Zoris OS Linux

[JesseRaymondBassett]

I am going to use Ubuntu Budgie 18.04. I feel this maybe my best bet.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

I absolutely love Ubuntu Budgie!! Everything works right from the get-go. Internet, Wifi, and all my apps and extensions. Highly recommend it!

 

[paul1149]

It's easy to fall in love with many distros when looking for the right one. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I'm extremely happy with MX, it's well thought-out, it's based on Debian so it has immense resources, and the forum is excellent. But I've been tempted as of late to switch it over to the Plasma desktop now that they have its resource usage almost down to XFCE levels (I run a Vista-era tower).

 

[Anthony2019]

The beauty of Linux is that if you don't like something, you can easily change it. Most distros come with their own choice of desktop environment, apps, and customisations, but anyone is free to change them. You're not stuck with using the defaults. You can install an alternative DE (KDE, Gnome, MATE, XFCE and others) from the repos. You can add or swap applications using the software manager or command line and a growing number of Flatpaks and Snaps packages are also available. You can swap the window theme and change it to your heart's content.

Some distros (such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu) provide default settings that cater to new users - clear antialiased fonts, multimedia working "out of the box" and a good choice of software applications including access to proprietary drivers. Ready to use with minimal fuss. Others can do exactly the same, but expect the user to do the work in setting up the system how they want it, especially distros such as Arch Linux.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Ubuntu Budgie is a good OS for those who want to venture over from Windows. For example, my cannon IP1600 printer immediately got setup by the OS. I was impressed!

 

[Anthony2019]

Budgie is a relatively new addition to the Ubuntu family and I think it is also officially supported by Canonical. I have tested it and it looks really good.

I don't use Ubuntu or any of the distros based on it. Not because it isn't a good system - it is, but because many of the software packages I rely on are not in the official repos and I'm not keen on adding too many third party personal package archives (PPA's) - especially if I don't know where they have come from. Fedora uses RPMs and they have a strict policy of only providing open source packages, however there is another community repo called RPMFusion which provides all the extra stuff - so with the two combined I have access to an enormous array of packages without having to use third party archives. Over time, adding these archives can make things a bit messy.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Anthony,
Have you heard of ElementaryOS? Is it any good? I am thinking of trying it out.

 

[Anthony2019]

hi Quentin
Elementary OS is based on an earlier stable version of Ubuntu and uses their own designed interface called Pantheon which is very similar to Mac OS in look and feel. They have also developed their own core applications using Vala and a lot of third party developers have designed apps that use the same toolkits and therefore integrate well with the OS. It is a graphically rich OS and uses extensive compositing but still performs reasonably well even on slightly older hardware.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Well I am writing to you from ElementaryOS. It is very smooth, fast, and more stable than Budgie. I like it so far!

 

[paul1149]

Do you know about www.distrowatch.com? You can find info, links, and user reviews there on scores of OSes. Very nice resource.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Never heard of that. Will check it out. Thanks!

 

[Anthony2019]

Quentin, have you ever come across Gnome Boxes?
It's a virtual machine app that lets you run multiple desktop os's without the need to burn the iso to disk or install on your hard drive. It's ideal if you want to try out different systems before installing.
You can use the app to download an OS from a selected list, or alternatively you can choose an .iso you have downloaded. You can add as many as you need.
The different 'machines' appear in a grid and you can switch and select between them.
I use Fedora 31 Workstation, but using Boxes, I can test the nightly build of the latest development version.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Interesting suggestion. Will look into it. Thanks!

 

[David Kent]

On my Linux Mint laptop, I have lost the icons on the task bar. They don't show when the apps are running. I updated Mint to the latest version this morning but that made no difference. The only Icon that shows is that for WhatsApp and that has move to the right hand side next to the Bluetooth icon.

 

[Anthony2019]

On my Linux Mint laptop, I have lost the icons on the task bar. They don't show when the apps are running. I updated Mint to the latest version this morning but that made no difference. The only Icon that shows is that for WhatsApp and that has move to the right hand side next to the Bluetooth icon.

If my memory serves me correctly, to bring the icons back, I think you would have to go into Menu and find the name of the application, right click on it and there should be an option to pin it to the taskbar?

 

[David Kent]

Forget That post, I had a message that said there was proplem and I opened the dialogue box and clicked an restore all and The icons immediately came back The problem seemed to be with xApp