XeroLinux. Is It Just About The Eyecandy?

XeroLinux is an Arch-based Linux distro that focuses heavily on eyecandy and polish. XeroLinux comes in three different desktop editions: KDE Plasma, GNOME and Xfce. Today, I'm going to take a first look at their flagship edition (KDE).
REFERENCED:
► xerolinux.xyz/
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[@XeroLinux]

Thanks DT for the review. I chose not to include any extra packages leaving the choice entirely up to the user. They can either bloat their system or make it minimal or anything else in between... Nothing is forced even rice. Total 4 choices as you so eloquently pointed out. Thanks again great and precise review...

[@AlbertoMontesSoto]

I love the part you said that the rice is optional, thank you

[@Blessed2bFresh]

Great work! I aspire to be able (one day) competent enough to have the talent and ability to create a distro/spin such as yourself. Truly phenomenal.

[@XeroLinux]

@@Blessed2bFresh thanks B. It took me a while to grasp everything. And thanks to the ArcoLinux team for the amazing knowledge they have provided me. Best place to start is there... I am but a padawan learner and not a Jedi yet. Been using Linux 18 months only. I still have a long way ahead...

[@gamerking64]

Installing more packages is better than removing bloat because the begginer user will break his system while doing such thing.(always think of the begginer user using his system)

[@XeroLinux]

@@AlbertoMontesSoto default one is not optional but if you don't like it there are 3 others to choose from...

[@zoeythebee1779]

The 'strong and complicated password' bit always gets me

[@TravisVroman]

You hit the nail on the head; it's very macOS-like visually. I don't see that as a bad thing. Thank for this, dt!

[@BinaHejazi]

Hello DT, many thanks indeed for this review. As a newly convert to the wonderful world of Linux in the past two years I have always had an urge to install and try Arch based distros but have always found them to be way off my limit to configure them the way I want. On the other hand when I chose Mint (my current system) I never thought one day I would consider another distro to install as I am so deeply attached to Mint that I will never divorce it but this XeroLinux is another thing. I am very grateful to you for putting the time in helping people like me. By the way when I began to install the XeroLinux the 4GB allocated by VMware was not seen to be enough by the distro and the installation would not continue so I had to give it 8GB to install. Ironically after the installation I shutdown and reduced the RAM back to 4096 and found no problem! Thank you so much mate!! Rgds, Bina

[@MrWarneet]

Never been a fan of any of the Arch based KDE distros but this one is - wow!

[@XeroLinux]

Hehehe.. Nice.. Thanks

[@piotrwyrw]

Wow that looks stunning. I might try it out actually.

[@quinten01]

I got almost the same look and feel on my plain arch install. It's literally arch + layan theme + latte dock and some other minor extras.

[@bigmikeobama5314]

nice!

[@XeroLinux]

Not exactly. It has quite a bit more. For example has a pre-configured bashrc with many useful aliases, and in the installer (calamares) can select a ton of stuff, there's also snapper tool for btrfs and other stuff. As for look yeah what you said is correct. It's not only look though...

[@_Donatello]

Hey DT one of your vid’s popped up at work today! Thanks for your help

[@the_real_vdegenne]

the grub screen and your reaction I had to play that part again, that was very amusing haha

[@rodneyaltamera4057]

Wow this is great stuff DT. Planning to try this new distro.

[@TheGordonsinclair]

Hi. Thanks for the heads up on this fantastic distro. And well done XeroLinux.

[@XeroLinux]

Thanks... 👍

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

How fitting to review a beautiful distro on Valentine's Day. I almost want to marry the distro!

[@partha2806]

Match made in heaven?

[@bigmikeobama5314]

i now pronounce you mr and mrs arch, you may sudo kiss the bride

[@XeroLinux]

Lol... Nice one thanks

[@partha2806]

@@XeroLinux wait you are the real one?

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

@@partha2806 Usually fake accounts nowadays are peddling a scam or virus. I doubt it's a fake account lol

[@cristiannovoadrums1655]

I would pay to see these first-impressions/review videos alongside an ongoing interview with the creators/maintainers of the chosen distro. That way we would understand more about why the preferred software over other possibilities.

[@noticiasapocrifas6965]

I agree. The Diolinux Portuguese-language channel did this, but just for for the Portuguese-speaking developers. It's really interesting, sometimes decisive, to know why they choose to do what they do. DT could do a lot more, being an English-speaking channel.

[@sujangamal8881]

The strong and complicated password always get me 😂😂

[@systemuser9636]

Thank you for reviewing this 🐧

[@masamune5710]

I think it looks really good. We need to stop judging Linux desktop by windows/macos standards because it's a different OS. The whole appeal of linux is the tinkering/customization and free software, and tbh you're never gonna please the people that think linux is too "ugly" or "unapproachable" cuz it's already been made approachable enough. Only real criticism is the shit support for gaming and lack of certain professional software

[@anokiyoussou]

Nah mate, I think fragmentation is the real issue here.

[@bigmikeobama5314]

i wouldnt call linux support for gaming "sh*t" i would say it isnt as good as windows. (no idea how it compares to mac) but there is actually quite a high compatibility rate on steam, more games work on linux than ever before. and that list isnt going to shrink over time, its going to increase. not saying its the best at the moment, but there are more important things in this world than the modern day mental mast ur bation that games have devolved into these days

[@masamune5710]

@@anokiyoussou you call it an issue, but I think it’s part of the beauty of the open source ecosystem. Open source is inherently unfriendly to standardization and favors redundant solutions to one problem allowing ppl to express their taste w their software. It sound super wishy washy but that’s what it is

[@masamune5710]

@@bigmikeobama5314 I agree, “shit” is hyperbolic, but for your average gamers that mostly plays AAA titles your selection is gonna be much slimmer than w windows, so Linux just isn’t an equal choice for gaming. But I think solving the Linux gaming issue could really push both ecosystems forward, since tech nerds and gaming have some overlap

[@masamune5710]

@@bigmikeobama5314 I really think Linux has the potential be the hobby/gamer OS while macOS and windows could be for work/professional software development. If Linux could get gaming right it could literally be a game changer

[@matthewpaolini]

Congrats on 200k

[@johnmal5975]

Wow this distro is stunning! Thanks for reviewing this.

[@jaspernewtoncountypubliche1895]

Their Gnome edition is dead according to the video that loads when you click the "gnome" button. Not that I would have used that edition anyhow, but just thought I'd mention it.

[@Jeff_Seely]

Derek, this video spurred me into grabbing Xero and checking out the live usb. I am really very impressed with it. I mostly run Gaaruda and it was my winkiller distro. This distro bears a lot of similarity to Garuda. I'd call it a Garuda lite of sorts. I am also going to bang around on it as a virt manager installation and maybe do an installation on one of my laptops. It really is a pretty distro and very tasteful in appearance. Thank you so much for this upload and your impressions. I do highly regard your opinion! Be blessed!!!

[@tigerscott2966]

I will have to try this distro soon...thanks.

[@ronholtz4882]

This is a super nice distro. Thanks for sharing.

[@InfernalMonsoon]

That Samurai Cyberpunk 2077 GRUB loader is so over the top that I honestly adore it.

[@sayonara816]

Found my new arch linux distro , it just looks soo amazing 💜🙏🏻

[@stevepowell4444]

Digging your shirt DT!

[@stephanhan.8390]

DT, this is a really nice demo. Can you do some presentation on a distro which can handle hiDPI and multi monitors? Because after few years of distro hoping, I still haven't came across a distro which can handle this.

[@iskamag]

Wow this distro looks cool >vivaldi >spotify Nevermind.

[@stamatisperrakis4298]

the strong and complicated password always cracks me up ! :)

[@kryptonic010]

Nice Distro. Ran across it and baked onto bare metal with 55". Its sweet, clean and snappy! I'm enjoying it.

[@XeroLinux]

Glad you like it.

[@denizkendirci]

I like the arco vibes however it comes with all kind of tiling WM editions, pre-configured. I just tweak config files a little then i'm good to go. If i have to install and configure the tiling wm from ground myself, then i'll use vanilla arch to do so.

[@gamerking64]

I like how DT is spamming distro reviews now when he actually complained about that a week ago.

[@jacobhinchliffe6659]

The duality of man

[@dragonboyjazz]

ill have to give this a try, looks great EDIT:[ VirtualBox ] Gave it a few goes, one with the opensource and one with the nvidia and both gave me a black screen, tried a second time with the open source drivers and just a black screen with no cursor.

[@XeroLinux]

Could be an issue with vBox. Have you updated it? Also I haven't used vBox in ages I use VirtManager as DT did in video works well.

[@metalfiregametime652]

So I thought I would give this Distro of Linux a try with an install. I placed it on one of my other hard drives and so far everything works. Blender, OBS, and VLC work out of the box without trying to figure out what to tweak and change to get it to work. Those are the main programs that I need to work and several other Distros have failed in that area.

[@XeroLinux]

Thanks. Glad it's working for ya...

[@Jump_Shock]

Your camera video looks great, what’s your settings?

[@drewlomite]

Love the T Shirt !

[@erichoberg3502]

I think it's quite good and I prefer it's look over Garuda which I find to be a bit too much bling. And after going to the developers home page which has a lot of good info I'm tempted to give it a go. Great stuff DT.

[@XeroLinux]

Thanks for the kind words. Am releaing one final ISO before taking a break until summer which will be using a different rice. Nordic style. If you into it. If not it's ok.

[@Endermen1094]

Hey DT what's your thoughts adding something like plasma shell to tiling window managers

[@bigdickdude007]

That login screen , made my ocd go crazy

[@Dazz_Youniversual_Studios]

Men, Arch Linux have some of the best Linux distros ever. First Endevor os, then Garuda Linux, and now this.🤩🤩🤩

[@bobbybologna3029]

This is better than Arco because I can easily navigate their website. lol

[@SkyeReim]

I guess this is the perfect choice for a regular user. just browsing and multimedia. the look is amazing

[@b.himanishrajan9997]

Please do a installation of Alpine Linux with DWM(setup like DE) DT sir.

[@squiddstv]

I've been using CachyOS lately. It's still a pretty small distro. Have you thought about doing a video on it yet?

[@tailsorange2872]

Of course you'd go with FISH over ZSH.... and that's because you can eat fish but not ZSH!

[@alexandrosvangelatos9979]

Cool distro 🇬🇷 I like your rice themes and options. There's a little bug with neofetch. When dt switched to zsh, the prompt still says bash is the shell.

[@akira9449]

You need to logout for the new shell take effect, thats why it says bash

[@alexandrosvangelatos9979]

@@akira9449 ah ok, didn't know that... 👍

[@derram0k]

Ah, so synapse is where I picked up the "press down to scroll through recent actions" thing. It's been over a decade and I still try to do that even though my current launcher doesn't have that feature.

[@berinloritsch]

AIO=All In One -- it's also used for off the shelf water cooling systems

[@whoisYoges]

the grub screen is one of the grub theme of CTT(Chris Titus Tech)

[@TehShadowDeath]

Awww he's missing half the eye candy. :( This distro really shines in a virtualbox or natively on a machine because of hardware acceleration.

[@rickyjohnson6268]

What do the differences for the Swap option mean? With Hibernate, No Hibernate, Swap to File. somewhat new to linux still, Never messed with Swap partitions before

[@vakthund]

Almost year old, but still WooooW, for an Arch (btw...) :)

[@the1trancedemon]

I installed it on my system and looks great (love the transparency all across), works great except for updates fail all the time. keep getting this - transaction failed error. upon installation, it says to update your system before using. so this is pretty much a no update os as per my experience. so theres troubleshooting right after a fresh installation. tried even sudo pacman Syu and no joy. so the whole thing is that if the update facility is not functional, then the os cannot fix itself ever and is in a closed loop. then another thing i noticed is switching themes destroys the whole arrangement of things and if you want to switch back to the default out of the box theme, you will have to do a lot of manual work which includes re-adding the latte dock and removing the default kde dock. i dont know if this is normal but the window buttons (minimize, maximize) are blank circles until you mouse over them.

[@Ldemon360]

Do have any idea on how to run this distro on a TrueNAS virtualization?

[@allenellsworth5799]

I hope they have some dot files available. I'd love to steal some of these looks.

[@XeroLinux]

Check my Github 👍

[@benherbst6861]

Looks pretty cool, maybe it will help the future of Linux.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

Hey DT, In your installation videos you always mention that you give 4 GB of RAM and 2 threads to an OS. Does it matter how much RAM you allocate per OS in VM ? I have laptop with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD, and I run several distros in a VM mode. Should I worry about allocating a certain number of gig per RAM in the VM (unless we run the OS simultaneously ) ? I generally allocate about 5 or 6 gigs of RAM per OS ( I have installed over 12 OS in VM, but only run one at a time).

[@tylerdean980]

If you’re not gonna be using that much RAM, there’s no need to allocate it. The common rule of thumb is not to give a VM more than half of your RAM.

[@zeldaadlez3377]

Hey DT, how do you change your videos so much? Sometimes you're here in the studio other times you're out in the woods and even have beard and mustache?

[@johnrobinson1481]

I used to daily drive Xero and then something with my windows dual boot messed everything up for gaming and I couldn't get things working again. Although since they've now got a Dracula theme I'm very keen to give it a look

[@merthyr1831]

When windows dual boot messed up for me I just deleted windows lmao. No point nowadays when most of my fave games run Linux pretty well/natively

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

I think it would have prefered or recommended settings

[@carpii]

6:56 - since they claim its an eye candy UI, it's a shame they didn't bother to fix the buttons and textbox extending outside the bounds of the dialog box 🤦🏻

[@merthyr1831]

Lol I spotted that too. I wonder if that's a VM issue as they use different video drivers. I doubt that would've been missed if it was a bug in live systems!

[@mikefrag]

It's a virtualbox thing

[@akashmanjunath2505]

dt: enter your strong and complicated password password : "**"

[@kirillgimranov4943]

When u r an american: "American English? Yeah, American English is fine for me"

[@donaldwillinger4280]

I just installed it after I couldn't get MX-Linux to install 1-7 correctly or my printer. This distro installed the system completely.

[@0xfb]

I have the same grub theme, it's "CyberRe" theme.

[@Plueschtroll]

Nice distro. Personally, I prefer a little bit more "plain" graphics, there is too much going on visually, but it is good that there are not too many things installed by default.

[@XeroLinux]

There's nothing but what comes with KDE. Everything else up to you to install or not. All I did was give it a fresh coat of paint. Nothing more. If too much then install Vanilla Arch with plain KDE. Imo it's too boring...

[@Plueschtroll]

@@XeroLinux That’s what I did, and then customized to taste myself.

[@XeroLinux]

@@Plueschtroll Cool. That's why I love Linux. Well enjoy your setup...

[@kennystrawnmusic]

It’s basically Garuda minus the memory hunger. Only uses 1.2GB of RAM instead of Garuda which uses almost double that - and that’s when it’s running in Live USB mode. Definitely would recommend.

[@the-real-zpero]

Empty RAM is wasted RAM

[@saltdad5263]

@@the-real-zpero an idling desktop shouldnt consume all your ram, if anything *thats* what would be wasteful :/

[@strongempatheticawarenessy2145]

I like arch but I have three oses on my computer and using ubuntu or debian based ones play together better on my multi-boot. You aren't just knowledgeable you are fun to listen to as well. Keep going.

[@markosth09]

Part of vivaldi is open source(modification to the chromium engine) so it is mixed source.

[@XeroLinux]

Exactly. Thank you...

[@braaitongs]

Theoretically you could install the desktop environment on any distribution since that is what the eyecandy is right? ....

[@ticcmii]

I think that grub theme is made by Chris Titus tech

[@locutusofborg2362]

The OS looks fantastic. I will be giving it spin. One issue and that is you should be talking up Vivaldi. It my be proprietary but it might as well be open source. Vivaldi goes out of their way to remove code that invades your privacy that Google seems to love to add to Chromium and Chrome.

[@merthyr1831]

Proprietary is more than just the code access. As long as the project is controlled by a private group and license, there are much more limitations and risks posed to using it from a FOSS advocate's perspective. A bit like how Android has AOSP which, while open source, is still largely proprietary and places a lot of trust on a business that does not necessarily have the same vision for its project as other contributors.

[@user-xh2yl6md5r]

thanks for the review DT just finished watching the video my view on kde rices and the state of linux de's (esp. kde) has not changed. this is unfixable and is a terrible experience.

[@taidee]

Man, Linux desktop is getting rich day by day, this is another nice looking distro.

[@kenshinscott]

DT I love antix Linux on my old labtop it runs great it’s almost perfect but it’s not it’s not easy to configure the WiFi settings takes a long time to understand and am not enjoying the experience every thing else is smooth and fast it’s amazing but the menu system and default apps use are too outdated and need too much tweaking to work I don’t have time for that I just want something simple that just works is there any antix fork that’s user friendly and fast and smooth and works on old hardware I can use?

[@Nearnface]

wowowowoww

[@brhh]

A bit of kvantum would do the trick 👌

[@norse8825]

If you like Grub screens, the Garuda grubscreen alone is worthy of installation of the distro.

[@Rowietheyoutuber]

Hey! What do your mean by eye candy? It really catches my ears and eyes I wanna know!

[@kentjensen4504]

I am a beginner and have only experimented with Xubuntu on an ancient Mac, and I am astounded by what Linux can do with such old hardware. However, I worry about the Linux world. Why? Because so much effort seems to go into creating countless new distros. It seems to me this is a wasteful (and lazy) use of resources. Shouldn't people who know how to code rather contribute to making FOSS much better? Isn't that where you need to compete with what giants like Adobe delivers to users? I was ready to switch from Mac to Linux, and due to DT I was going to aim for an Arch based distro, but one thing stopped me. My business entails offset printing, and that means I need to be able to use amazing software like GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, and Scribus and have them deliver dependable, professional results in the CMYK color space. Last I looked into this situation, all sorts of workarounds were required, and that just won't do it for me, and I am sure equivalent limitations are holding FOSS back in other areas. Coders should contribute to making Linux apps as pro as Win/Mac apps. We already have enough file managers and desktop icon sets.

[@random6033]

1:12 my _minimal_ arch install is _only_ 40 gigs (root partition)

[@MrBestBeatlesFan1]

So, Xero or Garuda? Which one would you choose?

[@linuxrant]

oh its much better than Garuda. Garuda blinds you with unreadable icons, and this is usable :) I would actually use XeroLinux, but unfortunately I stumbled on some wine/lutris problems (I game a little, and maybe they could be solvable after some effort) and those problems simply did not exist on Ubuntu Unity or Kubuntu, so for now I am on a debian team, but XeroLinux rocks. It is THE OS to be shown whenever someone doubts Linux is a thing.

[@silverlightLP-gk9bl]

never heard before about xerolinux. i'll give it a try on my mac pro 1,1/2,1 (2006 with firmware from 2007) and hope that this distribution not "burn" cpu core 1 on cpu a (linux mint does that)...

[@XeroLinux]

No promises. Mac is way above my pay grade

[@nostep3966]

5:07 had you chosen to encrypt on the previous screen then you could have chosen to login without a password. This avoids having to use 2 passwords to get into the machine, and the data is actually protected when you turn the pc off.

[@vesder819]

I read XeroX Linux 😅 Luckely it isn't a distro for printing and scanning enthousiasts. Like the default theming, looks clean and modern. Kinda eyeballing arch these days for my development environment, but afraid that the rolling dependencies will cost me more time than the benefits in my case as a developer. Anyone experienced with this use case? (Doing c++, python, rust development).

[@jacobhinchliffe6659]

Rust works fine and so does python, and aur covers any software or libraries not in the standard repos

[@sps014]

Reminds me of Garuda Linux Dragonized edition.

[@johnpaulpayopay1074]

I'm switching to XeroLinux for that sexy ass bootloader 🤣

[@Jean0987654321]

Vivaldi being the default browser didn't make any sense to me. Should've been Librewolf or Chromium instead

[@XeroLinux]

You have the choice during installation to install whichever you prefer. As for Vivaldi can uninstall in one sec. I made it default coz that's what I use and have been since inception. I love it nothing else comes close to its features. And I don't mind it being proprietary... Choices choices...

[@jackelofnar]

It's pretty much arcolinux with a rice

[@pietjespappie]

Looks nice. For me it's a bit too much, but hey, who am I? There are 2 things that I don't get. Pamac? That is made for Manjaro and prone to break a lot. And 2 filemanagers, Thunar and Dolphin? And I don't fancy those extra repository's.

[@marioschroers7318]

It looks like macchina rather than neofetch :)

[@user-xh2yl6md5r]

Why is the gnome logo there??

[@braelinmichelus]

Personally, I don't like any of these "eyecandy" arch spin distros. Though I am a self-proclaimed fan of pretty graphical design, distros like these simply try way _too_ hard to be _Æ S T H E T I C_ Specifically, a "cyberpunk / pro-gamer" ÆSTHETIC where everything is neon colors, background blur, transparency, and goddamn those "sweet" icons. I mean, I like _most_ of those things, but altogether in that ÆSTHETIC package, is just visually _WAY TOO MUCH!_ I mean, sure, it's pretty. But give my eyes some space to breathe! I like transparency with background blur, docks, and bright neon colors as much as the next girl, but don't turn everything up past 11... keep things just a bit simpler... my desktop should be a place where I want to work everyday... not look like every KZbin gamer's recording studio. 😂 I think I've said too much already...

[@patpopov]

They hit it out of the park if that was their goal. 😂

[@mr.michaelsomeone5667]

Xero looks similar to Hefftor Linux and PeuxOS and a little bit to EndeavourOS

[@XeroLinux]

Too bad HefftorLinux is a dead meme now. I still have it installed on my Storage PC. Killed their repos n removed their packages... Now it's just Arch... But yeah inspiration came from those you mentioned

[@JustWhyFFS]

And I JUST hopped to Garuda... hmm...

[@spaceaxi3392]

We NEED a real alternative to wallpaper engine, nothing hacky or jank. Straight up animated/sound-reactive background tools with repo ability.

[@benny982]

It's a Arcolinux fork

[@tigerscott2966]

I did install Deepin... It looked great, but only used a browser that was in Chinese language... No time to waste on that....there are too many other distros to use...

[@TheJackal917]

Why do I have Stanley Parable vibes? Am I that drunk? Daaaaaamn......