Episode 50 Show Notes
Distrohoppers’ Digest
<Begin pre-recorded section>
Moss: Distrohopping: The idea that Linux is fun, and the myriad ways people put distros together should be reviewed often. My name is Moss. I live in eastern Tennessee.
Dale: I’m Dale, I live in northeast Ohio.
Eric: And I’m Eric, I live in southwestern Florida.
Moss: Welcome to Distrohoppers’ Digest. We love checking distros out — new distros, new versions of older distros, and even some we may have overlooked.
Dale: We each have our preferences, in complexity or desktop or package management. Perhaps we can help you find a new distro, or better understand one which has piqued your curiosity.
Eric: The idea of this podcast is that we will each install a new distro to our chosen hardware for 3-4 weeks and use it as much as possible, perhaps even as our daily driver. We record all our trials, tribulations, fixes, and what we like and what we don’t.
Dale: I tend to take on the more advanced distros and give them a go.
Moss: While I tend to prefer looking at distros that would be kind to a new user, especially one who is hoping to move over from another operating system, such as Windoze or MachOS.
Eric: We intend to give as much information as possible on each distro, and will also mention what hardware we are using and might comment how we think the hardware may have affected the rating.
<End pre-recorded section>
<synopsis>
Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 047
Introductions
Hosts: Moss Bliss, Dale Miracle
Monthly Foibles
Updates: Solus, Redcore, Slackel, DeBodhi 32- and 64-bit, Ubuntu
Beautiful Failures: OpenMandriva 5 ROCK
Reviews: Sparky Linux 7.2 OpenBox/E25, Zorin OS 17 PRO
New Releases
Feedback
Announcements
Closing
</synopsis>
<Moss> Welcome to Distrohoppers’ Digest, Episode 050, recorded on February 8th, 2024. For this show, we will be reviewing SparkyLinux, and Zorin OS PRO. Eric will not be with us today. We also have an announcement – our website has moved to https://distrohoppersdigest.org, and the site is up and running. Some episodes have not been transferred yet, but we have also added Apple iTunes as a download source. Many thanks to Tony for his management of the previous site, and we welcome Bill Houser as our new webmaster.
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MONTHLY FOIBLES
…wherein we discuss what we did this month…
Dale:
The issue with my media server last month was a bad motherboard. I tested the PSU on another computer and it tested OK. I also tested the CPU in my gaming computer. It booted up fine. That renewed my confidence in the MSI PSU as it is a new venture for them. It would have been less expensive than the CPU, with the motherboard being in the middle. So I had another 40-minute trip to Micro Center which allowed some podcast listening since I only listen when I am in my car. I ended up buying an MSI Pro B550-VC, the ATX version. There was another revision of this board that Micro Center didn’t sell. After comparing them, I prefer the one I bought, as it had larger heatsinks on the chipsets. I was surprised at the lower price considering it had 8 SATA ports and 6 fan connectors. It cost less than the board it replaced and had more features.
I continued with the work on the server. I added an ICY Dock Hot-swap 4 bay 2.5” into the 5¼” bay of the server. It was a bit of a task because I had to find the correct depth of the screws so they wouldn’t interfere with the Hot swap trays. That is what you get with less expensive plastic construction. I wanted to get the metal Rugged edition but it was almost 3 times more expensive. I couldn’t justify the extra cost since the drives would remain in place unless needed to be removed. The plastic version is fine for home use.
You can watch me work on the server in the December 30th mintCast Roundtable stream on YouTube.
I did more work on my Lenovo Tiny M715Q to see why it locked up. I re-pasted the CPU which did lower the temp but they were still too high under load. I searched Lenovo’s support site using the serial number of the Tiny. I found a BIOS update from last June and an update for the SIO (Super IO) firmware. It mentioned an update for the fan controller which was independent of the BIOS update. The BIOS update worked fine, it was an ISO that I wrote to a USB stick. The SIO update oddly required Windows.
This presented an odd issue. A long story short, I couldn’t download the Windows ISO from LMDE with either Firefox or Chrome. I was able to download it using Pop!_OS on my Pangolin. The fun didn’t end there. I wrote the ISO using DD and it wasn’t recognized as an EFI boot device. I tried Popsicle and reported it wasn’t compatible. I then tried DD Rescue and it wouldn’t boot either on the Tiny. Oddly the one written using DD Rescue booted fine on my System76 Pangolin. A friend mentioned that he always uses Ventoy. That indeed worked fine, go figure. All this effort to update the SIO firmware on the Tiny. Come on Lenovo, you can do better than this.
In any case, the SIO was updated. I remembered that Bill from mintCast, Linux OTC, and 3 Fat Truckers podcasts said there was an update for the Focusrite Solo audio interface. I went and installed the software for it and it was automatically found. The firmware update was prompted on the first launch of the software and was successful.
As a test, I installed a CPU temp applet in LMDE and played about 90 minutes of various YouTube videos. I noticed before the updates, the fan would spin up quite loud about 30 seconds after playing the video. It would increase slowly until the video stopped.
Now the fan spins up very quietly and barely noticeable after about a minute. It continues to spin up and slow down at regular intervals. The idle temps are about 30 – 35 with messaging and web browsing around 40 to 45. The temps during YouTube playback was consistently around 45 to 56. Though 60 was only for a couple of seconds occasionally. It averaged about 50 C no matter how long the video was. I finished up the test with a 2-hour and 15-minute Skype call. I considered it fixed after that. I recorded Episode 49 of DHD without any problems.
Moss:
I made myself available to work, after spending the past couple months being Home Health Care to my wife. However, I’ve only had one other day of work since then.
I did get a slightly-used PineTab 2 tablet to play with. The device is still in experimental status, they should have the WiFi and Bluetooth drivers soon. Our friend Bill H. on mintCast bought me the dongle I needed, and the system works pretty well. Thanks to listener Jackie for getting me a great deal on this device.
I also got my wife’s System76 Kudu 3 sent to Joe for repair. It broke the right hinge, which also damaged the bezel on that side.
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UPDATES (Where we discuss what we have learned about distros we’ve already reviewed)
Dale:
https://getsol.us/2024/01/08/solus-4-5-released/
Solus released version 4.5. Here are a few of the new additions and updates. They are now using the Calamares installer, which is a big improvement over their previous installer.
Pipewire is now the default replacing PulseAudio and JACK.
They added packaged called ROCm version 5.5. It provides GPU acceleration for AMD hardware in PyTorch, llama, cpp, stable diffusion and others.
They updated the kernel to 6.6.9 and still offers the 5.15.145 LTS kernel. They are now using the schedutil CPU governor and the BORE scheduler by default.
Budgie 10.8.2, GNOME 45.2, Plasma 5.27.10, and Xfce 4.18. Which will replace their MATE edition.
https://redcorelinux.org/news/redcore-linux-hardened-2401-tarazed-stable
Redcore released 2401 codename Tarazed. It was re-synced with Gentoo Linux testing tree as of 21.01.2024. Linux kernel v6.6.13 LTS as default, with v6.1 LTS and v5.15 LTS available. Updates to the sisyphus package manager and many others.
https://slackel.sourceforge.io/forum/viewtopic.php?t=757
https://slackel.sourceforge.io/forum/viewtopic.php?t=778
Slackel updated their Openbox and Mate editions. They are still maintaining a 32-bit in addition to their 64-bit ISOs. The Openbox edition updated to kernel 6.1.62 and updates from Slackware’s Current tree. The MATE edition updated to kernel 6.6.11, MATE 1.26.2, and updates from Slackware’s Current tree. Also includes salixtools from Salix.
Moss:
I haven’t caught up on things very well this month, but I definitely want to mention new versions of DeBodhi – Bodhi on a Debian base – both 32-bit and 64-bit, and both on Beta 3. I’ve been using DeBodhi 64 for a few weeks now, nothing bad to report just more Bodhi goodness with nothing from Ubuntu. I did need to reinstall beta 3, according to guidance from Robert Wiley, and I’ve just got that done.
Things are definitely getting ready for the big reveal in April, when Canonical will come out with a full set of Ubuntus for their new LTS. It will be interesting to see what changes, as each LTS version comes with new headaches, both for its users and for those of us who use distros based on Ubuntu Core.
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BEAUTIFUL FAILURES – What we tried, and failed, to install or run this month
Moss:
I was hoping to review OpenMandriva ROCK 5 this month. It installed easily, and looked great … but every time I tried to do something or open some app or settings box, it took so long to open that I thought my mouse missed the trigger, resulting in me clicking a few more times before it finally opened, and leaving me guessing which of my mouse clicks actually worked. After that happened more than a few times, and confirming with Eric that the same happened to him, I started looking for another distro to try.
I also just had a self-inflicted failure. Firefox wanted me to try its new Language and Translation plugin. I didn’t have a problem with that in principle, so I said yes. Then I started freaking out when Firefox would not allow any keyboard input at all. I removed it, and things are back to normal.
Dale:
I didn’t have any failures.
Let’s move on to the reviews.
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REVIEWS
Moss:
DISTRO NAME: SparkyLinux 7.2 Minimal
INTRO: I had planned on reviewing something else, see Beautiful Failures. When that flopped, I looked around to see if there was anything new on Distrowatch that I might sink my teeth into. I found this lightweight gem waiting for me. We have reviewed Sparky previously, but a new version is always fun. Sparky is Debian-based, and you’ve heard my recent successes with Debian 12 based distros. Sparky comes in a wide array of ISOs, from bloat-heavy to minimal to even a version with no desktop, both stable and semi-rolling, and even special versions for gamers, multimedia, and for use as a rescue app. Since most desktops are easy to install on Debian (included in the Debian repo), you can pick just about anything you want. Sparky’s devs state that it is not exactly designed for beginners, although beginners are welcome.
MY HARDWARE: 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.
INSTALLATION EASE AND ISSUES:
I downloaded the minimal version of sparky. Or at least I thought I did — the windows showing information on the system during installation stated it came with LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and a few other pieces of software that I did not feel were necessary for a minimalist install.
The installer felt like the Ubuntu installer but had no graphics.
Installation was fairly swift, 5 or 10 minutes. They got my time zone right, which not all distros do.
And then I rebooted.
The boot seemed slow, but it was actually fast I was just expecting something else to show up on my desktop. Openbox just doesn’t look like a desktop to me, there were only 2 icons in the taskbar and none on the desktop. Opening the menus and looking around, there are some LX tools in it, not sure whether it’s LXqt or LXDE.
My first steps would be to remove bloatware, upgrade the computer to current files, and then follow the team’s instructions to install Enlightenment window manager. Except that the bloatware which was promised during installation was not installed, so that saved some time. Interestingly, Nala 0.12.2 is installed, as is timeshift, gDebi and a couple of other useful tools. Also, since Enlightenment completely installed from the Debian repo, I didn’t have to follow the steps. I wasted paper printing them out.
The kernel installed is 6.1.0-13-amd64. It also comes with PCManFM and Firefox ESR. The text editor is mousepad. They also have Riseup-vpn installed. There is a system upgrade tool, and synaptic is also included along with the preferred aptus app center. I thought I had set it to dark mode, then apparently it doesn’t take across other windows.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES:
The upgrade manager is barely graphical and instantly opens a terminal to do the upgrade. I had 66 packages to download and install.
It was not instantly apparent how to turn off the touchpad or how to move to different desktops, desktop1 is shown so there should be more options.
Office packages available in the app center include Calligra, FreeOffice 2021, LibreOffice, MS Online Apps, OnlyOffice, OpenOffice, and WPS Office. I selected FreeOffice and it installed. I then went and selected enlightenment desktop and it installed. Installation is snappy.
I installed Kmines and Kmahjongg from the app center, although I could not find PySolFC or Nethack. I did, however, find Nethack in the Sparky repo, and it installed in seconds. I then installed flatpak, logged out and back in, then attempted to install PySol from Flathub. Couldn’t find it, so I downloaded it from flathub.org. I tried to install it by double clicking the icon in my download directory, but that did not actually work, so I opened terminal and installed it from there. Interestingly, for some reason Sparky thinks I need to give a password to install flatpaks.
I then logged out to boot into Enlightenment.
While the Openbox manager had lots of beautiful wallpapers, there were only a few on Enlightenment and I didn’t see one I liked. No biggie, I have a few dozen favorite wallpapers saved on my drives.
Enlightenment had the desktops (4) on the taskbar, so I didn’t have to figure that out. But everything was so tiny. I thought my resolution was too small, but found it was right (1364×768). So I had problems getting my font sizes to where I can read them. I set scaling at 1.2x and it looked good, but it cleared as soon as I closed the dialog box. I tried it again, and actually found an apply button this time.
I never quite got the hang of this installation of E. So I went back to Openbox to finish my review. But I couldn’t find a way to turn off the touchpad there either. In Openbox, there is no menu system. You click Applications icon and get a full screen of giant icons of all the programs and you have to page up and down until you find whatever the app you’re looking for is called, and there is no search function.
EASE OF USE:
The system itself is quite easy to use. Enlightenment is giving me some problems, as it is not quite the same as Moksha, but I’m trying to work through them.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
18.54 GiB of space used on the SSD reported by GPartEd
709 MiB of memory used was reported by free –hm on Openbox
1025 MiB of memory used reported by free -hm on Enlightenment ???
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
I have not had much time this month to look for help, which resulted in me abandoning Enlightenment to go back to Openbox, where everything worked and I didn’t need to look things up.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
It should play nicely with any Debian or Ubuntu based systems.
STABILITY:
No crashes. It is, after all, Debian-based.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Just about anything Debian based will do nicely.
RATINGS:
Ease of Installation new user 8/10
experienced user 9/10
Hardware Issues 10/10
Ease of Finding Help (Community, Web) x/10
Ease of Use 8/10
Plays Nice With Others 10/10
Stability 10/10
Overall Rating 9/10 — 7/10 with E26
FINAL COMMENTS: I really don’t feel I gave Sparky a good enough test. I either need another month or another life. I expected it to be among the lightest of distros, and am amazed that it is not, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it … if you do the research, and if you like Openbox or E. I’m clearly not the audience for this one, and I apologize to the Sparky team.
Let’s hear now from Dale.
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Dale:
DISTRO NAME: Zorin OS 17 Pro
INTRO: Zorin OS is a Ubuntu-based distro from Ireland by co-founders Artyom and Kyrill Zorin. It was started in 2008 with the first release in July of 2009. I couldn’t verify which Ubuntu they started on. Given the date range it was probably Ubuntu 8.04. In June of 2010 Zorin OS 3 was released based on Ubuntu 10.04. Zorin OS 17 was released in December of 2023 and is based on Ubuntu 22.04. They update every 2 years and seem to track the even releases of Ubuntu. It is a good bet that Zorin 18 will use Ubuntu 24.04. The goal of Zorin OS is to provide an environment that is familiar to users of Windows and Mac OS. There are 3 editions available. The Pro, Core, and Lite. The Core uses the same GNOME base as Pro without the preinstalled productivity software, additional artwork, 6 premium desktop layouts, and support. The Lite edition uses the Xfce desktop which doesn’t include Zorin Connect. It is an application available in Pro and Core to connect your smart phone to your computer. It is similar to KDE Connect, if you are familiar with that.
I will be reviewing the Pro edition, which I paid for. It includes a full suite of applications that are preinstalled allowing most people to get to work on the first login.
MY HARDWARE: I used 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: Zorin uses the older and familiar Ubuntu installer.
I will mention the installation questions specific to Zorin.
The Grub menu has the options of Try or Install, Try or Install (safe graphics), Try or Install (modern Nvidia drivers), UEFI Firmware settings, and Power off.
What apps would you like to install?
Normal includes creative suite advanced productivity software, utilities and premium desktop layouts. Minimal installation includes core utilities and premium desktop layouts
Don’t participate in the census. Let the Zorin OS developers count the number of users anonymously.
Use an active directory.
POST-INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES: Onfirst boot the updates that were downloaded during install were installed without a password. I was prompted to restart after the installation. That is becoming a common thing in some Linux distros.
A Welcome tour opened on the first login. It was a good walk through showing how to open apps and customize the desktop. Options to connect to online accounts. Using Zorin Connect your phone to get notifications on your desktop. How to find and install applications.
To access the desktop layouts, you use the Zorin Appearance application. The standard layouts in Core are: Windows-Like, Touch, Windows-List-Like, and GNOME Shell-Like. The premium desktop layouts in Pro are: macOS, Windows 11, Windows Classic, ChromeOS, GNOME 2 and Ubuntu. One thing I think is a miss, is that they don’t label the layouts. There are graphical representations for each. It is hard to determine which one you want, if you are going by the names on the website. With that said, they are very well designed and look very similar to the look of each intended desktop.
While in the appearance app. The settings for themes, effects, interface, desktop, and fonts are available.
Theme changes the desktop accent color and background.
Effects enable animations, jelly mode (similar to Plasma’s wobbly windows), Desktop cube, and Spatial Window Switcher. The cube is a 3d animation for switching work spaces. When enabled you open the work spaces view, each work space is on a panel that spins on the X axis. You use the mouse pointer to drag it in all directions. You can see the contents of each work space as if it is floating above it. I think it is mostly eye candy but it does work. The Spatial Desktop Switcher is similar to the Cover Flow animation that is available on Windows and other Linux Desktops.
Interface is where you can adjust where the window decorations are placed (the close, minimize, maximize). You can assign what the Super key does. The choices are Zorin menu (app menu) and activities view, which is a view of everything on your work spaces. Advanced window tiling options and Taskbar settings.
Desktop is where you set options for desktop icons, icon size, and which ones are shown on the desktop. Fonts as you might have guessed, is where you select your fonts.
The other settings are the same you would use in GNOME. The GNOME Software Center is used for the GUI package management. All of the Ubuntu repositories are enabled along with ones specific to Zorin OS. Flatpak is in installed and configured by default. Zorin OS uses some Flatpaks from their own repo so even if you don’t use Flatpak, you will still need it installed. Snap is also installed and configured by default, though no Snap apps were install by default. All three are available in the Software Center.
Here is a brief list of the preinstalled applications. Blender, Darktable, FreeCAD, Gimp, Inkscape, Krita, LibreOffice, Ardour, Audacity, Handbrake, and Kdenlive.
Play on Linux and Wine are available to run Windows applications. In addition to Lutris, Steam, among others for Windows-based games.
The kernel version is 6.5.0.17. GNOME Shell version 42 running Wayland.
EASE OF USE:
From the time I first logged in, I felt like I could get to work and not need to change anything. That usually only happens when I use Solus Budgie or Mint’s version of Cinnamon. Though I do like to customize to fit my workflow. If you are familiar with how GNOME functions then you will be at home with Zorin OS. Where I think there is another miss is the defaulting the Super key to open the workspace overview. I think it should have been set to open the menu. Anyone coming from Windows would expect that behavior. The menu by default looks similar enough to Windows 7 or 10 that a person should be able to use it. One nice feature of the workspace overview is you can drag windows to another workspace. This may not be that discover-able to the average person.
One obvious difference would be the Software Center, though it is very well organized and shouldn’t be a problem. There will be some functionality differences between Mac OS and Windows that can’t be avoided. Though that should be expected when changing operating systems..
I never once needed to use the terminal to do any administrative tasks.
Some would say having all three package formats available is clutter and unnecessary. I think it is a well rounded offering. Yes, there is some duplication among packages. Most will just click on the default selection. Those that are familiar with Linux and GNOME’s Software Center will know how to select apps with their preferred packaging format.
One thing that really impressed me was the Software Updater. The presentation was on the level with Linux Mint. There is plenty of feed back as to what it is doing. It defaults to a bar graph and the current package. With a drop down arrow that will show the terminal output of the update.
The Software Updater pops up and provides the following options: Remind me later, install now, and settings. Settings will bring up the updates tab from GNOME Software. Where the options for update checking frequency, download, and download and install. After the update the options of Restart now or Restart later are presented.
It detected that I was using my phone’s hotspot feature and disable automatic checking for updates. There is a prompt for if you want to change this behavior. Once at home it detected that my WiFi was not bandwidth restrained.
I didn’t test the Play on Linux or Wine support. I don’t know what success rate a person would have using them. Given how successful running Windows-based games has progressed, I would think lesser demanding applications should function fine.
MEMORY AND DISK USE:
32 GB of space used on the SSD du -h /
763 MB of memory used was reported by free –hm
EASE OF FINDING HELP:
If you paid for the Pro edition then you can receive support directly from Zorin OS. There is also a nice help section on their website. A lot of good topics like migrating from windows, installation, partitioning, and many more. Since this is Ubuntu under the hood, the Ubuntu forums, Linux Questions, or any other Linux forum for Ubuntu distros will work. I didn’t need to reach out to their tech support.
PLAYS NICE WITH OTHERS:
I didn’t dual-boot this with anything because Ubuntu doesn’t have a problem. Other than identifying its self as Ubuntu in Grub. They have documentation on how to dual boot with Windows.
STABILITY:
I didn’t have any issues during the installation or post install.
SIMILAR DISTROS TO CHECK OUT:
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Elementary OS
Kubuntu
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 10/10
Overall Rating 9/10
FINAL COMMENTS:
Zorin OS 17 is a good competitor for Linux Mint Cinnamon. Despite a few misses I previously mentioned, it is a well designed desktop. Some will complain that 22.04 is too old of base and is outdated. The problem with the new and shiny desire is a thing called regression. Not all updates to software are good. There could be serious bugs, features removed, and some added that are not wanted. Reliability is what you want in a distro that you need to get work done. It is static so you know where everything is and what it does. You don’t open an app one day and find a whole new interface; worse yet, a critical application that crashes upon use.
Zorin is providing support and in order to do that, you want the most static dependable stable base.
The mitigating factor in the concern over stale old packages is Flatpak and Snaps. If something really needs to be 100% dependable, use the Deb.
I personally think this is one of the best releases of Zorin OS. I am curious about what version 18 will look like and if it will re-base onto Ubuntu 24.04. I am considering using this on my T560 in my bedroom for a long term comparison to LMDE 6.
Let’s move on to New Releases.
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NEW RELEASES THIS MONTH:
from 01/02-02/08
MakuluLinux 2024-01-03
Endless 5.1.1
Gnoppix 24
Mabox 24.01
Relianoid 7.1
Hyperbola 0.4.4
Live Raizo 15.24.01.07
Archcraft 2024.01.08
Solus 4.5
TUXEDO OS 2-20240110
Whonix 17.1.1.5
ExTiX 24.1
Mint 21.3 (all flavors)
Manjaro 23.1.3
LibreELEC 11.0.5
AVLinux 23.1
OpenMediaVault 7.0-20
Pardus 23.1
SDesk 2024.01.18
Sparky 2024.01
CachyOS 240121
NuTyX 24.01.0
MX Linux 23.2
Linuxfx 11.4.4
BunsenLabs Boron
Parrot 6.0
Slackel 7.7 “MATE”
Gnoppix 24.1.15
Redcore 2401
Alpine 3.19.1
EndeavourOS 2024.01.25
openmamba 20240128
SystemRescue 11.00
SDesk 2024.01.26
LibreELEC 11.0.6
Regata 23.0.40
Tails 5.22
OPNsense 24.1
NomadBSD 140R-20240126
Pentoo 2024.0
SysLinuxOS 12.3
ArcoLinux 24.02.04
Bicom Systems 7.1.0 “PBX”
Bluestar 6.7.2
Snal 1.31
Clonezilla 3.1.2-9
Archman 20240202
KaOS 2024.01
Mabox 24.02
Arch 2024.02.01
EasyOS 5.7
Ultimate 2024.02.04
OSMC 2024.02-1
Plop 24.1
KDE neon 20240208
SmartOS 20240208
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FEEDBACK
An E-Mail from Henrik Hemrin:
Hello Distrohoppers’ Digest hosts,
Now I have listened to Episode 49. Someone, I think it was Dale, mentioned a backup tool based on Borgbackup developed or under development by the developer of Timeshift, Tony George.
In December 2023 I finally moved to Linux as my daily driver after a desire to try Linux for decades and actually tried it for a couple of years. I had decided for Linux Mint as my daily driver but after reconsideration I instead went for LMDE.
This was a good time to review my backup strategy. For the personal data I decided to try Borgbackup together with the graphical interface Vorta. Vorta is free and open source and is developed by Borgbase, a company providing offsite backup. I have started with backup to external USB-HDDs and considering to add a remote backup, likely a paid cloud storage that supports Borgbackup. So far I see Borgbackup+Vorta as a good choice for me, including features like compression, encryption and multiple backup profiles.
I cannot stop myself from telling I now and then write about my Linux escapades on my website, not at least under https://www.hemrin.com/walking-to-linux
Regards
Henrik Hemrin
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ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Moss: For chatting with us further, you may choose to join our Telegram group, Discord channel, or Email the show at [email protected]. Our website is https://distrohoppersdigest.org.
Dale?
Dale: I’m @Dale_CDL on Telegram and Discord. My email is [email protected]
Eric?
Eric: You can hear more of me on mintCast, Linux OTC, Linux Saloon, and LinuxLUGCast. I also have a YouTube channel @ericadamsyt. You can reach me by email at [email protected].
Moss: And you can hear me every week on Full Circle Weekly News and usually on mintCast. My email is [email protected], and I’m on Mastodon as @[email protected].
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BEFORE WE GO:
Moss: We would like to thank all those who make this project possible,
Dale: Archive.org for storing and helping to distribute this program;
Eric: Audacity, which we use for recording and editing the show
Moss: Bill Houser for creating, managing and hosting our new website, with much gratitude to Tony Hughes for his past efforts;
Dale: Eric Adams for audio editing services, and Joshua Lowe for work on our logo;
Eric: All those who work on the teams which are creating, adapting, and maintaining the Linux distros we have reviewed this episode;
Moss: Mid-Air Machine, creators of the song, “Streets of Sant’ivo”, used as our music under Creative Commons license;
Dale: Thanks to Linus Torvalds for the Kernel, Richard Stallman for the GNU Toolkits, and all those who have worked behind the scenes on Free and Open Source/Libre Software;
Eric: We will be back next month. Thank all of you for listening.
<end pre-recorded section>
