… exactly like all the others.

Hello lovers of feisty Linux distros with that extra bit of special sauce, namely distros that stem from the Arch family.

Yesterday I installed and had a short look and standard test of RebornOS. And to say it right away, it was good, it was all that one expects from an Archy distro … and more.

First let me clear up one thing: When I say “like all the others” I didn’t really mean it all-inclusive, but Reborn is in its conception comparable with Archman and Endeavour in so far as it comes with a whole bunch of desktop environments and window managers included in a single installation file (ISO). And in that regard Reborn beats the older competitors since it gives us more choice right from the get go. Also it uses the Cnchi installer which seems to install the distro a bit faster than the other’s Calamares installer.

Apart from that, once installed the differences between Archman, Endeavour and Reborn are minimal. But let’s get into it and see how it goes:

Okay, the conclusion: I like RebornOS. Like it a lot indeed. Of course I like it, it’s an Arch-y Linux distro that comes – among others – with my personal favourite Mate desktop. Plus a whole shitload of other DEs and WMs, more than any other distro on the planet. Arch or not, Reborn beats them all.

I also loved the self-service shop where we could assemble our most beloved software already before installation. Too bad they ruined this cool gimmick by having millions of warez already preinstalled anyway. So for a minimalist like me there is lots of labour waiting when I wanna get rid of all that shit. I hate it when distros are not consistent. Minimal or Full House distro, both make sense for their specific clientéle. But when distro maintainers don’t know what they want, when they cannot decide if their Linux is supposed to be fish or chicken, that irks me.

I can’t say much about Reborn’s speediness. I found it a bit more tardy than its older siblings but that might be the hardware I tested it on. Gaga’s 4th gen  i3 cannot compete with GagaMore’s 6th gen i5. Law of evolution I assume. 😉

Reborn has a rather huge team of motivated devs, and a lot of social presence in Discord, forum, IRC, Twitter, reddit and facebook, which is always good. Look, they even have their own YouTube channel! Weirdly enough I couldn’t find reborn on DistroWatch. 😮 Maybe it’s too young to be deemed worthy of being entered? (Naaw, it’s first mentioned in 2017) A shame, since Reborn is a really big thing, and many many hardly functional hobby projects of your granny’s coffeeklatsch group are actually represented in DW. Hmm…

And the rest? Arch is a stable, versatile and super usable Linux base, we use it with desktops of our chosing. And it’s the desktops that make all the difference. I love to work in Mate, so I rate a distro, any distro, that uses Mate rather high. And if you’re a fan of any other desktop, Xfce, Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, Budgie, LXQt, GNOME, deepin, or when you prefer tiling window managers … whatever, you’ll love it, too!

Or maybe you’ll just like it, like I did. Because you’ve found your perfect system already, the perfect pairing of base and desktop that fits you like a glove.

So, after this rather long explainification this is my final conclusion:

There is lots to like about RebornOS. For many users it might even be the perfect love affair! Maybe there’s even a possible marriage in your future?