First impressions of Chakra GNU/Linux 0.3.1

"Despite receiving several requests for a Chakra Linux review, it took me a while to get motivated to write one, mostly due to the project's website. Oh, it's attractive enough and well laid out and there's a wiki and a forum. The site didn't appear to be missing anything, but two things raised warning flags right away. First, the website claims Chakra is alpha stage software and I usually like to wait until after a project drops the alpha/beta/rc designation before I try it. The other warning flag was raised upon reading the Frequently Asked Questions section of the site. (Or rather one of the FAQ sections, there's another in the Wiki.) There are just three questions and answers presented regarding the reason for Chakra's existence and its ease of use. Each of the answers strikes me as being unusually defensive. For instance, in response to a question about whether Chakra is user-friendly we're told that "in contrast to many other distributions, Chakra does not hide the system under some obscure 'administrative layer' (automated scripts, bloated front-ends, funky daemons etc)". The statement ends with: "However, newcomers to Chakra must expect to read and have a do-it-yourself approach to just about everything; anything less and they will be disappointed. We empower you, and you must learn to handle that :-)"."

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