DistroAstro

[Wikiastro]

Hi,

I'm currently running Distro Astro on an old laptop for astronomy use.  Runs very well, and has loads of software pre-installed.  I'm just wondering what the advantage of this distro is over something like the latest Ubuntu?  I'm not sure I'm getting the point really - any other users out there have any opinions?

Dave

[David Smith]

Never heard of it. It's burning to DVD as I type!

[Gasman]

Hi Dave

Had it on my laptop the other day but I gather version 3 is due out around about 23rd June with more stuff. The main thing with this distro is obviously its astro based and has the excellent Ekos inside Kstars which can control scopes,ccds, focusers etc etc using the INDI protocol instead of Ascom. I went down the Linux route after Windows let me down for the umpteenth time.

Once you get stuff configured ok it just works but if you are not used to Linux its vastly different from Windows. I`m using Linux Mint  version 17 at the moment with Kstars/Ekos configured fine and also trying out Xephem.

HTH

Steve

[Dave_D]

17 is out? Damn, they're always slow with the KDE release :/

[Wikiastro]

I've used Ubuntu for a while now on an old machine I've had kicking around.  Much faster than the old XP warhorse without any hardware upgrade needed.

[JamesF]

I've found a few niggles with Mint 17, so I'd give it a couple of weeks to get shaken down unless you're happy fiddling around with it.

I'm not really sure what the benefits of DistroAstro are other than having a load of stuff pre-installed.  It's Mint 13 under the hood as far as I recall, which is a long-term support release, but getting a little long in the tooth now.

Personally I'd take Mint over Ubuntu any day.  Unity and/or Gnome3 drive me to distraction

James

[RT65CB-SWL]

Hi Wikiastro/Dave,

I use DistroAstro 1.0.2 (Ceres) + update once a week to keep it upto date. As its name suggests it is mainly astro apps without the bloatware of multiple office suites, multimedia utilities, games, etc that you can install or/are installed with other other Linux disros. It is installed on an old Toshiba laptop with Vista and Linux Mint 13 on other partitions. I used to be a 'fan' of OpenOffice.org but now a Libre Office 'convert'.

Like Microsoft & Windows bloatware, I am finding Ubuntu (and anything-else-buntu) is getting very bloated too.

PLUS:

It detected my Phillips Toucam ll a few weeks ago which suprised me, as I thought I would have to do a search on the internet for the drivers/firmware.

NEGATIVE:

Only minor niggle I have with it is the lunar/moon app. I sometimes get horizontal banding. I believe this is a problem with the graphics chip especially on laptops with the ATI graphics chip set as mine has.