Happy 20th Birthday, Slackware!!!

Yesterday, the oldest GNU/Linux distribution alive turned 20 years old!

To all the Slackers out there, CONGRATULATIONS!  May Slackware keep running for more and more years!

Slacko: not a Puppy but a Monster Dog!

Since I have more free time lately thanks to Easter, I have embarked on several learning projects. One of them is trying on my little Toshiba NB-100 netbook as many lightweight distros --and other OSs: I tested Haiku and gave Minix a quick look--as I can. I have gotten different results with them.

Right now, although I am not a dog person, I am trying Puppy Linux.

I had tried Puppy Linux on an older system quite a while ago but had mouse problems and I even got attacked and bitten like a cat by Puppies when I talked here about MiniNo. Yes, I'm a cat person, hehe!

But well, now I am trying Puppy Linux 5.3.1. This version is called "Slacko" and is Slackware-compatible. Hey! To me, this is important! From my perspective, you cannot say you love Linux if you don't pay due respect to the oldest Linux distro. Respect your elders and learn from them, kiddos!

Slacko is different from Wary (the traditional Puppy) in the sense that it is designed for more up to date hardware. That was another good reason for choosing it.

Well, I gave Slacko a spin on my netbook.

What happened? As usual, Puppy did its magic and loaded itself on RAM so that my external DVD unit got free. This is one feature that I find extremely useful and convenient and I'd say it's hard to disagree with that.

I chose Spanish, my native language, and noticed that the menus were still in English, but I got a warning that the locale file was missing. Interestingly, most of the dialog boxes did come in Spanish, although they need a bit more work. Perhaps I could contribute in that area.

After that, the biggest problem came: Wi-fi access. For some lightweight distros I tried, Wi-fi enabling was a no-go. Slacko tried, too...but did not enable it.

Wait! This puppy knows several tricks! It comes with different methods for configuring Wi-fi access. I tried another one and whoa! Internet enabled! In fact, I am typing this on Seamonkey, the browser that Slacko comes with!

Oh, another problem for other lightweight distros on this netbook was recognizing the HD. Puppy got that from the very start without any hassle.

What about software? To me, this little distro comes with everything you might possibly need. In fact, after much searching, the only thing missing was software to use the netbook's webcam. And that is not essential in my case.

Can it play video? You bet. Even with softsubs using Gnome Player.

Oh...I realized then that unlike regular puppies, this one had been too silent. That was weird since audio was enabled. Upon further checking, I learned that I could only hear sound if I plugged external speakers. Well, that's not a big deal anyway. I always use an external USB speaker whenever I need this netbook for work.

Then, I decided to go tough on the little dog. I opened Seamonkey, Gnome Player, Abiword, a game, and a painting program...all to see if Puppy would run out of RAM (this netbook has 1GB).

Everything worked. This puppy is not a puppy but a monster dog! As its developers say, Slacko is Puppy on steroids!

By the way, did I mention that this little distro is very user friendly, too? It explains everything so that newcomers to Linux don't get lost. This is one outstanding feature of dogs...they are very friendly to people! Check out the installer on the image as an example:



I am really tempted to install it and thus start slacking the Puppy way! Kudos to the Puppy community for this impressive distro!

Learning to Slack with Kongoni!

Some days ago, I had said that I was bored since my multi-boot systems were working perfectly. I also said that I wanted to try Kongoni GNU/Linux.

Since booting the live CD wasn't enough, my quest for knowledge led me to actually installing this Slackware-based distro. Three were my main motivations to add yet another head to my hepta-boot desktop computer:

1. I have not tried a purely Libre distro.

2. I've always wanted to try Slackware, but I feel I'm not yet up to it.

3. I felt it was about time for me to see if I could do well with a text-based installation.

Thus, last night I took up the challenge, encouraged by a rainy night during which sleep had eluded me.

Kongoni's text installation did not bite me. Actually, I could understand quite well most of the questions (I'm not going to get into details here, but they asked about partitions, locales, the clock and such). My only problem was when I reached the part in which the installation asked me about the mounting points for my multiple partitions. Being careless as I am, I had forgotten to take note of that beforehand, so I said "What the heck! Let's live life dangerously!" and chose "ignore" for all the mounting points. After all, being Slackware an OS that encourages people to build their own systems, it must have some way to mount those things later, whatever they were! :P

After some time of file-copying, Kongoni's installer gave me good news: My system had been installed successfully! (I couldn't help feeling proud of myself because that meant that I could actually install a GNU/Linux distro without the help of any GUI).

Next was rebooting to meet my brand new Kongoni OS! Yay!

Kongoni's Grub greeted me with many (and I mean it) entries to boot. It seemed that all my previous Grub entries (functional or not) came to a dance and waited for me to pick them. Incredibly enough, my tortured brain was able to remember vaguely which OS was on which partition...and there were many in that Grub that simply didn't correspond to my OSs.

I let them alone and picked Kongoni, of course. I braced myself for chaos and despair, but in a matter of seconds I was happily navigating Kongoni's KDE desktop.

Again, although there were some desktop effects, I couldn't get the cube to work. Oh well, being a humble Mepis 8 user with no Compiz, I can live without it, hehehe!

The second test: music and video. They had not worked during my live session. Did they work now?

No. Amarok and Dragon Player worked, but very silently. That's bad if you actually want them to give you some sound, right? Moreover, Dragon Player crashed again...



While I'm aware that such problem can be corrected somehow, I'm just beginning my Kongoni-Slacking experience, so I opted for an easier approach. How about installing VLC?

How does Kongoni manage the packages? Oh, I had to meet PIG and got familiar with the concept of "ports".



Apparently, PIG took something and compiled it along with its libraries and dependencies. I didn't understand much what was happening, but hope to learn more in time. It showed me the whole process...I wish I knew what all that meant! Whatever PIG did, it did it well because after waiting for some time, I could find VLC in the application launcher:



So, did I get sound this time? Yes! Perfect! I tried different kinds of videos and audio files from my different partitions (no problem accessing them, by the way) and VLC played all.



The downsides of this experience? First, when trying the Grub options, I made a mistake with Mandriva (which had previously stood several of my destructive attacks and was a bit unstable) and rendered it unusable. Even though it tried to repair itself later, it didn't work out this time.

Also, since I didn't like that Grub, I used Mepis System Assistant to repair it and later I manually edited the file "menu.lst" to enable Pardus, that was absent.

Now I have to reinstall my Mandriva system...but I guess I'll wait for the brand new Mandriva to arrive. Meanwhile, I'll be trying to learn more about Kongoni and will start my slacking!

Slacking the South African Way: Meeting Kongoni GNU/Linux!

I had been wanting to try some Slackware based distro for some time. Why? If you say you like Linux and haven't tried Slackware, the oldest GNU/Linux alive (yes! Ubuntu is NOT the oldest, for the record! :P), you are missing your roots. Not enough reason, you say? Well, let me add that Slackware must have its magic touch if it has been able to stand the test of time since 1993. Yes, kids; Slackware may be older than some of you; then learn from the experienced and become better!

Now, inexperienced Linux users like me would like to start approaching Slackware one step at a time. Thus, I chose to start my slacking with slackware based distros. First, I took a peaceful stroll at the Zen garden of Zenwalk and now I'm searching for the antelope that befriends the famous African Gnu: the Kongoni.

This was perfect timing: Kongoni GNU/Linux 2011 released Firefly, its Release Candidate!

So, what does Kongoni 2011 have? Here are some pictures of my experience with it:

The Live CD booted with no issue on my system. Quite soon, I was at a familiar KDE 4. If I'm not mistaken, this is KDE 4.6. Interestingly enough, compositing is already enabled, but I could not get the desktop cube to work...maybe because it is a live CD...maybe because it is a release candidate...I don't know. Other effects are active, though.

The Kick-off menu works fine. Although it is not my favorite, Pardus has taught me my way into it already, so I didn't encounter any adaptation problems. Even people from the old school like me can navigate it.
















What's a distro without networking capabilities? I found Kongoni's networking as one of its strong points. It picked my wired connection instantly. Also, it has a wide variety of networking tools among which I found some long time friends: Kopete, for example. As you can see, Youtube videos play out of the box, too.
















What's this little browser I'm seeing? Another old friend: GNU/Icecat! Hey, it's Icecat 4! Nice! I still remember how I found it and downloaded it for my Mepis box. Great to see you here, pal!
















Now it's time for multimedia capabilities. Amarok takes charge of MP3 files while Dragon Player opens video. This specific video is an MP4 file. There were no issues when playing these files.















As for wallpapers, there's not much to choose from. I like the first one, but I'd probably settle for my customized wallpapers here. They are easy to locate and use anyway.















Finally, for young --and not so young--kids who are fond of cellphone-like interfaces, KDE 4 also offers a netbook interface. Personally, I find it hideous, but some say it's the future of computing...

In general terms, Kongoni looks like a good distro. I liked it in spite that it does not come with any office suite. That, for me, is a showstopper, but still Kongoni was well built and nothing I did caused crashes or problems during my test drive.

About the technical aspects of Kongoni, like PIG (did you notice the little pig on the notification area?) or its ability to compile code and install those compilations automatically, I'll try to test them later. My slack time is over and now I have to go to work!