Neptune Linux-Worth a look.......

[SeanK]

I'm posting this more for people, like myself, who may have had major issues with one of the bigger name Linux OS's and want a decent alternative for new and older hardware. I was going to review Neptune myself but this Youtube reviewer does a much better job than I could manage, so I'm posting instead.

I have used Neptune on and off on one older laptop for about 8 months and this thing is resource light and fast, for a KDE based system. I will say anything, in my experience, based on Deb12 can and has thrown up a few issues but this is the least hassle I have had, with any derivative.

 

[Vektor]

I tried Neptune a few years ago and it seemed to work very well.

I joined the forum recently and have been surprised at the lack of interest in posting.

Maybe because it is flawless or just not as attractive as the major players.

I moved on to other KDE distros like Porteus and MX because of the ability to save snapshots, create modules and have an immutable system using the built-in tools. Bullet proof.

Let us know how Neptune works out for you.

Vektor

 

[wendy-lebaron]

This is a good distro. I have used the "Faye" -> "Ada" v7.5 which was based on Debian "Bullseye". But eventually I had to shelf it.

I didn't like its method of updating. On my computer it seems to have been most preoccupied with "NVidia firmware". This is for a laptop that has no "NVidia" garbage, but Intel MESA. It took much longer to run an ordinary system update on this operating system than in any other Debian-based distro.

The version of KDE Plasma it had was v5.18. This meant the location bar below the tabs in Dolphin, which was annoying when wanting to drag-and-drop from one tab to another. Dolphin back then didn't permit multiple selections with the keyboard without "shift" keys like it could now. Kate behaved more strangely than it does in later releases. Sometimes a menu or window flickered into total black. I actually tolerated it because Manjaro KDE was worse about it on another computer I can't use today. There were many other things.

I finally dumped NeptuneOS "Ada" because suddenly it refused to allow me to access a partition on the internal disk. Because I booted from an external disk. I never got this refusal from Debian or anything else based directly on it, nor from Ubuntu. I didn't want to be with a bloated distro based on "Bullseye" and in addition, I found Q4OS "Gemini" and "Aquarius". However, NeptuneOS does the "UEFI magic" for external disks on an external ESP, while Q4OS can't. I have another distro with KDE Plasma v5.18 which is Freespire, based on Ubuntu "Focal Fossa" LTS v20.04. It's quite good, and without Snaps.

Some people will not like the bloat. The "Faye" that I installed at first had outdated versions of Audacity, KDEnlive and many other applications that could be rectified with either AppImage or Flatpak, thus consuming even more valuable disk space. However, it's nice to have those applications ready to go for those users that understand the limitations.

The NeptuneOS based on "Bookworm" is essentially unchanged in appearance from "Ada", which could put off some people expecting to clearly see progress, and not enough that Plasma was raised to v5.27.

 

[KGIII]

Maybe because it is flawless or just not as attractive as the major players.

I suspect you'll find it's a popularity thing. We get far more questions about the popular distros than we do the more obscure distros.

This isn't a very accurate source, but DistroWatch shows the top 100 distros searched for on their site and Neptune is way down on the list.

Of course, so isn't RHEL. The thing is, the folks looking for RHEL already know where to find it and aren't searching for it on DistroWatch. So, that's not completely accurate but it is probably a good indicator.

 

[SeanK]

This is a good distro. I have used the "Faye" -> "Ada" v7.5 which was based on Debian "Bullseye". But eventually I had to shelf it.

I didn't like its method of updating. On my computer it seems to have been most preoccupied with "NVidia firmware". This is for a laptop that has no "NVidia" garbage, but Intel MESA. It took much longer to run an ordinary system update on this operating system than in any other Debian-based distro.

The version of KDE Plasma it had was v5.18. This meant the location bar below the tabs in Dolphin, which was annoying when wanting to drag-and-drop from one tab to another. Dolphin back then didn't permit multiple selections with the keyboard without "shift" keys like it could now. Kate behaved more strangely than it does in later releases. Sometimes a menu or window flickered into total black. I actually tolerated it because Manjaro KDE was worse about it on another computer I can't use today. There were many other things.

I finally dumped NeptuneOS "Ada" because suddenly it refused to allow me to access a partition on the internal disk. Because I booted from an external disk. I never got this refusal from Debian or anything else based directly on it, nor from Ubuntu. I didn't want to be with a bloated distro based on "Bullseye" and in addition, I found Q4OS "Gemini" and "Aquarius". However, NeptuneOS does the "UEFI magic" for external disks on an external ESP, while Q4OS can't. I have another distro with KDE Plasma v5.18 which is Freespire, based on Ubuntu "Focal Fossa" LTS v20.04. It's quite good, and without Snaps.

Some people will not like the bloat. The "Faye" that I installed at first had outdated versions of Audacity, KDEnlive and many other applications that could be rectified with either AppImage or Flatpak, thus consuming even more valuable disk space. However, it's nice to have those applications ready to go for those users that understand the limitations.

The NeptuneOS based on "Bookworm" is essentially unchanged in appearance from "Ada", which could put off some people expecting to clearly see progress, and not enough that Plasma was raised to v5.27.

I think it does come down to personal experience, to a degree. I had a inconsistent run with Bookworm and a patchy experience with its derivative, LMDE 6. Hence the move to Neptune which has been pretty decent.

I say use what works for you.

 

[SeanK]

I suspect you'll find it's a popularity thing. We get far more questions about the popular distros than we do the more obscure distros.

This isn't a very accurate source, but DistroWatch shows the top 100 distros searched for on their site and Neptune is way down on the list.

Of course, so isn't RHEL. The thing is, the folks looking for RHEL already know where to find it and aren't searching for it on DistroWatch. So, that's not completely accurate but it is probably a good indicator.

Someone said look at Steam games end user OS base, if you want an accurate indicator of who runs what. As you might expect, Windows dominates and with regards to Linux distros like Manjaro (sort of Arch), rate highly. Of course, the Steam deck is based on Arch, too.

That said, it would be interesting to get a truly accurate representation of Linux usage globally.

 

[KGIII]

That said, it would be interesting to get a truly accurate representation of Linux usage globally.

Indeed. From various business reports, we know that RHEL dominates in the server market.

When it comes to desktop Linux, we only have indicators. Not even downloads would be an accurate metric. For example, I have a bunch of downloaded .iso files. I don't actually use them outside of spinning up VMs for testing. I recall some numbers showing Ubuntu (and probably official flavors) dominate the desktop market due to download numbers, but again those aren't accurate.

 

[Vektor]

SeanK said " it would be interesting to get a truly accurate representation of Linux usage globally."

I wonder if it would even be possible. I use at least 2 to 5 different Linux distros as a routine. Would that skew the accuracy of any survey. I know I am not the only one.

I thought about registering with the Linux big brother society but I am constantly switching from one os to another on different equipment. That would certainly skew the numbers.

Vektor

 

[SeanK]

I wonder if it would even be possible. I use at least 2 to 5 different Linux distros as a routine. Would that skew the accuracy of any survey. I know I am not the only one.

I thought about registering with the Linux big brother society but I am constantly switching from one os to another on different equipment. That would certainly skew the numbers.

Vektor

Good point. Distro hopping is a guilty pleasure I indulge in too, from time to time.

 

[Vektor]

And my wife uses M$ Windows on her computer that also have 3 Linux distros. I am sure M$ counts that in their favor.

There is no feedback as to Linux usage. I also run Win 7 in VBox vms on all my computers, for testing purposes, of course.

If all operating systems reported to a central database there would be at least 10 times the computers that actually exist. Cool.

Vektor

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Many people resent what they term as "spyware". Therefore no survey will ever be successful conveying the use of one operating system or another.

But this topic is about NeptuneOS, isn't it? I'm sorry if I made it seem recommending another Linux OS but I was trying to indicate what worked better for me. I repeat that NeptuneOS is a good distro. It installed and started up without any issues, which I cannot say for about 15% of the results of my own distro-hopping. The biggest problem might be the bloat. I didn't check out what is the size of the ISO but it might not fit into an USB disk formatted for "fat32". It will have to be formatted for "exfat". I don't recommend inexpensive USB v3.0 or later at this point.