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Vidalinux is a promising new GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo Linux and developed in Puerto Rico. It's currently in beta pending the first release -- and as such is full of bugs and problems. However, there's a bright future for this distro with its OS X-like GNOME interface and the new graphical front end for Gentoo's Portage system, Porthole.
Many people rave about OS X's interface, from the colorful Aqua theme to the layout of the menus and icons. Vidalinux does its best to mimic OS X's look and feel, even to the point of including gDesklets, an applet that adds a desktop-based quicklaunch icon bar identical to the dock in OS X. On the other hand, if you despise OS X's interface, you'll still be able to change GNOME around to resemble a KDE or Windows style. The dock is handy in OS X because most Macintosh programs don't have a background shell like graphical programs in GNU/Linux, BSD or proprietary Unix. In Vidalinux, the gDesklets applet is only useful when you don't have programs running in front of it. Open one program and the gDesklet icons are hidden from view until you close, minimize, or hide the program with the Show Desktop button. Vidalinux uses Red Hat's Anaconda installer to copy a stage 3 (all binary) Gentoo installation set, a precompiled kernel, and XFree86 to your hard drive. In Gentoo the stage 3 installation is done manually at the command line by using the tar utility, the kernel is compiled manually, and all other programs are installed from source through Portage. Anaconda uses RPMs to get the job done, then installs the rest of the software as binary packages (stored on the CD) through Portage. This isn't a problem so much as it is strange -- one of the main reasons why people use Gentoo is to get away from RPMs and all-binary installations. Read more at Linux.com |
