 So I have been using Redcore Linux for over a week now. We're one week in two days or so into my six-month Linux challenge I'll leave a link to that challenge video in the cards above and in the video description But basically the idea is to use a distro that you haven't used before or at least haven't used in a long time for six months straight now There are some rules that we've kind of made up as we've gone along So we've said that it's okay to reinstall if you have to so as long as you're still using the same Distro and you don't hop you're still within the margin of error or something whatever so I have been using it for a week in two days this is day nine I believe and I have some thoughts on Redcore and I wanted to share them now I said that I wasn't going to spam the channel with Redcore videos So I'm not going to do that. This will be my last video on Redcore until we get to the month point I will make another video when I've used it for a month and we'll see how it goes then and see if my opinions on it Have changed now like I did with my first impressions video I'm going to split this into two different sections The first one is the thoughts on Redcore itself The second one is more thoughts on Gen2 in general because when you're using Redcore you do have a system that resembles Gen2 in most of its you know Workings so if you have used Redcore before you'll know what I'm talking about Let's go ahead and jump in to my system, and I'll show you what's going on right now So this is my system as it is right now. I'm using DWM Are and I have been for you know a couple hours and as you can tell I'm still in the process of getting things set up So don't worry about the lack of theming and stuff like that. I'm not there yet It will eventually get prettier. So there's a reason why I'm using a window manager again and it the Biggest thing is that it all comes down to the fact that I wanted an update So let's talk a little bit about Redcore shall we and along the way you'll understand why I'm using a window manager again So Redcore at its heart is supposed to be based on Gen2 testing It says on the website in the very first Sentence as you can see that it's based on Gen2 testing and if it were based on Gen2 testing It should have access to very bleeding edge Software just like Arch does but that's basically what the testing branch of Gen2 is It's basically the rolling release version of Gen2 Otherwise, you'd be on the stable branch where updates come much more slower Now here's where the confusion lies with me. They claim. This is a rolling release Right, they claim that it is a rolling release if you if you open up a terminal It will say rolling right here in Neo Fetch. It says so right there and the thing is is that by default It's not rolling and it's not based on to testing either. Okay. It's really really not Instead Redcore has its own repositories and here's my qualm for a while I've been basically telling people that I'm using Gen2 and That's because I was under the assumption that Redcore was basically just an installer for Gen2 Now I understood that it was its own distro because they call it their own thing Like it says Redcore Linux there. It doesn't say Gen2 So I understood that they were separate things But I thought it was like the Arch Linux installer or maybe Arco Linux or something like that where yes They maybe have their own like side repositories, but they would also use the Gen2 repositories as the main one That's what I thought because in that first sentence on the website as you just saw it says Gen2 testing right there But that's not what it is instead. They have their own repositories and they actually have their own branches of their repositories And that means that by default you're actually on a stable branch Of their repositories. It's not so much rolling as it's menjaro That's basically what this is so they pull all of their stuff from Gen2 testing into their repositories And then release it sometime later to their users now when that later is Is up for debates the I've seen multiple times on their website. Sometimes they say six hours And that's definitely not been the case sometimes. It's multiple days So when I was still on the stable branch of their repositories It had been seven days since I had a single update a single update not even I had not a single update in the entire time After I installed and if that's you know, if it was built as a stable distro or If if it claimed that it had its own repositories that were delayed a little bit from Gen2 testing fine But when it says Gen2 testing at the top of the website in the very first sentence, you can call them a little bit confused So long story short What I ended up doing with the help of a friend in discord Was switching from the stable branch of the red core repositories to the testing branch Which is closer to Gen2 testing than the the stable branches and I updated and it went through fine Now this is after I tried doing the whole changing of the branch things on my own And I borked my entire system. So as you can see here, I have one reinstall And I did that because when I tried to update the first time after switching branches It completely deleted the shell like it deleted everything that we could possibly For whatever reason, well, I didn't delete it. It had some really weird air where glib C and the versioning number of glib C weren't wasn't matching up with with shell and whatever I don't know. It was a really weird air and apparently it was fixable But I didn't have the patience to fix it. So I reinstalled but once I did it properly I was able to use sysophus to move to the proper branch and got updated I managed to get to plasma 5.27, which is what I was after I really wanted the brand new plasma because I've been hearing every linux youtuber say, oh my goodness this plasma 5.27 Update is fantastic. It's it's the best plasma update ever. I think is what the linux experiment said, nick You lied to me, man. Now. I'm just kidding I'm pretty sure that plasma it just hates my guts. Okay, that's the the whole bottom line of this entire story is that I used I said in my first impressions video That the plasma that I was using was the most stable version of plasma that I've ever used that 5.26 that I was using That comes with the red core iso was very very stable And it was very very stable for six days. I had no problems with it. What so ever? Well, I I shouldn't say problem. I didn't have any problems with it I did have some of the usual monitor dual monitor issues that you know You just kind of have on plasma At least prior to 5.27 supposedly but I was able to fix those I was able to live with it very easily And it was just a very good plasma experience But I I wanted that plasma 5.27 because supposedly it fixed the monitor issues that I was having And it had tiling that I wanted to try and all these really cool features And it was just so shiny and I had the fear of missing out, you know fomo and So I switched to the next branch of red core got it updated got 5.27 it took four and a half hours to update I did a reboot Before I went to sleep at four o'clock in the morning after doing the update and it was working fine It worked fantastically well for the five minutes that I used it and then I went to sleep And I had left my computer on like I usually do because it serves as a file server for the rest of the house And does a whole bunch of backups overnight and stuff whatever, you know, I got up in the morning moved my mouse to wake the monitors up and it worked again for about two and a half minutes And I walked away, you know to get breakfast or whatever it was and I came back and k-win crashed now If you've ever used plasma before you'll know that k-win crashes all the time It is the buggiest piece of software you're ever going to see But it's just normal if you've used plasma before you're used to k-win crashing it happens quite often And when I say crashed for me, I mean it completely crashed and all I had was the window that I had open like on the screen There was no wallpaper. There was no panel and you couldn't like right click on the The desktop or anything like that. You could do nothing other than interact with the window that was already up And you know, like I said, k-win crashes all the time. So, you know, whatever I did the thing that you normally do when k-win crashes if you can't Restart k-win from the terminal. I just rebooted my computer. It was the simplest thing to do I know there's a command line thing that you can use to restart k-win But I figured well, it's just easier to restart my computer. It took, you know, five seconds or whatever it was I rebooted into the x11 version of plasma, which is what I'd been using and k-win didn't even start Like all I had was a black screen and a cursor. That was it And I don't know exactly what was going on. I did not try to I did not try to Troubleshoot it. I'll put this right out there I did not spend any time troubleshooting it because at that time I had a podcast. I was recording with steve For his patreon and I needed to have my computer working So what I thought I would do is just switch over to the wayland version of plasma And the wayland version of plasma actually worked. It worked fine The problem is is red core doesn't ship with pipe wire So there's no way to capture screen in Wayland without pipe wire installed and at that point I did not want to mess with switching over from pulse audio to pipe wire That would have been a two hour process that would probably have broken my audio for all eternity So the long story short is that I installed i3 and used i3 for a couple days and i3 is still fantastic I spent some time getting it back to the place that I was at before I switched to xfce last month and you know And i3 was was really good for a day and I decided to use xfc last night I decided I was going to install dwm for whatever reason I spent today patching it So that's why I'm back on a window manager. It was a very long like 10 minute explanation But it kind of gives you a sense of the very interesting times. I've been having with Red core now There's a couple other things that I want to talk about. So first I've tried very hard not to use the sisyphus thing so sys ifus like that is a Package manager that is just for red core And I did not want to get attached to it and I also can't spell the damn thing reliably I have a alias to do so if I need it, but I would just prefer not to use it. So So I've just been using emerge and it's fine. I can merge is the gen 2 It's the front end for portage or whatever and you know, it's the package it's part of the package manager system of gen 2 And that's just what I've been doing. So I haven't been using sisyphus at all other than to switch the to do the that update to the Next branch after I switched branches after that. I've just went right back to using emerge It just seems to be easier to use emerge and you get all the features that you would if you're using regular gen 2 and it works decently well now Obviously, there's a lot about gen 2 that I still don't know like yesterday I was trying to get overlays working and josh had helped me with that I still have no clue the the stuff he helped me with anything about overlays He just basically said here put these commands into your terminal and that's how you do it I so I have no clue how to use overlays still Other than the basics. So I'm still learning some of the stuff that comes around with gen 2 And you know, it's been the package manager system has been fine plasma broke, which is not a surprise to me whatsoever I'm back in dw or in window managers I should say I'm going to probably switch back and forth between i3 and dwm for a little while and decide which one I want to use I just felt like setting something up today. So I use dwm for a while So yeah, that's the basics of red core just the stuff that's just red core That's the stuff I wanted to talk about. So let's transition into the second part where I talk about using something based on gen 2 And my biggest takeaway so far after using this thing for whatever what it is it one week three days six hours 47 minutes and whatever seconds right for that amount for that period of time My biggest takeaway Is that if you value your time and you are the type of person who sits there and watches your computer update Gen 2 is a horrible distribution for you It takes when it does have updates if you switch to the the next branch of the red core repositories And you do the regular updates, which basically are just a gen 2 update It takes a very very long time now I've had updates on like arch Linux take a long time too because if you used a lot of stuff from the AUR it has to build all that stuff from source source as well And but the problem is is that usually on other distributions you have a lot of binaries And my thing here is that because I've been avoiding sycephus everything that I've installed is the actual thing It's the stuff from source because gen 2 is a source based distro if I had been using sycephus from the beginning And stayed away from emerge a lot of the packages that I would be having would be binaries, which would have saved Me a lot of time when I updated because you'd just be updating a binary Whereas when I when I have when I went through and used emerged all the time It was you have they had to update everything from source and it took a very long time and you know, it's It's a weird mixture of things because there are some binaries on my system But there are a lot more things that I have emerged And it's just kind of a weird mixture and it took a very long time So if you're the type of person who cares about update speed gen 2 is definitely not for you It takes a very long time now That's an obvious thing to say because it's a source based distro And it's supposed to take a long time. It's compiling everything for me personally I'm the kind of person who won't leave my computer to update on its own So I had to sit here for that whole four hours now I didn't obviously I you know, I watched tropic thunder while it was on so I was perfectly fine Waiting for it to do do what it needed to do But it was still something that took a very long time. So that's one thing that I noticed about gen 2 The other one is that Specifically, I mentioned overlays and the the brief amount of stuff that I learned from josh about overlays is that they've overly complicated overlays Basically, if you don't know what overlays are they're basically a way to add third party repositories They're like the ppas of gen 2 very simplified Explanation of what overlays are I understand there's a gen 2 guy out there saying oh, they're not anything I like I understand technologically. They're not the same But the idea is to have Outside repositories other than the gentle repositories add it to your system Then you can install softwares that are is hosted elsewhere. I think the system that slackware slackware has that has Allows you to install packages from other repositories as well. It's something similar to that It's not quite like fedora's copper because copper is all hosted in one place So it's a little bit different than that. But the idea is that you can Pull in packages from other places other than the just the gentry repositories But the way they've set it up is either more simple than josh explained it or I'm an idiot I'm pretty sure it's the second one and I just can't get my head around it because it's overly complicated Now I've read the documentation on overlays Both the new and the old so they used to have a thing called layman It's supposedly no longer works or you're not supposed to use it They don't have something e-select or some e-select repository or something like that And that's how you install repositories or overlays and it's an overly complicated process It's more than two lines and things just not just weren't working very well now It's possible that red cord just has a problem with overlays and that's the reason why The first overlay that I attempted to install wouldn't work with e-merge It did end up working with sisyphus after I've added the repositories Which is really weird because the sisyphus is supposed to be just a front end for e-merge So it's really really weird. So I don't I don't know what's going on with overlay But the point I'm trying to make here is that there's a lot of these little fiddly bits about gen 2, right? That's you that they do things in just a I'm not gonna say a weird way and just in a different way They do things in a different way and you have to learn each and every one of those things and These things constantly surprise you as you continue on so especially if you're using a distribution like red core Where you didn't have to go through the gen 2 installation? Where you would learn a lot of this stuff if you're just using red core and you have to you know Learn about overlays and you have to learn about, you know every once in a while You'll have to use an e-build from sisyphus or you decide to use e-merge or whatever for something You have to you you have to learn all these little things and it just it makes it feel very tedious Simply because there's so much, right? It's it's just it there One thing right after another it doesn't there hasn't been a day in the week in three days that I've used this That I haven't learned something about my gen 2 quote-unquote gen 2 system, right? I've learned something new and That has been a fun process for me, but it's definitely not user friendly So that's my second thought on the whole gen 2 based thing now the last thought that I have on red core and gen 2 together Is that the more I use it the more? It feels like an abandoned distro to me now the reason why I say this Is because first of all the last iso that they created was in october of last year It was the only iso that was released and if you add on top of that the inconsistent updates to their Repositories it doesn't seem like they have a schedule now granted I've only used this for eight days or whatever you know eight or nine days or whatever it's been I haven't seen where they have a very consistent update schedule now Maybe over time maybe they update it every 10 days or maybe they update it you know the Rolling version of the the branches every day and then the the stable one gets updated once a month I don't know yet. I haven't found that schedule anywhere online And that's the problem with their you know misinformation on their website where they claim that it's gen 2 testing and while it's technically Gen 2 testing they hold stuff back. It's very similar to manjaro. It's the reason why I mentioned manjaro earlier They manjaro is based on arch Linux for his repositories But they've basically cloned them and then held everything back for two or three weeks And they do this to obviously ensure that you know supposedly that you're more stable on a quote-unquote arch based distro And it feels that way with redcore 2 but the problem is is that it also makes it feel abandoned And I don't want to say abandoned. I guess I have a couple times, but it just feels Neglected a little bit and that's it doesn't feel like redcore is highly maintained anymore With the single iso that came out last year with no No news on a new iso for this year with the packaging being very much in control of one person Building that stuff and then pushing it out And no reliable way of knowing if Those repositories will eventually someday just not be updated ever again It feels like either it's very close to being, you know abandoned or it's just neglected And obviously this is just a one this is just a one person show So I don't want to come across as like i'm seriously Criticizing this one person for having a life outside of Constantly updating the gen 2 repository. So I'm I don't want to be that guy I'm just saying if you were to use redcore just go go in knowing That the package update situation is a little wishy-washy and maybe not be as Structured as you'd want it to be so or at least that's my feelings as of right now Maybe after I've used this for a month and I realized that there is an update schedule Maybe I'll know better now I am on the next branch of sisyphus or of the redcore repository So I should be getting a lot more a lot more updates now Then I was beforehand. So we'll see how that goes and we'll see how stable it is after I do another update because Obviously when you're on a very rolling release, which is what this should be now things have a tendency to go wrong So those are my one week in some odd days thoughts on redcore And I have to say I haven't given up yet. I'm a week in three days in I'm still going strong. Yes, I've had to reinstall one time Yes, I've had problems with kwin, but I don't think that those were redcore problems And even if they were redcore problems, I didn't diagnose them. So I can't really say what they were But you know, I wasn't really all that surprised that katie eventually decided to be bugging me because katie Just doesn't like me whatsoever. It never really has so not surprised So I'm using a window manager now also between dw and i3 maybe I'll install xmonad I've been asked to take a look at xmonad again. So that's something that I want to do So that'll be an interesting journey over the next six months or so because there's still basically six months left We're still at the beginning of this challenge. I don't know what I was thinking choosing six months but here we are We're Uh a week and a few days in if you're taking a part in the six month linux challenge I'd love to hear how you're doing in the comment section below also check out the discord There is a channel inside of the discord for this challenge And we spent a lot of time there just you know, bitching about our lives and our lack of good choices when it comes to Choosing linux distributions. So it should be it should it should be a good time Make sure you check that out link will be in the video description You can follow me on master down or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cast links for libera pay and youtube will be in the video description as well Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube You guys are all absolutely amazing without you the challenge would not be anywhere near where it is right now So thank you so very very much for your support. I truly do appreciate you guys are awesome again I do say that at the end of the every video and it makes it sound like I've Memorized things which I have memorized things, but it doesn't mean that I mean it any less So thanks for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. See you next time