sidux 2009.1

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exploder
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sidux 2009.1

Post by exploder »

I have been looking at sidux 2009.1 in my spare time and thought I would share my experiencees with it. sidux is not meant as a system for newbies, you have to get your hands dirty to really appreciate the work that has been done. The sidux installer is quick! It took 2 minutes and 14 seconds to install the KDE Lite version on my test system, now that is fast! Both the Live CD and the installed system boot extremely fast! Ubuntu could learn from how the sidux team builds a kernel.

sidux does not use usplash or splashy, so you see the boot process in verbose mode. You will only see the text for a matter of seconds because like I said this thing is fast! The new artwork is attractive although the icon set for the most part is stock KDE 3x. The Lite version does not have Iceweasel installed. A trip to the terminal fixes that with, apt-get update and apt-get install Iceweasel. (Synaptic can break sidux and is not reccomended) I used a script I found on sidux underground to install all of the codecs and MPlayer. The script enabled the non-free repos and is also reported to work in Lenny.

The sidux lite version really is lite! The installed system used only 68 MB of RAM at idle. Runnig the Live CD consumed much more RAM but it was still considerably lower than most KDE distributions I have looked at. Htop is included as a default package and just happens to be my favorite process viewer. The sidux manual is included and on the desktop by default. The manual is there for a reason and must be used as a reference if you expect to keep a running system. I almost forgot to mention that sidux 2009.1 is the only distribution that has set up the display correct on the test machine!

sidux is still using KDE 3.5.10 in the 2009.1 release, KDE 4 is stll in Debian testng. It should be very interesting to see how the sidux team handles KDE 4! I looked at the full version of the 2009.1 to see what the differences were, both 32 and 64 bit installs are on the DVD. The full version is complete as far as the mail clien, browser and such are concerned. I personally prefered the lite edition where I could choose what I wanted to install.

sidux interests me because they do thier own thing and do it very well. Following the instructions in the manual about upgrading is an absolute must! There are also warnings about package upades that will cause breakage and this is to be expected because of the sid base. sidux is a good choice for people that want very high performance, a Debian base and don't mint using the terminal fairly often. Many people think of Arch Linux when it comes to a low memory footprint and high performance but in my opinion sidux is better and easier.

sidux will not replace my trusty Elyssa instal but it is definately one of my favorite distributions to play with!
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Fred

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by Fred »

exploder,

My experiences with sidux tend to mirror yours. It is one of the best thought out distros I know of. I guess this is why I keep coming back to figuring out how we could use it, or portions of it, for a Mint variation.

A sidux Lite install containing Mint quality artwork that presented a nice clean GUI for program and Mint tool complement install, after the initial install, would make for and interesting set-up. Let's face it, the .deb program complement available for Debian is unequaled, even by Ubuntu.

Using sid is always going to present some challenges that are difficult to overcome if one of the criteria is to always have to have GUI's that run in X instead of scripts that don't need X, but if we could get past that... Think of the advantages.

Oh well, just dreaming.

Fred
exploder
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by exploder »

Hi Fred!

I was hoping you would comment! I think that you and I see the same thing here. I have started to read some of the user manual, wonder if there is a remastering tool? The sidux developers are leaps and bounds ahead of Ubuntu in many ways and they are a small group! Given time sidux will refine the update and upgrade process.I have even learned a few things from reading the sidux manual, it is very good reading! I have checked out every sidux release to date and I am very impressed!

exploder
kanishka
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by kanishka »

For me, Sidux is the only other distro that compares to Mint in innovation and quality.
Mint has a much bigger (and very special) community and you can choose from different versions, though.
Otherwise, Mint and Sidux are the best in town 8)
FedoraRefugee

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by FedoraRefugee »

My experience with sidux mirrors tha above. I used the xfce version and while Gnome is generally forbidden I did install a few packages with no problems. I did not mind running their script for 3D driver, I thought it was a very clean way to get the latest nvidia beta. Likewise, I ran the very latest kernel. I found the distro to be rock solid and very usable. That all said, when Mint 6 came out I went back.

I am really tossed up about what to put on my big computer. I have gentoo on it now but am going to install Shane's Mint Fluxbox version soon, just need to find the time. I also love Arch and Slack. I have to admit missing a Fedora install too, but I am not ready to go back to that just yet. I really dont like where that distro is heading. Lately I have been leaning towards going back to a purists perspective where I can still easily configure every aspect by config files and I dont have all the overhead garbage like PolicyKit, PackageKit, Pulseaudio...Maybe I need to try building my own LFS again, though I can just never seem to finish that.
exploder
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by exploder »

FedoraRefugee , I think guys like us get bored when we do not have something to tinker with. I have Mint 5 on my main machine and have tweaked and upgraded it so much it is like a new system. Most everything I use on a daily basis is at the latest version: Transmission, Gimp, Flash, OpenOffice, Pidgin and the list goes on and on. I have every bug I can find fixed except for the log off sound.

I personally do not like the Intrepid base at all, to me it is a giant regression and not the bug fix release the media claims it to be. Jaunty at this time does not appear to be any better. What good is a faster system that has poor support for popular graphics cards? I have always gone for the latest greatest until recently, now my focus is more on everything working.

sidux captures my interest because of it's speed and stability. Anyone that can build a kernel with that degree of hardware support and boot that quick knows something that I want to learn! The sidux installer gets better with each release too, it is quick and they managed to find a way to set the time zone. These Developer's are a small group doing big things! I think things tend to center around Ubuntu too much and Ubuntu's overall quality leaves a lot to be desired.

The big distributions are getting too competitive and pushing out new things that just are not ready to be mainstream yet. Plymouth is a good example because without a supported graphics card what good is it? Out of the box bloat seems to be a growing trend too. I do not especially want to see half of my RAM used just getting to the desktop and a bunch of things running at start up that I will never need.

It looks like we see the same trends!
rivenought

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by rivenought »

A few months back, I test drove the previous version of sidux, both the KDE and Xfce editions. I was impressed, but have gotten used to a GNOME desktop. That was my only problem, which was not a problem of sidux.

After reading so much about Debian, I have installed that to one of my hard drives. I still have the Debian + Mint experiment on a drive, as well. I do like Debian, and this is yet another opportunity to research and learn.

I have not tried the newest version of MEPIS yet, but it might be a good project for a rainy day. The base being Debian instead of Ubuntu seems to be a winning combination for them.

I have driven Parsix around the block a few times and found it pretty interesting, too. Once again, another distro based on Debian instead of Ubuntu.

Fortunately, I have only had one major glitch with Ubuntu, but that was solved by bailing out on the 32-bit version of anything based on Ubuntu 8.10. The 64-bit versions work just dandy on my main machine. Go figure.

With Mint being as stable as it is now, can you imagine the stability of being based directly on Debian?
exploder
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by exploder »

With Mint being as stable as it is now, can you imagine the stability of being based directly on Debian?
Even being based on Ubuntu we could be better if we did more ourselves to make improvements. Even Mepis as you mentioned does not completely follow Debian. Warren builds newer packages to fix bugs and issues people are having. We rely far too much on Ubuntu's repos for fixing common problems that have existing solutions. Brasero is my favorite example of this. The Ubuntu supplied versions of Brasero are total crap, the removed versions actually work but the average user wouldn't know this. We need to make our own decisions on packages rather than follow Ubuntu's poor support.Ubuntu tends to forget that things like DVD burning are important.
piratesmack

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by piratesmack »

Thanks, Exploder.
I've been looking at Sidux for a while, but haven't gotten around to trying it yet

I think I'm going to install it today

68 MB of RAM used with KDE?
Wow
exploder
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by exploder »

Be careful! I did a dist-upgrade and lost the icons in iceweasel.... Sid is getting flooded with new packages right now since Lenny was released.
Fred

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by Fred »

Yeah, now is a very busy time for sid. Open office finally out of experimental along with a new gimp, cups, Iceweasel, and KDE 4.2.1 to hit anytime. Not to mention all the new libs. I would recommend you use h2's smxi script to update with, especially now. Even then you need to check the forums just before you upgrade.

I haven't had any problems so far, but it is just because of the luck of the draw. If you don't want to risk breakage, hold off on the upgrading for a couple weeks, until things settle down.

@exploder

I think the icon problem for Iceweasel has been fixed now. You might try an init 3 level apt-get -u install iceweasel and see if that upgrades/fixes it.

Fred
piratesmack

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by piratesmack »

Thanks for the warning.
I've been using the KDE-Lite Live CD, but haven't installed it yet.
I'm not sure if I want to install it over Slackware, maybe I'll dual-boot.
pad-thai

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by pad-thai »

Given that its sid, I was surprised at how close sidux is to being out-of the-box ready. I had to manually install the flash player, and exchange xine for mplayer. That allowed me to install the mplayer plugin for firefox, which I use for some internet radio.

In terms of being desktop ready, Mint 6 is the closest I've ever seen. But sidux is very close, and bringing it up to snuff is relatively painless. Great little distro.
mince'n'tatties

Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by mince'n'tatties »

I have an install of 2009.1 on another partition and love it to bits, I have been using sidux as my other OS for a while now and have had no troubles with it at all. With blistering speed installing and rock solid stability you can't go wrong. I like the smxi script for cleaning out old kernels and installing graphics driver/flash/java is a great tool....as much as enjoy using sidux, it ain't mint.
anticapitalista
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Re: sidux 2009.1

Post by anticapitalista »

sidux is indeed a fantastic debian Sid (tamed) distro.
At the moment it is being severely tested with kde4 and xorg1.6 entering the Sid repos and the folks there seem to be handling it as well as possible.

smxi, which is NOT supported by sidux devs (though many users of sidux use it), is also being tested to allow ALL Debian Sid users a smoooth upgrade to the latest kde4 (if used) and xorg 1.6.

smxi is much more than a 'sidux' script. Any true Debian based disros should have no problems using it (or at least parts of it like sgfxi for graphics) such as Debian itself, Mepis, antiX, DreamLinux. Though the only distro that has smxi 'installed' by default is antiX.

Enjoy sidux, but do be aware that Sid is very likely to break.
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