GParted 1.2.0 Live CD & USB Image: Nimble and Effective

Continuing the theme of Debian based rescue distributions, simply because most of them are built on Debian, I am looking at GParted this week as last one in this short series. GParted is of course known as a tool to work with and edit partitions that is included with most distributions where it could be considered a de facto standard. But it also lends its name to a rescue CD image where it is at the centre of the collection of tools.

Introducing the Linux Mint Devuan Edition

The Mint project has been a long-time favorite among Linux users who are mainly home users. Its friendly and common sense approach to a distribution appeals to many people who want to run something with the Linux kernel on their desktop. There's ample testimony of this, from the inception and creation of the Cinnamon desktop as common sense, traditional but still sleek and modern alternative to the evolving desaster and dumbing-down assault from other desktops at the time to coming up with great little tools like the Warpinator for file sharing on a LAN, the Hypnotix IPTV app and other little improvements to make things just a little easier, for the average Joe and the Techie who just wants to get things done alike.

Rescatux 0.73: Rescuing GNU/Linux and Microsoft Systems with Rescapp

According to the Distrowatch summary "Rescatux is a Debian-based GNU/Linux live distribution that includes a graphical wizard for rescuing broken GNU/Linux installations." It features a graphical interface where one can choose a task to perform, including the option to restore the GRUB bootloader, Linux and Windows password resets, and Linux file system checks. Being based on Debian (Stable) it is using the Linux kernel 4.19.0-8 and systemd in the background. Right off the bat this could be a problem for machines needing a newer kernel but it was ok for my hardware, the newest machine now being around 20 months old.

Rescuezilla 2.1: Caped Tux to the Rescue?

Rescuezilla, not to be confused with Rescatux which is based on Debian, "is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration."(1) It is a fork of Redo Backup and Recovery after that was abandoned and like its predecessor allows a bare-metal restore after any hardware failure directly from the live image. It works as a live CD/USB image and can be used to work with Linux, OS X and Windows, automatically searches a local area network for drives to backup to or restore from and can recover lost or deleted data files. Rescuezilla uses a basic LXDE as graphical desktop. So far the advertisement.

A Long Wait Will Soon be Over: Slackware 15.0 Coming Up

As Slackware fans will have duly noted the team around the BDFL are finally one step, actually untold steps, closer to nearing the long awaited 15.0 release. And high time it is as outdated as 14.2 now is something like 4.5 years into its life. Is anyone actually still running this, except on servers? On 7 December 2020 it was announced that alienBOB's latest Plasma 5 packages made it into the Slackware-current branch for testing and with that they finally fully replaced KDE 4. Shortly after XFCE 4.16 followed and now even includes the Whisker menu.