Ok, I am about to bite the hand that feeds me. Specifically my being predominantly a Windows Server system administrator. I have always kept an old system around running some sort of UNIX/linux/BSD type OS to keep my *nix skills up to date and do some *NIX administration at work. For the most part, the linux distros have been OK for use on the desktop. With regards to being a server OS, I see merits for all of the above OS’s and Windows Server. Each has their place in the datacenter.
This post is more about linux on the desktop. I have tried quite a few of the distributions over the years. From Red Hat 4.x way back about 12 years ago to the former Mandrake now Mandriva, Debian, Suse, Slackware, Damn Small Linux, Puppy linux, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, PCLinux, Mepis, and a few others. I have tried quite a few. I have always liked distro’s based on Debian. I like how Debian is set up and I like the apt-get package manager.
About a year ago, I saw a blurb about a new distro called DreamLinux from a group down in Brazil. It certainly
was nice looking, but it didn’t seem to have any direction with where it was going. Many distros are like this. They are someone’s pet project, but they don’t seem to be kept up or worked on. I was worried about becoming interested in DreamLinux because of that.
Since I needed a new distro to test and becoming disappointed with Fedora 10 not being able to get the wifi driver working even with the wpa-supplicant drivers, it was quickly deleted from my hard drive. I decided to give DreamLinux a try. Setting it up was simple from the “Live” CD. After it booted, it quickly found all my hardware including the wireless antenna that Fedora puked on. It had a nice “Quick install” feature that did just that and quickly installed a bunch of commonly used apps like Firefox, Skype, etc. Since it was based on Debian, apt-get was there as well ready to go. It took me about 30 minutes to get the desktop set up and running the way I like it (I switched on Compiz and did a few other tweaks). All in all it is a pretty good distro. It is fast and fairly user friendly. It comes with a lot of software already pre-installed and was generally a no brainer.
This isn’t to say it has been all peaches and cream. Like most linux desktop distros, it has its rough spots. As you can see in the picture below, the video of Thomas Dolby bleeds over onto the file manager. I believe this is mostly a Compiz artifact, but none the less it is annoying and most people wouldn’t put up with it.
The system has also shut itself down a few times. Now I don’t know if this is a power settings issue or what as I have not seen it actually happen and haven’t gone through the logs yet to determine what is going on.
Anyways, pretty cool distro and I think I will keep it around for a while as I think this distro has a lot of potential.
Microsoft – you guys had better start delivering on the next desktop OS (Windows 7). It is pretty amazing that you can get a fully functional desktop OS with lots of productivity software for free.