Manjaro is a totally bi-polar distro. Utterly genius and silly at the same time. It does some things so well, it offers so much innovation, it has some rather unique features you don't get to see elsewhere, and then it spoils it with some visual inconsistencies, glitches with its bundled apps and very cumbersome package management. No AUR, fine, but what other options do common users have? How can ordinary non-CLI folks enjoy the likes of Chrome or Skype or whatnot on their boxen? There's a lot of progress - just read my Manjaro diaries over the years - but it's still all fragile balance, and the distro still needs to fully figure out its identity and direction.

The nonfree aspect of the live session should be highlighted. All in all, I'm pleased with the easy availability of everyday conveniences, the installer was neat, and there's a lot of original goodness in Manjaro, more than most other distros. But the network support needs some rework, there should be better identification or auto-configuration with hardware issues on so-called unfriendly platform, and the package management feels neglected. All in all, this is a very promising system. Manjaro 18.0.4 Illyria deserves something like 8/10, and I'll be following up with some customization tricks, plus maybe a review of another edition. That would be all for this rather lengthy review.

Today we are looking at Sparky 4.11 LXDE. It comes with the LXDE desktop environment which Lubuntu previously used, but it is no longer in development, the last release was two years ago but it is great to still have a supported Linux Distro which is using it.

The main feature, of this release, is that it changed the repository from Debian Stable to Old-Stable, so still, Debian 9 which tells me that they won't keep it going for long, but it will still be supported for 2 years, like Debian 9.

It uses about 300 MB of ram when idling and Linux Kernel 4.9 which is dated but playing with the distro, the apps can be a bit slow to open up the first time but perfectly workable and for old machines or any machine for which you want to use all the system resources for your work and the minimum for your system.

Direct/video: Sparky Linux 4.11 LXDE Run Through

Today we are looking at a newish distro that is quickly improving and according to many podcasts and blogs it might become one of the major Linux distros soon as it has many interesting features, but it isn't perfect yet.

There are many pros to look at, firstly it is Intel's Linux distro, so it has great financial backing and support. Ikey Doherty, the guy who started Solus OS is part of the developing team of Clear Linux, as we all know he is no longer part of Solus, but he is a great developer for Clear Linux.

It is an independently based distro, so not build on one of the major distros like Debian or Arch. It uses the Gnome Desktop Environment and it uses Gnome Software Center 3.30 as Software Store. It uses Gnome 3.32 and Linux Kernel 5.1 and uses about 1.1GB of ram when idling.

The only downside of it is, that the installer is still a work in progress and a person can only install it on real hardware, not in Virtual Machines, that is the desktop version, so I made this video by using the live session, rest assured that my host system is Linux as well, so I would really like to see that they will enable us to install it on VirtualBox as well. The ISO comes in a compressed package which a person needs to extract to use the ISO.

Video/direct: Clear Linux OS with Gnome 3.32 Run Throughclear os lms

So I’ve recently completed the review of XIDU Philpad 2-in-1 hybrid with Windows 10. The laptop features a 13.3″ touchscreen and support stylus, and I was intrigued whether those would work in Ubuntu 18.04. So I flash the Ubuntu 18.04.2 Desktop ISO to a flash drive and installed Ubuntu to another USB flash drive to give it a try with persistent storage. Note that while it’s OK for testing, running Ubuntu 18.04 from a USB flash drive is very slow, so it’s not recommended.

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Some are clearly the mouse pointer and touchpad, while the “Goodix” one is for the capacitive touchscreen. So I tried SINO WEALTH USB Composite Device which shows support for Pressure, and selected “Screen” mode, before clicking Save. But using the drawing tools in Gimp, only allows me to draw points with the stylus, not continuous lines, and the size of the points is fixed no matter how lightly or strongly I press on the display. Playing with “Dynamics Pressure Opacity” in the Airbrush settings did not yield any results.

In summary, most features work, except the cameras that fail completely out of the box, and the touchscreen may need some fiddling with the settings depending on the program you are using. I’m unclear whether it’s possible to use the stylus at this stage.