Linux Distros

[Bone-A Lisa]

I just recently switched over to NixOS from EndeavourOS, and I gotta say, I'm sold on it. NixOS is a declarative distro, essentially meaning that everything I want to configure / install on my system lives in a single configuration file (or multiple if you break the config up in a sane way). Your hardware config, such as drive mounts, kernel parameters, etc., live in their own file so you can have a unique one per machine. It makes updating my system as simple as editing a file, applying the config, and if something goes wrong, I just roll back that file and apply the previous config.

The config syntax and paradigm does have kind of a steep learning curve to it, though... Being a complete programming language and all. It took about a week of running NixOS in a VM and testing a config to be comfortable trying to switch my laptop over to it. But what is nice, is that once I got the config tailored correctly to what I want, deploying the exact same setup on my laptop took just downloading the config files, applying them, and in 5 minutes my setup was Identical to the VM (again hardware not withstanding). Then I did the same thing a week later for my main desktop machine.

Now my main desktop, laptop, and hopefully soon my work laptop, are all essentially the exact same computer, with the exact same set of apps, and the exact same config. It's so awesome.

I'm probably going to write a blog post on it here soon talking about my experience, and how many of my problems it's solved so far, lol.

[xXWebMasterXx_Gina]

I'll be honest, I don't know a thing about Linux, but with Windows 11 ever approaching, Linux seems like the logical next step    That said, just recently I happened across this OS called "Commodore OS Vision" which as far as I can understand is some sort of themed version of Debian and/or MX Linux? Couldn't tell you for sure, but the Commodore OS sure is eye-candy! It has a bunch of animations and a sleek interface that's supposed to give the feel of what a modern Commodore system might look like. 

At first, I just ran it through a VM, but then I decided to install it on my near broken laptop which takes like 10 minutes just to boot, and wow! I know this is just because of Linux and not the Commodore OS Vision specifically, but now my laptop is like 5x faster. Pretty good for a 5-6 year old machine!   

Though, I am having quite a bit of trouble actually using the system. I had to navigate through so many menus just to figure out how to turn down my screen brightness    I'm also having a hard time grasping how the file system is organized, everything has these really short, obscure names so it's hard just to track down were the exes of the various bundled programs are located outside of the system's quick launch menus.


I know I should be trying to learn more about Linux to use the Commodore OS, but now I just want to learn BASIC and code in the C64 emulator >_<

[PurpleHello98]

I've tried VMs of Linux here and there, although nothing's tempted me enough to switch. I may do so at least part-time soon, though, although there won't be any iPod compatibility, so I can't use it 100% of the time. I'm most interested in Ubuntu Unity and Linux Mint, although I've used the LXDE environment and really liked it. (I especially like that LXDE is still a little skeuomorphic, at least mast I checked!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I'll be honest, I don't know a thing about Linux, but with Windows 11 ever approaching, Linux seems like the logical next step    That said, just recently I happened across this OS called "Commodore OS Vision" which as far as I can understand is some sort of themed version of Debian and/or MX Linux? Couldn't tell you for sure, but the Commodore OS sure is eye-candy! It has a bunch of animations and a sleek interface that's supposed to give the feel of what a modern Commodore system might look like. 

As far as I can tell, it is a very small distro, based on an unsuccessful attempt to create a distro from 10 years ago. Nobody cann tell if they'll manage to keep their software up-to-date, and probably they don't have the resources to go for a smooth user-experience. I doubt that it is good for productive use on a system. If you are a beginner, I heavily recommend OpenSuse.

@PurpleHello98 did you try gtkpod or similar software that offer IPod-compability? Both Ubuntu and Mint are not entirely uncontroversial within the Linux scene (if anyone wants more details about this, just ask - don't want to bore you people out with distro-ranting). While both are safer to use than Windows, there are alternatives available that will probably give you a better time with Linux.

[shevek]

I think you can achieve a skeuomorphic look in almost any distro, especially because it simply hinges on the chosen desktop environment and the themes and config files for that. The distro is really mostly about how files are managed, package manager, better or worse for older hardware, lightweight or heavy, etc. I think the most newbie friendly way of customization is offered by KDE, especially since they offer buttons to download themes very easily and already have a lot of customization built in without asking the average user to touch any config file.

The switch from KDE Plasma 5 to 6 recently really rocked my Nvidia optimus system and leaves a lot of themes and customization behind because the creators need to port it first, so that sucks a bit. I had to cleaninstall for a variety of reasons, also due to the expired themes, and choose some new ones. There's definitely a lot of glossy, more frutiger aero aligned options as well, so if the skeuomorphism is your thing, I'm sure you will be happy with theming in KDE Plasma no matter what distro you use, as long as KDE works well with it. I also went with something more glossy now, and will likely also switch to a different and skeuomorphic icon pack once I find one I like and that works.