Distro Reviews

brent

WetGeek I had two bare metal partitions begging for companion distros and when murbert said that I looked at the website and thought it was pretty cool. easy install. co-exists with windows and shares grub. You are way ahead of me. I will explore when I get home later.

WetGeek There are a couple of behaviors I'd like to see added to Solus, but that's a topic for a different time. 😄

yes🙂

WetGeek

WetGeek I think I might try it on our little travel laptop, for a better idea how it works when installed on modest hardware.

I've installed it there now, on a little ASUS Travelmate. Obviously it won't be as performant as my VM, because it's a bit demented -- has a Celeron processor. But it's working reasonably well. Certainly no worse than Solus Budgie was on that machine.

I installed it on a fresh 256GB SSD, so I didn't damage the Solus installation, and SSDs are trivial to swap on that machine without taking the case apart. I can revert it back to Solus in less than a minute if I ever decide that that's necessary.

It was satisfying to get Thunderbird on this laptop by typing "thunderbird" in the terminal. Pretty soon, I was asked if I'd like to have that installed for me. Didn't work for Vivaldi, though, for some reason. I need to find out what it uses for a software manager in the terminal in order to get a few more things it needs.

WetGeek

While looking for what to use as a package manager in the Ultramarine BASH, I ran across this wiki. Although it may be a little out of date with respect to some things, I found it interesting, and thought others here might as well.

WetGeek

murbert Ultramarine

Hi, I'm wondering if you know the Ultramarine equvalent of eopkg on Solus? I'd like to install more stuff on my travel laptop, but I hate using Software Centers. Thanks for any help with this.

tomscharbach

WetGeek Hi, I'm wondering if you know the Ultramarine equvalent of eopkg on Solus? I'd like to install more stuff on my travel laptop, but I hate using Software Centers. Thanks for any help with this.

As a Fedora derivative, wouldn't Ultramarine use the Fedora structure -- .rpm, dnf and so on?

brent

tomscharbach (Fedora derivatives are 99.9 percent Gnome DE only, when I was looking. That Budgie is its flagship version is muy interesante and cool).

WetGeek

tomscharbach As a Fedora derivative, wouldn't Ultramarine use the Fedora structure?

That was my guess, too, but I hadn't used a Fedora distro since Red Hat screwed me about 20 years ago. I was hoping to find the NAME of the Fedora equivalent to eopkg. Something I could use on the command line.

tomscharbach

WetGeek The syntax is: sudo dnf install <package name> as in "sudo dnf install screenfetch" and see if it installs.

riffer

WetGeek Lol. dnf

e.g. sudo dnf install programname

oops late to the party

WetGeek

tomscharbach

Ah, got it. I forgot about that eariler posting. Thanks.

riffer

I'm about four hours into my Windows install. Granted, that includes using the tool to download the iso onto the USB drive but this is ridiculous.

WetGeek

riffer I'm about four hours into my Windows install.

Heh ... I remember that. I recently installed Windows 10 onto a VM when I re-created all my VMs after a Plasma install on my laptop. I'm not sure it was quite four hours, but it took a good long while, for sure.

tomscharbach

riffer I'm about four hours into my Windows install. Granted, that includes using the tool to download the iso onto the USB drive but this is ridiculous.

Four hours is excessive. I install Windows on any number of machines (mine, husband's, friends', railroad), not frequently but often enough that I can do the process in my sleep. The installation process typically 20-30 minutes to create the Windows Media Creation Tool USB, 20-30 minutes to install Windows from the USB, 15 minutes for updates since the MCT was created (typically every month) and another 15-30 minutes to plug my way through the settings to get things set up the way I want them and install software for the use case. It is a pain, to be sure, but it isn't four hours. The only thing I can think of is that your internet speed is slow or your computer is slow.

WetGeek

tomscharbach It is a pain, to be sure, but it isn't four hours.

Are you using a computer exactly like riffer's? It wouldn't surprise me if it took four hours on my Travelmate laptop. 😄

tomscharbach

WetGeek Are you using a computer exactly like riffer's? It wouldn't surprise me if it took four hours on my Travelmate laptop.

Of course not. That's why I suggested "The only thing I can think of is that your internet speed is slow or your computer is slow."

But unless riffer is using a ham sandwich, the install shouldn't take 4 hours. I installed Windows 10 on a 2017 Dell Inspiron 11-3180 about two weeks ago. The 3180 has an AMD A-9 processor (rough equivalent of a 2017/2018-era two-core Pentium) and the process took a lot less than four hours -- maybe an hour and a half. I believe riffer, but something is wrong.

WetGeek

Hmmm ... now that's odd, for sure. I installed Aquamarine on an SSD in my Travelmate laptop and laboriously confiugred it completely as was the Solus Budgie SSD before it. But the first time I shut it down, it wouldn't boot again.

Puzzling indeed, but I assumed I'd unknowingly done something wrong, and I reinstalled Aquamarine again, and configured, etc. Laboriously, as I wrote, because this little laptop is running on a Celeron processor.

But when I shut it down again (politely), it wouldn't boot. The UEFI doesn't recognize it as a bootable disk. So I replaced the Aquamarine SSD with the Solus Budgie SSD I'd removed earlier, and that booted just fine.

I may try to figure this out at another time, but for now it's more drama than I want to deal with. I'm almost scared to shut down the VM on my main laptop, but I guess I've gotta do that eventually. I'll let y'all know if that does the same thing.

WetGeek

WetGeek 'll let y'all know if that does the same thing.

I'm SO relieved! I just shut down the Ultramarine VM and restarted it without a problem. There must be something wrong with the UEFI in the little laptop. Maybe I need to update the BiOS there, if ASUS still provides an update.

Anyway, it appears that there's nothing wrong with anything else. I'm writing this from the VM now.

And it's set up and configured exactly like the Solus Plasma on this main laptop. I plan to work with Ultramarine for at least a couple days to find out if there's anything else I can learn from it. Maybe I'll eventually swap out the SSD on this machine and try out Ultramarine on that, since I can change it back to Plasma in about one minute if I ever need to.

I'm getting awfully tired of installing and configuring stuff, though. I may just keep this VM longer than I usually do.
Anyway, don't anyone be afraid to shut down your Ultramarine machine (or VM) if you do decide to give it a try. I'm sure the problem I had is solely with my Travelmate.

tomscharbach

WetGeek But when I shut it down again (politely), it wouldn't boot. The UEFI doesn't recognize it as a bootable disk. So I replaced the Aquamarine SSD with the Solus Budgie SSD I'd removed earlier, and that booted just fine. ... Maybe I need to update the BiOS there, if ASUS still provides an update.

I no BIOS updates are available, you might try resetting the BIOS to factory settings, then modify the settings so that the Legacy BIOS is disabled and the computer is "UEFI only". Make sure, of course, that Secure Boot and Fast Boot are both disabled, SATA set to ACHI and all the other usuals for Linux install. After that's all done, try to install again.

WetGeek

tomscharbach After that's all done, try to install again.

That sounds like good advice, but all that was done before the Aquamarine installer was run. No legacy, UEFI only, no secure boot, etc. The only thing I didn't do was set everything to factory settings first.

At any rate, we only use this little laptop for traveling; it's convenient for carrying in and out of motels. And we haven't been doing much of that for a while now. I'm going to revisit it when I'm not so tired of installing and configuring stuff.

riffer

I just think the Windows site was unusually slow, or maybe I ended up with a slow server on my VPN. Downloaded Geckolinux Pantheon ISO in 10 minutes though (Next distro to try).

Install went well. Updated. Ran the chris titus debloat script, added chocolatey and few standard programs.

tomscharbach

riffer I just think the Windows site was unusually slow ...

That's entirely possible. Today is "Patch Tuesday", when hundreds of millions of Windows 10/11 computers are downloading the 2022-04 Cumulative updates at the same time, so it is possible that the server you were connected to was struggling just when you needed it to be at the top of its game. That's not supposed to happen, but the real world is the real world.

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