 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 127, 21 November 2005 |
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. There is no rest for the developers of most distributions - following new development releases of SUSE and Ubuntu last week, the first test release of Fedora Core 5 is also expected shortly. What do you think of the new Mandriva 2006 and how does it compare with other KDE-centric distributions, such as Kubuntu 5.10? A long-time Mandriva user offers his views. Also in this issue: a new release of TheOpenCD, a quick look at RR4 Linux and an observation about the changing attitude of Microsoft towards Linux. Last but not least, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, affectionately known as GIMP, is exactly 10 years old today. Happy reading!
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (4.90MB) or mp3 (5.33MB) format (courtesy of Shawn Milo).
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
Content:
Miscellaneous news: Fedora 5, Mandriva vs Kubuntu, TheOpenCD 3.1, ten years of GIMP
 While most of us are enjoying one of the recently released stable Linux distributions, there is no rest for most of the distribution developers. Last week brought us two new development releases: the third alpha of SUSE Linux 10.1 and the first snapshot of Ubuntu Linux 6.04. In the meantime, the first test of Fedora Core 5 is also expected shortly - already delayed by two weeks and now re-scheduled for today (Monday), there is still no sign of any new test directory on the Fedora download servers. Normally, the ISO images of any new Fedora release are distributed to mirrors several days prior to the official announcement, but this has yet to happen. (Update: FC5 test1 is now expected on Wednesday.) While you are waiting, you might find it interesting to learn about the design process that eventually led to a new Fedora logo.
* * * * *
 A long-time Mandriva user has posted an interesting message explaining the reasons for his decision to leave Mandriva for Kubuntu. Among his gripes were disappointment with the services offered by the Mandriva Club, frequently corrupt Mandriva repositories, and the half-broken development snapshot of X.Org 6.9 in Mandriva 2006. Although the author still believes that Mandriva Linux is not a bad distribution, after spending some time experimenting with Kubuntu, he concluded that the Debian-based distribution matched his needs better.
What are your thoughts? If you are a Mandriva user, have you considered moving on to greener pastures? Or do you intend to be a loyal Mandriva fan, no matter what? If you've tried both Mandriva 2006 and Kubuntu 5.10, what are your impressions? Let's be honest about it: if you want to take full advantage of Mandriva Linux you do have to join the Club - otherwise you won't get the latest software and non-free packages, and you'll be made to wait several weeks for the ISO images. But joining the Club is not cheap, especially when considering that there are other distributions, real alternatives that do not cost an arm and a leg, while offering pretty much the same functionality as the one that costs €120 per year. Any opinions? Please discuss below.
* * * * *
TheOpenCD 3.1 has been released: "TheOpenCD team is pleased to announce the release of TheOpenCD 3.1. Core applications including OpenOffice, Firefox and Gaim have been upgraded to major new versions. The popular game Battle for Wesnoth has reached 1.0 and a range of familiar programs appear in minor version updates. The Live CD component is now based on Ubuntu 5.10 (the Breezy Badger). Blender has returned in version 2.37a and the MoinMoin Desktop Edition has been added." TheOpenCD is a project that provides a collection of the best open source applications for Windows. Version 3.1 is a bootable CD with a complete live edition of Ubuntu Linux 5.10 and the usual range of great free applications for those of you who still haven't been able to switch to Linux. Download from here.
The Open CD 3.1 - a combination of the Ubuntu live CD and a great collection of Free Software for Windows
(full image size: 819kB)
* * * * *
Speaking about Windows, Microsoft has released an interesting video - a presentation by Bill Hilf, the Director of Platform Technology Strategy at Microsoft Corporation. This is probably the first reasonably objective comparison between Linux and Microsoft products coming out of the Redmond-based software company; it hasn't been long since the top Microsoft executives labelled Linux with tags like "virus", "cancer", "pacman", and other unflattering names. Times have changed and, as Bill Hilf tells us, Microsoft is now maintaining a farm of about 400 Linux servers running in the region of 50 - 60 (!) different Linux distributions. They even subscribe to Red Hat Enterprise Linux support service and test various aspects of interoperability between the two operating systems.
Although the speaker does present the usual Redmond line about the total cost of ownership and maintains that Microsoft has a better security record than Red Hat Enterprise Linux (based on "independent" studies), one does get a feeling that Microsoft no longer sees Linux as just an inferior operating system that some kids hack on in their spare bedrooms. On the contrary, it is trying to learn from the success Linux has enjoyed among many developers and incorporate certain ideas into their own products. There is an interesting passage towards the end where the speaker unveils a new Microsoft command line application - complete with UNIX-like commands, command piping, and a few unusual tricks.
If you have an hour to spare or if you are interested to see the change in Microsoft's perception of Linux, here is the direct link to the video (you will need a pre-configured MPlayer browser plugin with support for Windows media format to be able to view it).
* * * * *
 The GNU Image Manipulation Program, affectionately referred to as The GIMP by many, is exactly 10 years old today. Considered to be the first real killer application for Linux and UNIX, GIMP has evolved into the most widely used open source graphics manipulation program, covered by hundreds of tutorials on the Internet as well as several printed books. The software was first announced by Peter Mattis on 21 November 1995: "The GIMP: the General Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is designed to provide an intuitive graphical interface to a variety of image editing operations." You can find some interesting information together with some screenshots from the early days of GIMP in this weblog.
Happy birthday, GIMP, and many happy returns!
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| Featured distribution of the week: RR4 Linux |
RR4 Linux
 Gentoo Linux, with its ground-up approach towards building a Linux operating system, should be an excellent base for creating new distributions and live CDs. Disappointingly, we haven't seen many of those and the number of Gentoo-based distributions certainly trails behind those based on Debian, Fedora or Slackware. But things might be changing and it is possible that we will soon start seeing more projects that choose Gentoo as their starting point. One of these new distributions is an excellent live DVD called RR4 Linux, developed by Fabio Erculiani.
The biggest advantage of RR4 Linux over, say, the Knoppix live DVD is that the former comes with much more up-to-date applications. The latest version of RR4 Linux has kernel 2.6.14, X.Org 7.0 from CVS, KDE 3.4.3, GNOME 2.12.1, and Firefox 1.5rc, just to give an indication about how cutting edge (even bleeding edge) the distribution is. The major disadvantage of the live DVD is that, despite its size, it lacks both Emacs and Vim. Besides KDE and GNOME, the XFce and Fluxbox window managers are also available.
But perhaps the best reason for downloading RR4 Linux is to avail oneself of what is possibly the easiest way to install Gentoo Linux on a hard disk. Using the official Gentoo Installer (currently in beta), users have the option to copy the content of the live DVD to their hard disk from within the comfort of a graphical installer (see screenshot below). Once done, RR4 will become standard Gentoo, with all the conveniences and features of the popular source-based distribution, including the Portage package manager.
Next time you need to install Gentoo Linux, but don't feel like going through the tedious installation process from "stages", give RR4 a try. And even if you don't intend to switch to Gentoo, RR4 Linux is worth the download - it makes for a very nice live DVD with a good set of highly up-to-date applications.
RR4 Linux - a cutting edge Linux live CD and an easy way of installing Gentoo Linux on a hard disk
(full image size: 918kB)
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| Released Last Week |
Kalango Linux 3.2
Kalango Linux is a nicely designed Brazilian distribution based on Debian and Kurumin. After some seven months in development, version 3.2 was announced yesterday. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.11, OpenOffice.org 2.0, KDE 3.4.3, GNOME 2.10, as well as a number of popular applications, such as the amaroK media player, K3b CD/DVD burning utility, Azureus BitTorrent client, GIMP graphics manipulation software, Inkscape vector drawing application, Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. Read the full release announcement on the distribution's home page for further information and join the discussion at BR-linux.org (both links in Portuguese).
SLAMPP 1.1
SLAMPP is a Slackware-based Linux live CD designed primarily as a pre-configured home server, although it also includes a minimal set of desktop-oriented applications for office and multimedia use. The project's second stable version has been released: "I proudly announce the newest version of SLAMPP. This version contains some new applications, features and hopefully will fix the known bugs reported so far to me. Furthermore, I consider this release as a maintenance release over the previous one, so let's hope all things will run smoothly." Find more information about the project in the release announcement and on the distribution's home page.
Gentoo Linux 2005.1-r1
The Gentoo release team has announced the availability of Gentoo Linux 2005.1-r1, a bug-fix update to the current stable release: "The Gentoo Release Engineering team is proud to announce Gentoo Linux 2005.1-r1! The 2005.1-r1 release is simply a media refresh over the 2005.1 release. What this means is that it used the same base snapshot, and has very few changes. It is essentially nothing more than a bug-fix release. ... There is also a new version of the x86 Gentoo Linux Installer LiveCD located under /experimental. This version is based off the 2005.1 snapshot, but has some bug fixes in it, along with version 0.2 of the Gentoo Linux Installer." Read the complete release announcement for further details.
* * * * *
Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Ubuntu Linux 6.04
The Ubuntu Linux project has published a preliminary roadmap leading to the release of version 6.04, code name "Dapper Drake". Following a series of development snapshots called "Flight" ("Flight" is to "Dapper Drake" what "Colony" was to "Breezy Badger"), the first beta release is scheduled for 23 March 2006. This will be followed by a release candidate on 13 April and the final release a week later. Your can find more information on the Dapper Release Process and Dapper Release Schedule pages.
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Web Site News |
DistroWatch in Linux Format
 Those of you who subscribe to Linux Format might have noticed a new "Distrowatch" section in the latest (Christmas 2005) issue of the magazine. Written by yours truly, this is to become a regular feature of Linux Format, covering the latest news from the Linux distribution world, analysing major new releases, and presenting interesting new projects. The current issue starts with a brief history of Linux distributions before checking out Slackware 10.2 and introducing the Tao Linux live CD.
While on this topic, I hope you won't mind a little plug. I have been a subscriber of Linux Format ever since I switched to Linux some 5 years ago and I still consider it the best English language Linux magazine available today. I feel honoured to able to contribute to this most outstanding publication. With a great mix of articles, reviews, interviews, and step-by-step tutorials on all aspects of open source software, Linux Format has contributed a great deal towards the wide acceptance of Linux that we are seeing today.
Next time you are at your news agent, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. Or even better, subscribe. It will be money well spent.
* * * * *
New distribution additions
* * * * *
New on the waiting list
- CAE Linux. CAE Linux is a live DVD distribution based on PClinuxOS. Dedicated to Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) and more specifically to finite element simulation, CAE Linux includes the new 3D pre- / post-processor SALOME and the powerful finite element solver Code-Aster. It also offers several scientific tools like GNU Octave and Scilab, and a full range of development tools and compilers.
- DSS Live. DSS (Debased Scripts Set) project is dedicated to providing a "System Development Environment" to create a Debian-based live Linux system.
- ZeroShell. Zeroshell is a Linux live CD distribution aimed at providing all main network services for a Local Area Network.
* * * * *
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 • Nice (by Ben Woods on 2005-11-21 12:47:36 GMT from Australia)
I always love the DWN!!!
2 • No subject (by Flavio de Oliveira on 2005-11-21 13:13:13 GMT from Brazil)
I could not find the script used to build RR4, there is also a gentoo based build by using linux live scripts called Loonix, but I think we still have few distros based on Slackware if we compare to Debian based.
3 • Always love DWW !!! (by Caraibes on 2005-11-21 13:17:20 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Love you guys !!! Great job !!!
-When do you plan to interview Robert Tolu from GenieOS ???
About Mandriva 2006, I installed Free version, and... welll.. it's the free version, nothing is there... no surprise...
Suse 10.0 was great, except for playing avi/divx/mpeg movie...
Zenwalk rocks, but is slightly unstable...
Puppy " " " " "
So back to good'ol'Debian pure (sorry, GenieOS)
4 • DistroWatch in Linux Format (by srlinuxx on 2005-11-21 13:23:47 GMT from United States)
OMG! Congratulations on that wonderful new "job"! I'm so jealous! :D I might have to renew my subscription now. :)
5 • Mandriva -> Kubuntu (by Roy Stefanussen on 2005-11-21 13:30:59 GMT from United States)
The Linux community can be viewed as fragmented or diversified. Either way, I think it is to be preferred over monoculture. This mild form of chaos fosters great creativity. However, evolution is not a pretty thing. Many projects are stillborn and other become extinct after a while. Being part of this exciting process requires adaptability and a certain tolerance to bugs.
I see the "parting shot" of Mr. Van De Velde mainly as sour grapes. I would not be overly surprised if Kubuntu gets the same treatment after a while.
6 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu (by bushman on 2005-11-21 13:40:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am also a long term Mandriva (since it forked from Redhat) and empathise with the person who decided to leave it in favour of Kubuntu. I agree with a lot of the points he stated, but disagree on others.
The points that I agree with are the following,
1) Obtaining the iso images as a paid up club member was a pain, it took me two and a half days to download the dvd iso using bittorrent. Some have said it took them longer. For a service that you are paying for, this is raw deal and it needs sorting out for the next release.
2) The whole xorg 6.9 thing was wrong, they should have stuck to a stable release. It works fine for me, but has caused headaches for others.
Other problems not mentioned
KAT: Why did they include kat, its a memory hog and slows down KDE to the point where its unuseable. They should have waited until it was stable.
Urpmi mirrors: The club urpmi mirrors are not always reliable and this is a pain if you want to install or upgrade packages.
KDE default configuration: Why is it that if you compile KDE apps from source, they don't appear in the menu or kcontrol automatically, but on Suse and other distros they do even though they use their own menu systems. The Mandriva menu system needs revising.
Points I disagree with
1) Urpmi is slow when compared to apt. I don't think so, but this may depend on the mirrors you are using.
2) No updates for 2005/2006. I have been using 2006 for about 1.5 months and have certainly had a lot of updates.
3) You have to upgrade yearly from CD or DVD. You don't have to use any CDs or DVDs because you can upgrade to new releases from ftp or http servers using urpmi.
Other points that I think are losing Mandriva a lot of current and potential users are the delay in releasing free isos and the impresion that the free version is crippled. Suse realised that if they don't provide free isos in a timely manner then very few people would bother with their distro. I understand that they need to make money from the club members, but they need to revise this model.
The artwork is too cartoonish (yes it can be changed, but look at the default Kubuntu or Suse desktops, they are beautiful to look at). Galaxy needs modernising or scrapping and we need a new set of default icons.
Apart from the problems I have stated I am happy with Mandriva, but understand why a lot of people are leaving it for other distros.
7 • RR4 Linux easy? (by Anonymous on 2005-11-21 13:42:16 GMT from Netherlands)
For me Kororaa is still the most easy way:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kororaa
8 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu (by Anonymous on 2005-11-21 13:43:14 GMT from United States)
Mandriva and Kubuntu don't have the same objectives. While I don't get the one behind Kubuntu, I very much enjoy the Mandriva ones. Mandriva Control Center is a pleasure to user, urpmi is a brilliant tool, and urpmi parrallel is really nice when you have various computers at home. Inclusion of French software (like freeplayer which is usefull only if you have the ADSL provider named "Free", or ADSL USB modems tipical here) makes it very usefull as well.
The work made on KDE fulfill my needs, I don't get why all this tab in konqueror in Kubuntu. What's more, I really like the speed you have with Mandriva 2006. Easyurpmi is a must.
The bad thing is that Mandriva needs money to survive (not like Ubuntu which is not playing with the same rules).
9 • LXF (by Max on 2005-11-21 13:52:22 GMT from Australia)
The new LXF is out already?
I almost went to my local newsagent today but thought it would be too early... No worries, i'll be there tomorrow...
Anyway Ladislav, congrats on your new section...
I guess its no surprise with all the hard work you put in running this site... ;)
10 • Mandriva and Kubuntu (by Anon on 2005-11-21 14:02:05 GMT from United States)
I am a Mandriva club member and loyalist. Is membership expensive? Yes, but you're pointing out the silver membership price, not basic. Also, I feel (hope) that my contribution is going not just to Mandriva but OS in general (that may be idealistic, but I have to believe that Mandriva does give back to the community). I tried the first release of Kubuntu, and found it much inferior in terms of hardware detection and new user tools (Mandriva Control Center and drakxtools). The proof is in the pudding and I am writing this in Abiword on a Dell laptop with an encrypted wireless link - everything was detected automatically - and I have yet to find a distribution that can do the same (okay you have to do the install using vgalo).
Are there problems, you bet. The club forum has gotten much better with the new full time moderator (Adam), but Mandriva appears isolated from club criticism. Consider the decision to create three release disks, Basic, Power Pack, and now Power Pack plus. The plus is supposed to placate the gold members (big big bucks - like $600 a year), but what they did was cripple the Power Pack DVD. Want to setup a home server? That used to be a no brainer with the power pack DVD, now the crippled version doesn't even come with an FTP server (4.7 Gigs of programs and no FTP server is unforgivable and the draktools were stripped down also). Want Postgresql? Too bad. I have been a silver member since the beginning of 2003, but I will drop back to basic membership if PP continues to be crippled. But, your basic premise that you have to be a member to get the full benefit of Mandriva is wrong. Wait a month and get the basic version online or buy the basic version or even the PP+ at Cheapbytes for under $10, and then use http://easyurpmi.zarb.org to get free online access to the full distro and most thousands of contribs.
Every distro has their problems, and Mandriva is no different, but they have a solid distro with an unfortunate management deafness for their fan feedback and a flippant disregard of outside criticism. Management wise it kind of reminds you of another company located in Redmond, Washington. Maybe arrogant programmers are the best programmers? I hope not, but checkout Pedroa at www.dotproject.net some time - wow - but dotproject is good.
11 • LXF & Mandriva vs. Kubuntu (by LinuxISO.co.uk on 2005-11-21 14:03:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was very pleased to see Ladislav's article in LXF this month, I will look forward to future editions :)
As for Mandriva vs. Kubuntu I am a bit biased as I have an Ubuntu desktop, a Kubuntu laptop and one of my severs runs Ubuntu-server. I would however agree with the points made from my observations from previous versions of Mandriva.
Urpmi is slower than Apt by design but there is apt4rpm for Mandriva (not sure how good the repositories are for it).
I think the club idea is good in theory (maybe a bit overpriced for what you get), but they really stuffed up when it came to the FTP release and they should have compensated users for such.
12 • The good of Mandriva without the bad? PcLinuxOS! (by A vocie on 2005-11-21 14:08:08 GMT from Switzerland)
PcLinuxOs is the right answer to those wanting to quite Mandriva.
- user friendly
- updated
- free
- keeping and improving the mandriva tools
- one disk, live and installable
13 • Mandriva, Mandriva Club and all (by Anonymous on 2005-11-21 14:08:48 GMT from Brazil)
I've been a Mandriva user since 1999 and I'm still using Mandriva now, but I couldn't agree more with the other Mandriva user. I am really disappointed with Mandriva Club and the distro is getting more and more unstable every day. The decision of including a known buggy Kat/ACPI/Xorg combination as default in Mandriva 2006 was unbelievable. Besides that, Mandriva Club has probably the worst support I've seen in my life (and I live in Brazil, I am used to very bad support all around), it's so bad that it makes me think how people can be paid for that service.
So, we have two questions:
1) Why do I pay Mandriva Club?
Mandriva was the first distribution working rock solid in my hardware while I was learning to use linux and now that I can, I would like to give something back. At subscription renewal time I'll think if that's where I'd like to spend my money.
2) Why am I using Mandriva?
I still think that Mandriva is a system pretty fast, to setup and use, and very flexible for someone used to it. It's not for begginers since you have to read the forums so that your system works OK (lately I recommend Ubuntu fot that), but Mandriva 2006 is still less work than Ubuntu 5.10 for my daily use (mostly J2EE Development / Multimedia / Gateway in only one box).
Lately I've been testing a lot of linux distros to pick the one I like the most and maybe I'll not be using Mandriva for while, but I sincerely hope that Mandriva can address their issues with support and quality. It's such a great technical team and distro with such a lousy management.
14 • PCLinuxOS (by wam on 2005-11-21 14:17:36 GMT from United States)
Ive installed over 100 distros in the past 2 years...PCLinuxOS has got to be the best, updated, stable and free distro ive ever used. Its the distro that Mandriva wished it was.
15 • DistroWatch in Linux Format (by d00m3d on 2005-11-21 14:22:32 GMT from Hong Kong)
That's a great news!
I have been a regular reader of LXF since 3 years ago. Although I also subscribe other journal like Linux Magazine, I have to agree that it the best English language Linux magazine available today. The only thing I feel uncomfortable is the delivery service which I have addressed my complaints to Future Pub in last year. I missed several issues and I was unable to order the relevant back issues. This year, so far so good.
Anyway, DW in LXF simply makes it best and best.
16 • Mandriva, K/Ubuntu, GenieOS, PCLinuxOS, SuSE (by Jeff on 2005-11-21 14:24:57 GMT from United States)
"PcLinuxOs is the right answer to those wanting to quite Mandriva."
No doubt about it. Just downloaded preview .92 last night. PCLinuxOS is Mandriva done right in my opinion. The repository is about 4,000 packages now and growing. And they're all available using apt!
SuSE is also a fine product, but it's still not as easy to install packages on it even with YAST and/or APT. But the 10.0 release clearly shows this is polished and has great potential.
K/Ubuntu are also fine products, but Kubuntu doesn't recognize any of the usb drives I plug in unless they were present during the initial install or I alter the fstab. I also don't like having to install all the plugins manually like flash, java, etc. Nevertheless, still great distros.
GenieOS? Easy to install and gets a desktop up and running in 10 minutes. This includes all the usual plugins. The wireless support is a bit weak, but I use ndiswrapper which is included so it doesn't matter to me. What I really like is that it's completely compatible with the Debian Sarge repositories. And I can always update to testing or unstable if I'm feeling brave.
"When do you plan to interview Robert Tolu from GenieOS ???"
I second that.
17 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu (by pp on 2005-11-21 14:37:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've used Mandriva since 2002, and experimented on Kubuntu 5.04 and 5.10.
When you do many things with your computer, you want everything to be configurable from one central place, just like in windows (the control centre). This makes using the computer so much easier. The distros that do this well are Mandriva and SUSE.
I've never paid a penny for my use of Mandriva and there is no need to do so. All the bells and whistles come from PLF repositories. Everyhing just works and it's easy to use. Only complaint are the Mandriva mirrors in England that sometimes don't seem to be lacking some packages, but I've started to use dutch mirrors.
Kubuntu has made a great impression on me, but I'm still waiting for a proper control center to come. So far SUSE is the main competition for Mandriva at this point on my desktop.
18 • Mandriva vs. Kubuntu (by Alan B. Cohen on 2005-11-21 15:12:40 GMT from United States)
I bought retail versions of Mandrake for many years, then started to download the free versions when I got a broadband connection 3 years ago. I've always been frustrated by the problems with Mandrake's repositories. I still have one machine with Mandriva 2006LE on it but have changed two others to Kubuntu. While still not perfect, my newer setup have been more stable and easier to upgrade. I will continue to monitor Mandriva's progress (and many others), but it is no longer my main linux distribution.
19 • @Jeff (by Max on 2005-11-21 15:16:31 GMT from Australia)
Does PCLinuxOS have its own repo? Can you point me to it? The website doesnt seem to mention anything...
20 • PCLinuxOS Repos (by Jeff on 2005-11-21 15:34:37 GMT from United States)
"Does PCLinuxOS have its own repo? Can you point me to it? The website doesnt seem to mention anything..."
It does and it includes pretty much everything you would need for desktop linux and they work excellent. I haven't had the system break or throw dependency issues during an upgrade yet. The /etc/apt/sources.list included with PCLinuxOS lists the repos. Here are a few out of that file:
rpm http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/ pclinuxos/2004 os updates texstar
rpm ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/metalab/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/ pclinuxos/2004 os updates texstar
rpm ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/apt/ pclinuxos/2004 os updates texstar
21 • Why I switched from Mandrake to Ubuntu (by Joeb on 2005-11-21 15:54:06 GMT from United States)
As a former long time Mandrake Club member (I left before they became Mandriva, but I was an original club member), I'd like to tell you why I left. While many people talk about technical reasons - ie urpmi vs apt or various packages or user tools, the main reason I left was because of the attitude being exhibited in the Club (that and it took days to use bittorrent to download the latest ISOs). Things became very hostile towards anyone comparing Mandrake to another distro or a lot of questions were being answered with RTFM (an not necessarily using the acronymn). The demise of the "community" spirit along with the increasing bugginess of the distro finally caused me to leave (although I hear that the community is improving again).
My search led me to many distros and I ended focussing on the one CD distros of Mepis, Yoper, Ubuntu, PCLinxuOS and some others. Each had their good points and bad points.
I ultimately ended up sticking with Ubuntu/Kubuntu, not because of any technical superiority, but because of the community built around it. It has one of the best user communities out there (not to put down the other distros, which also have very good communities).
Is it Ubuntu/Kubuntu perfect? No! Has it come a very long way in a short time? Yes! Is it the perfect distro for everyone? Of course not.
I do think, however, that Linux is maturing to the point where it is no longer technical differences that distinquish one distro from another, but now the more evasive user experience is the distinquishing factor. While it is true that Ubuntu/Kubuntu only ships with "free" software so you can't listen to mp3s out of the box (but only a click or to away with synaptic), in the long run, it's the user community that provides the user experience that makes one decide to stick with a distro or change.
Mandrake/Mandriva lost that user/community experience, for me anyway. Ubuntu/Kubuntu, however has met and exceeded my expectations for it.
In a nutshell, that is why I left Mandrake/Mandriva.
Joeb
22 • mandrivel (by ray carter at 2005-11-21 16:07:04 GMT from United States)
I was a Mandrake user from 9.0 through 10.1, eventually supporting 10.1 on six computers (two at home and four I manage for a local library - public access internet). I am in the process of moving to Kubuntu, since I feel that it meets my needs better - I almost made the switch last summer, but found a couple of packages I needed were not readily available for ubuntu. I've moved on machine to kubuntu, and have installed it on one new machine; will be transitioning the rest over the next few months. One reason - last week I did an in place upgrade from 5.04 to 5.10 - I won't say it was flawless, but we got there. Last I heard from Mandrake - everyone still suggested a new install rather than an upgrade. I am starting to appreciate the Debian package management philosophy.
23 • Best of Mdv+Best of Mepis=PCLinuxOS (by jared on 2005-11-21 16:42:38 GMT from United States)
I've started using linux with Mandrake 8.0 and thought it was wonderful, but as I matured in my linux experience I really began to notice the bugs and other problems that surrounded Mandrake. I haven't touched Mandrake since 10.0 and started using Mepis which was great, but found that upgrading had problems and don't even try upgrading anything in KDE in Mepis most of the time it would break KDE. The advise given in the MepisLovers forums would be don't upgrade KDE. Just this weekend I tried PCLinuxOS and I couldn't be happier. It is a great distro. I gave it a work over this weekend and really tried to push it and I didn't have any hitches. Add me to the others who have mentioned that PCLinuxOS is all the best of Mandriva, plus I'll add that it has everything Mepis has, plus it doesn't break. If you want a great desktop distro with a great control panel (thanks to mandriva) and want to have all your browser plugins (quicktime, w32codec, etc) working out of the box, plus easy acess to dvd play and apt, PCLinuxOS is the way to go. Kubuntu doesn't even have all of that. It's the only distro's I've used that I didn't have to spend hours customizing it to my own needs or likes except for having to add a few more packages with synaptic. It just felt comfortable right from the "get-go". It's like I found exactly what I'm looking for. Can you tell I really like PCLinuxOS?
24 • DistroWatch in Linux Format (by Pete on 2005-11-21 16:56:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Nice two page article (even if you did miss the first MCC distro :-) )
Have to be honest, it would have been better in Journal, but LXF is OK and far better than not having the article.
Do you get to keep the copyright and place it on this site, say after a couple of months after publication?
25 • Mandriva (by baturcotte on 2005-11-21 16:58:57 GMT from United States)
Chalk me up as another longtime customer of Mandrake/Mandriva that has moved on...to SUSE in my case (partially due to the fact that we are a Novell shop at work, and partially because I need a distro that is not only a good desktop but also a good server). I've liked the Mandrake distros, but the club attitude has really turned me off, and the changes to the PowerPack distro for 2006 were the final straw. If Mandrake expects to survive, they need to look really hard at their responsiveness to the customers and what they want...otherwise there will not be a bottom line to take care of.
26 • NEXENTA!!! "Debian GNU/Solaris" (by RobNyc on 2005-11-21 17:09:16 GMT from United States)
I hope the best for this project !
27 • Fedora Logo (by kcin on 2005-11-21 17:14:43 GMT from United States)
Catastrophe!!! All the description and justification of how they developed this new logo makes perfect sense logically... Unfortunately, all this logic has resulted in a pure disaster of a logo in any aesthetic sense. I am saddened and appalled. They've abandoned their namesake, for crying out loud!
Fedora abandoning the Hat as a basis for their Logo??? Unbelievable! It's as if Pillsbury abandoned the Doughboy, or as if Apple switched it's logo to a Banana, or as if Linux itself decided to ditch Tux for Roger Rabbit. Give me a break! How many companies would KILL for brand recognition symbology as well-known and striking and memorable as the Fedora Hat? ...And they are just chucking it for this committee-authored atrocity?
I'm just sick over this, and I'm not even a Fedora User - I can only imagine how bad the Fedora Faithful must feel.
28 • Zen Linux: there are three Perl viruses in the download (by Bill on 2005-11-21 17:35:31 GMT from United States)
I did not know where else to put this. The Zen Linux site just has a small mailing list.
Anyway, I have had the 1.2 version ISO download on my hard drive but have not burned it to CD to install yet.
I ran a virus scan, I'm in Windows XP, and three Perl viruses were found. I tried several competent virus scanners, all of them found the same things. They could not fix two of the three. Should I delete this ISO image ? Can it infect anything on either Linux or Windows ?
Someone should let the Zen people know. I downloaded from the link provided here when it first came out. I don't even have an e-mail program installed so I cannot contact the Zen people at this time.
29 • Best of Mdv+Best of Mepis=PCLinuxOS (by jared on 2005-11-21 17:40:44 GMT from United States)
I've started using linux with Mandrake 8.0 and thought it was wonderful, but as I matured in my linux experience I really began to notice the bugs and other problems that surrounded Mandrake. I haven't touched Mandrake since 10.0 and started using Mepis which was great, but found that upgrading had problems and don't even try upgrading anything in KDE in Mepis most of the time it would break KDE. The advise given in the MepisLovers forums would be don't upgrade KDE. Just this weekend I tried PCLinuxOS and I couldn't be happier. It is a great distro. I gave it a work over this weekend and really tried to push it and I didn't have any hitches. Add me to the others who have mentioned that PCLinuxOS is all the best of Mandriva, plus I'll add that it has everything Mepis has, plus it doesn't break. If you want a great desktop distro with a great control panel (thanks to mandriva) and want to have all your browser plugins (quicktime, w32codec, etc) working out of the box, plus easy acess to dvd play and apt, PCLinuxOS is the way to go. Kubuntu doesn't even have all of that. It's the only distro's I've used that I didn't have to spend hours customizing it to my own needs or likes except for having to add a few more packages with synaptic. It just felt comfortable right from the "get-go". It's like I found exactly what I'm looking for. Can you tell I really like PCLinuxOS?
30 • What is MoinMoin? (by Anonymous on 2005-11-21 17:47:43 GMT from United States)
Check out their web site and it gives install instruction. Can anyone shed some light about MoinMoin?
31 • Mandriva (by dostrak on 2005-11-21 17:49:05 GMT from United States)
I started out using Mandrake 7.1 powerpack when it first came out. I liked it. I never had a problem with it. Then I got 8.0, 8.1, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 powerpack. Paid for them all. As I went to the next release and the next release it just got worse and worse, I was always thinking "the next release will be better" . It never was. I haven't been back since. I switched to Slackware. I learned more in One year of using Slackware then I did in Four years of using Mandrake (I know its Mandriva now, but to me it will always be Mandrake) Yes it is a little scary at first, but once you learn how things work you can jump into any Distro and set it up and have it running with no problem. You want to use GNU/Linux use something else. You want to run GNU/Linux learn how to run Slackware.
32 • mandriva vs ubuntu (by agendelman on 2005-11-21 18:00:44 GMT from United States)
This is an excellent discussion. I agree with some of what has been said, but disagree with much also. Is there just one automobile, or tv on the market that you can or want to buy? Of course not. Linux is no different. Linux is supposed to give us choice, and currently that's just what it's doing.
I have two rather large hard drives with many partitions and many distros. I'm a Mandriva club member who has, of course the 2006 club edition, and also the devel (community) edition. When a cooker snapshot comes out, I install it and try to put my 2 cents in as the release moves toward beta.Nobody NEEDS to join the club, or pay a nickel. The public isos are available, freely downloadable, a few short weeks after club members get their edition. The free public edition is not crippled. It's usually 3 isos and you can simply use easy urpmi from plf to gain access to thousands of other apps. If you want to install the wizards for server installation, it's a trivial matter. If you want to follow the "community version" which contains contribs by private individuals that have not yet appeared in the latest stable release, go here
ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrakelinux/devel/iso/i586/
and then to easy urpmi and upgrade from the devel (community) mirrors. If you want to follow cooker, go here http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/CookerHowTo#Installing_from_ISO_Release
ahd find about 9 different ways to do it.
The mandriva community is more than the club. There are many thousands of helpfull users on forums, usenet groups, irc channels etc While some levels of club membership are expensive, standard membership for about $60.00 (US) per year gives me access to everything I need. I have a high speed connection and can get anything I need from mandriva, plf, or third party mirrors. If you have a slow connection, there are countless places on the internet where you can get cds for just a couple of bucks.
My favorite mandriva based distro is pclinuxos. It's beautifull, and functional. My favorite debian based distros, in order of preference are Mepis, kanotix, and ubuntu (actually kubuntu) My favorite slackware based distro is vector linux and the live cd, slax. I have all of these, along with opensuse10.0, debian stable, and slackware 10.2 on one partion or another.
At one time or another I've had to manually edit an fstab. or an /etc/apt/sources.list, or a lilo.conf etc on ALL of these distros. Anyone who can't or wont read the release and errata data on any
of these distros, will, from time to time have trouble. Anyone who is uniformly hostile to RTFM will likewise get into trouble. BTW, I found a unique and interesting way to avoide breaking a debian based system when I do an apt-get dist-upgrade. Just install debian. It's gotten much easier, and with a little reading there are many console driven config tools that don't require any great skill
If you can find a community that you like, go for it. If you can find a distro that your hardware likes, go for it. But be aware, that your hardware may not be as happy with the next release.
Among the distros that I really like is mandriva. It has excellent hardware detection, top of the line config tools, many thousands of apps to choose from, and a large diverse installed user base who are always available to help. Beware the large corporate driven distros. The big boys look at the bottom line, and if they don't like what they see, they'll drop the distro like a hot potato
Thanks for listening ton this long-winded post.
cheers.
33 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu (by Yoho on 2005-11-21 18:04:53 GMT from Belgium)
I agree with bushman. What's interesting is that all the bad changes have appeared in the last few weeks before release : cartoonish design, kat, unstable mirrors, xorg 6.9...
The biggest problem of all is that a lot of people warned about these problems on the cooker ML but they haven't been heard.
34 • PCLinuxOS (by guhappy on 2005-11-21 18:33:19 GMT from United States)
I agree with everyone who praises PCLinuxOS. I've tried many distros and find this one to be the most user friendly and stable distro around. I can't wait for the final release of .92 for I will probably replace my Windows machine with it. I'm going to miss those BSODs :-)
35 • Mandriva (by Scott on 2005-11-21 18:44:51 GMT from United States)
I'm also a long time user of Mandrake/Mandriva since buying a v8.0 box set at big box mart about 5 years ago (for $19 and one year of updates). My biggest beef that has been unmentioned is that the darn installer will distroy any thing else on the PC (unless it is windows I guess), will not detect that another boot loader is on the PC and insists on using LILO for the initial install. It says it can but it is always greyed out. You also don't get the bootloader screen after the install unless you partion it and change the boot loader in the partioning software. It skips right over it and has been like that for years or it wants a extra /root partion. I tried PCLinuxOS but it would boot loop or kernal panic with a SiS video card but have a new test machine and may not be a issue anymore. I used Mepis on that machine and worked like a dream until I tried to use the HD on the new machine with a nVidia card and flipped it out.
RH FC4 is on another partion on this machine and works like a dream but the days of blaming others for Mandriva's short falls are long over for me. I used to get around it by installing Mandriva first but I shouldn't have to with a modern distro. that I'm paying money for support. At minimum rescue should work and I shouldn't have to twiddle with grub/lilo to fix their short sidedness.
36 • Fedora Logo (by Jesse on 2005-11-21 18:48:46 GMT from Canada)
In reply to kcin about the Fedora logo.
Having been a RedHat/Fedora user for a number
of years, I too am not all that fond of the new
logo....yet. However, to say Fedora has abandon the
hat seems pointless. I don't think they ever used a hat.
RedHat Linux used the notable hat, but Fedora's logo
has been a captial F on a blue background. I believe
it was different from RedHat's red hat symbol for
legal reasons.... So, yes, they've changed, a big F for
a little F and some curves. Hardly the symbolic tossing
aside some make it out to be.
37 • mplayer ??? (by solsTiCe on 2005-11-21 19:08:00 GMT from France)
you suppose i need a preconfigured mplayer browser to see their video.
Why ? can't i use something else ?
I see the video from konqueror with the kafeine plugin (which use xine)
the microsoft is moslty right except maybe for the interoperability stuff... microsft interoperable with what ?
38 • RE: Fedora Logo (by Thomas Chung on 2005-11-21 19:10:57 GMT from United States)
In case you're wondering "Why not a hat?"
Please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/LogoIdeas
and see FAQ section.
Regards,
--
Thomas Chung
FedoraNEWS.ORG
39 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-21 19:33:42 GMT from United States)
"I can't wait for the final release of .92 for I will probably replace my Windows machine with it."
It hit the mirrors yesterday or Saturday I believe. I'm looking forward to the 1.0. My only real complaint about PCLinuxOS is that it's bloated with tons of software. I like a small system with just 1 video player, 1 picture viewer, etc. That doesn't mean PCLinuxOS runs slow. It's quite snappy on my box.
40 • Thanks (by guhappy on 2005-11-21 20:20:01 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the heads up on the final .92 release of PCLinuxOS. I'm downloading it right now.
41 • Distrowatch and Mandriva... endless story (by tomcat on 2005-11-21 20:47:32 GMT from Germany)
I don't use Mandriva (I am a Fedora user), but I am asking myself since a very, very long time, when distrowatch will finally stop its childish "personal crusade" against Mandriva. Every now and then, Ladislav complaints about this and that being bad with Mandrake/Mandriva. Now he reads one users opinion why someone switched from Mandriva to Kubuntu and thinks/hopes that others should follow suit? I could post dozens of forum entries where people said "bye bye" to ubuntu/kubuntu and went to Mandriva. I am sick of this ideological nonsense-warfare that distrowatch is going after.
When, for Gods sake, will you finally accept that Mandriva is one of the best distros out there for the desktop and stop your immature, childish personal warfare? What have they done to you that you hate them so much? With every new Mandriva release you start a rant about something not being the way you want it. Be it packages, be it the colors, be it the Club. And now there is a comparision of distros that you acutally cannot compare on equal terms... Sheesh... grow up man.
Sorry, but this had to be said.
42 • Congrats on the Linux Format gig (by DaveW on 2005-11-21 20:54:11 GMT from United States)
I agree that it's the best of the GNU/Linux print magazines. I'd love to buy it every month or subscribe, but in the US it costs something like $18 a copy. That may be quite reasonable for folks who find the included disks of use, but I prefer to download what I want. They've had letters (including mine) about selling the mag without the disks, but don't want to do that. Subscribing to the disk edition would be kind of like paying for two broadband services at the same time. So I buy the most interesting issues and check out the others in a bookstore.
Maybe if I have some bucks lying around I'll think about donating a subscription to a library or something. That way at least it would benefit enough people to justify the cost. But I'll definitely buy your debut issue, Ladislav, in hopes they'll come to see that you're a hot property and raise your pay.
43 • Abandoning logo's (by Gnobuddy on 2005-11-21 20:55:39 GMT from United States)
It's as if Pillsbury abandoned the Doughboy, or as if Apple switched it's logo to a Banana, or as if Linux itself decided to ditch Tux for Roger Rabbit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heh. The logo was invented by someone with some knowledge of psychology, to let you bury associations with a product deep into your brain. Scary how successful that has been.
I can't be the only one who thinks Tux is perhaps the ugliest logo ever? It's not that penguins aren't cute - much the reverse, they are very cute - but Tux doesn't look anything like a penguin; he looks like a cross between a grossly obese man and Daffy Duck (ever seen a penguin with a wide yellow bill?).
On reflection, the OpenBSD blowfish may be even uglier: http://www.openbsd.org/art/puffy/ppuf100X91.gif .
Still, that makes Tux the second ugliest logo I've ever seen. Too bad - I think Linux is great, and I think penguins are attractive little things, but Tux - well, Tux is hideous, frankly. I really, truly, hope someone some day redesigns Tux so he looks more like a penguin and less like an obese man-duck.
-Gnobuddy
44 • Mandriva and Kubuntu (by John Wu at 2005-11-21 21:03:38 GMT from United States)
I had some problem with
Fedora, Mandrake not working right after fresh install.
Often need to wait for the patch or find a work around it.
I found Debian base or BSD based are tend to do
more QA before they release their products.
The APT tool in the Debian base is rock solid then RPM.
45 • Distrowatch and Mandriva (by John on 2005-11-21 21:04:33 GMT from United States)
"I don't use Mandriva (I am a Fedora user), but I am asking myself since a very, very long time, when distrowatch will finally stop its childish "personal crusade" against Mandriva."
It's a free world. If you don't like it, don't read the comments. Don't visit the site. No one has a gun to your head.
"I could post dozens of forum entries where people said "bye bye" to ubuntu/kubuntu and went to Mandriva."
Like I said, it's a free world. Post your experience. Others should post as well. Afterall, that's why these forums exist. Both these distros have their strong points and some prefer one to another.
"And now there is a comparision of distros that you acutally cannot compare on equal terms... Sheesh... grow up man."
You should grow up or become a dictator because that's exactly how you sound. If you can't hear the criticism, even harsh at times, then you have nothing to debate or contribute. Where's your evidence that one is better than the other. Perhaps it is in some areas and in others it lacks. It's all personal preference and how each individual weighs what's important to them. Haven't you learned anything using Linux?
"Now he reads one users opinion why someone switched from Mandriva to Kubuntu and thinks/hopes that others should follow suit?"
Ladislav is free to do what he wants with his site. Freedom of speech. If you don't like it, start your own pro-Mandriva site.
Just for the record, I currently use PCLinuxOS (Mandrake-based) and GenieOS (Debian-based) on a dual-boot box. I have nothing against Mandriva and think it's a fine distribution.
46 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu (by JeffS on 2005-11-21 21:13:05 GMT from United States)
For me, Mandriva/Mandrake has delivered a vastly superior overall Linux experience, as compared to not only Kubuntu, but all other distros I've tried (and there have been many).
I started with Linux about 4 years ago, with RH 7.3. Then it was 9.0. Then I tried Mandrake 10. I was blown away. It was so fast, easy, stable, beautiful, and full featured. I started with the free Community Edition, having purchased CDs from a Linux CD version. Then I purchased a boxed set of Mandrake 10 PowerPack. And that was spectacular - worth the $70, and then some.
Let me just say, before I talk about the plethora of other distros I've tried, MDK 10 PwrPK has remained head and shoulders above all other distros in my overall Linux satisfaction.
After Mandrake 10, it was Mepis (2003, then Simply 3.3.1), then Ubuntu (Warty, then Breezy, and Kubuntu breezy). I've also tried Knoppix (various editions), Kanotix, Slax, SuSE Live, Fedora Core 2 and 4, Pure Debian Sarge, Damn Small, Puppy, FreeSbie (for a taste of BSD), Snappix, CentoOS 4.1, and many other minor ones.
Of that lot, SimplyMepis 3.3.1 was probably the best, followed by the Fedoras, then pure Debian, then Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
My Criteria? Stablity, ease of use, speed, features, look 'n' feel, package management, and just plain old fun.
Now I've also tried Mandriva 2005 Limited (totally Free version), which came with a special edition of Linux Format, and that was better than the rest (except Mandrake 10 PowerPack).
So for me, Mandrake/Mandriva has been the best in features, speed, look 'n' feel, etc.
Let me just say something about Mandrake/Mandriva, something that's a let down for many Linux enthusiasts. It's not a great free download distro. Mandrake/Mandriva is a package distro - it's best simply buying a boxed copy, or pre downloaded, pre pressed CDs from a CD vendor. Mandriva is not great for downloading, even apparently for Club members.
But with my experience, I can say without hesitation that purchasing a boxed set is well worth it. With all other distros, most of which I just downloaded, or it came with a book, there was always something, or many things, that was missing, or where it fell short, or something didn't work, or got messed up with apt repositories, or just irritated me. This includes Ubuntu and Fedora.
But none of that was a problem with a Mandrake/Mandriva boxed or pre pressed CD set.
But with purchasing a boxed set, almost everything I ever wanted in Linux, OSS, and even extra proprietary software, was there, and done very very well.
Another important thing of note: Getting extra software is not a problem with Mandriva. You don't have to be a member of Mandriva club. Just go to easyurpmi.com. Most everything is there. Plus many other RPMs will work with Mandriva. Plus most Java programs will work great (so long as you have the JRE installed and added to the PATH - very easy). And other stuff like FireFox, Opera, OO.o - can all be easily installed on Mandriva.
I guess what it really boils down to is this: Many Linux users are total Cheap-@sses, and want everything for free and super easy download. Well, Mandrake/Mandriva, while you can get it for free download (stripped down version), is more geared towards being a "for pay" packaged distro, with the extra polish, professionalism, attention to detail, features, printed documentation, and large softare selection out of the box, that comes with paying for a boxed set. For me, while I don't mind tweaking a free version, it's worth it in terms of convenience and time saving.
This is the ulimate and ironic kunundrum about desktop Linux - That the largest segment of the desktop Linux market are enthusiasts/nerds who are used to, or demand, using free downloads (and they don't mind the extra tweaking/downloading a free download version will inevitably require). But Linux excells best when it's distributed as a "for-pay" boxed package, like Mandriva.
47 • Re: John - Mandriva and Distrowatch (by tomcat on 2005-11-21 21:31:59 GMT from Germany)
I don't have a problem with critical comments. I know that Mandriva is not perfect. Which distro is it anyway? But there is a real difference between constructive critizism and unnecessary "bad talk". I have followed distrowatch weekly since several years now and it struck me that there is such a biased view in here. Other distros never were attacked as Mandriva was. But I do care, although I don't use it (I don't use K/Ubuntu, either) because this is getting unfair. Yes, you can blame Mandriva for using a developmental Xorg version. Yes, you can argue about the Club. But if you start to argue about Club-membership and the cost involved, then you should also start to argue about the long-time SUSE policy of selling boxed sets, about Linspire asking for money, about Xandros asking for money, about RedHat asking for BIG money. But it is only Mandriva that gets blamed for trying to earn money and not having the isos available at once (although there is a ftp-install option at once). What do you expect them to do? They are a company with paid workers! They need to charge money, otherwise their distro wouldn't exist.
"Where's your evidence that one is better than the other."
I never claimed that one distro is better than the other. Don't put word in my mouth that I never said. ;)
"Ladislav is free to do what he wants with his site. Freedom of speech. If you don't like it, start your own pro-Mandriva site."
Of course he can do what he wants. But IMHO he should finally start to treat Mandriva with the respect that it deserves. I might sound like a Mandriva zealot, but I am not, as it never touched my harddisks (I am running RedHat/Fedora Linux exclusively since 2001, btw). I am simply sick of this unfair and extremely biased "journalism".
Hate me, if you want... I don't care
48 • No subject (by John on 2005-11-21 21:46:10 GMT from United States)
"I never claimed that one distro is better than the other. Don't put word in my mouth that I never said. ;)"
Point taken.
"Hate me, if you want... I don't care"
Don't put words in my mouth : )
Of course your points make sense and that Mandriva isn't the only distro charging money. And it's a fine distro at that. However, what's at issue here isn't the quality of the distribution itself, but the bias that distrowatch has. Everyone has bias. Fox News is full of GOP propaganda. CNN is full of Democrat propaganda. I don't watch one or the other depending on my views. I also don't spend time on the white supremacy sites telling them how disrespectful they are because they don't respect equality. I simply don't visit those sites. I also don't visit scientology, intelligent design, and mexican cuisine sites. It's my choice. You should visit the sites that suit you and not try to unify a polarized world.
49 • Re: Mandriva and Distrowatch (by Leo on 2005-11-21 22:22:07 GMT from United States)
I am for a fact a Mandriva user, and a happy one. I am considering a switch to Kubuntu though, mostly because I don't like the transition to a 1 year dev. cycle. And because of the large and growing (K)Ubuntu community.
But I also seem to see a bias in DW during the last times. Both in favor of Ubuntu, which is praised to the heavens, and against Mandriva.I might be wrong of course. Actually, everyone and their mother have been bashing Mandriva for as long as I remember. The demise of Mandriva has been announced and predicted for, what , 5 years now ? And they are alive and kicking. For one thing, they have been producing a great desktop experience for a long time, unlike their counterparts in RedHat, who were recommending home users to stick to MS Windows. I don't forget these things.
Having said this, Ladislav, is one of the people I truly respect in this OS community. He is an honest, ethical person, and he votes with his wallet (see the donations program). His contribution to the OS/FreeSoftware movement is really appreciated.
Cheers
Leo
50 • Mandriva vs (K)ubuntu (by Jos Herni on 2005-11-21 22:30:06 GMT from Netherlands)
I also switched from (silvermember) Mandriva to Ubuntu. The main reason was the desire to work with a 100% Gnome environment. When Mandriva 2006 was introduced it brought Gnome 2.10 while Ubuntu had delivered 2.12. Mandriva is more KDE oriented, even if you choose for Gnome. Another reason was the price for my silvermembership. I wanted it all, and as a Silvermember it was possible to download the dvd. Ubuntu is much more intelligent with a single cd download and their apt-get/synaptic solution. Another thing is that Ubuntu looks better, specific in their font rendering. And the most important reason I switched? Ubuntu is so much more FUN!
51 • Mandriva vs Kubuntu. (by Bob Buick on 2005-11-21 22:31:24 GMT from Australia)
I used Mandrake from its first release until I discovered Mepis a year or so ago. I've tried Kubuntu more recently, looking for more timely software updates.
My impression - as an experienced Linux user, but not an expert - is that Mandriva is more polished than Kubuntu, but made a bad choice in being rpm-based. Mandriva's web-site also used to drive me to distraction, while Ubuntu/Kubuntu offer much better support and better updated repositories, although some aspects including their wireless networking seem awkward and buggy.
Mepis is dead easy to install and just works. It has an excellent community and has the advantage of being Debian-based. Kanotix offers similar advantages and also has a great installer.
I think Mandriva and Kubuntu would have been great choices a couple of years ago, but lag behind Mepis and Kanotix today.
52 • PCLinuxOS (by Andy Axnot on 2005-11-21 22:47:10 GMT from United States)
I'm another one who likes the current PCLinuxOS. I have been using mostly Mepis and Kanotix, but both these seem to be in a bit of a slump currently, probably caused by the Debian repositories problem.
I like to try different distros. This version of PCLinuxOS didn't give me any video problems (finally!). I liked it quite a bit, thought it would be a good introductory distro for friends who haven't yet made the switch, it is so easy to use. I kept playing with it, "testing" it, and now I'm just using it.
I have to admit that I don't envy the lot of a Linux developer. Pause for just a minute to catch your breath and the rest of the pack has left you behind. Right now I think this is the best intro or newbie distro. For Linux oldtimers or confirmed command line geeks, perhaps not.
For those of us who are not CLI junkies, this is one smooth distro.
Andy
53 • PCLinuxOS memory requirements (by PastorEd on 2005-11-21 23:04:39 GMT from United States)
I started my Linux journey using Mandrake, as it was the most "Windows-like" I could find... and I thought that was a *good* thing at the time (1 Corinthians 13:11).
I moved to JAMD, and really enjoyed that experience. If it had stayed together, I'm sure I'd still be running it on some machine... so, I moved on to PCLinuxOS.
An EXCELLENT distribution polished to a high sheen, PCLOS is very well done. *However*... it required at least 256MB of RAM to run well. That was just enough for only one machine in my home to run it.
Does anyone know if the memory requirements for PCLOS have come down for older hardware? Personally, about 80MB seems to be the magic number in this household.
G.B.Y.L.B.T.,
PastorEd
54 • Fedora's Logo (by kcin on 2005-11-21 23:34:22 GMT from United States)
In answer to the kind folks who posted about "why" Fedora either can't (legally) or won't (out of respect for Red Hat's wishes) use the visual rpresentation of their own name in their Logo... Well, with all due respect, to me this is just the heighth of ridiculousness.
"You can call yourself Fedora, but you cannot represent yourself using a stylized image of a Fedora?" Please!
I do think however that it is quite honorabe of Fedora to respect Red Hat's wishes in the matter..., I just think it is just petty and disrepectful of Red Hat towards Fedora to ask this of them in the first place. What does this say to the users of both? That Red Hat is ashamed of Fedora? If not then what does it say?
After all, didn't Red Hat name Fedora to begin with? And doesn't Fedora act as a sort of proving ground for new packages which Red Hat then adopts? So why deny your spinoff, whose labors benefit you, the benefit in turn of sharing the basic logo design? Is Red Hat thus treating Fedora like some sort of "Blue-haired Step-Child? Is Red Hat disowning or disavowing the connection between the two? What sense does it make to deprive your closely related protege the benefit of sharing the symbol which denotes the common background? Why is Red Hat apparently ashamed of Fedora?
I think Red Hat should be proud of Fedora, and should encourage them to use the Fedora image. To not do so sends the wrong message to Fedora, and to users of both Red Hat and Fedora alike. After all, the two are easy to tell apart; One is red, the other blue, one is enterprise and the other, desktop. Quality and commitment obviously rule in both. What is the problem?
Respectfully,
kcin
55 • Linux Distros (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 00:02:33 GMT from United States)
Some say PCLinuxOS is great, it is nice and based off Mandrake now Mandriva, too bloated.
SLAX is better, more compact and you can use copy2ram option. How can PCLinuxOS compare to it?
You have choice. I choose SLAX over it any day at any time.
If you ask me which is better between it and say Kanotix. I'd pick Kanotix, even though its size is big, it contains many useful programs. Austrumi is also an excellent and small live cd which works great. It is excellent that we have choices and we can find the one(s) that work best for us.
Mandrake Linux now Mandriva Linux was a fine distribution, and I still think that it is great, but many people do not like their model. Their business model should not have anything to do with whether they create an excellent distro or not.
56 • Fedora's Logo (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 00:07:45 GMT from United States)
I have to agree with #56. Why is Red Hat punishing Fedora when it benefits them the most?
Now a bigger and better question, After Red Hat is releasing Fedora, does it mean that now we can have mp3 support in FC5, dvd playback by default in FC5, NTFS module in kernel, etc. All those things which we have to download because Red Hat does not allow them in Fedora Core X where x in {1,2,3,4, ..}.
I have to ask because maybe this will make Fedora much more than a red hat bad child who had to be punished.
57 • mandrake or not (by neighborlee on 2005-11-22 01:05:44 GMT from United States)
I really think mandrake has alot going for it..but their business model I think has always been rather abysmal..There are plenty of other ways to produce revenue other than charging for free software ( although linspire has done it with CNR effectively enough ). I like mandrake but I dont like having to pay for the priviledge of getting the easy to use nvidia install when other , and equally quality distros give it away for nothing, and I mean suse, ubuntu, xandros and others so I think for mandriva to continue this club thing is going to in the end lose them some customers. They have done alot right , but while I've always been tempted to go back to mandrake for various reasons, I find myself remembering this one fact and stopping myself.
I think urpmf is one of the most amazing tools on their side as no other distro has one that matches its features ( and I mean the ability to use the tool 'offline' ). Suse is an exception as well and with ubuntu you have to download an archive file first to get the same results.
I also dont like the menu layout in mandrake as its got too many sections that seem to me anyway as repetitive, and they need to address that. Many times simplicity rules and they need to find a new king ;-)
I want to say one thing about IRC. They have the nicest bunch of people there. It is VERY unlikely you will ever get a 'RTFM', something all too common in lets just say 'some' channels, and why I've never ever used #debian frankly as a base system. YMMV, but I know where home is ;-)
I also find it odd that they charge for the privledge of keeping ones system updated via a automated icon on the panel. Most distros do this for free ( and its a nice convenience ) so thats another gripe I have about mandrake. It can be had for I think $23/year but still most distros offer this for free.
People of limited means should have access to the same software and tools as anyone else, so I applaud distros that offer this service to their customers. Thus I guess atm my money is on Ubuntu, and Suse ( although I HOPE they fix their gnome issues soon [ slow desktop response and the HELP section displays a kde logo in gnome when loaded ] ) .
cu peeps
neighborlee
58 • to JeffS (by Marc on 2005-11-22 01:36:17 GMT from Canada)
I completly agree with you. Well said !!!
You can never replace a good reference book.
59 • Disappointing Mandriva Linux 2006 (by ShiyuTang on 2005-11-22 02:11:55 GMT from China)
That's right. I don't think Mandriva Linux is as good as it's been told as a stable and easy-to-use desktop distribution. The only good thing is the i18n support for Chinese and other eastern asian languages. But it is all done by our China's Linux groups, not Mandriva's developers. I can't find the Mandriva's principal of i18n for a long time.
Mandriva Linux 2006 has chosen to use XOrg 6.9cvs. I don't who suddenly has the stupid idea and who will take the charge of it. Mandriva hasn't test it in any beta or RC versions. That leads to an interesting result that Mandriva Linux 2006 RC1 is the stablest version and more users still choose to use it than the final version.
I don't know when I stop to use Mandriva, but I know that the time will come soon. Maybe that is Fedora, or Red Flag, or else.
60 • mandriva to .... (by James LaRue at 2005-11-22 03:00:35 GMT from United States)
I did use Mandrake for awhile, and loved the look of it. But I found current releases buggy. Along the way, I ran across the PCLinuxOS Live CD. It had (and has) all the advantages of Mandrake/Mandriva. But it has proved to be far more reliable, polished, and inexpensive. So yes, I've moved on, but the point is not to dis a release, but to celebrate its evolution.
61 • RE: #53 JAMD and more (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-22 03:41:56 GMT from Italy)
I have very fond memories of JAMD too. A good Fedora modified distro is, IMO, badly missed.
Mandriva or (K)Ubuntu?
Neither for me.
I started with Mandrake, I loved it then, but my hardware didn't like it.
So I moved to SUSE and Debian (actually Libranet)
My tastes are still more or less unchanged: I am using Libranet 3.0 and Kanotix right now (the only truly compatible Debian derivatives)
SUSE 10.0 has been very disappointing with my hardware, but I hope 10.1 is going to be better.
My 2 cents? If you like SUSE you can't like Mandriva. If you like Debian you can't like (K)Ubuntu. Difficult to explain why in a few words, but I am sure some people will understand me. Maybe one reason could be the following: both Mandriva and (K)Ubuntu are for newbies who are easily satisfied, whilst SUSE and Debian are for more demanding users.
62 • PCLinuxOS - It is a "major" distribution (by Todd Johnson on 2005-11-22 04:59:18 GMT from United States)
In my mind, there are three main types of distributions: (1) Total Control, build-and-handle-your own distro, (2) Incredibly fast, slim desktop distro, and (3) Major Distro.
Obviously nobody's arguing about the (1) category here. When it comes to the desktop, and it comes to a newbie or intermediate linux desktop user, what desktop distro is the best?
Well, with Slax, Vector, and Yoper, they are probably the fastest desktop distros out there. However, they do have key faults. When it comes to Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse, Fedora, and Mepis -- the Majors, it doesn't quite fit a plethora of key needs in their own little ways, lack some speed... and are just set for the newbie.
Does anyone actually realize that PCLinuxOS is a Major distro? Major as in everything's taken care of. When you use it, you will be shocked that it isn't marketed on shelves at Best Buy or something. It's only downfall, like with most Majors is that it requires a nice amount of RAM to run KDE or Gnome. But it's not slow. It may not be quite as fast as Vector, but it's snappier than other Majors.
Ever want a distro that comes with plugins built in automatically? That installing DVD compatability, Win32 codecs and a few other things after you first install is literally just a few click away? That you DON'T have to say, "This distro is nice and polished, but only if I could run this.... how do I get this to work?"
Seriously. It's a major distribution, and I have no idea why people are looking elsewhere, besides balls-out speed. However, the time it takes to set up a desktop the way you want it without hassles takes more time for most than optimizing and trimming PCLinuxOS.
63 • PCLinuxOS (by MichiganMud on 2005-11-22 05:55:32 GMT from United States)
"...you will be shocked that it isn't marketed on shelves at Best Buy..."
This is true. Finally, Linux has a freely available desktop distribution which can compete with (and, in many ways, beats) Windows and Mac OS. The install is much faster than Windows -- with a lot less prompts. Mass deployments are easy -- remaster the CD/DVD with the appliations and configurations you want (forget Sysprep and all those ridiculous tools whose sole purpose is to protect Microsoft licenses). Flash and Java work out of the box. Most plugins do, too. You'll be able to install your customizations to multiple PCs from your remastered version. PCLinuxOS is an operating system you could install for non-technical people and they would easily be able to make good use of it. I know. I have done this for family members. Save yourself some dough and skip Mac OS for those virus prone family and friends.
The memory issue is restrictive for users with older hardware. This may change with Preview .92, as it is supposed to have a "mini-me" version available. PCLinuxOS could probably use some better UI on the installer -- but the current application does its job very efficiently, once you know it. A GUI would be nice for the remastering feature. It is not the fastest, but it is fast. It is probably not the optimal distribution for the "uber geeks." But, they'll probably find lots to like about it, too. All in all, this distro works as close to perfectly out of the box as just about any OS I've ever tried.
64 • Another Great DW!! (by Ron Korringer on 2005-11-22 06:25:24 GMT from United States)
Good Job!! Another great release of DW! keep up the good work!! I like all the articles!! Congrats!! well done!! cheers to all!! Linux is the greatest!! wow!! Great Job Ladislav!! killer feedback!!
65 • PCLinuxOS (by Glenn on 2005-11-22 07:14:17 GMT from United States)
With so many people saying so many good things about PCLinuxOS, I'm simply going to have to give it a try!!! Maybe it'll be the "perfect fit" distro for me.
My compliments to you, Ladislav, for making DW the outstanding page that it is.
66 • Fedora Logo (by welkiner at 2005-11-22 08:36:17 GMT from United States)
Wouldn't the logical logo be a blue fedora (or pick your color)?
A blue hat verses a red hat would differentiate the two distributions quite distinctly while maintaining thier common heritage.
wb
67 • PCLinuxOS and Memory requirements (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 09:34:49 GMT from Australia)
A few of you have complained about the minimum memory recomendations
Please look here http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/index.html
and read this last bit:-
QUOTE
PCLinuxOS is currently under heavy development and should be considered beta software. PCLinuxOS should work on most modern hardware and comes with advanced hardware detection. PCLinuxOS runs best on computers with at least 256 megabytes of memory.
END QUOTE
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE OF: the words " most modern hardware "
EG:
On my P4 laptop (512 Mb ram) it runs very well, very fast, it is deam to use
BUT
On my old P2 desktop (even with 256 Mb) it was horrible - is it not ovbious why.
So if you are looking for a Distro to run on an older machine do not try to use PCLinuxOS - look for another distro that is more suitable.
BTW - I took a tip from some thing Texstar wrote (I think) about how really 256 Mb is the bare minimum and he would recomend a minimum of 512 Mb
68 • PCLINUX OS, Major? (by SunRa on 2005-11-22 11:33:47 GMT from Greece)
How can you call a distro major when
1) It's in beta state, under heavy development
2) It's maintained by one person only, no matter how good he may be, and hasn't produced a stable product yet
3) No multilingual support out of the box
I happen to like the looks of the distro and I tried to install it on a fairly modern PC, intel x86, 2.8 GHz, 1GB RAM, 2 SATA hard drives of 200 GB each, Geforce FX 5900 VGA.
I never managed to do it. the installer got always stuck no matter the method I used; Prepartitioned on reiserfs (my favorite) or let to distro's own partitioner.
It's a shame that Texstar didn't use Mandriva's excellent installer.
Whem there's a stable product I will try it again, but till then...
Madriva is just the best all purpose distro I have tried since 1998, and I have tried most of them
69 • Mandriva, Kubuntum RR4 (by P.Cole on 2005-11-22 12:33:40 GMT from United States)
Distrowatch, outstanding work staying on top of distros. Mandriva:too big, cumbersome. Kubuntu:trying to build debian in it's own image; too many gotcha's. RR4:mysterious distro you can't download. PCLinuxOS: Linux the way it should be for beginner & experienced user alike. Truly plug & play. Set it up on an IBM T21 laptop. Removed the drive & installed it on a T23, then a T30, then to an x31, a Dell, an HP & Sony PGC. Same drive worked flawlessly on all mentioned laptops. Only gotcha was Java configuration (would not work the Java Fabric Manager front end app for configuring FC Cisco switches, IBM Storage Manager or SANavigator). Mepis: great distro, but a notch behind PCLinuxOS.
70 • Great read! (by 1c3d0g on 2005-11-22 12:34:43 GMT from Aruba)
Once again a fantastic DistroWatch weekly issue. Thanks for making our boring Mondays cheerful again. ;-)
71 • Where oh Ware is my Mepis (by Scott M. Allen on 2005-11-22 13:07:20 GMT from United States)
Daze ago we were promised to see Mepis just around the corner......
Has it gone to the cororner ??
72 • pclinuxos major distro? (by agendelman on 2005-11-22 13:51:45 GMT from United States)
SunRa
I have a GeForceFx 5200. I downloaded and burned the two nvidia versions of p92 (7174 and 7676). They are both coasters now. I couldn't find a way to boot into a gui. Even tried a generic "nv" driver. Still no go.
Then I downloaded and burned the non-nvidia ver pclinuxos-p.92. I then used synaptic to install the dkms-nvidia 7676 package and like magic, I had 3D acceleration. This is a way to do it if you have an nvidia card
The system is now humming and it's beautifull as usual.
cheers
73 • Mandriva/Kubuntu and PCLinux OS (by winsnomore on 2005-11-22 13:59:51 GMT from United States)
I have tried them all, Mandriva didn't impress me, left me feeling alternatively a second class citizen or a pirate (I didn't pay for it).
K(ubuntu) was much worse, has little MM support. I have tried them all over a period of more than a year and thew them off the machine after 2/4 hours of testing.
PCLinuxOS, I ran into .. it's one of the best .. nay I would say the best (currently). The fonts are right, everything looks right from the start. All MM support is there .. synaptic instead rpm tools. It's pleasant to use, stable and has almost everything one would need to start. It has some negatives, e.g. gcc is still 3.3 and the repo's are thin. You may not get the blazing end versions for everything (i.e. Knoppix) but you are not as far behind (i.e. Mepis)
The criticism that PCLinuxOS is only a beta .. well folks EVERYTHING In Linux domain is a huge huge beta !!!
INMO every distro is pretty much same, the difference is only in what is ready to use out of box and for how many people.
74 • Re: pclinuxos major distro? (by SunRa on 2005-11-22 14:14:27 GMT from Greece)
Thanks agendelman but I didn't get to the point to have the nvidia problem you mentioned. I didn't even managed to install it.
But as alive cd it was very good looking, no nvidia problem there
The looks, anyway is something you can modify, in every distro, to your taste
75 • tux is ugly (by s.miles on 2005-11-22 14:41:07 GMT from Estonia)
i agree, but i like kudzu.
76 • PCLinuxOS is the BEST !!! (by Serge Matovic on 2005-11-22 15:02:41 GMT from Canada)
Yes, I have tried almost all Linux distros and the PCLinuxOS is by far the WINNER. I honestly think it should be the No. 1 on Distrowatch list.
Best regards to all,
Serge Matovic.
77 • PCLINUX at the perspective of a Gentoo user. (by Kensai on 2005-11-22 15:14:24 GMT from Puerto Rico)
I've always been a Gentoo freak and I've been using Linux for years now as my main desktop. What I have to admit is that when it comes to user friendly distros I hate them since they try to get so easy that they spoil the fun. PCLINUXOS is different is super n00bs friendly but it gives equall fun to me being a hardcore Linux user. I think I falled in love with it. Never thought I would say that of a n00bs oriented distro but I got to say Texstar your great.
78 • @SunRa (by Max on 2005-11-22 15:41:04 GMT from Australia)
"How can you call a distro major when
1) It's in beta state, under heavy development
2) It's maintained by one person only, no matter how good he may be, and hasn't produced a stable product yet
3) No multilingual support out of the box"
So the fact that PCLinuxOS IS stable in practice doesnt matter to you? You are more concerned with the number 0.x?? So if he changed the version number to 1.x tomorrow, would you be happy?? What about Mandriva that SELLS a much more unstable product. Is that OK for you? I guess you must get that warm fuzzy feeling looking at a version number like 10.2 or 2006 right? Jezz 0.x??? Thta must be sooo unstable....
Slackware is maintained by one person too, and how stable is it? (Though i think the guy is a control-freak, for the good or bad)
Finally, if you look at PCLinuxOS' website, they aim to build an english-only distro. So, dont complain about multilingual out-of-the-box...
79 • PCLinuxOS (by Mike Drury on 2005-11-22 15:48:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
At last - a clear winner is emerging!!!
PCLinuxOS 0.92 is light years ahead and I run all distros.
It still needs bits sorting but it's the only one on track.
It uses synaptic (rpm) repositories with a good selection of applications.
To my way of thinking, the distro that enables a standard gz source file to be compiled using a synaptic front end, will be the outright winner (if opensuse had half decent repositories it might have been a contender - not even in the running without them).
Incidently, why are there so many bl---y different rpm's.
Keep up the good work Tex and thanks.
Mike
80 • tux is ugly (by s.miles on 2005-11-22 16:42:11 GMT from Estonia)
i agree, but i like kudzu.
81 • duh! (by s.miles on 2005-11-22 16:43:42 GMT from Estonia)
refresh is a bad button
82 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 16:59:32 GMT from United States)
Every day there is a problem. Every fucking day. Once in a hundred years I need to use floppy and I can't do it. My OS is Kubuntu, ugly brother of ubuntu.
It sucks.
83 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 17:32:57 GMT from United States)
25 minutes later. Floppy update
kfloppy coudn't do shit
gfloppy formated the disk without problems
to copy file to floppy I had to drop to CLI and use mtools.
DO I HAVE TO WASTE ALL THAT TIME FOR A SIMPLE OPERATION?
IS THIS THE HIGHT OF OPEN SOURCE FUNCTIONALITY?
you people are delusional.
84 • re:tomcat/John (by kilgoretrout on 2005-11-22 18:26:57 GMT from United States)
Regarding this little debate, I have to side with tomcat. The anti-mandriva bias here has become annoyingly obvious. It must really aggravate Ladislav that mandriva consistently comes in #2 on the page hit rankings. Ladislav, give this little crusade of yours a rest or find some other whipping boy. You have a great site but this petty vendetta only makes you look bad.
John, I don't understand your position which seems to be if you don't like it here don't come. I guess tomcat and I could just as easily say, if you don't like our comments, don't read them. That really adds a lot to the debate.
I also don't understand the ubuntu lovefest here on DW. Ubuntu is nice if you like gnome but it's really nothing all that special compared to other distros and pro-mandriva users could pour out a littany of kubuntu's shortcomings as many have done above. I also don't get the huge page hit ranking disparity between ubuntu and every other distro. Looks to me like some one is gaming the system. I really can't explain it any other way.
85 • No subject (by John on 2005-11-22 18:37:50 GMT from United States)
"DO I HAVE TO WASTE ALL THAT TIME FOR A SIMPLE OPERATION?
IS THIS THE HIGHT OF OPEN SOURCE FUNCTIONALITY?
you people are delusional."
If you don't like it, go back to Windows. Here are a few reasons why you should:
1. Package Mangers are a waste of time. I like software that installs independently of everything else in my system and there shouldn't be a problem with conflicting libraries.
2. NTFS is the most advanced file system on the planet.
3. The bundled IE web browser is wonderful. Glad Microsoft knows what's best for me. Be sure to turn ActiveX on too.
4. The Window Manager is the best. No need for any others.
5. Windows is the most secure system around.
6. Windows has no need for an advanced command line system. Things never crash in Windows. I always reinstall a fresh system every 6 months to keep my system in tip-top shape.
7. I enjoy helping support Microsoft by giving them $29.99 when I need a question answered.
8. I don't mind being an open target to identity theft. People out there really need another identity.
Instead of ranting, you may have tried asking people here for help. I've never had a problem dealing with floppies. Try PCLinuxOS. It's the most new-user friendly distro IMO and it's free. Or spend $50 on Linspire. It's still cheaper than Windows OEM at $99 for the home edition.
86 • No subject (by John on 2005-11-22 18:50:31 GMT from United States)
First, I will say I'm no Ubuntu lover, but Ubuntu has its place in the world of Linux and I have it installed on one of my boxes. I also enjoy PCLinuxOS which I think is the most complete distro around. But that's my opinion.
"I also don't get the huge page hit ranking disparity between ubuntu and every other distro."
It's easy. Ubuntu stacks the deck by pointing people here. This isn't news.
"It must really aggravate Ladislav that mandriva consistently comes in #2 on the page hit rankings."
It probably doesn't. He could simply not list it at all if he really hated it.
"Ubuntu is nice if you like gnome but it's really nothing all that special compared to other distros and pro-mandriva users could pour out a littany of kubuntu's shortcomings as many have done above."
Fine, list them. I have a list waiting for the shortcomings on Mandriva. Fact of the matter is, all Linux distributions have shortfalls of one kind or another.
87 • @Max for PCLinuxOS (by SunRa on 2005-11-22 19:24:56 GMT from Greece)
Dear Max
Don't get offended and don't get it personal
For me, when a distro fails to install on a fairly modern pc, where most of the other distros install fine, then this distro IS NOT STABLE
When the installer hangs everytime, NOT STABLE
When the maintainer (and I respect Texstar) says it's beta, NOT STABLE
I'm not English speaking so multilingual for me is a must
In my country we have an old say:
"We haven't seen the child yet, but we called him John)
Well I think that all of the above state that PCLinuxOS is not major
At least not yet
But I expect the best from Texstar
And as soon as he announces a stable product, I'll give it a chance
At last, in my country again, we say that the better is the enemy of the good
88 • PCLOS-John (by kilgoretrout on 2005-11-22 19:34:43 GMT from United States)
I like pclos as well; it's extremely well packaged and perfect for newbs or anyone really. I have it installed on a test partition and keep it updated but I use slack most of the time because it's what I'm used to. I don't know how closely pclos follows mandriva these days since I haven't followed mandriva for a while but I would assume there is at least some, if not a lot, of overlap. Not that there is anything wrong with that; it would be really foolish for pclos to not pick up the updates to mandriva's "control center" for example. I'm just not sure whether pclos could continue to develop and grow without mandriva putting out new distro every year. Do you have any insight on this point?
Also, I'm not going to take you up on listing kubuntu's shortcomings as others have already done so and I just don't feel that strongly on the isusue. As for listing mandriva's shortcomings, Ladislav seems to have that covered.
89 • @SunRa (by John on 2005-11-22 19:54:18 GMT from United States)
"For me, when a distro fails to install on a fairly modern pc, where most of the other distros install fine, then this distro IS NOT STABLE"
As you said, "for me". I have had plenty of distros fail to install where PCLinuxOS did install. In one situation involving a docking station, PCLinuxOS was the only distro to install.
"When the installer hangs everytime, NOT STABLE"
It's never hung on me. Are you saying no other installer hangs? Perhaps not on your system. But those installers might hang on mine.
"When the maintainer (and I respect Texstar) says it's beta, NOT STABLE"
This all depends on your definition of "STABLE". In one sense you're right, however, in another you're incorrect. Stable in my eyes is when an operating system work wells and doesn't crash. I'm guessing in your sense, you mean it from a developer's point of view. I hope : )
90 • PCLOS (by John on 2005-11-22 20:03:05 GMT from United States)
"I'm just not sure whether pclos could continue to develop and grow without mandriva putting out new distro every year. Do you have any insight on this point?"
From what I understand, PCLinuxOS is based on a Mandrake 9.2 base. Granted, PCLinuxOS would likely not exist without Mandrake/Mandriva. Kind of the same situation with K/Ubuntu and Debian.
"Also, I'm not going to take you up on listing kubuntu's shortcomings as others have already done so and I just don't feel that strongly on the isusue"
Nor should you. Ubuntu has shortfalls, Slack has shortfalls, Debian has shortfalls. There no such thing as the perfect linux. Just like there's no perfect car. All are designed by imperfect beings and as a result can never be perfect products.
91 • @SunRa (by Jeff on 2005-11-22 20:04:50 GMT from United States)
"This all depends on your definition of "STABLE". In one sense you're right, however, in another you're incorrect. Stable in my eyes is when an operating system work wells and doesn't crash. I'm guessing in your sense, you mean it from a developer's point of view. I hope : )"
Kind of like how Debian Unstable isn't "Stable" but is more "Stable" than most distros.
92 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 21:43:11 GMT from United States)
"Instead of ranting, you may have tried asking people here for help. I've never had a problem dealing with floppies. Try PCLinuxOS. It's the most new-user friendly distro IMO and it's free. Or spend $50 on Linspire. It's still cheaper than Windows OEM at $99 for the home edition."
Asking for help on using floppy? Did it really come to this? Kubuntu cannot handle floppies by itself? If you read my post carefully you would see that I'm capable of solving that problem. I'm pissed that my distro can't. As to spending money I would gladly shell out 200 bucks for Linux that just works. Unfortunately every single distro failed to deliver. When it comes to time vs money I'd rather spend $99 then hours of sifting through manuals. Now to your list.
1. Package Mangers are a waste of time. I like software that installs independently of everything else in my system and there shouldn't be a problem with conflicting libraries.
That's right. DLLs are protected. Package Managers have their own limitations. I'm sure you are aware of that.
2. NTFS is the most advanced file system on the planet.
It does the job. What is the most advanced file system?
3. The bundled IE web browser is wonderful. Glad Microsoft knows what's best for me. Be sure to turn ActiveX on too.
IE is a good browser. And MS doesn't force me to use it. It's there for my convenience. ActiveX is manageable.
4. The Window Manager is the best. No need for any others.
It's OK. I've never heard Windows users complain.
5. Windows is the most secure system around.
No less than Linux if you know how to work it.
6. Windows has no need for an advanced command line system. Things never crash in Windows. I always reinstall a fresh system every 6 months to keep my system in tip-top shape.
Windows does have advanced CLI. Thing crash in Windows less offten then in Linux. I ran Windows on my laptop without rebooting for 8 month. And power management is superb. I just close the lid and it goes to sleep. Linux on the other hand is very spotty in this area. Your linux is in tip-top shape because you install new distro every two weeks.
7. I enjoy helping support Microsoft by giving them $29.99 when I need a question answered.
In my 12 years IT career never had to use it. Free Windows community support is out there too. Does RED HAT has unlimited free support?
8. I don't mind being an open target to identity theft. People out there really need another identity.
If you put half the effort of studying Linux into securing your Windows you'll be safe.
I like this particular statement:
It's the most new-user friendly distro IMO and it's free.
Why is there a need for user-unfriendly distros? Bragging rights? Something to occupy yourself with?
93 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-22 22:02:34 GMT from United States)
users could pour out a littany of kubuntu's shortcomings as many have done above
I hate Kubuntu's Konqueror profiles. It was a dumb idea.
94 • No subject (by Aaron on 2005-11-22 22:05:24 GMT from United States)
"It does the job. What is the most advanced file system?"
XFS, UFS2, JFS. All are better. Even Windows applications run faster under an emulated Windows environment in Linux than on Windows natively.
"IE is a good browser. And MS doesn't force me to use it. It's there for my convenience. ActiveX is manageable."
Why isn't firefox included with MS then? IE is there for convenience. What garbage. Try removing IE from Windows and you'll lose a bunch of key elements of the system. What a wonderful philosophy to have the elements work off the same base so all the same viruses can penetrate it.
"It's OK. I've never heard Windows users complain."
All they know is Windows. And they complain constantly, but believe there's nothing they can do about it. Or they hire Geek Squad to come out for a hefty price.
"No less than Linux if you know how to work it."
Oh please. Where's your data to back this up. The U.S. CERT just recently showed Windows Server showing 249 vulnerabilities compared to Red Hat Enterprises 49. Why does Microsoft have 400 Linux servers if their own software is so good?
"Windows does have advanced CLI. Thing crash in Windows less offten then in Linux. I ran Windows on my laptop without rebooting for 8 month."
Let me know what the address is for fantasy land. Again, where's your data? And the CLI in Windows sucks.
"If you put half the effort of studying Linux into securing your Windows you'll be safe."
Sure and half my wallet too. Why should people have to maintain their system so closely if they're just users? As you said, do you need something to occupy yourself with?
"Why is there a need for user-unfriendly distros? Bragging rights? Something to occupy yourself with?"
Different people need different things. New users like point and click environments and others like to tinker. New-user distros are for dummies like you.
95 • PCLinuxOS (by Clint Christopher Cañada on 2005-11-23 01:16:40 GMT from Philippines)
Hi all,
I've tested a lot of distros in my stint with linux. Heck, I even am a codeveloper for an alinux/slack/looplinux derivative and contributed some code for alinux. But I can tell you with all honesty, the distro which shows great promise for linux users from a windows environment is PCLOS. Everything about it is just flawless... I've heard about Mandriva's problem about Xorg 6.9 cvs, PCLOS uses that, and I've got no problems with it whatsoever. I run it on an Intel based motherboard, a nvidia one, a via one, and there's an Sis based one in the office, and it just runs out of the box, without letting you install some things to make mp3s or some other codec run.
I might use debian for the server (formerly I used Fedora, but I didn't like the updates which were going a bit too slow for me), slack/alinux/pnutproject for development purposes, but at home, I primarily use PCLOS (I find myself using it more than windows - only time I use it is to use Dreamweaver/Fireworks). I updated .91 to .92 without any problems! And the real test was even people who didn't exactly know how to use linux got to use and install an HP printer with me just talking to them through phone... now that speaks a lot for it. Ubuntu was a pain in some aspects to configure, especially if the new user was on the phone and needed to ask some instructions from me. I just reinstalled PCLOS in the laptop for him, and he's quite happy with it.
Again, I repeat, if you just want to use your computer without much command line configuration - PCLOS is it. It just works.
96 • Mandriva Kubuntu (by warpengi on 2005-11-23 02:02:18 GMT from Canada)
I switched from Mandrake to Kubuntu at the beginning of the year. I am using Mandriva 2006 now.
Kubuntu was buggy as hell. Not what I wanted for my desktop. The only reason I upgraded to 2006 from 2005 was for KDE 3.4., so pretty.
Mandriva-Club sucks. The club repositories were the cause of most of the instabilities I encountered although PLF broke things once or twice too. There is little benefit for the money spent and when I pay I expect support and stability. Neither of which are features of the Club. I can get all the help I need in the linuxquestions.org forums.
I don't know if it is legal for me to run 2006 Powerpack+ without a membership. I got it from bittorrent. Now have no expectations from Mandriva for support, I don't have the club repositories and don't update from PLF repositories unless there is a dire need. My system is as stable as I could want. I am happy. Let the software police come, I will just switch to Debian.
Kat, what a useless piece of crap. I couldn't run RtCW as every few seconds Kat would spike my cpu usage up to 100% causing stuttering frame rates. I uninstalled that mighty quick.
97 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-23 02:17:20 GMT from United States)
XFS, UFS2, JFS. All are better. Even Windows applications run faster under an emulated Windows environment in Linux than on Windows natively.
RRRRRRRRReally? Is that a "hello world" application?
Why isn't firefox included with MS then? IE is there for convenience. What garbage.
Why isn't BMW powertrain included with my toyota? Should I demand that?
Try removing IE from Windows and you'll lose a bunch of key elements of the system. What a wonderful philosophy to have the elements work off the same base so all the same viruses can penetrate it.
Following that logic KDE should remove Konqueror. We cannot allow tightly integrated environments.
All they know is Windows.
And are reasonably happy with it.
And they complain constantly, but believe there's nothing they can do about it.
Imagine how much they would complain about linux.
Or they hire Geek Squad to come out for a hefty price.
Regardless of OS non-geeks shell out big bucks for their computer problems. Guess what... non-mechanics pay hefty price for car repair. And visits to doctor not that cheap. Are you getting my drift?
Oh please. Where's your data to back this up. The U.S. CERT just recently showed Windows Server showing 249 vulnerabilities compared to Red Hat Enterprises 49.
I don't need "Windows Server" or "Red Hat Enterprises" to run my desktop. Do you?
Why does Microsoft have 400 Linux servers if their own software is so good?
You are surely not implying those are production boxes.As to the number of 400... well there are many distros to keep tabs on. They also have other OSes and applications from competition for research. Same way Intel has a lab dissecting AMD chips or Honda slicing and dicing toyota cars. In other words "Know your enemy". That's why MS runs those 400 boxes. Go reread that article.
"Windows does have advanced CLI. Thing crash in Windows less offten then in Linux. I ran Windows on my laptop without rebooting for 8 month."
Let me know what the address is for fantasy land. Again, where's your data?
What data? Why would I document reliable operation of my laptop? Only linux obsessives archive their "uptime" records.
And the CLI in Windows sucks.
Only if you don't know it. RTFM. MS has excellent documentation, unlike linux man pages.
"If you put half the effort of studying Linux into securing your Windows you'll be safe."
Sure and half my wallet too.
Are you capable of googling? There is a lot of good spyware-free freeware for windows too you cheap bastard. Is that this whole thing is all about? You don't like paying for stuff?
Why should people have to maintain their system so closely if they're just users?
They shouldn't. That's why they stick with Windows.
Different people need different things.
How many of them like working with beta quality software?
New users like point and click environments and others like to tinker.
All users like point and click. Only bored ones want to tinker.
New-user distros are for dummies like you.
What would be the distro for a rocket scientist like you? Why bother with any OS for that matter. Go for raw machine code. You are smart, you can do it. While you are spending another year learning that I'll be getting on with living my life. Reading books, playing ping-pong or volleyball, taking my dog to "off-leash" park, dating women.
While we are on the subject of newbies would you like to see a picture of my boxed edition of Mandrake 6.0? I could crash that distro just by looking at the screen. It screamed reliability. I think around the same time every linux lunatic started "Linux is ready for desktop" propaganda. I was laughing my ass off. There was another good one: "this is the year of linux". I've heard that every year since then.
You remind me of a "born again". In the beginning all they can talk about is "Greatness of God". Don't worry buddy. It will pass. Reality will set in and you too will see shortcomings of Linux like all reasonable people. Do you want data on that?
98 • PCLinuxOS (by winsnomore on 2005-11-23 02:54:16 GMT from United States)
Well it seems the debate is over, everone (excep SunRa) who has tried it, seems to be very impressed with PCLinuxOS
Folks .. ubuntu/kubunu reign is ending.. PcLinuxOS would be #1, I have always suspected that bots were pumping xbuntu ratings on this site
Prior to xbuntu top 3/4 Linux Distro's all had around 1200 hpd .. all of a sudden xbuntu gets ~2800 ? did they increase the linux users by about 20-40% ? I doubt it !!! The other 4 still end up gettting their share of the ratings. I haven't heard droves of people using Fedora/Suse/Mandriva/Mepis/Debian/Knoppix switched to xbuntu.
They do have a marketing machine .. but the machines always always fail against humans .. so Tex bravo !! you have done great work, keep it up.
PS .. i had tried ubuntu .. and it failed to install on my hardware + it trashed my hd .. and is #1 .. go figure
99 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2005-11-23 03:02:29 GMT from United States)
How is PcLinuxOS in terms of applications? Do they have big repository? I'm sick of my Kubuntu?
100 • PCLinuxOs (by Anonymous on 2005-11-23 06:55:32 GMT from New Zealand)
Number of packages listed in Synpatic =4821 Everything you will need and more is there!!
101 • RE: #96 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-23 08:59:14 GMT from Italy)
"I don't know if it is legal for me to run 2006 Powerpack+ without a membership. I got it from bittorrent."
"Let the software police come, I will just switch to Debian."
Something like that is not going to happen. It is GPL software we are talking about, after all.
Whether that is morally right, that is another matter and it is entirely up to you.
102 • PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Gentoo (by davecs on 2005-11-23 12:14:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
My first attempt at installing Linux was Mandrake 8.1. It was already out of date, but is was on some coverdisks lying around. The poor antialiasing, the inability for me as a new user to get the screen over 800x600, and the poor design made my computer screen look like a child's toy.
I then tried Debian 3.0-r1. Despite downloading and printing pages of instructions, I could not get it installed.
I later tried Mandrake 9.0 as a result of a Linux Format coverdisk. That was much better. However, a general update broke Gurpmi and that made things difficult. Mandrake 9.1 was great, and Mandrake 9.2 was better.
At that time, I tried Gentoo. Despite the steep learning curve it became my distro of choice. Because I was still running Mandrake, I had two separate partitions. I started trying other stuff on the spare partition, many distros were disappointing.
It was later that I discovered PCLinuxOS. I was actually searching for "Texstar" because I was tempted to try Mandrake again but could not find the Texstar extra repositories.
I eventually set up a parallel install of PCLinuxOS. Just to try it out, you understand. At first I used 90% Gentoo and 10% PCLOS. It was a bit like when I first tried Linux/Windows dual boot, as I migrated gradually to PCLOS. Finally, I wanted to try something else, and it was PCLOS I could not bear to get rid of, so a year of tuning and tweaking Gentoo was trashed in minutes!
I've tried a few others on the way Xandros, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mepis, and none of them come close. Mepis is great live and easy to install, but is not so easy to add and update software, it's there the problems start. Xandros is too commerical, demands cash for GPL updates, and doesn't include a compiler to build them yourself. Debian is too cautious with software, I found Fedora is easy to install and impossible to maintain!
PCLinuxOS just runs live, all compatible hardware is detected, it installs easily, and for the minority with problems, the guys at the help forum seem to trample over each other to help. Donations are voluntary. It includes a compiler and loads of "-devel" packages, so you can add your own stuff from source. So it covers all bases from complete beginner to geek!
I have not tried enough distros to say it's the best. There are different circumstances for different people. But it's certainly my favourite.
103 • DW Weekly (by gabbman on 2005-11-23 12:16:29 GMT from Canada)
Another great read Ladislav.
Even more fun reading the comments, which I now see has expanded to include Microsoft zealots. ;)
104 • No subject (by Slim Jim on 2005-11-23 13:51:05 GMT from United States)
The Microsoft Zealot sounds a lot like I did when I tried to convince a friend of mine that XP was superior to OsX. This was before my discovering Linux. Anonymous is obviously a genius if he's able to keep a Microsoft box up for 8 months without rebooting. Human Nature never ceases to amaze me as I was just as stupid as he some years back.
105 • No subject (by John on 2005-11-23 14:03:43 GMT from United States)
"Following that logic KDE should remove Konqueror. We cannot allow tightly integrated environments."
Konqueror iisn't infested with spyware and viruses.
"And are reasonably happy with it."
I'm sure that woman who stay with abusive husbands and boyfriends are also reasonably happy also.
"I don't need "Windows Server" or "Red Hat Enterprises" to run my desktop. Do you?"
Just imagine how many flaws the Windows Desktop has if their Server software looks like Swiss cheese.
" What data? Why would I document reliable operation of my laptop? Only linux obsessives archive their "uptime" records."
Exactly. What data? There is none that shows Microsoft is more reliable than Linux. At least, no study that's independent and not funded by Microsoft.
"Are you capable of googling? There is a lot of good spyware-free freeware for windows too you cheap bastard. Is that this whole thing is all about? You don't like paying for stuff?"
Why should I google when I can have a functional system that doesn't die every 6 months. Why should I have to pay for something inferior when the superior product is free? Only an idiot would pay for such a thing.
"How many of them like working with beta quality software?"
Please. Are you so diluted to believe that Beta software is always inferior to release of another product. I suppose Gmail sucks compared to Hotmail in that case.
"All users like point and click. Only bored ones want to tinker."
What lame comment this is. I suppose you know what everyone in world wants also. Are you Santa Claus?
"What would be the distro for a rocket scientist like you? Why bother with any OS for that matter. Go for raw machine code. You are smart, you can do it. While you are spending another year learning that I'll be getting on with living my life. Reading books, playing ping-pong or volleyball, taking my dog to "off-leash" park, dating women."
Who says I don't go for raw code? I'm in the business. You'll be living your life? And so will I. Dating women? I'm already married. Going to the park with your dog? How about all the times you pick up your dogs crap. Yup, that's productive. You've summed up your life for me already. Your a single, lonely guy who makes less than $100K a year. Some life. If I were you I'd kill myself.
106 • No subject (by Aaron on 2005-11-23 14:05:33 GMT from United States)
"Reality will set in and you too will see shortcomings of Linux like all reasonable people."
Here's a news flash for your. All systems have shortcomings. In other words all OS's suck. It's just a question of which one sucks less.
107 • What a "telenovela" !!! (by Caraibes on 2005-11-23 14:36:22 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Can´t stop reading the comments, where I usually find a great deal of usefull infos, but it feels sometimes like a telenovela, or a boxing ring !!!
Well, I still enjoy it... Keep´em coming !
108 • Not a telenovela (by Andy Axnot on 2005-11-23 15:09:59 GMT from United States)
Definitely not a telenovela, Caraibes.
No gorgeous women :-(
Ladislav needs to do something about this :-)
Andy
109 • lxf (by henry on 2005-11-23 16:18:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
just checked out linux format. very impressed - the distrowatch section integrates really well into the rest of the magazine.
110 • Re #92 & #97 (by rglk on 2005-11-23 16:55:37 GMT from United States)
Here's Mr. Anonymous - No Subject again. DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!
111 • Fedora Core 5 Test 1... (by Kim Krecht on 2005-11-23 20:09:35 GMT from Germany)
...has been announced 46 minutes ago.
112 • Mandrake(Mandriva) vs Kubuntu (by RickG on 2005-11-23 22:21:30 GMT from United States)
I have been a Mandrake user for several years and up until last year, I always found it to be the best desktop distribution. I have been a standard club member since memberships were first offered. Oddly enough, I seemed to notice a decline in the distribution at about the same time as they came into the black. Even though I renewed last my club membership last November, I was already on the lookout for another distro. This past year has been a busy year for desktop distros and I have downloaded and tried several including Kubuntu. I like the look of Kubuntu, the free philosophy, and the cutting edge packaging. However, I have not found it very stable on my computer. For a little more than six months I have been using MEPIS. It is now my distro of choice! Any money that once went to madrake club memberships will now be going to Mepis. It offers the fastest way to get a usable, full featured linux desktop installed and going that I have been able to find.
113 • Not so positive (by Mr. Pink on 2005-11-24 05:40:28 GMT from United States)
Even more fun reading the comments, which I now see has expanded to include Microsoft zealots. ;)
OK. Once again for those who missed the memo.
MICROSOFT ZEALOTS OR WINDOWS LOVERS OR HOWEVER YOU WANNA CALL THEM DON'T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THIS SITE OR LINUX IN GENERAL. THEY ARE TOO BUSY FIGHTING IT OUT WITH MAC PEOPLE.
at the request of rglk from now on I'll be posting (or trolling as you put it) as Mr. Pink.
114 • Dear John (by Mr. Pink on 2005-11-24 08:34:50 GMT from United States)
Who says I don't go for raw code? I'm in the business.
Now I know why linux is so crappy. Please stop, maybe then things will improve.
If I were you I'd kill myself.
Hm.. you want me dead. Is that how you resolve disagreements? Is that a "Linux evangelism" in action? Have you ever considered applying for position of Linux advocacy spokesperson? You'll do a !BANG! up job. Just don't forget to reload.
How about all the times you pick up your dogs crap. Yup, that's productive.
Would you rather I didn't pick up after my dog? Is that a dog poop on your shoe?
Why should I google when I can have a functional system that doesn't die every 6 months
If you run linux how do you know that windows dies every six months?
Please. Are you so diluted to believe that Beta software is always inferior to release of another product.
I don't even know how to approach this statement. Did you say you are in software business? Are you sure?
Your a single, lonely guy who makes less than $100K a year.
John, you are not fooling anybody.
Just imagine how many flaws the Windows Desktop has if their Server software looks like Swiss cheese.
Is that what you're imagining? For a guy so devoted to linux you sure know a lot about windows. Did I say "know"? I meant "imagine".
115 • molinux (by vampire_janus@yahoo.com on 2005-11-24 09:40:39 GMT from Philippines)
to ladislav,
molinux is based on progeny according to this page
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence
but in its description it is said that it is based on ubuntu
anyway, would anyone here know whether linux loco is available in english as well? i am looking for a debian based distro (would have been progeny) but having kde as default desktop.
116 • Mandriva vrs the world (it seems) (by Richard on 2005-11-24 12:42:34 GMT from Australia)
1st comment here but at the speed that this seems to move I'll say I read to #115 when I made this:
1. A OS/distro is not a religious choice. It is what suits you now (I think I got over this when I finally ditched OS/2). I am not going tell you you are a good person for not using X!
2. As a Mandriva silver member I am unhappy with what that gets me at the moment - timing is that its approx 5mnths before decisions need to made. See below for what likely to push/turn my decision.
3. Linux communities seem to have a big 'push' for (k)/Ubuntu at the moment. Knoppix is the only other distro I seem to be looking at hard now; k/Ubuntu/SUSE does not 'excite' me in any way on my limited use of them ditto LIBRA (sp?).
4. My hardware seems to be detected better with some distros over others eg SUSIE and Ubuntu do not like my sound system.
Mandriva(drake) was the first Linux distro that I put onto a PC and used as other than experimentation. Club downloading of releases is not good - very slow BitTorrent speeds are the norm for me over a number of releases/years. Club responsivenes to problems is very variable - the only constant is poor communication about them some probs have been 'solved' very quickly but without notification.
Mandriva, the distro, seems to do most/all what I currently want with little frigging around - configuring it is to me straight forward via the MCC and generally easy to do. Once I have the 'hard' bits done, they ususally maintain easily (excception each change of version has required disproportionate time to configure 'Club' sources).
I didnt think distrowatch's was unfair to Mandriva until I looked at the linked source when I then thought that it had been more harshly characterised than the posters statement. I can live with that too. Co-incidently I had come across a factually inaccurate review of Mandriva 2006 (PC something - in the distrowatch LH column currently as the most recent of Mandriva 2006). Hence this piece. BTW I sent feedback to the reviewers oveer the inacuracies - will be interested to see if any corrections appear.
117 • RE: Mandriva vrs the world (it seems) (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-24 13:18:24 GMT from Italy)
Just a couple of thoughts.
Mandriva vs. SUSE: please don't judge SUSE by the 10.0 release: it was one of the worst ever in terms of hardware detection. Either use 9.3 or wait for 10.1
Let's not forget that SUSE has the *huge* advantage of being available for free from day one, full version, whilst when it comes to Mandriva you get only a "demo" version 2 months later, if you are not a member.
Knoppix: if you like it, you might like Kanotix even more. Kanotix is optimized for HD install. It is in a sort of a limbo right now, because there hasn't been any final release since June. There have been, however, 17 (!) Release Candidates. You can either download the latest RC or wait for the final, which hopefully shouldn't be too far away.
You also mention "LIBRA". I suppose you mean "Libranet".
I would forget about it if I were you. It is being "restructured" and it hasn't been available for (paid) download for 2 months now. Unless you mean Libranet 2.8.1 which in terms of linux time could be compared to a 80 years old human being.
118 • Distro tsunamis (by rglk on 2005-11-24 18:12:28 GMT from United States)
It's interesting to watch the ebb and flow of distro enthusiasms in this forum. Lately it's been more like a series of tsunamis; first the sustained Ubuntu tsunami (someone called it a lovefest, it really is a bit like an exstasy rave), then a brief Kanotix tsunami, followed now by a respectable PCLinuxOS tsunami. What's going to be next? Probably a noticable slackware tsunami (just think of the excellent slackware distros slax, klax, stux, wolvix, GoblinX, Myah, etc., not to mention slackware itself). And then ...? Well, Gentoo of course! Just take a look at the new Gentoo RR4/64 live DVD! And Pentoo! And VLOS!
By the time these successive tsunamis have abated, everyone will probably have grown a little tired of the breathless exhortations of "Linux, Linux, Linux!", and the already evident ground swell of BSD will rise to a mighty tide, mostly of Free, with two sharp spikes of Open and Net riding on top of it - alas, to fade away just as quickly as they rose when the masses realize that the BSD's just aren't nearly as easy to use as Linux, and they'll get tired of them.
But by that time, Nexenta and Belenix will have emerged from infancy and then the incantation on everyone's lips will be "Solaris, Solaris, Solaris!" - the most advanced, most innovative, most stable, most secure, in short the BEST kernel, merged with the BEST userland, GNU! My goodness, we truly have arrived in paradise!
But wait! What we've seen up until that point is just trailer park paradise - the true promised land is still to arrive: VISTA - LONGHORN - or whatever intensively focus group researched name MS will eventually settle on. And the drumbeat to which MS will be trying to suck all of us in will be deafening and irresistable: we'll all fall for it, we'll all dump our Linux distros and gladly cast away the thousands of hours we spent learning Linux.
But ... I'm wondering, is there anything on the horizon that's better than Linux, better than the BSD and Solaris Unixes, better than Windows and any MS Windows successor, something that's so easy and transparent to use that you completely forget you're using an OS? Is anyone working on an OS that's as different from anything we've used up until now and that's as much better as a hydrogen fuel cell powered car that's automatically steered with AI sensors and GPS navigation is than the human steered dangerous polluters we're using now?
Robert
119 • Mr. Pink (by John on 2005-11-24 18:54:15 GMT from United States)
"Hm.. you want me dead. Is that how you resolve disagreements?"
I come from an Italian background. That's how we do things. With a name like Mr. Pink, I'm guessing you understand : )
"If you run linux how do you know that windows dies every six months?"
When did I say I don't run Windows? I have it installed for gaming. Which is all it's good for anyways. And yes, I do have to reinstall it every 6 months if not less.
"I don't even know how to approach this statement. Did you say you are in software business? Are you sure?"
Pretty sure. I just sold off my company 2 years back.
"John, you are not fooling anybody."
I don't need to. I'm already married and retired.
"Is that what you're imagining? For a guy so devoted to linux you sure know a lot about windows. Did I say "know"? I meant "imagine".
You know, you sound a lot like I did before I started my software company some eight years ago. I was so narrowed-minded. How many linux distros have you tried anyways, one?
That's all for me. I'm off to have a nice turkey dinner. Happy Thanksgiving to all! Even to you Mr. Pink the Microsoft Zealot.
120 • RE: #120 Distro tsunamis (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-24 22:46:10 GMT from Italy)
"It's interesting to watch the ebb and flow of distro enthusiasms in this forum."
You are right, but my tastes stay always unchanged: Debian, *compatible* derivatives (there are only 2: Libranet and Kanotix) and SUSE. I can be momentarily disappointed, as I have been by the poor hardware (my hardware of course) support of SUSE 10.0, the uncertain state of Libranet and the lack of Kanotix releases. However I keep always running one or more of the above mentioned.
The Ubuntu tsunami? I have never been touched by it, nor even understood what is so special about this distro.
The PCLinuxOS tsunami? It doesn't touch me either. I have been a bit too long in the linux scene to be moved by newbie distros, too "cute" (I almost said "cutesy") and buggy (it has almost always refused to install properly in my box) for my tastes.
And BTW, you forgot the Mepis tsunami: another one which has never touched me.
But if there is going to be a Slackware tsunami, I am always willing to praise good, old Slack :-)
121 • Distro tsunamis (by rglk on 2005-11-25 03:51:43 GMT from United States)
Re #122 Anonymous Penguin:
Interesting, your tastes, attitudes and experiences run rather parallel to mine. I've also gone through a lot of different distros (test drove probably close to 100 live CD's) but I find myself always returning to unadulterated Debian.
I also don't understand the fuss over Ubuntu - there is nothing extraordinary about it. PCLinuxOS: I've played with it repeatedly over the past 2 years and had it on a HDD partition at one time. I downloaded the current version and played with it for a day. Yes, it's nice, but again there's nothing extraordinary about it.
Same goes for Mepis which has been sitting on a partition of my Linux HDD for nearly a year, along with 7 other Linuxes whose identity is changing all the time. I thought for quite a while that I should make Mepis my #1 Linux OS but I haven't. I seem to be happy with straight Debian.
I could get tickled with Slackware or one of its derivatives but I have a feeling that after a bout with one of them, I'd return to Debian after all. So why bother.
Let's face it: the differences between the various Linux distros, even the differences between the major Linux families, are vastly overblown. Of course, Distrowatch and folks who have a tendency to fall prey to religious fervor thrive on exaggerating these differences. Distrowatch is becoming a kind of fashion magazine of the Linux couturiers. At times I think DW's main intention is to titillate the reader with trendy Linux hype. I would have never thought I'd read a fashion magazine - but it's mildly entertaining.
I've developed a habit of rating the distros that I test drive. There are at least 15 distros that I've rated "very good" or "excellent" (of course that's only relative; there is no perfect or ideal or totally satisfactory OS that I know of). I think any of these would do as a workaday Linux distro for just about anyone.
One new development that I find rather interesting to watch and that stands out, at least for me, from the endless succession of minor new releases of work-a-like Linux distros is the merging of the Solaris kernel with GNU/GPL software (the so-called "GNU userland") which is presently happening with the Nexenta and BeleniX distros.
Perhaps Distrowatch should include more reporting on the OpenSolaris movement and its impact on the world of Linux. That movement is newsworthy, not the fact that some distro LinuxXYZ has released RC4 of v.10.1, two weeks after releasing RC3.
Robert
122 • RE: 121 • Distro tsunamis (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-11-25 21:33:23 GMT from Italy)
"Interesting, your tastes, attitudes and experiences run rather parallel to mine. I've also gone through a lot of different distros (test drove probably close to 100 live CD's) but I find myself always returning to unadulterated Debian."
Sometimes we do meet soul mates :-) (in the Platonic meaning of the word, of course)
I wish I could find one or two in this silly, small town, where, for the sake of my elderly parents, I have come to live from a great place like Leeds, UK :-(
123 • stability and useability (by Distrowatch Reader on 2005-11-27 18:36:11 GMT from United States)
I foolishly replaced a working (smoothly stable) Mandrake 9.2 install with Suse 10.0 open edition. The problems in KDE ,suspend to death and others (all from a single library, which when removed renders the computer unbootable) only allow this once smooth operating computer to stay up about 90 minutes at a time. Then it overdrives the monitor , you can hear it squeal from across the room, the os locks requiring a 30 minure cooling down period and a double start up sequence once to fsck itself once to run.
I am currently trying to download Texstars Pclinux, and Debian based Umbuntu.
I tried updating the boot rom and other desktops from E16 to gnome. No use. I cannot remove enough of the defective suspend to death routine in a KDE ? library.
124 • mandriva/pclinuxos (by cletis goodman on 2005-11-28 00:50:07 GMT from United States)
I was running mandriva until pclinuxos .92 came out.i download every distro that comes out on distrowatch and try it.thats my hobby.i cant find anything that comes close to it .2 thumbs up from me and 2 thumbs up from my wife and shes a windows user.
125 • Mandriva Club Cost. (by John Gardner on 2005-11-28 11:14:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
When Redhat drove me away by charging, I tried Mandrake and liked it. I thought to myself "you have been using Linux for years, and have never contributed anything in return". So I joined their club. I have never downloaded anything from it, it was just a way to say thank you and help to pay for the costs.
Number of Comments: 125
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