 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 83, 17 January 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 3rd edition of DistroWatch Weekly! Lots of new releases over the weekend, especially for gaming enthusiasts, with new versions of Linux Live Game Project and Hikarunix. Also in this issue - a comment on the recent distribution comparison feature in Linux Format, news about the upcoming Fedora Core 4 and Beyond Linux From Scratch 6.0, as well as a review of DistroWatch by NewsForge. Happy reading!
Content:
"Distrowars" by Linux Format
 Don't we all love "distrowars" and distribution reviews? The January issue of Linux Format features a mega-comparison of top 15 Linux distributions (Conectiva, Debian, Gentoo, Knoppix, Linspire, Lycoris, Mandrakelinux, MEPIS, Red Hat/Fedora, Slackware, SUSE, Turbolinux, Ubuntu, Yellow Dog and Yoper) with brief information about every one of them. After testing these distributions, the authors give a short verdict, then rate them according to various criteria. Although they don't explain how exactly they arrived at the final ranking, the article is an interesting read since the authors communicate various reasons for preferring a certain distribution over another.
Interestingly, the top three spots in the Linux Format ranking corresponds with the current page hit ranking on DistroWatch (the 6-month statistics). The top-rated distribution in the Linux Format article was Mandrakelinux, followed by Fedora Core and SUSE LINUX: "Mandrakelinux continues to have the best installation and configuration tools on the market, which is really what gives it the number one spot. Nothing beats DiskDrake for partitioning disks, very little comes close to the ease of use of the DrakConf URPMI package installer, and we can breeze through a Mandrakelinux install with our eyes closed." But not even Mandrakelinux is perfect: "Perhaps the key to Mandrakelinux's success is that its users keep hoping they'll fix the bugs - we love its tools but hate the stability issues, so we keep our fingers crossed that one day we'll have a bug-free Mandrakelinux. And when that day comes, there'll be angels singing in heaven..."
Below the top three spots, however, things differ somewhat from our own ranking. The 4th position is shared between Debian and, surprisingly, Yellow Dog (only 36th in our page hits), while our 4th most visited distribution page, that of MEPIS Linux, is only ranked at number 12 in the Linux Format article ("its lack of originality holds it back," claim the reviewers). The editors of Linux Format also enjoyed Linspire and Conectiva (6th and 7th respectively), although they do not fare particularly well on DistroWatch, where Linspire is currently on 24th and Conectiva on 36th position. Gentoo finished 6th ("takes long to compile") and Slackware 11th ("lack of innovation"), while the bottom spot was shared between Lycoris ("going too far in trying to please Windows converts") and Yoper ("lack of consistency").
Without doubt, there will be many readers who will disagree with some of the conclusions expressed in the magazine. As an example, the authors rated Yellow Dog Linux as the fourth best distribution (despite mixed reviews its version 4.0 received in the media), but then took away points from Slackware because it "remains a niche distribution"! The omission of Xandros Desktop from the list is also puzzling, especially since the very same magazine gave the distribution 10 out of 10 in an earlier review. And the 7th position for Linspire is perhaps another surprise - remarkably so, after the magazine asserted that "any distribution that bases its security model on Windows deserves a bit of kicking". But despite some controversial conclusions (and given that it is simply impossible to do such a feature and expect that everybody will agree), the authors did a good job with this comprehensive comparison of Linux distributions. If you've read the article, please leave a comment below; if you haven't, hurry up and get hold of the January issue of Linux Format while stocks last! (In case you are wondering, DistroWatch is not associated with Linux Format in any way.)
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Linux From Scratch Printed Edition
 It seems that many of you have taken an interest in Linux From Scratch after our recommendation in a recent issue DistroWatch Weekly, just before Christmas. After all, you can't be a real geek until you build your own distribution at least once, can you? If you tried it and find the project to be a great learning tool, you might consider supporting the project by buying a printed edition of Linux From Scratch: "A preorder price of $13.99 is being offered until February 15. After February 15, the price will be $19.99. For $13.99 you will get Linux From Scratch 2nd Printed Edition and the accompanying CD." More details about the book and how to order it are available on this page.
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| Released Last Week |
CentOS 3.4
CentOS 3.4 has been released: "The CentOS Team is pleased to announce the official release of CentOS 3.4 for i386. This release includes all RHEL 3 updates (for U4) and errata up to January 5th, 2005. New ISO images are available as well as an installable DVD edition with source. In addition, this release is available via BitTorrent." Read the rest of the release announcement with release and upgrade notes, as well as download information.
grml 0.2
grml is a Debian-based live CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of text tools and system administrators. Version 0.2 (code name "Satura") has been released; this is from the release announcement: "Special new features: CPU-detection on startup and start of cpudyn/powernowd depending on type of CPU; htop running on tty11; improved zsh configuration (prompt, completion,...); zsh-lovers (see 'man zsh-lovers') updated and available in; PDF-, PS- and HTML-format; grml2hd: install grml to hard disk. Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 20050109. Updated boot parameter 'memtest' to Memtest86+ V1.40...." Visit the project's web site to find out more.
ParallelKnoppix 2005-01-10
A new version of ParallelKnoppix is out. What's new? "Added Ganglia monitoring, with web frontend. Here is a screenshot of the Ganglia report for the tracetest_example.m running on a 2 node cluster. Added maximum likelihood and generalized method of moments examples for MPITB for GNU Octave. Added GUI scripts for remastering. Facilitates personalization, adding/removing packages, etc. This is not in the tutorial yet, but if you just follow the scripts in order, you can easily use apt-get to add/remove packages and create your own ISO image. ISO has been trimmed down to about 500MB." Find the release announcement and other information on the project's home page.
Tao Linux 1.0 Update 4
Tao Linux is a distribution rebuilt from source RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). With the recent release of RHEL 3 Update 4, Tao Linux is now offering new ISO images incorporating all Red Hat updates: "OK, now that the dust has settled from RHEL3 U4, I've created updated ISOs for Tao Linux. These ISOs have all updates as of 2005-01-05. There's not an awful lot new; the thing that excites me most is the Metacity update that fixes the long-standing window dragging bug. On another note, Pasi Pirhonen has left the Tao project, and will no longer be updating x86_64, ia64, & s390. I'm pretty keen to see somebody take over x86_64, which I perceive as the most used architecture next to i386. If interested, e-mail parsley at linuxjedi dot org." Here is the release announcement.
Lormalinux 5 LTSP Server
The developers of Lormalinux have released an LTSP Server edition of Lormalinux 5, based on Slackware: "A unique variant of LTSP based on Slackware with all-loved packages optimized and customized for ease of use and functionality. Give it a try and let the setup speaks for itself. A holiday gift for all educational and business institution willing to expand the capabilities of a thin-client network setting." Read the full release announcement which includes a list of features.
Rubyx 92 (also 94, 95)
A new release of Rubyx, a source-based Linux distribution written in Ruby, is out. Unlike the previous releases, which required a specialist peer-to-peer client, Rubyx 92 is available as an ISO image from the Rubyx FTP server: "In preparation for transition to DRUSS, ISOs/tarballs are now released by FTP. This version fixes several bugs, fixes the 'glibc double free' problem, and has significant improvements to the init system, especially for handling read-only root filesystems (CD and DVD based distros). The standard kernel now includes a patch to facilitate booting from a flash pen drive using the usb-storage driver." Read the announcement for details.
Kurumin Linux 4.0
Kurumin Linux 4.0 has been released. This is the first Kurumin release built on top of the 2.6 kernel series (version 2.6.8.1) with many other improvements, including auto-detection and auto-configuration of wireless network cards, software modems, and web cams, as well as many updated packages (KDE 3.3.0, Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird 1.0). See the Kurumin changelog (in Portuguese) for a complete list of changes and improvements.
Litrix 2.1
A new version of Litrix, a Slackware-based live CD from Brazil, has been released. The new release includes OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 and Java 1.5, and comes with various improvements compared to the previous release. No more details are given, but you can visit the distribution's home page (site in Portuguese only) to read the release announcement and to gather more information about the product.
Knopperdisk 0.2.1
Knopperdisk 0.2.1 has been released: "Here goes another one in the 0.2.x range, several packages have been updated and there are some additions as well. Additions include: mc (midnight commander), Mutt (e-mail client) and Samba (file sharing). There's also an improvement in the shutdown/reboot process since I adjusted the scripts to unmount filesystems at shutdown a bit to be more sane. Booting directly from the USB stick is planned for version 0.3.0, so for those who are waiting for that feature, please be patient." See the announcement of the project's news page.
Navyn OS 2005.01
A new version of Navyn OS, a Gentoo-based live CD, has been released. From the changelog: "new kernel 2.6.9; SATA disks are now supported; fixed installation problems; all programs are updated; now you can choose framebuffer resolution during boot; added new programs: LFTP (ftp client), xfsprogs (for XFS partitioning), rar; new security programs gkrellmwireless, macchanger, hydra, stunnel, fping, nast; added script for automounting partitions; added support for mouse with scroll wheel.
Navyn OS 2005.01 - a Gentoo-based live CD with Fluxbox as its default desktop
(full image size: 1,349kB)
Hikarunix 0.3
Every Go player's favourite distribution - Hikarunix - has announced a new release, version 0.3: "Announcing Hikarunix 0.3, a free (GPL) live Linux CD dedicated to learning, studying, and playing Go. Changelog: Firefox upgraded to 1.0 (with Java and Flash plugins); qGo upgraded to 1.0.0-r2; ngo upgraded to 0.1.15; GNU Go upgraded to 3.7.1; CGoban upgraded to 2.6.8; Sensei's Library Snapshot size decreased by two thirds (much lower memory footprint); Quarry 0.1.10 added; WINE removed; desktop and menu access directly to Kogo's Joseki Dictionary; desktop and menu access to start a local GNU Go game instantly; based on DSL 0.9.1 with all of its new features; menu options to upgrade CGoban, Jago, and gGo directly over the internet with Java Webstart." Read the rest of the release announcement here.
Xfld 0.2
Xfld is a Linux live CD with the XFce desktop; the new version 0.2 comes with the just released XFce 4.2.0. From the release announcement: "Today, the team of os-cillation has released Xfld version 0.2. Plenty of changes and updates have been made: XFce Desktop Environment has been updated to version 4.2.0; the underlying OS has been updated to Knoppix 3.7; the Mozilla web suite has been replaced with Firefox and Thunderbird; various KDE applications have been replaced with lighter alternatives; all packages contained have been updated to their latest versions; most Knoppix packages have been replaced with Xfld packages; the startup time has been reduced; numerous suggestions from Xfld 0.1 users have been considered in the development process."
Xfld 0.2 - a Knoppix-based live CD with XFce 4.2.0
(full image size: 380kB)
Berry Linux 0.52
A new version of Berry Linux has appeared on the distribution's project page: "Berry Linux 0.52. Changelog: glibc 2.3.4; Beep Media Player 0.9.7; GIMP Version 2.2.2 (Gnu Image Manipulation Program); MPlayer 1.0pre6a; Xine 0.99.3 (xine-lib 1.0); K3b 0.11.18; Digikam 0.7.1; Mozilla 1.7.5 (Japanese and English); Whiz 0.49 (Monoceros) + SCIM 1.0.2." Read the full changelog and package list for more details.
Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Fedora Core 4
Red Hat has published a preliminary release schedule for Fedora Core 4. The first test (i.e. beta) release should be out on February 21, 2005, followed by test2 and test3 in roughly monthly intervals. The final release of Fedora Core 4 is expected on May 16th, 2005. You can find the details of the Fedora 4 release schedule on this page.
Beyond Linux From Scratch 6.0
The developers of Beyond Linux From Scratch, or BLFS, are preparing for the release of version 6.0: "The BLFS development version is currently undergoing final checks in anticipation of the BLFS 6.0 release. The BLFS Editorial team recommends that users reference the development release if using LFS 6.0 as a base system. Although the development version changes daily, the instructions are mostly stable and will present a cleaner set of instructions for an LFS 6.0 foundation." Here is the announcement as published on the BLFS home page.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
New distributions addition
New on the waiting list
- APLINUX. APLINUX is a Debian-based Brazilian distribution designed for mail servers.
DistroWatch database summary
- Number of Linux distributions in the database: 374
- Number of BSD distributions in the database: 9
- Number of discontinued distributions: 47
- Number of distributions on the waiting list: 84
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| DistroWatch in the News |
DistroWatch reviewed by NewsForge
Tina Gasperson at NewsForge has been reviewing various Linux-related web sites on the Internet and DistroWatch.com has also caught her attention: "DistroWatch is one of the best resources for people who want to choose a Linux distro they'd find suitable. The site also raises awareness for smaller distributions. It has a large database with just about every Linux distribution currently available, along with useful information about each one that will help Linux searchers find the best one for them. The most interesting feature of the site is the news -- and how convenient, it's right there on the home page. It features headlines from around the Internet spotlighting the most recently released Linux flavors, Linux reviews, and 'traffic' newsletters, like the link to the latest Ubuntu Traffic." You can read the rest of the review here.
That's all for today, see you all next week!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Another Distro Wars Article.... (by Life at 2005-01-17 14:16:06 GMT)
Everytime I see one of these Mandrake or SuSE constantly gets voted as the best distribution, but to be honest, distribution wars are stupid anyway.
Each distribution has its pros and cons, and will appeal to different sets of users. Saying Mandrake and SuSE are the best is only saying they are the best for novice users who like everything done within a GUI because they are unsure how to do it using the configuration files or command line tools, Mandrake wouldn't be the "best" distribution to users who don't want a GUI for instance, as a server OS. Don't get me wrong, they ARE good distributions, and their popularity does reflect that, but I think these articles need to focus more on why people would choose a certain distribution over another.
Lets take Gentoo for instance, this distribution obviously would not be suited to a Linux novice, but for a Linux enthusiast, its a godsend. It's no different from the fact that LiveCD's are useful for people wishing to show off Linux demonstrations, or in need of a rescue disk to save a broken installation of another distro. Everything has its uses to different sets of people and different situations. There is no "best".
2 • PCLinuxOS is the best anyway (by Chris Hickman at 2005-01-17 14:43:48 GMT)
It's everything Mandrake should be. Based off of Mandrake, but way better. I love this distro and will likely not use anything else as long as it exists! Thanks Texstar!
3 • no ProMEPIS 2005 is the best :-) (by Mark Rijckenberg on 2005-01-17 15:14:04 GMT)
no ProMEPIS 2005 is the best distribution for people who prefer debian apt-get packaging over rpm/urpmi packaging:-)
4 • Re:PCLinuxOS is the best anyway (by Hendrik at 2005-01-17 15:15:38 GMT)
PCLinuxOS might be the best distro for you. Fine.
As long as you only need an US keyboard, US language, limited update sources, a beta installer...
Mandrake and Suse if you belong to the 'rest' of the world, or if you want your usb mouse simply working.
5 • distro wars a new way (by mepis user on 2005-01-17 15:33:30 GMT)
They are interesting to read. But theres got to be a better way. I dont think enough credit is given to the package availability. In a perfect world distrowatch
would collect and condense it into a nice short form. But dud I guest thats
what the main page is. Good work.
6 • thinking on it (by foo on 2005-01-17 15:40:14 GMT)
I don't really think there's a "best distro" that exists right now. They all fall short some where. Perhaps some of the coming innovations this year may yield a close to perfect "best distro."
Heck, half the time I'm simply using a distro because it manages to pick up majority of my hardware!
7 • Mepis at #12? (by Marcel on 2005-01-17 16:02:08 GMT)
Come on!
Original? Try Mepis and see how the "Big distros" should do their hardware detection. The big ones all use RPM.......let's get serious, guys. It is time for RPM 2. It is available: Debian has been using it for years.
Mandrake is great. Too bad it could not even get my adsl work out of the box. Get your act together boys!
Package availability? Again: the debian repositories are simply the best.
Mepis delivers a perfect way for installation. You can try it before you put in on the hard drive. I believe Mepis was the trendsetter there. Price? Mepis beats the big boys. Ofcourse Mepis could have nice flashy gui tools. But the re are not that many people working on Mepis, as there are on the big distros.
But all these people can learn something from mr. Woodford. The ranking Mepis has on Distrowatch the last weeks proves what many of us already know: Mepis is a great distribution! And I can tell: I tried many competitors.
8 • RPM and APT (by ybouan on 2005-01-17 16:29:05 GMT)
I always see people raving about the benefits of APT over RPM.
I have used both and I personnally don't really care. The only difference I noticed is that URPMI takes longer to update. All other issues with package management come from wether or not you have the right sources setup.
Did any one ever compare package systems? Is there a real review with pros and cons?
9 • Hey Hendrik! (by Kevin Strident at 2005-01-17 16:42:05 GMT)
Try PCLinuxOS's new Preview 8. They fixed the USB mouse bug, which was easily worked around anyway by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 at the login screen, logging in as root, and running MOUSEDRAKE just once.
10 • $ Talks (by Gabe at 2005-01-17 16:44:58 GMT)
Like they're going to piss off their advertisers by giving them a low ranking.....Mepis and Debian for the proletariate masses !!!!....Revolution OS !!!!
11 • social skills (by pete on 2005-01-17 16:45:07 GMT)
besides the availability of packages and security updates, another aspect would be if the distro is run by one person or a team. all this hype about mepis and pclinuxos is pretty ridiculous. its good for competition. and sooner or later the 'ego' of the distro creator will just move on.
12 • $ Talks (by Gabe at 2005-01-17 16:49:12 GMT)
Like they're going to piss off their advertisers by giving them a low ranking.....Mepis and Debian for the proletariate masses !!!!....Revolution OS !!!!
13 • Gnoppix Developer version 0.9.3b1 'Hoary' (by fractalguy at 2005-01-17 17:03:48 GMT)
In your "Gnoppix Developer version 0.9.3b1 'Hoary' " announcement the URL for the 386 version is missing (repeats the AMD64 URL). What is the correct i386 URL? ALso, I think I figured out what it is and found the down load time estimate to be about 30 hours (which then never completes). Are there going to be useful mirrors for this release?
The previous announcement was for "Gnoppix Developer version 0.9.2b5 Hoary" which I down loaded. It looked to be in fact not a live CD but an install. At least that is the way I read the menu that apppeared.
Thanks.
14 • Distrowars (by BigLinuxandBSDFan on 2005-01-17 17:05:46 GMT)
Who is number 1? It depends for what/what purpose. Many people swear by their distro. All the distro's have their strengths and their weaknesses. Some are easy to learn while others are hard. In my opinion each distro should have their place. Why are those distro's number 1? because people vote for them. Why is Knoppix not one of the best? SLAX? FreeSBIE? FreeBSD? Fedora? Cheers everyone! Keep it coming. Distrowatch is great!!! Great Job Ladislav!!!
15 • SLAX is #1 (by SlaxFreak on 2005-01-17 17:12:51 GMT)
Guys there is no comparison. SLAX is simply the best. You don't even need to install it. It simply works. Yes, it might now work with some hardware and the wheel mouse; but it get's the job done. You don't even need the CD on the CD drive if your computer has more than 256MB of Ram and you use copy2ram option. Slax has more punch and no bloat like some of the so called #1 distros.
16 • methodology (by tachyon at 2005-01-17 17:33:38 GMT)
No comparison should be taken seriously when it's not accompanied by thoroughly described methodology. ("It's no1. Why? Cause I say so!") I am a subcriber at the magazine in question, but I was disappointed by the lack of professionalism so openly demonstrated by its cover article! That being said, I am in love with Gentoo. (It has a nice logo, OK?) It's not a perfect distro, it suits me. Which is the case for every other distro out there. Each one suits certain people. Keep up the good work D'watch!
17 • distrowars bs (by Distrowatch reader on 2005-01-17 17:34:13 GMT)
Mandrake discovered the Micro$oft upgrade secret "Perhaps the key to Mandrakelinux's success is that its users keep hoping they'll fix the bugs - we love its tools but hate the stability issues, so we keep our fingers crossed that one day we'll have a bug-free Mandrakelinux. And when that day comes, there'll be angels singing in heaven" My config files look nothing like the standard Mandrake ones. I had no network, no mouse, no Kde stability, no Nvidia no firewall. If your reading this running Mandrake 10.1 try this for that sinking feeling ( Open a console su to root and issue the command shorewall start, watch all the firewall modules finally load- duh!). Mandrake uses unborking files *rpmnew?? Want help google for the problems in Slackware apply the precise slackware fixes not the odd Mandrake ones . Enjoy!! It really is stable without the funky unborking files. Do Not run the commands updatedb or ldconfig ever. The nvidia driver only takes three commands to properly install after reading the slackware fix 6629 on a 2.6 stock mdk kernel. I try every distro at least once . My personal favorite is still erposs3 by credative!
18 • Re: RPM and APT (by Ariszló at 2005-01-17 17:38:11 GMT)
"I always see people raving about the benefits of APT over RPM."
FYI: https://moin.conectiva.com.br/AptRpm
19 • "Distrowars" by Linux Format (by T.Djokic at 2005-01-17 17:42:51 GMT)
"MEPIS Linux, is only ranked at number 12 in the Linux Format article ("its lack of originality holds it back," claim the reviewers)." I personally prefer FUNCTIONALLITY over ORIGINALLIY! So, MEPIS is very close to #1. And yes, PCLOS is better than Mdk.
20 • Gnoppix Developer/hoary (by just john at 2005-01-17 17:46:30 GMT)
I had the same experience with "0.9.2b5 Hoary" as mentioned above.
... and I'm pleased to see less ragging on Hikarunix, this time out. (Tho I think it would be a perfect candidate for a Morphix module, so users could brew up a disk with the Hikarunix apps plus other stuff of their choice.)
21 • Disaggreements (by x at 2005-01-17 18:18:25 GMT)
Former U.S. Supreme Court, Felix Frankenfurter, once said "May the brethern always be in disagreement". Comment was made in response to statements concerning perceived dissention among the judges in what the best interpritation of the laws were.
The last time 100% of Frenchmen were in agreement, well it ended at a place called Waterloo.
Dissention and competition, if used constructively will always end with better results. Whereas, total aggreement will always leave you with something that satisfies no one, and wil never be developed into anything that will satisify anyone.
May the Distro Wars continue and support your favorite distribution
By the way thanks for the history of DW, shows what may begin as an internal, or personal developement could turn out to be a much needed or useable solution for others. I was pretty sure that you did not set out to make millions $$ with the production of DW.
22 • i guess ill throw my thoughts... (by bhrich902 on 2005-01-17 18:42:14 GMT)
i've only had a yeat and half using linux, started with mandrake to get my feet wet. i liked the usability, but it wasnt perfect. to be user-friendly one should have to mess with the console to fix things like urpmi sources, or anything at all really. i did enjoy it though, and learned much from, but the file system structure was too bulky, and didnt like the fact that they messed too much with the packages wich made them not work properly sometimes. then i found arch linux, wich is what i was looking for. so simple, the file system is well organized, clean, the boot up is as fast as u like it to be depending on exactly what u want to start-up. and the most important thing for me was the packaging system, so simple to use, fast and just makes since. thay have all the basic software u could want and more, no debian of course, but but more that efficient. and i like the fact that the packaging system is so easy to use that i was able to build my own packages if they dont have it, i cant ask for more, neither do my 3 ther systems running it. sorry for blabbing on about it, i guess that for me arch is the number one, so i wouldn't say it is the number one distro out there, nor any other distro for that matter. p.s., along the way i also stumbled into fedore core 3, yoper (really bad experience), debian (couldnt install). i guess all in all i love and hate the freedom and flexibiltty gnu and linux brings me. btw, i really enjoy this site and visit every day, thx to all behind it...
23 • Distrowars (by Luk van den Borne at 2005-01-17 19:35:47 GMT)
It seems Linux Format has been distrowatched :)
2 questions:
- Are both Gentoo and Linspire on the 6th spot?
- Where's Ubuntu?
My take: If you have some spare time, just try some of them. If you don't, use Ubuntu or Mepis. Sorry, had to be brief, running out of time (yeah it's a 50-50 percent guess which distro I have installed on my notebook).
24 • In summation... (by SFN on 2005-01-17 19:37:09 GMT)
Let's see if we can round all of this up.
1) Distro wars are stupid. Ther's no such thing as a "best".
2) But since we're on the subject, whatever distro the current poster uses is best.
Got it.
25 • RE: In summation... (by Offer Kaye at 2005-01-17 20:17:22 GMT)
LOL - mod parent up :-)
26 • Winners are Winners. It's not a coincidence. (by mr mainstream on 2005-01-17 20:24:43 GMT)
Funny to see all the comments above bash the winners of the contest. Seems that just the users of smaller distros reacted.
Well, I've tried Redhat, Mandrake, SUSE, Libranet, MEPIS, Knoppix, Yoper, Quantian and Morphix. Sure, it's not that much, but I always end up returning to Mandrake because of easiness, URPMI, Hardware detection and PLF. On my laptop I use SUSE 9.2 because of excellent ACPI and mobility support.
Go Mandrake! Go SUSE!
27 • Linux From Scratch book (by sengle3 at 2005-01-17 21:09:45 GMT)
I was glad to see that this book will soon be available and went to the order page to pre-order a copy. Until I saw the shipping costs! The cheapest option is around 50% of the book price and the most expensive option is about 15% more than the book price! Thanks, but no thanks.
28 • Mandrake-Linux is #1 overall and in most category (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-17 22:14:00 GMT)
To be honest anyone who dont come up with Mandrake-Linux at the top is either dishonest or as been paid by another distribution, or as they did in the past used older version of Mandrake-Linux to compare with the newest flagship of the other distribution , to make the distribution look weak.
- What everyone should do before starting an instalation is make space for the new distribution , only mandrake give you in all there offers the Free and opensource tools to do the partionning of the hard drive. It would be unfair to start to name them all , as I am sure there are new one even I dont know about. That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- Instalation : Mandrake as one of the best installer wich is all GUI based , unlike some other installer where the only choice you have are predetermined in advance Mandrake leave to you the choice to how-to install your new distribution.Its also worth mentionning that Mandrkae as all the installer the other distribution offers.
* You can choose a text based install
* You can choose a completely automated GUI install
* You can choose a pre determined install based on a disk with your preference on it.
* You can instal over a network.
* You can install it computer to computer over a USB cable.
* You can Install the most minimalist complete distribution wich fits on less then a diskette ( Yes the Mandrakians won that competition too ) , or the fulll and entire GNU/Linux flagship with over 10 desktop available ( on 2.1Gig of space).
*You can install only what you whant.
*You can install a secure distribution or the most secure distribution recommanded for military purpose.
*You can do a complete install locally from disquette , from CD or from DVD ( might not mean much but with the internet down , or no internet some of the Distribution in the competition above dont have nothing )
Thats why Mandrake as the best installer , it can do what the others do , it can do it better and faster it offer more choice. That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
This year the Gloves are coming off : Debian dont have a real installer ( there working on one , to be done after sarge come out ;-) ), Slackware dont either , Gentoo Dont , Red Hat dont , Fedora dont , Linspire certainly dont , they dont offer any choice , Real Distribution do it all , because Real Distribution dont have anyone as a target.
For those keeping score Mandrake as already two #1 spot , but it dont stop there.
- Configuration Tools : its a two men battle on the GUI and on the Text base ( yes , Text base tools are in Mandrake-Linux too )
I am sorry I should say its a one man Battle as the other one making real tools as gone bankrupt and got sold to Novell by the one holding the rights to its portfolio ( refering to the sale of SuSe owned by IBM wich sold it to Novell ). But lets be nice a little and say there still in the game.
Yast VS Mandrake Command Center or MCC
Summary : Yast dont play nice in
FVWM
FVWM95
TWM/VTWM
MWM
CTWM
OLWM/OLVWM
wm2/wmx
AfterStep
AmiWM
Enlightenment
WindowMaker
SCWM
IceWM
Sawfish
Blackbox
Fluxbox
Metacity
etc ...
, and dont have acces to all there tool in a Text based solution. and They dont have tools that only Mandrake-Linux does , winner ? That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- Choice of "suported" windows Manager :
Mandrake-Linux is in a category by itself , they are the only one to support and contribute to most of the windows manager and those that they dont support there community as them packaged.
Gloves are coming off : Red Hat dont support KDE , Slackware dont support Gnome , Debian dont support anyone even do they have close to one thousand developper , Linspire dont even support KDE even do its there only WM ,
all the rest use the software but dont have any developper working on anything but there distribution.
That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- Number of software availaible :
There is a Myth going on that Debian as the most software availaible its false and here is why : they take all the different architecture they have and add them up ,
Alpha
ARM
HP PA-RISC
Intel x86
Intel IA-64
Motorola 680x0
MIPS
MIPS (DEC)
PowerPC
IBM S/390
SPARC
This make the offer look bigger but that dont count as a software available , they also forget that almost no commercial software support them ( in comparaison to the one that support the commercial distribution ) and they dont support any commercial software themself. And they also dont support the non free software officially.
Mandrake-Linux come in second when we keep the number put out by the Debian group.
Its not a definitive win and clear and concise win for the Mandrakians but they are in the top 5 at all time. In a factual and accuracy based competition they win : That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- The commercially supported "Distribution" category :
* Mandrakesoft
* Conectiva
* Red Hat
* SUSE
* Turbolinux
* Yellow Dog
Mandrake dont loose a Point in that Category by not showing up or having a real distribution , That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- The Community supported "Distribution"
* Mandrake Community
* Debian
* Gentoo
* Knoppix
* MEPIS
* Fedora
* Slackware
* Ubuntu
Mandrake dont loose a Point in that Category by not showing up or not having a real community , That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- The commercial "appliance"
* Mandrakesoft
* Knoppix ( knoppix game , security ... )
* Linspire
* Yoper
* Ubuntu
Mandrake dont loose a Point in that Category by not showing up or not having an appliance product ( MNF , MandrakeMove , etc ... ) , That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
- The Live CD category :
* MandrakeMove
* Knoppix
* Linspire
* Yoper
* Ubuntu
Mandrake dont loose a Point in that Category by not showing up or not having a Live CD , That category is a definitive win for Mandrake-Linux.
note : Some people will falsely think that some product are being misplaced or not present in a category in the last four I sugested , you would be wrong , but then again it would not remove the point that Mandrake is in there too so if you wrongly and falsely feel your product should be added to a category to make you feel better do it , It dont change the outcome anyway.
This is getting long and tedious so I will short this up into where Mandrake is ( dont mean others above arent in these category sometime but not all the time ) :
- The Most Stable distribution ( yes if you know what your doing and dont try to apply other distribution way of doing thing to Mandrake like asking apt-get when its not insatlled yet )
- The Less Buggy Distribution ( Real Total number of software supported + thos not suporrted + number of Real bug reported.)
- The commercial and free software Servers offers ( the most basic package inlcude some servers)
- The most Respectfull of Commercial and GNu/GPL
* they can be separate or mixed
- The targeted User ( everyone ) :
* Total newbie to computers
* Newbie
* Normal user
* advanced user
* Most advanced user
* new Developper
* advanced Developper
* Gnu/Linux Guru
- The Development tools and Developper software and service
* All that can be included
* Mandrake Cooker , Bugzilla , etc ...
And in closing all the above are partially why MandrakeSoft And Mandrake-Linux are #1.
And contrary to what some have tried to put out Mandrakians are the nicest and brightest and most hard working people in the world , if you cant find someone nice in a group of 10 million in 54 langages its probably because you tried insulting us and you just got what you deserved.
29 • Morphix site down? (by distrosoldier on 2005-01-17 22:14:23 GMT)
What's happened to Morphix? I haven't been able to reach the site for days and now there seems to be only an empty directory where the morphix site used to be. :(
http://www.morphix.org/
30 • RE: Winners are winners (by Life at 2005-01-17 22:23:46 GMT)
Well whatever works for you, that is the point, but it is not the same for everyone. Personally, I've used pretty much every distribution under the sun, I run a site that mirrors distributions and hence, I test alot of them out.
Mandrake, SuSE et al are so "big" and "popular" because they are easy to use for people switching over from Windows. They all come with pretty GUI installers and big clicky buttons, with desktop environments that seem familiar to your average Windows convert. Obviously these distributions will get alot of support, because the biggest push in the Linux market currently comes from users switching away from Windows, and to a lesser extent, Macintosh systems. These people have been brought up on the same interfaces, used to point-and-click desktop adventuring, and lots and lots of GUI interaction, most of them have never even touched the restrictive DOS emulated shell, let alone a real command line interface.
Now, don't get me wrong, these distributions have a big place in the future of Linux, because quite frankly, the average computer owner these days needs things dumbed down for them, and if Linux is to get anywhere near to challenging Windows superiority on the desktop, it needs to be very simple to use, and more to the point, very Windows like as this is what computer users are used to. Anything different is "scary".
However, this does not mean they are the "best" distributions, as I stated before, there is no "best". Software is all about the right tool for the job. In the same way as you wouldn't use a screwdriver to solder a circuit, you wouldn't give Grandma a headless Gentoo installation to send email.
Every remotely successful distribution has its uses. Gentoo, Slackware and Debian (amongst many others) are suited to a more professional Linux user who knows how to customise their system, and doesn't need distro-specific GUI administration tools and hundereds of uneeded packages installed by default bloating up their system when they are comfortable with CLI and make their own scripts, and install what they need, as they need it.
In the same light, Mandrake, SuSE, FC and co. all have their uses, but let me ask you.... would you install these distributions on older systems? Or servers? Sure, you could do, but you would end up going through cutting out all the bloat and deleting uneeded Window Managers / Desktop Environments. Why bother when you can use distributions more suited to the task, and install only what you want from the start, rather than removing things piece by piece after (and likely fucking up your dependancy tree).
You say you like these distributions because of the hardware detection? Well to be honest, hardware detection is almost solely down to the kernel, init scripts and the modules included, and I think you will find almost every mainstream distribution around nowadays includes a generic kernel with a huge variety of drivers, and modular hotplug / coldplug to detect and load everything PnP side. Also, hardware support in general is down to the kernel, not the distribution specifically itself.
In short, I will say that distribution wars, although entertaining for serious discussions when constructive criticism is being used, is a complete waste of time. We are all supporters of open source (for various reasons, but to the same end), we are all using the Linux kernel, the LSB, the same drivers, the same modules, the same applications, only minor differences in package management and installers, and yet we sit here arguing (without even providing a basis for that argument) with each other. It's like some geek cock-comparing contest. We should be looking at ways to strengthen Linux distributions and open software, not running around declaring "mine is the best because I say so". This will only create more seperation in the scene. Together we stand, divided we fall my friends.
If you wanna bitch out software, bitch out closed source proprietary software like MS Windows. That is the enemy. Windows stands in the way of software freedom, the hobbyist aspect of computing so many of us love, open standards and only brings to the table vendor lock-in, DRM and corporate reliance.
If you are gonna fight, make it a worthwhile cause eh? ;)
31 • RE: Mandrake-Linux is #1 overall and in most category (by Aussie on 2005-01-17 23:03:49 GMT)
Umm, thanks for that.
I still prefer SuSE over Mandrake - mainly because I've tried both (actually I tried about 8 distros) on my current setup and I prefer SuSE 9.2.
It's all about my choice. My choice to choose and my choice to ignore people trying to force choice down my throat :P
32 • tried way more (by mepis user on 2005-01-17 23:31:07 GMT)
just booted into berry livecd looked very nice . I have tried about 17 dif
distros. Current top Mepis-pro,Ubuntu,Federo. Everybody has a dif axe to grind. What surprised me is for being 99 rank in last 30 days on distrowatch
Berry looks pretty sharp. With this level of quality at 99 rank. Wow its going to be the year of Linux!!
ps this was from a berry live-boot
33 • Mandrake is #1 in most categories, true yet (by SlaxFreak on 2005-01-17 23:49:26 GMT)
Mandrake is definitely easier to learn than most other distros. Mandrake Linux is a fine distribution. It is no. 1 period. We don't want to dispute that it is and has been at the top of distrowatch.com for some time probably since Distrowatch started. In most of the categories yes, Mandrake is at the top.
But for Live CD's my friend it does not out power SLAX. You can view a DVD in Move, you can also in SLAX. You can use office software in Mandrake, you can too in SLAX just not Microsoft compatible(*.doc, *.ppt, .xls,etc), You can play games in Move, in SLAX too except frozen bubble. You cannot burn CD's in Move with only 1 cd/dvd/rw drive, but in slax you can. You can do most of the things you can do in Move also in SLAX. Don't let the size fool you, it packs alot of punch.
Knoppix also has much more utilities than Move, so in this category I believe Mandrake is not at the top. Distrowatch does not have live cd's in a category of their own. It would be great to see who is at the top if you rated live cd's. I have used many live CD's and personally I like them all and each have their strengths and weaknesses. Any of the ones mentioned will work.
Mandrake started off based on Red Hat, instead of using GNOME as the desktop environment they opted for KDE. It became an instant hit. Red Hat/Fedora do carry KDE also and you can customize it any way you want, Slackware has a hard time packaging Gnome components, but there is Dropline Gnome for Slackware. Knoppix is based on Debian, Mepis is based on Debian, PCLinuxOS is based on Mandrake. In this case who is better the student or the teacher, the father or the son. You will never end the arguments. Use whatever you use, you like whatever you like, because you have a choice and if you want to flame someone/some company why not blast Micro$oft. Commercial companies do need to make money, and people that are not well informed and coming from the winblows community they need something easy to fall back into. Cheers everyone!!! Why argue? I use Linux and I also use BSD. Which is better? BOTH.
34 • On omission of Xandros from distro shoot-out (by Kanwar at 2005-01-18 00:10:51 GMT)
Flame me if you will people, but the reason i feel Xandros was omitted was to make Mandrake look good. Xandros is the only one out there that out-does everything the shoot-out claimed makes Mandrake #1.
Nothing against Mandrake. Its an excellent distro but to give it unfair advantage by omitting a formidable opponent is not fair!
35 • Wars (by William Roddy at 2005-01-18 00:56:41 GMT)
Our Linux War Correspondent
Distro wars. The premise of the article in question is juvenile, borrowed from the title of the movie Star Wars. The use of such an overworked, trite cliche shows the author's lack of certain knowledge bases. The content of the article shows the lack of investigative thoroughness.
I hear no one proclaiming, "Give me Linux, or give me death!"
By creating a "war," any "journalist" has something about which to write. In this case, no war exists, so there is an attempt to fudge one. (The Hearst newspaper empire created a war to build circulation.) This journalistic adage seems to still applies: "If it bleeds, it leads." Yet, I see no blood.
Like others of you, I am a disabled veteran, and I admit to being overly sensitive to the term "war." In wars, people die. Humans are maimed and dismembered. Blood is spilled, families lose loved ones. Civilization's treasures are lost. To use anything as a metaphor for war that is not war is to be insensitive or ignorant of the consequences of violence of people against people. I wonder: has the writer of the article in question every shot someone and watched them die, or been shot at?
The open-source community is not at war with each other. Linux distributions are the results of collaborations, joint usages, long-standing, ongoing discussions amongst people from all over the world.
The result is freedom, without any bloodshed, choice, without any coercion.
In war, there is only one winner: Death. Open source/GNU/Linux/BSD is a "win = win" result for both developers and users.
I have often said -- and I mean it -- that the open-source community should nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This community is an example of how major progress can be made by the collaborative efforts of people throughout the world.
Ad for the article in question, I have seen high school papers do better jobs of comparing and contrasting. I have heard high school debate teams do better analysis than this article did, or, in fact, than we are doing right here.
One isn't clear on whether the comparisons being made are from the most recent release cycle of each distribution. One isn't sure if all the distributions have been upgraded. With Linux, problem last week might not longer be a problem.
We don't not all drive the same kinds of cars, we go to great lengths to make sure our houses or apartments look different that the others around us. We all chose different appliances. We all watch different TV programs. It is the way of all humans to desire distinction. The human desire for distinction is where the fires of creativity were first kindled.
So. We all use different versions of GNU/Linux or BSD.
By Ladislav's accounting, we have 374 versions of Linux to choose from, there are nine BSD distributions, and there are 84 distributions waiting in the wings.
Many will work on Macs, PCs, PowerPCs, some will work on Xbox, Amiga, and other platforms. Projects like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, just to name a few, reach out to all distributions, in most languages. This sounds like outreach, not mortar fire.
Does any other operating system offer that kind of choice? Anything even close to it?
Are we giving a lot of free press to a minor player in Linux opinion making? By protesting too much, do we all show our own insecurity? You are already aware that the best way to conquer is to divide. But sometimes we forget the subtle consequences. Every time we verbally spar with each other, The Microsoft monopoly's PR people are taking notes, and will some day craft messages and products that distill our very own criticisms.
Let's remain unified on one point: GNU/Linux/BSD. And let's make it clear to everyone that it is not war going on here, but a very spirited example of peace.
I have a feeling that Ladislav is a man of peace. Thanks, Ladislav.
Wil
P.S. I always keep three different distros on three different computers (total, nine). And I still haven't settled on which one is "best," and I don't think I ever will.
36 • Distro Wars MDK (by Lord-Storm on 2005-01-18 01:36:40 GMT)
Personaly I belive the statement mandrake users are hoping for stabillity. Mandrake has good tools but a few well deserving packages are usualy leftout. Though the internal structure of the operating system is quite good.
What is wrong with mandrake?? look at all the new features!! look to find what they have broken in this release!
Debian should be on there and it will once sarge becomes fully stable. The community is good but prepare yourself for S.P.A.M since bots use the power of google archives to grab your email.
37 • End the war[Distrowar] (by PeaceKeeper on 2005-01-18 02:38:57 GMT)
Please end the war. It is not good to be fighting over Linux distro's when all of them are based on the same kernel whether 2.4.X or 2.6.X. Whether you like gui/text based/terminal you decide. Gnome/KDE/Fluxbox/XFCE/XPDE are desktops and MCC/YAST configuration tools to configure your system Disk DRAKE/Parted/qt_parted to partition your hard drive. You have the freedom to choose I hope, and no one threathens you to use a certain distro unless you work for a company and they tell you to use a cetain distro by force. A friend told me and I believe him many Microsoft employees use Linux at home. They know it is a whole lot better. It has everything that you need and alot of stuff that you don't also.
38 • Wars (by ReyFer at 2005-01-18 02:57:08 GMT)
I agree with Wil. There is no "best distro", there's only a better community experience. I've been using GNU/Linux for less than a year, and I've tried several distros, but to me, the freedom of being able to use so many different distros is the real "best".
39 • Distrowars (by Ed Borasky at 2005-01-18 03:21:58 GMT)
Well ... my own personal Top Five ranking is
Mandrake
Suse
Debian
Gentoo
Fedora
What do I use? Gentoo on the fast boxes with enough disk space, Debian on the slow ones with small disks. I can't afford Mandrake or SuSE, and Fedora is just plain unstable. That leaves Debian and Gentoo.
When Red Hat got out of the "Linux for the Masses" business, I switched to Debian. Then I discovered Gentoo. Mostly I switched because I wanted to have the most efficient system I could get. A side benefit is currency; Gentoo's stable has many more current packages than Debian stable, and in some cases Gentoo stable is ahead of Debian testing.
But the real Debian-killer is Java. Gentoo has much better Java support, and there's an awful lot of good software written in Java.
40 • No subject (by DrCR on 2005-01-18 03:38:34 GMT)
"A friend told me and I believe him many Microsoft employees use Linux at home. They know it is a whole lot better. It has everything that you need and alot of stuff that you don't also."
Yeah, I guess that makes since. Most computer "gurus" I know use Linux at least somewhat. My specialty is hardware though, so I'm only slowly getting used to Linux. Tried a handful of distros so far and the one I personally like best was also the first one I tried, SW10.
41 • Which Distro of linux verions come with the best games (by rob on 2005-01-18 03:48:52 GMT)
Which Distro of linux verions come with the best games, they almost never seem to talk about the 2d/3d games linux can com with?why is their not more linux gaming stuff type talk?
I feel that debian has the bet compression system, gentoo has the most apps , rpm systems just are too big+buggy etc..
42 • No Mandrake (by Anon on 2005-01-18 04:36:10 GMT)
Tried it once. Terrible stability, and horribly slow. Never again.
43 • glipse?? (by bhrich902 on 2005-01-18 05:53:29 GMT)
my comments seem to be posted here 3 times, of course i only sent it once, so please dont be mad at me :)...
44 • Mepis is waaaay better than 12th! :-) (by mepis_man at 2005-01-18 05:54:13 GMT)
Hi all -
I'm running Mepis and would put it waay higher than 12th ...
"Lack of originality" ... yeah, right! ;-) . How many distros are based on Debian? (and could therefore be tarred with the same brush). Don't get me wrong - I love Debian - I'm just saying that so-called lack of originality is a poor reason to rank Mepis at 12th.
I guess there will be lots of distros disappointed that they didn't feature in the article. Two I would love to have seen included are Kanotix and Arch. Kanotix is *very* good, and *very* up-to-date, running the Sid packages. Arch is also a great distro. Although I'm running Mepis, I still very much appreciate the worth of other distros, Kanotix and Arch in particular.
If the LXF folks are reading this - maybe you can do a future article on the "up-and-coming" distros like Kanotix and Arch. Just my 2c worth! :-)
mepis_man
45 • Re: Mepis is waaaay better than 12th! :-) (by Mark Rijckenberg on 2005-01-18 09:42:15 GMT)
I fully agree with what you said, Mepis man. Not hard to do, as i am also a Mepis freak ;-) My second choice is probably Ubuntu. I especially like the fact thaty Ubunt has 3 architecture-optimized iso images, 1 for x86, 1 for PowerPC and 1 for the AMD64 architecture. That is pretty cool.
Everybody, I wouldn't consider this long discussion about Linux distro's a war. I havent seen anyone "flaming" anyone else here. We all just like to give our opinions.
Fine by me.
46 • Distrowar? (by Richard at 2005-01-18 11:01:02 GMT)
Nice article and maybe even partially useful, But to me it read like an auto reviewer taking a ferrari, a Ford F250 and a chrysler minivan and saying the Ferrari is best.
Sure if you want to go fast and look cool it is, but if you need to move your couch across town it is useless. Both the Ford and the Ferrari are useless if you need to transport your daughters and her friends on her soccer team to the game in the next town.
WHatever Distro does what you need at the particular time is the best. and its always worth looking at what's new to see if someone has an implementation that better fits your current needs(which is where Distrowatch comes in so handy). Keep up the good work Ladislav.
47 • APT and RPM are apples and oranges (by Chris Hickman at 2005-01-18 11:42:45 GMT)
I don't understand why people compare them...APT is not a file format. You can compare DEB and RPM, and you can compare APT to YUM and URPMI, but not APT to RPM :)
That being said, Synaptic (which is APT *FOR* RPM) freaking rules and is one of the reasons I use PCLinuxOS (not that other distros don't have it or can't use it, of course). Also, I look in the Synaptic directory and see tons of international localization packages, so I don't know what the person above is talking about in having to have a US keyboard! I'd check out the pclinuxonline.com forums or the EFNET IRC channel if you're a non-US person trying to get it to work, they're very helpful in both.
48 • APT and RPM are apples and oranges (by ladislav at 2005-01-18 13:16:27 GMT)
What's wrong with comparing apples and oranges? They are both fruits...
49 • distro-what? (by catalinux on 2005-01-18 14:32:07 GMT)
hmm... the best OS Distro ever is a non Micros$0ft one :)
50 • XFLD-0.2 (by Cheapskate on 2005-01-18 15:25:17 GMT)
sweet, i downloaded it and ran it for a little bit, Live CDrom based distros are great in a pinch and for recovery of crashed and dead systems (both Win & *Nix) but i prefer to install and run Linux from the harddrive...
since it is based on knoppix i am hoping they left the command intact that installs it to the harddrive like the stock knoppix Live CD has...
51 • Synaptic? (by Chibi at 2005-01-18 15:26:39 GMT)
"..said, Synaptic (which is APT *FOR* RPM) freaking r.."
Yes, synaptic does 'freaking rule', but it isn't Apt for RPM, it's a frontend to apt, package format independant :P
52 • RE: Morphix site down? (by distrosoldier on 2005-01-18 18:08:57 GMT)
Ah, they've now offered an explanation why the site is down:
http://www.morphix.org/
BTW, I find the term "distrowar" highly amusing. :D
53 • DistroWars (by GWJMateo at 2005-01-18 18:38:09 GMT)
There is no "best distro", so all of you get over it. The fact that your pet distro didn't make it to the top of some journalist's arbitrary ranking is puerile. Does it work for you? Have your groked all of its eccentricities? Good for you.
Since Red Hat effectively dropped out of the retail market, the public "face" of linux is, for most people, Mandrake. It's where everyone is told to start, and for good reason: great tools, easy install, etc. It's a great OS to get familiar with Linux and OSS.
Are there better distros? Sure. Mandrake is buggy as hell, particulalry on .0 releases. And then there are other issues, like dep-hell, which is sometimes the Mandrake team's fault, sometimes not. And out of the box, alot of things are enabled, which makes the system seem slow.
But like any other linux, you can hack at it to your heart's content, and with tons of services turned off and the kernel optimized, Mandrake's penguin can fly.
Personally, I like Ubuntu. It's light, suits my needs, and with synaptic, it's easy to update. But is it "the #1" distribution? No. It needs some familiarity with OSS, particularly GNOME software to use, and pretty simple things need to be done through the terminal. Not necessarily noob friendly.
But it works for me.
The way I see it, there are 350+ linux distros tracked on this site, so there has to be one that is just right for you. Go find it, use it, but don't expect everyone to validate your linux lifestyle.
The way I see it, everyone who uses linux wins.
54 • Distrowars = Evolution (by mr mainstream on 2005-01-18 18:55:09 GMT)
I think it's very good to argue about distros and their qualities, as well as their components like GUI or package manager.
Closed source operating systems never have the possibility to this "selection by fitness" that keeps linux distros constantly evolving. The process may be slow, but I'm sure it will take us somewhere. Winning formulas will duplicate.
Sometimes it may seem that no-one will ever change their mind, but in reality most do all the time. There is evolution of views and distros. It's important to keep arguing. Let the best argument that appeals to greatest number win.
The variation also keeps the Linux scene interesting and deep.
HAVE FUN!!
55 • Distro wars??? (by Mike on 2005-01-18 18:56:49 GMT)
Once a year my local LUG invites people to come forward during a meeting and talk about their favorite Linux distro. They call it "Distro Fever."
Seems appropriate, given the about of heat this topic seems to generate. :)
56 • Distro Wars??? (by Scott on 2005-01-18 20:03:51 GMT)
I like most of you are in a quest for the one to win the wars but still have not found one that finds all the devices, runs all the media files, can run all the desktops etc.
I also have to keep windows on the primary machine and tried to partition it for some other distros. Mandrake 9 was the only one I found that automaticly found the windows partition and allowed me to dual boot without having to mess with the command line. But it had its and the biggest one was no audio which did work in 8. The problems I had after that were that the other ones I tried to test out on the other partions kept tring to stomp out the other partitions or LILO/GRUB problems. Then the last straw came when Mandrake 10 wouldn't detect and install over 9. I had to do it because update wouldn't work any more and would be too much for dial up anyway. It also kept all the old versions and was running out of room in the partiton.
Now I'm back to using Linux on a backup machine and re-formatting each time I want to try a new distro because they can't even get along with each other.
I tried Ubantu as a live CD on the primary box and it worked well enough to try but have video issues on the back up box because it won't stay at a video resolution that is not the maximum for the video card reguardless of what the monitor can handle. I tried 3 different boxes (with different video cards) to the same monitor and had the same problem. Every time it would change what I set it in setup menu because of the video card it detected.
I'm about ready to wait till things settle down a bit and just run Knoppix from a live CD until someone gets it right with better installers for the real world.
57 • Best distro? All of them! :) (by Scatershot on 2005-01-18 20:34:10 GMT)
After reading the plethora of comments I'm glad to see one point brought up again and again: There isn't a "best", each distro serves a purpose. I thought that was the whole point of distros; to build a specialised OS to fit a specialised need, no matter how off-the-wall or obscur. YOu would never get that kind of attention from Microsoft.
Remember back in the 80's when there was a competition with the OS's that were big then? What happened? Everyone picked Windows and dropped the rest. Now, we are all forced to use a one-size-fits-all OS. Do we really want this for Linux? I don't think so. Sure, distros will come and go, but with each one, something new is learned and shared that eventually gets picked up by the others and improved upon.
That is what Linux is about.
Having said that, I use SuSE, Fedora Core, and Devil Linux.
But I also keep trying new ones and go back and try some of the more established ones to see how things have changed.
Who knows? Next year I might be using Smooth Wall, Yellow Dog and Debian....
The main point is, I will be free to choose what is best FOR ME, and not be forced to use something because other people felt it was the only worthy distro. As long as this is possible, we all win.
58 • Fedora Core Linux 3 is awesome (by Carl Smuck at 2005-01-18 23:14:15 GMT)
I really like Fedora Core Linux 3 because it is stable. It is very easy to update with yum and it is very fast on an amd athlon XP system even though it was optomized for Intel Pentium 4 systems. Right now I am using Asp Linux 10 which is based on Fedora Core 3 and it is extremely unstable when you use the gnome gui. It has much better multimedia support than Fedora Core 3. I would however suggest that Users of Fedora Core 3 download the ISO images of Asp Linux 10 and then install the multimedia programs to fedora core that are missing from fedora core 3 because the two operating systems are compatible with each other. Users of Asp Linux should use KDE or ICEWM because they are more stable than gnome.
59 • RE: Mandrake-Linux is #1 overall and in most category (by Anonymous on 2005-01-19 10:09:33 GMT)
You're a troll. Mandrake is a very nice distribution, but a lot of what you're saying simply isn't true. Just talking about slackware because I am more familiar with it:
Slackware gives you gnu parted on cd 2 to use before install if you want to. You have to use the text version, which is not as "friendly" as mandrake's, but you can easily make space for installation if you need to. You can install in almost every method you mention (I'm not certain about the USB cable), except for an automated GUI install (But why would you want that? If it's fully automated, what do you need a gui for?) and then some.
OK so you don't get extra config tools. But you still have all the config tools which were included anyway, which is usually what the author of the program made for you to use and would expect you to use. The samba people wouldn't expect you to use yast or MCC to set up samba, they'd expect you to use swat - it's what they wrote, and they ought to know more about configuring samba than anyone else. So that's what's done in slack
Saying slackware doesn't support gnome is a lie, plain and simple. Slack fully supports gnome, pat has been grumbling because he spends 1/3 of his time supporting gnome when he could be doing other stuff, but he's still supporting it.
Debian does not add up all the separate architechtures, what they do is count the number of source packages - which is the number of packages for any architecture, but they don't count a package twice for two different architectures. Why do you think it's 7 cds for just x86, they somehow make less packages than the 4 CD mandrake take up twice as much space? Fedora and Gentoo definitely have more packages than Mandrake, although slackware has less calling this a "win" for Mandrake is not really true.
OK, Mandrake has better commercial support. But the community seems to be lacking compared to others - take a look at the mandrake newsgroup and compare it to anything else in alt.os.linux.
On the live CD front you are again simply wrong. Slackware has two of the best live CDs around, SLAX in particular is simply excellent. MandrakeMove is incredibly slow and bloated, and doesn't seem to have any advantage over other live CDs.
Appliances I'll give you, but I don't think it's a valid category
Most stable and least buggy you are simply wrong. Look at any linux help forum and you'll see most of the problems are with mandrake. The partition resizer is nice, but what about when it stops other OSes booting?
All in all your post is full of factual inaccuracies. Whilst I like mandrake, you make an awful ambassador for it.
60 • trolls... trolls everywhere (by irrelevant on 2005-01-19 13:03:15 GMT)
distro-wars are so annoying... troll troll troll troll....
i use linux. that is my prefered system. everything else is irrelevant for ME.
; )
61 • heh (by gentoo user on 2005-01-19 18:34:14 GMT)
I've used Mandrake Linux 8-10.1, and I must say that a some point in there I really stopped liking the bloat and MCC. Moved to Gentoo, installed from stage1 (very very easy, though it does take a bit of time), and I am very happy, it runs so much faster on my P4 than Mandrake did, I can configure everything exactly the way I want it to, and I have full support for everything. And with the Nitro kernel and Reiser4, things are even faster.
62 • Oh great! (by CJ on 2005-01-19 20:36:09 GMT)
That unrealistic bastard is back
63 • Thank you for saying it! (by CJ on 2005-01-19 20:41:12 GMT)
"Whilst I like mandrake, you make an awful ambassador for it."
People like him keep me from trying Mandrake again.
64 • Bloat (by PwrUsr on 2005-01-19 20:50:18 GMT)
For a GNU/Linux n00b it's good to have a distro that installs at least 5 web browsers and 8 text editors. A neophyte wants to explore the available GNU/Linux software and the more software there is available, the better it is. But once you've had some experience with GNU/Linux, you'll soon develop personal preferences -- you'll notice that you want to use this specific web browser and not any other web browser; you want to use this text editor and not any other text editor. At this point you start to consider that your distro that installed by default 5 web browsers and 8 text editors (which you first thought as a cool thing) is BLOATED.
The approach that installs by default many apps of the same kind is sometimes called installing "everything and the kitchen sink". Personally I used to think that such "loaded with features" distros were very cool because they gave me the chance to experiment, but once I've had some more experience on GNU/Linux distros I've surprised myself by starting to think that such "loaded" distros are actually "bloated" distros and that this is not as cool as I first thought it was.
Still, I think it's good that some GNU/Linux distros (never forget that what you call "Linux" wouldn't exist if there wasn't the GNU philosophy to keep Linux FREE) are easy for absolute newcomers and some others are better if you know your way around the GNU/Linux system. My personal favourite is Debian but I've tried most of the main distros and I realize that it's good there are many distros that offer different features for different kinds of users.
Just don't take that word "distrowars" too seriously. Different users discussing and evaluating many GNU/Linux distros from different points of view is not a bad thing. Rather, it's a free change of opinions between people that the word FREEDOM implies. It's not a war, really. Or, if it is, it's a very peaceful war. I just wish all REAL wars were as peaceful as "distrowars". :-)
65 • Re: Bloat (by Ariszló at 2005-01-19 21:32:03 GMT)
"never forget that what you call "Linux" wouldn't exist if there wasn't the GNU philosophy to keep Linux FREE"
I will never forget that. Still, I prefer to call it Linux. Similarly, I will never forget that life would not be possible on Planet Earth without air and water. Still, I simply call it Planet Earth. Planet Earth/Air/Water would sound awkward.
66 • The Very Best Distro For Me... (by Soloact at 2005-01-20 02:27:52 GMT)
...will be the one that will actually work on an old eMachines 250 MHz Cyrix with 64 MB RAM, and has a very easy to use GUI for my elderly Dad. He now uses an old word processor and web TV.
So, if anyone has any clues as to what will work. So far, got SimplyMEPIS to boot up, but is too large for the small RAM. Can't get SLAX or Feather to install in RAM. Can't get Linspire to install. Guess I'll keep trying.
67 • distros (by Dennis Strock at 2005-01-20 05:30:46 GMT)
I look forward to each new distrowatch weekly with excitement and I learn much from each. I often download new Linux distro's and try them out. I know that I am not up on programming but I would like to learn how to put together a Linux distribution for an example. I love Knoppix and I see that there are several distro's that use the Knoppix base to boot their system. How can I use that base then add to or take away applications to make my own distribution then create an install CD ISO file?
Can you give me or print up a tutorial or links to a tutorial on this subject. I'm sure that I am not alone in wanting to learn how to do this.
Thanks
Dennis
68 • Did you say FreeBSD? (by Mike at 2005-01-20 07:27:33 GMT)
FreeBSD is by far the best distribution Unix or GNU has.<<<<(thats a period as in FreeBSD is the best Unix system period.) The Linux systems are excellent, the Mac osx system is somewhat o.k. I have tried EVERY operating system EVER MADE and FreeBSD is by far A: Thee single most secure operating system bar none.
B: Applications wont be put on FreeBSD if they don't function properly
C:CVSUP is just a few commands away.
D: More software for it than any distro.
would'nt you agree?
69 • re:xfld, re freebsd (by mark on 2005-01-20 15:02:22 GMT)
Xfld will install on the hard disk with the knoppix installer. Just open an xfterm and type 'sudo knoppix-installer' I had it installed for a while before I discovered gentoo
Isn't openBSD more secure than freeBSD (although I will admit it's more secure than gnu/linux)?
70 • Soloact, your distro is... (by im_ka at 2005-01-20 15:21:21 GMT)
vectorlinux
.com
71 • Let the flaming begin... (by Nick Veitch at 2005-01-20 16:14:32 GMT)
Thanks for your kind comments on our Ultimate Distro feature in LXF62.
To be honest, we only ran the feature because we love getting loads of flames from our readers ;-) - though more often than not they are from people who haven't even read the magazine.
For your interest, the final rankings were determined by a proportional-representation vote from all of the reviewers who took part. As far as I remember, few actually put Mandrake at the top of their list, but it scored consistently high enough to come top overall.
Obviously the rankings are subjective to an extent, but I hope the comments were thought-provoking and constructive, and gave people some ideas as to what distros they might like to try, as well as distro maintainers some thoughts as to where they can improve.
Nick Veitch
Editor
Linux Format
72 • @most of the fabulatory comments (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-20 17:19:57 GMT)
Mandrake-Linux is the #1 Gnu/Linux distribution , its the best and will stay the best until your distribution do the same and then some more.
Gnu/Linux is not UNIX ( Linux stanf or : Linux is not UNIX ).And no the BSD and UNIX are not friends and Ally with GNU/Linux. Whe have higher morals and standards that you dont meet , sorry whe may use or include some of your software but its because where sometime lazy , nothing more. And frankly where nicer and more inteligent.
GNU/Linux is for the OS and Linux is for the Kernel , you dont like it go shoot yourself in the head with a big gun , its the LEGAL and PRECISE way to mention the two.
A new fully functionnal Gnu/Linux computer can be add for 200$ ( Mandrake-Linux as one , and so does many other distribution ) , it come with parts that are recent and wich meets the need of most people , Dont be a stupid cheapstake your father whont be around for long and its better to enjoy communicating with him then see him suffer on is piece of crap. Whats good for you is certainly good enough for your father or familly.
How to spot a stupid clueless : he is using words like troll , when he dont know the meaning of troll , a good start to detect a troll : HE IS NEVER ON SUBJECT, and is almost always "anonymous" , he will also use the word Bloated when he speak of numerous choice , and say that poweruser ( because he falsely think he is one ) dont like having the choice to pick the software that they prefer using , WRONG !
REAL GNU/Linux distribution are not cars , they are the manufacturer of cars , and not the cheap ass one but the luxury class ...
APT is not a compression system , its a package management system , DEB is a compression sytem , DEB compare to RPM not APT , RPM is better because it as more functions then Deb.
Slackware is a failing piece of crap , its founder failed to make it big and the three ( not one but three different company) who tried to make it what it should be all whent bankrupt.
NO , Slackware , dont include in ALL there package the SAME or SUPERIOR tools that Mandrake-Linux as from the Mandrakesoft real offers , I know I sale Slackware. No they cant Install in the same way Mandrake-Linux does , there not even near it. You need a GUI if the person whant to modify the automatic install , its called superiority by OPTIONSSSSS and CHOICESSSSS.
Samba on Mandrake-Linux is actually one of the stronguest point of the distribution , you still dont get it Mandrake-Linux ship with samba wich can be configured in MCC , dont like it use swat dont like swat and dont whant to use MCC webmin is in there , etc ...
Bad example at that too , Mandrake-Linux Samba + Buchan Milne is winning every Samba exclusive comparaison that his not rigued, whant to put 10k on this Bet ? I am so sure of the win I do , Bring the Samba team and the Slackware Samba Team , and will pit them against Mandrake-Linux + Buchan Milne in a 10 people 10 diferent configuration test.
Yes Debian add up all the diferent architecture they even mix , stable unstable and testing.
4 cd for mandrake ?
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/101/powerpack-plus
8 CDs and 1 DVD and thats not even the total of software Mandrake-Linux offers ... Dont make me laugh Fedora and Gentoo dont even aproach the former SuSe portfolio in numbers of software and Mandrake add three time the numbers SuSe add ...
Alt.os.linux =
alt.os.linux.slackware 112 000 threads.
alt.os.linux.mandrake 325 000 threads.
alt.os.linux.mandrake.fr 225 000 threads.
Thats beating you with your own totally stupid point now lets see how big Mandrake-Linux really is :
from Mandrakesoft press dep :
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
Mandrakelinux is distributed in 140 countries in 68 languages, with installations numbering 4-6 million worldwide
From :
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/
Slackware :
slackware-announce
slackware-security
Mandrake-Linux :
mandrake-announce
mandrake-changelog
mandrake-confirme
mandrake-cooker
mandrake-cooker-i18n
mandrake-cooker-ppc
mandrake-debutant
mandrake-expert
mandrake-expert-it
mandrake-newbie
mandrake-newbie-it
mandrake-security-announce
mandrake-security-discuss
From Google :
Mandrake (60)
http://directory.google.com/.../Mandrake/?il=1
Slackware (14)
http://directory.google.com/.../Slackware/
etc ... ( in the case of the mandrake community thousand of others worth mentionning but not needed of mention )
Slax is not from Slackware its based of Slackware ... I dont know wich other one you refer too , don whant to guess out of the 10 slackware base Live cd I know wich one your refering to ... and No MandrakeMove Beats them all hands down ...
MandrakeMove is incredibly fast and feature full :
* Desktops: provides a working GUI desktop environment with a collection of desktop programs, such as browsers and text editors.
* OS Replacement: provides an option to transfer the cd to the hard drive
* Education: provides a collection of educational programs, or was created to be used in the educational field
* Rescue: provides tools needed for data recovery
* Clustering: provides tools for making clusters
* Security: contains network security tools
* Home Entertainment: geared towards playing video and audio
* Gaming: video games!
* Non-English: distributions with homepages in languages other than English
* Diagnostics: contains utilities for testing hardware
* Firewalls: distributions created to be used as firewalls
* Forensics: distributions containing forensic tools
* Servers: distributions used for various server functions
* Make your own : distributions include code to roll up your own version
Millions More users = more complaint , the resizer as NOTHING to do with the fact another OS will boot or not ...
My post is 100% accurate , telling real life to liar and fabulator such as yourself is so much more fun.
The Ambasador for MandrakeSoft is Gaêl Duval ...
Me ? I am a Mandrakian Ewok , I beat the empire where the Gnu/Linux rebels , Mandrakian Jedi , Mandrakian master Jedi have all failed ...
CJ , nice to se you decided to rejoin distrowatch and call yourself unrealistic bastards , in your case the better nick would be "simple plain no flavor at all and stupid bastard", and If me expressing the view and reality of the world you live in, keep you off Mandrake-Linux , EXCELENTTTTTT !
73 • Distrowars a troll? (by EEDOK at 2005-01-20 21:46:41 GMT)
Is it just me or was that distrowars thing a slashdot style troll post?
End distrowars http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html
74 • linuxtimes (by me at 2005-01-20 22:58:02 GMT)
check out linuxtimes. nice articles, cool forums, etc...
www.linuxtimes.net
75 • mandrake realistic bastards (by Mike at 2005-01-21 03:48:07 GMT)
First off........realistic bastard, please learn to speak proper English and then please learn how to use that thing in front of you called a keyboard. Please take a couple of spelling classes too! lets admit it: MANDRAKE SUCKS! it is an overbloated, money hungry, Redhat cloned,resource hogging, cdrom breaking, same old apps over and over and over......well, you get the message! it's time for the REAL TRUE distro of all FREE (as in free beer) distros to emerge. FreeBSD is number one! womandrake just wants your money. would'nt you agree? <<<<<<<
76 • Please Dont Flame. (by Harold the Geek at 2005-01-21 07:13:22 GMT)
Please don't flame me fella's......SCO makes the best distro. why? because it's so old and broken down it gives me great pleasure repairing anything that goes wrong with it! and Im repairing it 99% of the time!@%*! second.....that half baked distro by M$ was pretty good! I forgot the name of it (it was released a couple of months ago, and could run many windoze apps) it's a piece of JUNK thats why I like it! I like ALL junk operating systems....thats why I like windoze so much!
77 • Slackware Super Distro!!!! (by Slackerman 2.6.7 at 2005-01-21 07:17:31 GMT)
SLACKWARE beats the pants off womandrake! SLACKWARE is the greatest Linux distro EVER MADE!
78 • It's a wonderful world (by O J at 2005-01-21 08:59:56 GMT)
It said war in the beginning...
I have installed a few distros (MDK, FC, SUSE, Mepis). Guess why ? Because every distro had so many shortcomings that I had to try something else... Let me guess that most of those who tested many distros were in the same situation
End result: I should have sticked with the first one and spent more time fixing the issues (which are pretty generic anyway). Which issues ?
Poor font display: Much better with anti-aliasing OFF and if you recompile freetype to workaround the patent issue.
No suspend to RAM: I guess I should try suspend to disk... (My BIOS/laptop might suck but Windows XP gives me the suspend feature right out of the box)
Issues with Webcam: You remember Microsoft add about OSS mutating. Well, issues around the pwc driver for webcam are a "nice" example.
As for robustness, the system will not boot in graphical mode if you mess anything up (e.g. partition reformatted with another filesystem, bad network config.).
As far as architecture/security goes, I had Konqueror blow up in Suse 9.2 when I first started to access a Web Page with a Java Applet. Not so impressive.
Bottom line: The work that has been done is extremely impressive. Yet from a practical point of view, it's still a long way to go to reach the usability level of Windows XP.
If I had to "market" Linux, I would focus on GPL and freedom. As far as usability is concerned there is a long way to go (at least for Linux beginners).
79 • OJ.......Mr.windozeXP protectional PnP security risk patchup job! (by Filterfogger at 2005-01-21 09:50:21 GMT)
Well OJ mr. smartypants......winblowz XP had the biggest FLAW and security breach of any os release in history! can you say plug and play? I will gladly accept any little flaw that Linux may have, and patch or fix, or recompile to fix that flaw than to bow down to some giant money hungry corporate jerk like the makers of winblowz! and as for you mr. REALISTIC Bastards.....get a life, and learn to spell!
80 • @MikebreezerBSD@aol.com (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-21 11:38:24 GMT)
Please explain to me how do you "speak" on a text based system , I need enlightment on that one ... my spelling is fine , its the words I use that you have a problem with , look hem up in a real dictionnary , as for proper english , it dont exist.
The thing in front of me is my 21" LCD system , the keyboard is actually on me , since some people pay me to use it , and pay me to confirgure , program , reprogram and reconfigure theres , I rightly assume I could teach you how to fully use yours.
I am sorry you must teach me how you make Mandrake Suck , might be a good GF replacement on travels ... never quit figured how some of you achive this feat ...
Since you have a real problem with words you heard but dont understand , I think you mean it come with too much software for your liking , easily solved just remove the one you dont like or need to use ... I guess the real problem is that you dont know how to do that on a superior system ...
I dont think your in charge of the budget at your house , do you even have a job or familly or house ? Mandrake provide almost everything for free ( as in cost and freedom ) and provide more then the other for the money that they receive, unlike some group wich any amout of money spent on them provide absolutely no real results.
I like the Red Hat clone part it shows how much you know about GNU/Linux and real opensource ... wich mean absolutely nothing ...
Ressource hogging , I guess you dont know how to configure your system , due to lack of education ...
Mandrake never broke any CD-Rom , but then again maybe your talking about the root plant you used to bash yours with and not the #1 Gnu/Linux distribution.
Same old app , over and over ?
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandrake
The only way , that I can figure, you achieve that is if you download always the same old version and install it the same way everytime , giving you always the same result ... your allowed to evolve , learn new trick and use nerwer version of this #1 GNU/Linux distribution ...
No , I dont get your message , you would have to tell me how your sending "this secret message" of yours all I see is your tottally stupid comments.and YarightlikeIwhant@spam.com is not an adress wich I own , I dont really need my inbox , im or any of the communication system at my disposal on Mandrake-Linux to be bothered with your non sense ...
FreeBSD is not even a distribution ... Some people say its an OS, personnaly I have higher standard for an OS.
You seem to have a problem with my money wich I spend on Mandrake-Linux , I earned it so I can do what I whant with it , thank you.
You seem to also hate money on its own , I cant wait to see you leave civilization to go live on your special island ...
81 • @Realistic Bastards (by Ariszló at 2005-01-21 15:01:20 GMT)
DistroWatch Weekly used to be an interesting opinion column.
82 • IMPI DA BES YALL (by Robert Marley at 2005-01-21 15:23:59 GMT)
Oh yaa we like da Impi cause it install wit jus a little ganja time mon!
83 • @Ariszló (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-21 21:10:01 GMT)
DistroWatch Weekly used to be an interesting informative column , even the comments where great , instead of non sense opinion from clueless ( in the comments ) who think they are experts and who falsely think they can bash the hard work of others or simply make personnal attacks. There used to be genuine question and great answers. If it where not suggestions for additions or complementary info. Its even reached inside the Distrowatch Weekly this days. It started in august last year around DW 60. I guess having a "zone free of stupids" for almost 2 years is the best to expect.
84 • Distro Wars (by Walter Shillington at 2005-01-21 23:36:43 GMT)
Hi:
I've actually been testing out a bunch of Distros over the last couple of weeks. In my opinion the best of the bunch is Xandros. It installs easily, the deluxe edition comes with Crossover which is great for us nubies from Windows. It recognised all my hardware and can install, quite easily Deb and RPM files. The best thing about it is when I installed it the LILO actually recognised both my windows OS and the other Linux OS I had on the second hard drive. Of all the Linux OS's I've tried it was the only one that did that. The bad part of Xandros is that you have to pay money to get the latest edition so if you are a little cheap it may not be the way to go. Here is a list of Linux OS systems I felt were quite good.
- Simply Mepis---- (but took a while to get working right)
- Knoppix live
- CentOS ---(Clone of Red Hat....really nice)
- SUSE
- TAO ----(Nice but could not figure out how to update)
- Linspire-- (but you need to join their CNR club)
- Novell
- Libranet
-Ubuntu
-Febora Core
This is the list of my 'Dogs' but remember I did not spend a lot of time trying to figure out problems so take this with a grain of salt:
To get a passing grade the OS had to be fairly easy to install and fairly easy to get on Internet and I had to be able to listen to a CD in my DVD ROM. None of the below could do all of that>
- Spinix 0.9 - (Would not install)
- Buffalo
- LormaLinux - (seemed to complicated to install)
- FreeBSD - (this UNIX OS super complicated to install)
- Junior Linux
- Blag Linux
- VLOS ---(would not install)
I'f anyone out there has tried Lycoris 1.4 please let me know your results. This OS let me play cards while it was installing and I really liked the program..........but after I updated Lycoris it stopped working.
Bye the way.....this is sort of fun. If you have Hight Speed internet and a spare computer and, like me, have no life, it is a good way to spend some time and learn a bit about Linux.
Bryce
Bryce
85 • Too many Linux distributions... (by anonymous on 2005-01-22 00:09:55 GMT)
that's why I eventually switched to FreeBSD.
It's lots of really nice details that make FreeBSD great!
i.e: compiling a kernel is much easier on FreeBSD than on any Linux distro. On FreeBSD you just edit a text file, make buildkernel, make installkernel and voila!
You can rebuild/upgrade the entire OS with one command: make world
I prefer using the ports over the packages. Some packages you have to build them yourself as they are slighty outdated nor are a package site.
For servers I find FreeBSD much easier to maintain than any Linux distro.
Greetings from the European Union!
86 • FreeBSD: Is there anything else? (by Ajax munroe: IT Technician URT at 2005-01-22 04:54:28 GMT)
FreeBSD is used on websites as the base operating server system, I know, I maintain a major website that has had the same FreeBSD system running for five straight years without a flaw, a hitch, or a glitch. That is why the site you are viewing at this very moment uses FreeBSD as their primary server. FreeBSD has quietly become the only nix type system that mission critical websites use as the primary server os. Next time you want to know what os is really the only choice, come to Distrowatch and let FreeBSD show you how dependable it is. When you graduate from your Linux playtoys, FreeBSD will clearly be the choice you will make as your primary os.
87 • Ajax and FreeBSD. (by harold T. jacobs at 2005-01-22 05:25:48 GMT)
I personally agree with Ajax, FreeBSD makes distros such as Mandrake look like a silly little childs toy.
88 • Pro Mepis (by Clive at 2005-01-22 10:36:50 GMT)
I have tried loads of distributions. However, ProMepis based on Debian is the best. Java and Flash work and with an apt-get install dvdcss2 from the terminal instruction my DVD player will play dvds! Rememeber you need to be in superuser mode to install applications. Try playing DVDs with Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, you can't easily! Having to download and install Flash and Java on Mandrake is a nightmare! Since installing Mepis I haven't had to change distro except to upgrade to ProMepis. Installing ProMepis was a breeze, you can tell it to retain your home directory and yes, it does just that. No lost files. It recognised my broadband connection, no problems. I can see the Windows network that my family use! My son (Microsoft fan) has started to use the ProMepis system! Yep ProMepis, is a lot more reliable and faster than XP. ProMepis can be run from CD but there is a shortcut to install the system onto your hard disk should you decide to. No problems here, but leave the default settings US you can change these later.
Packages:
The GIMP for your graphics work, is fantastic. Yes you have to put some effort in to learn how to use it but it runs rings around Photoshop for ease of use. Much to the annoyance of one of my colleagues!
Mozilla needs to be installed with an apt-get install mozilla command from the terminal. Firefox is installed as default.
XINE dvd player is excellent once the dvdcss2 libray is installed.
MPlayer also works great.
RealPlayer's still a bit sporadic but it's OK.
XMMs is great for playing Ogg and MP3 files.
K3B is excellent for burning CDs, iso etc.
Yep, ProMepis deserves it's rapid rise to fame on Distrowatch.
Well done Warren et al at ProMepis
89 • Linux Format (by Lord-Storm on 2005-01-22 14:24:21 GMT)
Yes I use to buy the DVD version with massive amounts of Tape. And use to pay about $28AU for it to be sent VIA Air. 7 issues During 2003. And is recommended for linux newcommers but too expencive in Australia to endure month by month.
These days I still run windows. But way more secure than those old days in 200*. nmap tested once a month since this is one of the best tools out there. (and the FBI know this)
I use White boxEL linux these days. Since I know how to customize it to my needs. (NAS)
733v1 ipaq and a nice and old maxtor 10gig
And it can pull a nice 60mbs over lan with good uptime.
So the distro you choose for a server only requires you to be able to work with it. Startup scripts should be smart (Sendmail OMG). Have good iptables support. Come with a network tester eg:nmap to help configure your firewall.
Yes also we all know depend hell is a problem and one day someone will fix it so RPM's are a thing of the past.
90 • FreeBSD is excellent though harder than mdk and ro real #1 (by BigLinuxandBSDFan on 2005-01-23 01:47:50 GMT)
FreeBSD is a excellent distro. It is more harder to learn than MDK for the realistic bastard. It does not have MCC, and gui's like mdk but it is running many websites with nearly zero downtime, (Yahoo,Distrowatch) are running from FreeBSD.
Yes, which is more secure between itself and OpenBSD? It is a matter of which one you use and learn to configure. I am still learning to use FreeBSD and as a matter of fact, I have used FreeSBIE. It is an excellent way to try BSD. It has some commands that are not found in GNU/Linux. You can use it any time you want and you can install FreeBSD from it. Then you can access the ports.
There is no real #1, but most of them are great in their own right. There is no software in the world without flaws that will run on all hardware that has been invented. Realistic Bastard you need to understand that not all people like Mandrake. It is a fine system and I don't have anything against it. But for all the people they have the right to complain about it and they have a choice. They don't need Micro$oft's they can use GNU/Linux and BSD. I have used Mandrake, Red Hat, Fedora, Knoppix, Slax, Berry, System Rescue, STUX, PCLinuxOS, SAM, Lindows(now Linspire), FreeSBIE and I like all of them although I prefer some over others. My top Live CD all purpose would be Knoppix, followed by SLAX, SystemRescue, FreeSBIE, Berry then PCLinuxOS(needs 256MB ram *problem encountered). For Hard Drive installation Fedora Core is my #1 Gnu/Linux. I have configured it to my liking with KDE, plastik theme, mp3 playback/decoding, DVD playback with xine, mplayer, kplayer. They don't have the ***download*** version like Mandrake does. Not that I am stingy or don't want to pay but why pay when the free product is much better than the ones that you have to pay. They are just going to be like Micro$soft. Linspire is following the footsteps of Micro$soft. CNR technology is impressive for newbies and people new to Linux. You critize Micro$oft and you are headed in the same direction. Sorry for critizing Linspire but probably Mandrake is just as bad with Mandrake Club and installing Flash, Nvidia, Java, Acroread which you can install on your own into the ***download*** edition. They were not as arrogant as they are now. Sorry Realistic Bastard but Mandrake is also not playing nice to many of its faithful users. I really liked Mandrake but now it is not playing fair.
Overall, instead of complaining about which is number 1 and giving reason's for it, we should just respect other people's opinion about their favorite distro/BSD. There is "no one size fits all" distro to everyone's liking. It is impossible to achieve that. Despite the name calling and insulting of some of my favorite distros, I still like to read Distrowatch.com and appreciate the hard work that Ladislav and his staff put every Monday. Thank you all!!
GNU/Linux & BSD are the best. Keep it coming.
91 • @BigLinuxandBSDFan (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-23 08:42:01 GMT)
FreeBSD is not a distribution , it took me 1 month to learn everything there is to learn about freebsd because of my BSD background. I still havent learned everything there is to learn about Mandrake-Linux. BSD people are like the Debian people lots of repeating of things wich are not true , BSD as the popular site wich as the longest downtime of all : Hotmail.
Distrowatch and Yahoo are not exclusively runned on BSD , and you whant to look up the downtime netcraft is reporting on Distrowatch since the BSD take over ...
BSD as no command that are not found on GNU/Linux , your like the Debian idiot saying Mandrake-Linux dont have apt ...
I get a kick out of that one every time when I just urpmi it ...
Feel free to offer your example ...
Yes there is a #1 , because the expert in Windows , Unix , Gnu/Linux , AIX , SUN , BSD , FreeBSD , OS/2 , BEOS , Amiga , etc ... with the certifications is well not you ;-)
Yes there is a software without flaw : Mandrake-Linux of GNU/Linux it install on everything , and on every hardware, if it dont its because you dont know what your doing.
Mandrake-Linux is free to obtain for all , Mandrake-Club is free to join the catch is you have to contribute ( money is not the only way to contribute in life ). Dont try to include Microsoft and Linspire in the same group as MandrakeSoft and Mandrake-Linux it dont work at all ...
You are the one complaining and I disagree the best way for everyone to have the very best software is to compare the best , say why its the best and have all the other try to beat it or beat it. Its called evolution , the weak whont survive anyway. Choice is not about removing thing , its about the ability to choose , I will add for some missing my point that this site is not about wich is the best Mandrake-Linux is and you all know why , this site is about helping understanding whats inside and learning a little from everyone , because no one knows everything.
Mandrake-linux the #1 distribution the only one fits all distro to everyone liking, included is the Kitchen sink.
- I am sorry , I have an R2D2 unit on the fire , gotta go , luckily tomorow is monday.
92 • @realistic bastard (by mark on 2005-01-23 11:48:02 GMT)
Your claim that mandrake will install on everything seems to be wrong. Can you install it on a 33MHz i486, how about sparc, alpha, mips, hppa, itanium and ppc64. Mandrake is not the best distribution for everyone; not everyone wants the kitchen sink.
93 • @mark (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-23 14:06:14 GMT)
"Can you install it on a 33MHz i486"
Yes ...
have it on a 286 3 feet away from my feet.
"sparc"
Yes ...
" alpha "
Yes ...
"mips"
probably , not sure ( meaning havent done one my self )
http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/index.php/Distributions
"hppa"
probably , not sure ( meaning havent done one my self )
I dont like hp product , exept there laptop.
ZD 8000 missa drooolllll
http://www.notebookreview.com/imageGallery.asp?product=zd8000
http://www.parisc-linux.org/
"itanium"
Yes
"ppc64"
Yes
I whas told that the Mac mini is covered too.( PowerPC G4 , not a big feat as motorola as been covered for sometime but Apple as a tendency to change the spec a little)
Mandrake-Linux is the best distribution for everyone , your not forced to use it , everyone whants the choice of not using the kitchen sink. Its better then no choice at all.
some people have a problem with : It can do what every other distribution can do , it does it better faster and as some option and choice the others dont have.
I should really release my Gnu/Linux converter pack , it freak out the Debian and Slackware and Gentoo and all the others Gnu/linux Fans users when you put there colors on top of a Mandrake-Linux system.
Mandrake-linux the #1 distribution the only one fits all distro to everyone liking, included is the Kitchen sink.
- Crap that R2D2 unit ran away , no more Iron special for me ..
94 • @Realistic Bastards: Give your example of a command (by BigLinuxandBSDFan on 2005-01-23 17:17:25 GMT)
"BSD as no command that are not found on GNU/Linux , your like the Debian idiot saying Mandrake-Linux dont have apt ...
I get a kick out of that one every time when I just urpmi it ...
Feel free to offer your example ... "
You asked for it now you got it:
Try this comand
# primes 1-1000
Your computer won't have it unless you go and download it/configure it/install it for yourself. It comes default on FreeBSD, and FreeSBIE. Mandrake, Knoppix, Debian, Slackware, SUSE, etc. most of the major distributions and their derivatives come with very useful commands like
# cal 1 2005 -> prints a calendar for Jan 2005, you can go back in time and into the future until the year 9999.
# factor number -> where number is an integer greater than or equal to 1
But they don't (by default that is) have the primes command as it is in BSD.
"Mandrake-Linux is free to obtain for all , Mandrake-Club is free to join the catch is you have to contribute ( money is not the only way to contribute in life ). Dont try to include Microsoft and Linspire in the same group as MandrakeSoft and Mandrake-Linux it dont work at all ..."
Yes I know it is free to obtain, Mandrake is a great player it gives back to the community. But many people who have used Mandrake are not liking what it is doing and I know that they have every right to do so. They don't like that Mandrake puts ***download edition*** into the latest versions. It doesn't really matter because you can still customize it whichever way you want and install new KDE, GNOME, XFCE but it is harder in many cases because mandrake has many configuration files and you have to really know what you are doing. Another example, a friend installed Mandrake 10.1 on a computer. The computer would not connect to the internet on a network. Using MCC -> network did not go anywhere. Borrowing from Slax documentation connecting to the network and going to the command line fixed the problem.
# ifconfig eth0 10.154.XX.YYY netmask 255.255.255.ZZZ
# route add default gateway 10.XXX.YY.ZZ
# echo nameserver "10.1XX.XXX" >> /etc/resolv.conf
The internet now works in that computer. But it was another idea and another distro that came to the rescue. SLAX derived from SLACKWARE. ALL OF THE DISTROS ARE #1, including the ones that don't play nice. You have the right not to use them. SEE YOU ALL ON MONDAY.
95 • @BigLinuxandBSDFan (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-23 18:47:31 GMT)
As default .. come on , it can be installed, thats all thats needed.
Probably a bad setup/choice at instalation , Using Mandrake-Linux and MCC without knowing how it work whas the problem , reading the instruction or going into the included man pages or documentation would have solved the problem just as easily.
( there on the cd ) , and they are linked in the software selection if you did not do a dont install docs at instalations.
Sorry but SLAX documentation dont even come even a milenia near the one MandrakeSoft , Mandrake-Linux and the Mandrake community offer , the problem is you did not knew how and where to get it.
You actually highlight and show one of the problem Mandrake-Linux as People assume there ( MandrakeSoft Dev and Doc community ) incompetent and that the support is not there , its very far from it.
96 • @Realistic Bastards: Bad Choice at installation (by BigLinuxandBSDFan on 2005-01-23 21:27:55 GMT)
"Probably a bad setup/choice at instalation , Using Mandrake-Linux and MCC without knowing how it work whas the problem , reading the instruction or going into the included man pages or documentation would have solved the problem just as easily.
( there on the cd ) , and they are linked in the software selection if you did not do a dont install docs at instalations."
No way sir, I have installed Mandrake 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, and 10.1 without any problems until this one. I know about the documentation about Mandrake Linux found at the home page and it is second to none. I have used DiskDrake, PrinterDrake and the tools that come with MCC without a problem till this one. Network configuration tool via MCC did not work and I used the hints that are provided in SLAX documents. It worked now and is all that matters. The person that had the problem actually likes Mandrake and does not complain about it. Even that when she selects to start programs the KDE says **Download Edition***. She is thrilled to have Linux and no more viruses, trojans and spyware. Mr. Realistic Bastard why are you so angry, I am not against Mandrake, I like Mandrake and have used it along with other distros. What is wrong is that we are turning against each other instead of embracing that we are using Linux/BSD and whether we use or like another distribution is our choice.
97 • @BigLinuxandBSDFan (by Realistic Bastards at 2005-01-24 04:44:39 GMT)
I stand by what I said , there whas a problem in your setup this time , and the answer you got from the SLAX doc is probably having a similar solution offered in the Mandrake-Linux ones , you just did not find it , if it dont then you can always contact the Mandrake documentation team and have them include your solution since you say it work.
I aint angry , I dont accept your answer and question as beeing reasonnable and entirely true. ( I say white hippo , you say hippo white and say that this hippo from africa dont come with its own cage for the zoo as default ... )
Actually , I somewhat share your views , but for me Its more use what you whant as long as its Gnu/Linux. Yes I will use BSD software , where no other option in GNU/Linux is available , as they are open source , But you will never make me agree to say that we are equal with BSD because both are not the same and dont share the same value.I am not against BSD at all , I just choose not to support them anymore as I have found something better ( not necessarely technology wise when being specific about certain software )
overall.
and :
Mandrake-linux the #1 distribution the only one fits all distro to everyone liking, included is the Kitchen sink.
Number of Comments: 97
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