Other Distros

[roadkill13]

Raspbian x86 06.22.2017 rpd edition. Installed to internal drive on my Asus Eee pc 901.

System: Host: raspberry Kernel: 3.16.0-4-686-pae i686 (32 bit)
Desktop: LXDE (Openbox 3.5.2) Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 8
Machine: System: ASUSTeK product: 901 v: x.x
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: 901 v: x.xx
Bios: American Megatrends v: 2103 date: 06/11/2009
CPU: Single core Intel Atom N270 (-HT-) cache: 512 KB
Clock Speeds: 1: 1599 MHz 2: 1599 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1024x600@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2
GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.3.2
Audio: Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.16.0-4-686-pae
Network: Card: Ralink RT2790 Wireless 802.11n 1T/2R PCIe driver: rt2800pci
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:15:af:e6:83:46
Drives: HDD Total Size: 12.1GB (47.0% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: ASUS size: 4.0GB
ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ASUS size: 8.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 6.4G used: 4.1G (67%) fs: ext2 dev: /dev/sdb1
ID-2: /home size: 3.7G used: 295M (9%) fs: ext2 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-3: swap-1 size: 1.10GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb2
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 69.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 1770
Info: Processes: 117 Uptime: 1:03 Memory: 244.8/2015.3MB
Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28

Added Pianobar and MPS-Youtube player. Has Chromium with pepper flash. Works very well.

[belham2]

Hi all,

Have been using this crunchbang successor the past week when setting up my pups for frugal install, and also to get a more in-depth idea of how I would like openbox and tint2 to look & function together if I put another pup-build together.

The BunsenLabs gang have done a nice job, and this latest "Hydrogen Deuterium amd64" release (put out in Apr 2017) is quite nice to use. It is Openbox with tint2 all on top of Debian Jessie stable with the latest version of the battle-tested 3.16-series kernel. Installation was easy, to a partition, and they've even developed a great script that pops up on first overall boot that will help a noob add essential things to and also mod their system all by simply answering questions via mouse-clicks.

Best way to describe this Deuterium is by pics. BL has pretty much fleshed out the openbox menu to the fullest. But yet they did not overburdened or junked-up the overall system----instead, they've made it super easy to customize and install whatever you want straight from right-clicking in the openbox menu (of course, you still get synpatic). Also, since the distro is debian-based, if it matters to you things like immediate dual monitor recognition, and redshift functioning immediately, are a given.

Anyhow, here's some pics. Focused on the right-click menus of openbox, to give you some idea how they've set it up overall. Hope you enjoy them:

[Colonel Panic]

I've now installed AntiX 16.2 (32-bit edition), and on top of that,the FVWM-Crystal window manager which goes with it really well. I would assign either a button or a menu to the action of clicking the middle mouse button on the desktop, but otherwise I feel FVWM-Crystal is close to being the perfect window manager, along with WindowMaker.

Overall though, I remain very impressed with AntiX as a distro. It's a lightweight distro for older computers, and yet it not only looks good but it's fully featured enough that you don't feel there's a lot missing when you use it; just like Puppy, in fact. Since it has the huge Debian repos to draw on, it's easy to add any programs it doesn't have; I've added Osmo, PortaBase and Qalculate so far.

Belham, I tried BunsenLabs Deuterium and it looked good but I couldn't get it to install; maybe it was a bad burn.

[Smithy]

That Bunsen Labs distro looks like my puppy Belham.

Nice clean looks and right clicks etc. Tint 2 and open box is a good combo! (IMO).

[infromthepound]

[quote="

Belham, I tried BunsenLabs Deuterium and it looked good but I couldn't get it to install; maybe it was a bad burn.[/quote]

Maybe you used helium instead. it's not inflamable.
JB

[Billtoo]

I downloaded the net install iso for Stretch and used it to install to
a 128gb usb SSD

bill@office2:~$ inxi -b
System: Host: office2 Kernel: 4.9.0-3-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Machine: Device: desktop System: ACER product: Aspire M5620 v: R01-A4
Mobo: ACER model: G33T-AM v: 1.0 BIOS: American Megatrends v: R01-A4 date: 12/19/2007
CPU: Quad core Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1603/2403 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 430]
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVC1 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.6
Network: Card: Intel 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e
Drives: HDD Total Size: 126.3GB (12.6% used)
Info: Processes: 169 Uptime: 1:27 Memory: 523.3/7987.4MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5
bill@office2:~$

I'm using my 32" TV as a monitor.

It's working nice so far.

[Colonel Panic]

Maybe you used helium instead. it's not inflamable.
JB

LOL. Anyway, second time lucky; I deleted the old ISO and downloaded the 64-bit one, and that one installed to my hard drive with no problems.

[solex]

Prior to updating to Slack Puppy 6.9.9.9 I wanted test a few other distributions on my Lenovo X61 with 8 MB RAM and a newly installed Samsung EVO 205 MB SSD

My analysis was not scientific at all by I tried to spend 2 to 3 days with each distribution and also downloaded the 'lightest' version of each.

-Linux Mint
-Manjaro
-Debian LXDE
-Solus
-Elementary OS
-Scientific Linux

I compared ease of setup and real world responsiveness particularly with browsing.

They all performed very well on the setup side, in terms of setting up printers Solus was the easiest.

My personal opinion was that Solus was the most polished but when installed it needed over 192 updates to the installed packages which would take over an hour to complete.

The nice thing about all of the OS's is that they recognized both monitors, laptop and 27" external. The only problem with all of them is by default it made my laptop the main monitor even though the lid was closed. Further to that I could not close the lid with out the system sleeping and there were no obvious options to turn off sleep mode with the lid closed.

Puppy on the other hand did not set the laptop display as the main monitor but allowed me to install and run with the lid closed, this happens to be my preference

In real world testing Puppy was by far the fastest, browsing in the other distributions was obviously slower

Puppy is installed for good on my new SSD

Again big thank you to all who develop and support Puppy.

[rufwoof]

Debian Jessie standard with xorg, fluxbox (windows manager), Eterm, pcmanfm (file manager and desktop icons)


(clickable thumbnail)

Nice and lightweight/fast, easy to configure.

650MB main sfs ... that includes firefox, libre office ... etc.

[Billtoo]

I tried installing Stretch 9.1 on my HP which has AMD Radeon graphics
but it didn't support the card properly so I downloaded Xubuntu
16.04.3 and installed that.

Xubuntu is working great.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just booted up the live version of Ubuntu 16.04.3 (Budgie version). It works well but I'm not overly keen on the look (a kind of blue / purple theme) and Budgie itself doesn't offer a lot of options for moving and resizing windows compared to, say, fvwm.

Horses for courses I suppose; the devs have obviously gone for simplicity instead of power and flexibility.

[rufwoof]

I've just booted up the live version of Ubuntu 16.04.3 (Budgie version). It works well but I'm not overly keen on the look (a kind of blue / purple theme)

I've settled on Debian Jessie for its rock solid stability with a core of just xorg, jwm and pcmanfm. pcmanfm provides the filemanager and desktop icons control (i.e. pcmanfm --desktop run as a process) ... all with no themes installed. That way you just run the default inbuilt themes and pretty much the configuration is all contained within a single file (startup programs, windows decorations, panel layout ...etc all configured within .jwmrc).

A problem is even with that simplification there are still multiple files that have to be configured in order to have a common look-n-feel. gtk2 for instance has a default inbuilt theme of Raleigh whilst gtk3 has adwaita as its default inbuilt theme. What I've done is to set qt4 to use a default of gtk+ theme (gtk3), and tweaked gtk3 theme to look more like the gtk2 default theme. Such that relatively small edits in .Xresources, .gtk-2.0 and .config/.gtk-3.0/settings.ini (and gtk.css) is pretty much enough to get a common look-n-feel whilst keeping things relatively simple. I've replaced the show-desktop panel icon with a hot corner that toggles show-desktop (using brightside), so for instance if the browser is full screen I can mouse into that corner and up pops the desktop showing the favourite icons I have on that.

I've also dropped having a panel Menu ... or rather a very simple menu that just basically offers reboot/power off type options and just have my favourite programs as desktop icons, including one that opens the filemanager browsing the /usr/share/applications folder (so other programs can be easily launched). Along with the right super key (WIN key to the right of the spacebar) launching gmrun, so program names can be typed in along with auto-complete ... as yet another means to launch programs).

Full install of Debian Jessie with Libre Office, Firefox ...etc. weighs in at a main sfs of around 600MB, which includes all docs and locales. With no docs and just my own locale that could reduce down to <500MB in total, but typically that's around 2GB of extracted/non compressed. Generally less than half of that 2GB ever gets used during a session, so tends to remain memory bound (quick operationally).

[Billtoo]

I did a new Xubuntu 16.04.3 install on my HP desktop.
I added some applications with synaptic,some with the software and
updates option,also added Kodi-17.3 and Smplayer/Smtube by following the
instructions on their hompages so the latest versions will be added with
software updates.

Using a 32" tv for a monitor via hdmi, the tv has decent speakers so
that works well.

*************************************************************
EDIT: I've been running Xubuntu 17.04 on my Macmini for a few months:

bill@bill-Macmini:~$ inxi -bw
System: Host: bill-Macmini Kernel: 4.10.0-32-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Ubuntu 17.04
Machine: Device: laptop System: Apple product: Macmini6 1 v: 1.0
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-031AEE4D24BFF0B1 v: Macmini6 1
UEFI: Apple v: MM61.88Z.0106.B03.1211161202 date: 11/16/2012
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i5-3210M (-HT-MCP-) speed/max: 1229/3100 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.3 drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.0.7
Network: Card-1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM57766 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe driver: tg3
Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (5.9% used)
Weather: Conditions: 72 F (22 C) - Clear Time: August 13, 10:24 AM EDT
Info: Processes: 205 Uptime: 49 min Memory: 550.2/15952.3MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.8
bill@bill-Macmini:~$

Smplayer/Smtube + Kodi + kernel updates are installed automatically when the
software updates utility downloads and installs other software updates.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just booted up the live version of Ubuntu 16.04.3 (Budgie version). It works well but I'm not overly keen on the look (a kind of blue / purple theme)

I've settled on Debian Jessie for its rock solid stability with a core of just xorg, jwm and pcmanfm. pcmanfm provides the filemanager and desktop icons control (i.e. pcmanfm --desktop run as a process) ... all with no themes installed. That way you just run the default inbuilt themes and pretty much the configuration is all contained within a single file (startup programs, windows decorations, panel layout ...etc all configured within .jwmrc).

A problem is even with that simplification there are still multiple files that have to be configured in order to have a common look-n-feel. gtk2 for instance has a default inbuilt theme of Raleigh whilst gtk3 has adwaita as its default inbuilt theme. What I've done is to set qt4 to use a default of gtk+ theme (gtk3), and tweaked gtk3 theme to look more like the gtk2 default theme. Such that relatively small edits in .Xresources, .gtk-2.0 and .config/.gtk-3.0/settings.ini (and gtk.css) is pretty much enough to get a common look-n-feel whilst keeping things relatively simple. I've replaced the show-desktop panel icon with a hot corner that toggles show-desktop (using brightside), so for instance if the browser is full screen I can mouse into that corner and up pops the desktop showing the favourite icons I have on that.

I've also dropped having a panel Menu ... or rather a very simple menu that just basically offers reboot/power off type options and just have my favourite programs as desktop icons, including one that opens the filemanager browsing the /usr/share/applications folder (so other programs can be easily launched). Along with the right super key (WIN key to the right of the spacebar) launching gmrun, so program names can be typed in along with auto-complete ... as yet another means to launch programs).

Full install of Debian Jessie with Libre Office, Firefox ...etc. weighs in at a main sfs of around 600MB, which includes all docs and locales. With no docs and just my own locale that could reduce down to <500MB in total, but typically that's around 2GB of extracted/non compressed. Generally less than half of that 2GB ever gets used during a session, so tends to remain memory bound (quick operationally).

That's good; I'll certainly look at the software you mention, I agree that pcmanfm is very capable and I like the way it displays all the other partitions on your system as icons.

I'm using Devuan Jessie at the moment, which is similar to Debian Jessie except that it doesn't have systemd (and it has a nice old-school feel to it as well).

It has some of the drawbacks of mainstream Debian though, you have to almost beg it to get it to do anything systemwise and it also overwrites my twm configuration file (which, say, Slackware doesn't do)

JWM's a very good window manager but I've had trouble in the past getting it to work with Softmaker Office for some reason. At the moment I'm posting from Devuan with the Openbox window manager, which is pretty good though not as easy to configure as Fluxbox (because it doesnt use plain text files for this purpose).

[rufwoof]

The more I use systemD the more I like it. Simple to add along with start or stop 'services' (in effect scripts).

Just backed up Jessie and tried a Stretch upgrade. Went through easily. Some tweaking was required afterwards and ~/.xsession-error pointed to the lines and what to change to be rid of those warnings. I did also have some (around 20) obsoletes left over to clean out afterwards (which synaptic highlighted), together with around 100 Residuals (that synaptic also highlighted) ... which I believe are programs I've installed, tried and uninstalled one way or another in the past that left over unused configuration files/folders.

In Stretch a common theme is Adwaita. I believe gtk+/gtk3 has that as its inbuild default and there are Stretch repository themes for gtk2, qt4 and qt5 adwaita themes ... so I've switched over to that (and edited .jwmrc to also have a similar look-n-feel).

So far everything I've tested is working really well, so much so I'm sorely tempted to stick with Stretch. Boots in around 16 seconds on my 10 year old PC. A nice feature is that during the animated splash screen (Plymouth) it even prompted to say that fsck was being run and a option to cancel that that's new (I believe, not seen it myself before) ... i.e. a visual indication of why the boot is taking longer than usual (rather than having to hit <esc> only to see that a fsck is being run).

Code: Select all

user@debian:~$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 6.688s (kernel) + 9.703s (userspace) = 16.391s
user@debian:~$ systemd-analyze blame
          4.435s ufw.service
          3.620s dev-sda1.device
          2.961s wicd.service
          1.483s systemd-fsck@dev-sda2.service
          1.188s networking.service
          1.109s plymouth-start.service
           912ms ntp.service
           788ms rsyslog.service
           480ms systemd-journald.service
           432ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
           297ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
           278ms kmod-static-nodes.service
           223ms systemd-udevd.service
           195ms plymouth-read-write.service
           189ms rc-local.service
           188ms systemd-user-sessions.service
           179ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
           178ms systemd-logind.service
           169ms systemd-random-seed.service
           167ms user@1000.service
           162ms systemd-modules-load.service
           146ms systemd-update-utmp.service
           127ms systemd-remount-fs.service
           126ms systemd-journal-flush.service
            98ms systemd-sysctl.service
            89ms plymouth-quit-wait.service
            84ms plymouth-quit.service
            80ms dev-hugepages.mount
            77ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
            74ms mnt-sda2.mount
            56ms systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
            14ms dev-mqueue.mount
             9ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
             3ms tmp.mount

For Jessie I had been running near pure debian Main repositories only, with the exception of jwm for which I pulled in a backport (2.3.6), however now that eliminates that backport so 100% pure main only. Nvidia works so well with the Debian supplied driver that I have no need to even bother with pulling that in from a external either.

2.4GB of disk space, around 1GB when made into a sfs using very light/fast compression (lzo level 1). I'd guess perhaps 750MB if xz high compression.

So far the 4.9 update 3 kernel seems to be working great

Code: Select all

user@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 4.9.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u3 (2017-08-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux

The internal cooling/fans seem much more dynamic compared to Jessie and it settles down to being really quiet when relatively idle really quickly.

Could just sit back and leave things as is ... receiving updates for the next 5 years which is likely beyond the hardware lifetime remaining. Having said that I bet the hardware now decides to throw a spanner into the works

[wiak]

Yes, I'm also a closet systemd fan - seems to me that it is the future for Linux developments so best to embrace it and improve it rather than trying to hold onto the old sysvinit mechanisms with their lack of parallelism.

Personally, I feel much the same about pulseaudio - it doesn't add so much to the system size that I wouldn't want it, and again it is the way Linux is going.

Main thing is that I want to try and keep my Linux system knowledge/practice up to date and ignoring systemd (or pulseaudio) would leave me a bit in the dark in terms of keeping up-to-date.

Should some other new mechanisms replace these, I would tend to always just go with the flow unless there was some particularly devastating reason why that wasn't the best approach.

Having said that, there is nothing wrong with traditions and sometimes some of these Unix-philosopy type traditions are indeed worth fighting for (if only to make sure the new alternatives try to incorporate as many of the old benefits as possible).

I get your point about just needing to stick with official Debian, especially since storage-space issues are really not important any more. Still being able to make a much smaller download version remains a nice convenience. Also, I think we lose something if we just use the version produced by the masters (though not anything like as bad as relying on Microsoft for all our computing needs and limited understanding). So I really think Linux would become boring if no-one tried to provide something 'different' than standard, despite how good standard might be. Size of distribution seems to me much less important than window manager/desktop-environment developed and used in terms of overall resource usage and ability to run fast and efficient even on older machines. I'm also not over-convinced of the advantages of creating a 'small distriibution' via the technique of strong file compression - that's too big of a trade off in terms of actual running speed in my opinion (cos slow to decompress in many cases - lz4 apparently not being too bad though).

What I really like about Fred's mklive-stretch efforts is simply that the script teaches a lot about how these systems work! Just reading the script teaches me a lot I find.

wiak

[rufwoof]

not over-convinced of the advantages of creating a 'small distriibution' via the technique of strong file compression - that's too big of a trade off in terms of actual running speed in my opinion (cos slow to decompress in many cases - lz4 apparently not being too bad though)

lz4 can throughput at close to ram speeds. Doesn't pack in that tightly, but still typically 50% reduction. It can be quicker to IO (disk) read half the amount of data + decompress quickly than it takes to IO the raw (non compressed).

That said, with low cost per byte of storage, not really that viable excepting perhaps if being communicated over a slower medium (remote). I somewhat threw the towel in and just settled for no compression ... full like installs with snapshots of those full installs so I can roll back to any one if so desired. I tried freebsd partially for that reason ... its zfs is solid and creates/restores snapshots very quickly. A great userspace choice (cli) ... however freebsd is let down by its packages that wrap around that compared to debians. So I've dropped freebsd. Compare for instance the rigor that Debian takes before letting things into its Main repository with that of freebsd's In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing unmaintained port. No special commit privilege is needed.. I found that a number of popular choices of packages (pre-built binaries) had poor choice of defaults or simply conflicted with other packages (for instance choice of Openshot and Blender versions are mismatched such that Openshot cannot produce 3D animated titles). Let alone the security implications that introduces (invalidates freebsd's proclamation of being a secure choice ... if the packages it caters to be laid on top are weak).

[Billtoo]

I installed Solus-3 Gnome to my Lenovo desktop:

bill@lenovo ~ $ inxi -bw
System: Host: lenovo Kernel: 4.12.7-11.current x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Gnome 3.24.3 Distro: Solus 3
Machine: Device: desktop System: LENOVO product: 7491B8U v: ThinkCentre M58e
Mobo: LENOVO model: N/A BIOS: LENOVO v: 5HKT39AUS date: 06/17/2009
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (-MCP-) speed/max: 2003/3003 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 430]
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.18.4) driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 430/PCIe/SSE2 version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.102
Network: Card: Marvell 88E8057 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: sky2
Drives: HDD Total Size: 320.1GB (3.6% used)
Weather: Conditions: 77 F (25 C) - Mostly Cloudy Time: August 18, 11:35 AM EDT
Info: Processes: 225 Uptime: 57 min Memory: 1940.4/3953.6MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.23
bill@lenovo ~ $

It has a good selection of software available in the package manager.
It downloaded and installed the proprietary driver for my Nvidia
graphics card.

It is working well so far, lots more to learn though.
*************************************************************************
EDIT:
I installed the Budgie version of Solus-3 to my Acer desktop:

bill@acer ~ $ inxi -bw
System: Host: acer Kernel: 4.12.7-11.current x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Budgie 10.4 Distro: Solus 3
Machine: Device: desktop System: ACER product: Aspire M5620 v: R01-A4
Mobo: ACER model: G33T-AM v: 1.0 BIOS: American Megatrends v: R01-A4 date: 12/19/2007
CPU: Quad core Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1603/2403 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 430]
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.18.4) driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 430/PCIe/SSE2 version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.102
Network: Card: Intel 82566DC-2 Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e
Drives: HDD Total Size: 126.3GB (8.0% used)
Weather: Conditions: 82 F (28 C) - Partly Cloudy Time: August 18, 2:26 PM EDT
Info: Processes: 228 Uptime: 48 min Memory: 1620.9/7985.6MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.23
bill@acer ~ $

This version works well too.

[belham2]

Just wanted to follow-up what Billtoo showed: When not banging my head on pup & ddog builds (don't get me wrong, I luv 'em), but during breaks of doing this, I've looked at mid-sized Linux distros. One of these is the recent Solus-3-Budgie. It's running on this i3 Intel 2011 laptop with an external SSD (sata-wired straight into the latpop SSD slot---but it's not "in" the laptop, if you know what I mean), and Solus 3 is zippy and quite nice. Jason S. & gang have done a heck of a job with Solus these past few years, as I was a budgie user a few years ago too. This iteration is so far impressive. The distro includes what is basically needed, really all you need, but yet the Software Center provides you access to nearly all else. And Solus includes (imho) nice touches like "Nightlight" ( a redshift spin) and tight integration of theming & icon setup & desktop/tray control with budgie. In my eyes, distros like this (and like MX-16) show what Linux can be like without having to go the full hog route of Linux Mint 18.2-Ubuntu-OpenSuse-Fedora (which in itself they are not bad, it is just they are mobydick whales in the making).

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the latest version of Shark Linux (2017.08 ), which I think used to be based on Gentoo but is now based on Ubuntu with Mate as the desktop manager. It works quite well except that so far I've not been able to get any sound from it, so it might require either PulseAudio or Alsamixer (or both) to be installed in addition to the distro itself.

Looks good though with an attractive aquatic blue theme.