Have you heard of SpiralLinux? If you are a fan of Debian Linux based distro’s then it is well worth your time putting onto a USB and trying out. It has impressed me enough to become my daily distro. My own laptop is following Debian Testing, while the family PC is following the default Debian Stable. Best thing? I have yet to hit an issue yet. That said, it has been a long time since I have really experienced an issue with any distro I have installed. Linux is pretty damn solid these days, and if you are happy to use Debian Stable, then you should have a fairly quiet and uneventful experience of just getting on with whatever you do on your computer.

To learn more about the different Debian Releases —> Click Here

The SpiralLinux moto is “Linux, faster than a snail”, and comes from the maintainer of GeckoLinux, so safe to say you are in good hands. Not that it really matters, though, thanks to the way SpiralLinux is set up by default. All the repos are Debian standard, all SpiralLinux does is give you a desktop that is ready to do everything straight out of the box. This is reassuring as if the maintainer did decide to walk away, then there is zero impact to the user as it just keeps following along with the standard Debian repo’s. So that is peace of mind baked in from the start.

Installation is as easy or complicated as you like. I choose manual partitioning, as keeping my / and /home directories separate takes a lot of the pain out of distro hopping. My laptop is formatted as ext4, but I have the PC running Btrfs. More out of curiosity than any other reason, if I am being honest. Also, the PC dual boots with Windows 10. The installer set that all up perfectly, and on boot Grub offers me an option of which OS I want to run. All nice, smooth and predictable.

I went for SpiralLinux XFCE as my preferred option. I did download and try Cinnamon, Gnome, Budgie, and Mate. Gnome is always too sluggish on my hardware (my fault, not Gnome’s) so I try just out of curiosity. Budgie I wanted to love, but just felt a bit clunky and in need of refinement. Mate is great, but I still prefer XFCE over it. Cinnamon is another favourite of mine, but again, XFCE just has the edge in responsiveness, while suiting my workflow better.

With me using Debian Testing, I can just install from Synaptic and enjoy the latest releases when they are stable enough to reach the repo’s. There are just 3 applications I run as AppImages, as that is what the individual projects offer. While only 2 other applications I get as Flatpak’s. The best thing about this? They all just work. The AppImages run with a click, and the Flatpak’s are all available from the preinstalled Software application. Recent releases of Ubuntu based distros have removed Flatpak support out of the box (read more on omg! ubuntu here: Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak), while you need to jump through a few small hoops to get AppImages working.

That is just the tip of the iceberg for useful (sensible?) features to be enabled from when you first log into your new desktop. The SpiralLinux website goes through all this in detail, so will not repeat here. However, it is worth noting that this is the first distro in years I have installed and not needed to look for a “Things to do after installing” article. Videos can be watched, music listened to, website’s and documents look as they should, and anything else are just tweaks to meet my own needs.

So my current takeaways from my time so far with SpiralLinux? My review on DistroWatch think summed it all up:

Cons:
— Screenshots on the site are not what I had once installed. That’s purely an aesthetic issue, quickly tweaked.
— No obvious update notifier as standard (have installed Package Update Indicator).
— Spiral Linux definitely does not get enough love or attention, publicity wise.

Pros:
— Great selection of default apps.
— Moving to testing or Sid is very straightforward thanks to the wiki.
— Completely based on standard Debian repos, Spiral Linux can disappear tomorrow, and you have nothing to worry about.
— Synaptic, and Gnome Software (Flatpak ready to go) is all there from the start.
— AppImages work straight away, too.

Overall great to be back on XFCE again, the responsiveness is by far the best for me. I really do believe that SpiralLinux has to offer the easiest way to get onto Debian without having to worry about long term support and/or stability.

Really impressed with what SpiralLinux have achieved and happy to recommend.