EXTERNAL: 8 reasons to use the Xfce Linux desktop environment

A good overview and appreciation of the Xfce desktop on opensource.com. I've been using Xfce on and off for long stretches of time since 2005 and have to say it's my preferred desktop environment. Well, we also have MATE and it provides even more options but that may not always be wanted or necessary. It depends on which style you prefer. Under the hood, once you get into it, Xfce is very powerful too. Link: https://opensource.com/article/18/6/xfce-desktop

Nomadic Working with NomadBSD 1.0.1 - BSD on a stick

Recently I found a bit of time to poke around in the world of Linux and BSD distributions and possibly even get back in to the reviewing business now and then. NomadBSD seemed like an interesting project to try for somebody partial to the Slackware and BSD way of doing things, but still searching for a BSD that is actually working as a day to day OS while being reasonably responsive, i.e. not bloated and running well on old hardware. That means trim and fast, without the desktop environment and a browser gobbling up all the resources.

VirtualBSD was a fine piece but since its demise there hasn't been anything similar to dip your toes into FreeBSD to my knowledge, let alone the other flavors. I reviewed it here seven years ago. How many? Yes, time flies. To say it right away in order not to waste anybody's time, NomadBSD works, and it works beautifully. Well, with a small caveat in terms of connectivity, but we'll come to that.

As alluded to, "NomadBSD is a 64bit live system for USB flash drives, based on FreeBSD®. Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be used for data recovery" according to their website. It fits on a 4GiB USB flash drive and can be booted via BIOS and UEFI. Which is just as well as an old 4GiB Corsair Flash Voyager pen drive is all I had. Additional information on their Github account.

The Devuan Project Announced the Release of Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0

The Devuan project has announced the release of Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0.0, code name "ASCII". This means that the project now has a stable release that is up to par with the current stable Debian 9 "Stretch" and provides an upgrade path from the previous "Jessie" release as well as a transition path from the corresponding Debian release. With this the project continues to offer a way of using the advantages of the huge repository of Debian packages while still staying with the old init system and circumventing the controversial systemd suite of system utilities. In essence, Debian as it used to be (from a user perspective).

Jibbed - NetBSD Based Live CD (Updated 19/01/13)

There aren't exactly many live CD's based on one of the BSD's around, and unfortunately over the years several more have gone the way of the Dodo. One such project was TrueBSD which is now described as dormant, not having seen a release in 4 1/2 years, and no final for even longer. It seemed promising but C'est la vie. The developers and a few hardcore users still keep an IRC channel active and refuse to admit that it's dead, but don't hold your breath.

From ArchBang to SlackBang

If you looked at the ArchBang website over the last few days you would have read that founder WillXtreme is retiring from the project leadership due to changes in real life and other pursuits. A few people also involved in the development and who were quite active in the forum for example and with tips on their own blogs, like pablokal, will continue the project.

Porteus, The Portable Community Linux

Porteus grew out of the fan project that gave us the Slax Community Remix, a continuation of Slax 6.1.2, the last official Slax release for quite a while, dating back to August 2009.
As the team grew more adept they put their own stamp on their interpretation of what a Slackware based Live system should be like and slowly moved away from the old Slax base and from some of its design principles.

Inspecting the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD

Following a recent request I downloaded the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD for a test drive. I tried Gentoo many years ago but gave up after a few hours due to the time involved, and my knowledge back then was a lot more rudimentary than today. Gentoo is a source distribution that is supposed to be configured and compiled from stage 2 or stage 3 tarballs, although images are available that allow you to cheat and skip the early part of kernel compilation etc. via minimal install images.

Quick Look at VectorLinux 7.0 Final

Around two weeks ago, on 28th November, VectorLinux 7.0 was finally released after two years of work, or, as the developers put it in the release announcement, "nearly two years of blood, sweat and tears". We don't want to be disrespectful then. You can get a brief overview of features for the standard edition here and here. I've previously looked at RC2 in a longer review over on Muktware, so this is more meant as an addendum.

Sabayon Fscked My Home - The XFCE Spin Revisited

This should originally have been entitled 'The Sabayon Xfce Spin Revisited', but something disturbing happened. It's been a while since I tried Xfce 5.3 last August, but in the fast moving world of software and technology a year can be a long time. Back then I was a bit unhappy about the size of 628 MB that gave the user little more than Firefox and the package manager.

One Year of Rolling with Arch/Bang

It's just a little over a year now that I first installed ArchBang with 2010.09 that had just been released. In comments to my following review a poster expressed the opinion it would be interesting to see how this would develop and if it would still be working in a year from then. So here we are. I've tweaked the install and kept it updated at my leisure, and it is still working fine. Over time the ArchBang base I started out with has turned into Arch Linux, as you would expect it to when pointing at Arch repositories.

Zenwalk 7.0 Live - Teaching tool and installable live system

This is a repost of the article on OStatic, slightly updated. The original article has since been deleted.

On 8th May the Zenwalk project released its Live CD of Zenwalk Linux 7.0. Currently Zenwalk offers the main Xfce edition, a Core edition which foregoes the X windowing system and is intended to be a starting point to building a custom desktop or server system, an edition with Openbox as window manager, an older Gnome version that is still at version 6.4, and the Live CD version of the edition based on the Xfce desktop environment.

Preview: What's Coming Up in VectorLinux 7?

VectorLinux is a long-standing distribution that seems a bit underrepresented in the PR department. I took the opportunity for an early look at RC2 of the upcoming version 7.0 to see what we can expect after more than 2.5 years of development. You can read the full article on Muktware.

Beautifying the Xfce Desktop

Regular readers will know Xfce is one of my favorite environments, and the one I have been using for the longest period of time, since early 2006 to be exact. It already comes with a large selection of themes and typically all you need to do is get a few icon sets to spruce up your desktop and you're done. Or keep using Tango, nice and simple.

Did You Know You Can Try BSD With VirtualBSD?

A while ago back in January I came across this announcement on OSNews.com and made a mental note that this was something I had to try. VirtualBSD 8.1 was released on or around 4/01/2011 and it basically gives you a pre-defined FreeBSD 8.1 installation with Xfce 4.6 and a range of applications in a virtual machine. It is a desktop ready FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE in the form of a VMware appliance but can also in a few steps be made to run with VirtualBox. Read the instructions for that here.

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.

Sabayon 5.3 Xfce & LXDE - a few impressions

First of all let me say this is not intended to be a full review of Sabayon Linux. Sabayon is well known and had its fair share of reviews already, the most recent one I am aware of being very thorough and can be read here. This is more like a quick look and impressions of how the light weight desktop environments do on Sabayon SpinBase.