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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.

What is GoblinX?

As I stated, GoblinX is a live CD based off of Slackware. I’ll let GoblinX’s website describe the distribution in its own words:

GoblinX is a Live-CD that is based on the excellent Slackware, developed and maintained by Flavio de Oliveira a.k.a Grobsch and created by using Linuxlive scripts. It is directed towards those users whose appreciate quality applications and a workspace that is both practical and beautiful. It contains some of the most often used and praised applications for Linux, a completely operational Linux system inside a single CD-ROM, runs from any CD-ROM drive without requiring the installation and can be easily costumized by everyone.

I’m certainly a user who appreciates quality applications and a workspace that is both practical and beautiful.

One other feature of note is the distribution is available in five different languages (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Deutsch).

Downloading and trying it out

GoblinX boot loader

I downloaded the ISO from the server in Brazil and it cruised along at a little over 100KB/s. I probably should’ve tried the BitTorrent, but it didn’t matter that much. The file downloaded was GoblinX-2.0.iso.

GoblinX booting up with its custom boot splash screen

I burned it to a CD and tried it in my desktop. Unfortunately when the CD was nearly finished booting, the despressing words appeared:

Fatal error occured -
LiveData not found. Searching for golivecd.sgn file, but the file was not found.

I tried using the “goblinx toram” boot option to load the contents of the CD to RAM, but this didn’t work either. Resigned, I booted up VMware Fusion Beta on my MacBook Pro and tried it out there. The CD also failed to boot under VMware, but attaching directly to the downloaded ISO did work. Clearly it was a bad burn or something. The CD burn verified but sometimes these things just happen. Unfortunately as it was my last CD-R, I stuck with attaching directly to the ISO on VMware.

GoblinX booted and came to a really unfamiliar login screen. It had a graphicalized (made-up word) framebuffer console login. It’s the first distribution I’ve used to go that route. These 5 graphics on the left were screen shots of the 5 different choices for window manager/desktop environment you have with GoblinX. It presented a good list of options on how to start X as soon as you login.

Console login screen

I opted to go the default route and type “go” at the shell prompt. X started up and I was brought into an Xfce4 desktop that was heavily themed from its default. The desktop wallpaper was definitely intriguing. I’m not quite sure what it’s from, but “TimeMaster” is written on it.

Xfce4 desktop

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the yellow/orange theme wasn’t quite my taste. Also my own personal preference for my desktop background is a nice scenic image. In any case, I didn’t find the default desktop to be what I’d consider “beautiful”. It wasn’t bad looking, though.

As far as being “practical” is concerned, I would have to agree that it is that. It has a number of useful applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, Abiword, Juk, K3b, GIMP, Gxine, and Gaim to name a few. Firefox is at version 1.5.0.7 and I didn’t check if all the rest of the applications were the latest. I tried starting K3b but it didn’t load. The error I got when I tried running it from an Xterm was:

k3b: error while loading shared libraries: libsamplerate.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

In any case, you’ll notice that the applications are themed to have a consistent looking UI with the GoblinX theme. For example, the following screen shot demonstrates this nicely:

Themed Applications running under GoblinX

Clearly a lot of work has gone into giving everything a similar look. I decided to try picking a different window manager to try out. I quit out of Xfce, and typed “gok” at the shell prompt. KDE promptly appeared. It appeared to have slightly more applications than the Xfce menu did. In any case, it was themed similarly (and definitely deviates from the default KDE look). I did like the KDE theme a lot better than the Xfce one. It has similar icons, but the color scheme and window borders are different.

KDE on GoblinX

K3b didn’t work under KDE either, with the same library error. With the number of applications that come with this relatively small distribution, I didn’t try out all of them, but you get a pretty large selection. All the applications I tried had customized themes to resembled the GoblinX look and feel.

I tried Enlightenment (”goe” command at the console shell) and that worked just fine as well. I didn’t try installing the GoblinX, but you can do that as well.

Enlightenment running on GoblinX

Final Thoughts

I felt that GoblinX is a pretty decent distribution. They definitely went all out to create their own look and feel and they did a good job of doing this. Other than K3b not working, the system appeared to work just fine for me. It gives you a variety of applications to use as well as giving your system a unique look and feel. The effort put in to getting the applications themed together similarly is commendable. It helps solidify the system’s look and feel and gives it a polished look.

The user forums aren’t as active as your bigger name distributions, but it does have them and questions are actively answered by Grobsch, the distribution’s creator.

You get a variety of choice on this live CD. KDE, Enlightenment, Xfce4, Fluxbox, Window Maker. All come with tricked out themes so you can not only have a different window manager, but an entirely different look to your system as well.

Would I recommend GoblinX over another live CD? Probably not to most people. But that being said, it works and looks cool while doing it. The slim, 304MB CD, comes with every type of application most people will need or want on their distribution. The distro’s creator is also helpful when it comes to answering problems on the forums. If you’re the experimental type, I’d recommend giving this distribution a shot. All you have to lose is a blank CD-R and you just might really like this one.

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