SpiralLinux

Reader supplied reviews for SpiralLinux Average rating 9.1 from 51 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. 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: 2025-06-06 Votes: 1 Spiral Linux What a well made OS! Tried it out on an old laptop. I was previously using Legacy OS, which is a customized version of Antix. OK I cheated a bit, I just made a few improvements to my old Lenovo I3 Thinkpad: Went from 4mb to 16 mb ram, and added a PCIe drive Kingston 7000mb/s Two very easy installs which made it lickity split. For instance – in Antix, the initial opening of Firefox or Libreoffice took 23 seconds, now it takes two!!!!!! So with this greater horsepower, I checked out Spiral Linux Mate edition. Bravo – good job guys. You can play around with it on a live, I used balena etcher. The Install went well without a hickup. On my installs, I pre-format and label the drives with gparted to cement my decisions in drive selection. The install did not ask for a root password, however once it’s up and running you can sudo su in a terminal, the type passwd to put in a root password. All updates are done as sudo on this OS. It has a magnificent Bookworm repository, along with a selectable testing, and Sid, or you can edit the apt file. Finally I got my HP Smart tank Document Scanner working – on something other than Linux Mint. I had to open up the HPLIP and download the required driver "plugin" from HP. Printer/Scanner works like a champ! The file manager easily sees the ntfs partitions . I was able to update to the latest bleeding edge kernel without a hitch. I haven’t played with the KDE version – but really I don’t need it, Mate is working well. Fine Job! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 12.231120 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-06-06 Votes: 0 Spiral Os Review – part 2 I downloaded and flashed via Balena Etcher all eight of His “Flavors” : Cinnamon, XFCE, Gnome, Plasma, Mate, Budgie, LXQT and Builder. I took them all for a test drive. All of these are Live to Install OS, so taking them for a spin is easy. First let me say that when downloading, just download one file at a time, I tried two at the same time and wound up with a lousy image. First and Foremost I congratulate the all the hard work that went into producing each and every one of these, they ALL WORK PERFECTLY. The file managers see all partitions and drives without a hitch on all flavors. So it’s really up to the individual as to which one to download. They all come with a basic minimal core set of applications. All of which are Bookworm. Updating to Testing or Sid is very easy. Now for the best distribution for the advanced user: Builder! It comes with the ICEWM desktop and the minimal core programs installed, which includes synaptic and Firefox. So if you want a bare bones, highly secure Internet only system – this is it! Moreover, if you want your own Sid or Testing custom OS, this is where you start. Printer set up is easy peezy, and ethernet connects quickly when unplugged – reconnected. There is also a forum page for assistance. What more do you need? I encourage you to test drive this. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 12.231120 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-04-16 Votes: 9 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 See all 51 reader reviews of SpiralLinux...