The team that puts together Linux Mint announced the other day the first release candidate of Linux Mint 6, which they are calling “Felicia”.

I have not yet downloaded or tested Felicia, as I will most likely wait for the “upgrade tool” they plan to release to make it easier to upgrade Elyssa to Felicia.

I am impressed with the list of new features, but am a bit on the fence as to whether they are really enough to be a new landmark release. I am very interested to see how the new version performs, though.

The Beta 4 version of OpenSuSE 11.1 was released today. I’m thinking of downloading and trying it, but I haven’t decided where and how I would install it.

I just recently replaced OpenSuSE 11.0 with Mandriva 2009.0, so I am not sure I want to put OpenSuSE actually back on my hard drive, quite yet. I will probably install it through VirtualBox, though, and give it a spin.

If you’ve tried OpenSuSE 11.1, please let me know what you think; especially if you can compare it to some other popular Linux flavors.

A little less than three weeks ago, the Mandriva team announced the official release of Mandriva 2009.0. I downloaded the “One” live disc the other day, and, after a few minor issues (a blank screen on boot and some issues getting my hard drives backed up) I got the OS installed tonight.

At first glance, the new version looks nice. It will be interesting to see if Mandriva’s decision to hold off on KDE4 until this release will prove wiser than the inclusion of KDE4 in OpenSuSE’s previous version. I haven’t really kept track of what improvements have been made to KDE4 over the last six or eight months, but I am hoping they are significant.

Boxee, the XBMC-based media player I wrote about a few weeks ago, has released a new alpha version. The official list of changes (to the Linux version, at least) is as follows:

• complete UI overhaul
• play content available from: Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central, MySpaceTV, NextNewNetworks, On Networks
• connect to videos from Hulu and CBS straight from friends activity and recommendations
• manage your personal RSS feeds from http://app.boxee.tv and access them through boxee (on My Feeds under Internet Video or Internet Music)
• navigation in media is vertical (up/down) instead of horizontal (left/right)
• mouse is supported and enabled by default for new installations (for upgrades it can be enabled via Settings > Appearance)
• application settings (YouTube, Flickr, Last.fm) are now accessible from the Settings menu
• improved SMB support, which also fixes accessing your media via the Apple TV
• when using a keyboard, the ESCAPE button always takes you to the previous screen
• improved lyrics support
• improved subtitles look and feel, support for subtitle switching and fixed media going Speedy Gonzales for a few seconds when subtitle are applied
• when working in off-line mode, you can now properly access your local content
• numerous bug fixes
• many fixes from our friends at xbmc.org
• moved boxee install directory to /opt/boxee under Ubuntu (POSIX compliance FTW )

Linux Mint is the first Gnome-centric distribution I have chosen to review. Previous to my recent research into Linux builds, I had not heard of Linux Mint. As far as Linux distributions go, Mint is still rather young, having made its debut in late 2006. However, it’s based on Debian and Ubuntu, and really brings a lot to the table.

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I recently heard about a new program called Boxee. The program is currently in the alpha stage, so you will have to apply for an invite on their Web site. When I applied, I received my invite within a few days.

Boxee is a media player very similar to Windows Media Center. In truth, it’s actually based on XBMC (Xbox Media Center).

I signed up for the invite knowing that it was only available for Mac and Linux. However, I did not realize that the only Linux flavor for which it’s been built, yet, is Ubuntu (technically, Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron). Thankfully, I was planning to install Linux Mint Elyssa on my home machine, anyway, which is based on Hardy Heron.

So, I went ahead and installed Linux Mint Elyssa (a post about that will be forthcoming) and then installed Boxee.

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This will be my second review of popular Linux distributions. This time, I will be taking a look at Mandriva 2008.1.

Mandriva is a distribution that is built with KDE as its main desktop environment. This particular version comes packaged with KDE 3.

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Periodically, I plan to review various Linux distributions. At this point, I have five different Linux distributions installed through VirtualBox on my computer at home, and will be trying to write a review of each when I feel I’ve used it enough to comment on it.

I will begin the series by reviewing OpenSuSE 11.0. I have been using SuSE since 9.1 was released, and have always enjoyed it. OpenSuSE 11.0 brings quite a few nice updates (discussed in a previous post) from the previous versions. However, I’m not really going to discuss the differences between 11.0 and previous versions, as I couldn’t do the same for other distributions. Instead, I will only be reviewing 11.0 as though I am a new user.

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Over the next few weeks or months, I intend to review some of the more popular Linux distributions. In order to do so, though, I feel I need to begin by offering a little bit of background into some of the more integral parts of Linux. Throughout my reviews, I will most likely make some reference to some of these items and the way a distribution behaves with a default installation. However, things like the desktop environment (which is what I’m going to focus on in this post) are almost always completely interchangeable between distributions, and should only be considered pros and cons of a distribution when discussing the default behavior of that distro.

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With VirtualBox running very effectively on all of my computers, I decided to start looking into some alternative linux distributions. I am, admittedly, a SuSE fanboy. It was the first Linux distro I ever tried, and, excepting my limited usage of hosted servers running on other platforms, and attempting to use Sun Solaris 10, it’s the only *nix distro I’ve ever tried. I was so impressed with it from the start that I never looked back.

However, now that I’ve begun to look into other distros, I’ve found something that’s severely lacking, so far. It seems that SuSE is one of only a very small few that release full packages anymore. Everyone else seems to have one or two choices for installation media - a live disc or a minimal installation CD.

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