Category: Reviews

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First Looks: Xen Demo CD 3.0.3

DistroWatch Weekly contains a review of the new Xen Demo CD.

Xen Demo CD is a bootable CD containing not one, but three Linux distributions – a recent build of Debian “etch”, SUSE Linux 10.0 and CentOS 4. Its main purpose is to demonstrate the wonders of virtualisation, or in less technical terms, the technology of running several operating systems (or several instances of the same operating system) simultaneously on the same machine.

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Mandriva 2007 Review

This Mandriva 2007 review at Linux Forums has a short section involving the LiveCD install of the new Mandriva release.

I booted on the Mandriva One CD, noticed nice boot splash sequences, answered one too many questions about my favorite language, keyboard layout, home country, time zone, favorite time synchronization method, I signed a user license agreement and told Mandriva One I didn’t want to activate the 3D effects (I didn’t, because I wanted to keep that as a surprise for when it would be running from the hard-drive).

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A Windows Users Delight: PCLinuxOS

Really Linux has an overview of PCLinuxOS.

PCLinuxOS offers the flexibility of being both a Live-cd, and including all necessary components for a full installation. As a Live-cd version it can boot directly from a CD drive without any installation to the hard disk. But more importantly, it includes an easy to use installer that allows you to fully install Linux when you are ready. Of course, as with many major distributions, there are excellent guides on the website for helping use the installer.

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Super-Simple System Recovery

SmallBusinessComputing.com reviews Symantec’s Backup Exec System Recovery Desktop Edition 6.5, which utilizes a Windows PE LiveCD to perform system restores of broken systems.

You probably don’t need to be told how important — make that critical — it is to regularly back up your company’s data. But it’s almost as important to have complete system backups as well, because desktop systems have become complicated beasts — containing updates and patches, user profiles, application preferences and myriad other customized settings. Restoring these can take hours or even days, during which time you have an unproductive employee.

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Puppy Linux 2.02 Review

MadPenguin reviews Puppy Linux 2.02.

Lately, it feels like the world is being overrun with otherwise outdated PCs. With landfills overflowing with unwanted computers, it’s great to find that Linux developers have taken it upon themselves to offer a viable solution to simply throwing away older computers. In today’s review, we’ll look closely at Puppy Linux and how well it does from a compatibility point-of-view. Since a number of other reviews have already explained how well Puppy Linux can do with outdated hardware, we figured it might prove valuable to see how well Puppy Linux functions on newer hardware with the needs of today’s notebook user.

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PCLinuxOS shines, despite dull name

DesktopLinux is reporting on a review of PCLinuxOS done by ExtremeTech which we completely missed last week.

Although it suffers from an incredibly boring name, PCLinuxOS has a lot to offer desktop Linux users. It’s a shame that so much utility has to be obscured by a bland name—but hopefully the developers will decide to rebrand this distribution under a catchy name.

I never had a problem with the name, but then, it is quite different than Beernix.

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Gentoo 2006.1 Review

Techgage has a review of the new Gentoo 2006.1. Included are many screenshots of the LiveCD and the GUI installer in action.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full six months since 2006.0 was released. Time indeed flies. The regular Gentoo release schedule is one per six months, and with this current release they hit the schedule dead on. This release doesn’t introduce anything major, but there have been many improvements that we will be getting into.