A small and fast Linux distro which runs as well on old hardware as new hardware

So, after an whisky and coke fuelled design session, and a small disagreement on icon positions, we’ve more or less got the initial UI of Simplicity Linux Netbook 12.4 finalised.

I’m not sure what you think, but I think it’s a great design by my friend and UI advisor Mike Jenner (and for those who know him, yes THAT Mike Jenner!  Who knew?)

There is still a ton of stuff to do for Simplicity Netbook 12.4 but the alpha should be out before the end of February, along with Desktop and Media.  I may release an alpha of Obsidian, but to be honest, Obsidian is more or less just a couple of scripts and serious weight reduction!

Please note: this is not anywhere close to the finished version.  At the moment it’s not even in Alpha.  This is a preview.

So, we’ve changed things around a little bit for Desktop.  First off we’ve got rid of LibreOffice.  There is a really good reason for this – it’s huge.  Plus, Abiword and Gnumeric are perfectly good office programs for everyday use.  Secondly, we’ve enabled compositing in XFCE.  This is something we’ve sometimes done, but not lately.  The thing is, Desktop is designed to be run on modern laptops and desktop machines with a bit more power, so enabling compositing isn’t that much of a stretch.  We’ve also included Thunderbird, because whilst we love Seamonkey, it’s lagging behind Thunderbird by quite a way now.  If you don’t believe me, download and run Seamonkey’s mail client and run it side by side Thunderbird.  It looks dated.  We’ve also included Skype, as usual, because Skype is a great little program for talking online, despite not being Open Source.  And we also have VLC.  And as you can see on the screenshot, this is full VLC, not vlc-gui from the Puppy community.  I like vlc-gui, but it sacrifices too much of VLC’s functionality for my liking.

So, yeah, there it is.  Enjoy.  Alphas should be out by the end of the month!

Please note, this is really rough around the edges:

The interface isn’t complete yet, but its getting there.  I’m not showing apps, because…well…that’s really incomplete at the moment!  However, Simplicity 12.4 Netbook and all of the Simplicity 12.4 Editions have a little something hidden which isn’t obvious when you look at them.  Prey.  We’re shipping Simplicity 12.4 with Prey, which allows you to track your Netbook/Laptop/Desktop if it’s stolen.  It’s a program we really like, and it’s very easy to use.

We’re also hopeful of another huge announcement soon – something we really can’t talk about but us guys are really excited about if we manage to pull it off.

We are pleased to announce that Simplicity 12.1 has been released. As usual, we have got several editions, to suit your own particular use case.

Simplicity 12.1 Obsidian: 127mb
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?728u9ba1b7wqceg
Obsidian is designed to be small, lightweight and fast.  We’ve stripped out anything we don’t think is needed, kept Seamonkey and autoloaded Seamonkey and the Network Manager.

Simplicity 12.1 Netbook: 160mb
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?00zm0fa00c3h92w
Simplicity Netbook is our most popular release.  Cloud based apps are favoured in this edition over local based apps.  It’s aimed squarely at people who use a Netbook when they have wifi connectivity.

Simplicity 12.1 Desktop: 371mb
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?5cs061sr3cbsdb1
Simplicity Desktop is our heavyweight edition.  You get heavier apps like LIbreOffice, Dropbox and Transmission included, because this is designed more for offline work on a laptop or a desktop machine.

Simplicity 12.1 Media: 210mb
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n7fjo572i7cbf2i
Simplicity Media is the version of Simplicity is an alternative to needing TV tuners, TV cards etc.  With Simplicity Media you can watch TV, movies, YouTube, read books and use the internet on your TV by installing Simplicity Media on a USB key and connecting a laptop to a TV with a VGA cable – something we do a lot here.

So, those are the releases.  If you have any other questions, please leave a comment and we will try to get back to you about it.

So, we got approved for EasyFundraising.org.uk.  Which means you can now sign up and choose to donate to us as your cause!  Plus, something we think is rather cool, if you go to http://simplicitylinux.easysearch.org.uk/ and perform searches (yeah, we know they use Bing…) then each search gains us 0.5p.  And whilst that might not sound like a lot, every halfpenny helps us!

Ok, so as I write this, we’re still going through the verification process (a screw up on my part has delayed it!) but we’re signed up with http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/simplicitylinux/ – basically, if you buy things from Amazon, eBay, Argos, other large retailers, you can donate to us for free.

For example, if you use Amazon, you pay nothing extra for your purchases, but 2.5% of that purchase price goes to Simplicity Linux.  Kind of awesome I think.

At the moment, we bear all the costs of Simplicity Linux ourselves.  And we know that some people have asked how they can donate.  Well, this is a pretty cool way to donate by doing things you would do anyway.  And it helps us.  At the moment we’re looking into raising funds to get our netbook idea off the ground, and then maybe moving into some other pretty cool areas.

So, if you’re interested in helping the cause, please do.  We will be hugely appriciative!

And as a quick note – the releases are practically ready.  We just need to tweak Media and Obsidian, and we’re good to go!  Plus we have some really exciting stuff planned for 12.04.

So, after out blackout supporting the Stop SOPA campaign, we’re back.  You can download the ISOs again, and you can keep up to date with our woefully slackly updated blog!

So, with NaNoWriMo over and Simplicity Linux 12.1 due out in just over 2 months, and we’ve done some development using the base distro of 11.10, however, even before 11.10, we were looking for a base distro which used the 3.0 Kernel.  Now we’ve found it in Racy Puppy 5.2.2.  It includes the 3.0.7 version of the Kernel, and it also features Xorg 7.6.

I cannot wait to begin development work on it, and play around with stuff.

So, it’s time for us to finally unleash Simplicity Linux 11.10.  And here is a quick guide to all the various Editions we offer.

Simplicity Linux 11.10 Obsidian: (112mb) http://www.mediafire.com/?9l7avgqzpnldjw7
Obsidian is a cut down to the bone edition of Simplicity Linux.  You get JWM as a window manager, Firefox and a network manager, and that’s about it.  It’s designed for putting on a USB key when you just need a web browser and nothing else getting in the way and taking up processor and memory resources.

Simplicity Linux 11.10 Netbook: (124mb) http://www.mediafire.com/?5yk0wgodw5xyrs2
Netbook Edition does what it says on the tin.  It’s designed to be used on a netbook rather than a desktop.  Most of the applications are web based rather than being locally installed.  If you use the internet more than you use local apps, this is the one for you. It’s designed to be small and light for fast bootup and fast use on Netbooks which have more modest specs.  It also uses XFCE as the window manager.

Simplicity Linux 11.10 Desktop: (379mb) http://www.mediafire.com/?8xdgb4h5lmvg24o
Desktop Edition is almost the opposite of Netbook.  It’s the Edition we personally use on our production laptop.  All the applications are preinstalled for you locally.  It’s a big download but you do get the full, uncut version of LibreOffice, as well as several other large applications.  And as with the other Editions, it comes with XFCE as the default window manager.

Simplicity Linux 11.10 Media: (131mb)http://www.mediafire.com/?7m2pjnypv9na3k6
Media is our newest and most experimental Edition.  Here at Simplicity Linux we listen to a lot of music and watch a lot of TV and movies.  So we created Simplicity Linux Media.  If you have a VGA port enabled TV, you can hook up a modest box to a TV and create a lounge PC.  It comes with iPlayer, TVCatchup, Grooveshark, Google Books, and Blinkbox to help you out with all your media requirements.

So, despite several setbacks this release cycle (there have been many personal issues and problems in the last 3 months) everything is on course for a full on release tomorrow.  We’ve used the excellent D-Pup (we left a couple of nods to the creators of D-Pup deliberately) as a base, installed XFCE and Firefox on top for Netbook, Desktop and Media Editions.  And as the community spoke, Obsidian comes with JWM preinstalled.

Tomorrow we will release some screenshots and descriptions of the various Editions, so you can decide which Edition is best suited for you.  We’re also planning to release some videos to show off what Simplicity Linux can do, and maybe dispel some of the myths around Linux.