Review: GoblinX 2.7 Micro Edition

GoblinX is a Slackware-based Linux distribution which comes in live CD format, and is developed and maintained in Brazil by Flavio de Oliveira, aka Grobsch.
The Micro Edition is GoblinX's smallest version - the ISO only measures around 100MB – and it comes with only Fluxbox and several GTK/GTK2-based applications.
It was the inclusion of Fluxbox which drew me to the Micro Edition, as I was looking for a lightweight distribution to install on my old Dell 8000 Inspiron.
The Inspiron is a trusty old workhorse with a Pentium III, 900Mhz processor, Nvidia GeForce 2Go graphics, 10GB HDD and 512MB RAM.
What makes the Inspiron particularly useful as a test machine is its 1400x1050 screen resolution, which regularly causes problems for Linux distributions.
The distro that detects it and configures it correctly is one that is worth recommending.
I had some previous experience of GoblinX and remembered it as an extremely stylish distro; the Micro edition continues the trend.The live CD loads quickly to a sophisticated looking desktop, where you have the goMurrina Fluxbox style, based on the Murrina Cappuccino theme, a central toolbar and six Idesk launcher icons.
Pleasingly, my network (via a Linksys PCMCIA Ethernet adaptor) was up and running without any configuration.
Less pleasingly, the live CD failed to correctly detect the Inspiron's 1400x1050 resolution - I had a 1280x960 desktop instead.
Undaunted, I fired up the quirky installer.
I say 'quirky' because you need to read everything very carefully.
To misquote the late, great Eric Morecambe, all the right tools are there, but not necessarily in the right order.
You do, however, get the opportunity to get your hands dirty – it's possible to manually edit the default Lilo.conf the installer creates for you before you finally accept it, for example.
GoblinX is one of those distributions where you enter your user and root details before the install.
The install itself is reasonably quick, which it should be given the small amount of packages being copied across.
Once into the installed desktop I found I still had a 1280x960 resolution – looked like there would have to be some xorg.conf editing to be done.
No big deal but, still, this was a disappointing black mark.
GoblinX's hardware detection is otherwise pretty good: My network and sound were working fine, the USB mouse was working and USB memory sticks were picked up immediately by the gtkUSBmanager, which I really like a lot.As far as help for a new user, there's little in the way of useful documentation on your new GoblinX system.
The best it gets is when you launch Firefox or the Fluxbox menu: both have links to the GoblinX website, where there are FAQs and Help sections, plus another link to the user forum.
If you have any extra system configuration to do, your first port of call will be the Magic Centre, which gives you an easy and fast way to access several applications to control and configure things.Now, here's a quick run-through of the main applications on board:
For commandline applications you have alsa-utils, cdrtools, cdrdao, cdparanoia, curl, diffstat, dvd+rw-tools, findutils, gettext, hdparm, lilo, logrotate, mc, ntfsprogs, open-ssh, openssl, slapt-get, sudo, wget.
For GUI applications you will find audacious, evince, file-roller, firefox, gcalctool, gdhcpd, gimp, gnome-terminal, gpicview, gslapt, grip, hardinfo, leafpad, lkmonitor, nautilus and totem.
That's not half bad for 100MB, is it?
Given GoblinX's Slackware heritage, it is no surprise to find Gslapt included as the package manager.
There's really very little to say about Gslapt, except that it does what it is supposed to do with a minimum of fuss (I used it to install Abiword and Mozilla Thunderbird, both without drama).
While GoblinX played my MP3s without any problems, the same could not be said for web-based multimedia: Apple Movie Players would not play via the Totem plugin, nor would BBC Radio 5 Live streams, so there's some work to be done before GoblinX can be described as being multimedia-friendly out of the box.
I am afraid I cannot recommend GoblinX if you are looking for a distribution that handles printers well, either.
Firstly, there is nothing obvious in the Fluxbox menu which would help you to configure your printer: It would have been useful to have at least had a link to a web browser so I could access the CUPS setup routine.
There is nothing in the Magic Centre, either, apart from a greyed-out printer icon which, I eventually discovered was greyed-out because the CUPS daemon was disabled by default!
To be fair to GoblinX, it does come with some very handy GTK-based GUI utilities:

gtkIdesk: a graphical interface built with Gtkdialog to let you reconfigure, add and/or remove icons displayed for the Idesk application.
gtkSetbg: a graphical interface to let you change the background of your desktop.
gtkautoapps: a graphical interface to let you add and/or remove applications autostarted at X login.
gx-shutdown: a simple Shutdown/Logout Interface with hibernate option.
gtkdaemons: It lets you enable or disable boot scripts to your system.
gtkfstab: It lets you configure, change and create your mount points.
gtkkeyout: It allows you to configure and change the deafult keyboard map used by Xorg.
gtklilo: It lets you configure lilo.conf and rewrite lilo.
gtksplitz: It lets you divide files into small pieces to save later.
gtkswaps: It allows you to create and enable a file swap memory.
gtkdsl: It allows you to configure an adsl account.

Another reflection of GoblinX's Slackware heritage comes in its basic stability. I have not encountered any major system glitches since my HDD install.
I think some more thought needs to go into how the default install is presented: That CUPS issue is a major oversight and while GoblinX was not the first distribution to fail at detecting my Inspiron's resolution, I was still disappointed at having to manually edit my xorg.conf to get things right.
I would also recommend the GoblinX developers look hard at their multimedia codecs: Totem plugins have rarely worked for me, while Mplayer always seems to work fine.
I cannot fault GoblinX for looks – it is a beautiful looking distribution – but looks are not everything, and I can't help feeling there is still a bit of work to be done before GoblinX can be considered a Premier League distribution.

POSTSCRIPT
Grobsch, the GoblinX development leader, has been in touch to clarify the position re multimedia codecs and also to address the issue I raised regarding problems configuring a printer.
Basically, it's a space issue - the codecs couldn't be included in the Micro Edition without breaking its 100MB limit and the same applies to the printer utilities.
He also points out that the other editions of GoblinX do contain all the multimedia codecs needed, along with the printer utilities, and that it's possible to download the codecs module and include it in your own remaster.
I'm happy to clarify that for him!