Version: 2017.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2018-04-25 Votes: 1
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I use Mint XFCE 32 bit on one laptop and I started using Chakra on another old laptop.
Chakra has proved to be pretty easy to use. I don't see that Mint is any user friendly, taking into consideration the use I give to a computer.
Chakra is much faster and better responding than Mint.
Mint takes about 260mb of RAM upon start up with XFCE (before I had the Mate DE and it took 450mb of RAM). Chakra takes about 340mb of RAM (Chakra is a 64 bit OS).
Contrary to the purist defenders of KDE I find it very useful to be able to use GTK applications.
Since I'm not a linux developer nor have I programming skills, it is very important the ease of use of Chakra, which has been pretty easy to work with.
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2018-04-23 Votes: 1
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Chakra is my normal distro, since leaving Mepis several years ago, mostly because I like KDE. I'm kind of old and set in my ways, and I'm done playing around with my OS. I do use Firefox, Libre Office, Gimp, Digikam and VLC and it's easy enough to replace supplied applications with those. It's reasonably quick on my older hardware and stable as well. My only issue is the small group of maintainers and users means some software is not available. Maybe I should step up the plate and learn to maintain those packages. On the other hand I don't get lost in the forums as I did with larger distros like Ubuntu and Debian. With the vast Arch Wiki available for help I have no trouble with Chakra.
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 8 Date: 2018-04-23 Votes: 0
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I have used Chakra in the resent past and was good with it had to offer. I was pleased how it dealt with GTK with it's system being QT based. It does a crisp clean looking desktop.
I did find though that as time went on it seemed to be slow and lagging with booting-up and basic web surfing. My internet connection is quick and my machine is way more powerful than what it needs to run (an Intel i5 quad core w/8 g's of ram). Not sure why it has this issue? The text seemed small also. For these reason I give it a low 8.2.
If at some point in time Chakra could get back into the flow of things and fix this slowing issue I would definitely give it a go again. It's good.
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2018-03-30 Votes: 1
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I think Chakra is very easy to use and also very quick it has got Korganizer on it which is a very sophisticated file o fax type application. I had great trouble getting this to work on Puppy linux as the Akonadi server would not kick in. I prefer Libre office to the Calligra sheets as I cannot collapse the huge window on the right hand side. I do not think Caligra will import Lotus 123 sheets. I think the command monitor collapsing into the top is very good. I have tried Chakrs alongside Kubuntu on the same machine a very slow IBM thinkpad with only 2 gig of ram. Kubuntu just cannot cope very well whilst Chakra blazed through stuff in comparison despite the tiny amount of spare memory. This is an achievment ! Another thing to bear in mind is 32 bit programs loke Wine are left a bit wanting in a 64bit environment I think wine also needs Java 32bit to run also and if you want to play games this is a disadvantage as steam is 32 bit. Despite all this I really like this Distro and recommend it for ease of use and speed which highlight Linux capabilities
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 10 Date: 2018-03-13 Votes: 1
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Very polished, beautiful, amazing integration with KDE. Not only that, it has a stable core with the bleeding edge packages of Arch. Definitely a distro that you need to try. I think it needs an ISO refresh considering my first post-installation update was about 1gb. Overall, Chakra will appeal to those who want to stay bleeding edge, but has the stability and simplicity that even new linux users would appreciate
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2018-02-17 Votes: 0
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I think Chakra GNU/Linux is a very accomplished piece of work. The desktop is easy to navigate and works very well. Only minor issue is that I created a user and then wasn't able to delete it. Also KMail couldn't connect to my IMAP email, but I thought it was just me using the wrong port.
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 9 Date: 2017-12-22 Votes: 21
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Around 6 months ago I became fed up with Windows 10, and decided to switch to a GNU/Linux distro on my desktop.
My first distro was Manjaro and it was a great experience, but unfortunately the repositories were very outdated (by design). Later on, I switched to vanilla Arch Linux. While it fixed the issue of outdated packages, it was extremely buggy and unstable on my system. Nearly every day involved Ctrl+Alt+F2 to reboot.
Chakra Linux is the best of both worlds. You get the latest bleeding-edge version of KDE Plasma and other software, but with total system stability. Unlike Arch, it doesn't ask you to install a new package every 30 minutes. They keep the "important" software up-to-date, while the more "auxiliary" pieces are updated slowly.
Out of the box, it comes bundled with a fantastic set of Qt-centric software and utilities. There are some apps you may feel obligated to uninstall, such as swapping out Qupzilla for Firefox/Chromium, or Calligra for LibreOffice, but for the most part it's a good selection. Visuals are great as well, it has a beautiful wallpaper and custom theming.
One thing that's not out-of-the-box is the Chakra User Repository; it is nowhere near as complete as Arch's AUR. Many of the packages are old and don't build correctly without tweaking the PKGBUILD quite a bit. This is nothing to fault the devs for since it's a community-based repo, but honestly it wasn't very comprehensive.
Thankfully they provide utilities for you to import packages from the AUR yourself, should you need to. And if you don't feel like building source code all day, many developers offer .appimage files. I have an "Appimage" folder for things such as Synfig Studio and Tiled, and they automatically plug into the Start Menu after launch.
Highly recommended from a Linux newbie / life-long Windows user.
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Version: 2017.10 Rating: 1 Date: 2017-11-27 Votes: 2
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very bad, wont boot up! tried lots of things, this installer is the worst!
Cant deal with nvidia optimus laptop using this bad software... i would vote for 0 if it were avaliable
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 10 Date: 2017-08-11 Votes: 10
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I am linux noob. And I am using Chakra only on one computer strictly for online surfing and usual home tasks like watching videos and archiving pictures. I am using it for cca 4 years.
Rolling release model is flawless. You just need to update every few weeks and I never needed to reinstall the OS from scratch. I also never lost any files.
Sometimes I find some smaller bugs, like when there is major update on Libre Office my local language gets replaced with some indonesian thing, or occasionally I find some obscure software feature or two that dont work as expected. Or screen resolution changes or simple things like that, but nothing major. If you have any issues often Arch linux forums that are very populated have right solution, if you dont find your problem on Chakra forums and wikis.
Easy to use even for people who only saw windows in their lives. Organizing desktop gadgets and widgets might be a bit confusing until you figure out how you manipulate them, but thats one time issue.
But generally its perfect and stable. No crashes, no freezing or lagging. Fast boot up and shut down time. Works well even on old computers with 2GB ram. Repositories contain all the standard software regular user might need. There is even GUI version of pacman called Octopi.
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 10 Date: 2017-07-24 Votes: 0
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I am just an averagew user and was attracted to Chakra's semi-rolling release model. So far I am really enjoying myself! As for pros, installs easily getting an Arch-based system up and going without any fuss, Steam is working well. Cons i haven't really had of note come up yet. Recommended to those who find Chakra's model appealing.
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 10 Date: 2017-05-30 Votes: 4
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I'm using it for a period of one week. I'm big fan of KDE. Before that I was using openSUSE 42.2 for a period of half year (probably more) so I can compare this two. The distro is very stable and polished. I've only one bug with sound card after resume from suspend, but it can be easily corrected. I'm sure that it's a matter of patching kernel.. It's much faster than openSUSE, especially time of booting (3x faster), it's comparable with Debian or ArchLinux. Chakra repos are integrated with KDE Settings, which is nice thing, and for orthodox kde users, there is option to disable gtk repos or lib32, etc. Multimedia, codecs, everything is out of the box, there is no need to add nothing else. Default browser is qupzilla is very usable and good (the newest version 2.1.2, to compare with last kubuntu 17.04, where only very old version is available), but it lacks some features like installing plugins. There is only adblock and a few othres. I've used it for a week because it's native KDE browser. It's quite good and fast, but.. I returned to firefox, because some features available which are important for me. Firefox is integrated with kde (also thunderbird) which is similar to openSUSE (for example in the last kubuntu it's not available even with additional repos and here it's out of the box).
Someone mentioned package manager.. Hmm, I'm using pacman. This octopi is similar to old Debian package manager synaptic, it's quite simple, and I've good felling about it, much better than about Kubuntu package manager.
And important.. I disabled baloo file indexer at the beginning with one click. In Kubuntu this was very hard, because after disabling it was still working, etc. I don't see also akonadi proceesses working in the background. To be truly, I don't need it also.
What more to say? I recommend this distro for these who need KDE-integrated apps. You don't have much choice here, so this is the distro for people who know what they want.
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 10 Date: 2017-04-28 Votes: 1
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Flawless. The most polished distro I have ever used - and always becoming better. The only thing I would wish for is more updated development tools (gcc, clang), although I feel an update might be just around the corner.
Thanks to the devs.
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 9 Date: 2017-04-02 Votes: 1
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Excellent distro, it just need some more polish and then it can be a really great distro.
I love the semi-rolling release model, it let me have the most recent application but without having to deal with the bugs tipical of a rolling-release as Arch.
Also the Plasma experience is very good and the package selections is not too big but at least the most used software (except for chrome) were there.
Some points (IMO) to make chakra really great:
-a nicer package manager (octopi works but is not so really nice....)
-the qt/gtk split (I don't quite understand it, gtk2 and 3 are in [gtk], but other gnome libs were in [core])
-the need of manual intervention (it is very annoying because you have to check the website at every update to check if there are interventions to do...)
-also having more packages would be great (as I said most used packages were there, but how do I install other packages? I saw there is a equivalent to AUR but I don't have the time to compile every application...)
-I installed tlp to increase battery duration, but some distro have it installed by default.
They are minor points but they make impossible to use Chakra for really inexperienced user.
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Version: 2017.03 Rating: 9 Date: 2017-03-18 Votes: 0
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The last time I tried Chakra was 3 or 4 years ago. It was a clunky mess. This latest version is just steps away from greatness. The installation was easy, smooth and flawless. I'm not a KDE fan but I like the way this desktop looks, feels and performs. I have had a lot of trouble with Arch-based distros in the past and always hoped that a solid, producton quality version would surface one day. I almost gave up hope, but this may be it. A great job by the Chakra crew.
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Version: 2016.02 Rating: 8 Date: 2017-03-17 Votes: 0
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Chakra is a solid, semi-rolling release distribution. It has a strong focus on Qt applications with the option of installing GTK software if the user wants it. The distro is fast and highly customizable.
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Version: 2016.02 Rating: 9 Date: 2017-02-20 Votes: 2
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Excellent KDE based distro. Limited package selection, though larger than Kaos.
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