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A full review of Trisquel 4.0 LTS. There are Linux distros that contain some free software and there are Linux distros that contain only free software. Trisquel is one of the latter distros; you will find only free software included with it. If you want proprietary software, you’ll definitely have to look elsewhere. Trisquel is perfect for Linux purists who only want truly free software on their computers.

The open source community viscerally reacts to Oracle's acquisition of Sun. Well it finally happened, as we all knew it would. Oracle bought Sun and promptly pissed off a lot of people with its heavy-handed ways. Anybody who has followed Oracle’s past antics shouldn’t be surprised by its behavior since acquiring OpenOffice, nor the reaction from the open source community which can be simply summed up as follows:

I write full reviews of Linux distros over on my other blog, Desktop Linux Reviews. Sometimes, however, there are distro updates that are interesting but not quite worth doing a full review. So I’ll be covering those over here on Eye On Linux; I call them “Quick Looks.” Peppermint Ice has a new release out today, so I decided to make it the inaugural Quick Look for Eye On Linux. Peppermint Ice, if you aren’t familiar with it, is a cloud-oriented distro based on Ubuntu. I did a full review of it on Desktop Linux Reviews, and also a column called War of the Peppermint Gargantuas that compared it to its sibling distro, Peppermint OS One.

A full review of Salix OS Live 13.1.1 LXDE. Salix OS is a distro based on Slackware. Slackware, as you probably already know, has not had a reputation as being the easiest distro to use. Salix OS makes Slackware accessible to more users by making it easier to install, configure and manage. You can get Salix OS with the Xfce or LXDE desktop environments. For this review, I decided to use the LXDE version of Salix OS.

I’ve reviewed so many different Ubuntu remasters that I’ve more or less become numb when I see a new one. After all, aren’t they all pretty much the same? Well no, not really. Different remasters offer different things. This week I decided to look at Pinguy OS. Pinguy OS is a strange blend of Ubuntu, Linux Mint and a bunch of other stuff all rolled into a unique package. It contains the default Ubuntu features and a whole lot more including a ton of multimedia codecs, additional desktop goodies, and a great range of default software.

A full review of aptosid 2010-02. I recently reviewed Linux Mint Debian, a very user-friendly version of Linux Mint based on Debian. This time I looked at another distro based on Debian, called aptosid. Aptosid, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is actually made by the same developers that created the popular distro Sidux. There was apparently some conflict and controversy within the Sidux e.V association that resulted in Sidux morphing into Aptosid.

We all know that there are passionate partisans of the GNOME and KDE versions of Linux Mint; yet, oddly, you rarely hear about people raving about the Xfce version. That’s a shame, because sometimes less is truly more. Linux Mint 9 Xfce has a lot to offer to those who have limited hardware, or who simply prefer not to deal with the eye-candy bloat of GNOME or KDE.

Life is full of surprises, some of them good and some of them bad. This week I got a great surprise when a Debian version of Linux Mint was released. I wasn’t aware that the Linux Mint developers were even working on it, so the release was quite unexpected. I did a full review of Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) for the Desktop Linux Reviews blog, but I wanted to talk about why this release is so important and helpful for desktop Linux users.

A full review of the Debian version of Linux Mint 9. Each time Ubuntu is updated, we get also get another version of Linux Mint. I usually end up reviewing most of the Linux Mint derivatives of Ubuntu. This time around though, we’ve gotten a delightful surprise from the Linux Mint developers. A Debian version of Linux Mint! Yes, there is now a rolling release Linux Mint distro!

There was an announcement a while back that North Korea had come out with its own version of Linux (called Red Star OS). I dropped by the official North Korean site, and found their contact information. I sent a polite email asking for a download link for their distro, but I never heard back from anybody. This was rather rude on their part, or perhaps they just don’t have people who can read English answering their email. Anyway, I wasn’t able to get a download link…until today.

SUSE Linux was one of my very first distros; I used to buy it from CompUSA and other places back when I first got started with Linux. These days, of course, one can simply use openSUSE instead of buying it at a store. This week I decided to look at openSUSE 11.3, the latest and greatest version.

Two brother Linux distros battle each other. It's a war of the peppermint gargantuas! When I was a kid, I used to watch the Creature Double Feature on channel 56. The Creature Double Feature was something I loved tuning into every Saturday, it was basically a double blast of monster movies. What could be better than two monster movies for a kid to watch on a Saturday?

Last week, I wrote about the somewhat-vague definition of the open core business model, and how it compared to the dual-license business model. Open core, like dual licenses, are all part of the whole "ways-to-make-money-faster-with-open-source-software" genre of business, but they are not the same thing.

Who knew that evil could be this much fun? It has been ages since I delved into the nightmarish and barbaric world of Ubuntu Satanic Edition. Much has changed since I first dared to install it back when I worked for ExtremeTech. Is Ubuntu Satanic Edition still as evil as it used to be? Find out in this review as I take you on a journey into the dark side of Ubuntu Linux. Together we’ll explore…the distro of the beast!

Think of Sun Microsystems, and what comes to your mind? For me? Purple workstations--my first exposure to Sun equipment. For others, it might be Solaris. Or Java. There's a host of things Sun was well-known for before it was acquired by Oracle last year and systematically dismantled to fit within the Oracle ecosystem. But I'll bet middleware was not one of the things you initially recalled. But it's some of Sun-now-Oracle's cast-off middleware that may prove to be a huge business for a burgeoning new community, led by some former Sun employees.

Just as late December brings Christmas, late June brings the annual "release train" from the Eclipse Foundation, and this year's train features the simultaneous release of project upgrades and new projects from 39 project groups. Featuring more than 33 million lines of code based on the work of 490 developers, the Helios release on Wednesday is the largest ever from the seven-year-old release train series. Highlights include a Linux IDE package, an Eclipse Marketplace Client for accessing open source plug-in software, and improved support for JavaScript and Java Enterprise Edition 6.

Ubuntu 10.04 is an easy-to-use Linux operating system that "just works." Have you been thinking about upgrading your computer to Ubuntu 10.04? I recently made the leap, at the prompting of my Update Manager. The process went fairly smoothly, but I did have to deal with a couple of minor annoyances. Since you never know exactly what may happen when you decide to upgrade, here are a few tips to get you started.

There have been several stories proclaiming that a recent Linux infection proves Windows malware monopoly is over and that Think Linux is free from malware? Think again; it's been hacked. Much as it pains me to disagree with the good people, they're wrong. Here's what really happened. UnrealIRCd, a rather obscure open-source IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server, wasn't so much hacked as the program it was letting people download has been replaced by one with a built-in security hole. Or, as they explained on their site, "This is very embarrassing...

You've likely heard this one already, but here it is again: over the weekend, the UnrealIRCd team discovered the "Unreal3.2.8.1.tar.gz file on our mirrors has been replaced quite a while ago with a version with a backdoor (trojan) in it." Yeek. This, obviously, is not great news, because according to the team, apparently this switcheroo has gone unnoticed on some of Unreal's mirror sites since as early as November 2009.

In previous reviews, I looked at the latest versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Now it’s time to look at a lightweight alternative to both of them, Lubuntu. Lubuntu uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) instead of the chunkier GNOME or KDE desktops. Lubuntu 10.04 is not an official derivative of Ubuntu; it is not supported by Canonical. However, it is serves a very important purpose by providing an Ubuntu distro geared toward older or less powerful computers.