 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 121, 10 October 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 41st issue of DistroWatch Weekly. A very busy week of exciting new releases is behind us, but that doesn't mean that this week will be any less interesting - in fact, we expect a new KDE 3.4.3 on Wednesday, while the "Breezy Badger" family of Ubuntu Linux and its partner projects are scheduled for release on Thursday. Also in this issue: we'll analyse the events of the past week, introduce Mandriva 2006 Discovery Live, feature WIENUX 1.0, continue with the usual release summaries, and conclude with a handful of interesting new distributions. Enjoy!
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (13.1MB) or mp3 (11.2MB) format (courtesy of Shawn Milo).
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
Content:
SUSE download servers under "attack"
 October 6th 2005 will go down as one of the busiest days in the history of Linux distribution releases. On that particular day, two major distributions (SUSE and Mandriva) announced final versions of their products, while another major one (Ubuntu) published a release candidate for one last week of testing. And as if that wasn't enough, several smaller projects also found this past Thursday to be an excellent day for announcing new products. Surely, there is something thoroughly auspicious about October 6th!
SUSE was the first to reveal the fruits of the recently launched openSUSE project with a release of SUSE Linux 10.0. This was also the first time ever that SUSE Linux ISO images were made available to general public immediately after their release - with a result that took the inexperienced SUSE release team completely by surprise. The main SUSE FTP server was flooded with requests hours before SUSE 10.0 was even announced - largely thanks to certain news sites (Heise.de and OSNews.com, just to name a few) that just couldn't resist publishing their "pre-announcements" and linking directly to the main SUSE FTP server. As a result, many desperate users attempted (and failed) to download the ISO images from the only server that had them at the time, thus preventing legitimate SUSE mirrors to synchronise with the main server.
In order to avoid a similar release disaster in the future (and also because of the lack of discipline among some Linux users), SUSE would be wise to consider implementing changes to its release and mirroring setup. Perhaps they could learn from the Fedora project which allows only approved mirrors to synchronise with its main server for a few days prior to opening up the repository to general public. That way, by the time a new release is officially announced, dozens of up-to-date Fedora mirrors are ready to serve the new files. Although it can be frustrating to know that the release is ready, but you can't have it, it is even more frustrating to have access, but unable do get any reasonable download speeds due to the fact that hundreds of other users are trying to download the images from the only available FTP server.
The moral of the story? Don't ever try to get ISO images from a distribution's main FTP server, especially not within the first few days after a major release. Instead, let the mirrors synchronise first before using one of them as a source of your files. You will find that your downloads are not only much faster, they are also much more likely to complete without any interruption or file corruption.
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Mandriva Club infrastructure falters
 If the release of SUSE Linux 10.0 was a disaster from the point of view of file availability and mirroring, Mandriva's own release did not fare much better. After much noise on its forums and obvious unwillingness of the responsible parties to announce any release date, it was finally revealed that Mandriva Linux 2006 would be made available to Club members on October 6. This was nearly a week after it had been released to "early seeders" - Club members willing to "seed" the ISO images for the benefit of those who'd join the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing process later on.
But this release mechanism had its flaws too - as several early seeders started exchanging information about the much awaited new release on Mandriva Club's forums, many other members felt frustrated by the delay. Additionally, the ISO images were not released until late afternoon Paris time - unless you had requested FTP access, that is, in which case you were granted access earlier. As the rumour about this loophole spread, many members started requesting FTP download access - until Mandriva stopped granting them. But worse was to come during the next few days when the Mandriva Club web site collapsed several times under the demand. Subsequently, many torrent and web site links were moved or modified, which resulted in interrupted downloads and more frustration. Several members also reported all sorts of bugs and error messages while buying or upgrading their Club memberships.
Those of you who have been around for a few years will remember the time when Mandrake Linux ISO images were announced and released to public without any delay and restrictions, and with dozens of mirrors ready to serve them immediately after each release. But things have changed. Nowadays, the various membership levels and access rights, ranging from early seeders and those who prefer FTP access to the Standard, Silver, Gold and Platinum members (with further geographical divisions), as well as club contributors, is bound to create complexity and hard-to-trace bugs in the system. But even if everything went right, BitTorrent downloads often take much longer than they should - despite the above-mentioned SUSE mirroring troubles, I had the 10.0 DVD image downloaded in less than 24 hours after the release, while Mandriva's 2006 PowerPack DVD is still trickling down at a painfully slow rate - that's after four days of continuous download!
What are your experiences with the Mandriva Club and Mandriva Linux 2006? Are they worth the investment? Is there room for improvement? Are the complaints on the Club's forums just some noise by never-happy eternal "moaners" or are they legitimate gripes about poor customer service? Why is it that SUSE has moved from being a mostly closed and somewhat proprietary distribution to a completely free and open project, while Mandriva has shifted in the opposite direction? Have these developments influenced your decisions while choosing a distribution? Please discuss below.
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Mandrake Move becomes Mandriva Linux Discovery Live
Lost among all the excitement of last week's Mandriva Linux 2006 release, the company's "Discovery" product line was also made available to Club members. Designed for Linux beginners and incorporating elements from Lycoris Desktop/LX (one of Mandriva's acquisitions from earlier this year) Discovery now comes in two editions: "Discovery" and "Discovery Live". While the former is Mandriva's entry-level product, the "Live" edition represents a continuation of "Mandrake Move", Mandriva's very own live CD project.
I was curious about Discovery Live, especially since it did not go through the normal beta testing process, but was still released at the same time as the main Mandriva product. Was it meant to be a surprise? Unfortunately, I did not have much luck with the live CD. On my main test system, which happily boots KNOPPIX, SLAX and most other live CDs, Discovery Live halted shortly after starting the X server - with a blue screen. Although there were no messages, the Mandriva blue screen was as deadly as its infamous Windows counterpart and only the reset button was able to bring the computer back to life.
My second test system, a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 laptop fared a little better. Discovery Live booted straight into KDE, but I still had to fiddle around with a configuration file to increase the meagre 800 x 600 pixel screen resolution the hardware detection program had set up. I also found the system very slow to boot and surprisingly sluggish in normal operation. On the positive side, the live CD now supports a large number of languages, fonts and input methods, and it comes with several stunning wallpapers and screensaver images.
What are your experiences with Discovery and Discovery Live? Do they work for you? Or do you wish the two products had been through a more rigorous beta testing process prior to their releases? Please comment below.
Mandriva 2006 Discovery Live is designed for Linux beginners - notice the task oriented menu entries.
(full image size: 1,070kB)
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| Featured Distribution of the Week: WIENUX |
WIENUX 1.0
Although WIENUX is unlikely to be of interest to users outside of Austria and other German-speaking nations, we are pleased to give it some extra exposure to demonstrate how far Linux has gone in the last few years. Launched by the City of Vienna in January and formally released in June this year, WIENUX is a Debian-based distribution with a goal to replace proprietary operating systems and applications on the municipality's thousands of desktop computers with free and open source alternatives. The distribution can serve as a great example for other government organisations and municipalities around the world. If the prosperous Austrian capital is happy to abandon long-established computing systems in favour of free and open source solutions, there is no reason why less well-off government entities could not to do the same.
We downloaded the WIENUX ISO images as soon as they were made available on the project's download page. Although WIENUX is based on Debian "sarge", it does not use Debian's new system installer; in fact, the first ISO image includes KNOPPIX hardware detection modules to auto-configure the system, while the second one contains DEB packages for installation. The power of the installer is very limited - for example, it insists on auto-partitioning your hard disk, while refusing to install on anything except the primary master (/dev/hda). This makes it complicated to evaluate the distribution, but it also clearly indicates the purpose of WIENUX - it really means to wipe out the existing operating systems from Vienna's computers!
There are other areas where the WIENUX installer makes things extremely simple at the expense of giving users choices. All partitions are formatted with the ext3 file systems, GRUB is automatically set up and installed in the Master Boot Record, and users don't get a chance to select packages for installation. The intention here is obvious - to provide an identical system for all of the thousands of new WIENUX computers. This way, the WIENUX installer effectively functions in a fashion similar to Fedora Kickstart where all the choices were decided in advance and incorporated into the installer.
Once you boot into WIENUX for the first time you will find yourself in a standard KDE desktop with somewhat customised menu entries. OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox and the usual range of open source applications complement the working environment. It is not clear whether the distribution was built by a group of in-house developers or whether the municipality hired outside contractors for the job, but it would be nice to see some details about the development of WIENUX, as well as further reports about the status of the deployment, problems, if any, and users' reactions after migrating to the new system.
Either way, we applaud the decision of the authorities in Vienna and wish them all the best with their Linux migration plans! For more information about WIENUX please visit the project's web site here (in German).
WIENUX 1.0 - a Debian-based distribution developed and deployed by the City of Vienna.
(full image size: 733kB)
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| Released Last Week |
ATmission 2.0
ATmission is a Fedora-based live CD designed to allow users to experiment with the Linux operating system and other open source software without having to install anything on a hard disk. Version 2.0 has been released: "Based on the Fedora Core 4 release with Linux kernel 2.6.11. With the new release of the cowloop 2.16 driver, cowfiles can now be placed on a NTFS partition. All packages are updated. Now it's possible to copy the ROOTFS file to hard disk which increases performance." See the release announcement on the project's news page for more information.
Berry Linux 0.63
A new version of Berry Linux was released today. Berry 0.63 comes with a number of updated packages, including Firefox 1.0.7, Mozilla 1.7.12 and OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta2 (1.9.128) - both English and Japanese editions of the above applications are included. Also updated were e2fsprogs to version 1.38, file to version 4.15 and GTK+ to version 2.6.10. One other change is the inclusion of Whiz 0.51 (Delphinus) + SCIM 1.4.2 + SCIM-Whiz 0.02 packages. Read the rest of the changelog for further details.
IPCop Firewall 1.4.9
IPCop Firewall has been updated to version 1.4.9: "I am pleased to announce the official release of IPCop 1.4.9. A year ago, first of 1.4.0 series was released. The overall download counter for IPCop on SourceForge is now at more than 2,500,000. Thank to all who make IPCop work, to all who contribute by supporting users, tracking bugs, writing code, documentation, working in the background. IPCop v1.4.9 is only bug fixes and is released with minor changes from 1.4.9test1. As usual, this version can be installed as an update from a previous v1.4.x version or with a ready-to-go ISO for a fresh install. 1.4.9 update installation will mainly reload firewall rules; a reboot is not necessary." See the release announcement has a complete list of changes.
Wolvix 1.0.3
An updated version of the SLAX-based Wolvix live CD has been released: "Wolvix version 1.0.3 has been released. New applications: Skype, Linphone, Graveman, wxMusik, Icecast and more. Updates: Firefox 1.0.7, Thunderbird 1.0.7, Wesnoth 1.0, AbiWord 2.4.0 and more. This release features desktop icons for Fluxbox and IceWM using IDesk, HOWTOs, various fixes and tweaks." More information can be found in the release announcement on the project's home page and in the detailed changelog.
Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.122
Lineox Enterprise Linux is a distribution rebuilt from source RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The new version 3.122 includes all recent upstream updates: "Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux 3.122 with Update 6 available. In the 3.122 version the installation environment is rebuilt, so it offers better hardware support during the installation. Note, however, that booting from a floppy is no longer supported in x86 edition. The x86_64 edition has never had floppy boot support. New features introduced in this update include: improved support for dual-core processors; kernel and user support for 2 TB partitions on block devices...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details..
SUSE Linux 10.0
SUSE Linux 10.0, the first product of the recently launched openSUSE project, has been released: "I'm glad to announce the final version (aka the Goldmaster) of SUSE Linux 10.0. Developing 10.0 as part of the openSUSE project with an open Bugzilla was a new and great experience. Thanks a lot to everybody that contributed in testing, reporting and fixing bugs, discussions etc. The mirrors are still downloading all the files and it will take a few days until all are synced. Detailed download instructions can be found here." Read the rest of the release announcement and visit Novell's product page for more information
Mandriva Linux 2006
Mandriva Linux 2006 has been released: "2006 is the ultimate version of Mandriva Linux. It is the fruit of the convergence of three technologies: Mandriva, Conectiva and Lycoris. Mandriva Linux 2006 is also more easy-to-use, more user-friendly and more powerful. It is ideal for the needs of all customers, from the beginner to the SOHO user. New features in 2006: Desktop Search tool, Interactive Firewall, new package manager: Smart, DeltaRPM updates; new installer feature; new software: graphical desktops: KDE 3.4 & GNOME 2.10; better look-and-feel and ergonomics...." Read the full release announcement and release notes for all the glory details.
WIENUX 1.0
WIENUX is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria. Its main purpose is to replace proprietary operating systems and applications on the municipality's thousands of desktop computers with free and open source alternatives based around KDE, OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Originally announced in January and formally released in July this year, WIENUX 1.0 is now available for free download from the project's download page (in German). WIENUX 1.0, based on Debian "sarge", contains kernel 2.6.11, KDE 3.3.2, Firefox 1.0.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta and other applications.
GoblinX 1.2
GoblinX is a beautifully designed Linux live CD based on Slackware. Its latest version is 1.2, released yesterday: "After almost seven months of development we are proud to announce the release of GoblinX 1.2. GoblinX 1.2 adds better hardware support, including 3D acceleration support for ATI/Radeon video cards. Added 'The Magic Center' - a control center which has many functions, added many xdialog/kdialod scripts to become easier to use, added more cheatcodes, upgraded modular system, upgraded kernel (2.6.12.3), upgraded several packages, and included 'liveupgrade' - a tool to upgrade the live CD without the need of installation on hard disk." See the release announcement and changelog for full details.
GoblinX 1.2 - a beautifully designed Linux live CD based on Slackware.
(full image size: 722kB)
Honeywall CDROM 1.0-hw189
Honeywall CDROM is a Fedora-based distribution with the goal of capturing the activities of cyber threats and analysing the captured data. An updated version was released yesterday: "The latest version of the Honeywall CDROM, 1.0-hw189 has been released. This release has numerous new features, bug fixes, and updates." What's new? "The CDROM now only supports layer 2 bridging mode, it no longer supports layer 3 routing (NAT) mode; headless installation has been disabled by default; yum(1) now automatically updates both the operating system and all honeywall functionality; you now get a daily summary report via email of all honeynet activity, including suspicious connections...." The project's download page has a complete list of changes.
STUX GNU/Linux 0.8.1
STUX GNU/Linux 0.8.1 has been released. The new version is a quick bug-fix update to the new 0.8 series, which the developers launched a week ago. Some of the new features include: "Based on Slackware Linux 10.2 and Knoppix 3.7 for kernel and modules; all procedure and interfaces have been substantially reviewed; added boot option 'toram' to load STUX image in RAM and run from there; STUX Network Panel added - configure network for dial-up, ADSL, ethernet and wireless connections; STUX Media Center added; USB support enhanced; hard disk and USB installation process enhanced; created BitTorrent UI, also integrated in Firefox...." See the project's news page for a complete list of changes.
Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.053
Following the recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 2, the developers of Lineox Enterprise Linux have also released a new set of ISO images incorporating all of the upstream updates: "Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.053 with Update 2 available. In version 4.053 the installation environment is rebuilt, so it offers better hardware support during the installation. The x86_64 release requires either AMD Opteron or Athlon64 CPU based computer. Some new Intel Xeon and Pentium IV processors with EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology) will also be able to run this version. Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux is a version of Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.0 which is constantly updated and contains only current versions of program packages." The release announcement.
m0n0wall 1.2
Following a long series of beta releases, the developers of the FreeBSD-based m0n0wall firewall project have released version 1.2 final: "m0n0wall 1.2 released! m0n0wall 1.2 includes many new features as well as improvements to existing ones (captive portal, PPTP VPN, logging, DHCP relay, diagnostics, DynDNS updater, IPsec). Countless small changes have been made to make the webGUI even more useful, and many bugs have been fixed in all components. Most important changes in this release: IPsec certificate support; improved firewall rule handling in the webGUI; RFC 2136 DNS updater; more diagnostics pages (Traceroute, ARP, firewall states)...." Find more details in the release announcement and changelog.
OpenLab GNU/Linux 4.0
OpenLab GNU/Linux is a South African distribution based on Slackware Linux, designed primarily for deployment in schools throughout the region. The project's latest release, version 4.0, was announced yesterday: "OpenLab International proudly announces the release of OpenLab 4. OpenLab 4 is an all-encompassing GNU/Linux software distribution, catering to desktop, power and server users alike. ... The base distribution is OpenLab4 LIVEcd, which is available for free download. LIVEcd contains the entire operating system, and all basic applications including KDE, OpenOffice.org and Firefox, all on a single CD. LIVEcd is complimented with two further CDs - POWERcd and KARMAcd." Read the rest of the press release for more details.
OpenLab GNU/Linux - a Slackware-based South African distribution designed primarily for schools
(full image size: 935kB)
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
New distribution additions
- Komodo Linux. Komodo Linux is a distribution based on PCLinuxOS with a custom set of packages and a new theme.
- Nonux. Nonux is a Dutch Linux distribution, a combined live and installation CD based on Slackware and GNOME. It is optimised for business use, with some applications localised into Dutch. The main features of Nonux are automatic hardware detection, careful selection of business and office applications, and presence of tools for a seamless integration into an existing (Windows) software and network environment.
- WIENUX. WIENUX is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria. Its main purpose is to replace proprietary operating systems and applications on the municipality's thousands of desktop computers with free and open source alternatives based around KDE, OpenOffice.org and Firefox. WIENUX is released under the General Public License and available for free download from the distribution's web site.
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New on the waiting list
- My Knoppix. My Knoppix is a Linux live CD for a digital home - complete with multimedia applications and a range of video sharing and broadcasting tools.
- LiveLAMP. LiveLAMP is a bootable CD that turns a spare computer in the classroom into a Linux development server for students to practice and publish programming exercises in over a dozen computer languages. As the name suggests, the primary emphasis is on core technologies which underpin the LAMP platform: Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP. Python, Perl, Ruby, PostgreSQL, C++, C, Pascal, Fortran, CVS, Apache, Lex/Yacc, text editing, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and XML are also included.
- Tuquito GNU/Linux. Tuquito GNU/Linux is a Debian-based Argentinian live CD distribution with the goal of providing excellent out-of-the-box hardware detection and support.
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DistroWatch database summary
That's all for this week. We hope you've enjoyed this issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Nice! (by war on 2005-10-10 13:27:34 GMT from United States)
First post of the day.
2 • Release of GoblinX against Mandriva/Suse (by Flavio de Oliveira on 2005-10-10 13:40:32 GMT from Brazil)
Hi, I did not expect release GoblinX in the same day of the Mandriva and Suse's releases... k=° ]
Thanks, Ladislav for the screenshot...
3 • Duh (by Scott Wilson on 2005-10-10 13:50:56 GMT from United States)
What was Novell thinking, with the popujarity of OS (kinda Cool, OpenSUSE = OS) that we would all wait in line for the servers to get the iso downloaded first. yea right. I will be good and wait about a month, In the mean time I have Ubuntu 5.04 running.
Ubuntu Horay, well its ok. Suse 9.3 gave me the best out of the box experirnce. You know the only bad thing I ever heard about Ubuntu was that release name, but I really dont hear Fedora, Suse, etc being refered to as their relase number but simply Suse Linux, Fedora core X. I will say Ubuntu is what Sarge should of been.
I tried Weinux, I cant seem to get the OS to boot, I cant read German but I assume you just press "JA" for every Question.
It would be gret if Munich would allow use to see their Debian based OS.
I figured it would be nice to use Weinux, to learn German. If i ever had to move out of the USA, it would be to Austria. My wife is from there, I have fallen in love with the Alps.
All the Desktops are great, but we are loosing the war with Multimedia support. Stumbling block for a coworker was that lack of an iTunes player for Linux.
The cup of coffee is gone its time to head out for work. Another Great read!
4 • Mandriva (by Dave Ellis on 2005-10-10 14:18:08 GMT from United States)
I grew weary of waiting on Mandriva to provide a specific date when 2006 would be released. Mandriva seems to view release as top secret information, that is to be safe-guarded at all costs, even from its club members.
As such, with the waiting, and hearing the reports from early-seeders how great 2006 was, I cancelled my membership on the 6th of October, the same day 2006 as released. I laughed a few days later when I heard about the system crash, the seeder problems, among other things, and was glad that I bailed when I did.
What am I running now? OpenSuse of course, and it is so much better than Mandriva. I guess Mandriva was a good starting point for me, from Mandrake 7.1 and up until RC2 of 2006... Mandriva's games and internal problems drove me from them, but I sure can't complain, Suse is what Mandriva will never be.
5 • suse 10 (by Edo Hikmahtiar on 2005-10-10 14:27:14 GMT from Indonesia)
I've already owned the OSS 10 not the retail version or eval and I think this is a great step for Suse/Novell for time to come. This can be a base plan to make a new era for linux distribution....
6 • Thanks for the linux help last week. (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-10 14:27:46 GMT from United States)
I able to navagate from the terminal now, am no longer running as root for kde and was able to install the nvidia driver for my video card in Debian Sarge(debian pure) ***The Debian Way** it wasn't as hard as I had anticipated. the link in case other newbie debian users need it.
http://tinyplanet.ca/~lsorense/debian/debian-nvidia-dri-howto.txt
However I do have a few new problems and questions that have arisen that I'd like to inquire about.
1) I installed several programs with apt-get from the debian sarge dvd's namely freeciv, benith a steel sky, and gltron to name a few. Some of these programs are added to the kde games menu and some are not...Why? freeciv was added automaticly but benith a steel sky and gltron are not listed in the games menus but you can still run them from the run command. How can I add them to the kde menu?
2)Backports.... I installed firefox 1.07 from the offical debian backport page and it worked great and was considering updating my kenal to the newest version....what are the advantages and disadvantages of running this backport? I it faster?
3)I installed opera from the opera site it was a *.deb file compiled for sarge version 8.5 I used kpackage to install it however it stripped all the extensions from it on install. ie chat and rss feeds. Did I do something wrong? is there another way to install this package?
4)another interesting thing happened as well after completeing the install of my nvidia drivers following the directions listed in the link above and rebooting I was presented with grub on bootup instead of 2 items being listed, the regular bootup and the safe bootup I now had 4 choices. 2 safe bootups and 2 regulars the first of the regular bootups did not boot to kdm it booted to bash or a terminal window startx did nothing the 2nd regular bootup worked great got the nvidia flash screen on bootup and it ran better than mephis(I kid you not!) Now I distenctly rember that the package I selected for the kernal compile was the one that ended in k7 because I have a amd cpu owever the bootup that did not work was the one listed as k7 at the end the one that worked was the one that ended in i386. While this is not a big issue....it did work! I do wonder why they seem backwards?
7 • SUSE 10.0 release rush (by Aurelian on 2005-10-10 14:28:09 GMT from Romania)
I tried to download SUSE 10.0 via BitTorrent but the speed was too low. ftp.suse.com was unreachable and ftp.iasi.roedu.net, the mirror closest to my location, was having a hard time sync'ing. I have a few suggestions for SUSE and Mandriva (especially for SUSE - I'll try Mandriva 2006 when it will be freely available):
1. Make .torrent files available on more webpages and list those pages on the main site. It's hard to get them from the ftp server in the first hours after the release.
2. Explain more clearly the difference between CD and DVD versions. Are there more packages on the CD or on the DVD? Why "EvalDVD"? Is it a trial version? I think not, but the name is ambiguous for beginners.
8 • Mandriva or OpenSUSE ( SUSE ) (by M Perks on 2005-10-10 14:43:52 GMT from Canada)
I have been pondering this question for sometime. Mandriva or SUSE? It seems that with every release of Mandriva you will always get an extra CD.. ie from 6 to 7 now. Lots of packages with many options and configurations. I am glad to see SUSE move more into the Free Download world. Obviously they are once again going to use their free version to promote their expensive server distro's. Good marketing ! Are you really getting anything good though? Both these distro's are bulky and overweigthed. Slow on bootup kinda like XP even on my P4... Conclusion, I suppose if a user wants everything known to mankind in the Linux world they will be very happy with either of these packages. But as in my case as one gets familiar with Linux they will most likely move to a smaller more configurable Linux like Gentoo or VidaLinux 1.2 ( VLOS )
9 • SUSE & MANDRIVA Experiences? (by pp on 2005-10-10 14:44:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've decided to skip the bittorrent madness and wait for reviews to appear, but please, if you already have experiences or comments on either new release, tell us!
10 • Mandriva Experience (by frank on 2005-10-10 15:11:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yeah sure the club Mandriva website is rubbish, the levels of membership are confusing, there's to much secracy and Mandriva don't always listen to their members. But, it's still a cracking distro. It boots super fast, has a responsive desktop, with a nice default theme this time, the wizards are excellent as always and there's a really good choice of packages.
Plus also bear in mind that yes you do have to pay for the powerpack version - with propietary software such as Nvidia and Real Player - but there is still and always has been a free version. Mandriva is not changing there business model to fit Suse it's the other way round. Also Mandriva has been in the top three distros on distro watch for a very long time and there must be a reason for that.
11 • About SUSE 10's mirror problem (by Robert G on 2005-10-10 15:33:49 GMT from United States)
I had an absolutely horrible time getting SUSE 10.0. there were no mirrors besides the main one. And bittorrent was quite slow. So I decided to stick with bittorrent for getting the distro. The funny thing was that I was hanging out in #suse on freenode, and I asked where is a mirror for SUSE besides the main one, and the response I got was "Do you actually think there would be mirrors? It was just released today!"
And my response to that is. You should always have mirrors ready before releasing the distro. That way this problem doesn't happen.
12 • suse 10 eval (by mark on 2005-10-10 15:36:53 GMT from United States)
got thur bittorrent at about 60kBs for the dvd it took
14 hours without the payback on dsl
running it now couple of hiccups but no show stoppers
been on 9.3 since april very good stuff
just my .02 cents
ps just use bittorrent in the early days
13 • Mandriva Experience (by Bill on 2005-10-10 15:40:42 GMT from United States)
I've used Mandrake/Mandriva off and on for several years. A year ago I decided to join the Mandrake (now Mandiva) Club, hopefully to get quicker access to new releases and better download mirrors. I have never been able to get bittorrent to work even when directly connected to my cable modem. I fill in the request for "Special" download mirrors. The "Special" mirrors Mandriva provides me have been for the most part unusable. Very slow (about 5Kb/s average). Some won't accept the login Mandriva gives me. One had the wrong version (i586) in the directory for x86_64 with no isos for x86_64.
My membership expires in about one month and I have decided to let it expire. I will get Mandriva when it becomes available to the public and use URPMI to get the additional packages I want. I like Mandriva and also use Ubuntu and SUSE. Recently, I became quite ambitious and decided to give Gentoo a go. Actually got it installed!
If the Mandriva Team can get its act together, I might consider joining the Club in the future, but not for some time.
14 • Linux help (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-10 15:55:18 GMT from United States)
Congratulations on your progress. And posting the link to help others is the very spirit of Free Software.
(Almost said the "spirit of Ubuntu", but I know no distro has a monopoly on helpfulness.)
1. Right click on the KDE menu and select "Edit menu". It should be self-explanatory from there.
2. As a general rule, if you don't have any reason to install a backport, don't. They definitely increase risks of instability. And issues with security patches. As for the kernel specifically, most recent 2.6 kernels have seen minor (unless you have a particular device or need) improvements, but also bugs, so be careful.
3. Dunno about Opera.
4. Not sure.
15 • SUSE torrent (by David Howard on 2005-10-10 16:05:03 GMT from Israel)
OK, now I understand why things are so slow. I'm downloading the DVD on a 2.0 MB ADSL connection, and after 95 hours, I've received 12.9%. I calculate that I'll have it all in 30.68 days. Ridiculous. I'll try again in a few weeks.
16 • Why can't mirror problems be solved at the top level? (by Dara Parsavand on 2005-10-10 16:05:23 GMT from United States)
Yes I realize that users could follow guidelines stated here (and numerous other places on the web) in terms of downloading Linux distributions. But why in the world would you depend on user behavior to smoothly use ftp to transfer to mirrors. I don't even see why it is needed to delay a release announcement, isn't it enough to set up logins from the mirrors to the server in advance so that no regular user can even try to start an ftp session? From the moment the release is announced can't you have bittorrent feeding one set of computers and a login only ftp server feeding the mirrors?
17 • Suse, Mandriva..download issues.. (by MrX on 2005-10-10 16:05:45 GMT from United States)
I avoided the whole mess by ordering both distros from Linux Central.. $30 (including shipping) and my hair doesn't get pulled out..
Regards,
X
18 • Mandriva experiences this weekend (by Ed Hodge on 2005-10-10 16:06:59 GMT from United States)
I wish I had waited a couple of days to get started. My initial attempt at the DVD was horrible, with speeds ranging from 5-20kb. I blame the windows version of bittorrent however ;-) (I had used the win version only because I had it readily available and didn't have it installed on my fedora partition) After 3 days with the file at 98% I got a error saying it couldn't save the file, even though the drive had plenty of room. Instead of retrying on windows, I went ahead and installed on fedora and tried again. Much better results this time!!! Speeds up to 180kb and the complete download in about 16 hours.
I think the problem was that the anticipation leading up to the 6th probably caused such a rush on the club resources that it astonished Mandriva. To their credit, they recovered pretty quickly, reallocating the entire club site to download links only. The biggest bottleneck had been getting to the club site to get the torrent link, and Mandriva took care of it pretty quickly considering.
19 • Re:Suse or Mandriva (by pmpatrick on 2005-10-10 16:12:34 GMT from United States)
You're likely to get a lot of heated responses on that issue. My personal opinion: the arguments becomes so heated because the differences between the two are so small.
Both distros are known for their user friendly graphical configuration tools. Suse has yast and mandriva has its "control center". At this point, I find it quicker to hand edit the config files myself so it's not an issue for me. However, suse's yast is probably better once you learn it's ins and outs.
Both distros are rpm based. Mandriva has urpmi for resolving dependencies which is superior to the yast system for package mangement and offers greater flexibility. Most people that use suse install apt4rpm if they want to install packages not include in the suse standard distro, eg libdvdcss, win32 codecs, etc. It may work OK but I don't believe it's as good as urpmi when properly set up. Suse does not seem to tolerate outside packages as well as mandriva and there are fewer suse repos compared to what is available for mandriva. When it comes to package mangement/availability, I'd give the edge to mandriva.
Look and feel. That's obviously a matter of personal taste but I think suse looks nicer and more polished than mandriva.
Support. If you speak english, you will find mandriva support superior through user forums and other english speaking users. There is a very large and active english speaking mandriva community. A lot of the good support forums for suse are in german, reflecting suse's german roots. If you speak german, you will find better support for suse and more german speaking users. Not there isn't a good english speaking community with suse; it's just not as large as mandriva's for historical reasons.
Stability. Historically, suse has an edge here. Mandriva eventually gets things right through updates but suse seems to do more testing and have things more stable with the release. Whether that will remain true in the future remains to be seen. Open suse seems to be moving to a more dynamic bleeding edge type of release and mandriva seems to be moving to a more conservative annual release schedule. Time will tell how this turns out.
Intangibles. Mandriva sprung from RH and its filesystem layout and config files are very similar to RH's. If you're familiar with RH or any RH clones, you will feel at home in mandriva even though mandriva forked off from RH many years ago. Not so with suse. Suse does things a little differently re filesystem layout and config files. If you're familiar with RH based distros, you will probably find the suse differences annoying. However, if you cut your teeth on suse, you are likely to be equally annoyed with RH based distros.
That's my observations on the two; your opinions may differ. However, I think it unfair to characterize mandriva as moving away from a free iso download type distro; that's simply not accurate. Mandriva has always released isos for download to the general public and has commited to continue to do so in the future. Historically, suse has been very jerky in this regard, refusing to allow free iso downloads and playing some games with the filesystem layout, init scripts and byzantine linking in order to cripple the ftp download edition. Thankfully, that appears to be behind suse with the open suse project, but let's not rewrite history here.
20 • Mandriva bittorrent (by aRTee at 2005-10-10 16:13:09 GMT from Netherlands)
I have seen many complaints about the Mandriva release.
It's a shame that so many get fed up due to the lackings of Mandriva.
On the other hand, I can only say that my bittorrent was slow (compared to other downloads, even ftp of RC2 was filling my channel at 250KB/s), it maxed out around 100KB/s, which I guess was not bad at all - within 2 days I had the x86 dvd, the live cd (which I have yet to try) and the x86-64 dvd. Of course I'm still seeding, my server won't be affected since it's running 2005LE quite nicely.
I don't see what the issues are with respect to secrecy of the release date, Oct 6 had been hinted quite a few times. Shame I didn't keep track of things or I'd have made sure to become an early seeder.
I think one of the problems is that most people don't keep their bittorrent open - they first install the new system, and many likely 'forget about it' after that.
As for Mandriva becoming 'closed' and Suse becoming more open - maybe so, but I think up to now Mandriva has a better trackrecord at that, so it's more like Mandriva and Suse meeting in the middle in the future. I can track what happened to my Mdv bugs, but the bug I reported to Suse, no clue what happened to that one. Maybe that's better with OpenSuse, if I find the time I'll try again. Still, that websphere had no issues of getting installed on Mandrake 10.1 or Gentoo, and on Suse 9.2 it just wouldn't is fishy in my book.
In any case, I installed Mandriva on a couple of systems (review forthcoming), and it looks quite nice. Is it the best Linux I ever installed and used? Yes, but then again, it's the first of the fall of '05, and I haven't looked at other contenders of this season: (K)Ubuntu, OpenSuse etc.
Nice stuff: OOo 2 (1.9 really) is included on the dvd, the boot is fast, and then some. Oh, and the installer looks nice, works fine, and the penguin on crack finally croaked.
So yes, the rollout leaves stuff to be desired, not everyone is happy, but the product is great (but read the errata and release notes, some things to be aware of), and some people are happy about the company too - not all were affected by crappy bittorrent downloads. Note that in some cases of people crying wolf it was their own fault...
Anyhow, in my book Mandriva Linux (the product, not the co.) sets a new standard.
Enjoy Linux,
aRTee
21 • mandrake - forget it (by tech_user on 2005-10-10 16:14:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
I know people sympathise with manddrake's attempts to make money - but what a history of idiotic failures and incompetence. i've used mandrake for a long time - i moved to it after a brief stint with redhat and that because redhat was deliberately crippled, and that because windows was terrible for getting stuff done. now this applies to mandrake - it is preventing things from getting things done - and so i will look to a distributuon that ensures sane decisions and a thought through strategy for its development.
22 • SuSE and Mandriva (by |TG|Mateo on 2005-10-10 16:26:21 GMT from United States)
I didn't even look at the bit torrents. I went to the US mirrors directly, and started poking around.
I found both the OpenSUSE and Mandriva 2006 Free releases that way, and had all 8 CDs, plus SLICK and SUPER within 24 hours.
I don't know what I am going to do with all of that, but even so, the downloads were there over the weekend.
23 • SUSE torrent (by David Howard on 2005-10-10 16:28:46 GMT from Israel)
OK, now I understand why things are so slow. I'm downloading the DVD on a 2.0 MB ADSL connection, and after 95 hours, I've received 12.9%. I calculate that I'll have it all in 30.68 days. Ridiculous. I'll try again in a few weeks.
24 • SUSE FTP Download (by Jason on 2005-10-10 17:30:38 GMT from United States)
I downloaded Suse 10.0 yesterday 10/9 and had both DVDs x86 and x86_64 in 13 hours on a 1.5M DSL line. I guess I just got lucky when compared to everyone else.
25 • ManDrivel (by rdt on 2005-10-10 17:55:36 GMT from United States)
I have been a Mandrake/Mandriva silver club member from early on, but my membership expiires this week. I got 2006 by bittorrent, but it was extremely slow (1% of my normal download rate) and took days. I've decided that I'll let my membership expire and "go elsewhere". Probably a debian based distro like Kubuntu/Ubuntu. No more drivel for me. :)
26 • About OpenSuse License (by Charlot Pietri on 2005-10-10 18:02:23 GMT from Canada)
Of course, OpenSuse is open, but that's about all that can be said about it. Has anybody managed to find the license? Nowhere is GPL found on OpenSuse's site in relation to its license:
http://minilien.com/?F2T7EKb7tC
This goddamned license is very hard to find. I found it about 2 weeks ago after a long search but can't find it anymore. As far as I remember, there were restrictions that made it completely unfit for a GPL license.
The day I see a link to a GPL license on OpenSuse's homepage, I might consider it. Otherwise, tough luck!
27 • Suse Download via FTP. (by Andy on 2005-10-10 18:20:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
I didn't have any problems downloading Suse 10.0 on Thursday.
I looked on Novells main download page on Thursday morning. Used Firefox to open every listed mirror as tabs. Found about 10 ftp sites that had all the ISO files.
Then I used my FTP client to download them all. By noon Friday I had every iso (5cd i386, DVD i386, DVD x86_64 and the Live DVD).
I didn't have any problems at all.
I found this to be a good reliable mirror, ftp://mirror.colorado.edu/pub/suse/i386/10.0/iso/ not the fastest but it held a constant 95kb/s. Book mark it for next time.
Hope this helps?
Andy
28 • SUSE FTP (by spidey9 on 2005-10-10 18:48:27 GMT from United States)
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I assumed that the SUSE servers would be swamped the first few hours after the release announcement. Nonetheless, less than 24 hours later I was able to connect to a mirror (kernel.org) and download the DVD at something approaching the 5 mpbs limit of my cable modem connection. IMHO that is quite acceptable.
My first impressions of SUSE 10.0 are mostly positive. It boots much quicker than the last couple of versions, and overall has a polished feel to it.
I lost interest in Mandriva some time ago when they started this whole Club Mandrake/Mandriva nonsense. I don't mind paying for a distro if that is the business model they choose, but I don't think it is right to charge for access to security updates. Having more secure systems is in everyone's best interest.
29 • Mandriva, Suse ... Wy not better a live? (by Teobromina on 2005-10-10 20:01:30 GMT from Spain)
I am using Mandrake - Now Mandriva since four years ago. It was my really first installed distro and I learnt a lot from using it.
I have installed most of the best known distros since, coming back to Mandrake every time because its simple and easy install procedure.
In the meantime I have been trying more and more 'big' lives like Knoppix, Mepis, Ubuntu, etc, but also small ones like Damn Small, Puppy, Slax, Beatrix, Sam, Lammpix, Insert ...
Now I realise that I preffer lives more than installed Linux. And the reason is simple: Lives give me more flexibility (If one new version dislikes me I simply throw it away, nothing to modify in my machine), more ability to have my own desktop anywhere, they care really to achieve progressively a better recognition of all the devices in the computer, and more than this they are really a good advantage to proprietary OSs, that need to be installed and do not run never as lives.
I am supporting lives you have already noticed, but I think they are the future, for another wheighty and migthy reason: Every time there are more and more web applications, some of them free. You only need a live OS to start and a good browser. This solution means no virus at all, nothing to save in the computer ... Therefore: Wy do we need to install anything?
Regards.
*/Teobromina/*
30 • Hey Ladislav? (by Charlot Pietri on 2005-10-10 21:07:04 GMT from Canada)
You write:
"This was also the first time ever that SUSE Linux ISO images were made available to general public immediately after their release (...). The main SUSE FTP server was flooded with requests hours before SUSE 10.0 was even announced"
OK, so it seems this OpenSuse thingy is the nest thing on earth since sliced bread. But the license? Where's the license? Isn't it Distrowatch purpose to say that a distro doesn't even dare offer its license for everyone to see?
What's the hoopla you're creating about such a lame thing?
31 • Linux help (message #6) (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-10 21:38:36 GMT from Netherlands)
Thanks for the message. It's nice to see we've been able to help.
About installing the nvidia driver the Debian Way, I found an even easier tutorial about it, but can't find it anymore. That's no problem though. Now that it's installed, the only thing I need to do when I update the kernel is to run: m-a prepare; m-a auto-install nvidia from a root command line, and everything is done automatically and correctly.
1) I installed several programs with apt-get from the debian sarge dvd's namely freeciv, benith a steel sky, and gltron to name a few. Some of these programs are added to the kde games menu and some are not...Why? freeciv was added automaticly but benith a steel sky and gltron are not listed in the games menus but you can still run them from the run command. How can I add them to the kde menu?
You've already received a good reply. However I can add that packages that add themselves to the KDE or GNOME menu are not that common (nearly all window managers have different menu systems). However, Debian has a great way to solve the problem that is called the Debian menu. You'll find the Debian menu in your KDE menu, in your GNOME menu, etc... and on all desktops and window managers it will be identical! The Debian menu is a central place where most GUI packages define a launcher, so you usually can find everything in it. The only problem is that it seems a bug prevents it from being updated automatically when you install packages. You can force an update though by running "update-menus" on the root command line (always as root). Be sure though that no package manager software is running at the same moment, as they seem to block it from starting.
2)Backports.... I installed firefox 1.07 from the offical debian backport page and it worked great and was considering updating my kenal to the newest version....what are the advantages and disadvantages of running this backport? I it faster?
I wouldn't bother that much with backports, as they can mess things up if you're not careful. It's actually easier to stay with Debian Unstable (although you have to update nearly every day and be careful of what you do, so I don't really recommend it for a true newbie. It's a great way to learn about the Debian system though).
3)I installed opera from the opera site it was a *.deb file compiled for sarge version 8.5 I used kpackage to install it however it stripped all the extensions from it on install. ie chat and rss feeds. Did I do something wrong? is there another way to install this package?
I installed Opera (which I'm using right now actually ;) ) from the Debian Unofficial repository: http://www.debian-unofficial.org/ . This way, I didn't have to bother with a separate .deb file and when it got updated I could do that automatically through Synaptic. And it handled the dependencies automatically too. Those guys do a great job!
4)another interesting thing happened as well after completeing the install of my nvidia drivers following the directions listed in the link above and rebooting I was presented with grub on bootup instead of 2 items being listed, the regular bootup and the safe bootup I now had 4 choices. 2 safe bootups and 2 regulars the first of the regular bootups did not boot to kdm it booted to bash or a terminal window startx did nothing the 2nd regular bootup worked great got the nvidia flash screen on bootup and it ran better than mephis(I kid you not!) Now I distenctly rember that the package I selected for the kernal compile was the one that ended in k7 because I have a amd cpu owever the bootup that did not work was the one listed as k7 at the end the one that worked was the one that ended in i386. While this is not a big issue....it did work! I do wonder why they seem backwards?
Strange. I didn't have that problem. But then I didn't install a new kernel when I installed the nvidia drivers. I just used the kernel I was already running. But I think the instructions you got were unnecessarily complicated. I'll look if I can find the tutorial I used again. You don't need it anymore, but if sometime you reinstall you'd be better off using that tutorial. It was much cleaner than what you showed.
Hope I've been of some help.
32 • Mandriva 2006 (by Scott Bolander on 2005-10-10 22:05:31 GMT from United States)
I was an early seeder; but I have never had the problems with bittorrent that others continually harp about. I use the headless linux client exclusively.
As for 2006, it is wonderfull. I have installed it on my primary desktop (DVD powerpack) and a client's server.
It installed on both machines without a single issue and is very fast.
I have never been able to stick it out with Suse because YAST is very clunky compared to command line urpmi (properly set up).
Suse 6.0 was my very first distro; one thing I can say for Suse is that the printed documentation is excellent.
33 • suse downloads (by nitroushhh on 2005-10-10 22:35:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
I second the idea of putting the torrent files on a different server to the big iso's.
I thought I'd do them a favour by using bittorrent but i couldn't even get the 35kbyte files from the ftp server.
Got the eval dvd down over the weekend. About 40 hours on a 256kbit connection. Not sure how i managed that.
I'm very pleased with it. Got it on 2 wireless machines now. Supports both wireless cards out of the box.
Not much to get excited about from 9.3. But it seems more polished and faster. OOo opening noticibly faster.
The eval dvd has java, flash, acroreader and real on it. All set up for you. If you MUST have only free software then I think these are not on the CD's.
If you want to play every media type you can think of and multiregion dvd's then add packmans repository to your yast source to get xine and kaffiene fixed. Plus hunt down decss.
A great article here on how to get the full monty running from either the cd's or the dvd.
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/
Its great to have packman rpms in yast.
34 • Mandriva 2006 vs. OpenSUSE (by Joe Rambieno on 2005-10-10 23:46:12 GMT from United States)
Having tried both, let me say that Mandriva is much better. OpenSUSE had a terrible time detecting my hardware, was slow, unresponsive, and a pain overall.
Mandriva 2006, on the other hand, detected all of my hardware perfectly, installed in less than 2 hours and is incredibly fast - boots in 21, KDE in 18 seconds, shutdown in 16 seconds on my machine. Plus, URPMI is better than YaST.
Yes, Mandriva (as a company) has its problems, but I would say that they are improving, and they make an excellent product. I am a silver club member and will renew my membership when it is time.
Your results may be different form mine, but I would recommend Mandriva 2006 over OpenSUSE.
35 • Unfair coverage of Mandriva (by AdamW on 2005-10-10 23:59:05 GMT from Canada)
Hi. I'm the Mandriva forum representative. I have to say, I find the coverage of our 2006 release in this newsletter extremely unfair. I think using terms like 'secrecy' about release dates is a little loaded. Simply put, we don't provide release dates very far in advance. This is hardly unusual practice in the software industry. It's not like we're sitting on the information and refusing to release it out of spite; we work very hard to bring the release to people as soon as possible, and it's not necessarily easy to pin down a date with confidence weeks in advance. A week before 2006 was released, the planned date was the 4th. It was changed to the 6th just three days before release. If we'd 'announced' a release on the 4th, all that would have happened would be that people would have been more annoyed.
The Club website went down exactly once after the release, due to huge interest in the new release (even more than for previous releases). It was restored within an hour, even though it was past midnight in France. The modifications made to the site to bear the load caused Club URLs to be changed, but the torrent files and trackers were NOT ever changed. A torrent file downloaded one minute after the release still works now (assuming your IP has not changed).
"Those of you who have been around for a few years will remember the time when Mandrake Linux ISO images were announced and released to public without any delay and restrictions, and with dozens of mirrors ready to serve them immediately after each release."
You may also remember the 9.0 and 9.1 releases, when the mirrors were immediately swamped ten minutes after release, and it was virtually impossible to log in to any of them for a week. People didn't like that. It's the reason we introduced the use of Bittorrent. People in the comments wonder why they get fast FTP downloads of the betas and release candidates - the answer is simple. Not many people want them. The demand for the final release is orders of magnitude greater.
"Why is it that SUSE has moved from being a mostly closed and somewhat proprietary distribution to a completely free and open project, while Mandriva has shifted in the opposite direction?"
This is also, in my opinion, an unfair characterization. Mandriva is exactly as free and open as it has always been. Even in the 'good old days', we sold a commercial boxed set with bonus commercial software which was not in the free download edition. We still do. THe valued members of our community who support us through Club membership get access to these editions as a part of their membership. Everyone else still gets the free download edition, which for 2006 will be given the name Mandriva Free. It is, as it has always been, a 100% free and open source distribution that is fully functional as a complete desktop operating system. Yes, access to the ISO version of it is opened a few weeks after Club members get access to the boxed editions (the full 2006.0 tree will be available on our public FTP mirrors on October 13th, though). But I don't think this _single_ change is enough to characterize as "shifted in the opposite direction". We are fully committed to the free software philosophy.
I do not believe our membership levels are confusing. We have four levels of membership: Standard, Silver, Gold and Platinum. As the names clearly suggest, they are simply grades of membership. There is no geographical division in membership levels: members in South America simply get to join at the same four levels for a lower price than everyone else. This was done because we have inherited a significant user base in this area of the world from our merger with Conectiva, and we did not want to leave this user base - whose average income is considerably lower than that in North America and Europe, where the majority of our existing user base is located - out in the cold with prohibitive membership prices. "Early seeders" are not a separate membership category, but simply a group of users who help to seed the releases. This program was prompted by a suggestion from our Club members, and has been warmly received by members.
Finally, Move has not become the Discovery/LX Live CD. They are different products. The Discovery/LX Live CD is not a product in its own right: it is part of the 2006 Discovery/LX product. If you buy this set from the Store, you get the Live CD as part of it. (Oh, and 800x600 was chosen as the default resolution because our QA showed that some systems have problems displaying 1024x768, the previous default).
Finally, to correct one important misconception from the comments to this post, we do _not_ charge for security updates. Security updates are available on our public FTP mirrors free of charge to everyone, as they have always been. The Mandriva Update program is included in the Free release and is fully functional there. Club members at the Silver level and above get access to our Mandriva Online program as one of their membership benefits. This program simplifies the process of updating your system by notifying you when updates become available, and optionally installing them automatically. But it does not provide access to any updates that you cannot get without paying.
36 • Mandriva 2006.0, Klik, Smart (by Leo on 2005-10-11 00:11:18 GMT from United States)
I posted for last DW my mini-review of Mandriva 2006.0. In short, it is very fast and looks very good, and I had a couple issues, one of which is documented and there is a workaround. I am happy all in all.
Whether Mandriva is open I think is not a fair question. The have always produced and supported free software.
Whether Mandriva is fair to its customers. That's another story. I am not one. My contribs have always been bug reports. As for myself, I love these folks.
KLIK: I've been playing with it in Mandriva. It is a very nice technology (for some self contained packages, like the stuff that would go in /opt). It may become a standard for third party commercial apps.
SMART: there is a new, great package manager in Mandriva, imported from Conectiva. Smart. Very, very impressive. I am using it instead of urpmi and friends. It has a nice front-end. It solves inconsistencies in the rpms intalled in the system. It runs so much faster than urpmi (it uses python + some C routines for speed up). Oh, and it comes with KSmartTray, a systray app that lets you know if there are new updates for your system. One click and you install them on. Very nice and promising, it only has one year of development behind. It has a good headstart becuase it is a first-cousin of Synaptic.
Ok, that's all my friends. Cheers,
-- Leo
37 • Debian help (by Ben on 2005-10-11 01:32:57 GMT from Australia)
http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/index.html
38 • mandriva or suse (by SalmanF on 2005-10-11 01:34:21 GMT from Indonesia)
Mandriva: because my PC is i586..... pentium 1 you know.
I've been using Mandrake 9.x for 2 years and not using Mandriva cause kernel 2.6 doesn't fit me (somehow had a problem with mounting devices).
I've been trying Mandrake Move and i think it's the best 'heavy' Linux liveCD i've ever met.
Mandrake is the only my PC's mate. And it's safe for me to recommend Mandrake/Mandriva over SuSE (YaST is SuCK). Urpmi/RpmDrake is better.
39 • Suse problems (by T. Robinson on 2005-10-11 01:59:37 GMT from United States)
I'd like to weigh in on a slightly different tack.
My first Linux was SuSE 9.1. It ran, but seemed slow,
so I started experimenting with other distros. I've
dl'd and tried more than 30 so far. Currently, I run
Yoper 2.1.0-4 for the blinding speed.
When Suse 10 came out, I dl'd the 5 cd set, MD5'd them
and installed. It failed to complete the install. So I
dl'd again, and this time I checked the burned CDs.
They checked out ok, and the hour and a half install
finished, then dumped me at the cli! Nothing I could
do would get X started.
Today, I dl'd the DVD eval version, checked the MD5
sum and then installed. It opened the display in
1600x1280 mode even though I had told the install
program to use 1280x1024. (My monitor is unstable at
1600). Once the gui came up, I went to desktop config
and changed the resolution to 1280x1024, and rebooted.
Now all that happens is that I get dumped on the cli
again, and there seems to be no way to start X. the
command startx tries to run, and bombs with an error
message.
I give up. I've wasted 10 cd's and a dvd and hours of
download and nearly 5 hours install time on this piece
of junk. EVERY other distro I have tested installed
and worked. NONE ever dumped me to the cli like Suse.
Bye.
Tim
40 • Suse and Mandriva (by agendelman on 2005-10-11 02:23:11 GMT from United States)
I installed both suse and mandriva very early on with bittorent. Instead of opensuse I downloaded and installed the eval dvd. The installation provided proprietary drivers like flash, j2re, realplayer, and 3d acceleration for my nvidia card. The mirrors are still synching and I'm waiting to install mutimedia packs for kde. Suse 10.0 is attractive and
reliable. Yast is indeed clunky. I like Novell's new "open" policy, but I'm not sure if they will be able to stay with it over the long run.
I'm a reasonably happy mandriva club member, and as I usually do, downloaded the club version of 2006. No problem with either bittorrent or access to the mirrors. 2006 pwp is sweet. I see evidence of Joe Cheek's work from lycoris and connectiva's smart is now available, although I still use urpmi, usually from the command line.
I really don't understand this stuff about mandriva development occurring in secrecy. The next distro is on the cooker mirrors right now. Cooker was just unfrozen. The mailing lists are active and if you want to get involved, report bugs, uplaod patches, etc you can do so today. In a few weeks the public download edition will be available for anyone to use and enjoy. Long before that, in a matter of days in fact, you'll be able to use a net install to get 2006. Anyone can do it and it's totally free.
Club members pay money for their membership, and among the benefits is slightly, and I emphasize slightly early access to isos.
This in no way means that development isn't transparent, open to anyone, or that each new version isn't always available to anyone, free of charge, who cares to download it.
41 • Re: some points by AdamW (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 02:30:38 GMT from Italy)
"Yes, access to the ISO version of it is opened a few weeks after Club members get access to the boxed editions (the full 2006.0 tree will be available on our public FTP mirrors on October 13th, though). But I don't think this _single_ change is enough to characterize as "shifted in the opposite direction". "
I believe that this single point is hugely detrimental for the sales of Mandriva boxes. Non club members have to wait for weeks, even before they can "have a taste" of Mandriva final. For instance I'll have to wait before I can know if pppoe works in the final. In RC2 I couldn't make it work, no matter how hard I tried. Why should I, or anybody else order a Mandriva box, a cat in the sack?
In the meantime the *full* version of SUSE was available for free download to everybody on the same day Mandriva was released to club members only. Have you noticed that, over a one month basis SUSE has overtaken Mandriva here at distrowatch? And honestly I believe Mandriva will be left a distant third in the end.
"We are fully committed to the free software philosophy."
"I do not believe our membership levels are confusing. We have four levels of membership: Standard, Silver, Gold and Platinum."
Two self contradicting statements. Your higher levels of membership cost a fortune, and yet if you can afford only Standard, you get very little for your money. This is *not* "full commitment to to the free software philosophy", IMO. This is full commitment to the god money. I can imagine what you are going to reply: we must eat. OK, but try at least to be fairer.
I don't know why Linspire is often portrayed as greedy, but their levels of membership are a lot cheaper.
42 • Anonymous Penguin from Italy (by AdamW on 2005-10-11 03:34:08 GMT from Canada)
I'm sorry, but your points are utter non sequiturs.
Firstly, you say that you aren't confident about buying 2006 because PPPoE didn't work for you in RC2. What on earth does this have to do with the Free version coming out later than the Club version, which was the issue you say you were replying to?
Secondly, you attempt to draw some point from the fact that SUSE's latest public release happened to come out on the same day as our Club release. Uh, sorry - what's your point? Fedora Core 5 won't be out for a couple of months, does that mean we and SUSE are both better? What do the coincidences of release cycles have to do with the price of fish?
Your final point rides straight into the very first mistake anyone ever made about free software. Free software is about freedom as in speech, not freedom as in beer. Just as you say, every company which intends to succeed in the Linux world has to make money somehow. This includes us, Red Hat and SUSE (though I suspect Novell isn't, overall, making money on SUSE at the moment, but sinking a large amount of money into it in the hopes of large future returns). There's no reason at all that this is incompatible with free (as in speech) software. The only software that people who pay us money can get but people who don't pay us money can't is commercial software.
My only problem with Linspire is that they don't provide a fully working free version of their distro - but hey, that's just what I'd prefer them to do, they have no obligation to do so.
43 • AdamW (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 05:19:43 GMT from Italy)
"Firstly, you say that you aren't confident about buying 2006 because PPPoE didn't work for you in RC2. What on earth does this have to do with the Free version coming out later than the Club version, which was the issue you say you were replying to?"
I quoted the issue (your point) in my above post. The free version coming out later has a lot to do with everything. If something didn't work in RC2, how do I, or any non club member can know that it has been fixed in the final? Therefore no blind boxed versions orders, as simple as that.
"Secondly, you attempt to draw some point from the fact that SUSE's latest public release happened to come out on the same day as our Club release. Uh, sorry - what's your point?"
That was just an example and a comparison, is that so difficult to grasp? In the same day when SUSE makes its *full* version available to everybody, Mandriva releases for its members only. Can't you understand how any non member can feel about it?
"Your final point rides straight into the very first mistake anyone ever made about free software. Free software is about freedom as in speech, not freedom as in beer."
Please don't tell me that pathetic story as if I had got interested in linux and in FLOSS yesterday. Yes I know everybody has the right to earn money, but you can choose between doing it with style or pissing everybody off in the process.
44 • My Knoppix (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 05:47:52 GMT from Italy)
Wow, I bet this new distro is going to make the RIAA and all like-minded entities very happy.
45 • About OpenSuSE License (by istoyanov on 2005-10-11 05:55:54 GMT from Bulgaria)
http://www.opensuse.org/Legal
46 • Anonymous (by AdamW on 2005-10-11 06:25:07 GMT from Canada)
OK, let's cut to the chase. How do you suggest we make money with style and without pissing everybody off in the process? *waves magic wand* you are now Francois Bancilhon: what do you do?
47 • Re: Debian help (#37) (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-11 06:42:07 GMT from Netherlands)
That's the page I meant! Thanks Ben for finding it!
48 • Mandriva (by Doug in Kentucky on 2005-10-11 06:45:24 GMT from United States)
I have preferred the Mandrake/Mandriva distro since it split from Redhat. I never have bothered with joining the club (have heard too many bad things) but I do buy the PowerPack versions on occasion to help to support the company.
I find Mandriva releases to be a little rocky when first released but they rapidly become rock solid with patches. I don't think you can beat urpmi (and yes, I have tried Debian with apt and Synaptic). I love Mandrake Control Center as well, I guess part of the reason I love it is familiarity.
A wonderful distro. It is no wonder that it has been one of the top 3 distros here at Distrowatch for years.
49 • AdamW (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 06:54:14 GMT from Italy)
"How do you suggest we make money with style and without pissing everybody off in the process? *waves magic wand* you are now Francois Bancilhon: what do you do?"
I can start with two simple suggestions:
1)Only one, maximum 2 levels of club membership (but then the highest gets absolutely everything, for $120 a year they have more than paid for their (download) Powerpack CDs or DVD.
2)Release the free edition on the same day when you release the "premium edition" (or whatever you want to call it) to club members. This is nothing but going back to the past, when it seems that more people were satisfied.
50 • sometimes it is good to wait a little (by x on 2005-10-11 06:54:24 GMT from United States)
In the early 70's, I was advised to always wait awhile before ordering newly available software. There are too many reasons to list here, but one has always been true - the shipping department always needs more time to catch up with the backlog of orders. Today, the shipping department rarely handles software distribution, but the senario has not changed. What is the value in participating in a traffic jam? Arriving a short time later without the hassle has always been healthier.
The more bandwidth available, the greater the demand for more bandwidth. Hopefully, I have not offended anyone.
Once again, Ladislav, thanks for providing this site.
51 • SUSE (by Lord-Storm on 2005-10-11 07:17:26 GMT from Australia)
BT first then sync mirrors and then release to public. Most mirrors will sync within a few days.
BT is only good for non dial up users. Nothing worse than P2P full of dial up users.
52 • SuSE 10.0 live DVD stinks (by Robert Fortune on 2005-10-11 07:24:11 GMT from United States)
I'm a Linux live CD/DVD whore. I download at least 3 every week to play with them; by now (over the course of two years) I must have gone through close to 100 different distros. My machine has the Intel i845 graphics chipset integrated in the mobo, and I use a Samsung 17 in. flat screen LCD display - pretty standard hardware.
These days, half of the distros I test get the native (best) screen resolution of my monitor (1280x1024@60Hz) right on the first try (i.e. with the default boot), and 4 out of 5 get it right with minimal fiddling (i.e. bootup cheatcodes or using later stage options).
So today I downloaded the SuSE 10.0 live DVD ISO with Prozilla which took 20 min, burned it to DVD and got ready to have some fun exploring what the boys in Germany had cooked up these last 6 months. I'd checked out the v.9.3 live DVD and had 45 min of fun with it but then filed it away not to be used again.
My mouth dropped open when this 10.0 live DVD booted into a 640x480 screen, and it stayed open for the next 30 min when I rebooted the blasted DVD another half dozen times exploring all possible options of changing screen resolution. It turned out not to be possible! I'm still shell-shocked - such crap from moneyed Novell/SuSE, #3 on the Distrowatch hit list?
As I said, I'm a jaded live CD distro whore who's very skilled at picking out a good John. This 10.0 SuSE live DVD is about what I would expect from a one-man shop (and a poorly skilled Linuxer at that) in Kazakhstan! I'm pissed at the 2 hrs. of wasted time I spent on this.
If you want to experience something really exciting and appreciate a superbly crafted state-of-the-art snappy distro, check out stux v.0.8.1 (based on slackware and Knoppix, and made in Italy)! A real standout that was worth every minute of the 12 hr bittorrent download!!
Cheers to all but not to the folks in Nuremburg (isn't that where SuSE is made, the old Nazi town?),
Robert
53 • "lack of discipline among some Linux users" :)) (by feodore on 2005-10-11 08:48:42 GMT from United States)
i guess by this "lack of discipline" (in downloading the open suse) you actually mean "lack of altruism". the inhuman linux users were so selfish that they wanted to get the open suse as soon as possible.
yes, i must admit, lack of altruism and greediness is unconceivable of linux users. they must change their heart. they must repent.
otherwise we would be forced to implement technical solutions (rather than moralist logorrhea), which is evil (why organize when you can moralize?).
54 • The mental states of some of the people who post! (by Bill Savoie on 2005-10-11 08:52:28 GMT from United States)
I love your work Ladislav, good information and you stir the pot just enough to let people see what they want to see. Some are almost mad. I think most distributions are doing a good job and most of the differences are more related to the user than the distribution.
I purchased SuSE 10 several weeks ago, and have yet to receive it in the mail. I am running SuSE 10 RC2 off the net until it arrives. I want to thank SuSE for changing. For technical growth, I have bought the 'The Debian System Concepts and Techniques' by Martin Krafft and want to move in that direction. I boot into 5 different distributions, I don't know why, they are all good. Wishy washy is easier than mad, but I don't get much else done!
Thanks Ladislav..
55 • @ Robert Fortune (by ben on 2005-10-11 10:09:06 GMT from Germany)
Wow, Robert, coming from Linux to Nazi with only one Live-DVD is ... silly. Just that. You spend 2 hrs with a crappy Live DVD? And then you complain. I think you have too much time to spend and you should spend a little more of it for some education about the _latest_ German history. Then you may try out elive 0.3
56 • Germans are good people (by William Roddy at 2005-10-11 15:40:04 GMT from United States)
Robert Fortune:
I am proud of my German friends.
Nuremberg was, as you imply with erroneous prejudice, the seat of Nazi ceremony and airplane production. But, long before that, it was also a major seat of power for the Roman Empire. Perhaps historical fault-finders can blame the Romans for SUSE.
During its history, Nuremberg was also the workplace of some of history's most brilliant artists, musicians, architects, and thinkers. The beautiful city was destroyed by Allied bombers prior to the end of WWII. It has, however, been rebuilt by the industrious good people of Germany.
Subsequently, Nuremberg now remains famous for the application of justice, because of the Nuremberg Trials, and is presently more well-known for this than for being a seat of evil aspirations.
Today, the city is beautiful and full of beautiful people. Nazis are gone and only the lunatic fringe believes themselves members of the ancient mystical cult of war.
It is my opinion that we should laud achievements, not bemoan tragic histories. Every city, if examined, has untoward moments in its history, as every family has villains in its family tree.
Please, please, please: celebrate who we are, not what we were.
William
57 • My Mandrake/Mandriva experiences (by Dr. David Johnson on 2005-10-11 17:21:34 GMT from United States)
Oh my my, what a great site, I love to read all the comments
and wonderful weekly news. Thanks Ladislav.
I sure can identify with Robert Fortune's (#52) curiosity about
many distros. Also a great laugh at your terminology. I guess
I am a distro fanatic, as I recently counted more than 80 I've
experimented with (only some are "Live CDs", and I'm in love
with them YES!).
Mr. feodore (#53), I am tickled with your creative vocabulary and
witty critique. I too am amused at the impatient people mad
about not getting their FREE things the minute they want it.
But ultimately this is human nature (at its worst.... ;-)
Thank you ben (#55) for your reminder to be willing to dig
deeper and not be so judgemental on the basis of limited
experience. See my notes below!
And William (#56), your words of reconciliation, combined with
an awareness of history, are wise and appreciated.
Now for my Mandrake experience. I have never dealt with SuSE.
But I've been very favorably impressed with many of the earlier
Mandrake releases, and was happily using 10.1 for various
functions.
I should say that besides being a "distro junkie", I have a special
interest in examining the possibilities of (1) using older hardware
and (2) tweaking distros for use in specialized server roles.
Mandrake had impressed me with being one of the "major"
distros that was focused on making it easy for the novice
user to install a functional desktop loaded with useful software.
Of course, this goal tends to make any distro rather bloated
and risks more problems with compatibilities and ease of use.
But I was VERY pleased in the prior releases with the way
Mandrake produced a great desktop for casual, and office,
users, and even made it easy to customize for specialty
server roles. Of course, it could not be run as easily on
very old hardware (check Trustix and others stellar results in
this area).
My experience with Mandrake 10.1 left me thinking that this
was the best distro I've ever found for ease of installation and
setup for various functions. And that's after using it on several
hardware platforms, and pressing it into service as a file server,
web server, etc.
But when I tried Mandrake 10.2 (Mandriva LE 2005; by this
time the company was transitioning with the new name),
I was surprised that on the first couple of tries (on different
machines) for installing the mini iso, the result was a
terribly minimal GUI (Twm) that had absolutely no menus.
Tried again on another machine and got fvwm with very minimal
software, so this is nice chance to try learning more about
urpmi, and I was able to install samba and configure file sharing
on my mixed network. Cool.
I tried again with the 10.2 mini iso, to specify ftp sites for sources
of additional packages, during the install, but this was quite
difficult, as the mirrors used paths that were not as listed on
the mandriva site, or were not fast.
So I learned that if I want the full range of installed software,
I should use the full multiple-CD install set, but if I want a nice
base system to customize for specific server roles, the mini iso
works. Seems different than the net install of OpenBSD which
allows me to customize packages quite readily during the
install process.
The troubles with 10.2 have NOT caused me to give up on
Mandriva. I look forward to trying the Mandriva 2006 full install
(yes I will d/l the full cd set, not keep struggling with the mini iso.
Well maybe, since I think I have the masochist gene, but that
helps me learn ;-)
Keep having fun, and thanks everyone for sharing. Let's keep it
clean and keep it real. The best way to learn is to dive in and
do things, you can't break your computer if you keep the
screwdriver out of the case while the power cord is unplugged ;-)
By the way, I did try Wolvix and that is one great Live CD distro!
(Still like my DSL, Puppy, and PHLAK though)!
Best wishes for a great week, to everyone.
Dr. David
58 • @Robert Fortune (by Ariszló on 2005-10-11 17:38:28 GMT from Hungary)
You are offending two nations in one go: Germany and Kazakhstan.
59 • Anonymous penguin (by AdamW on 2005-10-11 18:31:06 GMT from Canada)
That wouldn't be at all popular with Club members. Just prior to 2006 release, I suggested that the Club release would happen at the same time as the *commercial* release (not even the Free release), and members were extremely unhappy about that. (As it turned out, we released the Club edition a couple of weeks before the commercial box sets go out, so it wasn't a problem in the end. But it shows you how unhappy they'd be if they got their release at the same time as the Free version.)
60 • SuSE - Mandriva (by gabbman on 2005-10-11 19:44:55 GMT from Canada)
Just more of the same old.
SuSE crippled by YaST and no multimedia out of the box.
Mandriva PP installs more then you need. Boat still seems to linger in their base install.
With both you need to configure the YaST or URPMI repositories to make either somewhat more usable, just like they had to 5-6 releases ago.
After seeing how the likes of PCLOS, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis and many others were giving more O/S out of the box on one CD, I expected a lot more. They both lost my financial support 3-4 releases ago, and I still see no reason to begin on these latest failures.
61 • AdamW (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 21:54:02 GMT from Italy)
And yet only a couple of years ago the free version was released at the same time for everybody. I can't remember many complaints, except for some club members saying that they weren't getting much value for their money.
Also I know that the majority of your revenue doesn't come from club membership. So I suppose it comes from the sale of boxes (and paid downloads) or paid support. I for one would much rather buy a box, especially now that you release only once a year.
All the above would suggest me that pleasing your "paying customers" (I know that club members are paying customers as well) could bring more revenue.
62 • Re: Post 65 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-11 22:56:21 GMT from Italy)
I know we are going way offtopic, but I wanted to reply to this one.
"I also have friends who are/who come from those countries and they are very nice people contrary to what many people say"
Exactly. I, an Italian, *supposedly* a Catholic lived for years in a Muslim area in the UK. I was absolutely taken by their dignity, their respect for themselves and others, their friendliness.
Now I am back in Italy, in a very Catholic small town and I am hating every moment of it. They are in fact pagans (with all due respect for true pagans): for them religion means celebrating almost every saint on the calendar with almost daily, maddening fireworks and deafening sound of bells.
63 • Il mio amico italiano anonimo (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-11 23:27:50 GMT from United States)
(Speaking as someone who practices no religion) What's wrong with bells and fireworks and celebrations? Is it more the same objections one would have to sounds of a more secular nature, i.e. the neighbors who are always having parties? Or is there meant to be some suggestion that this way of practicing religion is less sincere or authentic? I'm just curious, not wanting to veer too far off topic, but finding your comments intriguing.
64 • post #63 (by Anonymous on 2005-10-11 23:33:56 GMT from Brazil)
> How has the merger between Mandrake with Conectiva
> helped Brazil bring more linux. or will it have more challenges
> with Goblinx, and Kurumin.
Kurumin is a nice distro.
Much more userfriendly than conectiva/mandriva
In just 1CD You have a very nice desktop for new users.
More about kurumin here:
http://www.guiadohardware.net/kurumin/
65 • Mandriva 2006 (by Scott Bolander on 2005-10-12 00:26:41 GMT from United States)
I was an early seeder; but I have never had the problems with bittorrent that others continually harp about. I use the headless linux client exclusively.
As for 2006, it is wonderfull. I have installed it on my primary desktop (DVD powerpack) and a client's server.
It installed on both machines without a single issue and is very fast.
I have never been able to stick it out with Suse because YAST is very clunky compared to command line urpmi (properly set up).
Suse 6.0 was my very first distro; one thing I can say for Suse is that the printed documentation is excellent.
66 • No subject (by Robert Fortune on 2005-10-12 01:08:16 GMT from United States)
My goodness, some of you people are touchy, I was joking with SuSE and Nuernberg and Kazakhstan! For heaven's sake, I'm German myself, in spite of the RF alias I'm using on the net. And I was ticked off precisely because I don't have the time to waste two hours on a futile undertaking (that's as long as it took to download the ISO, burn it to the DVD and fiddle around with it to the point where I finally gave up), and I wouldn't have expended all that time if I hadn't had high hopes for the new SuSE.
Some people watch Fussball or baseball or Tour de France or Wimbledon; I don't, I download distros instead and play with them which has the useful outcome (to me at least) that I have a good sense of what's happening in the realm of Linux distro development.
To get away from this and back to comments about distros:
I do find it inexcusable that SuSE released a "try it out" live DVD which utterly failed on a plain vanilla average consumer machine (a Dell Dimension 2300) in the department of video hardware recognition. I can't even remember the last time when a Linux live CD booted into a 640x480 screen and gave me no other choice. At least 80% of all the live CD's I've tested give me at least 1024x768 and at least 90% give me at least 800x600.
This really looks bad for SuSE. I'd be curious to learn what kind of feedback they are getting about this live DVD from other users.
BTW, some of the real standouts among the live CD's in the last several months: stux 0.8.1 (tops!), Wolvix 1.0.3, Knoppix 4.0.2 live CD and live DVD, elive 0.3, MCN_live Brugge and Jordaan, ZenLinux 1.2r, SimplyMepis 3.3.1, Kanotix 2005-03, slax 5.0.6 (excellent but Wolvix is better), Austrumi 0.8.7, Beatrix 2005.1, KCPentrix 1.0, Auditor Security Collection, Pentoo-2005.1, Whoppix 2.7 beta. The last four are security distros. My vote for the best four would go to stux, Wolvix, Knoppix and Beatrix. Otherwise, among the distros that aren't available live but need to be installed to HD, the standout is Vector Linux, including, I would think, the deluxe edition with enlightenment.
Cheers,
Robert
67 • goblinX naughty / critical mass (by andy on 2005-10-12 01:25:47 GMT from United States)
To the creators of goblinx you have done good, live cd I like.. I would ask that you avoid suggestive material... the default background for fluxbox was it? although attractive, however not for everyone.
Lets try and keep open source open for all audiences.
** another bad call the game critical mass. use of language in the setup, not for everyone...
I love open source and always try to intruduce it to new users.
lets try not to scare away sensitive new users to the open source...
Thanks for consideration.
68 • Re: Il mio amico italiano anonimo (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-12 02:47:23 GMT from Italy)
"What's wrong with bells and fireworks and celebrations? Is it more the same objections one would have to sounds of a more secular nature, i.e. the neighbors who are always having parties?"
Yes, exactly! This small town which could otherwise be very quiet, has *by far* a higher level of noise than any large European city center where I have ever lived. There is almost a competition going on, who makes the most noisy celebrations.
69 • Reading course for dummies (by Charlot Pietri on 2005-10-12 04:26:10 GMT from Canada)
istoyanov writes:
About OpenSuSE License:
http://www.opensuse.org/Legal
Though the first line says: "The following legal documents govern the activites at this site and the content and *software* available at this site", nothing adterwards refers to rights on software. It's all about terms of use of the site, copyright on written material, privacy policies and trademarks.
People believe Suse is GPL. Our very own Ladislav Bodnar, referring to a ZDNet article (gosh!) writes: "(...) YaST will, from now on, be licenced under the terms of the GPL (...) "
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20040322
What did ZD write? Here goes: "But with the new plan, to be announced Monday at Novell's Brainshare conference, the company will release YAST under the General Public License (GPL), sources familiar with the plan said."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5175682.html
Are those "sources familiar with the plan" to be trusted? What finally happened on that Monday? If Yast and all Linux software produced by Suse and Novell were put under a GPL license, why doesn't the site say so?
This is pretty crappy journalism. Then, users begin to pick up the rumor as truth. For instance, On Novermber 18 2006, Benjamin Vander Jagt wrote: "Novell has released YaST into GPL"
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20041018&mode=1
Now, the rumor becomes fact. It seems when there is a void, people fill it with whatever they prefer. Isn't this Novell's goal?
Once again, where's the goddamned license?
70 • SUSE 10.0 Live DVD and Mandriva Live (by eco2geek at 2005-10-12 05:22:53 GMT from United States)
To #66: Yes, you can tell SUSE what screen resolution to use, in two circumstances. First, from the boot screen, you can select the resolution for the console. Second, after it boots into KDE, you use YaST to identify your monitor and then select a screen resolution (and color depth, and frequency). Just like you would if it was installed on your hard drive.
There were some odd glitches. The biggest one was that SUSE Live didn't automatically mount either my hard disk partitions or my optical drives, and I couldn't find any way to mount them through YaST (not really surprising, since that's usually done during installation). IIRC, the last SUSE Live DVD I tried did detect and mount them. A newbie is probably not going to know how to manually mount his/her partitions!
I used BitTorrent to download the SUSE Live DVD and got some of the fastest rates I've ever seen. (Wonder if that was due to the tracker being in my home state, and probably most of the other peers being close?)
The last time I installed Mandrake/Mandriva, I was also confused by that blinking icon that told me that security updates were available, and then required me to pay money to get them automatically. After banishing that icon from the desktop, I learned you could get them for free. Pity Mandriva doesn't tell you right up front how and where to get them for free, instead of telling you that you can get them easily only if you pay up. I appreciate that Mandriva is a business, but that put me off. We're talking security updates here, for heaven's sake.
As far as Mandrake Move (briefly mentioned above) goes, the last time I tried it, it was crippled -- you had to pay for the version that saved a "persistent home" to a USB key. With all the other free live CDs out there with that capability (plus UnionFS, plus the capability to save to hard drive), why bother with Move?
GoblinX does have gorgeous artwork and a very interesting theme. I hope its authors ignore #67 and don't "sanitize" it for fear of offending someone. If you're offended by the sight of breasts, either get over it or move on to another distro.
71 • Re #70, 66 & 52 - SuSE live DVD (by Robert Fortune on 2005-10-12 06:53:29 GMT from United States)
I went back to the SuSE v.9.3 live DVD. On my system it boots into a 1024x768@60Hz desktop (as opposed to v.10.0 which boots into a 640x480 desktop even when I choose 1024x768 at bootup, i.e. F2 -> F3). With YaST I can then manually change the resolution, choosing a generic LCD monitor with 1280x1024@60 Hz resolution, and this setup is in fact accepted for the next session. Good for v.9.3, it does look nice.
When I go through the identical procedure with v.10.0 the "configuration failed". I tried a dozen different manual settings for video card and monitor in v.10.0 with YaST (which is really difficult to do because the text is almost impossible to decipher at 640x480 on a LCD display the native resolution of which is 1280x1024), all of them failed. No way of getting anything other than 640x480.
As I said, I've put live CD's through my system ad nauseam, and I have a sense of what constitutes an acceptable standard in video hardware recognition and configuration for live Linux distros in late 2005. In my opinion, the SuSE 10.0 live DVD is a shoddy job; the folks at SuSE ought to be embarassed about it. One man shops (e.g. the majority of the distros that I rated highly in my last post) can do a better job.
Cheers,
Robert
72 • SuSE - Mandriva (by ben on 2005-10-12 10:21:17 GMT from Germany)
Hm I began using Linux with a SuSE 7.0, they got somewhat constantly better up to version 8.2 After this I got more and more disappointed, things that made no problem with one version produced issues on another version on the same hardware. 9.2 was the first Linux that froze on my system. In 9.3 the same bug letting freeze my system persisted (although reported twice from me). Deactivating hotplug did the trick in 9.2 and 9.3. The speed of SuSE and Yast decreased with every release. So I tried Mandrake 10 and 10.1 and they were on my system both faster, more reliable and less buggy. Weary of the updating every half a year I tested Mepis, then SphinxOS (R.I.P.) and now I run a Libranet system. I'll stick with it, I think. I'll install a mandriva as well for the comparison.
An interesting thing I found when comparing SuSE and Mandrake was the amount of patches that were required for SuSE or Mandrake. SuSE had some 2 GB at a given time, Mandkrake in the same time 1.2 GB. If I assume that the security issues were the same for both, the difference has to be made out of bugfixing. Both Distros came with around 3000 packages, so they were comparable in every respect. I calculated only the full rpm's.
I also "felt" the difference in quality using the distros. I am curious if the new community concept of SuSE may reduce the bugs.
73 • Reply to linux hungry (by tuxfan on 2005-10-12 14:22:14 GMT from India)
Hey linux hungry:
1) Go to KDE menu>Run command, type kappfinder. Scan for non-kde apps and check the ones u want to be included in the kmenu.
Also type update-menus in terminal.
2) As for Opera, I think ure download was fine. I guess the opera ppl have stripped down their browser.
Hope this helps. Try asking ur questions at linuxquestions.org, debian forums and #debian channel in freenode too - they're all very helpful guys I think, especially debian people.
74 • SUSE 10.0 DVD (by IMQ on 2005-10-12 18:00:46 GMT from United States)
For whatever reasons, I could not install it on one of my PCs. The installer kept telling me that it could not read/find a number of files. However, when I ran a check on the DVD using the check your CD/DVD option, it told me the DVD was OK. I tried to at least 4 times but no cigar!
So, I downloaded the CD set overnight and at the moment installing it. Just finished CD1 installation and ready for reboot...
75 • Tiny Sofa DOCS? (by Dr. David Johnson on 2005-10-12 18:50:07 GMT from United States)
Has anyone had any luck in finding any substantial docs for the Tiny Sofa distro (any flavors)? I can find a few release notes but no thorough docs. Thanks.
And thanks for the tip on KCPentrix (#66), I had not heard of that one!
And based on good feedback on stux, I plan to try that one too!
Happy running a website on Trustix on an old PII with only power and network cable (no video, keyboard, and mouse), and 2 open ports (80 for web and 22 for ssh for admin)!
Best wishes to all,
Dr. David
76 • Re #73 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-12 19:45:10 GMT from Netherlands)
1) Go to KDE menu>Run command, type kappfinder. Scan for non-kde apps and check the ones u want to be included in the kmenu.
Also type update-menus in terminal.
Don't forget to run update-menus in a *root* terminal! Otherwise you'll get double entries in your Debian menu. It's easy to correct, but better not make the mistake in the first place (unlike me ;) ).
2) As for Opera, I think ure download was fine. I guess the opera ppl have stripped down their browser.
No they haven't. I'm using Opera 8.5 at this very moment, and the RSS and chat are very much present. But I still suggest that you take a look at http://www.debian-unofficial.org/. They provide an Opera package in their repository, so you don't have to download the deb yourself. But you should first purge your original install, as their install uses different settings.
77 • RE: SUSE 10.0 DVD Update (by IMQ on 2005-10-12 20:55:53 GMT from United States)
Well, the CD-set installation complete with only one package (I believe it was kde development something) was not installed. Then I followed the 'Hacking OpenSUSE' from
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/
to get the multimedia/DVD playing capabilities enabled.
Looking good so far.
That's was my experience with SUSE 10. :)
78 • SUSE Live DVD and LCD monitor resolution (by eco2geek on 2005-10-12 22:24:28 GMT from United States)
#71: If you feel like trying something else to get a decent LCD screen resolution, as per an article in the SUSE support database, try stopping the X server from a console with "init 3", run "sax2" from the console and configure your monitor/screen resolution, then restart X with "init 5" -- that might work.
Or just move on to another live CD that gives you the results you desire automatically. :-) I personally suggest Kanotix (a Debian-based Knoppix derivative) for installing permanently on your hard drive.
79 • KORORAA (by RobNyc at 2005-10-13 00:33:38 GMT from United States)
Kororaa is gonna be the best distro.
80 • Stux, Slackware and about difference of tastes (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-13 02:08:36 GMT from Italy)
Encouraged by Robert Fortune enthusiastic opinion of Stux, I decided to give it a go: what a disappointment!
A kernel 2.4.26 in October 2005? It doesn't even support much of my hardware.
What a far cry from the simplicity and effectiveness of Slackware proper. I was logged in as root in a KDE without panels (I soon found out that they are "hidden")
Trying to configure everything was a frustrating experience: pppoe worked at first, but it didn't work at reboot. Trying to activate Nvidia from Stux control center resulted in a broken X configuration...
By that time I had really enough.
Concluding:
1)It is all a matter of taste. For me nothing beats Kanotix as a LiveCD and no derivative beats Slackware proper (Vector is a decent one)
2) Stux might become good enough one day. Trouble is, I know my fellow Italians: they start an OSS project and they have enough of it before it is complete.
81 • Re #80 - Stux & slackware (by Robert Fortune on 2005-10-13 08:07:08 GMT from United States)
Sorry you weren't happy with stux. Let's see what others have to say.
Kernel 2.4.26? That's what slackware 10.0 was using, and the most recent version of slackware (v.10.2 from Sept. 05) uses 2.4.31. Slackware cherishes stability above everything else, hence they go with kernels that have been very well tested.
Logged in as root - that's common practice in live CD's, the majority of them do it, including, I believe, Knoppix and Kanotix. You can set up an ordinary user easily enough if you wish.
I like the fact that in stux the KDE panels are hidden by default; that's always the first thing I do with any new distro - get that clutter out of the way.
You certainly didn't last long with that distro :-)
Yes, Kanotix is excellent, racier than Knoppix but potentially less stable, being rather cutting edge. I agree with you on the excellence of Debian and slackware. I'm beginning to use straight Debian now but I'm still reluctant to install straight slackware. I prefer to explore slackware derivatives instead and think rather highly of Vector. I quite liked the Slapt package management that Wolvix offers; it's a clone of Debian's apt-get. It would be nice to see that included in other slackware variants or in slackware itself.
Cheers,
Robert
82 • RE: 81 (by IMQ on 2005-10-13 14:21:38 GMT from United States)
Just a correction about Knoppix and Kanotix: neither logs in as root. The root console is available for you to do stuff that requires root access.
83 • Ubuntu and Kubuntu (by Rugantino on 2005-10-13 17:16:47 GMT from Italy)
Breezy (Ubuntu and Kubuntu) are out. Did somebody manage
to download them? I could not so far (both BitTorrent and ISOs).
Too much traffic and too few nirrors I gues...
84 • Ubuntu and Kubuntu (by Ed on 2005-10-13 18:49:12 GMT from United States)
I was able to download them no problem. Gave them a run and there have been improvements, however, it still took more than 30 minutes to get up and running. The Debian Pure disc installs in 7 minutes and apt-get to testing or unstable takes an additional 10-15 minutes. But that only matters to us junkies who install operating system everyday. To an everyday user, 30 minutes isn't bad.
85 • Re: #81 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-13 19:11:26 GMT from Italy)
Hi Robert
Don't be afraid to install Slackware: you'll find it surprisingly easy. It was one of the first distros I installed as a newbie. Besides 10.2 is one of the very few distros where everything works for me out of the box or with very little tinkering.
86 • Kubuntu (by Tim Robinson on 2005-10-13 19:33:14 GMT from United States)
I dl'd it at reasonable speed using ktorrent. Install took nearly an hour, and then I find a very nice desktop. Like the speed and feel, but there's one hitch:
NO ROOT ACCOUNT!
Everything Root needs to do must be done using a cli, and since there is no root account, SU doesn't work. I had to switch back to Yoper in order to edit Kubuntu's FSTab file so I could access my Windblows drive.
Bah!
87 • Re: Kubuntu (by Ariszló on 2005-10-13 20:55:17 GMT from Hungary)
Edit your config files with
sudo kwrite
or type
sudo su
in Konsole.
88 • Kubuntu 5.10 (by Tim Robinson on 2005-10-13 21:06:03 GMT from United States)
Thanks, Ariszlo, I'm still new at this and didn't know how to use the sudo command. I'll try it.
Looks like I'll be changing distros as the Yoper site went down days ago, and now there is nothing at www.yoper.com
What a shame. They had a good distro there. Fast, and light, even with KDE, since it all fit on one CD. Anyone out there know how I might get in touch with other Yoper users? Their forum was on the same domain. The problem was that one of the major players got recruited into the Open Suse project.
Thanks again for the quick answer.
Tim
89 • SuSE EVAL or OSS (by Phantasmathos on 2005-10-13 21:40:21 GMT from El Salvador)
He guys, can sombody explain the diference between SuSE EVAL and SuSE OSS? Why two diferennt OSs and isos? I have SuSE 9.3, then I need to upgrade to Eval or to OSS? Please some help, I really don't undersatnd well this topic.
P.
90 • Re:SuSE EVAL or OSS (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-13 22:31:13 GMT from Italy)
They are basically the same thing, except that Eval comes with all the commercial plugins: RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader, Java, Flash...
Except if you have moral objections to "non free" software, I suggest that you use Eval (which is BTW the updated equivalent of SUSE 9.3)
91 • EVAL or OSS? (by Phantasmathos on 2005-10-13 22:43:15 GMT from El Salvador)
Thanks a lot!
And one more question: if I use OSS to upgrade, I will loose all the non-GPL packages in my actual desktop?
(Damn!... with some problems, I allready dowload the 3 first CD isos of OSS!!!)
P.
92 • Re: #91 • EVAL or OSS (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-13 23:10:32 GMT from Italy)
"And one more question: if I use OSS to upgrade, I will loose all the non-GPL packages in my actual desktop?"
Not necessarily. You must be careful what YaST wants to do: don't allow: "delete unmantained packages"
Best upgrade while you are logged in SUSE 9.3: YaST has an option for that.
93 • Thanks for the linux help! (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-14 00:53:31 GMT from United States)
The advice on the menueditor, kappfinder, update-menus, nvidia setup instructions, and debian chatroom were all great!
Now I have uninstalled opera and reinstalled from from the unoffical source (added to my apt sources list) it installs fine but will not run....I think I might have bumfuzzled something up unknowlingly. I have also compiled 2 packages besides the nvidia driver! asciiaquarium(it's a ascii screen saver where fish swim on your screen and are sometimes eaten very interesting and unique I lso have compiled ktorrent...I will tell you that I had a lot of problems at the start I had no idea you had to install developement packages to compile some software....ohh well after 3 hours of hard work and frustration I did get the 100k screen saver to compile kpackage compiled in a few minutes after I got the problems ironed out.
I'm working on converting my copy of neverwinter nights platnium to linux it's working 1/2 way now.
My system seems be becoming more unstabe now though. It crashed several times while running synaptic it's also leaving leaving strange marks on the screen pretty often they don't clear when I refreash the screen eitherbut do reset when I log out and back into kdm I think they may be affects from the nvidia driver I compiled or might have something to do with the fact that the kernal running is the i386 instead of the k7.
thought i'd post a little bio still needs to flesh out.
http://www.geocities.com/kingfish600/LinuxHungry_page.html
94 • Yoper (by Ariszló on 2005-10-14 05:58:13 GMT from Hungary)
Tim Robinson wrote Looks like I'll be changing distros as the Yoper site went down days ago, and now there is nothing at www.yoper.com
At http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=372127
Tobias Gerschner writes:
due to a recent software upgrade the server of yoper insists to work properly. It is now down for unscheduled maintenance which also includes complete new system installation and configuration of the web-ends.
Meanwhile, you may get in touch with other Yoper users at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/f57
95 • Eval or OSS (by Phantasmathos on 2005-10-14 07:20:46 GMT from El Salvador)
Thanks for the help!!!
My SuSE 9.3 is running in an old (and rare) Intel.DotStation, with Celeron Coppermine 1.0 and 128 MB of ram.
AND is one of the few distros that can recognize and use/fix all the old hardware (only Slackware, Mandrake and Ubuntu can do de same). Is quite slow but is totaly fuctional now (Slackware run better but I'm not skillfull with it).
If somebody have another IntelDotStation and want to exchange info/experience we can talk: phantasmathos@yahoo.com
BYE, and thanks again!!!
96 • RE: #95 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-14 11:18:38 GMT from Italy)
Always glad to help :-)
97 • Mandriva ONE YEAR release cycle ! (by Leo on 2005-10-14 13:15:12 GMT from United States)
Does anyone care about Mandriva's announcement of a 1 year release cycle ? It sounds pretty bad to me. One year is too long in the linux world, where support for your peripherals is given by the OS, not the vendor. So, if you buy a new machine in the next few months, chances are some of your hardware will be supported in Mandriva almost 1 year later !
Unless they plan to do upgrades in six months. But they will need a massive upgrade. If that's it, I don't mind. Otherwise, I'll be switching to some other distro six months from now ...
Opinions ? Anyone has any more info ?
98 • What a great week! (by William Roddy on 2005-10-14 14:01:31 GMT from United States)
This is a TERRIFIC week!
It's always exciting to see how Kano puts the latest touches on KANOTIX. I'd been waiting for that distro and while I was waiting, I installed Fedora Core 4 and updated it. It's running beautifully. Then Ubuntu came out in three flavors and I had to try all of them. And they all work beautifully. (By the way, my definition of "beautiful" is any distribution that works 10 times better that Windows).
I'm excited about trying SUSE because it's an old friend and once was a staple for me and I've heard so many really positive things about the new one and 9.3.
CentOS is receiving some rave reviews from friends of mine who need enterprise systems that's the quality of RHLE, but free.
And now, KANOTIX. It's fantastic. (Someone said it has the "potention," I believe was their word, for being unstable. But it's not, nor has it ever been.) What is an old man with an old machine supposed to do?! It's like Christmas! And now someone has given me the urge, the itch, the courage, to try Slackware. I recently installed Vector and it's very, very good.
To make matters more complex, I also installed PC-BSD, for a first look at a *BSD distro for myself and it works great and will be a real contender soon, I think.
This is all almost too much to bear. How can ANYONE be negative this week!? There is so much good in the Linux world, so many good posts here, so many friends who meet and post here. I always learn a lot, with each issue of DW, with each install of a distro.
I know this has been posted before, but it recurs, so I'm just putting it here for those who missed it:
* For UBUNTU, if you need customary root access, simply do this:
Step 1
1. Go to a command line.
Type 'sudo passwd root'
Hit enter.
Fill in the password, as requested.
And that's it.
If you can't live without Ubuntu access to a root gui session, simply complete Step 1, then do:
Step 2:
Go to 'Administration >Lognin Screen Setup' and click.
You'll be asked for a password. Your original password will work.
You'll be met with a menu where you click on the tab 'Security' (well-named). in the 'Security' menu, check one box, 'Allow root to login with GDM.'
UBUNTU does not recommend doing either of these things. I believe their reason is a good one: security. They ship the distro with all ports turned off and with no direct root access, other than 'sudo' because they want it to be as secure as possible, out of the box.
However, if you're a tinkerer, as I am, and security is not a paramount issue, Step 1 and Step 2 should resolve the most commonly-heard objection to Ubuntu.
It's an excellent distribution(s), as are all the others mentioned.
Please don't be impatient with the remarkable process of open source software. Each distribution improves with each successive release. There is always progress. Never stasis. And there is always something new to try, even if it's an new version of an old distribution.
Thank all of you for all the wonderful tips and comments this week. And thank you, Ladislav.
Bill
99 • Kanotix (by Bob Buick on 2005-10-15 01:05:02 GMT from Australia)
After several years of RPM hell with Mandrake, I moved to Mepis a year ago. After many months of their over-conservative up-grades, I moved to a HD install of Knoppix, while I hung out for the much over-hyped Kubuntu (GNOME's too much like Windows XP). Spent all yesterday trying to make Kubuntu work (2 hours alone trying to get into the device manager as root). Last night, I checked Distrowatch just as Kanotix appeared. Downloaded it overnight and installed it on the HD this morning. The install was as sweet as a nut, the system is comfortable, fast and comes with all the tools you need (except privoxy, synaptic, OOo.org and whatever KDE extras you personally like). It's taken me 7 years of Linux to get here, but it's been worth the wait!
100 • Re: Kanotix (by Ariszló on 2005-10-15 07:00:10 GMT from Hungary)
If you don't like rpm hell, you won't like Debian's dependency hell either. You pick some nice application in Synaptic only to be told that it won't be installed. Dependency hell is a common feature of both dpkg and rpm.
101 • RE: #99• Kanotix (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-15 07:15:33 GMT from Italy)
Hi Bob
I also find Kanotix a supreme distro, and it is also my favourite among the hundreds I have tried. I'll say more: 2005-04 is going to be a major improvement over previous versions, as 2005-01 was over the "Bughunter" releases.
But I must confess that I found Ubuntu Breezy improved over the previous version I had tried (not sure which one)
It took me some time to configure most things the way I like (getting root login and getting rid of their theme and background was some of the first things I did)
Also what I expected to work the Debian way very often didn't.
I definitely don't like their drums and that by default there aren't any icons at all (but all my partitons are on the desktop: 7, not counting / and swap)
I am also going to try their KDE, the last time I did I disliked it intensely.
I understand that Ubuntu is definitely geared towards newbies, and for them it might be good.
And finally, about Kanotix, have you tried this gorgeous wallpaper:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=25587
102 • RE: #100 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-15 07:24:21 GMT from Italy)
Ariszló,
what you say can be true only if you use Sid, and normally not for a long time. Definitely it isn't true if you use stable and normally if you use testing.
Besides people don't use dpkg most of time, but apt or aptitude.
You use dpkg only to manually install something or to intervene if apt fails.
103 • Sort criteria (by Marc on 2005-10-15 11:27:32 GMT from Canada)
Hello Ladislav, just want to know if its possible to have in
your page rang criteria a sort based on distro of origin.
Could be Debian, Mandriva, Fedora, Slackware etc ....
Would be nice to know where Linux is heading.
Thanks.
104 • Re: #102 (by Ariszló on 2005-10-15 20:47:55 GMT from Hungary)
Yes, it's more true of Sid than Sarge.
As for dpkg or apt, dependency hell is indifferent to the command you are using. What I wanted to say is that any distribution that checks dependencies before installing a package is doomed to suffer from dependency hell. No matter whether its package format is rpm (handled by rpm or apt-rpm) or deb (handled by dpkg or apt or aptitude).
105 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-10-15 23:19:45 GMT from United States)
Calling the occasional hiccup that occurs - usually when pinning or running unstable - a "hell" is I suppose relative. But the issues of chasing after one dependency then another than another of which former rpm users complain are rather more difficult and much more frequent compared to those minor problems that Debian users occasionally encounter. I suppose having no dependency checks is "heaven"? Not knowing you need a library until you try to install a package and it fails is all fun and games? Or, let's just install every library under the sun - whether it's needed or not - just in case?
106 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-10-16 09:47:16 GMT from Hungary)
Anonymous wrote: I suppose having no dependency checks is "heaven"?
Yes.
Not knowing you need a library until you try to install a package and it fails is all fun and games?
It's not like that. You install Slackware and everything is fine. Then you get some third-party packages from http://linuxpackages.net where you are told what extra packages you need to install. But more often than not, you already have the required libraries.
107 • Robert Storey' Ubuntu review (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-16 15:42:20 GMT from Italy)
"Others will hesitate, experimenting with distro after distro, seeking the "perfect operating system" but never quite finding it. The huge collection of Linux/BSD systems listed on DistroWatch is a testimonial to how difficult it is to make a decision. However, after spending weeks trying to get XYZ distro to recognize your wireless card, it's really nice to have an OS that just works. Spending your life wandering in search of Utopia can have consequences. One might keep in mind the words of Aneurin Bevan... We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
I might understand it wrong, but the good Robert Storey seems to suggest here: "why look any further, when Ubuntu is so good?"
Well, I want to say a couple of things about it:
1)One's favourite distro is a moving target. Until less than a year ago I would swear by SUSE and Libranet. Libranet disappointed me because of the high cost. At the moment it isn't even available.
Of SUSE I finally got enough: too many bugs when it is released, too slow until 9.3, and bloated configuration tools like YaST now stand in my way. I welcomed OpenSUSE, but the first release after the change has brought me more bugs than the previous ones (and they are serious bugs, I can't find a workaround)
When Kanotix 2005-01 was released I saw the light :-)
So there is at least one distro for me.
In the meantime I keep trying lots of others: I find it a lot of fun.
2)Ubuntu: as I said in post #101 I find it improved, but definitely not my cup of tea.
Why? There is no straightforward explanation, I am just not in sync with the Ubuntu developers. The same is true of hundreds of other distros. On the other hand when it comes to Kanotix I feel as if I had written a wish list and sent it to Kano...
108 • Ubuntu article :) (by DrZak on 2005-10-16 15:45:01 GMT from Germany)
Very enlightening article, i just want to point out one thing. Author wrote: "....somebody does in fact pay for those CDs. The "somebody" in this case is South African multi-millionaire, Mark Shuttleworth, who generously donated US$10 million... "
I guess somebody has to pay for the bandwidth too :) Sometimes i event think those prices equal :)
109 • UbuntuReview sudo use (by Greg on 2005-10-16 17:23:57 GMT from Canada)
I'm biased. One of my favourite things about Ubuntu is sudo is set up by default and root is disabled. The reviewer seems to think this is a bad thing. He mentions that it is dangerous to run as a user who has extra security permissions. I agree with that. Ubuntu isn't like that though. It makes it easy to get extra permissions when you need them, but you don't have them all the time. It is not like running as root. It would be running as root minus the disadvantages with a bit more work to set up.
It is even better for me then switching back and forth between a normal user and root. I never have to worry about forgetting to switch back to my normal account. Once you learn about sudo it is just so much more useful and safer because it gives more control over the level of permission you give to other users.
If their was only one thing only I could take from Ubuntu it would be their work to encorporate sudo instead of switching to root for every task you need more permissions.
110 • Review: The Ubuntu 5.10 "juggernaut" (by Marcos Bovolon on 2005-10-16 17:39:23 GMT from Brazil)
Excellent review. I personally tested and confirmed all the comentaries inside this article.
I had installed Hoary and upgraded to Breezy and found the same problems. I also tried to install additional packages from Debian repositories and got package breakage.
Similarly my video card is a Radeon QY 7000 and experienced segmentation fault running glxgears command in the xterm.
Very clear and valuable information contained on this review.
Congratulations and keep this well done job on highs.
Marcos.
São Paulo, Brazil.
P.s. I still prefer other Debian distro and be awaiting for more mature Ubuntu with evolution on multimidia applications like embbeded mozilla-mplayer or Mplayer.
111 • Re: UbuntuReview sudo use (by Ariszló on 2005-10-16 18:12:50 GMT from Hungary)
Greg wrote: It is even better for me then switching back and forth between a normal user and root.
And I prefer real KDE's (not Kubuntu's) File Manager - Super User Mode. It's more convenient than sudo (which is like good old kdesu but without a root password) and much more convenient than switching between normal user and root.
112 • Ubuntu Review (by John on 2005-10-16 22:55:48 GMT from Australia)
The reviewer obviously missed the point of sudo, anyone who has ever used sudo understands that. He also complains about a lack of packages, but fails to enable the multiverse repository. Had the reviewer and others on here read the documentation that comes with the latest release of Ubuntu a lot of problems could have been avoided. All you have to do is click on the red life preserver on the top of your Gnome desktop, then click on the Starter FAQ Guide.
113 • Ubuntu Review - the community (by john on 2005-10-16 22:58:43 GMT from Germany)
I agree with most stuff of the review - except the "friendly community". The userbase there might be friendly, the Forum Staff (Admins and Moderators) is an unfriendly bunch of egomaniacs. If I need help with Ubuntu I go to other forums with more knowledgeable, more friendly and less dictatorial staff-members.
Just my opinon.
114 • UBUNTU JUGGERNAUT (on hold) (by Ying Hu on 2005-10-17 02:44:07 GMT from United States)
Actually, I've found Ubuntu-5.10 to be pretty broken, especially if one is expecting to "just work" (not). Ubuntu themselves make the root password to be the initial user account's password, and DON'T TELL ANYONE. If one changes the root password, the GUI controls in Gnome for things like Updates and Synaptic and 'Run as different user' DON'T RECOGNIZE THE ROOT PASSWORD and still continue to use the user account password, and they don't tell anyone that, either. Mozilla is broken - the rest of the suite cannot be gotten through Synaptic as Ubuntu changed some core library, but didn't account for the fact that the BROWSER, chatzilla, mailnews and other fundamental parts of the package couldn't use it. (Perhaps someone can suggest a working repository? Debian's doesn't do it.) Gnome's Nautilus is still buggy, but in a different way. It has crashed for me twice in several hours for MOVING UP ONE DIRECTORY. The 'little box' method of listing the path is a BAD interface decision as it cannot be copied/pasted/retyped in, and the workaround is undocumented (use the GO->Location menu or its keybinding). New Terminal and Nautilus windows won't remember resizings (Gnome). Foxfire/Mozilla don't remember the same selections for local file system navigation as the rest of the desktop (one click or two?). Synaptic/apt package dependencies for KDE are broken (perhaps that'll be fixed when Kubuntu 5.10 is ready). And so on. I haven't tried any of the 'great new features' yet because I've been so busy trying to fix broken stuff. To me this feels like a beta, not a release.
115 • RE: 114 • UBUNTU JUGGERNAUT (by IMQ on 2005-10-17 05:26:17 GMT from United States)
Sorry to disagree with your statement that "Ubuntu-5.10 to be pretty broken..."
If you use Ubuntu the way it is designed and something fails to work, then you can say it's broken. If you try to make it work the way you want it, then you're the one who break it.
Ubuntu is, without a doubt, getting better with each release. It is, like all the distros out there, imperfect. There are always bugs. Always had and always will. However, we can all help to make the distro better if each of us file a bug report whenever we encounter one.
A little tip for your problem with 'little box' in Nautilus:
Ctrl + L turns the 'little box' into Location where you can copy/paste/type
Hit Esc key and you are back to the 'little box'
So far I encounter only one bug. I want to do a little more testing to confirm the problem before filing the report.
Have a good day!
116 • The Ubuntu Juggernaut: Resistence Is Futile.... (by t.djokic at 2005-10-17 05:43:35 GMT from Yugoslavia)
Ubuntu is free (you can order CD to be send to you at no cost), Kubuntu is not - you must download it or something. Ubuntu is No.1 at DW Top List, Kubuntu is No.11. Since people like Gnome and KDE at about 50:50 ratio(?) why such difference? One more thing - if you want to test Kubuntu, you must download Live ISO. If you like it, you must download install ISO. Not very good idea. I am sorry, I don't like whole approach and strategy of Ubuntu project.
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Baltix GNU/Linux
Baltix GNU/Linux was an Ubuntu-based distribution designed primarily for Lithuanian and Latvian speakers, as well as other users from Europe's Baltic region. Besides standard software found in an Ubuntu release, Baltix also includes a variety of educational programs, games, vector graphic and diagram drawing software, WINE integration for running Windows applications, office clipart, and internationalisation features for the supported languages.
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