Distro Digest ep. 2 | Linux Mint 20.3 beta & Pop!_OS 21.10, Fedora 35, Zorin OS 16 Lite and more!

boy do we have a lot to cover in this one so what i want to do is kind of a distro digest number two this is a sort of video where i go through a bunch of different linux distro releases that have come out in the last couple of months or are about to come out and kind of run over the pros and cons and quick kind of hot takes of some of these releases what i realize is that in the busyness of the school year i'm a high school teacher by day in a computer enthusiast at night what i've realized is that i've missed like a lot of the major releases uh what i've realized is that there actually isn't like a whole lot of change going on in the next world but there are still some standouts and also some kind of mehness that i want to get into so i have put a number of distributions that are both in beta and out of beta through the ringer and today is the day where we consolidate all those thoughts into a single video i'm also going to post a poll on the youtube community tab that you guys can let me know which one of these deserves like its own full video i'll be more than happy to look into that further but let's get into it and we'll see what has been going on in the world of linux distributions in the last three months or so [Music] but before we get into that today's video was brought to you by skillshare now if you have never been on youtube before and you don't know what skillshare is it's an online learning community with thousands of courses by hundreds of industry professionals and enthusiasts on topics that you might enjoy as a high school teacher i love learning i've always been learning i continue to learn in a bunch of different areas and skillshare is just one of the really helpful tools that helps me continue the pursuit of learning in my own life whether that is and it could be the same for you whether it's a hobby that you are trying to pick up or become more proficient at whether it is a more professional pursuit that your income relies on your ability to scale up or scale sideways your different skill set while you can hop around and dig around on the platform for free skillshare premium gives you unlimited access to every course that they have no advertisements whatsoever and it is a great resource for upskilling side skilling or just learning something new so i can't encourage you enough definitely jump onto skillshare and have a look around and the first 1000 people that click on the link in the description below will get 30 days of a free trial of skillshare premium and thank you once again to skillshare for sponsoring today's video now that we have kept the lights on let's jump in and we'll find out what's been going on in the world of linux so if you wanted to check down in the description below or the different time stamps for the ones the projects that you're most interested in here we go first of all relying on the fantastic work of omg ubuntu and joey sneden in the team linux mint 20.3 beta is now available to go and download now i have been running the beta and and playing around with it for the last couple of days and uh it kind of confirms everything that i already feel about linux mint as a whole which is the project is so polished it's so consistent it looks so good overall however that look was starting to get a little bit dated that's one of the things that they tried to address with this release they tried to bring the uh the window controls and some of the borders and stuff a little bit more larger and more prominent and a little bit easier to target and i think also this could be in the response to the fact that the ad waiter theming and all of that kind of stuff uh is becoming a little bit more locked down and so it does actually look a lot more similar to what you're going to find on mainline gnome or at least the yarrow theming in that the winner controls uh is it just me or do they look really familiar now compared to what cinnamon used to be i like the change as it definitely doesn't make sense when you have desktops that have very high pixel density on average these days to have window controls that small also they have added a new little application to show your recent documents and stuff like that which i think is interesting considering that the gnome documents tool is i think been stagnant for quite a little while and that just continues to add to the list of custom tools that linux mint developed like the hypnotics tv streaming application and also the warpinator wireless file transfer tool celluloid among others so there's uh there's a lot of great stuff that linux mint continues to contribute to the desktop linux space and honestly if i had to pick between recommending like a just an average person who's kind of familiar with computers to try linux for the first time at the end of 2021 linux mint would be one of the top contenders i would honestly have a really tough time deciding between zoran os 16 and linux mint and that definitely considering the hardware lockout that windows 11 brought on uh the linux mints and the zoran os's of the world look like very real alternatives for not everyone but definitely a select few linux mints performance is underrated in its overall desktop snappiness and even benchmarks it somehow manages to eke out some victories a lot of the time speaking of zorin os xaron os 16 lite has officially launched uh this is the xfce based desktop that a lot of people have been waiting on they're still offering both the core and pro edition of these desktops and i think this is a great way of showing people uh what open source software can do even if you have a lower spec machine the other thing that i like about this is the fact that you have a lighter weight desktop so you can devote more of your system resources to the professional grade applications that come included with pro now obviously there's a huge discussion that people like to have about i'm not paying 39 euros for open source software and that's fine don't think of it in that way think of it like a 39 donation to get everything set up and done for you for the right person i think it's a great product and for everybody else zarin os core both the main zoronos 16 release and also the light release that i've noodled around with it is amazing how many features it can deliver on on lower spec machines compared to the mainline release and compared to literally any other os out there now to me it doesn't visually feel as polished as the mainline gnome release but i think that's got a lot to do with how xfce handles things like compositing and transparencies and all of that jazz the layouts the desktop layouts are all here you do get a more restricted set obviously in the core download versus zone os 16 pro lite you get a lot more choices here including a global menu for the mac version which is kind of for the mac layout which is kind of nice but like i said you do get to enjoy a lot of the the perks of having the zorran os desktop all these tweaks are known to zoran os users but to see them integrated into a lighter weight release is fantastic and of course it's going to be supported for quite some time fedora 35 came out at the beginning of the last month uh back in november it's it's release date got pushed a little bit um but they had some good reasons for that they wanted to make sure that gnome 41 dropped good and proper and they wanted to make sure that all the bugs were ironed out and i think it landed fairly well overall they had switched over to the pipe wire audio system in linux in fedora linux 34 and they continued to iterate on that to try and push that tin along technically speaking while i did jump around into the fedora 35 desktop and play around with gnome 41 just for a little bit uh it's it's gonna i i love what the gnome project do by and large but to me the desktop does take a fair bit of time and effort that i just don't have anymore to get working the way that i wanted to and that's not a knock-on gnome or anything like that it's just that for the way i work and for the for the stuff that i'm working with i just prefer to be able to drop a system onto my hardware and be up and running in as little time as possible so all the love in the world for fedora linux 35 and if fedora is if basically you're burnt out on the ubuntu side of distributions then then i highly recommend fedora as kind of like the flagship linux distribution that that enthusiasts should go and download 2020 was a huge love year for fedora fedora seemed to be able to turn it around and and have a bunch of people really frothing for their releases and and 2021 has really consolidated that direction i think for fedora there's a lot of love in the community for this project also a long time ago now but as it's something that i've only been dipping my toe in the water again recently the the advanced hardware support basically the more up-to-date linux kernel and hardware support releases of mx linux has dropped at the end of november and these isos are basically just have more up-to-date mesa drivers and linux kernel and all that kind of thing and if you are still looking for the mainline stable mx releases that i think came out towards the beginning of november or end of october and and those releases went off fairly well as could be expected i'm looking to do a mx linux revisited as i haven't done a deep dive into this distro in quite some time and now that they have a kde release with i'm not sure if that was new to mx21 or whether that was something that came along earlier but the 64-bit kde plasma with the 5.10 kernel is something that's been on my hit list for a while so let me know in the poll in the community tab link in the description to yeah let me know if i should look into that further also beginning of this month third of december we had centos stream nine now obviously centos bit of a uh controversial uh change of gears for them uh in recent or not even that recent really there was a quite a while back now that they changed direction for centos as a uh as a way to better pave the road for red hat enterprise linux and while the community this didn't blow over too well with them there is still a lot of enthusiasts out there that enjoy what centos is bringing to the table and centos stream being based off fedora 34 and ready to pave the way for red hat enterprise enterprise linux 9 centos is kind of a way to preview what is coming in that space and so a lot of developers enthusiasts and and people in that world find a lot of value in centos stream now this is not one that i've looked into or feel i have the reason to but just in case you missed it and you wanted to go and check that out centos stream 9 is out and landed and i don't think i really need to mention ubuntu 21.10 to me this release kind of just came and went it was a thing that i was expecting and yeah there wasn't really anything that uh that particularly blew my mind or made me want to check it out and the other one that i am uh that we're all i think still waiting on the release of and i played around with the beta was um popos 20.10 now uh now the interesting thing about this is that literally not one day after i had finished making this part of the video that popos 21.10 has finally come out so briefly scrubbing over the release notes i'll give you very brief thoughts and i haven't had a chance to try the final version out i've definitely run around with the beta for a while so bear that in mind but basically they have brought in a new app launcher that is better designed for various screen sizes they have a better multi-monitor experience and they're wanting to basically provide an app launcher that works better and more productively for the desktop shell that they're creating and then they finally also have a tech preview for the raspberry pi 4 or compatibility with a raspberry pi 4. they're also going to be taking the kernel and driver testing and qa a little bit more seriously and they also have a new refresh install feature based on the recovery partition that might be pre-installed on your hardware or that you set up yourself obviously there is some updates to the gnome underpinnings but for the most part popos is kind of heading their own direction with their own desktop shell so yeah overall in terms of a system that is easily upgradeable i think this is a fantastic step and for a lot of people especially if you've bought system 76 hardware you get the benefit of all the first party support that they give for their hardware for those who aren't in deeply invested in system 76 then i for me personally i don't see enough compelling reason here to switch away from what you were probably already used to um but it'll be interesting to see to me popos seems to be in a bit of a holding pattern waiting to make the big move to its long-term goal which is to create its entirely own desktop environment as opposed to a heavily customized version of gnome so overall it's uh it's an interesting interim a sort of holding pattern release between now and a final desktop desktop environment of their own very cool nonetheless uh if it floats your boat awesome yes i apologize for the fact i've got a bit of a cold at the moment but there you go 24 or 48 hours can change an awful lot so that's kind of my little mini rant on what's going on at the moment endeavour os is another one that's on my list of things to do in the near future as that has had a big year as well so thank you so much for watching and let me know which distro i should look into next uh as for right now i'm probably going to be working on a bit of a distro of the year kind of awards video at some stage either late this year or early next so stick around for that thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: InfinitelyGalactic

Views: 2,569

Keywords: infinitelygalactic, technology, linux, open-source, free software, ubuntu, alternatives to windows, alternatives to macos, distro reviews, app reviews, centos stream 9, pop os 21.10, ubuntu 21.10, zorin os 16 lite, linux mint 20.3, fedora 35, mx linux 21

Id: WsDcJt0dOOI

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021