BLAG7K Is in Alpha release, so I thought in anticipation of it going final, I would try the 6K install. BLAG stands for Brixton Linux Action Group, which "works to overthrow corporate control of information and technology through community action and spreading Free Software." ; sounds like I should move to Brixton. Very inspiring sentiments, and ones that make the open source movement so scary to those monopolists and cartels. We spend huge amounts of our disposable capital on their products, but when there is a downturn in the market, based largely on their unwise business decisions, then we are all labeled criminals and 'Pirates!!!!!' to cover their sorry behinds.
Anyway, back to BLAG6K. It is a very simple install, which should be no surprise, as it is based on Fedora Core 6; everything comes on a single CD, and apart from a teensy bug in finding an IP address during install, it goes quite smoothly. You are asked to enter a root password, choose the kind of install you want (Office or Server), your time zone, and then the installer takes over. I chose to use the entire disk for the install, though you can customize it if you wish using Qtparted.
Once the packages are installed, you are prompted to create a user and enter a password, and are then quickly on to the desktop environment. Everything comes packaged out of the box, so there is no hunting around for media codecs to play MP3s or videos.
BLAG6K has a very user-friendly (i.e., all GUI) interface for adding software, making modifications to your system, and the like. This system is, as I mentioned earlier, based on Fedora Core 6, and I really don't where all the gripes about it come from--updating the software went very smoothly, no hangs or other problems that you often see with smaller distros.
As this is based on Fedora, SE Linux is included, and all ports are locked down with the exception of SSH, which you can disable after first reboot. From first booting the installer disk to updating the system completely took approximately twenty minutes; a couple of extra minutes extra for adding Beryl (of transparent spinning 3D cube fame) from their extras repositories. which the system automatically adds for you once you are ready to update your software.
It is a very minimalist install, without Open Office, adding just the basic tools you need to run a small office or home business, or use just for the fun of it.If you are really into planning for the worst, you can download their entire repository (two extra DVDs) that contains absolutely everything; these guys really think of it all. It really felt quite responsive on this seven year old laptop; kind of odd, because Ubuntu just turns the fan into a 747 engine and makes the underside hot enough to fry bacon. Very understated GNOME desktop environment, with a very pleasant light blue theme as default, with a number of very nice desktop backgrounds included in the initial installation.
If you have an older machine that you can't always get web access for, then this is well worth a try--one caveat being that BLAG6K doesn't have a liveCD. BLAG can also be installed from a USB key, which is a convenient way to spread open source software. Am downloading the Alpha of BLAG7K as I write this, and will give it a try just as soon as I have it.
The BLAG7K install disk offers an unusual choice, at least with my limited experience using Linux; there is the option to upgrade an existing installation, something I'd not seen before, as far as I can recall. I undoubtedly could have done the upgrade over the internet using Yum or Apt (included with BLAG), but as this is based on Fedora 7, and I'm such a big fan of their install process, decided to do it the old-fashioned way, i.e., by downloading and burning the ISO installer disk.
After having chosen the upgrade existing installation option, the installer had no difficulties in spotting the previous installation, then proceeded to ask if I want to create a new boot loader, and where I wanted to install it. I chose the default option (on the Master Boot Record) and the live image was transferred to the hard drive.
This took a bit of time, as Fedora 7 is quite a switch from Fedora Core 6; the core and the extras have been merged, so that the work of developers from Red Hat and the contributors from the Fedora Project are now shared extensively. Not sure how time was actually saved by choosing the upgrade option as opposed to a fresh installation, apart for obviating the need to enter the time zone, root password, create a user with password and so on.
One odd bit about the upgrade procedure is that when a new package was installed over the old one, the installer screen gave a little jump, as if there were an invisible spring being pushed down upon. Not sure if that is a feature or a bug. A list of features for 6K can be found here.
Total upgrade took around thirty minutes before I was back in the desktop environment dumped into the console with the option to debug or reboot (this is an Alpha release, after all); looks like I get to see how long an 'upgrade' versus an install takes after all. Wiil update shortly.
Wowza. The install option is about twice as fast as the 'upgrade' option (when they fix it, that is), and keeping in mind that this is an Alpha release, and very cutting edge kernel, software, etc., it was quite impressive. Now going into first reboot, and setting up SE Linux; crossing fingers to getting an X server at all.
Phew! Scary couple of moments without an X server; after creating a new user, I was prompted to finish, then nothing--just a blank screen, though the disk activity light was blinking. By hitting alt +f3 I got into the console, logged in, then rebooted; now am in the very nice new shiny desktop environment of BLAG7K!
The Blag team seem to taken to heart the criticism leveled at the 6K release by updating the graphics, the desktop backgrounds and the fonts; very sharp looking indeed. Still the same understated light blue theme, but a crisper background, and cleaner, clearer fonts than the 6K install. Superb. More impressions as I play with this system some more, but on the whole, a big step up from an already fine distro. One additional point; this is based completely on Fedora 7, so likely many of the improvements are due to their stellar work; but as they are committed to the libre model of open source software (not including the 'dirty', i.e., proprietary codecs) the Blag team deserves some credit as well.
As I have hit upon all the major (and some not so major) distros in the past couple of months of diarying, I'd like to take the time to examine some of the lesser known distros to see what else is nice out there, a kind of 'distro a day' tour of the open source software movement; I'll likely be skipping compiling KDE from source (a requirement for FreeBSD, and a twenty some hour timesink), but rather concentrate on the distros that have been overlooked; distros like Wolvix, Austrumi, Arch, and the like. If there's some distro you think should be included, please leave a comment--but please have mercy! I'm not ready for Gentoo or Slackware or Linux from Scratch, regardless of how much character that would build in me. Cheers!
Update: Add Arch Linux to list of too hard at this point for me; I read on distrowatch that it had a text installer, but man is that a tough one--using cfdisk to do partitioning is not the user-friendly thing I had in mind when I downloaded it; odd, but BLAG7K seems to have remained untouched even though I formatted the disk in cfdisk under Arch--that's one tough distro! Next up is Vector Linux; hope it's a little easier than Arch.