Essora Eos

Reader supplied reviews for Essora Eos Average rating 6.7 from 3 review(s) What are your thoughts on Essora Eos? 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: -- 20260921 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: 20260514 Rating: 6 Date: 2026-05-17 Country: United Kingdom Votes: 2 Live USB - Rufus (MBR,UEFI,dd) as my Linux utility failed. Install onto an existing partition: multiboot twin HDD system with two EFI partitions Calimares Essora Installer required "Ingles-en_GB". "Essora warner" advised to accept risk (check box) and first backup data, so chose not to install GRUB and do that later from an existing distro. Promisingly the progress bar started up, but simultaneously with a message 'Installation Complete'. Towards the end of the installation bar progress a 'failed' message appeared. The working EFI partition now had only a single entry for Essora, minus GRUB as requested. OS-prober was present too; great calamities. The second EFI partition now had format label 'unknown'. Maybe two disks and two EFI partitions was a little too much. After some re-grubbing, fstabbing, I found that the 'Install Complete' message shows as 'even more complete' when the installer successfully finishes! My login manager had 'num lock' set for a good login experience and the login wallpaper is still non too welcoming. The distro now has a shiny 'wbar' at the top right and a correspondingly useful configuration tool for it. The website also has (minor) updates. There is an (complicated - as opposed to 'UFW' uncomplicated) Essora Firewall, Lumessora, Essora System Centre, Essora Store and useful applications such as Firefox ESR, Abiword/Gnumeric, Geany, GIMP and GParted (very useful in this case!). There is plenty of hardware information to hand with the Essora System Centre, and there is a special 'Essora' kernel. There seems to be no upgrade path from previous versions and releases are fairly frequent so installation technique might improve with practise. Synaptic Updater/Installer was not visible. Updates seem to be deliverable via the Essora 'Stora' update application and the Essora updates button on the task bar. The Store gave me a familiar (before 10/25!) spinning busy icon while initially updating and then 'Essora Store not system compatible' cascading menus after use. The task bar options can be arranged (eg. clock and exit buttons to the RHS) via edits to the jwrc-tray file. The Calendar RSS feed can be tweaked via the /usr/local/Google-news python script and an RSS feed of choice can be substituted. The distro is pleasantly and not overly themed even with the cheery anthropomorphised logo however there are obvious rough edges both in setting up and in use. For example, it is still noticeably multilingual at times, and window corner grabbing can be finicky (but likely adjustable). Synaptic (when installed) failed big time due to a theming error. Sudo and 'apt' both regularly threw errors but seemed to do as requested first. I wonder if the distro will now refine/debug or if there are further developments ahead. I notice that the creator has previously worked on Puppy Linux; another lightweight distro with a logo. Very diffic. to quantify out of ten as it is nicely themed and mostly works well if you ignore the errors (which the early version did not have). Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20260202 Rating: 6 Date: 2026-02-23 Country: United Kingdom Votes: 2 Essora_Eos_openbox-jwm-1.1 Using the same method to create a bootable USB drive as with the previous version of JWM consistently failed, and a VM didn't pick up the network (possibly user error!) A bootable live DVD was created, that worked fine and installation went smoothly picking up the previous install and a Windows bootloader. I t was noted that the boot files are now labelled 'Essora' rather than the standard Devuan files. I don't know the difference and feel a little wary. The graphics now incorporate the disparate tree desktop background, a circuit board themed icon and a graffiti style login screen; the commonality being that they are dark by default. The login screen would have to go. Four virtual desktops are still present 'in secret' accessible via 'Alt' and the desktop number. Right clicking on the desktop brings up the menu like Openbox; This was a selectable option in the previous version. There are a workable number of applications installed; lightweight office options, GIMP, PCManFM and Rox Filer. There is an update icon on the right of the desktop.Confusingly this only operates with a right click and offers Essora .deb packages rather than the expected security updates. The menu item "Essora Store" offers Deb, Flatpak and Appimage options and is pleasant to use. The distribution is described as clean, minimal, fast and customisable, with only essential tools installed by default but maybe a few more tools this time, with the Essora Store in place of Synaptic and Xlibre in place of X11. Documentation is limited to describing what Essora means. Anything beyond standard Devuan (quite a bit) is assumed as self evident. Descriptions of the releases is lacking so relies on personal investigation at present. I can appreciate all the effort in this but for me the previous JWM 20250921 hits the sweet spot for now, perfectly useable and that bit simpler and with tried and tested X11. I hope it is not discarded from the available options. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 20250812 Rating: 8 Date: 2026-02-04 Votes: 74 actually ESSORA_Excalibur_jwm_20250921 There are currently three options Essora Eos (Debian) with KDE Plasma or JWM, and Essora Excalibur (Devuan) with JWM using OpenRC. JWM Excalibur was chosen here. The Calamares installer worked uneventfully on a dual boot MBR system. A root password was requested. There are a few desktop backgrounds installed, some looking as if they have had a brush with AI but subtly so. There is a time/calendar utility on the left hand side of the taskbar. It displays a Google news feed until blocked and that slows down access to the calendar. Curses could be an option. There is a modified menu box in the middle of the taskbar (Python style); categories on the left and respective applications to the right. The box has nicely rounded corners and its size can easily be changed to accomodate the applications without need to scroll. The default font can also be changed. The standard 'Nerd' font wasn't quite me. The menu applications look to be changeable but not via GUI clicking. Also to the centre were search & home & system & desktop shortcuts which activated PCManFM Being lean and light there was no office suite only a little Geany, although there were a whole 21 games, all of which could be removed together via the package manager. There was no sign of a firewall or of Conky although there were several conky configs to choose from. UFW and Conky additions keep it still light. X11 provides the GUI glue and a 'figure running through a door' icon gives access to the logouts & shutdowns. It is all a bit underwhelming but nicely so; a workable system without the big D or big KDE and a modern-ish init - OpenRC. It also has a centre mounted menu that doesn't require a hardware upgrade yet still runs briskly on older kit. I hope it isn't that Eos which gets all the attention in future updates, and that Openbox returns. Was this review helpful? Yes No