Report: Open Source Adopters Testing on Windows

By Kimberly Hill
LinuxInsider

Alfresco Software's survey found that companies that decided to launch its software -- as opposed to those evaluating and testing the applications -- tended to prefer open source operating systems, application servers, databases and browsers. That is, when companies eventually adopted the open source content management application, they deployed it using Linux.

Trick question: When taking a look at an open source content management application, companies chose to test that application using which operating system?

If you guessed Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows, you're right. That's according to the findings of a recent survey conducted by Alfresco Software. The company, which makes enterprise content management applications, conducted an opt-in survey to which about 10,000 of its 15,000 community members responded. Nearly as many companies tested the software using Windows as all versions of Linux combined.

Surprise Results

The seemingly counter-intuitive results -- indicating that many companies choose to test open source prospective applications using a proprietary personal computer operating system -- may make more sense when viewed within the context of enterprises that may be new to the open source world, according to Stephen Powers, senior analyst with Forrester Research.

"It's possible that, for some of these organizations, Alfresco was their first dip into the open source waters, and they simply weren't using Linux anywhere else," he told LinuxInsider. Those companies that do choose an initial open source application may later decide "to go with an entirely open source stack," he explained.

Among the Faithful

Perhaps not so surprisingly, Alfresco's survey also found that companies that decided to launch its software -- as opposed to those evaluating and testing the applications -- tended to prefer open source operating systems, application servers, databases and browsers. That is, when companies eventually adopted the open source content management application, they deployed it using Linux.

The environments of those companies, though, were not as exclusively open source as one might think.

"The survey shows there is a clear leader at each level of the open source stack but also indicates an increasing trend for organizations to adopt a mixed stack, combining both open source and proprietary software, to enable use of best of breed components," said Ian Howells, chief marketing officer at Alfresco.

For example, users strongly preferred open source Tomcat or Jboss over the leading proprietary application servers from Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and BEA (Nasdaq: BEAS), even in production environments, according to Alfresco. They overwhelmingly test and deploy using a MySQL database platform. However, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), says the company, was the most popular choice among proprietary databases.

Among browsers used to access Alfresco's enterprise content management repository, those surveyed tended toward browser client software over portals. Firefox led the pack among preferred browsers.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Powers, "that users of an open source application such as Alfresco are implementing it in production using other components of an open source stack."

US Leads Open Source Adoption

The Alfresco survey also found that the U.S. is leading open source adoption globally.

"The UK lags behind in the adoption of open source suggesting less government emphasis compared with other European countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy," said Howells.

Deployments of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) have grown at a rate twice as fast as those of Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) SUSE since November 2006, according to the survey. The trend suggests that companies may not like the terms of the patent and interoperability agreement announced by Novell and Microsoft at that time, said Howells.

Intel's Threading Building Blocks Goes Open Source

By Jack M. Germain
LinuxInsider

Intel's Threading Building Blocks lets programmers thread like an expert without being one, explained James Reinders, software evangelist and director of marketing for Intel's Software Development Products. The product requires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading models. Applications written with threading are portable across platforms.

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) announced Tuesday the release of Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as both an open source and commercial product. The company also launched a Web site that establishes an open source project around this product.

Threading Building Blocks (TBB) is a C++ runtime library that abstracts the low-level threading details necessary for optimal multi-core performance. It uses common C++ templates and coding style to eliminate tedious threading implementation work, thus simplifying threading for performance and scalability, the company said. It requires less code for threading and delivers multi-core performance.

"We found people very hungry to program in C++, but multi-threading common tasks is not available in all platforms. Now it can be used by everyone," James Reinders, software evangelist and director of marketing for Intel's Software Development Products, told LinuxInsider. "I'm not aware of any threading product available as open source until now."

Builds on Parallelism

Intel's Threading Building Blocks lets programmers thread like an expert without being one, Reinders said. The product requires fewer lines of code to achieve parallelism than other threading models.

Another benefit of this technology is that applications written with threading are portable across platforms. Since the runtime library is also inherently scalable, no code maintenance is required as more processor cores become available, he explained.

Threading Building Blocks abstracts parallelism away from an assembly language sort of world (raw threading) into a high-level representation world of tasks, he added.

Key Benefits

Intel's TBB 2.0 extends the technology to more operating systems. Now included are Linux, Mac OS X Power Mac (32/64 bits) G5, Windows, IA32, IA64, Intel 64 processors, Solaris 10 (32/64 bits) and FreeBSD 6.2

TBB 2.0 also extends C++ like STL (standard template library), but it does this with concurrency in mind.

The programming product consists of building blocks for threading. This allows programmers to use some or all of its components rather than forcing them into an all-or-nothing approach.

TBB 2.0 coexists with raw threads such as Windows and POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) and OpenMP.

Pushing Adoption

Intel decided to release TBB 2.0 as open source to make it broadly adopted, according to Reinders. Intel will continue to offer a packaged commercial version and support for a fee.

The commercial (US$299) version builds from the same source with no difference in functionality, he said.

"Our customers need to know that it can be available on any platform they desire and that it will always be available. Open source is a natural at making this happen," he said.

Open Source

The source code and open source project community are located at a dedicated Web site. Intel will maintain this as a full open source Web site with downloads, forums, mail list, submissions and bug list.

Intel offers the commercial version of TBB at a commercial site.

The runtime exception can also be found online. It is the one FSF/GNU uses for libstdc++ (C++ standard library), said Reinders.

Intel's open source project is committed to compiler independence, processor independence and operating system independence, the company said. Future Plans "Intel is investing in this project and is adding engineers to it. We put a lot of energy into making this competitive. Intel hopes to keep more programmers comfortable using parallel programs," said Reinders.

Future Plans

Intel is supporting C++ because it is a hotbed for concurrent application development, according to Reinders. It supplies the underpinnings for the majority of programming, either directly or indirectly.

Meanwhile, .NET and Java live largely in a concurrent environment where multiple concurrent processes are providing a great deal of parallelism today. So Intel plans to evaluate interest and proposals for .NET and Java versions of the Threading Building Blocks, Reinders allowed.

However, C++ remains Intel's priority, and the company will work to make sure it gets done with higher priority than moving to other languages, he said

Linux Foundation Borrows Novell's Markus Rex for CTO Position

By Chris Maxcer
LinuxInsider
The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin first approached Markus Rex and Novell with the idea of "borrowing Rex" to be the Foundation's CTO for a year and a half. "We're strong believers in the importance of standardization for the success of Linux moving forward. At the same time, we didn't want to lose an executive with the Linux know-how of Markus," Novell's Bruce Lowry said.

In the search for a new chief technology officer, The Linux Foundation (LF) has nabbed Markus Rex, a long-time Linux executive from Suse Linux and, more recently, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL)

While Rex will be working for the Linux Foundation, technically he's only on loan to the non-profit organization that's dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux. He will return to Novell at the end of 2008. Rex has been an advocate of Linux standardization throughout his career, and he brings strong technical leadership to the CTO position.

"We drew up a job description and quickly realized just how small a pool there was of ideal candidates," Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, told LinuxInsider. "Markus is one of a handful of people in the world qualified for this job."

The CTO Task List

As The Linux Foundation's CTO, Rex will help drive new standardization and technical initiatives around Linux and promote Linux adoption more broadly. More specifically, he'll lead all technical efforts, including the Linux Standard Base (LSB) and the Open Printing workgroup. He will also be the primary technical interface to LF members and the LF's Technical Advisory Board who represent the kernel community.

The Linux Foundation has worked closely with Rex over the last three years, Zemlin noted. Rex was a board member of the Free Standards Group and The Linux Foundation and was already very closely involved with the Linux Standard Base (LSB).

The previous LF CTO, Ian Murdock, who was one of the founders of Debian Linux, left LF to join Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) in March.

Rex comes to The Linux Foundation with a strong history of Linux product management and strategy. Most recently, he's been in vice president roles at Novell, working in services strategy and managing Suse Linux efforts. Prior to Novell's 2004 acquisition of Suse Linux, Rex served as Suse Linux's head of development as well as vice president of research and development, and he oversaw Suse's growth from 15 engineers in 1999 to more than 200 in 2004.

The Fine Print

So what's the deal with the so-called "loan?"

Zemlin first approached Rex and Novell with this idea. Rex, he said, was clearly a good fit for the LF CTO job, though this wasn't a snap decision for Novell.

"We're strong believers in the importance of standardization for the success of Linux moving forward. At the same time, we didn't want to lose an executive with the Linux know-how of Markus," Bruce Lowry, Novell's director of global public relations, told LinuxInsider.

"So after discussions within the Novell senior executive staff, including CEO Ron Hovsepian, we reached the decision that 'loaning' Markus to the LF was a great approach," he added.

As as part of the deal, The Linux Foundation gets an "extremely well-qualified senior executive, without having to pay his salary -- an important consideration for a non-profit like the LF -- and Markus will continue to work on issues of importance to Novell," Lowry noted.

In addition, Novell hopes that other commercial organizations will be willing to offer up their talent to The Linux Foundation in the future.

"We felt it was a win on multiple levels," Lowry said.

Puppy Linux 2.17

Puppy Linux is a small liveCD Linux Distribution. It usually comes in an approximate 50 to 100 MB download, yet contains a full suite of applications for common computer tasks. Version 2.17 was released a few days ago. I've looked at Puppy a few times in the past, but I never fully appreciated it until this release.

I always found Puppy Linux fairly complete with good performance, but was not very impressed with its appearance. It may not have improved much in the look and feel department, but in terms of performance it has few rivals.

I had a bit of trouble with the first two boots of Puppy. When booting one is given a choice of using Xorg or Xvesa for the X server. My first instinct was to use Xorg, but that didn't work so well on my Hewlett-Packard laptop with NVIDIA graphics that I was using. The boot process would just stop at that step. The second attempt I tried using "cheat codes" that sometimes help (with Ubuntu derivatives, for example) to no avail. The third boot I chose Xvesa with 1024x768 resolution and was taken to my desktop. Xvesa is a choice offered for those wishing a light implementation, and perhaps contributed to the impressive performance I experienced with Puppy. My sound worked out of the box.

Two download versions were available this time. One using LZMA compression and the other using GZIP. GZIP is supposed to be faster, but I had already chosen the LZMA by the time I learned of this. No matter, the performance of Puppy has to be one of its main features. The Puppy developers tend to include smaller and high performing applications, but even the Seamonkey web browser opened in approximately two seconds and page rendering was instantaneous. There was no menu lag or screen corruption when moving or resizing windows. Even the manual configuration steps and connecting my winnic was immediate. Rarely have I experienced such performance when using a liveCD.

Puppy comes with quite a bit of software. Some are mainstream applications while others are lesser known small lightweight equivalents. Many of their configuration tools appear to be homebrewed front-ends. Some include Gnumeric, InkscapeLite, Gaim, Abiword, Transmission, and gxine. Some of the small lesser knowns include Soxgui, Xwget, and Agenda. Puppy also ships with all kinds of rippers and dialers. Some homemade apps include PupCtorrent, Puppy Package Manager, and Pbackup. They even managed to include some games like Bubbles, Rubic Cube, and Tkmines. It appears they have a setup wizard for about every piece of common hardware known. It even includes a remaster tool. All this sits on top of Linux-2.6.21.5. Added all up, it's quite impressive for an 83 MB download.


However, the appearance of Puppy is still a bit unattractive. It uses JWM and while it works fairly well with impressive response times, it's not overly pretty. A Welcome message of helpful tips now stands in place of the seagull wallpaper used so many times. Fortunately, Puppy does come with an easy tool to set the background. Unfortunately, there's not much to choose from, the seagull and a skyscape is about it.

When shutting down one is given the option of saving their personal settings. On a multisession cdrom or dvd it merely adds a folder to the first session. Alternatively, you can save it to partition. But when I rebooted my saved session, not only was the screen resolution not as I saved, but the internet connection configuration was lost. That was what I was really hoping would be saved. The resolution and wallpaper was correctly loaded from the second saved session, but I'm left to do the winnic dance each boot.

I can certainly see why Puppy has such a loyal and vocal following of users and third party developers. Once upon a time Damn Small Linux was my tiny distro of choice. But given that DSL seems to be lacking support for my newer hardware, Puppy might have taken its place. With its amazing array of applications and astounding performance Puppy has little competition left. All in all, I was very impressed.

From :Distrowatch.com

Sabayon Linux 1.0 "Business Edition"

By Andrew Heil (aka eco2geek)

Sabayon Linux is an Italian Gentoo-based distribution known for its cutting-edge features and striking artwork. On July 15th, they released Sabayon Linux 1.0 "Business Edition", which has a different focus than their regular releases: to satisfy the business user who needs a stable distro with a good set of applications suitable for office use, and who doesn't need a large selection of games, or the latest eye candy, such as Beryl or Compiz Fusion.

Available in both 32- and 64-bit versions, the Business Edition is a 1.7 GB download via BitTorrent or via an official mirror (it's also available for purchase). Once burned to DVD, it boots into a live environment, from which you can test its features and run its installer. (You can also choose to run either a text-based or graphical installer straight from the initial boot menu.) Installation was simple and straightforward, although it took a long time (roughly 45 minutes) on my test box, an older PC with an AMD Sempron 2200+ CPU, an NVIDIA MX440-based video card, and ~500M of RAM. The distro includes the proprietary NVIDIA driver, which worked out of the box. It also comes with a custom 2.6.22 kernel.

Based on Gentoo's stable branch, the Sabayon Business Edition includes KDE 3.5.5 (the default window manager); Firefox 2.0.0.4; OpenOffice.org 2.2; KMyMoney 0.8; QCad 2; Krita 1.6.1 (a vector drawing program); Scribus 1.3 (a desktop publishing program); Imendio Planner 0.12.1 (for project management); KMyFirewall 0.9.2; Skype; VNCViewer, and many other useful apps and utilities. It includes nice touches such as the Flash plugin, the Win32 codecs, mplayer, a large number of image editing programs (including Blender 2.43), and the regular KDE games suite. It also includes the WINE Windows emulation layer, in case you need to run a Windows program. (The entire package list is available here.)

Unfortunately, this distro and I didn't get along very well. Sound support in KDE seemed not to work. After viewing the output of "alsaconf," my first assumption was that there were some missing kernel sound modules, but that was wrong. It turned out that, for whatever reason, KDE's audio backend played WAV files just fine, but it wouldn't play sound files in Ogg Vorbis format. (The fix was to set an external player.) Another bigger problem was that OpenOffice.org crashed each time it was started, and then tried to restart itself, over and over, until its process was manually killed. Uninstalling the "openoffice" package and installing the "openoffice-bin" package fixed the problem. Hopefully, YMMV.

On one hand, it's hard to see what this distribution has to offer in terms of application selection that other, easier-to-use distributions (such as PCLinuxOS or Ubuntu) don't. Gentoo's package management system isn't exactly simple to learn or use.

On the other hand, for those interested in a relatively easy way to install and become acquainted with a stable, Gentoo-based distro, Sabayon Linux Business Edition is a good choice. Plus it's got an active user community and a well-written Wiki.

From : distrowatch.com

Will Sun Rise on a Linux-ized OpenSolaris?

By Chris Maxcer
LinuxInsider

"The traditional Solaris on SPARC 'über-alles' kind of attitude started wearing thin several years ago, and the company's embrace of x86 and a less traditional approach to microprocessor development reflects the recognition that the company needs to move into new areas," Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, told LinuxInsider.

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) is working on releasing an easy-to-install binary version of its OpenSolaris open source operating system with delivery planned for early 2008, the company told the press Thursday in a meeting in San Francisco. The idea is to deliver OpenSolaris in a packaged distribution method modeled after the ease of distribution used with Linux. The initiative is called "Project Indiana," and it's a key component of Sun's open source efforts. It, along with Sun's OpenSolaris.org community, is facing a mixed bag of challenge and opportunity.

At the bottom of the mixed bag, Sun sees an opportunity to leverage a community of open source enthusiasts to develop, test and help deliver new solutions for OpenSolaris, which Sun might then be able to utilize in its enterprise-level Solaris operating system. In addition, OpenSolaris can introduce a growing number of Linux professionals to Solaris.

Sitting on top of the mixed bag, however, is the OpenSolaris community itself, as well as Linux enthusiasts who don't necessarily believe that Sun will bring great benefit to the open source community -- after all, Sun is a commercial business focused on profit.

The Center of the Sun

"As Sun has evolved as a company, there's been a recognition within the company that Sun needed to expand both its product and customer base in order to continue to be a vital, valid vendor moving forward," Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, told LinuxInsider.

"The traditional Solaris on SPARC (scalable processor architecture) 'über-alles' kind of attitude started wearing thin several years ago, and the company's embrace of x86 and a less traditional approach to microprocessor development reflects the recognition that the company needs to move into new areas," King noted.

"Solaris is a big part of that, and it draws a comparison to IBM (NYSE: IBM) and HP (NYSE: HPQ) , in that Sun has an operating system that works very well on other platforms, as opposed to IBM's AIX (advanced interactive executive) and HP's HP-UX (Hewlett Packard Unix)," he added.

Looking for Mojo

"With OpenSolaris, Sun looked around and saw the community mojo that was driving Linux development further and further as a commercial distribution -- and leading to great success for companies that were leveraging Linux," King explained. "Sun basically said, 'Geez, that looks like a great model. If we open source Solaris, maybe we can get some of that community feeling going around Solaris, because hey, look, Solaris has been around longer than Linux and has a great feature set.'"

Sun launched OpenSolaris.org a couple of years ago, but recently amped up action by hiring Ian Murdock in March. Murdock founded Debian Linux and was the CTO of the Linux Foundation. With Murdock, Sun launched Project Indiana, which has the primary goal of creating an OpenSolaris binary distribution that will provide a single CD install with the basic core OS and desktop environment.

One of the key benefits of most Linux distributions is the easy install process -- while OpenSolaris requires far more work to just install than most Linux pros are prepared for.

"We need to make 'OpenSolaris' something you can touch, something you can 'Download Now!' and run on your laptop to try out the latest and greatest from the OpenSolaris community," Murdock explained on his blog.

Tapping Innovation

By making OpenSolaris more accessible via Project Indiana, Sun may be able to better tap into the Linux-related open source community, driving additional innovation into OpenSolaris. By using OpenSolaris as a free testing ground for innovative new solutions and features, Sun can then integrate the best into its commercial Solaris OS.

The fact that Sun has commercial interests that are tied closely to its open source interests has the side effect of creating suspicion.

"Sun has a great goal, but from what I'm seeing, it's going through some severe growing pains at the same time," King explained.

"Any time that you engage in community building ... which is usually an organic process ... and you build a truly egalitarian community and invite feedback, you'll almost assuredly get feedback, and not always terribly positive feedback. So, we're seeing some of that now," he said.

Enter Linus Torvalds

In June, Linux creator Linus Torvalds nailed Sun in a post on LKML.org. "They may be talking a lot more than they are or ever will be doing. How many announcements about Sun and Linux have you seen over the years? And how much of that has actually happened?" he wrote.

Torvalds accused Sun of wanting to use Linux resources but not wanting to give anything back.

"Am I cynical? Yes. Do I expect people to act in their own interests? Hell yes! That's how things are supposed to happen. I'm not at all berating Sun, what I'm trying to do here is to wake people up who seem to be living in some dream-world where Sun wants to help people," he wrote.

Enter Jonathan Schwartz

The next day, President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, on his blog, posted an open reply to Torvalds, which included an invitation to dinner.

"We should put the swords down -- you're not the enemy for us, we're not the enemy for you," Schwartz wrote.

"I wanted you to hear this from me directly. We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities -- we have no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense," he added.

The next Project Indiana announcement will likely come this fall, Terri Molini, a Sun spokesperson, told LinuxInsider. The timing is not nailed down, but the expectation is that Sun will provide a pre-release binary distribution of OpenSolaris.

AntiX "Spartacus"

AntiX is an installable liveCD based on SimplyMepis geared toward older computers of lesser resources. The developers released "Spartacus" this past week, just little over month since their last. They have done a lot of work in this month. Although I was quite taken with AntiX, I expressed a few issues I had with "antics" and the developers have addressed most them. However, those issues aside, this release finds AntiX improved on many levels.

The most noticeable improvement is in the appearance of AntiX. With an updated background, hipper theme, and more complete menu, AntiX seems less like a distro for older computers than a major contender. The default background is a bit lighter in color than the previous making the desktop easier to use, and it has a much nicer bubble-like logo. In fact, AntiX ships with several background choices. The theme is updated to feature a much nicer 3D windec. The menu is more complete with most applications available listed, but its appearance is much more attractive as well. It has 3D highlighting of items and features translucency and rounded corners. Even the terminal emulators now feature pseudo-transparency to blend with the background of desktop. AntiX is looking great.

Being an off-spring of SimplyMepis, AntiX has superior hardware detection for the basic things. My sound worked at login, as did my touchpad and add-on usb mouse. My graphics were detected properly and I was taken to my desired 1280x800 resolution. But even more appreciated was the fact that my internet connection worked out of the box. This is inherited from SimplyMepis as well and to date they are the only two distros to enable my HP dv6105's winnic out-of-the-box. No fussing around at the commandline for that. However, cpu scaling is still not automagic. I still had to load the modules and set the profile myself. In addition, I'm still having to monitor battery life through the /proc file. Suspend/resume work from the commandline as well. None are a big deal. When installed I can set up the cpufreq to be enabled at boot and add battery monitoring to Conky. The important things are that support is available in the kernel and the tools are included.

But even if some application or utility wasn't included, it would probably be available through Synaptic. SimplyMepis repositories are already set up for the user. Also included are some of the Mepis tools such as the harddrive installer and user, X, and net configuration wizards. In that same area one finds lots of networking and system tools.

AntiX comes with lots of great software. The primary desktop is Fluxbox and it ships with applications to accommodate about any machine. From Firefox, through Dillo, to Links there are about five browsers available. It includes Sylpheed for email, Abiword for word processing, Gnumeric for spreadsheets, and The GIMP for image manipulation. Multimedia can be enjoyed through XMMS, Audacity, and Xine. There are CD/DVD creation tools too. There is Irssi, XChat, Gaim, Pan, gtk-gnutella, and Mutt. It even comes with a few games and much more. The undercarriage has remained the same with Linux-2.6.15-27, Xorg 7.1.1, and GCC 4.0.3.

AntiX now has their very own webpage for announcements and important information, including user and password. Opening any of the browsers takes one to their forum. Helpful Tips appear on the desktop at login.

I just really like this mini-Mepis. It looks great and works really well. It comes with a well-rounded suite of applications and it did exceptionally well on my hardware. Two thumbs and two big toes up!

From : Distrowatch.com

Berry 0.82

Berry Linux is an installable liveCD based on Fedora. I've looked at Berry Linux several times in the past and always liked it. Berry .82 is no exception. Since I hadn't tested it in a while I couldn't resist looking at the latest released on July 10. Although I still like it, it doesn't seem to be evolving very much. This could be an advantage to true fans, but I believe they have gotten their money's worth out of that kitty cat wallpaper.

The fruity start sequence is still there as well. There are lots of boot options such as English, Rasp, or Vaio. Most of my hardware was detected properly and working including sound, but excluding my winnic. They include the NVIDIA 3D graphics drivers, but for some reason, I was still logged into a 1024x768 desktop. Thinking I could easily adjust that in the xorg.conf file and restart X backfired on me. Silly me clicked on "Logout" in the menu which proceeded to shut the computer completely down. Deeper in the menu is the "Restart or Change Desktop" option that I should have used. So, upon restart I used the cheatcode screen=1280x800 and was given just that. Then I was able to use Ndiswrapper, wpa_supplicant, and dhclient to bring up my internet connection. Inserting removable media results in an error, but are mountable at the commandline.

Berry comes with a limited control panel containing only options for changing the computer name and some simple networking details such as ip or nameserver. The main desktop is KDE 3.5.7, although not all the usual KDE applications are included. In the menus we find Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.11, Gaim, Sylpheed, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, Planmaker, and Textmaker. In Graphics we find DigiKam, Inkscape, KPDF, Showfoto, and The GIMP. There are a few games such as Miss Driller, Pacman on SNES, and Winemine. Multimedia applications include Audacious, K3b, Kaffine, MPlayer, TVTime, and Xine. I was able to play video files at will. The browser comes with most expected plugins such as flash and multimedia support. Also included in Berry is Wine and Beryl. I wasn't able to figure out how to actually use Beryl without Googling to remind myself of the files I'd need to manually edit, but surely the option was there... somewhere. Berry also ships with the Rasp desktop environment, which looks like a Windows 98 flashback. Under the hood we find Linux 2.6.21.6, Xorg 7.2, and GCC 4.1.2.

All in all, Berry is very much as I remembered. It's stable and has fairly good performance. I did experience a bit of menu hesitation when using the liveCD, but nothing more serious. Hardware detection was good enough and the software selection was adequate. Overall, it remains a solid and respectable Linux distribution choice.

From : Distrowatch.com

CentOS 5.0 LiveCD

The CentOS team released a liveCD based on version 5.0 on July 10. It's a 679MB download and was created so that a prospective user can test it on their hardware. It comes with enough applications that it could be used as a portable workstation as well.

After descending into the labrynth they call a boot menu, I gave up and just hit enter at the boot screen. The boot process locked up when trying to start the graphics on my Hewlett-Packard dv6105 laptop with NVIDIA Go 6150 graphics. I had a bit better luck on my desktop with an NVIDIA 6800 as the system didn't fully lock up. I was able to ctrl+alt+F2 and edit the xorg.conf file to start X. Afterwards, CentOS looked fairly attractive with a professional quality background and tidy desktop and menus.

The CentOS 5.0 liveCD ships with GNOME 2.16 and IceWM. In the menus one finds ample applications for basic tasks. For example for internet and communications we have Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.10, gFTP, Gaim, Ekiga, and XChat. For graphics they have included gThumb, Xsane, and The GIMP. Server applications include php 5.16, MySQL 5.0, and Apache 2.2. Office tasks can be handled by OpenOffice.org 2.0 and Scribus. Multimedia apps are CDPlayer, K3b, Totem, and Sound Juicer. Some system tools include Baobab, Network Tools, NmapFE, QTParted, and Traceroute. Under the hood we have Linux 2.6.18-8, Xorg 7.1.1, and no GCC.

CentOS also ships with AIGLX and Compiz for those with graphics chips that are supported. NVIDIA owners won't be able to use it as neither the kernel source nor headers are included, and most of the booted system is read-only, precluding any hope of installing the NVIDIA 3D graphic drivers.

Hardware detection hit a sour note with me with its poor graphics detection and configuration. I found their boot menu very confusing even for an old Linux user like myself. There's no install option (that I could find) and given my luck with Anaconda, the installer is the main thing I'd like to test. Otherwise, it was fast performing and stable while providing a decent starter application stack to test. Some of the applications are quite long in the tooth, but the server apps are newer versions. All in all, I wasn't really impressed. For the Red Hat, Fedora, or CentOS fan, it might make a nice portable system. As far as newcomers, this liveCD will not likely result in new CentOS users.

from: distrowatch.com