Distro-hoppers anonymous

unklar · 2021-09-26 08:01:05

DeepDayze wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
^^ Good choice. I've just updated a month old installation of Manjaro, and all went well except for the very large size of the download - just over 1 GB. Arch-based distros seem to be much more demanding of bandwidth than Debian-based ones do.
(I've also installed LXDE as the desktop manager, which Manjaro doesn't have as standard.)
I've noticed that as well in my experiments. Wondering if it is because of the dependency mechanisms in use as it appears they install all recommends by default.

^^This is actually logical with a RollingRelease distribution, which receives new and updated packages several times a day.

That's why you should not wait a month. At least then weekly. That's at least one of the rules at sid(uction).

Last edited by unklar (2021-09-26 08:06:43)

deleted0 · 2021-09-26 13:17:55

Archcraft OS latest release:

September 2021 : Archcraft 2021.09

https://github.com/archcraft-os/releases/releases

Lots and lots and more eye candy settings - themes, icons, menu styles, etc.
The purpose of the OS is creation and sharing of eye candy desktops.
Screen Recorder gets top level Menu real estate.
Because there isn't enough garishly ugly desktops on Reddit.

Normally, I detest a Mac OS style launch bar, especially if the icons pulse on mouse-over.
This one I only slightly hate.

8bit

Last edited by deleted0 (2021-09-26 13:55:57)

Colonel Panic · 2021-09-26 18:45:33

unklar wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:
^^ Good choice. I've just updated a month old installation of Manjaro, and all went well except for the very large size of the download - just over 1 GB. Arch-based distros seem to be much more demanding of bandwidth than Debian-based ones do.
(I've also installed LXDE as the desktop manager, which Manjaro doesn't have as standard.)
I've noticed that as well in my experiments. Wondering if it is because of the dependency mechanisms in use as it appears they install all recommends by default.
^^This is actually logical with a RollingRelease distribution, which receives new and updated packages several times a day.
That's why you should not wait a month. At least then weekly. That's at least one of the rules at sid(uction).

You're probably right (and interesting that you should mention Siduction too; I've recently upgraded that one too and it was about a 950 MB download.) Makes me wonder though whether or not there is an optimum frequency of upgrading a distro; once a week sounds about right but once every day, or two days, is probably too much.

Colonel Panic · 2021-09-26 20:22:54

DeepDayze wrote:

I've noticed that as well in my experiments. Wondering if it is because of the dependency mechanisms in use as it appears they install all recommends by default.

Yes, again you're probably right. Manjaro has branches just like Debian though (stable, unstable and testing) so the rules may be different for those.

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Switching_Branches

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2021-09-27 03:39:38)

hhh · 2021-09-27 02:19:15

MXLinux 64-bit KDE (in Virtualbox)...

DeepDayze · 2021-09-27 16:45:51

Colonel Panic wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
I've noticed that as well in my experiments. Wondering if it is because of the dependency mechanisms in use as it appears they install all recommends by default.
Yes, again you're probably right. Manjaro has branches just like Debian though (stable, unstable and testing) so the rules may be different for those.
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Switching_Branches

I bet pacman by default installs all recommended packages just like apt in Debian and not sure if pacman has a switch similar to --no-install-recommends in Debian if you don't want or need any of the recommended packages.

PackRat · 2021-09-27 17:26:17

DeepDayze wrote:

I bet pacman by default installs all recommended packages just like apt in Debian

I don't think so; they are listed after a package install/upgrade -

from ArchWiki -

Packages often have optional dependencies which are packages that provide additional functionality to the application but not strictly required for running it. When installing a package, pacman will list a package's optional dependencies, but they will not be found in pacman.log.

pacman has the --asdeps and --asexplicit switches (which I have never used) that allow for changing the "installation reason" so the user opts into installing the recommended packages (I think that's how it works).

Read the ArchWiki about pacman and maybe the AUR packaging rules for dependency handling.

unklar · 2021-09-27 17:55:50

Colonel Panic wrote:

unklar wrote:
DeepDayze wrote:
I've noticed that as well in my experiments. Wondering if it is because of the dependency mechanisms in use as it appears they install all recommends by default.
^^This is actually logical with a RollingRelease distribution, which receives new and updated packages several times a day.
That's why you should not wait a month. At least then weekly. That's at least one of the rules at sid(uction).
You're probably right (and interesting that you should mention Siduction too; I've recently upgraded that one too and it was about a 950 MB download.) Makes me wonder though whether or not there is an optimum frequency of upgrading a distro; once a week sounds about right but once every day, or two days, is probably too much.

With Sid(duction), the more often a full-upgrade is done, the more stable the system is.
Doesn't that sound logical?
I would like to quote a good friend (and moderator) from the siduction-forum:

Piper wrote:

Unstable (sid) is called unstable, not because it's prone to crashes, but because of how often it changes
To make the best of sid, it is wise to full-upgrade every day, some people do it once or twice a week.
The unstable (sid) repositories are updated every 6 hours. This happens in debian 4 times per day, each versus 05:00, 11:00, 17:00 and 23:00 and why full-upgrades are important on a daily basis.

Yes, and from the Administrator @devil I know that he updates his productive system daily, if necessary several times.

The trick is always to read exactly what apt will do.... and, to read the forum. It happens more often to just wait with the DU.

DeepDayze · 2021-09-27 18:03:11

PackRat wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
I bet pacman by default installs all recommended packages just like apt in Debian
I don't think so; they are listed after a package install/upgrade -
from ArchWiki -
Packages often have optional dependencies which are packages that provide additional functionality to the application but not strictly required for running it. When installing a package, pacman will list a package's optional dependencies, but they will not be found in pacman.log.
pacman has the --asdeps and --asexplicit switches (which I have never used) that allow for changing the "installation reason" so the user opts into installing the recommended packages (I think that's how it works).
Read the ArchWiki about pacman and maybe the AUR packaging rules for dependency handling.

OK thanks for the clarification and still it's a good idea to upgrade at least weekly (and that goes for debian too).

PackRat · 2021-09-27 18:59:10

DeepDayze wrote:

OK thanks for the clarification and still it's a good idea to upgrade at least weekly (and that goes for debian too).

Certainly Debian Sid-based distros. And bleeding edge/rolling release like Arch or Void [based] distros.

Debian Testing is the one to be careful with. That is an easy distro bork because of the way dependencies come through the pipeline. A large DE like Gnome (KDE, Xfce) can get updated, bit the dependencies may lag behind (for quite a while, sometimes). I borked Gnome on Debian Testing years ago and it took a couple weeks for the dependencies to come through. Sparky maintains their own repos and guards against this sort of thing, I believe.

With Sid, some big packages - namely python, perl, xorg - can cause trouble with dependencies lagging behind. When I was running Sid/VSIDO, I would watch for those to hit, then wait a couple days for the rest of the packages to show up.

DeepDayze · 2021-09-27 20:31:03

PackRat wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
OK thanks for the clarification and still it's a good idea to upgrade at least weekly (and that goes for debian too).
Certainly Debian Sid-based distros. And bleeding edge/rolling release like Arch or Void [based] distros.
Debian Testing is the one to be careful with. That is an easy distro bork because of the way dependencies come through the pipeline. A large DE like Gnome (KDE, Xfce) can get updated, bit the dependencies may lag behind (for quite a while, sometimes). I borked Gnome on Debian Testing years ago and it took a couple weeks for the dependencies to come through. Sparky maintains their own repos and guards against this sort of thing, I believe.
With Sid, some big packages - namely python, perl, xorg - can cause trouble with dependencies lagging behind. When I was running Sid/VSIDO, I would watch for those to hit, then wait a couple days for the rest of the packages to show up.

Exactly for Sid and the siduction forum is the best resource for those who use Debian Sid and I am sure other distros have guidance on their rolling releases as well to warn about potential issues.

I am sure very few people run pure Debian Testing as that can have more breakage than Sid and other distros that have some sort of testing branch may experience the same.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2021-09-27 20:32:44)

hhh · 2021-09-28 01:53:40

PackRat wrote:

Debian Testing is the one to be careful with.

Indeed. sid might go down for a week, but testing can go down for months if you're waiting on a specific package. If you want to experiment with debian, use sid and follow the siduction dev forum and also post support questions here.

The exception to this is when testing goes into soft-freeze, like it did last January, and the the consecutive freezes till the (Bullseye) release. I've had no problems using testing at soft-freeze in the release cycle for the last three releases. Since Stretch.

DeepDayze · 2021-09-28 02:01:20

hhh wrote:

PackRat wrote:
Debian Testing is the one to be careful with.
Indeed. sid might go down for a week, but testing can go down for months if you're waiting on a specific package. If you want to experiment with debian, use sid and follow the siduction dev forum.
The exception to this is when testing goes into soft-freeze, like it did last January, and the the consecutive freezes till the Bullseye release. I've had no problems using testing at soft-freeze in the release cycle for the last three releases.

If you are good with backporting you can backport the package you need from Sid to testing (if said package is available in Sid) if you can't wait for it that long especially when not in a freeze.

The siduction forum is great even if you are using plain vanilla Sid and not siduction distro.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2021-09-28 02:03:16)

hhh · 2021-09-28 02:05:00

Why do that, though? Why not just run sid?

deleted0 · 2021-09-28 18:09:33

XeroLinux

Plasma on Arch.
https://xldb.techxero.com/
https://xldb.techxero.com/p/1-about-xerolinux

As shipped. Pretty awful. IMHO.

The formatting of the fetch was off the first time it ran. (neofetch at the end of the longest bash.rc I've seen)

8bit

Last edited by deleted0 (2021-09-28 22:18:55)

deleted0 · 2021-09-29 01:05:33

twoion wrote:

^ do they mix GTK and plasma apps by default?? Seems annoying as KIO and GVFS don't mix either.

I installed GIMP and it seems to play nice.
The first set of images were of the Core edition. (minimal)

The shots below are from the Main edition.

Default screen.

8bit

Last edited by deleted0 (2021-09-29 01:08:36)

hhh · 2021-09-29 22:33:31

twoion wrote:

^ do they mix GTK and plasma apps by default?? Seems annoying as KIO and GVFS don't mix either.

Agreed, it's an awkward combo. Honestly, as far as a streamlined, unified set of default apps and services go, it's hard to beat BunsenLabs...

Colonel Panic · 2021-10-06 23:03:57

I've recently installed the KDE variant of Slackel 19.3, a Greek distro based on Salix and Slackware, and so far it's working well; I usually have a lot of trouble with "tearing" in KDE on my system, but not with this one. It has a nice all-green theme as well.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2021-10-06 23:04:38)

PackRat · 2021-10-07 01:45:30

Colonel Panic wrote:

I've recently installed the KDE variant of Slackel 19.3, a Greek distro based on Salix and Slackware, and so far it's working well; I usually have a lot of trouble with "tearing" in KDE on my system, but not with this one. It has a nice all-green theme as well.

Slakel is based on Slackware Current - should be Slackware 15-beta these days. Slakel and Salix are both excellent distros. Slackware Current is also good. Put together by a couple of the Slackware devs, although still considered an unofficial release.

Last edited by PackRat (2021-10-07 01:47:05)

Colonel Panic · 2021-10-07 08:01:47

Yes, they're all good. Slint is worth a mention too; it's a French distro for visually impaired users and also based on Slackware with some Salix packages.

https://aiyumi.github.io/en/blog/slint-linux-review/

Salix doesn't update regularly from Slackware Current IIRC, unlike the others, so you have to wait for the official release (14.2, 15.0 etc). to get the next edition.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2021-10-07 08:02:41)

#1501 2021-09-26 08:01:05

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1502 2021-09-26 13:17:55

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1503 2021-09-26 18:45:33

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1504 2021-09-26 20:22:54

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1505 2021-09-27 02:19:15

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1506 2021-09-27 16:45:51

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1507 2021-09-27 17:26:17

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1508 2021-09-27 17:55:50

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1509 2021-09-27 18:03:11

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1510 2021-09-27 18:59:10

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1511 2021-09-27 20:31:03

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1512 2021-09-28 01:53:40

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1513 2021-09-28 02:01:20

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1514 2021-09-28 02:05:00

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1515 2021-09-28 18:09:33

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1516 2021-09-29 01:05:33

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1517 2021-09-29 22:33:31

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1518 2021-10-06 23:03:57

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1519 2021-10-07 01:45:30

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1520 2021-10-07 08:01:47

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

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