Comparison Test: CTKArchLive 0.6 vs. ArchBang 2011.01 "Symbiosis" (on FreeTechie)

Yay! I got another guest post! This time I compared ArchBang 2011.01 "Symbiosis" and CTKArchLive 0.6, two Arch-based Openbox distributions that try to make living with Arch a little easier (but don't quite cater to newbies like Chakra does). Here's a little snippet from that article:

After rebooting, I got to the boot menu, and selected the menu entry for CTKArchLive in English. (The only other option was French.) Unfortunately, I faced the same problem that I initially did in ArchBang, and here I had no “failsafe” option. Then, I figured that maybe if I included some of ArchBang’s “failsafe” boot options in CTKArchLive’s menu entry, it would work. I pressed CTRL+E at the boot menu on CTKArchLive’s menu entry, typed in “xorg=vesa” and “nomodeset” (both without quotation marks) at the end of the first run-on line, pressed CTRL+X, and went on my way. It worked, and I was able to get to the desktop.

Please support Free Techie and read the rest of the article here. Enjoy!

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 February 6

There were only a couple of posts that garnered a few comments this past week, so I'll post all of those.

Review: Debian 6 "Squeeze"

An anonymous reader signed as Eddie Wilson had this to say: "I agree with your assessment of Debian 6.0. However I do believe that the Debian team will offer Gnome 3 when it becomes stable. I'm not sure if they will offer Unity or not. That is a wait and see item. The classic Gnome will not be developed anymore after Gnome 3 takes hold so who knows. The Debian team did adopt KDE 4.x so I'm sure they will go forward with the latest Gnome when it's stable. Good review and thank you."

Another anonymous commenter said, " I use Debian exclusively for my servers at work. I prefer Debian over Red Hat and other alternatives. I had previously used Ubuntu with extensive problems (constant rebooting for no apparent reason) which were all solved when I switched to Debian. I really like Debian's rock solid stability compared to Ubuntu for use as a server. I don't install X-Windows or a GUI, so most of this article didn't apply to me. I have not yet booted up a sandbox with Squeeze on it but I am looking forward to upgrading. I don't understand why Debian wouldn't be considered relevant. I see its purpose as a stable alternative to Ubuntu, rather than switching to something else like Red Hat."

Revisited: KDE 4.6

Reader Dustin Casler said, "Thanks for the review. I've been wanting to try out 4.6 and also been wanting to try Arch but never find myself with the time. I would have never thought of this. I have a few questions though. Were there any complications getting proprietary drivers/codecs/flash going? Also Would you mind posting or emailing me the commands you used to set it up automatically start KDE?", later adding, "Your Welcome. I saw this article at pretty much the perfect time. I've got Archbang installed, updated, and KDE added. Now i'm just having issues getting into that initrc file to change it to KDE. When I rebooted it doesn't show KDE in the session options. Going hunting in the forums now. Everything seems find with my Nvidia card, but I haven't tried using any desktop effects or playing any videos yet."


Thanks to all those who commented this week. I don't have anything really planned for this week as of yet; I am still waiting on Free Techie to accept and publish an article comparing ArchBang 2011.01 "Symbiosis" to CTKArchLive 0.6, both Arch-based Openbox distributions. Hopefully that'll happen soon, at which point I'll post a teaser and a link to the full article here. At some point (but by no means necessarily this week), I'm thinking of maybe reviewing #! 10 "Statler" R20110207 Xfce and ArchBang 2011.02 [no code names anymore] along with (when those distributions' newest versions get released) a comparison test whose participants I won't name...yet. Remember, if you like what I write here, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Revisited: KDE 4.6

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I recently tried reviewing KDE 4.6, and it didn't turn out so well due to the combination of my installing KDE 4.6 in a live session and my using Linux Mint to try it out. (Also, I have said this before in previous articles, but again, my primary distribution is Linux Mint with GNOME, so that bias will show in this article somehow or another. Please do keep that in mind when reading this.) One frequent suggestion was to use Arch to test it next time. Although installing Arch may not be so bad, getting it configured to work right post-installation, while ultimately very rewarding, is time-consuming and pretty difficult, and I don't think I have either the time or skill to do that. Then I had an epiphany (no pun intended): use ArchBang. It comes as a live CD and, after installation, it has a nice Openbox setup with things like sound and network settings configured properly out-of-the-box. It also comes with a whole bunch of GTK+ applications, so it's ideal to see how well KDE plays with another DE/WM side-by-side.

I tried doing all this in VirtualBox on a Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME live USB, because MultiSystem, the multiboot live USB creation tool, seems to have messed up VirtualBox on my installed Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" GNOME system. I allocated 1024 MB of RAM to the guest OS, used a 10 GB virtual hard drive located on my physical hard drive for installing ArchBang, and went on my way. The installation procedure was fairly straightforward; it was a text-based ncurses-esque interface. After installing, I restarted the virtual machine and then ran the following commands in sequence in order to update the system: "su", "pacman -Syu", "exit", log out, log back in, "su", "pacman -Syu" for good measure, "pacman -S kde", and finally "exit". I also edited the ~/.xinitrc file to start KDE instead of Openbox by default. I then logged out and logged back in. Follow the jump to see what KDE 4.6 is really like.

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 September 19

There were a few posts that garnered comments this week, so I will list them all.

Whose LXDE Is It Anyway?

Anonymous reader 1, referring to my example of KDE as a tightly-integrated DE, counters, "Funny the components you mentioned as integral part of KDE (Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Strigi) can be run in any DE (like LXDE) as well."
Anonymous reader 2 counters this by saying, "To use Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Strigi you'd need to have some kde libraries : x11-libs/qt-qt3support. This probably means you have kde installed and lxde."
As anonymous reader 3 points out, "If someone really wants, it's possible to even run a KDE main component (like Konqueror) in a Gnome desktop (say Ubuntu), provided the necessary infrastructure (in this case, among others, kdebase) is provided. That, of course, defeats the idea of economy and the practical results desktop integration brings."
Finally, anonymous reader 4 explains, "Besides, I don't see that lack of identity as a problem, and something rarely mentioned: the main advantage of OB (and LXDE) is not really lightweightness,but customizability. No other DE is even a match in that respect (except maybe some tilling WMs, but those generaly require you to know some programing language)."

Microsoft's Hardware is Good Stuff

An anonymous reader corrects my description of Microsoft and its hardware: "That's cuz they don't make it, they contract for it."

Review: ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro"

An anonymous reader asks, "Why are the pics not thumbnails so I can view larger?" I'm still working on it.

Review: ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro"

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You may be asking, "Why are you reviewing this? You just did a review 2 days ago!" Actually, I wrote the preview on Sunday and scheduled it to automatically publish on Wednesday. On Thursday, the official stable version of ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro" was released. As I have touched upon most of the things relating to this distribution in the last article about ArchBang, this will be a slightly shorter review. Or will it? Follow the jump to find out.

200th Post: Preview: ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro"

Happy 200th post Das U-Blog! I hope you readers have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them! And, as always, if you have not already done so, please take a moment to click any one of the various subscription buttons to get updated on new Das U-Blog posts as they come out (either by email or in your favorite RSS/Atom reader)

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1. This is not a typographical error.
2. This is not "CrunchBang ('#!')".
3. THIS. IS. ARCHBANG! [insert dramatic music here]

Of course, the real story is slightly more nuanced (did I use that word right?) than that. ArchBang, while not a badly-spelled version of #!, is actually inspired by (but not derived) from #!; it aims to be to Arch Linux what #! is to Debian (and was to Ubuntu before version 10 "Statler"). That's right: ArchBang is an Openbox derivative of Arch Linux. I was actually looking for other reviews of Linux Mint "Debian" when I found this article whose comments section linked to an article on #! and ArchBang. Naturally, I was intrigued upon seeing Arch's response to #!, so I went ahead and downloaded the ISO image to try it. Please do note that to better reflect this distribution's advertised capabilities as a solution for old computers, I have decreased VirtualBox's RAM allocation for this distribution to 192 MB (keeping video memory at 12 MB). Technically, the minimum requirements are 128 MB of RAM, but I think 192 MB is a reasonable stand-in for an old computer these days. Follow the jump to see how it fares in these harsher conditions.