Released on April 30, GoblinX 2.0 is a live CD Linux distribution based on Slackware from Brazil. According to DistroWatch, “the primary goal for GoblinX is to create a more pleasant and functional desktop, standardising (sic) all icons and themes to make it easy for novice users to learn about available applications.” Never having heard of it before, I decided to download it and give it a try.
Posted in review, linux | 14 Comments »
Apologies once again for the delay in reviews and new content to the site. Things are still quite busy for me lately, but I’m doing my best to get new reviews up. I have added a good friend as a contributor to this site, Steve Thate. I have known him for many years and he, like myself, enjoys testing out new Linux distributions and seeing what they are about. Expect to start seeing some postings by him in the very near future once he gets acquainted with things.
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Like srlinuxx over at tuxmachines, I was contacted by a guy who was wondering why I hadn’t done a review of Arch Linux 0.8 yet. Well, the simple reason is because I hadn’t gotten around to it! Finally, I have. Here’s my review of the 64-bit version of Arch Linux 0.8.
Posted in review, linux | 18 Comments »
After a nice weekend away in Hilton Head, SC, enjoying the nice sun and the company of family and friends, I am back with another review of a BSD-based system. DesktopBSD 1.6 RC2, released April 13, aims to provide a system that is easy to use but maintains the power and functionality of BSD.
My use of BSD goes back a number of years (late 1990’s) and the latest releases of the standard distributions (Free/Open/Net) haven’t changed much since then. The capabilities have increased, but the look and feel of each OS remains pretty much the same. The original three haven’t made many usability strides since then. (I’m sure some BSD die-hards will have something to say about this. I’m sure I’ve missed some major ones, so feel free to enlighten me.)
In any case, it is good to see that others are stepping up to the plate to bring the BSD line more up to date with what the mainstream operating systems are doing. It is not necessarily about eye candy but ease of system use and configuration that is important. Perhaps the BSD camps do not feel it is necessary to have easy to use administration tools and completely ready to use desktop systems from the install, but I do. Clearly the possibilities are endless, considering what the latest Linux distributions have been able to achieve, and what Apple has brought about with Mac OS X (which has a lot of BSD-based code in it).
Posted in review, BSD | 21 Comments »
Apologies for the light posting lately. I have been busy working on some other projects, and I went out to visit family this weekend for the holiday. I hope everyone had a good Easter! And now the reviews must continue.
Linux Mint, a Linux distribution based in Ireland, is an Ubuntu-based distribution that aims to improve the out-of-box experience of Linux. Let’s see how this distribution stacks up.
Updated (April 11, 8:40AM EDT): Version number in title (and once in article) was incorrectly stated as “Beta 2″ instead of “Beta 020″ and has now been fixed.
Posted in review, linux | 4 Comments »
Folks, I am now mostly recovered from my illness and I am hopefully bringing to you the first (or one of the first!) reviews of the latest SimplyMEPIS 6.5. I am reviewing the 64-bit version on my AMD Athlon 64 x2 system that I built myself. This machine includes 2GB of RAM, 160GB and 200GB SATA drives, and most importantly an Nvidia GeForce 7800GT 256MB. My last review of SimplyMEPIS 6.5 RC 1 got a lot of attention, albeit not nearly as much as my PCLinuxOS 2007 Test 3 review did.
Posted in review, linux | 29 Comments »
This Filipino-based Linux distribution, initiated by the Open Source Group in the Philippines’ Advanced Science and Technology Institute in October 2001, hasn’t received a lot of press (in the US, at least). I just first heard of it via DistroWatch announcing their latest release. Curious, I checked out the distribution’s website, which looked very nice. I’m always interested to see what government sponsored software brings about. I didn’t see any reviews on the DistroWatch page for Bayanihan, so I decided it was time to change that.
Posted in review, linux | 13 Comments »
I have been neglecting the BSD line of operating systems lately, but a new release of DragonFly BSD has come out and I figured this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I have never used DragonFly, but I used to use FreeBSD extensively (I still have it running a few servers) and I’ve also used OpenBSD and NetBSD in the day.
Posted in review, BSD | 7 Comments »
Linux distributions meant to be used as systems administrator utilities often have a special place in the heart of those who have been saved by their usefulness. In my line of work I have found them useful from time to time myself. On my SystemRescueCd review, a reader named Dave recommended checking out Trinity Rescue Kit. So, I decided to give it a try.
Posted in review, linux | 12 Comments »
Turning away from the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink distributions for a moment I now turn my attention to a light-weight distribution aimed at being as simple as possible while still being up-to-date. CRUX 2.3, released on March 20, 2007, attempts to fulfill such a role.
Posted in review, linux | 5 Comments »
Hot on the heels of my PCLinuxOS review I decided to take a look at another distribution that aims to be simple to use yet powerful. Sabayon Linux aims to give users all the bleeding edge software of SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS but is based on Gentoo and uses Portage as its package management system. I haven’t used Gentoo for a couple of years now, but Sabayon’s popularity is continually increasing and with a new release it’s now time to give it a try.
Posted in review, linux | 29 Comments »
