Quick review for SING , first distro of 31 Flavors of Fun project

SING is the first distro released by Todd Robinson for his 31 Flavors of Fun ( there are 4 available distros already). I was curious so I downloaded and put it into a USB drive anyway to test it. Here is a quick review for SING with some screenshots of this distro in live CD mode:

The size of SING is pretty big (over 1.7 GB) so you will need a DVD or a 2GB+ USB to test it, I used Unetbootin to create the bootable USB and got no problem at all.

The desktop environment of SING seems to be Gnome 2 and is highly decorated with an AWN dock at the top of the screen and a tint2 panel at the bottom. The AWN dock is quite well arranged with many applets and has several effects enabled, although it takes too much vertical space IMO. The main color theme of SING is brown and as you can see in the screenshot below, there are many shortcut folders on the desktop by default:

SING performs decently when it comes to hardware consumption, at idle, it eats up around 200 MB of RAM, which is pretty low in today's hardware capacity. However, its still not the lightest distro for sure.

The default web browser of SING is Ice Weasel, when you start it, it will open Todd Robinson's blog:

Good old Nautilus file manager is used in SING but the theme is quite outdated:

With 1.7GB in  size, there are a lot of preinstalled applications in SING. For internet use, besides IceWeasel, you also have Pidgin, Skype, Dropbox and IceDove (for mail client ):

For office and graphic work, you have the LibreOffice bundle, Evince, GIMP and several other apps. One thing I like about SING is that this is the first distro I've known that includes an offline dictionary (GoldenDict) by default:

 

For multimedia, you have Audacious and VLC to handle everything. However, due to some unknown bug, the sound doesnt work for me. Perhaps it's the problem when you want to create a full distro in such a transient time without proper testing. Flash is preinstalled by default but the sound still doesnt work:

The software center of SING looks like the old one of Ubuntu:

This is just a quick review of mine for SING, the first distro of the 31 Flavors of Fun project, I will do some deep testing soon when I have time. If you are interested in this extraordinary project, you can download SING and 3 other distros here.

Bridge Linux 2012.8 "Xfce"

Dalton Miller has announced the release of Bridge Linux 2012.8 "Xfce" edition, an Arch-based distribution and live CD: "Bridge 2012.8. It was requested a lot, and now it's here: GRUB 2 is the default bootloader in Bridge Linux 2012.8. There are a few notes about this - first, the bootloader install should detect all operating systems on the system, but it will change the root kernel parameter of Arch installs with a vanilla kernel. There are quite a few changes: fixed the /etc/hosts file; fixed the Xfce X respawn error; fixed some mkinitcpio issues; fixed the installer; added French and Turkish language support in the installer; added menu item to run post-install script after first run; added instructions for proprietary GPU drivers...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes. Download (MD5): bridge-xfce-2012.8-i686.iso (637MB), bridge-xfce-2012.8-x86_64.iso (658MB).

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Damn Small Linux 4.11 RC1

Nearly four years after the last stable release, the Damn Small Linux distribution is once again being actively developed. Yesterday John Andrews announced the availability of the first release candidate version 4.11: "Here is the first release candidate for Damn Small Linux (DSL) 4.11. The changes in this release are a step toward making DSL a friendly alternative for older hardware. I've fixed some bugs, updated some applications, and replaced others. Applications: updated JWM to 2.1.0 (now supports rounding); updated Dillo to 3.0.2 (much improves CSS support); added XChat 1.8.9; added sic 1.1 IRC client; added XCalc-color. Modified desktop functionality: it is now possible to switch between JWM and Fluxbox without shutting down X; added menu items to switch between DFM and xtdesk icon engines or use none at all...." Here is the release announcement with a full changelog. Download: dsl-4.11.rc1.iso (50.6MB, MD5).

The 31 Flavors of Fun project has been started

If you still remember, Todd Robinson from On-Disk.com is trying to create and release 31 different usable and complete Linux distros everyday in August 2012. Three distros have been released, they are named SING, SOHO and Debian_live_VTWM.

If you want to download and test these distros, you can check the mirrors here and here. These three distros are pretty big in size in my opinion, all are above 1.7GB.

If you want to keep track of the 31 Flavors of Fun project, you can check Todd Robinson's blog, follow the twitter feed @31Distros31Days and participate in the forum

Toorox 08.2012 "Xfce", "Lite"

Jörn Lindau has announced the release of Toorox 08.2012 "Xfce" and "Lite" editions, a Gentoo-based live DVD. Both editions feature the Xfce desktop environment, but "Lite" includes fewer applications and lighter productivity program (AbiWord instead of LibreOffice). From the release announcement: "Toorox 08.2012 'Xfce' and 'Lite' have been finished and are ready for download. This release is based on Linux kernel 3.3.8-gentoo and contains the latest Xfce desktop environment, version 4.10. Compiz has been built into the Xfce edition for a little bit eye candy. The default applications for web and mail are now Chromium and Claws-Mail. All packages have been updated: X.Org Server 1.12.3, Mesa 8.0.4, Chromium 21.0.1180.55, GIMP 2.8.0, Audacious 3.3, Wine 1.5.9, LibreOffice 3.5.4.2. Toorox 08.2012 'Xfce' and 'Lite' now support 11 languages." Download (MD5): Toorox_08.2012-32bit_XFCE.iso (1,609MB), Toorox_08.2012-32bit_LITE.iso (938MB), Toorox_08.2012-64bit_XFCE.iso (1,777MB), Toorox_08.2012-64bit_LITE.iso (986MB).

ClearOS 6.3.0 "Community"

Peter Baldwin has announced the release of ClearOS 6.3.0, a CentOS-based distribution for servers: "ClearOS Community 6.3.0 has arrived! Along with the usual round of enhancements, this release introduces new applications focused on the mail server stack. Anchored on the Zarafa for ClearOS solution, you can now implement an on-premise or private cloud mail server using ClearOS. This release includes the following new applications: Zarafa Community for ClearOS, Mail Antivirus, Mail Antispam, Antispam Updates, Greylisting, and more. For businesses and organizations, ClearOS Professional 6.3.0 also includes Zarafa Professional for ClearOS, Mail Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky and Gateway Antimalware Premium powered by Kaspersky." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Download: clearos-community-6.3.0-i386.iso (596MB, MD5), clearos-community-6.3.0-x86_64.iso (633MB, MD5).