Q4OS Forum

alanlinux

Member

Registered: 2021-05-31

Posts: 4

Details about Q4OS

Hello Q4OS forum,

First of all, a big thank you to the Q4OS Team! You've done a great job! I have tried and been using several distros as desktop OS (e.g., Lubuntu, Mint, Debian, MX, Manjaro), but I like Q4OS the best so far! It's clean and light (even with the Desktop installation). I've tried Q4OS 3.14 on the hard drive of an old ThinkPad and in VirtualBox in other computers. Things just work out of the box!

I'm thinking about installing Q4OS on the hard drives of my work laptops, but would like to ask the following questions before doing that:

1. What are the key differences between Q4OS and Debian? In addition to the goodies included in the Welcome screen (e.g., desktop profiler), what are the benefits of using Q4OS other than Debian (I think I'll go for KDE Plasma)?

2. How does Q4OS handle proprietary drivers that are not included in Debian? Some Q4OS users said they liked it because some hardware, which didn't worked on plain Debian, worked right out of the box in Q4OS (wireless adaptor being the most important one!).

3. If I install Gemini 4.5 now (still in testing), will it be possible for me to upgrade it to 4.6 and later versions (especially after Debian 11 Bullseye has become a stable release) within Gemini 4.5, so that I don't need to go through a new installation?

4. Where can I find out more about the Q4OS Team? I'm interested because, apparently, you guys have done a better job than Canonical!

Sorry for my many questions, and thank you again, Q4OS Team!

Alan

Cheker

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2020-12-05

Posts: 16

Re: Details about Q4OS

Greetings and welcome! I've been using Q4 on my laptop since mid 2019, answering two of your questions from my experiences:

1 - Q4OS remains very close/loyal to Debian while making certain key aspects easier right off the bat. Two examples: whatever account you choose to create upon installing is immediately allowed to use sudo, you don't need to do anything;  in Debian, you have to add several repositories to APT's sources because the default ones leave a lot to be desired - I don't remember doing this in Q4, I assume the interesting ones are already there and enabled.

2 - I think I remember seeing the option to install proprietary drivers in the welcome screen that pops up after you first install Q4. Personally I have these installed and so never had any problems with fringe hardware.

I might be in the minority with this, but another big selling point for me is Trinity - I was a big sucker for WinXP so I appreciate the aesthetics. Other than Q4, I only know of one other Linux distro that uses Trinity as a default choice - EXE, based on Devuan, which is itself a sister of sorts to Debian.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: Details about Q4OS

1. Q4OS is Debian actually, with some added tools, Desktop profiler, Software centre, dedicated applications installer, Lookswitcher tool with visual themes and Trinity desktop option, see q4os.org

2. Yes Q4OS detects and uses a firmware for Broadcom wireless network hardware chipsets, or offer an easy user level installation of some proprietary drivers, for example for NVidia graphical hardware.

3. The upgrade will be essentially possible, however not recommended and documented. A clean installation will be recommended.

4. An available info can be found on the Q4OS website and forum at the moment. We would like to provide some more sooner or later.

alanlinux

Member

Registered: 2021-05-31

Posts: 4

Re: Details about Q4OS

Thank you, Cheker and Q4OS team!