| Bianca Kde Edition Beta020 |
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| Written by Administrator | |||||
| Thursday, 12 April 2007 | |||||
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YIPEE, NO NEED TO GET 'VANILLA' KDE FROM
THE UBUNTU REPOSITORIES ANYMORE.
to the cheers of Bianca fans who preferred Kde over Gnome. Thank good- ness, those who preferred Kde would not have to live with the non-minty Kde desktop borrowed from edgy repository. Yes! I must admit that i am also a KDE fan. I'm very positive that this KDE edition of Bianca would also be highly sought after when the final/stable is release on 20th April 2007.
LinuxMint is developed in Ireland where my all time favourite rock band,U2 originates. Bono has contributed alot to the international society. Maybe, he wouldn't mind taking off his sunglasses in show of support for higher uptake of open source softwares.
This beta edition of Bianca is based on the solid Kubuntu 6.10 code base. It comes with Linux kernel 2.6.17-10, KDE 3.5.6, Xorg 7.1.1, GCC 4.1.2, & the and the commandline tool, Envy 0.8.1.
Again, there is no 64 bit version or ppc version for Linux Mint. I suppose the Irish developers wouldn't want to unnecessarily introduce its fans to the 64 bit environment as yet. If they do produce the 64 bit version of Bianca, i hope that it would rock more than, the SimplyMEPIS 64 that i adore.
Primary And Secondary Test Machine book that came with Pentium M processor 1.4Ghz with 1gb ddr sdram, ATI radeon 250 graphic and AC97' soundcard. It is also equipped with Ipw2100 built-in intel wifi adapter, also Broadcom BCM5705M gigabit wired ethernet.
While my secondary test machine was a pentium 4 shuttle desktop with Sis motherboard plus nvidia card, which i would only mention when necessary in this preview.
As usual, i would be installing (not virtual) the distro i am reviewing/previe- wing on my primary test machine. In this preview i would also install Bianca Kde edition beta 020 onto my secondary shuttle desktop.
Do We Need A DVD Disc For A Not So Big Image ? verified the md5sum, i burnt it using k3b from Sabayon 3.3. This DVD image reminded of the Pioneer Rifleman DVD image that i downloaded a few days ago. I was grumbling on the need to use a DVD to house a barely over 700mb of iso file. Couldn't they customize these DVD images so that it would even- tually occupy just a CD. It's so much cheaper & no wastage of DVD space. It would also be friendly to the Kde fans who are without a DVD drive.
Having said that, both Pioneer rifleman & Bianca KDE edition beta 020 are also based on ubuntu, and preferred the KDE desktop. I think they made the correct long term decision to base their distro on Ubuntu.
Since i brought up the DVD image issue, i would also like to ponder on distro that uses 1Gb of space on a single DVD. Every gauze counts ! Anyway, I am sure that these developers must have some very compelling reasons to do that. Too big an image would mean network congestion and unnecessary redundancy. While too little may mean too little features or choices. My praise to DSL and Sabayon developers who managed to strike a good balan- ce on either end of the spectrum.
Loaded The LiveDVD Into Dell Notebook DVD-rom Kde edition looked exactly the same as the one on its parent Bianca(gnome edition). I chose the 1st option, Start Linux Mint, by pressing the enter key.
The ensuing bootsplash featured the neatly crafted Bianca logo without any verbose mode, all the way to the KDE desktop. No login needed ! It would be very convenient for those who uses a liveDVD frequently. As a result, i could only show the screenshots of the login screen and kde splash after i've made a fresh installation of this beta distro to my Dell notebook. For the time being, just enjoy the Kde desktop of this liveDVD.
The soothing green theme went well with the desktop artwork. The theme music was minty too. Actually, i only got to know about this cool minty music that greeted me, when i tried this beta liveDVD on my secondary test machine (pentium 4 shuttle pc with Sis mobo).
The desktop also looked very clean. Imagine, only one icon on the desktop: the minty green Install icon. Very 'sterile' indeed. The fonts looked quite sharp. My Dell notebook's 1024x768 resolution was correctly detected.
The Bottom-most Desktop Panel was the scrolling of RSS feeds at the bottom-most the Kde desktop. The RSS feeds occupied about 95 % of the bottom-most panel which was sandwiched by the Desktop Access applet on the left corner and by Trash applet on the right corner. It reminded me of the electr onic billboard of a stock exchange office. This new feature was brought about by Knewsticker.
Clicking onto any of the scrolling items would take you to the main content. Cool implementation ! Despite having the RSS feeds, Bianca 2.2 beta remain very slick. However, imho, the wallpaper on the desktop and the greenish theme did not go well with the Knews ticker. Either drop the ticker or drop the wallpaper. Anyway, it's just my spontaneous thoughts.
The Other Desktop Panel desktop panel that i described earlier, the one with the scrolling rss news.
On this main panel, you have K-menu applet, Quick file browser applet, and System menu applet on the left side. While on the right corner of the main panel, you have Kmixer, Klipper, Kpowersave, and Adept notifier applets, all on the system tray. Well, the digital clock and calendar applet were also on the right most corner of the main panel.
Is The Tasty Menu That Minty ?
The K-menu has got a new name, Tasty Menu, it looked like a mixture of the opensuse/sled10's kicker start menu & slab start menu. More of slab's elements though. At the moment, i must say that it looked rather like a scaffolding though. Most probably, that was why it's called a beta 020. I am pretty sure that the developers would beautify the Tasty Menu further.
Imho, i think the slabby Tasty menu would look much more slicker if the left most column, that house the Favourite application, is omitted. The Quick file browser applet next to the Tasty Menu reminded me of the Slackware's quick file browser.
Sceenshots of Quick File Browser Applet
More About The System Menu Applet applet. With it, you would have easy access to the Home folder, Users folders, Storage media, Remote places, and the Trash. Without the virtual desktop pager/switcher on the main panel, there were lots of rooms left for the taskbar. Btw, I had no problem accessing the shared folder on my window machine, via the remote places.
Install LinuxMint2.2 KDE Beta To The Hard disk Dell Inspiron's hard disk. It took on 9 minutes to install. Much faster than its parent, Bianca 2.2. The installation was very smooth. The boot time was only 40 seconds, from the hard disk, whereas it took 1 min 50 seconds from the liveDVD.
Why it took shorter time to install KDE version, though only at beta, as co- ompared to its stable gnome parent ? My truly wild guess would be : the developer chose the DE-dependant Koffice for this kde edition, while the latter was stuffed with openoffice.
Networking Experience Was Amazing RSS feeds right away after loading in the kde desktop. I was very delighted when the knetworkmanager got my Dell Inpiron 600m's ipw2100 wifi adapter connected via wpa-psk encryption protocol to my Linksys wifi router almost automagically (of course, i had to enter the passphrase). One strange thing though. No RSS feeds with wifi. It seemed that Knewsticker got no issues with wired wired ethernet. Well, this is not the final release yet.
Package Management via the Adept manager to manage the deb packages available from ubuntu repository. The Adept Notifier located at the system tray would notify you of any updates available. This Adept thing truly made me feel like Kubuntu is everywhere.
Multimedia And Flash Player avi file, google video files, Wmv files, quicktime video, or mpeg video out-of-the-box. Without the sound though. I tried alsaconf but this utilities was not available. I tried to configure Kmix and Alsamixer but also to no avail. Like its parent LinuxMint kde edition should be able to play mp3 song too. I suppose that was a bug. I suppose the one of the major reason why people love Bianca so much is due to its multimedia capabilities.
The software included in this category of software were Kaffeine, mplayer, amarok, k3b, etc. I would have no problem listening to internet radion on live365.com if it wasn't because of the sound problem. I almost never had problem with the AC 97 sound card. I could also play original dvd movie but without the sound of course. No problem with flash-based games on the internet as flash player 9 was also included in this KDE edition of Bianca.
1.6.2 is the preferred choice of office suite in LinuxMint KDE edition beta. Other program bundled in this category of software are Kontact, Kplato, KMyMoney, Scribus, etc.
Other softwares to the ntfs partition that was auto-mounted at /media. I would have used the mintDisk tool to mount the ntfs into read/write mode if the very help- ful tool was available. I did download mintDisk from the repository but it wouldn't run. Sun java 6 was included too.
Despite upholding the ethics of the GPL, the LinuxMint developers are still very thoughtful to the fans who need proprietary video driver. Since Envy was available, i ran Envy 0.8.1 from the Konsole to get the proprie- tary ati driver for my notebook. Unfortunately, I would get a blank screen every time i ran Envy.
While on my secondary test machine, Envy would tell me that the propri- etary nvidia driver was incompatible with my system. Maybe, the nvidia card on my secondary test machine was too old for the new nvidia driver detected by Envy. Anyway, it's my first encounter with Envy.
Suspend And Hibernate Functions would remind me of it, every single minute. The thing that made me very excited was the flawless suspend and hibernate functions on my Dell inspiron 600m notebook. Btw, it took quite long to shutdown both of my test pc. I thought the systems had freezed.
Other hardwares problem using my all-in-one Hp officejet 4355 (printing & scanning) with Bianca KDE edition beta 020. Amarok also had no problem with my generic MP4/MP3/WMA player. Digikam had some problem detecting my Cybershot camera.
This KDE Edition Beta Will Only Get Better Envy, i was very hopeful that the stable release would end up in my athlon desktop side-by-side with SimplyMEPIS 64. I would be happy if the very helpful custom-made-for-Bianca tools like mintartwork, mintDisk, mintMenu, mintConfig & mintWifi are included in the stable release of the Bianca KDE edition.
I also hope that the final image would just need a CD, since openoffice had been omitted. Then, i wouldn't have to waste my DVD space. Well, Bianca kde edition beta 020 also performed wonderfully on my secondary test pc. With the sound working on my secondary test machine, i could verify that this distro in preview truly has the multimedia capabilities that people are seeking after.
Just to let you know, i wrote this preview and edited all the screenshots from within LinuxMint 2.2 KDE Edition beta 020, at my office.
I had to run this beta distro as a liveDVD on the pentium D desktop at my office with Via motherboard that came with built-in Via video chipset and Realtek sound chipset. While writing this review within this beta distro i manage to watch some BBC news that was available in wmv & realplayer format. I also enjoyed some internet radio. The KDE edition of Bianca was very stable despite being a beta!
Lastly, i hope to see it moving away from ubuntu with each of the release. I suppose LinuxMInt needs some degree of uniqueness to climb further the Distrowatch chart.
Thank you for reading my review.
By Michael Shee Choon Beng.
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