Feren OS feels like Home

Posted by deleted_by_reddit@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 1 comments

[Feren OS Customized by Me](

I don't know, I just want to talk about it for a second. I found out that it was developed by only one person, because it certainly doesn't look or feel like it. Now some of that may come down to the fact that Ubuntu is rock solid, and KDE Plasma's just gorgeous, but it's all in how those ingredients are properly baked.

Someone on another forum asked to be sold on the OS, and I tried. I told them that I tried Linux Mint, but the Cinnamon DE was lacking, missing a few features I needed (like a lock screen that didn't show my wallpaper) and couldn't create a workaround for, while MATE and XCFE weren't able to give me the environment I wanted, which needs to be flexible. I like to tweak my settings, and there weren't many ways to do that with those DEs.

I've installed Manjaro (my other favorite) but could never get it to work because of ethernet issues. I spent days trying to get things to start and they just wouldn't. I eventually gave up.

I've installed Elementary OS, PoP OS, and Zorin OS, and all three failed to load properly after installation. Tinkering got me no closer to getting them up and running. Granted, any number of things could have happened, but it was still disheartening.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu flat out refuse to work on my system. Either during installation, or during startup, something kept going wrong. *15* installation attempts (downloading and using new ISOs, trying new command lines, etc), and I decided the whole thing was cursed.

Finally, I saw Feren OS listed on DistroWatch, and it showed it was KDE/Plasma (I love the KDE plasma DE), had Vivaldi as its default browser (hands down favorite browser), and I thought "well this is worth the shot."

I installed the OS, and booted it up. Everything seemed good out of the box, except for the ethernet connection. Like every other Linux distro I've installed, my ethernet is a giant PITA. I have a Realtek ethernet adapter, and as usual Linux is like "you must want r8168 for that one!" despite it never being a good option ever Ever EVER.

Fortunately, I was prepared, and installed the Realtek r8125 GBE ethernet driver, and restarted, at which point everything ran smoothly. A bunch of installs, updates, sudo apts, and customizations later, and I have the most flexible, easy to use system and it beats the ever loving crap out of Windows, and it has to be, without a doubt, my favorite Linux distro so far.

I checked out the folks behind it, and holy cow, seriously? One person develops it, and there are volunteers who keep things moving for users. This is THE little distro that could. I can only hope the good people involved in keeping this distro working continue to do so, because it is an accomplishment.

I don't know if I can convince you, but I can say that this distro is stable, flexible, capable (I'm playing GTA V in the other window right now), and customizable to the point where it will *spoil* you with all of the options you have. The default KDE Plasma environment helps, but the Feren OS developer has clearly put massive work into making it the easiest to use, as well.

It seems like gushing, it really does, and it probably is, but I was at the end of my rope finding a distro that would just work with my system, as persnickety and finicky as it can be. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm fairly new to Linux, and so all the workarounds you probably thought of in your head never came to me, though I did the best I could with the knowledge I had and had access to.

I hope more of these distros pop up (and I seriously wish Feren OS a big push upward), because I'd love to see the Windows stranglehold in the desktop environment be broken.

So just some fluff, I guess. I hope it was interesting!