Distro Reviews 2

brent

elfprince Moore is probably #1...he delivered the best dirty puns and definitely had a style. Craig does not have that for sure. He has menace which is a new wrinkle.

WetGeek

brent my perception was that it was a not difficult distro

You could be right. I thought I had downloaded it and couldn't get a VM created from it, but I may be thinking of a different distro. Okay, ya got me. I'll look for a .ISO now and give it a try. Seems I should try to patch a hole in my collection, eh?

brent

WetGeek you're having a good time, and I'm not glued to Slackware....stay with your method: throwing a dart at distrowatch. there is a lot of undiscovered wild distros out there. I tried this one for a day called PsychOS. Indeed it was🙂

WetGeek

WetGeek I thought I had downloaded it and couldn't get a VM created from it

Slackware Linux
That's exactly what happened. As I got into the "installer," I immediately remembered what had happened the last time I tried this.

I got as far as trying to create some partitions, but every time I selected this option, it was like Groundhog Day. I was returned to the top of the list, and couldn't do anything else. Again and again.

I was pretty sure I knew how to create partitions without reading the installer help file first, but maybe I'll go back and do that now. There was no mention of that's being a requirement, but one never knows ...

... Nope, trying to get installation help just returned me to the top of this same list. Some help! Apparently I'm just not smart enough to install Slackware. This time I'll leave the .ISO file in my ISOs share, so maybe next time I'll remember that I've already tried it.

Such a shame, too. Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution that is still maintained. And it's the parent of a former favorite distro of mine. It would have been nice to be able to explore it.

Now it's just a choice between Distrowatch or James Bond.

wingman-4

WetGeek As I remember Justin Bieber and Hanna Montana Linux were introduced as a means to get kids to try Linux in Ubuntu bug # 1 days . https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

WetGeek

Qubes OS
This looks like a good candidate. From Distrowatch:
"Andrew David Wong has announced the release of Qubes OS 4.1.1, a "patch" release of the project's security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. This version upgrades the Fedora template to version 36 and the Linux kernel to version 5.15: "We're pleased to announce the stable release of Qubes 4.1.1. This release aims to consolidate all the security patches, bug fixes, and upstream template OS upgrades that have occurred since the initial Qubes 4.1.0 release in February. Our goal is to provide a secure and convenient way for users to install (or reinstall) the latest stable Qubes release with an up-to-date ISO."

Based on Fedors 36, it should be a small and efficient distro, indeed. I've never heard of Qubes OS, but it sounds like one I should be smart enough to get installed.

wingman-4

WetGeek I was just looking at that . This is just for fun and not to be installed for security reasons being Ubuntu 10.10 !

WetGeek

Qubes OS

That's not exactly what I'd call a warm welcome, but I'll continue and give it a fair try. I've never seen a Linux distro (or any other kind) require so many prerequisites from a Virtual Box VM.

WetGeek

Qubes OS
This is starting to get pretty old. I have selected the 32GB virtual drive as the install destination ...

... but if you look at the bottom, you can see that there's an error -- no disks selected. Go figure.

Without selecting a disk, there is no going forward with the setup. Must be related to one of the missing dependencies I saw just before this. Since I can't see any path forward from here, I'm bailing out once again.

murbert

WetGeek The drive is not selected there, just hilighted. There should be a check on it.

zmaint

WetGeek Thanks for taking one for the team! 😆

WetGeek

Qubes OS
At least I was able to find out what it was complaining about.

If 32GB is not large enough for its logical volume (which I didn't ask for), I'm tempted to tell it where to go. Instead, I'll double the size of the virtual drive and give it one more try. If that doesn't satisfy it, then I'm outta here. Hang on ...

... Nope. Even with a 64GB disk, I get another error message. At least, this time it has nothing to do with a logical volume I didn't ask for. It just doesn't like the disk. On the way in I was shown the same page about missing dependencies, so this must be because of something there. My only choice is to quit the installer.

wingman-4

WetGeek I see Qubes has a rather large ISO , I'll give it a try and report back.

WetGeek

wingman-4 I'll give it a try and report back.

Thanks. Are you using VirtualBox? Maybe someone could try it with Boxes?

WetGeek

murbert The drive is not selected there, just hilighted. There should be a check on it.

Aha! Thanks for that. I wonder how one selects it? I've tried clicking and double-clicking, but neither of those changed anything. I'll try one more time, and try to figure out what it needs from me.

wingman-4

Qubes system requirements.
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/system-requirements/

wingman-4

This is where I'm at now .
The installer is now running , I'll report later.

Edit: Can't finish setup due to the page being larger than the screen resolution.

WetGeek

wingman-4 Can't finish setup due to the page being larger than the screen resolution.

Qubes OS
I was just about to save my answer saying the same thing, but I needed to refresh the forum page first. Then I saw your post. Exactly the same thing happened with my VirtualBox VM.

I changed the maximum screen size for VMs from 800x600 where I'd set it before to 1024x768, but that didn't change anything. I suspect that this wouldn't be an issue on a hardware installation, but on a VM there appear to be limitations in that regard.

Thanks for the confirmation. My recent record with exploring new distros is now what, 0 for 3? 0 for 4? I've lost track, but I'm getting pretty disappointed. If I find another distro that sounds interesting enough to go on wth this project, I think I'll start Distro Reviews 3. This one is getting pretty full, and I'm also starting to believe it's been cursed.

brent

WetGeek This one is getting pretty full, and I'm also starting to believe it's been cursed.

well, the bsd and similar slack install scripts are very long, drawn out, convoluted installs, especially in light of the splendid modern calmares etc. I have the attention span of a gnat with those types. Hannah Montana was a success. You didn't spend long at Endeavour and I forgot why. And Qubes is designed for a very niche security demographic last time I looked. It's infamous for that. I'm not shocked it didn't install easily. Manjaro you didn't explore deeply but I think it was 'been there/done that' for you. Your second installment is a great thread--don't sell it short. Clear Linux was valuable info, too.

WetGeek

brent Manjaro you didn't explore deeply but I think it was 'been there/done that' for you

You must mean Manjaro Plasma. Just before I created it I spent a couple days with Manjaro Budgie. So in a way, you're right about "been there, done that." There wasn't much different about the Plasma edition, other than the DE (and therefor the size).

I usually recover quickly from failed experiments, so I don't expect this break that I'm taking to last long. And seriously, I was kidding about the thread's being cursed. At 259 posts, though, I do believe this one is big enough.

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