Austrumi 3.2.2: a nice stranger

Austrumi is not a very famous distribution in the Linux world, although I have written about it twice already.

Let me introduce it again for those who did not read my previous reviews.

Austrumi is a Linux distribution that is based on Slackware and developed by a small team from the Latgale region of Latvia, a small ex-USSR Baltic state.

The official site of this distribution is far from the best I have ever seen. It pretends to have several sections and work in different languages, but many of them simply do not work. Even the forum link from that site is not functioning.

The "news" section of the site tells you that the latest version of that distribution is 2.4.0. The download link on the site points to an ISO image with index 2.2.9, but it still does not work. But if you remove the filename from the download link in the address bar of your browser (ftp://austrumi.ru.lv/), you will be able to see a list of ISO images. The latest version is 3.2.2 and it was released in August 2015, so we are talking about a very fresh release now.

Image size of Austrumi 3.2.2 is just 278 MB, which definitely puts the distribution in the "pocket" category.

When I reviewed the previous versions of Austrumi, I had to record a CD-RW or DVD-RW, because neither the dd command nor Unetbootin worked with this ISO image. This time I was a bit luckier. Although dd command still does not work, Unetbootin created a workable USB stick for me.

So, USB drive is in the port of my Toshiba Satellite L500-19X laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

SLAX 7.0: The Comeback

It was the operating system I was waiting for a long time, simply because I felt nostalgic about it.

SLAX

SLAX 6 was (practically) the first Linux operating system I tried. It was the subject of the first review I wrote. Unfortunately, Tomas M, the author of SLAX, abandoned the project after version 6 was released. That is why branches of SLAX, like Porteus, sprang up.

After all this time, Tomas M. has returned to the business. The new version of his famous operating system, SLAX 7.0, was released in the middle of December 2012. I downloaded that release soon after, but, unfortunately, it took a significant amount of time before I had a chance to try the OS and to write the review. While I was doing it, SLAX went through several releases, and SLAX 7.0.4 was released not so long ago. It fixed some issues I noticed, but more about that later.

The image size of SLAX 7.0 is notably small. Depending on the language, it weighs between 210 and 220 Mb. Yes, you read it right. The full operating system weighs less than quarter of gigabyte! You can download each language version as an ISO for CD, or as a ZIP file for USB stick. The USB version also includes some other files needed to "burn" the image to the live USB itself.

I downloaded the ZIP file, unpacked it in my Xubuntu installation and clicked on the .sh file.

Puppy Slacko: different, but the same

Most of my readers probably know, that apart from this blog, I also run Buy Linux CDs site. You can order CDs with Linux distributions there, and they will be sent to anywhere in the world.

There are not a lot of orders, I must admit. But sometimes I do get orders. A recent one was very interesting for me, because it allowed me to come back to my old friend, and see how it has changed in the last few months.

So, an order came from the Buy Linux CDs site. This order was for the Puppy Linux disk. Because I have not tried Puppy for quite a long time now, I decided to use the CD for my own review as well.

The latest current version of Puppy Linux is  5.3.1, and it was released on the 25th of October 2011. This is the Puppy Slacko version, which tells you that the roots of this Puppy are in Slackware. I believe this is different from Puppy I have used before, because it was previously based on Lucid Lynx version of Ubuntu, hence it was named Lucid Puppy.

The ISO image size for Puppy remained very small. The core system is only has 136 Mb in size. It is easy to download from one of the many mirrors.

When the CD was ready, it was time for me to start the review. Reboot my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Choose to boot from CD. Let's go!

SliTaz 4.0: light and stable

When I first started this blog, I tended to write mostly about pocket-size distributions. SLAX and Puppy Linux were my first ones. And I still love them.

Even though I've branched into more heavyweight distributions since that time, pocket-size small Linux distributions are still my favourites. I like trying them out, and then writing about them for you, my readers.

SliTaz is one of those small-size distributions. I reviewed SliTaz 3.0 earlier. It unexpectedly declined to work on my relatively old laptop Compaq C300 at that time, but worked on a newer Toshiba L500-19X. It was more than a year ago. Much has changed since then. First, I no longer use my Compaq laptop, and Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 became my main guinea pig. Second, and this is more important, a new version of SliTaz was released.

So, SliTaz 4.0 was released in stable version on the 10th of April 2012.

The ISO image grew in size a little bit since last time, but remained absolutely tiny - only 35 Mb. It means that you can download and burn it to your disk in no time. In my case, I burnt the ISO image onto a DVD-RW disk. The Buy Linux CDs site does not offer SliTaz in the list, but you can request one using the contact form, if you want.

So, the disk is ready and inserted into the optical drive of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let’s go!

Devil Live twins of OpenBSD: the project is kicking

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about twin brothers in the world of Open Source. They are not Linux-related, but rather BSD-based operating systems: LiveCD OpenBSD and LiveUSB OpenBSD.

If you re-read those posts, you may notice that I was not happy with those operating systems at all. They were not working more often than they were working.

Since that time, I talked to the author of the project, Girish, several times. He let me know recently that the project has an updated release, published on the 10th of April 2012. I must admit that it was not the only release since my first review of LiveCD/LiveUSB OpenBSD. But the one(s) you probably missed were not worth reviewing, from my point of view.

Now, let's check what has changed recently.

As it was before, there are 3 versions of the operating system available for downloading: Full, MiniX and Minimal. I chose the Full version. It is about 1.7 Gb in archive file form. The file is hosted on Sourceforge network, so you are likely to get good downloading speed. Once the file is downloaded, you need to use an archiver to get the ISO image out of the archive. Not a big deal, to be sure.

Even though the project officially bears the title "LiveCD OpenBSD", this is not the LiveCD in normal terms, in the form we are used to seeing it. Yes, you still need a CD (or a DVD for the full version). Once the disk is burnt, you need to boot from it and then... you still need to create a LiveUSB with the actual system! Yes, you can't use the LiveCD for work. It is only a step to create a LiveUSB. I think that this is not useful for popularisation of the distribution, and this is one of the areas which the developer might well look into.
Update: the developer updated me that he's looking into improvement in this area.

The process of installation itself is simple and is fully described on the screen which is presented by the installer CD.

So, using this unusual way, the LiveUSB was created for me. Reboot. Let's go!

Austrumi 2.4.5: Small and Mighty

Recently I wrote that visitors of Linux notes from DarkDuck come from all over the world. There are almost no white spots on the map if you look at the list of the visitors’ countries.
Some of my readers live in Latvia. Not a majority, of course. In fact, Latvia is number 64 in the list of the annual statistics, somewhere next to Kenya.

That does not mean I should never look in the direction of that country. There is at least one reason for doing so: Latvia is the native country of the Linux distribution Austrumi. It is a small pocket-size Linux distribution which I have written about once before.
The Austrumi team released a new version of their operating system recently, on the 30th of September, 2011.
Unfortunately, links on the original site still lead to the old version. To get the fresh ISO image, I used links from Softpedia, which lead to different files on the same server. The latest version is 2.4.5.
ISO image size of Austrumi 2.4.5 is about 210 Mb, which is about twice the size of the version I looked at a year ago. It was previously only 120 Mb in size. Even so, 210 Mb definitely puts Austrumi into the category of "pocket" distributions, those which you can take with you anywhere on a USB or CD.
Unfortunately, Unetbootin was not able to "burn" image to USB. That is why I had to burn it to DVD-RW.
So, the disk is in the optical drive. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Lets go!

LiveUSB and LiveCD: devil OpenBSD twins

There are not many times when I get my sight out of Linux and look into other free Operating System. Most often these are BSD-based operating systems.
Today is such a case. Even more, today I will tell you about two twin brothers from BSD family.

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...

BSDanywhere: time machine

I have already written about BSD-based systems several times. I reviewed FreeSBIE and PCBSD.
They were system based on XFCE and KDE. These are more or less modern looking operating systems. Could I imaging myself back into 1990s when I was downloading another BSD-based system?
This time I will tell you about BSDanywhere. This is Live CD based on OpenBSD. Authors write on their site that this OS is not intended to be installed at all, and that it only works from CD. That is fine, because I was interested in Live systems from the very beginning.

Latest version of BSDanywhere has number 4.6 and was released in November 2009. Unfortunately, it is the last version because its single developer stopped any further activities with BSDanywhere and switched to OpenBSD itself.
So, iso image of BSDanywhere is downloaded and burnt onto CD-RW. Disk is in the optical drive of my Compaq C300 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD-RW. Let's go!

Porteus 1.0: On the Trail of SLAX

There are not many truly "pocket-oriented" systems in the Linux world. I mean those which are intended to be "installed" on flash drive or CD and run from there. Those which are not intended for full installation.
The most famous of them are SLAX and Puppy.
Unfortunately, SLAX project is no longer active as such. Initiative for further development of Live pocket-size system based on Slackware now came to another team. They call their baby Porteus. Yes, that is name (Proteus) from Greek mythology. But it also reminded me name from Alexandre Dumas' books when I made review for first pre-release version 0.9.
Porteus team announced that version 1.0 of their system is now ready. Of course, this system review should make its way to my blog.
ISO image of Porteus 1.0 is quite small, well below 300Mb. Of course, it can be burned to CD and ran from there. And also you can put Porteus onto USB drive and run from there. I wanted to use second option. Documentation says that I need to copy files from iso-image when it is mounted as loop device or via archive manager. Then script has to change Master Boot Record on the drive.
Unfortunately, Linux-oriented script is not marked as executable, and I could not make it executable. Same issue as in previous (pre-release) version of Porteus. I also tried to run this script as sudo bash lin_start_here.sh, but only got error message

./syslinux/bootsyslinux.sh: Permission denied.

Porteus boot menu offers you multiple options. Main of them lead to Porteus with 2 different Desktop Environments, namely KDE and LXDE. KDE is default one and it boots if you don't use your keyboard for 10 seconds. Let's start with this one.

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!

Did Alexandre Dumas Use Linux?

Porteus system is relatively new system on the Linux sky.
It came to light when developer of SLAX, Tomas M. gave up the project. Even before that, there was a fork called "SLAX remix". Now it is named Porteus.
The name sends us to two facts.

• Portability. Porteus, as well as SLAX, is intended to be portable system. The one you carry with yourself in your pocket and can use wherever you get access to computer.
• Alexandre Dumas. If you read The Three Musketeers, or even if you have nor done this yet, you must know name of the character Porthos. He is very powerful and friendly, even though not always quick.

Does the name of this Linux follow the Dumas idea? How good was Dumas in his predictions? Let's see...
Distributive of Porteus Linux is very light. It weights under 300 MB. You can either burn it to CD, or extract files from .iso image and copy them to your USB drive. Like in SLAX, there are 2 files in the distributive which can make your USB bootable: one for Windows users and one for Linux. I found a small issue there, because Linux-oriented file (.sh) is not marked as executable, and I could not make it executable. Neither chmod nor Midnight Commander options helped. Anyway, I have Windows XP for some reasons, so .bat file was used. Finally I got bootable USB drive with Porteus system in it.
Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

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...

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!

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!

Old Good(?) Style

I recently wrote about Linux distributive which was derived from Red Hat once Red Hat became commercial. But Fedora is not the only derivative in there!

As long as Red Hat is still open source software, anyone can use their source code for own purposes. That's the way how CentOS was born.
Selection of available versions for CentOS is not massive. If you want to have Live system, you have a choice of only one variety. Practically, this is GNOME-embedded system. No choice between KDE, LXDE or any other windows manager. At least, for CentOS 5.5, which I used.
Anyway. Following procedure is standard.
Download CD image. Burn it onto CD-RW disk. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD.
Let's go!

In the footsteps of Little Red Riding Hood

Everyone is familiar with this wonderful fairytale of Red Riding Hood. This is a story of little girl who wore small riding hood. But all the girls grow up.. Riding hood grows up as well and may well become Red Hat.

---

This time I've tried a distributive which is very close to the fairy tale Character. No, that is not Red Hat Linux. My first and only (yet) acquittance with Red Hat Linux was 10 years or so ago... Since then Red Hat became fully commercial product for enterprises and no longer supports individuals. But there's an alternative for it. It is also a headgear. This is Fedora. Fedora is actively supported by Red Hat, and acts as playground for new technologies before they are included into main Red Hat package.
My guinea pig was Fedora 13 with GNOME.
Usual process with small adjustment this time. Download iso-image from the Internet. Use Pendrivelinux tool to put it onto the USB drive. Reboot! Choose to boot from USB! Let's go...

Last Tango with Manny Tux, or Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

One of my previous posts was about Mandriva Linux Spring 2010.1.

That time I booted this system from pretty old 1Gb USB flash drive.
The results were not as nice as they could be.
Manny Tux showed herself in slow mood.
After some thoughts I decided to give Manny another try. This time I took brad new 2Gb flash drive for experiment.
So, “burn” iso drive to USB stick with Mandriva Seed. Reboot. Select USB boot option. Let's go for second round!

Meeting the Puppy, or Tux in canine skin

It is time now to talk a little about the cute little puppy.

Of course, I am not going to talk about animals here. We are talking about Puppy Linux.
I heard about it for the first time long before the first acquaintance. Many sites and articles about "pocket" Linux-systems, referred me to this animal.
My first meeting was with version 5.1.1, which had been released just days before this acquaintance.
Download the image of the CD-ROM. It is only about 130M. Burn it. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD. Let's go!