Ok folks, details to follow soon, but after a long hiatus, we are close to releasing a new wattOS finally. Several core members of the team have been testing for a couple of weeks, and we are ready to have others test out privately.

Please email beta@planetwatt.com to express your interest.

Only requirement is that you have a forum account, and do not share the beta ISO elsewhere.

More screens, info and web site updates to come in the next few days!

tks...biff

I just now started removing apps/packages I don't want or need on my install. After every new install I do on a computer I'll go through every app/package installed in Synaptic and remove those I don't want. It was certainly refreshing to see that all the foreign fonts that are installed on the mainstream distros are not included in WattOS. I also noticed that all the different language packs are not installed by default. I always have to delete all those language packs when I run through the list in Synaptic. Those not being installed saves me about 5 minutes +/- when I remove the unwanted packages. Two thumbs up for keeping things clean!

Just to clarify, you meant use the other section for bugs. My casual observations and general feedback should continue here. Correct?

Finally! I thought I'd post this up more to let you know that I have R12 installed and running than anything else. I had to run "honey do" errands and go to a doctor's appointment before I was able to get the install done. This is purely a first impression of R12. I haven't removed, installed, updated, or tweaked a single thing. It is simply installed and I took a quick trip around the included software. The hardware specs for this laptop are listed below so you have an idea of what I'm running R12 on. Most of my laptops are similar in hardware specs.

The first thing I noticed was that the desktop and window treatment are simple and clean. I was happy to see this as opposed to some of the gawdy desktops some other distros use as default and specifically not the horrid green that Mint provides. I really don't like green as a choice for desktop and window appearance. Even though my personal preference is all blue and I prefer lighter accents than the dark with R12, at least the whole experience is clean and simple. Once I've set this up to my personal liking I'll post some screens.

As for included software, there are a few pieces I'll be installing for sure and a couple of things I'll change. Now, that's not to say that the included software is somehow wrong. I'm just use to different choices. For instance, I'll remove gThumb and replace it with Mirage. I'll be adding Pinta and Gimp as well which is the reason I prefer Mirage over gThumb. Having Pinta and Gimp for heavier editing means I can use a smaller and cleaner image viewer. I'm sure a lot, if not most, other users of R12 will be quite happy with gThumb. Pinta is a piece of software that might be considered for inclusion with the default installation. I call it the poor man's Gimp. Much simpler than Gimp, but still offering some sophisticated editing capabilities.

Oh, yeah. With no applications opened I'm using 411 MB of 6850 NB available, or 6%. With Mint on this laptop it used between 12% and 15% of available. I have never figured out why there is a fluctuation in memory used for just the desktop while running Mint. I thought it might be the Update Manager running in the background, but I have since ruled that out. But that's irrelevant now, LOL!

Bottom line? So far I really like what I'm seeing with R12. I'll try and keep you posted as I begin to install, update, and tweak things to suit me.


Lenovo G51-35
AMD A8-7410 quad core CPU
8 GB RAM
1 TB HDD
Radeon R5 graphics
Kabini HDMI/DP audio
Realtek RTL8723BE wireless adapter
Realtek RTL8111 gigabit Ethernet
PLDS DVD-RW optical drive
Blackweb wireless bluetrace mouse

I'll post a few more in the coming days. I need to reorganize my photo folders anyway. Maybe I can start getting things in some kind of order.