TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

This distro seems to have materialized out of the collective ether of the internet because I'd never heard of it until someone on LinuxForums sent me a link.

What surprises me is that I *hadn't* heard about it because it looks very much like a Linux clone of Mac OS X. I would have figured the Macheads and the Linux-must-be-hard-otherwise-it's-not-Linux-heads would have clashed over this.

Install:

You start in a graphical XFce liveCD environment, and the installer isn't obvious to find. It's buried in the menus that only pop up if you click the "so tiny you'll absolutely miss it or otherwise just think it's an icon with no useful purpose until out of desperation you start clicking wildly" button.

It then launches a modified Morphix installer, which makes you partition your harddrive yourself. This is nothing serious for a well-versed Linux user but for newbies the idea that the installer doesn't just pick up your drive and slice it up for you can be daunting.

A note to the DreamLinux developers: if you're going to emulate the look of an OS defined by ease-of-use, it's a good idea to actually make YOUR operating system easy to use as well. Just a thought.

Once partitioned, the installer goes on its merry way. You don't get any choices as to what it installs. Funny that it requires you to have Power User skills but treats you like someone who doesn't know the difference between your CDROM tray and a cupholder.

It's one or the other guys, one or the other. The installer sat at 32% for about five minutes and then miraculously told me the install was done. Apparently their status bar update script needs work.

The installer then told me I'd successfully installed Morphix and asked me for my usual root/user passwords. Yet another piece of advice: when making a derivative distro, remember to change the name on the installer.

This is really cheap of me, considering most of the folks who work on this Brazilian distribution probably didn't grow up speaking English, but I couldn't help but notice that the translations for some of the popup dialogs aren't quite right. For instance, upon first boot I was greeted with this message:

"Welcome to Dreamlinux! To use all the resources available on the system it is needed that you activate the sudo user. For this, at the dialog box that follows, you must enter with the root password, and next you will be able to use the system normally."

I've noted the awkward parts in case the makers of DreamLinux happen to read my page. I doubt very seriously they will, so my secondary reason will henceforth be comical derision.

The overall desktop experience was generally nice looking, for an OS X ripoff. The file browser looks similar to the OS X Finder, with a few glaring exceptions such as the fact that the "Close/Minimize/Maximize" buttons are on the right side (like MS Windows) rather than the left side (like OS X). They are also not marked in any way, so one must use trial and error when attempting to minimize a window in order to keep from accidentally exiting it.

DreamLinux has copied some of the style but none of the substance of OS X. The dock is static and icons cannot be dragged on or off of it. The lefthand navigation bar in the File System also cannot have things dropped into it. CDROMs have to be manually mounted. The whole thing just leaves me feeling hollow.

Software Selection:

MP3 and MPG support were installed, as well as the Mplayer plug-in for Firefox. The strange thing though was that media playback seemed to work *only* through the Firefox plugin.

Attempting to open an MPG movie from Mplayer resulted in a fatal error: "Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device." Opening that same MPG file directly in Firefox resulted in a movie that played just fine.

Other disappointments include that the GCJ Java stack was installed, rather than the real Java VM, much to my chagrin.

There were a few notable odd application choices, such as Picasa and Inkscape alongside the GIMP. AbiWord *and* OpenOffice.org were included as well. I can only assume that Morphix is based on Debian because there was an "Apt-Get" icon in the dock, and it worked as expected when I gave it an internet connection.

Most Annoying Feature:

As I said before, this distribution is a pale imitation of the Mac OS, much like corpses are pale imitations of living things. You can dress them up pretty as can be in a three-piece suit, but underneath it's dead and hollow. And it smells. Oh, the smell. But I digress.

Who's it best for?

The installer for DreamLinux was easier for me to get working than the one for Morphix, so if you're just jonesing for Morphix but want an easier installer, DreamLinux might work for you.

I applaud the team for putting so much effort into emulating the LOOK of Mac OS X in Linux. Now I challenge them to finish the job by adding the FEEL of Mac OS X as well. Until then, this is just another derivative with pretty window dressing.