Distrowatch review grumbles

[JayM]

Version: 19
Rating: 1
Date: 2019-10-23
Votes: 0


Displaying is very horrible on a VirtualBox (Even with installed Guest Additions); everything blinks and glitches, moved windows are leaving track for 2-3 seconds, and dockbar dissapear when the window doesn't toches it.

His VB problems are the guest OS's fault? Way to troubleshoot there, Clyde.

[colin_b]

Version: 19
Rating: 1
Date: 2019-11-05
Votes: 0

Could not install. Got to a certain point in the install and the screen started blinking. Went out and came back in to try install again and the same blinking problem. I never had an install problem with either Ver. 17 or 18. This is a new bug. I am also running Debian 10, MX Linux 18.3 and Mint 19 on the same Lenovo T420. All installed and run perfectly. Ver. 19 is NOT ready for prime time until the installer is debugged.

[Huckleberry Finn]

Version: 19
Rating: 6
Date: 2019-11-10
Votes: 0

Font and icons are too small for comfortable viewing, not a good start to a distro, wonder what else they stuffed up.

"Didn't know whether to laugh or cry"

[BitJam]

Version: 19
Rating: 6
Date: 2019-11-10
Votes: 0

Font and icons are too small for comfortable viewing, not a good start to a distro, wonder what else they stuffed up.

"Didn't know whether to laugh or cry"

This can be a problem on high dpi systems. We are working on a way to set a reasonable resolution on the first live boot but we have have not succeeded yet, or were not able to squeeze it into *-19. IMO this is a legit complaint. This can even be a problem in the virtual consoles because the Linux kernel limits console fonts to a max of 32x32 pixels while the KMS video drivers tend to default to the highest resolution possible. AFAIK it is not trivial to raise this font size limit and it is no longer possible to set suggested screen resolutions in xorg.conf and AFAIK was never possible for the virtual consoles. Perhaps upstreams devs thought screen resolutions would decrease over time or max out at 1920 x 1080.

IMO an upstream fix would be utterly trivial but instead they went in the wrong direction and broke it even more.

*** sigh ***

[sunrat]

I had the same problem on 4k monitor. Just opened one of them there MX tweaky things and made them bigger.

Also the Xfce display scaling I found to be absolutely useless. 2x made most things too big and scaled some windows right off the screen. They need to look at how KDE do it with fractional scaling, 1.5x works nice on the same 4k screen.

[Huckleberry Finn]

This can be a problem on high dpi systems. We are working on a way to set a reasonable resolution on the first live boot but we have have not succeeded yet, or were not able to squeeze it into *-19. IMO this is a legit complaint. This can even be a problem in the virtual consoles

I see now. I was wondering why he/she didn't just click "Appearance" and ... :)

[BitJam]

I had the same problem on 4k monitor. Just opened one of them there MX tweaky things and made them bigger.

Sure but if you are new to the system and don't know where anything is and you can't really read the text then it is a real problem. IMO it is far better to err on the side of making text too big (within reason) rather than too small. Why the upstream devs are trying very hard to make text as teeny tiny small as possible by default is ... not optimal.

[dreamer]

IMO an upstream fix would be utterly trivial but instead they went in the wrong direction and broke it even more.
*** sigh ***

I think the idea is that Linux desktop users shall move to Wayland. X.org devs and Wayland devs = same devs?
Please keep in mind that Linux is not about choice.
http://islinuxaboutchoice.com/

[davemx]

This is a review that I will NOT be sending to Distrowatch. My misadventures with Manjaro.

Did I mention before (of course I did!) that I keep 6 partitions, labelled Distro1 to Distro6 for Linux so I can have a play from time to time. At present I mostly use MX-Linux 19 which is Distro6, followed by PCLinuxOS on Distro1, where Grub-Customiser works particularly well.

After downloading Manjaro, I added it to a Multiboot USB stick. It booted, and I got to a desktop. Nice. But the installer crashed when I tried to install it. Always used UEFI. Tried a couple of times.

OK, maybe it doesn't like running off MultibootUSB, so I tried a DD copy (from MX19). This booted up to a nice desktop. Played around for a while, and thought let's see what happens now when I try to install it. Tried to overwrite Distro4, using "replace partition", but it did not accept my click. Tried a few times, rebooting...

Rebooted but this time, before attempting to install, I ran GParted to erase the Distro4 partition (/dev/sda9 if you need to know), and this time attempted to install by creating a new partition, ... and .... it worked! Well sort of, it wouldn't let me mount /dev/sda1 as the EFI partition. No matter, once installed I'll go into PCLOS > Grub Customiser and sort it out. Which I did. When I ran GrubCustomiser, it gave me several entries for my new Manjaro partition, none of which worked, they all crashed! I rebooted to PCLOS, hand-edited the first Manjaro entry, and I finally booted into an installed Manjaro. The trouble is, nothing would open. All attempts to run a program failed, though the logout applet did work. But nothing else did. I wanted to use the terminal to see what was happening but that wouldn't run!

Eventually I hit on an idea. I logged in as root, and deleted my user from the system, including /home folders, then re-installed the user. This time, when I logged in it worked!!

By now, it had become an academic exercise, just to prove I could do it. The fun had gone, and I really can't be doing with it. I might nick some graphics for my collection, but I'm buggered if I'm going to make any more time for Manjaro.

Why am I not posting it on Distrowatch? It obviously works for a lot of people, and I don't want to lower myself to the level of some of those who have reviewed MX.

P.S. I also tried Mint. Mint installs whether or not I use MultibootUSB, the difference is if I install it from a MultibootUSB stick, the installed version refuses to run! But it does work OK from a DD'd stick. But Cinnamon flatters to deceive. Looks beautiful, but too much crap — insists on separate menus for logging out and shutting down — as do a few other new desktops, seems rather pompous to me. And same wallpaper on every desktop. And the absence of submenus on its version of Launcher. But not bad if you like that sort of thing!

[Huckleberry Finn]

Version: 19
Rating: 1
Date: 2019-12-01
Votes: 0

That's the only distribution I'm unable to install on Laptop with Ryzen 5

?