{"id":1389,"date":"2013-12-22T08:37:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T13:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/?p=1389"},"modified":"2013-12-22T08:37:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T13:37:12","slug":"bye-bye-buntu-hello-solyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/desktop-env\/bye-bye-buntu-hello-solyd","title":{"rendered":"Bye Bye Buntu, hello Solyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve used Ubuntu for quite a long time now. I would say since 12.04 on my current laptop (Dell Inspiron 15z that I mentioned in another post. Yes, the one with Windows 8 and Secure-boot UEFI). Seemed to be the “good\/easy” choice to get up and running with a dual-boot for this newfangled secure-boot BIOS since Ubuntu has “signed kernels” since 12.04 version. Setting this up, was not simple, yet not too complicated once I found advice on the net that actually worked.<\/p>\n

After upgrading from 12.10 to 13.04, things simply were not the same. The machine would not boot in secure mode. No big deal, but after a while it makes one think… what changed? what’s different? and the next thought… do i really want to be forced to press and hold the F12 key each and every time I want to boot into Linux properly. The answer to that last part was an obvious ‘no’.<\/p>\n

So, it was time for a change of distro. The criteria was kind of simple: Stable (well I think everyone wants stable..) and if possible, a rolling style release, so I wouldn’t have to worry about `upgrades in-place` doing silly things, or having to do fresh installs. Under ‘normal’ circumstances I prefer fresh installs, but also prefer it when the machine itself is easy-to-control. Which I would say is somewhere between the days of Fedora Core 2 (when I was learning Linux) and this new age of Secure-boot BIOS. I feel like this machine’s BIOS is not under my full control (A P.I.T.A if you ask me).<\/p>\n

The Linux Action show podcast reviews Distros every now and then, and one week, they mentioned “SolydXK<\/a>“. The review goes back a few months, so I had forgotten most of the review. It was a positive one, which made me consider trying it. I wanted a KDE environment (as recently) I’ve been using KDE, even in Ubuntu (google for the 3-5 commands it takes to migrate Ubuntu to Kubuntu) if you like Ubuntu but have grown a bit tired of Unity and older GNOME.<\/p>\n

My choices came down to Kubuntu 13.10 and SolydK (the KDE version of Solyd). So far, I’m really liking Solydk. There are few weird things, such as flickering splash screen on boot – which occurs whether I have the USB external keyboard\/mouse plugged in or not. Also, I’m liking that SolydXK is a rolling distribution. Given that Linux offers choice, I can always switch back if necessary to Kubuntu. But for now… Solyd is working really nice. Really responsive on this computer and gives a great KDE Desktop where stuff basically works as expected in other KDE-based distros. <\/p>\n

Some other qualities of Solyd are that it was not derived, but “forked” i believe from Linux Mint (read more here<\/a>), which I have used and is quite nice. So that puts in the ‘based-on-debian’ category of distros. Solyd is based on Debian testing and uses Synaptic Package Manager. Even though software stores\/managers are all the rage these days, I still (from time to time) will use the GUI Synaptic or the more common apt-get install command at the terminal.<\/p>\n

If you’re in a similar spot with a relatively new computer (2 yrs old or so) and want a good KDE experience (rolling release) you do (thank goodness) have many great choices. Some of you still reading might be screaming “Arch, Archlinux has all this!” and you’re correct, Arch is well-known for its rolling style. However, it’s not easy or quick to set up and I wanted to get going quick so I can try the distro out. <\/p>\n

I recommend SolydK for KDE fans out there, (no shopping lens or other spying apps that send data – as far as I know). And I’m thinking of putting SolydX (the XFCE version) on a friend’s computer (right now the machine runs Puppy Linux from CD-rom).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve used Ubuntu for quite a long time now. I would say since 12.04 on my current laptop (Dell Inspiron 15z that I mentioned in another post. Yes, the one with Windows 8 and Secure-boot UEFI). Seemed to be the “good\/easy” choice to get up and running with a dual-boot for this newfangled secure-boot BIOS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15,56,24],"tags":[29,8,21,68,62],"class_list":["post-1389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desktop-env","category-distros","category-linux-discussion","category-freedom-choice","tag-freedom","tag-gnome","tag-install","tag-kubuntu","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1396,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions\/1396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}