It’s been nearly six months since the arrival of the eeePC, and while there have been options to replace the default Xandros OS (baby mode) with another distro for nearly as long, none come close to the latest release of Mandriva ‘One’ 2008.1 (KDE). The latest iteration of Mandriva has only been out a day, but news that it would work without any configuration (i.e., ‘out of the box’) has been around since late February/early March.

Claiming to work without any config and actually doing so are two very different beasts however (as a number of failed distros will attest to); but when the folks at Mandriva state this capability then one is wise to take notice. And indeed the Mandriva 2008.1 delivers, and in grand fashion; booting up the live CD from an external usb CD drive attached to the eeePC loads the desktop in a very short time, and with the odd desktop resolution on the 7″ screen perfectly displayed.

Installation itself is an equally speedy affair, with the installer doing its initial work in around eight minutes, dividing up / and /home into 2.4GB and 1.2GB slices respectively; following installation one removes the live media (and in this case the cd drive) and is asked upon reboot to offer a root password, a name/user name/password before finding oneself in the newly installed system.

Everything does indeed work as advertised ‘out of the box’, from wireless (identified as Atheros 5006, though it is in fact 5007) to webcam to all of the fn + Fx keys (volume up/down, wireless on/off, etc.); Mandriva 2008.1 ‘One’ goes the Xandros one better in the suspend/hibernate category by not losing the wifi connection upon sleep, a small detail but nice nonetheless. Another big improvement is the use of PulseAudio, in this case with driving a large external monitor/TV; while the Xandros system provides a tinny sound at very limited volume, the Mandriva system really cranks out clear loud sound, making one fear for the tiny eeePC built-in speakers, and in the case of the external monitor/TV one has to actually reduce the sound on the external device itself, while in the Xandros system maxing the sound on it allows one to hear the action (unless someone nearby is crunching on some popcorn, slurping a drink, or humming).

Whatever you use the eeePC for, be it as an alternate lightweight notepad, wifi browser, or media centre for a larger external monitor/TV, Mandriva 2008.1 has made it significantly better, to the point that you will be wondering if they somehow packed a hardware upgrade in that tiny 697MB CD in addition to the excellent system on offer. If you have an eeePC and are tired of the limitations put on it by the default system, then this is a highly recommended choice: effortless to install and several upgrades that bring even more out of this little appliance.

In order to get a true feel for Kubuntu Hardy Heron one has to run the system for quite some time; just installing it will only let you know how much better the installation procedure has become, while leaving you with little understanding on how many changes this new system brings, particularly the Kubuntu-KDE4 brand.

I began running the 3rd Alpha release of Kubuntu-KDE4 as soon as it came out, and apart from a single show-stopper libc6 bug that caused one to be dropped into a shell prompt instead of reaching the new and improved desktop there has been little to complain about and much to herald.

Just a few days ago I switched my main machine over to KDE4 as well, and if you are using Kubuntu Hardy Heron you really need to go that route to appreciate how much lighter and faster it is over the KDE3 version of Hardy Heron; Firefox3-beta4 is tailored to this new environment very well (which is odd since it is a gtk app) and the speed is nothing short of astonishing. Similarly the new DragonPlayer (which replaces Kaffeine as the default movie player) and Juk (an Amarok substitute) are grand departures from their predecessors.

The Dolphin file manager offers everything one could want in that department, and is especially notable in the degree of polish and speed it exhibits. While the desktop widgets are a bit slim in the picking, the ones that are there a fully functional and a joy to work with. One feature that stands out for me is the new behaviour of desktop files; under KDE3 one could right click copy to/move to, whereas now a mouse-over said icons now yields a small sleeve that has a resize, rotate, configure and hide option–quite a big adjustment if one is used to the KDE3 way of moving files about.

One of the things that really impresses is the fact that apps run so much faster and lighter, something unimaginable when ‘upgrading’ to Vista, or even moving up to Leopard (from either XP or Tiger, respectively); it seems that the open source developers forgot the mantra of forcing new users to buy faster and more powerful systems for nothing much worthy of note in the OS.

There are still a large swath of this system that I have yet to examine and fully try out, as the transition from KDE3 to KDE4 is such a big step, and many of the KDE3 apps are still hanging about and tempting their use (amarok being a case in point). That being said, I will continue to use this system until it reaches final (and beyond) and report back more of what I discover; this goes beyond Hardy Heron and its speed and stability and more into waiting as KDE4 fully replaces all of the components in KDE3 that make Kubuntu such a wonderful computing system.

Comments will be left on (though still in moderation) so if you have any questions feel free to ask away, or stop by the freenode channel #ubuntu+1 where you can receive real time help with your system; if you have a comment that consists only of ‘nice post’ or something similar it will be deleted, so fair warning.

To the community; even if it is just showing off your 3D spinning cube; you don’t need to be able to grep or proc your way around the command line to be in a position of making Linux stronger. You can start (if you use Ubuntu) by going here and reading some of the ideas and even adding your own.

To get suspend/hibernate working with a notebook in Ubuntu, or any Linux for that matter with the now Alpha 5 version of Hardy Heron; it was weird seeing some lights on the Thinkpad that had not been lit before. Boot time is much faster than anything previously from this distro stretching all the way back to Dapper Drake, and shutdown time is near instantaneous. This is on Ubuntu (GNOME) whereas before I had always run KDE version (Kubuntu). Those two features working make the various Alpha breakages worth it all.

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).

When first installing Gutsy Gibbon (way back in beta) there were some issues with installing vmware-server; everyone I talked to just said ‘use virtualbox’. While virtualbox is undoubtedly a fine solution, it lacks the polish and ease of use I had grown accustomed to while using Feisty. After having running so many distros (subsequent to installing them) using vmware-server, it was not easy to make the switch. After a self-imposed hiatus of several months, I decided to give vmware-server another chance, and I’m pleased to say that it is not only easier to install (from the Canonical partner Gutsy repos) but is also much improved in terms of speed, stability and overall ease of use, with a much improved user interface and improved speed and graphics capabilities–just ran Hardy Alpha 3 in a vm on only 256MB ram, and it flew–clearly a reflection on Hardy as well, though kind of shocking exactly how fast it ran and how effortless it was to set up. Time to dust off all the distros I downloaded but never could find the time to try out on a live install over the past several weeks. Having a Linux machine without virtualization is an incomplete experience at best. I may even try to virtualize ##windows just to see how the other half ‘lives’. Heh.

Is a minimal version of PCLinuxOS that comes with just the bare bones, allowing you to install exactly what you need; the liveCD is a very fast boot, and true to its Mandriva roots is extremely easy to configure through the Control Centre. I downloaded this 279MB distribution at a netcafe, burned the iso file and connected to the hotspot there in a matter of moments, all without installing a thing–were it not for some files that needed backing up on my installed system, I would have installed it right then and there.
There is really no tougher test for a Linux distribution then starting it cold from an outside wireless hotspot and configuring it via liveCD mode; that it was able to do so in such an effortless manner is a testament to how much the team at PCLinuxOS continue to hone their skills and make an excellent easy to use distribution even better. I installed Asian language support in a flash (not sure how that is possible in liveCD mode, but it worked) and was quickly browsing the web with the default Konqueror web browser.
If you’re just going to use the system to browse the web, watch movies, listen to music and get email, perhaps do a bit of text editing or creating spreadsheets, then it is already for you; the excellent Abiword and Gnumeric come ready to go, though you can easily add Open Office if you so desire.
The tendency of Linux distributions to get bigger and pack more and more into their liveCD/DVDs (e.g., Sabayon, MIB Games Mandriva remaster) while convenient can slow your system down considerably; it’s nice to see that some see the need for a more bare bones effort that allows you to pick and choose for your particular needs.
Well worth the download and test drive; see if you can resist making your system a dual boot with this very zippy and configurable effort from TexStar and company and all the fine developers at PCLinuxOS.

Would seem to be an oxymoron for the ages; Slackware by its very nature is not ‘easy’; interesting to see the new release of DarkStar Linux, which is targeted at beginners in an installable liveDVD. There seems to be a great deal of interest in this distribution, if torrent speeds are any indication; the 2.34GB download is flying (fingers crossed). Another distribution that I have long been curious about (obsessed even) is Vixta, now with release 0.98.1; though that has no seeders and will apparently take infinity to download. Worth the wait? Time will tell. More as they are downloaded and iso’s burned to disk.

Well the day has finally arrived, and even in the gnome Linux channels people are asking when they can download and install KDE 4.0. Hahahaha Though not nearly as finished as the 5 releases since 3.0 there is a lot to look forward to in this initial release; coupled with the release of Alpha 3 of Hardy and lots of breakage to look forward to. Will report more as soon as possible.

MIB Live Games is a treasure trove for Linux gamers; at last count over 100 games, 48 in arcade alone. As it is based on Mandriva 2008, the setup (and possible installation) are a breeze; to say that everything is included out of the box on this remaster of Mandriva 2008 ‘One’ would be an understatement indeed. It can be installed or used as a liveDVD (3.4GB); as there was already a Mandriva on my test box I just ran it in liveDVD mode, and even using an underpowered Intel video card all the 3D compiz-fusion eye candy and games worked flawlessly. Not that I tried every one of the games. Heh.
For foreign language support both this remaster (as well as the original) of Mandriva 2008 ‘One’ is rivalled by only Ubuntu for ease of set up and input as well as number of languages supported. Not that other modern distributions cannot do it; but for new users some of this can be rather daunting, and when you toss in the fact that it is a non-native language initially then the difficulty level rises considerably.
My only gripes with this particular remaster were the odd screen glitch at restart, as well as hanging for an extended period of time (i.e., not responding) while in screensaver mode.
For those in Asia, using the original Mandriva 2008 ‘One’ Asia edition is preferable as this remaster only offers major European languages at the starting configuration screen, though again they are not that difficult to add once the system is installed.
Just wish this distro had been around when the test box was my only computer; the graphic card support is superb–eliminating a lot of the xserver reconfigure settings needed in the not too distant past. All in all a fine first effort from the unofficial Italian branch of Mandriva–much more to look forward from this group of knowledgeable individuals.