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Linux Distribution Review and Survey (2023)

Know yourself and your unlikely partners.

Legend

Below are the symbols used to denote different types of notes taken during distribution reviews, aggregated in tables in the following sections.

openEuler Community Edition

TypeRemark
Overriding locales to English (they used en_US.UTF-8) on bare TTY sessions.
×No Chinese input support during installation - can't set a Chinese full name.
×Bad fontconfig settings, Japanese glyphs displayed on Chinese installer interface.
×PolicyKit installed but not enabled by default.
×Networking not enabled during installation.
×Random files from packages loitered around /.
?Cockpit not whitelisted by firewall, not accessible without further configuration.

RHEL Workstation

TypeRemark
Power profile support available and enabled by default.
×Bad fontconfig settings, Japanese glyphs displayed on Chinese installer interface.
?Installer sets default language by GeoIP detection.

Ubuntu

TypeRemark
Functionality to detect keyboard layout by a single key stroke at the installer.
Internet connection wizard at the installer.
Third-party drivers installation feature at the installer.
Hardware driver manager.
Installs open-vm-tools after detecting the virtual machine.
Input method works out-of-the-box.
?Theme selection at the installer.
?Installation by rsync.
?Skips GRUB menu by default.
?Defaults to Wayland.
?Pre-installs Remmina (RDP/VNC).
×Language selection does not affect live session.
×No input method support for full name input.
×No valid installation progress indicator (only a "bouncing progress bar").
×Poor Chinese localization "利用最好的开源进行开发."
×No option to disable system upgrade during installation (nor was there an option to cancel the update, as with the previous Ubiquity installer).
×Ubuntu Desktop Installer takes up a processor core.
×Installation log was not output at real-time.
×Yet more updates after updating during installation.
×Data sharing with Canonical is opt-out.
×Serif Chinese font in Ubuntu Software (Dart application)?
×Input method switching combination doesn't seem to work (in VMware).
×command-not-found defaults to Snap.

openKylin

Date of Review: 20230819 Version: 1.0

TypeRemark
Built-in "restoration mode" with validation for backups.
Built-in backup tool with Ghost (?!) image support.
Biometrics support for PolicyKit.
Fully featured user's guide with graphical instructions!
?Provides an older kernel (6.1 vs 5.15) at Live menu.
?Fullscreen installer.
?Has an on-screen keyboard enable icon.
?A/B partition.
?Installation by rsync.
?Graphical wizard for installing .deb packages.
?Built-in LAN chat.
?Teamviewer alternative.
?Defaults to Wayland.
?Pre-installs an alarm clock and voice recorder.
×Defaults to an awful resolution (800x600) while reporting 3840x2400 (VirtualBox).
×Two on-screen keyboards pre-installed (and enabled) by default.
×No input method support for user name input.
×No full name setup.
×Installer log/status indication has poor readability.
×Bad line-wrap for desktop icons.
×Application menu is sometimes unresponsive.

Solus Budgie

Date of Review: 20230827 Version: 4.4

TypeRemark
Keyboard layout tester integrated in the installer.
Provides Steam native runtime.
?Opt-in location services to detect timezone and locale defaults.
?Option to create multiple users from the installer.
?GRUB menu hidden by default.
×Language settings does nothing to the installer interface.
×No slideshow during installation (the UI looked broken).
×Desktop unresponsive to drag and select events.
×No highlighting for selected icons (also opens on single click).
×No translation for application categories.
×Language packs not installed by default for Firefox and Thunderbird.
×Searching for "terminal" in the application menu did not show Terminal as a candidate.
×System update compulsory when installing a package.