Distro-hoppers anonymous

Colonel Panic · 2023-06-19 11:16:19

I'm having a midsummer "refresh" of my hard drive at the moment. Just tried two new distros; the latest OpenSUSE Leap, 15.5, which I think is still a bit rough around the edges (I think Gecko Leap is better, even though it's the previous version, 15.4), and the latest version of CrunchBang++ which is built on Debian 12.

As ever, CrunchBang++ is very faithful to the original concept of CrunchBang, only with up to date libraries and software, and as such works well and is very lightweight.

[Edit: OpenSUSE Leap 15.5 works OK in Gnome or IceWM.]

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-07-05 14:22:02)

johnraff · 2023-06-20 05:44:35

^I'm curious as to how CB++ is more lightweight than BL. Does it install fewer packages by default?
There might be lessons there for us, at least for a lighter 'lite' version.

Colonel Panic · 2023-06-20 07:45:28

johnraff wrote:

^I'm curious as to how CB++ is more lightweight than BL. Does it install fewer packages by default?
There might be lessons there for us, at least for a lighter 'lite' version.

I wouldn't say that it was (more lightweight). There was a speed comparison between CrunchBang++ and Bunsen a while back and there wasn't much in it; I'll see if I can find it.

[Edit: here we go;

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=8485
]

or1o9 · 2023-06-20 16:08:54

cb++ 12 live session, well it looks basically like Waldorf. The iso is 2GB, comes with some basic tools. Nothing exciting going on. The weird thing is that the welcome script popped up after logging in to the live session. Makes sense of course if one want to really test out the live session I guess.

Everything is just much more basic than BL. To me it feels stale, like there has not been any progression. So for those who just want it like back in the Waldorf days it is perfect. And kind of kudos to the dev for staying true to it, for giving the fans what they want.

Last edited by or1o9 (2023-06-20 16:11:27)

Nili · 2023-06-21 09:25:19

BunsenLabs direction is the right choice for me. Can't stick forever on a Waldorf styles, It would be too boring nowdays imo, BunsenLabs offers variations of themes, conky, menus, backgrounds, fonts and icons.

In today's times, it's worth sacrificing a little memory, i used to tweak very hard my system to stay hardcore minimalistic user, once one reach that line the next day understand that it is boring missing features for fact of a few minimal numbers packages/memory and disks usages stats.

So, i'm for BunsenLabs always look ahead.

If the memory is a concern, today ram is cheap, i think don't hesitate to add more and enjoy the current work done by the devs.

Martin · 2023-07-05 21:08:16

More experimenting with other distros:

Now I am playing around with SpiralLinux Plasma installed on a virtual machine (Qemu). I wanted to try out the Debian 11 -> Debian 12 migration described in the documentation of SpiralLinux. And I wanted to take a dive into Plasma beyond what is possible with a live session.

The 11 -> 12 migration worked fine but the disk image size increased from 9.something to 13.something GB. Is this normal? I did something similar with BL several years ago and don't remember this kind of size increase.

I find Plasma is really well put together and not very resource hungry these days. Still not my bag of tea.

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-07-08 10:08:47

Hi Martin,

It may be you've got the "old" and superseded files still on the disk - I usually run Bleachbit after I've carried out a distro update to get rid of these.

Martin · 2023-07-08 20:13:31

Possibly so. Now, a few days later, the disk usage as seen from inside SpiraLinux looks reasonable but from the viewpoint of the host system the disk image still looks too big. Maybe a Qemu disk image quirk I have not fathomed?

/Martin

DeepDayze · 2023-07-09 15:26:15

Colonel Panic wrote:

Hi Martin,
It may be you've got the "old" and superseded files still on the disk - I usually run Bleachbit after I've carried out a distro update to get rid of these.

Also a sudo apt --purge autoremove should help cleaning up left-over packages no longer needed.

Colonel Panic · 2023-07-10 11:31:36

DeepDayze wrote:

Also a sudo apt --purge autoremove should help cleaning up left-over packages no longer needed.

Thanks, I've tried it now but but bleachbit turned out to be better (I've just recovered 928.8 MB of hard drive space in total with it). It's far more comprehensive in what it flags up for possible deletion, and it saves the settings you chose for it for the next time you run it.

[Edit: I found sudo apt --purge autoremove very useful today when I was in Neptune and Firefox insisted on displaying itself in German, so thanks for the info there. There was nothing for it but to remove Firefox completely and reinstall it.]

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-07-13 11:46:02)

Colonel Panic · 2023-08-02 08:13:48

I got a new (for me) computer recently from a charity shop for the homeless in Cambridge (England), so I'm testing it out to see which distros work with it and which don't. It came with Mint so it's a given that that one's OK, but it seems I have to avoid anything Arch-related becase Arch can't pick up the network card and it needs to be able to do that in order to install itself on my hard drive.

I installed Fedora 38 from the cover disk of a Linux magazine and it's working well (I'm posting from it now).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-08-02 08:25:38)

Nili · 2023-08-02 13:32:39

^Enjoy and have fun!

Colonel Panic · 2023-08-03 13:37:41

Thanks Nili. I feel that my days of trying any and every distro in sight are over now though. It's just so much work setting up, moving files around and (sometimes) editing config files as well, every time you install a new distro. I'll just stick to a few that work well with this machine (I've got 500 GB of hard drive space now, so plenty of room).

Fedora is good though, but it's very heavy on updates. I like Open SUSE Leap as well; it's very stable and reliable but doesn't give you quite as big a choice of packages as Debian and nor are they the most up to date ones (but I suppose that's the price you pay for the stability and reliability).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-08-03 14:00:13)

Nili · 2023-08-03 19:54:56

Any time. Personally, i have become lazy and impatient doing WM edits. My days of editing WM(s) are over too, but i don't think i'll stop Distro-hopping. That's why i fell short with DE after i bought a new tower desktop and a 4K monitor.

These last two years the most i have used Fedora with GNOME and Tumbleweed with KDE both on wayland.
I had the safest and quietest experience there with Fedora GNOME until one day out of blue i decided to try KDE since i had never been used at all. The first impression was extraordinary as i liked it immensely. From KDE Plasma i found a little more room to make easy themes/settings edits.

After ten years in Debian, or Debian-based, I really needed to look to other distros.

I think whichever offers the best opportunity we'll, be it Debian, Arch, openSUSE, Fedora, Void i'll give it a try.

I have already stopped at openSUSE, I believe i'll try many others in the future.

What i miss from Debian? is it the tracker.

Debian
openbox-tracker@debian
openSUSE
openbox-tracker@opensuse

What extraordinary data from Debian, sincerely openSUSE tracker i don't like it at all, too plain odd and dull.
I navigate tracker for packages data and Debian have it the greatest. Indeed... Debian have a lot more packages versus openSUSE, the later not only has fews, but also has many shortcomings. But, KDE imho is to solid, stable and rolling... that's the main reason i'm stick into this distro among others from KDE Dolphin, Gwenview, Konsole, Kate, Elisa etc..

I still have some fuel in me for Distro-hopping so far

Colonel Panic · 2023-08-03 22:24:36

Thanks for replying. I've never been a fan of Gnome (at least not from 3 onwards, although I like some of the software that comes with it such as gedit), but I agree that OpenSUSE is good. So is Gecko, which takes an OpenSUSE base and adds a few things like multimedia codecs to give a more out of the box experience.

Void's one I've never tried though I have seen good things said about it.

Nili · 2023-08-04 12:56:32

I used to have fun with GTK themes mostly GTK2 now looks a bit dated, things became difficult with GTK3 but, there were still rooms to make changes, while with GTK4 they seem even more complex to me. This matter was resolved passing on KDE.

Editing Breeze seems simpler. I was a geany fan, early leafpad on #! for text editor.

Really Tumbleweed for me that i use for almost a year now is it been solid distro.
Gecko, i checked from his LIVECD, but since i manage to make TW working with codecs, themes, packages i think don't need Gecko. However, appreciate what it offers for newbies on openSUSE, especially for those that have issues with codecs, packman, opi and so on out of box.

Never been used Void, but it's my target to check it.

ratcheer · 2023-08-04 13:25:04

Editing the config for Awesome WM has been a breeze. The settings just make sense and they work the way they're supposed to, at least the ones I've worked on. I've been using Awesome for about three years now.

DeepDayze · 2023-08-04 16:41:07

Nili wrote:

I used to have fun with GTK themes mostly GTK2 now looks a bit dated, things became difficult with GTK3 but, there were still rooms to make changes, while with GTK4 they seem even more complex to me. This matter was resolved passing on KDE.
Editing Breeze seems simpler. I was a geany fan, early leafpad on #! for text editor.
Really Tumbleweed for me that i use for almost a year now is it been solid distro.
Gecko, i checked from his LIVECD, but since i manage to make TW working with codecs, themes, packages i think don't need Gecko. However, appreciate what it offers for newbies on openSUSE, especially for those that have issues with codecs, packman, opi and so on out of box.
Never been used Void, but it's my target to check it.

Plasma has gotten better with the most recent release and now uses less resources. Plasma 6 is looking promising and hopefully be easier to configure as I miss having a lot of config options like in KDE 3.5!

Nili · 2023-08-04 17:09:27

DeepDayze wrote:

Plasma has gotten better with the most recent release and now uses less resources. Plasma 6 is looking promising and hopefully be easier to configure as I miss having a lot of config options like in KDE 3.5!

Already is it better even on current Plasma 5.27.7. I haven't doubt it, I am a regular follower of Nate posts. I'm looking forward to the day when it finally comes to the public.

Don't know anything about KDE2/3/4. I was all time on GNOME sides, Plasma 5 fulfills for my daily tasks absolutely fine.
As i said, even now on 5.27.7 it offers many opportunities of using or edting, so no doubt Plasma 6 will be pretty BIG and great release.

DeepDayze · 2023-08-04 17:21:38

Nili wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
Plasma has gotten better with the most recent release and now uses less resources. Plasma 6 is looking promising and hopefully be easier to configure as I miss having a lot of config options like in KDE 3.5!
Already is it better even on current Plasma 5.27.7. I haven't doubt it, I am a regular follower of Nate posts. I'm looking forward to the day when it finally comes to the public.
Don't know anything about KDE2/3/4. I was all time on GNOME sides, Plasma 5 fulfills for my daily tasks absolutely fine.
As i said, even now on 5.27.7 it offers many opportunities of using or edting, so no doubt Plasma 6 will be pretty BIG and great release.

I disliked GNOME but Cinnamon is like what GNOME should have been, but Plasma is now becoming my daily driver DE these days. Someday maybe a Plasma spin of BL with a theme that matches BL now would be nice if that were to ever happen

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