I just reviewed Belenix 0.4 and must say this is one of the best Live-CD demos I have seen in quite some time for the Solaris Live CD distros. I enjoyed seeing Xorg 6.9beta, KDE 3.5.1, Koffice 1.5beta, KDEPIM/Multimedia, Quanta 3.5.1, GIMP 2.2.10, Xscreensaver 4.23, and pretty much a good inclusion of KDE packages and open source software.
Also, the layout of files were more like the standard Solaris distro. Good. This is a product that can be used to teach Solaris as well as show off a few programs, develop/migrate software, or use for various ISP or networking purposes. <Sidenote: I got the same monitor resolution setting at bootup of 1400x1050 as I did during Nexenta bootup - this never happens with Linux Live-CD/DVDs). I go into Control Panel->Desktop->Screen as reset to 1024x768 and everything is fine. Monitor detection and setup with Xorg on Solaris needs review. I notice Xorg 6.9cvs was built on Belenix 0.3 (not 0.4) as well from Dec 2005. Maybe the official release of Xorg 6.9 fixed this?> A few things I noticed (space reasons?): 1.Missing were the other KDE packages (i.e. KDE Educational, KDEGames, etc.). The KDE Educational (http://edu.kde.org/development/3.5improvements.php) has some worthy educational programs on it which would have been great to show off in school environments. A full implementation of KDE 3.5.1 would make this perfect for KDE conferences, engagements, and journalism efforts. Otherwise, good job here. 2. Xscreensaver had a few of the screensavers missing or not working. Otherwise, I'm glad Xscreensaver was included and a lot of GL screensavers worked fine with Xorg 6.9. No crashes during random screensaver playback within the first 5 minutes. Please add Xscreensaver 4.24 to the next update. Mesa 6.4.2 and the official release of Xorg 6.9 are worthy upgrades as well. 3. Quanta Plus 3.5.1 mentions Kommander (http://dot.kde.org/1087424515/) and Tidy was missing? Might want to look into that. 4. Firefox 1.5 beta. Please add v1.5.0.1 or higher - or maybe even SeaMonkey would be the successor Internet browser suite. 6. Install to Hard drive... 7. Nvidia 81.78+ drivers for Solaris with GLUT missing. This is the icebreaker. 8. More usage of a 700MB CD. I think only 617MB gets used which could have included a few of the additional pieces. 9. Build 34 of Nevada. The other things were just some observations, not show stoppers. Belenix 0.4 is truely one of the best Solaris distros. I think a few official updates to critical pieces like Xorg 6.9/7.0 and Mesa 6.4.2 will help the desktop environment as well as support for many things mentioned in the OpenSolaris desktop group discussions. ~Ken Mays __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
