LinuxExtras-Gentoo-11

Gentoo was my last conversion or convergence.

I had seen a Gentoo live CD (probably 2008) and KiWi Linux (I may be wrong here) which was probably a Gentoo Linux derivative but never caught my eye till I discovered XBMC in Sabayaon.

The latest edition which I downloaded yesterday is pretty impressive.

In 2.3 GiB it has everything a newbie needs and XBMC (Media Center).
It has both 32 bit and 64 bits editions.
It is good as gold for Linux Lovers.
In 10 years it has the stature and only Knoppix can boast and can rival.

If not for my search for Linux 100 and the discovery of Sabayon and XBMC I would not have been writing this piece.

Thanks a lot guys and girls.

Please excuse me for my ignorance and not including you in my Linux 100.

You are in the top 10 in my list and even though you are around 20 in the distrowatch (Sabayon is in the top 10) if you introduce few live CDs and LXDEs, you will be envy of the rest.

XBMC may be heavy to be put in a CD distribution but that as a separate edition in your repertoire (do not let it die a natural death of under usage) of live CDs will add spice to your distribution of high quality.

I would have preferred you put blender in the DVD in future version with XMBC and that will be the best multimedia and graphic Linux image for newbies and the savvy..

Final Count Down on Linux 100

I am almost completing 18 months come end of March of downloading and testing Linux Live CDs and lately few of the DVDs.

All good things have to come to an end and with Sinhala Linux coming to the scene without fanfare or funfair after a long delay, I will be concentrating on that instead of the Live CDs but with occasional reference to them (not full time as it used to be for nearly 18 months).
Real reason for this venture was the boring one year election campaign and as a diversion tactics of an intellectual nature.
The things I learned was enormous.
Sinhala Linux coming at the tail end was quite a surprise.
It looks as some of my critical comments are taken with serious attention and lot of my audience is not Sri-Lankans but Americans and far way web browsers.

I believe my comments were only academic and may be some times constructive but lot of things not intended by me has / have happened.
In the Grand Finale, I would like to list few.

1. Multilingual Distributions are coming from EU and South America which is pretty good.

2. French is also becoming a leading language of distributions.

3. Light weight and multiple editions are hitting the bench.,emulating PCLimux. Sabayon (Gentoo), Salix(Slackware), Aptosid (Debain), Fedora (Redhat) and Zenwalk are examples.

4. Some dormant like Korora coming out of the attic.

5. Distributions are looking at others to emulate or improve the Linux image.

6. Dominance of Ubuntu is diminishing and Ubuntu also looking for an image lift.

7. Redhat has come out of hibernation.

8. Debian is showing its prowess and slowly and rightly embracing the changes. Lot of live editions including Sinhala Linux edition.

9. Flame wars are becoming less intense but critical and constructive.

10. With all these I am becoming rejuvenated at my twilight years and old and young are coming together for a Grand Finale.

11. Puppy (front pocket) and Knoppix (piggyback) remain my favorites.

12. Pendrive Linux are ubiquitous.

Only criticism I have is the children programs (except gCompris and few others) and games have been neglected.
Morphix, Myah and Adios are slow to wake up from hibernation or slumber.
Young chaps take them out of the attic and put some the grandpa influence on the map and make some really grandiose games and creative activities (for children and grandpa like me) and reinvigorate the Linux spirit of the yesteryear.

Linux100-SuSe-Update-02

Suse after many months of deliberation and milestone editions has finally released the 11.4 which looks pretty good. Thanks to business like approach and releasing it on the date schedules but I have a feeling that it could have been released much earlier and the many milestones were not necessary for a distribution widely used unless of course like Redhat and Ubuntu were making radical changes. SuSe does not need any radical change. It's KDE stands out as a robust but RAM craving entity and very useful desktop which has hybrid of Apple and Microsoft feel.

Thanks goes to the KDE Team and it is one of the best.

My appeal always was for KDE and not Gnome even though I am not fanatical like Gnome and Debian guys.
I am a Debian fan too and for its effort on Sinhala Edition I have revived my allegiance to it. It has a special place in my cognition and the other rivaled that was Redhat which lost its charm after Fedora. Now even Fedora is trying to catch up with others.

SuSe does not have to do any catch up except to change it corporate image which it burrowed from Novel and had corrupting influence of Microsoft like CEOs.

If they drop those two elements and let the innovation to be its driving force it can reach the masses again.
It should follow the leading changes introduced by PCLinux with many light weight edition and a very nice and promising Gorilla Edition (fullmonty).

I have become a fan of Puppy (all editions), Knoppix and PCLinux and those were the top three installed in recently assembled IBM (second hand) computer with big SATA hard disk.
This is the first time I have had a hard disk above 80 GiB.

In any case I need a big hard disk for the images I download and test. All these time with a modest 80 GiB IDE hard disk I have accomplished downloading over 300 CDs and a very few DVDs.

My forth distribution is Mepis and it has not come up with a new edition for a long time.

Coming back to SuSe, even though the DVD came on the dead on time, the CDs were there in the Linuxtracker a few days earlier but because of the server breakdown there at Linuxtracker I could not download them. I was not keen anyway to download before the dead line today evening, being Friday I came early because of cricket matches (watch TV and to see England succumbing again) and downloaded both KDE and Gnome versions.

Both are pretty good.
I was happy that they dropped OpenOffice and Libreoffice is now the master of ceremony.

Branshee is taken over the media player. Apart from those changes the SuSe image was kept intact.

The Venetian blind like appearance (not vertical but horizontal) of the graphic is very pleasing. It has kept the green image which is very good and environmentally friendly guy like me who likes blue for personal image, having a touch of green like my ornamental plants gets full marks.
You get 10 out of 10 in spite of my criticism on corporate actions.
Thanks guys and girls at SuSe community.
It would have been better if this was released in December instead in March like PCLinux and many other distributions and you guys would have gone on a long holiday which you deserve.

I will download the DVD and install it my computer which as become redundant due to my upgrade. I will take another 24 hours (altogether 36 hours), that is how our Telecoms gives me the band width.
I strongly suggest that in your next release the CD version comes in December rather than March. This year because of the Cricket World Cup, I like many Sri-Lankan I have programmed enough time to coincide with cricket matches but not next year though.