[CS-FSLUG] September 2004 Distribution releases

[N. Thompson]

Today I'm home sick with the flue, this should help pass time :-)

On October 3, 2004 05:45 pm, groundhog3000 wrote:
> I have tried it too,
>
> >Its a smaller version of Mandrake Linux 10.0 with a few welcome changes,
> >notably the software was chosen because it would work faster and use less
> >memory then the usual Mandrake applications, there are even interesting
> > word processor and spreadsheat applications in there that start up
> > significantly faster then OpenOffice.org and possibly even KOffice.
>
> It is a very, very small version of Mandrake. I have no idea where "text
> maker" comes
> from, but it's in there. The selection of games is good.  It is fast and
> looks good.

TextMaker and PlanMaker were nice even if it took me a while to figure out how 
to switch the user interface language over to English. I only had limited 
experience with both but I would say that they are probably on par with 
OpenOffice.org writer and calc although with less language dictionaries if my 
memory serves. Its also probably close to OpenOffice.org when it comes to 
importing MS Office files but so far there is no slideshow product from the 
same company and neither OpenOffice.org or PlanMaker were able to properly 
import an Excel spreadsheet with some full page graphs from some physics work 
I did at school.

The games were good, I had no complaint there, the Mandrake bootsplash was 
also artisticly improved a little although the boot up process still bears an 
almost perfect resemblance to that of Mandrake Linux, and the desktop was 
fast as Groundhog had said. Overall I would say that Sam could compete with 
any distribution aiming for real user friendlyness and simplicity while still 
having excellent software.

> >Overall I think its a good distribution, although since its an early
> > release don't expect it to be bug free and completely translated into
> > English, also its a live CD so anyone interested in trying it should
> > check the minimum requirements page and make sure they have enough ram.
> >
> >One thing I like is the way they use XFCE with a nice setup as their
> > default desktop so the desktop itself is not only good for slower
> > machines but also looks nice.
>
> Indeed, I didn't see any of the bugs in my time with it, but it does
> need to complete the
> english translation.  It is good for slower machines and very good for
> people who just
> need to pop in the CD, get some work done and move on.
>
> Gabe

The language issue was also the only one I came across, I don't remember 
comming across any bugs however I would say in all fairness that I haven't 
been using it for long. If only I could get OpenOffice.org, maybe KOffice and 
definitely Qt designer on there then I'd consider it a good alternative to 
SUSE Linux considering what I need from a Linux distribution :-) .

>
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