As announced yesterday, an unexpected RC of the upcoming spring release 2007.1 of Pardus Linux was made available to the public.

Not all the cats are having nine lives, so my experiences with Calisan (the Live CD) and Kurulan (the installation CD) were pretty much different.

The LiveCD first.

As always, I had to make sure I select the "Other Languages" menu entry right after the boot, otherwise it would have continued in Türkçe.

The same languages are available: English, Nederlands, Deutsch, Español, Português (Brasil).

The first surprise was when my display announced me:I could go on after switching with CTRL+ALT+Numeric_Plus to the next resolution... unfortunately 800x600 (@85 Hz). Switching to another resolution either meant 640x480, or it was out of sync range too, so I had to continue the initial setup using a screen resolution of 800x600 and a virtual screen size of 2048x1536.

Later on, I could solve the mystery when TASMA revealed me what was the list of the "supported" (assumed) resolutions, in this order:Obviously for a 19" CRT, I eventually settled for 1400x1050 (@75 Hz).

Back to what came after I switched to 800x600 (with a much larger virtual workspace): Kaptan Desktop asked me about:

• Mouse Settings
• KDE Style (Classic, Modern, NextGeneration, Transparent)
• Wallpaper
• Network
• Package Manager Options: "Show in the system tray" and "Check updates automatically for every [12] hours".

Nice idea, but PiSi was not showing anywhere near the system tray!

I had no trouble with the network, as in my case it's plain simple DHCP with a RTL-8139 NIC, so I can't say what would do a user needing PPPoE, or which wireless adapters are supported.

Once in TASMA (Pardus' CC), I took the chance to switch the desktop to 1400x1050, as previously told.

And here it is the live Pardus desktop, with a few applications started:


Some good news: KDE 3.5.6, Firefox 2.0.0.2, OpenOffice.org 2.1, GIMP 2.3.14, the same good choice of applications: Graphics (7, including DjView as an addition to KPDF), Internet (15), Multimedia (12, including Amarok, Kaffeine, MPlayer), Games (23), plus Kchmviewer, Yakuake, Smb4k...

Akregator includes (among others) subscriptions to Pardus-specific feeds from planet.pardus.org.tr, gezegen.pardus.org.tr and sanat.pardus.org.tr.

KRegExpEditor is now included and available in both Kate and KWrite.

As for the multimedia, Amarok fails (like in all the other distros) to play my favorite streaming station, Atlanta Jazz Colors, and this is why I have used Kaffeine for that. Coming from a heavy usage of Gxine, Kaffeine is very convenient for me, for it looks pretty much similar (old solutions, good solutions).

My crappy Radeon 9200 SE (RV280) scored 1223 FPS using the "radeon" driver, which is by all means excellent.

Some bad news: The bookmarks in Firefox are in Turkish only, the default theme's font sizes are awkwardly big (see the screenshot), and I there is no way to persuade PiSi to show up, from either TASMA or from the CLI:Oops! I forgot to issue a "pisi update-repo", maybe this would have helped.

BTW, the root password is "pardus".

Other than that, everything else worked, the USB devices were automatically mounted, etc. etc.


The installation CD now.

The same choice of languages, sync "Out of range", then the steps for License, Keyboard, and Partitioning.

That's bad, bad news. I know I had some issues with YALI when I installed Pardus for the first time, but now there is something definitely wrong: it fails to pass beyond the partitioning stage, no matter what:(The misspellings of the functions and variables are like in the original.)

After several tries, also at the CLI, I gave up. I suppose this installation CD was tested with automating partitioning and using the full HDD, but I can't afford that right now, so I need to be able to choose my partitions.

Türkçesi, this is not a Release Candidate, this is more like an Alpha release. Or, judging by Mandriva's quality standards, a Beta :-)

I don't have detailed informations about the planned schedule for Pardus Linux 2007.1, but should this rushed RC be issued in the attempt of releasing Pardus Linux 2007.1 before Mandriva Linux 2007.1, well... wrong move.

So far, there is only the officially released 2007 edition of Pardus, the same way there is only the officially released 2007 edition of Mandriva. Betas and Release Candidates are just too buggy...

The second part, A Second Look At Pardus 2007.1 RC: Surprises, Surprises.

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