Other Interesting Distros, Part 9

[deleted]

WetGeek That's really weird. The boot menu (F12) should recognize the USB drive in legacy mode.

WetGeek

[deleted] That's really weird.

Yeah, that's what I believed, too. I'd love to post screen captures of the BIOS, but of course, that's impossible. I'm going to try one more time to boot the Solus USB drive with the BIOS set to legacy mode, just to make sure I haven't somehow been mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that what happened the last time I tried it.

WetGeek

WetGeek I'm going to try one more time to boot the Solus USB Storage Device with the BIOS set to legacy mode

Wow! I had no reason to believe what the real problem was. The Solus USB drive that I've used so many times (maybe too many times) does not boot now. When I wondered if that might be the case, I tried using a USB drive that I'd created for installing Sparky linux, and that one booted with no problem. So I created a new Solus 4.3 Plasma USB drive using a brand new one from the same batch that the Sparky one came from, and that also booted just fine, using the UEFI settings in the BIOS.

I used the KDE Partition Manager from the Solus Live session to delete everything from my SSD except the EFI boot partition and the SWAP partition. Then I created two 221 GB partitions and installed Solus Plasma into the first one of those. I'm no longer as sensitive about dual-booting with different partitions, now that I know I can easily restore my BIOS if necessary, but I'm still going to favor VMs as the best way to explore other distros.

It remains to be seen whether I can clean up my BIOS and remove the names of the distros I've installed and removed in the past, but even if I can't, I can live with that.

And special thanks to @[deleted] for putting up with me until I saw the light, and realized that every suggestion he made was a good one. It was just a flaky USB drive that made me think that they didn't work.

Axios

WetGeek Glad you got it fixed.

WetGeek

I'm back! One thing I didn't expect was that fixing both Latitudes this way would eliminate all those unforgettable old names, for the distros that had been installed on partitions and later removed. It cleaned up everything.

I decided to give one of my laptops to my wife to replace hers, still a Latitude but a lesses model. We'll recycle her old one, which has become a little worse for wear. If I ever decide that I really do need a second laptop, I'll buy one, but at this time I'm thinking it would only be another machine to maintain, and I don't really need it.

So I set up the first laptop with a user for me, because I maintain and update it. But also a user for my wife, who will be using it nearly all the time. I set up her three favorite games in three workspaces, and configured the settings so that she can't get into any trouble with the menu and such. In place of the menu, there are icons for those games on the desktop. And the window decorations for the games include only an X button to close them. They're always maximized, and that can't be changed.

The second laptop I set up for myself, just as it's always been setup. I sync'd Vivaldi and created all the tab stacks I've used for a long time. I also set up Thunderbird, and configured three email accounts, imported two address books, linked with two Google calendars, and set up my games. Finally, I installed VirtualBox.

This all took a whole afternoon, but the result is wonderful. There's no need for me to replace any laptops. Their UEFI settings are pristine, and each has some spare unallocated storage for possible future use. I'm a very happy camper, and glad to be here again. And I want to thank, one more time, everyone who helped me solve this.

Axios

WetGeek I think eufi will update itself somehow but I have yet to get it straight
in my mind what causes it to do it.
Kinda what I was trying to accomplish having you toggle it.
You did something to have it do that and it got rid of old entries.
Manually creating a new eufi partition would prob do it.
Just saving money nowdays makes me happy..lol

WetGeek

Axios You did something to have it do that and it got rid of old entries.

What I did, on both machines, was to delete the EFI partition, and then create it again, and format it WIN32. I'm pretty sure that's what got rid of all the old names for nonextstent (anymore) distros. I left the SWAP partitions untouched, of course.

I deleted all the other partitions, which left me with about 440 GB of unallocated storage. I created a partition out of half of that for installing Solus, and left the rest of it for possible future use. that gave me a 220 GB partition for Solus, and about the same amount unallocated storage.

Axios Just saving money nowdays makes me happy

Not to mention not recycling two perfectly good laptops! Plus, learning a bit more about them.

kwag

@WetGeek Now give Bluefin a try. It's a complete different experience! https://projectbluefin.io/

WetGeek

kwag Now give Bluefin a try. It's a complete different experience!

Indeed, it is. I have to admit being curious about any Linux distro with an .iso file larger than 6 GB, but my curiosity has been satisfied now. I pretty much lost interest after trying to create a Bluefin VM, which, when I tried to start it, lockd up the VM and my host system so thoroughly that I couldn't continue without a hard reset.

So, Bluefin is just a memory here now. Can you explain your interest in it? What all does that 6+ GB .iso file install?

AlphaElwedritsch

If then aurora would be the better choice for @WetGeek 😉
https://getaurora.dev/en

WetGeek

AlphaElwedritsch If then aurora would be the better choice for @WetGeek

One at a time, please. The bluefin ,iso file is about three times the size of anything from Solus, so it's got me pretty curious.

AlphaElwedritsch

WetGeek
I was talking about aurora, because it is the plasma spin of bluefin.
I tried it and what can I say, yes, over 6GB in size and probably a pure flatpak distro.
No advantages over Solus. I didn't expect or hope for that either. It was pure curiosity.
But it also shows me once again that I'm sticking with Solus and simply know what's good

kwag

WetGeek
If you try Bluefin , Aurora or Bazzite, you won't look back at anything else. The mechanism of immutability, plus other failsafe details, makes everything else feel antiquated. Like BRTFS rollbacks, all file system data checksumed (BTRFS), immutable (unbreakable) OS. Slowly, many distros are starting to take that direction, because it's the future of Linux and other OSs. There's just no way back.

WetGeek

AlphaElwedritsch I'm sticking with Solus and simply know what's good

Absolutely. I feel the same. Once I found Solus Plasma, many years ago, I knew that I probably couldn't do any better. I did explore other distros, but as you said, simply out of curiosity, And lately, not even much of that. Cheers!

kwag

AlphaElwedritsch "No advantages over Solus" Seriously?
Here's what's missing on Solus: No manual roll backs, no end-to-end checksumed data at the file system level, no automatic rollback if newer version update is corrupt or has problems, no automatic updates in the background. On Bluefin (and others) updates are done concurrently while OS is in operation and users can't even tell it's being updated, because of the A/B (Ostree, RPMOstree) mechanism. Once they reboot, they are in a new version. As on a immutable OS, users can't mess up the system, like they can with SolusOS or any other UN-Immutable OS. You see, that's the current trend right now of many going that way, because anything else is old and unreliable, just like Linux has been since the beginning (old school fart dev here, since Linux 1.92 kernel, circa 1992) so I'm really looking forward to all main distros taking this route and solus included! It's just the OS evolution way to stability and reliability. Want to manually crash Solus? Just start an OS upgrade, and half way, shut down the machine. Say bye bye to your OS as it will be on a unrecoverable state (been there, done that). Try that with any immutable os, and nothing happens. You can even pull the power at any time, and I have tried it on purpose, and I can't crash Bluefin, EndlessOS, Bazzite, Aurora, VanillaOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, OpenSUSE MicroOS. The only place I'm using Solus now, and works like a charm, is on a modified BIOS Chromebook with 4G RAM and 16G internal SSD and there it really shines, because of resources. Even Bluefin runs faster on it, but because of the dual OS images (running/backup) it takes too much disk space and leaves me with way less that 2G RAM, as for Solus leaves me with almost 5G RAM. As to the 6+ GB on the install ISO, I'm pretty sure it's drivers and modules on the ISO so it can use (install) as needed depending on the hardware. As I mentioned, my installation of Bluefin on the Chromebook Dell Inspiron Model 3181 works and that clearly says the ISO has a lot of drivers and data that are there just for different hardware.

Citfta

I downloaded Bluefin and Aurora and tried to install them in QEMU/KVM. They both crashed. I gave them 8 GB of ram and 4 processors and 40 GB of storage. They apparently won't run in a VM so kinda hard to check them out if I don't want to do a real install. I'll stick with Solus. It just works.

kwag

Citfta STOP testing on VM'S! Do it on real hardware, then comment.
Yes, SolusOS "It just works" and it's very good. And so does Bluefin, Bazzite and Aurora, but with a full kitchen sink that is missing on SolusOS 😉

Citfta

kwag STOP testing on VM'S! Do it on real hardware, then comment.
Yes, SolusOS "It just works" and it's very good. And so does Bluefin, Bazzite and Aurora, but with a full kitchen sink that is missing on SolusO

Not all of us have a lot of extra hardware to do an install of another os on. If it can't be run in a VM I'm not interested. I also read on their blogs that they can't be used with Ventoy. What kind of nonsense is that? And I will comment when I feel like I have something to add.

AlphaElwedritsch

kwag Yes, SolusOS "It just works" and it's very good.

yes, right. and that is absolutly enough for me 😉

Original-Syn

@kwag
We (my company) used Aurora for a few months as we looked at it for our office. Not for me. It is a nice system, but just not what I wanted. I do think Universal Blue has a good idea and is a more enticing setup than the Fedora Atomics they are based on. So I do appreciate what they are doing, and it is a good distro for people. But I don't really miss anything at all. Granted, I have been using Linux since essentially its inception.

Also, one thing, it is not SolusOS. It is just Solus.

kwag

Original-Syn if it's not what you wanted for an office?, then what exactly are you looking for, for an office?
Because for lay people, office personnel, etc. there's just noting better than an immutable system like what project Universal Blue has to offer.

Do you want a Linux system that can break? Like Ubuntu, Debian, Solus, Arch? Yes, they are not immutable and they DO break and HAVE broken on updates.

Or do you want a new technology like RPMOstree, OSTree, A/B, BTRFS with rollback etc. that can't break and if they do, you can rollback?

I would never install Solus or any other un-immutable system for a "regular user" that comes from Windoze. I would install an immutable, unbreakable system, for example like Bluefin (Yes, it IS unbreakable, by design) and the user doesn't even have to worry about updates or an update breaking his system because the images pushed are curated.
Can Solus guarantee this? NO!
Can Ubuntu guarantee this? NO!
Can Red Hat guarantee this? NO!

Can Bluefin, Bazzite, Aurora, EndlessOS, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, Ubuntu Core, Manjaro (with BTRFS rollback), OpenSUSE Micro OS guarantee this? YES, they can and is exactly what they do and offer a protection that no other "regular" monolithic single image filesystem can offer. There's no contest here. It's simply an advanced technology that is being implemented in the latest Linux trends and will be the future, no matter if some like it or not, it's here to stay and other distros will either follow or stay behind and go into oblivion. That's just how technology works and I will never go back to a non-immutable distro, unless I have to, like in my case with the Chrome book that I had to go and install Solus because it's the best "regular Linux" as far as resources on limited hardware. For anything else, there's just no contest. Project Universal Blue is just way way ahead of the croud.

Original-Syn

kwag You are trying too hard on this. Not sure what you are trying to gain, to be honest.
My office is full of Linux veterans. RPMOstree, etc. don't really mean much for us. Also, you seem to think that there are no other ways to recover. We do not truly have such a problem. I have systems that have run for years without issue.

Second, you lost me at immutable/atomics being unbreakable. That has been proven untrue. Immutables have a big part of the future, but your take is a very opinionated one. It will get there one day. It isn't there yet today.

In any case, this topic is about other interesting distros, and this is derailing into an immutable/atomic vs. traditional thread.

Staudey

kwag (Yes, it IS unbreakable, by design)

And as we all know software design is always perfect and unfailing.

brent

kwag
I've vented many times about all sorts of stuff so not judging you in the least...your post's Irony is Solus has announced it's intention, more than a couple times, to eventually end up where you want it to be.

I personally don't believe in your version of ideal or Solus's version (if they are both still the same) of what the future should look like, and have to cross that bridge when it comes. If Solus goes that way I will likely follow it.

//If X11 and human beings curating a distro go away then I will have to face it. So far not impressed with the alternatives at all (Wayland/immutable). And I haven't used Linux as long as most of you.//

Also--I did break SilverBlue after one week. I'm good that way. Zzz. Felt like Fedora with handcuffs on and Linux not supposed to feel that way.

That last part there was my contribution to wetgeek's thread, as @Original-Syn correctly reminded us and I, again, digress.

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