My PCLinuxOS 2009 "MiniMe"

I am not just a big fan of PCLinuxOS rather my computing life becomes difficult without it. Doing my routine home and office work on my computer is always a risky task on Windows and Linux is the best safe alternative for that. My daily Linux experimentation also compel me to have something as a backup and as a "rescuer". PCLinuxOS 2008 "MiniMe" is the best candidate for that and it is always lying on my desk and in my office bag to be handy.

PCLinuxOS 2008 "MiniMe" is quite an old release and it needed to be updated to current 2009 status and I was looking for some perfect way to do it. PCLinuxOS forums are always full of valuable information and there I found what I was looking for .

Texstar says it in his own words as:

How to do full update on clean install Minime 08 as of 5-23-09??


OK here's my steps from a clean install of minime 08 to full update:

1. Install the following:

GConf2
bootloader-utils
dbus
findutils
gtk+2.0
libcairo2
module-init-tools
which

2. Install the following:

kernel-2.6.26.8.tex3

3. Mark All and Click Apply.

I followed these steps and changed the looks of my PCLinuxOS 2009 "MiniMe" by adding a wallpaper of my choice and installing nuoveXT-aero icons and added Opera browser for me and made a new custom iso with "mklivecd" and everything is working perfectly on my PCLinuxOS 2009 "MiniMe". The size of the iso is not true minime as the updates made it bit bigger than actual minime but it is still the original basic minime with changed graphics and Opera added.

Happy home,Office and rescue with with my PCLinuxOS 2009 "MiniMe" is all ready and working great.

Hymera Open Not so easy and stable

My story about this new debian based distro goes like this :: although the DW Hymera page says it is multilingual including en but they installer is only italian and all you have to do during installation is to do a guess work plus the installer is not easy at all as compared to what Hymera people say, and after installation the system refuse to boot at all beyond GRUB:::something related to kernel???

I adopted a different method for installing Hymera:::grabbed a lenny netinstall cd:::installed base system and added hymera repo ( http://mirror.hymera.it/standard/ ) removing lenny official repos and installed full hymera system maintaing ext3 file system instead of ext4 and lenny kernel . You can see my Hymera installed system in these screenshots.

 
Now the repository from hymera has huge packages available but lots of packages are still missing and you have to re add lenny official repos to get a working system despite the warning from hymera team to use only their own repos. Also you have to set keyboard ley out from italian to en.

This distro has potential but needs lot of work and despite the adds given by hymera at DW this distro is not yet ready for its claimed potentials and I am sure not everybody would either think of or adopt an alternate method of installing this distro as I did.

To be honest and not too critical it doesn`t have something really exciting except some latest packages e.g Open Office which is again broken, ext4 file system and latest kernel which gives problem after installation .

The boot loader gets installed to mbr: I checked grub menu to confirm but something is wrong with the kernel that prevents system to boot at all and many has reported this issue on their forum.

Still wish best of luck to Hymera team .

How to install GRUB & set repositories for ALT Linux 4.1.1 Desktop

ALT Linux is a Russian Desktop Linux and Alexey "Ktirf" Rusakov is the Head of Systems development dept. ALT Linux Technology. He announced the availability of an updated release of ALT Linux "Desktop" edition, version 4.1.1 today on 15/01/2009.

This updated release of ALT Linux "Desktop" edition 4.1.1 also offers an English only install DVD with English as the default language so that those who want to install ALT Linux in English will not be choosing English from the cryptic Russian letters on boot menu by pressing F2.

The English only DVD of ALT Linux can be downloaded from the main ALT Linux Server.

There are two small issues I want to mention here regards ALT Linux Desktop which might be of interest to many.

1: How to install GRUB on ALT Linux

LILO is the default boot loader for ALT Linux and somehow ALT Linux team loves to stick with LILO despite the fact that most of the latest desktop distributions are switching over to GRUB than LILO e.g Vector Linux due to many reasons which is a separate topic. I personally like GRUB , thanks to "silicium" one of the development team member of ALT Linux Desktop who sent me this ALT Linux Wiki page for how to install GRUB on ALT Linux.

2: How to choose ALT Linux Repositories for Desktop Version.

ALT Linux Desktop should be set on Desktop/current repositories rather than on branch or Sisyphus which are equivalent to Debian "testing" & "sid" accordingly. I thanks "thresh" for clarifying this ALT Linux repositories setting to me. So you can enable these repositories on your ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 to if you want all the security updates/updated packages and stable softwares packages.


rpm [updates] ftp://updates.altlinux.org/4.1 i586 updates
rpm [updates] ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/4.1/branch i586 classic
rpm [updates] ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/4.1/branch noarch classic

I will add the recommendations of Alexey Rusakov the Head of Systems development dept. ALT Linux Technology regarding the repositories for ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 in his own words here which he sent me in an email regards the settings for repositories.

"Concerning repositories - try our new 'Update sources' module in ALT Linux SystemManagement Center, it is much more obvious than the list in Synaptic :)And yes, you'll be able to run Synaptic from it afterwards.Under the hood, it is rather simple anyway: we have branch/4.1 repo,that is a branch new distributions are built on; we have 4.1.1/Desktop,which is the repo of the vanilla Desktop distro, and 4.1/updates, thatis updates to Desktop. thresh was right, using 4.1/branch is not reallyrecommended, they may be some occasional instabilities there. Use4.1/updates instead, it is as stable as we can make it. "

"

I wish everybody happy home computing with the latest ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 !