Episode: 2839
Title: HPR2839: Sample episode of the Distrohoppers Digest podcast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2839/hpr2839.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 17:46:49

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This is HBR episode 2008-139 entitled Sample episode of the Distro Hopper's Digest podcast.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 37 minutes long and Karima Clean Flag.
The summary is, we bring you the first episode of the new creative commons show the Distro Hopper's Digest.
Today's show is licensed under a CC by MCSA license.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honesthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
Today we're going to have an episode of a new podcast called the Distro Hopper's Digest.
It's a new podcast. It's released under a creative commons CC by MCNU commercial 4.0 license.
It's done by Moss and Tony who's done many shows here in HBR and Moss from the Linux Mint podcast.
So sit back, relax and enjoy the first episode of their podcast.
More information including links and how to subscribe will be in the show notes for this episode.
Distro Hopping, the idea that Linux is fun and the myriad of ways people put distros together should be reviewed often.
Welcome to Distro Hopper's Digest episode 1.
Recorded on April 24th, 2019, my name is Moss. I live in Eastern Tennessee.
Hi, my name is Tony and I live in the Northwest of the UK.
Welcome to Distro Hopper's Digest.
We love checking distros out, new distros, new versions of older distros and maybe even some old distros we've missed.
I have my preferences and Tony has his, perhaps together we can find some common ground to share with you.
So the idea of this podcast is that we'll each install a new distro to our chosen hardware for three to four weeks and use it as much as possible.
Perhaps even as our daily driver, we record all our trials and tribulations fixes, what we like and what we didn't.
I like to find distros which would be kind to a new user, especially one who is hoping to move over from another operating system such as Windows or Mac OS.
We intend to give as much information as possible on each distro and we'll also divulge what hardware we're using and how we think the hardware may have affected the rating.
For our first show, we decided on Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 Cindy LMDE3, what Linux Mint might look like if there were no Ubuntu, and a completely self-spun distro sold as OS 4 Fortitude.
We'd like to hear from you what you'd like to see us take on, be it Debian Red Hat Arch, Suzy, Mandriva, Slackware or Gen2-based distros.
On to this month's first distro, Linux Mint Debian Edition 3.
Talk to me Tony.
Okay, well, the first thing I did for this, as with distro hopping, my initial installation was done on a dual boot with a main 19.1 matte installation on a Dell E725O Ultrabook.
I've got 16 giga RAM in this Ultrabook, so it's quite a decent little machine.
This created the first issue that I had as the installer required the SSD to be manually partitioned to allow the dual boot.
Despite only one other OS being currently installed, unlike Mint, where it automatically detects the other installation and gives an automatic option to format the drive for a dual boot.
So this resulted in me accidentally bulking the drive and having to reinstall both Mint 19.1 before I could do the install of Mint Debian Edition.
So that was a little bit of a faux pas.
So since the install, if this had been mid-Aly driver, I'd lost all my data, and I wanted to be in best pleased at all, because as had not long set up the PC, as I bought it up a few weeks ago, it wasn't a major disaster.
So once the SSD had been partitioned into two main partitions for Mint 19.1 and LMDE 3.
The installer is fairly intuitive for an experienced Linux user, whose are lots of experience and understands what the root partition is, etc.
and where to put the group bootloader to make multiple installs bootable.
But during the install, you set up location, keyboard, layout, etc., use a name and password, and then the install continues.
On this hardware, the actual install once commence went quickly, less than 15 minutes, despite me not having a large bandwidth for Wi-Fi available in the venue that I actually did it in, that wasn't at home at the time.
On Rebeater was presented with the group bootloader which gave me a first choice of LMDE and 19.1 being second choice.
So going on to post installation, facts and issues, on the first install, the first thing I noticed was the hardware like the trackpad on the laptop,
whilst working at a basic level as a mouse to point the cursor and scroll pages, double-clicking on the pad did not work as a less left mouse pad key, which one you're using, you used to have in this facility, it's a bit frustrating.
These issues weren't present in Mint 19.1, so it wasn't an issue with the hardware, it was actually a software issue.
Mint 19.1 Mate, which is the other installed OS, so LMDE had not detected all the hardware during install for some reason.
However, on Reinstall, the hardware worked perfectly second time round. I still don't know why it did that.
I subsequently installed LMDE on my Toshiba Z30 as it's slightly larger screen and is lighter to use and carry around.
And while testing the distro on other hardware, the majority of the tests conducted around the Z30 laptop.
Okay, Tony, did you check and see if the under-mouse and trackpad that everything was set right?
Yeah, there wasn't even an option to set the trackpad. I ended up having to go into the software centre, I used Synaptic,
searched touchpad or trackpad, and I realised that some of the codecs or bits of software that were needed weren't installed.
So once they installed those, the trackpad actually worked. So it was a fix, but that issue was a bit of a problem.
The other thing I forgot to mention is that on the Dell, I couldn't get the SD card reader to work, and that is still an issue.
On the Z30, it wasn't an issue, the SD card reader worked out of the box, but I've still not found a fix for the SD card reader on the Dell.
And that's another reason that I transitioned over to the Shiba for the rest of the test.
Okay, so let's get on to ease of use. The first thing is, on first install, you presented with the Cinnamon Desktop Environment,
which being an old gnome too stickable is not retro enough for me, so I went and found the Mate DTE in the software manager installed it.
I logged out before logging back in and was able to choose Mate in the login screen.
Now I'm logging and was presented with the familiar Mate DTE for clarity, boot times on the two laptops I installed on were around 25 second mark.
With the Cinnamon Desktop Environment, almost or about 820 megabyte of RAM issues, but when starting up in the Mate Desktop, it's around about the 62650 mark, so about 200 megabytes less.
So after installing Mate, I went to search for the software I use regularly.
Web browser is not a problem as Firefox is installed out the box, as you would expect.
And as I have a separate home partition on the particular laptop I was using, it picked up all my Firefox settings on the first start, apart from the home page, which was a simple fix.
The next job was to install Audacity and Mumble, as these are essential to the podcast workflow for both this and Mint Cast and the HEPR shows that I record.
The first thing to note is that all the software available is several versions behind, as LND3 is based on DB and stable, and unless an update is required for security reasons such as with Firefox,
they don't update the software between releases.
Audacity is still on 2.1.3, which while it will still do the job, doesn't look as slick or have some of the features of the latest 2.3.1.
Not a major issue of both of these are available as flat packs and snaps, so podcast workflow is assured in LMDE.
Offline word processing and office is provided by Libra Office, which again, a little old being on the 5.2 branch.
Again, it does the job, so no problem there.
One big issue with LMDE is that DB and does not support the addition of PPAs or may have never had for all I know.
You can add dead repositories, both in Synaptic and via the command line, where they are available for the software that you're wishing to install.
Another software may be available as flat packs or snaps.
This is an example for adding virtual box X, and you can see that in the show notes.
I will add that even though I managed to install virtual box X, there was an issue with the kernel drivers, and it took me a little while.
I'm not sure if eventually I've got it working.
I have got it working on another distro, but not with LMDE.
So that's an issue with virtual box itself, but it does show that you can get additional software that's not available in the normal repose on your machine in LMDE, but you may have to go searching for the depths and the code to actually install those drivers, but those software repositories.
Apart from adding those, I was also able to install a working version of one of my most used tools, which is Get I Player.
After installing SnapD and picking up the Snap package for this CLI utility, which really made my day because it can be a bit of a pain to install Get I Player.
And the Snap for it makes it really easy to install.
So with the use of Snap's flat packs and being able to add dead repositories, then it does tend to mitigate some of the problems of not being able to add straight PPAs, but may not resolve all issues if these aren't available.
Another thing myself and most users will need at some time is to print documents. This was not a problem with LMDE.
It picked up my printer at the moment it was connected and turned on, so it's not an issue.
However, I should point out my printer is several years old and cops may have problems in finding drivers for newer printers, particularly those with flat bets, scanners or copiers integrated into them.
So memory use, both cinema and matte and not the lightest DTE, DTEs around.
But considering I was using equipment with 16 giga RAM, neither was a major issue.
If you have four gig or less, I would suggest matte or another resource, another lower resource hungry DTE to conserve a little RAM.
As I said, at startup sentiment takes up 820 megs, so this could be an issue on lower resource boxes ease of finding help.
With a bit of googling and with the use of man pages, I was able to get some some help with the couple of issues that I had.
As usual, the man pages can be a very useful tool.
Mint has a great set of community forums for asking about all things Linux Mint and the community rules are quite explicit about not being rude to newcomers.
While I didn't have to use them on this occasion, it's good news to know that they're if they're needed.
How does it play nice with others?
I said earlier, LMDE, unlike the main Linux Mint does not allow a straightforward view of the option to install alongside the current OS.
It may have recognized Windows, but my other system was 19.1, so before I could install alongside this, I had to manually create a partition for LMDE to reside in.
Not a very new user friendly.
However, once I figured out how to do the custom install all went well and Grub was able to pick up both installs at boot.
I might have been better looking for install instructions on the net before I went about it, but I was testing to see how user friendly the installer was.
On the main Linux Mint, I was able to find this quite intuitive, but not on LMDE.
Tony, in my experience, I find that there are some distros that allow you to put on Grub Customizer and fix that later in the Grub.
LMDE is not one of those. Debian is not one of those deep and used to have it and doesn't have it anymore.
But you have to check your distro if you can add the Debian PPA or an RPM PPA that will let you add Grub Customizer, then it will always help you fix that problem.
Grub Customizer is very easy to use. New users might be a little bit itchy about using it, but we're talking dual-boot or multi-boot systems here anyhow, and that will take some training and getting used to it.
Yeah, I'm not actually installed LMDE as just taking up the whole hard drive, so obviously I can only speak from the experience of installing it on a dual-boot system.
Like I say, for me, it was reasonable. Even for me, though, I've installed hundreds of Linux distributions over the years, mainly the Debian-based ones like Ubuntu and Mint and that, but the installer on the main branches is really user-friendly.
I didn't find it user-friendly on LMDE at all.
What I tend to do when I know it's not going to have Grub Customizer available is I install it and then I install something else after that because the last distribution you put on a multi-boot system is the one that will control the Grub.
Yeah. So moving on, if we're looking at stability, all I can say is LMDE is rock-solid. During the time I was using it, as far as stability, I didn't have any problems, no crashes, no weird things happening during use or anything like that.
It's as rock-solid as the base, which is Debian, obviously, or Debian, as I keep getting told to call it.
Debian doesn't do anything on the edge. They do their stable branch, which is what LMDE and Linux Mint are based on, sticks with what works.
And they don't reach out very far.
That is the case today. For those of you who remember the Linux Mint Debian Edition or Debian Edition back in the day, it was based on SID.
And it was a rolling release based on SID. So it could be a bit flaky at times. That was why the Mint developers decided to move over to the stable branch and just update it when the new version of Debian comes out every couple of years as a...
So my ratings for LMDE. So ease of installation.
New user friendly to our attend. It's just too difficult to get your head around the installer if you're a new user.
Experience Linux users, I would say 7 out of 10, because they still improvements they could make to make it more intuitive even for experienced users.
Hardware issues. I've given it an 8 out of 10. I may be a bit generous there because the couple of problems I had, I think, should have been working install considering that the main Linux Mint, both the issues with the trackpad and the SD card reader, they worked out the box.
ease of finding help. 10 out of 10. Linux Mint's got a great community out there and there's plenty of advice and help on the internet. And if you've used to them the man page use a fantastic ease of use, I would say 7 out of 10.
And that's just because no distro is perfect, particularly when you're starting a new one for the first time and you've got to find your way around it.
But generally it's a good distribution. I'm sure if it was to continue with it, it probably push up to closer to 10.
Playing nice with others, I've given that a 7 out of 10 again and that's more to do with the installer and the fact it's a bit tricky to install and I managed to nuke one of me installs on the Dell laptop side to totally reinstall stability 10 out of 10 problems.
So some similar distro distros to check out, you might want to consider deep in an MX Linux, they're both Debbie and based distributions that you might want to have a look at.
But obviously for new users for ease of install and easy use, I would recommend Linux Mint main addition and possibly go with the Marta desktop because I think that's a big fan of my day. Yes.
MX Linux will have an interesting issue that a lot of distros use system D, there are fewer and fewer distros that don't use system D in boot up.
But MX Linux includes system D but does not enable it so you'll have to either decide to run the equivalent of Dev1 which is no system D or enable it at boot up.
And that's not something a new user should be presented with but I think if you play with MX Linux a little bit you'll get to like it as a new user.
Yeah, just bear in mind if you're from the UK don't pick UK for your language install when you when you're putting it on because that's Ukrainian look for great Britain GB for great Britain.
Okay, more over to you for the second distro.
All right, as far as my hardware, I run a Lenovo ThinkPad T430 with eight gigabytes of RAM and a 500 gig hard drive which I keep partitioned into four partitions each with its own distro.
So I usually keep a distro that I use all the time a distro I like to use a lot that is not quite ready for full time use and I have a couple more partitions left to play around with things if I change my mind about something.
I have an external hard drive where I keep my data and my backups.
So for this first episode I picked Solus OS for fortitude.
I had a good deal of experience with Solus from about the 3.0 level or maybe just before 3.0.
Ike was spending a whole lot of time on the Jupyter shows talking about it and he's a very personable man and made it sound really easy and got a lot of positive feedback.
So I started using it and I really liked it, but I have my issues and I'll talk about those in a moment.
Installation, I had no issues getting it up and running, adding additional software is not an issue if it is in the repo or can be added as a snap.
Sadly, this did not include my preferred VPN which is Mulvad.
I do not get paid by Mulvad or anybody else I am broke or my preferred office suite which is soft maker office.
And I know I'm in a very small minority of Linux users who like soft maker.
But if you stick with the software it has or can be gotten easily, it's as easy as pie and a beautiful desktop it is running buggy.
After installation, hardware issues, my printer was not on the list of what was available and could not be set up despite being a Linux friendly printer and is easily set up on a variety of other systems using either Deborah RPM packages.
Solus uses EOPKG EOPackage.
So you want to check your printer before installing Solus or be prepared to buy one or live without a printer.
The list of approved printers is larger than it is standard for cups but does not yet include all Linux friendly printers.
There is a way to apply for a printer driver. I was not able to find out how to get a login and password on the system where you go to apply for that.
Maybe I just didn't see something this does happen with me.
I have been a long time Linux user.
I have never been an all-in Linux user and I use Linux as a desktop operating system as one would use Windows not as a terminal driven thing as most Linux users do get to.
I am getting better at it but it's a slow learning process not to dive in and do this from the start.
So I kind of get a feel. I think I have a better feel on what works out of the box for new users because they're not going to look to how to do terminal.
They're not going to look at the man pages which I don't believe I've ever read a man page. I may be wrong about that.
But let's move on.
Ease of use. Application issues again. I can't install mold ad VPN, soft maker office or my brother printer. It's an MSC J470 DW for reference.
The odd thing is that it is easy to install a J460 or a J480 but they use different driver and even have a different ink cartridge.
So I just lucked in or did not luck out however you want to put that and have the quote wrong printer end quote.
The Solus repo has the latest version of Audacity 2.3.1. It has Falcon which is a QT3 and Midori which is a webkit browsers in the repo which is a plus for people that are fleeing chromium and all the problems that Google has installed in Chrome.
Has mumble and discord in the repo.
Cody is in the repo but it's still at 17.6 the current version as of today is 18.2. If you're into old simple computer games they have Pysol FC in the repo but I couldn't find the KDE games that I run and I didn't find any version of NetHack.
I play old games. I am not a gamer by the strict sense of the word.
If you are a gamer Solus is a great distro. They have the easiest access to all the Steam games and Proton and all that stuff.
As a regular computer gamer Solus and Clear OS are probably your best bets for a new distro to try.
Running issues the first night after I installed it I ran updates and the update manager took hours to complete looking for updates.
I let it run overnight it did finish up and I did get suggested updates installed with no further issues.
In terms of boot time it's the fastest boot of any distro I've tried except maybe MX. I could boot Solus three times in less time than it takes to boot Linux Mint Mate on my machine.
Sadly I did not write down my memory use. I'm going to have to fill that in on the show notes later. I apologize for that.
Ease of finding help after getting help from the user forum I got soft maker office installed.
It took four to five days for the information I needed to be presented in a way that I understood and can use.
You might be easier to understand. You might have been understanding. I am autistic. I do read things the wrong way and say things the wrong way.
I might not have been expressing myself right or understanding their response right. However that means after help from Tony Hughes here I got the snap store installed and enabled.
I did that to get wire guard installed which is a step towards installing Mulvad VPN but I could not get the snap store to run.
I posted the issue to the solus forum on the 7th of April at six o'clock a.m. I got an answer within six minutes but the answer was that snap store does not run in the current version of solus but it will quote soon and quote.
You have to go online to https snapcraft.io slash store to use the snap store but it does run it installs directly from the snap store if you do that.
Options to install using a software center if snaps are installed which I could not find anywhere to enable installing snaps or the terminal using the supplied command.
For wire guard it was pseudo snap install wire guard dash a m mp. At this point I have two users telling me to run a command to convert an unnamed file to install Mulvad.
They're both calling me stupid and telling me telling each other that I must be a troll but neither one told me what file to run that command on again it could be my lack of understanding.
It must be said that prior to this point I was getting a good amount of attention and help and that other users saw this exchange differently than I did.
One of Mintcast listeners commented it was reading it on the solus forum and he said that I was getting a good deal of help and did not understand what I was upset about and I'm sorry for that.
So bottom line is use solus if you like library office or a gamer. If you need a printer make sure it's on the currently covered list. If you need a VPN better hope it's one that everyone likes.
I'm sure it's easy to get PIA or proton VPN or one of the better known VPNs running apparently Mulvad is not in that list for whatever reason.
I don't feel I should have to change my preferred software to use a distro. I built these preferences over years. I should not take abuse from the user forum no matter how stupid I may be.
I did thank each one who did help me and I thought that would get them to see I was not a troll. But in my experience some solus users are not nice these days and that it's a big zero in the help department.
Play's nice with others. Grub Customizer is available in the repo I experienced no problems with solus rewriting my grub after setup.
I remember with one distro that I had grub Customizer in after it did some updates to grub it rewrote the grub again and I had to go back and use grub Customizer repeatedly.
That is to say whenever it did those changes to grub which was only when it did an update to grub.
I'm starting to lose my clarity here I hope you're understanding me well.
Stability I had zero problems with stability after that one update issue previous experience says it should be as solid as anything can be.
Similar distros to check out maybe Manjaro can you think of anything Tony.
I can't think of a because solus it's written from the ground up so it's a totally different distro to anything else.
I don't even know if there's anything using it as a base so basically solus is an animal in its own right like Debian and you know some of the other early distros.
Because all the code has been written from the ground up.
Maybe Sabayon since it is about the only user friendly version of Gentoo that exists on the market so it is as good as a self spun distro like this.
Yeah, possibly yeah.
Okay, my ratings eases deletion 9 out of 10 I don't give out 10 out of 10 unless you happen to very well implement the Kalamaris installer I am this stuffy that way Kalamaris is the ultimate installer in my book.
Hardware issues 9 out of 10 ease of finding help the community in web I told you why I'm giving it a 2 out of 10 not a zero I should probably give it as high as a 4.
But if you run into a problem and you don't understand it I did not get the idea that people liked to help and that's a big minus for me.
Ease of use 9 out of 10 as long as you've got everything you need it'll work plays nice with others 8 out of 10 stability 9 out of 10.
I guess it's as stable as anything maybe not Debian since there's since it is home spun and you don't know if they find something that they missed.
So that's the end of our reviews of what we did this month maybe we'll do better next month.
Maybe let us know what you think our next show will be recorded on May 29th 2019 visit our website at distro hop digest dot com and we haven't finished writing it yet so be patient with us you can follow us on me we discord and telegram at our midcast groups.
And right now that's about it.
You can email me at mossupmitcast.org Tony you're at.
I'm at th at mintcast.org or you can get it.
Did you mention the distro hop who's that Gmail.
Yes, no I didn't distro hoppers at gmail.com boy we need to rewrite our notes here.
No you've got it in the notes not in this section I don't.
If any of our listeners have suggestions for our music or transitions or which distros you'd like to see us try please contact us.
We can be contacted at distro hoppers digest.gmail.com there it is I didn't forget it.
I told you it's good to have a laugh just to say folks for those of you may know us from our experience on mintcast.
One of the mintcast listeners Jackie Moore has written to mintcast and we feel that we'd like to read this out.
Everyone that is a mintcast listener is aware of moss is difficulty of late.
I've started a go fund me to help moss go to self and this a link for the self page in that and that's in Charlotte in North Carolina.
To donate please go to grow moss at southeast linux fest.
This can be our best way of saying thank you for doing mintcast at distro and distro hoppers digest.
So there's a link to that page in that little bit of text that Jackie sent.
So everyone wants to help moss go to southeast linux fest and maybe record a few interviews and get to meet some of the other podcast guys that are going.
We all know that there's going to be quite a few podcasters attending southeast linux fest this year.
The whole destination linux crew will be there.
Yeah and I'm sure there will be a few others as well.
You'll get to meet some great people if you get there.
If you want to help moss get there head on over to that go fund me site and drop him a couple of books just to help him on his way.
Before we go we would like to thank all those who make this project possible starting with hacker public radio and they're allowing us to use their mobile server.
Archive.org for storing and helping to distribute this program audacity which we use for recording and editing the show.
All those who work on the teams which we are which are creating adapting and maintaining the linux distros we've reviewed this episode mid air machines creators of the song Streets of Sun to two
used as our music under created commons license and YouTube sound effects library for the aggressive motorcycle used for our transitions.
Thanks to linux tools for the kernel Richard Stolman for the GNU toolkit and for all those who've worked behind the scenes on free and open source labor software.
And thanks to the rest of the mint cast team for letting us use their channel for distribution of our first episode we shall be back next month.
Thank all of you for listening and we look forward to hearing your respond.
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