Another not-Linux Linux based operating system. Can’t wait to argue same as with Android and ChromeOS that this is not like “real” desktop Linux looks.
We really should stick to calling it GNU or something.
Definitely not GNU, that’s even worse than calling it Linux. We should simply call it by it’s own name, Vega or whatever it ends up being. Android is Android. ChromeOS is ChromeOS. We can acknowledge they utilize the Linux kernel and some other open source code, and as such give some back. But they are not what we refer to as Linux, as that is a spirit as much as if not more than it is a collection of software.
An OS is defined by its ecosystem ( applications, users, and philosophy ). Everybody knows what an actual Linux distribution is and the kinds of desktop environments ( eg. GNOME, KDE, XFCE ) and applications that Linux implies ( eg. Docker, Podman, Emacs, GIMP, OBS, LibreOffice ). It does not matter if the C library is Glibc or MUSL. It does not matter if things were compiled with GCC or Clang. It does not matter who wrote the version of ‘ls’ installed. It is not confusing when somebody tells you they are using “Linux” on the desktop, the server, or the cloud. You know what they mean.
Saying GNU / Linux does not add any clarity in my view and could be confusing or wrong. If you use Alpine in the cloud, you are using Linux ( very clear ) but not GNU / Linux. If you are using Void on your desktop, you are using Linux ( but maybe not Glibc ). Is one version of Void Linux called GNU / Linux and the other one isn’t? It is not a useful label other than politically.
Android and ChromeOS use the Linux kernel but are not Linux distributions by any useful use of that term. If I switch you from Void to Arch, you could use it for hours without noticing the change. You might not notice until you went to update software. If I moved you to Android or ChromeOS, you would certainly notice right away. In some ways, Windows is a more similar environment than Android is.
If I say, “I use Linux”, you do not have to ask me if I mean Android or if I have a Chromebook. People that don’t “know” that these other systems use the Linux kernel would never make that mistake. The “confusion” is artificial.
As a non-Linux example, is there anybody that is confused that the XBox uses the Windows kernel? Even if I say “I game on Windows”, would you honestly wonder if I meant XBox? Or would it be super obvious that I meant on a PC?
If I say, “I game on Linux”, you again know that I do not mean Android or ChromeOS ( unless I am purposely trying to be arrogant or funny about it ). You might ask if I am using a Stream Deck but, guess what, the Deck also boots into KDE. It really is Linux.
My Nest thermometer and my IP camera both run the Linux kernel as well. Do we need a special name for them? No. Nobody is truthfully confused by that either. Would we call them GNU / Linux even if they use Glibc? I hope not. So what does GNU / Linux even refer to outside of the political meaning?
The whole mechanism of working of Clonezilla is about the least intuitive I have ever found. So many chances for errors/mistakes, especially if you’re trying to do a network backup. Rescuezilla invokes clonezilla as a backup mechanism, but it saves you all the trouble with a way more intuitive UI. It’s been a revelation to me since I found about it, and refuse to use clonezilla alone.
It’s not open source but I absolutely love Veeam Agent, it will backup an online system with encryption, very easy to use, and they provide a bootable recovery image to restore from.
normal application tray and buttons for close, maximise and minimize
dolphin ! (But any capable filemanager with spacesaving UI, extensions, an editable location bar, drag/drop dialogs, selection mode, preview, pinned favourites, kfind integration,… would do)
are all simply better than the GNOME counterpart. Also things like the clickboxes of decorations actually reaching to the top corner is something so obvious its crazy that GNOME simply ignores that and you need to directly point to the “x”.
Did the windows before not have regular menu with all that? I think its an okay concept, even though I can imagine something like workspaces could make sense too.
As the first paragraph says: “The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.”
I’m also on KDE at the moment, but I appreciate the money going into FOSS desktop experience. Most importantly as keeping things viable for the future. Also KDE and GNOME both, one presumes, learn from each others successes.
Alpine is very lightweight. I think it was built so that it would run well inside docker containers, which means it should be fairly easy for low-end computers to run it.
Afaik, it doesn’t come with a DE out of the box, so it won’t be very user-friendly
I guess it depends on what comes with the distro. If you start off with a basic Linux install and add a DE that is low on system resources, like LXQt, you can breathe life into a machine.
Bodhi, antiX and Linux Lite come to mind.
You can also start with a minimal base, Arch, Debian, Alpine, anything, and then add packages.
I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian.
Because it’s the stock Debian + custom themes/skins + some crappy useless minitools. The 99% of packages come from the official Debian repository, the rest are only the rice.
A custom Iosevka build for terminal and code and B612 font for everything else on the desktop. I moved recently from Monoid and Atkinson Hyperledgible.
I use SpiralLinux on my old Inspiron but it’s basically just Debian with some user-friendly tweaks. I guess you could try Tiny Core or Porteus or something really small like that.
A person in this thread already recommended having different colors for different conditions like ssh and running as root, I havent seen anyone mention this specifically but you can determine if the current working directory is writable with something like [ -w “$(pwd)” ] and set the color to red or print a symbol if it doesnt return true.
Also I recommend putting all the code and logic for your shell prompt in a shell function, and using a substitution shell to put it into the PS1 variable like this:
<span style="color:#323232;">__shellprompt ()
</span><span style="color:#323232;">{
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> if [ "$(id -u)" = 0 ]; then
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> local PROMPT_EMBLEM='#'
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> else
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> local PROMPT_EMBLEM='$'
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> fi
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> printf "%s" "$(whoami)@$(uname -n):$(pwd)"
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> printf "n%c " "$PROMPT_EMBLEM"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">}
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PS1='$(__shellprompt)'
</span>
Now this is just a really barebones example, there is a whole lot more you can do like passing in the last exit code through the argv of your shellprompt function like this PS1=‘$(__shellprompt $?)’ and like print it out if its non-zero so you wont have to like echo $? to see if the last command failed, but you should be able to still do this. In my testing, running the shell prompt function in the subsitiution shell didnt effect the $? variable.
In my first comment on another thread about shell prompts, I posted my full shellprompt, it is slightly outdated (I just changed hostname to uname -n), if you cant find it feel free to send a message or just ask, and I will send you the code.
This example is very enlightening. I was kind of aware that one could run shell functions and even use a GIT function in my prompt, but I never thought it through and your example brings the point home.
I’ll waste most probably a few hours to find my perfect prompt function!
Something that should be noted when adding colors to your shell prompt function is adding the non printable characters that keep the terminal from buggin out, this caused me a massive headache until I figured it out. When putting it in the PS1 variable directly you will put [ to begin a color sequence and ] to end one, but printf will print a literal [ and ] so instead you will have to use `
If you want serious optimizations - then Gentoo is your choice. But seriously, there won’t be any serious difference between distributions. What really matters here are DEs and browsers. I would recommend some kind of lightweight window manager like i3 or dwm. If you do not want to configure everything yourself, then your choice is lxde/lxqt. Also, you can use distros without systemd (void, artix, devuan, gentoo etc), but that does not matter that much.
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