KaOS (a quick look), cont.
The Calimares installer (this implementation, anyway) does the partitioning itself, if you opt for manual partitioning. Unlike other installers, one does not partition the disk before starting this installer. If you do, when you get to this point you'll need to create a new partition table and start over again. Like I did.
Here, I've allocated 1 GiB for a boot partition (efi), and 6 GiB for a swap partition, so I'll be able to hibernate this VM. Thus, whenever I start it, I won't need to start over with an empty session, but can continue where I left off the last time. Partitioning the disk here also lets you manage the partition flags and mount points -- in fact, you'll need to in order to enable the [Next] button. Note that the default file system is XFS, although all of them are available options. I love the Calimares installer (sounds like deep-fried squid, to me), and I'll be delighted when it's in all the Solus .ISO files.
Finally, it starts out like this. I was hoping that the right-side bottom panel was just for the live session, but it's back again here. I've heard it said that a panel on one side or another is best, because screens are generally wider than they are tall, so this way provides more usable client area. Maybe. But I'm afraid it would take me a long time to get used to it. Your mileage may vary.
Now that the system is up, the first thing I'm going to do is to do a full upgrade. I'll use Octopi for that, as I did the last time I reviewed KaOS. To be honest, that's because I can't remember which command-line package manager it uses. I'll figure that out later, when I start to install individual packages.
The leftmost icon in the button bar is the "Check for updates" feature. Once Octopi knows that there are updates available, it enables the button next to it to show how many packages need to be upgraded (in this case, 418) and prompt for confirmation. The choices are [No] and [Run in terminal]. When the latter is selected, a terminal window is opened in Octopi's bottom panel, where you can enter a password and start the process. So this is actually a hybrid graphical/cli software manager. It's a graphical software manager that does the installations and updates in a built-in terminal. I thought that was unique enough for another picture.
Next, I'll figure out how to install packages I need in the terminal, and fetch what I'll need for the configuraton I plan on doing. I'll mention the package manager, in case anyone wants to know, but I'm not going to describe this task in detail. Basically, I'm going to install the micro editor, nfs-utils or nfs-common, depending on what's available, three solitaire games, Thunderbird, and Vivaldi. In order to be "lightweight," I guess, KaOS doesn't include Thunderbird by default, and I'm not sure I'll be able to get Vivaldi, but I'll try.
Aww, fsck. I should have remembered that KaOS is an Arch-based distro, so of course the package manager is pacman. It's not my favorite, but I can use it. It looks like this is going to be a very brief review, because I can't use it to fetch Vivaldi, or two of my three solitaire games. Before I give up entirely, I'll try getting these with Octopi. I'm hoping it can access more repositories than pacman does. I'm a little surprised that it's decided the micro editor is up to date, yet it's gonna reinstall it. Why do that?
After getting what I could that way, I decided to change to the system settings next. I find it really hard to do much of anything with a single desktop, and that's certainly true for configuring a distro. The first thing I noticed is that with either one of the available dark themes, Breeze Dark or something called MidnaDark, it's almost impossible to read the text in text boxes, and on the buttons. This is with MidnaDark, which is the lesser of two evils. With Breeze Dark (my usual favorite), the text virtually disappears, it's not just difficult to read. Fortunately, I've used this wizard enough times that I pretty much know what the buttons are for, so I can get by.
I also changed my mind about the bottom panel location. Opening up more client area seems sensible to me, especially since my customary workflow places a single application in each workspace, so I can appreciate more height versus more width. Keeping an open mind, I'm going to try it on the left while working with this VM. Maybe I can get used to it if I work with it for a while. Maybe I'll even start to like it, and try it on my laptop. Right now, though, the panel on the left feels wrong to me, but on the right, it feels really wrong.
Well, that didn't last very long. I changed my mind again. It turns out that a vertical panel is nearly impossible to configure, especially if you use a pager (a.k.a. Workspace Switcher) to select among virtual workspaces. In this much enlarged view of the left panel is the pager, with its six workspaces. Can you spot it?
Give up? It's the tiny black bar in the middle of that image. I should have realized that in actual use, my bottom panel is pretty full. Making it vertical, and thus much shorter, is a disaster. What I should also mention is that it took me about 45 minutes to configure that panel, and in the end, I could only do that by moving it to the bottom to do that, and then moving it back to the left side when finished. It was virtually impossible for me to configure it in place, and I'm very experienced at setting up Plasma panels.
That's enough for now. I need to whack some weeds and mow some grass while it's not raining here. After I've used this VM for a while, I'll post a summary and conclusion.