Distro Reviews

murbert

WetGeek I considered the possibility that the update would actually fix the problem

Have you tried running a live USB to see if it works with that? The Fedora 36 beta will have a recent kernel

WetGeek

murbert Have you tried running a live USB to see if it works with that

This is amazing. I happened to have a Budgie live USB handy, so I booted to that. And Bluetooth worked fine. I even paired my BT mouse with it, and that worked fine. But when I removed the flash drive and rebooted, it came up with a black screen that I can't get rid of. I'm typing this now on the little Travelmate laptop.

I'm still looking forward to the newer Latitude, so I'm not going to cancel that order. But it looks like I'll be using the little laptop for the next four days. If the BT mouse and keyboard will pair with that, it might be the best possible solution.

WetGeek

WetGeek f the BT mouse and keyboard will pair with that, it might be the best possible solution.

Yes! Both the BT keyboard and mouse paired with this little Acer. so I can put away the other peripherals now and use this little laptop for the next four days. Given the black screen on the M4800, there's no telling what else might go wrong with it.

tomscharbach

WetGeek This is amazing. I happened to have a Budgie live USB handy, so I booted to that. And Bluetooth worked fine.

Huh! What that says to me is that either: (a) the Solus installation on your M4800 is corrupted, or (b) an updated file since the ISO release used for the Live USB screwed things up, but royal. My guess is on (a), so a Solus reinstall would resolve the issue. If you feel like fooling with it, boot into the Live USB, install Budgie from the Live USB and see what happens. I'm slapping my head that we didn't think about a corrupted installation sooner.

WetGeek Given the black screen on the M4800, there's no telling what else might go wrong with it.

Yup, my theory about a corrupted installation aside, the motherboard might be giving up the ghost.

WetGeek I'm still looking forward to the newer Latitude, so I'm not going to cancel that order.

The M4800 has to be 7-8 years old now (2014?), and once you move to the newer Latitude, you won't want to go back. If a corrupted Solus installation turns out to have been the problem, you can repurpose the M4800 as a test machine or put it to other good use.

BTW, when you get the Latitude, it would be a good idea to update any firmware that needs updating, in addition to the BIOS.

WetGeek

tomscharbach a Solus reinstall would resolve the issue

With the black screen, I can't even see the F12 boot menu, so reinstalling anything would seem to be out of the question. I'm going to put this thing away somewhere for a while, at least. I'm sick of looking at it for now. Eventually I may try to get it working again, but I'm not interested right now.

tomscharbach

Morphing back to distro reviews:

(1) I'm reasonably certain that Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS will release tomorrow with the 41.4 Gnome stack. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has been on Gnome 42 since Beta was released three weeks ago. I don't know why UB is staying at 41.4 rather than moving to 42, but my guess is that the UB team is experiencing the same issues that the Solus team has been experiencing with Gnome 42, and holding back until the issues are resolved. From what I can gather, UB hopes to move to Gnome 42 with the first point release on August 4.

(2) I've not been able to build an Zephix module.zx for Microsoft Edge, and I'm putting further exploration of that distro down indefinitely. I was attracted to the distro's modular design, but it has a way to go -- like decent documentation, for example -- before I will be able to do anything with it.

WetGeek

tomscharbach I'm reasonably certain that Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS will release tomorrow with the 41.4 Gnome stack.

I've been looking forward to creating an UB VM, but I've been occupied by other issues lately. Maybe by the time I get the distractions resolved, the LTS will be out. You've written so much about UB that I can't wait to see it in action.

brent

GUIX experiment with gnu/free distro a failure. 14 hour install. About another 10 for updates. My equipment is sound. I waited 2 days to use it but could not get past the endless compiling. I threw in the towel.

I may be done hopping this season. I REALLY like Porteus Mate and Porteus LXDE. One is USB install and one is bare metal with Windows install. I will pick one. A Slack derivative and so far so good.
This is a sound #2 next to Solus for me.
I think🙂.

Axios

All I can say about forum its not like we dont try!
I got my ideapad working great still is about 2 update cycles behind and I am not updating it at this point.

tomscharbach

Axios I am not updating it at this point.

Reason?

Axios

tomscharbach I feel like things either with linux in general or solus are a little turbulent right now
still got one crashed solus gnome machine that I havent had time to deal with was trying to make it my main
machine got important info I need get off it, the machines I do have working I have held off on updates and adding software to them and they are working fine.
Just kinda the way I see things read watch the forum see how ppl post somebody posted in support about
bluetooth not working (Dunno Kind interesting)

But on that note solus is the longest running linux thats been on any my machines.
I will Image the hds at some point before I do a major update and see how things go after that.

tomscharbach

Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS was released this morning. I decided (based on several week's testing) that 22.04 was ready to be used in a production environment, so I installed UB (joining Solus Budgie and Windows 11) in a triple-boot, triple-drive, independent UEFI partition installation on my production computer.

As I reported yesterday, LTS uses the Gnome 41.4 stack rather than Gnome 42, and I was able to confirm that UB is holding back on Gnome 42 installation pending resolving a few issues. The August 4 point release is the target for moving to the Gnome 42 stack.

WetGeek

tomscharbach Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS was released this morning.

Congratulations on getting some good news! Given all that's happened recently, I'm going to hold off creating a UB VM until I can do it on the new computer, but I'm still eager to find out what it's like. But tell me, is the Budgie on Ubuntu the same or newer than the Budgie on Solus? On my other Budgie distro VMs, it was always 10.6.

tomscharbach

WetGeek But tell me, is the Budgie on Ubuntu the same or newer than the Budgie on Solus? On my other Budgie distro VMs, it was always 10.6.

Budgie 10.6.1 on UB. Budgie 10.6.1 on Solus, too, as far as I know.

I'm not at all sure which Budgie distros have adopted 10.6.1 at this point. If I remember right, some of the distros you reviewed were still at 10.5, As Saudley noted about Ultramarine, for example: "Seems like in Ultramarine's case it's built from a non-release commit though. In particular, the latest one before the change of organization from Solus to Buddies of Budgie, Either they haven't realized that this change happened, or they haven't yet had time to build the newer releases." That's an issue that should resolve now that Budgie is under separate management from Solus.

I imagine that all of the currently active distros (Ultramarine doesn't seem to be that, at present), will be on 10.6.1 before too long if they aren't already.

WetGeek

tomscharbach If I remember right, some of the distros you reviewed were still at 10.5

Yeah, now that you mention it, that's probably right. I was just thinking that they were earlier than 6.1.

joluveba

tomscharbach I'm not at all sure which Budgie distros have adopted 10.6.1

I don't think any fixed release distro has the latest version of Budgie. If you want to enjoy the latest Budgie, you have to go Solus, Arch Linux (and derivatives), or Void Linux.

Antoine

brent Hi 🙂 mageia come frome france and nutyx from Switzerland 🙂

solus and endeavour os. for my self
Mageia is nice you using dnf or urpmi ?

brent

Antoine DNF is what the documentation suggested to use re: packaging. But since I never solved the internet connection problem, I sadly had to move on. That is one distro I wanted to keep as #2. I am really impressed with European distros in general...but the end user doesn't think about those things maybe...Solus is still referred to as an Irish-origin distro although its Irish founder is long since gone.

REVISED DISTRO HOPPING CONCLUSION: nothing has been as lovely or intuitive as Solus yet. I set off on this journey to have some fun. But not having much fun at all. I may cease all this nonsense until LispySnake. I got the feeling that will make some waves.

Antoine

brent i've the same feeling with solus... nothing has been intuitive like solus and eopkg manage. yeah mageia use always the old think of mandrake for internet connexion ... sad...

tomscharbach

Axios I feel like things either with linux in general or solus are a little turbulent right now ...

I see your reasoning. I read (in another thread) that the Solus team is having issues with the Gnome 42 stack. Ubuntu Budgie, did, too. Both are on Gnome 41.4 currently. According to the other Solus thread, we might see an upgrade from Gnome 41.4 to Gnome 42 today, or next week, or maybe the week after that, depending on whether the issues can be resolved. Ubuntu Budgie is (as I understand it) planning to hold off until the August 4 point release.

I suspect that the Gnome stack issues are Budgie-related for the most part. Ubuntu 22.04 moved to Gnome 42 several weeks ago (in Beta) and I think that some/most Ubuntu "flavors" followed suit. Ubuntu Budgie didn't, retrograding to 41.4 before release.

eye4bear

tomscharbach I read just the other day that Fedora has stated that their next version will no longer support BIOS installs, only UEFI. Will be interesting to see if others follow this lead.

tomscharbach

eye4bear I read just the other day that Fedora has stated that their next version will no longer support BIOS installs, only UEFI. Will be interesting to see if others follow this lead.

I hope that others move off Legacy BIOS. That standard is 15 years out of date. I realize that distros that abandon Legacy BIOS will get blowback, just as distros that abandoned 32-bit a few years back got blowback, but I think that it is time to call it a day on Legacy BIOS. I wonder how many computers are still running that aren't UEFI-capable. I would guess that the number is very small.

tomscharbach

joluveba I don't think any fixed release distro has the latest version of Budgie. If you want to enjoy the latest Budgie, you have to go Solus, Arch Linux (and derivatives), or Void Linux.

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