Do you have a distro testing computer?

[Petermint]

Mageia looks interesting. Will you write up a comparison with LM 21? Perhaps the Xfce versions as they would be closest.

[antikythera]

The distro testing unit should be there to be broken, and then fixed with a new distro. I am looking forward to trying Mageia 9, since 8 did not work great on the T480s.

It is essentially, the Ryzen system is it's direct replacement as the main linux workhorse. But at any rate, both systems have only solid state storage, USB 3.0/3.1 respectively and restoring the drive contents takes 10 minutes including booting foxclone.

I do have another much older barebones system (AMD Athlon X2 4400+ socket AM2, 2GB DDR2-800, 2TB Samsung SpinPoint F4, Ralink RT2500 USB wireless I can just about force to work) but it's essentially useless due to the 690G chipset's integrated GPU - HDMI output but no hardware acceleration and no sound with any currently maintained linux distribution. The ironic alternative? Adding a slightly less crappy Dell OEM Radeon HD3450 with a proprietary connector on the back with a lead which splits to two VGA out. Those VGA connections are the problem, I don't want to hook it up to my new P2421 due to lack of workstation space with two towers there already and have no other monitor with VGA now and none of the TVs in the house have VGA in either now.

[half-word]

I test any new to me OS in a VM first and foremost. Most of them never move away from there, especially because I sometimes test several versions at the same time (think normal/ESR for Ubuntu or stable/testing/unstable for Debian/Devuan). Although I don't have a testing machine, I always have a spare machine or two and any promising OS ocasionally gets installed on them.

When I try them on bare metal it's usually a laptop so it's a great test of hardware support, especially power management. That's pretty important for me as I don't try only Linux distros but also OSes from BSD or Solaris families which are often less than stellar in that area.

[MurphCID]

Mageia looks interesting. Will you write up a comparison with LM 21? Perhaps the Xfce versions as they would be closest.

I will do so, Mageia 8 had some firmware/kernel issues that caused an unstable system. I am looking forward to Mageia 9 since it appears it will have the 5.15 kernel.

[MurphCID]

I test any new to me OS in a VM first and foremost. Most of them never move away from there, especially because I sometimes test several versions at the same time (think normal/ESR for Ubuntu or stable/testing/unstable for Debian/Devuan). Although I don't have a testing machine, I always have a spare machine or two and any promising OS ocasionally gets installed on them.

When I try them on bare metal it's usually a laptop so it's a great test of hardware support, especially power management. That's pretty important for me as I don't try only Linux distros but also OSes from BSD or Solaris families which are often less than stellar in that area.

That is why I purchased the t480s so that I have a slightly less than new computer that I can install distros on bare metal and see how they work. It comes with enough ram and storage that I do not have to worry.

[MurphCID]

Well, I just could not stand POP!_OS and Gnome any longer. Their Cinnamon is old, and its great if you like beige icons. So I loaded Fedora 36 Cinnamon on the Darter Pro. Well the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports work, and even though the Cinnamon version is 5.2.7, it looks pretty good. There is an issue with the dnf updater but it installed 613 updates, and I am now running Kernel 5.19. Looks pretty like Cinnamon, 90% of the terminal commands are there, some differences. So until Mint 21.1 comes out and the USB-C/Thunderbolt issue is fixed, I will most likely keep it on this laptop. But it has been put in the desk drawer and is not likely to be a daily driver. That is for the HP and the Lemur Pro, and somewhat the T480s.

[Petermint]

POP!_OS

beige

beige
Maybe we could start a separate thread where people mention distributions they tested then rejected/accepted with the main reason(s) why. Would have to be objective, like out of date packages, not "beige". Beige would be objective if it was hard to read or poor contrast or a similar problem.

Beige was a complaint about IBM PCs. Boring beige. I worked with a lot of IBM PCs and none were beige. The first beige computer I saw was an Apple when Apple were trying to sell their computers to businesses. A beige Mac. They were trying to sell floppy disk Macs to owners of PCs with real disks. The demo expert showed us the Mac after he had loaded the 135,000 floppy disks needed to boot it into an application.

I know because I went back and asked for the demo again starting with a Mac that was switched off. The demo reminded me of those wirelesses where you crank a handle to charge the battery.

So after using a disk, I vetoed anything based on floppies. You cannot go backwards. The same with SSD. I would never boot from rusty disks. If a machine cannot upgrade to SSD, scrap it. And USB 3. If a machine does not have USB 3, scrap it. For testing things, my time is too valuable to boot through USB 2.

[MurphCID]

POP!_OS

beige

beige
Maybe we could start a separate thread where people mention distributions they tested then rejected/accepted with the main reason(s) why. Would have to be objective, like out of date packages, not "beige". Beige would be objective if it was hard to read or poor contrast or a similar problem.

Beige was a complaint about IBM PCs. Boring beige. I worked with a lot of IBM PCs and none were beige. The first beige computer I saw was an Apple when Apple were trying to sell their computers to businesses. A beige Mac. They were trying to sell floppy disk Macs to owners of PCs with real disks. The demo expert showed us the Mac after he had loaded the 135,000 floppy disks needed to boot it into an application.

I know because I went back and asked for the demo again starting with a Mac that was switched off. The demo reminded me of those wirelesses where you crank a handle to charge the battery.

So after using a disk, I vetoed anything based on floppies. You cannot go backwards. The same with SSD. I would never boot from rusty disks. If a machine cannot upgrade to SSD, scrap it. And USB 3. If a machine does not have USB 3, scrap it. For testing things, my time is too valuable to boot through USB 2.

It is just unattractive. I am a sort of visual guy, which is why I harp on icons, fonts, and such. As a distro, POP!_OS is pretty darn good, I just cannot stand Gnome. It is purely subjective on my part.

[MurphCID]

A short test report on Fedora 36 on the Darter Pro #2 (DARP 7). As you all know Mint 21 did not have a successful run on the Darter, it would not see either of the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports which both POP!_OS and Fedora do see. Not sure why, but I cannot work without those ports since my external drives all are USB-C. So I decided to give Fedora 36-Cinnamon another try. So let us go over things:

The Installer: Made for more experienced Linux users, it was not hard, but it was not the Mint installer. You can also see its server roots in that you set up as a root user, then make a user account which you have to add to the wheel group. The partitioner is NOT intuitive and not as easy as the Mint installer. That being said, installation is relatively smooth, but you absolutely need to set up your wifi or plug into the ethernet right away.

Configuration/Running Fedora Cinnamon: Cinnamon is 5.2.7 which is older, but still looks really nice on the Darter Pro screen. Kernel is 5.19 series and runs well. All ports work. As with all non Mint installations "right click to uninstall" is not an option. But the ability to turn off the trackpad when a mouse is detected is there, and is great. You can tell it is based on Fedora and the icons are blue, Gnome blue, but fortunately you can change that. Theming is just like on regular Mint, which goes fast.

Updates: You have to manually install the ability to do flatpaks, and some other non Fedora approved software. Then you have to use a command to install the non-free software: sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedo ... e-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/f ... e-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm This is annoying since this command is pretty hidden, and it took one of the Fedora guys on their forum to show me this. Once you do that then LibreOffice 7.4 is shown in the update manager. The Fedora update manager is workable, but not nearly as nice and user friendly as that in Mint. You can also update via terminal using "dnf" and I really appreciate the amount of information that you get in their terminal. There are some commands that you can use in Debian that are different in Fedora, but for the most part things work well.

Overall: I am glad I have a little more Linux knowledge than I had before, otherwise this would not have gone well for me. But I like Fedora on the Darter Pro, it will not replace Mint, but it works well, and I am looking forward to seeing how it handles upgrades to Fedora 37. I doubt it will ever go on one of the "road warrior" laptops, but on the Darter Pro it is a perfectly acceptable distro to use. There are some things that are very nice, with TLP going , battery life is really good, and so no issues there. As always I am a visual guy, and it looks nice, clean, fonts are displayed well with good anti-aliasing, and same with the icons. If Mint was not available, I could see myself using Fedora Cinnamon as a daily driver.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...So after using a disk, I vetoed anything based on floppies. You cannot go backwards. The same with SSD. I would never boot from rusty disks. If a machine cannot upgrade to SSD, scrap it. And USB 3. If a machine does not have USB 3, scrap it. For testing things, my time is too valuable to boot through USB 2.

You and me three!

[MurphCID]

...So after using a disk, I vetoed anything based on floppies. You cannot go backwards. The same with SSD. I would never boot from rusty disks. If a machine cannot upgrade to SSD, scrap it. And USB 3. If a machine does not have USB 3, scrap it. For testing things, my time is too valuable to boot through USB 2.

You and me three!

Yep, I never look back, Floppies, CD's, are so yesterday.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...So after using a disk, I vetoed anything based on floppies. You cannot go backwards. The same with SSD. I would never boot from rusty disks. If a machine cannot upgrade to SSD, scrap it. And USB 3. If a machine does not have USB 3, scrap it. For testing things, my time is too valuable to boot through USB 2.

You and me three!

Yep, I never look back, Floppies, CD's, are so yesterday.

Heck, I don't use CDs or DVDs for storage media anymore. I do get my music and movies on CDs, DVDs, and BDs since they usually cost less (especially when I can get them on sale or on a bargain table, rack, or bin), have better documentation, and give me better quality than I can get from downloads.

I also don't use HDDs anymore. I switched to all SSDs, even for data storage and backups, a few years ago.

[MurphCID]

You and me three!

Yep, I never look back, Floppies, CD's, are so yesterday.

Heck, I don't use CDs or DVDs for storage media anymore. I do get my music and movies on CDs, DVDs, and BDs since they usually cost less (especially when I can get them on sale or on a bargain table, rack, or bin), have better documentation, and give me better quality than I can get from downloads.

I also don't use HDDs anymore. I switched to all SSDs, even for data storage and backups, a few years ago.

I have one, just one HDD left, everything else I have are SSD/NVME drives.

[MurphCID]

No more distro hopping for now. I am tired. So therefore I am staying with Mint 21, LMDE 5 and Fedora (on the other Darter Pro).

[vansloneker]

If I want to try a distro I run a live session from a USB stick and that gives me enough clues to stay with Mint...

[MurphCID]

If I want to try a distro I run a live session from a USB stick and that gives me enough clues to stay with Mint...

I think I am done distro hopping (at least for a great while). My needs are being met quite nicely by Mint 21 and POP!_OS.

[Petermint]

We all need a Pop. What is different and useful about POP OS?

[MurphCID]

We all need a Pop. What is different and useful about POP OS?

For one the Darter Pro with the 11th generation Intel processor worked great under mint 20.3, but under 21, the usb-c/Thunderbolt ports would not even be recognized. So I had to put pop OS back on it in order to have working thunderbolt ports. I’m pretty sure it’s a hardware issue with that particular laptop. Because my other two laptops were just fine with Mint 21. Pop OS is an excellent Debian and Ubuntu distribution. But gnome is the flagship desktop environment and their version of cinnamon is very outdated and is only available in tan color.
It also runs the absolute most current kernel which is 5.19. The software seems to be a little more updated than you would expect from a LTS release.

[Petermint]

I used MX for a couple of one offs as they have a special download for 5.18 to cover gen 11 and 12. It works, has Xfce, but they really mess up the user interface.

[MurphCID]

I used MX for a couple of one offs as they have a special download for 5.18 to cover gen 11 and 12. It works, has Xfce, but they really mess up the user interface.

I am thinking of posting my short review of Mint vs POP!_OS in a couple of days. MX works really well, and is closer to Debian than most others.