Chakra GNU/Linux Editon December 2011 Review
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Chakra Edn 2011.12 is the third and final edition of the Chakra Edn line of Chakra, a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The first two editions were Chakra Edn 2011.09 and Chakra Edn 2011.11.
We always like to start our reviews by providing information about the installer and installation process of the distribution being reviewed, but since there were no changes or new features in Tribe, Chakra’s installation program, there is no point in rehashing information that is already available in Chakra Edn 2011.11 review. A few screen shots should be enough.
If you are new to Chakra, you may want to read that review and Chakra GNU/Linux review for a detailed description of the installer and installation process. Also, all articles (reviews and tutorials) about Chakra that has been published on this website and you can find it by searching on this site, use tool above to search.
For users already familiar with Chakra, here are a few screen shots of the installer from the latest release. The screen shot below shows the list of available Bundles. Bundles are how Chakra makes non-native KDE applications available for installation.
And this is of the boot loader installation step. Unlike other Linux distributions, Chakra uses BURG, instead of GRUB, as the default boot loader. BURG is based on GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader.
By using BURG, Chakra gives you this beautiful (compared to that of GRUB) boot loader screen.
A beautiful screen shot of installation in progress.
Ok, with the old stuff out of the way, here is a list of the new stuff in Chakra Edn 2011.12:
- KDE 4.7.4
- (Linux) Kernel 3.1.4 (2.6.35.14 optional)
- Updated sound-stack
- Tomoyo-tools 2.5 added to a default install, for more security options
- Wqy-microhei became the new default font for Chinese/Japanese/Korean
- QtWebkit 2.2
- Updated initscripts with the option to test systemd
- Updated mesa-stack
- Included more popular GTK-apps as bundles
The release announcement stated that more popular GTK applications were included as bundles, but I counted 28 in this release, while the previous release (Chakra Edn 2011.11) shipped with 29 bundles installable from Bundle Manager. Perhaps a few, less popular ones were replaced with more popular applications. The complete list of bundles that shipped with Chakra Edn 2011.12 are shown in the next two images.
And the list continues. Note that though QupZilla is listed as a ready-to-install bundle, it is installed by default, so I do not see why it is listed as such in the Bundle Manager. There must be something special about QupZilla because it is the only bundle that is also installable from AppSet-Qt, the main graphical package manager. Other bundles that I checked can only be managed from Bundle Manager. And considering that QupZilla is a Qt application, I am not so sure that it should have been listed as a bundle in the first place.
While the inclusion of more popular GTK applications is a good thing, for me, the most important new feature is Tomoyo-tools, a host-based application firewall, which is one of 3 available in Linux. An application firewall complements an operating system’s stateful packet filtering firewall. Fedora uses SELinux, while Ubuntu and distributions derived from it use AppArmor. Chakra is the first Linux distribution reviewed on this website this year to include Tomoyo in its stable edition. Note, though, that it is not activated by default. Tomoyo will also be the default application firewall in Mageia 2, but that will not be released until May 2012.
Making Tomoyo available is a nice addition to Chakra, but several shortcomings of the previous release which I drew attention to in Chakra Edn 2011.11 review, were not addressed in this latest edition. For example, the firewall is not activated out of the box. Also, CUPS, the printing daemon, is not activated, so setting up any printer on the system will always be a manual process. Always, until the developers set it up to auto-configure printers like we have in Pardus, Linux Mint, Ubuntu and other distributions.
Another minor issue which I drew attention to in that review of the previous edition, is that the home directory is missing the usual cast of folders that you see in other distributions. So the first task that you have to address in a new installation of Chakra Edn 2011.12, is to create the folders yourself. The screen shot below shows the default home folder of a useraccount as viewed from Dolphin, the file manager.
Installed Applications: Chakra Edn 2011.12 ships with a reasonable set of applications that most users would need. Note that the DVD installation image is loaded with the right set of applications, while the CD installation image is almost bare-bones. So if you do not want to spend times hunting for applications to install, best to use the DVD image. The following is a list of some of the installed applications on my test system:
Bangarang (“a Jamaican word for noise, chaos and disorder”) is a music and movie player that is integrated with the Nepomuk indexing service. Courtesy of this integration with Nepomuk, Bangarang “has access to indexed media information and automatically shares its own media information, rating, tags and usage statistics with other KDE powered applications.” If you are not using Chakra, Bangarang is likely included in the repository of your distribution. I know that it is available in Ubuntu.
Calibre is an e-book management application with the following features: Library management; ability to “convert from a huge number of formats to a huge number of formats” or more simply, can convert many e-book formats; a modular device driver with support for many e-book readers; can auto-fetch and convert news from websites and RSS feeds to e-books; built-in e-book viewer; comes with a built-in Web server that essentially allows you to run a private e-book server.
QupZilla is a Qt WebKit (Web) browser installed by default. It is also listed as installable in the Bundle Manager, which, by definition, makes it a GTK application, which is kinda confusing, unless there is some thing abut QupZilla and bundles that I am yet to grasp. In any case, QupZilla feels very fast, much faster than rekonq, the default Web browser.
Q4Wine is a graphical application that makes it easy to “manage wine prefixes and installed applications.” That is another way of saying that it makes it easy to run Microsoft applications in Linux. It is one of four graphical interfaces for
WINE available in Linux that makes it possible to run Windows games and other Windows applications in Linux.
SpiderOak is a commercial cloud backup service that claims to offer secure storage for your data. It is similar to Wuala from LaCie.
Tomahawk is a “socially-connected” music player “optimized … to play, discover and share music.” The main interface is shown below.
Many more applications are available for installation via AppSet-Qt, the graphical package manager, or as bundles using the Bundle Manager.
Final Thoughts: While I do not currently use Chakra on my personal computers (aside from my test machines), it is one of my favorite KDE-based distributions. Most of the pieces that could make it a perfect desktop distribution are in place, but they need to be made available users out of the box. For the next edition of Chakra, which should be released early next year, here are the features I would like to see made a part of the default installation, that is, installed or activated out of the box:
- Create all those folders in user’s home directory that we see on other distributions
- Have the firewall activated
- Might not be a bad idea to activate Tomoyo too
- CUPS should be activated, and the system configured to auto-configure connected printers
- Replace the Kickoff menu with the Takeoff Launcher, and add the Stackfolder widget to the panel. These two features will give the default desktop a very modern, user-friendly appearance. They are 2 cool reasons to use the K Desktop Environment.
Those, of course, are just suggestions.
Resources: Chakra is a semi-rolling distribution, so if you are already running an installation of Chakra, you do not need to download this latest edition. Just apply all available updates and you will be good to go. The rest may download a 32- or 64-bit installation image from here. All interested may read the release announcement and post support questions here.
Screen Shots: More screen shots from test installations of Chakra Edn 2011.12.
The login screen.
The default desktop with the Kickoff menu.
The same desktop, but with Takeoff menu.
Installed Internet applications as viewed from the KDE Plasma Netbook interface.
Multimedia applications from the same interface.
LibreOffice is the installed office suite in this edition of Chakra Edn. This screen shot shows the various components.
Source: Linux BS Dos
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