Review: Pardus Linux 2007.2 (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Dec 19, 2007 at 10:04am
Section:
Reviews
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Pardus Linux is a distribution built from scratch rather than from any one particular
existing distribution. Born in 2005 through funding and development provided by the
Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey, it's grown quickly and become a
distribution worth taking a good long look at. Pardus is a system designed around
the premise of "ease of use". It's also a distribution that has somewhat
of a "fun" feel to it. But is Pardus all fun and games, or is it a real
solid distribution that everyone can use? Let's find out.
Installation
The Pardus install disk boots very quickly and gives you the choice of nine different
languages which you can work from, including Turkish, English, Dutch, German, Spanish,
Portuguese (Brazilian), Italian, French and Catalan. Upon selecting your language of
choice, the install CD then proceeds to ask you which configuration you want to boot up
in. You can boot into the Pardus install in either a normal, "standard
graphics", or a minimalistic configuration. There's also the option for doing a
memory test, booting from the hard drive, or switching your language. Selecting the
normal loading configuration, Pardus goes to work detecting hardware and setting up a lot
of basic system services. This takes a couple minutes, but when you're done,
everything is in perfect shape and all your hardware is properly detected.
After a few moments, Pardus brings you to a welcome screen which is part one in a three
part setup process. First you're asked to accept the terms of the software (all of
the Pardus terms of use line up with the GPL) and the GPL (you can read it right there on
that screen if you like) and then click continue in the lower right hand corner of the
screen. Next you can check the integrity of your CD to make sure everything is
working as it should be. This is good to run the first time to verify the cd burned
correctly. While not every distribution has this feature, it's one I always welcome
and think all distributions should have. You're then asked your keyboard language
(not sure why it asks this, as you've already specified your language of choice earlier)
and to partition your drive. You can choose to either have Pardus automatically
configure your drive, or you can do it manually yourself.
After the drive is partitioned, the system goes into its basic install sequence.
The last part of the install asks you to do the normal exercise of adding users and
setting passwords. The way Pardus sets up the system is amazing. It's one of
the more hands free setups I've seen. There's no live cd that I can find with this,
so booting the install disk will take you right to the setup process. Once
everything is setup, you simply tell it to reboot, remove the cd, and restart the system.
Now that we've covered the install, let's look at the actual live system.
Testing the System
When you first boot the system after install, you're greeted with a program called
"Kaptan Desktop", a name that is a somewhat tongue and cheek reference to many
heroic cartoon sea captains of comic book fame. The application itself helps you
setup your desktop, which is a highly customized KDE install. (Pardus uses KDE 3.5.7
as the default window manager.) So in short, this is sort of like Pardus' way of
doing the basic desktop setup similar to KDE's first run wizard. Only this comes
with a few more options. Once you finish walking through this and setting up your
desktop, you're asked to start a program called "Tasma". This is a special
configuration program, similar to the KDE control center, only much lighter, with fewer
options, and a very basic layout and design.
Typically, unless you need to do something special, you don't need to touch this.
But if you do, you will find things are quite easy to navigate. I wish it
gave the end user more control over their system, but it really doesn't. It only
lets you into the more basic and common sections you'd need to customize and configure.
Now if there were some kind of power user setting that allowed you to have more
control over the system, then I would feel better about the Pardus Configuration Center.
But since there isn't, I feel the configuration center is left in a situation that
really impairs the user from getting everything they can out of this distribution.
The next thing you'll encounter is the internal package manager requesting to do
updates. Pardus uses its own custom package management system called PiSi which
works an awful lot like Synaptic, but is very unique in how it handles things.
Package management is surprisingly easy when upgrading or removing applications, but tends
to be a bit of a chore when adding new ones. As you can see in the picture below,
everything is broken down into categories to make it easier to find what you want based on
the type of items you're looking for. So for example, if you're after stuff for the
Gnome desktop, you'd go into the Gnome Desktop category.
Aside from the problems installing new packages, the package manager works well.
Out of all the custom package managers I've used, this one is nice, but needs some
work before I can truely give it my stamp of approval. That's not to say that won't
happen, but installs need to be come as simple as search, click and install, with the same
simplicity Synaptic does it.
The desktop for Pardus overall is very spartan for the most part, which is good.
I really have no complaints about that. The system tray obviously has a few more
items than I prefer, but for the average users, what's there is very useful. You're
only given two desktops to start with, but you can easily change that later on should you
so desire. Such a clean desktop makes it easier to enjoy the wallpaper of your
choice. It's also very easy to tweak your desktop settings and make things exactly
the way you want them to be.
The KDE menu, currently redesigned and called the "Pardus menu" is fairly
simple and well laid out, even though it is in many ways rather reminiscent of the Windows
start menu. It still holds much of the characteristics that make it a KDE menu, but
the applications section is customized in such a way as to make the windows refuge feel
right at home.
While Pardus was originally designed by Scientific & Technological Research Council
of Turkey for use by scientists, researchers and others in the science community,
students, home makers, or even Linux newbies will find themselves right at home as well.
The system also comes with IPtables pre-installed to provide you firewall support
should you want it. Another interesting thing about Pardus is that although it uses
KDE as its default window manager, there's also evidence of a lot of other elements from
Gnome and XFCE in it as well. While they're sparse, you can definately see their
influence in the system.
One thing I really liked about Pardus was its icon scheme. The cute asian theme
with cats and other rich colored icons really make it quite an enjoyable experience.
There also appears to be some graphical eyecandy of some kind that is setup by
default in Pardus. While I couldn't actually find any sign of either Compiz or
Beryl, there is some obvious 3d and splash effects being used in the system. I'm
just not sure where they come from.
Speed wise, the system is very snappy and responds very quickly to anything I ask of
it. And even out of the box, the system was remarkably stable. I say this because
I've seen a trend with other distributions of late where they don't gain true stability
until after several weeks or months and numerous updates. Pardus does it right out
of the box on the original release version. Hardware detection, as mentioned before, was
flawless. While I would wish for some more expert control over the desktop and what
it can and should do, from a new users perspective, what's there is very visually pleasing
and easy to use.
The list of applications available to you includes a lot of the standard KDE apps as
well as a number of 3rd party apps such as Firefox, Mplayer and more. Multimedia
support in Pardus is good. Your cd's, dvd's, music and movies should have absolutely
no problems playing. Wireless support however is a bit shaky. It takes a bit
of tinkering to make it work, but it will work.
Conclusion
Really, overall, I like Pardus a lot. I honestly have to admit that I was
impressed. While it's certainly not to the level of PcLinuxOS, it most definitely
can hold its own against the major players in the Linux market. If you're new to
Linux, or a more seasoned user, you will definitely want to check it out. Right now
I can't give Pardus my official recommendation due to a few flaws mentioned above, the
biggest being the package manager. However, if those few flaws are rectified, I
don't see why Pardus wouldn't find its way onto my recommended distributions list.
It really was one of the more enjoyable experiences I've had lately in all my
testing. And I've definitely tested several different distributions lately, some of
which were so bad, the only right thing to do was to burn the cd. 0_0;;
So reviewing Pardus was a breath of fresh air. I look forward to the next version
of Pardus in hopes that it will have ironed out these last couple of problems so that I
can, with a good conscience, add it to my recommended distributions list.
For more information on Pardus, you can check out their homepage.
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