HOME

Sid is the unruly kid in "Toy Story" who breaks toys for the fun of it. And though Sid might not make a good first impression, Sidux ' 'Ourea' does. Sidux 'Ourea' is based on Debian 'Sid', (named after the Toy Story character), the unreleased development version of Debian Gnu/Linux, and as such is very much on the leading edge of Gnu/Linux.
I've used Debian before, the stable versions, and Sidux is surprisingly capable, (with my Pentium 4 era hardware it actually feels more stable than Debian's 'stable' release?!?). I expected a twitchy, glitchy, unstable operating system, and got a rock-steady installation instead.
Sidux is a snappy OS. As an Ubuntu user, I'm used to an operating system that handles more like an SUV than a Ferrari, so Sidux-Xfce is a refreshing change, (The Xfce desktop is optimized for performance and is well known for it's resource-friendliness). I tried the KDE-lite and XFCE desktops, (Gnome is not officially supported by Sidux), and of the two, I preferred the XFCE desktop, (I'm an unrepentant fan of Gnome, so I'm biased towards Gnome-like environments). KDE is the choice of many Linux aficionados because of its tight integration and expansive feature list, (if you're new to Linux, I think KDE is well worth the extra bit of time and effort spent in learning to use it effectively, but for those of us who've migrated from Windows and don't do much of anything other than web-surfing, writing, emailing, and a bit of You-Tubing, Gnome is more intuitive). The XFCE default desktop is very spartan, but offers many customisation options. It's also very resource-friendly, so older, under-endowed systems may show some performance improvements. After a couple days of messin' around in Sidux, I was feeling like I wanted to migrate from Ubuntu.

Sidux is a lean, mean, state-of-the-art operating system. If the default Gnome was as polished in Debian and Debian-based operating systems as it is in Ubuntu, I'd switch, - but it's not. Gnome in Debian distributions is under-sold. The default artwork is very basic and unrefined, whereas Ubuntu-based Gnome desktops are very slick.
I'd give Sidux a 10/10, but not without Gnome! The Official Sidux Home-Site actually states that they'd be more than willing to support Gnome if they could find a couple of maintainers for it. Based on the great first impressions this new distribution is making, some equally new talent will probably jump on the opportunity to add a customized Gnome-Desktop iso, (knock-on-wood).

All-in-all, Sidux delivers! But don't take my word for it, navigate to their wesite, download the iso and take "Ourea" for a test drive, - it's a live CD, so you can run it without installing it. The installer also includes the option to install to USB HDD or USB Flash, which means Sidux can be used as a portable operating system, allowing you to boot from any USB-enabled computer, (read more about this option at the Sidux website).

Thanks for reading this Sidux intro.
Here's a link to the Sidux website