Linux OS Distribution Reviews
During the time when so many Linux distributions throw everything and the kitchen sink into a DVD, it’s nice to use a product like Damn Small Linux where the focus is on keeping the system compact. Do you need 6 text editors and 11 e-mail clients? Most people really only have one favorite app for a particular task anyway. So how does Damn Small Linux measure up? Read on to find out.
As I mentioned in my last post, I installed Foresight Linux on my second box last week. Dont worry Ubuntu fans, Im still running Feisty on my main machine). To set expectations, this post is part mini-review of Foresight, part comparison to Ubuntu, and just my opinions and thoughts on Foresight after using another distribution for almost 3 years.
Sometime earlier this year my notebook, a low-end IBM R50e, got slow. It used to be reasonably zippy and Ubuntu worked extremely well on it. Then it just became downright sluggish and applications would often take ages to open.
It’s that time again. Yes, it’s the beginning of the next openSUSE developmental cycle. It began with the release of 10.3 alpha 1 last Thursday. Reports have already been circulating with some of the new changes. openSUSE is not the apple in quite as many eyes these days, but regardless of your personal feelings, it is still a darn fine system. Even if only one other person besides myself is interested in the development cycle, we at Tuxmachines will do our best to keep them informed of the progress.
As a musician and long time Linux user I have often found myself stuck between a rock and a Microsoft place, when it came to recording. With all the industry standard software being available only on two platforms and with many of the sound cards and interfaces available having elaborate binary drivers not available for Linux.The world of mixers, Mic’s, proprietary hardware and its accompanying software seemed like one that that didn’t have any room for Linux and its “volunteer” coders (cue snicker). That’s how it seemed anyway and those of us wanting to set up a simple, yet capable recording studio, without studio dollars were faced with two options. Pirate or sacrifice.
Well as I mentioned in my review of Ubuntu 6.10 Beta Edgy back in October 2006 where I was talking about switching to Ubuntu, well I did it… Yes I gave up Xandros which I had been using for 2 yrs and moved to Ubuntu…. I am happy that I did!
There is a newer distro in town, gaining traction. Sabayon Linux is an installable, Gentoo based live Cd/DVD. It has the stated goal of being 100% Gentoo compatible. A lot of attention has been paid to the Sabayon brand. Theming is consistent and striking. Sabayon is one of the best looking distros I have used. They use a yellow,orange and red theme that is fresh and unlike any other Linux distribution. Beryl is used by default. It is a KDE distro with the option to use Fluxbox as your Desktop Environment. Sabayon gets it’s name from an Italian desert, to quote the website and Wikipedia: “Sabayon is an Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, a sweet liquor (usually Marsala wine), and sometimes cream or whole eggs. It is a very light custard, which has been whipped to incorporate a large amount of air.†Sabayon refers to its users as “Hens†which isn’t as off putting as you might think.
It seems as if a new Linux-based operating system is born every day, with each facing the challenge of justifying its existence in a field that’s already rather crowded with mature Linux distributions boasting active user bases and organized bodies to back them.
ADVERTISEMENT
But one relatively young Linux distribution worth keeping an eye on is Foresight Linux, a desktop-oriented distribution that hit its 1.0 release milestone at the end of January.
What sets Foresight apart from the rest of the fledgling distro pack is the software management framework on which its built.
Foresight is one of the most active projects based on rPath’s Conary software management system, which offers administrators a great balance of flexibility and control in deploying and maintaining applications on Linux.
rPath builds and maintains a reference distribution, called rPath Linux, along with a set of tools for packaging up software applications with rPath Linux to create software appliances. ISVs can then concentrate on their own code, while rPath maintains the operating system components on which the ISVs’ applications rely.
It’s been over a year since I tested the origins of SaxenOS, but when rc2 of version 1.1 was announced I thought it was time to see what was new. There have been changes afoot within the SaxenOS project, some major changes. Yet some of the fundamentals remained the same. It was easy to see the roots of Saxen while appreciating the new.
When last we visited SaxenOS it was known as STX. It was a small lightweight distro, based on Slackware and designed for low-spec machines. The iso came in a mere 390mb download and featured the cute Equinox Desktop environment. It was fast and stable and featured its own STX Control Center for setting up some hardware and other basic configurations.
Earlier this week Microsoft finally shipped its Vista “Longhorn” operating system, which has been receiving a fair amount of attention from traditional media sources. However, if Windows is not your thing Fedora 7 Test 1 is now out. Originally Fedora 7 Test 1 was scheduled for release on January 30, but a delay had pushed it back to today. Fortunately this two-day delay should not push back the April final release. Many of the features for Fedora 7 were covered in our Fedora 7: The Linux Knight in Shining Armor article. However, what we have to offer today is the first screenshots of Fedora 7 along with some of our very preliminary thoughts on the Fedora Desktop LiveCD.
Last fall we wrote a review that was generally well received on Simply Mepis 6.0. This is a very nice package out of West Virginia that takes KDE to Ubuntu in a more polished and solid way than even Kubuntu can do. Much was made by people, even on Distrowatch about little coming from the Mepis camp over the last couple of months, and then right around Christmas, sure enough here comes a nice little improvement package and much to my suprise a package offering 64 bit support.
Now, some may have seen the listing of my older eMachines m6805 laptop, which I have been struggling to get native 64 bit OS’ on for almost 3 years now. Every now and then someone would offer up their version of 64 bit, and I would bite and try, only to fail one of many things, much of which was either DVD players or wireless woes. Now, that machine is now at the bottom of some scrap heap, but my replacement from Worst Buy was still a 64 bit machine from the new owners of eMachines, Gateway, with almost the same exact specs. So my dreams of being free of 32 bit still live on, yet I still cannot get a package that wants to work across the board…until now. More on that later, but let’s give this new polished package a review before the Feb 10th expected launch and let people know if they should move over from other KDE systems to the one out of the Mountaineer state.
Apart from a KDE desktop and applications, the developers of the Pardus 2007 Linux distribution have built an entire distribution from scratch. Pardus, released last month, has its own multilingual installer, custom dependency-resolving package manager, and an INIT system that slashes boot times by several seconds. The distribution has come a long way since its first release in 2005, when it was based on Gentoo and lacked a package manager. Thanks to its custom tools, it’s one of the easiest Linux distribution to run and manage.
Most of the custom tools in Pardus are written in Python. The first you’ll run into is the distribution installer YALI, Yet Another Linux Installer. It’s easy to navigate through, with clear installation instructions. You can use YALI to resize NTFS partitions to make space for Pardus. The Zorg script handles Xorg configuration and configures the best settings for the monitor and graphics card during installation.
