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

At the moment we’re experiencing problems with our download links.  It’s an issue we’re aware of, and we’re trying very hard to fix.  We hope to have everything resolved by the end of the day, and we’re really sorry if you wanted to download Simplicity Linux 12.4 and couldn’t.

Edit:
You can now get Simplicity Linux Netbook 12.4 at https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=13823798e42af270&resid=13823798E42AF270!551&parid=13823798E42AF270!504&authkey=!  We’re working on the rest.

Simplicity Linux Media Edition 12.4 available at https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=13823798e42af270&resid=13823798E42AF270!552&parid=13823798E42AF270!504  And for those wondering – no, we have no problem using Microsoft’s resources to host our distro   In fact, we view it as somewhat ironic!

Another excellent review by SneekyLinux!

We like giving stuff away.  Unfortunately, financially it’s not really viable for us to normally give stuff away.  But we’ve made an exception for this release cycle.  Dave, the lead developer, has a wife who is an artist.  She makes tiny sculptures out of polymer clay and sells them on her Etsy page which is here.

Now, as we’re in the process of trying to move her from Honduras to England, we’re trying to get a little money together.  And last night we had an idea.  Her specialty is making tiny geeky sculptures, or tiny coffee oriented scultures for things like keyrings and mobile phone charms.  She also knits.  And for our recent wedding, she made his and hers Tux The Penguin cake toppers.

So here’s the deal:  You go to her Etsy page, take a look, and e-mail her with the subject line of “I want a Tux!”  Her e-mail address is there, but you need to click the Read More link.  And if by chance you want to order something from her, please do.  Just add it to the e-mail.  And just to make things a little interesting – here are the rules.  You get one entry into the draw for e-mailing.  And as well as the “I want a Tux” subject, tell her something you would like to see in Simplicity Linux 12.7 – because we value your input.  Anything you order gets you another two entries.  Per item.  And as a little preview of the standard of her work, here are the cake toppers.  And yes, she really did make them.

So, go support my wife (and indirectly Simplicity Linux!) and you too could win a teeny tiny tux!

Edit: Draw takes place on 28th May 2012 to celebrate the release of the Simplicity Linux 12.7 Alphas

So, with Simplicity Linux 12.4 out, we’re starting work on Simplicity Linux 12.7.  At the moment we’re not releasing ISO images, but this is a screenshot of what we’ve done today.  We’re using the very awesome Saluki Puppy Linux distro (info is here and here) which has the 3.2.8 Linux Kernel.

Again, we’re going with XFCE, because we like it.  And additional features of this release are that mounted drives will be available in Thunar, not just the desktop.  Also suspend and resume are featured in this release, something we’ve wanted to include for a really long time.  And we’re working on making it easy for you to tether an Android phone to your machine.

We’re also running Dropbox beside an alternative – GetFreeCloud.  GetFreeCloud doesn’t have a Linux client at the moment, but we’re going to see what we can do with their Windows client and WINE, as well as including it as a browser link on the desktop (that’s what’s there at the moment).

Plus, one thing we’re childishly excited about, the power manager bundled with Saluki and Simplicity Linux has a Turbo option.  As a child of the 70s, anything marked Turbo is always exciting and begging to be pressed!

And following the release of Simplicity Linux 12.4, you can expect a lot more blog posts, Twitter posts and Facebook posts.  As well as polls and an annoucement soon of an idea we had at our private release party last night.

And finally, Simplicity Linux 12.4 Desktop Edition is available for download at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14553218/SimplicityDesktop124.iso  It weighs in at 308.5mb.  It also features Firefox and XFCE but it also features locally installed software like Skype, Prey, Abiword, Gnumeric, Dropbox and others.

Simplicity Linux 12.4 Desktop Edition is more suited for people who don’t trust the cloud and like to have their stuff on their system.  It’s a little bigger than the other Simplicity Linux Editions because all of it’s software is local, not based in the cloud as with Simplicity Linux Netbook and Media Editions.  However, this allows us to bundle applications like VLC and Skype.

If you want a version of Simplicity Linux which is a little more comparable with Windows, then Desktop Edition is it.  It also benefits from that fact that it’s designed for higher end hardware in that it uses XFCE’s Compositing Effects.  Whilst this might work on netbooks, it’s more work for the processor, which is why we don’t activate this feature in Netbook Edition.

You can get Simplicity Linux 12.4 Media Edition from http://t.co/z5cAP0BW  It’s 259.64mb, and it’s designed to be a decent media computer OS.  From it you can watch TV, movies, listen to music and read books.  It has the XFCE window manager, and uses Firefox as a browser.  And one feature we think is really huge, we’ve bundled OnLive with it too.  So you can play recent releases on a Linux machine.

This is one of the releases we are really proud of, because it’s one we use in the office a lot for both movies, TV and music.  We’re actually using it tonight at our private launch party as the jukebox!

You can now download Simplicity Linux 12.4 Netbook Edition at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14553218/SimplicityNetbook12.4.iso  It’s 190.93mb and features mostly cloud based software.  It also has a simplified interface for smaller screens like netbooks.  The window manager is XFCE, and it comes complete with Firefox as the browser.

It also features Prey, which is anti-theft software.  It will allow you to register your machine for free on the Prey website, and then sets up a cron job, which automatically checks the website every 20 minutes to see if you’ve reported your laptop as stolen.  If it is, it reports back on what your machine is doing.  You can configure the reports generated on the Prey website.

At the moment we’re currently experiencing technical issues (slow internet, MediaFire not leting us upload ISOs) and there is a chance we might not be able to release today. At the moment we’re working on a fix, but right now, it doesn’t look good.

Sorry to all our users.

Ok, so tomorrow we are planning to launch Simplicity Linux 12.4.  But we’re really proud of Simplicity Media Edition.  It’s something we use often, and its something we really like.

There are several additions to this from the Alpha.  First, you can now configure Prey through it’s own “configurator”.  This means you don’t have to manually edit config files etc.  Always good from an end user point of view,  especially when we’re trying to keep things simple and just working!  Secondly, non working icons are now working. Also a big bonus!  All the features are tested before release, and they do work.  And they work very nicely in our opinion.  Especially GrooveShark and CatchUpTV.

But the big one is OnLive.  We’ve been debating since early January whether or not to include this, when we got it working.  We didn’t include it in 12.1 for one big reason – we didn’t have permission from OnLive to do it.  And we still don’t.  And yes, we did ask.  But here is the thing.  We use OnLive on Simplicity Linux.  We play Driver.  We played the driving game from their Indie contest.  I’m sure I played Limbo (love that game).  But the one I play a LOT on OnLive on Simplicity Linux is Saints Row The Third.  No the controls aren’t perfect.  That’s an OnLive issue (they use DirectInput, Wine doesn’t support DirectInput well).  But it works enough that you can run a current game (like Saints Row The Third or Driver) on a netbook and it’s playable.  And you can see what the service is all about.

If OnLive has a problem with us including their service on our distro, we will of course remove it.  We don’t want to upset them.  We want to promote what we think is a very good product to a market that wants it.  Ok, first person shooters aren’t going to work well, but driving games are amazing on it.  We hope OnLive won’t ask us to remove it, because we’d hate for it to be something we have to only use privately.  And of course, OnLive could always release a Linux client…

So, you can now download Simplicity Linux Desktop 12.4 Alpha at http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?a4x5n2l0ql434y3 and you can download Simplicity Linux Media 12.4 Alpha at http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?w1ekddoo973g1k2

As these are Alpha releases, you can expect them to be a little rough around the edges.  But they’re reasonably stable, and we use them daily from a USB key due to the fast boot times from USB key.

Also, Desktop is quite far from being complete.  There are several packages not included that will be included in the Beta and final version.