Tuesday, November 25, 2008

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!

Monday, November 24, 2008

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

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.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

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,