Linux, BSD, and everything else...

Step-by-Step Vinux 3.2.1 Install Guide

2012-01-18T12:00:00.000Z

The Vinux distribution has been optimized for users to be able to operate a computer, surf the internet etc. all via text to speech tools and the keyboard. It is geared towards disabled users and in particular towards people with VI needs. I have written about it recently and am now making an install guide for the latest version available to help ease the transition for people not familiar with
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Three Spins You May Not Have Heard Of

2012-01-15T13:46:00.000Z

Always on the lookout for something interesting I found three more esoteric spins of major distributions and set out to give them a quick test run.
This was helped by a streak of bad luck recently which resulted in me suddenly having two partitions available.
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antiX M11 in Review - Sadly Not So Great

2012-01-09T12:49:00.000Z

As most readers will already know antiX is a light weight distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux and SimplyMEPIS, or just Mepis if you prefer, which is itself based on Debian. antiX sports a custom IceWM as default window manager and environment with tools from the ROX desktop. It is supposed to mainly be used on older machines and as a consequence there is no x86_64 edition, only two 32-bit optimized for i486 and i686 processor instructions.
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Meet Grml 2011.12, Basic Debian Respin for Sysadmins

2011-12-30T13:00:00.000Z

Today we're looking at another more specialized distribution spin called grml that apparently has its origins in Austria, not that it mattered much when technology allows us to work pretty much from anywhere. Is it grml because those mountain folks up in the Alps are always grumbling and grumpy, or is it that life as a sysadmin is turning people into muttering zombies?
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Semplice Linux, An Exercise in Simplicity

2011-12-23T12:42:00.000Z

Semplice Linux is a very young project that has only recently made its debut on Distrowatch with Release Candidate 1 for their upcoming 2.0 code-named 'Emily' getting listed. This means there must be a support structure in place, a website, bug tracker, documentation and user forum.
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Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000Z

Hello guys. It's been another long year, although it went really quick. Seems contradictory, but with everything going on in the world and in my private life it seems both long and short.
In the Linux and free software world both the Unity desktop and GNOME Shell had their first public releases that sparked plenty of controversy and set the scene for the year.
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A Review of Vinux - Linux for the Visually Impaired

2011-12-18T23:26:00.009Z

Vinux is a specialist distribution remastered from a Ubuntu base and optimized specifically with visually impaired users in mind. Some others also come with a screen reader and other accessibility options by default, for example in the login screen, but these are never turned on from the start and voice recognition software is rarely if ever present.
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Slax 7 Is On The Way

2011-12-17T05:33:00.003Z

Chances are you already know this if you're into Slackware based live distributions that are using SquashFS for an easy to manage modular architecture. Development has picked up again, and on Tomas M's blog there is also a nice video of what's called a Slax 7 technology preview. Looks like Porteus, the project spawned by the fan community as Slax-Remix, will soon not be the only choice.
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Quick Look at VectorLinux 7.0 Final

2011-12-15T17:38:00.000Z

Around two weeks ago, on 28th November, VectorLinux 7.0 was finally released after two years of work, or, as the developers put it in the release announcement, "nearly two years of blood, sweat and tears". We don't want to be disrespectful then. You can get a brief overview of features for the standard edition here and here. I've previously looked at RC2 in a longer review over on Muktware, so this is more meant as an addendum.
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Bye-Bye, Firefox

2011-12-11T02:19:00.000Z

It's been a long time coming. In October last year I wrote a post wondering what browser to switch to or whether to stick with Mozilla's Firefox. And that was even before the current madness, upping version numbers all the time with little if any perceivable benefit to the end user. The stability problems were easily overcome, just by re-enabling those little helpers called hosts file, Adblock and Noscript. It's a testimony though to how bug-ridden websites are that all those are needed just for a
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My Favorite Distribution Releases 2010-2011

2011-12-04T20:47:00.000Z

I was going to write about how I finally dumped Firefox for Opera, but Firefox 8 does not seem too bad and for the first time appears a bit nippier at start up. Like Dedoimedo has found, this does not look like a completely arbitrary decision to pump up the version number but actually has some small benefits, so I'm going to give Firefox another chance before it is relegated.
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Updated CrunchBang Statler Images, More Like ArchBang

2011-11-28T20:17:00.001Z

Corenominal has announced the release of an updated build of CrunchBang Linux 10 "Statler", with some significant changes since the last release. CrunchBang is a lightweight Debian-based distribution featuring the Openbox window manager. The Xfce edition has been discontinued to focus on the Openbox edition. The Gnome Display Manager (GDM) has been removed in favor of the SLiM login manager, as inclusion of the in Debian repositories upcoming move to GDM 3 was deemed undesirable.
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Arch Linux: The Big Upgrade

2011-11-22T19:12:00.001Z

I've been putting it of and been running with linux 2.6.39 for months, but today it was time and the big upgrade went surprisingly well. Basically, I have not been updating this machine since I wrote the ArchBang article in July. After downloading around 420 MB in package updates (more than 2 GB installed size) two days ago it pulled in another ~90 meg today.
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Puppy 5.3 "Slacko" - Slackware With Added Woof

2011-11-13T19:30:00.000Z

On 17/10/2011 a new version, or edition if you prefer, of Puppy Linux was released, this time based on Slackware, and it is appropriately named Puppy "Slacko", because we all know that Slackware users are lazy, right?

I haven't used Puppy before, in part because I felt no need considering the many distributions out there and in part because some things like its Ubuntu roots did
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New Page for Screenshots and Artwork Added

2011-11-13T17:23:00.001Z

Today I've added a screenshots page to the blog for all those vanity shots showing off my desktop. Nevertheless, it's a bit of fun and something to look at if you got nothing else to do. It may also provide some inspiration, just like I get some ideas from other websites, and I will usually post links to the artwork used, icons, backgrounds and such. I'm starting with an old-style KDE 3.5 desktop taken in Slax-Remix (Porteus) 0.9.
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Linux light - SliTaz GNU/Linux and SliTaz-Aircrack-ng

2011-10-30T16:00:00.000Z

Once upon a time there was DSL (Damn Small Linux) which provided a full workable system in a 50 MB image. I used to have it on a small partition for repair and rescue tasks on my desktops. It was never or at least very rarely needed as I recall, but I liked the pre-set radio stations in XMMS and the backgrounds and conky config in DSL, so I ended up running it more and more over Zenwalk 2.6, which at the time was using a very half-baked early XFCE 4.4, if only to listen to internet radio on a geeky minimalistic looking box.
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Overclock Your New and Cheaply Bought HP Touchpad

2011-10-29T02:15:00.000+01:00

If you were one of the lucky, or organized, people to get a HP webOS tablets for £89/£99 respectively for the 16 and 32 GB editions. here's your chance to get more put of it with the so-called Uberkernel to 1.5 GHz and even up to 1.9 GHz apparently. This should get rid of any lag on this device. Or perhaps just install one of the many Linux distributions?

New Generation of Smartphones Offers Better Voice Recognition to the Visually Impaired

2011-10-23T21:14:00.000+01:00

It seems that after the Samsung Galaxy S II surprised at least me with extremely good voice control for daily operation, Apple´s iPhone is next to make life easier for the Disabled, and everybody who would rather talk than type. Technology is getting there, and as a care manager I can only be happy for the people with visual and other physical impairments that make it difficult to operate devices the traditional way.
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Sabayon Fscked My Home - The XFCE Spin Revisited

2011-10-17T14:00:00.000+01:00

This should originally have been entitled 'The Sabayon Xfce Spin Revisited', but something disturbing happened. It's been a while since I tried Xfce 5.3 last August, but in the fast moving world of software and technology a year can be a long time. Back then I was a bit unhappy about the size of 628 MB that gave the user little more than Firefox and the package manager.
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Slackware 13.37 - Perfect for My Laptop

2011-10-10T14:00:00.000+01:00

Most people who have dabbled in Linux for a while "know" that Slackware is difficult to install, configure, make work and keep up to date. It is an OS only for geeks. Not so. These days the developments in the wider universe have trickled down to Slackware as well, and having something like KDE 4 as default desktop already means plenty of things taken care of, with all the utilities and options this desktop environment is providing.
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One Year of Rolling with Arch/Bang

2011-10-03T00:01:00.000+01:00

It's just a little over a year now that I first installed ArchBang with 2010.09 that had just been released. In comments to my following review a poster expressed the opinion it would be interesting to see how this would develop and if it would still be working in a year from then. So here we are. I've tweaked the install and kept it updated at my leisure, and it is still working fine. Over time the ArchBang base I started out with has turned into Arch Linux, as you would expect it to when pointing at Arch repositories.
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ArchBang 2011.10 Released

2011-10-02T13:26:00.000+01:00

Hooray, yet another ArchBang release barely a month after the last. I think Will likes to give us options as he keeps changing things around.
Chromium is out again and Firefox Nightly is now the browser of choice. The Openbox Applications menu now has icons. Not sure if that might slow loading time down a bit. You can now edit keyboard layout configuration while installing ArchBang, and the Getting Started help has been updated. Read the release announcement here.

Trisquel GNU/Linux - Free Software and Gorgeous

2011-09-28T17:27:00.001+01:00

Welcome to Trisquel GNU/Linux! I've been wanting to write this for a long time, because trying this distribution really feels inviting. Trisquel GNU/Linux is as you can see by the naming convention one of the few distributions fully endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, and in return they're doing a lot to promote the FSF and their principles on their website. If you're yawning already, hold steady and read on, because Trisquel looks sharp and has something to offer.
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KNOPPIX 6.7 and ADRIANE Audio Desktop Review

2011-09-17T14:29:00.000+01:00

Once upon a time the daddy of this distribution, Klaus Knopper, started a trend with his pioneering Knoppix live CD as rescue and repair tool. It was known for incorporating extensive hardware detection that required minimal to no configuration at boot to arrive at a fully working desktop.
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Unity Linux 2011 to use Arch-Linux-Like Approach

2011-09-07T15:15:00.000+01:00

In other news another favorite of mine, at least in the rpm universe, has released an Alpha build of what will be Unity Linux 2011. I reviewed Unity Linux last year on this blog and images were 276MB and 277 MB per architecture, and the subsequent update 2010.2 brought it to well over 300 MB. This time the size is only a 100 odd megabyte and the team is making some significant changes.
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