Desktop Linux Reviews

I recently took a look at the Gnome version of Linux Mint 7. That review proved to be quite popular and brought a lot of traffic to DLR. I’ve been patiently waiting for the KDE version to be finished and now it’s finally here. So I snagged a copy and gave it a whirl. What’s [...]

A while back I took at a Linux distribution geared solely toward playing games called Live Linux Gaming. Well there’s another remastered distribution for gamers called SuperGamer. SuperGamer is based on VectorLinux and requires a dual layer DVD. It weighs in at roughly 8GB so it’s a bit on the chunky side as a download. [...]

Once again Brian has weighed in with a good distribution review request. Up this time is antiX, a light-weight version of Linux based on SimplyMEPIS. antiX is geared toward older systems but it’s also quite usable on more modern hardware. antiX is maintained by a guy who goes by the moniker “anticapitalista.” What’s New In [...]

Sometimes I run into a remastered distro that is so odd…so strange…so disgusting…that I don’t even know where to begin in reviewing it. Hannah Montana Linux is one such remastered distribution. Before I get into this review I have to confess that I had no real idea who this Hannah Montana person was before I [...]

One of the nice things about Linux is that anybody can create a Linux distribution and sometimes the better distros come from the most unlikely of places. Pardus Linux 2009 is a Turkish distribution. Pardus Linux was created and maintained by The National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an affiliate of the Scientific [...]

Back in 2006, when I was writing for ExtremeTech, I reviewed a version of Ubuntu with a religious theme: Ubuntu Christian Edition. At one point it seemed as though Ubuntu CE had been discontinued but I was pleased to note today that it has apparently been brought to life again: Great news!! Ubuntu CE is [...]

The excellent distribution suggestions keep coming from Brian Masinick and here’s yet another one, Sidux 2009-2. Sidux is based on Debian and you can download a version that uses the XFCE or KDE desktop environments. You can also opt to download the lite version that weighs in at about 600MB or the full version that [...]

Brian Masinick weighed in with another good suggestion recently for a distribution review. This time he recommended Elive so I snagged a copy to check it out. Elive is based on Debian and uses the Enlightenment window manager rather than KDE or Gnome. The version I picked for this review is the 1.9.35 release which [...]

Sometimes great minds think alike, there’s just no doubt about it. When I heard of the release of CrunchBang Linux I knew I had to do a review of it here on DLR. And when I got up this morning I noticed that there was a post by Brian Masinick in Request A Review asking [...]

I got another review request recently, this time for Mandriva Linux. So I snagged a copy of Mandriva Linux One (a free download) and thought I’d give it a whirl. I picked the KDE version as I wanted to spend more time playing with KDE. Mandriva Linux comes in a number of different versions: Mandriva [...]

Lately I’ve been looking at different distributions but there’s another angle of desktop Linux that bears looking at from time to time too: gaming. Yes, there actually are Linux gamers out there and, despite some shortcomings, it is quite possible to play some games on your Linux system. Usually people would do it by installing [...]

They say that good things come in small packages and so it is with Tiny Core Linux, a diminutive but powerful distribution. TCL weighs in at an incredibly petite 11MB when you download it. Yes, it really is that tiny. Tiny Core Linux is based on Busybox, the Linux 2.6 kernel, JWM, Fltk and Tiny [...]

As you have probably noticed, there’s a Request A Review page up on this blog and one of the first suggestions was made by Bill Julian. Bill wanted to read a review of Knoppix 6.0.1. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Knoppix is a Debian-based Live CD version of Linux. You can get it on [...]

No writer is completely without bias. I do the best I can to be even-handed and objective when reviewing a distribution. I have to admit though that I’ve been far too biased toward covering Gnome-based distributions and haven’t nearly covered as many KDE-based counterparts. I’ll be trying in the future to have a more balanced [...]

Just wanted to let everybody know that the discussion forum is now up. Here’s the link: http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/forum It’s also in the sidebar under the RSS feed. Please feel free to drop by and chit chat about Linux or whatever. Edit: You need to register separately for the forum. Different database than the blog comments. Sorry.