14 DAY TRIAL // 4MLinux 8.2 Beta, a mini Linux distribution that is focused on the 4Ms of computing, Maintenance (system rescue Live CD), Multimedia (e.g., playing video DVDs), Miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and Mystery (Linux games), has been released and is ready for testing.
4MLinux is one of the smallest distributions in the world that still retain the ability to work as a normal desktop environment, integrating some of the newest applications available.
One thing is for sure, 4MLinux is not your average Linux distribution. The developer has made some tremendous effort to fit as many applications as possible in the operating system, while trying to keep it as small as possible.
“The main features in this release are maintenance (MBR and GPT partitioning software, 4MLinux Backup Scripts 8.2, ClamAV 0.98.1), multimedia (MPlayer svn-r36817, FFMpeg Git-2014-02-09), a mini server (FTP, HTTP, SSH, SFTP), and mystery (a set of small games).”
“The X Window System is based on X.Org Server 1.15.0, Mesa 10.1.0, JWM 2.2.0, and the FOX toolkit 1.6.49. Fully automatic installation of the vanilla versions of LibreOffice 4.2.0, Java RE 7u51, and VirtualBox 4.3.10 is also supported. The size of the ISO image is about 55 MB,” said the developer on his blog.
The distribution also uses Pathfinder 1.0 as the default file browser. It's not a very popular file manager choice, but it gets the job done. You will also notice that there are still two different launchers, one at the bottom with all the options and a dock at the top with some of the preferred applications.
Also, the users will no longer be prompted to choose a root account and a password before the log-in and the live system will boot straight to the desktop. Before the 8.2 version, users needed to actually start the X server by typing startx into the terminal.
The developer will now start to release all the other distributions that he is building around this major update, like Allinone, Gaming, Server, Media, Rescue, and so on. Keep in mind that you can install any of these Linux distros from the main launcher with the help of a very simple piece of software.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement. Download 4MLinux 8.2 Beta right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.