SwiftLinux-Regular-An Update

While everybody was focusing on new trends and tablets, I was keeping an eye on SwiftLinux.

My last report of it was unsatisfactory since it did not boot up in my old IBM and fonts were missing.

It is a Debian (Mepis antiX clone) derivative and it has come out with SwiftLinux 0-1-2 and the latest one is sleek fast to boot and work on both my old and new IBM (Relatively).

It is light on your computer and like Puppy very light on the RAM and and amazingly uses less than 100 MIB for the live CD.

That is very good feature of this distribution.

It has AbiWord and OpenOffice (prefer LibreOffice-next time round please) and Python but no Vi.

Its graphic memory usage (Debian terminal memusage is not there- but why should it have both graphic and terminal mem utilities) is revolutionary idea going back to Linux development of Memory part of the kernel. Below is a rough breakdown of the memory usage.

Python less than  4 MiB

Abi Less than       5 MiB.

Open Office from 18 to 25 depending of what part of the suite is used.

Terminal also takes about 12 MiB surprisingly.

Thanks guys and girls of SwiftLinux living up to the reputation for old computers and low memory guys.

Mind you it can be used with new too.

Now i have no hesitation of recommending it and it is going to take lot of points from my point scheme and it will now start rivalling Puppy in a constructive way for newbies.

Puppy of course is my number one.

Knoppix 2 and Debian 3 and when it becomes stable SwiftLinux will certainly occupy the 4th or fifth place if they introduce utilities for visually handicapped who do not need lot of graphic utilities for obvious reasons.

Please think of the days when Linus had the 386 and developing multitasking utilities for his resource poor computer bought on student loan.

There are lot of poor guys in the African and Asian subcontinent.

Ubuntu moving away from the low end and poor end of the market (which is essential for different reasons I have stated elsewhere) we must not lose track of the majority who are poor including senior citizens (pensioners) who will be visually handicapped and struggling to survive with low budget.

Mind you these facts are true for poor Americans too.