There’s a growing trend for Linux-focused PC vendors to develop their own distro to showcase the best points of their shiny new hardware. Until recently, TUXEDO OS was available only as a pre-installed option on machines from TUXEDO Computers, now anyone can download and install it on their computer.
What Is TUXEDO OS?
TUXEDO OS is a distro made for PCs manufactured by TUXEDO to optimize performance on their hardware.
Derived from Ubuntu 22.04, TUXEDO OS comes with the gorgeous and intuitive KDE Plasma 5.25 desktop environment, fitting in with TUXEDO’s mission statement of, “making Linux accessible to the general public”.
In addition to branding and hardware tweaks, TUXEDO differs from standard Ubuntu and Kubuntu in that it eschews the standard PulseAudio daemon in favor of the more modern PipeWire.
TUXEDO has also made a deliberate and sensible choice to avoid the use of Canonical snap packages in its distro, choosing to go with the older and tested DEB format for packages, instead.
Further breaking with Canonical, the company has changed the network connectivity check so that every 300 seconds, machines running TUXEDO OS will ping http://connectivity-check.tuxedocomputers.com, rather than http://connectivity-check.ubuntu.com. This may seem like a small change, but as a UK company, Canonical is subject to UK rather than EU data protection rules.
TUXEDO, based in Germany, is still subject to full-strength GDPR. TUXEDO absolutely promises it will not record your ping on its server.
Finally, TUXEDO OS reinstates OS prober by default. Prior to GRUB 2.06, you could install Ubuntu alongside other operating systems such as Windows, and OS prober would detect those other OSes, and present users with a boot menu, allowing them to select which OS to use for each session.
OS Prober was deactivated as a potential security risk in Ubuntu 22.04, meaning that the handy boot menu disappeared. TUXEDO’s choice to reactivate OS Prober should prove popular with the multi-booting community.
How Can You Install TUXEDO OS?
If you already bought a laptop or desktop from TUXEDO Computers, you should already have TUXEDO OS installed. If you need to reinstall TUXEDO OS, or install the distro on different hardware, download the ISO file from https://os.tuxedocomputers.com/, then follow our instructions on how to install Linux on any PC or laptop. Before you start, you’ll also need a USB flash drive.
The TUXEDO OS installation USB allows you to try the distro out in live mode and makes it easy to partition disks, for installation alongside other distros or operating systems.
Is TUXEDO OS Easy to Use?
As TUXEDO OS is based on Ubuntu 22.04, it will be familiar to most long-term Linux users and distro hoppers, however, you’ll be instantly irritated when opening a terminal for the first time.
For some unknown reason, TUXEDO has seen fit to include the asciiquarium text-based fishtank package and to start automatically when you hit Ctrl + Alt + T. It’s a silly whimsical thing, and while it only happened once, it didn’t give us the best first impression of the distro.
Aside from that, TUXEDO OS seems to be a good, solid project, and the decision to do away with snapd is a wise one.
As you would expect from a KDE desktop, theming is seamless, and all the included apps (mostly beginning with K) look good and work well.
You can launch programs from a start menu which will be instantly intuitive to anyone coming from Windows, and you can install new apps via the terminal or the “Discover” software center.
For productivity, TUXEDO OS comes with LibreOffice, and there is a small selection of games installed. For a more extensive variety of games from all platforms consider installing Lutris.
Taken altogether, TUXEDO OS is a solid distro that is suitable for beginners, experts, and power users.
Try Out Some Other Distros From Hardware Manufacturers
TUXEDO OS isn’t the only distro made by Linux hardware vendors and then released to the general public. You can install SteamOS, the gaming-oriented distro, on non-Valve computers, and Pop!_OS, originally designed for machines from System76, is proving extremely popular.
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