sharing a review I submitted to Distrowatch #477
playmobilmeister
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I couldn't find any contact details and wanted to share this with @geckolinux, the developer.
This is what I submitted moments ago
(Note to Distrowatch: sorry if you received this a second time. I'm not sure you received it)
--KDE and Xfce versions, Debian 'testing' branch--
I'll try to not repeat the last few reviews. In a nutshell, I would recommend even to beginners, because it allows a balanced solution for stability, recency of a birad range of software and flexibility for tinkering. In addition, the installer is relatively simple and fast.
Usage
To cut an even longer story short, I found that spiral's snapshot-ting configuration on its Btrfs file system (setup via 'Snapper', and available to configure via 'snapper-gui') allowed me to go back easily each time I tried newer kernels or newer packages. This in turn solved some hardware issues on the newer computer and allowed me to use much less Flatpaks etc. in the old computer, as well as to be less afraid to compile some software on my own and tinker with some system settings manually.
Almost all of the rollbacks worked perfectly. Some of them didn't, but then I went to earlier snapshots from hours or days before and it worked. There are some quirky issues but they are not necessarily Spiral's fault. Probably Debian testing's issues. Probably Debian testing's issues. The only big problem I had was that my internal network config using NFS didn't work, but then I was able to solve it by asking in the Debian xmpp chat and forums.
Well done Spiral Linux developer! I hope that you keep up the good work and am looking forward to trying the next Gecko release.
Background
3 months ago I switched my laptops to the latest Spiral Linux.
Initially, a 12 year old Dell Inspiron 7220 running the 'testing' distribution branch of Debian and using Spiral's Xfce Desktop Environment variant and a month later a quite recent Vivobook 15 (1.5 year old) to running the 'stable' branch and using KDE.
The former serves as a media center connected to the TV and as a backup node in the local network.
The latter as my primary computer.
The reason I switched from the Debian installation is that I wanted automatic snapshots that are available from the boot process, so that I have as easy as possible a rollback process that is immediately available from the GRUB boot-loader menu. Being a novice, recently migrated from Windows I found that I want to tinker quite a bit.
I also needed stability and more recent software versions of some programs. The tinkering eventually ruined the old media center l.
For the work computer, I Initially went with Manjaro which was quite good, but my tinkering ruined it quickly.
'Vanilla' Debian stable on my work laptop was indeed very stable and I managed to easily cope with the old version problem (of the Stable branch) using Flatpaks, snaps and Appimages. Some of them, however, slowed down the system quite a bit when I ran several of them at once. I also had problems with some hardware detection or drivers with the newer computer and learned that newer kernels served me better.
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