SalentOS 1.0 Luppìu, The Minimal Debian Based
SalentOS is a GNU/Linux operative system based on Debian that uses Openbox as window manager. SalentOS has been designed to combine simplicity and completeness.
The distribution is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds for the x86 processor architecture. The download for the 64-bit build is 1GB in size. Booting from the downloaded ISO brings up a graphical desktop environment, running on the Openbox window manager. When the system first starts up, a window appears and asks us to select our preferred language from a list of two-letter language codes. The default language is English (gb).
Once our language has been selected, we are free to explore the Openbox-powered interface. A panel at the top of the display holds the distribution's application menu, a handful of quick-launch buttons, a task switcher and the system tray. The background rotates between wallpapers, with most of the background images displaying landscape scenes. When we decide we want to install the distribution we can launch the system installer from a quick-launch button on the panel at the top of the screen.
SalentOS uses Debian's graphical installer to get the distribution installed on the local hard disk. The installer is fairly verbose and contains several steps. We're walked through selecting our language, location and time zone. We set a password on the administrator account and create a regular user account for ourselves. The Debian installer supports both manual partitioning and guided partitioning. While I find the installer's partition manager to be awkward to navigate, I do appreciate that the guided partitioning feature will show us the proposed file system layout and give us the chance to rearrange the suggested file systems. SalentOS gives us the chance to work with Btrfs, JFS, XFS, ext2, ext3, ext4 and LVM volumes. The installer asks us to select a nearby package mirror and gives us the chance to install the GRUB boot loader. When the installer is finished, it closes, returning us to the SalentOS live desktop.
Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
