TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

I have my suspicions that the particular person who recommended aLinux to me on LinuxForums did so strictly for the entertainment value they would get out of hearing me rip it apart. I can say now that after the whole ordeal I went through to install and run this pus-filled urethral drip of a distribution that I have no intention to disappoint.

Where shall I start? How about the website. The entire top and bottom fourths of the page are covered in random words used (I can only guess) in a vain attempt to boost their hit rankings in search engines. I should have probably taken a cue that any distribution that has to resort to tactics I've only ever seen before on porn sites in order to get more people to look at their project probably isn't on the up and up. The website consists of many oddly named links to things that may or may not have anything to do with aLinux. There is a link at the top of the site for "AMD64". I erroneously thought this linked to their AMD64 port. Instead I was taken to AMD's marketing site for the AMD64. These were all just harbingers for what was coming.

Install:

Upon boot I was greeted with what I could only call the "Carnival of Suck" screen. The first splash declared: "aLinux - Pulling all the stops." I'll leave any and all jokes about what exactly they "pulled" to the baser group of readers. Next was the install screen. It was an eye-rippingly gaudy framebuffer with the aLinux logo (which looks oddly familiar... like a bastardized MS Windows flag) on it no less than twice. Side note: this distribution got press a few months back by having the dubious honor of a cease and desist letter from Microsoft for using their logo for Windows XP on their default desktop screen (it said LinuxXP). 

You would think with this over abundance of eye candy that their installer would be graphical. You would think wrong. The installer is ncurses-based and absolutely unintelligible to anyone other than the developers, whom I have determined were in the throes of a particularly good line of crack cocaine when this distribution was created.

It became quite apparent to me from the first set of instructions that the developers' native language was not English. The grammatical and spelling errors that I found in their instructions would put a retarded schoolchild to shame. Here are some excerpts:

"The install process is in hope to be fast and painless..." - It was neither, I assure you.

"We recommend EXT2, still seems quickest transferring..." - Quickest was never something they were accused of being.

"Use this option to configure everything rite now..." - I feel a rite of something was performed, perhaps an homage to the God of Suck.

And that was just the first few screens. I was told I needed to configure my partitions. No problem. I was given the option of cfdisk, which then proceeded to attempt to format my CDROM drive. When this inevitably errored out, I was given a terminal session to clean up. Once I pointed cfdisk to the correct device, all was well, at least for the partitions.

I chose the install option and it asked me to format the partitions. At first I realized I'd made a mistake in the partition scheme and chose "No" when it asked me to proceed. Instead of backing up or dumping me to a console, it proceeded to continue installing on its own, using my SWAP space as the root partition. Needless to say, it ran out of space quickly and hung my system. Reboot, try number two.

The second time the install went fine, until I got to the part where LILO is installed. I tried every option available and every time LILO came back with an error saying it couldn't be installed. At this point I almost gave up but was heartened by the adulation of my loyal readers (like yourself) to try booting from the partition using another distro I had lying around. Vector Linux SOHO gave me the "boot from existing partition" option and let me witness the further optic horror that is aLinux.

First boot brought me to an equally eye-searing blue and green sparkly desktop that proclaimed "ALINUX". Cluttered about the desktop were links to everything imaginable, including MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ messengers (but no AIM). All three were different icons to the same app, Kopete. I was also immediately greeted with an error message saying my sound card wasn't found. Alsaconf told me no devices could be found, PCI or otherwise. 

Nvidia drivers were a no-go because although the developers included the Java VM 1.5 and GCC, they neglected to include basic system utilities like "ld". My USB thumb drive also wasn't detected at all (I checked the dmesg output and found nothing).

Software Selection:

Movie playback for WMV and MPG exists, but I wasn't able to test MP3 playback since my soundcard was apparently too advanced for this distribution to pick up. (All hail the holy C-Media brown bag special, shiny is thy silicon among cards.) Several different multimedia apps are included along with the usual compelement of KDE apps (KOffice as well, I noted with disdain).

Most Annoying Feature:

Engrish installer that simply doesn't work correctly, gaudy XP-esque carnival graphics, lack of soundcard detection, and a general feel of cheapness (like a hooker that hangs around a Wal-Mart and wears way too much makeup) just add up to a distribution that makes a complete mockery of the Linux kernel and GNU tools it exploits. This distro might actually surpass Linspire and Ubuntu on my Hatred-O-Meter (patent pending).

Who's it best for?

Like crack? Love deciphering fractured English instructions and inevitably finding out your efforts at fixing their installer's bugs are futile? Eat blood sausage? aLinux is for you! If however you walk upright and have something more than wind whistling between the vacuous cavern that separates your ears, you would do best to turn and walk away, very quickly, from this distro before its icy tendrils of suckage implant themselves into the base of your skull and make you start to jump around frantically speaking in tongues about "Developers, developers, developers..."