SpiralLinux

Reader supplied reviews for SpiralLinux Average rating 9.1 from 49 review(s) What are your thoughts on SpiralLinux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 12.23112011.220925 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 12.231120 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-04-16 Votes: 8 I recently switched from Sparky8, which is based on the testing branch (Trixie) of Debian to SpiralLinux MATE, and after installing it, I pointed it to the Debian Testing (Trixie) Repo and got a little bit better version than Sparky8. I also don't have to worry about the "dev hit by a bus scenario" as it's updated by and from the Debian repositories. The updating of the current SpiralLinux OS to the Debian testing option does take quite a while to do even on a fast internet connection, but everything worked out and it's been a smooth operating system over the past two days thus far. Everything that I've needed, Gnome disk utility, Simple scanner, Xscreensaver, Xfburn, etc were all available in the Debian repo. I'm using an adhoc built computer out of this and that from other boxes I've had over the years, current setup: Mobo Asus B75M-A, CPU Intel i3-3300 quad, GPU ATI Radeon 4300-4700, and multiple desktop peripherals. Both my Epson ET-2840 and Brother HL-L2305 printers had installed automatically. From such an old offering at today's standards SpiralLinux still does what the dev had planned for it to do and updating it hasn't been a concern. I am still waiting for the day MATE 1.28.2 gets added to the Debian repositories, but from where I sit I haven't seen any difference in running MATE 1.26.2 vs MATE 1.28.2 that is available from other linux OS offerings. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 12.231120 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-01-27 Votes: 49 --Notes-- Version: latest version, but after upgrading to the Debian 'testing' branch. Desktop Environments: KDE plasma 6 (initially 5) and XFCE Windowing System: mostly using x11 6 months ago I switched both my laptops to the latest Spiral Linux. Being a novice, and recently migrated from Windows 10 to Manjaro, I found that I want to tinker quite a bit and I ended up with a broken system on my main computer and a slow system on the older one (which was still much faster than Windows 10). I initially tried 'vanilla' Debian Bookworm (12.5 at the time) which was ok, but I wanted to try a Btrfs based system with the snapshots available from the bootloader, and didn't have the time to go into OpenSUSE / Fedora at the time. I'll try to not repeat the last few reviews. In a nutshell, I found it to be a really good version / spin of Debian. I would recommend this one even to beginners over Debian, because it provides a balanced solution for stability, as well as recency of a broad range of software and the flexibility for tinkering. Moreover, there's no risk arising from a relatively small community stagnating because updates only follow the Debian repositories. I hope that the creator keeps up the good work and am looking forward to trying their next Gecko Linux release. -Usage- I found that 1. The installer was easier and quicker than Debian's default 2. Spiral's snapshot system on top of its Btrfs file system (setup via 'Snapper', and available to configure via 'snapper-gui') allowed me to go back easily each time I tried newer kernels or newer packages. 2. This, in turn, allowed me to tinker quite a lot because I felt confident that I could return to a previous state easily, so I was less hesitant to tinker with some system settings manually. 3. I could use considerably less Flatpaks and Snaps (again, after I upgraded to Debian Testing) due to Debian's large native package repository. 4. The Xfce version It looked prettier out of the box Problems: 1.Snapshots: 5 out of 6 rollbacks worked perfectly. One didn't, but then I simply tried earlier snapshots from hours or days earlier and continued from there. 2. Display. X11 - no problems whatsoever. Wayland: I had a lot of display issues with the freshly installed Spiral Linux, but I believe all of them are Debian 12 Stable (Bookworm) ' fault because I had most (or all) of them previously with Debian itself. Upgrading to Testing (Trixie) solved most of them. I still don't use the Wayland version of KDE. -Laptop Hardware issues- All of my hardware components worked out of the box, save for those 3 Dell special laptop keys on the older computer but I don't really need them. Camera worked fine, too. -Hardware specs- - A 13 year old Dell Inspiron 7220 running the 'testing' distribution branch of Debian and using Spiral's Xfce Desktop. The former serves as a media center connected to the TV and as a backup node in the local network. - A quite recent ASUS Vivobook 15 (1.5 year old). started running the 'stable' branch and using KDE. It's my primary computer and I recently switched it to follow the Testing branch as well after a trial period with the stable (bookworm) branch. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 12.231120 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-01-14 Votes: 51 Big Debian fan, but I was looking for some method of smoothing out some things (install/updates/flatpack implementation/etc). Things were more than fine, but less overhead was kinda wanted. Enter Spiral. For my use, most of the boxes were already checked...no fuss, no muss. Up and running and a machine with my preferred settings all under 15 minutes? Shazaaam. If you dig Debian or want to go for it in the express lane with cruise control...try it. Extremely happy with this implementation. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 49 reader reviews of SpiralLinux...