paldo GNU/Linux

Reader supplied reviews for paldo GNU/Linux Average rating 8.2 from 5 review(s) What are your thoughts on paldo GNU/Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- stable1.22 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: stable Rating: 10 Date: 2026-04-11 Country: Germany Votes: 4 Every now and then you come across a Linux distribution, you have never heard of but it takes you by surprise! Paldo is one of these! I found this distribution by hitting the "Random Distribution" button on DistroWatch and since it is labeled "Independent", it got my attention. I have a thing for distributions that aren't based on anything else and do their own thing. This distribution definitely is one of them! I wouldn't call this one a beginner distro. You should know how to partition disks, apply filesystems onto them and mount the partitions. But if you have installed vanilla Arch or even Gentoo, you should be fine if you follow the documentation on their website. It's pretty straightforward and it was installed very fast! The boot process is QUICK and once you're logged in, everything works. It's pretty minimal and not a lot is preinstalled but that's not a downside. The package repository is pretty small, but flatpak is preinstalled and you can install apps from flathub. I think this is the way this distribution is intended to work anyway! Unfortunately I couldn't get Steam running. It brought up an error message saying something like "Flatpak version 1.12 is necessary" although flatpak version 1.16 is on the system. I tried uninstalling flatpak completely and reinstall it, but no luck. So for now I can't see me using this distro on my main machine but I'll play around with it on an old laptop. It's definitely worth installing and I still give it a 10 out of 10 for its uniqueness! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: stable Rating: 10 Date: 2026-03-02 Country: United States Votes: 1 Hands down one of the FASTEST install times I have ever seen. The installer could use some work, however. You will not see a desktop Linux distribution as basic as this. Flatpak is installed to give access to most major applications you need. The main repositories are extremely small, but it's secretly it's strength, allowing development of the distro itself to not lose its focus. It's not for everyone, but this is one of the only Linux distributions where they only use upstream software. No additions, subtractions, or substitutions unlike most distros. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: stable Rating: 8 Date: 2024-05-04 Votes: 3 I've reviewed paldo before ("oddball distro for sure"), but I've been playing with it again recently and have discovered that you can use flatpaks for some of the missing software in the ridiculously sparse repo. And since paldo provides no means of connecting to the gnome-shell-extensions site (neither chrome-gnome-shell nor gnome-browser-extension are installed or available as binary packages at least), the Extension Manager flatpak is a godsend, making it possible to install the extensions that make Gnome (for me) slightly less than terrible. I had previously tried compiling, which worked but took some research. Finally a reason not to hate the Software Center! So, yeah, you can make paldo into something usable for the average human, but it does take some persistence, and comes at the expense of disk space. Normally I don't like or use flatpak or snap, but paldo forces you to try new things. It's actually somewhat impressive how well these things work. I haven't noticed any difference in behavior with the flatpaks I've installed (mainly strawberry music player). They seamlessly integrate with the rest of the apps and are able to access necessary drives, etc. I guess that's the future... This distro gets the prize for fastest install. I'm integrating m.2 ssd's into my system, and installing to the nvme drive took maybe a minute from last button clicked to finished install. One other tip is to do upkg-upgrade once installed. That apparently installs everything, or close to it. Libreoffice, etc. but no gparted strangely enough, just Gnome Disks, possibly the worst partitioning tool yet invented. No flatpak for gparted either... Not for everyone, but if you're looking for something weird/challenging paldo is worth a try. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 5 reader reviews of paldo GNU/Linux...