Openmamba 3 Mini Review - The Italian for KDE

Another week, another operating system.  This week it’s openmamba 3 GNU/Linux, an independent distro originating in Italy.  Openmamba 3 is available as a live dvd, live cd (that is too big for a cd) and a disk image.  Previous versions and a rolling release are available for servers, i586, x86_64, raspberrypi, bananapi and cubox ARM architectures.  This review is based on the full 64bit live dvd.

The initial experience with the live dvd is not a happy one.  Live dvds are always slow and on an Asus Eeebox’s paltry hardware they’re even slower.  This one was close to glacial.  Thankfully I wasn’t intending to review the live environment and chose to install as quickly as possible.  The installation was quick and trouble free taking about an hour to the reboot point.

 The installed system is slow to start but once up and running works well enough.  Openmamba uses the KDE desktop on the live dvd but gnome can be installed and lxde is available on the rolling release lightcd.  Almost the full range of KDE software is included but it is the extras that are notable.  Libreoffice and Okular are added for office, Chromium and Filezilla for the internet, VLC and Wine.

In general software management is handled by Apper and Smart Package Management but a third tool, Network Software Installation, launches on first startup offering applications not available in openmamba’s repositories.  These include Skype, Spotify, Flash, Java and MS codecs and fonts.  There is just one problem: it doesn’t work.  In the test the installation failed if attempted at first startup and had to be repeated later with each application installed singly if an overload of the system was to be avoided.  Even then it took four attempts to install Skype.

Overall Openmamba worked quite well, was reasonably fast and didn’t overuse resources but there were problems.  Sound playback on VLC was intermittently affected by what can only be called “crackling” and the program refused to recognise the subtitles inside an .mkv file, flash on firefox didn’t seem to want to display video and I could find no way to change the wallpaper (I know it’s there, it just wasn’t worth hunting for).  Yes, it could look good and it has the compiz cube but compared to last week’s Trinity based distro, Q4os, Openmamba’s KDE incarnation was simply not good enough.

Q4os Mini Review - Something A Little Different

This week saw the first Long Term Support release of q4os, Q4OS 1.4 Orion, an unusual little desktop operating system. Q4os is available as a bootable installation CD or a live CD (308MB and 643MB respectively) and features the rarely seen Trinity Desktop Environment on top of Debian Jessie. Trinity is to KDE what MATE is to Gnome: a throwback fork of an earlier iteration designed, at least partially, to avoid the bloat of its parent.

The initial installation from the Live CD is fast and relatively painless before the user is given three levels of installation: Desktop, Basic and Pure. The desktop gives a range of software, basic very little and pure almost nothing. After choosing Desktop the system downloads Chrome, Libreoffice, Thunderbird, VLC and a number of other applications to go on top of basic KDE utilities like Konqueror and Kwrite.

Going back to a basic KDE environment was a surprisingly comforting experience and, without the traditional resetting of the keyboard after install (what do they have against French keyboards?), a reasonably painless one. Everything worked and worked fast. Memory usage bottomed out at around 250MB reaching 513MB with Chrome, Libreoffice Writer and VLC running together.

Q4os does have a few quirks. There is no integrated screenshot program, necessitating the use xwd in command line (hence the paucity of screenshots in this review) or pinta and no torrent client. Additionally, neither Konqueror nor Chrome could handle Magnet links and the usual Chrome fix does not work with the Trinity Desktop Environment and Debian Jessie. To get 1080 video to work on low spec systems you'll need to install xbmc in synaptic; its an old version but works fine.

All in all Q4os, and the Trinity Desktop Environment, are quite good and with support until “May 2020 at least” should gain a good number of users. It's KDE the way it used to be; for good or ill.

Cubuntu Mini Review

Cubuntu 14.04.2 International - So close.

What does every Desktop Environment need? Yep, an Ubuntu variant. But Cubuntu is more than just Ubuntu with the Cinnamon DE, it’s got Unity and Mate too. Even a Gnome2 option. This is a review of Cubuntu, the belt and braces of Ubuntu variants.

First impressions of Cubuntu are good. The default Cinnamon desktop looks very good and the background is gorgeous. The range of software included is more than adequate. Alongside all the standard software of a full Ubuntu installation (Libreoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Rhythmbox, etc.) can be found Chrome, Skype, VLC, Spotify and Radiotray. If the developers had managed to squeeze GIMP and Kodi into the 1.8Gb disk image they’d be nothing left to install.

Unfortunately the gushing has to stop. There are problems. Attempting to download updates during installation is pointless, it simply doesn’t happen. Moreover, if you are not using the same keyboard as the default option you will have to change it, individually, for each desktop. These are both one-time fixes and not really a major problem. The problem with the Nemo file manager, default for both the Cinnamon and Unity options, is more permanent. The shortcuts for Documents, Pictures etc. in the sidebar are dead-ends that do not lead to the folders concerned.

Fortunately the Mate option does not suffer from the same problem. The Mate DE utilizes the Caja file manager and Cubuntu has kept it; its sidebar shortcuts works. The only possible criticism of the Mate setup is the absence of the Mate tweak tool which is included in the standard UbuntuMate. 

 

Overall Cubuntu’s not bad. The option of multiple DEs is nice, alowing the user to choose which suits them, and their hardware, best. The Mate option is fast, the Cinnamon option is pretty and the Unity option is, well, ... Unity. If the French developers sort out the little problems (and add the tweak tool to Mate) Cubuntu could become a major distro, even THE major distro.

Cotton OS Mini Review

Cotton OS Mini Review

First in a series of mini reviews of lesser known Linux distros comes Likemoresoft’s Cotton OS, a windows-lookalike intended to ease the migration from Microsoft.

Cotton is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS using the kwin window manager from Kubuntu and the Xfce desktop from Xubuntu. On the test Asus Eeebox underlying CPU & memory usage stood at 3% and 17% (350Mb) respectively rising to 17% and 30% (590Mb) with Firefox running.

The installed software is typical of an xfce distro, Firefox and Thunderbird for web and mail, Parole and Gmusicbrowser for media, Abiword and Gnumeric for office.

The standout feature of CottonOS is its “windows-like” appearance. The default “user” account has traditional M$ icons and the background of Windows 8 complete with a conky displaying the weather in Los Angeles whilst the “root” account is a slightly less offensive monochrome design.

As expected from a xfce distro, CottonOS is FAST. That is the only reason for using it, its speed cannot make up for its abominable appearance and blatant misuse of M$ Windows trademarks. I had this installed for a month and avoided using it like the plague. The only way its makers can possibly avoid legal action is by claiming fair use as a parody. That claim would be immediately believable.