Lubuntu ISO images are Available via Official Ubuntu Servers (Finally!)

Lubuntu is an excellent, Ubuntu Linux based GNU/Linux distribution that comes with the LXDE desktop which is at the moment is one of the fastest, light-weight desktops out there (even faster than XFCE). Although it was started as a derivative rather than an official part of Ubuntu but since Ubuntu did miss the LXDE desktop version in their long list of other options such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu... soon after the initial release of the Ubuntu 11.04 release Mark Shuttleworth said that now they'll consider treating Lubuntu as one of their "own", soon enough.

I think that pretty much became a reality for the Lubuntu developers since from now on we can download Lubuntu from the official Ubuntu servers!. Now before you're gonna go ahead and download please be aware of the fact that, according to the official announcement these images are not quite ready yet and are missing splash images, over sized (over 800MB in size thus won't fit in a CD!) and won't even load the default desktop session, etc. In simple terms, they are not stable.  

Anyhow you can still use them using a USB drive or DVD, etc... and these images currently have ...

*. Chromium web browser (well I guess it's better at low resources rather than Firefox, or maybe not).

*. Openbox as the window manager.

*. PC Man, the default file manager of the LXDE desktop, which is quite fast and resembles a "lighter" version of both Nautilus and Thunar.

*. Abiword and Gnumeric (excellent spreadsheet application which is not that famous thanks to both LibreOffice and OpenOffice :D).

*. Pidgin as the default IM client.

*. Gnome mplayer as the multimedia player (excellent front-end that uses the MPLayer "engine").

*. Audacious as the audio player.

And also not just the LXDE desktop but you'll also get some portions of the Gnome desktop such as file-roller (archive manager in Gnome) and Gnome-Keyring (a password keeper). Well, that's about it mates!. But as said these are the daily build ISO images and are certainly not stable at the moment. So use it at your own risk ;-)... (seriously!). Oh and congratulations to the Lubuntu Geeks as well, finally, you made it!.

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.

CentOS 6.0 Live CD/DVD Editions are Finally Released!

For those of you don't know, CentOS is a GNU/Linux distribution that's based on the RedHat Enterprise Linux. Just like with RHCL, CentOS is also well known for being painfully slow to release new versions where most other GNU/Linux distributions give away new versions about ever 6-10 months.

CentOS on the other hand do a lot of testing for their packages thus even when they release a new version the packages may not have their latest versions nor features. But the rest assured, if you want a highly stable, less crashing secure operating system (say for our server), then this is one heck of an OS and I don't think there are that many who can compete against it either!.

Anyhow, after a long pause few weeks ago (2) they released the CentOS 6.0. It's available for both 32bit/64bit architectures but at that time there was no Live CD or DVD available for the users. But few hours ago (yesterday) they finally announced the official availability of the CentOS 6.0 Live CD/DVD!.

The Non-LiveCD CentOS 6.0 desktop...

In general this is only the LiveCD edition thus no new packages nor versions are included.

Main features of the 6.0 version ...

*. GNU/Linux Kernel 2.6.32.

*. Gnome 2.28.2 (Yup no Gnome 3 and if it's ever gonna get into CentOS that would be after a long time from today :D).

*. Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9 (Forget about Firefox 5 but not even Firefox 4).

*. Thunderbird 3.1.3.

*. Gimp 2.6.9... just a few to mention.

It comes with both CD and DVD versions. So if you want all the packages then you should go for the LiveDVD since they've stated that because of the lack of space, some of the apps are missing in the CD version. You can download CentOS 6.0 Live media from this official release page. And if you're looking for a review, then Igor Ljubuncic at dedoimedo.com has a excellent one as always. Good luck.

Vinux 3.2.1 is Released (GNU/Linux Distribution for the Visually Impaired)

GNU/Linux is all about variety and different choices. Thus if you have certain needs that you cannot acquire by using a certain distribution, unlike with the closed-source software where you're usually end-up with little margin for choices, with GNU/Linux you will find something else that's closely related to your interests. So no one is left behind :).

In that sense, if you haven't heard, Vinux is a GNU/Linux distribution based on the Ubuntu OS that's aimed for the visually impaired users. Although both Gnome and KDE do come with their own accessible software but if you want an entire operating system based on the needs of a visually impaired users point of view, then Vinux is an excellent distribution.

After the recent 3.2 release which brought a lot of new features such as ...

*. Based on the Ubuntu 11.04 "engine".

*. Came with the Pico TTS Voices (a text to speech engine implement by Google for the Android OS) addition to the Espeak (not bad but Pico is better).

*. Pre-installed proprietary codecs (some of them). 

*. Orca-Teacher (screen reader written in Qt for the KDE desktop) and  Talking Clock.

*. LibreOffice and Epiphany web browser.

*. New system bell when the booting screen appears so choosing different booting options is much easier... are just a few to mention.

Anyhow after few weeks of the 3.2 launch, the main developer behind the project, Dr.Bongo officially announced the availability of the version 3.2.1 which brings few features + main bug fix (including many others for sure)...

*. Now the PulseAudio server runs as in the "user mode" rather than the "system mode".

This was implemented because in the previous releases, where it used to run in system mode, there had been numerous reports of sound system crashing on several sound cards, not to mention the importance of having a stable sound system since it's for visually impaired users. So now it's fixed. But, because of this, to enable the audio "system wide" you'll have to run two scripts/commands.

*. Comes with a GUI for installing Vinux 3.2.1 into a USB drive easily called Zenity.

*. cdburn command-line tool for burning and checking CD/DVD (md5sum).

If you use the Vinux 3.2, then you can easily upgrade to this latest version by using the below commands.

wget http://www.vinux.org.uk/script/upgrade_script.tar.gz

tar -zxvf upgrade_script.tar.gz

sudo ./upgrade.sh

You can download the latest ISO images from this page. Unlike with many other GNU/Linux distributions, it is advised by the developer not to update the OS applications unless you really need them. Good luck.

The "Extra" Long Awaited Elementary OS "Jupiter" is Finally Out!

The Elementary project is actually started as a project for giving away applications and GTK based themes for Ubuntu around 2007. For instance the Nautilus Elementary file manager is actually created by the "elementary" dudes!. This again shows the characteristics of the developers and from the start they've been doing things that impressed the Linux users + developers all around the world.

Wanna "desktop" on Jupiter! :)

After seeing the success they had with the little customizations they did to the Nautilus, they started creating and customizing a lot of other applications thus "converting" them into "elementary". So I guess after some time they thought... "well, we have a file browser of our own, have customized few apps that look awesome (almost rhymed :P ) then why not create an operating system of our own". Bingo!.. that's how the Elementary OS was born (based on Ubuntu).

Here are some of the main applications it ships with

*. Midori - A GTK based web-browser (not the best of its kind though).

*. Docky - A Mac OSX dock type application (very popular).

*. Postler - An e-mail client created by the elementary developers!.

*. Lingo - A web dictionary.

*. Totem - The default Gnome media-player frond-end (can be set-up to use both Gstreamer and Xine).

*. Abiword - A lightweight word processor for GNU Linux (cross-platform actually).

*. Shotwell - An awesome picture manager for Gnome.

*. The Ubuntu software center.

*. GNUmeric - spread-sheet application.

*. Nautilus Elementary version - Dah... :).

These are the main programs and there are no audio players. Totem is the only choice. I think the reason for this type of behavior from the developer may have something to do with wanting to keep the development process restricted to a minimum of apps but making a lot of customizations to those "chosen" apps which resulting a more "elementary-ed" OS.

This has to be expect since it was obvious from the beginning that the developers wanted to "keep" the respect they had or for the thing that they are quite famous for. In fact in the next release they are focused on creating a music player of their own!. I really like this attitude from them actually... sometimes you just gotta have some balls! to create something of your own.

Few apps such as the new Slingshot app launcher (in the screenshot) are "missing" in this release

Anyhow, still things such as the Slingshot (an application launcher) or Plank, etc seems to be missing. So hopefully those original Elementary apps will be available in their next release. To be honest, I haven't used Elementary OS... I never will probably... but for those of you who wants an easy to use, highly personalized (don't know how else to put it) Linux operating system, then the Elementary OS looks like an excellent option nonetheless.