Pear Linux 6 review
Aside from Firefox, Pear Linux 6 ships with three webapps, made possible by Fogger. These are for Twitter, Facebook and Google+. The concept of webapps is cool, because by creating them for those websites that you are always visiting, you use less tabs on your Web browser. The problem is that with Fogger, activity auto-notification is not integrated into the desktop. In other words, using webaps powered by Fogger is no different from visiting the same websites from your Web browser. And I think it is even better with a Web browser, considering that you can have all three websites open on one browser window, rather than the three different windows of Fogger.
For those applications, like a full Office suite and games, that are not installed, the Pear Appstore provides a very user-friendly interface for installing and managing them. The version of Appstore that shipped with Pear Linux 5 appeared to be a fork of Deepin Software Center (DSC), the graphical package manager of Linux Deepin, another desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. That is because it had a feature that was not available in DSC.
That feature, the ability to upgrade all available updates with a single click, is missing from this edition of Pear Appstore. And that’s not a good thing because what it means is that if there are, say, 20 applications to be upgraded, you will have to click on 20 upgrade buttons. That’s a lot of clicking to do, so there must be a very good reason why DSC is used in Pear Linux 6, rather than the custom version that shipped with Pear Linux 5. You can see screen shots of that here. This screen shot of Appstore illustrates the point I’m trying to make. With 59 updates available, the Upgrade button for each application will have to be clicked. That’s a lot of clicks. A sudo apt-get update from the command-line takes care of that.
Most of the graphical management applications are accessible from System Settings, the hub for such applications in any GNOME 3 desktop. Two are custom-built for Pear Linux. The first one, shown here, makes it easy to reposition the dock. It’s called Pear Dock Config.
The other, Pear Linux Tweak, gives you a lot more to do. When I first launched it on a test installation on real hardware, it reported that “The package information was last updated 14 days ago.” But that was on a system that I installed less than 24 hours prior. (see the text under Your system is up-to-date.
After running sudo apt-get update, the reporting was more accurate.
This just shows what you can do from the Tweaks tab of Pear Linux Tweak.
The Admins tab shows a few more.
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I haven’t try that pear yet but I’m willing to try.
Also the Web Browser was (as I understand it) created in ZorinOS!
I was deeply disappointed with 6 compared to 4 – as with 5, no decent Office Suite (LibreOffice). When I installed the 32-bit I got a broken desktop that was all blue. 64-bit fared better but I could not alter the settings for brightness and password (screensaver and password lock) – and did not get a response to my broken install post on the forum!
I still have my test installation running, so I’ll take a look at the issues you had r are having
So based on everyone slamming Pear, I go and have a look at Luna. Here’s what I find:
“elementary OS Luna is undergoing development. It’s near a beta release, but isn’t quite there yet. In the meantime, we ask for your patience as we finish this release and get it pushed out. Jupiter has served us well over the last year and a half, but its age is showing. As such, we don’t recommend downloading it.”
So I can’t download Luna, and the developers themselves recommend I don’t download Jupiter. But all these posts here are ripping on Pear.
Does anyone but me find that ironic?
This is a distro for people that like Luna OS but for some strange reason don’t install Luna? I am really tired of all these respins that are essentially wholesale lifts of other established respins.. Stop wasting your time and resources on stuff like this.
I noticed that they took and renamed Ubuntu Tweak to Pear Linux Tweak. The overlaying scroll bars are easy to use. A person just has to unlearn a few things then after you do they are not annoying. This distro needs some original work done.
Maybe measure your words better.
There are other desktops based on GNOME 3 out there that you didn’t mention. There’s that distro from Indonesia, another one from Spain, I think and surely at least a couple more I don’t remember.
Maybe a careful search on Distrowatch will reveal some, but maybe not all.
This is clearly Pantheon with a slightly more attractive sling-shot launcher. Nice work though!
Other good Gnome3 Ubuntu derivatives worth looking at are Deepin Linux and Pinguy. They both do a good job of fixing up gnome 3 into something useable.
Have not looked at Pinguy yet, but you can find articles on Linux Deepin here.
a little biased
The Pear Tweak tool didn’t enable the window buttons to be moved from left (default) to right when I asked it. It seems to be anchored left – even after save. The overlay scrollbar is annoying, while the left top and left-bottom hotspots kept getting in the way when I was working. I appreciate the concept for both of them, but I think I still prefer separate windows/workspaces as defined in Compiz, which are locked into your menu bar. Otherwise, a pretty cool looking release.
It’s not a gnome-shell adaptation, it’s a pantheon-shell adaptation. Most, nearly all, of the work behind this shell was done by the elementary OS team, who are currently building Luna OS.
he has a point. and its not so much an adaptation as an almost wholesale lift. Seriously, the only thing they didnt take from elementary UI wise is Slingshot. The reason you had instabilities is because Luna is still in development (not even beta yet… this is not a distro for production machines)
They even used Slingshot from The elementary Project, but in an older version with old concepts.
BTW. – What is this for an article??? NO reference to elementary? Seriously, this is crappy….
Have a nice weekend.
Did you even bother to read the other comments before posting yours?