Distro-hoppers anonymous

Nili · 2024-10-14 08:53:40

DeepDayze wrote:

Got to play with Opensuse a bit and packman is something akin to the Arch AUR...it's certainly hit or miss at times.

That's what i wanted to say too, there are a few quibbles with packman that should be noted. It's a matter of waiting or mostly removing any package if necessary.

Colonel Panic wrote:

Another tool you might find useful when you're running OpenSUSE is opi.
I've found that opi is a good tool for adding packages to OpenSUSE that aren't in the standard repositories; I've added strawberry, qalculate and other packages to it that way. I've had problems getting it to work in Tumbleweed though (less so in Leap, which is the one I normally use), but it is at least worth a try IMO.
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 89#p126289
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comme … ally_cool/
[Edit: there's also Gecko, a distro which is based on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed but with media codecs and some extra software added, and also OpSys, Exton's spin on Tumbleweed but I haven't tried that one so can't vouch for it.]

Yeah, i run opi, where i'll go without it? it's the very first thing i start working on a new install.
opi codecs, browser or other multimedia stuff. Honestly if it wasn't for opi i wouldn't be in Tumbleweed at all.

Really i don't need Gecko, It's something ready-made OS, ideal for Tumbleweed beginners, but i'm capable enough to build it myself from server selection. I'd like to run a minimalistic ISO without crufts.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-14 10:38:15

Sure. When I post stuff like the one above though I'm not just addressing the person I'm answering, but also anyone else reading the thread who might be interested.

That's the one of the main reasons I keep banging the drum for Leap on here, even though I know most people aren't very interested in trying it; I think it deserves more attention than it's getting.

If you want a distro that's stable and reliable and (most importantly) where nothing breaks when you update it, Leap's as good a choice as any and there are still plenty of Linux users for whom that is what they want from a distro. The only price you pay for that is that the packages are a bit behind the curve (though in practice that's hardly ever a problem in my experience).

Back to Gecko; Gecko's dev, who calls himself geckolinux, has indicated on the forum that he wants to move away from OpenSUSE from now on, as he thinks its future is uncertain, and concentrate more on his other distro, Spiral, which is based on Debian Stable. I think Gecko's pretty good and it isn't a drastic change from the original Tumbleweed (or Leap if you use the "Static" version of Gecko, which is being phased out now).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-15 07:07:21)

Nili · 2024-10-15 14:55:56

Good thought, posts are also for educational purposes. I know Leap only by posts talked about it, haven't tried it.
However, for a stable OS i would chose Debian over anything else personally.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-15 15:30:04

Nili wrote:

Good thought, posts are also for educational purposes. I know Leap only by posts talked about it, haven't tried it.
However, for a stable OS i would chose Debian over anything else personally.

I agree; if I had to pick just one OS and stick to it, it would definitely be Debian (especially Debian Stable).

There's a reason why so many other distros are based on it, and as geckolinux said in his forum recently Debian's future is much more certain than OpenSUSE's (which is why he's focusing his attention on his Debian-based distro, Spiral, rather than Gecko).

A while back I tried to build my own distro from Nobara (based on Fedora 39) and found there was so much extra stuff I had to download and install before I could even install a simple program like tint2, which is straightforward and easy in Debian; it didn't even have CMake or Git as standard.

You don't realise how spoilt you are with Debian stable (and maybe Slackware too in this regard, though Slack has other issues such as dependency handling).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-15 15:38:34)

Nili · 2024-10-16 07:41:49

I used to make a custom setup aswell with Debian with only 100 packages in the finished installation, Set it up a with startx, wm, feh for background, and many scripts to make it completed for my needs.

Updates were infrequent, or mostly security stuff. Installing and tweaking NetInst ISO was the best time for me. It worked for beautiful without selecting anything from tasksel. Just auto-login on tty1 and an auto command from .profile to make life for startX/wm. Plain and Simple. Debian is it the minimalistic king.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-16 10:09:35

Nili wrote:

I used to make a custom setup aswell with Debian with only 100 packages in the finished installation, Set it up a with startx, wm, feh for background, and many scripts to make it completed for my needs.
Updates were infrequent, or mostly security stuff. Installing and tweaking NetInst ISO was the best time for me. It worked for beautiful without selecting anything from tasksel. Just auto-login on tty1 and an auto command from .profile to make life for startX/wm. Plain and Simple. Debian is it the minimalistic king.

Excellent! Must say I'm not brave or knowledgeable enough to use NetInst; I'd rather err on the side of installing packages I don't need (from the Debian full installation DVD) than omit the installation of packages that I do.

In other news, my installation of Slackware Current met the fate of other attempts I've made in the past to get it up and working, in that something went wrong that I wasn't able to fix (in this case it was the video display). It surely can't be long now before the "official" Slackware 15.1 is released though?

Update: I tried again with Slackware Current but with more success this time, though there are still some intermittent problems with the display. Maybe I shall go on the Slackware forums soon and try to find out how to fix it?

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-16 20:57:12)

Nili · 2024-10-17 18:17:04

Heh, I've put the system down too many times by doing wrong commands or removing packs or libs, until i learned a few things How many sleepless nights.

Slackware, It has been suggested to me several times, I wanted to give it a try, but haven't done so far. Although the installation guide doesn't seem very different to Debian Expert Install.

Honestly, i would install this system for the sole fact that have installed it and that's it, i don't think would stick on it very longer. This system is one of the Linux oldest, i must have tried it earlier, today it is too late for me to turn my head back.

I'm glad you were successful in your attempts. Is not that easy distro, you have achieved something

I don't know if they use the forum, maybe try to contact them in IRC

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-17 21:24:03

Thanks for the suggestion Nili but I just can't be bothered to post anything to the Slackware forums / IRC at the moment; it's late here at the moment and it can wait. I'm posting this from Oreon (which is in its turn based on Alma, a Red Hat clone) which so far has worked without a problem.

Slackware's a lot easier to install than it used to be though; you had to edit the XOrg configuration file by hand at one time (I'm not exaggerating). That's why easy/easier to install distros like Vector and Zenwalk came along which despite being based on Slack took a lot of the strain and hassle out of setting it all up.

I agree with you about mistakes too; I once wiped the whole Linux partition by putting the wrong switch after rm (never made that mistake again). That was in Slackware too, an amazing distro called Basic Linux which was based on Slack 3.5 and could be installed from just two floppies. The last time I looked, it was still available though I don't know if anyone still uses it.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-17 21:52:31)

hhh · 2024-10-18 03:36:44

^ Here you go...

https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/

https://archiveos.org/basic/

If anyone gets this installed and running, please post a scrot in the Monthly Scrot thread!

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-18 06:13:28

hhh wrote:

^ Here you go...
https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
https://archiveos.org/basic/
If anyone gets this installed and running, please post a scrot in the Monthly Scrot thread!

Thanks hhh. BasicLinux was OK for 2005, when computers had a lot less RAM and CPU power than they have now, there was no Youtube, and Web pages weren't laden down with as many ads as now. I remember surfing the Internet with just 32 MB of RAM, using the Blackbox window manager and Opera 5 for the browser; good times.

Currently enjoying; Bento, a distro / respin based on AntiX but with OpenBox as its window manager and a bright and cheerful colour scheme and wallpaper (also, how many distros have workspaces named after planets - Moon, Mars and Venus?). At the moment it's based on an old version of AntiX (19) but it still all works perfectly well and the developer, who appears to be French, got in touch with me to tell me that he or she's thinking of working on an updated version soon.

For now though I'm enjoying the fact that it uses a pre-Supernova version of Thunderbird, so still easy and convenient to use.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-19 11:12:33)

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-29 18:31:53

In other news; I looked at updating Debian Testing as it now is, and was asked to authorise a 1,106 MB download for (as far as I can see) no additional benefit over the old system (Bookworm). Should have stuck with stable.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-29 18:32:32)

johnraff · 2024-10-30 04:26:42

Trixie upgrades are coming in almost every day at the moment, so if you leave it for a while it will build up...

Bookworm works pretty well, yes.

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-30 13:16:29

johnraff wrote:

Trixie upgrades are coming in almost every day at the moment, so if you leave it for a while it will build up...
Bookworm works pretty well, yes.

Thanks for replying. I thought that if I upgraded to Testing I'd have more up to date versions of programs such as Firefox as standard (so 128 instead of 115), but it didn't turn out to be the case.

DeepDayze · 2024-10-30 14:34:08

hhh wrote:

^ Here you go...
https://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
https://archiveos.org/basic/
If anyone gets this installed and running, please post a scrot in the Monthly Scrot thread!

This old gem would be fun to play with on some real old laptop or desktop machine! I still have some old Slack CD's to grab packages from to customize this. Perhaps might also be fun to use Links to browse the Net.

johnraff · 2024-10-31 04:35:43

Colonel Panic wrote:

I thought that if I upgraded to Testing I'd have more up to date versions of programs such as Firefox as standard (so 128 instead of 115), but it didn't turn out to be the case.

In general, you should indeed get more recent versions of programs on Testing than Stable, but Firefox is a bit of a special case.

If you install firefox-esr you'll get the extended support version on whatever Debian you're using, except Buster:
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw … ection=all
My Firefox on Bookworm is 128.3.1esr.
I wonder why you're still stuck on 115?

Colonel Panic · 2024-10-31 19:44:56

Thanks for replying John, and for the link too. I've downloaded 128.3.1 and am posting from it now (in Testing).

I had to use Seamonkey to download it though, because when I tried to do it through Firefox I got an error message; "File not downloaded - Potential security risk."

If Firefox 128 esr is available for stable as well though, there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of point on the whole in moving to Testing (from Stable) because Firefox is the only program I use where the actual version seems to make any difference at all (the local government website I have to access won't work with 115 esr).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-10-31 22:47:37)

johnraff · 2024-11-01 03:07:03

^You don't need to download Firefox 128.3.1 from anywhere - just install firefox-esr the regular way using apt.
(It just got upgraded to 128.4.0esr today.)

It might be best first to remove any firefoxes you installed from a download.

Last edited by johnraff (2024-11-01 03:08:11)

Colonel Panic · 2024-11-01 06:54:22

johnraff wrote:

^You don't need to download Firefox 128.3.1 from anywhere - just install firefox-esr the regular way using apt.
(It just got upgraded to 128.4.0esr today.)
It might be best first to remove any firefoxes you installed from a download.

Thanks for the suggestion. One reason for downloading it as a file rather than using apt though is that I can reuse the file whenever I install a distro that either is, or is based on, that version of Debian - as I just have done (I'm posting from Firefox 128.3.1 in AntiX init-diversity now). It saves on download space (and capacity, for those still stuck on monthly usage caps) and on having to carry out the same procedure every time I install Debian or a Debian-derived distro.

In other news, amidst all the ballyhoo concerning yet another version of Fedora being released this week there's been another version of Pisi released this week. Pisi is an independent Turkish distribution with an interesting history - its developers used to work on a distro called Pardus that was used by the Turkish government, but they were sacked by the country's dictator for being insufficiently supportive of his leadership of the country.

The old Pardus had a very good reputation and it is to be hoped that PiSi will have too. The new one is OK and perfectly usable but is more or less a respin of Debian Stable.

[Edit: I'm posting from Pisi (live) now. It's quite tricky to change the default keyboard language from Turkish to British English, but I managed it and am currently listening to BBC internet radio (on Firefox).

The software that's provided is very up to date (Firefox 131, for example). The repositories seem quite small though (I wasn't able to install abiword or strawberry), so the question really is why, when there's a lot of competition amongst distros at the moment?].

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-11-04 20:10:48)

Colonel Panic · 2024-11-15 08:51:16

I've just installed MX 23.4 (the XFCE edition) from a magazine cover disk, and am trying to make it into an installation that I can "snapshot" for future use with all the applications I need already installed.

For me MX is, like Sparky, a capable distro which suffers from just one flaw; aesthetics, I just don't like the look of it, so that's one of the things I'm hoping to change. Exton did a very usable MX spin a while back, so I'm going to see if I can use that as a template.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2024-11-18 21:49:52)

Colonel Panic · 2024-12-01 22:22:40

Thank heaven, or someone, for Gentoo Live (and other live disks of course). My computer's developed a weird fault whereby it won't boot or recognise the keyboard at all from the hard drive, so I can only get it to work by booting up a live disk, and when I do that it's fine.

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