Distro-hoppers anonymous

Colonel Panic · 2026-04-28 12:17:32

I'm currently trying out Lite 8.0 RC, and so far it all looks OK although a bit bland (though of course that's easily changed). They've gone for the increasingly common idea of listing programs in the menu by their function instead of by their name (so web browser, image editor, mail client etc.).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-04-28 17:49:20)

Colonel Panic · 2026-04-30 17:31:32

I;ve just updated Endeavour Ganymede, and it's definitely not one for slow connections - 1734 MB download in total. All went well though.

PackRat · 2026-04-30 18:32:19

^ Did you see what was updated?

If you haven't run an update in a while, you got the full plasma desktop update and linux kernel 7.x in one upgrade.

Not so much specific to EndeavourOS; all Arch-based with plasma desktop would get those updates.

DeepDayze · 2026-04-30 18:51:56

I've heard kernel 7.0 is quite the seismic shift and it is in Debian Experimental right now plus there's new nvidia driver builds that will build on it. Going to try building it on Stable to test it.

As for Arch there's all the latest goodies!

Last edited by DeepDayze (2026-04-30 18:52:48)

Colonel Panic · 2026-05-01 09:25:22

PackRat wrote:

^ Did you see what was updated?
If you haven't run an update in a while, you got the full plasma desktop update and linux kernel 7.x in one upgrade.
Not so much specific to EndeavourOS; all Arch-based with plasma desktop would get those updates.

No I didn't. I took a chance and just went with pacman -Syu (maybe I should have learnt from my mistake with ArchBang before I joined this forum, when I did the same thing and borked the whole system; but it seemed to work out OK).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-05-01 09:25:53)

chroot · 2026-05-01 13:18:46

Colonel Panic wrote:

PackRat wrote:
^ Did you see what was updated?
If you haven't run an update in a while, you got the full plasma desktop update and linux kernel 7.x in one upgrade.
Not so much specific to EndeavourOS; all Arch-based with plasma desktop would get those updates.
No I didn't. I took a chance and just went with pacman -Syu (maybe I should have learnt from my mistake with ArchBang before I joined this forum, when I did the same thing and borked the whole system; but it seemed to work out OK).

So you gave up Archbang and switched to EOS?

Colonel Panic · 2026-05-01 20:05:42

Tha ks for replying.

A bit more complicated than that I gave up having anything to do with any Arch=related distros for some time (literally years) after that disaster, but eventually found my way to Manjaro and (eventually) to Endeavour as well.

ArchBang was a good distro for its time but the devs did tend to assume that you knew what you were doing in Arch (which I didn't) and especially that you would know not to try to update everything at once (ditto). It was very lightweight for the time; I remember that after I installed Fvwm-Crystal in it, which suited it, it worked well even in 512 MB of RAM.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-05-01 20:09:13)

hhh · 2026-05-02 02:05:46

Colonel Panic wrote:

ArchBang was a good distro for its time but the devs did tend to assume that you knew what you were doing in Arch (which I didn't) and especially that you would know not to try to update everything at once (ditto).

What the hell are you talking about? You do update Arch all at once, no matter the derivative. You just have to research and update it every freaking day...

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … the_system

By the way, I use ArchWiki.

Döbbie03 · 2026-05-02 02:47:25

Colonel Panic wrote:

ArchBang was a good distro for its time but the devs did tend to assume that you knew what you were doing in Arch.

Sort of comes with the territory being an Arch based distro

Colonel Panic wrote:

that you would know not to try to update everything at once

You never do partial upgrades on an Arch system. You're in for a bad time if you do.

chroot · 2026-05-02 13:30:13

Colonel Panic wrote:

Tha ks for replying.
A bit more complicated than that I gave up having anything to do with any Arch=related distros for some time (literally years) after that disaster, but eventually found my way to Manjaro and (eventually) to Endeavour as well.
ArchBang was a good distro for its time but the devs did tend to assume that you knew what you were doing in Arch (which I didn't) and especially that you would know not to try to update everything at once (ditto). It was very lightweight for the time; I remember that after I installed Fvwm-Crystal in it, which suited it, it worked well even in 512 MB of RAM.

If you prefer stability, Debain and of course BunsenLabs are your best bet. Distros like Arch, Gentoo and Void are rolling, they do need a little more effort and time to maintain. But they have excellent documents and user base, it's easy to learn and get help when needed. Once you understand how they work, I'd say it's fairly easy to use. Somebody said there're only three base distros in Linux, Debian, Arch and Gentoo. There are hundreds of distros that are beased on them. A few of them, for example, BunsenLabs, ArchLabs (blame @Döbbie03 ) and Mint, add values to the vanilla bases. Most of other distros just try to make Debian work like Arch, or make Arch work like Debian. Of course, that doesn't work.

Döbbie03 · 2026-05-02 17:25:07

chroot wrote:

ArchLabs (blame @Döbbie03 )

I accept your blame

Colonel Panic · 2026-05-03 09:25:03

chroot wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
Tha ks for replying.
A bit more complicated than that I gave up having anything to do with any Arch=related distros for some time (literally years) after that disaster, but eventually found my way to Manjaro and (eventually) to Endeavour as well.
ArchBang was a good distro for its time but the devs did tend to assume that you knew what you were doing in Arch (which I didn't) and especially that you would know not to try to update everything at once (ditto). It was very lightweight for the time; I remember that after I installed Fvwm-Crystal in it, which suited it, it worked well even in 512 MB of RAM.
If you prefer stability, Debain and of course BunsenLabs are your best bet. Distros like Arch, Gentoo and Void are rolling, they do need a little more effort and time to maintain. But they have excellent documents and user base, it's easy to learn and get help when needed. Once you understand how they work, I'd say it's fairly easy to use. Somebody said there're only three base distros in Linux, Debian, Arch and Gentoo. There are hundreds of distros that are beased on them. A few of them, for example, BunsenLabs, ArchLabs (blame @Döbbie03 ) and Mint, add values to the vanilla bases. Most of other distros just try to make Debian work like Arch, or make Arch work like Debian. Of course, that doesn't work.

Good post, and I agree about Debian; you forget sometimes how good it is, and how trouble free to administer, until you try to do things that are easy in Debian in another distro.

I'd add Slackware to that list of core distros you mention (Debian, Arch and Gentoo). I've got Slackware Current on my hard drive, and it's still very usable with Eric Hameleers's (Alien Bob's) extra Slackbuild packages. I wish Pat Volkerding would release a new official version (15.1?) though.

Another one I like is OpenSUSE Leap, though I don't have it on my hard drive at the moment because I failed to install the latest version (16.0). Its stability and reliability are both rock solid in my experience; I was in hospital a couple of years ago, and when I came out Leap 15.6 worked absolutely without a hitch after I'd updated it, and that was after five weeks' downtime.

I may say more later.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-05-03 09:50:50)

Colonel Panic · 2026-05-03 22:22:40

Just a few more thoughts.

I've tried Fedora too, which has just released a new edition (44) but it seems to
work best on a newer computer than mine; I've got a Dell Vostro desktop from 2012.

I think for all round versatility, it's hard to beat MX and I'd always want it
somewhere on my hard drive for its toolkit which I use a lot. I like AntiX as
well, though I haven't found it to be quite as stable as MX in the past (it has a tendency
to reboot itself for no obvious reason, which MX doesn't).

Here are some thoughts from someone who knows a lot more than I do about Linux, and which I think are worth reading. In particular, he thinks that OpenSUSE has a very uncertain future;

https://github.com/geckolinux/geckolinu … ssions/526

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-05-04 16:48:52)

Colonel Panic · Yesterday 11:36:01

HackerOS (from Poland) looks like an interesting project. It's based on Debian Testing but with a particular emphasis on cybersecurity, and aims to appeal to gamers amongst others.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to use it because although the documentation told me what the live password I had to use was, it didn't tell me what user name to use. A simple but crucial omission there.

PackRat · Yesterday 13:15:10

^ Try "live" or "user" as the user name.

Colonel Panic · Yesterday 13:41:11

Thanks for replying, but I tried both of those!

PackRat · Yesterday 13:49:18

Colonel Panic wrote:

Thanks for replying, but I tried both of those!

What version did you download?

I just tried the xfce version. It has auto-login. I logged out and user name "user" with password "live" logged me back in.

Colonel Panic · Yesterday 14:31:35

Thanks for replying. The "main" official one with KDE plasma (not that it tells you that).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (Today 06:43:44)

Colonel Panic · Today 06:43:28

Does Canada need its own distro? This looks interesting anyway;

https://maplelinux.ca/

Pinhead · Today 11:10:00

What is your opinion on atomic distributions? Fedora Silverblue, Bluefin, Bazzite?

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