Wednesday, December 27, 2017

depends on how you're looking at it

From Dedoimedo's conclusion in his review of BunsenLabs Deuterium:

...BunsenLabs Deuterium gives us a lightweight setup, it truly is that, but on any moderately decent hardware, the advantage goes away, and in its place, you get the horrible ergonomics of Openbox, which is simply not suited for any reasonable, modern work.

Hardware support is mediocre, the installation process is quirky, it's very hard to customize the desktop, network support is average, and in the end, you need to invest energy to achieve something you get out of the box with any other desktop environment. There's really no justifiable reason for that. Perhaps Deuterium will appeal to a small base of users, who want the flexibility and simplicity of Openbox, but for the vast majority of people, it's a hassle.

So much in fact that I gave up. There wasn't anything cardinally wrong with the distro. But it's like walking into a store, seeing something, and then you move on, because there was no magic. Something like 2/10. Well, maybe next time. Or perhaps a different desktop environment.


https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/bunsenlabs-linux-deuterium.html
 

That's about what I'd expect from him. I really have no issues with this review. It's a matter of perspective; BunsenLabs is not the kind of distro he'd like. I doubt that he'd like anything that shipped with only Openbox.

Earlier in the review, he wrote, "Why is the would-be panel called Tint2? How's that relevant?" I smiled when I read that; I don't know where the name "tint2" came from. tint2 is unlike any other panel I've used. It's probably my favorite panel, though.
 
This line really sums things up: "Perhaps Deuterium will appeal to a small base of users, who want the flexibility and simplicity of Openbox, but for the vast majority of people, it's a hassle." He's right, of course. It's a distro for the Openbox fan -- a user who knows what to do with Openbox, one who stashes away old Openbox config files for later use, and one who doesn't need a so-called "modern" desktop.
 
It's for somebody who understands that Openbox is not a desktop environment, but rather a window manager that can be used instead of a desktop environment.

A user like me. He rates it 2/10; me, I give it a 9. :)

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