Orca Flotta

Antergos 19.1: Super … with Problems *EDIT: Correctified Link*

Orca: Ohayo Kidz!

Blog Readers (all 3 or 4 of them): Hai Orcsi, wassup?

O: Do I have a wonderful blog story for you today …

BR: Oh, what is it, pray?

O: A surprise story you will love.

BR: Shut up bish … and tell us what the fuck it is!

O: Well, I thought, why not, just to change things up … why not reviewing another Linux distro and …

BR: *groan 😦

O: I do sense some negativity here. :/ But, hey, you dunno what kind of Linux it is today …

BR: Fuck the Shut up!

O: But … butbut, I don’t have any other stuff prepared for you today. 😦

BR mumble a bit among themselves and finally: Okayyyy. Just because you asked so nicely. But make it short, ya?

O: Okay! 🙂 Here we go …

Antergos 19.1: A Super Distro With Some Huge  Problems!

I never really liked Antergos, always regarded it as the mighty Manjaro’s weaker and fuglier little Bro/Sis. Where Manjaro devs did their best to make ArchLinux as n00b-friendly as possible, the Antergos crowd stayed decidedly more geeky and made their product not as accessible but left it on a more geeky platform, much closer to upstream Arch.

Looking back and from a nowdays perspective I can see the advantages of such an attempt. I’m as close to Arch on my beloved Namib GNU/Linux as well and love it so far. But as a n00bie both distros would have killed me. Got it? Downright killed me! So we and I should forever be grateful to PhilM and his Manjaro gang for their beginners’ friendly approach.

GitHub - NikoKrause/CinnVIIStarkMenu: [DEPRECATED REPO] The ...
Never knew Cinnamon had its own logo. I bet, as so many stuff in the Linuxverse, this ain’t like totally official.
Unfortunately they and their fanclub in the Manjaro forums are also quite a nasty bunch and don’t treat all the desktop flavours with the same kind of respect. And the new users with even less. Their most prominent victim being Mate desktop Environment, which is, as y’all well know, your editrix’s favourite flavour but criminally neglected by the devs and the community. This was the reason why I left Manjaro and went with Namib in the first place. My heart beats like a n00b heart. A decision I didn’t regret yet.

Review] Antergos Is More Than Just A Noob's Arch Linux - It's FOSS
Nope. A simplified Arch would be Manjaro.

So when I heard Antergos just released the latest snapshot 19.1 and it’s supposed to be goodygood, I didn’t hesitate but downloaded the ISO file and installed it on MiniMe … or shall we say I tried to install it … but failed. 😦 That was 4 days ago and I found out two things:

  1. The Antergos forum members are nicer and more helpful than the Manjaro crowd.
  2. The Antergos devs are a buncha slow-pokes. Because even 4 days later there is no sign of relieve. I wouldn’t wonder if they scrap the Mate desktop if they can’t find a solution soon.

And since I’m a rather nervous little squirrel I decided to install the other super easy desktop, the nice and modern Cinnamon. Apart from the installation process,  which is a bit more complex than that of Manjaro and Namib … and takes forfuknever! It all went great and once the install was done I was looking at this:

1
Whoa! That’s one empty screen, isn’t t? In Mint, Cinnamon’s home planet, it looks nicer and more busy, like in Start work immediately. Not so in Antergos.

The first encounter with the new Antergos/Cinnamon version was … not disapponting but a little bit sobering. Do I really scramble through the extended menu system before I can even get the desktop to a functional state? Fortunately this ain’t my first rodeo and so I am up and running in 10 minutes or so. But was this stick between the user’s leg really necessary? What I also noticed was a serious lack of pre-installed softwares. As most advanced users might welcome this decision to keep the base system nice and tidy, for new users this can mean another reason to turn their backs on Linux at large, and to never return. 😦

2
Modding the desktop theme a bit more to my personal taste, and activating my bloggo is quickly done. Also that function I always look for first thing: The screenshot tool. Menu looks nice and light now, right?

To be honest I’m a bit miffed at this point and seriously ponder deleting the whole system, formatting the PC and try it again … but with Xfce instead of the fashion whore Cinnamon. Let’s not forget Xfce is the DE of choice for the absolutely n00b-focused LinuxLite distro. Otoh why bother? It’s all running rather nicely on my oldest and slowest pice of computational crapola. I bet with a bit more thoughtwork and careful customization I could make this a very pretty and useful system again. Much better than everything I could ever achieve with Windows. 🙂

3
I don’t even try to install a SL Viewer from the AUR but go the good old way as we known it from Ubuntu and Debian. And …\o/ YAY! \o/ there I am inworld!

It’s gotta be said, Cin has become a lot better recently. It’s still a resource hog, which I guess is system inherent in its evil Gnome3 genes, but it’s running quite spunky now. So if you’re looking for something baby easy for your 80+ relatives. Any distro with the Cinnamon desktop comes highly recommended. I guarantee you’ll receive far less help calls than ever before.

lovinitgood_004
Antergos: i’m lovin’ it

Ok, errr *cough, I made this poster like 4 days ago, when I was still looking forward to the new hotness that is this latest version of Antergos Linux. And hey, it’s not bad … fuk it’s one of the bestest Linux distros on the planet! I only wished they’d make it a bit easier for blind n00bs. I can tell you quite honestly, had my gurujin set me up not with Manjaro but with Antergos, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I’d most probably potter around on Win 7, 8, 10, more or less unhappy about that shite but with a better blog, choc full with Second Life stories, and no stupid Linux shit.

But do we really want that?

 

31 comments

    • Traditionally I was a fan of Manjaro, Andreas, mostly because I was on Mnjaro since quite a while when Antergos entered the scene. But I’m not too fond of Manjo anymore since they are too far removed from upstream and they don’t care enough about Mate. Now I’m a fan of Namib … and as of today also in love with Antergos.
      What’s your fave?

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      • I was distrohoped between Antergos and Manjaro KDE mostly because i was afraid that i cannot handle Antergos and Arch. But i move on to Antergos KDE finaly and i see how it goes. The community of Antergos is smaller i think but it is very much friendlier. And the Antergos is a lot faster than the bloated Manjaro.

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        • Sorry i forgot to enter my name in the previous answer. The Namib OS that you are mentioning, is the firts time i hear it. How it is his KDE, if you know?

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          • Can’t say anything about any KDE, Andreas, since I don’t use it. Strictly a Gnome2 (Mate) gurly this one is. The Namib distro you can find here: https://www.namiblinux.org/
            I guess it’ll be stock standard Plasma 5.xx and you gotta customize it yourself. That’s how we roll in Linux, don’t we?

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            • Thanks for the info. I stick with Antergos since i find it very awsome distro. I am afraid for its stability and that maybe i am not capable of handle the Arch. Whats your opinon about that? Dont tell me to install Mint. I dontlike cinnamon

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              • Huh? Why are you afraid you can’t handle Arch? You’re on Antergos, which is like Namib and Manjaro also an ArchLinux distro. I guess the KDE will be more or less the same in all 3 of them.

                And Mint is so much more than Cinnamon. Of course it’s Cinnamon’s home distro and Cinnamon has become so much better and faster lately. But I don’t like it neither. Fortunately you can have Mint also with Mate and Xfce. But they stopped development for KDE, so you won’t like it anyway. And why install Mint when you’re already an Arch user and don’t need Mint no more? I only tell total n00bs to install Mint, since it’s the easiest and most complete Linux distro available. 😉

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                • I think because im a little insecure about myself. But you have right. I am not not totally noob, but i am not an expert, thats why. Abd everybody says that manjaro is friendlier compared to Antergos.

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                  • Andreas, I’m everything but an expert myself. But I almost always manage to get distros installed, check them out and delete them again when I don’t like them or am overwhelmed. Manjaro is supposed to be easier than Antergos since they put another layer of security and curation between you and Arch upstream. That’s why it updates a little later than most other Arch distros. And they give you the choice between stable, testing and bleeding edge update pathes. That’s kinda all to it. I guess.

                    The way it looks right now I’d say stay with Antergos, if you like it. As Arch users we know the risk of the system breaking down on us, it’s system imminent. And Manjaro gave me many problems as well. So it’s not a smoother ride than with the others.

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                    • Same here, i stay in Antergos. Like i said earlier is a a lot faster, less bloated and very much friendlier from Antergos. By the way, where are you from?

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    • It is indeed. Guess why we left expensive and hectic and rainy and cold Germany only to move down here to hippie central? =^.^=
      BTW, you don’t sound like a natural Anglisi neither, so where do you hail from?

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  5. I tested Solus and didn’t like it very much:
    https://orcaflotta.blog/2017/01/11/solus-mises-the-mark-again/
    https://orcaflotta.blog/2017/05/31/solus-with-mate-de/
    https://orcaflotta.blog/2017/06/11/baibai-solus-o/

    I know ArcoLinux and Arch Merge how it was known earlier. And I respect Eric Dubois for all the labour he put into this Arch based distro. As far as I remember I didn’t like it on my desktop. It’s too much focused on education and boring geeky stuff. But it’s about time I give it another try. Good idea and thx for your suggestion.

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  6. Damn….after an lts kernel update i have no network. A problem that i have faced before in the past. I think i am going back to Manjaro that everything works fine in my computer!!!

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    • Don’t restrict yourself to LTS kernels, always install the most recent one. If it doesn’t work you can always go back.

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        • Aha! See, it’s nothing to do with the drivers. Manjaro is just great with having it all sorted out for you, Nvidia and AMD and Intel and whatnot drivers.

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            • Honestly I don’t have enough experience with Antergos but I know in Manjaro you can switch between various kernels as you fancy. Manjaro is always a good choice, that’s why it’s the new #1 on DistroWatch. Antergos won’t install on my good machine anyway, so I’m trying now the brand new Namib 19.1 and see if I have more luck with that.

              Laterz

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                • Me too, Andreas, me too. And I’ve found one that just works. Is almost like Mint or something easy. frederic2ec released a new Namib 19.01 snapshot just earlier today and it installed right away without any problems.

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    • Exactly! From what I gather Namib is almost pure vanilla Arch, just like Antergos and all the others. In fact is Manjaro the least Arch-like of all the Arch-type distros.

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      • Honestly after all i dont care what is more Arch or less Arch. I want something to do my job. To be fast, to open webpages, to use Netflix or Kodi. I dont want to spent time learning geeaky stuff.

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        • Then my choice would be Mint. It’s the best distro with no problems whatsoever. I aĺways keep a USB stick with a Mint .ISO handy, so I have something for emergencies. That shit just works and works and works and …

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