First off, I’m finding that Debian 12 is actually pretty decent in it’s own right. With Spiral Linux, it almost looks like…
Spiral Linux is to Debian as EndeavourOS is to Arch.
Thoughts?
I’ll have to try it on vmware as i do like Debian 12. 
It can be but I have stopped so long distro hopping because I know that the perfect os doesn’t exist and distro hopping is a path that doesn’t lead to anything but I still sometimes install another os on dual boot just to test and mess etc.
Also, in my opinion, desktops should always have the latest stable software from the developers, it’s the same in windows.
Things do break but they can break in a stable distribution as well.
The only difference is it breaks with update or not, that’s what people has against rolling release that it breaks after update which happens very less, hasn’t happened to me for a long time.
You can break say debian or ubuntu with your own errors without update the same way you can arch or other rolling release distros.
Anyway, I think it might not be very related to your post but I just wanna share my thoughts.
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Oh I’m good with EndeavourOS, that’s on my “daily driver”. I do like to look around at other distros from time to time though. Spiral Linux could be a good option for my son though. He needs to be familiar with Debian and this would be easier to install and set up. (not that Debian 12 was that hard to install).
I’m not a Linux long-timer (2017) and I’ve only really had two distros for daily life including Endeavour (cameo Fedora)…but I did ‘audition’ my share–sometimes for months-- including dozens of smaller names like Spiral. Spiral was nice. But.
I can state unequivocally I have never understood, liked, appreciated, enjoyed, embraced or even tolerated anything Debian including any Ubu. The whole apt thing, terminology, sensibility, syntax, the many overkill GUI programs all accomplishing the same thing–it’s the built in redundancies I really loathe the most. Debian philosophy is like a serious allergy to me. All the rest I adapt to easily.
But everyone here feels that way about one aspect of Linux, no doubt. 
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I guess I am the odd person out. I tried spiral linux, even installed it for a time. I was not impressed enough with it to keep it. To me it is way too bloated and uses up too much system resources. There is a whole bunch of other distros out there that are arch, debian, and other based that surpass it in my opinion.
I tried spiral linux on vmware. I would rather have Debian 12 to be honest.
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Well, what do you think about security? A one man publishing distro? Are you afraid to enter your payment card number? Passwords?
No, I dont think so. Where is the Spiral Linux community?
If it would come to a comparison like this I would go for Linux Mint LMDE. LMDE 6 is based on debian 12 bookworm
Other than that, I am very happily using debian testing on my laptop.
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If you like outdated software, that seems like a good distro.
If anyone here tries it, do me a favour and post the output of:
gcc --version
Thanks!
It’s version 12.2.0-14 according to synaptic in the live system.
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$ gcc --version gcc (Debian 13.2.0-4) 13.2.0
I’m using Debian Testing on one of my machines
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Agree about the community. My comparison was more about it being pretty close to basic Debian with an easy installer and nicely set up for daily use “out of the box”.
…and LMDE is one of my favorite Debian based distros 
I posted about Spiral Linux just about the time when it first saw the light of the day though I have never tried it:
Sorry for the interjection!
Going back into the cave.
Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here.
Hmm, that would depend on whether EndeavourOS has its own package repos in addition to Arch? One of the core principles behind SpiralLinux is that I don’t want users’ installed systems to depend on me for maintenance, so there are no custom packages or SpiralLinux package repos, and the installed system is completely dependent on the upstream Debian project.
The problem I personally have with rolling releases is that I’m a busy person and I often have ongoing projects on my computer that have nothing to do with software development. So when I’m working on something I’m absolutely not going to spend time updating my system and possibly fixing new issues that come up. That would be fine to simply keep using the system without fetching updates, but sometimes I might need to install a new package that I need while I’m working on something, but if there has been a major new rolling update since the last time I updated then ProgramX might need a newer glib or Qt version, which means that I would have to update the entire OS just to install a single new package that I need, and probably reboot the system and lose all of the open windows I was working on. So I personally like using Debian Stable as a base for my needs. To each their own though.
I actually think apt is overrated too. My personal pet peeve is that it doesn’t have a concept of “vendor stickiness” (https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Vendor_change_update#Overview) and it requires APT pinning rules to make any manual package version changes not get reverted during the next apt upgrade. But then again, manually messing around with package versions and orchestrating a slew of intersecting package repos is something that I now personally prefer to avoid, as I just need to get work done on my computers with no drama or unexpected changes or manual interventions. So that’s why I created SpiralLinux, it allows me to quickly install a system that is completely dependent on Debian that preconfigures all of the stuff that I don’t like about vanilla Debian. I set it up to use Synaptic as the main recommended interface for managing packages, which in my opinion makes things a lot more enjoyable to use compared to the command line. And regarding the redundant programs, yes Debian is definitely guilty of that, whereas SpiralLinux ships a sane selection of one app per general-purpose category.
Hi there, can I ask bloated compared to what? Compared to vanilla Debian, SpiralLinux is considerably less bloated. Vanilla Debian installs large groups of software via “tasks”, which are usually incredibly bloated, plus the DEB packages specify other package “recommends” that also get automatically installed along with explicitly installed packages. Whereas SpiralLinux only pre-installs explicit lists of simple packages, not metapackages or tasks, and it disables auto-installation of recommended packages.
Hi there, SpiralLinux creator here. You bring up a very important point. If the security updates depended on me I wouldn’t use it myself. That’s why I made the entire system depend strictly on the resources of the upstream Debian project and their package infrastructure. Unlike many other small distros, SpiralLinux has no custom packages or repos of its own. So after installation to a user’s hard drive the system has absolutely no connection with me or the SpiralLinux project, and I don’t have root access to the system via package updates. As for what goes into SpiralLinux, you can inspect the recipe tarballs that I upload to Github and even build it yourself with Debian’s live-build tool.
Here: https://github.com/orgs/SpiralLinux/discussions
But I don’t go out of my way to build a community. I keep a low profile online, and I’ve noticed that other SpiralLinux users tend to be the sort that just want to use their computer to get work done, so they install it and don’t come back to interact, which is fine with me.
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OK, I didn’t mean it in a bad way and specifically at you. It’s more of a general problem.
More than the finished thing, I appreciate the publication of the procedure of how to create and set up something like this.
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Thank you for the feedback. Can’t do better than the developer themselves :). As I’ve posted elsewhere, my comparison between Spiral and Endeavour was mainly based upon both being very close to their base distro (Debian and Arch) but are easy to install and seem to be nicely set up “out of the box” for daily driver use.
Also, while EndeavourOS does have a small repository of useful tools (that you can use or not), it is similar to yours in that they rely heavily on the same repositories used by base Arch.
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No offense taken. Like I said, I agree with you in principle. I want a large proactive security team behind my OS, and I also want a decent mirror infrastructure, which a small niche distro that reinvents the wheel can’t provide.
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@GeckoLinux
Just started to give it a try.
I noticed that there were no output in the console view of Calamares, at the exception of one line that contain the version of Cala. Normal behavior ?