I seem to recall that they were giving out free versions a couple of months ago. You may want to wait for that to come again, if it ever does.

Go get it. Now!

Here.

Version: Kanotix 2005-03

Easy to find:

Website must contain information on which versions are available (Live CD, Full Install, etc): 2.
Website is very sparse and therefore easy to find stuff.

Website must contain working links to the download repository: 2
Torrents and ISOs available.

Distributor must provide forums or FAQ for support: 2
FAQ and Forums supplied. Forums are primarily in German, but there is a category set aside specifically for English speakers.

Easy to download:

Download must be in standard ISO format: 2
Yup.

Website must supply MD5 checksums of ISO: 2
Yup

Easy to install:

Pre-GUI installation must not require any configuration of basic devices like monitor, keyboard, or mouse: 2
Picked up everything including my soundcard which historically has problems with the 2.6.11
kernel.

Installation must allow for selection of a window manager: 1
Installation doesn’t allow selection, but the standard ‘sessions’ option exists on the login panel to allow selection of three or four window managers

Basic installation must properly configure video, sound, networking, keyboard, and mouse on at least one of my three test computers: 1
I had to run ndiswrappers to get my wlan card running, but it was pretty painless. I want to give a ‘2’ here, but I just can’t without breaking my own rules.

Easy to use:

Distro must include following applications: 2

o Office applications (word processor and spreadsheet at minimum)
o Internet tools (browser and email at minimum)
o Some type of graphics program
o Some type of PIM application (calendar and contacts at minimum)
o File system browser application to view and use my CDROM, HDD, and USB stick

TONS of applications.

I have to be able to figure out how to access the program menu within 60 seconds of desktop launch: 2
KDE is default desktop.
I have to be able to figure out how to shut down/log off within 60 seconds of wanting to do so: 2
Again, KDE is default desktop. No problems here.

Total: 20/22 or 91%: Suitable for new users!

I’m really impressed with Kanotix. The live cd ran beautifully and once I figured out how to use ndiswrappers, my ago-old problem on not having my wlan card running on a Live CD went away. Part of the reason I’m impressed is that Kanotix is a Debian-based distro (actually, the live cd is based on Knoppix) and Debian distros just seem to be a little more zippy to me.

The boot is definitely much faster than my FC3 machine (about a full minute faster) and the speed of apt-get is a welcome relief from the lethargic yum.

There’s an interesting little menu item I’ve never seen before called Klik that allows you to run applications without installing them. This is a really neat feature when running the Live CD (although admittedly I didn’t discover Klik until after doing the hard drive install so I’m speculating that it works when running live bit I’m pretty sure that’s why it was included in the distro). However, if you do a hard drive install, I think you’d be farther ahead to just install any applications you’d like. I found Klik to be really slow both at downloading and at launching the apps.

The only application I have downloaded since installing Kanotix is Opera. Although Kanotix comes with Mozilla, Konqueror and Lynx (don’t tell Kelly Penguin Girl!), I’m on the Opera train for the moment. Opera has some javascript problems that I don’t like, but I love the interface and the skins. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Kanotix came with my other ‘must-have’ application, Audacity, already installed.

So far I’m quite enjoying Kanotix and this week’s podcast is being recorded on it. Nice job!

Kanotix caught my eye because it professed to have superior wireless support, complete with ndiswrapper installed. I had heard of ndiswrapper and knew that it was some sort of application that allows some wireless Windows drivers to be used in Linux, but I had never had the time to play with it.

Well, today I did and while it wasn’t a complete cake-walk, I did manage to get my wlan card up and running in Kanotix using ndiswrappers and iwconfig. Very cool. This is the first time I’ve had a Linux distro connected to the Internet on this laptop other than Fedora.

I learned a few things: Kanotix (or dhclient or my router, not sure which) has problems getting an IP address assigned from my router when WEP is enabled with a 64 bit key. Once I changed my WEP key to 128 bit - no problem. Kelly’s two Windows machines both barfed on 128 bit WEP keys until I upgraded the software for both of them, then all was well.

I’ve always wanted to go back to a Debian based distro (which Kanotix is) and I’ll be playing around with Kanotix over the next few days to see if it’ll meet my needs. I’ll post a review of it when I’m done playing with it.

• 4.10 (The Warty Warthog)
• 5.04 (The Hoary Hedgehog)
• 5.10 (The Breezy Badger) - not out yet

Aren’t the names enough to make you want to try it out?

Go to their website here and click the Shipit - Free CDs link.

Go.

Go now.

I haven’t heard of Frugalware before but it appears (from the one review on Distrowatch) to be a minimal distor that has speed and stability as its strength. Looks like it was originally based on Slackware but now is on its own development path.

I’m not sure what KateOS’s strengths are. Their webpage reads like typical marketing stuff.

Knoppix…well…Knoppix rocks :)

I then decided that since this is Linux this provided a perfect opportunity to try a new distro. So, I tried SuSe personal which was bust. I should have remembered that because it was on a single CD that it doesn’t come with the gcc compiler (and other assorted development tools that I need to get my wlan card up).

Finally…I’m downloading Mandriva/Mandrake as we speak. It’s 3 CDs and I’ve confirmed that it comes with gcc. I’ll let you know how that goes.

One of these nights I’ll have a working laptop again to do my podcast on :)

This review is based my distro review framework which can be found here.

Puppy Linux version 1.0.3

Easy to find:

• Website contains information on what versions are available: 2/2
• Working links to download repository: 1/2. Not well organized, Initially the tabs at the top of the page get you to the right place, but the ISO file repositories aren’t consisent. Easy to download wrong ISO as I did the first time.
• FAQ or Forum support: 2/2

Easy to download:

• Downloads in ISO format: 2/2
• MD5 Checksums available: 2/2

Easy to install:

• Pre GUI asks for basic configuration information: 1/2. Asks for type of mouse but offers easy to understand options.
• Installation allows for selection of a windows manager: 2/2
• Basic installation configures video, sound, networking, keyboard, and mouse: 0/2. Puppy failed to configure at least one of the basic configurations on all three test platforms. Note: I did not include networking in this review because all three test platforms are on WiFi at the moment and I don’t expect a distro to be able to configure WiFi out of the box.

Easy to use:

• Distro includes following applications: Office application, Internet browser and email, Graphics program, PIM application, File browser: 2/2
• Figuring out how to launch programs: 2/2
• Figuring out how to log off: 2/2

Total score: 16 18/22= 82%. Not Recommended for new users! (man my math sucks. Thanks Brian!

Yes…I only went there today to see if my Fedora Core 4 was out and it was! So, I’m starting the distro notification with Fedora.

It’s important to note that I reviewed the Live CD only and I did it with a view of how suitable it is for beginner Linux users since that’s what we’re doing around here. The full-blown distro may be completely different and suitable. I don’t know…I didn’t try it.

Onto the Live CD. It was a total bust on my Dell Inspiron 1000. It failed to pick up my USB mouse or my onboard trackpad. The first thing Puppy asks you when the desktop loads is to pick a screen resolution from an available list using the mouse. Well, since neither of the two mice or the onboard trackpad that I tried worked, I was unable to get past this step. I tried CTL-ALT-Backspace to get back to the command line (which worked) and then tried a manual ‘xwin’. That prompted puppy to ask me what type of mouse I had: ps/2 or serial. Neither of those are suitable selections for my USB mouse.

That’s pretty much where the review on my laptop left off. Since I can’t click on anything and the keyboard shortcuts don’t appear to work, I was left staring at the desktop unable to do anything.

I tried Puppy Live on my desktop and it fared better. It booted, recognized my USB mouse (weird…) and keyboard without a problem. It incorrectly offered me the possible screen resolutions for my video card (stating that only 640X480 was available). However, by following the pretty simple instructions I was able to get a higher resolution working. Then I was able to play with the distro itself.

Since it’s a very, very small Live CD (23MB download) I wasn’t realy expecting much in the way of applications. Puppy delivered a standard set of applications that would probably answer the needs of any run of the mill user. There was a graphics program, audio player, some office suite applications, basic Internet tools, and file system browsing utilities. I found the interface a little hard to get around because none of the applications were the standard applications I was used to. For instance, there is no Open Office suite; rather the word processor is Ted, the spreasheet is ABS Spreadsheet, the PIM software is Xcal. Same with the Internet tools; rather than the familiar Mozilla or what have you there are three web browsers installed: Links, Dillo, and Amaya. None of which are very intuitive.

None of that mattered though, since Puppy failed to pick up and use my desktop network card. Yes, it’s WiFi, but still…for me no Internet means no computer.

Puppy Live CD has earned a spot in my Live CD collection for a while. I want to play with it on different machines and see how it reacts. I want to be clear that the lack of the mainstream applications is completely understandable since the object of Puppy Live is to make it as functional and as small as possible. This doesn’t make Puppy Live a bad Live CD, it just makes it that much harder for beginner users to get going with.

With that in mind, I don’t recommend Puppy Live CD as a suitable testing distro for new Linux users. If you can only download one distro today - don’t make it Puppy Live :)

Barry Kauler, a retired university lecturer from Australia, created Puppy Linux pretty much from scratch. This little puppy is only about 60MB including GUI and is made to boot right off a CDROM drive.

There are a couple of customized releases of Puppy as well such as one with the Opera web browser and one that is designed to operate on a PC with 128MB RAM.

You can get your own copy off Distrowatch or Barry Kauler’s website: here.

In preparation for hosting the show I upgraded my Dell Inspiron 1000 from Fedora Core 2 to Fedora Core 3. FC3 isn’t all that new really, I was just hesitant to do the upgrade because my wlan card isn’t supported by Fedora. I managed to get it working in FC2, but remembered it being a total beast.

As it turns out, I managed to get my card up and running with little difficulty (I give it a 2.5 tricky penguin rating) which leads me to believe that the problems I have with FC2 were more related to my inexperience with Linux than any real problem with inserting the correct modules, etc.

On that note, FC3 installed like a dream (2 tricky penguin rating, but most of that is due to the iso burning process). It was the most Windows-like install I’ve seen yet on a distro (although I’ve been told that Suse is quite slick as well) and had none of the problems FC2 had. My laptop didn’t like the video handlers on FC2 and I had to do a text install because the default refresh rates weren’t compatible with my screen and caused the thing to flicker horribly during the install. To this day I’ve had to run vesa drivers with FC2 on my laptop which were OK but far from ideal. Not so with FC3. I just popped the disk in and off it went. I’m running at 1024×768 for the first time since I switched to Linux and it was totally painless.

I see that FC4 ‘test’ is out now as well!

Edit: Now that I’ve played with FC3 for a while, I notice that there are some intermittent sound problems with the distro. I thought it was just me, but a quick Google search shows that this is a rather widespread problem. Before installing FC3, please be aware that you may experience soundcard related problems.