Review: Dream Linux 3.5 (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Mar 20, 2009 at 01:17pm
Section:
Reviews
Printer Friendly Version
Legacy URL
Dream Linux, the dream of every new user, or at least the distro that's a dream to use has taken another jump forward and released a newer version. But as with every new version, questions remain as to how well the new version stacks up against the older ones. And how does this one do against it's predecessors? Let's find out.
LiveCD
The LiveCD boots up quite fast and gets you to a rather nice looking XFCE desktop complete with numerous icons and a quick launch bar very reminiscent of MacOSX. One thing though that really stood out during the bootup sequence was a series of words that would scroll in from the left announcing each major thing that was happening, such as doing auto start or loading the desktop.
It would then scroll out to the right and another would come in behind it. That was a rather nice and somewhat eye candy'ed touch. 
Another interesting thing you notice right away upon reaching the desktop is the notation along the right side (at a sideways angle) announcing three noteworthy features of DreamLinux 3.5: Powered by Debian, Boosted by Flexiboost, and Install USB FlashDrive.
Of the three, the one that catches my attention the most is the “Boosted by Flexiboost”. This is obviously a speed improvement system, and leads one to believe that it's there to provide a lot of help in performance.
The desktop includes your standard home, computer, trash and other items, but also has several interesting additions. The first is “Live Dream”, a point and click LiveUSB installer. Across the screen from it is it's counterpart, “Persistent Dream” that provides a LiveUSB install that keeps all of your settings, even after reboot. The second is DL Installer. This is just the standard DreamLinux installer that will walk you through everything you need to do to install DreamLinux.
Next to it is an Easy Install icon. This one allows you to point, click, and install a selection of popular and obscure applications not included in the default install with the least amount of effort possible. There's also an OEM installer. This will create an OEM like install on your computer, which makes this perfect for any computer builder or OEM to use when building PC's to create a ready to go, out of the box PC installed with DreamLinux. (I think this is a fabulous idea other distros should pick up to increase OEM usage of their distro)
The last item of interest is the CD remastering tool that allows you to make your own custom mixed version of DreamLinux that you can use wherever you want.
The overall system in LiveCD mode is very fast, easily within the upper half of LiveCD speeds. The number of installed applications are a bit on the lean side, but all the important ones are there, including many of the lightest weight internet, multimedia, and graphics apps available.
Stability in the LiveCD is fantastic. Trying to crash this is like trying to crash a bumper car. You can bang around all you want, but you aren't going to dent any fenders. One annoying thing I did find was that the screensaver was set a little too short, and came on at some rather inconvenient or inappropriate times. Otherwise it was fine. Now, let's move on to the installer and see how that does.
And for those of you who aren't too fond of XFCE, or are fanatical for Gnome, there is also a Gnome version of Dream Linux 3.5 now. Now not as a knocking against Gnome by any means, but the disk for Gnome booted noticeably slower into the desktop and ran noticeably slower as well. Feature wise however, it was essentially the same as the primary XFCE version, save for the Desktop Environment and a few UI tweaks consistent with the use of Gnome. Otherwise they're almost identical.
Installation
Using the DreamLinux installer is fairly easy. It starts you out with a single screen that asks you for the root and user login, as well as how you would like your disk partitioned. It's not directly explanatory on how to use, but a few seconds of clicking around will allow almost any user to figure it out.
Once you're ready to begin, just click “Apply” and let the installer do the rest. Really, this is one of the simpler installers, as far as steps go. However, it's anything but one of the fastest, as it took well over 40 minutes to complete the install, which easily puts it in the bottom third of installer speeds.
The only thing you have to do at the end is simply reboot and you're all set to go. Installation to USB pen drive is amazingly fast and easy. Almost in a way it's easier than the hard drive install. The OEM install is also fairly easy, as it more or less just dumps a default configuration onto the system.
Overview
Now although everything prior to this worked fine, including the LiveCD, I had some really ugly issues trying to get the system to boot. Had to actually run the install twice just to get it to take, since I got an unbootable drive the first time. Once the second install succeeded, I rebooted and found that it crashed on the first two tries at booting.
I got some weird segment fault, but no explanation what faulted or why. It did finally boot on the third try, but took an immeasurable amount of time to complete that. Subsequent boots were a hit or miss proposition. And I know it wasn't the hardware, since the system booted just fine on the LiveCD and the previously installed copy of PCLOS.
But on the times when it did succeed in booting, the desktop ran just fine. I expected it to get flakey on me, but interestingly enough, it didn't. I don't really know how to explain it, but once it was past all the boot problems, it ran just as clean as the LiveCD.
Software selection in the installed selection is identical to the LiveCD, as is the desktop as well. So if you need to test drive DreamLinux 3.5, you can pop in the LiveCD and see if it fits your needs. Load times for applications aren't noticeably different than the LiveCD. Maybe a tad faster, but not much.
One positive note is that the DreamLinux control panel looks both simple and beautiful. It's well laid out and pretty much point and click easy to use. Also, the dream Linux Easy Install, USB installers, and OEM installer are all still available in the installed desktop, including the remastering tool.
For those who are curious, the Easy Install is there to make adding certain programs and drivers to the system very easy. These are things that normally wouldn't come with the system due to legal or other reasons. Thus you, the end user, are given the option of installing them manually yourself. Some of these items are things like the Nvidia drivers, Libdvdcss, Acrobat and others.
Another little surprise is that XBMC is installed by default, so you can fire it up and watch your favorite movies right from your PC. It could also easily turn a small PC into a DVR of sorts too if you really wanted it to. Oh, and before I forget, DreamLinux is eyecandy heaven. There's eyecandy everywhere. No fancy Compiz like effects, but rather just a lot of really great looking graphics.
Anywho, getting back to the gagging that happened earlier in the boot, I checked and I can't find a reason for it. It's not a hardware issue, as it found every single bit of my hardware, including sound, network and everything else. So aside from it's boot problems, which may not be a problem for everyone, it's really not a bad distro. As for the boot issues, I suspect to see an update soon that will address those. So if you want to hold off for a little bit until that update hits the repositories, that'd be fine.
Conclusion
Overall, other than what I listed above, I see no real reason why a new user couldn't just dive right into DreamLinux 3.5 and start having fun with it. It's really not bad. Again, it's not as fast as other XFCE centered distros, a real surprise given the speed boost claimed by the desktop wallpaper, but still it's fast enough to work well for most users.
For more information, check out their homepage: http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/
|
Average vistor rating: 3.9 out of 5 (18 total votes) | |
|
Latest Articles
Upcoming Shows and Cons
Announcements
There are no current announcements.
How often do you change distros?
Latest Releases
(courtesy of Distrowatch)
More
|
