Toorox is based on Gentoo, and so programs in the repository have to be compiled. But unlike Gentoo, the installation disk comes with binaries. If compiling from source is superior, as Gentoo users claim, why provide the most important software as binaries? And if binaries are good enough for the most-used programs, why not compile the rest, as Sabayon (another Gentoo derivative) does?

The live DVD started by asking whether I wanted German or English and what sort of monitor I had, but there was no other configuration: if your keyboard is not German, it’s assumed to be US. The setup is bloated, even by KDE standards, with 36 icons and notification areas; naturally, it’s rather sluggish unless you have a fast computer. The Icecat browser ran in what can only be called paranoid mode, with endless popups complaining about almost every web page; luckily there was Konqueror. There are no codecs or flash provided, so there are limitations on what you can do without a lot of downloading.

The installer appeared to work, but actually failed. No /home was created and I could not even log in to a console, since it refused to accept both root and user passwords. Its limitations as a live DVD and the failure to install make this rather useless.