openSUSE "Leap" 15.2 - Any Good?

This is a review I've been wanting to write since forever. Having tried many iterations of SUSE Linux over its long life before, during and after the Novell era, it always left me feeling ambivalent. And I really wanted to like it. The last time I set out to write a review but then canned the idea was for 12.3, when images would work in VMware Player but did not boot on my real hardware. Now THAT is a long time ago and it also means a lot may have changed, hopefully for the better.

Upgrading Ubuntu Server 16.04 Droplet on DigitalOcean to 18.04

About five years ago I decided I need a remote server for backup and cloud services that are more under my control than when using the big names and free or even paid for storage space out there and after a long look around went for a Ubuntu droplet on DigitalOcean. Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty' was the latest LTS release then and systemd wasn't an issue yet. I had used Ubuntu in the old days and am very familiar with Debian which explains the choice, not going for Fedora or CentOS. FreeBSD was and still is another option but due to often changing client side installations I wanted something that doesn't require an ssh key to log on.

Slax 7.0 - Slax Is Back

December 2012 saw the final release of Slax 7.0 after more than three years without an update, quickly followed by several bug-fix point releases. In 7.0.3 the ability to act as PXE server was re-introduced, which had been present in earlier versions but was missing from the early 7.0 branch. I tried it in VMware Player, VirtualBox, from Live CD as intended and installed to external USB connected to an Acer 5551 laptop with ATI graphics, 4 GB Ram and a Phenom II X3 processor.

CRUX 2.8 Review - The Inspiration Behind Arch Linux

This one is well overdue, but the time has finally come. In my defence, I installed CRUX 2.7.1 as far back as summer, but a hard drive failure wiped it all, and since then 2.8 was released. Just as well, so we'll be testing the latest version 2.8. CRUX is a DIY distribution that is perhaps less known than others, but it is the inspiration behind the mighty Arch Linux as the distribution Judd Vinet was originally using. I would point to this dated interview if you want to know more about the origins of Arch.

Slackware Derivatives: The Superb Mini Server Project

SMS, short for Superb Mini Server, is one of those niche distributions built on a major that are not really needed but fulfill a particular purpose and might save you time if what they offer is exactly what you want. SMS is built from Slackware and provides a ready to go server setup with many additional useful packages and tools pre-installed. Slackware itself of course makes a fine server, but SMS has a few more tricks up its sleeve.