There are a number of reasons why I am not entirely impressed with this distribution,lets begin with the funcionality,mamy of the AI features are hidden benind a pay wall(you havve to pay $33 to access many of them which means you can't really give the distro a thorough trial while some of the other features require login( user name and password),but there apars(at least in my experience) some ambiguity as to whether a payment is required to use theese features.,I have read in a few posts that the developetr behind the distro is experiencing financial issues which brings the viability of this distro into question unless others are willing to step in and give the project a leg up. on a technical note it is interesting that the develpper swings between Debian and Ubuntu( ubuntu is essienttialy based on Debian) Documentation is sparse, much of it is a series of explanatory video's which to my mind are more an attempt at marketing the distro than offering any practical help to the new user.all in all, A nice toy to play around with but I woudn't use it as a primary distro.
This is by far the worst distro I have ever used. I tested the latest MakuluLinux LinDoz 2025.08.08 RC and it’s extremely buggy and lagging. The GUI is a mish mash of visual clutter and confusion. The settings is scattered in multiple modules than to be all in one settings like in gnome.
The taskbar uneven icon sizes is not visually appealing where all the icons on the left is large and on the right its small. There was a lot of icons on the desktop that was unnecessary and very difficult to customize. The taskbar remained translucent no matter what theme you choose. All of the wallpaper look like oil paintings, no real photos or anything. The window theme was chaotic. It’s like it was designed by a 10 year old that tried to make it far too intuitive than it needs to be.
Customizing was very confusing. They really need a serious eye on design and user experience. It was tooooo cluttered too many preinstalled apps. I won’t recommend this distro to anyone. It’s too much.
Oh boy, this distro is an absolute treat. I'll first start with the good things this distro does. I really like certain parts of it's AI assistant. Especially its coding feature, as it's pretty helpful for basic stuff. Honestly that's about it for the good things, now onto what I find concerning. First thing is that it's GTK4 theme is completely broken. The distro uses gnome software for its software store and the repository menu in it is completely broken due to the font colors. Second thing is that flathub is not preinstalled on the distro. For a linux distro claiming to be innovative, i would think it'd have flathub installed for more application choice. Also for the people who hate snap, snap is preinstalled for some reason. Note that there are NO apps actually using flatpak or snap out of the box, so it's strange they are installed in the first place. Also the theme on this distro is just plain ugly to me, i think cinnamon's default theme looks leagues better than on here. Also, the AI assistant for some reason has an "anti-woke" mode??? I'm sorry, but WHO asked for an AI assistant with BUILT-IN homophobia and transphobia? Off of that subject, why does the live-media have a crappy AI bot video play automatically when you boot into it? And why is there a pop-up trying to sell you on the pro version of the system about 5 minutes in the system? The final thing that is concerning for long-term use is the use of automatic updates in the background. This distribution is based on debian testing, which is a decent base for normal usage, but i would NEVER use automatic updates on this operating system because ANYTHING could break. This distro also heavily relies on external, 3rd party repos. It is to the point of there being 28 repositories TOTAL in the sources list, some of which being UBUNTU ppas and debian BUSTER packages. Why are these on a debian testing base? These apps would be better suited on flatpak and snap if the distro ACTUALLY used them. In conclusion, Makulu Linux LinDoz is an absolute mess of a linux distribution and I do not suggest using it for daily use. PLEASE use ubuntu, mint, regular debian, or fedora over this.
I was real interested in giving this a try and see how Electra and all its other AI Tools work, but I'm afraid its still very beta and needs to be more fine tuned.
I wanted to run this in its Live Boot mode to test/install in the latest version of VirtualBox 7.1.4, but nothing but X11 issues and desktop never boots up, regardless of adjusting the display settings in VirtualBox. And that is a show stopper, since I will test first in a virtual environment before committing to installing a distro on hardware.
MakuluLinux offers a beautifully crafted user experience with its Gnome desktop, providing a sleek and modern interface that RoseMarin found visually appealing. However, her enthusiasm took a dive when she discovered it couldn't play Roblox, leading her to give it a score of zero in her eyes. While the aesthetics and features of Gnome were enjoyable, both RoseMarin and I couldn't help but miss the familiarity and customization options that KDE offers, reminding us of the importance of finding the right balance between functionality and personal satisfaction in an operating system.
Makulu Shift edition rotts, cause GNOME from Ubuntu 22.04 in 2024 is very old. And GNOME is known to ignore its APIs in newer versions. So if you use a lot of plugins (like Makulu does), plugin authors do not update them for older version (Gnome from Ubuntu 22.04), then Makulu Shift simply sucks in 2024.
It would be better Makulu GNOME edition to concentrate on default GNOME, and its plugins made by Ubuntu, cause they are always up to date, and to ditch all these 16 different looks.
And to carefully select additional very popular GNOME plugins from proven sources (which have separate editions for Ubuntu 22.04 GNOME)
Makulu better to concentrate on its fantastic AI stuff, it is the coolest Linux distro so far.
Thats why 10 out of 10.
Makulu max,nightmare to install,don't even try unless you have a minimum of 8gb Ram and a decent processor, here are my findings of this os,graffically its superb but that the only good thing I have got to say about it,everything else dissapoints, I have been using linux for a number of years now and have to say its the least user friendly distro I have ever come accross so for newbies this will be a nightmare,ok so trying the try before you buy scenario it works just fine,quick and snappy,after full install that's where your problems will begin, updates or should I say most of them installed promptly but wouldn't or couldn't install all of them, so back to the os,app store installed a few of the app I selected but after opening once they failed to open at all,even one or two of the pre installed apps wouldn't open either, selected other packages to see if that would cure the problem but to no avail, lastly there is never any mention in any of the reviews for this os that you have to pay to fully unlock all of apps that are on other distros for free, there are better distros out there I personally use deepin linux that I have never encountered any of the problems that makulu throws at you, the moral of this review is never believe all the reviews that you will see for this product,I wish I had never bothered
Makulu is a strange distro, a hybrid Frankenstein monster. It promises stability, but the reason is that it comes with Ubuntu 20! Google Chrome doesn't work with flatpak because it needs a newer version of flatpak. It comes with Gnome 36!! Gnome is already in version 44. Some tools it brings are from Linux Mint, they don't even bother to change them, others are from Ubuntu.
It is focused on the aesthetic aspect, but it is limited to changing the icons and the place of the "dock". Gnome is a desktop that doesn't allow for too many changes.
On my new Lenovo IdeaFlex 5 laptop it doesn't even recognize Wi-Fi (Intel ac 9560), when any distro recognizes it.
The latest invention has been to release a distro with AI called "Electra". Why do you want Electra if Alexia or Siri already exists?
They ask about $30 for adding new "desktop themes". For $7 you get a Window$ OEM license.Asking for money for a distro with Ubuntu 20 and Gnome 36 is ridiculous.
This is very nice MakuluLinux OS that i like it very much to switch between desktop theme style like kde Plasma, Lindoz, etc but i find it very puzzling for one thing is it took up a whole 1TB space and leaving just 50.3GB space which i just installed new OS and not much i installed. I'm disappointed that it took up a whole 1TB space even it format correctly with 1TB and smaller swap space. So Something add up on home system files taking up space like that is not normal as I cannot install any more apps on it that tell me you have low space.
Makulu has been an interesting distro in the past. Past Xfce and Cinnamon versions were pretty steady and solid. I had grown to really like this distribution, but now Xfce and Cinnamon have been dropped in favor of Gnome across the board.
Gnome is a resource hog. The website tries to acknowledge this while trying to make the case that the use of the Gnome framework and not the front end means it will not hog resources, but the proof is in the installation. It fails. It fails pretty spectacularly, in fact.
I have an older system (quad core processor) that runs like a champ if I am running Xfce, Cinnamon, IceWM, JWM, TDE, Budgie, Enlightenment or most anything that is not requiring massive memory (8 GB RAM on this old desktop). KDE and Gnome simply will not run. It appears that all the tweaking done by the Makulu team could not make this run on that older machine. I tried it on my newer laptop (16GB RAM and a five year old processor). It chokes on KDE and Gnome too. Makulu was not the exception. It ran, but not well. One of the philosophical tenets of Linux has long been the ability to use Linux on machines that Windows has left behind. Makulu's switch to Gnome has rendered it completely useless for all but the most modern machines (a disturbing Windows performance trend that has been taken up by the KDE and Gnome systems over the years). I am sad to have to leave Makulu behind, but if it won't work, you have to move on.
I actually stumbled upon this distro looking for a rolling release debian , my debian opensuse tumbleweed if you will, yast is just awesome, which I highly regard more than the other distros, but don't quite love. I started out on ubuntu my first few years of dabbling in linux years ago and ended up on tumbleweed for the most part since, although I have always distro hopped.
I have to say I love the DE's in this distro, way better than Manjaros, and I can try all the different DE without wrecking my previous install to do so.
Pros, the Debian testing version installed on my old amd fm2+ mobo. Cons, I haven't found one yet, but will review when I do, however some will hate the fact that it comes with Chrome installed.
I've been this using for a few weeks now and I actually think I'm done distro hopping now, I hope the developer can continue to maintain this project!
The developer would seem to focus his attentions mostly on eye-candy to the exclusion of functionality, at least in the "shift" version. This latest version begins with a video of the assorted desktops you can choose. In my virtual box and also to a disk it was glacially slow and, ironically, never offered an install feature. Bizarre. Perhaps in the future function will play a more important role. Until then......
A great, easy-to-use, fast, stable and beautiful looking distro. This review is for the “Lindoz” version. It looks great, is light on resources, has lots of customization and other repositories already enabled, applications are carefully chosen, installing programs is a snap (not the spyware package thing called snap), great tweaks and optimizations. I’ll be using this more often, I came from Zorin, but that OS is a bloated joke that makes you pay for the other versions which only offer different themes.
I dropped everything and I use it on all my computers since 2021. I'm discovering now "lindoz" which really charmed me with its interface facilities and it's clean desktop.
I thank the whole group of developers and I really wish that this distribution will be very successful.
Good continuation :-)
Version: 15 Rating: 10 Date: 2021-09-19 Votes: 26
This distro combines elements of "Linux" in ways that are not done elsewhere, re-imagining the possibilities of desktop workflow. It's innovative and masterful. I greatly admire the mind behind it and applaud the work.
I really like the "Gnome" environment but since it is associated with "Unity" which I do not like at all, I converted to XFCE. When I discovered "Deepin" which is based on "Gnome", I dropped everything and I use it on all my computers since 2015. I'm discovering now "Flash" which really charmed me with its interface facilities and it's clean desktop.
I thank the whole group of developers and I really wish that this distribution will be very successful.
Good continuation :-)
Lindoze version, tested in virtualbox. The UI is pretty nice and not just another cookie-cutter reference desktop environment. That being said, I found little helpful documentation on configuring the Variety implementation, with the Variety config program itself not seeming to effect things, other than to double up on whatever Item I am trying to toggle off on the display. I also found the brand promotion a bit much. I would much rather be told how to turn something on than have to figure out how to turn it off. So, an interesting technology demonstration, but with enough quirks that I won't be running it outside of a VM
There are a number of reasons why I am not entirely impressed with this distribution,lets begin with the funcionality,mamy of the AI features are hidden benind a pay wall(you havve to pay $33 to access many of them which means you can't really give the distro a thorough trial while some of the other features require login( user name and password),but there apars(at least in my experience) some ambiguity as to whether a payment is required to use theese features.,I have read in a few posts that the developetr behind the distro is experiencing financial issues which brings the viability of this distro into question unless others are willing to step in and give the project a leg up. on a technical note it is interesting that the develpper swings between Debian and Ubuntu( ubuntu is essienttialy based on Debian) Documentation is sparse, much of it is a series of explanatory video's which to my mind are more an attempt at marketing the distro than offering any practical help to the new user.all in all, A nice toy to play around with but I woudn't use it as a primary distro.
This is by far the worst distro I have ever used. I tested the latest MakuluLinux LinDoz 2025.08.08 RC and it’s extremely buggy and lagging. The GUI is a mish mash of visual clutter and confusion. The settings is scattered in multiple modules than to be all in one settings like in gnome.
The taskbar uneven icon sizes is not visually appealing where all the icons on the left is large and on the right its small. There was a lot of icons on the desktop that was unnecessary and very difficult to customize. The taskbar remained translucent no matter what theme you choose. All of the wallpaper look like oil paintings, no real photos or anything. The window theme was chaotic. It’s like it was designed by a 10 year old that tried to make it far too intuitive than it needs to be.
Customizing was very confusing. They really need a serious eye on design and user experience. It was tooooo cluttered too many preinstalled apps. I won’t recommend this distro to anyone. It’s too much.
Oh boy, this distro is an absolute treat. I'll first start with the good things this distro does. I really like certain parts of it's AI assistant. Especially its coding feature, as it's pretty helpful for basic stuff. Honestly that's about it for the good things, now onto what I find concerning. First thing is that it's GTK4 theme is completely broken. The distro uses gnome software for its software store and the repository menu in it is completely broken due to the font colors. Second thing is that flathub is not preinstalled on the distro. For a linux distro claiming to be innovative, i would think it'd have flathub installed for more application choice. Also for the people who hate snap, snap is preinstalled for some reason. Note that there are NO apps actually using flatpak or snap out of the box, so it's strange they are installed in the first place. Also the theme on this distro is just plain ugly to me, i think cinnamon's default theme looks leagues better than on here. Also, the AI assistant for some reason has an "anti-woke" mode??? I'm sorry, but WHO asked for an AI assistant with BUILT-IN homophobia and transphobia? Off of that subject, why does the live-media have a crappy AI bot video play automatically when you boot into it? And why is there a pop-up trying to sell you on the pro version of the system about 5 minutes in the system? The final thing that is concerning for long-term use is the use of automatic updates in the background. This distribution is based on debian testing, which is a decent base for normal usage, but i would NEVER use automatic updates on this operating system because ANYTHING could break. This distro also heavily relies on external, 3rd party repos. It is to the point of there being 28 repositories TOTAL in the sources list, some of which being UBUNTU ppas and debian BUSTER packages. Why are these on a debian testing base? These apps would be better suited on flatpak and snap if the distro ACTUALLY used them. In conclusion, Makulu Linux LinDoz is an absolute mess of a linux distribution and I do not suggest using it for daily use. PLEASE use ubuntu, mint, regular debian, or fedora over this.
I was real interested in giving this a try and see how Electra and all its other AI Tools work, but I'm afraid its still very beta and needs to be more fine tuned.
I wanted to run this in its Live Boot mode to test/install in the latest version of VirtualBox 7.1.4, but nothing but X11 issues and desktop never boots up, regardless of adjusting the display settings in VirtualBox. And that is a show stopper, since I will test first in a virtual environment before committing to installing a distro on hardware.
MakuluLinux offers a beautifully crafted user experience with its Gnome desktop, providing a sleek and modern interface that RoseMarin found visually appealing. However, her enthusiasm took a dive when she discovered it couldn't play Roblox, leading her to give it a score of zero in her eyes. While the aesthetics and features of Gnome were enjoyable, both RoseMarin and I couldn't help but miss the familiarity and customization options that KDE offers, reminding us of the importance of finding the right balance between functionality and personal satisfaction in an operating system.
Makulu Shift edition rotts, cause GNOME from Ubuntu 22.04 in 2024 is very old. And GNOME is known to ignore its APIs in newer versions. So if you use a lot of plugins (like Makulu does), plugin authors do not update them for older version (Gnome from Ubuntu 22.04), then Makulu Shift simply sucks in 2024.
It would be better Makulu GNOME edition to concentrate on default GNOME, and its plugins made by Ubuntu, cause they are always up to date, and to ditch all these 16 different looks.
And to carefully select additional very popular GNOME plugins from proven sources (which have separate editions for Ubuntu 22.04 GNOME)
Makulu better to concentrate on its fantastic AI stuff, it is the coolest Linux distro so far.
Thats why 10 out of 10.
Makulu max,nightmare to install,don't even try unless you have a minimum of 8gb Ram and a decent processor, here are my findings of this os,graffically its superb but that the only good thing I have got to say about it,everything else dissapoints, I have been using linux for a number of years now and have to say its the least user friendly distro I have ever come accross so for newbies this will be a nightmare,ok so trying the try before you buy scenario it works just fine,quick and snappy,after full install that's where your problems will begin, updates or should I say most of them installed promptly but wouldn't or couldn't install all of them, so back to the os,app store installed a few of the app I selected but after opening once they failed to open at all,even one or two of the pre installed apps wouldn't open either, selected other packages to see if that would cure the problem but to no avail, lastly there is never any mention in any of the reviews for this os that you have to pay to fully unlock all of apps that are on other distros for free, there are better distros out there I personally use deepin linux that I have never encountered any of the problems that makulu throws at you, the moral of this review is never believe all the reviews that you will see for this product,I wish I had never bothered
Makulu is a strange distro, a hybrid Frankenstein monster. It promises stability, but the reason is that it comes with Ubuntu 20! Google Chrome doesn't work with flatpak because it needs a newer version of flatpak. It comes with Gnome 36!! Gnome is already in version 44. Some tools it brings are from Linux Mint, they don't even bother to change them, others are from Ubuntu.
It is focused on the aesthetic aspect, but it is limited to changing the icons and the place of the "dock". Gnome is a desktop that doesn't allow for too many changes.
On my new Lenovo IdeaFlex 5 laptop it doesn't even recognize Wi-Fi (Intel ac 9560), when any distro recognizes it.
The latest invention has been to release a distro with AI called "Electra". Why do you want Electra if Alexia or Siri already exists?
They ask about $30 for adding new "desktop themes". For $7 you get a Window$ OEM license.Asking for money for a distro with Ubuntu 20 and Gnome 36 is ridiculous.
This is very nice MakuluLinux OS that i like it very much to switch between desktop theme style like kde Plasma, Lindoz, etc but i find it very puzzling for one thing is it took up a whole 1TB space and leaving just 50.3GB space which i just installed new OS and not much i installed. I'm disappointed that it took up a whole 1TB space even it format correctly with 1TB and smaller swap space. So Something add up on home system files taking up space like that is not normal as I cannot install any more apps on it that tell me you have low space.
Makulu has been an interesting distro in the past. Past Xfce and Cinnamon versions were pretty steady and solid. I had grown to really like this distribution, but now Xfce and Cinnamon have been dropped in favor of Gnome across the board.
Gnome is a resource hog. The website tries to acknowledge this while trying to make the case that the use of the Gnome framework and not the front end means it will not hog resources, but the proof is in the installation. It fails. It fails pretty spectacularly, in fact.
I have an older system (quad core processor) that runs like a champ if I am running Xfce, Cinnamon, IceWM, JWM, TDE, Budgie, Enlightenment or most anything that is not requiring massive memory (8 GB RAM on this old desktop). KDE and Gnome simply will not run. It appears that all the tweaking done by the Makulu team could not make this run on that older machine. I tried it on my newer laptop (16GB RAM and a five year old processor). It chokes on KDE and Gnome too. Makulu was not the exception. It ran, but not well. One of the philosophical tenets of Linux has long been the ability to use Linux on machines that Windows has left behind. Makulu's switch to Gnome has rendered it completely useless for all but the most modern machines (a disturbing Windows performance trend that has been taken up by the KDE and Gnome systems over the years). I am sad to have to leave Makulu behind, but if it won't work, you have to move on.
I actually stumbled upon this distro looking for a rolling release debian , my debian opensuse tumbleweed if you will, yast is just awesome, which I highly regard more than the other distros, but don't quite love. I started out on ubuntu my first few years of dabbling in linux years ago and ended up on tumbleweed for the most part since, although I have always distro hopped.
I have to say I love the DE's in this distro, way better than Manjaros, and I can try all the different DE without wrecking my previous install to do so.
Pros, the Debian testing version installed on my old amd fm2+ mobo. Cons, I haven't found one yet, but will review when I do, however some will hate the fact that it comes with Chrome installed.
I've been this using for a few weeks now and I actually think I'm done distro hopping now, I hope the developer can continue to maintain this project!
The developer would seem to focus his attentions mostly on eye-candy to the exclusion of functionality, at least in the "shift" version. This latest version begins with a video of the assorted desktops you can choose. In my virtual box and also to a disk it was glacially slow and, ironically, never offered an install feature. Bizarre. Perhaps in the future function will play a more important role. Until then......
A great, easy-to-use, fast, stable and beautiful looking distro. This review is for the “Lindoz” version. It looks great, is light on resources, has lots of customization and other repositories already enabled, applications are carefully chosen, installing programs is a snap (not the spyware package thing called snap), great tweaks and optimizations. I’ll be using this more often, I came from Zorin, but that OS is a bloated joke that makes you pay for the other versions which only offer different themes.
I dropped everything and I use it on all my computers since 2021. I'm discovering now "lindoz" which really charmed me with its interface facilities and it's clean desktop.
I thank the whole group of developers and I really wish that this distribution will be very successful.
Good continuation :-)
This distro combines elements of "Linux" in ways that are not done elsewhere, re-imagining the possibilities of desktop workflow. It's innovative and masterful. I greatly admire the mind behind it and applaud the work.
I really like the "Gnome" environment but since it is associated with "Unity" which I do not like at all, I converted to XFCE. When I discovered "Deepin" which is based on "Gnome", I dropped everything and I use it on all my computers since 2015. I'm discovering now "Flash" which really charmed me with its interface facilities and it's clean desktop.
I thank the whole group of developers and I really wish that this distribution will be very successful.
Good continuation :-)
Lindoze version, tested in virtualbox. The UI is pretty nice and not just another cookie-cutter reference desktop environment. That being said, I found little helpful documentation on configuring the Variety implementation, with the Variety config program itself not seeming to effect things, other than to double up on whatever Item I am trying to toggle off on the display. I also found the brand promotion a bit much. I would much rather be told how to turn something on than have to figure out how to turn it off. So, an interesting technology demonstration, but with enough quirks that I won't be running it outside of a VM
Awesomely beautiful. Extremely fast and just works and works. Running the Core Makulu version. Awesome work, development team!!!!!!
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