* Posts by sb56637

5 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Nov 2014

MX Linux 21.2: Middleweight Debian-based distro is well worth a look

sb56637

SpiralLinux, GeckoLinux, and Btrfs

Hi there, SpiralLinux and GeckoLinux creator here. It's worth mentioning that if Btrfs isn't desired then it's very easy to select any another filesystem during installation, all the major ones are supported.

SpiralLinux: Anonymous creator of GeckoLinux puts out new Debian remix

sb56637

Re: Couple of notes

Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here. It's actually closer than you might think to being possible. All you would need to do is take the live-build config recipe that I publish on the SpiralLinux Github, and then use live-build on a Devuan system to build it. You would probably have to tweak a few included package names and/or configurations, but I suspect it would be relatively straightforward.

Fedora 24 is here. Go ahead – dive in

sb56637

> Most of the Mint X-apps are not included by default, though some, such as the Eye of MATE image viewer, are.

The author is confused here, Eye of Mate is a Mate project fork of EOG and has nothing to do with the Mint X-apps.

You've come a long way, Inkscape: Open-source Illustrator sneaks up

sb56637

Re: opensource 3D CAD ..?

freecadweb.org

OpenSUSE 13.2: Have your gecko and eat your rolling distro too

sb56637

A few comments and corrections

Thanks for the nice review! I'm an old openSUSE user, spent a year on an Arch-based distro, and now I'm back on openSUSE and happy to be here again. It is indeed a nice, stable choice for people who want to get to work without hassling constantly with the distro.

Small correction: the Gnome Weather app is present on the Gnome Live image, although I uninstalled it. Gnome Software is also installed by default, and it seems to work OK. It's just that the amount of available applications are so limited in Gnome Software. I wish openSUSE would write its own "Software Center" type of app, like Ubuntu has.

> "openSUSE uses its own cross-desktop YaST software manager, which looks and functions more or less the same in both GNOME and KDE — something of a rarity in software managers"

Actually, the software manager *IS* the same in both Gnome and KDE. It's the QT interface that is being used across the board, although the rest of the YaST modules have an available GTK interface.. There is a YaST sw_single module coded in GTK too, but it has major bugs and has been jettisoned in favor of the less buggy QT sw_single module.

> "If you'd like to have the stable base, but want something closer to a rolling release distro, there's always Tumbleweed.®"

This isn't technically correct. Unlike the old Tumbleweed branch, which updated user apps on top of the most current openSUSE released version, the new Tumbleweed (https://news.opensuse.org/2014/10/24/tumbleweed-factory-rolling-releases-to-merge/) is actually a proper rolling release where everything is continually updated, including the kernel and drivers and the rest of the base system. My personal trick for achieving something close to a rolling distro with a stable base is install the openSUSE fixed release (13.2 at the moment) and then adding selected OBS repositories to make most of the user apps roll with the latest version without touching the OS core. Pretty nice compromise, in my opinion.

Thanks again for the article!