Opensuse has recently released its newest version in its line of Linux operating systems. I have had a few run-ins with Suse in the past at much earlier release dates. 12.3 has gotten a lot of publicity for how well put together it is, which is one reason I was left so gravely disappointed after using it. In this review I am going to try to look at the good of Opensuse, since some of the problems I experienced only apply to those with certain hardware conditions, but there is also some bad to sift through.
The Desktop
One nice thing about OpenSuse is the KDE setup it comes with by default. They've put a lot of effort into making both the animations that are enabled and the themes that are applied visually pleasing (if you happen to like green). Although it is good looking, it is not as functional as you may want it to be. It ships with KDE 4.9, but that can be updated immediately by switching to Tumbleweed (the rolling release system for Opensuse). Similar effort is applied to the Gnome Opensuse flavor, but not to the XFCE, which was disappointing. Their XFCE .iso comes with some bland defaults with light branding. It's really nothing to right home about.
The Applications
The default applications are more-or-less standard. Libreoffice, your DE tools, Firefox, Vim (I was happy to see that) etc. Gimp is not included. One application that always gets coverage in Opensuse reviews is YaST (Yet Another System Tool). It truly is an amazing utility, with which you can graphically perform tasks that on any other distribution you would be doing by hand. Graphically changing hostnames, installing packages, changing kernel parameters, changing GRUB around, setting up a LDAP / Mail server, etc. It can all be done through YaST.
The Not-so-good
So far it is sounding like a very good distro, no? Well, there is one minor issue that you will run into. To enable networking, you have to select a check mark in the NetworkManager applet for whatever DE you're using. After it's selected you must reboot to start using networking. It's a minor annoyance for some, but it grows into bigger problems for others.
I have a hardware condition that disallows proper shutdown. Thanks to this networking problem I have absolutely no internet access whatsoever. This is an incredibly rare case, but it's bound to effect others out there. And even if it never effects your computer to this extent, it WILL happen to you.
On first run, packagekit will persistently run, causing you to either have to kill it or reboot. This has something to do with it checking for updates and crashing.
Would I use this distribution?
I really wanted to. I downloaded the .iso to move from Sabayon 11 to something a bit more Enterprise, but ran into some bugs that stopped me in my tracks. It is destined to become Ubuntu fodder.
Who would use this distribution?
Don't get this review wrong. Opensuse is one of the best Operating Systems for enterprise workstations and home desktops. It is an Operating System crafted specifically for desktop and laptop use, none of this touch-friendly nonsense that some companies have started introducing. If you are fine with some rough corners, use it. It is the best default KDE experience I have ever seen, even if it is an earlier version. I just think that they should have polished the distribution a tad bit more before releasing it.
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Sabayon 10 Review - Why wanting 11 is a bad thing
I have long been a die-hard Sabayon Linux fan. I have used it for laptops, desktops, and servers in the past, but its use best fits user-centric computing: laptops and desktops. Sabayon is like Arch in that the packages are bleeding-edge. They follow upstream exactly, or at least within minor releases. This is thanks to Gentoo's Portage (source-based) and Sabayon's build server. When source code is pushed, Gentoo packages it and Sabayon makes it available as a binary. Theoretically this is a good thing. Before you can jump into this theoretical goodness you must first get Sabayon to work, and for 7, 8, and 9 this was no big deal; not the same story for 10.
If you look at my Bash's history, it won't be that grand. In fact, 11 commands might seem like a freakishly small amount. And why would package names like "kubuntu-desktop" appear on someone's history that praises Sabayon in their review? The answer is simple. Sabayon makes installing Gentoo extremely easy, but what it fails to do is adapt to slightly unusual partitioning schemes.
My partitions are set up in such a way that packages are installed on a solid state drive, my hard drive gets its own /home, and a removable media is formatted with tmpfs. Sabayon was able to do this (with relative ease, I must say. Compared to something such as Crunchbang). Sabayon was even able to punch through the logical volume management on the disks, unlike some installers (I'm looking at you again, Crunchbang). The install worked and all was well, grub installed, my user was created, and the prompt to reboot came up. Upon reboot I was dropped into a shell (with a very pretty background image, I must say) prompting options. The "shell" command launched a limited shell, and I used it to dd /dev/sda with /dev/zero.
The second installation was the same story, even with just the hard drive being formatted to ext4 and used as the / partition. At this point, I gave up and reinstalled lubuntu. A cut of losses.
Theoretical and past versions
Despite all of the trouble with Anaconda (Sabayon's installer) I will still always have a soft spot for Sabayon. The fact that such a small team is able to write something so big is astounding. They use a lot of Gentoo's work, but they add a LOT of their own stuff (including a package manager) and ship it upstream, benefiting the community. Entropy, the binary package manager, has features unlike that apt, yum, or zypper could ever dream of having without third party software.
With a few simple commands entropy can back up and export the entire database of installed packages, and have it reinstalled on another computer without even the hint of a depedancy problem. Even if you backed up Coreutils and did an equo restore over a newer version Entropy can adapt to not allow any problems to crop up.
Aside from the package manager itself, Sabayon features some stunning visuals and branding, including a custom TTY (which, by the way, stops kernel error logging unless explicitly specified. Perfect for those of us with a damaged USB port logging problem), nice default tools (as they say: "gcc is there, out of the box"), and your choice of desktop environment.
Sabayon has been described as "Gentoo for the lazy", and largely that's what it is. A platform for installing Gentoo and all of its benefits, with some added bonuses, like Entropy. The wiki is subpar compared to FreeBSD or Arch's, but it is there. It is a decently popular operating system, so there is also some community support. A big question is whether or not it will run Steam, and that answer is an astounding yes. Steam has been in the repositories since closed-garden beta.
Conclusion
Sabayon has a bright future. Low resources, a "kickin'" package manager, aesthetics, and a good core (Gentoo Linux) give it the edge over its competition. That said, there are still some bugs to iron out. I ran into a documented bug in the installer and wasn't even able to get it installed. If you like tinkering, or if you like Gentoo with an installer, Sabayon could possibly be the OS for you.
Sidenotes
Large .iso
If you look at my Bash's history, it won't be that grand. In fact, 11 commands might seem like a freakishly small amount. And why would package names like "kubuntu-desktop" appear on someone's history that praises Sabayon in their review? The answer is simple. Sabayon makes installing Gentoo extremely easy, but what it fails to do is adapt to slightly unusual partitioning schemes.
My partitions are set up in such a way that packages are installed on a solid state drive, my hard drive gets its own /home, and a removable media is formatted with tmpfs. Sabayon was able to do this (with relative ease, I must say. Compared to something such as Crunchbang). Sabayon was even able to punch through the logical volume management on the disks, unlike some installers (I'm looking at you again, Crunchbang). The install worked and all was well, grub installed, my user was created, and the prompt to reboot came up. Upon reboot I was dropped into a shell (with a very pretty background image, I must say) prompting options. The "shell" command launched a limited shell, and I used it to dd /dev/sda with /dev/zero.
The second installation was the same story, even with just the hard drive being formatted to ext4 and used as the / partition. At this point, I gave up and reinstalled lubuntu. A cut of losses.
Theoretical and past versions
Despite all of the trouble with Anaconda (Sabayon's installer) I will still always have a soft spot for Sabayon. The fact that such a small team is able to write something so big is astounding. They use a lot of Gentoo's work, but they add a LOT of their own stuff (including a package manager) and ship it upstream, benefiting the community. Entropy, the binary package manager, has features unlike that apt, yum, or zypper could ever dream of having without third party software.
With a few simple commands entropy can back up and export the entire database of installed packages, and have it reinstalled on another computer without even the hint of a depedancy problem. Even if you backed up Coreutils and did an equo restore over a newer version Entropy can adapt to not allow any problems to crop up.
Aside from the package manager itself, Sabayon features some stunning visuals and branding, including a custom TTY (which, by the way, stops kernel error logging unless explicitly specified. Perfect for those of us with a damaged USB port logging problem), nice default tools (as they say: "gcc is there, out of the box"), and your choice of desktop environment.
Sabayon has been described as "Gentoo for the lazy", and largely that's what it is. A platform for installing Gentoo and all of its benefits, with some added bonuses, like Entropy. The wiki is subpar compared to FreeBSD or Arch's, but it is there. It is a decently popular operating system, so there is also some community support. A big question is whether or not it will run Steam, and that answer is an astounding yes. Steam has been in the repositories since closed-garden beta.
Conclusion
Sabayon has a bright future. Low resources, a "kickin'" package manager, aesthetics, and a good core (Gentoo Linux) give it the edge over its competition. That said, there are still some bugs to iron out. I ran into a documented bug in the installer and wasn't even able to get it installed. If you like tinkering, or if you like Gentoo with an installer, Sabayon could possibly be the OS for you.
Sidenotes
Large .iso
Monday, November 12, 2012
Manjaro Linux .82 review
A while ago, I did a review of Manjaro Linux. Manjaro, for those of you who are curious on its specifics, is a pre-configured Arch Linux distribution with some custom tools, including Archbang's installer (they now have a custom one in development), a Pacman (the package manager) frontend, and a Manjaro-branded XFCE desktop complete with their own Conky config. The version that I reviewed, .80, had numerous bugs including insane RAM usages with LightDM and a dependency on Nvidia's proprietary driver. See how Manjaro is doing now in the week's second review.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Chakra Claire-2012.10 Review
After hopping from an Ubuntu install with a broken permissions system (how is it even possible that root can't read files anymore?) to Sabayon, and promptly remembering why I left Sabayon in the first place, I have hopped to a distribution I haven ever used before: Chakra Linux. For the readers that don't know, Chakra is a Linux distribution with a very stiff, almost dictator-like control on what packages can and can't be installed from their repositories, and the default desktop environments (or the ones that are available). Take a look at why I chose to let the Chakra developers decide what was good for my computing sanity in this week's review.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Ubuntu 12.10 final beta REVIEW
This is a review on a beta package as of October 4th, 2012. This information will be deprecated quickly as updates are released in a fast manor as the 12.10 deadline approaches.
11.10 blew Ubuntu users away when compared to 11.04, with the immature version of Unity in a long-term support release that drove many of its users away. Hoping that 12.10 would bring further maturity to what Unity has already evolved into I installed it, and have had mixed emotions since then. Here are some of my discoveries, complaints, and criticisms on the new Ubuntu operating system.
Upgrade Process
The update process couldn't have been easier. A matter of running update-manager -d from the terminal and a few hours of installing updates later, the reboot prompt appeared and 12.10 was booted. Note that if you are using the openssh-server package there will be a boot-time error message regarding an incorrect compilation flag, as well as a mandatory filesystem check since upgrading an operating system is such a dramatic overhaul.
The boot process will take longer than usual if you upgraded from 12.04. This is why it is commonly recommended that the Operating system be installed over the existing one, rather than throwing patches on top of an existing framework.
On first boot
Unity hasn't changed much. Aside from the controversial shopping lens, unnecessary glossy buttons on the launcher, and file previews it is just like a faster version of what came before. Which isn't much to complain about. In fact, it's nice having a snappy interface. Of course, snappiness only applies to those with a higher-end internet connection (> 256 KiB/s) since file indexing and Amazon searches are the norm within Unity now. Of course, this can be opted-out of with sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping.
Little Differences
There were seemingly small but interesting design choices in this release. The full name of the user is no longer displayed on the top right of the screen, and a new printer applet is the default. Also, "Software Updater" is the new Update Manager, and it updates upon boot. So there will be no more tiered updating.
Also, in Unity's Expo-like workspace switcher, clicking on a window will move you to that workspace rather than highlighting it within the interface.
A weird design choice was to include two applications that are pinned to the launcher that open in the firefox web browser. It seemed pretty out-of-character for Ubuntu.
Possible bugs
The only bug I have noticed is the inability to minimize a window using the Unity launcher, which is a pretty big deal. Aside from this inconvenience the Beta release is seemingly stable. However, little issues seem to crop up in Beta releases, so I could never recommend this for a production machine.
Although not a serious functionality issue, sometimes Unity previews mix their text together, creating an unreadable mess. Also, as shown in the picture, the previews for Albums are supposed to play individual tracks. This does not work, but I am not sure if it is implied to. The sideways triangle IS the Universal sign for "Start", though.
Other Goodies
Ubuntu 12.10 comes with a signed bootloader, meaning that it can run with UEFI secure-boot that Windows 8 OEM computers will be coming with. This caused quite a big stir in the open source world, and Ubuntu was about to employ questionable tactics to get around it, but with a signed version of Grub everything remains the same.
All of the outdated packages are updated and a most up-to-date repository is out there. Gimp 2.8 is among the collection. No more third party repos!
Here is a little demo video showing some of the features discussed in this article:
11.10 blew Ubuntu users away when compared to 11.04, with the immature version of Unity in a long-term support release that drove many of its users away. Hoping that 12.10 would bring further maturity to what Unity has already evolved into I installed it, and have had mixed emotions since then. Here are some of my discoveries, complaints, and criticisms on the new Ubuntu operating system.
Upgrade Process
The boot process will take longer than usual if you upgraded from 12.04. This is why it is commonly recommended that the Operating system be installed over the existing one, rather than throwing patches on top of an existing framework.
On first boot
Unity hasn't changed much. Aside from the controversial shopping lens, unnecessary glossy buttons on the launcher, and file previews it is just like a faster version of what came before. Which isn't much to complain about. In fact, it's nice having a snappy interface. Of course, snappiness only applies to those with a higher-end internet connection (> 256 KiB/s) since file indexing and Amazon searches are the norm within Unity now. Of course, this can be opted-out of with sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping. Little Differences
There were seemingly small but interesting design choices in this release. The full name of the user is no longer displayed on the top right of the screen, and a new printer applet is the default. Also, "Software Updater" is the new Update Manager, and it updates upon boot. So there will be no more tiered updating.
Also, in Unity's Expo-like workspace switcher, clicking on a window will move you to that workspace rather than highlighting it within the interface.
A weird design choice was to include two applications that are pinned to the launcher that open in the firefox web browser. It seemed pretty out-of-character for Ubuntu.
Possible bugs
The only bug I have noticed is the inability to minimize a window using the Unity launcher, which is a pretty big deal. Aside from this inconvenience the Beta release is seemingly stable. However, little issues seem to crop up in Beta releases, so I could never recommend this for a production machine.Although not a serious functionality issue, sometimes Unity previews mix their text together, creating an unreadable mess. Also, as shown in the picture, the previews for Albums are supposed to play individual tracks. This does not work, but I am not sure if it is implied to. The sideways triangle IS the Universal sign for "Start", though.
Other Goodies
Ubuntu 12.10 comes with a signed bootloader, meaning that it can run with UEFI secure-boot that Windows 8 OEM computers will be coming with. This caused quite a big stir in the open source world, and Ubuntu was about to employ questionable tactics to get around it, but with a signed version of Grub everything remains the same.
All of the outdated packages are updated and a most up-to-date repository is out there. Gimp 2.8 is among the collection. No more third party repos!
Here is a little demo video showing some of the features discussed in this article:
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Manjaro Linux review
***DEPRECATED***
Although some information on this page is relevant, it is outdated by a few months. A new version of Manjaro is out and there is a separate review for it: http://profectium.blogspot.com/2012/11/manjaro-linux-82-review.html
Manjaro Linux is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Arch, for those that do not know, is a distribution designed to be completely minimal; this allows the user to build their system from the ground up. Manarjo is Arch Linux for people that want a functioning system out of the box. Using Manjaro still awards the user with the features of Arch Linux while being wrapped in a user friendly package.
Installation
Manjaro Linux is very easy to install. It uses X by default but still uses an ncurses user interface that opens in a terminal to install. The installation takes considerably longer than any other Linux distribution I have ever seen before, mainly on the formatting part. The partition editor did not recognize my other partitions either, so I had to use the entire disk. The problems with the installer will be fixed some time this fall when the Manjaro Linux team finishes their graphical installer. If you have ever installed Archbang, it's basically the exact same experience.
First Impressions
Manjaro uses the lightdm display manager just like Ubuntu does. There is a sacrifice between memory usage and aesthetics here, however. Lightdm uses about 50 MiB more RAM than gdm does, and /etc/inittab is nowhere to be found. For those that do not want to kill lightdm and start X manually on every boot this could be a dealbreaker. I was not happy with this.
When choosing which CD .iso to install I chose XFCE. To my surprise it was heavily patched for Manjaro Linux. The entire XFCE experience was wonderful in terms of additions that the Manjaro Linux team made. I presume that the other desktop environment options are just as friendly if not moreso than the XFCE version of the distribution.
Prolonged use impressions *new*
I have recently discovered a very troubling bit on information about Manjaro. If you notice in the screenshot, 585 MiB of RAM was in use. This is a nominal sum in today's age, where having 8+ GiB of RAM is commonplace, but what is using all of that memory? It turns out that a kernel module named nvidia was installed during the Manjaro installation.
It dawned on me that Manjaro DID provide a boot option to not install video card graphics drivers, but I instead installed the drivers. Following this guide I blacklisted the nvidia kernel driver and restarted the kernel. Upon doing this X was completely brought to its knees by the absence of the Nvidia driver. X DEPENDS on the Nvidia driver as it is used in Manjaro Linux.
Manjaro Linux does not provide a flexible graphical system to meet the needs of a graphics-intensive user as well as one who does not use graphics. Rather, they polarized their distribution with two extremes that conflict with one another.
Installing Software
Unlike Archbang the pacman (package manager) mirrorlist is functional right out of the box and does not need any updating. Pacman even comes with a graphical frontend, making installing software possible for beginners.
The autoconf tools suite was not there by default, however. This made installing packages from the Arch User Repository (AUR) difficult. Any user wishing to compile their own software will also have to take the detour of manually installing the three packages that make up autotools.
Non-manjaro specific Arch Linux evaluation
Arch Linux, the system that Manjaro is based on, has quite a bit going for it. It is arguably the best documented distribution around with its wiki and forum. The AUR and official repositories are as up-to-date as portage, which until now has been the best repository tree I have ever used. Pacman is a bit cumbersome to use from the command line (pacman -Syu to update does not make immediate sense), but it is one of the selling points of Arch Linux.
Conclusion
If you are a user interested in Manjaro Linux it is completely usable as-is. For a user with a bit less experience with Arch Linux it would probably be wise to wait until the graphical installer is released to avoid the partitioning confusion that all users of Manjaro have run into so far.
After discovered the issue with X recently I have decided to jump ship to Fedora Linux. However, it is a very minor issue since the nvidia module only takes up about 111 MiB of RAM. The scary part about the issue is that other shortcuts like the X-dependency or lightdm could be lurking in the background of Manjaro Linux, making it an unreliable computing platform.
Although some information on this page is relevant, it is outdated by a few months. A new version of Manjaro is out and there is a separate review for it: http://profectium.blogspot.com/2012/11/manjaro-linux-82-review.html
Manjaro Linux is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Arch, for those that do not know, is a distribution designed to be completely minimal; this allows the user to build their system from the ground up. Manarjo is Arch Linux for people that want a functioning system out of the box. Using Manjaro still awards the user with the features of Arch Linux while being wrapped in a user friendly package.
Installation
Manjaro Linux is very easy to install. It uses X by default but still uses an ncurses user interface that opens in a terminal to install. The installation takes considerably longer than any other Linux distribution I have ever seen before, mainly on the formatting part. The partition editor did not recognize my other partitions either, so I had to use the entire disk. The problems with the installer will be fixed some time this fall when the Manjaro Linux team finishes their graphical installer. If you have ever installed Archbang, it's basically the exact same experience.
First Impressions
Manjaro uses the lightdm display manager just like Ubuntu does. There is a sacrifice between memory usage and aesthetics here, however. Lightdm uses about 50 MiB more RAM than gdm does, and /etc/inittab is nowhere to be found. For those that do not want to kill lightdm and start X manually on every boot this could be a dealbreaker. I was not happy with this.
When choosing which CD .iso to install I chose XFCE. To my surprise it was heavily patched for Manjaro Linux. The entire XFCE experience was wonderful in terms of additions that the Manjaro Linux team made. I presume that the other desktop environment options are just as friendly if not moreso than the XFCE version of the distribution.
Prolonged use impressions *new*
I have recently discovered a very troubling bit on information about Manjaro. If you notice in the screenshot, 585 MiB of RAM was in use. This is a nominal sum in today's age, where having 8+ GiB of RAM is commonplace, but what is using all of that memory? It turns out that a kernel module named nvidia was installed during the Manjaro installation.
It dawned on me that Manjaro DID provide a boot option to not install video card graphics drivers, but I instead installed the drivers. Following this guide I blacklisted the nvidia kernel driver and restarted the kernel. Upon doing this X was completely brought to its knees by the absence of the Nvidia driver. X DEPENDS on the Nvidia driver as it is used in Manjaro Linux.
Manjaro Linux does not provide a flexible graphical system to meet the needs of a graphics-intensive user as well as one who does not use graphics. Rather, they polarized their distribution with two extremes that conflict with one another.
Installing Software
Unlike Archbang the pacman (package manager) mirrorlist is functional right out of the box and does not need any updating. Pacman even comes with a graphical frontend, making installing software possible for beginners.
The autoconf tools suite was not there by default, however. This made installing packages from the Arch User Repository (AUR) difficult. Any user wishing to compile their own software will also have to take the detour of manually installing the three packages that make up autotools.
Non-manjaro specific Arch Linux evaluation
Arch Linux, the system that Manjaro is based on, has quite a bit going for it. It is arguably the best documented distribution around with its wiki and forum. The AUR and official repositories are as up-to-date as portage, which until now has been the best repository tree I have ever used. Pacman is a bit cumbersome to use from the command line (pacman -Syu to update does not make immediate sense), but it is one of the selling points of Arch Linux.
Conclusion
If you are a user interested in Manjaro Linux it is completely usable as-is. For a user with a bit less experience with Arch Linux it would probably be wise to wait until the graphical installer is released to avoid the partitioning confusion that all users of Manjaro have run into so far.
After discovered the issue with X recently I have decided to jump ship to Fedora Linux. However, it is a very minor issue since the nvidia module only takes up about 111 MiB of RAM. The scary part about the issue is that other shortcuts like the X-dependency or lightdm could be lurking in the background of Manjaro Linux, making it an unreliable computing platform.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Crunchbang Linux Review
As a long Linux user I have experimented with a lot of different operating systems. I have used Debian for a short while (before a dependency managed to bring the system down), Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and a lot of other Debian based Linux distros but it wasn't until about two days ago that I decided I would try out crunchbang: a lightweight Debian derivative using Openbox as its primary window manager. Here is a breakdown of its strong points and weaknesses:
Good: Speed
Crunchbang's boot process beat my Ubuntu partition by about 30 seconds. I do have a lot of bloaty services running on Ubuntu, but this is quite a big bonus; especially so if reboots are commonplace.
Good: Stability
Depending on the version of Crunchbang that you chose (testing, stable, backports, etc) there will be varying degrees of stability. It's based on Debian, which is a widely used operating systems on servers, so it inherits a lot of Debian's stability. I have not had a graphical hiccup or a kernel panic once.
Bad: Backport Repositories
On crunchbang it is easy to change around the repositories using synaptic or just editing /etc/apt/sources.list. That makes this issues less of a big deal. However, the backports did not seem to have enough packages that I am used to having. Codeblocks was not in here, and dependencies were an issue. Adding Debian Wheezy's repositories fixed some of the issues.
Very Bad: Installer
I installed Crunchbang twice. The first time, the installer failed to recognize my Ubuntu partition and when it wrote Grub to the master boot record. This gave me a barely functioning crunchbang install and no Ubuntu. For a novice computer user this would be an instant dealbreaker, because of they do not know their way around mount then all of their data would have been lost.
When I entered the (then only) operating system on the grub screen I was immediately displeased. Thunar (the file manager) would not start because it could not find the display and glibc6 was not found. These are two enormous errors. Rebooting solved those issues, but not the issue of the MBR. I reinstalled Crunchbang and it worked perfectly, detecing all three of my Operating Systems.
Great: Aesthetics
In addition to Openbox, a dark icon theme, and a light gray background (simple yet elegant) Crunchbang comes with my personal favorite display manager: SliM. SliM is one of the simpler display managers available. It is configurable if you have the root password, and allows quick different user logins. It doesn't show a list of users. It just shows :username and :password. If your username goes along the lines of xXxXleethaXorZxX then SliM is not for you.
You decide: Ice*
On Debian and Crunchbang Mozilla Firefox is replaced with a browser called Iceweasel. This is because some of Mozilla Firefox (the crash handler and images) is proprietary. Iceweasel is completely free, but lags behind a bit in terms of features and up-to-datedness (aurora is 11.0). Firefox addons and themes are fully compatible. Iceweasel has a brilliant feature added to the search bar. It can search for Debian packages, which is a lifesaver on the broken backports repoistory.
Icedove, the Thunderbird replacement, is also a bit outdated but is not as noticeable. It works the same as Thunderbird and even has (in my opinion) a prettier icon.
Bad: Out of the box software
Crunchbang comes with a bit of preinstalled software, but not all the choices are good. The file manager (thunar) and the terminal emulator (terminator) are two of the few good examples of preinstalled software. Abiword and Geany are the only two text editors that come with the system (if you discount VI). There is no middle ground and no libreoffice. If someone wanted to edit their rc.lua file for the Awesome window manager, lets say, they would have to decide between opening it in a word processor with no syntax highlighting or a full fledged IDE.
Gedit does not have many dependencies, so installing it was easy enough.
Other essential tools like CUPS and git are not included, but a welcome script called cb-welcome allows them to be downloaded.
Conclusion
I have had a love-hate relationship with Crunchbang over the past few days. Dependencies have killed me, but the stability and speed are good things. Crunchbang is NOT for beginners, unlike what Crunchbang enthusiasts may try and tell you. I had to mount my /dev/sda7 partition from the command line to even get my old files transfered over (and no, thunar did not detect it). However, if you are an experienced Linux user that wants to escape the bloaty grasp of Canonical or the outdated and fully free beast that Debian Squeeze is, then Crunchbang could be for you.
Good: Speed
Crunchbang's boot process beat my Ubuntu partition by about 30 seconds. I do have a lot of bloaty services running on Ubuntu, but this is quite a big bonus; especially so if reboots are commonplace.
Good: Stability
Depending on the version of Crunchbang that you chose (testing, stable, backports, etc) there will be varying degrees of stability. It's based on Debian, which is a widely used operating systems on servers, so it inherits a lot of Debian's stability. I have not had a graphical hiccup or a kernel panic once.
Bad: Backport Repositories
On crunchbang it is easy to change around the repositories using synaptic or just editing /etc/apt/sources.list. That makes this issues less of a big deal. However, the backports did not seem to have enough packages that I am used to having. Codeblocks was not in here, and dependencies were an issue. Adding Debian Wheezy's repositories fixed some of the issues.
Very Bad: Installer
I installed Crunchbang twice. The first time, the installer failed to recognize my Ubuntu partition and when it wrote Grub to the master boot record. This gave me a barely functioning crunchbang install and no Ubuntu. For a novice computer user this would be an instant dealbreaker, because of they do not know their way around mount then all of their data would have been lost.
When I entered the (then only) operating system on the grub screen I was immediately displeased. Thunar (the file manager) would not start because it could not find the display and glibc6 was not found. These are two enormous errors. Rebooting solved those issues, but not the issue of the MBR. I reinstalled Crunchbang and it worked perfectly, detecing all three of my Operating Systems.
Great: Aesthetics
In addition to Openbox, a dark icon theme, and a light gray background (simple yet elegant) Crunchbang comes with my personal favorite display manager: SliM. SliM is one of the simpler display managers available. It is configurable if you have the root password, and allows quick different user logins. It doesn't show a list of users. It just shows :username and :password. If your username goes along the lines of xXxXleethaXorZxX then SliM is not for you.
You decide: Ice*
On Debian and Crunchbang Mozilla Firefox is replaced with a browser called Iceweasel. This is because some of Mozilla Firefox (the crash handler and images) is proprietary. Iceweasel is completely free, but lags behind a bit in terms of features and up-to-datedness (aurora is 11.0). Firefox addons and themes are fully compatible. Iceweasel has a brilliant feature added to the search bar. It can search for Debian packages, which is a lifesaver on the broken backports repoistory.
Icedove, the Thunderbird replacement, is also a bit outdated but is not as noticeable. It works the same as Thunderbird and even has (in my opinion) a prettier icon.
Bad: Out of the box software
Crunchbang comes with a bit of preinstalled software, but not all the choices are good. The file manager (thunar) and the terminal emulator (terminator) are two of the few good examples of preinstalled software. Abiword and Geany are the only two text editors that come with the system (if you discount VI). There is no middle ground and no libreoffice. If someone wanted to edit their rc.lua file for the Awesome window manager, lets say, they would have to decide between opening it in a word processor with no syntax highlighting or a full fledged IDE.
Gedit does not have many dependencies, so installing it was easy enough.
Other essential tools like CUPS and git are not included, but a welcome script called cb-welcome allows them to be downloaded.
Conclusion
I have had a love-hate relationship with Crunchbang over the past few days. Dependencies have killed me, but the stability and speed are good things. Crunchbang is NOT for beginners, unlike what Crunchbang enthusiasts may try and tell you. I had to mount my /dev/sda7 partition from the command line to even get my old files transfered over (and no, thunar did not detect it). However, if you are an experienced Linux user that wants to escape the bloaty grasp of Canonical or the outdated and fully free beast that Debian Squeeze is, then Crunchbang could be for you.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Ubuntu 12.04 review
A year after the release of Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal, the LTS release of Ubuntu, Precise Pangolin, was released. The new version featured Unity 5 with features such as the HUD and lenses. Also on the list of additions was the inclusion of classic gnome and the replacement of banshee with good-old rhythmbox.
A page out of Debian's book
Debian, the father distribution of hundreds of derivatives, uses Gnome 2 in their stable version. After all the gripe over Gnome 3 and Unity the ubuntu development team decided to include a full blown gnome-classic DE in the release. The inclusion was aimed to move people away from outdated versions of Ubuntu that are still clinging to gnome 2.
Rhythmbox, Debian's media player of choice, is also included over banshee in this distribution. After dropping rhythmbox to include Banshee for 11.04 they have gone back to their roots, leaving banshee in the dust. This was because of community preference, bugs in banshee, and stability in Rhythmbox.
Despite the reasons for these changes, Debian users will be in a more comfortable default environment than before when switching to Ubuntu.
Unity 5
In contrast to the original Unity from 12.04 Unity 5 is a vast, vast improvement. With one fell swoop the Ubuntu team has turned Unity into a tool of timesaving and productivity, and it's called the HUD. The HUD, activated with the alt key, allows access to the menu bar of any application. It also caches results so it can learn your preferences, making quick judgments about what you want to do and what you want to do quickest. The Unity interface can now be customized in a ton of ways, from myunity to the ccsm to even the appearance menu.
Small improvements define the latest version of Unity, however. The simplest features like leaving old queries in the Dash really make using the interface a much more productive experience than before. Unity is no longer the clown car of the desktop interface world.
Conclusion
12.04 is the first distribution after a year of volatility over some of Canonical's decisions to get things right. They dropped unstable software in favor of old, stable software and pushed enough bug patches to make Unity look like a family quilt. Where 11.04 had a cutting-edge, unstable feeling to it 12.04 is a noticeably stable experience that is easy for newcomers and power users alike.
A page out of Debian's book
Debian, the father distribution of hundreds of derivatives, uses Gnome 2 in their stable version. After all the gripe over Gnome 3 and Unity the ubuntu development team decided to include a full blown gnome-classic DE in the release. The inclusion was aimed to move people away from outdated versions of Ubuntu that are still clinging to gnome 2.
Rhythmbox, Debian's media player of choice, is also included over banshee in this distribution. After dropping rhythmbox to include Banshee for 11.04 they have gone back to their roots, leaving banshee in the dust. This was because of community preference, bugs in banshee, and stability in Rhythmbox.
Despite the reasons for these changes, Debian users will be in a more comfortable default environment than before when switching to Ubuntu.
Unity 5
In contrast to the original Unity from 12.04 Unity 5 is a vast, vast improvement. With one fell swoop the Ubuntu team has turned Unity into a tool of timesaving and productivity, and it's called the HUD. The HUD, activated with the alt key, allows access to the menu bar of any application. It also caches results so it can learn your preferences, making quick judgments about what you want to do and what you want to do quickest. The Unity interface can now be customized in a ton of ways, from myunity to the ccsm to even the appearance menu.
Small improvements define the latest version of Unity, however. The simplest features like leaving old queries in the Dash really make using the interface a much more productive experience than before. Unity is no longer the clown car of the desktop interface world.
Conclusion
12.04 is the first distribution after a year of volatility over some of Canonical's decisions to get things right. They dropped unstable software in favor of old, stable software and pushed enough bug patches to make Unity look like a family quilt. Where 11.04 had a cutting-edge, unstable feeling to it 12.04 is a noticeably stable experience that is easy for newcomers and power users alike.
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