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Creating a new distribution with SUSE Studio and thoughts on customising Linux with themes.

I am creating a Linux distribution at the moment using SUSE Studio, this one has the Gnome 3.8 desktop. Apparently that is the desktop that OpenSUSE uses with the 12.3 release. I am currently downloading the first build and I will have a look and see how it has turned out with a live USB/DVD ISO image. This will be interesting; I have a 16 GiB USB stick to put it on; I will use the Linux Mint 14 disk writer to put the image on the stick and then I will have a portable USB copy of OpenSUSE to use on the move. I have tried using the Ubuntu Gnome edition from a CD, but that is slow; a USB is faster when you run a Linux distribution from it. The cool thing about SUSE Studio is that you can put custom bootsplash and Grub images in it as well as custom wallpapers. It would be good if Canonical created the same thing, then you could create a custom Ubuntu distribution with the desktop environment you wish and custom wallpapers and boot graphics. That would make Ubuntu more popular. I would love to see an online tool to create a Linux distribution that allowed someone to have only the applications and tools that they actually require for their work. But that is why SUSE Studio is so good.

Microsoft do not have anything like this, that is why Linux is more customisable than Windows. I do use Windows 8 sometimes to use applications that will not run with Wine. And it is not very customisable compared to the Linux Mint 14 MATE desktop. But many people are using this due to the fact that it is the next version of Windows and everyone sees the television advertisements showing the touch interface and the Metro tiles. But in practice you only use the Metro tiles to click an application`s icon that you searched for and you use the Windows 7 styled desktop the rest of the time, they could have left the Windows Vista styled start menu in it and updated the rest of the operating system but this was not their vision for the new Windows. This is why Linux is taking over, the many desktops that are available make everyone happy. If you do not like one desktop; you can just use another one. I like using MATE on Linux Mint, it is very themeable. I have installed a Metro UI Metacity theme that is very attractive indeed. This is one cool desktop theme for Linux Mint. Some people like desktop themes that make Linux look like Windows and there is nothing wrong with this at all. That is part of the freedom of choice that is inherent in the philosophy of Linux.

The Linux kernel is open-source and this means that the source code is available for anyone to read. Strangely but truthfully, this also means that the Linux kernel and the distributions built on top of it are more secure than the Windows and Macintosh operating systems claim to be. I only hope that Doom 4 is available for Linux if it is ever released. It seems that it will be the Duke Nukem Forever of ID Software games. The best setting of this game would be on Earth, if it was a new re-imagining of Doom 2 Hell on Earth. That would be a very interesting game indeed. As in Unreal Tournament 2004, it could have very large maps indeed, the Unigine Valley Demo had a 64 square kilometer map that you could walk around in, this sort of map would be very slow with enemies in it though. So a Doom 4 map would not be able to have thousands of enemies in it; although UT 2004 has some very large Onslaught maps that can have a few players and vehicles roaming around. I guess it could be possible to have a Doom 4 game that could have wide open outdoor maps as well as interiors. Gaming on Linux does work; I have the quakespasm source port installed on Linux Mint 14.

Just type sudo apt-get install quakespasm and then add the Quake files to the ~/.quakespasm/id1 folder and you will be able to play Quake on Linux. Darkplaces is also a good source port for Linux that has higher system requirements, but is capable of awesome graphics. Get it here: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/.

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