 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 164, 14 August 2006 |
Welcome to this year's 33rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The openSUSE project celebrated its first year in existence last week and it has a lot to be proud of: two great releases, many new users and a solid base for Novell's enterprise products. In the meanwhile, the founder of Gentoo Linux Daniel Robbins is once again working on his old project, while the creator of Mandrake Linux Gaël Duval keeps on hacking on the mysterious Ulteo distribution. But not all is good news this week - we are sad to say good-bye to Shawn Milo and the podcast edition of DistroWatch Weekly. Finally, if you live in Central America, don't miss the statistical table summarising visits to DistroWatch from your region. Happy reading!
Content:
- News: openSUSE birthday, Robbins returns to Gentoo, Ulteo update, Debian vs Ubuntu, new BSD live systems
- Statistics: DistroWatch in Central America
- Released last week: Ubuntu 6.06.1, Freespire 1.0
- Upcoming releases: Foresight Linux 1.0
- Site updates: End of podcast, discontinued distributions
- New distributions: AegaenLinux, epiOS, MidnightBSD, Quetzal, RoFreeSBIE
- Reader comments
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG format (5.0MB)
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in MP3 format (6.1MB)
(The Podcast edition is provided by Shawn Milo.)
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Miscellaneous News |
openSUSE birthday, Robbins returns to Gentoo, Ulteo update, Debian vs Ubuntu, new BSD live systems
 Last week the openSUSE Project, established in early August 2005, celebrated its first year in existence. For the first time since the early days of SuSE Linux, the general public was invited to contribute code, create sub-projects and beta test the popular Linux distribution. The result was spectacular: the project has since produced two stable releases (versions 10.0 and 10.1) and is now alpha testing openSUSE 10.2. The fruit of this labour is also used by Novell's other major Linux products - SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server SLED/SLES, which some believe to be breakthrough releases likely to be adopted by a substantial number of enterprises. Many of the utilities that Novell has built during this time were also released under the General Public License. In short, the first year of the openSUSE Project was a resounding success. Congratulations to all involved and many happy returns!
* * * * *
 Guess who is back working on Gentoo Linux again? Yes, it's Daniel Robbins, the founder and former project leader of the world's most popular source-based distribution. In a recent web log entry he had this to say about his current involvement in Gentoo: "Working on Gentoo again? Eek! Solar has requested that I look into adding 'pre-defined grub.conf' support to the grub ebuilds. I hope to look into adding this to the grub ebuilds, probably modeled after the USE="savedconfig" in the busybox ebuild. That should be fun. I'm going to look into this over the next couple of days." Also don't miss Robbins's earlier post where he talks about his former job at Microsoft's Linux Lab - an interesting read.
* * * * *
 Speaking about well-known distribution developers, mystery continues to cloud Ulteo, a new project developed by the founder of Mandrake Linux Gaël Duval. With the promised first beta release, originally due in May, nowhere in sight, some might be wondering whether this supposedly revolutionary distribution is, in fact, vapourware. Not so, says Duval in an Ulteo forum post: "It's a bit frustrating because I wished we would have been able to publish something before summer. But in the end, this extra wait is certainly a very good thing." While he is still reluctant to disclose any details about the project, he has confirmed his earlier assertion about the goals of Ulteo: "Don's expect Ulteo to be different on the installation side, or on the desktop side (at least at the beginning). What we bring is more 'network oriented'." Read the brief interview on this page (scroll down for the English translation).
* * * * *
 What's the difference between, Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux? One way of looking at the two projects is comparing them in terms of "newest software". Lucas Nussbaum has done just that - he counted the number of packages in Ubuntu "Dapper Drake", Debian "sid" and Debian "etch", and compared their versions. Interestingly, Debian's testing branch seems to be more up-to-date than Ubuntu's latest stable release and was more up-to-date even at the time of the release of Ubuntu 6.06. While not particularly meaningful, these figures are certainly interesting as they give an indication of the current status of Debian's much awaited "etch" release. But will Debian still win the "battle" after "etch" gets frozen and stops receiving package updates? It will be interesting to revisit the comparison once Ubuntu's next stable version hits the mirrors....
* * * * *
 The world of open source software has had a fair share of fights over the years (Emacs vs Vim, KDE vs GNOME, LILO vs GRUB), but what about the different Linux file systems? Those readers with interest in the subject might find it interesting to note that no fewer than four well-known Debian developers came out against using XFS during the past week. Martin Krafft: "I am through with XFS, once and for all. I still think it's a good filesystem when you can ensure that the power never goes, and your hardware is reliable, but it's just not adequate for laptops or even desktops." Julien Danjou: "I regularly spite on XFS, and I am quite amused that more than 2 years later, XFS is still totally crap!" Gunnar Wolf: "About to say goodbye to XFS as well." Erich Schubert: "I'm going to join madduck, Gunnar Wolf and Julien with their negative experiences with XFS." Coincidence? Or is XFS starting to get a really bad reputation among hard-core Linux developers?
* * * * *
 Plenty of interesting activity on the BSD front. Two new BSD-based live CDs were built in recent weeks: a Mexican project called Quetzal has developed a new OpenBSD-based live CD booting into WindowMaker or XFce, while the Romanian RoFreeSBIE is the first FreeBSD-based live DVD and one of the easiest ways to install a fully-configured FreeBSD desktop system on your computer. In the meantime, another new, desktop-oriented FreeBSD project has been launched; it's called MidnightBSD and its goal is to create an easy-to-use FreeBSD system with graphical configuration tools and an intuitive window manager. Finally, a new web site containing details about OpenBSD ports was unveiled last week at ports.OpenBSD.nu. On this site you can browse ports, search for ports, get RSS feeds and add them to your ports tracker to receive email notifications about port updates.
RoFreeSBIE 1.2 - the first FreeBSD-based live DVD.
(full image size: 1,009kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 A new version of grml was released late last weekend. If you've never heard of the distribution, don't be put off by the unattractive name - some believe that this is one of the hidden gems of the Linux distribution world. From a recent review by NewsForge: "You won't find this gem in the top 100 at DistroWatch, but if you ask me, it works better than all the usual names. The project says it's for 'users of texttools and system administrators,' but grml actually offers more. It's Linux that 'just works.' My users are not geeks, but grml makes all our lives easy." What makes this project particularly exciting is the abundance of excellent scripts to accomplish many common tasks with minimum of fuss. Besides the software available on the (installable) live CD, grml also maintains its own repository of useful Debian packages, including proprietary graphics drivers and other popular tools. Lightweight, fast, with several unusual window managers, grml is certainly worth a closer look, even if you are not a real "sysadmin."
The new grml 0.8 with the Pek window manager.
(full image size: 1,085kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 Finally, a quick reminder about why news about certain distribution releases don't appear on the front page of DistroWatch. Last week, this site was accused of ignoring release announcements by Aurox Linux, a Fedora-based distribution created by a Polish publishing house, due to the commercial nature of the project. This is not the case. Although the Aurox team has emailed us the release announcement, they have failed to publish the same on their own web site. As has been our policy for several years, we will only publish release announcements that have already appeared on the distribution's own web site, stating clearly that a certain version has been released and marked with a release date. If you are interested in Aurox Linux 12.0, you can download a release candidate from this FTP server.
On a related note, the publishers of Aurox have launched a new site that attempts to rank Linux distributions based on readers' votes on a scale from 1 to 10. It is called DistroRankings.com and it allows you to submit votes for various distributions to influence their ranking.
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| Statistics |
DistroWatch in Central America
Our commentary summarising the state of Linux in the South Pacific last week has attracted some interesting feedback and many readers emailed us to ask for further DistroWatch access statistics from other regions of the world. As a result, we will publish similar figures in the future, starting today with Central America. The table below lists all countries and territories in the region, with the "Index" column representing the number of visits per month per 1 million inhabitants during the period from January to July 2006.
Although in absolute terms it was Mexico that provided DistroWatch with most visitors (a total of 92,430 visitors came from Mexican IP addresses during the first 7 months of this year), in terms of "per capita" visits, the Dutch territory of Aruba came at number one, with Antigua and Barbuda following closely behind. The only country whose residents never visited DistroWatch during this period was Turks and Caicos. For reference, USA has an index of 3,002, Canada 3,800 and Finland, the world's highest ranked country in terms of "per capita visits", 6,388.
| Rank |
Country |
Visits |
Index |
| 1 |
Aruba (AW) |
1,106 |
2,243 |
| 2 |
Antigua and Barbuda (AG) |
1,050 |
2,224 |
| 3 |
Barbados (BB) |
2,687 |
1,390 |
| 4 |
Bermuda (BM) |
478 |
1,066 |
| 5 |
Belize (BZ) |
1,841 |
1,011 |
| 6 |
Puerto Rico (PR) |
24,043 |
889 |
| 7 |
Bahamas (BS) |
1,716 |
831 |
| 8 |
Netherlands Antilles (AN) |
1,188 |
792 |
| 9 |
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) |
4,564 |
587 |
| 10 |
Costa Rica (CR) |
15,343 |
572 |
| 11 |
Saint Lucia (LC) |
495 |
442 |
| 12 |
Cayman Islands (KY) |
96 |
336 |
| 13 |
Grenada (GD) |
209 |
335 |
| 14 |
Saint Kitts and Nevis (KN) |
87 |
321 |
| 15 |
Panama (PA) |
5,376 |
263 |
| 16 |
Dominican Republic (DO) |
10,732 |
178 |
| 17 |
US Virgin Islands (VI) |
153 |
177 |
| 18 |
El Salvador (SV) |
7,412 |
167 |
| 19 |
Anguilla (AI) |
14 |
161 |
| 20 |
Mexico (MX) |
92,430 |
128 |
| 21 |
Jamaica (JM) |
2,363 |
126 |
| 22 |
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (VC) |
87 |
107 |
| 23 |
Dominica (DM) |
42 |
86 |
| 24 |
Guatemala (GT) |
7,881 |
83 |
| 25 |
Montserrat (MS) |
4 |
68 |
| 26 |
Cuba (CU) |
2,623 |
33 |
| 27 |
Nicaragua (NI) |
862 |
25 |
| 28 |
Honduras (HN) |
875 |
19 |
| 29 |
British Virgin Islands (VG) |
2 |
13 |
| 30 |
Martinique (MQ) |
33 |
11 |
| 31 |
Guadeloupe (GP) |
8 |
3 |
| 32 |
Haiti (HT) |
68 |
1 |
| 33 |
Turks and Caicos (TC) |
0 |
0 |
|
As always, please don't take these figures too seriously. They are simply provided as an indicator of interest in DistroWatch (and, by extension, in Linux and other open source software) in various countries, but they certainly don't represent physical installations or distribution downloads.
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| Released Last Week |
K12LTSP Linux 5.0.0
Eric Harrison has announced immediate availability of K12LTSP Linux 5.0.0, a Fedora-based distribution designed for terminal servers and diskless clients: "K12LTSP version 5.0 is now available for your downloading pleasure. K12LTSP 5.0 is based on Fedora Core 5, which includes all sorts of new stuff. Of primary interest to K12LTSP users: this release of Fedora includes Mono support for the first time, and Mono applications such as Beagle, F-Spot and Tomboy; there is dramatically improved internationalization support with SCIM." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Freespire 1.0
Kendall Dawson has announced the release of Freespire 1.0 final, some three weeks ahead of schedule: "Freespire version 1.0 (build 13) is now available for download. A few minor release notes: enabled selection of file system type in installer; bug fixes for ISP connection tools; Freespire KDE theme fixes; numerous fixes to Lmail and Lbrowser. To report a bug please see this page in the wiki. Enjoy!" Here is the complete release announcement.
Knoppel 0.7
A new stable version of Knoppel, which is essentially a Greek variant of the popular KNOPPIX live CD, has been released. Version 0.7 is based on KNOPPIX 5.0.1 with kernel 2.6.17.7, X.Org 7.0 and KDE 3.5.3 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 (with an updated spell-checking tool). It also includes support for RAID controllers, udev for automatic recognition of external storage devices, NTFS read/write support (experimental), and new drivers for wireless cards and internal modems. For more information please see the full release announcement (in Greek).
PCLinuxOS 0.93 "Junior"
The developers of PCLinuxOS have announced the availability of a new edition of the popular beginner-friendly Linux distribution: "PCLinuxOS 0.93a Junior is a self booting Live CD with advanced hardware detection. In addition to running Junior in Live CD mode, you can also install it to your computer. Easy to follow instructions are included on the Live CD as well as a chat channel for instant help. Junior comes with a set of pre-selected programs for web browsing, email, instant messaging, blogging, IRC chat, music, graphics, video, digital camera, games, FTP, BitTorrent transfer, CD/DVD burning and more." More details in the release announcement.
Nonux 3.2
An updated release of Nonux is now available for download. The new version of the Slackware-based distribution and live CD (with Dropline GNOME) designed for office use in Dutch-speaking business environments comes with an updated Linux kernel 2.6.17.7, Dropline GNOME 2.14.3, Evolution 2.6.3 and Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6. Other upgraded packages include Cairo, Liferea, OpenLDAP, Samba and xine. Visit the project's news page (in Dutch) to learn more about the changes in this release.
Ubuntu 6.06.1
Colin Watson has announced the release of Ubuntu 6.06.1, an updated version of Ubuntu with more than 300 bug and security fixes over the original "Dapper Drake": "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS, the first maintenance release of 'Dapper Drake'. This release includes both installable Desktop CDs and alternate text-mode installation CDs for several architectures, for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu. Xubuntu is also included, although commercial support for it is not available from Canonical Ltd." Full details about the fixes can be found in the release announcement.
Rocks Cluster Distribution 4.2
Rocks Cluster Distribution 4.2, code name "Hallasan", has been released: "Rocks v4.2 is released for i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures. This release supports latest multi-core CPUs from AMD and Intel (a.k.a., Woodcrest)." Among the many new features and enhancements are: several new tools for Bioinformatics computation; graphical installer; restore roll for saving and restoring user account and cluster node information; based on CentOS 4.3 and all updates as of August 6; updated SGE roll to SGE 6 update 8; many bug fixes. Read the full release announcement for further information.
Linux From Scratch 6.2
Linux From Scratch 6.2 has been released: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS Version 6.2. This release includes a large number of package upgrades (including Linux 2.6.16.26, GCC 4.0.3, glibc 2.3.6) and security fixes. It also includes a large amount of editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text. You can read the book online, or download to read locally." Read the full announcement on the project's news page. Besides the book that teaches the basics of Linux, the developers of LFS have also released a new live CD.
GParted Live CD 0.2.5-5
An updated version of GParted LiveCD is now available: "Minor update to fix some problems in the new video card detection. Some cards were given the wrong driver and starting X was not possible without manually editing the xorg.conf file. If X fails to start use the 'manual video card' option in the boot menu. This reverts the system back to the behavior of 0.2.5-3 for video card selecting. I added a screen shot program for reporting bugs. The 'Boot failure: Unknown keyword in config file' is fixed." Here are the complete release notes.
grml 0.8
Michael Prokop has announced the release of grml 0.8, a Debian-based live CD for users of text tools and system administrators: "grml 0.8, codename 'Funkenzutzler', is available." The long list of new features include: "install-packages-useful: a script which installs useful software on your grml system; grml-resolution: change X resolution via a simple menu frontend; updated to X.org 7.0; switched from Kaffe to Jikes and JamVM; added window managers fvwm-crystal and dwm; setup of files in /boot/grub/ to be able to install grub...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes and updates.
* * * * *
Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Foresight Linux 1.0
Ken VanDine has published a development roadmap leading towards the release of Foresight Linux 1.0 on the 9th September, just three days after the final release of GNOME 2.16: "We have started really working toward the 1.0 release scheduled for September 6th. So what does the road look like? Couple big things, GNOME 2.16, Xorg 7, Conary 1.1, and a more structured release management process. Anyone that watches the commits mailing list can see that I was a busy bee this weekend. All of GNOME 2.16 Beta 1 is committed and cooked on our new development label. I also created all the troves (and cooked them) on the new devel label. And the big thing, X.Org 7, all the sources are committed." See the project leader's web log for more information.
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
End of DistroWatch Podcast
Sad news for all our visitors who enjoyed to the podcast edition of DistroWatch Weekly. Shawn Milo has informed us that he is resigning from the task of narrating the podcast, effective September 2006. The reason he cited was lack of time, while his attempts to raise funds for continuing his work came to nothing. Even worse, Shawn was recently laid off from his programming work of 6.5 years, so all his present efforts are focused on getting his freelance copywriting business off the ground. If anyone is interested in continuing the podcast or can offer any form of help to Shawn, please contact him on this address: shawn at milochik.com. We'd like to thank Shawn for endless hours of volunteer work on the podcast and wish him best of luck in his new endeavours!
* * * * *
Discontinued distributions?
One of the DistroWatch readers has gone into trouble of trying to identify unmaintained distributions. Here is the result of his work:
I know that some of these alerts are probably automated for you, but I just want to notify you on this in case you don't know. I realize that some distros (Debian and Phaeronix, for examples) can have very long release cycles, even up to a year, but those which are active often have signs of life which are less than a few months recent. Whereas no matter how long the release cycle, if a web site and mailing list has been essentially dead for 10 or so months, I think the distribution may be, with all good intentions, be considered discontinued.
The following distros are marked as active, but appear to have been abandoned by their developer(s):
- 10-12 months old:
- ATmission: The last sign of any activity on their web site was the end of September, 2005 (10 months old).
- Ging: Single-page web site file last modified November 2005. FTP index of ISO reveals that the only ISO was released in early November 2005 (10 months ago).
- Julex: The last update on the web site was on November 9th, 2005 (10 months old).
- LinnexOS: Judging from their package list, they haven't done anything since late August 2005. (12 months old)
- Mayix: Last web site update was November 11th, 2005 (10 months old.)
- Salvare: The latest version of the distro was released November 2005 (10 months old). The last actual post to their devel mailing list was in November 2004.
- Snappix: The last change to their web site was in late September 2005 and the link to download their distro is defunct (10 months old).
- 13-15 months old:
- ANTESIS: Last web site update early July, 2005 (13 months ago).
- Hubworx Network Manager: Latest web site update was on June 28th, 2005 (14 months old).
- Snøfrixx: Their website is a bit of a maze to navigate, but if you jump directly to the download page, you'll see that the latest release was in June 2005 (14 months old).
- 16-21 months old:
- iBox Linux: Their web page, although in Chinese, appears not to have changed since 2004. Considering that they started in 2004, and their website is still touting version 0.1, I don't think they've done anything with it for a while (at least 20 months old).
- P!TUX: Web page file last modified March 4th, 2005, still features the only release of the distro, 1.01 (17 months ago).
- WOMP: Web site and distro last updated April 2005 (16 months old). Its mailing list is a bit active (it has had 20 posts in all of 2005 - 2006 [an avg. of 1 post per month] from a few users), but there's no sign of a developer anywhere around.
- 22+ months old:
It's very depressing to go through these (so many broken dreams, eh...) but cleanout must be done for the living and constantly improving distros to shine and be used.
In case any of our readers know something we don't, please speak up now. Failing that, the above-mentioned distributions will be flagged as either "dormant" or "discontinued" later this week.
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- AegeanLinux. AegeanLinux is a free open source operating system for your computer. With over 650 packages (precompiled executables, ready for download and run), and using KDE as it's desktop, Aegean provides an easy-to-use, fast, non-bloated operating system, suitable for everyday use. AegeanLinux's main goals are those of security, stability, and ease of installation. AegeanLinux is built for the i686 processor.
- epiOS. epiOS is a Gentoo-based GNU/Linux distribution designed and optimized for VIA Epia systems. It's developed to detect and support all integrated hardware components, like the onboard MPEG-2 decoder or the PadLock (cryptography) engine out of the box. Otherwise its main purpose is to provide a system which is easy to install, maintain and of course very easy to use even for inexperienced users but keeping all the advanced features Gentoo provides.
- MidnightBSD. MidnightBSD is a newly-launched operating system based on FreeBSD. Its main goal is to create an easy-to-use BSD desktop system with a graphical installer and system administration tools, and an intuitive window manager.
- Quetzal. Quetzal is an OpenBSD-based live CD that boots into a full graphical environment. Both WindowMaker and XFce editions are available.
- RoFreeSBIE. RoFreeSBIE is a FreeBSD-based live CD/DVD with KDE and WindowMaker, and optional hard disk installer using BSDInstaller. It supports a number of languages, including English, Romanian, Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and German.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And that concludes our latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next issue will be published on Monday, 21 August 2006. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • BSD (by Roy Stefanussen on 2006-08-14 12:14:09 GMT from Cincinnati, United States)
Maybe it's time for me to look closer at BSD.
2 • Robbins (by Kim on 2006-08-14 12:44:00 GMT from Tranbjerg, Denmark)
Welcome back Daniel.
Once you try Gentoo you can't live without it :)
3 • Lost causes (by Xavier on 2006-08-14 12:58:06 GMT from , United Kingdom)
Whatever happened to Luit? It was rather nice. It was referred to a couple of days ago on the Puppy Forum by a person from that sub-continent.
4 • Robbins (by d00m3d on 2006-08-14 13:41:59 GMT from Beijing, China)
Emerged from the dark evil side, great! :)
5 • The greatest news - This is Slackware 11 RC1 (by Victor on 2006-08-14 13:49:59 GMT from Dobrich, Bulgaria)
It is coming, guys! The real linux ;]
6 • Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (by Dennis on 2006-08-14 13:52:12 GMT from , United States)
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are in Central America? Since they are north of the USA (except Alaska) that's rather a stretch.
7 • New BSD Projects (by Treeforth Tremulatum III on 2006-08-14 14:04:27 GMT from Savannah, United States)
As an avid BSD user, I'm not quite sure what to make of all these new projects based on BSD. On the one hand it's great to see so much interest in BSD, but on the other hand, the last thing we need is the creation of lots of pointless vanity projects like in the Linux world, merely duplicating the efforts of the big boys and diluting the available talent.
However, it seems like a couple of the projects announced on this page today do have a unique purpose and have the potential to develop into solid and useful products.
MidnightBSD sounds like it might be very interesting, since they state that they're making an actual fork of FreeBSD, specifically aimed at the desktop user and with a custom window manager and graphical admin tools. This is in contrast to DesktopBSD and PC-BSD, which are both just customised versions of FreeBSD (for now, at least).
Quetzal also sounds interesting, since I'm not aware of any other live CD's based on OpenBSD, but I can certainly imagine cases where one would be useful.
It remains to be seen of course whether these projects can build up enough momentum and sustain enough interest over the longer term to remain viable. But I certainly wish them the best and am eager to see how things develop.
8 • RE: 6 Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (by ladislav on 2006-08-14 14:07:59 GMT from Taipei, Taiwan)
Well, it sounded like something that could be in Central America :-) Anyway, thanks for the pointer, I've removed it from the table.
9 • Discontinued distributions? (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 14:12:48 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"It's very depressing to go through these (so many broken dreams, eh...) but cleanout must be done for the living and constantly improving distros to shine and be used."
I have hardly ever entered the debate "too many distributions"
However, after buying new hardware, I realized that only SUSE fully supports everything. Of the remaining hundreds, not a single one completely fulfills my needs: either unsupported hardware or showstopper bugs.
However not even SUSE fully satisfies me: it is a terrible resources hog, and when you install it you must download hundreds of updates, especially if you are using OpenSUSE.
A wider view about personal computing in 2006: every 6/12 months your hardware becomes obsolete. But operating systems and applications miserably fail to keep the pace.
As I just said, Linux is badly disappointing me at the moment.
MS Windows s#cks as usual, although Windows Media Center is *slightly* better than the others.
There are very few doubts in my mind that Mac OS X is the best OS for personal computers at the moment. However it has its cons as well, the main ones being that Mac computers are poor value for money, especially in Europe (I know, somebody will argue that the new Mac Pro is good value for money, but because everything except for the CPUs is quite basic in the default configuration, it will cost you much more than $2,500) and that there isn't an awful lot of apps for Mac.
What to say? Unless you have old(ish) and common hardware and you are happy with it, this is not a particularly good time for the software side of personal computing (IMHO)
10 • other opinions about XFS (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 14:24:39 GMT from Dorval, Canada)
Opinion about XFS seems to be shared by gentoo developers. According to the gentoo manual
"XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling that is fully supported under Gentoo Linux's xfs-sources kernel. It comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. We only recommend using this filesystem on Linux systems with high-end SCSI and/or fibre channel storage and a uninterruptible power supply. Because XFS aggressively caches in-transit data in RAM, improperly designed programs (those that don't take proper precautions when writing files to disk and there are quite a few of them) can lose a good deal of data if the system goes down unexpectedly."
Some debian users seems to have another opinion about XFS
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
"Based on all testing done for this benchmark essay, XFS appears to be the most appropriate filesystem to install on a file server for home or small-business needs"
11 • Statistics about Central America (by werner on 2006-08-14 14:56:18 GMT from Chapdes-Beaufort, France)
You forget french guyana, im living there and visiting your home page about 20 times daily
12 • RE: other opinions about XFS (by Beranger on 2006-08-14 14:57:50 GMT from Bucuresti, Romania)
> "Some debian users seems to have another opinion about XFS..."
They only have _benchmarks_, which rate _performance_, not _safety_ or _reliability_.
Bare performance is one thing, losing your data is a completely different issue.
Of course you have to have backups. But you don't backup every 10 minutes, and you can't restore in 5 seconds, can you?
13 • Mexico (by warpengi on 2006-08-14 15:07:34 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
Last I heard Mexico was in North America. It does however share much in common (politically and liguistically) with the rest of Latin America and so I can't really disagree with it being listed in Central America. The Mexicans should be the ones to speak up on it if they disagree.
14 • abandoned distros (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 15:20:10 GMT from Rancho Palos Verdes, United States)
I hate to see Womp on the list. It would bring to live old pcs with abandonware windows dvd player software. Granted the new GeeXbox does a beter job and looks nicer but I get the feeling some older hardware will be left behind again when Womp goes.
15 • Nice of Puerto Rico to be #2 in most visits (by Kensai on 2006-08-14 15:24:11 GMT from , Puerto Rico)
Mexico goes #1 with ~92K and Puerto Rico #2 with ~24K is awesome to see how Puerto Rico is so interested in Linux. Well it is more concentrated in the North of Puerto Rico since VLOS is from there, also the University of PR makes 1 flavor of Linux based on Knoppix. Which is Bioknoppix and there is another Distro from PR called Snappix based on Knoppix as well. Still I use only American, Canadian distros like Gentoo, Arch Linux, Slackware.
SInce I know the VLOS head developer and know he is the most arrogant bastard when it comes to Linux. :) So I will not support his distro.
16 • other opinions about XFS (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 15:26:23 GMT from Dorval, Canada)
Opinion about XFS seems to be shared by gentoo developers. According to the gentoo manual
"XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling that is fully supported under Gentoo Linux's xfs-sources kernel. It comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. We only recommend using this filesystem on Linux systems with high-end SCSI and/or fibre channel storage and a uninterruptible power supply. Because XFS aggressively caches in-transit data in RAM, improperly designed programs (those that don't take proper precautions when writing files to disk and there are quite a few of them) can lose a good deal of data if the system goes down unexpectedly."
Some debian users seems to have another opinion about XFS
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
"Based on all testing done for this benchmark essay, XFS appears to be the most appropriate filesystem to install on a file server for home or small-business needs"
17 • Re : other opinions about XFS (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 15:35:53 GMT from Dorval, Canada)
Sorry for the second post (I reloaded the page and the message was sent another time ...)
My understanding is that the XFS issue is not a problem with XFS itself, but with the "improperly designed programs". When debian developers say that XFS is crappy, they would probably mean "XFS is not safe to use with application XYZ that is somewhat crappy".
I use XFS since it's inclusion in the kernel and I never loose any data.
18 • Cool (by 1c3d0g on 2006-08-14 15:36:09 GMT from Oranjestad, Aruba)
Finally, my daily visits to DistroWatch have paid off. :-P
In all seriousness, I'm glad that there's a lot of interest in GNU/Linux in this region. :-)
19 • MidnightBSD (by Eric on 2006-08-14 16:24:35 GMT from Sudbury, Canada)
Well, this midnight BSD project seems odd since they want to make a seperate fork of FreeBSD using a 6.1 PRERELEASE, whats wrong with the actual 6.1 release?? Their goals for the project seem like every BSD users dreams like including wireless driver integration and have a binary update system in place. Another reason why BSD users would want to assassinate these developers, becuz on their development page they state, "To clarify, this is a fork of FreeBSD. I'm not creating a distro like DesktopBSD or PC-BSD.", im not sure if any of you noticed but he referred to their BSD as a DISTRO!!!! Flavour sure, but please don't mix BSD terms in with GNU/Linux terms. Which is another why this project at the moment sucks until they gain a little bit more knowledge of what they're doing and their project scale is aslarge and unique as NetBSD/OpenBSD in comparison to FreeBSD, a very large difference for BSD fans among GUN/Linux users. So good luck MidnightBSD, your going to need it! Sorry for being so against it, but come on, just develop for FreeBSD and everybody can reap the benefits, otherwise FreeBSD users will just port the nice pretty apps into FreeBSD if they are worth while anyway, lol.
20 • Daniel Robbins..he is back (by Daniel Mery on 2006-08-14 16:30:00 GMT from Seffner, United States)
Good News for Gentoo !!!! Daniel Robbins is returning to his project.
I think Gentoo Project today needs Daniel Robbins as leader.
Welcome to your home and good luck
Regards,
Daniel Mery
21 • XFS + Freak Data Loss (by Ryan M on 2006-08-14 17:02:46 GMT from Dallas, United States)
Most of the time XFS behaves very well. But on freak occasions it completely destroys data. I had an external storage device with hundreds of FLACS. Over time I kept getting these odd errors in my dmesg. I ran an XFS check disk routine, it made a ton of horrifying fixes, and suddenly half of my FLACs were destroyed. I fortunately had another backup.
To this day I have no idea why the file system got corrupted so badly (no power outtage, no writes on my part, etc), and nobody on the XFS mailing list wanted to follow up with my bug report. In any case, throughout the last few months, there have been a lot of bad bugs found in XFS (2.6.18-rc especially!) and there is almost always a corruption thread within the XFS mailing list. All of this and now major Debian users... well. I'm changing at least one of my volumes to something other than so not all my eggs are in one basket! Too bad though, because I love XFS to death though for its fantastic efficiency in disk usage and handling of large files...
22 • distro comparisons (by engelsman on 2006-08-14 17:13:26 GMT from Bussum, Netherlands)
There's always http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions
It even has Lunar, the small distro I'm currently using :-)
23 • Re: Discontinued distributions? (by gnobuddy on 2006-08-14 17:15:26 GMT from Marina Del Rey, United States)
The OP wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, after buying new hardware, I realized that only SUSE fully supports everything. Of the remaining hundreds, not a single one completely fulfills my needs: either unsupported hardware or showstopper bugs.
However not even SUSE fully satisfies me: it is a terrible resources hog, and when you install it you must download hundreds of updates, especially if you are using OpenSUSE.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've tried a *lot* of distros, and keep coming back to Gentoo. One reason is that if there is a Linux driver available for an item of hardware at all, you can usually make your Gentoo box support that hardware. You have to do everything manually, but at least you can make it work - and Gentoo has about the best documentation I've seen in the Linux world (not that that's a very strong statement - expect to do some Googling!).
As for the "automatic hardware configuration" distros, I agree with you - many do auto-configure most older hardware, but most fail here and there with unusual or newer hardware. I had endless headaches with Suse 10.0, for instance, which kept reverting my printer settings to A4 paper on every reboot, resulting in endless printing headaches, and was the slowest distro I have ever used.
-Gnobuddy
24 • No subject (by jfs on 2006-08-14 17:17:17 GMT from Tallinn, Estonia)
so how is jfs in terms of data-corruption? any links? is it usable?
25 • Re: 24 (by Kensai on 2006-08-14 17:55:32 GMT from , Puerto Rico)
I personally use reiserfs but jfs is my 2nd best option as it is a very clean filesystem and performs very very well. I recommend it.
26 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 18:04:55 GMT from Dorval, Canada)
No filesystem can protect against corruption on power outages. They can only protect against (most) corruption in the event of system crashes. If the drive was completely quiescent when the plug was pulled, you're OK; otherwise, all bets are off.
I know XFS can cause problems, see
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#nulls
But other FS also have problems. For exemple, I have got an unexpected power failures with Reiser3 on a machine at work. Reiser destroyed a huge number of files which were not even open at the time of incident (fortunatly I had backup for them ...).
I would really like to see a "benchmark" comparing reliability of different filesystem !
27 • Dominican Republic had a good ranking !!! (by Caraibes on 2006-08-14 19:05:50 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
Hi Friends !!!
I was very happy to read the Central America hit list. If I am not wrong, we (in DR) are #4 as of real hits, which is not bad !
I am pleased to see Gnu/Linux activity in Haiti as well !
Thank you Ladislav for that interesting presentation.
I can't conclude without mentioning Mr. Antonio Perpiñan, the guru and precursor of Free Libre Open Source Software down here in DR, you'll find more info at www.abiertos.org
28 • RE: # 23 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 19:17:30 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Gnobuddy,
I always "wanted to like" Gentoo, but I always failed.
The manual install is terribly boring, and the GUI one is extremely unsafe.
Also, I have always found all sorts of bugs in various applications, not to mention that Portage happily messes up your system. It could well be that I have never kept Gentoo on my PCs long enough to learn, but I have heard the same story from more experienced users.
Anyway, I want to give it another go, maybe in the form of a derivative, like Sabayon Linux or VLOS.
29 • #9 (by tom at 2006-08-14 19:28:45 GMT from Helena, United States)
Anonymous Penguin:
What the heck are you running? I just built a box with reasonably new hardware and, although there are occasional problems, I can run several distro's. I assume you are running the newest/latest hardware.
In general, Linux can handle hardware as good or better then Microsoft. Don't believe me, go ahead and install Windows 2000 or XP with the newest set of hardware and try to install the drivers.
The only advantage Microsoft has is they "conspire" with hardware manufactures. Often the newest latest hardware is built to run on windows, and not just released at random. Thus the drivers are only available to Microsoft users. I avoid this hardware.
For example nvidia makes drivers for my video card. They are not opensource, however, and not as nice as the Microsoft drivers. I knew this when I purchased the card.
On reasonable hardware Linux runs fine. It sounds as if you did not do your homework prior to your purchase and bought a computer that is not Linux compatible. This is like complaining Windows will not run on your SPARC workstation. Please do due diligence prior to your purchase and compare apples to apples.
My new Linux box runs fine. Reasonable, up to date hardware, fast processor, lots of RAM, dual monitors, nice sound, etc. I currently run Arch, but run Ubuntu, Fedora 5, Zenwalk, Debian and others with no problem.
30 • RE: # 29 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 19:45:32 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"It sounds as if you did not do your homework prior to your purchase and bought a computer that is not Linux compatible."
To be quite honest, it wasn't primarily meant to be Linux compatible :)
I can't say more on a public forum, but you can deduct it from my post # 9.
However I don't have hardware which is out of this world, it just isn't mainstream (for Linux). Later the problem should be solved (and, as I said, SUSE already supports everything)
31 • XFS (by pinguin@home on 2006-08-14 19:54:05 GMT from Helsinki, Finland)
As fars as I know XFS happens to be the journaled filesystem that the BSD world is most interested in porting to BSDs (at least FreeBSD). If the relatively poor reliability of XFS is true, I wonder why?
Anyway, also I had troubles recently - maybe related to XFS. A game I was playing, while installing new software and upgrading my OS with apt-get, froze and I had to reboot (just trying to restart X didn't succeed). After I rebooted, surprise, surprise, Debian didn't boot anymore... :( I had just installed Debian a few days ago, and I had wanted to give XFS a try because it was told to be so fast. But what about the reliability? Isn't a journaled file system meant to cope with just that kind of problems like what I had (reboot during an update process etc.)?
32 • For Crying out loud! (by Dragonopolis on 2006-08-14 20:16:33 GMT from Houston, United States)
I hate it when people cry "there isn't a lot of apps for a OS"
If you ask me I get too many of them installed Linux Distros. Hundreds of Tools I will never use. I bet I don't even have 200 Apps that I have added to my Windows XP (partly thanks to linux). Most programs work fine on my XP ( except cd/dvd burning ouch!). I have just about every app covering every category. 1 photo, 6 media players, 3 browsers, 2 email, roughly 40 games, MS Office 2003 and OpenOffice (these really count as one each), Fax App, 2 PDF, 1 synth app, 4 anti-v/firewall. Nope I might not make to hundred.....
I have more that I downloaded but honestly. Most average users just stick to one or 2 apps in the Popular Categories and I doubt the average user downloads 50 or so tools to make windows work better.......
As a matter of fact many Linux Distros are Bloated with Apps and Tools. I like variety like the rest but I only need a couple good tools to do the job. Many times I'm doing the opposite of what I do in Windows. Instead of Adding stuff to streamline Windows I'm taking it out.
Oh well point is Apple has enough good apps both commercially and in opensource to satisfy 90% of the Average users Needs. Apple and Linux could use a push in the Gaming Area but over all there are Times were Linux is overkill.
Another Point. I see often people in Linux forums bashing the amount Software that Apple has but you never see any Linux user at all bashing Linux Distros that Streamline their Linux Distro with very little apps going for the Minimalist Approach. Hey its great. I like diversity and Competition. Apple does a great job with UI and App integration. They don't have a lot of software but they have enough "quality software" to get it done especially if you count all the quality open source apps you can run on OSX as well.
Well I'm out of here got to get back to work!
33 • RE: #32 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 20:33:08 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I wasn't bashing Apple in any way, just the opposite, if you care to read my posts more carefully.
Apple has plenty of apps? Maybe, but then suddenly you realize that a basic one is missing. Which is never the case in (main) Linux distributions.
34 • XFS... (by Pelle on 2006-08-14 20:38:21 GMT from Oslo, Norway)
Hi all, this is my first post ever on distrowatch. First of all, great site, thanks, I have used this page for 2-3 years, comparing distros, and finding out more about distros. Great work Ladislav Bodnar.
About XFS... I have always used ext3, without error or problems, and I have always wanted to try XFS, or reiser, but with all this talk about stability, I think I will stick with ext3, maybe try JFS, if that is still supported. Anybody with real life stability numbers on SUSE + XFS? Or should i stick with suse default reiser + ext3?
P.
35 • #26 & #31 (by Wrawrat on 2006-08-14 20:52:31 GMT from Qubec, Canada)
reiserfs and XFS are using a data writeback strategy for the journal... Only metadata is written to the journal, and it might happen after the data is actually written to the disk. Combined with the usual disk cache, a kernel panic or a power failure can wreck the data that wasn't sync'd to disk before the event.
The default strategy for ext3 is the opposite (e.g. data is written to the disk before the metadata is committed to the journal). It seems to be safer than data writeback. That said, ext3 can use the usual journaling strategy, where all data is committed to the journal before getting written on the disk. reiserfs and XFS cannot.
I am not very aware of the tolerance to filesystem-level corruption (bad inodes and the like), but I had some issues with XFS and reiserfs... Personally, I won't use anything but ext3 until the competiton is safer with outages. JFS seems great, but it's quite slow, according to the personal benchmarks I made a while ago...
36 • To complement #35 (by Wrawrat on 2006-08-14 20:56:51 GMT from Qubec, Canada)
Just a note on JFS: it was slow on my _personal_ tests, but it was quite fair on the CPU usage. I believe it could be an interesting alternative on slower machines with high CPU usage and some I/O...
37 • 30 (by tmulgrew on 2006-08-14 21:17:18 GMT from Helena, United States)
Anonymous Penguin:
"To be quite honest, it wasn't primarily meant to be Linux compatible"
Obviously your judgment of Linux is unfounded. Try a Linux compatible box before making such proclamations.
PS Try Debian or Gentoo.
38 • RE: #37 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 21:29:14 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"Obviously your judgment of Linux is unfounded. Try a Linux compatible box before making such proclamations.
PS Try Debian or Gentoo."
Obviously you don't know me :)
I have been a linux fan for years and I have tried virtually every distro out there.
Try Debian? LOL, that sounds quite funny to anybody who knows me, especially under different nicknames.
Yes, I like Linux, but operating systems are not a religion, so why couldn't I build a PC for a purpose other than being fully Linux compatible?
39 • Re Penguin #9 (by BigMadDrongo on 2006-08-14 21:30:12 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
--------------
There are very few doubts in my mind that Mac OS X is the best OS for personal computers at the moment.
--------------
While there are good reasons to believe that (and good reasons to disagree), declarations of Apple's divinity are currently my #1 pet hate in IT. I feel compelled to comment, but I'll restrict myself to the following.
Mac OS X is *not* an alternative to XP/Linux/BSD. Why? Because it only runs on a Mac (VMWare-related hacks aside). You're not switching your OS, you're switching your entire PC. An OS that requires you to *buy a new fricking computer* (at inflated prices!) to use it can hardly claim better hardware support than Linux.
This isn't fanboyism BTW, I'm running XP at the moment.
--------------
Unless you have old(ish) and common hardware and you are happy with it, this is not a particularly good time for the software side of personal computing (IMHO)
--------------
I disagree. This is the first time in years there's been a strong challenge and credible alternative to the monopoly. Consumer choice = good. The competition is forcing everyone to raise their game. (Well, MS are trying... heh.) It's not as if Windows has got any worse, Linux is improving by leaps and bounds (whether or not you think it's "good enough" yet), and Mac OS is great if that's your bag. I'd say it's an excellent time for PC software.
40 • 939-socket Motherboard (by IMQ on 2006-08-14 21:39:26 GMT from Decatur, United States)
Guys & gals,
I just got an AM64 CPU and a couple nVidia cards from my brother. So I am looking for a 939-socket motherboard that support nVidia SLI. I did some looking at the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert Motherboard reviews. And it seems pretty good.
Any feedback on how well it work under Linux? I am looking at some of the AMD64 distros. One of them is Ubuntu/Kubuntu AMD64.
Appreciate any feedback on successes/problems with this board. Any other motherboard recommendations are also welcomed.
41 • 38 (by tom at 2006-08-14 21:41:39 GMT from Helena, United States)
Anonymous Penguin
Build what you like. Don't complain Porsche parts don't fit your Ferrari.
The fact you built a box incompatible with Linux does not degrade Linux or make me a religious fanatic.
42 • No subject (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-14 21:58:57 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"Mac OS X is *not* an alternative to XP/Linux/BSD.....it can hardly claim better hardware support than Linux"
Were did I say that? I just said that it is a great OS, regardless of hardware support.
As to the rest of your post, I absolutely agree about Windows, it s#cks (as an OS), and I said that already. Unfortunately it is still the best supported by hardware manifacturers and by software suppliers.
Generally speaking, it seems to me that everybody is missing the real meaning of my post (#9)
This was the core:
"A wider view about personal computing in 2006: every 6/12 months your hardware becomes obsolete. But operating systems and applications miserably fail to keep the pace. "
Isn't that true? Where is software taking full advantage of 64 bit, multicore processors? Where are stable, bug free OSes? (possibly with the exception of Mac OS X)
43 • XFS / ZFS (by Tariq on 2006-08-14 22:01:36 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
I've used XFS for at least 2 years on my dell 8600 laptop - using hitachi and now seagate disks under mandriva and fedora with absolutely zero problems - including the occasional power cycle.
by the way - why not port over XFS to linux? I know its not GPL but i think its benefits are fantastic.
44 • 42 (by tom on 2006-08-14 22:46:16 GMT from Helena, United States)
Anonymous Penguin:
This is the problem. You are practicing/preaching blatant consumerism.
The fact is I am quite content NOT running the latest/greatest hardware. Once people like you throw away your "outdated" hardware, I purchase and refurbish/recycle. A "new computer", like the one I built to replace a "mission critical" box that died, will last 5-7 years, no problem. It is built on 6-12 month old technology and just slightly slower then cutting edge, but at a huge cost savings. If the box were not critical to my needs it would not have been replaced with a new box.
Please send all your 6 month old obsolete boxes to me. I will wipe the hard drive, install an OS (likely Ubuntu), and donate it to the needy/indigent in my community. I have been supplying boxes to the indigent for some time now and can give you a receipt so you may write off your donation helping you to defer the cost of your 64 bit OS X box. Supply me with contact information and I will contact you with details of the donation. I believe I can get a grant to cover the cost of shipping.
In answer to you question, "Where is software taking full advantage of 64 bit, multicore processors? ":
What do I need a 64 bit, multicore processor to do? I will concede hardware outpaces software, but what do you expect? The mass volume of available software is not going to be re-written for the newest 64 bit, multicore processors overnight.
The question you should ask is "What do I need my box to do?" Once the needs are identified, what is the optimal hardware/OS combination. It is silly to run a 64 bit, multicore processor "just because".
As far as Mac OS X you come across as quite a fanatic.
"Where are stable, bug free OSes". No OS, including Mac OS X is or will ever be bug free. Try Zenbwalk, Debian stable, Arch Linux, Fedora. All these have bugs, but they are fairly minimal. Pick one that is most bug free with you hardware. For myself, Zenwalk and Arch have been the most bug free, your results may vary.
At least with Linux when I find a bug there is the possibility of a solution. Either Google or if necessary I can (and have) write one. Try that with Microsoft or OS X.
45 • Ulteo and SymphonyOS (by Marc on 2006-08-14 23:03:15 GMT from Montral, Canada)
I have a feeling that these two projects have common goals.
Maybe they should get together ...
Dream, Dream, Dream ....
46 • JFS vs XFS ????? (by Anonymous on 2006-08-14 23:52:09 GMT from Montral, Canada)
I actually use ext3, but wanted to try XFS for my next reinstall. I am now afraid that this could be a bad idea. JFS seems interesting too. I would like to know other readers opinion about JFS reliability.
47 • XFS: No problems here. (by UltraZelda64 on 2006-08-15 00:22:50 GMT from Alliance, United States)
I've been using XFS for my / and /usr partitions ever since I switched from Windows to Zenwalk, and have yet to have any problems. I would be using XFS for my /home partition too, but decided to go with ext3 for compatibility purposes; ex., it's readable from within Windows and various Linux distros, very versatile and tried-and-true.
Personally, ext3 and XFS are the only two file systems I would use as my day-to-day file system. Though Reiser and Reiser4 aren't bad from my experience, I generally stay away from them, especially Reiser4, since I've heard quite a few bad things about it. The fact that Reiser refuses to comply with Linus' requests and then bitches that he won't include it in the Linux kernel is enough for me to pass it up.
Data loss/corruption happens no matter what the filesystem is; considering I've heard or experienced nothing before about XFS causing problems, I'll continue using it. It's damn good so far.
48 • Interesting? (by Exile on 2006-08-15 00:38:12 GMT from Pittsford, United States)
"Also don't miss Robbins's earlier post where he talks about his former job at Microsoft's Linux Lab - an interesting read."
There is absolutely nothing interesting about that blog post. No insight, understanding predictions or explanations. Just the mention of the fact that there was such a group. Not even worth the read. . .
49 • JFS is the bombtastic. (by JFSMonkey. on 2006-08-15 01:30:43 GMT from Bloomfield Hills, United States)
I know, I know. Different strokes for different folks, and because some people run different computers for different things (say, when running a RAID or SCSI system) JFS isn't always the best, but when on laptop or home computer JFS is about the absolute BESTESTNESS!
High speed, high reliability.
I made an extensive, facts-backed-up post about this on the ubuntu mailing list a while ago. (It double-functioned as a scathing attack on the beliefs that reiserfs is anywhere near good / Reiser4 is the next messiah, so it's about both.) Here it is: compiled evidence of the coolness of JFS (and the not-so-coolness of reiser). Read if interested.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2006-July/088568.html
Oh, and by the way, Anonymous Penguin, Tom had it absolutely right when he said:
"Build what you like. Don't complain Porsche parts don't fit your Ferrari.
The fact you built a box incompatible with Linux does not degrade Linux or make me a religious fanatic."
Generally, I run by the philosophy that if you don't like an OS, FS, app, etc, just don't use it. There's no point in complaining about it. And it's not like you paid them money for it... they don't owe you anything, and we don't owe you a sympathetic ear. Sad, but true. Use something else.
50 • Re #49 (by Anonymous2 on 2006-08-15 01:58:06 GMT from Toronto, Canada)
Wish there were more people with your philosophy. I am one of those people who fiddle around with Linux, trying out many distros on my older laptop. (My company is Mac-based). I read a lot, but find it quite tiresome to see the amount of MS-bashing on many Linux-related sites. I would like to extend JFSMonkey's philosophy to say that if one doesn't like Windows, get on with your life and make yourself happy with BSD or Linux. Take the time and help out in the development processes.
51 • Anonymous Penguin, (by Andy Axnot on 2006-08-15 02:14:48 GMT from Kenilworth, United States)
Anonymous Penguin, the reaction to your comments is funny. It's as if you had never posted here before, or were a known Linux basher.
Andy
52 • RE: #49 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 02:38:56 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"Generally, I run by the philosophy that if you don't like an OS, FS, app, etc, just don't use it. There's no point in complaining about it. And it's not like you paid them money for it... they don't owe you anything, and we don't owe you a sympathetic ear. Sad, but true. Use something else."
It is really funny that according to some, I have become anti Linux now.
Everybody failed to see the bigger picture of what I was trying to say:
"A wider view about personal computing in 2006: every 6/12 months your hardware becomes obsolete. But operating systems and applications miserably fail to keep the pace."
Mine was a complaint as they sell us hardware that is of no use with the current software. And Jo User doesn't really have a choice: he buys what the shop assistant recommends him.
Nowhere I wrote that every 6/12 months I rush to buy new hardware.
But on the other hand the future starts today. I can't remember if there was the same resistence when we moved from 16 to 32 bit, but we did eventually. Similarly we must now begin to move to 64 bit computing. It seems to me that in the OSS community I come across an attitude like: "64 bit? Why? What is the big deal?" more often than elsewhere.
But I must admit that SUSE Linux was one of the first operating system to see the 64 bit potential.
53 • RE: #51 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 02:42:05 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"Anonymous Penguin, the reaction to your comments is funny. It's as if you had never posted here before, or were a known Linux basher."
Thanks Andy, at least somebody knows that :)
54 • Whoops... (by JFSMonkey on 2006-08-15 02:58:39 GMT from Bloomfield Hills, United States)
Sorry about that. Comments number 9 and 30 threw me off a little. Thought were a dedicated fanboy of two OS'es and complaining about everything else.
You are pretty much right on that count... really, not enough focus on hardware is being done. Iget the feeling that this happens because most distros these days are just spinoffs of a few "core" distros (RH, FC4, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Knoppix, mandrake/mandriva (but not anymore) and I'm missing half a dozen at least), and when some of those core distros don't focus enough on drivers and rather on making themselves shiny to keep up with the other big distros... it's not always good. I'm probably exaggerating distro competition here a bit, though.
As for a stable and bug free linux OS... slackware seems to have died, so forget that. :D
55 • 29 (by Darren on 2006-08-15 03:18:27 GMT from Brisbane, Australia)
I tend to agree that linux can handle hardware better than Windows.
Over the weekend, I rebuilt my Slackware 10.2 box. I didn't have to worry about installing drivers for all my hardware - although, I did update my kernel from 2.4.x to 2.6.x - but that was because I prefer the 2.6.x kernel.
Even my HDTV card works with minimal tinkering - less time than it takes for me to install the various software/drivers required for it under Windows.
It is also infinitely more stable under Linux then Windows, plus I have the added benefit of being able to record HDTV while ssh'd in remotely from work via a few simple commands.
56 • RE: #54 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 04:15:30 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"As for a stable and bug free linux OS... slackware seems to have died, so forget that. :D"
I hope not :)
57 • I have three customers.. (by azbaer on 2006-08-15 04:38:29 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
These customers use three different flavors,
Guess which one has NEVER broke, is always up and running, and has the owner of the company thinking about dropping the XP OS on the desktop in favor of a all linux company! come on and guess?
The OS are:
Gentoo
Slackware
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
58 • Re #57 (by rglk on 2006-08-15 04:59:45 GMT from Edgewater, United States)
Well, that's obvious - slackware!
Robert
59 • Re: #11 (by reyfer on 2006-08-15 05:30:39 GMT from Caracas, Venezuela)
Hi. Last time I checked, French Guyana was in South America, not Central America.
To Ladislav: great job as always
60 • 64 bit processors (by tom on 2006-08-15 05:34:59 GMT from La Junta, United States)
I am sure this is the way of the future.
I would not invest in the technology yet as I have no immediate need and the software industry is not yet up to the 64 bit technology.
Multiple kernels, Microsoft, Linux, etc can run and make use of the technology, I believe what you are all referring to is applications. For example, your 64 bit core is irrelevant if your applications do not take advantage of the technology.
Obviously it will take time for software to catch up, and once it does my 32 bit processor will be that much more obsolete. Expecting software to be rapidly optimized is unrealistic, and no OS, Microsoft, OS X, or otherwise, offers extensive 64 bit optimized applications.
Until then, unless you have a need for a specific 64 bit optimized application there is no need to invest in the 64 bit processor.
PS Anonymous Penguin :
Your comments re: Debian and running bug free are somewhat off. You will need to choose between stability and cutting/bleeding edge. It is unrealistic to expect to run bleeding edge hardware with bleeding edge software and have a bug free OS.
Try Debian stable, slackware, Free BSD, etc on a reasonable Linux compatible platform and you will have a reasonable bug free stable platform.
If you chose to run bleeding edge (Linux) software on non-Linux compatible hardware I, for one, am not sympathetic or appreciative of complaints re: bugs.
61 • counting (by azbaer on 2006-08-15 05:51:41 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
One for slackware.
Any one else want to guess?
62 • 64 bit question (by azbaer on 2006-08-15 05:58:54 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
Go ahead ahead get a 64 bit cpu. load it up with ram.
I dont care which oS you use, with the exception of Apple. NO PC based 64 bit software, yes ther is the 64 bit Windows but everything you load will be 32 bit applications at least for the next few years.
63 • RE: #60 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 07:36:12 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Tom,
Bugs and unsupported hardware are two different matters.
64 • 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux Distributions - Your opinions, please! (by linbetwin on 2006-08-15 09:10:25 GMT from Ploiesti, Romania)
Apart from flash, java, w32codecs and other issues, how would you rate 64-bit versions of Linux against the 32-bit versions?
Is it worth installing x86_64 distros on desktops used for regular tasks like office, multimedia, browsing, email, IM, games and finding workarounds for the issues above? Or is the speed difference palpable only for CPU-intensive and RAM-hungry tasks on high-end machines?
In your experience, which distros offer better 64-bit versions?
Thank you for your answers.
65 • Re: 57 • I have three customers.. (by Ariszló on 2006-08-15 11:06:28 GMT from Szeged, Hungary)
Slackware.
66 • What is Wrong With KateOS's Website? (by EmyrB on 2006-08-15 13:41:25 GMT from Potters Bar, United Kingdom)
Does anybody know? I have been trying now for several days but it just times out. They ain't out of business are they? Or is version 3 prooving to be too popular?
Anyway just thought i'd ask.
Excellent issue as always Ladislav
67 • counting (by azbaer on 2006-08-15 14:42:09 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
thats two for slackware. any more guess?
I give the answer on fridayish
68 • Re #32 (by engelsman on 2006-08-15 18:08:07 GMT from Bussum, Netherlands)
"As a matter of fact many Linux Distros are Bloated with Apps and Tools. I like variety like the rest but I only need a couple good tools to do the job."
Maybe you should try something like Lunar. You install a minimal system, and after that *you* get to choose what to add to it. It's a source distro, so it's a little slow to get started if you want a full desk top instead of a lean, mean server, but *you* are in control.
69 • 68 (by AC on 2006-08-15 18:49:18 GMT from Olympia, United States)
There are plenty of distros that allow installing a minimal base and adding what you want from there, Debian most famous among them. But obviously, someone complaining about bloated distros but continuing to try one after another isn't interested in doing the work. So I'm sure they don't want the work of compiling. They want a distro that makes the 'right" (read: satisfying their personal druthers) choices out of the box.
70 • 57 (by tom on 2006-08-15 20:12:22 GMT from Helena, United States)
OK, I'll bite.
Gentoo
71 • No subject (by AC on 2006-08-15 20:37:02 GMT from Olympia, United States)
I'm going to go with the obvious answer and say RHEL.
72 • RE: #64 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 20:53:14 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"Or is the speed difference palpable only for CPU-intensive and RAM-hungry tasks on high-end machines?"
I believe it is exactly like that. I would suggest at least 2 GB RAM for 64 bit computing.
"In your experience, which distros offer better 64-bit versions?"
Well, SUSE has the longest experience, but you could also try Fedora (download a re-spin: http://torrent.fedoraunity.org/), Gentoo, wait for Debian Etch to be released...
I am just downloading Slamd64, I want to try the unofficial 64 bit port of Slackware.
I am also looking forward to the release of Sabayon Linux x86-64 3.0RC2 (in a few hours)
73 • RE: #57 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 20:56:37 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I also believe that RHEL is the most Enterprise ready distribution.
74 • RE: #64 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-15 21:11:15 GMT from Roma, Italy)
BTW, unless you have bleeding edge hardware, you could also try CentOS, rock-solid.
75 • 64 (by tom on 2006-08-15 23:02:20 GMT from Helena, United States)
llinbetwin: Stop blatant consumerism. You should not purchase a 64 bit CPU, or any other box, without at least some analysis of your needs and budget.
"Is it worth installing x86_64 distros on desktops used for regular tasks like office, multimedia, browsing, email, IM, games and finding workarounds for the issues above? Or is the speed difference palpable only for CPU-intensive and RAM-hungry tasks on high-end machines?"
First: Define worth.
Next ask yourself, what do you use your box for?. What applications do you need to run (on a x86_64 distro)? Is the application available and 64 bit optimized? Are you willing to run any of the 64 bit distros (ie Gentoo)?
Office, multimedia, browsing, email, IM, games and finding workarounds for the issues above are likely, for the most part, 32 bit optimized at this time on the majority of distros (Just because the kernel is 64 bit optimized does not necessarily mean the apps are also optimized).
Last what is the cost of a 32 bit processor vs a 64 bit processor? Keep RAM, motherboard, etc the same (or as close as possible).
In my analysis, unless you have a specific need, it is premature to purchase a 64 bit processor. This decision is OS independent as no OS (Microsoft, OS X, Linux, BSD, etc) has extensive 64 bit optimized applications available and you can not easily make "full use" of the power of a 64 bit processor. Why not wait until a majority of applications are 64 bit optimized? When the time comes you can purchase a more powerful box, for less cost, than any box you purchase today.
76 • Thank God: End of DistroWatch Podcast (by Annoyed Podcast Listener on 2006-08-16 00:03:45 GMT from Morristown, United States)
Cry me a fucking river...boohoo...so basically the podcast is ending because Shawn Milo is starting a new business and his podcast isn't raising enough money.
Bull. The real reason that the podcast is ending is that it was poorly produced and that Shawn told an entire linux distro community to "go fuck itself". Not to mention that the podcast was never released on a consistant schedule. It would be promised on a Tuesday, come out on a Thursday, not appear on the distrowatch site until the weekend...it was total crap.
The quality of the podcast was shitty to begin with, got acceptable for a while, and then went totally downhill. I stopped listening regularly after Shawn gave up covering the entire issue of distrowatch and started asking for cash and advertisements. On a podcast about 2 months ago, he told a certain distro to "go fuck itself", and refused to read the distrowatch weekly coverage on that distro. That was the end of my listening to the podcast.
Shawn, sorry to see you go, but your podcast sucked, end of story.
77 • counting (by azbaer on 2006-08-16 00:37:47 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
Two for slack Two for RHEL one for Gentoo.
Intresting
78 • missed MirOS release (by Anonymous on 2006-08-16 11:17:06 GMT from Gonbach, Germany)
"In case any of our readers know something we don't, please speak up now."
MirOS Release #9 (released 2006-06-23)
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?m=115110448632235
http://mirbsd.org/?getting
79 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-08-16 12:01:15 GMT from Nairobi, Kenya)
# 57 • I have three customers..
“I gave my customers...guess which one is still running”
My guess is you’re going to say Gentoo - but Slackware still ROCKS, dude! Slackware is Gentoo without all the heavy lifting.
Roach Boy
80 • RE: # 57 I have three customers... (by Roach Boy on 2006-08-16 12:02:39 GMT from Nairobi, Kenya)
My guess is you’re going to say Gentoo - but Slackware still ROCKS, dude! It's like Gentoo without all the heavy lifting.
81 • RE: #75 (by linbetwin on 2006-08-16 13:15:23 GMT from Ploiesti, Romania)
llinbetwin: Stop blatant consumerism. You should not purchase a 64 bit CPU, or any other box, without at least some analysis of your needs and budget.
I bought a new PC a few months ago to replace a really old one. I chose an ASUS A8N-E + AMD ATHLON64 3000+ (939 Venice) because a reasonably powerful 32-bit processor wasn't much cheaper and because I don't expect to upgrade my hardware for at least 3 years. I don't know if that's blatant consumerism.
First: Define worth.
Speed, performance boost vs. instability, incompatibility.
82 • 81 (by tom on 2006-08-16 13:54:13 GMT from Helena, United States)
Congratulations. Nice to see you have thought out the issue and are not replacing hardware every 6 months.
83 • Counting (by azbaer on 2006-08-16 15:26:45 GMT from Phoenix, United States)
Well its all even 2 2 and 2.
a key phrase in my orginal post. "Once a month",
Slackware is great, but not really known for the desktop. Maybe the grand daddy of Linux distro's, slack does need a lot of configuration and compling.
Gentoo is also good as source based Linux, great to use to learn the interworking of linux. but once its compiled and hoprfully running it can be a real pain in maintaining, especially in a part time IT department.
The correct guess in Red HAt Enterprise Linux. I even have shown the manager/owner how to check for updates and install them. Granted it is a simple Samba, file /print and email server. but all it needs is a once a month check up. its been running for over a year. with no breakage pains everything works.
This is Not a slam against Slack or Gentoo but they are not really for a unmanned IT department in small businesses.
84 • 81 (by tom on 2006-08-16 17:49:54 GMT from Helena, United States)
linbetwin;
Sorry, just thought of this point. Generally, with CPU's, like cars, performance is proportional to cost; equal cost = performance.
With AMD the performance follows the number "3,000" and not architecture (32 bit, 64 bit, or dual core).
Like fast cars, if you want a fast CPU it will cost.
Your "reasonably powerful 32-bit processor wasn't much cheaper" likely has very similar performance to the 64 bit chip you bought. The 32 bit chip has less compatibility problems. I would have stayed with the 32 bit chip, but that's me.
85 • Podcast demise (by Ubuntex on 2006-08-16 18:14:39 GMT from Loves Park, United States)
I happened to dig Shawn's take on issues like Xandros or the like. His sentiment echoes most of the community -- most, not all.
Yes, the podcast was late on occasion, but it's a volunteer effort. Sometimes family or work takes precedence. It's not like he was pulling a paycheck from Ladislav.
I rarely hear a podcast that is well produced. Have you heard the "thing" that the UbuntuOS crowd puts out? It's totally indecipherable. It actually sounds encrypted!
I'm not sure what SM used to make the podcast, but it was better than quite a few others.
86 • 83 (by AC on 2006-08-17 09:04:55 GMT from Olympia, United States)
Yay! I got it right!
A point of contention:
"Slackware is...Maybe the grand daddy of Linux distro's."
Slackware is at most Debian's older sibling. SLS was the first distribution with a range of applications (there were a few academic sites with the Linux kernel and GNU tools and libraries available via ftp.) Pat Volkerding used it. So did Ian Murdoch. Neither was happy with it. Pat submitted lots of patches and had them ignored until finally he put them together in his own fork of SLS, Slackware. Ian instead wrote a manifesto, attracted a lot of developers, got support from the FSF, and started the Debian Project. While Ian's approach was more systematic and idealistic, Pat's was more "Just Do It!" (and both attitudes have their merit: I'm not trashing either), but both were responding to deficiencies in SLS.
87 • Newer Hardware (by Anonymous on 2006-08-17 15:46:32 GMT from Rancho Palos Verdes, United States)
My kids have a machine that is newer but the installers are all starting to make assumptions and overriding the command parameters when they see new hardware. It is getting worse and worse especially with Ubuntu and Mandriva based distros. For instance I have a old 14" monitor (non-digital) and when I key in vga=791 or screen=800x600 or NODCC it gets ignored. Only some knoppix/gentoo/fedora based distros get it right. If it is because of KDE offer me XFCE. The others try to do at a higher resolution and black screen or I get 3 jumpy screens side by side all because the video card can do it. Other times it would see newer hardware even though it can't mount it and freeze the whole install instead it should just give up and continue to use the older hardware that has been provided to it.
88 • 32-bit or 64-bit computing? (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-18 13:52:02 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Some interesting thoughts by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4091414098.html
"No, it's not just that he sees Vista's manifest failings as giving Linux a golden window of opportunity. It's that he has studied the history of operating systems and he believes that the only time an operating system can be displaced is when its hardware platform changes underneath it. Now, and within the next year and a half, as we see the 32-bit computing world give way to the 64-bit world, this is not only the time for the Linux desktop to strike, it's probably the best opportunity Linux will get to try to displace Windows."
In fact, Linux has been doing that for a while.
SUSE, and maybe to a lesser extent, Red Hat, have a fully mature 64-bit environment.
I remember 2 or 3 years ago, when ordinary people hardly knew about 64-bit computing, friends telling me with enthusiasm of their successes with AMD 64 and SUSE.
89 • 88 (by AC on 2006-08-18 20:31:44 GMT from Olympia, United States)
And some of us, even earlier, had our successes with NetBSD and amd64
90 • # 88 Windows vs Linux (by raymond on 2006-08-19 03:25:32 GMT from Forestville, Australia)
The Windows OS is specifically designed to work with a minimum of brain exertion by a desktop user. They have worked hard to get hardware manufacturers to provide drivers that work with the OS. So it is difficult for Linux to "displace Windows". It could probably only compete with it, and at best take away some of its desktop share. Linux is improving in this regard though.
The problem with the computing industry as a whole is that it is invariably full of incompatibilities - between hardware components, and between hardware and software. It is geared towards getting the public to always upgrade to new "systems" (new hardware + new software) in order to keep the money turning over. Windows is part of this "new system" approach (e.g., each new Windows version requires more RAM and hard disk size), while Linux is more orientated towards working with older systems and making them last longer.
91 • Windows vs. Linux (by Anon Y. Mous on 2006-08-19 06:00:29 GMT from Kailua, United States)
> In general, Linux can handle hardware as good or better
> then Microsoft. Don't believe me, go ahead and install
> Windows 2000 or XP with the newest set of hardware
> and try to install the drivers.
Ain't that the truth. The Windows XP installer doesn't have drivers for SATA drives... so you if you are building a new computer, you need a floppy drive, and you need to press F6 and supply SATA drivers on a floppy. Either that or slipsteam the drivers into the XP install CD.
My friend just got a HP Pallion dv6000 laptop a few days ago (AMD Turion based). Knoppix 5.01 booted on it fine. It recognized the dual processors and the sound even worked with absolutely no tweaking. I'm amazed at the vast variety of hardware that linux live CD's will boot on.
92 • 90 (by tom on 2006-08-19 17:49:40 GMT from La Junta, United States)
Thank you. See my previous posts re: Blatant consumerism.
I agree with all your points re: Microsoft and the hardware manufactures.
93 • RE: #90 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-19 22:02:04 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"The computing industry is geared towards getting the public to always upgrade to new "systems" (new hardware + new software) in order to keep the money turning over. Windows is part of this "new system" approach (e.g., each new Windows version requires more RAM and hard disk size), while Linux is more orientated towards working with older systems and making them last longer."
That might partly be true, but if it weren't for that, we would still be using the Commodore 64, if at all.
Isn't part of the human nature to always seek improvement? Otherwise what is the difference between us and monkeys?
As to Linux being "more orientated towards working with older systems and making them last longer." that is true only for some distributions. Isn't it true that KDE 3.5 requires many more resources than older versions?
Novell recommends pretty high specs for SUSE: http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/sysreqs.html
(I can assure you that the above should be minimum requirements, especially regarding RAM: SLED 10 or openSUSE 10.1 will choke with only 512 MB RAM)
As to 64-bit and "blatant consumerism", if you already own a PC and you are happy with it, that is OK. But if you buy a 32-bit CPU in August 2006, you are investing on a technology which is on its way out and which will be obsolete in no time. Besides you aren't even saving money.
94 • 93 (by tom on 2006-08-20 00:57:31 GMT from Helena, United States)
First, Novell is NOT KDE.
Second, SUSE is bloated and needs more RAM because of it. This is not a good example of Linux making use of "old hardware".
Try Arch Linux or Debian. My applications are just fine after a "server install" on a 32 bit chip and there are more 32 bit applications then 64 bit applications. 64 bit chips are thus a long way from making 32 bit chips obsolete.
And no, keeping up with the computer industry is not what separates us from monkeys.
Again, in all seriousness, please send me all your "obsolete" computers I will refurbish them and give them to the needy. This is what I do and we could always make use of a donation and you get a tax break.
When purchasing hardware you should analyze your needs and purchase hardware and software to meet these needs.
You should NOT buy because Novell, Microsoft, IBM, DELL, etc tell you your hardware will be obsolete in a few short months.
95 • RE: #94 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-20 01:36:37 GMT from Roma, Italy)
"First, Novell is NOT KDE."
Who said that? I didn't.
"And no, keeping up with the computer industry is not what separates us from monkeys."
So we should have stayed with the Commodore 64, black and white television...No wait, radio was more than enough...or maybe even that was too much?
"When purchasing hardware you should analyze your needs and purchase hardware and software to meet these needs."
And make a purchase which you can use for a few years. Or not?
"You should NOT buy because Novell, Microsoft, IBM, DELL, etc tell you your hardware will be obsolete in a few short months."
None of the above. Something becomes obsolete when you can't buy it new any longer (that is going to happen very soon to 32-bit CPUs and mobos) and when it is no longer supported (that will take a bit longer, but not that long)
"Again, in all seriousness, please send me all your "obsolete" computers I will refurbish them and give them to the needy. This is what I do and we could always make use of a donation and you get a tax break."
Because I sell my hardware when it is still viable (after about 3 years) I can still make good money out of it. If I must help the needy I have many other ways.
96 • #93 new technology (by raymond on 2006-08-20 02:04:14 GMT from Forestville, Australia)
"Isn't part of human nature to always seek improvement?"
Yes, but in the business world there is added pressure to sell "new" replacements at a certain price, and dump "old" - especially in technology.
"As to Linux making older systems last longer. that is true only for some distributions. Isn't it true that KDE 3.5 requires many more resources than older versions?"
Yes, newer technology needs newer resources. But if Linux works well with a broader range of hardware why not really sell that point and get Linux onto older computers - like Xandros is trying to do after Microsoft dropped support for Win98. That way Linux would not be directly competing against Microsoft, but kind of subverting them.
I think that governments should force hardware vendors to provide drivers for all popular OSs (Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.). This would make life a lot easier for the public.
97 • RE: #96 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-20 03:21:32 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I like what you say. Unlike others, you have read and understood.
98 • Turks & Caicos (by Jeff C on 2006-08-20 04:15:15 GMT from , United States)
I hate to burst your bubble on countries that visit DistroWatch but it is not true that no one from Turks & Caicos has visited in the last seven months. I regularly check in from Providenciales, Turks & Caicos as do a few others I know.
I think the logic you're using to confirm source IPs may be flawed. I can certainly share with you the ranges in use in the country.
-Jeff
99 • # 93 (by Anonymous on 2006-08-20 12:55:33 GMT from Braslia, Brazil)
"Otherwise what is the difference between us and monkeys?"
Monkeys are smarter then us!
:-)
100 • # 94 (by Anonymous on 2006-08-20 13:02:21 GMT from Braslia, Brazil)
"When purchasing hardware you should analyze your needs and purchase hardware and software to meet these needs.
You should NOT buy because Novell, Microsoft, IBM, DELL, etc tell you your hardware will be obsolete in a few short months."
Thats Right!
I'm running Sarge on an Athlon 1200 with 256M ram, and for email and web
and sometimes open an PPS, XLS or DOC it is pretty good.
101 • # 96 (by Anonymous on 2006-08-20 13:06:18 GMT from Braslia, Brazil)
"I think that governments should force hardware vendors to provide drivers for all popular OSs (Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.). This would make life a lot easier for the public."
Seriously? Isn't this fascism or comunism?!
:-)
102 • 96 & 101 (by AC on 2006-08-21 01:39:23 GMT from Olympia, United States)
"I think that governments should force hardware vendors to provide drivers for all popular OSs (Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.). This would make life a lot easier for the public."
Seriously? Isn't this fascism or comunism?!
:-)
Not necessarily. Perhaps it would be merely (over-reaching?) consumer regualatory-ism-cum-socialism.
103 • RE: #81 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-21 01:45:10 GMT from Roma, Italy)
And BTW:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1366603
If spending $59.97 for a CPU is "blatant consumerism"...
104 • #101 (by raymond on 2006-08-21 04:33:55 GMT from Forestville, Australia)
How about "computerism".
105 • 103 (by tom on 2006-08-21 05:54:40 GMT from La Junta, United States)
Spending $59.97 for a 64 bit CPU is not consumerism.
I am sure it's performance is almost equal to a $59.97 32 bit CPU.
Consumerism is buying any computer, 64 bit or not, without an analysis of your needs, when you already own (by your own admission) a relatively new, perfectly functional 32 bit box, because Novell, Microsoft, IBM, DELL, etc tell you your hardware will be obsolete in a few short months.
What are your reasons to buy a new 64 bit CPU? So you feel superior to monkeys? You have not named a single application you either need or use for a 64-bit CPU. You do complain about a lack of 64 bit optimized applications. Your 32 bit machine works fine, in fact you are selling it for what it's worth.
Your purchase of a 64 bit CPU is consumerism, buying for the sake of ownership. Your rants on obsolescence of the 32 bit CPU boarder on paranoia.
What should I expect from someone who complains about how Linux does not run on the new, non-Linux compatible box s/he built?
Also Linux is not about word domination. If you do not like it, go back to OS X, after all that is what choice is all about.
106 • # 105 (by Anonymous on 2006-08-21 12:31:32 GMT from Braslia, Brazil)
"Your purchase of a 64 bit CPU is consumerism, buying for the sake of ownership. Your rants on obsolescence of the 32 bit CPU boarder on paranoia."
I think the only reason to buy a 64bit machine is when one needs looooots of memory such for runing a data base in memory because 32bit have a short/low limit of memory addresseable.
107 • RE:#105 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-21 14:21:37 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Final word (from my side) on this crazy matter.
I had a 3 years old, lowish end computer. I needed a new one. I built it with reasonably future-proof technology. I sold the old one because I am not the kind of person who puts everything in the loft (after all I helped somebody who needed a reasonable box for little money)
After all I don't drink, I don't smoke, basically I spend my money only on food and bills. So I don't know why I shouldn't spend some money on computer parts without being criticized by some paranoid "anti-consumerist"
And yes, as a linux veteran I have the right to complain that support for new hardware sometimes takes far too long (and I say that especially as a long time Debian user who had to move to SUSE in order to find his hardware supported)
108 • About consumerism (by linbetwin on 2006-08-21 15:09:11 GMT from Ploiesti, Romania)
I am the one "accused" of consumerism for buying a 64-bit CPU. I don't mind, I am not at all offended. I believe this whole thing was a misunderstanding. I make roughly $300-400 a month and I can rarely afford hardware upgrades. That's why I try to buy hardware that won't be obsolete in two years.
109 • RE: #108 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-08-21 15:15:39 GMT from Roma, Italy)
I know, linbetwin.
That is why I posted that link. Accusing of consumerism somebody who lives in a country which is notoriously not rich, for buying something worth $59.97, is really the top.
110 • GRML (by |TG|Mateo on 2006-08-21 17:21:37 GMT from Quincy, United States)
Ladislav,
Thanks for spotlighting grml. It has alot of things going for it: tons of applications and tools, several lightweight desktops, and it does not completely break debian compatibility.
A real gem, like Slax.
-Mateo
Number of Comments: 110
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| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Full list of all issues |
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BEERnix
BEERnix was a lightweight Linux live CD based on KNOPPIX.
Status: Discontinued
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