Episode 40 Show Notes
Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 40 Show Notes
MONTHLY FOIBLES …wherein we discuss what we did this month…
Moss: More issues with my T540p, I had to completely reinstall Linux Mint and Bodhi. Mint would not update the kernel, it was missing files and I could not replace them, with lots of help from Dale. When I installed Mint, it used UEFI, so I had to reinstall Bodhi to get Grub back. I really needed to use Rescuezilla to have a complete version of Bodhi as I use it, but no, it took me 4 hours to get things back to the way I like them. It was a Good Experience. For the foreseeable future, I will only have my current testing distro on that machine.
I also have a new router/modem and new phone to deal with. Setup on each of those was fun for different reasons.
Dale: A few days after recording Episode 39, it was brought to our attention that the Feedburner feed for the podcast was having issues. After a brief discussion with the DHD team, a decision was made to switch to RedCircle. This decision was mostly based on the success Bill Houser had using RedCircle for his podcasts Three Fat Truckers and Linux OTC. He is also a co-host on mintCast. I spent the next day reading through all the documentation on RedCircle’s website. Once I felt ready, I created the free account and began the process of moving the feed. They have the option to import the feed via the feed address, which was problematic since Feedburner kept reporting that an error had occurred. After several attempts, it was able to import episodes 1 through 16, with errors that needed to be edited. After several more attempts, I gave up and started the process of manually creating entries for the remaining 22 episodes. I downloaded the files from Archive.org and used the podcast’s blog to fill in the required details.
While I was at it, I resized the logo. That took some trial and error because of the specific resolution requirements RedCircle had. I was trying to find the correct ratio so that the image looked normal. I want to thank Tony for his assistance in testing and verifying that the new feed was working on the various providers.
In addition to Archive.org and our blog, you can also listen to the podcast via the player on RedCircle. The link will be in the show notes.
Distrohoppers’ Digest RedCircle Page
The remainder of my time off was spent visiting my cousin and a friend. I tried to catch up on my favorite YouTube channels and my favorite shows on the Discovery Plus streaming service.
I did resume working on my third history of the Graphical User Interface article. It was 8 months since I last worked on it. I have reached the 1980s and boy is it a busy decade. I’ve been deciding on how to proceed. So with that cliffhanger… Let’s move on to Updates
UPDATES (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Moss: OpenMandriva LX Rome is out now, which is where 4.5 Rolling went, and it is already prepared to accept the future 5.0 files.
Dale: Void Linux is working with Fastly, a content distribution network or CDN, to make their repositories faster and more available around the world.
Bluestar Linux has resolved the kernel issue and resumed releasing isos.
Debian began the first freeze of Testing 3 weeks ago, code-named Bookworm, which is the next stable release of Debian. During this freeze, no large or disruptive changes are made to packages. No changes are made to packages that are used in the building of other packages. The next freeze according to their timeline is the 12th of February.
openSUSE has updated from 2048-bit RSA to 4096-bit RSA keys for RPM and repository signing keys. This includes Leap and Tumbleweed along with the Backports and SLE repositories. SLE is SUSE Linux Enterprise, their server edition.
Blue Systems released Netrunner 23 code name Vaporwave. It is based on Debian 11 Bullseye using Kernel 5.10.19, KDE Plasma 5.20.5, QT 5.15.2, Firefox ESR 102, and LibreOffice 7.04. Based on my review in Episode 25, this should be able to upgrade to Debian 12 before Netrunner releases 24.
XeroLinux announced that new features will be few and far between, they are concentrating on stability and consistency. They believe XeroLinux has reached its ultimate potential. Now it’s all about tweaking and maintaining it. The monthly ISOs might be making a comeback.
Storm-OS has started two paid support options of $10 and $20. The $10 basic plan includes support via Discord and the $20 premium plan will add a TeamViewer option and more.
Voyager has a new website and a release date of the 23rd of April 2023 for their 23.04 release. It will include GNOME 44, XFCE 4.18, Kernel 6.2, and Mesa 23.0.
Ubuntu Budgie has new edge tiling for 23.04, it replaces the built-in edge tiling. A link for the details will be in the show notes. They have very good examples of the new features.
Ubuntu Budgies’ New Edge Tiling
Pardus released 21.4 with too many updates to mention. A few were a new My Computer application, an updated LightDM greeter, and Visual/functional improvements to the software center. A link will be in the show notes. Pardus 21.4 updates
BEAUTIFUL FAILURES – What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month
Moss: I ran Big Linux on my T540p for a month, co-existing happily with 4 other distros. But my T540p was not happy. I started getting Kernel Panic Error when loading Big, so I took drastic action and pulled the drives, moving the Silicon Power 512 Gb to be the main drive and removing the Samsung 256 Gb drive, replacing the spare drive holder with the original CD/DVD drive. This is the configuration I will be reporting on in my review below.
Dale: My failure was a project suggested to me by Moss called Armbian. The Armbian project allows the project developers and community to create Debian-based or Ubuntu-images for use on Single Board Computers aka SBCs. The most common is the Raspberry Pi. An image was created to work on AMD/Intel-based computers. I was a bit confused why they did that since Debian and Ubuntu already work on those computers. Armbians’ reasoning was that Armbian has better/more current support compared to vanilla Debian and in the case of Ubuntu, removes some bloat, in their words.
They don’t use ISO files, instead, they have an image similar to what you could create using Gnome Disks. I verified the IMG file per their instructions using shasum. I wrote the IMG file to the USB stick using Gnome Disks, which took close to 9 minutes.
After booting the USB stick and going through the configuration, I logged in and the Gnome Desktop session appeared. The configuration consisted of the same questions a typical installation program asks. Armbian functioned well until I tried to update it, which resulted in it not booting up upon reboot. I didn’t see an obvious reason as to why it wouldn’t boot. So I wrote the image to the stick again and went through the configuration. This time I followed the instructions to install the stick to the SSD once I logged into the Gnome Desktop. I still had wattOS installed and the instructions said it would overwrite the contents of the SSD. Once I had completed the instructions which were, where I wanted to install it, and what filesystems (Ext4 or BTRFS) I wanted to use. After several minutes it reported it was done successfully. I rebooted the laptop and was met with the Grub2 Emergency Mode. I rebooted off of a Solus Budgie Live ISO stick and looked at the SSD. I saw that there wasn’t an EFI partition, which explains the need for the Emergency mode. I don’t know why it didn’t copy that from the USB stick. So while in Gnome Disks I deleted all of the partitions on the SSD and booted off of the Armbian stick again.
This time around, the installation program recognized that the disk was empty. It asked me if I wanted it to create all the required partitions, and I responded with a yes I do. After answering the aforementioned questions, an error message appeared and the installer exited. The EFI partition was too small and needed to be larger. The ironic thing about this error is that the installer was the one that created the partition, to begin with. That is when I gave up and moved on.
Distro Reviews
Moss:
DISTRO NAME: Big Linux
INTRO: Can a new user install Arch? That’s the plan. This sharp new distro from Brazil tries to make Arch the most user-friendly distro in history, and it has some pretty major proponents already. There are some cool secrets here.
MY HARDWARE: For this review, I used my Lenovo ThinkPad T540p. This computer has a 4th-generation Intel Core i7-4710MQ, 16 Gb RAM, and a 512 Gb Silicon Power SSD, with both Intel HD Graphics 4600 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 730M graphics. I installed it using the entire disk, which I noticed also set aside a swap partition at the end of the disk.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES: I booted my T540p, hit F12 at the proper time, and was prompted to use the Adata stick. Since my system has both Intel and Nvidia graphics, the next choice was to use a version with newer Nvidia drivers, older Nvidia drivers, or other options without Nvidia at all. I selected the newer drivers, as they should work on my 2014 machine. The next screen was to select language, with the first three choices (larger and brighter than the others) being Portugues – Brasil, English – United States, and Español – España. Then I was given a set of 8 themes (4 light, 4 dark) to select from. I can’t really tell much difference, so I selected Breeze Dark. I then was given 6 desktop styles to choose from: Classic, New, Modern, K-unity, Next-G and Desk-X. I selected Modern, as experience with a prior installation showed that Desk-X (with an animated dock) was pretty slow.
I was then given a nice looking desktop, with one of the icons being Install System. I double-clicked on that one. I was then presented with choices of Pattern, Performance, or Compatibility, with Performance being default. OK then. Then Calamares loaded. I was informed I was not connected to the Internet, so I fixed that with my wifi selection and password. American English was already selected, so I hit Next. Then time zone, which was selected appropriately so I hit Next again. Keyboard selections, same. Then I selected to Replace a Partition, and picked my partition, did not click the Encrypt System checkbox, and hit Next. Now it is time to tell the system my name and login info and I checked the box to login automatically. On the next screen all I had to do was click Install. I noticed that the clock was already set correctly for my time zone. I started being shown the slideshow, which included learning that Big Linux uses BTRFS by default. Two minutes later, I was presented with an error code that the bootloader could not be installed. So I attempted to make a new partition table, and failed, and so started over, instructing Big to use the entire disk.(22:42 – 22:42). All done in 2 minutes, ready for restart.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES: Restart showed Welcome to GRUB and then moved to a selection screen, with both selections being for Big. I let it load the default while typing this sentence. I was rewarded with the same nice desktop, with icons for Trash, Control Center, and Dolphin and a centered bottom taskbar, and then the Introduction to BigLinux screen loaded to help me get set up. Themes, Desktops, and Settings – Choose your Avatar – and Language Packs were the choices on the first screen, I moved on. “Choose your default browser” was next, with choices of Brave or Other browsers. I selected Firefox and went to install it. No problem. It downloaded 107, then prompted me to upgrade to 109. I believe it also took the time to install other updates. I see Libreoffice 7.4.3-3 being downloaded, and kernel 5.15.85-1. It has now been 15 minutes since I started the installation (the second time) and I have an updated system, still going through the Introduction screen. The next screen is KDE Connect, I skipped that. The next screen is Driver Installation and Hardware Information I clocked on the Driver Manager to make sure they had the latest Nvidia driver — it has 390xx bumblebee installed. I fiddled for a bit before finding how to install 470xx. I found it, installed it, and rebooted. This time it took a lot longer to retrieve the packages. I don’t know what’s holding it up. But it seems to be working at last. Another reboot.
Back to the Intro screen. I went on in the menus, and found Telegram in the offerings. It downloaded the Flatpak info but did not install it. I then ended the Intro screen, and it’s time to start playing with Discover. But instead of Discover, I found Big-Store, with Native programs, AUR, Flatpaks and Snaps all in one store! It took some time to get stuff installed but it was really nice to see everything at my fingertips.
The default browser is Brave, but you can add Firefox before you get out of the Intro windows and Big-Store makes it easy to delete Brave.
I am having trouble getting Big to recognize its settings regarding the touchpad. I have it set to ignore the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in, and I have said mouse, but the touchpad is still reacting even when my thumb gets anywhere near it. There is not an all-out Disable Touchpad setting.
EASE OF USE: The updater worked really well for the month prior to my Kernel Panic, and so far has worked well since I made it the solo system on the machine, but I don’t have enough months of use to tell whether that would continue to be the case. Big-Store works really well but packages are loaded as Native, AUR, Snap, Flatpak, in that order, and there is often a lotof AUR stuff; as I prefer Flatpak, I often had to scroll down quite a bit to get to the Flatpak section. I was pleased to see that FreeOffice had Native, AUR, and Flatpak versions. This is a continuous release version, based on Manjaro, so there are (hopefully) no more installations or version upgrades.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
9.3 GB of space used on the SSD
747 MB of memory used was reported by neofetch.
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
I didn’t ever feel like I needed help. This is a nicely put together distro, and I found everything I wanted without even trying.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
I’m not sure. Something caused a kernel panic, but it seemed to work well prior to that. So I would say yes.
STABILITY:
Again, I have to mention the kernel panic. I have not had any issues since I reinstalled. But Arch is known to have long-term updating issues, and I haven’t run this long enough to prove Big doesn’t share those issues.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
anything Arch with Plasma
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 9/10
experienced user 10/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) x/10
Ease of Use 10/10
Plays Nice With Others 8/10
Stability 8/10
Overall Rating 9/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
Overall, I really like this distro. I would need to keep it running a few more months with no issues before I can completely recommend it, but it looks good and anyone who can install it would be able to use it with no issues, I hope. Arch without pain, whoda thunk it? I would suggest that everyone go to Distrowatch and find the Big Linux page; it doesn’t currently show up in the rankings, and that’s a sad thing.
Dale:
DISTRO NAME: CachyOS
INTRO: From what I’ve gathered it was started in the fall of 2021 by Peter Jung, Vladislav Nepogodin, and Piotr Gorski. It was in development for almost one year. They have a GUI installation ISO of GNOME, KDE, and the Xfce ISO is under development. Other desktops and window managers are available during the GUI installation. They also have an ISO that is a command line-based installation. I noticed they have very active GitHub and SourceForge pages.
This is a quote from their website and SourceForge, it repeats some of what I have already said. ‘CachyOS is a distribution based on Arch Linux, that offers an easy installation, several customization options to suit every user, and special optimizations for improved performance while remaining simple.
Features
- Simple and easy install and configuration
- Providing an x86-64-v3 repo for all core, extra, and AUR packages
- Several different DEs
- CLI and GUI Installer
- Native ZFS support also for all custom kernels
- Providing several different filesystems
- Netinstall offers 10 different DE’s
- Different Linux kernel scheduler and general improved kernel out of the box in the repo
- Own browser based on firefox
- Kernel Manager”
MY HARDWARE: The laptop I used is my Lenovo ThinkPad T460. It has an Intel Dual Core i5-6200U 2.8 GHz CPU, a 14″ display using Intel HD Graphics 520, 16 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES: The GUI ISO’s Grub boot screen has the following options. CachyOS, CachyOS with Nvidia Closed Source driver 900+ and newer, Legacy hardware no modeset, Memtest86, UEFI Shell, UEFI Firmware settings, System shutdown, and System restart.
There is a welcome screen open upon bootup, with a launch installer option listed at the bottom. CachyOS is using the Calamares Installer and the XFS filesystem. I believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux and one of the distros I have reviewed use XFS. It is not very common.
There is quite a bit of a difference between installing on an empty drive versus one with an existing operating system. If I click on the installation link via the Welcome screen, I have the option that will give you a choice between an online installation or an offline installation. When choosing the offline installation, you will not be required to connect to the Internet. If you choose the online installation, you will have the option of installing additional packages including which desktop to use. I noticed that if you use the installer link in the Applications menu, it will only allow you to do an online installation.
When the drive is empty, the installation is normal. The usual questions of language, location, where to install, and user account creation. However, when the drive already has an operating system, there are additional questions, only if you select the online installation.
The online installation had a popup before the installer window even appeared. It asked if I wanted to use Grub or systemd-boot. This option also requires the computer to support UEFI booting and have it enabled. I chose to use systemd-boot. After selecting my location, language, and keyboard options. The next screen had a selection of desktop options. They were Plasma, Cutefish, Xfce, Sway, Wayfire, i3, GNOME, Openbox, bspwm, and LXQT. I chose GNOME. The following screen had a list of packages to install. These were various custom Kernels, the aforementioned desktops, CPU Microcode, Firefox, Nvidia drivers, Printing support, HP printer/scanner support, ZFS, and accessibility tools. Next was the account creation, hostname, and options to log in automatically and use the same password for the administrator. The last screen is the summary of choices and click to install. During the installation, a slide show of information appeared. One of them mentioned they use their own compiled kernel using the bore option, they also include the Arch kernel. The benefit according to CachyOS is that their kernel uses the BORE scheduler. It stands for Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer. I didn’t look into it any further because I wasn’t interested. If you are, you can search for BORE scheduler on your favorite search engine.
Upon completion of the installation, there was the option of restart now after exiting the installer. Oddly I had to click done instead of the larger restart icon.
During one of my installations, I tried to use the systemd-boot option. That did boot CachyOS but it didn’t list Pardus Linux as a boot option. The issue is that Arch-based distros use /boot for their boot images and other distros use /boot/EFI. According to the Arch Wiki for systemd-boot, all I needed to do is copy the files to the /boot folder. Then I ran sudo bootctl update and rebooted. Pardus was still not listed. I saw there was a config file you could create for boot managers but I didn’t try it. This defeats the purpose of the “install alongside” option in the Calamares installer.
My last installation was an offline installation using the replacing the previous CachyOS installation option. That installation failed with the error “Failed to run Pacstrap, failed to run Pacman”.
Since I was getting tired of installing this, I finally just used Gnome Disks and wiped the SSD. I then did an offline install.
The command line installation ISO has boot options: Install, Install with speech, Install copy to RAM, and EFI Shell.
I booted to each available option and each time I was at a terminal screen. I had no clue what the installation program’s name was. I looked at their Wiki and there is no mention of a command line installer. I did find a mention on their update page saying the command line installer is coming soon. So needless to say I didn’t try using it. That is very confusing and odd.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES: The grub screen was customized with some geometric blue shaded shapes with the CachyOS name at the top. The login screen was the default GDM Gnome uses. I don’t understand why these distro maintainers go to the effort of theming their distro but never bother to theme the login screen, I digress.
The wallpaper is the same blue-shaded geometric shapes used in the Grub screen. They are using Gnome 43.2 with the panel on the left side with the activities activation in the upper left-hand corner enabled. One notable addition is the Pop Shell Tiling component from Pop!_OS. Once enabled, it allows tiling window functionality on top of the Gnome Desktop. The other extensions they have installed are App Indicator for legacy tray icons, Dash to Dock, and Gnome 4x Ui Improvements. I was surprised that the Extension Manager extension wasn’t installed. It replaces the need to use the web browser add-on to install extensions. It works very well in my experience.
A Welcome screen appeared upon logging in, called CachyOS Hello. It contains quite a bit of information. A distro Read Me with Release information and links to their Wiki, Forums, and getting involved with the project. A button to install apps that were available during the online installation. The next button is Apps/Tweaks. There you can enable DNS Crypt, Systemd Out of Memory service, and others. There are system management tasks such as System Updates, Reinstall all packages, Refresh keyrings, Clear package cache, and installing optional kernels, among many others.
There are not many applications installed by default. Some of the installed apps are Parole Media Player, Qt development applications, Kvantum Theme Manager, Software Token (used for RSA SecurID), Gnome Tweaks, and Octopi. Octopi is the GUI for the Pacman package manager. One set of packages I don’t see often is Avahi. Avahi is a free zero-configuration networking implementation, including a system for multicast DNS/DNS-SD service discovery.
Among the applications that were created by the devs are, CachyOS Hello (the Welcome Screen), CachyOS Packages, CachyOS Kernel Manager, and the Cachy Browser. The Cachy Browser is a fork of Firefox with patches from Librewolf.
If you are a fan of using the terminal for various tasks, they are using Fish for the shell and provide Gnome Terminal and Alacritty terminal emulators.
EASE OF USE: The overall functionality was good, though there are a couple of rough edges that were annoying. Almost every time I used the CachyOS Package installer, I needed to use the “remove Pacman db lock” via the CachyOS Hello application. I could also open the terminal and delete the /var/lib/pacman.db.lck file. Even rebooting the laptop and signing in, never using Pacman or Octopi, the database would be locked. Even when I exit from the CachyOS Package installer, the database would be locked. My complaint is mostly because I am evaluating this from both a new user perspective and a moderate computer user. I think a more advanced person would be using vanilla Arch and configuring it to how they want. The devs have everything that was added to CachyOS available on GitHub, for anyone that wants to add them to their Arch installation. Once I removed the database lock from Pacman, their package manager functions similarly to other distros’ package management. I think it would have been better to remove Octopi and create their own. I am not a developer, with that said, it shouldn’t be much more effort to include the functions of Octopi in their application, as it is an open-source project on GitHub. That is exactly what the Manjaro devs did when they created Octopi.
Flatpak is available but needs to be installed. It is available in the GUI via the CachyOS Package installer. It has its own tab in the application. When I clicked on the tab, I was shown a screen asking me if I wanted to install it. There was a “more details” option which was blank when opened. When I clicked on ok to install it, the installation window scrolled constantly asking for me to enter a number denoting the default was 1. The error that kept scrolling stated that y was an invalid number, which I never entered. I tried typing 1 and clicking enter in the entry box below the installation window, unfortunately, it didn’t accept it and kept scrolling. I had to close the CachyOS Package Installer because of that.
After removing the db lock yet again, I opened the terminal and typed sudo pacman -S flatpak. I was given 9 options with the default of option 1, which was the CachyOS-v3 repository. I didn’t know which one to choose, so I chose that one. After about a minute, it was finished installing the required packages. I returned to the CachyOS Package Installer and tried to install the Signal Messenger. That resulted in an error and I had to click on the console output tab to read the message. The command socat was not found. I opened the terminal window again and used Pacman to search for the phrase socat. It was indeed a package name, so I installed that via sudo pacman -S socat. I closed the terminal window and the package installer. After opening the package installer again, I searched for Signal Messenger, the installation window opened showing Flatpak downloading and installing the required packages. That was followed by a pop-up window reporting it was successful. I signed out and signed back in, then pressed the windows/super key and searched for Signal, it was found and opened. As with other distros, Signal would exit when the window was closed. I didn’t bother editing the .desktop file to add the minimize to tray option. That was because they had symbolic links pointing to scripts and that was too much effort for this review.
Since Flatpak was a meta package to install other required packages, I don’t know why socat wasn’t included. It was obvious that the Flatpak integration wasn’t working. Perhaps if their Flatpak installation via the CachyOS Package Installer worked, it might have installed it. I say might because I don’t know if it was using the same Flatpak meta package I used. This was their repository so I can’t blame Arch for this.
Their custom browser, Cachy Browser, is a fork of Firefox using code from the LibreWolf browser, which is also a fork of Firefox. It appears to be using the current branch of Firefox which is version 109 as of the 7th of February 2023. It has the following extensions installed by default, Dark Reader (forces dark mode on webpages regardless of supporting it natively), CanvasBlocker (a Javascript blocker), and uBlock Origin (ad/pop-up, etc blocker).
Aside from the additional add-ons, the functionality is the same as vanilla Firefox with the exception of signing into a Firefox account. This functionality is broken in Cachy Browser. From what I have read in the CachyOS forums, one of the devs claims it is a LibreWolf issue. Nothing more was written in that forum post. In my opinion that was a non-starter for me and installed Firefox from their repo which was version 109.0.1.
Instead of using Bash, they are using Fish. I am not a fan of Fish, I find it annoying and distracting to provide typing suggestions. I can see the interest in it for people that are not fast typers or not familiar with typing commands. I also thought their terminal theme was too dark, I found it hard to read what I typed. Even increasing the brightness of my display didn’t help.
Another annoyance was having Neofetch execute every time I opened the terminal. Neofetch is an awesome application for displaying useful details about your computer. Such as kernel version, CPU in use, GPU in use, and memory. Again, I can see the need for this application for support issues. Just tell the user to open the terminal and repeat what is shown. They could have created a script and had it in the application list to click on instead.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
9 GB of space used on the SSD
723 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm.
EASE OF FINDING HELP: There is quite a bit of help available. They have a wiki, a forum, Telegram, Discord, and Reddit. I didn’t interact with any but I did search the forum and used the wiki. I also searched the Arch forums and was surprised that the question I had was asked and the answers weren’t RTFM.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
No, not unless it is another Arch-based distro. This is not much of a surprise, Arch has always had an issue with dual booting. You could of course try systemd-boot.
STABILITY:
I didn’t experience any crashes or lockups. Given the Arch base, it is solely up to the CachyOS devs to verify that the updates will not break the system. Stability is also largely based on AUR usage, as this can cause more issues than updates from upstream Arch.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Manjaro
Garuda
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 6/10
experienced user 8/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) 10/10
Ease of Use 7/10
Plays Nice With Others 3/10
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 7/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
I would say this is not for a new user, at least not yet. There are too many quirky things that need to be fixed for everything to work. An experienced user would be able to fix or work around these issues. The installation has too many options for a new user. In my opinion, they only make the installation longer. It is far easier just to install everything you are wanting after the installation. The selection of packages is too limited to be of any time-saving, which is the point of offering them during the installation.
This distro is worth a look if you are a fan of Arch-Based distros and agree with the choices they have made. Personally, the issue I have with this level of customized distros is, if you don’t like the customizations, you will spend more time undoing what you don’t like, than if you installed it from scratch yourself.
NEW RELEASES THIS MONTH:
from from 01/04 to 02/09
Nitrux d5c7cdff
Dragonfly BSD 6.4.0
Daphile 23.01
Snal 1.25
Runtu 22.04.1 “Lite”
risiOS 37.1.1
Robolinux 12.09
OpenMandriva 23.01 “ROME”
Nobara 37
Pisi 2.3.1
Alpine 3.17.1
EasyOS 4.5.5
Bicom 6.7.0 “PBXware”
Gnoppix 23.1
ALT 10.1 “Education”
LibreELEC 10.0.4
Archman 20230115
MX 21.3
RebeccaBlackOS 2023-01-16
Regata 22.1.0
Uruk 3.0 “Cinnamon”
Lakka 4.3
Springdale 9.1
Legacy OS 2023
Archcraft 2023.01.20
Netrunner 23
Archlabs 2023.01.20
SparkyLinux 2023.01
Absolute 20230122
Freespire 9.0.1
Manjaro 22.0.1
Tails 5.9
OSMC 2023.01-1
LiveRaizo 14.23.01.22
Volumio 3.396
AV Linux MX-21.3
Peropesis 2.0
OPNsense 23.1
Mabox 23.01
Elementary 7
RebornOS 2023.01.20
Gnoppix 23.2
openmamba 20230201
ALT 10.1 “Workstation”
ArcoLinux 23.02.02
Slax 15.0.1
Slax 11.6.0
Arch 2023.02.01
Manjaro 22.0.2
SparkyLinux 6.6
4MLinux 41.1
ArchLabs 2023.02.05
Bluestar 6.1.9
CachyOS 230206
Plop 23.2
Endless 5.0.0 (w Wayland)
KDE neon 20230209
SmartOS 20230209
Univention 5.0-3
FEEDBACK
from Bhikhu <[email protected]>
Excellent episode as always guys! Need I say anything more? Hands down the best Linux review medium out there!
Moss, you can try the following two things to try and fix the inconsistent sda* to sdb* issue between reboots, open /etc/default/grub as root and add the following line to it,
GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=false
save the changes and run,
sudo update-grub
See if the above fixes the issue. If it doesn’t then, try to control the Grub from a distro that ships the newer versions of Grub compared to Debian and Ubuntu. Something Arch based, Fedora based or may be OpenMandriva based. Anything other than Debian/Ubuntu. I’ve personally fixed the exact same issue by switching the Grub from Debian stable to ALTLinux Sisyphus.
Dale again amazed me and impressed me by the thoroughness of his review and technical deep dives during the process. Dale’s information on Grub/GPT and XDG and making flatpak applications to appear in the start menu was hugely informative and important. Kudos Mr. Miracle!
Josh, give Regata OS a go, you’ll love this gamer focused distro, hopefully,
Moss, I can help build a new Distrohoppers’ Digest website if you wish. I mean the current one kinda looks dated besides being based on Google’s now defunct blogger platform. Let me know if you want me to help you build the new site.
Finally congratulations to Moss and Dale on getting new computer hardware. Boy, I’m so jealous of you guys! You guys are lucky. I mean, here I’m at the other end of that spectrum, wanting to buy Kingston RAM for my computer and can’t find it available in India and importing them from overseas is absolutely way way out of my means. I’ve been dreaming to buy either of these two,
https://www.newegg.com/hyperx-8gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820104673?Item=9SIB7JCJGE6107
A few distro suggestions for you guys,
Keep up the great work and say my hello to Tony.
Bhikhu
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Moss: For chatting with us further, you may choose to join our Telegram group or our Discord channel.
You can find Josh on @joshontech on most social networks or email at [email protected], also he is co-host on the CrowbarKernelPanic podcast.
Moss: Dale?
Dale: I’m @Dale_CDL on Telegram and Discord. My email is [email protected]
Moss: And you can hear me every week on Full Circle Weekly News and mintCast. My email is [email protected], and I’m on Mastodon as @[email protected], plus you can find me, Dale and Dylan, at Its MOSS dot com.
