Lapis Linux KDE4 ,Can Anything be more pretty than this?

Erkan Kaplan is a workaholic , never tiring guy who is on the pursuit of something interesting and pure from GNU/Linux.

I installed the GNOME version of recently release Lapis Linux and installed KDE 4 on it as somehow I am unable to live with GNOME. I was facing problems here and there and Erkan Kaplan was never hesitant to help me with those issues.

He personally prefers KDE 4 than KDE 3 as he believes KDE3 has no more future. I was constantly pushing him for issues I was facing with my Lapis Linux KDE4 and then came a news from him that he is working on a pure KDE4 version of Lapis Linux .

It was hardly a week and here is the KDE 4 Lapis Linux released. I am posting from the Live DVD of it at the moment . I have tested many KDE 4 distributions and nothing could be as pretty as this Lapis Linux KDE4 desktop is.Erkan has put all his best efforts to make this version in a very short time.The Lapis Linux KDE4 can be downloaded from Lapis Linux official site .It is a DVD ISO with size over 700MB so you have to burn it to a DVD.

There is another good news with this release. Those who want Lapis Linux in English are not supposed to worry about setting locales this time. Just press F2 on boot menu and your Lapis system will boot to this nice looking desktop in English language .

Installation is straightforward from the icon Lapis Linux Harddisk Installer with no hassles.The most beautiful part of the Lapis Linux Installer is that it added my BRLIX installation automatically to the GRUB menu so I don`t have to worry about reinstalling GRUB later and chain loading BRLIX.

Once you have installed Lapis Linux you boot into a perfect KDE4 desktop and the only words I can say are " Just enjoy it " :)

I am a big fan of PCLiunxOS, KDE and wanted to use KDE4 and lots of distro-hopping did not satisfy my demands .

I have no hesitation to recommend Lapis Linux to all those who want PCLinxuOS based distribution and want to have KDE4 . There might be some issues but I saw so many issues with openSuse,Fedora 10, Kubuntu 8.10 so these issues seem minor to me.Lapis Linux might not be up to the highest mark and standards but it does need testing and exploration.

I appreciate the devotion of Erkan Kaplan and I will request and urge everybody to test his work and offer him words of appreciation.

I am loving it !

Famelix is BRLIX Now

Remember Famelix? Famelix was a GNU/Linux distribution developed by Brazilian Faculdade Metropolitana de Guaramirim (FAMEG) and based on the work of famous Kurumin Linux. It particularly stressed in the adaptation of the user interface so that it resembled Window$ as much as possible.

If you have tried recently to access the Famelix GNU/Linux official site you will receive such message " Oops! This link appears broken.Page not found - connection failure." So neither the Famelix official site nor any of their forum works at all and they are dead!

But the project in not dead infact. I sent an email to Diogo V. kersting ,one of the developer of former Famelix project asking him what happened to the fate of Famelix project and he replied me with these words

" We the students and the professor (developer of Famelix), have made a company to continue the development of famelix.But the name Famelix is owned by FAMEG (the University) so we changed the name to BRLIX. The BRLIX have the themes XP and Vista, which you can choose on the Control Panel."

So Famelix is not dead and the project is being run under the new name BRLIX . Their new official site is cool looking with a mascot of a cute looking parrot wearing brlix t-shirt with a Tux sitting next to him.

They offers both free and paid download for the current BRLix 1.0 Release Candidate 1. The paid download is offered with these words " if you want to help the developers to continue the work in the BRlix, you can pay for a pre-release, where you will receive before all the releases of the BRLix, you will have a priority on the support, and you will can suggest new stuff’s to BRLix."

I have an interest in the former Famelix and current BRLIX because my daughter and wife are very Window$ oriented and they get nostalgic without Window$ so I wanted to install a Linux distribution on their computer which resembles as much as possible to Window$ XP and still I am free of hassles to get their computer free of viruses and all Window$ related problems.

So if any of you wants to try this new BRLIX you can access their official site and try the free or paid download whichever suits you. Their site is not working in English and not much help is available at the present but the download link can be easily accessed. For any additional help that you need you can drop an email to me and I will get you through to Diogo V. kersting and he might help you accordingly.

I will urge Ladislav Bodnar of DistroWatch to update the home link for Famelix to BRLIX as many of the people like me might be trying to access the former Famelix page facing that Oops! message at the end.

How to set locales-en on Lapis Linux

After I posted about Lapis Linux some of the friends asked me how to set the Locales into English from the scary looking Turkish language.

Well, I know zero of Turkish myself but this is how I set my locales into English and it was quite easy.

1: Locales-en is installed by default in the current testing version 1.0.2 Yavuz (RC4) of Lapis Linux so you don`t have to worry about installing it.

2: Just boot from CD as live, no need to boot in safe mode, press F2 at boot and choose English. For additional settings change language to en from tr in boot command.

3: Once you are at login manager just type root as user and lapis as password , you don`t have to worry about Turkish language here because you had already set language to English at boot time.

4: Once you are on Lapis Linux Desktop just run apt-get update to update all packages list to avoid any conflict of packages later on when you will set locales into English.

5: Open Control center from the menu on top and set locales to English as shown in the screenshots.It will ask you to logout to set the locales so logout and login again as root.

6: Open Synaptic and un install locales-tr as shown in screenshot here.

7: Logout from System menu once again and then login again as root

Your desktop and Lapis Linux system will be all English this time and you can easily install it from the Install Icon on desktop or by running command "draklive-isnatll from shell which will bring the GUI installer running in front of you.

A bit of warning once again. Some of the packages might not work and you might face off & on crashes here and there but please keep in mind this is a testing version so things will gradually settle down. Report back issues at users-mailing list and you will get prompt reply.

At this stage Lapis Linux might not be up to the high expectations for many but it does work and works almost 99 % perfect.

Just test it and have fun from this pearl from Turkey : )

I am loving it guys!