Distro-hoppers anonymous

DeepDayze · 2023-03-10 00:11:21

Martin wrote:

I am thinking about doing some thing different to my secondary computer, my Lenovo EX230. By "different" I mean installing a distro not based on Debian. I find both Void and Salix very tempting. I am a bit intimidated by the work needed to set up full disk encryption.
Any thoughts on this? Salix vs Void... Full disk encryption...
/Martin

Would be nice to see options for setting up FDE right from the installer itself and ensuring that all the pieces are properly in place for a trouble free OOTB experience on first boot.

Think PackRat can chime in on Void as he uses that a lot.

Martin · 2023-03-10 06:09:08

PackRat wrote:

Martin wrote:
I am thinking about doing some thing different to my secondary computer, my Lenovo EX230. By "different" I mean installing a distro not based on Debian. I find both Void and Salix very tempting. I am a bit intimidated by the work needed to set up full disk encryption.
Any thoughts on this? Salix vs Void... Full disk encryption...
/Martin
Both solid distros.
Void has documentation for full disk encryption installs - https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/guides/fde.html
You can probably find something similar on the Slackware forum page at LinuxQuestions.org, or the Salix forum. If not, the Salix forum users are good people; they'll help you out.

I have the documentation for both Slackware and Void. Print outs would be several pages long...

/Martin

PackRat · 2023-03-10 11:10:53

DeepDayze wrote:

Would be nice to see options for setting up FDE right from the installer itself and ensuring that all the pieces are properly in place for a trouble free OOTB experience on first boot.
Think PackRat can chime in on Void as he uses that a lot.

The Void documentation covers full disk encryption. I think it has to be done from a chroot installation ( https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation … hroot.html ). I don't think it's part of their installer. The chroot installation isn't too hard (I did it once just to do it).

@martin - how are you planning on using the computer? The only real difference is that Void is rolling release and will see regular updates. Salix is Slackware so much fewer updates. If you were to go with Slackware-current, it would be more like Void.

Martin · 2023-03-11 19:16:14

Rolling or non-rolling distro doesn't matter. I have been very happy with non-rolling Debian for many years.

I just picked up on my radar that FreeBSD and possibly OpenBSD installers do full disk encryption. Maybe too adventurous though. But then we are talking about my secondary computer. It contains nothing I can't loose if things go pear-shaped and I assume I can always reconsider and install something within my abilities.

The Void full disk encryption installation instruction I found is this one:
https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/guides/fde.html

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-03-16 11:46:47

Ubuntu has it (full disk encryption) too. I don't know about Debian 11.

Martin · 2023-03-16 19:48:53

Colonel Panic wrote:

Ubuntu has it (full disk encryption) too. I don't know about Debian 11.

I assume it does. My current OS is Debian based (no points for guessing it is BL) and encryption was a matter of ticking the right box during install.

Job computer runs Ubuntu. Disk encrypted of course.

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-03-23 22:18:19

I've just installed the latest beta of Fedora (38), and it's working well so far with no obvious problems.

Spoke too soon ... the Fedora devs have decided for some reason that the distro's users want the Windows trait of the automatic installation of updates whilst the distro is still booting up (we don't all, in fact for some of us this is one of the things we most dislike about Windows).

Edit: I'm also getting very fed up with Gnome (the window manager), although I like some of the software that comes with it. I find it clunky and awkward to use, it takes over the boot manager and obscures other window managers I've got installed; and it also seems to thrash my hard drive on occasions and slow down whatever I'm trying to do. I might stick with Exton's spin on Fedora Cinnamon in future, which works very well on my system even if I had to install some programs myself, such as LibreOffice and Thunderbird, that should really have been provided.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-04-23 10:32:49)

taberacci · 2023-03-29 03:35:44

Warning, this is a distro-hopper who could go rambling for quite a bit. I couldn't do this in 2021 or earlier so there.

Beryllium, nice system but a bit bloated. Have to get used to dot-file land. Tried Slackel also which was a mess to be honest and not good for slow Internet connections. Also have Archbang which has been small and awesome so far. I have like much, much more but it will be a story for another day.

(BTW why isn't there a "general" topic to introduce new people? Why start a new topic for "every" person? I hate starting topics but I might have to create one anyway, that's why I asked.)

Colonel Panic · 2023-03-29 07:26:40

taberacci wrote:

Warning, this is a distro-hopper who could go rambling for quite a bit. I couldn't do this in 2021 or earlier so there.
Beryllium, nice system but a bit bloated. Have to get used to dot-file land. Tried Slackel also which was a mess to be honest and not good for slow Internet connections. Also have Archbang which has been small and awesome so far. I have like much, much more but it will be a story for another day.
(BTW why isn't there a "general" topic to introduce new people? Why start a new topic for "every" person? I hate starting topics but I might have to create one anyway, that's why I asked.)

There's this one;

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewforum.php?id=7

Welcome anyway.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-03-29 07:27:08)

Martin · 2023-03-29 21:19:30

Earlier I lamented the lack of installer support for creating encrypted hard drives in Void and Salix. Yes, there are instructions for both for how to do it manually but... Then I found out that Slint, which is a Slackware based distro built on Salix technology, has an installer that does disk encryption for you.

Hence, I am currently trying out Slint in a virtual machine.

Slint has no Live ISO. You have to install it before you take it for a spin. Installing, including encryption, went swimmingly once I had duped it into believing I have a 50 GB drive for it to use. It occupies 9 GB after installation.

During the installation process I can choose between several DE/WM options but Mate is sort of recommended so I went for that and expected a stream-lined Mate experience as Salix Live ISO offers a very snappy, no-nonsense XFCE experience. But instead Slint UX is a mix of Mate (GTK) and Qt programs with several duplications, tripplications...: At least four text editors, three file managers etc. When I check installed packages I find every window manager I ever heard of. Why?

The package manager in question, Gslapt, works fairly well. It is a little primitive compared to Synaptic. When removing packages I have to carefully double-check what else will be removed. Also, when installing, it is not always successful in pulling in dependencies.

Slint is not Salix with a HD encryption capable installer. Nevertheless, I will play some more with it to learn more.

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-03-30 19:24:07

Hi Martin,

I tried an earlier version of Slint (14.2.1.4) a while back and liked it but couldn't get a later one (15.0.1) to finish installing - maybe it was a bad disk burn or something. It used to have tools for the partially sighted (such as the orca screen reader) though; I assume that it still has.

https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stabl … on.html.en

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-03-30 19:26:52)

Martin · 2023-03-30 20:44:49

Yes, help for partially sighted is the main selling point of Slint. I fail to see (pun not intended) how a menu system bloated with multiple alternatives of file managers, editors etc helps people with poor eyesight. And why a Mandlebrot fractal zoom application? That is a very visual thing. Likewise Compis effects.

Mate itself is very straight-forward and the Mate applications (Caja, Pluma...) are likewise functional without being over-designed or making a big song and dance number of themselves. I found the original theme a little on the gaudy side but that is easily fixed. YMMV as this is about personal taste.

Most things run smoothly and reasonably snappy despite me only allocating one core (ten year old i3 processor) to this virtual machine. There has been a couple of very temporary freezes tonight (Compis?) but very, very far from the Micro$oft experience of "Window not responding" for minutes on end.

/Martin

taberacci · 2023-04-02 22:40:20

I'm not a "fanboi" of anything. If I say something it comes from experience, I don't have to lie about what I did. It was very frustrating trying to get through Debian Installer while it kept failing at bootloader install, but one day I succeeded. Too bad I still don't have it around. I do have Debian XFCE "Testing" which was a "weekly" ISO near Happy Holidays last year, a nice accomplishment but I'm not comfortable with that buggy D.E. anymore.

I don't like rolling-release distros. But a couple based on Arch have served me very well, such that some people would think that, after all, I am one of those people trying to wave the giant flag on other people's faces. Manjaro KDE has worked very well for me, even on an 11-year-old PC, had v5.15 LTS kernel for a long while and now on their v6.1 with almost no issues. I don't know why other people keep having problems with that distro, but I know what is the greatest problem at the other end. Still, Spiral KDE is a bit better to me even if it's outdated. Because I have to use it from a slow mechanical internal hard disk.

I like to install Linux on external USB disks. Whatever doesn't let me do that and doesn't let me have Wine "multilib" doesn't have my stamp of approval. 64-bit-only Wine isn't going to cut it -- I need to run some Windows installers. Rejected Triskel because of it a short time ago. One of the first couple of distros I had to set aside were Linux Mint for being retarded, and Mageia v8 for having ancient packages out of seldom-maintained repositories. Had to deal with it also with Void "musl" last year, and sometime later with Salix. Understood that it was going to be quite a job on Redcore but it was unusable to me for other reasons, really wanted to like that one, the Romanian project leader of that one has to be praised for what he's doing.

Solus and Void "glibc" were awesome about Wine but had to move on away from them after too long. Manjaro KDE just beat both of them hands down. The problem was, I tried to install Bunsen Labs Lithium onto a new 64GB external disk that I bought and ended up messing up things so I couldn't boot into Solus anymore. You have to see what Solus did to my ESP; I don't think I finished cleaning up after it.

Solus MATE was great with 32-bit Windows stuff but I was getting really carried away. Then an update caused RENOISE to crash instead of starting. I was like, "Oh no where's the boat now? I can't swim!" It was the beginning of the end. R.I.P.

Void, well, other people criticized it installing successfully with no sound and with no volume system tray thingie. I disliked the "stock" XFCE it came with. After a few months I got sick and tired of a rolling-release distro that slowly and steadily bogged down updating repositories and installing what it wanted. This was true with Fedora XFCE also but I should have stayed with it even longer. However was offended they put off v37 for a month. I had Fedora v35 GNOME but it sucked, I'm glad my setup of Spiral GNOME isn't that lame. I have to dig deep into my closet but I think I also have Fedora v36 MATE that I never updated, meant to keep it that way as last resort LOL. Maybe I'll try v38, or just wait until November or so for v39.

I've tried many others. A lot of them were crap like EasyOS, Gecko Linux "Static", Mabox, OpenMandriva ROME, siduction, Triskel and Zephix, and some of the Ubuntu flavors and those related like Mint, AV Linux and LegacyOS (based on Antix). Garuda refused to boot for me, Bluestar was freckin' confusing, RebornOS appears to install successfully only with GNOME. Archcraft refused to give me any sign of a window, infinitely just black screen with mouse cursor like waiting for KDE to load up. Mabox was certainly a hair better than NomadBSD and otherwise bloated and both too hot for my CPU fan. Recently I wanted to see what was the big deal with elementary OS. The D.E. is nice but a bit weird, didn't dare install it. It might have been much better than overrated System76 software LOL where I got that same "get a newer e2fsck!" problem as Debian "Testing" for a while. Had Rocky Linux for a bit but I will never again download an ISO much larger than 4GiB. Just before that when a new release of EuroLinux came out I picked up the "net-install" or whatever it was because it was much smaller. Big mistake, couldn't even give me a desktop. Checked out Mageia "Cauldron" of that alpha they have currently but soon got tired of it. The same with Gecko Linux based on "Tumbleweed", had a library update clash which was unacceptable to me. Incredibly that was able to do a full system update without problems out of a six-month-old ISO, although with very slow Internet. Had ALT Sisyphus "unstable" with MATE. It was pretty good for about two weeks, then I made a reckless decision to update and wrecked it so it booted very slowly. I had Devuan MATE but felt like I committed a dirty profound sin, ripped it off after a month. I cannot care if "systemd" is bloatware or spyware, to me it has to work how I want or forget it, because I cannot go back to Windows easily anymore.

Right now I'm downloading Ubuntu Cinnamon "Jammy". LOL.

taberacci · 2023-04-03 01:55:19

It didn't last long. This "new" Ubuntu "flavor" is slow as a hog, and it blocked doing anything with "apt" on terminal. It's bad enough I have to trust only LTS. IMO this Cinnamon version was made by different people from Kubuntu, which I have to keep offline for good to keep the "ebil snappez" away. With about 50 thousand files more at fresh install and first-time booting ArcoLinux is way better than this "new" Ubuntu.

Martin · 2023-04-03 19:20:02

Short Slint adventure update.

The dependency technology must be broken. I have installed a number of things now that does not work because some library or another is missing. Also, after a while I found that some programs that have installed correctly and work are flagged as not installed in Gslapt. I had to re-install Trojita to be able to remove it.

The user documentation tells me I can not install /any/ package that was installed during OS installation or the system will break. Really? I would understand this if it was a bare bones OS to which I had to add everything in user-land I wanted to have including WM/DE in the manner of FreeBSD.

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-04-05 01:25:43

Thanks for the review Martin. Quite honestly, when I want to use Slackware Eric Hameleers's "Current" Slackware spin does everything I need from it and I don't see the need to replace it with anything else (although Slackel Openbox, of which a new version has just been released, is good too in my experience).

I just wish the Slackware devs (and Pat Volkerding in particular) would ditch Calligra though and add in Libreoffice instead (as I do when I install Slack myself).

Martin · 2023-04-05 05:44:56

Colonel Panic wrote:

Thanks for the review Martin. Quite honestly, when I want to use Slackware Eric Hameleers's "Current" Slackware spin does everything I need from it and I don't see the need to replace it with anything else (although Slackel Openbox, of which a new version has just been released, is good too in my experience).
I just wish the Slackware devs (and Pat Volkerding in particular) would ditch Calligra though and add in Libreoffice instead (as I do when I install Slack myself).

It was the installer capable of setting up full disk encryption for me that prompted me to take Slint for a spin.

/Martin

THX1138 · 2023-04-05 12:47:10

My distro-hopping story goes like this.
back in the late 1990's I discovered Red hat 4.something or other, maybe 5. something.
I joined a linux user group and pissed them off heartily because I was such a noob and they were all like professors of computer science and shiz like that. Then around the early 2000's i discovered Debian and loathed their purist ways, I felt like I was being inducted into a linux monastery, so went to Suse but it was so bloated I went back to debian after a year or so. then every distro imaginable and possible between 2005 and 2012 then I felt like I had learnt enough to start actually introducing businesses to linux. I think you would be hard pushed to find a distro I havent used. Anyway the upshot is that I find Debian based distro's to be the true heirs to the true linux way of life - and now feel at home in the monastery of debian linux and its holy flavours. I havent yet been inaugurated but I certainly worship at the altar. PS for a while I used to love Void but then it went haywire and flew off into outer space. Now I am back with bunsenlabs and just experimenting the last few weeks to get it how I love it

Martin · 2023-04-05 21:56:34

THX1138 wrote:

PS for a while I used to love Void but then it went haywire and flew off into outer space. Now I am back with bunsenlabs and just experimenting the last few weeks to get it how I love it

Went haywire?
What did they do?

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-04-08 14:51:41

Finally signed up to Flickr, at least for a trial.

Enlightenment with the BlingBling theme running in Siduction Wintersky;

https://www.flickr.com/photos/198071096 … datetaken/

#1921 2023-03-10 00:11:21

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1922 2023-03-10 06:09:08

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1923 2023-03-10 11:10:53

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1924 2023-03-11 19:16:14

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1925 2023-03-16 11:46:47

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1926 2023-03-16 19:48:53

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1927 2023-03-23 22:18:19

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1928 2023-03-29 03:35:44

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1929 2023-03-29 07:26:40

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1930 2023-03-29 21:19:30

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1931 2023-03-30 19:24:07

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1932 2023-03-30 20:44:49

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1933 2023-04-02 22:40:20

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1934 2023-04-03 01:55:19

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1935 2023-04-03 19:20:02

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1936 2023-04-05 01:25:43

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1937 2023-04-05 05:44:56

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1938 2023-04-05 12:47:10

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1939 2023-04-05 21:56:34

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1940 2023-04-08 14:51:41

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

Board footer