 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 978, 25 July 2022 |
Welcome to this year's 30th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
EndeavourOS is an Arch-based project which provides access to multiple desktop environments at install time. The distribution strives to be flexible and up to date with cutting edge software. This week we begin with a look at EndeavourOS and report on the setup process and experiences gained by running this Arch-based distribution. Arch and its family of distributions are known for their flexibility and people can run a wide range of graphical user interfaces - desktop environments and window managers - on Arch's core operating system. We'd like to hear from all the Arch users out there: what graphical user interface do you currently run? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. In our Questions and Answers column this week we talk about hardware compatibility and how people react to Linux distributions not working with a user's hardware. Then, in our News section, we share good news on the hardware compatibility topic as Canonical has officially certified Ubuntu as working with Dell's XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition laptop. We also share news on Slax experimenting with a return to its Slackware Linux base and report on efforts to run Linux on Apple's M1 and M2 hardware. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a terrific week and happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (13MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
EndeavourOS 22.6
The EndeavourOS distribution is a member of the Arch Linux family. Endeavour is a rolling release platform which strives to be easy to set up and run as a desktop operating system. The project puts a strong focus on initial customization, providing the ability to choose our desktop environment (and various extras) at install time.
I previously reviewed EndeavourOS just over a year ago and the distribution was one of a handful which made my list of remarkably good distributions of 2021. As you might imagine, I was eager to try out the project's latest snapshot to see how it had evolved over the past year.
Endeavour is available as a single 1.8GB download for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. Booting from the project's live media brings up a menu asking if we'd like to launch the distribution normally, run the live media with improved NVIDIA video support, or launch in fallback mode. The normal method worked well for me and the live media quickly loaded the Xfce desktop. The Xfce interface is arranged with a panel across the bottom of the screen. This panel holds the application menu, quick-launch icons, task switcher, and system tray.
EndeavourOS 22.6 -- The application menu
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Once Xfce loads a welcome window appears on the desktop. This window offers two tabs. The first tab has buttons we can use to initiate actions such as running the system installer, opening a partition manager, running an ARM image writer, and updating the package mirrors. There are additional buttons for opening a display settings utility. The second tab in the welcome window provides us with access to information and support resources. The buttons in the second tab open the Firefox browser and link us with the Endeavour website, wiki, and forum. One of the buttons opens a page which displays news related to software updates. Since EndeavourOS is a rolling release it sometimes introduces major changes or incompatibilities. This news page shares warnings and tips to help users deal with Endeavour's rolling nature.
Installing
Clicking the action button to launch the system installer pops up a window to ask if we want to run the off-line or on-line installer. Both options launch the graphical, Calamares installer, but there are a few differences. The off-line version will use local packages to set up Endeavour with the Xfce desktop and a custom theme. The on-line version will allow us to select which desktop environment we want and then grab the necessary packages from remote repositories and set up the selected desktop with a generic theme.
Calamares is a friendly, graphical installer which starts by helping us select our time zone and keyboard layout. We are asked if we want to use guided or manual disk partitioning. The installer's manual process is quite easy to use and offers simple point and click partition management. The guided option will take over available free space or take over the entire disk with a single ext4 filesystem. We have the option of setting up a swap partition, a swap file, or not using swap space at all. The next screen of the installer asks us to make up a username and password.
The first time I ran the installer it was in off-line mode and the install process started off well enough with a progress bar showing packages being installed to the disk. About halfway through the install process Calamares crashed, leaving my hard drive in an unbootable state.
I launched the live media and this time tried the on-line install process. This is virtually identical to the off-line procedure, except we can select which desktop environment (or multiple desktop environments) we want. Most open source desktops are supported, including KDE Plasma, Xfce, GNOME, and LXQt. We can also optionally choose to install alternative kernels and printer support. This time, after picking a username and password Calamares immediately crashed without downloading or installing any packages.
Wondering if my trial might be doomed to end early, I launched Calamares again and took the off-line approach. This time I got through all the steps and the installer completed successfully. I was using the same settings, partition layout, and username as my first run through so I'm not sure why Calamares crashed the first two times and not the third.
Early impressions
My new copy of EndeavourOS booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into the Xfce desktop. Xfce is the only available session, by default. Signing into my account brought up the welcome screen again, though this time it had more tabs. The information tab is still there and it's joined by a few extras. One tab is called After Install and it has buttons which launch tools to update the package mirrors, install software updates, clean up package information, and change the display resolution. There is also a tool for changing which display manager is used. The other tabs mostly connect us with on-line resources such as forums and documentation.
EndeavourOS 22.6 -- The welcome window
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One tab in the welcome window is called Add More Apps. One button in this tab opens Firefox to display the packages available in Arch Linux's official repositories while another also opens Firefox and shows us a searchable list of packages available in Arch's community repository (the AUR). A third button on this page opens a custom software installer.
This software installer opens in a new window and shows us a list of categories of software. We can click on a category to expand it. Each category holds around half a dozen popular software applications. The applications are listed with their package name and a brief description. Next to the packages we find a box we can check to mark the item for installation. This gives us quick access to popular items such as LibreOffice, Flatpak support, bittorrent clients, e-mail software, and media players.
EndeavourOS 22.6 -- Installing popular applications
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While simple in its appearance, the software installer works well and makes it possible to quickly install multiple items at once. The previous time I ran Endeavour I commented one of the only things I missed while running the distribution was a graphical software manager. This tool only handles installing popular applications, it doesn't help with updates, removing items, or browsing the whole package repository, but it's certainly useful and a good step toward making Endeavour more welcoming.
Using the popular application installer or running the system update tool will open a virtual terminal window and launch the appropriate pacman command to accomplish the task. The first time I tried to fetch updates the process failed reporting some package signatures were not valid or corrupted. Running the update again completed successfully.
Something I noticed early on, after I'd fetched waiting updates and restarted the computer, my login screen changed slightly. Alongside the Xfce session option there were four new session options for GNOME. These were labelled GNOME, GNOME [again], GNOME on Wayland, and GNOME on Xorg. These sessions worked which was interested to me as I hadn't knowingly installed the GNOME desktop, just a few applications and updates. It seems one of the applications, or one of the updates, caused the entire GNOME desktop, applications, and window manager to be pulled onto my system. This was an unexpected change and one which took me a while to remove due to the interconnected dependencies involved.
Default software
Endeavour, by default, ships with a fairly small collection of desktop software. The Xfce 4.16 desktop is included along with its detailed and easy to navigate settings panel. The Firefox web browser is included along with the Parole media player, a system monitor, and the Thunar file manager. In the live environment there is a log collector tool which makes it possible to select log files we'd like to concatenate and then compiles them into one big log file in our home directory. This should help with trouble-shooting problems and sharing information on forums.
EndeavourOS 22.6 -- The Xfce settings panel
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The distribution ships with the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU command line utilities, and manual pages. The distribution runs the systemd init software and version 5.18 of the Linux kernel.
Most of the included utilities worked well for me and as expected. The one problem I ran into was with Parole. The media player kept freezing when asked to play video files. I installed VLC through the popular software installer and it played videos smoothly.
Hardware
I tried running EndeavourOS in two test environments, starting with VirtualBox and then moving to a workstation. The distribution performed well in VirtualBox. The system was responsive and generally ran smoothly. EndeavourOS integrates with the host operating system and Xfce dynamically resized with the VirtualBox window.
EndeavourOS 22.6 -- Accessing on-line tutorials and help
(full image size: 691kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
When I switched to the workstation Endeavour ran very quickly. The desktop was highly responsive and all my hardware was detected. Endeavour did something I haven't seen before: when I first launched the system a window popped up and let me know there were two network drivers available which could work with my system. I was told one was the default and should work, but there was an alternative I could switch to with the click of a button. The default driver worked and I didn't need to try the alternative.
A fresh install of Endeavour with the Xfce desktop and no other add-ons or alternative kernels consumed 6GB of disk space, plus some space for a swap partition (or swap file). When I first logged into Endeavour, when using the custom theme, the system used about 640MB of RAM.
Package management options
Earlier I talked about the popular apps installer which we can access from the welcome window. In fact, I couldn't find the popular app installer in the application menu, so the only way I could access it was through the welcome window. Despite this hurdle, the utility worked really well.
I didn't find any general purpose graphical software manager or update manager on the system. However, we can use the welcome window to launch an update process. We can also use the command line pacman package manager. The pacman tool is fast and, despite its cryptic syntax, mostly functioned well. It provided a firehose of updates during my trial, sometimes providing around 100MB of updates per day. This is quite a lot compared to fixed release distributions.
I ran into a few instances where pacman ran into problems. A few times while applying updates the utility refused to proceed, reporting checksum mismatch errors or problems with package signatures. Clearing the cache and trying again fixed this. I ran into the same problem when installing the GNU Image Manipulation Program - it failed to install the first time due to a checksum mismatch, but succeeded the second time. This repeated issue with packages makes me wonder if one of the project's mirrors has been compromised or if there is a regularly occurring glitch in the download process.
Other observations
For the most part Endeavour ran well and provided a smooth, snappy experience. However, I did run into the occasional crash. During the first few days of my trial Firefox crashed two or three times. The welcome window crashed once after I logged in. I find it rare to see any desktop Linux application crash these days so having three within 48 hours was surprising.
I also noted earlier that Calamares crashed a few times - the first time trying the off-line installer, and then any time I tried the on-line installer after that. Usually Calamares works quite well for me so this was an unpleasant surprise.
Earlier I mentioned one of the tools listed in the welcome window will change the display manager (more popularly known as the login screen). We can choose between the default LightDM, LXDM, GDM, and SSDM. I tried this and the selection screen accepted my choice, asked me for my password and, a few seconds later, told me I should reboot for the change to take effect. I did this and found I had successfully changed to LXDM. I later switched to GDM. It seems as though the new display managers are quickly and quietly installed in the background after we select them (they aren't all installed by default). This makes the system appear flexible while not cluttering up the hard drive with extra display managers out of the box.
Looking back, I think selecting GDM and then cancelling it in favour of LXDM early in my trial is how I ended up with the entire GNOME desktop installed. I found out when I switched machines later in the week and installed GDM that selecting the GNOME display manager not only installs GDM, it also switches our default desktop from Xfce to GNOME without asking. I guess GDM assumes we want GNOME and pulls it in as a dependency and switches the default session.
Conclusions
When I talked about EndeavourOS back in January and why I included the distribution in my list of favourite projects of 2021 I had this to say:
Despite being one of the younger projects on this list, Endeavour performed beautifully, offered good performance, flexibility, and a pleasantly uncluttered default configuration.
The one drawback I ran into was Endeavour doesn't ship with a graphical package manager, but this was (for me) a minor concern. The project is producing a quick, sparse, rolling release that felt remarkably stable and error-free. As with Artix, I wouldn't recommend EndeavourOS to Linux newcomers, it expects a degree of familiarity with Linux software and the command line, but it's a great platform for people who want to run Arch while enjoying an easy setup process.
I feel this statement is still mostly true. The project has taken steps to try to add more graphical and user-friendly tools to help with software updates and installing new packages. This feels like step in the right direction. I still feel like a full featured desktop software centre would be welcome, but the project is clearly trying to lower the bar for new users.
In fact, a lot of effort has been put into the initial setup and welcome process. There are a lot of documentation resources, some quick access to settings, log files for trouble-shooting, and the installer can install alternative desktop environments with a few clicks. This makes EndeavourOS quite flexible and a relatively friendly member of the Arch Linux family of distributions.
However, there were some issues this time around that I didn't run into in early 2021. The big one was Calamares crashing a couple of times. The installer is usually rock solid on other distributions and having it crash, both in off-line and on-line modes, was a poor early impression. Having GDM pull in the entire GNOME desktop and switch my desktop session without asking was, if not a bug, certainly an unwelcome surprise. I also ran into a handful of crashes with Firefox and other utilities.
In short, EndeavourOS introduces some good new tools and features, but it feels like it is struggling with stability issues. This wasn't helped by the fact on at least four occasions the package manager bailed out of a procedure because new packages failed their checksum verification. It's good the package manager stopped what it was doing when there was a problem, but it's not good there was repeatedly a problem - possibly due to corrupted downloads or comprised packages. This suggests something going wrong on the infrastructure level of the project.
Some of the things I liked about EndeavourOS before are still present. The distribution is still unusually fast, pleasantly mid-weight when it comes to resource consumption, and I like that the default is to start us off with just a handful of desktop applications we can add to as needed. This is helped by the popular application installer which gives us access to items such as LibreOffice, other web browsers, and many other useful programs.
In short, EndeavourOS provided a mostly good experience, but it still isn't quite as user friendly as I'd like and there are some stability issues that need fixing before I'd feel entirely comfortable using this distribution as my day-to-day work system.
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Visitor supplied rating
EndeavourOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.5/10 from 377 review(s).
Have you used EndeavourOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Slax explores return to Slackware base, Ubuntu certified to run on Dell's XPS 13, Linux running on Apple's M2 hardware
The Slax project once provided a live CD based on Slackware Linux which ran the KDE desktop. The project has recently shifted its base to Debian and now provides a Fluxbox-based interface. The developer of Slax has decided to test a new branch which returns to the project's roots and is based on Slackware once again. "I had nothing better to do so I decided to give Slackware 15.0 a try. Slax is no more a KDE-based distro with full applications, so it shouldn't be hard to make a Fluxbox-based version from Slackware, right? Well yeah. I managed to build a working prototype. For a limited time, it is available only for supporters at patreon.com/slax. If you wish to test it out, feel free to join the community of supporters with any monthly plan you can afford. You can find the download link to the prototype of Slackware-based version of Slax there."
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Canonical has announced that the Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition computer is now certified to work with Ubuntu 22.04. "July 21st 2022 - Canonical is excited to announce the new Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition has been officially certified for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Starting from August, developers can buy Dell's flagship XPS 13-inch laptop with the latest version of Canonical's desktop Linux preinstalled. Also, from today current XPS 13 Plus owners can install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and automatically receive the same hardware-optimised experience that will ship with the new Developer Edition. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS brings new features, performance and stability improvements backed by up to 10 years of software updates." The Dell XPS 13 joins a wide range of other computers which have been certified to work with Canonical's Ubuntu distribution.
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Ever since the Apple M1 computer appeared with its custom ARM processor, people have been working to port Linux distributions to the new architecture. The Asahi Linux project has made great strides in getting Linux software running on the Apple hardware. In a recent blog post the project has announced support for the newer Apple M2 processors along with Bluetooth. "Bluetooth had been on the back burner for a while now, since Apple switched to a new bespoke PCIe interface that apparently no other vendor uses. But all that changed when R picked up the challenge of reverse engineering it! Thankfully, Bluetooth itself is quite simple, since the host to controller interface is largely standardized. Apple made a variant that runs over PCIe, but the higher layers are the same as any other Bluetooth controller. After R put together a userspace proof of concept driver, Sven picked up the work and started writing a proper kernel driver. As of a few days ago, Bluetooth started working!"
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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) |
A question regarding hardware compatibility and reviews
Wondering-about-hardware-compatibility asks: I have a question. In reading the reviews of many distros, installing many distros over the decades, I am left with a fundamental question. There are a lot of people who try to install a distro and the installation fails. I can understand this particularly on a new or in the waiting list distro. My question is, What are the real chances / probabilities of an installation failure of a mainstream distro that most users rate 10 being a fault of the release or developers. I have seen these install issues when working with really old hardware or brand new latest versions of hardware, but have never made the claim or thought it justifiable to state that it was the developer's fault that the ISO would not install. I have installed ISOs that would not install from the machines optical drive yet installed flawlessly from an external USB optical drive. That makes me think that perhaps for many or most failed installs it is a weird hardware configuration and not a problem with the ISO. It frustrates me when people leave bad reviews for what to me is lack of experience or their own weird hardware configuration. Neither of which, to me, can justifiably be blamed on the distro's developers. I find it completely absurd that these people seem to believe that every distro's developers have a warehouse of hardware, and the manpower, to test their ISO on every machine and every conceivable combination of hardware.
DistroWatch answers: I've read over this question half a dozen times and what I take away from it is a question of my own: Why is there a need to assign blame to anyone in this situation?
The question keeps using terms like fails, failed, blamed, and fault and it all seems geared toward trying to either deflect blame (from developers) or assign blame (to end-users).
Let's take a step back for a moment and look at the big picture. It is a fact that no operating system works on all hardware. Some operating systems, especially those with commercial backing, will often run on a wider range of hardware or have better driver compatibility. Some are even certified to work with certain hardware. But the fact remains no operating system will work properly on all available hardware. In light of this fact, I think it is profitless to try to assign blame, to either users or developers, when this fact is pointed out.
It is true that sometimes a distribution doesn't install properly because a person's computer is too old, too young, or uses components which are too exotic. However, it's equally as true to turn the tables and say some distributions don't work well with computers that are modern, or older, or uncommon. Pointing the finger of blame at a user or developer in this situation doesn't help either side and it doesn't make the hardware/software compatibility any better.
I think everyone (the developers, the user, and the people reading reviews) would be better served by realizing that a review is not meant to be an objective declaration of a universal truth. Each review is one person's observations and opinions based on their own experiences, needs, and situation. People reading reviews are going to be best served by trying to identify situations, equipment, and needs described in reviews which are similar to their own and learning from those experiences. Likewise they'd be better served by ignoring reviews where the equipment, scenario, or needs don't match their own.
I'd also like to point out that reviews are not press releases. A review which only says good things about an operating system isn't particularly useful as it's ignoring the problems; all operating systems have problems. It's useful to point out when something doesn't work, especially if there is some context for the issues encountered. Pointing out limitations isn't the same as complaining or assigning blame, it's just sharing information.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Qubes OS 4.1.1
Andrew David Wong has announced the release of Qubes OS 4.1.1, a "patch" release of the project's security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. This version upgrades the Fedora template to version 36 and the Linux kernel to version 5.15: "We're pleased to announce the stable release of Qubes 4.1.1. This release aims to consolidate all the security patches, bug fixes, and upstream template OS upgrades that have occurred since the initial Qubes 4.1.0 release in February. Our goal is to provide a secure and convenient way for users to install (or reinstall) the latest stable Qubes release with an up-to-date ISO. If you are already using Qubes 4.1.0 or Qubes 4.1.1-rc1, then you should simply update normally (which includes upgrading any EOL templates you might have) in order to make your system essentially equivalent to this stable Qubes 4.1.1 release. No special action is required on your part. Qubes 4.1.1 includes numerous updates over the initial 4.1.0 release, in particular: 4.1.0 dom0 updates to date; Fedora 36 template (upgraded from Fedora 34); Linux kernel 5.15 (upgraded from 5.10)." See the release announcement for more details.
NuTyX 22.07.0
NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The project's latest snapshot is NuTyX 22.07.0 which includes several new tools and updates to its wide range of desktop editions. "The NuTyX team is happy to announce the new version of NuTyX 22.07.0 and cards 2.5.4. New toolchain gcc 12.1.0, glibc 2.35 and binutils 2.38. The xorg-server graphics server version 21.1.3, the Mesa 3D library in 22.1.4, GTK4 4.6.6 and Qt 6.3.0. The Python interpreters are at 3.10.5 and 2.7.18. The Xfce desktop environment is updated to version 4.16.0. The MATE desktop environment is at 1.26.0 version. The GNOME desktop environment is also updated to version 42.3. The KDE desktop environment is available in Plasma 5.25.3, Framework 5.96.0 and applications in 22.04.3. Available browsers are: Firefox 102.0.1, Chromium 103.0.5060.134, Epiphany 42.3." Additional details can be found on the distribution's news page.
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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 in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,747
- Total data uploaded: 42.3TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running desktop environments on Arch Linux base
In this week's Feature Story we talked about the EndeavourOS distribution. EndeavourOS is an Arch-based project which provides easy access to a wide range of desktop environments. We would like to hear, from those of you running Arch-based systems, which desktop environment you run, if any?
You can see the results of our previous poll on customizing desktop themes in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Which desktop do you run on an Arch base?
| Budgie: | 21 (1%) |
| Cinnamon: | 120 (8%) |
| Deepin: | 4 (0%) |
| GNOME: | 169 (11%) |
| KDE Plasma: | 499 (32%) |
| LXDE: | 41 (3%) |
| LXQt: | 27 (2%) |
| MATE: | 86 (6%) |
| Xfce: | 376 (24%) |
| Another desktop: | 19 (1%) |
| A window manager: | 168 (11%) |
| Command line only: | 13 (1%) |
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| Website News |
Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the forms of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $127 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Olivier S | $50 |
| Douglas S | $23 |
| Johnathan H | $14 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Simon M | $7 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Matt C | $5 |
| Ross M | $3 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| P.B. C | $2 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
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New distributions added to waiting list
- AaricKDE. AaricKDE is an Arch-based Linux distribution. It features the KDE Plasma desktop environment and runs on the Zen edition of the Linux kernel.
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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, 1 August 2022. 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 • Endeavour and Calamares (by Brad on 2022-07-25 00:53:05 GMT from United States)
I had similar issues when attempting to try Endeavour - crashes while using Calamares. I gave up for that reason.
Keeping in mind the Q&A regarding HW/Distro compatability, I guess I can't fault the developers of Endeavour or Calamares too much. I can only say that for the HW that I use (Dell/Lenovo/HP) that Manjaro has given me the most stable experience for years. I still find occasional issues with Calamares, but I'm not (yet) ready to blame the developers. Earlier versions of Calamares worked flawlessly - it only seems to be the latest versions that have some issues.
2 • EndeavourOS (by verndog on 2022-07-25 01:13:47 GMT from United States)
I have three EndeavourOS installed (Gnome, KDE, XFCE), and they all work perfectly. Very fast and easy to keep updated. I installed all three so I could determine which one to keep. Can't decide. I like all three. They each have their own strengths.
I rarely, is ever have issues with them, and when I do, issue is solved within a day or two at most.
Great forum by the way. Very helpful! Not condescending at all.
3 • Running desktop environments on an Arch Linux base (by Guido on 2022-07-25 01:31:50 GMT from Philippines)
Why limit yourself to one desktop? I have 3 PCs with Manjaro Linux installed. One with Gnome, one Mate and one LXQt.
I can only recommend pamac as the graphical package manager for Pacman. In the terminal write:
sudo pacman -S pamac
That should also work in Endeavour. And change also the mirrors close to you. Can be done in pamac.
4 • Poll (by Friar Tux on 2022-07-25 01:33:01 GMT from Canada)
Since having discovered the Cinnamon DE, any distro I have tested in the last year or so has had the Cinnamon DE. I find it to be the end all and be all of desktop environments. I don't think I will ever go to anything else. It seems to work quite well with my methodology and muscle memory.
5 • EndeavourOS (by rich52 on 2022-07-25 02:00:20 GMT from United States)
I've used Manjaro for the longest time but EndeavorOS has been more cutting edge with what they have to offer in upgrades and software. Both are excellent Distro's. The online installation option worked fine for me and the software was up to date at the point in time you've downloaded it. Overall it's been very stable and KDE Plasma has been nicely packaged and runs very smoothly.
6 • Desktop (by Ken on 2022-07-25 02:08:38 GMT from United States)
I finally gave i3 a try, and now that I'm used to it and how quickly I can do what I need to do, I find it hard to go back to the standard desktop paradigm. I could do it, and there are days when I have the urge to install Xfce, but so far, I'm happy.
I'm not the least bit surprised that installing GDM also installed the entire GNOME desktop and automatically switched your login session to it. GNOME is getting as pushy as Windows and Mac, and is the reason I'm starting to experiment with primarily QT applications instead of getting locked into the GNOME system through GTK.
7 • slax (by dave on 2022-07-25 02:47:17 GMT from United States)
I have never even used Slax but still managed to feel annoyed when I learned they had switched to Debian.. and I'm a longtime Debian user! If he's not gonna base it on Slackware, he should change the project name. I wouldn't say it's misleading to the average person, but let's be honest-- the average person isn't gonna find Slax anyway. Probably 99% of the people who would stumble across it will be Linuxfolk and will immediately assume it's a derivative of Slackware because of its name.
8 • Blaming the publisher of the operating system? (by Greg Zeng on 2022-07-25 03:11:42 GMT from Australia)
The editorial comment here suggests that publishers should not be blamed. Most users need to categorise these publishers, to increase our chances for success with the operating system.
Most "open source" operating systems have small numbers and small teams to create these products. The smaller and newer teams generally have less reliable final products, as discovered by this week's review of EndeavourOS.
There are 242 Linux "active" operating systems, currently. https://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=Linux&category=All&origin=All&basedon=All¬basedon=None&desktop=All&architecture=All&package=All&rolling=All&isosize=All&netinstall=All&language=All&defaultinit=All&status=Active#simple
If a "desktop" is needed, there are 211 brandnames. Most of these (117) are based on the Debian package manager, as has been since the creation of mature versions of Debian.
Of the 117, 50 are based on Ubuntu. These Ubuntu-derived systems supposedly "benefit from the accumated teamwork of the earlier "upstream" coding teams. Not true!
If any user wants to gamble on the products of unstable, insecure adventures, there are very many (most) operating systems. The younger and smaller the development team, the greater the risk of instability, as shown in the Linux system reviews.
Blame the development team? With Linux, you can choose your "parents". Most (all?) commercial & government systems do not allow this "freedom".
9 • @7 - slax (by Andy Prough on 2022-07-25 03:40:05 GMT from United States)
>"I have never even used Slax but still managed to feel annoyed when I learned they had switched to Debian.. and I'm a longtime Debian user! If he's not gonna base it on Slackware, he should change the project name."
Slax has been well-known for being a lightweight live Linux distro for many years. Most of the time a user would add new software by installing "modules", not by doing a bunch of slackware command line work. And in fact, Slax has also been able to use Debian packages for many years now.
So the people who were using Slax were probably doing so because of its characteristics as a lightweight live distro with amazing live usb features. When I used it, I did not care what it was based on - I did not know a thing about running slackware at the time. So moving to a Debian base wouldn't make as big a difference as what you might think. Continuing to call it Slax simply let people know that it's still a good lightweight live distro.
10 • Slax (by Charlie on 2022-07-25 03:55:50 GMT from Hong Kong)
@9
Well, I am the one happy to know Slax would give another spin to Slackware once again.
Slax actually has a much longer history and fame as a Slackware liveCD than a Debian one, I still remeber the time I used it, a polished Slackware with KDE 3, and you can simply install it to harddisk in later versions.
There are also many Debian related LiveCDs and communities, you can even easily install a lightweight Debian desktop on your own. But Slackware LiveCD is the blue ocean, currently I don't think there's one except alienBOB (Slackware official developer) doing that.
Slackware is a good traditional distro with the most original UNIX style, it's the longest surviving distro but with very few developers, you can tell how amazing it is by achieving that.
11 • KDE install - EndeavourOS, ArcoLinux-B, & Garuda on 12 year old Lenovo notebook (by 1-DOT.com on 2022-07-25 04:04:49 GMT from United States)
I recently made KDE Plasma installations of Arch-based distros EndeavourOS, ArcoLinux-B and Garuda OS to 3 hard-disk partitions to an old 12 year old Lenovo (Intel i7) notebook. Unlike bad experiences installing XeroLinux and StormOS (Arch distros), I had no issues installing any of these other more mainstream Arch-based distros.
I was disappointed that Garuda forced me install to a BTRFS partition instead of EXT4, BTRFS does not play nice with the Grub-Customizer or OS-Prober utilities.
ArcoLinux-B requires more Linux experience to optimize its longer detailed installation but, for me, Arco was my "first impression" favorite of the three. As installed, Arco-B did include KDE's Discover GUI-based software installer. It also included a few Plasma widgets that I like that were missing in EndeavourOS and Garuda.
As noted in Jesse Smith's review, EndeavourOS did not include KDE Discover or any other GUI-based software installer. It did, however, include the "yay" command line installer which, as a Debian-base fan, I much prefer to learning the more complex syntax of Pacman. Since I still prefer a GUI software option, I used yay to install Manjaro's pamac-nosnap to my EndeavourOS installation. I did note that once installed, pamac is labelled "Add/Remove Software" and not PAMAC in the EndeavourOS menu.
Looking at memory use via Neofetch and Stacer utilties, KDE Plasma seems more memory efficient than most KDE Plasma Debian-based distros and much more efficient than the KDE Plasma Fedora distro. Overall subjective performance on this 12 year old notebook seemed very similar for Arco, Garuda and Endeavour.
I won't keep my Garuda installation due to forced BTRFS usage, Between the other two, after adding PAMAC to EndeavourOS, I could be happy with either Arco or Endeavour.
12 • Hardware compatibility (by Simon on 2022-07-25 05:04:06 GMT from New Zealand)
This is really a kernel issue, not a distro issue. Regardless of distro, your hardware's not going to work if there's no Linux driver for it... and, again regardless of distro, if there is a Linux driver for it, the default distro kernel can be replaced with a newer one that supports the new hardware. For beginners it can be an ease-of-installation thing, whether a distro uses a recent kernel and/or has it configured properly to support the desired hardware... so I do understand thinking in terms of distro hardware compatibility when recommending distros to beginners... but really it's the Linux kernel, rather than any distribution of it with any other software, that determines hardware compatibility. So, anyone concerned about the compability of a specific piece of hardware should be checking for Linux kernel drivers, not mucking around testing different distros to see if they happen to include them.
13 • Fair review (by LTS user on 2022-07-25 05:36:23 GMT from Germany)
The fairly written review here of the popular rolling release distribution expresses, in my view, everything a new Linux user needs to consider. Of course, many are happy with the rolling release model, but looking at it objectively, it is only understandable that the (commercial) large providers will offer their business customers an OS like MicroOS or Silverblue in the future; besides, of course, the proven LTS distributions like Debian or Ubuntu. When you switch on your computer in the morning at work to drive projects forward, it is simply inconceivable to want the added thrill of any rolling releases.
14 • Xfce :( (by Leon on 2022-07-25 06:11:27 GMT from France)
I highly doubt, I'll be living so long, to see only one single properly looking (OOTB) Xfce based distribution ever.
https://ibb.co/yszgJ94
15 • slax and the name (by Any on 2022-07-25 06:46:40 GMT from Spain)
I stopped downloading Slax when he changed the name.
16 • @ Could-not-take-my-desktop-with (by Leon on 2022-07-25 06:49:20 GMT from France)
I hope you're still here and read this -- it was too late for the answer on the Friday night.
"The problem is... THERE IS NO “ADD” BUTTON IN THE APPEARANCE APPLICATION OF MX 19.4 and I don't know how to install a theme without using that freaking button...
Excuse my ignorance (I'm a stupid newbie), and the lack of clarity in my previous post. I hope I had been clearer this time. By the way, it doesn't matter the specific theme I want to install (which name is “Neutronium”), since I don't know HOW TO DO IT."
You DO NOT NEED the 'Add' button, but you MUST provide the link to the specific theme.
Since the simple answer, 'extract and move to' isn't enough for you, if you do not provide us with the link, we won't know what exact theme you are trying to install.
The thing here is, there are different Neutronium themes around the net and a theme is not the same as a theme, and not every theme will work.
Working Xfce theme in 2022 must consist of xfwm part (for the window borders) and of gtk3 part (for inside the window looks + gtk2 for compatibility reasons), and it must have appropriate folder structure (== path) -- often there is 'one folder too much' in the path, that prevents the theme from being properly recognized.
As you can see here:
Theme unrecognized: https://ibb.co/TkJm4ZR
Theme recognized: https://ibb.co/12QDNVb
And as you can see, this Neutronium works without issues on:
MX 18.3: https://ibb.co/Hrkr8cV
MX 19.4: https://ibb.co/cQQbVJr
MX 21.1: https://ibb.co/kmJkZYT
Mint 20.3: https://ibb.co/jvfMjP6
We could easily explain to you HOW, if you helped us to help you and tell us WHAT ...
17 • Poll (by Someguy on 2022-07-25 06:55:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Noting comments in Q&A, but, for a more complete picture of readers & users, maybe it would also be helpful to have a 'None of the above' option for folks like YT who never use Arch-based OSes, indeed avoid them?
18 • @16 correction (by Leon on 2022-07-25 06:58:43 GMT from France)
The links should've been like this:
MX 18.3: https://ibb.co/cQQbVJr
MX 19.4: https://ibb.co/kmJkZYT
MX 21.1: https://ibb.co/jvfMjP6
Mint 20.3: https://ibb.co/Hrkr8cV
19 • GDM (by Andreas on 2022-07-25 09:07:56 GMT from Czechia)
> I guess GDM assumes we want GNOME and pulls it in
This is a huge mistake. "Don't assume anything", goes the rule, and rightly so. Either the maintainers/devs are seriously lacking in knowledge, or they are just plain "evil". You *do not* make choices like this for the user behind their backs. This, coupled with the crashes mentioned in the reviews is another reason to keep clear of Gnome and the Arch family.
20 • slax name (by Any on 2022-07-25 09:16:58 GMT from Spain)
@15 - error
I mean "I stoped downloading Slax when he changed to Debian."
Slax is a clear allusion to Slackware and when there is no Slackware then there should not be any mention of it.
Debix or Debbix would have been the correct name.
21 • Running desktop environments on Arch Linux base (by zcatav on 2022-07-25 09:17:17 GMT from Turkey)
I don't use Arch BTW.
22 • installing endeavour (by peer on 2022-07-25 09:30:48 GMT from Netherlands)
installation of Endeavour failed:
offline: crash
online kde: failed
online community openbox: failed
23 • Desktops on Arch (by krell on 2022-07-25 09:36:43 GMT from Thailand)
Should have had a I don't use any arch based distro option.
Void is a superio cousin of arch.
For general use Fedora 36 or Clearlinux all the way babe!
24 • EndeavourOS (by borgio3 on 2022-07-25 09:59:21 GMT from Italy)
Hello everyone, in this very moment i'm on EndeavourOS 22.6 OpenBox community edition. Except for the configuration of the Nvidia 470 drivers, installed thanks to the suggestions of the Enedavour development team, no other problems arose. I have adapted some openbox stuff using the terminal and other tools and now it is a perfect system for my needs. Fast, consuming few resources and also aesthetically pleasing. Thanks to the development team.
25 • Slax naming (by sly on 2022-07-25 10:05:36 GMT from Canada)
simple Slax names based on distro type :)
Slackware: Slax
Debian: Slex
NixOS: Slix
Opensuse: Slox
Gentoo: Sloox
Ubuntu: Slux
EasyOS: Sleasy
26 • Closest is not always fastest (by JeffC on 2022-07-25 10:52:13 GMT from United States)
@3
You recommend switching to the closest package mirrors.
Since the days when I was using CrunchBang as my distro of choice and read on their forum that the distro dev used a mirror in Germany because it was faster than any in the UK for him (which was where he lived) I have chosen by highest speed instead of lowest distance.
In my own experience I found a mirror that was about 900 miles (1500 km) away which was faster for me than one that was less than 60 miles (100 km) away (closest to me).
27 • Desktops on Arch (by krell on 2022-07-25 12:06:41 GMT from Thailand)
Mate on Fedora
28 • Hardware Compatibility (by penguinx86 on 2022-07-25 13:35:21 GMT from United States)
I used to have lots of problems with failed installations 10-15 years ago. I'd burn the ISO to a CD or DVD, and the install would error out. I wasted lots of CDs and DVDs because of this. I'm not sure if it was due to hardware incompatibility, bad CDs/DVDs, missing drivers, or maybe just because I was a Noob?
But these days, I rarely have installations fail. I switched to booting from USB live media or installing ISOs in VirtualBox. Occasionally, I have a VirtualBox install fail. Usually a reinstall fixes the problem. If drivers are missing, like Video Drivers, I can usually install them from the VirtualBox Guest Additions ISO.
But installing from USB live media is another story. There are SO MANY distros that do not include compatible Wifi adapter drivers. How can I download missing drivers on a laptop without Wifi? If my Wifi doesn't work out of the box, I ditch that distro and move on. But then, I have to reformat my SSD and reinstall my old reliable distro Linux Mint to get Wifi working again. This is why I've given up installing new distros from USB live media. I'm sticking with what works out of the box, Linux Mint.
29 • Eneavor popularity (by Otis on 2022-07-25 13:40:49 GMT from United States)
Crashy installation. No joy. But, looking at the DW PHR we see it rising gradually and taking aim at the number 1 spot. Tried it twice, once early last year and then again recently. Same thing kept happening at install.. both times thought it was me, my machine, or bad hash match. None of it.
Made me wonder about the rankings here again.. realizing that there could be a negative aspect to some near the top, being clicked on by dozens of people per day just to see what all the ruckus is about by reading the spiel rather than to truly investigate, download, and install. MX is NOT the most popular Linux distribution in the world.
And Endeavor is not the 2nd most.
30 • Running desktop environments on Arch Linux base (by Tim on 2022-07-25 13:43:43 GMT from United States)
I just run "vanilla" Arch Linux with the Awesome window manager. Easy peasy!
31 • finally succesfull install Endeavour (by peer on 2022-07-25 14:05:57 GMT from Netherlands)
see comment #22
Online installation failed because Endeavour could not delete the target partition.
So I removed the partition and then installed Endeavour. Now Endeavour kde plasma is running
32 • Page Hit Rankings (by penguinx86 on 2022-07-25 14:19:38 GMT from United States)
I agree with @29. The page hit rankings don't reflect which distro is really the most popular. It seems like the 'flavour of the week' gets more page hits, because people click out of curiosity. A while back, Fedora was the first distro to include Gnome 40 as the default desktop environment. Fedora got lots of page hits and even beat out Ubuntu for a couple of weeks. But now, Fedora dropped to 7th place, below Ubuntu at 6th place. And what about the bottom of the page hit rankings? A couple of months ago Haiku and Emmabuntus were in the top 10. Now Haiku is in 92nd place and Emmabuntus is in 99th place. How did that happen? I'm also curious how many page hits are from the same people spamming their favorite distro to make it higher in the rankings?
33 • @4 - AGREE! (by mandatory on 2022-07-25 14:26:29 GMT from United States)
Upon last reinstall (Debian Stable), I switched from Cinnamon to Gnome.
Big mistake I deeply regret!
Cinnamon rules.
Gnome drools.
34 • PHR (by Otis on 2022-07-25 15:18:08 GMT from United States)
@32 Yes, it's past the debate point about the "popularity" of a distro and its place on the list here. There's a link on the top right explaining this to users of DW.
My point is mainly how a distro can rise on the list because it is being talked about due to a (partially or fully) negative review, reflecting nothing muc at all about its world wide usage on computers.
35 • EndeavourOS (by Johnny on 2022-07-25 17:24:36 GMT from Estonia)
The space travel theme is pure cringe. I'd never use it for that reason alone.
36 • DEs (by Cheker on 2022-07-25 17:31:50 GMT from Portugal)
I have two Archs (Manjaro, Artix) across two PCs, both have Xfce. My DE of choice used to be KDE but it had some dumb slowdowns (I blame the Nvidia card), so after that I moved to Xfce and now I favor it. Mate is a very close second.
37 • Desktop on Arch (by Robert on 2022-07-25 18:05:32 GMT from United States)
I daily drive Wayfire on my arch machine. It works well, if a bit barebones.
KDE is my preferred desktop, and I keep it installed and check in from time to time to see if enough bugs have been cleared out for me to go back. But lately it's gone from "almost there" to "takes several minutes to log in, and everything is broken when it finally does." Probably something on my end, but I have no idea what and can't be bothered to do a full reinstall.
I quite like MATE as well, and wouldn't mind switching back to that when they get a full Wayland session implemented.
38 • @29 - top of the page hit rankings (by Andy Prough on 2022-07-25 17:58:58 GMT from United States)
> "Made me wonder about the rankings here again.. realizing that there could be a negative aspect to some near the top, being clicked on by dozens of people per day just to see what all the ruckus is about by reading the spiel rather than to truly investigate, download, and install. MX is NOT the most popular Linux distribution in the world."
Don't fool yourself - the top 5 on the page hit rankings are all incredibly good and feature-filled distros. We couldn't even dream about distros like those when I got started with GNU/Linux systems. None of them is the "most used distro in the world", because the most used distro in the world is determined by corporate/enterprise spending and decisions, just like the way that Windoze became the most used OS for corporate offices and the way ChromeOS is so heavily used by schools and universities.
But they probably are the "most often chosen Linux distros by knowledgeable users making their own private, non-corporate decisions".
39 • marketing (by Tad Strange on 2022-07-25 19:01:08 GMT from Canada)
I wonder if "Terminal-Centric" is just Endeavour's way of saying that they are basically an installer for a mildly configured vanilla Arch desktop with few added features.
It's not like you cannot be "terminal-centric" to your hearts content in any other brand of Linux.
Just seems to be an odd thing to make into the primary marketing for the thing.
I tried it. Tend to prefer Manjaro, with it's somewhat more conservative attitude and small array of useful tools.
Plasma desktop, of course. I've got it on an old W520 Thinkpad and want for nothing.
40 • XFCE (by ro0t on 2022-07-25 19:59:04 GMT from Germany)
XFCE until grave.
Nothing else matters.
41 • Poll results (by Robert on 2022-07-25 20:01:12 GMT from United States)
I found the poll results surprising. KDE and Xfce way out ahead, with Gnome well behind, roughly even with window managers. Would've expected Gnome to be near the top what with it being default on most major distros.
But I guess this is about arch, and Arch users know better.
42 • GNOME (by Jesse on 2022-07-25 20:07:24 GMT from Canada)
@41: "I found the poll results surprising. KDE and Xfce way out ahead, with Gnome well behind, roughly even with window managers. Would've expected Gnome to be near the top what with it being default on most major distros."
The idea that "GNOME is the default" is a common, but inaccurate meme. It's really only the default desktop on a few commercially backed distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, SLE). Pretty much all community distributions use something else.
Technically Debian uses GNOME as its "default", but since Debian is such a flexible system iat setup time ts default doesn't really mean anything. Almost all Arch-based, Ubuntu-based, and Slackware-based systems use something else - typically Xfce or KDE Plasma.
43 • @28 hardware compatability (by Titus_Groan on 2022-07-25 20:09:15 GMT from New Zealand)
"There are SO MANY distros that do not include compatible Wifi adapter drivers."
likely due to patents preventing drivers being "freely re-disributed"
yes, you bought the hardware and you would think the drivers were paid for by purchasing the hardware, but software patents dont work like that.
Distros should be aware that by providing a patent encumbered driver, they are exposing themselves - not the end user, to severe penalties for breach of patent terms.
Linux Mint, in particular, in the past, has been quite cavalier in its attitude towards patent encumbered software, particularly audio and video codecs.
44 • Linux Mint (by Friar Tux on 2022-07-25 20:36:12 GMT from Canada)
@43 (Titus_Groan) "Linux Mint, in particular, in the past, has been quite cavalier in its attitude towards patent encumbered software, particularly audio and video codecs." (And WIFI)
I believe this is what made Mint the top distro and has kept it there (despite its position on the DW chart). Cavalier or not, Mint works out-of-box every time and THAT is what folks are looking for. Install and go right to work. If a distro can't do that, I move on to one that can.
45 • Mint (by Jesse on 2022-07-25 22:27:04 GMT from Canada)
@43 and @44: "Linux Mint, in particular, in the past, has been quite cavalier in its attitude towards patent encumbered software, particularly audio and video codecs"
Mint has been the opposite of cavalier toward encumbered software, like wifi drivers and media codecs. Remember earlier versions of Mint shipped with separate editions for people in the USA and Japan where software patents were still a thing. (The rest of the world didn't recognize software patents, so the codecs weren't encumbered in those countries.)
Check out this past announcement, for example: "Linux Mint 11 comes as a live DVD. A live CD is also available for people without a DVD burner or distributors established in the USA and Japan. The live CD comes with fewer applications, no multimedia codecs and no restricted software, making it fit within 700 MB and safely distributable in countries where the legislation allows patents to apply to software."
https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06669
46 • Top 5 PHR (by Otis on 2022-07-25 22:36:10 GMT from United States)
@38, I understand that point, but to mine Mageia, Fedora, and openSuse were in the top 5 just ten years ago. We need not debate the usefulness of any of those distros as they are long standing. Even then, though and incremented throughout Linux history, distros have come and gone irrespective of their high position on that list.
The DW PHR top 5 now are not the top 5 distros as to usage in the world of Linux is an easier thing to understand then to try to pretend that they really are. As to that I'd guess Arch and Debian as the only sure things as to high worldwide popularity.
47 • Arch, no DE yet (by TheTKS on 2022-07-25 23:02:56 GMT from Canada)
I voted Arch CLI because that's what I happen to have at the moment.
I'm trying to get Linux to run with a DE on a 32-bit Chromebook that's out of support, but still works well as a travel laptop for light use. The most detailed instructions I could find online for the "easy" version (ha, ha) for a first try were for Arch and for Debian dual booting a distro on top of ChromeOS kernel on an SD card or USB drive. I went with Arch's more straightforward instructions for my first time trying Arch.
Arch installation instructions from a couple of years back got me a lot of the way there: I got ArchLinuxArm installed (thank you, Arch and ArchARM!) but stuck in boot.
Nikolas on github gave tips for more recent installations and got me through booting to the command line (thank you, Nikolas!).
No wifi, so stuck in a USB wifi dongle and got a working wifi connection (but only if I stuck the USB dongle in after booting - wouldn't pick it up if I fired it up with the dongle already in.) Ping worked, but couldn't download. Another post somewhere (probably Arch wiki about networking) got me past that... something about not having two network managers trying to fight for dominance. I read somewhere that it's always DNS.
I tried updating Arch but failed on my first try. I've gotten as far as a reinstallation to the CLI with working internet again.
I would like to try installing X and a DE next, Xfce.
If I get that to work... then I would really like to get SlackwareARM 15.0 32-bit running on this.
Aside: other than the wifi and post-installation update related problems, the roadblocks I ran into were systemd related. As the "admin" of only a few single-user computers, I don't see what benefits systemd brings me and really didn't enjoy the time I spent with it.
TKS
48 • Hardware compatibility (by Mike on 2022-07-26 11:18:15 GMT from Netherlands)
I have used OpenSuse for many years, until I bought a new desktop.
Suddenly I had issues with my soundcard. Everytime sound started with a pop.
More people mentioned having this issue on multiple places on the internet. No solution was found. No reaction on the forum. I decided to move to a different distro that did not have the issue. I tried later releases but the problem remained.
What made me sad was that no response came on the OpenSuse forum.
Now I have moved on.
49 • Databases of compatible hardware (by Otis on 2022-07-26 16:57:56 GMT from United States)
Thanking Jesse for his explanation of review(s) overview in the Q&A section of DW Weekly, also providing the link to three important lists provided at DW: 1. Organizations which sell computers with Linux/BSD pre-installed, 2. Phones and tabletsm, and (to me the biggie) 3. Databases of compatible hardware.
I will peruse that third one just out of curiosity as to my three laptop's varying hardware, and mainly to see how much the list could aid in distro choices to even bother with.
50 • OpenSUSE (by qwerty99 on 2022-07-26 17:45:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
The micro OS download for OpenSUSE is 3.7GB! Some micro OS!
51 • Sound @48 (by Cheker on 2022-07-26 17:47:06 GMT from Portugal)
I suspect I know what you're describing:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1230833/annoying-click-popping-sound-on-ubuntu-20-04
Elijah Lynn's answer is what did it for me. I saw this behaviour on several distros.
52 • DW and Distro Popularity (by Samuel on 2022-07-26 20:22:47 GMT from South Africa)
How many people out there use Linux but do not visit DW? Sure there is no way of knowing how many. Just hearing people talk about a linux desktop distro or a Linux desktop alternative to other OSes, Ubuntu seems to be by far the most popular distro in terms of long term installations in machines. Among the visitors to DW it might be the first 5 on PHR.
53 • distro popularity (by dave on 2022-07-27 03:39:27 GMT from United States)
@52 I have to agree with this. Ubuntu is easily the Linux distribution that is most well known among normies. For many normies, Ubuntu is synonymous with Linux. Mint is easily 2nd. One hypothetical way to prove this could be to take stock of all the news clips with visible computer screens. The most common sightings are (obviously) Windows, OSX and a distant 3rd is stock Ubuntu using Unity/Gnome.. you'll basically never see anything beyond that (which is sad)..
54 • DW popularity list (by Leon on 2022-07-27 07:24:59 GMT from France)
@29, @32, @34, @38, @46, @52, @53
First and foremost, DW list is partially wrong. Ubuntu should be at least at 4th place (all *buntu 2'193), however, both, the DW and the DW ranking are actually irrelevant.
Why?
Normal people don't care for the OS. They buy a new PC and the OS comes preinstalled.
It'll usually come with Windows or rarely with macOS, and it'll stay at it until EOL.
When the PC becomes unbearably slow, normal people get another PC.
Sometimes, after HW isn't supported or performant enough, some will try to 'breathe it the 2nd life'.
Then they will simply download Ubuntu, which will stay there for the next couple of years.
After Ubuntu, if they still can't or won't part from 'the good old potato' ...
They might start experimenting with different distributions.
Note that that's the normal case because ...
Normal people don't care for the OS -- they care for their applications.
Normal people don't care for the PC, nor they know of DW.
DW ranking list is comparable to a zoo.
Most people will stand in front of some caged exotic beast.
However, at home, they'll still keep their kitty and won't get a tiger.
If I think of myself and my own clicks, I doubt that I ever clicked once on Fedora or Ubuntu.
I know where I can get them, if and when I need them, but ...
I clicked countless times on some 'junkstrybutions', as it is much easier to get some messed up distribution from DW, then to go and hunt some messed up distribution from their own website, which will redirect one to some mirrors page, which will then redirect to some ... whatever.
As example: Each time when I want to show some badly miss-configured Xfce, I download the latest MX-Linux from DW, make a couple of screenshots, and trash the ISO again. Brings ranking up. And then, the people who saw the screenshots and won't believe that something can really be that bad, also go to DW and download it for themselves to try. DW ranking again goes up ...
55 • Distrowatch distro popularity list is irrelevant (by Thinking normie on 2022-07-27 22:50:57 GMT from France)
@29, @32, @34, @38, @46, @52, @53, @54
Who can really disagree with Leon?
Distrowatch measures Distrowatch readers clicks on distro names. That's indeed just Distrowatch buzz stats, and no distro popularity ranking at all. First of all you have to know that Ditrowatch exists to read it. Secondly there's no directe connection between using a distro a clicking links on Distrowatch!
I myself has been using Ubuntu on several machine for 15 years and Manjaro on a machine for nearly 4 years. Guess what? I almost never click on Ubuntu or Manjaro articles when having a look at Distrowatch. When i first installed Ubuntu on a machine in 2007 - the only distro that really worked after installation, i almost stopped reading Distrowatch articles on Ubuntu. Same for Manjaro in 2018...
I don't read Distrowatch to get information about distros i use because i know them and get better information about them elsewhere. I read Distrowatch to keep an eye on whats's going on with distros I DO NOT use.
I wouldn't be surprised that most distro hits on Distrowatch are actually connected with distros readers don't use at all themselves either.
56 • Distrowatch distro popularity list is irrelevant (ERRATUM) (by Thinking normie on 2022-07-27 22:55:18 GMT from France)
Erratum:
Secondly there's no direct connection between using a distro AND clicking links on Distrowatch!
57 • Closest mirror does not yield fastest download (by Thinking normie on 2022-07-27 23:42:10 GMT from France)
@26, @3
JeffC's right.
There several reasons that make a download quicker or slower from one server compared to another one.
First of all, the geographically nearest server from you may be too slow or too overloaded.
And then, there is all the Internet infrastructure between the server and your machine, beginning with the server's Internet acces link.
From Paris (France) i clearly get better results from californian mirrors set by US data carriers big shots (seemingly server farms with high throughput, nearly directly connected to major Internet backbones) than from the server of the university lab just across the Seine river, less than 2 miles away from my home (obvioulsy a more modest server with a much more limited Internet connection...).
If a distro has a central download location (like Ubuntu.com) i use it because it certainly is the most used server and Internet operator caches usually simply make it the quickest download source. Manjaro (maybe any Arch-based distro?) has an option on Pacman that allows selecting the currently quickest responding mirror (and usually selects for me an Austrian server, far from Paris-located mirrors, across more than one border). Otherwise from experience i choose big Internet-operator-hosted mirrors in Norhwestern Europe or Northern America (intercontinental and continental Internet backbones interconnexions matter more than pure geography...).
58 • Rankings (by asdfg12 on 2022-07-28 05:21:29 GMT from Germany)
@54 That is true in many respects. I myself, like many others, just click on one of the top distros to read the latest comments and of course that drives up their rankings. I've also noticed that there seems to be a rather childish clicking competition among users of certain related distros (like Debian-Ubuntu, Arch-Manjaro-Endeavour, even Mageia-OpenMandriva). I've often seen, for example, a new overly jubilant review gets positive feedback ("Was this review helpful?") and then massive downvoting shortly afterwards. Or when there is a critical review, that almost immediately afterwards effusive counterstatements are written or that the fans of the mother distribution have nothing better to do than to portray the derivative as negatively as possible.
59 • How to install desktop themes in Xfce (by Could-not-take-my-desktop-with on 2022-07-28 05:44:39 GMT from Brazil)
@16
Hey Leon, thanks for trying to help me!
The Xfce desktop theme I wasn't able to install is “Neutronium Xfwm4”, labeled as 46566-Neutronium-Xfwm4.tar.bz2 and available for download at least in these two addresses:
https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1016569
https://apps.plasma-bigscreen.org/p/1016569/
Both webpages have a blue button suggestively called “Install”, but something is telling me I should not click on it... (Well, the OS running on my PC is a frugal install of MX 19.4 AHS using a persistent storage that is being gradually configured to remaster the distro. And since I accidentaly destroyed the previous install, it made me affraid of everything online.)
Learning Linux sometimes is daunting for a newbie, but the hard way of learning is better than the easy way. So I prefer not to perform the online method of installing “Neutronium Xfwm4”. If I couldn't do it offline, then I will upgrade to MX 21.1 and do it by means of the ADD button of the Appearance application.
Either way, I appreciate your solicitude. Thanks once again for taking the time to teach me how to beautify the Xfce desktop! Your words in post #14 are a holy truth. Every distro under the Sun has a terrible look OOTB. Even MS Windows is ugly as hell.
Believe me: My remaster of MX 19.4 AHS is getting incredibly beautiful and easy to use __ too different from the original version made by the MX team. In the near future, when it will be finished and updated, I'd like to know a trustful file-sharing website where I could place it to be downloaded by anybody around the world. Maybe I call it “MX 19.4 AHS x64 Pretty Xfce Edition”.
60 • Desktop Environment on Arch (by Dr.J on 2022-07-28 08:06:40 GMT from Germany)
we have several notebooks in the household, all running Archlinux. I have been using Arch for more than 10 years, but have slimmed it down a bit (without systemd, runit instead; no display manager, autologin via agetty, etc.). As DE we use XFCE and Openbox. I prefer the latter, because even though I like XFCE, it runs too buggy. Lots of trouble with the panels (which don't automatically hide as they should) or autostarts at login. Openbox doesn't cause any problems of this kind. And it's fantastically easy once you get used to the syntax of the three configuration files. If I had to use a tiling window manager, I would install Awesome, which I tried for some time but don't really need.
61 • Failure of an ISO to install (by DachshundMan on 2022-07-28 09:40:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
If I get an ISO that fails to install I simply download a different distro as I am not so fixated on any particular distro that I must have it. This how I came to use Mint Mate which I am writing this on now. Previously I was using Manjaro XFCE until some of the programs I installed from the AUR messed up the updating and I could not fix it in a short time. Instead of spending a lot of time to fix it I just tried a few ISOs until I found one that (a) installed OK and (b) laid things out in a way that suited me. Normally I try to stick to distros near the top of the DistroWatch ranking as I reckon they will probably not have many problems.
I agree with Jesse that nobody should be blamed for failures to install due to HW incompatibilities. However as I feel, maybe wrongly, that the big distros should install more reliably I normally recommend them if asked.
In my limited experience big name HW is just as likely as a home built system to have compatibility issues.
62 • Slax (by Norbert on 2022-07-28 11:07:57 GMT from France)
@25 good distro chuckle
63 • DW PHR List (by Otis on 2022-07-29 15:08:02 GMT from United States)
@55 Distrowatch provides many good services to the Linux community, and the computing community at large. One of the best and most used I'm sure is the PHR list itself. A hundred distros right there, each one on the list a link to info about it, most with reviews here and linked to other sites with reviews, not to mention each distro's download links.
One can come here to this clearinghouse for Linux distros and explore to one's heart's delight via that PHR list, not just get an idea as to how many others are exploring by looking at the order of distros on the list.
64 • @59 (by Could-not-take-my-desktop-with) (by Leonie on 2022-07-29 17:01:53 GMT from Netherlands)
"Learning Linux sometimes is daunting for a newbie, but the hard way of learning is better than the easy way. So I prefer not to perform the online method of installing “Neutronium Xfwm4”. If I couldn't do it offline, then I will upgrade to MX 21.1 and do it by means of the ADD button of the Appearance application."
I went back and was reading what you wrote, what Leon responded and also Jesse's explanation.
Jesse's explanation was minimal and not very useful for a noob. Leon tried to help, but I'm somehow insecure did it actually help you or not, since from your writing above ...
First of all, you can easily 'do it offline'. You just go to the website and download the theme.
https://ibb.co/dK4LP39
https://ibb.co/SsxTZB5
If in doubt that it could be a malicious file, you can check that online too:
https://ibb.co/nDf7dHP
As Jesse and Leon already explained, all you need to do is to unpack the theme and move it inside the hidden folder .themes inside your home directory -- AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO FIND IT -- despite your claim 'I could not find it'.
You did install the theme, but you didn't know the very basics, and those, you couldn't find where to activate, what you just installed.
As Leon already wrote, a full Xfce theme consists of three parts: gtk2, gtk3 and xfwm4.
However, some themes are incomplete and do not have all of those parts, and that's why they are not called Xfce theme, but GTK or xfwm themes.
This is what happened to you, after reading Jesse's incomplete explanation ...
Jesse didn't mention that Xfce needs two different settings, on two different places, to set up the theme, but mentioned only 'Appearance', and you, who downloaded only xfwm theme (without GTK part), of course didn't find anything, and even with 'Add' button, you wouldn't find it.
Xfce settings has separate 'Appearance' and 'Window Manager' settings. Your Neutronium theme, which consists only of xfwm part of the theme, is visible only under 'Window Manager', and since it is missing the GTK part, it can not be shown under 'Appearance', as of Jesse's writing.
With other words, inside 'Appearance', one will find the GTK theme and icons, but the window borders (xfwm4 part, like Neutronium), will appear only under 'Window Manager'!
https://ibb.co/hDcRVvm
Simply move your downloaded themes in .themes, and select them under 'Appearance' and 'Window Manager' settings.
https://ibb.co/HK86kmV
This is what it could look like, your MX 19.4:
https://ibb.co/qFgFvjc
https://ibb.co/hKSdQdY
https://ibb.co/25S7rc2
BUT -- there is one small caveat.
One can move the themes either inside the user folder (home) or inside the system folder (usr/share/themes). Both of them will will 'work', but there is a big difference between.
Sometimes, some program might need to run with administrative privileges, and it's highly probable, that it will not use the theme installed in .themes folder inside the home, but that it will insist on the theme installed inside /usr/share/themes.
Will say, it might happen that you occasionally get two completely different themes in two different windows -- different GTK theme, different window borders and different icons and mouse cursor, if you did also change them, and installed them inside .icons folder in your home.
BTW, there is a free and easy way to share any file, incl. movies and ISO's, but for more control, you should make an account -- even it also works without.
https://ibb.co/K9bsRh3
The website is reliable and anonymous -- as much as anything web can be anonymous. ;)
Number of Comments: 64
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Hybryde Linux
Hybryde Linux was an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop. Its most unusual feature was an option to switch rapidly between multiple desktop environments and window manager without logging out - the list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode), KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. This was achieved via a highly customisable Hy-menu, which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. All open applications are carried to any of the available desktops. The system offers an interesting way to work fluidly in a multi-desktop environment.
Status: Discontinued
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