Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Video IM, Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and various bits of hardware new and old.
Wednesday 4 March 2009, 2:56 PM
Dream Linux 3.5 - An Excellent New Release
Of course, the first step is to get it installed. I downloaded the LiveCD, which is their Xfce-based desktop. For some reason they can't fit their Gnome release on a CD, and I didn't feel like fooling around with downloading and burning a DVD just to see if it was going to work - especially because, based on my experience until now with the 2133, I wasn't terribly optimistic that it would work.
Dream Linux takes a very different approach than most of the other Linux distributions. They concentrate on functionality, and don't put a tremendous amount of effort into hand-holding and making their distribution "easy for beginners". You can see that from the first boot and installation screens; the only options are "boot" and "memory test", no long list of various display modes, different LiveCD or boot directly to installer, or anything else. Just boot and get on with it. That is what I did, and I got my first really big, really positive impression from Dream Linux. The LiveCD booted on the HP Mini-Note with no problem, it figured out the display and brought it up in 1280x768 resolution (the ONLY Linux distribution so far that has been able to do that). This was looking very promising already.
The desktop of the LiveCD is equally "terse" - everything is there, but even an experienced user is likely to need some time to look it all over, figure out what is what, and decide that "DL Installer" is what you want (as opposed to "OEM Installer", "Live Dream", "Persistent Dream" or whatever). From that point, however, things get really interesting. They have managed to create an entire installation dialog in one window for Dream Linux. The essentials are all there - root password, user account disk partition selection, GRUB - in one screen, rather than the three to ten or more that other distributions have. Obviously, there are a few things which are not there - time set setting, keyboard, and so on - but again, the idea seems to be, if you know what you are doing you can take care of all of that after the installation is finished, so why clutter things with them here?
The installation completes quickly, and you reboot to find... the same desktop that you had on the LiveCD! Makes sense, I suppose... why not? Once again, on my HP >Mini-Note, it was using the vesa driver, and had the proper resolution. I wanted to try the openchrome driver, as I have on all of the other distributions, but I ran into the first real problem with Dream Linux at that point. The X server is an older version than any of the others I have uses, so I couldn't copy over the driver from one of them. I couldn't compile it, either, most likely again because of the older X server. After struggling with it for a while, I gave up and posted a question on the Dream Linux Forums. Much to my surprise, I got a reply within two hours, and it took care of getting the X server up to the same version and Mandriva and a few others, so I copied over the driver, and it works perfectly! Very, very impressive.
So, I am now investigating packages, versions, options, configuration and such on the HP 2133. I need to adjust my brain to the Xfce desktop, but I will also say that it looks very good, and it is amazingly fast on this Mini-Note. I will also install it on the S6510 and S2110, to see if it does as well on those (I expect that it will). From what I can see so far, they have a rather intereting (odd) choice of packages and versions. They say that the distribution is based on Debian 5.0 (lenny), but the linux kernel is 2.6.28.5, which is considerably newer than Debian, while the X server is 1.3.0, which is older than Debian. I suppose they are being "conservative" with some packages, using what they know works.
There are lots of other packages included, of course, some you would expect and some you might not. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice (2.4), Adobe Reader, gThumb, Inkscape, Rhythmbox, Totem, CD/DVD burner... all installed and ready to go.
In conclusion, though, I would say again, I am just amazed at how well, and how easily, Dream Linux installed on this Mini-Note, after all the struggles with the other distributions I've had. More to come.
jw 4/3/2009
PreviousComments on this post
This looks very interesting. I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the other machines.
How does boot-up time compare with other distros? I'm looking for something fast and light for a project.
Congrats Jamie! Finally something that works and you made me curious...should I do the same on my asus 901? i might consider this for the weekend. Although 9.04 jaunty is now running so well, I'm afraid of removing it...hm..what about the dock etc? are they running smooth with your Via drivers?
@Tezzer: Boot time is in the same range as the others; I just did some quick and dirty testing, and on that machine, from the multi-boot selection menu to the login prompt, Ubuntu 8.10 takes 1:02, Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 5 takes 0:50, Mandriva 2009.0 takes 1:05, openSuSE 11.1 takes 1:15, and Dream Linux 3.5 takes 1:10. BUT, this is really just a quick and dirty look at what they are doing right now, I haven't made any effort to see what differences there might be in configuration and autostart programs between these distributions. I'll post about installing Dream on the two Lifebooks tomorrow.
@fancollo: I think you might like Dream Linux, but from what you have said about how the Ubuntu 9.04 installation is working on your Asus, I would be very reluctant to remove it too. However, Dream Linux seems to boot and run very well from CD, USB Thumb drives, USB hard drives and such, so it might be worth giving it a try that way first, just to see what you think.
Thanks to both of you for reading and commenting.
jw
Hello Jamie! Congratulations on getting a distro running smoothly on the HP2133! As a fellow owner I'm more than familiar with all the driver problems etc. Will you be making your own .iso public? I'd love to give it a go on my own notebook.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Hi Rich, thanks for reading and commenting. In fact I have more than one Linux distribution running smoothly on the HP 2133 now. On the WXGA (1280x768) model, in addition to Dream Linux 3.5, I have openSuSE 11.1, Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04, SimplyMEPIS 8.0 and VectorLinux 6.0 all working correctly, with the latest openchrome driver, and the wired and wireless network interfaces working. The WSVGA (1024x600) model is considerably more difficult, but I do have Ubuntu 8.10 working on it, in addition to the SLED 10 (SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) that it came loaded with.
I doubt at this point that I would make my own .iso of any of those, but I am likely to post detailed instructions for getting them installed and working, as I have already had a couple of requests for that. Do you think there would be more interest in an iso distribution? I'm more of a believer in showing people how to do it - not least because that kind of information will often carry over to newer releases and other distributions.
jw
I think it would be a great idea - many people are having problems with different distros of linux on their netbooks - for example I can't get the wifi or compiz working on my 2133, so if one person can share their achivements then that's great for the whole community.
