Reinstalling an operating system is one of the most painful moments when you end up losing all the customization you had set up. Users spend hours tweaking and optimizing every aspect of their environment, and it's not always possible to reproduce the results exactly. To avoid this, the MakuluLinux distro offers the possibility of capturing the current state of your desktop and installing it on another system without any hassle.
All Linux users have that "first distro" that guided them through their early steps. In my case, that distro was Debian. Several websites said Debian wasn't the best choice for beginners, but for some reason I couldn't figure out then, I felt quite comfortable with it right from the start. Just to keep with tradition, I occasionally download the latest stable netinstall and do a custom installation, choosing the core components the apt-get way. That flexibility is probably one of the strongest advantages Linux has over systems like Windows and OS X. The user adds what they need, modifies what they want, and removes the rest, almost without limits.
Now, if you have more than one computer and want to replicate that customization on each one, how can you do it? One viable answer is MakuluLinux, a solid distro whose Cinnamon edition has just been released with 64-bit support. According to its developers, the biggest news MakuluLinux brings is the inclusion of Makulu Constructor, a tool that lets you generate a clone of the operating system in its current state, turn that clone into an ISO image, and then dump its contents onto other hardware. The image is created with live mode, installer, and full EFI/Secure Boot support—a very important detail in these days of laptops that come with Windows 8.x preinstalled.
MakuluLinux includes an integrated antivirus and firewall, advanced streaming support (including services like Netflix), the LightDM display manager, Wine, Steam, and compatibility with EFI and Secure Boot, which are real headaches, especially on 64-bit systems. The ISO with x64 support is a 1.3 gigabyte download, while the 32-bit edition is barely 100 megabytes lighter. MakuluLinux also offers versions that use XFCE and KDE, in case you're not entirely comfortable with the Cinnamon edition.
In short, if the idea is to customize a Linux distro and replicate that personalization across two or more systems, MakuluLinux is an interesting option to keep in mind.
