Featured Comments: Week of 2016 January 17

There was one post this past week that got a few comments, so I'll repost all of those.

Review: Solus 1.0 "Shannon"

Reader whs001 said, "Thanks very much for a thorough review of Solus. I've been paying attention to Ikey Dougherty's work ever since Linux Mint Debian Edition, and I've read quite a few reviews of Solus - yours is more thorough than many others, and the first one I've seen that mentions all the problems you found. At this point I'm relying on reviews of Solus because I can't even get it to finish booting on either of my 64-bit machines. It starts to boot, but hangs up before even getting to the logon screen. Not ready for prime time. I'm actually writing because you are the first review I've ever seen who has complained about scroll bars that jump all the way to where you click rather than just going one "page down" the way they ordinarily do. I have strange problems with that behavior. On my Dell OptiPlex desktop running Linux Lite with XFCE, most of the scroll bars work normally, but in Synaptic they jump down (or up) as you describe. On my Dell Inspiron laptop running Xubuntu, it seems as though the scrollbars in all applications have this stupid jump-down behavior. I would blame that on Ubuntu (particularly since it has a history of messing with scrollbars, giving us that dopey long, skinny place marker rather than the usual squarish one), but Linux Lite is also based on Ubuntu. In fact what I'm running is Xubuntu 14.04 and Linux Lite based on Ubuntu 14.04, so the fact that they have different forms of scrollbar misbehavior is really odd. Thanks again for the review", later clarifying in response to a question from me, "I wrote Solus onto two different USB sticks with dd, and neither one of them would finish booting on either machine."
In response to the above posts, commenter keithbluhm shared the following: "I've been checking out Solus just because, and I'm no computer hardware/software guru, but I was able to install, boot, update, use, shutdown, reboot, etc, etc, using the provided ISO within VirtualBox on Win7...zero issues. No idea what the differences would be between a VM, Live USB, and so on."
Also in response, reader Jake had the following tip: "@whs001: Sounds like an issue with uefi. Check your bios settings and ensure that uefi is first or enabled. Perhaps you need to make sure that your drive is selected as the boot device as well."

Thanks to all of those readers for those comments. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may have gathered that I'm basically posting around once per month now. That schedule is not going to change much for the next few months. It won't decrease because I do still enjoy posting from time to time, and I would personally feel a bit badly for neglecting this blog for an entire calendar month. That said, it also won't increase because this semester, having finished classes (basically), I need to prepare for my general examinations (also called qualifying examinations) which occur at the end of the semester, which will determine whether I get to stay in my PhD program or not. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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.

Featured Comments: Week of 2012 June 24

There were two posts that got a couple comments this past week, so I will repost all of those.

Review: Sabayon 9 KDE

Reader Jesse said, "I tried to load it twice. Didn't finish after abt 45 min. Tried again, same problem. Decided not worth it."

Revisited: SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline"

Commenter manmath sahu had this suggestion: "prashant, it's strange, just now I installed the latest skype right inside solus. it was just an apt-get away. here's my skype package list.: dpkg --list | grep skype ii skype 4.0.0.7-1 Skype"
In a similar vein, reader Kirk M said, "Funny thing, Skype installed and worked fine for me on Solus 1.1 on both my desktop PC and my laptop (from the repos). It also installs and works fine on SolusOS 2 alpha builds."

Thanks to all those who commented on those posts. This coming week, I plan to have at least one review out (though there may be more too). In any case, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Revisited: SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline"

This is the follow-up to this review. At the time, the 64-bit edition had not been released, and I was unable to install packages in the live system probably due to a bad USB writing procedure by that particular version of MultiSystem that I was using at that time. For this post, I tried the 64-bit edition of SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline" using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Because I am simply discussing whether installation of my preferred packages worked, I will keep it short and sweet.

Using the Synaptic Package Manager to install the Linux Mint Menu and Redshift worked, and those packages started and worked fine too. Also, as SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline" is based on Debian 6 "Squeeze", the Mupen64Plus package in the repository is version 1.5, so I was able to install and use that fine too.
Google Talk was not in the repository, but that is generally to be expected. I was able to install and use it through the DEB file fine.
SolusOS uses Nautilus Elementary, but interestingly, Gloobus-Preview is not present. As SolusOS is not based on Ubuntu, installing Gloobus-Preview is nontrivial, so I would like to see that included in the future. Then again, SolusOS 2 will have GNOME 3 and has GNOME Sushi (which is basically the same sort of thing as Gloobus-Preview) in a repository already, so given that SolusOS 2 will not be released more than a few months from now or so, this is probably not a big issue.
Skype, at version 4, was the bad apple here. Neither the static DEB file from the website nor the package from the repository worked. I mean, the package installed fine in both instances, but in both cases Skype refused to start, throwing an error (that I think I have seen before) about the inability to load some critical shared library. Unfortunately, searching in the SolusOS forums yielded the same question with not much of an answer, and the suggestions made for users of Debian 6 "Squeeze" on various websites did not work either, as Skype continued to throw the same error.

The lack of a working Skype means that I would not install SolusOS 1.1 "Eveline" on my computer. I do hope though that it works better on SolusOS 2. In fact, I am downloading and trying out SolusOS 2 Alpha 5 right now.

Review: Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" MATE

Ah yes. I've been wanting to do this review for quite a while now. And now I can! So I will do just that.

Main Screen + Linux Mint Menu

Linux Mint has been my OS of choice for the last 3 years now. For the last 2 years, I have been using Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" GNOME. That will be supported for another year from now, but that also means that I need to start looking into replacements for when the old version loses its official support. I've played around with Cinnamon, but it's still a bit immature and unstable and doesn't quite fit my needs; given that MATE is supposed to be GNOME 2 with the essential components simply renamed, it seems like this would be the best candidate for remaining on my computer's hard drive for the next few years.

I tested the live session of the 64-bit version using a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see if this is a worthy successor to what I have been using thus far.

Featured Comments: Week of 2012 May 13

There was no "Featured Comments" post last week because there were no posts the previous week. This past week, there were two posts that got quite a few comments, so I'll repost a few of those.

Review: SolusOS 1 "Eveline"

Reader DarkDuck said, "The paragraph about Live system should be in bold red colour. :-) Have you been able to check which repositories are used in SolusOS? I would thing they're not Debian standard because of Skype."
Commenter Bernard Victor had this to say: "I have switched from Linux Mint, as it is much easier on system resorces. It is extremely stable, and very easy to set-up. The only problem I am having is getting Skype to work properly. It does everything but I cannot hear myself ???? Give it a proper try. I'm sure that you willlbe impressed like every other reviewer I have read."
Reader Ikey Doherty, who created and is the lead developer of SolusOS, had these clarifications: "I'm happy to package a newer skype :) Also if you look in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ you'll find we use backports, multimedia, and our own repo, which is now in the region of 6.6GB :) Regarding "process elevation" there is no root password on the live image, it's disabled for security reasons. You use sudo, which requires no password for the "live" user, so to become root: sudo su Et voila :) Other than those points, very very nice review :) Thank you very much and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Feel free to jump in on IRC or our forums, you'll find very welcoming people! :)"
An anonymous commenter said, "I tried solus on my netbook and I love it! Great OS, easy to set up, everything you should do to make debian a great desktop os is already done for you, so it saves a lot of time. It looks great, I really like the modified zuki blues theme. i'm pretty sure that solus will replace crunchbang 64bit on my desktop real soon! Thanks ikey, for this great distro!"

Review: ROSA 2012 "Marathon"

Reader Denis Koryavov, who I think is one of the higher-ups at ROSA, had this clarification: "Hello. Can you tell me what graphic card is used in the your laptop? If intel, then it is well-known bug, and it can be easily fixed: http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/Errata_ROSA_Marathon_2012#Incorrect_resolution_with_Intel_graphics_cards"
Commenter akdengi, who also seems to be a ROSA developer, added, "Some problem for now is modeset for older card (such ATI < 2000HD or older Intel). In Mandriva 2011 many, many users will have blank black screen instead installer :( Generic driver (and working installer on many system) is more good, than not working system. This is hacked workaround, because solving of problem is not been simple - or using different syslinux menu list with/without modeset or using chainloading, like in Ubuntu and autodetect (but it's need more code change). In next update ISO release we try fix this problem."
Reader Wanderer said, "I so wanted to try ROSA, but it died on the boot up I suspect it did not want to play well with my nVidia 8400. I tried to find a work-a-round from a couple of forums, but ultimately chose to use Mageia 2(RC). Mageia worked wonderfully and is on the bleeding edge of Linux tech, especially because I invoked the testing repositories. I've not had a single problem with it. I read an article about GIMP 2.8 and the next day or day after it was on my updates list. I didn't mean to steal the show from ROSA. I did a live DVD not to long ago and it worked well and I wanted to try it again like I said. Oh well. Thanks for your review, I liked it."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I have final exams through Wednesday, so I won't be able to post anything until Thursday which is when I get back home. In any case, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Review: SolusOS 1 "Eveline"

I've gotten a couple requests to review this distribution, and I've wanted to do it, but for a while all that was being released consisted of beta versions and release candidates. Now, however, version 1 "Eveline" has been released in its final form, so I am reviewing that now.

Main Screen + Cardapio Menu

SolusOS is supposed to be a user-friendly, stable distribution based on Debian 6 "Squeeze". It features a customized GNOME 2 that looks rather reminiscent of Linux Mint; this is not surprising, considering that the lead developer also contributes heavily to Linux Mint. In fact, its use of GNOME 2 makes it almost like a throwback version of Debian-based Linux Mint, now that the latter distribution has moved onto MATE and GNOME 3/Cinnamon.

I tested the 32-bit live edition using a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like.