Redcore Linux 1706 Redcore Linux is a desktop distribution based on the source-based Gentoo project. Redcore is designed to be quick and easy to install on laptop and desktop computers. The distribution ships with LXQt as the default desktop environment and there is just the one edition of Redcore we can download. Its installation media is built to run exclusively on 64-bit x86 computers.



Booting from Redcore's installation media brings us to a graphical login screen where we can sign into the live desktop environment using "redcore" as both the username and password. Later, if we need to access administrative functions we can elevate our privileges using "root" as both the username and password.



Signing into the live session brings up the LXQt 0.11.0 desktop. A panel runs across the bottom of the screen, providing us with access to the system's application menu, task switcher and system tray. On the desktop we find icons for launching the project's system installer and another for getting help. The latter icon opens a web browser and connects us to a web-based IRC chat room where we can interact with other Redcore users.



Installing



Redcore utilizes the Calamares graphical system installer to get the distribution installed to a local disk drive. Calamares begins by asking us to select our preferred language from a list. We are then quickly walked through picking our time zone, confirming our keyboard's layout and partitioning the hard disk. Calamares supports either automatically taking over a portion of the disk or letting us manually partition the drive. Manual partitioning is fairly straight forward and I found Calamares provides a fairly streamlined series of options. The partitioning screen also lets us choose where to install the distribution's boot loader. Calamares then asks us to create a username and password we can use to login later. We then wait for Calamares to copy its files to our drive and, afterwards, we can reboot the computer to try our pristine copy of Redcore Linux.



Early impressions



When Redcore boots, we are presented with a graphical login screen where we can sign into either the LXQt desktop or a minimal, Openbox environment. I stuck with using the LXQt environment during my trial. Next to the application menu, on the panel at the bottom of the display, there is an area where we can drag-and-drop icons. This allows us to grab icons from the application menu and pull them down to the panel, creating quick-launch buttons.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- The default LXQt theme

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The LXQt environment was responsive and rarely did I see any notifications or other distractions. Though I did find my eyes tended to be drawn toward the red border that surrounds open application windows. The borders are not only colourful, but also thin and I found it difficult to click the edges in order to resize windows while the default theme was in use.



Also on the subject of the appearance of windows, I noticed different applications featured different colour schemes. For example, the QupZilla web browser uses just about every colour of icon and decoration, LibreOffice offers a blue-on-grey theme which reminds me of Windows 95. The VLC application mixes greys and red while the file manager uses a lot of yellow and red. With the default theme the Notepadqq text editor and qBittorrent application were unable to display their drop-down menus. When the menu was clicked, an empty, black box would be displayed where the menu should be. The user can still click on menu entries, but cannot see what they are selecting as the text and background are both black. This can be fixed by switching to an alternative theme in the desktop's settings panel.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- Trying a lighter theme

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Settings



The LXQt desktop includes a settings panel where we can open modules for adjusting the look and feel of the desktop environment. Most of these tools deal with application themes, the wallpaper and window behaviour. There are also tools for changing our locale settings, setting up new user accounts and connecting to printers. The settings panel also includes a launcher for the Connman UI network configuration utility. These tools all worked well for me. There are relatively few tools in the settings panel, but each module contains many options, giving us a good deal of power over Redcore's desktop interface.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- Adjusting network settings with Connman

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Hardware



I explored running Redcore in two test environments, a desktop computer and a VirtualBox virtual machine. Redcore ran fairly well in the VirtualBox environment. It automatically integrated with VirtualBox and I was able to use my host computer's full screen resolution. Redcore's desktop was responsive and the distribution proved to be stable.



When I tried to run Redcore on the desktop computer I ran into a number of problems. The distribution's live disc was unable to boot at all when my desktop computer was set to boot in Legacy BIOS mode. When my computer was booting in UEFI mode the distribution's live disc would lock up during the boot process. I was able to work around this by booting with the "nomodeset" kernel parameter, but this left me with a live environment that was command line only. The X graphical display software would fail to launch, cutting me off from the LXQt desktop and the Calamares system installer. This left me to play with Redcore in the VirtualBox environment only.



Redcore ships with a desktop utility for setting up printers, however the distribution does not include drivers for my HP wireless printer. This driver needs to be found and installed manually in order to get the printer to work.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- Exploring applications and alternative themes

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A fresh install of Redcore Linux, when sitting idle at the LXQt desktop, used 190MB of memory. While Redcore was light on memory, the distribution used an unusually large amount of disk space. A fresh install of Redcore took up 6.6GB of disk drive space. After I had installed software updates, this expanded further, to 11GB of disk space. This was before I had added any applications of my own. For comparison, most Debian-based distributions I use require about 11-12GB of space with multiple desktop environments, applications, libraries and development tools installed.



Included software



Redcore ships with a slightly unusual collection of default software. For instance, the distribution uses QupZilla (without Flash support) as the default web browser. Redcore ships with the WMail e-mail client for accessing GMail accounts and qBittorrent for downloading and sharing torrents. The distribution also supplies users with the QuiteRSS feed reader, the Konversation IRC client and the FileZilla file transfer program. The Connman UI application is present to help us connect to the Internet and qpdfview is available for reading PDF files. The default music player is the minimal Qmmp application and virtual machines can be managed with the AQEMU application. There is a TV viewer which offers dozens of channels we can supposedly watch for free. I tried a handful and the TV client was unable to successfully connect to any of them.



There are some more common applications in the mix too, including the LibreOffice suite, the KDE Partition Manager and the K3b disc burning software. The VLC and mpv media players are present too. Inkscape and GIMP are available to help us edit images. Redcore's default file manager is PCManFM. Steam is present to help us download and run games from Valve's store.



Digging further we find Redcore ships with two compilers, the GNU Compiler Collection (version 5.4.0) and Clang (version 4.0.1). The distribution runs on version 4.9.30 of the Linux kernel, though these versions will ease upward over time due to Redcore's rolling nature. The SysV init software is present, but service management on Redcore is handled by OpenRC.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- Running QupZilla and LibreOffice

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Package management



Software management on Redcore can be handled through a number of tools, but the project's documentation focuses on the Sisyphus package manager. Sisyphus acts as a friendly front-end for Gentoo-based technologies such as the emerge software manager. Using Sisyphus, we can issue simple command line instructions to install, find, remove and upgrade software on the operating system. Sisyphus, and the emerge back-end, function well, but they are quite a bit slower than other package managers such as Pacman and APT. It takes a few minute to even check for new software upgrades after we have already updated our repository information. Despite this speed penalty, Sisyphus completed all of its functions successfully.



When I first started using Redcore there were 110 software updates waiting to be installed; their total size was not given. These upgrades were installed successfully. I noted that, following a kernel update, the next time I booted Redcore, the operating system paused to rebuild kernel modules. This added a few minutes to my boot time. Something else I noticed when using Sisyphus was when I was installing updates I received a steady stream of warnings concerning my locale settings. I ran into no problems as a result of these warnings, but I did decide to adjust my locale settings in the distribution's settings panel to remove the warnings.





Redcore Linux 1706 -- The Sisyphus graphical package manager

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Sisyphus has a graphical front-end. This program, sisyphus-gui, displays a list of available software along with a brief description. The Sisyphus front-end does not have many features. We can highlight a single package and click a button to install or remove the package. We can also click a button to install all available software updates. The graphical front-end appears to still be in its very early stages and does not appear to offer methods for searching for specific packages or filtering packages.



Conclusions



Going into this experiment with Redcore Linux, I was cautiously optimistic. It is not all that often I come across Gentoo-based desktop distributions (Calculate Linux and Sabayon being notable exceptions). I was aware Redcore was a relatively young project and I was curious to see what, if any, unique experiences the project could offer.



Redcore is definitely unusual in a few ways. Apart from being a relatively rare Gentoo-based distribution, the project ships with an unusual collection of software, much of it Qt-based. I find it interesting Redcore is working on its own graphical package manager to work with software. I also find it appealing that Redcore defaults to using binary packages, but the user could easily use Gentoo's source-based Portage system to build software from source code.



There were several minor issues I ran into throughout the week which started to add up after a while. While Redcore worked inside VirtualBox, the distribution did not play well with my desktop computer, particularly the video card. The package manager, while powerful, was slow and installing new packages and upgrades took an unusually long time.



There were a number of theme and locale issues on Redcore which caused me to switch themes, tweak the window manager and change my locale during my week with the distribution. Each of these were small issues, but ones which should be sorted out to provide a smooth desktop experience.



On the whole Redcore offered a fast, responsive environment in which to work and up to date software. The application selection is a little unusual, but I welcomed the variety as it introduced me to a few desktop applications I hadn't tried before.



Redcore might need a little time to mature before I will recommend it, there are still rough edges to polish. I like the general design, but there are some implementation issues to sort out which will hopefully be addressed as more people try Redcore and submit bug reports. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



Redcore Linux has a visitor supplied average rating of: 6.7/10 from 66 review(s).

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