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!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

Sorry to all our users.

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…

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.