MONTHLY
FOIBLES
...wherein
we discuss what did and didn’t work for us this month…
Moss
- So This month I have been fighting with my hopes and dreams, and
finding a nice surprise which I will report on shortly. I’m working
a full-time job which was supposed to be part-time, which limits my
time somewhat. The weather has been beastly hot with brief,
occasional rainstorms.
August
3 - I reformatted my IdeaPad hard drive and tried to set it up using
UEFI, because one of our listeners asked me why I was using Legacy
Boot. First distro I installed, it couldn’t find the right place to
store the boot. So back to Legacy Boot.
August
7 - I installed Linux Mint 19.1 and upgraded it to 19.2. I installed
Mageia 7. I installed Sabayon. Sabayon is a rolling release, so I
have no clue on a version number.
I
attempted to update Mageia MATE. It froze halfway through. I did that
many times with the same result, both using the update manager and
terminal. Finally, it just told me that a file was broken with a bad
key, and that is that. I tried to log into the Mageia Forum, I had a
login from a year or so ago. I couldn't get in. I couldn't reset my
password. I couldn't even create a new account (it let me, and let me
select my password, and then crashed). So no Mageia right now, and
I'll try to get back to it.
Meanwhile,
I found that installing Mageia made it look like Mint was no longer
installed. Nothing changed about that after installing Sabayon. So I
installed Ubuntu Budgie 19.04 on the remaining partition, and
installed and ran Grub Customizer, and voila, everything is there and
boots.
August
10 - I'm installing Mageia 7.1 KDE on the same partition I had Gnome.
NOTE TO DEVELOPERS: Please turn off power-saving features during
installation. Nothing scares a new user more than having his screen
turn itself off while he is installing your system.
Mageia
nicely suggested I have my Linux Mint 19.2 be the first boot. It did
that last time, and then hid the boot from me. Let's see how it goes
this time.
I
boot to a pretty menu if you like blue. Yes, Linux Mint is there and
highlighted, although Mageia is at the top of the menu. Anything I
select, it asks me for username and password, and won't accept login
for anything. Note that Mageia doesn't set username in installation,
but you get to set that at your first boot -- but at this point I
can't get in to that first boot. Nor can I log into anything else. I
just discovered the magic word. It is not Admin or blank or anything
else, it is "root". Now I'm logging in.
And
it won't let me log into ANY of my boots without "root"
password. And while it detects my Realtek wifi modem, it does not
detect any signals coming to it. I fought that for about 20 minutes,
then went to install KDE neon to get my boot back.
KDE
neon detected the wifi just fine and logged me into my router on
about the 3rd step of installation, just after selecting English
language and English US keyboard. I got my boot back, as expected.
However, after some fighting with Discover, I decided to give up on
Neon and went back to Ubuntu Budgie, which has never let me down. It
found my wifi installation AND already had it set up when I rebooted;
many other distros I have to set it up again after installation and
reboot.
I
think it's time to give up on Mageia for now. I have lots of other
distros to look at. I went back to Sabayon, and have installed
everything except Mullvad and a couple games. I just about had
Mullvad installed, but Mullvad claims I have too many keys out. I
have written them to find out what to do next -- I can't just go
deleting keys when I have no information which key is used for which
distro or machine. Still, Sabayon is just peachy and I'll stick with
it for a while.
So.
On August 16th, I was installing something else (Deepin 15.11) to the
IdeaPad, and it completely screwed the Grub boot system. I tried
several things to rescue it, but the final choice was the
Nuke-and-Pave Option. So I reformatted my hard drive, and
installed Linux Mint, Sabayon, and Ubuntu MATE.
In
the past few days, I installed GeckoLinux 150 on my ThinkPad, to have
Ubuntu Budgie 19.04 instantly leave the boot menu; when I installed
Ubuntu MATE 18.04, GeckoLinux went away. And on the IdeaPad, I
installed Manjaro, to have Ubuntu MATE 18.04 stop booting (reports a
strange message saying it is not a 32-bit distro and I should try a
16-bit boot), and, upon reinstalling Ubuntu MATE, I get a “kernel
panic” from Manjaro with no boot. (I have shared the screen with
our Telegram group.) If you say, well, it must be Ubuntu’s
fault -- both machines have LinuxMint 19.2, which was not affected,
and the ThinkPad also has Bodhi 5, also not affected, and both are
based on Ubuntu 18.04. All these continue to boot. And while I’ve
had issues with Mageia, as stated, Sabayon ran beautifully, as did
OpenMandriva 3. This is why I instituted the “Plays Well With
Others” category, but it still stresses me out when I run up on it.
So
now you’ve heard some of my struggles, has anything exciting been
happening to you, Tony?
Tony
- So since we last recorded I have returned from Woodbrooke and
completed this months’ distro review, more of that soon. I have
been playing with a couple of donated PC base units which are all
early dual core PC’s so I decided to install Linux Mint XFCE and
they run fine with 4Gb of RAM. They would benefit from an SSD upgrade
but as they are destined to be given away they’ll probably not get
it. I’ve also put Mint onto a Packard Bell laptop I was given and
this has had an SSD upgrade as I’m passing it on to a Friend with
very little cash as he is on disability benefits. This runs very
nicely with 6Gb Ram and the SSD despite being almost 9 years old.
Clearing
my Garage so I can get it ready for moving in our Makerspace Laser
cutter, 3D Printer, and CNC milling router as we have lost our
current base from the end of this month.
And
on the 17th August, I joined the Big Daddy Linux Live stream as their
challenge was the distro I am reviewing this month, EndeavourOS so I
got to talk a little about that but not in the depth of a full
review.
DISTRO
NAME: EndeavourOS reviewed by Tony
INSTALLATION
So
for information this months installation was done as a sole install
on a Toshiba Portege Z30 the specification is as follows, this is the
same machine I used for last months Debian review:
Intel®
Core™ i5-4210U CPU 2cores and 4 threads @ 1.70GHz to 2.7GHz
128Gb
M2 SSD and 8Gb DDR3 Ram.
However
to test its friendliness for those dual booters out there I did test
installs on a couple of other machines. I can report If the PC being
dual booted has a standard partition configuration then Endeavor does
a great job and the Calamares installer they have included makes it
as simple as an Ubuntu spin to dual boot. However with Endless OS the
Dual boot failed to setup Grub correctly due to the partition
structure of EndlessOS and at first boot Grub loaded straight into
Endeavor and as it was only a test, I didn’t try to fix the
issue.
POST
INSTALLATION HARDWARE FACTS & ISSUES
All
hardware including the WiFi card was detected and working as soon as
I rebooted the Laptop. However you have a very basic set of utilities
to start, XFCE 4.13 was the DE at install although this has since
been updated to XFCE 4.14. You get Firefox for a web browser and a
few system tools such as GPartEd, but all the software you need to be
productive has to be installed, including any alternate DE’s you
may wish to use.
EASE
OF USE
It
would be inaccurate to say that Endeavour is a “new users”
distribution of Arch, as those who have been using a deb or rpm
distribution for any length of time will find they need to learn the
pacman package management system to get anything done and it does
take a little getting used to. However Endeavor OS have already
created a great Wiki
which
will help you learn the basics so your first port of call after
initial install should be to the Wiki. One of the pages gives you the
details of installing other DE’s and I was able to install MATE
using the instructions on this page;
here:
Also
as well as pacman the distro team have included the community
repositories which can be checked for software using the Yay package
management tool, if you wish to check both repositories then using
Yay will search the official Arch repositories and the community
repositories so you only need to use one command, there is a slight
difference in that you don't use sudo when using Yay commands but it
will ask for your admin password during the process.
Also
as well as a great Wiki, Endeavour OS has already built a great
community around it and there is an active Telegram group to look for
user support. I also found support on some of the other community
groups I am signed up to such as the Big Daddy Linux Discourse
channel where they were recently doing an Endeavour challenge.
Application
Issues: I didn’t have any, all the software I needed to install and
use regularly is installable either in the official Arch repository
or through the community repository. Also you can if you wish to
install, both Flatpaks and Snaps, so you shouldn't have any problems
getting your chosen software installed, even my beloved get-iplayer
is available without having to install the snap.
MEMORY
USE:
At
first boot, Endeavour OS is very light on system resources, at first
install, updates and installation of all my essential software the
HDD/SSD usage in my case was less than 6Gb.
EASE
OF FINDING HELP
As
I have already said, Endeavour OS has already created a great Wiki
with loads of information on getting started with what you need to do
on first install. There is also a large Arch information base out
there that is full of information, including many video tutorials on
YouTube.
PLAYS
NICE WITH OTHERS
Again
the installer is very easy to use, and the dual boot option allows
easy resizing of the HDD partitions so you can allocate the space the
way you want to with a slider or leave the default 50/50 split. As I
said earlier, on most installs this works fine, when I installed a
dual boot to a Linux Mint box no issues at all. But with Endless OS,
Grub got confused with their complex partitioning on the disc and I
was left with only an option to boot into Endeavour at restart, but I
think this issue was the fault of Endless OS and not Endeavour OS. I
did install the August updated iso onto one of my Dells that still
had a dual boot of Windows and PCLinuxOS and this went perfect with
all the OSes showing up in the Grub splash screen at boot.
STABILITY
I
have been using the laptop for about 80% of my computing needs for
the last 4 weeks and, despite daily updates, I have not had any
issues with the stability of the OS, despite not checking if there
were any issues with any proposed updates as is recommended.
RATINGS:
Ease
of Installation new user friendly install scores 5/10
experienced
Linux users 8/10
Hardware
Issues 10/10
Ease
of Finding Help (Community, Web)
10/10
Ease
of Use
8/10
Plays
Nice With Others
8/10
Stability
9/10
SIMILAR
DISTROS TO CHECK OUT
Manjaro
FINAL
COMMENTS
For
the developers to produce such a slick iteration of Arch at their
first attempt, despite having a very active community that they have
inherited from the former Antergos OS, is absolutely amazing. Also
the community, despite the reputation that some Arch communities
have, in my experience has been fantastic. Bryan from the Endeavour
team was on Big Daddy Linux Live a couple of weeks ago and stated
that one of their aims is to have the best community that any Arch
user could want or expect. I echo Rocco’s statement on hearing
this, this is amazing that the community is at the center of this
distribution. If you have never tried Arch and want an easy start to
getting to a working DE albeit with minimal software installed,
Endeavour may be for you. This is definitely going in the list of
Distroes to keep in the locker and it is currently still on the
Toshiba until I decide to install the next review subject over it.
DISTRO
NAME: Sabayon Linux reviewed by Moss
This
month, I had hoped to review Mageia 7.1, but we’ve already
discussed my travels in Mageialand. Ultimately this is about the
unexpected joys of Sabayon, a distro which attempts to bring Gentoo
to beginners.
MY
HARDWARE: This
month I’m strictly working on my Lenovo IdeaPad 110-15acl-80TJ with
4 Gb of RAM and a 500-Gb hard drive (AMD chips).
Aug
8 - I started trying to update Sabayon. It took more than my lunch
hour; fortunately, the update manager is ready, willing and able to
suspend an update and continue it later. It took over 3 hours to do
the first update (468 files), and then a second update of about 66
files took about 20 minutes. Everything went smoothly. Total install
including updates was about 5 hours.
I
got Firefox set up, and even managed to install SoftMaker Office from
a tar.gz file with an easy to use script and completely remove
LibreOffice.
It
is obvious I will need to completely relearn the commands for the
Gentoo system, and I'm having a bit of trouble finding my other
programs. I'm needing to get Mullvad installed, as well as my
printer. But that is for another day.
Due
to a mess-up on my system not having to do with Sabayon, I
reinstalled on the 16th. Sabayon started doing updates and then
froze 25% of the way through one update and would not continue. My
experience was, if you discontinue updates, you can continue them
later. Not so this time. (My fault, as I’ll explain later.) I spent
all day on the 17th trying to get it to work. Looks like I'm
reinstalling again on August 18th. More about this later, as I
discovered the cause.
August
18 - I got Mint installed. I got Sabayon installed. I installed
Ubuntu MATE. I left my machine with 3 partitions, at least for now.
While I was updating Sabayon, which we all tend to do before anything
else, I actually read through the Welcome page, where it suggests you
open Terminal and do a few things FIRST (even though the software has
already asked you to do updates). I note that one of the “first
steps” searches for a better mirror. DO THIS PEOPLE! Sabayon is a
fun distro, but those initial updates take 5 hours without taking
this step. Yes, it is a forgiving distro, and you can break the
process and pick it up later, something I wish other distros would do
as well as Sabayon does, but still, it will be FIVE HOURS. I will be
reinstalling soon just to see what the difference is.
If
you are interested, a
reviewer on DistroWatch recently reviewed Sabayon utilizing the Gnome
desktop.
On
August 21st, I started my 4th installation of Sabayon at 18:55. If it
weren’t an easy install, I might not be doing this, but Sabayon
always finds a way to make it feel like fun. Again, the purpose of
this installation was to see whether it goes more quickly if you
follow the guidelines and do things in Terminal first before running
updates. I noted during installation that this distro includes native
AMD and Nvidia drivers, and comes with Steam Big Picture Mode. The
slideshow also features Kodi, but for some reason that is not
included in the installation but can easily be added later. I checked
out the assistive tools; they exist, but I wouldn’t rely on them.
My installation was completed at 19:17. Upon reboot, I found that it
did not transfer my wifi password; not all distros do, but it’s a
pleasure to see when one does.
So
it’s into Terminal I go. The Equo update completed at 19:23, the
Mirrorsort at 19:25. It took until 21:11 to upgrade Entropy, the
package manager, but this apparently included all of the hours-long
updates I had experienced in previous installations. I then ran Equo
conf update, which seemed to be stuck at 6% until I figured out I
needed to hit the space bar to continue, which I needed to do a few
times for it to continue, and it completed at 21:20, displaying the
endlessly cute message, "All fine, baby! Nothing to do!"
I
did a couple of unneeded (repeated) updates, just to prove to myself
that all the updates were done, then ran “equo deptest” (test for
missing dependencies), which completed at 21:33, and then ”equo
libtest” (check for missing or broken libraries), which finished at
21:41, at which time I was all done and had to reboot.
POST
INSTALLATION HARDWARE ISSUES
You
boot up, and are met with a message that no Virtual Machine has been
detected, so it is turning off the VM manager. It then continues to
boot, and nothing appears to be wrong, but that’s a bit
disconcerting to new users.
Out
of four installations, I had Mullvad installed only twice and with
purported DNS leaks. Repeated conversations with Mullvad Support
confirmed they had no idea how to support Sabayon, and suggested I
try a more popular distro.
I
still have not found the page I’m looking for in order to install
my printer by using source. Sabayon does not use .deb or .rpm files.
In the end, this was the back-breaker for me to continue using
Sabayon or not, and I’m sure the answer is “out there”.
Sabayon
MATE 19.03 desktop, status bar moved to bottom
Interesting
updating system… informative and hard to read both!
EASE
OF USE
Application
issues: Everything runs the way it should except for Mullvad, my
printer, and Stacer. I only got 3 of my 5 games installed. But this
is a NICE system and I really enjoy using it.
MEMORY
USE:
Htop
reports using 2.16 Gb RAM use with Firefox open. That’s a bit steep
on a 4 Gb laptop, which leaves me hoping my swap drive is functioning
properly.
EASE
OF FINDING HELP
The
Forum is small but friendly. There are around 16,000 registered
users, and if it’s like most forums, over half of those have gone
on to other things. I got responses to my questions, but not many and
not all were actual solutions.
PLAYS
NICE WITH OTHERS
There
is no Grub Customizer, but the grub menu shows everything and nothing
conflicts.
STABILITY
I
have had absolutely no issues with crashes. The update manager is so
stable you can stop and start it again even on a later boot.
SIMILAR
DISTROS TO CHECK OUT
Is
there anything close? Not in Gentoo-based. Perhaps Manjaro and
Endeavour in Arch, or Solus OS.
RATINGS:
Ease
of Installation
new
user friendly install scores
4/10
- patience, not skill, required
experienced
Linux users
7/10
Hardware
Issues
8/10
Ease
of Finding Help (Community, Web)
7/10
Ease
of Use
8/10
Plays
Nice With Others
8/10
Stability
8/10
FINAL
COMMENTS
I
really, really like this distro but will not be keeping it beyond
this review. There is nothing here I can’t do more easily
elsewhere. But, this is not the nightmare I was expecting to
encounter, and there are lots of fun touches (“No new updates!
Cool!”). If you’re up for a quite different experience, I highly
recommend trying it… but do all the post-installation stuff it
suggests and don’t be afraid to use the Terminal. This by itself
makes it less friendly to beginners and new users, as so many of us
are afraid to open a terminal until we are quite experienced.
NEW
RELEASES THIS MONTH:
from
our last show to present
Clonezilla
• 2.6.3-5
Hanthana
• 30
Proxmox
• 6.0 "Mail Gateway"
Scientific
• 7.7
Kodachi
6.2
EasyOS
2.1
EasyOS
1.2
OSGeoLive
13.0
AUSTRUMI
4.0.6
OviOS
3.02
Clonezilla
2.6.3-3
Netrunner
19.08
BigLinux
19.04
Alpine
3.10.2
Redcore
Linux 1908
Knoppix
8.6
Neptune
6.0
Emmabuntüs
DE2-1.05
Voyager
Live 10
RHEL
7.7
Pardus
19.0
SparkyLinux
19.08
LinuxMint
19.2
FEEDBACK
Sylas Writes:
You
can manually type in a PPA in your /etc/apt/sources.list although
Grub Customizer is actually in the Buster repositories! All you have
to do is type ‘sudo apt install grub-customizer’. Then it will
work
Tony replied - Thanks
Sylas, I’m sure that Moss who plays with Grub all the time will
make a note of this.
<Moss>
I'm
really not doing distrohopping to stress out myself or the listener,
but one of our regular listeners left our Telegram group because he
was too stressed hearing about my struggles with Mageia. However, he
pledged $50 towards any decent used laptop I would like to purchase,
with the proviso that I use it to only install one distro at a time,
which is more like what most of our listeners would do. He suggested
I ask other listeners to chip in. I don’t enjoy asking for help,
suffering as I do (like many other podcasters) from Impostor Syndrome
(the fear that what I’m doing isn’t important to anyone), but
find I’m doing it a lot these days. We did find a couple Lenovo
G70-80s on eBay for around $200, and they look to be ideal for my
needs. So if anyone else really enjoys what I’m doing on this show
and mintCast and would like to contribute, please contact me.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We
are pleased to announce that Episode 4 has been downloaded 369 times
as of this recording. This is more than 3 times what we had for
Episode 1 after a month.
We
have had a number of users who have wanted to submit their own
reviews for Distrohoppers’ Digest, and we now plan to do a
User-Only show, Distrohopper’s Digest User Edition. We will post
the criteria to be used in your review on the blog at
https://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com.
Please
submit your review in .flac format if you can, but we can accept .mp3
if that’s the best you can do. Submitting a script of what was said
will also help our listeners, but is not required. Please send your
submission to distrhoppersdigest@gmail.com.
Our
next show will be recorded on September 25th, 2019. Depending on our
feedback, there may be a User Edition before then. Visit our website
at https://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com
and
follow us on MeWe, Discord and Telegram at our mintCast groups, and
we can be contacted at distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com
.
If
any of our listeners have suggestions for which distros you’d like
to see us try, please contact us.
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