Aptosid - An Overview

Michael Reed — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0000

aptosid might sound like a package management tool, but it's actually a desktop-orientated (KDE4 or XFCE) Debian derived Linux distro. It's more than a mere respin of Debian, but does it have what it takes to distinguish it from all of the other desktop distros?

Looking at the approach that aptosid (lower case only, the name is a portmanteau of the Latin word for adapt and the name of the Debian unstable branch) takes, it's clear that it is a distant cousin of Ubuntu. Both distros are desktop orientated, fairly simple to install and based on Debian. The major differences are that aptosid offers rolling updates and only comes in KDE4 and XFCE flavors. It features enhancements over and above pure Debian in order to broaden hardware support. However, as it conforms to the Debian definition of free software, non-free codecs are installed by adding the non-free Debian archives.

Booting from the live ISO image is the first stage of carrying out an aptosid installation. Being a KDE man, I tried out the KDE4 edition, and the first thing that hit me upon booting was the wacky custom artwork that is paired with a dark theme. Garish or an acquired taste, it certainly lends this distro a distinctive atmosphere. Even when booting the ISO image inside a VirtualBox VM, things are fast and stripped down, a good sign.

The aptosid desktop. Shades aren't supplied with the download. Apart from the radical custom art, it's a pretty standard KDE4 desktop.

Installing aptosid isn't quite as idiot proof as a standard Ubuntu install. For example, the user has to manually partition the hard disk using a choice of tools including Gparted. Beyond that, the options, which are selected before beginning the installation, are fairly minimal. The link on the backdrop that takes you straight to the Aptosid IRC channel is a welcome touch that more and more distros have begun to include.

The relative speediness of the live CD was, thankfully, carried over to the fully installed desktop. Restricting the VirtualBox VM to 512MB, the desktop was still very responsive, which has to be good stuff considering that it's KDE4 that we're talking about here. I'm not going to list the default applications, as the website already does that, but suffice to say that an up-to-date Iceweasel build (Firefox by another name) is the web browser and the other applications are the standard ones that you'd expect to find on a KDE4 desktop.

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Tiny Core Linux 3.6 adds GUI installer

Michael Reed — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000

by Michael Reed

With the release of version 3.6, the Tiny Core crew have added a GUI method for hard disk installation. As I have, on previous occasions, banged on about this omission, I thought I'd take a look.

In the past, I've had a love/hate relationship TinyCore Linux distribution. On the one hand, it sports some amazing technology. It's a lightweight distribution based on a custom core. By default, it gives you a basic desktop with a dock along the bottom and enough GUI tools to begin adding applications and making other customizations. See our overview of Tiny Core circa 3.3 for more details.

The fly in the ointment was that although it was easy to add applications, making persistent changes and performing a hard disk installation has always been for experts only. Just to clarify: There's nothing inherently wrong with HD installation being a command line affair that requires quite a lot of Linux knowledge and extensive references to the documentation. In the past, this use case (hard disk installation) isn't one that the developers chose to focus on. However, to me, and some other admirers of what Tiny Core has to offer, it seemed like missed opportunity. There is a class of user who has experience with Linux while not being guru enough to do things like installing GRUB manually. As soon as I first came across Tiny Core, I felt sure that this was the type of user who could put tiny core to good use in order to quickly put together minimalist custom Linux desktops.

So, what does the long-wished-for installer actually look like? First of all, although it's a GUI application, it's not the Ubuntu installer, and it doesn't try to be. Along the way, the user has to answer some questions and specify boot options. If you've not used Tiny Core before, you will have to hit the documentation to familiarize yourself with some of the concepts. For example, Tiny Core has a number of different boot modes. These control what aspects of the operating system are persistent and specify the balance of how much of the OS runs directly in RAM. One snag, for newcomers, is that the documentation on the website isn't yet fully in sync with the new installer. However, new users should be able to glean what they need from the older documentation.

The new installer.

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