2017 Linux Distributions to Watch

The article I read is: The Best Linux Distros to Watch Out for in 2017

First distro in the article is Solus, and they go on to say that it's a new distribution that's not a derivative of some other distro and is based on the rolling-release model. While I haven't taken a close look at Solus (by perusing their website or utilising the Dell to test it), there are topics that come to mind.

First off is desktop environments and window managers, while the article doesn't specify about what desktop environments are included, it's usually best to support the ones that people can quickly become familiar with, ones that are lightweight, ones that are well known, and/or any combination of them. Over the time I've been toying around with Linux, I've used GNOME 2, GNOME 3, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, Unity, Openbox, and whatever Fedora uses. Taking a shot in the dark, I would think Solus probably has GNOME 3 and KDE as their "official" desktop environments, and then maybe LXDE and XFCE as their "supported" desktop environments. I could be wrong, but I'm not entirely in the mood to poke around Solus' website and find out for myself.

The next is the software repository... well, a couple things here, but let's just delve into it anyway. I'm assuming that they have some sort of GUI and/or CLI package manager specifically built for their repositories (for example: openSUSE has zypper, Fedora has yum, and so forth), and that it's not using one and/or based off of one from another distro (that would defeat the purpose of being a non-derivative, yes?). The other issue is with niche packages (the packages that have some sort of demand, but doesn't get prebuilt packages like popular packages). Does Solus walk in the same footsteps of most other distros by having their users manually compile these packages from source, or do they have something similar to the Arch User Repository?

Another is architecture support. This is always a major topic because it's not just x86_64 computers that Linux users install Linux on. Obviously I'm not saying that they need to support RISC, MIPS, and so forth, but they should at least support most of the popular ARM types if they want to "compete" with the other distros.

So while I do like the idea of a non-derived, rolling-release distro, I don't think it's for me. While Manjaro is a derivative of Arch, it is a very similar concept to Solus, and I prefer being able to utilise the AUR to automatically compile the not-popular-enough software that I use when it is updated (assuming someone didn't orphan it beforehand). Depending on the architecture support, it may become something worthwhile to me if it's something I can utilise on the Banana Pi, assuming it properly writes the boot data for kernel upgrades (with openSUSE Tumbleweed, I'm better off downloading the new image and setting the system back up than trying to utilise zypper to upgrade the kernel.

I do think that it should be great for most other users that want a rolling distro and not be using a derivative of some other distro.


Second up is Liri. While I've heard of the Papyrus project a bit, I can't say the same with Hawaii. I don't really have too much of an interest in it from the article itself, but I'll at least say that the desktop environment looks nice.


Next is LXLE. As a distro to revive old PCs, I'm somewhat interested in it, but in honesty, I'm more interested in PIXEL. I may give it and PIXEL a shot on the machines that are less powerful than Ziggy, but it will become a matter of which ends up being better.


Last in the article is KDE Neon. I've never been much of a fan of the KDE environment , since I had felt it to be awkward to use sometimes and a bit too much customisation in its appearance. While I do like making things nicely look the way I want things to look, the days of changing colours of every window aspect are long past me these days, and I just want a colour scheme I can grab from somewhere that fits what I'm looking for. There's a possibility that I may try it out to poke at KDE 5, but I highly doubt it.


None of ones in the article really struck me as well, since my needs are fairly met (with the old machines, ARM boards, and iBooks as the exception), but I will still keep my eyes peeled for something that seems would help me get closer to having my needs fully met.