Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Distro Release: Linux Mint 11 LXDE

According to DistroWatch, the Linux Mint team has released the LXDE edition of Linux Mint 11. It looks like the major changes are to the appearance of a lot of applications, particularly the Software Manager. According to Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre:
The Software Manager - many improvements were made to its graphical interface, and the Software Manager now looks much more polished. Application screens were visually improved, not only in the way they look but also in their layout and the information they show.
I'm surprised we're actually seeing this particular edition of Mint. I thought they were converting all their non-GNOME editions to rolling releases with a Debian code base.

Distribution Release: Linux Mint 11 "LXDE" (DistroWatch.com News)

DistroWatch Weekly No. 418 Highligts

It's that time of week again (though I've missed the last couple of issues). The highligts of this weeks DistroWatch Weekly for for fans of lightweight distributions include:

  • Toorox "Xfce" and "Lite" versions. Apparently, Toorox is a Gentoo-based distro. Despite the naming, both of these versions have Xfce as the default desktop. However, the Lite version swaps out several resource-hungry applications for lighter alternatives.
  • ConnochaetOS. This is a superlight distro intended to run on old computers (as little as 64 MB of RAM on a Pentium I processor).
  • Puppy Linux 5.1.3 "Wary." The Wary version of Puppy Linux is also supposed to be optimized for very old computers.
  • WattOS R4. I had already spotted this one and written a brief post about it. However, DistroWatch Weekly thoughtfully included a screenshot of the default desktop. Insectophobes beware. 

DistroWatch Weekly No. 418.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Distro Release: WattOS R4

WattOS is one of my favorite lightweight distributions, despite a few minor quibbles about configuration options. Yesterday, the newest version, wattOS R4, was released. Among the changes are a "control panel user interface for simple configuration of your system in a familiar format" and a couple of changes to lighter software defaults, most notably switching from Firefox to Chromium as the default browser. 

I also like the new logo wattOS has adopted. It goes better with the default color scheme (assuming the default theme is still green-based) and may not look quite as awkward as part of the menu button.

PlanetWatt - wattOS R4