Pardus 2011: KDE SC 4.5.5 With A Pinch Of GNOME In One Of The Best KDE-Based Linux Distros

Pardus is a Linux distribution funded by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey. Even though it uses KDE, Pardus tries to make every user - including those who come from a GNOME Linux distribution - feel like home and in which the user is in control of how his desktop looks like right from the start.

Pardus 2011 comes with its own original tools: YALI (installer), Kaptan - an first boot configuration tool, PiSi (package manager) as well as many tweaks to some already existing tools. Read on to find out more!

First impressions

(Pardus login screen)

When you first boot the Pardus 2011 Live CD, YALI installer (which now has LVM/RAID and UUID support) will guide you through the installation process. Everything is intuitive and easy to use for both novice and advanced users (the following screenshot is just one of the YALI installation steps):

While most major Linux distributions impose their own style (theme, icons and so on), in Pardus you're in complete control of how everything looks from the beginning: when you first boot Pardus you'll meet Kaptan, an original Pardus tool that runs when you boot Pardus for the first time and lets you customize the user interface and other settings (you can choose the theme, menu, wallpaper and so on):

If you've never tried Pardus before, I'm sure the first impression will be "wow" for most of you like it was for me!

Default applications

(Clementine)

(Firefox 4.0 beta 9)

Pardus 2011 is not your regular KDE Linux distribution - you won't find KOffice (now Calligra Suite) by default but LibreOffice. Further more, Mozilla Firefox 4.0 beta 9 is the default web browser. Other default applications: SMplayer as the default video player, Clementine as the default music player, KsCD is now the default player for Audio CDs and of course most of the popular KDE applications like digiKam, Kdenlive, Kopete, Dolphin, Ktorrent, Kget, Choqok, Konqueror and so on.

(GIMP)

Even though Pardus is a KDE Linux distribution (Pardus 2011 comes with KDE SC 4.5.5), it features some of the best GNOME applications too such as GIMP or GNOME NetworkManager 0.8.2:

The reason for using GNOME Network Manager as the default network manager application is to make it easy for its users to set up CDMA, HSPA and VPN networks.

But you don't have to worry about integrating GNOME applications with the KDE look - Pardus has this covered and the latest Pardus 2011 uses KDE's Oxygen style for all the GTK apps. This is great for those who use GNOME and want to try a KDE Linux distro as they can keep using some of the applications they've got used to while trying out some of the best KDE applications too.

For a package manager, Pardus comes with its own "PiSi":

But of course, there's also a graphical package manager too:

Panda (Pardus alternative driver administration) is a new System Settings module which allows users to change the driver between Open Source and proprietary one for NVIDIA and ATI display adapters.

Pardus 2011 comes with KDE SC 4.5.5, Linux Kernel 2.6.37, Python 2.7.1, xorg-server 1.9.4 RC1 with improvements to the automatic driver configuration mechanism done by the Pardus developers.

Download Pardus 2011

There's much more to Pardus 2011 then I could ever cover in a post so you really need to try it out for yourself to see why Pardus is considered one of the best KDE-based Linux distributions of the moment.

Pardus 2011 is available for both 32bit and 64bit and you can download it from HERE | Pardus 2011 release notes

Bodhi Linux Reaches Beta (0.1.4), Gets New Themes And Layouts

Bodhi Linux is a fast, minimalistic Enlightenment (E17) Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Bodhi 0.1.4 beta was released yesterday bringing two different themes (light and dark) and four different custom Enlightenment configurations to choose from:

The most important change in this release is how the default theme for Bodhi is now handled. After listening to the complaints of people more than a few times, I realized I needed to do with Bodhi's theme what we had done for applications - let the user make their own choice.

- Jeff Hoogland, Bodhi Linux developer

When you first boot Bodhi, a configuration window will be displayed where you can select your language as well as the theme color and layout:

Here are the two new themes with different layouts:

(Fancy Light)

(Laptop Dark)

(Laptop Light)

(Desktop Dark)

Other changes in Bodhi Linux 0.1.4 beta

Bodhi 0.1.4 changelog:

• Added acpi-support package so suspend function now works
• Added itask-ng and calendar modules to base system
• Added broadcom firmware to core system
• Updated network manager to 0.8.1
• Updated Firefox to 4.0 beta8
• Update lxterminal to 0.1.9
• Updated E Packages
• Changed plymouth back to black theme
• Created 4 E profiles, each in two colors, to choose from
• Added user selection of E profile at first system startup
• Added symlink so flashplugin-installer works with FF 4.0 beta

Online Software Center

But that's not all: in our initial Bodhi Linux post we were telling you that Bohdi will gen an online software center that will use apturl so its users can easily install applications. Well, the Bodhi online software center is live for some time and besides being able to install applications using apturl, it also features offline installers. The online software center can be found at http://software.bodhilinux.com/

To install an application using a Bodhi (.bod) offline installer, simply download it from the Bodhi online software center, copy it to the computer with no (or limited) Internet connectivity, make it executable and double click it:

Download Bodhi Linux

For more info on this release, check out Jeff's post | Thanks to Jeff for the tip!

DouDouLinux: A Linux Distribution Especially Designed For Kids

DoudouLinux provides tens of applications that suit children as soon as 2 years old and tries to give them an environment as easy to use as a gaming console. Kids can then learn and have fun but... without Dad and Mum watching!

“Doudou” is a French word that means wubby, the teddy bear or the cloth that children carry everywhere and hug very strongly in their arms before falling asleep.

DouDouLinux is, maybe, the greatest aid for parents who don't have enough time to spend with their children while they have fun on the computer but who also don't want to come back and find out that their operating system kind of crashed or that some important document was accidentally erased. That's because you don't have to install DouDouLinux to be able to use it, all you have to do is boot it from an USB stick (and when booting you can choose if you want the changes to be saved or not) or a CD/DVD and the kids don't have to log in to be able to play!

Further more, you don't have to worry that while your child plays Internet games he will get to see unsuitable pictures or games for his age thanks to a smart built-in web page access filter (starting with version 2010-11).

Educational and fun!

But let's just start with the beginning. When you boot DouDouLinux, it looks just like you can see in the above picture. A friendly drawing background and only seven sections you can choose from. Four of them come with educational games as well as a few others that will familiarize your child with the way the mouse or the keyboard works. TuxPaint is there too in case your children want to exercise their painter abilities.

(Tux Paint)

I have found that all the games on DouDouLinux are educative and violence free. But be careful, some of the games are very addictive! I might not admit, but after writing the review I will play Pingus all day.

In the educational games section kids will get to play and learn games with numbers, letters, how to use the keyboard and the mouse, a geography game (another one of my favorites). It's just nice they have plenty of options.

More than just games

("Whole DouDoLinux" section)

But DouDouLinux has more than just games: in the "Whole DoudouLinux" section which is designed for parents you'll find categories such as Learn, Work, Enjoy, Multimedia and Tune (system settings) that have the usual applications that you might need: a video player, IM client (Empathy), a web browser (Epiphany), an French-English dictionary, text editor and so on. Some more advanced games are also available in the Enjoy section - here you can find adventure, arcade, board, cards, logic and sports games; among the games are SuperTux Cart, Pingus and more. In the multimedia section the little ones will clearly love the Piano Keyboard - this as well as the games under "Enjoy" are also available in the "Mini DouDouLinux" section so your kids can play them without having access to the other tools (and no login is required).

(Pingus game)

The future

DouDouLinux has a release cycle of 3 months and in the future it might get improvements such as an option to install DouDouLinux inside a Windows system without repartitioning, online CD customizations, a tool to limit the time spent on the computer and much more. See this page for more on the DouDouLinux future and see if you can help!

Download

Because DouDouLinux doesn't require an installation, there are both ISO and IMG files available to download in several languages such as English, Arabic, English, French, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and more.

Download DouDouLinux (note: in my test, the Ubuntu Startup Disk creator failed to create a bootable USB so I recommend UnetbootIn for creating a bootable USB - it's available in the Ubuntu repositories and you can also find Windows executable at its homepage).

Thanks to WebUpd8 reader inameiname for the tip!

moonOS 4 "NEAK" Released With File Hierarchy System, AppShell

moonOS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. moonOS 4 codenamed "NEAK" has been recently released, replacing E17 with GNOME for the main edition and is currently available for 32bit only. While it provides a new stylish interface by default, the most interesting new feature in moonOS 4 is the use of a new File Hierarchy System which aims to make the filesystem more user-friendly. Read on!

First impressions

On a first look, moonOS is not very different from Ubuntu: there are many obvious changes from Ubuntu, other then Docky instead of the bottom Gnome panel.

Overall, the desktop looks very clean and polished thanks to a modified Clearlooks Revamp theme (download it from HERE), Faenza icons and Droid font which are set as default.

The green seems a bit too much and unfortunately there aren't many themes installed by default (Ambiance and Radiance are missing for instance) but that's because moonOS doesn't try to cover everyones taste and instead it provides only the basic stuff you'll need - for everything else there's Ubuntu Software Center which you can use to further customize moonOS.

Default applications

While it is designed to look good by default, moonOS is still pretty light and doesn't come with many applications installed by default - it only tries to cover the basic needs.

Most of the default applications are the same as in Ubuntu, however there are some changes: Pidgin is default instead of Empaty, Banshee instead of Rhythmbox, GIMP and Cheese are installed by default and Nautilus Elementary replaces the upstream Nautilus. Other default applications include: Workspace Switcher Appindicator, Gloobus Preview, Synapse and of course Docky which you can see throughout all the screenshots in this post.

Further more, moonOS comes with Linux Kernel 2.6.35 with the "200 lines" patch applied for a speed boost.

New File Hierarchy System, AppShell

moonOS uses its own file hierarchy system: all the system files are available under /System (the executables are under /System/Executables, the Libraries under /System/Libraries, the settings under /System/Settings and so on), /tmp is available under /Temporary and so on. However, the normal file system hierarchy is still there. The new file system hierarchy is created with "mount --bind" (ex. mount --bind /usr/bin /System/Excutables).

In moonOS there is no /home partition, the users folders are available under /Users so if you want a separate "home" partition, create it under /Users when installing moonOS.

Another rather unique feature in moonOS 4 is the use of Appshell, a new applications framework:

Software that use Appshell Framework will be standalone so everyone can download a single package then install it in anytime, anywhere, offline, online and easy to share with friends via Flash driver.

Appshell is currently in an experimental state so only 3 applications use it for now: Cheese, GIMP and Pidgin. You can find them under /AppFiles.

Download moonOS 4 (Warning: Chrome and Firefox display a warning that the website where the moonOS ISO is hosted may have malware so browse with care!)

Thanks to WebUpd8 reader Rajit for the tip!