A while back, as you may remember, I did a quick look at NimbleX, as well as some of the features of the then upcoming NimbleX 2008. Just a few days ago, NimbleX 2008 final was released, so I decided to check it out. I am not going to do a long boring review and I will say up front that I have only been running it on and off for a few days from the live CD. In other words, I am really just doing a quick look at some of the features.

NimbleX, which is based on Slackware, is advertised as a customizable and slim Linux distro. The CD comes with many desktop environments including KDE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, Openbox, and more. The default, not surprisingly, is KDE 3.5.

Upon booting from the live CD, you are presented with a login screen and nothing to tell you what the username or password is. You can find this information on the website (just entering root and no password works), but I wish that you didn’t have to look this information up. Oh well, just a minor issue. Once you have successfully logged in, you get a fairly standard KDE 3.5 interface. One feature I really like is an icon on the desktop that, when clicked, starts up Compiz Fusion, with a nice full set of effects (wobbly windows, desktop cube, menu effects, etc.), not just the minimal set many distributions use. I really like the idea of having a button on the desktop to start Compiz Fusion and I have not seen this idea anywhere else yet. It could be even better if things like wireless networking settings were put on the desktop, too, but I really cannot complain, since no one else, that I know of, puts anything like this on the desktop.

As you start to use NimbleX, you will quickly notice that there are an amazing number of applications installed, which is quite impressive, since NimbleX is a very slim distro. you should note, however, that the K office suite is included in place of OpenOffice. You can always create a custom NimbleX CD from the NimbleX website with OpenOffice, though.

In all these applications, you get some applications such as GParted and Partimage that make NimbleX a useful system maintenance CD. Also included are several already-configured servers, that can be started with the click of a mouse.

One thing I noticed, and liked, about the applications menu is that almost every application is named in this form: Application Type (Name), so it is easy to tell what each application does, even if you don’t recognize it.

I did notice a few bugs, but not many. When I start Compiz Fusion, the icons for the workspaces stretch horizontally and when I try to boot up in any of the non-standard modes, such as the web browser kiosk mode, X fails to start on my hardware. Hopefully, these bugs will be fixed soon, though.

Other features of NimbleX include the custom CD creator on the NimbleX website, which lets you create a custom version of NimbleX with the applications, artwork, and settings you want, and the sub-100MB edition, which, as the name implies, is a furthur stripped down version of NimbleX.

If you are looking for a small, customizable Linux distro, you should definetly check out NimbleX. Additionally, if you want to create a customized CD just for your needs, NimbleX is probably the easiest way to go. Even if you don’t fit into either of these categories, you might want to download the NimbleX CD just for the chance to check out some unusual desktop environments without having to download a million CDs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Distros, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.