So I'm trying AnduinOS

[TabNumlock]

Tried the live ISO on Ventoy and figgered I'd install it on the upstairs PC. Everything works but my Brother network printer. Yeah, it's kinda a ripoff of Zorin using their panel and start menu that got forked as extensions. But it's super compact (1.9GB), installs fast and has the latest kernel and Gnome version. No Gimp or LibreOffice which is fine by me.

It's made by a young guy in China named Anduin Xue. Has a YT channel. I might donate $10 and ask him how to fix the printer.

It has some quirks that can be adjusted if you want to hear about them. Super stable, so far.

[Aravisian]

@TabNumlock

Yeah, it's kinda a ripoff of Zorin using their panel and start menu that got forked as extensions.

That is what Free Open Source is all about. Sharing knowledge and adding your gifts.

Given that he ZorinGroup sponsors the fork of their Dash Extension with financial assistance, I think they are not unhappy to see their work enjoyed.

[TabNumlock]

I probably can't use it anyway:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mfcj480dwcupswrapper: Depends: mfcj480dwlpr but it is not installable.

Unless I get a new printer. Might get a Brother laser monochrome.

Plus, the guy only guarantees updates for a year.

Too bad because everything else works great, after I figured out the quirks:

*Terminal shows absolutely nothing when you type in your password (thought it was broken). You can edit a file as root to add placeholders but I haven't done it.

*The Activities taskbar key is well hidden. You have to turn it on in Arc Menu and then in Dash to Panel. Then move it where you want it. It's nice because you can scroll thru your desktops with it. Turn Isolate Workspaces off so it doesn't move around. No need for Panel Scroll.

*Extensions is installed instead of Extension Manager. Fix that.

*The "Computer" in Nautilus is gone. Just type / and then add it to Favorites. BTW, it now shows the path, no need to type Crtl+L anymore.

*He uses a super geeky calculator. Just d/l the standard one.

*The Super key does the Start button and I don't think you can change it to Activities. So I just made my R-Ctrl key do Super_L+KEY_TAB using Input Remapper. Do NOT install Input Remapper via the terminal. Use the deb file. Edit: you can turn it off in Arc menu by deleting it. Then you could use Tweaks to move the Activities key to R-Win or R-Ctrl.

*He has Clipboard Indicator installed but the indicator is turned off! Turn it on in settings.

*There's no firewall. Gufw, the simple one Zorin uses can be installed tho.

*There are tons of Start menus. I'm using Sleek.

*Clicking on the User actually opens Settings/System. You then have to click on Users.

*Most of the settings for the desktop icons can only be accessed via Extension Manager. I used them to get rid of the drive icons that keep popping up.

*The weather app is kinda pointless. Gnome already has a better one built in. Just get an extension to add the temperature to your taskbar.

*The panel fonts sometimes turn white in Light mode. Just go into Extension Manager and turn the panel off/on to make them black again. This is the only real bug I've found, so far.

I have to go to bed before I remember something else.

[swarfendor437]

Looking at your menu pic it looks more like a Deepin rip-off ala Win 11 central styling. Does it have Synaptic Package Manager available? If so see if printer-driver-all is listed. This meta package installs CUPS, system-config-printer, and most importantly Gutenprint which has most of the current printer model drivers.

[TabNumlock]

Only the "driverless" driver works on Zorin. When I select it on Anduin, it doesn't work. Also, I have to unlock the printer any time I do anything.

The Zorin address is http://localhost:631/ and brings up a web page.

The Anduin one is Brother MFC-J480DW._ipp._tcp.local:631 and says can't be found.

Could there be a firewall?

[TabNumlock]

@swarfendor437

Looking at your menu pic it looks more like a Deepin rip-off ala Win 11 central styling.

That's cuz I made the Start Menu transparent, which is kinda dumb. It's distracting and also turns off the theme so it doesn't switch to white in Light mode.

The wallpaper doesn't auto-change like in Zorin. There is a light wallpaper but you have to set it manually.

BTW, if you want a Desktop Clock extension like that:

Time: %I:%M (I removed the spaces around the colon)
Date: %a %b %d
Location: 1450/55 (1920 monitor)

Here are the backgrounds, which are quite nice:

Add them to Zorin and they will switch!

[TabNumlock]

More free info/stuff:

If you use a desktop PC with 3-piece speakers like me, you probably noticed a click/thud whenever the sound comes on (even on sound keys). This is the power saving which idles the audio.

The first fix worked for me on Anduin:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1230833/annoying-click-popping-sound-on-ubuntu-20-04

I think with Zorin, I used the comment out a line in /etc/pulse/default.pa method. Anduin doesn't even have that file so I'm glad the first method worked.

Bonus tip: How to remember Anduin. What is Ann doin'?

[Locklear93]

@TabNumlock

Bonus tip: How to remember Anduin. What is Ann doin'?

Anduin Wrynn

[TabNumlock]

An odd choice. My mother named me after my father, Tab Numlock Sr.

Actually, you can get wallpapers to switch using Night Theme Switcher. Does sundown/sunrise and you can make a key combo to activate it or just hit the Dark Style button in the Gnome control panel.

Night Theme Switcher - GNOME Shell Extensions

Edit:

It has a startup sound you can turn on in Settings/Sound.

warty-startup.oga

Might wanna change that.

/usr/share/sounds/Yaru/stereo

[TabNumlock]

Printer support seems to be a weak spot. I had to manually install a Brother driver and a dependency and specify IP address.

wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/sane-backends/libsane_1.1.1-5_amd64.deb

With Zorin, it was plug&play and with Fedora I just had to pick out the printer from a list. Both "driverless".

[swarfendor437]

I noticed in Zorin when checking the properties of my Canon TS-8151, listed as Canon TS-8100_Series. Checked properties, "driverless" so changed it to TS-8000_Series which has CUPS drivers. Sorted. In the old days when printer support was not current, (I have always used Canon Printers) I would look on the Print Cartridge box as to which printer models they were compatible with. I had a Pixma i-865, no driver. The cartridge box indicated compatibility with BJC-8800 - so chose this model from available printer drivers and could print from i-865.

[TabNumlock]

Driverless means cloud printing. I wonder who might be looking at what you're printing.

Anyway, I would rank AnduinOS with Zorin Core. Both great looking and Windows-like. You could install them without your family noticing.

Zorin is more stable and reliable but AnduinOS has much newer components and installs much faster with less bloat.

If I were making a distro for noobs/normies, I would install Chrome instead of Firefox cuz that's what 70% of people use vs 3% for FF (Google would probably pay you). I'd install Pinta instead of Gimp. Leave out LibreOffice. Most people just use Google Docs.

[swarfendor437]

That is what I like about PCLinuxOS Debian (KDE Plasma edition) - no bloatware, no systemd, no pulseaudio. LibreOffice is there if you want it with a one time installer from the menu, and it has a full range of Browsers from it's Browser Installer. Uses Pipewire out of the box and uses Liquorice kernel 6.12 last time I checked. Once you have installed Tiled Menu from Zren, they think they were using a Windows 10 machine!

[TabNumlock]

Well, the printer stopped working and reinstalling the driver didn't work.

So it's back to Zorin. At least I got some good wallpapers out of it. And the bug where the taskbar icons/text turned white in Light mode was pretty intolerable.

Long live King Zorin!

[swarfendor437]

So you got me wanting to see! I downloaded NobleNumbat and PluckyPuffin .iso's to run as VM's using virt-manager. Was able to download the English UK version of Numbat but all I got at boot time after the GRUB menu was a floating 'x' cursor. Reinstalled the 'pool' file and used safe graphics and when it got to the checksum being [OK], the screen developed a permanent flicker - perhaps I should have been a bit more picky on the type of Graphical Interface in the VM Details! I then had more success with the PluckyPuffin based Anduin - but had a problem logging in. I reinstalled and then remembered that it is only available in English US. This time I viewed the password fields when setting up my user, and that was the issue. I had to enter "Shift+ 3" to get the # sign in my password, if I used the keyboard # key it would not work at login, even though choosing English UK during the install and viewing the password at login showed the correct symbol, the installer had chosen the US Keyboard setting! Bizarre! Now once I had sussed out the login password was sorted, but anything that required my password such as sudo in terminal required the US shortcut still for #!

And I managed to install the cupswrapper driver from Brother and lo and behold, it shows up in Printers after installing and running:

sudo system-config-printer

And I don't even have the hardware!

I was able to install Synaptic Package Manager via the terminal and then installed Epiphany Browser as everything in the Software channel is Flatpak!

The one application that I was pleased to see was Qalculate, disappointed that the Dev chose Evince over Okular. So overall, 3/10 (for effort). Must do better!
Not a lot of walls to choose from either, just the light version of the dark wall shown in the screenshot. Could not put my location in for the Weather App launched from the Menu, but could change the location by adding mine from launching the weather icon to the left of the taskbar.

Now deleting this poor effort of an OS from my VM pool!

[Sparks79]

I tryed zorin 17 a few months ago, but was totally bewildered with the network Log in section.
Let me explain.
I have several computers in my home and for the most part they all use windows 10.
They are on cat5 cable with auto assigned IP address not a fixed IP.
And there is one PC that's on linux mint 22.1 cinnamon.
I have a central storage of some 8TB SSD in Raid0 in a Qnap TS264 NAS.
Now from either the Linux PC or any of the Windows PC's I can Map into the NAS.
However in Zorin 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 , I can't figure out just How to Map my NAS Drive.
At present I do not have Zorin installed ( for that reason ).
I would love to Try Zorin 17.3 ( again ) but unless I can find the right Instructions as to how to Map Network Drive, I am Staying Away from it.
Also I am a bit concerned about Brother Printers.
I read here in this topic, someone was having trouble and couldn't get their brother network printer to work.
Well my printer is a brother MFS-J880DW, quite old now but still working.
And is automatically found and configured in linux mint 22.1.
If anyone could help me out with the networking trouble, I might give it another try.

[Omnimaxus]

I actually tried the live ISO of AnduinOS last night. I didn't like it. I wasn't truly planning on switching or anything, but I had to try it out. Again, just didn't like it. Plus, to be honest, because it's from China, that alone makes it questionable. Look at what's happened with Deepin Linux. It's come under scrutiny by many people, and for good reason. The Chinese government (note I didn't say "people," but "government") has shown itself to often have ulterior motives in how and why they control their populace to keep folks in check through spying, monitoring (of internet communications, for example), and so forth. All of this is factually and objectively documented without bias. So, who's to say AnduinOS isn't anything like Deepin Linux in that sense? Best to leave it be and go with something else more reputable and trustworthy like Zorin OS or Linux Mint or another Ubuntu/Debian-based OS.