moonOS 3 Linux (Makara)
There have been a lot of different remastered versions of Ubuntu created over the years. Occasionally though I find one that stands out from the pack and that offers an entirely unique experience. moonOS 3 is a remaster created in Cambodia by a Cambodian artist called Chanrithy Thim.
There are two versions of moonOS, the Main Edition and the LXDE Edition. The Main Edition uses Enlightenment DR17 and the LXDE Edition uses LXDE. The LXDE version is geared toward older, less powerful computers. For this review I downloaded the Main Edition.
moonOS 3 has one of the…er…most unique mottos I’ve seen. It’s motto is “Light of Free Operating System.” Hmmm…I’m not exactly sure what to think of it but it sort of fits in with the beauty of moonOS. Anyway, it sounds cool so I’ll go with it.
What’s New In This Release
Here’s a list of the new stuff in this release of moonOS:
Based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
Linux Kernel 2.6.28-15
Firefox 3.5
Pidgin 2.6
Xorg 7.4
Security Updates
moonControl Improvements (new interface, change font sizes)
moonGrub Improvements (new interface, new theme creation feature)
moonSoftware (browse offline, view screenshots, sort by various criteria)
EFL Keys Added (Virtual Keyboard)
Firefox Comes With Moonlight Plugin and Silverlight Support
OpenOffice.org 3.1.1
XMPP Video and Voice for Pidgin
Enlightenment 0.16.999.60
As you can tell there’s quite a bit of good stuff in this upgrade of moonOS.
moonOS 3 features a stunningly beautiful desktop theme.
(18 votes, average: 4.06 out of 5)
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(4.75 out of 5)
Wow, Jim, you are reviewing all of the lesser known distros this week! I’ve heard of moonOS before, but I do not remember grabbing a copy; I may do so this time and see if I have any success getting it going with Virtualbox OSE. It certainly is a good looking distro! Maybe I will try the LXDE variation just to be different and see if it also has the same outstanding art work.
Hi Brian,
Yeah, there’s some fun stuff out there that doesn’t get much press. Glad you are enjoying the reviews. moonOS is definitely cool. Let me know how you like the LXDE version if you try it.
I tried out MoonOS 2 recently and was pleased with it. I like the feel of E17. The only problem I had with it involved reading my other hard drives. The live Cd mounted all my drives and parttions with no problems. But I missed a step on the install somewher. The other drives would show in the places gadget and in the MNT folder but I could not get them to mount even as root. I also prefer the itask-ng module over the regular shelf for launching applications.
I think MoonOS is the best of the Enlightenment Distros (OpenGEU, OzOS, Elive, Maryan etc). I’m pretty sure the “Light of Free Operating System” is a translation issue.
Thanks for this review with the nice screenshots. Good to know about this Linux distribution.
But I have one remaining question, why did you use the proprietary software VMware and Parallels, and why not the open source VirtualBox instead ?
The Moon tools look very much like Mint tools – or is it just me?
Albinootje, I have all three available on my computers (Parallels, VMWare and VirtualBox). I float back and forth depending on the distro though I lean toward VMWare solely out of habit. VirtualBox is great too though.
I grabbed moonOS 3, Makara, and I am using the standard E17 Enlightenment version with Virtualbox 3.0.6 on Debian Lenny. It did not take long at all to load and it runs pretty well, and it is indeed very attractive.
The LXDE version, as far as I can tell right now, is limited to Version 2 – I grabbed that and will give it a try as well.
Hi, Jim.
Thanks for your informative review of MoonOS. It looks interesting, and I’m downloading it now to check it out for myself.
By the way, “it’s” (with the apostrophe) means “it is.” I think there were a couple of places in the review where you meant to use “its” (no apostrophe). :)
Thanks again.
Tony
Hi Jim, great review by the way, just one question: do i need glasses because i can’t find the install icon or anything looking like an option to install to the hard drive like in MoonOS 2?
Kind regards
James
P.s I’m opening a new cafe/holistic centre soon and i think i might use MoonOS as the colour scheme! It’s very beautifully zen.