JULinux 0.1.6.1f is here!

We thought JULinux 0.1.6.1b was going to be the final 0.1.6.1 but there were new advances we made in our scripting and overall ease of use for the Windows convert. After months of headaches, late nights, compiling custom .deb packages, JULinux theming scripts (not included with the distribution), doing lots of graphic art work in gimp, and listening to Windows users tell us what they like and dislike about Linux (as we have done in the past) I finally put out the 32 bit iso.

Screenshots

As we all know it's not just enough for Linux to be fast, stable, reliable, run millions of programs, be easy to use, and compatible with everything but for the Windows user it also has to look comfortable, familiar, save in Microsoft compatible formats by default (so their friends can open their files), have a babysitting feature where they can call for support for free, etc.

My DAD always complains that Linux looks too bland. ??? Even with Compiz, 3D desktop, Vista / 7 themes and everything, for some reason he thinks XP actually looks better ???

To be perfectly honest I hate flashy things on the desktop because they slow down your computer and cause video games to crash on occasion. It's nice if you want to show off or if your customer likes flashy things and they don't do a lot of gaming. I'm not planning on removing it from the distribution unless I need to save space.

I did find that in my 64 bit distribution by removing the usplash it boots in 30 seconds. I'm having trouble with my GUI config in the /etc/skel but I think I found a work around for that. It's the same bug in the 32 bit CD version. What I plan to do is include my install script that I have that makes JULinux look like JULinuXP in a hidden directory on the desktop as well as the installer also hidden. This way the Finish_Install.sh will first execute my theme script and make sure the Desktop looks all nice and pretty before doing anything else.

I can't believe how fast it all runs. One of the Major Ubuntu problems is PulseAudio. It hardly ever works as well as ALSA or solves any problems. I had to develop a script that removes PulseAudio and installs ALSA along with the ALSA mixer. PulseAudio will still try to start every split second. Ubuntu hard coded some sort of process that keeps checking if PulseAudio is started or not and keeps trying to start it. It just won't die. So removing it works.

The second Major Ubuntu problem is that a lot of dependencies Games need are not in the repos. They are however in pure Debian repos. My solution? You may not like it at first. If you remember back to the BigMac32_Install scripts they temporarily changed the sources.list file and then changed it back again. Well that's not a bad idea. The necessary files could all be hidden. What I could do is first install the Debian repos and then install the dependencies (only) and then copy the original sources.list file back and install the games from those repos. This would allow the dependencies to be installed without causing Pure Debian package conflicts. Unlike BigMac32 this would be optional and separate. In fact the entire Game install would depend on if the user typed Y and pressed enter after being asked if they wanted extra games.