Tribblix review : A Suitable desktop operating system

I was mainly motivated to write this article after reading a old review piece in distrowatch ( a mainly linux place where projects like NetBSD, Openindiana and haiku are openly flamed). To me, it really felt a lot like a huge lie being brutally thrown at my face. After bashing the usability of the system in laptop computers, complaining his desktop environment could not launch, without providing any details about the computer he was using, the operating systems is given a very bad image. I`m writing this piece expecting it will be found on google eventually in this blog, desmistifying some of these lies.

Tribblix is mainly a operating system. This means it comes in the format an early 80s or early 90s operating system would come, in a text interface. Instructions are given in the website to install it and its software, including the desktop environment which brings it a grpahical desktop. From there, you are free to do what you want. It can be used for other purposes as well, but this is far from its focus. Its focus is giving itself to you to tell WHAT IT WILL DO. Simple as that. Its so lean and lacking things as default after being installed that its extremely light even on early 64-bit computers. Want to try it? Get an old intel atom, amd athlon 64, or pentium 4 (the 64 bit versions, as the one im using right now to write this piece) and try it out. It even runs from a usb 2.0 port in good performance (if you`re using the right flash memory for this kind of use) and the tribblix install script allows you to do so. Its even faste than most linux distributions focused on lightweight performance on old limited computers i used and than freeBSD.

After you install it, the overlays software installation system of tribblix will give you A LOT of software ready in your hands. Want 10 different desktop environments and 30 window managers/graphical user interfaces? install all the retro desktop overlays. Want windows software to be able to run? Install wine. Want a browser? Install the retro internet utilities and have pale moon, the only independent browser (which is now recognized by microsoft as a web browser in windows 11 operating system internal security algorithms) running functionally. Want a office suite? Install wine and install a proper office suite from windows. Want libreoffice? Install libreoffice.


Most basic desktop software for office usage and for development will be available. Some software from linux will not be available, as they are not ported. But why would you need so much of it if you have the whole base of windows software for it right available with wine if you just want to use a desktop computer for tasks most people would do? Do you lack a graphics card? Tribblix is amazingly fast without one even if you use a pentium 4.  Does your computer has four gigabytes of ram or less? Tribblix will perform normally and not hang at all.

Where are the limitations distrowatch falsely accuses in a warped and distorted way? Driver availability and the range of computers it can run (and run normally, without issues). Tribblix is based on Illumos. I will not get into deep details on this piece, but its based in a open source operating system project, descended from oracle solaris but which is far more advanced than it. This brings certain qualities. Its fast. It uses less memory than most linux distirbutions or BSD operating systems. It generally uses less processing power, as BSD and Linu have grown A LOT over the years, while illumos mostly tried to push for technological breakthroughs (for linux users terminology, much alike arch linux) and for the community and enterprise interests it is invested into, while mantaining compatibility with older unix APIs and conventions harder than freeBSD for example does. A lot like NetBSD, DragonflyBSD  and OpenBSD.

What makes tribblix maybe be disliked by some (i mean, a lot of linux people are very friendly) linuxheads because its internally a solaris descendent, a unix system V decendent, and a unix descendant, directly from Bell Labs and AT&T code. This is a bit unsettling for some fanatics. Te other thing is that it eschews some of the linuxisms and linux conventions which are assumed by some linuxheads, but widely eschewed by operating systems such as Darwin, AIX, NetBSD. And the are generally not going to change. Illumos is NEVER adopting pulseaudio. It has sunaudio. Illumos is NEVER adopting wayland. They do not trust the project quality to be the very needed x11 successor, nor the necessity of effort to port it.  A lot of people on illumos still use motif, gtk2, gtk3 for graphical application development. Illumos has SMF as its service manager instead or systemd. Unless if you`re running a server, there is no actual logic in contesting the use of XML for SMF management and development targeting it. Most Solaris managers use it to this day. Tough life, as it is to deal with systemd in redhat world, but not as (selectively) criticized. All of this is likely not to be changed. Linux conventions and the way linux sees its need to follow apple will not happen, period. All of this has nothing to do with not liking to well service companies or users. It has to do with mantaing the solaris way of doing things, while advancing it in the new illumos way of doing things. Red hat has its way to be dealt with. WIndows has its way. Mac has its way. Nothing new in the game. Community involvement to port drivers would be very happily appreciated, but hey, nvidia still releases drivers for solaris, which are generally compatible with illumos. so why all the fuzz?