Episode 20 Show Notes
Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 020
Introductions
Hosts: Tony Hughes, Moss Bliss, Dale Miracle
Monthly Foibles
Updates: mentions of Lubuntu, OpenMandriva, Void, Solus, Endeavour
Beautiful Failures: ExLight, OpenMandriva Lx 4.2, Project Trident
Reviews: Bluestar, UbuntuDDE Remix
New Releases
Feedback
Announcements
Closing
MONTHLY FOIBLES …wherein we discuss what did and didn’t work for us this month…
Moss – I have gotten comments about my tendency to delete some programs, including LibreOffice, immediately after installation. To me, it makes sense to do it before you run the updates, because some of those programs, especially LibreOffice, are quite large and take up quite a bit of time and space in the updates, and if you remove them first, they don’t update. I know Chris Fisher has mentioned he doesn’t use any office. If you are like that, you may also want to remove CUPS prior to doing updates – or just run Bodhi, which leaves the printing package out altogether. Other things to consider removing include Thunderbird — again, if you don’t use it. sudo apt-get purge packagename* is all you need.
Otherwise, it has been a rough month, as my mother passed around the time of our last show and we’re still figuring out what to do about it. It is very hard to not have her to call every time something happens. The schools have been open a bit more, so I’ve had some subbing jobs. Next month should be better for us than this month was.
I did just buy my wife a new computer, she needed more computing power than we could afford so I found an old Xeon workstation on eBay. The specs are spine-chilling and the price was right.
Dale –
Well, I’ve been wanting to check for dust in my new Plex Server case and my Samba Server’s old case. I was using two Thermaltake H22 cases. They are from the generation when they just started putting dust filters on the cases. I bought a SilverStone SST-CS380B-USA case in the fall of 2019 to replace one of the H22 cases. After about 14 months of 24/7 use sitting next to the H22 case, I am really impressed. There was only the lightest trace of dust inside and not everywhere either; some areas had none at all.
On the other hand. You can’t say that about the Samba Server’s H22 case. It had dust bunnies clinging to every surface. The CPU heatsink looked like it was wearing a stocking cap, there was enough dust to knit two dozen sweaters or jumpers, probably around 2 years of dust. I had to remove the heatsink fan from the heatsink in order to clean it. That made me think of the last time I replaced the thermal paste. I knew I replaced the Plex servers paste when I installed the new case, so I am thinking it was close to 8 years, when I built the computer.
Needless to say the paste was like concrete. It took several minutes to get the heatsink removed, which was nothing compared to how long it took to clean. Once I put everything back together, the idle temp dropped from 42c to 32c. The overall case temp dropped about the same amount.
Tony – Not much really, I’ve been trying to get my health back on track and that’s been an up and down job of late. We are still in Covid lock down here in the UK which after a recent Government announcement is not going to get significantly relaxed until late spring, with the further rollout of the vaccine. On a positive note I had my first dose of the said vaccine last Saturday as we record this so things are moving.
Computer wise I did sell one of my many laptops, a Toshiba Z30, the buyer wanted Windows 10 and Linux Mint dual booting on it, the Linux side was because she knew her printer scanner worked in that but not in Windows. To cut a long story short I got Windows 10 on the laptop and Windows set it to fast boot and I could not get into the BIOS or the boot menu despite much trying and internet searches to find a solution nothing worked. In the end the buyer gave me the model of the printer and I was able to find a Windows Driver that worked so she was very happy with it without Linux in the end. Talking with the mintCast crew Joe suggested one way to get into the BIOS was to interrupt Windows startup several times to force it into the rescue menu, which gives access to the BIOS as an option, I will try this if needed on another occasion.
One final thing is about the show, I am finding it more and more difficult to find the time to distrohop, with health issues and life stuff, so I will be taking a back seat on that part of the show unless I have something that really grabs me or I review a new release of my daily driver. That is not to say I am going away completely, I’ll still be on the show to quiz Moss and Dale on aspects of their reviews and I’ll still be the chief production editor doing all the post production and posting the show so you can get it in your feeds.
UPDATES (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Moss – After our show last month, a Lubuntu user showed me how to move the Terminal or other apps to the Taskbar. It wasn’t any harder than MATE, but the location you needed to place your mouse was more restricted than I’m used to. Look for the green checkmark.
OpenMandriva has version 4.2 out, but not without problems for those updating from 4.1. I’ve had to report a couple of issues, and I’ll cover this better later in the show.
Dale – Void Linux updated their ISO images. Which is a good thing considering they are a rolling release distro. It will save some time updating after a fresh install.
Solus has released version 4.2. There are way too many updates to mention. So I will just mention ones that caught my attention. They are now using kernel 5.10.12, which is a welcome news to the 5th gen AMD Ryzen CPU users. They upgraded to PulseAudio 14.1. This version resolves the problem of an HDMI video source being automatically switched to upon connection. That functionality is disabled by default. They are continuing to use Gnome 3.38 so no Gnome 40 here. Lastly Plasma is at version 5.20.5. Along with updated Frameworks 5.78, KDE Applications 20.12.1 and Qt 5.15.2. I was a bit disappointed that Plasma wasn’t version 5.21, though it is understandable given the time needed to review new versions before inclusion into the distro.
Tony – So since we were last on air EndeavourOS released a new ISO of their Arch-based OS. Considering it is less than 2 years since this distro rose from the ashes of Antergos Linux they are doing a great job, when I reviewed their first release in August 2019 you only had one Desktop at install which at the time was XFCE 4.14. So I grabbed the latest ISO and did a dual boot on my other Z30. Now if you choose the net install option you can make a choice from all the main DE’s and a few of the windows managers as well, so you can have your DE of choice, which in my case was Mate right from the start. The installer is Calamares and really easy to use, dual boot setup is as easy as it is in Mint or Ubuntu, so no problems there. The guys and girls over at EndeavourOS have done a great job, so if you want Arch but without all the pain, go check it out. You can also still get my original review from August 2019 from our Blogger site, it was Episode 5.
So now we move on to a new feature.
BEAUTIFUL FAILURES – What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month
Moss: Distrowatch provides a service of installing virtually everything they get and reporting on it, right up to the point that it fails to install or run. We thought we’d follow suit. Just as it is good to have information on how well a distro runs on certain equipment, it is also valuable to learn the progress of distros which may not be quite ready yet, and so we have added this section. We’ll try to keep it light and short.
I’ve been playing with ExLight, a new distro among many by Arne Exton. This distro uses Debian Bullseye and Enlightenment 0.24.3 to beautiful effect, but there are many unfinished features. While I did get it fully installed, it quickly lost wifi access and often reported that it was “ready” but would not actually be connected. I kept it on my Kudu for a while, but eventually it had to go when no fixes could be found and support responses were few.
As I said, OpenMandriva finally released version 4.2, and offered it as regular updates through dnf but neglected to tell their users how they needed to run the update. I did what I could on my two machines, rebooted (which itself was glitchy the first time), and got the new 4.2 screen (not as pretty as the previous version but distinctive nonetheless)… and a message that a certain configuration file could not be written and to contact my system administrator to fix it. Then it took me to a login screen which showed my login name and prompted me for my password… which it rejected. Repeatedly. With reboots. I wound up doing a clean installation on the FuzZ400, and I stumbled on a discussion on their forum (before upgrading the Kudu) that I was supposed to upgrade my Rock repos using the commands sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf distro-sync –allowerase, and then run sudo dnf upgrade. I did that in upgrading the Kudu… and got exactly the same result. Now I’m being told that I should have “answered the scripts carefully” at the end of the installation. I saw a series of scripts which looked like
Blah blah blah packagename
blah blah blah
Select (Y/n/other option/other option)
I did like any barely literate user would do, and answered Y to all of them. In my experience, accepting the default leaves old config files installed. But I was apparently expected to read and understand this barrage of instructions, each saying nearly the same thing, and understand that the default was the proper decision to make.
Dale: Project Trident started out about 3 years ago based on TrueOS, a fork of FreeBSD. In late 2019 they decided to rebase it on Void Linux. Since I am a fan of Void, I decided to try it.
The installer required an internet connection to download the installation files. You could choose which release version you wanted which is a unique feature. The installation was similar to Void’s but had a lot less options and was not dual-boot friendly. All you could do is select which drive you wanted to use. After a couple attempts at installing it, I finally completed the install, but it would not boot. A “dracut could not boot” error message was displayed. It suggested copying the log file to a USB stick so it could be sent as a bug report. After many attempts to get the USB stick to mount, I gave up; the USB stick mounted fine in Linux Mint Cinnamon. I will revisit this in the coming months.
Reviews:
DALE:
DISTRO NAME: Bluestar Linux
INTRO:
This was suggested to me by Moss after I needed to put Project Trident back on the shelf, so to speak. Bluestar is an Arch-based distro from Germany using the KDE Plasma Desktop. One thing that sets Bluestar apart from other distros is it doesn’t use the default panels; instead they use Latte Dock and various widgets which are what KDE calls Plasmoids.
I really couldn’t find much on this distro. Bluestar is hosted on Sourceforge and has a Facebook page. I tried searching for Bluestar and found a brand of ranges and stoves incidentally. I noticed on the boot menu of the installation ISO they have support for Intel Atom Cedarview CPUs with GMA 3600 integrated graphics.
MY HARDWARE:
The laptop I used was a Lenovo T430, it has an Intel Dual Core i5-3320M 2.6 Ghz cpu, 14” display using Intel graphics, with 4GB of RAM and a 240 GB SSD. I am also using BIOS mode instead of UEFI.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
I thought I would skip using dd to write the ISO image to the USB stick. This time I used the USB image writer in Linux Mint, also called Mintstick. I never used it before, but it worked with no problem.
I booted into the live image. I clicked on the installer icon displayed on the desktop. It gave me a nice Welcome screen with a summary of the installation steps listed on the left. One odd behavior I noticed was it displayed a caution triangle and reported that the computer wasn’t connected to the internet. It went on to say that my computer didn’t satisfy some of the recommended requirements for installation.
With the network disconnected, I only had the choice of the Basic install. I couldn’t find out from their page on Sourceforge what that included. There was a comment beside it that read No System Update. So I figured, oh, they want to download updates during the install. So I exited the installer and connected to my WiFi, which I found in the hidden drop down dock in the top center of the screen. When I opened the installer again, I saw another notice. It read, “Attention: For a basic installation without internet access, disable your internet connection and restart the installer.” It goes on to mention that this may prevent issues with DVD based
installation. So we moved along. Once connected to the WiFi, I was offered a few more installation options. There is the previously mentioned Basic, along with Desktop, DeskPro and Developer. As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t find any description for those. The one I am unclear about is DeskPro; I assume Developer is the same as Desktop but with packages needed to compile software. I chose the Desktop option.
The installation questions are the usual. Your language, location and keyboard settings. You have the option of what disk is used for the installation. You can dual boot with another OS, replace a partition with Bluestar or erase the disk to install Bluestar. Additionally, you get to choose if you want the bootloader installed and where to install it. Your swap options are None, Hibernate, and No Hibernate; you don’t get to select the size. I think they are basing it on some ratio of the installed memory. They also give you the option of encrypting your installation.
Up next is the user account creation and naming the computer. They offer the option to login automatically without the need to enter the password. If you want to use sudo to perform root administration activities, just check the box that says “use the same password for the admin account”.
The next screen allows you to select a theme. I thought this was a pretty nice feature, and it was optional during the installation. A few other distros allow you to do this. The last screen is a summary of your chosen options. Click install and wait.
I did notice that the install stopped for several minutes at the 91% mark. Eventually it had a window pop open. Then began downloading packages. I found it at the 19 out of 19 completed stage a while later. I assumed it was done, so I clicked on the close button. After a few seconds another window popped up and began downloading more packages. Some time had passed and I noticed it stopped again. No dialog box saying it was done; it was just the same as the popup window before it. After clicking on the close button, the installation finished seconds later with a “All Done” message.
I clicked the checkbox to “restart now” and clicked done.
POST INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
Upon reboot, all of the hardware was detected and the screen was at its native resolution. One thing I have always found annoying in distros is when they don’t save the WiFi passphrase you used during installation. This distro is using WPA_Supplicant; I should think there wouldn’t be an issue with moving the configuration from the installation to the installed system. I am not a developer, so I can’t actually say how easy this should be.
EASE OF USE:
The themes that Bluestar created are a mixture of some dark and light themes; I of course selected one of the dark themes. They have a high level of transparency, so much so that some popup notifications can’t be read clearly, depending on what is below the popup window. The desktop is also very busy with plasmoids of weather and other system information covering ⅓ to half of the screen. I personally felt it was too busy, and removed them. Maybe it is just me, but on a 14” screen it felt a bit cramped, even though my active applications were covering them.
The default packages are similar to what you find in other distros, though they do include quite a few Internet-related packages such as Chromium, Dropbox, Filezilla, Firefox, Kmail, Ktorrent, Pidgin Internet Messenger, Skype, and Thunderbird. Thunderbird was at version 78.7, Firefox at 85.0.1, Chromium was at 88.0.4324.150 Official Build for Arch Linux. I noticed most packages were very current. The kernel is 5.10.13-arch1-1 and Plasma is at 5.20.5.
I noticed that the WiFi wouldn’t automatically connect after login; this happens randomly and all I can do is reboot. The message I get most often is that it can’t configure the adapter. It did retain the paraphrase so it was only a matter of click connect from the connection manager. I have not had issues with the WiFi with any other distro on this laptop.
One gripe I have is application discovery. The graphical package manager is Octopi; it looks very similar to Synaptic. But not being familiar with Arch-based distros, I did not know the name of the package manager — GUI or command line. I tried typing “Add” in the menu and nothing appeared. I tried typing “package”; nothing was found. I then started looking through the menu items. I finally saw an application called Octopi in the System menu, opened it, and saw that it was indeed the package manager.
Another gripe is that, out of the dozen or so applications in the Latte Dock, not one of them was Octopi. It was also not pinned to the hidden dock at the top of the screen. This is my second install of Bluestar and I tried to rule out any unknown installation issues.
Yet another gripe is that they don’t have the superkey configured to launch the application menu. Again, that is probably just me. It is funny, because I never had that habit until Microsoft started doing that in Windows 95, so I guess we can blame them.
As far as the functionality of the desktop goes, it is very responsive. For those of you not familiar with Latte Dock, it mimics the look of the dock used in Mac OS, although that is just one of its many configurations. It also can replace the default Plasma docks and panels. I think Latte is better than the Plasma docks.
During the week of February 7th, I tried to update the packages, since it had been a week or so since the install. I noticed that a few of the repos were giving “404 Page not found” errors, and that lasted for several days. Finally, on the 12th, I noticed the repos were back online. I was then able to synchronize the package databases in Octopi. I’ve been using it since, as I can’t stand using Pacman — those command line switches annoy me. Octopi reported that there were updates, so I chose to install them. A window opened with the options of “NO” and “Run in terminal”. Obviously I wasn’t going to click “No” since I want to update, so I clicked on “Run in terminal”, which opened a terminal window to run Pacman, and Pacman reported that there was nothing to do. So I used the command line, and again it reported there was nothing to do. I opened Octopi and tried to update, and was again given the option of “NO” and “terminal”. I was thinking it was a permission issue and was not prompted to enter my password, but I had typed sudo pacman -Syu on the command line, so I don’t know what the problem is. I tried again the next day, with additional packages needing to be updated, and the same thing happened.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
Memory usage on first boot after install was 780 MB. Once I removed all the Plasmoids, the memory usage after a clean reboot was 550 MB. This was observed with the free -h command, although Htop reports 629 MB. The install size on the SSD is 16 GB.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
They have a Facebook page. Since I am not much of a Facebook fan these days, I didn’t sign in to look at it. There is also the Sourceforge bug tracking system; their discussion section has one post from 2017 along with their bug tracker. The one bug reported is the same issue I had with the repos, so apparently this is not a new issue.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
When I installed Bluestar, the only other distro installed was the broken Project Trident installation, so I wiped the disk and installed Bluestar. I later downloaded the ISO for Ubuntu 20.04 and installed it alongside Bluestar. Both distros booted fine after Ubuntu’s installation. I ran sudo grub-install /dev/sda from Bluestar’s terminal and Bluestar was once again controlling grub. I noticed that Bluestar didn’t have an update-grub command, so I ran sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg, which is what update-grub does. I don’t see any issues in dual-booting Bluestar with another Linux.
STABILITY:
I haven’t had any crashes or lockups, but the problem of not being able to update the packages is a real issue. The repos going offline for several days is not good either. I also don’t understand the problems with the WiFi randomly not working.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Garuda Linux
EndeavourOS
Solus
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 6/10
experienced user 8/10
Hardware Issues 7/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 5/10
Ease of Use 5/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 7/10
Overall Rating 7/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
I don’t want to sound overly negative. I wasn’t happy with the issues with Bluestar. The themes are very nice and I like the use of Latte Dock, but there are many areas where Bluestar needs some help. The popup windows that download the packages during install should either auto-close when complete or notify you that they are done. Some visual feedback during the long pause before the popup windows open would be nice. But the biggest problem is not being able to update the packages. A history of the repos going offline is not good. Adding Octopi to the Latte Dock would be nice since it is how you would install and update packages. This distro has some potential. So I will revisit it later this year.
MOSS:
DISTRO NAME: UbuntuDDE Remix
INTRO:
Deepin Desktop has gotten a lot of press for it’s gorgeous design and functional apps, and taken heat for the possibility of the code containing information collection by the Chinese government, which has been disproven but yet steps have been taken to prevent this. But have you ever wondered what would happen if you took that beautiful desktop and applied it to Ubuntu apps? Someone did, and this is the result.
MY HARDWARE:
My laptop is a 2016 model Dell Inspiron 7353, with a 14” screen, an i5 processor and Intel graphics, 8 Gb RAM and a 128 Gb SSD. I also loaded this distro on my Kudu 3, with a 17.3” screen, an i7 processor and Intel graphics, 16 Gb RAM and a 1 Tb SSD, and my FuzZ400, an 10-year-old HP Workstation with a Xeon processor, 16 Gb RAM, and a 512 Gb SSD with a 26” monitor.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
I downloaded the ISO and copied it to a Ventoy stick, and rebooted the Dell Inspiron, selected the Ventoy stick and the distro, and after a while it started loading. And it kept loading. And kept loading. And then the screen went black, some text appeared on it and then disappeared, and about 5 seconds later the desktop came up. Scary times, but we got there.
The installer was Calamares, but just like I saw in Lubuntu last episode it was themed to look like Ubiquity. Maybe this is the current thing in using Calamares to install Ubuntu.
I selected sda3, replacing OpenMandriva on my SSD and dual booting with Linux Mint. A dialogue box came open saying that the system found a problem and would I like to report it?, without informing me what the problem was, and continued installing after I selected yes. I still have no idea what problem was found.
The slideshow during installation would have been prettier if it wasn’t just all blue. DDE has a reputation of being extremely colorful. This installer bespeaks that. It also seemed to run a bit more slowly than my installations of Ubuntu Web, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Unity.
I installed this on all 3 of my main machines, and each time got a dialog box stating there was an error, and did I wish to report it? I did the first time, ignored it the other two, which was later recommended by the dev.
When completed, the “Restart now” box was already checked and I just had to click “done”.
POST INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
It rebooted to a very pretty boot screen with a graphic of the Aurora Borealis but too-tiny type. I of course got Grub Customizer and fixed that boot screen after updates.
I got the error message again. The distro remembered my wifi access point but did not remember my wifi login, so I was prompted for the password. I hadn’t seen that previously in other distros; it’s not quite as good as if it did remember my password, but better than not remembering my Wi-Fi access point. I had this problem on the Kudu as well, although randomly it seems to remember my wifi password. Also, autologin works or doesn’t, depending on your machine.
The default desktop is very blue in random looking geometric shapes. Mark that for changes.
My next step was to change my screen resolution. They did not have the usual Ubuntu Displays feature under that name. I had to open Control Settings, and found Display on the top row.
Changing the setting left large portions of the screen White with the remaining portion showing the original blue geometric shapes the first time I did this on the Dell, but that behavior did not repeat at other times or on my other machines. I did not find a clear way to restore the background, so I right-clicked on the desktop and selected “change the wallpaper”.
Since the main idea of Ubuntu DDE was to divorce the desktop from the Chinese apps, of course there is LibreOffice instead of WPS. My first task, as always, was to delete LibreOffice before doing updates.
I was a bit surprised to find the updates consulting 74 repos; these updates included upgrading 220 packages and installing 13 more. That got me Firefox 84, when 85 had come out the previous day, and the updated kernel is 5.8.0. After I finished, I ran sudo apt autoremove and removed about 63.5Mb of unnecessary files.
When I reboot or shut down, I am told that Unattended Upgrades are running and you risk losing that if you continue. I got this on all three machines. There is a fix for this, which I will discuss shortly.
After reboot, I discovered that it had ignored my wishes to log in automatically and asks for my Wi-Fi password again. This is its usual behavior, and I have requested a change from the dev.
Of all the packages I normally install next, it did not have Discord but suggested I install it as a snap. I did that after getting the other program installs done.
After I got everything in and all my settings fixed except for Firefox, I rebooted, and, yes, it asked for my Wi-Fi password again.
Another irritation is the Terminal. While it shows as a red icon on the Taskbar, the Terminal itself is all white. However, it is quite easy to change the theme right on the Terminal.
One really cool feature that I haven’t seen in a lot of distros is the ability to set different wallpaper for each workspace, and you can increase or reduce the number of workspaces quite easily.
In the end, I uninstalled LibreOffice, Thunderbird, GIMP, and various Gnome games, and installed Softmaker FreeOffice, Ubuntu Restricted Extras, Slimbook Battery 3, Grub Customizer, Audacity, Telegram Desktop, Stacer, Kmines, Kmahjongg, Nethack-x11, PysolFC, plus Discord as a snap.
EASE OF USE:
Other than the irritating task of having to enter my wifi password every boot, everything is beautiful and everything is Ubuntu. There are no real issues with learning the system, I know all this already. However, on my Kudu, after a couple weeks’ use I was booting to a black screen with no cursor. I hit escape and got a single note, hit it again and got a lovely rising 4-note string, but still nothing. The dev says it is a known issue, and I’ve had this with Ubuntu Unity and Zorin OS recently. I have not yet had this problem on my other two machines.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
Neofetch is already installed, and reports 626 MiB RAM in use. Stacer says I have 8.2 GiB of disc space used. I opened Telegram-desktop with Stacer open; RAM usage as reported by Stacer went up slowly from 1.0 Gib to 1.2 Gib, and when I closed it, even after clearing the cache, it still rose to 1.3; I closed Stacer and ran neofetch and it started at 1 Gib and dropped to around 800 Mib. I then opened Firefox (4 tabs), and neofetch reads 2211 MiB; this is a bit high but is still quite usable for systems with 4 Gb RAM or more.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
I joined the UbuntuDDE remix Telegram group, which is echoed to-and-from their Discord and IRC. There are 900 members give or take, and the main dev is active and has helped me out quite a bit. And with everything being Ubuntu, you know lots of help is readily available for most issues you would come across. Even so, there is not much activity in this group despite the high number of members.
The error message I got at boot can be cleared with
sudo rm /var/crash/*
The issue with Unattended Upgrades scaring you when you try to turn the machine off is solved by a simple, two-command fix for this that you have to run in Terminal.
sudo systemctl stop unattended-upgrades.service
sudo systemctl disable unattended-upgrades.service
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
I dual-booted with Linux Mint 20.1 on the Dell, with no issues. My Kudu is running 8 distros, and the FuzZ400 is running 4. No problem here. I had an interesting experience copying the ISO to a Ventoy stick — it reported when the copy was done, but showed only 67% on the little graphical bubble and did not show 100% until the Ventoy stick was done installing it! This is a feature, not a bug, as it really lets you know when Ventoy is done installing your ISO instead of just when the copying is complete.
STABILITY:
See previous statements re: Ubuntu. The closest thing I had to a crash was the desktop’s appearance after changing the resolution setting.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Deepin OS
Lubuntu
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 10/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 9/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 9/10
Ease of Use 8/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 9.5/10
FINAL COMMENTS
There is a lot to recommend this distro. It’s pretty. It’s Ubuntu. It’s fairly light. I had intended to install it only on the Dell Inspiron but felt moved to put it on my other machines. For quite a while I was using this distro more every day, and it threatened to replace Mint as my go-to. There are still a few papercuts and issues, but they should be easy to iron out, probably with the next version. This distro is as deep as Ubuntu, and could easily find its way into your heart and onto your desktop. It has mine, and it wouldn’t take a lot for it to move into my daily driver slot.
NEW RELEASES SINCE LAST EPISODE:
from 01/20 to 02/23
GhostBSD 21.01.20
NuTyX 20.12.1
Xigma NAS12.2.0.4
4MLinux 35.1
GPartEd Live 1.2.0-1
Endless OS 3.9.2
Tails 4.15.1
Clonezilla 2.7.1-22
Alpine 3.13.1
Zentyal Server 7.0
OPNsense 21.1
EndeavourOS 2021.02.03
Solus 4.2
SparkyLinux 5.14
Live Raizo 12.21.02.02
Debian 10.8.0
Debian Edu 10.8.0
PCLinuxOS 2021.02
Bluestar 5.10.13
PrimTux 6-20.04
Diamond Linux-TT 05.Fb.21
Septor 2021.1
Ultimate 7.1
Finnix 122
Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 – all official flavors
OpenMandriva Lx 4.2
KDE neon 20210218
Mabox Linux 21.02
KNOPPIX 9.1
Endless 3.9.3
siduction 21.1.1
Void 20210218
Netrunner 21.01
PCLinuxOS 2021.0215
4MLinux 35.2
GeckoLinux 999.210221
Tails 4.16
Alpine 3.12.4
Devuan GNU+Linux 3.1.0
