Granular has been my first successful tryst with KDE and E17. I have never been a fan of KDE and really didn’t like it this time either. Enlightenment is a different story altogether. It is slick and light and just so different that you actually feel that you are using a different OS. Although there is a slight learning curve to E17 and there is a lot of tweaking to make it look and feel exactly like you want it to. My first tryst with E17 was quite disappointing mostly because of the fact that I has used it on Elive.
I used Granular for a few day but I really couldn’t get myself to work on it as productively as I was used to so I went back to Linux Mint, which is still my top recommendation for not only first time linux users but also for pros. What follows is a screenshot tour of the Granular linux install and features.
The live CD starts up with an selection menu where you can kind of live boot you want. If the live CD fails to start in the default mode, VideoSafe does generally work
The boot of the live CD
Choose the keyboard to proceed
This is the only linux distro that I have seen that requires you to log in to the live CD too
The system loading screen here reminds me of the Red Hat loading screen from yore
The KDE desktop starts up by default. This can be changed during login
The KDE menu is liked by quiet a few people as they tend to compare it to the Ubuntu menu. I am sure that they have not experienced the awesomeness of the mintMenu
Fancy icons are a given with KDE. Another draw for first timers and DE hoppers alike
Amarok is a KDE app that I really like
The KDE control Panel. Pretty standard in all aspects. Although I havent done a deep dive yet
Choosing E17 loads the Enlightenment DE instead of KDE. Much better in my opinion. Faster and more intuitive… after you have gotten used to it
The E17 splash screen. This can be disabled from the option towards the top of the screen
The E17 menu comes up on left click of the mouse and a shortcut/fav menu comes up on right click
The dock at the bottom is nice ans configurable, but needs a little getting used to. There are also very few plugins available by default. You might notice the missing icons on the desktop. This apparently happens because there are none available for the varios desktop icons that we are used to.
Launching the Granular control center. I think thats the wrong spelling of centre
Thecontrol centre is also fairly standard and in my opinion looks better than the KDE one
The Granulat linux install wizard
The whole process is quite simple as I was installing to a virtual machine. FUlly automatic are not really needing any inputs from me
The flie copy process takes some time
Configure the boot loader GRUB
Restart to start using
Granular startup from the HDD
Setting up the root password and a user account
Login…
And also shutdown
Abhilash is a part time blogger and blogs about photography, technology and travel. When not blogging Abhilash is either selling outsourcing solutions to companies or indulging in marathon episodes of various science fiction shows and movies.
