What If Prince William And Kate Middleton Were Linux Fans

Today is great day in the UK. Day of another Royal Wedding.
Not only because this is just another Bank Holiday in this country. But also because this day continues monarchy. Hopefully Prince William and Kate Middleton will have baby soon, who can inherit British throne.
I actually don't know if William and Kate are Linux fans or not. Maybe they even have not heard about this great operation system.

But let's imagine they are great Linux lovers.
How can this change Royal Wedding ceremony?

• bridal bouquet is arranged in the form of Ubuntu's logo
• groom wears Fedora during the ceremony
• bridesmaids wear Red Hats
• procession to and from the church follows Debian spiral
• church entrance is in form of Arch
• little green gecko is bride's pet, and it presents at ceremony
• Puppy is groom's pet, and it presents at ceremony too
• guests are served with Mint tea
• teapots are in the form of FreeBSD logo
• ceremony ends up late in the night with fireworks in the form of Mandriva stars
• whole ceremony costs just one Cent to UK taxpayers

Huh, the last bit is definitely just a dream.

Can you suggest any more ideas for ceremony? If you and your partner are going to be married soon, will you be using any of the ideas in your ceremony?

Linux Mint XFCE Roller Coaster

I have been trying to use Broadcom 4311 WiFi card on most Linux distro I have tried so far. This card is built into my Compaq C300 laptop. I think it became my idee fixe at some point. Especially when I was taking Debian-based systems for review.

Just few days ago I wrote about my happiness after achieving my long-term desire with Linux Mint XFCE. This distro is based on Debian Testing. I managed to activate and use Broadcom 4311 there in Live mode!
Did it make me stop?
I have another laptop at home - Toshiba L500. It has Realtek 8191SEvB WiFi card. I know that Linuxes based on Ubuntu 10.10 are working correctly with this WiFi card. I have written about this already (1, 2, 3). As long as I had USB stick with Linux Mint XFCE on it, I decided to give Debian another go.
USB stick is in the port. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB.
Let's go!

Blessed by Trinity...

I am long established fan of KDE3 (Trinity). There might be 2 reasons:
1) My first ever Linux was SLAX which is based on KDE3.
2) I prefer old-school menu style with one column in main part with branches for each of them. When I see several columns in main menu I quickly get lost in navigation. It's like Win95 style compared to Win7 style. Or KDE3 compared to Mint Menu or KDE4 in some Linuxes.
That's why every Tux which is blessed by Trinity is interesting for me. That's why I am very thankful to Sirius Lee who gave me some more ideas in the comments to Pardus review.
You can guess now that I'll talk today about KDE3 implementation. But  what will be the root? Never guess! The root of KDE3 will be... Ubuntu! Yes, today my guinea pig is Trinity Kubuntu. It is developed by KDE3 fans from Pearson Computing. These guys produced Trinity images for all Ubuntu versions since Intrepid. My choice is for latest version - Maverick. There are 2 options available: CD (682 Mb) and DVD (1.8 Gb). Decision was made for CD version, which was later "burnt" to USB stick using Ubuntu (Kubuntu) Startup Disk Creation tool. Persistence was requested during the "burning" process.
Looks like everything is ready. Key is in ignition. USB drive is in the port. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

There Are More Than 100 Subscribers Now On This blog!

Last week was pretty much full of news around this blog. Most of them were linked to our 6-months anniversary.
Is there anything important left for this week?
Yes! It happened today.
You know that many people read this blog often. Some of them subscribe to this blog, and they are most loyal visitors. Of course, you may follow me on Twitter or Facebook. But most common subscription method is e-mail or RSS feed. I use FeedBurner tool for this.

Today Feedburner showed me wonderful picture. There are more than 100 subscribers now! To be exact, 101.
Isn't it great success?
I think it says that my posts are interesting and useful to my readers.
Of course, this is tiny amount compared to subscription list of other bloggers. Martik has about 300 subscribers, go2linux - more that 1600.
Do you want to join ? There is a link to RSS feed on the right. Just below you can subscribe via e-mail.
And, of course, Twitter and Facebook options are still available.
All these subscriptions will cost you nothing. They are FREE!

If you want to check current number of subscribers (and position on other ratings), please scroll to the bottom of the page.

9 Steps To Happiness in Linux Mint XFCE

Linux Mint team works hard on making Linux as much user-friendly as possible. They even managed to improve usability of Ubuntu which holds position because its high degree of userfriendliness.

Linux Mint is not just one system. I would say that Mint is more like approach to interface building which can be applied to a range of systems/desktop environments/windows managers. Sure enough, most known Linux Mint version is based on Ubuntu with GNOME. That was just a beginning. I have already written my thoughts about this Linux Mint version.

But every beginning has its own story. Mint team also released KDE, LXDE and XFCE remixes. All of them were based on Ubuntu. Were... Until recent.

Another twist in the story started with LMDE which stands for Linux Mint Debian Edition. I have also reviewed that release in my past. LMDE, as opposite to all previous Mints, was based on Debian. Mint team applied Mint ideology, menu and everything else to pure Debian. Of course, GNOME was the core of LMDE. That could not continue for long, and Mint team decided to go further. Result was... Linux Mint XFCE. What does it mean to us? Mint's elegance and user friendly interface multiplied by XFCE performance? Or Mint's overload of tricks multiplied by XFCE complexity? That's what I wanted to check when I first heard of Linux Mint XFCE.

Current version has number 201104. Is version number relevant? I do not know because Linux Mint XFCE is based on Debian Testing, which is rolling release. It uses Debian's repositories.
Before testing Linux Mint XFCE, it has to be downloaded. You may be surprised, but wonders starts right at the downloading phase! Linux Mint XFCE weights 958Mb. This is more that SalineOS (926Mb) and far more than XFCE-based Xubuntu (696Mb).
Unetbootin lovely helped me to "burn" the Linux Mint XFCE image to 1Gb USB stick. I activated persistence in Unetbootin "just in case", even though I had barely 30M of free space on the stick, and Unetbootin only promises persistence for Ubuntu-based distros.
Finally, I am ready to set off to another adventure with Debian-based distro. Has it become my idee fixe recent time - to make Debian based Linux to work on my Compaq laptop? I don't know...
Reboot. Choose to boot from USB.
Let's go!

Voting Results

I announced a poll on this blog about a month ago.
The question in the poll was What is the most interesting part of this blog?
It is time now to announce results.

Here they are:

As you can see, most of the readers prefer to see what is this blog about: reviews of different Linux distributions. Another part wants to see HowTos related to different aspects of working with Linux. And the rest voted for Video HowTos.

I want to say Thank You to all those who took part in the poll.

I'll try to mix the topics on my blog and show you reviews, howtos and videos in the mixture proportional to the poll results.

Another poll will be announced soon.

Stay subscribed!

How Much of Linux Can You Get for 0.01 GBP?

You know that modern Internet life is all around search. Search facility is "a must" on all respectable resources. Even my blog has search facility - just look at the right column.
Sometimes search can give you some weird results, as was with me recently.

I was looking at Amazon site for some books about Fedora, just wondering if there are any decent readings about this Operation System. For some reason, Amazon's search engine threw a link to the list, which had nothing to do with Fedora. That was an offer of OpenSuSE 11.3 DVD. Not only the link itself surprised me, but also the price. The offer was made for 0.01 British Pound including postage costs. You can understand that one penny does not cover even cost of DVD creation, not talking about postage, Amazon and credit card processing charges.
These guys not only offer OpenSuSE for ridiculous price. You can also get Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenOffice - all for 0.01 GBP.
Just out of curiosity, I ordered that DVD with OpenSuSE.
What was the result?

This Blog is in Top100 of Technorati Info Tech Blogs

Hello everyone!

Looks like there is no time for me to write anything about Linux last few days! I promise you'll get fresh content very soon. There are so much news about the blog itself!

• We have celebrated first half-year of this blog.
• I have announced a winner in second contest.
• And another thing happened today.

This blog (Linux Notes from DarkDuck) is now listed in Top 100 of Technorati Info Tech Blogs!

As of now (5pm in London), it is on #56 in the list.
Technorati is very popular authority in blogosphere.

The leading blog search engine and directory, Technorati.com indexes more than a million blogs. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere.

Being in the top list of this resource is very big award for the team of the blog.
Of course, this success would be impossible without you, people all over the world who read, comment and subscribe to us. That's why I want to tell

THANK YOU!

Contest Results!

Today is 15th of April 2011. This blog is 6 months and 1 day today.
As I promised, today I am announcing results of second contest on this blog.
Here are the results:

This time contest will only have 1 winner. No runner-up prizes. Main prize, 4Gb USB stick goes to subscriber with e-mail ma...@...l.com!
I will contact winner very soon to obtain further information.

Thank you for your interest! Stay tuned!

We are 6 months old!

Hooooorrray!

This blog is 6 months old today!
When I started it in October 2010, I did not think that it will last so long. Looks like I get in rela love with both Linux and blogging about it. I hope you enjoy reading what I am writing to you here!
What was done in these six months?

• More than 60 posts
• More than 25 different Linux distributives
• 2 guest posting on another blogs
• 1 guest posting in this blog
• And we are now a team of 2 authors!

Having published this post, I let know to all of those who wants to take part in our contest: there are good news and there are bad news.

• Good news are that you now exactly know answer to the first question of contest. First existing post was published six months ago, on the 14.10.2010
• Bad news are that you only have few hours to find answers to other questions and send me an e-mail, as required by competition rules.

Good luck to all of you!

Is CentOS 5.6 Better Than 5.5?

CentOS is free operating system which is based on source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). RHEL itself is non-free open source project which has 2 free "relatives".

• Fedora acts as sandbox and test polygon for RHEL developers. Technologies from Fedora eventually got their way to RHEL.
• From another side CentOS is based on the existing RHEL and uses its source code with minimal changes. In spite (or because of) being free, CentOS is widely used on server market.

Because of its nature, it is very clear that CentOS is mostly oriented to server market. But CentOS can also be used on desktop  computers and laptops.
I have already reviewed CentOS 5.5. That time I fell under impression that CentOS came from 20th century, at least in terms of user interface design.
New version 5.6 was released recently. Should I check what is new? Sure!
So, image is downloaded from torrent. It weights just enough to get to one CD, so CD-RW was burnt. I am usually reluctant to burn CDs in KDE's default K3B, but this time I tried this option and was nicely surprised that CD-RW was burnt without any issues at all.
Disk is in the drive. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD. Let's go!

Moonstruck with...

MoonOS

From DarkDuck:  This is the first post of new author of this blog: Diogones. He is student at University of Colorado and also fan of Linux. I hope you'll like his posts. So, ladies and gentlemen, please applause! DIOGONES!

 One of the most admirable elements about Linux is, once the community has become comfortable with a distro, another one appears to disrupt the status quo. Mint arose out of a desire to create an improved version of Ubuntu; Salix was developed to make Slackware more user-friendly. While these distributions are often argued to be mere spin-offs, and not true distros, they deserve mention for their unique adaptation to an already established distro.

 MoonOS is one of these noteworthy distros. It may be an obscure distribution, and it might not be genuinely original, but Moon is too interesting to be ignored. Based upon Ubuntu/Debian, MoonOS takes the comfortability, ease of use, and user-friendly aspect of Linux's number one distro, and gives it a more distinctive feel, reminiscent of the Mac's OS X.

Contest Is Still Running

Hello to all my readers!

Do you want to win 4Gb USB stick?

I'd like to remind you that contest is still running on this blog.

You have few days left, because list of participants will close this week (oooops, I have just gave you another clue to get correct answer to contest question...)

I'd like to remind to all those readers who joined mailing list, Twitter account or Facebook page that you only participate in contest when you send me e-mail with answers. Please see contest rules for details!

Do I Have Bad Karma for Debian?

Do I have bad karma to run Debian? I have 6 posts about Debian so far, and only one of them relates to full success, where I was able to run a full-power Debian on my laptop. Maybe I myself and Debian are just creatures of different worlds and we cannot live together?
Let me try one more time.
This time my attention will be taken by Aptosid. This is Debian-based distributive, slightly adjusted by team of developers. It is based on Debain Sid, which is classified as unstable sandbox. How unstable it is actually? Let's see.
Aptosid offers several options of its distributive: KDE-full, KDE-lite and XFCE. My choice this time was for KDE-lite version, which fits to USB stick. Latest release of Aptosid is dated February 2011 and has code 2011.01.
So... iso is downloaded and "burnt" to USB stick using the Unetbootin tool.
Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

3-in-1: How 3 Old Friends Can Be Found In Same Place

Can you ever expect that three of your oldest friends which belong to different companies can be found in the same place? Difficult to imagine, isn't is? It's like accidentally finding your best school friend and your best colleague in your favorite pub just across the road from your home. Dream!
Same happened to me recently.
My first blog post back in October 2010 was about SLAX system. SLAX is like first love: you remember it forever.

Hey, can anybody still claim he does not know answers for Contest questions?

Post about SLAX was soon followed by post about Puppy. I felt in love with Puppy from the first sight. It's a pity I had to remove it from my HDD to replace with Debian Squeeze.
SLAX is based on Slackware.
Puppy (at least v.5.1.1) is based on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.
They are definitely from different companies.
What do they have in common? They both can wear same clothes: KDE 3, Trinity.
Trinity is default Desktop Environment in SLAX. As for Puppy, Trinity was used in Puppy's additional package which I wrote about here. Actually Trinity is my third old friend. I wrote recently that I prefer KDE to GNOME, and that love started from KDE3 in SLAX.

And now imaging how I was surprised when I told there is Linux Operating System which combines all three! This is Puppy SLAX remix.
It was announced on the forum post. Disk image weights less than 300 Mb, but you still need to spend about an hour to download it even on high speed Internet connection because sending server limits downloading speed to about 100Kb/sec.
Anyway, image is downloaded and burnt to CD-RW. It's time to reboot. Let's go!

4 Lessons Which Bodhi Linux Taught Me

Ubuntu is not the oldest distributive on the Linux landscape. Moreover, it is not standalone one, and it is based on Debian. But Ubuntu and its derivatives became the most used Linux in the world, bringing Linux to the level when non-geek users can get benefits of this OS.
I have mentioned already that Ubuntu has huge number of derivatives. The Wikipedia page contains impressive list of them, but even that list is not full.

New star appeared on the Ubuntu sky recently, and this star is called Bodhi Linux. Version 1.0.0 was released at the end of March, just a week ago. Everything new is interesting. Hopefully, not only for myself, but also for my readers. That's why I have to try this new operating system.
Bodhi Linux image weights less than 400Mb, which puts it into the same line as Puppy and SLAX.
While testing Bodhi Linux, I learnt 4 lessons which I'd like to tell you about.