Distros of interest and why.

[MALsPa]

I've been a fan of Debian XFCE and #! XFCE for awhile now but when #! stopped supporting their XFCE version recently I began to consider other alternatives in that realm. I still use #! XFCE as my primary OS, but I just want to have other options in the future. I've been really impressed with Saline OS so far. It's pretty quick. I'll probably give it a #! look (remove the fancy wallpaper, move the panels around, remove unnecessary apps), but so far it's a nice little distro.

I didn't realize, or maybe I forgot, that Crunchbang had dropped Xfce. Went back and read the latest release announcement, and you're right. Should be easy to add Xfce to it, though.

At the moment I'm posting from Ubuntu 10.04 with Openbox, but with xfce4-panel. I love how Linux allows you to do things like this! Kinda feels like creating your own distro spin.

I agree about SalineOS. I've been running it here for a year now, and I think it's a great distro.

[mikhou]

I didn't realize, or maybe I forgot, that Crunchbang had dropped Xfce. Went back and read the latest release announcement, and you're right. Should be easy to add Xfce to it, though.

You're right. I could add it easily enough, and I have gone the Debian XFCE route in the past, and I liked it. But after doing everything necessary to setup Debian XFCE (the last time that I did so) I realized that it was almost exactly like #! XFCE. That's when I figured that I would save myself the hassle and go with #! XFCE. Now that #! XFCE is no longer supported (and I don't feel like setting up Debian XFCE), I thought that I would give Saline OS a whirl.

mikhou

[Aging Technogeek]

This distro is not yet available, but it will be of interest to many Mint users - SolusOS http://www.solusos.com/

It is being developed by Ikey Doherty and should be available in RC or beta form within the next month or so. He promises many amazing things and surprises.

[dagon]

Yes, that looks interesting but...

He promises many amazing things and surprises.

Noooooo!
I don't want surprises... unless the jaw-dropper is a complete lack of bugs it just make me chew my nails.

[craig10x]

looks nice but debian stable and gnome 2...sounds like going backwards instead of forwards...

[tdockery97]

Yeah but stability is a thing people want these days. So the first release will be the stable branch (with new apps)
Should've used my own site to post a leak but what the hell. There won't just be a stable branch. Hint.

lol.

Stable with current apps would make me completely happy. I don't hate Gnome 3, but given the choice while it's still around I'd rather use Gnome 2.

[craig10x]

ah...got you ikey (the "hint hint"...lol)...unlike tdockery97 i guess i am just spoiled with gnome 3
looks very nice! well, maybe if it will have access to newer apps in the updates with it, it might be pretty cool even as it is...
but i will also look forward to the "other" possible versions....

with the "hint hint" version, a little cinnamon on top might be nice on top too

[mikhou]

I was looking back today at what I had posted earlier.

You're right. I could add it easily enough, and I have gone the Debian XFCE route in the past, and I liked it. But after doing everything necessary to setup Debian XFCE (the last time that I did so) I realized that it was almost exactly like #! XFCE. That's when I figured that I would save myself the hassle and go with #! XFCE. Now that #! XFCE is no longer supported (and I don't feel like setting up Debian XFCE), I thought that I would give Saline OS a whirl.

This really makes me sound lazy. It's really not that difficult to setup Debian. However, as I have gotten busier lately and frankly just don't have time to fool with customizing distros anymore, I am looking more at plug-n-play distros (like Linux Mint, Crunchbang, and SalineOS). I still like Debian (and I hope I'm not overly lazy), but if SalineOS will do what I want with less headache, I'll go that route.

mikhou

[craig10x]

Ikey...actually, debian stable with new apps sounds pretty interesting
I guess the next version of debian stable would have to have to gnome 3 anyway, so at that point, some Cinnamon topping would be nice for that!

Also...even in your current version (and all going forth) don't forget the ubuntu patching to the libcairo like Clem does for LMDE to get that great ubuntu font rendering...make debian (especially when web browsing) look soooooo much better then it does from the way it normally looks (since debian won't use it for "philosophical reasons" it would seem)...

I'll have to take a look at it when it is ready...I was also wondering if you will have a mint type layout for it (just 1 panel on bottom and slab style menu)...that has always been my (and many others here) favorite...

[ej64]

Now that #! XFCE is no longer supported (and I don't feel like setting up Debian XFCE), I thought that I would give Saline OS a whirl.

My Statler XFCE is humming along on testing repos since almost a year now. It doesn't seem to break ... so, no need to look for something different even now when Corenominal has dropped XFCE.

Going back to stable wouldn't be an alternative to me. Newer hardware benefits from current packages (e.g. kernel, xorg) so I'm more like going with something testing or sid based, perhaps LMDE if I had to.

[craig10x]

very good...i meant don't forget the ubuntu patching for font rendering (had left out the word forget originally...lol) but i guess you got what i was saying...
yeah that patching really makes things look so much better (and debian doesn't use it)...glad to hear about the mint style layout...good move

[craig10x]

very cool, Ikey way to go!

[Aging Technogeek]

I have been doing a lot of alpha testing for Ikey and I can say this much. I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised when the first public release comes out in February. Things are happening very quickly and most are happening for the better. Solus is going to be a very good OS.(I don't want to jinx things by getting too optimistic ).

PS to Ikey. I registered on the new forum but my posts are being "held for Moderator approval". What up wit dat?

[spider2097]

I didn't realize, or maybe I forgot, that Crunchbang had dropped Xfce. Went back and read the latest release announcement, and you're right. Should be easy to add Xfce to it, though.

You're right. I could add it easily enough, and I have gone the Debian XFCE route in the past, and I liked it. But after doing everything necessary to setup Debian XFCE (the last time that I did so) I realized that it was almost exactly like #! XFCE. That's when I figured that I would save myself the hassle and go with #! XFCE. Now that #! XFCE is no longer supported (and I don't feel like setting up Debian XFCE), I thought that I would give Saline OS a whirl.

mikhou

At the risk of doing a slight regress by answering this post, but - #! does still support XFCE usage, just not straight out of the box. Admittedly, I can't say whether it's full support (or that it keeps current with XFCE updates) but the welcome script that runs on first boot after install will download & install the XFCE files (should you choose to). Then it's just a case of setting your login manager to set XFCE as your default login environment. #! is a very nice little distro in my eyes, I spend the majority of my computer use flitting between #! and Mint depending on my mood. With the introduction of Cinnamon, I've actually taken the plunge to dedicating my main desktop PC to being a sole Mint installation, my laptop & netbook are both running #! and I've built myself a mini-PC for my Windows usage (some things I just can't live without). Of course, my main desktop may not stay a single distro machine for long - but with the amount of HDD space it has, that's definitely not a problem

[Suo_Eno]

Anyone tried Semplice Linux' alpha yet? Sid w/ Openbox it says...Me tempted but a bit intimidated.

[MALsPa]

Anyone tried Semplice Linux' alpha yet? Sid w/ Openbox it says...Me tempted but a bit intimidated.

First I've heard of it. Very interesting. I'd like to see their default sources.list.

[MALsPa]

Anyone tried Semplice Linux' alpha yet? Sid w/ Openbox it says...Me tempted but a bit intimidated.

Decided to give Semplice a whirl on my spare computer. But not the 3.0 alpha; I installed 2.0.1 instead.

Yeah, Sid w/ Openbox. Chromium browser, PCManFM, Gnumeric and AbiWord, Synaptic. Live CD, all-text installer, but don't let that scare ya, it was easy. Uses sudo by default! Kinda unusual outside of the Ubuntu world, isn't it?

If all goes well, I'll upgrade to 3.0 when it's finished.

[Suo_Eno]

@MALsPa
Hey thx MAL! That's some fast test run install you did. That spare PC set just for distro spelunking eh?

[MALsPa]

@MALsPa
Hey thx MAL! That's some fast test run install you did. That spare PC set just for distro spelunking eh?

LOL! Well, I had nothing better to do on this Sunday afternoon. Actually, that isn't true, but you know how it is. Semplice looked kinda interesting, so I thought, "Why not?" I hadn't checked out a different distro in awhile.

With Debian and Debian-based distros, I really prefer to stick with stuff based on Stable, which is why I like Mepis and SalineOS. So this is kind of a departure for me; I've never even run Debian Unstable.

There were 240 upgrades available from the start.

And, yeah, the spare is pretty much set up so that it's pretty easy to try some other distros on it. All I have on it is Mepis 11 and Ubuntu 11.04. I have to say, I really like using Mepis as the first distro, booting the other distros; after I dropped in a couple of more partitions and installed Semplice, I booted into Mepis, and the mount points for the new partitions were automatically created, and fstab was already set up, too. All I had to do was drop a few lines in menu.lst for Semplice and then boot into the new installation. Of course, Mepis is still using grub-legacy, which is fine with me, but others might not like that so much.

Semplice looks okay, especially for those of us who love Openbox. They included tint2 for the panel. Comes with some Xfce stuff like mousepad, xfburn, xfce4-power-manager, and xfce4-screenshooter. They've got a Semplice repo in there along with the Unstable repo in the sources.

I'd be a lot more excited if it was based on Stable, but I'll roll with this and see how things play out.

[MALsPa]

I added openSUSE 12.1 (KDE) last week. First time I've ever installed openSUSE, although I've looked at live sessions a few times in the past. The YaST/Zypper stuff is all new to me. Of the "major" distros out there (your definition of "major" may differ, of course), openSUSE was the one I wanted to get a feel for after Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora. I want to see what I think of it after a year or two. Looks good so far.