Disil's stuff

My Linux journey: the retrospective

So.. This is probably the last series on My Linux journey. I've been using various Linux distros over 1 month, from Linux Mint, then KDE neon, then Neptune OS. What are my thoughts about it? Well it is great, but it could be better.

First, let's start with my review of Linux Mint. It is stable, and kinda up-to-date because it is based on Ubuntu, and it also has interface that resembles Windows (Cinnamon DE). It is good in terms of UX, but not so much in UI.

Cinnamon lacks authentic feel. It is just a Windows wannabe. Also the UI looks really old, predates the Windows 7 era. It's not appealing to me. Also, Linux Mint by default use some strange apps, for example using Celluloid instead of VLC. The point of the distro is to made Linux-switching from Windows user to be easier, so why not including the popular apps from Windows that is FOSS?

After that, I moved to KDE neon for a really really short time. I mean 2 days. 2 days is all I need to broke the installation, because I was trying to install winehq-stable. I will never touch that distribution again lol. One thing that I learned from that is

I love KDE!!!

The last distros i tried is Neptune. You probably didn't know it, like I was. So I search 'KDE distros' on KDE wiki and found a page where they list every KDE based distros. I found this distribution there. It is a Linux distro created by some (2) developers from Germany based on KDE desktop & Debian 11. When I boot into it, everything just works! Maybe because it had newer kernel (5.18 at the time) so my new hardware is supported.

I used it for about two weeks and my experience is better than on Linux Mint. I hate the constant updates on Ubuntu-based systems, so I love the Debian slow-paced update cycle. I wouldn't say that Debian is stable, because there is some cases where the gui would just fail (maybe it is because of the old Plasma version?) and I have to use the terminal.

Here's the thing; ordinary users do not like terminal. It is a scary places because it's background is dark, and there's only monotone expresionless message showed on the prompt. After all, only power user who boast about "terminal is better & efficient" that like it.

I can't say that I hate terminal, but I can't also say the otherwise. For some commands like installing apps with apt or cd-ing to another directory it's easy because you can tell the meaning of the command within the command itself. How about this:

sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grapejuice.list <<< 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/grapejuice-archive-keyring.gpg]

what does that mean????? I can't understand it. Let's says that those will break the sources.list file, what would they do if they entering it in the terminal? They are following random guides from the internet and suddenly their system is broken. The user will probably blame the post author, and think "why should I use Linux if i need to insert randm terminal slang when I can use Windows without CMD?"

Back to the topic. After about 2 weeks of usage, I decided to install Wine, so that I can use Windows program just in case something happens. Oh, I also plans to install Office, because LibreOffice is highly unstable on MS file format.

The first thing I do is to open software manager (KDE Discover) like any other sane Android user will do. I type 'wine' in the search box, and I found it on the first search result. Neat!

wine search result on KDE discover

I press the install button, and it immediately download a lot of files. Then after the installation process has completed, I open winecfg, the program used as the Wine Control Panel. I changed a few settings, and saving it. I launch an apps, and it works.

Now this is where the problem comes. Debian is so old that the Wine version included in its repositories is long EOL. The latest Wine version is 7.0, while Debian 11 (which is released in 2021) includes Wine 5.0 which is released on 2020. That's a whole year late. Moreover, Debian team does not backports features necessary for some apps. The world in 2022 is different from 2020.

The last thing I tried in this OS was installing Roblox. I downloaded Grapejuice, a Wine application that is tailored to Roblox. The app function is to make Roblox installation on Linux more easy for noobs.

I follow the instructions on their documentation site. The first thing that I should do before installing Grapejuice is to install newer Wine from upstream.

Long story short, when the sources was added to /etc/apt/sources.list, it has a lot permission issues. Eventually I solve it by editing the list using privileged Nano. And when I try to install winehq-stable it says that I 'hold a broken package'. I'm confused with that message. What does that mean?

Things only gone downhill from there. I somehow installed Wine, and installed Grapejuice too. Of course the app broke when the Roblox Player was launched. I give up. I can't remove Wine anymore, it is permanent on my system. Maybe this is what dependency hell means.

I am typing this on my Firefox browser from the semi-broken Neptune OS installation. Right now when I wrote this post I also download a clean copy of Windows 11 iso. Tomorrow I will burn this W11 iso to my USB drive, and install it to my Laptop. So...

Goodbye Linux, I am a bit disappointed😕, but I hope Linux & it's community will grow even more in the future.

#experience #review