Dynebolic 2.0

Original date: June 16, 2006 1:06 AM by sonnik

I've previously mentioned the Dynebolic LiveCD distribution. I first heard of the distro a couple weeks ago on Newsforge. The problem was, that I downloaded version 1.4. Version 2.0 is now available for download. I tested this distro out, read on for my observations...

I'm always impressed with any group that takes the effort to compile their own functional distribution onto a usable CD, so it's hard to nitpick on many details. Overall, the LiveCD is highly functional. In addition, a LiveCD like this gives you the opprotunity to learn of many open source applications that you may not otherwise have a need to test out. For example, Cinelerra, an open source video editor looks to be very promising. I wouldn't have otherwise went looking for this application.

Dynebolic is a ready-to-go multimedia distribution. I'm partial to the thought of having streaming multimedia server available without a dedicated installation; Dyenbolic is capable of doing this. In addition to audio and video, Dynebolic also includes tools for conventional publishing and web development.

Dynebolic will mount your existing hard drive partitions on boot. This means that it's able to read NTFS, FAT32, ext2/ext3, etc. You're able to put your existing media files to the test without major modificaiton. Note that I didn't check to see if my NTFS partitions were mounted Read/Write, though I would be wary if they were. I also loaded up all sorts of formats of media clips, with overall success. There were a couple of DV files I had that may have utilized codecs that Dynebolic did not support.

I guess my only real complaint with the distribution is lack of documentation; and almost any open source project is guilty of that these days. Obviously you can go to the websites of each included application, so that also reduces reasons for complaining. I'm not a big fan of WindowMaker; but to keep the distribution lightweight - I'm sure choices are limited.

On the plus side, it does look like the developers did include a nice "nest" feature to easily save your customizations to a USB drive. Of course, Firefox, chat, and other standard network tools are included also. Check it out, if even just to try some new open source applications.