I am currently test driving Openmandriva Rock and Devuan. I am trying to determine suitability for my personal and business PCs and laptops.
I only have experience with Debian and Unraid as far as Linux goes. I like Debian, but the Debian people don’t like me, so I am looking for something else.
I have 4 PCs and 2 laptops that need a Windows 10 alternative by October.
I am hoping that OM can be my new operating system, we will see if I can get a workflow going with minimal fuss.
I like calm and boring and I dislike change for the sake of change so Rock seems like my speed.
Hopefully I can be ignorant and newbie without being insulted and degraded. The Linux people in general have not been kind to me so far.
I hope you do not find this to be a problem in this community. Do be aware that OpenMandriva Lx is not like any other Linux distribution. You will find a mix of things that are same or similar to Debian and things that are different. Package management is definitely one of the differences. The first thing for new users to do is read the Release Notes and Errata so you know what info is available in those. Check out the information in the “Big Fat Warning” banner at the top of this page.
Thanks. Yes, I have been running it for 2 weeks on a laptop and I see what you mean. Slowly working my way through the wiki as I have time.
This is not a hobby for me, so I am taking it seriously. I cannot deploy an operating system on my main workstation or business PCs until I am sure it is going to work for me. There is money at stake for me if I get it wrong.
I am not here to criticize or demand anyone change their ways. It is either going to work out or not.
Just a word of caution. Rock is going to have newer versions of packages than most Stable releases from other, more widely used distros.
We genuinely help those that genuinely want to be helped. People that pretend to want help, or extort us to change or build things for their purposes or they won’t use our distro are typically the ones that will be sharply criticized.
Feel free to open a post in Support if you run into issues, but please follow the template’s requirements prior to posting. There are several well known issues that are addressed and possibly solved that can save you a lot of headache later.
Finally, we don’t support using Discover, or any other GUI package manager to Update/Upgrade the distro. There are posts detailing how that can be accomplished in the terminal, but using the Software Update application in the menu will provide the greatest level of success. Fair warning: we do have some issues with our mirroring solution that is being investigated. So, repos can be unreachable for a brief period of time.
Thanks for the info. You are already better than average for a Linux forum IMO.
I have been putting a lot of time in coming up with a replacement OS, I am not doing this on a whim. I don’t enjoy wasting my time, so I will not be wasting anyone else’s time.
If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of business are you in and what software do you think you would use.
I also own a business and back in 2019 when I made the shift I discovered I’d already been using all the software already - LibreOffice, Gnucash, Kmymoney, an assortment of browsers, etc. In fact I started using LibreOffice as my daily driver in 2012; and I was a MS Developer at the time. So I could have written a custom add-on for Word to do what I wanted. Or just use LO Writer.
If you’re using quickbooks (single user), Gnucash will take you a couple weeks and then you’ll be past the blocks. If you need a multiuser system with all the other bells and whistles QB has, you’re already using the cloud based anyway. So it runs in a browser.
Not to mention Wine and Virtual Machines.
What other software do you use? Unless you’ve got a bazillion bucks already sunk into Adobe plugins and such Inkscape, Gimp, Darktable, Krita, KdenLive, OBS, DaVinci, etc. all get the job done.
Are some programs a little “rougher” yeah, but there’s youtube videos up the yinyang on just about anything.
Prior to my install, I asked a bunch of noob questions, and was answered in detail by the helpful people here, resulting in a very smooth and positive install experience. Some minimal due diligence on my part, like searching the forums and wiki, and if I needed any clarification, it was pretty promptly supplied. I have nothing but good things to say about the community here.
Therefore if you find yourself facing a bug with one of these majority of packages then your request for support and help will soon return to Debian proper. If you don’t like dealing with them then Devuan may not be for you. I think I would enjoy Devuan, but as a package maintainer I needs must work in Debian Unstable and then Devuan copies my packages over in binary form. If you have a problem with one of my packages whie running Devuan then you have to deal with me via the Debian bug tracker.
I’ve been using OMLx ROME for only a few months now as my daily driver on my System76 laptop and am no shill for them, but if it is the support community that you value I would think that OMLx would be better for you simply because it will completely isolate you from the Debian community which is something you appear to value. Not to besmirch the Devuan project, but they are still very tightly coupled to Debian.
Like @SomeDudeInAZ said, if you give us a description of your current workflow or list of software that you use we can try to give our best recommendations. If there is something that you want but isn’t in the repos you can submit a package request. There is already a decent list that we are working through, but we will try to help you out.
Choosing software has not been much of an issue for me, just getting every part of a Linux OS to work seems to be the challenge. They all have their limitations it seems.
I mostly will just use basic software as most of what we use is cloud based anyway.
The only software there is not an alternative for is SixBit Ecommerce listing and database software. I cannot operate without it and it does not work on Linux. It also has to be running 24/7 so I just set it up on it’s own PC.
- Be respectful
(probably no need to repeat the obvious, but, still…)
No one is going to make you insulted and degraded
As for the rest, I see you already shared some very good willingness so I feel like I have nothing to add.
PS> I split some messages from there to a new topic so that the posterity can find it useful in the future, since knowledge sharing is (also) the forum purpose.
Yeah, that sounds good and sounds like it will be the goal eventually. First I am trying to get my PCs all set up and running so I can get my workers used to the new flow. Then I will look for ways to phase out that last Windows PC. There are definitely going to be one or more VMs involved in that. I can just put the VM on my Unraid server and pop into the VM whenever someone needs to access SixBit. It can just do it’s job headless most of the time.
Thanks for taking the time to look into my issue, I really appreciate it. I wish I could just take a week off and get all this stuff set up at once.
):