Commodore OS Vision

[Jackdaw]

Well I've just started to download this OS to give it a try. It's a whopping 36Gb, so it's going to take a bit of time.

You can find it here.

Review

[Baggey]

I was looking at this. But 36GB.

Cant wait to see what you think.

[Jackdaw]

Well after spending some time trying to get it to install on VirtualBox on my main gaming laptop, and all I can say is what a pain. It actually crash during the install on VB if the animated wall paper is running. It does install and work, but you definitely need a lot of HD space and it's very choppy.

So I thought I'd install it on real hardware, my ASUS Rysen 7 3600U laptop. I would have thought by now that they would have the AMD graphic drivers for Debian fixed. It shows screen artefacts at certain horizontal positions on screen.

And having looked at the "features". I've come to the conclusion that Microsoft Windows 10/11 has less bloatware pre-installed, and I was starting to think that the heat death of the universe would come before it finished it's installation. They must be in competition with MS on that front. At least you get a bit of music to listen too.

It annoys the hell out of you every ten clicks with comments on wanting you to install it if you decline the install on start up dialog. On the plus side. It does enable the firewall by default, which a lot of distributions don't do these days. I didn't try out the run MS Windows stuff on it with the graphics drivers being so poor.

So my verdict is stay well clear of it. All it is, is just a version of Linux MX (based off Debian 12) with a customised MATE DE with Commodore 64 themed tools and lots of unneeded software that uses up disk space. It would have been better if you could have selected what to install during installation setup.

I would class this Linux distribution in the same category as those trying to emulate MS Windows and macOS.

[Dabzy]

It looks pretty cool and all... But, I thought as much as of your review as soon as I saw they just rammed it all with already made Linux based material, nothing really angling towards 8bit Commadore classics, from the likes of applications such as Power Pack to popular games as, I dunno coming from the Amstrad CPC line, erm, Impossible Mission I recall playing on a mates C64, which was really good.

So yeah, seems to be just another rehashed distro which brings absolutely nowt to the party, apart from looking a bit more fancy.

Dabz

[Jackdaw]

nothing really angling towards 8bit Commadore classics

Nothing as of note yet. The Commodore OS BASIC Studio application is aiming towards that, but currently as far as I can tell. You need to install this OS to use it and run any created applications.

The only installed software for 8bit development is CBM prg Studio (a Windows application and not the best) and C64 SID Music Editor, better known as GOAT Tracker, a program similar to the old Sound Tracker.

And of course there's no firmware ROMS, other than the open source versions.
But if you know where to look. The C64 and ZX Spectrum ROMS are easy to find.