 There are a lot of distributions out there. That's one of the truest things that I've ever said and It shouldn't then be surprising that I quite often come across distributions that I've just never heard of before and usually when I see these distributions, I ask what the is that and Well, the one that we're looking at today is another one of those distros I've never heard of Q4 OS before now There's a possibility that this is a very popular OS and I've just been living under a rock or perhaps I've found a hidden gem who knows one of the things that you should know about this series is that I do some research beforehand, but not a lot I want to kind of keep a fresh mind going into it and Unless the website that I find for the distribution is absolutely atrocious I try not to judge it too harsh before I go in now that isn't always Something that I succeed at sometimes I start judging things based on the look and feel of it before I've even used it That's just human nature, but I try to at least keep an open mind So hopefully you will too so this is going to be a look at Q4 OS So the first thing we should do is take a look at the website now the first thing you should know about Q4 OS is that it's based on Debian 11 and If you're thinking what I'm thinking is that there's a lot of Debian based distros well That's true now it comes in two different flavors running plasma and something called the Trinity desktop now I've heard of the Trinity desktop before but I've never actually used it before So this is going to be an experience because we are going to try out the Trinity desktop today when we get to installing this I First downloaded the plasma version because I was just like I'm comfortable with this I don't want to look at something new, you know also lazy But the downloads that it was gonna take 16 hours So it just turned out it was easier just to download this Trinity desktop one and so we're gonna look at that So the website is not the greatest not the worst that I've ever seen one of the things that I noticed being someone who writes For a living is that they didn't capitalize the first letters of their sentences at least not all of them It's very inconsistent. I don't understand that I don't want to be a nitpicker But I edit stuff for a living so I noticed that right off the bat like I don't know why it's really weird It seems to be a design decision though something because they've done it They've done it in every single paragraph and then they go on to actually capitalize stuff, but Honestly doesn't matter again open mind So other than that on the website you'll find a download page where you can find links to both the Trinity and plasma versions of the Live ISO and an install CD. It'll give you the minimal hardware requirements And one of the interesting things that it advertises and I'm not had a chance to try this But I've looked at the documentation and it looks amazing is this thing right here called the Windows installer now apparently what this thing will do is That if you have Windows installed on your computer, you can download this it will download the ISO of key for OS It will install it alongside Windows from within Windows if that's true and it actually works Thank You Firefox for that Firefox has just been doing that randomly. I don't know why it's so weird But anyways if the Windows installer thing actually works It's what I've been wanting Linux to do for Absolute years because one of the hardest things to do in my opinion about Linux is actually install the damn thing because you have to deal with He you know boot menus and UEFI and partition managers and all this stuff Before you even get to the installation process if this worked it'd be game-changing now The thing is I don't have a Windows partition or a Windows install to actually test it on So if anybody has actually used that and know if it works leave a comment in the comment section below I'd love to know other than that you'll also find a section on documentation where they'll tell you some things about why you should choose Q4 OS Available applications the Windows setup, which is what I looked at earlier. It'll take you through the setup for that Windows thing It looks like it's like four steps. It which is just I mean there's even a like a video guide on YouTube I didn't see that before but if that works man, just Mind blown I'm right out of the bat. They also have some developer manuals and some stuff related to the Trinity desktop Which we might take a look at later if I get lost They also have some requests for business supports and some stuff for developers here as well So let's go ahead then install this. There's more stuff here on the website I will link that in the video description if you want to take a deeper dive into the stuff that they offer Including the release notes for their brand new release, which was released just a couple days ago So we're gonna be installing this in a virtual machine and I have it all set up Just I'm gonna go ahead and yes here and we'll see how this goes and Once it stops grabbing my mouse, I will be able to make a full screen one of things I've never actually figured out is how to make Vert manager full screen with via key binding like I've searched on the internet for it. It doesn't seem to be one maybe I'm wrong but seems you have to click the button and When it's in a TTY or something you can't click the button there we go now we go All right, okay, so you may want to enlarge text and widget size to improve readability click Okay to run a configuration tool for screen setup and scaling. I don't really care about scaling It would be cool if this handled resolution. I don't the text seems okay for me. So I'm just gonna hit apply That was a plasma Thing you can tell by or at least I'll use the breeze theme. Wait a minute You know that I'm thinking like I told you before that I've heard of the Trinity thing is Trinity the debt the desktop that is based on Plasma 4 we're gonna go find out right quick. Give me a second Okay, I was kind of right. It's Katie plasma or it's Katie 3 and I'm plasma plasma is 5 But it's Katie thought 3 that is based on so it's basically what genome 3 went with you know What happened when they switched to genome 3 is that someone decided they didn't like genome 3 so they made mate and cinnamon eventually the same thing kind of happened here when Katie 4 came out everybody hated it because it was God awful and Obviously the Trinity is kind of like the continuation of Katie 3 which everyone seemed to like so that's the reason why this actually looks quite familiar So let's go ahead and take a look at this stuff here. Okay, so this is just the welcome screen We'll actually take a look at this once we get installed So let's go ahead and click on install Q4 OS and see what installer we get. This is the calamari's installer So this is very familiar. So we'll just run through this real quick. I mean American English is fine That is an appropriate time zone. That's an okay keyboard and here we go So we get a few selections for software. So Q4 OS desktop Recommended for regular loot users full-feature desktop with bread browser office suite and recommended application set install process could take a while as the installer needs to Perform an extra configuration and cleanup Basic for users who prefer customizable desktop the basic Q4 OS desktop with common utility system tools and libraries lightweight and slim Starting configuration for users who want to install desktop applications with their choice. So that's kind of like a minimal install I'm assuming it comes with a desktop and probably nothing else Live for those of you want identical system to the live media No additional software will be installed now The live media environment will only be cloned into the target system the most simple and quick installation way I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to be like it will install on the hard drive The exact thing is the live media or is this something you could probably maybe install on a Like a USB key and have a persistent thing I don't know and pure for experts on the ultimate minimal desktop You will be free to set anything up by yourself one of the thing I will notice from these things is that I would absolutely love a little bit more information on what that is And I'm not sure we'll go back to the website here for a minute and take a look at this and see if there is a like an explanation of what Those four options actually are a unique desktop option makes possible setting up multiple desktop environments For instance plasma trinity side-by-side but interfering with each other so you could run both of them. That's interesting Take it careful. Thanks to the careful optimization desktop environments are completely separated from apart from one another They don't interfere themselves at all Get the dual desktop setup by selecting trinity or another support desktop environment in the desktop profile or tool and Install it easily alongside the default plasma desktop using a one-click style guide Once installed you can switch back and forth between different desktop environments upon login just like the desired one at the login screen Okay, so that then that's the winner windows and so that doesn't say anything about what those different ones are it may be here somewhere a Few moments later. Okay. I've taken a look here and I can't seem to find it Now it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist that there's not more information on what those four things are But I can't seem to find it so we're gonna go ahead and just choose the top one Which is the one that they recommend for people, but I would really like more information on that stuff They have a lot of space here. They could for sure offer at least a little bit more information So like I said, I'll just choose the one here at the top hit next Erase disk no option here for choosing a different file system or anything like that There is an option to a crypt which we've seen this both there and not there in some Installation mediums so good that it's there. We'll go ahead it next enter some credentials here With a very strong complicated password, which I can't seem to type apparently that's beyond me We'll leave that as it is and hit next and then install I'll cut the video here and come back when it's done. Okay, that took about five minutes I'm gonna go ahead and hit the restart button now it done here Okay, so this is the Trinity display manager for those of you who are interested and I'm assuming this is also a Relic from KD3 Interestingly, you have to remember what your username was which is a good thing. I actually remember In that strong and complicated password obviously so this menu here would probably allow us to switch between session types Yep, so Also, we can restart the X server from here remote login console login and so on so forth. That's pretty cool We'll go ahead and hit login. I don't need to do that. What if we click X it still comes up okay One option for, you know, not having to open that window would be cool, but it does not that big a deal So we'll wait for this to come up and then the first thing we're gonna do is search for display here See if anything comes up nothing comes up. Okay So the search panel there is not all that great. Let's look control panel then and we'll look for Display I don't see a display there either sound multi-system administration date and time Monitor display. Okay, we kind of bury that and you have to use a password in order to change the display resolution. Okay Interesting resolution and layout Okay, so apparently if you don't at this beginning you enable global display control You can't actually change anything. So if this is unclicked all this stuff here is grayed out and If it is clicked you can then change with the resolution is so we're gonna find 1920 by 1080 which would be up 19 we're going to went too far. No, we didn't go far enough Well, that's really does work better as a drop down. There we go. Okay, and then apply and Hit accept configuration Okay, so I have to say that of all the desktops that I've ever used test the most convoluted process of choosing a display resolution I've ever managed to see so I don't know whether or not that's just something that they've chosen That's new or that that's just the way Katie three worked. I don't actually think I ever used Katie three I'm pretty sure the last kid the Katie I used before plasma. I never used for I'm pretty sure the only Katie I used was probably like to something because that was back in 2002 ish, maybe So whatever was out in 2002 and that was very very briefly That was back when open Suiza came with both GNOME and Katie installed on the ice ISO or CD where it was probably a CD RW at that time. But anyways Back to reality here. Anyways, we can close the control panel now and now we can take a look at This welcome screen. So we have a run desktop profile about their button Which will full feature desktop with web browser this dialogue let you choose additional desktop environment So yes, I want to install this show these so you can choose Interesting so you can actually choose other things other than plasma LX cute XFC LXD Notice not Alex cute. Well, Alex cute was right there Matt. You're blinder than a bat even with the glasses on Matei budgie cinnamon GNOME and Trinity which is already here. That's kind of cool I have to admit there's not a lot of desks out there that will you'd installed that other desktops So the full feature desktop with web browser. So I'm actually sure what this does Software profile so recommended for regular users. That's what the why would you need this? I bet you this is for when you're actually still in the install the live environment. Okay, that's cool All right, I'm assuming that that's what that's for that We click install now a profile has already been applied to the system previous profile If you continue the selected profile replaces the previous one and system will be configured accordingly So you could theoretically if you want to choose a different one of these if you chose wrong at the beginning because there Is a lack of information you could choose one of these interestingly enough Well, no, I was gonna say that it looks like there's more actually more information here than there was on that one screen We saw but there's not it's exactly the same from what I can tell I wonder What would happen if we installed something like this? Okay? Nothing. Okay, so if you'd you can select the the desktop environments you want and then select one of these and then install So if I had actually gone into this during the pre Before I installed it and went through this I could install other desktop environments and then install from here Okay, if I close this the welcome screen does come back up. Okay, so this is let's click install application. See what we get here So this is a custom software center of some kind. We know it's very very complicated and Elegant because they spilled center like that. So let's see from from here. You can install Looks what looks like a quite a bit of software, which is nice It does give you the like a rating system, which appears they all have it all know I was gonna say they all have a 2.0 rating, but that's not true They have some other things that have a close to a 10 rating, which is interesting Surprisingly enough Google Chrome has almost a 10.0 rating here Interesting I wonder who rates those things if we click on this Okay, so it does have a little checkmark there that I missed that tells you whether or not the Applications are installed and you can install your Nvidia drivers from here And it gives you links to install the applications that you selected Which doesn't look like you can choose more than one at a time. No, not at least not from here There's a link to synaptic package manager and the desktop profiler from here as well Now I wonder what would happen if you install this stuff in the live environment. Would it carry those through? I'm not actually sure I made the mistake in my last WTF video where some of the stuff that you did in live Environment actually would carry through and I just thought it wouldn't because it's very weird or very unusual For that to happen, but it did in in the last one So I'm not sure how that would actually work here I'm kind of regretting not going through the welcome screen for him But I'm so used to Saving the welcome screen for afterwards because the welcome screen for me It's usually something that is meant to be looked at once you've installed the desktop environment or the the distro So we have a way to install prior to Terry Codex turn on desktop effects. Do you want to turn desktop effects on? Sure Desktop and effects have been enabled. I'm not exactly sure what that means But it probably wouldn't work in a VM anyways. Anyways, it doesn't matter a set auto login switch to kickoff start menu Which I wonder what that would do. So right now we're using bourbon. I'm assuming that's what that means here So you switch to kickoff and hit apply Okay, so that's what the kickoff start menu looks like So that is a very early predecessor to the kickoff menu that you probably you've seen before in plasma So we'll hit okay there and then let's see what the other one was classic and apply and That's just going to be like a little start menu thing Okay, cool that you can set it from there So there's more options here set up screens get scaling which we saw earlier hardware info Which is just going to be like the hardware info center interestingly enough that Katie I believe plasma. I believe bakes that into the settings panel Documents online and donate. Okay, so that is the welcome screen So initial impressions of Trinity desktop is that there's a lot of icons on the desktop and the wallpaper is not offensive So that's actually not bad. So on the bottom here underneath my face We got the clock. We have a icon volume button the network button applet and I believe that's the clipboard tool Yep for clipper. Okay, and then on here We have pinned conqueror, which is a web browser Interesting that they have conqueror pinned and not Firefox that Firefox installed We see Firefox here and then we have the showdex desktop button. Okay, so moving on to let's go ahead and open up eternal So control T does not open up terminal, which is disappointing So we're going to programs console We all know console. So we'll do well first. We'll do Free dash M to see what we're looking at in terms of memory usage 392 megabytes now. I know that's not the lowest We've all seen like there's some desktop environments other than use Sub 200 but that's impressive for something that for the most part looks at least somewhat likes KDE plasma I mean there's obviously going to be a lot of differences because it's older But it looks fairly modern like there's nothing here that looks offensively old like you'd expect something that was developed back in the mid 2000s But you know, that's actually really impressive. So let's see if neo fetches installed. It's probably not nope So first let's go ahead and let me run updates real quick pseudo at update and and pseudo app upgrade So interestingly enough zero updates. So not bad. Well, now the pseudo apt install neo fetch Very easy to install neo fetch Now we don't get a fancy ascii art for this it just shows that we're running Debian and This is running kernel 5.10, which is appropriate for Debian has 1771 packages Now don't freak out about that if for those of you who care about packages Debian counts their packages differently than like arch does so that's the reason why Debian always looks like it has well My god, so many more packages, but it's actually not true This is using bash 5.1.4, which is a little older than what I would expect The that the bash that I have installed on my system is 5.1.16 So it's not as far as back as I thought it was I thought they were actually fine 5.2 But then I don't use bash. So how would I know? Okay, so we this is the trinity desktop using the water leaf icons with the key for os 02 theme This is the console terminal obviously and it says now it's using 405 megabytes But neo fetch always reports memory memory different than free does. Okay, so There are those two things now. Let's go ahead and take a quick gander through the Applications that are installed so accessories we have all these are all categories I'm going to find that welcome screen again and Change back if we right-click on this and click and figure So unlike in plasma, we don't have an option for alternatives here, which is a little disappointing So let's see if we can find the welcome screen again programs Synaptic my little Firefox has its own category. Why does my little Firefox have its own category? That's a little weird, right? So these are actually aren't That's a really weird menu, right? You start off at the top expecting these things to be categorized, right? And accessories you have office here and LibreOffice is here and we have games and then these are all all this stuff is Properly categorized very nice But then here we have like LibreOffice is its own category in the main menu and VLC synaptic Thunderbird it looks which is here Like I'm wondering if these are kind of like favorites instead of like actual categories, but everything else is under accessories That's a really weird menu. I'm not sure why they have it like that. Anyways, we'll just start here And so under development we have the K regix Editor I'm actually sure what that is under our games. We have arcades. We have k-bounds Some Exolitaire and mine sweeper and stuff basic games under graphics We have Digi cam, Gwenview, K snap shot for screenshot tool color paint Which is a paint program cuka for scan and OCR programs and LibreOffice draw Internet Firefox K mail conquer and Thunderbird So we have a little bit of overlap in terms of multiple types of programs covering the same thing So we have two browsers two mail things. I'm not sure why we have both of them They should just make you know the choice, but it's not horrible. I've seen worse Here in under multimedia. We have a KDE folder which has SM tube Which is a YouTube browser for SM player Amorak Clementine KB 3b K red pulse audio volume scrolls That's probably control and VLC Again, there's quite a bit of stuff here that is kind of overlapping So Amorak and Clementine are both media like music players and they're actually installed I thought maybe they were like links to install them. Maybe that's why they were both here But they're not they're actually both actually installed Okay, I'm not sure why they need in but install both of them. It's a little weird I have to admit it's not it's not something that I haven't seen before a lot of Distros tend to do that but it's something that you should know Under office we have K organizer in the LibreOffice suite and Kp PDF view for PDFs science. We have LibreOffice math settings. These are just gonna be like audio CD The control panel firewall configuration probably this is like a front-end for UFW. I'm assuming yep This is powered by UFW. So that's really easy. I have made a video on UFW if you're interested in that I'll try to link that in the cards above probably won't get the timing right though. I never do Okay, so other than that we have some system stuff super user. So we have conqueror console and Wait a whole lot. You have my heart Crusaders installed by default. It's amazing. It's also kind of really slow and There's like a weird icon there that show that shows that it's still launching but really weird But crusaders installed by default Okay, Q4OS my new daily driver That's not it's an interesting like midnight commander like theme but you can easily change that so we'll close that I want It's interesting though. That's we don't like if we go up here back up here go to systems like Do we see? Like so we can open crusader without this the super user women when we opened up it as a super user before did it ask for a Password My Alzheimer's is pick is kicking in so let's go back here. I'm very curious about that open up crusader You know open up the super user crusader without a password Also, this is a much older version of crusader by the way There's quite a bit of stuff here that the new versions of crusader actually have this doesn't seem to have but it has the Has tab support so it's still okay I would not use this menu system if I didn't you know have to because I don't see the welcome screen And let's see if we can find that welcome screen system settings control panel welcome screen wall match I don't actually see the welcome screen again. They're gonna change that menu probably could do it in the control panel Let's see where's the control panel is here And let's go through some of this so appearance and themes see what themes we have installed We can't launch feedback look switcher. This is the look switcher. So this is we get debon RQ For OS default slide, which is gonna be all of my windows XP. I'm assuming let's switch that because oh you have to log out Why not? Let's do it. I want windows XP so bad. I'm just gonna log out and we'll do it Why not? Then it takes you back to a TTY and not the display manager. Okay, I wonder if we're gonna have to start X That'd be funny Okay We did have to hit start X that's fantastic and it didn't remember the display settings Okay That looks switcher thing kind of broken. I'm gonna have to admit to that that scared a lot of people away. Oh, good Lord Oh, it's so good. I remember this menu is all the memories the memories Let's go back to the system control panel. Good Lord Where is the control? Oh, it's under settings. So we got to go back. Where's the back button? Where's the Oh back button right there. Okay settings control panel, which is right there. It's changed icons And then if try to remember how I changed the system administration Modern desktop this here scroll all the way up here to 1920 by 1080 hit apply Get accept. Okay. Okay That is That's the best thing I've ever that's the best thing I've seen all day. That's great Interestingly enough, they didn't actually use the wallpaper because you like you could use the wallpaper I don't think like Microsoft is gonna sue you for using that wallpaper. I mean, it didn't stop them from Literally copying the menu interestingly you can change the size of this menu. That's fantastic Okay, let's open up firefox and see what version of firefox here I'm guessing that this is going to be the esr version of firefox settings. Oops. That's the wrong thing I needed I needed to go to I needed to go to help and then about this is the no, this is version 98 So this is not esr. That's That's pretty awesome because if you download a lot of different debbie invades distros you're gonna get the esr version That this is not yes or no This is not the most recent version of firefox 99 just came out But the fact that you're getting something that's fairly recent kind of cool got that theme that just So awesome Like I want I think I want to run this it's so good I wonder if there's anything let's go back to like we have it now We have a search box here We can actually think for themes if we select search for themes nothing there. What was that thing that what was the thing? Called changer. No, what was it called? I forget go to application system No, it wasn't under there under settings look switcher. Okay. Here we go. This is what was the other one that they had that spring which is Uh, like windows 7. I'm guessing little windows 7 but also windows xp. I'm not gonna find it Oh, and then we have the windows 98 version. Okay In terms of Make sure what wait The all system themes will be listed keep in mind that some of them may be incomplete or under development might not be working Expected expected. So there are some other things here that you can install So the high contrast stuff is here kd classic Which looks like a kd dig. That's that looks like the kd that I tried back in 2002 or whatever was Keramik I'm not familiar with that plastic. I've seen that before platinum. All these are really really old looking redmond The the default version that comes here the the demineer one Is really modern looking it's like it's basically breeze Uh, but the rest of these are Really really? Oh Okay, that one there doesn't look too bad the sunshine one. Uh, I'm not gonna switch again, but the It has some themes. We'll put it that way. Let's see. What else can we take a look at? So for the most part this Panel along the side here is mostly I don't know if you can even see that on the side But that clock there is like a like a analog clock and it's really small good luck See trying to see the time from that. Okay. What else do we got here? These are still the same as we had before the control panel was linked right there in front of my face By the way, why didn't nobody have to you know, tell me that I'm so blind sometimes just I don't know. Anyway, so that is q4 os Let's go ahead and wrap this thing up We've been going for a while from my very brief experience with this thing. I love that windows xp theme I just made me laugh. I don't think I it's not usable. I don't think but I mean If you really really enjoyed windows xp It was kind of cool. I Admitted it brought some memories back because I used the crap out of windows xp That was Like I had tried window or I had tried linux at one point for a very brief time in 2002 Somebody handed me an open suzer. It was actually probably suzer at that point a dv d rw Maybe it was a cdr w of suzer I installed that on my computer at that time and it was fine, but it didn't have games like Very good games at that point and Obviously there wasn't very good games on windows either But there was at least a few things that I could do in windows And so I ended up going back to windows and that was at that point I switched to windows xp and I used the crap out of that for a long time So they're xp theme here very nostalgic in terms of everything else There's some things that are Weird here and also some things that are kind of cool. I don't really know how well that dual desktop thing Really works. I didn't try that out I'm assuming that that's kind of like the premiere feature Probably really good, but I didn't want to go through and reinstall it. That's the thing if I'd Done the smart thing and actually went through the welcome screen to begin with Lesson learned, you know, I'll do that from now on Because that's the second time a welcome screen has burned me by not going through it before the installation I won't let it happen a third time the switching of the themes that you have to log out is a little bit Knowing and the fact that it doesn't get you back into the display manager could confuse some people So you have to know that startx is actually a thing And uh, it is cool that startx at least works if I if it hadn't worked like because they didn't use like an Excellent rc thing Then i'm not actually sure how I would have gotten back into it without, you know, rebooting the computer Or the vm in this case. I will say that there's a lot of duplicate software So it comes with dolphin it comes with crusader both install those are both very heavy applications for file management And it also comes with two web browsers two email clients It comes with two music players three if you count vlc it comes so it comes with two Like meet make movie players as well So there's a lot of duplicated software in this desktop profile So the one that at the beginning when we did the the installation where you got to choose from the different profiles The one that says it's recommended comes with a lot of duplicate software It doesn't really have to do that. I'm not sure why I'm assuming that the reason why they include some of that older stuff So like crusader, which is the oldest version of crusader and stuff the conqueror stuff and all that I'm assuming they do that because This is this desktop here. The trinity desktop is meant for people who are either nostalgic or really liked kd3 So those are applications that those types of people would actually be looking for So i'm assuming that that's the reason why those are there and then they'd obviously want to include something That's more modern and usable at least that explains things like the crusader and dolphin and conqueror and firefox I don't know how they explain having two media players because neither one of those things are old both What was amorak and Clementine both of those are still being in development. So i'm not sure why I mean granted crusader is still in development too and conqueror is still in the boom But they include all the versions. I don't know. It's a little confusing I'm sure there's more stuff that I could have gone into but we're running into 45 minutes of record time here So we need to wrap this up You know desperately so anyways that is it for this video if you have comments on q4os Leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on twitter at linuxcast You can support me on patreon of patreon.com slash linuxcast before I go I'd like to take one to thank my these fine people robert sid devon patrick fredkramer meaglin jackson i'm chul steve a subreddit on xxaml kbtgb Mitchell j dog carbon data jamie shon odin martini andy ross edward oak merit camp jackley peter a crucible dark benefits time at cpm Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time