FOSSwire

Traditionally, Gentoo Linux has been a distribution designed more towards the more experienced Linux user, perhaps the 'power user', if you will.

Its source-based package management and offering the user complete control over the system installation and configuration have meant that traditionally, it can be difficult to approach.

Having myself tried and failed to install Gentoo in the past, I thought I would take the recently released 2008.0 Live CD for a spin, and see what the installation process is like, and how easy it is to use and understand. So here goes.

You get started like any other Live CD - throw it in the drive, reboot and press Enter to boot in. Before the GUI even arrives, you'll be asked to pick a keyboard layout to use for the live CD, then eventually you will be greeted with this GDM login screen.

There's an autologin set here, so you just have to wait a few seconds for the live user to be logged in. Gentoo now uses Xfce as the default GUI environment, so it will load up (fast, as it always seems to be).

As expected, this is a fully usable Gentoo system at this point, albeit running Live, so of limited utility. A fair selection of packages are installed, included Firefox 2.0.0.14, in a 'Bon Echo' branded guise.

Still, we're interested in the installation procedure. Conveniently on the desktop is an installer shortcut. Actually there are two - a command-line based installer, and the graphical GTK+ version. I'll be using the latter.

There's no introduction or anything. As soon as you double-click the installer, you're thrown straight in at a partitioning screen. Provided you have a clean disk and don't mind Gentoo monopolising your hard drive, it's simple to click the Recommend Layout button for a one-click solution to this screen.

It does, however, give its power user base the ability to fully control how Gentoo will inhabit their hard drives.

Click Next at this point and you are right away doing mount points for those partitions you just set up (and any others you want too). This is usually saved for the tail end of distro installations, but the way that the Gentoo installer works means that it will mount all of these partitions for you in the live distro too for the install, so it is done at this point.

You don't get an awful lot of confirmation, so pretty much as soon as you hit Next, those partitions will be written to disk and a few files get copied over.

Once that initial set of files gets copied, you then go back into answering questions. Personally, I don't like this sort of do some work, then ask more questions, then do more work thing.

It reminds me of the Windows XP installation procedure - when you can never just answer questions and set it off doing its own thing, it requires constant supervision. The Gentoo install isn't nearly as bad, but the way it works doesn't feel very 'standard' in comparison to more mainstream Linux distros.

From this point on, you are asked about configuring network interfaces, your root password and setting up the different users for your newly installed system.

The users module could potentially be a little confusing without a fair bit of Linux experience, as you are asked to manually fill in details such as the user's shell, home directory and user ID. You can leave things blank for defaults, however.

The final step before the proper copying of packages happens is to choose any additional packages you need. If you want a graphical system at the end of the install, you'll need to make sure you check at least the xfce and xorg-x11 packages.

Finally, the proper copy operation gets started. This will probably take considerable time (it did in my VM installation, at least).

Once the copy is finished, just as abruptly as it begun, you are notified that the installation is complete and you can reboot into the installed system.

Conclusion

So, how easy is this to install?

It certainly doesn't require much specific knowledge of Gentoo or how it works, but neither is it for the faint hearted.

A significant body of previous Linux experience is expected, as you'll be on your own with respect to key concepts, such as partitioning, packages and users.

I imagine that in a 'safe' environment - i.e. a machine that didn't particularly matter, someone with only intermediate Linux skills could probably get through relatively easily and progress to using the distro.

Gentoo is still very oriented towards the more experienced user and the person who likes to endlessly fiddle with and tweak their system so it works exactly how they like it and has the maximum possible performance.

I don't remember how I fell down on installing in the past, but it certainly seems like an achievable feat for someone with some Linux experience now, and that in itself has lowered the bar to learning and using Gentoo.

They could try to make it even easier to install, but then I guess there might be complaints from those who do not want their installer to be 'simplified' any more.

People like control over their machines.

As promised, here I'm going to take a look at the new 'KDE 4 Remix' version of Kubuntu.

For the uninitiated, let me explain. The latest version of the KDE variant of Ubuntu, has two versions - the standard disc featuring KDE 3.5.9, and this KDE 4 Remix disc, which features the new KDE 4.0 release.

In this review, I'm going to focus on this distro from the user's perspective. There's plenty of cool stuff under the hood of KDE 4, but here, I'll focus on what you can actually see and play with, as that's what will probably sway people to using this release or the official one.

So, without further ado, let's load up the KDE 4 Remix disc.

Once you've gone through with the installation process, which is virtually identical to that of the standard KDE 3 disc, you get greeted with the Kubuntu KDE4 desktop.

It features an attractive blue abstract desktop background, with the black KDE bar running across the bottom. The K menu is obvious and clear, and therefore should be very simple to pick up if you've ever used KDE before. More on the K menu later, however.

The KDE 4 spin of Kubuntu apparently lacks overt Kubuntu branding and from the user's perspective looks like a stock copy of KDE 4 without modifications.

One of the first things you may notice is this weird looking icon in the top right.

Hovering over it reveals an option to add a new widget. KDE 4 features a new widget engine integrated into the new Plasma desktop. Right now there are only a handful, including clocks, a battery monitor, application launchers and other utilities like that. Despite being few in number, the widgets are attractive and functional.

Unfortunately, not all widgets that were compatible with KDE 3's SuperKaramba application work with the new system at the current stage. Aside from this, KDE 4's widget system is solid, if lacking in variety at the current time.

The K menu is KDE's central location for starting applications, much akin to Windows' Start menu. Previous editions of KDE have had a simple scrolling menu with application categories that then expand to allow the user to launch individual applications. There was access to other items, like settings, but it was more of an afterthought.

The new K menu has been reworked and now features several categories across a bar at the bottom. The Favourites bar records the items you use from the menu most frequently, and allows for easy access to your favourite things.

The Applications category works more in the traditional K menu style, but adopts a Vista-style scrolling system rather than cascading submenus out all over the screen. This makes it a lot clearer and keeps everything in one place.

The Computer category offers access to system settings and common places, while obviously the Recent category and Leave category do pretty much what they say on the tin.

Overall, I'm a fan of the new menu. Admittedly it will take some adaptation for me personally, when I do switch to KDE 4 full-time, but then I'm not a big user of the menu anyway, tending to plump for icons on the bar to launch apps, or using Alt-F2.

One of the big new things that the user will notice is a visual refresh. A new icon theme, called Oxygen, features in this release. From what I've seen, Oxygen looks professional and clean in the new interface, and most certainly a welcoming change from the Crystal icon set which has been around for a long time in KDE 3.

There's also a new control style and window decoration style for the release. The controls look modern and fresh, but I can't say I am a fan of the new window decoration. By default, there is a serious lack of contrast between the active window and the inactive window.

I find this disappointing, as it detracts significantly from KDE's usability. Previously, the default window decoration had a good contrast between active and inactive, so this feels like a step backwards.

Admittedly, it's a trivial detail to change to something better, however you lose the sense of visual consistency across the new platform.

While many of the applications have been updated to use the new functionality in the KDE 4 platform, some older, KDE 3 applications remain. KDE 3 apps fit in well with the rest of the system. There are no visual inconsistencies with the theme, as it all runs on top of the same Qt toolkit.

I couldn't really find anything that rough around the edges to be honest. What needs to happen now is for the distros to make the migration over to KDE 4 full-time, and then applications can follow suit and start taking advantage of the new underlying technology that 4 brings to the table.

Conclusion

The Kubuntu KDE4 Live spin gives you the benefit of using the new KDE 4 desktop environment in a relatively stable, tried-and-tested Ubuntu system. While it is a shame that KDE 4 couldn't make it to the official Kubuntu release, that is planned for Intrepid Ibex, perhaps this does give KDE application developers a clear signal that v4 is coming, and will hit the major distros soon.

In my time playing with this disc, I had no major problems at all. Aside from my minor annoyances with some elements of the theme, KDE 4 provides that new backend technology that application developers can use to build extremely rich applications, but also giving a new smooth visual refresh to convince users to upgrade.

For the moment, I am going to stick with the KDE 3 version of Kubuntu for my main desktop. This isn't particularly because I think the KDE 4 spin won't cut it, but more down to pragmatism (and/or laziness), as I already have the KDE 3 version up and running and right now, it serves my needs well enough.

The KDE team face a unique challenge. They need to get KDE 4 working to a level where distros ship it by default. Until that happens, there won't be a sufficient base of users to justify application developers making the jump over to the new frameworks, and therefore KDE 4 won't have enough shiny new toys. This Kubuntu implementation sends out a clear message, though - KDE 4 is coming, and it works pretty damn well.

Bad things happen, and sometimes those bad things will happen to your computer, or a computer you are responsible for.

There are quite a few Linux live CDs out there designed for the purpose of rescue systems. The idea is, something bad happens, and you then boot into the CD and use the tools it provides to fix the problem, or hopefully at the very least save your data.

SystemRescueCD includes a whole host of tools that are very useful. If you are already a Linux whiz, you have a full command line available to you, as you'd expect, and an impressive array of tools you might need. I particularly find partimage to be useful, and use SysRecCD to do backups of my Linux system in this way. There are also lots of other system tools, including full read-write support for NTFS partitions through ntfs-3g, meaning

As well as the command line side of things, the CD also has a GUI available, which uses WindowMaker. One thing that is worth mentioning is that it isn't loaded up by default, you have to start it with startx. This is fine if you're reasonably proficient with the command line or know how to do this, but it does raise the barrier significantly for non-Linux people who want a restore system.

GUI applications included in the distribution feature Gparted, for easy reformatting and repartitioning of disks, both Firefox and Dillo for any emergency browsing needs and many other basic graphical programs.

SystemRescueCD certainly isn't for the faint of heart, and you'll need a reasonable previous amount of experience with Linux to be able to use it effectively. But as a backup and restore tool, I find it to be very useful and provide many tools you might need in a lightweight live CD environment.

It can be downloaded from the official wiki.