#pinguy

Pinguy OS est une distribution GNU/Linux basée sur Ubuntu avec une interface Gnome Shell à laquelle on a ajouté un dock et un conky. Y’a pas à dire, ça titille la rétine !

Le dock à la Mac OS X et le conky en haut à droite.

          Malgré la présence du menu de Gnome 3, la Pinguy propose un autre menu supplémentaire à la façon de elementary OS où les logiciels sont classés par catégories :…

New Post has been published on http://gamewas.com/penguin-run/

Penguin Run

New Post has been published on http://giochilibero.com/pinguino-run/

Pinguino Run

Saw this on webupd8 the other day. Pinguy OS 12.04 beta, based on Ubuntu 12.04, is now available for download.

Unlike the previous 11.10 release which never reached a stable state (because Pinguy didn't consider GNOME Shell 3.2 stable), Pinguy OS 12.04 will have a stable release.

The latest Pinguy OS 12.04 LTS beta uses GNOME Shell 3.4.1 as the default desktop environment with quite a few extensions installed by default, such as: Weather Indicator, Cardapio Menu, Classic Systray, Native Window Placement, Workspace Indicator, GPaste, User Theme, System Monitor, Media Player Indicator, and many more.

Like in the previous release, Pinguy OS 12.04 beta uses Cardapio, a cool, highly customizable application menu as the default menu, replacing the GNOME Shell Activities Overview. You can, however, disable Cardapio and re-enable the Activities Overview and Dash, by using GNOME Tweak Tool which is installed by default.

So I installed it to a USB drive and tested it. My impressions? When I first loaded Pinguy up, my immediate thought was that the desktop was cluttered. Many Linux distros take great care to not overly clutter the desktop with icons and toolbars, but apparently that's not the case with Pinguy. Now, most Live-CD's place an icon on the desktop to "Install the OS", so I'll discount that one being there. But in addition to that one icon, there was also an icon for Examples, Language Support and Additional Drivers. These icons on most distros don't appear on the desktop, but are usually tucked away in some menu somewhere in case you need them. With the desktop already packed with TWO Docky bars, the extra icons on the Desktop make it seem very cluttered. Pinguy comes loaded with a bunch of extensions which can be enabled or disabled using the gnome-tweak-tool. Most of them seem to work, but there are a few that will not enable due to unmet shell dependencies. While the Hot Corner was disabled, I discovered it is still possible to access the GNOME3 Dash by hitting the Super-key. Then all the open windows are spread, and you can access the GNOME3 Dash menu from there. I think it's interesting that Pinguy decided to use GNOME Shell 3.4 to develop their desktop on, as they've taken great steps to make it look as un-GNOME3 as possible. From disabling the Topleft Hot Corner, to using Cardapio in place of the Dash, to using a double Docky setup in place of the GNOME3 dock, this distro has the feel of GNOME3 without some of the immediately obvious benefits of GNOME3. I suppose the reasoning was that is would be more stable based on GNOME3 than on Unity.

I encountered one serious issue though. When I went to take a screenshot of the OS, I discovered that the OS doesn't respond to a press of the PrintScreen button. So I went hunting for a screenshot program. One program, called Shutter, comes installed with Pinguy. However, every time I went to make a screenshot, CPU and RAM usage climbed to the point where the system froze and I had to hard-shutdown by holding down the Power button.

Final impressions?

I really like GNOME3. PinGuy was nice, but it took away some of the best features of GNOME3 that I liked. In the end, I can't help but think of PinGuy as another GNOME3 spinoff.

It seems stable enough to use and enjoy as a desktop solution.

I have two computers to test on right now. One is an Asus 1201t that came with no OS (only Expressgate) out of the box. It has 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HD, an ATI HD3200, and an AMD processor. Linux has a history of playing not-so-nice with ATI, which comes into play later.

The other notebook I'm playing with is the exact opposite. It's a massive, tricked out Lenovo Thinkpad originally designed for use by a professional engineer. It has a 2.0 GHZ dual-core x920 Intel processor, 16 GB of RAM, a terabyte of space in the way of two 500 GB RAID HDs, a Quadro FX 3800m with a half gig of memory, and a 22" screen. It's ridiculous, especially for a laptop. (I screwed up this computer's bootloader while messnig with Bodhi Linux. Bodhi's installer crashed and affected the boot sector. Either that, or Adobe's STUPID Flexnet DRM technology that writes to the boot partition caused GRUB to screw up.)

Both machines have Windows 7 installed on them and run reasonably well on it. I decided to start playing with Linux, after briefly using Ubuntu 9.04 or 10.04 in 2010/2011, after installing Mint 12 "Lisa" on an old Dell with 1 gb of RAM. It worked beautifully and I started checking out other distributions. I've ended up going through maybe half a dozen in about a week?

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The rundown:

OpenSUSE.

Too massive. (4.7 gb?) I was torrenting this and realized there was no way this was going to fit on my 4 gb usb drive. 4.7 gb for the latest version. Why?

Pinguy OS.

Works very well. Is supposed to be Ubuntu that just works, and it does just that. It's comes configured beautifully and with oodles of useful software. The ISO is 1.6 GB, which is quite huge, but I feel justified for so capably accomplishing the stated mission of the OS. Unfortunately, I won't use it because I have Windows as a full-featured OS. Plenty of software choices in MS, free or otherwise.

Mint.

My go-to Linux OS. Stable, easy to set up, fairly simple to customize, and plays well with my hardware. Both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions work well on my hardware. The ISO comes in at about 700 MB to 1 GB. Hopefully, running the LXDE version (just finished downloading it) will make it even faster on the small lappy. Compiz is shizballz right now, and I don't really need all that fanciness.

A small issue here is that Flash stutters, which does not happen in Win7. I'll see how the LXDE version does and Google for a solution.

Ubuntu.

Fine, but runs slow and is rather buggy on my small computer. It's not particularly fast on my large laptop, either, and I find Unity difficult to customize.  Commendably, they keep their downloads at around 700 MB. I've tried the 64 bit 11.10 and the release candidate for 12.04. 11.10 worked well, not remarkably so, and 12.04 booted into some scraggly colored lines, not surprising considering it's not an official release yet.

I installed the Lubuntu, Xubuntu, and Kubuntu desktops in 11.1 on the large laptop and liked them all. KDE impressed me, in particular, but I liked how snappily Lubuntu ran.

Bodhi Linux.

This is the OS I want to be my go-to. I like the community and the look but, unfortunately, it runs slowly on my hardware once installed. (Bloathi might be better? Timmy, a user on the Bodhi forums has created an alternative installer for Bodhi that includes software and drivers, which will hopefully make it an easier OS for me to explore. It is a 1.4 GB ISO, compared to the base ISO of 374 MB.)

My other problem with Bodhi Linux is more serious. The installer has stalled on both my machines and possibly damaged GRUB on the large computer. Again, this might be Flexnet since both machines have Adobe software -_-

I've resigned myself to patiently waiting for their next release, which is supposed to include Englightenment 1.0 as the desktop environment. The community is a big part of why I'm drawn to this distribution. On top of being very supportive of each other, they also have great resources like an art wiki. (Check out their gorgeous Desktop of the Week gallery.)

Puppy Linux.

Ehhh.... Limited, and annoyingly so. Linux is about flexibility, right? Adding software is unnecessarily difficult and the OS feels crude, though it's fast and does what it sets out to do. Useful if you want an OS off your flash drive and loaded into your RAM (so as to preserve drive life). Otherwise, LiLi makes useful portable distros.

Download comes in at 126 MB, which is great, but tweaking it is a chore. I do really like how it loads into RAM, and Puppy does have a unique charm to it. I had hoped to make it my main Linux OS because of that and being able to run it from a USB drive, but I suppose it's not for me.

I was running the Slacko 5.3.2.6p beta from their forums.

Distributions I'm going to or want to try:

Crunchbang.

Promising. I like minimal, but powerful OSes. Maybe this will work better than Bodhi? Both are Ubuntu derivatives and operate on the same idea of quick, attractive, and powerful. It's a 643 MB download for the more stable non-backport version, of which I'm downloading the 64 bit variety.  (Just started the download in microTorrent.)

Slitaz. 

Promising. The 30 MB, super-minimalist download is cool. So is the distribution's reputation for stability and functionality. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Debian.

Not tried because it seems to require too much tweaking. It seems stable, which is priority no.1 for me. Honestly, Linux takes up a lot of time for someone just figuring stuff out. Debian garners praise from all corners, though, and I would like to test it out.

Archlinux.

Maybe in the future.... It seems like a fun thing to try once you know your way around what Linux desktop operating systems have to offer.

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