#slitaz

I'd say the worst from what I've heard is Manjaro, with it's apparent stability issues and not bringing much more to the table than Arch. though, I've never used Manjaro myself, it's just what I've heard.

For distros that I've actually used myself, it depends on the definition of worst. if you mean the worst everyday computing distro, definitely SliTaz. its repository is extremely outdated and ridiculously tiny, the distro has poor documentation, it's not well supported at all, it's not even based on anything so you can't always rely on the Debian/Arch wiki. But I mean, it's not really meant for everyday computing, it's really just a stripped down version of TinyCore, stripped enough for some versions to fit on a single 1.44mb floppy iirc. And it really, really excels at that.

If you mean the worst distro in general, I'd probably say Ubuntu. honestly, from when I used it myself it wasn't that bad at all. it gets a lot of shit for being bloated, and dear God it really is bloated, but other than that, it's really nice. lots of things Just Work™, it has sensible defaults, great support, and a large package selection.

it does kinda bug me how even the server variant of Ubuntu is pretty bloated. a server probably doesn't need a large chunk of the components installed by default. but it also comes with lots of utilities making server setup really easy soooo

This post is a summary of my journey to find a replacement OS to Windows on my new computer.

Technically the computer is just contemporary 2022 by any account, it's not bleeding edge nor antiquated. It's no speed demon nor slouch I think: -> Intel N6000 + UHD Graphics -> 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD -> 1080p OLED touch screen -> WiFi + BT -> Front + rear cameras Nothing that any modern OS couldn't handle.. right?

I do have a little list of what to look for in the OS that is going to run this computer: -> light on RAM, CPU, SSD -> sprightly touch friendly UI -> easy-ish configuration -> supports the hardware i.e. CPU, GPU, WiFi, BT, etc. -> pi-hole + unbound to make the internet pleasant-er -> runs Google Chrome & Brave browsers Not terribly demanding by any measure.. right??

So off to DistroWatch.com to check out what's on offer in the world of Opensource OS!

>>> Long story short, I spent weeks experimenting ... >>>

Never have I thought that I would cycle through so many OS to find so few that works with my hardware.

I've cycled through MX Linux / Debian / Manjaro / Slax / Slitaz / PopOS / EndeavourOS / FreeBSD / NomadBSD with no success.

For a time I felt that Manjaro was going to be the OS to be. It supported most of the hardware sans the cameras, ran all of the apps I need .. but pi-hole + unbound somehow always didn't end well. pi-hole would work and unbound too, albeit not in tandem, I just couldn't get them to play together, that's probably my fault for not knowing to configure each that well. It was also rather heavy on RAM at almost 4GB which probably is GNOME's fault. Yes I used GNOME, only because it has better touch screen support than the other Window Mangers and Desktop Environments.

Manjaro GNOME has its quirks, sometimes, something glitches and the UI craps out on me, but generally it works well, is sprightly, but it sips quite a bit of battery juice when in Sleep mode., and Hibernating is almost akin to rebooting which doesn't bode well for just picking up the computer to do a quick search or read or watch something.

The Debians and BSDs were wrote off shortly after their first boot. The problem was they couldn't detect the OLED display. I couldn't control brightness, set resolution or adjust color at all, which Manjaro somewhat managing with exception color adjustment.

Alas poor Slitaz .. honestly, I was hoping that it would be the one that works, but it didn't even manage to boot. I was quite dismayed.

So that is why I almost resigned to using Manjaro seeing that it was the only Linux that actually-mostly-worked on this computer, but .. there was one more OS I wanted to try on this computer, it came on my radar only because it can now run Linux apps, so just maybe, it could fare slightly better than Manjaro..

-> ChromeOS Flex

Back in the day, I'm already aware about Neverware and what they were doing to bring ChromeOS to the average Intel / AMD x86 / x86-64 computers. When they were bought over by Google, their product, CloudReady, became ChromeOS Flex. Now that it is Google-fied, tehre is a whole lot of convenience in keeping my browsing preferences in sync across different computers.

With Google incorporating Linux containers in ChromeOS Flex, this was one avenue I was keen to explore to satisfy my desire for OS-wide ad blocking & DNS identity privacy.

Nesse vídeo faço a instalação da distribuição Slitaz em uma máquina virtual e dou uma visão geral do sistema.

The process is pretty similar to one described at slitaz handbook, though that is outdated.

Here I describe manual (by hand) installation, because "slitaz-installer" was not found in live distribution.

1. Boot from liveCD/USB

2. Format required partitions using gparted (at least we need one root partition, that can be ext4)

3. To mount easily all drives required, just open them in PCManFM (we'll need CD partition and newly created partition)

4. create boot directory on new partition and copy vmlinuz-x.x.xx-slitaz from boot directory of the liveCD

5. copy rootfs*.gz files to the root of new partition

6. extract them using lzma d rootfsX.gz -so | cpio -idu command starting from the last one, i.e. 4-3-2-1 ("u" is added to original command to overwrite already existing files)

7. install grub as described in original manual (autologin can be added to the end of "kernel" line) Samples can be found in /boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg file at the liveCD

Slitaz installation did not work. A screen problem occurred each and every time, despite frustrations and changing the manual text input settings during setup. * off!

从光盘启动，选择“SliTaz Live”

启动中...

选择 en_US 

选择 us

进入桌面

点击左上角的设置按钮

输入管理员账号和密码，默认是 root 和 root

选择菜单“Install”→“Install SliTaz”

选择“Execute Gparted”，将硬盘格式化为 ext4

选择“Continue Installation”

在“install Slitaz to partition”处选择目标硬盘，如果已格式化分区，则不选中 Format 选项

选中“Grub”的“Install Grub bootloader.”，点击“Proceed to SliTaz installation”

选择“OK”

Interestingly, I've found that some Linux OSs are just a joy and pleasure to use. With Windows, there was always nagging issues of maintenance, which is a pretty decentralized process on that OS. (It was also slow.) On the plus side, Windows 7 was very stable and could handle most of what you threw at it.

Some Linux OSs tended to pose the opposite difficulties. While they were centralized and minimal, and fairly simple to set up for basic tasks, creating a fully-featured desktop for everyday computing was an outright project. I liked the idea of Puppy, SliTaz, and Crunchbang, and used them for short whiles, but didn't like having the feeling that a problem was always around the corner. Again, the fixes were there, but it's not a situation you want with a productivity desktop. I did enjoy the speedy "feel" of both SliTaz and Crunchbang, though. SliTaz, especially, impresses me with how much functionality it contains in 30-40 mb. Maybe when 4.0 comes out, I'll give it another try.

I first noticed while using Fuduntu that it was something you'd forget you were using which, to me, seems to mean it's a well designed desktop OS. It's feature-filled enough so that you're not running into errors trying to do simple tasks, yet not bloated to the point where those same simple operations will stutter. The Gnome default setup is also quite nice, being simple, clean, and easily customized. That's the kind of distraction free desktop I like to work on. Linux Mint 12 vanilla and LXDE also fell into this category, though 12 was a bit slower than Fuduntu and LXDE requires quite a few extra steps to do things like change the wallpaper.

I have high hopes for Mint 13, likely released in May, and Ubuntu 12.04. 11.10 would have been a good productivity desktop, but it just felt slow which, in itself, is a distraction. (Fuduntu was apparently targeted at eee PCs in its first iteration, which probably explains why it runs well on my 1201t.)

Oh yes, and Chakra. I'm keeping an install of Chakra around mainly to learn how to use it. It's a great project and the OS itself is very capable and well-designed. I don't see myself doing a lot of work on it, though. I get distracted by all the little KDE doodads. It is, however, very complete, and very pretty, as well as quite fast for an OS filled with eye candy.

So, basically, I'm going to be doing the bulk of my work (editing and writing) on Funduntu and Mint 12 (and 13). I like the balance of speed, capability, and clean design. I don't have any hardware that really necessitates the use of "light" OSs, so these two should do it!

(Sorry for the disorganized rambling; trying to organize my thoughts after weeks of learning new OSs and deciding, meh, this doesn't feel right.)