Fedora 9 booted up from the 2GB USB stick I used, and, through the virtue of solid state, did so a lot more quickly than CD-based LiveCD images do. I used my portable Fedora 9 system to browse the Internet. I downloaded some things, and I installed a piece of software, too. I tried rebooting the system, and, sure enough, the changes I'd made did persist.

Hardy Heron has been designated as one of Ubuntu’s periodic Long Term Support – or LTS – releases, for which the company commits itself to providing three years desktop support and five years server support. This means that Hardy Heron isn’t going to go anywhere soon; it’s here for the long haul. This invariably means the designers have focused less on putting brand new stuff in but rather more stability, more robustness and more reliability.

Ubuntu comes with several games such as Mines, Same GNOME, Chess, Mahjongg, and Sudoku. The Internet applications include Ekiga VoIP client, Evolution Mail, Pidgin instant messenger, Vinagre VNC client, Terminal Server Client, and Transmission BitTorrent client. Sound and video programs include Sound Juicer, Brasero for disc burning, Totem movie player, and Rhythmbox music player.

Like many distributions today, the repositories are equally or even more important when considering the software availability.

EXT4 has been a work in progress for some time now, and further EXT4 work is landing in the Linux 2.6.25 kernel. Fedora 9 will integrate support for the EXT4 file-system and will be integrated into Red Hat's Anaconda installer for new installations or converting an EXT3 file-system to EXT4. On the file-system side in Fedora 9 is also encrypted file-system support.

We tested alpha 4 ourselves, and we are very impressed with some of the hot new features. Ubuntu 8.04 is the first version to include PulseAudio, an open-source sound server that offers sophisticated mixing capabilities and network transparency. PulseAudio offers several potential improvements to the desktop user experience, including support for independently controlling the volume of individual applications, transferring audio streams between devices, and outputting a stream on multiple devices at the same time.

gOS stands for Good Operating System; it is a web-oriented desktop operating system which uses a lot of google applications and services, as well as many other popular online services. gOS and creators 'Good OS LLC' are not affiliated with google in any way. Computers pre-installed with gOS virtually carried themselves off the shelves when they went on sale in America in November and December of 2007.

Re-mastering a distribution may sound like pretty heavy-duty guru-type stuff, but it needn't be difficult at all. If you want to add software to one of the standard locations (rather than just putting it somewhere on the DVD) it is pretty much a 2-pass algorithm since you have to add something to a directory that then is converted into a compressed file which then has to fit along with everything else into an iso-image - not too big for the DVD or CD. But in this case, all that is necessary is to make a tiny alteration to a boot parameter.

Here are the commands needed, to be executed as root as usual:

You can install and run Ubuntu from within Windows without any risk of accidentally deleting your existing programs and files by using Wubi, an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users. Unlike UNetbootin, which installs Linux on a hard disk partition, Wubi works by installing Ubuntu within a file stored on your Windows drive, and adding itself to the Windows boot.ini file to allow you to choose between Windows and Linux at boot time.

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.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I use to work on Desktops PCs, one in my office and one in my Home, I use my Laptop (an old IBM T30) only when I travel, and as I like to travel light, this also goes for my Laptop, so here I will show how do I configured my Laptop with Debian Lenny, and just the necesary software for my job while abroad.

Reviewers highlighted three intriguing aspects for Fedora 9: the new desktop schemes, the new package management system, and back-end improvements to memory usage and performance.

On the desktop front, Fedora 9 Beta offers GNOME 2.22 and KDE 4.0.2 as the defaults. GNOME 2.22 in Fedora 9 has better file system performance, security improvements, and the ability to manage power right at the login screen (quite handy on a laptop). There's better Bluetooth integration, especially for Palm devices.

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.

Excuse me for being skeptic, but one doesn't expect midget distros to be the best in any field. How well can a single-CD 469MB distro hold up against every other multi-GB DVD distro available today? As it turns out, Zenwalk manages to squeeze in a long list of open source wireless drivers, as well as the proprietary Intel wireless device firmware. Surprisingly Zenwalk 5.0 not only does things you don't expect from a single CD distro, it does them with ease and very little command-line sorcery.