Other Interesting Distros, Part 2

Axios

Installing Gentoo Linux

Before we continue installing Gentoo, it is important to note that this process is entirely manual, which means a lot of commands will be executed along the way. As such, it is recommended that you not only consult this guide but also check Gentoo’s official handbook for further guidance during the installation.

brent

Axios I always find the manual ones challenging but satisfying. If I make it to the end.

zmaint

WetGeek Also this might help. I sub to his Youtube channel, he's an IT guy and uses Gentoo as his daily driver. https://github.com/MentalOutlaw/deploygentoo

WetGeek

zmaint Also this might help. I sub to his Youtube channel, he's an IT guy and uses Gentoo as his daily driver.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, but I just don't feel sufficiently driven to experience Gentoo at this point. That may change sometime in the future, but for now I'm going to consider my curiosity fully satisfied.

WetGeek

zmaint Redcore? Allegedly its Gentoo but without all the build from source stuff in your face.

Uhhh ... I checked out the downloads, and the most recent one is from 2021. We're about to jump into 2023, so I'm somewhat hesitant to waste any time on it. It's probably the edition that gave you issues.

I don't have to be constantly exploring new distros one after the other. It's okay if I take a break now and then.

WetGeek

PCLinuxOS KDE Darkstar - Commentary

When asked the "if not for Solus" question recently, @MintSpider answered that he'd probably go with PCLinuxOS, and opt for the KDE Darkstar DE. That's a reduced version of Plasma, as I understand it. Well, Plasma is already quite lean and powerful, so I wondered just what Darkstar would be like.

Indeed, so far I like it very much. The initial install is only 5.08 GB in size, and after I worked out a minor video issue with VirtualBox, everything has been trouble-free so far. This is one of the distros where my mouse scroll wheel actually does scroll where it should, and I don't need to look for vertical scroll bars to navigate.

I haven't configured anything yet, but I look forward to doing that tomorrow. As soon as I get the rest of our computers updated, that is. 😆 I'll start with a visit to the system settings, creating some virtual desktops, and trying to connect with my NAS.

brent

WetGeek KDE apps are familiar to you across the board in all your Plasma excursions? Or do you ever discover any new ones? just curious. my reading says that this is an independent distro (bonus points those are my favorites) and the have a Mate. Look forward to more.

WetGeek

brent KDE apps are familiar to you across the board in all your Plasma excursions?

Yeah, pretty much. Usually the differences are in how well and how completely they've implemented Plasma, what package manager they use, how complete their repositories are, and so on. The KDE apps (mostly starting with "K", like Konsole) are very standard, provided it's a good implementation.

This will be the first time I've experienced the reduced "Darkstar" version of KDE Plasma, and I"m looking forward to more, as well. See you tomorrow ...

WetGeek

PCLinuxOS KDE Darkstar - Commentary, cont.

I decided to get a start on configuring this distro tonight. It's been nearly uneventful, except for one issue. Every time I start the VM, or reboot, the display resolution setting returns to its smaller default size. I thought it might improve things if I were to install the VBox guest additions, but that just made things worse. Now, if I try to resize the VM by dragging the bottom right corner, the image turns black and there's nothing more I can do with it.

Before this happened, I managed to do an apt update and upgrade, installed micro, nfs-utils, Thunderbird, and Vivaldi, all without a problem. Its repository is apparently very well stocked. Given that apt is its package manager, I'm assuming this is a Devian- or Ubuntu-based distribution.

So, tomorrow I'm going to try to figure out the resizing issue. I wish I'd taken a snapshot before all this happened, but hindsight is always 20/20, I guess. Now, I'm really going to retire for tonight.

MintSpider

WetGeek PCLinuxOS is based originally on Mandrake and is RPM based.
The apt and synaptic installed are designed for RPM use.
More details here: https://pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/Synaptic_and_the_Repositories

brent

MintSpider Since Mandrake existed 1998-2005 [beyond as mandriva] I wonder why Distrowatch (and another website i read about pclinuxos) are comfortable calling pclinuxos based on "Independent" and not a fork? Semantics I guess or politics or timelines.

WetGeek

MintSpider The apt and synaptic installed are designed for RPM use.

Interesting. After finding that apt would perform the update and upgrade, if it hadn't been able to install Vivaldi, I would have tried getting it with a .DEB installer, not a .RPM file. And been puzzled about why it didn't work.

[deleted]

MintSpider That's interesting. I've always thought PCLinuxOS has started from scratch, like Solus.

joluveba

brent Since Mandrake existed 1998-2005 [beyond as mandriva] I wonder why Distrowatch (and another website i read about pclinuxos) are comfortable calling pclinuxos based on "Independent" and not a fork? Semantics I guess or politics or timelines.

I think the logic of Distrowatch is to consider a distro independent when it doesn't depend on another distro. For example, Endeavour and Manjaro depend on Arch Linux, Endeavour is just Arch, and Manjaro repositories feed on Arch repositories. PCLinuxOS doesn't depend on Mandrake/Madriva, they would be screwed if it they did, Mandrake/Mandriva stopped existing a long time ago! They keep their repositories independently.

brent

joluveba I think the logic of Distrowatch is to consider a distro independent when it doesn't depend on another distro. For example, Endeavour and Manjaro depend on Arch Linux, Endeavour is just Arch, and Manjaro repositories feed on Arch repositories. PCLinuxOS doesn't depend on Mandrake/Madriva, they would be screwed if it they did, Mandrake/Mandriva stopped existing a long time ago! They keep their repositories independently.

Makes perfect sense. I had not considered neither Man(s) not existing would result in an Independent designation. Did not think that one through🙂

[deleted]

joluveba Well, there's still Mageia and OpenMandriva.

MintSpider

"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it"
Captain Spock

brent

[deleted] the former they are still designating as Independent probably for the same reason as pclinuxos.

joluveba

[deleted] Well, there's still Mageia and OpenMandriva.

Yes, PCLinuxOS, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Rosa Linux, and Alt Linux, the daughters of Mandriva 🙂

[deleted]

brent Yes, it's indeed the same logic.

WetGeek

PCLinuxOS KDE Plasma - Revisited with New .ISO

This will be the final episode in what I've come to think of as my PCLinuxOS Affair. After no luck creating a VM to explore the Darkstar (reduced) version of KDE Plasma with this distro, I've downloaded a current (11-30-2022) version of an updated .ISO file and used that to create a VM that needed only 22 packages to be upgraded in order to become absolutely up-to-date.

This is what the end of that update process, and the installation of a few packages looked like. The installation went very smoothly, as well as the brief update and installation of micro, nfs-utils, thunderbird, and vivaldi-stable. So far, there's been none of the grief that came with my previous PCLinuxOS experiences.

I may be getting ahead of myself, but so far I have a feeling this one is a "keeper." And there's more to come ...

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