I accidentally downloaded the wrong version of Voyager OS to try out based on Ubuntu 23.04 beta when I meant to grab the Debian 11 based version. But after installing it I’ve really been enjoying it, making me eat my words on saying bye bye Ubuntu, though Ubuntu is dumping Snap for next year’s version (Firefox in Voyager OS is not a Snap package), but I still disabled telemetry even though my Pi-Hole/Unbound servers filter their domains. Voyager OS 23.04 has the new Gnome 44 with a lot of desktop extensions installed, and I just had to add GSConnect for phone integration and activate a couple others (wasn’t working with Gnome Extension website yet). It uses Wayland, so it works really well in VMware Player without having to capture the mouse fully which makes it easier to switch back to the Windows host. I deleted Fedora 38 Beta because of a bug causing Firefox to crash with a recent update, so I was looking for a Gnome Desktop OS to use and went back to Voyager OS which I enjoyed previously. Consequently, the french developers for Voyager OS do a really great job of adding a lot of nice customizations to Ubuntu/Debian to make it easier to use over stock Gnome which is one of my least favorite desktop environments. If nothing else, it’s worth a look for ideas on how to customize other distributions with Gnome, and I’ll have to try out their XFCE version to see what they’ve done to customize it. So if you’re looking for distro to fire up in a VM to experiment with, give Voyager OS a look.
Virtual Desktop view:
OS version and kernel:
Video demo: