Debian has been a mainstay distribution in the Linux world for years.  It's such a strong player with such high quality that close to a hundred distributions are, or were, based on it in whole, or in part.  This includes great names such as Ubuntu, PCLOS, Linux Mint and others.  But there is one more distribution out there that is gradually making a name for itself.  That distribution is Sidux.  Their motto is "Debian Hot and Spicy."  That's quite a motto and a claim for a single distribution to make.  But does the distro stand up to such a high standard of greatness, or does it fail miserably?  Let's have a look and find out.

LiveCD and Installation

One thing that sets Sidux apart from other distributions is the fact that it includes both a x86, and an x64 bootable LiveCD image.  It also includes the same x86/x64 installation image on the disk as well.  This allows you to take one disk with you wherever you go and install the same distribution on an older x86 system, or a new x64 system without needing a second disk.  The LiveCD (well, technically it's a DVD with two different livecd's in one) also has an enhanced boot option for either mode as well.   There's even a copy of memtest on it for those times when you need to check your system's memory.  The cd boots into the system very quickly.  Total load time from boot to desktop is about a minute, which is very fast by LiveCD standards. 

Once on the desktop you're greeted with a "Welcome to Sidux" message, and a quick introduction to the distribution.  Once you're on the desktop, you'll find that the Sidux LiveCD is anything but typical.  Sure, it's got a lot of the things you'd expect to find, but at the same time there's a few things that aren't.  For one, only Knoppix matches Sidux in total number of applications available in the LiveCD by default.   Secondly, the Sidux LiveCD is considerably faster than most other LiveCD's I've found so far.  It's incredibly snappy and easy to work with.

There's also plenty of help that comes native to system that you might find useful if you get stuck.  They put a link to the included users manual, and even an IRC channel in case you're savvy enough to use IRC and need help.  They even included a link to the release notes if you ever felt inclined to read them.  After poking around and looking through everything, I was very satisfied with it.  The next step was to install it to the system.  To my surprise, the installer wasn't as newbie friendly as I had expected after the very friendly approach I saw presented elsewhere.  It's rather, well for lack of a better word, primitive.  When you first load it up, you're greeted by a six tab window.

It's definitely nowhere near as easy to use as Draklive from PCLOS, or the native installers for Linux Mint or PC-BSD.  Now some might say, "So what's so hard about clicking next?"  Well, I'd say "Nothing" if it wasn't for the fact that it's not as easy as just clicking next.  The welcome screen gives you a quick disclaimer, and then gives you the option to install Sidux to a USB pen drive.   It's the next screen, conveniently located under the "Partitioning" tab that's a bit tricky for new users.  You start with all options already pre-configured for you, *except the partitions*.  Those you need to do by hand with a Linux partition editor.  The three choices are gparted, cfdisk, and fdisk.  If it wasn't for the fact that gparted was a graphical partition editor that is reasonably easy to use, I might say that the install was beyond the capabilities of a new user.

But I still hold issue with forcing the user to actually have to partition their own drive by hand.  If a user is new enough not to even understand how disk partitioning works, or what they need to do when setting one up, this could become a huge stumbling block.  But once you get through that, the next couple of screens are pretty easy.   The grub and timezone screen can more or less just be clicked through without touching it.  The next screen is for setting up users on the machine.  You only have the option for setting up the root login, and one user.  If you want more users, you'll have to do that later as root.

One big plus I noticed about the system is it enforces a six character minimum on passwords.  Where it fails though is that you could write "password" and it'd give you the thumbs up.  Alphanumeric passwords are always the best to have, but I have yet to see a distro that requires them.  Ah well, at least they enforced a minimum password length.  The last two screens for network and installation are quite easy to work with and pretty much are click, click and done.  From here you can go grab a sandwich, and by the time you're back, your system is ready.  The speed at which it installs the system is quite surprising.  From start to finish it can complete it in about six minutes.  Of course if you count the time you spent before that configuring things, you end up with about a 20 minute total install time.

Once that's done, just restart the machine and get ready to enjoy your new desktop.   Now, speaking of that desktop, let's see what it has to offer us.

The Main System

On first boot, the system loads to the login screen very quickly.  Of course, if you don't want to boot to the login screen, there's also the option to do a memtest with the installed system as well, just like on the LiveCD.  Once on the desktop you'll find that, while you have a couple icons less on the desktop, everything else is the same.   Sidux also does something that a lot of other distributions have not as of late.   They use a generic, clean copy of KDE that has not been modified, tweaked or "sweetened" in any way whatsoever.    It's good old fashioned KDE 3.5.9 on a version 2.6.24 Linux kernel. 

Alright, admittedly there's some tweaking done to it, but most of it is in the area of adding additional applications for you to use.  And there's a lot of them.  It almost makes Sidux the "swiss army knife" of Linux distributions.   Everything you'd expect to be there, is there...for the most part.  They did do a few tweaks you may not like.  But those consist of the swapping of a few favorite applications for a few slightly less favorite ones.  For example, they replaced Firefox with IceWeasel, Pidgin with Kopete, and there are a couple other tweaks as well.  They also

Another thing that's interesting, and I don't know if this was intentional or not, but a complete Debian menu, including system development tools, and a development folder, are left intact in the KDE menu.  Normally these are empty and invisible in most distributions.  So I don't know if that was a mistake, or intentional.  But if nothing else, the menus are worth exploring.  And if you decide you don't want any of them, you can easily remove them at a later date.  Another interesting surprise that comes with this latest version is the addition of Krusader.  I've started seeing that appear in a lot more distributions lately, and I'm thrilled to see it here!  Krusader is one of the best file managers for KDE out there.  Heck, it even works well on Gnome if you're so inclined to use that as your Window Manger instead.

Another awesome surprise is the presence of VirtualBox, as well as WengoPhone.   There's also a lot of great applications included in here that would make most office workers giddy with delight.  There are a few things missing you might depend on, such as Gimp and others, but those are easy enough to install.  I'm very surprised and pleased with everything included in this distribution.  The KDE control panel is clean and spotless, and the system appears to be setup to run on anything from a UMPC, to a laptop, to a full blow desktop, or even a server!  It also did a great job of handling all of the media I could throw at it.  So multimedia support isn't a problem.

Another awesome and incredible little application was the Sidux Control Panel.   This in many ways works very similar to the System Control Panel in PCLOS.   It's very easy to use, and it allows you to control quite a few things without much problem.  These include screen resolution and more.

Really, the only problems I ran into was installing applications, and with how the system recognized various fixed and removable media.  As for the packages, sure, there's Kpackage, but that's about useless for installing new applications, which leaves you installing new stuff from the console, since Synaptic is nowhere to be seen.  As far as upgrades and patches, the system uses a program called Hermes.  I'm very unimpressed with Hermes, and wish that the developers would consider using a different package management and upgrade system. 

Now as for how the system handled fixed media, I wasn't at all pleased.  Now this may be caused by a bug that the developers have yet to identify, or it may have been an install glitch.  However, when opening the storage media shortcut, the system thought that the main hard drive was actually a removable hard drive.  If you told it to remove it, the system crashed.  So that's a bug that will likely need to be fixed.

Conclusion

Sidux's primary motto is that it's "Debian Hot and Spicy".  Really, I didn't find anything "Hot and Spicy" about it.  In fact, the entire desktop experience is calm, soothing, and productive.  Overall I like Sidux.  I'm very impressed with its speed, its ease of use, the tools it has and more.  But it's not quite up to a point yet where I can recommend it to new users.  Now if a user who had a bit more experience wanted to take it for a spin, then I would by all means recommend this distribution.  Think of it like a house that has a few flaws with it.  It's great for someone who doesn't mind tinkering, but not for someone who wants a turnkey house.

Now in the future if they clean up the few things I mentioned and make them more new user friendly, then by all means I would love to recommend this distribution to new users, because I think they'd do well with it if those couple of things could be fixed.  If you'd like to download this distribution, or learn more about it, I recommend going to their homepage.   There's a lot of great things there to get you started into the world of Sidux.