pinguy OS

Although I’ve settled with Linux Mint as my main OS for the moment, I still like to keep an eye out for other distributions. The other day I discovered Pinguy OS, which is another distribution based on Ubuntu. According to their website (pinguyos.com):

Pinguy OS an out-of-the-box working operating system for everyone, not just geeks

This OS is for people that have never used Linux before or for people that just want an out-of-the-box working OS without doing all the tweaks and enhancements that everyone seems to do when installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu or other Linux based Distro’s.

I thought I’d give it a whirl. Rather than install it in a VM, as I normally do, I thought I’d install it directly onto my laptop. The process was painless, and done in less than fifteen minutes from a flash drive. After a reboot I was presented with this:

 

Desktop

My first thoughts were that it looks quite pretty. It has a standard Gnome panel at the top of the screen. Clicking on the icon in the top left corner activates the main menu – Mint style. To the right of that is a drop-down menu that allows me to switch between currently running applications, or show the desktop.

Next to that is something that I’m more used to finding within applications; a menu showing File, Edit, View, Places and Help. It’s a nice touch, and the various options can be accessed by using Alt-F and so forth. If I wanted to create a new spreadsheet, for example, I would select “File > Create Document” and select ODS spreadsheet from the list. Unfortunately all is does is create the document (on the desktop), and it has to be manually opened for editing. I would have expected such an action to actually open Libreoffice directly, so I was a little bit disappointed.

On the right-hand side are the usual network, sound, messaging and calendar applets that you find in gnome, along with a few others which I may well remove – things like clipboard applet, system monitor and desktop switchers are unnecessary for me. The other icon is for the update manager, which is Mint’s version rather than Ubuntu’s.

Docky is used for the application launchers at the bottom of the screen, and to open common folders on the left. Again, I prefer to use the keyboard so it is rather surplus to requirements for me. Gnome-do is also installed, but again, I haven’t really used it. Or rather, never really got the hang of it! (One day, perhaps).

Conky is also installed, providing the HUD on the desktop.

Software

Software management is done via the Ubuntu software manager. In my opinion this is far better than the one shipped with Mint. Synaptic is available too, for those so inclined.

Internet

Firefox 6 was released the other day, and that is the default browser. It comes with a list of add-ons as long as my arm:

• Adblock plus, Dictionary tooltip, Downloadhelper, Download statusbar, Downthemall, EmailThis bookmarklet, Fasterfox lite, Flash-aid, Plain Text links, Rehost Image, Resurrect Pages, SearchPreview, Shareaholic, Skipscreen, Speed Dial, YouTubeIT

AARGH. No, this is wrong. Extensions are very much a personal preference. Out of that lot the only ones I’m keeping are Adblock Plus, Shareaholic and Flash-aid which I’d never seen until now. I still have to install things like XMarks, Lastpass and a few others, and I also have to spend time uninstalling the add-ons I don’t need. I’d rather see the browser shipped without the clutter and let the user choose.

Email is handled by Thunderbird 3. Or rather it would be if the program hadn’t crashed. I got as far as entering my name, email and password on the setup screen before it crashed and left me with a blank window. After killing the process and restarting the program it did work, but once again it comes with a list of add-ons that I probably won’t need. Having said that, since Gmail appeared, I never use an email client.

Empathy is the default for instant messaging, and Gwibber is there for social networking. I prefer Pidgin for the former, and I have already installed Tweetdeck for the latter.

Skype and Dropbox are already installed, which is handy. Deluge is the torrent client and there are a few other bits and pieces, notably Teamviewer, which I happen to use a fair bit.

Office

Libreoffice is the default, along with wxBanker personal finance manager and Calibre for e-book management.

Graphics

Shotwell handles photographs and when I plugged in my phone, I was prompted to open Rapid Photo Downloader which displayed all the available pics and downloaded them. It does what it says on the tin, I suppose, although I would have preferred to choose where they were downloaded to, and whether they were left on the camera. I’ve never been a huge fan of Shotwell, but that’s down to personal preference. There’s Pinta for creating and editing images (never tried it), Simple Scan and a couple of programs for handling CD/DVD labels.

Media

Rhythmbox is the default music player, which I definitely prefer over Banshee. Movie Player for Video playback and Openshot is there for video editing. VLC and XBMC are also installed, along with stuff for converting things to other things.

Conclusion

Overall it’s quite a tidy distribution. It combines some features found in Mint (like the main menu) with some of the better ones from Ubuntu (software manager). Flash works out of the box, and the Flash-aid Firefox add-on keeps it updated. The acid test for flash used to be getting the BBC iPlayer to work, but nowadays the test is with ITV player; it will not work on Mint or Ubuntu, but works perfectly in Pinguy.

The pros? Well, I think the File>Edit>Etc. menu on the desktop is wonderful. Anything that reduces mouse movement is welcome in my book. The desktop is pretty, as are its effects. I have my spinning desktop cube back for starters. I had no hardware issues, and my phone (SE K800i) was detected the moment I plugged it in.

The cons? The number of Firefox and Thunderbird extensions. With Mozilla’s new rapid-release schedule for Firefox, there is going to come a time when something is going to break, and to have so many installed by default is asking for trouble. I’d also prefer to see less clutter on the Gnome-panel.

Would I switch to it? I think I would, although I’d like to spend a little more time with Pinguy before switching completely, and I’d like to try the 64-bit version to ensure that Flash performance is as good.

Sorted

It has taken ages, but I’ve finally got the Windows PC updated and installed with all the necessary software. It’s strange being back with the Auld Enemy, but like riding a bike, it’s not difficult to get back into the swing of things.

One thing that struck me as being very annoying was the constant string of updates that occurred soon after the re-installation. Installing XP itself only took about 20 minutes, but I was several hours waiting for the seemingly endless “download, reboot, install” process. I found it all quite exhausting.

I still don’t know what caused that drive issues that prompted the whole process in the first place. Two disk drives that have worked together without a problem suddenly didn’t want to behave any more. Each drive behaves individually, and when I put each one on a different IDE channel (not at the same time) they both work fine.

Could I drop Linux and go back to Windows? No, definitely not. The painful update process that I endured with XP can be performed with one beautifully simple command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

The downside to all this fiddling about is that I have hundreds of RSS items and Tweets to catch up on. Looks like tonight is going to be a late night as well!

Still Minty

I’ve managed to stick with LinuxMint for almost a month now. It isn’t perfect, though. There are a few annoyances that I’ve discovered, like applications not completely filling the available space until I click once on the top border of the window. That’s a minor one though. The only thing that really irks is the Alt-Space action. Ordinarily it would bring up the window control menu, but instead the whole top border bar vanishes along with the window control buttons, and I can’t figure out how to get them back without logging out and back in again.

Other than that, everything seems to be fairly stable, and I certainly do not miss the random X crashes that I had with Ubuntu.

My favourite Mint feature has to be the search box in the main menu – if I search for an app that isn’t installed, it gives me the chance to do so, without having to bother with the software centre, or mucking around with apt-cache search.

Will I be sticking with Mint? I think yes is the answer to that question. What will happen when Gnome 3 becomes the default, I don’t yet know.

Linux Mint: Day Two

It’s tweak time.

I prefer my main menu top-left on the screen, so I’ve moved it back there. I’ve also created a second panel at the bottom to contain my application switcher. Here I also added my “show desktop” in its traditional place, and a wastebasket icon on the right. Okay, so I’ve lost a wee bit of screen real estate, but no more so than I had with Ubuntu. I could have added the “Applications, Places, System” menu if I’d liked. I do love Gnome.

I also managed to figure out the shortcut key for the main menu. While Alt-F1 will bring up the standard main menu, [Control] and [Windows Key] will bring up the enhanced Mint menu. Right clicking on the menu and selecting “Preferences” will allow this to be changed. I had hoped to change it so that only the Windows key would be used, but it didn’t seem to work. I will keep tweaking.

I have noticed one major positive change; my laptop has remained relatively cool and the fan noise isn’t nearly as intrusive. I had issues with excessive fan speed in Windows Vista, and on more recent Ubuntu versions, and so far (touch wood) I haven’t had that with Mint.

So will I stick with Mint? Well, I’ve already copied my documents across, and I’ve installed all the Firefox extensions I need, so it looks like it’s going to be a working system for the time being. I’m going to give it a week before I make a decision.

 

Minty Freshness

After a month with Ubuntu 11.04, I’m fed up with it. First there was Unity. Fortunately I wasn’t forced to use it, and decided to go with “Ubuntu Classic”, but it still wasn’t quite right. Lately I have been having X crashes, regularly finding myself dumped back to a login screen. I don’t think I’m the only one either.

I tried the Kubuntu variant. KDE is quite pretty, but it’s fairly heavy on system resources, and I just couldn’t quite get it. Having a Gnome desktop for so long, it was always going to take a while to get used to it. Perhaps I didn’t give it a fair crack of the whip, but it just wasn’t for me. Similarly, Xubuntu and Lubuntu didn’t quite cut it either, although the latter was very snappy compared to the standard Ubuntu desktop.

I’d dabbled with Mint on a few occasions, but only in virtual machines. Today I decided I was going to properly install it to see if it would make a decent alternative.

As with Ubuntu, the installation was fairly rapid and went without a hitch. After a reboot, I was presented with a welcome screen offering me the chance to download the restricted packages (Flash, codecs etc.), which it did in one step. I also chose the “Upgrade to DVD version”. A visit to the Software Manager allowed me to install Adobe Air (for Tweetdeck). Other than that, I was ready to go. Pidgin was already installed, so all that I had to do was set up my accounts.

Wait – I forgot Skype. I wasn’t sure if it would already be installed, so I typed the word into the search box. Not only did it give me options to search Wikipedia or Google, but it searched through the available packages too, and gave me the option to install it there and then. I was certainly impressed by that.

It’s taking me a bit of time to get used to the menu being at the bottom of the screen again, but I can change that easily enough if I want to. It’s also nice to have the window control buttons on the right, where they should be. I had a quick look through the settings in the Control Centre and there was an option to put them on the left “Mac style” if I wanted to. No rummaging through gconf-editor to do this either.

Overall, I like what I see in Mint 11. The one feature that I absolutely adore is the ability to install something from the main menu, without having to open the Software Manager. If there was one thing I could gripe about, it’s not knowing how to open the main menu with the keyboard. Alt-F1 does open a menu, but it’s not the same as the one you get when you click the bottom-left corner of the screen. I suppose I’ll just have to look through the help files to find out.