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Today we'll be looking at another Music and Graphical artist Linux distribution (commonly referred to as a distro) in the unusual Dyne:bolic; a liveCD with some unique capabilities for media activism, artistic creation and multimedia production.
From the 'getting started' information box, immediately available upon entering the desktop environment, we learn that there are two ways to use the liveCD without ever installing the distro, yet at the same time keeping all your work for the next session.
One of the ways to preserve your work is to create a NEST, which you copy to a USB key; the other way is to DOCK the system by copying the contents of the /dyne directory onto any part of your hard disk--similar to an installation, without the chance of fouling up another install.
Dyne:bolic 2.4.2 uses the Xfce window manager, and is suitable for slower or older computers with limited ram; running it with 256M of ram allowed it to fly, so presumably as little as 64M would be workable, though obviously, the more ram the better it will operate.
Though not as packed as Musix, Dyne:bolic does offer all that one would expect for a music/graphics distribution; pro apps such as Ardour, Rosegarden, Audacity, and the like; applications for streaming radio, creating video (Kino, Avidemux, Cinelerra), creating/burning/ripping music, and loads more.
This distro has a distinctly political feel to it, and no wonder; visiting their website you see a banner declaring that Italy is colonized by the US and ruled by criminals with a picture of now former Prime Minister of Italy Berlusconi in a red circle with a slash across it.
Politics aside, Dyne:bolic has all the tools to do just about anything you could imagine in the creative arts, and has excellent hardware recognition of USB, Firewire, video cards and so on.
It is a libre distro, so don't expect Flash 9 and youtube viewing, though watching video and listening to mp3s was ready to go off the liveCD.
For graphical artists there is plenty to be happy about; Dyne:bolic comes with GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, Blender, XSane, and ImageMagick.
Though lacking the full Office Suite, it does include the excellent text editor Abiword, desktop publisher Scribus, Lyx as a text processor, and nano for the real geeks.
Firefox, Links2, and Links (console browser) are available for surfing the net; Thunderbird and Mutt for email; gpa for encryption, as well as Xchat and GAIM for instant messaging/irc.
Dyne:bolic includes two internet phone apps, NVU for web publishing, and a number of apps for vnc as well as internet tracing/sniffing, two torrent clients (ktorrent and bit torrent), soulscape for P2P, and a gnutella client.
Not being a graphic artist or musician I couldn't test the capabilities of all the included software, but if you are one, then you will find plenty to like in this distro.
Dyne:bolic is lightweight, very responsive with limited ram and packed to the gills with everything for an aspiring artist or media activist. Well worth a look if you are considering such ventures, but only have older or slower computers to use. Dyne:bolic is available for download here, and some screenshots are here.
Just looking at my desktop, I come to realize how much I have come to depend on vmware-server; sadly my license for the beta expires in six days--after that I either have to fork over $39 (early buyer price, full price $79) or start burning the ten or so ISO files littering my desktop. Sigh. Have to really get going on reviewing those I want to before the clock strikes twelve. Though with Intel buying a stake in vmware, it might be wise to pay for a copy after all.
You may want to do a bit less text processing; the best one is now 1% away from being considered a full-fledged AI according to the Turing Test. Yikes!
Forget the iPhone. Get a Linux-powered OpenMoko phone. And at half the price. What's not to love (except the looks)?
SAMBA is going GPLv3, and the screws are getting ever tighter on Microsoft--nobody is buying their line about not being a party to the GPLv3 in light of their deal with Novell. Couldn't happen to a nicer convicted monopolist.
Not surprising then that fewer and fewer developers want to work for them, the migration to Linux continues apace. Can't they ever catch a break? Mwahahahaha.
If you've heard of the one laptop per child program from MIT, then this may interest you; some folks check out Intel's competitor product, the Classmate PC, aimed at the same demographic--kids in developing and third world countries.
And finally, if you live outside the US, then you may soon be able to buy one of those nifty Dell boxes with Linux pre-installed; Dell has announced plans to sell them first in Europe, with other regions to follow. Great news for Linux, and another stake in the heart of The Monopoly.
Some distros slated to be reviewed in the near future are the latest from LinuxMint (with Xfce!), Famelix (XP lookalike), Grafpup (spinoff of PuppyLinux), Granular Linux (from India), and BerryLinux (from Japan).