Review: Linux Mint MATE 201303

For those of you who have been waiting for a review, I think I may have said before that my writing would shift more to science-y stuff and away from distribution reviews. However, that does not mean that reviews will stop entirely. I'm on spring break now and have a little more time to do these reviews, so today I am reviewing Linux Mint MATE 201303, which came out earlier this week.

Main Screen + Linux Mint Menu

This is the version of Linux Mint based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. It uses a variant of a rolling-release model, in that while existing users can get the latest and greatest software simply by applying updates as usual, the updates come in large bundles (I almost want to say they are like the Microsoft Windows Service Packs, except that they work) rather than individual package files. This means that the most common packages used on a Debian-based Linux Mint system are tested so that they can be guaranteed to work not only individually but also together, so that the problem of an individual update breaking other dependencies becomes moot. Around the time of releasing a new update pack, a new ISO file snapshot of the distribution is released, as was the case this time around.

I reviewed the [32-bit] MATE edition using a live USB made with MultiSystem; I wanted to review the Cinnamon edition too, but it refused to boot, so I will leave my assessment of it at that. I also did an installation of this (which regular readers know is rare), so you will have to follow the jump to see what this is like.

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Review: Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" GNOME

Although I have reviewed a number of Fedora remixes, I haven't reviewed proper Fedora since the very first review/comparison test I posted on this blog over 3 years ago. There are, however, a few reasons for me to be trying this out today.

GNOME 3/Shell Activities

Fedora is typically more for Linux users with intermediate levels of experience and comfort with Linux, as well as for developers and administrators who want to see what is coming in RHEL/CentOS. That said, it can sometimes make a good consumer-grade desktop distribution as well, as long as it is done right; that's why there are so many remixes of it out there. But that doesn't explain why this review exists. I am trying Fedora today because I have not checked out GNOME 3/Shell in a while. I am also trying it because the Anaconda installer is supposed to have been thoroughly revamped. But mostly, I am trying it out because as a physics student, the codename tickled me enough to give it another look. (For those who don't know, a popular joke about physics problems takes such modeling to its logical extreme by applying it to a cow milking: "Imagine that this cow is spherical and radiates milk isotropically...".)

I tried the live session through a live USB system made with MultiSystem. As the revamped installer is a new feature, I tried the installation as well through a 64-bit Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" Xfce live USB system made with MultiSystem as well. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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Review: Linux Mint 14.1 "Nadia" MATE + GNOME 3/Cinnamon

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've had the time to sit down and do a review like this. The reason for that is because this semester has been incredibly busy in pretty much every way, and today was finally the last day to turn in problem sets and other assignments. Now, I can finally do this review.

Main Screen + Linux Mint Menu

Linux Mint needs no introduction here. However, one thing to note is that this is the first release since version 4.X "Daryna" to have a version number with a digit after a decimal point. The reason for that was that some sneaky bugs got past final-release testing, so they needed to be fixed and the ISO file needed to be released as an updated image. Right now, the editions with MATE and GNOME 3/Cinnamon are out in final form, so those are the ones I am going to be reviewing today. For reference, the KDE and Xfce are coming soon, as those already have release candidates out now.

I tested this as usual on a live USB system made with MultiSystem. I did not test the installation. Follow the jump to see how this fares relative to my current preferred version 13 LTS "Maya".

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Long-Term Review: openSUSE 12.2 KDE

I did this long-term review on my normal UROP desktop computer with the 64-bit edition of the OS. Follow the jump to see how it fared. Also do note that there are more days logged because I intend to use it for about 60-80 full hours of work, which is the equivalent of 7-10 full days in the summer, though now I am working on a part-time basis as classes have started. Finally, for some reason Blogger decided to delete the content of what I had here, so everything up until "Day 2" is very much paraphrased from memory.

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Review: VectorLinux 7.0 Standard Gold

One of the distributions I've been wanting to check out for a while now has been VectorLinux. Recently, version 7.0 of VectorLinux was released, so I'm reviewing it.

Main Screen

What is VectorLinux? It's a Slackware-based distribution that ships customized versions of Xfce and KDE that aim to be a lot more user-friendly, while retaining the benefits of using Slackware. The version I'm reviewing today is the Xfce edition ("Standard"), because the KDE edition ("SOHO") of version 7.0 hasn't been released, and as far as I understand it is not free of charge.

I tested the live session using a live USB made with MultiSystem. I tested the installation in VirtualBox on a MultiSystem-made Xubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" live USB, with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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Review: Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen"

Before I begin, I'd like to say that the reason why there was no "Featured Comments" post this week was because there were no comments on last week's posts. That's probably because I didn't write a lot last week as I was spending time with friends and family. Anyway, let's get on with the review.

Main Screen

I don't think Mandriva particularly needs an introduction. Suffice it to say that it was among the original premiere easy-to-use Linux distributions, along with MEPIS, even before Ubuntu existed. It came up with the all-in-one Mandrake Control Center (now, of course, the Mandriva Control Center) and made graphical installations easier to do. It has continued with a dedicated following, but in recent months it almost collapsed, even prompting the introduction of Mageia, a fork dedicated to advancing Mandriva while staying true to its core values (more on that shortly). Its financial woes have continued, but while the last few releases made a few changes to the implementation of KDE 4 but overall nothing too drastic, this release aims to bring back some of the old luster by completely rethinking the way KDE 4 is supposed to work. Let's see how true that is in a bit.

I tested Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen" on a live USB, first made with MultiSystem and then made with UnetBootin. I was surprised that Mandriva booted after having the live USB made with UnetBootin, because for the last few years Mandriva ISO files have failed to work right with UnetBootin. I guess that application has gotten better at properly writing these ISO files to USB sticks. I tested the installation procedure in a VirtualBox VM in a Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini UnetBootin-created live USB host with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS; I initially tried to do the VM thing within the Mandriva live USB system, but that failed (more on that later), and anyway, using Pinguy OS ensured better consistency.

I don't think I've ever written about testing a system with both MultiSystem and UnetBootin. So why have I done so this time? Well, this was originally supposed to be a comparison test with Mageia 1 included. However, Mageia was not recognized by MultiSystem, and the UnetBootin-created Mageia live USB failed to boot properly. That was odd, considering that there were reports of older alpha and beta releases of Mageia that booted fine when the live USB was created with UnetBootin. I think I'll hold off trying out Mageia until it is supported by MultiSystem, at which point I'll review it separately but through the lens of a comparison test, sort of like how I approached Scientific Linux 6 and CentOS 6. In any case, I'm too impatient to hold off testing Mandriva for the sake of Mageia. Also note that while I made all the following observations about Mandriva in MultiSystem, I was able to replicate all of them in UnetBootin, as I have seen with other distributions as well.
With all this in mind, follow the jump to see what Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen" is like.

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Review: Scientific Linux 6.0 "Carbon"

Main Screen

I really wanted to do this review a while ago, but I couldn't because when I wanted to do it then, MultiSystem didn't recognize the then-newly-released Scientific Linux 6.0 live CD ISO file. Since then, there have been quite a few updates to MultiSystem, and this time I could make a Scientific Linux 6.0 live USB with MultiSystem.

So what is Scientific Linux? It's basically Red Hat Enterprise Linux, minus Red Hat branding (with Scientific Linux branding instead), plus repositories containing extra mathematical, scientific, and engineering software, plus some extra niceties. It was developed for Fermilab and CERN, so it's not really meant to be a home desktop distribution per se, but I did read a few reviews of Scientific Linux 5.X commenting favorably on its abilities in such environments, so I wanted to see if that would be true of version 6.0 as well. Plus, I have never tried more office/server-oriented relatives of Fedora, so this would be a new experience for me too.

As mentioned earlier, my main mode of testing was through a live USB made with MultiSystem. I also tested the installation in VirtualBox within the live USB session. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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Review: Porteus 1.0

64-bit: Main Screen

Considering that I reviewed Zenwalk 7.0 not too long ago, I must be going on a Slackware-derived binge or something. Yes, both Zenwalk and Porteus are based on Slackware. Maybe my subconscious is trying to make up for the terrible review (not my assessment of Slackware, but my skill level and writing in that post) of Slackware 13.1. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, Porteus 1.0 came out yesterday, so I decided to review it.

So what is Porteus? As I just said, it's based on Slackware, but it's more than that. As Slackware has never had an official project for creating Slackware live media, Slax came in to fill in that void. Quite a while ago, Slax ceased regular development, so after a while, Porteus came in to succeed it. Now, typically, these stories of evolution and succession aren't of much consequence (e.g. AriOS coming from mFatOS, Kororaa moving from Gentoo to Fedora, et cetera), but as you will see, it is quite important here that Porteus is the revived and modernized Slax project.

32-bit: Main Screen

Porteus comes in 32- and 64-bit flavors. Curiously, while LXDE is available for both architectures, KDE 3.5 Trinity is found exclusively in the 32-bit version, while KDE 4 is found exclusively in the 64-bit version. As my laptop has 64-bit hardware, I tested both using a live USB made with MultiSystem. I didn't test the installation because apparently the installation isn't one in the traditional sense; it's essentially booting the live medium off of a hard drive, which seems hard to achieve with not-particularly-interesting results. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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

Fuduntu Main Screen

Oh 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 "Laughlin") and it is designed to be user-friendly like Ubuntu as well as optimal for laptops, netbooks, and other portable computers.

Fusion Main Screen + Mint Menu

Fusion is also based on Fedora (version 14 "Thorium" also being based on Fedora 14 "Laughlin"), and it aims to provide a complete and very user-friendly desktop experience with a slight emphasis on multimedia applications.

I made a multiboot live USB of these two distributions using MultiSystem. I did not install either one; I just tested the live sessions. Follow the jump to see what each one is like. Please note that this post is full of images, so now you know what may be causing the page to lag a bit if that happens.

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Review: openSUSE 11.4 KDE

Main Screen + Kickoff

This 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, the other version being Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (Novell SLED). It has been a pioneer and a force for progress in the Linux ecosystem; unfortunately, Novell has been beleaguered by financial troubles and is going to be bought out by Attachmate, though the openSUSE developers have remained committed to the project regardless of Novell's fate. Though openSUSE is primarily a KDE desktop, the developers have made almost equal contributions to both GNOME and KDE. For example, the openSUSE developers were the ones who created the Kickoff menu for KDE 4 as well as the ones who led the charge for better integration of Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org into KDE 4. They were also instrumental in developing the Slab menu (which inspired and has been improved upon by the Mint Menu), Banshee and other Mono-based applications, and other things like Bonobo that aren't directly noticed by users. I was actually thinking of testing both the GNOME and KDE versions, but I figured that testing the GNOME version would be just testing the existing applications in a more familiar GNOME environment, so I might as well just test the KDE version; plus, I got lazy when downloading the ISO files. Oh well.

I have tried openSUSE twice before, both times version 11.3 KDE. The first time I tried it was in a virtual machine and as part of a comparison with other KDE distributions, and I was fairly pleased with its stability; that said, it was quite slow, though that could be attributable to the limited settings in the virtual machine due to the limited resources of my old computer. The second time I tried it was just to see if it would play well with my hardware on a live USB; unfortunately, the system still felt slow even on my newer current computer, and Skype refused to start once downloaded and installed. Follow the jump to see how openSUSE 11.4 compares to 11.3. I tested openSUSE 11.4 KDE by adding it to my current multiboot live USB setup using MultiSystem, but I did not test the installation procedure.

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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 I have a bit more time and I'm willing to give it a try. I made a multiboot system with AUSTRUMI (which I reviewed yesterday) using MultiSystem and went on my way. Please note that as I do not have a spare computer and am not willing to allocate space on my hard drive for distributions other than my main ones (Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" GNOME and Microsoft Windows 7), I have tested the live DVD, not the installation DVD. Also do note that as I have already reviewed Pardus 2011 with a plethora of images there, I will not be including any new ones in this post; if you want to see pictures of Pardus 2011, please refer back to the original review. Follow the jump to read the rest.

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Review: Debian 6 "Squeeze"

After a wait of 2 years, Debian 6 "Squeeze" has finally been released! Yay! It's now officially termed "stable".
Some highlights include changes in supported architectures (e.g. ARMEL instead of ARM), choice in using either the Linux kernel or FreeBSD kernel under the Debian GNU tools, a Linux kernel that is now made completely of free software, GNOME 2.30 with some updates from 2.32, KDE 4.4.5, Xfce 4.6, LXDE 0.50, IceWeasel 3.5, OpenOffice.org 3.2, more packages available, an improved installer, and more "pure blends" for different users.

Main Screen + Main Menu

With this release came a couple articles and a bit of back-and-forth discussion online about the continuing relevance of Debian. The original article posited that Debian is becoming irrelevant because its most famous derivative Ubuntu has it beat on the user-friendly desktop side and Red Hat and SUSE are also much more popular on the server end. A different article argued that Debian, far from becoming irrelevant, is essential for the ongoing survival of derivatives like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MEPIS, and #!. The original article's author then responded by saying that if need be, although it would be a royal pain to do so, the developers of these derivative distributions could probably continue developing packages for their systems if Debian suddenly disappeared.
I take issue with that, because distributions like Linux Mint, MEPIS, and #! have smaller developer bases, so their time is already taken up by developing the smaller add-on packages to make their distributions unique; they have neither the [wo]manpower nor the funding to possibly continue developing core packages without the help of the Debian developers upstream. Plus, Linux Mint, although currently a primarily Ubuntu-based distribution, is also continually maintaining a rolling-release Debian-based distribution, so it needs the work of the good Debian developers even more in that sense, especially considering that the Ubuntu-based version of Linux Mint will diverge a bit more from Ubuntu in not adopting either Unity or GNOME 3 and not using Wayland for a while.
That said, I did read an interesting comment in one particular release announcement of Debian 6 "Squeeze", and that says that almost all the features present in the current stable Debian release were present in the most recent Ubuntu LTS release (10.04 "Lucid Lynx"), which came out just under a year ago. I would also add to that the fact that Debian stable releases are not supported any longer than Ubuntu LTS releases, which are supported for 3 years after release. Therefore, unless unbeatable stability or low resource usage is paramount, I would say for now that there's no compelling reason to use Debian 6 "Squeeze" over Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx". Of course, that case might become more compelling when Ubuntu uses Unity in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "P[...] P[...]", as Debian will likely stick to a more traditional GNOME setup and will probably appeal to more users disenchanted with the current direction of Ubuntu.

But I'm not here to argue if Debian is relevant or not. I'm here to try it out. I tried out the standard GNOME and KDE live systems through a live USB made with MultiSystem, and installed the KDE version in VirtualBox with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS. Plus, there's a little bonus at the end (which I won't reveal right now), so follow the jump to see how it all goes.

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Revisited: 3 Newbie-Friendly KDE Distributions

A few months ago, I did a comparison test between 5 KDE distributions that aim to be friendly to newbies. These distributions were PC-BSD 8.1 "Hubble" (which is technically a distribution of BSD, not Linux), PCLinuxOS 2010.07 KDE, openSUSE 11.3 KDE, Sabayon 5.3 KDE, and Pardus 2009.2 "Geronticus Eremita" (live CD). (I also tested Chakra Alpha 5 "Panora", but that wasn't compared to the others due to its pre-release nature.) I did all these tests on my old Sony VAIO desktop. I intended to make live USBs out of all of these using UnetBootin, but only Sabayon and (surprisingly, given its origin and its developers' previous statements about using UnetBootin in this particular case) PCLinuxOS cooperated. The others required that I make a live USB using the "dd" command, which wipes all existing data off the flash drive and writes the ISO file onto the USB with a primitive filesystem type that can't coexist with other partitions. This didn't look good for me, because I didn't want to keep erasing and rewriting data on the flash drive. Thus, I tested all these distributions in VirtualBox. The downsides to this were that as my old computer only had 1 GB of RAM, I could only allocate 448 MB of RAM to the guest OSs, which in some cases was clearly too little, and that I couldn't in some cases properly test things like hardware detection and installation of programs in this limited virtual environment.
Then, a couple weeks ago, I found a program called MultiSystem, which I wrote about promptly. This program allows writing a live multiboot setup to a USB drive partition without destroying other partitions. Plus, it supports distributions like Mandriva (which I tested shortly after the original comparison), openSUSE, and Pardus which otherwise require the "dd" command. (Unfortunately, it doesn't support either PC-BSD or Chakra, the latter of which is surprising in its omission considering that distributions like Arch, ArchBang, and CTKArchLive are all supported.) Clearly, this was what I needed. Now I could go back and test Mandriva, openSUSE, and Pardus as live USB systems with direct access to all my computer's hardware without issue. And that's exactly what I've done and that's the subject of today's post.
Please note that I'm not including any screenshots with this post because the relevant screenshots have already been put up in the previous comparison. Next, I'm not actually comparing these distributions to one another, as that's already been done — I'm just seeing if each one on its own will cooperate with my computer's hardware. Also, I realize that because I'm testing these on a much better computer than before (and I'm using Mandriva 2010.2 instead of version 2010.1 that was previously tested), the methodologies may turn out different results than before. With all that in mind, follow the jump to see how each one fares.

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Featured Comments: Week of 2011 January 9

There were a handful of comments on a few posts this week, so I'll repost them all.

Chinese Company Copying the Burj Khalifa

Reader T_Beermonster said, "I'm not aware that the Blackpool Tower has had any significant negative impact on Paris," then later added, " The Blackpool Tower isn't a copy of the Eiffel Tower as such, like the proposed hotel in Beijing it was "inspired by". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_tower It is smaller, made with a cheaper construction method and was commercial in intent. There is also the Tokyo Tower which is much closer to being a (slightly) scaled up copy . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Tower"
Commenter da deepenator said, "ahem, great wall of china, ahem..."

Review: MultiSystem (a USB Multiboot Script)

Reader njmurarka asked, "Can you put a BART PE Windows ISO as one of the bootable OS's?" (It's actually already accessible in the GRUB4DOS menu entry available with every use of MultiSystem.)
Commenter Helton Moraes had this bit of praise for the script: " I use Multiboot for some six months now, and it is perfect. It is well written, complete, full of usefull options, adds persistence automagically, frequently updated, supports a lot of distros, and mostly WORK!!! It wont boot in some systems with weird BIOSes, but it is a minor problem. My main system (Mint 10) was installed from flash using multiboot, which is WAY faster than LiveCD."

Review: CrunchBang ("#!") Linux 10 "Statler" Openbox r20110105

An anonymous reader had this bit of support: "Nice review, thanks. I´ll use #! to resurrect my centrino laptop! My big problem with Leafpad is that it has no syntax highlighting."
Commenter Barista Uno also had this bit of support: "Thanks for the excellent review. I am tempted to renew my love affair with Crunchbang, which ended when I switched to Mandriva, thence to the Lubuntu varieties and now to PCLinuxOS."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I hope to have a couple more reviews up. Remember, if you enjoy reading what's written in this space, please subscribe (through RSS, email, or Google following, all of which are on the sidebar) and continue commenting!

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Review: MultiSystem (a USB Multiboot Script)

A couple days ago, I saw featured on Linux Today an article in PCPlus about a new USB multiboot creation script called MultiSystem. It's a GUI tool, which is nice for newbies like myself, and it automates the creation of a multiboot live USB from multiple live ISO files.
Now, as many readers know, I've tried a not once, not twice, but three times to make a multiboot setup. The recurring issues I had each time were that each ISO file was written to a different partition and there was no unified boot menu to select a live session among the different partitions. There are other ways to do this, mainly using the command prompt and extraction tools, but I was too lazy/pressed for time to try such things. I had read about other GUI extraction tools, but they seemed a bit too limited in the distributions they could handle. Then, I saw this.
This tool seems to be the holy grail of multiboot live USB creation. You can read more about it in the original article and on the project's website (in French, but can be translated via Google Translate), but this tool seems to support almost every distribution listed on DistroWatch (currently running at around 650 distributions listed) and then some (e.g. Fuduntu). Plus, it doesn't seem to have any of the caveats of other tools, like not being able to multiboot Ubuntu and Linux Mint at the same time (as Linux Mint is too similar to Ubuntu). It even allows for testing the final multiboot system in a virtual machine. I'm not going to fully review the application, as that's in the original PCPlus article, but I will share a couple experiences I had with it.
One issue with many distributions today is that they aren't fully supported by UnetBootin, so they can't be written to a partition of a USB stick without destroying all other data present on the stick. MultiSystem seems to get around that issue, as it was able to write on the first of my four partitions of my 8 GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro USB drive without destroying the other three; the distribution I tried (it can make "multiboot" systems with just one distribution as well) was CrunchBang 10 "Statler", which no longer works with UnetBootin and typically requires the "dd" command (which destroys all other data present on a USB stick) to be written to a USB stick. This is exciting for me, as I can now also test other distributions like Mandriva and openSUSE (which similarly can only use the "dd" command to be written to a USB stick) on my computer without the need for a virtual machine. I can confirm that my CrunchBang live USB worked, so keep your eyes open for a review of that very soon.
Preparing the USB was a little tedious but wasn't too big an issue. It was a little odd when I picked the ISO files for writing; I expected to only select one file at a time in the file dialog, but when I only selected CrunchBang, that somehow became my final selection, and I couldn't pick anything else for writing onto the USB stick. I guess I need to be more careful when selecting multiple ISO files.
It's nice that the script also offers the ability to test the new system in QEMU or VirtualBox, but unfortunately, neither worked for me. That doesn't matter much, as I don't really lose anything by actually trying out the live USB on my computer (i.e. changing the BIOS and all that jazz). However, I do hope for the sake of the application itself that this gets fixed soon.
It isn't possible to create separate multiboot systems on different partitions, but because GRUB is installed in the USB stick's master boot record (MBR) I suppose I shouldn't expect anything different.
Otherwise, I am extraordinarily pleased with this application. I don't have any real reason to try new multiboot setups; this is what I'll be using from now on. Along with a new CrunchBang review, you can also look forward to second looks at Mandriva and openSUSE now that I can see how well they might play with my computer's hardware.
(UPDATE: As it turns out, MultiSystem installs KVM (or something like that) which somehow modifies the Linux kernel slightly, and this is why its built-in VirtualBox application doesn't work properly. Actually, its "built-in" VirtualBox program uses my installed VirtualBox program to run, meaning my already-installed VirtualBox no longer functions correctly. Now, if I want to use my virtual machines, I'll need to boot into a live USB (like Pinguy OS) which, ironically, may be created with MultiSystem. Oh well.)

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