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  sid · January 11, 2010 at 9:33 pm

  I am using Sidux as my main system for a long time. Its a near perfect KDE distro out there. Its very stable and quite easy. You only need to know ‘apt-get install’ to happily use this distro. I would recommend it to anyone including a recent Ubuntu convert.

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  mrchilly · January 11, 2010 at 9:48 pm

  Thank you for the review of sidux! I currently triple boot between sidux, arch and gentoo. I like fast and I like minimalistic distros that I can form into what I like. Sidux is blazing. It does come with some decent programs, and for me it was a great base (easy install…around 5 min on my machine) and I have used it extensively on some of the boxes I’ve rehabbed and donated. Sidux is a great place for those who want to run debian, but want something more “cutting edge” than stable and want to run sid.

  But the fun of all of these distros is there’s something for everyone…keep up the good work

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  SpaceFerret · January 12, 2010 at 12:32 am

  Totally unfair review. Sidux is perhaps the best ‘ incarnation’ of Debian . The reviewer dismissed it’s usability for the home users based on the fact it requires some knowledge in using the terminal. What a nonsense ! Sidux developers provided a state-of-the-art Manual where every single aspect is explained , all that needs to be done is to copy and paste into terminal . Edit your sources.lst with additional repositories, update apt-get , search and install packages with Debian Package Search GUI , in less than half-an-hour you can configure and set up the most advanced and versatile system Linux has to offer. Speaking of wireless drivers – Sidux installer actually scans your computer’s hardware and gives you a simple step-by-step guidance on how to install proprietary drivers, it took me less than a minute to get my Ralink wireless driver. Sidux is awesome, the reviewer is not

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  trompetenkaefer · January 12, 2010 at 2:32 am

  Well I think ceni is used instead, because if you run the network manager with a wireless connection and you enter runlevel 3 (which is considered by the Sidux-Developers) for updating your system, you don’t have any connection to the net.

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  rufus D · January 12, 2010 at 9:38 am

  Since you asked whom it is for:
  I’m a debian guy. I like apt, I like little-patched packages, and besides, I haven’t tried any other distro (except for mandrake, back in the day).
  I prefer sidux to debian stable due to the newer packages (I’m kind of a version number fetish guy). I prefer sidux to debian unstable due to
  -less hassle (quite often broken-in-sid packages are patched and uploaded with an interim version number to the sidux repositories in a few hours, so users get a completely clean and automatic bypass)
  -dozens of small-ish improvements all over the place (stuff like bash autocompletion…)
  I use it as a desktop system for my day-to-day computing needs.

• Links 12/1/2010: Arch Linux Highlighted, Many New GNU/Linux Devices | Boycott Novell · January 12, 2010 at 11:01 am

  [...] Sidux 2009.04 Sidux is a distro I’ve never tried before. Its a Debian unstable based system with a rolling release. Basically, its based upon Debian ‘unstable’, and instead of having one big release that everyone works on, it just updates certain packages everytime a new version is released. Arch Linux uses the same system. [...]

• 

  Magikx21 · January 12, 2010 at 11:47 am

  I’ve been using sidux for close to 2 years now and it is a great distro. The packages are quite new since it is using Debian unstable and the rolling release works much smoother than upgrading 2 times a year.

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  Dickie · January 12, 2010 at 12:50 pm

  Ehhr, you failed to mention that non-free codecs are easily installed thru the instructions shown during installation and in the Sidux-Start manual.
  Firmware is downloadable, by the way…
  Did you notice the speed advantage comparing to other full-blown distros?
  Sidux is not ‘meant’ for a newbie, an intermediate or a professional user.
  If you encounter any problems, just ask on their forum and aid is coming to you form all directions, including the right one of course.
  As shown on the Sidux website, they’ve got manuals for just about anything, anyone could do the trick.
  In fact, any moron would understand the command-line interface.

  I’m not an intermediate linux-user, nor am I a power user, but Sidux is my homeboy.
  On my eeepc900 it works flawless, it feels 100 times faster than Windows XP and 10 times faster than Ubuntu.

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  Dan · January 12, 2010 at 1:57 pm

  I’m a fairly recent sidux user (since 2009.1) and while I cant speak for who the sidux team are aiming for I can give a little information about the type of user I am and why sidux fit my desires.

  I’ve been using linux since 2000 (originally in a physics lab later at home) and so I’m reasonably au fait with the linux ecosystem. I went through my distro-hopping days and while I like things about fedora and Suse I settled into the debian family. Debian proper at first but sarge got long in the tooth, then I tried out Ubuntu and used Mint for a year and a half. I was mostly settled.
  Then the bother of the six monthly release upgrade began to just plain annoy me. I’d get things the way I wanted then along came another step change and things would break, my settings wouldn’t carry over etc. Other things specific to the *buntu derivatives started to bother me as well. The near automatic sudo began to bother me, it was almost like those “click OK to ignore this warning” boxes that windows users no longer even notice.

  So I decided to switch to a rolling release distribution and use su instead of sudo. I tried out gentoo for a while but emerges were taking forever and for a rolling release the packages are quite old. Sabayon was just a mess – probably my fault but I just couldn’t get to grips with the nightmare tangle of portage and entropy which just weren’t playing nicely together. I was going to try Arch next, but the package management headache of Sabayon made me put off trying Arch and go for a nice apt based debian distribution. So I tried Sidux.
  Installation was as you note above seriously fast. I’m not really a KDE or XFCE man but purging XFCE and installing LXDE was so very easy with the familiar apt-get. The lack of a graphical package manager and use of su at the command line (meaning you need to use the root password instead of your user password) is really helpful in keeping the System Administration and Application User parts of my activities mentally separate – as is the need to actually switch to run-level 3 to do the frequent small dist-upgrades. It is this part that probably appeals to me the most. When you are both sys-admin and user on a machine it can be very easy to fall into the trap of mixing roles, but if you keep sys-admin tasks to the command line and user tasks to a gui it really helps.

  So I would say that sidux appeals to competent (but not necessarily expert) users who are comfortable with linux, prefer to have frequent small inconveniences to twice-yearly major disruptions, prefer the apt package management system, wish to maintain separation of user and super-user roles and wish to take advantage of new kernels and applications as soon as they are released.

  Maybe if I’d gone ahead and tried Arch it would have won my heart, but I didn’t, I went for the comfort and familiarity of APT and found Sidux fit my needs so well that I didn’t need to keep looking. Sorry Arch.

• 

  Heavnsrevenge · January 12, 2010 at 8:04 pm

  I wish stupid people stopped doing distro reviews, especially about a linux system they can’t handle.

  If you like to do anything to your system by means of calling it customisation including change the wallpaper, its the same. If of course you can’t handle linux and can’t admit your being a wuss by using a distro which everything is done for you, then go back to Windoze or buy a Mac

  I’m a FreeBSD user now, but to me you don’t have the qualifications to do dissing distro reviews if all you can do is complain.

  “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” Including surviving a distro too intense for your own good.

• Capnkirby » Blog Archive » Sidux 2009.04 · January 12, 2010 at 8:41 pm

  [...] Read the rest [...]

• 

  Admin comment by jontyl · January 13, 2010 at 9:46 am

  Thanks for the feedback guys.
  @Heavnsrevenge & @SpaceFerret. I tend to go for the newbie market, which doesn’t include obviously competent users such as yourselves. I know this isn’t necessarily the ‘best’ view to take of sidux, and I did actually like the distro, but a newbie wouldn’t want to go onto the handbook to get a MP3 to play.
  

  Heavnsrevenge :

  I’m a FreeBSD user now, but to me you don’t have the qualifications to do dissing distro reviews if all you can do is complain.

  I actually try to do the opposite and complement these distros as much as possible. After all, this isn’t some big corporation churning out code to make money. These are produced by people out of the goodness of their hearts in their free time for no financial gain.

  Heavnsrevenge :

  If of course you can’t handle linux and can’t admit your being a wuss by using a distro which everything is done for you, then go back to Windoze or buy a Mac

  I disagree with you there. A distro should go to present as few problems as possible, but thats one of the many wonders of Linux, there’s a distro for everyone. And I will admit that I like a distro to do everything for me

  @Dan
  I know what you mean by Ubuntu managing to break stuff every six months.

  @trompetenkaefer
  Thanks for that.

  Sorry for the time it took for all the comments to appear, I didn’t set this blog up, so I wasn’t aware I needed to approve all of your comments.

• 

  drdre · January 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

  I disposed of sidux after 2 days. Wifi was not easily installable. It requires a wired connection to get to the firmware. This might seem trivial, but I would have to almost rebuild the house to get to my router first.
  After rebooting a few times, sidux denied access using the root password. I know that I didn’t change it, but sidux refused access to root functions.

  I happily booted from an chakra linux cd and installed arch from it. No sweat (although shaman package manager choked on a parted package).

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  Fred · January 13, 2010 at 2:24 pm

  I’d agree that sidux is not for newbies, it does require some ability to work the terminal, apt-get requires you pay attention and to read the forums for warnings. On the other hand the manual is the best I’ve seen, the forum help is accurate. The reward is a fast & up to date Debian based KDE that you can use without problems.

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  DeepDayze · January 13, 2010 at 10:10 pm

  I have been a sidux user since its inception and find it to be quite a well-designed distro which is mainly geared to intermediate to advanced users of Linux. There are 3rd party scripts out there that help manage and maintain a sidux install that help alleviate the shortcomings.

  The manual is the best I have seen in any distro plus help is easy to get on the sidux forum and IRC channel so no reason people should shy away from sidux.

  Sidux= Debian Sid made easy

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  frank · January 14, 2010 at 12:15 pm

  for a few time I was using Sidux and I think is a great distro….after installing synaptic and adding the debian multimedia repository it was a perfect distro very fast and edgy

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  Macuilxochitl · January 15, 2010 at 8:32 am

  I’ve been using sidux since Chaos its first stable release (sidux is never capitalized, if you use the IRC channel it automatically changes Sidux to sidux), and had used its predecessor, Kanotix, before that. I still use my Chaos install and have installed sidux on at least a dozen machines for myself and others, and after all that, I’m afraid I have to agree with the author’s conclusions, I don’t really understand for whom sidux is well suited. I didn’t feel like my experiences were benefiting the wider Debian community like it might have if I had been running straight Sid (the Debian development branch that sidux is based upon). I like the idea of a rolling release, but the wonks at sidux recommend that you do a distribution upgrade every week or two, with a month or two being the safe outside maximum (apt-get dist-upgrade from the command line at init 3). I admit I have bloated installs but I find myself downloading more than a gig a month, easy, even with approx or apt-proxy over my 3 sidux boxen. Each DU is time consuming and a PITA. And stuff breaks regularly, requiring me to haunt the forums and IRC channel, uninstall stuff (I’ve had to strip X out of machines to rescue installs). I end up futzing around with the CLI way too much. Don’t get me wrong, I love apt-get, but I’d like to have a life, too.

  And this year has been hard for me as a sidux user. First, Lenny became stable, which forced big disruptive changes down my throat if I wanted to keep up, in particular KDE4 and the latest generations of xorg. KDE4 was not even half-baked IMO (though it is sloooowly sorting itself out), and the changes in X left my onboard video without 3D. And I took a long trip in Spring and came back to find that the sidux community had been ripped by infighting, the developers and mods had booted folks from the IRC channel and taken down posts in the forum about those helpful scripts that DeepDayze was referring to which had originally made sidux seem like an inviting option. They are called smxi & sgfxi & exoodle, BTW (you can google them, they have their own forum and IRC channel now, and still support all true Debian distros). The scripts also made it wildly easy to get all the proprietary bits installed (codecs, non-GPL programs like flash). All reference to smxi was removed from the manual, with is a good reference, I must say.

  There was always a fair amount of that “do-you-want-fries-with-that-elitism” attitude in certain quarters of the forum & IRC channel, but these went from being friendly, helpful places to a very toxic environment, especially if you didn’t have all your Linux chops lined up in a row (I admit it, I’m just a normal desktop user, not a true geek). Gone are the days of friendly banter (at least in Englisch, I can’t vouch for what is being said auf Deutsch, which is the majority of the conversations).

  And while its true, Sarge was dated, even when it was released, Etch & Lenny have been much more up-to-date, and and seem so much more reliable to me than sidux. And in my experience updating from Debian Stable to Stable is a much smoother experience than going from one Ubuntu release to the next, plus it only happens maybe every 18 months or 2 years, so it is not as time consuming. With apt-pinning and debian-backports you can keep Stable feeling quite current. Likewise, supposedly you can go from one Long Term Release version of Ubuntu to the next (I haven’t tried this yet, but will in April), which only means upgrading every 2 years or so (with security upgrades provided in the meantime). And Debian Testing is a rolling release, part of the main branch of Debian development, doesn’t have quite the package churn of sidux, and doesn’t require dropping to the shell for routine upgrades. I’d now recommend testing and stable or Ubuntu LTS over sidux any time.

  BTW, while ceni is a helpful addition, I really don’t see why wicd or knetworkmanager are not included. Most people download their updates while at the GUI (apt-get dist-upgrade -d) and then drop to the CLI for the upgrade, and I don’t recall losing my connection. And some of the sidux-only administrative tools are just useless (in particular the one for setting screen resolution in X, which I’ve never seen work at all).

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  Tim · January 15, 2010 at 11:29 pm

  Ignoring the fact the sidux is one of the best live CDs (it’s really fast to boot), sidux is aimed at people who would like to make sid workable. It’s sid, so there will be a lot of updates (most of them are Debian, which my ISP mirrors, so it’s fast and free for me). So, who is likely to use sid? Advanced users. Sidux has some good added value; I’m basically using Debian sid, but with no problems. That’s amazing. sidux devs fix sid problems in a very pragmatic way, so recently sidux has made a few patches to the new xserver to get things working while waiting for upstream.
  The community is good, very low noise, as you would expect of such a niche distribution. Do you remembers the days when you get strong answers to questions really quickly, without a lot of wild guesses from people knowing less than you?
  The manual is strong. It’s not very big. It tends to give only one way to do something. It seems to be up to date.
  I’d never heard of ceni before using sidux. However, it works, and even WPA wireless connections are maintained in runlevel 3. That’s unusual; I’m pretty sure the the network manager-based tools don’t do that. If you know why this is a good thing, you should look into sidux. Actually, the fact is that non-gui tools can be really good. I think wvdial is that best mobile broadband solution. If you find this shocking and unbelievable, I’d guess sidux is not for you.
  I actually use it on every non-mac in my house, although I’m thinking of moving a couple of computers I don’t use much to simplymepis 8.5 since this will give me a good kde 4.3 distribution with a basically set-and-forget Lenny base. But I’ll be keeing sidux on my day-to-day laptop.

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  Mr.Muckaround · January 27, 2010 at 3:22 am

  A fairly poor review, I’m afraid to say.

  With some poorly made points, the reviewer lost my respect with this statement early on,

  “The Sidux DVD is 2GB in size, far too large to fit onto a CD. There is live CD’s available in ‘lite’ editions.”

  Of course a DVD image is to big to fit onto a CD, hence the reason for calling it a ‘DVD image’.

  As for sidux being ‘based’ on Debian sid, wrong once again it is debian sid, albiet a snapshot of sid with varius scripts and customisations to make the installation process a lot easier than it otherwise would be.

  Thankfully he gave the installer a good rap, in all but one respect. When installing on a laptop the installer detects, the wireless card, and provided you have active network access “wired” will pull down the necessary ‘packages’ and install them on the fly for you. Nothing could be simpler.

  Grub 2, was not included by choice, it was included because Grub 2 is now in debian sid, that’s right the debian ‘unstable’ branch, hence it’s on the ‘cutting edge’.

  I migrated to sidux after years of using ubuntu, and had little to modest experience with the command line, pretty much a newb if you like.

  However with the excellent documentation provided, preconfigured irc client to enable you to speak with members of the sidux community, and excellent support in the forums, any problems are resolved easily.

  True it’s not for the absolute beginner, but in all due fairness I sat down with a 14 year old girl the other day and got her to do a fresh install on my laptop.

  She’s quite bright and the only times i needed to intervene was when it came to setting up the partitiions, and to explain what needed to be done when the wirless card was detected.

  Other than that she followed the prompts, and voila in no time at all it was up and running with wireless support.

  It’s a shame that people write such ill researched and presented reviews as this.

  In my opinion they do nothing to aid in the uptake of linux by curious windows users.

• 

  damentz · February 20, 2010 at 5:11 am

  @drdre

  ahahahaha, I need to also try reviewing distros by forgetting my root password, buying a new house with correct wiring, and complaining that I don’t know what I’m doing anyway.

• 

  smurph · March 14, 2010 at 10:50 pm

  I’m a serial distro hopper, but I’ve found that the two distros that have permanent partitions on my computer are sidux and archlinux. Since this is a sidux review, I’ll comment only on my sidux experience. First of all, it’s very fast. I can’t say it’s the fastest I’ve used, but I can’t think of a distro that was faster. The Debian repositories are great and apt-get is simple to use. Don’t let the command line scare you. I use PackageSearch to find a package, right-click to copy the package name, then paste it in the terminal.

  I’m not a KDE fan, so I installed the xfce version. But, I ended up loading lxde and removing xfce. Lxde works perfectly in sidux. I’m also an Enlightenment fan, so I loaded e17 and it also works well. I can go on and on, but I don’t want to write a comment on a review that’s longer than the review. I’ll finish by saying I’ve never had a serious issue with sidux, which is impressive since it is a “cutting edge” distro.

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  Chris · March 15, 2010 at 12:09 pm

  The reason ceni is used instead of a GUI component is that if a KDE library breaks, you have no internet connection. Keep in mind you are running the unstable branch and there is always the possibility of something going wrong. With ceni, you can use it without the need for an X server. I find it an interesting tool to use.

  The other problem with your review is that you’re bashing sidux because it’s harder to use compared to other distributions such as Ubuntu. This is not a very fair comparison because sidux was never meant to cater to that type of audience. In a nutshell, sidux was created for those who wanted to run Sid, but wanted the ability to set it up quickly and be able to have something that would flag bad packages (smxi). This is a big advantage over Fedora, which is known for breaking lots of packages upon release.

• [En desarrollo] sidux 2010-01 Preview 1 « Gustavo Pimentel's GNU/Linux blog · May 28, 2010 at 7:32 am

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  darmowe filmy porno · July 12, 2010 at 9:59 am

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  daemox · August 14, 2010 at 9:59 pm

  Howdy,

  I’m confused as to whether you actually ran this distro before your review or just reviewed it from little tidbits you could quickly scrounge up.

  Anyway, I really enjoyed Sidux when I gave it a whirl a while back. I went with the XFCE flavor and in the end it was simply too much work for me while I was attending classes. Despite this I look foward to trying it again (probably with the KDE 4.5 this time around) as it’s a smoking fast distro with the latest and greatest Debian has to offer (what more could you want eh? ).

  I’m currently an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS user and if nothing else I plan to stick with this LTS release until 12.04 rolls around. I do however find it funny when people complain about the 6 months releases when there are 2 year LTS releases that are generally rock solid (at least for a desktop orientated distro).

  I think a lot of people don’t realize that the LTS releases have 6 month point releases. Which means that LTS releases are not just static entities (especially with 10.04 and bringing in new major revisions of Firefox and maybe others?).

  Anyway, just some miscellaneous points I wanted to address.

  Cheers,
  daemox

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