Other Distros

[James C]

The latest Semplice64. Debian Sid with Openbox.

Still even fits on a cd.

http://semplice-linux.org/blog/2015/04/ ... 7-released

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james@semplice:~$ uname -a
Linux semplice 3.19-3.semplice.0-desktop-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Apr 4 00:07:20 UTC 2015 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[cimarron]

Very slick and attractive DE on Semplice 7; impressive. Systemd init though...

[rokytnji]

Very slick and attractive DE on Semplice 7; impressive. Systemd init though...

Not Semplice here but a way to find out if running systemd in any linux distro.

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$ cat /proc/1/comm
init

[cimarron]

Turns out it's pretty easy to replace systemd with sysvinit (at this point anyway)...

[James C]

Turns out it's pretty easy to replace systemd with sysvinit (at this point anyway)...

Got it done before I did.

At the moment it's pretty easy to stay away from the dreaded systemd depends mess but who knows what the future will bring.

[Colonel Panic]

I'm posting from the latest version of Manjaro (64-bit, XFce window manager). It seems OK and quite fast except that there's no Flash in Firefox (though doubtless this can be installed).

EDIT, 17th April 2015; I've now installed Manjaro to my hard drive and Flash is working fine. I'm not sure what was wrong before, but sorry if I misled anyone.

[Billtoo]

I installed LMDE-2 Betsy 64bit to a 1TB usb 3.0 hard drive, computer is
a macmini:

Computer
Processor 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz
Memory 16374MB (421MB used)
Operating System LMDE 2 Betsy
User Name bill (Bill)
Date/Time Sat 11 Apr 2015 10:36:07 AM EDT
Display
Resolution 1920x1080 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Mobile
X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Multimedia
Audio Adapter HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH

I installed Smplayer,Kodi,KDE games, and more with the Software Manager.

It's working well.

[anikin]

Very slick and attractive DE on Semplice 7; impressive. Systemd init though...

Not Semplice here but a way to find out if running systemd in any linux distro.

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$ cat /proc/1/comm
init

Minimal Debian SID. Fast and sleek.

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root@debian:~# cat /proc/1/comm
systemd
root@debian:~# uname -a
Linux debian 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt7-1 (2015-03-01) i686 GNU/Linux
root@debian:~#

Fear not systemd.

[bark_bark_bark]

Rip Debian Sid, it used to be good until beta-quality crapware systemd came into the picture.

[cimarron]

Semplice 7 has a very nice modified Openbox/tint2 DE, which makes it about as light as Lubuntu (less than 150MB on my old Dell P4). But much better looking. It also allows setting up a root account at installation, so you can run as root just like in Puppy.

At the moment it's pretty easy to stay away from the dreaded systemd depends mess but who knows what the future will bring.

Easy to replace systemd with sysvinit, but trying to remove systemd already looks bad (you have to remove all of these as well)...

[Colonel Panic]

I've installed Slackware 14.1 (32-bit) and was pleased to discover that it still ships with the fvwm window manager as one of the options (one of the very few distros that still does). So, I was able to try out one of the excellent themes which have been created for fvwm, FVWM-Nightshade;

http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Fv ... ent=156697

What I particularly like about this theme as that when it iconifies a window, it creates a thumbnail-size version of it, on the left hand side of the desktop. Very cool.

The highly regarded Fvwm-Crystal desktop is available for it too.

On the whole, Slackware is a lot more user-friendly than it used to be, which makes me wonder whether Ubuntu has forced all other distros to "up their game" in this regard.

[Colonel Panic]

Just installed the previous version of Exton MeX (64 bit), which is based on Mint with the Cinnamon window manager. It seems and looks good so far except that it doesn't come with an office suite, so you have to apt-get the one you want (I chose LibreOffice). I added a couple of other programs I liked too, such as the database program Portabase and Qalculate! (the Queer Calculator).

[James C]

Just a work in progress,Debian Jessie using the unstable Sid repo along with the Devuan repos with systemd pinned .

Running XFCE now but planning to see if MATE will go without systemd.

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james@exefce:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
8.0
james@exefce:~$ cat /proc/1/comm
init

[David Andrew]

I tried out Linux Deepin the other week and was very impressed. Uses its own DE that can be switched to be Mac or Windows like. Software centre is one of the better ones I've seen as well. Still, there's a lot of bells and whistles which generally isn't my cup of tea, but I reckon it will soon rise the ranks.

[technosaurus]

Just a work in progress,Debian Jessie using the unstable Sid repo along with the Devuan repos with systemd pinned .

Running XFCE now but planning to see if MATE will go without systemd.

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james@exefce:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
8.0
james@exefce:~$ cat /proc/1/comm
init

To avoid systemd I did a minimal install of wheezy, then (as root) did something like:
sed -i "s/wheezy/jessie/g" /etc/apt/sources.list; apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
Though with the latest chrome I have to add --no-sandbox and --disable-gpu with my old ati rage 128 card or it just says "Aborted"

[Billtoo]

I installed Ubuntu-15.04 beta2 64bit to the hard drive of my macmini.
I used apt-get to install xfce4 so can log out and switch to a xcfce4
session.
I've been using both for a couple of days with no problems.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just downloaded the latest version of Calculate (14.16), which is based on Gentoo, and so far it's looking good; it uses Chromium for its main browser.

(EDIT: I've just discovered why Gentoo-based distros (including Calculate) aren't more popular; because everything is compiled from scratch, it takes ages to install a new piece of software. It took me the best part of an hour to install Firefox, and Thunderbird's taking even longer.

[rokytnji]

Out of curiosity I went to the 1st post on the 100+ page thread and checked out AV linux that lobster posted about. If I was a musician. I'd be running that distro more than likely.

At 3.5 gig. It has a lot on it. The 6 version is based on Debian Squeeze and from what I read. The distro maker needs a break from building a testing Debian based release.

The forum maint. answering questions, distro building, is straining the main.
I hate it when people only want support. But do not give back in help or money or time.
Like vampires.

Golden rule is golden rule, always. Anyways AV looks pretty nifty to me. Too bad all I play is harmonica. But not professionally.

http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html

So here is post #1 bump!

[Colonel Panic]

ConnochaetOS (a distro for old computers built entirely on free software) has resurrected, only this time based on Slackware rather than Arch as previously;

http://www.connochaetos.org/

I haven't tried it yet but to me it looks an interesting option for people with older computers (the minimum recommended spec being a Pentium 3 with 128 MB of RAM).

[darry1966]

New version of LinuxBBQ here JWM version:
http://linuxbbq.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2040