What distros have you been testing recently?

[wove]

For reasons I am not sure I understand KDE has a preference for Snaps over Flatpaks. While many KDE apps do have Flatpaks, they are late in arrival. For the largest range and most recent KDE apps one really does need to either use Neon which creates and uses .deb pretty soon after releases or updates, or use a system with Snap support enabled and that would for the most part be Kubuntu. Of course Arch and its deriviatives are also up to date with KDE apps. Fedora's Kinoite which just uses Snaps is lacking in many KDE apps and many apps it does have are not the latest updates.

[crosscourt]

Really hate Snaps but Im typically not an early KDE app user so its not really an issue for me.

[bin]

In the search for a replacement for MX I've been having fun revisiting an old friend - SolydXK. Not too bothered about the K side of it but the X(fce) is coming along nicely. It's been around many years, but never really hit the big time. Coming from Holland there's more than a smattering of orange on the theme colouring . However it is essentially stock Debian but with a number of small tweaks under the hood - many of which are not immediately obvious but welcome nevertheless. It offers a slightly stripped set of apps on install but a simple Welcome screen takes you off to a load more goodies.
There's no glitz, no glamour, just good solyd Xfce. Is it for newbies - possibly not. Do you need a highly active forum full of people messing up their systems - then it's not for you. However, I like it.

[wove]

Thanks for mentioning this. I do not think I had ever heard of it. I went to their site and noticed they had a 32bit version, which just might work on my new 2006 machine. It is actually a 64bit machine, however it only boots from a 32bit efi. The bulk of 64bit Linux distros only ship with 64bit efi boot loader. So you can either do lots of hacking, or you can just be content with a 32bit distro. While the machine is 64 bit it also has a RAM limit of 3GB, so there is really no need for a 64bit OS.

[crosscourt]

I finally settled down with Zorin 17 and havent been testing much nor distrohopping. Zorin suits my needs right now and is easy for even my wife to use.

[wove]

I have been using Endless OS for a long time now. I setup virtual machines in Boxes to take a look at what new might be coming along. Every now and again I will install on hardware. I have found myself in something of a retro rabbit hole, intrigued by seeing what all can still be done with old OSes on period hardware.

[crosscourt]

Mostly running Windows, Chrome OS and Zorin these days and thats it.

[crosscourt]

I was using MX LInux quite a bit but there have been some issues I have grown to dislike recently. I moved over to Q4OS KDE as a Debian 12 installer and its been a much better experience overall. I liked MX Linux better in their earlier days and since then its been a bumpy ride, even though its still a good distro. Feren OS completely tanked and there are many problems with the distro that affected its popularity among users. I stopped using it because I simply couldnt get it to work well. Zorin OS has been amazing as one of the best distros Ive ever used and will continue to use it as my main distro.

[crosscourt]

I just updated Feren OS and it was a large update and most of the issues were fixed.
MX Linux 23 had a medium size update which cleared up quite a few issues, even though Discovery continues to be a bit cranky at times.

[bin]

After a bit of faffing around at the start of this year I decided to give Mint Debian a whirl - LMDE6.
In the past I was not much of a Cinnamon fan, but with Cinnamon 6 they have fixed a lot of little niggles and tweaked/enhanced a few areas.
The result is something I'm quite happy to live with and have been swapping over my other machines as I go.
OK - it uses a lot of memory but even on my 8gb laptop I don't notice it. If I was running a couple of VMs and 15+ tabs in FF then it might stutter - but I don't, that's what the desktop machine is for.
After over a decade of XFCE it took a couple of days for retraining muscle memory in some areas but other than that I think this is where I stay.
OK I'm still going to fiddle around with other stuff because it interests me but that's just for fun.