I feel like this Distro is well on its way to making it as my daily, however it still needs some polish before it gets there IMHO.
Here are my thoughts :
As a KDE Plasma user, I would love it if in Calamares when we select KDE, we have more package selection choice, like, the full suite of kde-applications with possibility to check/uncheck what is required instead of having to add to user pkg file, which, by the way was a great idea…
Finally, it would be great if you added Kvantum to installer as it’s an essential part of Plasma dunno why they don’t make it so… As well as pamac-aur to replace Discover…
One last question, is there a way we can add our user pkg on iso so we don’t have to add packages to it every time we install OS?
Yes. In the installer, at $HOME, there’s a file user_pkglist.txt where you can write the names of additional packages you want to install. Please look at the file, there are some more instructions.
Or, if you already have a file (in the internet) with additional package names, there’s another way: re-start the Welcome app from terminal:
eos-welcome --pkglist=URL
where URL is an internet address to a file (similar to the above), containing just names of additional packages.
The purpose of Calamares is to give you a working system without much effort. You can easily install whatever you need using pacman, after you get the basic install working.
God no, that’s bloat. Again, you can easily install it yourself. Better than me having to uninstall it…
You can easily save a list of all installed packages on your system and install them at any point.
Agree so much with Kvantum. Been using KDE in some form for over 20 years, and in all the time that Kvantum’s existed, have never installed it other than to see that it was utterly unnecessary.
You already have all of that, just in a slightly different way than you imagine.
You don’t have to type much (it is a terminal-centric distro, after all), you can save your package list as a text file and just install everything on it automatically. It does not have to be on the ISO, just upload it somewhere (git, perhaps?) and have it ready when you need it.
Kvantum is in the repos, KDE applications are in the repos… Everything you need is there (and if not, you have the AUR).
I was told that Discover was omitted on purpose from KDE. What GUI store is there instead? Why not offer pamac as an option? It’s on AUR so cannot add to pkglist.txt as it only pulls repo packages as mentioned… Or am I wrong?
I’m not sure why it isn’t included, but it’s a terminal-centric distribution after all sudo pacman -S packagekit-qt5 discover should do it, then you can install your backends of choice for Discover.
You can feed a list of AUR packages to yay and install them automatically, but that’s generally a bad idea. You should check the PKGBUILD file of everything you install from the AUR, just to be safe.
I don’t use discover or pamac or anything like that, it’s all bloat ware to me. I just use terminal or if I’m really hunting, I’ll use arch package search or the aur online. Nothing else needed.
We started out of the ashes from another Arch-based distro called Antergos. When the devs of that distro threw in the towel, they left a somewhat shocked community behind.
Antergos had those choices in their ISO, but it was also those amount of choices that became their end.
A part of that community left and went on to Arcolinux, Manjaro and to another distro that was born out of Antergos, RebornOS.
The last distro is offering those choices and an out of the box experience.
The last chunk of the former Antergos community wanted a distro without too much bloat, so they could customize it, without going through a full Arch install or uninstalling things they don’t need. We stepped in and tried to create that with the community in mind and that’s why we have those “small amount of choices” on the ISO.
Also, adding more features means creating more work for us and we are maintaining this project with the help of the community and to preserve the fun in the project.
After all, we’re doing this for the fun of it, it shouldn’t be a burden. I hope I’ve explained our philosophy to you well and I hope you will enjoy your endeavour and perhaps help us out in the future, if you want.
I appreciate the hard work. I know that this is time consuming as I have begun my journey into the Linux world thinking I was only going to have my fun then get back to the “real world” being Windows. Not knowing I would be stuck there leaving Windows behind.
I have since written a multitude of utility scripts some good some broken… So believe me I know. I was only asking those questions simply because a lot of the people am trying to get to switch to Linux ask the same question, in this vast world of Linux are there any Distros that offer choices? I am on a journey to collect all the ones that do.
Yes I agree EndeavourOS is a clean bloat free Distro which is good. Am not against that at all…
For newbies, Mint is great. Fedora is also pretty awesome. You can install either Mint or Fedora on your grandma’s laptop and chances are good she’ll be happy with it, without having to know anything about computers…
Just get rid of those sleep commands, they do nothing except waste time. Other than that, it’s okay. Though, I’ve already told you about mktemp command, look into it, it’s a much better way to make temporary files and directories.
On EndeavourOS, you don’t have to manually build paru, just use yay to install it.
Minty fresh… Mint was my first ever Distro. Funny but I found it dull and not exciting… Wanted more… More to play with. But yeah I get ya… There’s a Distro for everyone.
For me it’s Vanilla Arch with KDE… Using ArchFi… I have 5 PCs 3 of which are running 1 in Church and one with my Dad… The 3 I use are all on Linux…
Yes, Arch (and EndeavourOS) requires a special mindset: a tinkerer, someone who is interested in getting to know his or her operating system. It’s not a difficult system to maintain at home, but it does require this mindset.
And yes, Mint is a bit boring, but that’s what many people want out of their operating system: to just work and not be too exciting.
It’s great that you’re learning to write scripts, that will be very useful to you in the long run.
That is why am an Arch user. I am a tinkerer… I never thought I would end up writing scripts… But that’s what am doing… Am loving it. Each working script is like a milestone for me…
Just get rid of those sleep commands, they do nothing except waste time. Other than that, it’s okay. Though, I’ve already told you about mktemp command, look into it, it’s a much better way to make temporary files and directories.
I need them as I am slow reader. Can’t keep up if I don’t use them.
On EndeavourOS, you don’t have to manually build paru, just use yay to install it.
Yeah I know but that script was written for Vanilla Arch… Will adapt it for whatever Distro I use… As for mktemp command still looking into it and how to use it. Will fix script soon as I know more… Thanks
I can say that I learned more linux and terminal in the past 6 months I used this distro plus reading this forum and Arch wiki than in the past 6 years I used Ubuntu based distros. Don’t get me wrong Ubuntu and Mint are nice distros. But EOS opened a whole new side of linux I did not explore before.
