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!

Lapis Linux I Not yet another PCLinuxOS remaster

While PCLinuxOS development is stale and going on behind curtains where no one from the development team is willing to answer any question either at forum , to emails and nor at IRC #pclinuxos help , there is another project lead by Erkan Kaplan a Germany based Turkish who is working tirelessly on Lapis Linux .

Lapis Linux is not just yet another community remastered copy of PCLinuxOS but a total pure work started from scratch. They started their project basing it on Tinyme 2008 but building it from zero ,making and baking every brick themselves. So it is not reinventing wheel again but getting an idea from an existing project but putting all the efforts with their own hard work.

Lapis Linux is purely Turkish Language distribution and GNOME is the main desktop environment. Till version 1.0.1 released on 11/08/2008 it was almost impossible to use it in English but everything was in Turkish and it was impossible to boot it and proceed. But since it is under extremely active development they have moved to 1.0.2 Yavuz (RC4) released on 03/11/2008. This time it has locale English enabled by default and after little tweaking around one can easily set English as default language as I did posting this post from Lapis desktop.

Lapis Linux is GNOME oriented distribution but from current version onward they are offering KDE 3 ,KDE 4 & XFCE along to be downloaded and installed . Lapis Linux version 1.0.2 Yavuz (RC4) is sporting Linux 2.6.26.7.lapis1 kernel & GNOME 2.24. All the art work and graphics are from the Lapis Linux team and very pleasant looking.Compiz support is also present.The PCLinuxOS control center and Synaptic are also present for easy access.

At current development phase many packages are not properly working but as Serkan one of the developer said " We are moving forward to lzma supported RPM packages with this version.So, there are lots of packages which should be packaged again. As we see those packages, we'll fix them. And yes there will be English support with this version." it is clear that the development is going on progressively and things will settle down sooner.

There is an active forum for Lapis Linux but since everybody speaks Turkish there so it might not of much help to English speaking people but those interested to participate and report issue can reach the development team on Lapislivecd mailing list & Lapis Linux .

The current development version of Lapis Linux 1.0.2 RC4 can be downloaded from Lapis Linux main website for testing purpose.The development team can also be reached at IRC Freenode #turklug & #lapislinux but many of them don`t speak English so that might not of much help.

Lapis Linux is indeed a great news for those who want to use PCLinuxOS and are not happy with their development pace. Lapis Linux is a good alternate and a pure work .

I urge all to give it a try, they might be disappointed currently if it did not work but will not be once it comes up with another stable release which does not look too far with their fast development work going on tirelessly.

Distro Lost!

PCLinuxOS is stale and nobody from PCLinuxOS is willing to say anything about the repositories which are frozen despite the fact that it was said "just few days" on their forum.

It is the time to move on to something other than PCLinuxOS and I have two distributions in my list.

1: SIDUX

2:KANOTIX

I request all those who drop by here to suggest pros and cons of both and which one is superior to other in different aspects.

I am patiently waiting for your kind suggestions and remarks.

Regards,

Arch Linux I Arch-live Development Blog

Godane, a rather quiet natured young man who is always present at IRC #archlinux is doing an amazing job of making custom made ISO files of Arch Linux, one of the notorious newbies "non-friendly" distribution regarding installation and configuration.

Arch-live Development Blog & Godane’s Development Blog are two main sites with all the info and ISO files download links released by Godane till now.

I am in the process of " learning Arch Linux" way myself these days and Godane`s ISO are of real help indeed.

Anybody interested in straight forward & simple Arch Linux installation other than pure Arch way should check Godane`s work.