New on the forum from the farmlands of central Texas. I got into Linux about 5 years ago. I had bought a little and inexpensive Fusion 5 Windows 10 tablet for travel since I could load up a micro SD with books, music and TV and use it for travel, taking to work, etc. After a system update not only did the tablet not see a network adapter it also did not work with the SD so no entertainment value. I did try all the restore, fixes and none worked so I decide to try out Linux. Fedora was the only one that worked with the wi-fi so I just started exploring and after 6 months got a fairly decent but lower end laptop like a person may give their teen to have some and kept experimenting until I finally got a more resource packed laptop and then moved on to Debian based. I think I have the same Debian issues as Torvalds since the wifi did not work with any of them except for Kali Linux. Had no goal of a security oriented distro, but it was the only one that worked well so I added in the user friendlier software like VLC, Libreoffice and did the same as I had with Fedora. I read in a few places and was told by others I know using Linux that three varieties of the OS that it can be good to become familiar with are Fedora, Debian and Arch. At the age of 60 even with more than a few years with Fedora and Debian I admit to being lazy enough to want an easier to install at least Arch to begin with and read fine things about Reborn and found the installation a breeze and a pleasant experience and am now exploring Reborn for a number of months running Cinnamon desktop, but also installed everything for Gnome and have added KDE and XFCE also. I know some suggest not adding extra desktops, but having no troubles with Fedora and Kali I have done the same now with Reborn with no major issues. Now I am just exploring and experimenting away. Tinkering with things is a long time passion of mine. Carpentry and woodworking is a hobby I have had for 40 plus years. Glad to be a part of the bunch and group.
Welcome @KM76678 
!
With multiple desktop environments installed together, you may notice issues with appearance and theming (like wih KDE Plasma and Gnome, depending on what themes are installed and based on what customizations are done). I used to have multiple desktop environments on my laptop for testing. Once in a while there are package conflicts like what happened with Budgie’s and Gnome’s settings apps months ago. Otherwise there aren’t any major problems.
We are a small community whose presence is mostly on Discord, but you will get adequately prompt responses here on the Forum if you run into any problems. Since RebornOS is fully compatible with Arch Linux (except for an additional small package repository of our own), you can find help that pertains to Arch Linux and Arch Linux based distros (except Manjaro) that will also apply to RebornOS.
Nice to see you around!
So far the only issue I encountered was a XFCE Polkit Agent pops that would sometimes come up, so I just deleted it. The good is that this machine is older, with 4GB of RAM so it is great to test out until I spring for a better machine with better resources. It is cheap enough that I don’t mind breaking things to rebuild and get repetition on setting up and learning.
Welcome, KM76678! I, too, am a relatively new RebornOS user, as well as a bit of a tinkerer/experimenter. Reborn is fun, and it was easy to set up (I use the KDE desktop here). My most recent experiment has been to install Garuda-XFCE along-side my other installed OSes/distributions. I currently have Windows 11, Solus Linux, Reborn OS, and now Garuda-XFCE installed on my primary laptop PC, using the rEFInd boot manager to make them all get along together. The great thing about using the rEFInd boot manager is that there is a way for me to enroll rEFInd into the UEFI database following installation, and sign each distribution’s kernel image file, so they can all successfully load with Secure Boot enabled (Windows 11 is happier with Secure Boot enabled).
The reason I decided to give Garuda-XFCE a try was that XFCE is nearly infinitely configurable. The Garuda implementation of XFCE looks a lot like both KDE, and Cinnamon, with the panel located horizontally at the bottom of the screen. The panel contains a Menu button, allowing me to access all installed applications, and I can add apps to the panel (creating an icon there), so I can launch them directly from the panel. On top of all that, Garuda provides an XFCE configuration/tweaking GUI app that includes everything I have found that I want to customize, and much more.
Both Reborn, and Garuda, are a lot of fun to use, and I like them both a lot. Since there is so much to learn from the Arch-based family of distributions, I’ll probably be using one (or more) Arch-based distribution(s) for the foreseeable future.
You mention that you’re 60. I’ll turn 75 this Summer, so we’re both mature GNU/Linux users/experimenters (I wonder if our ages have anything to do with our love of experimentation?). I hope you enjoy your adventures with Reborn as much as I have so far.
Ernie
Thank you for the welcome, Ernie. Yes it is a blast, and great learning experiences just trying out new ways and ideas. XFCE is a fun desktop and especially once you install the Whiskermenu plug in. I do believe that is one of great things when getting into Linux of whatever variety and distro is just the search for how to customize things to your liking for ease of use. It can take you down a rabbit hole of learning new things and ways to look at what you are working with. At some point into time I do plan on virtual install of Arch without using the easier to install distros or the Archinstall script. I know a number of people tell that is good way to get under the hood on how much to do and admit it is not as difficult as some make it that it is more time consuming and getting the commands and parameters right. I do agree that our ages may be a bit of the love of experimenting. Whether it is myself with carpentry or those in mine, and your age groups with mechanical things and cars from the 60s and 70s. I tell people that have seen the movie Dazed and Confused the high school parking lot in that movie was like mine where my classmates had inherited some of the old classic and muscle cars.
Take care,
Kenneth
I hadn’t considered that plugin. I suspect it’s why Garuda can configure the menu as it does. Interesting. I’ll have to do some research on my older laptop regarding that.
Ernie