As you can see, the default Window Manager for Antix is Fluxbox.  (Although IceWM is available from the menu)  There’s a neat system monitor running in the top left corner.  It looks pretty nice and the default terminal style uses fake transparency (it clones the desktop background).  The system colour scheme and fonts are easy to read and use.  It has a slight military feel to it - the workspaces are named Alpha, Bravo, Gamma and Delta.  The default browser in Antix is IceWeasel 3.0 - which is basically Firefox 3.0 with different artwork.  I guess Mepis uses this from Debian and Antix has left it unchanged.  I think, probably, anyone using Antix is enough of a Linux pro that they know that IceWeasel is the same as Firefox and won’t get flustered.  I’m not really into the IceWeasel theme, but that can easily be changed.

Net Connection

It just worked when I booted.  That’s how it should be.

Programs

mtPaint was included here, as in Damn Small Linux.  Nana and Leafpad are included for text editing.  For office Abiword is included for typing, as usual with these lightweight distros.  Gnumeric is the spreadsheet program, par for the course.

Pidgin is included for instant messaging.  This is a much more fully-featured program than is usually included in these distros. IRC is done via XChat - again, pretty nice for a lightweight system.  Dillo is included, as usual, but it’s pretty useless in my experience.  Links2, a commandline browser was available as well.  I recently learned ( I think in Linux Format Magazine) that Links2 is also capable of displaying images!  Usually elinks, lynx, and so on do not display any images - limiting your web experience.  Now you can get the uber-fast browsing experience of using a commandline browser and still experience images.  So if you’re using Anitx on a very low-powered PC, this could be very useful for you.

For audio and video we have xine, mplayer, and xmms.  (And a few others) And for games there’s Mahjong, Chess, and Dosbox.

So, over all, I think Antix is the best, most fully featured Lightweight Linux distro I’ve tested thus far.  It even beats out Puppy Linux 4.0.  So my current recommendation list would be Antix, Puppy Linux, and then Feather Linux.  If you have an older computer that you don’t want to send to the junk bin - install Antix!  You get the awesome Debian base under the also awesome (so I’ve heard) base of Mepis.  You get nice, functional software and there weren’t any boot problems.  I didn’t need any “cheat codes” to get it to boot.  It looks good and, with a package that would add icons to the desktop, I’d probably use this for the guest computer so visitors could browse the web without me worrying about them introducing viruses to my computers.  Oh, and it looks slick with the “transparent” xterms.  Let me end with a screenshot of the IceWM environment, which I would recommend if you wanted to use this for a guest computer where people will be expecting Windows and looking for a “start menu”.

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“I always say, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em …. Report them to Homeland Security. They’ll beat ‘em for you’ ”
-Colbert on The Colbert Report 9 June 2008

(03:25:23 PM) Danny: mom just gets pissed if we don’t eat three meals a day

“Under the Bush Administration, the value of human life has gone down $1 million” - Colbert on The Colbert Report 14 July 2008

A: “Do you have to stand at the standup [meeting]?”
J: “Yeah, and there’s a strict no-leaning rule”

Mike: “I’m the hulk”
Dr. : “Technically you’re Bruce Banner”
Mike: “Point taken — nerd.”
Mike Burbiglia at The Improv 23 Aug

“So someone’s holding the back of his underwear…” - Mike K about why someone was acting strangely

First, let me mention some of my pet peeves which are no longer a problem.  Compiz no longer comes on every time I log into Gnome.  You may remember my struggles in getting it to stay off instead of turning it off every time I logged into Gnome.  That’s what caused me to use Xfce exclusively for a few months.  I also like that GDM now actually remembers your previously selected Window Manager.  Before the option “Last Window Manager I logged Into” didn’t work.  You could select to use your new one as your default, but that always seemed so “permanent” to me.  So I really like that it now just defaults you to whatever you used last time.  The new GDM that Fedora is using is nice, and very clean.  I don’t like that it has to show the names of the users - that’s bad security practices.  It also stinks that it’s so new there aren’t any themes for it.  I had about 10 or so themes that I would cycle through for the older GDM.  Before moving on, I want to mention that I haven’t had any problems with PulseAudio.

There are some other new benefits in Gnome.  I’m not sure if this is from the Gnome Virtual File System, but now anything you have mounted in /media gets put on the desktop.  They already would put your usb drives on the desktop, but now they also put nfs shares if you have them mounted in media.  Also, with the USB “logo” they make it easier to tell which of your drives are internal and which are USB-attached.  That’s pretty convenient.  I would still like for the media to have better user-friendly names like how you can name the volumes in Windows.  There does not appear to be an easy way to do this in Linux.  So I’m left wondering which drive has my pictures, 160 GB Media or 122.9 GB Media?

The other major update is with Fedora using PackageKit.  The great thing about using PackageKit is that all of the Gnome distros are moving to using it so now the Linux user only has to learn one way of installing packages.  They don’t need to learn a new package manager for each distro they use.  PackageKit also tends to have much better descriptions of the updates and packages deing installed than any previous version of Fedora’s package managers.  When you first get notified that there are updates to install, it gives you the chance to review the changes.  Otherwise you can just install all the updates.

Some of the other changes, though cosmetic, were welcome.  They were, I think, Fedora’s new theme (as opposed to the new Gnome theme).  First off, there’s the change to the scrollbars.  I know it’s just aethetic, but I love how instead of a square crashing into another square, now it’s a rounded edge finding its home where it fits neatly like a puzzle.  I just like it, perhaps it’s some Fruedian thing.  Who knows?  Also, I really like the Window Decoraction they’ve chosen for the maximise, close and shrink buttons.  I think a plus sign makes perfect sense for themaximise button.  After all, you’re making the window bigger. It certainly makes more sense than the symbol Windows uses for maximising a window.  And now we get to the exciting part, I will use KDE 4 on Fedora 9 for the first time.  So I will be, in a sense, live blogging about my experience in KDE 4 as implemented by Fedora 9.  As you may recall, I was pretty impressed with openSuse’s port of KDE 4.0 and 4.0 wasn’t supposed to be as good as 4.1.  So I’m going to log out of Gnome and I’ll see you on the other side!

Ok, here’s the initial screen on first boot.

So you can see they’ve fixed the problem everyone was having with a lack of desktop icons.  That icon view can be moved around.  I got a little preview at Kopete’s message notification when it popped up in the top middle of the screen where I was looking around.

Overall, KDE 4 appears to have a Mac OSX type of theme and it’s pretty good.  Just as I said with openSuse 11, I like how the maximise and close Window icons are separated so I have less of a chance of accidentally closing the WIndow.  One bad thing, right off the bat, is that Konqueror cannot properly do the Visual Editing in Wordpress, so I had to switch to Firefox 3.  The neat thing about Dolphin, and KDE 4 in general, is that there are a lot of neat effects even if Desktop Effects is turned off.  As you hover over files in Dolphin, the preview window fades into the preview rather than just switching abruptly.  KDE 4 is definitely going to give Mac OSX a run for its money in the effects department.  Especially as it continues to mature into 4.2, 4.3, etc

An interesting technology they’ve been touting for KDE 4 is nepomuk which intends to bring the innovations of the semantic web over to the desktop.  Therefore it supports tagging and commenting files.  This would facilitate better search because the search program wouldn’t have to depend on reading the file or the file’s title to find it.  It would do it based on what you’ve tagged the file.  I can see this having some great new implications.

Annoyingly, I haven’t been able to figure out how to make it so that only the applications in your current desktop show up in the panel.

I know there’s a way to fix this, but I couldn’t find it within five minutes and gave up.  The Widget selection seems to be about the same as in openSuse 11.0.  I crashed plasma when I tried to use the Twitter widget, b

ut I think that’s because I didn’t have KWallet enabled.  Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be a dashboard

button like in openSuse.  Perhaps that was changed between KDE 4.0 and 4.1?  Ah…it’s now a widget you add.  Here’s my widget-crazy desktop with KDEtwitter, simple calculator, binary clock, fuzzy clock, RSS reader, and show dashboard.  In practical use I’ll probably get rid of the binary and fuzzy clocks.  I’m always in need of a calculator, so I’ll probably keep that one on the desktop.  Same with KDEtwitter.

Ok, so a while back, I blogged about one last look at KDE 3.  So now I’m going to revisit some of the applications I talked about there to see how they’ve changed for KDE 4.  First up is Amarok.  I know we’re still waiting for Amarok 2 since it follows a different schedule than KDE 4, but let’s see if it’s changed for KDE 4 nonetheless.  It looks pretty much the same as before.  So I guess we have to wait for Amarok 2.0 for dramatic changes.  Kopete has has some cosmetic changes, but it more or less operates the same.  I trawled through the options to make sure.  Overall, it’s not too bad and it’s pretty informative.  I like it.

I think Fedora has done a pretty good job with KDE 4.  It works pretty well - as good as it works on openSuse.  I still have some work to do to get used to using KDE 4, but overall it’s not too bad.  I’m still not a fan of Kontact, but I’ll give it another shot and see if I can get use to it.  I’m going back to Gnome for a little bit since I have all of my ToDo items in Evolution and I want to keep KDE to QT programs to see if I can get by with only KDE applications.  Overall KDE seems to crash a lot less than KDE 3, widget crash notwithstanding.  It feels a lot more polished and mature and it looks a lot better than KDE 3.  The new menu isn’t that bad at all once you get used to it.  Perhaps, given some time, I can come to love KDE again.  Later this week I’ll probably be giving it another shot.  I leave you with two little things I like in KDE 4.  The first is a panel widget and the second is a menu item.

Motherboard:

Property Value

Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

Model P4P800-E

Version Rev 1.xx

Serial Number MB-1234567890

North Bridge Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P Revision A2

South Bridge Intel 82801EB (ICH5) Revision A2

CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz

Cpu Socket Socket 478 mPGA

System Slots 5 PCI, 1 AGP

Memory Summary

Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes

Maximum Memory Module Size 1024 MBytes

Memory Slots 4

Error Correction None

Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed

On first startup, I thought - hmm this browser looks a bit bubbly.  Reminds me a bit of MSN Browser in the late 90s.  Then I suddenly noticed something - no top bad on the browser!  Where’s the File, Edit, Tools, menu so common to Windows programs?  Even the tabs are right up in the titlebar window.  But you know what?  I like it - more room for viewing my websites.  Tabs load up ridiculously fast.  And the little things are so nice - like how there are animations when you create the tabs.  They slide out from the left.  Or when you close a tab, all the ones to the right of it slide over to the left.  It’s pointless eye candy, but I love it!  It really adds to the experience. 

The search bar appears at the top.  Also, when you’re typing websites into your bar, all kinds of suggestions pop up that have nothing to do with websites you’ve been to before.  Like for server.ericsbinaryworld.com, when I hit “s” - sears.com was one of the choices even though I’ve never been there.  I can see Google using this as a way to make money.

Your most viewed sites are there for you to click on whenever you open a new tab.  Very convinient.  But it reminds me a lot of Opera’s speed dial.  (Except that it’s automatically filled out)  Check out this shot from my Opera review.  

And compare Google’s recently closed tabs to Opera’s trashed tabs:

I wonder how it feels to be Opera.  They are always coming out with the latest and greatest in web browser paradigms, but no one uses them.  I guess it’s their penalty for charging for their browser back in the day and then displaying ads.  Otherwise, they could be eating Microsoft’s lunch now instead of Firefox.  Firefox took tabs from Opera (the first MAJOR browser to implement it).  Now Google’s Chrome takes Opera’s speed dial and recently closed tabs - two of their best features.  (The latter is rumored to be in IE

Although most pages loaded a LOT faster than in Flock or Firefox, flickr wasn’t THAT much faster at all.  And they were touting their awesome Javascript interpreter.  I wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped to be.  That could have cinched the deal for me.  In fact, it seems to be, more or less, comparable to Opera in terms of rendering speed.  

Overall, I am really happy with how fast and responsive Chrome is.  I think I’ll use it for a couple of days like I did with Opera, Flock, and other browsers I try out.  If it turns out to be fast enough, it could end up being my new default browser.  

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As you can see, it’s pretty much inspired by Twitter.  It has a very similar interface and reply mechanisms.  I got a good vibe from it - as I did with Twitter.  Something about the aethetics just made me want to use it - just like Twitter and unlike Pownce.  Of course, there are some negatives with Identi.ca being inspired by Twitter.  Chief amongst these is the reply functionality.  Only Plurk (with Pownce in a distant second) have correctly implemented replies in a way that makes sense.  Without a threaded reply, it’s pretty hard to correctly follow the conversation that may come out of something posted on Twitter and Identi.ca.  Of course, maybe that’s done on purpose.  Perhaps replies are an afterthought because that’s not what these micro-blogging services believe micro-blogging to be about.  I’d LOVE to see a mode in Identi.ca (just another tab, really) where posts could be viewed in a threaded fashion to be able to follow the conversation better.  That would help Identi.ca leapfrog over Twitter in useability and functionality.

Speaking of this, it appears that Identi.ca assumes the user already knows what micro-blogging is all about.  Unlike Twitter and the other services, the FAQs don’t have a lot of hand-holding “this is what a micro-blog is” talk going on.

I have found a lot more neat conversations on Identi.ca and I think that’s because a lot of the people on here are here because it’s open source.  Thus, open source conversations seem to dominate on the site.

So far there doesn’t appear to be functionality in Flock or any programs in the Fedora repositories that allow posting to Identi.ca from other programs.  You *can* post from GTalk, though, so that works out well.

What makes Identi.ca worth using, trying out, etc is that it’s open source.  They are using the AGPL which means that you have to share source code if you make changes and then deploy it publicly over the web.  But the most important aspect of the open-ness of this platform is that you can take the source code, install it on your own server, and then become part of the Identi.ca network.  In other words, you can make your own customized version, but still have friends, communications, etc with the main site and with other sites running it.  You no longer have to have an account on each of these sites, they can all just link to each other.  Think of it as being able to interact with your friends who have myspace while you only use Facebook.  It’s THAT revolutionary…potentially, anyway.  We’ll see where it goes.

I’m not sure yet what I want to do with Pownce and Plurk.  But I think Twitter will become my general thoughts blog while Identi.ca will be for Linux issues.  There may be some cross-posting with issues that are really important to me, but I think this keeps my thoughts in the realms where they are most likely to be read.  That’s the plan anyway, so let’s see what happens.

But it’s been a few years and nothing horrible has happened because of the Microsoft pact and it came as a liveDVD in the latest Linux Format Magazine.  I was trying to wait until KDE 4.1 came out for Fedora so that could be my first experience with KDE 4, but that’s been delayed nearly a month now (while they, rightly, fix some bugs) so I decided to go ahead with the Suse review.

Suse is the second oldest distro that’s still around.  It started off as being based off of Slackware and later on was somewhat based on Red Hat, borrowing rpm and some other technologies.  Since then it’s gone off on its own and is now considered one of the big boys.  A few years after Red Hat shelved its personal distro and converted over to the community-sponsored Fedora, Suse decided to do the same thing with openSuse.  Just like Fedora, they’ve had some uneven releases.  However, openSuse 11 is supposed to be their comeback release.  Historically, Suse has been one of the biggest supporters of KDE as the default desktop although that has fallen off a little seince they’ve been trying to compete with Red Hat in the business world.

It’s important to note, however, that Novell’s Suse team has put a LOT of work into their KDE desktop.  This liveDVD is running KDE 4.0, yet they didn’t seem to have any problems getting icons on the desktop.  Lots of people were complaining about being unable to do so in Fedora and other distros using KDE 4.  Apparently, they just didn’t take the time that Suse did to engineer a really good KDE 4 release.  (Frankly, I’m surprised that Siego didn’t point to openSuse 11.0 as an example of a well-implemented KDE 4.0 release!)  They’ve also solved the problem of the ugly black panel that was too large.  So, plus points go to Novell’s openSuse/Suse KDE team.  They deserve an applause for doing this so well!

Novell has the KDE program menu that has annoyed so many people.  One of the things I’ve always loved about KDE was the fact that it had a favorite (or most run) programs section on the start menu.  Sure, there are some that believe that if you’re going to run programs that often you should have them as launchers on your taskbar.  But that can make taskbars look a bit cluttered.  Also, I think the most used program portion of Window’s Start Menu is one of the things they got very right with Windows XP.  (I’m not sure if MS innovated that or copied it from somewhere)  This menu is a good menu and doesn’t deserve all the hatred it’s received on the net.  It just needs a couple of tweaks to make it perfect.  The first problem with it is that if your mouse wanders down to the Favorites, Applications, etc portion of the menu, it switches you to that section.  I think a click should be required there to keep people from accidentally switching.   That was the biggest complaint most people had and it can be fixed so easily.  No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.  One other thing that was a bit unclear to me was how to go back on the applications hierarchy.  The skinny arrow on the left is not noticeable enough - at least not the first time it catches you off guard.

Widgets…it’s one of the biggest, most talked about innovations of KDE 4.  There is a lot of innovation going on in KDE 4 and if they can get past the KDE 4.0 stigma, I think they may end up surpassing Gnome with this release.  With Superkaramba, KDE has always done widgets so much better than Gnome.  Gnome’s desklets always seemed a bit kludgey and tacked on at the end.  Superkaramba always felt like it was part of KDE; even before it was added as an official part of KDE 3.5.   Now, with Plasma, the KDE team hopes to take them to the level of Apple’s OSX widgets.  In fact, OSX widget compatibility is either in KDE 4.1 or coming in KDE 4.2.

Wow!  If you’ve only seen the same old screenshots of a calculator, a click and a notepad, you haven’t seen the true power of the widgets.  First of all, they have quite a few new ones now.  You can see that I have a comic viewer, an RSS feed, and a Twitter feed.  All of these came from the default “add widgets” dialog.  I’m surprised, especially given the popularity of Twitter, that no one has showcased these widgets yet.  I’m thouroughly impressed that we’ve moved beyond simple system monitors and weather widgets (although I’m sure those are coming soon enough!)  They’re very easy and intuitive to position and configure.  And, one of the problems I always had with widgets on any desktop was that if I had all my programs open, they were less helpful to me.  Well, by clicking on the little button by the gecko or the top right corner, the plasma dashboard view is activated. This minimizes your programs and brings the widgets to the forefront.  A simple click on the desktop brings your programs back!  Couldn’t be easier.  They’re also very pleasing to the eye with their drop shadows.  They move smoothly and appear with a little fade-in.  Very nice.

As far as programs go, they have a pretty standard set.  OpenOffice.org provides the office suite.  Again, like with Mandriva, this is a little bit out of place since they could use KOffice.  However, I know that OpenOffice.org has much better compatibility with the suite from Redmond.  Interestingly, GIMP and Krita don’t seem to be included - but then again, it’s a liveDVD.  I’m sure it’s in the repositories.

In fact, let’s check out Yast, their control center.  It appears to control any setting you might want to change.  Plus points for them for making it all nice and organized.  In fact, they seem to be on par with Mandriva here in terms of everyting you could possibly want in one place.  Minus a very small point for it not looking as pretty as Mandriva or even as pretty as the rest of openSuse 11.0.  From here we can install programs.  Let’s see how well that appears to work.

I have to say that it is indeed ugly to look at.   I couldn’t really get a good feel for it as it didn’t have repositories defined.  I’ve really become much more of a fan of PackageKit’s interface.  (Which I’ll talk about in my Fedora review)  More and more Gnome-based distros are moving to PackageKit and I think there’s even a KDE version of Packagekit.  It works very well for package management and you can’t argue against the value of a consistent interface across distros.

Some last little things I noticed.  Take a look at what came up when I clicked on “My Computer”:

I really, really like this page that it loads up.  It is very useful for locating places on your computer AND for getting information.  To get the same info in Windows you’d have to open up “My Computer” AND right-click on “My Computer” and click on properties.  Here you have some quick links to “Common Folders” and also you can see that it recognized my NTFS hard drives.  You also have all the key information you need in order to get help from someone:  kernel version, distro, KDE version, graphics card driver, graphics card info, CPU info, and the total and free RAM.  Just one look gives you everything you need to know.  And I want to finish up with just a quick look at some of the neat finishing touches that Novell has done with openSuse.

Look at that - there’s a little gecko - the Suse mascot on the title bar.  This little dude appears on any title bar that has focus.  It’s just little touches like this that make the distro seem more professional.  I wish more distros would do things like this.  And look at this:

Now, this is probably a KDE setting, as opposed to Suse, but good on Novell for leaving it in.  There are many things I like about this setup.  First of all, the expansion button is not next to the exit button.  The number of times I’ve been frustrated by accidentally closing a window when I meant to resize it is just too numerous to count.  Also, the up arrow makes more sense to me than Microsoft’s icon.  It’s just that we’ve been around with the Microsoft implementation for 20 years.

So, what’s my final verdict?  I think Novell has done a really, really good job with openSuse 11.0.  Unlike Fedora, they did a very good job with the unfinished KDE 4.0 and turned it into something usable.  Lots of visual finishing touches make the distro just feel professional and not hacked together.  There are a few rough edges here and there.  I also didn’t test out flash, MP3 playback, or DVD playback.  I presume these can all be downloaded from some third party repository in some country where they don’t implement silly things like software patents.

Except for the still touchy subject of the Microsoft deal, I’d recommend Novell to someone who was new to Linux but ready to learn.  It doesn’t have the same hand-hold style of Ubuntu, so that’s still my top choice.  Right now it’s really almost a tie between recommending Mandriva and openSuse as the next best thing after Ubuntu.  Fedora is often broken due to being bleeding edge and I wouldn’t recommend it to someone brand new to Linux.  Of course, there still is the patent deal and they either did it to make themselves more palatable to companies than Red Hat (thus having bad motives) or they had to satisfy investors (which they legally must do in the USA).  So I guess that would break the tie and give it to Mandriva.  But Novell has made a top notch distro and if they can get over the negative press from the Microsoft deal (and there are websites like boycottNovell to prevent that), then I think openSuse may end up on more magazine covers and start to steal some of the thunder away from Ubuntu.

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