Recently in Vector Category

I didn't have high hopes for Wolvix on the $15 Laptop — a Compaq Armada 7770dmt built in 1999 — since previous attempts to load the live CD resulted in an X configuration that needed a little work.

Since then, I've had quite a bit more experience working in the xorg.conf file, and I was able to get a halfway decent X configuration going so I could test Wolvix Cub (the smaller of the two Wolvix distributions, with fewer packages than the larger Wolvix Hunter).

As I've written on many occasions, I consider Wolvix to be one of the best Slackware-based distributions available. Both the graphical configuration utility and the very flexible installation utility — also an X application — add considerable functionality to a solid Slackware 11 base.

And with Wolvix (and the rest of the Slackware-derived distros such as Zenwalk and Vector), all of the helpful Slackware console utilities are still there. Xwmconfig, netconfig, mouseconfig, even pkgtool can be used in any of these Slackware-based systems. You might not need them as much as you would in a standard Slackware installation, but they do come in handy.

Wolvix also includes slapt-get and Gslapt, the Debian-apt-like utilities that changed the way I look at package management in Slackware.

Before Wolvix, when running Slackware I dutifally downloaded updates from the Slackware FTP site, then used updatepkg to install them. One by one. By one.

One time I figured that using pkgtool for updates would enable me to save time and avoid all that typing of long filenames, or the almost-as-long procedure of copy/pasting them in the file manager for each and every package than needed updating.

I ended up with "doubles" of every updated package, since pkgtool didn't know I was doing an update and just installed the new packages without removing the old ones. So when you're talking about doing updates of Slackware packages with Slack's default tools, it's updatepkg or nothing.

All it means is that slapt-get and Gslapt, which are included in Wolvix and easily added to Slackware itself, are essential for the person whose life doesn't revolve around using the updatepkg utility.

Just the fact that Wolvix — which can operate as a live CD with a Knoppix-like save file, or in "frugal" or traditional hard-drive installs, can be brought up to date in minutes with Gslapt in much the same way that apt and Synaptic work in Debian continues to be a revelation.

Put it this way: How many longtime Slackware users don't have and use slapt-get/Gslapt? I bet not many.

Once I had Wolvix Cub running as a live CD with X properly configured on the 144MB/233MHz Compaq Armada 7770dmt, I used xwmconfig at the console to switch between the Xfce and Fluxbox window managers.

Not surprisingly, both WMs ran quite well, even with only 144MB in the live CD environment.

What astounded me were the extremly quick application-load times. In previous tests of Wolvix, it was quick but not so quick as to beat Debian Etch or Slackware 12 under Xfce and Fluxbox.

In Wolvix Cub running on live CD on the Compaq, a number of text editors, the lightweight Abiword and not-so-light Firefox all loaded relatively quickly. I need to do more tests, but Firefox seemed as responsive or more so than the Mozilla-based Seamonkey browser is in the ultra-fast Puppy Linux.

I wouldn't want to run Wolvix, even the Cub edition, as a live CD in the same way as Puppy or Damn Small Linux — especially in only 144MB of RAM, but when it comes to a traditional install, Wolvix Cub or the more application-rich Hunter would seemingly make an excellent candidate to permanently run on the Compaq.

In contrast to Debian and Slackware, Wolvix installs with just about every application and utility I like, from Abiword to Bluefish, Dillo to MtPaint, and with extremely well-organized menus in both Xfce and Fluxbox. In fact, the Fluxbox menus even include little icons next to each category of applications, something I've never seen before.

I'm "sure" I could replicate all of this goodness in standard Slackware of Debian, but the former's KDE focus and the latter's devotion to GNOME mean that it would take quite a bit of work on my part to have as good an experience in Xfce and Fluxbox as I already enjoy in Wolvix by simply loading the live CD and doing an easy installation from what I consider to be among the best installers of any Linux distribution.

Previously:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part I — Puppy or Damn Small Linux
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part II — OpenBSD or Debian?
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part III — Browsers and wireless

Coming up:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part V — Where I'm headed
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VI — Younger Puppies
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VII — Debian with Xfce and Fluxbox calls
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")

I don't think I've mentioned yet one of the great things about Wolvix, the Slackware-derived GNU/Linux distribution that has installed without complaint for me on two occasions thus far.

It uses GRUB, not LILO (like Slackware, Vector and Zenwalk).

I don't want to debate the merits of GRUB vs. LILO, but since the overwhelming majority of Linux distributions use GRUB, I'm way, way, way more comfortable with it.

And I've never, ever done an install with LILO when it picked up any other distribution I already had on the box. Never.

That's why I'm very OK with Wolvix using GRUB.

What I'm going to do the next time I do a Slackware install: I've had trouble figuring out how to configure GRUB to boot Slackware, but the solution is close at hand -- on Slackware disc 3, to be exact.

First: Install Slackware with the LILO bootloader.

Second: Get the GRUB package from Disc 3 of Slackware and install it. It should do everything for you and replace LILO with GRUB.

I have a good feeling that this will work.

Or ... just install Wolvix.

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?"

He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.

He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.

And I'm disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn't mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could've also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.

One thing I've learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That's what I'm starting to do; my New Year's resolution is "less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions." See, I'm setting the New Year's resolution bar very low -- then I'll be sure to succeed (unless I'm caught triple-booting anytime soon).

Anyway, I'm still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I'm packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.

I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD -- I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven't seen in the past year.

I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I'm thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).

I knew that Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 had Gslapt -- the graphical front end to the get-slapt package manager for Slackware -- but for some reason I had no idea that it would be useful for updates.

But commenter Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér gently told me that Wolvix's get-slapt/Gslapt indeed points to a Slackware 11 mirror, as well as Wolvix's own repository.

So I opened up Gslapt, updated and upgraded. I didn't add anything, so I can't vouch for get-slapt/Gslapt's ability to satisfy dependencies, but the upgrade went perfectly, and now I've got a fully up-to-date Wolvix distribution.

Already I've said that Wolvix (and perhaps by extension Slackware 11 -- not 12) is the best-performing Slackware-derived distribution I've tried. I've had no configuration problems whatsoever. And a look in Gslapt shows me that there's a huge number of Slackware packages that I could potentially install.

But one of the great things about Wolvix Hunter is that it pretty much has everything I want. It looks great, now has the latest Firefox browser, OpenOffice, MtPaint, the GIMP, AbiWord, a ton of multimedia apps, just as many networking apps, even a bunch of text editors (I'm currently exploring what Bluefish has to offer, but there's also Mousepad, KompoZer, SciTE, medit, vi, GNU nano and JOE). Mail clients? Hunter has Claws Mail and Thunderbird in the GUI, plus mutt at the console.

And the Wolvix Control Panel is one of the best configuration GUIs I've seen.

Never mind that the current versions of Zenwalk and Vector won't run (they'll install, but they won't even give me a shell login; it's probably something having to do with a hardware hangup).

The more I use it, the more I like Wolvix.

Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 image from Wolvix.org.

After dual-booting Ubuntu (at times 7.04 and 7.10) and Debian (first Etch, then Lenny, then a couple of Lennies for a couple of days) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), I've said goodbye to Ubuntu for the time being and decided to install the dependable Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (the bigger of the two Wolvix distros) and keep Debian (still Lenny). After "losing" two Ubuntu 7.10 installs to unknown causes -- both times processes began slowing to a crawl -- I thought rolling back to Ubuntu 7.04 would give me something stable.

But the boot process for 7.04 began stalling at something having to do with the CD drive (I turned off "quiet spash" in GRUB so I could see where it was dying). I'm thinking that either my laptop or Ubuntu itself must be somehow cursed. One of the reasons I had Ubuntu installed, besides the fact that it works pretty well (when it does work) with this laptop, is that I can easily get Internet Explorer (via IEs4Linux) on the box. There's one Web site I work on that absolutely requires IE, and my need for such access could grow from minimal to critical at just about any time. That hasn't happened yet. What I'd like to see is updated instructions at IEs4Linux to get it set up on Debian. (As far as Debian goes, IEs4Linux remains stuck in the Sarge era).

But suffering through three dead Ubuntu installs in a row has made me weary. For one thing, I'm going back to separate partitions for /home. That's how I have Wolvix set up. Wolvix can be run as a live CD, a frugal install or a full install. I believe the frugal install saves files in the same way as Knoppix and Damn Small Linux, and I want to be able to access the partition when booting Debian, so I opted for the full install. I don't think Wolvix provides updates in the way Debian, Ubuntu and other "established" distros do. No matter. It runs even better on this laptop than it did on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client (where Wolvix was tested along with another crop of distros in my gOS comparison).

And Wolvix has another thing going for it: It's a Slackware-based distro that actually installs and runs with no trouble. Slackware 12 runs ... but I just can't get the X configuration right (and just about any other Slack-based distro offers a better Xfce experience in terms of applications and tools than Slackware itself, which remains a KDE-focused distro, albeit a faster KDE distro than any other). Both Zenwalk and Vector have been problematic; I can install, but something funky happens during booting and I can't even get to a console. I suppose I could turn off ACPI, AGP, IRQs and the like ... but if Wolvix can just run, why not the others? I probably will try to put Slackware 11 on the box at some point just to see if it's Slackware 12 that's screwing me over (Wolvix is based on Slack 11).

Anyhow, besides the fact that it runs and installs seamlessly, I really like the look of Wolvix, as well as the software mix in Wolvix Hunter (which features heavier apps like Open Office and the GIMP, along with lighter ones such as MtPaint, AbiWord and Dillo). Wolvix ships with Xfce and Fluxbox as window managers. In my recent tests, I've determined that Fluxbox doesn't provide much of a speed advantage over Xfce, and since Xfce has many more features, I'm pretty much running it exclusively, even on the aged $15 Laptop (a 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt with a 233 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM). And while the spread between Xfce and Fluxbox isn't as wide as one would think, Xfce does provide significant speed advantages over GNOME and KDE

The Wolvix Control Panel app is excellent. For everything from configuration to installation, Wolvix is way ahead of most of the distributions I've used. While the network-configuration portion of the control panel can be somewhat confusing (it reminds me of Zenwalk), it does work. Before I figured it out, I tried using Slackware's netconfig utility in Wolvix. It doesn't seem to work, though you can go through the paces. At least Wolvix offers a utility that does work. With a distro like the highly touted gOS offering NO network configuration utility (they think everybody has DHCP), I'm thankful for any kind of help. Yes, I can hack the text files that hold Linux's network configuration, but I'd prefer not to. It's just the way I am.

Since I'm constantly switching between a static IP at the office and dynamic IP at home, it's taking me a few extra steps (I love being able to easily switch between network settings in Debian and Ubuntu), but the trade-off is worth if since Wolvix otherwise performs so well.

And the Debian Lenny honeymoon is way, way over for me. I've considered rolling it back to Etch. My Alps touchpad issues are coming back (it's not as perfect as it is in Wolvix, Ubuntu 7.04 or 7.10), and the fact that the new Lenny kernel seemed able to manage the noisy Gateway CPU fan for a day but not thereafter is very troubling. I can continue to use the Etch kernel with Lenny, and I just might do that, but I'm left wondering what's going on and whether or not there's an easier fix.

What I did do, for both Wolvix AND Debian Lenny, was put my fan-managing cron job to work. It basically checks CPU temp every five minutes and, if it goes above 60C, turns the fan on, then turns it off when it goes below 50C. Rather than a shell script and a cron job, I'd just like a single line of code that I could stick in some config file to make this work. I've seen things similar to what I need, but I haven't yet nailed it down for the Gateway Solo 1450.

I did, however, get the fan to stop in Debian from boot (using @reboot as the time element for the entry in crontab for the first instance of the cron job, then following with */5 * * * * to run it every five minutes thereafter. Again, I will detail the Gateway Solo 1450 fan-control solution, step by step, in a future entry.

And while I think a cron job is a sloppy, hackish way to deal with a CPU fan, I've done it now in Puppy, Wolvix and Debian, so I'm pretty much getting used to it. It's notable that in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I couldn't get the system to allow me to turn the CPU fan on and off, even when sudoing the command. I guess I needed to write to root's crontab, and sudoing can't quite qet you there. At least that's my six-second analysis of the situation. I would've loved to put Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on the laptop -- perhaps it could stick around without self-destructing like 7.10 and 7.04. I seem to remember Ubuntu, at least in the alternate install, offering to create a root account. Maybe if I install with the alternate CD, I can get control of the fan. But do I really want to run Ubuntu 6.06 LTS?

Briefly, here is where Ubuntu is falling down:

$ sudo echo 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state

yields the following:

bash: /proc/acpi/fan/FAN0/state: Permission denied

In every other distro on which I've used this line in my cron job, I need to su to root to run it (Puppy logs you on as root, so it's no problem there). But I can't seem to get it to work in Ubuntu. As it is, 6.06 LTS only has five months of support remaining still has a year and five months of support remaining (I'm no math whiz). Might as well wait until 8.04 comes out as the next LTS (or just stick with CentOS 5). ... Then again, Ubuntu 6.06 is from the Debian Sarge era. I smell another install of MepisLite 3.3 .. or maybe the recently updated -- even though I thought it was dead -- Sarge itself. I could always try to solve my Alps touchpad problems and stop my whining (if only ...).

UPDATE: I figured out how to shut the fan on and off in Ubuntu. Details tomorrow morning.

I did keep Debian Lenny (upgraded from Etch). And I know this is the testing distribution and not stable, but I was alarmed by a bug I discovered in the Nautilus file manager. When in a Nautilus window, if you right-click on a file and try to get its properties, Nautilus crashes, a bug report screen comes up, and then Nautilus relaunches. I filled out the bug report and went to the Web page for the bug. While there are about 500 reports of the same bug, it looks like the bug itself has been "closed." Well, it's not fixed, but the report is closed. It says that the bug goes away in Gnome 2.20.1. I have 2.20.2, and it hasn't gone away. I'm hoping that it will, but if the problem with the Ted word processor being catastrophically broken in both Etch and Lenny is any indication, I won't hold my breath. I guess I don't quite understand how bugs are dealt with.

As I said, I'm considering rolling it back to Etch. I'm also considering an installation of CentOS 5.0, which manages the CPU fan fine. Pros: CentOS, a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will be supporting this distro for YEARS; if it works now, it'll get security patches for a long, long time. Cons: it's harder -- at least for me -- to find as much variety in software as there is for Debian, Ubuntu, even Slackware. I'm sure there's plenty of software out there -- and there's nothing stopping me from compiling my own -- but I just couldn't get the hang of adding repositories and GPG keys. Just finding and installing AbiWord was beyond my capabilities. Perhaps a RHEL 5 book would help me; they've got to be out there. Another con: RHEL -- and, by extension , CentOS -- doesn't play MP3s or even Ogg audio files. I'm sure the codecs are out there, but I like the fact that most Linux distros -- whatever philosophy of freedom they espouse -- at least play an MP3. Hell -- I even can play Oggs in Windows Media Player on my XP box.

But what I did do with Lenny today was pack a bunch of software onto it. I threw all the kids' educational stuff I could find, the GIMP (I can't believe Debian doesn't ship with the GIMP), plus digiKam, which the esteemed Carla Schroder recommended to me as the best Linux image editor -- one that also deals with the IPTC caption info that I need to both preserve and edit. (Both the GIMP, as well as Krita and MtPaint not only won't edit the IPTC text embedded in a JPEG by Photoshop, they completely erase the info; NOT NICE.)

By the way, I thought about doing a frugal install of Puppy Linux, but what I did was preserve my pup_save on the Debian partition so I can continue running Puppy from CD (I'm still on 3.00; I've had no problems, so I haven't tried the 3.01 CD yet, although I do have it).

I wish Damn Small Linux would run better on the Gateway, but I'm still running DSL 4.0 on the older $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt). There are new releases of DSL in the 4 series and also in the 3 series. I have to say that I like both of them. I did a lot of work with DSL 3.2 and 3.3, and I'm glad the developers are keeping both going. I am disappointed, however, that the version of Firefox (it's 1.0.something) in DSL does not work with Google Docs. I was hoping to run DSL instead of Debian Etch (the main distro on the Compaq's puny 3 GB hard drive) and gain some speed in Google Docs, but it is not to be. For better or worse, it's another point in Puppy's favor -- Puppy's Seamonkey browser/e-mail/HTML-generator app can handle Google Docs. But now that both Puppy and DSL feature MtPaint, at least they're equal in terms of image editing; for me, MtPaint is the best lightweight image editor for Linux. If it edited the IPTC info, I'd be in geek heaven. Since it doesn't, I remain on geek terra firma.

And I continue to prefer Geany as a text editor over DSL's Beaver (and over Xfce's Mousepad, GNOME's Gedit, anything that comes with KDE ... should I go on?).

I'm having one problem with Puppy: One of the Web sites I work on -- LA.com -- has an obscene amount of Flash animation, and it crashes Seamonkey every time I try to access it. I thought that Firefox might make a difference, so I installed the PET package. But the site crashes Firefox, too. I don't have this problem in any other Linux distro or in Windows or Mac, so something fishy is going on. Yeah, the amount of Flash is obnoxious, but it's not my call.

This entry is way too long, and I didn't even mention my re-flirtation with PC-BSD. After I deleted Ubuntu and before I put Wolvix on the laptop, I decided to do another PC-BSD install. The install itself went fine. I still had that weird graphic blob below the cursor. And I downloaded three PBI files to update my 1.4 release (I didn't feel like burning a new CD, since's I've only got two left in my formerly 100-CD stack). One PBI took it from 1.4 to 1.4.1, the next to 1.4.1.1, and the last to 1.4.1.2. They couldn't do this in a regular software update? Anyway, I couldn't go from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.1.2 -- it said something about only updating from 1.4.1. And BSD is different enough from Linux that the prospect of adapting my fan-quieting cron job to BSD is and will remain way beyond my capabilities.

So PC-BSD met the same fate as it did the last few times I installed it; it came down quickly. I'm enjoying Wolvix Hunter right now.

So here's where I stand this week with the $0 Laptop: Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the hard drive (Wolvix with its own /home, so I can roll a new distro over it without killing out my files) and Puppy 3.00 as a live CD. But I'm thisclose to slapping Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or CentOS 5.0 in there.

Like many of you, I'm stuck between changing Linux and BSD distributions like underwear and finding something that can serve me for years without it either falling apart or me yearning for something better.

As one of the ways to keep track of my journey through the world of Linux and BSD distributions, on every CD I try to write the date I burned it. I can't remember how I found out about my first Linux live CD, Knoppix 5.1.1 (some Web story must've gone on about how great it was to run a full Linux without doing a hard-drive install), but the date I wrote on the case is Jan. 29, 2007 -- soon after the 5.1.1 release came out. And it wasn't just my first live CD, it was also the first Linux CD of any kind I made -- and my first experience with a Unix-like operating system since leaving adm3a and VT-100 terminals behind after my college days in the 1980s.

I remember running that Knoppix CD on my Dell box. I didn't know what Debian was. I had no idea that KDE was Knoppix's desktop environment -- or that there were many alternatives. I didn't know why the Web browser that looked like Firefox was called Iceweasel.

Since then I've spent considerable time running Puppy and Damn Small Linux from live CDs (and in hard-drive installs, usually of the three-or-so-file "frugal" variety).

I recently burned both Puppy Linux 3.0 and Damn Small Linux 4.0. On the one hand, I'm thinking about doing reviews of both. On the other, I think it's time to replace the Debian setup on the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt. I've been running it for months with a very basic Debian Etch install. I started with the "standard" install, then added X and Fluxbox, along with the apps I wanted. It's been running fairly well, but the problems with various applications have been piling up. I know that if I use Puppy or DSL, the apps I want should work perfectly from the get-go. Of course I could also do a fuller Debian install -- say the Xfce version -- which would include many more applications ...

So before I dive back into live CDs, here's what's been troubling me with my Debian Etch install. The laptop is so old (probably circa '98) that it doesn't have USB ports. I have my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card installed -- it works with just about every Linux distro out there -- and I have the CD drive plugged in. The floppy drive is dead, but who needs it? I have the original 3 GB hard drive, and it's pretty full, even though I've got nowhere near the full Debian install on it. I really should buy a new hard drive that's way bigger and less prone to failure.

Anyhow, the 233 MHz, 64 MB system probably could run Xfce, but I've been conservative, running both the console and Fluxbox as needed. Maximum memory for the Compaq is 144 MB, but I've been too lazy and cheap to buy the RAM. The CMOS battery is dead, and I've really been too lazy to crack the case (TORX screws aplenty) and see how to switch it out. I have the network time server app installed, and that resets the clock at each boot.

I originally wanted to handle my work e-mail over IMAP with Mutt and MSMTP. Never mind that to get a Mutt setup seems to be the height of geek competence (a height to which I do not reach), but since my original push to get the .muttrc and .msmtprc files just right, something changed and I can no longer send mail. I could never figure out how to handle multiple mail accounts over IMAP (POP is easier, since you can POP all the mail down and filter it ... and by "easier," I mean harder but doable).

So I installed Sylpheed, which I figured would be light enough for the 233 MHz box. I've always liked Sylpheed, although I've migrated over to Evolution and Thunderbird on my other boxes.

On first launch of Sylpheed, I got an error message that some parameter in some file (I confess, I didn't recognize any of it) was missing. So I went ahead and configured Sylpheed. It didn't work.

I have AbiWord installed -- my go-to lightweight word processor -- but the graphics of the laptop just can't keep up. I type, and the letters appear seconds later. Ted might work better, but it's broken in Etch. You can neither create a new file nor open an old one.

On the brighter side, the Dillo browser works great (although the fonts are better in Damn Small Linux and Vector), and I also have had no problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox), Lynx or my favorite light image editor, MtPaint (which should be an official Debian package available via apt-get but for some reason can only be found at Sourceforge and on other distros like Vector and Zenwalk). I've also been very pleased with Mousepad as a text editor, with Nano and Vi as backups. (I'm more of a Nano users because I just don't spend a lot of time in console editors and have ragged Vi chops).

So I'm able to get my work done in Etch, but I have a feeling that I'd be better off -- especially at 64 MB of RAM -- with Damn Small Linux.

And with the release of version 4.0, what better time to re-evaluate the distro, which has been in or near the Distrowatch top 10 for quite some time.

So I pulled the CDs for Puppy 3.00, DSL 4.0 and Knoppix 5.1.1. I'm not ready to break out the Compaq laptop just yet, so I used my main test box, the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that runs a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM.

I plugged in a USB drive, with my hope being that I could then unplug the hard drive, boot from CD and then have no drives whirring for the duration.

That worked with Knoppix, Puppy, even with a Vector SOHO live CD I burned a week ago (and let me say that just as Vector excels with the Xfce desktop, it also does remarkably well in KDE).

But Damn Small Linux? No, it wouldn't boot with the hard drive disconnected. I tried versions 3.3 and 3.2 as well. No go for any of them.

My USB key is a little unsual. It was a freebie, and has a CD advertising image (detected almost always as drive sr0) as well as a 256 MB flash memory. Puppy found the flash just fine (I've always had great luck with hardware detection, especially of drives, with Puppy), and I was able to boot without a hard drive, run entirely in RAM, and save my settings and files to the pup_save on the USB drive. Brilliant, as usual.

Neither Knoppix nor DSL could find the USB flash drive, but I suspect with a "pure" USB drive the results would be different.

Even so, I've done quite a few Puppy reviews, and I wanted to start out with Damn Small Linux. So I plugged in a hard drive, booted DSL (using the dsl toram boot code that loads the whole distro into RAM) and was off.

Quickly, things that are better in DSL 4.0: network configuration is smoother than ever. Once I entered my static IP, DSL guessed the rest of the info pretty darn well. I entered my local name servers, but the gateway and broadcast addresses were correct without me doing anything. I was able to get printing working with apsfilter (I could never replicate my success in Etch, by the way).

The default window manager in DSL is now JWM, and the thing I miss most is the menu that used to come up with a right mouse click. It's easy enough, however, to change window managers to the old DSL's Fluxbox, and then everything is the way I like it. But I'm getting used to JWM (Joe's Window Manager) in DSL, and I like the clickable folders on the desktop -- it's easier and more intuitive than using the file manager.

Anyhow ... I'm not ready yet for a full DSL review, so let me just tell you that to me -- and many others, I suspect -- Puppy, DSL and Knoppix are VERY important distros in the Linux universe. Going from Windows or Mac to the world of Linux might not have happened for many of us if we didn't have live CDs that actually work that way with which to experiment.

And in many cases, working with a live CD or frugal install that allows files and parameters to be saved, either on the hard drive or on removable media, can be an easy, secure and preferable way to use a PC. Especially when it comes to DSL and Puppy, upgrading can be as easy as downloading and burning the latest ISO. And if you don't want to upgrade? No problem -- just use the version you want.

I did spend at least half a day running Knoppix with no hard drive. As I said above, Knoppix didn't find my USB drive (a situation that might be remedied with a more standard flash drive). As the king of live CDs, Knoppix, which is not one of those distros that is continually coming out with new releases, runs very, very well. Even when not running it in RAM, Knoppix is surprisingly quick, even with KDE. And if you do have 1 GB of RAM, I highly recommend running it with the toram boot option. I definitely plan to get the book "Knoppix Hacks," which has a new release slated for this month, as well as the new Damn Small Linux book.

And this thought has crossed my mind: I just might hack together a PC with 2 GB of RAM, and either a Compact Flash card or USB flash drive for storage, with no hard drive at all, to run Knoppix entirely in RAM.

(By the way, Puppy seems to know when it has enough memory to run in RAM -- I don't think you have to pass that information in a boot code).

And while the live CDs of Ubuntu, Mepis and others are helpful in terms of evaluating hardware detection, they're not designed to be used day-to-day in that manner. But DSL, Puppy and Knopix are -- and they all can be installed to the hard drive if you wish.

Before I wrap up this entry, I want to say that everybody should try Puppy, DSL and Knoppix. Download the ISOs, burn the CDs and start experimenting with all the boxes you can find. I've had more fun with live CDs than in anything else I've done with Linux. After a few months in Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu, it's a nice change of pace (and yes, I've tried Slax -- which I like -- and I plan to give Wolvix a spin soon).

So burn yourself some live CDs -- and make a half-dozen or so extras to hand out at will. It's the best way to get people started on exploring the non-Windows world of computing.

Thinking back to my Vector Linux 5.8 Standard install of a month or so ago, I decided to try it again. This time I wouldn't use the Puppy 2.14 live CD to make my partitions and would instead use the Vector CD all the way. First of all, while I like the installer overall, it makes you do your own partitioning in Cfdisk with no provision for a "standard" partitioning scheme, the latter option -- available in many other distros -- very helpful to new users and those uncomfortable with manual partitioning.

I'm comfortable enough, so I went ahead and made swap, root and home partitions, in that order, on the hard drive. Then I was able to deselect some packages I didn't want (games mostly), and the install continued. At one point during the process, my screen went blank, but the install appeared unaffected. Not comforting, for sure. Turns out it was the screensaver, and the moving the mouse didn't affect it. Hitting the space bar did the trick, though.

Once the files all loaded, it was time for the extensive Vector configuration, including everything from mouse to monitor resolution, with a whole lot in between. Besides creating a root password and deciding which services start up at boot, one of the great things in Vector is the option to run the /tmp directory in RAM. I've heard that this can be a problem if you plan to do a lot of compiling, but since I don't imagine I'll do much of that, I gladly checked off this feature. Anything to speed up the system.

One thing was a bit unusual: When creating user accounts, the system said they had to include at least one number. I picked my usual login and added a 1 to it. Weird, but not that big of a deal.

Vector's Xfce desktop isn't of the minimalist style. Its lower panel includes a bunch of icons, a clickable desktop-switcher, clock, volume control and more. I'm not as in love with the look of Vector as I am Xubuntu, but I'm definitely in love with everything working at first boot, unlike my recent Xubuntu 7.04 install.

My first test: A YouTube video. Flash is included in the distro, so I try a video. It's choppy, but that's to be expected on my hardware, which doesn't handle video or audio especially well. I try an MP3 audio track. XMMS plays it -- and plays it well. The audio is excellent, with no skipping. Mplayer in Xubuntu doesn't do this well. And unlike Xubuntu, Vector has no problem playing an MP3 right away -- no codec downloads needed.

One thing's for sure, Vector is well-equipped for multimedia with XMMS, Mplayer, Xine, Graveman, mhWaveEdit and RipperX. It looks like it can handle DVDs, though I don't have anything better than a CD drive, so I can't check it.

Abiword, Gnumeric and one of my favorite image editors, mtPaint, are included. These are all applications of appropriate weight for an Xfce system. J-Pilot is there, too, and as a Palm handheld user, that's a nice touch. I'd love it if it actually worked. I'll have to dig out the Palm and give it a try.

Xfce's Thunar file manager opens almost instantly. Most apps respond about the same as they do in Xubuntu, some a little slower (AbiWord, Firefox), others a good bit faster (the GIMP). But all in all, I don't see any great speed boost over Xubuntu.

In addition to Mousepad, there's the Adie editor. I'm not familiar with it, but it loads quick and looks promising. For browsing, Firefox is joined by Dillo, Opera and SeaMonkey. It's nice to have Web-browsing choices, especially because most users -- including myself -- spend a lot of time on the Web. Grsync is included for backups -- another nice thing to have.

Right after the install, I wasn't yet ready to do the first software update, but I did want to see how Vector dealt with shutdown and my box's ACPI power-management situation. Vector passes that test and turns everything off. If only Xubuntu did as well (it doesn't, in case you didn't get my inference).

(Days pass ...)

I booted into Vector after a week of ... other things (Slackware, Debian, Xubuntu, actual work), and my network connection didn't work. Like I would do in Slackware, I went to a terminal window, did su to root and ran netconfig. It didn't work. I did it a couple of other times using Vector's VASM configuration application. VASM is kind of clunky -- it's pretty much the same thing you'd get from doing the various Slackware configuration scripts from the command line, except in a GUI window -- but I guess it works. It needs polishing, but it's better than nothing.

After a couple of times through the configuration, I got networking back. I don't know what happened, but it's something I'll be keeping an eye out for.

The Vector boot manager is pretty nice -- and a little different from what I'm used to. Vector Standard doesn't ship with Fluxbox -- I wish it did, but there is the provision to add desktop environments via Gslapt and then choose a different one by clicking Session. If you click System, however, you can select a console login, and since I set up Vector to boot to the GUI (you can choose a console login, I think), I like the option of logging in to a console from the GUI. When I did start at a console, I found Vi, Nano and Midnight Commander. But no Mutt. I imagine that Mutt is easy to find for Slack-related distros, and after adding an SMTP program, I could run my mail from the console.

Now that I've done at least a fifth of the software updating I need to do in my newish Slackware system with upgradepkg at the command line, I have to say that Gslapt in Vector is easier to use. It works much like Synaptic. Of course, installing Gslapt in Slackware would make both systems equal. I could also use Slapt-get, but I don't know much about it.

I like Vector Standard's focus on Xfce. It uses the latest version of the desktop environment, and all the apps seemed to be up-to-date as well. From my limited experience, it's hard to find up-to-date packages for Slackware that aren't already included in the distro. I'd love to add AbiWord to Slackware, but I can't seem to find all the dependencies on Linuxpackages.net. Nor is its version of Abi the latest. But Vector (and ZenWalk, for that matter) champion AbiWord and offer version 2.4.6. Maybe I can get the packages from the Vector or ZenWalk repositories and install them in Slack.

Fluxbox in Vector I used Gslapt to add Fluxbox, and it's the best-looking out-of-the-box Fluxbox setup I've seen so far. The background looks the same as in Vector Standard's Xfce desktop -- a nice blue pattern with the Vector logo. The default "system style" is Magick-X, and it looks and works great. In Vector, as in all distros, applications totally speed up with Fluxbox as opposed to Xfce. The GIMP loads in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds in Xfce. I noted similar gains with the rest of the applications.

Vector does offer a KDE version -- and that is the direction I think they're going in, with the Xfce "Standard" version fading somewhat into the background. I hope I'm wrong and that Vector keeps developing its Xfce platform.

Still, I can't say enough how Fluxbox really, really rocks in Vector. Most stock Fluxbox configurations are heavy on gray, but not this one. I'm sure the expert Fluxbox user can make the window manager look this good and function this well on any system, but it's very nice to have such a positive experience right away. It's so good that I think Vector should do a Fluxbox-only spin of the distro. At the very least, Fluxbox should be included in the ISO -- it's too good not to.

Package managment: Some complain there's "no package management" in Slackware. Well, there is. It's not as comprehensive as apt in Debian, but it's there. Vector, like other Slack-derived distros, makes it even easier for users by including Gslapt and pointing it to the distro's own repository. And you can still use pkgtool and all the other Slackware packaging commands, but for a straight update of the system, Gslapt does a fine job. So Vector is easier to maintain than stock Slackware, but it's nowhere as easy to update as Debian, Ubuntu and the like.

One thing, though: Debian has way more packages than Slackware, and while the Vector and ZenWalk crews are doing their own packaging (a great service, to be sure), you might have trouble finding your favorite apps. On the plus side, Vector has a terrific selections of pre-installed apps and handles multimedia better than average.

Why Vector -- why not ZenWalk? I've wanted to test ZenWalk for awhile, but the current version, 4.6, will not boot on my VIA C3 Samuel-based box. I still have a 4.4.1 disc, and that did install. I tried to do a software update with Gslapt on it, knowing full well that I would probably break the thing. I did. I guess ZenWalk just wasn't made for this CPU. I just heard that ZenWalk 4.8 is in beta. I'll try it out, but I'm not holding my breath about it booting.

The Linux travails of a VIA C3 Samuel CPU: For the record, I've had no problems booting this CPU with Vector or Slackware. However, this box won't boot any Red Hat-based distros. Nor will it boot anything based on BSD. That leaves out Fedora, CentOS, Scientific Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DesktopBSD and PC-BSD. Gentoo does boot but dies during the net configuration part of the install. Everything derived from Debian does boot and run. So it's a big deal for a distro to actually boot and install on this box. If I ever get my Gateway (Pentium-based) laptop fixed, it'll be a whole new distro-testing ballgame, but for now there's a lot of the Linux and BSD world out there that's closed to me.

But if I can run Debian and all its derivatives, Slackware and most of its derivatives, that leaves quite a lot to look at.

Community: The Vector forum has 10,296 posts (going back to the very end of 2006, with other forums before that); ZenWalk's forum has 58,850 (going back to about March 2006); and the Slackware portion of LinuxQuestions.org has 11,136 posts. I don't want to draw any conclusion from these numbers, especially because it doesn't take into account alternate forums and Usenet newsgroups, but at minimum I will say that there are active communities for all of these distros. And especially for Vector and ZenWalk, I see nothing but growth as far as community support and involvement.

Conclusions

Best things about Vector: While I don't think Vector has the best looking Xfce desktop out there, it's far from the worst. Vector is fast, though not appreciably faster than other distros running Xfce. App choice is excellent; Vector gets points for including MtPaint as a low-spec companion to the GIMP, and there are plenty of browsers and editors. I haven't tried Xara Xtreme -- another graphics editor -- but it's nice to be introduced to a new app. Vector excels in multimedia apps and includes Flash and the ability to play MP3s out of the box. Adding Flash to Firefox isn't as easy as it should be. In Ubuntu, I've been able to do it easily, but for most distros you have to deal with tarballs, compiling and the like. I just tried to get Flash working in Debian by using Synaptic, but it doesn't work. Yes, even Debian isn't perfect, and I prefer to have Flash pre-installed, even though it's not open-source (though it is free). Also, thanks to the Vector crew for including the very-light Dillo browser. It's a handy app to have around when you want to instantly open a browser.

Another good thing: Vector is available preinstalled on PCs that cost well south of $200. I like the commitment they show to low-priced hardware. Best of all, once Fluxbox is installed, Vector still looks great and only gets better when it comes to performance.

What needs work: Gslapt is good, but I'd love a friendlier package management front end. Vector's VASM configuration utility is kind of bare-bones and not all that elegant. The installer needs to hold newbies' hands a little more, especially when it comes to drive partitioning. Also, I'd like the choice between LILO and GRUB for my bootloader to be made during the install, not later. Another thing, and this isn't that big a deal: The pointer in Vector is a little large for my taste. I imagine this is configurable in Xfce, but I'm used to smaller pointers.

Final words: When it comes to easier-to-use renditions of Slackware, I suggest trying both Vector and ZenWalk to see what works best with your hardware. If speed is important, and if your hardware isn't new, any of these Xfce-based distros can really bring some sanity to your computing life. Vector with Xfce is really good, but Vector with Fluxbox is excellent. Try it.

Fluxbox seems like an afterthought in most distros. You can add it, sure, but it doesn't look or function that great without some work. On one of my Debian installs, Fluxbox is excellent, on the other not so much. Slackware has a nice Fluxbox setup as well.

But I wasn't prepared for how great Fluxbox would be in Vector. In my Vector Standard install, I added everything related to Fluxbox with the Gslapt package manager. MAN ... does it work well. Looks great, works great, with all the menus populated and a great Fluxbox theme that I'd never seen before.

Coming soon: A full review of Vector Standard 5.8

Ubuntu and its sister Linux distributions -- including Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Edbuntu -- finds themselves in an enviable yet thankless position in the Linux universe. That the 'Buntus are the most popular choice among Linux users is without question. Ubuntu is nearly always at the top of Distrowatch.com's popularity list, its forums are busy -- make that very busy -- and also very friendly. New users are welcomed, their hands are held, and command-line fixes are offered along with gentle encourgement.

But "experienced" users must be accomodated, too -- today's newbie is next month's Linux veteran, after all.

Still, Ubuntu is famous for its single live CD install, huge community, ease of use and, most of all, it's Ubuntuness. I guess what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu changes depending on the person. To me, Ubuntu means (or should mean) a perfect experience out of the box, the best hardware detection available and a system that can grow to serve the majority of PC users.

If you're computer was made in the past couple of years, by all means run Ubuntu, with its GNOME desktop, or Kubuntu with KDE. But for those of us with, shall we say, "vintage" equipment, the search for a Linux distro that makes the computing experience more comfortable -- meaning not too slow -- can be trying. One of the first things I suggest to potential Ubuntu users -- try Xubuntu and its Xfce desktop. It's lighter on resources than GNOME, as are the applications that go along with it.

But does Xubuntu live up to the hype? Is it as easy to use as Ubuntu? Will it satisfy both new and experienced Linux users? How does it compare with other Xfce-equipped distributions?

After trying quite a few Linux distributions that offer Xfce desktops (Slackware, Vector, ZenWalk, Debian), it was time to revisit Xubuntu 7.04, install it from scratch and see how it fares.

I've had a combination Xubuntu/Ubuntu install running for awhile, but it doesn't quite give me the full picture of the Xubuntu-only experience -- plus, it was an upgrade from 6.10 due to install problems at the time, and I wanted to do a clean 7.04 install.

In the past, I've always used the "alternate install" disc, but this time I wanted to try the live CD. Upon booting, however, I got the following error (the x's are numbers that I didn't write down):

[ xxx.xxxxxx] Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0

I don't have a floppy drive connected, and I don't know why the error came up. But after the line appeared with various numbers between the brackets three times, the Xubuntu live CD continued to boot on my Maxspeed Maxterm thin client -- the test machine with long IDE and hard-drive power cables leading out to my CD drive and array of hard disks, which I switch in and out to run different operating systems.

The Maxspeed box features a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz CPU, an eveM motherboard by ECS, the maximum 256 MB of PC-133 RAM, a TDK 32x CD-RW drive and a 14.4 GB IBM IDE hard drive.

The live CD finally displayed the Xubuntu desktop. It didn't look like I could actually do anything, though. Right-clicking didn't give me the Xfce menu, and there were no panels at the top or bottom of the screen. It all looks good, but I couldn't do anything except click the Install icon on the desktop. So I did.

As I went through the steps in the graphical installer, I realized that it's no easier or more difficult to use than the alternate installer for Ubuntu/Xubuntu. It just looks better. I let the installer take care of the partitioning, and it created a main ext3 partition and a swap partition. I've dual-, triple- and quad-booted plenty of systems lately, but I've been in the mood of late to keep it to one distro per drive. You see, at some point we all need a PC that gets work done -- work that doesn't include so much computer noodling -- and I need the space on my smallish drives for actual files. I haven't regretted keeping Debian Etch as the sole distro on one of my drives, and for some time I had a reliable install of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on another drive. It's just cleaner that way -- no messing with GRUB or LILO, no running out of space in the /home partition.

From there, the install continued. One thing that the graphical installs of the various Ubuntus don't do but the alternate installs do take care of is networking. If you're using a DHCP connection, you're fine -- no tweaking required. But if, like me, you need to set up a static IP, the installer does nothing for you. You have to figure out how to set up networking once the system is installed. I've been using Ubuntu and Xubuntu for awhile, so I know exactly what to do, but for first-timers, the alternate install is actually better when it comes to setting up a network connection in a complicated office-computing environment such as mine).

Once the install finished, and I was instructed to reboot without the CD, I ejected it and tried to restart the system with a click on the Reboot button on the screen. That didn't work. I had to do a hard reset to get the system to reboot. But from there GRUB started, and the Xubuntu splash came up.

Once the system finally booted and I logged on, I still wasn't able to launch a program. I went into the Xfce desktop settings and checked off "show desktop menu on right click." The system should have shipped this way -- and I think Xubuntu 6.10 and 6.06 LTS both did. This is a big newbie deal-breaker -- what good is a Linux desktop that doesn't come configured to run a single program? The fix is easy, but the out-of-the-box experience is so important, this bug really needs to be fixed for the next Xubuntu release.

And while I appreciate the clean look of the raw Xubuntu desktop, I really need a panel somewhere to tell me what's going on. I don't know what's happening on any of my virtual desktops, nor can I start a file manager, Web browser or terminal window with a single click. I don't remember my old Xubuntu setup being so bare. Again, for the new user, it just makes it harder to use Xubuntu. I eventually did get the top and bottom panels working (see below), but this is another thing that must be fixed before 7.10 and the next LTS release of Xubuntu are made available.

So I go to set up my networking, typing in my password when requested (Ubuntu and its derivatives being among those that, out of the box, allow the user to "sudo" his or her way through most configuration chores without using the root password ... which is seemingly never needed in the world of Ubuntu).

Since I've done it about a dozen times, setting up the static IP went without incident. I like the networking setup in Ubuntu and its cousins. At the very least, I'm familiar with it, it's consistent -- and it works.

Now that I have networking and can run Firefox, I have to say that the look and feel of Xubuntu is probably the best of any Xfce-based system I've used. The type looks good, the windows themselves look nice -- I like the way the scroll bars look. The type on Web pages in Debian Etch does NOT look this good -- and if it did, I'd probably never look back and stay with Debian. But especially when it comes to the rendering of type, this is a bit of needed polish that many distros -- including Ubuntu/Xubuntu -- thankfully add to the Debian base. And I'm glad to have it.

One thing Xubuntu doesn't include is Flash. I understand that it's not open source, but it is free, and it would be nice to have the distro ship with it. It is in the Ubuntu repositories, but every time I've installed it with Synaptic, it hasn't worked, and instead I have to install the Firefox extension.

Even so, video performance in Ubuntu-based distros hasn't been as good as Debian, Slackware and a host of other distros on this particular PC, so I'm not anxious at the moment to enable Flash.

Even though I didn't have a panel at all, I could switch between desktops with ctrl-alt-(left or right) arrow and spread my applications out a bit. But what if I want a panel? I went into Settings and opened the Xfce Settings Manager. Clicking on most of the icons allowed me to tweak the settings. But when I clicked on Panel icon, nothing happened. I guess Xubuntu really, really doesn't want me to have a panel. But I remember having one in my old 6.10 setup, and it stuck around when I upgraded to 7.04. Even so, that desktop sure looks clean. There's not even a clock showing. (Wait! I have one in my other Xubuntu setup).

I understand and appreciate the minimalism of the bare Xfce desktop, but I'd like to at least have the option of adding a panel. So I Google it. Turns out that running the command xfce4-panel in a terminal window makes the upper and lower panels appear. But as soon as I close the terminal window, the panels go away. Same with xfce4-panel & (to run the job in the background). After re-Googling (is that even a word?), I add xfce4-panel to the list of autostarted applications. It works, but it's messy -- not something a newbie would be comfortable with. Hell, it's not something I'm comfortable with. Hopefully the next Xubuntu release will take care of this -- I can understand wanting no panel and having that option, but the default should be to have the panels showing.

Part of the Xubuntu (and Xfce) philosophy is to use applications appropriate for what is seen as a "lightweight" desktop environment. Things like the Thunar file manager and Mousepad text editor are integral parts of Xfce, and they are included here. Both run extremely well. While the GIMP image editor is a bit too heavy in comparison, it did load in 1 minute, 15 seconds -- about average for this PC. Firefox loads in about 8 to 10 seconds upon first launch, with a second window opening in only 5 seconds. That's very impressive. The AbiWord word processor starts in about 10 seconds. I find that a bit slow, but it's not a deal-breaker by any means. A terminal window opens in a couple of seconds, and by the time 7 seconds pass, I have a prompt. That's good.

This being a new install, I was surprised that the system didn't prompt me to do a whole bunch of updates. And since it was running so well, I was reluctant to force the issue. But I did. I went to the Update Manager, and it said my system is "up-to-date." It couldn't be, since I had done nothing since the CD install. So I clicked "Check," entered my password, and then the system began looking over the repositories.

It turned out there were 76 updates needed. Having about eight months experience installing and using Linux distributions has taught me where to look, but I think that the "naked" Xubuntu screen (which I have to admit is growing on me) and especially the lack of a program menu until it's configured can be a turnoff for the very person that Xubuntu needs to attract -- the first-time Linux user with a less-than-new system. There is a pretty nice (if less than detailed) link in the Firefox browser's home page to the Xubuntu Desktop Guide (which links to a version on the local filesystem, so it will work for those whose networking is not operational), but it doesn't exactly begin with "how to setup Xfce so you can launch a program," nor does it cover how to do an update of the system.

We can argue all day about how appropriate GNOME, KDE, Xfce and other window managers are for the given hardware and computing style, but for me, I think of Xubuntu as not a "lightweight" window manager but a "normal" one. Xfce is not lighter than Windows XP or Mac OS X, for instance. I think of GNOME and KDE as "heavier" -- and they do more -- than what comes with Windows and OS X. So that puts Xfce is in the same league, speedwise, with what most PC users know. When it comes to true lightweight window managers, I tend to think of Fluxbox and JWM.

Anyway, back to the updates. I clicked "Install Updates," and that process began. The updates downloaded and installed without incident.

At that point, it seemed like a good time to shut down. My system has ACPI power management, and most distros handle it without trouble. The thin client shuts down all the way in Ubuntu but for some reason never has in Xubuntu. With this new install, it still doesn't. Everything seems to turn off, the drives spin down, but the power light remains on. To turn the system all the way off, I have to hold in the power button until the system powers all the way down. It's something I wish the Xubuntu team would fix.

As I said before, I wasn't going to install Flash right away, nor would I add anything to play mp3 files just yet. But I did try to play one of the included OGG files to see if sound was configured and how it performed. Sound was working, but the audio skipped terribly while playing an OGG file in Gxine. Sound is marginal on this system, as is video, but I do get acceptable performance from other distros and applications. XMMS in Damn Small Linux is one of the apps/distros that handles sound well on this PC. Sound is also smoother in Debian -- even under GNOME.

Still, I gave Gxine another chance. I tried to play the stream of the BBC World Service. At first I get an error box, but the stream seems to be buffering. Buffering forever, that is. I got nothing. I tried a few other stations, none worked. When I stream audio through Debian, it sounds great, and that makes me wonder what in Ubuntu/Xubuntu is degrading audio and video performance. On newer systems, this shouldn't be an issue, but on older ones -- Xubuntu's target market -- it most definitely is.

Pros:

-- Xubuntu looks great -- no problems there. As good a visual implementation of Xfce as I've seen. From window details to fonts, Xubuntu does very well.

-- 7.04 seems as fast or faster than previous releases 6.10 and 6.06 LTS. It even seems as fast as other distros under Xfce.

-- The Ubuntu community. You won't always get the right answer, but you 've got a great chance due to sheer numbers.

-- A nice set of applications, the ability to add just about everything with the Ubuntu and Debian repositories, plus the ability to install downloaded Debian packages. The use of apt and its helpers (Synaptic) makes updates and upgrades easy and almost foolproof.

-- Ubuntu's Add/Del Program utility is a friendlier version of Synaptic. Plus it automatically adjusts Xfce menus to reflect app changes.

-- The alternate-install CD has ability to install Linux Terminal Server Project packages.

-- The installable live CD and alternate-install single CD make Ubuntu and its brother/sister distros extremely attractive and convenient. While Debian's network-install CD remains, for me, the gold standard in full-Linux install media, the use of a single CD makes Xubuntu/Ubuntu more attractive -- especially to new users -- than distros that require multiple CDs (Fedora, Slackware, most BSDs).

And now, to sum up ...

More pros Performance in Xubuntu is generally good. It's the best-looking Xfce implementation out there. Application choice is excellent. The Ubuntu tools, repositories and community are powerful incentives to use Xubuntu.

Cons: The Xubuntu graphical installer is nothing special. It doesn't attempt to do a customized network connection. Nor does it give any choices as far as applications or start-up services. Installers for Debian, Slackware and Vector are better. The Xubuntu installer gets the job done, but not as well as it should. The "command-line" installer on the alternate CD looks much like the Debian installer and does allow setup of a static IP connection. But I've had many problems with the 7.04 "alternate install" CDs -- and no problems with Debian. During my first install of 7.04, I had to use the 6.10 "alternate install" CD and then upgrade to 7.04 with the Update Manager. It worked, but it's not as easy as starting with 7.04 in the first place. This time I used the 7.04 live CD, and it did the job, but not without a few bumps along the way.

Deal-breaking errors in Xubuntu 7.04: The Xfce panels don't show up automatically. They must be added by the user to the list of startup applications. Even worse, you can't even launch an application until Xfce is tweaked so the right-mouse button brings up a menu. If you're a newbie who has never used Ubuntu (which seems to be free of all these problems), you'll probably give up before you even get started. While fixable, these configuration issues beat out anything Slackware 12 threw at me. In Slack you expect a lot of trouble but get very little. The initial experience is much better. That's not saying much for Xubuntu.

Debian also has a reputation for being difficult, though it isn't. And if Debian can get all of this right, why can't Xubuntu? Ubuntu/Xubuntu has a reputation as being user- and newbie-friendly; the project's developers need to focus on making the initial user experience as smooth as possible. They're not there yet. I hope for better things in 7.10.

And ... the first software update didn't go smoothly.

Multimedia support: I understand that Ubuntu and its derivatives don't support proprietary codecs, but sound and video files that are open play worse in Ubuntu/Xubuntu than they do in most other distros I've tried on the same hardware. Speed otherwise is not an issue, but when it comes to sound and video, Debian, Slackware and Vector do better. On newer hardware, this shouldn't be noticeable. But on my older PCs, it can be a problem.

Xfce-specific issue: Xfce doesn't include a graphical tool that can add and remove applications from the window manager's menus. The Xubuntu team should make this a priority.

Conclusions: I really like Xubuntu, despite its flaws. The bar is high for Ubuntu and anything related to it, and Xubuntu should be better. Major glitches in 7.04 that are present after install are somewhat easily solved by searching the Ubuntu forums, but such problems are major deal-breakers for new users.

For newbies, I recommend Xubuntu 6.06 LTS, which doesn't have these problems. In many ways, Xubuntu still has an edge over other Xfce-based distros, but potential users might prefer Debian, Slackware, Vector or ZenWalk. For new users, Debian-based distros (such as Xubuntu) are much easier to update and upgrade than those based on Slackware, although ZenWalk and Vector have made considerable improvements in this area. Potential users with performance issues may also find that another window manager makes for a better Linux experience. Fluxbox and JWM are two worth considering.

Final words: Xubuntu has the potential to be the leader -- in both popularity and user experience -- of Xfce distros. I'll be looking for improvements in the 7.10 and 8.04 LTS editions. But Vector and ZenWalk are nipping at Xubuntu's heels, and Debian is also worth considering.

Back to 6.06 LTS: I'll admit, my recollection of Xubuntu 6.06 LTS wasn't crystal clear. So I dug out the live CD from my stacks and booted it. I get the panels that are missing in 7.04, and the right-click application menus are also enabled. If Xubuntu could do this in 6.06, why not in 7.04? But on the positive side, the colors in 7.04 are much more vibrant, and everything looks a little bit better. While 6.06 looks like every other Xfce desktop, the subtle differences in design make 7.04 stand out. Even so, for the best out-of-the-box experience, 6.06 LTS has a lead on 7.04. I hope they don't screw up LTS for next year's 8.04. As I've said above, a patched Xubuntu would be hard to beat.

Back to Vector 5.8 Standard: Last time I installed Vector, I used my Puppy 2.14 live CD to partition the drive with Gparted. I started a new Vector install and decided to do it all with the Vector CD. It uses Cfdisk to do the partitioning, and there's not even a provision to do a standard partitioning job -- you have to get your hands dirty and create the partitions yourself. While experienced users may be comfortable with that, others may not. In this instance, Xubuntu wins -- you can accept the automatic partitioning or do just about anything you want.