Thursday, August 28, 2008

Linux with sunglasses, Dyne:bolic

Most Linux news concerns the big picture. What corporations and systems admin are talking and doing about Linux. And what seems to be the interest of the masses. So, articles are rampant about migrating from XP and the grunts of wireless laptop owners. The one unavoidable thing for most is that if you want Linux, you have to install it or get some savvy geekologist to do the task. This includes configuring, adjusting and bracing yourself for learning a different world view. Yeah, things are different in Linuxville. While most versions of Linux have evolved from the same approach, there a few of note that have taken a different approach. Dyne:bolic is one of those and if you don't play with it you'll never appreciate it. I am writing from within it using a web browser called Bon Echo, which is Firefox. Smooth and stable it all is and the install was painlessly simple, just copy a file from the CD to the root ("/") directory, booting the CD finds the copied file and initiates it. Since I already had Grub and QGrubeditor, I edited Grub using the info from the Dyne:bolic manual and now am dual-booting Ubuntu and Dyne:bolic. It had Abiword which is very cool but I wanted Open Office.org. I downloaded it from the website on the Dyne:bolic page and installed it by moving the file to the module directory and rebooting. Imagine downloading directly to the module directory and rebooting instead of all the hassles of Synaptic and Synaptic is easy. OK, so you don't have the complete catalog of a Debian based distro, but Dyne:bolic is meant to be portable, run on older and lean machines, be as complete a multimedia distro to be used in "any" part of the world. So, this is not a review so much as it is an endorsement. Get it, load it, play with it, use it...........be advised, it is not billed as cutting edge, but it is not fodder for the mainstream, or driven by the hype market either, yet it does the same things as the high priced spread with high usability.

1 comment:

pablo said...

Nice blog you have; came here to read something about dyne bolic, nice posts...and very recognizable how you look at things..keep on posting!!