11 replies to this topic

[sunrat]

Last night I was feeling restless so killed some time by installing Neptune OS on my more beefy computer. Neptune is based on Debian Stretch but has rebuilt KDE Plasma 5.12 to be compatible. Default Stretch has Plasma 5.8 and the improvements by 5.12 are significant.
Installation was a piece of cake. Boot from USB key and follow instructions. GRUB was set up correctly on UEFI during installation. Adding Nvidia driver from stretch-backports was simple, system has 4K monitor and GTX970 so works better with it. The only slightly tricky bit was getting sound to work. Pavucontrol showed the correct card and metering but no sound. A visit to Alsamixer was required to raise volumes for my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card.
Neptune has a decent selection of included programs, the usual suspects such as LibreOffice, GIMP, Thunderbird, Okular, Inkscape and VLC. Default browser is Chromium.
Not so usual is the inclusion of some dedicated multimedia programs such as Ardour, Audacity and Kdenlive. Amarok is the default music player which has great library functions and looks nice but has an annoying glitch with ReplayGain which I use for all music. The ReplayGain setting kicks in a second or so after the song starts playing so it changes level. For this reason I'll be installing my old favourite DeadBeef as it handles ReplayGain better although it has less features.
Overall Neptune OS is very well-behaved and functional, a great derivative of Debian Stretch featuring a nice more modern Plasma implementation. I could easily use it as a daily driver but siduction has always treated me well - 11 years and counting now! I am seriously considering switching to Debian Buster when it's released in about 6 months although maybe even before that as the freeze has just started. Buster will have Plasma 5.14 which is just plain excellent. As much as I love siduction, it does take a lot of work keeping it updated.

Neptune OS, a solid 8.5/10 from me!


https://neptuneos.co...start-page.html

[securitybreach]

Nice, I may have to fire up a VM.

[wa4chq]

Good morning, Sunrat.  Thanks for the review.  Yesterday I put Neptune on a thumb-drive.  I haven't spent much time with it yet but I also like what it includes in the multimedia department....you mentioned that in your review.  I'm not a big fan of KDE but it really has come a long way.   If I decide to install Neptune it will be sharing the hard drive with Slackware.

[sunrat]

Indeed people who have been turned off from KDE in the past are really missing out and should give it another try. KDE4 never quite achieved greatness and Plasma 5 was not very good until after version 5.8. 5.14 currently in Testing and Unstable ( and siduction) is excellent with Neptune's 5.12 pretty close..
I particularly appreciate Dolphin as the finest GUI file manager available. Often I see complaints about Thunar in MX forums about things that don't occur in Dolphin. Rectangle select, multiple item select, context menu, size display in main panel are just a small selection of things Dolphin gets right but Thunar doesn't .
I spent more time in Neptune yesterday and the experience was pleasant with the only glitch being Discover package manager. It's fine for updates/upgrades but can crash when trying to install new software. Maybe why siduction doesn't include Discover. There's always apt on CLI or Synaptic to install software anyway.
I'm still quite impressed with Neptune.

[wa4chq]

The first time I tried Plasma I went crossed-eyed...lol.....and lost!  I hadn't a clue where things were.....  I normally use spectrwm and file managers like ranger and mc....  but Plasma on Neptune looks nice.

[Hedon James]

sunrat, on 02 February 2019 - 07:03 PM, said:

Indeed people who have been turned off from KDE in the past are really missing out and should give it another try. KDE4 never quite achieved greatness and Plasma 5 was not very good until after version 5.8. 5.14 currently in Testing and Unstable ( and siduction) is excellent with Neptune's 5.12 pretty close..
I particularly appreciate Dolphin as the finest GUI file manager available. Often I see complaints about Thunar in MX forums about things that don't occur in Dolphin. Rectangle select, multiple item select, context menu, size display in main panel are just a small selection of things Dolphin gets right but Thunar doesn't .
I spent more time in Neptune yesterday and the experience was pleasant with the only glitch being Discover package manager. It's fine for updates/upgrades but can crash when trying to install new software. Maybe why siduction doesn't include Discover. There's always apt on CLI or Synaptic to install software anyway.
I'm still quite impressed with Neptune.

I've always found KDE/Plasma interesting, but the plethora of options (they have options for their options!) was a turn-off.  And their historically high RAM usage has always been a deal breaker for me, no matter how attractive.  But I've been watching the Plasma desktop on a KaOS VM (specialized KDE-only Arch distro) and I'm really impressed with it.  RAM usage hovers around the mid-300s in default state, so it's no longer a "hog".  Based on my KaOS experience, I'd say it's a middleweight desktop, nearly on par with XFCE usage/performance.  And KaOS does a nice job polishing the Plasma desktop and presenting a consistent and coherent desktop appearance.

Didn't mean to hijack the Neptune thread....simply to pile on with the statement that "KDE/Plasma has come a LONG WAY and is much lighter than it used to be."  Helping to dispell the myth?!  

[securitybreach]

Well nowadays, if you want bloat, just install Gnome....

[Hedon James]

securitybreach, on 05 February 2019 - 12:48 PM, said:

Well nowadays, if you want bloat, just install Gnome....

That's how I ended up using LXDE!  And I'd happily continue using LXDE if I thought it had a viable future.  Then again, WindowMaker is still around from the late 90s (and looks nearly the same), so what do I know?  But LXQt is coming along nicely, and isn't much heavier than LXDE.  Maybe once it becomes more mature, it will also be more optimized, with lesser resource usage.  That's the sweet spot for me.  There's lighter environments, and there's more fully featured environments, but LXDE/Qt is about the perfect blend for my tastes.

Gnome is the new hog of DEs.  Whodathunk that?

[securitybreach]

Use i3wm, it uses about 140mb of ram. Of course, you need a few things to have a fully setup system.

[wa4chq]

My new hard drive came in yesterday for the Lenovo E420.  I partitioned it for MX-17 and the other will eventually be for Slackware.  But for now I decided to add Neptune.  I've only had it up and running since around 9 this morning and already it's telling me I have 2053 updates.  LOL....  I think I'll hold off updating until I'm someplace that has smoking wifi....

[abarbarian]

"Then again, WindowMaker is still around from the late 90s"

Window Maker Window Maker ra ra ra !  

[Hedon James]

abarbarian, on 06 February 2019 - 03:57 PM, said:

"Then again, WindowMaker is still around from the late 90s"

Window Maker Window Maker ra ra ra !  

I put that in there just for you buddy, wondering if you'd take the bait, and sure enough...there you are to defend the honor!  I couldn't resist!