Episode 078 – Go Blue!
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Total Running Time: 1:25:14
Un-edited Live session – http://youtu.be/opFwsEzFs14
Contact Us:
show (at) smlr.us or the Contact us page
Summary
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 17:30
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 21:40
Mary Distro Review
Time: 28:15
Tech News:
Time: 48:40
Toolbox
Time: 59:30
Is it Alive? – Mary
Time: 1:06:30
Listener Feedback
Time: 1:13:25
Outtro Music
Time: 1:18:35
Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Sound bites by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
Time: 17:30
More will be added later
Distro Talk: Tony
Time: 21:40
- 3-31 –Bodhi Linux 2.3.0 – Ubuntu-based distribution with the latest Enlightenment window manager
- 4-1 – Slackel 3.0 “Openbox” – lightweight Slackware-based distribution,
- 4-3 – Emmabuntüs 12.04.2-1.04 – Xubuntu-based distribution with the Xfce desktop and a large number of pre-installed applications
- 4-4 – Pear Linux 7 – highly customised Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution with GNOME 3.6
- 4-6 – OS4 13.4 – Xubuntu-based Linux distribution
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Bodhi – 1601
- Pear – 1843
- Mageia – 2333
- Ubuntu – 2485
- Mint – 3646
Mary Distro Review – PearOS 7
Time: 28:15
For you Franc-o-philes this week’s review is of PearOS, a French distribution. According to PearOS’s web site: The purpose of Pear Linux is to create an operating system based on Linux (think Ubuntu mini remix) and propose a simple but powerful interface. If I were writing the definition or purpose it would be to create an operating system that looks like AppleOS, behaves like AppleOS but costs a heck of a lot less than AppleOS.
So would PearOS be a POS or would it bosc in the glow of a positive review?
Poire (pwah) Pear in French
The Vitals:
Name: PearOS 7 (http://pearlinux.org)
Maintainer: David Tavares
Distro Latest Birthday: 4/4/13
Derivative: Ubuntu 12.10
Kernel: 3.5.0-23
Review Desktop: Gnome 3.6 (which appears to have been modified)
Minimum System Requirements include 512 MB physical RAM, 8 GB available disk space, 800×600 display resolution. Hearing that you’d think it would be available for 32-bit systems but you’d be wrong You need a 64 bit processor to run PearOS 7. I checked the site and it’s simply a matter of the main developer having the available time.
Live Environment:
Pear OS boots to a very polished, easy-on-the-eyes desktop. On the left side are the icons you typically see. PearOS includes another icon – Welcome to PearOS. When opened it displays a visual tutorial for six different PearOS features:
Launchpad – for application starting and access
Mission Control – a bird’s-eye view of running apps
Desktop Switcher – hot lower left corner allows switching between desktops
Clean My Pear – a system clean-up utility for both user and root-level cleanup (better know your password). It didn’t seem to let you be selective about what you cleaned
My Pear 4 – easily customize your system: panel, dock, etc. which seemed to be easier said than done
Notification Center – for messages
PearOS includes two panel apps on the desktop: a) Plank which is centered across the bottom of the screen in a very Mac-like way; b) Wing-Panel – a panel at the top-right hand corner of your screen designed to show only the indicator and session applets.
Graphics: ( nvidia was automatically detected and loaded)
Wireless: (iwl4965)
The Defaults
Browser: Firefox19.0.2
Office Suite: LibreOffice 4.0.2 (available via ppa)
Mail Client: Geary Mail
File Manager: Files (actually Nautilus)
The wallpaper looked celestial and spacy and reminded me of the Apple environment. It’s time to take a look at the installed version.
The Install Process:
Nothing much to say about the process to install, aside from the fact it’s Ubuntu-based and solid—I only experienced one error– an id10t error when I rebooted and realized that I overwrote my Grub install.
Installed Environment:
Logging in to PearOS for the first time was easy but it’s time to take a more in-depth look at the installed version of PearOS.
First, the buttons. Because PearOS is designed to closely resemble Apple, the three standard title-bar buttons are, of course, located in the upper left corner of the application window. The upper right corner shows a button that toggles maximize/restore. It takes a little getting used to One thing about the “green button” – clicking it will drop down a list of options for that window including maximize, un-maximinze, always on top, etc.
WingPanel – As noted earlier it is meant to handle the indicator and session applets while not taking up the entire top of the display like Gnome Panel. However, in POS and other distros that use Wingpanel (based on my research), it did stretch across the entire top of the screen, with no way to change the configuration. In my opinion, Wing-panel was Gnome-panel without any configuration capability. I decided to remove Wingpanel and replace it with Gnome-panel (which I was able to start—both panels overlayed each other) which also was installed. That proved to be a bad decision. The simple removal of wing-panel rendered the entire desktop unusable. All I had was my spacy wallpaper. My desktop was truly lost in pace. Danger…Mat Enders…danger!! (with apologies to Will Robinson)
I dropped to the terminal (CTRL+ALT+F1) and executed a startx command. Within a few seconds I was back in a graphic desktop—of the root user. And there was no customized pear desktop. I had a stock Gnome3 desktop, the wallpaper of which displayed the the following notice: “This is a alpha version of PearOS 7.” Even more interesting was the fact that wing-panel was not listed in Synaptic as available for install, even though the history window clearly showed it as being uninstalled today. After posting to the PearOS forum and receiving a quick response from one of the administrators, I reinstalled PearOS and continued my testing .
The other panel I mentioned earlier is Plank. By the way, it wasn’t initially intuitive how to add launchers to Plank. However, a bit of looking in PearOS’s forum revealed the steps. Any open app will appear on Plank. Simply right click the program’s icon and select “Keep in Dock.”
Installing software can be handled by PearOS Software Center or you can use the ever-reliable Synaptic which also comes pre-installed. I have used Synaptic for years. Even after it was not included in Kubuntu by default, it was one of the first things I added after install. The POSSC looks professional and, undoubtedly, is based on Ubuntu software center. Anyone using it should have no difficulty finding and installing software they need. Newly added software is filtered to the top. Another options is to filter by top-rated software. Selecting a category on the left presents available options in a detailed list format. It would have been nice for Fonts to show a preview of the font, but it didn’t.
I installed Pingus was impressed at how far the game has evolved…now you’re saving penguins from climate change.
I opened Firefox and attempted to load a video for playback. I had issues with the display—Firefox slowed to a crawl…and a notice that Firefox is not responding…Do I want to force quit or wait. As it turns out, Adobe Flash plugin crashed. So, I installed Chromium and tried from there. It crashed, too. Later I tried it again and did not have a problem.
Other interesting Programs:
Pear Utilities – a set of tools to help customize your PearOS experience: a) My Pear (lets you set your hot corners; b) Clean your Pear– helps you clean your Pear; c) Pear PPA Manager, which listed gnome3, libreoffice4, gambas3, yorba as the ppas available with install.
Time Back – A backup utility that uses an external USB to hold backups of selected directories. Pear’s answer to Apple’s Time Machine. Can select the frequency of backups—from one hour for the past 24 hours, daily for the past month, weekly backups until your hard disk is full. I tested Time back – it created a file called cronopete within which are the files earmarked for backup.
On Air – a simple music player but it does have an equalizer.
Rating: Rating PearOS is kind of tough. On one hand you have a polished desktop that looks similar to MacOS. It’s very functional, has some well-done custom tools, and is nice distro for anyone who’s not going to tinker the system.
My issues with Pear– a) Wingpanel is experimental and the lack of customization overall forced me to the ledge a couple of times; b) the documentation is spotty—but the forums are helpful and you can also google your question. I get the impression that the project could use more help.
3.0 cups
Tech News:
Time: 48:40
More will be added later
WUBI To Be Dropped from Ubuntu 13.04, Windows Users Lose Out
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/04/wubi-unlikely-to-be-in-ubuntu-13-04-windows-users-lose-out
Microsoft’s Market Dominance Is Coming to an End, Say Leading Analysts
Link to the Gartner study: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2408515
Exclusive: Ongoing malware attack targeting Apache hijacks 20,000 sites
Scribd document-sharing service hacked
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Scribd-document-sharing-service-hacked-1836241.html
KDE Korner
KDE Ships April Updates to Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform
Mostly bug fixes and translation updates.
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.10.2.php
First Alpha release of Muon Suite 2.0.0
the first alpha release for Muon Suite 2.0. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Packages for Kubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” are available in the QApt PPA.
http://jontheechidna.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/muon-suite-2-0-0-released/
Kabuntu 13.04 is released
Kubuntu 13.04 Beta 2 is now available for testing. It contains a bunch of new and updated features, see the 13.04 Beta 2 page for details. Upgrade from 12.10 or download the image to install it.
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/RaringRingtail/Beta2/Kubuntu
The Toolbox
Time: 59:30
More will be added later
Is it Alive…?
Time: 1:06:30
During this segment of the show, I challenge Mat and Tony to identify whether a Linux Distro is alive or dead? Every other week, I twist the concept for our game show and challenge Mat and Tony to decide if the named entity was a Linux distribution or something else. This week is not twist week, so the task is very simple. Is it alive or dead…
====================================
Max Linux – MAX: Madrid_Linux is the operating system of the Ministry of Education and Employment of the Community of Madrid.
http://www.educa2.madrid.org/web/max
MAT: d
TONY: d
VERDICT: : Alive
====================================
Xamin – Is an Iranian distro
http://xamin.ir/en/
MAT: a
TONY:a
VERDICT: Alive
===================================
ehad Linux – was ia single-CD, Mandriva-based distribution designed for the speakers of Hebrew.
MAT: d
TONY: d
VERDICT: Dead
===================================
Dreamstudio – is a multimedia distribution based on Ubuntu’s latest long-term support (LTS) release:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dreamstudio/DreamStudio_Unity-12.04.2-i386.iso
MAT: a
TONY:a
VERDICT Alive
===================================
Leenux – is a Linux distro specifically designed for eeePC and netbooks
http://www.leeenux-linux.com/
MAT: d
TONY: d
VERDICT alive
===================================
Infra Linux – was a distribution of Linux with the full cycle of development that is based on Ubuntu .
MAT:
TONY: alive
VERDICT: dead
===================================
Mat won by one
Listener Feedback:
show (at) smlr.us or 313-626-9140
Time: 1:13:25
Ronnie – LXLE maintainer
Guillaume – Ditro review finding script!
The script is licensed under the “make as much money with it if you can and, while you are at it, take credit for it too… I don’t really care.” licence.
Download script: drscript.sh
Outtro Music
Time: 1:18:35
Punk Rock by Difraction of light
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.