 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 125, 7 November 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. As expected, the three main BSD releases stole the limelight of most open source news sites last week, with especially FreeBSD 6.0 looking like a truly excellent product. We will take a closer look at some of the issues discussed on the FreeBSD mailing lists shortly after the release and share our experiences with upgrading the DistroWatch server. Also in this issue: a comment on the events of the past week affecting SUSE Linux and Kubuntu, and a link to an interesting sub-project by Linux From Scratch - for the fans of cross-compiling. Our featured distribution of the week is the OpenSolaris-based BeleniX live CD, while the amaroK project is the one that gets our US$300 October 2005 donation. Happy reading!
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (5.47MB) or mp3 (6.31MB) format (courtesy of Shawn Milo).
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
Content:
FreeBSD 6.0 Released
 As expected, the final release of FreeBSD 6.0 was announced late last week. Originally scheduled for August, but delayed due to showstopper bugs, the new FreeBSD release has been greeted with much enthusiasm among the users of this popular open source operating system. Although it is a "point-zero" release, the first reactions among those who upgraded their systems were overwhelmingly positive, with many claiming that 6.0 is a huge improvement over the so-so 5.x series. FreeBSD 6.0 is considered a stable release and users are encouraged to upgrade their production machines.
However, FreeBSD is a complex operating system and an upgrade of this scale is bound to lead to problems in certain circumstances. The most often reported issue after upgrading to FreeBSD 6.0 concerned locales settings, which many users lost after the upgrade. The immediate solution is to recompile Perl to link to the new libc library, although it is generally recommended that you recompile all installed ports to eliminate any potential problems incorrect linking might lead to. This, of course, only applies to upgraded systems, not to new installations.
Another issue that came up frequently during upgrades from 5.x was the failure of "make buildworld" at various stages of compilation. It appears that deleting the /usr/obj/* directory before running "make buildworld" eliminates this problem.
Some users reported that the NVIDIA driver, downloaded and built from the graphics card manufacturer's web site, made the upgraded FreeBSD 6.0 system unbootable. The solution is to disable loading the driver before rebooting the newly upgraded system, then install it directly from FreeBSD ports, rather than using NVIDIA's way of compiling the module.
Other than these minor issues, general happiness with the new release seems to be the order of the day. It looks like that FreeBSD development team has done an excellent job and version 6.0 is possibly the project's best and most feature-full release to-date. Give it a try and let us know your impressions!
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Miscellaneous news: SUSE rumours, Kubuntu status, Cross Linux From Scratch
 The peace in the world of Linux distributions was disturbed last week by a wave of what later turned out to be an unsubstantiated speculation about the future of SUSE Linux. A so-called Linux web site (which we won't link to and won't name here because it continues to cheerfully disseminate sponsored anti-Linux propaganda from its pages) published a story asserting that Novell is about to pull the plug on the development of SUSE Linux. This was apparently based on a recent announcement about layoffs at Novell. While the rumour was quickly denied by the networking giant, the company did admit that cost-cutting measures were being implemented and, as a result, the KDE desktop will be removed from future releases of Novell Linux Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. However, the measure will not affect Novell's openSUSE project which will continue to build SUSE Linux with KDE as its main desktop.
 The fans of Kubuntu had a reason to celebrate last week as their preferred distribution is gradually getting recognition it deserves from the Ubuntu founder: "In his opening remarks at the start of the conference, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was now using Kubuntu on his desktop machine and said he wanted Kubuntu to move to a first class distribution within the Ubuntu community. The large number of Kubuntu users at the conference was evidence as the need for this. Free CDs for Kubuntu through 'shipit' should be available for the next release if the planned Live CD Installer removes the need for a separate install CD." Read the full story on the Kubuntu web site. On a related note, a rough feature list of the upcoming Kubuntu "Dapper Drake" is now also available for your reading pleasure.
 Have you ever wanted to build a Linux distribution from scratch for an architecture other than i386? If so, then here is some good news. In a move to expand to all popular processor platforms and to teach users about cross-compiling, the Linux From Scratch project has announced the launch of Cross Linux From Scratch (CLFS): "Building CLFS teaches you how to make a cross-compiler and the necessary tools, to build a basic system on a different architecture. For example, you would be able to build a Sparc toolchain on an x86 machine, and utilize that toolchain to build a Linux system from source codes." To find out more, visit the subproject's new web pages and start exchanging information on its already very busy mailing list.
Finally, an announcement by Mad Penguin about a light-hearted contest to win a boxed edition of SUSE Linux 10.0, Xandros Desktop 3 and other prizes: "See that handsome penguin down there? His name is Vic and he's pleased to make your acquaintance. Vic, meet [insert your name here]. [and here] meet our beloved mascot, Vic. There, now you know each other. Here's the deal. Your mission is to take Vic here and create a work of art in the form of desktop wallpaper. He's big enough to allow you to scale him to fit your masterpiece. The trick is that you MUST do something that is funny or otherwise entertaining." If you have some artistic talent and a sense of humour, give it a try - the competition runs until the end of November. Learn more here.
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| Featured distribution of the week: BeleniX |
BeleniX
 The world of open source software is getting more and more exciting almost by the day. Only a couple of years ago nobody could possibly imagine that the venerable Solaris by Sun Mircrosystems would one day be a free operating system, in both senses of the word. Although burdened by an unusual license, the Open Source Initiative now assures us that Solaris is indeed Free Software, which anybody can use and enjoy without any strings attached.
Being a true UNIX, Solaris is certainly not the easiest system to run and administer. But since the OpenSolaris project opened up to public participation and the source code was released for all to examine and modify, several more user-friendly derivatives have emerged. One of them is called BeleniX LiveCD, developed by the India Engineering Centre of Sun Microsystems in Bangalore. Although the product comes from Sun, it appears to be more of a hobby project of a few developers than a real Sun product.
We tried out the BeleniX live CD on a spare computer. The operating system goes through the usual boot sequence before prompting the user to select the preferred language and keyboard, after which it tries to configure X.Org. If it succeeds, it will boot into a good-looking graphical desktop with XFce 4. While the number of included graphical applications is limited to Firefox (1.5 beta2), Gaim, SuperTux and the usual XFce utilities, the live CD does a fair job detecting and configuring hardware and network, so it is ready for use straight after boot.
BeleniX is probably the best and least intimidating way to learn the basic concepts of Solaris. Sure, many of the commands you know from Linux or BSD behave exactly the same way on a real UNIX, but there are also substantial differences that make the operating system look difficult to the uninitiated. Luckily, the BeleniX web site provides a page with quick links to documentation for those who wish to learn more about Solaris and its underlying technologies.
Products like BeleniX are a clear indication that momentum is building behind Solaris and that many people find the product interesting enough to join the rapidly growing Solaris developer community. And that, together with a growing number of free operating system options, can't be a bad thing.
BeleniX - the first OpenSolaris-based live CD that boots into a graphical desktop
(full image size: 890kB)
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| Released Last Week |
OpenBSD 3.8
OpenBSD 3.8 has been released: "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 3.8. This is our 18th release on CD-ROM (and 19th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install. As in our previous releases, 3.8 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system: Improved hardware support, including new aps driver for the built-in accelerometer found in some IBM ThinkPad laptops, new art driver for Accom Networks Artery T1 and E1 cards...." A detailed account of all changes can be read in the release announcement and on the product's features page.
RR4 Linux 2.60.4
A new version of the Gentoo-based RR4 Linux live DVD is out: "The fourth 'dot' release has hit the net in these hours. That's RR4 Linux 2.60.4 and sports a lot of changes, under the hood and not. Fixes: KDE Menu removed duplicates; SATA DVD readers support; Radeon 7000 Video detection; ATI Drivers 8.14.13-r5; cleaned Perl installation; speed-up in RR4 boot from hard disk. Improvements and additions: Linux kernel 2.6.14; added online live DVD installer update via a desktop icon; full support for IPW2100 and IPW2200 wireless cards; new boot theme; Ndiswrapper 1.5 rc3; updated GNOME to 2.12.1; Opera 8.50; OpenOffice.org 2.0; amaroK 1.3.5...." See the release announcement and release notes (in PDF format) for further details.
EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.1
This is a new security and bug-fix release to EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0: "Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.1 This release includes several bug fixes and feature enhancements to the Guardian Digital WebTool, the SELinux policy, and the live CD environment. The following reported bugs are fixed in this release: users can not add/edit web files; WebTool can not stop MySQL; WebTool errors-out if resolv.conf is empty; users cannot upload files via FTP; PHP not built with GD library; WebTool should give the user some feedback upon errors; problem when creating a second Virtual Host on the same IP...." Find more details and download locations in the release announcement.
NetBSD 2.1
NetBSD 2.1 has been released: "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 2.1 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 2.1 is the first maintenance release of the netbsd-2 release branch. This release provides numerous functional enhancements, including support for many new devices, hundreds of bug fixes, patches and updates to kernel subsystems, and many enhancements to the user environment. In addition, all of the security fixes and critical bug fixes from the NetBSD 2.0.3 update are included as well." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed list of changes.
ClarkConnect Gateway/Server 3.2
ClarkConnect Gateway/Server 3.2 has been released. What's new? "The full list of changes is available in the developer change log -- highlights include: Multi-WAN; user login access for changing passwords; sub-administrator login access; network diagnostic tools. Version 3.x supports upgrades from ClarkConnect 1.1 and later. When you run the ClarkConnect installer, make sure you select the upgrade option (see adjacent screenshot). As with any upgrade, please backup any critical data. Some software required conversion utilities and name changes. You should double check the following after your upgrade...." Read the rest of the release notes for known issues and software package notes.
FreeBSD 6.0
It's official: FreeBSD 6.0 is here. "It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. This release is the next step in delivering the high performance and enterprise features that have been under development in the FreeBSD 5.x series for that last several years. Some of the many changes since 5.4 include: significant performance improvements to the filesystem and direct disk access layers of the OS; expanded support for wireless networking adapters and new support for the WPA wireless security protocol; experimental support for the PowerPC platform." Read the complete release announcement and release notes for more information.
T2 2.1.0
The first stable version of T2, a Linux distribution build tool kit originally forked from ROCK Linux, has been released: "After a year of very hard work, we are happy to announce the immediate availability of our first stable release of T2. T2 2.1 is our first stable branch, forked out of ROCK Linux 2.0 one year ago. It has lots in common with that release, like ROCK Net, ROCK Plug, .gem file format, devfs, monolithic kernel and x11, but far more robust and improved to fulfill our goal of making a clean and stable framework for spin-off projects and customized distributions." See the release announcement for a more detailed description of the project.
Kaella 2.1
Kaella is, effectively, a French edition of the popular KNOPPIX live CD. After many weeks of testing, version 2.1 has now been released for download. The new version is based on the CD edition of KNOPPIX 4.0.2, but it comes with OpenOffice.org 2.0.0, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0.7, and a corrected French language module for KDE. Other improvements include several cosmetic changes in KDE, new French translation of the KNOPPIX menu, addition of French documentation, and addition of new ADSL modem drivers. For a full list of changes please see the release notes (in French).
BeleniX LiveCD 0.2.1
This is bug-fix release of BeleniX LiveCD, an OpenSolaris-based distribution with an option to boot into a graphical user interface with XFce: "This is primarily a bug-fix release with the addition of a few utilities like a Volume Control and mixer utility and a GUI tool to manage services or daemons. Thunderbird did not work in 0.2 due to some missing files which have been added. Another item of interest is the addition of DTrace Toolkit that consists of various useful DTrace scripts and documentation." See the full release announcement and a more detailed changelong on the project's home page.
GoblinX Mini 1.2.1
The GoblinX project has announced the release of GoblinX Mini 1.2.1, a bug-fix update to the 1.2 series: "The GoblinX Project is proud to announce the release of GoblinX Mini 1.2.1. GoblinX Mini 1.2.1 brings some small bug and error corrections: an upgraded kernel (2.6.13.2); Linux live and Unionfs, added Gxine, Xine-lib, Gdhcpd, Zmixer, Xarchive and Graveman; removed Wv2, Jfsutils, Eye of Gnome, Lame, Flex, LVM; added a better log system; firewall does not send log messages to console, added a new bootsplash theme, ebona_goblix, based on the beautiful Ebona wallpaper of ViperV6; removed NVIDIA drivers - the Mini edition does not have any applications that need 3D acceleration...." See the latest GoblinX Newsletter for more details.
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Fedora Core 5 delayed
As has become tradition in the development of Fedora Core, the release of "test1" of the upcoming Fedora 5 has been postponed. Originally scheduled for release today (Monday), Fedora Core 5 test1 is now expected on November 21 instead. Subsequently, all following releases have also been delayed by two weeks. No reasons for the delay are given, but the preliminary schedule now reflects the new dates, with the final release of Fedora Core 5 now scheduled for 27 February 2006.
SimplyMEPIS 3.4
After many months of waiting for Debian "sid" to stabilise from the post-"sarge" upgrade mess, the developers of MEPIS Linux have finally announced a new upcoming release, version 3.4. A test version should be out within the next few days: "SimplyMEPIS 3.3.2 was replaced with Simply 3.3.3, which is a great build and includes OpenOffice.org 2.0 and Mozilla Thunderbird. I'm sorry most of you won't have the chance to use it, as Simply 3.4 is now in the works and should be available as a test in a few days. This new version will incorporate some new stuff: KDE 3.4, OpenOffice.org 2.0, and X.Org." Read the rest of the announcement for further information.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
DistroWatch server upgraded to FreeBSD 6.0
Following the release of FreeBSD 6.0 last week and many overwhelmingly positive early reports about the new version, we decided to upgrade the DistroWatch server over the weekend. Although we didn't have any major problems running FreeBSD 5.4, our "geeky" hearts simply demanded that we ran the latest and greatest whenever possible. As always, upgrading a remote server located half-way across the world does bring a considerable amount of anxiety (will the new kernel boot at all?), especially because upgrading FreeBSD requires two reboots. Luckily, everything went fine and the server was never down for more than a minute on two occasions last Saturday.
Two minor issues came up during the upgrade. As reported by others, a "rm -f /usr/obj/* might be necessary prior to "make buildworld" to eliminate some compile problems down the line, and this was the case with our upgrade too. The second issue was the "pf" firewall which, for some reason, refused to allow any traffic through the SMTP port after the upgrade. However, after disabling the firewall and re-enabling it again, without changing any of the firewall rules, everything was back to normal. Other users also reported similar problems on the FreeBSD mailing list, so it looks like we were not the only ones affected by this issue.
As always, these types of upgrades (and the anxiety they bring) tend to lead to inevitable comparisons between FreeBSD and Linux (and even Solaris, now that it is free) as a web hosting solution. We switched to FreeBSD from Debian "woody" about a year ago and had mostly positive experiences. Unfortunately, a FreeBSD system does seem to require much more baby-sitting than a Debian-based server would ever need - virtually all FreeBSD security updates, rare as they are, require that either the kernel or the userland (or both) be recompiled and the system rebooted. On the other hand, we have enjoyed the ability to keep the system and software up-to-date by compiling the latest applications from FreeBSD ports - a big advantage over any stable Debian.
There is, of course, no such thing as a perfect operating system. That said, FreeBSD has proven itself over the years as one of the most reliable workhorses powering an enormous number of mission critical web servers around the world. To a large extent, our experience is in line with this fact. We are currently entertaining the possibility to award the November 2005 donation to the FreeBSD Foundation. Are there any objections among our readers? Please agree or disagree in the forum below.
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October 2005 donation: the amaroK project receives US$300
amaroK is the second multimedia application in a row (after MPlayer) that receives our monthly donation. Gaining many new fans and supporters over the last few months, this KDE-based music player is a great addition to the increasingly powerful desktop. amaroK is one of the most feature-rich media applications available today and the project's recent drive to generate further development funds has prompted several readers' emails recommending amaroK for a donation. We are pleased to oblige.
amaroK - a media player for the KDE desktop
Our monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxISO.co.uk and LinuxCD.org, each of which contributed US$50 towards this month's donation. Both stores have an excellent selection and latest releases at very reasonable prices. Next time you need to order your favourite Linux or BSD CDs, get them from LinuxCD.org or, if you are in the United Kingdom, from LinuxISO.co.uk.
This is the PayPal receipt for the donation to amaroK:
Dear DistroWatch.com,
This email confirms that you have paid muesli (-at-) gmail.com $300.00 USD using PayPal.
------------------------------
Payment Details:
------------------------------
Transaction ID: 0KH8523573841532G
Total: $300.00 USD
Item/Product Name: amaroK fundraiser
Item/Product Number: amaroKfunds
Buyer: DistroWatch.com
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the donations programme:
Since the launch of the DistroWatch Donations Programme in March 2004, we have donated a total of US$5,605 to various open source software projects.
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New distribution additions
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New on the waiting list
- DeveLinux. DeveLinux is a live Debian-based distribution designed for developers and programmers. It includes useful development software on a single live CD.
- Grafpup Linux. Grafpup Linux is a desktop Linux operating system based closely on Puppy Linux. Its goal is to be as useful to graphic designers and other imaging professionals as possible while still remaining extremely small and fast.
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DistroWatch database summary
And with this we'll say good-bye until next Monday. We hope you've enjoyed this issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Next weeks donation (by Jack Malmostoso on 2005-11-07 11:41:46 GMT from Switzerland)
Just to suggest gcfilms as a target for a possible donation... i discovered the software this weekend and I was amazed by it!
http://home.gna.org/gcfilms/
Good work as usual!
2 • RE: Next weeks donation (by ladislav on 2005-11-07 11:48:52 GMT from Taiwan)
Just a quick reminder: before suggesting a project for the next donation, please make sure that the project actually accepts donations. Not all of them do.
3 • Donation again (by Nobody special on 2005-11-07 12:07:41 GMT from France)
Well, not to disparage gcfilms, which seems quite nice, but I think the Tellico collection manager (http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/) has about the same features, as far as movies are concerned, while being a completely generic application.
Data import can be done through Amazon, freedb, IMDb as well as the z39.50 and Entrez systems. No barcode reader, as far as I know, but I may be mistaken.
I use it personnaly for movies and teas. CDs and books would also be a breeze, were I not too lazy.
4 • New FreeBSD logo (by Mark Kowarsky on 2005-11-07 12:08:10 GMT from Australia)
Who hear likes the new FreeBSD logo? Personally, I preferred Beastie. The current logo looks like a red blog with cat's ears.
I have a feeling that it is close to 50/50 for liking and disliking as can be seen in forums threads such as http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-397889-highlight-freebsd+logo.html
5 • Donations and GoblinX Mini (by Flavio de Oliveira on 2005-11-07 12:10:57 GMT from Brazil)
I accept donations for my project... :oops:
About The GoblinX Mini, I invite you (Ladislav) to do a test later...
6 • next week's donation to FreeBSD (by Patrick at 2005-11-07 12:30:14 GMT from Luxembourg)
I think it's a good idea to support the BSDs in addition to Linux distros and projects. However, FreeBSD is AFAIK the best-sponsored BSD already. Maybe another BSD like NetBSD or OpenBSD would profit more from a donation.
7 • link doesn't work (by pp on 2005-11-07 13:04:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
clicking the DW weekly sign on the front page takes me to the DW weekly of 31.10..
8 • I'd nominate R for donation (by pp on 2005-11-07 13:20:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to nominate R, that statistical computing tool for donation.
http://www.r-project.org/
It's a huge, important project relevant for all kinds of people who use statistical modelling, a kind of "OpenOffice" of statisticians. If anybody agrees with me, honk! :-)
9 • Donation to FreeBDS (by Didier Spaier at 2005-11-07 13:25:29 GMT from France)
I make no objection to a donation to support FeeBSD. I installed FreeBSD-6.0 (as a fresh ans standard install) on top of a previously installed beta version: it works and I lost nothing.
Wilst I currently use a Slackware 10.2 which I'm very satisfied of (thanks to Patrick Volkering), I appreciate FreeBSD's ports + packages collection. I only should learn some administrative tasks before using it everyday, e.g. properly setting up a firewall (for now on my Slackware distro Guarddog is doing the job) and securing my box myself.
Sorry for my bad English -- Didier, Paris
10 • All those BSDs (by Jim on 2005-11-07 13:32:26 GMT from United States)
Thank you for another great DistroWatch Weekly! It's always a nice way to start my Monday. Ladislav, could you or Robert consider writing an article comparing the BSDs? Something more substantial than "NetBSD is the most secure default install and NetBSD is available for the most architectures etc." What are some specific differences that a home user would care about? Why is there a new NetBSD 2.1 and an upcoming NetBSD 3? What's the status of Dragonfly? What about FreeBSD vs. DesktopBSD and PC-BSD?
I tried FreeBSD a year or two ago, but it required too much tweaking for a home desktop. It was just little things like the mouse wheel didn't work and I didn't have permissions to write to a different drive, but I got tired of looking up how to fix stuff so I went back to Suse Linux. With the newer BSDs available, I'm interested in trying again.
If I'm asking too much for a short DWW article, I understand. Then maybe you could just pick one of the BSDs as a Featured Distribution of the Week.
11 • November 2005 Award to FreeBSD! (by Chris Roosso on 2005-11-07 13:44:29 GMT from Canada)
I agree! You should give the November 2005 award to Freebsd.
I'm using using FreeBSD on most of our web and mail servers and it's just amazing. I think the greatest advantage is the software maintenance (ports system). Servers are then so easy to keep updated, and having the flexibility to build software with specific options is easy and great! We don't have to spend hours and hours every month to keep everything up to date.
12 • developer interviews (by butters on 2005-11-07 14:07:59 GMT from United States)
I would like to suggest that DistroWatch try to line up a weekly developer interview for this column. This would be a nice way to keep readers in touch with the latest and greatest coming out of free software projects.
For instance, the release of X11R7/6.9 is just around the corner (early December, I think), and that has lots of implications for the distributions out there. I bet many DistroWatch readers are unsure of what's going on. Perhaps you can get someone from the Xorg development team to take a moment to talk about the upcoming release and what it brings to the desktop?
This is just an example, I'm sure very few free software projects would turn down a request for an interview for DistroWatch Weekly.
13 • Donation! (by Ed Borasky on 2005-11-07 14:18:49 GMT from United States)
" I'd nominate R for donation (by pp on 2005-11-07 13:20:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to nominate R, that statistical computing tool for donation.
http://www.r-project.org/
It's a huge, important project relevant for all kinds of people who use statistical modelling, a kind of "OpenOffice" of statisticians. If anybody agrees with me, honk! :-)"
HONK! HONK! HONK!
Yes, R is indeed the greatest thing since APL to hit the scientifc and statistical programming language world. They've got over 600 packages now, you can actually write web apps in R, and I use it daily.
Besides, Ruby on Rails doesn't need the money. :)
14 • anyone notice linux now has a wireless network stack? (by butters on 2005-11-07 14:22:22 GMT from United States)
Also, the release of linux-2.6.14 was somehow overlooked amidst the sea of BSD news. FreeBSD isn't the only OS kernel to vastly improve wireless network support in the past week or two. Linux now has a full 802.11 stack, complete with WEP, CCMP, and TKIP support, in the mainline kernel. This has enabled the inclusion of IPW (centrino family) device support in the kernel and will enable native support of more devices in the future.
Configuring wireless network interfaces is still a mess in most Linux distributions compared to in FreeBSD 6.0, but both now have sane wireless networking driver architectures. FreeBSD's wireless device support, however, is extremely limited at this point.
15 • HONK! for R (by Anonymous on 2005-11-07 14:36:14 GMT from United States)
Yes, R is a great project released under the GPL and widely used by statisticians. It provides the bases for another great open source project: bioconductor.org for the analysis and comprehension of genomic data.
16 • November Donation to FreeBSD and Future suggestion OpenBSD! (by cdude on 2005-11-07 14:40:05 GMT from Canada)
I agree for FreeBSD November donation, I've been using it for more than 2 years now and it gets better by the day! I also would like to suggest OpenBSD because a lot of its works on securities are integrated into other open source projects as well as commercial softwares, without anyone giving anything back to them. OpenSSH.. ehhm!!
17 • HONK! for R (by Anonymous on 2005-11-07 14:42:10 GMT from United States)
Yes, R is a great project released under the GPL and widely used by statisticians. It provides the bases for another great open source project: bioconductor.org for the analysis and comprehension of genomic data.
18 • Novell, and other stuff (by Scott Wilson on 2005-11-07 14:42:29 GMT from United States)
I have been expecting Novell to screw up SUSE, just like they did with everything else. So its going to be a gnome desktop, hopefully some one will integrate KDE as a package. I prefer gnome, (actually I prefer enlightenment). So indeed SUSE Linux is becoming Fedora, a community based test bed for Novell. Its a good thing I suppose, but this doesn't look good for the retail side of Linux. Is the Desktop dead? I was rather upset that I could not find any other OS in the Retail stores except MS Windows, and one to two copies of the newest Mac OS. What about in your neck of the woods?
I built a new PC this week end, Sempron AMD CPU, much to my surprise and horror I now have a 64bit machine.(previous was a 450MHZ), Ubuntu 64 bit loaded with no glitches, sound network, everything worked after the first boot. So far my only complaint is that there are no java, flash, other other packages that will work with the 64 bit AMD CPU. Ubuntu or Linux's fault? NO, but the respective companies. (Yes I know I can use the 32bit programs)
BSD? I don't really care, as a desktop, no. If I wanted that I would get a Mac. On a server, yes I hear its rock solid. New logo, looks like a cat. BSD is th closes thing we have to Unix. I kinda feel weird that I come to Distrowatch to learn about Linux and they are running FreeBSD.
Another good read. I start a new job today
19 • FreeBSD (by capt ron on 2005-11-07 15:23:11 GMT from United States)
YES!!! YES!!!!YES!!!!
Please donate to FreeBSD!!!
I really would like to switch to FreeBSD but I'm not geek enough.Linux has been hard enough. I still can't get my wifi to work. I would like to see FreeBSD as easy to use as Ubuntu.
20 • I'd nominate R for donation too! (by istoyanov on 2005-11-07 15:33:37 GMT from Bulgaria)
Still waiting to seeing anything such powerful as this statistical computing environment, even among its commercial competitors! I use R exclusively for all my data processing tasks and would also like to nominate the R-project for receiving a donation.
21 • Donate to FreeBSD (by Joshua Kampmeier on 2005-11-07 15:56:19 GMT from United States)
Absolutely!! I think FreeBSD is extremely well deserved of the donation.
FYI: there is the 'freebsd-update' tool for applying binary security patches to the FreeBSD when you lack the immediate time to rebuild the kernel/world/both. I use it on production servers at work.
22 • Donations? (by ALex on 2005-11-07 15:59:29 GMT from United States)
I thought they were monthly, not weekly.
23 • R-Project! (by sociology guy on 2005-11-07 16:35:00 GMT from United States)
Yes, the above posters suggesting the R-project have found the perfect project for donations!
(also, any chance of trying a project like musicbrainz sometime in the future?)
24 • Go with Kanotix (by Steve on 2005-11-07 16:45:15 GMT from United States)
I have tried a lot of distros and none have come close to beating Kanotix! Kanotix is a rock-solid, bleeding-edge Linux distro based on Debian SID. Its developer, Kano, puts in countless (and perhaps thankless) hours creating a near-perfect distro.
Kanotix is in strong need of donations. Please consider Kanotix for this month's DistroWatch award!
25 • FreeBSD security update care and feeding (by Jackstraw on 2005-11-07 17:00:25 GMT from United States)
Good point about the need for repeated system builds to keep the FreeBSD base system current with security updates. There are good reasons to go the build-from-source route, as you get a very optimized system. It would be nice if incremental builds were supported to incorporate security patches, rather than the choice between [a] full make world vs. [b] manual build of the affected component per the security advisory.
To be fair, if you run a binary-based system, use freebsd-update from the ports collection to handle binary updates. That makes things more equivalent to the Debian-level effort.
26 • Donation to PC-BSD (by john Inama on 2005-11-07 17:14:58 GMT from United States)
I agree that FreeBSD is already well funded. I think the donation should go to PC-BSD, which in my opinion is the best project out there to make BSD as user-friendly as Linux is becoming.
27 • Donations (by x on 2005-11-07 17:48:17 GMT from United States)
I agree with you that a donation to the FreeBSD project is in order. Future donations to the other BSD's should be given serious consideration. Some of the developments at these projects have benefited not only the BSD communities, but virtually all computer users worldwide.
The BSD's offer competitive (diversity) alternatives to other operating systems, even providing services for one of the worlds largest software houses for years until they developed a replacement.
I would like to put LSF's name in the proverbally donation hat. While it not for the faint of heart, it provides a general guideline to intregrating components into a full fledged operating system. They even accomidate the truly paranoid with the Hardened LFS subproject.
28 • Wonderful edition of DistroWatch weekly (by bullehead on 2005-11-07 18:08:31 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the great read. I appreciate this site very much. DistroWatch weekly is a great way to start Mondays :)
29 • Kanotix donation (by Dan MacDonald on 2005-11-07 19:43:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Donate to Kanotix please!
I got sick of waiting for Debian to include Xorg and KDE 3.4 so I switched to Kubuntu, then to Mandriva 2006 for a while but the latest release candidates of Kanotix have addressed this niggle so I'm happy to return to using Kanotix as my primary OS. It's the best Debian derivative that I've tried- hence the 'Worlds Best OS' ;) Be nice to see a Kanotix for PPC too- anyone know whatever happened to knoppix/ppc??
What really makes Kanotix stand out from other distros is the unbeatable IRC support. I've learnt a lot about Linux from #kanotix -special mentions must go out to kano, slh and etorix who seem to live on that channel :) and who are always willing to answer the most dumb (or blindly geeky) questions about Linux I have had. Truly lovely guys!
Go Kanotix!
dan
PS (blatant plug alert!!) I made my first, small, contribution to open source recently with konqkonv, an extension (service menu) for konqueror called konqkonv which enables you to convert video files into DVD or VCD MPEGS in a single click. You can get it from
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=30455
30 • PC-BSD donation (by james e. thompson on 2005-11-07 20:16:11 GMT from United States)
I second that PC-BSD nomination , i like it and in time i think it will be right in there with Linux' ease of use for the desktop . A little true nix desktop flavor is welcomed by me !
Keep up the good work & hello Ladislave !
jim
31 • Donation to FreeBSD or FreeBSD Update (by Martin on 2005-11-07 20:27:14 GMT from France)
Please Donate either to FreeBSD or to the FreeBSD Update project ( http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/ , Colin Percival from FreeBSD), it would be great to have binary security updates on other archs than i386 so that this tool is integrated in the base system
32 • First BORING distrowatch weekly (by Robert G on 2005-11-07 20:43:04 GMT from United States)
Sorry, but I did not care for this distrowatch weekly. I think it could have used quite a bit more stuff for it. especially with all the new BSD stuff. Hopefully next week will be better.
Oh and btw, are any of the 3 major BSD's any good for desktop purposes? or are they all really just for servers?
33 • FreeBSD (by Anonymous on 2005-11-07 20:43:58 GMT from United States)
Agree.
34 • Donation (by Anonymous on 2005-11-07 21:17:10 GMT from France)
Even if I'm a full time linux user, FreeBSD deserves your donation. That's a great OS and I wish it keeps evolving.
Ho, and good choice for Amarok
On another note, that's very bad news we're getting from Novell/SUSE. The biggest strength of SUSE has always been its KDE integration and the work they put into it. Are we going to have professional distributions built around GNOME and hobbyist around KDE ? That would be stupid to divide the free UNIX desktop world this way.
35 • Re: Comment #19: by capt ron on 2005-11-07 15:23:11 GMT from United States) (by Mike Bear on 2005-11-07 21:54:19 GMT from United States)
19 • FreeBSD (by capt ron on 2005-11-07 15:23:11 GMT from United States)
YES!!! YES!!!!YES!!!!
Please donate to FreeBSD!!!
I really would like to switch to FreeBSD but I'm not geek enough.Linux has been hard enough. I still can't get my wifi to work. I would like to see FreeBSD as easy to use as Ubuntu.
*********************************************************************
For those who feel they are not 'geeky enough' to run BSD as a desktop, you might think of trying PC BSD, a 100% GUI verions of Free BSD on a bootable CD. No commands to memorize! see: www.pcbsd.com for more info or Google it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
36 • URL Correction to Comment #35 (by Mike Bear on 2005-11-07 21:59:12 GMT from United States)
URL for PC BSD should be: www.pcbsd.ORG...not .com.
Sorry 'bout that!
MB
37 • PC-BSD (by Henrique Maia on 2005-11-07 22:11:22 GMT from Portugal)
A sure candidate to a donation. Interesting project.
Looking forward to have it on my computer.
38 • Re: #24 & 29 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-07 23:34:36 GMT from Italy)
Another one for Kanotix here.
That such an operating system can be downloaded for free is almost unbelievable.
Kanotix is as close to perfection as it is humanly possible.
39 • PC-BSD and FreeBSD (by Jesse on 2005-11-07 23:47:37 GMT from Canada)
I admit I'm a full time Linux user and perhaps a bit
ignorant about the BSDs, but I'm curious about something.
After the hype about FreeBSD in this week's DistroWatch,
I went over to their website and took a look. It appears a bit
"geeky" and complicated. Why would I want to manually configure
X, install in text mode, etc? I then went to the PC-BSD website
and it looks as easy to install and configure as, say, RedHat Linux
or SuSE.
My question is if PC-BSD is an open source project based
on FreeBSD, then why aren't these beautiful installation methods, package managers and auto-config tools ported back into
FreeBSD? Wouldn't that make FreeBSD much more popular
amoung newbies and desktop users?
Please feel free to e-mail me with your comments. Is it
a stability thing? A licensing thing? A time problem?
Jesse
slicer69 at hotmail.com
40 • Kanotix donation (by Dan MacDonald on 2005-11-07 23:55:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Donate to Kanotix please!
I got sick of waiting for Debian to include Xorg and KDE 3.4 so I switched to Kubuntu, then to Mandriva 2006 for a while but the latest release candidates of Kanotix have addressed this niggle so I'm happy to return to using Kanotix as my primary OS. It's the best Debian derivative that I've tried- hence the 'Worlds Best OS' ;) Be nice to see a Kanotix for PPC too- anyone know whatever happened to knoppix/ppc??
What really makes Kanotix stand out from other distros is the unbeatable IRC support. I've learnt a lot about Linux from #kanotix -special mentions must go out to kano, slh and etorix who seem to live on that channel :) and who are always willing to answer the most dumb (or blindly geeky) questions about Linux I have had. Truly lovely guys!
Go Kanotix!
dan
PS (blatant plug alert!!) I made my first, small, contribution to open source recently with konqkonv, an extension (service menu) for konqueror called konqkonv which enables you to convert video files into DVD or VCD MPEGS in a single click. You can get it from
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=30455
41 • Movie Editor not Movie collection database (by yshapedback on 2005-11-08 00:26:16 GMT from Philippines)
does anyone knows an open source for project that can replace adobe premiere and windows movie maker? i've been browsing the web for this kind of project. if anyone knows such projects (not movie collection manager like gcfilms and tellico) please infom me... and that project deserves a donation so it can grow... CHEERS!!!
42 • Donation to FreeBSD. (by Dan C. on 2005-11-08 00:42:21 GMT from Canada)
As a user of FreeBSD for mission critical web services, I couldn't agree more with you donating money to them. I'm fairly new to FreeBSD, about 6 months usage, but I wouldn't go back to anything else when it comes to critical servers.
43 • This time, (by towsonu2003 on 2005-11-08 01:40:10 GMT from United States)
New distribution additions were interesting...
44 • Kanotix (by Antonio on 2005-11-08 03:01:25 GMT from United States)
If you want to donate to some distros/projects,
I would nominate the following in the order shown
1. Kanotix
2. Slax
3. FreeBSD
I actually like all of the above mentioned distros and whoever of the three that gets the donation very well deserves it. Kanotix-2005-03 rocked, but 2005-04 is getting there little by little. Slax is a great live cd, which also deserves mention. FreeBSD is hard to learn but well worth the effort. I still have to learn more about it. I have no objection if FreeBSD gets it this time, but also consider Kanotix and Slax. They are great linux live cd's which are of much help to me and my colleagues.
The new OpenSolaris live cd's, Shillix and Belenix are very different from BSD's and linux, yet they encompass very powerful software. I have tried Belenix but it does not go into X. Shillix does not have an X desktop, ie, gnome, kde, xfce, blackbox, etc., nonetheless Jorg Schilling is an excellent person, has a great live cd and gave us the cdrtools, cdrecord to burn cd's in linux, bsd and now opensolaris. Great Job!!!
45 • Thanks for the spectrum of update issues (by Bill Savoie at 2005-11-08 05:19:06 GMT from United States)
I always enjoy your posts. I use SuSE, Kanotix, feather and Mepis, but most of all I enjoy watching the world wake up to open source! Vim and Ada get most of my time. I am working on a chess engine. Thanks again Ladislav.
46 • open movie editor (by yshapedback on 2005-11-08 06:49:52 GMT from Philippines)
actually i've already found a movie editor at sourceforge.net. it is called open movie editor. but up to now they haven't released any file. maybe a donation from distrowatch.com can boost the development of this project... i am nomating OPEN MOVIE EDITOR for your donation...
47 • FYI: PC-BSD installer (by Anonymous on 2005-11-08 07:56:06 GMT from United States)
It won't reach the FreeBSD core because they are pretty strict about not adding GPL components. Especially to something as basic as the installer. And the installer won't be released under the (better from a FreeBSD standpoint) BSD license because it uses qt libraries and Trolltech are very strict about either using the proprietary license or using the GPL when using qt.
48 • FreeBSD on the desktop (by Bob Woodshed on 2005-11-08 09:50:45 GMT from Korea, Republic of)
First off I say go ahead and donate to the FreeBSD foundation next month. It's kinda funny because I made a (very small) donation to them last night.
Anywho for those of you wishing to use FreeBSD as a desktop platform then you can use PC-BSD as mentioned, but don't forget about DesktopBSD . Both of them have pages here on Distrowatch and both are aimed at being easy to use on the desktop. Go ahead and read some reviews or install both and see which one you like better.
49 • Donate to a smaller project (by Toni on 2005-11-08 14:34:07 GMT from Austria)
I think FreeBSD rocks and deserve donation as well but
there are many smaller projects who really depend on donations.
I would suggest the donation should go to Kanotix or Slax or PC-BSD or any other small projects.
50 • Donations (by fdavid on 2005-11-08 16:58:06 GMT from Austria)
This donation programme is really nice and I'm glad to see any open source project to be sponsored. Furthermore, I still keep my opinion (which I also expressed when the donation programme started), that most of the sum is Ladislav's money and he can do with it whatever he wants.
So the whole thing is great, with a minor flaw in the way of choosing the project for donation. In my opinion, either the projects for donation should be choosen in a really open manner (e.g. voting for 3 possible candidates each month), or they should be just choosen (secretly) by Ladislav. Keeping the illusion that the readers may influence the choice with nominating projects is often misleading and may make many readers disappointed, when their favourite won't get the donation at the end. Making the readers disappointed is just not the goal of the donation programme - as far as I can judge. ;-)
Example:
I have already nominated a project (I won't put the name here again, because I don't think that I should nominate the project again, if Ladislav didn't like the idea twice to donate to that project), and it was also supported by many other readers. I didn't summerise all of the nominatios so I don't know if other projects had better support among readers.
I just wondered that no nomination summary appaered in any cases and I got no answer if the project is ignored/forgotten/not liked/queued/etc. This, in turn, makes me not to nominate any projects in the future, since it also may go to /dev/null. Ok, it may not be the greatest loss, ever. ;-)
How does the current way of choosing the project for danation look like?
Ladislav makes a suggestion in dww, which is normally agreed by many readers, since there are enough users of almost all of the projects he points out. There are always some readers, who try to nominate other projects, but mostly in vain.
This above written may not be true, just my impression, so it must be handled as such.
So I really hope that I won't be misunderstood, and I would like to see the donation programme in the future let there be any project choosing method.
Thank you Ladislav for Distrowatch and for the donations.
51 • why not consider OpenBSD or a related project? (by escapenguin on 2005-11-08 17:41:43 GMT from United States)
pf came from OpenBSD, and it's an integral part of this very website. The team's latest release is especially innovative with the new malloc and RAID tool in addition to many other improvements. Granted it's hard to choose lately since the BSDs are being so innovative in multiple areas at the same time, but I'd like to cast a vote for the underdog.
52 • Kanotix (by Bryan King on 2005-11-08 18:25:22 GMT from United States)
I agree with the above posters regarding a donation to Kanotix. This is a distribution that incorporates the latest/greatest in a package where everything "just works". You can't ask for more. I know there is no such thing as a perfect operating system, but perhaps Kano has come the closest.
53 • Kanotix (by Jeff on 2005-11-08 18:45:58 GMT from United States)
Although I have Kanotix as a rescue tool, I don't have it installed on my hard drive. It's a great distribution, but I think it lacks polish. And I have had it break by using apt-get. I personally have GenieOS installed on my drive and PCLinuxOS, SuSE and PC-BSD along side it. I think the recent test images of PCLinuxOS are as close to perfect as possible. The hardware detection is great, it installs from livecd, it uses APT for dependency issues, and it's very polished. I also like SuSE 10.0. I added APT to my install and it works well. PC-BSD is also really cool. It has made installating FreeBSD easy and fun. I just hope they upgrade the base to 6.0 since it's stilled based on 5.4. 6.0 has ra0 wireless support built into it which is nice.
I will also add that the new FreeBSD logo does look terrible. I liked the old one better : )
54 • #41 Movie Editors for Linux (by Tom Kennedy on 2005-11-08 20:30:56 GMT from United States)
The two movie editors I've found for Linux are:
- cinelerra http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
- kino http://www.kinodv.org/
Cinelerra is very powerful and is geared more towards professionals. With that power comes more complexity. Kino is less featured, geared towards home users, and easier to learn.
Being not afriad of complexity myself, I just jumped right in and learned cinelerra. I'm not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I have used it to edit several videos for my Church.
My only complaint with cinelerra is I've never been able to get DV exporting to work with the canopus advc-100. (Importing works fine, though.) Kino can import and export to the advc, so typically I use kino for capture and playback and cinelerra for all my editing.
(BTW, I highly recomend the advc-100 for converting between NTSC/PAL analog video and firewire-DV. The quality is extremely high, especially for the price. It also makes a nice poor-man's time base corrector.)
I still haven't figured out how to turn DV files into a DVD under Linux, but it's been over a year since I tried. In the past we used some proprietary mswindows software for that.
55 • RE: #53 Kanotix and PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-09 00:16:44 GMT from Italy)
Sorry to be a jerk, but PCLinuxOS is "cute" (actually "too" cute for my tastes), but I have found it always buggy. The latest release won't even install on my hardware.
As to polish, actually Kanotix has more of it than many others: that is especially evident with the latest RC.
And as to breaking it with apt, one should keep in mind that it is based on Debian Sid, so a bit of knowledge and quite a bit of wisdom are needed. My recipes are: use pinning (to testing), install apt-listbugs and consider carefully what apt wants to do. Besides there are very few breakages which can't be repaired.
56 • RE: #50 Donations (by ladislav on 2005-11-09 01:42:29 GMT from Taiwan)
Thank you for your feedback. It's never easy to please everybody - just read through the above discussion and you'll notice that although the majority of posters have only good things to say about KANOTIX, there is always the odd voice that disagrees.
The same is true about the donations. I started the programme simply because I felt that since I am making a living by reporting on the exciting world of open source software, I should give something back. I was hoping that other web sites with similar business models will join in and that together we'll be able to support more projects. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened.
In fact, some so-called Linux news sites not only refuse to give back, they are happy to display sponsored anti-Linux FUD which they have the audacity to label as "Linux Reference Center"! (Sorry for mentioning this again, but it just drives me crazy every time I see this blatant greed and complete disrespect to all open source software developers who work for free.)
Anyway, the donation policy is simple - if you feel that a project deserves a donation, either email me or nominate it in this forum + include a few words of justification why you think the project should get a donation. I keep a record of all nominations and the most frequently nominated among them will get it - sooner or later. If this sounds too secretive and undemocratic, than it probably is, and for a good reason - running this web site for the last 4+ years has taught me an important lesson: there are people out there who will employ extreme measure to abuse any open voting mechanism.
So I reserve the right to make a final decision based on a prevailing sentiment for the past month, the list of nominated projects and other factors. I also want to reward projects that help running DistroWatch - hence the reason why I suggested FreeBSD for the next donation (although I am now inclining towards awarding it to KANOTIX, since it has been nominated many times already and it might be more in need for money that FreeBSD). I also looked at donating to "R", but their donations system is so cumbersome - I hope they can implement a simple online donations procedure rather than requiring donors to fax credit card forms to a number in Austria.
In short, I don't believe there is a perfect, democratic way of awarding donations. If you feel that your voice is not heard, then I am sorry - my list currently has about 40 projects that are sort of queued up for a future donation, so hopefully your favourite project will also get it some day, but it may take time.
57 • RE: #56 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-09 02:23:23 GMT from Italy)
Thanks for a good, wise reply to our "concerns"
As to democracy I couldn't agree more with you. It is a bit foolish to insist on a "democratic" system when it clearly doesn't work (my mind goes to the moderation system of OSNews)
As to donating either to FreeBSD or Kanotix, I agree with you: I am very fond of Freebsd, but Kanotix seems in bad need of funds.
That is very sad, because it has more than 5,000 registered users, and if everybody donated 10EUR a year...
I try to do quite a bit more than that. I am not boasting, it is only that if Kanotix were not there next year for me it would be a little disaster.
So please people, don't argue so much about who gets Ladislav's donations: instead put your money where your mouth is!
58 • BeleniX and other non-Linux kernel GNU distros (by Robert Fortune on 2005-11-09 06:07:19 GMT from United States)
I'm excited about the recent proliferation of attempts to marry non-Linux kernels with a GNU userland that in the minds of many is associated with the Linux kernel only. For example, we now have a distro that uses the FreeBSD kernel to power a GNU/Debian KDE userland (GING), and several distros that start with the Solaris 10 kernel and graft a GNU/Debian userland onto it (Nexenta) or wed it with GNU software through the Gentoo portage system (BeleniX which was this week's featured distro in Distrowatch Weekly).
I think this is an important development. Sun opened the source of Solaris, their version of Unix, to the open source community earlier this year under a GNU-like licence, calling this branch of development OpenSolaris. Solaris 10 is probably the most innovative, cutting edge version of Unix currently available, and it may well emerge as a serious competitor to Linux and certainly to Windows, especially in its new mixed marriages with GNU software.
It's little wonder that after Sun's opening move projects sprung up immediately with the goal of making an OpenSolaris desktop distro that would run on commodity x86 machines, i.e. ordinary PC's.
The first of these was SchilliX, the brain child of Joerg Schilling, the developer of cdrecord and related utilities. SchilliX sticks closest to the OpenSolaris binaries and tries to maintain strict compatibility with Solaris. At this point, SchilliX runs from a text console only; it doesn't as yet have a graphical environment with X window server, display manager and desktop environment. But you can profitably run it from the command line if you want to learn what the new Solaris 10 has to offer.
Then the BeleniX live CD came along which is developed by folks associated with the Sun Development Center in Bangalore, India. They took the Solaris 10 kernel and compiled the XFce desktop environment plus a smattering of useful applications for it and wound up with a pretty nice usable and Linux-like desktop. The next phase of their road plan calls for the development of a hard disk installer and of support for the Gentoo portage system which will make available to BeleniX a host of applications typically run under Linux.
Then yesterday Nexenta (also called GNU/Solaris) was released which marries GNU/Debian to the Solaris 10 kernel. Nexenta comes in a live CD version as well as a version devised for hard disk install, and it makes available some 2000 GNU/Debian packages, with many more to be added in the future. It may still be a little rough around the edges, especially in the area of hardware recognition and support. That is still Solaris' weak point: it used to be run primarily on proprietary Sun equipment, with Sun having total control over the hardware, not in the messy world of PC's with their infinitude of different hardware components.
The BeleniX and Nexenta live CD's run awfully slow; it takes 5-8 min to boot to a full desktop, and another 1-1.5 min to start up Firefox. I communicated about this with the BeleniX developers but I can't say that I really understood the causes of this sluggish performance. However, I was assured that these distros will run reasonably fast when installed on a hard disk. You'll be able to multiboot them with Linux and with Windows.
Finally there is GING which runs GNU/Debian and is powered by the FreeBSD kernel. This live CD runs reasonably fast and offers a respectable assortment of packages, mostly from KDE 3.4, all in the space of 300 MB. It feels like Linux until you start looking at the filesystem, device names, config files etc., much of which looks rather unfamiliar. The same goes for the Solaris distros which are even farther removed from the familiar Linux layout.
I think in the future there will be a lot of ferment in these efforts of fusing stock and trade user-friendly and time-tested "Linux" GNU software with non-Linux kernels. It's worth checking out these distros and keeping tabs on what's happening with them. The OpenSolaris movement in particular will be a force to reckon with, in my opinion. In the end, all of this will probably be to the benefit of the end user of OSS.
Robert
59 • RE: #56 Donations (by fdavid on 2005-11-09 08:41:39 GMT from Austria)
Hi Ladislav,
thank you for your detailed answer. I'm glad to see your care about the issue and I really understand your points.
I may have just not considered that people tend to cheat if there's an open voting system, and if you still want to take into account the opinion of your readers, it is hard to find an easy way to measure the popularity of a nomination.
I presume that any solution to the problem would require quite much administration, which is not desired, either.
A way, how the the point I brought up in my previous post could be addressed, is to communicate to the readers what happens with the "lost" nominations. For example, in every call for nomination could be noted how the nominations are handled. This must not be democratic, or must not meet any requirenments. :-) It should merely define the rules.
Regards,
fdavid
60 • Thanks Tom Kennedy (by yshapedback on 2005-11-09 10:28:04 GMT from Philippines)
thanks for the information.. i think i just have to figure out how to make these programs work with ubuntu
thanks
61 • Fedora Core 5 (by Witek on 2005-11-09 13:19:54 GMT from Poland)
Isn't Fedora postponed to include Gnome 2.14 ?
62 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-09 14:13:49 GMT from United States)
I vote Kanotix.
63 • Donations (by anon on 2005-11-10 00:22:49 GMT from Germany)
KANOTIX would be a very good decision for the donations after FreeBSD or vice versa. Both deserve the money and if KANOTIX needs the money more urgently, then give it to them and next time, FreeBSD will receive the donations.
Some projects that also deserve a donation imho are:
- Inkscape, which is one of the most important and advanced applications for graphic design that might leave us with something that is even better than illustrator in the future
- Scribus, a good application that will make the usage of Linux for enterprise systems even more tempting
- Yoper, a small crew of developers that create one of the fastest distros out there and I heard that they desperately need money and new developers (I had used it a long time ago but mainly use Slackware now).
- XSane project, for its continuous effort to integrate scanners into Linux in an easy way.
Just my thoughts :)
64 • donations (by Tim Robinson on 2005-11-10 00:43:30 GMT from United States)
I feel that who gets money, basically from Ladislav's pocket, should ultimately be up to him. He is accountable to no one but himself. I, for one, am delighted that he considers our comments regarding this topic.
So herewith, I'd like to second the motion for Yoper to receive whatever he can give them. I run Yoper and love the blazing speed, the light, one disk size and the intelligent selection of included applications.
Yoper lost Andreas to Suse back in March and with him, their major drive. They are having trouble making progress toward their next major release and could use help.
I've tried Open Suse and see Andreas' handiwork there, as it is incredibly fast on my system compared to 9.1, 9.2, or 9.3.
My vote for Yoper.
And keep up the great work, Ladislav!
65 • 58 • BeleniX and other non-Linux kernel GNU distros (by Antonio on 2005-11-10 00:48:58 GMT from United States)
58 • BeleniX and other non-Linux kernel GNU distros
Thank you for sharing this information with us. Distrowatch is great. I only knew of Schillix and Belenix, and now I have found out about GING. Will check out later.
Thanks.,
66 • GING (by Andrew on 2005-11-10 03:00:06 GMT from Canada)
Ladislav,
your page on GING says that "this distribution appears to be discontinued." What happeed?
67 • Re #66: GING (by Robert Fortune on 2005-11-10 03:13:05 GMT from United States)
Go to the bottom of the current edition of DistroWatch Weekly - New distribution additions. That's where I found out about GING.
Otherwise go to:
http://glibc-bsd.alioth.debian.org/ging/
Robert
68 • Ede (by Anonymous on 2005-11-10 16:30:49 GMT from Germany)
I am looking for a distri that have also EDE as windowmanager, but EDE is not in the searchdatabase on distrowatch:( why isn`t it? ede looks good.
69 • Donation pick (by rob from Mt. Healthy on 2005-11-10 18:41:59 GMT from United States)
I agree with #3. The tellico collection manager is a very useful application. I started using it back when it was called 'bookcase' . The author was quick replying to an email question I sent, and he had quickly fixed a bug I encountered.
http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/
70 • Donations from readers (by Anonymous on 2005-11-10 20:31:36 GMT from Hungary)
Ladislav, why not set up a donation page on DW so that we, readers can also donate. You could then in turn transfer our donations to projects. This way more projects could be supported with money.
71 • More: Donations from readers (by Bill Savoie at 2005-11-10 21:59:40 GMT from United States)
I agree with #70. we see all this 'free' stuff and we feel guilty. It would be great if we could donate without much difficulty. Something like a click here button to donate on each distro page! It doesn't have to be on the DistroWatch home page, just a little link, like were the forum page is found.
Once that was operational, a 'donate link count' could be added to see/show how many times the link had been clicked on.
Maybe some time later, like 2007, it would be even better if a 'paypal' or some mechanism could be added and the amount contributed to all projects could be displayed on the home page. I would think a moving sum of the last 6 months might be several thousand dollars/URO/what ever. We could really experience the spirit of 'Open Source' and feel generous!
Thanks for all your work..
72 • Yes please donate to FreeBSD! (by ChrisW on 2005-11-10 22:54:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
I run a small suite of FreeBSD desktops for a voluntary community computer center. I install from the CD then add apps from ports. I find the apps are mostly right bang up to date and everything works beautifully. As a desktop it rocks and is solid as a rock even on lower spec machines. The FreeBSD project is also a tremendously important source of development initiative for the free/open source software community. Projects like PCBSD, FreeSBIE, etc wouldn't exist without it and there is plenty of spin off for Linux in terms of code sharing as well. I agree work on improving ease of installation would help newbies, eg autodetecting for X and perhaps a donation could push this along a little. I understand Linux already has a number of paid developers. As far as I know FreeBSD doesn't (though some of the developers are in paid work which allows them to work on FreeBSD). I think a donation to FreeBSD would have enormous benefit for the the whole free software community.
73 • WELL DONE DISTROWATCH (by Hiran Perera on 2005-11-11 07:27:29 GMT from Sri Lanka)
This is a fantastic website dedicated to linux. I was amazed by its well organized lists on linux distros. I visit this site daily to get myself up to date on the linux world. I'm quite new to linux. I currently use Mandrake lINUX 10.1 + i have the live cd's of knoppix 3.9 & thaprobane (A srilankan distro) I have gained a lot of info on linux through this site.
I even recommend my friends to browse through the info..
I hope to learn more on linux and contribute towards it..
My Quote "Wanna free up your hard disk!!!!!
Delete WINDOWS" hahahahahaha
74 • Re: Ede (by Ariszló on 2005-11-11 11:01:17 GMT from Hungary)
Anonymous wrote: I am looking for a distri that have also EDE as windowmanager, but EDE is not in the searchdatabase on distrowatch.
Search for Equinox:
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&desktop=Equinox
and you will find STX Linux:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=stx
http://stibs.cc/stx/
75 • Donation (by Jim C on 2005-11-12 00:47:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
I recall a while back it was said that donations would not be going to the bigger distros , as it was felt it wasn't appreciated.
I just noted on the Geebox web page they are losing their free hosting server in January. a prime candidate for support then?
Number of Comments: 75
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