- This topic has 27 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated Feb 10-8:20 pm by BobC.
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ModdIt
As unable to finde the Distrowatch grumbles thread, will put here.
One local school class wrote and sent distrowatch reviews from own devices at home, not all use linux daily but all have installed, setup and ran or run varios Linux distros
and flavours. We are calling different desktops and base systems flavours as reflecting individual taste. AntiX and MX are among the flavours still in use.
The action came when a girl told others that she used linux exclusively and had install and manage it herself. From total disbelief came motion..The reviews described what a 14 to 17 year old experienced, liked and disliked on his or her distro over several months. Many pupils also had comments regarding Forums, some of which were an awful experience for new users. Some stuck with one distro others changed several times.
IMHO 33 kids with varied hardware can give valuable insights. We all learned a lot and rescued some older computers during the action. I found it a very positive experience and well worth the time invested.
MOST of the reviews submitted to DW were never published, some even submitted more than once because kids thought maybe something went wrong with sending.
All reviews submitted were in english language. Improving reading and writing english was one aim along with group interaction team and confidence building. I love kids saying dont worry, we can manage that.
Some reviews on DW discussed were so trollig brainless and useless that we all wondered how the hell they ever reached the public. Some just cut and paste crap from earlier often other distro threads. Or voting down other distroś than the one submitters are fanboys of.
DW is highly regarded it seems, from last school years pupils at a German school 33 think it is pretty useless as an opinion builder.
As a positive some reviews do point out real problems.
Side Note:
Some members not only of this forum point out spelling mistakes or mock not just DW posters, English is a major language but many linux users devs and supporters have another mother language, some will suffer dyslexia. Sure they all could use a spell checker, mine do not work perfectly. btw. The one on my Xiaomi phone is run my a malevolent KI and mangles correct spelling in to unintelligable useless crap.
Linux for me is not just an OS it is also a globe spanning group trying to communicate and work together, please be tolerant and considerate.
manyroads
und die Kinder haben doch recht. 😉 Your English is fine, genau so gut wie mein Deutsch.
Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - http://many-roads.com
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
dwm & i3wm ~Reg. Linux User #449130
20 Jan 2021 ~ "End of an Error"Prize for guessing who wrote this. Hopefully the guy stops wasting time of antiX forum members with his modifications, he called bugs, and wishes.
NOT FROM MODDIT OR KIDS,
FULL QUOTE: DISTROWATCH REVIEWRating: 4
Date: 2022-02-04
Votes: 1
With Antix, if you value your time, you should clearly stay away from this distro. In 19.3 – 19.4 it was fine, but its developers moved way too far away from Devuan or any other systemd – free distro. And it has created bug, antix – specific bugs. With Linux, you should firstly Google, check some Linux forums and only then post your questions. But with Antix you’ll find that the majority of recipes isn’t working and upgrading packages from debian backports (at least in 19.5) with quickly break your system: you won’t be able to launch any web-browsers except for seamonkey. Another pain in the ass was pulseaudio. I’ve used it in many distros. e.g. Arch. Slackware. Ubuntu. But here it simply doesn’t work. It loads, it kinda starts, but you need to switch profiles manually every time you start something, that works with audio, like audacious/mpv. Without that, you’ll get silence after boot. And i did everything that was mentioned in forum posts, config files. Still no sound. I’ve switch (temporarily) to Arch. Install bare-bones ICEWM + pulse and everything works flawlessly. Zero problems whatsoever. There are a lot of broken dependencies, like in antix 21 x64 you’ll not be able to install wine after upgrade. At least I wasn’t able. And adding wine repo didn’t help me. And these are only several of my fresh difficulties with it. I guess I’ll migrate to Slackware. It’s far more stable, secure and predictable.END OF QUOTE
- This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by ModdIt.
Anonymous
WHO BENEFITS FROM DWELLING ON SUCH NEGATIVITY?
WHY REPOST THIS RUBBISH HERE, THEREBY DRAWING ATTENTION TO IT?#76968 IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE WHEREIN THE POSTER IS TOO LAZY (TOO DAFT?) TO BOTHER USING QUOTE TAGS.
IN THIS CASE WE WIND UP WITH A POST WHICH, AT A GLANCE, SEEMS TO BE A MODERATOR SPOUTING THE VITRIOL..
Please, move this topic away from its current placement under “News”.
Move to “In a Greek kafeneio”, or maybe the OP will just delete the topic altogether, eh.PPC
I don’t personally like negative discourse, but I can see the “value”, well, “usefulness” of referring to negative “review” that show a lot about the person that is writing the “review” and that person’s thought process. First off- I have no idea who the person is…
Second- I have yet to find a more welcoming forum than ours- people try to help, not just answer with a “RT*M”
Third- I’ve become frustrate with the amount of DW reviews that point to what, not flaws/bugs but just lack of awareness of the versatility of antiX- some people (not just on DW, but on other reviews) say stuff like “I can’t work with the File Manager, goodbie, antiX, I’ll be using XYZ distro instead”, “It would be great if we could add icons to the toolbar” (one Youtube reviewer stated that those icons could not be changed), “It’s too bloated” (ah, ah, hilarious!), ” “It does not warn of updates/does not update!!!”.
To most of these complaints, a easy solution, even for non techies could be achieved in the forum…I do have to say I understand newbies frustration with rox filer- I tried to use it, when I first came to antiX, then I installed Thunar, then, some weeks/months later, I realized I already had SpaceFM available… Then I realized that I could use SpaceFM as my default File Manager… and most users don’t go as deep into the OS as I do. And many people seem to think that asking questions on a forum is, for some reason, not a thing they should do- they like asking stuff, for example, on Youtube comments (I never read anyone answering them, strangely enough).
I tried to tackle some of what was missing in the first antiX I tried out, antiX 16… Now, for example, on antiX 21 (and specially if using the FT10-transformation package)- the main problems of being unable to add icons to the toolbar, etc is address, but (in the default antiX interface), “hidden” away in the menu…
For now I think that the only “question” that the “reviewer” address that I think a tiny bit relatable is “pulse audio”- for some reason, on my antiX 19, Firefox refuses to work with pulse audio, despite other software I tested worked fine… On antiX 21, I tested just once, and pulse audio seemed to work fine with Firefox (it was some time ago, not 100% certain on that one).
But… complaining only seamonkey browser works? Hum… Is that even possible that someone thinks a full fledged OS won’t be able to install and use any available browser? Or should one assume that one is unable to (for some reason) learn how to make any other browser work?When I think of a criticism to make I always think in the terms of “I can’t do this”, not “It’s impossible to do this” or “No one can do this on this particular system”… That would be assuming that I know everything about the subject they are talking about…
P.
Topic is Distrowatch Reviews.
Too daft too lazy thanks for the constructive criticism.
In the world I live in, in discussion of percieved problems, reviews and opinions is open, welcome
occurs often and is in many cases heated and opinionated. But we do think there is always something
to learn.Should other moderators want to delete or move the thread fine with me.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by ModdIt.
Why don’t you delete it yourself ?
After all, you created it.
Nobody needs “DistroWatch” !
sybok
Hi,
just few comments.
It seems that the thread got a bit emotional at a certain moment.
Let me share some lessons I see from the posts so far:1) If one quotes somebody, it’s probably better to mark it so clearly; not necessarily using the markup as there are other options e.g.
QUOTE
….
END OF QUOTE2) We are human beings and we sometimes get emotional.
This was indicated in the post in the first sentence *grumble*.
A more explicit mention and adding a constructive approach ([re-]initiate discussion if something can be done about it?) might help keep the emotions balanced.3) Some things could have been suggested in (a more polite form) using private messages.
4) ‘antiX’ is great for me and it is not for everyone; this is a fact.
Could the initial post be a sign of accumulated frustration?
I have not been on the forum a long time yet but sometimes users posting questions without seemingly having tried to search the forum or internet for answers (and some are already there) can be frustrating (especially for someone who is a more experienced user).
The same applies to reading negative quick-try and dismiss reviews.
And same goes for different and conflicting needs/preferences of different users.
There is a saying (actually it is a verse) in Czech which loosely translates as: “There is none to satisfy all.”Though we may enjoy exchanging ideas and interaction here and it may feel as an important part of our free time, it should not define our life and/or self-value.
A bad review is not an attack of something I hold dear; it is more or less informed opinion.
And if the reviewer cannot be reasoned with, then it does not help to ponder upon it for long time if no constructive resolution is possible.
Believe me, I know that it is not always easy to do.
I sometimes tend to define my self-value by acceptance of things I do (or like) by others.Thanks sybok for the balanced reaction,
I have taken your tip and added Quote End Quote.I read posts in the forum daily, up to now more than once daily, the person who wrote the review is
almost certainly still an antix forum member who received a lot of help from others.
What is in the review fits to several posts the person made and especialy the last one.Regarding nobody needs Distrowatch, unfortunately without sites like that one which is very well known
Linux would be reduced to very few commercial distributions, probably within a fairly short space of time.
That is those with enough advertising budget and reach. A few enthusiasts distributions might also linger on,
until the users and supporters die of old age. Watch how embrace and destroy affects once popular free
distributions, recent one demise of the open base of Red Hat which was perceived as encroaching on market share
and profits.The reactions of do not read, take it down do not want to figure out the how and why the post came about are not
exactly what I and several others had hoped for.Personaly I consider antiX used as it is designed for or sensibly extended is among the very best of the best.
Messed up and then criticised is not my idea of common sense or fairness.If I break a working system the system is not responsible so I should not would not call it bad.
Forum and friendly very recently a user was mocked for bad spelling in english, another who is suffering long covid
mocked for lack of mental capacity.
Many others are unable to post because a KI blocks them or their IP, great when many thousands of users share the same
exit point IP as in case of Vodafone cable customers in Germany.what does get blocked, only rubbish scammer posts or those which are hard to understand, who gets helped, the white man
with good grasp of the english language or withou prejudice someone doing their best to communicate?.What can happen, in the end the forum becomes a cosy quiet little old boys club.
Dont rock the boat, oooh shit its sinking. At least to the level of a couple of years ago.madibi
Just to add something more distrowatch hasn’t accepted my review in a month.
That’s a bit strange, because the same day where my review was refused, I did another review for Peppermint that was published in 5 mins.
BTW: I should add that I never had problems with Connman. Par contre I had a lot with alsa mixer, because for me it’s diffult to handle. Problems that I solved with pulse-audio that is easier, according to my taste.BobC
With Antix, if you value your time, you should clearly stay away from this distro. In 19.3 – 19.4 it was fine, but its developers moved way too far away from Devuan or any other systemd – free distro. And it has created bug, antix – specific bugs. With Linux, you should firstly Google, check some Linux forums and only then post your questions. But with Antix you’ll find that the majority of recipes isn’t working and upgrading packages from debian backports (at least in 19.5) with quickly break your system: you won’t be able to launch any web-browsers except for seamonkey. Another pain in the ass was pulseaudio. I’ve used it in many distros. e.g. Arch. Slackware. Ubuntu. But here it simply doesn’t work. It loads, it kinda starts, but you need to switch profiles manually every time you start something, that works with audio, like audacious/mpv. Without that, you’ll get silence after boot. And i did everything that was mentioned in forum posts, config files. Still no sound. I’ve switch (temporarily) to Arch. Install bare-bones ICEWM + pulse and everything works flawlessly. Zero problems whatsoever. There are a lot of broken dependencies, like in antix 21 x64 you’ll not be able to install wine after upgrade. At least I wasn’t able. And adding wine repo didn’t help me. And these are only several of my fresh difficulties with it. I guess I’ll migrate to Slackware. It’s far more stable, secure and predictable.
I wish people would review the distribution they downloaded and tried, rather than what they attempted to make it into. He doesn’t consider the probablity that he’s created a Frankenstein like mess out of an otherwise working distro, and then blames it on the distro. Every time changes are made they can cause issues, and the more changes, the more permutations of possible issues result. Some people are able to diagnose and fix them, but most are not able to. I wonder why he was trying to change 19.x instead of running current code?
Broken dependencies in 21? I didn’t see any, but I can imagine that if one was to haphazardly install unknown things, eventually thing will likely get hosed. The broken packages are an indication that someone has been trying to force square pegs into round holes…
- This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by BobC.
oparun
I’ll try to throw my 5 cents into this discussion
>people would review the distribution they downloaded and tried
Antix, it built on top of a stable as a dinosaur turd Debian. I’ve used it (Debian) for a long time, alongside with Slackware, Arch and several other obscure distros. I’ve never had so much headache with any of those distros. Wait, maybe with Slackware 14.2 in its later years and only with newer slackbuilds. I’m talking about some build – dependencies, that weren’t mentioned in the README file. Granted, i’m not an original author of that review, but i can support some of those claims. I’ve never had hardware issues with Debian and Devuan, that i’ve used very briefly as a toy – distro on a testing bench. But Antix is another beast. If you check this forum, threads that i’ve created, you’ll see that i’ve had a plethora of very strange and Antix-only-bugs: font rendering, network glitches, same thing with pulseaudio (i didn’t fix it and quit). I’ve used Antix in my restoring project and ditched it because in the end i’ve spent far more man-hours trying to tune Antix.
> Every time changes are made they can cause issues
It heavily depends on a distro. In Arch you’ll have its famous wiki and topic – rich forums. In Slackware it’s kinda hard to screw your OS to its unworkable state. And here you can do it in like 3 or 4 commands. And yes, using backports in Debian is a common and practical thing. As well as using oldstable for the sake of stronger stability (i don’t know how to put in better in English).
> Some people are able to diagnose and fix them
It depends on a distro (again) and wiki or how-to. Again somewhere on this very forum i’ve got a topic, that was dedicated to a tricky removal of radiotray-ng package. It cased kinda strange error and all recipes, that i’ve found in Google, didn’t work for me. Finally, i’ve found a part of the solution in a thread of a far less popular distro forum and then worked from it. I’ve left my solution to this trouble in my topic here. I didn’t have any trouble with this very package in Debian 10/11, Devuan 4 (i guess, the recent one) and Ubuntu 18. But Antix is another story.>someone has been trying to force square pegs into round holes
It means that your project is going way to far from it’s base and you need to caution people (maybe on the front page) that they should stick with only built-in repositories list. And stress this thing. But even then you’ll pretty quick get an obsolete version of your distro. Why? Internal repos aren’t fast enough with some core or extra packages, like mpv or transmission or keepassxc or something else (like, above-mentioned WINE).But this was my experience.
oparun
Oh, yeah, nearly forgot: that pre – amp option in your stock alsa. Option that is not present in any other major distro out there. Option, that is impossible to tune through config files (it killed my audio several times and I had to reinstall OS because nothing else helped). I’ve managed to solve it and left my solution in my topic. Unfortunately, you’ll not find any useful info in Google (well, now you will), because it’s a specific bug.
And still I cannot call my solution full or this problem a general linux bug, because I cannot replicate it in any other distro and I cannot get the full “reach” alsa sound, because I’ve played with EQ settings (lowered it) and alsa sound is just a little worse that in a stock Debian (alsa – only config).I am actually ALSO guilty of doing ALL of the things I said cause trouble.
The difference is that I try to make one change at a time to keep the permutations reasonable, and and do it on a test system first so I can reload and try again till everything works.
I did try Slackware at one point. I won’t say anything against it. I liked the “recipe” concept. I liked SlackoPup, Salix and Slackel better than Slackware. They were good. But I like antiX better than any of them.
I gave up on apulse too, LOL. I did try. I wish I could get a Bluetooth headset working with antiX. I would bet it will eventually work, but for now, allow for the fact that it takes time and effort to make things work, and instead of lambasting them, we should treat the people trying to provide those improvements with courtesy and respect for the selfless effort they put in, even if it is probably fun for them making things work 🙂
anticapitalista
If it breaks you get to pick up the pieces
Installing apps from outside the repos eg radiotray-ng is asking for trouble. You do so at YOUR own risk.
If user wants to use latest and greatest (sic), use an Arch based linux and not antiX.
If you want it to work like ‘normal’ – then use any other systemd-based distro.
There are plenty out there.Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
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