Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution. In its early years, Patrick Volkerdin rolled up a kernel, init, libraries, desktop, and applications to make Linux easier for users. And that's still what he is doing today. He doesn't change anything, he doesn't customize anything. Every component is exactly how the original developers intended. For example, users get a vanilla kernel and default desktop configuration.

Known as "Goddard", Fedora 13 not only boasts a current software selection and a modernised design, it also offers an extensive range of technological improvements. As usual, the distribution demonstrates its pioneering role in this area and many of its advanced features are likely to appear soon in other Linux distributions.

Another nifty feature in Mint 9 is the backup tool; you can use this to make backups of your personal files or to back up the software you have installed (or both). If you've spent a few hours getting all the packages on your desktop system just right, why go through all that again on your laptop? Just back up the software selection and then do a fresh install on the laptop, and then restore that to the laptop.

The software manager with Mint is also pretty useful. It now includes more than 30,000 packages to choose from.

For the techies, the Kubuntu uses Plasma Netbook Shell and it looks a lot more futuristic than the Ubuntu, at least to me and my team. I absolutely love the animations and how the windows behave. Excellent – Very. But, here is a word of caution – as you would have already noticed from the screenshots, it looks quite a lot different from the existing netbook distros, chiefly because all of them use Ubuntu Netbook Edition as their base. So, it will take a day or two in getting used to the KDE+Plasma Environment.

One of the first things you will notice is that there is a heck of a lot more icons on the desktop and panels than on the standard Ubuntu. The panels are practically bursting with icons and monitors. The two icons on the right side of the lower panel are of particular interest (one of which was mentioned by PeterB). Take a look at Figure 3. The far right icon (the big X) is basically an icon for the xkill command. This command will fire up a special cursor that will kill any application you click on. It’s very handy when an app is not responding.

My Series 1 TiVo is getting old, so I am planning an escape route based on MythTV, a free software system that turns an old computer into a personal video recorder. This week I tested three MythTV-specific Linux distributions: KnoppMyth, MythDora, and MythBuntu. I found MythDora the best overall fit for my needs -- but there are important distinctions between the three that may lead you to a different decision.

One of the first and most noticeable changes in version 1.6 is that it now contains a LiveCD option. While I wouldn't consider this to be a typical livecd, it certainly stacks up well against the large collection of other livecd's out there. Initially you're greeted with the standard Freebsd boot screen and bootup sequence. The first part of the livecd session starts out with a semi-graphical welcome screen that is keyboard driven.

Puppy Linux, in case you aren’t already familiar with it, is a lightweight version of Linux that is designed for portability.

The .iso file of Puppy Linux 5.0 weighs in at an incredibly petite 128 MB. It’s much, much smaller than all of the usual desktop heavyweight distros. But don’t let its small size fool you, Puppy Linux 5.0 is anything but an also-ran in terms of functionality and usability.

KDE's social networking and network collaboration features received the biggest boost. Another focus was the further improvement of the Plasma Netbook shell. This alternative desktop is designed to improve the ergonomics of KDE for netbook users. The changes are complemented by added structural modifications.

KahelOS is essentially a remastered version of Arch Linux. Arch Linux has always had a reputation as being somewhat inaccessible to average desktop users, and KahelOS is an attempt to make Arch Linux more accessible to more people.

OOo 3.2 is a step in the right direction. Firstly, it's a lot faster. Version 3.2 of Writer launched more than 50% quicker than 3.1 in our tests, down to 3.4 seconds from around 7 with a fresh reboot. That alone makes a big difference, but the UI also seems to be more responsive. We used Writer exclusively over the last couple of weeks, and there's an almost imperceptible improvement in the on-screen typing latency, which can really help if you create a lot of words.

On May 18th, the Linux Mint project released version 9, codenamed "Isadora" of their popular re-spin of the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

What's the big deal about Linux Mint and why is it so popular among Linux users? It's because that it includes a number of improvements and tweaks that aren't set up out-of-the-box in the base Ubuntu distribution.

Virtualbox is a virtualization application developed by Sun and is available for Windows, Linux, OpenSolaris, and Macintosh. It allows you to run another operating system (a guest) without dual booting. While I have always been a big fan of Virtualbox, I have always found virtualization (regardless of the application) to be slow and behind the times, so I would only use a virtual OS when absolutely necessary. Virtualbox 3.0 may actually convince me to use the technology more often.

With the might of the Xapian search engine at its command, the lightweight Recoll might just be the tool for you, if you can get it up and running. Almost no distro carries Recoll in its software repositories, and the tool's dependency list might put off a few users. To begin, you need xapian-core, plus Qmake and Qt. Fortunately, these are readily available from the software repositories. This would translate to a 10-place penalty on the starting grid were it not for the packaged binaries for Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva and other distros.

Recoll starts indexing as soon as you click File > Update. It stores the index in the ~/.recoll/xapiandb/ directory. By default, it'll begin indexing from your home directory, including any mounted partitions or SMB shares.

Arch Linux is one of the few distributions to be optimized for an i686 processor- in other words, it's really fast without having to compile anything. It uses a custom package manager called Pacman (which, surprisingly enough, doesn't seem to spark any legal controversy), which works similarly to Apt in that it has dependency tracking and relies on repositories. Arch's philosophy is to start with a base system and install all the graphical components manually via Pacman. This means you need a working Intertube connection and a fair amount of time on your hands. A caution before you install Arch: Arch is NOT meant for newbies.

MINIX has traditionally been an operating system with an eye toward education. Both versions 1 and 2 of the MINIX system were designed to be useful for students learning about operating systems. The code behind MINIX was small and clean, making it a practical study tool in this complex field. The latest offering of MINIX, version 3, attempts to keep the same principles as the previous versions, but also strives to be more practical as a modern, UNIX-like, operating system.