Hello 2023: Current Setup and State of Affairs

It's been a while since I posted anything here. Testing various distros eventually loses its appeal and we settle on one or a mix of distributions. I'm not really using Slackware anymore except very occasionally in the form of Alien's LiveSlak on a USB stick and experimenting with Porteus. Slax also once again has a version based on Slackware but I find Porteus the better choice these days if a modular system is what you want. All this is toying around though.

My day to day work is done on a mixture of MX Linux KDE edition, AntiX, and Linux Mint. Yes, the one with systemd. Simply due to the fact that it is the one distribution that I tried that managed to set up the Nvidia driver without further fiddling and work correctly with my hybrid graphics laptop to allow for some advanced Steam gaming. The other reason would be that it is the one distribution where Cinnamon really shines in combination with the Mint tools. If not for that I'ld be going Plasma only. This combo has proven to be more than adequate to deal with anything I throw at it and is a great production setup.

Housekeeping: References to Debian Resources to be Dropped

Debian GNU/Linux is a great OS/ Linux distribution and with the kFreeBSD kernel even an attempt at providing a BSD variant. I have been running all their releases since Sarge on and off, mostly on, for most of the last 13 years since using Linux exclusively in one shape or another but usually vanilla on at least one desktop machine and am currently still running it on a VPS - and antiX on the laptop. Nonetheless, the move to systemd and the controversy around adopting it was a watershed moment and together with the fact that GNOME Shell became the default desktop meant I lost interest in the project.

Spring is Here! Browser and OS Stats.

Spring is here and this blog's not quite dead yet. One advantage of only looking at things after a longer time is that you sometimes notice quite stark changes and developments. Last time I looked at the stats in more detail they were all dominated by Chrome/Chromium and Firefox, with a couple of generic tablet browser identifications thrown in and with Windows and Linux and a few Unix identifiers in the OS department. iPad and iPhone came to between 1-2%. Not so now.

Happy Holidays and New Year

It's been another year chock full of releases. Lots of distributions I'ld like to not only try but write about, like LuninuX, Comfusion, Wifislax, Manjaro and others, plus of course BSD which is still outstanding.  Time is now very limited and it isn't possible to do all that, but I'll take a few choice picks here and there. Thanks to all of you for checking back and a good start into 2013!!

Taking a Break, Back in Autumn

Well folks, it's been fun but I've decided to take a break and enjoy the summer. Life's too short to spend it all hunched in front of a monitor, writing or otherwise, and I've been doing enough of that both at work and privately year after year.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

Hello guys. It's been another long year, although it went really quick. Seems contradictory, but with everything going on in the world and in my private life it seems both long and short.
In the Linux and free software world both the Unity desktop and GNOME Shell had their first public releases that sparked plenty of controversy and set the scene for the year.

Anniversary, Distro Testing, and Future Articles

This blog turned one year old yesterday and has had around 130 000 page views by the time of writing, a definite up from 36 000 in the first six months. Not as much as some others have but hey, it's supposed to be fun. Jim Lynch over at Eyeonlinux.com has identified what he calls The Dark Side of Distrohopping, and I'm not planning to get as stressed out over testing and writing as he seems to be, but then if I remember correctly he is trying to make a living from his sites.

Poll on Distributions Closed

Well, it was almost clear, plenty of people have voted for a review of the new Scientific Linux 6, and that's how it will be. Still need a bit more time though, we'll have another review before this.

It's been a bit quiet from my side because I've been busy finishing Fallout NV with almost 200 hours of game play- discounting the reloading, exploring of different avenues, going back to a previous save etc. Cool game, almost as good as the predecessor Fallout 3 with Broken Steel add-on installed. And apparently they both work well with Wine (Gold status). If you're playing it on the PC there are also cool mods available from the fan community, although some are a bit dodgy and definitely not politically correct. Apparently the aim of one is to make it look more like Return To Castle Wolfenstein. That entails lots of insignia and black clad storm troopers. The Zombie mod is fun though, although it's really just a variation of the ghouls in the game.

Poll - Which Distributions to Review Next? Please Participate.

You can assist in deciding which distributions to review next. This includes specialist live CD tools like Backtrack for computer forensics or network analysis, and I´ll work my way down the list.
Feel free to leave other suggestions in the comments box below, but please note I am not a fan of anything *buntu, because I feel they get enough coverage already. Thanks for taking part.

The poll is now closed, but feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments anyway.

Xfce 4.8 Released After Almost Two Years

Well, it´s a bit of a slow news January, and I haven´t had time to do any reviews lately, but at least the new 4.8 release of my favorite desktop environment Xfce is out. And it looks good too. For a visual tour go here. Suffice to say that the long awaited browsing of remote shares using Thunar (FTP, Windows Shares, WebDav and SSH servers...) is now supported and there is now a removable devices eject button in the side pane. Most of these new features are only available on GNU/Linux though and not on the BSD´s, as you can see on the blog or from this posting and ensuing discussion as to the reasons why on the site of one of the developers. A solution that works on both platforms would be desirable. In the meantime, one can always use a different file manager to mount, unmount and browse volumes.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yes, for almost three months already the shops have been filled with Christmassy stuff and now it is here. Finally, no more teasing, the real deal. And the people who find it all too much have hopefully managed to escape to the Highlands or some other remote area or somewhere in the world where they don't celebrate it, at least not so much, ideally somewhere south.

It's been another interesting year, in life and in the world of linux and open source. Whatever your thoughts, development is bound to continue at break neck speed.

Salix OS have released 13.1.2 KDE & KDE Live

On 30/10/2010 the Salix team announced the release of a KDE spin of their latest 13.1.2 offering. This is a boon for everybody whose favorite desktop environment is KDE 4, and from reading the announcement this a standard KDE SC with all the apps that normally gives you, so not much to say about that. It also includes Koffice and perhaps most interestingly has added the Kaffeine media player and the Clementine audio player, a successor to Amarok.

SalixOS 13.1 "Xfce Live" and "LXDE Live" released

Weyhey, if it looked like we´re fast asleep that´s not the case, just travelling moving, and in the process I´ve become less able to update this and test out more distributions. In due course I´ve also had the dubious pleasure to see just how ugly this site looks in IE6, which many internet cafe´s and plenty of employers are still using. But I hope by October everything will be back to normal.

A new live release of my favorite Slackware-based distro is out, bringing it in line with the rest of their traditional offerings. It´s also apparently exactly one year after their first release ever was published.

Ads and Adblock Plus

Hi all,

This blog is now a little over two weeks old and I'm still experimenting with the layout. I've added a few ads to the site but if you're anything like me you won't notice, between a hosts file and an adblocker I rarely see anything I don't want to see. If you're not using any of this I hope it won't annoy you too much. I've stayed clear of anything flashy and rotating that could be seen as irritating. At least they're all on topic as far as I could tell.

More reviews and areas of interest

Hello there,

both the reviews on Unity Linux and on Kongoni GNU/Linux were received quite well. Got a lot of reads and even the first comments here on this site. Thank you.

My interest is to look at the more obscure and lesser known distributions that don't get much airtime usually. So I'll slowly work myself through them over the next few years. In particular I am interested in distributions from the Slackware, Debian and Mandriva based corners of the Linux world. Also on innovative projects that are not based on anything, like Frugalware.