 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1099, 2 December 2024 |
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Welcome to this year's 49th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
How much RAM does my operating system use and how much should it be using? How much does it need to use? These are questions which regularly haunt people, especially those who are working with limited hardware specifications. This week, in our Questions and Answers column, we talk about measuring RAM consumption and discuss what might make RAM statistics change over time. Before that, we begin this week with a look at a distribution which attempts to offer the desktop experience of Windows with the under-the-hood technology of Ubuntu. The project, called Anduin OS, is a recent addition to the DistroWatch database and we report on how this distribution strives to make new Windows-to-Linux migrants feel at home. Then, in our News section, we report on SUSE's ongoing rebranding efforts and share an update on UBports gearing up for its next major release. Plus we talk about Murena's new NFC-free phone and welcome the return of Linux Mint to the top of our page hit ranking chart. Then we share highlights from last week's releases and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
AnduinOS 1.0.1
AnduinOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the GNOME desktop environment. The project offers a smaller download compared to its parent (1.6GB for Anduin vs 4.8GB for Ubuntu) and Anduin's desktop theme and layout are meant to mimic Microsoft Windows. The goal appears to be to provide an operating system with the capabilities of Ubuntu while offering a familiar look and feel for former Windows users. In other words, picture a more minimal version of Zorin OS.
One key difference between Anduin and Ubuntu, which probably accounts for a big chunk of the differences between the sizes of the ISO files, is Anduin ships different ISO files for each supported language. There are about 20 supported languages and each one is offered through a different ISO file. This means the user needs to start their experience by seeking out their language code (such as en_US or pt_BR) in a list of ISO files and downloading the proper one. Each ISO has its own SHA256 checksum and an associated torrent.
AnduinOS's live media boots to the GNOME desktop. GNOME has been customized with a special, Windows-like layout which places a panel across the bottom of the screen. This panel holds a weather widget, application menu button, some quick-launch icons, and a system tray. The weather widget defaults to showing us what the weather is in California, USA. On the desktop are three icons for opening the file manager, the trash folder, and the system installer.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- The GNOME Files file manager
(full image size: 222kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The default theme is dark (black with blue) and the mouse pointer has been set up to look and act like the Windows pointer, including the blue spinning "busy" mouse cursor. Clicking on the application menu button opens a window in the middle of the desktop which shows us a grid of application launchers. Above the grid we find a search field for filtering the displayed icons.
Installing
Anduin uses the Ubiquity system installer. This graphical installer, inherited from Ubuntu, does a good job of walking us through picking our language, selecting our keyboard layout, and selecting whether to download updates during the install process. I opted not to fetch updates, but did click a box to indicate I wanted media codecs and third-party hardware support such as wi-fi drivers.
Ubiquity offers guided and manual disk partitioning. The manual approach is pleasantly simple and walks us through a point-and-click experience. The guided approach sets up a single ext4 partition with a swap file. Optionally, we can enable LVM for the root filesystem. Then the system installer asks us to make up a username and password combination and copies its packages to the local drive. When it finishes it offers to restart the computer.
I'd like to comment that finding the controls for logging out or shutting down the computer is not immediately obvious. There is no sign out option in the application menu, and (to my eye) no obvious "user" menu on the desktop. Signing out is accomplished by clicking the system tray (not the clock, but any icon left of the clock). This brings up a series of options I'll mention later. From the list we can choose the "Power Off/Log Out" options.
First impressions
The first time my new copy of Anduin booted it brought me to a graphical login screen that appeared to be missing a few components. There was a panel across the top of the screen and the distribution's name at the bottom. However, there was no login prompt or method by which I could select a user account. The system then locked up and failed to respond to keyboard or mouse input, necessitating a hard restart. The next boot and the next all gave the same result. There weren't any other boot menu options to try and it was looking as though my trial might come to a premature close.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- Exploring the application menu
(full image size: 257kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Then, when looking through the GRUB settings, I discovered a variable in the kernel command like called "vt_handoff". Disabling this parameter (erasing it from the command line before booting) fixed my issue and the system booted normally, presenting me with a working login screen, and allowing me to sign in.
The default desktop session runs GNOME on Wayland, though there is a second session option for running GNOME on X11. Apart from memory consumption, the two session options seemed to be nearly identical in terms of performance, features, and stability.
Earlier I mentioned the system tray is unusual. The system tray on Anduin also functions as a mini settings panel. Clicking it opens a menu where we can quickly access volume, screen brightness, networking, sign out, and battery options. It's a compact menu of settings that functions a little differently than the trays of most other distributions, but I think it is easy enough to navigate, once we find it. The tray menu also has a button for launching the full featured GNOME Settings panel. The full settings panel helps us find and adjust options for the entire desktop along with theme, privacy controls, touchpad settings, and linked cloud accounts.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- The system tray and compact settings panel
(full image size: 296kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Included software
The distribution ships with a fairly minimal collection of applications. The Firefox web browser is featured along with the GNOME Files file manager, the gEdit text editor, the Shotwell image manager, and a document viewer. The Cheese webcam utility is installed along with a security key and password manager. The "key" part of this tool seems to work well enough, but I didn't find an obvious way to add new passwords to the manager,
We can also find the Rhythmbox and Totem media players in the application menu. These utilities are accompanied by media codecs for most multimedia formats.
Instead of GNOME Terminal, Anduin ships with a simple virtual terminal called kgx. This terminal works, but doesn't seem to have any options. I couldn't find a way to manage tabs, disable the blinking cursor, or change the font. I will say though that I appreciate the kgx titlebar turns red when we run commands using sudo. While kgx was functional, I eventually downloaded QTerminal, another fairly minimal virtual terminal, which makes it easy to adjust the cursor, layout and font.
In the background we find the GNU command line utilities, the GNU Compiler Collection, and a full selection of manual pages. Anduin runs systemd as its init software and runs on version 6.8 of the Linux kernel.
I'd like to note that Anduin OS 1.0.1 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy" and pulls from Jammy's package repositories. However, the kernel included in the distribution appears to be from Ubuntu 24.04 "Noble". Apart from the kernel package, I think everything else is pulled from Ubuntu 22.04. This makes Anduin 1.0.1 over two years old, effectively, at the time of its release.
I'd also like to mention the GNOME documentation is missing. Trying to access the Help option from any of the GNOME applications (such as Totem or Files) had no effect. There appears to be no documentation on the distribution, apart from the command line manual pages.
Hardware
I found Anduin worked well in VirtualBox. The distribution provided average desktop performance, ran smoothly, and integrated well in the virtual machine environment. When running on my laptop, again, everything worked and the distribution was stable. My one issue was with mouse pointer behaviour. The GNOME desktop didn't register taps on the touchpad as clicks, though this could be changed in the settings panel. I also found it awkward that the touchpad used "natural" scrolling while a separate mouse device would use classic scrolling. I'm not a fan of "natural" (or "inverse") scrolling, but I can get used to it. Switching back and forth between the two styles is too weird for me and I also changed this behaviour in the settings panel.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- Browsing the settings panel
(full image size: 253kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Compared to its parent, Anduin has quite different resource requirements, though in different directions. Anduin used 11.5GB of disk space, plus another 500MB for a swap file, making its size on the disk 12GB in total. Ubuntu 22.04, by comparison, used just 5GB of disk space. On the other hand, Ubuntu 22.04 used 1,000MB of RAM with the same ext4 filesystem and desktop in these test environments while Anduin used 680MB. Or at least it used 680MB when logged into the Wayland session, when signed into an X11 session, Anduin used 770MB of RAM. In any event, the distribution uses a lot less memory than its parent, but consumed about twice as much disk space.
Software management
While using Anduin there were no notifications letting me know when new software updates became available. I also found there is no software centre or update manager. There is an entry in the application grid called "Apps Store". Clicking this entry opens the Firefox browser and shows us documentation which explains we will need to browse for software on-line (on the Anduin store page) and then use the terminal to add packages to our system.
AnduinOS 1.0.1 -- The application store
(full image size: 209kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
We are shown a list of software categories we can browse. When we find an application we want the website displays the commands we need to paste into the terminal to fetch the software. This is unusually cumbersome and awkward, even compared to classic package managers like Synaptic. The instructions are overly complex too. For example, to install the GNU Image Manipulation Program and configure it we're told to run the following:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gimp
cd /tmp
#https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP.git
mkdir /tmp/PhotoGIMP
git clone https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP.git /tmp/PhotoGIMP
mkdir -p ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/
rsync -Aavx --update --delete /tmp/PhotoGIMP/.var/app/org.gimp.GIMP/config/GIMP/2.10/ ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/
rm -rf /tmp/PhotoGIMP
When we compare this to Ubuntu and its community editions where the procedure is to use a software centre and click the Install button next to an application's entry or running "sudo apt install gimp", this is a lot of extra steps.
As I mentioned above, there is no update manager in Anduin, any updates we want to fetch must be handled using the APT command line tools. This approach works, but it's not an ideal situation for people newly arriving from Windows who are unfamiliar with the Linux command line. APT functioned well for me, grabbing over 500MB of updates on my first day with the distribution.
Anduin does not include Snap or Flatpak support. The latter seems like an oversight since finding and installing Flatpak bundles from the Flathub repository seems like a straight forward way to introduce Windows users to fetching applications on Linux.
Conclusions
AnduinOS appears to be a young project and, while it has a nice idea in mind (Ubuntu customized to better suit former Windows users), it isn't doing a lot to cater to people migrating from Windows, apart from using a familiar theme. There isn't any effort to support portable packages, run Windows executables (with WINE), offer first-run tutorials, or even include documentation for all the new applications people will be discovering. Also, the lack of a proper software centre in favour of having users fetch programs using the command line is likely to immediately turn off newcomers.
What we end up with is basically Ubuntu with a Windows-like desktop layout, which is a step in the right direction, but its bare bones nature makes Linux seem like a poor replacement for Windows. It's like a Lite edition of Windows or a cheap clone, with poorer software management rather than the proper replacement it could be. When I compare AnduinOS to other projects with similar goals, such as Zorin OS, the difference becomes more obvious. Zorin is based on the latest Ubuntu LTS release, not a platform two years older, it offers documentation, Windows application compatibility, tools like Zorin Connect for working with mobile devices, and portable application support. It also has full and light editions to cater to a range of hardware requirements.
The AnduinOS project isn't doing a bad job - it is providing a workable, functional operating system that can work well and pull from Ubuntu's massive software repositories. It's easy to set up, and it even looks a little bit like Windows to make people feel more comfortable with the layout of the desktop. However, I don't think it is (at this time) doing a good job of bridging the gap between Windows and Linux for newcomers.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
AnduinOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: N/A from 0 review(s).
Have you used AnduinOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports gearing up for next major version, Murena offering NFC phone, Mint rises to the top of the charts
Back in July we reported the SUSE organization had asked openSUSE, its community branch, to rebrand. This rebranding effort is continuing across products and services SUSE provides. ZDNet shares an overview: "SUSE announced a significant rebranding effort, several new product offerings, and the launch of SUSE AI, a secure platform for deploying and running generative AI (gen AI) applications. SUSE has renamed its entire portfolio to make product names more descriptive and customer-friendly. Notable changes include: Rancher, SUSE's Kubernetes offering, is now SUSE Rancher. Liberty Linux, the company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)/CentOS clone and support offering, becomes SUSE Multi Linux Support. Harvester is rebranded as SUSE Virtualization. Longhorn is now SUSE Storage. Why? Well, just look at the names. While Rancher is a well-known Kubernetes management service and program, nothing about the name that said 'SUSE.' The others had even less of a connection with the parent company. Besides, when I say Harvester or Longhorn, do you think virtualization and storage? I don't think so!"
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The UBports team has published an update as the project works towards its launch of version 24.04, estimated to arrive in early 2025. "Music and Calendar core apps have had an update along with Weather and Clock and behind the scenes there has been more work getting ready for Noble.
Marius said that we could expect quite a nice version of 24.04 to be ready early next year but a reasonably functioning build might be released as soon as just before Christmas. Anyone who can is urged to come forward to help with the packaging and compiling work. If you can't get in touch via Telegram you can use the forum. Our new approach will be to announce set launch dates (subject to any delay for safety reasons) and run with what we have by then. Previously we have waited around until we felt that we had 'enough'.
Alfred mentioned that plug-and-play for displays is now working in Mir2. (Actually Mir 1.8.) It has been merged for Focal too so will patch the display dropping bug." The newsletter also discusses new web browser development, VoLTE progress, and third-party app updates.
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The Murena project has unveiled a new smartphone which will ship with the organization's /e/OS de-Googled flavour of Android. The new phone, called the CMF Phone 1, provides long battery life, privacy features, and is a non-NFC device. Additional details can be found in the organization's announcement with pre-order options available through the Murena shop.
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Finally, some non-news news. For the past handful of years the MX Linux distribution has been at the top of the DistroWatch page hit ranking charts. The charts don't measure install base, quality, or popularity, it just indicates (on average) how many people visit a particular project's information page. While past distributions to grace the top of the PHR list (such as PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint) were usually geared specifically to beginners, MX Linux stood out as being different. While MX Linux isn't difficult to use, its target audience is more experienced people seeking stability and efficient tools, a system that works reliably and stays out of the way.
MX's approach gained it a lot of attention in YouTube reviews and Top Distros of the Year lists by Linux reviewers. This steady flow of attention has kept it at the top of our page hits for a few years. This past week Linux Mint regained its position at the top of the PHR. This follows a strong release with Linux Mint 22 earlier this year, as well as its focus on beginner friendliness. It doesn't hurt Linux Mint 22 appeared at the top of some recommended lists this year. Welcome to all you curious visitors who are interested in Linux Mint and other fantastic projects!
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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) |
Measuring RAM usage
Ballooning-memory asks: This time last year I was running a NuTyX Enlightenment laptop that would boot on 220MB of RAM. I had another laptop that ran Arch with Enlightenment and that used 240MB of RAM at boot.
Now, 12 months on, I am lucky if I can get either distro running under 500MB. The kernel seems to have grown by 200MB and PipeWire seems to have done the rest.
I realise that things move on, but I didn't see any improvement for that doubling of RAM. Any advice?
DistroWatch answers: Two of my favourite questions are: What do we know? And why do we think we know it? These questions remind me to check on my ideas and the assumptions which led me to them.
The reason I bring this up is I can certainly believe a distribution's memory footprint could grow, even double, over the span of a year. People tend to install new programs, pull in new dependencies or fresh versions of packages which add new features, and enable new background services. Sometimes we do these things without even noticing. However, my mind tripped over the idea that the Linux kernel was using 200MB more RAM now than it was a year ago.
The Linux kernel, even on larger or mainstream Linux distributions, tends to be quite a bit smaller than 200MB. Usually the kernel takes up between 10MB and 25MB of memory. For instance, I checked an Ubuntu distribution while writing this response and the kernel was using 19MB of memory. Unless something has gone very wrong, the kernel will not be using 200MB of RAM.
If you are interested in checking the size of your own kernel, we talked about how to do that in a previous article called The size of the Linux kernel. In short, running the command "dmesg | grep Memory" should give you information on how much RAM the kernel is using in kilobytes (kB).
This still leaves us with the question of how the system went from reporting about 220MB of memory usage to 500MB. I suspect there are two possibilities. One is that the memory statistics are being reported by two separate programs (or by the same program in two separate ways). Some utilities will report just how much memory is in use by applications. This is memory which cannot be repurposed for anything else. Other utilities will report the amount of memory being consumed by applications and by cache. Cache is memory which holds files that have been read from the disk and kept in RAM for quick access. Cache can be quickly repurposed and used for other things. We shared the different ways to measure memory in an earlier article called Types of memory usage and running Linux on older computers.
In this instance it is possible one utility is reporting 220MB of RAM is being actively used while another tool is reporting 500MB of RAM is being consumed by applications and cache. Both are correct, they're just reporting the information differently.
Another possibility is the system really is using up more memory now that it was a year ago. Exactly why may be tricky to discover as it could be a case where one new program is using up an additional 250MB of RAM. However, it could also be that 25 programs are using an average of an extra 10MB each. Without having a snapshot of the system in its original state for comparison it'll be hard to track down multiple larger programs.
To see which applications on your computer are the largest memory consumers, and possibly identify the culprit, run the top command as follows:
top -o "%MEM"
The above command shows a list of processes on the system, sorted with the ones consuming the most RAM at the top of the list. This will help us track down which programs are gobbling up memory. You may find a large application or background service which is consuming RAM which you do not need, allowing you to uninstall it.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
YunoHost 12.0
YunoHost is a Debian-based distribution which strives to make it easy to quickly set up a server and host web applications. The project has relesed a new version based on Debian 12 "Bookworm". "YunoHost now depends on Debian 12. The user portal and SSO (Single Sign On) system have been split into three distinct pieces: SSOwat now only manages the SSO/ACL logic (as a nginx Lua middleware); yunohost-portal-api: A new 'portal API' service delivering authentication cookies and allowing users to retrieve/update infos; yunohost-portal: A new login and homepage web portal. Simplified subdomain addition during app install (they can now be installed with a Let's Encrypt certificate directly from the app install form instead of going through dozens of clicks). The installation script has been reworked with a simpler flow and UI (instead of the old ncurses/whiptail). The base YunoHost setup is now lighter: MySQL/MariaDB and PHP are not installed by default anymore (apps will explicitly depend on them hence everything gets installed only when needed)." Additional information is provided in the project's release announcement.
Emmabuntus DE5-1.03
The Emmabuntüs project is a desktop Linux distribution with editions based on Debian's Stable branch with both the Xfce and LXQt desktop environments available. The project has fixed some issues with the ISO which could cause problems when used with specific image writers. The new Emmabuntüs DE5-1.03 release also improves braille support. The release announcement states: "This new version of our distribution mainly concerns updates of some embedded software, the fix for the use of bootable USB stick creators with the precious help of Thomas, the Xorriso developer, and the addition of the ibus-braille utility enabling 6 dots writing via the keyboard like the Perkins method. Emmabuntüs DE 5 1.03 includes the following new features and enhancements: Based on the Debian 12.8 'Bookworm' operating system; added ibus-braille accessibility function for 6 dots writing via the keyboard like the Perkins method; fix of ISO usage by the bootable USB stick creators Etcher and MintStick, following the evolution of the Syslinux replacement by GRUB-PC; updates: Firefox 128.4.0esr, Thunderbird 128.4.3esr, Warpinator 1.8.6, Cahiers débutant Debian 12.7, deb-get 0.4.3, TurboPrint 2.57."
elementary OS 8.0
The elementary OS project has announced the release of version 8.0 of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution. The new release focuses on adjusting application permissions and expanding the default Flatpak repositories: "Application settings has an all-new design that expands your control over permissions. We now support adjusting the run-time permissions in Flatpak's Permissions Store - these are set when an app explicitly asks for your permission to access a feature while it's running. So if you've previously denied an app access to run in the background or granted an app permission to set the wallpaper, you can change your mind at any time and adjust permissions here. We've also adjusted the language of install-time permissions - aka sandbox holes - to be more clear that these represent advanced system access and the implications of adjusting them. Plus the descriptions of several individual items were changed based on your feedback to use less technical language. And app permission pages now show the app's icon and description." Details on the changes along with screenshots can be found in the release announcement.
elementary Os 8.0 -- The Pantheon desktop
(full image size: 4.4MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
Armbian 14.11.1
The Armbian team has announced the release of Armbian 24.11.1, the updated build of the project's Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed primarily for ARM development boards. The new release updates the Linux kernel to version 6.6.60 and brings other significant improvements: "We are thrilled to announce Armbian release 24.11.1, packed with significant updates across our entire ecosystem. These updates are aimed at enhancing functionality, expanding hardware support and refining the user experience for both developers and everyday SBC users. Core system updates: the updated build system introduces new tools for faster builds and seamless integration; optimized compilation workflows and prebuilt configurations make deploying custom firmware easier and more efficient, especially for developers focusing on specialized projects; Armbian Config Next Generation has seen improvements in hardware control, streamlined service management and automated configuration scripting...." See the release announcement and the release changelog for further details.
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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: 3,123
- Total data uploaded: 46.0TB
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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) |
RAM usage over the years
In our Questions and Answers column this week we talked about RAM usage, how it tends to grow over time, and different ways of measuring it. While the RAM usage of most operating systems tends to rise over time, people can avoid increasing their resource requirements by switching desktop environments, disabling services, or even switching to lighter operating systems.
Linux users in particular have a lot of options from which to choose and can downsize to smaller platforms faster than distributions grow.
We'd like to hear whether your RAM requirements today are higher or lower on your main computer than they were five years ago. Let us know how you're combating bloat in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on including desktop-specific testing distribution in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Is your RAM usage higher or lower than it was five years ago?
| Much higher: | 556 (20%) |
| Slightly higher: | 862 (31%) |
| About the same: | 1083 (39%) |
| Slightly Lower: | 42 (2%) |
| Much Lower: | 15 (1%) |
| Unknown: | 209 (8%) |
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| Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 9 December 2024. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. 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)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • RAM/bloat (by Juan Bolsa on 2024-12-02 01:22:51 GMT from United States)
Just doubled to 16gb from 8. Got a Ryzen 7 to handle video and browsers better, seems to be working.
2 • MX linux (by Pumpino on 2024-12-02 01:44:24 GMT from Australia)
I don't know about anyone else, but I've always been sceptical of MX linux holding the top spot for years. I don't find the distro especially unique and I find it hard to believe that it would consistently receive more clicks than other distros for so long. Maybe someone script has stopped reloading the page.
3 • 4GB is still OK (by Mint4TheWin on 2024-12-02 01:47:29 GMT from France)
I used to have a computer with 4GB of RAM around 5 years ago. At this time, 8GB was the near future, and 16GB was projected to be just enough 5 years later, so about today.
I won't say much about others OS than *nix but 4GB of RAM nowadays is, when not having a bunch of browser tabs, still pretty decent.
So maybe the Moore's law didn't happened for RAM, or maybe not in the Linux/BSD world, because I rarely use more than 4GB, not even about 2GB on average (without counting file cache and zRAM swap), and never get out of memory kills, except after opening some wild javascript websites.
Maybe it's just because penguins have no fear for obsolescence...
4 • MX (by Jesse on 2024-12-02 01:51:05 GMT from Canada)
@2: " Maybe someone script has stopped reloading the page."
I've heard conspiracy theories like this every week for the past four years. There is no basis to any of them. Even if MX (or another distro) had a script that loaded their page, or if they added a bookmark to their default browser try to increase their page clicks, it wouldn't work. We filter for things like that. You can't just refresh the page, or run a bot to load the page, and have it affect our PHR.
Some projects have tried to manipulate our PHR. (MX isn't one of them.) It doesn't do anything, just uses their bandwidth for a few weeks until they realize it isn't working and then they stop.
MX Linux got to the top of the list for the reasons I outlined above in the News section. No more, no less.
People who come up with these outlandish theories must think we don't check our web traffic logs or something, it would be really really obviously if suddenly thousands of page hits for the same project came in every day from manipulated traffic.
5 • Poll, MX Linux (by Otis on 2024-12-02 02:19:34 GMT from United States)
Heck I don't know if my RAM usage has changed, the computer does that and over time it's never occurred to me to analyse it. I do know that my CPU speed has improved, graphics etc gotten better because I've upgraded my computers to better hardware. The cheapo oldies I have are for fooling around with this or that distro for a while, but I stick with MX as workhorse.
MX inflating their Page Hit Ranking here is so silly that I thought the questioner up there @2 was kidding. MX Linux is at or near the top for the reasons it exists in the first place: To be an "out of the way of the user" distro that just works and does not by default depend upon systemd as init. MX Linux will never leave one of my machines for those and other reasons that stopped me from distro hopping quite some time ago.
6 • measuring memory (by Andy Prough on 2024-12-02 02:51:23 GMT from United States)
I like using the ps_mem.py program for measuring memory usage. Shows you one program at a time what ram is used in a very clear listing.
7 • RAM (by Kurt_Aust on 2024-12-02 04:23:56 GMT from Australia)
I do enjoy pointing out that my current computer has 8 MILLION (2^23) times as much RAM as my first computer.
From TRS-80 (16 KB) to X99 chipset workstation (128 GB), yes I know it's ridiculously excessive.
8 • Amount of ram (by Wolf on 2024-12-02 04:32:25 GMT from United States)
I remember a time when 1gig was way more than enough for everything. Over the years it's gradually gotten hungrier and hungrier. I'm a gamer and 16gigs is barely adequate anymore. Same with graphics. Most games are very hungry. Just my 2cents as an old af Linux gamer.
9 • Memory usage (by Wedge009 on 2024-12-02 04:38:22 GMT from Australia)
On my primary system, I find mostly browser processes and maybe LibreOffice applications to be the biggest consumers of memory. But I usually leave processes open for days until something stops working and a reset is needed. And certainly some sites use more memory over time than others, especially ones like weather tracking that updates itself. On a fresh boot, memory usage is pretty low and I'm sure the situation is still better overall than on a Windows system.
10 • MX Linux (by AdrianTM on 2024-12-02 05:56:54 GMT from United States)
As one of the MX contributors I find these "wonderings" about Distrowatch rank very insulting. We don't manipulate shit, if anything we are happy we are dropping from the top spot to avoid this kind of accusations and trolls who target us because of that.
It's fine you don't find MX especially unique, it's probably not for you. MX is an independent distro that is made by users for users and we don't make money from it having more users is not something we search on purpose and it doesn't bring us any direct benefit, only the satisfaction that what we do is appreciated and is useful for others, this kind of gross accusations or innuendos say something about the people who make them.
11 • Memory Usage... (by Vukota on 2024-12-02 08:35:09 GMT from Serbia)
It used to be enough 8GB of RAM to run Linux smooth. In past year or two it came up to 16BG. With 8 it still runs ok, but with hiccups here and there.
What is a top ranked distro on DW, it doesn't really matter. Good general distro will be among top 20.
12 • RAM (by eb on 2024-12-02 09:25:40 GMT from France)
Hello,
- main computer, 10 years old, runs fine with 4 go RAM & Fluxbox
- secondary computer, a bit older, slow but usable with 2 go RAM & Ratpoison
- server, 18 years old (!), no X, fine with 2 go RAM & zram
With :
Slackware_15 (respectively 64 32 32)
kernel_huge (an error, I should have installed generic)
no Desktop Environment since 2010.
Window managers spare your RAM !:-)
13 • MX Linux (by illumos on 2024-12-02 10:56:08 GMT from Japan)
MX is 'not' using systemd.
And MX is very easy to use and user friendly distro.
So MX is No.1!
14 • AnduinOS? (by Wally on 2024-12-02 11:25:47 GMT from Australia)
I'm usually in favor of variety, the more new distros the merrier. I respect the time and effort put in creating live ISOs to distribute and finding and maintaining places to distribute from. But:
The point of AnduinOS escapes me. My wife's laptop runs Ubuntu 22.04 unmodified except for the removal of snaps. It would take me less than a half-hour to get it looking just like AnduinOS, except for the wallpaper. AnduinOS is Ubuntu with a few extensions added: Dash to Panel, Arc Menu, weather, and a few others whose purpose really escapes me. That's it. Seems like much ado about very little.
In the process they lost a lot of Ubuntu's built-in usefulness. A minimal Ubuntu install offers more. They also lost the panel's power icon in the system menu, which they placed in the bottom right corner. Jesse refers to it as "system tray". (Gnome gods named it. Don't blame me.:-) Turning off all extensions and logging out restored it to the top bar where the Gnome gods intended. Turning extensions back on one at a time found the culprits in the disappearance and got the AnduinOS looks back including the bottom panel with power visible.
Menus in the middle? Funny thing, but on my copies of Windows 11 I move the start menu to the left side where I prefer it to be. To each his own.
15 • MX Linux (by RetiredIT on 2024-12-02 11:58:29 GMT from United States)
After achieving good results from MX 18.3 and 19.4 and less so from the 21.x series, I have been greatly disappointed with the 23.x releases. I have tried to install MX 23.2 multiple times on my Lenovo Thinkpad T490 (32 GB/500 MB) and MX 23.3 on my Dell Latitude 7490 (64 GB/2.0 TB).
Again, seeming like the developers finally got their act together with 23.3 on my Latitude, bugs appeared even before I could get the install set up the way I wanted. I could not restart or shutdown from the desktop and had to use the ON/OFF button to restart. It kept going back to the login screen. The options in the upper right corner of the screen were grayed out and inoperable. Again, an infinite loop became apparent at that point with no way out.
The only way I could install 23.3 was to do an upgrade step by step from MX 21.3 to 23.0, then to 23.1, 23.2 and finally 23.3. This is really a ludicrous way to do things and another statement for the poor state of today's Linux landscape.
It's a real shame because MX Linux seems to have had so much to offer in the past, especially in the way of tools. However, it is very dated, especially the ugly, notorious installer, and it has become a real memory hog compared to earlier releases. Just like so many other Linux distros, it has fallen off dramatically, especially since 19.4, which I believe was their very best work.
I have been having so much more success and satisfaction with Ubuntu 24.0 with Snaps removed and registered the Ubuntu Pro option on three of my five laptops with updates until 2036. Linux Mint and LMDE have also both stood the test of time. I plan to be using all three of them for the foreseeable future.
16 • AnduinOS (by dragonmouth on 2024-12-02 12:22:29 GMT from United States)
"there is no update manager in Anduin"
Since AnduinOS is based on Ubuntu, one can always install Synaptic.
17 • RAM Usage (by dragonmouth on 2024-12-02 12:33:20 GMT from United States)
Feature creep and making programs/apps more and more user-friendly.
18 • @15 MX Linux (by Jan on 2024-12-02 12:33:37 GMT from The Netherlands)
I too have had installation problems with MX (KDE) Linux.
I finally found that installation only ran well, and without later usage problems, with using a RUFUS made installation USB-stick.
Installation from a VENTOY-usb-stick always resulted in problems (for my hardware-situation), certainly when on this Ventoy-USB-stick also other MX-ISO-versions or AntiX-iso-versions were present.
After installing MX-KDE (MX-XFCE ran very sluggish on my old hardware) from a RUFUS-made USB-stick, MX-KDE ran very good.
19 • @15+@18 MX linux (by Jan on 2024-12-02 13:01:03 GMT from The Netherlands)
Addition to my comment @18
I ran all my MX-linux installations in dual-boot with Windows.
Maybe installation as only-installation gives other results.
20 • @16 AnduinOS (by Wally on 2024-12-02 13:04:33 GMT from Philippines)
"one can always install Synaptic." One can always install update-manager and gnome-software or snap-store, but the idea of the distro is that it's friendly to newcomers from Windows, so they probably should have come already installed. Synaptic is my favorite GUI app for the purpose, but it's not exactly newbie friendly.
21 • mint and mx (by dolphin oracle on 2024-12-02 13:08:22 GMT from United States)
We are and always will be grateful to distrowatch that allowed our little distribution so much exposure.
And we are very happy to even be mentioned in the same breath as some of the other larger projects.
It was fun to sit on top of that list for so long. I remain happy. :)
22 • @13 - systemd in MX (by Uncle Slacky on 2024-12-02 13:33:26 GMT from France)
systemd is available as an option at boot, so MX can work with systemd if required.
23 • MX Still (by Nathan on 2024-12-02 13:37:19 GMT from United States)
I have been running MX since before Covid.
All is well.
I did add the Cinnamon desktop to the XFCE version of MX
and never looked back.
I did not have any install or update issues at any time.
So yes, MX is my daily driver.
I distro hop on my "play" laptop, presently on Elementary 8.0
E is pretty but will not be my daily driver.
By the way, all my USB efforts were made by using the MX Tools USB Maker app.
24 • RAM (by Robert on 2024-12-02 14:56:33 GMT from United States)
Couldn't tell you if RAM usage has increased over time. It's not something I monitor. I don't really care how much memory everything uses as long as it stays below the 32GB I have in my PC.
Besides, whatever increase in memory usage exists from kernel, desktop, and background services will absolutely pale in comparison to my web browser with however many dozens or hundreds of tabs open. Yes I'm like that, yes it's a problem. But I'm probably not gonna fix it.
25 • 4GB??? (by Distrowitch on 2024-12-02 13:32:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Current laptop with 4GB always hitting swap, previous 4GB laptop never hit swap 10 years ago.
Had to stop using cinnamon and switch the witch to mate to calm the fan.
Current lappy is fanless so back to cinnamon, add pipewire, etc, now using 700MB swap regularly!!!
26 • Ram 'n MX (by Friar Tux on 2024-12-02 15:41:50 GMT from Canada)
My "lappy" (love that word) is about a year old with 7 GB of ram. BUT, I don't really care. The fan rarely comes on. (It's a mid-range HP.) At this stage, all I care about is - does it work and does it work consistently without issues. (Getting old, patience is wearing thin.)
As for MX Linux... nope. Could never get it to work. Stress the "could never" as I tried many times. Can't figure out how it's number one, but don't really care. For me, Linux Mint was the only distro that CONSISTENTLY worked no matter how many times I installed it and how many computers, I installed it on. All the other distros, even the "biggies", had issues, either during installation or afterwards (MX included).
One other thing I've found is that I had LESS issues with distros running SystemD than with other inits. So now I partial to SystemD as it seems to make things run, and run smoother. And before we start bringing out the flame-throwers, that is MY opinion, from MY experiences. Your experiences may vary.
27 • ram amounts and chromium tabs (by brad on 2024-12-02 15:55:26 GMT from United States)
I want a computer with 32gb+ ram and see how many chromium tabs I can open before i run out lol
28 • RAM (by David on 2024-12-02 16:31:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm puzzled by people who say they need at least 8 GB. Games, I presume. This desktop, 5 years old, has 4 GB because that was the smallest available. Occasionally I have a look to see how much RAM is being used and I've never caught it using more than 2 GB. Of course, I'm running PCLinuxOS with Xfce.
29 • RAM & MX (by Pogi Americano on 2024-12-02 17:17:25 GMT from United States)
My RAM has increased (4g - 8g) simply because I do more with my computer. Standard operation for me is to have Firefox open with 1 or (most of the time) 2 Libre Write files open with several different text files (3 or 4) all open at the same time. ... Sometimes with utube music added to the bunch. If my computer could handle 16g I would upgrade but according to the docs it goes only to 8g. I've been using MX for several years simply because it works on my pc and I've gotten used to it. It's probably no better than say. Ubuntu or Arch or Fedora, just my preference. If something ever goes wrong with MX I'll be searching for something that works with my pc and I'll just have to get used to something else.
30 • @15, 18, and 19 (by Brad on 2024-12-02 17:33:33 GMT from United States)
I too, spent (wasted) most of the day yesterday trying to get MX23 installed on an older HP laptop - I tried a couple of different approaches, replacing a working copy of Manjaro, which stalled trying to format the disk, and then in desperation, wiping the disk (SATA SSD) with GParted and then installing, which stalled and failed in the exact same way.
I too, remember MX fondly, before the most recent iterations. I even had a hard time installing the MX-23 live media to a USB to use persistently - it finally worked after much heartache - I don't recall having such a problem with MX-19 on the same USB.
In any case, I gave up on MX as a lost cause for my older X-64 laptop, burned a copy of SolydK on a spare USB, installed it onto my laptop, and Bob was my uncle!
I realize that a lot of time and effort has been placed into MX, but it seems it's not working for some of us, at least.
31 • MX (by rijnsma on 2024-12-02 17:52:27 GMT from The Netherlands)
I use MX from 1917 and it never complaints. I tested many, but for the moment I keep this. That says all!
32 • MX (by rijnsma on 2024-12-02 17:55:25 GMT from The Netherlands)
Joke 2017 haha...
33 • RAM (by Squid on 2024-12-02 18:03:51 GMT from United States)
RAM consumption depends on the desktop environment used:
LXDE requires 500 MB at start-up
KDE Plasma booting up to 1.4GB quietly
More features, more ram. This is the hard law to live by.
34 • @ 24 • RAM (by Titus Groan on 2024-12-02 18:18:19 GMT from New Zealand)
"Besides, whatever increase in memory usage exists from kernel, desktop, and background services will absolutely pale in comparison "
I have a script, that takes a while to run. typically an hour.
over the last year, with no hardware changes, just software inc kernel updates, that hour has dropped by 25% to about 44 minutes.
Just saying that there are certainly software improvements being made, improving efficiency overall, so maybe that ram upgrade can be put off, for at least a bit.
35 • @20 Wally: (by dragonmoiuth on 2024-12-02 18:18:50 GMT from United States)
"it's [Synaptic] not exactly newbie friendly. "{
And APT or dpkg is? :-)
IMNSHO, Synaptic is much more functional than any of the Software Centers that Debian-based distros use although it may not be as pretty. No extraneous eye-candy, just function.
36 • Zorin Base (by Dan on 2024-12-02 20:03:30 GMT from Canada)
Just wanting to clarify something in the review. You stated that Zorin (the latest version) is based on 24.04, which it's not, it's based on 22.04. The only thing it has is the kernel that is used in 24.04, other than that, it is still a 22.04 base.
37 • LMDE -- MXDE. Linux Mint rises to the top of popularity ranking. (by de on 2024-12-02 20:06:41 GMT from United States)
Does LMDE play a significant role on the rise in popularity of Linux Mint? Is there some statistics on the ratio of regular Linux Mint user count and LMDE user count (eg. DistroWatch polls)?
MX is based on both AntiX and Debian. Is there a plan for "MXDE", a version of MX that is based on only Debian?
38 • Slightly higher RAM usage (by Flavio R. Cavalcanti on 2024-12-02 20:12:44 GMT from Brazil)
Maybe, we should note that:
Users who ran the "free" command to measure the initial RAM usage of Debian 12 Bookworm RC, in April 2023, got a shock: — Almost double what "free" command indicated in Debian 11.
It wasn't Debian that changed. — What changed were the "free" / "top" tools, from the "procps" 4.0 package — but this had already been happening with other tools, at least since 2020.
Indeed, since August 2020 , Conky 1.11.6 started showing much higher RAM usage values.
It wasn't a bug. — It was a “correction” of the “Used RAM Memory” calculation — proposed or signed by Linus Torvalds since January 2014 (Kernel 3.14).
Here are some notes about this — with a Translate button above the Title:
https://byteria.blogspot.com/2020/10/conky-wrong-ram-memory-usage.html
And, yes, I have seen a slightly higher RAM usage, by many distros, along the years, even in my old PC with 4 GB RAM. — Things are getting better, and I think it is natural to use a few more RAM.
And it growed a few more, from one day to another, when I started using a new PC with 16 GB RAM. — I think it is natural that distros use more RAM if there is more RAM to be used.
I always use KDE, so I can compare some distros, all in the same machine (dualboot or multiboot), all without PackageKit automatic check for updates at startup, and all without PIM suite. — Mageia, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian use a few more RAM, as they run a few more services in background. — PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Void use a few less RAM at startup (5 minutes uptime, idle), but I don't think it has anything to do with their init software. They are just less bloated.
Here are some notes about this:
https://byteria.blogspot.com/2023/06/multi-booting-12-distros-linux.html
39 • Zorin and LMDE (by Jesse on 2024-12-02 20:20:03 GMT from Canada)
@36: " You stated that Zorin (the latest version) is based on 24.04, which it's not, it's based on 22.04. The only thing it has is the kernel that is used in 24.04, other than that, it is still a 22.04 base."
This is a fair point. I was thinking at the time specifically of things like hardware support at the timme, but it's true that other packages are older. However, Zorin OS users can enable backports if they want newer software.
@37: "Does LMDE play a significant role on the rise in popularity of Linux Mint? "
Not really.
"Is there some statistics on the ratio of regular Linux Mint user count and LMDE user count"
Yes. The Mint project has talked about this in the past. I don't have a link to the post at the moment, but I think they indicated a little under 10% of their users run LMDE.
40 • RAM usage (by JG on 2024-12-02 20:46:24 GMT from United States)
Some of the package managers like Synaptic and Slapt-get now fail with less than 1GB of RAM. This makes it more difficult to find modern distros that will work with my dinosaur Slot 1 and Socket 370 systems from roughly 25 years ago. Most 32-bit distros have also disappeared. The web browsers will no longer work on these processors either, but I cannot force myself to throw these systems out... LOL.
41 • Mint top ranked now (by JeffC on 2024-12-02 21:54:06 GMT from United States)
Mint is the top on page hits now?
Oh, good, maybe now the haters will move on to hating it.
Someone asked what distros people were using on their ThinkPads on Reddit, I said MX Linux and was downvoted.
It must be some sort of heresy to not say Arch BTW there.
42 • not systemd distro (by illumos on 2024-12-02 22:54:23 GMT from Japan)
There are many attractive distributions that do not use systemd.
Diversity of init systems leads to the development of Linux and benefits its users.
We encourage you to use these distributions.
SysVinit:MX, PCLinuxOS, Devuan, Slackware, Zenwalk, NuTyX, CRUX, Pisi
OpenRC:Gentoo, Calculate, Alpine, Adélie, Alpaquita, Artix, Parabola
Runit:VOID, antiX, Venom, Joborun, Dragora
s6:Obarun, glaucus
dinit:Chimera
sinit:Spark
shinit:Carbs
Shepherd:Guix
43 • @35 Dragomouth, AnduinOS (by Wally on 2024-12-03 01:08:13 GMT from Australia)
"it's [Synaptic] not exactly newbie friendly. "{
And APT or dpkg is? :-) You seem to have missed this from my comment @20:
"install update-manager and gnome-software or snap-store" "should have come already installed" Kindly don't pick pick out snippets out of context to carp on. It's dishonest criticism to say the least.
I ran a PC repair shop for many years, mostly Windows PCs. I know quite a bit about Windows users. I managed to install a few Linux systems on clients' machines over the years. Retired for a while now. Ran into an old client the other day. I had installed Mint on his machine years ago, and ran him through some basics. Now he wanted to know if I could install Linux on his new laptop. In all the years he learned nothing. Mint-update? Great! Synaptic? Gimme a break!
44 • DW PHR list (by David Milovanović on 2024-12-03 01:34:10 GMT from Serbia)
I am currently using Linux Mint (decided to give it another try when I got a new computer) and I used to use MX Linux for a few years, and I have to say that it doesn't matter which distro is first on the DW list, what matters is that we have such good options to choose from. Both distros are great IMHO. Of course, there are other great distros beside these ( Trisquel, Lite, AntiX, Puppy and Devuan are my favorites ).
45 • DW-PHR (by Jan on 2024-12-03 11:31:17 GMT from The Netherlands)
I think when a distro is high on the PHR it is a self-establishing position. The distro is hit on because it is high on the PHR.
I rather look at the average rating.
However even that is questionable. It strikes me that at the rating page there are very much 10-rating, combined with very low ratings. They sometimes have huge stories, which seem to me to be not from real users (so AI-stories) and not objective (so from fan or anti-fan boys/girls, linux evangelists).
46 • MX stats.. (by Tom_Servo on 2024-12-03 13:17:35 GMT from United States)
@10
Good god, calm down. You had one rando make that assertion, and you're one of the public faces/devs of the distro; responding to trolls is not a good look.
I don't use Mepis, but I have in the past and I think it's a very strong distro. Since one of the feeder projects was a fantastic user-friendly distro called MEPIS (which was a competitor to one of my favorites, Libranet back in the day), many of us followed Mepis to MX,
I think y'all do great work, and please keep doing so.
47 • RAM Usage (by penguinx86 on 2024-12-03 14:39:35 GMT from United States)
I've been using Linux for over 10 years. Whey I type the "vmstat -s" command, my typical desktop usage is 2-4gb active memory and 0gb swap used. It doesn't seem to matter if I have 8gb or 16gb of RAM installed. The only time I use more RAM is running virtual clients in VirtualBox. But of course, this is home desktop usage with only 1 user, and not a multi-user server under a heavy workload.
48 • How much RAM is needed vs how much is used. (by vw72 on 2024-12-03 16:21:38 GMT from United States)
Looking at how much RAM is in use could identify a problem with a program leaking memory (not releasing it when finished), but as long as you have enough RAM to do what you normally do without having to hit swap, you are fine.
Case in point - a Raspberry PI 3b+ only has 1GB of ram and is quite useful running klipper for a 3d printer or acting as a local file server or both, with RAM to spare. Of course, it's not running a DE, just the cli.
My point is if one is just browsing the net, checking email, etc., you don't need a lot of RAM. On the other hand if one is doing video editing, 3d modeling, music/midi work, then 16GB seems to be a good starting point (although these types of applications will work with less, it is much slower as things write and read the swap partition/file).
Linux, in and of itself, does not use a terrible amount of RAM. Different DEs use various amounts of RAM from 200MB to 1GB. So figure 1.5GB for the basic system and then calculate the RAM needs of your most RAM hungry program and add a little bit more.
Personally, I have an old Dell laptop with only 6GB of RAM, running Debian 12 with the Gnome desktop and it runs as well as my newer machine with 16GB.
In short, don't stress about RAM unless you are being constrained by it.
49 • MX and RAM (by Albert on 2024-12-03 22:47:44 GMT from United States)
I'm wrinting this on MX Xfce 23.4_ahs (Libretto) on one PC. It's been several years now that I've been running this OS without problems. I tried the KDE version, but I seem to remember I faced some kind of trouble with it, can't specify what. I'm very satisfied with MX as I am with the other systems that are installed on the machine -currently the three versions of Linux Mint 22 (Yes, all of them, I couldn't just pick one), Pardus Xfce linux and this one.
I'm testing FreeBSD and GhostBSD now also (not very much luck with them for the moment, they only work on an old laptop where even the wifi works for them, but they refuse to function properly either on a more recent laptop or on this PC). I also have one copy of Void Linux on a USB waiting to be tested and I'm checking on Redox development from time to time.
As for RAM usage, I've just run 'vmstat -s' and it tells me that the used memory is 4 Gb, while 3.8 is the active memory. It seems a bit high to me considering that I'm neither playing any video or audio, nor working with anything else. However, this doesn't worry me at all since this PC was given 24 Gb to use it as needed.
50 • Tavares (by Linux and Zram on 2024-12-03 23:38:05 GMT from France)
"My point is if one is just browsing the net, checking email, etc., you don't need a lot of RAM. On the other hand if one is doing video editing, 3d modeling, music/midi work, then 16GB seems to be a good starting point (although these types of applications will work with less, it is much slower as things write and read the swap partition/file)."
But there is "zram": it is a Linux kernel module for creating a compressed block device in RAM, i.e. a RAM disk with on-the-fly disk compression. The block device created with zram can then be used for swap or as general-purpose RAM disk. The two most common uses for zram are for the storage of temporary files (/tmp) and as a swap device.
51 • RAM Usage (by hellfire103 on 2024-12-04 08:29:12 GMT from Germany)
Well, I was still running Windows five years ago, complete with the bloatware from HP and Microsoft that I didn't care enough to remove. I remember having 7.5 GB or RAM being used (out of the 8GB I had upgraded to), simply by having Opera, LibreOffice, and Windows Explorer open at the same time after a day's work.
Today, meanwhile, my RAM usage rarely goes above 3GB (out of 24). I am running Arch+Sway, and the heaviest software I use is probably either Mullvad Browser, Eclipse, or Steam.
52 • 32-bit distros (by tomas on 2024-12-04 12:29:04 GMT from Czechia)
Linux has been said to give new life to old hardware. I am not so sure if that is still valid.
A good old notebook was given to me. The only problem seems to be its 32-bit processor.
Not considering myself to be a noobie anymore I still prefer distros that run everything I need out of the box.
I have tried to find and install several distros on the notebook with little success.
At the time being the best result is Q4OS with Trinity desktop (firefox added runs OK @40).
Searching on Distrowatch is difficult here - you must go through i386, i486, i586 and i686.
Searching for i686 only (according to the processor) does not (always) show the distros for lower specifications.
When using the results of the searches and going to the download, you may find:
- the 32-bit is no longer present
- the EOL is near without a view for further support
- the downloaded ISO does not work or the installation fails
- when installed the PC does not boot
- the installation has not the declared properties.
There is only a minimum of usable distros for 32-bit PCs.
I wonder if DW could make a survey and review on that.
53 • 32 bit distros (by Kruger on 2024-12-04 23:29:51 GMT from Australia)
>>I have tried to find and install several distros on the notebook with little success.
I would suggest you try Devuan which is available as an i386 ISO or one of its derivatives like:
- Peppermint OS
- Loc-OS
- Refracta
Antix is another great choice
You have plenty of options even with an old redundant 32bit processor, you just need to look
54 • Why MX Linux? (by denk_mal on 2024-12-05 07:30:38 GMT from Germany)
All the people that claim about the popularity of MX Linux ignoring a small but for us important fact: MX Linux is (nearly) the only Linux that provides us with a systemd-free linux that is usable in a smooth way.
If there is no reason to not using systemd then you get a buch of distros here but if "no systemd, please" is a necessary requirement (for your computer or for your better feeling ;-) ) then there is nearly only MX Linux.
This is IMHO the base for the popularity.
BTW Funfact: on my business laptop I also use a systemd free linux called WSL2 from Microsoft, the company L. Poettering is working for.
55 • @55, Why MX Linux and Why not PCLinuxOS? (by Tasio on 2024-12-05 11:34:44 GMT from Philippines)
Nothing against MX, but PCLinuxOS gets lost in the no-systemd shuffle. It's works quite well, easy install and I have a fondness for it because it's one of the first distros I used many years ago.
56 • @56 PCLinuxOS, stuck booting (by Jan on 2024-12-05 12:08:26 GMT from The Netherlands)
In the last year several times I tried to boot PCLinux-KDE form a live-USB, each new ISO I tried again. On my hardware the booting stuck somewhere. Initially 1 year ago, sometimes the booting succeeded, but a started OS froze after circa 5 minutes. The latest ISO's never boot to a working OS, so it has become worse.
Several KDE-distros work on my old hardware, so it seems to be a PCLinuxOS-KDE (or KDE-setting) problem.
I have seen several messages on this problem, not only PCLOS. So something to work on?
57 • @57,PCLinuxOS, stuck booting (by Tasio on 2024-12-05 12:44:19 GMT from Philippines)
"The latest ISO's never boot to a working OS, so it has become worse." If you have an interest, the place to bring up the problem is at the PCLinuxOS forum.
58 • deb vs rpm (by illumos on 2024-12-05 12:58:15 GMT from Japan)
@56 Not only does PCLOS not use systemd, it also uses rpm as its package instead of deb and dpkg.
This is surprising, as rpm is the package format used by the RHEL family, so using rpm without systemd is an impressive feat.!!!
59 • @59 Forum reporting (by Jan on 2024-12-05 13:03:02 GMT from The Netherlands)
Seem logical, but you need to register.
But I have a very bad experience with trying to register or reporting problems on the specific forum's. The forum-owners seem not to like people who want to report a problems.
60 • VOID and Alpine (by illumos on 2024-12-05 13:11:49 GMT from Japan)
@56 MX and PCLOS are using sysVinit.
But VOID uses runit, and Alpine uses OpenRC.
VOID is a more advanced distro than Arch and can be used as a daily driver.
And Alpine allows you to easily install a desktop environment using the 'setup-desktop' script.
Consider VOID and Alpine as potential distro without systemd!
61 • @60, deb vs rpm (by Tasio on 2024-12-05 13:36:29 GMT from Philippines)
@60, Not only RPM with sysVinit but also apt for rpm and Synaptic. Don't know if that is impressive or not.:-)
62 • elogind (by illumos on 2024-12-05 13:48:45 GMT from Japan)
@63 PCLOS not only does not use systemd, it does not use elogind either.
It is a true systemd-free distribution.
AntiX does not use elogind either, but MX does.
63 • RAM usage (by R. Cain on 2024-12-05 12:48:16 GMT from United States)
“Is your RAM usage higher or lower than it was five years ago?”
My RAM usage is--almost--*precisely* the same as it was five years ago, as I run the same distro now as I installed more than five years ago--across all computers, and am still using all the time. It was the best there was then, and it is STILL the best there is now...if not much better than what is available now.
I refuse to ‘drink the kool-aid’ of “...if it’s not the newest, biggest, most feature-filled version, it _can’t_ be the best...”. This is the destructive mentality--of both users AND distro developers AND MOST ESPECIALLY web-browser developers--which has led most once-great Linux distributions to be the pathetic (under-)performers they are today.
Consider for a moment: arguably, one of the best, tightest, ‘most bang-for-the-buck’ distros, _ever_, was Linux Mint’s Maya: a beautiful, do-everything, have-everything distro, and all this within a ‘footprint’ of 960 MB!
And, yes: the argument that keeping a distro for five years or more is counter-productive because of the inability to run the latest web-browser is *NOT* an argument against doing so--it is an argument AGAINST the ‘newest, biggest, most feature-filled’ development-mentality of the browser developers...and of the entire Linux ‘distroscape’.
Because of the total lack (on the part of developers) of any time, now, to devote to ANY Q-A, validation testing, or responding to input from consumers / users, one can forget arguing (against keeping a really good, older distro) about a lack of ‘security upgrades’, or ‘bug-fixes’; both are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent in almost all contexts in which one wishes to discuss these points, and will only serve to confirm a serious case of confirmation bias.
64 • systemD and elogind (by Otis on 2024-12-05 22:35:21 GMT from United States)
@62 I am not sure why the deployment of elogind is considered by some a negative in distro development. At the Gentoo site the definition/description of elogind is:
"Elogind is the systemd project's logind, extracted to a standalone package. It's designed for users who prefer a non-systemd init system, but still want to use popular software such as KDE or GNOME that otherwise hard-depends on systemd."
I have no qualms about it, I am merely wanting to understand, as it seems to me that it was "extracted" from the systemD schema for reasons that systemD detractors want.
65 • @63, RAM usage (by Tasio on 2024-12-06 02:49:09 GMT from Philippines)
@63, A couple of things: Mint Maya is a bit over 5 years old, 2012 to be exact. I installed Mint at 2.0, code-name Barbara in 2007. Ran very nicely on a laptop with 256MB RAM installed. Guess I should have stayed there while the staying was good.
Also, browsers can be easily installed from outside the repos. I have a VM running Bodhi 32 bit legacy based on Ubuntu 18.04 with the latest Firefox. Idles at 132MB. Not bad. latest 64 bit Bodhi based on 22.04 is up to 230MB. Debian Bookworm 32 bit version is over 400MB.Talk about inefficiency!
66 • hard non-systemd (by illumos on 2024-12-06 12:35:27 GMT from Japan)
@64 GNOME is not possible without elogind, but KDE is possible without elogind.
Distros without elogind are called "hard non-systemd".
antiX (runit), PCLOS (sysVinit), VENOM (sysVinit) and Obarun (s6) are "hard non-systemd" distros.
These distros do not adopt elogind and use seatd to implement x11 or wayland.
67 • non systemD (by Otis on 2024-12-06 15:21:57 GMT from United States)
@66 I think I understood all that from reading that description I posted in @64, also from sayings here and there over time.
More choices is the way I see all of this.
Incidentally, the PCLinuxOS distro has been around long enough now as a ("hard") non-systemD offering that to me it serves as a reminder of just how good a distro can be without that particular init. sysV seems to be proving itself with that distro's popularity.
68 • Pop OS (by Kruger on 2024-12-06 22:58:15 GMT from Australia)
Why even release Alphas of any software, especially an OS? Don't they have testers out there who can test the Apha release for bugs?
Is it just me or is it weird? Releasing a Beta of a product also doesn't make much sense, except to testers.
What is the purpose of these Alpha releases?
69 • @68 --alpha and beta releases--Why? (by R. Cain on 2024-12-07 00:27:33 GMT from United States)
See the last paragraph of @64.
Not to put too fine a point on this...
The purpose of alpha and beta releases are to off-load--TO THE DISTRO USER-- the testing of new distros, because distro developers simply do not have the time for anything related to ensuring the quality of their product. They're MUCH too busy working on the *next* bigger, faster, feature-filled version of their latest distro to be bothered with ensuring that the product is really ready for release.
This is a real shame, and almost guarantees that there will never be a "Year of Linux On The Desktop".
Alpha- and beta-versions of Linux distributions used to be unknown. (It would be really interesting to pinpoint exactly when this phenomenon became a "thing".)
Now, they (alpha- and beta-versions) are indications of not-ready-for-prime-time distributions.
Number of Comments: 69
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