Antorca started life as illume OS, a project I started in 2011 when I was only 12 years old. Initially a lightweight, Debian stable-based distribution, it found a eager following and interest from various online communities like the Puppy Linux forums, Linux-focused YouTubers (sneekylinux), and Softpedia.

illume OS underwent changes over the next 5 years of its existence, shifting from its lightweight origins to experimenting with new convenient desktop layouts and web-centric features.

It was a time when major distributions changed over their desktop environments to heavyweights like GNOME, Cinnamon, and the likes, anticipating that a vast majority of their user-bases would eventually upgrade to more-capable computers or choose not-so-user-friendly distributions with lighter environments. It was here that Antorca would able to find its niche.

However, time has caught on and the once-heavyweight, sluggish desktop environments like GNOME and Cinnamon have matured, whilst mid-weight desktop environments like MATE and Xfce matured significantly. As such, I ended the project for the first time in 2016 when I found that there was little to contribute to the desktop Linux world with illume OS.

I rebooted the project as the Antorca project in order to continue my self-education in the workings of a Linux distribution earlier this year. I have to say that I did indeed make several strides when working on Antorca, though I have found it difficult to figure out what could really differentiate Antorca from other distributions.

I guess I could say that I have also changed my views on the desktop Linux world quite considerably over the last 2-3 years. I once thought that it was a necessity to ensure the survival of smaller distributions which catered to some niches, but have found that functionality beats all. Do many general-purpose, supposedly-niche-focused distributions actually contribute much in terms of functionality or features to the Linux world? Not really. Only a few can claim their form to be actual positive contributions, particularly Deepin, elementary OS, and Zorin OS (all of which contribute greatly to improving the desktop user experience).

Despite the Linux community stereotypes of Ubuntu being a “noob’s” distribution, I sincerely believe Ubuntu (i.e. considering all official Ubuntu derivatives) to be a reliable desktop base with a great set of features, up to date packages, and a great online community if you ever need support. I have been running Ubuntu MATE on my main desktop for the last 2 years, and even when I tried to move on to other distributions, I couldn’t help but return to Ubuntu MATE. The sheer simplicity, high-quality, and reliability of Ubuntu and the MATE desktop (I still love the Xfce desktop too, but I don’t really have a need to move to Xubuntu at the moment) has diminished the allure of niche distributions which don’t contribute much other than their form in my eyes.

Plus, Ubuntu is perhaps the Linux distribution with the most third-party application support! Aside from repositories, we can see online how the first distribution supported is normally Ubuntu. As the market share and potential user-base for an application for Linux would almost always be smaller than those of the Windows and macOS user-bases in most cases, developers may be hard-pressed to have to repackage their application for multiple distributions which make up a small part of the already small size of the desktop Linux user-base.

I’d like to thank those of you who have supported this project over the last few months for giving me hope that this project was possible. However, in the greater scheme of things in order for the desktop Linux world to make advancements and to increase its popularity, more resources, support, and user bases should perhaps move to reliable, high-quality distributions which already have more than enough resources. It’s perhaps time to take difficult but necessary steps to end the fragmentation of the desktop Linux world.

• Easier to manage thanks to a much better dashboard.
• Easy migration between other blogging services if needed in the future.
• It’s faster – load times on the Tumblr blog were marginally slower.

Also, beta 3 is in the works! Lots of changes have been made since beta 2’s release, some of which ended up violating the feature freeze I supposedly imposed earlier as I have unintentionally moved many of the features planned for version 5.1 into 5.0.

UPDATE: The website has now been mirrored on GitHub!

To start things of, Antorca 5.0 beta 2 was released a week ago. Since its release I have discovered some bugs in the custom browser and productivity apps installer. This particular bug involved the installer checking if the app has been installed while the app is being installed.

This isn’t good at all – it’ll always end up saying that the app isn’t installed (unless it has already been installed before that particular scenario). This is because the installer script ends up jumping straight to that check right after initiating an install.

Thus I’ve decided to initiate a rewrite of the installer script in C to allow for process forking (which consequently allows for parent processes to wait for child processes to finish, voilà).

Boom

UPDATE: A new batch of updates have since resolved this! But now GIMP and BleachBit have been sacrificed because of updates to Python (I choose to go with bleeding-edge upstream updates instead of holding back updates to prevent potentially larger broken packages further down the road due to mismatched dependencies).

A recent update to the Debian Sid branch have caused folders in the file system root directory to be mounted as devices. This has caused an eye-sore on the desktop (where mounted drives are displayed by default), with dozens of directories appearing as devices there. As I write this blog post, I’m still trying to sort out what’s causing this bug. This may end up delaying Beta 3, and even worse – the eventual release of version 5.0.

Budgie

With the massive stuff-up on the Xfce (i.e. default, or more realistically, the only actual) edition with the root directories, the cards are on the table again for the Budge edition. I’m considering the possibility that somewhere, somehow, a configuration fault in the Xfce edition is causing the root directory issue. So perhaps it’s worth a shot to see whether that issue could be reproducible on another desktop environment in another development virtual machine!

What’s new

Added

• Added GParted for disk partitioning and management

Changed

• Package updates (includes Firefox 55.0.2)
• New default wallpaper

Fixed

• N/A

Download

You can get the latest build (2.1GB ISO image) from SourceForge.

Installation information

Install at your own risk! To install the image on to a hard disk, navigate through the start menu by going into the System category and selecting System Installer.

It is recommended to use GParted for disk partitioning before using the installer. When partitioning your disk for installation, set aside at least 256MB for an extended partition containing a linux-swap partition, whilst the main partition (which holds the system files and home folder) should be formatted as ext4 and could take up however much space you need it to.

Username: root
Password: antorca

The first major release of Antorca has reached feature freeze! At this point, no new features will be added. Features may only be removed (or deferred to a future release) or changed at this point.

This new release includes rewritten web browser and office suite installers/selectors. These selectors allow users to choose from a list of browsers and office suites to install with one click. This means users don’t have to search through package managers for web browsers or GNOME Software (which doesn’t show non-open-source options).

Redshift has been added to allow you to control the temperature of your screen. This helps reduce eye strain as the day progresses.

What’s new

NOTE: This changelog includes changes from another, unreleased build (20170723-r17).

Added

• Redshift for screen temperature control (needs to be tested on native hardware)
• New artwork

Changed

• Changed default icon set to Moka

Fixed

• “Install a web browser” and “Install an office suite” have been rewritten – not only do they work now, but they handle errors a little better too!

Version numbering

Antorca’s releases will
start at version 5.0. Antorca will be starting at version 5.0 due to
what I suppose could be called the “4.0 curse” where most of my
projects don’t survive once they hit version 4 for various reasons.
Also, Antorca is considered a spiritual successor of illume OS.

Future
minor releases would be numbered as 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, etc. Major
releases would be numbered as 6.0, 7.0, etc. Due to an inconsistent
year-round schedule, I would find it difficult to release new versions
of Antorca on schedule (e.g. 17.08, 17.12, 18.08, etc).

Release cycle revision

Unlike what I previously announced, Antorca will have a similar release cycle to illume OS. There will be 1 major release every year, with minor releases in between with bug fixes and updated packages.

Download

You can get the latest build (2.1GB ISO image) from SourceForge.

Installation information

Install at your own risk! To install the image on to a hard disk, navigate through the start menu by going into the System category and selecting System Installer. When partitioning your disk for installation, set aside at least 256MB for an extended partition containing a linux-swap partition, whilst the main partition (which holds the system files and home folder) should be formatted as ext4 and could take up however much space you need it to.

Username: root
Password: antorca

Decision on Release Cycle

It has been decided that there will be 2 major releases a year. One in the middle of the year (either in June or July), and one at the end of the year (probably around December). The exact month or week of release will not be fixed, but the convention of two releases will be followed (if possible).

Download

The build’s ISO image weighs in at 1.7GB. It’s available at the build’s folder in the project’s SourceForge page.

Direct download (1.7GB)

What’s new

Added

• Arc themes for Firefox now bundled with Firefox.
• guvcview webcam viewer (take pictures or record videos).
• ClamAV and Gufw re-added.

Changed

• Generic application names in the menu change reverted.
• New menu icon that fits in with the Paper icon theme a little better.
• System font hinting now set to slight (previous configuration was just a bit too blurry and was tiring to the eyes).
• New default wallpaper.

Fixed

• Web browser and office suite installer doesn’t install the selected option (still in progress).

Installation information

Install at your own risk! To install the image on to a hard disk, navigate through the start menu by going into the System category and selecting System Installer. When partitioning your disk for installation, set aside at least 256MB for an extended partition containing a linux-swap partition, whilst the main partition (which holds the system files and home folder) should be formatted as ext4 and could take up however much space you need it to.

Username: root
Password: antorca

Budgie Desktop’s reliance on the GNOME software stack has proven to be somewhat of a headache. There appear to be 3 different places one can change the login screen background (but only the LightDM configuration app works), 2 to change your desktop background, 2 to change the functionality of your desktop.

Adding custom wallpaper for the Budgie Desktop will require a bit more work. GNOME’s wallpaper configuration only shows wallpapers supported via XML sheets. This is madness (compared to Xfce). I am not entirely sure whether it’s worth it to implement my own custom XML sheet to support Antorca’s custom wallpapers.

On the bright side, I find the Budgie Desktop to be extremely refreshing compared to many of the other desktops out there at the moment. The desktop could be reorganised to work a little like Chrome OS’s ‘taskbar’ or even to look like MATE’s (as is how Antorca Budgie’s desktop is currently layed out). Performance wise, it blows Cinnamon, GNOME, and KDE out of the water. However as it is still in its infancy, there aren’t an awful lot of extensions for Budgie’s panelling system compared to GNOME’s.

I’m beginning to wonder whether my outburst about Thunar’s ‘Delete’ option (one thing I have yet to point out is why I’d rather not just replace Thunar but keep the Xfce desktop – I just prefer to keep things as default as they were, i.e. Thunar was designed for the Xfce desktop in the first place!). MATE is on par with Xfce in terms of performance and customizability, however its file manager (Caja) has a similar feature as Thunar’s.

So in the end, perhaps I exaggerated and jumped on to the Budgie bandwagon a little early. It’s a fantastic desktop, but Xfce’s maturity, extensibility, and customisability has ensured its place as Antorca’s primary desktop environment. The Budgie edition may not receive as much attention for now but I’ll continue work on it, albeit slowly and carefully.

TL;DR – Antorca is switching to Budgie as the default desktop environment.

It’s been a while since there have been any public builds of Antorca or even news of its development. I’ve been pretty busy with uni and will continue to be so for another 2-3 months.

However, I’ve managed to keep the Antorca development virtual machine up to date with the latest packages from the Debian Sid repositories.

An unfortunate incident that happened just yesterday has led me to consider making the big leap from the Xfce desktop to Budgie on Antorca. I was working on a C assignment and accidentally deleted 2 weeks’ worth of work in an instant all thanks to Thunar’s ‘Delete’ option (luckily I made backups a few hours before, I just forgot how to reimplement specific methods).

Sidenote: I’m not putting the blame squarely on Thunar but having an option to do an equivalent to a ‘rm’ command in a graphical environment is painful.

Having played around with the Ubuntu Budgie derivative, I was impressed at how Budgie has drastically improved in performance in the last couple of months (I was considering making Budgie the default desktop environment for Antorca, initially). I decided to test out Budgie on a clone of the Antorca development VM and I was pleased with its performance, and its sensibility and minimalism in its design.

I’m not really a fan of customizability as customisations to a desktop environment can prove to be risky if you haven’t done a study or research into your own usage patterns on your own desktop.

Budgie’s somewhat-more-locked-down-but-not-too-locked-down environment gives a sense of safety and clarity to my (and hopefully your) productivity environment.