TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

I've been impressed with Vector Linux in the past, though strangely moreso with their free version than the paid edition. They've generally offered a nice low-power alternative for older boxes and those of us with newer boxes who just like efficiency. I was interested to see what (if anything) had changed since the last time I looked at it.

Install:

The installer hasn't changed at all as far as I can tell. It's simple, text-based and does its job. The fact that it doesn't have to load up an entire LiveCD environment means not only will it load up faster, it won't tax older systems or those of us with real video cards. (Hear that Ubuntu?)

A couple of the install options caught my eye. One was a clone of Super Mario Brothers called "MegaMario", which I was curious to try out. The other was the option to install either the proprietary Nvidia or ATI drivers (both were selected by default, which I found strange).

The install went remarkably fast compared to what I'm used to with more mainstream distributions. I was then asked what hardware daemon I wanted: VL-Hot or HAL. I'd honestly never heard of the former, so I chose HAL. The rest was the usual time zone, users/passwords and X setup.

During the X setup I was given the option to run the Nvidia driver installer. This launched a relatively new version of the Nvidia installer and all went well. This is a welcome time saver since it's probably the first thing I do on a new system. The installer finished up and I rebooted.

Reboot gave me a functional Nvidia driver and the desktop was decidedly prettier than the last time I used it. Although I'm fairly sure it was an XFce environment, it felt on par with Gnome or KDE, which considering the significant difference in resources is saying something.

MP3s and MPG movies played, but WMVs did not. When I pushed the eject button on my CDROM drive I got a strange error from Hal: "Failed to eject. Given device 'NEC_DVD_RW_3500AG' is not a volume or drive." Well, excuse me but I beg to differ. Right-clicking on the desktop icon and using "Eject" worked. It's a small but significant annoyance for me.

I was a little surprised (okay, shocked) that when I opened VLWifi it detected and let me configure my Broadcom wireless card without needing any drivers. I had wifi in a matter of seconds (due to the network being up that day). That's another plus.

Software Selection:

I'm intrigued (and a little concerned) about this "MegaMario" game they included. The physics and controls are similar to that of SuperTux, but they make use of several sprites and sound effects that I'm pretty sure are copyrighted by Nintendo. It's a derivative work, sure, but Big N hasn't been known to take kindly to these sorts of things in the past.

Planet Penguin Racer (a modified version of TuxRacer) was included and confirmed that the Nvidia drivers were properly installed. I have to admit I have a weakness to that game.

Java 1.6 from Sun was installed, and Eclipse worked just fine once I downloaded it. Abiword and several web browsers were installed (Seamonkey, Opera, Firefox) as was Pidgin. The K3b CD burner and Bluefish HTML editor were among their stranger inclusions.

The VASM control center was also something particular to Vector. It offered GUI configurations for networking, X Windows, Users and services just to name a few.

Conclusion:

I was quite impressed with Vector 5.9. So impressed, in fact, that I'd seriously consider throwing it on my main machine the next time I get the itch for something new. The relatively low memory footprint makes this a possibility for older machines as well, and you won't be missing out much from larger distros.

Vector is an excellent distribution for my needs, and easily one of my new favorites for the middle-to-low power machine category. It offers a lot and doesn't suck your resources dry. Good job, Vector team.