Software used this week

I usually use Libranet 3.0, which I have heavily customized, as my desktop system in my basement lab. Libranet has a great collection of software, and it is also easily updated, modified, and maintained. Another desktop Linux distribution, though, is also quite good, and for certain things, such as preconfigured browser plugins, SimplyMEPIS is somewhat easier to use. Both Libranet and SimplyMEPIS have great base software, a recent Linux kernel, an excellent collection of utilities, and the always outstanding Debian packaging and configuration tools.

Sometimes I hack up Libranet, so it is nice to have another option available to me until I have time to fix what I mess up (sometimes I mess things up on purpose, so I can study how they work and how to fix them), other times I just get too aggressive by installing bleeding edge software that breaks the way the packaging is supposed to work, and it also breaks the way some multi media content works.

SimplyMEPIS has some nice plugins that are automatically integrated into the default Web browser that work well; I have been using them a lot this week.

I have also been experimenting with Klax-KDE-3.4.2 to see how well KDE 3.4.2 is working. So far, that experiment is going very well.

Finally, I have installed or attempted to install two additional desktop systems since last week, DragonFly BSD, which I successfully installed on my old AMD 400 system (I do have to install the ports collection, though, as is, my installation is pretty minimal. I attempted to install a base level of the next Beta release of Mandriva 2006 (0.1.3). That did not work. The kernel keeps crashing. I am going to go back to make sure I picked up the correct ISO images and also check to see if there have been problems with this beta test cycle. I may have something to report to the development team if I have the right stuff installed.