Kernel Version: - 2.4.0
KDE Included: - No
KDE2 Included: - No
Gnome Included: - Yes
XF86 version 4.0.2
Installation:
Icepack is not based on any system. It is made from scratch. I booted of the CD into the graphical installation. Icepack then asks for the installation language, either English or German.
The Icepack installation then detected my video card (A Creative Riva TNT2 Ultra), Monitor (it couldn’t detect my CTX 1565 but it tried…), Mouse (PS2), Network Card (A Realtek RTL8139a), Sound Card (It didn’t detect my Sound Blaster AWE 64 – it only detects PCI sound cards but allows manual selection). Icepack also detects the CPU (mine was a Intel Celeron 433), SCSI Cards (I didn’t have one), USB devices (it detected my hub), PCMCIA devices (I didn’t have any) and ISDN card / Modem (I didn’t have either).
During the installation Icepack’s IceTux, who provides assistance at every step, guides you. Partitioning is as easy as it is with any other distro using Icepack’s own software. One thing that was annoying during the installation was that you could not go back a step if you made a mistake – you had to reboot and start again.
The network config is also the same as any other distro. Icepack does not support DHCP, as it is aimed at home, desktop users. The printer config is also included in the installation (it worked with my Epson Stylus Colour 400).
While I was mounting my partitions I noticed that Icepack would not let me mount any partition other that the ‘/’ partition in a directory that was not off ‘/mnt’. This was annoying, as I had hoped that Icepack would share a boot partition with another system. But, for home users, this wouldn’t matter.
Icepack installed it’s packages and prompted me to reboot.
When it booted up I noticed something impressive – it is VERY quick to boot into the graphical login (compared to ANY other distro I’ve tried (and that’s a lot!)).
Something that is confusing on the graphical login is that there is no login button, you just press enter after your password and it does it. However, there are Restart and Shutdown buttons where you would expect the login button to be, so be careful!
I noticed that Icepack supports Advanced Power Management and Auto Mount.
There is a reasonable amount of software included with Icepack but I did notice that there was no office package that I could find (except for gnotepad+ which isn’t really suitable) included with the Download Edition. This is due to liscencing restrictions.
Icepack uses the Gnome window manager with a choice of either Window Maker or Enlightenment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be possible to boot into Enlightenment without Gnome (which is a shame). But again, for desktop users it doesn’t really matter.
I then noticed that the sound module had not been loaded (after I set it up during the installation). I checked the Icepack Configuration and it was set up but no module had been loaded so I had no sound. I loaded the module (‘sb’) manually and it then worked (but I had to do this each time I rebooted).
I then tried to run Sim City 3000 for Linux using Icepack (It had not been playable with any other distro on the same machine) and it worked! With other distros I would get terrible sound affects, music and graphics but with Icepack, I only had terrible music (not Icepack’s fault – Lok�#8217;s fault). The game was playable!
I’m sure that the full version would be an ideal system for any desktop user.
