Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Tried out Kanotix 2005-03

The other day I downloaded Kanotix 2005-03. Previously I had downloaded 2005-02 and liked it enough to install it on my hard drive. Though I could (and did) update it once or twice using the Debian binary archives that were provided, I decided to try out Kanotix as a Live CD, then install it to disk over the previous version.

This latest edition really isn't much different than the previous version, but it does provide you with the latest KDE changes in KDE 3.4.1, and it also provides a few other application updates that have changed since the previous release.

Kanotix has pretty good hardware detection, a fairly easy hard disk installation program, and up to date software. If you like an easy to use desktop system, it is worth a look. If you are partial to KDE on the desktop, even more reason to use Kanotix.

My one suggestion for the Kanotix developers is this: since you already have a pretty easy to use hard disk installation program, why not go just one step further and associate a Live CD desktop icon with the installation script action? That would make this a first rate way to easily load a Live CD, test to see if it works on your hardware, then quickly and easily install the software to disk. So close, why not make it even easier for the real beginner, instead of making them have to search the Web site to find out the way to install the software? Granted, it's not hard as it stands, but usability factors suggest that filling in just a few more details could turn this into one of the top desktop distributions. As it is, I give it pretty good marks, but I do think that both SimplyMEPIS (which has the desktop installation icon) and Ubuntu, which is less fancy, but also has easy installation tools), tend to steal the visibility. The reasons? An active user community and some really easy hard disk installation tools.

Nice job, nevertheless. Good software. It works quite well, and I like it.

No comments: