GeckoLinux is a newcomer. I mean very new. Its first release was last week. You shouldn’t view this distro as a wailing infant, however. It’s based on openSuse Leap 42.1 and was leapfrogged into near-instant maturity from Suse Studio, a Web application for building and testing software applications in a Web browser.
Hi everyone, Sam here. :) This is a very good writeup of the reasons and motivations behind the creation of GeckoLinux. Many thanks for the coverage!
Huh, funny that you apparently visited and download GeckoLinux right at the time when I was rebuilding the ISOs, which is why they weren't available. I also had quickly fixed the mixup between the Cinnamon and Budgie downloads, but right during that timeframe you apparently downloaded it. :) Anyway thanks for keeping going despite the initial hiccup.
The gnome-screenshot app freezing with a white screen is unfortunately a known issue. (github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/4677) The workaround is to use the PrtSc (print screen) button, which will save a screenshot to your ~/Pictures directory. You could also install the "xfce4-screenshooter" package for similar functionality without the bugs. Maybe I should include it by default.
I also recently added a Gnome edition to the repertoire, with Mate, KDE, and LXQT soon to follow.
Thanks again! As the openSUSE project always says, "have a lot of fun!"
Open Suse seems like a great choice for business environments, however it's not beginner friendly and a bit complicated, more then regular linux distors out there, so I am happy to hear about Gecko Linux project.
I'm not sure if dissecting general cinnamon setting is the right call, but I guess will have to try it out to judge it myself. I generally like minimalism but hate when minimalism is pretext to cut functionality. In my book minimalism means: uncluttered, clean, elegant, modern and intuitive yet still maintaining full functionality - that's a hard standard and most simply fail at it (e.g. gnome: too little options, nautilius as the least useful file manager out there, gnome is modern but not intuitive in general...), because minimalism becomes a vail for simplistic and opionless environment.
I'm curious about LXQT edition, because LXQT is a simple yet solid and enough flexible DE for work environments and due its friendliness on resources, it's the best choice at work, because work computers aren't always the newest one and yet they have to be quick.
I tested in Virtual Box few live images quickly and here are my thoughts:
Cinnamon: it looks great, everything seems to work, settings panel looks complete. However there is only one wallpaper to choose by default (not a problem but still feels unpolished) and with 1,7 GB of RAM I had over 800 MB usage on the start (cinnamon alone over 300 MB) which is weird. Even plasma takes in such conditions a little above 400MB.
Mate: Looks also great and with more wallpaper choice feels more worked out, however when changing default theme it all went south and errors and crashing began.
XFCE: Works ok, but seems too close to ugly vanilla xfce. Doesn't know enough this DE to judge.
LXQT: Had high hopes for this one but was very disappointed. Mate terminal in LXQT? Admin passwords have to be given in xterm window (ugly) which sometimes stays and cannot be shut. There is no main LXQT settings panel and I cannot find setting where compositor can be changed.
Didn't test plasma or gnome because I know and love those DE most but don't plan them to use on business computer (too heavy).
To sum up:
Cinnamon and Mate seems to be most worked up but still major feel is that all releases needs little more love. It doesn't feel mature yet, more like a beta because many details are missing or inconsistent, like:
- each DE has different wallpaper choice, there is not enough own theming (but that's probably due the open suse heritage that fails on this short too)
- environment inconsistent choices like mate terminal in lxqt
- some environment elements are not complete (eg. lqxt)
- strongly disappointed in language versions: unlike any other live distros, after choosing own language, system is still in English after boot, and after installing language and setting it from LDM menu, it's still not fully translated and folder names stay English.
- I believe I saw somewhere some clippboard pastes that were not mine (some creator's rest overs?).
All those were found in a very quick and brief look in VM.
This all makes Gecko Linux still very young. It needs more work to feel fully professional and safe to put in a working environment. Will be checking this project later, because it has lot of potential thou. The main idea is great :D but still needs more work or manpower behind.
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GeckoLinux: This Baby Knows What It's Doing
Posted by: Jack M. Germain December 11, 2015 03:51 PMGeckoLinux is a newcomer. I mean very new. Its first release was last week. You shouldn’t view this distro as a wailing infant, however. It’s based on openSuse Leap 42.1 and was leapfrogged into near-instant maturity from Suse Studio, a Web application for building and testing software applications in a Web browser.
Huh, funny that you apparently visited and download GeckoLinux right at the time when I was rebuilding the ISOs, which is why they weren't available. I also had quickly fixed the mixup between the Cinnamon and Budgie downloads, but right during that timeframe you apparently downloaded it. :) Anyway thanks for keeping going despite the initial hiccup.
The gnome-screenshot app freezing with a white screen is unfortunately a known issue. (github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/4677) The workaround is to use the PrtSc (print screen) button, which will save a screenshot to your ~/Pictures directory. You could also install the "xfce4-screenshooter" package for similar functionality without the bugs. Maybe I should include it by default.
I also recently added a Gnome edition to the repertoire, with Mate, KDE, and LXQT soon to follow.
Thanks again! As the openSUSE project always says, "have a lot of fun!"
I'm not sure if dissecting general cinnamon setting is the right call, but I guess will have to try it out to judge it myself. I generally like minimalism but hate when minimalism is pretext to cut functionality. In my book minimalism means: uncluttered, clean, elegant, modern and intuitive yet still maintaining full functionality - that's a hard standard and most simply fail at it (e.g. gnome: too little options, nautilius as the least useful file manager out there, gnome is modern but not intuitive in general...), because minimalism becomes a vail for simplistic and opionless environment.
I'm curious about LXQT edition, because LXQT is a simple yet solid and enough flexible DE for work environments and due its friendliness on resources, it's the best choice at work, because work computers aren't always the newest one and yet they have to be quick.
Cinnamon: it looks great, everything seems to work, settings panel looks complete. However there is only one wallpaper to choose by default (not a problem but still feels unpolished) and with 1,7 GB of RAM I had over 800 MB usage on the start (cinnamon alone over 300 MB) which is weird. Even plasma takes in such conditions a little above 400MB.
Mate: Looks also great and with more wallpaper choice feels more worked out, however when changing default theme it all went south and errors and crashing began.
XFCE: Works ok, but seems too close to ugly vanilla xfce. Doesn't know enough this DE to judge.
LXQT: Had high hopes for this one but was very disappointed. Mate terminal in LXQT? Admin passwords have to be given in xterm window (ugly) which sometimes stays and cannot be shut. There is no main LXQT settings panel and I cannot find setting where compositor can be changed.
Didn't test plasma or gnome because I know and love those DE most but don't plan them to use on business computer (too heavy).
To sum up:
Cinnamon and Mate seems to be most worked up but still major feel is that all releases needs little more love. It doesn't feel mature yet, more like a beta because many details are missing or inconsistent, like:
- each DE has different wallpaper choice, there is not enough own theming (but that's probably due the open suse heritage that fails on this short too)
- environment inconsistent choices like mate terminal in lxqt
- some environment elements are not complete (eg. lqxt)
- strongly disappointed in language versions: unlike any other live distros, after choosing own language, system is still in English after boot, and after installing language and setting it from LDM menu, it's still not fully translated and folder names stay English.
- I believe I saw somewhere some clippboard pastes that were not mine (some creator's rest overs?).
All those were found in a very quick and brief look in VM.
This all makes Gecko Linux still very young. It needs more work to feel fully professional and safe to put in a working environment. Will be checking this project later, because it has lot of potential thou. The main idea is great :D but still needs more work or manpower behind.