Review: SysLinuxOS 12.4
Quoting: DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. —
The description of SysLinuxOS says that it is intended to be useful, right from the start. We shouldn't need to install anything, virtually every tool we need for system administration or networking is right there, at our fingertips, immediately. This is true and the distribution accomplishes this goal quite well. There are a lot of applications, monitors, development utilities, package sniffers, wireless access point tools, collaboration software, and more web browsers than anyone working outside of an IT department will ever need.
However, there are some issues with the distribution and I feel one of them is this giant collection of software. Or, to be more precise, I feel as though the developers have thrown every utility anyone has ever suggested onto the pile, whether it worked well or not. As I mentioned above, one of the network tools cannot function without root access and fails to launch at all when run as root. Including it doesn't accomplish anything. Likewise, featuring a utility which only works with a Cisco account seems a bit unnecessary. If we have a Cisco account and the network access to connect to it, chances are we can also install the utility on the fly. In a similar vein, I can see the appeal of having a system monitor on the desktop, but SysLinuxOS has three - one on the panel, Conky, and the desktop background itself. These tools mostly show the same information and are constantly updating, and it makes for a very busy and redundant experience.
SysLinuxOS is a good example of the idea that a little water is refreshing while too much water feels like drowning.
While I eventually found SysLinuxOS useful, mostly for my self-imposed quest of tracking down why it was generating a steady flow of network traffic, I ran into a few serious bugs early on. For some reason, Btrfs kicked itself into read-only mode, which made the distribution difficult to use and switching to ext4 removes most of the appeal of having tools like Timeshift included. The fact that I ran into not one, but two bugs during the first day of my trial which rendered the graphical environment unable to function was not a good sign. It suggests a lot of software and themes were shoved into this distribution without an appropriate amount of testing.
Again, SysLinuxOS feels like it is very full featured, brimming with options and applications. But this also feels like its biggest issue as a lot of software isn't working properly. The GDM, MATE, Apache, exim, and anacron software all failed to start at one point or another. It makes the distribution feel unpolished even though a lot of its software is incredibly useful.