Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal Alpha 3 Review: Anticipating more cutting edge apps


26th July, 2012, exactly one month after Alpha 2 release, Kate Stewart has announced the release of Alpha 3 of Ubuntu 12.10. Being an avid follower of Ubuntu, I downloaded the 765 MB ISO from the Ubuntu cdimage site. Booting up was quick in VirtualBox and I was greeted with the familiar Unity interface.



From Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 3 Screenshots




From Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 3 Screenshots


AntiX 12: Most complete lightweight Linux distro I have seen!



Linux never ceases to amaze me - particularly the light-weight distros aimed for low powered PCs! There are so many options and depending on your need and suitability you can pick and choose which one to use. Plus, it brings your old machine back to life without compromising on the security and with the state-of-the-art applications! You can't ever think of that with any other operating system,

Linux Mint 13: Now with XFCE and possibly best of the lot!


Linux Mint never ceases to amaze me! First they came up with the heavily cinnamon version of otherwise deplorable Gnome 3 and now they have added XFCE version. And to be honest, it looks brighter and shinier than Xubuntu 12.04 LTS!



From Linux Mint 13 XFCE

As usual, the 830 MB installation ISO is power packed and complete with most of the common apps that we need like adobe flash, codecs,

Sabayon Linux 9: Impressive out of the box distro


I came to know of Sabayon from Distrowatch. And no experience of working with Gentoo and Gentoo-derived distros, I thought of trying Sabayon in my virtualbox. And I am really impressed with a slick and serious OS.

As the OS claims to provide out of the box applications, the distro is is slightly heavier in size. 32-bit KDE is 2.4 GB, Gnome 1.8 GB & XFCE, the lightest, 1.5 GB. You can download

How to install MS Office 2010 in Linux? Even in 64-bit OS you can have Office 2010


I understand Linux purists would fume with this topic. I appreciate the LibreOffice suite - it is really good. But, a lot of Linux users who started with Windows, are more comfortable with MS Office. Also, I have seen quite a few Mac users using more MS Office for their documentation work than i-Works. Without going into the debate, given below are the simple steps how I installed MS Office 2010

OpenSUSE 12.2 first release review



9th Sep'12:
This is an old review of RC1. My final release review is at http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/2012/09/opensuse-122-gnome-review.html. This time I have installed in a system and thoroughly reviewed it highlighting the pluses and minuses.  You'll like it more than this one, I bet!

Old review:

Though I use Ubuntu/Debian allied distros for my daily use, but one distro which intrigues

A week in replacing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with Ultimate Edition 3


Yup, I bought a laptop with 3rd gen i7, 8GB, 2 GB Nvidia GEForce 630M & somehow I wasn't able to totally configure Ubuntu with compiz config to get the desired effects. So, once I saw the Ultimate Edition 3.4 note on distrowatch, I booted it up in my virtualbox. It won't load well on VB, and finally I decided to give it a try. Anyway, it is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and how bad it can be!

I

PCLinuxOS KDE 2012.2: Pretty and solid distro





I have heard a lot of good things of PCLinuxOS and yesterday, finally I decided to try it out. I downloaded the stable version 2012.2 (KDE) from the PCLinux FTP. The ISO is about 690 MB and I booted it up in my VirtualBox. The initial liveCD boot was easy, it asked a couple of questions on my keyboard and location and finally landed on the desktop.







The desktop looks typical KDE and

Decent|OS 3.0 Alpha 2 Review: Good but can be better







Yesterday I reviewed Pinguy and Zorin, and today I booted up another similar distro - Decent|OS 3.0, which is a Ubuntu derivative with Mate desktop. The 930 MB ISO can be downloaded from here. It is a 32-bit image & 64 bit is not available yet. It is still in Alpha 2 stage and should not be used for production purposes.

Booting in a VirtualBox

On booting, the familiar Ubuntu boot up

Porteus 1.2: Really impressive KDE light weight Linux and full of features


I follow Distrowatch a lot. It is the best window available to anyone to know about the latest happenings in distribution world. There I came across the release of Porteus linux 1.2, a slackware based minimalistic linux. Porteus stands for Portable Linux and really it is portable at 250 MB odd size. You can download the 32-bit & 64-bit ISOs from the Porteus website. Amazing that the developers

Fuduntu 2012.3: Neither Fedora nor Ubuntu, but different


In my post on Fedora Vs Ubuntu, I mentioned my wish of having a distro that combine the simplicity of Ubuntu with elegance of Fedora. And a friend of mine, Darshak, suggested me to try out Fuduntu. I downloaded the latest 2012.3 from the website. The ISO is a whopping 931 MB!

I booted it up in VirtualBox. It didn't ask me unnecessary questions like type of keyboard, location, etc. but

Ubuntu derivatives offering a more complete OS: Pinguy & Zorin


One thing I dislike about Ubuntu is that the installation process involves downloading 300-400 mb of data and it doesn't end there! Even after installation, the first update is about 200 mb! Further, to install your favorite programs, you have to download another 100 mb!

What if the OS itself gives you most of your favorite programs? That would save you a lot of time and internet data indeed.

Review: Ubuntu 12.10, code name "Quantal Quetzal" Alpha 2


On 28th June, Kate Stewart has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Ubuntu 12.10, code name "Quantal Quetzal". Already I reviewed Alpha1 release in one of my earlier posts.

Just like what I said, Quantal builds on the success of Precise with some incremental improvements like updated Linux kernel, updated Gnome, and updated Firefox and Thunderbird. In addition, python 2 & 3

Finally! A powerhouse in my possession - ASUS K55VM-SX086D


After a lot of deliberation I finally ordered ASUS K55VM-SX086D, a true powerhouse with 3rd gen Core i7 processor (quad core), with 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M 2 GB DDR3, chicklet keyboard, 15.6 inch widescreen backlit LED display, USB 3.0, and touchpad with gesture control. I thought I had spent a lot of time with my 2003 born P4, 1.5 GB PC and my Intel Atom (Asus only!) netbook