While I enjoy my Netbook because it is small and easy to carry around, when it comes to more serious work using multiple programs the screen size leaves a little to be desired. Hence a new laptop was in my near future. After checking what was available for a reasonable price I decided on a Sony Vaio laptop.

It is a Sony Vaio model VGN-CS320J, with the usual trimmings. There were not any reviews that I could find, but there is an older Sony laptop in the house that has performed flawlessly for almost five years now. I thought that was a good recommendation in itself.

One of the nice things about a new laptop is the search for a new Linux. Having a full size screen and a little more power under the keyboard opens the door to distributions I have not tried before. I again tried the usual distributions that I have mentioned in past Linux posts, and they performed in the same manner as before.

I had read about a distribution named Pardus that has been popular among some of the seasoned Linux crowd of the past. There was a new release a short time ago. I wanted to download and try try Pardus out, but the servers were quite busy at the time.

Pardus is a distribution from Turkey and as written in the ‘About Pardus’ section on Distrowatch:

Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution funded and developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey. Pardus has a range of unique features, such as Mudur, a start-up framework of Pardus to speed up the boot process, and PiSi, an efficient package management system with a user-friendly graphical interface.

My download time last night was about forty minutes. I downloaded the Pardus iso last night, then burned a cd and installed Pardus this morning. Pardus is a simple to install and use distribution by design. In the about section of the Pardus home page, the creators of Pardus want a Linux system that is powerful and easy to use for government, business and individuals with ease of use and productivity in mind.

If you enjoy KDE, you will love KDE 4.x.x for your initial desktop and Open Office with a few KDE programs added in for your office programs you need not look further for a productive Linux distribution. If you prefer Gnome as your desktop, it is a download away using the Pardus package manager named PiSi.

I changed two networking settings for my wifi to work, but that is minor and not unusual. I also changed my desktop appearance. I then added KDE games, but there is nothing more that needs to be changed to be a solid useful Linux desktop or laptop system. I guess that means I have a productive office, net, game machine now.

The repository is not as massive as some of the heavyweight distributions, but it looks like most popular packages are available for download and install. In Games for example there are one-hundred eighteen more games to choose from after I installed KDE 4 games. In multimedia there are one-hundred eighty-two more choices. There are plenty of choices in each category for most users it seems.

One unique idea that Pardus uses is in updating. Instead of downloading the whole program for a small rewrite, only the changed portion is downloaded and installed. I thought this is an interesting idea, and seeing Pardus is in use at all levels in Turkey and beyond, it works well and saves time and bandwidth.

If you can wait an hour for the download to complete and burn an iso cd you are on your way to a nice Linux system on your PC. Pardus is for you if you know the answers to a few simple install questions. Pardus installs programs most people will want and not many programs they won’t want. With a healthy lean selection of programs in the repository there are a lot of program choices for all tastes.

If you want to try Pardus out, the universal iso is recommended by Pardus. Before starting the install create a root and user passwords along with a user name. Press F2 for your language preference when you start. One interesting note, clicking on buttons or option on the Pardus home page wrote to the right of the main screen I was looking at. If you click a button and do not see anything see if it is to the side on your browser window.