The second beta of Dreamlinux is out, this time with more goodies in store; DreamLinux has always used the xfce window manager, which is still evident, though this time around they have added the option for a GNOME DE; what with the recent Nokia buyout of TrollTech (qt) and the uncertain future of KDE, I thought it best to re-familiarize myself with the incredibly complex GNOME environment. Heh.
The XFCE window manager is much the same as before, though a bit speedier, featuring the avant-window-navigator (much similar to the OSX Tiger Dock); it appears in the GNOME environment as well, and both are packed with all that you need for general online computing. DreamLinux has long been one of the Linux Distributions that comes with all of the non-free bits included at startup, so the fact that they have added an easy install of those (in a nifty control panel) was a bit of a surprise–now, through the easy install CP you can add Nvidia drivers, win32codecs, Google Earth, Skype, Opera, DVD playback and the like.
DreamLinux retains all of its previous speed and good looks while adding GNOME; this test was done in a VM using 256MB RAM as I have no test machine available currently–startup and shutdown were very rapid and the added convenience of deciding how pure you want your Linux install is a nice touch as well–many will opt for the non-free bits, but the fact that they now let you choose is a welcome innovation. Greatly looking forward to the final release of this second beta, at which time I will take a look at how much improvement (if any) the team at DreamLinux have made in their previously very nice and intuitive installer. This live cd is very much worth a look even you decide in the end not to install; indeed one could use the livecd on many older computers, saving work to a usb key and then rebooting into your underlying installation (hopefully Linux).