Dreamlinux 5.0: a leap to the dream

There are a lot of Linux distributions based on Debian. The most famous of them are Ubuntu, some flavours of Linux Mint and Aptosid. There are many more less known, for example, Kademar. Another Debian derivative which I have already written about is DreamLinux.

I cannot say that my previous attempt to run DreamLinux was successful. It was the version 3.5, and there were issues with font size which prevented me from running any tests at all.

Since then, DreamLinux team released another version of their distribution, version 5.0. As you can see, they skipped version 4. To be precise, they abandoned version 4 after several beta-releases, because of their own visage of the product. Anyway, the new version 5.0 is now based on Debian Testing branch and is fully compatible with it, the developers have announced.

DreamLinux 5.0 is only available to download as an ISO file with XFCE desktop environment. This is a small step backwards, because version 3.5 had a GNOME version, too. Maybe it's not that bad, because GNOME2 is no longer in active development, and GNOME3 is too far from perfection and total acceptance by all users yet.

The ISO file for DreamLinux 5.0 can be downloaded either from one of two mirrors, or via torrent. It is about 965 Mb in size, much larger than version 3.5.

I downloaded the ISO file from torrent and "burnt" it onto my 8Gb USB stick using the Unetbootin utility.

So, the preparations are over. USB stick in is the port of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

Was it my DreamLinux?

How many Linux distributions are there in the world? Hundreds? Thousands? If you look at the list at Distrowatch.com, you'll be impressed. And those are not all the distributions. Because some of them are very specialized and only used by certain group of people or organization.
But how many "core" systems are there? Not so many... Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Arch, RedHat... Did I forget anything?
Other distributions were either forked from those listed at some point, or are actually "spins" based on current version of "core" Linux system.
If we start talking about portable, true "pocket" Live linux distributions, then Slackware comes to first place. SLAX, Porteus, Nimblex, Kongoni - all of them are based on Slackware. Second place, of course, is with Debian: Knoppix, Puppy are very famous.

This time round I have tried another Linux operating system based on Debian. It is also intended for "pocket" usage, though it is not truly pocket-size. So, please meet: DreamLinux.
This Linux distribution is available in 2 options: CD with XFCE version and DVD with GNOME . As far as I understood from their web site, XFCE is preferred option. That's why my choice was for Dreamlinux XFCE.
Latest version of Dreamlinux XFCE was released in March 2009 and has version 3.5. From this you can see that Dreamlinux is not the most dynamically growing system. Since that time, Debian has changed its stable version. But anyway... let's have a look at what Dreamlinux has to offer.
ISO image of it weights just below 700 Mb, which means it can be burnt into CD. But I decided not to use CD-RW in this case, but to try USB options.
There are not much information on the official site how to create Live USB from ISO image. Yes, there are tutorials how to install Dreamlinux onto USB, but that requires this operating system to run already. That's why my approach was to hit and miss.
My first try was to Linux standard dd command. Unfortunately, it did not work. USB was not recognised as bootable at all.
Second run was for Unetbootin, famous graphical tool to create Live USB. And this time I was more lucky...