BLAG 90000: The Rebel Distro

THERE'S an alluring whiff of rebellion about the Linux/Open Source community.
I like it that way because it reminds me of the days when I was young and argumentative and had the energy to try to make a difference.
Back then I brandished my principles like a weapon; my targets were conservatives and tyrants, racists and bigots, religions, polluters, torturers and corporate thieves.
Now I am older and wearier, and it is all I can do to put food on the table and keep a roof over the heads of my young family.
I think this partly explains the attraction of Linux to me.
Using Linux, writing about Linux, championing Linux - it is like sticking up two fingers (or one, if you are reading this in America) to a corporate world that insists on telling me what I can and cannot do with my own computers.
Linux appeals to the bloody-minded, anti-authoritarian, rebel in me.
It appeals to the part of me that always cheers the little guy in the movies, as he takes on faceless, Kafka-esque agencies and regimes.
And perhaps all this explains why I like the attitude taken by BLAG Linux and Gnu, a Linux distribution which is largely the work of 37-year-old Jeff Moe, aka Jebba.
The operating system's name derives from the Brixton Linux Action Group, which "works to overthrow corporate control of information and technology through community action and spreading free software".
Great, I am with you there guys.
I recently installed BLAG 90000 on one of my computers, but I am not going to trouble you with a traditional Linux review.
Suffice it to say that BLAG 90000 is based on Fedora, uses the outstanding Anaconda installer and is easy to use and maintain.Check it out and see for yourselves.
What I want to focus on instead is what I hinted at earlier: BLAG 90000's attitude, the spirit it represents.
Every time I use BLAG 90000, I cannot help thinking of rebels like Che Guevara.
I do not know Jeff Moe, nor do I know anything about his political beliefs.
So, this is my imagination at work and should not be interpreted as any kind of intention or propaganda on the behalf of BLAG 90000's creator.
It is quite possible that there exists a whole generation of kids who think Che Guevara is just a cool-looking dude on a T-shirt.
Guevara was a lot more than just a poster boy for rebellion.
He was a Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader and, as such, was no stranger to the use of violence as a means to his ends.
He was also an author and physician (I highly recommend you watch The Motorcycle Diaries, which is based on his early life).
He campaigned and fought against inequality, monopolistic capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.
Or, if you are George W Bush, he was a PITA lefty terrorist with dubious friends.
Anyway, what is it about BLAG 90000 that sets my mind wandering off down this leftish fork in the road?
Well, for starters, when you first launch BLAG 90000, the boot splash contains a message: "Novelty is oblivion".
This is a paraphrase of a quotation from Francis Bacon's essay, 'Of Vicissitude Of Things', and references Bacon's supposition that there is little that is new in the world.
I cannot explain why Jeff Moe decided this was a fitting introduction to his creation, but you have to admit it is a distinctive way to kick things off.
It is also a precursor of what is to follow, once you start to dig beneath the surface of BLAG 90000.
For example, when you launch Firefox.
You know how most Linux distributions often include links to their wiki or forum?
BLAG does that, too, but there is much, much more in the BLAG 90000 bookmarks folder.
In fact, there are so many entries I could not possibly list them all here, so what follows is a small sample that is relevant to the theme of my article:

Aktivix - Linux for Activists
Free Software Foundation
Democracy Now!
SchNEWS - direct action newsletter
Antiwar.com
The Spirit of Resistance Lives
Reporters Without Borders
Guerrilla News Network
Squall - Radical Quality Journalism
Disinformation
Anarchist Resistance in the Capital of the Empire
Anarcho-Syndicalist Review
Anarchy for Anybody
Bureau of Public Secrets
CounterPunch
Disinfopedia
Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives
Green Anarchy
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Peoples' Global Action
Primitivism.com
Raise the Fist
Resist.ca
Turning the Tide
Amnesty International
Banksy
CorpWatch
Earth First! Journal
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Guerrilla News Network
Human Rights Watch
NO TO WAR
Protest.Net: A calendar of protest, meetings, and conferences
Electronic Privacy Information Center

..and there are more - lots, lots more.
Now, is my admittedly left-field analogy starting to make sense yet?
There is more.
In the release announcement for BLAG 90000, Jeff Moe declares that it is a 100% free software operating system.
Plus, it is the first major BLAG release to feature the Linux-libre kernel.
Linux-libre is a project to make a branch of the Linux kernel with all the non-free software bits removed.
BLAG's parent distribution, Fedora, has a long history of striving to adhere to the strict principles of 100% free software, and 90000 tracks Fedora 9 (plus there's a BLAGHEAD repository which tracks 'Rawhide).
So, this is clearly a distribution with its own finely-honed set of principles; if you do not like that, fine, there are lots of other distributions which are happy to give you all the non-free software you desire.
And isn't that another great thing about Linux - the freedom to choose?
Finally, you know how on most Linux forums you are discouraged from posting anything which is even vaguely political?
Well, the BLAG forum has a separate section for 'Politics', where rants and trolls are encouraged!
Now, where did I put my beret...

FOOTNOTE:

This post has been edited to better reflect my original intention.
Plus, this has just been posted on Distrowatch.com:

Jeff Moe announced a bug fix release of BLAG Linux And GNU labeled as 90001, a single-CD desktop distribution based on Fedora: "It comes on a single CD (684 megs), is easily installed, and user friendly. This release follows quickly on the heels of BLAG 90000, as there were a few annoying issues with that, some of which have been sorted, such as some broken dependencies. A number of packages have been added to the CD, some of which appeared in earlier BLAG releases, such as: bittorrent, freej, gcc, gqview, gthumb, thunderbird, vnc-server, xchat. The CD has 97 package updates including a new kernel-libre-2.6.25.10-86.fc9.1, firefox 3.0.1, gnome/gtk2/nautilus packages, pidgin, xorg and more... Known issues with this release: Use yum instead of apt, or uncomment GPG line in /etc/apt/apt.conf (or install those keys); Automajick kickstart installs are not currently available; On some installs you have to hit ctrl-alt-f7 after first boot when you add a user; this is only needed the first time."