Bookmem Posted November 4 Posted November 4 Sdesk is supposed to be a lite, easy to use, distro based on Arch. I tried to install it on Vbox but can't get it to work. It comes up with pretty much a blank screen and when the screen times out, it ask for a password that hasn't been set. Has anyone else tried it? Quote
raymac46 Posted November 4 Posted November 4 Have not tried Sdesk but I had similar problems with other Arch-based distros (Manjaro specifically) in VBox. I think a lot of it has to do with the Guest Additions not being up to date in VBox. I love Arch as a distro but it always seems to run best as a bare metal install. In VBox it might run fine, then an update crashes the install. Quote
Bookmem Posted November 4 Author Posted November 4 2 hours ago, raymac46 said: Have not tried Sdesk but I had similar problems with other Arch-based distros (Manjaro specifically) in VBox. I think a lot of it has to do with the Guest Additions not being up to date in VBox. I love Arch as a distro but it always seems to run best as a bare metal install. In VBox it might run fine, then an update crashes the install. Well at least it booted and installed in Vbox. I used Rufus to create a USB stick and tried to boot it on both an HP Elitebook 745 G2 laptop and a Lenovo M73 mini. On both of them, it took the progress bar 10 minutes to fully expand and then just sat there. Waited another 15 minutes and nothing. Thought the problem might be the slow SD card is used so I then used a USB 3 stick and got the same results. Quote
raymac46 Posted November 4 Posted November 4 Well if the live version on a USB stick won't boot it is not the fault of VBox. 1 Quote
securitybreach Posted November 4 Posted November 4 If you want an easy version of Arch, simply install EndeavorOS. It uses the normal repos except for their repo for themes and icons. If you can use a mouse, you can use EndeavorOS. 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 I downloaded the Sdesk ISO and copied it to my Ventoy flash drive. It booted OK, but it isn't a live distro, so I couldn't do much with it as I don't want to install it. It did boot OK to the installer, and I got a GUI. 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 I installed Sdesk in VBox but I don't like it at all. If the screen blacks out during the install you can enter password "live" to get back the installation screen. The installer doesn't give you the opportunity to enter a username and password so you end up after the reboot running as "live" with root privileges. This is very weird. You can add a user and password but that user can't do any administrator tasks. The Guest Additions don't work so you can't get a proper screen display. This distro seems very unpolished and unsatisfactory. Endeavouros is miles ahead as an Arch-based distro. Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 Note: I understand that you can use the Arch Way to add a new user to appropriate groups and also to the sudoers list after installation, but the installer should take care of this in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me for a supposed easier installation to leave you in a root user state. Quote
securitybreach Posted November 5 Posted November 5 2 hours ago, raymac46 said: Note: I understand that you can use the Arch Way to add a new user to appropriate groups and also to the sudoers list after installation, but the installer should take care of this in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me for a supposed easier installation to leave you in a root user state. True but that isn't the arch way per se, that is normal linux command line adding a user and adding the user to groups. Most of that stuff is either very old or left over from UNIX. I was running those same commands on Slackware back in the early 2000s. Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 I installed Endeavouros with the Xfce desktop in Virtual Box and it works absolutely perfectly (Guest Additions and all.) That would be my recommendation for an "easy Arch" distro. If you install using the online option you get your choice of a number of desktops. Posting from it now. 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 1 minute ago, securitybreach said: True but that isn't the arch way per se, that is normal linux command line adding a user and adding the user to groups. Most of that stuff is either very old or left over from UNIX. So what is the Arch way to manage users then? Quote
raymac46 Posted November 5 Posted November 5 With Sdesk even if you get the user and groups right, you still don't have a workable Guest Additions that will get you a full screen in VBox. Whereas Endeavouros works like a charm right out of the box. No comparison. Quote
securitybreach Posted November 5 Posted November 5 8 minutes ago, raymac46 said: So what is the Arch way to manage users then? useradd, userdel, groupadd, groupdel, chown, etc. 1 Quote
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