College Linux is a distribution based on Slackware targeting users first being introduced to Linux (including, but not limited to, college students). College Linux attempts to provide an open, easy to use environment where new users can learn more advanced features of Linux. The makers of CL hope to take advantage of the Slackware speed and stability while providing their own interface, installer, and configuration utilities (as well as some other goodies).

The Install

Installing College Linux proved to be a course riddled with problems. Many of these problems have to do with my specific hardware setup and may not affect your systems. I have reviewed these problems with the College Linux team, and they were already aware of several of them. Checking on the forums, I also found that others are having similar experiences and one of the project leaders ventured that the installer may be the weakest part of College Linux. I'm going to outline the problems I had here, after a brief description of the install.

Install Screen  Login Screen
L to R: The College Linux installer, login screen


The CL installer allows you to select a keymap (and then test the new keymap) before bringing you to their three-step menu. Your first step is to partition the drive for College Linux by selecting "Partitions" from the menu. If your disk is previously configured, all you have to do is set up the mount points. Using cfdisk instead of fdisk makes partitioning quite easy for the inexperienced (though I like fdisk, myself - it is much faster when you know the commands and the partition tables on your system well). After you have set up the partitions and the mount points, you must are given the Lilo setup options. There is an easy way to let College Linux handle everything, if you only have one OS booting. Obviously, that isn't always going to be the case, but I'll get into that more later. Your next step is to select "Install" from the menu. This will install the packages from the College Linux CD onto the selected partitions - no further questions asked.

By now, undoubtedly, you are thinking that this installation was incredibly easy and that anyone can do it. Yes, it was a very simple install. However, for the most part, that simple install wasn't good enough - I'll go over why here.

College Linux has the right idea when making the install simple. Their problem, from the response I get at the website, is that they are undermanned for the task that they have attempted (and are currently looking for volunteers). Because of being underpowered, sacrifices must be made, and I ran into a few of them here - most notably the lack of keymap/multiple disk functionality. I don't believe that simply looking at numbers is an accurate way to rate software, so if you want my "rating" on the installer, I'll give it an "Its getting there."

Post Install Configuration

A number of options must be configured when loading College Linux for the first time that weren't handled in the installer. These steps included setting the root password, creating a user account, changing the time zone, configuring your network, and configuring X. The post install configurator was marginally more successful than the installer, but I still feel like it is lacking in many ways, and it failed to auto-configure most of my system.

My Hardware:
I am currently using onboard audio until I get paid, as my Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer bit the dust on me a few days ago.

Being somewhat repetitive, College Linux again asked me what keymap I wanted (it was currently on qwerty, not my previously selected dvorak). This was tolerable, as I wanted my dvorak. What wasn't tolerable was what happened next - it completely ignored me. Unlike the installer, where it at least temporarily loaded the keymap, the configurator simply ignored my choice and left in on qwerty. This was quite infuriating, and disappointing as well.

Setting a root account password should have been easy - but picture the following: One, being that the installer ignored my decision, I am now on qwerty; two, I don't know it; three, passwords don't show up. If you haven't put it together by now, I typed my password in as though I was on dvorak. Because I was on qwerty, my password then became a jumbled mess of characters that I had to decrypt after I changed the keymap.

My network was configured easily using DHCP, the device having been probed properly, using a system that was very familiar (from Slackware use). X was also auto-configured by a Knoppix-based system, so I told the installer to load X at boot. This probably wasn't the best idea, in retrospect, but everything is 20/20 in hindsight. While everything appeared to have been configured properly, it had improperly set my monitor's refresh rate, rendering X useless until I could reconfigure it myself (which was harder than you might think - I'll go into more detail later).

Where We Are Now

I now have a system that boots to X, which isn't configured properly. My keymap isn't loaded, so I have a hard time typing (moving from dvorak to qwerty is painful on your fingers... dvorak is so much nicer). When I attempted to fix X, I ran into many other problems.

Some Problems with College Linux
Before I start, let me explain to everyone that many of the problems here are reflections of my preferences and hardware. Some problems I describe may be considered features, even (such as the virtual consoles, read on), and I merely offer my opinion that they are problems.

When X started and was totally useless (frequencies were wrong for my monitor, I couldn't see a thing, and it was potentially dangerous), my first reaction was, of course, to kill X. A simple ctrl+alt+backspace did the job, but [I believe it was kdm] "helpfully" restared X for me, giving me the same problem. I'll fix that, I thought, not knowing the problems that barred my way. I switched to virtual console one with the usual command, and found it to have been rendered useless by way of X. I tried to switch to console two, but to my dismay, nothing happened. I tried the others; nothing. Seven brought me back to (a broken) X - but no console. Without a shell to type at, I had no way to fix X - if I only had one OS, I'd have been forced to format and install something else [Note: I wouldn't actually have. According to the makers of College Linux, shell six is open. Maybe I didn't try it, but I thought I pressed on all of them - just my luck not to find it]. Luckily, I have several other *nixes installed, and I used Slackware 9.1 to fix the X configuration. This, of course, lead to other problems - for example, I had to reboot every time I wanted to check my configuration. For some reason, X in College Linux won't work at a resolution higher than 800*600 - whereas on other *nixes, it goes up to 1024*768.

Even with the initial difficulty of getting X working, it still was not configured for my keymap - and attempting to configure it proved an effort in futility. I think it is likely that the keymap was not installed properly, or simply not installed at all. Keymap aside, X also wanted to run at 1024*768 (virtual), so I had to scroll on my desktop because my actual resolution was only 800*600. This was just slightly annoying, so I decided to finish my review running College Linux from a virtual machine on VMware. It should be noted here that everything worked properly the first time when running under VMware, and all devices were autodetected correctly (with one exception: it didn't like my virtual scsi drive). I would also like to note here that my webcam was not detected in the regular install (the device wasn't there in Vmware).

The Desktop

Once at the College Linux desktop, I began to see some better aspects of the distribution. The desktop was clearly more refined than the installation and configuration aspects. With a Mac OS/X based theme on KDE 3.1, College Linux had the ability to surprise me. Having only the installer to go by, I was expecting a much poorer look.

Since College Linux uses very well-known default applications, I will list their defaults (the items that are most easily accessible in each category) here so that I don't waste time describing things redundantly and I can spend more time on what makes College Linux fit into its niche.



These packages in combination make for a powerful, easy to use desktop in many, if not most, environments. Package management is generally a shady side to many Linux distributions, but slapt-get made it simple to update my system and add/remove packages. A few simple clicks of the mouse and my system was updated - no questions asked. It even answered the "yes" for me when asked if I was sure. This may be bad, in some people's eyes, but if I click on "Upgrade Packages" I want it to upgrade.

What Makes College Linux Special

With a simple setup of username/password at configuration time, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Webmin, SQLite, and phpmyadmin have been installed and configured. This is something that I always set up when I install a new distribution, and it always takes more time than I expect it to (and a lot more time than I'd like it to). College Linux did all the hard work for me, and it was clear sailing for development from that point. I can't stress enough how useful this is to me (and many others) - web development is a very common practice among people who use Linux, especially college students. This, coupled with the inclusion of Quanta Plus, makes a complete web development environment simple for anyone.

College Linux is fully compatible with Slackware 9.1, and also adopts the Slackware speed and reliability. It is very similar to Slackware in the way that the interface is basically unaltered. Aside from the theme change, College Linux seems to have left the menu choices to KDE. This means I know exactly where to look to find my programs, because it is just like Slackware. It is all well and good for a distribution to claim that their menu is superior, but once they change it its no longer standard. If their menu is truly superior, they should submit it to KDE for review. Standardization is needed for a pleasant experience in most environments - GNU/Linux is no exception. But I digress...

One of the notable inclusions in College Linux 2.5 was Direct Connect. With such an application already installed, it made file-sharing easy. Many distributions miss the fact that people like file-sharing, and I always end up downloading Azureus to overcome this problem. As an added bonus, Direct Connect was easy to use, even though I had no previous experience with it. Many file-sharing applications can be very different than others, having decided on their own names for many aspects of the interface, making it a pain to sort out at first. Direct Connect gave me no such problems.

Conclusion

When I first attempted to install College Linux and it failed, I put the CD on the shelf with the mindset of "I'll figure it out when I have more time." When I was given the assignment to review College Linux by Mad Penguin, I took the CD down, dusted it off, and grinded my way through the difficulties of the install. The install was terrible; worse than most I have seen, despite its apparent simplicity. However, I cannot remember a distribution that was more worth the time. College Linux is fast, stable, looks good, and comes with automatically configured tools for most of my usual tasks. I will likely be using College Linux as my main OS if I can find a way to solve the resolution issues. If anyone has advice on that, please e-mail me at [webmaster] at [aparadine.com]. While College Linux obviously needs a lot of work on the installer, it is a very useful distribution and one I will be keeping an eye on for future review at Mad Penguin.

This document was written by Preston St. Pierre and may be reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.