#about linux

http://www.everythingliveon.com/superx-os-greases-the-classic-linux-wheel/

SuperX OS Greases the Classic Linux Wheel

SuperX OS is a solid Linux distribution that dispels all of the criticisms about using free open source operating systems.

SuperX is a relatively new distro developed by Libresoft. Based on Ubuntu and Debian, it adds a highly customized KDE desktop environment. Version 3.0 — dubbed “Grace” after computing pioneer Grace Hopper — was released March 23.

Version releases come out about every 10 months or so, but the maturity and impressive performance of this latest release makes the SuperX OS a prime replacement choice for whatever distro you now use — it is that good.

SuperX OS should be one of the first options for anyone looking to dump Microsoft Windows. It needs almost no learning curve.

A Better KDE

As an advanced Linux fan, I used to prefer the KDE desktop environment for its wide range of configurability and flexibility. However, traditional KDE implementations are often complex and confusing for newcomers, with sometimes overwhelming options to remember. What I especially like about how Libresoft’s SuperX KDE is the way developers tweaked it to be simple and effective.

SuperX OS uses a tweaked KDE desktop environment that is clean and inviting.

One example of this tweaking is the absence the Activity feature. Activity is a subset of Virtual Desktops. Each Activity space you create can have its own set of Virtual Desktops. The Activity feature is an alternative virtual desktop. In KDE, you can use both methods.

Each Activity workspace or screen can have its own wallpaper, icons and widgets. I never found the Activity feature in KDE to be anything near useful. It seems not to exist at all in SuperX OS. The right upper corner, the usual hot spot to navigate to the Activity controls, is not a part of SuperX OS.

Over the years I have switched to the Cinnamon desktop. I find its flexibility and configurability rivals that of KDE, but it is simpler and more convenient to access all of its overlapping features. That is the same reaction I have toward how KDE functions in the SuperX OS.

Under the Hood

What caught my eye in this KDE variant distro is its desktop responsiveness. Grace gives more priority to application performance.

The Grace engine compresses unused memory pages within RAM rather than swapping them out to the swap partition. This makes the OS responsive even when the system memory is low. Commonly used applications are preloaded and cached in memory for faster startup of favorite applications.

SuperX Grace comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This release is a Long Term Support version. It will receive regular software updates and bug fixes until April 2019.

Lean Hardware

SuperX OS 3.0 runs on most legacy hardware. It excels on well-endowed modern gear.

System requirements are rather basic: minimum 1-GHz processor (dual-core recommended) with at least 1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended) and 25 GB of disk space.

SuperX 3.0 ships with KDE 4.13.3, Linux kernel 3.13, and a full range of multimedia support. The installer offers an option to install non-open source drivers and codecs to ensure that all audio and video formats play, including Flash-compatible plug-ins.

KDE tends to make older, less-endowed computers sluggish. A favorite old laptop with 1 GB RAM locked up once it fully loaded Super X OS. Other older computers with 2 GB or more RAM worked fine.

Integration Works

The customized KDE 4 desktop environment works impressively well. It sports a dark plasma theme.

SuperX includes all the tweaks of KDE and QT, plus the benefits of some adopted Linux Mint tools.

I like one in particular: SuperX Sources is a fork of Mintsources from Linux Mint. The Package Manager is based on Muon. SuperX has social and instant messaging integration provided via Social Messenger.

Applications Included

SuperX comes preloaded with both the Mozilla Firefox and Chromium browsers, and a fully functional Flash player. The Firefox browser comes with the download manager/accelerator DownThemAll! extension preinstalled.

SuperX’s default video player is VLC. Musique is the default music player. OpenShot video editor is preinstalled, as is the Filezilla file transfer client.

Other solid software packages include KDE games such as Kapman and Potato Guy, LibreOffice office suite, GIMP image editor, Thunderbird email, Kate text editor, KTorrent torrent client, Java, K3B disc burner, GParted partition editor, Kamerka webcam, Konversation IRC client, and more.

Easy Navigation

Moving around the desktop is very easy in SuperX OS. The corners are hot spots. Push the mouse pointer into the upper left corner of the screen to see an Expo view or thumbnail presentation of all open windows on all virtual workspaces. Pull the mouse pointer out of the corner to return to the standard screen view.

Push the mouse pointer into the lower right corner to see a grid view of the open applications in each workspace. This view gives you the added advantage of seeing which apps are open in each workspace. Click the minus sign in the grid to remove an empty workspace. Click the plus sign to add another workspace.

Free or Donate

Libresoft Technology is a privately held company that provides commercial services based on SuperX and other open source technologies.

Do not let the prompt for payment on the download page deter you from trying SuperX OS. Just put $0 in the payment window and press the download button.

Of course, you can voluntarily pay whatever you want for this open source Linux distro. Besides the freemium version — which worked flawlessly on several of my old and new computers — Libresoft offers a professional version for business and enterprise use, with paid support.

Bottom Line

SuperX OS has almost all of the applications that an average home or office user would want out of the box. It is quick and easy to add much more.

Do not let the newness of this distro keep you from trying it. This latest release is far more developed than many Linux distros that have been around much longer.

Libresoft did not attempt to reinvent the Linux OS wheel or create a new desktop to add more confusion to an already crowded desktop field. Instead, it focused on fine-tuning one of the most productive Linux desktop environments.

SuperX lives up to its name. It is a superb operating system choice.

Like this:

http://www.everythingliveon.com/linux-4-0-brings-skynet-closer-to-existence-offers-reboot-free-kernel-patching/

Linux 4.0 brings Skynet closer to existence, offers reboot-free kernel patching

Linux 4.0 is almost upon us! It’s codenamed “Hurr durr I’ma sheep.” Yes, seriously. Linux kernels have weird codenames.

Setting aside the head-scratching title, Linux 4.0 isn’t a massive change from Linux 3.19. It would have been named Linux 3.20, but lots of people wanted to see Linux 4.0. As Linus Torvalds himself said, “the strongest argument for some people advocating 4.0 seems to have been a wish to see 4.1.15 – because ‘that was the version of Linux Skynet used for the T-800 Terminator.’”

Reboot-free kernel patching

The biggest feature (aside from dragging us ever closer to the robotic hellscape seen in the Terminator series) is live kernel patching. When an update—perhaps a critical security update—is issued for the Linux kernel, this technology would allow the operating system to swap out its running kernel without a reboot. It might sound like a minor time-saver, but it’s actually a huge deal for mission-critical servers that need maximum uptime.

Originally, this feature was offered by Ksplice. But Oracle bought that technology and it now only works with Oracle Linux. SUSE developed their own solution, named kGraft, and Red Hat developed their own solution, named Kpatch. The live-patching feature found in Linux 4.0 works with both kGraft and Kpatch, making everyone happy.

Don’t necessarily expect your Linux desktop to get rebootless patching any time soon, as this requires some work to implement. But it’s a big deal for Linux servers and clusters that need all the uptime they can get.

Intel Skylake, AMD Radeon, and PlayStation 3 drivers

The Linux kernel gained a lot of hardware driver improvements, offering improved hardware support. There’s been work done on graphics and power-management support for Intel’s Skylake processors, the successor to Intel’s Broadwell platform. The Intel Quark system-on-a-chip platform is now also supported, along with many new ARM platforms—ARM support is increasingly being integrated into the mainline Linux kernel.

AMD Radeon graphics cards are getting better driver support in Linux 4.0.

The open-source AMD Radeon driver now supports audio over the DisplayPort connection, better fan control support, and other improvements. Gamers will still want to run the closed-source AMD FGLRX driver, though—or stick with Nvidia hardware, which provides a superior closed-source graphics driver.

Hardware support for everything from the open-source Nouveau graphics driver for Nvidia GPUs to various input devices and Toshiba laptop power-saving settings has improved. Sound drivers have been cleaned up, and the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) support also has a bunch of improvements.

Amusingly enough, there have also been patches forrunning Linux on the PlayStation 3. Despite Sony removing the “OtherOS” option from existing PlayStation 3 consoles with a firmware update—and facing a class-action lawsuit for doing it, although that was dismissed—PS3-related patches are still making it into the Linux kernel.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is still getting love in Linux kernel updates.

File-system drivers for everything from the F2FS flash-friendly file system, OverlayFS file system for live environments, pNFS file system for network file system clients, and BtrFS next-generation file system have been improved, too.

http://www.everythingliveon.com/bodacious-bodhi-broadens-linux-desktop/

Bodacious Bodhi Broadens Linux Desktop

Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 RC3’s implementation of the Enlightenment desktop, makes an awesome desktop computing platform for office or home.

Bodhi is one of only a handful of Linux distros embracing the Enlightenment environment. Its developers call Bodhi the Enlightened Linux Distribution.

Beware if you try it: Bodhi Linux could easily become your favorite Linux distro.

That accolade does not come easily from me. I have become very attached to the latest Linux Mint release running the Cinnamon desktop. As flexible and feature rich as Cinnamon has become, Enlightenment exceeds it by leaps and bounds.

Enlightenment takes a bit of adjusting to, however. It has a learning curve and a customization path that renders it not so out-of-the-box ready. But you get a configuration fine tuned to your computing needs without the bloat of never-used applications.

Linux Picks and Pans highlighted the Enlightenment desktop in a special review last year that looked at the fledgling implementation of Enlightenment in four new distros, including an early Bodhi release. This year I spent some time since its February 5 release working with this alternative desktop environment.

The current release is marked by the recent return to the project of one of Bodhi’s major developers, Jeff Hoogland. The first stable release for the third major update to the Bodhi Linux operating system, version 3.0.0 was released on February 17.

Enlightenment Primer

Enlightenment is a Compositing Window Manager and Desktop Shell. It is radically different from other lightweight interface shells such as Xfce and LXDE.

Enlightenment is lightweight, so it runs of lots of legacy desktops and laptops. It is also very customizable. It is adaptable for small mobile devices as well as multicore desktops…the primary development environment.

This desktop environment offers a basic core design. Its design is tweaked and integrated differently depending on which supporting Linux distro you use. Bodhi Linux developers are leaders in how far the tweaking goes.

Enlightenment’s menu pops up from any point of the desktop with a left-button click of the mouse, instead of being in a single place. A more traditional menu button is also present on the Bodhi panel bar. This bar can be on any edge of the screen depending on the selected theme.

Bodhi Basics

Bodhi Linux is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Enlightenment 17.04. It uses a modular structure that provides a high level of customization and choices of themes. Bodhi’s philosophy is built around minimalism and user choice.

The default Bodhi system is light. Its only pre-installed applications are the Midori web browser, Terminology (Bodhi’s terminal application), EFM (Enlightenment File Manager), and the Leafpad text editor.

Bodhi Linux’s system tools and default applications are very different from more standard desktop environments.

More software is available from the AppCenter, a web-based software installation tool. The developers contend it is easier and better for users to build the system their way from the start. That trumps having to remove all the unwanted apps and install the desired ones.

Why the Midori browser over more popular options, like Firefox, Chromium or Google Chrome? Midori is central to the modular design of Bodhi Linux. The Midori browser is very lightweight yet functional. It installs applications directly from the Bodhi Linux AppCenter, a feature that some other browsers lack.

The EFM is tweaked to work within Bodhi Linux to add files and launchers to the desktop by moving the desired files and launchers into the desktop folder that’s located in the home directory.

You can opt out of displaying desktop icons at: Main Menu>Settings>All>Files>File Manager under the Display tab.

But you can add other file managers and designate other default applications for more traditional functionality by going to: Main Menu>Settings>All>Apps>Default Applications.

Modular Methodology

The AppCenter is one of the software building blocks. The Bodhi repository has many common applications the developers consider the “best of breed” applications for each particular category. It also provides several application-sets (meta-packages) that provide common applications and/or are chosen to meet a particular use case.

Another building block is the system updater process. There are multiple methods to achieve this, but the simplest method is to open the Terminology application, located in Main Menu>Applications>System Tools, and running these commands:

[] sudo apt-get update[] sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade

The third modular software building block is the Synaptic Package Manager, common to all Debian GNU/Linux based distributions. It is installed in Bodhi Linux by default.

To access it, go to Main Menu>Applications>Preferences>Synaptic Package Manager. This provides access to all of the applications in the Bodhi Linux and Ubuntu 12.04 repositories.

Using Bodhi

Bodhi Linux and the Enlightenment desktop bring elegance that makes using Linux a new experience. Bodhi has an easy-to-use workplace switcher on the desktop; and it is effortless to place gadgets on the desktop.

However, the system tools are very different from more standard desktop environments. And the few pre-installed applications are different from the stock apps used in the other distros.

Bodhi offers five profile configurations.

Bare is a minimal setup with very little loaded. This is an advanced feature for setting up your own custom Enlightenment configuration.

Compositing is a vertical setup with flashy effects.

Desktop is a basic setup suitable for most desktop configurations with a menu, taskbar, systray and clock along the top.

Fancy is an alternative setup with more artistic layout.

Laptop/Netbook is a basic setup for most laptop/netbook configurations with a menu, taskbar, systray, power monitor, clock along the top and a CPU scaler.

Bodhi Linux has six themes. These range from two-tone gray or black, to a few multi-color options, or light blue.

Bodhi Linux’s use of Enlightenment serves up a different user experience on the desktop.

The biggest problem that I had with Bodhi Linux was getting it to access the wireless connection. Hard-wired Internet worked fine on both my desktop and laptop computers. But none of my cadre of mobile gear was able to connect to my various wireless hardware components. I could not find any driver solutions or instructions on getting wireless to work. Obviously, this is one large potential drawback if you want to take your Bodhi Linux with you.

Bottom Line

The Enlightenment experience is not for all Linux users, especially those who are less skilled. I am impressed with Bodhi’s integration of the Enlightenment desktop. It is far ahead of what other distros are doing with this modern environment.

The user interface, however, is not intuitive. Experienced Linux users will figure out the differences and adapt quickly. Newcomers to Linux should expect lots of frustration in trial-and- error sessions to make any headway.