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Makulu E17 4.0 First Impressions


mhbell

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Installed Makulu 4.0 E-17 tonight. It is based on Debian Testing (sid) Lots of extras and very easy to install. It worked for me right out of the box. ATI radeon HD4200 card was no problem did not have to add anything. I did the expert install instead of the simple install. I am using it as I write this. So far everything is working. I downloaded all of the updates and installed them. There is some nice artwork and it has several features. The enlightment desktop is fast and boot up is also fast.

Mel

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Guest LilBambi

Makulu 4.0 E17 Linux Distro Is Mostly for Hippo Aficionados - Softpedia

 

Makulu-4-0-E17-Linux-Distro-Is-Mostly-for-Hippopotamus-Aficionados-417199-2.jpg

 

“Based on Debian Testing and Kernel 3.12.x, its fast, its stable and offers plenty eye candy. Sporting a Traditional Layout, Lots of preloaded themes, Wallpapers and Applications. Users will find this build much easier to navigate than most Enlightenment builds out there...,” reads the official announcement.

 

The developer also implemented the Gnome/XFCE menus system into Enlightenment and the Xfce file manager into E17.

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I like the E17 desktop environment for its performance on lower resource machines, but I had a hard time coming to grips with its conventions, i.e. "shelves" and such. It has its finer points, and interesting approach to desktop environments, but it was just too strange of a bird for my tastes. However, I still have Bodhi linux on a VM and I keep firing it up to check out updates, new features, etc... IMO, it's a FANTASTIC replacement for a low-resource laptop that's primarily used for e-mail, web-surfing, and net-based activiities. In short, it's not for me (at least, not yet?!) but I'll be continuing to check it out and monitor progress.

 

I recently saw the new release of Makulu with E17 DE and read the tagline "easier to navigate than other E17 desktops" and immediately interpreted as "easier to use than Bodhi". I also noted it was based on Debian, rather than Ubuntu like Bodhi is. I've been wanting to check out Makulu, but haven't had the time yet. Thanks for posting this Bell!

 

P.S. I've also been wanting to check out AntiX, which is also based on Debian with a choice of Fluxbox or IceWM desktops. (hint, hint, hint...) :whistling:

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P.S. I've also been wanting to check out AntiX, which is also based on Debian with a choice of Fluxbox or IceWM desktops. (hint, hint, hint...) :whistling:

I checked it out several months ago to install on a older laptop. was not impressed with it at the time. maybe I will check it out again.
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Looks interesting!

 

 

 

Testing, not Sid.

Guess I got mixed up. when it boots up it says Debian GNU/Linux (Jesse/Sid) So it could be both using testing and sid. Edited by mhbell
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AntiX is quite a useful distro for very creaky old hardware but I don't think it would be my choice for anything serious. I did get an early version to work on a (wait for it) Pentium II 266 laptop but you're never going to use that for much besides curiosity these days.

 

I downloaded from sourceforge.

So did I or at least started to and it was pretty brutal. Maybe try again.

ETA seems to be a lot better.

Edited by raymac46
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raymac46, it is a slooow download even from Sourceforge.

I didn't time it, I just left it running in the background while I did other things.

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I gave Makulu a spin in VBox (at least the live iso.)

What I liked:

Very pretty wallpaper if you are into hippos.

All the guest additions are there and the distro gives a wide screen and auto window adjust out of the box.

 

What I didn't like:

It's a PAE kernel, so if you don't enable the appropriate function in VBox it won't run.

The ISO is HUGE for what is admittedly a compact desktop.

E17. I just can't be a fan, even with the modifications the developer has made here. It just seems unpolished and clunky compared to say Xfce.

The installer stinks frankly. Instead of a nice smooth ride like Ubiquity or even the logical text based Debian installer, it is totally unfriendly. It has all the eye appeal of a GIMP photo process. There are multiple windows, and it immediately dumps you into GParted to roll your own partitions - even for a simple install in VBox. Then you have to tell the installer where to copy the system and the bootloader. Next it presents you with a tedious menu - even for such a simple task as changing the user name and password. Then the user name and password have to be changed in the terminal. Finally you have to fiddle with a sudoers file in the Terminal using Nano. All of these are familiar enough to a veteran of Linux I suppose, but I found them ridiculous for a new user. At the end of the day after I installed everything and rebooted I just got a crash, and at that point I didn't feel it was worth it to reinstall.

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Well I'm not about to be defeated by any Linux Installer so I tried again, this time successfully. Sending this post from VBox where I have Makulu E17 installed. I have to admit it is pretty fast - even in Virtual Box.

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I REALLY like that wallpaper! May I assume it's a stock wallpaper? Looks like it belongs in LXLE! I'd like to get my hands on the original *.png file!

It is stock wallpaper and several to choose from Not just hippo's .hint hint! Just downloaded the antix 13.02 you was asking about. It is nothing fancy however you can pretty well configure it anyway you want to. It has fluxbox, icewm (default) and jwm everything worked out of the box including my ati radeon hd4200 which a lot of other distro's have a hard time with.
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Well Makulu is just too annoying for me to go any further. After an update which took forever, I somehow managed to bork the update-grub installation (the choice was one of two locations - both bad) and the system won't run again. I just nuked it. No problem there are lots of others to try.

I'd advise caution with this one if you are putting it on the rails with other distros. Too much of a chance you'll break your system. Of course you could be smarter than me. Probably are, come to think of it.

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Well Makulu is just too annoying for me to go any further. After an update which took forever, I somehow managed to bork the update-grub installation (the choice was one of two locations - both bad) and the system won't run again. I just nuked it. No problem there are lots of others to try.

I'd advise caution with this one if you are putting it on the rails with other distros. Too much of a chance you'll break your system. Of course you could be smarter than me. Probably are, come to think of it.

I am booting the following distro's along with Makulu.

Mint 16 cinnamon (main Distro),

Siduction 13.2 Gome,

siduction 13.2 kde,

Suse 13.1 kde,

suse 13.1 gnome,

LXLE,

mint 16 kde.

Thats 8 distros with a Multi boot Grub 2 What I do most of the time if a distro doesn't want to install grub to the root partition, I let it install to the MBR the I use its grub to boot to my main distro and open a terminal and type "sudo grub-install /dev/sda" then I have my old customized grub back. I also use grub customizer and super grub if something gets messed up. No Big thing.

Mel

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I think the reverse happened in the example I had. I want grub installed in the MBR and after the update I believe it got installed in /dev/sda1 instead. There's only one distro in a Virtual Disk.

I suppose one could put the ISO back in and fix grub that way - like a rescue disk.

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I ran it live from a USB stick.

One thing I could not figure out - how to get the time to my zone.

It was correct when I first booted up and before I had internet connection. When I got on the internet, it defaulted to a zone several hours ahead of me. I was able to change to a 12 hour clock, eliminate the seconds and select if I wanted day and date, or just date or neither to show but I can't find how to select a time zone.

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I used Bodhi for a while on my EeePC but it's Ubuntu-ness eventually killed it. Now use LinuxBBQ/LXDE which is great. A Debian based E17 could be interesting.

BTW hippos kill more humans than any other animal in Africa, maybe except mosquitos. Not so cute now, eh?

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I continue to have problems with this distro. I reinstalled it in VBox, then updated through the terminal. When it got to the place where I was to reinstall grub I made sure it went in the right place. On a reboot I got:

error: ELF header smaller than expected.

Entering rescue mode

grub-rescue>

And that was all she wrote.

I used the live CD and a howto from Ubuntu to mount the HDD and associated tools, chroot, install grub and update-grub. Now it's working again.

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Again One thing I could not figure out - how to get the time to my zone.

 

Now it gets really annoying. I turned the netbook on this morning and it had changed the time in the BIOS so the computer booting into windows showed the time 7 hours later than it should be.

 

It looks like I'm going to wipe this one off the stick because I don't want to have to keep resetting my system clock every time I use it.

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Again One thing I could not figure out - how to get the time to my zone.

 

Now it gets really annoying. I turned the netbook on this morning and it had changed the time in the BIOS so the computer booting into windows showed the time 7 hours later than it should be.

 

It looks like I'm going to wipe this one off the stick because I don't want to have to keep resetting my system clock every time I use it.

try this link it is in the manual.

 

www.makululinux.com/apps/forums/topics/show/10079603

 

Nov 24, 2013 - Now Offering XFCE, KDE and Enlightenment . ... The newMakuluLinux installer is just about done, just some testing that is currently ongoing. ...out ) i have actually added change language and time zone into the distro menu.

Edited by mhbell
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Thanks for the link, mhbell.

Since I was running live - it never asked for my time zone. The time was correct until I had internet access then it changed (and apparently changed my BIOS tome too) and I could see no place where I could input a time zone.

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Now it gets really annoying. I turned the netbook on this morning and it had changed the time in the BIOS so the computer booting into windows showed the time 7 hours later than it should be.
Windows will always set HW clock to local time, so this will happen as Linux looks to it as UTC. Simple solution is to edit the file /etc/adjtime and change UTC to LOCAL.

Or you can force Windows to use UTC which is what I did, saves changing 5 distros! http://kb.norsetech....ck-to-utc-time/

 

To set timezone in a Debian distro -

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

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It doesn't mean it shows UTC time. It just applies the UTC +/- whatever hours to the hardware UTC clock time to show local time, same as Linux does.

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V.T. Eric Layton

Again One thing I could not figure out - how to get the time to my zone.

 

Now it gets really annoying. I turned the netbook on this morning and it had changed the time in the BIOS so the computer booting into windows showed the time 7 hours later than it should be.

 

It looks like I'm going to wipe this one off the stick because I don't want to have to keep resetting my system clock every time I use it.

 

This is a DEBIAN thing. For years now, whenever I install Debian, it likes to change my BIOS clock to UTC, which, of course, boogers up all my other operating systems. I've learned to fix that right off by editing /etc/default/rcS:

 

UTC=no

 

:)

 

Of course, if you running this distro Live and not from an installed version, my fix won't work for you.

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Well, not a Debian thing on my two testing netbooks. For me, it is always 'buntu that can't get the time correct.

On my ASUS 7" the installed Linux is a hybrid of Xandros/Debian and I never had a problem with the time.

 

In the past few days, I've booted up the 9 USB sticks I have with Leeenux, Puppy, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Mint Linux, Xubuntu, and Maluku. To decide which I want to keep and which I want to wipe.

 

I had trouble with time in Xubuntu and Maluku. I don't remember if I did in Mint Linux. I do know the moment I spied Java 6 included in Mint Linux, I decided I do not want that running - ever.

I had no trouble with Leeenux, based on Ubuntu nor did I with Mepis, based on Debian.

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