Other Distros

[Moat]

Hi rufwoof - let us know of what you think of the Mate desktop environment. I think it's an excellent all-around DE - very reasonably light and fast/responsive, yet plenty of straightforward tweakability + panel plugin assortment/menu choices.

... so very stable on the Debian side of things, but the more unstable on the Mint side (front run changes earlier). Bit of a odd contrast/choice.

Just my experience, but I tend to feel Mint is actually pretty conservative with their updates. I find myself updating my Mint installs about every time I boot - and over years of doing so, have never had an update break or adversely effect the system. If anything, updates appear to actually improve the system's performance - things just seem to get a little faster and smoother over a point release's life-cycle (aside from longer boot times since switching to systemd init... ).

Strange... but I'll take it!

The Debian edition may be a little different in that respect, though...

Bob

[rufwoof]

Hi rufwoof - let us know of what you think of the Mate desktop environment. I think it's an excellent all-around DE - very reasonably light and fast/responsive, yet plenty of straightforward tweakability + panel plugin assortment/menu choices.

Hi Bob

I'm not that familiar with VirtualBox and expanding the size was a bit of a pain. Had to clone the existing 6GB one first as I'd set that to fixed rather than dynamic and apparently cloning transposes it over to dynamic ... which needs to be the case before you can resize the .vdi Then once you've cloned and resized it you have to install gparted within the machine and resize the partition. I also had problems with the UUID's not matching. Got there in the end, and installed the Guest Additions (which also didn't come easy/naturally), but now its working great. In Seamless mode and with the machine settings to share the clipboard/cut-paste etc you can have both running alongside each other. Attached is my Debian File Manager dragging and dropping a file into Mint's file manager. By default I like my menu at the top of the screen so Mints being at the bottom pairs nicely with that. And fully installed into the VM (rather than just running the .iso/live-boot) its running at a reasonable/usable rate, even on my relatively old 4 core 2GB system.

The browser and other progs are working great. Which is nice as its more integrated i.e. isolated browser session from the rest of the system (personal docs etc.).


Clickable thumbnail.

Catches you out a bit, press print screen and depending on what's in focus either Mint's or Debian's screen capture window pops up

Or you can have both



I haven't installed guest additions yet on the Debian side, so currently it looks like drag and drop is just one way instead of the bi-directional value I set (similar for screen capture, Mint currently just captures its own windows, Debian captures both windows). Playing a sneekylinux youtube in Mint's Firefox and play another in Debian's didn't work well, the second to be started kept spinning (loading). Playing Kodi (listening to a radio station) in Debian, playing a youtube in Mint did work however, overlaid sound (hear both).

I guess the obvious choice is to use two desktops, one on each and just flip desktops to switch between the two (handy being able to drag/drop and cut/paste etc between them as well )

Load wise it runs quite well with just 2GB of ram. Slows some when heavily loaded (youtubes playing and kodi running), but for general use OK (I allocated 1GB of ram to the virtual machine, could have got away with less IMO to leave more available for the host)



UPDATE : on thinking more about two youtubes playing, that's potentially down to I'm running the Debian FF in a restricted user session, perhaps when a local firefox (user) then I suspect that might be fine.

[Moat]

In Debian Gnome you use either system-settings or tweak-tool to change those sorts of things.

Yes, I've since spent quite a bit more time tweaking Gnome 3 to my liking. It's OK now (after quite a lot of work and hunting down extensions), but still lacking in certain basic features/functions that I'm so used to (just showing clickable max-minimize buttons on the main taskbar, without having to run a screen-hogging lower taskbar for the same functionality, for example).

To my surprise, I've downloaded Maui Linux 17.03 “Cuba Libre

[rufwoof]

Thanks Moat. Just trying it now in a virtual box live-boot. Sluggish on my old clunker. Might try a actual live-boot.

[Moat]

Sluggish on my old clunker. Might try a actual live-boot.

I'm running it as a live session from a USB flash drive (created with Mint's iso>USB tool) on Andy's (scientist!) old donated HP 6730b laptop, an am truly surprised how responsive it feels. The more I play with it, the more impressed I am. Lots of useful desktop config tools/widgets OOTB - takes a little digging since there are so many options, but the necessary tweaks are there, and well implemented to boot. Me likes it!

Bob

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maui@maui:~$ inxi -f
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core2 Duo P8600 (-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB 
           clock speeds: max: 2401 MHz 1: 1600 MHz 2: 800 MHz

[Robert123]

Devuan Linux made this announcement plus some interesting distros to try based on it - some of which are not so well known.http://refracta.freeforums.org/post6831 ... lit=#p6831


- Gnuinos <http://gnuinos.org> (linux-libre 100% free, GNU review pending)
- Refracta <http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta>
- Exe GNU/Linux <http://exegnulinux.net>
- Nelum-dev1 <https://sourceforge.net/projects/nelum-dev1>
- Star <https://sourceforge.net/projects/linnix>
- heads <https://heads.dyne.org> (linux-libre 100% free, GNU review pending)
- good-life-linux <https://sourceforge.net/projects/good-life-linux/>
- Crowz <https://sourceforge.net/projects/crowz>

[Robert123]

I'm trying the Goodlife spin it offers 32 bit versions.
https://devuan.org/os/partners/devuan-distros

[Robert123]

My Good Life Linux desktop based on Devuan this one is for Colonel Panic and Nitehawk.

[Colonel Panic]

My Good Life Linux desktop based on Devuan this one is for Colonel Panic and Nitehawk.

Thanks for the mention! My problem at the moment is getting distros I've installed to boot from the hard drive; that's why I'm Puppy-only for the time being.

Looks like a great concept though and you've clearly put a lot of work into it, so I may have a look at it later on.

[Robert123]

Sorry Colonel it isn't creation my creation I just mean't my desktop the way I set it up as opposed to the vanilla default one

[Colonel Panic]

Sorry Colonel it isn't creation my creation I just mean't my desktop the way I set it up as opposed to the vanilla default one

Fair enough Robert, and sorry for the misunderstanding (I now see that you'd said you were trying it as opposed to it being your creation). You did a good job with the desktop anyway.

Just looking at that list and seeing Refracta mentioned, I think it's worth saying that it's a pretty good distro in its own right and it runs well on older computers.

[Colonel Panic]

Trying out Bee Free at the moment, a 64-bit free software distro based on Mint and with Cinnamon as its window manager. So far it's working well.

[Billtoo]

I downloaded and installed the latest Debian testing iso

System: Host: ******** Kernel: 4.9.0-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Machine: Device: desktop System: Hewlett-Packard product: p7-1246s
Mobo: Foxconn model: 2ADA v: 1.00 BIOS: AMI v: 7.12 date: 06/07/2012
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i5-3550 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1609/3700 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 430]
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVC1 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.6
Network: Card-1: Ralink RT5390 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe driver: rt2800pci
Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169
Drives: HDD Total Size: 2000.4GB (0.8% used)
Info: Processes: 166 Uptime: 45 min Memory: 811.3/11976.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5

Works good so far.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the latest version of Solus (2017.04.18.0). With this release Ikey seems to be getting away from the Debian roots of earlier versions of Solus (apt-get doesn't work in Solus, for example), but there is a software centre that allows you to install additional programs and which works well; I was able to install midnight commander without any problems.

I downloaded the Budgie version, which has a nice spring theme to it but Budgie itself is limited in the ways in which you can manipulate windows with the mouse (maybe I've been spoilt by window managers like fvwm and windowmaker). Probably a good option though for someone moving from Windows who doesn't want any necessary complication.

[Robert123]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/devuan-1 ... 6044.shtml

[Billtoo]

I downloaded the Devuan 1.0 live DVD From Distrowatch and installed it
to a 128GB SSD.

Version
Kernel Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (x86_64)
Compiled #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30)

I added Kodi-16.1 (needed to add the Jesse Backports repository to
Synaptic).

It's working well.

Thanks for the headsup @Robert123

[rufwoof]

I downloaded the Devuan 1.0 live DVD From Distrowatch and installed it
to a 128GB SSD.

Version
Kernel Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (x86_64)
Compiled #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30)

I added Kodi-16.1 (needed to add the Jessie Backports repository to
Synaptic).

It's working well.

Thanks for the headsup @Robert123

Does it cater for running
apt-get update;apt-get install systemd-sysv
... to install the later/modular (and IMO vastly better) SystemD ?

Under systemd you're able to start/stop/see individual services and any dependencies easily. Other commands such as systemd-analyze are able to show timing (bootup) and even plot charts of each individual service plotted alongside all others in a time sequenced manner (so you can visually identify bottlenecks). Takes a bit of getting used to if you write your own service ... where to drop it in (depends on/required by type decisions have to be made), but with familiarity its very easy.

Way way better than the older case of having to drop in sleep 5's or whatever to try and sequence things as-desired/intended.

That's not my chart BTW, just one I found via a search. Mine has little to see, all over (bootup) in a few seconds, with wicd (networking) being the bottleneck.

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$ uname -a
Linux debian 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Frugally booted using grub4dos, /home only set as being persistent. Extraction of sfs to / enables it to be booted as though a full install (handy for the likes of installing kernel updates before reforming a updated main sfs again).

Menu.lst

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title Debian Frugal RO except /home RW
find --set-root /live/jessieamd64lxde
kernel /vmlinuz boot=live quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img

title Debian FULL *** USE THIS TO UPGRADE KERNEL *** 
  find --set-root /live/jessieamd64lxde
  configfile /boot/grub/menu-mine.lst
  commandline

I have the plymouth glow bootup splash theme installed that shows a animated clock like rotation/glow of the bootup timing

[Colonel Panic]

Does it cater for running
apt-get update;apt-get install systemd-sysv
... to install the later/modular (and IMO vastly better) SystemD ?

If you like Debian and want systemd, why not just go straight for debian jessie and install that instead? Devuan (and its spinoffs like Refracta) is specifically for people who don't want systemd on their computer.

I'm sure the arguments concerning the merits and demerits of systemd will run and run; the great thing with Linux is that at least we have the choice, whereas with Windows once Microsoft moves to a new technology you're stuck with it sooner or later (since Microsoft stops supporting its older Windows releases after a certain date, you can't run an old version of Windows indefinitely).

[Robert123]

I have run both Systemd and non-systemd systems (including refracta and Devuan) and don't mind either. Having said that those two I have mentioned are designed to work without systemd and infact there are also idealogical reasons as well. Like you say Colonel why add systemd when these distros are about freedom from systemd and the packages are also systemd free.

[rufwoof]

Does it cater for running
apt-get update;apt-get install systemd-sysv
... to install the later/modular (and IMO vastly better) SystemD ?

If you like Debian and want systemd, why not just go straight for debian jessie and install that instead?

It was a joke (hence smiley). I do run Debian Jessie (frugally) already. Many saw the need to update init due to its serial deficiencies and of a number of potential candidates, such as Upstart, Epoch, Mudar and SystemD, the tendency has been to adopt SystemD as the upgrade path/development for its parallel processing/modular approach.

the great thing with Linux is that at least we have the choice, whereas with Windows once Microsoft moves to a new technology you're stuck with it sooner or later (since Microsoft stops supporting its older Windows releases after a certain date, you can't run an old version of Windows indefinitely).

Devuan has around half a dozen key developers. Saw some claims that they'd support Devuan Jessie beyond the 2020 LTS date that Debian will support Jessie, however that claim seems to be fading as it would be too tall a order for the development team to continue with new developments and maintain older versions. Personally I think now Devuans at release 1.0 it will start to fade into yet another small backwater. No doubt there will be some die-hards, as there are some who prefer to continue to use terminals rather than gui's for desktop sessions.