I had some allergy to this distribution but any more.
Allergy is due to------->
In the early days of my Live CD distribution testing, I downloaded Absolute Linux and by shear accident I said yes to a command and it took over my hard disk and installed it and wiped everything.
That was long time ago and I wrote Microsoft Killer on the CD and never tried it again till today.
Almost everybody in the University on token strike (remind me of the old days when we had to strike demanding bread, milk, rice and not coconuts) I decided to try this on one of my old computers in office which I had messed up including the boot record and its mouse PS/2 mouse was fidgety.
I plugged in a USB mouse and started installing.
Installing was on write mode which I like very much and it was like using Debian where everything was configured step by step.
It took a little extra time fearing it will destroy my FAT partitions used for storing some archived material which i have already forgotten.
True to the statements below which I copied from its home page it does write and reported the faulty on board sound and gave me opportunity to configure USB external sound card I plugged in.
It is very light on the old computer and had everything including K3B, AbiWord and Libre Office.
I have no hesitation of recommending it for dual booting.
It uses LiLo and could not detect Peppermint I had already installed.
Apart from that glitch it is an excellent distribution for a newbie learning Linux.
Another admirable feature is that when you first time boot it tells you what ought to be done including using a user account.
I had some difficulty finding the control center which is the first entry in the menu because it gives neither Gnome or KDE desktop appearance which is in fact is a remarkable feature what i like the most.
It gets one out of the regimented routine and frees you with new found linux independence.
Well done guys an girls at Absolute Linux.
Mind you it took 11 days to download (the longest but Hanthana Sinhala Linux did not finish after 14 days) by torrent.
Please use the point to point download and I am currently downloading its latest version.
It cannot be listed in my Live CD/DVD list since only thing it lacks is a live sfs script an I hope in future it is included by default with UnetBootIn for USB booting.
- Desktop oriented, as opposed to use as a server
- All-at-once installer with the packages I wanted. Sifting through everything on the Slackware installer was hell.
- Lightweight. Had some older equiptment and also wanted to incorporate use of my modified version into my PC repair business -- installing it on older machines for customers.
- Like to play. Want the latest, best software. Slackware was perfect for this as all the headers are left in the packages/libraries so I can compile what I like. Since I like to script/program, I made myself many little utilities and shortcuts to configure the system more easily.
- I want complete control.
- But I want the operating system to stay out of my way.
- Is a modification of Slackware
- Fast, stay-out-of-your-way desktop. No Gnome or KDE. Uses well integrated collection of the best lightweight software to give you most of the things the "big desktops" give you, only at at much, much faster pace.
- The software folks use on a desktop: Firefox, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pidgin chat, GIMP image editor, WPClipart, Thunderbird mail, K3B CD/DVD burning, Frostwire P2P, Deluge BitTorrent, 2 dictionaries, a bunch of games -- basically any of the latest, most popular Open Source software.
- Many script utilities (with friendly little GUIs) to make configuration and maintenance of system easier and still allows manual (text-file based) configuration, if desired.
- Package compatible with Slackware minor versions. (ex. Absolute 12.2 -> Slackware-12.2), with a few exceptions: kernel packages, KDE-libs, madwifi, ndiswrapper, svga-helper, a/etc.
- Root user can install software or set system configurations. That's it. Perfect for parents and IT guys. If you want to do something root user is allowed to do, log in as root. That's what the account is for.
