tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17921686609925564472024-03-04T22:58:41.956-08:00Open ReviewEverything about Desktop Linuxsimplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-11034477856443528552008-03-04T06:43:00.000-08:002008-03-04T07:48:43.001-08:00Shift Linux 0.6 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Another uninspiring Ubuntu derivative</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZ2NneV8m9Y-u4ALV6ij22waVr8nWfJ8URx6VllegTioR5QJA9nfQkbXGl_ewPXIEpymklL1RCCvAXKX0q_5aTQJkB4ZDbK3Q6Yo40c6wzeh3Pppw76aVLcUp40QSWm2F76Q0b7we-9KW/s1600-h/Screenshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZ2NneV8m9Y-u4ALV6ij22waVr8nWfJ8URx6VllegTioR5QJA9nfQkbXGl_ewPXIEpymklL1RCCvAXKX0q_5aTQJkB4ZDbK3Q6Yo40c6wzeh3Pppw76aVLcUp40QSWm2F76Q0b7we-9KW/s320/Screenshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173905538289655826" border="0" /></a>Neowin.net is a technology news website that actively focuses on critising Windows Vista, and supporting Mac and Linux. Neowin runs under the slogan, "Where amateurish journalism looks better.". Shift Linux is a project that was created by the Neowin community. Neowin's Shift Linux is designed to give the user an experience of being part of the Neowin community and to have a simple, easy-to-use live CD that can be installed to a hard drive.<br /><br />According to the project <a href="http://www.shiftlinux.net/">website</a>: "Shift Linux is based on Debian and Morphix, therefore it has access to all of the software and applications as other Debian distributions.". And this is definitely not true, as Shift is clearly an Ubuntu derivative.<br /><br />Shift Linux comes on three flavors; fluxbox, gnome and KDE. I used gnome edition for this review. Shift Linux is currently ranked # 58 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=shift">distrowatch</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />AMD Athlon 64 3200+, with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 5300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiolgHn0d4-1gZw_cl57-usPu8GqXZvZ2Bjox3-2baL3VScef4Tn_NnBwg5sQLhhrD-HOXdLXSDZv8izzUR-xndt_2-L3yUcmrn1cnwScP1WwdW8SirVArZ0Td_i0QB2_VTO74LTjN2mqU4/s1600-h/Screenshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiolgHn0d4-1gZw_cl57-usPu8GqXZvZ2Bjox3-2baL3VScef4Tn_NnBwg5sQLhhrD-HOXdLXSDZv8izzUR-xndt_2-L3yUcmrn1cnwScP1WwdW8SirVArZ0Td_i0QB2_VTO74LTjN2mqU4/s320/Screenshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173905546879590434" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />The booting was extremely similar to Ubuntu 7.10, discussed in one of my previous <a href="http://simplyjat.blogspot.com/2007/10/ubuntu-710-review.html">posts</a>.<br /><br />The first thing that I noticed about Shift Linux was eye-straining theme. I was reminded of energy saving efforts by <a href="http://www.blackle.com/">Blacke Google</a>; but even Blacke was not much irritating to eye as Shift Linux was.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation is again similar to Ubuntu 7.10 discussed in my previous <a href="http://simplyjat.blogspot.com/2007/10/ubuntu-710-review.html">post</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />I have to say the look and feel was just horrible. I am sure that if I have this theme on my desktop; I will have more frequent visits to my Ophthalmologist. My eyes felt the pressure even after a small exposure, that I had for this review.<br /><br />Secondly, the theme is greatly disconnected. The initial splash screen has the original Ubuntu light brown screen. And I was never able to see the grub splash screen because of irrelevant errors at boot time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0Daku3meIAiF5RP7KfZxlLU5-kvUF48ywSESPBQA-BkCJ5OF6dDF70CRTMqCHaMv5-zgBEmJ4IUF6aNTsxzscJYZFRaHNNeBxaEzV1dKuDp2O5dr4Zoxg1BKU_J2lPmlPX4N-s8XkfI3/s1600-h/Screenshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0Daku3meIAiF5RP7KfZxlLU5-kvUF48ywSESPBQA-BkCJ5OF6dDF70CRTMqCHaMv5-zgBEmJ4IUF6aNTsxzscJYZFRaHNNeBxaEzV1dKuDp2O5dr4Zoxg1BKU_J2lPmlPX4N-s8XkfI3/s320/Screenshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173905551174557746" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Application</span><br />Applications are the same as Ubuntu 7.10.No custom application. There was one notable exception though; Firefox 3 alpha 8. This exception made me think "Who, in his able senses, includes an alpha software in its release?". First answer was definitely M$, but second was Shift...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Out of box multimedia support is missing from the default installation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Downgraded Compiz is present to provide basic eye-candy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />One does not require a howitzer to kill ants/bees/rabbits/dogs. When one wants to "give the user an experience of being part of the Neowin community" what one needs is a theme not a Linux derivative.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUXzYNwyIBLKUlLnOrY0H0DX1yEKH9VrCCIBwPajDwuutg9g5l8CSKjv_K38HtmXQ-SGx16j57qd6I99eYIf2XKnDobKp_czapBCukp4tVYF-z91uhCsr-bASn_DybbBJYAza6DU-k-Cu/s1600-h/Screenshot4.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUXzYNwyIBLKUlLnOrY0H0DX1yEKH9VrCCIBwPajDwuutg9g5l8CSKjv_K38HtmXQ-SGx16j57qd6I99eYIf2XKnDobKp_czapBCukp4tVYF-z91uhCsr-bASn_DybbBJYAza6DU-k-Cu/s320/Screenshot4.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173905555469525058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />I did not seen any reasoning or logic for creating Shift Linux. What the project website describes as need is the need for gnome/KDE/fluxbox theme, not an Ubuntu derivative. I tried really hard to find at least some other difference but failed. Shift Linux just provides an additional theme, and as a matter of fact, an ugly theme.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://thoof.com/tr/286298" scrolling="no" width="145" frameborder="0" height="24"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" scrolling="no" border="0" width="125" height="18" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END -->simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com102tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-68789339625496978242008-02-19T07:53:00.000-08:002008-03-04T07:53:27.347-08:00Zenwalk 5.0 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Wonderful Zen Experience.</span><br />Couple of months ago, Zenwalk 4.8 was reviewed <a href="http://simplyjat.blogspot.com/2007/11/zenwalk-48-review.html">here</a>. Since the review, Zenwalk has climbed <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zenwalk">Distrowatch</a> ranking to #14. Zenwalk aims to be a multi-purpose Linux distribution by focusing on Internet applications, multimedia and programming tools.<br /><br />According to the project <a href="http://www.zenwalk.org/">website</a>; Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics: Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications), Fast (optimized for performance capabilities), Rational (one mainstream application for each task), Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment) and Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2KGT1l7deH9NkvI3aZz86Hwczjf9uJlO5x5iU16A_L4LJbM0wJR5rddoUQ2H05V5p1q76Ab-DaHN0IGouHufZthguW8FBbCjNwna_fMZZT-OsCJecjk_iAvyuuSTcYpT8BlxWD5S1W46/s1600-h/Desktop1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2KGT1l7deH9NkvI3aZz86Hwczjf9uJlO5x5iU16A_L4LJbM0wJR5rddoUQ2H05V5p1q76Ab-DaHN0IGouHufZthguW8FBbCjNwna_fMZZT-OsCJecjk_iAvyuuSTcYpT8BlxWD5S1W46/s320/Desktop1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168724267386436274" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />AMD Athlon 64 3200+, with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 5300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor. Though some argue that its not appropriate to review a "lightweight" Linux distribution, like Zenwalk, on fairly modern hardware, but I have my own considerations. Firstly, I do not aim to benchmark the distributions, I want to see their desktop viability. Secondly, I do not have the luxury to arrange an outdated hardware mentioned by other reviewers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Zenwalk comes with a Live CD edition, but the Standard edition that I used to review does not support Live environment. The install CD still comes with ncurses based text installer. After installation the desktop came at 1280x1024 and proprietary nvidia drivers were not installed by default. GCC and kernel-headers were installed by default that allowed me to install nvidia drivers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />There is no reason to be intimidated with the text based installer; it's really easy. Its asks the standard questions: root partition, swap partition and begins installation.<br /><br />Once the installation is finished, user can configure the system. Last time I had problems with automatic loading of network module, but this time the network module was properly loaded. It might be because of my machine change or because of proper hardware detection. But I will give benefit of doubt to Zenwalk and say "good job in network detection". Wireless card installation was also a breeze. The wireless network was not shown by default in WiCD manager; user has to click on "hidden" menu item and type in ESSID to connect.<br /><br />This time Zenwalk also shows a couple of Licenses, even when you are not using the driver covered under the license. It is a minor issue and I hope to see, in future release, license agreements that are applicable to my machine only. It was nice to see GPL though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Simple, beautiful and pleasing, are the words that describe look and feel: flaunted by Zenwalk. The theme is unified, and the login-manager bug mentioned in the last release is gone. Furthermore, Zenwalk retains the true spirit of XFCE; does not try to imitate other desktop environments as done by default installation of some other distributions.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZhjNMKh-JItVwXI2FZZKfSu_4K-snM_t8SO-ypmGTYMC4L2Qq9fCVqiJltapWA9pAIsSYHV1AmN5dzYfbx8qLor7LtdnTLu6GkjOWmPU6mycZfgVdX01HKoKSfEdVnbmst-cMShruiOfN/s1600-h/Untitled.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZhjNMKh-JItVwXI2FZZKfSu_4K-snM_t8SO-ypmGTYMC4L2Qq9fCVqiJltapWA9pAIsSYHV1AmN5dzYfbx8qLor7LtdnTLu6GkjOWmPU6mycZfgVdX01HKoKSfEdVnbmst-cMShruiOfN/s320/Untitled.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168724271681403586" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Zenwalk has a rational choice; one mainstream application for each task. And it is really nice. It means ease of use for a newbie. I still say Open Office would have been a better choice, but things are way they are.<br /><br />All the applications are in there latest packages(at the time of Zenwalk release). For windows network browsing you have fusesmb tool (I missed it in the last review). To view your network shares, create a directory (probably ~/smb), launch the fusesmbtool under network applications, specify the folder where you want to mount the network shares, specify the windows username & password, and hit connect. User will see the windows network under the directory specified.<br /><br />Zenwalk comes with a simple control-panel called aptly called Zenpanel. It contains almost every aspect of computer customization, that an average desktop user will require. Zenwalk 5.0 comes with HAL (hardware abstraction layer) instead of its own custom hot-plug system. And it means better support for plug-and-play devices.<br /><br />XFCE supports a list of images for the wallpaper, but does not allow user to choose when to change the wallpaper. There is a way around this; the command "killall -USR1 xfdesktop" changes the wallpaper on the desktop. So those of you who want automatic cycling of wallpaper can create a cron job, or create a desktop icon to do the same.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Zenwalk supports proprietary codecs out of box. I was able to play MP3 and WMV files. DVD playback was also supported.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Neither Beryl nor Compiz is installed by default. But XFCE has its own window compositor and gives really nice effects<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Zenwalk is a really old distribution; one of the very few pre-2000 surviving distribution. I would really like to see a 64 it binary version of Zenwalk. Some better hardware detection(monitor) is also expected.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Zenwalk is a really great distribution for Linux newbies, just because of the fact that it chooses single mainstream application for each task. And this does not mean that Zenwalk will not appeal to Linux gurus. I will just say "Try the Zen computing" and see it yourself.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://thoof.com/tr/274162" frameborder="0" height="24" scrolling="no" width="145"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" scrolling="no" border="0" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com459tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-54426463417394233222008-02-07T06:19:00.000-08:002008-02-08T21:56:46.133-08:00Vector Linux 5.9 Standard Gold Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br />VectorLinux is a Linux distribution for the x86 platform based on Slackware which aims to be user-friendly.Vector Linux is currently ranked at #21 on <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vector">distrowatch</a>. Screenshots are available <a href="http://vectorlinux.com/STD-Gold/index.html">here</a><br /><br />According to the project <a href="http://www.vectorlinux.com/">website</a>: Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set Vector Linux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. Vector Linux is a lighter-weight, fast, Linux operating system for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems and is based upon Slackware. Vector Linux has improved Slackware to produce a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain operating system that is second to none. We include automatic hardware configuration, unique administration tools and easy software package management via the Gslapt/slapt-get system. Vector Linux is considered to be the fastest, non-source Linux distribution on the planet!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Vector Linux comes in a separate live CD, which is not released for version 5.9 yet. But the installation media does not have a live environment and you have to go the old fashioned way of first installing the distribution and then seeing/feeling it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation is similar to Slackware installation: with the options named more realistically/humorously. It is really nice to see the kind of innovation in the installer option table.<br /><br />The installation automatically selects the swap partition (if available) and prompts for root partition. The best part of installation is the graphics drivers: my machine has an nvidia card, which was correctly detected by the installer, and the required proprietary drives were installed during the installation. Vector Linux has really stepped forward in terms of usability.<br /><br />In the later part of the installation, user can configure different aspects of the new Vector Linux machine.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Previous releases of Vector Linux had big icons and window borders; which some might consider distasteful. But with this release that has changed; brand new aesthetically pleasing & sleek icons and windows borders are here. The look and feel has greatly changed and it's impressive. Dejavu fonts are still missing from an otherwise great default theme.<br /><br />One thing that I do not like is XFCE mimicking the look & feel of other desktop environments. Here the default settings make it look more like KDE than like XFCE<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Vector Linux contains a lot of applications, specially targeted at low-end machines. Open Office is missing, which I think is a necessity for all Linux distribution. Open Office is not so much resource hungry, that it should be omitted from distributions targeted at low-end manchines. In place of Open Office, Abiword and Gnumeric are present as office applications.<br /><br />The default browser is SeaMonkey(Mozilla re-incarnated), but still Firefox is available for ardent fans. Mousepad and MEdit are the editors of choice for Vector Linux. BlueFish editor is available for development. Couple of nice games, including chromium, are available.<br /><br />Acrobat Reader & Flash Player are installed by default, making a great OOBE (out of box experience). Gsplat is available for additional package installation.<br /><br />Vector Linux has its own control center in the form of VASM. Its short and sweet; contains wizards for almost all the regular chores.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Mplayer, Xine & XMMS, along with the required codecs, are installed by default. So the user can simply insert a DVD and start watching the same. WMV & MP3 files are played without a glitch.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Neither Beryl nor Compiz is installed by default. But XFCE has his own window compositor and gives really nice effects like shading and fading.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Vector Linux is a mature distribution, it is time for Vector Linux to think about the 64 bit version as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Vector Linux is a really great distribution, and with this release the rough edges have been removed. Its stable, fast, looks good and has an OOBE that is second to none in the arena. It is highly recommended for both newbies and experts alike.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/247013"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com163tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-74957138825006612182007-12-13T07:11:00.000-08:002008-02-08T21:57:17.319-08:00Centos 5.1 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><a href="http://centos.org/">CentOS</a> stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System. As a group, CentOS is a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organizations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation. CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the <a href="http://centos.org/">Red Hat</a> Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class operating system stability without the cost of certification and support. CentOS is currently ranked #12 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=centos">distrowatch</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEislb9liwT7meyGT605fuPZYO7XwYiXEtZrZNT6uL8u3WtFio6BKjaS9SJh1LacB9-bzE1xAKI4pO5JBZUUJmh7stHSpOrl6w6sSxAH8VHmJ36M9-70FQXEEErwhaLU1UTJzkvbsmgK1WFm/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEislb9liwT7meyGT605fuPZYO7XwYiXEtZrZNT6uL8u3WtFio6BKjaS9SJh1LacB9-bzE1xAKI4pO5JBZUUJmh7stHSpOrl6w6sSxAH8VHmJ36M9-70FQXEEErwhaLU1UTJzkvbsmgK1WFm/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143476970091910530" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor. For this review I am using 64 bit edition.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />The installation DVD does not come with a Live environment. A separate Live CD is available for people interested in checking the environment first.<br />Fedora and CentOS are amongst the earliest distributions to correctly bring 1440x900@75Hz desktop resolution.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />CentOS uses Anaconda as the system installer. As with the other distributions that use Anaconda; it is really simple to install CentOS without actually burning a DVD. User can install the system from the hard disk containing the ISO image. For detailed description see the installation section in my earlier <a href="http://simplyjat.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-8-review.html">post</a>.<br /><br />Anaconda asks for the language, keyboard and allows you to configure partitions. The network configuration tool has been updated and user can separately configure IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Earlier it was not possible to assign static IP to one and leave the other one on DHCP, but thats not the case now. Anaconda then asks for time zone, root password and the packages to be installed.<br /><br />User can select additional repositories during package selection, but I did not try that out. The package selection categories made me laugh. Emacs and Editors are different categories :). Seems like Emacs is not an editor any more, but far more better/superior than editors. And even though the fact that Emacs is not in the latest 22 version.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />CentOS comes with a light blue theme and the theme is very well integrated(even with Compiz). The default font set was "Sans" (I personally do not like Sans), which I changed to "Dejavu Sans". For a Sever/Workspace oriented distribution, the look and feel is nice.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFML6EOY3xdizstBKUYA8S0dyDP7IeODkzq7k6FSdyBN5v6Ki4nFsDSjAj1ySzAPuKMvDMB6LbsJSxMBSRAEMRAx-Z1sdDpEi5SxjJonGDl5yRBt6YxTshSOHe726vi0UdeVgVnqv4sGtA/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFML6EOY3xdizstBKUYA8S0dyDP7IeODkzq7k6FSdyBN5v6Ki4nFsDSjAj1ySzAPuKMvDMB6LbsJSxMBSRAEMRAx-Z1sdDpEi5SxjJonGDl5yRBt6YxTshSOHe726vi0UdeVgVnqv4sGtA/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143476982976812434" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Being a DVD install there are a huge number of applications. I would say that I was really disappointed by version of applications used by CentOS (Red Hat). Firefox is in version 1.5.0.12 and Open Office is in a really old version 2.0.4. But this rant is more appropriate for Red Hat. Pirut is again disappointing as it fails/hangs a lot.<br /><br />Additional applications can be downloaded from the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://centos.karan.org/">repository</a>. But the repository seems to be stagnant. There is not even a single application in the main extra repository. Some applications are present in extra testing repository but they are not sufficient. The repository for CentOS 4 is full of all kinds of useful applications.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />There is no out-of-box multimedia support in CentOS, and hopelessly the official repository lacks the required binary packages. So if you are looking for multimedia functionality, you have to look of other unofficial repositories or compile the applications/codecs from source.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Compiz is installed by default and provides basic eye-candy. But for enabling it, proprietary graphics card drivers need to be installed and /etc/X11/xorg.conf needs to be tweaked.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />CentOS is just a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and really a good clone. But it seems to be going into dangerous waters. The most disappointing aspect was the lack of good and complete official repository(which is not the case with CentOS 4). It is a really good distribution for server/workstation users who do not want to pay extortion money to Red Hat. But for casual desktop user, I advise to stay clear.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/133348"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com185tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-55058039435469215542007-12-11T09:11:00.000-08:002008-03-04T07:54:21.210-08:00Frugalware 0.7 Review<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Things are becoming frugal...</span><br /><a href="http://frugalware.org">Frugalware</a> is a general-purpose Linux distribution, designed for intermediate users, who are familiar with command-line operations. It is based on Slackware, but uses a different package management system, Pacman. Frugalware's developers attempt to make Frugalware as simple as possible while establishing a priority based on comfortable use. Frugalware is currently ranked #36 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=frugalware">distrowatch</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiayy4eGaTGOxZKSIFG1Y74c_S6qPaFkec7eL_9cHOAAc8Mnit9A4yFVficksCKYr3kxqXxeiaIBtgxVQJvycAoutnhEMNHlTdua0AVGTLCt_I-zGjeE-kKEakzxQtu1QmFTZ8mj60qQyx/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiayy4eGaTGOxZKSIFG1Y74c_S6qPaFkec7eL_9cHOAAc8Mnit9A4yFVficksCKYr3kxqXxeiaIBtgxVQJvycAoutnhEMNHlTdua0AVGTLCt_I-zGjeE-kKEakzxQtu1QmFTZ8mj60qQyx/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132746907548677010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 6600GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Frugalware does not come with a Live environment. Frugal comes in install only CDs and DVDs; 13 CDs and 2 DVDs to be precise. ISO images for CDs 3-13 or the second DVD is required to be downloaded if the computer on which Frugalware is to be installed, does not have an internet connection. <br /><br />I like the package all concept adopted by some of the distributions like Frugalware. Its really handy, makes the installation fast(as the packages are read from the disk) and makes network-less installation possible. I just know three distributions that come in more than a single DVD; <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, <a href="http://frugalware.org">Frugalware</a>, and <a href="http://www.momonga-linux.org/">Momonga</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installer is ncurses based text installer and frame-buffer makes the screen come up at higher resolution, making the installer look nice & unclustered. <br /><br />First user is asked about language, followed by the keyboard selection and an option for RAID configuration. In the next step user can create partitions and assign them. First swap partition needs to be selected. Slackware auto-detects the swap partition and highlight it as the only entry, but this is not the case with Frugralware: it lists all the partitions and user has to select. This needs to fixed. <br /><br />Then user is prompted for root partition. Once root partition is selected, installer gives an option to select additional partitions for mounting. I came across my first bug! The windows ntfs partition was shown as "IN USE" and the mount point was mentioned as "/", a chill went down my spine. The partition that I selected to install Frugalware was also showing the same configuration of "IN USE" & "/". I crossed my fingers and took the risk of continuing. Thankfully the installation went smoothly and did not harm my windows partition. <br /><br />In the next step user can select the different packages that need to be installed on the machine. The package list is huge and divided in nice groups. All the major desktop environments are included. Installation starts after the package selection and completes in approximately 15 minutes. Seeing the huge list of packages, I consider the installation really fast. <br /><br />After the installation user can configure the new system by setting root password, creating new user, configuring the network (DSL configuration is also available), selecting the time zone and finally selecting the desktop resolution and colors. The installer detected my monitor for a mere 1024x768, but the resolution was editable. I edited the resolution to 1440x900 and the test screen came up really fine. <br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMm05Lv_uQRcq-3zr_3q1gYwWEtccpgyUKukOMnDocVhh0EjHEC3eSXCCapLD-tnIV0nsXwR62y3kJqy86DLXAFlFVCXpOFT3xRvM0AxtZvrfS8MVG9DEA7xVKYWWgLYFeFELrxyXOFQ7/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMm05Lv_uQRcq-3zr_3q1gYwWEtccpgyUKukOMnDocVhh0EjHEC3eSXCCapLD-tnIV0nsXwR62y3kJqy86DLXAFlFVCXpOFT3xRvM0AxtZvrfS8MVG9DEA7xVKYWWgLYFeFELrxyXOFQ7/s320/snapshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132746916138611618" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />In a single word gorgeous. Making a distribution is more of art then computer science; an art perfected well by Frugalware. The desktop environment is breath taking. The light-blue theme is present every where, from gfxgrub, to splash screen, to login manager, to the desktop, to the wallpaper, to the icons, to the mouse pointers, to the window borders. Its a great unified theme all across, irrespective of desktop environment. I could only hope that other distribution take a cue from Frugalware in this section.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Being a two DVD install, a lot of packages are installed. Open Office is latest version 2.3 and firefox is 2.0.07(cause of the fact that Frugalware was released a while back). Pacman is the default package manager used by Frugalware, thus any application is just a simple command away. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Frugalware has out-of-box support for all kinds of media. I was able to successfully play WMV, MP3 and DVDs. Java runtime is also installed, and that too the latest 6.3. Flash player was missing, but this could be attributed to my 64-bit machine. As far as I know there is no 64-bit flash player(wake up adobe).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />None of the compositing manager was installed by default. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendation</span><br />It would be really nice to have an integrated control-center where average user can configure his complete system<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Frugalware has a mission, and a really good mission. It works just great out of the box. There are a few hick-ups (like the installer bug and some minor crashes) but Frugalware is very well on track. It looks awesome, maybe a trend-setter in look-and-feel for linux. This is a distribution to look for in coming time. <br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/132371"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com196tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-91647047374706804212007-11-14T06:00:00.000-08:002008-02-09T04:51:52.252-08:00Arch 2007.08-2 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A lean machine</span><br /><a href="http://archlinux.org/">Arch Linux</a> is a Linux distribution inspired by CRUX and intended to be lightweight and simple for advanced users. According to the project website; "Arch Linux is a workhorse distribution designed to fit the needs of the competent Linux user. We strive to make it both powerful and easy to manage, making it an ideal distribution for servers and workstations. Take it in any direction you like" .It is currently ranked #17 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=arch">distrowatch</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbAnYNCvgIJ97tRmYTd3QrM2ek3Rb5yKlAVWHJ_5nK4jiM8jolv6ocXLv7MHdf-8leAgyIplzUHlhDuBkNe-pgfl_fNsUDKW1d_qcXDOOTJVAyd3afwHJTBZX_C8eWIQRG-0K7jmQcvrVG/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbAnYNCvgIJ97tRmYTd3QrM2ek3Rb5yKlAVWHJ_5nK4jiM8jolv6ocXLv7MHdf-8leAgyIplzUHlhDuBkNe-pgfl_fNsUDKW1d_qcXDOOTJVAyd3afwHJTBZX_C8eWIQRG-0K7jmQcvrVG/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132388234011954066" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 6600GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Arch Linux, on its own, does not provide a live environment. However, for the interested, <a href="http://www.faunos.com/">FaunOS</a> is an Arch derivative and provides live environment. So users can check out FaunOS as well. Also <a href="http://archie.dotsrc.org/">Archie</a> also provides a live environment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />Arch comes in two flavors, CORE & FTP. Both ISOs are minimalistic and won't result in a working desktop environment. I chose core ISO for this review. Again instead of wasting another CD, I extracted out vmlinux and initrd files from isolinux directory in the ISO, and used them for starting the installation. A detailed procedure is provided in my earlier <a href="http://simplyjat.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-8-review.html">post</a>.<br /><br />Arch Linux has two main repositories "core" & "extras". The core repository contains minimalistic software, enough to provide a working command-line-interface. Rest of the packages(i.e. gnome, kde, xfce, xorg, e17) are contained in "extra". For the core installation the user has two option s, either to use the directory available in the ISO or copy the latest packages from any of the <a href="http://www.archlinux.org/download/">mirrors</a>. The repository contains more and recent packages . I chose to copy the latest package from core repository. Copy all the core packages on to some spare hard disk partition before starting the installation<br /><br />Once the user boots into the install system, there are five different terminals available and BASH can be started by hitting <enter>. First, for non-CD install mechanism I used, user has to mount the partition containing the core packages to /src/core/pkg. The installer can be invoked by issuing /arch/setup command.<br /><br />The installer allows to create and specify partitions. I would like to mention that Arch loads pata modules before sata modules, and thus if you have two hard drives, first an IDE and second a SATA, then IDE drive will be named sda and SATA drive will be named sdb. User can change the module loading order in the final system configuration.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAdzw4d3KUa34Y7dSH0I10PmbGdntg3IZ-ZRr8O3rNjbQxVXERLHz9Wau9UW1bSvxZ2elaLSvVYNmw-qZO_i4pgF67HeyLSr8J4QZioaE94mTHZC9W-q44votekQW-AxfK7cIpzV0t6UXs/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAdzw4d3KUa34Y7dSH0I10PmbGdntg3IZ-ZRr8O3rNjbQxVXERLHz9Wau9UW1bSvxZ2elaLSvVYNmw-qZO_i4pgF67HeyLSr8J4QZioaE94mTHZC9W-q44votekQW-AxfK7cIpzV0t6UXs/s320/snapshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132388272666659746" border="0" /></a>The installer then asks to select the packages for installation. Now its safe to select all the packages. I remember, in version 0.7, if the user selected all the packages for installation, the installation failed. After package selection, package installation comes into play. And it was really fast. The core system installed on my machine in less then 5 minutes.<br /><br />After installation, system configuration comes into picture. I love the fact that almost all of the system configuration are concentrated in /etc/rc.conf. Spare some time and browse all the configuration files. Arch uses a BSD-style init framework.<br /><br />Once the core installation is finished, user can reboot into fully functional command-line-interface. Now at this, point users have two options for "extra" installation. If the user can bring up network connection in the command-line-interface, network installation works fine. If, however, the computer is not having a functional network connection, user can download the "extra" repository from any of the mirrors and can copy the contents in "/var/cache/pacman/pkg" directory. Also "extra.db.tar.gz" file needs to be extracted to "/var/lib/pacman/extra" directory.<br /><br />Once onto the newly installed system, user can customize the installation with "extra" repository.<br />"pacman -S kde" will install all the required packages to bring up KDE; similarly gnome, xfce can also be installed.In the last release, packages for keyboard and mouse were not installed automatically by the above command; but that is gone now<br /><br />To boot into the new desktop environment, user needs to do these changes: change /etc/inittab to runlevel id:5, set login manager as kdm/gdm/slim, add hal and dbus to list of daemons (started at boot) in /etc/rc.conf, and execute xorgcfg to generate xorg.conf.<br /><br />Being a KDE fan, I installed KDE first and then later tried to see xfce as well. I installed xfce4 by issuing pacman -S xfce4, but was never able to get to the xfce desktop environment. It just hung for me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Being a workstation and server targeted distribution, not much has been done in the aesthetics department, except a custom wallpaper. But even the base KDE looks really nice. For GTK application to look nice under KDE, users have to install the gtk-qt-theme.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />The core install only provides basic installation and whatever application the user wants, s/he has to get it from the extra repository. The extra repository is approximately 4 GB and provides almost all the applications in there latest version.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />With the packages from extra repository, I was able to play all kinds of media.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Compiz-fusion is not present in the extra repository as of now. So user has to enable other repositories for the eye-candy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Arch Linux should also think about a single DVD install flavor. Just pack core and extra onto a single CD, for workstation users. This will save the individual downloading of packages from the repository, and will make arch installer easier for system without internet connection. Also, please take some time and clean up the wiki.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Acrh Linux is lean, wicked and it allows all types to possibilities. It allows the user to custom tailor the distribution as per his/her taste. It has a great package manager. A package manager that is being used by lot of other distributions like frugalware, archie and faun. But I am unable the gauze the advantages pacman provides over apt-get.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/90516"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com137tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-45659305956907794132007-11-10T03:47:00.000-08:002008-02-09T04:53:17.707-08:00Fedora 8 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Nice new beautiful fedora.</span><br />Fedora (previously called Fedora Core) is an RPM-based, general purpose Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora's mission statement is: "Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software."<br /><br />According to the project <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/">website</a>: "Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project." Currently Fedora is ranked #4 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/fedora">distrowatch</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLcAt4-VmyWdqh85AvQbxJDkhlXw0bkPODXavGdSaI8z_oH6kvj-aFGsM45CRuGvDCMbF_oJ0IMpIJjGy8Jvl6o1XUTyaoGZfM83Cj6Imv73DhOmZYYBcZd_M0SW97UBG3Qt738NaSoZh5/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLcAt4-VmyWdqh85AvQbxJDkhlXw0bkPODXavGdSaI8z_oH6kvj-aFGsM45CRuGvDCMbF_oJ0IMpIJjGy8Jvl6o1XUTyaoGZfM83Cj6Imv73DhOmZYYBcZd_M0SW97UBG3Qt738NaSoZh5/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131192996153084786" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 6600GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Fedora comes in different flavors: KDE Live, Gnome Live, Games Live, Developer Live, Fedora Electronic Lab Live and the standard DVD install. For this review, I picked up the 64-bit standard install DVD.<br /><br />I really like Red Hat based distribution from installation point of view. There is no need to burn a CD/DVD for installation. You can have a hard disk installation. This is really cool. No need to burn extra DVDs and then throw them out after six months.<br /><br />On initial boot, after installation, Fedora brought up X with the correct resolution 1440x900@75Hz. Fedora did the same in version 7 as well, making it the first distribution to correctly setup Graphics for my machine (neither XP nor vista) can do this)!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />Red Hat uses anaconda for installation. Anaconda is really easy and highly configurable installer and is used by a lot of other distributions as there standard installer.<br /><br />Here I would take some time to describe the hard disk installation process. The user needs three things: a partition(fat32 or ext3) that can be read by the installer, an ISO reading application (e.g. WinRAR) and a Linux boot loader (e.g. lilo, grub or NTLDR).<br /><br />Copy the ISO file to a free partition; which is readable by installer. Now use the ISO reader application to extract /isolinux/vmlinuz & /isolinux/initrd.img. Now create a new Loader entry with these files to the desired partition. You might have to google for more information specific to the Loader you are using. For grub, the new entries for the second partition on primary hard disk, should be like this:<br /><pre><br />title Install<br />kernel (hd0,1)/vmlinuz ro vga=791<br />initrd (hd0,1)/initrd.img<br /></pre>Now reboot the machine and select the Install option. Anaconda will come up and ask for language and keyboard. Then anaconda will ask for the partition containing the ISO image file. Once anaconda finds the desired image, it will start as normal.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQla6I4NOJJJbWKyIa74cckSBtzQVzi0W6vSk97C8QNCbL1vZJMWDioP611p_5elh1Vh8sVkQPWqSjqwfQVSwzO_3_VMci4suWHiznSVlRM6OboJTih1ua7jYzc11WtCCSTFRSIpxMoUy1/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQla6I4NOJJJbWKyIa74cckSBtzQVzi0W6vSk97C8QNCbL1vZJMWDioP611p_5elh1Vh8sVkQPWqSjqwfQVSwzO_3_VMci4suWHiznSVlRM6OboJTih1ua7jYzc11WtCCSTFRSIpxMoUy1/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131193009037986690" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />As mentioned in the title, werewolf (Fedora 8) looks are simply breath-taking. Tango icon theme is now default, the fonts look awesome.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Being a DVD install, there are a lot of applications, and all of them are in the latest version. Open Office 2.3 is there for office application, and Firefox 2.0.0.8 is installed for web browsing. I had some problems with Firefox; initially it refused to come up. I had to kill all the running Firefox instances (by executing "killall firefox"), and Firefox came up fine the next time.<br /><br />The default applications present on DVD are undergoing a massive change. A lot of applications are missing out. Gvim is dropped, whereas emacs is in the latest version 22.1. Gnome configuration editor is dropped, one thing I personally don't like. But I consider these as side-effects of a massive change. The changes are not yet stabilized, and we can hope to see a stabilized set of applications, tuned to community preferences in future.<br /><br />Software installation is still a mess. Pirut almost hangs whenever invoked. It would be better to see Pirut as a more responsive applicaiton.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Red Hat is staying clear from proprietary codecs, as a result, out-of-box multimedia support is missing from Fedora. Codec buddy is installed for making codec installation easy, but I ran out of luck while trying to use it. While playing MP3, Amarok simply crashed. And while playing WMV files, codec buddy was unable to find any suitable plug-in.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Fedora comes with latest compiz fusion, but is not enabled by default. For Nvidia graphics card, I enabled 3D acceleration by compiling proprietary Nvidia drivers from source. Also some additional parameters are required in xorg.conf.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Red Hat ruled the Linux distribution world, before Ubuntu came and took over. With the current release for Fedora, it seems that Red Hat is fighting really hard to control the lost ground. The intense effort is clear from the current release. If we ignore minor hick-ups, werewolf is one of the best releases from Fedora. With this release Fedora is returning to my workstation as distribution of choice, after a long time.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/84646"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com159tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-57376612021463268042007-11-04T03:23:00.000-08:002008-03-04T07:54:59.828-08:00Zenwalk 4.8 Review<span style="font-size:90%;">Zenwalk (formerly Minislack), or Zenwalk Linux, is a Slackware-based GNU/Linux distribution with a goal of being slim and fast by using only one application per task and with focus on graphical desktop and multimedia usage. Zenwalk is currently ranked # 15 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zenwalk">Distrowatch</a>.<br /><br />Zenwalk comes in four different versions: Standard, Core, Live, and Server Editions. I used standard edition for this review. There is no screen capturing application installed by default by Zenwalk; thus the review does not contain any screen-shots from my machine. If you are interested in seeing Zenwalk, look <a href="http://www.zenwalk.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=9">here</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />For this review I chose the Standard Edition, and it does not come with a Live environment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installer is ncurses application, similar to Slackware. For some newbies this, seemingly text based installation method, can be intimidating. The installer asks the standard questions, root partition, swap partition etc. and begins installation.<br /><br />Once installation is complete the user can configure the system. One of the most annoying fact about a Slackware based distribution is failure to load the required network card module. The installer detects the network card, allows the user to specify the network settings, and then on booting, the network functionality is missing. The user has to manually load the network driver module . Now this issue is generic to almost all Slackware derivatives.<br /><br />So if you are planning to install Zenwalk, or as matter of fact any Slackware derivative, its better to know your network card name and corresponding module required by Linux before hand. A simple googling will help :). On my machines, I have intel network and realtek network cards and the modules are e100 and 8139too, respectively. So for the intel based driver I have to issue "modprobe e100" as root user. Once the module is loaded, the user has to bring up the network card by going through a control center application called ZenPanel.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Zenwalk flaunts the most simple and elegant theme; its nice and cool. Zenwalk has xfce as the default desktop manager. And the xfce is left in its original format, not pushed hard to look like gnome, as done by some other distributions like Xubuntu and Mint.<br /><br />Zenwalk has a really nice login screen; very well integrated with the splash screen and wallpaper. But with this version (4.8), somehow the themed login screen was not selected by default. I had to manually set in Settings Manager.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Zenwalk has a unique application strategy: one mainstream application for each task. Its nice and can be very helpful for new Linux converts. A lot of confusion is cleared. I used Geany, as a text editor, for the first time and was really impressed.<br /><br />Almost all the applications are in the latest version. Ice weasel (re-branded Firefox) is 2.0.0.6-g2. Open office is missing from the packages, instead Abiword and Gnumeric Spreadsheets are installed. Although these applications are enough for an average desktop user, but I feel that Open Office would have been a better option. Maybe we can hope to see that in later versions.<br /><br />With xfce based distributions one serious short-coming is the lack to samba viewer. There is no way to view samba shares on other machines. And the same scenario is there for Zenwalk.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Zenwalk has the complete multimedia support out-of-box. It was able to view/listen all kind to medis formats without any glitch.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />There is no advanced compositing manager installed by default with Zenwalk. A default compositing manager is installed which allows true window transparency.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Kindly load the desired network module during boot: its easy and simple, but can prove to be really annoying to a new user. Also Open Office is much better and complete solution for office related application; kindly consider it for inclusion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />I am just in love with xfce based distributions; they are fast, simple and elegant and Zenwalk is no exception. It has a really good control center and out-of-box multimedia support. Except for few initial hick-ups (network card module) it is really user friendly. I would recommend it to new Linux users.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/77538"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com126tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-3795526777266544642007-11-01T08:33:00.001-07:002008-02-09T04:54:35.272-08:00StartCom MultiMedia Edition ML-5.0.6 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Highly disappointing start</span><br /><a href="http://www.startcom.org/">StartCom</a> Linux is a Red Hat clone. The Multimedia edition resembles Fedora. It is currently ranked #81 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=startcom">Distrowatch</a>.<br /><br />The last time I viewed this project's main page, I remember seeing a reason for starting the distribution. The project developers expressed their anger about the pricing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat's decision to discontinue the Base version. As a result of with developers were forced to rebuild the distribution from source. But this time I see that StartCom has converted to a commercial identity. And the original cause is lost.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-IcvyHrw9BtOVdmBQs9Lkdn-qEZ3oMLNPykrR3Ys5J8HRKsUeR95qyp18cDwwrAnscM0fIDouSrwrrCQGUkh1SbwiDSwy61P5dDjKWGgVK0xErnrQ3Ro4hOkKyfaW42LuD5XsbVOnd66/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-IcvyHrw9BtOVdmBQs9Lkdn-qEZ3oMLNPykrR3Ys5J8HRKsUeR95qyp18cDwwrAnscM0fIDouSrwrrCQGUkh1SbwiDSwy61P5dDjKWGgVK0xErnrQ3Ro4hOkKyfaW42LuD5XsbVOnd66/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127912629283843218" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />For this review I used the Multimedia Edition DVD, also known as Kessem. The DVD does not provide a Live environment, thus the user is forced to install the distribution first. This is quite amazing, given the fact that Fedora now provides a live environment. <br /><br />When the system boots for the first time, some configuration is further required. Selinux is removed from Multimedia edition, so the desktop users are saved from a restart. Display configuration is completely messed up in Kessem. Even after selecting "Generic LCD 1440x900" the configuration did not give me the option for setting 1440x900 resolution. I selected 1400x1050 and desktop came up with 1024x768.It looked horrible.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />StartCom uses the same Anaconda installer: used by Red Hat, with some changes in the package selection. Some sets, like Cryptography are available under two headers.<br /><br />The installer asks about Language, Keyboard, disk partition, boot loader, root password and packages to install. The user account is created on first boot. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmxtrtRc0XNmWhfMnUgxey5vt3F4NMMznKurJzFrBkDhzeqaNbVeym3LCED0GlZ9j6EyQ2_En19WvcOVsGhhdgu1BhbYjTeAzBIXazTVNYT1p4-K02zOR82MoEW0c0peVQPoFMWF3oBdnN/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmxtrtRc0XNmWhfMnUgxey5vt3F4NMMznKurJzFrBkDhzeqaNbVeym3LCED0GlZ9j6EyQ2_En19WvcOVsGhhdgu1BhbYjTeAzBIXazTVNYT1p4-K02zOR82MoEW0c0peVQPoFMWF3oBdnN/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127912616398941314" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />StartCom does not have very appealing user interfaces (I reckon Fedora is better), but they are not so bad either. Dejavu fonts are missing from the default install.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Being a DVD installation there are a lot of applications to choose from. Latest Open Office 2.3 is installed whereas Firefox is still 1.5; 1.5.0.12 to be precise.<br /><br />There are a lot of unique softwares present in Kessem which are not found in other distributions; for instance , MySQL Administrator . Wine is also installed by default.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Being a multimedia edition, I was too much excited about the codecs and multimedia applications. Certainly there are a lot of Multimedia applications, but none of the Codecs worked. I was unable to play WMV files and DVDs. Its pathetic for a distribution, calling itself multimedia edition and yet unable to play DVDs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Compiz Fusion is installed by default, but all attempts to enable the eye-candy resulted in XServer crash.I had the latest Nvidia drivers and all the required settings in xorg.conf, but still I was unable to have the nice desktop effects.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />The previous versions were a lot better, and I strongly supported their cause. Now with this release the cause is gone, and a new commercial identity is in place. The system crashes a lot, seems like there was no testing done at all. Just stay away from StartCom, Fedora is lot better, stable and reliable.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/68030"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-42845556809338153102007-10-20T21:54:00.000-07:002008-02-09T04:55:09.168-08:00Ubuntu 7.10 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> A mixed bag </span> <br /><a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> is a predominantly desktop-oriented Linux distribution, based on Debian GNU/Linux but with a stronger focus on usability, regular releases, and ease of installation. Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical Ltd, owned by South African billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.. It is currently ranked #2 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu">distrowatch</a>. For this review, I used the DVD distribution.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDiReUtTTMBEbOGDT7LL-p-evAVmhtUyzN3KTylZHq4gPgagrfKTeHo6nNMY6rYo2q58XLZdL-Nd0gvLQ5_L-sFDyz1heX6N0xylYUBzH8lQvdVAh_WVGTa7rlaTpDpgZkaNaoarW_EMRu/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDiReUtTTMBEbOGDT7LL-p-evAVmhtUyzN3KTylZHq4gPgagrfKTeHo6nNMY6rYo2q58XLZdL-Nd0gvLQ5_L-sFDyz1heX6N0xylYUBzH8lQvdVAh_WVGTa7rlaTpDpgZkaNaoarW_EMRu/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123663242652329362" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 3.4 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Ubuntu comes with live CD installation environment. The user can boot into the actual system, check how the distribution is going to look like and then finally install the operating system.<br /><br />This XServer configuration was a lot better this time. Earlier the live CD came up with 1280x1024 resolution and looked really bad. This time the XServer came up with 1400x1050: its not optimal 1440x900, but still it is close. At least Ubuntu identified that the computer has a wide-screen monitor attached.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation is similar to previous versions, except for the migration assistant: it is removed. The installation summary screen shows information about it though.<br /><br />In the previous release, Ubuntu introduced the concept of scanning all the hard disks after every change done in the partition table. Just for selecting the root partition, the user had to wait patiently for three scans: one initial scan, second when root mount point was selected and third when the root partition was marked for formatting. And on top of that, each scan took a lot of time. This time, scan time is reduced a lot. Seems that the installer is doing fine-grained sensible checking. But all this makes me wonder; why did they replace the original file-system selection screen from the installer? It was fast and efficient.<br /><br />The installation starts and seems to go fine. Around 75%, the installer asserts "less than a minute remaining". And at 82%, while scanning mirrors, the installation stands still. I waited for an hour, but the installation would not move beyond 82%. After an hour, I was certain that the installer has entered an infinite loop and started digging the net. And it was not only me, who was facing the problem but a lot of other people too. he user has to disable networking; mirror scanning will time-out and the installation will proceed.<br /><br />After Drapper (Ubuntu 6.06), I am yet to see a bug free installer in Ubuntu. Why every time I have to google for installing the most user-friendly distribution? Why can't the developers put a simple "skip" button? Why the installer does not time-out automatically? Why can't Ubuntu test these simple installation scenario? If I have to deal with installation nuisance, then why should I use Ubuntu and not FreeBSD or Arch?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisO7ftCyKJ_LSfAM-CmRwJv2hMYv0iem13jjLq4aNrWOEcaBF8dOVTdIuxDuyHmkKSu1xNn3pTSefyyHgPjy-2rYQgUAuS5DXBJRnIY17Wxay2Ql21BwajwUiWVLpdZpiJfjbmPWy-DgvX/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisO7ftCyKJ_LSfAM-CmRwJv2hMYv0iem13jjLq4aNrWOEcaBF8dOVTdIuxDuyHmkKSu1xNn3pTSefyyHgPjy-2rYQgUAuS5DXBJRnIY17Wxay2Ql21BwajwUiWVLpdZpiJfjbmPWy-DgvX/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123663246947296674" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics<br /></span>Ubuntu has moved back to dark brown theme, and it looks really nice. At some places the older orange-brown color is still present, but that is acceptable. As usual the fonts look really good<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications<br /></span>Ubuntu comes with standard set of applications. If you have downloaded the DVD image, a lot of applications can be installed via DVD. With Gutsy, deskbar applet is shown in upper panel with the user name. Alt+F3 will invoke deskbar and its lot better than the application launcher.<br /><br />Open Office 2.3 and Firefox 2.0.0.6 (both latest) are installed by default. Bug reporting tool, python 2.5 and Ubuntu device database are also installed by default.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Ubuntu has chosen not to distribute the multimedia codecs. So out-of-box multimedia support is missing. Still when the user plays a multimedia file, he has an option to search and install the required codec.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy<br /></span>Eye-candy was the much awaited feature in Ubuntu. And it is as simple as it gets. Personally I feel that it is too much dumbed down. Nvidia-glx-new package is present on the DVD and contains the driver required for Nvidia 3D support. Installing it is a breeze. User can select the visual effects from System > Preferences > Appearnce > Visual Effects. There are three options: None, Normal, and Extra. Xorg.conf is not updated to incorporate Extra effect, and the user has to do it manually.<br /><br />Now comes the shocking part: Ubuntu is targeted for windows migrators, that should not mean that one has to bring in ugly windows aspects! In windows, after every driver install, user is asked to reboot, and that is not the case with Linux. Linux supports modules and thus every driver installation does not require a reboot. But with Ubuntu user is forced to reboot, in order to use the new graphics drivers. Restarting X Server should have been more than enough.<br /><br />Also people who are too much excited about the cube, will be disappointed. Ubuntu has left compiz configuration utility out of standard install. User needs to explicitly install "compizconfig-settings-manager" to get System > Preferences > Advanced desktop effects settings. The required packages only 527.1 KB. I don't know why these were kept out of the media, they could have been easily incorporated both in CD and DVD format<br /><br />There is a saying "My way or Highway", but this is not amongst the open source principles. I have nvidia graphics card and explicitly compile the drivers and then load them through xorg.conf. But Ubuntu does not allow me to manually load the compiled drivers. And even if you somehow manage to load it, visual effect settings go for a toss (as they are bound with nvidia-glx-new package).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Ubuntu has quickly achieved mass attention, it was also #1 distribution for a long time. It has done some great work like ship-it to promote Linux. But I am really disappointed with the current trend. The current release is a mixed bag, but is completely unacceptable in terms of Ubuntu's glorious past.<br /><br />Installer bugs are a strict NO, for any software. Right now, Ubuntu needs to only focus on "Bug-free, efficient installer". No software can beat the competition if the installer is buggy. Also Ubuntu should not limit the options given to open source enthusiast.<br /><br />The next release 8.04(hardy) is supposed to be LTS(long term support) release, just hoping that Ubuntu is able to set things right in it.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/36750"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-8396920887299520922007-10-11T09:02:00.000-07:002008-02-09T04:55:52.634-08:00Mandriva 2008 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Losing the Magic</span><br /><a href="http://www.mandriva.com/">Mandriva</a> is a commercial Linux distribution: emerged from the ashes for Mandrake and Connectiva. Mandrake was the trend-setter for user-friendliness in Linux. Mandrake was Ranked #1 distribution for a long time before Ubuntu took over. Currently Mandriva is ranked #8 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva">distrowatch</a>. Mandriva comes in different versions; one (single CD), free (OSS only), PowerPack, Discovery. I am using free DVD version for the review.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0KS8N4suGSFd2fmj-u7ZVlK5MCu93-mdKxm986tubZoeSWEgGZeMyUgaU5rJ64_P9ZCuKAUmuGm9vOe_EDAopBJbkU2wL3t67R4J8bIdkppOl5KAxg2QERp_U0fpd088i2qaDMVBjYWQ/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0KS8N4suGSFd2fmj-u7ZVlK5MCu93-mdKxm986tubZoeSWEgGZeMyUgaU5rJ64_P9ZCuKAUmuGm9vOe_EDAopBJbkU2wL3t67R4J8bIdkppOl5KAxg2QERp_U0fpd088i2qaDMVBjYWQ/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120137340790285682" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />Pentium D 2.8 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />"Mandriva One" is the live CD; "Free" does not come with a live CD environment. So if you are curious whether all the hardware will properly function or not, you have to download a separate CD. I preferred to wait and see once the installation is complete.<br /><br />After installation, desktop came up with native 1440x900@Hz. Only a few distributions are actually able to correctly configure a wide-screen monitor, thus Mandriva scores high points for this.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation process is a bit changed; changes seem to be influenced by PCLOS. Graphical Installer comes up and walks you through the installation process. The standard questions are asked. The security configuration that used to be the first screen, has been moved to post-install configuration page.<br /><br />Mandriva searches for all the installed linux distributions and provides you the option for upgrading the compatible distributions. For my system, the installer gave me option to upgrade existing Centos, Ark, PCLOS distributions. I have never tried the upgrade path, but would certainly like to try them out once.<br /><br />You can easily manage your partitions to accommodate the new installation. A new desktop selection screen is added. With this you can pick either Gnome or KDE as your default desktop environment. After the selection, installation starts and takes approximately 15 minutes to complete.<br /><br />Post-Install configuration shows the most changes. It is now much more similar to the PCLOS configuration, and it is really awkward. Time-zone and country selection is a complete mess. The configuration for auto-login is missing. My wireless network card was not detected. The only good part came with desktop resolution. The driver for the graphics card was nv instead of nvidia.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics<br /></span>Mandriva still retain the La Ora theme introduced in the earlier version. For the Free version its light blue and really pleasing to the eyes. But the fonts were looking really bad.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBq45J13PalGWchEHuID8lVzmig-Anauksr4JIu8VN7VEIAPLdTIYDa3Sy-FLxQ_-t6lR5FCUOAIYVJym5fDZJn482yF1HKVy2ATInR9e_F7D1KrN9rSPXNczKg_t7Vdwbff9igpxkAL6/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBq45J13PalGWchEHuID8lVzmig-Anauksr4JIu8VN7VEIAPLdTIYDa3Sy-FLxQ_-t6lR5FCUOAIYVJym5fDZJn482yF1HKVy2ATInR9e_F7D1KrN9rSPXNczKg_t7Vdwbff9igpxkAL6/s320/snapshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120137349380220290" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Being a DVD install there are plenty of softwares available. But majority of the software is of older version. Open Office is 2.2.1 instead of the latest 2.3.0 and Firefox is 2.0.0.6 instead of the latest 2.0.0.7. Additional repositories can be configured to install more software as well. This installation failed for me though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Surprisingly the Free version comes with the audio/video codecs preinstalled. The kaffeine wizard reported lack of win32 codecs and libdvdcss. But, astonishingly, I was able to play MP3 files, WMV files, and DVDs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Eye Candy</span><br />Mandriva comes with Mettese and Compiz Fusion. But I was not able to use them with the default nv drivers. I needed nvidia drivers for 3D acceleration but was unable to install the nvidia drivers.<br /><br />When I tried installing the drivers from on-line repositories, the installer was unable to set up any repository as it was always "unable to parse media.cfg". When I tried to manually build the drivers, nvidia.ko failed to load because either there was a version mismatch between the gcc used to build the kernel and gcc present on the system, or something regarding mis-configured headers.<br /><br />This experience makes me think about the beta testing employed by Mandriva. These bugs should have been ironed out in beta and should not have made it to the release candidate. But, here they are in the release.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Mandrake used to have a unique identity. Initial versions of Mandriva continued with that identity. But the latest version seems to be shedding that identity, and becoming a shadow of other distributions. If you want to lead, don't follow someone else.<br /><br />The current version is at best pathetic. It is below the expectation level of a free distribution, leave out commercial distribution. Hope that Mandriva tries to regain its vision and identity with future versions.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/11699"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com70tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-17248344135055771812007-09-29T01:37:00.000-07:002008-02-09T04:57:17.466-08:00Foresight Linux 1.4 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A nice green appliance</span><br />According to the project <a href="http://www.foresightlinux.org/">website</a> "Foresight Linux is a Distribution which showcases the latest and greatest version of the GNOME Desktop Environment and Freedesktop.org. Foresight includes some of the more innovative and new software being built for Linux today, including Beagle , F-Spot , Avahi , and the latest HAL".<br /><br />Foresight Linux 1.4 features the latest GNOME 2.20, which includes updates to Evolution Email and Calendar, Tomboy Notes, Power Manager, Epiphany Web Browser the GNOME Image Viewer, Eye of GNOME and more. It also features the latest Conary package manager and an updated GTK theme.<br /><br />Foresight is currently ranked #32 at <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=foresight">Distrowatch</a>.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8x5ZMcncgj9gZrrP5s3-06YVKXYwzDGqwIiRq_eKz2KSTY5SWGtSA9iXelylf9dx0-6f4JRtygYPOA8IyurQXhx3KDmbVENvUZuSlXuN2V0bqwKns-G8Jzoo35QhJol7SxmN6HtLITzB8/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8x5ZMcncgj9gZrrP5s3-06YVKXYwzDGqwIiRq_eKz2KSTY5SWGtSA9iXelylf9dx0-6f4JRtygYPOA8IyurQXhx3KDmbVENvUZuSlXuN2V0bqwKns-G8Jzoo35QhJol7SxmN6HtLITzB8/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115886109146260818" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />I have switched to another Machine. Now I am having a Pendtium D 2.8 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Nvidia 7300GS with 256 meg RAM and 19" wide screen monitor.<br /><br />The whole point of specifying a test machine, is to give an idea about what I am using. It shall not be taken as minimum requirements.<br />In general, a processor that is more that 1GHz, a RAM more than 1GB and a separate graphics cards (preferably Nvidia) should be fine for majority of the distributions. A separate graphics card is required if you want to enjoy the eye candy, or if you have a wide screen monitor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Foresight Linux does not come with a Live CD environment and you have to actually install foresight in order to see how it looks. After installation, the new user account is created via a dialog.<br /><br />Foresight came up with 1280x1024@60Hz instead of native 1440x900@75Hz. The xorg.conf had mode lines for almost all the resolutions except 1440x900; closest was 1400x1050@75Hz. Also the resolution section was messed up. I was seeing resolutions like 1440x1440, 1280x1280 etc. On the brighter side, nv module was loaded (in earlier releases, vesa was loaded).<br /><br />I commented out unnecessary mode lines and specified 1440x900 as the only resolution. After restarting X Server, it came up with a nice 1440x900@75Hz.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />Foresight uses the Anaconda installer. It would be right to call it minimalistic anaconda, as some steps are removed. Installation was more or less same except for the fact that my wireless card was not detected.<br /><br />Anaconda asks for the language, keyboard and allows you to configure partitions. It then asks for time zone, root password etc and starts the installation process. The installation process lasted for approximately 15 minutes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />I am fond of the color green, and the bright green used by Foresight is just fabulous and soothing. The theme is disconnected at some places, like the gnome splash screen in blue and no splash screen while booting. But overall, foresight scores high in this area.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />Foresight comes with the latest and the greatest of almost all the stuff. The DVD image being 1.3 gig, allows a lot of applications to be installed by default. Foresight's user guide is also accessible from the main menu.<br /><br />Standard accessories with search and tomboy notes are included. All gnome games are bundled as well. Gimp, Desktop Drapes and SVG vector illustrator are installed as part of the graphics package. Epiphany is the default browser along with Thunderbird, Firefox, Ekiga, Liferea, pidgin, openVPN and XChat. Latest OpenOffice 2.3 and evolution are installed for office applications. Banshree, Brasero, Totem and Last Exit are available under multimedia.<br /><br />Foresight is having mono installed but the build tools(gcc g++ etc) are missing. Foresight uses a web interface for system administration. This requires more work, as some settings are duplicated, some are missing and some don't take effect before a reboot.<br /><br />Foresight comes with conary package manager. It is supposed to be an evolutionary package manager from rPath, but I did not have too much luck with it. I wanted to install proprietary nvidia drivers and thus issued "sudo conary nvidia". Conary downloaded around 6 meg of binary file and then failed while installing it. The error message clearly stated that it was a bug in conary and I should file a bug report. I wanted to give conary a second try and fired the same command again. Conary started to download 6 meg again! Come on, I just downloaded the non-corrupt package, why can't an advanced package manager identify that?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioDoQlrxCHdEV4s9Vs9zEsbvR6fCPCw8B3jXyfXXF9NXeacqYUdjkRkUnXLUXFGMDpjURzX1HKxsl4PbmJJDowtX81ZcGMa-99tA-Sknp5YLwZMt9tG5y6fd_TKPojxnL5DedKgR2-gXDO/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioDoQlrxCHdEV4s9Vs9zEsbvR6fCPCw8B3jXyfXXF9NXeacqYUdjkRkUnXLUXFGMDpjURzX1HKxsl4PbmJJDowtX81ZcGMa-99tA-Sknp5YLwZMt9tG5y6fd_TKPojxnL5DedKgR2-gXDO/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115886113441228130" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Foresight has an out of box support for almost all types of media. I was able to play WMV and MP3 files. I also enjoyed watching DVDs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Foresight comes with latest compiz fusion. A system tray icon is included for the same. All the beryl configurations are available. But because of the lack of proprietary nvidia drivers I was unable to test it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />CD has a limit of 700 meg. Once a distribution has crossed this limit and has moved on to a DVD format, the distribution can go on a wild package hunting. And Foresight should look around and see some more useful packages to include by default. Build tools, drivers, IDEs are a few recommendations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Foresight is really great for seeing the latest gnome; one can show off the bleeding edge desktop. Foresight also has a great out of box experience. Foresight is having a great theme and is quite user friendly. I would recommend it to every one, coming to me, asking for which Linux to start with.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/8819"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-72846858139601371712007-09-27T09:56:00.000-07:002008-02-09T04:57:01.374-08:00Linux Mint 3.1 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Great Vision, Great prospects, but losing some it somewhere in the crowd.</span><br />Mint Linux is a buntu derivative. According to the project <a href="http://www.linuxmint.com/">website</a>; "Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution". Mint Linux is currently ranked #6, on <a href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint">distrowatch</a>. Celena (codename for Linux Mint 3.1) boasts about mintAssistant, mintUpload, proprietary drivers, plug-ins, stability, performance and usability.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgspTQYvdtV5E2WkZKMs3NxHux7_7tlGtJIEUlNk2NuqXQB1Ifg89HkLVOz_xZB35nSexFuxryoMX4y3nlyd6alUo-MTnYZr9o6Yay1Lxe2HqN7XvmuUDqSrQURlqsKRI8x-LZJZT-FpZdZ/s1600-h/Screenshot-1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgspTQYvdtV5E2WkZKMs3NxHux7_7tlGtJIEUlNk2NuqXQB1Ifg89HkLVOz_xZB35nSexFuxryoMX4y3nlyd6alUo-MTnYZr9o6Yay1Lxe2HqN7XvmuUDqSrQURlqsKRI8x-LZJZT-FpZdZ/s320/Screenshot-1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5114943153371391282" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />My workstation is a dual core 3.4 GHz intel processor, with 4 Gig RAM and 512 MB Nvidia 7950 graphics card. I have a 19" wide screen monitors which supports 1440x900@75Hz.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Like Ubuntu, mint offers a live CD environment where you can see how the distribution works on your computer before actually installing it. On my machine live CD booted at 1280x1024@60Hz instead of native 1440x900@75Hz. The live CD environment seemed too slow to me. The new artwork introduced with Celena was with black theme and looked nice.<br /><br />One point I would like to mention is about the drivers. Mint boasts about proprietary drivers but nvidia graphics drivers are missing from the selection. Module nv was configured for my nvidia graphics card and thus native 3D support was missing. I tried to manually change the driver in xorg.conf, but xorg refused to start because nvidia module was not installed. Finally I have to manually install proprietary drivers for nvidia. This is somethings that needs to be looked at by the distribution developers<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9zahBMwg8pAHNqCjwMAlun-01_dZXgq13QY3oFFJiL63sgTSQyThOriJcX6wtCWDkNSO_JgJGiR3fxsZr_Th70GaKWIGlCGQaOjt69WvUyDA1XS71NljwC5nUU7vnGfTPhNyiWvrHFrk1/s1600-h/Screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9zahBMwg8pAHNqCjwMAlun-01_dZXgq13QY3oFFJiL63sgTSQyThOriJcX6wtCWDkNSO_JgJGiR3fxsZr_Th70GaKWIGlCGQaOjt69WvUyDA1XS71NljwC5nUU7vnGfTPhNyiWvrHFrk1/s320/Screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5114943144781456674" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installer is the same 6 step installer used by Ubuntu. And I personally feel that the installer is bloatted and does unnecessary operation that seem to make you feel that your computer is slow and outdated. But this is rant is directed to Ubuntu instead of Mint.<br /><br />The installation process is fast took around 15 minutes to finish and comparatively fast. On first boot user is shown mintAssistant.<br /><br />I was really exited about it but was greatly disappointed . The number of configurations for a new machine are enormous but only three options are provided by mintAssistant, namely root password, disk configuration and fortune. I feel that all these options are extremely irrelevant. sudo is far better, nobody cares how the disks are managed (as long as they see the contents) and fortune is stress reliever.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />I really liked the earlier blue theme found in Mint. But now with new black wallpaper and green logo, I feel really bad about the looks. Its good to stick to two colors at max, otherwise the theme feels disconnected.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNL93FAHg3L4bzMnV4IrfdJIBEhol7Z25zU23RWVEHlm8pgN6gpJIp5N3XPMd9pymJ4UCuqDdrWz7SCdqSJasneyCZuwzx-R-Ya7WCradlgJPKFzcG3BtHLJF5bSOc6rTbb5JQr89hW3jk/s1600-h/Screenshot-2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNL93FAHg3L4bzMnV4IrfdJIBEhol7Z25zU23RWVEHlm8pgN6gpJIp5N3XPMd9pymJ4UCuqDdrWz7SCdqSJasneyCZuwzx-R-Ya7WCradlgJPKFzcG3BtHLJF5bSOc6rTbb5JQr89hW3jk/s320/Screenshot-2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5114943161961325890" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />The first thing to notice is custom application launcher. The launcher is well organized and easy to use.<br /><br />Being a single CD installation distribution, the application set is limited and oriented to a desktop user. Tomboy notes is a noticeable addition to Accessories. Gimp is present for image manipulation. The latest version of firefox, thunderbird, sunbird, pidgin, java runtime are installed by default. Open Office version installed is the outdated 2.2.0. instead of 2.2.1 or latest 2.3.0.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span> I was able to watch videos, DVDs. and listen to music.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Both Beryl and Compiz are installed be default, leading for more confusion for a novice. come on guys even beryl and compiz agreed to merge back why are we still having them differently in Mint?<br /><br />The default configuration for xorg crashes beryl and you have to manually edit xorg.conf to add special parameters in order to make beryl work. I think it will be long time before we actually see a distribution with runs beryl/compiz out of box.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Version 3.1 is supposed to be minor update over 3.0, but even the kernel remains the same. With gibbon around the corner users would have been more happy with a new version based on gutsy. The changes made in Celena do no warrant a new version. Why does mint need to frequent releases? Have a better release plan for Mint. Mint needs more focused efforts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />I have to admit that Mint is one of the most beginner friendly distribution out there. It is the only distribution that I installed on my dad's machine and he is really happy with it.<br /><br />But with the current release I feel that Mint is getting derailed. It is emphasizing on frivolous decorations instead on usability. Mint has a great vision and have fulfilled it so far; it reached the distrowatch top ten. It just need to make sure that good work continues.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/8446"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-46959012856527707602007-08-20T06:51:00.000-07:002008-02-09T04:45:41.355-08:00Sidux 2007-03 Review.<span style="font-size:90%;">Sidux is a desktop-oriented distribution and comes with as a live CD.Its based on the unstable branch of Debian GNU/Linux. It was originally created by a group of developers who split from the KANOTIX project and launched their own distribution. Sidux has a relatively speedy release cycle.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />My workstation is a dual core 3.4 GHz intel processor, with 4 Gig RAM and 512 MB Nvidia 7950 graphics card. I have a dual 19" wide screen monitors which support 1440x900@75Hz.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimRW69KiIXtPDFEX2-Q5F4q-CEBQZiovn8kZI9kD97zLV-rO1G1YDXyOyYUeKR_RHNXkJjUE3hQi9I4_dIO-B63-rpX3w551AhNwqYrWePuuLxHy3e4FKgmMO1Su8iHawOOqnJxnQMkpM1/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 407px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimRW69KiIXtPDFEX2-Q5F4q-CEBQZiovn8kZI9kD97zLV-rO1G1YDXyOyYUeKR_RHNXkJjUE3hQi9I4_dIO-B63-rpX3w551AhNwqYrWePuuLxHy3e4FKgmMO1Su8iHawOOqnJxnQMkpM1/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5100794185689398114" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Sidux comes with a live CD environment, and has couple of options for booting. The default option worked fine for me. The monitor resolution was set to 1280x1024, instead of native 1440x900. Only a few linux distributions can actually run the native 1440x900 resolution, and vista starts only with 1024x768. So in screen resolution I will say , its good .<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />Installation is as easy as it gets. Sidux has its own custom installer. There is a warning message on the installer application, stating that the installer is currently under heavy development and not completely stabilized yet. But the installer worked perfectly fine for me.<br /><br />It has a good installer consisting of six screens in a tabbed wizard mode. First screen is the welcome and last is the actual installation screen. The second tab asks for hard drive partitioning. User can start a partitioning tool (if required), and select the root partition where the system is to be installed. Third tab asks for boot loader configuration and timezone. Next screen requires username and password. Fifth screen asks for network and service. The installer is still in early version and needs some refinements in terms of layout of fields.<br /><br />The installation was really fast and took less then 10 minutes to finish.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Sidux comes with an earthly theme; plain and simple light brown colored. Definitely appealing to the eyes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />The best part was the inclusion of build tools and Linux headers. Even though Debian does not include these tools with its default install, Sidux does. In my opinion build tools and Linux headers are the two most important ambassadors of free software foundation. These are the tools every aspiring geek should know.<br /><br />Graphics applications included are - gime gwenview, kpdf, digikam, kghostview. Couple of games are als0 present. For internet, firefox (iceweasel), KTorrent, KBluetooth, Kget, Kopete, Akregator, WengoPhone, Kvpnc, Kwifimanager exist. Multimedia applications included are kaffeine, amarok, k3b, kdetv, KMix. Open Office is present with all the applications.<br /><br />Sidux is based on an unstable Debian and comes along with apt and a lot of applications; which are just a click/command away.<br /><br />Sidux comes with a couple of utilities to configure different parts of the machine. But they are disconnected. A single control center would have been a better approach.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Neither Win32 codecs nor libdvdcss were installed by default and thus I was not able to watch dvd and play windows media files. Also there was no luck playing MP3 files. Sidux has acknowledged this fact and has provided a hot fix on its home page.<br /><br />For a desktop oriented, bleeding edge distribution like Sidux, it is not at all acceptable to stay clear from multimedia support. Even if it meant delaying the release.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />There is no eye candy application installed by default.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQghiX1HlUQRtE1ymNHTLxRtIO4Gg20haD-cyVXyH4XZXNQ2stpq360NYA-CUKhVdbkTT3hx0rSGjzg6cwxWhfmjFkVi5qOCEFTqCEEyafgm7UW_PBMPiwS7tRR6lGlFs8tkcChmxeNXT/s1600-h/snapshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 421px; height: 155px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQghiX1HlUQRtE1ymNHTLxRtIO4Gg20haD-cyVXyH4XZXNQ2stpq360NYA-CUKhVdbkTT3hx0rSGjzg6cwxWhfmjFkVi5qOCEFTqCEEyafgm7UW_PBMPiwS7tRR6lGlFs8tkcChmxeNXT/s320/snapshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5100794198574300018" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Sidux should concentrate more on an out of box experience, as this is really crucial for a live CD environment. The configuration applets are nice but they need to be unified under one application which does all the configurations. Its more important to give a steady and stable experience to the user than to just give away frequent releases.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Sidux is a nice distribution but requires a lot of work to get ready for the prime time.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/4715"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END -->simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-65380569158313195802007-08-13T05:41:00.000-07:002008-03-04T07:53:57.028-08:00Absolute Linux 12.0.2 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW9fxbWn7vjomy7aHShuKIDOA_g4gsAqtYMr7nSDQbRtfx0fDzv_0TTg7KcK0SZDR3ItsqFY760Z1viyS-iBc1TFvi-Kwh1KF56vNm-H6jLyNU-AINdsrzvJTwAnl8hhhEn2Ao-WXuloS-/s1600-h/screenshot.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW9fxbWn7vjomy7aHShuKIDOA_g4gsAqtYMr7nSDQbRtfx0fDzv_0TTg7KcK0SZDR3ItsqFY760Z1viyS-iBc1TFvi-Kwh1KF56vNm-H6jLyNU-AINdsrzvJTwAnl8hhhEn2Ao-WXuloS-/s320/screenshot.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098166254342862018" border="0" /></a>According to Absolute <a href="http://www.pcbypaul.com/absolute/">website</a> "Assembled to make installation and maintenance of Slackware easier. Built for speed, stability, security, ease of use and development (if you are so inclined.) I am as confident in it's stability as a stock Slackware box -- and that is saying something"<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />The test machine that I am using is an AMD Athlon 2600+ XP, 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 with 15" LCD capable of 1024x768@75Hz<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4yL-bXrI66jiu9arbvv2lQiFqKYyY78tG1psNGfdjTpDUpeyz2M14Ml9q9cfE6HtSuFTdOtwxDqVWhNRgozWIPjrmTvnlsvcDGsE1yrz3zBOJemgQjZIJnp1vLb1TKFxnXpg7nrLGfkcR/s1600-h/screenshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4yL-bXrI66jiu9arbvv2lQiFqKYyY78tG1psNGfdjTpDUpeyz2M14Ml9q9cfE6HtSuFTdOtwxDqVWhNRgozWIPjrmTvnlsvcDGsE1yrz3zBOJemgQjZIJnp1vLb1TKFxnXpg7nrLGfkcR/s320/screenshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098166258637829330" border="0" /></a>Absolute does not come with a live cd mechanism. You have to wait for full installation to complete in order to see what an absolute linux machine looks like.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation process is standard ncurses based installer created by Slackware. You can add a swap partition and root partition. The installer allows you to select amongst reiserfs, ext3 and xfs file systems. It also recognizes any NTFS/FAT partitions found on the machine and allows you to configure them. User is prompted for installation mechanisms; "Install from Absolute CD/DVD is the default option". One interesting point to note is that Absolute comes only with single CD install media but it lists DVD media as well.<br /><br />Once the installation method is selected, the installation starts. It takes approximately 15 minutes to install Absolute on my machine. Thereafter the modem configuration screen is displayed. The user can configure LILO as the boot loader. I prefer Grub though, but there is no such option.<br /><br />The next screen allows the user to configure the mouse which is followed by the Network configuration. Then the user can select which services to start when the system boots. Console font configuration, timezone configuration follow. The last step is to set a root password.<br /><br />There is no initial user configuration allowed by the installer, so the user has to login as root on first startup. During this Absolute tries to configure XServer. The resultant xorg.conf was completely screwed up; it did dot detect the frequencies correctly.Moreover, there is no DefaultDepth specified and for the Depths specified, Modes configuration is missing.<br /><br />The default run level is 3; thus you land onto command prompt. I don't get this; what's the point of configuring X if you are not providing it as default login. Also, Absolute is supposed to be a desktop oriented distribution, they why the default run level 3 instead of 4.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv54_Xhxza77n59Vw9gFOy9GcDZ8Dy9yvPeCmG1I08f1dbZcwipm_rWcDPrNs9IA5LKYr6_J37zFZ4SCR6CEkSj4mY30VgdvNy6kIMUE5s5GfY3o9kRaeELZ-mnsJBQ-TqjflMGIusNmKn/s1600-h/screenshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv54_Xhxza77n59Vw9gFOy9GcDZ8Dy9yvPeCmG1I08f1dbZcwipm_rWcDPrNs9IA5LKYr6_J37zFZ4SCR6CEkSj4mY30VgdvNy6kIMUE5s5GfY3o9kRaeELZ-mnsJBQ-TqjflMGIusNmKn/s320/screenshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098166267227763938" border="0" /></a>In this department I will say that Absolute is just bad taste. The look and feel resembles that of windows 95. I can see some of user interface blunders. There are two panels configured by default, both are having the same size and almost the same color.The second one floats over the first one; confusing the user. (In the screen shots I have placed one of the panels on the top)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />The applications found in absolute are limited and suited for a single person only. There are two different file browsers, Rox and Alt. There are a couple of educational applications and some dedicated to configuration tools.<br /><br />Internet applications are limited to Firefox, gFTP, sylpheed. ktorrent, pidgin and putty. Some games are also thrown in. Graphics applications include gimp, screenshot, monitor calibration, color selector etc. There is a video player, an audio player and a sound controller. Nedit, Abiword, vim editors are available. pAgenda Calendar is also available as calendar application. QtCrust, HTML Page and pyCrust are availbale for development.<br /><br />Absolute linux uses XPKGTOOL as a front end for installing applications.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />I was able to play MP3 and windows media files with absolute linux.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Absolute linux is meant to be installed on low end older machines, thus ruling out the possiblity of eye candy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Absolute needs to evolve, it needs to have a community and thus become less specific and more generic.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj16Ig9hBvr39zpbYowk5yTZJgEGbandHTZghYRBfbHVYoA9eJadIIjPhFmneq6kbZDcfewCGWIHDleJNtZcrV_xtbSxwHIXI-SVROgOTovP9LuDfosLMjgAn0BTga3lzGlkr7LkBflVH5H/s1600-h/screenshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj16Ig9hBvr39zpbYowk5yTZJgEGbandHTZghYRBfbHVYoA9eJadIIjPhFmneq6kbZDcfewCGWIHDleJNtZcrV_xtbSxwHIXI-SVROgOTovP9LuDfosLMjgAn0BTga3lzGlkr7LkBflVH5H/s320/screenshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098166271522731250" border="0" /></a>I seriously do not understand the need or vision for Absolute linux. It does not provide anything extra over Slackware. Slackware offers icewm, fluxbox, kde and some other window managers to be selected during installation process.<br /><br />Absolute is based on slackware and thus started with version 12; highest version number existing for any distribution. But wait a second, where are version 1 to 11?<br /><br />Making a distribution is really easy now-a-days, pick a package manger, pick up a list of open source applications to install, create custom packages and burn them on a disk. But the soul of any distribution is the vision. What do you want to acomplish with your distribution. And in my opinion absolute linux is absolutely missing the soul.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/4027"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-69758114912812650312007-08-10T23:40:00.002-07:002008-02-09T04:46:48.557-08:00Asian Linux 2.0 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7l5h_AbeWfFGqyk38xLMkV4PLGfLbKBpa99Z3a4AB6cBDABRkvQQ80qGEdI59pFGFaoU9v9JX_tGbU_prj3BhSjhSu5GUhLWPQAfO9IMbCL6WWkUUEIiADhJAFRUwN4x-M0blTlblvPP1/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7l5h_AbeWfFGqyk38xLMkV4PLGfLbKBpa99Z3a4AB6cBDABRkvQQ80qGEdI59pFGFaoU9v9JX_tGbU_prj3BhSjhSu5GUhLWPQAfO9IMbCL6WWkUUEIiADhJAFRUwN4x-M0blTlblvPP1/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097331664887837826" border="0" /></a>This distribution comes with 5 CD installation media, and there is no DVD iso image available on the download site. All the five CDs are required for installation and changing CDs during installation is a real pain; they also slow down the installation process. The logo used by Asian resembles adobe's logo in blue color.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">History</span><br />According to the poject <a href="http://www.asianlinux.net">website</a> "AsianLinux is one of the complete Linux Distributions developed in India. It has a lot of additional Entertainment & Development tools as compared with other Linux Distributions. It consists of Mozilla Firefox Browser with Flash Plugins & Java Runtime which makes it fully compatible for Internet Applications"<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />The test machine that I am using is pretty old; it is an AMD Athlon 2600+ XP, 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 with 15" LCD capable of 1024x768@75Hz<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />AsianLinux does not come with a live CD mode. So you have to install the distribution before you can check it. I think it is pretty outdated, and some users will be petrified by the fact that they have to install the distribution first. Anyways this is a personal opinion, and the standard installation method was the norm before MEPIS changed the whole landscape.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZUMUKr4PxGvEf1X0_cAeSfBrYZEVCtv6SL1elsfft1Lzi64cDki6v7dM4DDFVIqJOTJFGB45Sf_JbG0WSXDNIJc3cKZ0PlRODCthtz0hMi795cRC16PRKg67EEnQRQuYXgc30Vxttc9x/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZUMUKr4PxGvEf1X0_cAeSfBrYZEVCtv6SL1elsfft1Lzi64cDki6v7dM4DDFVIqJOTJFGB45Sf_JbG0WSXDNIJc3cKZ0PlRODCthtz0hMi795cRC16PRKg67EEnQRQuYXgc30Vxttc9x/s320/snapshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097331669182805138" border="0" /></a>The installer application gives you an option to check the validity of the installation media. This is a really long process and I recommend users to just give it a pass.<br /><br />The installation asks for user language, keyboard, and partitioning. In the partitioning application there is no option to resize an existing windows partition. It picks up any existing swap partition, and the user is left to just select the root partition.<br /><br />Then the user has the option to select networking options, timezone and boot loader. The options are reasonably defaulted and should not be a concern for a newbie. Then comes the software package selection.<br /><br />Redhat based, anoconda package selection is one of the best; its simple and yet provides you with full flexibility. I advise that users give a complete thought to what they want to install, as using yum/pirut at a later stage can be a unpleasant experience.<br /><br />Thereafter the installation process starts, and its a really lengthy process, it took more than an hour to finish.<br /><br />The installer does not give an option for creating default user. So on first login you have to log in as root and create a new user by using KUser application. It should not allow root to login.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Asian Linux reminded me of my first encounters with linux. The look and feel is similar to what Redhat had around 10 years ago. There is nothing good for this section.<br /><br />Xorg configuration was completely screwed up. I was getting 800x600 @60Hz and the color depth was only 16. The driver was correctly loaded to radeon though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFbZDhEvNZeom-hYQLGYNm6UdGLU7tztwCH0P7QsJS0rDVFn-MBZ_LWJpUL8jmn0vRVXaF_bJ1YZk_XXKcT_iyZxV3dWXL8IhGXTqe2RRDgE_r8JoGSZbowoN3q2LUZecmi34O9DZCADFO/s1600-h/snapshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFbZDhEvNZeom-hYQLGYNm6UdGLU7tztwCH0P7QsJS0rDVFn-MBZ_LWJpUL8jmn0vRVXaF_bJ1YZk_XXKcT_iyZxV3dWXL8IhGXTqe2RRDgE_r8JoGSZbowoN3q2LUZecmi34O9DZCADFO/s320/snapshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097331673477772450" border="0" /></a>Being a 5 CD install, Asian Linux provides you with lot of software. But the majority of the application software provided is outdated; open office 2.0, firefox 1.5.0.8. And so on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />Win32 codecs and libdvdcss were installed by default. So the user can easily watch movies. But when I tried to play MP3 songs, the only thing that i got was static noise. The sound card was properly configured and auto test produced correct sound.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Fedora 6 was one of the early adopters of compiz, still there was no eye candy provided by default in Asian Linux.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6Q1el5h7m4M8TJnjT8VqiWuIKFY3wftPH3tc3ngRSdQfsjpe2nnO77Z6jJJCm7TRLAi3JEbcEmXAavaVN_QN_XdNLAk9ckzaxnMNNnwZ2ndgNcKgt9WM3PE9XMbCg1GitXJUQv6GqlBy/s1600-h/snapshot4.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6Q1el5h7m4M8TJnjT8VqiWuIKFY3wftPH3tc3ngRSdQfsjpe2nnO77Z6jJJCm7TRLAi3JEbcEmXAavaVN_QN_XdNLAk9ckzaxnMNNnwZ2ndgNcKgt9WM3PE9XMbCg1GitXJUQv6GqlBy/s320/snapshot4.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097331673477772466" border="0" /></a>I would recommend to stay away and clear from Asian Linux, until you are feeling too much nostalgic. If you feel good about Redhat 7/8 and want to relive the same experience over again, then you should check Asian Linux. In one word, it is simply outdated.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/3855"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-87841857762731190272007-08-09T09:14:00.001-07:002008-02-09T05:01:28.376-08:00Linux Mint 3.0 Xfce Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><a href="http://linuxmint.com/">Linux Mint</a> is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. It is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories. The 3.0 Xfce edition was released on August 7, 2007. Some snapshots for Linux Mint can be found <a href="http://linuxmint.com/screenshots.html">here</a>, but these snapshots are not specific for Xfce.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />The test machine that I am using is pretty old and well suited for lightweight distributions like this. It is an AMD Athlon 2600+ XP, 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 with 15" LCD capable of 1024x768@75Hz<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />On the boot screen, user is given three choices. Default one is to open a live session with Linux Mint Xfce. The booting takes a little time as it configures all the hardware. It correctly identified the screen resolution of 1024x768@75Hz. The system seems similar to the gnome version.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The installation is the same seven step installation used by Ubuntu. It asks you about the language, time zone and key board. The worst part is the hard disk partitioning.<br /><br />The partitioner takes too much time to identify all the partitions. Then whenever user changes something, it requires to rescan the whole partition table again. Why does one need to rescan the whole partition table with every single edit; this could be done at once when the user selects to write the changed partition table to disk. Anyway this rant should not be applicable to Mint as they are using the standard *buntu installer.<br /><br />Then it provides you with an option to migrate your user settings from any existing operating system. It shows you the final configuration and you can go ahead with the installation. The installation was relatively fast; it took approximately 10 minutes to finish.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br />Now this is one of the most awful aspect of *buntu family. Three years in making and nobody could ever come up with a good grub menu. Why are users offered an outdated black & white boot loader with no image. Some distributions have advanced to gfxgrub, but if that seems a huge effort then at least provide a nice image for the grub. Again this rant is not something specific to Mint.<br /><br />A lot of times, I see people referring to Xfce as "tasteless mimicking of Gnome". This is because distributions like Xubuntu and Linux Mint Xfce actually make them believe that. Come on, Xfce has its own identity, there is no difference in desktop context menu and start menu. Distributions like Zenwalk and Vector actually keep the original Xfce feel and look great.<br /><br />Linux Mint shares the wallpaper and icons across all the versions; Gnome, KDE and Xfce. Other editions of Mint include specialized launchers, and I was expecting something on similar terms for Xfce edition, but there was none.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />I feel that the set of applications included is very limited as compared to other Xfce based distributions. User gets standard accessories with catfish, mousepad, thunar and tomboy notes. For graphics you have gimp. For Multimedia you have mplayer, xfmedia, gnormalize, exaile, brasero. Internet applications contain, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Java 6, Deluge. For office, you have open office.<br /><br />User gets a lot of configuration options via system settings. Linux Mint XFce edition also has its own control center. XServer-Xorg application really requires an applause, it is a really nice front end for editing xorg.conf and its does its work very well. One key application missing is the one for taking screenshots. I was unable to find any pre-installed screenshot application and thus this review lacks screenshots :(<br /><br />On the plus point all the Ubuntu repositories are compatible with Mint and thus you can install any application you want from the repositories.<br /><br />Fortune is installed by default and displays humorous quotes every time you open a terminal. Fortune cookies are great fun, but not many distributions include them by default (the only other distribution which I know is Slackware)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br />As part of Mint mission statement, it is supposed to provide better out of box experience to the user and it does the same to some extent. I was able to play windows media file, MP3 file and DVDs. Flash was also enabled for web surfing. Only missing point was that my sound card was not configured properly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Beryl is installed, which you can easily configure. For me the default driver loaded was ati and not radeon and thus I had initial problems with beryl. Once the driver was changed to radeon beryl worked great. Beryl came up with default red window borders which was inconsistent with the generic green theme.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendations</span><br />Linux Mint Xfce requires some polishing, and in doing so it should stop mimicking gnome. It also requires lot more applications out of the box.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Linux Mint is a good distribution but I was really disappointed by the Xfce edition. There are a lot other Xfce based distributions which are far more superior to Mint. I would like to just wait and see Linux Mint Xfce edition getting polished.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/3641"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-12071786263775837792007-08-05T09:20:00.001-07:002008-02-09T05:03:31.567-08:00Sabayon Linux 3.4 review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">A bright red star at open horizon</span><br />Sabayon is the new name for earlier RR4 distribution. It is based on Gentoo and modified according to the needs of users. It comes in two version; one full DVD version and another in single CD mini-edition. Recently they have also launched a Business Edition for Sabayon.<br /><br />This is what the project has to say on its website "Get rid of Microsoft Windows. Install the Sabayon Linux Operating System and unleash the full potential of your Computer. Sabayon Linux features the most advanced Industry Open Source technologies: no hassles."<br /><br />You can visit the project <a href="http://www.sabayonlinux.org/">homepage</a> read about it more and see some more <a href="http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/screenshots/">screenshots</a>.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Test Machine</span><br />This is one distro that has been occupying one partion on my personal workstation. Its a dual core 3.4 GHz intel processor, with 4 Gig RAM and 512 MB Nvidia 7950 graphics card. I have a dual 19" wide screen monitors which support 1440x900@75Hz.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Booting</span><br />Sabayon gives you a lot of options for booting. The default option is full fledged live CD environment. Sabayon has supported accelerated graphics even in live CD environment for a long time (with the help of proprietary drivers). When you boot in the live CD user is given an option to select the acceleration package to be used; namely AIGLX or XGL or no acceleration. This is one unique configuration that is not available with other distributions.<br /><br />The live CD could not start my Xserver at desired resolution of 1440x900, instead it was just able to have 1024x768 even with required nvidia drivers loaded. I think it has to do something with the accelerated graphics. But any way the resolution was enough for installing my system.<br /><br />When you log in to live environment, you see a really nice blend of red and black. This makes sabayon a lot different from standard blue style, found in other distros. On the desktop you see nvidia driver configuration icon. Also there are lots of games ready to be tested.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Installation</span><br />The installation icon is placed on the desktop. Sabayon uses a modified version of Anaconda (well known redhat installer) for installation. The installation is lengthy but complete with all configuration. Installer detects your wireless network card and allows you to configure it during the installation.<br /><br />Anaconda ask for language, keyboard and allows you to configure partitions. It asks which desktop environment you want to have; namely gnome, kde or fluxbox. KDE is the default desktop and fluxbox if for users who have power restrained systems.<br /><br />Installer then asks for different group of applications that you want to install. There are lot of games to be installed and played on linux, and sabayon proves this point very well. For the blogger who says that linux is not ready for gaming, i say "go check Sabayon".<br /><br />The installation process is lengthy, processor intensive and time consuming. For my machine it took approximately one hour to finish. For a system that is more that 2 years old, it can very well take four or more hours.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_57HC7RCRmdc/RrX6MHP9c4I/AAAAAAAAABc/uQZa2TP7UwA/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095253639450948482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 600px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 284px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_57HC7RCRmdc/RrX6MHP9c4I/AAAAAAAAABc/uQZa2TP7UwA/s320/snapshot1.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Aesthetics</span><br />The theme adopted by sabayon is different at the best. I feel that the theme aspect is half cooked in sabayon. If doesn't feel like one continuous theme. At some places the theme puts extra strain on eyes. If you try to run any GTK based applications the menu entries are completely unreadable. The console starts with prompt color light green with white background, a color combination that is hard to differentiate.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_57HC7RCRmdc/RrX6M3P9c5I/AAAAAAAAABk/LQiOobfXD30/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095253652335850386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 605px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 244px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_57HC7RCRmdc/RrX6M3P9c5I/AAAAAAAAABk/LQiOobfXD30/s320/snapshot2.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Applications</span><br />Being a DVD based installation there is a really huge set of applications. Sabayon uses Portage as application manager. Thus the applications installed are really fast and optimized to the tastes for the user. There is a front-end for Portage with the name protato which helps in finding and installing applications.<br /><br />Google Earth, Google Picasa, skype and virtual box are some of the applications installed by default in sabayon that you will not find in an other distribution.<br /><br />Qt, bean shell and glade are installed by default for application development. With all other unique applications, I was expecting eclipse to be installed by default but I think I was expecting too much.<br /><br />For games all the standard gnome and kde games are installed by default. And along with that there are a lot of 3D games to try out; Danger from the deep, Savage, Nezuiz, sauerbraten, Second life, Battle for Wesnoth and many more.<br /><br />A lot of applications are also installed for graphics; DjVu, gimp, picasa, digikam, fspot, kooka etc. Same goes with interenet applications; azureus, google earth, filezilla, wireshark, amule, firefox, thunderbird, skype, NX, wlan manager. Coming to multimedia application you see the same trend; mplayer, real player, kaffeine, dvd::rip, elisa, lightscribe labeler, tvtime and so on. Open Office 2.2. is installed for office productivity suite.<br /><br />I wanted to see a specialized control center for sabayon to make it more user friendly, but it was missing. Except that, I think i was very much impressed by what sabayon has to offer to a new user.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Eye Candy</span><br />Sabayon is the only distribution to include the new compiz fusion 3D accelration manager to provide great eye candy to the user. Compiz fans have a reason to rejoice, compiz now works with xinerama.<br /><br />Configuration options for compiz, are enourmous, there are lots of plug ins to add extra effect. Its just plain fun game to configure and use different effects.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Multimedia</span><br />Sabayon comes pre-loaded with all the required codecs. I was able to view DVD, listen mp3 files, watch windows media files.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Conclusion</span><br />Sabayon is one distribution that can give all major distributions a run for their money and it is almost there as well. The power of open source can not be felt with binary distribution packages, the real power comes with custom compilation, and an environment that provides an easy way to do the same. Sabayon is the kind of environment that one should be looking at if s/he wants to harness the true power.<br /><br />Hope that sabayon mantains its right track and iron out the rough corners so that we can rely on a really briliant star.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/3150"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com62tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-57430383670798684672007-08-05T04:09:00.001-07:002008-02-09T04:48:09.513-08:00Freespire Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Freespire - a new step towards freedom</span><br />Freespire is a comunity version for commercial Linspire. The latest alpha 2U was released on 22nd March, 2007. You can visit freespire site <a href="http://www.freespire.org/">here</a>. Some of extra screenshots are also available <a href="http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Screenshots">here</a>.<br /><br />Generally I avoid reviewing distributions that as in beta phase. It seems like commenting on half cooked solution, when everyone knows that it is not finished yet. But I would like to make an excetpion in case of Freespire.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />So my test machine is a bit old; five years to be precise. It is having AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (overclocked), 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 graphics card. It has enough meat for trying out an average desktop distribution.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Freespire CD gives you option to boot in Live CD and install the distribution directly. Oddly the option for live CD is not the default one. The default option is to install the distro. Anyway this is a matter of personal preference.<br /><br />The booting process is similar to what is seen in ubuntu. The default color scheme is blue and I really liked the kind of blue used by freespire. Freespire correctly identified 1280x1024@75Hz for my 19" monitor, and started KDE.<br /><br />Once you are on the desktop you will surely notice the marvelous icons bolsted by Freespire. Its just great. On the desktop you see NTFS drives automatically mounted. Gnome partition editor (gnome partition editor is much powerful than Qtparted and its a good decision of include it here). You have icon for CNR (Click and Run) stating 'coming soon'.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />On the desktop you see an icon to install freespire link on the desktop. It opens a full screen application. The installation application ask for keyboard layout and installation method. There are two installation methods "Take over an entire hard disk" and "Advanced install".I prefer the latter as I have several operating systems installed on the single hard drive.<br /><br />In advanced installation method you select root partition and whether you want to write boot loader in Master Boot Record. Then it asks for computer name, User name and administrator password. Actually, its misleading to say administrator password, it is the user password used for sudo. This can lead to some confusions.<br /><br />With all these steps you are ready to install the operation system. It displays the final configuration screen asking for your confirmation. The installation takes just under 5 minutes. The installer displays time elapsed and approximate time remaining.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1_xLSSp_FbD3OxST6veHyTOa38U3DQ-OUstEsF4B8R8wWtTFSMccYbWYIC3xZD4xvfrF5oS2Ag9531IwaSlssnak81mXFF-kX6mkAMpnf5wK51fGK9YenARTYK5DO9Q4IR8IHxBKkEKN/s1600-h/snapshot1.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1_xLSSp_FbD3OxST6veHyTOa38U3DQ-OUstEsF4B8R8wWtTFSMccYbWYIC3xZD4xvfrF5oS2Ag9531IwaSlssnak81mXFF-kX6mkAMpnf5wK51fGK9YenARTYK5DO9Q4IR8IHxBKkEKN/s320/snapshot1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095173688634733394" border="0" /></a>As mentioned earlier the blue in blue blend is awesome. The specialized icons are really great. The earlier versions of freespire that I saw were more or less morphing windows; they had menu button renamed as start but now that is gone. The new menu buttons have really good Freespire icons. The default menu bar also looks more like KDE then XP. The automatic login is not configured by default. In my opinion, for a single user desktop , user should have a installation option where s/he can choose to have auto login or not (something I really like about mandriva).<br /><br />On first login user is prompted for a license agreement. I think lot of people out there who really don't bother about the license agreement, and so I just agreed to it. Then you are given screen to configure different aspects of your system, like sound settings, Time zone, screen resolution, etc. But all settings applets have to switch to administrator mode to change, i.e. you have to enter your password. Otherwise its really great and all the aspects of configuration are covered.<br /><br />One thing that I did not like is that by default, the fonts are really big, anti-aliasing is not turned on and the font families are mixed a lot. Any ways, these are just configurations and should not be a big problem.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjR5hviNqvYixfLqee6YH9IT80GF4cjZEMi1XFp9yFL8J2QOFeiMnKr9h5-HLR4ISCW-QpLbJveSbeFt5Gy4ILPqSOhOaI2Sv6AePii4d89LrBfVl-Etu5vndh9oe7E0ncK6hBEhjGvzF1/s1600-h/snapshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjR5hviNqvYixfLqee6YH9IT80GF4cjZEMi1XFp9yFL8J2QOFeiMnKr9h5-HLR4ISCW-QpLbJveSbeFt5Gy4ILPqSOhOaI2Sv6AePii4d89LrBfVl-Etu5vndh9oe7E0ncK6hBEhjGvzF1/s320/snapshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095173697224668018" border="0" /></a> It seems freespire chose to not let off all the XP style configuration. All the applications are still under programs menu. Seeing that it is a single CD installation, the applications select is almost complete.<br /><br />For development we have Nvu, and a few games are also thrown in. You have a good set for internet applications; Java 6, Flash, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Ktorrent, Konqueror etc. For multimedia you have Real Player, Lsongs, KMix, K3b. Open office 2.2 is installed as office application.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia </span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh58KA_cyDr9XRLFg0Z7GpLS_9crXOmjPG36MU_yXyFR_6Xm3gDTA13jUMHkPUrotMM3bgEyo2rBxQYIFNzyNzxYQa6OjdDvw5y22P8C4gkHxPpX3wa9sU3w_nusV6fIyg7LcxC8z2MlM8/s1600-h/snapshot2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh58KA_cyDr9XRLFg0Z7GpLS_9crXOmjPG36MU_yXyFR_6Xm3gDTA13jUMHkPUrotMM3bgEyo2rBxQYIFNzyNzxYQa6OjdDvw5y22P8C4gkHxPpX3wa9sU3w_nusV6fIyg7LcxC8z2MlM8/s320/snapshot2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095173692929700706" border="0" /></a> MP3 played well out of the box. Real player 10 is configured as default player applications for audio files. For video files, you have KMPlayer with all the necessary codes installed by default. I did not have any problem watching DVDs and windows media files.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />Freespire is an appealing distribution for new comers and once the CNR is fully implemented it will really be one of the easiest distributions to use. I will recommend it to all the newbies and KDE aficionados. For M$ users if you are thinking about the switch and don't want to go through the noisy ubuntu forum Freespire is there for you<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/3151"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com93tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-26689485333601926692007-08-05T04:01:00.002-07:002008-02-09T05:04:17.138-08:00Wolvix 1.1 Hunter Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fast and elegant</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDFr2PdydppsthCOhiODvHix6YYumoDt6P5zZgdTq8pSUsEDJPMtTC-DOnD4KbifwiYK0sv67-d1hI_4fYAf9AqhryiDfBbT8Am7GVq4AHURw2X-d_YiqweDkg4fcbEW0olzQLMD3lW2-/s1600-h/screenshot_2007-08-06_19-51-54.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDFr2PdydppsthCOhiODvHix6YYumoDt6P5zZgdTq8pSUsEDJPMtTC-DOnD4KbifwiYK0sv67-d1hI_4fYAf9AqhryiDfBbT8Am7GVq4AHURw2X-d_YiqweDkg4fcbEW0olzQLMD3lW2-/s320/screenshot_2007-08-06_19-51-54.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095949333958587378" border="0" /></a>Today I am trying Wolvix Hunder Live CD. Wolvix was a remastered SLAX CD, but currently they have changed there base to good old slackware. The live CD provides plenty of cheat codes, available <a href="http://wiki.wolvix.org/CheatCodes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">here</span></a>. Wolvix uses XFCE as its desktop environment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Test Machine</span><br />So today I am using my old test machine, AMD athlon 2600+ XP, 1 Gig RAM, 64 Meg ATI 7200 with 15" LCD capable of 1024x768@75Hz<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Booting is really fast and boasts of a grey theme. I likes the theme as it makes me remember the old days when computer monitors used to be black & while. The root password is toor and not mentioned anywhere on the login screen. I tried the password because I knew thats what slax uses.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />The hard disk installer is currently in testing stage and can not be trusted much. It is located inside Wolvix control panel and there is no shortcut on the desktop. There are two installation methods, full and furgal. I tried out the full installation.<br /><br />The installer is least intrusive and most helpful, it gives you an option to run gparted to make/resize partions on your hard drive. Six questions are asked by the installer; 1. Boot Device, 2. Root Partition, 3. (Optional) /home, 4. Swap, 5. Filesystem, 6. Install Grub, 7. Install. The installation process is really fast, it took approximately 5 mins to copy all the desired files to selected partion.<br /><br />Once the installation is complete, it asks couple of questions. GUI Login or text login, Framebuffer required. Wolvix installer also identified other operating systems installed on the machine, but it could not successfully retreive their names. Also odly enough it gives an option by which user can skip the wolvix entry in grub. I think it is bad taste.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MJBq2oOwIGJ2JnatmXc7i2a1hjOJliUsDa6OJvGk5T3boC_PnOtvztxc_hbKhNiLFrubybrQbdKU17iLkLdVfrc4_vUZgwaK8XCVZJivU3CtprF2JIR28jxrdxoBEy2g9UMrB_EYAS6B/s1600-h/screenshot_2007-08-06_19-53-10.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MJBq2oOwIGJ2JnatmXc7i2a1hjOJliUsDa6OJvGk5T3boC_PnOtvztxc_hbKhNiLFrubybrQbdKU17iLkLdVfrc4_vUZgwaK8XCVZJivU3CtprF2JIR28jxrdxoBEy2g9UMrB_EYAS6B/s320/screenshot_2007-08-06_19-53-10.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095949342548521986" border="0" /></a>As mentioned earlier, the default theme is grey, and it is a nicely designed theme that does not extert strain on eyes. The menus are all colored and look really great. The whole wolvix theme is one continuous theme and everythings seems to be though over very well.<br /><br />System utilization is shown on the desktop, blended with the wallpaper. This display can also be turned on an off selectively.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizinyr9r_e6aNWZvOyT6yYWi1_k3lf1VGzagL0UBmfdRbPSPhEy9o3PqWzLiN9nuHuiJOO_SYTYYrfqA4v6EpKJaayMnAOgZpYc6C7ShFaYycrKc-UrqU4VfIWMKje0brmd4CpOVDl7hjU/s1600-h/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-21-21.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizinyr9r_e6aNWZvOyT6yYWi1_k3lf1VGzagL0UBmfdRbPSPhEy9o3PqWzLiN9nuHuiJOO_SYTYYrfqA4v6EpKJaayMnAOgZpYc6C7ShFaYycrKc-UrqU4VfIWMKje0brmd4CpOVDl7hjU/s320/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-21-21.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095949346843489298" border="0" /></a><br />The applications are selected keeping a average desktop user in mind. For normal accessories, catfish, gnome commander, medit, Xpad are really good choices. XFCE does not have a samba viewer, but gnome commander acts as a really good samba viewer, I just wonder why did I not use it till now on XFCE based systems.<br /><br />Bluefish editor, kompozer, meld diff viewer, scite are available to development realated activities. Some games are also included, along with couple of standard graphics applications. There is huge set of multimedia applications; dvd::rip, vlc media player, kino, mplayer, xine, gtkpod, gpodder podcast client and more.<br /><br />For internet related applications; firefox, thunderbird, dillo, pidgin, phNeighbourhood, wifi radar are also included. Seeing all the mozilla related stuff I wonder why a lot of distributions leave out sunbird; its a calendar application from mozilla and really a good one. Open Office is installed for application with all the variants. I remember someone lately blogged that open office is not equivalent to M$ Office as it does not include an equivalent of M$ Access. But I feel its not his fault as a lot of distributions leave out Open Office Base; which is included in the default installation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Multimedia</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5fAvPqqeAdkliu7GhiFj-htLcZ3y9QHnVJEcq6WY4oWL_MhyrwVg2BhqiAd1WiFURiEeqNf4kfRF_61qKgMRgkYCP6ZB-KXHITe7bmzFUm-P0Y8IKw0pdaS22Xufb38G00uSz63nP5n8/s1600-h/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-21-29.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5fAvPqqeAdkliu7GhiFj-htLcZ3y9QHnVJEcq6WY4oWL_MhyrwVg2BhqiAd1WiFURiEeqNf4kfRF_61qKgMRgkYCP6ZB-KXHITe7bmzFUm-P0Y8IKw0pdaS22Xufb38G00uSz63nP5n8/s320/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-21-29.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095949359728391202" border="0" /></a>Wolvix comes preloaded with all the codecs. MPlayer is the default application used for MP3 and windows media files. DVD also played flawlessly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye Candy</span><br />Wolvix does not come with any eye candy. And I think it goes well with the distro priorities. In my opinion wolvix is meant for older computer to provide excelent user interface.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZtsS8BdR0aqjZHKHQxH3qNuf9Lw9tAw23tw8dNB-heQlHUth16O-j0ohIarX7C0HrQOad5AHfkecCZ8WrlX46uulNQt1JPMtYTzps-3wtgVEIVIt0KKO2PBBtowh-GV-aFiOi3hBo8mfk/s1600-h/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-22-37.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZtsS8BdR0aqjZHKHQxH3qNuf9Lw9tAw23tw8dNB-heQlHUth16O-j0ohIarX7C0HrQOad5AHfkecCZ8WrlX46uulNQt1JPMtYTzps-3wtgVEIVIt0KKO2PBBtowh-GV-aFiOi3hBo8mfk/s320/screenshot_2007-08-07_03-22-37.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095949368318325810" border="0" /></a><br />According to the project website "Wolvix is a LiveDistro built from Slackware and the Linux-Live scripts. It's a desktop and multimedia oriented Linux distribution designed to suit the needs of regular to advanced desktop users."<br /><br />I am not sure how will it work out for advanced desktop users, as lot of them will have preferences regarding KDE and GNOME. But for an average desktop perspective it is really great distro which runs really well on older computer.<br /></span><br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/3339"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END -->simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-63324448252127685542007-07-16T09:08:00.001-07:002008-02-09T05:07:03.444-08:00Pardus Linux 2007.2 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A good vision, lots of promises, but not fully there yet</span><br />The Anatolian leopard (<i>Panthera pardus tulliana</i>) is a subspecies of leopard native to Asia Minor, Turkey. It is unknown whether any of these leopards still exist in the wild. <a href="http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/index.html">Pardus</a> linux is a Turkish distribution named after the Anatolian leopard. Installation screenshots are available <a href="http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/screenshots/usage.html">here</a> <br /><br />This is one really good themed distribution. I like the fact that distributions bring just more than technology to user, they bring an experience with them. It just takes a small amount of time to, change the wallpaper, choose a good icon set, customize menu a little bit, its just awesome.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />Now I have a 19" LCD for my test machine (AMD 2 GHz processor & 1 GB RAM). Pardus installation CD booted with 1920x1200 @ 75 Hz, whereas my monitor only supports 1280x1024 @ 75 Hz. So I was unable to see the complete screen, I was just seeing a part of it. The experience was horrible. It made me seriously feel that my 19" LCD is small. I just can't understand "why would anyone require installer running on 1920x1200?" This is just insane, installer running at 800x600 would have been equally good. This is something that needs a good look from Pardus developers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation.</span><br />I was unable to see the full screen but still somehow I managed to install the system. A really cool minimalistic installer. Just few simple and straight questions. root partition, root password and initial user account. and you are through with the installation questions. This is as good as it gets. Simple no fuss, straight to the point installer. The installation process is really slow, it took approximately 45 minutes on my machine to finish the installation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">System</span><br />I have to admit that Pardus splash screen is the most pathetic splash screen I have ever seen. When you are making a splash screen you should put in some effort for actually placing a progress bar. There is no progress bar on the splash screen and the user has no notification what-so-ever about what is happening.<br /><br />The login screen is continuation of "sea theme" from the splash screen. I would like to point out that this sea theme is totally disconnected from the feline theme you see once inside the desktop. It would have been a lot better if there was only one theme instead of two disconnected themes.<br /><br />On initial login you can configure your menu layout, network (both wired and wireless) and mouse. It feels good to see the wizard configuration as it is really helpfull But timezone is one serious thing missing from the configuration wizard.<br /><br />For me the desktop booted at 1920x1200 again! I was amazed. I tried searching for control panel like stuff. And I find Tamsa configuration center. I launch tamsa and to my shock it is rebranded "KDE Control Center". To me it looks like plain theft. People know kcontrol what it is used for and who made it.<br /><br />Anyway I looked at the current Monitor configuration and it showed 1920x1200 @ 373 Hz, it simply made me laugh. come on 373Hz will fry my monitor :). I tried to change the frequency and the only other frequency option available was 379Hz LOL. I though its time for good old "vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf" Now again another surprize, xorg.conf was having maximum resolution for "1280x1024", I seriously do not understand how can XServer run on a resolution that is not mentioned in the configuration file.<br /><br />And the surprizes were not over with xorg.conf; the default color depth configured by Pardus was 16 bit. come on if I have a monitor that can run 1920x1200 @ 373 Hz why would I be running it on 16 bit colors and not 24 bit?<br /><br />I changed the xorg.conf to suit my needs. To test the new settings, I wanted to log-off and log in again, and thats when I saw my first system freeze. The system just stopped responding. I have to do a hard reset of the machine.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5x69EuRTMQPOUpC_L2WsgtFzS44T4WiY1nPkcw5ZoXgjcf8s3HKLceTrrH5gOTko1sJfi07CZYJYOgDNSROJYcpn9A2zTPaVf7hB_XWNbN6DQm64owQAs5clTmhSVXQU6p0aJ3sF3NjNV/s1600-h/snapshot3.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5x69EuRTMQPOUpC_L2WsgtFzS44T4WiY1nPkcw5ZoXgjcf8s3HKLceTrrH5gOTko1sJfi07CZYJYOgDNSROJYcpn9A2zTPaVf7hB_XWNbN6DQm64owQAs5clTmhSVXQU6p0aJ3sF3NjNV/s320/snapshot3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087834513755348258" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications. </span><br />Pardus includes kicker menu and allows you to choose between the traditional menu or kicker menu. One thing I would like to say is "Stop emulating windows" in terms of layout. The desktop context menu is ripped off functionality just to resemble windows desktop context menu. This also goes with the main menu as you see everything under "Program" menu.<br /><br />All standard applications are installed with their latest version. Open Office 2.2.1 Firefox 2.0.0.4 standard KDE games etc. Yuake is installed by default, this should be plesant surprize for good old command line interface affictionados. Package manager used by pardus is PiSi In terms of multimedia applications, both win32 codecs and libdvdcss are installed by default. So one will not have any problem with not playing any audio/video file. But when i tried running a WMV file i got the sound and a blank screen, not sure what went wrong.<br /><br />One CD KDE systems like Kubuntu made me think that KDE is not good enough for one CD as almost all of them just dropped games section, some even dropped open office as well. But Pardus is especially good in terms of default package selection.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrB2ZAe89dtCZexafwPSAWwtDvCHp_zUGHJHg5bFR2Gi4bDF4Q_c9_pcNTXRS960acXNULvFD4JNcWfHstw035H1q1WJhLELoObdA3YyL75ClHzIbxGc7h1QBF4vj4gORCXPGsz5JqjLK/s1600-h/snapshot4.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlrB2ZAe89dtCZexafwPSAWwtDvCHp_zUGHJHg5bFR2Gi4bDF4Q_c9_pcNTXRS960acXNULvFD4JNcWfHstw035H1q1WJhLELoObdA3YyL75ClHzIbxGc7h1QBF4vj4gORCXPGsz5JqjLK/s320/snapshot4.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087834526640250162" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aesthetics. </span><br />I would really applaud pardus for making Dejavu Sans as the default font for all the standard applications. Dejavu is really good font and i haven't seen a single distro that makes them default. I have to manually change the fonts in other distro but that was plesantly not the case with Pardus.<br /><br />The Icon theme is really nice, the feline desktop is really cool. If you want to say you can say that it is more or less the standard KDE system, but with Pardus it just doesn't feel like one.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu2dv2N-KQvy_kwzZ52d1kbk0FhSuwYz5Q_nuIQFnp6mpVVV9LhNQ2SqjRwu93gNmwnMNxYh9TBLhMLD8WtPsTE_Td4JO1VsBvbumrUXHFsmheE8k-66C62sWFBlKtgYZFjnj6UTwJBJ_X/s1600-h/snapshot5.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu2dv2N-KQvy_kwzZ52d1kbk0FhSuwYz5Q_nuIQFnp6mpVVV9LhNQ2SqjRwu93gNmwnMNxYh9TBLhMLD8WtPsTE_Td4JO1VsBvbumrUXHFsmheE8k-66C62sWFBlKtgYZFjnj6UTwJBJ_X/s320/snapshot5.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087834530935217474" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusions. </span><br />The last time I tried Pardus (around 6 months ago) there were frequent freezes, and I mean a lot; to such an extent that it did not allow me to do anything usefull to it. But I can see the effect of consistent hard work from pardus developors. Pardus is far from being complete but it is on the right track, may be one year from now, it will be shine amongst rest of distros.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/1844"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1792168660992556447.post-4102947833687338152007-07-10T09:05:00.000-07:002008-02-09T05:08:32.236-08:00Dream Linux 2.2 Review<span style="font-size:90%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Truely a linux dream</span><br />So today I downloaded the latest edition of <a href="http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/">DreamLinux</a>. The last time I played with DreamLinux was around 8 months back and was really disappointed as it failed even to boot on my machine.<br /><br />DreamLinux 2.2 Multimedia edition was released on 29th June (same day iPhone was released) . And if you are interested its currently ranked at #17 at DistroWatch.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Booting</span><br />DreamLinux comes as a live CD with installation option. The live CD booted straight to XFCE desktop with 1024x764 @ 75Hz. It was not the optimal 1440x800 @ 75 that my monitor supported, but it is fair enough to get you started.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Installation</span><br />So coming on the installation part. There is a really nice installation help available as default page in firefox. So if you are not sure about something, open firefox and see the help.<br /><br />The Installation application, in my opinion, best in the bread, It shows you a couple of options, namely "Root Password" "Username/Password" "Root Partition" "Grub Location" on a single screen. Even Ubuntu is having seven screens for installation and a lot of time is wasted in screen transitions. I filled in the desired details and the started the installation process. I did not time it, but it approximately took 10 minutes to do the complete installation. This is the fastest installation on my system.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Applications</span><br />XFCE is a really good option of desktops on diet, its fast and elegant yet functional. The only problem is that it does not a have a samba viewer and the way i see it XFCE developers are not interested in adding that support. Now on the home network I simply can't live without samba. My file server and proxy server are on windows :(. So inspite to my liking XFCE, I was not able to use any XFCE targeted distribution on my workstation. And to solve my worries Lin Neighborhood was installed by default.<br /><br />I have a nvidia graphics card and need the proprietary drivers in order to make my dual monitor work. And for compiling nvidia graphics drivers from source you need to have build tools and kernel headers. And in the recent times many distributions have sacrificed these two packages from default installation. But Dream Linux, even being a multimedia edition, provided both by default, and thus I did not had any problem with driver installation.<br /><br />One of the major factor in Linux adoption is "Control Center" concept. Ubuntu does not have it and Mandriva and open SUSE have the best in the breed. And seriously I was not expecting a control center form DreamLinux, it is an over expectation seeing the current trend of distributions. But I was amazed seeing on in DreamLinux. And the DCP Control Center is not one haphazardly put it is well thought over panel.<br /><br />Now a days trend seems to eye-candy stuff – compiz / beryl and I was please to see them in DreamLinux. It has a special settings dialog where you can enable/disable the eye candy stuff.<br /><br />Coming to multimedia stuff I was happily surprised by seeing lot of applications: gxine, xmms, MPlayer, dvd:rip, audacity, jack control, kino, grip, easy tag etc. One of the major criticizm for Linux is iPod; people say that they don't want to switch to Linux because they wont be able to manage there iPod. But hey, look at DreamLinux it comes with gtkpod pre-installed.<br /><br />For office applications Open Office is installed by default. Though I was unhappy to see an older version 2.0 instead of the latest 2.2. Anyway 2.0 is still pretty good. For internet Firefox, Thunderbird, aMSN and Bittornado are installed by default. Flash player and PDF viewer are also installed by default for better web surfing experiece.<br /><br />For CD/DVD burning Brasero is installed. Package management is handled by apt with a really nice front end in form of synaptic. So if you are not satisfied with the applications then just grab new applications from the web.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Asthetics</span><br />This is the distribution that gave me a WOW effect, if i remember correctly the last time I had this WOW effect was with PCLinuxOS 0.93a big daddy. The icon theme is really great. DreamLinux tries to mimic mac and it does it really well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion</span><br />There are some minor glitches in the distribution, but overall DreamLinux is a really good distribution. I have burnt 10 CDs to distribute to friends and recommend to to grab your own iso from the site and enjoy linux. :)<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="145" height="24" src="http://thoof.com/tr/1498"> </iframe><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN --><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onclick="window.open('http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?wt=nw&pub=P8L2YA1Q0BYRL2KK&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'addthis', 'scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,width=620,height=520,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,screenX=200,screenY=100,left=200,top=100'); return false;" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-bm.gif" alt="AddThis Social Bookmark Button" border="0" scrolling="no" height="18" width="125" /></a><!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --><br /></span>simplyjathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15039391699241705953noreply@blogger.com46