Dreamlinux Works 2.1 & XGL 2.0 - From Brazil with lots of love and eye candy -Updated

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This entry was posted on 9/19/2006 10:30 AM and is filed under Distros.

Updated September 20th, 2006:

I received the following email from the Dreamlinux team:

Dreamlinux Works Edition 2.1

We are disposing the version 2.1 Dreamlinux Works Edition.
This release correct some problems of the old version, as it
brings more modules to harware detection.
Automount, Internet Sharing, NTFS-3G, Powernow and others,
and a general actualization through Debian Testing repositories,
avoiding future errors or package breakings.

For more information visit: www.dreamlinux.com.br

Andre Felipe J Souza

Dreamlinux Project
Developer Team

I think the translation changed "distributing" to "disposing". From what I can tell, nothing in my review will change with this new release, except that the package should work better, add the NTFS support (which was something that was a nice to have), and improved hardware detection, so enjoy Dreamlinux and I know you will enjoy this package as much as I did. KLG


Sometimes you just got to go against the grain. I mean, we all do it: we follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing. Look at Windows penetration rates if you doubt me. Is Windows so vastly superior that it demands/warrants 99% penetration of all PC users' desktops? (Before you ask, I am using 99% as that was a number mentioned to me by a CEO of a major Linux distribution this past week so lets just run with it, shall we?) Well, it is plagued by lockups, improper DLL files which hang the OS or worse give you the dreaded BSOD, costs a ton for anything and everything you wish to do, and people use security loopholes to take over your system without you ever knowing it. So I would have to answer no, it isn't that great of a system. Hence the success of Apple and limited success of Linux. People want their machines back.

While most Linux people seem to target Windows with its desktop ease and color, another branch seem to want their distro to mimic the more useable and graphically appealing Apple desktop, which is built on Unix and just plain sexy (can you call a distro sexy, well I just did). With all of the eye popping features, quick links on the dock bar, Jaguar is just a plain pleasure to run. Just ask my daughter who stole my Apple iBook years ago and still refuses to give it back.

Most people look at XFce as the desktop truly intended to get the Apple users excited about Linux. It also tries to minimize memory and free up resources, as you can read on the website from its creator Oliver Fourdan. As a desktop in its own native form, it is nice, but not really too sexy. I mean, the mouse is cool, but little furry creatures are becoming all too common in Linux.



Then I found a small review on a new package from Brazil called Dreamlinux. The pics included told me all I needed to know: XGL. A quick download of both the Works and XGL versions and I was quickly in business. Let's head to South America and see what is happening, shall we?



Details:

Website http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/
Download Here
Kernel - Kernel 2.6.14 Based on Kanotix Kernel
Desktop - XFce 4.3.91
FAQs - http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/debian/documentacao/guia-rapido/
Cost - FREE!!!
Special Features - Live installer, excellent icons/graphics, full media support including DVD, XGL Version for Nvidia

Nitty Gritty:
Installation ()

Dreamlinux comes in my favorite package: a Live CD with an installer function. When you boot up from the CD, you get to choose your monitor settings, which stay with you upon install, so make sure you choose wisely.



Well, once the Live CD boots up, which happens extremely fast, you are welcomed into a world of exciting graphics and loads of software. This Live CD is second to none in what it offers in flexibility, function and flare.



One quickly learns how XFce can really be done right and I can honestly say this is the closest look to Apple to date. The picture above is with Engage enabled, which gives you the zoom icon feel, and across the bottom you have quick access to Terminal, Disk Manager, Internet, PDF, Abiword, XMMS, MPlayer and Apt-get just to name the major hits. Everything you want is there. And more than that, everything works, including audio and Video. There was absolutely no additional steps to do in order to get mp3s or a dvd playing. Simply put, this little distro is a Dream and it Works. What a great name, in that it actually describes the user experience to a T.



So now the process of installation can vary, if you are trying XGL or the Works package, only in one step and that is a command line partition tool in Works versus a graphical and command line in XGL. Since my laptop doesn't have an NVidia card, I went with Works, so that is what you will see.

From the start button in the top left, one simply selects down from the 'System' option and select 'Dreamlinux Installer'. From there a nice dialog box appears and starts this extremely compact and easy to follow process.




The dialog really keeps you in line of where you are, and where you are going, with options to move backwards at any step. I think this is critical for newbies and experience users alike, because one always may change their mind.

The next step (which for some reason I lost my picture of, sorry) is to choose partioning type, which again in XGL you have graphical or command line and Works only command line, so since I am doing Works next shot is of the command line partitioing agent.

What I set up was a simple partition of 3.8 GB and a swap of 500 MB to match my RAM as well.



The next step in the process sets up your swap drive



Followed by the partition choser and format you wish to use. The standard mix of Ext, ReiserFS and XFS are included, so you can use whatever you feel is best for you. I generally go with the default people offer in the install process as most newbies also won't know which to use here.



After you select this, the information is moved from the Live CD over to the newly created and formatted partition. For my VMWare install and my install on the laptop, both took a little over 5 minutes to move the 1.7 GB of data, but kept me informed along the way in a nice little graphic window. I try not to interupt anything during this process, but I was able to continue to use other aspects of the Live CD while the install was happening, such as the web browser. There is a nice little web site built into the Live CD when you launch the browser that gives you enough help if you run into a small problem.


Once the data is moved over, the next step is to setup your computer hostname. MyBox is the default, but you can choose whatever your heart desires as long as it doesn't conflict with network naming conventions.

Note that the steps along the process are still counting at 4 of 7, but now that we have installed on the harddrive, there is no reason to go back to chosing what partition or partition type, so the back option has been removed.


Once we name our machine, we have to name ourselves and secure the PC from attacks. First up is our Root password. Once again, please do not just simply try and skip this step as this is the corner stone of Linux/Unix security. Here Dreamlinux requires at least 5 characters which I feel is good but would rather see 7, not a big deal but a bit longer would make the system just that much more secure.



Next we get to chose our user name and password, again with the same rules as the Root password. Almost done, just one more step to go!!!! I can't wait to see this thing for real.



Our final step is to chose where we wish our Boot Loader to be installed, or to set up a boot disk. I always set this to MBR (Master Boot Record). I can say that this does find your windows partitions but not any other ones that I had installed.



And that is it my folks. About 10 minutes in and I have a new little sext distro from South America that I just can't wait to take on a test run and see if the Dream is really Working.

Let's find out how well this thing purs, shall we???



Starting (
)

Once the first boot happens, you start in a desktop second to none in way of look and function. Just like the Live CD you start out with Engage disabled, but following the quick tutorial found in the Forum, you can enable Engage from the settings and do a quick Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and restart your desktop and wallah!!!! This is by far the sexiest desktop on the market, period, IMHO. The only thing that comes close would be PCLinuxOS with their KDE and translucent windows, but this is a dream come true (no pun intended). I simply love the efficienct desktop of Apple, but hate their costs and lack of community that Linux has. (I know Apple people will debate that with me, but bring it on) Now I have it in Linux and honestly I think a little better in some aspects. Plus Blue is my favorite color, so no one can go wrong with me on this stunning backdrop.




A quick run around the options and one is just simply caught off guard on how this little compact Live CD has everything one will need: Office, media, CD-DVD Burning, PDF, Picasa, and I could go on and on. Now, my wireless didn't work (of course, only Freespire has managed to pull that off) so I did the NDISWRAPPER I am so used to and got that up and running in a snap. Now in two weeks of trying I haven't been able to get ATI graphic mode of 1280x800 functional and then this opens up the one weakness of Dreamlinux: unless you speak Portugese your support is limited. Well, to be honest, pretty much empty minus about 45-75 posts and those are pretty simple ones. Yes the developers do answer you, but not much exists by the way of a Wiki or knowledge base in English at this time. But what does come with worked so well I didn't really notice too much. I also used Google to translate a couple of questions from Portugese to English which worked pretty well.



On the tool bar, there is a settings icon which opens up to a window that allows you to tweak most of the XFce settings, but not all. I was a bit disapointed that I wasn't able to set my PC time here, just adjust Orage settings of placement of the clock and font. So a little more hunting and I was able to discover in the Home Icon a Utilities folder full of goodies. Here is where you really set up the PC, not the settings icon, which also is the same as the settings drop down from the start Cloud (top left of screen). I guess this is a bit confusing but again I think that what the general user would want is in the settings, however I would rename Utilities to more of System Configuration, or something to that affect. A Desktop Icon would also be nice, so that people can get there easier than accidentally finding this. This also goes for the Sound icon, which one would think would adjust sound volumes and it sort of does, but really the best place to do that is also in the Utilities or in the media application itself, by the way is just amazing to me.



I mean they all worked. Period. No issue. Nothing. Damn. Never had that before, even from Commercial distros such as Xandros and Linspire. There you have to download a couple of things to enable licenses and features. So technically I would have to say that these folks don't either care about these silly license fees associated with media such as MP3 or DVD, or did something behind the scenes. Either way, the dream has come true in that I have a media laptop on install for the first time ever. Way to go Dream Team!!!!!



I did sync up my iPod and read the files, but since most of my music is actually DRM protected I wasn't able to do much. It did get sync'd and I was able to read directories which I love as well. Another plus and more to why there are 4 Pennies for this distro on Starting.

The Apt-get icon pulls you into Synaptic screen which has an decent repository but one can always add more.



So I can honestly say that other than getting my ATI card to properly work, which honestly is so trivial to me in that I have settled many times for 1024x780 graphics that I just don't notice, this package is probably the nicest distro to come along in a very long time. The only package I can say worked this well for me out of the box was PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu, but neither wow'd me like this one does. I can flat out say that I have little doubt that if you are an Apple fan or love XFce desktop and you give this a run, you will enjoy what you see and probably never look back.

So then why no 5 Pennie on this? Well, I will never get over having to set up wireless and video everytime. Yes I am used to it, but like I said, in order to get 5 Pennies, the packages has to do everything out of the box with no extra time by me in order to fix anything.

I do wish that they would get the XGL fuctional for ATI, then 5 Pennies would have been in the bag. And that leads us to the Extras department where again, Dreamlinux shines, with one exception: no support.

Bonus Stuff ()

What else can one person need in a package: Media, CD-DVD Burning, iPod support, XGL for those with Nvidia, Office and so much more??? Well, how about support? NTFS Read/Write? Wireless in a box? This package is by far one of the sexiest and efficient I have played with to date, but lack of support is just hard to overcome. Now, if you speak Portugese you are perfectly happy. But to make this in the English speaking world, or in European markets who have English as a solid second language, or even with German, French and Spanish support mechanisms would be required. I know as a group just starting out that this is on their roadmap, so when they get to the next level watch out everyone because I think this will be moving several average packages now situated on the top of Distrowatch.com out of there in a blink of an eye.

One thing we need to mention that is really exciting with Dreamlinux is MKDistro. This easy to follow program will allow anyone to build their own distro from the ground up. Think of it as a GUI based Gentoo, but with more options and flexibility and no requirement for a PhD in CS from MIT.

If this is something you are into, I would suggest giving this a run, but just know that when I messed with it, it is what happened: I messed with it. Nothing worked after I started then stopped. I think I chose the option to replace my current distro, which was Dreamlinux, with a new one that I quit, so did it. I love the concept and I think that this really will be a set apart feature and has awesome potential to get these guys on the map.


Overall ()

I am honestly pleased to give this package a 4 Pennie review, simply in the fact that I love the look, the functionality and the way they went about getting what any newbie would want into an easy to use Live CD, quick installer, XGL funtionality package seperate from the Works. I mean the more I played with this package the more I became a fan. What started out as curiosity really started turning to a WOW, these guys have it, or almost.

I have no doubt the more people get involved in this community, the more there are English and other speaking experts in the distro itself, that this distro will become a top 25 distro easy, if not higher. Why not there yet? I really don't know why. It is an exciting little package that works on almost every front. It might be the Morphix dilema of people wanting a more integrated system rather than a modular one. I actually like the Morphix model and think that it is more efficient and keeps away from one package hogging memory from another, making the system more efficient and therefore faster. I am sure a guru out there can explain that better than I can, so I will just keep it to my humble opinion that this is a dream and dreams really can come true.

So give it a shot, download the package and run it live, take the plunge on a test box or VMWare, and see for yourself and be the first on your block with this awesome distro. I am a huge fan and will be watching this grow while keeping this on one of my paritions any time I just want to see Linux the way that it should be.

Thank you for reading my review. You know, if you like what you see (or even if you hate it) you can either send me a note at KnoLinuxGuy@KnoLinux.com. Also, please feel free to click away at our adds. I don't plan on becoming the next Bill Gates by doing this, but this does help offset the costs of doing this and helps keep my wonderful wife off my back as to why I do this. If you hate me, click more so that I can do something else =)

As always, good luck in your personal Linux knowledge search and best wishes!!!!Remember, if you could be so kind to check out our links along the side of our page in order to support our efforts, we always appreciate a click or two. If you hated this, click a lot, then I can try something else out like bowling =)

Cheers

KnoLinuxGuy (Kevin)
 

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    • 8/25/2006 5:08 AM Bryan wrote:
      Wow! This is the most thorough review I have ever read. Having used Dreamlinux, I wholeheartedly agree with the comments.

      As stated in the review, getting support on the forums is real dodgy because of the language constraints, so you're pretty much on your own.

      LOVED this review!!

      BK
      Reply to this
    • 9/7/2006 3:37 AM Ed wrote:
      Did you ever manage to get your ATI card working properly? I want to try out dreamlinux on my laptop; with an ATI X300 and a native resolution of 1280*800 - however if I'm going to be doomed before I start as to getting that working, I should probably just not bother.
      Reply to this
      1. 9/7/2006 8:04 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Yes I did, I loaded the ATI driver from their website, manually modified the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file by adding the 1280x800 resolution. If you need more detail than that, please let me know.

        Hope it works for you, good luck and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 9/14/2006 1:57 PM Tor M wrote:
      Hi!

      Nice review! I love the looks of this os.
      I have a question:

      How did you get dreamlinux to work on vmware?
      I get a kernel panic when i try to boot the install i have on my win xp vmware server.

      Regards

      Tor M
      Reply to this
      1. 9/14/2006 3:17 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Well, Tor, you got me on that one. I never did get it to run fully on VMWare and saw the same issue. Typically I install on VMWare to capture the installation screens (hard to do that with most installers as there is no screen capture software) then install on my own laptop for real to capture all the other aspects, like how it works, functions and feels with my laptop.

        Now, I do recall something about installing from the ISO instead of the CD might help with this, but I never tried it. I know it does run faster that way, and then you really don't even need to install it, just run from the ISO file instead and you should be good to go.

        Hope that helps and thanks for the comment.

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy



        Reply to this
        1. 9/26/2006 5:55 AM kognik wrote:
          Dont go along with the default setup in VMWARE but choose a "custom install". When it comes to choose between IDE and SCSI choose IDE. That will avoid the kernel panic. SCSI is the default but not every Distro likes that.I have a VMWARE Image with DL, so this procedure is tested.
          Reply to this
          1. 9/26/2006 7:58 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
            Thanks for the tidbit kognik, I have heard of this solving many of the problems with installs for distros on VMWARE, especially the live CD installs. Will have to give it a try later.

            Thanks and best wishes

            KnoLinuxGuy

            Reply to this
    • 9/21/2006 3:54 AM Dale wrote:
      I downloaded the driver from ati and got 1600x1200 working (with an x800xl card) but not 3d. Fglrx wouldn't work for some reason. Did it for you?

      When I went to do an update after the install there was a massive amount of updates, which seemed unusual for something installed on the day of release. Also, I got the dreaded 'apt-get must allow force loop break' error (or something like that, I'm at work now.)

      That plagued the 2.0 release and I was waiting for the 2.1 to hope it had been taken care of. Am I doing something wrong here?
      Reply to this
      1. 9/21/2006 5:40 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Dale,

        To be honest I haven't been able to load this as I am traveling this week. I do know that the FLGRX driver can be hit or miss as the support isn't really there. Yes, it is from ATI, but no it isn't really all that good.

        I have done some stuff with 'aticonfig' or 'aticonfigure', the actual command is in the dialog box that pops up when you install the proprietary ATI driver, which gives you some after commands to truly get your xorg.conf file operational with the ati driver.

        That being said, most people I know who develop always recommend using the open source ati driver and staying clear of theirs. I doubt that 3D then really will work, but it might. My ATI card is a mobility card and while I have the XGL functional, I don't do many other things that graphic intensive.

        Good luck and if you get it working let me know, when I get back on Monday of next week I plan on playing with 2.1. I would imagine the apt-get updates that you are seeing are on the packages outside the core which isn't too uncommon in that many people focus on their work and let the other Debian packages do their own thing. While I would like to see them get this more current, they are a very small team so their focus and bandwidth are both very, very small. Hopefully as the distro gains popularity, which I am sure it will, the community involvement, especially English speaking.

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 9/23/2006 5:29 PM Aquafire wrote:
      DreamLinux is off line and has been for several days..

      That is sad. Makes me wonder if Apple has sent them one of dreaded cease and desist letters.

      On another point re the forums.

      Yes, I joined and find it very limited due to the English section being buried in a sub forum.

      Perhaps we should consider setting up an English version forum.

      Dreamlinuxforums.com ?
      Reply to this
      1. 9/24/2006 9:02 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        I think getting a US version would be a good idea, but I would think that should be coordinated with the team in Brazil.

        I don't think Apple could do anything to them as all they are running is XFCE, Enlightenment and Engage, so it has a look and feel of OS X, but there is no way to patent Look and Feel. Apple usually sticks to hardware and not software. More than likely what is happening to the Dreamlinux site is the same thing that is happening to Lin/Freespire when they setup CNR for free. They don't expect the rush to their servers and don't have the bandwidth support.

        So what I really think would help them out would be a server in the US to host downloads of the distro because I think that they only have two which are both in Brazil. Not really sure how to make that happen so if anyone knows I am sure they would appreciate that.

        Thanks for the comments and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
        1. 9/24/2006 4:26 PM Sergio Oliveira wrote:
          There is some Brazillian government support but basically this is a free distro project, I would put the Portuguese request onto forum, Andre Felipe is very responsive, maybe interesting for them to have a US server.
          Reply to this
          1. 9/24/2006 5:12 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
            Yes, I have contacted Andre on a couple of occassions and received nothing but positive feedback and is one of the reasons I am so high on Dreamlinux. I emailed them about the server issues, but have not received anything back as of yet.

            I am sure they would be for a US based server, just a matter of coordinating something like that. While I like to mess with distros and learn linux, the business side is not something I am very on top of for many reasons.

            Thanks for the comment and best wishes

            Cheers!!!!

            KnoLinuxGuy

            Reply to this
    • 9/23/2006 8:49 PM Scott Sexton wrote:
      Thanks KnoLinuxGuy for the review. I clicked on one of your sponser links to help the cause.

      I am able to boot DreamLinux live with ati 1280x800 resolution without having to download another ati driver. I've noticed that (or I am ignorant about), later versions of xorg seem to auto configure a correct ati driver file ( /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 )
      if you CANCEL any kind of forced vesa driver resoulution configuration. Thus, when DreamLinux shows you the resolution selection menu, if you choose "cancel", rather than a specific resolution, you will get a correctly configured 1280x800 resolution using the ati driver module that came with DreamLinux. This "cancel" method also works on other machines that I have tried with other video cards and having other default resolutions.

      My only problem with this otherwise great distro, is my wireless card. No go yet. I believe DreamLinux is perhaps one of the smoothest distros I have ever tried.

      Cheers,
      Scott Sexton
      Reply to this
      1. 9/24/2006 8:50 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Thanks for the tidbit Scott, and thanks for the click. Sometimes you need to de-configure some kernel uses of wireless, especially on the Broadcom module (bcm43xx). Try 'rmmod bcm43xx' and see if that helps. If you are using Broadcom, I find the support on ubuntu pages (wiki mainly) really helpful in keeping this half done module from causing havoc.

        If not, if you are using NDISWRAPPER, then more than likely you need to find the right windows driver for your card. Usually a google search of 'wirelesscard windows XP drivers' (insert your wireless card model number) and you should find what you are looking for.

        Good luck and I agree. Dream is very smooth and one of the best out there. If we can get some better English support then this one could do extremely well.

        Cheers!!!
        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 10/1/2006 7:50 AM Haveanotherpuff wrote:
      I agree with you 100%,specially about the support,I tried it and it works like a dream,I just wished the forumn were more english,Debian is my favorite and xfce is one cool desktop,specially for my computers which are not top of the line. Love your reviews keep up the good work.
      Reply to this
      1. 10/1/2006 9:12 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Thank you puff, I know several people want to work on getting a US forum going for this. I know for one I would participate, but couldn't come close to finding the time to take on a venture like that. I would think a Wiki would be the best so if anyone out there who is a dream fan and good at building Wikis might want to contact them in Brazil. They are open to the idea (I asked about this before) just want to make sure that this is going on the same path as they are.

        Thanks for the comments and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 10/10/2006 8:53 AM X wrote:
      Hello there KnoLinuxGuy,

      There are somethings I disagree with in your review.

      For one thing the installation is definately not worth 4 IMO it is a solid 3.

      I state this because installation on both my laptop and desktop ran into similar problems.

      For one thing the install hangs randomly and gets really ugly if you want more then just the root and swap partition. Another problem I have experienced is that the install freezes if you choose a filesystem that isn't ext3, which is the default. Personally I use reiserfs and was dissapointed that it heavily favors ext3 to the point where trying to install something else fails.

      The system itself is indeed pretty but there a lot of things that are a real chore to configure. One being the engage dock, which is one great looking dock. I wanted to add gaim to the dock but you need to know how to create .eap files. From what I saw DreamLinux doesn't offer any advice for creating .eap files, meaning I had to browse through the enlightenment forums to find a way.

      When you try and run alsa config the icons all mysteriously dissappear, which is odd.

      I could go on but there are a lot of details that need work. The system is littered with little bugs and glitches and that hinder basic functionality.

      Their english forums are a joke, hardly any questions are answered and the english user is pretty much high and dry unless he/she knows portuguese

      Dreamlinux does have potential, it just needs a lot of polishing and fine tuning.
      Reply to this
      1. 10/10/2006 4:10 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Well X, you can always disagree with me, that is what is fun in this world.

        I also saw the install issues when trying reiserFS, but as I am writing to most newbies and typically review the distro with their defaults. If I have any issues with their defaults I usually mention them, but when considering Ext3 versus reiser, that I really am ok with either. Now Ext2???? that I have issues with.

        The .eap issue is not a Dream issue, but rather an Engage/Enlightenment issue. Plus I think that a lot of the missing icons can be traced to issues I see in other E16/17 desktops. I know as Enlightenment gets better, so will Dream.

        I think a lot of your frustration goes directly to the lack of English forum support with Dream and I think that if that every were to take off, then a lot of what you are looking for, and can readily find for other distros, would be quicker and easier to fix.

        But when you compare Dream to other distros right now, the look and feel is just there and honestly it just is so much closer to a working desktop over KDE or even Gnome. That again is my humble opinion and everyone is free to agree or disagree. But since it is my site, I will only post those I want to share. I appreciate how you communicated your disagreement, hence why it is here.

        Thank you very much for taking the time to comment and hopefully people can get Dream up to a point where it fits your needs better

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 10/14/2006 7:53 AM Merlin3 wrote:
      Your explanations and review is extremely detailed ..but alas not detailed enough for me! I downloaded Dreamlinux but cannot for the life of me figure out which part of the download needs making into a bootable CD. Your help would be much appreciated.
      Reply to this
      1. 10/14/2006 2:50 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Well Merlin3, there are two downloads right now from Dreamlinux, 2.1 Works and 2.2 Alpha. Alpha builds are pretty unstable, so i would head over to the 2.1 works here. If you already have downloaded you are 99% there.

        These are ISO files, which can expand to the full tool with a simple CD-ROM/DVD burning software. Linux uses Gnome Burner or K3B, while Deep Burner is a good free one for Windows. Just download the ISO image, run the burning tool which will have a feature to extract ISO image. Don't just copy the ISO to a CD, that won't work. It usually states burn ISO image or Copy Image to CD, depending on which tool you use. Deep Burner, which again is Free and has no spyware like a lot of them do (you can also use NERO on a 30 day trial, but larger download), which is the one I use for Windows. This has a startup wizard which has the bottom option to Burn ISO image.

        Good luck and if you have anymore questions, email me at knolinuxguy@knolinux.com

        Thanks and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 10/30/2006 3:45 PM Ken wrote:
      I have been incredibly pleased with my Dream2.1 install! They added a simple ndiswrapper gui that allows windows driver install, and the network tool will show WAP's in range.

      The ACPI control for my laptop has ONLY EVER WORKED IN DREAMLINUX! I get extreme battery life, even with wireless on all the time. Throttles processor so the laptop stays cool. I COULD NOT run Unreal Tournament on this tired old puppy under win2000 or XP without painful framerates, but XWine gets me back in the game big time.

      Set Dream up for my mom,and she is extremely pleased with functionality, and I don't have to worry about long-distance malware eradication.

      And let me tell ya 'bout printing...for so long the BANE of linux...Dream discovered all my LAN printers at work, and prompts to install (correct!) printer driver when I try to connect.

      I have tinkered with dozens of distro's and gotten deep into several, and NOT A ONE is as good for the average home user on older hardware as this one (though PuppyLinux comes close)
      Reply to this
      1. 10/30/2006 4:40 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Thanks Ken for the feedback and I agree completely. I have zero issues with Dream on any of my machines, and recently put 2.2 Alpha on my desktop (my laptop is back in the shop so I am stuck back on my old desktop for the time being) and it fixes a lot of the discovery issues for Grub, seeing all the Linux distros on that machine and also worked well in finding my printer which is a wireless one using HP Direct.

        I just hope users like you can help get the US/English based support better for Dream. I know there is a new Wiki somewhere, but the data on there isn't that great yet. I am hoping that more people will join their community and get this distro up the food chain where it belongs.

        Thanks again for your comments and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 10/31/2006 10:40 AM Ken Hawkins wrote:
      here's an english site that has got started:

      http://www.dreamwiki.co.nr/

      I just applied for permission to add content, but I work full time, and a 2nd job 3 evenings a week, so I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute. Which is why "IT JUST WORKS" is so important.
      Reply to this
      1. 10/31/2006 11:02 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Thank you Ken, that is the site I also found, just couldn't remember the Link. That is the biggest problem everyone in the Linux community has, in that this is mainly a hobby for 90% of the people involved, so finding time to do this without taking away from something else is always a problem. The more people get involved, and if everyone can give 15 minutes, it really adds up.

        I just hope it doesn't become over done like Ubuntu, which honestly there is just too many people out there with differing ideas on where it should and could go. This has killed lesser distros, and hopefully it won't happen to Ubuntu, but everytime I turn around there is a new package built on the base system which only takes away from making one package that is superior. MS has money, and states that they will push $7.5 Billion into R&D this year. To do the same thing, Linux would need about 75 Million Man hours of support and development from the community(assuming an hour of work is worth $100). A good friend on my from the Air Force used to say, "if you have a million hours of work, just get one million people and get it done in an hour." The problem I see in Linux community is that there is nearly that many hours put into Linux as a whole, but that is cut into nearly 600 distros. If we could narrow that down to about 25-50 really solid ones, each with their place in the world, e.g. education, multimedia, gaming, scientific, server, etc....then Linux wouldn't be so damn far behind MS and Apple.

        There was similar problems in my industry back in the 90's, when there were about 240 wireless companies building out networks across the US. It was nuts, we were all fighting over the same resources, both human and physical. But then the companies realized that for the industry as a whole to survive, they need to consolidate and coordinate. Today there are probably 50-75 different companies, but only 7-10 national players and we are more successful than ever.

        I am not saying that we should all form a company and do it only one way, I am just suggesting that people think really hard when creating a new distro away from another extremely similar one only for the sake of becoming the next Ubuntu. We need to keep it simple and coordinate what we are all doing if we ever want to make a dent in the market share that MS has taken for granted.

        Sorry for the soap box, and thanks again for the link.

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 12/18/2006 8:21 PM Rune wrote:
      I got interested in dream Linux after reading about it on distrowatch, and then this blog. I would like to give it a try, the only thing that is holding me back at the moment is the question of stability.

      Is it stable? Even after update and upgrades? How compatible is it with Debian packages?

      Any comments would be appreciated from anyone who has been using the distro for a while.

      Thanks in advance
      Reply to this
      1. 12/18/2006 11:32 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Hey Rune,

        Well, I can't speak for everyone, but my main server has been running Dream 2.2 RC1 for about 30 days now and I have seen zero issues. Now on my laptop, I had a couple issues in getting the network properly configured, but I really didn't spend a lot of time trying as this was not a machine I planned on keeping it on.

        So yes, I would say it is just as stable as any other Debian distro, since it pulls from those repositories. It is pretty much a debian in its heart and soul, with the kernel coming from Morphix.

        It does seem to come with an older set of default builds, but the people at dream told me once they focused on other things and let the debian people keep those up to date and would rather spend time looking at bugs they have than to keep rebuilding their base distro only for other packages others may not even want.

        Hope this helps. Give it a go on a seperate partition and then gradually move your main system over and you will not be disappointed. I sure haven't been.

        Anyone else is happy to add to this, but I would say that most who try this distro tend to stick with it.

        Thanks for the comments, sorry for the slow post, power has been out here in Seattle so heat was my first goal, now that is back after 3 days I can now focus back on my website.

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 12/18/2006 9:52 PM Des Sale wrote:
      I entirely agree with all the favorable comments about DreamLinux. I prefer xfce to other managers and this distro has added some tweaks that sets it ahead of the likes of Xubuntu, Kate, Xfld. etc.
      But an Enlish language forum is badly needed.
      Reply to this
      1. 12/18/2006 11:44 PM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Some people have mentioned a english based wiki for dreamlinux.

        http://www.dreamwiki.co.nr/

        Hope you find the info helpful or maybe could help the folks out there.

        Thanks for the comments and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 12/19/2006 11:23 AM Ken Hawkins wrote:
      I have been using DL2.2RC1 on my primary laptop since it was released. Totally stable except with certain web site scripts than can cause Firefox to shutdown or lockup. Another experiment laptop that I performed the install, then total update through Synaptic does not suffer this problem, though the update was not fully successful, and I haven't had time to thrash that laptop more to see what might be broken. The 2.2RC also removed any need for me to install wireless NIC drivers through ndiswrapper. All the cards that required this previously, now work without ANY intervention - IT JUST WORKS!! Even better than before.

      Those fellows in Brazil continue to amaze me. Like our host here, I am constantly installing new flavors of linux, and Dream certainly deserves consideration by anyone who wants it to work with minimal hassle

      regards,
      Ken
      Reply to this
      1. 12/19/2006 11:48 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        A couple of hints for the Synaptic update issues. I went in and changed the default repositories, which seem to be all based in Brazil of course, to US repositories and then I didn't have the download failures.

        As for the "APT::Force-LoopBreak" problem, within the Synaptic window simply click on Settings/Set Internal Option... and copy that into the variable field and set the value to "true" and then that should work. Another trick I found is that there seems to be a problem in the NTFS-3G update which won't work, so just deselect libntfs-3g and then ntfs-3g from getting updated or even select remove and that seems to work.

        Hope this helps. The boys in Brazil are doing well with this package and I even loved the interview on Distrowatch, just wish I would have been able to add that to my review =)

        Thanks for the comments and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
    • 12/19/2006 10:40 PM Rune wrote:
      Thanks for the answers, I will be giving it a try, once I get an internet connection at home again.

      The eyecandy part is very importatnt in my quest to convince my wife that we should drop windows all together on our PCs.

      Thanks again,

      R-
      Reply to this
      1. 12/20/2006 8:58 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Your welcome Rune, on the wife part, I find that the less they know the better and it is always easiest to ask forgiveness over permission.

        Plus what I sell them onl, especially with Dream, is that Apple is really Linux itself so what we are doing is adding the Apple look without having to buy the expensive Apple hardware.

        Good luck and best wishes

        Cheers!!!!
        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
        1. 12/23/2006 10:23 PM rune wrote:
          To my wife 3 things are important:
          1) Looks
          2) Application she wants are there
          3) It works

          If it fails on any of the account I am always nagged about it. Windows has problems with "3) it works", and linux normally have suffered from problems on 1) and 2), and for my wife mainly on the looks part, so I look forward to trying it out, and I hope it will not run into any compability or stability issues.
          Reply to this
          1. 12/24/2006 11:21 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
            Yes I know the feeling. I have tried to get my wife's laptop over to Linux on many occassions, but she gets upset when she has to do anything other than double click on an icon. She doesn't even like Mac's as they are too simple but not the same as her Windows.

            The funny thing is that she loves to play frozen bubble, but she can't get it on her Windows so she always likes to play that on my laptop. She just won't admit it.

            I plan on trying to get either Dream2.2 or Freespire 2.0 once it goes final on her laptop and see if she even notices. It is pretty old and the windows partitions keep crashing and get bogged down. Probably needs a new hard drive, or at least defragged.

            I just wish that people would market better Linux laptops that are more affordable. The places I see that advertise these list prices over $1500 for the same model you can buy for less than $700 with windows. I understand that they have less volume so they need more profit per piece, but that just keeps people from buying Linux, so they never will see the Windows piece.

            Good Luck and best wishes over the holiday season.

            Cheers!!!!

            KnoLinuxGuy

            Reply to this
    • 12/20/2006 10:34 AM Ken wrote:
      As I noted before with my mother, all that matters to a lot of people is that it just plain works, without needing any voodoo. Start a browser & visit a site, & flash works, or MPlayer plugin works. Go to shoutcast, and the radio stream work (or better yet, streamtuner, plug in a USB printer and it works, etc

      My brother is also non-techie, & has been very happy with an install of VectorLinux, that is going on 3 years old, and he has never had: a crash, a virus, a hack, personal info stolen, or become a spam relay. I am going to get him onto DL2.2 ASAP.

      My one fly in the ointment: have a cheapie webcam that is detected, the apropriate driver is loaded (so it seems in dmesg), but no image & cannot get microphone input for Skype or other chat, just crackling noise. Regular sound all fine.

      Regards
      Ken
      Reply to this
    • 1/5/2007 4:29 PM mrpectate wrote:
      This was a great review. Gave me all the info I usually look for. Now I hope DL 2.2 gives me all the distro I need :)
      Reply to this
    • 1/12/2007 4:04 AM Carlos wrote:
      Greetings from Germany. Iam running the latest Dreamlinux 2.2 and think that this distro is the sweetest at this time. But of course I stuck at the wireless setup like some other fans. In my case I am using also a wireless broadcom card, and I also using ndiswrapper. The drivers are installed and the hardware is present but as soon I try to activate the card nothing happens and I get an error message. I have two cards installed, one is an regular ethernet card that is on board and one is the wireless card. The wireless card is marked with eth0 and the other card is marked as eth1. Any Ideeas what I am missing here? I appriciate any suggestions to solve this problem. By the way, what card do you have to work with ndiswrapper?
      Regards, Carlos.
      Reply to this
      1. 1/12/2007 10:14 AM KnoLinuxGuy wrote:
        Guten Morgen Carlos,

        I was using broadcom on my old laptop, now I have a Belkin. The problem with most broadcom chips now is that people include bcm43xx module in the kernel, which is incomplete. You either have to load the firmware, which of course cannot be included due to GPL restrictions or remove the bcm43xx module in order to get that to work.

        The best support I have seen for a debian system on how to do this is of course on the Ubuntu wiki and threads.

        https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx?action=show&redirect=WifiDocs%2FDriver%2FBroadcom43xx

        Follow those and see if that helps. If you load ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5 and get an error, just ignore it, go on to 'depmod -a' and then 'modprobe ndiswrapper' and then 'ndiswrapper -m'

        Ignore the error on including in the module, and then run iwconfig and see if your card is there and 'iwlist scan' to see if it is working

        Good luck and let us know if that works.

        Cheers!!!!

        KnoLinuxGuy

        Reply to this
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