Episode 105: Ikey on SolusOS
News:
- How to install Android 4.0 on the HP TouchPad (CyanogenMod 9 Alpha). (liliputing.com)
- The Mint team has made the RC for Mint 12 LXDE available for download. (blog.linuxmint.com) (What’s New) (Release Notes)
- Phoronix benchmarks ext4 vs btrfs on the 3.3 kernel. (phoronix.com)
- Interesting benchmark measuring impact of desktop effects. (openbenchmarking.org)
- Linus rants against OpenSUSE. (muktware.com)
- Raspberry PI pre-orders sell out plus more PI info from Linux User & Developer. (bgr.com) (pcworld.com) (linuxuser.co.uk)
- Centrify announces Active Directory support for Linux Mint 12. (centrify.com)
The Main Topic: SolusOS Review
- SolusOS announces RC1. (solusos.com)
Featured Website:
- SolusOS. (solusos.com)
Tip:
- Great posting on using the ‘date’ command on Linux, specifically Mint and Fedora boxes. (openlogic.com)
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Ikey’s audio is a bit rough in this episode. He was having some bandwidth challenges as we were recording (as was I!). Hope you enjoy what he has to say.
It’s funny how everybody goes KDE, the same thing happened to me not a month ago.
I’ve upgraded LMDE to Debian Testing on my machines (didn’t want in to be a one big security hole), and I honestly tried getting used to Gnome 3, but Gnome 3 turned out to be nothing better than Unity. While proprietary developers (or Canonical, which is none the better) may have their own reasons, open-source community should benefit from all the evolution the software came through, or so I think. The patterns and ideas we consider classic are classic for a reason (yes, the hidden system tray, or what do you call it in Gnome 3 is a perfect example of why new is not always good, having to move the pointer instead of the eye to see if there’s a missed skype call – oh, come on!). Another essential open-source value for me is customization capabilities (and I’m not talking wallpaper changes or spray-painting your panels in different colour here), and Gnome 3 managed to take both those open-source advantages away. So I went to Cinnamon (from LMDE repos that are binary compatible with Debian, which is the only good thing about them), and must confess I loved it (the lack of customization is compensated by the sane enough defaults, though some tweakability is more than welcome) for 3 days, after which one of my tweaks (made from GUI, so it wasn’t anything wild) rendered Cinnamon unbootable. Whatever I did since, Cinnamon starts right into an error message that helpfully states “something went wrong so we’ll restart” (making tracking the problem so desperately easy I still don’t have the slightest idea on how to fix it).
XFCE is just not there, feels like going back to early 90s. LXDE, however great, can’t be really comfortably used in languages other than English (same holds true for E17 and other less wide-spread DEs I’ve tried), so I was forced into KDE, and use it as my main DE now. And judging from the first part of this episode, I’m not alone.
Looks like something is rotten in the state of GTK.
P.S. I’m horrybly sorry for ranting, but when developers tend to fix what works, it really gets me on.
Yeah, I jumped ship a couple of episodes ago when James urged people to try KDE 4.8. I haven’t used KDE since 3.x, and as much as I liked cinnamon, it doesn’t play nice with my sandy bridge chip and results in severe screen tearing. KDE 4.8 is amazing, and I’m staying with it.
Thank you for the opportunity guys, absolutely loved it.
Any time you want me to pop back in let me know 🙂
Just releasing RC2 of SolusOS as we speak, things
are really hectic over here ! 🙂
Ikey seems to have a clear vision of what “users” want and need. SalusOS could be popular if it can keep up it’s momentum and it’s promises. However, it could very easily end up just another victim of “Linuxgoism”. I have to ask the question that many people will be thinking. As LMDE has seen little development, due to the Linux Mint Dev Team overstretching themselves, then “why is SolusOS not the new LMDE?” I understand that there can be differences between developers, but as LMDE seems have no present direction, “Why did we need another distro?”. (refer to my comments of last show).
Charlie, I can understand a lot of people will compare
SolusOS to LMDE, however I feel it is an unfair
comparison. LMDE was meant to be a rolling release,
even though it now isn’t. SolusOS is a completely
different concept, offering a stable base and
modern applications.
There is no risk of it running out of steam. I know
whats needed because I originally created LMDE. I see
how it could have worked, and know why it will ultimitately fail. Chasing a moving target is never
a good idea, unless you have a strong mechanism in
place to counter that.
Why do we need another distro? Because many people feel like they are being ignored, that the devs are
just running off in all directions giving them what
they *think* the users need. I directly engage with
my users and SolusOS is the direct result of that.
Its about what the users want. A desktop system that
just works. Not being told how to use your computer,
but making it as easy as possible to do it in the
traditional sense, but without using aged technology
either.
RC2 went out last night. The only way of knowing why
SolusOS is different, is to use it. I’m not gonna
give a sales pitch 🙂
Hi Ikey. My point is not to compare the two distros but to highlight, what is in my opinion, one of the fundamental “problems” of the Linux dev community. It is clear that you (and others) have “inconsiderable differences” with the present LMDE Dev Team and therefore SolusOS was created. I don’t wish to comment on this or any other individual case. I simply feel that, in general “Forking” instead of compromising, is something that is holding Linux back. Instead of a few finely tuned Linux distros, we have innumerable incomplete replications. Some people may see this as a positive, I see such dilution of knowledge and it’s effects, as being the reason why Linux struggles to compete with proprietary desktops.
Again I think you misinterpet. Who’s forking what
now? The point of SolusOS is *against* forking.
We’re doing this exactly because people are sick
of all the pointless changes and want a system
supporting what they already know. Hence SolusOS.
And they’re not ‘inconsiderable’ difference, they
are vast.
Its because of all the forking, changing and chasing
other systems that Linux is fragmenting. i.e. jumping
on the Gnome 3 and Unity bandwagons. Thats why I
decided to stick with Gnome 2.
My comments are not directed at SolusOS, but at the Linux Dev Community in general. As you say, Linux is fragmented and I feel this is caused by people’s inability to compromise. With regard to SolusOS, I will rephrase my statement to avoid misinterpretation. I feel it would have been beneficial to all if Linux Mint had adopted SolusOS as their LMDE release. LMDE, which seems to be going nowhere, would have a roadmap again and SolusOS would have a considerably easier path to recognition.
I think of the desktop as nothing more than a tool to access my applications and receive notifications. Linux Mint LXDE combined with Synapse is “Simply The Best”, however it can be a little heavy on older hardware. Here is South Africa few people can afford what Westerners consider “average” hardware. There are distros, like Debian, Puppy, etc, that work fine on such hardware but they are not for the general “user”. I’m looking forward to seeing if SolusOS can bridge this gap.
Of course it’s good to see all our hosts running KDE (does that include Harrison? my brain’s returning 404’s) but I’m sorry to hear Rob’s jumping ship so soon. Good thing there’s not a rootkit or something preventing you from changing DE’s, eh Rob?
I’m glad to hear Ikey talking about SolusOS and what LMDE could have been. I was excited when my laptop came with it but I can’t help but notice how seldom I see updates. I want to see why I’m unable to apply most of the updates I’ve seen but I figure it’s mostly due to how I installed KDE SC 4.7.4. I also want to look into getting 4.8 on my box but I suspect I may need to do a reinstall to clean things up, which is something I do NOT want to do.
Of course as a KDE user I have to wonder if SolusOS will see a KDE version but I understand that the way Ikey develops it means getting a new DE isn’t likely to happen for quite a while, if ever.
Thanks for another great show, guys. I can’t wait to see what the next episode has for us.
Why wouldnt I want to allow other DE’s ? 🙂
Not priority yet but once Gnome 2 32-bit + 64-bit
are out and stable I’ll look to other desktops.
I wasn’t suggesting you wouldn’t allow other DE’s, simply that you have a lot on your plate and it would probably be a while before you started building packages for them. While I haven’t built packages for KDE I have looked at doing so and decided it was WAY above my pay grade. And my abilities.
I’ve installed SolusOS on my old Dell D620 laptop and it’s working very smoothly. It seems like my sort of desktop, offering efficiency over eye candy. I haven’t been required to use the neolithic command line yet which is excellent.
(Before I’m flamed, I’ve heard all the benefits of the command line, like I know from my grandfather all the benefits of a double de-clutch gearbox over a stick shift. He would not even acknowledge the existence of automatic gearboxes).
I’m looking forward to seeing this distro’s future innovations.
Bringing KDE to any distro is a challenge but LXDE is simple. Ok, I maybe be a bit biased.
installed Solusos RC2 on P4 HP 3Ghz hyperthread single core with Nvidia geforce 8400GS low profile GPU and everything is working great – in fact better then mint LMDE and main editions. im sold
love the menu also. i did experience afew install issues but managed to work around it. overall great and i can see it replacing my ever faithful mint10 (uninstalled mint 11 & 12 and kept m10 instead as m11+12 was causing greif and frankly, those releases didnt feel minty anymore..)
Just installed RC3 on my good old Dell 1501. Runs increddibly smoothly and lightning fast. I’m really impressed.