Snowlinux can be described as a German Mint, with versions based on both Debian (but Stable rather than Testing) and Ubuntu. The current Debian-based versions are Crystal 3 (with Xfce) and Ice 2 (with Gnome 2, KDE, or LXDE). The Ubuntu version is Cream 2 (with Mate and Cinnamon). This test is of the 32-bit version of Crystal 3.

It comes on a CD with Shotwell, Rhythmbox, Icedove, Thunderbird, Firefox, and Empathy. Why no video player or word-processor, yet two email clients? And Icedove and Thunderbird are actually the same thing! It has its own installer, which would be easy to use if it told you that you need to right-click on a partition to assign a mount point. Unfortunately, encryption is not supported.

The software had no problems, as one would expect with Debian stable, but why has the home page for Firefox been set to the meaningless ‘about:home’? Media codecs are installed and, once I had installed Parole, all formats played perfectly. It recommends 256MB, but 384 would be a more realistic minimum.

As usual with most Debian derivatives, I had to modify and create configuration files to enable my USB speakers, and even then the correct device was only selected now and then. Flash was installed in Firefox, but the playback was poor; this too may be a feature of my hardware.

Snowlinux still has some way to go, but it’s improving steadily. If you don’t need encryption, it may be worth trying.