Loading...EasyPeasy
With the proliferation of Linux across severl platforms,it is no surprise that there is one targeted for the netbook market.
EasyPeasy is a distro specifically designed to run on Netbooks. Like most major Linux distros EasyPeasy comes with numerous offerings including office tools, several games, audio and video tools and encryption support.
All of this is neatly arranged in a slick desktop. This distro is indeed worthy of your netbook.
Sun Virtualbox
another
Have you ever wanted to savour a flavour of Linux, Windows or the Chrome OS without the hassle of a complete installation? You could get another computer and install the new operating system on it. Another option is to boot off a USB drive or a live CD. This mechanism of sampling a new operating system through a flash drive or a live CD is particularly popular in the Linux world.
The sun virtual box offers yet another option, virtualization. This means you can run one operating system (termed the 'guest') from inside another system( the host) . Using a pentium 4 system running Ubuntu, I can sample several operating system and even use features not installed on my system, thanks to an install of the virtual box. With Sun VirtualBox the guest operating system runs just like any other application in the host system. VirtualBox is available as an install for both Linux and Windows.
First download and install Sun Virtualbox on your system.Then head over to this site to download an 'image' file of the guest operating system. This Lifehacker article is a great guide to run your guest operating system on your machine using VirtualBox.
There are some disadvantages to using VirtualBox. Firstly you may not get some guests running at all. Sometimes, specfic applications inside your guest operating system may not work at all.
Finally, the guest operating system usually runs slowly. If you want to check out the performance of an operating system, VirtualBox is not where you should test it.
Jinzora
In one of my earlier entries, we took a look at Subsonic, a media center used to stream music from one computer to other computers on a network. Jinzora is another such music player/organizer.
Unlike Subsonic which is build in Java, Jinzora is built with PHP. While Subsonic can run as a standalone application or as an application within an application server like Tomcat, Jinzora is run as a web application on a Apache web server.
Jinzora is an open source application and can be accessed from a browser on a computer or any other mobile device. It offers better eye candy but besides that it is very similar to Subsonic in functionality. Like subsonic, Jinzora has a search utility and displays album info.
As Jinzora runs within Apache, and as Apache is a cross platform web server, Jinzora can run both on Linux and Windows systems.
SongBird
In my previous post, we saw some two awesome media centers, Boxee and XBMC. However, when one needs to organize only music files on one or more drives connected to a computer or or one's laptop and also have the ability to access music from Internet streaming sites for music, then music media centers like Songbird may be worth looking at.
Songbird was once called the iTunes killer. However, it did not live up to the hype. It is still a worthy contender to iTunes and others in its own league like DoubleTwist and Winamp.
Songbird is an opensource, cross-platform music mediacenter/organizer that can run both on Linux and Windows. Included with the music-center are tools to buy music from 7digital Music store,listen to Shoutcast radio and mashtape, a tool to download music and artist information. Songbird has tools to import and export music lists, support for iTunes and can play a variety of audio formats including mp3, vorbis, flac, wma and aac.
Songbird offers discography, album information, etc. for songs played in a neat interface that also includes a search feature.Other features include the ability to create smart playlists and watch folders . Songbird also comes with development tools to build custom plugins or add-ons for enhanced functionality.The songbird website has several add-ons one may use to customize her installation of Songbird.
One setback I have found with Songbird is that I cannot mount network drives on Linux. On Windows mapped drives perform badly with Songbird. This means that songbird can only access media files on internal and external drives connected to a local computer. All in all, Songbird is a decent media manager that could be better.
Here are some more articles on Songbird.
GoblinX
GoblinX is an interesting distro based on an old Linux distro called Slackware. The philosophy behind Slackware and now, GoblinX is to strive for simplicity. This means that while the like of Ubuntu strive to be compatible with as many devices as possible, GoblinX offers no drivers nor addons.
The GoblinX website offers 4 types of distros:
g:Standard: This is the original version that has 5 windows managers
g:Noblin: This is a Gnome based distro of GoblinX
and two other distros, GMini and GMicro.
I tried the live CD of the g:Standard distro on an old pentium III. The UI is slick. The g:Standard packs a lot of system and network tools.
See also:
MakeUseOf article on GoblinX
Feather Linux
Feather Linux(128MB) is another lightweight distribution 
that can be used for a basic desktop. Like Puppy Linux It comes loaded with many applications including Abiword, Calculator, Browser, Spreadsheet,etc.
Like Puppy, it can run on out-of-date computers. Unlike Puppy, Feather does not provide as much eye candy or as many applications.
Crunchbang Linux
Crucnhbang is what I'd like to call a 'Man's Linux'. Sporting a Spartan interface and just a black background, Crunchbang is eerily deceptive in its offerings. It offers almost no conventional eyecandy. A right click of the mouse will reveal the large number of applications in a small package. You can, if you choose customize the desktop easily to suit your needs.
Crunchbang is another Ubuntu derivative and is much faster and smaller than its parent. For regular desktop work, crunchbang offers a slick desktop. A build of Crunchbang Ububtu's latest version is yet to come, but the existing version, built of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is good enough for now.
Linux Mint
LinuxMint is another Ubuntu/Debian based distribution of Linux and has a large user community. The latest version Helena is build off Ubuntu's latest version, Karmic Koala. I tried playing around with the Live CD. While it offers great eye candy and some good applications, it did not provide any strong reason to switch over from Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Having said that, it does make a decent desktop.
PuppyLinux
There are plenty of reasons to 'wow' this distro. One is the footprint size. The live CD ISO file is has a size of just 110MB and downloaded in a jiffy. As advertised all over the web, it can be used on older PCs with small .drives and memory.
Having said that, I have had some problems trying to revive some older PCs with Puppy. It runs well, however on a P3 Dell (T.800) . Another word of caution is that if you plan to do some heavy weight development on Linux, Puppy may not be the one you want.
Puppy's desktop is also great giving the user a wide choice of wallpapers, etc. I preferred the older version of Puppy, titled 'Deep Thoughts', to the latest version (4.3.1), when it came to default wallpaper.
Another reason to be impressed in the number of applications Puppy packs inside it. (There are too many to count. )All of these applications come out of the box. These include utilities, file system tools, games, office applications, multimedia, internet and network tools. The network tools include a firewall, FTP software, a VPN client and many more. One of my favourites is the simple to use, network configuration tool, 'Connect' If you need a good, free and fast system from older hardware for your basic you may want to a good look at Puppy Linux.
OpenSuse
OpenSuse is another popular Linux Distro, sponsored by Novell. Version 11.1 ran wonderfully on a Pentium II 866 mHz and was quite fast. I had my heartaches trying to install 11.2 from a Live Cd though(I tried both the KDE and Gnome versions). A network install CD finally had me up at running with 11.2. I went for the KDE version. The network install takes about 3 hours.
Open Suse 11.2 has an impressive look and comes with an impressive set of applications. In addition to Open Office and games, it features Choqok, a desktop client for microblogging on Twitter and Identica. It also comes with Xsane, a scanning software that works with most scanners and Marble, a Globe, a Geography tool.
One of OpenSuse's claims to fame is its application installer Yast, which is more powerful that Yum and aptitude, the installers on Fedora and Ubuntu. Yast offers the ability to add the latest, greatest versions of applications housed on the OpenSuse machine.
Open Suse is another safe choice for anyone looking for a slick desktop. It does not have as many applications as Ubuntu, though. With Ubuntu and Fedora, Opensuse is one of the big three in the Linux world.
Fedora
Fedora is another popular Linux distro sponsored by Red Hat.Taking on one size fits all approach, the distribution includes a lot of applications like a word processor, spreadsheet, media player and so forth. Fedora does not have as big a user community as Ubuntu and hence does not have as many applications.
Installing the latest version of Fedora(Version 12 titled Reign) on a Pentium III 512 MB was a breeze. Fedora's speed is comaparble to that of Ubuntu.Fedora makes an excellent desktop with a great set of utilities. Its newest release also features improved Bluetooth support.
Fedora is a stable powerful and fast system that makes a nifty desktop.
For the last few years, reviving old pentium IIIs with 512MB or less of memory with a Linux distribution has been my magnificent obsession. This has been a rewarding and dare I say, a heart-warming experience that has opened up my eyes to free, legal and high quality systems that come loaded with equally high quality software. Here is my take on some of these systems.
Xubuntu is another version of Ubuntu I have tried. It is used to install Ubuntu on systems that do not have the luxury of too much memory or fast processors.