Fedora Core 9 KDE

I thought I had published this one, but when I visited the blog to see which all distros I had written about, I realized I had forgotten to publish it. It might have a few corrections in it, probably that's why I didn't post it. I will subsequently make the corrections.

Distribution name:

Fedora Core 9 KDE

Version:

9

Desktop Environment:

KDE 4

Kernel:

2.6.25-14

Instruction size:

64 Bit

Live boot:

The FC9 KDE live boot doesn't give you anything to complain, and considering that this is the KDE version of an OS which uses GNOME as its native desktop environment, this is really impressive ;) The first time I loaded the X did crash once and it did hang a bit. But that may because of the lack of RAM. I had 512mb of RAM and have now upgraded to 1.5GB. All drives were detected and they were being mounted on clicking on them. Though I prefer a double click for this purpose. A detailed description of my first live boot can be found here.

Installation:

The installation of FC9 KDE was one of  the most pleasant experiences. It took about the same time it would take to copy about 2-3GB of data onto the hard-disk, which was really awesome. The installation steps were also really quick to come along. Even the formatter screen didn't take more than a second to load. After installing systems that take ages to install, it was really great to have a system that doesn't take long to install.

Boot issue:

The installation prompts you to ask where you would like to install the grub, and that is where I opted for it to install it on the drive I had installed the operating system, rather than messing around and rewriting the MBR. There were no problems relating to booting and everything seems to be in order.

Screen resolution:

The default screen resolution was 1280x960/60Hz, and the graphics card drivers were already installed. Or at least I wasn’t prompted to install any. Though the drivers didn’t really belong to NVIDIA. One thing I didn’t like about FC9 KDE was that when I tried to changing the resolution, I was prompted to restart X in order for the new settings to be implemented. Restarting X didn’t take as long as it usually takes, but since I had not logged out before restarting X, it reset all the changes to the settings I had made in that session.

Hardware detection:

Hardware detection seemed fine. Nothing seemed to cause any problem. After writing so much against the OS under the other headings, I think they should get an extra point for not messing up anything here.

Mounting:

All my drives were correctly detected, and like most other operating systems, they aren’t mounted at the start of the session. Also it asks for the root password for mounting each and every drive, so I suggest, it would be better to always log in using the root account.

Network:

Though the system was set to take in the address using the DHCP, which it did take, there were problems with the internet. I had to disable and then enable the network to get the internet to work. Despite that, I was prompted that the system could not contact the update site.

Browser:

Like I have said before, I love my browser. I don’t care who comes out with it, but as long as it is fast and good, I don’t mind who’s made it, Mozilla, Microsoft, or anybody else could have come up with it for all I cared. Since this is a KDE desktop, no points for guessing, it comes equipped with Konquerer. I did speak about my opinion of the browser here, but I am going to write more about it none the less. The first thing you notice is that the javascripts don’t work. Fiddling around with the settings shows that the options has been enabled, yet there seems to be a problem with JS. Tabbed browsing has become a standard, and Konquerer wouldn’t disappoint you with that respect. Closing the tabs though doesn’t utilize the middle click standard. Middle click on a tab and you are greeted with a Protocol not supported message. It has problems when it comes to displaying text boxes and buttons, even the font size is all messed up. There is also a problem with the CSS compatibility, as they seem to have set up their own standards. Even Wikipedia doesn’t load properly, and looks like a wiki page does when you save it. The rendering of pages is slow and the browser hangs when too many tabs are opened. (Without the system running out of memory) If you intend to use the operating system, do look for an alternative browser.

Themes:

I have always liked the default Fedora theme a lot which seems to have changed little over time. The GRUB menu had its standard image and the splash screen was nice too. I love the colour blue, especially the darker shades of it, so I really liked the default theme. Definitely beats the colour brown any day ;) The other themes that come in the package were IMO not as classy, but you can always get a new theme from the net.

Look and feel:

The overall looks were decent, even though there wasn’t any desktop effect application that came with it. The one thing I didn’t like was the single click feature. There is always too much confusion over how to select and how to open a file. But I suppose most KDE user would be used to it. The desktop has a small button at the top right corner that allows you to add widgets to your desktop, which I really liked. I like an analog watch going tic tic on my desktop. All the icons on the desktop are also in fact widgets linking to your files. This makes things a bit tricky. There was also an option to automatically change wallpapers after a fixed time that you set. Some people might like this features, though I am the kind of guy who could use a wallpaper for as long as the OS lasts. FC9 KDE makes use of the Dolphin file browser, which was another thing I am not a fan of.

Desktop:

The desktop looks good, but only after you reduce the size of the panel. The default panel size is huge, and it makes the desktop looks ugly. Try to reduce the panel size and you will notice that the rendering of the panel gets all messed up. Mind you, don’t restart X or you will lose the recently made changes to the settings. It would be better if you logged out and then restarted X for whatever purpose you need to do so. Also, the tiny size for the panel makes the panel look as though it has been chopped off, because the fedora image and time is cut off. So small seems to be the only viable default option. Also, the widgets as icons thing don’t work for me.

Menus:

Hmm... The menus, let’s see. The one thing I liked was that the menu size was variable, and could be changed by simply dragging, but mind you, don’t be surprised to see the menus automatically resize themselves. After all, KDE 4.0 is just the beginning as they say. And it is definitely not free from bugs. The shutdown procedure also needs a little tweaking. You click on shutdown and you are given the regular options off restarting, logging off, blah, blah, blah in the menu itself. Once you choose one of em, this window pops up asking you yet again as to what you’d like to do (shutdown, restart, log off...). Though the window popping up looked really nice, the redundant question was really irritating.

Software selection:

Needless to say, the KDE version comes with the standard Ksoftwares. There was KWrite, which broke words in between when the line ended, and then there was the office suite consisting of KWord, KSpread, KPresenter, and loads of other KStuff. FC9 KDE didn’t have any photo editor, like GIMP. It came just with a paint application apart from an image view and a useless screen ruler. The internet section was much better equipped, having every application I could think of ever wanting to use, and lots more. It had a feedreader, an FTP mail client, a download manager, a news reader, a remote desktop connection manager, a torrent client, an IRQ client, an instant messenger, etc, etc. There was also an application for configuring the firewall and SE Linux.

Codecs:

FC9 KDE like most other distros came without any proprietary codecs, but unlike most other distros, it didn’t even provide a one click option for downloading codecs. I tried looking for codecs, but to no avail. It came equipped with Kaffiene Media Player, and Juk Media Player which crashed when I tried playing a song. If I’d have used the distribution, I think VLC player would have been a must.

Packages:

By the time I reached the point where I had to check out the package manager, I was really frustrated with the distro. I looked around for the package manager but could not find it anywhere. Nor was there an option to get software from a repository, that could be located easily. So I simply shutdown my system and got rid of the OS as soon as I could.

Performance:

The memory usage of the OS was a little erratic, sometimes there was less than 200mb of free memory (out of 1.5GB) , while other times it barely used 300mb of it. Though I really liked the KDE info center that they have incorporated.

Codecs:

Like most distros, FC9 KDE comes only with the open codecs, and unlike other distros, it did not offer any simply way of getting these codecs either. Since I did not intend to use the OS for long, I did not install any codecs/player.

Packages:

Like I said the OS did not appeal to me so I didn’t use it much or install any package. I couldn’t spot any application to link to any repository either. Though I am sure it sports the rpm. You’d have to check it out for yourself.

Stuff I missed out:

There isn’t anything good I have to say about this distro under this heading. There is this static like noise in the speakers sometimes while minimizing/maximising windows sometimes. Boy, there is something definitely wrong with the sound drivers. Also, I am not such a big fan of dolphin, the file browser/explorer.

My impression:

I apologise for not having anything good for the OS but it seriously doesn’t deserve much credit. I know a lot of hard work goes in to make such operating systems, and it is probably the K desktop environment that ruined things for the distribution. This is probably one of my least favourite distro.

Final words:

If you are one of those users who doesn’t give a shit about the desktop environment and works solely on the terminal, this might be the distro for you, apart from that I think only KDE lovers might be impressed by the system. I am sure things can only improve from here for KDE.

PS: The test system had an AMD64 Athlon (2800+) mounted on an Asus K8S-MX motherboard, with 1.5GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce Fx5200 (AGP) with 256MB of memory.

Linux Mint 5 (Elyssa) Review

Distribution name:
Linux Mint 5 Elyssa - Main Edition

Version:
5

Desktop Environment:
GNOME 2.22.1.2

Kernel:
2.6.24-16

Instruction size:
32 Bit

Live boot:
The Linux Mint 5 did have a live boot, which took a tad more while to load than what other distros take. As soon as the X started, I got an error which went like: GNOME couldn't load blah blah blah... Some components may not run well. Turned out there weren't any issues, at least none that I could notice. The distro came with MP3 codecs, which was a pleasant surprise, so the live experience was a lot better than that offered by other distributions. Also unlike most other live boots that I have experienced, things were a lot smoother and the system didn't go catatonic. Neither did the GUI (X) crash like I have experienced with many-a popular distributions. While shutting down the live boot, it prompted me to remove all disk from the drive and to press enter when I was done, but strangely, the drive refused to open when I pressed the button for it to do so. I had to reboot to get the disk out.

Installation:
The Installation time for Elyssa is probably the only thing that disappointed me. Though the ease of installation was average, it took longer than any other operating system I have installed yet. I was asked the typical questions that they asked before OS installations. I had a drive mounted and some files open, so after I had finished configuring everything for the install; I was prompted to unmount all drives following which I was redirected to the partitioner again. This is something I did not enjoy, particularly since the partitioner takes ages to load the drive information. All in all it took me over three quarters of an hour to install the operating system, which was after booting in the live mode.

Boot issue:
Due to hassles of configuring the grub or rewriting the MBR following each installation, I have started installing the grub on drive where the OS is installed. I use another GRUB (From either my pen-drive, or my other previously configured operating systems) to start up the grub of the new OS manually. I was pleased to see that the other operating systems had been automatically and more importantly, correctly configured. The only problem I had was when I restarted. I suspect that it is probably because of the frequency scaling, but I was given this warning about CPU over voltage when I opted to restart, which has been the case with other Linux operating systems too.

Screen resolution:
The default screen resolution was 1280x960/60Hz, and I was informed of the availability of restricted drivers from NVIDIA after the installation, which I cancelled for the moment. Later when I set out looking for the option to install the restricted drivers, I came across EnvyNG which was a common manager for NVIDIA as well as ATI drivers. I opted for the automatic hardware detection and installation for NVIDIA driver, which lead to the downloading of loads of libraries which were apparently being fetched from the Ubuntu hardy and the Mint Archive. Strangely, the downloading was not as fast as it usually is and it took awfully long to download everything at a mere 10kb/s. After installation the default resolution was set at 1024x768/85Hz. And after a while a balloon popped up, which said something like Ubuntu (Yes, that's right, it said Ubuntu) is using drivers it cannot support... Blah blah blah. Currently I am at 1152x864/75 Hz and I wouldn't like to go higher at the moment. Also, I am greeted by a full screen NVIDIA logo as soon as the X starts.

Hardware detection:
Well, all my onboard stuff was detected fine. I didn’t try out the webcam, because seriously, there is not much use for it on Linux. The printer is packed up, because it was cluttering my table, though with the HP on Linux drivers, I doubt I’ll have problems with it. The graphics card like I mentioned was detected automatically and restricted NVIDIA drivers were recommended for it.

Mounting:
All drives are detected at the time of booting, but are not mounted automatically. Of course times have changed now and you don’t have to edit fstab or type in commands into the terminal to mount your drives (though no one stops you from doing so if you enjoy it), all you have to do is double click on the drive and it mounts almost instantly, with no noticeable delays. Doing so did cause an icon of the newly mounted drive to pop up on my desktop. For me my desktop is a sacred place, and I like to keep it as less cluttered as possible. I’ll come back to the desktop later.

Network:
The network was detected automatically, since my network is configured by DHCP. No problems here.

Browser:
The browser is something I am really touchy about. I don’t mind using any browser as long as things are accessible and it loads all content in decent times. Luckily Elyssa came with Firefox 3, and since I am really comfortable with the browser, I faced no problems here. Of course, the fonts of the browser were those really squishy ones like the Linux-Firefox has, but since I had been using Vista for a while, it did look kind of strange.

Themes:
The theme for Elyssa didn’t quite give the impression that their catch phrase (From freedom came elegance) promised. I really dislike the colour brown on my monitor, but I’d prefer the Ubuntu scheme over Mint’s any day. Like all distributions this too has its own colour, and you don’t have to be Einstein to have guessed that this distro’s colour is florescent green, usually over a dark gray. I didn’t quite like the default icon set that they had, which seemed to have been mutated by the Hulk (For the record Hulk sucks). But you can always set any distribution to look like your old distro. All it takes is time.

Look and feel:
Compiz came installed by default, and as soon as I installed the restricted drivers, the settings for the graphics changed automatically to advanced. There was this thing called Simple Compiz Settings (Pardon my ignorance if it's a common thing, but I had never seen it before) which allowed me to easily configure the level of special effects I desired. I chose the highest level and didn't see much significant changes in the effect. The standard Desktop Cube was switched on, and the windows flew to the corners of the desktop on being minimized, but nothing significant. I was forced to use the advanced Compiz settings where I switched on the wobbly windows and the water effect, still nothing. Crap, I forgot to restart X. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and I saw the quickest X restart I have seen. All the cool features started working too.

Desktop:
The default desktop of Elyssa came with a two icons, Computer and Mint home. Apart from this there were new icons that kept popping up whenever a drive was mounted, like I had already mentioned. But thanks to Mint’s Control Centre, which was really very cool BTW, I could easily switch this option off, without having to go through the trouble of making edits in the GConfig. And there was just one GNOME panel that was at the bottom of the screen, where I prefer it to be, unlike most other GNOME panels which have one hanging upside down. It’s just a matter of dragging stuff around, getting the panel to the bottom and rearranging stuff according to your preference, but I was talking about the defaults. If you go into customizations, you could change practically everything.

Menus:
The menu as seen in the screenshot was pretty decent, with one of those fields for filters which now seem to have become a standard. The system and the places field comes expanded as you open the menu, and the application field expands into a new column as you scroll your mouse over the appropriate category.

Software selection:
Linux Mint comes loaded with the basic software that you would want to use. There is GIMP for your image editing, and the Open Office comes as your office suite. For your sound and video requirements you have Movieplayer, MPlayer, Rythmbox and also a sound recorder, which is not that common for a Linux distro.

Codecs:
Like I have already mentioned, Linux Mint came with all the proper codecs required for playing all possible video and audio formats, which includes MP3 for audio and amongst the videos I tested out AVI (ISO MPEG-4 (XviD, ffmpeg)) and WMV (Windows Media Video 7). It also played flash video files (FLV), and ran a DVD automatically as I inserted it into my drive. I wonder if the use of these preinstalled codecs is legal. Anyway, so far so good, I am yet to find a file I have not been able to play, which is really cool, since I have not been forced to click on any warnings about proprietary stuff.

Packages:
Mint uses MintInstall which is an application to handle the installation of .mint files and .deb files (Hmmm, I have never heard of .mint files. Why does each and every distro have to make their own file types). It can also be used to retrieve packages from the Ubuntu or the Mint repository. Apart from this, there is also the synaptic package manager which I am really comfortable with, since I have been using Ubuntu for a while

Performance:
The applications take lesser time to start up than it took in a couple of other distributions, though the start-up isn’t exactly fast. I’d have to do some heavy duty work on the system to rate its performance, though it certainly is a tad more responsive than my Ubuntu 7.10.

Stability:
So far Elyssa has been a lot more stable than most of the other distributions. X hasn’t crashed a single time yet, and it doesn’t go catatonic yet. I shall edit this field if I ever have a bad experience with it.

Shutdown:
Shutting down Linux Mint doesn’t take long. And unlike the other places where it took longer than required to do certain tasks, it was faster while shutting down.

Stuff I missed out:
One really cool feature I liked was that Mint played out the MP3's as previews when you placed your mouse pointer over them for over a second. Another thing that I liked was that it provided you with the option of making a backup of your root, which does sound like a nice idea if you have excess disk space. Anything goes wrong and you can get everything back to normal. Also when I booted for the first time, I was greeted by the Mint assistant which is meant to help you fine tune your system. I learnt was that with Mint, you didn't need to have a separate administrative password. Instead simply type in “sudo su root” and you can gain administrative rights. There was also this option for “Humorous” Quotes at the start of the terminal. May be I am not smart enough, but I fail to get the “Humour”. Linux Mint, like most other distribution also has its own update manager MintUpdate, which takes care of all your software updates.

My impression:
Linux Mint 5 is an OS I'd like to switch to from my Ubuntu 7.10, which although is less visually appealing than the Ubuntu, it is not something that cannot be worked upon. Apart from that, I always enjoy working on different Operating systems. This way, I can get to know all about the strengths and weaknesses of an OS.

Final words:
If you are new to linux, or are looking for a new operating system to explore, go ahead, try out the Linux Mint 5. In fact, I'd recommend it over the much more popular Ubuntu it is based on. Although it has it's similarities with Ubuntu, it is also pleasantly different. In case you are an Ubuntu user, it wouldn't take much getting used to it. It is easy to use, and already has most of the stuff you would probably need. As for the more advanced users, it’s no point advising you guys about an OS. You could always get all your favourite features working on any of the OS’s.

PS: The test system had an AMD64 Athlon (2800+) mounted on an Asus K8S-MX motherboard, with 1.5GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce Fx5200 (AGP) with 256MB of memory.

It's a mad mad world

I was getting bored, so I googled I am bored where I came across this review of Ubuntu 7.04. Man this is a must read. :)

Here's the permalink to the comment that was posted on Amazon.com

Any way I am a little busy for a couple of weeks so in the mean while, why don't you read about my first impression of Linux on my blog. And also my review of Fedora core 9 KDE Live. I also booted the regular (Gnome) FC9 in the live mode but it didn't mount my drive. My favourite Live boot is Mini-Me 2008 which is a minimalistic Live CD of PC Linux OS with KDE. I promise to post a comparison between them all and their reviews when I get the time to do so.

Introduction

Let's start from the beginning. When I first started using computer, MSDOS was the operating system of choice. Those black n white monitors, which had a curvature of a basketball, those white perfectly rectangular cabinets with those seven segment displays for showing the clock speeds, oh! n that little turbo button that was used to overclock the PC, such were the PCs of those days. Then came the era of the coloured screens and multimedia enabled PCs. New operating systems came up, n the ones I used were windows 3.1, windows 95 and windows 97. It was then that my Dad noticed my interests in computers and bought me my first PC. It was a 667 MHz P-III with 64 MB of RAM (at 100 MHz), a 15 GB hdd and an internal fax modem. It came preloaded with windows 98. An OS I used for the next 4 years, and believe it or not without a single re-install. Oh and I still have that PC n my Mum uses it now. Hardware upgrades include 256 MB of SD RAM (at 133 MHz) and a LAN card for the internet connection. And it runs XP now, and supports all the software that you could need on an everyday basis. It still runs over 12 hours a day n apart from a few bloated capacitors and a busted soundcard, it has always worked well. Three years ago I bought another PC (which is my current one), a 1.8 GHz AMD64 processor called the 2800+ which was mounted on an Asus K8S-MX (probably the worst motherboard that you could mount it on) with a mere 512 MB of DDR RAM (at 400 MHz), an NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 with 256 MB graphics memory (god bless NVIDA) and a 160 GB SATA HDD (which was then considered as a hoarder's delight), which ran windows XP for nearly 3 years, with a zillion re-installs. During this time I learnt some really nifty tricks to tweak the OS, and even on how to maintain it. During the last one year, I used XP without any anti-virus (that would explain the zillion re-installs) and mastered the art of removing viruses manually. I would sometimes intentionally plug in a pendrive containing a virus with auto-run on, just to see how bad the malware could mess up my system. Luckily, none were of the likes of pasma n other data/application corrupting ones, like they used to make back in the days when viruses petrified me. As Microsoft announced the death of XP, I got my hands on a complimentary copy of Vista and installed it on my system. Since my PC didn't belong to the vista era, it did struggle a bit sometimes, but most of the times, it ran well, even with the Aero effect n all. As it turned out, Vista was pretty similar to XP and tweaking it wasn't that tough. In less then a week I was bored with Vista, and decided to break free from the shackles of Microsoft. It was then that I decided it was time to switch to Linux, but was faced by the dilemma of which flavour and distribution of Linux should I go in for. I asked a few friends of mine who were using linux, and they all unanimously pointed me in the direction of Ubuntu. Then came the more important question, how many other distros had they used. Turned out only a few of them had ventured beyond Ubuntu and those who had, had only checked out a couple more popular distributions. Man! This was a vicious circle, and I was caught in exactly what I was running away from, popularity overpowering capability (like microsoft over ubuntu). But anyway, I did install Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy gibon), and was really impressed by the progress it had made since I had first installed the 5.10 version of it. With millions of linux distribution circulating around the net, I have decided to try out and compare a few of them. This is my search for the ultimate linux. Considering how fast things move in the linux world (unlike in the stagnating world of windows), I am pretty certain this search wouldn't be one that I could ever conclude.