I always appreciate your audibility of speech and the clarity of text and screenshots; I can assure you that it is worth the effort you must put in to it. Thanks.
Yes, but I wish the mouseovers over (for instance) the choice of windowing systems lasted longer so that I could actually read the mouseover text without having to stutter-step the video.
I am a Manjaro user, I think that there is a lot of good distros out there and it's up to the user and what feels good for them. The reason I like Manjaro is because you can access the Arch repos and pretty much have anything you want. It has come very handy for drivers that Ubuntu based distros don't carry any longer. All that said Great vid as always you make my Sunday mornings Thanks Chris.
the "downside" (from a production stability point of view) is that Arch is a rolling distro, more suited for users who want to be on the cutting edge of Linux development; so it's more easy for Arch to break itself (even without user intervention); if you want a stable production distro sitck to any debian based non-rolling distro (I say debian based because of the huge software repos they have)
@@jpegxguy again, from a stability and production point of view you dont want nightly builds; the only reason for some latest kernel could be some obscure hardware that needs a device driver only the last kernel provides; besides that, for a production computer on a daily basis (as opposed to just trying some distro from time to time) cutting edge rolling distro it's not worth the risk of breaking it
Agreed. Having something that's as easy to set up as Ubuntu or Debian and being able to modify and configure it as much as you want without it making a fuss is great. Having access to Arch repos, especially AUR, is very nice as well.
Large updates too frequently is a problem for me and the lack of partial updates doesn't help either. But i simply love manjaro kde and i can't seem to leave it completely.
68 comments already! And it's only 7 AM in Vancouver! I believe that anyone that doesn't like Windows or can't afford a new PC or a Mac can find safe harbor with free and powerful OS from a bevy of Linux systems. Alongside a sea of used PC's or large selection of new SBC from Amazon under $60. Having your channel as a guide anyone can get started with a PC to access the internet and run many useful application's for work or school. If gaming is your need then your in good company due to the fact Linux now offers some very popular PC games running on Linux. Thanks again for making Sunday morning a place to listen to stuff that makes people think! The future is here!
Christophe S Poor ice cubes. They don’t make a very good operating system or a safe cooling solution for any computer system. In fact I brought a few out to keep me company just this week and they simply disappeared.
Technically - these weren't cubes, so they have no say in this :D Another great video. Based on your preview, I started to use Zorin OS on my secondary machine.
One of the best rapid reviews of linux distros I have ever seen. I'm using an outdated version of mint. About ready to dump debian based distros since they don't keep up with ham radio apps. So this was a nice eye opener for me. Thank you :) 73 j
Transparency is useful if window space is limited and you want to type the contents of one window into another, such as when copy and paste isn't possible. It also looks quite futuristic, which I thought a futurist like you, Chris, would have enjoyed!
Excellent application of tongue-in-cheek mode. Always-wonderful-information mode works very well in this episode. Thank you, as always, for sense and sensibility.
I so remember my first thing in learning about computers was my mouse training useing Solitaire to use the controls of a mouse to catch and more things around and drop and how much clicking you had to do. GOOD OLD DAYS
I have used Mint quite a bit myself but recently I tried to install the latest version on an older laptop and it couldn't install, even the 32-bit version. I noticed on distrowatch that Mint's popularity is way down from what it used to be, maybe it's because it's not as compatible as it used to be.
Here we are. This thing notifies me about new videos late, so get difficult for me to be the first posting. Excellent Video Chris! Useful. Greeeeeeetings!
i got second because i just happened to open youtube 45 seconds after the video went live. Maybe next time you could spam F5 at 15:00 next sunday :) Notifications these days seem to be not sent. Even if i click the bell i just find stuff thats been live 2 days in my subscription tab.
Great video as always Chris, I'm glad you chose a Linux one this week - I always enjoy your Linux exposés! Regarding transparency in Terminals, I think it's just 'Cool' more than practical - there was a time when a lot of Linux fans tried to make their workstations look like something from a Hacking scene in a movie, and transparent visuals were just the thing then! Perhaps also proof that your system had the horsepower to run a complex thing like that with transparency too ... my opinion anyway :) Edit: On further thought, I think also it was because it was a good way to show that your system wasn't "Windoze" ;)
I can say ManjaroARM runs very well on Raspberry Pi 4 and avoids a ton of issues caused by Raspbian being a 32-bit OS running on a 64-bit platform. Very happy with the manjaro team for this release (conversely, the Arch Linux Pi 4 release was a major PITA to get working)
I am also excited to see this I used PCLinuxOS in 2009 as well myself so I know what it is like there was different versions of PCLinuxOS but some of those versions are discontinued
Been using PClinuxOS for 7 or 8 years now. I have tried lots of others, Mint, Ubuntu, SUSE, Sidux, Puppy etc but I always come back to PCLinuxOS. KDE is by far the best version to use.
I too have a computer I test and play around with various distros. The stability factor on many distros has greatly improved over the years. A lot of nice ideas and tweaks in most of them. At the end of the day, the most polished and user friendly, bar none, is Linux Mint Cinnamon. LM 19.2 is absolutely great. LM Cinnamon is the only place to go for new Linux users. After a year or so of LM, then go knock yourself out in Linux Land!
Bonjour Chris. Like yourself, I have been using Mint for a few years. Recently, I've noticed that Manjaro has taken over first place in the distribution ranking by a long shot. Since the Rpi 4, I am searching for a 64bit Linux OS for the Rpi and discovered Manjaro. It's a pre-release distribution and showing a lot of promise. I have also installed a X86 XFCE copy on my Lunix machine and was impressed with its speed and resource requirements. Looking forward to a clean and stable Rpi version. Thanks you.
Hello ! I love your videos (and not only the OS part) I guess it has been suggested (or maybe I missed it) but a good subject to treat could be the difference between OS and distribution, and distribution vs Desktop environnement which are often mistaken one with each other in common langage, sometime leading people to the wrong github/forum when trying to get help :) Anyway keep it up, I love your calm and relaxing tone !
I have never succeeded in installing Manjaro on a physical computer. There was always something broken in the installation process, and that made me think, how well tested this piece of software might be in general. So I gave it up for good.
I have Mint Cinnamon as my daily driver - my hardware set up (poor choices on my behalf) means a lot of distros struggle on my system. Mint was the first stable one and it just stayed. I do have a second (simpler) system where I have lots of distros installed for play/learning. Manjaro KDE is definitely one of my favourites. I have found that as long as I do TTY updates, the system simply doesn't break... so far anyway :) The other distro I really admire is MX Linux. Like Mint it is super reliable and just works... for me anyway. In MX-18 I installed the Cinnamon desktop from their Testing repos and it looks great and works well. Another one I really like is Fedora Cinnamon (currently writing this from Fedora Deepin lol). Mint/MX/Manjaro and Fedora are my personal favourites... I still struggle installing/setting up pure Debian... for what it's worth :)
I've been using PCLINUXOS for 10 years. Running this distro with the KDE Plasma 5 Desktop - it is THE BEST Linux Distro you can run on your PC today IMHO.
@@Texas_Radical When I started experimenting with Ubuntu I used LIVE CD's but they ran slow and crashed if pushed too hard....much better to install them
I agree with Chris on transparent backgrounds. I don't want my attention distracted by what may be beneath a window or Panel ("task bar"), etc. Any transparent backgrounds are immediately changed to solid black opaque. If I need to see anything beneath I'll simply move the window. Manjaro, PCLinuxOS, Mint are all nice, but my preference is MX Linux. I no longer look for a distribution (aka distro-hopping). Some general points that stick out are it's Debian based, Xfce, very stable and highly configurable with a very helpful forum-based community.
my thoughts on linux distros: everyone should start to experience with them. basically all kind of computers (i.e. very old computers, brand new single board computers, network servers, android devices -yes, android is based on linux-, vending machines etc...) are able to run or already running linux. even windows 10 has WSL, so you can run linux under windows. i agree it doesn't matter if it breaks down because of your inexperience, experimenting is fun.
The ice cubes were hilarious!!! I kind of like the PC Linux OS.... I need a linux distro which connects solidly and reliably to Windows network drives and folders.
Thanks for some Linux testing Chris after I mentioned it in a comment before. I'm using Peppermint now and I think you may want to give it a whirl if you already haven't . It's very nice indeed.
I think it is interesting that PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva. I ran Mandrake back in the day, the Mandriva, but quit both when they died. Now I just use cobbled together distributions to run Ham radio apps. Thank you for an interesting look at these.
Please keep going with the good content, I really like your videos. I love Manjaro, I'm using it for programming and everyday tasks and it is wonderful, almost never have errors here. Its easy to use, it supports snap, it works out of the box, lots of hardware compatibility and a TON of software available. I recommend this distro to a lot of people, its useful for almost everyone. But I feel the need to explain the exception case where I won't use Manjaro. As a lot of other Linux based Operating Systems, manjaro will always assume that you know what you are doing with the system, allowing you to enable and automatically download updates from the AUR, change services, system configurations, change the DE, remove any package and a large etc. So I will not encourage to install this on computers for absolute beginners.
@Ana Assburgian Which famously pushed out a version with malware in it, yes not as good as Mint. I mean malware is a problem for any OS but you don't expect it be bundled with the OS!
@@twmbarlwmstar It's not an unintentional malware, there are keyloggers and trackers embedded in Windows, allowing them to know where you are, who you are and exactly what you are doing. They call that a feature for more personal experience hahahaha
@@edwindimas560 Those ‘trackers’ you mention are called telemetry, and everyone uses it, including Google, Android, & You Tube which I see you are unconcerned using. The ‘keylogger’ arrived in a technical preview (so not for general release). Such as it is, it now lives, hardly hiding away, in Settings, go into Setting (W10) and; Then Privacy, go to the General section and Turn off 8Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future. While you’re there, examine the other options and consider if there’s anything else here that you may want to change. Clearly it isn’t malware, it is an openly and transparently accessible feature and one that can be turned on or off by the end user. Few years ago when my employer was about to make a notable IT investment in IT we sat in on a MS presentation as regards all this non-sense, remember we were enterprise (actually a charity, but), and there’s nothing sinister in any of it. In fact it turned out my employer was more sinister and when the MS Re-Seller put their foot in it as it turned out my employer was paying for third party ‘solutions’ to keep an eye on us as employees. There were some read faces at that meeting. Clearly the W10 telemetry didn’t/couldn’t spay on us as employees to the extent my employer wished. BUT NONE OF THAT IS MALWARE, IT IS OPENLY AND EASILY TURNED ON OR OFF, UNLIKE THE MINT MALWARE; The Mint hack was implemented by modifying a PHP script that was part of a WordPress installation used by the Mint project. Let’s be honest here, WordPress is a well-known security issue and yet the world’s most popular, or near most popular, Linux distro gets hacked via such a route- it doesn’t say to me ‘eye on the ball’. You can Google plenty more around that and several other issues. While I’m told Mint has changed it has a history of playing fast and loose, causing criticism to come from those responsible for the Linux kernel itself. For what I want from Linux Mint doesn’t provide the goods. Let me make this clear, the vector of transmition was Mint itself, if you downloaded Mint from a Mint server you got the Malware, unannounced- this wasn’t a feature it was a hack. Mint had been warned by both the Linux Kernel developers and Canonical that its security was piss-poor and had chosen to ignore such warnings.
Here's an idea for a vid: make a comparison of 32bit non-PAE distros on a real non-PAE cpu. I recently got tasked with this (helping a friend who had this intel centrino mobile cpu laptop) and i'd tell you thou there are several distros like PuppyLinux, LinuxLite etc, that claim to continue non-PAE support, in reality it took well over 4 hours to find a good distro that would turn this old winxp laptop to something resembling a sbc
That's an interesting and useful idea. We get told "good on old hardware" but the truth is something different. -- BTW of the Puppies my fave is MintPup (it's actually DebianDog, but I dump them all together).
I've been using various versions of Linux since around 2001. I've installed so many Linux versions on various computers over the years. I really liked Ubuntu and used it on my main desktop PC for years. Now I'm using Zorin but just before Zorin, I was using Manjaro. I like both but I like Zorin's interface better than Manjaro. Still haven't tried PCLinuxOS but I might try it out.
I've been enjoying Mint and ArcoLinux as dual daily drivers. I've switched to i3 wm in both, though I'm exploring Awesome and to a lesser extent Qtile. What won me over to tiling window managers is that floating windows DE's impose competition between all windows, while twm's function for cooperation in the workspace.
Good video. A while back, I was a big fan of PCLOS for it's polished look and feel. And I have tried the latest Manjaro with a host of well known to almost unheard of distros in between. But for my money, MX Linux takes the prize. IMHO, it's time for all these distro creators to come together and create the ultimate distro that will take the crown away from Windows. The Linux offering is so grandiose these days, that even the most seasoned aficionado will find it daunting to make a selection. Cheers.
Hello Chris, O yes, ice cubes are all envious, I can tell! 😆👌🏻 All frozen of envy. I like manjaro, and I think I'm going to put it in one of my VMs, looks very promising to test & experiment with.
ExplainingComputers Well, of course, there are plenty of ideas to play with. How about clustering few raspberry π into one super π? Nice project to try. Or encryption topic. Surely there is a ton of methods like RSA, twofish, aes, etc. 😁
Thank you again Chris for another fine video. I agree with the transparency point. Why would you want to see through to what's behind the curtain? Distracting to say the least. I have seen online training instructors do that and down grade them for it. I have used Manjaro which is a nice distro. Never tried PCLinuxOS and probably won't because I really do not care what my ice cubes think. My issue with Linux in general is that is has a bit of an identity crisis. Don't get me wrong, I have loved LInux ever since I found it with Ubuntu Dapper Drake. Why oh why so many different distros and desktop environments and package managers etc. etc. etc. If we want to kill off Wondows we need to get together and come up with a killer distro. The only thing worse than no choice is too much choice. Again, keep the great videos coming and I hope to watch again....very soon!
I run Manjaro on my netbook and it runs fine since I don't need it to do anything resource intensive. It's my spare programming machine for when I get inspired on the go.
For inexperienced users, I find Mint is still the best. However, after several years of Mint and before that Ubuntu, two years back I switched to Manjaro, and would never go back! I think Manjaro is great for the experienced user, who does not mind the occasional misstep!
I''m really glad you are looking at Manjaro, but personally I've come to dislike XFCE as an AMD user do to composting issues, and having to configure them, so I've moved over to Budgie as it's based on Gnome while not being cluttered, and lighter weight on system resources.
Maybe take a look at MX Linux, fantastic development team and one of the best communities for help and general resource. Maybe MX would be a good choice for the 'new to linux' user and being based on Debian it's stable and 'less' likely to break as with Arch based rolling distros. Just a thought ;0)
I recently switched to MX on my lappy. I had been running mint for a number of years on all my machines, I can honestly say MX will be replacing it on them all.
Interesting to hear your opinion on Manjaro, it’s the distro I’ve been pushing for a while to those asking about starting out with Linux. My attitude, because I am not a fan boi for any distro/OS, is these users will hang on to Windows, quite possibly for ever- but they can get their hands dirty with Manjaro, especially because of the great manual and really all the points you mention- for all the ‘here be dragons’ it’s actually ‘real world’. Like the online versions of Office which are very good, and despite what fan bois will scream, guarantee that the file you send will be able to be opened by the vast majority that will expect Office documents and won’t spend time on problematic files. You don’t convert people by sending them files that don’t format properly on their computer. And what better way to ease the adaptation from Windows by giving access to Office to all intents and purposes. People will then explore Linux further as their confidence improves. When you consider the fuss when MS changes the look and feel of some part of Windows you can imagine the culture shock of a jump from Windows to Linux so anything ‘real world’ that mitigates that is helpful. I like it, while I VM so I can switch easily from Windows and Linux it is nice to see some grown up thinking, especially now Microsoft are so important to Linux development. I have been genuinely impressed with what they’ve done integrating with Android. I don’t like Mint and nobody is going to change that.
Two very nice distros - I especially liked Manjaro! Have you ever looked at the Elementary distro? It's the only Linux distro that has a distinctly Mac-like look and feel, which might make more Mac users be interested in Linux.
When transparent windows became a thing on putty I was a programmer for an online multiplayer text based game. I used the transparent feature because I could be working on the game in the shell and still see everything going on in the game and based on the color of the text I could tell whether someone was sending me a private message or if I accidentally crashed the game.
Thank you for this walkthrough... Of these two, I would be interested in trying out PCLinuxOS. As a relative newbie, I'm a bit scared of breaking Manjaro.
@ThriftyAV I've only broken a Arch install a few (3 or 4) times. But you learn from breaking. You also learn from trying new flavors. I love how arch can look or "feel", but on a production machine that I depend on I run debian based distros, only because I know the structure better. But I've ran redhat, arch deb vanilla deb vars BSD. Point is it's good to be well rounded because you know what works for YOU.
I wouldn't worry, honestly. It isn't W10 levels of click and play but I think the fear is overplayed- then again I remember back as far as Windows 3.1 and Linux back in say 1996 so everything is an improvement on those.
@@twmbarlwmstar I agree most of my arch crashes was probably due to my habit of having flashy desktops and questionable 3rd party drivers lol I've never had one crash from an update, not saying it can't happen it just hasn't to me. I've never installed manjaro but I hear it's a simple task compared to a build from source.
@@Texas_Radical Put it this way, I'm no Linux expert and I managed to install it OK, which is my main test- that said compared to even a decade ago most distros pass this test.
Hi Christopher. Another great video. I've used Manjaro a few times. I like it a lot. Looks great, has up to date repo's, most things work that don't in other distro's. Only problem for me is Blender 2.80 has a major bug in it. That's the disadvantage of having bleeding edge software. I've transfered to only SBC's in the last weeks. The NanoPi M4 is my main desktop driver, and the Odroid N2 is used for video editing and rendering. The M4 has VPU/GPU drivers for Linux, and the new NVMe hat. It all works great, very silent and power efficient. My pc can't output more than 1080p display resolution. I've now got a 4K display, and my SBC's do a lot better with it. I'll reach 1 000 subs in the next hours/days. Only 507 x less than you :) I've got a lot of work to do I guess. Have a nice evening. Greetings, NicoD
Hi Nico, great to hear from you. Very cool that you have moved to SBCs only. Not that long from now, many of us will use small boards all of the time. You are blazing a trail! :) Good luck on the subs.
transparent backgrounds + blur are the best! Especially on window tilling manager like i3, If I had no transparent terminals I would forget that I even have a background.
Would be nice if you did stress tests, stability and how much memory the OS eats. Often do heavier multi tasking like render a video in the background while doing lighter things like surfing. Just tested a few distros but some was noticeably poorer at this or had some stability issues.
Hi Chris. Interesting about Manjaro, pity there isn't anything for my Cannon printer. Oh well maybe in the next release. Besides e-mail and doing notes for my LearnLinux Classes ( I hope ) my primary uses are watching videos, email, and copying discs so I can have full Legal backups of my software. Cheers.
I’ve been putting MX Linux onto old laptops for about a year. It’s streamlined, and still runs apps like Python whiteboard with no additional modification. I like Linux mint, but found that some apps were unstable or no longer ran on later versions. My only complaint is that setting screen resolution is a bit of an issue - something you’ve mentioned about several distros. I even got MX Linux to run on an Atomic Pi with no major issues.
There are a lot of good Linux distros, and a few excellent ones for the KDE desktop....MXLinux, Kaos, Manjaro....and I've used virtually all of them. I always come back to PCLinuxOS.
Thanks for the interesting video Chris. Have you ever considered doing a video on how internet security works? E.g. different anti-virus, firewall technology.
Good reviews. I've never used either of those distros before. And I agree with you on the transparent apps. 👎 (By the way, the thumbs down is for transparent apps! :)
How about the semi-retired, it's-not-really-a-distribution distribution: AVLinux? "Semi-retired" because the developer does not have the resources of time to support any active forum; "it's-not-really-a-distribution" because - technically - it's not a distribution. It's explained in the rather excellent documentation (getting close to 130 pages) and the 'ghost' of the forum. AVLinux is still available, and perhaps after some stings stop hurting, the forum might come back. Major advantages of AVLinux: the only available demo of Mixbus 5 (a short low buzz every 10 minutes or so to remind you it's a demo), Ardour, JACK Audio Connection Kit (you start it and use it with the 'Realtime' box checked and the correct Input Device and the correct Output Device choices - the only confusing parts to me on the JACK Settings section - (also, I use its Frame/Period at 256 and its Sample Rate of 48000 but that's pretty much it)), and several other useful devices. No 'Sudo' available - it's a little old-school but the developer likes doing it that way. And the use of 'Systemback' for installing AVLinux turns out to be a rather clever usage of a non-installer. If I had some extra cash (which I really don't at the moment) I would consider sending the developer, Glen MacArthur, either a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4G or a NVIDIA Jetson Nano and a suggestion of running AVLinux on one of them. Perhaps somebody will read this and consider this a strong hint. Strong software deserves support. And AVLinux is strong.
I know that you often refer to Arch as being "difficult", but please give it a go and review. (I've been using it as my daily driver for a few years, installation can be done rather more quickly than you seem to believe, and even as a rolling release - and I use the testing repos - it's rock solid).
I think arch gets the rap of being difficult to install, coming from a windows user never used linux point of view. I've installed arch and it was easy but for somebody that's never seen a terminal, compiling, then having to install X and a DE from command line, would probably send them running back to MS with their tail between their legs and a bad taste in their mouth.
I used a hard disk editing tool to manage partitions on a drive a few months ago. It came with an ultra light weight Debian live distro that included the utility for modifying a hard drive partition. I wrote "gparted live" on the flash drive I used. This obviously wasn't intended as an end user distribution, but I was impressed that it looked good and worked great (for it's purpose). It fit on a 512MB flash drive that was probably from the 2000's. It looked like a fully functional distro from my perspective. What distro's are available for even older stuff? I'm curious if there is anything capable of working on true vintage hardware that is also secure enough to bypass the sneaker-net defacto standard. It would be fun to build a breadboard monstrosity to surf the mutant grandchild of ARPAnet. Something like a 68k (00/10/ 6809), Z80, or 6502 based system would be awesome. Figuring out kernal details for a scratch configuration would be a heck of a learning experience too :-) -Jake
