In my previous blog post I indicated that I had not opted to use Dreamlinux as a main distro for my desktop PC because it was still in an RC status. Well, recently Dreamlinux announced the release of their newest version: Dreamlinux 5.

This release is based on Debian testing with the latest XFCE desktop and it comes with full multimedia support, an office suite (Softmaker 2008), graphics software and many services pre-installed. Detailed information on what is installed can be found on the Dreamlinux homepage.

Although it has been quite, not to mention very, silent around the project it seems that Dreamlinux still has a steady fan base as it currently again in the top 10 of the page hit ranking on Distrowatch and the main download site has been blocked due to the heavy traffic. Fortunately currently alternative download locations are available as also mentioned on the Dreamlinux homepage.

Having always been pleased with Dreamlinux I was curious to install and test the final release of Dreamlinux 5. I downloaded the iso and using unetbootin put it on an USB stick to install it alongside my Lubuntu installation.

Installation itself went smooth and is easy to do using the Dreamlinux installer. Because Dreamlinux is not the main distro I opted for an installation without grub. When the installation was completed, my grub updated and I rebooted … Dreamlinux failed to boot. Turned out there was an issue with not matching UUID in the grub.cfg. After correcting this Dreamlinux booted without major issues. More information on how to prevent the non-matching UUID can be found in this thread on the Dreamlinux Forums.

When initially started, my desktop looked (more or less) like this:
Dreamlinux 5 - Initial setupWhy the expanded menu? Because I was looking for the wbar configuration. The wbar dock was the dock that was used up until the RC release and I could not find the entry for configuring it. Then I checked more closely to find out that the final release comes with Plank. Plank does not (yet) have a GUI to change the settings, rumour has it that people are working on it, but the Dreamlinux Tutorials blog and the Dreamlinux Forums cover the basics. Personally I reduced the size of the icons and changed the theme.

Was that all I have changed on this release? No. By default Dreamlinux comes with softmaker and I am accustomed to LibreOffice, so I replace this. Also the default browser (Chromium) is not my first choice, so I installed Firefox, probably not the first choice of true Debianists, and also added Chrome. With Plank reconfigured and the new software installed my desktop now looks like this.
Dreamlinux 5 - Current setupThere were some other minor issues but they were all easily resolved with help of the forum community which has become (very) active again since the last release.

Overall Dreamlinux still, or should I say again, is a fast booting low on resource distribution. Will it suite everyone, probably not. It has everything for people that like to do media and graphics but also several applications that people may not opt for from the beginning. However, with the Debian repositories at hand one can configure it quickly and easily to ones liking.

Despite the minor glitches I encountered I think Dreamlinux 5 is surely worth a try.

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