Your Greatest Strength (Fiction)

I wrote this and posted it because it's for fun. Sometimes I like to write as a way of just setting life aside for a few minutes and enjoying my imagination. If you enjoy this, please share it with your Facebook and Twitter friends!

Your Greatest Strength

By: S. Daniel Smith

The wind was chilly, but felt good against his legs as Paul trotted down the lane toward the starting line. He wanted to be warm enough at the start of the race to get off quickly. Of course, the bios weren’t warming up. They didn’t have to. The millions of nanobots that acted as sensors and trigger servos in their legs and lungs would make up for the deficiency.

Paul didn’t care that he was the only runner left in the elite class who ran as a whole human, or “non-bio” as they were termed. Everyone else, in order to compete against the other bios, became a bio too. Oh sure, thousands of people ran marathons, even competitive ones, as non-bios, but they didn’t really compete. Often they were charity runners. An important part of the running culture to be sure, but not where Paul operated.

“Mornin’ Paul,” said another elite runner as they crossed paths. Paul recognized the runner, a fellow American named Todd Bogart…a bio. Todd had reportedly made the switch a year ago. He hadn’t won anything yet, but it often took a year or so for the implants to reconfigure the muscular and cardiovascular systems.

Paul nodded, but didn’t speak. He was angry.

The trotting was over. Paul conducted a very short, very simple stretching routine. He didn’t want to stress his muscles too much before the race. They would be tested plenty once the gun went off. He wanted to win. When he beat the bios, he wanted them to see it. He wanted his body as fresh as possible.

“All elite runners please report to the starting line!” bellowed the loudspeaker. “Race starts in 10 minutes!”

Paul made his way forward. The bib number told others around him that he was an elite. They made way for him. Some of them didn’t know who he was, but most did. They, being non-bios, knew Paul the non-bio because all of the running magazines did articles on him. He was the fastest non-bio in competitive racing.

“Two minutes until start!” warned the loudspeaker. He was telling jokes and making fun of the newbies in between warnings.

Paul took his place in the second row of the elite group. He didn’t want to be too brash, even though he planned to beat every last one of them. Knowing what he knew, and having the advantage that he had, he didn’t mind starting just behind them. He took notice of who was around him. Many of his fellow runners had raced non-bio for years before succumbing to the pressure to compete. Money came from winning, or at least placing in the top three, and the top three was harder to come by for non-bios. A small wave of sympathy washed over him, but Paul dismissed it with a furrowed brow. He was angry.

“One minute!”

Only one other bio was in the group with him. Paul didn’t know the guy’s name, but did know he came from Ethiopia. Once upon a time, that would have mattered. It didn’t anymore, for the most part. While the biomechanical implants helped everyone improve, regardless of talent level, the body’s natural abilities still had an effect. The implants couldn’t just make a fat couch potato a star athlete (that had been tried before), but it nearly always gave an advantage.

“On your mark!”

Now the adrenaline was pumping. Paul always got nervous, even though he knew he would win this day.

“Get set!”

Why did they count down like this? It was stupid. A race like this, that lasted the better part of two hours, didn’t need a sprinter’s countdown.

“Go!”

Lots of cheering, bodies bumping against each other, and runners dodging elbows. He almost wished he weren’t an elite runner. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with it as much.

The race started normal enough. The elite runners, Paul included, tore off on a 4:10 pace down the main stretch of the road toward their first turn. The bios could maintain that pace nearly the entire marathon. Paul, while the elite of elite as far as non-bio running was concerned, could only maintain 4:25 or so per mile. Human running had adapted significantly over the years, even to the point of almost calling it evolution, but keeping his pace below five minutes per mile for the entire length of the race was still impossible…unless one was a bio runner.

“That’s where your greatest strength becomes your greatest weakness,” Muluneh had said several months back He was the last elite Kenyan runner to go bio a few years before. It disgusted Paul. He liked Muluneh a lot. The guy was a fierce competitor. Too bad he was in today’s race.

Paul stayed with the pack for several of the first miles, then started drifting back a little. They were maintaining a sub-4:15 minute mile pace and he was starting to eek a little above. A few seconds here and there would add up soon.

“Just a few more miles,” he breathed to himself. He took water at the five-mile mark. Several years ago, back in the early part of the century, a 4:20 pace would have been incredible.

But that was before the big running companies started testing biomechanical running aids. Elite runners shunned the equipment for several years and major races like Boston, London, Berlin, and New York disqualified bio runners.

Things change though…people do too. Berlin was the first to allow bio runners. Once a major marathon dropped the rule, the others followed suite until the USATF was forced to do the same. It was all downhill from there.

“Almost time to make your move,” he told himself as he lost sight of the last bio elite runner ahead of him. They had rounded the turn at mile 19 without him. He was still running a blazingly fast speed, but it wouldn’t be enough. His greatest strength was his greatest weakness.

Mile 21 came and went. It was now or never. Paul was high-fived by a friend of his at the water station, where Paul took his last drink for the race. That friend then texted another friend at mile 23 (where the bios were in the race). A simple howdy-do was all he needed, and he pushed a button on the cell phone that linked to an encrypted satellite, that linked to a hacked cell phone tower, that linked to the biomechanical controller implanted in the elite runners’ bodies.

He knew the risk. The doctor he had consulted told him that it could hurt people. The biomechanical equipment hadn’t been tested in a way that bypassed its normal shutdown routine because no one had ever hacked the system before. Arrogance. It serves them right.

Except for Muluneh of course. He really didn’t deserve this, but he had gone bio too. It was another nine minutes before Paul saw the effects of his high five. He started passing them at mile 24, but a few had managed to escape the first blast and the “man” had to trigger a second one. Paul found Muluneh at mile 26, a mere 350 yards from the finish line.

Paul was alone. No other elite ran as a non-bio. He slowed as he approached Muluneh and stopped by his side. Muluneh was lying prostrate on the road, trying desperately to claw to the finish line. He dragged two inept legs behind him.

“Something is wrong, Paul,” he said, out of breath in his heavily accented Kenyan accent. “I can’t work my legs.”

Paul knelt down and touched his adversary on the shoulder. For a brief moment, the race seemed to stop. He looked at Muluneh and sighed.

“Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness, Muluneh,” said Paul. “I’m sorry. I hope they figure out what happened.”

Then he got up and won the race.

SparkyLinux 3.2 Xfce Review

Sparky Linux 3.2 Xfce Review

By: S. Daniel Smith

www.navychristian.org

SparkyLinux is a very intriguing distro. I’ve played with it before, but never reviewed it in earnest. I’ll get into what I like and don’t like about them towards the end of the review, but first let’s start with what SparkyLinux is: “SparkyLinux is a lightweight, fast and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customized Enlightenment and LXDE desktops. It has been built on the “testing” branch of Debian GNU/Linux.”

As can be seen by reading just about any of my reviews, I like to review a given distro by first looking at it on my MacBook Pro before testing in on my Toshiba test laptop. Someday I’ll write a post explaining why I like doing that.

Desktop:

Having said that, I liked how it looked on my VirtualBox. Loading it up on VB, I immediately noticed the wonderful appearance of the standard desktop. Along the top you will find the standard Menu bar, including status icons for networking, date/time, user information, etc. On the left side, you have the home, file system, trash and (on live CD version) the install icons. Along the right hand side, there is a rather large system monitor bar (Conky) akin to Windows gadgets, although there is far more information on SparkyLinux, and to be fair, Windows gadgets look better.  Finally, at the bottom is a bar akin to the Mac OSX icon bar. It is very functional, even on my old Toshiba.

System Monitor:

While it isn’t the prettiest system monitor I’ve ever seen, the information displayed by SparkyLinux via Conky (http://conky.sourceforge.net) is certainly the most comprehensive. Unfortunately, comprehensive sometimes means busy, and this status bar is very busy. I think the average Linux user would enjoy the information displayed here, though I don’t know if a non-Linux user would want that much information displayed all the time. When thinking of a person who may be switching from Windows to Linux, it’s wise to remember that Windows is a fairly clean desktop experience. This is true for Mac as well. Displaying too much information can be a curse.

Having said that, I really enjoyed the experience. I am a somewhat experienced Linux user, so Conky didn’t bother me. On the contrary…I enjoyed knowing exactly what my computer was doing the whole time. If you choose to test SparkyLinux for yourself, then you’ll see what I mean. Conky makes testing SparkyLinux very convenient.

Standard Applications:

SparkyLinux comes with a standard load of applications that you would expect to find in most mainstream Linux distros. It uses LibreOffice 4.1.4.2 for office applications, which I believe give it the best chance to compete against Microsoft Office. LibreOffice now has 4.2 on the street, but it just happened, so SparkyLinux can’t be faulted for sticking with a 4.1 variant right now.

It comes with a lot of games, most of which are pretty simple and not that enjoyable, but most interesting is the PlayOnLinux app. I’ve used WINE before, but I had never heard of PlayOnLinux. I guess I should have guessed that it was based on WINE.

Web browsing is accomplished through IceWeasel, which is a rebranding of the Mozilla Firefox for Debian. This seems fishy to me, as Debian simply took the Firefox sourcecode and renamed it so they didn’t have to comply with Mozilla’s branding rules. This begs an entire blog post of questions about the philosophical issue surrounding open source agreements and how far they should go to prevent other open source orgs from using not-quite-so-proprietary information. At any rate, IceWeasel works fine, as it should.

On a final note, dropbox comes standard with SparkyLinux. I use Dropbox extensively to move files between computers, including between work and home (Word documents only, no actual work files). It’s easy enough to get a program like Dropbox, so it’s not the biggest selling point. However, knowing that the SparkyLinux developers are forward-looking enough to know that it’s necessary is a big point in their favor.

Installing SparkyLinux:

Installation was not fun. First of all, SparkyLinux recognizes the installer program as an untrusted application (see below), which is just awkward in my opinion. It makes me think of Windows not trusting other Microsoft applications. I’ve never personally seen this before on Linux, so I was disappointed to see it here.

In addition to this issue, SparkyLinux then proceeded on my behalf to the installer without asking for the root password, something that I also find disappointing (or awkward might be a better way of saying it) as most Linux distros ask for the root password.

Overall, I was not impressed with the install experience, and a novice user will not find it usable. Like another reviewer of SparkyLinux, I think this is a weak spot for the distro.

Performance:

SparkyLinux 3.2 is no slouch when it comes to performance. It provides very little drain on resources as it performs tasks in applications such as IceWeasel and LibreOffice Writer. Some of this, of course, has to do as much with the applications that are being used as with the OS running them, but the important thing to note is that SparkyLinux isn't the drain.

At rest, the distro uses only 1-4% of the CPU and 5% of my laptop's 3GB of RAM. Thanks to Conky displaying real-time stats on the right side of the desktop, I can see exactly what is using the resources. At rest, Conky is actually the biggest drain, at a whopping 1% of the 2% CPU utilized.

Once I start typing on LibreOffice Writer, the CPU jumps to 5%, with LibreOffice using 2/3 of that. Same thing happens when I start working in IceWeasel. Bottom line on this is that SparkyLinux isn't a resource-hog. Of course, we could have assumed that. However, battery life isn't quite as good as could be hoped for. Battery life is often a topic of interest in any given Linux distro, and the issue is quite popular on the internet. Since I am running off of an older system (over 3 years old), my hardware undoubtedly bears some of the blame.

SparkyLinux 3.2 gets good grades for performance, especially considering the fact that my laptop isn't a spring chicken and that Windows 7 used to bog it down so much that it was unusable.

Overall Impression:

I’ll say right up front that this distro isn’t going to be displacing Ubuntu for me. It’s not as polished and doesn’t work as well. I think, especially for novice users, that it’s not friendly enough. In order for Linux to be mainstream, it cannot require more from people than Mac OS or Windows does.

Having said that, I do like it and I think it has promise. Its desktop experience, especially its Mac OSX-style bar, shows a lot of possibility, and its range of standard applications is impressive. For those who are interested in playing with a distro that might need some experience to make effective, then go for it. It’s just not for the average user, and certainly not for the novice.

Using Electronic Bibles in Church

This is a guest post from Dr. Steve Matthewson, pastor of CrossLife Evangelical Free Church in Libertyville, IL. I've always wanted to address this issue more, as I am a bit of a geek, so when I read Dr. Matthewson's thoughts on the subject, I asked if I could publish them on the blog. Here are his thoughts on the use of electronic Bibles in church:

I realized how much our culture has moved into the digital age when I heard a student preacher in my preaching class this spring at Moody Bible Institute begin a sermon like this: “Please take your Bible, your iPad, or your smart phone and turn with me to Matthew 5:43-48.” Twelve days ago, The New York Times ran an article in its Technology section titled “In the Beginning Was the Word; Now the Word Is on an App.” It pointed out that the free app (short for “application”) called “You Version” is changing the way millions of people read the Bible. Our ministry staff has recommended it. I have it on my smart phone, and my wife, Priscilla, has it on her Kindle. The New York Times felt it was time to do a piece on the “You Version” app because in July 2013 it reached 100 million downloads, placing it in the company of technology start-ups like Instagram and Dropbox. You can read the article here.

So what do we make of reading the Bible in a digital, electronic form rather than in a print (book) form? Overall, I’m quite pleased with “You Version” and have no problem with you bringing your Bible on your tablet or smartphone when we gather to worship God. There is nothing more “spiritual” about reading the Bible in a printed book form rather than on a mobile device. If we really want to be purists, then we should jettison our leather-bound or hard-back Bibles and opt for scrolls. But I have yet to see the ESV or NIV offer their translations on a leather scroll! The decision really boils down to personal preference. Personally, I prefer to read and preach from the Bible in book form rather than on an iPad or Kindle, However, I no longer carry a pocket Bible when I visit people in the hospital. Rather, I simply read Scripture passages to hospital patients from the “You Version” app on my smartphone.

There are several reasons why I like “You Version” and the concept of having the Bible in digital form. First, it is convenient. Because I rarely part with my smartphone, my Bible is always with me. I have even read it in the check-out line at Target or Portillo's! Even though I love the Bible, I would never think of carrying my Bible into Target or Portillo's. It’s not that I’m ashamed of God’s Word. I have too many other things to carry when I am in those establishments. Second, there are all kinds of reading plans built into the “You Version” app. Third, while print versions of the Bible often have some kind of concordance in the back to let you find a particular verse or some of the verses on a particular topic, the search features on “You Version” let you do more comprehensive searches. Fourth, you can highlight and add notes just as you would in a print Bible. Fifth, you can switch between versions. I would never bring six different Bible versions with me to a worship service. That would require six Bibles (books)! But if I bring a smartphone or a tablet, I can switch between the NIV, ESV, NKJV, NRSV, NLT, and NASB almost instantly.

Of course, there are downsides to shelving your print Bible and going digital. When I use the “You Version” app, I find that I cannot move as seamlessly between consecutive chapters or as quickly from one Bible book to another. Honestly, I can go from Exodus 20 to 1 Timothy 6 a lot quicker in my print Bible than I can in my digital Bible. A bigger concern is the temptation to multi-task on my mobile device or tablet when I am trying to focus on reading the Bible. I’m curious how many people who bring the Bible on their Kindle or iPad or smartphone also check Facebook or email or ESPN Sportscenter! What upsides and downsides have you observed when it comes to reading the Bible in digital form versus print form? You can weigh in on this and follow the discussion on our Facebook page. I thank God we have His Word both in digital form and in print!

SolydX 201311 Review

Every now and again, something comes along that simply rewrites your expectations for productivity and elegance. Heading into December, I had listed Semplice5 as one of the best unknown Linux Distro of 2013. As it was clearly nearing the time to make such decisions, I felt Semplice5 had it locked up when up against other minimalist distros. Whether SolydX 201311 was that good or not remains to be fully decided (and will be within the next few days). What I can say, without a doubt, is that SolydX hits a clear home run with their xfce desktop with a few exceptions, noted below.

The SolydXK team makes a KDE version as well, which you can read about here at LinuxBSDOS.com. They do an amazing job of reviewing the KDE desktop version, and I will attempt to do as well with the Xfce release. I was interested to learn that the LinuxBSDOS reviewer felt that SolydK didn't bring anything new to the table, so I wonder how I will feel about it by the end of my testing. Remember that my testing usually focuses on the end-user experience, and it's often based on comparisons to the main distros like Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora.

At first glance, the desktop (shown below), is very clean and largely devoid of obnoxious app docks or desktop backgrounds. Very simply, SolydX has it's name and an app to install. Other than that, you have your home folder and the HDD folder. Everything else, as is the case with Xfce, is through the Menu button on the bottom left.

Like most distros, it already recognized my test computer's wireless card and had my home wireless router ready for me to click on and input my password. The distro comes standard with Firefox and Thunderbird for web browsing and email, respectively. Also standard is the Pidgin chat, xChat IRC app, and Transmission torrent downloader. These all seemed to operate normally.

SolydX then does something that I really don't understand. I'm sure it's to save space, but it just doesn't make sense. Instead of coming with OpenOffice or LibreOffice, they come standard with AbiWord and Gnumeric. This is just honestly backwards. From a purely end user mindset, I want a fully-functioning office suite, not a hunt-and-peck conglomerate. Until these smaller distros figure this out, they will have a hard time making it big. What makes this even more intriguing is that their business edition does come standard with LibreOffice! Honestly, this is a costly error, in my opinion. If it's to save space, then find a different way to save space. The distro isn't any smaller than Manjaro 0.8.7, which carries LibreOffice, so saving space can't be the issue.

Was this their only error? For the most part, I believe so. The distro is amazingly light on resources. Even though the Live CD version lagged at times on my test computer, it was because it needed to access the DVD ROM, not because the distro was actually slower. I had no such delay when testing via my VirtualBox. It's also amazingly easy to get around. One of the issues brought up by the KDE review was the lack of an automatic firewall. I can see how this is a concern. Indeed, when I looked at the Firewall Configuration, it was off. I think this is something that can be dealt with fairly easily. With an easy-to-use GUI, it's not difficult for even a novice user to change this setting. And since it's right on the menu, instead of Microsoft Windows' control panel, it's more apt to be recognized by the novice user.

Another issue that is just inconvenient, not a killer, is that my touchpad isn't fully used by the distro. Now, that probably isn't completely the fault of the SolydX developers (I assume again that this is a space-saving issue), it is something that I find mildly annoying. First, in SolydX, I can't use my tap function of my touchpad. I have to use my two click buttons. Second, scrolling is non-functioning. Both of these work fine in my main distro (Ubuntu 12.04). The Manjaro 0.8.7 live CD also has trouble with scrolling, but not the tap function.

My Take: So, does this displace any of the other distros I've reviewed this year? Not really. It does make me rethink the idea of the minimalist distro, especially at a time when it seems like many distros are shipping with the lack of a good office suite. From the end-user support, I just don't know how they can be for the masses without office compatibility. The only exception is if you're making your distro for a tablet, and none of the ones I've reviewed are doing that.

SolydX is gorgeous. It is light, simple, and pretty. Unfortunately, it also lacks some really necessary things, like better driver support and of course the ever-important office suite.

OpenMandriva Lx 2013.0 Review

Want to know how OpenMandriva stacks up against the other "unknown" distros of 2013? Click here to find out!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Mandriva is no longer active. It was good while it lasted, but unfortunately, it isn't in use anymore. I use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS now. To read more about Mandriva, click here. 

Mandriva is a Linux community that I have never really delved into. Having cut my teeth on RedHat and then moved fairly solidly into Ubuntu-based distros, I haven't really moved into much else. Granted, 2013 has seen me investigate the Arch world with the Manjaro review I did previously, but still most of my activity stays in the Ubuntu area.

Just because I have a comfort zone, as it were, doesn't mean I don't enjoy other flavors, so when the opportunity came up to review the new OpenMandriva release, I jumped at the chance. The OpenMandriva community has the tagline, “A pinch of COMMUNITY, a pinch of PASSION, a pinch of INNOVATION, flavored with FUN.” Something very intriguing to me, but I wanted to see if it was more than a tagline.

OpenMandriva Lx 2013.0 was released on 8 November 2013. It comes partnered with the KDE desktop (something you know I'm hesitant about) and a decent load of software.

I first tested OpenMandriva on my MacBook Pro. It has a 2.5GHz i5 processor with 4GB RAM (I allocated 1GB for testing the distro, as I have on previous reviews).  As I tend to do, I started testing OpenMandriva by firing it up in my VirtualBox as a live CD. I ran it twice as the live CD because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. For some reason, even though I asked it just to boot up instead of install, it took me through the install anyway. Incidentally, while performing the install, OpenMandriva was using anywhere from 10-50% of my CPU and every MB of the 1024 MB RAM I allocated for the distro. Sure enough, it thanked me for installing the distro at the end of what I thought was the live CD boot. 

I rebooted my Virtual machine and tried to work inside of OpenMandriva, but the 1GB of RAM I had allocated to the install just wasn't enough to make it work. I had to back out and rethink my plan. After increasing the amount of RAM allocated to VirtualBox to 2GB, I was able to reboot and make things work. It's not that big of a deal as most computers have substantially more than 2GB. However, if you use old computers at your home or nonprofit, then it would be wise to consider the fact that it is somewhat resource-heavy.

OpenMandriva Applications: Page 1 of 2

OpenMandriva comes with a pretty good loadout, starting with my favorite flavor of office productivity, LibreOffice, which I am using to type this review. It includes the Calc (spreadsheet), Writer (word processor), Draw, and Impress (Power Point). Not included, for some crazy reason, is Base (database). It's free and doesn't take up that much space on a 1.5GB ISO file, so I don't know why distros don't include it, but they don't. By the way, 1.5GB isn't too bad and only took me about 20 minutes to download.

Also included is Firefox for browsing and KMail for your Outlook/Thunderbird mail client. Also included, like in the Kwheezy distro, is a host of HP software tools and printer managers. Konsole is the primary terminal program for the distro and works easily as expected.

As for the pull on resources, things were much better after I allocated the additional RAM. A Firefox search boosted resource needs to about 12-15% of the CPU and approximately 120MB of RAM. LibreOffice added another 100MB of RAM use to my total and bumped up my CPU use to about 20% periodically. Even at rest, however, it does use about 690MB of my 2GB allocated. I wanted so badly to give this distro a fair review that I loaded it upon my very powerful i7 powered Asus gaming laptop. Because of the distro’s propensity to install on the HDD, I did run it via VirtualBox. Even with my more powerful system, it just lagged more than I wanted it to.

My take: I find this distro impressive because it is built on good stock and carries an notable load-out of programs. The fact that it comes standard with most of LibreOffice and uses Firefox as the browser is very important, though I do wish that they included the entire LibreOffice suite, not just the more popular or more used items (base was missing).

Here’s the problem for me though: First, the installer is “different.” Instead of having an actual live CD version, it requires users to install to the HDD. While this isn’t the absolutely worse thing in the world, it’s honestly not great either. People test Linux distributions all the time and a perspective user will want to try out the distro before installing, so this is a glaring mistake that I hope they fix.

The distro is also rather resource-heavy. I’ve already mentioned the stats, but to really impress me, a distro has to be able to thrive on lower-quality machines.

Finally, it was fairly slow to startup. I feel like this isn’t the biggest issue in the world personally, but a quick startup is something we’ve all become accustomed to, so it’s pretty important.

Startup took way too long!

I think that, with more time and some additional elbow grease, OpenMandriva can become a good system, though I'm not sure it will ever become my personal favorite. It's worth a look though!

Kwheezy 1.2 Review

Want to know how Kwheezy stacks up against the other "unknown" distros of 2013? Click here to find out!

I have always been a categorically against the KDE desktop experience. I've never understood it, and never really tried. Part of that might be because I started with GNOME, I don't know. What I do know for certain is that I have always shied away from KDE desktops and therefore I have avoided many distributions. Something about Kwheezy however, has intrigue me enough to make me want to take a look. I have many presuppositions that will have to be overturned in order to be unbiased, but I am willing to give it a very good try. Whether you are a fan or foe of KDE, put some of your biases aside and join me for this review.

The website says the following: "Kwheezy is Debian 7 (Wheezy), with a pre-configured KDE desktop experience and a good selection of GNU/Linux/Open Source software." That is an understatement! It doesn't come with a good selection of software, it comes with all of the you need to get started. The page goes on to say that it's not really a separate distro, but more of a pre-configured Debian installation.

In order to conduct this review, I used both my MacBook Pro with a 2.5 GHz i5 processor and 4GB of RAM via VirtualBox (of which 1GB of RAM was utilized), and my two-year-old Toshiba laptop with a Celeron processor and 3GB of RAM.

Kwhhezy's 1.2 ISO weighs in at a hefty 3.8GB. It was easy enough to get to. The website directs you to Linux Freedom. Simply scroll down until you see the US mirror for the 64-bit, or 32 bit if that's what you need, and click.

Kwheezy 1.2 comes standard with a slew of programs, which explains its giant ISO. One of the major categories is games. Major categories include arcade, board games, card games, and tactics and strategy, along with Stream, which you can access by inputting your Stream login and password. For office needs it comes complete with LibreOffice suite which is comparable to Microsoft office as well as several utilities such as the HP fax utility and Calligra Flow, which is a flowchart and diagram program. I also found it mildly surprising, but refreshing, to see VirtualBox, Unetbootin, and WINE configuration available. Like I said, it's huge, because it just about everything you want.

The live CD desktop looks beautiful!

Immediately after booting a live CD version of Kwheezy 1.2 into my VirtualBox, I was asked to set up my keyboard. This was an interesting but unnecessary step, as canceling the process did not affect my user experience.

In hindsight, I may not of allocated enough RAM to the distro as it used half of the allocated 1 GB for resting alone. This is not a real dilemma for someone who has several gigabyte available. However, it could become a problem for someone on an older computer that does not have as much RAM available. I fired up the Google search engine and search for Kwheezy. My resource usage immediately jumped to 60% of RAM and the distro began to drag. When testing it on my dedicated Toshiba laptop, the resource issues usage stay the same, but of course that meant better overall percentages because I had more RAM allocated to it. CPU usage sits around 8 to 10% at rest on my Celeron based Toshiba laptop and jumps periodically depending on the task. Overall, despite the higher use of RAM, the distro makes efficient use of my technological resources.

On my Toshiba, using the lives CD at first, it had no trouble figuring out my wireless system and after I put in the pass code, I was on the Internet without a hitch. All programs on the live CD work without any modification.

Installation onto my hard drive was a breeze! I had to input information into four screens, and then KWheezy did the rest. It didn't do the best job of explaining my need for passwords for both the route and administrator. While I assumed that's what it was, it wasn't until after I messed up my password that I learned for sure. While it was a breeze, they did take a while as you used almost all of my CPU for the entire download process, meaning that it was at 100% for almost the entire process. It also required more than 1GB of RAM, meaning that I would not have been able to install it on my VirtualBox on the MacBook Pro without reconfiguring VirtualBox.That small hiccup aside, I am now running KWheezy on my hard drive without any problems at all.

KWheezy was a breeze to install!

The installed version is very clean, but does run you through a short setup.

The good: first of all, it comes with everything you need right out-of-the-box. Aside from getting my Bible software downloaded, which is necessary for me because of what I do as a lay minister, KWheezy comes with everything I needed. I didn't have to go get an office suite, games, or anything else. As I get used to it, I may go get things such as Supertuxkart or other games that I want to enjoy, but I did not need anything to begin working from the distro. This is especially important because the computer serves as the extra family machine, meaning that my children need to be able to use it. My daughter had no problem learning how to use the system once I showed her the few nuances it had. Of course this is my gold standard for Linux distros. If my kids can use it, anyone can.

The bad: Trading immediate usability for size, the distro is very big. I had to set aside my 2 GB thumb drive for the heavier 8 GB thumb drive in order to build the live CD version. Whether this is truly bad or not is subject to personal situation and up for debate. Again, that big distro allowed me to use the desktop out of the box, or thumb drive as it were, without any modification. Still, for those who don't have quite the amount of resources, it is something that must be understood.

Final thoughts: Despite my initial misgivings about KWheezy because it is a KDE desktop, I came away from reviewing this distro very impressed. It truly came with everything I needed and much much more! It does chew on resources at times, but as long as you have more than two gig of RAM and a decent processor you'll be fine. I particularly enjoyed it is easy to start using both as a live CD, and as an installed distro. I highly recommend the distro for your personal review and use. Let me know what you think of it!