What distros have you been testing recently?

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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

Post by crosscourt »

Installed FreeOffice using the gdebi installer with no issues. Added a few more apps like Okular and qbittorrent and removed LibreOffice. As I get more familiar with PM Ill handle most of this at the initial install where possible. Functionality now is as good as Zorin but it uses less than than half the ram Zorin uses.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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“tlmiller” wrote:played around with Endless OS again. Still not a fan of the default apps, and the fact that some apps just can't be removed.
I do agree with that. I think the strength of Endless OS is that it has a clear focus and they are very clear about their target audience. I think that is something that far to few Distros do. Fedora does offer some special purpose and focused "spins", there are a few distros like Ubuntu Studio, that have a clear and specific audience, but the majority of distros are just generic desktops that put very little time into thinking about who they are expecting to use it and why it would be useful to use.

With the Endless Foundation targeting the underserved technology areas of the world, it is really less a personal computer and more a family or maybe even the school's computer, which results in their being applications that will not be useful to some users. If you dig into their documentation they do have ways of making a customized install to add things you want and remove things you don't.

When I fix up and give away machines, they almost always have Endless OS installed. It is an excellent fit for both after school programs, as well as a nice fit in assisted living facilities. I can give a quick intro to the system, ask what things they might like to do, provide a quick demo and just leave them to explore. And the greatest advantage to me is that I do not get pestered with support questions. No one breaks the systems and the system is not self breaking.

Every time I visit my youngest grand daughter she has new pictures she has made to show me, goofy videos she has made. She found Super Tux Cart and shows me how fast she can drive. Never a question about why such and such does not work, or this quit working. I think its tablet/phone interface makes it easy and inviting for kids to explore.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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So, my testing with OpenSUSE has went so well, that OpenSUSE got to increase it's installed presence in my house. I've put it on the T14 Gen2 AMD now, so there's 2 installs of OpenSUSE. The loser from that is Debian, as it drops down to 3 installs. I'm thinking I may move away from Debian as my primary OS since it's looking more and more like Norberts not going to build Plasma 5.26, and I've gotten so used to having modern Plasma on stable Debian that I really don't wanna deal with having an aging Plasma on there now, nor do I want to switch to SID to run the modern version. But won't be anything today regardless.
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crosscourt
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Ive moved to Neon as my main KDE distro as I want the newer versions. Not using Debian at all any more as I use Neon and Zorin primarily.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Might give OpenSUSE a look given your comments as I liked it before but it had issues. Which version of OpenSUSE are you using?
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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crosscourt wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:46 pm Might give OpenSUSE a look given your comments as I liked it before but it had issues. Which version of OpenSUSE are you using?
Tumbleweed. LEAP is ok, but just too many missing packages for me to really enjoy it, and there's a few I haven't found a GOOD way to install. I keep VM's of LEAP though just in case I work through the rest of the isues and wanna try it on bare metal.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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I was pretty sure you were using Tumbleweed as Leap I never cared for before.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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LEAP has the same issue as Debian. Once it's released, it doesn't get release or major version bumps, only minor version bumps. So like LEAP 15.4 currently has Plasma 5.24. WHile that's not incredibly outdated RIGHT NOW, it will be until the beginning of June with the launch of LEAP 15.5 that it will get a version increment. Sure, it's every year instead of 2-3 years like Debian, but still gets stale just the same.
And unlike in years past with Debian, there's no Norbert Preining (that I've found) releasing updated versions of the desktop for the stable OS. So Tumbleweed is my choice.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Im on Neon updating one of my older installs as I have two presently. Discover was being pain in the ass so used Synaptic and it took awhile but it updated but didnt ask to restart. Thats what usually happens when Discover does the updating.
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Re: What distros have you been testing recently?

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Neon is a bit sluggish so I tried MX Linux 21 and very good so far. They handle the repos in an interesting way inside of MX package installer. They have the repos separated out at the top of the installer. They have stable, test, backports and flatpak. For instance in the installer Thunderbird was still on 78 which isnt supported any more. I went into the test repos in the installer and found the update 102 version of Thunderbird and installed it No issues whatsoever but they go to great lengths to tell you to not use these other choices outside of stable as there could be problems. I like having the access to what I need but they should have updated Thunderbird on their own. Will be looking through the backports to see what is available as well.
The Lenovo so far seems to like this distro.
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