Other Interesting Distros, Part 4

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.

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!

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.

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

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.