Reviews – It's MOSS

Upgrading from Mint 20.3 to 21.1

I recently downgraded from Mint 21 back to 20.3, just for stability’s sake and to use some apps which were disabled or removed from the Ubuntu 22.04 base. Now that there has been some time for Ubuntu to fix some of those issues, and Mint has released the next version (Vera, 21.1), I thought I […]

Distro Madness Round 1 Concludes

After an extended voting period, the first round of Distro Madness is now concluded. Voting for round #2 is now open VOTE HERE Here are the results to date with some thoughts to follow The first thing that I noticed was that Linux Mint ended up in a surprisingly competitive race. It was by no […]

Distro Madness 2022 Opens

Welcome to DistroMadness 2022. For those of you who participated last year you can skip straight to the voting. VOTE HERE If you are new to Distro Madness or just want a refresher on how it works then please see below. What is Distro Madness? DistroMadness is an effort to understand the Linux community’s distribution […]

Installing Linux on a ThinkCentre Tiny M700

I just got a new (refurb) model of this incredibly tiny machine, to replace my giant HP Z800 Workstation for both room, newness, and power consumption. So I set down to install Linux on it, not Windoze 10 as comes installed. And I ran into a brick wall. With help from friends, chiefly Leo Chavez […]

A look at Pine64: Pinetime

One of the more challenging choices I face as I move further into open source is what to do for hardware needs. I always start with the goal of supporting community driven companies that work together with the linux and open source community. However often this goal often encounters obstacles and I have to admit […]

Linux Lite install

Linux LiteMoss Bliss This is a distro installation report which did not make it onto Distrohoppers’ Digest. I installed version 4.4 on this occasion. The installer is Ubiquity: the more you use it, the easier it is to use. I had no difficulties. It was interesting to see some of the default settings being more […]

Cutefish OS

by Moss Bliss This is a review which was judged to be too incomplete to include in Distrohoppers’ Digest podcast. Cutefish OS is created by the developers of Cutefish Desktop, which has already been released on Manjaro Linux. It is based on Ubuntu core. I installed this on my Lenovo ThinkPad T540p. Somewhere I saw […]

Reborn OS install

by Moss Bliss This little distro is an Arch newcomer, and there were some surprises in store. I downloaded the ISO and burned the stick. I installed the stick in my Lenovo ThinkPad T540p. The installer was simple to use once you figured out that there wasn’t a Continue button to hit, just an arrow. […]

Hardware Review: HAVIT 89 key mechanical keyboard

I have to admit that the keyboard has always been an after-thought when I have purchased a computer. In fact, prior to the purchase of this particular keyboard, I have only ever owned ones that came stock with my system purchases. I have certainly used different types of keyboards over the years: from early 90s […]

Jelly Comb – Evolutionary Trackball

I recently purchased a Jelly Comb MT50 trackball as a replacement for a dying Logitech M570. I don’t know if it’s objective, but the M570 buttons seem to be less sturdy than they used to be… My friend Joe repairs a lot of M570s and suggested I get one. It looks good. It feels good. […]