Happy Holidays and New Year

It's been another year chock full of releases. Lots of distributions I'ld like to not only try but write about, like LuninuX, Comfusion, Wifislax, Manjaro and others, plus of course BSD which is still outstanding.  Time is now very limited and it isn't possible to do all that, but I'll take a few choice picks here and there. Thanks to all of you for checking back and a good start into 2013!!

Read More

CRUX 2.8 Review - The Inspiration Behind Arch Linux

This one is well overdue, but the time has finally come. In my defence, I installed CRUX 2.7.1 as far back as summer, but a hard drive failure wiped it all, and since then 2.8 was released. Just as well, so we'll be testing the latest version 2.8. CRUX is a DIY distribution that is perhaps less known than others, but it is the inspiration behind the mighty Arch Linux as the distribution Judd Vinet was originally using. I would point to this dated interview if you want to know more about the origins of Arch.
Read more here >>

Read More

More Games for the Holiday Season

After checking out the Duke Nukem 3d give away I came across more offers on GOG.com, which is undoubtedly the intention. ArmA2 with Operation Arrowhead add-on, together called Combined Operations, is a necessity for playing the DayZ simulation zombie mod that's taken off big time. I've only watched a couple of game play videos so far but it looks real good. It's half price at $14.99 which is an acceptable starting point in my book.
Read more here >>

Read More

Holiday Gift: Duke Nukem 3D (Win+Mac)

Duke Nukem 3d for PC & Mac is free to download until Friday 14.59pm. PC obviously means Windows executable here but check out eduke32, a modified game engine that will let you play it on Linux. You need to sign up for an account but just use a disposable email as you can download the game straight away without confirming the address. Thanks to Edward Koenig for the tip. Oh yes, and you get some cool artwork and ringtones, too.
Read more here >>

Read More

New Design for Slax.org, Preparing Final Release

Just in time for the expected final release of Slax 7.0 on Monday after all this time the web site has had a makeover as well to serve as a visual reminder that a new age for Slax has truly arrived. This is the first release using KDE 4, and possibly Blackbox as low resource alternative, and also the first one since a sponsor was secured.
Read more here >>

Read More

New Stable ArchBang ISO 2012.12 Released

Continuing my theme of randomly re-posting announcements without really adding any content myself until there's more time again, ArchBang 2012.12 is out with a new dark theme, updated openbox-menu, and the Linux 3.6.8 kernel. As it's based on Arch it is now also using systemd and that may give pause for consideration if you care. It's looking fine though, and there'll continue to be unofficial test iso's between releases due to the fast moving nature of developments in open source software.

Read More

Richard Stallman Calls Ubuntu "Spyware"

Ha, well, it was only a matter of time, and we all know that, just like Linus, Mr Stallman pulls no punches. Take that, Canonical. I'm far from a free software zealot or a Ubuntu basher, although I try and live without proprietary stuff as much as possible (is that a reasonable stance?) and I'm generally not using Ubuntu because I do not particularly like it. There are a lot of alternatives out there. At present I'ld be more likely to run Haiku than Ubuntu but that's besides the point. Do what you like but be aware of why you're doing it and the potential pitfalls.
Read more here >>

Read More

Slax 7.0 Getting Closer

Since the announcement that he has secured some major corporate sponsors for taking up the development of Slax again Tomas M has been hard at work. You can read about the ongoing updates on his blog if you want to follow how the next Slax is taking shape.
Read more here >>

Read More

Absolute Linux 14.0 - Still Needs Refinement

I haven't upgraded to Slackware 14 yet and in a moment of madness obliterated my old install to start all afresh. That leaves some room to try the new release of Absolute Linux first which of course is based on Slackware. So here we go.
Read more here >>

Read More

CrunchBang 'Waldorf' - Second Time Lucky

As we all know 'Waldorf' is the testing branch of CrunchBang Linux based on the upcoming Debian 'Wheezy'. Two weeks ago I wrote a shortish post about how the latest testing image failed to install, and promptly an update got released with the release announcement pointing to a known bug in the Debian installer. So, time to try again now that we're back home.
Read more here >>

Read More

Resident Evil: Retribution (Movie, 2012)

The movie starts with recapping the ending of the previous one, tying neatly into the last few seconds where Umbrella Corporation helicopters are on the way to attack Alice and her surviving helpers on the aircraft carrier.
This alone is confusing and tedious as the scene motion is wound back and forth, but it ends with our heroine blasted into the water by an explosion from where she is presumably scooped up, which would explain how she ends up in the corporation's base in the arctic.
Read more here >>

Read More

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Late Verdict

Last year I wrote an article very much extolling what a great game the last in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series 'Call of Pripyat' was. Balanced, well-thought out game play, great graphics and so on. Like so many teenage and not any longer so teenage boys I absolutely love post-apocalyptic games and movies and this series falls right in there.
Read more here >>

Read More

CrunchBang 'Waldorf' R20120806 - What a Shame

Good morning, dear reader. This past weekend I felt a bit experimental again after openSUSE cocked up what was otherwise a nice installation. You see, I'm not normally an openSUSE fan but when 12.2 came out I immediately grabbed a copy and loved it. Nice stable KDE 4, polished, good looking artwork, understated but beautiful, Yast2 for easy graphical administration, the works. Unfortunately, it didn't stay like this.
Read more here >>

Read More

Youtube-dl: Download Videos from the Command Line

Try youtube-dl to download videos to hard drive and watch them later when not connected. It uses the MIT licence. Youtube-dl is a command line tool and thus has to be run from the terminal.
Enter youtube-dl, the -t switch, the username and password for your account, and then the URL of the resource you wish to download which you can get from your browser's location bar, like this:

youtube-dl -t -u username -p password http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2S9rwyQkJE

The -t switch means use the title of the video we're downloading. Enter 'man youtube-dl' for more options.  The application also prints the size of the video and the estimated time it will take, the ETA, to the terminal. Wait for it to finish and enjoy.

Read More

Calcalute Linux Desktop 12 KDE - Keep It Rolling, Baby

Well, I wasn't going to do any reviews until later this year, but several of a recent flurry of releases caught my attention and my  interest and I made some time for checking them out. One of them is Calculate Linux. Others have reviewed it before and found themselves inundated with offers of Russian brides and other more vile advertisements, but I won't let that put me off because, as I can reveal, I like the product itself very much.
Read more here >>

Read More

Cooler Than Arch, More Flexible Than Gentoo

Bedrock Linux will let you run several distributions side by side, on real hardware, in an integrated, chroot'd environment and all at once. Here's the interesting and informative discussion thread on Slashdot.

The Linux Action Show, Series 23 Episode 02. Find the original, higher resolution version and show notes on this page.

Read More

Broadcom Wireless and Slackware 14

Broadcom wifi in Linux distributions still seems to be an ongoing issue and a moving target. There are several ways to get this to work depending on the chip set you got, and even several ways for the same one, so everybody will have to decide for themselves how they want it. You can check out the PCI-ID (the one that shows up when running the lspci command) and the Chip ID on linuxwireless.org and see what is supported.
Read more here >>

Read More

RHEL with the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE)

TDE is the unofficial continuation of the KDE 3 project by a new team or as they put it a desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the overall KDE 3.5 computing style,

that took the code when development on it ceased and all resources in the KDE camp moved over to 4. Trinity is more though than KDE 3 in maintenance mode though as they actively progress their own implementations of libcaldav and libcarddav libraries for the PIM-suite (now called Trinity PIM suite) and have taken over maintaining QT 3 with hundreds of patches applied since the last official update.
Read more here >>

Read More

Taking a Break, Back in Autumn

Well folks, it's been fun but I've decided to take a break and enjoy the summer. Life's too short to spend it all hunched in front of a monitor, writing or otherwise, and I've been doing enough of that both at work and privately year after year.
Read more here >>

Read More

Adding LXDE to Slackware 13.37

Slackware does not come with LXDE on the CD/DVD so how do you get it? The hard way is to go to Slackbuilds.org and do a search. This will come up with a package list that needs to be built in a particular order. Nothing too dramatic as it is a relatively small number of packages, and dependencies are well documented on every page.
Read more here >>

Read More

Compiling the Kernel in Slackware

One of the reasons why I chose Slackware is that the kernel and other included software is presented vanilla and unpatches, as intended by the developers. That makes recompiling a lot easier in my experience than in some of the other major distributions, no finger pointing, where one first has to track down and apply distribution specific patches.
Read more here >>

Read More

Ubuntu Shootout - 10.04 LTS vs. 12.04 LTS

Although I'm mostly writing about Slackware and Arch Linux related distributions I've got nothing against Ubuntu. I used it back with 5.10 'Breezy' and was quite impressed. It even detected and configured all multimedia keys on the cordless Logitech keyboard, including the volume wheel, no mean feat at the time. That was when Debian Sarge was too old to be useful and X burped on my hardware, and I did not know enough to run Testing or Unstable branches.
Read more here >>

Read More

Building Chromium for Slackware64

Chromium, the browser, can sometimes seem a bit evasive on the Slackware64 platform. For a start, the binaries more commonly distributed are either deb or rpm files, and although Slackware with the 13.37 release has gone the extra mile to accomodate a new browser and added a build script for Google-Chrome under extra/ in the repositories, there is none for Chromium.
Read more here >>

Read More

From ArchBang to SlackBang

If you looked at the ArchBang website over the last few days you would have read that founder WillXtreme is retiring from the project leadership due to changes in real life and other pursuits. A few people also involved in the development and who were quite active in the forum for example and with tips on their own blogs, like pablokal, will continue the project.
Read more here >>

Read More

Chakra GNU/Linux - Interview with the Development Team

Every once in a while you come across a distribution that makes you re-evaluate your preferences and challenges your perception of what the underlying base or a desktop environment is like because of the presentation and the overall package. Chakra GNU/Linux is such a distribution. It focuses on KDE only and, as it grew out of the KDEmod project for ArchLinux in KDE 3 days, still provides optimized packages, and this, in my opinion, shows.
Read more here >>

Read More

Slackel, Custom Slackware Current with Newest KDE 4

Just a few days ago I was writing about getting a newer version of KDE 4 with Porteus or from Eric Hameleers' Ktown repository, and I have also been checking Chakra GNU/Linux to see what KDE is up to. Now we have another distribution, or custom respin, of Slackware current branch on the table that's at least news for me.
Read more here >>

Read More

Porteus, The Portable Community Linux

Porteus grew out of the fan project that gave us the Slax Community Remix, a continuation of Slax 6.1.2, the last official Slax release for quite a while, dating back to August 2009.
As the team grew more adept they put their own stamp on their interpretation of what a Slackware based Live system should be like and slowly moved away from the old Slax base and from some of its design principles.
Read more here >>

Read More

Hell Freezes Over in Slackware Current

The 'Current' development branch in Slackware hasn't moved for a while. Almost a year after the last stable Slackware the repositories are still on KDE 4.5.5 and Xfce 4.6.2, and here's why! The Benevolent dictator for life has finally had enough.
Read more here >>

Read More

A New Appreciation for Puppy

It's been around five months since my first contact with and review of Puppy in its latest Slacko incarnation 5.3. Since then it has worked quite nicely and I found myself booting more and more often into it although I've got several nice systems installed. Shortly after my review maintenance release 5.3.1 came out and this week it was time for an upgrade.
Read more here >>

Read More

Slackware Derivatives: The Superb Mini Server Project

SMS, short for Superb Mini Server, is one of those niche distributions built on a major that are not really needed but fulfill a particular purpose and might save you time if what they offer is exactly what you want. SMS is built from Slackware and provides a ready to go server setup with many additional useful packages and tools pre-installed. Slackware itself of course makes a fine server, but SMS has a few more tricks up its sleeve.
Read more here >>

Read More

News from the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona

Normally I'm not too keen on all the latest gadgets. I still don't even own a smart phone and am using a 'traditional' LG mobile I bought for £9.95 instead. It does all I need, so I'm certainly not an early adopter. However, this years Mobile World Congress brings some interesting developments, and as somebody interested in computing and related technology in general it's hard not to get excited.
Read more here >>

Read More

Inspecting the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD

Following a recent request I downloaded the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD for a test drive. I tried Gentoo many years ago but gave up after a few hours due to the time involved, and my knowledge back then was a lot more rudimentary than today. Gentoo is a source distribution that is supposed to be configured and compiled from stage 2 or stage 3 tarballs, although images are available that allow you to cheat and skip the early part of kernel compilation etc. via minimal install images.
Read more here >>

Read More

Window Maker Has New 0.95.2 Release After Six Years

Here's something for those who haven't read it yet on Slashdot, a new version of Window Maker (yes, written apart is the correct naming scheme) has been made available. Apparently a new team has taken over development, and in fact this is the second release from them, ironing out some more bugs since the initial new 0.95.1 release in January.
Read more here >>

Read More

Gaming Fun - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Well, I haven't been around lately due to playing the awesome S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat and plenty of other commitments. Finally, the world of work and further education is back and keeping me busy, so we can hopefully afford a nice holiday at the end of the year without dipping into our savings.
Read more here >>

Read More

Step-by-Step Vinux 3.2.1 Install Guide

The Vinux distribution has been optimized for users to be able to operate a computer, surf the internet etc. all via text to speech tools and the keyboard. It is geared towards disabled users and in particular towards people with VI needs. I have written about it recently and am now making an install guide for the latest version available to help ease the transition for people not familiar with
Read more here >>

Read More

Three Spins You May Not Have Heard Of

Always on the lookout for something interesting I found three more esoteric spins of major distributions and set out to give them a quick test run.
This was helped by a streak of bad luck recently which resulted in me suddenly having two partitions available.
Read more here >>

Read More

antiX M11 in Review - Sadly Not So Great

As most readers will already know antiX is a light weight distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux and SimplyMEPIS, or just Mepis if you prefer, which is itself based on Debian. antiX sports a custom IceWM as default window manager and environment with tools from the ROX desktop. It is supposed to mainly be used on older machines and as a consequence there is no x86_64 edition, only two 32-bit optimized for i486 and i686 processor instructions.
Read more here >>

Read More