Vanillux - An Ubuntu Based GNU/Linux Distribution that Comes With Gnome3!

Since we're gonna be, somewhat missing the "Gnome support" in the future versions of Ubuntu (starting with the 11.10, although it'll still be officially supported through online repositoreis but not in the CD/DVD) it's about time that someone comes up with GNU/Linux distribution that's based on Ubuntu as the "core" yet uses the Gnome 3 or the Shell as the default desktop rather than the Unity interface.

It's called Vanillux and it's so new at the moment that it's not stable thus not recommended for everyday usage. Now to be honest I haven't tried it (yet) but the thing that got me excited, as said, it uses Ubuntu as the core + supports Gnome desktop only (both the classic and the new Shell). So basically if you (like me) happened to both hate and love Ubuntu at the same time then I'm pretty sure that could be the sort of a community that is building the Vanillux Linux at the moment.

According to their home page the aim is pretty much straight forward, quoting...

"Contrary to most other OS suppliers out there, our goal is not to take large amounts of market share; Our goal is to keep our users happy and involved, regardless of their numbers..."

Nice and clean Gnome 3 desktop...

Now they have a downloadable ISO images but according to themselves they are a bit troublesome at the moment. Because of a possible "bug" with the ubiquity (Ubuntu's installing wizard) if you use those ISO files you cannot install the OS into the HDD but since they're liveCDs you can enjoy experiencing the OS nonetheless.

By default it does not come with a lot of applications since again according to the developers own words...

"The basic Vanillux desktop is simple and only includes the basic to get you running..."

Although I'm not entirely sure about all the software packages and their version (as said I haven't used it) but you'll get ...

*. Gnome 3 as the primary desktop.

*. Also the classic Gnome version (for those of us with slower hardware, you ain't alone in that :D).

*. Chromium web browser rather than the Firefox.

*. VLC and another media player (so that we can run proprietary codecs/files by default, man what A relief!)...

If you want to get more software such as LibreOffice and Flash, etc for the Vanillux OS then you can do so by using their online repositories. As said the LiveCD version does not let you install it because of a bug.

But if you want to install it permanently then you'll have to install the most basic version of Ubuntu using the minimal installation CD and then (make sure you have a faster Internet connection) after the installation issue the below command in the Command-line environment.

wget http://dl.vanillux.org/ubuntu-vanillux/vanillux-install.sh && chmod +x vanillux-install.sh && sudo ./vanillux-install.sh

This script, according to their wikipage is designed to automatically install the Vanillux graphical desktop and the applications. So all you gotta do is just run the script. Other things like System requirements are unknown (I didn't find them on the site) but they do have some nice screenshots at the moment. Although it would be nice that they could give the system requirements (I understand that it's might be too early for that but...).

But as a final note, it's no way in its final stages, only experimental at the moment so use it at your own risk. In the mean time if you want one of the most secure and stable GNU/Linux distributions but willing to let go of the need of having latest software versions, etc then I highly recommend the latest CentOS 6.0.

Anyhow, I'd like to wish good luck to the Vanillux developers one more time, Oh one more thing I almost forgot!. You can get the latest versions of the full ISO images from this FTP page. Good luck.