Review: Semplice 4 "Atom Heart Mother"

A couple of people have asked in comments (especially of my review of #! 11 "Waldorf") that I review Semplice. I took a look at its website and was pretty intrigued, so here is the review.

Main Screen + Openbox Menu

What is Semplice? Much like #! (which I may end up referencing frequently whether I want to or not), it is based on Debian and uses Openbox as its default WM. Unlike #!, which is based on Debian Stable (and issues preview releases based on the future Debian Stable release), Semplice is based on Debian Unstable "Sid", which allows it to be maintained as a rolling-release distribution.

I reviewed Semplice 4 "Atom Heart Mother" (I found out the code name from the release notes) using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Review: aptosid 2010-02 "Keres" KDE

Main Screen

What's aptosid, you ask? I had reviewed sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos" before, and unfortunately, that review didn't turn out so well; it refused to load after booting in VirtualBox. So why am I bringing up sidux? Well, sidux, due to various legal and financial issues, has changed its name to aptosid (but otherwise continues the release naming/numbering system as well as the fundamental base (Debian's sid (unstable) system)). Let's see if this one works. (NOTE: I have reverted to allocating 1024 MB of RAM in VirtualBox.)

Review: sidux 2010-01 "Hypnos"

Main Screen

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".