Distro most like Solus

WetGeek

tomscharbach Don't hold your breath. As I understand it, no ISO is currently available.

Right you are. I was mentally conflating two messages. The "Here's the link" one wasn't for Serpent OS.

brent

WetGeek Serpent made me immediately recall a fantastic distro I tried called VenomOS. It's the only OS on my ventoy after Bunsen and Bodhi. You can file that for your other thread🙂 (yes I promise its not a bsd)
edit/sp.

WetGeek

brent Serpent made me immediately recall a fantastic distro I tried called VenomOS.

Based on your recommendation, I'll take a look at it. I've heard the name before, but according to my ISOs share, I haven't created a VM to try it yet. Stay tuned ...
...

Turns out that Venom is one of those distros with a text-based installer, that requires the user to do all the preparation that most installers do automatically. Like partitioning the disk to be used. Only in this case, it doesn't seem able to write the partition table.

I'm way too tired to fuss with this for now, but I'll hang onto the .ISO file I downloaded in case I develop more of an interest sometime when I'm better rested.

Do you intend to install it from your Ventoy? If so, good luck with that. Please let us know how it goes for you. Maybe this is one of those occasions when something will work on hardware, but not a VM.

brent

WetGeek I loved the ISO, I did not install it. Skip it and disregard my suggestion. Life is way too short for unforgiving, archaic, text-based installers.

mike-ward

FWIW, Elementary OS was one of a handful of distros I could boot on my 2010 MacBook Pro. It ran surprisingly well. WIFI worked without having to install broadcom drivers.

Brucehankins

mike-ward I want to put it on an early-2009 iMac as soon as I upgrade the RAM. It just feels right. I hope it runs well enough, the thing is a potato.

elfprince

brent Yeah, I expect this on a *BSD, Gentoo or Slackware, not in a modern Linux distro. Unless, they allow a default good sense partition scheme to proceed with.

WetGeek

brent I loved the ISO, I did not install it.

I think it's fair to conclude that Venom is not the distro that's most like Solus.

brent

elfprince they allow a default good sense partition scheme to proceed with.

I have successfully used a text-based installer twice (it was taxing🙂)and gave up a few other times. And I thought the partition scheme they wanted to default install was smart. Is that a hallmark of these installers? I mean, I've had GUI installers propose installs I thought were wrong sizes/places (always grateful one can DIY in these installers).

WetGeek

elfprince default good sense partition scheme to proceed with.

I actually expected to see a default option, but if there was one, I missed it.

This is what the venom-installer looks like.

How hard could it possibly be to write a little GUI wizard to handle this stuff? I thought curses died long ago.

brent

WetGeek I know. that's why I suggested ( a couple posts above ) you bump Venom to your Distro thread instead of this one. But in light of the installer, nevermind🙂

brent

WetGeek I think if you went one step further with the capital P/enter, it would have presented a default scheme, then 41 other options🙂 but I agree, that feels medieval any more..

brent

Brucehankins although I've run Macs for years I always wondered if their bios was mac-exclusive? or is bios always tried and true plain agnostic bios?

Brucehankins

brent I've got no clue. My understanding is that the older pre-2012 mac's are pretty standard, then they get wonky. I've got MX xfce on it right now, and the core 2 duo should handle it fine, but the 4gb of slow ddr3 seems to be the bottleneck. It runs, but it's not a pleasant experience. Eventually I plan on throwing 8gb at it and seeing if I can get it running smoother for one of my kids. It was running fine with El Capitan (10.11), but that hadn't gotten a security update since mid 2018.

brent

Brucehankins Eventually I plan on throwing 8gb at it and seeing if I can get it running smoother for one of my kids.

4GB in theory should be good. I'd be shocked in another 4 didn't alleviate the bottleneck.

Brucehankins was running fine with El Capitan (10.11), but that hadn't gotten a security update since mid 2018.

Snow Leopard was my last professional macintosh. I know its Monterrey now. how come no updates since 2018? fear of wonkiness? it's none of my business, but am curious. thanks for your reply.

elfprince

brent My last Apple OS line was from Cheetah up to Jaguar. 😆

Brucehankins

brent OSX had a similar update policy to iOS, each release is supported for a particular amount of time, with a new point release or version coming out every 12 months or so. Each model of hardware can only be update to specified releases, based on compatibility and such. 10.11 was released in September 2015 and supported till July 2018, there were 3 other releases in that time as well. The hardware saw 6 os versions and had 9 years of total support, so that's not too shabby in my book.
My guess is supporting older releases while updating and maintaining new release is extremely taxing. It's not just a Mac/Windows thing, it's common in Linux too. Ubuntu LTS releases come out every 2 years, drop standard support after 5 years, and are considered EOL after 10 years. So 16.04 is essentially dead, 18.04 will essentially die in 2023. The big difference, Linux is capable of running on older hardware and is less demanding, so they don't have to hardware gate as much as Apple and Windows (some of which is to drive sales).

brent

elfprince they loved their big cats back then. OS7 & 8 were dodgy and buggy. OS 9 was the best for me--that could be dialed in lean and fast. Then came the Mac version of WIN10: OSX. I considered it an improvement in many areas but bloated elsewhere. ((Unlike WIN 10 which I thought offered a tiny bit improvement at all compared to 7.) I had to reuse OSX this summer after a decade away---I forgot more than I remembered of course...---sorry)
(yes, offtopic, meandering, sentimental I know)

elfprince

Brucehankins The crash of my last Apple hardware, an iBook G3, was the last straw. Enter Linux (and BSD) running on cheap x86 hardware, plus freedom to choose.

brent

Brucehankins that odd update rhythm is knocking off some cobwebs for me, I seem to recall it like that as well, thanks for indulging

Brucehankins

elfprince man, that was the before times when they still ran PowerPC! My family still likes Apple hardware, I haven't tried the new M1/M2 stuff yet, but I hear it's amazing. Freedom of choice and not being forced to discard good hardware just because it's older though is the key. I've got 5 machines currently, the newest is on 2019 hardware, the oldest is on 2007 hardware.

tomscharbach

Brucehankins My family still likes Apple hardware, I haven't tried the new M1/M2 stuff yet, but I hear it's amazing.

Two of my sons swear by Apple. One has an M1 and thinks it is spectacular, and it seems to be, from what I've seen of his macBook. I use an iPhone SE and I like it much better than I did previous Android/Google phones. Apple is locked down, but it is good equipment.

Brucehankins Freedom of choice and not being forced to discard good hardware just because it's older though is the key.

As I understand it, Apple supports hardware (OS upgrades) for about 6 years, and that doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

Brucehankins I've got 5 machines currently, the newest is on 2019 hardware, the oldest is on 2007 hardware.

Mine are a Dell Optiplex 7050 Micro (2016 - 6th Gen), Dell Latitude 7390 (2018 - 8th Gen), Dell Optiplex 7080 (2019 - 9th Gen) and Dell Latitude 7520 (2021 - 11th Gen). My pattern is to upgrade/replace every 3rd iCore generation, so early next year I will replace the Optiplex 7080 with a 12th Gen and retire/recycle the 7050 6th Gen.

« Previous Page Next Page »