Siduction Linux 22.1 - Observations, cont.
Apparently Nala isn't a perfect front-end for apt. I tried to use it for an update, and it got stuck on dpkg for about 5 minutes. When I stopped it, none of the packages were upgraded, so I just did it with apt.
Configuring konsole, checking system settings, creating virtual workspaces, all went smoothly. The only trouble I had was when I tried to use Nala to do an update. Accessing my NAS, its shares, and their contents using Dolphin with smb worked well, so it was trivial to modify /etc/fstab to add my shares, and to configure bash with my macros.
A really strange thing happened when I changed to /mnt to mount the NAS shares. Typically at that time, I issue a mount -a command, knowing that it will display a list of shares that are defined in /etc/fstab, but for which there are no mount points (folders) yet defined. I then use that list to mkdir the mount points, after which I can usually issue the mount -a command one more time. If everything's gone okay, the result will be a dozen shares that are as easy to access as are local folders.
Today, the first time I issued the mount -a command after modifying /etc/fstab, the mount points were apparently created automatically, because there were no errors listing the mount points that needed to be created. This is what the last step in that process looks like:
Creating those mount points using mkdir is a chore that I'm getting really good at, but it's enough of a chore that I wouldn't forget having done it. I'm sure I didn't do it. And this looks like Dolphin accessing the contents of those shares, now snug in their mount points.
The mount points for those shares are defined in /etc/fstab, of course, which had been modified. But this is the first time that I've seen a distro create them in response to a mount -a command. I could get used to that.
I used Firefox to download Vivaldi from its web site, and Discover opened the .DEB file and installed it. Next I configured its settings, installed Lastpass, and sync'd it. All without any drama. I'm not a fan of KMail, so I installed Thunderbird next, and created two email accounts. Likewise, all went well. Even dpkg, the task that apparently failed the first time I tried using Nala worked well this time.
The only other task I usually perform in order to make the VM usable as a daily-driver is to install the three solitaire games I play when I'm bored. For this, I try Nala one more time, and it works well. The output is nicely formatted, and it's supposed to be faster than apt itself, due to using two threads instead of just one. On a task as small as this, I can't vouch for any additional speed, but it worked well.
CONCLUSION
This has been one of the smoothest, most enjoyable episodes of Other Interesting Distros I've ever created. Everything I've needed to do, I was able to do without any errors. Since I've installed a lot of upgraded packages, I installed restic and used it to create a backup in the Backups NAS share. I plan to keep this VM around for a while. I plan to use it as a very performant and fully configured daily driver for a day or two.
Here a look at neofetch:
