Full Circle Magazine FR

SolidXK Ever hear of SolydX or SolydK or the conjoined SolydXK? You can stop scratching your head, these aren’t cereals or high-fiber colon cleansers. The first two are Debian based distributions with Xfce and KDE as desktop choices. At 950 MB and 1.4 GB respectively, these are just slightly larger than the Debian parent that bore them. Still doesn’t ring a bell? Well, they are new (early 2013 or so), and, other than a sparse website at http://solydxk.com, there really isn’t much to indicate they really exist. Perform an online search and you’ll see results highlighting a window tinting company, the actual website, and a couple notes that no such words exist (in that order, I might add).

SolidXK

Avez-vous jamais entendu parler de SolydX ou de SolydK ou des deux réunis, SolydXK ?

Arrêtez de vous gratter la tête - ce ne sont ni des céréales ni des nettoyants du colon à haute teneur en fibres. Les deux premiers sont des distributions basées sur Debian, avec, comme bureau, Xfce ou KDE. À 950 Mo et 1.4 Go, respectivement, ils sont à peine plus grands que le parent Debian qui les a fait naître.

Ça ne vous dit toujours rien ? OK, ils sont nouveaux (à peu près début 2013) et, à part un site web

And what of SolydXK? It’s a teaser that exists in name only at this point. It’s X or K but not XK quite yet, although I see no reason you couldn’t install Xfce and then add KDE or vice versa. Lack of history aside, I was able to get an .iso image of each for a try in my Virtualbox setup. While the installer is more aesthetically pleasing than Ubuntu’s, some may find it confusing when it comes time to pick the root partition and related format. If that sounds a little out of your league, there is a helpful tutorial at http://solydxk.com/community/tutorials/#software. Even with the usual Virtualbox bottleneck and slowdowns, installation was not bad at roughly 20 to 30 minutes for either. No updates awaited me, and this I attribute to the Debian underpinnings and the youthfulness of the OS itself (about 3 months old when I got it). Footprints were relatively low at less than 10 GB for either, once installed.

In what has to be a rarity, all my hardware was recognized and I experienced no problems with video, audio, or anything else—since nearly every codec or driver you’d need is already there. If it won’t play or open, chances are your files are woefully outdated. As for desktop designs, you get either the very basic Xfce or the somewhat more grandiose KDE. If you didn’t catch the hints, I’m referring to Xfce’s rather bland “here it is, take it or leave it” 2D qualities, or KDE’s “add enough widgets and you’ll never see that desktop again” design issues. In base form, both look somewhat alike with similar backgrounds and bottom taskbars. Probably to aid users in identification, there is a big X or K in the titles of each, good thing since they are nearly indistinguishable otherwise. Take a look at the screenshots and you’ll see what I’m referring to.

That’s it folks. Other than the ubiquitous KDE musical ditty upon opening (Xfce has no such announcement), you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference, although KDE aficionados would spot the standard transparent window and widget menu immediately. Taskbars for both are the same layout, too, with the menu to the left and system information parked to the right. As the adage goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. About the only other indicator of one over the other is KDE’s better clarity and brightness. Xfce looked downright dull in comparison, but it is a lightweight desktop design with a minimum of flash. Normally, I’d steer users with limited resources to the Xfce platform since it usually performs much faster than the fatter KDE offering; however, that’s not the case here. In fact, it wasn’t really close. KDE was a good 5 seconds faster to boot—even after adding desktop widgets that would normally cause it to crawl. However, I don’t consider Xfce’s average boot time of 30 seconds anything to laugh about, especially given that’s in Virtualbox.

Being lightweight usually comes with a price, and that’s often a spartan menu with equally spartan tools, but that isn’t the situation here. A partial listing is shown in the table bottom right. While boot times were definitely different between the two, there was no discernible difference in performance beyond that. Both were equally quick in opening programs and files, saving documents, etc. If nothing else, either version of Solyd was quite fast once booted, even when using Live mode in Virtualbox. About the only bottleneck I encountered was the ever troublesome Software Manager, which resembles the Ubuntu Software Center—minus the branding and Canonical commercial offerings. It frequently did spooky things like flutter in and out during program installation, or just lock up for no good reason. On the other hand, the old standby, Synaptic Package Manager, performed like a champ.

So, would I recommend either one? All depends upon what you’re after. Those looking for a stable Debian based distribution will be well served here, but being plain can lead to problems. First, it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Remove the name and artistic logs and it could be confused with a couple dozen offerings I’ve reviewed over the years. The base programs are just that—base. It has no specialty, such as Peppermint OS and their Cloud-based programming, nor does it appeal to a segment, such as ArtistX or openArtist—two distros with a bevy of programs geared to A/V artists. Second, is it going to survive or become relegated to the dustbin of history? Take a look at Distrowatch, and, once you get past the top 50, you’ll see a few hundred more releases that just never made the popularity polls even though they are quite capable. But there is no faulting the OS itself. It has never failed to work, and I have yet to induce a crash (and believe me, I do try hard). It just needs to be polished a bit more with some excitement added. Mind you, don’t go all Cadillac Cimaron on it, just add some pizzazz (Google that Cadillac, if the name doesn’t ring a bell, and you’ll see what I mean). With all these factors considered I give SolydX and SolydK 3 out of 5 stars.

Full Circle Podcast Episode 33, With Added Horsepower Your hosts: • Les Pounder • Tony Hughes • Jon Chamberlain • Oliver Clark and Freaky Clown from the Blackpool (UK) LUG http://blackpool.lug.org.uk In this episode we are joined by Freaky Clown, we talk about the Ubuntu Phone release, Linux peripherals and some events.

L'épisode 33 du Podcast Full Circle : d'autres chevaux sous le capot

Animateurs :

• Les Pounder • Tony Hughes • Jon Chamberlain • Oliver Clark et Freaky Clown

du GUL de Blackpool (UK) http://blackpool.lug.org.uk

Freaky Clown nous rejoint pour cet épisode où nous parlons de la sortie d'Ubuntu Phone, des périphériques Linux et de quelques événements.