Distro Reviews 2

WetGeek

tomscharbach If you run into problems

BunsenLabs Lithium
No problems at all. I downloaded the .DEB file, and the default for it was to install with the package manager. I deleted all the sponsored shortcuts from the start page, did a sync, checked the settings, and now the start page is looking like the one on my laptop. I added the email accounts for myself and WetGeek, so I now have working email and browsing with automatic logins.

Thanks again for the suggestion. Now all I need to do is figure out how to fix more trivial things. I need to configure some workspaces, figure out how to do an update, stop tiling the background, scale the video to 1.25x, and stuff like that. Now that email and browsing are taken care of, I can relax and figure out how to fix the little stuff.

And thanks to @brent. This "hobby" distro has been virtually without problems, and I'm looking forward to having some more fun with it. Until you mentioned it, I'd never heard of it. I still don't know what DE this is. I think it may be a custom creation for this distro only, and thus it doesn't need a name.

tomscharbach

BensenLabs Lithitum

WetGeek I still don't know what DE this is. I think it may be a custom creation for this distro only, and thus it doesn't need a name.

Reviews (here and here, for example) suggest that the DE is a Debian-based Crunchbag successor using Openbox as the windows manager. I imagine that Lithium is a custom DE rather than a knock-off of the standard Gnome, Plasma, MATE, Budgie and similar DE's.

Edit/Update: The following is from the Lithium website:

BunsenLabs Linux Lithium is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable Openbox desktop. The project is a community continuation of CrunchBang Linux. The current release is derived from Debian 10.

The distribution consists of configuration and resource packages installed on top of Debian. There are no changes to the way the Debian base system is administrated.

-- Pre-configured Openbox window manager with tint2 panel, conky system monitor and jgmenu, a feature-rich desktop menu.
-- Assortment of harmonising GTK2/3 themes, wallpapers and conky configurations
-- Various configuration and application utilities to maintain this system
-- Additional desktop-, multimedia- and hardware-related packages come pre-installed to offer a better “out-of-the-box” experience.

It might be that Lithium isn't a DE at all, but a set of configuration and resource packages from which you roll your own.

WetGeek

tomscharbach It might be that Lithium isn't a DE at all, but a set of tools from which you roll your own.

BunsenLabs Lithium
That's very possible. I'm not much concerned about that, because the DE -- whatever it is -- is quite usable.

Although there are half a dozen or so file managers provided, I'm finding that Thunar (the default) works quite well, for most purposes. But connecting with my NAS wasn't one of those purposes. It does list a link to Browse Network, but any attempt to use that feature only results in a failure.

Thunar. Kinda sounds like the name of a Marvel Avenger, doesn't it?

What I was trying to do was to retrieve my bashrcAdditions file and my fstab additions from my NAS, so that was not gonna work. Then I remembered that I had sent myself an email containing the contents of those text files a while ago, while exploring a different distro. Since I had Vivaldi installed and configured already, getting what I needed from Vivaldi Mail was trivial. So, now I had all my friendly macros available in the terminal, and /etc/fstab now included my 12 NAS shares.

After modifying /etc/fstab to include my NAS shares, though, I couldn't find a way to mount them in Thunar. I could change to /mnt and view the shares all there, and display their contents, so I was assured that the /etc/fstab additions are working perfectly, but it's a convenience to see their names in the Places list in a file manager. If anyone uses Thunar, and knows what incantation is needed to do this, please share.

Workspaces are still an issue. I thought I'd seen a related menu item at one time, but I now realize that was for configuring temote deskops, not virtual workspaces. It's been a common feature of Linux forever, though, so I haven't given up on it yet. Doing anything that requires several windows to be open at the same time is a real chore with a single desktop (workspace). It just doesn't fit my needs.

Moving on ...

WetGeek

WetGeek Workspaces are still an issue.

BunsenLabs Lithium
That was quick. I found the link right away in the OpenBox Configuration Manager, as Desktops. I increased the number to 8, but I haven't as yet figured out how to make them appear on the screen. That's next.

And that was just as quick. With the mouse pointer on an empty part of the background, I discovered that rotating the mouse wheel displays a little image representing the desktops. The first bit of rotation displays them all with the current desktop indicated as the selected one. Moving the mouse wheel changes the selection to the left or right, where clicking on the current desktop makes it the new current one.

The result of all this stuff being available by using the mouse on the desktop -- the right-click, for example displays the main menu, mouse wheel changes virtual workspaces -- leaves the desktop, itself very clean. This is the first such arrangement I've seen in all the distros I've explored, and I'm sure it would appeal to anyone who doesn't like a cluttered workspace.

The Conky display listing all the keyboard shortcuts is a nice touch, too. And, of course, there's a Conky configuration editor available for those who love to tinker with things.

Here's how its size compares to other VMs that I've created. Keep in mind that I haven't created any snapshots of this VM yet, so the comparison isn't perfect, just approximate. Lithium is fully setup and configured as a useful computer, though, so there's nothing more to be added to it. If I have reason to post again about this distro, I'll include an actual comparison, as I'm about to create a snapshot of it.

And since I've been suggesting that the number of unit files that are enabled at startup is related to startup and shutdown speed, here's what this distro enables. 43 is a lot more than Solus, which loads 3, and results in its being very quick. But it's considerably fewer than most distros enable. Ultramarine, for example, enables 156, and as I've pointed out before, that's a lovely distro that takes forever to startup and shutdown.

About all that's left is to use it for a while in place of my laptop, to get a "feel" for how it would be as a daily-driver computer.

WetGeek

BunsenLabs Lithium
As promised, here's the comparison of sizes after including a snapsot of the VM. As you can see, that didn't add much at all, as it was 8.41 GB without the snapshot.

Now if I can just figure out how to get the video scaled to 1.25x. That makes text everywhere much easier for me to read on this 1920x1080 screen. I've been making too many typos because I just didn't notice them in time. That's the last configuration change I haven't figured out how to make. I'd be really surprised if it's not possible to do that with Lithium.

WetGeek

BunsenLabs Lithium
I shouldn't make assumptions, and I did that just a while ago. When I found that the action of scrolling the mouse wheel changed the selector from left to right to indicate the current workspace, I assumed that clicking on that one would change to it. I've seen that happen in every other distro I've seen.

But it was only because I was looking at empty workspaces that nothing much was happening. Now that I've added applications to their own workspaces, I now realize that all it takes to change to a workspace is to scroll to it with the mouse wheel. And as you move from one to another, a somewhat larger icon displays that shows you what is active in this workspace. You just stop moving the mouse wheel, and you're left in the workspace you just selected by scrolling to it.

I could get used to that method very easily. Incidentally, their icons also show up in the more customary location on the bottom panel, just to the right of the menu icon. A click there will change to a workspace in the usual way, which could be very handy when applications are at full-screen, so there's no empty background to access with the mouse. And it doesn't contribute to screen clutter, since the botom panel is there regardless, for the menu icon on one end, and the system status indicators on the other end.

Still looking for that video scaling setting ...

WetGeek

BunsenLabs Lithium
Here's the answer to what "Lithium" refers to:
"Bunsen Labs has just released a major new version of their light-weight Openbox based distribution. The new version called Lithium is now based on Debian 10 Buster. The previous version, Helium was still based on Debian 9 while the next version on the road map is Beryllium based on Debian 11 that should come out some time next year."

And I've learned that the bottom panel is called the "tint panel." So if you find yourself checking out this distro, and you want to change something down there, look for a menu option to edit the tint panel.

I've also learned that it's not required to use xrandr to change the screen resolution. I just hadn't found the list of resolutions in the display settings yet. It requires a bit of searching.

Sitll haven't found a way to change the video scaling, and I'm beginning to believe I may not. I found a posting from the forum online, but I wasn't able to follow the directions to a scaling setting that was described there. Maybe it was from a previous version of the distro?

WetGeek

BunsenLabs Lithium
CONCLUSION:
Unless something unexpected arises soon, this will be my final post on this topic.

I want to express my thanks once again to @brent, for suggesting this very interesting distribution. It's been a lot of fun to explore. And if my beloved Solus were ever to disppear, I could get by quite well with this distro.

It's very different, in a lot of ways, from the usual distro, so I've spent a lot more time setting it up and configuring it as I usually do for one of these explorations, but I've found virtually nothing that couldn't be made to work the way I want it to.

The only exception is that video scaling, which might not matter to most folks. It wouldn't even matter to me if my laptop weren't on a stand in front of my chair, and about twice as far from my eyes as it would be if it were on my lap.

Although I don't plan to do anything more with Lithium for now, I do plan to take a similar look at Beryllium when that becomes available. Maybe a setting for video scaling will be more obvious in that edition. 😀

Since this wasn't a failed effort, I'll keep this VM around for a while, in case someone else wants to give Lithium a try, and has questions I can help with.

brent

WetGeek it really depends on the Distro but sometimes I really enjoy the OpenBox desktop and sometimes its not implemented in a sound way with others distros. Good work on trying this out.

wingman-4

WetGeek

I had fun with this , but couldn't get a secure connection via Firefox to download anything . This never happened before.

WetGeek

wingman-4 but couldn't get a secure connection via Firefox to download anything

Do you mean Firefox on Solus, or Firefox on BunsenLabs Lithium? I didn't have any problems on either of those using Vivaldi.

tomscharbach

Vivaldi OS

WetGeek Do you mean Firefox on Solus, or Firefox on BunsenLabs Lithium? I didn't have any problems on either of those using Vivaldi.

As Vivaldi adds functionality (e.g. Vivaldi Mail), do you foresee a future in which Vivaldi develops into a browser-centric Vivaldi OS, similar to Chrome OS or Chromium OS? I don't use Vivaldi, but reviews/comments I've read in recent weeks suggests that Vivaldi development might be heading in this direction.

wingman-4

WetGeek Do you mean Firefox on Solus, or Firefox on BunsenLabs Lithium? I didn't have any problems on either of those using Vivaldi.
BunsenLabs

WetGeek

tomscharbach Vivaldi develops into a browser-centric Vivaldi OS

I''ve never thought of it, but I guess anything's possible. I've never seen anything from the Vivaldi community or the Vivaldi forum that would give me that impression, though. They've added lots of usability features (like Notes) during the last few updates, but the email has been the only big feature addition I've heard about.

tomscharbach

Vivaldi OS

WetGeek I''ve never thought of it ...

I hadn't either, mostly because except for reading your posts about Vivaldi, I haven't given Vivaldi a thought. The Vivaldi mail client got me curious, though, so I did an online look at Vivaldi mail, and that's where I found the speculation.

The speculation might or might not point to anything. Probably not, in part because for many users, an full-fledged operating system might not longer be needed at all.

I suspect that we are already a point where a reasonably light user -- me for example -- could do everything from a browser.

I was thinking about it this afternoon, looking at the apps I use, and came to the conclusion that I could recreate my entire working environment using nothing more than a browser and online apps.

For example, I open e-mail and calendar using my browser, my browser opens and reads almost all file formats natively, several online Office suites are available, and I found online equivalents for the the other apps (calculator and so on) I use regularly.

It may be, other than an ultra-lightweight OS that boots my computer and opens my browser, I need an operating system like a fish needs a bicycle, so to speak.

I want to think about this some more, but maybe Chrome OS (as originally envisioned) and the might-or-might-not Vivaldi OS that some people are speculating about makes conceptual sense.

WetGeek

tomscharbach I need an operating system like a fish needs a bicycle

Vivaldi as an OS?
Being retired, most of what I do during a typical day is email and browsing. LOTS of browsing. Since the pandemic, I started ordering groceries online, rather than drive to a grocery store and mingle. It's so convenient that we've continued grocery shopping that way exclusively. We occasionally use DoorDash to order meals delivered from restaurants.

And online shopping works well for other than groceries. I've bought everything from a shoe horn to computers online. Today our dentist recommended a Waterpick for those of us who don't have the patience to floss. Two of those will arrive tomorrow from Amazon. We stay in touch with our doctors via email and online patient portals, and keep track of appointments with the Google calendar. All that would be possible using Vivaldi.

Our entertainment is mostly from streaming services like Netflix, Discovery+, Prime Video, and Disney+. And racing, football, soccer, hockey, rugby, and baseball. We haven't been to a movie theater in years. One movie and popcorn for two people will easily pay for several months of streaming interesting content. Likewise, Vivalidi would serve us well for that.

I'd bet a lot of people could get by with a computer that simply ran Vivaldi. That could satisfy a very large market share. And such a computer would probably be quite affordable.

I'd still want one computer that would run other applications, like a photo editor, a media player, a music library, an ebook reader, a torrent client, VirtualBox, Linux games, and others, but I'm not everybody.

Maybe that's the future of computing for most home users, especially those on a budget? And maybe even for a lot of employees in corporations. Executives, receptionists, PAs and HR can do most of their work with an office suite and a calendar. As you've pointed out, that's all available through web services. Vivaldi again?

Interesting idea!

WetGeek

wingman-4

Actually, I didn't have any problem with Firefox on BunsenLabs, either. I used it to download a .DEB version of Vivaldi from the web site, then used Vivaldi for browsing and email after that. I'm not sure what might have caused your problem with Firefox.

brent

WetGeek Maybe that's the future of computing for most home users, especially those on a budget? And maybe even for a lot of employees in corporations. Executives, receptionists, PAs and HR can do most of their work with an office suite and a calendar.

since gigahertz only matter with the Pure Production Model you are envisioning, and everything cloud-born, then things like storage space, native apps, much of the hardware and case, and maybe even a media player can be sacrificed and we can run these systems on 512MB like we did in the day😉---since you can only open Word in the cloud. I'm sure many companies are already there however. and instead of buying 500 Dells an employee gets something more sad and depressing and limited and yuck like a Chromebook, the over-rated one-trick-pony of the computer world.
But I digress.
I agree with your vision and would argue in many respects its already here. My own personal email is with Zoho, who runs their own suite like Google, Outlook, possibly Vivaldi, etc.

Long live the desktop.🙂

WetGeek

WetGeek Maybe that's the future of computing for most home users

Vivaldi as an OS?
Y'know, whenever I've created a VM of an unfamiliar distro in order to learn about it, if it's one that seems reasonably competent, I like to try using it for a day or so as a "daily driver" computer. I load it up full-screen on my laptop, and try not to use the host for anything ... just the VM. That gives me an idea what it would be like to change to that distro if we ever lost Solus somehow. And to find out which distros I wouldn't use even if I were paid to.

Why shouldn't I try the same experiment with Vivaldi? We were fantasizing about its becoming an OS, after all.

I was just thinking that, using just Vivaldi on my laptop, I could read and answer my email, read the day's web comics, manage my stock investments, log on to my credit union and pay my VISA balance if any, order lunch, log on to the Solus forum, watch the news, and just about anything else I'd want to do with a computer on a typical day.

The media machine could get by with just Vivaldi. That's what it uses 95% of the time anyway. By watching the previous day's game shows from the YouTube TV "library" (DVR equivalent) we wouldn't need Firefox for local channels. No need to test that theory ... I already know it would work.

Email is already set up for Vivaldi on this laptop. I'm tempted to give this some more thought, and if I can't come up with any reasons not to, I might try spending tomorrow in nothing but Vivaldi. Anybody else up for the challenge?

tomscharbach

WetGeek Why shouldn't I try the same experiment with Vivaldi? We were fantasizing about its becoming an OS, after all.

I worked out a plan to cut over to browser-centric online computing last night, and I might set up a computer to work entirely from the browser over the weekend.

I realized last night that I'm about 80-90% of the way there without doing a thing.

My major apps (mail, calendar, browsing, photo editing, video/media, file reading, e-Reading and so on) are online, as are most of the minor apps. The big holes at this point are LibreOffice and Steam. LibreOffice is easily replaced with the free version of Microsoft Office Online, but I'll have to figure out how to run Steam online and participate in Zoom meetings without a local client.

I'll also have to move all my files and file management online if I decide to do a cut over, but I know that it can be done because all my railroad-related files are stored and managed online. I won't do a full cut over in that respect, however, unless and until I go full-bull online. I'm still old-school enough to distrust online storage of sensitive files.

But, as I think about it, the idea of being able to sign into any of my computers and have an identical, online working environment on all my computers is alluring.

Brucehankins

WetGeek Have you heard of ChromeOS and Chromebooks? Lol. Semi-seriously, ChromeOS and Chromebook are essentially web browsers as an OS. It's changed a lot over the years and there's more offline functionality now, but in the early days basically everything was run online. All the apps were essentially web apps or electron apps that ran through the Chrome browser, similar to how you can install a website as an app today with Chrome.
There was once upon a time, a Firefox OS that was supposed to replace Windows on computers and tablets and go head-to-head with Android and iOS for phones. Sadly, this never really took off and full development stopped just after 2 years in early 2015. Smartphone and TV support continued for about another year, but most of these devices have been long dead.
Outside of gaming, I could comfortably do 90% of what I need to from a browser. The edge cases are where I would need a full desktop OS. I've got Opera set up with my different workspaces, allowing me to keep things organized, and the majority of what I do has a website or extension. That said, I still prefer a full desktop experience with native apps. Web apps and browsers have come a long way, but they still can't match the power and capabilities of a fully developed desktop application.
As tomscharbach said, I don't fully trust cloud storage solutions. I use them for work and some non important personal things, but I don't trust them for sensitive information or anything I'm concerned about losing. I still use local storage or hardcopies for those things.

WetGeek

tomscharbach I don't fantasize about Vivaldi

Vivaldi as an OS?
Greetings from Vivaldi. It doesn't much matter to me what you fantasize about. If that's Edge, then so be it. It's nice to have some company for this experiment.

If you need to use Zoom to participate in Zoom meetings, then I guess you'll need to see if there's a version of Zoom that works in a browser. Back when I tried Zoom for our family meetings, I installed a copy from Snap or Flatpak, if I remember right, but I seem to recall that there was a browser option as well.

We have immediate family members (parents, children, and grandchildren) spread out from here to Virginia, Tacoma, and Sicily. Yep, that Sicily. Every two weeks we meet for what used to be a Zoom session for a family chat. But for a long time now, it's been a Whereby chat instead.

Whereby is a competitor to Zoom, but we found it to be much preferable. It is a browser app, and built from the ground up to be one. Nothing needs to be installed on anyone's computers except maybe a bookmark for your browser. It's very secure, and subject to European privacy laws.

The company markets it to corporations and organizations, but the same version is offered to individuals for free. Only one member needs to have a Whereby account, and they don't require any personal information but your email address. You log on as the host and start a meeting, and all anyone else needs is the address of the meeting.

If your "room" is open, anyone who knows the web address can enter and participate. If you've "locked" it, anyone who wants in needs to "knock," and let you know who they are. It's up to you to let them in if you want to. Free sessions are up to 45 minutes long, but there's no limit on the number of sessions. If anyone wants to talk longer, all you need to do is sign off and then sign back on. I believe you can have 1,000 locations connected, because during our sessions, I see a small "4/1000" on my screen.

Whereby has lots of features that I won't go into here, because you might be stuck with Zoom anyway, and it would be a waste of time to go on and on about Whereby. You can find out more at whereby.com, if you're curious. Only one member - the host - needs to have a free account. Everyone else simply browses to the meeting location. I'm sure that even Edge would work fine for that.

I really slept in this morning - until 4:45. I normally get up by about 3:00. I used to get to the office by 5:00. There was no traffic to speak of, and I could get in about 3 hours of intense concentration in a quiet office without anyone's bothering me. And in the afternoon, I could leave before evening traffic got heavy. After doing that for decades, it kinda stuck. I still retire around 7:00, read some sci-fi for half an hour or so until I can't focus anymore, and then drift off to sleep in a couple of minutes. It beats taking drugs to get to sleep.

Anyway, I've been in Vivaldi all morning, and I plan to be here all day. Maybe longer. Let me know how it goes with Edge. Maybe we'll find out that this "Chromebook" idea isn't so silly after all. Later ...

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