2011-06-26

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 June 19

There were two posts this past week that got a handful of comments, so I'll try to repost a few from each.

2011 June 20: Linux and My Computers' Hardware

An anonymous reader said, "DELL Latitude E6400 with Linux Mint 11 (64bit). Everything works flawlessly on the E6400. Touchpad, audio, sleep, hibernate, wireless, wired, microphone, audio volume buttons. Just like it was made for this laptop. The only thing I really do not like on the E6400 is the LAME Intel graphics hardware. I would pick ATI/AMD or NVidia graphics hardware over Intel graphics hardware any day--twice on Sunday. I also recently had Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS 64 bit desktop on the E6400 and had no problems at all. I moved to Mint 11 because I really like the work they did to bring in the visual elements and general usability. The Mint Gnome menu arrangements and color schemes are much easier on my eyes and brain and I like that it is ready-to-go upon install without modifications/additions. I highly recommend Mint 11!"

Review: Porteus 1.0

An anonymous reader (seeming to either be the lead developer or someone close to the development of Porteus) said, "Thanks for the review! I'd like to add that the installer uses SYSLINUX tools and a preset configuration file, which allows users to boot into KDE or LXDE without logging in via the CLI (though text mode is available as well from the boot menu). The boot parameters also allow users to boot with persistent changes and/or a copy2ram function. Skype didn't work on 64-bit because you were using a 32-bit binary on a 64-bit system, and Porteus is not a multilib environment. We do have a package manager included (it's further down in the system menu, 'Porteus Package Manager' or 'PPM'. This is still in beta and we're still working on populating it with modules. If you'd like Skype for 64-bit and it's not in the repo, let us know in the 'module requests' section of our forum, and someone can whip one up for you :). Thanks again, and I'm glad you liked it!!"
Commenter Barnaby had this to say: "Further to the 32 bit Skype on a 64 bit system which obviously did not work, I think the idea is for people to create their own modules from other formats with the easy to use Modules tool. Automated conversion into modules is one of the greatest strengths of Slax and now Porteus."
Another anonymous reader had this gripe: "I tried Porteus. I liked most of it, but I hated the primitive way of 'persistence' or saving config setups. You have to hack config files to specify some 'save.dat' file. In 2011, why not just make persistence auto like Ubuntu, et al, do??? Also, I wanted to auto boot with lxde and copy2ram but again, this is very complicated. I do not want to type boot cheatcodes every time I use the distro. Maybe there is a hack to do this. BTW, Puppy has a friendly way of using a 'pesistence' save file ...no editing of config/boot files."
Yet another anonymous commenter said, "I agree with the negative comment about the the office suite selection. However, it was choosen because of its compactness. Would abiword and gnumeric be some better options?
For those who would like to have the openoffice suite on porteus instead of the koffice suite (the latter being Porteus standard because it is lighter, so to respect the small size of the distribution), openoffice is installed rather fast in cli mode, see post 6 of KSA_ARAB: https://porteus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=58 Installing packages could be a very fast process once you catch it. Different possibilities are available, amongst other Porteus package manager. It is also a very good idea to install porteus hdd, also called the (Slackware) frugal install (some kind of poor man's intall), instead of running it usb or cd. A few hdd procedures are available on the Porteus forum."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. Unlike this past week, where I did have two reviews planned, I don't have anything planned for this coming week, but again, I'm sure I'll be able to think of something to write about. Remember, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing to, commenting on, and sharing these posts!