IS it OK to be superficial sometimes?
The reason I ask is that I was drawn to Granular 1.0, a Linux distribution based on PCLinuxOS, by its snazzy little logo (see right), which made me think of the Far East and ninja throwing stars. Hey... I never said I was deep!
The Granular project hails from India and the development team is led by Punjab-based computer engineering student Anurag Bhandari.
An old friend of this blog, Doctor Saleem Khan, conducted an interview last year with Anurag which is well worth a read to get a good feel for Granular - you can find it here.
Granular comes as an installable 699MB live CD (get version 1.0 here) and with both KDE 3.5.10 and Enlightenment 0.16.999 as your desktop environment options.
The release notes for 1.0 promise "solid stability, out-of-the-box usefulness, great multimedia experience, support for running Windows software, and all of this & much more" and, having used it both as a live CD and an installed system, I have to say those claims are not too far off the mark.
Of course, you would have to be going some to make a mess of any distro based on PCLOS, which has a great reputation for hardware detection and system stability, even if it has been a long, long wait for a new version.
The key features in Granular 1.0 are:
New Granular 1.0 repository
Custom 2.6.26.8 kernel
Major packages include Firefox 3.0.4, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, KOffice 1.6.3, CompizFusion 0.7.6, Gimp 2.6.3, Wine 1.0.1
Out-of-the-box support for audio and video files in Xine and MPlayer
Multimedia plugins for Firefox are now pre-installed (xine-plugin)
Support for read/write to NTFS partitions via ntfs-3g
ATi and NVIDIA official drivers included
Video Installation Tool included to help you install your video drivers
Configuring printers and managing printing made more easy
In live CD mode it does what all such distributions do, with a broad range of applications available to cover just about any task. What interested me, however, was if Granular would run on an ancient Compaq machine I have been forced to call into service as a test PC.
With its 700MHz AMD Duron processor and Nvidia V6 Vanta graphics, 17inch CRT display, no ethernet connection and just 512MB of RAM this old machine really struggles with most KDE-based distros, so how would it cope with Granular 1.0?
The answer, one surprisingly rapid install later, was extremely well. That install, by the way, is as streamlined as they come - double click on the desktop icon, Mandriva's DrakLive installer launches, asks you where you want to put the OS and then puts it there.
The only other question you're asked is where you want to put GRUB (in the Master Boot Record, in my case). Your root/user configuration is done post-install. It's really all quite painless and there's certainly nothing in here to trouble even the greenest Linux newcomer.
A quick word here about the look of Granular: The default KDE desktop sports a silver/grey theme which personally I find quite bland but, obviously, such cosmetic issues are easily addressed, as is the top-of-screen placement of the KDE start menu and panel (I prefer it at the bottom of the screen).
I mentioned the old Compaq doesn't have ethernet, so for this review I was hoping it would be able to handle a Sitecom USB wi-fi adaptor: I needn't have worried because Granular's Network Centre had detected it and the Sitecom, in turn, detected my home wireless network.
With my encryption key entered, I had internet access and all it took was a minute, tops. The Compaq is situated at the other side of the house from my router, so the connection was very weak. Still, a major bonus to have wi-fi running.
I also had full sound from the off, with ALSA handling my onboard sound with no need for manual intervention. A word of praise here, too, for the lovely startup/shutdown audio selected by the developers.. very stylish indeed.
Granular comes with a Kicker menu - the side-scrolling version favoured by the SUSE developers and others. It's not my favourite - I'm more of a KDE traditionalist - but I can live with it. What I noticed, however, is that the Granular menus contain a fair amount of duplication.
For example, Applications>Granular links to a lot of options which are also present in both the Granular Control Centre (for hardware configuration and found in System>Configuration>Configure Your Computer) and the KDE Control Centre. This duplication is going to confuse new usrs and possibly requires a re-think by the Granular team in the interests of usability.
And while I'm on the subject of menus, I think the developers need to look at the icons they've chosen for the 'Office' section - there are a lot of OpenOffice.org icons in there and they all point to KOffice applications - bit cheeky, that!
While trawling through the menus I noticed a couple of useful utilities, one for creating a live CD and one for live USB systems - this latter one I shall be investigating in greater detail at some time in the future, as live USB systems seem to be the way forward thanks to the explosion of CD drive-less netbooks.
Another useful tool is the Video Installation Tool, which offers a number of ATi and Nvidia driver options. I chose the 71xx driver for my old Vanta card, it went online, grabbed the necessary, installed it and told me to reboot. And, er, that's it - it works really well.
Also on the plus side, Granular contains a desktop link to a handy start guide in which the functions of all the major applications and utilities are outlined.
One of the Granular team's initial promises was that their distribution would handle multimedia out of the box. They're right - it did. My reviews-special USB memory stick was detected without a problem and from it I was able to play MP3s (in Amarok) and an AVI movie (in the awesome Kaffeine), while my commercial DVD of The Bourne Ultimatum played perfectly in SMPlayer.
Granular handles online multimedia equally well, with Apple movie trailers, BBC radio streams and YouTube videos all playing without a problem via Firefox browser plugins.
So, it's pretty much all positives so far and, to be honest, that's just about the way things stay; so would I recommend Granular 1.0?
Well, yes and kind of no. The 'yes' is because it does what it says it will do and does it very well indeed - simple installation, great hardware detection, easy configuration, multimedia-friendly, a good choice of applications (plus Synaptic for adding more from the Granular repository).
On the downside, the menu is a bit messy, the desktop appearance is drab and, this being the big point, it doesn't really do anything that its parent distro, PCLinuxOS, cannot do - and there's a new, 2009 version of PCLOS due sometime soon.
While I am very pleasantly surprised by Granular 1.0, I'm not sufficiently impressed to have it replace my current distributions of choice - CrunchBang Linux and Linux Mint.
If, however, you have never tried a Linux distribution - and therefore have nothing to compare Granular with apart from, perhaps, Microsoft Windows - then this distribution will fit your needs extremely well.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Review: Granular 1.0
9 comments:
Good review. I used Granular's Xmas edition a year ago and was impressed with it.
The only downside to Pclos and its spinoffs like Granular is the very slow release cycle.
None of these older releases will run my on my newer hardware. This has forced me to move on to Mandriva who is the grandfather to Granular.
The only advantages of Granular or any of the Pclos spinoffs is superb synaptic and multimedia support out-of-box. Other than those you are using mostly Mandriva anyways.
Still, it is nice to see a new Granular release and good luck to them.
@ hotdiggettydog
That's just about the best internet name I've ever seen.. nice one!
I totally agree about the slow release cycle - PCLOS used to be my distro of choice but after months and months of inactivity I moved on to others, which is a real shame because it is still a superb distro.
As for Mandriva, I can't help thinking that, while it's still an excellent distro, the company lost a lot of support after the recent enforced departure of some well-respected staff under less than ideal circumstances.
Thanks for reading my review ;-)
"...recent enforced departure of some well-respected staff under less than ideal circumstances."
That was quite a deal. One such respected person just announced his beginning employment with Red Hat in February.
Nice review, and I agree with your points. I don't see Granular as more than an updated PCLOS, even with their "own" repositories. PCLOS is awesome by itself, and great to set up for someone that wants something that just works. As mentioned, it would be nice if new isos for new hardware came out more often. I like more things going on myself, I find Mandriva to be to buggy, so Fedora it is at the moment.
http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/23/job-announcement/
Just found that announcement I mentioned.
Hello Steven Lawson,
I was on routine stroll of Distrowatch which I always do when Im online and I saw Granular 1.0 review by you. I downloaded this new release in first few hours of its release and checked 2 things on it which bothered me previously and they are still in same state but I could not find time to report back to Anurag & Chrisz.
Granular is pure in the sense that Anurag and his team are re inventing the wheel but with a sense and not just yet another clone of PCLinuxOS.
There are many shortcomings but seeing their small team as compared to PCLinuxOS I ignore those.The graphics part is best about Granular and I have a custom made DVD of Granular with extra decorations added to it :)
Since PCLinuxOS 2009 is almost around the corner and there is going to be the BIG UPDATES release next weekend Im sure all PCLinuxOS based distros inculding Granular will enjoy the recent release of updates.
Lapis Linux from Turkey is PCLinuxOS based but made from zero distro with their own repo and not using PCLinuxOS at all and I would love if you have time to review it for us.
Regards,
Granular team dare to release a distro without 'Open Office'.Some time users might have misled that the Open Office is installed..because use of wrong icon for Koffice suit..Being a different Geographical based other than Western countries may have some beneficial in deciding codecs question, so the multimedia related problems solved..I love PCLOS but their long standing hibernation left many users searching for other user friendly distro such as 'Mint'. Once I liked SAM but they also hibernated with PCLOS It is commendable that Granular team released this full version So far So good.. I believe Anurag may note your valuable suggestions and remove the floated features..Overall the review is on encouraging side
-Vaithy
I did not mean to put a plug in for Mandriva. I, actually, think it is kind of rude to go off on other distros when the subject is about Granular.
Mandriva is not my fave but I thought it should get credit where credit is due. You can be sure all the new Granulars, Pclos, Sams, etc. will have Mandriva for a backbone.
I got the email about the big Pclos update. Hopefully, an updated iso image is to follow.
And thanks for "That's just about the best internet name ..."
I have installed granular 1.0 on my intel celeron 500mhz / 320mb ram pc with hsfmodem. i found it as a very nice distro after installing several ubuntu based,mandriva and opensuse or fedora distributions. the only downside for me is the internet connection. previously i have got connection to internet in mandriva 2008.1. another thing about granular linux is it's menus are too much and confusing.Both the granular control center and the kde control centre will both confuse a new user.Instead they can put all the menus under two control centres instead of pull down menus.They can remove extra softwares like abiword etc so that whoever want can download and install them. I like the OS very much except for the above mentioned things.Hope Mr. Anurag will make it a clean and tidy OS.After trying this OS, I have stopped distro hopping. I am waiting for the Update of this distro or PCLOS-2009.Thank u Anurag for a great effort and i am sure Granular is going to be a major distro in the future.
BABUR...
nice post
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