[conspire] CABAL on Saturday

[Rick Moen]

It's going to be a fine weekend for a CABAL meeting, which is a good
thing, because we're having one.  ;->

There will be rain over the weekend, but the predictions I'm seeing so
far say it won't start until very late tomorrow night at the earliest.
So, at 4 PM tomorrow, we'll see which way things are heading, but I'm
hoping we'll be able to be outdoors, where it's been very nice indeed.

We have Linux.  As always,
http://linuxmafia.com/cabal/installfest/#distros has the complete list,
but here are the newest additions:

o  antiX M11 'Jayaben Desai' for i486 and i686

   antiX is yet another extremely useful and oft-ignored Linux 
   distribution:  It's derived from SimplyMEPIS but made fast
   and lightweight by using your choice of Fluxbox or IceWM 
   instead of KDE.  It does well on as little as a Pentium II 
   with 64 MB RAM.  _This_ sort of thing, not Ubuntu or Puppy Linux,
   is what people like Brian Good, the guy with the 13-year-old 
   Compaq Armada 7800, ought to be installing.

   It boots as an installable live CD, and therefore also makes 
   quite a fine rescue / utility disk


o  Aptosid 2011-01 'Geras' KDE Full DVD for i386/x86_64
   Aptosid 2011-01 'Geras' XFCE for x86_64
   Aptosid 2011-01 'Geras' KDE Lite for i686 and x86_64

   Just updating my Aptosid discs, which I consider both my 
   preferred way of installing cutting-edge Debian and a 
   truly excellent general-purpose live CD.


o  CentOS 5.6 for i586 and x86_64

   Latest release of the leading community RHEL rebuild, for
   people with corporate needs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.


o  Gentoo LiveDVD 11.0 for i386 and x86_64


o  grml 2010.12 CD for i486 and x86_64 

   A unique Debian-based live CD with excellent hardware autodetection
   and a large number of console tools, useful for sysadmin work, as 
   a rescue disk, for network work, etc.


o  Kademar Linux 4.9.5 'Escritoria' DVDs for i586 and x86_64

   This is a really excellent Debian-family installable live CD with 
   your choice of KDE 3.5.10 and KDE 4.5.5.  The Kademar developers 
   add a graphical user-help application, a graphical central 
   administration utility, a high-performance 2.6.37 kernel, a fully
   configured WINE 1.2.2 for running MS-Windows apps and games, 
   graphical desktop theming, etc.  It's ridiculous that this isn't
   more popular.

   The developers are primarily in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and
   so it has full support for English, Catalan, and Spanish.

   Bruce?  You want this thing.


o  Kanotix 2011-05 DVDs for i686 and x86_86

   This was one of the first really successful live discs, and this
   version comes with Kanotix-branded KDE 4.4.5, Ubuntu's 2.6.38
   kernel, LibreOffice 3.3.2, Firefox (Iceweasel) 4.0.1, Thunderbird
   (Icedove) 3.1.9, WINE 1.3.19, a bunch of scripts for pulling down
   and integrating popular proprietary software (Adobe Flash, Nvidia
   and ATI video drivers, etc.).

   Bruce, Kanotix until recently maintained a KDE3 version, last
   updated with the 2010 edition on 2010-06-09.  I have the 
   final DVD discs for i686 and x86_64, and will give them to you
   tomorow if you attend.


o  Knoppix 6.4.4 DVD for i486

   The first distro to make live Linux discs really succesful, and it's 
   still good.  This is the full-sized KDE 4.4.5-based version, crammed
   with gigs of very current software.  It includes a graphical
   installer to bulk-install it easily onto one's hard drive, but is
   not an ideal choice for a long-term desktop system.


o  SimplyMEPIS 11.0 DVDs for i586 and x86_64

   Another Debian-based installable live DVD built on KDE 4.5.3, 
   with excellent hardware autodetection, a good font collection,
   and many other desktop niceties.  A lot of people really like this
   as a desktop distribution.


o  Linux Mint Debian Edition DVDs, 201101 GNOME for i386 and 201012 
   GNOME for x86_64.

   The Mint developers were the first to produce an Ubuntu variant 
   loaded down with the usual 'extras', e.g., browser plugins, 
   A/V codecs, libs to play Hollywood DVDs, Java, nice desktop 
   theming, etc.  Here, they've done the same thing to cutting-edge
   Debian.  If you want to try GNOME and Debian for desktop, this is
   a fine way to get there.  (I also have the very latest Linux Mint
   regular edition for Ubuntu.)


o  PCLinuxOS 2010.12 GNOME for i586

   PCLinuxOS is an installable live-CD desktop distribution for novices,
   with RPM package management and derived originally from Mandrake
   Linux (which is now Mandriva and its community fork Mangeia).
   There are separate downloadable discs with GNOME, KDE 4.5.4, 
   Enlightenment, LXDE, XFCE, Openbox, and 'GNOME Zen Mini' (a 
   minimalist GNOME setup).


o  Puppy Linux 5.2.5 for i386

   Puppy is a tiny (85 MB) live CD that boots entirely into a RAMdisk 
   (at which point you can eject and remove whatever you booted from).
   It defaults to a small window manager called JWM, but also
   has a package manager that can fetch other window managers or 
   other software.  Warning:  Everything in Puppy Linux is designed
   to run as the root user.


o  Ubuntu Linux 10.04.2 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Alternate Disk for i386 and x86_64
   Ubuntu Linux 10.04.2 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Server Disk for i386 and x86_64

   There are particular situations where you want the Long Term Support
   release of Ubuntu, for its long-term maintenance commitment 
   (3 years for desktops, 5 years for servers) and this one 
   is the latest.