Are you a modder? Join the Popular Mechanics modding community to share your modding tips, tricks and cool case mods. Drop by the message boards to talk modding with other members. Check out my modding blog and set up your own blog to share your mods.Is there a Linux distribution you’d like to see reviewed? A Linux app you’d like to see covered? Post a note in the comments below and I’ll check it out. I can’t promise to review every app or distribution but I’ll definitely check out your recommendation.
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antiX M8.2 has now been released, and I would like to see a review of the full version – and maybe I will take a crack at writing a review of the base version.
If there really are not any reviews of SimplyMEPIS out there, I’d love to see impressions of SimplyMEPIS 8.0. It has been out since February, and it has had one formal official update, but the MEPIS Lovers community has been absolutely hopping this year with unofficial updates. Danum has released at least three respins with KDE 4.2, and has another one imminent with KDE 4.3. Marcos, another community packager, has released at least two respins of his own, one of MEPIS XFCE and another of MEPIS LXDE. All of these are of first rate quality.
I don’t know if we want to get into the business of reviewing an unofficial “respin” or not, but Jim, if you do decide to give that a whirl at any time, these MEPIS respins are extremely impressive and all of them that I have tried out are nearly distribution release quality – that’s MEPIS distribution release quality – they EXCEED the quality of about 75-90% of the released distributions out there!
Pumping up a hopefully pending review of antiX at http://mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?p=187754#post187754 – and hoping that a review of antiX will also get the antiX team some positive exposure too!
The antiX announcement and information can be found at http://mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22317
Official antiX announcement at http://www.mepis.org/node/14221
JR, that KDE 4.2 remaster is the excellent “Danum” remaster. Danum created a couple of them, beginning on January 27 when KDE 4.2 came out, called that one Cano, then came out with another one somewhere around KDE 4.2.3 and called it Cano 2. He has another one to be coming out soon; cannot recall the name of that one, but he does have a new name and his remaster will be SimplyMEPIS with a KDE 4.3 desktop.
Marcos has done a great job, too, and has published at least two respins – one for XFCE, another for LXDE. These also have their own theme, though they are not quite as comprehensive as Danum’s work.
antiX qualifies as a distribution in its own right, and it has been officially sanctioned by Warren Woodford and announced alongside SimplyMEPIS for a couple of years now. There are possible signs that Warren might sanction one or two more variations, if they hold up to the high standards of the name. A couple of them appear that they could, IF the documentation and support can equal that of SimplyMEPIS and antiX.
Now that the majority of the distros that I have mentioned or recommended have been reviewed, the two remaining ones from my previous list are:
1. SimplyMEPIS
2, Debian Lenny
Both are stable, both are based on Lenny, both have a very loyal following. Neither has changed a lot since released this past winter, and neither of them gets a lot of press, at least compared to the hysteria that usually surrounds Ubuntu and anything remotely connected to it or anything with Google in the name. These have something THEY DON’T – longevity and stability. I challenge you to find something more stable than either of these distributions.
Another distro that has been out there a year or two is Omega. I first tried it as a respin of Fedora 10 and liked it because it came with the extras that cannot be directly included in Fedora. Now there is a Omega 11 release, and it is just as good as the previous one, and a bit more stable than Fedora 11 at release, since it includes the updates and improvements.
If you like to track Fedora, but would rather have a somewhat more stable release, and you would also like to use non-free media extensions, then Omega is the distro for you. I think it is worth a review, too, since it is probably not that well known.
BTW, I am using Omega 11 in a Virtualbox OSE instance and it runs well there!
Another possible candidate.
http://macpup.org/
Thanks for the reviews.
I really enjoy your reviews of lightweight distros. I have a msi wind running Crunchbang Linux 9.04 and I am really satisfied. Pretty fast and with fairly full desktop functionality.
I would like to read a review of gOS (http://www.thinkgos.com/index.html). Also a review on the Zenwalk would be nice (http://www.zenwalk.org).
Thank you.
Please review Sabayon. I am interested in reading your opinion about it.
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/
The current version is 4.2, but version 5.0 will be ready for 2009-08-09. Thank you!
Hi, I so far love your blog. Your reviews seem to be pretty fair, and cover a lot of detail without getting bogged down in things common among distros. It’s a great site for people who like to distro hop (who doesn’t?).
I’d like to see the latest openSUSE reviewed some time. Although I’d dabbled in dual booting before hand, one of my first cold-turkey Linux experiences was with Suse 10.1. That put me off Suse for a long time, and almost put me off Linux. I’d love to see how Suse is going now.
I’d like to see a review of PCLinuxOS. It’s consistently listed in the top 10 at distrowatch. I’ve used several variations of it (Kde, Gnome, XFCE and minimal-versions) and it’s a well-put-together distro, in my opinion. It’s targeted to new linux converts and focuses on being easy to use with minimal tweaking. Give it a spin!
Greetings Jim. I stumbled across your site from a link posted by the Download Squad regarding your Hannah Montanna Linux review (Oh dear god), and was pleasantly surprised to read your well-thought out reviews and insights.
My request is this : A review (or basic overview) of Enlightenment-using distros/remasters. I know of two, eLive (which I have just downloaded and will try soon) and OpenGEU (which is an Enlightenment-using remaster of Ubuntu 9.04). I think that Enlightenment has enormous potential as part of a lightweight distro, and seems to be far more user-friendly than either IceWM, XFCE or Fluxbox.
A simple overview list (or ‘Best Of’ listing with brief summaries) would be useful to introduce people to this window manager.
Cheers, and keep up the good work!
Hello I’m poor and have been given a Pentium III PC which I thought would be of no use. A friend said to give this linux stuff a go and installed something called teenpup linux on it. I’m getting use to using it and thought others might like to try it as well. Can you please review it as my friends want to know more about it and I can’t provide them with any information on it.
I’m adding gNewSense to the list……..
http://www.gnewsense.org/
Its a fork of ubuntu GNU/Linux which is only using free softwares(as described by Free Software Foundation)I don’t know anything new is there in this distro,but the philosophy looking good to me…
How about Firefly?
http://fireflylinux.com/