Review: Chakra 2015.11 "Fermi"

Main Screen + Kickoff Menu

Not only has it been a while since I've done a Linux distribution review on this blog, but it has been an especially long time (over 2.5 years, in fact) since I've looked at Chakra. I figured that now that KDE 5 (technically incorrect terminology, I know, but please bear with me, as I'm using this for the sake of brevity) is being used in Chakra, it may be time to see how a distribution I've rather liked in the past has evolved. In case you don't remember, Chakra was originally based on Arch Linux, but a few years ago, it branched off into its own independent distribution with its own repositories, though certain tools (like the package manager Pacman) are based on things found in Arch Linux. It focuses exclusively on KDE, and it uses a semi-rolling release model in which core system packages are updated less frequently in order to maintain stability, while front-end applications seen by users most often are updated more frequently to provide a competitive desktop experience.

I tried this on a live USB using the "dd" command; as in my review from over 2.5 years ago, neither UnetBootin nor MultiSystem work anymore for reliably creating Chakra live USB media. This wasn't a terribly difficult thing to do, but in any case, the Chakra wiki contains a little more information for people who might need a little more help with these steps (especially if they are new users from Microsoft Windows who are trying a Linux distribution for the first time). Additionally, note that Chakra can only be used on 64-bit computers. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: KaOS 2014.04

It's been a while since my last review. Now I'm a bit more free because the semester ended over a week ago. At the moment I'd really like to get my hands on the official release of Linux Mint, but that isn't out yet. In the mean time, though, I'm going to check out KaOS.

Main Screen + KDE Homerun Kicker Menu

This distribution caught my eye from a DistroWatch review. That review concludes that it isn't clear exactly what the goal of this distribution is. Looking at the website more, I can't say that it's any clearer to me either. All I can glean is that this distribution aims to please more experienced users with a rolling-release model, maintain a small base of packages so that those will be polished before use, and target newer computers by using KDE and only 64-bit releases. I'll have to try this distribution out to see if there is any more information regarding the target audience of this distribution. I tried KaOS on a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Porteus 1.0

64-bit: Main Screen

Considering that I reviewed Zenwalk 7.0 not too long ago, I must be going on a Slackware-derived binge or something. Yes, both Zenwalk and Porteus are based on Slackware. Maybe my subconscious is trying to make up for the terrible review (not my assessment of Slackware, but my skill level and writing in that post) of Slackware 13.1. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, Porteus 1.0 came out yesterday, so I decided to review it.

So what is Porteus? As I just said, it's based on Slackware, but it's more than that. As Slackware has never had an official project for creating Slackware live media, Slax came in to fill in that void. Quite a while ago, Slax ceased regular development, so after a while, Porteus came in to succeed it. Now, typically, these stories of evolution and succession aren't of much consequence (e.g. AriOS coming from mFatOS, Kororaa moving from Gentoo to Fedora, et cetera), but as you will see, it is quite important here that Porteus is the revived and modernized Slax project.

32-bit: Main Screen

Porteus comes in 32- and 64-bit flavors. Curiously, while LXDE is available for both architectures, KDE 3.5 Trinity is found exclusively in the 32-bit version, while KDE 4 is found exclusively in the 64-bit version. As my laptop has 64-bit hardware, I tested both using a live USB made with MultiSystem. I didn't test the installation because apparently the installation isn't one in the traditional sense; it's essentially booting the live medium off of a hard drive, which seems hard to achieve with not-particularly-interesting results. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: Chakra 2011.02 "Cyrus"

Main Screen

Chakra GNU/Linux has become one of the distributions I now test regularly. Its appeal to me lies in the fact that it is based on Arch Linux (and is therefore comparatively quick and configurable), yet it comes with KDE already configured along with a more user-friendly system installer and package manager. I've already tested versions Alpha 5 "Panora", 0.2.0 "Jaz", and 0.3.0 "Ashoc". I figured I would test version 0.4.0 "Cyrus" whenever it got released, so I chose to wait until the news showed up on DistroWatch to test it. Unfortunately, that never happened; the latest news regarding this release was about 0.4.0 "Cyrus" Beta 2. Then, two days ago, I saw a news entry on DistroWatch about Chakra, specifically regarding version 2011.04 "Aida" Milestone 3. I wondered if the 0.4.0 "Cyrus" release had been scrapped entirely, so I headed to the Chakra website to check it out. It turns out that version 2011.02 "Cyrus" (renumbered from 0.4.0 for reasons I will also talk about shortly) was released in February itself and is now the current stable release; it was just never announced on DistroWatch. Darn it! Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?

As I just mentioned, the numbering changed from 0.4.0 to 2011.02. It looks like the Chakra developers moved away from the goal of a stable 1.0 release and chose to emphasize the rolling-release cutting-edge nature of Chakra by switching to a year-month numbering system. That said, the old numbering system clearly showed that Chakra is still alpha-release software; I don't know if I'm supposed to think the same thing with the current numbering system — more on that later.

I tested Chakra in VirtualBox with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS and an available 10 GB virtual hard drive for installation. In response to a couple comments as well as articles on other blogs that I have seen, this is for a few reasons: I can't make a Chakra live USB without wiping it clean (dd) and I don't have too many blank CDs/DVDs lying around for these purposes, I can better control how Chakra responds in lower-resource environments (though admittedly 1 GB is still plenty), and I don't need to worry about messing up my installed systems on my computer. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Will KPresenter and Gnumeric Please Come Forward?

This is probably one of the few times that I'm wishing that I had Microsoft Office on my computer. (As it happens, as I go to the library for at least an hour every weekday anyway, I just used Microsoft Office there.) Why?
Well, for my latest chemistry problem set, I need to plot a range of data and add a trend line. Although OpenOffice.org Calc can do this, there aren't as many options. It only gives options for linear, exponential, power, and logarithmic trend lines, none of which are what I want. Although the power regression fits well, what I want is a quadratic regression, and this is something that I just can't do in OpenOffice.org, which is really a shame. I remember when testing some distribution that included Gnumeric (I don't remember which one), I needed to do a similar thing then, so I tried to do it in Gnumeric; if I remember right, Gnumeric did offer the option of a polynomial regression line (with the order of the polynomial specified by the user). Score 1 for Gnumeric, 0 for OpenOffice.org. Also, last year, I needed to make a 3D plot (x, y, f(x, y)), which is possible in Microsoft Office Excel. OpenOffice.org, unfortunately, doesn't have this capability, and at that time (I don't know if the situation has changed much now), it couldn't even render an already-created chart properly. I tried to recreate the same chart with Gnumeric, and, lo and behold, it worked perfectly! Score 2 for Gnumeric, 0 for OpenOffice.org.
Also, last year, I found myself needing to create and view many spreadsheets with lots of data (thousands of rows). Although this wasn't problematic per se in OpenOffice.org, it was certainly a lot slower than in Microsoft Office Excel. Score -1 for OpenOffice.org? Maybe.
So what does KPresenter have to do with all this? Well, it's just that in my experience, KPresenter does a whole lot better in terms of usability and ability to create high-quality presentations than either OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft Office Powerpoint. That's because the whole KOffice suite is geared towards desktop publishing as opposed to traditional document creation. Score 1 for KOffice, 0 for both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.
Oracle is being rather wishy-washy about the future of OpenOffice.org, which isn't confidence-inspiring either. I would say the only things OpenOffice.org have going for it are Writer and Math. In the near (or not-so-near, I don't know) future, I may supplant Calc and Impress with Gnumeric and KPresenter. And honestly, AbiWord is a pretty good alternative to Writer as well.