Episode 22 Show Notes
Moss – Welcome to Distrohopper’s Digest, Episode 22, recorded on May 5th, 2021. This episode, we are taking on Emmabuntus, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Makulu LinDoz, and SolydX, with a brief discussion of RoboLinux, and a flop or two. We are happy to receive suggestions of distros you’d like us to try.
MONTHLY FOIBLES
…wherein we discuss what we did this month…
Moss – I could have reviewed RoboLinux last month or this, but it was just not different enough from Ubuntu MATE — unless you pay the developer a lot of money, which would get you what is thought to be a very good set of White Hat hacker tools. I instead posted a brief review at It’s MOSS. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on, having picked up Full Circle Weekly News on top of my activity on mintCast and this podcast, and I’ve also had work as a substitute teacher more days in the past month. So I’ve been a bit limited for time, and even skipped a mintCast because all the little things were piling up.
I continue to have odd problems with USB sound cards. The last vendor kept swearing they sent me replacements, oh my the postal service, but I don’t think they ever did and finally refunded my money. It required 6 messages through eBay to get to that point, and they forced the 6th one even after I told them they would get the dreaded Negative Feedback if I had to write again. I ordered two identical cards from a vendor in China. It may take a while for them to get here, but the odds on both of them being broken are low.
Dale – I received my System76 Pangolin laptop. It is an all AMD based laptop. I chose the 4.0 GHz Ryzen 5 4500U (2.3 up to 4.0 GHz – 8MB Cache – 6 Cores – 6 Threads) with 16 GB of ram and a 15.6” display. I wrote an initial impressions review on It’s MOSS. My other activities are discussed under the Beautiful Failures section.
In non computer activities, I took my 20 year old Kirby vacuum cleaner to the service center. The neutral / drive toggle pedal broke. They fixed it and looked the rest of it over.
And while I was at Staples buying printer paper and a spiral notebook, I saw an office chair I liked. Considering my existing chair was over 10 years old, I figured I was due for a new one. It is a Dormeo Bonded Leather Manager Chair. It was pretty easy to assemble. The instructions were in perfect English and the diagrams shown were helpful.
Tony – A little bit of Linux but not too much, I have a DELL 7250 UltraBook which runs Windows 10 and openSUSE Tumbleweed, it had been a while since I started this PC, but a couple of weeks ago I needed to use the Win10 install to use my HP Color Laser printer as it will not work in Linux and I realised that I had not updated the SUSE Tumbleweed install for several months. So I decided to risk running the upgrade path of 1200+ package upgrades. I can report that everything went smoothly and everything still works. I’m on Kernel 5.12.0-2 after a more regular weekly update yesterday LibreOffice 7.1.1.2 and all the other software I’ve looked at seems to be the latest or as near as to make little difference. Considering the length of time between updates I was pleasantly surprised that it all went so smoothly and there were no issues after the update. A great positive for the openSUSE Tumbleweed developers keeping it so stable for a rolling release.
UPDATES (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Moss – To quote Bela Fleck, “The hippo has landed.” All the Ubuntu flavors were released on April 22. On top of that, Bela would be further pleased that, thanks to System76, COSMIC Desktop is landing in Pop!_OS, which would make it the COSMIC Hippo, although its presence will be delayed until June. And Slackware 15 Beta just landed on the 14th, we’ve been waiting for this for years. And there is something I keep forgetting to report on with Lubuntu, both 20.10 and now 21.04; when I ask it to reboot, it seldom makes it all the way to the reboot command, at least on my machines. You are left with a blank screen, waiting for it to restart, and eventually have to do a hard bootdown.
Dale – Well Ghost BSD is now using the new FreeBSD 13-Stable as a base. That also upgrades their ZFS to OpenZFS 2.0; OpenZFS is the merger between all of the ZFS projects into one code base. I didn’t see any new release information for the others, though it is hard to keep track since some of them are rolling release distros.
Tony –
Just that openSUSE Tumbleweed is very Good lol.
BEAUTIFUL FAILURES – What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month
Moss: Dale and I worked together to install Emmabunẗus. For some reason, some of my tools would not install, such as Telegram and Element and Discord. Dale said he would keep the distro on his machine and work with it, so I wiped mine and started over.
I had a really good time with SolydX, as I report below, and decided to try to install SolydK as a dual boot. The installation went just as well as SolydX, but after rebooting it seizes with a kernel panic in step 1. I installed it twice more, looked at the checksum, downloaded a different copy, installed it again, and still get the exact same issue. I have reported it to the forum. I have not tried to use SolydK as a sole installation, but doubt that dual-booting was the issue.
Dale:
As Moss mentioned, I installed Emmabuntus briefly to see what was happening to him. Apparently there were some security key issues with some of the repos. Those errors prevented the apps from being installed. In an attempt to fix the issue by installing new keys, I ended up preventing any updates from installing, so I had to disable those repos. The flatpak also had some weird permission issues. I can’t remember what they were, as I forgot to write them down.
I will be brief about my second failure because I really don’t want to relive it again. I have been using Mint Cinnamon since last December with my new Nvidia 1650 graphics card, the least expensive card that could support my monitor’s native resolution. I wanted to go back to Solus Budgie. Well that didn’t go well; all I could get to work was the open source driver, which ironically didn’t support the resolution I wanted to use. I heard that Pop!_OS supported Nvidia in a separate ISO. The long story short, it installed and worked on my first boot. The other reason for trying Pop! is because I have grown to like it on my System76 Pangolin. Once graphics cards become available I may swap the card for an AMD if I continue to have problems with the Nvidia in other distros. MOSS: – DISTRO NAME:Makulu LinDoz
INTRO: I don’t even remember who suggested this distro to me, but it looks like a great suggestion, especially for new users who are leaving Windows 10 for Linux.
MY HARDWARE: I installed this on my System76 Kudu3 laptop, with an i7 6th Gen processor and Intel graphics, 16 Gb RAM, and a 1 Tb SSD.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
This distro used the Calamares installer with no advanced options; I could not designate the swap partition, for instance. But the installation went smoothly, and new users would appreciate the simplicity. There is no need to report all the steps as they are laid out clearly and understandably and run flawlessly. Thank you, Calamares.
POST INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
Post-installation setup looks well thought out, but keeps opening other windows rather than being integrated. This distro is set up with Chrome — not chromium, not Firefox — and tries to require you to use it. Even their forums, apparently a web app, open up Chrome. You are informed there is a snapshot feature, but it only opens Timeshift, which while it is a useful backup feature is not technically a snapshot.
You are prompted to log into all your various online accounts. I guess they really do want you to have that whole Microsoft experience. I logged into my Ubuntu One account and could not get the window to close. The only button showing is to remove your account… Aha! the red X to close the window is hidden, you have to mouse over it to reveal it.
The desktop is based on Cinnamon. I replaced Chrome with Firefox. They have a modified Conky taking desktop real estate, but it gets out of the way easily. Element is included in the software store, a nice touch. There was a long pause before it started to install, but it did eventually install. Telegram 2.7.1 is also in the repo, which is from Flathub. Then I went to install Discord, and now that I know where to look I see it is coming from the repo, and it’s asking for my password to continue, which it didn’t for Element or Telegram. And when it starts installing, I see it is not installing a repo copy but rather a Snap package. And I had to log out and back in to get these newly-installed apps to show up in my menus.
The Conky adaptation looks terrific, but the instructions on how to set up the weather, clock, etc. are not at all clear. Keep clicking around the area, you will get lucky eventually. The weather asks for a code, but unlike weather apps which ask for some geo marker you have to go look up somewhere, they just want your ZIP code, at least if you’re in the US. Since the dev is from South Africa and currently resides in Vietnam, I’m fairly certain he has it worked out for other areas of the world.
EASE OF USE:
After everything is set up and running the way I want it, it is a breeze to run, looks beautiful (especially if you like Windows 10), and easily could be considered as your main distro of choice. But beware: you need to be aware that their battery icon always shows more remaining battery life. After using this on my power-hungry Kudu for over an hour, there appeared to be no significant reduction in battery use based on the icon, but hovering over it I found I was at 55%. This may be considered an improvement over other distros. I’ve had some indicators show nearly empty when it was at 45% or higher.
There is also a security problem with LinDoz — not enough of it. While you cannot log in to your system without a password, the dev has otherwise disabled all calls for your password when doing root-level stuff using sudo, and is proud of it. I just believe that, when you enter Terminal, you should have to enter a password at least once to sudo, like most distros do. And while the nice, graphical Software Updater works well, for some reason it does not check back after completion to see if more needs to be done. More than once, I opened Terminal and ran sudo apt update and found many more updates waiting for me.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to use their workspace switcher. It looks a lot like the one in more modern Ubuntu-based distros, but doesn’t function the same. I’ve tried just about everything that works in other distros. Sometimes I have actually gotten it to work but have not been able to repeat my result. I did get a response, and I do not consider it a friendly one, so that’s a big markdown.
It’s also a bit hard to get into the forum. You go to the distro’s website, click on Forum, and find the login almost at the very bottom of the page, which then takes you back to the website and you have to click on Forum again. You might eventually get used to logging in on the website and then clicking Forum, but I haven’t managed to remember to try that yet so I don’t know for certain that would be an improvement.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
This is not the lightest of distros, I was using 790 MiB RAM under neofetch. With the browser open to Google Mail and Google Drive, I’m using 2396 GiB. While that is a fair amount, it still is low enough to use on a computer with 4 GiB RAM.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
They have their own forums, but they appear underused. The dev does get back to you quickly, but there do not seem to be a lot of other users on the site. Not all the answers you will get may be found satisfactory, but should be sufficient to give you what you need. One issue I asked about would have required a short answer: to use this keystroke or do a mouse click here; instead I got the answer to go watch a video. The good news is, this is Ubuntu and Cinnamon, and you should be able to find plenty of help if you go to those types of forums, and as I always seem to say, don’t forget LinuxQuestions.org.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
I have had no difficulty using it on my multiboot Kudu, cohabiting with six other distros.
STABILITY:
It’s just as stable as Ubuntu, maybe more so since they strip out a lot of apps and tools before releasing it.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Ultimate Edition
Feren OS
Zorin OS
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 10/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 5/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 9/10
FINAL COMMENTS
I need to try this one out more. This would go into the top tier of my recommendations for people who want to try Linux who are used to Windows 10, and if you loaded it on a new user’s machine you would likely not get any questions for a couple weeks. But when you do get questions, the papercuts here are definitely different than in other distros; make sure you are knowledgeable enough in the system to answer their questions. The slightly lower level of security on this distro will make it Just Like Windows, pleasing a new user and infuriating an experienced one, except you still can’t install Windows executable files and viruses. The rating fell considerably when the dev belittled me for not watching a video when he could have just told me the keystroke; this is not respectful, no matter how accurate it may be. Caution: do not overdo trying to cut back on unneeded components. Removing an unneeded onscreen keyboard, for instance, completely removes Cinnamon.
DALE:-DISTRO NAME: openSUSE Tumbleweed
INTRO: Tumbleweed is a rolling distribution of openSUSE. openSUSE is a community sponsored project by SUSE, ARM, B1-Systems, Tuxedo Computers and others. openSUSE and SuSE’s history is long and complicated. In short, SUSE is a company of German origin. They created SuSE Linux in early 1994 making it one of the oldest existing commercial distributions. In October of 2005 openSUSE was created as a non commercial version of SUSE. It was based on SuSE Linux 10.1 and the first version of openSUSE was 10.2.
Tumbleweed was originally conceived by Greg Kroah-Hartman, who is currently the maintainer of the Linux kernel. He had the idea of making add-on rolling updates from the openSUSE development codebase that could be added to openSUSE. The current Tumbleweed we have today is the merger of the development code base and openSUSE, thus creating a rolling release distro.
I want to make a special mention to Joshua Hawk of the mintCast podcast and Crowbar Kernel Panic (A Linux Gaming Podcast) for helping me with openSUSE. It is one of his favorite distros and he is quite familiar with it. Thank you for the help.
MY HARDWARE:
The laptop I used is my Lenovo ThinkPad T460 which is my retired daily driver. It has a Intel Dual Core i5-6200U 2.8 GHz CPU, 14″ display using Intel HD Graphics 520, 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
I created the installation USB using Popsicle, which is an Open Source GTK app that Pop!_OS uses. It worked very well. Since most computers these days are using UEFI as the default, I chose to enable it for this review.
Upon boot-up you have the options of Boot from Hard Disk, Installation, Upgrade and More. More includes Rescue the System, Boot Linux System and Check Installation Media. I tried the Check Installation Media option and the media was verified as good. It then loaded the installer.
Once in the installation you are shown a Licence Agreement. This is also where you select your language and test your keyboard. Next you are shown the Network Settings: if you choose to configure the network, updates will be downloaded during installation and your WiFi network settings will be imported into the new installation. That is a really nice feature I wish other distros would do. If you want to configure your Network Settings, select your device from the list and click Edit. For Wired select Dynamic IP address (DHCP) or Static (manually entered) IP address. For WiFi you will click on Choose Network. It will scan for available access points. After you select yours from the list it should automatically pick the correct Authentication mode. Enter your credentials needed to connect.
I will note that on my T430 ThinkPad, the network finder gave an error multiple times, stating that it could not load the wireless networking widget. It asked if I wanted to load the Debug mode or not. If I chose no, it asked again. I then learned that choosing no a second time causes an error in the installer; the installation will restart but it loads the Ncurses terminal installer. When that happens, you can reboot into the installer or follow these instructions.
Select Install, then your USB installation media is listed under Hard Disk; mine was sdb2. Just press the down arrow until you see it listed. It asks for the path for installation media. Just press enter a couple times. Then the GUI installer will open. On my T460 ThinkPad the Wifi finder worked. If you don’t want to configure the Network Settings just click Next.
Now you can select what openSUSE calls System Role. Basically, do you want a Desktop or Server install? The Desktop Environments available are KDE Plasma 5.21, Gnome 40 and Xfce 4.16. Other DE’s and Window Managers are available in the repositories. I chose Gnome 40.
Up next is the Partitioning. By default it will wipe the drive and install openSUSE as the only operating system; your other options are Guided Setup and Expert Partitioner. The Guided option is not very straightforward. Select the drive you want to use for the root partition. You are then shown the following option via drop down menu choices:
- Choose what to do with existing Linux Partitions.
- Do not modify,
- Remove if needed and
- Remove even if not needed.
Below that is another option: Choose what to do with other partitions. You are given the same drop down menu choices. If you select the wrong combination of the two options, the installer will report that they are not compatible and you will need to change them. You will be able to enable Disk Encryption and LVM (Logical Volume Management, used to group multiple drives into one pool of drive capacity). If you want to change the default filesystem of BTRFS you can do that in the next screen. Available filesystems are Ext2, 3, 4, and XFS. You can also have a separate Home Partition and Swap Partition.
The Expert Partitioner is more like the Partitioners used in other Distros’ advanced partitioning option. Looking at all the options available will be overwhelming for a new user and maybe even to an advanced user. It will take a few minutes to see how it works, though once you understand how it works, it is very well presented. If you select the Use the proposed partitioning, you will see all the BTRFS subvolumes already configured. If you select Use the existing partitions, nothing will be configured. If you are unfamiliar with BTRFS and its Subvolumes you have a learning curve ahead of you. The syntax is not bad, it is just unfamiliar. If you want a pre-configured set of Subvolumes. it is best to do a default installation wiping the drive until you get an understanding of how BTRFS Subvolumes work.
I decided to wipe the drive and install.
Next I set my location, time zone and clock. In the “other settings” option you can manually change your time and date. Use NTP (Network Time Protocol) to set your time and date. NTP will not be available if you didn’t previously configure your Network Settings. Then you create your user; you have the option of using your user’s password for Administrative activities via sudo or you can use Automatic Login.
The screen which follows shows a summary of the settings you have selected. In the security section toward the bottom, you can adjust the default settings. Now click on Install. When finished, it will reboot into the newly installed system.
One thing I noticed during the installation: I wasn’t asked for the computer name during the installation. A week or so later I installed Tumbleweed on my T430 and I still missed it. While chatting with Josh online I mentioned it to him. He created a short video with his smartphone and
sent it to me, showing there was another tab in the Network Settings that I didn’t notice. So if you miss it like I did — twice — it is a tab next to Overview labeled Hostname/DNS.
POST INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:All of the hardware was detected and worked including the native display resolution. The Wifi settings were imported from the installer, so upon logging in I was connected to my phone’s WiFi.
EASE OF USE:A few days later I turned the laptop on and was notified there were updates available. I chose to use the GUI updater, and it completed the update. A pop-up window informed me that no more updates were available. I clicked OK, then a smaller pop-up with an error was shown: “Could not get updates. Failed to process the request” There was a “More Details” link below it; I clicked on it and it did nothing, so I clicked OK. Oddly, a duplicate pop-up again stating the same error; I clicked on it and yet another duplicate pop-up appeared. I clicked OK on the third one but nothing happened. I tried closing the updater and it wouldn’t close. At that point I just decided to reboot, and since then updates were installed without these pop-ups occurring. After the updates openSUSE was at kernel 5.12.
After the first week I started using Zypper, which is the command line updating utility using the ZYpp or libzypp package manager engine. It is quite a capable utility. Zypper handles all the searching, updating, installing and removing of packages and you are also able to make changes to the repositories. I was surprised with its ability to manage services.
One thing I noticed about using Zypper. If you want to use it immediately after booting up, you need to wait until the GUI updater finishes checking for updates, otherwise it will give you an error stating it is being blocked. [Moss: I have had that happen in a lot of distros, less than half but a lot.] It will ask if you want to interrupt the current action with a Yes or No. Typing Yes will not be accepted until the GUI updater is finished. I did read on the openSUSE forum that you can stop and disable the Package Kit service, which is a service that manages package management. I didn’t try this yet.
I will say one thing about updates with Tumbleweed: be prepared to download and install a lot of them. In one day alone there were over 200 updates at about 1 GB in download size. There were more updates later in the week. The amount varies from a couple dozen to a couple hundred. Another thing I learned was from Josh Hawk: It’s strongly suggested to use the zypper dup command instead of update on Tumbleweed. dup is the dist-upgrade option. If you use the GUI updater, you will not need to be concerned about that.
One utility that sets openSUSE apart from other distros is YaST, the Yet another Setup Tool. YaST does everything that Zypper can and more. Most system settings can be managed with YaST. If you prefer the terminal, there is a ncurses version. ncurses provides a terminal-based graphical
menu interface. If you would rather use the GUI, there is a GUI version. It is a great utility and may save you from typing a lot of long commands.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
744 MB used and 10 GB on disk.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
openSUSE has a great Wiki and forums. I used the forums and the Wiki for many questions I had. I also asked Josh Hawk quite a few questions as well.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
I didn’t get a chance to dual boot this. If you were to install a distro after installing openSUSE, I don’t see a problem. I just have concerns doing the partitioning with openSUSE’s installer. It would be a little intimidating for a new user.
STABILITY:
I didn’t experience any stability issues. For a rolling release it is pretty stable. With that said, the openSUSE wiki does point out that due to the rolling nature, they can not say that package will not break, especially if one depends on specific kernel or library versions.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
openSUSE Leap
Ubuntu Rolling Rhino
Manjaro / Endeavour / Arch / Black Arch / Reborn, etc.
RATINGS:Ease of Installation new user 5-7/10
experienced user 9/10
Hardware Issues 9/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others NA
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 8/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
There are a couple things I didn’t mention in the review, such as Gnome 40. I am not a huge fan of Gnome, though my experience with Pop!_OS on my System76 Pangolin and my self built desktop has warmed me up to it. I installed Gnome 40 just to try it out. As a desktop environment it was stable and functioned as intended.
Another thing I didn’t mention was BTRFS. If you are wanting the best experience and most up to date version, I would highly recommend trying Tumbleweed. If you want a non-rolling release with an older version then try Leap. I didn’t speak on it much because, frankly, I am not familiar enough with it. It offers a great roll back feature in case of update or configuration issue goes pear shaped. The sub volume feature is also interesting but it takes some time to wrap your head around it.
If you want to try the newest packages but you want more stability than an Arch-based distro. I would suggest openSUSE Tumbleweed
MOSS: – DISTRO NAME: SolydXINTRO: This distro was begun in 2012, and was based on Linux Mint Debian Edition. The developer created two editions, one using XFCE and the other using KDE Plasma. It’s simple, keeps resource usage low, and is kept secure.
MY HARDWARE:For this installation, I used the Dell Inspiron 7353 laptop. This machine has an i5 6th Gen and Intel graphics, 8 Gb RAM, and a 128 Gb SSD.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
The distro uses its own installer, but it’s quite simple and easy to follow. The partitioner is not completely integrated but is obviously a themed GPartEd. If you do create a new partition, you will need to hit the Refresh button before continuing; the button is there but there is no prompt to use it. Even so, it is much easier to use than the normal Debian installer, and you won’t have many issues other than what I just noted.
After you have it mostly installed it will look like it’s freezing halfway done with updates. Please be patient, it will continue and complete without issues.
POST INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:On some random boots the mouse does not work. This is probably just one of those weird things dealing with Linux on a Dell computer, but I’m not certain. I don’t see any issues listed in the user forum.
Grub Customizer is in the repo, not always the case with Debian-based distros until the latest versions, so if you’re dual- or multi-booting, it is easy to reclaim GRUB with sudo grub-install, then run Grub Customizer to get your boot the way you want it.
EASE OF USE:
It’s XFCE on Debian with a Minty tilt. I found it easier and better to use than MX Linux. If I had liked the colors and theming, I might even recommend it over LMDE. (If you like Plasma and can get SolydK to work for you, this system does look better in blue.)
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
Neofetch reports 522 MiB RAM usage on different boots. Stacer says I have 7.3 GiB in use, including a folder of wallpapers I added. I don’t need to tell you that’s pretty light, although not the lightest of distros I use.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:There aren’t many people in the forum, but the responses are lightning fast. And again, it’s Debian at the heart, you should be able to find lots of help. I continue to recommend the use of LinuxQuestions.org, it was the first thing I joined when getting serious about Linux.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:I ran this as a solo boot, other than the attempt to dual boot it with SolydK. I don’t think the issue with SolydK had anything to do with the fact that it was dual-booting with SolydX.
STABILITY:
You can count on Debian for stability, maybe more stability than you’d like as the system updates more slowly than most to make sure it is being tested, tested, and re-tested to make sure everything works. I don’t see any issues with the Desktop or the way it is implemented. SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
MX Linux
Q4OS
Debian
Linux Mint Debian Edition
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 8/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 8/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 9/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others not tested
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 8.5/10
FINAL COMMENTS
While I don’t much care for the default wallpaper, it is definitely distinctive. I had trouble looking at all the orange and brown, and I would bet that even most Tennessee and Texas football fans would come to agree. This is a good distro and I will check in on it in a year or two, but I won’t be keeping it around right now. I also need to check back on SolydK and find out why I can’t get it to boot, when it’s essentially the same distro with a Plasma desktop.NEW RELEASES SINCE LAST EPISODE: from 03/31-05/04
Deepin 20.2
JingOS 0.8
FreeBSD 13.0
Alpine 3.13.5
AcademiX 2.6
EasyOS 2.7
Slackware 15 Beta ***
Proxmox 1.1 “Backup Server”
Pisi 2.2
Ultimate 6.7.1 “Developer”
SystemRescue 8.0.2
MX Linux 19.4
Linux Lite 5.4
EndeavourOS 2021.04.17
Univention Corporate Server 4.4-8
Ubuntu – all official and some unofficial flavors
T2 SDE 21.4
RebornOS 2021.04.22
Voyager 21.04
Fedora 34
KaOS 2021.04
MakuluLinux 2021-04-27
Proxmox 6.4 “VE”
Calculate 21
KDE neon 20210429
GhostBSD 21.04.27
Artix 20210426
OpenBSD 6.9
OpenIndiana 2021.04
Archman 20210501
Arch Linux 2021.05.01
ArchLabs 2021.05.02
RebornOS 2021.05.02
SparkyLinux 5.15
FEEDBACKWe got an email from Phil
G’Day Tony and crew!
Have just finished listening to Distrohoppers Digest #21 and found it to be absolutely fascinating.
I really liked Dale’s breakdown of Debian in the intro as I learnt a lot about this distro of which mine (Linux Mint) is based on. It was good for me to understand the difference between apt and apt-get as I had always thought they were interchangeable. Wherever possible, I prefer to use the command line. I never use sudo apt in Mint as it will ask for the sudo password if required.
I was also interested in Moss’ review of Mageia 8 as I have a soft spot for anything Mandrake related. I briefly used it (Mandrake) in the late 90’s/early 2000’s but never stuck with it – oh well.
This is the second of your podcasts I’ve listened to having come here from Mintcast and loved them both. It’s sparked an interest in Distro hopping and hoping that once I master setting up VM’s will look into other distros. I’ve pencilled in OpenMandriva to try first based on Moss’ recommendation in this episode.
Keep up the good work!
Phil
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Our next episode will probably be recorded around June 2nd or 9th, depending largely on Dale’s schedule.
For chatting with us further, you may choose to join our 23 users in Telegram, our 53 members on MeWe, or the 120 or so members of the mintCast channel in Discord.
Dale: I’m on Telegram as @Dale_CDL, my email is [email protected]Moss:
Tony, where can we find you?
Tony: You can contact me at [email protected], http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/, Twitter @TonyH1212, [email protected]
Moss: and you can hear me – and Tony – nearly every week on mintCast, and every week on Full Circle Weekly News. You can reach me as @zaivala on Telegram, email me at [email protected] and find me on Mastodon at @[email protected] plus my various blogs and music sites and, along with Dale and Dylan, at ItsMOSS dot com. We would like to thank the mintCast crew for our use of their Mumble room.
Moss – My work here and at mintCast can be supported by joining my Sponsus https://sponsus.org/u/zaivala or by direct donation through Sponsus or PayPal ([email protected])! Thanks to Supporter firecat and Helpers esskaybeenz, linuxluva114 and jon_in_glasgow. I am very grateful for all donations which have been or will be received.
