Turbolinux 10f provides two tools for keeping the system up to date and installing other packages. Figure 7 shows the Turboupdate application, which is analogous to Red Hat's up2date utility and SUSE's Yast Online Update (YOU) module. Figure 8 shows the Turbolinux Application maintenance application (available as the "Package admin tool" on the System menu), which is analogous to the red-carpet application found on Red Hat (and now SUSE) systems.

The Turboupdate application is designed to install system fixes and updated applications to resolve bugs or security problems. The Application maintenance application provides a convenient way to install packages from the local filesystem, from a CD, or from network sites such as Turbolinux' own ftp.turbolinux.com. The packages on ftp.turbolinux.com include a complete set of packages for the GNOME desktop, which should please fans who were initially dismayed by the absence of a complete GNOME desktop in the standard Turbolinux install.

All-in-all, Turbolinux 10f is a nicely-organized distribution that is geared towards desktop end users but which still provides tools like gcc that developers or home hackers need to get work done. If I wasn't already a Linux bigot, I wouldn't have noticed the default omission of some classic utilities. GNOME fanatics won't be impressed (at least until they update their system), but anyone familiar with KDE (or CDE) will immediately feel at home.

People who want to view DVDs on their machine, play CDs, or work with various other multimedia files will be extremely happy with Turbolinux 10f. Turbolinux' focus on the Japanese and Chinese markets should make it a hit in those countries or with anyone who wants a Linux distribution that provides rich support for those languages and their associated character sets. In keeping with their target markets, Turbolinux has a variety of web sites where you can get more information: www.turbolinux.co.jp (Japanese), www.turbolinux.com.cn (Chinese simplified), even www.turbolinux.com (English), for people like me.

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