From France comes a nifty little wonder guaranteed to run on just about any x86 box ever made, LinuxConsole. The ISO I downloaded is the full (692M) sized version, designed to run on 64M of ram; other lighter versions tout the ability to run on 16M of ram, and while I didn't try those, after using LinuxConsole 1.0 in vmware-server I have absolutely no doubts on the authenticity of those claims. The ISO download is also available through bit torrent.
I first became curious about LinuxConsole after checking the DistroWatch rankings for the past week; while clearly unscientific, they do provide a clue as to what is getting attention around the internet fairly accurately.
As always, let me begin with this disclaimer: if you are new to open source software, then some fine sources of information are available here, here, here, here, and here. Phew.
While I did not install LinuxConsole--only using the liveCD function--I still was able to gather a fairly solid impression of just how well it might run, running in virtualization using the (for now) free vmware-server. I set the ram size to 256M, four times as much as LinuxConsole demanded, and gave it 4G hard drive space on the virtual machine. Again, well more than the installer recommended.
LinuxConsole offers icewm as the default window manager; KDE, GNOME, Beryl+Compiz, and a number of others are supported as well. This little distro reminded me a lot of PC-BSD in that it uses a somewhat unique package manager; PC-BSD uses the packages pbi, which have all the necessary dependencies included, while LinuxConsole uses the lcm (LinuxConsole Modules) in a similar fashion. Both avoid some of the now-distant (thankfully) problems associated with getting into trouble with packages not having all of their dependencies (support packages) installed with them.
This is a very new distro (released just a couple of days ago), and as such does not have the number of available packages as a more established Linux distribution such as Fedora or Debian; nonetheless, I think that the excitement generated by the modular nature of this Linux distribution will have a number of converts in no short order.
As I began writing this review, I noticed I still had a good thirty minutes until I could post it, so I decided to go for a full on install of LinuxConsole; I think that the limitations of vmware prevented me from getting the full experience, and the developer might just want to add an icon to the desktop that says 'install me' or the like, just to allow newer users of Linux to have a very clearcut path to doing so. Installation was fast (under vmware conditions); though I'll have to try this out in liveCD mode on my test machine to get a more accurate feel; I've considered installing it, but as fast and complete as it is, don't know if it's really necessary. When the liveCD is this fast, then the install--how much faster can it get? The liveCD absolutely flies on minimal ram.
Continuing to play around in the liveCD, I went to youtube (Flash9 worked perfectly in Firefox2), loaded a story in the BBC, and went to an mp3 download site (just streamed, didn't download/Pirate!!!!!!) and tried that out--all worked very well, in fact, faster than any computer OS I am currently running--Ubuntu, Wolvix 1.1, OS X Tiger. My reasons for doing this? Well, to ascertain whether all the media codecs work out of the box. They do, and most excellently.
The developer of LinuxConsole has a number of versions of this distribution available for download; a traveler, a gamer, a multimedia, one or two others I forget the name of, and the full-sized one. Will report back on how the liveCD runs on my test machine in a day or two.
On the heels of the release of the GPLv3, there is some very big news coming out; news that will once and forever smash The Monopoly, empowering all the rest of us nobodies to do what we wish with the hardware and the software that we run, and the data that is on it. Three days prior to the final release, Eben Moglen gave a speech in Scotland that is both beautiful and poetic; so wonderful that I can't but help quote some more from it, though you should and must read the full text, as well as watch the video of this presentation.
And what is the goal of The Monopoly?
The entertainment industry on Planet Earth had decided that in order to acquire Layer 7 Data Security, it was necessary to lock up layers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 so that no technological progress could occur without their permission.
And the reaction of the IT and consumer electronics industries?
This was known by the IT industry and the consumer electronics industry on the planet to be offensive nonsense
You truly have to read the entire speech, as Mr. Eben Moglen lays it all out with absolute clarity. Adding any more would be doing a disservice to his words.
To put in perspective how important Linux and open source have become--he and Richard Stallman spent the past eighteen months meeting on a weekly or bi-monthly basis with the 20 or so top IT vendors, a similar number of the largest users of software in the world (banks, brokerages, government agencies, etc.), as well as the leaders of the top open source development projects and the most skilled developers, coders, and hackers, and came to this agreement.
Just a little more than a day after the release of the GPLv3, Google has put up Linux repositories for all the major Linux distributions; the pages include clear explanations on how exactly to enable these repositories, both in the command line and through the graphical interface, with a ton of screenshots. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This is, if not the coup de grace, then the high warning shot across the bow. Or something.
To close, something of beauty from Mr. Eben Moglen's speech:
If it is possible, easily possible, to give to each human being who wishes it, anything of utility or beauty in our world of civilization, if it is possible to deliver any such entity anywhere at any time at low cost or at zero cost, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything she wants? Why is it ever moral to deprive people of that which they could have for nothing and which they wish to have, and you already have made?