Distro-hoppers anonymous

deleted0 · 2023-05-11 13:48:09

Colonel Panic wrote:

The only downside is (and I don't want to sound like Dedo here), to me it doesn't look all that great. It's got a rather dull dark grey theme with a modern art wallpaper which looks like two-dimensional Licorice Allsorts on a grey background, the icons are flat and "blocky," and for me, most seriously, the font used in the menu and the text below the icons is faint and not very clear.

MX has always had the 'Loving geeks at home' look.
Geeks seldom make good artists. Look at Antix, ugly.

That's okay with me, let them put their efforts into the code rather than the art.

8bit

DeepDayze · 2023-05-11 13:52:45

Colonel Panic wrote:

I've just downloaded the latest version of MX KDE (21.3), though I haven't installed it. On the whole it works well with a good range of applications and of course the excellent MX Tools set of utilities. The only downside is (and I don't want to sound like Dedoimedo here), to me it doesn't look all that great. It's got a rather dull dark grey theme with a modern art wallpaper which looks like two-dimensional Licorice Allsorts on a grey background, the icons are flat and "blocky," and for me, most seriously, the font used in the menu and the text below the icons is faint and not very clear.
All this can be changed though, and there's even a remaster utility in MX Tools which enables you to create a new ISO for future use once you've done so. For now though, if you don't want to do that I'd recommend using Exton's respin of MX with LXQT instead and just add in the KDE utilities you need (and also an office suite).
Postscript; I've just booted up MX Exton for the purpose of comparison. The fonts aren't great in that either, though they are at least bigger which makes them easier to read, and the wallpaper is a picture of a Ferrari Enzo (Exton clearly likes his cars; one of his other respins has a picture of a Bugatti as its wallpaper) which makes a difference too.

I have MX-21.3 KDE installed and it's indeed a well designed distro with it's only foible is how much is packed into it. The themes and icons I changed upon a fresh install, and made sure baloo is disabled as well. Once I got it looking the way I want I used that remastering tool and it produced a nice ISO I could use to install on another machine or as a backup in case I hose the current install. Gotta give MX kudos for its customizability if you don't like the default setup.

As for Exton, never tried it and perhaps he should use car names for distro names lol.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-11 17:30:44

DeepDayze wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
I've just downloaded the latest version of MX KDE (21.3), though I haven't installed it. On the whole it works well with a good range of applications and of course the excellent MX Tools set of utilities. The only downside is (and I don't want to sound like Dedoimedo here), to me it doesn't look all that great. It's got a rather dull dark grey theme with a modern art wallpaper which looks like two-dimensional Licorice Allsorts on a grey background, the icons are flat and "blocky," and for me, most seriously, the font used in the menu and the text below the icons is faint and not very clear.
All this can be changed though, and there's even a remaster utility in MX Tools which enables you to create a new ISO for future use once you've done so. For now though, if you don't want to do that I'd recommend using Exton's respin of MX with LXQT instead and just add in the KDE utilities you need (and also an office suite).
Postscript; I've just booted up MX Exton for the purpose of comparison. The fonts aren't great in that either, though they are at least bigger which makes them easier to read, and the wallpaper is a picture of a Ferrari Enzo (Exton clearly likes his cars; one of his other respins has a picture of a Bugatti as its wallpaper) which makes a difference too.
I have MX-21.3 KDE installed and it's indeed a well designed distro with it's only foible is how much is packed into it. The themes and icons I changed upon a fresh install, and made sure baloo is disabled as well. Once I got it looking the way I want I used that remastering tool and it produced a nice ISO I could use to install on another machine or as a backup in case I hose the current install. Gotta give MX kudos for its customizability if you don't like the default setup.

As for Exton, never tried it and perhaps he should use car names for distro names lol.

Thanks for the advice re MX KDE. The only Baloo I know is this one, but I think it's something to do with file search in KDE?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpetAXm0hz4

As for Exton, the companies would probably charge him for the use of their name, but also there are the legal implications. Imagine if you're a company like Bugatti, and someone released a Linux distro called Veyron and it proved to be unreliable, insecure or painfully slow - wouldn't be good for the company's image at all.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-11 17:36:23)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-11 17:32:34

eight.bit.al wrote:

MX has always had the 'Loving geeks at home' look.
Geeks seldom make good artists. Look at Antix, ugly.
https://i.ibb.co/CMYpY1r/antix.png
That's okay with me, let them put their efforts into the code rather than the art.
8bit

I think you have a point, and that's where the respins come in (like Exton's) that attempt to make something more visually attractive from the raw material as well as adding functionality.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-11 17:49:34)

DeepDayze · 2023-05-11 18:36:02

Colonel Panic wrote:

Thanks for the advice re MX KDE. The only Baloo I know is this one, but I think it's something to do with file search in KDE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpetAXm0hz4
As for Exton, the companies would probably charge him for the use of their name, but also there are the legal implications. Imagine if you're a company like Bugatti, and someone released a Linux distro called Veyron and it proved to be unreliable, insecure or painfully slow - wouldn't be good for the company's image at all.

Agreed..just a lil' joke about Exton.

Yes baloo is the search engine in KDE and it takes up a lot of resources so it's best to disable it.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-11 19:51:57

DeepDayze wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
Thanks for the advice re MX KDE. The only Baloo I know is this one, but I think it's something to do with file search in KDE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpetAXm0hz4
As for Exton, the companies would probably charge him for the use of their name, but also there are the legal implications. Imagine if you're a company like Bugatti, and someone released a Linux distro called Veyron and it proved to be unreliable, insecure or painfully slow - wouldn't be good for the company's image at all.
Agreed..just a lil' joke about Exton.
Yes baloo is the search engine in KDE and it takes up a lot of resources so it's best to disable it.

Thanks for replying.

Another option is to take another Debian-based distro and install MX Tools in it. Here's Head On A Stick's thread on the subject, from 2020;

https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php … 007f37aef1

There is the caveat though that not all of them are guaranteed to work in a distro which (unlike MX) has systemd. Maybe Devuan or AntiX is a better bet.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-11 20:43:14)

johnraff · 2023-05-12 00:26:13

Martin wrote:

I just ran some tests. The x230 setup is my Lenovo Thinkpad x230. It runs BL Lithium and I have added i3 since i3 works better for me on that small screen. Lately I also added Windowmaker for fun. Comparing RAM usage right after re-boot -- yes I re-booted between each alternative to make sure I started with a clean slate each time -- I register the following RAM consumptions:
Openbox: 303 MB
i3: 220 MB

Still puzzed as to why the openbox setup uses 80MB more RAM than i3.
Unklar's setup:

unklar wrote:

inxi -SMxxx
System:    Host: beryllium Kernel: 5.10.0-22-686 i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           Desktop: Openbox 3.6.1 info: tint2 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: BunsenLabs GNU/Linux 11 (Beryllium) base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: IBM product: 2371H8G v: ThinkPad X40 serial: <superuser required> 
           Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required> 
           Mobo: IBM model: 2371H8G serial: <superuser required> BIOS: IBM v: 1UETD3WW (2.08 ) 
           date: 12/21/2006

Results of my beryllium installation with the ps_mem.py script

the system is running since 2023-05-08 10.00am

 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used	Program
...
  3.5 MiB +   5.4 MiB =   8.9 MiB	openbox
...
---------------------------------
                        553.8 MiB

So for him, openbox is using ~9MB of a total of ~550.
On my main box with 8GB RAM openbox uses 0.4% of that, according to htop. OK that means ~30MB, but @martin I still can't help feeling there's some other difference between your openbox and i3 setups accounting for the difference in RAM use.

jeffreyC · 2023-05-12 17:38:40

Colonel Panic wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:
Thanks for the advice re MX KDE. The only Baloo I know is this one, but I think it's something to do with file search in KDE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpetAXm0hz4
As for Exton, the companies would probably charge him for the use of their name, but also there are the legal implications. Imagine if you're a company like Bugatti, and someone released a Linux distro called Veyron and it proved to be unreliable, insecure or painfully slow - wouldn't be good for the company's image at all.
Agreed..just a lil' joke about Exton.
Yes baloo is the search engine in KDE and it takes up a lot of resources so it's best to disable it.
Thanks for replying.
Another option is to take another Debian-based distro and install MX Tools in it. Here's Head On A Stick's thread on the subject, from 2020;
https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php … 007f37aef1
There is the caveat though that not all of them are guaranteed to work in a distro which (unlike MX) has systemd. Maybe Devuan or AntiX is a better bet.

MX Linux does have systemd, but it also has sysvinit.
The MX devs make sure their tools work with both because some MX users use systemd.
The reason MX has sysvinit is because that is what works with the antiX and MX live USB system.

taberacci · 2023-05-13 08:24:09

Colonel Panic wrote:

I've never tried Spiral but I'll bet it's good. The one thing I didn't like about Gecko was the "rain rolling down green glass" wallpaper, but that's easily changed. I agree that OpenSUSE (and anything based on it) is one of the slower distros though.

Really Spiral Linux is just Debian, but instead of Debian Installer it has Calamares. It comes with 32-bit repositories enabled in case you're interested. And it uses "backports" or something like that to provide a newer Linux kernel than Debian "stable". While Debian prefer to patch the kernel v5.10, Spiral could provide one that's on v6. You could straight out change the "sources.list" from "Bullseye" to "Bookworm" and it could upgrade the system to that. By "default" Calamares offers to format "root" directory as "btrfs" in order to do those system snapshots loved so well on Garuda and other OS's.

However it's not going to allow setting "root" password. There are no window manager versions so you might be turned off by that. There is a "basic" version which doesn't install a desktop but it's all I could tell you about it.

https://github.com/SpiralLinux/SpiralLi … ect#readme

Gecko and Spiral Linux try to be consistent with the look no matter what is the D.E.

One more serious problem Gecko has is that "ROLLING" ISO is now more than nine months old. Updating to the latest might fail. A few weeks ago I was lucky I was successful with my slow Internet connection and all but it downloaded almost 2GB of packages.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-13 15:28:18

taberacci wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
I've never tried Spiral but I'll bet it's good. The one thing I didn't like about Gecko was the "rain rolling down green glass" wallpaper, but that's easily changed. I agree that OpenSUSE (and anything based on it) is one of the slower distros though.
Really Spiral Linux is just Debian, but instead of Debian Installer it has Calamares. It comes with 32-bit repositories enabled in case you're interested. And it uses "backports" or something like that to provide a newer Linux kernel than Debian "stable". While Debian prefer to patch the kernel v5.10, Spiral could provide one that's on v6. You could straight out change the "sources.list" from "Bullseye" to "Bookworm" and it could upgrade the system to that. By "default" Calamares offers to format "root" directory as "btrfs" in order to do those system snapshots loved so well on Garuda and other OS's.
However it's not going to allow setting "root" password. There are no window manager versions so you might be turned off by that. There is a "basic" version which doesn't install a desktop but it's all I could tell you about it.
https://github.com/SpiralLinux/SpiralLi … ect#readme
Gecko and Spiral Linux try to be consistent with the look no matter what is the D.E.
One more serious problem Gecko has is that "ROLLING" ISO is now more than nine months old. Updating to the latest might fail. A few weeks ago I was lucky I was successful with my slow Internet connection and all but it downloaded almost 2GB of packages.

Thanks for the info about Spiral. I find that using btrfs introduces more problems than it solves (if any) though because Grub probers don't always recognise partitions formatted with it and nor do some versions of Gparted. Ext4 works well enough and I can't see a good reason not to stick with it from now on.

As for Gecko, I've got the "Leap" version installed (15.4) and I find it pretty much trouble-free as long as you update it reasonably frequently. It's slightly behind the "rolling" version in terms of the software provided, but in my experience it's very stable.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-13 16:39:18)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-13 15:38:35

jeffreyC wrote:

MX Linux does have systemd, but it also has sysvinit.
The MX devs make sure their tools work with both because some MX users use systemd.
The reason MX has sysvinit is because that is what works with the antiX and MX live USB system.

Again, thanks for the information. Dedo's written a couple of articles about MX Tools, and MX Snapshot in particular, which are worth reading;

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx- … sited.html

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx-snapshot.html

taberacci · 2023-05-14 04:51:22

Debian "stable" kernel got upped again, to "5.10.0-23-amd64". Just updated to that, and upped Firefox-ESR and other things on BL Beryllium.

Sector11 · 2023-05-14 19:28:34

WOW! 5.10.0-22-amd64 wasn't around long.

FF-ESR was an earlier update. Already had that.

Martin · 2023-05-15 18:48:42

johnraff wrote:

@martin I still can't help feeling there's some other difference between your openbox and i3 setups accounting for the difference in RAM use.

I have tried to understand this -- new to ps_mem and wanted to test it. I am not terribly successful though.

I have studied vanilla Openbox, BunsenLab and i3 as they are accessed by picking DE in LightDMs menu.

If I do ps -ejH I get 153 rows of output for i3, 155 rows for OpenBox and 172 rows for BunsenLabs. Almost all of this is the same.

I then tried to look at the size of what was unique for each alternative, using ps_mem -p.

This is were I run out of luck -- most likely due to lack of skill. Vanilla OpenBox and i3 do not differ much. BunsenLab is easier to understand as there are clearly more things running there (Compton, conky, Thunar etc).

I have not spent a lot of time on this as I was preoccupied with a painting project this weekend.

/Martin

johnraff · 2023-05-16 01:20:10

There's no doubt that BL runs various things that someone who was short of RAM could cut down on.

or1o9 · 2023-05-16 03:10:55

^That is probably true. But if that is the case, that the BL RAM consumption is too high, one might start to take in consideration to upgrade the hardware. Or try a more minimalistic approach to the setup. To get both is not so easy.

Martin · 2023-05-16 05:45:08

I don't run i3 on my x230 for RAM reason. I do it because I think tiling works better for me on that screen size.

Open Firefox with a few tabs and the difference between BL, OB and i3 is drowned out. Right now (FF, Thunar and two xterm) free -h tells me I use 1.6 GB of RAM.

/Martin

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-27 16:07:13

taberacci wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
I've never tried Spiral but I'll bet it's good. The one thing I didn't like about Gecko was the "rain rolling down green glass" wallpaper, but that's easily changed. I agree that OpenSUSE (and anything based on it) is one of the slower distros though.
Really Spiral Linux is just Debian, but instead of Debian Installer it has Calamares. It comes with 32-bit repositories enabled in case you're interested. And it uses "backports" or something like that to provide a newer Linux kernel than Debian "stable". While Debian prefer to patch the kernel v5.10, Spiral could provide one that's on v6. You could straight out change the "sources.list" from "Bullseye" to "Bookworm" and it could upgrade the system to that. By "default" Calamares offers to format "root" directory as "btrfs" in order to do those system snapshots loved so well on Garuda and other OS's.
However it's not going to allow setting "root" password. There are no window manager versions so you might be turned off by that. There is a "basic" version which doesn't install a desktop but it's all I could tell you about it.
https://github.com/SpiralLinux/SpiralLi … ect#readme
Gecko and Spiral Linux try to be consistent with the look no matter what is the D.E.
One more serious problem Gecko has is that "ROLLING" ISO is now more than nine months old. Updating to the latest might fail. A few weeks ago I was lucky I was successful with my slow Internet connection and all but it downloaded almost 2GB of packages.

I've been posting on the Gecko forum recently, and the Gecko admin (I think he may be the only one) said that he thought OpenSUSE may discontinue Leap after the next version (15.5) and even OpenSUSE itself is looking uncertain, so his advice was to stick to Debian instead (and Spiral, which is also his work). I'll see if I can find the link.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-27 16:14:23)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-27 16:11:19

Here's the thread, and the comments I'm referring to are here;

"No further GeckoLinux Static editions will be built unless there is a major change in SUSE / openSUSE's roadmap. The traditional openSUSE Leap OS as we know it will no longer exist after version 15.5. As of now, there are no concrete plans for a desktop-focused traditional (mutable and not container based) non-rolling/fixed-release offering from SUSE and/or openSUSE. So GeckoLinux Static will simply not be possible to maintain, and even users of vanilla openSUSE Leap will also probably have to look elsewhere. Users that want some assurance of long-term sustainability and predictability will not find it with SUSE / openSUSE. Debian on the other hand is still sane, predictable, and relatively free of drama. So for users that want a traditional fixed-release Linux OS, I recommend SpiralLinux, which contrary to @madmanRB 's description has quite a few major differences from other Debian-based offerings. Please see the SpiralLinux website for details."

https://github.com/geckolinux/geckolinu … ssions/503

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-27 17:17:21)

DeepDayze · 2023-05-28 01:34:43

So Opensuse thinking of going the Fedora immutable OS route?

#1961 2023-05-11 13:48:09

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#1962 2023-05-11 13:52:45

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#1963 2023-05-11 17:30:44

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