Old Manny Tux Baby

Babies are usually sweet and cute. We all like them. We endeavour them. We hope they grow up to be better then we are.
But that does not happen all the time. Sometimes babies just stay undeveloped and forgotten... That is unfortunately true for human society. Here we have social care for such babies. But Linux world also has some examples like this...
Mandriva Linux was forked from Red Hat project many-many-many years ago. It existed under name Mandrake even before centuries turn. It was developed separately from it's mother and got some babies itself.

One of these babies is Berlios. How good is it? Let's see...

Only One Day to Go

Contest which my blog runs at this moment is due to end soon.
Please be aware that your entry e-mail has to be sent by 11.59pm on the 31.01.2011 to qualify.
If you have not done this yet, please hurry up! Contest will not run long!

Happy Birthday... To Me!

Am I modest person? Maybe... Maybe not.
If I have a blog, I can now officially announce some personal events here.
Today I am turning 34. It's my Birthday. Personal Birthday. Nothing to do with blog's history.
Anyway... Congratulations are welcome!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

One More Guest from East

Do you remember Pet Shop Boys song "Go West"? Sure you do! Today we will not follow their recommendations. We will go East. How far? Japan? Russia? Not, that is too far. I have already told you about one Russian distributive. Today we will see what Latvian developers bring to Linux world.

There is distributive called Austrumi. This is "East" in Latvian. So, let's go East.
Austrumi is very light distro, just around 120 Mb. It can easily fit to business card size CD. That is why Austrumi will not be listed among distributives you can get via my Buy Linux CDs page.
Anyway, business card CD is not my case, I use standard size CD-RW. Image of Austrumi 2.2.5 is downloaded, burnt to CD-RW, reboot, choose to boot from CD. Let's go East!

When Old Is Better Than New, or Comparing Two Ages of Brothers

My first acquittance with Linux happened to be with Slackware-based pocket distributive of SLAX. My first blog posts, then written in Russian and then translated, were written about SLAX.

SLAX was the only slackware-based distro I have tried until recent. And then my way crossed Nimblex.

When you get to Nimblex site, you can easily tell that Nimblex is a brother of SLAX. Same multi-language web page, same "customize your..." section, same menu points. Of course, design is different but that is just a different shirts for brothers.
Download section contains links to Nimblex 2008. CD image which weights just under 200Mb. It is burnt to CD-RW. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD-RW. Let's go!

Contest from Linux Notes from DarkDuck

Here we go!

Contest is open!

All the rules and conditions are described on the Contest page.

Good luck everyone!

Have We Got There Yet?

I have done several attempts to Debian Linux so far. They were both related to Debian itself, or Debian with Mint remix.
Results are not very much promising so far.

But LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is a rolling release. Changes are constant there. I was told that there can be a difference when I get newer version.
Let's see.
So, LMDE image is downloaded. It is version 2011.01.

There is kind of mess with versions of LMDE. That's due to error found in 2010.12 32-bit, found right after release. More details here.

ISO file size is more than 700Mb, so CD-RW is not an option this time again. DVD-RW is burnt and loaded into my Toshiba laptop drive. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD drive. Let's go!

Another reason to celebrate?

Hello everyone!

Today is 14th of January 2011. What does it tell you?
For those who ARE in Russia, this is "Old New Year". Confusing, isn't it? :-)

But for all the readers of my blog this is another reason to celebrate!

My first post was published 3 months ago! Yes, this little baby is 3 months old now! We celebrated when it was 1 month old, so why not celebrate 3 months?
Again, 14th if October 2010 is day when first English post was created. There were some Russian posts, which I translated into English later and removed from the blog. So, from now on let's say that 14th of October is official Birthday.

This is a tradition that hero of the day gets presents. Let's break it! Today I'll do you all a present. To be exact, the present will be handed to you later, but you can do first step to get it right now!

In few days time I will announce a contest. What will it be and what will be the prize - all will be announced later. No-no-no, this will not be a bikini contest!
Today I am only going to tell you that I will wait for your e-mails with answers to my questions. Prize(s) will be given to randomly chosen contestants. The condition though will be that e-mail which you send me your answer from should be listed in e-mail subscribers' list on the closing day of contest. So, do yourself a favour and subscribe to my blog. Doing this, you will:

• ensure you will not miss my contest announcement, and
• book yourself a place in the contest.

I wish you all a good luck!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

From Russia with Love

Linux was born in Finland. Linus Torvalds had an idea of portable operating system while studying in University. Once born, Linux spread all over the world. Including Russia.

One Russian organisation was developing their own operating system called MOPS Linux for several year. But nothing is forever, and MOPS Linux project was cancelled. Although team of developers remained. They continued work on system, and new members joined the team. As a result, Agilia Linux was born.
Should I try this Linux from my motherland? Why not.
So, image is downloaded. It is heavy enough - 2.5Gb. DVD-RW disk is recorded. Because of that, experiment will run on Toshiba laptop. Reboot. Chose to load from DVD. Let's go!

Unexpected Behavior of Old Tux

This post will not bother you for long. I'll be short this time.

Slitaz is one of the favorite distros of K.Mandla, which is famous for his adherence to old systems... At least from previous millennium!
Should I try it myself? Yes, for sure!
Slitaz is very easy to download. Even if you don't have broadband connection, it is not difficult to get it. It weights only 30Mb. Yes! This Tux lives in a very small box. And that's why I will not put it for sale in my "Buy Linux CDs" page.
So, CD-RW is recorded and inserted into my Compaq laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD. Let's go!

Can Bugs Take You to Cloud, or Several Spoons of Tar in Barrel of Honey

Have you ever heard Russian saying "Spoon of tar in the barrel of honey"? Even smallest defect can significantly reduce image of the object.
The system which I am going to tell you today has several defects. Are they smallest? Do they spoil the system, or you can cope with them? It's up to you...

But that system broke few records in my list: both good and bad ones. Good is that xPUD (yes, I am going to tell you about this Linux now) has fastest booting time I've ever seen for CD-based Live distros. Bad is that number of defects I have found during quick engagement with it is absolutely fantastic.
So, image of xPUD Linux (0.9.2) is downloaded, CD-RW is burnt. Time to reboot and choose CD as a boot source. Let's go!

Another view on old friend, or putting Toshiba into pocket

Puppy has been my friend since almost very beginning of my acquittance with Linux world. It is one of the Linuxes which live on HDD on my 5 years old Compaq laptop.
But it was not able to run on my newer Toshiba laptop which has turned 1 y.o. recently. The reason is in hardware. That Toshiba laptop has some kind of WiFi cards which are not recognised by any Linux distributives. To be exact, this card had not been recognised until Ubuntu 10.10 came into the scene, along with Linux Mint. Now I know that at least some Linuxes support new hardware.
But what is about Puppy? From first sight, Puppy itself still does not support that WiFi card, because version 5.1.1. which I have is still the latest. Nothing changed.
From another sight, though, Puppy is just a basis for other Linuxes, and all of them are built around Woof. Fluppy is one of the "other" Puppies. I was told it supports WiFi on my laptop. Let's check!