Review: Bodhi Linux 1.0.0

Main Screen + Main Right-Click MenuThis is not the first time that I'm looking at Bodhi Linux, which is why this review will be a little bit shorter than that last one. That said, I felt like it was time for a review with the release of the stable version 1.0.0.For those of you who have never heard of this distribution, Bodhi Linux is an Ubuntu derivative that is known for using Enlightenment E17 as its WM. It's meant to be lightweight, somewhat...

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 March 20

There were a few posts that garnered a handful of comments, so I'll try to repost most of those.Review: Chakra 2011.02 "Cyrus"Reader Znurre said, "Interesting and honest review as always. Good job :)"Commenter hugo lobo had this clarification: "Thanks for the review. Also, one thing that surprised me was that Konqueror didn't have the WebKit rendering engine option even though it is at version 4.6; all it had was KHTML. Maybe I was supposed to get it from the repositories and I missed it. Exactly. You would have to install the 'kwebkitpart'...

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Ubuntu: Even the Computer-Averse Can Use It

Yesterday, I was talking to one of my relatives (whom I shall refer to as $relative) about computers, and I inquired as to whether $relative was still using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" that I had installed on $relative's laptop shortly before I left for college. Do note that $relative is pretty computer-averse when it comes to anything other than using a browser or using a productivity suite. To my surprise, $relative said yes! I also asked if $relative's printing issues were sorted out, because the printer connected is made by Lexmark, and Lexmark...

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Linux Mint Xfce: Now Based on Debian

In all honesty, I didn't see this coming. Sure, if you browse through this blog, you'll see plenty of posts and prognostications on my part about the future of Linux Mint and Debian, but I didn't think this would happen the way it has happened. I regularly open the Linux Mint homepage to check for updates, so when I saw "Linux Mint Xfce RC" released, I got excited because finally Linux Mint 10 "Julia" Xfce will have been released after the release of the GNOME, KDE, and LXDE editions. Then, I realized that in place of "10 'Julia'" was a date number....

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Why I Think All Browsers (Mozilla Firefox Included) Will Survive

Mozilla Firefox 4, as customized by meMozilla Firefox 4 is out, and I'm using it now. It's now fast enough and stable enough that it has rekindled some of the old excitement I felt when I first started using Mozilla Firefox and when I started using a new version of the browser. At the same time that I started using it, I saw this article (Ed Bott, ZDNet) which posits why Microsoft Internet Explorer will survive and Mozilla Firefox won't, and I felt...

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Review: Chakra 2011.02 "Cyrus"

Main ScreenChakra GNU/Linux has become one of the distributions I now test regularly. Its appeal to me lies in the fact that it is based on Arch Linux (and is therefore comparatively quick and configurable), yet it comes with KDE already configured along with a more user-friendly system installer and package manager. I've already tested versions Alpha 5 "Panora", 0.2.0 "Jaz", and 0.3.0 "Ashoc". I figured I would test version 0.4.0 "Cyrus" whenever...

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 March 13

There were a couple of posts that garnered quite a few comments. Anyway, I'll try to repost most of them.Review: GhostBSD 2.0An anonymous reader had this tip regarding changing the root password: "You could of course use "sudo passwd root" to change the root password..."Commenter kelvin said, "Instead of writing all this crap you should of reinstalled it correctly as I did then you would find the package manager works correctly searches, updates, and installs as it says on the box. it is limited to 1 package at a time. The major let down for...

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Back at Home for Spring Break 2011

I'm halfway through my second semester of freshman year, and I'm back home now for spring break. I came back on Megabus; although I left half and hour late, I arrived on time, which was nice. The bus had free wi-fi, but that didn't matter to me because I slept almost the entire time (it was a night bus). The only annoying thing was that some Disney movie was playing on a tiny screen at the front of the bus at a rather loud volume, so I couldn't really sleep well then.Now that I'm back home, I'll have a bit more time to write here, but ironically,...

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Comparison Test: Fuduntu 14.9 vs. Fusion 14 "Thorium"

Fuduntu Main ScreenOh boy. I've been wanting and waiting to do this comparison test for quite a while now, and now I can finally do it! The problem was that Fusion 14 "Thorium" was just released a few days ago, and before that I didn't want to compare a stable release of Fuduntu to a pre-release of Fusion.So let's look at the contenders. Fuduntu is, despite its name, not based on Ubuntu. It is based on Fedora (version 14.9 being based on Fedora 14...

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Review: GhostBSD 2.0

Main ScreenRecently, GhostBSD 2.0 was released. What is GhostBSD? It's a FreeBSD distribution that uses GNOME as its sole DE and aims to make FreeBSD more user-friendly, similar to what Ubuntu has done to Debian (and the Linux community as a whole) — that last part comes from the GhostBSD website. This puts GhostBSD in the position of being the GNOME counterpart to PC-BSD, which is a KDE-focused FreeBSD distribution, although that will gain GNOME...

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Magnitude 8.9 Earthquake in Japan

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a few days ago, a monster earthquake of magnitude 8.9 hit Japan and hit it hard. Some death toll estimates say 5000, others say 10000, and still others quote even larger numbers. It's been devastating to the people of Japan, and they need help.This particular natural disaster has hit close to home because I have two Japanese friends from middle school who moved back to Japan for high school (and beyond). Thankfully, they are OK, but it is truly unfortunate that many people can't say the same...

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 March 6

Once again, I was afraid that I wouldn't write a post like this, but thankfully that hasn't happened. There were a handful of comments spread over a few posts, so I'll try to repost all of them.Movie Review: The Social NetworkReader Abhijith said, "Good movie. I think it definitely deserves a second watch. Very engaging as you rightly pointed out."A Disappointing Review of Bodhi Linux 0.1.6Commenter Jeff91, who is also the lead developer of Bodhi Linux, said, "Thanks for the support mate."Reader Emyr Bateman had this to say: "I too read the review...

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Review: openSUSE 11.4 KDE

Main Screen + KickoffThis review you are about to read was originally going to be about Scientific Linux 6. However, two things changed that: one, openSUSE 11.4 got released yesterday, though I did think about doing Scientific Linux today and openSUSE in a few days, and two, Scientific Linux didn't play well with either UnetBootin or MultiSystem. In any case, that review will have to wait a bit.openSUSE is the free end user-grade version of SUSE,...

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A Disappointing Review of Bodhi Linux 0.1.6

A little under a year ago, Jim Lynch of Desktop Linux Reviews posted a highly critical review of Kubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx"; I found many of his criticisms to be either easily fixed or extremely petty, especially the inscrutable emphasis on the lack of Canonical branding. Well, I'm back to say that I've come across another poor review of another Ubuntu-based distribution: this time it's Dedoimedo reviewing Bodhi Linux 0.1.6, which I have also checked out before. I like reading Dedoimedo a lot, but this review has really dampened my trust of...

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Movie Review: The Social Network

Yesterday night I watched the movie The Social Network with my family. It's basically a dramatized documentary about the history of the founding of Facebook. Although the main people in real life were OK with this movie, as far as I know, this was not an officially-endorsed documentary, so there was a lot of dramatization especially where details were few and fuzzy. (On the other hand, things like the instant messages and emails, which have been published by Facebook, are real.) Plus, I think it's fairly well-established that Mark Zuckerberg in...

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 February 27

I was scared again that this post wouldn't happen this week, but thankfully I was able to write 2 posts that ended up getting a handful of comments.Review: AUSTRUMI 2.2.9Interestingly enough, all the commenters on this post have been anonymous.One reader asked, "Am I blind or there is not even 1 (one!) link to the AUSTRUMI web site? What kind of review is this?" Yeah, sorry, I'm not in the habit of doing that. I'll try to do it from now on, though.Another commenter said, "If you push the tab button at the boot-splash and type in lang_en as a boot...

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Revisited: Pardus 2011

Last time, when I reviewed Pardus 2011, I was really impressed by its ease of use and its selection of default applications. One minor issue that I had was that repositories weren't enabled by default, so I couldn't install any new software. The other issue with the review itself was that because I had trouble with Pardus 2009.2 "Geronticus Eremita" on a live USB, I was hesitant to try Pardus 2011 on a live USB as well, so I chose to review it in VirtualBox. This meant that I had no idea how Pardus would play with my computer's hardware.Well, now...

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Review: AUSTRUMI 2.2.9

Main ScreenUnless you're from Latvia, there's a good chance that this is the first time you are seeing either the name AUSTRUMI or a review of it. So what is it?AUSTRUMI is a Latvian Slackware-based distribution that uses FVWM as the window manager. So why am I reviewing it? Well, a couple days ago I saw on DistroWatch's ticker feed of updated distributions that the AUSTRUMI developers have released version 2.2.9. Yet DistroWatch's page for this...

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Free Software and Accessibility

Yesterday, I saw a link to this blog post (Paul Cutler, Paul Cutler's Blog) that also linked to this Bugzilla bug report comment regarding an accessibility issue in Eye Of GNOME, GNOME's default PDF and other file viewer. The suggestion was to add a menu entry in the "Edit" section of the main menu allowing users to copy recently loaded images in the document to the clipboard. A user by the name of Adrian Hands was the one who submitted the patch. But he was no ordinary user; as he suffered from ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease), he could barely...

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