This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3776 from Monday 23 January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, a Linux distro review.
It is hosted by Bookworm and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
This summary is a Linux distro review.
Hello Hacker Public Radio Bookworm again, checking in this time with a Linux review.
This one is 0 Linux, X-E-R-O Linux, don't remember where I stumbled across it or where I found it,
but it is available from their web page, I'll include a link in the show notes.
First, I sold it on an older Macintosh that I have.
It's an Intel Mac.
Mostly due to two factors.
One, I had the hardware that wasn't doing anything.
One of the reviews I saw about it, how did the Mac like interface from a modified KDE plasma base,
as a plasma user, how could I resist?
Previously installed for the door at 36 on the Mac,
and it was a random hardware issue at boot time.
I wanted to see if the issue persisted on the arch base,
and since I'd never used arch before, this is a perfect test case.
The install, powered on the Mac, and if you have a Mac keyboard,
you can press and hold the option key to get a list of boot options.
I received boot into Futura or to the EFI partition on my USB drive with the 0 Linux installer.
Selected the EFI USB device and was presented with four menu options, zero Linux installer,
R EFI boot options, Mac OS and reboot, booting into the installer.
The GUI was providing me with first with the...
In the GUI installer, I was first given the option to install several fixes for virtual environments,
including QEMU and VMware.
Next I was greeted literally with a welcome screen from claiming,
welcome fellow Linux nerds on quote,
I'm at home.
After selecting a language time zone, keyboard layouts,
the disk partitioning options are presented,
and in much less confusing verbiage than Futura I might add,
and you are given a choice of what swap partition type to use.
Swap no hibernate, swap with hibernate, and swap to file.
And a choice of file systems to use, including XFS, ButterFS and DXT4.
I chose the XFS default since this was just a toy,
not a high availability or high capacity server, no need for ButterFS.
And if I am happy with the state of the system,
I may well use it as a media server or a flex server,
and in that case I'll need a larger file capacity of XFS.
Also available are the file system encryption checkbox
and manual partition options.
Under user account set up,
it detected and offered to set the machine name as Mac Pro 5-1,
which is fine, it'll help me idea the device on my network
versus a unique name I would then have to come up with,
and would inevitably contain MAC in the name.
So why not just go with the default this time.
The page also included checkboxes to validate password strengths,
forcing strong passwords and auto login option,
and an option to quote reuse user password as route password.
Obviously for pseudo purposes this would not be recommended,
but in my situation I did choose it and choose also
to use the strong password validation.
Next screen verifies all the selections,
and when it is next is clicked, a pop-up wants you to confirm again
that you want to make the changes that you've selected.
Insert jeopardy music for the install time.
A couple of months back now at this point,
I don't remember how long it took.
It wasn't an extraordinary long time.
There's a decent but not extensive list of pre-installed apps
that it has to install.
During the install there is a button to observe what actually is going on
in the background partitioning, file copies, compiles etc.
I think I'll watch that for a few minutes,
then I got tired of trying to keep up with the scroll.
After the installation it was complete at first boot and login.
I can see a message on the boot screen
referring to the same hardware issue I saw in Fedora eight.
Something about CPU zero bank eight.
There might be a hardware issue.
There's after all a 10 year old note,
an older Intel Mac.
Step one is, as always, update the system.
And see,
121 packages are ready for update at the date of install,
including the newest kernel at that time of 5.19.
Next stop, install proprietary drivers, open source drivers,
and non-pre-installed apps.
All this went very smoothly.
As the distra maintainers had put lots of thought and work into it
and to say, I'm impressed is an understatement so far.
There's also a handy-dandy quote post-all system
config button.
And all my goodness does it display all kinds of information.
About the hardware software, pre-installed applications.
You name it.
It comes up in that list.
It includes such goodies.
As Yak-Wake.
Avanti browser, KDE connect.
They're also pre-installed.
The only thing I really needed was a decent office suite.
I chose lever office of course.
The zero Linux Hello app.
Now, when you first log in, pop up screen
is quite a setup.
Offering all the tools you need to get up and running.
With an app browser, very similar to discovered
that's used by Fedora.
Finding lever office was very easy.
Take a checkbox.
Confirm a few dependencies.
Need to be installed.
Click install and prove done.
I was able to seamlessly browse the internet.
I was able to watch a full-length Jackie Chan movie on Netflix
with no issues or buffering.
Leber office CalCop opened.
It opened in about five seconds or so.
Only marginally slower than my regular i7 desktop PC
running Fedora 35.
So all in all, I got to say it was a pretty stable, pretty solid,
pretty clean process.
I've had no issues with it for over three months now.
I'm not using it as a daily driver,
but it does stay on when I'm home.
I will use it for streaming videos from educational sites
or things that I'm trying to do training on.
Trying to do additional learning.
I've had no issues at all.
I'm using a 32 inch insignia.
TV as the monitor.
And had no problems configuring sound to use the TVs
internal speakers.
So sound is not an issue.
They actual hardware itself.
It's a 2010 Mac Pro 5.1 with the dual Intel Zion 124 processors
running at 2.5 gigahertz and 32 gigahertz of RAM
with an ATI radion 5770 video card.
I picked it up at a local college surplus auction
with no hard drive.
And it does have four pre-determined slots for hard drives
that click directly into the motherboard.
No additional cabling needed.
I installed a 500 gig spinning rust hard drive
for the operating system.
And an additional 500 gig for additional storage.
As far as older hardware is concerned,
it's still fairly quiet and crash-free.
I think the longest up time I've gotten so far is about
7 to 10 days somewhere in that neighborhood.
Oh, and the only reason that shot now is because I had to do it manually
because I was leaving didn't want to leave the PC on unattended.
No, that's all I've got for today.
If you like the Mac aesthetic,
but you want to use open source software,
I think this is a great choice.
The operating system itself is aerolinics,
as I've stated before, looks like the guys behind it
or just guy or gal or whoever is behind it
is doing a fantastic job of really thinking out the details.
Everything from the old known throwback menu across the top.
That's where you have your start buttons
and your app menu and time and things of that nature
with the Mac like menu bar at the bottom
with the bouncing icons for your running apps and things of that nature.
I'll put a screenshot with the link to the zero Linux website
and some pictures, screenshots that I've taken on the device.
If you notice, yes, that is the MST3K guys
in the bottom right corner of my screen where they belong.
If you have any questions, please comment in the show notes.
I hope you enjoy.
Thank you, have a good day.
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