Thursday, May 19, 2011

Linux Update Pinguy

The recent edition of Pinguy based on Ubuntu is very pleasant.
It has both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
This was one of the DVDs I could download overnight and was over 1.67 GiB and comes under my middle weight or the Chimpanzee category.

Rapid download was due to the availability of large number of seeders.

Seeders themselves speak of it popularity and I need not say any more.

It has Unity and Apple like desktop.
Boots up fast has LibreOffice and Dropbox, Skype and many of the utilities that a first time user may prefer to have in his or her system.

I have no reservation of recommending it to a newbie and Linux savvy should decided for himself or herself.

It has some issues like not being able recognize multiple Linux operation that I have in my hard disk. Grub is is little bit limited and finicky (one does not have to worry about it and let me deal with it myself) in its behaviour.

This comment is short and sweet and I should wind up with my bonobo to gorilla classification of the ape family assuming that we, users not the Linux community descended from apes.

This was something to substitute the boxing category I started with and being interested in biology, environment and biodiversity, I could not resist using our nearest relative (I am not an expert on apes and not even humans and their behaviour especially with the computers) to illustrate how heavy or padded a Linux distribution is.

1. Bonobo is the feather weight category and include all Linux distribution under 200 MiB and fits in to a mini CD. Puppy to DSL to IPcop.

2. Common Sri-Lankan Monkey is the Light weight category and the best in this category are Peppermint, again a Ubuntu derivative and Berry Linux (Redhat derivative).

3. Middle weight is the Chimpanzee category and goes up to 1.5 GiB and Pinguy fits in well to this category. (Mind you mini DVD can fit in 1.4 GiB image and still fit in with your front pocket. I still have few Mini DVDs, I bought for Cricket World Cup,2007 left in my cabinet and a double layered one not used. This is to illustrate the point that I rarely go above Mini CD and standard CD for my work. I am light weight in my approach. Fact that there are DVDs now one need not fill them with junk packages one never uses. Remember Linux used to pack them in Floppies. Do not forget that creative beginning).

4. Heavy Weight ( 3 to 4 GiB) or the Gorilla category is PCLinux FullMonty and Knoppix, the 10th Anniversary edition which is less than 4 GiB and it is my number one).

5. If one wants one can add HaliWandura (Sri-Lankan jungle variety which is less in numbers with a blackish ring around the face and neck) for 700 MiB CD and PCLnux and Ubuntu fall into this category.

I find between 500 to 700 MiB one is limited with many constraints (We are limited by the physical capacity of the disk and not Linux) and going up to 1 GiB does not do justice to the developers, either.
So go for next best that fits in with mini DVD of 1.4 GiB)
.

One (1) GiB may be good for Flash Drive guys / girls but with Flash drive capacity which has increased now, trying to fit a distribution (KDE) to 1 GIB is not advisable.

So developers it is far better to stick to 4 categories.

1. 50 to 200 MiB
2. 500 MiB
3. 500 x 3 and the 1500 MiB ceiling.
4. 500 x 6 and the 3000 and above category

5. For any glutton use above 4.0 GiB (this is not hitting Debian below the belt punch (boxing terminology) which has the best repository on this planet but to state that packages above the base system should be blocked into either 4 GiB (standard DVD) or may be even 1.5 GiB (Mini DVD) and that depend on how they are used.
It is high time somebody outside the Debian (it become an independent survey) community do an objective survey of the use of various elements in the repository.
Then on the basis of 5-S classification divide into three categories and archive according to that system.
1. Frequently used
2. Less frequently used but generally useful (? Education).
3. Used for a particular purpose but rarely (Science)

Double Density and 8
GiB is a waste of time and it is far better to have two 4 GiB game DVDs instead of one big 8 GIB DVD.
Incidentally I saw a Debian distribution of 20 GiB (? BlueRay) in LinuxTreacker today and I wonder to whom this distribution is targeted for?

Who is the glutton?