CDlinux 0.9.2 Community Edition Trial Summary

I have introduced some older version of CDlinux. Three month ago, its author released several new version of CDlinux one after another, included 0.9.1, 0.9.2beta1, the latest new version is CDlinux 0.9.2 which released at 28 February, 2009. I will post some personal feeling and thinking about what have changed based on its older version and some suggestion after some day’s use.

At first, download the newest CDlinux 0.9.2 Community version at CDlinux official website. Install it into hard disk with the method introduced in CDlinux 0.6.2 Installation. You will find some default services start at boot time have been subtracted, such as: sshd, vftpd, etc..

Boot into system, click start menu at bottom-left corner, we can find there are more items than before, such as: “GMlive” and “SMPlayer” in “Mutimedia”; “Partimage” and “install CDlinux” in “System”, the “install CDlinux” provider the function of installing CDlinux into USB disk and the “C:” partition in Windows operating system; Added “Opera” web browser into “Network”. Changed “Abiword” to “Zoho Writer” in “Office”, and etc..

The Chinese Input Method has been changed to “Scim” from “Fcitx”. The file format for saving personal data has been changed to “squashfs” from “tgz” in CDlinux 0.9. In this way, when you save some data into desktop or the home directory of current user, the system will compress your personal data with “squashfs” format when you restart or shutdown the system. In my 256M RAM machine, system mount my personal data as a “loop” device(I haven’t tested if it can be loaded into RAM directly on a big RAM machine) when restart into CDlinux 0.9.2. Unlike CDlinux 0.9, the usable RAM will not decrease when mount personal data as a loop device in CDlinux 0.9.2, because CDlinux 0.9 save personal data in “tgz” format, the “tgz” format personal data file will be loaded into RAM directly, this cause the usable RAM in CDlinux 0.9 been reduced. I think improvement may be taken in the way of saving personal data: You can’t save a file which size larger than the usable RAM; If you save large size personal data into your home directory in an old machine, it will take a long time’s writing operation for saving your personal data into “squashfs” format file when quit system, for example, it taked about one minute to save a 100M size file into home directory on my PIII 667 + 256M machine. Of cause, the question above will disappear if you save data outside the CDlinux system (e.g., another partition which CDlinux isn’t in).

CDlinux 0.9.2 Community edition with about 204M iso file size located at “Mobile OS” when the much smaller “standard” edition CDlinux 0.9.2 Standard edition with about 64M iso file size located at a handy admin/rescue tool, the console only CDlinux 0.9.2 Mini edition with about 25M iso file size has no GUI interface can be used as a admin/rescue tool too. CDlinux has been changed from an admin/rescue tool only in older version such as CDlinux 0.6.0.

CDlinux has good i18n/locale support. Currently de_DE, en_CA, en_GB, en_US, fr_CA, fr_CH, fr_FR, ja_JP, ru_RU, zh_CN, and zh_TW are fully supported. And users can easily configure CDlinux to support their own locales. Especially to a chinese user, it is a best one good at chinese support among liveCDs I have ever seen. And, its hardware support is very good, the update speed is fast now, CDlinux 0.9.2 has adopted the new 2.6.28 kernel. CDlinux 0.9.2 community edition includes plenty of network and desktop applications, basically, it can satisfy the daily use for most people and it is easy to use because it can be used with few setup when boot up ended.

I think the most part of CDlinux need to change is to add a package management system, missing a package management make it is difficult to customize for a common user. For example, I need to custom CDlinux as a kid education system, it need add Gcompris education suite and KDE education suite, etc., I think this isn’t a easy job for a common user.

And, it will be a good news if CDlinux can be installed into hard disk as common Linux distribution. Maybe, it will help some low RAM old machine to use CDlinux. Just like Puppy and Slitaz do. But, if this will make CDlinux become an another Puppy or Slitaz?

I find new version of CDlinux has reduced some services start at boot time. I think, it will be a good news if CDlinux can provide a mechanism to control which service should be started at boot time and either load software into RAM or mount it as a loop device. I can decide load what services or softwares when RAM is limited in this way.

I don’t know if they are reasonable or not, just a reference for users and authors of CDlinux and welcome communication. Thanks for reading.