I know I haven’t blogged on here in quite awhile – that has been due to 2 things: first, my wife and I finally bought a house, so I have been busy with getting everything in order for all that is involved with such a major purchase; we just finished moving in this weekend. Secondly, I was all set to do a review of SolusOS or openSUSE when my main laptop died (the HP Pavillion from 2009). For the last 4 weeks I have been using the old Gateway MX7340 laptop that runs Crunchbang Linux.

I set this up more as a gaming machine – it has DOSbox (with my favorite front end, DBGL), Angband, Nethack (plus 2 forks), Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Brogue, DoomRL, ADOM, and several emulators – for NES, SNES, and Genesis.

I also added a few games from the Debian repositories that will run on such an old machine – like FreeCiv, FreeCol, and Frogatto. Others like Warzone 2100 and 0 AD just are too graphics-intensive to be playable.

Since Crunchbang uses Debian (I’m using the Waldorf edition of Crunchbang which is based on “wheezy”/testing), I haven’t tried to set up Netflix, and my games on Steam expect much more than the 1.5 GB of RAM that is available. But Flash and Java are working fine, so streaming music, videos, and Hulu are all possible entertainment options for me.

My current plan is to save up and get a new laptop from Newegg. There are a few that are very good in the $500 to $700 range, with dedicated graphics cards. Once I have a new machine, I’ll be installing the current version of Linux Mint on the entire machine, and then partition off a section so that I can install and review Linux distros as I have been doing in the past.

Sabayon Linux 11 is the latest edition of Sabayon, a distribution inspired and based upon Gentoo Linux, a version of Linux that uses source based installation rather than binary packages. Sabayon is intended to have the features of Gentoo with less work, and does include binary package management. This is a review of Sabayon 11, using the MATE desktop. 64 bit edition. As in my previous review of Sabayon 8, I had no trouble creating a bootable USB key with UNetbootin on Windows. I chose MATE not only because it fit within 2 GB, but because I’ve done an Xfce review already.

Installation

Sabayon installs quickly and easily using a graphical installation routine. You choose your language, then keyboard, and storage device. One nice feature is that when choosing your language, there’s an option for Asian font support to be built in to your installation. I don’t think I’ve seen this in other distributions.

Sabayon doesn’t use “sudo” by default; you need to enter a root password and then create at least one user (and password), like Fedora. When it comes to the installation, it shows 5 options: use all space, replace an existing Linux system (detected on my laptop), shrink current system, use free space, or custom layout.

During the actual installation, several splash screens are displayed. I think two of them could use editing; the snark on Debian stable is uncalled for, and at this point I think there are 2 other major distributions that include Xonotic (an FPS game).

Features

The MATE desktop is a fairly minimal installation. You start with Midori as the only browser, and no office software is installed. Java and Adobe Flash are not installed by default, but they are easy to find in Rigo, the primary application to add and remove software packages.

The default desktop after installation

Sabayon uses Entropy as its binary package manager with Rigo as a frontend program, and it works well enough, featuring dependency checking and displaying “USE Flags” (a Gentoo customizing feature), but I wasn’t pleased that you can apparently only install or remove one program at a time. It also doesn’t include a numerical indication of how many files each category includes. Rigo is the replacement for Sulfur, the previous front-end, and it has a very quick response time to queries.

In addition to Entropy, Sabayon also allows you to use the portage system from Gentoo (with Porthole as a frontend). You are strongly advised to be cautious when mixing in packages from Portage to a mainly Entropy system, since it’s possible to break your setup that way. Porthole seems quite powerful so if you do choose to use it, be sure to read the information on it carefully and understand how to use it.

The front end for Portage

Sabayon uses a utility called CUPS to do printing. This is installed by default and it had no trouble detecting my wireless printer (although I did have to choose it from a list):

printer configuration in Sabayon

Software

The initial software selection in Sabayon’s MATE edition includes the following:

Accessories: an archive manager, a disks utility, the pluma text editor, a screenshot utility, and a terminal

Graphics: Atril (document viewer), and Eye of MATE image viewer

Internet: Midori web browser, Midori private, Transmission torrent downloader, and Xchat for IRC.

Office: a dictionary, Atril (doc viewer)

Other: 8 web links to various Sabayon help pages

Programming: Glade

Sound/Video: Audacious

System Tools: 11 various tools, including 2 more terminals and the CUPS printing utility.

Based on my browsing of the available software in the repos, most of what you’d want to use can be obtained using Entropy. There are several video editing programs, all the main programming languages and their associated libraries, GIMP, the LibreOffice suite, and many more commonly used programs.

Installing the Blender 3d graphics application

Gaming

The repositories are divided into categories, so you can find games by either searching for a name, or by browsing each category. They did seem to have a reasonably large selection of games (with scattered exceptions missing such as Frogatto, Nethack,  and Megaglest), and quite a few that I hadn’t heard of before. I didn’t check all of those out, but some look quite interesting. Most of my favorite emulators were also available, but the “Generator” program  (a Genesis emulator) listed in Rigo simply wouldn’t run. On a positive note, Sabayon does have the Nintendo 64 emulator Mupen64plus, version 1.5 (the version with a graphical front end).

Both the Steam client and Wine 1.5 are in the Entropy repositories, but I cannot confirm that Steam works flawlessly.

Help and Tips

The desktop icon “Get help” will open a webpage to a chat screen, or you can instead use XChat for the same thing. The “Other” menu item is identical to the old “Sabayon” entry that leads to 8 webpages including the forums, bug reporting, github, documentation, and the forums.

Likes

The system seemed quite stable and attractive, and lets you do a fair amount of customizing.

Dislikes

If accessibility is a concern for you, the KDE desktop may be more suitable; the only working onscreen keyboard I found was the KDE one (Kvkbd), which on MATE pulled in a bunch of unneeded libraries. Even with Portage, I could not find “Onboard”, the main GNOME virtual keyboard.

During installation, the default setting for time meant that I continually had to reset my time by 5 hours whenever switching between Linux and Windows 7.

Final Thoughts

My feelings on Sabayon haven’t really changed from before – it’s a great, high quality Linux distribution that has all the features you’d want, but really should not be recommended for people who either are new to Linux or just want a simple working system. Sabayon is quite powerful but its features are really best for those who know they will be using them.

I also was surprised to find that there were a fair number of Portage packages not available in the 64 bit edition. I had expected that installing something via source would have built it for me with no real issue.

Linux Mint 14 was released in November of last year. I haven’t done a review of a Linux Mint edition since the KDE version of Linux Mint 12, which was a year ago, so I felt one was overdue. This is the 32 bit version, using the Cinnamon desktop. You can alternatively choose the MATE desktop environment edition, which offers a look and feel closely resembling older Mint editions such as 10 or 11.

My now aging laptop is a 2009 HP Pavillion with 4 gigabytes of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. It has an ATI Mobility Radeon 3200 card in it, which is so outdated that I can’t use the proprietary Catalyst graphics installer.

Installation

As usual for Linux Mint, installation was trouble free and took less than half an hour. These days, the size of the default .iso file is more than a CD can hold, so I strongly recommend that if your computer is able to boot from a USB drive, you should use one and “burn” the data for Linux Mint 14 onto it. A 2 GB or larger stick will work fine, and I find UNetbootin to work very well if you’re using Windows to download and install from.

Linux Mint 14 with menu open

Features

Linux Mint starts you with 2 workspaces (you can access the second one by moving your cursor to the upper left corner of the screen to bring up both of them). The desktop is Cinnamon 1.6, with the kernel being 3.5.0.17. The Software Manager is included (and so is Synaptic, the graphical front end to apt-get), to easily find and install programs or games.

Linux Mint now includes Nemo, a drop-in replacement for the Nautilus file manager used in GNOME, which was created because the team at Linux Mint didn’t like the changes to Nautilus that were introduced in version 3.6. Nemo is now part and parcel of the Cinnamon desktop.

With Cinnamon, in the lower right corner of the taskbar, there is a section for notifications; the Settings menu for Panel editing, settings, and troubleshooting; Network Settings, your volume control (which includes quick launches for Banshee or VLC); the update notifier, the Date and Time settings; and the list of open windows. For more news and information about both Nemo and Cinnamon, you should check out the Cinnamon website.

There are 18 wallpapers to choose from, so if you get tired of the default, you don’t have to look too far to change it. This is a welcome change from a couple of years ago, where the main release only had a handful of wallpapers included by default. You also get a very large assortment of themes for Cinnamon and a smaller choice of window themes.

Default themes in Cinnamon 1.6

Software

The initial installation provides you with the following programs:

Accessories: the usual things such as an archive manager, calculator, character map, screenshot application, etc.

Graphics: Evince (a document viewer), GIMP, gThumb, an image viewer, LibreOffice Draw, and Simple Scan

Internet: Desktop sharing app, Firefox, Pidgin, Thunderbird, Transmission, and XChat

Office: LibreOffice Base, Calc, Draw, Impress, Writer. The document viewer can be run from here as well.

Sound and Video: Banshee, Brasero, Gnome Mplayer, Totem movie player, a sound recorder, VLC.

In addition, I installed “Onboard”, since several keys on my laptop’s keyboard no longer respond when pressed.

the onscreen keyboard for GNOME

If you install Netflix separately, via the PPA created for Ubuntu, it gets installed in the Sound and Video section of the menu.

As usual for Linux Mint, there are no games installed by default. This can quickly be rectified using the Software Manager.

Linux Mint detected my printer easily, as soon as I clicked “add printer” on the Print wizard application. Unlike some distributions, the correct printer was identified with no need to look through a long list of similar HP printers.

Just one click to add my printer

Gaming

Since Linux Mint is based upon Ubuntu (this edition is equivalent to Ubuntu 12.10), all of the games found in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories are here. Getdeb and Playdeb repositories are also available, although in the past they haven’t always been online. Nearly all the games that I have discussed in previous articles can be installed. The Software Manager shows over 1400 packages available.

Lots of games, with reviews

The Linux client for Steam can be installed just as it can on Ubuntu, but I need a better graphics card in order to play the one game I own which has been ported over so far (Crusader Kings 2).

Help and Tips

Firefox is pre-populated with links to the main Linux Mint sources of help and information – the main page, their Community site, the forums, and the official blog (for news on the latest from Linux Mint). Also, the XChat IRC client will open into 2 Mint chat channels by default…general chat and help. The Acessories section of the main menu includes a Help entry, which when clicked will open up a link to the Documentation web page, featuring User Guides in PDF form for many languages.

Likes

Because it’s using a Ubuntu base, you can add extra “PPA” sources if you so desire. such as the Netflix specific Firefox build, or getting the most up to date versions of certain other applications that have their own Personal Package Archive available.

The repositories have over thirty thousand programs and games available for installation.

If you use Steam for gaming, their Linux client installs just as easily as it does on Ubuntu (of course).

Mint installs the “hplip” printer libraries by default, and it found my printer quickly with no need to pick the right model from a list.

Dislikes

I haven’t really found anything I dislike in this particular edition of Linux Mint.

Final Notes

Linux Mint remains my recommended distribution for most people. Although I prefer KDE, the Cinnamon desktop provided as the default works well and has more customization than the GNOME Shell found in Fedora, without overdoing it.The major issues people have with the Ubuntu Linux distribution center on privacy issues and/or the use of Unity as the default desktop. By offering either Cinnamon or MATE as a default, Linux Mint gives users a choice that avoids all the controversy that Ubuntu has become known for over the last year.

Based on ease of use and ability to run the programs I use, I will have no qualms about installing Linux Mint in place of MS Windows as my primary operating system for the next laptop I purchase (which will be this fall, most likely). Linux Mint has all the best features of Ubuntu, but has consistently been focused on listening to their users. All of the new pieces (Cinnamon, MATE, Nemo) have been developed or adopted because Clem Lefebvre and the rest of the Mint developers put the users’ needs first. In fact, while the Unity desktop has only been adopted by a few Linux distributions besides Ubuntu (all of which are Ubuntu-based), Cinnamon and MATE have spread to over a dozen distros between them, quite a few of which aren’t related to Ubuntu at all. This is a testament to their popularity.

If you prefer to use Debian as your system base instead of Ubuntu, I suggest you check out Linux Mint Debian Edition. There will be a new release very soon now.

The latest edition of Fedora Linux was released on January 15th, after 2 months of delay. This community project is sponsored by Red Hat Linux and is one of the primary showcases for the GNOME desktop and its applications. Among the features making their debut is a much improved Samba setup (which is supposed to let you connect easily with Windows’ Active Directory). Also, the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments which got their start in Linux Mint are available, although not installed by default.

This is my review of the KDE edition of Fedora 18, 64-bit version. After 3 reviews of their main release, I decided it was time to check out the KDE Spin edition. Fedora has several different “Spins”, produced to showcase desktops or emphasize scientific, design, gaming, or other focused interests.

Installation

Part of the reason why Fedora was delayed for 2 months was that they overhauled and rewrote their installation routine. I found it somewhat confusing. To be honest, I didn’t know that Anaconda needed an overhaul. It has always been a clear installer for me in the past. Here are a few screenshots showing the simplest install you can do – a full install with automatic partitioning on an empty drive. They are included only to illustrate the new look, there is a lot more to the process.

Selecting language when installing Fedora 18

Before partitioning your disk

After creating your root password

I didn’t screw up the installation (I normally dual boot Linux with a Windows 7 system on this laptop), however I did find that there were points where feedback could have been more clear, and I can see how someone with less experience installing Linux would not be confident of how to proceed.

Fedora, unlike Ubuntu and Linux Mint, uses a separate root password for administation.  After the main installation, the post-install setup lets you assign a user to the administration group, in which case they can use their regular password for installing new apps and performing other system tasks.

Features

Fedora 18 ships with KDE 4.9 and is what I call a “pure KDE” distribution. You do not start out with Firefox, the GIMP, or LibreOffice installed. The one browser is Konqueror, which I find adequate but not quite as good as Chromium or Firefox. For office work, you get 3 of KDE’s Calligra suite applications – Stage, Sheets, and Write (for presentation, spreadsheets, and word processing respectively). The Calligra Suite is an excellent set of programs but Write does have one drawback which might be a killer for some people: it cannot save in the .docx format, but only in the .odt one. So you can read MS Word files, but unlike LibreOffice, you can’t edit them and then save in the default format that Word is used to.

Fedora doesn’t seem to make any modifications to the way KDE is shipped;  the menu is in Application Launcher style and the initial appearance is this:

the initial look of Fedora 18 KDE edition

You start with only the 1 wallpaper; however, there are 2 extra groups of backgrounds that you can easily install from the repositories: kde-wallpapers and kdeart-wallpapers. I presume they were left out due to the rather large size of each (> 70 megabytes). You also have 1 desktop, although adding more is very easy, since the pager is already on the taskbar on the left side, next to the Activity Manager. This is in pleasant contrast to some KDE distributions that hide the pager initially.

Fedora ships with the 3.6 kernel, but after 2 weeks of updates it’s now 3.7.4.

Software

Fedora 18 includes the following programs in the KDE Spin:

Development: Akonadi Console

Games:  KMahjongg, KMines, and KPatience

Graphics: Okular pdf viewer, Gwenview (image viewer), Kolourpaint, Kamoso (picture retriever), KSnapshot (screenshots)

Internet: Konqueror web browser, Akregator for blog feeds, Konversation for chat, Blogilo (blogging software), the BlueDevil bluetooth wizard,  and Telepathy (instant message contacts)

Multimedia: Amarok music player, Dragon media player, K3B disc burner, and KsCD to play CDs

Office: Calligra Words, Sheets, and Stage (word processor, spreadsheet program, and presentation)

Settings: a firewall configurater and the System Settings general management tool

Fedora’s KDE edition uses a tool called Apper to install, remove, and update software, and you are notified of new updates whenever you login. For me, Apper seems a little easier to use than the graphical front end to yum that you find in the standard edition, and I really like it. It offers groups of related software that you can select from, such as Applications, Games, Development, etc. There are no reviews of software like you find in the Ubuntu Software Center, but since I usually know what I am looking for, I found that it suits my needs quite well.

the KDE graphical tool to add or remove software

Fedora doesn’t include non-free software by default. If it’s important for you to have Flash for videos, Youtube, and games, I’d suggest you install the appropriate Google Chrome browser (32 or 64 bit). It installed quickly for me and works fine, and you are notified of updates the same way as the rest of the software. There are two 3rd party programs that install nonfree software for Fedora – easyLife and Fedora Utils. They have been updated for Fedora 18 now, but at the time that I tried them two weeks ago, they had not been, and I encountered problems using the versions for Fedora 17.  My solution was to go to RPM Fusion directly and simply add their extra repositories as instructed on the site. I’ve had no issues updating anything that way.

Fedora is also an excellent distribution for programming – this new release features Ruby on Rails 3.2, Python 3.3, Perl 5.16, as well as Haskell, OCaml, and PHP. Also, most of your favorite development environments can be installed – Eclipse, Netbeans, Kdevelop, and Code::Blocks to name just a few.

For your artistic side, you have easy access to Blender, Cinepaint, Inkscape, Synfig, and more. Music makers can grab Audacity, Ardour, Mixxx, Hydrogen, and many other creative programs.

Updating proved to be a snap, and just as with previous versions, Fedora had no trouble finding my printer.

Updating your system

A trouble-free routine to add my printer

Gaming

As noted above, Fedora’s KDE edition provides 3 casual games right off the bat – a solitaire card game (KPatience), a Mah Johngg tile matching solitaire game (KMahjongg), and a Minesweeper clone (KMines).

The games available in Fedora’s repositories are the very latest versions, and include many favorites from all genres – adventure games, FPS, puzzle games, platformers, card games, and a few roleplaying games.  One notable area that it does lack is emulators. I’m not sure why, but Fedora’s standard repos seem to have no console emulators (in the 64-bit edition). This is easily remedied with the addition of the nonfree repositories, but if you are reluctant to use nonfree software, you’re out of luck. The good news is that the nonfree repositories do have nearly all the emulators for consoles that I like to use: NES, Genesis, Gameboy, SNES, Nintendo DS, Gamecube, and original Playstation. The only console I didn’t find one for was the Nintendo 64.

Help, Tips, and Tricks

The Konqueror browser is prepopulated with links to all the main Fedora websites, and also a few other useful Free Software links. The Fedora Forums are your place to go for help in most cases.

Likes

I definitely like the fact that Fedora’s KDE edition does indeed showcase KDE.

I am pleased to see that a few casual games are installed, so that you can have a little fun immediately.

My laptop has a tendency to overheat, but Fedora runs quite nicely and it is noticeably less hot than when I use Windows 7.

The System menu includes plenty of administrative tools, such as Fedora’s automatic bug reporter, Konsole (the terminal), both the regular and root-mode file managers, the SELinux security tool, and the Release Notes for this edition.

Dislikes

I was surprised to notice that neither Krita nor Karbon (the main two graphics applications in the Calligra suite from KDE) were included by default. Kolourpaint is a simpler program similar to MS Paint, while Krita can compare quite nicely to the GIMP, which is usually included in non-KDE distributions.

The new installer routine definitely needs either a step by step guide provided at the Fedora website, or more detailed feedback for new users of Fedora.

Final Notes

I didn’t use the standard edition of Fedora 18 for very long, and do not want to compare it to this one. I will just say that my experience with Fedora 18′s KDE Spin has been just as pleasant and smooth as the three times that I have used the main edition. I’ve experienced no serious issues, and only one very minor bug (in Apper, the first week I used Fedora. It has not recurred in 2 weeks). All of the programs I enjoy using, as well as the games I love to play, are available to me with this distribution once I add the extra nonfree repositories you can find at RPM Fusion. It is a solid distribution that I can recommend to any person who prefers the KDE desktop to that of Unity or GNOME 3.

With the recent release of Semplice Linux 3.0.0 at the beginning of the year, I was curious and decided to take a short look at the 3 active Linux distributions that use the “sid” unstable Debian repository for their sources. If you have any interest in a bleeding-edge distro, but want to stick with Debian, these are your best options. For people new to Linux, Debian is one of the oldest active versions, and has a huge set of programs and applications which are stored in a central location, called a repository. This trusted server is where you normally obtain most or all of the programs you use in your day to day life. Debian has the largest repository of any distribution, containing over 30,000 programs and libraries. Debian maintains 3 sets of these files: the most tested are called the “stable” set (called “squeeze” after one of the characters from the movie Toy Story) and are used to run servers or other important concerns. Then there is “testing” (known as “wheezy”) which are more recent versions, with most bugs fixed and perfectly suited for desktop use. Most of the best known Debian based Linux distributions are based on this branch.

Finally there is “sid”. sid is named for the evil kid in the original Toy Story movie. This is the group of new files which have only undergone a few days of tests. They are the newest possible versions of your software, but since they have the occasional potential to break something that worked before, caution is advised and they stay in unstable for a few weeks before being moved to the testing branch.

I installed the 64-bit version of each of these 3 distributions into a virtual machine and took a look around. The discussion below should not be considered as reviews, but rather a “first look” to give you an idea of what to expect from each. Beginners to Linux really should not start with one of these distributions – there are plenty of Debian based ones that are based on the “testing” branch which provide an excellent initial set of applications.

Semplice Linux 3.0.0

Openbox is the only installed option for a desktop, but unlike in Crunchbang Linux, the menus automatically update when installing or removing programs (Crunchbang can be tweaked to provide the same feature, but it isn’t set up by default).
Semplice, like Ubuntu, uses “sudo” and the main account has root powers. It offers the option to disable sudo and have a separate root account, but discourages this.
Synaptic (the graphical package installer/remover) is included in the installation.  The applications you get include a Bluetooth manager, Gnu paint, Mirage (an image viewer), the Chromium web browser, gFTP for file downloading, Pidgin and Xchat for communication, the Claws email client, Abiword (word processor), Gnumeric (spreadsheet program), a pdf reader, the Gnome mplayer for videos and music, 3 terminals, and a task manager. There is also a simple printer wizard. The forums and wiki are just a click away, and there is a “Help” menu.

Semplice Linux menu shows up by right clicking

aptosid 2012-01

I installed the Xfce edition, but you have a choice of desktops – KDE full, KDE lite (just a very minimal KDE install), Razr-qt, and Xfce. All available in both 32- and 64-bit. Both aptosid and Siduction ask if you want nonfree and contrib sources added to your list, with an appropriate warning about no longer conforming to the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines). Iceweasel is initially set to open aptosid’s home page.

Applications include a Print wizard, a document viewer, an image viewer, the Ristretto viewer, the Xsane scanner app, Iceweasel browser (Firefox), the Transmission torrent client, Xchat, Brasero Cd burner, Gxine, Xfburn, Abiword (word processor), Gnumeric (spreadsheet app), Orage calendar, and the usual system apps.

the Xfce edition of aptosid

siduction 2012.2

siduction is a fork of aptosid. There are quite a few similarities between these 2 distros, including the fact that the installation routine is driven thru the Iceweasel browser and forces you to set up partitions before continuing. Available desktops are KDE, LXDE, Razr-qt, and Xfce, with a brand new developer release featuring Gnome 3.

The applications in siduction appear to be identical to those in aptosid, with perhaps a few different system programs available. Neither siduction nor aptosid include a graphical add/remove programs manager, and in fact they strongly discourage its use. The recommended way to add or remove programs is only by using the apt-get command in a purely command line setting (you’ll have to log in as root, issue an “init 3″ to exit the X Windowing system, then proceed).

The Xfce version had a bug (fixable) whereby you couldn’t start the browser until you go into the .config folder in your /home directory and delete a SingletonLock file. This bug did not appear in the LXDE edition.

siduction, Xfce edition

All three of these distributions have graphical installations, and fit on a CD. They provide a minimal but not bare bones set of applications to get you started, including python 2.7 and the GCC compiler, as well as a few other programming tools. None of them come with media codecs pre-installed, so you won’t  be watching Youtube videos or listening to mp3s immediately. However, both aptosid and siduction allow you to add extra repositories that include the media codecs and more programs; you just will need to install them separately after the main installation routine.

Because they are based on the unstable branch of Debian, using this in any production environment is definitely not recommended. I also would not install these to a computer that you absolutely rely upon. But for a secondary laptop or desktop, they do provide a decent system with full access to the wide variety in Debian’s repositories. Make sure you read the manuals and keep up to date with any warnings and forum news.