Orca Flotta

GeckoLinux: Much Cooler Than Expected

1
Freshly installed Gecko’s Mate DE looks like every other distro’s Mate

Maybe I’ve reported about my previous experiences – mostly failures – with openSUSE and its friendlier spin-off GeckoLinux, which always ended in personal catastrophes. But now GeckoLinux devs have released a new version, which …

is a Linux spin based on the openSUSE distribution, with a focus on polish and out-of-the-box usability on the desktop. It is available in Static (based on openSUSE Leap) and Rolling (based on openSUSE Tumbleweed) editions.

2
Language installer (I guess it’s the first update) makes no problems

And since I’ve heard some positive reports about the lizard’s friendly offspring I decided to give it a quick lookover. And what can I tell you apart from Gecko is fukn great! At least until now, so after kinda 5 minutes of total usage time. 😉

3
Typical for Mate, the Control Center let’s you tweak a lot of system settings …

GeckoLinux ticks all the most important boxes a Linux distro has to fulfill to be acknowledged as a distro fit for Orca’s consideration:

  • super easy installation (it comes with the genius Calamares installer)
  • friendly, easy to navigate website
  • ample desktop environments to choose from: Cinnamon, Xfce, Gnome, KDE Plasma, Mate, Budgie, LXQt and a probably minimalistic “barebones” flavour gives you a lot of choice
  • a Static (long term support) and a Rolling edition
4
… lots more than any other Gnome-ish distribution

And what shall I tell you, quite contrary to all my earlier attempts within the SuSE ecosystem, the installation went fast and without any problems. I chose my beloved Mate as DE and it appeared in all its usual humble glory with all its tweakable features and, most important, it’s very spunky and fast.

5
As always it’s just a small 2 minutes operation to turn the standard installation into an Orcalicious desktop with yummy wallpapers

I was really surprised by how friendly and easy GeckoLinux was to install and operate. All my earlier attempts always ended with 😮 and 😦 and I’d given up on ever getting anything SuSE, openSUSE or Gecko to run on any of my computerz. But hey! the Gecko devs obviously have a heart for dumb-as-shit housewifes. Great! 🙂

6
Why o why did they have to use evil Google as standard search engine? Don’t they know better? Do they have no social conscience? At least they are giving us an animated *Gecko on the search bar =^.^=

Okay, I know I’m as always much too fast and should take more time and more thorough testing before giving you my verdict. So I won’t do it. Haha. But since SuSE is one of the oldest Linux distributions and is time-honoured proven as a stable workhorse in professional and hobby use, I guess we don’t have to discuss its value as a system. Gecko, as a spin off openSUSE is as trustworthy as its commercial mothership since they are both running on the same robust base code. Add to that the speediness on my weakling Intel i3 micro-machine and the comforts of the Mate desktop and we might have a winner at our hands!

editions
Everybody should be able to find their favourite desktop flavour in this generously equipped grab bag

Will I use GeckoLinux? No, probably not. I’m happy with, and know my way around in, the ArchLinux ecosystem, while I’d have to learn all the new commands for SuSE. So far I didn’t need to invoke the Terminal yet, but believe me, in case I’d need to I’d be like totally helpless. That’s why I stick with my Namib Gnu/Linux. But Gecko is a hot candidate for a possible replacement as my secondary/emergency system. So far it’s not only easier to install than Mint but also quite a bit faster in operation. Cool beans. =^.^=

* You noticed it too, right? Datz no gekko, dat be a chameleon. 🙂

 

14 comments

    • Hi there, GeckoLinux creator here. Thanks a lot for the review! I’m glad it worked for you this time. Please feel free to file a bug report on the GeckoLinux Github bug tracker if anything goes south on you.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Oh heyyy! Wow, what an honour. You’re already the third dev commenting (and obviously reading) on my humble blog. Ikey of Solus, Frederic of Namib and now you. I wonder how you guys always manage to stumble over this bloggy. It’s not even a real Linux blog, you know? It’s supposed to be mainly about Second Life, the virtual world platform.

        Anyhoo, as I said I never got your mothership distro installed, also not a KDE fan at all. So I always gave up and saved myself the trubbel. But what you’ve done with the good old SuSE is phenomenal. Excuse me for sticking with my Arch-based distro for now but from now on I’ll always keep a recent Gecko handy for emergencies. So your system will replace LMDE now officially.

        And at this time I have it running on one of my desktops and on my netbook, where I’ll keep it for realz.

        It’s that good! 🙂

        Like

        Reply

        • One more thing: My husband is the KDE fan in our household but he can’t stand anything Plasma 5.xx. Can’t you guys make a flavour with the much nicer and more pleasing Plasma 4 DE? You’d have a fan and supporter for life. 🙂

          LØL

          Like

          Reply

          • Hi orcaflotta, thanks for the reply! Really glad to hear you’re finding GeckoLinux useful, even as a secondary or backup system. It’s always good to have options.

            I just stumbled across your blog while narcissistically Googling the name of my distro. 😛

            Regarding Plasma 5.x, it’s interesting that you and your husband don’t like it. I was actually in the same boat, but then I realized that it was the default configuration that most distros shipped that drove me crazy. So I set up my almost perfect personal Plasma 5 config and shipped it with GeckoLinux. 🙂 But even if you still don’t like it you have 5 other desktops to chose from with GeckoLinux, in *Rolling* and *Static* variants, so there’s something for everyone.

            Cheers.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply

            • Yeah, and I’m a real Mate fan since years, so I know what I want and am happy with it. It’s just hubby who’s never satisfied with all the modern KDE Plasmas.

              Like

              Reply

    • I see no reason why Gecko shouldn’t be able to run SL/Firestorm. I have no idea how to install the shit but it should also work directly from the Firestorm folder, like I always do in Mint. How good or shabby it’ll look on your screen is a question of your graphics card entirely. Yes, Intel’s onboard graphics are indeed weak-ass. Apart from my one relatively good graphics card all my other machines are running on Intel onboard graphics but I can log in with all machines … just not sailing or visiting a packed dance club or so.

      So I guess Gecko is a worthy candidate. I won’t recommend it wholeheartedly, like Mint or Namib since I didn’t have spent enough time on Gecko yet. So please don’t hate me should you crash and burn.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s