Other Interesting Distros, part 3

WetGeek

brent Dolphin is a fine kde app that belongs nowhere near gtk/gnome applications in my experience.

Well, the solution to your problems is pretty obvious -- give Solus KDE a chance. It's sleeker than Budgie, more configurable, and rock solid. It runs flawlessly on my little Celeron-based Travelmate laptop without any crashes at all, so it's not resource-hungry. But I believe I've suggested that before, and you weren't interested in trying it.

Best of luck with whatever you do. I hope a solution you'll like isn't too far away. Tom's suggestion of Ubuntu Budgie is a good one. It isn't Solus, but it's a good, solid implementation of Budgie, despite its Debian heritage.

Brucehankins

brent I second WetGeek that Plasma may be worth a go. I say this with extreme bias, and not holding anything back that I will die on the Qt > GTK hill. If you're just wanting a Budgie holdover until there are some patches/fixes/changes brought the DE as implemented in Solus, I'd give Endeavour a try as well.
Cinnamon is also a good DE similar to Budgie in some ways, though not offered on Solus, it may provide you some reprieve for the loss of Budgie in the short term. Though you may find that Mate is a perfectly acceptable replacement. I guess I could see how you could make it more Budgie like and maybe look not like Windows XP......

stalebrim

WetGeek

Well, the solution to your problems is pretty obvious -- give Solus KDE

a lifetime

FTFY

joluveba

WetGeek why don't you just install Dolphin. It's a great file manager, and although it might bring with it a few KDE dependencies,

Instead of installing Dolphin from the repository, I would advise to install the Dolphin flatpak. That would avoid the problem with KDE dependencies, since they are theoretically included in the flatpak, and should not interfere with your desktop.

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.kde.dolphin

brent Dolphin uses the Baloo file indexer which, on my installs, indexes my entire computer not every couple hours, not every day, not every week, not every hour but every second nonstop. Paralyzed the the system, sucked up resources, obliterated memory. Crash crash crash. Watching it in System Monitor was like watching a horror film. There's a reason I remember Dolphin so easily and vividly.

It's not the first time I have read about this problem with Baloo, I wonder why some people suffer from it, and others don't. I know we are all fans of Solus here, but believe me, in Solus KDE this doesn't happen (at least not in my computers). I would have moved to Solus MATE a long time ago if it did. 😆

By the way, when you have used Solus MATE some time, and if you like, I would love to hear what you think of it.

WetGeek

joluveba in Solus KDE this doesn't happen (at least not in my computers). I would have moved to Solus MATE a long time ago if it did.

Indeed. There are four laptops, three desktops, and one VM in this house that all run on Solus KDE Plasma. They range from powerhouse DELL machines to a little Acer, and not one has ever exhibited anything resembling these troubles. Just solid, reliable performance, year after year.

brent

Brucehankins Though you may find that Mate is a perfectly acceptable replacement. I guess I could see how you could make it more Budgie like and maybe look not like Windows XP......

Acceptable is the highest praise I got right now, Mate was not built to be phenomenal. Echoes of XP for sure but nothing has happened glitch-wise and I've no resistance or strain getting where I need it (not necessarily like) it. When you come from Solus Budgie expectations maybe too high!
I did see Endeavour Budgie. I liked it. I just threw 22.0.4.1 on the Ventoy

joluveba I know we are all fans of Solus here, but believe me, in Solus KDE this doesn't happen (at least not in my computers). I would have moved to Solus MATE a long time ago if it did.

It's a no-glitch subdued world here in Mate🙂.

WetGeek r, and not one has ever exhibited anything resembling these troubles. Just solid, reliable performance, year after year.

I'm listening...

joluveba It's not the first time I have read about this problem with Baloo, I wonder why some people suffer from it, and others don't

I have extreme prejeduice against anything K, it always gives me a terrible K-Infection. That prejeduice aside, I've liked LKDE, LXQT and DE's like that. Plasma didn't do anything for me and I've used it testing distros. I didn't see what all you guys see in it. It's not a daily driver, so I know I haven't given Plasma anything more than a day. It was just a shoulder-shrug environment to me. Maybe someday.

Brucehankins

WetGeek I've come to a similar conclusion on Gecko. I wanted to like it, and the zypper syntax is very straightforward, but everything just runs a bit slow. Updates are slow, programs launch slower and are less responsive. The overall experience feels bloated, despite htop showing only about 1gb of RAM being used and swap not being hit at all.
I always set my VMs up the same, like you do, 6GB of RAM, 40GB virtual hard disk. Many other distros don't exhibit the same lag, and you can full screen them and forget it's a VM, not this one. Time to nuke Gecko.

WetGeek

Brucehankins everything just runs a bit slow.

I wanted to like it, too. I used SuSE, followed by openSuSE, followed by openSUSE Tumbleweed for years. I liked how one could start YaST with just one password, then iinstall software, do updates, and do all kinds of other maintenance without being bothered for another password. But I installed and tried Gecko, and I have to believe my own eyes.

PSA: If you didn't care for Gecko, stay away from Debian. It's even worse. I'll never understand how so many distros that are based on Debian are so much better.

elfprince

brent Fewer needs and expectations - less stress. 😄

joluveba

brent It's a no-glitch subdued world here in Mate🙂.

No wonder you like it, Solus Mate rocks. The most underrated version of Solus.

brent I didn't see what all you guys see in it.

Plasma is beautiful, I'm in love with its effects. It's a frivolous reason, I know, but they never get old for me. And if you want to change anything, Plasma never tells you no.

Mate by default is ugly, but the Solus Mate customization is very beautiful, kudos to the Solus team for that.

Brucehankins

brent I didn't see what all you guys see in it

I didn't either for a long time. I loved Unity back in the day, then it was Cinnamon for a while, then came Budgie. I even had a fling with Gnome on openSUSE and Pop! And thought it was amazing back then. I've even said on these forums before that the amount of options in Plasma was overkill and I didn't get it either.
One day messing around with Solus Plasma in a VM from my Solus Budgie install, it just kind of hit me. Plasma is really good, and I like all the settings and granularity. Similar to joluveba I like the animations and eye candy it provides, and it did all that using less resources than my Budgie install. So I wiped that laptop and switched to Plasma full time.
Now, don't take this the wrong way, I've tried many different distros take on Plasma, and I think most of them stink out of the box. Solus was the only one I've installed so far that if there were no changes or customizations made, I'd be happy with it as-is. But again, the possibility of customization is HUGE! I mean, who hasn't wanted a Zero Two animated wallpaper at some point?

brent

elfprince Fewer needs and expectations - less stress. 😄

that is a remarkably healthy way to look at the situation, thank you. I have not stressed at all in Mate.

viyoriya

I have seen all your choices are systemD instead of hopping distros you should try different init systems.
try void or artix for runit Init systems
gentoo for openRC/s6
nixOS/alpine for musl lib
for fun - kisslinux

Brucehankins

viyoriya musl brings a whole new set of learning curves 😄.
MXLinux also uses SysVinit (default with D in there too), but only XFCE, Plasma, and Fluxbox.

brent

Brucehankins viyoriya I thought the different inits were conspicuously absent from these threads til I remembered that I've tried a lot of different non-systemd distros and did not notice any difference on a performance level (terminal, gui, i/o etc) but didn't dig deeper than that. msul never heard of.

viyoriya

Brucehankins forgot to add suckless sinit init system

viyoriya

brent you shoud check with pstree / htop for the process difference, as well as memory
Last time I replied to you when you were making Curtido I guess 🙂

stalebrim

brent The number of systemd units on startup is the absolute measure for distro performance so non-systemd distros inevitably perform better since they've got none 😃

Brucehankins

viyoriya I haven't tried that one. I've been meaning to try a void and nix install since the way they handle packages is so different, but haven't had time yet.

brent

stalebrim The number of systemd units on startup is the absolute measure for distro performance so non-systemd distros inevitably perform better since they've got none 😃

I know all that. It didn't make the init distros I checked out noticeably faster (boot, launch FF, launch Libre Writer, etc) to my untrained eye with no stopwatch.

WetGeek

RebeccaBlackOS - Observations

Posting this mostly for grins, but it may actually turn out to be something worthwhile. The name got my attendion because I fell in love with Becky Robinson when I was in Kindergarten. We were both 4.

I believe this OS offers the largest selection of DEs that I've ever seen. No surprise I'd pick Plasma.

So, why does the next page look so much like GNOME? Maybe I'll find out soon.

I was hoping there might be an installer in here somewhere, but I can't find one. Oh, well. So much for RebeccaBlackOS. I guess it was never going to work out for us.

brent

WetGeek wow that is some crowded gnome there. you did Miley Cyrus(?) distro some time back so there's that consistency..

WetGeek

brent wow that is some crowded gnome there

Yeah. I get wound-up every time a friend tells me that all the distros that give me grief are based on trying them out on VMs. But in this one case, it may be true. When the .ISO was launched, it didn't respond to a full-screen command, and when the VM window was enlarged, the OS didn't adjust itself to fit. And there was no way in the "live" session to get to a Displays setting and enlarge it from there.

So. maybe if I were installing it on hardware instead, I might have been able to find some kind of installer somewhere. This is the first time I've ever been able to actually blame a distro's issues on trying to install it on a VM.

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