Distro-hoppers anonymous

Colonel Panic · 2022-03-15 10:32:07

I've recently installed Slackel Openbox 9.5, which is a Greek distro based on Salix and Slackware. There are two other versions of Slackel based on KDE and Mate respectively, but unlike the Openbox version neither of them have been updated yet.

Networking didn't work "out of the box" so I had to find a fix for it, but once that was sorted it turned out to be a good, lightweight and yet fully featured distro with an attractive interface if you like green (it's heavily green-themed). I don't think the underlying Slack version is 15, though, because it was released earlier (Slack 15 was released on the 3rd March whereas Openbox was released on New Year's Day), so if that's important to you it might be worth waiting for a later version of Slackel.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-03-15 11:06:21)

PackRat · 2022-03-15 17:03:32

^
Slakel has always been based on Slackware current, and the sister project of SalixOS which is based on the stable release of Slackware. SalixOS 15 should be available soon. Dimitris Tzemos is a developer for both projects.

Used to be that the Slakel repositories could be used with Slackware current so a user could configure gslapt for use with Slackware current and not rely on Slackbuilds.

Colonel Panic · 2022-03-16 17:26:01

PackRat wrote:

^
Slakel has always been based on Slackware current, and the sister project of SalixOS which is based on the stable release of Slackware. SalixOS 15 should be available soon. Dimitris Tzemos is a developer for both projects.
Used to be that the Slakel repositories could be used with Slackware current so a user could configure gslapt for use with Slackware current and not rely on Slackbuilds.

Thanks, that makes sense. I don't think Current was much different from Slack 15 so there shouldn't be much difference.

If you like Slack-based distros, the venerable Zenwalk is also still going. It's got a somewhat dark default theme for my taste (albeit with a dramatic wallpaper based on that very long bridge in Hong Kong) and uses Chromium as its default browser, but it seems to work OK. You have to install your own office suite though, because it doesn't come with one provided.

Shouldn't be too hard on it because I think it's a single developer effort now and at least it's still going when a lot of other older distros (Vector, Libranet etc.) have fallen by the wayside.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-03-17 14:50:04)

Bearded_Blunder · 2022-03-16 17:30:26

I used Zenwalk, a very long time ago,(before finding #!), if I end up with nothing better to do I might take a look, I got on reasonably well with it at the time.

PackRat · 2022-03-16 17:42:07

Zenwalk is a good distro.

It too is now based on Slackware-current.

Bearded_Blunder · 2022-03-16 17:46:17

Last time I used anything based on Slackware I believe Debian Stable was codename Etch.

Colonel Panic · 2022-03-18 08:52:29

PackRat wrote:

Zenwalk is a good distro.
It too is now based on Slackware-current.

(and Bearded Blunder) Yes, and it uses Flatpak for its software installation which I find patchy (it has LibreOffice in its repositories for example, which is good, but not Thunderbird).

In other news; Mabox broke yesterday. I don't know how it happened but the menu in Openbox didn't work, Conky turned to crap after about 30 minutes and I couldn't change the theme through ObConf. I decided drastic measures were called for so I nixed Openbox, ObConf and Conky and installed Fluxbox, dmenu, gkrellm and xterm instead. What I've got left is an Arch setup which looks about 20 years old but still works, which is the most important thing obviously.

[I also carried out a full Arch upgrade - a 992 MB download.]

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-03-19 16:54:09)

ratcheer · 2022-04-02 14:05:51

I guess it is time to try out the Fedora 36 Beta, and see what Gnome is up to now.

Sigh...

DeepDayze · 2022-04-02 14:30:14

ratcheer wrote:

I guess it is time to try out the Fedora 36 Beta, and see what Gnome is up to now.
Sigh...

GNOME 42 on Wayland for starters.

ratcheer · 2022-04-02 21:16:48

Yeah.

I have it upgraded on my notebook, now. The F35 to F36 upgrade ran, flawlessly. I need to make backups before I start using it too much.

Arch Linux on my desktop is my main, everyday system.

DeepDayze · 2022-04-02 22:10:13

Fedora I liked and used to run it as my daily driver back in the Fedora Core days, but hated dealing with RPMs though. I may give it another spin, and perhaps make it like BL.

Colonel Panic · 2022-04-05 12:56:58

I'm currently in Fedora 36B (XFce respin), and am finding it an elegantly designed distro that works well - upgrades are smooth and fast, for example. I don't know what advantages (if any) Fedora or any of the other RPM-based distros (SUSE, PCLinuxOS etc.) has over Debian though.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-04-05 12:57:28)

deleted0 · 2022-04-05 13:56:53

^ I recently spent some time with Fedora 35 and came to the same findings as you.

rbh · 2022-04-05 15:21:01

I started with Redhat 2.0 in 1995. Migrated to Suse around 2000. It might be 15 years ago that i left Suse and Fedora.
I can not recollect it being any big difference between rpm and deb.

I miss Yast in Suse though.

DeepDayze · 2022-04-05 16:51:39

rbh wrote:

I started with Redhat 2.0 in 1995. Migrated to Suse around 2000. It might be 15 years ago that i left Suse and Fedora.
I can not recollect it being any big difference between rpm and deb.
I miss Yast in Suse though.

Yast is awesome and nothing quite comes close to it in versatility and power. Using Alien you can convert rpm's to deb and vice versa as well.

Colonel Panic · 2022-04-06 07:56:52

eight.bit.al wrote:

^ I recently spent some time with Fedora 35 and came to the same findings as you.

Yes, I've got sufficient space on my hard drive to fit it in though so it's not a problem.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-04-06 07:58:04)

trinidad · 2022-04-06 13:18:18

Migrated to Suse around 2000

Suse was absolutely awesome in that era. My first immersion in "Linux" was with the boxed CD set and two manuals that Suse put out in those days on a home built overclocked 433. Dual booted Windows 2000 with that Suse desktop and two HDDs, one 20 gig for Suse and 10 gig for Windows. The first broadband connection I got to connect to it was on a motorola surfboard by identifying the sytem as an Apple. Moved to Kubuntu with 12.04 until 16.04 but then Debian 8 came out and I never looked back again. I used to use alien to get RPMs to work odd broadcom stuff because RHEL had drivers and OEM man numbers.

TC

DeepDayze · 2022-04-06 15:54:09

trinidad wrote:

Migrated to Suse around 2000
Suse was absolutely awesome in that era. My first immersion in "Linux" was with the boxed CD set and two manuals that Suse put out in those days on a home built overclocked 433. Dual booted Windows 2000 with that Suse desktop and two HDDs, one 20 gig for Suse and 10 gig for Windows. The first broadband connection I got to connect to it was on a motorola surfboard by identifying the sytem as an Apple. Moved to Kubuntu with 12.04 until 16.04 but then Debian 8 came out and I never looked back again. I used to use alien to get RPMs to work odd broadcom stuff because RHEL had drivers and OEM man numbers.
TC

I loved Alien as it worked pretty darn well for firmware stuff, but you had to make sure you had any dependencies installed first before installing any of the alien-created debs from those RHEL RPMs.

Bearded_Blunder · 2022-04-10 23:53:51

ratcheer wrote:

Gentoo is hard.
That's the post.

My experience is it's a LOT of carefully reading instructions interposed by sometimes VERY long waits.
But then I have OLD slow hardware.

They might still claim to support the old 486 processors, but you'd die of old age actually trying to install on one.

Colonel Panic · 2022-04-28 11:32:05

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

ratcheer wrote:
Gentoo is hard.
That's the post.
My experience is it's a LOT of carefully reading instructions interposed by sometimes VERY long waits.
But then I have OLD slow hardware.
They might still claim to support the old 486 processors, but you'd die of old age actually trying to install on one.

Exton used to have a Gentoo spin called ExGent which was a pretty good way of getting an easily installable Gentoo, but I haven't seen an update of it for a year or two now. Gentoo was always a good distro - very solid and stable - but in the end I don't think it offered anything that Arch didn't, and for a lot more trouble to set it up than Arch needed and a smaller repository of software.

In other news; I'm currently carrying out a system update of Mint 20, which is a 585 MB total download, Quite a lot, but less than I would need to update either an Arch distro or either of Debian Testing and Unstable.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2022-04-28 13:51:11)

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