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1 • No subject (by vlada on 2005-10-17 11:54:49 GMT from Yugoslavia)
Another great DWW. Thank you Ladislav
2 • No subject (by cheetahman on 2005-10-17 12:16:41 GMT from United States)
Look for it every morning on monday
3 • Setting up wireless network on SUSE Linux 10.0 (by John on 2005-10-17 12:19:10 GMT from United States)
This shows just how far Linux has come, that you expected it to work out of the box, and were disappointed that it took the better part of a weekend to get it to work.
Just a year or two ago, you would have been shocked if it had worked, and would have been proud that it only took a weekend. I believe the change in attitude is the direct result of Linux getting better and better at such an amazing rate. We simply expect more out of it now, which is good, as it will push it even farther along.
I just loaded SUSE 10, and simply love it. I've used several distros over the years, and have grown weary of making things work. Now I'm ready for them to just work. I believe SUSE has done wonders in getting to that place.
If this problem/workaround is fairly common knowledge, I would expect that 10.1 will address it. From the changelogs, it looks like they've been quick to deal with reported bugs.
Lastly, this is the first time I've ever posted here, though I'm a regular visitor. You do a great job with this site, and I'd like to thank you. You're my first stop on Monday morning, and one of the first stops every other day of the week. :-)
John
4 • Ubuntu 5.10 kernel (by aa42 on 2005-10-17 12:32:16 GMT from Finland)
It's always easy to say "seriously underpowered kernel" and such, but AFAIK this seems quite a hoax. All the actual benchmarks I've seen point to 0-2% increase in performance when compiling with higher-than-i386 as the baseline. The code is already compiled to high performance execution on new processors, they're just not using the very few extra commands provided by i686&co (mtune, vs. march).
It's more just that geeks love to fiddle with settings and click all the "optimizations" on, without even knowing if they really affect anything or not.
5 • Debian release (by Ben Woods on 2005-10-17 12:32:17 GMT from Australia)
first time i have seen a definate release date for debian on a DWW that fare into the future!
I think this can only be a good thing for debian!
6 • Symphony Os (by Marc on 2005-10-17 12:35:42 GMT from Canada)
Did i miss something. I haven't seen
Symphony Os pass by and it's not on
the waiting list anymore. Any news Ladislav ?
Thanks again for another DwW.
7 • RE: 4 - Ubuntu 5.10 kernel (by ladislav on 2005-10-17 12:47:05 GMT from Taiwan)
I don't think I can agree with you. For one thing, Ubuntu's i386 kernel only recognised half of my 2 GB of RAM, so installing the i686 kernel meant a HUGE improvement on my desktop, especially since I tend to have many applications running at the same time.
Besides, if the performance increase was really only 0 - 2%, why would Ubuntu bother with building separate binary kernels for i686 and k7? I am not an expert in these matters, but from my experience an optimised kernel does make a noticeable difference in terms of desktop performance.
8 • re: #4 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-17 12:55:10 GMT from Netherlands)
I have to agree on this one with ladislav. Although I'm using Debian Unstable rather than Ubuntu, using the i686 instead of the i386 kernel, *everything else being equal*, really speeded up my desktop. I think 20% or so is a good estimate of the speed increase I had. I *really* noticed it.
9 • Ubuntu (by Ancient Welkiner on 2005-10-17 12:58:53 GMT from United States)
I make my living building and maintaining systems and networks, a large part of which is installing and maintaining operating systems. Twenty-five or so years ago I was forced (by the market) to go to the dark side (M$Windows). I could not understand why in the world anyone would want to pay someone for the privilege of testing their half baked software when there were much better systems available, but old Bill sold it to the world. I think that we can all agree that just because something becomes popular does not make it good. Human beings never cease to amaze me, I suppose it has something to do with the herd mentality.
Why in the world would anyone want to spend hours installing Ubuntu when you can install Mepis in 10 to 15 minutes and it just works.
My first Linux installation was Red Hat about eleven years ago. I have installed to HD every Debian related distro that I could download, and some that I had to buy, and every new version of Debian distros that came out in the last year,including Hoary and Breezy. I even installed Knoppix 3.8 to HD, just to see. Knoppix is probably the best LiveCD out there (and it should be), but it is not very good as an installed distro.
Back to Ubuntu. I like the Ubuntu philosophy, and I really like their earth tone colors and simple(I think elegant) theme, that everyone is complaining about. It is one of the very best looking distros that I have seen, but looks are only skin deep.
Why in the world do some people call it newbie friendly. Of all of the Deb distros of the last couple of years, Ubuntu, is the most difficult and time consuming to install and setup. I can install and setup pure Debian with the Debian Pure installer in one fourth the time and when I finnish, I have a pure Debian installation without the application package problems. I can install Kanotix or Mepis in one tenth the time or run them from LiveCE in 100th the time without having to download 2 CDs. Not to mention that they run more stable and give me less problems on a wide range of machines.
For my newbie customers and friends I recommend Mepis, Kanotix, or if they really want to jump in, Debian Pure, but not because of the color of the desktop.
My 4 cents worth.
wb
10 • Re: Ubuntu 5.10 kernel (by blacksun on 2005-10-17 13:00:03 GMT from United States)
I'd be interested in benchmarks if they are available. I installed the linux-k7 kernel after reading the Ubuntu review on Distrowatch, but I did not notice any discernible difference beyond a different splash screen when the kernel is first initializing. And I haven't been performing any resource-intensive tasks on my setup, so I am not exactly in the position to tell.
11 • Booting a liveCD from a partition (by Leo on 2005-10-17 13:02:09 GMT from United States)
I am reposting, my previous post seemingly got lost.
I tried to do something like this to boot KubuntuLIVE from a partition:
http://wiki.lunar-linux.org/index.php/Installation:No_CD
(just the section "Booting the ISO from a hard disk partition")
Besides creating the partition (as ext3), I made it bootable with fdisk. But I cannot boot from there, I get a lilo error, something like "unrecognized binary format". Any ideas ? I know many of you Tinker with these things. Bottomline is, my Mandriva 2006 is not burning CD's anymore and I need some other distro at least to burn stuff ...
Many thanks
Leo
12 • Ubuntu 5.10 and Debian Pure (by Jeff on 2005-10-17 13:24:29 GMT from United States)
I gave Ubuntu and Kubuntu 5.10 a run this weekend and it seems to work well and I find the community friendly enough. But, it's still annoying to add all the usual plugins (flash, java, etc). Granted, for legal reasons Ubuntu doesn't offer these out-of-the-box. It also takes much longer to install than some other distros. For now, I'll stick with Debian Pure since it installs quicker, includes the plugins, and is fully upgradeable to Debian unstable if I want cutting-edge.
13 • Incorrect link point to last week issue (by Eric on 2005-10-17 13:33:50 GMT from Canada)
Please note that the link " Read more in this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly...." point to last week's DistroWatch Weekly,
but the link at the beginning correctly point to the new issue.
14 • Notes on Ubuntu (by AQ on 2005-10-17 13:37:10 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu only took 40 minutes to install when I tested it.
It is committed to the free software movement. Mepis is not.
Both Mepis and Kanotix are KDE based, Ubuntu is Gnome based.
Debian Pure is too new, and hasn't made a name for itself that anyone would recognize.
Ubuntu is clearly meant to be an installed distribution.
Mark Shuttleworth has gone to space.
But what do I care, I use Fedora.
15 • Sloooow Page Load (by Ancient Welkiner on 2005-10-17 13:44:23 GMT from United States)
Ladislav,
What's happening in Green Bay?
DistroWatch is taking forever to load and never finishing!
Dallas Mirror is zipping along just fine, but the Comments update seem futher behind. Guess there is a problem with the Green Bay Server.
Great Weekly as always. Thanks for all your work..as always,
wb
16 • Setting up wireless network on SUSE Linux 10.0 (by meltdown on 2005-10-17 13:52:07 GMT from Canada)
I use a different distro with a different wireless card, but I get so much out of solutions offered by linux users. I would NEVER have gone in that direction (ie. assign static IP to ethernet), mind you, I'm a intermediate user without much 'networking' knowledge. Anyways, thanks for the tips and to any others who spend a weekend working on something, please document it. This adds to the learning curve and thought process of many users having to deal with linux issues. You'd be surprised how many others will appreciate it.
Keep up the good work...Everyone!
17 • Ubuntu kernel installation (by Niklas on 2005-10-17 14:07:32 GMT from Sweden)
Now you lost me ... Which of the kernels available in Ubuntu would you choose for an AMD Athlon XP system?
18 • RE: 15 - Sloooow Page Load (by ladislav on 2005-10-17 14:15:22 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, I noticed that too. From what I've been able to find out it looks like there is some heavy port scanning going on on the server. The FreeBSD kernel is giving me a message saying "Limiting closed port RST response from 264 to 200 packets/sec". The pf firewall is up and running, so I just hope that the intruder goes away soon.
19 • SystemTap looks great!! (by Ed Borasky on 2005-10-17 14:26:11 GMT from United States)
Buried in the news this week was the fact that the CentOS 4.2 release contains a "technology preview" of SystemTap. This is highly significant for a couple of reasons:
1. Yours truly gets off on tools like that, and this is the first I've heard of SystemTap. :)
2. When did CentOS, a supposedly "stable as RHEL" distro, start including "technology previews" in their "releases"?
I'm a big fan of CentOS and the other RHEL rebuilds. I use them as practice environments for building my Red Hat administration skills, and I recommend them to people who want to be Red Hat compatible without encountering the slings and arrows of outrageous Fedora.
So ... I'm going to upgrade my CentOS partition and play with SystemTap. I'll post my experiences on http://linuxcapacityplanning.com.
Oh yeah ... next time the donation issue comes up, add a new project to the list of contenders ... http://moodle.org :)
20 • Linux port of Google Earth (by Patrick at 2005-10-17 14:27:53 GMT from Brazil)
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1401986683;fp;16;fpid;0
"A number of people are now working on a Linux port of Google Earth, but Rasmusse did not offer a release date."
21 • google numbers. (by Anton on 2005-10-17 14:35:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
while most people would agree that google is a useful tool, i am starting to feel cheated by google, their numbers just don't add up, for example i just did a search for kubuntu, and got 2,510,000 hits, great, but then i looked deeper and found the true number of pages found was only 459! how do google get away with this deception? one of the reasons i started using google in the late 90's, was because i was impressed by the large number of results it apparently found ?
22 • Reply to #17 (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-17 14:42:20 GMT from United States)
the kernal should end in k7 for the amd processer.
23 • google earth on linux (by crawancon on 2005-10-17 14:48:06 GMT from United States)
you may start loving me now.
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=3254
go here to make google earth work under wine.
:-)
::bows::
(ok, so there are some gotcha's... just tinker with it like we do with everything else. :-)
24 • Wireless networking in SUSE 10 (by Chris on 2005-10-17 14:54:20 GMT from Canada)
I just installed SUSE10 this past weekend and I am delighted with it. I got my wireless working (a netgear USB WG111V2) by using the ndiswrapper tool which uses the supplied Windows XP driver. I had it up and running in minutes. Native support would be better and I know we will get there.
25 • KATE OS (by IMQ on 2005-10-17 15:01:36 GMT from United States)
Does anyone have problem accesing the homepage. I haven't been able to access it for quite some time, since 2.0 release I believe.
KateOS seems like a nice distro, based on my experience with the LiveCD 2.0. However, the problem accessing the home page causing me stay away for now.
26 • Kubuntu breezy badger install & Mepis (by Rick on 2005-10-17 15:02:08 GMT from United States)
I installed Kubuntu this weekend. Here are my impressions:
-HATE the installer. It looks like the bad old days of DOS. Truly awful. I still
have my Mandrake 9.1 CD's, and the installer on that is so much better, it is
shameful. Mepis has a nice & fast installer, too. The Kubuntu installer asked
for the mount point (to determine where it would install), but I doubt new
users to Linux would understand that this is where it would install the OS.
'Mount' is pretty much Unix terminology. It would be nice if there were a
screen that confirmed the location that it would install the OS onto.
Also, it scanned ALL of my partitions and reported some kind of strange
error on ALL OF THEM. There was nothing wrong! Also, why in the
world did it scan partitions that it was NOT installing the OS onto?
There were also times during this scanning when the screen was just a blue background with a gray bar at the bottom.
Can't they put a message on screen, letting the user know what is happening?
-I like Adept, the package management software. Not really better that
Kpackage under Mepis, just different.
-It does NOT do good job of installing software if you are a developer. I had
to manually install Kdevelop, gcc, g++, and it still doesn't work...looks like
there's a symlink missing that is causing the ./configure to fail. Mepis did
this part right.
In summary, I like the community behind Kubuntu, the software repositories
seem well done, but the installer is awful and setting up some additional
software is very time-consuming. I staying with Mepis for now. If Mandriva
releases good, solid distros, then maybe I will go back to them, since
Mandrake was my intro to Linux.
27 • Ubuntu Release (by KingBahamut on 2005-10-17 15:08:38 GMT from United States)
Im really glad to see the Breezy Release at the top of the order. We at the Forums (Ubuntuforums.org) spend a large amount of time helping the userbase. Its been fun, but the release of Breezy gave us a larger amount of users to address. I feel personally that a few more releases , and a Windows Killer we will have.
28 • google earth on linux (by crawancon on 2005-10-17 15:13:38 GMT from United States)
you may start loving me now.
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=3254
go here to make google earth work under wine.
:-)
::bows::
(ok, so there are some gotcha's... just tinker with it like we do with everything else. :-)
29 • google numbers. (by Anton on 2005-10-17 15:14:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
while most people would agree that google is a useful tool, i am starting to feel cheated by google, their numbers just don't add up, for example i just did a search for kubuntu, and got 2,510,000 hits, great, but then i looked deeper and found the true number of pages found was only 459! how do google get away with this deception? one of the reasons i started using google in the late 90's, was because i was impressed by the large number of results it apparently found ?
30 • Google Earth (by Joel on 2005-10-17 15:16:32 GMT from United States)
Those critical of Google Earth not running under linux should understand it's history. Google purchased the technology from Keyhole, and that was a windows only program. I respect that they wanted to release it as soon as possible. Even if that meant a windows only version to start with. And as previously posted they are working on a Linux port. Here's another link:
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1401986683;fp;16;fpid;0
31 • Ubuntu 5.10 and Debian Pure (by Jeff on 2005-10-17 15:28:30 GMT from United States)
"Debian Pure is too new, and hasn't made a name for itself that anyone would recognize"
It's a modified sarge installer. Debian has been around far longer than Ubuntu. There's a reason Ubuntu based itself on Debian. The community resources for Debian proper are massive. However, the resources specific to Ubuntu are also very good.
"Ubuntu only took 40 minutes to install when I tested it"
Debian Pure with Gnome took 7 minutes on my setup. Athon XP 1700+, 256MB DDR. Not exactly the fastest machine.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Ubuntu. I think it's a great distro, but I prefer Debian proper. I also use SuSE 10.0 and PCLinuxOS .91. Debian is my primary, but I think SuSE and PCLinuxOS have some nice polish.
32 • Wireless networking in SUSE 10 (by Chris on 2005-10-17 16:02:47 GMT from Canada)
I just installed SUSE10 this past weekend and I am delighted with it. I got my wireless working (a netgear USB WG111V2) by using the ndiswrapper tool which uses the supplied Windows XP driver. I had it up and running in minutes. Native support would be better and I know we will get there.
33 • MyKnoppix --- 20051017 new update (by Canadian Dude on 2005-10-17 16:05:42 GMT from Canada)
Greetings a new update (fixed download) of MyKnoppix is available.
MyKnoppix is based on Knoppix 3.9, and it is a multimedia edition with Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Malyasian, as well as English modes.....
.... It's multimedia at it's best (video, sound, graphics).
PS: Like all Live-CD's it takes a while to boot (with the exception of Dynebolic 1.4.1 which is lightning fast....even faster than Windows & Linux & Mac...go figure)....
34 • google earth on linux (by crawancon on 2005-10-17 16:13:57 GMT from United States)
you may start loving me now.
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=3254
go here to make google earth work under wine.
:-)
::bows::
(ok, so there are some gotcha's... just tinker with it like we do with everything else. :-)
35 • Comments on various Ubuntu issues... (by jdong on 2005-10-17 16:16:01 GMT from United States)
(1) Kernel optimization -- I've talked with developers on several occasions about the seeming 'lack of optimization' in Ubuntu. There are benchmarks behind the developer decisions on optimizations. To summarize, safe optimizations are applied, and performance only differs by an insignificant percentage between Ubuntu optimizations and super-Gentoo style optimizing.
First, with the kernel, there is no measured difference in performance between the 386 and higher-level kernels, EXCEPT that the 386 kernel does not support HIGHMEM for systems with 768+MB RAM. Other than that, there is virtually no measured performance difference, unless you need low-latency realtime, in-kernel development, in which case you probably need to recompile your own kernel to accomodate your uses anyway.
Second, with the rest of the system, we're 486-architecture and pentium4-tuned, the safest and most sensible combination of optimizations. Additional features like sse, mmx, and other instruction sets are turned on at runtime if the base processor supports it. Optimizing the system any more does not make a difference.
jdong,
UbuntuForums administrator
Ubuntu Backports Team Leader
36 • zd1211 (by jdong on 2005-10-17 16:18:09 GMT from United States)
And as far as the zd1211, IIRC there were serious stability issues with the kernel module when I tested it -- sometimes it would lock up systems even without the chip, if the module was present. I've had terrible luck with getting a test zd1211 device to perform acceptably under Linux (SuSE and Ubuntu), so I can kind of see the reasoning for SuSE not including the module by default.
37 • Radeon Driver Bug (by Dominic on 2005-10-17 16:22:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thank you so much for fixing the Radeon bug -- it's taken me 2 months to track it down to probably being a video bug. It used to randomly happen about once a day so I thought it was a hardware fault (I'm a PC builder noob) until I found Totem would consistently do it within a couple of minutes.
Apart from that though I am now a HUGE ubuntu convert. This distribution 'Just Works' like no other, is aesthetically pleasing, has all the packages, and is sooo fast! Being a former KDE fan I tried Kubuntu on my laptop about 6 months ago, and it was okay, but not great. Now Ubuntu has made me learn to appreciate Gnome, and I actually far prefer it (last Gnome I used was v2.4).
Anyway, thanks big time for the fix.
38 • Some old news (by dostrak on 2005-10-17 16:28:38 GMT from United States)
I have a question? Is there any idea of how many people where trying to download Suse and Mandriva last week (well almost 2 weeks) to cause there server problems. Thats got to be a lot of people.
39 • woopsee (by crawancon on 2005-10-17 16:30:16 GMT from United States)
pardon redundant posts. site is lagging.
40 • Wireless Hell (by Robzilla on 2005-10-17 16:59:14 GMT from United States)
I agree with many of the comments here that Linux has come a long way. In the short year I have been a Linux user the growth and constant improvement is impressive. My first exposure to Linux was Suse 9.2. Pro and it was a bad experience for me a complete novice. I had hardware issues and Networking issues and of course wireless issues. Many distros later and many hours later I have never been able to get my atheros 802.11g wireless card working in any distro I have tried. I see a progress. But still no dice. The closest I have ever gotten was with Vector Linux and the help of the people on the forums and the guys that work on the distro. The support of Vector is superb! I got very close with there hope and tainting the kernel with the madwifi driver. However it never worked.
I do not know when it will work but I am waiting for the day that I do not have to boot into windows just to be wireless. It is something I have been upset with from my induction into Linux. When I am able to go wireless in Linux it will be the end of my windows partition and the constant money drain of application software and security software.
I know a lot of people like Debian and Debian based distros. I am one of them. Mepis was my favorite distro for a long time. Now I running Slackware 10.2 and I am really happy with it. It is way fast. Smokes XP and many other distros I have used. Stability that is better than anything else I have used! Configuration and package management is actually not difficult. Not quite as easy as Apt Get but Pkgtool is pretty cool. So everyone who is still somewhat new to Linux and has been intimidated about using Slackware I say give it a try. Give Vector Linux a shot first and then try Slackware10.2!!Linux just keeps getting better!
41 • Excellent Ubuntu review, Robert. (by DaveW on 2005-10-17 17:00:00 GMT from United States)
Robert Storey's Ubuntu review should become the standard for Linux software reviewing. It obviously came from intense use of the distro, an intelligent sense of what's important and what's not (ie, not the easily changed wallpaper), and contains tips and workarounds for the distro's flaws and deficiencies.
Most of all, it's by and for a grownup, without the petty and irrational rahrahs and boos that spoil so much of OSS reviewing. As far as I'm concerned Ladislav and Robert have become the Terrific Twosome of OSS journalism. Thanks and congratulations to both.
As far as Ubuntu is concerned, I tried the previous version because I admire their philosophy and goals, but for me Mepis remains the best I've found for my needs. Robert's review persuaded me that there's little chance that that has changed with the new release: exactly what a review should accomplish.
42 • Questions for Robzilla (41) (by DaveW on 2005-10-17 17:10:48 GMT from United States)
If you're wasting money on Win software just to make wireless work, why not just switch to a compatible wireless card? Just curious.
I installed Vector and its speed and lightness (with ICE) is very impressive. I'm spoiled by apt-get and Synaptic, though, and Vector's gslapt still seems far cruder and difficult to use. Once the developers get it refined, though, Vector could emerge as a real contender. You recommend starting with Vector and then going to full Slackware. I'm wondering what Slack has for you that Vector doesn't?
43 • Ubuntu 5.10 64 bit PC AMD64 version (by NJGuy on 2005-10-17 17:12:38 GMT from United States)
I decided to install and run the AMD64 64 bit version of Ubuntu instead of the 386 version as an experiment. Everything works fine, with two notable exceptions: 64 bit plug-in java support for firefox stinks and the 64 bit install of UT2004 demo behaves very strangely.
Unfortunately, I need the most up-to-date java plug-in for linux, so I will have to reinstall the 32 bit version of ubuntu this weekend. Older plug-ins work but behave weird. Oh well. What ever happened to the 64 bit revolution!?
I do have to say that the 64 bit solution was incredibly fast!
44 • Better and better (by William Roddy on 2005-10-17 17:35:20 GMT from United States)
I think the level of service DistroWatch.com gives the community improves with each issue. It is an exceptional Website in a universe of normalcy.
Robert Storey is an excellent writer and I think he would be, no matter what he was writing. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a journalist. And for this Website to have his services is a bonus to us all.
Ladislav's clear-headed, even-handed approach to the weekly material here is mature, optimistic, and useful, which attracts readers who are, for the most part, seriously interested -- no matter what their level of expertise might be -- in moving open source, GNU/Linux distributions, and *BSD forward.
The results are a community, subsets of software, and a Website that, individually and as a whole, constantly get better and better. That really gives us something to look forward to each week.
Thank you all, readers, writers, and posters, for all you bring to my life each week. You are a joy.
William
45 • SymphonyOS Delay (by Dark Leth at 2005-10-17 18:10:02 GMT from United States)
I apologise for the delay of Symphony Beta One. Ryan is still fixing some problems in the code, as to make it more usable for testers when it is put up. I can almost promise that you will see it in some form or another in 2 weeks.
Once again, I am sorry for the prolonged delay, and we thank you for your enthuisiasm.
46 • Jeff (by AQ on 2005-10-17 18:10:35 GMT from United States)
Try typing "debian pure" into google, and see what returns you get. The fact is that people are not gathering around it and pushing it to the top of the stack. Yes, Debian itself is a major distribution, and we all know that. Anyone wondering why Debian Pure is not held as a preference above Ubuntu simply needs to see the returns of a search engine to understand. Ubuntu has a powerful campaign around it, which means that people know it exists. They can even have professionally created copies of it sent to them for free. Don't split hairs because Debian Pure doesn't have a name for itself yet, and that is clear. Debian proper is not what we were discussing.
Also, I am not defending the install times of Ubuntu. Ancient Welkiner wrote that it takes hours to install Ubuntu. That is the lie I was responding to. In fact, read his post to get a grasp on what I was actually responding to.
47 • Symphony OS (by |TG| Mateo on 2005-10-17 18:12:27 GMT from United States)
Symphony is on the active list now....#302 or something. Really like the idea....
48 • sudo su? (by Anonymous on 2005-10-17 18:14:31 GMT from Italy)
just add an alias to have su actually do "sudo su"...
49 • Reply to #17 (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-17 19:17:29 GMT from United States)
the kernal should end in k7 for the amd processer.
50 • Robert Storey: great journalism! (by Charlot Pietri on 2005-10-17 19:58:48 GMT from Canada)
Robert Storey is always interesting and to the point.
51 • SuSE 10.0 WLAN (by Benjamin on 2005-10-17 21:27:03 GMT from Denmark)
To whomever wrote the tip: Me, my friend and some people on the openSUSE mailing list have had problems with WLAN DHCP, too. But we solved the problem either by killing and starting dhcpcd og doing "/etc/init.d/network restart". I don't know why it fails at boot... maybe because you have another network interface starting up. And I have NO idea why the dhcpcd has to be restarted. It's absolutely annoying.
Kubuntu's network administration was even worse, though. It just wrote crap into /etc/network/interfaces that ifup couldn't read. Splendid!
But everything is solvable with a few workarounds....
52 • Google (by klhrevolutionist at 2005-10-17 21:52:27 GMT from United States)
Well, thank you for the google comment.
It is not just one program they have kept from the linux world.
But most of their software is only available for microsoft.
So hopefully someone sees the comments & editorial that was written.
And ports their software to the linux communtiy.
Thanks.
53 • Re: Native Wireless for ZD1211 (by linuxrocks123 on 2005-10-17 21:54:55 GMT from United States)
http://www.zydas.com.tw/downloads/download-1211.asp
The chip manufacturer itself provides a Linux native, OPEN SOURCE kernel module. I have an Airlink101 USB wireless dongle based on the ZD1211 chip that I use with this driver. I have noticed some stability problems (mostly random lockups), but only when the device is physically plugged into the computer and only when I am fiddling with the wireless settings more than I should. There is a fork of the driver at http://zd1211.sourceforge.net as well which is attempting to work out the driver issues.
Kudos to ZyDaS for supporting Linux and open source! While other wireless chip manufacturers guard the specs on the chip and thus make even reverse engineering a driver difficult, ZyDaS writes a driver and releases it under the GPL. Support for the chip may be beta right now, but please do keep in mind that ZyDaS has released an open source driver for Linux when you make your purchases. Closed-source binary modules are as far as most other manufacturers go.
54 • Questions for Robzilla (by Anonymous on 2005-10-17 22:13:40 GMT from United States)
DaveW,
As far as the wireless card I have not bought any software to make it work. It has worked out of the box since I bought the laptop. I was talking about spyware and anti-virus software that I have to buy on a yearly basis that if I could use wireless in Linux I would not have to buy because I would only use Linux. Of course there is also Microsoft office and other apps you have to buy that you canget similar apps in Linux for free.
As far as Vector is concerned it is a matter of stability for me. In my experience on my computer Vector was not as stable as I have found Slack to be. I know they are essentially the same but for some reason Slack is more stable. As far as Vlapt I was having major problems with it. Every time I would use it the packages would not install or not update or there would be dependency issues. As far as installing packages I downloaded Vector was easy.
I really like Vector Linux and I really like the people behind the project. When they iron out some of the issues I have stated I will try Vector again. Heck when they release a new SOHO 5.2 or whatever their new release is I will definetily try it. I liked Vector so much I bought the Cd set from them. Lets just say they are in my top Three distros!! As far as being a distro that does not get as much attention as they should Vector tops the list. I mean Kanotix and Mepis are great but I think Vector is just as user friendly and a better more responsive help forum. As far as the distro its performance seems faster than the debian counterparts to me. But I am not trying to say one is better than another I am just saying that Vector is ussually not even mentioned as a user friendly distro and I think in my experience Vector was a lot faster and easier to set up than Ubuntu ever was. Not to mention trying to get codecs out of the multiverse, what a nightmare that was for a newbie!
So for me Vector got me into the Slackware way of doing things. Once I used the system for a while I got more familiar with the slackware package management and configuring x, knowing the right kernel, etc. So it was an easier segway into Slackware after using Vector. Both are great. That is what is great about Linux the choice!!
Robzilla
55 • Wireless Hell (by Robzilla on 2005-10-17 22:15:11 GMT from United States)
Dave,
Forgot to mention the wireless worked out of the box in Windows. It still doesn't work in Linux
56 • Ubuntu (by anon on 2005-10-17 22:17:53 GMT from Germany)
I don't know if I love or hate Ubuntu 5.10... I can't decide... although I use it.
57 • 46 • Jeff (by Ancient Welkiner on 2005-10-18 00:05:46 GMT from United States)
Jeff said "Try typing "debian pure" into goggle, and see what returns you get".
This is just proving my point. Try typing "WindowsXP" into goggle, and see what returns you get. Does this mean that XP is better than Unbuntu? I don't think so. I simply stated (post #9) that just because something is the most popular does not necessarily make it the best.
Also I realize that in #9 I was not very clear in the use of the terms "pure Debian" and "Debian Pure". When I said "pure Debian", I meant the "Debian Distribution" as opposed to distributions based on Debian like Ubuntu, Mepis, Kanotix, etc. I probably should have used the term "Debian proper" instead.
For 13 years Debian has been one of the most installed and beloved distributions of Linux (if not the most). That's why so many other distributions are based on it.
"Debian Pure", as I understand it, is not another distro based on Debian, but instead, is an alternate "installer" for the Debian distribution. Distrowatch has had at least one or two very good articles on Debian Pure, but they do not list it as a distro, I assume, because it is not a distro, but an installer for the Debian Distro.
In regards to my original statement in #9 (which was refferred to as a lie #46), I will restate it this way. Why would anyone spend hours installing a Debian based distribution, when they can install Debian itself in much less time using the Debian Pure installer or Debian Sid in much much less time using the Kanotix installer.
When a customer comes in with their box and says how much will it cost me for you to install and setup Ubuntu Linux on my computer, if you do not quote at least two hours labor, you will loose money. That is a fact. You can call me a liar if you like, but calling me names does not change the facts.
Another fact, if I give a capable customer(Linux newbie) a Mepis or Kanotix CD to take home and install, they often call me back and say OK it's installed and looks good, now how do I use it? On the few occasions that I have given customers Ubuntu CDs, they call back and say I just started the install, what is this? What do I do now?
Long live Linux and Ladislav,
wb
58 • No subject (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-18 01:28:42 GMT from United States)
I have no idea how installing Ubuntu took you 2 hours. I installed it on a machine with a 300 MHz Cyrix and 64 MB RAM and it took just under an hour. I'm not calling you a liar, only saying that my experience was vastly different. Note that Mepis couldn't even boot on this old relic. One disadvantage of a GUI installer.
As for "Debian Pure" vs. "Debian proper", that sort of confusion is precisely why Ladislav does not list that distro: they don't respect Debian trademark policies, using the name without permission, leading to confusion. And until they get in line, Ladislav (rightly, IMHO) won't list them.
59 • A beginner's experience with Ubuntu (by Ben on 2005-10-18 01:29:10 GMT from Australia)
http://henrytheadequate.blogspot.com/2005/10/henry-and-his-computer.html
60 • No subject (by Marc on 2005-10-18 01:42:02 GMT from Canada)
Thanks Robert !!! I upgraded to Breezy with a snap !!!
Except for some minor glitches, the whole thing went perfect.
Expect some Nvidia prob because of kernel change and also
some minor alsa and Totem prob. ( idont use totem and Breezy
re-installed it).
As for Symphony OS , i'm happy to know that they are still around.
Can't wait to see the new Beta One comming out for testing.
61 • DebianPure (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-18 01:44:06 GMT from United States)
I can't agree more I believe that debianpure shuld be considered a alternate installer....it apears to just add additional files from excluded repositories to enable more multimedia. I think that I could add the required repositories now with no difficulty but a few weeks ago it would have been difficult and wheather debian likes what debianpure does or not it does make a newbies install more funcinal.
62 • Umm... I'm AQ, not Jeff (by AQ on 2005-10-18 02:28:25 GMT from United States)
J"eff said "Try typing "debian pure" into goggle, and see what returns you get".
This is just proving my point. Try typing "WindowsXP" into goggle, and see what returns you get. Does this mean that XP is better than Unbuntu? I don't think so. I simply stated (post #9) that just because something is the most popular does not necessarily make it the best."
Ok, I'm going to assume you're not the sharpest tool in the tool shed. This actually doesn't prove your point. "Debian Pure" is a new take on Debian, which is not supported by Debian. It has not made a name for itself that casual users would be able to find it and use it.
"Also I realize that in #9 I was not very clear in the use of the terms "pure Debian" and "Debian Pure". When I said "pure Debian", I meant the "Debian Distribution" as opposed to distributions based on Debian like Ubuntu, Mepis, Kanotix, etc. I probably should have used the term "Debian proper" instead."
Again, Debian and Debian Pure are 2 different things. They aren't interchangable. One is supported by the Debian project, the other is not.
"For 13 years Debian has been one of the most installed and beloved distributions of Linux (if not the most). That's why so many other distributions are based on it."
I think everyone here probably knows that.
""Debian Pure", as I understand it, is not another distro based on Debian, but instead, is an alternate "installer" for the Debian distribution. Distrowatch has had at least one or two very good articles on Debian Pure, but they do not list it as a distro, I assume, because it is not a distro, but an installer for the Debian Distro."
What do you think you are saying here that we don't know already?
"In regards to my original statement in #9 (which was refferred to as a lie #46), I will restate it this way. Why would anyone spend hours installing a Debian based distribution, when they can install Debian itself in much less time using the Debian Pure installer or Debian Sid in much much less time using the Kanotix installer."
And I answered that. Ubuntu has a massive campaign behind it, and it is reaching people with offers of free CDs, and getting itself in schoolroom computer labs around the world. You simply have to realize that time is not a problem for most people (many will wait 10 to 20 minutes for their spyware infested windows box to open their favorite program). Installation time is not a big deal to these people. On top of that, they might agree with the philosophy, and the release cycle of Ubuntu. It is "cool" to be able to see a "new version" of a distro every 6 months. We all know that Debian strangled itself for years before this latest release. That obviously effects the momentum it has behind it with many people, and decreases its mindshare. There are many reasons why people would use Ubuntu or Kanotix instead during install, you just have to be ready to explore different forms of logic from your own to see it.
"When a customer comes in with their box and says how much will it cost me for you to install and setup Ubuntu Linux on my computer, if you do not quote at least two hours labor, you will loose money. That is a fact. You can call me a liar if you like, but calling me names does not change the facts."
But it installs in much less than an hour. How do you reconcile your inconsistency here?
"Another fact, if I give a capable customer(Linux newbie) a Mepis or Kanotix CD to take home and install, they often call me back and say OK it's installed and looks good, now how do I use it? On the few occasions that I have given customers Ubuntu CDs, they call back and say I just started the install, what is this? What do I do now?"
You really have to be kidding. Hitting enter a few times is somehow more difficult that hitting the "next" button in any graphical installer? This is some serious grasping at straws.
63 • Debian Pure (by Jeff on 2005-10-18 02:50:08 GMT from United States)
"Again, Debian and Debian Pure are 2 different things. They aren't interchangable. One is supported by the Debian project, the other is not."
My intention wasn't to start a flame war since I like both Ubuntu and Debian Pure. But it's obviously some haven't taken the time to hack the Debian Pure iso. Take the net scripts for example which are made available on the Debian Pure site along with instructions. All you need to do is download the Sarge installer, yes the SARGE installer and run one of these scripts. The scripts are nothing more than setting up a sources.list and apt-get'ing a bunch of stuff out of the main sarge repositories and a couple of unofficial sources for plugins. Take the plugins out and you have an official Debian system installed using an official Debian installer and using a script to save you from typing. How does that make it non-Debian? Because a simple .sh script was added? Debian Pure is not Debian-based, it is Debian.
64 • Debian Pure (by Nirmal on 2005-10-18 02:59:43 GMT from United States)
Hi all,
I'm not interest in joining this flamefest since I'm a SuSE user, but I'll say this. I added Debian Pure to my mirror back in August and it's downloads have outpaced Mepis and even Ubuntu which was at the top for a while. Distrowatch did list Debian Pure when it came out. Why they won't now is beyond me. Whether Distrowatch lists it or not, people are downloading it in large quantities and that's something that can't be ignored.
Enough about that, I think SuSE 10.0 is one of the best distros out there. I use it currently with apt and synaptic installed. APT is one of the greatest inventions. Combined with a polished distro like SuSE, that definitely works for me!
65 • No subject (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-18 03:55:19 GMT from United States)
It does not matter whether Debian Pure is the greatest distro in the world or a steaming bowl of crap. Nor does it matter whether Debian Pure is 100% compatible with Debian - even just a few tweaks - or something completely incompatible. What matters is that they have named their project using a trademarked name. And Debian can't stand by for that.
It's not like RedHat attacking CentOS, et al for so much as mentioning RedHat on their site. That's certainly overkill. But to maintain a trademark, the owner of that trademark can't stand by while others infringe it. Debian Pure's infringement may be completely harmless. It may even be a boon for Debian. But for Debian to maintain its trademarks and the reputation that they represent, they can't have infringement like this happening.
I applaud Ladislav for refusing to list Debian Pure until they reach some agreement with the Debian Project.
66 • Re: Kate OS (by andrew on 2005-10-18 03:59:36 GMT from Australia)
> Does anyone have problem accesing the homepage.
No, I can't say that I do... I installed KateOS 2.2 (it's very nice!) and their website was up whenever I tried to access it.
67 • Debian Pure and Ubuntu (by Ancient Welkiner on 2005-10-18 05:15:33 GMT from United States)
Jeff,
I apologize for quoting your name by mistake in the previous post, and thank you very much for the additional information about Debian Pure (post 63). I agree with you 100%.
Nirmal,
Thanks for your info too (post 64). I'm glad to here that people are finding a good tool. As to why DistroWatch doesn't list it, I still think that it may be because the creator of Dabian Pure states near the top of his web page that this in not another Debian based distribution, but just an installer for Debian. Since DistroWatch watches distros and this is not a distro then what should they do? I did learn about Debian Pure from a very good article (I think by Robert) in DistroWatch Weekly...so thanks once again DistroWatch for all the wonderful info that you provide.
As for those with their long knives out for me, all I can do is take off my hat to you. When a customer comes through the door with an x,y, or z computer with God only knows what kind of hardware, if you can install Ubuntu in less than an hour with all hardware working and stable, then you are a better man than I.
I don't believe that I have flamed anyone or even been sarcastic to anyone. It certainly wasn't my intention. I only related my truthful experiences and opinion of a distro as it pertains to me and my work. I thought that the open exchange of ideas and experiences with distros was what this is all about. If someone is offended because I don't think Ubuntu is the answer to all our prayers, then I deeply apologize. But I really do like the colors and I love Gnome.
Long live Linux and Ladislav
68 • Off Topic (by klhrevolutionist on 2005-10-18 06:11:02 GMT from United States)
This KLAX deal is clean. I like the fact it comes with a lot of KDE goodies.
And also junk.
But is there a secret I don'y know ?
Why is there no installer ? I know, it's just for awing "awe"
Okay, now some linux user create an unofficial install script.
It is slack-compatible, so I don't see why it would'nt be good ?
REPLIES, ANY ?
69 • DebianPure (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-18 06:45:55 GMT from United States)
Whew didn't expect things to get this heated over debianpure and i'm not asking Ladislav to include it I can understand his point of view and Debians. As a linux newbie I guess that I do have a problem with someone saying that software should be free as in free speech and then quabbling about adding the name debian to your distro suddenly they start saying it's trademarked how can you be free as in free speech and trademarked? Outside of the trademark problems the only differences i've noticed between Debian and DebianPure is that the plugins (mplayer, flash, java, libdvdcss2, and w32codecs) are all included in DebianPure. Nothing big you can add these yourself from the unoffical repository. As for Ubuntu I downloaded the DVD version and have already given away 2 copies. While I'm not running Ubuntu right now (think i'll learn my way around debian first.) I don't see any problems with it and I don't think that the Debian comunity will crumble because of it either.
70 • Problem with ethernet wwireless card (by Henk de Jong on 2005-10-18 08:29:44 GMT from Netherlands)
You had problems with your wireless card. You solved it with a hard IP adres. Is not it the problem is (partly) caused by your (Linksys?) router? I have several systems on my notebook and if I try to connect with another system with the same ethernet card I get no connection. I "solved" the problem with rebooting the linksys router or selecting a hard IP adres.
NB. My router is configured as 192.168.50.1 because I wanted to install the new Suse Novell server. (?)
71 • Off Topic (by reddazz on 2005-10-18 10:04:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
Klax is not meant to be installed on your system. Its meant for people who want to checkout the latest KDE features without compiling/installing anything on their system. If you feel like you want something that can be installed on your hard drive, send a polite email to the devs.
72 • Re: DebianPure #69 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-18 10:21:20 GMT from Netherlands)
LinuxHungry, you make the common mistake to treat all so-called "Intellectual Properties" the same way. The very reason why this very term is misleading is that copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets are very different things, both historically and legally. "Free as in free speech" only refers to copyrights and patents (and EULAs :) ), which are the only things that can limit the software freedoms.
Trademarks are a completely different beast. Trademarks protect a name, ensuring that the name will stay recognisable because noone else may create a similar product with the same name. This doesn't mean the name isn't free. It means you have to call a spade a spade, and that you can't steal somebody else's product's name for your own and profit of their hard-earned recognisation.
The catch with trademarks is that the owner of the trademark has to *actively* pursue *all* cases of trademark infrigement it comes across. If not, the trademark will be lost and the name will fall in the public domain. The trademark owner is *not* allowed to let some people use his trademark for their own products and others not. It's a "everyone or noone rule": if the trademark owner allows one unaffiliated entity to use his trademark for their products, he will lose his trademark. And then if another company comes and uses that name for a product in a way that is damaging for the former trademark owner, he will have *no* way of defense.
Trademarks are *not* something wrong. They don't infringe on any right. You're still allowed to use a trademarked name, as long as you use it to refer to the product it rightfully refers to (i.e. as long as you call a spade a spade). Trademarks are there to protect unique names, to ensure recognisability in the market. The trademark owner gets then some rights, but they are balanced by the responsibility of pursueing *all* cases of infringement he comes across, with penalty of losing the trademark if he doesn't. And what's most important: the trademark owner *doesn't* have the right to selectively allow some unaffiliated entities to use his trademark for their products and some not.
73 • gnobian_ken00bie (by wam on 2005-10-18 10:56:19 GMT from United States)
I have no idea how installing Ubuntu took you 2 hours. I installed it on a machine with a 300 MHz Cyrix and 64 MB RAM and it took just under an hour.
You have to be kiddin me! But did it work? HMMMM???
74 • Another log on the fire (by AQ on 2005-10-18 12:46:38 GMT from United States)
You play the victim well with an ignorant comment like this. If you equate being able to install Ubuntu in less than an hour an indication of manhood, then yes, apparently, I am a better man than you. I also don't know how shoddy of a machine you are attempting to do these things on, but if you say you're a builder, I'm assuming you should be working on more modern hardware than a pentium II.
"If someone is offended because I don't think Ubuntu is the answer to all our prayers, then I deeply apologize."
You play the victim well with an ignorantlt backhanded comment like this. I didn't say that Ubuntu is the greatest thing on earth, or that you should think it is. You said you couldn't fathom how people could be using Ubuntu instead of these other faster installing distros. I listed many reasons why. It is really that simple. That wasn't an attempt to convince you that Ubuntu is the greatest, it was intended to show you that people have their reasons.
75 • Alternative to Google Earth (by BarkingOwl on 2005-10-18 15:18:58 GMT from United States)
NASA has something similar to Google Earth. It's called World Wind (http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html).
Yes, it only has clients for Windows, but it is open source, so should make it much easier for those with more brain power than me to port the code for a native linux client (rather than getting the Google Earth Windows client to work under WINE).
Oh, and thanks for another great issue of DWW!
Cheers!
76 • KLAX Installer? (by |TG| Mateo on 2005-10-18 16:04:14 GMT from United States)
Klax is based in Slax, so you could do a poor-man's install I guess. The Slax forums have a how-to for this method. This is not a method for those who need a graphical installer though.
77 • Re: did it work? (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-18 18:14:21 GMT from United States)
Yes! Sorta. It was slow as molasses. I mean "put on a pot of tea while Firefox opens" slow. I mean swapping every time you opened a menu slow. Unbearably slow. But it did work.
78 • Symphony OS (by |TG| Mateo on 2005-10-18 18:17:30 GMT from United States)
Ryan posted that Beta PR1 will be out within 48 hours.
79 • Re:77 (by LinuxHungry on 2005-10-18 19:05:01 GMT from United States)
I remember when I wanted one of those Cyrix setups a few years ago but was to poor to buy one (grin). Which flavor of linux runs well on it?
80 • Re:79 (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-18 19:18:01 GMT from United States)
Replacing GNOME with IceWM, Fluxbox, or FVWM but continuing to run Ubuntu it works just fine. But even Xfce4 is slow. And use maybe Midnight commander as a file manager. I almost immediately upgraded the RAM, but even then GNOME was very slow, though not swapping. The Cyrix is noticeably slower than a silimarly clocked PII. I'd use Debian on it now - I mean, I don't see a reason to use Ubuntu when you'll be using Universe for everything anyway. I've heard good things about Slack on old machines. And Gentoo. But I've been sticking with Debian/Debian-derived systems while I'm learning, so I can't speak from experience there. But Debian, with the right package selection, will run on anything.
(I'd really recommend a machine like that be used for a firewall or file server though. I'm just learning how to configure servers and such. I guess that's why I'm not so eager to jump to trying other distros. So much to learn without switching. But I know there's lots of good stuff out there.)
81 • Google (by Dewey D. on 2005-10-19 00:01:17 GMT from United States)
Any speculation on Google Linux?
I'd be afraid, if I were microsoft.
82 • Rant about Debian Proper (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-19 09:58:27 GMT from Italy)
Between yesterday and today I downloaded DVD 1 of Etch, using jigdo-lite.
Everything went well until I actually tried to install it: the only availabe option was TO DELETE ALL MY PARTITIONS IN ALL MY HARD DRIVES.
Sorry for shouting, but I am really annoyed. Who has such idiotic ideas of experimenting with such crazy, useless things?
In the meantime nobody could care less if pppoe users are left out in the cold because there is no option for them in the installer. And yet the Libranet 2.8.1 installer, released August 2003, has such an option.
Not that the "oh so great" Ubuntu is any better than Debian from this point of view.
Now what amounts to is that I'll have to use a separate installer: trying if the daily built is any better, otherwise I'll have to use the stable installer.
83 • Follow up (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-19 12:44:16 GMT from Italy)
So I downloaded the daily build of the installer. Partitioning was OK, but the installation failed anyway because it was not possible to install initrd-tools. Fair enough, this is a bug I can understand. So I had to use the Stable installer.
Another oddity was that DVD1 contains everything needed to install Gnome, but not KDE. I had to use an internet connection because aptitude needed to download 15 packages, including the package KDE itself.
Now what sense does it make to put (part of) KDE in DVD2? They say that DVD1 contains the most popular packages!
84 • PHLAK "LittleBoy" [Beta1] (by ROBERT HUNTER on 2005-10-19 17:43:14 GMT from Australia)
Having tried the excellent Phlak [Profesional Hackers Linux Assault Kit], I thought I would download the "Littleboy Version" of this distro. So far there is little to complain about. Being less than 200MB means that it fits on a Mini-CDR, which is always a good thing-it easily fits into a shirt pocket. I also like putting such distros onto a USB bootable flashdisk. Iv'e had success with putting several small distros like Frodo [Slax], Damn Small , Mandrake Mini, etc onto USB. Littleboy also installed seamlessly onto USB. The script worked perfectly-not bad for a beta release! Everyone, give it a try. I haven't found much wrong with it, but it's early days yet.
85 • Ubuntu (by William Roddy on 2005-10-19 17:51:49 GMT from United States)
It seems to me that, despite the fact that some people don't like Ubuntu, some people do. Case in point:
"The Linux Journal Readers' Choice award is the latest in a line of awards that Ubuntu has won recently, including the UK Linux & Open Source Awards 2005, Tux magazine Reader's Choice 2005 for Favourite Linux Distribution, and Ars Technica's best distribution award." PRWeb, 19 October 2005.
And it also seems to me that pounding away at one's dislikes about Ubuntu isn't going to stop people from using it, nor, in some cases, liking it.
I want to repeat something I've said before. Every Linux distribution gets better with each release of it. As with the weather, if you don't like a distribution, just wait a while.
Linux distros change; the Universe chages. And like the Desadrata says, "The Universe [and Linux] is unfolding as it should."
William
86 • RE: Rant about Debian Proper (by Ippon on 2005-10-19 18:05:43 GMT from Finland)
"In the meantime nobody could care less if pppoe users are left out in the cold because there is no option for them in the installer."
Yes, I can see how that might easily confuse someone not familiar with GNU/Linux. But there is an easy workaround if you know some basic things about working in the console. You see, you can switch to a "virtual console" if you press a key combination "Ctrl-Alt-Functionkey". And there is a pppoe configuration tool called "pppoeconf" installed by default in Debian.
So how can you use these two pieces of information to set up a pppoe connection during the installation? After the installer has finished the first phase of the installation and rebooted your computer, do not proceed straight away to the post-installation configuration. Instead, press "Ctrl-Alt-F2" and... Lo' and Behold: you have just switched to a "virtual console". Congratulations!
Now you can log in using your newly created user name and password and then type "su" and press Enter to become a "super user" that has rights to make system-wide changes. Then start the pppoe configuration tool by typing "pppoeconf" and pressing Enter. After finishing the pppoe configuration, press "Ctrl-Alt-F1" to return to the original console and finish the post-installation configuration with a working pppoe connection.
There are also plenty of other interesting and fun command line tricks besides switching to "virtual consoles", and in time you will learn many of them if you stick around with GNU/Linux. : )
87 • Rescue CD (by Andrew on 2005-10-19 19:07:05 GMT from Canada)
Any suggestions for a rescue cd? I accidentally fried my GRUB menu.lst, and can't quite fix it.
88 • Is Debian Pure an infringement on Debian's trademark? (by Raven on 2005-10-19 19:09:21 GMT from United States)
Soemone needs to find a copy of the terms of using the Debian name. I was just debian.org and I couldn't find it. Because it seems to most of us that Debian Pure is not an infringment at all - it would be if it were actually a different distribution from Debian, which it isn't. As has been stated many times before, Debian Pure is just an alternate installer for Debian. Is this wrong? Does anyone have a link to a page that details the terms of Debian's trademark?
89 • Re: #86 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-19 19:47:09 GMT from Italy)
"Yes, I can see how that might easily confuse someone not familiar with GNU/Linux."
"There are also plenty of other interesting and fun command line tricks besides switching to "virtual consoles", and in time you will learn many of them if you stick around with GNU/Linux. : )"
Thanks for your willingness to help, but the person you describe above is not me: I wasn't born yesterday as a Linux user, and Linux is the only OS I have been using for years (while playing with virtually every other OS on earth). I know how to setup pppoe *after* the install, if necessary. (and then restart base-config)
I can't see *any reason* why pppoeconf shouldn't be part of the installer, and why you should instead resort to "virtual consoles" and nonsense like that. Virtual consoles should serve different purposes than basic tasks which should be in the installer in the first place.
Let's not be surprised when people say that Linux is nowhere ready for the desktop.
Unless you are happy that Linux stays forever an OS "for geeks only"
I am not. I give copies of Linux to a lot of "ordinary users" and I want them to use it.
90 • Debian trademark (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-19 20:35:37 GMT from United States)
The original policy statement:
http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19980306a
Reflections by the current DPL, Branden Robinson, on the need for clarification and refinement:
http://necrotic.deadbeast.net/~branden/blog/exuberance/Debian
(scroll to the middle of the page.)
91 • Ubuntu (by Jeff on 2005-10-19 20:44:09 GMT from United States)
"The Linux Journal Readers' Choice award is the latest in a line of awards that Ubuntu has won recently, including the UK Linux & Open Source Awards 2005, Tux magazine Reader's Choice 2005 for Favourite Linux Distribution, and Ars Technica's best distribution award." PRWeb, 19 October 2005"
Don't trust what other people have to say. If you do that, you might as well use Windows since 90% of the world says it's the best. Try the distros and decide for yourself.
92 • Re: #91 • Ubuntu (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-19 20:52:36 GMT from Italy)
"Don't trust what other people have to say. If you do that, you might as well use Windows since 90% of the world says it's the best. Try the distros and decide for yourself."
Very well said. With other words, don't be a lemming.
93 • 3 points re:trademarks & Debian (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-19 21:02:08 GMT from United States)
1. This has nothing to do with software freedom. Everyone is still free to use Debian source or binaries, in whole or in part, modified or unmodified. And they can make clear the Debian parentage but saying "Debian-based", "Debian-derived", or whatever.
2. Trademarks are good for Free Software. In the FOSS world, reputation is central and protecting the good name of a project is essential to building and maintaining the trust established in a community.
3. Trademarks don't allow the owner to pick and choose. DCC and Debian Pure may reflect nothing but positively on Debian. There's no criticism of these projects implied in Debian protecting the trademark. This issue is that to protect a trademark, you have to protect it in all cases, not just in instances that reflect badly on Debian. If they don't enforce trademark in these cases, they can lose their rights should someone unscrupulous seek to use the name to prey upon the community.
94 • ubuntu breezy 5.10 (by kevred on 2005-10-19 23:03:20 GMT from New Zealand)
Takes a while to install and seem,s to have raced ahead of Debian package wise so it will take awhile for Marrilat deb packages to catch up.
95 • Re: #89 (by Ippon on 2005-10-19 23:51:15 GMT from Finland)
"I know how to setup pppoe *after* the install, if necessary. (and then restart base-config)"
You do not need to set up pppoe before base-config in debian. You can just run the after-installation base-config, skipping the part where you set up repositories, and then run apt-setup afterwards. But in ubuntu you should do as I suggested in the earlier post -- it will save you from some unnecessary troubles.
"I can't see *any reason* why pppoeconf shouldn't be part of the installer"
And I cannot really see any reason why pppoeconf *should* be part of the installer. Please name one successful desktop OS that sets up networking during the installation. That being said, I have read some dev posts (in debian-boot) which strongly suggest that pppoeconf *will* be part of the next version of debian-installer. : )
"Let's not be surprised when people say that Linux is nowhere ready for the desktop.
Unless you are happy that Linux stays forever an OS "for geeks only"
I am not. I give copies of Linux to a lot of "ordinary users" and I want them to use it."
I do not give away free CD-ROMs and I do not pretend to be Santa Claus. If someone has a GNU/Linux related problem, then I am happy to give advices but that is as far as I am willing to go. Whether GNU/Linux will ever reach total world domination or whether it will even be some day ready for the desktops of "ordinary users" is of very little interest to me. Still, I think that William Roddy (post #85) has got the right idea: "Every Linux distribution gets better with each release of it."
96 • Ubuntu LiveCD for Macs.. (by Tommyr on 2005-10-20 01:49:59 GMT from United States)
Well 5.10 won't run on my G3 ibook 500 for some reason. Gets to a brown screen after loading stuff and halts. 5.04 worked fine. Ideas? I tried the various start modes listed on the screen....
Tom
97 • RE: #95 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-20 03:59:00 GMT from Italy)
"But in ubuntu you should do as I suggested in the earlier post -- it will save you from some unnecessary troubles. "
Not in my experience, I have found post-install setup of pppoe in Ubuntu smoother (than in Debian). Having said that, I don't use Ubuntu.
"Please name one successful desktop OS that sets up networking during the installation."
I don't know your definition of "successful". Libranet 2.8.1 does, and it was considered by many as one of the best desktop distros ever. Not sure about LN 3.0 because I didn't buy it.
SUSE does, and does it well.
Mandriva does it, but does it wrong: I have written a mini howto for newbies in another forum, what to do once you are logged in.
Slackware leaves you absolute freedom, and that makes things very easy.
"That being said, I have read some dev posts (in debian-boot) which strongly suggest that pppoeconf *will* be part of the next version of debian-installer."
Yes I know that, thanks. About time too.
98 • re #97 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-20 07:20:50 GMT from Netherlands)
""That being said, I have read some dev posts (in debian-boot) which strongly suggest that pppoeconf *will* be part of the next version of debian-installer."
Yes I know that, thanks. About time too."
And then? In the Netherlands pppoe is useless. DSL networks use pptp only. Does that mean that the Debian installer should add pptp configuration in the installer too? We're talking about millions of potential users here.
My question is: where does it end? Must the Debian installer contain every possible connection configuration tool for every possible kind of connection?
Be happy that you *can* use pppoeconf during installation on a virtual terminal. I didn't have this chance. But I'm not going to complain about something that is *not* Debian's fault. After all, no OS in existence automatically connects to a pptp network anyway. And in those days that modems are constantly being replaced with routers, connecting to computers through DHCP, I'm not sure they should bother.
99 • Re: #98 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-20 07:33:21 GMT from Italy)
"And in those days that modems are constantly being replaced with routers, connecting to computers through DHCP, I'm not sure they should bother."
One good reason is that a modem costs around 30EUR, whilst a decent router costs around 100EUR.
For the very same reason ISPs are more likely to give you a modem, at least in this country.
100 • Link to Debian Pure at distrowatch.com/debian (by Ariszló on 2005-10-20 11:10:47 GMT from Hungary)
If Debian Pure is not a separate distribution but an alternate installer then wyh not simply add a link to it at
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian ?
101 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-10-20 15:49:48 GMT from United States)
91 and 92:
"Don't trust what other people have to say." That is one of the most cynical and paranoid things I have ever read.
If one can't trust what other people way, why are we doing this? Why are we even participating in this forum? Just to tell everyone we don't believe a word they're saying.
If you insist that I don't trust anyone you (or I) disagree with, it'll be difficult to learn anything new. Living in a constant state of paranoia and calling everyone we disagree with "them" plays to the weakest and saddest parts of humanity
And did I say TRUST the information? No. Not even close. Where do I say or imply that? What I said is that some people use and like Ubuntu, even if others don't, and no one can change that fact, or their minds, with any amount of complaining.
As for the Microsoft dominance, the only reason 90 percent of the people -- if, indeed, that figure is accurate, since Linux is free, and it is impossible to know exactly how many people use it, and assuming the 90 percent of the people use Windows, just because someone say it does, goes against your "don't trust what other people say" theory -- is that Microsoft is a monopoly and comes pre-installed on most machines. (It does not logically follow, though, that it stays there. The machines I use are former Microsoft computers. And factor in that when people talk about that large percentage of Microsoft users, they are referring to users of Win 95, 98, 98SE, and ME, which are still on machine not because they good but because they came with the machines and people can't afford or don't know how to change that.)
So I will continue to trust what people say until my own experiences prove that I can no longer do that. And my experiences tell me that Ubuntu is a good operating system, far better than Window 95, 98, ME, and 2000, and in my mind, XP. But so is KANOTIX, and MEPIS, and Fedora, and SUSE, Knoppix, PCLinuxOS, and Debian, and many, many other Linux desktop distribution.
In summary, the majority of Linux users do NOT use Ubuntu. Or any other Linux distribution. No single Linux distribution has the majority of Linux users locked up. Mention any distribution and the *majority* are using some other one.
Finally, if you can't trust other people, who can you trust?
Come on, guys. This is the old fart, William. I love all Linux. I wasn't trying to make a case for Ubuntu, but a case that some people like it, regardless of how loudly other people protest, and they should be left alone to enjoy it.
Peace,
William
102 • Oops! (by William Roddy on 2005-10-20 15:51:56 GMT from United States)
Post #101 is mine. I hit the send button too soon. It is not from anonymous. Sorry.
103 • Ubuntu Firewall (by Anthony Tomlinson on 2005-10-20 18:11:08 GMT from United States)
You have to remember that there is a firewall (iptables) built into the kernel. All that adding Firestarter or Guarddog will do is give you a gui to adjust the settings. So, Ubuntu most definitely does come packaged with a firewall.
104 • Oops! (by Jeff on 2005-10-20 18:27:32 GMT from United States)
"If one can't trust what other people way, why are we doing this? Why are we even participating in this forum? Just to tell everyone we don't believe a word they're saying"
For information and suggestions. People have the right (at least in my country) to make up their own minds.
"If you insist that I don't trust anyone you (or I) disagree with, it'll be difficult to learn anything new. Living in a constant state of paranoia and calling everyone we disagree with "them" plays to the weakest and saddest parts of humanity"
People trusted a man with the initials AH during the second world war. Look where it got them. A little distrust and paranoia is a healthy thing.
"As for the Microsoft dominance, the only reason 90 percent of the people -- if, indeed, that figure is accurate, since Linux is free, and it is impossible to know exactly how many people use it, and assuming the 90 percent of the people use Windows, just because someone say it does, goes against your "don't trust what other people say" theory -- is that Microsoft is a monopoly and comes pre-installed on most machines. (It does not logically follow, though, that it stays there. The machines I use are former Microsoft computers. And factor in that when people talk about that large percentage of Microsoft users, they are referring to users of Win 95, 98, 98SE, and ME, which are still on machine not because they good but because they came with the machines and people can't afford or don't know how to change that.)"
Walk into any home or any corporation and take a look at what desktop they're running. Whatever the reason is for Windows being dominant doesn't change the fact that it is.
"Come on, guys. This is the old fart, William. I love all Linux. I wasn't trying to make a case for Ubuntu, but a case that some people like it, regardless of how loudly other people protest, and they should be left alone to enjoy it"
I made no protest against Ubuntu. I actually have it installed on my system. I also have PCLinuxOS, Suse, and Federa installed. I love all linux also. If Ubuntu works best for someone, they should use it. I personally am leaning SuSE now since I really like the 10.0 release. People should dive in and try different flavors and make up their own mind.
P.S. Is 60 the official age when someone becomes a geezer? I hope not because I'm approaching fast!
105 • Re: #99 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-20 20:24:10 GMT from Netherlands)
Well, Italy doesn't seem very good as I see it when it comes to this kind of hardware. Here in the Netherlands for 30€ you *can* get a decent router. The only reason I didn't buy one is that I have to move to another province within 6 weeks, and I cannot just move my ISP subscription with me. So I'll just have to get a new one, and I already know that all major ISPs provide a free router with a new subscription (they usually still call it "modem", but that's only because non-technical people are unlikely to have ever heard of a "router". But it's definitely a router, I've seen some of them) .
Well, I just thought this would be the current state for all developed countries. I didn't know the Netherlands had so much advance in this area...
106 • Re: #105 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-20 22:36:57 GMT from Italy)
"and I already know that all major ISPs provide a free router with a new subscription"
In Italy (most) ISPs don't give you a free modem or router. If you want one you must pay a monthly rental. In the UK it was a different story.
"Here in the Netherlands for 30€ you *can* get a decent router. "
When I came back to Italy I bought a good modem for 30EUR (long story why you can buy it so cheap). A new decent router, as I said, was around 100EUR.
107 • #104 (by William Roddy on 2005-10-21 00:17:26 GMT from United States)
Playing the "AH" card was a slap in the face, completely out of place and uncalled for.
Playing the "at least in my country" card to a disabled vet is an insult, intended or otherwise.
What crap!
Did you, or did you not, write: "Don't trust what other people have to say"?
I can't -- won't -- live that way. And you know what else? I don't want to listen to you anymore.
108 • Re: #106 (by Christophe Grandsire on 2005-10-21 00:23:35 GMT from Netherlands)
Strange how things can be different between two European countries.
In the case of the Netherlands, I guess the market is just getting saturated, so ISPs have to invent new things to get clients. My current ISP nowadays proposes new clients a half-price subscription for the first six months, free installation, a 75€-router for free (or the money itself if you want to buy one yourself) and a free music-store service. And it is one of the least generous (but proven to be one of the most reliable).
It's like the mobile phone market: it's so saturated here that companies are giving away entire cinema sets or DVD-recorders if you buy a 199€ mobile phone! I swear I've seen one promotion where the gift was a laptop!
Supply and demand: it's funny how it goes when the consumer is in control of the market. Imagine how it would be if it applied to the software market. Wait, it already does: that's called FOSS :) .
109 • Wireless (by Rob on 2005-10-21 04:14:37 GMT from United States)
I have a lappie with a slower Netgear WG511 Wireless card. I've been running SimplyMepis and could never get it to work. I recently felt the need to purchase a D-Link DWL-G520 PCI Wireless card for my desktop. Couldn't get that to work either. I ended up burning the latest Kanotix RC and bumbled into getting both of them to work. Of course, the method transferred easily to SimplyMepis, so it turns out it was more my bad. Now, if only I really needed wireless access. It seems ndiswrappers is really progressing as are other wireless projects. I also ran into the problem of conflicting network cards.
110 • No subject (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-21 06:16:19 GMT from Italy)
"Supply and demand: it's funny how it goes when the consumer is in control of the market. Imagine how it would be if it applied to the software market. Wait, it already does: that's called FOSS :) ."
LOL!
Unfortunately in Italy monopolies or cartels are the norm. We are very slowly and painfully getting rid of Telecom Italia's monopoly.
Politcs can also be a nightmare. Mr Berlusconi is a mafioso who, in the last few months of his government, is doing everything for his personal gain or in order to appease his (neofascist or populist) allies.
Having lived in the Netherlands (many years ago), in Germany and mainly in the UK I can notice the difference more sharply.
111 • Update on SUSE 10.0 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-21 11:03:46 GMT from Italy)
Somebody might remember that I was complaining about SUSE 10.0 not working for me. X was badly messed up, I had no sound...
Well, I gave it a go again today and I was amazed: almost everything has been fixed in no time. The only bug worth mentioning is that my sound configuration doesn't get saved between reboots (even with alsactl store): I'll file a bug report.
Definitely the open development method works: in the past it took months before a given release became reasonably bug-free.
112 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-10-21 13:26:18 GMT from United States)
"Playing the "at least in my country" card to a disabled vet is an insult, intended or otherwise"
I must assume you're American with a comment like this because it presumes that I should thank you and somehow I owe you something. There's only one problem. I'm only visiting the U.S. from Switzerland. Being a vet for a country that hasn't figured out that war doesn't solve anything and doesn't even know how to take care of its elderly isn't something to be proud of. I'd have more respect if you were part of the border patrol for the Mexican border.
"Playing the "AH" card was a slap in the face, completely out of place and uncalled for"
Why? Too many people in the world think the way you do and tuck this neatly under the carpet. I say remember it, confront it so that we may avoid it in the future and history doesn't repeat itself.
"Did you, or did you not, write: "Don't trust what other people have to say?"
I did.
"And you know what else? I don't want to listen to you anymore"
Typical American comment. Perhaps if you listened more, you wouldn't have this mess in Iraq. However, I must say I enjoy knowing the fact that our country's bank accounts get fatter by the day with your embezzled tax dollars and disability funds.
113 • "consumer is in control of the market" (by Anonymous on 2005-10-21 15:13:08 GMT from Brazil)
Um artigo interessante:
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
114 • 113 • "consumer is in control of the market" (by Anonymous on 2005-10-21 20:21:13 GMT from Brazil)
Outro material interessante:
http://www.futurepower.net/microsoft.htm
115 • Re: Update on SUSE 10.0 (by Leo on 2005-10-21 21:20:33 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the Update AP - let us know how it goes with the bug report.
I am a bit disappointed I filed a full bug report (with background information, logs and what not) for my problem burning CD is Mandriva 2006.0 (many people seem to be having problems). Thing is, no one even looked at my bug report apparently :-(
Maybe they will, they've been pretty good in the past.
Cheers
Leo
116 • Re: #115 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-21 21:40:19 GMT from Italy)
"Thanks for the Update AP - let us know how it goes with the bug report."
OK, I will. The SUSE bug reporting system is very, very professional.
117 • Robert Storey's review of Ubuntu (by Crayon on 2005-10-21 23:07:54 GMT from Hong Kong)
"I was slightly disappointed to see that the live CD did not automatically recognize the computer's hard drive, but I was able to mount it manually."
Actually one of the best uses of a LiveCD is to test drive a particular distro WITHOUT it messing up your existing system. And as LiveCDs are a great way for non-Linux/*BSD users to see what the fuss is all about then by not automatically mounting your HDDs it decreases the chance of the newbies killing their machine and blaming it on Linux/*BSD.
"Mounting the hard drive may not be important to you, but it would be crucial if you were trying to rescue data (one of the best uses of a live CD)."
Then use a proper "rescue" CD. In any case the fact that you need to use a LiveCD to perform your rescue would probably mean that your system is so messed up that you need to so some fsck's first, so auto mounting the disks would be a hinderance anyway.
BTW the rest of the review is great, the reviewer seems to have actually used the product :)
This is in contrast to the vast majority of so called reviews in which the "reviewer" simply re-iterates the features list of the product being reviewed.
118 • LG3D (by mikkh on 2005-10-22 05:33:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Interesting idea, but it doesn't quite come off.
It looks great when you first load it, but it just doesn't feel right using it
A 3D environment seems to work well in games but not as a desktop IMO. I was a bit disappointed I couldn't maximise the firefox window and it was only when quitting I saw the GTK warnings ' full screen windows not implemented yet' message.
It also seems to require a pretty hefty system. My AMD 2600 with a GB of RAM and admittedly crappy Nvidia FX 5200 was coping but only just
119 • #112 (by William Roddy on 2005-10-22 06:59:42 GMT from United States)
It's a shame that a Website as fine as this one can so easily turned into a pulpit for racist, nationalist, lunatic-fringe stupidy such as post #112. I only hope that the comments in post #112 distrub others as much as they disturb me.
120 • 119 • #112 (by William Roddy (by Anonymous on 2005-10-22 10:56:55 GMT from Brazil)
"a pulpit for racist, nationalist, lunatic-fringe stupidy such as"
You need psychiatric help.
Are You taken your prozac regularly?
Racist?
Are you north-americans not racists?????
Nationalist?
Don't you?
What other contry is promoting war and terrorism all over the world
in ower recent history?
You are the the terrorsts, not Iraqis or Afgans...
You are the killers, the murderes...
121 • Hackers army (by Anonymous on 2005-10-22 11:36:32 GMT from Brazil)
http://mirror2.escomposlinux.org/comic/strip.png
122 • Post 120 (by Ancient Welkiner on 2005-10-22 12:44:46 GMT from United States)
I come here for Linux, not to read the ravings of a maniac.
If post 120 stays, I'm gone.
wb
123 • Don't offend (by Ariszló on 2005-10-22 13:43:42 GMT from Hungary)
Don't offend Germans. Don't offend U. S. citizens. An don't make fun of Kazakhstan. It does not make sense.
124 • It is sad... (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-22 15:40:47 GMT from Italy)
How political hatred is entering Linux and other technical forums: I saw a lunatic doing this at linuxiso.org. I saw an *extremely* heated debate (but more an exchange of insults and profanities as I had never seen one before) at OSNews.
Can we please try and keep this place free from such nonsense?
I also suggest that my post (#110) could be an example of how each of us can accept that no country is perfect, including our own.
125 • No subject (by Ingo on 2005-10-22 20:46:31 GMT from United States)
"It's a shame that a Website as fine as this one can so easily turned into a pulpit for racist, nationalist, lunatic-fringe stupidy such as post #112. I only hope that the comments in post #112 distrub others as much as they disturb me"
Switzerland haven't had a war in hundreds of years.
Switzerland is peace with everyone int he world.
Swiss children learn to speak at least 3 languages during childhood.
Switzerland's crime rate is among the lowest in the world.
Switzerland has few if any people dying in the streets.
On the other hand, you sir are part of a country that can't even speak one language properly let alone 3; invade countries without good cause; have a soaring crime rate; have racism in every area even the large, metropolitan areas; lets its own people starve in the streets; and accounts for 90% of the drug imports in the entire world. How are the Swiss racist, nationalist, lunatic-fringe, stupid you say they are?
126 • English (by Ingo on 2005-10-22 20:48:45 GMT from United States)
Oh, and by the way... I'm not Swiss... And English is my third language.
127 • Robert Storey's review of Ubuntu (by Paul Chambers on 2005-10-22 21:17:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Robert for his well considered review of Ubuntu. I am a Systems Manager in the process of building my first Linux systems for testing, with the ultimate hope of deploying servers to replace our windows infrastructure.
It seems it is very difficult to balance the choice between a solid distribution (debian), and an up to date one (eg mandrake), without being trapped in another proprietary upgrade cycle (suse, redhat). Ubuntu is interesting in this regard because it offers elements of the benefits of both of the first of these approaches.
I was almost relieved to hear the issues which Robert had with Ubuntu. They won't put me off, but I will be richer for bearing them in mind. So often reviews seem to be either "it's pretty so I'm deliriously happy with it", or "it doesn't automatically install the packages I want, so I'm going to pan it". Robert's was a good introduction to the distribution, and has inspired me to install it and play around.
I've had a look at the Desktop version, and I like it. It has a pretty solid feel and I could see myself rolling it out for our admin machines that don't require specialist (windows) CAD software. I'm going to spend my time next looking at the server installation and seeing if I can easily configure it to do what I want.
So, no criticism, just wanted to take the time to say I appreciated the review.
Paul Chambers
128 • #125 & 126 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-22 21:29:28 GMT from Italy)
Great! Another "my country is better than yours" post, even if you say that you aren't a Swiss.
My country is just my country, with (many) cons and a few pros (among them we, the ordinary people, are rather tolerant, relaxed, "live and let live" minded-and that is maybe why we get so often abused by whoever is in power or in a strong position)
129 • recent posts (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-22 22:51:27 GMT from United States)
Something I value about Ubuntu - though one doesn't need to use or even like the particular distro to share the values - is the emphasis on community. And the Free Software community transcends national, ethnic, religious, or "racial" boundaries. We are united by a belief in important freedoms and wanting to share those freedoms with people around the world. Squabbling about other differences is not only terribly off-topic, but counter-productive to the reasons we're here. Let's remember that.
130 • Apologies (by William Roddy on 2005-10-23 16:13:52 GMT from United States)
Since the entire flame that errupted insuded from one innocent post of mine (see #85, which started a tirade from one individual), I will no longer post to this forum, out of concern for its other users. I have no intention of being, or having become, a flashpoint for such things. My desire is for peace between all nations, all peoples. My goal is to learn more about the productive process of open-source software.
To the extent that I have caused any difficulty for other readers, I apologize.
Let me be clear about one thing: my concerns were expressed to, and about, one person, not to a nation and to have had it extrapolated as a condemnation of an entire country was, at the least, incorrect.
I admire the Swiss, their accomplishments, their contributions to the world, past and present. There are good people in every country of the world.
This is not the first time I've faced this situation on this forum. It is not the fault of the forum. I agree, as I often find myself doing, with the author of post #129.
Thank all of you for your help and for allowing me to participate. Thank you, Ladislav, for such a fine Website. I will still use it's home page as my guide.
Much as it saddens me, this is my last post here.
Good-bye.
131 • Don't go (by Anonymous on 2005-10-23 18:05:18 GMT from United States)
While so much as saying "he started it" is liable to add to a conflict, well... I don't think you're the problem William.
132 • didn't mean to make that last anonymous (by gnobian_ken00bie on 2005-10-23 18:13:57 GMT from United States)
I think most here will agree with the sentiment in my previous post. And that you'd be missed.
133 • Re: the previous few posts (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-10-23 19:25:16 GMT from Italy)
Actually I believe that everything started from a misinterpratation of posts 91 & 92, which were rather innocent posts meaning "OK, listen to others, but in the end make up your own mind autonomously".
However it never matters who or what starts an argument: an agurment takes place when *several people* overstep the limits of decency.
So I don't believe anybody should feel he is the sole responsible and go. We should *all* learn to be more mature and, above all, that the FLOSS priciples of brotherhood and freedom are what really matter in forums like this.
134 • Please, don't go (by Ariszló on 2005-10-23 20:33:35 GMT from Hungary)
Anyone's innocent statement may be misinterpreted. I have always enjoyed reading your comments even if our favorite distributions are not the same.
135 • We love you William R. (by Dr. David Johnson on 2005-10-24 01:58:07 GMT from United States)
Don't let it get to you, we love you William.
An old friend once told me a great expression (I think it was not original with him):
"no brains, no headaches".
We used that phrase a LOT when we had to deal with, shall we say, "problem clients".
And here is one that just made me crack up this week. I have a can of WD-40 in my bathroom (some recent renovations going on there), and I just happened to notice a line of INSTRUCTIONS that were printed right along the top rim of the can. It read:
Point nozzle at work.
Now, for some reason this really cracked me up.
I guess there is no shortage of people in this world, for which such instructions are actually needed.
Hmmmm...
Come to think of it there is one other howler on this topic I could share. When in Shanghai this year, we stayed (for the last time, that's another unrelated story) in the China Love Inn (great name, eh?), and there is a sign on the INSIDE of the doors to every guest room in this Inn, and it provides some rules for the guests.
The sign insists that guests are not to engage in the selling of drugs, gambling, or whoring. ;-)
I asked my Chinese wife, "why in the world do people need this sign, isn't it common knowledge that these things are not condoned by the management of such establishments?"
She replied, totally straight-faced, that "Oh yes, some people don't know they shouldn't do those things."
(Now, I'm not sure which I found funnier, the sign itself, or my wife's answer!)
Everyone have a great week, keep smiling, and know there are no shortages of people who need instructions with aerosol cans, and behavior at hotels, so just accept it and try to be nice....
Dr. David
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| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Linuxin GNU/Linux
Linuxin was a Debian-based Linux distribution developed in Spain. Linuxin employs graphical installation, hardware detection and basic configuration options during installation.
Status: Discontinued
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