Linux: SaxenOS

[vakkotaur]

This past weekend I installed SaxenOS on percheron. Now that I think of it, it didn't give me a chance to name the machine myself, but that's a minor issue. SaxenOS uses the Equinox Desktop Environment which seems to be a light clean thing. I've tried the SaxenOS LiveCD on the laptop and EDE is fairly snappy there as well.

Much of what I would add to customize the installation to my preferences is already there. As Gslapt is included, adding a few things is quite easy. The most difficult installation was Opera, as it had to be done without Gslapt, and that wasn't too big a deal.

So far, SaxenOS was looking really good. It fell down in a couple places, though. Sound wasn't working. The configuration tools that want the root password don't seem to handle it right and so changes can only be done when logged in as root, not as a user who knows how to get to root. The install to hard drive doesn't set the filesystem to read-write so the first thing to do after the install is use the LiveCD to rescue the install. This a known bug and the solution is on the SaxenOS web site.

When I tried the LiveCD on the laptop, I had about the same experience. I didn't install anything, of course, as I was just running from the CD. SaxenOS does mount any hard drive partitions it finds so I didn't have to fiddle around doing that myself. Again the sound didn't work, but that's not too surprising on a laptop. Unfortunately the network card also wasn't working, which was disappointing as I really wanted to try WiFi Radar. That looks like the very thing I was looking for a while ago and was surprised nobody had already written. Well, someone had written it, but all my searches somehow completely missed it.

So far SaxenOS looks pretty good, but it's not quite done. For a while it looked like I might want to replace Ultima with SaxenOS on the laptop. If that should happen, it won't be with the current release.

I did get WiFi Radar to install and run, or appear to run, on Ultima, but I have yet to get it to handle the wireless connection. Hopefully I can find whatever it is I'm overlooking and get it truly working without too much pain. I'd really like to have graphic connection manager and not have to fiddle with the more hands-on stuff every time I change locations.

As percheron is now meant for trying various distributions, I'm not sure how long SaxenOS will last on it. I suspect I'll be trying SaxenOS again, when there is another release.