The Chakra Project - Innovating on KDE and Arch Linux

The Chakra project started out releasing a live CD based on Arch Linux with KDE 4 for the desktop, initially to make it easier and quicker to install an Arch system with their favorite environment, while also providing an unofficial Arch live CD to test drive the distribution. It is in their own words for anyone who likes the KISS principle of Arch and the elegance of KDE and the Plasma desktop. The project is providing images for both the i686 and x86_64 architectures.

They currently have new betas of their upcoming release 0.3 'Ashoc' out. For anybody who would like to test themselves, they can find the images here for download.

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What's the matter with Firefox these days?

Not long ago I was still defending Firefox as a good browser that never, or only very rarely like every few months, crashed on me. That may in retrospect have had something to do with hosts file and all sorts of nasties blockers, because once I disabled these for a while for a little test it suddenly kept crashing, like in abnormally exiting, at least once a day.

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KDE 4: The KDE SC in Kubuntu and Fedora

Although not one of my main desktop environments any longer, I have been keeping track of KDE development now and then and feel it has improved a great deal. Ever since the 4.4 releases it actually seems stable and light enough to use and while not all features and functions present in KDE 3.5 may have been replicated (at least Kwikdisk and Kdiskfree are back), the 4.4 series has marked the point where KDE has finally become usable again. I have to admit, it looks good too. I actually enjoy booting into the new KDE.

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Experiencing Arch Linux with the ArchBang Live CD

So I got my new laptop ready for some hardcore multi-boot action, and one of the distributions I’ve always wanted to test is ArchBang. I’ve tried Arch before and installed it a couple of times just for fun, both in a virtual environment and on disk, but haven’t been serious about it. It was just to practice the installation and play around.

A couple of months back ArchBang caught my eye, when it was first announced on Distrowatch.com. ArchBang is a live CD distribution of Arch Linux that is light on resources. Arch is known to apply no to, and only if absolutely necessary, minimal patching to upstream software, which usually results in a high degree of stability and an experience as intended by the developers.

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Wanted: Acer Aspire 5551 seeks distro

It took a while but last weekend I finally got a replacement for the long dead Thinkpad. This must be a common scenario. A predominantly Linux user goes out to get a new laptop and has no idea if some of the new hardware will work with his preferred choice of distros. Fortunately, I had already checked the point most likely to be problematic, the wireless chip. In a previous model it was Atheros. Unfortunately, I assumed this was the case for the entire line-up and found out to my dismay that the Aspire 5551 actually comes with a Broadcom chip. This meant trouble going by everything I'd read.
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