WTF Is Spiral Linux?
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2022
- Today I talk about Spiral Linux another Debian based distro.
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it's basically the "Anarchy Installer" of Debian. I like the idea, especially since it could theoretically continue working indefinitely if the project were to shut down unlike many other "Garage distros".
Hi there, greetings from the creator of this spin (can't say the name or YT deletes my comment). Thanks for the review. A few responses to some of your comments:
- 5:53 What this spin brings to the table isn't simply the fact that it uses Btrfs by default. Tons of other distros do too, and even in the vanilla Debian installer it's quite easy to select Btrfs. But almost all distros that use Btrfs configure it with just a few subvolumes, which aren't conducive to taking proper bootable snapshots. And what's more, very very few distros allow for booting those snapshots from the GRUB bootloader and/or easily rolling back to a snapshot with a simple command. It's technically possible with most distros but is ridiculously hard to configure and requires tons of research. That's what this spin does for users out of the box.
- 7:55 It should be noted that Synaptic is the primary package manager that the wiki documentation recommends for completely managing updates and even upgrades to Debian Testing or Unstable or the next Stable release completely through the GUI without the command line. Discover or Gnome Software are included in each of the editions mainly to provide a front end to Flatpak/Flathub.
- 8:37 The "Breeze" theme is selected because as you mention I don't include the full Numix global theme. The widgets are indeed Plasma, but in the "Colors" and "Plasma Style" sections it is using Numix. It should be noted that the font colors are pure black, which is something that many users like myself that spend all day in front of the computer absolutely require for good font legibility.
- 10:15 I wonder why you booted the 5.10 kernel when it uses 5.18 by default. That's another huge advantage of this spin compared to others based on Debian Stable, because the 5.10 kernel simply will not work on some very new hardware. So this spin includes the 5.18 kernel from Debian Backports by default to make it bootable on new hardware, and then users that prefer to stick with the older kernel can also use that.
- 13:05 Regarding wallpapers, I see no benefit in increasing the ISO size to include wallpapers when that is the first thing that most users change and which they usually just download from the internet. :-)
- 13:50 It should also be noted that this spin includes proper theming for Flatpaks out of the box, both for GTK and Qt apps, the latter of which is ***ridiculously*** hard to configure. This spin does all the hard work for you out of the box.
- 15:30 Believe it or not a huge amount of time was dedicated to changing the awful Debian defaults for each of the 7 desktop environments offered by this project, including this Plasma edition. You might want to take vanilla Debian for a spin to see the massive difference in its default config. I'd also like to mention that there are a number of notable bugs in Debian Stable (which do not get fixed during the lifecycle of the release per Debian policy to avoid introducing other new bugs) that this spin works around via config changes. They are the sort of bug that requires lots and lots of Googling and trial and error to work around, and although the fixes are a bit hackish in some cases they do solve significant problems in Debian.
Thanks again for the review, have a good one!
great post, fillas !
Is it safe to say SpiralLinux is to Debian what EndevourOS is to Arch? I will be giving this a try.
@@jason.r9273 Hi there! I'm not too familiar with EndeavourOS, but that sounds about right. It's worth mentioning that unlike many other small distros based on a big distro, SpiralL... does not have any of its own packages or repositories, so it remains completely dependent on Debian and not on me for the longevity of the system.
@@s.b.2088 Endeavour has an extra repo, it doesn't solely rely on the default arch one
thanks for your hard work its a fantastic distro
Hi Matt, nice one, but some small additions (although I don't use Spiral myself): it's made by the maker of Gecko; hence the inclusion of btrfs and snapper, borrowed from OpenSuse. Zram is enabled, just as flatpak (which you mentioned). Font rendering, proprietary codecs and more hw/print/powermgmnt support has been added. Plus you can easily enable Testing or Unstable. So I think it brings actually quite a lot to the table ;-)
It's a fantastic distro
I see people say this distribution (spin?) is useless but I think it does make a lot of sense. It makes Debian a distribution you can download easily and start using immediately after an install.
Basically it sorts out fonts, non-free repos, drivers, flatpack and BTRFS. I thinks it's great!
It makes Debian a distribution a first time user can use with no trouble. I would have no problem recommending my mother to use this.
I didn't say useless. I said it wasn't special.
@@TheLinuxCast No you Matt, people in the comments.
@@themroc8231 ah. I ignore those typea of comments.
@@TheLinuxCast Actually Matt I was thinking that what would be really nice for me was if this guy made with Slackware the same thing he did with Debian and Open Suse.
In many ways this is basically debian non-free. I've been using spiral and gecko exclusively for a long time now and they have been my most troublefree linux experience in years
PS run testing and all software is cutting edge
I think why I like the WTF reviews is because it gives a little spotlight on the smaller, "garage", distros that probably doesn't get alot of exposure except for maybe Distrowatch. Keep up the good work.
Exactly. Great that those little projects get their moment on stage as well 💪
I installed Spiral Linux easily and I am using it in one notebook for the last 2 months.... XFCE... works very very well.
I had this Calamaries problem scanning (it's running grub os-prober) for hours searching my large drives. I Googled it and found a solution. I placed a dummy file called /etc/lsb-release on each partition on my large disks that the installer could possibly access. Contents of the file in this format:
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=22.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jammy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS"
Then that part of the Calamares install went from hours to seconds. I just leave these files in place on all my mounted partitions. Might be worth a try.
Matt, SpiraLinux has only 1 dev. He also is the dev behind GeckoLinux...I've done both reviews on my channel and the dev has commented on my video...we have had quite a few conversations via email... first of he the dev btw, who is anonymous, like to call them a "spin" and not a distro, because he doesn't maintain packages. His whole goal on these "spins" is, he wanted them to be very easy to install and user friendly setup. I've talked to him and he is working on a a i3 version, and is also releasing a updated version soon. His GeckoLinux is,OpenSuse and available in both the Tumbleweed or Leap...
Super fast way of installing Debian , Replaced LMDE ,, Impressed .. 🙂
Finally we have a Junji Ito distro
Great that you give the small distros a moment of glory, too. 💪😎
Congrats for 20k
I think it is great that you can choose your Desktop Environment during installation. Also a good thing is that it also uses the Debian repo's. And it is not bloated like hell, so you don't have to uninstall a million programs. A good thing to know/learn is that before installing you need to unplug your external drives to speed up the proces ( obv. I did not know that it was convenient with the Calamares installer ).
I recently install SpiralLinux, Budgie DE, work like a charm.
Even after I upgraded to semirolling testing release.
This will be my next distro. You can switch to unstable branch and maybe get a newer KDE version. It's in their wiki. I've never used debian unstable and I was wondering can it be an alternative to arch at least at some point being with newer packages. Great videos btw. I starting watching your channel for quite some time now. ;-)
I strongly recommend using testing over unstable. Testing will also work as a rolling release except about every 3 years before a release, non-security updates will "freeze" for a couple of months.
The difference is that unstable WILL break. It is there to break. They will put things in the repos knowing perfectly well they will break. That's what unstable is there for.
Testing on the other hand has repos that are about as fresh as Ubuntu, and it is already an extremely stable environment, much more stable than Ubuntu in my experience.
I downloaded and used th KDE version too-- with NO issues at all-- and in fact it's on my VENTOY...(with about 26 others)
It's solid, easy and great for most
The TL;DR of SpiralLinux is that GeckoLinux creator took the time to create a stable distro based on something other than openSUSE Leap (since Leap days are likely numbered).
It's a great Distro BTW.
@Dio Titus , YT won't let me post any links here (and there's nothing official yet anyway), but I meant exactly what you are thinking.
Presumably static Leap will be some kind of immutable/container kind system, rumors from reddit - 15.5 could be last this branch and change to something called ALP.
I have installed Spiral Linux 2 or 3 times - installs well and runs nicely.
You said it has old packages but if it only uses the Debian repos that means it is perfectly safe to upgrade it to testing.
You should try living a month or two with Debian testing, I can promise you'll be amazed at how good it is.
wallpaper backgroup is very similar with Gecko Linux, or is it the same developer? even the webpage the same
It's the same developer yes.
That feature where it shows all the windows they call it "present windows", as in preh-zint. By default it's set up so when you mouse the upper left corner it pops up, but I didn't like that so I rebound it to WinKey+W. I hardly ever use it, and I've found that if I turn off the compositor it doesn't even work, but I suppose it can come in handy.
Can you next please do a review (or WTF is ....) of NixOS? It's a declarative OS based off the standalone nix package manager. You write all your system configurations down in a config file, it's very interesting how it does things!
Just wanted them.say i like the backstory about the person behind the spiral linux and gecko. But somebody best me to it :) i think it's interesting enough and you have a lot of de to choose from. I like cinnamon a lot.
I had this back when it first came out- and it did NOT work right---- BUT the new version is PERFECT. In fact, I'm using it NOW-- and LOVE IT.. it's FAST, easy, powerful, STABLE and works GREAT FOR ME....
I'm a 66 year old hillbilly and I had NO issues installing this-- ran great too-- no issues AT ALL. it's SIMPLIFIED--- unbloated- but very functional- and FAST.... and Debian based for the stability, as well as availability of packages. I'd be running that now- but I'm on SPARKY-- which is similar but had a fee more tools I use..
I installed it a week ago on an HP Slimline 270. So far it's been fine. I installed the Cinnamon desktop just because I use Linux Mint Cinnamon on my other Linux box. When I installed it I missed the fact that is based on Debian. No matter, it is doing fine. I'm going to keep using it for a while at least.
I liked the questions and the answers. I think Debian is easy to install. Debian and Arch, these days, are much easier to install, than the versions from around 10 years ago.
A used computer with Windows 10 on it is just $100.00. Fork over another $60.00 and you can get a custom interface and a firewall.
So strange you have this install issue. I recently installed EndeavourOS and the whole thing installed in less than 10 minutes. I've also (somewhat) recently tried out a few other distros with calamares and had no issues. I have 6 drives (all ext4) directly connected that add up to about 100tb.
Holy cr*p, how did you achieve that? Which drives are you using? And what are you collecting in those?
Would you call yourself a data hoarder? And either way, what do you keep on those drives?
Calamares really should have an option to skip scanning hard drives and proceed with installation.
1,000,000% agree. OR just let me point it towards a hard drive for it to scan. It doesn't need to know where everything is.
Perhaps I'm explaining to eskimo's how to melt ice, but ...
If you use an m.2 drive (probably using a PCI-e to m.2 adapter card) for installing temp distros, you'd be able to disable SATA in BIOS when doing these test installs. Not only would you circumvent some of this calamares issue, but you'd protect your data from the occasional wonky installers that wipe all drives due to some error (it's been years since that happened to me, but I'm sure will happen again if you "try out" enough distros).
E2A: Part of why I suggest this, beyond ease/laziness is that SATA cables aren't engineered for repeated connections and disconnections. I have an SSD where the plastic L covering the pins broke off (forcing the use of the same [very short] cable) before one of the pins ended up breaking off too, rendering the drive unusable (without significant repair).
The ssd I have in my computer for this just stays there, so that's not a big problem. My issue is the external hard drives and os-prober. Finding a way to not have calamares and other installers scan those is what I need to do.
I have installed the XFCE flavour easily and quickly (I have a HP Prodesk 600 G1 SFF) . I have put it to my taste with very little work, so I am quite happy. For me this new distro is a vety good new since I don't like ubuntu and its tactics. What I like is a distro like Mint: serious, with a lot of common sense and good taste and this one looks similar. If ubuntu dissapears it will be very good for the linux community. We don't need them.
That Cinnamon icon looks like it's been stolen from a vape juice store.
Why do people say Debian is hard to install? The only thing I saw that could be confusing is installing grub.
Matt, Spiral Linux is to Debian what Salix is to Slackware. Why not do a 'WTF is Salix' video?! A new version was just released about a week or two ago. Thanks
7:03 pre installed apps not matter. just apt get what eva want. apt purge what eva you not want, it download it from debian LOL
IF that's true then we don't need any distros other than Debian, Arch and Red Hat. After all, anything based on those are simply installing pre-installed apps.
GVM.
Maybe it is time to buy a used laptop, so you can keep harddrives, and install whitout the scanning.
For beginners who want Debian, this distro seems really good. Debian has its finesses when it comes to setting up things and not everyone is comfortable doing every little thing by themselves. I wouldn't use it though, since I'm used to doing the setup myself.
Is it a secure boot issue that prevented your live install?
No. Os prober.
"Debian's best for older hardware" Matt says in this video. So, someone please define what "older hardware" means, 3 years?, 5 years?, 10 years?, 15 years?, 20 years?, What? Thanks
Crystal Linux is something you could take a look at. It is in Beta for the moment but it looks really promising (based on Arch)
Linux is awesome, but all these different distros are a turn off. I am tired of distro hopping. After 15 years of testing and installing, I am at the point of just sticking with Linux Mint and Mabox.
fyi there is no reason for this to exist you can already install debian with calamares from a live environment and it is from debian
Just like other "X" based distros have no reason to exist, yet, here we are
@@PhayzinOut it has btrfs out of the box tho, that's something
@@ddman7867 Yeah, I was just pointing out how there's always gonna be one person that thinks there's no reason something shouldn't exist, even if it comes with a different file system 🤷
@@PhayzinOut yeah true. It's got flathub out of the box too. People overlook these things and tbh I don't blame them cause I think btrfs + flathub + easy installation still isn't enough to warrant a new distro but others might think that's enough and that's fine
If you're having trouble installing this-- there is something wrong-- this is the EASIEST one I ever saw-- and is DESIGNED to be used by inexperienced users. All that mess is something in YOUR system-- not the software.
Why are you having so many problems with installing and using different distros? What type of hardware are you using? I have a nvidia system with a Broadcom wireless card and I dont encounter the same level of issues you claim to have. I’m starting to smell some bs on your claims.
It's running os-prober on 34TB of harddrive space. It's not that theyf ail it's that they take 4 hours to get to the install portion.
@@TheLinuxCast I’m surprised that I didn’t get any notification on the replies. So is your main issue just calamares scanning your drives? Why not just move them to a NAS so you won’t have to deal with that problem again? Sometimes the perception you create in some of your videos is that the Linux installers are buggy. I know that’s not your intention and you did say it’s unique to your setup but some folks who are on the fence about switching might find it off putting.
@Dio Titus I have tried a variety of distros and the only major issue I encountered was fedora kde live usb constantly crashing (lack of nvidia driver). My Broadcom wireless card doesn’t make things easier as well but that’s to be expected.
Why NOT create an universal Linux Operating System that would unify Linux and its distros to overcome all of these disorganization and lack of coordination?
Microsoft does it with single Operating System, why NOT linux?
first of all, linux isn't about having your choices made for you, because everyone has different use cases. Linux doesn't assume that it knows whats best for you. Secondly, there ARE distros that are a one-size-fits-all operating system like Ubuntu for example. If you don't want to choose anything, just use ubuntu and call it a day. What kind of organisation and coordination do you expect from thousands of different people making distros that suit them best that don't even know each other's existence much less make any sort of communication between each other? It's like saying why can't all car manufacturers just stop making different brands, models and makes and just make one car that everyone can use and be happy with? Why is picking a car so disorganised and uncoordinated? You see what I'm saying here?
@@ddman7867
But is it good idea to be disorganized or lack of coordination between people who create their own distros and later abandoning them?
What's the point?
Why not everyone work together to make the best distro for anyone to use WITHOUT a drama?
@@SkyFly19853 again, that's already being done. You're asking for Ubuntu when it already exists. As for all the crappy distros everyone else makes, it's not your business nor is it mine what other people do with their time and talent. I wouldn't stop someone from making an indie videogame and tell them to contribute in making the top AAA games better. It's their business what they wanna spend their time on. Why is that such a bad thing? If you don't like it, simply don't use it.
@@ddman7867
I wasn't even talking about making video games since I also make one, but when it comes to operating system, the more distros, the more problem it creates than it solves.
People from each distro just hating each other's distro...
so much division...
So much waste...
@@SkyFly19853 well I'm sorry to tell you but the world isn't operating at 100% efficiency. Far from it
There are better reviewers available on UA-cam such as Tyler Tech
Never claimed to be the best. But glad to know you think I suck at this
Yes. Same here. Buggy installer...maybe. Why they not using old good debian installer? It is mysterious to me.