Ark Linux 2005.2 RC3.html

Ark Linux 2005.2-RC3

Ark Linux is a Distro that is designed to be super easy to use, and be a great starting point for the new Linux user. It is aimed solely at the desktop with no intentions or pretentions of being anything more than that. This simplicity of design and focus allows the Distro to forego many of the additional packages that are added in to many Distros to give the option of using it for more than the desktop.
From Arklinux.org:

Ark Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution designed especially for desktop use, primarily for people without prior Linux experience.

Ark Linux is designed to:

be easy to learn and use
include all tools and applications the typical desktop user will need
be a technically sane development environment

In this light, I can honestly say that Ark has a lot to offer!

Installation:

Installing Ark is almost too easy, particullarly when selecting "System Install". In this mode, you simply select your language and location, click System Install, and play Tetris until you are told that the installation is done. Now of course, nothing is completely this easy, if you chose this method, any and all of your drives will be used for Ark, and there is no choice about it. There is an "Expert Mode" available which gives you Qparted to select and manipulate your partitions to your liking. However, there is a bug in the Expert Install that creates frame buffer errors with some graphics cards (mostly Nvidia's and I810's from what I found in the forums) and the install cannot get past the Qparted screens. The solution for me was to remove my primary drive and let it take over my secondary drive which is where all my testing Distros go anyway.
One oddity with the install process, when it is done, it asks you to remove the CD and power and hit the reset button on your pc, no reboot sequence. Now, while I expect that the installer simply un-mounts the drives when it is done, this is a rather disconcerting suggestion in my mind. However, it does work.

Screenshots (Thanks to OSDir)

First Boot:

Once you have restarted your computer, you are greeted with a very attractive Grub screen with a water background. From there it boots to text for a moment and than back to a very gorgeous sea scape scene with a progress bar accross the bottom. Very nice indeed! Autologin is pre-selected, and the user is already set up as "arklinux". What really supprised me is the usage of KDE 3.5! Seeing as the first beta was released after Ark rc3 was released, that is a most interesting choice. Theming is simple and easy on the eyes, there is a basic "Bluecurve" based background with the Ark Linux logo on the bottom, and a fairly standard set of KDE icons and links. Over all it loks very good.

What it has:

Quite a lot! Starting with KDE 3.5 to say the least. Additionally, there is Firefox, Openoffice, Koffice, Thunderbird, Kynaptic Apt-Get interface, XOrg 6.8.2, sitting on top of a 2.6.14rc2 Kernel. Ark also has an interesting perspective on root and users, from the Arklinux.org:

The root account is disabled completely by default, meaning you cannot log in. However, the "arklinux" user (the one you're using after installation, unless you create other user accounts) is set up to automatically launch graphical config tools as root.
Ark Linux configures 2 users on installation: 'arklinux' and 'root', both of which have their accounts set to 'disabled'. This normally means that you would be unable to login as either user. However, using PAM and our kapabilities tool, we have enabled local logins as arklinux user (a local login means you have to be physically at the machine). Once logged in as arklinux, you can use the graphical config tools to gain root access (to set a root password and use the root account the "traditional" way, use the user manager in mission control or "K -> System -> Command Line Interpreter (Super User Mode)"). This is capability is only available to the arklinux user. We do not believe this is an issue for home users because we are working on the assumption that the home machine is a single user machine (we will provide a 'family' option sometime in the future which _will_ have passwords set) and thus all users at the home are 'trusted'. You can set passwords on the arklinux or root accounts at any time using the passwd command, and the accounts will revert to standard password-enabled accounts.

The default username is 'arklinux' and the password is disabled, meaning you can log in only through autologin before you set a password (for details on setting a password, see item 5). The root user is setup in the same way (password disabled). The arklinux user has special capabilities (provided by the kapabilities tool) that allow it to perform certain (configurable) tasks normally only available to the root user (such as installing packages and stopping/starting network interfaces).

What this comes down to, is the default user has almost root access, kind of like the "Sudo" command precedes any action you take. This gives the user the ability to do updates and other commands as if they were root, but are not. As it states above, this is easily changed by setting a standard root password and creating a standard user; curious....
There is also a great selection of games, a lot of fun eye candy and of course the Ark Linux Mission Control Center. Mission Control Center is easily one of the sweetest designed control centers around, easily as good as Mandriva's. It allows quick and easy configuration of all areas of the Distro, linking to existing configuration tools, or to home grown ones as needed. It simply works and works well.

What it has not:

There really isn't a lot missing from Ark. Probably the biggest missing pace I encountered is ReiserFS support. This is fairly minor, unless of course you have several Reiser partitions with most of your data on them, which I do. What this meant for me is booting back to PCLOS and moving data from there to the Ark install, rather than taking it from PCLOS. I did see that there are Reiser packages available in the Kynaptic database, but did not bother trying as the problem was easily worked around.

Usage:
Overall I found Ark very easy to use, quite complete and well put together. Many of the problems I encountered appear to be more related to KDE than Ark, a good example is the Klipper clipboard tool. It has a problem when copying and pasting the popup menu goes quite insane popping up all over, and the only way to make it stop is to kill the app all together. Actually, this is really the only issue I have encountered using this distro. Any thing I needed was available in the repositories for download and install, the look and feel is smooth and easy. Speed was good, stability was a non issue, and everything worked as advertised.

Conclusions:

Ark is a Distro well worth trying. While aimed at the new user I believe the experienced user will find it a comfortable and easy change of pace. Everything basically works, the Mission Control Center is a paragon of simplicity, KDE 3.5 is surprisingly stable here and works well. I can easily recommend Ark for both the new and experienced user.

Contact me at:
webmaster(at)capnkirby.com

Capn