NOTE: This article does not mention all the applications included in Granular FunWorks 2007. The actual number of software applications in FW2007 is greater than mentioned here.
Enjoy
s
With all the fun stuff packed in the DVD, you’ll never run out of tools that let you enjoy, and that’s for sure. With 4 action-packed desktop environments, you’ll love using Linux like never before. KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment, and Looking Glass are the chosen ones to never let you get bored. In addition to these, there are other applications and utilities to let you customize your system in the way you want it to be.
Get Internet-ized
Communication is as easy as cutting a piece of cake. Surf the Internet your way using Firefox, Flock, or Opera. Chat with your friends through Pidgin, Skype, or Kopete. Download your content using MultiGet, Azureus, or KGet. Upload your content using gFTP and FileZilla. Easily connect to remote computers and share data over the local/remote networks. Send & receive emails using Thunderbird and KMail. Subscribe to newsfeeds using Akregator, RSSOwl.
Get Entertained
Granular FunWorks 2007 offers out-of-the-box support for multimedia playback. Through the various applications, it can play virtually any media format existing on Earth. The all-time favorites, like VLC Player, MPlayer and Xine form the most versatile players for Linux. There can play almost any type of video as well as audio for you. And then we have Amarok, XMMS, RealPlayer as the main stream audio players. Picasa and digiKam can easily manage your vast or small image/photo/picture collection. A TV tuner card owner can also watch TV channels through TVTime.
Get Professional
Create animations using Blender, create & edit images using GIMP and Inkscape, edit sounds using Audacity.
Get Working
With FunWorks 2007, you get complete OpenOffice and KOffice suite which let you create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, charts, and more… In the development area, FW2007 offers the KDevelop suite to let you work with C/C++, Scripts and Ruby. Cervisia is the CVS management app and esvn & KDESvn offer support for SVN. Adobe Reader and KPDF let you view you pdf files.
Get 3D
Beryl and Compiz are the two terms use synonymously with 3D effects on Linux. These are two different light-weight software applications that provide high quality 3D effects that are both useful and full of eye-candy. In addition to these, FW 2007 has Sun Microsystem’s Looking Glass which aims at giving a complete 3D experience to the end user in the form of a full functional desktop environment.
Play
Playing games is an essential part of life. FW2007 will not disappoint you in this area as well. Loaded with many 2D and 3D games, you’ll never get bored using Granular. Some of the 3D games included are: Cube, AssaultCube, Battle For Wesnoth, XMoto, and Planet Penguin Racer. FW2007 also contains the complete KDEGames suite among some other good games. Your really have to try all the games your self to get a glimpse of all of them.
Get Educated
FW2007 contains some quality educations tools too, such as Childsplay, complete KDEEducation suite, Google Earth, Celestia, Stellarium, and more.
Get Emulated
Through the powerful tools, like QEMU and VirtualBox, you can literally run a full-fledged operating system within another operating system, like Windows XP in Granular! Wine is another software that lets you run/install certain native Windows applications on Granular.
Other Features
Some other apps of FW2007 worth mentioning are:
The Granular Control Center is the central place where all Granular’s configuration tools are located. It is like the Control Panel of Windows.
K3b lets you easily burn CDs and DVDs.
ntfs-3g provides writing support on NTFS partitions.
Synaptic Package Manager lets you download & install extra softwares, and keep your system updated.
soundKonverter is the frontend to various audio converters.
XSane is an excellent tool to scan documents & pictures through your scanner.
Granular StartPoint lets you know about most of the applications which come bundled with FW2007.
Granular Extras is a small collection of media to cheer you up.
Granular Package system (grls) let you apply the officially released patches for your system with ease.
A vast number of login themes, wallpapers, splash screens lets you customize your system in the way you want it.
I’m missing something, where is the KERNEL version???
is bcm4318 wireless supported?great distro and i”ll definitely give it a try
The kernel version is the PCLinuxOS repository stable 2.6.18.8
Thats really cool from what I’ve seen so far. Simply superb. Thank you.
Tried to transfer files from other systems on my lan, had difficulties:
Unable to see any Samba shares, couldn’t configure Samba. Worked from my win$ machines.
KDE’s remote desktop connection wouldn’t allow file transfers.
Tried using floppies but worked only one time. Would not remount 2nd floppy. Kept showing contents of 1st.
Had to resort to scp to get job done.
“My Computer” crashes while loading sysinfo.
Nick, the sysinfo crashes in case of My Computer is now a known issue. It is known to crash in case of some PCs. The best solution is to use the My Computer of root account.
For a detailed solution, put up your query at http://www.granular-linux.com/forum
Can’t wait to try this Linux distro, I’m so far impressed!
It seems to have everything I could want so far, and if it fulfils the two things no other has, a battery monitor that works with my laptop battery (Enlightenment seems to on Elive, and hopefully will on here), and what has never worked even once, my wireless card. Crossing my fingers
Wishing you luck, David!
News about new version of Granular on distrowatch.com caught my eye. I like Enlightenment, KDE and experimenting with totally new environment like Metisse or Looking Glass. Granular offered almost everything, so I decided to give it a try. Download went without any problem. For now I just managed to load live DVD and look around a bit. I was very pleasantly surprised with panel placement and kickoff menu - I’ve always liked both. Overall appearance (theme, color scheme) was very nice too. For now, I’m eager to test this distribution, and I think I’ll make it during this week. But for now, I just wanted to thank you for your work and, IMHO, very nice concept.
Thank you very much, Kronos.
We are glad you liked this release.
I am interested in this distribution as I am a supporter of the PCLinuxOS. I think it’s great you found this kernel stable enough to build your OS around. Best of luck to you!!!
I was attracted by LG3D. Had to install to my HD.
First day I ran apt-get update then upgrade. To my surprise
over 300 packages upgraded. Unfortunately, that upgrade broke
may things. Most important to me was LG3D. It no longer is listed
as a session option. Some investigation discovered MANY symlinks
in /etc/alternatives are broken. I use ‘upgrade-alternatives’
as best I could, and repaired the the sun java links. Still no
LG3D. May do a reinstall and try again.
curtdodds, to solve this problem, download the file: http://granularlinux.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=243.0;attach=96
and copy it to: /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions/
Nice distro however my repositories vanished after two days.
Anurag,
Thank You. Worked perfectly.
Saved me a reinstall.
Neil,
Mine did also. Go to /etc/apt and copy
all the files with suffix of .rpmsave
to the file name, without .rpmsave.
e.g.:
#cp sources.list.rpmsave sources.list
worked for me.
Dear Anurag,
Would you please send me a Granular DVD?
Because I have no internet connection, and I can’t purchase a DVD.
You can send me in this address:
manmath sahu
first europa global services
501-504, palm court complex
20/4, sukhrali chowk
mehrauli-gurgaon road
gurgaon - 122001, india.
regards,
manmath
Dear Anurag,
I am very much interested in Granular. Would you please send me a Granular DVD? Because I have no internet connection, and I can’t purchase a DVD.
You can send me in this address:
manmath sahu
first europa global services
501-504, palm court complex
20/4, sukhrali chowk
mehrauli-gurgaon road
gurgaon - 122001, india.
regards,
manmath
Hi Anurag.. nice distro..
but some problems.. drak3d not working.. asks me to logout and press ctrl alt backspace everytime i try to open that…
and whenever i try to run beryl in KDE window decorator is not seen… open office apps not working.. why????????? please be quick in reply…
hats off! you have done a great work.
but i would like you to post link to the “list of all packages” of granular, because are some are really interested to know exactly how many packages (not just the applications) granular contains and what they are.
Harisankar,
To try to solve your window borders problem, check here:
http://www.granularlinux.com/forum/index.php?topic=131.0
To solve the Open Office bug, install the package openoffice-kde from Synaptic Package Manager.
Fantastic distro, I can’t wait to try it! The selling point for me was enlightenment, since it wouldn’t compile on Ubuntu and I didn’t want to waste my life trying to make it work. Is it E17? Also, what languages are included?
Really f**ing beautiful.
doktorZee,
Yes, it is E17 in Granular FunWorks.
Hi!
I’m as new to linux as a person can get. I couldn’t find the minimal requirements to run Granular i.e. processor, RAM, etc. I’m going to try and install it on my old Gateway P3 - 1 Ghz with 256 MB RAM. It had Windows ME which is nothing but problems. Unfortunately I can’t afford one of the fancy new systems, so I’m going to try and resusitate this one by using linux. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I’m going to give it a try! I’m a 57 year old Missouri Ozark hills man who’s going to take his first shot at linux.
Gramps
Gramps,
Granular should install on your system with Pentium III and 256MB RAM. You may experience a bit slow speed in KDE, but Xfce & E17 (Enlightenment) may eventually work for you.
Check here for instructions to switch between KDE, Xfce, E17:
http://www.granularlinux.com/uniquefeatures.php#switch-session
I wish you good luck!
Hi Anurag,
I came to know about Granular Linux at Distrowatch, and immediately tried it on my P 4, 256 mb RAM system. Since this was an old system, enabling the beryl/compiz effects in other linux distros resulted in a really painfully slow desktop experience.
But when I tried out my hands at Granular, I was really wonder struck.The speed and ease of use of just amazing and not to mention all the eye candy stuff(Super karmba, kbfx, beryl-manager)
Inspired by the power of Granular to run even on modest systems with such high quality visual effects, I made a site just for that and to show the world that even modest configuration coupled with linux could produce some amazing visual treat.
Man, this is one awesome distribution with some really cool apps and packages.
All the best for you and for your team
Justin,
I am glad you found Granular usable enough to dedicate a website to Linux. We (Team Granular) assure you even better results with the future Granular releases. Anyway, look out for the next Granular release coming at the end of this week.