it's a very good distro that I recommend if only there was language selection in the installation and then we wouldn't have to deal with it, for now it seems to be better than opensuse. it is installed with "calamares" like other distributions we are used to. we can test it live, it comes ready with the repositories installed.
the iso is light because we choose the desktop layout in advance, kde 1.7GB
While it doesn't have language selection during installation, it is still a good choice due to its lightweight ISO and pre-installed repositories.
You can test it live and choose your desired desktop layout in advance.
I was going to try rolling linux on my (very) old Acer laptop
and selected the following distros:
- Artix - no systemd, lean and promissing
- RebornOS - well assembled and probably the best Arch distro among
Arch-like ones.
Artix (xfce s6) installed flawlessly and immediatelly failed to recognize available networks.
NetwokManager showed nothing not even a hope. Old Acer was cut from from the world.
Repeated tries with different DE and Community edition gave the same result.
Probably there are ways ro repair network functionality after the installation
but then it all should be included into the installation scrypt. Next one...
RebornOS. 3 tries of installation with different configurations but with the same
result - ERROR in the middle of the process and inevitable abort.
Which brings us to Gecko - the openSUSE implementation definitelly
better than the SUSE itself.
NIce, fast and flawless installation, functional Xfce screen.
Stable distro, ready to run after (long) zypper update. Hope for many happy updates.
9 (not 10) so far to give Gecko the place for improvement.
Distro hopping since 2012. Tried them all. Use Mint most of the time. Was looking for something different and updated. Found Gecko Cinnamon. ----- Beautiful.
Pros:
Ease of use
Live usb
Easy install
YaST ----- Works well for me.
PACKAGE install - uninstall
Just the right amount of software for daily use.
Easy to manage
Runs smooth for me.
Cons:
None
Learn the Linux Command Line and use the Terminal and you will not have any problems.
Rolling forward - any problems roll back.
Big THANKS to the developer.
Try it you will love it..................
At first it seems to run very smooth and slick, and the Pantheon flavor is less patronizing than Elementary OS.
Pros:
Runs quite fast on older machines.
Nice look
Cons:
Language support is very buggy, to put it mildly (system installer does definitely not do what it promises to, and trying to get another language than English working is a royal PITA).
Some essential packages come as snaps, which does not integrate well with the Pantheon App Menu and Dock.
All in all nice work, but alas, definitely not ready for larger public use.
I had given up on openSUSE years ago. It was a great distro until around 2014 when it started to go downhill, and eventually became unusable for me. However, it appears that the GeckoLinux team has turned openSUSE around. Plus they've made it more streamlined plus easier to install and use. I'm working with the Cinnamon desktop and it's a real pleasure to run. I'm not a big Cinnamon fan but this is an unbeatable combination. I experienced one of the easiest installations and was up and running in a matter of minutes. I had no problem adding my favorite Linux programs either. If this distro continues to operate so smoothly, I just might change my rating to 10. Keep up the good work GeckoLinux, could you do this for Fedora and Slackware too? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I've recently installed as a dual boot system on a new mini computer. It took several attempts to get Grub2 to recognize and install properly. Also, the ISO is so old, that when attempting to do an update, it had well over 1600 updates to make and things inevitably failed during the update - a lot of error messages. One persistent error was was with the Nvidia repository. Apparently this has been an ongoing issue. Since I have no Nvidia hardware, I just deleted that repository through Yast. Solved one update problem.
I then went to the terminal, refreshed repositories (sudo zypper refresh -f -s), then updated the system through the terminal with some added parameters (sudo zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change --no-recommends). Adding these parameters allowed the update to continue without any major hitches.
I do believe these update issues were caused by the very old ISO that is offered for install - over a year old ISO is not good for a rolling release - too much opportunity for breakage. Since doing this, Gecko seems to be running fine, I do like the ease of set-up, but after the update, I lost the wallpaper from Gecko, and have only the Tumbleweed wallpapers available - small issue.
I will continue testing this, since I do like the idea of OpenSuse, just not the configuration hassles.
It just works! I mean, it REALLY works! I've been using this openSUSE spin for years. I currently have GeckoLinux Static Gnome on two systems and use it as my daily driver. It is very fast, stable and easy to use. I use flatpaks for any software not in the repos such as the LibreWolf web browser and the Extension Manager. But what is probably most notable about GeckoLinux is its hardware support which is second to none. GeckoLinux isn't change for the sake of change; it adds convenience to the speed and rock-like stability of openSUSE.
Version NextPlasma. After a dangerous upgrade of the previous version (my fault I suppose, after I tried to upgrade everything) I reinstalled everything from this version. I found that everything went right. I even see all my hardware recognized, notably the scanner from my samsung printer M2070 on the local network, after I installed the proper drivers: this is a thing that I was not able to do with the latest OpenSuseLeap or Thumbleeed.
What to say apart that this is a very good distro to work on.
I have been using Kubuntu but was always looking for a distro which allowed:
1. Deploy and Switch desktop environments at the click of a button
2. Had something extra in the distro rather than a vanilla offering, such as Kubuntu/Neon/Fedora
3. Great level of support
4. Something mainstream in terms of underlying operating system such as Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL
5. KDE based
I was always drawn towards Fedora and OpenSUSE (which gets the highest rating on Distrowatch of believable scores) but found Fedora slow and OpenSUSE awkward, particularly the installation process
I watch a lot of youtube reviewes of distros and then I saw one reviewing Gecko which I was rather impressed, so I installed this on a number of laptops, to check all was good.
Gecko rolling is directly based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and uses it's repositories amongst others which brings in the stability and reputation of OpenSUSE.
The installation went well from a 1.7GB iso, which is small compared with alternatives. However, a word of warning...if you are installing from a USB stick then this will only work once, if you want to re-install then you will need to re-image the USB stick as it will cause problems and may lead to an unusable system.
The system installed in under 10 minutes, very quick, in fact probably the quickest I have experienced to get a running usable system.
I have a default of KDE Plasma, but loved the fact I could go into YaST and click Cinnamon, to have a cinnamon desktop deployment and then choose what I wanted at the next login prompt.
The YaST software manager is quite impressive in it's functionalty.
Throughly impressed with Gecko, I have all my apps running which I regularly use which include:-
Bitwarden
Libreoffice
Megasync
OBS Studio
Visual Studio Code
Brother Printer (This was a little manual to install)
KDE apps
VirtualBox
etc
Gecko gives OpenSUSE the polish it needs to be a livable, easily installable, likable distro....I'll be sticking with this for a while....
Gecko has some defining features compared with other distros which set it apart, it can be compared with MX Linux in the Debian world, but better.
Advantages
Includes additional drivers to support your hardware which helps installation
Rolling release with thoroughy tested modules
Nice default home page within firefox
Allows easy running of additional desktop environments, cinnamon, pantheon
Unique patterns install to allow catogarised deployemnt, e.g. python dev environments
Well supported operating system as it's OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
Based on RHEl, rpm release, stable
Modern kernel v6+
I installed the rolling Gnome edition and compared it directly with standard Tumbleweed (with Gnome) on the same machine.
For some reason, Gecko installs X11 by default while Tumbleweed uses Wayland. Because of this, Gecko is a bit choppy and does not run as smoothly as Tumbleweed.
Although Gecko advertises improved fonts, I actually prefer the fonts in Tumbleweed.
Also, the Gecko's default icon pack is very outdated looking. They don't mesh well with Gnome especially. The Firefox icon in particular is quite odd.
Wonderful program all up. Maybe it's just me, but with the update I seem to have a problem. If I go to YAST Software, and go to internet update, it wants me to update weekly. That's fine by me, so I click it. As a result it won't update and my commands are NOT saved. I am wasting my time there.
Other than that, Calamares provides for an easy installation, Gecko found my printer, I didn't have to do anything. I find the Gecko suitable for novices and professionals alike. I found the distro fast, comprehensive and a pleasure to use.
Keep up the good work :)
A simply fantastic distro. Opensuse is like Debian: it is reliable, solid as a rock, stable, but when it comes to installing it you have to spend a lot of time to make everything work: add repos (especially Pakman), codecs, wifi, non-free software, etc. etc. With Gecko Linux all those problems disappear: everything is there to start working. There are many Debian distros that add the non-free world, codecs and wifi, but a distro was missing in opensuse that has the same. Good work.
The only thing I miss is a slightly more modern and pleasant aesthetic, honestly, it looks quite ugly, but that's not a problem on Linux: you can customize a distro in 15 minutes, especially on Cinammon and Kde.
Great distro, fast and based on openSUSE. Everything worked on my old Macbook Air. Adding the new repo for Tumbleweed is confusing, since the old one not working. But once I added it, it work like a charm. Wine, Steam, installed without a hassle.
This is a really good distro, the downside is not to many effects for KDE Plasma. No magic lamp. But it's ok, not really using it, but hoping it will include in the next release. The NVIDIA graphics is too old, so I'm using Nouveau.
Thanks GeckoLinux team. You guys are the best.
After some some tests with this I am not sure how this distro is openSUSE based , as things eg Synaptics touchpads do not work with gecko but they are perfectly working under official openSUSE.
I managed to install both of them on 2 different - same brand: Lenovo , laptops.
I have the feeling that the developer is cooking the kernel according to their needs (like blacklisting/removing drivers) . Also some strange mixing of third party repos there. If you value your privacy and / or your integrity of your data better avoid this and stick to official openSUSE.
Well let me start by saying that I have been extremely satisfied with the combination of GeckoLinux Rolling combined with XFCE. GeckoLinux smartly configures the system to get you up and running in no time. What you are left with is openSUSE Tumbleweed with all the needed repos & codecs added, improved fonts, all essential apps installed & various other tweaks to save time after install. Is openSUSE a beginner distro? Not really, more like an intermediate user distro. But if you take the time to do a little research, you have a system that, at least in the case of XFCE, is lightning fast, always up to date & as reliable as any Linux system I have used in the last 14 years. Also by having BTRFS combined with snapper, which is now standard in a GeckoLinux install, I have the security of knowing that if an update goes south, a simple roll back will get me going again. There is no system anywhere that makes rolling back to a prior snapshot as easy as openSUSE. I have distro hopped a lot over the years, but since I installed Gecko, I have no desire to go anywhere else. I always have the latest & greatest (but pretested thanks to open QA) with enough of a challenge to keep learning & discovering Linux interesting, satisfying and fun.
Switched from Debian Testing to Gecko (Rolling w/Plasma) a few weeks ago. Gecko's installer, codecs and font rendering make this a step-up over installing OpenSUSE. My laptop has been both stable and contain the latest packages with Gecko - I Highly Recommend this distro!
The theming is annoyingly inconsistent. Change your colours/styles in plasma to dark, open up YAST, and you still see white backgrounds and red highlights rather than the defaults from your style.
Othherwise it seems to work fine. The visual inconsistency just bothers me
Plasma tumbleweed snapshot - I've had mixed results with this one as I have with previous snapshots. Given the specific mention of grub improvements within the release notes I had hoped they had fixed the problems I have already fed back on.
It's fine on my legacy BIOS hardware but grub still fails to configure properly on any of the EFI machines (MSI, Gigabyte, Lenovo) I have tried it on just letting the installer do it's own thing. Upon reboot I still get dumped in rescue mode on the EFI machines. So I cannot use it without doing manual configuration the stock OpenSUSE Tumbleweed actually doesn't need which partly defeats the object of Gecko in the first place as a more consumer friendly OpenSUSE.
From what I have seen of it on the one legacy machine and in live environment on the others it's not too shabby and far quicker to boot than stock openSUSE. If it wasn't for the very positive experience on the legacy machine I'd honestly have given it 1 or 2 out of 10.
I've tested Xubuntu, MX, Lite, Bodhi, Q4os, Sparky, Lubuntu. They are beautiful distroes. but Gecko works better for my computer. Gecko is simple and fast-from first boot, execute app to shutdown. I don't need thinking too much with codec or driver. Another thing is the open SuSE repo. It has comunity repo. With it I got new app without wait too long. the base app are right for me. Maybe the only thing i dont need too much is the office suit. I use it as my dailly drive. I really enjoy use gecko linux.
I like OpenSuse, but I had problems using it, mainly with some crashes, freezes and it being slow to open up and use applications. I wanted to see if there were any other distros based off of it and I came across Gecko.
Gecko is more easy to use, hasn’t locked up on me and is pretty stable and speedy when using.
tested variant: "GeckoLinux NEXT Plasma"
This is a NEXT KDE but on OpenSUSE Leap.
* small RAM footprint (Other KDEs out there start with 1GB usage,this was around 400MB)
* almost bloat-free (for a KDE distro, is very nice)
* codecs out from the box
* install gets (almost I think) all the files from the ISO, no network needed
recommended for people that like stable base on NEXT KDE, needs some fixing anyway: man pages are missing.
For a new to linux, gecko makes me easy to learn linux. It has root to open suse
which has good documentation, easy to install, and friendly community.
Its ok if happens you have a "compatible" laptop/desktop.
Laptop's touchpad (a 5 yo model) does not work from start and need extra work - works *fine* with OpenSuse 15.3, so I believe the author of this "distro" somewhere lost it and can't figure it out. Also, as someone mentioned on another report: man pages messed. good attempt but failure
I have opposite feelings with this distro. On the one hand, I find it great that "opensuse" is easier and brings more desktops, also wifi drivers (it is one of the few distros with rtl8821ce pre-installed). But then there are bugs, freezes, problems loading repositories ... it is something that also happens to "opensuse" and it does not happen to debian, ubuntu or manjaro. Great idea from the programmer, I've been using it for some time, but I'm not quite comfortable with it. I have tested it on an old imac and also on a new laptop, and the result is the same.
Switched from ArcoLinux to GECKO 3 weeks ago. Have not had any issues so far. Installation went smooth, customizing was a snap and so far runs really good. I am using the cinnamon desktop.
Unlike most distros I have tried this one does not remind me i need updates....instead i am told terminal window is the way to get updates and so far its worked great.
sudo zypper dup type that and you get updated.
I am running the tumbleweed version.
Installing on Intel Core2Duo x_64 2Gb, XFCE.
Pros
Gecko Linux easy to install, only need 20to30 minutes to finish the installation. Everything work nicely. Every hardware well detected, sound-display-scan-etc. One improtant is it is stable.
In idle XFCE only needs 550 to 600 mb.
Cons
Gecko doesnt have upgrade option, so we should clean install-from 152 to 153, before we use it and install application one by one. But it is not so big issue, because getting application from open Suse web or other source is really easy.
Version NEXT Plasma. This is a good way to see the latest plasma 5,22 while using the stable OpenSuse 15.2. Kudos for the hard work to give a friendlier way to install and handle the OpenSUSE Distro. Installed without problem on a not too new machine (a 4 years old pentium laptop machine with 4GB RAM), not fastest as light but reasonably fast. For accostumed OpenSuSE users, something could seems a bit odd (color choice for instance), but nothing really important.
This is for OpenSuSE what is Mint for Ubuntu, it is growing up and I found it better than in the past, really good.
Just one note: I would have preferred to see the software, in the Yast choice, grouped by type (i.e. Graphics, Office etc.), maybe just leaving it s a view option. This is because the available software is really a lot.
The default filesystem is not btrfs, but I think this is correct for this desktop oriented distro (however you can change it if you like).
I recently switched from Arcolinux for Gecko. I always liked openSUSE, but their default installer is a pain. The Gecko's Calamares Installer does a concise job. I am running on a Macbook Pro. I had no issues with Gecko for the last 6 months using the OS.
One of the very best distros I have EVER used! I have Tumbleweed Cinnamon installed. There's a lot of updates, but I only run them once a week.
I had a couple of issues unrelated to Gecko that I found a solution easily. The forum is active. Its basically suso with Gecko making it easy to install. 1.5GB download is all. Installing was very easy.
Normally I have a Ubuntu product installed, which I still to, but I will keep this Gecko as long as it preforms as it has been.
Does what it says on the tin - an easy way to install Opensuse with much of the post-install work done for you.
I gave up on Opensuse many years ago when they stopped providing live CDs with an offline install option - the idea of either a 4.5GB DVD download or multiple net-installs (on a relatively slow internet connection) didn't really appeal to me.
This project makes Opensuse a viable proposition again. All the more remarkable because it appears to be the work of just one developer - kudos & respect goes out to whoever that might be!
After have been using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with satisfaction for a period, I have found this distro (KDE rolling) even better for some settings improvements and a easier installer. However I prefer the detailed but guided installed of original OpenSUSE.
If you want to have BTRFS partition you must use manual partitioning, because the automatic only have ext4.
For a correct language setting, after having installed you must launch the language installer first, then do a distro update. Every software will be set to the correct language.
As for OpenSUSE, the best rate!
Suitable also for beginners and daily use.
I've been distro hopping for at least 10 years. Started out with Ubuntu, which seemed to get progressively worse for speed and support of systems older than 5 years. The last 3 or 4 years I've settled in with Mint (until it too got too bloated), Peppermint and MX Linux. For really old hardware I've had great luck with BunsenLabs. MX seems to be getting a little "sloppy" lately, so I started to look around somewhere out of the Deb/buntu realm. I wanted to love Manjaro, but it seems to "break" after a few days/weeks of updates and I don;t have time to constantly re-tweak it.
When I've tried OpenSUSE directly i wasn't that impressed with all the configuration "tweaks" required, then in some review I discovered Gecko XFCE. I installed it easily; configured my old Brother printer and I've been off to the races. Gecko boots very lively on a converted Macbook Pro 2009 with 8gb RAM. The old toadie Broadcom driver and NVIDEA driver worked out of the box. A lot of distros have dropped support for the bcm43xx series of drivers, apparently.
Gecko is fast, doesn't break easily and allows me to get a days work done without having to worry about crashed and freezes on this machine. Love this distro. If it continues to do as well as it has the past couple of weeks, I'm gong to install on my production desktop, which currently runs MX 19.3.
In a few words, I'm comparing Tumbleweed XFCE with MX XFCE. Both are pretty easy to install and use, but I give the edge to MX because the MX Tools assistant is better than YAST.
VERY nice distro. It just works - not much more to say. Extremely polished with excellent font rendering. For some reason this is a difficult for a majority of distros to accomplish. Very stable. YaST is a wonderful tool. Most impressive and highly recommended.
Why 9 instead of 10 - not the fastest distro out there. Not slow be any means, but it does start to lag after some time.
Version: 152 Rating: 8 Date: 2021-01-30 Votes: 6
I use XFCE Static edition. Everything work well on my core 2 duo with 2 gig ram. The instalation process was only about 10 minutes. So far It good for my old x86_64. And it now as my daily drive.
Version: 152 Rating: 9 Date: 2021-01-27 Votes: 0
I tried out Gecko Linux XFCE 15.2 on an Acer Aspire 3, a lightweight computer. I ran it from USB.
Gecko was impressive. Absolutely everything worked 'out of the box'. I powered down and powered up again, and yes, it is true: Gecko has persistence built in.
However, on the downside, the more I loaded the system, the slower it became, until it slowed almost to a stop. For lightweight computers, one needs to do one thing at a time.
it's a very good distro that I recommend if only there was language selection in the installation and then we wouldn't have to deal with it, for now it seems to be better than opensuse. it is installed with "calamares" like other distributions we are used to. we can test it live, it comes ready with the repositories installed.
the iso is light because we choose the desktop layout in advance, kde 1.7GB
While it doesn't have language selection during installation, it is still a good choice due to its lightweight ISO and pre-installed repositories.
You can test it live and choose your desired desktop layout in advance.
I was going to try rolling linux on my (very) old Acer laptop
and selected the following distros:
- Artix - no systemd, lean and promissing
- RebornOS - well assembled and probably the best Arch distro among
Arch-like ones.
Artix (xfce s6) installed flawlessly and immediatelly failed to recognize available networks.
NetwokManager showed nothing not even a hope. Old Acer was cut from from the world.
Repeated tries with different DE and Community edition gave the same result.
Probably there are ways ro repair network functionality after the installation
but then it all should be included into the installation scrypt. Next one...
RebornOS. 3 tries of installation with different configurations but with the same
result - ERROR in the middle of the process and inevitable abort.
Which brings us to Gecko - the openSUSE implementation definitelly
better than the SUSE itself.
NIce, fast and flawless installation, functional Xfce screen.
Stable distro, ready to run after (long) zypper update. Hope for many happy updates.
9 (not 10) so far to give Gecko the place for improvement.
Distro hopping since 2012. Tried them all. Use Mint most of the time. Was looking for something different and updated. Found Gecko Cinnamon. ----- Beautiful.
Pros:
Ease of use
Live usb
Easy install
YaST ----- Works well for me.
PACKAGE install - uninstall
Just the right amount of software for daily use.
Easy to manage
Runs smooth for me.
Cons:
None
Learn the Linux Command Line and use the Terminal and you will not have any problems.
Rolling forward - any problems roll back.
Big THANKS to the developer.
Try it you will love it..................
At first it seems to run very smooth and slick, and the Pantheon flavor is less patronizing than Elementary OS.
Pros:
Runs quite fast on older machines.
Nice look
Cons:
Language support is very buggy, to put it mildly (system installer does definitely not do what it promises to, and trying to get another language than English working is a royal PITA).
Some essential packages come as snaps, which does not integrate well with the Pantheon App Menu and Dock.
All in all nice work, but alas, definitely not ready for larger public use.
I had given up on openSUSE years ago. It was a great distro until around 2014 when it started to go downhill, and eventually became unusable for me. However, it appears that the GeckoLinux team has turned openSUSE around. Plus they've made it more streamlined plus easier to install and use. I'm working with the Cinnamon desktop and it's a real pleasure to run. I'm not a big Cinnamon fan but this is an unbeatable combination. I experienced one of the easiest installations and was up and running in a matter of minutes. I had no problem adding my favorite Linux programs either. If this distro continues to operate so smoothly, I just might change my rating to 10. Keep up the good work GeckoLinux, could you do this for Fedora and Slackware too? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I've recently installed as a dual boot system on a new mini computer. It took several attempts to get Grub2 to recognize and install properly. Also, the ISO is so old, that when attempting to do an update, it had well over 1600 updates to make and things inevitably failed during the update - a lot of error messages. One persistent error was was with the Nvidia repository. Apparently this has been an ongoing issue. Since I have no Nvidia hardware, I just deleted that repository through Yast. Solved one update problem.
I then went to the terminal, refreshed repositories (sudo zypper refresh -f -s), then updated the system through the terminal with some added parameters (sudo zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change --no-recommends). Adding these parameters allowed the update to continue without any major hitches.
I do believe these update issues were caused by the very old ISO that is offered for install - over a year old ISO is not good for a rolling release - too much opportunity for breakage. Since doing this, Gecko seems to be running fine, I do like the ease of set-up, but after the update, I lost the wallpaper from Gecko, and have only the Tumbleweed wallpapers available - small issue.
I will continue testing this, since I do like the idea of OpenSuse, just not the configuration hassles.
It just works! I mean, it REALLY works! I've been using this openSUSE spin for years. I currently have GeckoLinux Static Gnome on two systems and use it as my daily driver. It is very fast, stable and easy to use. I use flatpaks for any software not in the repos such as the LibreWolf web browser and the Extension Manager. But what is probably most notable about GeckoLinux is its hardware support which is second to none. GeckoLinux isn't change for the sake of change; it adds convenience to the speed and rock-like stability of openSUSE.
Version NextPlasma. After a dangerous upgrade of the previous version (my fault I suppose, after I tried to upgrade everything) I reinstalled everything from this version. I found that everything went right. I even see all my hardware recognized, notably the scanner from my samsung printer M2070 on the local network, after I installed the proper drivers: this is a thing that I was not able to do with the latest OpenSuseLeap or Thumbleeed.
What to say apart that this is a very good distro to work on.
I have been using Kubuntu but was always looking for a distro which allowed:
1. Deploy and Switch desktop environments at the click of a button
2. Had something extra in the distro rather than a vanilla offering, such as Kubuntu/Neon/Fedora
3. Great level of support
4. Something mainstream in terms of underlying operating system such as Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL
5. KDE based
I was always drawn towards Fedora and OpenSUSE (which gets the highest rating on Distrowatch of believable scores) but found Fedora slow and OpenSUSE awkward, particularly the installation process
I watch a lot of youtube reviewes of distros and then I saw one reviewing Gecko which I was rather impressed, so I installed this on a number of laptops, to check all was good.
Gecko rolling is directly based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and uses it's repositories amongst others which brings in the stability and reputation of OpenSUSE.
The installation went well from a 1.7GB iso, which is small compared with alternatives. However, a word of warning...if you are installing from a USB stick then this will only work once, if you want to re-install then you will need to re-image the USB stick as it will cause problems and may lead to an unusable system.
The system installed in under 10 minutes, very quick, in fact probably the quickest I have experienced to get a running usable system.
I have a default of KDE Plasma, but loved the fact I could go into YaST and click Cinnamon, to have a cinnamon desktop deployment and then choose what I wanted at the next login prompt.
The YaST software manager is quite impressive in it's functionalty.
Throughly impressed with Gecko, I have all my apps running which I regularly use which include:-
Bitwarden
Libreoffice
Megasync
OBS Studio
Visual Studio Code
Brother Printer (This was a little manual to install)
KDE apps
VirtualBox
etc
Gecko gives OpenSUSE the polish it needs to be a livable, easily installable, likable distro....I'll be sticking with this for a while....
Gecko has some defining features compared with other distros which set it apart, it can be compared with MX Linux in the Debian world, but better.
Advantages
Includes additional drivers to support your hardware which helps installation
Rolling release with thoroughy tested modules
Nice default home page within firefox
Allows easy running of additional desktop environments, cinnamon, pantheon
Unique patterns install to allow catogarised deployemnt, e.g. python dev environments
Well supported operating system as it's OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
Based on RHEl, rpm release, stable
Modern kernel v6+
I installed the rolling Gnome edition and compared it directly with standard Tumbleweed (with Gnome) on the same machine.
For some reason, Gecko installs X11 by default while Tumbleweed uses Wayland. Because of this, Gecko is a bit choppy and does not run as smoothly as Tumbleweed.
Although Gecko advertises improved fonts, I actually prefer the fonts in Tumbleweed.
Also, the Gecko's default icon pack is very outdated looking. They don't mesh well with Gnome especially. The Firefox icon in particular is quite odd.
Wonderful program all up. Maybe it's just me, but with the update I seem to have a problem. If I go to YAST Software, and go to internet update, it wants me to update weekly. That's fine by me, so I click it. As a result it won't update and my commands are NOT saved. I am wasting my time there.
Other than that, Calamares provides for an easy installation, Gecko found my printer, I didn't have to do anything. I find the Gecko suitable for novices and professionals alike. I found the distro fast, comprehensive and a pleasure to use.
Keep up the good work :)
A simply fantastic distro. Opensuse is like Debian: it is reliable, solid as a rock, stable, but when it comes to installing it you have to spend a lot of time to make everything work: add repos (especially Pakman), codecs, wifi, non-free software, etc. etc. With Gecko Linux all those problems disappear: everything is there to start working. There are many Debian distros that add the non-free world, codecs and wifi, but a distro was missing in opensuse that has the same. Good work.
The only thing I miss is a slightly more modern and pleasant aesthetic, honestly, it looks quite ugly, but that's not a problem on Linux: you can customize a distro in 15 minutes, especially on Cinammon and Kde.
Great distro, fast and based on openSUSE. Everything worked on my old Macbook Air. Adding the new repo for Tumbleweed is confusing, since the old one not working. But once I added it, it work like a charm. Wine, Steam, installed without a hassle.
This is a really good distro, the downside is not to many effects for KDE Plasma. No magic lamp. But it's ok, not really using it, but hoping it will include in the next release. The NVIDIA graphics is too old, so I'm using Nouveau.
Thanks GeckoLinux team. You guys are the best.
After some some tests with this I am not sure how this distro is openSUSE based , as things eg Synaptics touchpads do not work with gecko but they are perfectly working under official openSUSE.
I managed to install both of them on 2 different - same brand: Lenovo , laptops.
I have the feeling that the developer is cooking the kernel according to their needs (like blacklisting/removing drivers) . Also some strange mixing of third party repos there. If you value your privacy and / or your integrity of your data better avoid this and stick to official openSUSE.
Well let me start by saying that I have been extremely satisfied with the combination of GeckoLinux Rolling combined with XFCE. GeckoLinux smartly configures the system to get you up and running in no time. What you are left with is openSUSE Tumbleweed with all the needed repos & codecs added, improved fonts, all essential apps installed & various other tweaks to save time after install. Is openSUSE a beginner distro? Not really, more like an intermediate user distro. But if you take the time to do a little research, you have a system that, at least in the case of XFCE, is lightning fast, always up to date & as reliable as any Linux system I have used in the last 14 years. Also by having BTRFS combined with snapper, which is now standard in a GeckoLinux install, I have the security of knowing that if an update goes south, a simple roll back will get me going again. There is no system anywhere that makes rolling back to a prior snapshot as easy as openSUSE. I have distro hopped a lot over the years, but since I installed Gecko, I have no desire to go anywhere else. I always have the latest & greatest (but pretested thanks to open QA) with enough of a challenge to keep learning & discovering Linux interesting, satisfying and fun.
Switched from Debian Testing to Gecko (Rolling w/Plasma) a few weeks ago. Gecko's installer, codecs and font rendering make this a step-up over installing OpenSUSE. My laptop has been both stable and contain the latest packages with Gecko - I Highly Recommend this distro!
The theming is annoyingly inconsistent. Change your colours/styles in plasma to dark, open up YAST, and you still see white backgrounds and red highlights rather than the defaults from your style.
Othherwise it seems to work fine. The visual inconsistency just bothers me
Plasma tumbleweed snapshot - I've had mixed results with this one as I have with previous snapshots. Given the specific mention of grub improvements within the release notes I had hoped they had fixed the problems I have already fed back on.
It's fine on my legacy BIOS hardware but grub still fails to configure properly on any of the EFI machines (MSI, Gigabyte, Lenovo) I have tried it on just letting the installer do it's own thing. Upon reboot I still get dumped in rescue mode on the EFI machines. So I cannot use it without doing manual configuration the stock OpenSUSE Tumbleweed actually doesn't need which partly defeats the object of Gecko in the first place as a more consumer friendly OpenSUSE.
From what I have seen of it on the one legacy machine and in live environment on the others it's not too shabby and far quicker to boot than stock openSUSE. If it wasn't for the very positive experience on the legacy machine I'd honestly have given it 1 or 2 out of 10.
I've tested Xubuntu, MX, Lite, Bodhi, Q4os, Sparky, Lubuntu. They are beautiful distroes. but Gecko works better for my computer. Gecko is simple and fast-from first boot, execute app to shutdown. I don't need thinking too much with codec or driver. Another thing is the open SuSE repo. It has comunity repo. With it I got new app without wait too long. the base app are right for me. Maybe the only thing i dont need too much is the office suit. I use it as my dailly drive. I really enjoy use gecko linux.
I like OpenSuse, but I had problems using it, mainly with some crashes, freezes and it being slow to open up and use applications. I wanted to see if there were any other distros based off of it and I came across Gecko.
Gecko is more easy to use, hasn’t locked up on me and is pretty stable and speedy when using.
tested variant: "GeckoLinux NEXT Plasma"
This is a NEXT KDE but on OpenSUSE Leap.
* small RAM footprint (Other KDEs out there start with 1GB usage,this was around 400MB)
* almost bloat-free (for a KDE distro, is very nice)
* codecs out from the box
* install gets (almost I think) all the files from the ISO, no network needed
recommended for people that like stable base on NEXT KDE, needs some fixing anyway: man pages are missing.
For a new to linux, gecko makes me easy to learn linux. It has root to open suse
which has good documentation, easy to install, and friendly community.
Its ok if happens you have a "compatible" laptop/desktop.
Laptop's touchpad (a 5 yo model) does not work from start and need extra work - works *fine* with OpenSuse 15.3, so I believe the author of this "distro" somewhere lost it and can't figure it out. Also, as someone mentioned on another report: man pages messed. good attempt but failure
I have opposite feelings with this distro. On the one hand, I find it great that "opensuse" is easier and brings more desktops, also wifi drivers (it is one of the few distros with rtl8821ce pre-installed). But then there are bugs, freezes, problems loading repositories ... it is something that also happens to "opensuse" and it does not happen to debian, ubuntu or manjaro. Great idea from the programmer, I've been using it for some time, but I'm not quite comfortable with it. I have tested it on an old imac and also on a new laptop, and the result is the same.
Switched from ArcoLinux to GECKO 3 weeks ago. Have not had any issues so far. Installation went smooth, customizing was a snap and so far runs really good. I am using the cinnamon desktop.
Unlike most distros I have tried this one does not remind me i need updates....instead i am told terminal window is the way to get updates and so far its worked great.
sudo zypper dup type that and you get updated.
I am running the tumbleweed version.
Installing on Intel Core2Duo x_64 2Gb, XFCE.
Pros
Gecko Linux easy to install, only need 20to30 minutes to finish the installation. Everything work nicely. Every hardware well detected, sound-display-scan-etc. One improtant is it is stable.
In idle XFCE only needs 550 to 600 mb.
Cons
Gecko doesnt have upgrade option, so we should clean install-from 152 to 153, before we use it and install application one by one. But it is not so big issue, because getting application from open Suse web or other source is really easy.
I recently switched from Arcolinux for Gecko. I always liked openSUSE, but their default installer is a pain. The Gecko's Calamares Installer does a concise job. I am running on a Macbook Pro. I had no issues with Gecko for the last 6 months using the OS.
Version NEXT Plasma. This is a good way to see the latest plasma 5,22 while using the stable OpenSuse 15.2. Kudos for the hard work to give a friendlier way to install and handle the OpenSUSE Distro. Installed without problem on a not too new machine (a 4 years old pentium laptop machine with 4GB RAM), not fastest as light but reasonably fast. For accostumed OpenSuSE users, something could seems a bit odd (color choice for instance), but nothing really important.
This is for OpenSuSE what is Mint for Ubuntu, it is growing up and I found it better than in the past, really good.
Just one note: I would have preferred to see the software, in the Yast choice, grouped by type (i.e. Graphics, Office etc.), maybe just leaving it s a view option. This is because the available software is really a lot.
The default filesystem is not btrfs, but I think this is correct for this desktop oriented distro (however you can change it if you like).
One of the very best distros I have EVER used! I have Tumbleweed Cinnamon installed. There's a lot of updates, but I only run them once a week.
I had a couple of issues unrelated to Gecko that I found a solution easily. The forum is active. Its basically suso with Gecko making it easy to install. 1.5GB download is all. Installing was very easy.
Normally I have a Ubuntu product installed, which I still to, but I will keep this Gecko as long as it preforms as it has been.
Does what it says on the tin - an easy way to install Opensuse with much of the post-install work done for you.
I gave up on Opensuse many years ago when they stopped providing live CDs with an offline install option - the idea of either a 4.5GB DVD download or multiple net-installs (on a relatively slow internet connection) didn't really appeal to me.
This project makes Opensuse a viable proposition again. All the more remarkable because it appears to be the work of just one developer - kudos & respect goes out to whoever that might be!
After have been using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with satisfaction for a period, I have found this distro (KDE rolling) even better for some settings improvements and a easier installer. However I prefer the detailed but guided installed of original OpenSUSE.
If you want to have BTRFS partition you must use manual partitioning, because the automatic only have ext4.
For a correct language setting, after having installed you must launch the language installer first, then do a distro update. Every software will be set to the correct language.
As for OpenSUSE, the best rate!
Suitable also for beginners and daily use.
I've been distro hopping for at least 10 years. Started out with Ubuntu, which seemed to get progressively worse for speed and support of systems older than 5 years. The last 3 or 4 years I've settled in with Mint (until it too got too bloated), Peppermint and MX Linux. For really old hardware I've had great luck with BunsenLabs. MX seems to be getting a little "sloppy" lately, so I started to look around somewhere out of the Deb/buntu realm. I wanted to love Manjaro, but it seems to "break" after a few days/weeks of updates and I don;t have time to constantly re-tweak it.
When I've tried OpenSUSE directly i wasn't that impressed with all the configuration "tweaks" required, then in some review I discovered Gecko XFCE. I installed it easily; configured my old Brother printer and I've been off to the races. Gecko boots very lively on a converted Macbook Pro 2009 with 8gb RAM. The old toadie Broadcom driver and NVIDEA driver worked out of the box. A lot of distros have dropped support for the bcm43xx series of drivers, apparently.
Gecko is fast, doesn't break easily and allows me to get a days work done without having to worry about crashed and freezes on this machine. Love this distro. If it continues to do as well as it has the past couple of weeks, I'm gong to install on my production desktop, which currently runs MX 19.3.
In a few words, I'm comparing Tumbleweed XFCE with MX XFCE. Both are pretty easy to install and use, but I give the edge to MX because the MX Tools assistant is better than YAST.
VERY nice distro. It just works - not much more to say. Extremely polished with excellent font rendering. For some reason this is a difficult for a majority of distros to accomplish. Very stable. YaST is a wonderful tool. Most impressive and highly recommended.
Why 9 instead of 10 - not the fastest distro out there. Not slow be any means, but it does start to lag after some time.
I use XFCE Static edition. Everything work well on my core 2 duo with 2 gig ram. The instalation process was only about 10 minutes. So far It good for my old x86_64. And it now as my daily drive.
I tried out Gecko Linux XFCE 15.2 on an Acer Aspire 3, a lightweight computer. I ran it from USB.
Gecko was impressive. Absolutely everything worked 'out of the box'. I powered down and powered up again, and yes, it is true: Gecko has persistence built in.
However, on the downside, the more I loaded the system, the slower it became, until it slowed almost to a stop. For lightweight computers, one needs to do one thing at a time.
Have it as daily driver, the Cinnamon version on Tumbleweed. love it.
Aswell on older Lenovo but Lxqt instead..also Tumbleweed.
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