Distro-hoppers anonymous

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-01 19:33:54

I tried to install Mint 21.1 (Cinnamon) but the installation failed because Mint needed a separate EFI partition to install and didn't recognise the one I'd created. May try again soon (I'm in no rush).

In other news; my efforts to install a desktop manager other than Gnome (which I dislike) in Fedora 38 failed, so I gave up and binned the DVD and installed the latest edition of Ultramarine (which is also based on Fedora) instead. It works, but the devs have changed the default wallpaper and not for the better IMO, and there's no obvious way of changing it.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-01 19:38:13)

deleted0 · 2023-05-01 20:22:36

^ Did you see the boot times?

Running Xbuntu Minimul also; very nice clean slate to build on.
Complete with nvidia drivers, codices, etc.

I used to laugh out loud at _buntus,
but if one looks close between the thorns, one may find a rose.

I watched the daily builds stop showing up and I know it was going to release.

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/dail … l/current/

8bit

Last edited by deleted0 (2023-05-01 20:24:41)

taberacci · 2023-05-03 18:04:49

Shelfed ArcoLinux into IMG.GZ for two months then restored it. Doing system update was his-two-L's, poor repo server performance, probably "systemd" interfering. No "pacman-mirrors" program to help resolve it, and it resisted "reflector" too. So I decided to reinstall offline from one-week-old ISO. Great distro but bloated, comes with too much junk aimed at programmers. Also with stuff like "Desktop Thrasher" LOL. Comes with too many themes that eat up disk space and even worse, the XFCE ones seem to be kept separate from the Kvantum ones. ArcoLinux comes with Pamac being Snaps-ready -- oh the horror. One of the first things I uninstalled, don't want to complicate my life further thanks to M$, Canonical and Manjaro "corporation". It features "dkms" dependency work, making it a little bit faster than Debian rebuilding "initramfs". What a shame EndeavourOS "Artemis" flew by everything by comparison but that OS doesn't work that way anymore.

Sector11 · 2023-05-03 21:11:25

taberacci wrote:

{snip ...} ArcoLinux comes with Pamac being Snaps-ready -- oh the horror. One of the first things I uninstalled, don't want to complicate my life further thanks to M$, Canonical and Manjaro "corporation".

Could not agree more!

And a side Note from Wikipedia: Snap_(software)

Snap Store
The Snap Store allows developers to publish their snap-packaged applications. All apps uploaded to the Snap Store undergo automatic testing, including a malware scan. However, the scan does not catch all issues. In one case in May 2018, two applications by the same developer were found to contain a cryptocurrency miner which ran in the background during application execution. When this issue was found, Canonical removed the applications from the Snap Store and transferred ownership of the Snaps to a trusted third-party which re-published the Snaps without the miner present. Although the Snap sandbox reduces the impact of a malicious app, Canonical recommends users only install Snaps from publishers trusted by the user.

So not trusting Canonical I'll take their own advice.

Don't Break Debian → I like the "important note" regarding: snap

__________
bold italics in both cases are mine

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-04 10:17:09

I've just installed the latest beta of Neptune (22nd March), and a warning for other people with older computers; Plasma Wayland takes an age to load if it loads at all. Plasma XOrg (which is also available from the bootup menu) loads just fine, but it's still a "heavy" system on system resources. I'll see if I can get some figures next time I'm in it.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-04 13:33:50

Sector11 wrote:

So not trusting Canonical I'll take their own advice.
Don't Break Debian → I like the "important note" regarding: snap
__________
bold italics in both cases are mine

Good link!

taberacci · 2023-05-05 18:56:36

Colonel Panic wrote:

I've just installed the latest beta of Neptune (22nd March), and a warning for other people with older computers; Plasma Wayland takes an age to load if it loads at all. Plasma XOrg (which is also available from the bootup menu) loads just fine, but it's still a "heavy" system on system resources. I'll see if I can get some figures next time I'm in it.

I sort of had this problem with EndeavourOS GNOME, although it wasn't performance-oriented. It was File Roller unable to extract files to the current directory set in any file manager. Had to use "Extract All" command which was clunky. I got advice in another forum to start with X11 session instead of Wayland to fix the problem. Sadly the "gnome-shell" v44 was upgraded for Arch Linux... the end. Actually I have yet to get into that installation and see what happens.

If you don't rely on KDE system search that well you could try to disable it in the system settings. Because "baloo" could slurp a lot of memory. Happened to me when I first installed Spiral Linux KDE, it was running away sticking up the CPU until it created a 2GB file that I found months later and deleted. I had to absolutely disable search in the system to make sure it didn't happen again.

DeepDayze · 2023-05-06 16:03:32

taberacci wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
I've just installed the latest beta of Neptune (22nd March), and a warning for other people with older computers; Plasma Wayland takes an age to load if it loads at all. Plasma XOrg (which is also available from the bootup menu) loads just fine, but it's still a "heavy" system on system resources. I'll see if I can get some figures next time I'm in it.
I sort of had this problem with EndeavourOS GNOME, although it wasn't performance-oriented. It was File Roller unable to extract files to the current directory set in any file manager. Had to use "Extract All" command which was clunky. I got advice in another forum to start with X11 session instead of Wayland to fix the problem. Sadly the "gnome-shell" v44 was upgraded for Arch Linux... the end. Actually I have yet to get into that installation and see what happens.
If you don't rely on KDE system search that well you could try to disable it in the system settings. Because "baloo" could slurp a lot of memory. Happened to me when I first installed Spiral Linux KDE, it was running away sticking up the CPU until it created a 2GB file that I found months later and deleted. I had to absolutely disable search in the system to make sure it didn't happen again.

That's what I'd do first thing after a fresh KDE install as this reminds me of the slowdowns I experienced with indexing on Windows and I also disable indexing on a fresh Win install. Plasma with baloo disabled worked great even on my older HP system.

As for Wayland it's not all there yet...eventually it should be just as performant as X11 and then I'd switch.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2023-05-06 16:05:31)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-07 17:51:30

taberacci wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
I've just installed the latest beta of Neptune (22nd March), and a warning for other people with older computers; Plasma Wayland takes an age to load if it loads at all. Plasma XOrg (which is also available from the bootup menu) loads just fine, but it's still a "heavy" system on system resources. I'll see if I can get some figures next time I'm in it.
I sort of had this problem with EndeavourOS GNOME, although it wasn't performance-oriented. It was File Roller unable to extract files to the current directory set in any file manager. Had to use "Extract All" command which was clunky. I got advice in another forum to start with X11 session instead of Wayland to fix the problem. Sadly the "gnome-shell" v44 was upgraded for Arch Linux... the end. Actually I have yet to get into that installation and see what happens.
If you don't rely on KDE system search that well you could try to disable it in the system settings. Because "baloo" could slurp a lot of memory. Happened to me when I first installed Spiral Linux KDE, it was running away sticking up the CPU until it created a 2GB file that I found months later and deleted. I had to absolutely disable search in the system to make sure it didn't happen again.

Thanks for the tip! I generally use midnight commander for file searching (from a console) because it's faster than anything else I've seen so far, but really I think I should get to grips with grep / pgrep and do it that way.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-07 17:52:54)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-07 17:54:36

DeepDayze wrote:

taberacci wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:
I've just installed the latest beta of Neptune (22nd March), and a warning for other people with older computers; Plasma Wayland takes an age to load if it loads at all. Plasma XOrg (which is also available from the bootup menu) loads just fine, but it's still a "heavy" system on system resources. I'll see if I can get some figures next time I'm in it.
I sort of had this problem with EndeavourOS GNOME, although it wasn't performance-oriented. It was File Roller unable to extract files to the current directory set in any file manager. Had to use "Extract All" command which was clunky. I got advice in another forum to start with X11 session instead of Wayland to fix the problem. Sadly the "gnome-shell" v44 was upgraded for Arch Linux... the end. Actually I have yet to get into that installation and see what happens.
If you don't rely on KDE system search that well you could try to disable it in the system settings. Because "baloo" could slurp a lot of memory. Happened to me when I first installed Spiral Linux KDE, it was running away sticking up the CPU until it created a 2GB file that I found months later and deleted. I had to absolutely disable search in the system to make sure it didn't happen again.
That's what I'd do first thing after a fresh KDE install as this reminds me of the slowdowns I experienced with indexing on Windows and I also disable indexing on a fresh Win install. Plasma with baloo disabled worked great even on my older HP system.
As for Wayland it's not all there yet...eventually it should be just as performant as X11 and then I'd switch.

The same again, and I agree about Wayland. I've never really seen the problem with XOrg anyway, but maybe it's something that affects newer computers than the ones I tend to get.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-07 17:55:27)

taberacci · 2023-05-08 07:14:44

Debian organization could be accused of doing really dumb things but I don't think they would ever do something like... just LOL programmers are becoming extinct. Or maybe there is something I'm missing here.

It's a good thing I failed installing Fedora 38 because I would have been angry at this folly. This was expected to come from a small independent distro!

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issu … 508#fedora

QUOTE REVIEWER:

One other thing to note is the fact that this version of Fedora does not come with the GNU Compiler Collection and Make preinstalled. These were included with Fedora 37, but not in 38. Other developer tools, like Git and Toolbox, are still part of the default package set.

It looks like IBM and Red Hat don't want any more "free" programmers if they aren't doing Flatpaks and stuff like that.

EDIT: Fixed a couple of stupid typos.

Last edited by taberacci (2023-05-08 07:15:43)

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-08 13:33:46

taberacci wrote:

Debian organization could be accused of doing really dumb things but I don't think they would ever do something like... just LOL programmers are becoming extinct. Or maybe there is something I'm missing here.
It's a good thing I failed installing Fedora 38 because I would have been angry at this folly. This was expected to come from a small independent distro!
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issu … 508#fedora
QUOTE REVIEWER:
One other thing to note is the fact that this version of Fedora does not come with the GNU Compiler Collection and Make preinstalled. These were included with Fedora 37, but not in 38. Other developer tools, like Git and Toolbox, are still part of the default package set.
It looks like IBM and Red Hat don't want any more "free" programmers if they aren't doing Flatpaks and stuff like that.
EDIT: Fixed a couple of stupid typos.

Yeah. It's easy in Debian because (from memory) all you have to do is install a suite of packages called "build-essential" or something similar.

I installed Fedora 38 Beta a short while back and then tried to convert it into something I could live with but gave up in the end and deleted it. I dislike Gnome basically; it might be OK for tablets but IMO it doesn't work well with traditional computer desktops and monitors of the sort I have, though some of the software it comes with (such as Gedit) is good.

There are some good Fedora-based distros and spinoffs though, such as Exton Defender and Ultramarine; both of which I've mentioned earlier in this thread. Ultramarine uses the Budgie desktop manager and has a few tweaks added to it to make it more user-friendly, and Exton Defender is based on Fedora Cinnamon and has a lot of system admin software added into it and is meant to run as a live disk although it can also be installed.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-08 18:42:53)

DeepDayze · 2023-05-08 13:44:18

Colonel Panic wrote:

Yeah. It's easy in Debian because (from memory) all you have to do is install a suite of packages called "build-essential" or something similar.
I installed Fedora 38 Beta a short while back and then tried to convert it into something I could live with but gave up in the end and deleted it. I dislike Gnome basically; it might be OK for tablets but IMO it doesn't work well with traditional computer desktops and monitors of the sort I have though some of the software it comes with (such as Gedit) is good.
There are some good Fedora-based distros and spinoffs though, such as Exton Defender and Ultramarine which I've mentioned earlier in this thread. Ultramarine usesd the Budgie desktop manager and has a few tweaks added to it to make it more user-friendly, and Exton Defender is based on Fedora Cinnamon and has a lot of system admin software added into it and is meant to run as a live disk although it can also be installed.

I see that there's also different "spins" of Ultramarine and there's even a Plasma spin that resembles Pop!-OS.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-08 18:41:15

DeepDayze wrote:

I see that there's also different "spins" of Ultramarine and there's even a Plasma spin that resembles Pop!-OS.

Yes, but the Flagship version (with Budgie) is the one the devs themselves recommend and I'd guess it's because it's the one they put the most work into.

DeepDayze · 2023-05-08 18:55:13

Colonel Panic wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
I see that there's also different "spins" of Ultramarine and there's even a Plasma spin that resembles Pop!-OS.
Yes, but the Flagship version (with Budgie) is the one the devs themselves recommend and I'd guess it's because it's the one they put the most work into.

Looks cool, and budgie looks like a simpler GNOME desktop without the cruft. I wouldn't use GNOME either and yearn for the GNOME 2 days where it was actually much better.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2023-05-08 18:56:02)

Martin · 2023-05-08 21:31:11

DeepDayze wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
DeepDayze wrote:
I see that there's also different "spins" of Ultramarine and there's even a Plasma spin that resembles Pop!-OS.
Yes, but the Flagship version (with Budgie) is the one the devs themselves recommend and I'd guess it's because it's the one they put the most work into.
Looks cool, and budgie looks like a simpler GNOME desktop without the cruft. I wouldn't use GNOME either and yearn for the GNOME 2 days where it was actually much better.

Sounds like Mate to me.

/Martin

DeepDayze · 2023-05-09 01:14:25

Martin wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
Colonel Panic wrote:
Yes, but the Flagship version (with Budgie) is the one the devs themselves recommend and I'd guess it's because it's the one they put the most work into.
Looks cool, and budgie looks like a simpler GNOME desktop without the cruft. I wouldn't use GNOME either and yearn for the GNOME 2 days where it was actually much better.
Sounds like Mate to me.
/Martin

MATE is pretty cool I got to play with it as there's a metapackage in Debian for it.

Colonel Panic · 2023-05-09 08:12:32

DeepDayze wrote:

Martin wrote:
DeepDayze wrote:
Looks cool, and budgie looks like a simpler GNOME desktop without the cruft. I wouldn't use GNOME either and yearn for the GNOME 2 days where it was actually much better.
Sounds like Mate to me.
/Martin
MATE is pretty cool I got to play with it as there's a metapackage in Debian for it.

Yes, Mate is good I agree. The only thing it doesn't do that XFce does, as far as I know, is enable me to middle-click on the desktop and bring up a list of all the windows I've got open in my workspaces.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2023-05-09 08:12:44)

Martin · 2023-05-09 18:53:50

Apropos Budgie and Mate: A couple of weeks ago I did some WM/DE-hopping courtesy of Spiral Linux ISOs being available in several 'flavors'. I used a Qemu virtual machine awarded one core and 2 MB of RAM. Impressions in alphabetical order after a bit of not too organized testing Live-ISOs:

*Budgie* I understand Budgie to be based on Gnome and being tweaked towards a more traditional UX with a 'normal' menu system. Yet it retains some of the more irritating idiosyncrasies of Gnome such locking pop-up windows to their source. Also, it hangs intermittently for no apparent reason -- no high CPU load for instance. Changing preferences did not always work. With Budgie the system occupied 461 MB of RAM right after start-up.

* Cinnamon* Fancy and polished. Everything works but CPU load shoots up to 100% a lot of the time. Even just moving a window is CPU heavy. The system monitor eats resources! 625 MB of RAM right after start-up.

*Gnome* 512 MB of RAM right after start-up. I know this let's-do-things-different UX from my work computer. It works for me but it is not a favorite. Gnome is more responsive than both Budgie and Cinnamon. Strangely enough if feels a little quicker than the Ubuntu-Gnome on my work computer despite the meager HW resources in this test. Spiral Linux magic?

*LXQt* Now we are in for a very straight-forward, traditional UX. No strange 'innovations' and pretty snappy. 409 MB of RAM right after start-up.

*Mate* This is basically a GTK-based twin of the LXQt UX. Easy on the user and the HW. Occupied 486 MB of RAM right after start-up.

*Plasma* Plasma offers more bling and a 'different' UX compared to LXQt and Mate. It did, however surprise me by being responsive and no resource hog the way KDE of yesteryear used to be. 457 MB of RAM right after start-up.

*XFCE* No-nonsense UX not too dissimilar from LXQt and Mate. Easy to live with and really snappy. 470 MB of RAM right after start-up.

/Martin

deleted0 · 2023-05-09 19:42:44

Martin wrote:

*XFCE* No-nonsense UX not too dissimilar from LXQt and Mate. Easy to live with and really snappy. 470 MB of RAM right after start-up.
/Martin

Also, Xfce is mature and offers features that others don't have. Right-click menu, left/center/right alignment of window title, and the list goes on.

Some of the newer DEs look real good, rounded corners, and such. With time, their level of customization should grow.

8bit

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