Other Interesting Distros, Part 4

WetGeek

murbert Ventoy is now useful in your use case

😊 Yep. And so is Etcher. I have a feeling I'll put off using Ventoy until I have more than just one .ISO file to keep track of.

stalebrim

dd is the way to go. adds a lot of thrill to the flashing process too.

WetGeek

I was really looking forward to exploring ExTiX. I would be a two-fer for me, as I've never heard of ExTiX Linux, and never experienced Deepin, although I've heard of that. But after having the installer stop before it partitioned the virtual disk drive, with a message that ExTiX requires 64 GB, and 128 GB is recommended, I've already learned everything I need to know about it.

Brucehankins

WetGeek I think the one thing I would have issue with on Bunsen is the Bullseye base. It appears to be using "standard" Debian 11, not the testing or development branches. Did you notice if the packages where fresh or where they more of an LTS like the 5.10 kernel?
Solus has really spoiled me with updates, it would be hard to use something that's not as leading edge anymore.

WetGeek

Brucehankins Did you notice if the packages where fresh or where they more of an LTS like the 5.10 kernel?

I didn't notice, but based on the kernel it uses, I suspect you're right. It might be possible to install a newer kernel after-the-fact, but I haven't looked into that. And I don't plan to keep Beryllium around long enough for it to make a difference.

brent

Brucehankins I think the one thing I would have issue with on Bunsen is the Bullseye base. It appears to be using "standard" Debian 11, not the testing or development branches. Did you notice if the packages where fresh or where they more of an LTS like the 5.10 kernel?

I have the gnome-software center and synaptic but unlike Ubu Budgie, it does not promote or shake me down for updates every minute. maybe a setting? I will check out more and elaborate fresh or not.

WetGeek

EndeavourOS Cassini - Observations

This my next target for an exploration. I can't remember for sure whether I've evaluated EndeavourOS before, but if I have, it's been a very long time. I love their huge collections of DEs from which one can be selected during the installation process. I selected KDE Plasma, of course.

The excellent installer utility also offered a number of community editions, of which OpenBox was just one example. Much as I usually avoid those, preferring official releases, that's one I just might need to try when I get done with this review. I was very impressed with OpenBox as it was implemented in Bunsen Labs Beryllium.

This distro is Arch-based, so I'm expecting good things from it. My first impression is very positive. When I resized the VM window, the OS resized itself accordingly. And when I invoked the Host+F VirtualBox incantation, EndeavourOS leapt to full-screen with no hesitation.

I have a feeling this one is going to be a lot of fun!

stalebrim

WetGeek And the best part - it doesn't modify TLP's default config!

Brucehankins

WetGeek looking forward to the full review. I've got Endeavour Plasma installed temporarily on a budget HP Pavilion 17 I just took possession of and LXQt on an early 2009 iMac. Very happy with everything except for Pacman. I've got to set up some aliases for it if I'm going to keep Endeavour around.

brent

@murbert in this instance ventoy failed. first time ever. made a rufus usb and installed that way. could have been an anomaly because its always been solid

WetGeek

brent in this instance ventoy failed. first time ever. made a rufus usb and installed that way

I've been giving more thought to Ventoy, and I've just about concluded that it still probably won't be useful to me. I assume that over time it fills up with .ISO files. Then, when you want to add another, you'll need to remove something to make room. And that could be just because you want to check out the newest version of something you've installed before.

The more I consider it, the more I'm convinced that one small USB flash drive and Etcher are all I need.

brent

WetGeek I really like this OpenBox window manager. Unlike with other non-Solus VMs I've created, my mouse is perfectly handled here

man its easy to warm up to it, isn't it? transitioning to a world with no winndows open everywhere is kind of cool. thanks for the good look.

brent

WetGeek And that could be just because you want to check out the newest version of something you've installed before.

The more I consider it, the more I'm convinced that one small USB flash drive and Etcher are all I need.

two schools of thought.
1) if you have a lot of old isos in reality you are curating/saving them, not launching them anymore. ventoy would not be useful.
2) but if you had 10-15 bitchin' trending (as the kids say) flavours and distros you are chomping at the bit to try out/install/VM/review or keep around, then Ventoy is very necessary. they are all at your fingertips and can be launched immediately. and installed immediately.
*you are right of course that usb size will dictate distro amount. I keep a steady stable of 10 I like, often adding, often throwing away

stalebrim

WetGeek

I assume that over time it fills up with .ISO files. Then, when you want to add another, you'll need to remove something to make room.

Correct. That's indeed how flash drives work. If it fills up, you need to remove files to make room for new ones.

WetGeek

Brucehankins Very happy with everything except for Pacman. I've got to set up some aliases for it if I'm going to keep Endeavour around.

Are you trying to tell us you stole the Pavilion? 😊

If I were going to use any Arch version for an extended time on hardware, I think I'd create 4 or 5 aliases, too. At least enough to handle the most common functions. Its native syntax gives me a rash. I think I'm allergic.

WetGeek

EndeavourOS Cassini - Observations, cont.

My next task was to scan through the system settings, and create some virtual desktops. The defaults were mostly agreeable, but I shut off the various screen dimmers and blankers, since this laptop host is always running on A/C. Considering the kernel in use, I strongly suspect that this distro is not based on an LTS version.

The next item on my task-list is to modify the bottom panel to move the new virtual desktops (which were placed there automatically upon creating them) to the center of the panel with two panel spacers. I've done this so many times that I'm getting really good at it.

Uh oh! Dolphin found Shared Folders (smb) when I clicked on Network, but then claimed there are no shared folders found. That's bullox, of course, as we all know by now. On the off-chance that the NAS hadn't awakened yet today, I repeated the request four times. I can't wait to see what happens when I mount the NAS shares with a change to /etc/fstab. 😊

Thankfully, EndeavourOS installed the VirtualBox guest additions without complaint, so this VM has access to all of it's host machine's USB 3.0 ports. I inserted a USB flash drive that contains all my distro configuration files, and this refusal by Dolphin was but a minor inconvenience.

Now, after mounting those shares, Dolphin displays their names, but insists that it can't enter any of them. That's apparently a distro issue, because many distros that I've tried have no such problems. And Dolphin still insists that there are no smb shares available. That's gotta be news to my smb server. I've never been able to figure out how to solve this problem.

I installed Vivaldi using Pacman, then configured and sync'd it. Then I installed and tried to setup Thunderbird, but although I'd added two email accounts, the Thunderbird UI did not appear. So I started it again from the menu, and it displayed the account setup page again. After the third attempt, I rebooted the system and tried launching Thunderbird again. The same thing happened when I tried to launch it.

CONCLUSION
Given that I can't access my NAS shares using Dolphin, and I can't get Thunderbird to appear, there's no point in further preparing this distro for an extended daily user test. And since the problems I've encountered could reflect a poor implementation of the Plasma DE, I'm going to start over and evaluate the community edition that features OpenBox instead of any DE.

The Plasma version does show definite promise. It's fast, it readily installed the VBox guest additions, and the mouse almost works as it should, but that's not enough to make it a good candidate for a daily-driver. We'll soon see what the OpenBox edition offers

Brucehankins

WetGeek I think I'm allergic as well.
Stolen from the scrap bin of "this doesn't boot anymore and it's getting thrown out".

WetGeek

EndeavourOS Cassini i3 - Observations

Although Endeavour's web site says that it offers the OpenBox window manager via its installer, that's not exactly true. Here's the list of options that the installer makes available. I chose i3 for this adventure, as it's somewhat similar, and apparently available.

In fact, as it's installing the selected DE or WM, its slide show again presents a number of window managers including OpenBox. I'd love to find out how to actually get that installed.

I wish I could get this day back again. Everything I've tried to do has turned out to be a waste of time. The i3 version of EndeavourOS is remarkably unhelpful to a new user. Solus Budgie with an i3 session was much more useful. To do anything with this implementation of i3, I'd need to print the 72-page i3 manual and refer to it constantly. I'm simply not that dedicated to EndeavourOS i3, especially since this isn't the window manager I was told I could install.

If I can learn how to get OpenBox installed, I may try this release one more time, but that's certainly not a sure thing.

stalebrim

WetGeek

I'd love to find out how to actually get that installed.

Via the cryptic option "install community editions".

brent

WetGeek I am going to install Bunsenlabs next to Solus and nuke Ubuntu Budgie and get it off the windows ssd.

revised Ubuntu 22.04 Review: very pretty. not everything works and often chatty. broken solus budgie still the better budgie and I say that with a sad sad heart.

Graduating to a WM interesting part in my linux education.

WetGeek

I finally give up on EndeavourOS. I thought I'd give it one more try by selecting a Budgie version, but that's going nowhere. I launched a terminal, and it showed up as a bright white background with black text, and hurt my eyes. So I tried to configure it, and created a new profile, but I could not change the colors, and they only offered that one gnome theme for the terminal.

Then I wanted to see if I could get to my NAS with the file manager, and this is as far as I got when I clicked on Network and then Windows Network, the only shortcut that's available from there.

I can't seem to get anything accompished with EndeavourOS, so I'm calling it a day now. It looks like we've got about 8" of new snow in the back yard, so maybe I'll go build a snowman.

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