OpenMamba
Here's what happened after I locked my computer yeaterday and went off to read my book for a while.
It took more than 2 hours and 45 minutes to download this 3.14 GB Live DBD for OpenMamba, and I hope it turns out to be worth it. (Yeah, I know they spell it openmamba, but I prefer my way. It's easier to read.)
I'll admit, they also offer a version that's CD sized, but it just has a KDE desktop and a smaller assortment of preinstalled apps. This DVD sized edition is said to have a KDE desktop and a full set of apps. So it was my choice to get the bigger one, because I was curious about what all comes in a full set of apps. The whole KDE stack? I'm about to find out, I guess.
OpenMamba actually offers a choice of 6 downloads, including everything from this full DVD version down to one for the Raspberry Pie. They're all independent rolling editions, and all start out with Plasma for a DE. I read somewhere that LXQT is available as well, but apparently that's something that can be installed later. There was no mention of it on the downloads page.
After taking a long time to download the .ISO, it also takes a long time to install the "live" version. There was a point when I though it was surely locked-up, but I exercised some uncharacteristic patience and I was rewarded with the image above. I can't wait to find out how many unit files it's been loading all that time.
I created a VM for it with my usual starting set of resources -- 4 GB of RAM, 32 MB of video memory, 4 i7 cores, and 32 GB virtual disk drive. After the live version gets started, I plan to create a 1 GiB efi partition and a 6 GiB swap partition, as usual. That will leave 25 GiB for the system. The Live session starts out with an 8-page KDE Welcome pamphlet, which I assume is a guide for folks who are new to Plasma, so I may open it later and take a look, but for now I'm going to skip it and just go ahead and install the OS.
As an independent rolling release, OpenMamba uses apt as a command-line package manager but actually deals in .RPM files. I don't know yet whether it uses the Fedora repositories or their own, but I suspect the latter. This should be interesting. Since it uses apt, I'll be able to use the apt-specific version of my bashrcAdditions file (bashrcAdditions-apt) to make life in the terminal easier. If I find out that nala is also present, I have a version of it that targets that instead, but I doubt that will be the case.
The various editions all default to the English language, but offer a choice of language as the first step when the OS is launched. I noticed a little Italian flag somewhere on the download page, so I suspect it may be Italy-based. If true, that's a first for me. I've had distributions that were based in lots of other countries, but none from Italy. So, there seem to be many reasons OpenMamba qualifies as an Other Interesting Distro. I hope that all y'all will find it interesting as well.
While I was typing all that, apparently the live session phoned home and discovered that there are upgraded packages to install. I'll do a complete update after the installation, as I suspect that any upgrades I install during the live session won't be carried over to the installed OS, but it's a nice touch. There are so few upgrades available because this .ISO was created just a few days ago.
Hang on, here we go ...
The installer sure looks familiar, of course, and I notice that there's a Partitions section. I don't know yet whether that will allow me to create the ones I want in the sizes I want, but if not, I'll back out and look for a partition manager to do that. Another nice feature is that the open session window resized itself automatically as I resized the VM window. Not all distros do that (not even the MATE edition of Solus), and I consider it another nice touch. It's easy to leave plenty of room for the installer.
Moving on, we find another reason to believe that this distro is based in Italy.
In the Partitions section now, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do what I want to do here.
Indeed. After accepting the default of a gpt partition table, the next thing that appeared is this full partition editor. I find it very convenient that it's built into Calameres so I don't need to back out and go fine one somewhere. (I can't wait for this to be the Solus installer.) I'll skip some of the details now, because we've all used one of these editors. As I wrote earlier, I'll create 1 GiB of efi, 6 GiB of swap, and the other 25 GiB for the root file system.
Here's the result. The partition creation page allowed setting flags, but the mount point setting was always grayed out.
I have to assume that will come next, or perhaps the installer will figure that out for itself, based on the file systems I've chosen. Now I wonder why the [Next] button is still disabled. I'm going to have to look around and try to figure that out, as I'm of the impression that my work here is finished. After all, the virtual hard drive is fully partitioned. Maybe I still need to find a way to apply these changes? But I don't see any way to do that.
[upl-image-preview url=
I clicked the [Edit] button to return to one of the individual partition creation pages, thinking that there might be an [Accept] button there that I missed, but there's not. This could be a problem. If I absolutely have to, I'll go back and let the installer erase the whole disk (which is already empty) and create its own partitions, but I shouldn't need to do that. It would be a terrible oversight for an otherwise wonderful installer. I've just got to think harder. What could I be missing?
The only fields I had left empty were the file system label fields, because those should be optional, and I don't really need them. But I went back and filled those in too, and that had no effect on the outcome. Still no [Apply] button anywhere, and the [Next] button still disabled, so at this point I'm fairly well stuck. I think I'm going to take a break and fix breakfast for us (steel-cut oatmeal with cranberries and a small bowl of mandarin orange slices this morning). That'll give me time to ponder my situation, and maybe think of something else to check. I'll close this for now, and return a bit later.