#3001 2026-07-25 12:56:09

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

Thanks for the info. I think I'd have be convinced though that FreeBSD was better than what I'm already using (especially when I have an old and gradually failing computer that I'm trying to keep going).

I don't know how much this is true for everyone else here but I've got a lot of "sunk cost" in terms of the knowledge I've built up over the years that I've been using Linux, even down to things like the batch files I use that rely on Linux partition naming conventions (the BSDs are different in this regard), so I feel I'd need a good reason to change over.

At the moment I'm posting from MX 23 (Melodie's Bento respin).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-07-25 14:29:11)

MarkW

Member

Registered: 2024-11-03

Posts: 546

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I could try refurbishing my previous laptop and putting FreeBSD on that.   Just need to get some more tools

Döbbie03

Resident Metalhead

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 4,324

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

For anyone wanting to try Void, this might be worth a looksee

https://odysseylinux.org/

---

"All we are is dust in the wind, dude"
                                       - Theodore "Ted" Logan
"Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes that everybody liked, they left that to the Bee Gees."
                                       - Wayne Campbell

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

Looks good Dobbie!

unklar

Back to the roots 1.9

From: #! BL

Registered: 2015-10-31

Posts: 3,062

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

For anyone wanting to try Void, this might be worth a looksee

https://odysseylinux.org/

Thanks!
Unfortunately, there's too much of a discrepancy between the *grand* announcement and the *download*...   

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I've had another go at installing MX Fluxbox 25.2, and this time it worked. I'm posting from it now.

I took PackRat's and greenjeans's advice and disabled the screensaver first (I wasn't able to do the same for power management, but in the event it didn't matter). And of course I didn't have Firefox open this time.

So far it's working very well and is light in system resources (for a 2026 distro). I'm not overly keen on the appearance, which it has in common with all the other MX 25.2 series, but that's easily changed.

One thing it really needs though is a better menuing system that groups programs by function from the start button in Tint2. I've installed JG Menu for this purpose. It also doesn't have an office suite or an image viewer-come-organiser like Geeqie (but you can easily install those too).

[EDIT: the sound went down for some reason so I've gone back to MX 23 (based on Debian 12). Don't know what's wrong with Trixie but I find I like Bookworm better - hope they keep issuing updates for it.]

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-07-31 07:33:35)

PackRat

jgmenu user Numero Uno

Registered: 2015-10-02

Posts: 3,026

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

New one from Spain based on Debian Testing.

Soplos Linux - https://soplos.org/

Live session of Xfce4 version is pretty smooth. Plasma and Gnome version also available for download.

Looks to be a minimal Xfce4 install. Ghostty added as the default terminal; xfce4-terminal also available if ghostty doesn't run on your system. Uses zRAM by default for swap so do not create a swap file during the install. The Calmeres installer still offers creation of swap with the full disk or manual partition options.

May install to metal if I have some time. Calameres installer.

---

You must unlearn what you have learned.
    -- yoda

marens

Member

From: World without M$

Registered: 2023-02-02

Posts: 1,292

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

^ Whisker Menu is one of my favorites.
I remember spending hours writing CSS for a custom gtk theme.

Unfortunately, I haven't used XFCE for a long time.

---

If people would know how little brain is ruling the world, they would die of fear.

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

Since the sound's been very "on and off" with this computer recently, I decided that the best thing to do was to boot up a recent snapshot of antiX 23 (based on Bookworm, which I made with everything still working) from a live DVD-R.

That way if anything breaks again, all I have to do to restore it is to shut the system down and boot it up again from the DVD-R; all I will lose will be any files I was working on at the time, and that might have happened even if I was working from a distro installed to my hard drive.

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

Exton has released the latest version of his ExTix respin of Ubuntu (26.8), and I've downloaded it and am using it now.

It's a bit low on included software and has, for me, an unacceptably garish login screen that is hard to read; however, both of those are easily remedied.

It has the (for me) very desirable quality of being "snapshottable" - that is to say, you can create a snapshot ISO of it at any given time and then burn it to a DVD-R.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-08-26 10:45:56)

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I've installed Devubox-MX (an MX respin based on Devuan Excalibur), and so far it's working well.

It claims to draw a lot of the inspiration for its desktop environment from Bunsen and other distros.

https://devuboxlinux.github.io/

Download link;

https://sourceforge.net/projects/devubox-mx-edition/

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-08-24 23:00:49)

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

A quick rescue operation on BesGnuLinux after the JWM installation broke (again!) - I installed the Mate desktop (plus extras) on it and it's now looking much more like the fully featured Debian-based distro it actually is.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-08-27 23:54:33)

WizardofCOR

Member

Registered: 2023-07-28

Posts: 89

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

A few recently completed home projects:

1. Containerized Ollama-based AI in a VM.  Used Ubuntu for this, with an nVidia P100 as a pass-through.  I can certainly sympathize with those who attempt nVidia pass-through configurations.  An interesting little 'feature' is a black console screen.  Gotta use a remote protocol instead.  Neat.

2. GhostBSD on an Intel NUC - easy enough, runs well.

3. Manjaro on a tertiary PC (Frankensteined old parts, but decent enough to run it well.)  I had Carbon installed on it prior.  But I wanted to check out Garuda and Manjaro just for fun.  I found Garuda too 'bright', and too heavy on resource-use for the hardware.  May change the box back to Carbon in the future, but sometimes it's nice to test & play with other distros, ya' know?

4.  Unbound and Pi-Hole on an ESXi VM.  But what base OS to use?  Tried PhotonOS  - didn't like it.  The Portainer/Docker arrangement was irritatingly painful, even to just update or set a static IP.  Then I discovered DietPi, and everything was up and running (exactly the way I needed) within a matter of minutes.  And, it has an even smaller resource footprint than a PhotonOS minimal!  Woot!  In short, if you're looking for a lightweight implementation of Unbound and Pi-Hole, check out DietPi.

Been a busy week!

Last edited by WizardofCOR (2026-08-30 03:35:22)

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Just a dude playing a dude, disguised as another dude...

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I tried to install the latest edition of Slackware Current Live to my hard drive, but the installation stalled for some reason near the end and although the file structure seemed to have been transferred intact, along with the contents, I was unable to boot the distro. I therefore decided to wipe the partition (all 58 GB of it) and install Sparky 8.3 KDE there instead.

So far Sparky looks OK except that it installed the American English keyboard despite the fact that I thought I'd selected the Brotish English one to install, and I haven't yet figured out how to change a keyboard mapping in Wayland (it's less straightforward to do so than it is in XOrg).

Last edited by Colonel Panic (Yesterday 10:19:55)

unklar

Back to the roots 1.9

From: #! BL

Registered: 2015-10-31

Posts: 3,062

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

So far Sparky looks OK except that it installed the American English keyboard despite the fact that I thought I'd selected the Brotish English one to install, and I haven't yet figured out how to change a keyboard mapping in Wayland (it's less straightforward to do so than it is in XOrg).

^Search in $HOME/.config/ for a file named 'environment'. Inside you will find something like this:

XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT=nodeadkeys
XKB_DEFAULT_MODEL=pc105
XCURSOR_THEME=DMZ-White
XCURSOR_SIZE=26
XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT=de

That's from labwc. It should be similar for you.

chroot

Member

Registered: 2024-12-12

Posts: 175

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I tried to install the latest edition of Slackware Current Live to my hard drive, but the installation stalled for some reason near the end and although the file structure seemed to have been transferred intact, along with the contents, I was unable to boot the distro. I therefore decided to wipe the partition (all 58 GB of it) and install Sparky 8.3 KDE there instead.

So far Sparky looks OK except that it installed the American English keyboard despite the fact that I thought I'd selected the Brotish English one to install, and I haven't yet figured out how to change a keyboard mapping in Wayland (it's less straightforward to do so than it is in XOrg).

Which WM/DE do you try to configure in wayland?

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

So far Sparky looks OK except that it installed the American English keyboard despite the fact that I thought I'd selected the Brotish English one to install, and I haven't yet figured out how to change a keyboard mapping in Wayland (it's less straightforward to do so than it is in XOrg).

^Search in $HOME/.config/ for a file named 'environment'. Inside you will find something like this:

XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT=nodeadkeys
XKB_DEFAULT_MODEL=pc105
XCURSOR_THEME=DMZ-White
XCURSOR_SIZE=26
XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT=de

That's from labwc. It should be similar for you.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

I tried to install the latest edition of Slackware Current Live to my hard drive, but the installation stalled for some reason near the end and although the file structure seemed to have been transferred intact, along with the contents, I was unable to boot the distro. I therefore decided to wipe the partition (all 58 GB of it) and install Sparky 8.3 KDE there instead.

So far Sparky looks OK except that it installed the American English keyboard despite the fact that I thought I'd selected the Brotish English one to install, and I haven't yet figured out how to change a keyboard mapping in Wayland (it's less straightforward to do so than it is in XOrg).

Which WM/DE do you try to configure in wayland?

Thanks for your question.

KDE. I may try others later but I've only just installed it.

Colonel Panic

Member

Registered: 2018-11-13

Posts: 1,813

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

A quick update; what worked in the end was changing the LayoutList entry in kxkbrc, in the .config subdirectory;

GNU nano 8.4                              /home/graham/.config/kxkbrc                                       

[Layout]
DisplayNames=
LayoutList=gb
LayoutLoopCount=-1
Model=
ResetOldOptions=false
ShowFlag=false
ShowLabel=true
ShowLayoutIndicator=true
ShowSingle=false
SwitchMode=Global
Use=true

Last edited by Colonel Panic (Yesterday 23:58:21)