Siduction - The rolling Debian alternative

Siduction - what you need to know

Siduction was created in July 2011 from the former Aptosid Community. But before that there were already stations. From Knoppix to sidux to aptosid to Siduction. A mature roadmap one would think.

What is the difference between Siduction and Debian?

First, much of both distros are equivalent. The minor differences are that Siduction is a rolling Debian distro with graphical installer, Debian on the other hand does not offer Sid as a direct ISO output. To install Debian Sid you either have to install stable first and convert it to Sid via testing or you install Sid with the mini installer. If you are interested in these two options, please have a look at my two videos. Links in the description below. In short, if you want to have a rolling Debian system, Siduction is a much easier and faster way.

Siduction also comes with its own kernel and scripts and offers support via forum and IRC.

In case you are wondering how the name Siduction came about, the name siduction is a play on two words: The word sid, which is the codename of Debian Unstable and seduction in the sense of seduction.

Technical key points:

The minimum requirements vary depending on the desktop and variant. Siduction itself gives the following specs:

CPU: 64-bit Processsor

RAM:

    KDE Plasma at least 4 GB RAM
    Xfce at least 4 GByte RAM
    LXQt at least 512 MByte RAM
    Xorg at least 512 MByte RAM
    NoX at least 256 MByte RAM

Disk space:

    At least 5 GBytes of disk space for NOX.
    At least 15 GByte hard disk space for all other variants.
    At least 50 GBytes of disk space if installed on a partition formatted with Btrfs.

Graphics:

VGA graphics card with at least 640×480 pixel resolution and an optical drive or USB media.

Sidcution is a rolling distribution. Means there is always the brand new software and apps.

For package management, APT is provided, but depending on the desktop, there is also another solution such as Discover for KDE Plasma. Furthermore Synaptic is also at your side. As package the Debian package is used. Flatpak is basically on board but without Flathub as source.

Startup / Download from page:

Open a browser and go to the download area of the Siduction site. There you can choose an ISO based on your desired desktop incl. EU or US mirror. If you want to verify the ISO for consistency, directly at the download of the respective edition you will find the file with the verification code below the ISO.

The downloaded ISO should then be flashed to a USB stick with a tool like Etcher. If you install in a VM, e.g. with VirtualBox, you can save this step. If the ISO is on USB, you have to shutdown the computer, connect the USB stick and set the Bios or UEFI to boot from USB and then start the live system. Then you can try out live and that completely without obligation or you start the installation.

Startup / Installation:

The installation is assisted by Calamares Installer. The steps are similar to e.g. Linux Mint. So if you can install Linux Mint, you should be able to do it with Siduction.

Hacks and important commands (update, search etc)

If you want to update the system, you can do it graphically or via Synaptic. The Siduction developers recommend to do this in the console, so that you get information about possible errors. In the console I would recommend the following important commands:

Refresh package sources:

apt update

Update packages:

apt upgrade

upgrade packages:

apt full-upgrade

Remove unnecessary packages after upgrade

apt autoremove

Refresh flatpak packages

flatpak update

Fully automated upgrade:

apt update && apt upgrade -y && apt full-upgrade && apt autoremove -y && flatpak update -y

Target group:

Newcomers and beginners are clearly out here. Anyone who uses Sid or Siduction must be able to handle the terminal and also be able to analyze and solve the problem independently in the event of an error. So Linux knowledge is essential. And you should also bring time for the error case. Because if something tweaks, it can range from tender to hard. And if the system doesn't start up, you should be able to invest enough time. Maybe Debian Stable or another LTS distro is suitable for a system that has to be there immediately. But if you want to have the newest of the new in the Debian cosmos, you can get it here.
Performance, Desktop & Programs

    My system with KDE Plasma Desktop occupied 9.8GB of the disk. But actually only 8.9GB. More on this in a moment.
    Memory requirements were 1.2GB.
    Number of installed packages after first boot: 2626

Info: I had installed with BtrFS file system. Obviously Snapper was installed as well. Snapper might be familiar to most of you in connection with openSUSE, because there exactly the same is realized in connection with BtrFS and Snapper. Snapper already created snapshots automatically. I simply deleted them and the load dropped from 9.8 to 8.9 GB.

Desktop interface and concept:

Newcomers and beginners are clearly out here. Anyone who uses Sid or Siduction must be able to handle the terminal and also be able to analyze and solve the problem independently in the event of an error. So Linux knowledge is essential. And you should also bring time for the error case. Because if something tweaks, it can range from tender to hard. And if the system doesn't start up, you should be able to invest enough time. Maybe Debian Stable or another LTS distro is suitable for a system that has to be there immediately. But if you want to have the newest of the new in the Debian cosmos, you can get it here:

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