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But except for MATE, some very interesting choices make MakuluLinux Imperium Edition stand out: it installs by default applications like Steam, Wine, PlayOnLinux and even the Kingsoft Office suite instead of LibreOffice.
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MakuluLinux Mate Imperium Edition has been released a few hours ago, and being based on Debian Testing, I took it for a test drive. This is a good opportunity to have a look at the latest MATE 1.8, since Ubuntu Trusty only includes the 1.6 version in the repositories, and for the Mint release we’ll probably have to wait for about another month.
But except for MATE, some very interesting choices make MakuluLinux Imperium Edition stand out: it installs by default applications like Steam, Wine, PlayOnLinux and even the Kingsoft Office suite instead of LibreOffice.
makulu02
So, let’s take a look at how this fresh release looks like, but first, a few details about the relatively new distribution MakuluLinux.
Based on Debian Testing
First of all, MakuluLinux is based on Debian Testing, which is a rolling release, however it is a well-known fact that even in Testing, packages are pretty stable and reliable, having been tested already for an extended period of time. It comes in several flavors which include Enlightenment, Xfce, KDE and now MATE. For each there is a live CD, around 1.7GB in size, so you will need a DVD or a USB stick to try it. The kernel version for this release is 3.13.
MATE 1.8
MATE is a desktop environment that was forked from GNOME 2, which looks and behaves just like the classic desktop we knew before the GNOME 3 transition. It’s heavily improved and actively developed, and the latest release, 1.8, was put out about one month ago, early in March.
This release of MATE saw changes in several applications, like the file manager (Caja), the window manager (Marco), the panel and applets. Other small improvements were introduced in this release as well.
First Boot
So after booting up Makulu, I was surprised: the desktop looks absolutely amazing. From the transparency and wobbly windows effects, to desktop widgets and a clean, transparent panel, everything falls great into place and looks awesome. Very good work for the Makulu developers tweaking MATE like this:
makulu01
The applications menu looks just as awesome as the rest of the desktop:
menu
The whole interface follows a dark-greyish theme with tints of brown and green mostly for the icons:
caja
Changing the appearance will also suggest a new wallpaper. There are 26 very beautiful wallpapers in Makulu:
wallpapers
And there are plenty themes to choose from if you don’t like the default dark one:
themes
Applications
Let’s take a look at the most important applications featured in Makulu. We have the default file manager in MATE, called Caja, which resembles Nautilus closely. It has support for tabs, different view modes, previews, sidebar and bookmarks. It allows you to mount and unmount partitions and other drives directly from the sidebar.
For web browsing, Makulu ships with Iceweasel (which is actually a rebranded Firefox by Debian due to some legal issues), but not only. Chromium is also available, and repositories for Opera and Google Chrome are enabled by default as well.
Besides Iceweasel, Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome is included as well:
chromium
For installing software, Makulu developers included the mintInstall application, which organizes packages in categories and has a friendly, clean interface:
mintinstall
For drawing there is Pinta, a powerful painting application with support for various tools and layers, comes bundled by default in Makulu:
pinta
The Control Center allows you to change practically anything pertaining to MATE:
control_center
And it doesn’t stop at this, the CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager) is also installed by default, so you can tweak without much hassle the compositing manager, change and apply 3D effects and the behavior of windows:
ccsm
Wine, Steam & PlayOnLinux
And this is not all. Makulu takes the concept of “out of the box” and expands it. Several interesting packages to see by default include Wine, Steam, the popular gaming platform, and PlayOnLinux. Even winetricks, the helpful script which make it easy for you to install various libraries, is included.
playonlinux
playonlinux02
Kingsoft Office
Another interesting choice is to include the commercial Kingsoft Office suite instead of OpenOffice. Kingsoft Office has three components: a text-processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation application. I wrote a full review about it here.
kingsoft
Other components include the Deluge BitTorrent client, Dropbox, Thunderbird, Pidgin chat application, Leafpad, Calculator, HandBrake video ripping program, Brasero for burning CDs/DVDs, Audacious music player and Pitivi video editor.
The repositories used are the ones of Debian Testing:
repos
And Makulu comes by default with enabled Linux Mint repositories, and enabled repositories for applications like Opera, Skype, Google Chrome or Google Earth. A Makulu-maintained repository is also enabled.
The pppoeconf package doesn’t come on the Live ISO image, so I had to mount another drive and copy it from there to make the Internet work.
Another (probably a bug) thing I could catch was that the sound volume applet doesn’t seem to save the selected volume level, and resets it to maximum. This may be problematic to some people, but another mixer can be used just in case. Also, the wallpaper seems to revert to the default one after a few seconds from changing it. These glitches will probably get fixed in the upcoming updates.
makulu03
There is much more to say about Makulu and the different approach it takes, however I will stop here. Overall, I really was positively impressed by it, and I believe it to be a must-try distribution, especially if you’re into games and want everything setup, from effects, to Wine, Steam and packages that usually don’t ship by default in a distribution like Ubuntu for example. I know I’ll make sure to keep an eye on the development of future versions.
To sum it up, Makulu Imperium is definitely an awesome release for the MATE lovers out there. I think this is a job well done and I was pleased with it, and the Wow factor will come positively into play for this beautiful release. Full Story |
