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I used to love Debian, never thought I would ditch it until about a year ago, but I've been very unhappy with it. Many programs have annoying bugs that never get fixed, I google the problems and find people complaining about the same problems years ago which still haven't been fixed although the original software HAS been fixed just not updated in the Debian current repository, application versions are updated way too seldom or just not at all, and some may even be skipped altogether between releases, which means years.
I know the next release probably isn't too far away and a lot of stuff will have been upgraded with it, but how much and for how long? I don't care. I've had enough. I want to change. Debian is just not really good anymore. I hate upgrading the OS and if I have to do it, then I'll take the occasion to go try something else and hopefully not have to worry anymore.
I want another distro that uses .deb, I really need to use .deb, and I want to use lean and mean Openbox/LXDE. I don't want any unnecessary baggage. Absolutely no compulsory KDE, Gnome or XFCE, I don't care if I can boot into another DE, I don't want those clunkers taking up space on my system and I don't want to have to bother with removing them. I want just Openbox and whatever I choose to install.
I know many people like Mint, but it's always seemed bloated for my taste. They discontinued LXDE and I don't want Cinnamon. I don't want those impositions. I want something basic that is Debian compatible, updated more often and can grow with my needs.
What is closest to Debian/LXDE nowadays?
Note: forget Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not Debian. The past belongs in the past.
AFAICT, everything using .deb is debian-based, or debian- and *buntu-based. Thus, what you're asking for amounts to an oxymoron. You make it even harder by asking for LXDE, since it's developers morphed it into LXQt.
I know Tiny Core or at least I used to many years ago. It was so tiny it was almost useless.
Do you use AntiX? Are you familiar with it?
They say:
Quote:
antiX can be used as a rolling release distro
and
Quote:
If you wish you can enable the Debian testing or unstable repositories and live on the bleeding-edge! For those that prefer stability, keep to the Debian Stable/stretch repositories.
Uh, what? Willy-nilly? But the stable and testing repositories aren't compatible. How does that work exactly?
Distribution: Mainly Devuan with some Tiny Core, Fatdog, Haiku, & BSD thrown in.
Posts: 5,426
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucmove
I know Tiny Core or at least I used to many years ago. It was so tiny it was almost useless.
Do you use AntiX? Are you familiar with it?
They say:.... But the stable and testing repositories aren't compatible. How does that work exactly?
Tiny Core can be set up & used just like any other distro, I used to use it on an old laptop, main advantage, once loaded to memory, works fast. Check out CorePlus version.
I've been using AntiX since the demise of #! (chrunchbang linux), (8~10 years now, I guess), it's a good distro that does everything that I need, (& more).
When you install it, you choose which repos that you want to use, it's not advised to mix them. I've used 'testing' without bother, but I don't need the latest software, so I tend to just use 'stable'.
Tiny Core can be set up & used just like any other distro
Tiny Core is, like most distros, a walled garden. Their repository is too small. Too likely not to have what I want at any given time. And no one provides TCZ packages except themselves. I had a taste of that kind of isolation with Puppy Linux and it's not fun. That is one of the reasons I am so attached to Debian.
MX Linux maybe? I think it's based on Debian - kind of a weird xfce4 set up but I have heard it's pretty solid. Tested it a couple of times and didn't have any issues but I preferred vanilla Debian so never ran MX for more than a couple of hours.
Devuan, most likely. The most recent stable release is decent and there's a new one on the horizon. Also pretty much all the older Debian community has moved to the Devuan forums [which you may or may not view as a good thing].
When I used Devuan for a couple of weeks I could detect no discernible difference between it and Debian. It feels exactly the same [to me, anyway], just without systemd.
Last edited by Lysander666; 05-08-2019 at 09:26 AM.
Distribution: Mainly Devuan with some Tiny Core, Fatdog, Haiku, & BSD thrown in.
Posts: 5,426
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucmove
Tiny Core is, like most distros, a walled garden. Their repository is too small. Too likely not to have what I want at any given time. And no one provides TCZ packages except themselves. I had a taste of that kind of isolation with Puppy Linux and it's not fun. That is one of the reasons I am so attached to Debian.
Have you checked out dCore, it uses Debian packages.
MX is the sister distro to AntiX, it uses XFCE DE, instead of WMs that are used in AntiX.
(Both are Debian Based.)
I knew they were related, didn't care for either really, mainly because of the script magic that handles switching WMs. Wasn't bad, I just prefer 1 WM at a time. Kind of OCD-ish about that...
When I used Devuan for a couple of weeks I could detect no discernible difference between it and Debian. It feels exactly the same [to me, anyway], just without systemd.
I am not a developer or system maintainer. Does the absence of systemd make any noticeable difference to ordinary users?
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