Review: openSUSE Tumbleweed GNOME Snapshot 20170329

For the last 5 years, I have been running Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" Xfce as my main OS on my laptop. Its support cycle is only 5 years long, so its end-of-life is fast approaching (within a month). This has spurred me to seriously start looking into replacements/upgrades. In the interest of having an open mind, I don't necessarily want to lock myself into sticking with Linux Mint; while I may still be biased toward the Ubuntu/Linux Mint family, the collection of minor issues in the latest releases of Linux Mint may actually make me more open to other alternatives. However, I'm probably not going to go with some small one-person distribution, especially if the community around that distribution is small and it doesn't have officially-supported packages. My criteria for considering a distribution are that it should have either official support for Skype and Google Talk (both of which I use regularly) or it should have a large enough community to make unofficial support viable (through the implication that the distribution will last a long time); related to the last point, I expect the support cycle to be as long as possible, and in particular, to be more than 3 years. Additionally, while I am not completely opposed to KDE, my most recent interactions (in my most recent distribution reviews) with KDE 5 have left me somewhat less than impressed, so when possible, I will try to stick to MATE/Xfce when possible, thanks to my familiarity and confidence with their tools, ability to recognize peripheral devices, et cetera. Additionally, because I'm seriously trying to test aspects of these distributions for my daily use, I'm going to touch upon a few other things beyond what I might write for a typical distribution review.

With that in mind, my first test subject is openSUSE Tumbleweed GNOME. I've tried openSUSE before, but it has been a while since the last time. Additionally, its support cycle is only 3 years, but it does have a rolling-release version called Tumbleweed, so I figured I might try that. I created a live USB of the 64-bit ISO using the "dd" command, as recommended on the website. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Rebellin Linux v3 GNOME

Last week, I finished and passed my generals! This not only means that I can continue doing research here with a roof over my head and with money to feed myself; it also means that I now have the time to get back to doing reviews and posting about other things here. I'm starting this week by reviewing Rebellin Linux.

Main screen + GnoMenu

Rebellin Linux is a rolling-release distribution based on the unstable "Sid" branch of Debian. It features the GNOME or MATE DEs, and its focus is on being easy to use, with special attention paid to user support; in particular, it offers personalized lifetime support after a onetime payment of a modest ($14 as of this writing) fee, and offers free support in the form of the user manual (though that requires provision of an email address, which is a bit odd) and a Q&A section of the site in lieu of traditional forums. Looking at the website, it seems like this is largely a one-person operation, and the website design and some of the words used make it seem a little more amateurish (which is marginally off-putting for a distribution that bills itself as meaning "business"), but it seems like a decent effort from a single person, and I'd like to see what it has to offer in any case. I tried this as a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Solus 1.0 "Shannon"

The semester has finally ended, and with that, I am officially done with all of my technical classes forever! (I still need to take an ethics class next semester, but that shouldn't be a big deal.) I've had a free weekend, so I've taken advantage of it by reviewing the recently-released Solus 1.0 "Shannon".

Raven + Budgie Menu

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you may be wondering why I'm reviewing Solus with a version number of 1.0, if I already reviewed SolusOS 1 "Eveline" over 3.5 years ago. The reason is that this Solus is different from the SolusOS of a few years ago. The deal (as far as I can tell, so if I get parts of the story wrong, please let me know in the comments) is that for the previous SolusOS, version 2 was to be released with all sorts of cool things like an independent base, a fork of GNOME 2 supporting Compiz (separate from MATE), and so on, but then the development team ran out of funds to continue development, so SolusOS died at that point. More recently (around a year ago), the lead developer of the former SolusOS project, Ikey Doherty (along with presumably other people involved with the old SolusOS project, but I'm not too clear on that point), started working on a new lightweight DE called Budgie, built from GNOME 3 technologies to maintain compatibility with the upstream code base (in direct contrast to the forking that Cinnamon and MATE had done). He put it into an independent distribution called Evolve OS, but then a trademark dispute briefly ensued; this was quickly resolved by dropping the Evolve OS name and resurrecting the Solus name, and that is the distribution that I am reviewing today.

I tried Solus (which is only usable on 64-bit systems) on a live USB written with the "dd" command, as this is the recommended method; the Solus wiki explicitly advises against using UnetBootin, and I figured that MultiSystem may not be able to handle a new independent distribution like Solus. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Korora 21 "Darla" Cinnamon

Main Screen + Cinnamon Menu

I wanted to do this review a few weeks ago but didn't get the chance until now. Anyway, although I have reviewed Korora a few times before on this blog, I have not reviewed its Cinnamon edition until now. I particularly wanted to try the Cinnamon edition mainly because I seem to have bad luck whenever I try other distributions with Cinnamon, so I wanted to see if that would change here. As usual, I tried it as a live USB system made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Pinguy OS 14.04 LTS "Papercut"

Main Screen + GnoMenu

I have now graduated college, so I am back home for 2.5 months this summer. In that time, I have many more opportunities to do reviews that I couldn't do during the same semester. This was originally supposed to be a comparison test against Antergos, which is another distribution that ships GNOME 3/Shell and aims for new users to Linux. Unfortunately, Antergos refused to boot. Therefore, what is left is a typical review of Pinguy OS, albeit with some more critical remarks than usual about how well it really caters to newbies (left over from when this article was a comparison test). Follow the jump to see what it is like.

Featured Comments: Week of 2014 January 26

There were two posts this past week that got a comment each, so I'll repost both of those.

Revisited: Linux Mint 16 "Petra" KDE + Xfce

An anonymous reader had this vote of support: "welcome back prashanth ji.............." [following the takedown of this blog for a large portion of the month of 2014 January].

Review: Pinguy OS 13.10 Beta 3

Another anonymous commenter suggested, "Elementary OS, with all the stability you need. :)"

Thanks to both of those people for leaving those comments. This coming week, I will have a post about the semester ahead. After that, the semester will start and will certainly become busy, so I likely will drop the frequency of posts after that, as I have done in past semesters. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Review: Pinguy OS 13.10 Beta 3

Main Screen + GnoMenu

Several weeks ago, I reviewed a couple of distributions in the span of a week. I initially thought one of those reviews would be of Pinguy OS, but then I saw that I had last reviewed Pinguy OS when it was at version 12.04 LTS, so I figured I would only review LTS releases. Then the lead developer of this distribution asked me in a comment on another post to take a look at Pinguy OS soon, and I thought I would do that much earlier this month. Then of course this blog went down and didn't reappear until a little over a week ago. Now I can finally review Pinguy OS. I've reviewed it enough times (even in GNOME 3/Shell guise) that I can safely skip the introduction. I will say though that this is labeled as a review rather than a preview because there will never be non-beta releases of non-LTS versions. I tried Pinguy OS as a live USB made with MultiSystem (because for some reason using UnetBootin produced a non-bootable live USB system). Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: openSUSE 13.1 GNOME

GNOME Activities Overview

I haven't been able to write up any reviews recently because of the confluence of classes, UROP, and graduate school applications. Now my classes are sort of wrapping up, in that my last problem sets were due yesterday (the publication date is after the date of writing), so I have a little time to relax and do some reviews. The first is openSUSE 13.1 GNOME. I've reviewed openSUSE before a number of times, so I won't try to introduce it again. I tried the live version of the GNOME edition on a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Korora 19 "Bruce" GNOME

Activities screen

In the comments of my review of Korora 18 "Flo" KDE, a bunch of people asked me to review Korora 19 "Bruce" GNOME. Now that this new version is out, I'm going to review it. It hasn't been too long since my last review of Korora, so I'll skip the introduction and get right to the main stuff. I reviewed the 64-bit edition (usually I review the 32-bit versions of distributions essentially by default, but this time the 32-bit edition seemed rather delayed to the point when I first downloaded the ISO file, I was under the impression that Korora might have dropped 32-bit support) on a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" GNOME

Although I have reviewed a number of Fedora remixes, I haven't reviewed proper Fedora since the very first review/comparison test I posted on this blog over 3 years ago. There are, however, a few reasons for me to be trying this out today.

GNOME 3/Shell Activities

Fedora is typically more for Linux users with intermediate levels of experience and comfort with Linux, as well as for developers and administrators who want to see what is coming in RHEL/CentOS. That said, it can sometimes make a good consumer-grade desktop distribution as well, as long as it is done right; that's why there are so many remixes of it out there. But that doesn't explain why this review exists. I am trying Fedora today because I have not checked out GNOME 3/Shell in a while. I am also trying it because the Anaconda installer is supposed to have been thoroughly revamped. But mostly, I am trying it out because as a physics student, the codename tickled me enough to give it another look. (For those who don't know, a popular joke about physics problems takes such modeling to its logical extreme by applying it to a cow milking: "Imagine that this cow is spherical and radiates milk isotropically...".)

I tried the live session through a live USB system made with MultiSystem. As the revamped installer is a new feature, I tried the installation as well through a 64-bit Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" Xfce live USB system made with MultiSystem as well. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Featured Comments: Week of 2012 December 9

There was one post that got a handful of comments this past week, so I will try to repost most of those.

Review: Linux Mint 14.1 "Nadia" MATE + GNOME 3/Cinnamon

An anonymous reader said, "It's too bad you didn't get to experience Mint 14 with Cinnamon. I have it running on both a Pentium E5300 desktop with Nvidia 440 GT, and on a 6-year-old laptop with Intel C2D T7200 with Intel 945GM integrated video, and it runs great on both."
Another anonymous commenter had this to say: "Cinnamon now comes with Nemo instead of Nautilus. I like it, but I am o so missing the ability to have scripts and actions from within Nemo. In my opinion it was made default file browser too early."
Reader ArcherB shared this experience: "I just installed MATE on top of my standard Ubuntu installation. Works great without the stability issues of Mint. Tried Cinnamon, but, like the author ran across, it was simply not stable enough for me. It would launch and run for a while, but then weirdness would crop up. It would either lock up, "tear", or certain aspects of it would fail. MATE works fine for me, so I'll stick with that and KDE."
Commenter Jonc said, "I've run into no stability problems with Mint 14.4 Cinnamon. Or any other problems. One of the pleasures of Cinnamon is that it requires little customization, unlike many other distributions that tout their configurability but release products that are ugly and disfunctional in their default state. I've found MATE to be slow after using it on Mint, Fedora and OpenSuse. The transitition from Gnome is incomplete (Check the Startup Apps: several instances of MATE processes running in parallel with their Gnome equivalents). I also wonder if the resources behind MATE are enough to sustain it and if it can make a successful transition to GTK3. If I wanted to run a Gnome 2 desktop, I'd go with CentOS. Now, that does require a good bit of tweaking to get a good looking usable desktop, but it is fast and very reliable."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I have final exams, but after that is finished, I'll probably have a post out looking back on this semester along with possibly another review. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Review: Linux Mint 14.1 "Nadia" MATE + GNOME 3/Cinnamon

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've had the time to sit down and do a review like this. The reason for that is because this semester has been incredibly busy in pretty much every way, and today was finally the last day to turn in problem sets and other assignments. Now, I can finally do this review.

Main Screen + Linux Mint Menu

Linux Mint needs no introduction here. However, one thing to note is that this is the first release since version 4.X "Daryna" to have a version number with a digit after a decimal point. The reason for that was that some sneaky bugs got past final-release testing, so they needed to be fixed and the ISO file needed to be released as an updated image. Right now, the editions with MATE and GNOME 3/Cinnamon are out in final form, so those are the ones I am going to be reviewing today. For reference, the KDE and Xfce are coming soon, as those already have release candidates out now.

I tested this as usual on a live USB system made with MultiSystem. I did not test the installation. Follow the jump to see how this fares relative to my current preferred version 13 LTS "Maya".

Review: Cinnarch 2012.10.01

I haven't gotten the chance to do a review in a while. It's a long weekend, so I finally do have some more free time now, and I need to take a break from the otherwise endless stream of work, so I'm taking a look at Cinnarch now.

Cinnarch is a relatively new distribution on the scene. True to its name, it is based on Arch Linux and uses GNOME 3/Cinnamon as its primary DE. At first I figured that the packaging would be fairly stock, but as it turns out (and as you will see later in this post), there are a few other mild customizations present as well.

I tried this on a live USB using MultiSystem; I did not try the installation. To be honest, this is going to be more of a look at GNOME 3/Cinnamon in general rather than Cinnarch specifically as a distribution, though there may be certain things in the distribution affecting the experience of the DE. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Pinguy OS 12.04 LTS

Main Screen + Cardapio Menu

A couple weeks ago, the latest version of Pinguy OS came out, and I wanted to try it. I haven't had the time until today, though, so that's why the review is happening today.

I previously reviewed Pinguy OS 11.10 and found that while there are certain things to which I may not be able to become fully accustomed, the "beta" label on Pinguy OS 11.10 seemed overly cautious considering its stability and high quality overall. The latest version has not changed much from that beta version besides having newer packages in general, but because version 11.10 was never truly official, the changes in version 12.04 LTS are of course huge compared to version 11.04. Also, accompanying the new release is a revamped website, which looks a lot cleaner and less bloated than before.

I probably would not normally seriously consider a distribution with GNOME 3/Shell for installation on my hard drive, but one of the things that caught my eye about this release was the option of using the Axe menu instead of the default Cardapio menu in the top panel. I did some searching and found out that the Axe menu looks and could potentially act almost identically to the Linux Mint Menu, which is amazing. That is why I am trying the 64-bit edition (as a live USB made with MultiSystem); sure, GNOME 3/Shell doesn't have my nice desktop cube, but it could potentially have everything else I could want, and given that, I'm OK with giving up the desktop cube if I am left with no other good alternatives. Follow the jump to see what this is like.

Review: Cinnamon 1.4

This was actually going to be a preview of SolusOS, both because I wanted to do it and because a commenter had requested it. Unfortunately, MultiSystem refused to write SolusOS to the USB, while SolusOS was unbootable after being written to the USB by UnetBootin. Hence, I could not try it out. Instead, I am trying out Cinnamon 1.4.

Cinnamon Menu

A few months ago, I reviewed Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" with GNOME 3/Shell. Although it used GNOME 3/Shell, it tried to make it better through the Mint GNOME Shell Extensions (MGSE). At that time, I said that while MGSE was a valiant effort to make GNOME 3/Shell more usable, I would rather just use MATE. Well, since then, the Linux Mint developers have ditched MGSE entirely in favor of GNOME 3/Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a new desktop shell for GNOME 3 that aims to emulate either the standard GNOME 2 desktop or the usual Linux Mint-based GNOME 2 desktop, depending upon the user. It also aims to make GNOME 3 a lot more configurable.

Last week, I wrote a post about how I would transform MATE into something that I already use on a daily basis, but I also mentioned that I should withhold judgment about Cinnamon until after actually trying it. Well, I am trying it now to see if it could do a reasonably good job of replacing my preferred GNOME 2 desktop setup. Follow the jump to see what it is like. I tested this on a live USB session of Ubuntu MATE Remix made with MultiSystem.

Review: KahelOS 020212

I have reviewed Chakra GNU/Linux a number of times here both before and after its split from the Arch base, and I have fairly consistently said that it is an amazing distribution and has a great implementation of KDE. But when it comes to Arch-based distributions, I have never tried the other side of the DE coin — GNOME — until now.

Main Screen + KahelOS Welcome Center

That is where KahelOS comes in. It is an Arch-based distribution that ships with GNOME and aims to make it user-friendly, though like Chakra, it expects that users will be at least somewhat willing to learn and work with the system. It was originally targeted at a primarily Filipino audience, but now it has a more international perspective.

I tested the live session through a live USB made with MultiSystem. I tested the installation in a VirtualBox VM in a Xubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" live USB host with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS. Follow the jump to see what this other offspring of Arch is like.

Review: Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" GNOME + MATE

Recently, the latest version of Linux Mint was released. Considering that I almost exclusively use Linux Mint on a daily basis and I'm a huge fan of the distribution, I had to review it.

GNOME 3 Shell: Main Screen

This release could easily be one of the most highly-anticipated new Linux releases in a long time, far surpassing the anticipation of its parent, Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot". Why? Well, although Unity had to be ported to GNOME 3, the interface is still essentially unchanged from version 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", so most of the changes have been back-end and bug fixes and general polishing. Linux Mint, on the other hand, used its classic GNOME 2.X setup through version 11 "Katya". Now, however, the small group of developers has had to port all that over to GNOME 3 with far fewer resources to do so than Canonical. Yet, the Linux Mint developers have essentially rolled 3 desktops into this one release. The main desktop is a heavily customized GNOME 3 Shell. The secondary fallback to that is a slightly customized GNOME 3 Fallback mode. The third (but really, equal to GNOME 3 Shell) desktop is MATE, which is a fork of GNOME 2.X akin to how Trinity is a fork of KDE 3.5; because MATE aims to be able to coexist with GNOME 3, it cannot use the "GNOME" names for files because otherwise there will be conflicts, so the MATE developers have had to completely rebrand GNOME 2.X along with making other small changes here and there. The Linux Mint developers advise using the GNOME 3 desktop, as MATE is still under heavy development and will still be a bit unpolished, but considering how much I really like GNOME 2.X, I think it's worth checking out.

I tested the live session through a live USB made with MultiSystem. I tested the installation using a VM in VirtualBox in the live USB session with 1024 MB of RAM, 64 MB of video memory, and 3D graphics acceleration capabilities allocated to the guest OS. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: openSUSE 12.1 GNOME + KDE

GNOME: Main Screen

It's November again, so what does that mean? It means there's another new release of openSUSE, and I'm reviewing it.


openSUSE doesn't really need much of an introduction here. There are a few new things with this release, though. The first is that GNOME 3 has become an official part of openSUSE; this is not surprising considering that openSUSE and Fedora were the only distributions who provided vanilla live CD previews of GNOME 3 before its official release. The second is that the release numbering and schedule have changed. Now, there will be releases in November, July, and March, and they will respectively have decimal numbers ".1", ".2", and ".3" before the number before the decimal point gets incremented by one with the next November release. This means that there will be no more ".0" or ".4" releases, and that the jump from, for example, version 13.1 to 13.2 will be just as significant as the jump from version 12.3 to 13.1.

KDE: Main Screen

I reviewed both the GNOME and KDE editions using a live USB made with MultiSystem. I tested the installation in VirtualBox in one of the live USB systems with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS. Follow the jump to see if I'll like this release as much as the last one.

Review: Pinguy OS 11.10 Beta

A new version of Pinguy OS has come out, and as can easily be predicted, it's based on Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot". And because I've taken a liking to past versions of it, I'm reviewing this new one now.

Main Screen

For those who don't know, Pinguy OS is basically Ubuntu plus everything and the kitchen sink. Also, the interface is made to look much more like Apple's Mac OS X, with a top panel featuring a global menu, along with docks and similar themes. However, there have been some changes out of necessity because as of version 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot", Ubuntu no longer officially supports GNOME 2, so Pinguy OS has also had to upgrade to GNOME 3. As a result, the whole "Apple Mac OS X" look has had to be adapted to the new interface and restrictions (and there are many such restrictions) of GNOME 3. I'd like to see if it still remains as usable and friendly as before.

I tested the live session on a live USB made with MultiSystem. I did not test the installation, because (1) this is an Ubuntu derivative, so there isn't much point in going through the whole Ubiquity song-and-dance one more time, and (2) the lead developer has said that this release is still beta-quality in terms of stability. Regarding the second point, the developer has also said that the stability of GNOME 3.X is not likely to improve anytime soon, so there will be no official final release of Pinguy OS 11.10; this is also why I'm calling this a review rather than a preview like I usually do with pre-release distributions, because this is as official as it will ever get. Follow the jump to see if it's the same Pinguy OS I came to know and love.

Review: Sabayon 7 KDE + GNOME + Xfce

I've reviewed Sabayon here enough that I don't need to introduce it here anymore. Let's just say that version 7 was released recently, so I'm reviewing it.

KDE: Main Screen

But usually, I only review the KDE edition, so why am I reviewing the GNOME and Xfce editions too this time? Well, GNOME is now at version 3.2, and the Xfce edition is now considered to be stable enough to not be "experimental" anymore, so I think both of those things warrant reviews. Of course, I'm going to be reviewing the KDE edition as well, and KDE is now at version 4.7, which I haven't had much experience with as most recent KDE distributions I've tried have included KDE only at version 4.6.

I tested all 3 editions using live USBs made with UnetBootin. I did not test the installation procedures, because I didn't see anything in the release notes about improvements to the installer, so I don't really anticipate any changes from last time. Follow the jump to see what each edition is like.