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1 • I agree with the above opinion... (by Caraibes on 2006-06-12 11:45:16 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
I have to be frank : I was totally disapointed with the Dapper releases... Only Xubuntu managed to install correctly, but I was not really happy with it...
I have been using Zenwalk for a while, but I was not satisfied with the Lin Neighbourhood behaviour over my network, so I installed Blag 30003 on 2 of my pc's and I am really happy with it...
This is the good point of having a stable version... No bugs !!!
I'll keep up to date with the future release of Blag 50K, based on FC5...
What I liked with Blag over Fedora, is that it's only a 1 cd download (I have way too much distros cd's in my workshop !!!). And that it comes with all the multimedia tweaks ready...
So, to add my voice to the author's of the opinion column, I would say for the big group od Dapper disapointed : Try Blag !!!
It is also notably one of the 5 distros recommended by Richard Stallman (with Dyne:Bolic, which I enjoy as well !!!)
I am not such a purist, since I installed Realplayer and Skype (!!!) but I enjoy that Free Software vibe...
My 2 cents... Now I'll sit back and read all your comments !
2 • Ubuntu (by Marco on 2006-06-12 11:57:01 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
I personally love the new Ubuntu 6.06 and think it is one of the best distribution available at the moment. But this is just my opinion...
3 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Eric on 2006-06-12 11:59:59 GMT from Leiden, Netherlands)
Indeed a bit disappointing. But my biggest fear is that we have to wait 12 months for a new stable release, since the next one will be Etch...
4 • I agree about Fedora being the winner (by Luis on 2006-06-12 12:03:03 GMT from Madrid, Spain)
Yes, I think Fedora won this round. Their 5th release was a great surprise, while the latest Ubuntu and SuSE were quite a disappointment.
Thanks Ladislav !
5 • On fedora C5.... (by jack straw on 2006-06-12 12:07:25 GMT from Den Haag, Netherlands)
It won't even begin to install on my athlon 64 with sata drives...
MDV 2006.0 (64 Bit) did a perfect job. It worked out Disks,Soundcard and Graphics (both ATI) perfectly, yes also the modem....
Ubuntu LTS (both 32 and 64 bit) did the same.
Mepis and, to a lesser extent, also SUSE 10.1 played nice with my hardware.
Am I the only one having very bad experiences with FC ?
6 • distro releases (by dark child on 2006-06-12 12:12:09 GMT from Winchester, United Kingdom)
I too am disappointed by Ubuntu and Suse 10.1. Ubuntu was hyped up too much, but the release seems like any other average Linux distro (good but not spectacular). Suse is good, but the package management problems are a major annoyance. Fedora Core 5 provides a better overall experience in my personal opinion.
7 • On fedora C5... addendum... (by jack straw on 2006-06-12 12:13:39 GMT from Den Haag, Netherlands)
Forgot to tell the only other OS which is giving a lot of problems (to be read as A LOT OF PROBLEMS) to get installed is WinXP 64 bit. What a nightmare.
Regards
8 • BSD... (by KiM on 2006-06-12 12:15:05 GMT from Athar An Nabi, Egypt)
heloo every body...
as always a lovely monday with distroweekly...
i am now in the phase of using my mighty old machine PIII MHz, 128M RAM..
which i will upgrade to 256M soon.. i started a trying project of mine to try and test many distros at the same time and these were my decisions:
Debian (waiting for ETch), K/X/E/Ububtu 6.06, Xandros deluxe, slackware10.2, KateOS 2.3, Suse10.1, Gentoo2006.1, Zenwalk2.6, SymphonyOS and BSD?
i am having a problem choosing which BSD to use as i have never used BSD before... i need your help guys...
thanks alot..
KiM
9 • For Kim, post#8 (by Caraibes on 2006-06-12 12:20:35 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
For your machine (old machine PIII MHz, 128M RAM), I would go with Zenwalk 2.6... It is a great distro, with a very friendly forum...
You could also try Puppy Linux... Version 2.0 rocks !
But, today, I am under the charm of Blag 3003, so I also recommend it, except that you boot into Xfce4 instead of Gnome...
10 • Re: BSD (by Michael on 2006-06-12 12:21:31 GMT from Bellville, South Africa)
Hi
Before asking people to wipe your backside why not google first?
Thanks
11 • hmmm .... (by samiky on 2006-06-12 12:21:48 GMT from Bucharest, Romania)
FC5, Suse, Ubuntu, etc. ... a bunch of fat and sluggish linux distributions.
personnaly i think Slackware, Frugalware & BSD's did a better job.
Simple to install, configure install by default mp3, java et. co; slims & fastes & responsives .. what else do you want?
Try one of these and after that tell me more bullshit about Ubuntu, fedora ... name another distrib
12 • ISO Images (by Sterling Patten on 2006-06-12 12:24:49 GMT from Panama City, United States)
I am new to Linux. I am trying to find a way to create a bootable DVD ISO disk. I can make a bootable CD ISO disk using the ISO image CD recording wizard v2.0. But this program will not make a DVD disk. can you suggest an alterative product to use?
13 • Fedora just works (by Jeremias Grym on 2006-06-12 12:25:09 GMT from Ume, Sweden)
I agree that Fedora Core 5 is (surprisingly) stable and easy to work with. yum is almost as good as apt-get when it comes to upgrading, and there are lots and lots of packages available from the core and extras repositories. Only a few addons for multimedia is required. Information about mplayer and mp3-support is easy available after a quick search on the interweb.
It bothers me that it still isn't perfectly clear about the role of the community vs the role of Red Hat when it comes to building and supporting Fedora, but technically it works fine for me. Maybe the greatest distro I've tried for a long while.
14 • ubuntu 6.06 (by my on 2006-06-12 12:32:08 GMT from Istanbul, Turkey)
blag is supported not for it is the best it is supported by stallman becouse of it is one of only 5 distributions which are free by the standard of GNU.
Since he is the founder of GNU ofcourse he will recommends it.
u said "Xubuntu managed to install correctly, but I was not really happy with it..."u should tell the reasons why u re not happy with it,otherwise it is obvious to get dissapointed since
if u have great expectation u will be dissapointed anyway.So tell me what u expect and what u can not get?
my
15 • dyne II (by just john on 2006-06-12 12:40:26 GMT from Fremont, United States)
Well, I've tried dyne:bolic II.
It's a bit too much for my old, lesser laptop -- recent Knoppix releases have similar problems -- but on a newer ThinkPad, it can do some neat stuff.
But there are bugs to iron out. Looking forward to release 2.1.
16 • Suse - not too bad (by sssuse on 2006-06-12 12:41:39 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
Well all the new features in suse 10.1 are very buggy. However I found the base system rock solid. I disabled the userspace network mannager and I use yast for updates (ie 10.0 functionality). That works just fine.
17 • Ubuntu (by Jim on 2006-06-12 12:43:53 GMT from Grosse Ile, United States)
I was disappointed with the new release of Ubuntu. I've tried every release since it came out and they worked well, but Dapper was terrible for me. There were many packages that either failed to run (or even download), ran with increadible instability, or had major graphical corruption in the interface. Usually I stay with whatever distro is on my hard drive for at least a week to play with it or so but I ran back to Zenwalk after a day.
18 • FC5 is not perfect either (by rick on 2006-06-12 12:45:18 GMT from Istanbul, Turkey)
FC5 Installer immediately crashes if you select the Turkish language in the installer. Sure, this is a fault of beta testers too but you would expect fedora to better test its installer. This is a result of pushing late minute changes. Also it's a pity that programmers haven't still learned that case conversion is locale sensitive and you can't expect all Latin alphabets obey English case conversion rules. So set locale to English if you are going to need case conversion of keywords and names in English and don't want them converted to something unexpected.
19 • Xubuntu 6.06 (by just john on 2006-06-12 12:51:35 GMT from Fremont, United States)
Just wanted to speak up (and forgot to add it to my dyne II message) that I like Xubuntu's 6.06 LiveCD experience. It's a hoot to see the same style desktop on my PPC and i386 machines.
20 • RE: BSD... (by pinguinus on 2006-06-12 12:53:35 GMT from Helsinki, Finland)
If you want to try some BSD, I suggest that you try FreeBSD on some of its derivatives (DesktopBSD, PC-BSD), if you want to use BSD. FreeBSD is the most used BSD, with most documentation and most packages, and best hardware support too (even 3D support with nVidia cards etc.). If you think that FreeBSD proper might be too difficult first (it might, lots of new things need to be learned, and not much autoconfiguration), I suggest that you try DesktopBSD that is very FreeBSD compatible, yet easier to use alternative. PC-BSD is ok and easy too, but it goes more on its own separate way, so not as FreeBSD compatible as DesktopBSD.
21 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Anthony Haslam on 2006-06-12 12:56:50 GMT from Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)
Please don't let the unfair (imo) negative reviews put you off trying out this great distro. If you've a spare machine or partition, then you've nothing to loose. I would suggest the 'alternative' text based installer or Xubuntu for anyone that wants to use it on a machine nearing the minimum requirements. Realistically, the live cd probably needs more like 256MB to work properly.
My install (on a 2 year old laptop) from the live cd went quickly & perfectly, from inserting the disc, to having a full functional install took less than an hour.
My laptop is burdened with Via's Unichrome IGP. I could not get this to work under any distro until Dapper came along, and it worked out of the box. Add the good hardware support to the updated software and the second to none online community, and that's why Ubuntu is the best distro for me.
I have encountered only one problem. That being that the hibernate function doesn't work, although it does for some. It has been raised as a bug and I'm sure it'll be sorted soon. Overall I've never had an OS that was as complete, useable and stable out of the box (I tried a few before settling with Ubuntu).
Tony.
22 • Debian flame fest (by Chris Norton on 2006-06-12 12:58:23 GMT from Melbourne, Australia)
Whilst I haven't read the actual posts involved I would like to say that I think the lawyers were quite right to be upset at being left out of the process. Afterall, their job is to make sure that their clients don't run into legal difficulties and it's impossible to do that if your client doesn't actually tell you what they're up to! What if there'd been some trouble with licenses? Software developers (especially those seeking universally free software) are not the best people to make legal judgements like this.
As for Ubuntu Dapper being a disappointment, I'd have to disagree. My experiance was that it was a very good release. Better than the previous one by far. Of course, I haven't been affected by any showstopping bugs. The install from the "desktop" CD went off without a hitch, as did an upgrade from a Breezy system. There's also plenty of howtos on getting proper multimedia support installed, which is essential.
I tried out SUSE 10.1 as well and also found it to be very good. It has much more of a "professional" feel to it than Ubuntu though. When I have the bandwidth I'll look foward to trying out Fedora as well. To be honest I usually only put these distros on other people's PCs as I'm more partial to customised Slackware systems myself. :)
23 • SuSE 10.1 (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 13:03:31 GMT from Northbrook, United States)
So far I've enjoyed SuSE 10.1, the package management and updating is a pain in the arse tho, that's for sure. But overall I've had no quams with the OS. I enjoy Xgl and Compiz, just wish I could get games to run when running Xgl.
I may try FC5 if I can get my other machine up and running...
24 • Fedora (by David Poh on 2006-06-12 13:06:47 GMT from Lisboa, Portugal)
I just installed fedora 5 a month ago on my laptop. Installation was indeed very smooth. As usual, I had to change all the default applications and artwork, and install all the unfortunate mandatory proprietary software.
Yum is OK, gcc 4.1/ glibc4 helps boosting apps.
I went through many problems as soon as I started to use it in various wireless networks. I got very frustrated, just as 5 years ago when I dropped Redhat 7.3, with all the conflicting configurations between gui and command line. Then I got frustrated with gnome and ievolution data server, gconf, and all that good-idea-but-never-ready HIG stuff. Then some apps did not have an rpm, so I had to install them from source.
I don't really understand who fedora is for: it is neither newbie nor dev-friendly.
Conclusion: installed gentoo+fluxbox in 1hr two weeks ago. Since then, my productivity went back to 100%.
25 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Yannis Papadopoulos on 2006-06-12 13:07:39 GMT from , Greece)
Ubuntu just works in my Sony laptop. Sound, wireless, NVIDIA card were out of the box I didn't have to mess around contrary to previous releases. I think that it is one of the most polished distros I have installed.
26 • Fedora Core 5 is not flawless (by Alberto Milone at 2006-06-12 13:10:50 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I like both Ubuntu and Fedora. I think Fedora Core 5 is a really nice distro but it automatically shutdowns randomly. I filed a bug several time ago. I didn't have that problem in Fedora Core 4 (as in any other distro).
Here is the link to the bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=190058
In Ubuntu Dapper everything works out of the box and I haven't had any problem whatsoever. I know that Dapper is not perfect (some users have problems with it), nonetheless I can't see how it can be a disappointment.
And by the way the live installer is not the only method available for the installation. The alternate-installation is also available ( the previous Ubuntu's installer).
I don't mean to say that Ubuntu is superior to Fedora but I would steer clear of saying that Ubuntu is a disappointment while Fedora is "still the most professional, bug-free and solid distribution available today".
27 • BSDs (by Troy Banther on 2006-06-12 13:12:00 GMT from Birmingham, United States)
As far as BSDs go I like OpenBSD. I'm a security-oriented individual. NetBSD is pushing to be the most hardware complaint version and Free being the one for the masses.
If I had spare equipment I would drive a pure OpenBSD server without a graphical interface. I spend most of my time in the command line anyway. There are great books online and at the bookstores. `Absolute OpenBSD` and `Absolute BSD` by Michael Lucas are great books. Give them a read.
28 • Good opinion (by Thomas on 2006-06-12 13:13:42 GMT from Wennigsen, Germany)
I fully agree with you! There was such a hype about Ubuntu 6.06 and SuSE 10.1 and such a big disappointment! The graphical installer included with Ubuntu permanently crashes and with SuSE, you can't use the new update tools because they don't work...
Even if I never liked Fedora Core, I think I'll change to FC5 after your suggestion and give it a try!
Great DWW as usual!
29 • Dapper Drake, and Re: BSD (by David at 2006-06-12 13:17:07 GMT from Chicago, United States)
It's a disappointment that Breezy which always seemed to suffer from performance problems, and of course the controversy with Canonical's refusal to update Firefox, to be followed with such a dog. I can't even set the screen savers to randomize every three minutes like I used to! A minor issue but I'd call that a feature downgrade. The only real improvement I noticed is NVidia OpenGL drivers run a lot smoother and don't freeze up my system like Breezy did.
Just to comment on Kim's post, BSD is still pretty raw in terms of desktop usage and seems to lag at least a year behind GNU/Linux on driver support. Otherwise, I hear good things about all their distros. I kind of monitor DragonFly's progress, once they have an X server installed by default I'm going to give it a try.
30 • Debian and Java License Row (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-12 13:22:29 GMT from Roanoke, United States)
I read the emails in question on the debian developer mailing list, and quite frankly I think Anthony Towns came off as rather childish. When your project is getting something of value from someone, it's not a good idea to dismissively offer to separate from them because you disagree with a suggestion they made... unless you're really acting in your own interests, and not the project's.
That being said, I think that these types of debates out in the open are quite healthy.
We don't know exactly how many chairs Steve Ballmer has thrown at his underlings... and we also don't know what kind of things Microsoft's software makes our computers do, but one thing we can safely assume: it ain't pretty.
With Debian, we know what the software does and the development process is open and transparent. It's also free as in beer. No salesman could make an offer that great.
31 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by reyfer on 2006-06-12 13:27:14 GMT from Caracas, Venezuela)
I have been using Kubuntu since Breezy (5.10) and on June 1st did the upgrade to Dapper (6.06). I don't know if my case is the exception or not, but my installation runs smoothly, have had no problem so far, and I'm finally windoze free thanks to it. I tried Fedora, and Suse. Both are excellent distros, but for me, Kubuntu is the one
32 • unfortunate decision in SUSE 10.1 (by Ken Yap on 2006-06-12 13:28:38 GMT from Canberra, Australia)
Yes, I agree that it was unfortunate they decided to cram a foreign package management system into SUSE at the last moment. This is my major gripe with 10.1. It must be causing grief for the developers to get fixes out under this kind of pressure nobody needs. Even now that they have issued updates to the package management system, it still eats a lot of memory and time updating so there is room for improvement.
Still, I recognise that YaST had to grow up. But this means I will defer upgrading my workhorse machine until 10.2. 10.0 works fine so I'm not in a hurry. In other respects 10.1 is really polished on my other machines. After the updates to Knetwormanager have been applied, dynamic address acquisition on my notebook works like it should; it even notices if the cable is unplugged.
33 • No subject (by Aventis on 2006-06-12 13:31:15 GMT from Islamabad, Pakistan)
I agree with many people here regarding disappointments over various issues in major distros,personally I found two issues with FC5 which were annoying to me.It would not work with my Creative Audigy Sound Blaster Card & second it did not mount/access my FAT 32 ( i am dual booting it with XP ) by default.My sound card never gave me any any issues but with FC5 my system was mute whatever I do to fix it and inability to access FAT32 partitions by default is annoying for me as I am not fan of commands and can`t handle them easily.FC5 is the best amongst all imho.
I wonder is there any remedy for these 2 issues and I will switch back to FC5 from my currently installed Qilinux 1.2
Regards,
Aventis
34 • Fedora5 (by Nathan Fisher on 2006-06-12 13:38:03 GMT from Houston, United States)
Fedora Core 5 does not work at all with the video card on my second computer, to the point that the installer degenerates into a mess of gibberish characters - whether you choose graphical or text based installation. So I have never gotten it installed all of the way in order to test it fully. In contrast Ubuntu installed and ran without a hitch, as did FreeBSD, Crux, Puppy2, Grafpup, DyneBolic, Mepis, ReactOS, you get the picture. Nothing else has had a problem.
Don't take this as a flame towards Fedora, I ran FC4 on my main server for almost a year and was essentially happy with it. Just adding my voice to those who feel this release wasn't as polished as reported, and maybe the other distros got a little too much heat.
For Kim - I wouldn't mess about with some of the 'easier' BSD's mentioned above for one simple reason, most will install KDE which will run painfully slow (if at all) on your old hardware. Just go for the real thing and install FreeBSD, and choose a lightweight desktop like Icewm or Blackbox. FreeeBSD is nowhere near as hard as you have been led to believe and I don't think it will give you any problems. The same advice applies to Linux desktops too, BTW. Your list of distributions are all going to be slow going on 128MB of RAM. There are lots of better alternatives.
35 • Ubuntu and Fedora (by Rafterman on 2006-06-12 13:45:43 GMT from Point Pleasant Beach, United States)
I've been using Ubuntu Dapper since Flight 6(aka Alpha 6), and I haven't had any problems. I'm quite a bit hesitant to try FC5 though, because every time I tried to install FC4, Anaconda kept crashing and I was left with an unusable system. I'd just like to know, did anybody have problems installing FC5?
36 • Burn that DVD (by Lobster on 2006-06-12 13:47:02 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
"I am new to Linux. I am trying to find a way to create a bootable DVD ISO disk. I can make a bootable CD ISO disk using the ISO image CD recording wizard v2.0. But this program will not make a DVD disk. can you suggest an alterative product to use?"
I am gonna suggest having your cake and eating it . . .
Download one of the Puppys here (70 meg)
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/DownloadLatest
(Opera or Mozila versions)
Then use the CD/DVD burner/wizard under multimedia to burn your DVD's - I burn to RW-DVD's (the wizard auto formats - clearing previous ISO's)
This will introduce your to Puppy AND allow you to evaluate the ISO's of your choice.
Hope that helps.
37 • Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper (by Chris Spejcher on 2006-06-12 13:49:45 GMT from Green Bay, United States)
I haven't had any problems here with Dapper. The new Desktop CD installer is really easy and it takes less than 10 minutes to install. Sorry to those that are having trouble.
Hearing people having problems with getting hardware to work with distros always makes me think of Apple and why they lock OSX to a tight hardware config. Supporting all sorts of hardware is hard.
38 • Too big, too slow (by antidrugue on 2006-06-12 13:53:34 GMT from Montral, Canada)
About Fedora Core 5 : "It is possibly one of the most stable and dependable Linux distributions ever built!"
Compared to distros like Debian GNU/Linux (even the testing flavor), Fedora Core 5 is simply not reliable.
Fedora Core 5 shipped with a buggy kernel (refusing non-GPL modules), but its overall size and speed are perhaps the biggest drawbacks.
39 • Fedora ... not the best and most polished distro. Sorry. (by arctic on 2006-06-12 13:54:22 GMT from Schenefeld, Germany)
If you claim that Fedora is the best distro right now, then I think I must disagree with you. First impressions were nice, but then chaos struck. Read my first review here: http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=31484
And my update to the review here:
http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=31484&st=15#20
Now you will see that Fedora is FAR from being perfect. Sad, but true. :(
40 • Xubuntu for old laptops (by Patrick on 2006-06-12 14:01:23 GMT from , Luxembourg)
I've tried Ubuntu on an older laptop (PIII-Coppermine 1100Mhz, 256KB RAM) and it was horribly slow. I then tried Zenwalk and this one works well, which must at least be partially due to XFCE.
So my question is - is Xubuntu as lightweight as Zenwalk? Can it be reasonably used on an old machine?
41 • FC5 (by Max on 2006-06-12 14:06:05 GMT from Perth, Australia)
I must agree with regards to FC5.
Ive had it on my laptop as my main OS on my main machine since mid-april and it runs just great, ACPI suspend, wireless and all.
I also have to say that I just tried Ubuntu 6.06 and it installed flawlessly, no ATI problems, and it also feels slightly faster than FC5.
I tried Suse 10.1 and although I liked playing with Xgl i just plain hate YAST, but that's just me...
On a last note, I will be installing Ubuntu 6.06 for my mom later on this month... It's just plain easy, simple and fast and you gotta love that. For me, I'll be sticking to FC5 for the foreseeable future....
42 • I am very pleased with Ubuntu/Kubuntu 6.06 (by Hammerhead on 2006-06-12 14:11:18 GMT from Wilkes Barre, United States)
I just can't complain about free operating systems.
Keep up the great work Ubuntu/Kubuntu developers :-)
43 • Which Distro to try (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 14:11:52 GMT from Sewickley, United States)
If you want a distro thats easy to install,easy to use,and easy to upgrade, and everything works right out of the box including all browser plugins. Then try (PCLinuxOS)
44 • No subject (by Max on 2006-06-12 14:12:10 GMT from Perth, Australia)
By the way, I didnt like Fedora Core until I tried version 5.... Those with bad past experiences (like me) should give it a try ;)
45 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Moe on 2006-06-12 14:43:13 GMT from Shrewsbury, United States)
I was running the previous release of Ubuntu under VMWARE and when prompted I upgraded to 6.06. Nice feature this upgrade thingy. Several hours later everything worked without a hitch. I even switched into K and with Kilk I installed Google's Picasa. Bingo! This is the life!
46 • For My, post#14 (by Caraibes on 2006-06-12 14:48:39 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
well, you are right to point that Blag was recommended by Stallman for it's Free according to the Gnu standard... I think it's good. It is a convenient little distro, and while we are discussing bugs on Dapper, Suse 10.1, and FC5, stable Blag is based on FC3, so it doesn't really have bugs.
Stable isn't cutting edge, but it does the job for me after the week of trying cutting edge without success...
As of my comments on Xubuntu, you are right to point that I haven't elaborated. I think Xubuntu is a good distro. Jani, the dev, did a good job. It is just that I didn't like the feeling of it... It's hard to be precise, but sometimes, a distro strikes you as "just right"... Sometimes it doesn't...
So far, my "just right" distros are : Zenwalk, Blag, Puppy, Dyne... PCLinuxOS (the magic one...)
But it is in all friendship, and of course I encourage the valuable work of the Ubuntu team... It's not abnormal to try to release the "best distro ever" and end up with a bag of bugs.. It happens, life goes on, they'll release another one...
Good day to you all, linuxeros of the world !
47 • size doesn't matter (by crawancon on 2006-06-12 14:49:11 GMT from Clearwater, United States)
The smaller releases as of late have eclipsed the major releases.
(odd turning of tides?) in terms of usability.
sure the major releases have been disappointments..
....but.. hey.. it gives us ''perpetual beta testers of FOSS" a raison d'etre.
I've always found more nuggets of gold in the smaller ones than the major ones anyway.
puppy is the one to watch out for. (if you're an ISO hobbiest)
vectorlinux has been up for 126 days and counting for my soho server.
48 • Fedora Core 5 (by Andrew Hutchings on 2006-06-12 14:58:06 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
"Fedora Core 5 - still the most professional, bug-free and solid distribution available today."
What about Debian?
49 • SUSE 10.1, Ubuntu 6.06 (by IMQ on 2006-06-12 14:58:07 GMT from Decatur, United States)
I installed both on 2 machines and both had some issues.
Ubuntu Desktop CD is more problematic when attempting to install to the hard drive. So I stick with the old fashion "alternate" CD, which gives users more options (like the ability to choose where to install boot loader). I also tried Kubuntu/Xubuntu, both individually and as additions to Ubuntu based installation. They all seem to get along fine.
I had SUSE 10.1 installed on one machine with access to internet. Well, I had problem adding installation sources via YAST. Tried numerous times with same results. Even tried suggestion via OpenSUSE by adding sources via Konqueror. It reported successfully added sources but when checked via YAST, it did not show. So, I decided to re-installed it from a fresh DVD just downloaded. This time it worked. However, there has been no updates since the release of 10.1 a few weeks ago. At least that what it said when I tried the Online Updates via YAST.
50 • fedora not desktop-responsive (by project_2501 on 2006-06-12 14:58:17 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
i agree that FC5 is stable. after finally moving from mandriva, and trying the others such as xubuntu, i decided on FC5.
its fine - and with some manual work you can get multimedia working.
the problems I found are:
* yum is slow. almost every interaction results in lots of network traffic - even a "search". updates are slow and cpu heavy.
* the kernel is not optimised for desktop interactivity. you get choppiness and applications stalling then resuming and they're not alwas media playback applications either. this happens with both gnome and xfce - and yes i do have many servcies disabled.
51 • No subject (by hans horwath on 2006-06-12 15:06:38 GMT from Salzburg, Austria)
hello,
hot-headed are only those who try to do something negative to debian (and linux at all?).
if you would 've read the discussion you could 've seen, that the one who really was clear-headed, objective and fair was anthony towns, the Debian Project Leader.
if you misuse the distrowatch-site for very negative things, then distrowatch has lost/will soon loose its name!
greetings
hans
52 • PCLinuxOS (by anonymous on 2006-06-12 15:11:11 GMT from Minneapolis, United States)
I am tired of the PCLinuxOS people constantly plugging their distro without any real comments about stuff. I see it everywhere. Come on, guys, most of us are aware of it being "easy to install, easy to use, and easy to upgrade" from the last thousand times we were told. Many distros are this way now, please give us some real information when we ask or if its relevent, but leave the constant postings alone for a while.
53 • Ubuntu 6.06 is a great distro (by pierrerosen on 2006-06-12 15:17:07 GMT from Roseland, United States)
I strongly disagree with Ladislav that Ubuntu 6.06 is a disappointing release. You can check out my review of the latest release of Ubuntu at http://pierrerosen.livejournal.com/ . Feel free to leave comments.
Why is Dapper great? Because Ubuntu works out straight out of the box with all of my hardware. My camera, webcam, G5 mouse, monitor, graphics card, and scanner all work with no tweaking. And with some minor tweaks, I get full 3D support, multimedia capacity, and a working printer.
Dapper isn't perfect. One huge flaw is that burning the ISO to CD didn't seem to work under WindowsXP using the suggested software. It did work under Ubuntu 5.10 however.
The live CD desktop install worked for me, but I think it is a poor idea, since it might not work on every computer.
I tried to install Xubuntu using the alternate CD on my old PII 300Mhz and got a kernel panic and a frozen installation. Luckily, the underlying ubuntu 5.10 installation was not harmed.
I also strongly disagree that Fedora Core 5 is the solution. I had nothing but trouble with FC5. I'd sooner use Debian Unstable than FC5. But, perhaps I'll try FC5 again.
To quantify how great Ubuntu is, I can say that I now use Linux for 95% of the tasks I work on at home. I now dread having to reboot into WindowsXP!!!
54 • Fedora Core 5 - bug-free and solid? (by Jack from Poland on 2006-06-12 15:23:47 GMT from Warszawa, Poland)
Not at all. Without any active network connection Pirut and other GUI installers crash when you try to apply the updates. When you try to install some software which is contained on CD/DVD FC5 insists on using mirrors...
55 • Fedora (by Craig on 2006-06-12 15:32:14 GMT from Great Malvern, United Kingdom)
Sorry man, but Fedora Core 5 was/is just as bad as any one of the other big distro's. Like arctic said above the shipped kernel was not compiled to support non-GPL drivers, and there was the issue with an updated kernel that was a disaster. I'm sorry but it was a disaster, you would expect a kernel at the very least to be the most tested part of the whole system. This shows that Fedora is just as vulnerble as the likes of SuSE and Ubuntu at slacking off a bit and/or bowing down to pressure thus making mistakes, this I hope you all agree, put's things into perspective!
56 • Fedora (by Craig on 2006-06-12 15:34:13 GMT from Great Malvern, United Kingdom)
Sorry brain is thinking faster than I can type:
"I'm sorry but it was a disaster, you would expect a kernel at the very least to be the most tested part of the whole system and indeed tested thoroughly before released as a new package"
57 • Another satisfied Ubuntu/Xubuntu 6.06 user (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 15:46:03 GMT from Pleasant Hill, United States)
Since there seems to be a lot of complaints about Ubuntu on distrowatch, I thought I would add that I'm another of the very satisified Ubuntu/Xubuntu 6.06 users and would recommend others to try it out.
Most of the problems I've heard mentioned here have to do with an ATI graphics card driver and the use of the use of the graphical installer. As I am an NVIDIA user, I'm not of much help on the graphic card issue, other than I do know that there are ATI Ubuntu users who aren't using the vesa driver.
As for the graphical installer, yes, it is the first generation of the installer, and has room for some improvements. I think that's why there is also the alternate installer, too.
Is Ubuntu 6.06 perfect? Of course not! But, then I have yet to see a distro that is.
In short, while there have been some people with specific hardware related problems, from the message boards, it appears, that the majority of them find Ubuntu 6.06 to be a very fast and stable release.
58 • re: xubuntu on old laptop (by John on 2006-06-12 15:46:27 GMT from Cedar Rapids, United States)
I'm running Xubuntu on a 400Mhz Celeron Compaq with 160MB of RAM (that's the max) and it runs superbly, not quite as fast as Vector, but with much better harware detection and better package management. I first installed Dapper Beta 2, then updated via apt-get when LTS came out. I've had no problems at all.
Xubuntu is the first distro I've installed on this old piece of crap laptop on which I've been able to get the sound working. I did have a problem with the live CD crashing on install, so I recommend the text install (they call it "alternative" now), other than that it's the best distro I've used. I recommend it to anyone with older hardware.
59 • Ubuntu and BSD (by william johnson on 2006-06-12 15:53:25 GMT from Wilmington, United States)
I love this line from Norton's post, "There's also plenty of howtos on getting proper multimedia support installed, which is essential.". Man that's a real knee slapper.How in the world can Ubuntu be taken seriously.I don't. If that's your gig,
have fun.
BSD: I can't think of one good reason to install it on a
desktop unless you are into self-flagellation.
60 • Fedora 5 ??? NO THANKS !!!!! (by John Fragkopoulos on 2006-06-12 16:00:05 GMT from Athens, Greece)
As i just read in your weekly report your opinion is that the fedora 5 is the most easy distro for linux. NOT at ALL.
I have the bud luck to try to install this "strange and peculiar" distro more than 4 times BUT without any succes, all the times my two PC's refuse to boot again in fedora!!!. One time also i make format ( this distro installed as a second OS in a second hd with windows XP in first hd)For this reason i try and INSTALLED very easy one time SUSE 10.1, then KUBUNTU 6.06, and finally the distro that i found the BEST
for my needs 'PCLinux'
Thanks
61 • Huge FC5 annoyance (by David on 2006-06-12 16:07:28 GMT from Chicago, United States)
How about this: I tried a multi boot install with two hard drives, one IDE and the other SATA where I put the FC5 partition. Instead of using the home partition I already created on the SATA drive, it insisted on using the IDE drive's home partition, even when I remarked it out of /etc/fstab! Yeah great distro...
62 • about PCLinuxOS (by PastorEd on 2006-06-12 16:40:36 GMT from Olympia, United States)
Nicely polished distro... but...
it absolutely REQUIRES 256MB RAM to operate. This renders it useless for older hardware.
It's a shame, too, because (as I remember) even it's ICEWM was polished. Once it was installed to HD, then one could easily trim it down to work on older stuff. You just can't natively INSTALL it to older hardware.
Does anyone know if PCLinuxOS has an FTP install option like SuSE did?
GBYLBT, PastorEd
63 • FC5 the best distro? (by Raul Suarez on 2006-06-12 17:03:53 GMT from Barrie, Canada)
I've used fedora since FC3. I skipped FC4 (although I tried it) now I use FC5 on what used to be my main system. (Now I find my self using my old system with Puppy 2 most of the time).
Other than the blunder with the kernel which, by the way was fixed pretty quick, everything has been running smoothly. I 'yum update' regularly and I haven't found any incompatibilities.
But regarding the distro wars I'd like to add the obvious: The best distro is the one that works best in your system.
People that use their computers to do real work (as opposed to just distro fever) should try several distros for a 'test drive' the same as with a new car. Once you feel comfortable with a distro for your own purpose. you should expect to stay with it at least a couple of years or until your needs change.
On the server side go with one with frequent bug and security fixes. FC5 has a good turn around record.
On the desktop side go for one that best support your work requirements. e.g. has the right mix of applications required.
The interesting part of this article is that it highlights a new stage in the distro wars:
The new yardstick for choosing a distro is quality. Functionality, package availability and looks are now given for granted in most distros.
64 • Perfectly happy with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (by Stefan Daniel Schwarz on 2006-06-12 17:07:57 GMT from Scharrhof, Germany)
While I'm perfectly happy with Ubuntu's latest release (despite having an ATI card), there might be some problems for other users. But it's true that hardly any major release is completely bug-free, no matter how long it's delayed for polishing. That said, what matters most for reliable usage is timely updates and proper security. With that in mind, Ubuntu is still the best choice, providing three years Desktop and five years Server support. For production use, especially in an enterprise environment, it's always best to wait a while after release for things to settle and patches to be available. It's great that Ubuntu is going to publish a point release which fixes the remaining bugs. I don't mind if a new release is a bit buggy as long as I can count on fixes to appear quickly. I'm sure it will work out well.
65 • Fedora 5 (by Henri E Witsenhuysen on 2006-06-12 17:12:41 GMT from Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Hi Ladislav,
I enjoy your website and use fairly regularly.
Let me say that I have been using Fedora 5 for sometime now and find it quite an easy to install distribution and it works out of the box.
Whilst there are some problems with proprierty software, and fine tuning it to suit my style of usage, I have up to now been quite satisfied with it.
I run Fedora 5 as a SCSI server and in a laptop client environment and at no time has it failed. It is very stable and I run it along side a Windows 2003 Small Business Server and Windows XP Workstation.
I must disagree with some of the comments levelled at SUSE 10.1. It too is a great distribution only it takes longer to run an application.
SUSEś installer is very polished and it too runs out of the box. Its real problem is speed. It is definitely slower than Fedora 5 and both are slower to run when compared to Debian.
Thanks
66 • Hit the nail on the head (by rexbinary on 2006-06-12 17:14:35 GMT from Quitman, United States)
Yes SUSE 10.1 and Ubuntu 6.06 were BIG disappointments to me as well.
Although FreeBSD is my free UNIX of choice, SUSE has been my Linux of choice. After I installed SUSE 10.1 and saw what a mess it was I tried every major distro, including all three flavors of Ubuntu 6.06.
Fedora Core 5 just seemed the most polished. Not that it's perfect by any means, but I would have to fully agree it won this round of releases.
I still can't believe Ubuntu released 6.06 LTS with that installer, it's so lacking in features and very awkward to use. It's a great idea, but they should have put that in the following release and polished it from there.
67 • Frenzy 1.0 (by mzee on 2006-06-12 17:18:21 GMT from Vilvoorde, Belgium)
"BSD: I can't think of one good reason to install it on a
desktop unless you are into self-flagellation."
Please try Frenzy 1.0 LiveCD. Or even better : install it on you hard disk. You may change your mind.
Confess I have a lot ot things to learn about FreeBSD.
68 • What a trollish FC advertisement (by Pete on 2006-06-12 17:22:12 GMT from El Segundo, United States)
So instead of FC being a great distro, its only ok, but the other major distros are all terrible. What a bewildering endorsement. I'd prefer to have seen more examples of what makes Fedora great.
All the distros described had significant delays in the release cycles. Somehow for Fedora this comes off as "9 months of long development" where as the other distros apparantly only had weeks and months of slippery problems.
I think I'll pass on FC5 if this is the sort of slanting review it takes to get an positive endorsement.
69 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by emJai on 2006-06-12 17:37:44 GMT from , United Kingdom)
I installed this on my intel SFF desktop PC and thinkpad T21with no problems, though I did find the new live-cd installer more confusing, it was much quicker to install however. I loved the tweaked look and the multimedia examples.
For beginners Ubuntu now is easy to setup multimedia using "easyubuntu"
http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/
It will be interesting to see how the new Mepis/Ubuntu is recieved next week...........
70 • Happy with Ubuntu (by Suyog on 2006-06-12 17:51:03 GMT from , Pakistan)
I've been using ubuntu for a year now, and haven't booted into windows even once. It works perfectly fine ( i upgraded to dapper when it was in beta), and i get my day to day work done. However, my complain is that I need to spend lots of time reading and googling how to do simple things like connecting my mobile to the pc with bluetooth, making my lifeview tv card work, etc. I wish linux was as easy for a newbie to use as windows.
71 • I guess (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 17:55:50 GMT from Ivry-sur-Seine, France)
Mandriva is still the best out there, too bad that they need to make money...
Fedora is at an alpha stage, has a very badly configured KDE and yum is very slow.
Ubuntu is just a fork of the great Debian, filled with bugs.
SUSE is awfull dealing with software installation.
It's a bit sad for the GNU/Linux world to see that there is little progress these days in terms of distribution (at least it looks so).
72 • ubuntu & suse (by al on 2006-06-12 17:59:54 GMT from Lattimore, United States)
If you look back at how things went down you would realize that ubuntu really got everyone's mouth watering when they announced the delay. Meanwhile Fedora released a 'pretty' stable release, I personally dont find it anything special, but it is stable. So all this pressure was placed on Ubuntu to release something special (LTS).... Suse, what can you say about suse? The only area they really dropped the ball was implementing the new package manager too late in the ballgame :O
73 • Distro Review (by tom on 2006-06-12 18:31:23 GMT from Helena, United States)
Of the "large" distro's (Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu) I personally found the most polished and trouble free was in fact Fedora. Yes, it is true none run with no hassle and yes all are resource hogs.
The problem I have is all the large distros run slow and install unnecessary software.
On BSD. I have only dabbled. I advise Desktop BSD to start. Desktop BSD will yield a KDE system out of the box with minimal hassle and it is otherwise FreeBSD. Once you are familar with the OS (BSD) and ports move to FreeBSD. If you like you can then move to OpenBSD. Have not tried Fenzie.
Nowadays I prefer the Medium weight distros and was dissappointed XUbuntu runs so slow. My preference is Zenwalk. Zenwalk is relatively lightweight and hassle free. It you need it is easy to install from Slackware or compile from source. I run with Fluxbox modified with a ROX desktop and have been happy. Basically with Zenwalk you get a solid base and can add applications as needed.
There are a number of distros that run very fast a a live CD Dyne and Vector for examples. Dyne in particular is nice with its "docking".
Puppy/DSL and the light distros are OK, but applications are limited and, at least with Puppy, it is a hassle to install alternate desktops (XFCE, Fluxbox) and/or compile from source.
74 • Was that an opinion piece, or an advertisement for Fedora? (by Michael Kornblum on 2006-06-12 19:16:04 GMT from , Mexico)
Since I've migrated from a Microsoft to Linux environment, I have learned one simple hard and fast rule. Not all distros play nicely with the user's hardware (or even the user himself). I myself tried several distributions before choosing the one I currently run on my laptop and I am very happy with it.
Ironically my distro of choice is the same one that was trashed in your opinion piece. But thank goodness we live in a free society which allows us to run the OS that keeps us (and our machines) happy and productive, whatever that software may be.
75 • RE: 10 (by Bill Turner on 2006-06-12 19:29:59 GMT from Heston, United Kingdom)
10 • Re: BSD (by Michael on 2006-06-12 12:21:31 GMT from Bellville, South Africa)
Why be such a twat, he was asking for information, it is people like you who make new users unwilling to ask questions!!!!!!!
76 • Ubuntu v. (Name Your Competitor) (by Justin Whitaker on 2006-06-12 19:36:32 GMT from Quincy, United States)
Ok, I see alot of people slagging Ubuntu for the LiveCD version, which you can install: first srlinuxx was guilty of that, and now distrowatch. That's an uniformed opinion.
The LiveCD is to test the system: yes they want to to be able to be the sole method of distribution at some point, but right now, it is too buggy. Some day.
The alternative install disk allows you to use the standard installer, or OEM mode, just like the 5.04 disks, and results in a stable, capable desktop that is now my standard linux install.
In fact, one better: other than one 10gb XP partition on a little used laptop for some Transparent Language software, our house is now Ubuntu.
It's dead simple, easy to update, and finds just about everything I have thrown at it hardware-wise.
I even have it running WoW, Counterstrike Source, and other games without incident.
Truly a milestone in Linux development.
Too bad you guys reviewed the wrong verison.
77 • I like Ubuntu 6.06 (by Hobbitland on 2006-06-12 19:55:09 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
Hi, actually I found Ubuntu-6.06 to be the best release so far. I found
Ubuntu-5.04 is be quite buggy and Ubutntu-5.10 even worse. So the
latest version is a big imrpovement.
I don't like SuSE 10.x because they did extra work to cripple the
multimedia. Yes, there are unofficial reposy to get multimedia but
its too much work.
Ubuntu is better because all you need is a single CD. I download all
the extras like multimedia and updates and stick them onto a
second CD.
SuSE needs to do better. With a DVD they should have working
multimedia.
A advantage of Ubuntu and Debian is the packing format (.deb)
which doesn't get into a mess as in ".rpm" hell. Ubuntu seems
to have a huge reposy of almost anythign you can think of.
For the first tiem in Ubuntu "autofs" works properly with removeable
media. I prefer to disable "hald" and use "autofs" instead. Autofs
mounts removeable media when the are accessed and unmounts
when they are finished. Good for USB pens as no need to eject.
A big problem I found with derivatives of Debian/Ubuntu like
Knoppix, Kanotix, SimplyMPEIS is that when ti comes to adding
extra software there are soemtimes comflicts with packages from
different reposys.
78 • Re: 62 • about PCLinuxOS (by DaveW on 2006-06-12 20:10:39 GMT from Chicago, United States)
Pastor Ed, There's a "MiniMe" development release of PCLOS .93 that comes with only the basics and relies on Apt/synaptic to build your own set of apps. Don't know if it's right for your setup, but might be worth a try. It's still in development, but I've kinda drifted into using it as my main OS. And there's a utility for burning a bootable backup CD of the whole system once you've customized it.
79 • Two suggested packages - SELinux and initNG (by foo on 2006-06-12 20:20:15 GMT from Wellington, New Zealand)
I'd like to suggest SELinux and Elektra as two useful additions to the package database. SELinux is one of the few security packages there, while Elektra (the system-wide config package) is a long-overdue addition to the config area which should mean far better and more robust configuration.
A third possibility - initNG. That also deserves support and a high profile...
- foo
80 • For PastorEd, post#62 (by Caraibes on 2006-06-12 20:27:45 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
interesting comment about PCLinuxOS and an eventual LITE version.
That would be very interesting... I am not using PCLOS these days, but I can tell you why so many posters just sing the praises of it : it works out of the box, and as of my main desktop, it is the only distro who had my Lifeview TV card working...
If Texstar is reading, here's the message : we want a LITE version of PCLOS !!!
Then, as of the "distro wars", I think we should all take it easy... It's normal to have some strong opinions... But we can't take ourselves too seriously !!!
Now I loved that :
"People that use their computers to do real work (as opposed to just distro fever) should try several distros for a 'test drive' the same as with a new car."
from post#63, Raul Suarez...
Distro fever, it is exactly what I have !!! Doesn't mean that I don't do any real work...
This is why I love it down here in DWW !!! Because I treat my distro fever !!!
I love you all, Ubuntu users, FC users, Slackware users, and even Mandriva users (!!!)
Don't forget my word of the day, and check that out :
http://www.blagblagblag.org/
Recommended by :
http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
81 • "use fedora core5"... but.. (by brad on 2006-06-12 20:41:58 GMT from Gainesville, United States)
you mention how great it is.. while i'm sure its' GREAT..
but have you tried out pclinuxos.. its easy to install, simple to add packages and multimedia support and in 4 years and 20+distros, it just "works"
just wanted to give my .02... if anyone can tell me, i stopped using fc after version 3.. cause i had to update the updater to get the updates, but the updater was part of the updates..it was at the time, a catch22, has this issue been resolved? is software updating easier?
again.. try pclinuxos, you WiLL not be dissapointed.
82 • ubuntu 6.06 (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 20:48:37 GMT from Syracuse, United States)
i have to agree with the poor quality of this ubuntu realease. it's uninstallable on a P4 dell optiplex GX260 with 256ram and the stock configurations. the only way i was able to get dapper on it was to install hoary, update that, then switch the sources to breezy and istall that, then switch the sources to dapper. btw, the problem was in the fifth stage of the livecd install at the partition section, and the alternate cd blanks and locks up during the installation of packages stage.
83 • FC5 and Ubuntu (by Anonymous on 2006-06-12 20:53:25 GMT from Columbus, United States)
I don't think either of these are "perfect" distros. I've ran both, and decided to stick with Ubuntu because I know APT and dpkg better than I do RPM.
FC5 had series problems installing with my x1600 graphics card, then didn't set my gigabit ethernet correctly, nor 7.1 channel sound. I had to swap in older graphics card and NIC, then change the modules once it was installed. Got everything working, and working well, but man this system is just a dog. Even with an AMD 3200+ and 2gig DDR2.
Ubuntu has it's issues also, but I didn't have any with the ethernet, nor getting fglrx installed correctly. Alsa doesn't 100% support my sound, but at least in Ubuntu I can get sound out of 5 of my speakers. The speed of Ubuntu runs circles around Fedora though, it's as if I had all new hardware again.
I guess it's to each his own. We should be happy that we have so many choices.
84 • RE: 49 • SUSE 10.1 (by warpengi on 2006-06-12 21:06:34 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
Decatur said "However, there has been no updates since the release of 10.1 a few weeks ago."
I had the same thing. In YAST make sure the Status and Refresh columns in Installation Source are set to on. Then you will probably get a WHOLE LOT of updates.
I agree Suse 10.1 updates and repository management have been buggy. Things seem to be settling down now though. My laptop is staying with 10.0 as I don't need the agro.
It seems to me a slower release cycle would be a good idea for every distro. Mandriva 2006 ( released on a slowere release cycle) is exceptionally stable and very polished. The best release they have done since I began using it in 2000. Release early release often should be for alpha and beta versions only. I know everyone wants the latest and neatest eye candy and tools but the distros are shooting themselves in the foot when they issue buggy releases.
85 • Distro fever... (by Tim on 2006-06-12 21:27:52 GMT from Auburn Hills, United States)
I have to admit...I also have "the fever". Because of this condition, I have made it a habit over the last 8 years of buying "older" hardware to run Linux/BSD on (problems were almost always with video cards, modems (remember those), and sound cards). This practice still works for the most part (and it's cheaper too). Far less problems. Unfortunately, it seems like linux is still behind the curve with hardware support and I can't always have the latest greatest hardware immediately after it comes out. I'm not complaining though, I'm a total linux consumer. I offer virtually nothing back to the community other than my thanks.
I find myself making decisions lately out of fear of what the future holds (totally stupid). What will happen to Suse now that Novell owns them? Debian and Ubuntu might not be getting along...oh no! I hear Patrick Volderking is sick with some mystery illness?
The good news is that these are the things I think about now and not technical issues. All the distros are buggy on any given release. So what. They always seem to get better. The good news is that many distros are so close now feature wise that it's really down to preference.
86 • Bad Ubuntu decisions? (by Hans on 2006-06-12 21:58:36 GMT from Berlin, Germany)
Ubuntu Dapper was delayed for six weeks because Shuttleworth wanted to include the new GUI installer. I think this was a bad decision.
Not only was the Dapper release delayed but the GUI installer is still very premature despite of this delay. Why did Shuttleworth decide to delay Dapper's release to include this not-yet-ready GUI installer into a release that was supposed to be "enterprise ready" and that enjoys Long Term Support? Now the potential enterprise users will be hounted by this bad installer for three years. (Or will the next Ubuntu LTS release become earlier?)
I think Shuttleworth made this bad decision because he wanted to save money. Sending free CDs via the "Shipit" service all over the world obviously costs lots of money and Shuttleworth must have already spent millions of dollars on Ubuntu. And he probably haven't yet made much money by selling services and paid support for Ubuntu. Maybe he thought that he could save some money by uniting the installer CD and the LiveCD so they only need to post everyone one CD instead of two. Well, that's a good idea as such but the timing was terrible. Shuttleworth decided to save money in the wrong place and the quality of the Dapper release suffered for his bad decision. The Dapper release had to be delayed and now people have to make do with a very premature installer.
I shudder to think that people order Dapper CDs from "Shipit" to give them to their friends and to introduce Linux to new users who will get a bad impression about Linux when the installer breaks. My advice is this: just download the "alternate" CD. It has a Debian-made installer, so it's rock solid.
87 • Ubuntu Dapper (by Andy B on 2006-06-12 22:10:11 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
Just another vote for Ubuntu Dapper - I've got it running on 6 PCs of varying specifications (mixture of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu), and I've had no significant problems with any of them. Haven't (yet) tried SuSE 10.1 or FC5 so I can't comment on those.
Andy B
88 • 84 (by tom on 2006-06-12 23:19:12 GMT from Helena, United States)
Brad:
FC5 is significantly improved and I was pleasently surprized. I have not had difficulty installing from the repositories at all (unlike previous experiences with FC4). Try the FC wiki or Fedora Frog. The biggest problem I have is I am inexperienced with red hat/fedora so sysadmin takes more time/google.
http://www.fedorafaq.org/
http://easylinux.info/wiki/Fedora_frog
PCLinux (Mepis) fans: I agree with #80 regarding problems with PCLinux, Mepis, and Kanotix. I have not had as much difficulty wtiih Kanotix. Hopefully Meips will improve on these issues as is is now based on Ubuntu. If so Mepis may become quite popular.
89 • distro review and debian flamewars (by butters on 2006-06-13 00:17:29 GMT from Cleveland, United States)
Both Ubuntu and SUSE are young communities with a lot of autonomy from their commercial entities, and I think both projects learned valuable lessons from their recent releases. These types of release management errors are the kind that cause the leaders to be more careful in the future.
It's striking that the problems with both distros have little to do with general quality assurance and bug-squashing diligence, but with major management errors. For Ubuntu, you have your pick of showstoppers, the ATI driver being in my opinion the most regretable. It was working in the last RC, they updated it 3 days before the gold release, and they shipped with a broken driver. They get no sympathy from me, especially since the extra time in the release cycle allowed for a package freeze to be in place.
I'm pretty much in love with the Ubuntu/Canonical model of community development, commitment to free software, and ambitious pursuit of commercial success. For me, Dapper represents an incredible overall product with a couple very visible bugs in the initial release. I'm sure Ubuntu will make a fine entry into the commercial Linux space, one that free software enthusiasts can be proud of, and give Red Hat and Novell a good run for their money. Give them two more years, and maybe revenue will come in line with the Distrowatch page hit rankings.
I would normally caution Distrowatch to stay out of the game of recommending distributions or declaring one the winner over some others. However, this review was one that I feel needed to be done, and a good forum to do it in. It's easy to find good reviews of FC5, but drawing attention to the relative quality of popular distros is something that needs to happen more in general. The free software system has a remarkable rate of feature development, but often it is overall quality that makes a bigger impression when you try a distro. For me, the biggest impression I got from FC5 was that it was slower and more bloated than I would have liked, but that's just my opinion.
As for the Debian license review issue, this is clearly Anthony Towns (the brand-new Debian Project Leader) having some problems growing into his role. As a figurehead, it is important to do what you need to do to make your team happy and thereby keep them united. Towns is doing two things wrong, in my opinion: First, he is trying to push a wildly unpopular decision, where as leader of a community project he has an obligation to yield to the will of the vast majority. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, he should pay (and least) lip service to Debian's legal representation when making decisions, especially when the lawyers get upset. Instead of explaining his reasoning and offering to consider the analysis of the lawyers at SPI, he is immediately confrontational, and the SPI guy had the right to become uncomfortable with the way Towns was treating the relationship. Towns is obviously frustrated that the community is divided over the issue, and seems to be taking it out on SPI, who had been strangely excluded from the discussions so far.
...The problem is, whenever you ask the lawyers about anything, they're more likely to err on the side of caution and say no. The fact that SPI had been ignorant of the flamewars seems strange to me, and the apparent lack of an official position from SPI is equally troubling. From this debate to the one on the ACX wireless driver on the LKML, it has become painfully obvious that someone needs to step up and offer the legal dos/don'ts of free software, or we might be still wasting bandwidth on this stuff years from now.
90 • packages (by JAG on 2006-06-13 00:48:57 GMT from Linden, United States)
Hey Ladislav, how 'bout including Dovecot...???
It's a secure IMAP and POP3 server.
* Works with all commonly used IMAP clients. Allows optionally enabling workarounds for some client bugs.
* Complete IMAP4rev1 and POP3 support.
* Supports multiple commonly used IMAP extensions, including SORT, THREAD and IDLE.
* Complete TLS/SSL support.
* IPv6 ready.
* Shared mailboxes aren't officially yet supported, but ACL files are.
* Maildir++ quota is supported, but hard filesystem quota can be problematic.
91 • Surprised (by Small Potato on 2006-06-13 01:10:52 GMT from Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
I am really surprised by so many negative Ubuntu comments, given the fact that 1) Reviews on the net are generally very positive, and 2) I personally have 0 problems with Ubuntu.
My test machine is old. It is a Samsung NV5000 laptop. But maybe because it is old, the hardwares are well tested and supported.
The localization in Chinese is something I have waited for a long (5.10) long (5.04) long (4.10) time. It is awesome. This single new feature already beats all previous versions of Ubuntu.
Fedora is of course great since FC3.
92 • Thanks #89 - Butters - nice take on everything (by Bill Savoie on 2006-06-13 01:39:44 GMT from Huntsville, United States)
I took the time to read all the Debian posts, and I thought it a good example of how hard it is to communicate with posting one's take on a situation. Each post would seem clear and wrap me around the issues. I would be OK until I read the next post. It was confusing. I noticed how people tried to help each other by giving agreements. When things got heated, people tried to carefully craft their point of view and avoided the characterizations. The words "in quotes" were the quick killers that made things worse. They were just too loaded to be helpful connectors.
I did enjoyed reading #89 and I like your way of explaining what was going on. I would also like add that programmers who get into leadership roles often have to learn how to think like a lawyer and not get stuck taking sides. What brings good results as a sharp eyed programmer, may not be what is needed in keeping the team motivated. I don't program in Java, but my job may require it in the future. In general there are forces out there which we just have to learn to deal with. We humans are complicated and the world is even more complicated. That situation is the core of creativity and I would not have it any other way. I like debian, and after that long read, I thank them for all that hard work, and thanks butters for the nice wrap up!
93 • Two suggestions (by Andy on 2006-06-13 02:22:36 GMT from Schenectady, United States)
I would like to recommend that Distrowatch include the proprietary ATI and NVIDIA drivers to the watched packages list. These are very important numbers for people running newer hardware because they often need at least version X in order to have full support for their hardware and using the version distributed with the OS is often the path of least resistance for installation.
94 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Allan on 2006-06-13 03:16:17 GMT from Parkes, Australia)
I am disappointed to see people having trouble with Dapper (including the reviewer. My own experience was flawless. I would be interested to see what % of users are affected by the problems as they seem to be primarily hardware related.
As I said, my install on my old 800MHz 256MB Vaio went smoothly. The Live CD booted perfectly without the horrible Q&A that plagued earlier Ubuntu Live CD's. The Live CD install also went well, albeit slowly on my ageing machine. I was gratified to see that, having set my WEP key in the Live CD's wireless network settings, these carried over to the installed system perfectly.
I find the performance of Ubuntu/Gnome on my old laptop quite acceptable. I also installed xubuntu-desktop via apt-get to see what it was like but quickly returned to the bosom of Gnome. It is still there, however, and, as a bonus, I now have access to some lighter alternative applications (eg. Gnumeric, Abiword) in my Gnome menu!
Regarding multimedia, it is disappointing that legal issues have prevented their inclusion in Ubuntu, but I found Automatix (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=190025) filled in all the blanks perfectly. It would be nice if a link to Automatix (or it's competitor EasyUbuntu) could be included in the menu in future releases.
Allan
95 • FC5 "review" (by DR F. on 2006-06-13 03:16:53 GMT from Pittsburgh, United States)
I agree with Pete this "review" of fedora's latest needed to deflate the other contenders in order to claim FC5's superiority. I started using fedora with FC3 and liked it then but each release since has been disappointing. I've tried a lot of distros so I must have the fever. My favs for a truly solid destop are Slack with dropline, Foresight (but it requires a fast connection to upgrade-which I don't have) and although ubuntu's dapper has problems it works better in all areas than FC5.
To Patrick looking for a faster light weight distro: check out DamnSmall, and wolvix.
96 • All the majors? (by joe f. on 2006-06-13 04:23:25 GMT from Munich, Germany)
I know Slackware keeps a low profile, but it is nearing a new release, and judging by how -current is behaving on my two-month-old home brew system, it will be as solid and stable as ever. Throw on Dropline Gnome and Suse/Ubuntu/et al have nothing on Slackware (and I tried them all).
Slackware also seems to be generating more derivatives than ever. I just tried STX Linux, and if you're looking for something for older hardware, I heartily recommend giving it a try. The EDE desktop looks very Windows 95-ish, but it's lightweight and probably a good choice for people who want new software for that old Windows 98 box. In fact, I just put Zenwalk on an old laptop of a friend, and I plan to have her bring it back so I can switch her to STX.
Next up for the spare partition is bluewhitelinux (?), another unofficial 64-bit port. I've tried SLAMD64 (troublesome to install, solid once configured) and Frugalware (solid all around), so it'll be interesting to see what's up with this version.
See ya.
97 • RE: 84 (by IMQ on 2006-06-13 04:54:14 GMT from Decatur, United States)
Actually I had the both columns "ON" but still see no update the last time I tried it. In fact the only sources were the one I added pointing to ftp sources. I removed the CD/DVD sources since I don't want to be prompted for it every time.
I haven't played with it much. Except for adding the additional packages for playing DVD.
98 • Vector (by tom on 2006-06-13 07:32:47 GMT from La Junta, United States)
Vector is slick. The Live CD is very fast and includes XFCE and Fluxbox with ROX.
I have been struggling with the Hard Drive install and posted my solution on the Vector web site. There may be an easier way, but I was able to hack this together in my free time and I am not overly familiar with Vector administration.
Vector runs light and fast. Unfortunately the HD install will take some effort.
Hope this helps.
http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum1/index.php?PHPSESSID=fe790ddd4877bf303484af352e23315f&topic=11390.0
99 • All the majors? (by Jason on 2006-06-13 10:09:04 GMT from Sandridge, United Kingdom)
What do you mean the major release season is over?
SimplyMepis 6.0 is released in 5 days, and I think you'll find that's in the Top 5!
Nice to see DistroWatch has it's finger on the pulse.
100 • No subject (by Slaxfan on 2006-06-13 10:11:59 GMT from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil)
There is a new GoblinX Mini release candidate, too.
101 • Google Earth for Linux (by linbetwin on 2006-06-13 10:27:02 GMT from Ploiesti, Romania)
Native port! No WINE!
102 • No subject (by anon on 2006-06-13 10:39:37 GMT from Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation)
Packages to track:
dvd+rw-tools
lm_sensors
net-tools
pciutils
procps
shadow
sysfsutils
usbutils
wireless-tools
103 • Fedora? What a surprise! (by Eric on 2006-06-13 10:57:46 GMT from Shanxi, China)
I haven't tried it since FC3.
All my impression about it was buggy and unstable.
And I have heard a lot of people saying FC5 is release before it is prepared again.
104 • GoogleEarth for Linux is here !!!!! (by Caraibes on 2006-06-13 12:51:46 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
Hey,
I just installed GoogleEarthLinux on my Blag 30003 desktop...
It works fine... I am really happy that it is avalaible, because there are no Open Source app that does the same thing (so far...)
I wasn´t so impress with Picasa, because we have other Free apps.
But GoogleEarth is a Biggie !!!
Check it out here :
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
105 • googleearth and blag (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-13 13:07:02 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
I checked it out last night and it froze up my ubuntu system after a few minutes. It was neat while it lasted.
Blag sounds interesting. I am starting to think that being a free software purist is not a bad idea.
106 • The Spring Round-Up (by JustEric on 2006-06-13 14:57:53 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
I think the Spring 2006 releases from the "big" Linux Distro's have each brought something different to the table. Fedora brought outstanding code generation, SUSE/Novell brought the excitement of XGL graphics, and Ubuntu brought enthusiasm and community spirit. The Fedora Project supported and promoted GCC 4.1's development as well as GLIBC 2.4 in major ways. The Gentoo Project tracked the Fedora development of both glibc-2.4 and GCC-4.1 quite intensely in their deployment of those libraries for Portage. The code generated by Fedora 5 includes source fortification as well as SSP wherever feasible. Technically this is a standout contribution. XGL is/was all the rage this Spring like it or not. It will be something of great importance as time goes by and was spear-headed by Suse/Novell. Ubuntu brings the masses along with it's popularity. Arguably the Ubuntu Forums are a great source of learning and information for newbies as well as veterans. If a distro wanted to know how a newbie adapts to Linux these forums are a great source of information in terms of Linux adoption and pleasant, well-mannered atmosphere. If the three factors I mentioned above could converge: great code, great graphics and a strong community spirit-- great inroads would be made toward Linux adoption. The fact that we have all three separately however, is proof enough that advancements are being made.
I have enjoyed installing and working with many distro's and wouldn't commit to extolling just one as the King--however just a quick note that most likely Slackware 11 will provide the smoothest running and coherent offering because it will reflect what is actually working well at this point in linux development. It won't offer the latest thrills and frills-- that's not the point of Slackware. Slackware will run what it offers extremely well. Slackware 11 will be "done when it's done", and for Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu--and others-- They will never be "done"-- their job is to innovate and move us forward. Regards- Eric ;-)
107 • Dreamlinux 2.0 RC1 (by sodix on 2006-06-13 18:59:35 GMT from Doha, Qatar)
Hi,
just want to inform that release candidate for Dreamlinux 2.0 has been available :
http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/forum/viewtopic.php?t=271
108 • @Tim (by gnobuddy on 2006-06-13 19:30:20 GMT from Pasadena, United States)
... (by Tim on 2006-06-12 21:27:52 GMT )
I find myself making decisions lately out of fear of what the future holds (totally stupid). What will happen to Suse now that Novell owns them? Debian and Ubuntu might not be getting along...oh no! I hear Patrick Volderking is sick with some mystery illness?
=====================================
I don't think you need to worry too much. One of the most powerful things about good Free software is that it is stronger and more enduring than the personalities and corporations that create it.
While Windows will likely die with Microsoft Corp some day, the work of Free Software developers will continue to be available for anyone to pick up where they left off. When the Xfree86 consortium sat on their duffs for too long, X.org took the reins and we users lost nothing in the transition. FreeBSD developers were slowing down and not as open as some would like, so we have Dragonfly BSD. If Micro$$ bought Novel, shut down SuSe, and fired all the developers, all the code the SuSe developers wrote over the last decade and more would be still be available to the community and the best parts of it would be incorporated into future distros. If Patrick Volkerding should be run over by a bus, the people who already polish his work (Slax, Vector, Zenwalk, etc) would be able to continue his work.
So I believe you will continue to have access to the best parts of whatever distribution you love today, even if the distribution changes names and alters beyond recognition.
Good Free Software has a life of its own, beyond the ability of individuals and corporations to control. It feeds not on money, power, or influence, as commercial software does, but rather on some very deeply fundamental human characteristics - creativity, curiousity, generosity, and the desire to benefit ones fellow humans. As long as humans continue to be humans, and the technology exists to create Free Software, it will live on.
-Flieslikeabeagle
109 • Program suggestion (by Albert Astals Cid on 2006-06-13 20:18:02 GMT from Madrid, Spain)
I'd like to suggest:
- digikam
- konversation
- gwenview
110 • Package Update (by Tom Sattler on 2006-06-13 21:14:29 GMT from New York, United States)
I think Squeak would be a good candidate to track.
111 • SUSE package management... (by madcap on 2006-06-13 21:37:59 GMT from , India)
I installed SUSE 10.1 last week, after working on Fedora Core 5 for a while... FC5, like u said, was more stable and bug free out of the box, but being a long time apt-get*ter I found yum kinda slow for my needs (maybe just on my box). With SUSE I went ahead and enabled the SMART pkg mgmt support as per Guru's (RPM repository) blog... and I think it's very cool... SMART works perfectly well, and with the 3rd part repositories added all the missing links were added, like all the missing multimedia components. Tho i still think YaST for installing packages is rather slow, slower than the yum way. Maybe SUSE should switch to SMART as the backend for YaST?
112 • Fedora 5 endorsement (by Roger Hammer on 2006-06-13 22:31:03 GMT from Minot, United States)
Nice to read your recent comments endorsing Fedora 5 in light of the somewhat disappointing releases from the other major distros. I just stepped up from Fedora 3 to 5 and am as pleased as I can be...very few issues to work out and updating and fixes are timely. Have experimented on a second machine with Suse 10.1 and Ubuntu 6.06, both left me flat. Thank you...Fedora I think doesn't get the respect it deserves.
113 • burning ISOs (by jumbalaya on 2006-06-14 05:26:06 GMT from Pullman, United States)
Relatively recently I found DeepBurner (if you insist on burning from Windows). It seems to do a very good job on ISOs.
Good luck!
http://www.deepburner.com/
114 • Disappointed with them all (by Peter on 2006-06-14 08:38:04 GMT from Honolulu, United States)
I've been playing around with close to 10 different live linux CD's. I must say all the linux distro's are rather disappointing.
Does linux need 500 different distro's? Does linux need so many package managers? (Why can't they just settle on one decent standard?) The fragmentation is amazing.
I feel the innovation level is very low compared to the what was going on in the BeOS. What I'd like is a BeOS-like OS with fine-grained security.
Linux feels so sluggish and crusty.
115 • Upcoming Xandros release (by apb on 2006-06-14 10:42:21 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
According to this webpage:
http://www.xandros.com/...desktoppremium
Xandros Desktop Version 4 Home Edition and Home Edition - Premium will be available June 21st... perhaps it is time to add this to the "Upcoming Releases and Announcements" section?
116 • "fragmentation" (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-14 11:29:42 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
With freedom comes responsibility. One of those responsibilities is making decisions. This is also known as having a choice.
Most people here enjoy testing out the different distros that people and companies are putting out.
See this article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006AD38-D9FB-1055-973683414B7F0000 for affirmation of your point of view.
117 • Debian (by Eric on 2006-06-14 12:34:35 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
Novell purchased SuSE Linux (and Ximian) and then used their purchases to develop their Enterprise products. Fair enough. Ubuntu's plans are to use free Debian to make Ubuntu packages which will then be used in their Enterprise product. Along the way they use each Ubuntu user as a testing bed. It's a brilliant plan. Money for free. Yes, there are the free cd's.. I realize. Are Ubuntu user's being used? And shouldn't we be promoting Debian more? Won't Ubuntu become another Xandros, Linspire only with development from free Debian and the current Ubuntu user base? It's must be a good plan becuase now MEPIS is doing the same thing. Using Ubuntu packages to build it's distibution.
Seems to me if we stick with Debian, we will get for free what the others wouldhave us pay for.
Sorry for the rant.
118 • Suse package management patch (by Michael on 2006-06-14 12:43:26 GMT from Nashville, United States)
I ordered the boxed set of Suse 10.1 and was not pleased with the ensuing package management problems. To Suse's credit, I applied the patch and it worked. My Suse installation now is running fine.
Thank you, Distrowatch, for getting the word out.
119 • CentOS (by HughesJR on 2006-06-14 13:11:33 GMT from Corpus Christi, United States)
Don't forget about CentOS :) (Though, if you want latest/greatest ... I agree the Fedora is the Best).
CentOS is still out there, the 4.3 version was released in April 2005, and it will be supported until 2012.
The new CentOS 4.4Beta is now in the works and will contain seamonkey replacing Mozilla, Firefox 1.5 replacing FireFox 1.0.8, Thunderbird 1.5 replacing Thunderbird 1.0.8, OpenOffice 1.1.5 (supports OOo 2.0 documents) replaces OOo 1.1.2 and more ... and it is just as stable as ever ...
120 • something interesting (by JAG on 2006-06-14 15:30:35 GMT from Bronx, United States)
Hey everybody!, check this out...
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/06/07/1920213
121 • Opinion Section (by Randy K. on 2006-06-14 16:14:55 GMT from Gainesville, United States)
I am in total agreement.
I have been a strong proponent of Ubuntu from Warty to Hoary to Breezy and was very excited about Dapper. What a disappointment. Starting out with system lockups from the screensaver, I decided to load Fedora Core 5, leaving a partition for another Ubuntu install attempt. Well, the second time hosed the Grub where I could not boot. SO, pulled out the Fedora DVD, reinstalled Grub and back in business. I loved Breezy Badger, but the latest Ubuntu is a major step backwards for the distro. I cannot believe this is what the team ended up with.
So for now, this former Ubuntu zealot is a happy Fedora user.
122 • Need Help (by John Matheson on 2006-06-15 01:56:10 GMT from Minneapolis, United States)
CUTTING EDGE DISTRO NEEDS A FEW GOOD MEN AND WOMEN
NetSecL is an experimental high security Linux distro. It is intended to be: 1. Easy to install 2. Secure right out of the box 3. Easy to administer (for a security distro) and 4. Easy to use. There are other high security distros. However, they fail to meet one, or more, of the above criteria.
At the present time this project is suffering from a lack of support from the linux community. While there are some foreign contributors, there is very little activity on the English forum. If you are a c++ programmer, looking for a chance to prove yourself, the NetSecL project might be just the place your looking for.
If you started using linux in a quest for better security, but are chaffing at the amount of knowledge it takes to truly harden a linux system, give us some help and we will give you a secure distro that doesn't require a degree in computer science to install. We also need beta testers and newbee users.
The NetSecL forum is a great place to learn about linux and computer security. It has a history of being both non-elitist and helpfull. With a few patches NetSecL 1.3 is fairly stable and usefull for an experimental distro. We will be glad to help new users, that don't want to Use NetSecL as their only distro, with multiple booting issues
The project's main page is at http://marksman.beplaced.com/. The English forum is at http://netsecl.myfreeforum.org/. The project leader is Iuri Stanchev. Check it out.
Peace,
John Matheson
123 • Comparison Of Distributions Only _With_ Package Mgmt. (by Frank D. on 2006-06-15 11:11:45 GMT from Berlin, Germany)
Although being confused about the negative remarks about Ubuntu, which just works as always, there's a problem on comparing Linux distributions of different origin:
Whether running with GNOME, Xfce, or KDE, with or without Evolution vs. Thunderbird or MP3 support -
it's the package system which counts:
The DEB system with Apt and Synaptic (sorry, not Kynaptic or Kadept) is superior to all the other, especially RPM with Slow-Yast, -Yum, or whatever.
That's the reason why most serious Linux distributions are simply derivatives of Debian GNU/Linux (as Nexenta is the only usable free derivative of Solaris).
I've tried dozens of Linuces/Unices over the last months:
some which didn't even began to install or boot (Zenwalk was better when it was MiniSlack),
others which weren't able to recognize a standard 3-key mouse or to start the X server (hi BSDs!),
or are still offering aged crap (sorry, Slack fans).
And yes, among the 'good' ones is Fedora Core from 3 to 5, for sure.
But no distribution gives you that simple way of replace e.g. the kernel - since I'm running AMD K7 only, I want AMD K7 kernels only, not i386, and not i686.
With updating your sources.list just with a few clicks, and with Apt and Synaptic it's just done with a few clicks, and the unnecessary kernels are fully removed, too.
This can be done by everyone, e.g. by your grandma with instructions over the phone.
On the other hand, if you're a Linux hacker, you know how to configure your Debian-derivative by hand anyway.
So why complain about a distribution without blinking and useless stuff for Windows dummies, when it just works instead - for five years, not only until the next major release forcing to reinstall.
124 • answer to post 123 (by Caraibes on 2006-06-15 11:24:46 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
"Although being confused about the negative remarks about Ubuntu, which just works as always"
This is just simply not true !!!
-How can you be so blind and deaf ???
-Haven't you been reading their own Ubuntu forums ???
-Haven't you been reading the comments in DWW from this week and last week ???
If Dapper was so good, then most comments would be good, or at least encouraging...
The fact of the matter is that Dapper is buggy and doesn't work with a major amount of hardware out there in the world.
This is inexcusable for such a major distro as Ubuntu, thas has so much wealth of minds and money behind it.
And as for Zenwalk vs Minislack, I have been on that distro since the Minislack days, and let me tell you that the improvements are so vast, that I can't even start to write about it... Please do some homework before posting such nonsense (sorry for these harsh words, but I have to be frank with you...)
125 • Re: 117 - Debian (by Lanx on 2006-06-15 16:27:11 GMT from Eschborn, Germany)
Nonsense. There is no enterprise version of Ubuntu for which you have to pay, and there will be no enterprise version for which you'll have to pay. Ubuntu will alway be free of charge as stated on their website. No Ubuntu user is used for making money. It seems to me that there is a lot of paranoia and hatred amongst Linux users once a distro becomes sucessful.
And btw., Dapper Drake works flawlessly here on two computers. No problems with instalation either.
126 • Debian Etch (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-15 17:01:13 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
just switched from Ubuntu Dapper to Debian Etch.
I am surprised at how user-friendly it is, compared to how it used to be. I only noticed a couple of minor differences from Ubuntu. Things that I had to configure on the command line. Ubuntu cleans up Debian pretty well, but it feels good to be running the original.
Maybe it's the contributions of Ubuntu that have made Debian better or maybe it's just how Debian is. But it has gotten a lot better over the years.
FOSS is great.
I also tried Fedora Core 5, which was very well polished, but it had bugs too. Bugs are a fact of life unless you want to run Debian Stable and be stuck with OpenOffice 1.0.
127 • almost forgot... (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-15 17:21:21 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
I didn't have to install anything special to get Debian to play MP3s or WMAs or M4As. It just worked.
All my music and all my movies have played flawlessly out of the box so far.
128 • Re: #123 and 125 (by arctic on 2006-06-15 18:46:20 GMT from Graft, Germany)
#125:
[i]There is no enterprise version of Ubuntu for which you have to pay, and there will be no enterprise version for which you'll have to pay.[/i]
This is not 100% correct. For the enterprise version, you will have to pay for support. That was always the plan M. S. had envisioned for Ubuntu and Canonical.
#123:
[i]Although being confused about the negative remarks about Ubuntu, which just works as always[/i]
As already stated: It's plain wrong. Sadly.
[i]...it's the package system which counts:
The DEB system with Apt and Synaptic (sorry, not Kynaptic or Kadept) is superior to all the other, especially RPM with Slow-Yast, -Yum, or whatever.[/i]
That ain't correct, either. If you are talking about download/upgrade speed, then smart is nor inferior. urpmi ain't slow, either (only updating the mirrors is slower). Swaret is fast, too. If you are talking about configuration options, then emerge and urpmi are not inferior but perhaps even better.
[i]That's the reason why most serious Linux distributions are simply derivatives of Debian GNU/Linux (as Nexenta is the only usable free derivative of Solaris).[/i]
So ... RedHat, Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo and Slackware are irrelevant? How biased is this??? The most widely used Linux enterprise system IS Red Hat (and its clones like CentOS or Whitebox). Please, do your homework before posting such nonsense.
[i]But no distribution gives you that simple way of replace e.g. the kernel - since I'm running AMD K7 only, I want AMD K7 kernels only, not i386, and not i686.
With updating your sources.list just with a few clicks, and with Apt and Synaptic it's just done with a few clicks, and the unnecessary kernels are fully removed, too.[/i]
Other distributions ship with the sources, so you can build a kernel in a hurry, if you want. Other distros even have kernels that are especially built for machines with less or more than 1 GB RAM, for multimedia use, etc. ANd all of them install and replace a new kernel with two clicks or a simple command from the cli.
The reason why many distros don't ship with special AMD K7 kernels and such is: There is not much of a performance improvement with such "specialized" kernels. Furthermore, it slows down the whole development process (THAT is one reason why Debian stable is incredibly old, although rock stable).
129 • Fedora core 5 "professional" ROFL (by poetfreak on 2006-06-15 19:38:30 GMT from Holland, United States)
I have five computer systems, three desktops and two laptops. Fedora core 5 installs on two desktops, the third chokes and dies completely, and it does not support all the hardware on either laptop. Xandros supports everything in all 5. Is that doornoob a RedHat employee or WHAT?
130 • Re: Debian (by Misty on 2006-06-15 20:09:40 GMT from Elizabethtown, United States)
"It seems to me that there is a lot of paranoia and hatred amongst Linux users once a distro becomes sucessful."
It's not just that 'buntu has been successful but that other easy-to-use distros have always have a free version and a deluxe version with extra software. Their business model is threatened by the fact that 'buntu gives it all away for free. The makers of the other distros that use that business model are frightened of 'buntu and communicate that down to the users, who spread FUD that 'buntu is going to start charging. They completely ignore the fact the fact that since 'buntu is as GPL as any other distro if they were to start charging for it on Tuesday, anyone can take Monday's version, re-brand it and distribute it freely. Pretty funny to ignore it being GPL for a bunch of *nix zealots, isn't it?
If it's wrong for Canonical to give away the entire distro package for free rather than having a pricey deluxe version like other easy-to-use distros because it threatens the business of the others, then SCO was justified in trying ot get rid of Linux and BSD, as is Microsoft in their anti-Linux crusade. I have no sympathy for those who have made their money selling what others are willing to give away. They need to get innovative and offer something their competition doesn't instead of just spreading FUD to get rid of the competition -- that's what SCO and Microsoft are hated for in the *nix community.
And no, I'm not actually that big a fan of 'buntu myself. I use Debian and am considering Gentoo, so I don't particularly need one of the newbie-friendly distros. But I'm tired of seeing this stuff. It's no different that the under-handed tactics MS has employed; namely, spreading rumors and FUD about their competition.
131 • ROX Desktop, Zaurus, New tracked packages (by Anonymous on 2006-06-16 02:28:24 GMT from Chiswick, United Kingdom)
By far and away the most important package for DW to track (apart from the Nvidia ad Ati drivers) is ROX, if just rox-filer. In just this thread alone I have read a number of comments on people saying 'Linux seems slow and cumbersome' etc. Not true! To such people I would recommend the rox-desktop Debian package. The rox file manager is MUCH more responsive and memory-efficient than KDE and GNOMES, it loads much faster, needs less than half the RAM and has auto-mounting of disks pre-configured in the Debian package. I have run Debian/ROX on a PII w/ 96MB RAM and it flew.
Other important packages to track are
amule - best FOSS p2p
ardour - most powerful FOSS audio tool
devede - Easy pyGTK Video DVD conversion tool
goobox - best linux MP3 ripper I've used
Being an avid fan of what i think remains the worlds only Linux only computer/pda, the Zaurus, I would love to see OpenZaurus, pdaXrom, Sharp and Cacko roms (at least) tracked on here too. Zaurus may be a niche platform but so is Linux and *BSD.
I'm looking for a GTK interface for batch-resizing image files- anyyone got a suggestion? I know there is a Nautilus plug-in that does this but I use ROX-filer now. Yep, rox4debian has totally replaced KDE and GNOME for me- I just love the XP slaying speed it brings!
Great to hear about Google Earth being released natively for Linux- thats another killer app less remaining to be ported. Adobe and Autodesk where are you?
2006/2007 is surely the turning point in Linux land. No-one can deny that the PS3 and the $100 laptop will bring Linux a LOT of extra exposure.
132 • If you want a fast Linux box (by Dan MacDonald on 2006-06-16 02:40:42 GMT from Chiswick, United Kingdom)
This is what I'd recommend to those looking for as speedy Linux desktop setup:
Kanotix/ Debian Sid
ROX desktop and filemanager
Abiword word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet
GIMP for graphics
GNOMEToaster or NeroLinux with DeVeDe when needed for burning
audacity for audio editing
dillo web browser with firefox installed for more demanding sites
xpdf (guess what this does?)
goobox audio ripping
ROX's own text editor
file-roller archive tool
xmms music player
xine or mplayer for video
What a great desktop setup this is! Can't wait for RanOtiX (kanotix w/ROX desktop)!! file-roller feels a tad bloated though, but the ROX archive tool is too lightweight- any recommendations here? Gotta be eiither GTK or FLTK interface for me.
133 • Re: If you want a fast Linux box (by Ariszló on 2006-06-16 08:24:57 GMT from Budapest, Hungary)
Or install an i686-optimized distribution like Arch, Frugalware, or CCux and your Linux box will be as fast with heavy-weight KDE or Gnome as Kanotix with ROX.
134 • Ubuntu 6.06 (by Brad Kelley on 2006-06-16 13:44:34 GMT from Freeport, United States)
I just want to make a comment about Ubuntu vs Fedora Core 5. I tried to install Ubuntu after hearing al the praises and looking closely at the packages and options. Ubuntu looks like a great OS. Thats where I should have stopped. I tried (for about 3 hours) to get to install, it would not recognize my SCSI raid array. Also it locked up multiple times during the install process after i installed a IDE drive just for Ubuntu. After the third lock up I was done, unplugged the drive and set the raid back up and installed Fedora Core 5 without an issue. I think the Ubuntu developers need to do a little hardware work ont he distro. While I agree Ubuntu looks like a good distro, I may never really know.
Brad Kelley
135 • 131 * 132 * 133 (by tom on 2006-06-16 19:09:03 GMT from Helena, United States)
Thank you for the suggestions.
Right now I run Fluxbox with Rox desktop. It takes a litle time to configure fluxbox, but what a nice set up. I have changed to Dillo and tea with Firefox and Abiword as backup.
This set up is very fast, it takes 1-2 seconds from login (GDM) to desktop. KDE/Gnome/XFCE all take much longer, 30 -40 seconds.
What is nice about fluxbox is the menu selections are nicer then ROX, yet all the rox options remain available (menu options are from fluxbox, click on any icon to get the rox options). Shoud work with blackbox or openbox as well.
If you would like to see Fluxbox/ROX desktop in action, try Vector LIVE (very FAST for a live CD). Google search on fluxbox configuration, try these links to start:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Fluxbox
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsTipsFluxbox
I look forward to running some of the other aps.
I disagree with 133 (Ariszole). I have run Furgalware and it is nowhere close to FluxROX in terms of speed. I have not found i686 optimization of applications give much of a performance boost. IE Firefox is still firefox, still is sluggish, and speed is dependent on the number and types of Extensions (or lack of extensions) much more then on 16868 optimization. Dillo is fast and hey- look ma no cookies.
136 • FluxROX (by tom on 2006-06-16 19:24:44 GMT from Helena, United States)
I forgot to include:
Once you learn the lingo, the fluxbox menu is easily to configure (customize), including sub-menus. Icons can easily be included (again see vector for a very nice example of what FluxROX can do).
You end with a very fast, polished, and customized desktop. Apps run faster becasue of the low overhead of your desktop. GNOME/KDE apps run just fine (if properally installed).
Also look into the slit, this is a dock for applications very much like other desktops (GNOME/KDE/XFCE/Windows), untirely user configured however.
Also, I find K3b has been the fasted and most reliable burner in my experience with my DVD. The others work, but seem to run a little slower and I am more likely to make coasters, esp GNOMEcoaster !!. I will try some of your suggestions (for ripping and burning).
137 • Speed (by tom on 2006-06-16 22:13:03 GMT from Helena, United States)
Sorry to monopolize....
ELive (Enlightenment) is also very fast. Not quiet a fast a Fluxbox or ROX, but noticeably faster then KDE/Gnome/XFCE. takes a little longer to boot to desktop, apps run fast. Baroque, but tasteful eye candy.
XFCE is nice, starting to get bloated.
138 • anonymous@example.com (by Time to desktop on 2006-06-17 01:12:45 GMT from Honolulu, United States)
Here are some "time-to-desktop" timings that I did on a Pentium III, 500 Mhz, 384 MB RAM
Time-to-desktop
kubuntu 2:35
kanotix 1:50
beos 0:10
I just tried the ROX desktop per one of the above poster's suggestion. I think it's promising. It doesn't feel as piggish as kde and gnome. But it's functionality is pretty minimal.
*still wishing for a beos-like system with modern security*
139 • Green Bay Server (by welkiner on 2006-06-17 05:40:36 GMT from Los Angeles, United States)
Is the Green Bay Server Down?
I can't get to distrowatch.com(Green Bay), but I can get to distrowatch.serve-you.net(Dallas)
What's happening?
wb
140 • Default distro.... (by Rev on 2006-06-18 00:57:40 GMT from Lyndhurst, United States)
It is just my opinion and not intended to start a distro flame war but in my opinion, a Red Hat variant should be the default distro of choice as I have found they "JUST WORK". Then again, who am I to tell you what to use?
That said, Fedora is a great distro for the fresh novice to the guru. It is my default distro or my "go to" distro. It just works and the amount of help available is amazing. My favorite resource is http://www.fedorafaq.org as it is the most complete and the yum configs are unbelievable with the amazing quantity of stuff you can load on your box. Their yum config will have you installing until you are blue in the face or run out of drive space.
My current distro is CentOS. The only gripe I had was having to recompile the kernel for my external drive, something you don't have to do with FC.
I installed CentOS because of the Tuttle thing and was impressed with them because of that story. I am glad to have installed it as I am very impressed.
In the end though, use what ever works for you even if what works for you is M$ . Who cares about the opinions of others when they are not the ones having to work YOUR box. Let them flame if they want as you are the one that has to work with what you use...NOT THEM.
...and yes, I do run XP. It makes a great application running in my Qemu emulator. Dual booting is barbaric....(my opinion)
One final note....
Bill Gates is stepping down. This will be interesting to see how it plays out in the Linux community.
So there you have it. Your default distro or OS is up to you.
Best wishes.
-Rev.
141 • xfce and fedora (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-18 02:41:45 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
Several things about fedora and red hat annoy me. The biggest is the generic naming of programs in the menus. In my opinion, programs should be referred to by their actual name, instead of "Word Processor" "Spread Sheet" etc... But as you say, to each his own. Red Hat has always catered to the corporate market, so it does makes some sense to for those who might experience linux for the first time through work.
But for my purposes, I LOVE debian's package management. It just rocks. Having invested some time in learning apt-get and dpkg several years ago, I never have to worry about dependencies or whether something is packaged for my distribution. Nothing gets installed in /usr/local/bin, because the official repositories have everything I need.
Just today, I installed the latest beta of xfce4 from the unstable repositories. It is amazing! The best balance of speed and features that I've ever seen in a desktop environment. The panel on the bottom took up far too much screen real estate, but it was easy to remove and put the same items into the task bar at the top of the screen.
It comes with about a hundred different themes. And the new file manager is a huge improvement over the old one... it actually makes functional sense.
142 • 138 (by tom on 2006-06-18 03:49:29 GMT from La Junta, United States)
I am running on a simmilar system.
On Zenwalk, desktop = Fluxbox + ROX
Time to desktop = 2 seconds.
Kubuntu is close to 30-40 seconds.
If you run ROX + fluxbox/Openbox/Blackbox you will get the functionality you need.
In gerneral ROX= desktop icons, gui to view folders. Lacks a menu system.
Fluxbox= menues, lacks desktop icons, gui to view folders.
The two complement each other (Yes, you can use either alone and configure the functionality you need).
143 • zenwalk? (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-18 04:28:53 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
isn't that slackware based? I tried slackware for a while a couple of years ago and really liked it...... except for the lack of dependency management and the scarcity of packages. If I'm not mistaken, Debian has the largest package selection of any distribution.
I may try out that "FluxRox" combo eventually.
144 • VLOS 1.3 BETA is heaven (by RobNyc on 2006-06-18 04:54:31 GMT from Flushing, United States)
Wow I can't believe VLOS 1.3 beta is so good
I didn't wanted to try it, but I had to.
FC5 didn't work well with my X1600 PRO 512mb card
Ubuntu did but I wanted to see what else from my list.
So I haven't used Gentoo since January.
Installed VLOS 1.3 wow.. even though I don't have 3d default, I have XGL default wow its just WOW
You all must try VLOS 1.3 BETA nvidia, ati, users whatever you are get it. the download is fast too.
irc.freenode.net #vlos
I'm back supporting this Latino Distro
145 • DISTROS (by RobNyc on 2006-06-18 04:56:14 GMT from Flushing, United States)
Ok I keep seeing so many distros
I been distro hopping for 2 years now
I am very practical
The distros of choice are
VLOS / Phaeronix / Gentoo
Frugalware
PCLinuxOS
Ubuntu
Fedora Core 5
Debian sid / Parsix
146 • Still undecided? Then install Fedora Core 5! (by Peter Mount on 2006-06-18 06:27:48 GMT from Sydney, Australia)
I only just installed Fedora Core 5 before I read this article. I must say I was relieved to get such a vote of confidence in Fedora Core 5 from this edition of DistroWatch Weekly. Fedora certainly does offer a lot in terms of community support at http://www.fedoraforum.org
I'm surprised that Ubuntu 6.06 turned out to be so "dissapointing". Ubuntu 5.10 seemed like such a good distro to give to potential new Linux users, particularly with the Live CD serving as an introduction. Lets hope that can fix things with that.
I'd like to be able to keep giving copies of Ubuntu to people I know. Then, after a while, maybe I can talk them into trying Fedora :-)
147 • SUSE and Debian, a few thoughts (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-06-18 06:51:34 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Foreword: I had been without a broadband connnection for almost 2 months, and without a connection at all for almost a week. Therefore I hadn't been able to try any latest linux release.
On the other hand I have a brand new computer since a couple of weeks, based on an Intel D945GNT mobo, a Pentium D 920 processor, SATA HDs... Besides I am using the onboard sound and graphics (GMA 950)
Well, I tried Kanotix 2006 RC2 on it. I had all sort of issues, including K3B destroying a DVD, no 3D acceleration for my card, choppy operation...
I haven't tried their 64bit version yet, which is quite a few months old anyway. I have just downloaded the Debian netinstaller which I'll try later, but in any case my first impression is that my beloved Kanotix and therefore Debian do not support my new hardware very well.
SUSE 10.1 x86-64, which I downloaded yesterday, has given me some issues with the updates, but other than that seems to be running absolutely smooth.
No wonder, considering that SUSE has been supporting 64bit computing for years now and that the Intel GMA 950 is officially supported only for SUSE.
So positive experience overall here with SUSE, as always it mainly depends on your hardware.
148 • hardware compatibility (by spiritraveller on 2006-06-18 14:27:09 GMT from Atlanta, United States)
The beauty of open source is that you can make it work with any distro if you really want to use a different distro.
You can apply the patches necessary and recompile the kernel to support your hardware on it... of course, it's a pain in the ass, and I don't think I've bothered to do a kernel recompile in at least 2 years.
Instant gratification is awesome, but it's nice to know you can fix things your way if you want to put in the time.
149 • Ubuntu Dapper and FC5 (by fcsman on 2006-06-18 15:13:12 GMT from Matthews, United States)
I have installed Ubuntu 6.06 on a new hard drive on my laptop (IBM Thinkpad) and an upgrade (from Breezy) on my desktop (Dell) and they both worked great! I have also installed it on a couple of old laptops and that worked perfectly. I'm sorry to hear that people are having problems with Ubuntu.
I installed Fedora Core 5 on my laptop (on a spare laptop drive) when it came out and it also worked, so I don't have anything negative to say about it either. As time went on, I found myself booting up on the Ubuntu Drive, so that it what I'm using daily. On the Server side, I have been happy with CentOS 4.3, but I'll probably give Ubuntu Server a try here soon.
150 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-06-18 17:57:42 GMT from Honolulu, United States)
> Fluxbox + ROX Time to desktop = 2 seconds.
> Kubuntu is close to 30-40 seconds.
We are measuring apples and oranges. My timings included the time for the *OS* to load and initialize (excluding the initial time spent in the bios)... not only the time for the desktop to load.
I guess the painfully slow loading times would be okay if hibernate worked. Hibernate hasn't worked in the distros I've tried though.
151 • Ubuntu (by tom on 2006-06-19 04:48:00 GMT from La Junta, United States)
FYI:
I had not booted my Ubuntu patition in some time. It seems I have suffered a total system bork.
I went to the Ubuntu site and there are several posts with simmilar failures, but no solutions as of yet 9short of a re-install).
There is a "stick" with some information about updating Ubuntu, read before you upgrade.
I do not knwo if this will save you some aggravation, but I hope it will.
Will re-post tomorrow as it is late in the week.....
152 • Addition to my post, #147 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-06-19 05:40:37 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I forgot to say, however, that SUSE 10.1 has a very annoying shortcoming: it doesn't support hundreds of printers. Mine is an Epson Stylus D88 bought some six month ago. Debian testing/unstable adopted Gutenprint 5.0 RC2 (now RC3) several months ago. In fact I don't know why they don't release a final, their drivers seem rock-solid to me.
But when I reported it to the SUSE beta testing, their reply was: "We'll add support for Gutenprint when they release a final"
I find that ridiculous, as if they had never added beta or even alpha software to their releases before.
Number of Comments: 152
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| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
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Commodore OS Vision
Commodore OS Vision is a 64-bit Linux distribution which was originally based on Linux Mint and is now an unofficial spin of MX Linux. This distribution was created for Commodore enthusiasts and people who appreciate a retro style interface. Commodore OS Vision uses the MATE desktop interface and features a retro look and effects. It has a classic Commodore slant with a selection of applications reminiscent of their classic Amiga counterparts.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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