I stopped testing Linux distributions years ago but I made an exception with RefreshOS is a Debian-based distro that promises a pure Debian experience without Snap or Flatpak.
Since Canonical decided to focus on the corporate market and IBM, together with Red Hat, formally or informally took over the direction of most of the Linux projects, it stopped being interesting. Except for some minor innovation from Endeavor or Linux Mint, all distributions offer more or less the same.
RefreshOS is no exception. But it does have some things to contribute.
RefreshOS is a Debian-based distro
Let's start by saying that it is not a community distribution. On their website they point to eGoTech™ as responsible. According to your account ofand it is about:
A budding software development company dedicated to creating user-centric digital products.
To be fair in a review, it must be done from what those responsible for the project propose, not what the author of the article would like. So let's see what it is proposed on their website:
offers a combination of ease of use, speed and elegance. That focuses on Qt's stability, customization, and seamless integration, with features and improved performance to meet diverse user needs.
From an aesthetic point of view, RefreshOS 2.0 (Boundless Beagle) It is one of the most careful distributions I have seen with the KDE Plasma desktop. This includes the bootloader background. Even installed on an external drive, it works smoothly, so I suppose that on a solid state drive it should run smoothly.
A wise decision is to use Calamares as an installerWithout a doubt, it is by far the best installation assistant in the Linux ecosystem and makes having several operating systems installed on different disks really easy. However, when I restarted the computer I discovered that I had not added the other operating systems to the boot loader.
Another point that must be corrected (and it is surprising in a Debian-based distribution that has the theme oiled) is the translations.. Even though I selected the installation in Spanish from Mexico (The only alternative that Calamares offers for Latin Americans) it was installed in English from the United States. When I wanted to change the language in the configuration, it only offered me Spanish from Spain. And, I couldn't change the currency format to the Argentine peso either.
I don't think it was a good decision to use Avalon Menu as an application launcher. Unlike the traditional Plasma menu, it does not group applications into categories, so having many installed can get confusing. Fortunately, it is something that can be changed in a couple of clicks by right-clicking on the distribution logo.
In terms of applications, the big surprise is that they did not choose Brave as the featured browser although Firefox is there and you just have to type its name in the launcher to find it. Brave is a browser with very good tools for privacy protection and ad blocking, and websites register it as if it were Google Chrome, so there are hardly any compatibility problems. In the rest of the titles we find the usual offering such as the LibreOffice office suite, the El Gimp photo editor or the VLC video player. Another departure from the usual is KMail instead of Thunderbird.
Beyond the details noted RefreshOS 2.0 (Boundless Beagle) It appears to be an ideal option for those who want to have the best of Debian without having the worst. It is on its way to becoming an excellent alternative for those who want to get started with Linux and for installing it for family members who know nothing about computers and just want to use their computer.
Even experienced users should give it a try. It is based on Debian, one of the most stable distributions with the largest selection of software to which it adds the KDE desktop ecosystem and applications. By not wasting effort on different desks, quality is assured.
It's even possible to add support to Flatpak and Snap with a few simple commands.