Episode 34 Show Notes
MONTHLY FOIBLES
…wherein we discuss what we did this month…
Moss – I got all signed up to try my hand as a substitute teacher for another term. I have no idea whether I have the energy to deal with kids all day 2 or 3 days a week and still have the energy and other tools to continue my three podcasts, but we are simply spending money too fast and need to increase our income and thereby our savings. We have also changed our plans as to where we might move, which means nothing until we have the money to use as a down payment and the time to go look. As such, we are considering going to a convention in November, which would get us in the area.
I also have had the misfortune of literally losing my teeth. My upper plate fell out at an eating establishment, and I smoothly wrapped them and put them in my pocket. At some point, they apparently fell out of my pocket. At the moment, I have not replaced them, which explains why I’m talking funny today. My friend Joe is working on my backup set, which were too large for my mouth, and should return them to me shortly, and I need to contact the dentist to make a new plate.
Dale – I was home for my regular time off plus one of my two weeks of vacation, sadly it was not a vacation as I was moving to a new apartment. One benefit of moving is you get to sort through everything you have and decide if you really need it or not. Now that I am home, I will be able to continue that phase of keeping the item or getting rid of the item. I already had 5 trips to Goodwill which is a donation center here in the states. This was even before I moved. I am looking forward to having a room just for my computers.
Because I am currently single and a computer geek, I did have some priorities. I connected my cable modem and activated the service. Then I temporarily connected my router, switch, and access point so that I could at least have WiFi. After sorting through boxes and totes, I will permanently set up my network and computers. Then I will finally go through my kitchen stuff and find a place for my microwave. Eating is obviously a requirement, though it doesn’t require my kitchen. I have never been a fan of cooking.
Josh – I got a job and I am moving yippy! Except not yippy because moving sucks. Unfortunately we cannot move into our new apartment till August 13th but I start on July 18th. Basically I am couch surfing for the next month till our new place is ready.
As far as tech stuff I haven’t had much time for anything.
UPDATES (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Moss – We all know that Mint 21 is about to drop. The betas went out on Monday after a couple days of issues. I know I will be upgrading everything I have, including my TV machine. SparkyLinux just dropped a new version as well.
Dale – Sorry, I didn’t have a chance to look for updates. I’ve been busy unpacking and organizing my new apartment.
Josh – nothing for me.
BEAUTIFUL FAILURES – What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month
Moss – Amazingly, I have had no failures this month. I have installed three distros and they all worked.
Reviews
Moss:
DISTRO NAME: OpenMandriva Rolling LXQt alpha
INTRO: OpenMandriva is arguably the most beautiful distro remaining in the Mandrake Linux family of distros. I’ve mentioned it many times on this program. But this time, they are releasing both with a non-Plasma desktop but also in a rolling ISO. This distro is based on OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 Rolling Plasma, which, to date, does not have an ISO – you have to create it from a normal “Rock” installation and follow a set of steps, this is the first time they have made an ISO of their rolling version. I just had to give it a shot.
MY HARDWARE: I installed this on my Lenovo ThinkPad T540p, with a 6th generation i7, 16 Gb RAM, and two SSDs on it, with both Intel and Nvidia graphics. I installed it on sda1 and gave it the full drive.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES: I was simply amazed. The installer was Calamares, so it was as simple as ever, and 5 minutes later I was watching it copy files and install them.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES: When you boot up, you have a bit white-and-red screen informing you that the screensaver is an extremely old version. There is no way to update this that I’ve found. More later.
The next issue I had was that I could not update anything. The dnf upgrade command went nowhere and Discover said I didn’t have an internet connection (which I clearly did). After asking on the OpenMandriva Forum, where leader and top dev Ben Bullard is always helpful, I learned that I needed a new command for upgrading: sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf dsync . Worked like a charm. I got all my various things installed, except for PySolFC and NetHack, which also do not install in all previous versions of OM I have tried. When you are done, you have a beautiful, quick, easy to use and lightweight distro, which is also rolling. OpenMandriva has a different view of “rolling” than most – when an app update has cleared their “Cooker” crew, then it gets rolled out. No breakage, no fuss.
LXQt looks and works fine. I am still, however, bothered by the nag screen, which nags you about needing to close open files or lose data, when you’re shutting down or rebooting. If you haven’t saved your files, you should, but the system should be aware of what’s open and what isn’t, which would make this nag irrelevant.
EASE OF USE: Other than the new update command, this distro is as easy to use as any RPM distro out there, and twice as lovely. You will never want to change your boot menu again, even if you multiboot.
Or so it seemed. It turns out there was a reason this was labeled “alpha”. Ben Bullard tells me that he is dismayed at the response from the LXQt team on bugs which have been found and reported, including the fact that you can’t even send a message on the OM Forum from this distro, the screensaver is badly out of date, and you can’t even turn off the touchpad.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
8.2 GB of space used on the SSD
492 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm.
EASE OF FINDING HELP: OpenMandriva has the friendliest forum I’ve found anywhere. Ben Bullard and his crew are very much into this distro, and I doubt if many of them ever use anything else.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS: Yes, and with a beautiful boot screen besides.
STABILITY: It’s not ready. It looks like it is, but it simply isn’t.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
OM Plasma
Mageia
Rosa
PCLinuxOS
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 9/10 experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 8/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 6/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 6/10
Overall Rating 6/10
FINAL COMMENTS: I was all ready to write a glowing report, but there are just too many bugs. I shouldn’t be surprised; it was, after all, labeled an alpha, but it’s basically a different but mature desktop grafted onto a mature distro so it shouldn’t have happened. Ben Bullard and his crew are working hard on fixes. For now, you should load OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 Plasma or look elsewhere.
Dale:
DISTRO NAME: Xubuntu 22.04
INTRO: Xfce has been one of my favorite desktop environments. It dates back to 1996 using the Xforms Toolkit, a proprietary toolkit. In 1999 it was rebased onto GTK and many of the distros at that time welcomed it into their repos. Xfce originally was a Linux version of CDE (Common Desktop Environment) based on the Motif toolkit that was popular among the Unix variants.
Current Xfce is its own independent desktop environment.
Xubuntu is one of the original distributions from Canonical. It started out as a meta-package that could be installed on Ubuntu, allowing you to replace Gnome. Starting with Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake in 2006, Xubuntu was created. It is a community-maintained derivative of Ubuntu.
MY HARDWARE:
The laptop I used is my Lenovo ThinkPad T460. It has an 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 verified the ISO’s MD5SUM and wrote it to my USB stick using Popsicle, a GUI USB writing utility.
The boot splash screen before the installation opened used an image similar to the Xfce logo and used that image throughout the installation.
After the language/keyboard and wifi questions, the next screen is Updates and other Software.
I was asked, “What apps would you like to install to start with?”
Normal install (Web browser, utilities, office, games, and media players).
Minimal install (Web browser and basic utilities).
I selected the normal install. The other option was downloading updates while installing Xubuntu, which is automatically checked. Install third-party software for graphics, wifi, and media formats was unchecked by default. I chose to not download updates because I wanted to see if I was prompted to install updates later.
When I came to the partitioning screen, I chose to replace my previous Ubuntu Budgie installation instead of manual partitioning. It did quite well with no issues.
Location was next along with the user account creation.
After that the installation was complete. I was prompted to restart the computer by clicking on the Restart Now button. I was not prompted to remove the installation USB stick.
I had a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen. I waited 5 minutes with no activity so I eventually pressed Enter. Then it did a normal shutdown and reboot.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
On the first boot, I had the same window pop-up that I had on Ubuntu Budgie informing me that I have incomplete language support. This time, I chose to install them right then. I was able to get details on what was being installed. They were dictionary files for various applications like Mozilla Thunderbird and LibreOffice.
When I was typing in my password, the Thunar File Manager opened for some reason. After the language support was installed, I was prompted to select my preferred language. There was also an option of applying my choice system-wide and I did.
EASE OF USE:
Since I opted out of not installing updates during the installation, I wanted to see if I would be notified of updates, since Ubuntu Budgie didn’t until I turned on notifications. After 15 or 20 minutes, I was notified that there were updates available. After the updates were installed, I was prompted to reboot now or later. There was a button to click on to open the update settings available on the update notification window. I thought that was a nice feature to have.
I am not going to rant this time about Snaps but I do need to mention that the Firefox snap opened in 17 seconds. That is 5 seconds slower than it was on Ubuntu Budgie. I experienced the same behavior with the Firefox snap as I did on Ubuntu Budgie. That shows that it is something specific in the Ubuntu base, though it doesn’t explain why it is slower.
I have been getting regular notifications of updates while using Xubuntu without needing to turn on the notifications as I did on Ubuntu Budgie. There have been some updates where I have been asked to reboot the computer. I was given the choice of restarting now or later.
I noticed that Xubuntu uses Superkey T and F to open a terminal window and the file manager. Those are the same shortcuts that I use on Pop OS.
The Greybird default theme was pretty nice but I changed it to Greybird-dark. I think it had a better uniform dark theme. Using Greybird, the Whisker menu when opened was too bright in contrast to the dark menu. This is obviously a personal preference.
Flatpak is not installed by default, but this can easily be fixed by typing sudo apt install flatpak in the terminal. I also installed the plug-in for Gnome software so I could install Flatpaks from the GUI. The command for that was sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak . I opened Gnome Software and waited about a minute or so for it to update. Once finished, I could select my source in the upper right to Flatpak if one was available.
Overall this has been an enjoyable distro to use.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
15 GB of space used on the SSD
515 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
I did not seek any help, but, seeing that this is an official Ubuntu flavor, there are many forums to use in addition to Ubuntu.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
The automatic partitioning replacing the previous Ubuntu Budgie installation worked flawlessly. The only issue I have is Canonical not using a better name in the Grub entries.
STABILITY:
I didn’t have any issues. “It’s Ubuntu; it’s stable.” – T. Hughes
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Ubuntu Mate
MX Linux
Mint Xfce
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 8/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 8/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 10/10Overall Rating 8/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
As I mentioned in my Ease of Use section, this has been a pleasant experience. This is despite the fact that I am an old Xfce user. Xubuntu seems more polished compared to the Ubuntu Budgie. I didn’t have as many pop-up windows as I did with Ubuntu Budgie.
Josh:
DISTRO NAME: Ubuntu 22.04
INTRO: Ubuntu has gotten a bad rap over the past 5 or so years. This release has really got some people steamed. Between the Firefox snap taking in some cases 45 seconds to start or systemd-oomd killing every high ram usage application, 22.04 has taken some hits. Ubuntu is just not what it used to be and Canonical keeps messing up.
MY HARDWARE: Ryzen 5800x CPU, 16gb 3200mhz ddr4 ram, 256gb SP ssd, Nvidia 1650 Super GPU.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES: As in my last review, it’s Ubuntu, so installation is super simple for anyone, just using the standard auto install method. I did try some fancier install methods such as btrfs as root and ZFS as root and both ways worked flawlessly. Seriously, if an Ubuntu install does not work it’s usually the usb either failing or not being written correctly.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES: I really had no issues with Ubuntu on my hardware, my graphics drivers installed properly and games played well. I didn’t even notice any slow down with Firefox, most likely to do with my cpu being as strong as it is. Also didn’t have the systemd-oomd issue with it killing things like Firefox and Chrome.
EASE OF USE: Ubuntu is extremely easy to use. Other than Linux Mint it’s the easiest distro to use.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
10.2 GB of space used on the SSD
1150 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm.
EASE OF FINDING HELP: Ubuntuhas a vibrant community and endless documentation online. It really is so easy to find help.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS: Ubuntu plays very well with other distros including Windows.
STABILITY: I never had any issues with stability, not even with many applications and tabs open.
GAMING EASE: Great for gaming I could play all my games I tried without issue. Most of this has to do with Steam Proton. I played Horizon Zero Dawn, Sims 4, Valheim, and Jedi Fallen Order. All the games I tested played well other than Fallen Order; it still has the issue that, when you pause the game and unpause, the gameplay gets choppy, but as long as you don’t pause the game it plays very well.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT: All Ubuntu based distros.
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 10/10 experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 10/10
Works with Games (optional) 10/10
Overall Rating 10/10
FINAL COMMENTS: So even though I give Ubuntu a great review 22.04 has had some issues. Although I did not see these issues on my system they are still out there. I feel like anyone wouldn’t notice the issues unless on a moderately low end machine.
NEW RELEASES THIS MONTH:
from 06/06 – 07/13
Mabox 22.06
Archman 2022.06.07
openSUSE 15.4
Obarun 2022.06.08
Star 4.0.0
ExTiX 20.6
DragonFly 6.2.2
MidnightBSD 2.2.0
MakuluLinux 2022-06-10
IPFire 2.27-core168
NuTyX 22.06.1
Garuda 220614
postmarketOS 22.06
Kaisen 2.1
EuroLinux 9.0
Kodachi 8.23
Manjaro 21.3.0
Whonix 16.0.5.3
GhostBSD 22.06.18
TrueNAS “SCALE” 22.02.2
Clonezilla 3.0.1-8
KaOS 2022.06
EndeavourOS 22.6
ArcoLinux 22.07.03
SmartOS 20220630
Univention 5.0-2
Condres OS 1.0
Nitrux 20220629
openmamba 20220701
Archman 2022.07.02
Pisi 2.3
Arch 2022.07.01
Porteus 5.0
EasyOS 4.2.3
Snal Linux 1.19
Absolute 20220701
Oracle 9.0
SparkyLinux 2022.07
KDE neon 20220707
Bluestar 5.18.9
BSDRP 1.991 (BSD Router Project)
Elive 3.8.30
Debian 11.4.0
NST 36-13232
Tails 5.2
IPFire 2.27-core169
Zevenet 5.12.2
