Tag: DISTRO

Most commercial products run a fairly set course; you get Microsoft Office 1.5, then 1.6, 3.0, 4.0, all the way up to office 2010 (For Windows, at least). It's a fairly orderly progression, with version numbers rising over time – pretty easy to follow. Open-source projects are a different beast, however. When enough developers don't like the direction a project is going, they sometimes just ...

SystemRescueCD is an incredibly useful, Linux-powered tool for troubleshooting and correcting problems on PCs that are in need of help. CDs and my workbench just aren't a good mix, though -- they tend to get forgotten in optical drives or sandwiched between case panels and scuffed beyond use. While it's been possible to dump Sysresccd to a USB flash drive for a while, it's gotten a whole lot ...

Several big sites have been blogging excitedly about Peppermint OS. ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez referred to Peppermint as "A new Linux OS for the cloud," but is it really? I decided to download and install Peppermint so that I could find out for myself. What I found is that Peppermint is very similar to dozens of other Linux distributions out there: it's a remix of Ubuntu with a different set ...

Venerable Linux distro Gentoo will hit the decade mark this December, and they're celebrating the milestone with a new live DVD release. Born as Enoch Linux in 1999, the distribution has slipped a bit in popularity over the years, yet it still provides a solid foundation for other distros. Like Debian was supplanted by Ubuntu, Sabayon - which is Gentoo-based - maintains a spot in the top ten ...

A while back, Brad introduced Dowload Squad to MobaLiveCD, a handy little app that allows you to virtualize Linux LiveCD distros right in Windows using QEMU integration. Moba 2.1 now includes support for bootable USB drives. Got a favorite distro installed on your trusty thumbdrive? Pop it in, wait for the drive to become visible in Explorer, then press the LiveUSB button in Moba. ...

The openSUSE team has released the first beta of their popular but controversial Linux distribution, and it has some spiffy features that make it worth checking out. The most exciting improvements are in the area of speed, as this is one OS that is often ridiculed by reviewers, mainly for its historically sluggish boot times and sloth-like package system. In contrast, openSUSE now uses an ...

We're generally big fans of Ubuntu, but it's not the only Linux distribution on the block. After spending a little too much time trying to complete a simple operation in Ubuntu the other day, we decided to take another popular Linux distro for a spin. PCLinuxOS has been called "The distro hopper stopper", and we can see why. System configuration tasks are handled by a rebranded version of the ...

digg_url = "http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/02/26/flipping-the-linux-switch-the-distribution-maze/"; Who doesn't love choices? You can "have it your way" at fast food restaurants. No two cars ever cost the same, because of add-ons and price negotiations. We like choice. It's a good thing. Right? Choice, really, is a double-edged sword. We get too many choices, and we can get easily ...

The Vector Linux team has released the latest Version of their Slackware 12 based distro. It boasts many features that make it stand out from the crowd. From the release notes: "The release features fully working browser plugins including Flash, java, mp3, real media, Windows media, pdf and Quick time. Additional features include: X.org 7.3, Linux kernel 2.6.22.14, fully customized Xfce 4.4.2, ...

Readers, in your opinion, what is the very best Linux distro and why? I have heard everything from Ubuntu (though it isn't clear how you pronounce it) to Gentoo, Knoppix, Debian, Xandros, Linspire, and so on...You can see the dilemma. For anyone who isn't familiar with Linux, or someone just starting out with Linux, which distro is the best? The easiest to install? Easiest to use? Which comes with ...

Linspire, the Linux distribution criticized by some for being full of proprietary drivers and software, is trying to go the way of Fedora with a new "community-driven" distribution called Freespire. Two version of Freespire will be released, one with proprietary software and one without. The really-free version won't, for example, come with DVD playback, which users will instead have the ...

It's not exhaustive, but informative. Joshua Drake has been using Linux professionally for over 10 years, and he shares his opinions and comparisons in an admittedly subjective but thorough comparison of the five major Linux distros for "non geeks." The comparisons are between Red Hat ES, Novell SLES, Fedora FC4, OpenSuSE 10, and Ubuntu Breezy Badger. Notice Linspire isn't in there? ...