BeaFanatIX Review

Some of you have probably heard a few years ago about a project called BeatrIX - a small GNU/Linux LiveCD distribution, which was pretty popular at that time. Unfortunately, the BeatrIX project has been discontinued since 2005.

The BeaFanatIX project started as a remaster of BeatrIX. The team extracted BeatrIX, changed some stuff, and put everything back on the CD. It was still BeatrIX, but with a face lift. You can find a lot of descriptions about BeaFanatIX (BFX for short) on the Internet, like "BeatrIX reloaded" or "Debian built on Knoppix", but what is BFX really? You might be surprised, but BeaFanatIX is a customized LiveCD based on Ubuntu 5.10 (codename Breezy Badger). However, because the Ubuntu LiveCD is loading rather slow, the BeaFanatIX development team used the techniques from the Knoppix Linux LiveCD distribution in order to get a fast bootable CD.

First Boot

I've downloaded the ISO (approx. 157 MB in size), burned it on a blank CD and put it in my CD-ROM, in order to boot from it. After a few seconds, I was prompted with a customized GRUB splash, the BeaFanatIX logo/mascot – the black cat. First option is "Boot from first harddisk", which is not a common thing as some users many not look at the bootloader screen and just press enter. So, in order to start the LiveCD environment, you need to press the second option - "BeaFanatIX 2006.2 *default* (1024x768x16, english) - (why it is marked as *default* I really don't know, hopefully they will fix this bug in a future version). Please wait a few seconds for the LiveCD to load. You will see a lot of text on the screen as the CD tries to discover your hardware and load all the necessary services and modules. I have an Optiplex 740 machine from DELL, and I was amazed when BeaFanatIX recognized the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ that comes with my PC.


Under the hood

The main components that power this version of BeaFanatIX 2006.2 are:

• Linux kernel 2.6.15 with patch ck7 (compiled with gcc-4.0.1)
• libc6-2.3.5
• GCC 4.0.1 compiler
• Xorg 6.8.2
• Gnome 2.12.2 desktop environment

The Desktop

A few seconds later, you'll see a GNOME splash entitled "BeaFanatIX 2006.2" (which, once again, features the black cat mascot) and the desktop appears. What do I see on the desktop? It's a bird, it's a plane, no... it's the black cat, again. The BeaFanatIX desktop features just three (important) icons: Computer, bea's Home and Trash. The desktop is powered by a single panel at the bottom of the screen, which is loaded with the Main GNOME Menu, Show Desktop icon, a volume icon and the clock/calendar applet. Even if BeaFanatIX LiveCD looks quite simple, it looks pretty good for a GNOME desktop. However, I miss a network monitoring applet in the system tray.


The Applications

Let's have a quick look over the installed applications that you will find in this edition of BeaFanatIX:

Accessories:

• File Roller - Archive Manager
• Nautilus - File Browser
• Leafpad - Notepad clone
• GNOME terminal
• Gedit - Text editor

Graphics:

• GQview - Image viewer
• PDF Viewer

Internet:

• Evolution - Outlook-like E-mail client
• Mozilla Firefox - Web browser (version 1.5.0.10)
• Gaim - Multi-protocol Internet Messenger (should be replaced with Pidgin in future versions)
• Pan - Graphical Newsreader
• gFTP - FTP client

Office:

• AbiWord - Word processor
• Gnumeric - Spreadsheet creator

Sound & Video:

• Beep Media Player - Audio player
• Volume Control

System Tools:

• Gconf - GNOME Advanced Configuration Editor
• Firestarter - Easy Firewall Configuration Tool
• GParted - Graphical partition manager



While testing some of the applications, I've encountered some problems with Firefox: no flash support (probably because of legal issues). And not only that, but when I tried to install the plug-in automatically, I've encountered more problems as the installation failed and I had to install the flash plug-in manually. Here are some quick instructions on how to enable flash support in Firefox:

1. Go to Adobe Flash Player for Linux webpage and download the TAR.GZ file.
2. Extract the file (right-click on it and choose Extract Here)
3. You need to open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type:

./flashplayer-installer

and hit enter. Then follow the instructions on the screen. When you are asked for the Mozilla folder, write /home/bea/.mozilla

4. Installation complete. Now you can view flash webpages on Firefox.



Power tools that you cannot see

Hidden somewhere in the heart of the BeaFanatIX LiveCD you can find a few system components that enable you to do advanced tasks, like the ability to access Windows shares with the help of the Samba-client or burn CD/DVD images either with cdr-tools from text mode or with Nautilus-CD-burn option from the right-click context menu. Wlan Configuration script will help you configure your wireless Internet connections and the Post-installation Localization script will help you configure your system for easy software management, enabling full language support. Moreover, the BeaFanatIX distribution comes with pre-installed support for many filesystems:

• ext2
• ext3
• ReiserFS
• JFS
• FAT12
• FAT16
• FAT32
• NTFS (read only, unfortunately)
• XFS
• cifs
• cramfs
• smbFS
• NFS
• NLS
• UDF
• autoFS

All in all, if you like this distribution, you can install it on your hard drive within minutes, as the installation process is almost automated. During the installation process, it can recognize Windows installations and it will add them to the bootloader (GRUB).



In conclusion, BeaFanatIX is a LiveCD distribution for the nostalgic Linux user. It is a pretty fast Linux distribution with a good selection of software for almost all your important daily tasks, a true "mobile office". If you're looking for bleeding edge software, look somewhere else because "bleeding edge" is the opposite of BeaFanatIX.


You can download BeaFanatIX right now from Softpedia.

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