 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 698, 6 February 2017 |
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Welcome to this year's 6th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
A large part of what defines an operating system and its usefulness is the software it can run. This means the methods by which we find, install and maintain software on our systems are significant and we spend time this week talking about different approaches to bundling and deploying software. In our News section we discuss Snap packages being backported to Ubuntu 14.04 and our Questions and Answers column explores the differences between containers and modern packaging formats such as Flatpak and Snap. We invite our readers to weigh in on the subject of packages, containers and virtual machines as ways to distribute software in our Opinion Poll. Also this week we talk about delays in getting Ubuntu 16.04.2 released to the public and Debian preparing to launch Debian 9 "Stretch". Plus we discuss running Steam on TrueOS and the Tails distribution migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit builds. First though, we share a review of Solus by guest author Alwan Rosyidi. We are also pleased to bring you a list of last week's distribution releases and we share the torrents we are currently seeding. Plus we welcome the Arch-based OBRevenge OS distribution to our database. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (32MB) and MP3 (20MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Alwan Rosyidi) |
Solus 2017.01.01.0: Impressive newcomer
Solus is an independent Linux distribution where the rising Budgie desktop was born. Despite the fact it is relatively a new Linux distribution, Solus brings many stunning features. The most interesting feature is, of course, the superstar Budgie desktop that has catalyzed another important project called Ubuntu Budgie. The newest version of Solus, Solus 2017.01.01.0, was released on January 2017 and offers us plenty of new and interesting things to look around.
1. Technical overview
Solus 2017.01.01.0 is built on top of the Linux kernel version 4.8.15. It only supports 64-bit architecture, which has been a new trend among other Linux distributions today. It's said that 64-bit operating systems consume more memory and run poorly on slow computers. Is this true or not, and happening in Solus? This is another interesting thing we have to find out.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- The Budgie desktop
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
2. Budgie desktop
Budgie desktop is a new desktop which has been created by the Solus developers. It is a built on top of GNOME libraries. Solus 2017.01.01.0 uses Budgie desktop version 10.2.9 built on top of GNOME stack version 3.20.3.
Budgie desktop consists of five parts:
Main menu - Placed at the left top corner panel, there is a main traditional menu similar to the main menu of elementary OS.
Pinned shortcut - Beside the main menu, there are pinned application shortcuts. You could pin your most used applications here. To pin the applications shortcut, you have to open the application, then right click on the taskbar, and then select Pin to panel.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- Pin to panel
(full image size: 187kB, resolution: 543x369 pixels)
Taskbar - Right after Pinned shortcuts, there is a taskbar of running applications.
Applets/Indicators - At the right of the panel, there is an applets bar offering important functions such as: Network Manager indicator, notification indicator, battery/power indicator, sound indicator, shutdown indicator, date indicator, and at the right corner of panel there is a shortcut to access Budgie desktop settings.
Budgie desktop settings - Budgie's desktop settings panel is hidden in the right corner panel. It's a complete settings panel with options to move the desktop panel position, arrange the panel's items, applets, and change desktop themes. At the bottom, there are shortcuts to shutdown the computer, lock the computer, and a shortcut to GNOME's system settings.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- A collection of snapshots of the settings panel
(full image size: 262kB, resolution: 848x768 pixels)
3. Built-in apps - Solus 2017.01.01.0 comes with a minimal number of built-in apps. There is no LibreOffice office suite or GIMP image editor. The good news is, there is the VLC media player and Rhythmbox music player to enjoy your multimedia collection.
4. Package management and software repository - Solus has its own package manager called eopkg. It is very similar to Debian's dpkg with apt and quite easy to use. We can install an application easily by executing the command: sudo eopkg install app_name. We could find popular Linux apps in default Solus 2017.01.01.0 such as GIMP, Inkscape, SMPlayer, and more. Unfortunately, the very popular Chromium browser isn't included yet in this Solus version. Alternatively, you could use the AppImage version of the Chromium browser.
There is also a graphical Software Center very similar to Ubuntu Software Center or GNOME Software. There is also very nice documentation about using eopkg package management in Solus's wiki.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- The software manager
(full image size: 191kB, resolution: 952x695 pixels)
5. Installation - Solus comes with a modern, easy to use graphical installer very similar to Ubuntu's Ubiquity which comes with guided installation, replacing all existing Linux installations, and advanced partitioning. However, the advanced partitioning isn't as complete as Ubuntu's Ubiquity. There is no option to mount NTFS/FAT32 partitions so, if you have one, you have to mount these partitions manually after installation. However, the installer is still relatively easy to use.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- Partitioning with the system installer
(full image size: 48kB, resolution: 768x553 pixels)
6. Memory Utilization - RAM is now cheaper and is not a big issue among today's users. But in case you are curious about the distribution's resource utilization, it consumes about 700MB to 800MB of RAM in an idle mode.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- Checking memory usage
(full image size: 46kB, resolution: 702x545 pixels)
7. Desktop theming - Solus uses the Arc GTK theme and Arc icon theme. It is good looking and modern. The desktop wallpapers can be changed by right-clicking on the desktop. There are plenty beautiful wallpapers available in Solus-2017.01.01.0.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- Selecting new wallpaper
(full image size: 452kB, resolution: 843x466 pixels)
8. Solus 2017.01.01.0 MATE - Solus 2017.01.01.0 also comes with a MATE edition that uses MATE desktop version 1.16.1. Solus 2017.01.01.0 MATE brings a brand new application menu called Brisk Menu which looks very similar to the Cardapio menu. It is a simple, fast, traditional menu that resembles the look and functionality of Xfce's Whisker Menu.
Just like Linux Mint MATE, Solus 2017.01.01.0 MATE only provides a single panel at the bottom of the desktop, with the Brisk Menu at the left corner, and a system tray applet in the right corner.
Solus 2017.01.01.0 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 1.2MB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
9. Overall performance and conclusion - Installed on an old, dual core Intel Pentium with 4GB of RAM, Solus 2017.01.01.0 runs quite well, without lags or crash issues. If you are starting to feel bored with your current distro, Solus 2017.01.01.0 is an impressive alternative you can try. It's fresh, fast, good looking, and easy to use. The lack of some of the most popular Linux apps like the Chromium browser is an issue and I hope Solus developers will put it in Solus's official repository in the future releases. Overall, I could simply say Solus 2017.01.01.0 is impressive. It could be, in the future, a fair rival to the good looking elementary OS.
As the conclusion, here is my personal scoring for Solus 2017.01.01.0:
- Build quality : 8/10
- Performance : 8/10
- Ease of use : 8/10
- Artwork : 8/10
- Installation : 7/10
- Software Management : 9/10
- Software Repository : 6/10
- Overall score : 8/10
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Tails migrating to 64-bit, Debian Stretch freezes, Ubuntu backports Snap, Ubuntu 16.04.2 delayed again, running Steam games on TrueOS
The Tails distribution is a Debian-based project which is used to anonymously browse the web, scrub meta-data from files and securely transfer files. The Tails project has announced their distribution will soon shift from providing 32-bit builds to 64-bit builds exclusively. "Tails 3.0 will require a 64-bit x86-64 compatible processor. As opposed to older versions of Tails, it will not work on 32-bit processors. We have waited for years until we felt it was the right time to do this switch. Still, this was a hard decision for us to make. Today, we want to explain why we eventually made this decision, how it will affect users, and when..." Tails 3.0 will drop support for 32-bit computers on June 13, 2017, according to the project's roadmap. The change is being made to take advantage of 64-bit security features and improve package compatibility. Details on this change can be found in the Tails announcement.
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The Debian project is well known for releasing new stable versions of the distribution when they are considered ready rather than on a set schedule. Though Debian does not have a specific schedule, the distribution does appear to be nearing the release of Debian 9 "Stretch". Jonathan Wiltshire reported Debian has entered its final freeze leading into the release of the next version: "The Release Team is pleased to announce that Debian 9.0 "stretch" has entered the final phase of development and is now frozen."
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Snap packages have been supported by the past couple of Ubuntu releases. Snap packages handle their own dependencies and offer a number of security features which make them appealing, particularly for distributing software not available in Ubuntu's official repositories. The Snap technology has recently been backported to Ubuntu's previous long term support release, Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr". This allows people running older copies of Ubuntu to experiment with Snap packages. The OMG Ubuntu website offers further details: "While most people reading this post will be doing so from a more recent version of Ubuntu than Trusty, the arrival of Snapd in the Trusty archives means even more folks can fool around with the new software deployment and package management system." Instructions for installing the Snap software can be found in the announcement.
The Ubuntu team pushes out updates to the distribution's long term support (LTS) releases on a regular basis to provide fresh installation media for users. These updated builds are not brand new versions of the operating system, but include additional drivers and packages with security fixes. The most recent update, Ubuntu 16.04.2, has been delayed twice now and the team plans to hold it back until February 9th to allow for further quality assurance testing. Leann Ogasawara explained the reason for the delay: "We would like to formally request an extension for 16.04.2's release. We have just identified a serious boot regression on arm64. The resolution looks to require landing changes to the kernel, flash-kernel, and possibly d-i. While we can likely physically get those changes into the archive in time for the release, there would be next to no time to test this nor provide appropriate regression testing on other platforms. We would be much more comfortable giving that some proper testing before releasing and therefore would like to request an additional extension for the point release date."
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Josh Smith has published a tutorial which explores how gamers can get some of their favourite gaming titles running on TrueOS and, by extension, related operating systems such as FreeBSD. The tutorial walks readers through setting up the Windows version of Steam on TrueOS using WINE and an application called PlayOnBSD. "If you're a PC gamer, you should definitely give PlayOnBSD a try! You may be surprised at how well it works. If you want to know ahead of time if your games are well supported or not, head on over to WineHQ and do a search. Many people have tested and provided feedback and even solutions for potential problems with a large variety of video games. This is a great resource if you run into a glitch or other problem." The tutorial includes detailed installation instructions and screen shots of Steam games running on TrueOS.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Comparing containers with portable applications
They-are-all-portable asks: I recently read your piece in DistroWatch Weekly 668 comparing Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage. I found it very interesting, but one question came to mind as I was reading it: What functionally differentiates these newer packaging formats from container formats such as Docker?
I don't know much about any of these except that containers are marketed more as an alternative to virtualization rather than alternative packaging, but from my perspective they all seem to do the same thing. Install a framework (except AppImage), download a bundle containing the application and relevant libraries, and run it. Are they just marketed differently, or perhaps accomplishing the same end goal, but going about it in completely different ways under the hood? Or is there something big and important that differentiates these technologies that I just don't know?
DistroWatch answers: Let's talk about AppImage first. I would like to point out that AppImage is relatively old, compared to Docker, Snap and Flatpak. AppImage was first launched back around 2004 while Docker arrived on the scene in 2013. (Flatpak and Snap are about the same age, or just a little younger than Docker, respectively.) AppImage provides a way for developers to bundle up an application and its dependencies into one package file. The end user downloads the package and runs it and, from the end user's point of view, the application and its dependencies are one big file.
AppImage, from the end user's perspective, is very convenient. The user does not need to have administrator/sudo access to download and run AppImage packages. No package manager is required either. While AppImage does not provide any sandboxing security on its own, tools like Firejail can be used to isolate AppImage programs with little to no configuration or effort on the part of the user.
Flatpak and Snap, while they have their differences, both provide a framework that either comes pre-installed on the operating system or is set up by the administrator. Then the administrator can install applications and services on the system. Flatpak and Snap programs are somewhat isolated from the system and provide some potentially nice security features. Dependencies are handled by the framework and/or the developer so the administrator does not need to worry about them.
What each of these three (AppImage, Snap and Flatpak) have in common is they are designed with a single application or service in mind. I might download the Krita AppImage, Apache Snap or a Firefox Flatpak, but chances are I am after just one specific application when I use these technologies. When I download a program bundled with one of these technologies, I get just the program and its immediate dependencies.
Docker is quite a bit different. As the original question pointed out, Docker is a lightweight alternative to virtualization, not to packaging. Docker provides a container which people tend to use to make little, portable operating systems with a small number of applications or services. While an AppImage might include a single desktop application and its immediate dependencies, a Docker container is likely to include (for example) a copy of the Debian operating system, a network service and maybe development tools.
Docker shines when it is being used to build layers. The Docker website has a helpful diagram which shows how Docker containers can be used to stack independent pieces. The host system really just provides the Linux kernel and Docker framework. The containers then can hold an operating system and any specific tools we want. A Docker container might hold an entire development environment which can be shared among coders in an organization, or it might hold an Apache, database and PHP stack for web hosting.
It might be easiest to think of it this way: AppImage provides portable applications, with no framework required, that can be installed by end users. Flatpak and Snap provide a framework administrators use to deploy a program or service. Docker offers a way to deploy and share operating systems and complete development or production environments. They all bundle dependencies to make software portable, but their use cases and approaches vary quite a bit behind the scenes.
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For more questions and answers, visit our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
OPNsense 17.1
The OPNsense operating system is a FreeBSD-based specialist operating system (and a fork of pfSense) designed for firewalls and routers. The project has released a new stable version of the OPNsense operating system, version 17.1. "The OPNsense team is proud to announce the final availability of version 17.1, nicknamed Eclectic Eagle. This major release features FreeBSD 11.0, the SSH remote installer, new languages Italian / Czech / Portuguese, state-of-the-art HardenedBSD security features, PHP 7.0, new plugins for FTP Proxy / Tinc VPN / Let's Encrypt, native PAM authentication against e.g. 2FA (TOTP), as well a rewritten Nano-style card images that adapt to media size to name only a few. We would like to encourage everyone to supervise this major upgrade physically. As such, it cannot be performed from the GUI. Instead, go to the root console menu, choose option 12 and type '17.1' at the prompt. The process will download a full set of updates and reboot multiple. All operating system files and packages will be re-installed as a consequence." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found here. All torrents we make available here are also listed on the very useful Linux Tracker website. Thanks to Linux Tracker we are able to share the following torrent statistics.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 291
- Total data uploaded: 55.6TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Virtual machines, packages and containers
This week we talked about virtual machines, containers and packages. As a follow-up we would like to find out if you use any of the technologies we talked about to run applications or services. Do you use packages that bundle dependencies such as AppImage, FlatPak and Snap? Or do you run services in a Docker container or a virtual machine? Feel free to share your preferences in a comment.
You can see the results of our previous poll on running alternative phone operating systems here. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Virtual machines, packages and containers
| I use virtual machines: | 947 (54%) |
| I use bundled packages: | 54 (3%) |
| I use containers/Docker: | 41 (2%) |
| I use a combination of the above: | 174 (10%) |
| I use none of the above: | 534 (31%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to database
OBRevenge OS
OBRevenge OS is a desktop operating system that is based on the Arch Linux distribution. OBRevenge features a live DVD and offers users the Xfce desktop environment with the Whisker menu as the default login session. The distribution includes a welcome window and the Pamac graphical software manager to help users get set up with the software and drivers they need. The distribution can be installed using the Calamares system installer.
OBRevenge OS 2017.01 -- Displaying the welcome screen and application menu
(full image size: 130kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 13 February 2017. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Preferences per opinion poll (by Brenton Horne on 2017-02-06 00:24:52 GMT from Australia)
I take what I can get. If I can't install the app using my package manager but I can run it via all three options, i.e.:
* Containers
* Bundled apps
* Virtual machines
I will opt for bundled apps. Mostly because of performance considerations and size considerations. Usually a bundled app (especially an AppImage) will take up less space than an entire containerized operating system or a virtual machine image of an operating system. Likewise a virtual machine usually has a very defined limit on how much RAM/CPU one can allocate to it before things become slow, if not impossible, to work with, so if the program I want to run is very resource-hungry (like, for example, RuneScape's NXT Client or Visual Studio) I will probably opt for a container or bundled app as they aren't so limited. But if my choices were just containers and virtual machines I'd choose containers. VMs usually take substantially longer to boot up and take up more resources than containerized systems.
2 • Using Google Chrome with Solus (by BALLOON a.k.a. Fu-sen. on 2017-02-06 00:25:01 GMT from Japan)
If you want to use Google Chrome with Solus, it is convenient to use Software Center.
Easily install Google Chrome from Third Party in Software Center.
3 • solus v. manjaro (by linuxista on 2017-02-06 00:39:33 GMT from United States)
For the first time in long time I'm toying with the idea of distro hopping. I might replace my backup OS, my Manjaro install, with Solus just to try it out long term. I'd love to hear a compare contrast b/t Solus and Manjaro from anyone with first-hand experience with both distros.
Looked at the OBrevenge website. Looks like a re-spin of Arch using some Manjaro GUIs, like the installer and pkgmanager. The original aspect seems to be a distro based GUI that controls the graphical desktop, and you seem to be able to mix and match panels and launchers with it from components from an assortment of lighter weight desktops like Mate, Lxde, (tint2), et. al.
4 • OB Revenge (by Gekxxx on 2017-02-06 00:51:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Installed OBRevenge. Went smoothly on my 7 yr old Packerd Bell 3000MHz, 512 MB Video and 4GB mem. It looks great and works really fast. Full driver support through AUR samsung-printers for my CLX3180. Openbox on its best, powered by Arch. What more can you want? Wishing the team all luck with their fantastic spin of Arch.
5 • Solus (by Gekxxx on 2017-02-06 01:10:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
I installed Solus 2 times this month. The first time all went well and I had a good time. The second install lacked the Samsung Drivers for my printer. I was referred to the Samsung Website where the unified driver is not presented anymore for my CLX 3180. I read Budgie will be developped with qt5, and not with gnome. Solus runs on 512 MB video, but I recommend more. On a modern machine, just go for it.
6 • RAM prices (by a on 2017-02-06 01:15:44 GMT from France)
From the Solus review: "RAM is now cheaper". Well no, it’s not cheaper, actually, the prices have been climbing in the past months and will keep climbing according to what I read.
Even if the prices hadn’t been raising recently it still wouldn’t be smart to say that, as whatever the price of one component is, it still adds up to the total price of the computer, and you have no idea how much money other people can invest in their hardware, and there is a maximum capacity of RAM depending on the motherboard/computer.
7 • @3 Solus vs Manjaro (by lupus on 2017-02-06 02:09:58 GMT from Germany)
I like Solus a lot. It is a rock solid and optically very pleasing distro but because of Software availability I still prefer Manjaro after long testing periods. I requestet FreeFileSync in the Solus Forums but they see no need cause they have GRSync in their repository.
I can understand that but recent decision to change to Qt might turn me away completly
8 • @7 (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 02:16:43 GMT from Ireland)
> I requestet FreeFileSync in the Solus Forums
We don't take requests via the forums. We have a formal process and a bug tracker for this. Reason being is they get lost on forums, untracked, etc.
9 • The Beauty of OBRevenge (by Tran Older on 2017-02-06 02:30:48 GMT from Vietnam)
Instead of installing LXDE, XFCE and MATE on Arch, you can install OBRevenge with Openbox playing the window managing role of both xfce4 and marco. sudo pacman -S budgie and you don't have to install/ dual-boot to Solus OS either, and memory consumption on an idle mode has been much lesser than the above review of Solus. And, most importantly, being Arch-based, it fixes the waking up problem of trackpads found on Acer/Asus/Lenovo laptops when trackpads and pointers refuse to work after hibernation if you install an Ubuntu derivative.
10 • @4 OB Revenge (by linuxista on 2017-02-06 02:35:30 GMT from United States)
The default desktop is Openbox? That certainly fits the name better. I was sort of puzzled thinking, what, this is XFCE's "revenge" on Openbox? So now the questions are, are there a couple of DE's/WMs installed by default that you can boot into, like both OB and XFCE? And if so, how nicely configured are they? A well-configured OB can a great desktop.
11 • @Ikey @8 (by lupus on 2017-02-06 02:49:48 GMT from Germany)
Yah Ikey did that see:
https://dev.solus-project.com/T2166
I understand it has no priority, and btw I seem to prefer Gnome despite all your excellent efforts.
12 • @11 (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 03:01:59 GMT from Europe)
Well now the request is in properly, once we reach it we'll get it in :) We have a backlog
of around 600 issues atm so things take a natural order.
You're free to prefer GNOME - we provide GNOME Shell for a reason.
13 • Think Different (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-02-06 04:38:05 GMT from United States)
Void Linux offers Budgie Desktop without systemd
# xbps-install -S budgie-desktop
14 • @13 Void (by linuxista on 2017-02-06 04:56:01 GMT from United States)
I like the Budgie Desktop. It doesn't have any virtual desktops, but it has its own logic that I found quite usable. I also like that it picked up all my kbd shortcuts and settings from Gnome seamlessly. I hope that doesn't change with the move to Qt.
But if Void doesn't have systemd, that's a dealbreaker. I'll stick with Solus or another distro. Thanks for the warning. :)
15 • @13 (by Justin on 2017-02-06 05:04:13 GMT from Australia)
Budgie does have virtual desktops.
16 • misc (by chi on 2017-02-06 05:46:33 GMT from United States)
@9 Must OBRevenge be "installed", or does it provide liveboot?
@13 thanks for info: "Void Linux offers Budgie Desktop without systemd"
re: Q-n-A
Wow, Krita as an AppImage example is pretty remarkable. I checked and found that It's only 77Mb (and, FWIW a ready-made firejail appimage profile is available), compared to the 360Mb+ boatload I'm shown would be installed to my debian jessie system! Also, appimage direct from krita.org mirror provides me 3.x version rather than the v2.85 from debian jessie repository. Thanks a bunch for the q-n-a heads up.
17 • @16 (by Tran Older on 2017-02-06 07:04:38 GMT from Vietnam)
OBRevenge can be installed on hard disk using Calamares and ít does provide liveboot. You can make it look like a product from Cupertino by installing the Macbuntu gtk theme and tweaking Openbox by using obconf.
18 • elementary OS vs Solus (by mikethebike on 2017-02-06 08:36:49 GMT from Germany)
Imo Solus is already way ahead.
elementary OS is more about being shiny than bug free. Way overrated.
Solus runs great on my Chromebook Acer C720 for quite a few months whereas elementary always turned out to be a dissapointment.
19 • Tails goes to 64 bit (by John on 2017-02-06 09:29:10 GMT from United States)
Hmmm....
Why obsolete old hardware that actually works?
Tails should go to at least 256 bit. In that way it would be totally secure.
And only need 128GB of main memory to boot.
How can a browser even think about using 1GB of main memory. Totally obscene.
John
20 • RAM (by Somewhat Reticent on 2017-02-06 11:49:27 GMT from United States)
Is there a way to add more RAM without adding more power consumption - unless it's actually in use?
21 • Solus (by Wine Curmudgeon on 2017-02-06 12:16:34 GMT from United States)
I liked it a lot, but as mentioned, it isn't always easy to install and getting it on a thumb drive can be difficult.
22 • Where is Gentoo? (by Vukota on 2017-02-06 13:16:13 GMT from Montenegro)
Can someone dare to comment what happened with Gentoo? It seems like it felt through a black whole. There used to be several remixes of Gentoo, best Linux Wikis, most up to date packages, etc., but now days I see on DW there is only one shy review of it (user submitted) at http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ranking&sort=votes and page hit rankings in La La land.
Related to Solus and Budgie, I agree with @14 that it is a nice effort, though it doesn't seem mature enough (as Cinnamon in example), and I totally agree with those who prefer GNOME over QT (and I don't' think change will help memory consumption). As Alwan mentioned in his review of Solus, I find it lacking packages, and have Budgie desktop for that reason running under other distros like Antergos/Arch (and even Mint).
Related to a "RAM is now cheaper" conclusion, fact is that it doesn't matter much if you can't put more RAM in the laptop or desktop (as is the case with several machines I have) like Acer C720.
23 • Solus (by mandog on 2017-02-06 14:04:47 GMT from Peru)
Have used it and budgie since it was alpha, Solus itself has been a never ending evolution, sometimes a bit off a recession but mostly forward and for the good now its finally a half decent and stable distro its all going to change direction again to QT + GTK. Full marks go to Ikey and all this done in such a short space of time, Slow down man you have all your life ahead
I like Budgie best on Arch linux where it runs superb as most DE/WM seem to as Arch has no default desktop so is not biased to any desktop they all seem to jell better with Arch for me
Remember this is just my opinion
24 • Containers and Memory... (by Oliver Tweedie on 2017-02-06 14:15:51 GMT from Romania)
As per the question is memory expensive; me thinks yes it is.
I am doing an upgrade on an old server box. The 'cost effecitve' mini-ATX motherboard cost just slightly more than the ddr4 2133 8 gig crucial memory stick. So yes, by yesteryear standards memory is expensive. No, I haven't bought any memory in a bit so that adds a bit of perspective to it too.
As to this weeks question; I picked none of the above. But in reflection I realized I use Firejail on occasion so I guess I kind of use a container...I guess.
Firejail does work I guess. I confess I don't really know how to test it to guage it's effectiveness. Pass along hints on how to test it if there are any about. Anyway I use it, checked the processes and htop and it does run. It seems to load too and be under development. But if Firejail is nothing more than a digital talisman, ok...I guess.
Everything we read on the Internet is true, right?
25 • Gentoo (by Dave Postles on 2017-02-06 14:29:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
The relative collapse of Sabayon seems to be an issue here. I liked it in the distant past, but I found that the package manager became increasingly frustrating I wonder if Calculate has a very limited existence, confined to Russia? I used Calculate from time to time, but just didn't appreciate the time consumed by emerge as the package manager.
26 • Solus (by nottahopper on 2017-02-06 14:55:21 GMT from United States)
Tried Solus a while back but had trouble with getting Wine to work as well as installing certain needed apps. It also did weird things to permissions on my external drive formatted ext4
27 • @26 (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 15:06:37 GMT from Europe)
> Tried Solus a while back but had trouble with getting Wine to work
A "while back" in Solus terms can be a *very* long time back, as we're rolling release. WINE is known to work fine these days and has done for quite a while. We're on 2.0 atm. PlayOnLinux is also an alternative should you wish to use alternative WINE versions.
> as well as installing certain needed apps
If they're missing, please request. The size of the repository is constantly changing.
> It also did weird things to permissions on my external drive formatted ext4
Sorry, no it didn't :) Solus doesn't do anything destructive you don't tell it to. When a new Linux native filesystem (i.e. ext4) is mounted, typically the root of that filesystem is owned as root. Thus you wouldn't have write permissions to it (Basic UNIX ACL) - likewise if it is owned by a different UID (not your default UID 1000 in Solus) then you also still might not have write permissions. chowning the root of the drive may help.
28 • Solus review (by Jordan on 2017-02-06 15:15:11 GMT from United States)
I want to thank Alwan Rosyidi for the review style itself. Jesse's narrative way of doing reviews is also quite good of course, but this Solus review is very easy on the eyes while being spot-on each point as a numbered item; very refreshing. Also I like the 1-10 grading system at the end. ;)
29 • Query on rating numbers (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 15:23:18 GMT from Europe)
Building on Jordan's point (28) - I'd first also like to thank the author for this piece.
However, I must ask where the numbers are coming from. Now, I'm not going to focus on the obvious ones, but I will focus on the less obvious.
You've rated performance as 8/10 - yet it's well established that Solus is one of the (if not *the*) fastest booting Linux desktop OS out there. And we've spent a lot of time actually getting performance right.
I'm worried that your (mis)conception regarding 64-bit is what made you give this number. The utilisation of RAM doesn't make Solus a bad performer - it's using your memory properly. The number you've shown (which isn't cold boot/no apps) shows heavy cache utilisation which is in line with our defaults. As such it contributes to a more responsive and immediately available system. You won't run into memory exhaustion issues.
I feel that all in all, it was a nice light review, but misconceptions lead further to confusions (such as the performance thing, or the comparison to elementary, the menus are completely different :))
Look forward to your clarification on this.
30 • Solus (by havenchaz on 2017-02-06 15:40:55 GMT from United States)
Best rolling release around. Updates never screw things up, it always works.
It would be nice to expand the Software Repository with more software like Clementine. Also, I find the Third Party apps are slow to update. It is a relatively new distro so everything will fall into place.
Rock solid and great looking OS.
31 • @29 Solus (by mandog on 2017-02-06 15:41:12 GMT from Peru)
Its nice to see a developer come here and clarify queries this is very welcome and more devs should do the same,
And no i'm nothing to do with the solus project but do appreciate Devs giving time to respond.
32 • Solus (by Kiouhey on 2017-02-06 15:44:38 GMT from United States)
Solus installer lacks too many options, no lvm support, no encryption (not available if dual booting), Btrfs and Xfs.
The os is nice and well polished but the installer is lacking too much ATM.
My local policy requires full disk encryption, and I need to have dual boot.
33 • @32 Solus (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 15:52:36 GMT from Europe)
> Solus installer lacks too many options, no lvm support, no encryption (not available if dual booting), Btrfs and Xfs.
The installer does support both LVM and encryption. You only need to check a couple of boxes. However we only offer these for *full disk encryption* in an automated fashion. Emphasis here on _full_. There has been practically zero interest in supporting this in a manual fashion, but if it _is_ needed then sure, I'll add it. This is why we have a bug tracker, so people can make me aware of these wishes :) Preempting want is the root of all evil.
Regarding xfs and btrfs, you need to consider the context of Solus. We provide a user friendly installer for a *home computing* operating system. It's not a generic Linux that you can setup as a server or whathaveyou. There's also no way to express this as an option to an inexperienced user, because it's unnecessarily complex. i.e. WHY should a user, new to Linux, need to select a root filesystem? That rules it out of automation entirely.
Sure,it could be a manual partitioning option, and there is a request on GitHub to support XFS, which I will do. I have no interest in supporting btrfs as even to this day it is highly buggy, and it is impossible to guarantee stability because BTRFS is often not backwards compatible. Solus reserves the right to issue *downgrades* to any packages at any time if problems are encountered, and this may happen with the kernel itself (and indeed, *has* happened.) As such, btrfs is an incredibly poor candidate for a rootfs.
For XFS It'll likely be a _manual only_ partitioning option in the next snapshot.
34 • Solus Review (by Sparky on 2017-02-06 16:33:03 GMT from United States)
The last section of the review is IMHO too short.
Only six sentences are used to talk about Performance and Conclusion.
Because of this, this was a presentation of Solus not a review.
Nice pictures though...
Also the memory consumption is not after a cold boot, which is normally used in a review because as soon apps are started they are using the bulk of memory, not the OS. (and the cache is not emptied if the apps are closed)
In my experience, depending on the hardware, Solus will use between 350 Mb and 550Mb after booting. YMMV...
35 • Solus (by nottahopper on 2017-02-06 16:47:39 GMT from United States)
@Ikey Doherty - The drive root was owned by the default UID and I was unable to chown. Had no such problem with any debian/ubuntu variety.
36 • Solus - installer (by Hoos on 2017-02-06 17:13:16 GMT from Singapore)
@Ikey,
Previously I wasn't able to install Solus 1.2 on drive 2 (GPT) of my multiboot system because my drive 1 - the one with the main bootloader - was MBR/msdos and I was booting up via BIOS.
IIRC you have previously said it's not good to mix the 2 types of partition table formats (or maybe the problem was combining MBR/msdos with UEFI), but surely that only applies if the user wants to install a bootloader with Solus in the first place.
My home computer is Windows-free so there was no need for me to deal with a UEFI or Secure Boot setup on my first drive. My drive 2 is more than 2TB - which can't be unusual nowadays - so needs to be GPT and not msdos otherwise the rest of the drive space isn't accessible. I don't need to install a bootloader with Solus because I have another distro taking care of main grub duties.
Is there an option to choose a no-bootloader option so that installation can continue on the home computer? I have Solus installed on a laptop and I like it.
37 • RE: Solus (by Andy Mender on 2017-02-06 17:13:55 GMT from Austria)
Solus seems to be growing into a decent independent distribution. I like the idea of the Budgie desktop - more "true" to GNOME than GNOME3 itself perhaps? :)
@29,
I would also think 700 MB is a bit high for a desktop + no apps scenario. Not even full-blown GNOME3 uses this much. Thanks a lot for clarifying this point, Ikey!
No promises here, but I'll have a look at Solus, especially that it's rolling-release now. I prefer rolling-release distros due to their consistent quality :).
38 • @36 Solus - installer (by Ikey Doherty on 2017-02-06 17:32:42 GMT from Europe)
So the LVM + encryption support was added in 1.2.1 which was released way back in October last year :) Rolling release = rapid feature development :D
Re: UEFI. If Solus is booted with UEFI then you MUST install a bootloader, otherwise Solus cannot be booted. You could trick it by booting in legacy mode and telling it to not install a bootloader at all (We only allow this on legacy boot)
39 • AntiX 16.1 Success (by S Savage on 2017-02-06 18:35:00 GMT from Canada)
Antix 16.1 just rescued my 8 year old notebook from recycling. I almost gave up as the latest Mint XFCE wouldn't run, and Lubuntu just barely barely ran I couldn't get the sound to work in AntiX 16.0
On a lark I tried AntiX 16.1, and it worked. It's fast, smooth, and runs cool (Mint made my keyboard very hot). Running the dark colored "NOX" theme on the IceWM should prolong the battery life too. Anyway I sent them a donation as thanks, as this one is a keeper.
I am also obliged to thank runwiththedolphin for his helpful tutorial videos on YouTube, because the setup is not quite Mint easy.
40 • @38 - Solus Installer (by Hoos on 2017-02-06 18:41:59 GMT from Singapore)
Thanks. Looks like I have to check the booting options in the BIOS with regard to USB/DVD.
41 • @37 solus (by mandog on 2017-02-06 19:11:01 GMT from Peru)
I don't know where that fig came from, to me it looks like in live mode.
On my desktop it idles after boot at under 450 mb with nvidia-non free graphics
42 • Solus (by gekxxx on 2017-02-06 20:55:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Ikey Doherty btrsf runs really well on SuSE. Not so buggy after all, it looks.
43 • Ram and 64bit (by Sebastien on 2017-02-06 21:46:30 GMT from France)
I use 64 but flavour everytime I can. I still own some cute 10" netbooks that only support 32bit systems and I am glad I can still use them with an up to date os (Mint xfce runs fine on them).
As for ram requirements, I pushed those To 2GB which is the best I can do.
I want To thank all these teams behind distros for whom old but still shiny devices matter and where keeping performance for the best user experience is an overall motivation.
44 • Solus OS . .. GNU/Linux ... distributions (by John557b on 2017-02-06 22:08:01 GMT from Romania)
I do not use Solus. I have no hard disk drive. I gave up on using and not keep my SATA 2 hdd due to noise, not quite disturbing, but I did not liked it, though it did not even had 9 months of total uptime run. My computer is USB 2 and I try use systemd-free TinyCore but the sofware repository is disaster and I also cannot use sound hardware due to not present firmware for my Intel VIA codec audio ,while Nanolinux has OSS sound kernel module LOL. I do not rush to get another hdd XD. I do not want to use to local fixed disk Linux distribution installation.
45 • Budgie (by Didier on 2017-02-06 22:27:30 GMT from France)
I normally use Openbox (at home), Gnome and KDE (at work). I recently tried Budgie. I was disappointed to observe it is not as fast as Openbox, less mouse-configurable than KDE, and not very different from Gnome, although the configuration menu is very convenient. In fact I wonder what the users like and developers intent to provide with this new and apparently very enjoyed desktop ?
46 • Solus, OB Revenge and IMs (by aary on 2017-02-06 23:52:47 GMT from Japan)
I Tried Solus a couple of times. I liked the Budgie UI and I was also impressed by their speed of progression. Really really fast.
But at one point I quit testing because they did not support multi Lingual input methods. Does it work now?
OB Revenge is my recent favorite. I pushed the recommend button in the DW evaluation section too. Input method (my case fcitx mozc) works but by default it wouldn't keep the config after reboot.
As a non native english user I really we had a multi lingual search option in the DW search page.
This is because only few official web sites state clearly if their distro supports multi lingual input or not, and that can mean "of course we support IMs" or "of course we don't care about IMs"
It is 2017 and we still have to install and find out if an Input method works or not This is a rather sad thing about Linux.
47 • antiX (by John on 2017-02-07 00:28:51 GMT from United States)
Many thanks for the antiX comment running on old hardware.
I downloaded it. Ran isohybrid on the .iso. And copied to a memory stick.
I am running it on a memory stick as I type this. And the memory isn't even half full :).
Works great.
Long live small distributions. Long live Dillo and Joe.
I love running off memory stick. I can change distros quickly. Now if I can just find one that will run Kicad. Kicad doesn't download and work with latest Knoppix?? Still not sure how to fix it.
warm regards to all,
John
48 • @22 Where is Gentoo? (by Thomas Mueller on 2017-02-07 00:56:09 GMT from United States)
I am on gentoo-user emailing list, and it's active, so I don't get the notion of Gentoo falling into a black hole. You could go to gentoo.org website; I haven't been to that website in some time.
49 • Magic ermine vs containers (by technosaurus on 2017-02-07 02:20:48 GMT from United States)
All of these package formats and containers are trying to do what Magic Ermine has been doing for years. Its proprietary, but the developer is very supportive of open source projects. If you haven't tried it, I recommend giving the free demo a try at:
http://www.magicermine.com/
50 • Calculate Linux (by canadensis on 2017-02-07 06:23:04 GMT from Australia)
@25, I use Calculate as my daily driver along with Slackware on my other machine. I don't live in Russia nor do I speak Russian! Compilation times are not an issue.
51 • Compiling times (by RJARPCGP on 2017-02-07 06:27:56 GMT from United States)
The longest compile for me by far, was KDE in 2010! It made my PC look like a 486 at only 25 Mhz! lol
52 • RAM usage at cold boot (by RJARPCGP on 2017-02-07 06:38:50 GMT from United States)
Nearly 512 MB without apps is normal if you're Microsoft. LOL.
53 • RE: Where is Gentoo? (by AndyMender on 2017-02-07 09:42:06 GMT from Austria)
@22, @48,
Gentoo is definitely active, at least judging from their IRC channels and website. However, it is indeed falling in DW rankings, because there is less and less of a reason to run a pure source-based distribution. The setup is time-consuming, even with pre-baked scripts and the myriad of compile-time options (features, USE flags, etc.) in the end gets in the way. What I typically use Gentoo for is messing around with packages in a container or chroot. For that Gentoo is perfect as building a container takes only minutes :). Sort of my 2 cents.
@47 and @others,
AntiX and MX are great distributions. They run incredibly well on my under-powered Intel M hardware, should I consider a user-friendly setup. "Vanilla" Debian also does the job well, though.
54 • Calculate Linux (by babu on 2017-02-07 10:33:41 GMT from Belgium)
@25 and @ 50. Am also using Calculate Linux. Did a frugal install of the lxqt version on a usbstick. Works fine. No complaints at all.
Should it be bad or suspected because it is Russian? Or are we naive??
55 • OBRevenge OS & MaboxLinux (by BubbaLou on 2017-02-07 11:09:03 GMT from Romania)
OBRevenge OS is an excellent OpenBox, Arch based distro. I currently use a OpenBox/MATE combo, with a hybrid panel layout.
For those who really enjoy Arch and OpenBox, there is a Manjaro based one=MaboxLinux, that really is enjoyable. Check it out. https://maboxlinux.org/
56 • Debian Stretch (by cykodrone on 2017-02-07 12:37:03 GMT from Canada)
There was talk a while back about going back to having a choice of init in Debian, was that abandoned? I'm seriously asking. Another serious question, have Debian's developer contributions and/or financial contributions fallen off since they locked themselves in to systemd? Not because of hate or distrust of systemd, because of the undemocratic lack of choice, Debian used to be democratic. When you download the raw kernel, it doesn't ship with anything. Other distros still have a use/don't use choice, is Debian being stubborn or lazy?
57 • Budgie... (by Vukota on 2017-02-07 13:29:11 GMT from Montenegro)
@46: I don't run Budgie under Solus, but Arch/Antergos and it works with multilingual input, though I do recall that I couldn't configure it just by right clicking on the keyboard applet (what is usually available in other DEs).
@53: Good explanation about Gentoo (and glad it is still live and kicking). These days, you would think that build servers and good custom configuration tools would probably solve most of the issues with having to build everything from source, but then again, what do I know.
58 • MX Linux (by Lawrence on 2017-02-07 14:39:34 GMT from United States)
antiX-16.1 is indeed a good OS for older computers but there is a little-known variant called MX Linux which is even better. MX Linux is based on antiX but uses the XFCE desktop and the Thunar file manager. I just installed it to my two netbooks (bought 2009 and 2010) and it has made those computers work better than they did when they were new. If you have an older computer which is just sitting around, in my opinion MX Linux is certainly worth a try.
59 • Solus / Solus Notification Applet / Firewall (by Winchester on 2017-02-07 16:19:57 GMT from United States)
I have Solus installed on one of my partitions.
Overall,I am quite satisfied with it. No major issues so far. The "ufw uncomplicated firewall" was not installed by default which I thought was strange. Easily installed via the software center,though. Activated via the terminal.
I still have to look into customizing launchers in the panel and into locking or ignoring updates to specific packages. I have the Conky system monitor 1.8 installed and it works exactly the way that I want it to work. I have heard of people having issues with version 1.9 so,I don't want to risk that update but,I am presented with an update notice each time I boot the operating system or open the software manager. Maybe there is a way to avoid this. I am not sure yet.
I changed the pink text in the terminal to a different color.
The most annoying minor issue is that the notification applet maintains a notification that a removable drive "can now be safely removed" after being ejected as an "unread notification". I believe that the notification should time out after,let's say,30 seconds. Shouldn't be constantly looking at a red bell in the panel after ejecting a USB stick.
These are minor issues,though. Solus seems like a great choice for Linux beginners but not only for beginners. As long as your hardware is not too old. Top ten distribution,maybe a little bit higher in terms of quality.
60 • RE: Solus and applets (by AndyMender on 2017-02-07 16:45:28 GMT from Austria)
@59,
The UFW uncomplicated firewall is in fact an interface to iptables, which are handled by the kernel internally. One could write iptables rules directly, not caring for any extra abstraction layer. Therefore, many distributions don't offer the ufw package pre-installed, while the real firewall is set up and running in the background since first boot :). I prefer UFW as its rules resemble PF rules, which I'm familiar with on FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
This was one of the things that confused me enormously when I started using GNU/Linux some time ago ("Why does Linux not have a firewall? Is it so secure by default?").
61 • Containers, xfs and openbox (by far2fish on 2017-02-07 17:55:33 GMT from Denmark)
Containers are really great if you want to test something without messing up your own "box" or try something out on multiple Linux distributions. Plus it can be easily scripted.
I lost faith in XFS after kernel panics on kernel version 3.x. Now bac to good old ext4.
Without having tested OB Revenge OS, is there any more to it than just Arch, openbox and some look and feel?
62 • @59 - Selective updates in Solus (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-02-07 19:02:29 GMT from France)
It's possible to select/deselect individual updates in Solus when new updates are announced. The security-related ones are pre-selected, but even these can be individually deselected if desired.
63 • Calculate (by Dave Postles on 2017-02-07 22:23:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
No imputation was intended about Calculate being Russian, other than one would expect it to have a market there. I've used it in the past, but it didn't suit me and I had trouble with the time consumed with emerge on my kit. I've also used Rosa (Russian Mandriva-derivative). Of the two, I'd personally prefer Rosa.
64 • OBRevenge (by Dave Postles on 2017-02-07 22:54:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
@61 'and some look and feel' - useful for those not familiar with Arch, I think, not least the Welcome panel which allows one-push selection of additional software (base installation is minimal). The range for click and run selection is limited, however, and it is necessary to use pacman at cli to add more (well, that's what I did). In true Arch tradition, you have to use clamav at the cli, not clamtk. You also have to get clamav from AUR. Also, the one-push media apps installation does not include all the codecs; if I remember correctly, it is necessary to get libdvdcss etc from AUR. My feeling is that it's a compromise between Arch and a fully user-friendly OS.
65 • Solus codecs (by Terence Stamp on 2017-02-08 00:52:09 GMT from United States)
Does Solus come with a full assortment of codecs for multimedia? If not, are they easy to install?
66 • 58 • MX Linux (by pivoron@gmail.com on 2017-02-08 02:00:38 GMT from United States)
I also recently discovered MX-16. I absolutely find it a fantastic fit for my linux uses. I have replaced Xubuntu with MX-16 and have not looked back. I had been using Xubuntu for four years. I like the icon arrangement on the left side, it took about 5 minutes for me to adjust to that. Now I would not want any other setup - it suits me perfectly.
I have it installed on a USB 3 stick, and it's very fast. I am using it on older computers and on a Dell Inspiron 3000 notebook. On the recently purchased Inspiron it came with Windows 10 factory installed (sorry about that). I can boot from Windows, or with the USB stick completely bypass windows and all its ills. Windows on the Inspiron seems very slow. I cannot imagine how it could be considered workable!
MX-16 has some really useful abilities like remaster and live persistance. It also can make a complete clone of itself as a Snapshot to use for total backup. One of the great linux distros - MX-16.
67 • Linux Mint 18.1 XFCE (by Ethan on 2017-02-08 02:56:42 GMT from United States)
I've been playing with MINT XFCE. It seems a little faster than Mint MATE while using half the RAM.
222MB RAM at rest.
475-555 MB RAM running Chromium
68 • Gentoo (by scrumtime on 2017-02-08 12:43:34 GMT from Nicaragua)
Gentoo is still going strong as far as i see
I think a few Distros seem like they fall off since the Rolling release models started and noone sees the reason to give out big releases of course as well most gentoo users are more prone to have built their own system their way..
probably they get a drop off from time to time as do many other distros with developers etc getting older, less time, families etc. and as we see from smaller distros its not always easy to get more helpers with the skills to do developing.
Calculate is a very good Gentoo based OS i have used it for quite a while with no issues at all it has been very stable and trouble free..
69 • Rolling releases... (by Vukota on 2017-02-08 14:31:43 GMT from Montenegro)
@68: Contrary to that belief that rolling releases casused impression of "fall off", I see Arch and OpenSUSE doing great and attracted several good spin-offs.
70 • RE: Rolling releases... (by Andy Mender on 2017-02-08 15:23:55 GMT from Austria)
@69,
This is only partially true. While OpenSUSE is rising to glory after Leap and Tumbleweed started being heavily promoted (that main website animation!), Arch is falling in DW rankings still. It used to be 9th, now it's 12th for the default "last 6 months". @68 is right in the sense that Arch and Gentoo installs are typically long-running and without point releases there is no need to discuss them in detail :). They just keep on rolling!
I return to Arch, ArchBang or even Manjaro often, when I'm tired of the constraints that big mainstream distributions impose.
71 • Arch and Gentoo (by curious on 2017-02-08 16:27:54 GMT from Germany)
The reduced popularity of Arch and Gentoo (as the most well-known examples) might possibly be caused by (*** ATTENTION: HERESY WARNING! ***) the lack of an easy-to-use installer - something that should be taken for granted nowadays.
Almost nobody is willing to waste the amount of time needed for a "traditional" Arch or Gentoo installation procedure - and they shouldn't have to.
Of course, the fanbois will now point out that [insert-distro-name-here] exists which provides an "easy" way of installing e.g. Arch, but obviously that gets counted as interest in that distro, not basic Arch.
72 • @65 - Solus codecs (by Uncle Slacky on 2017-02-08 18:38:20 GMT from France)
A search on "codec" in the Solus repos turns up quite a few (I tend to just use VLC so it's a non-issue for me) - even Flash is available if you really want it.
73 • Gentoo etc (by scrumtime on 2017-02-08 18:53:24 GMT from Nicaragua)
@69 Debian Arch Slackware Gentoo Fedora /redhat don't advertise releases very often where some distros which are based on one of the aforementioned parents seem to need to keep pushing every alpha , beta , Rc, wallpaper change etc even the rolling release ones. (I don't even remember the last time i saw Gentoo advertise a release)
I guess if you want to up your ranking thats the way to do it .though i see distros' who haven't made a release of any kind in years that have web sites years out of date above distros' with quite regular releases which is all very baffling
@71 You are probably right most of us who used linux from the early days were more used to the installation processes and dont find it too troublesome though to make it easy and windows like (why why) everyone wanted graphic installers, package managers with pictures, desktops with pictures and things, 1 click updating and so on,,,
must admit i have some comps with all the above now..due to laziness but i still have Gentoo and Slackware which i have used for many years. and still do most of my updates through CLI and opt for open or fluxbox rather than a DE
74 • Installing Arch or Gentoo (by canadensis on 2017-02-08 19:37:23 GMT from Australia)
@71 You wrote: "Almost nobody is willing to waste the amount of time needed for a 'traditional' Arch or Gentoo installation procedure - and they shouldn't have to."
And you are correct, no-one should "have to" do a traditional Gentoo or Arch installation if there are easier options available. But for those of us who want to do this, it is certainly not a waste of time - we do it for the control it allows and for the learning experience it offers.
Choice - we have it in open source software!
75 • @71 Arch (by far2fish on 2017-02-08 20:14:59 GMT from Denmark)
The Arch popularity can still be seen by the succes of Manjaro and Antergos, which both offer easier installation and friendly community support.
76 • Fanboi (by @71 on 2017-02-08 20:17:34 GMT from Denmark)
I didn't see your fanboi statement until after my first post, but admitted I love Antergos though I am currently using Fedora as primary distro:-)
77 • Gentoo (by Nathan Zachary on 2017-02-08 22:23:48 GMT from United States)
@71 and @74,
Agreed about the installer, as well as the comments regarding rolling-release distributions. As a Gentoo Dev, I can vouch for the distro being alive and well. It has problems, just like any other FLOSS project, but I still prefer it to other distributions.
Though it takes time to compile packages, I am readily given the choice of my init system (loathe systemd), and I can easily configure and build my own kernel. :)
Cheers,
Nathan Zachary
78 • @4 (by dave on 2017-02-09 02:07:15 GMT from United States)
this was the moment that I realized Packard Bell was still a thing.
blast from the past for me.
79 • solus (by Sonic20 on 2017-02-09 07:32:17 GMT from United States)
I did an install of Solus on laptop with no problem doing a clean install and taking over the complete hard drive. Got everthing working except that I could not get it to connect to either of my two printers using the CUPS page, a HP Deskjet 3510 or the Epson XP830.
At this stage any of the more popular distros have no problem connecting to printers, I have tried Mint, Ubuntu, Manjaro, PCLOS, and any number of others. If a distro requires tinkering to connect the basics, not ready for prime time. I will go back when there is a new release.
80 • RE: Arch and installations (by Andy Mender on 2017-02-09 10:09:26 GMT from Austria)
@71, @74, @75,
While Manjaro and Antergos (and also Chakra, in a way) offer 'an easy way out', I think it has more to do with overall user-friendliness and looks than ease of installation.
To be perfectly frank, if you know your Unix Fu, doing a full Arch install is 15-30 min for a standard setup. You can even write a short Shell script to automate it entirely.
That same time might be spent on customizing a user-friendly distribution. Even more so, running the really streamlined, hand-holding distros I often suffered from the same problems I had on Windows - how to remove needless services and pop-ups to cut down on resource use and boot time. That's a lot more time consuming than building a fresh setup from the ground up.
@75,
I too ran Gentoo for quite a while and somewhat participated in the community. Configuring & compiling the kernel is fun and so is selecting USE flags. However, I switched to Arch/Manjaro, because the overabundance of USE flags caused me problems in the end. It's difficult to grasp the impact of a feature on all of your programs and libraries. What I think would be useful is a rundown of how each USE flag affects a specific package, much how it's done in FreeBSD interactively.
81 • Solus MATE vs. Linux Mint 17.3 MATE vs. Ubuntu 14.04 MATE (by Rick on 2017-02-09 14:10:18 GMT from United States)
MATE version failed in live mode. Uses way too much overhead at idle compared to Mint 17.3 MATE and Ubuntu MATE 14.04. Like many other distros which have come out in the past 3 years, a 200-300% increase in overhead memory usage at idle is NOT progress but has become bloatware just like Windows did years ago.
82 • Posts 79 and 81 and 62 (by Winchester on 2017-02-09 14:37:23 GMT from United States)
sudo eopkg it hplip
in the terminal should work to get an HP 3510 going under Solus.
Epson,I'm not sure but perhaps installing gutenprint could be the solution to that. They have a driver for the Epson XP-820 .
Solus just recently added MATE so,I am not surprised by issues there. It might be more fair to judge the default desktop.
Anyway,printing is not an issue for me because I have multiple operating systems installed on separate partitions. If I want to print,I just boot another OS. I haven't even tried to install my printer under Solus yet.
To me,avoiding the Adobe Flash plug-in and still being able to watch videos is reason enough to keep Solus on a partition.
As far as post # 62 goes,even if you de-select an update,you will continue to be notified about it every time you boot up the operating system or open the software center. Unless there is a way around that which I am unaware of.
83 • Solus at idle (by sydneyj on 2017-02-09 17:29:47 GMT from United States)
FWIW, I have Arch/Mate and Mint 18.1/Mate installed on bare metal on the same machine, and Solus/Mate installed as a VM guest on the Arch host. Arch idles (with open terminal) at 387MiB, Mint 18.1 at 347MiB, and Solus at 332MiB. Not sure whether being a VBox guest would affect the reading.
84 • Love to All You Tireless System D- Social Engineers (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2017-02-10 05:35:25 GMT from United States)
@14 You can't give up social engineering, I know. It's hard. Try your local chapter of Mac Cult Suckers Anonymous for help from a higher power. Try to see my side, I just offered a tip for a certain audience from an orthogonal, non-korporate dimension. Some of them read DistroWatch.
Matter of fact, for choice, Void beats every distro save perhaps Gentoo. Void offers BOTH musl and glibc runtimes PLUS the whole basket of desktops on each, WITH nearly realtime sync to upstream releases. And you get LibreSSL for the cherry on top. Do I sound like an infomercial? I'm seriously impressed with Void Linux. Caveats: not for n00bs - live CDs are horribly stale - the ncurses installer sucks - devs do not much participate in forums. For all that, if a n00b can hire a local high school kid to install it and configure the desktop, Void is nearly maintenance-free.
I am happy that Solus is helping n00bs run Linux. My recommendation for DIY n00bs who can't hire a nerd is Manjaro OpenRC with the lovely, easy, Calamares installer and friendly forums. Calamares offers OpenRC or System D- as an install option. Your higher power can show you what to do. My own Solus dealbreakers are System D- kinky kontrolware and missing XFS . XFS is by far the most stable fs on Linux. Even more stable than ext4. If XFS haters used it under Debian or Ubuntu, well, they should move to a rolling distro for timely bugfixes and recent kernels.
85 • @84 Why XFS? (by curious on 2017-02-10 09:16:10 GMT from Germany)
Don't get me wrong, a stable, bug free and "enterprise grade" file system is a good thing. But XFS is - by design - best suited to situations with a smaller number of very big files, e.g. your movie collection. For general Linux use (i.e. partitions with a huge number of very small files), I therefore prefer JFS, which is otherwise similar, but possibly even more stable.
86 • RE: Why XFS? (by AndyMender on 2017-02-10 11:33:48 GMT from Austria)
@84, @85,
I think what Arch Watcher was probably hinting at are the file system recovery and repair capabilities. XFS nicely pairs up with LVM for trivial, home-centric NFS storage. It's also so central to the GNU/Linux ecosystem that it missing is a slight drawback.
87 • @84 (by Jay on 2017-02-10 17:13:47 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the tip on Void. I'm going to give it a try. The latest xorg from Arch has broken my netbook (it already didn't work right without nomodeset), so I'm starting to look around again. I'm using open RC, and I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
88 • XFS & stable updates (by M.Z. on 2017-02-11 22:23:20 GMT from United States)
@84
"...move to a rolling distro for timely bugfixes and recent kernels."
The thing I really like about PCLinuxOS is how easy & reliable it is to get the latest kernel & revert back if you hit a but; however, I see no big differences in the timeliness of updates to Firefox when compared to Mint. I know there are lots of flashy new features under the hood when you get new packages in most rolling distros, but you get plenty of bug fixes in the patched software from distros like Debian, it's just using a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' model. Point release distros are lot like running the patched ESR version of Firefox rather than the main version. I hit a bug once in the main version of Firefox that caused it to crash until I got another update, but whatever new feature I hit didn't exist in the ESR, which is more stale but slightly less buggy overall. It's rare but that sort of thing does happen.
@XFS questions
I dug a little & I can't find the info, but I had the impression from somewhere that TRIM support on Ext4 was better & made it a better choice for an SSD than XFS. Anyone know which is better for SSDs?
89 • @88 (by Diehard Ubuntu Hater on 2017-02-12 20:28:47 GMT from Brazil)
"... Anyone know which is better for SSDs?"
It seems to me that F2FS (Flash-Friendly File-System) is better than both ext4 and XFS. There are other brand-new filesystems developed SPECIFICALLY for use with SSDs, I think.
Number of Comments: 89
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Lernstick
Lernstick is a mobile and secure learning and working environment for school and at home that can be installed on external storage media (e.g. USB sticks, USB hard drives, SD cards, etc.). The distribution is based on Debian's stable branch. The distribution is intended to perform so that almost every computer can be started from this storage media. Basically, a hard drive with an installed operating system is no longer required. (Optionally, the system can still be installed on the hard disk.) As a result, the learning stick is a platform for so-called Bring Your Own Device scenarios, in which students can also use their private devices for school purposes, such as exams in an secure offline/online environment.
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