From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

I routinely/regularly dl linux distro .iso/s to a bootable Ventoy SSD
and boot them up to 'check them out'. I rarely do any tweaking or
changes to the default, depending on how much time I spend with a
distro, with the exception of employing sticky keys (or xkbset if
there's no sticky).

There are some distro/s that I want to 'mess with' some more that cause
me to 'go to the trouble' of planning to reboot them live and make them
live with persistence.

Not many distro/s are 'easily' enabled to be persistent; MX/AntiX are
robust in their persistence abilities, Puppy is 'natively' persistent,
I've enabled persistence on EasyOS, and used Sudoku's/Nio Wiklund's
mkusb for Ub & Mint in the past.

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend more
time with it and make it persistent, so I employed Ventoy's persistence strategy by Ventoying a 32G USB using its linux web UI tool, copying
Lilidog to it, then using Ventoy's clever 'plugson' tools to make a
.json for a persistence.dat for it so that now the ventoy usb can boot a
live persistent Lilidog.

For those who like to boot live linux distro/s, whether it be with a VM
or Ventoy, I recommend Lilidog. I haven't checked out his other
releases; I'm kinda interested in seeing what Waydog has to offer in
Wayland varieties.
--
Mike Easter

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Mike Easter wrote:

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend
more time with it and make it persistent,

For those who say 'What's a Lilidog?', one description says:

Lilidog is a lightweight desktop Linux distribution based on Debian
"Stable" and featuring a customised Openbox window manager. It
incorporates the tint2 desktop panel, the Thunar file manager and
the xfce4-terminal terminal emulator.

Some other words I would use are, interesting, inventive, cleverness;
but nothing gets in the way, it is convenience features.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lilidog/
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2/9/26 1:05 PM, Mike Easter wrote:

Mike Easter wrote:

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend
more time with it and make it persistent,

For those who say 'What's a Lilidog?', one description says:

Lilidog is a lightweight desktop Linux distribution based on Debian
"Stable" and featuring a customised Openbox window manager. It
incorporates the tint2 desktop panel, the Thunar file manager and
the xfce4-terminal terminal emulator.

Some other words I would use are, interesting, inventive, cleverness;
but nothing gets in the way, it is convenience features.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lilidog/

I ran it up too. Not sure what caused me to try it, but heck, add one to ventoy and try.
I too found it one of the easier to get up and running. I have some custom themes and
icons here in Mint and installed theme there. That was part of my test scenario.

No persistence so I just played for an hour or so. Still it's fun to see some of the OSes
that people make.
--
Linux Mint 22.3, Mozilla Thunderbird 140.7.1esr, Mozilla Firefox 147.0.2
Alan K.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Alan K. wrote:

I have some custom themes and icons here in Mint and installed theme there.-a That was part of my test scenario.

I 'never' tweak such as themes and other 'visual' aspects, but the
distro is very much designed to encourage that.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 09/02/2026 17:35, Mike Easter wrote:

I routinely/regularly dl linux distro .iso/s to a bootable Ventoy SSD
and boot them up to 'check them out'. I rarely do any tweaking or
changes to the default, depending on how much time I spend with a
distro, with the exception of employing sticky keys (or xkbset if
there's no sticky).

There are some distro/s that I want to 'mess with' some more that
cause me to 'go to the trouble' of planning to reboot them live and
make them live with persistence.

Not many distro/s are 'easily' enabled to be persistent; MX/AntiX are
robust in their persistence abilities, Puppy is 'natively' persistent,
I've enabled persistence on EasyOS, and used Sudoku's/Nio Wiklund's
mkusb for Ub & Mint in the past.

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend
more time with it and make it persistent, so I employed Ventoy's
persistence strategy by Ventoying a 32G USB using its linux web UI
tool, copying Lilidog to it, then using Ventoy's clever 'plugson'
tools to make a .json for a persistence.dat for it so that now the
ventoy usb can boot a live persistent Lilidog.

For those who like to boot live linux distro/s, whether it be with a
VM or Ventoy, I recommend Lilidog. I haven't checked out his other
releases; I'm kinda interested in seeing what Waydog has to offer in
Wayland varieties.

I create an Oracle VM with bare minimum install (Ubuntu and other
distros have two ways to install so I normally go for minimum). Disk
size 25GB, 2 processors, 4096MB Ram. So it is always there and can
access it using putty and do all sorts of things with it knowing that it
can't damage anything else on the machine.






--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

George wrote:

I create an Oracle VM with bare minimum install (Ubuntu and other
distros have two ways to install so I normally go for minimum). Disk
size 25GB, 2 processors, 4096MB Ram. So it is always there and can
access it using putty and do all sorts of things with it knowing that it can't damage anything else on the machine.

For some reason, I never got on the VM bandwagon.

I evolved from using Rufus (on a Win) to write linux .iso/s to a USB to
Ventoy writing multiple .iso/s on the same USB, to Ventoy writing *more* multiples to a SATA SSD (much faster than my mostly USB2 equipment), to
more Ventoy strategies using its plugins for persistence and alternate
grub boot.

I LUV Ventoy, and I've never really needed a VM to boot a linux OR a
Win, as I can use Hirens to boot WinXP/DOS, or PE W10/W11.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Mike Easter wrote:

Alan K. wrote:

I have some custom themes and icons here in Mint and installed theme
there.-a That was part of my test scenario.

I 'never' tweak such as themes and other 'visual' aspects, but the
distro is very much designed to encourage that.

Here's a recent msg in the forum in which the dev sleekmason has advice
at the end of the msg about 'Theming fun'.

I haven't done any of that. and don't know much of anything about Custom
Theme Changer, tint2, Auto Themes, or Quick Themes.

https://sourceforge.net/p/lilidog/discussion/updates/thread/89d02e41c9/?page=6#cbaa

As I mentioned, I don't have experience w/ theme tweaking.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 15:29:27 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

For some reason, I never got on the VM bandwagon.

Another option is containers. Somewhat lower overhead, because they
share the same kernel. This also limits your options (no ability to
boot alternative guest kernels), but has its uses nonetheless.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

Mike Easter wrote:

For some reason, I never got on the VM bandwagon.

Another option is containers. Somewhat lower overhead, because they
share the same kernel. This also limits your options (no ability to
boot alternative guest kernels), but has its uses nonetheless.

This might seem 'silly' to those who like VMs, but one reason that I
never got 'into that' is because 'generally' I was running low-resource systems and I couldn't 'see' running two OSes at the same time just to
run a live distro, when I could boot just one OS live.

Then, to solve the 'problem' of keeping system changes, the 'right kind
of persistence' (not just a data place) fit the bill.

Now the machines I use most each have 8G of ram which is enough for what
I do.

The only containers I use are when I boot Easy OS, which I do w/ a
Ventoy configuration.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2026-02-09, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

I routinely/regularly dl linux distro .iso/s to a bootable Ventoy SSD
and boot them up to 'check them out'. I rarely do any tweaking or
changes to the default, depending on how much time I spend with a
distro, with the exception of employing sticky keys (or xkbset if
there's no sticky).

There are some distro/s that I want to 'mess with' some more that cause
me to 'go to the trouble' of planning to reboot them live and make them
live with persistence.

Not many distro/s are 'easily' enabled to be persistent; MX/AntiX are
robust in their persistence abilities, Puppy is 'natively' persistent,
I've enabled persistence on EasyOS, and used Sudoku's/Nio Wiklund's
mkusb for Ub & Mint in the past.

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend more time with it and make it persistent, so I employed Ventoy's persistence strategy by Ventoying a 32G USB using its linux web UI tool, copying
Lilidog to it, then using Ventoy's clever 'plugson' tools to make a
.json for a persistence.dat for it so that now the ventoy usb can boot a live persistent Lilidog.

For those who like to boot live linux distro/s, whether it be with a VM
or Ventoy, I recommend Lilidog. I haven't checked out his other
releases; I'm kinda interested in seeing what Waydog has to offer in
Wayland varieties.

Looks interesting. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks.
--
"Not just insane... Trump insane."
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2026-02-10, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

Mike Easter wrote:

For some reason, I never got on the VM bandwagon.

Another option is containers. Somewhat lower overhead, because they
share the same kernel. This also limits your options (no ability to
boot alternative guest kernels), but has its uses nonetheless.

This might seem 'silly' to those who like VMs, but one reason that I
never got 'into that' is because 'generally' I was running low-resource systems and I couldn't 'see' running two OSes at the same time just to
run a live distro, when I could boot just one OS live.

That's basically why I moved away from VMs.

Then, to solve the 'problem' of keeping system changes, the 'right kind
of persistence' (not just a data place) fit the bill.

Now the machines I use most each have 8G of ram which is enough for what
I do.

The only containers I use are when I boot Easy OS, which I do w/ a
Ventoy configuration.

--
"Not just insane... Trump insane."
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Mon, 2/9/2026 10:43 PM, RonB wrote:

On 2026-02-10, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

Mike Easter wrote:

For some reason, I never got on the VM bandwagon.

Another option is containers. Somewhat lower overhead, because they
share the same kernel. This also limits your options (no ability to
boot alternative guest kernels), but has its uses nonetheless.

This might seem 'silly' to those who like VMs, but one reason that I
never got 'into that' is because 'generally' I was running low-resource
systems and I couldn't 'see' running two OSes at the same time just to
run a live distro, when I could boot just one OS live.

That's basically why I moved away from VMs.

Then, to solve the 'problem' of keeping system changes, the 'right kind
of persistence' (not just a data place) fit the bill.

Now the machines I use most each have 8G of ram which is enough for what
I do.

The only containers I use are when I boot Easy OS, which I do w/ a
Ventoy configuration.

If you have the hardware for it, why not ?

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/NFKb11jb/Two-Virtual-Machines.gif

The beauty of computers, is you never know what you're going to get.

Paul


--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:35:13 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend
more time with it ...

This article <https://www.zdnet.com/article/waydog-proves-that-lightweight-linux-distributions-dont-have-to-look-outdated/>
mentions that Lilidog is part of a trio. Perhaps try the Wayland-based
variant?

Waydog picks up where Lilidog (RIP) left off, only adopting the
Wayland compositor, instead of X11. Although there was an update
to Lilidog in 2025, the distribution still remains dormant.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:35:13 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to
spend more time with it ...

This article <https://www.zdnet.com/article/waydog-proves-that- lightweight-linux-distributions-dont-have-to-look-outdated/>
mentions that Lilidog is part of a trio. Perhaps try the Wayland-
based variant?

Waydog picks up where Lilidog (RIP) left off, only adopting the
Wayland compositor, instead of X11. Although there was an update to
Lilidog in 2025, the distribution still remains dormant.

Altho' Jack Wallen wrote/dated that zdnet today; it is not 'accurate' ie up-to-date.

As far as I know, the distro was /never/ DW 'dormant' as it was just
very recently 'listed' at DW, 'tho' dev has been going on longer; and
the 3 versions are all available. Of the other two I haven't tried, the
Waydog is of some interest to me, even 'tho' Wayland 'differences' from
X11 haven't 'inspired' me so far. For something that has taken so much
time and trouble all over the place, I can't really see 'the difference'
-- more like just seeing the time and trouble.

In my OP, I said:

I haven't checked out his other releases; I'm kinda interested in
seeing what Waydog has to offer in Wayland varieties.

I do like that JW gave some reporting on the varieties in Waydog in
terms of the 3 WMs, which I have never heard of otherwise.

The dev says:

Waydog - A Wayland based release with Labwc, Sway, and Waybar. A fun
release that shows some of the potential of Wayland and small window managers. Niri and Wayfire are also available as separate installer
options.

However, my fave reviewer Jesse Smith generally tries a distro live, VM,
and installed. JW was a little lazy and just ran as a VM; I don't think
you get to complain about WM + Wayland graphical glitches if you aren't willing to look into the performance a little better.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Mike Easter wrote:

JW was a little lazy and just ran as a VM; I don't think you get to
complain about WM + Wayland graphical glitches if you aren't willing
to look into the performance a little better.

To be more fair to Wallen, at least he admits it:

That could also be because I'm running it as a virtual machine, and
I've experienced some wonkiness on distributions that would
otherwise run fine.

JS of DW says the same about his VM phase of testing.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Mike Easter wrote:

I'm kinda interested in seeing what Waydog has to offer in Wayland varieties.

Having briefly checked out live Waydog and its choice of 2 WMs for its
Wayland display, I prefer the parent Lilidog, OpenBox, XFCE pieces
Thunar & Terminal over stable Deb and all of the 'wonderful' features
the dev has created.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2026-02-10, RonB <ronb02NOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2026-02-09, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

I routinely/regularly dl linux distro .iso/s to a bootable Ventoy SSD
and boot them up to 'check them out'. I rarely do any tweaking or
changes to the default, depending on how much time I spend with a
distro, with the exception of employing sticky keys (or xkbset if
there's no sticky).

There are some distro/s that I want to 'mess with' some more that cause
me to 'go to the trouble' of planning to reboot them live and make them
live with persistence.

Not many distro/s are 'easily' enabled to be persistent; MX/AntiX are
robust in their persistence abilities, Puppy is 'natively' persistent,
I've enabled persistence on EasyOS, and used Sudoku's/Nio Wiklund's
mkusb for Ub & Mint in the past.

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend more
time with it and make it persistent, so I employed Ventoy's persistence
strategy by Ventoying a 32G USB using its linux web UI tool, copying
Lilidog to it, then using Ventoy's clever 'plugson' tools to make a
.json for a persistence.dat for it so that now the ventoy usb can boot a
live persistent Lilidog.

For those who like to boot live linux distro/s, whether it be with a VM
or Ventoy, I recommend Lilidog. I haven't checked out his other
releases; I'm kinda interested in seeing what Waydog has to offer in
Wayland varieties.

Looks interesting. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks.

Lilidog kept me from booting in UFEI mode on my Ventoy USB. I was able to
boot it using Legacy mode but, until I deleted Lilidog, I had to use Legacy mode. Once I deleted Lilidog everything was back to normal.

Lilidog looks like a pretty good light Linux. I might take a longer look in
a week or so.
--
"Not just insane... Trump insane."
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2026-02-10, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:35:13 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

I recently booted Lilidog and liked it well enough to want to spend
more time with it ...

This article
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/waydog-proves-that-lightweight-linux-distributions-dont-have-to-look-outdated/>
mentions that Lilidog is part of a trio. Perhaps try the Wayland-based variant?

Waydog picks up where Lilidog (RIP) left off, only adopting the
Wayland compositor, instead of X11. Although there was an update
to Lilidog in 2025, the distribution still remains dormant.

It looks like the article writer was wrong about Lilidog's demise and he's corrected himself now.

Although I ran into some speculation that Lilidog was no longer in
active development, the developer reached out to me to let me know
that all three are still alive and barking.

The latest release of Lilidog was last Friday (February 6th). It's based on Debian 13, Trixie. (Probably released shortly before or after the original article was published.)
--
"Not just insane... Trump insane."
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

RonB wrote:

It looks like the article writer was wrong about Lilidog's demise and he's corrected himself now.

Yes; I could tell from the conversations in its forum that the 'dormant' remark that JW made wasn't accurate. While dev has been going on for
some time, it had never been 'listed' at DW; and the DW 'condition' of
being 'dormant' is one in which a previously *listed* distro whose dev
pauses or ceases or delays for X amount of time has its *listed* status changed from 'Active' to 'Dormant'.

In the case of Lilidog, it had never been listed at DW and therefore
never listed as 'Active'; then when the 'condition' of the project
reached its current level, DW listed it as Active. Never dormant.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Mike Easter wrote:

Some other words I would use are, interesting, inventive, cleverness;
but nothing gets in the way, it is convenience features.

I'm gaining a better understanding of the 'basis' of Lilidog. The dev is
very good at making the WM OpenBox (+ some XFCE pieces) into a strong
DE w/ useful features; BUT... OB is a X11, so in order to provide
Wayland, he has the Waydog release which doesn't use OB. However, while Waydog features/employs WM's capable of Wayland, they aren't nearly as
strong in their features that the dev sleekmason has been able to use in Lilidog.

The other strength of sleekmason's desktop is his familiarity w/ using
tint2 for a panel/taskbar, along w/ lxtask for enhancement.

So the result is a well-featured 'desktop environment' made out of a WM
+ other support (from DEs such as XFCE & LX) w/o needing to employ any
of the much heavier DEs.
--
Mike Easter
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2026-02-11, Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:

RonB wrote:

It looks like the article writer was wrong about Lilidog's demise and he's >> corrected himself now.

Yes; I could tell from the conversations in its forum that the 'dormant' remark that JW made wasn't accurate. While dev has been going on for
some time, it had never been 'listed' at DW; and the DW 'condition' of
being 'dormant' is one in which a previously *listed* distro whose dev pauses or ceases or delays for X amount of time has its *listed* status changed from 'Active' to 'Dormant'.

In the case of Lilidog, it had never been listed at DW and therefore
never listed as 'Active'; then when the 'condition' of the project
reached its current level, DW listed it as Active. Never dormant.

So an honest mistake. Thanks for the explanation.
--
"Not just insane... Trump insane."
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2