2010-09-02

Review: sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos"

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This is a really short review of sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos". In fact, there will be more background information than review content. Why is this so? First comes the background: sidux (yes, it is all lowercase) is a distribution built off of Debian's unstable "sid" branch of development (as is Ubuntu, but sidux stays closer to its Debian roots in terms of tools and customization of the system). It uses KDE by default, though Xfce (and maybe even other DEs) is (are) available. It is a rolling-release distribution, so the latest and greatest packages are available on sidux when they are released.
So why is this review so short? In VirtualBox, I got lucky once, and sidux actually booted to the KDE desktop; then, it froze, prompting me to force-quit the guest OS in VirtualBox. (For the record, I gave sidux 1024 MB of RAM and 12 MB of video memory, just like I do with other OSs I test in VirtualBox on my new computer.) Trying a couple of times more put me into a console, every time. I figured that maybe the AMD64 version was faulty, so I then tried the x86 version; I was experiencing the same problem here as well. (I also tried fiddling with some boot options, like the kernel and drivers used. Aside from the first time, this tweaking didn't help.) Quick web searches yielded no results regarding this issue. For now, I'll file sidux 2010-01 under "doesn't work now, maybe try again when I have more time".