I used to be obsessed trying new distros and the super lightweight ones especially. Now I just want something that looks nice and “just works”. Pop OS is my daily OS on my laptop. Latest Ubuntu but with extra tools and polish on top.
1 Like
Kubuntu 19.10 installed today!
1 Like
And replaced today with good old Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition! 
1 Like
LOL well I actually have Fedora on the SSD now. For how long?
Distro-hopping within Ubuntu(-based) distros? Aren’t they more similar than different? I have Fedora since 1 day now and I know that it won’t stay long: Nvidia Prime works, Intel Neo works too, but there is no sound when using tiling window managers. I have googled carefully for a solution and I am really bored by Debian, so I was actually ready to stay with Fedora, at least for a while.
1 Like
lol, I’m still not happy with Mint Cinnamon. As you say, @betazoid Ubuntu-based distros are more similar than different.
So I think I’m going to go with Manjaro. A bit more care required with updates, but at least it’ll be an easy way to get up to date versions of photo editing software, without relying on PPAs. 
I have done partition images of my Mint install though, just in case!
1 Like
Lol.
Manjaro KDE installed yesterday. Straightforward installation. Darktable etc 3.0.0 installed using pacman.
Big fly on the ointment is continual heavy disk access. Is it due to KDE? Manjaro?
Hmmm so what to do know… Spend days / weeks trying to diagnose the issue? Or try a different distro? 
Brian - do you have SSDs or what?
Amount of RAM?
Have you set up a swap partition? Size of it?
Check the swappability setting.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
1 Like
Actually I have no problems of this kind with Manjaro. Everything works. It’s just that I don’t like the artwork, themes, backgrounds etc.
I suppose you have googled the issue.
1 Like
Well I just solved the Fedora sound problem. I think I’ll stay with Fedora for now. Maybe you can give Fedora a try as well?
1 Like
Since you have KDE, the process manager (ksysguard) can display the I/O rates of the processes. On a new install it is possible that this is the file indexing at work, and it may cool off after a while.
1 Like
Not sure what packages Manjaro KDE comes with installed by default but I remember disabling KMail, Baloo and Akonadi has made my openSUSE KDE lighting speed faster on an older laptop. I am guessing Baloo is indexing files on your machine and that is what is causing your hard drive to work hard right now.
1 Like
120gb ssd where root partition is. /home is on 1tb mechanical drive. 16gb ram, with 8gb swap partition on the ssd.
@betazoid i did try googling, only to end up finding posts from 2010 which didn’t resolve the issue…
edit to add that after using iotop, it’s some process called mandb which is chugging away using 36% cpu load, as well as Process 50 - kworker/u8:1-events_freezable_power_ Whatever those are?!
I believe it would be wise to have the swap partition on the mech drive instead.
In case you really need a swap partition, that is! Quote from the link belov:
It is highly likely that you will never use the swap space on a machine with 8 gigabytes of RAM or more, unless you do some serious number crunching or video editing.
Also read about what swappiness factor that is recommended for an SSD,
as well as for a mech drive.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
1 Like
Interesting article, thanks @Claes. I’ve never actually need to use my swap partition, despite doing a few 360x180 degree HDR panoramas using ~90 odd images. With regards to Manjaro, I’ve still got a few issues, so I’m really not sure whether it’s a sensible OS choice for me.
Yes, rolling distro means up to date software, but to be honest I fear it may require just too much system maintenance.
I fear it may require just too much system maintenance.
Oh? In my opition, it more or less takes care of itself.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
1 Like
After moving through several distributions over many years I finally decided that the first decision that I needed to make was which desktop worked best for me. I find that XFCE, tuned the way I like it is clean and fast while the ‘pretty’ KDE is (for me) a nightmare.
I now run Manjaro/Arch+XFCE. … exceptionally stable, fast and runs on a 12 year old as well as a current hardware base. I run darktable from the git that is automatically built without my input.
Rock stability, fast, continuous updating and a sensible desktop … what’s not to like?
2 Likes
The main reason i went for linux mint Cinnamon is that XFCE (at the time) didn’t support colour management through colord. Apparently the latest version does (4.14).
Anyway I got Mint Cinnamon reinstalled as neither the partition images or timeshift got my backed up mint installation restored.
I’ll see how i get on over the next few months at least until Mint 20 comes out.
As you say @davidvj, it’s good to settle on a DE which works best for yourself. At the moment for me it’s pretty much Cinnamon.
I do have a laptop which is needing an earlier version of mint upgraded. Perhaps I could use that as a test bed for various distros & de, leaving my main desktop functioning as it is with mint 19.3 Cinnamon.
I’m running the latest Debian with Xfce as DE.
Did a little background story in one of the other threads floating around here: Which Linux distro? - #212 by Jade_NL
2 Likes
A smirky answer might be: “all of them.”
I have a trio of Macs, a desktop Win10 machine, iPads and several Chromebooks - some running Crostini, and my old unbolted 2013 Chromebook Pixel running native Ubuntu.
I recently bought a Galaxy Chromebook & am loving the AMOLED display though it’s so far above my other PCs in that department it’s hard to know if my color calibrations are even remotely right. Things that look fantastic on the AMOLED can look pretty rubbish when I see them on a Mac 