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1 • more Ubuntus (by Douglas on 2006-12-18 13:21:08 GMT from Germany)
Why is satanic Ubuntu not listed yet? LOL
2 • various (by Patrick Useldinger on 2006-12-18 13:37:54 GMT from Luxembourg)
Why is FreeBSD no longer in the "upcoming releases"?
Regarding the "ideal" distro, for me it is still Slackware, as it is the most stable in just about every aspect of the word. But I do hope that Debian passes this politically difficult period and ends up, with the help of Ubuntu no doubt, more dynamic than ever. It deserves it.
3 • Great year-end review (by lefty.crupps on 2006-12-18 13:45:14 GMT from United States)
Thanks for a good year-end review of the major distro happenings. It is interesting to see competition among some distros which I would have considered kind of "dead" due to their use of RPM. After some work with DEB files, I never expected to go back to the Dependency He!l that is RPM. And yet, here these distros are, adding updates and new releases to some old favorites (Fedora, Mandriva), with plans to revitalize the RPM package format even.
Hopefully the competition can last while still building on top of an LSB which enables ISVs to create software for our part of the computing world. One blog reading ( http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 ) about software installation headaches is enough for one day.
Thanks again
4 • RE: 2 various (by ladislav on 2006-12-18 13:48:57 GMT from Taiwan)
Why is FreeBSD no longer in the "upcoming releases"?
Because FreeBSD 6.2 release dates are no longer in the future:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/schedule.html
5 • 2006 - 2007 (by crawancon on 2006-12-18 13:49:26 GMT from United States)
I'd say this has been a dizzy-ing year for distro watchers and maintainers. Back in 2003 and 2004, many of us had a really good handle on the technology that was out there driving the new distros to their higher versions. Now, it seems, just as no one can predict the future, that chaos has ensued; 3-D desktops, same old debian bugs/delays, Novell + M$, binary blobs, etc, etc. what is going on anymore?! At any rate, thanks, Ladislav for providing a santuary, or area of sanity for those of us who still wonder how its all going to end up. The perfect methodology for communicating with machines and other humans. May we all find next year well while taking steps towards improving the world around us.
6 • New Linux User (by Navneeth on 2006-12-18 13:50:36 GMT from India)
I stepped into the world of Linux for the first time in mid-'06 and started with Ubuntu. I never used it regularly for the first few months because of networking problems. But now, as I type from my almost-fully customised Ubuntu, I'm using Linux most of the time, and rarely go to that..that...what's the other OS called? You know, the one with 4 colours...hmm anyway, who cares. :P And during this time, DistroWatch has been a very useful resource to me.
7 • No subject (by enoxs on 2006-12-18 13:55:25 GMT from Belgium)
I think Ubuntu will lead in 2007 like it did in 2006. Ease of use, polished desktop, fast and easy installer, some excellent GUI administration tools make Ubuntu the distribution of choice for someone who came from a windows world. Opensuse 10.2 made good innovations. I think this one will be second or close to first next year. Fedora, apart from a new wallpaper, 3D and Xen is not that much exciting and will give it's place for Debian Etch. A lot of us, Ubuntu users came more and more familiar with the Debian system, which is an excellent choice if we want to do little more on ourself. What some distros learned and some have to learn yet, is that 90% of the computer users on this earth "point and click" to do their work, so ithink, that's the way every distro should go. If something is easy, people appreciate it, make choices and use it!!!
8 • PCLinuxOS (by PCLinuxOS Fanboy on 2006-12-18 13:57:23 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS continues to thrive and attract new users who love its clean look, friendly menu selections, and great reliability. Texstar and team continue making it better and better, and the community support continues to grow stronger. PCLinuxOS Magazine has made its debut, recently and has now produced its 4th issue.
Excitement is in the air as the team works steadily on version .94 / 2007 which will bring in many core updates and new features, such as 3D effects. I can hardly wait to see how much PCLinuxOS continues to advance this coming year!
9 • Linux Mint (by pp on 2006-12-18 13:58:45 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm surprised you didn't mention Linux Mint. It's basically Ubuntu + Non-free multimedia add-ons + a new theme. Very practical for someone who wishes to run ubuntu without having to do all the work for getting plugins etc installed. Sure, not very innovative, but practical and popular..
10 • Ideal distribution (by Anonymous on 2006-12-18 14:02:52 GMT from Canada)
2006 was a great year for me since I found my ideal/perfect distribution : Archlinux. After testing kubuntu, gentoo and suse, I found this gem that easily let have the system that I want.
2 thumb up for Arch !
11 • Ideal Distro? (by Glenn on 2006-12-18 14:04:09 GMT from Canada)
Hi.
I favor Ubuntu and Debian equally. These are my favorites.
I still look at each distro and try our the interesting ones, one of the most intriguing lately is ELIVE which is certainly a bit out of the main stream and breaks aways from the semmingly common ambition of Distros to evolve into a Windows like desktop. I think the fresh ideas and approaches to deal with evolving technology make any distro ephemeral at best.
I have not found the ideal distro yet and pray God I never do. The hunt for it is so much fun. The chase is more fun than the prize to be found at the end.
Just an opinion,
Glenn
12 • 2006; out with the old, in with the new (by Lucho on 2006-12-18 14:14:30 GMT from Brazil)
What a long and crazy year this has been.
2006 was in some ways the "Year of Linux": so many things
happened, both good and bad, in the Linux eco-sphere. Let's
all wish tux an equally fruitful 2007!
For my part, a little voice in the back of my head tells me that
Ubuntu will not continue to be so super-successful. Don't get me
wrong, I love Ubuntu. But it's something of a one-trick pony:
success with new users is easy when you're being compared to
Debian Sarge. Now that Etch is around the corner I foresee some
interesting times (in the chinese sense) for Ubuntu.
Two thumbs up for Etch!!
13 • ARCH! (by DevilotX on 2006-12-18 14:16:25 GMT from United States)
I've attempted to install arch a few time, maybe I'm just horrible at it, but I could never get a full desktop going, I'm excited to try the new office installer, something that can give me the arch experience without all the text editing.
14 • How openSUSE could be #1 (by pp on 2006-12-18 14:23:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Being a regular user of both Ubuntu and openSUSE, I see actually just one substantial area where Ubuntu beats SUSE, and that's the package management and speed of installing new stuff. In SUSE the refreshing of repositories takes several minutes, just to install an app. On the other hand, the configuration tools of SUSE beat Ubuntu any day.
But even if SUSE improves the package manager, Ubuntu will probably still keep ahead due to 2 very simple reasons: one-cd distro (quick to download, give to friends) and free shipping. So it's the easy ACCESS to Ubuntu that gives it the edge. Other distros should learn from that.
The big battle of 2007 will be between these 2 titans, but I have to admit, you never know what's around the corner in the Linux Land. Amazing new stuff comes up every quarter of the year!
15 • my personal experience (by Thomas on 2006-12-18 14:23:56 GMT from United States)
I have tried more than a few distros over the last few years, and see myself as "no longer newbie but far from expert". I think one aspect overlooked is the ease of sound configuration OOTB. Vector Linux was very appealing to me, (Slack-based, awesome choice of window managers, small demand and size) but the trouble it takes to get sound working on any kind of headset (major brands, USB or non-USB) was a major setback.
I have tried both SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS, and settled on PCLinuxOS. I found it slightly easier to get my desktop sound and video working. My best experience in the past was Mandrake 8.1 and 9.1, and I doubt it is a coincidence that PCLinuxOS is based heavily on Mandrake.
With Linux, "YMMV" is so true - Knoppix and Ubuntu, although very popular, have never really worked well for me.
16 • I've settled on Fedora (by rexbinary on 2006-12-18 14:32:37 GMT from United States)
I'm mainly a FreeBSD user, but I have settled on Fedora as my Linux.
I really liked Novell's SUSE at one point, but I could not stomach their sell out to Microsoft.
Ubuntu is very nice. I have Xubuntu in use on an old Macintosh which works quite well, but it has some quirks. But Ubuntu on my main desktop PC intermittently stalls during boot, requiring a hard reset each time. I had this problem with 5.04, 6.06, and 6.10. It is an open bug, and I have added my reports, but it's just too annoying to deal with for me. I have to say again though it is a fine distro.
I had previously tried Fedora Core 5, but kept trying other distros until I installed Fedora Core 6. It works great, looks great, has a great community, and lots of packages are available. It has everything I want, and not much I don't want.
Have a Happy New Year everyone.
17 • Not dead yet (by dthacker on 2006-12-18 14:34:07 GMT from United States)
It's a bit too early to bury Ubuntu. The LoCo team initiative, the regular release schedule, and the inclusive Ubuntu community will continue to drive this distribution at or near the front of the penguin flock. I continue to hope Debian stays healthy, I think they are now the "reference distro" My prediction for the biggest issue of 2007?: Propietary kernel modules.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who celebrate them. To the rest. Peace!
Dave
18 • Slackware (by Gonçalo on 2006-12-18 14:36:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use it exclusively and recommend it.
19 • Best Distro (by Fernando Gracia on 2006-12-18 15:07:21 GMT from United States)
Thanks Distrowatch for being the best linux source for us. During this year I tried 27 distros, some of them wonderfull; however, for some reason, I have to keep looking for differences in the linux world, easy installs, connectivity, eye candy, etc. I am ending this year with three distros installed in my black box. Vector 5.8, PclinuxoS .92 and Puppy 2.02, and I am very Happy with these, easy to install, everything works right out of the box. No problem at all. Ok guys. Merry Christmas, and Thanks to all Linux community for share your experiences at Distrowatch.
20 • Linux Tmxxine (by Lobster on 2006-12-18 15:08:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Happy Christmas
AUSTRUMI is an excellent distro. Most of them are. My own distro based on Puppy is well on target for release in 2008 - only another year or two to go. I hope to bring the voice synthesis back for 0.9 A big thank you to Ladislav and all those making Linux so much fun :)
21 • Arch (by tom on 2006-12-18 15:10:06 GMT from United States)
#10 I Second that. It took me a while to read the install instructions and now I fear they are out of date as there have been substantial updates to the OS.
Yet I have found Arch Linux very up to date and very easy to sys admin.
I would like to take tah Arch Office Install for a drive.....
DevilotX : LOL, the hardest thing with Arch is the up-front reading required.
Once you have an install, however, you have a deep understanding of the OS and sys admin.
As far as Ubuntu, I agree that it is a successful distro because of the encouragement given to new users. Fedora, SUSE, Debian, Slackware, etc and all fine and have advantages/disadvantages but all could learn from the welcoming nature of the Ubutnu forums.
Canonical may be different, but many distro's have a corporate arm. The reality is we live in a corporate world.
And the Ubuntu bashing is amusing. Ubuntu, for better or worse, is bringing Linux to the masses.
If you don't like it, don't use it. Distro bashing somehow seems childish.
22 • No subject (by warpengi on 2006-12-18 15:11:57 GMT from Canada)
I've been using Mandrake for many years now. It gives me the right combination of well integrated desktop, stability, bleeding edge and has a massive package repository. I also get the right combination of nice GUI tools and command line accessibility. Mandriva will be on my production computer for the forseeable future.
I love Arch and the Arch philosophy. Arch makes a very fast desktop OS that is fully user controlled (no bloody bluetooth daemons installed/running by default for ie). I recently tried it on my laptop and failed to get it to install. I'll probably try it again sometime esp. for the beautiful package manager and package builder. Not recommended for servers though.
For everything else I want the stability, reliability and dependability of Debian. I agree, Debian is an institution. Unlike Slackware it is not dependant on a single person. Slackware is great but it needs to open up the development and management process to move ahead. I expect the venerable Slackware to become extinct if they do not move beyond the i386 only architecture and limited software selection/package management. The advent of the cell processor, integration of graphics and x86 processors, 64 bit processing, mobile devices. The i386 instruction set is set to become a smaller subset of the processor needs for the future.
23 • openSuse 10.2 (by vcamm50 on 2006-12-18 15:12:32 GMT from United States)
I did my Linux experimentation for years until last year. Suse became my main distro for polish, ease and Yast's control panel.
Now, it looks its best, Yast has been magically inbued with speed and stability and it works better than any other distro on my laptop.
24 • Sigh... (by 1c3d0g on 2006-12-18 15:17:10 GMT from Aruba)
#1: because we don't need useless trolls like yourself vomiting crap all over this site's forum.
25 • SUSE, Linux in 2006 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-18 15:19:47 GMT from Italy)
"Despite the outcry and even calls for boycotting Novell's products, most Linux users ignored the controversy and went on to download the new product - to find in openSUSE 10.2 a highly polished, innovative and laptop-friendly Linux distribution."
Unless you happen to have an ATI video card. I have a Radeon X1600XT and the best I can get is framebuffer!!!
But worse even, the apt repos seem to have gone forever, and it is not clear at all how to use Smart instead. A severe disappointment overall.
In the meantime the future of my favorite distro, Kanotix, is very uncertain.
A disappointing Linux 2006 for me. Good job (no Pun intended) that 2006 has been for me the year I discovered OS X.
26 • Ideal distro(s) (by Dave on 2006-12-18 15:24:09 GMT from United States)
Hmmm, for anything I administer - my laptop, servers at work or at home I use Fedora Core.
Any workstation I build for family & friends (the spouse) that require little CLI work or add'l interaction outside of codec installation, hardware, & first batch of updates I use Ubuntu.
I have a 5CD set and 1DVD set for FC6 that I can throw on anything at any time. I have a 1CD set for Ubuntu 6.06LTS that I'll use if I know the PC is going to someone I know...
27 • Ideal Distribution (by Fred Morcos at 2006-12-18 15:25:41 GMT from Egypt)
Gentoo Linux on the desktop, Ubuntu Feisty on the laptop... I favor Gentoo but it's too much work (compiling) for a 5 years old laptop...
28 • And BTW (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-18 15:31:16 GMT from Italy)
If you put the Page Hit Ranking Data span at 30 days, OpenSUSE has overtaken Ubuntu. Funny, I knew it would happen, but not so soon.
29 • 2007 (by clem on 2006-12-18 15:33:28 GMT from Sweden)
Hi,
As the founder of Linux Mint I suppose I shouldn't really comment on this, but ahh.. why not after all.
First of all, thanks Ladislav for distrowatch, it's a pleasure to read you every Monday and to come back everyday for updated info on distros, podcasts, newsletters, packages... this my number #1 Linux reference on the net and I find it extremely useful.
This year I've been particularly impressed by Fedora and I really think they have the potential to compete against Ubuntu or SUSE. Their desktop is one of the best, they have a great community, a great ambiance and a team of passionate developers.
I've also been impressed by Mandriva. After they got rid of Gael Duval and everybody thought they were history, they came back with a fantastic release, great innovations and a really nice distro. Not only was I impressed technically by it, but they went back on their previous mistakes by making their release available for download the same day to non-club members. They're still big in France and they still have a decent sized community of users. If only they could change their release cycle (1 year is too long)...
Of course the leaders, Ubuntu and SUSE, should remain in place. Will SUSE replace Ubuntu at the top... I really can't say.. they'll probably have to improve their package management for that to happen, but their desktop is definitely better.
Overall, in 2007, I don't think we'll see much changes in the top5... but I do think the competition will become harsh in the top10-top20. Sabayon will surely gain in popularity, and I believe distributions like Freespire and Ulteo might become much more popular than they are at the moment.
I would also keep a close eye on PC-BSD... and of course Linux Mint :)
Clem.
30 • Bye Bye SUSE, Hello Mint (by Jim Welch on 2006-12-18 15:34:29 GMT from United States)
Due to the M$ deal, I have switched to Mint, after a month of Kubuntu. I needed an OS I could recommend to Joe Sixpack. I will be speaking to my local Kiwanis Club in January: "Is Microsoft Obsolete?" I will be giving away Mint CDs for those who want to try a new OS. I have been programming (embedded) since 1972 and using linux since 1996.
31 • Re #19 (by JQ on 2006-12-18 15:40:28 GMT from United States)
Hey Fernando, I have the same 3 distros left after much testing!
And Merry Christmas to you too.
JQ
32 • More about SUSE (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-18 16:10:36 GMT from Italy)
This forum seems to shed some light about Smart for SUSE 10.2:
http://www.suseforums.net/index.php...entry148595
And this article has an ATI driver how to (definitely not newbie-friendly):
http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60
33 • Ideal Desktop? (by GWJMateo on 2006-12-18 16:14:38 GMT from United States)
Great year end review!
As for my ideal desktop...no, not really.
Ubuntu is fine for getting away from XP, but I find most distros to be redundant: too little difference, too little innovation. Repackaging X distro to have Y DE/WM is not innovation.
Where is the "best of breed" "windows users be damned" distro that brings together all the innovations of open source into one nice neat and tight package?
I'll be rolling my own this year.
34 • Still a "Distro Hopper" (by Ricardo / RR_Fang on 2006-12-18 16:24:32 GMT from Brazil)
Since I started using Linux again this year, I tested at least 10 distributions. Most were really great, and stayed longer on my computer, some were not exactly what I was looking for / not my taste, and I gave up from some distrosbecause i got too much trouble (Gentoo, Dreamlinux).
So, after staying with Ubuntu for a long while, i used Fedora Core 6, and now testing/staying on OpenSUSE 10.2. Still, i am always curious, and like to see the differences, and the good and weak points of each distro. So i may give Debian a try in the future, while i don't find what's my taste, what fits my needs... Maybe i should starting writing reviews in portuguese? :P
That's all, sorry for my bad English... Merry Christmas for everyone, and a great new year
35 • Ubuntu/Debian (by Kav on 2006-12-18 16:29:17 GMT from United States)
<< This in itself, combined with curiosity about the technical merits of this remarkable project, will likely entice many Ubuntu users into trying Debian "proper">>
You just perfectly described me a year and a half ago. After first switching to Linux and trying Ubuntu 2 years ago I felt exactly that about 6 months into Ubuntu. I've been running Debian Sid ever since and loveing it. I still recommend Ubuntu to the curious, but the pure Debian packages are just plane better. I can mold a Debian installation into any type of server I desire in little more time than the time it takes to download the packages.
Distrowatch got me started and is still one of my favorit news sites. Thank you, and rock on.
36 • Merry Christmas (by Darren Neufeldt on 2006-12-18 16:39:13 GMT from Canada)
Thank you Ladislav for having this website. I come here daily to get all my distro news.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year,
from my family, to yours.
37 • ideal distro? (by ray carter at 2006-12-18 16:40:11 GMT from United States)
2006 was an interesting year for me. In the spring, I installed a Userful four seat station (runs RHEL) at the local library. Later I upgraded the four stand alone internet computers from MDK to Kubuntu 6.06, along with content filtering via Dan's Guardian and session limits via timeoutd. At home, I tried a number of the current distros and realized that not much really changed for me. I have most certainly NOT found an ideal Linux distro. I continue to run Gentoo (fully optimized) on my VIA C3 based mini-itx, while I run Kubuntu for most uses and rely on Elive for 'older' boxes - I've found that it runs quite nicely on a P166 with only 64MB or RAM.
So - I guess I'm still looking for the holy grail.
38 • In the summer of 2006 I found BLAG (by KimTjik on 2006-12-18 16:47:20 GMT from Sweden)
Because of circumstances I'm a newcomer to Linux; I started to search and test different distros in 2005.
As stated in the subject I've become very impressed of the fedora based BLAG. It has a small but very engages community, especially since the developer himself always seems to be ready to give support.
Still I keep some space open on my drives to be able to test new distros. That's the real fun part of computing for me and I hope the diversity will be intact for the years coming. It looks like there is space enough for everyone and every taste.
39 • Arch Linux 0.8 (by L on 2006-12-18 16:49:28 GMT from Sweden)
Arch Linux 0.8 should be coming out this week! Testing ISOs are available, and the version string has already changed in the latest /etc/motd.
40 • Debian-- my ideal desktop (by Darkman on 2006-12-18 16:50:07 GMT from United States)
I love Debian. No, it isn't the easiest distro to install, but it's much easier than it was and it's getting easier all the time. Besides, there's the Social Contract and I would encourage anyone who is not familiar with it to read it:
www.debian.org/social_contract
I began with Mandrake four years ago and along the way, I've sampled just about everything. There are many fine distros and while I use Debian exclusively, I have nothing but respect and praise for people who devote their time and energies to free software, regardless of the distro.
Merry Christmas, Ladislav. I look forward to reading a new edition of Distrowatch every Monday morning and I hope I will have the privilege of doing so for many years to come. You render a great service to everyone in the free software community.
41 • No subject (by phil on 2006-12-18 16:52:19 GMT from Germany)
ubuntu will stay at the top, because suse is too conservative!
fedora is good (and modern) too, but I hate their network-configuration-tool... it will be the worst gui you can find, if you try every single distro listed at distrowatch.com ;-)
42 • Arch Linux (by AB52 on 2006-12-18 17:08:48 GMT from Australia)
I'm typing this post on an Arch box running KDE, fully set up for desktop use. (all done by myself!)
The key is to buy a notepad and write down all the steps, as well as add your own comments as to why you need to do them. You'll end up with your own custom guide that allows you to set up your own Arch box in under an hour. (length depends on speed of your Internet connection).
I've also got another Arch box that uses a Hauppauge PVR-150 and Microsoft MCE USB remote. Works perfectly using the respective ivtv and LIRC drivers. I can capture and playback without a problem.
I went with Arch because of speed, package manager and the way the small Arch community keeps up with the latest releases of components. (I prefer it over Debian as its more bleeding edge, but not unstable...May encounter an occasional bug, but the system doesn't bomb out on you).
I haven't installed it on my ThinkPad yet, might give that a shot later.
Arch isn't suppose to be for the beginner...Its really aimed for the more technically oriented who have the patience and the persistance to see learning this distro as a journey in itself.
If you prefer everything done for you, you shouldn't bother with Arch, and go with something else that is made for such a target audience.
43 • No subject (by Joaquim Gil, Portugal on 2006-12-18 17:10:57 GMT from Portugal)
Thanks a lot Ladislav, for maintaining this fine website. This is my #1 place for Linux information.
I wish you a very Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
44 • OpenSuse (by Erik Sorenson on 2006-12-18 17:29:23 GMT from Canada)
I am pleased to see that the tin hat brigade at FOSS, including Perens, were unsuccessful at slowing down adoption of OpenSuse. Maybe they can talk to each other next time, emphasize their self-importance, leave us out of the loop, and let the rest of the world get on with life.
Oh, and your black-list of Vista? Nobody cares, folks. Besides, it really is a little presumptuous to think that you should argue freedom of choice, and then recommend limiting our choices.
45 • Ideal distro (by JeffS on 2006-12-18 17:40:34 GMT from United States)
For the basics, and speed and stability, and cleanliness of design, it's Slackware. I adore Slackware for those qualities.
However, while Slackware does the basics really well (basic video, sound, etc), some of the desktop niceties are problematic, such as 3d acceleration, installing various packages (not part of the standard repo, or not in LinuxPackages.net), and nice GUI config tools (not that the editing config files is hard, it's just that GUI config tools are nice to have.
So, for a more complete desktop experience, my best experience has been PCLinuxOS.
Being based originally on Mandrake 9.1, it features some Mandrake niceties like the Mandrake Control Center (PCLinuxOS Control Center). It also features AptForRPM, with Synaptic, with a 5000+ strong repo. It also features good speed and it's low on resources (at least compared to heavier distros like Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora, etc). It's also great looking. It's also up to date, and stable. Finally, it features full multi-media codecs, and spectacular hardware auto-detection.
So for me, the ultimate Linux desktop distro is PCLinuxOS, and it's the first distro I'd recommend to any newbie, and to any experienced Linux user who wants a easy, trouble free, full featured, beautiful Linux desktop.
For me,
46 • Ladislav, Regarding SimplyMEPIS & PCLinuxOS (by devnet on 2006-12-18 17:44:20 GMT from United States)
"Whether they continue to thrive in 2007 will largely depend on their adaptability, but chances are that at least one of them won't be around this time next year."
Do you know something we don't? :)
I know PCLinuxOS will be around next year...is there some kind of warning sign we're missing about the other distro?
47 • #1- Satanic Ubuntu (by Ringwraith on 2006-12-18 17:57:19 GMT from United States)
I think that violates a trademark that Mr. Gates has on any Satanic or demonic references.
48 • No subject (by BuKToP on 2006-12-18 18:01:15 GMT from Bulgaria)
Does anybody still use it?
You mean Slackware?
Ah... You're kidding, man ;]
A lots of people still use it and will continue to use it. Not old at all, as 11.0 was released two months ago and still most of the packages are up-to-date :]
And there is nothing more stable and solid. Yeah, hard to configure. But we want Linux here. Not shiny, transparent configure tools, that look and act like M$ ;]
If someone wants to learn the real Linux... Slackware is the distro!
49 • RE: # 40 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-18 18:09:49 GMT from Italy)
Incredibly similar experience here. You narrated my Linux experience :-)
50 • SimplyMEPIS or PCLinuxOS (by Snowman on 2006-12-18 18:18:06 GMT from United States)
Once should disappear in the next year, but which?
Having used both in the past couple years, I would guess Mepis would be the one to go. PCLinuxOS has an easier to use interface for all configurations levels.
Also Mepis has changed to Ubuntu base in the past year and I see it becoming more of an *untu clone in the next year.
PCLinuxOS has been steadily gaining a bigger user base and with more programmers like Texstar, Thac and Ocilent1 keeping PCLOS up to date with the latest greatest features, this distro cannot fail.
51 • ideal distro ??? (by nvc on 2006-12-18 18:19:32 GMT from United States)
I never found an ideal distro in a year+ of testing and learning linux and all the software surrounding it. It's been an interesting ride, I learned many things but in the end i have to say there's more to push me away from linux then attract me to linux.
There are those that would disagree with me and my opinions, and they are very vocal about it, not understanding that their needs are different then others. What linux currently offers does not meet my needs and I'll leave it at that.
And I hope this is not taken as a negative. I wish nothing but the best to those that believe and put in an honest days work to improving linux and the software built around it. I learned a lot and appreciate more today what they do then 2 years ago.
Great distrowatch ladislav and I look forward to 2007 with your site to stay informed with the linux/bsd communities.
52 • favourite distro (by Mika Hack on 2006-12-18 18:22:34 GMT from Italy)
I really love Blag and Kanotix......
Blag make me feel Pure........Kanotix.....what future?
Sidux.....we will try it!
I use Ubuntu......but it's like make love for money....I don't feel home!
It's my feeling that Linux is loosing a big opportunity.....hope I am wrong!
53 • Kororaa deserves a look (by KJC517 on 2006-12-18 18:31:37 GMT from United States)
I have always wanted to try Gentoo, but found the traditional gentoo installation too long and somewhat difficult (graphical installer is a nice touch, but it does not yet seem ready).
Anyone wanting to try Gentoo but couldn't (for various reasons) should give Kororaa a look. I was very happy with it.
54 • PCLinuxOS (by Texstar on 2006-12-18 18:32:24 GMT from United States)
Well I plan on being around this time next year. I'm having way too much fun!
55 • No more distro hopping here (by UZ64 on 2006-12-18 18:44:11 GMT from United States)
For a while now, I've settled on Zenwalk, and have no plans to change. With a measly 256 megs of memory and being cursed into using expensive RDRAM that's not worth the price, I currently don't have much choice. Although even some of the heaviest distros including Ubuntu impress me with their performance when compared to the sluggish and virtual memory-hungry WinXP SP2, I prefer the lightest and fastest distro possible to take advantage of the memory I do have.
Only problem with Zenwalk: its repositories, while containing quite a bit of good stuff that I often use, sometimes don't have certain packages that I want/need. For that reason, I've been forced into compiling... and considering I likely wouldn't even know how to do so yet if it wasn't for Zenwalk, that's not exactly a bad thing. :)
I still tend to keep up-to-date on my favorite distros, and keep them stored on my hard drive for future use. Not wanting to risk my setup, the only new distros I try out for the most part are live ones, and the most impressive one I've seen lately has been Linux Mint. Ubuntu, plus "restricted" codecs, plus an attractive theme definitely makes for a nice distro. It would be nice if it was available in a standard (non-live) install version as well, like the other Ubuntus.
Of course, there are exceptions, and every once in a while a new distro is released that just begs for an installation. For those I have some free unpartitioned space left over on my drive.
56 • Thanks (by Davey on 2006-12-18 18:48:01 GMT from United States)
for the year-end roundup. It's one of the better Linux surveys I've come across. And thanks for the incredible service you do for the community year-round, Ladislav.
That said, I'm not sure why you were so harsh with Mepis and PCLOS. Mepis was my long-time main OS for quite a while. Then the repository problems happened and I tried PCLOS, and have remained with it since, while still checking in on Mepis. Both of these distros appear livelier than you indicate. PCLOS users are looking forward to a .94 release shortly that promises to combine the cutting edge with the stability, ease of use, and reliability that is the distro's special niche. The current release is getting a little elderly, but it's still the one I recommend to seriious new users.
Happy New Year to all!
57 • Frugalware , speedy and quite different (by Marius on 2006-12-18 18:56:56 GMT from Romania)
If you like Slackware speed and simplicity but like to have a nice package manager ( pacman from Arch ) try Frugalware. It's not like most distros out there , and it's certainly fast and simple. I find it a lot easier and more polished then Arch but it still lacks some things when compared to more user friendly distros. A live CD and GUI installer and package manager are planned though.
If you aren't afraid of the console and want speed and simplicity try Frugalware , you might just like it. Oh , by the way , the comunity is great so drop by #frugalware and say hi.
58 • Distro-junkies Unite!!! (by Sonicfrog on 2006-12-18 19:04:08 GMT from United States)
First, I want to thank Ladislav for Distrowatch. The Weekly Udates gives me a reason to like Mondays!
In 2000, I was taking a Cisco sponsored coarse on networking and internet management. I never did get my CCNA, but, by learning how to configure Cisco routers, I got my first exposure to Unix OS's. I had heard of this mysterious thing called Linux and since it was similar to Unix, I thought I'd give it a whirl. I went to the local Borders book store and bought "Linux For Dummies", which included Red Hat 7.0 on CD. I heard Linux could be hard to install, and the installer on 7.0 was text based, but even so I managed to get it running the second time out. WOW that was cool. It had KDE and was very easy to navigate. Then, when I read that it had a nicer installer (read "GUI" interface) I went out and bought Mandrake 8.1, followed by Suse 8.0. Then I discovered LinuxISO.com and that is when I officially became addicted. And it was painful, because I was still using a dial up connection, so I would have to wait a day for a new distro to download. I was sooo proud when I managed to have six different OS's running on one computer.
I am in the same happy world that #11 occupies. I too don't think there will ever be a "perfect" distro for me. I loved Mandrakes old installer, and though some have issues with it, I am very fond of Suse's "yast" because it puts all of the system config tools in one spot. I love the "out of the box" usability of Ubuntu, but was never fond of the name.
So, what do I use now?
Debian Etch on the laptop. I have had all manner of linuxes on the Pavilion, but I keep coming back to good old Debian proper. It has been a competition between Suse, Ubuntu, and Debian, but Debian wins out over the other two because it has less bloat, and, since I like to tinker with things, I get to get my hands dirty to get it working the way I want.
I have 64 Studio installed on my home PC. I do a bit of audio work and the distro uses a tuned kernel for multimedia applications to decrease latency and maximize efficiency. It is also quite usable for everyday surfing / email. This disro is also a Debian derivative. Why do I like the Debs so much? Apt-Get via Synaptic - need I say more.
Distro's on the "want to try" list?
Mint.- Wonder if the compiz stuff will work on my laptop with this distro. I couldn't quite get it to work with Ubuntu proper.
Sabayon. - Have tried Gentoo but was never able to get it running, though that was more an installation time issue. VLOS worked OK, but it was still a young distro when I tried it.
Open Suse10.2. - Does any distro look better? Now if they can just get the package management thing fixed up.
E-Live / Austumi. - Have dabbled with E-Live. What Fun!!! I am so looking forward to using the Enlightnment Desktop when it matures.
Ooops. This post is longer than I wanted. Oh well. I tend to ramble when I'm talking about something I love.
59 • my ideal Distro? (by raskolnikov on 2006-12-18 19:22:47 GMT from Mexico)
Slackware GNU/Linux, of course. I have been using it since 9.0 and never looked back. I've tried some other, like Kororaa's XGL live-cd and SuSE 10.1 just to check XGL/compiz desktop, but a Slackware rock-solid system is always available in my office's and home's computers, as well as in my laptop ("slacktop" I like to call it). Also, it's always handy to have a Slax live-cd at reach, just in case something goes wrong or to test compatibility on a linuxless computer ;)
Try Slackware if you haven't. It's awesome.
60 • PCLinuxOS "Coming to get ya" (by Sal on 2006-12-18 19:25:31 GMT from United States)
"but chances are that at least one of them won't be around this time next year."
LOL, Ladislav, rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. LOL
PCLinuxOS development continues at a faster pace than ever before. Wait till you see our next release, better make room at the top of the list!
Best Regards, Sal
61 • distros in 2006 (by DW Reader on 2006-12-18 19:27:40 GMT from New Zealand)
Apart from the Ubuntu Dapper updating glitches which should never have happened (and which had me on the phone trying to help my elderly father fix his broken box long distance--I don't agree that Ubuntu is really newbie friendly) I'm now happy with Edgy on my notebook and desktop.
Although VMware has its own agenda, I've found it a great toy for trying new distros as soon as they appear without risking major system rebuilds if an installation goes haywire. Hopefully they will update vmware-tools soon.
Sabayon was a fizzer on my notebook--no ATI acceleration.
Beryl is a great feature for Linux and a trump card against M$--even though it is under development.
The new wave of BSDs have my interest. PCBSD is great and the recent wave of live BSD disks (I think Olive was the best) show lots of promise.
62 • RE: # 52 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-18 19:35:28 GMT from Italy)
"I use Ubuntu......but it's like make love for money....I don't feel home!"
LOL! Good one.
63 • Damn Small Linux (by Joseph on 2006-12-18 19:42:54 GMT from United States)
No mention of DSL so far. I use it on some ancient hardware (200 MhZ CPU, 64 MB RAM, 1GB hard drive). It's runs great on that old thing. Use that machine just for web surfing and a little .pdf reading.
Have not found a distro for my main box however. I'm still looking for a distro that can get my wireless card to work out of the box. It is an oddball card though, so my expectations are low.
I think the biggest thing that will expand desktop Linux this next year (or more) is getting video drivers and wireless drivers (for laptops and desktops) open sourced. When those two things fall into place, Linux will really take off.
64 • the Linux to watch in 2007 (by Peter Head on 2006-12-18 19:44:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have tried the latest versions of openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu on my Sony PCG-GRT816S laptop with Pentium 4, 2.8GHzprocessor and 512MB memory. The fan on this laptop is noisier than I'd like (though the 1400x1050 screen is fabulous) but becomes unacceptably loud when running the above apart from K/Ubuntu. However, I have a memory problem with the latter, exhibited in OpenOffice by the insert footnote dialogue box remaining as a ghost image on screen after it is closed! To my amazement, Ulteo runs as quietly as WIndows XP and has no memory hiccups - and all this on its first alpha release. A lot of thought certainly seems to have been given to efficient memory usage and minimal resource usage. I am impressed and will be staying with this distro as its matures.
Peter Head
Edinburgh
65 • I will continue to use OpenSuSE because (by Holden on 2006-12-18 20:12:55 GMT from United States)
I've been using Linux from 1996 and have experimented with many different distros over the years. The first distribution that I found that was [relatively] easy to install and configure was SuSE 5.0. I have continued to try other distros and have been very impressed with many of them (Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, DSL, Kubuntu, Knoppix and other "life-saving" Live distros among others), but I keep coming back to SuSE because it has consistantly been the best distro for my needs. I bought two copies of every SuSE version from 6.0 on, one copy for myself and one copy for my company. Sure, I could have just bought one copy, but I liked the work that SuSE was doing and the small cost of the packaged distros was my small contribution to the Linux Revolution. With the advent of OpenSuSE, it is now easy for anyone to be able to try OpenSuSE. The ability to inexpensively buy a set of OpenSuSE install CDs or a DVD, with its wealth of included software, along with good support for many winmodems, is a huge plus for those unfortunate users who are restricted to using a modem for Internet access. I have converted many of my friends, relatives, and coworkers to Linux using SuSE Linux. I will continue to use OpenSuSE, for the time being, because it has been consistently the easiest to install and easiest to use of the various distros I have tested.
One of Linux' great strengths is its variety and diversity and I certainly hope that the intense competition continues for many years to come. At the same time, it is also beneficial if there are a couple of "leading" distros that new users can use to get started using Linux.
Over the years, there have been very positive things that have happened with SuSE and some events that have given me concern. Although I've used Novell's server OSes professionally, I had some misgivings about Novell's purchase of SuSE. My initial misgivings about Novell were alieviated when Novell announced OpenSuSE and made YAST a GPL utility. Since I, along with Linus himself, am a KDE partisan, I wasn't happy to see Gnome become the default window manager, but KDE is still strongly supported, so that hasn't been a problem for me. The Novell-Microsoft "treaty" does give me pause, but I'm not going to rush to judgement and will wait to see how this plays out. Even if it turns out to have negative results for Novell, there is a good chance that OpenSuSE could continue as a project independent of Novell.
With the excellent guides to "hacking" OpenSuSE from the Jem Matzan, which make it easy for new users to include the various codecs and apps that make Linux just as usable on the Internet and with multimedia as the Mac or Vindows, the great majority of users are better served by Linux than the other OS contenders.
http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60/
The hundreds of pages of excellent documentation for OpenSuSE that can be downloaded from the Internet also are a great advantage in using OpenSuSE.
http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/opensuse-102-documentations/
Thanks, Ladislav, for the invaluable resource that DistroWatch is. I visit it daily and it is a great guide to what's new in the everchanging world of Linux distributions.
66 • Happy holidays to all (by mark south on 2006-12-18 20:15:42 GMT from Switzerland)
Ladislav, thanks for providing entertainment all through the year and for giving us all at least one thing to like about Mondays. To you and all your readers, happy holidays, and I'll be looking forward to the first issue of 2007.
Oh, and to you guys and gals and creatures on the Vector Linux team, well done on finally getting it all put together and out the door in time for the festive season.
Best wishes all round,
Mark
67 • Slackware (by tdjokic on 2006-12-18 20:18:27 GMT from Serbia and Montenegro)
"remember that you can always run it in the form of Zenwalk Linux or VectorLinux, two excellent Slackware variants worth looking into." ... and Stux too!
As allways - nice DWW!
68 • Ideal? (by Jesse on 2006-12-18 20:21:38 GMT from Canada)
I can't say I've ever found an ideal OS, let alone a Linux one.
However, rather than distro hoping, I prefer to pick a
single distro (in my case, Fedora) and stick with it. Knowing
one flavor of Linux _very_ well makes more sense to
me than knowing a little about each one.
Fedora isn't perfect, but it gets the job done and, I think,
has an excellent community behind it.
69 • #64: P4 2.8 Ghz laptop? (by herman on 2006-12-18 20:25:10 GMT from Europe)
Are you really using a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz laptop?
Oh my.
How about you try to underclock it; it might make it less hot and your fan will take it easier too. Did anybody overclock your laptop or something? 2.8 Ghz?
Frankly, I believe Intel should be prosecuted for
a) producing monsters such as P4, and
b) allowing them to be put in laptops. ;)
I don't have a Linux laptop, and the reason is I am not certain how Linux and the hardware will interact when power management, battery life, automatic underclocking when idle, and fan speed are concerned.
It's simply cunfusing. I don't want to run Linux on a laptop if it may turn it into a vacuum cleaner.
The first good < $1000 laptop that runs a preinstalled major Linux distro with everything just working out of the box, power saving working, and good battery life, will sell by the thousands.
Don't you just see it, HP, Dell, etc.? You blind?
70 • No subject (by Anonymous at 2006-12-18 20:25:52 GMT from United States)
The Linux User with the P166 and 64mb of ram having problems with Ubuntu/Mint is not with Ubuntu/Mint, it is with the the combination of the 2.6 kernal with "G" and "K". If it will run it will take 20+ minutes on a live CD (most of that with a black screen) and you will wait minutes for firefox to open when it does load. There needs to be a "X" option of some kind. Sometimes it will still try to use a higher resolution than one that is entered in F3 leaving a scan rate problem with the monitor if it displays at all. If you find one that does work it will omit a install option (better have a 3GB+ HD if it does). Then if you find one that does install correctly with a boot loader it will not have a update capability that works with "X" or whatever.
It is not just the the P1 and MMX user that is running into this it is the P2, K6 users with 128mb and under with the new releases. You hear me Zenwalk, PCLinux, Dream and Dyne:Bolic. The new OliveBSD live CD works. It doesn't look good for me install anything new unless it is a 2Ghz machine or over with 512mb of memory. But I will give Austrumi and Arch Office one last try for this year (I'll give up a old install of Xandros). DSL 2.0 had a stumble but 3.0 is fine as is the fine work by Puppy even though I have to use another OS to set the partions on a install most of the time (old zenwalk 2) and upgrades are dicey.
71 • Different distros for different hardware... (by Caraibes on 2006-12-18 20:43:41 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Funny how Sonicfrog (post #58) wrote about the CCNA, I had about the same experience !
As of me, my fav'distros, and my different PC's in 2006, here's what I have to say :
I have been using mostly Blag in my desktops, no major problem. I also have a kid's PC with Edubuntu Dapper, just fine. I had a fun (and fast) time while experimenting with Zenwalk, a wonderfull distro, but I finally don't like Xfce too much, as it tends to bug after a while : I am mostly a Gnome guy !
Experimenting with Mandriva Gnome (06 & 07) was interesting, as it is a good distro, enen though dealing with urpmi isn't as nice as apt-get...
PS: a word for the PCLinuxOS team, I love your distro, but it has problem with the spanish layout keyboard, and I wish it would offer other languages easier...
For my laptop, Ubuntu Dapper is the king of kings, no competition. It is better than Edgy, and better than all the rest. I finally came back from Xubuntu to Ubuntu, because Gnome is simply the best DE around !
I use Puppy on my usb pendrive, and as a live-cd... Dyne is fun as well, and DSL is a great tool for older older hardware...
So I would say, 2006 was Blag on the desktop, and Ubuntu on the laptop...
I am a bit less of a distro-hopper, but still, I enjoy trying new stuff... So I plan on test-driving distros here and there... Less than before...
72 • Ubuntu #1 (by dizzy on 2006-12-18 20:50:57 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu with a few KDE apps is the best thing going right now. I can't see using anything else for the next year.
73 • Re: How openSUSE could be #1 (by Anonymous on 2006-12-18 20:58:00 GMT from Germany)
> Ubuntu will probably still keep ahead due to 2 very simple reasons: one-cd distro (quick to download, give to friends) and free shipping.
Ubuntu's free shipping has been already considerable cut back: the newest version is not available for free and we will have to see which future version if any will be available that widely/agressively again.
74 • Re: SUSE, Linux in 2006 (by Anonymous on 2006-12-18 21:00:23 GMT from Germany)
> Unless you happen to have an ATI video card. I have a Radeon X1600XT and the best I can get is framebuffer!!!
The latest proprietary binary ATI driver supports X.org 7.2 which means not more or less graphic cards are supported than with any other distribution.
75 • Re: No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-12-18 21:04:12 GMT from Germany)
> ubuntu will stay at the top, because suse is too conservative!
It's exactly vice versa: openSUSE 10.2 is bleeding edge while edgy only delivered cold coffee or didn't include the interesting stuff (desktop search, 3D effects) by default.
76 • Distro Preferences (by Soloact on 2006-12-18 21:04:42 GMT from United States)
Currently running on various computers around this place:
Knoppix 5.0.1 (laptop)
PCLOS
Xpresslinux (I discovered it on DW's waiting list 2 weeks ago)
Currently experimenting with:
Sabayon64 (would like to see Mandriva64-type of "everything works out of the box" as far as add-ons and plug-ins go)
Linux Mint (would like to see it with both KDE as well as Gnome, instead of the bouncing back and forth)
Elive (takes gettng used to, but it's fun)
Now many will tell me that, with a little configuring or work, I could get everything I wanted that I'd like to see. I would point out that my opinions are from an end user point of view. There are many people that I know, who are fed up with MS, and would like everything to "just work" in the ways that they are familiar with using. Yes, I'll agree that there are some out there, and I applaud those who are working on them, but there is still a way to go in order to convince them to make the switch, or even a partial switch (dual or multi-boot).
My 2 cents has now been said.
Ladislav, congratulations on a great year!
77 • Gentoo is about... (by Omari on 2006-12-18 21:06:27 GMT from United States)
...configurability, and transparency, and the ability to easily control all the workings of one's computer.
Most Gentoo users, and certainly devs, are steeped in this approach. No GUI config tools without having a CLI equivalent. Contrast YaST, which does not have full-featured package installation from the command line. No making changes to a user's config without asking first. No opaque configuration layers (contrast SUSE Config) that put distance between the user and the configuration of the machine.
Gentoo devs might be going in their own directions but as long as they are steeped in the Gentoo tradition, Gentoo will thrive.
and BTW, many Gentoo complaints come from people who, given the ability to break their system with bizarre settings, did just that. Stick with sane settings and Gentoo is quite stable and reliable. Yes, sometimes updates break things, but that's true with any distro--see Ubuntu and SUSE's recent troubles. Updating is tricky with any distro, not just Gentoo.
78 • Distro hopper no more (by Akuna on 2006-12-18 21:11:00 GMT from France)
Zenwalk was my choice distro of 2006 & it is not likely to change in 2007...
Simple, clean, clear, beautiful, bleeding edge & fast!
79 • Elive (by eric on 2006-12-18 21:19:21 GMT from United States)
As a linux bachelor this year, I dated a few of the popular distros out there. Elive and I met in September and we have been inseperable since. I finally popped the question and we are now 'engaged' (check enlightenment site for that pun) and will be married forever come the new year. Never in my linux experience have I met such a quick, intelligent, beautiful desktop. Elive is really trim with no bloat, great hardware detection, and looks a lot like her mom Debian just easier to get along with and better looking. With all the important multimedia, office, internet, graphics and several fun games, Elive has it all. Any program you miss from your Ex-distros is just an apt-get away. Good luck everyone finding your own distro, I hope you are happy as Elive and I.
-Holiday cheers
Eric
80 • Mepis vs PCLinuxOS (by Buster on 2006-12-18 21:23:14 GMT from Canada)
Both of these will survive because they are based on different major systems - Debian/Ubuntu/apt-get and Mandriva/rpm, and both have an important niche. If anything threatens Mepis, it's Linux Mint! Both are Ubuntu/Debian based, and have similar philosophies.
81 • Which Distro will be top of the heap in 2007 (by Bill Kenney on 2006-12-18 21:24:09 GMT from United States)
I continue to stay with Mandriva as I have
been since release 8.1. Version 2007 is the
best and cleanest yet.
Ubuntu clearly has shown the right direction
but lacks in execution. Could there be a
Gobuntu ( Google + Ubuntu )? Could be and if
that happens, and Vista falls on its face,
all of Linux will get a boost.
82 • OpenSUSE 10.2 is so wonderful... (by s2s on 2006-12-18 21:24:18 GMT from Australia)
...That I had to kill my whole laptop's Windows install, just to pass the install process! :-(
I couldn't dual boot as OpenSUSE 10.2's installer said something about a "error 1012" and refused to install OpenSUSE. Only when I trashed everything, did it agree to install. I don't remember OpenSUSE 10.0 being like that, but I know 10.1 did the same thing!
As far as I'm concerned, OpenSUSE is a bloated bit of distro. It has too much crap installed by default. (Ubuntu is ranking 2nd with slightly less crap I don't need). Beagle seems like the worst offender of hogging system resources...Makes OpenSUSE run like a bloated cow.
I'm sorry, I'm getting irritated at Ubuntu and OpenSUSE. They don't do what I want. (custom install and they both remind me of Windows! The very OS I want to get away from!)
At best, Ubuntu is really nothing more than an oversimplified variant of Debian. After trying both Debian "Etch" and Ubuntu 6.10, I can see why some folks say: Ubuntu is an african phrase for 'can't install Debian'
While OpenSUSE is that slow semi-trailer for retards.
I never realised how dumb the world really is, after trying both Ubuntu and OpenSUSE.
83 • 2006 (by Scott Wilson on 2006-12-18 21:25:57 GMT from United States)
I work for a nationwide computer service company here in the USA. I use a couple of guide lines for linux:
"Out of the box" and "what will I run into in the field"
2006 saw my first real professional dealings with linux.
Most of my customers are very small businesses to the home user. Many of the users, are "dumb" The amount of virus and spyware call I do are about 90% of my service calls. many "because a pop up add said to download this to protect my computer" of all the distros I think Ubuntu is of the best, for a business, I only suggest RHEL or NSEL. Remember most do not have a manned IT staff. One customer had a Gentoo based Server that was the IT persons playtoy, (left because he was asked to or by his own accord) No documentation, once the updates were done everything broke, The customer almost switched to Windows server, because they could not find any one to maintain the server, needless to say they spent the money for a subscbition and are now using RHEL, I pop in once amonth to do a little admin chores
As for my personal choice, last weekend it went like this: Ubuntu-> Fedora->Debian->tried open suse, what no ftp download? err back to Ubutnu->Kubuntu, arts error cpu overload? errr using knoppix now. till I decide on what to install.
84 • Linux Flavour (by parkash on 2006-12-18 21:50:32 GMT from Germany)
At first, I tried RedHat 8.0 on my PIII Laptop. And found myself totally lost, couldn't get to install my modem and everything was quite a mess. Then I went on to Gentoo 1.4 (or so) and found myself delightfully addicted!!
I was a Gentoo user for about 3 years, until I discovered Ubuntu... At first I tried it and found it horribly easy to use --which I hated.
I don't know exactly what happened since. But I've used Gentoo, VLOS, (K)Ubuntu, Crux, Rubyx, SourceMage, SabayonLinux, Kororaa, K12LTSP, suse, OpenSuSe, Mandrake, Mandriva, Kanotix, Xandros (for 30 minutes or so), PC-BSD, Solaris, Lunar, and Fedora Core --I think they're all that I've used.
And so far, I was happy only with three of them:
Gentoo (not anymore)
Ubuntu (for about a year)
Fedora Core 6 (it simply works great with my AMD64)
I'm actually very happy with Fedora, despite it doesn't work as smoothly as Ubuntu with laptops. But I think it's more proffessional ;) Anyway, I won't post here my whole point of view :p.
Nevertheless, I should say that I haven't yet found the distro with which I'll stick to.
I still want to try:
Debian Etch
Pardus
DreamLinux
Fedora Core 7
And will be trying until something really good comes into my hands.
I think in 12 months, the top distro will be Fedora Core or a new one... However, I don't beleive that Ubuntu will drop under 3rd place...
85 • My Ideal Distribution (by WhoDo on 2006-12-18 21:57:41 GMT from Australia)
Yes, since you asked, I have found my ideal distribution - Puppy Linux!
It runs on almost anything, is the fastest distro around, takes only 70Mb to download and includes every piece of software the average user would require.
Furthermore, it has a friendly online community, great support and a squillion ways to be customised to individual tastes. Not only that, but the software available in the repos covers almost every taste, and installation is a single click exercise.
What more could anyone want? Oh yeah, it will run with as little as 32Mb (using a swap partition) or 64Mb neat. In 128Mb the entire OS will load in RAM and you'll need a seatbelt to drive it!
As you can see, I love my Puppy! A pity you didn't include it in your 2006 Feature Distributions list - after all, you DID award the developer a donation during the year!
Cheers
86 • By the way (by parkash on 2006-12-18 22:05:20 GMT from Germany)
I just wanted to say that I'm happy there's still work going on with RPM... Because I hate it.
In the ideal distro, installing a package is just EASY. :)
Happy Holidays to all!!
David.
87 • No subject (by Anonymous at 2006-12-18 22:10:31 GMT from Italy)
Ciao....da dove?
Io dalla prov di macerata...
confermo quanto detto......Ubuntu....uhhmmm....quanto prima lo mollo!
ciao!
88 • Favourite Distros (by vic on 2006-12-18 22:19:14 GMT from Germany)
Back in 1998, I started with Caldera, shortly followed by SuSE 6.x, then Debian 2.1. At that time, Linux was definitely not ready for the desktop, so I continued testing distros (from Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSE again). It wasn't until 2004 when I finally found a distro that was perfectly adopted for the 08/15 desktop use - Kanotix.
Now that Kanotix isn't continuing with Debian Sid, I switched to Sidux, and again, it's best for my personal use. Fully Debian compliant, 20000+ packages in the repos, nice scripts, and the only distro that made my rt2500 working with WPA - neither Ubuntu, nor Sabayon (which is great anyway) could do this.
But I have other favourites: Arch Linux for example. I don't have it installed on any of my systems atm, but some time ago I tried 0.7, it's just so fancy and fast, free of all this bloated crap which I do not need. I may give it a second try when 0.8 final is out - I love the Arch philosophy! Another one is Sabayon, which I only use as a LiveCD to test bleeding-edge software and...to show off ;)
I haven't ever tried openSuSE (my last SuSE was 8.2), Fedora (did try Red Hat with 2.2 kernel years ago) or Mandriva (the former Mandrake was the only distro that killed my data on my disks while partitioning), but maybe I shall give them a try in the not-so-far future.
Gentoo ain't no alternative, as the article says: "too much work" - it is indeed! Neither is Ubuntu - it "uses" Debian without being compatible to it - that's a major drawback in my opinion.
Oh...I forgot one: Musix. Very nice for all those music creation freaks, though a bit buggy and unstable - anyway, a great idea.
So, that's must be it. I'm looking forward to 2007, and wish all of you a happy new year.
Vic
89 • Distro of choice (by tomcat on 2006-12-18 22:31:09 GMT from Germany)
I have settled on Fedora and Debian. They are not perfect but they get the work done for me.
90 • Mepis, PCLinuxOS, or what? (by Risto on 2006-12-18 22:34:16 GMT from Finland)
As a new Windows-to-Linux convert I must say that "recent converts" NEED a distro that feels like Windows: GUI install and configuration, no command line "spells".
My choices were PCLOS "Junior" (old 400 MHz PIII) and MEPIS (my digiTV box, good hardware recognition), Both "just work" and with KDE, both are suitable "windows copies". AND the most important: no command line magic so far!
My next test CD is the new VectorLinux, if I manage the XFCE desktop.
Thank you Ladislav for having this website, lots of information for the newcomers.
91 • Distros of Choice (by tmb_ayebe on 2006-12-18 22:36:11 GMT from Ireland)
I use Fedora Core 6 on my laptop, because it works the best out of all the ones I tried (Ubuntu Edgy doesn't even boot).
I use Ubuntu Edgy on my desktop for the same reason plus ease of use with automatix2.
I also like DSL but have yet to find a use for it.
I also have Ulteo installed, as I am intrigued to see what will happen when the nest update comes.
Thanks!
92 • SymphonyOS (by Name on 2006-12-18 22:41:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Could somebody tell me if it uses Knoppix hardware detection?
93 • distro (by Casey on 2006-12-18 23:24:29 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu is the distro of choice. After trying others, tweaking, fiddling, it occurs to me that ubuntu not only feels faster, but is easier, better maintained, better community and slicker than the others.
I still don't understand the attraction to open suse. Every time I try their 'latest', I feel like I'm driving a car in 10 feet of mud compared to ubuntu.
Props to Sabayon though. If there were another choice, I think that would be it, but I prefer deb to emerge.
94 • PCLOS (by rijelkentaurus on 2006-12-18 23:33:43 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS is my distro of choice, followed a close second by Mepis. I can't see either folding in the next year. There's not a lot that can't be accomplished with either of them. I am running PCLOS both on my workstation at home and on the IBM laptop, and WPA2 was a snap to setup, far easier than Windows, IMO. It's also great for a server, although I prefer RHEL because of its 7 year life cycle. Set it and forget it whenever you can.
95 • Ideal Distro (by Roman on 2006-12-18 23:34:09 GMT from Israel)
Hi, all
Theoretically the best OS is OpenBSD. In parctice, however, to make it a good desktop is not always feasible. For example, I can't use it at home since there is no Cable Modem driver for my internet connection.
To me the question of ideal distro has always been if it could work well with the hardware. Since Knoppix 3.6 of mid 2004 no distro (and no propritery alternative) was able to compete (particularly as to video playback) on my Celeron 1300, 256 RAM + 32 Video RAM. I used the script from a later version of Knoppix to make a proper hd installation. However inability to install new packages prevents it from being ideal. BLAG 5003 (based on Fedora) is the one that performs great.
As to my laptop (in an answer to #69) Dell Inspiron 1300 with Celeron 1,4 GHz, 256 RAM minus 8 MB Video RAM, the only distro that worked not just good but exceedingly great was Mandriva 2007. It can perform as well with 3D desktop effects (albeit with performance level set to "Fast"). I doubt that any other OS could be used as successfully on this laptop model.
96 • Distros (by Tazix on 2006-12-18 23:45:32 GMT from United States)
I run SLED 10 beta on my box that I don't change often (Was Mandrake 10 before that)... Xubuntu Edgy Eft on my box that I try out different distros often on, and Xubuntu Dapper Drake on my old Celery 500 Laptop.
I wasn't overly impressed with Fedora Core 6 (Fedora has some wonky ways of doing things, IMO). With around 30 distros tried in the last 2 years, I definitely prefer Debian based ones.
For me, Xubuntu is almost a perfect mix of funtionality vs. resources used. (Not including having to install the standard non-free media stuff, dvd decryption, getting network shares working in Thunar, etc.).
97 • PCLOS (by Joe on 2006-12-18 23:47:03 GMT from United States)
Tried PCLOS early this year and have settled down with it ever since. I try other distros to see what is up and I have yet to find one that works better or is more robust. I have installed it on three family members' PC's and none of them miss windows.
Elive is very fun and shows a great deal of promise. It is beautiful and simple and simply screams. Highly recommend giving it a try.
98 • 2006 Distros (by Peter Besenbruch on 2006-12-18 23:49:48 GMT from United States)
2006 saw me finally standardizing on a single distro. Then a couple of things happened.
I removed Libranet from the last machine it was on, and replaced it with Kanotix. Now my five working machines were all running Kanotix. Starting this December it looks like I replaced one dead distribution with another.
Then I ordered a laptop with Linux installed, Fedora 5. Everything works on that laptop, so Fedora's staying, even if I'm not enamored of YUM.
The rest of the machines may convert to Sidux, if it gets off the ground. That said, the three desktops are all running straight Debian kernels, and they work fine. The two non-Fedora Laptops are running Sidux kernels, and they work fine.
Five computers have Debian Testing in common. Yes, I may have installed Kanotix or Libranet, but the software mainly comes from Debian. As long as Debian sticks around, I will have up to date software.
My predictions for next year: The Fedora laptop now has Firefox 2 coming directly from Mozilla, and Flash 9 from Adobe. Next year, I'll add OpenOffice 2.1 to the list.
I have been trying to decide what to do about Debian Etch. When it's released, do I stick with it, or do I keep my repositories keyed into "Testing?" It will probably be the latter. I will probably continue grabbing Firefox from Mozilla, and wait for OpenOffice to hit Sid before checking it out.
I may check out other distros, but Debian's repositories and package management keep me in the Debian camp.
99 • Happy Christmas to all (by Daniel Mery on 2006-12-18 23:57:09 GMT from Venezuela)
Hi linux's user,
Happy Christmas to all. I wish the best in this New Year 2007 !!!
2007 is the LINUX's YEAR !!!!!!
Take care and be happy
Daniel
Long life to Ubuntu and FreeBSD !!!!! and all Linux distros
100 • Mepis and PCLOS - both are my ideal distro's... (by Anonymous on 2006-12-19 00:14:19 GMT from United States)
I dual boot between Mepis and PCLOS, with Mepis just edging out PCLOS as my favorite. Still both distro's are a joy to use and have built up a great community around them. One of them disappearing next year?... not a chance!!
101 • AnonymOS (by anon on 2006-12-19 00:18:32 GMT from United States)
AnonymOS was a flash of brilliance.
Since then more tools & how to guides have emerged for building your own special purpose Live OS. Wonderful!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
102 • Year end distro wrap-up (by gfranken on 2006-12-19 00:38:31 GMT from United States)
I think you've characterized the distro situation fairly well. Insofar as PCLinuxOS goes, I would guess that it will be around this time next year. Imminent is the version .94 release, as Texstar, the prime mover behind PCLinuxOS commented on December 3rd regarding progress toward a .94 release:
"We've updated to gcc 4.4.1 and a fresh glibc which will allow us to get a lot more applications in the repository that we couldn't provide with the old code base such as Last.fm, Flash 9 and other goodies. We've now have over 5,500 packages in our new repository. There are still quite a few applications missing that need to be recompiled and updated. We've converted to a xdg menu system which should work a lot better for dynamic updating as well as user editing. We have kde 3.5.5 and updated Gnome 2.16 working well. We have xgl, aixgl, beryl, compiz, compiz extras and emerald all working nicely with an updated xorg server. This should bring us up to date with the other distros.
We still need to finish up the packages, test them against synaptic updating and installing. We need to get mklivecd up and running with updated hwdetection. We need to test the installer. We need to finalize the graphics from mypclos beautification project and get those into the bootsplash, login and other places. We're trying very hard to get this done as fast as possible. Im not going to put a release date out because I don't want to be forced to release something that may not complete just because of a date."
103 • RE: 102 ear end distro wrap-up (by ladislav on 2006-12-19 01:20:51 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, it seems that I was wrong about PCLinuxOS and I am happy to see that its development continues. I recently booted into my 0.93a installation and was surprised to find that there were no updates - Texstar used to provide them fast, especially the major applications. That's why I thought that PCLinuxOS was losing its steam. I am also no longer on its dev mailing list - I couldn't take the posts and opinions of the list's moderator (not sure if he is still around or not), so I unsubscribed some time ago.
104 • Ideal distro (by Limadito on 2006-12-19 02:00:47 GMT from Argentina)
Debian Testing is perfect (at least for me).
105 • Re: 29 - release cycle (by johncoom on 2006-12-19 02:16:42 GMT from Australia)
clem from Sweden wrote in reference to Mandriva
"If only they could change their release cycle (1 year is too long)..."
My question is FOR WHOM is it to long - not for me,
personally I hate the 6 mo release cycles of most distros
I believe you will find lots of people (especially newbies) do not want short
release cycles - Why ? well its like "oh no not again, could they not have
fixed that before, and oh no here we go new release bugs all over again"
Many people "just want to use the god damn thing" and do not want to be
forced to re-install or do an upgrade every 6mo just because the Geeks want it.
YES YES I know you will say "but you do not HAVE TO " you can stay with
what you have - BUT that is not the point - to many it seems that when a new
release comes out every 6 mo, that perhaps the developers did not produce
the last version correctly, after all IF it was so fantastic when it was released ?
Then why do they have to release another version so quickly ?
Remember Linux distros have long gone past the "for geeks only" stage
Now it has become the "I just want to use the god damn thing" type
people who are taking up the use of Linux and IMHO are the future
NOW do not take things out of context - I appreciate many of the things
that the Geek types are continually adding to Linux but those with a "it
works for me" and I just do not care about Newbies (let them use Win)
Seem to have "lost the plot" and it seems they are not in touch with reality
Now IMHO
Short release cycles for major Distro versions are counter-productive
by all means have an interim issues for the Geeks (like MDV cooker)
I like one year release cycle because I do not get my Desktop messed up
each and every time the WiZ kids say "here we go it is upgrade time again"
:-(
PS: as ex-MDK/MDV user I was one in the Club that asked for longer cycles
106 • Pardus 2007 is Wonderful! (by aximus on 2006-12-19 03:04:26 GMT from Turkey)
I've installed Pardus 2007 an hour ago, and I can say that it is one of the most beatiful Linuxes out there. I've been an Ubuntu user for the last 2 years, and did not ever think of replacing it, but this time I feel pretty close for the change. People reported that even the beta and RC releases of Pardus 2007 was very stable, easy to install and to use; and I can confirm the latter 2 now, and I am sure it is stable as I expect (Pardus 1.0 was also very very stable).
I couldn't download it from the main server (because of overload), but you can get it pretty quick at:
live cd: ftp://ftp.linux.org.tr/pub/pardus/kurulan/2007
install cd: ftp://ftp.linux.org.tr/pub/pardus/kurulan/2007/2007
BTW, it can play any media file, it has java, flash, etc. out-of-the-box; it supports AIGLX (but you need to change one line in xorg.conf).
Definitely, one of the greatest distros I've seen upto date, 2 thumbs up!
107 • PCLinuxOS for me (by BrianP on 2006-12-19 03:12:08 GMT from United States)
I started the year with Ubuntu and changed to PCLinuxOS around July and am glad that I did......it just works for everything that I wanted to do........it is a great desktop OS and really beats Ubuntu in my opinion!!!
--brian
108 • Pardus Rocks (by Kensai on 2006-12-19 03:15:36 GMT from Puerto Rico)
I am a Gentoo, FreeBSD user, who was frustrated by how all distros suck and gentoo just sucks less, At least FreeBSD is the better OS not windows for me I hate it :D. But I come to realize that pardus is such a great polish linus distro, I made the change already, people please give PArdus a spin, it is worth it. It just feels professional.
109 • wow merry xmas!!! (by warpengi on 2006-12-19 03:37:15 GMT from Canada)
Amazing how these comments are for the most part all about what people love about their distro/s of choice and there has been a minimum of slagging off the rest. Must be the time of year. I hope we can continue this through the next year:-) :-)
Merry xmas & happy new year Ladislav and to all distrowatch readers
110 • Arch is my favorite (by Ben on 2006-12-19 03:38:44 GMT from United States)
For me, the base install coupled with the best package manager out there (IMHO) makes it really easy to get my system set up exactly the way I want it without the bloat of some other distros ;)
111 • Pardus English support (by IMQ on 2006-12-19 03:42:42 GMT from United States)
Does the final release of Pardus support English after installation?
I tested the 2007 RC but couldn't play with it much after booting into Turkish desktop, even though the installation was in English.
If there's a way to change it to English, then I will give it another shot.
Thanks.
112 • PCLOS (by Natalie on 2006-12-19 03:49:44 GMT from United States)
Why do I use PCLOS? NO RELEASE CYCLES! I'm still using .92 from my first install. With updates, I have a .93 system. I do not want to reinstall every few months. I have a life. Install Ubuntu and add all the missing stuff every few months? No thanks. I liked PCLOS so much that I figured $20.00 donated to the small dedicated staff of Texstar was more effective than lots more to a bigger corp or pay-for-OS. I do not like RPM. I started with Debian and still love the Debian distros, and I try all of them. Texstar does all the work and the simple fact is, with Synaptic, who cares if it's RPM or DEB? It always works with PCLOS and it just works! It will be around next year. I wish Texstar would go public so I could buy some stock!
113 • Ultima Linux website (by S1acker on 2006-12-19 04:27:10 GMT from Australia)
Sorta off-topic but does anyone know what has happened to the Ultima Linux website? I think its been offline for a few days now...
114 • libranet linux (by arya on 2006-12-19 04:30:58 GMT from India)
now libranet.com is also gone
what a sad end of this highly successful and lovable linux DISTRO
can someone in community give a helping hand to this distro
everyday some new distro is coming on distrowatch but if somebody can give a helping hand to this distro, i think new distro would be as successful as UBUNTU .
115 • Mepis for Me (by CallMeAl on 2006-12-19 04:55:06 GMT from New Zealand)
SimplyMEPIS is very reliable, very flexible and a solid workhorse. It is a distribution has all aspects covered well in my opinion. It is current, easy to update, reasonably quick, and presents nicely. It does all that small business and home users could want. It is not an accident that it continues to rank highly on Distrowatch.
116 • RE: # 114 libranet linux (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-19 05:14:34 GMT from Italy)
You can still find some Libranet users here:
http://www.linuxagora.com/vbforum/
117 • Re: Feature + road maps (by johncoom on 2006-12-19 06:07:16 GMT from Australia)
Ladislav
Re: SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS and your comment
"On the negative side, both projects lack clear roadmaps"
Have you ever considered that this is why they may succeed ?
Many of the other Major Distros are continually having version issue problems JUST because they try to stick religiously to their "road map"
Perhaps we might say that pure Debian is the exception ? I don't know.
Of course I think that many of the problems get compounded by short
release time tables as well. (as previously commented on above)
May be its because of the peer pressure for a "road map" & "sticking" to it,
They have problems ? Just think about how many times with new versions
of the major distros you (Ladislav) have had to report about various problems
they have had at each issue? Some times it is one issue after another. Yes
some times they are minor things, but they usually could have been avoided
Perhaps Texstars attitude is better "it will be ready when it is ready"
and remember it is a full time hobby for him - and not a teenage fad
This way people get a rock solid distro, that will last for a significant while.
I'm happy to wait til its ready, please no fixed "roadmap = always problems"
118 • RE: 117 Re: Feature + road maps (by ladislav on 2006-12-19 06:45:17 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, maybe the word "roadmap" is a bit too binding and therefore disliked by some developers, fair enough. So let's call it something else, like "milestone", or "development objective". Something that will tell users that the project continues to evolve, that the developer has clear ideas where he or she wants to take the it. At the very least, it should have a continuously updated changelog so that we know that the dev hasn't suddenly disappeared. Maybe it's just me, but I dislike the feeling that my preferred distro might be abandoned (and you only need to filter out the "discontinued" distributions on the search page to see that this is far from being an uncommon scenario).
119 • Ideal distro (by linbetwin on 2006-12-19 07:19:22 GMT from Romania)
I still can't use Linux on a daily basis because of poor accessibility (I need a functional, lean, bug-free screen magnifier that won't eat hundreds of MB of RAM). Ubuntu is getting closer to becoming an accessible distro, but there's still a ways to go.
I agree with post # 14. For me, the best distro would be Debian-based (maybe Ubuntu) with openSUSE/Mandriva configuration tools. If I were an openSUSE/Mandriva developer I would only concentrate on the improvement of the package management tools for the next release. Leave the desktop as it is, it's perfectly fine, but package management is a disaster. I know YaST is much more than Synaptic, but Synaptic does one thing well, while YaST takes 20 minutes to update repositories and run suseconfig scripts. Everytime you are installing something in openSUSE you feel like you are installing the distro all over again.
Mandriva is also nice, but package management is just as horrible. And I find ia ora simply ugly.
Ubuntu is the best when it comes to ease of installation, package management, community/documentation and accessibility, but it lacks good configuration tools and quality control.
All distros I have tried lack quality control (haven't tried Debian yet. Etch looks tempting, but GNOME 2.14 is less accessible than Edgy's 2.16). All distros seem to be in perpetual beta. It's gotten to the point that I find Linux less stable and buggier than Windows.
Ladislav, I enjoyed your review of Linux distros in 2006. Can I ask you what distros you use for work and pleasure? What are your personal favorites? What works best for you?
It's nice to see people commenting on their favorite distributions, instead of flaming each other over political/religious issues.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Ladislav and all the people who help him maintain this website! And to everybody visiting this site. I'm looking forward to visiting your DistroWatch just as often next year.
120 • RE: 119 Ideal distro (by ladislav on 2006-12-19 07:53:24 GMT from Taiwan)
Can I ask you what distros you use for work and pleasure? What are your personal favorites? What works best for you?
I am typing this on Mandriva 2007, which I have been using since I started my personal rotation programme to make me switch my main distro every six months. Before that I used Kubuntu. I haven't decided yet on which distro will replace Mandriva in 3 - 4 months.
My personal favourite is Debian, the unstable branch. Despite the name, its reasonably stable and if you update once a week, you'll be running a very modern Linux distro. Things do break from time to time, especially during a post-release update bang, but APT has some fantastic safeguards that one can use to prevent any major disaster.
As for which distro works best for me, I honestly can't think of any of the major ones that wouldn't do the job I need it to do. In the past I disliked distributions that used the RPM package format, but nowadays this is no longer a problem it was 5 years ago. Still, I have to agree with you that any of the "advanced" RPM-based package management utilities, like urpmi, yum or yast (I have no experience with smart) often feel like poor cousins compared to Debian's apt.
121 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-12-19 08:04:47 GMT from Sweden)
I change distro once a month for pure fun, right now I have the time to do so.
I like Debian systems the best, I have been in linux since '99, started with Slackware (nice distro) then to RPM (mandrake) then to JBL (Norwegian distro that only made one release), then I found Debian through Libranet.
Re: # 114
Libranet was a beautiful distro, and the distro that brought me from RPM to DEB, but then it went commercial, and it died. As I understand the son of the founder is now in control of the distro and he has no intention of releasing the source code of the tools used in Libranet.(I think his not even in the linux and computer world)
Re: #1
I thought it was a joke when I read it the first time, but then I saw it on sourceforge, http://parker1.co.uk/satanic/
You have a valid question if its a valid project.
Re: #105
Your not forced to update your system!
122 • No subject (by esters on 2006-12-19 08:44:45 GMT from Latvia)
Late 2005 i got my first Linux distro, it was ubuntu 5.04. I remember i had problems installing such simple things like xine and alsa, because i was too Windowsed. Later i switched to 5.10, played with it for a while, but since i was a gamer at that time i didn't had time for Linux. Now this year, since July i 90% migrated to Linux, currently Debian. Why Debian? Well i was a bit fed up with the ready-to-run desktop and other pre-configured stuff(Ubuntu), i wanted to do something on my own, so i got a debian-etch-testing netinstall , and with the help of one guy from IRC i started to set up my own desktop. Since July i have tested Arch Linux, Zenwalk , Slackware (unsuccsessfully) . Arch Linux impressed me , because it was simple,optimized and had the latest software, but the firefox crashes and some wierd things with fontconfs keeped me away. But still it impressed me. Recently i gave a try to Zenwalk, i wanted to check out something based on slackware, so i installed pretty simple, because i'm used to text-keyboard install not GUI-based because they are really slow and unneeded if you want to set your system really quick.Well Zenwalk was interesting so i tried out the netpkg managment, did a system upgrade and after that Xorg crashed :> so that was my experience.
As for next year, i think ubuntu will stay at the top, because Ubuntu IS the newbie distro, not a Linux, but a newbie distro. Also i think many Ubuntu users will try Debian because they would like something different (maybe the netinst).
As for other distros , i don't really know, from RPM based i have tried only Fedora Core. So i'm not too competent to share my thoughts on the future, but i share my vision of a Linux newbie. Thanks for providing Distrowatch and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year , cheers from Latvia.
123 • Still looking for my ideal distro (by Brian Ballard on 2006-12-19 09:59:43 GMT from Australia)
Although I have been playing around with RedHat, Fedora 3,4,5 and Ubuntu, which I am currently using with a bit of frustration.
I want the codecs that my web brouser says I should install but are not available, seems AMD 64 bit & via K8 chipsets are unloved by programmers or Ubuntu.
I left Fedora because of my search for the codecs and plugins to play music & dvd's when travelling. Also many of the streaming media uses the freely (as in no cost) downloaded players.
OOo is beaut (lots more than satisfactory). The Gimp appears to exceed my current and future needs. (I must read the manual). I have converted my wife because of the more robust nature of the OS and that Tetris appears almost like the original.
I would love a polished package that would interface with GPS & download sone of the maritime charts for boating navigation.
At present I am happy, but will be VERY happy when one of the major distros start to provide a means to download and automatically install codecs and plugins so everything works!
Go Linux!!
God Bless & seasons greetings
Brian
124 • Follow-up after a week-end of testing... (by Caraibes on 2006-12-19 10:23:15 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Ok, guys, let me give you a little follow-up on my week-end of "Main Distros testing" :
Since I had little issues with Blag on my main desktop, I decided to try FC6, MDV 2007, OpenSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu Edgy, SimplyMepis 6.0 :
My desktop is a self-assembled with canibalized part PC (amd Athlon XP 2600+, 768 megs of ram, ATI Radeon 9250, Biostar motherboard (with Via chipset), C-Media sound-card, Lifeview Flyvideo 2000 sound card, Dell LCD monitor, DVD-rom. DVD-burner... etc). I also have a BenQ scanner and a Canon Pixma iP1500 printer.
Blag was on this machine for most of 2006. (issues were scanner would not scan, and printing was buggy from OOo)
OpenSUSE 10.2 : can't install Canon printer (can't get libpng10)... Firefox can't install extensions & themes. Apart from that, it was nice.
Ubuntu Edgy : Sound conflict between TVcard & sound card, can't use Canon printer. Apart from that, very nice.
SimplyMepis 6.0 : can't print with Canon printer, bad image with TVcard...
Fedora Core 6 : same issue that I had on Blag 50k : there's a bug when printing from OOo, it only prints half page (on my Canon printer)... Nice distro, but Blag makes Fedora so much better than Fedora itself (great work, Jebba, great work !!!)
Mandriva One 2007 Gnome : Everything works... Install was very fast, but tweaking it to my needs took like 3 hours... Scanner works, Canon printer works fine with OOo, Tvcard works, just a bit of funny issues, when some installed apps like XMMS & Streamtuner don't have any icons nor entry menu... URPMI is not the fastest, but it seems to work...
SO I am going to experiment with keeping Mandriva 2007 on my main box, to see how it runs in the long term... Keep in mind this test was done on a very tricky setup, as most other (easier) PC's are doing great with any distro, like Blag, Zenwalk, Ubuntu...
The tricks of my main box are the Canon printer (I keep it because the cartridges are so easy to refill...), the BenQ scanner, the TVcard...
Disclaimer : for laptop, Ubuntu Dapper all the way.
As of the release cycle, I wish they were doing something like one major release per year, and a reliable update system during the year... 6 months is too fast, it is only for distro-hoppers like me :)
125 • dis (by hans on 2006-12-19 11:13:50 GMT from Belgium)
Well I got away from suse, let's say for "political" reasons. And I discovered BLAG, I really like this distro. It is also the first linux for 3 other guys I'm sharing a house with and it seems to work.
For my laptop (x86_64) I'm waiting for Debian.
Hans
126 • Pioneer Test Drive (by Ariszló on 2006-12-19 11:51:29 GMT from Hungary)
Test_drive_Pioneer_i386_1124_05.iso may be broken but they do not provide md5sums. When I boot the cd, it goes for a while displaying a nice Kubuntu logo but then it keeps repeating this:
User not know to the underlying authentication module
I wanted to ask for the md5sums at their forum but it is down. Then I went to http://www.technalign.com/contact/contact.php , which scared me away with its gibberish.
Has anybody been able to use Pioneer Test Drive?
127 • Pioneer Free (by Ariszló on 2006-12-19 12:24:12 GMT from Hungary)
Contrary to Pioneer Test Drive, I could boot into Pioneer Free but it did not impress me. It is just Kubuntu with Thunar but without the feeling of Humanity to Others.
Go Ubi, go!
128 • Favorite distro (by dbrion on 2006-12-19 15:14:48 GMT from France)
Mandriva 2006 is my favourite distro, out of habit and because I added (by compiling) everything I wanted (one can do that with any distro which has a gcc; if one is not happy with 386 code, gcc, correctly configured and made, can generate binaries for [4, 6]86 CPU, as well as Atmel 8 bits cPUS, ARMS and Mingw [ I have 7 gccs, simply activated with a PATH....]
Explaining that Slackware (RE 22) is bad because it only supports i386 is a wrong reason.. I know that here are many outfashioned 386s: you can burn them (it might pollute), put them in your garden (is that so beautiful?) or have them working under Linux (or DOS). As CPUs are getting cheaper and more numerous, having distrs which keep concerned with what will get of them within 3/5 years is not ridiculous at all....=> If I were 10 years younger, I would prefer Slackware based distrs (or DSL).
Mandriva 2007 is still, as far as I VMplayed it(in october 2006, for necessity), a joke : no urpmi (=> no rpmdrake=> I was very glad to configure and compile), no syntax coloring for vi (I had a paleontologic editor). As my friends had updated from Mandriva 2006, these 2 bugs could not be reproduced, so I installed it twice-installing kept being easy-). The urpmi change was confirmed in this DWW... As Mandriva tries to reproduce Microsoft Windows behavior, that is not astonishing: the delay cult leads, in a less extend, to something like Y2k Bug (I mean Microsoft Windows 2000: somepeople could have _that_ running for 45 mn without a crash: it gave a tremendous impulse to Linux...=>I never bought Windows 2000 and I VMplay under XP...). I am pessimistic for their future if Mandriva releases (under users' mindless pressure) twice a year . { I could have a PCMCIA card running (without systematic crash; under Mandrake 9.1, it was not recognised and did no harm; XP recognised it; where is progress??) with a Mandriva 2006 in May 2006. Before, it crashed on a distribution I bought in dec. 2005... ). => I suppose Linuxes are not Beaujolais Nouveau, and I will retry it ...next year (re VMplaying it, then buying and installing if everything is OK)...
RE 61
There is a problem with VMware screens: you can test realistically many linuxes (and legal Microsoft Windows, to know whether cross compilers work without dual booting : XP starts slower than KDE...) but I use it as a filter (one cannot chose between ~300 distributions, even if one shuns distrs which have no exotic keyboard support during install...). It is a simulation program, and I feel it might sometimes lead to unrealistic conclusions in screen support : many people are happy with Zenwalk, in a real installation, but Vmplayer screens did not seem to be supported in oct 2006 with Zenwalk [ and perhaps with some Mandriva testing beta releases]. Any way, as VMplayer went free, it was a great tool to verify a Linux distr was not too complicated, and had anything you wanted (a gcc, native 1D keyboard support during (and after ) install . I do not ask for much (MICROSOFT DOS had functional equivalents in the early 1990s....) and anything the releaser claimed .{ I think of Pardus:111}..
I hope using VMplayer for a final choice is better than a random choice of 10 distrs among 100, but it might be not the optimal way.
At the end of this year, I found Mandriva 2006 a little slightly superior to Windows XP [ enhanced by Cygwin and Mingw, of course](but it is not(yet ?) a sufficient reason to have only one OS).
129 • Distros (by octathlon on 2006-12-19 15:33:42 GMT from United States)
My story is boring, but here it is anyway: I've tried several distros and wound up with Ubuntu on my desktop, later switching to using the KDE environment on it most of the time. I'm one of those now ready to try Debian Etch when it comes out.
I haven't had the courage to try repartitioning my laptop drive so I started using Puppy Linux on it. It runs completely in RAM, so it's not slow like most Live CDs are, in fact programs open instantaneously! I like it.
For my mother (age 71) I tried both PCLOS and SimplyMepis on my old computer (PIII 700MHz), and wound up going with Mepis because it immediately worked with her modem and for its choice of packages, plus being based on Ubuntu. She loves it and has no problems other than it won't print in color to her Canon printer.
I look forward to reading Distrowatch every week - Thanks, Ladislav and Happy Holidays!
130 • Look out for Caos and Conary based systems.... (by superbnerb on 2006-12-19 16:32:40 GMT from Canada)
If these two distros get their act together, they could be next year's Sabayon.
personally today i use Sabayon but I like these two distros to step up and be a contender next year.
131 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-12-19 16:59:49 GMT from United States)
RE: 118
ladislav,
Pertaining to PCLinuxOS. If you were actually invovlved in the community (maybe not the mailing list, but at least read the forums) you would know that it's still very much under development so there would be no reason as a user who is active in the community to worry. You also seem to not recongize the demographic that PCLinuxOS is reaching. A large number of the visits that come to my page (http://theloveoflinux.com/hwdb) are from windows 98 systems. I'm not understanding how someone coming from windows 98 would be worried at all about if there window wobbles or not. I'm don't think that's a proper way to define whether or not a distro will be around in a year because different distros attract different users and some maybe into stability and functionality instead of the unstable latest greatest.
132 • Reply to post #3 (by Finalzone at 2006-12-19 17:35:35 GMT from Canada)
"After some work with DEB files, I never expected to go back to the Dependency He!l that is RPM. "
I think you don't understand how dependency hell works. The fact is you are comparing apt-get with RPM. It is like comparing DKPG (the true Debian package manager ) with yum. Try to use DPKG, you will have the same dependency hell. Hope that enlightens others.
133 • Quick spins on Kuliax 6.0 and Pardus 2007 final... (by IMQ on 2006-12-19 18:19:42 GMT from United States)
Downloaded and tested both Kuliax and Pardus on 2 PCs today. Both installed successfully although I had use the 2nd option from the list to get Pardus to complete the installation. I am also glad that Pardus 2007 does support English after the initial installation. There were also some improvements in the installation process, I think.
Both distros look and feel solid and clean. I am typing this from the freshly installed Pardus 2007 via wireless connection on a RT2500-based PCI card. The network manager does not provide option for WPA so I have to use the little script to get the wireless up and running. Maybe there is a way to do it but I haven't have time to tinker.
Kuliax is based on Debian but I am not sure which branch they are based on because the sources.list have all three (stable, testing, unstable) repositories. However, none of them were enabled by default. I chose to enable the testing branch.
As far as having a main distro is concerned, I don't have any. I ran a good number of distros on heavily partitioned HD. My PCs are home to PCLinuxOS, Debian, SimplyMEPIS, U/Kubuntu, SabayonLinux, Mandriva, openSUSE, BLAG, CentOS, Slackware, Vector, Zenwalk, etc. I frequently alternate these distros since they all basically have what I needed. I won't have problem should one of these ceases to exist.
I would have a difficult time picking a favorite one since I like so many for slightly different reasons. If I must pick one, PCLinuxOS would be the one by s small margin.
A quick comment on SabayonLinux: very nice LiveCD. However I don't think I would use it as my main distro for a simple fact it's taken too long to compile. Small package is acceptable but a big one like OpenOffice.org takes forever on a fairly decent machine: AMD AthlonXP 2500+ with 1GB RAM and 256-MB Radeon Pro. The worst part about compiling is that they don't always work, wasting hrs for nothing. So it only for playing I want to compile something, just let it run and go do something else, and hopefully, it complete when I get back.
Anyway, enough mumbling.
M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S
and
H A P P Y N E W Y E A R!
everyone.
PS: Looking forward to 2007 editions of DistroWatch weekly news.
134 • Re. #124 (by sermat on 2006-12-19 18:27:32 GMT from Canada)
Hi Caraibes: Re. your post #124: I also confirm your finding, that Mandriva was the only distro (out of all major ones) that worked 100% on my system, especially detecting and configuring my Konica-Minolta printer, that no other distro even detected.
135 • Favorite Distro (by The_Dadu on 2006-12-19 18:46:00 GMT from United States)
PCLOS is on four of my seven machines. Of the other three, one is an Apple ][ with 128k (big apple!) and dual floppies. The other two are running DSL due to being PII's with limited memory.
As others have commented, PCLOS just works. Could there be improvements - of course! And Texstar and the Ripper Gang seem to be hard at work making them. Using SynapticForRPM was brilliant; since moving to PCLOS last Feb., I haven't had any of the problems I used to encounter with Mandriva. While I have tried several of the 'buntu's, the lack of codecs and a Control panel bug me, as does the inability to log into root. Make it easy for me - not try to change the way I work. Too SAP for this guy.
I have tried liveCD's from many other suppliers and just end up back with my favorite pair, PCLOS on newer equipment and DSL on older gear (although I am following DSL-not development).
136 • No subject (by Ulan on 2006-12-19 18:56:19 GMT from United States)
I'm only looking at Linux once in a while because I have to use it for a few programs that are only available for UNIX/Linux at work.
I'm one of the few more casual Linux users who cannot say much about Ubuntu, because it consistently failed to install a working version on my laptop. It's been doing that for a few releases by now, and I'm a bit fed up of having to use a CD for starting my computer. It's obviously not for me.
I was looking at Sabayon because I wanted to see Beryl at least once, and with Sabayon it worked on the first startup without problems (other than the usual bugs). I have to say that I liked Sabayon quite a lot, even though it doesn't look that polished yet. Great work!
In the end, I'll probably stick with Fedora Core 6. It's not exactly exciting, but it works. The fact that it resembles RHEL, which I have to use in different work environments, is the icing on the cake.
Don't forget the power of familiarity. Easy to use desktop environments are the draw of PCLinuxOS and Mepis, excellent support and documentation is Ubuntu's ace, and for me, FC6 has its similarity to RHEL as a plus. Let's see how Novell/Suse will play their familiarity card if MS starts to push them.
137 • I will stay with Ubuntu/Kubuntu (by RobNyc on 2006-12-19 19:19:05 GMT from United States)
I will continue faithful here
138 • Distros (by K9Kool on 2006-12-19 19:28:10 GMT from United States)
Everyone has their favorite distro, and a lot is said both good and bad about the others. As a person who drudges out a living on Windows systems I install and use all of the Linux distros I can for personal work and fun, I want to thank all of the people who's hard work and dedication put them out there for me to enjoy freely.
139 • distro found (by Antinous Kalisto on 2006-12-19 19:49:55 GMT from United States)
I've found my distro, Slackware. No matter how many others I try, I always come back to it. These days its Slackware or FreeBSD. Something about the two is just more UNIX-ish then anything else out there.
As for our 2007 king, Fedora will rise again. Ubuntwho? :)
140 • Note to all Ubuntu users! (by SlippJigg on 2006-12-20 01:23:06 GMT from United States)
I have installed and tried many disto's of linux since 1998. I started using linux as my main os for a little over a year, so i am not a linux expert (by no means). I am a computer user, and have been since the c64 days. I enjoy computers as a hobby, but endless configuration & distro hopping is not for me. If i constantly wanted to configure/fix/upgrade/patch/etc i would have stayed with windows! One of the best things linux has going for it is awesome package managers like synaptic, anyone can update their system/packages and install new stoftware very easy.
I think if a lot of Ubuntu users downloaded the PCLinuxOS iso and gave it a try, 8 out of 10 would switch to PCLOS.
There is 2 main groups of linux users
1. the hardcore users (the L33T) - live & breathe terminal + code, don't mind compiling source, configuring via terminal, the DesiRe to learn how it all works (and how it works together), + everything average pc users use.
2. average computer users - surf web, email, burn cd/dvd, office apps, photo apps, etc - don't what to compile source and learn how it all works (just wants it to Work!)
More average computer users can make the switch from windows or mac today to linux with a very small learing curve. I set my 65 year relative up with PCLOS on his machine, and he loves it. Why...because it works! I took me 20 minutes to show him what apps to use for what task - and i haven't had any questions at all from him since.
I would suggest PCLinuxOS to anyone wanting to switch from windows, or from most other distro (including Ubuntu) that i have tried.
Long live PCLinuxOS
SlippJigg
141 • Open Suse 10.2 (by Luis jacquez on 2006-12-20 01:42:36 GMT from United States)
I love this distro,work out of the box on my laptop ,wireless network,Nvidia 3D card
support most of everything that I plug on my laptop, with a few bugs....................
but kicking A**.
L.Jacquez
Indianapolis IN.US.
142 • PcLinuxOS (by postaldave on 2006-12-20 01:51:06 GMT from United States)
Ladislav do you know something no one else does. granted they don't publish a new version everyday like some here but they are VERY much alive.
i've always been amazed out how well they do here given they don't come crawling to distrowatch every day just to get a higher ranking. U know who i'm talking about.
anyway, PCLinuxOS rocks and i like PC-BSD too. both are non-political and i really like that.
been a GREAT year here at distrowatch and the weekly is the best part.
143 • 103 • RE: 102 (by johncoom on 2006-12-20 03:36:36 GMT from Australia)
For those who are interested ? - and to be as wise as we are about it ?
from the FAQ fourm Topic: 0.94 Release Timetable? (Read 1737 times)
here: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=14168.0
my best guess is that it will be "ready when it is ready"
some of the membs have even got a "tote" going, what a joke ?
Personally I just prefer to wait and see as I know it is being
compiled as Christmass comes upon us. Make your own guess
Ladislav, get in on the "tote" with the others,
PS- another "tote" (just closed) is for the 5000 member
(4975 as I write - so its close, wonder who will win - what a joke)
Happy Days - johncoom
144 • PClinuxOS (by postaldave on 2006-12-20 03:51:13 GMT from United States)
The official PCLinuxOS timetable.
"it will be ready when it is ready."
so far they have never missed a deadline.
145 • nice overview (by love calculator on 2006-12-20 05:36:51 GMT from Poland)
I really enjoyed reading this issue. It was my first full year with GNU/Frozen Bubble/Linux (2005 was almost full) and many interesting things happened (3d desktops, Novell controversy, Ubuntu having ups and downs, Etch looking like it's going to be released almost as scheduled). A bit too many fights in our world for my taste, but hey, I'm new here...
146 • Ideal Distro? (by Andrew on 2006-12-20 05:47:57 GMT from New Zealand)
Over the years I've tried all the main distros, it's turned into an addiction as has this website. So far no distro has managed to correctly detect my wireless card and or video card properly.
Linux has been around since 1991, 15 years and hardware detection is still flaky. I keep reverting back to Windows XP because all my hardware is detected correctly and functioning properly. The distro I am wanting to progress is Elive. Enlightenment is excellent. Once again Elive just needs to work on hardware detection. I do enjoy DistroWatch. Keep up the good work.
147 • Arch (by rglk on 2006-12-20 05:52:49 GMT from United States)
I'm glad to see that quite a few people wrote in with very positive comments about Arch. Arch has become my favorite distro; I find it utterly satisfying, and it cured me of my distroholism ("My name is Rob, and I consume at least three new distros every week.").
My migration path in the recent past has been Debian & Xandros -> Slackware -> Arch, and Arch may well be my final resting place. Since I've settled on Arch I've felt as though I've been swinging in a hammock strung between two palm trees on a Florida beach with a glass of good Scotch in my hand, looking at the ceaseless strife of unreformed distroholics with bemusement and feeling not the slightest impulse to try out any other distro. In fact, the 2 ft. tall stack of Linux install and live CD's (>150) on my desk has grown by less than 1/8th of an inch in the past two months (the only notable distro has been Paldo). Also, I hardly feel the need to read Distrowatch anymore.
What's so great about Arch?
Arch is optimized for the i686 architecture and always uses the latest kernel. Hence, it runs very fast, even with a full-blown KDE desktop, and fully boots in <60 secs, even with quite a few services running. Its design is exceptionally well thought out. I find myself marveling time and time again at how adept the developers have been in making good decisions in the design of the distro. They seem to have done everything right. One certainly has the feeling that one is running an extremely well crafted distro rather than some Rube Goldberg contraption.
Pacman, Arch's package manager, is tops. IMO it's second only to or perhaps equal to Debian's apt. A very large number of packages is available, and they are constantly updated. Arch, like Slackware, is on a rolling release schedule, i.e. they don't issue fixed incremental releases (that's why you hardly ever see Arch on Distrowatch). You upgrade your system continually, and in that way you're always at the cutting edge.
Arch gets under the hood. It hides nothing behind inflexible GUI configuration tools, and it requires you to know a bit about Linux. If you know little about Linux, you'll learn it fast with Arch. In a few months of running Arch I've learned more about Linux than I had in several years of running "easy to use" Linux distros. They may be easy to use some or much of the time but when they finally break you're clueless and unable to troubleshoot them simply because you haven't learnt any Linux. IMO, there is no better way of building Linux confidence than running Arch or Slackware or Gentoo.
Support is also quite good in Arch. Arch has an excellent user's forum and a ton of good wikis. I found that I hardly ever had to ask for help with Arch because I was always able to troubleshoot problems by myself and learning a lot in the process.
A very large number of Arch users seem to have gone through the same experiences as I have, distrohopping or distrowatching forever and being chronically dissatisfied with whatever distro they were using, then finally coming across Arch and finding it to be the ideal distro to settle on, going cold turkey on all the other distros.
Robert
148 • predict 2007 (by Max on 2006-12-20 09:50:36 GMT from Germany)
I think it will again be k/ubuntu to be the star.
Mr. Shuttleworth said they were willing to strife for the 3D desktop (beryl-project) in April and include more media and eyecandy projects.
If they manage to mary the Debian/Ubuntu ideas/package-management with a working 3d compliant multimedia environment there can be no more wishes.
149 • Arch (by Anonymous on 2006-12-20 10:17:33 GMT from France)
The archlinux standard install is not so hard to install. I use arch for 2 years and it's the perfect distro for me. I tried suse, yoper and gentoo and ubuntu but arch is really the best for me.
150 • #146 ideal distro? (by h3rman on 2006-12-20 11:07:02 GMT from Europe)
"So far no distro has managed to correctly detect my wireless card and or video card properly.
Linux has been around since 1991, 15 years and hardware detection is still flaky."
You should have bought the right hardware, or just use vesa and ndiswrapper. Call nVidia/ATi and whatever crappy firm made your wlan card, and complain they don't care about good drivers.
151 • OpenSuSE (by IowaJohn on 2006-12-20 13:19:39 GMT from United States)
Could give Ubuntu a run for its money if they could fix the repo sites. I find them slow, and often the update process stops because it cannot finish the download.
I personally started using SLED 10 and find the distro solid and updates managed very well. It's like OpenSuSE 10.1 without the bugs.
152 • Windows XP? (by IowaJohn on 2006-12-20 13:22:23 GMT from United States)
"I keep reverting back to Windows XP because all my hardware is detected correctly and functioning properly"
As someone who spends an enormous amount of time "fixing" windows hardware detection problems, (usually after the windows update process) I think maybe you have just been lucky.
153 • RE Windows XP detection (by D Brion on 2006-12-20 14:24:19 GMT from France)
There at least 9 times more Windows users than Linux users => one cannot expect there will be 9 times _less_ mal practices...
With stable systems, updates are generally bugs reintroductions | regressions => claiming for fast automatic updates is just saying 'Hello, my Friend, with the help of a fast IT network, (Ubuntu, MICROSOFT, Pardus, whatever you want ) will automatically give| sell you new bugs, in due time, you did not ask for"....
Choosing among the bugs which are very annoyous and deciding whether corrections should be applied or not seems more reasonable .
=> the argument of fast downloading/ updating is a joke.
For my Asus laptops (one cannot put anything inside them, too many screews) hardware is better managed by Window XP than by Linux (it is not Linux's fault, but Asus's ; however the result is the same): power consumption is higher with Linux ( it can be deduced from the time batteries starve if one forgets main supply) ; this drawback was reduced (but still exists) with some ACPI improvements due to Linux Magazine, March 2006 (in French : Mandriva made great efforts to make this power management less ennoying, and this help is acknowldged in Linux Magazine).
154 • Slackware works and works and works (by jazzfelix on 2006-12-20 14:53:34 GMT from Germany)
I tried all major distributions from Mandriva to Debian, but only Slackware is able to do what i want. Most of the software i use daily is in Slackwares packagerepository. I found that the software i use for my music-compositions is in softwarerepositorys of Debian, Suse, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and so on, but in none of these distributions every program worked fine. I began to compile and create own packages, and so i moved to slackware, because slackware has no single bug, and if i have to compile my own software, because my distribution has no or a too old package i can choose a stable distri with only a few but working packages.
155 • RE: # 151 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-12-20 14:55:11 GMT from Italy)
"OpenSuSE could give Ubuntu a run for its money if they could fix the repo sites. I find them slow, and often the update process stops because it cannot finish the download."
SUSE used to have apt4rpm, much loved by many. But apt had also many "political" enemies, who won in the end. An absolute shame, because from now on I'll only be using Debian.
156 • No subject (by enoxs on 2006-12-20 15:14:37 GMT from Belgium)
I see a lot of reactions about different distros. Everyone has his favorite, from the beginner or even more advanced to the sys/it admin, that's a good thing. Complaining about problems is not the way to go, searching for solutions and share it with others is.
A lot of guys i know avoid at all cost command line interface, and when there is a problem and they can't solve it with the mouse and the GUI, they are stuck and eventually revert back to windows. It's not a bad thing to learn a little more about the basic commands, the filesystem, the kernel, etc... There are good linux bibles, IRC channels, forums where you can get a lot of info and help.
And if there are no drivers available for bleeding edge hardware, don't blame the linux community for it. Blame monopolising, that's the reason. The distro developpers do a lot of work to keep satisfying us, the users,and they do it in for free. Asfar as i know, hardware problems is just a matter of time, and this comes OK with time. By the way, install a windows XP on a brand new laptop without the drivers, and the whole thing works only for 50 %.
I think whatever distribution we use, we should respect the developpers for the hard work they do and stop complaining about minor issues.
Have good days!!!
157 • Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo.... (by urcindalo on 2006-12-20 16:30:03 GMT from Spain)
I got my first non-Apple box back in January 2005. I had never used anything but Mac OS (X) and Atari OS. But I didn't doubt it for a second: I would use Gentoo. What's more, I installed the 64 bit version for my AMD64. Gentoo was similar to fink on OS X, and I was looking for a distro I could maintain that friendly way.
Gentoo is the easiest to maintain OS ever. It's also the most free OS out there. You, and only YOU, decide what is going to be installed, from the system logger or cron engines to the DE, choosing whether to install support for TIFF, php or ssl. The community, on the other hand, is also the BEST. No other people are as amiable as Gentoo forum users, and the number and quality of the docs available online are just amazing.
I've never used any other Linux distro, and I'll never do. I can't find a single glitch in it. Thanks for existing.
Long live Gentoo!!
158 • RE: 150 (by Andrew on 2006-12-20 19:16:44 GMT from New Zealand)
My Wireless card is Intel and Video card is ATI.
You can't always pick and choose your hardware, especially when it relates to a laptop. I dual boot between Windows XP and whichever distro takes my fancy. Perhaps these Christmas holidays I should delete Windows and settle down with Elive as the sole OS.
159 • RE: 152 (by Andrew on 2006-12-20 19:45:17 GMT from New Zealand)
And Linux doesn't cause problems after an update process, try re-compiling the Kernel. After having done an update how many other things do you have to tweak. All part of the fun but just time consuming each time.
160 • My current fav... (by Darganot on 2006-12-21 03:36:25 GMT from United States)
Looking through the posts I see a lot about SUSE. I have just started using linux this year and cut my teeth on Ubuntu and still go back to it after failed bouts with openSUSE, Gentoo, Puppy, and a few others. For the noob, ubuntu is a great distro to learn the linux ideals. There's also tons of documentation for it online.
Just this week however I have been blown away by Sabayon Linux. I noticed the 3.2 "miniCD" last week on the main page and decided to give it a spin as I was getting bored with Kubuntu. I would only really recommend Sabayon for those with an NVIDIA card but it comes pre-configured with beryl and many other nifty programs. There's also lots of programs in the repository. Check it out if you haven't.
After just 6 months of using linux I started a skeptic windoze gaming geek and now I'm a 'nix nerd for life. I can't wait to see what comes next, I'll probably see what all the fuss with Debian 4 is about.
161 • QOTD, Good Tidings for the New Year! (by RoachBoy on 2006-12-21 08:47:16 GMT from Kenya)
QOTD: Hasta la Vista, Microsoft Vista!
Here’s an interesting moral dilemma. Should we “poor” folks in the Third World be grateful for Bill Gates’ robber-baron billions which he is now channeling through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help fight malaria and what not? Do we have the makings of a slogan here: Buy Windows, Help the Poor?
Anyway, best wishes to all for 2007! May the FOSS be with you!
162 • My favorite distros (by Artie on 2006-12-21 10:06:50 GMT from Norway)
I'm a distro junkie. Having tried most major distributions up through the years I have ended up with latest PCLinuxOS on the hard drive and Puppy Linux 2.12 running from cd eagerly awaiting 2.13. If you have a very! old pc you might try 1.09CE. Puppy is hands-down the best distribution I've ever tried. I use it 99 percent of the time because of its unbloatedness and sheer speed running everything in RAM. Sometimes I boot up PCLinuxOS for a change of scenery, but although PCLinuxOS is a great distro and I have a 2.80GHz PC with 256 Mb RAM using PCLinuxOS feels like wading through syrup compared to Puppy. I soon tire of sitting there watching the hard drive lamp blinking waiting for something to happen and reboot into Puppy again. Besides, Puppy has the friendliest and most responsive community and forum I've ever come across. I feel like being part of a family whenever I go there to ask questions or try to help out.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all and thanks to Ladislav for a great site!
163 • distros of the year (by phersotty on 2006-12-21 21:54:24 GMT from United States)
I think the one thing this article missed is how fast the Mac Intel was supported in Linux. In less than 6 months there have been multiple distros that run nicely on the new Mac Intel machines. SabayonLinux worked out of the box on my Intel MacBook. I mean everything: including grub and wireless. We don't even need bootcamp to do it. On a side note what's with Penguins and Hollywood? We've had March of the Penguins, Madagascar penguins, and recently Happy Feet. Tux should start collecting some royalties :-)
164 • M$ converts need creature comforts (by KW on 2006-12-21 22:56:01 GMT from United States)
I had my wife switched over to Kubuntu and everything was "breezy" :)
Then she found out that there was no "easy button" (my term), for getting clipart into her OpenOffice document. She was used to hitting a toolbar button and browsing thousands of clipart, selecting one and it dropping directly into her document.
It was such a problem we ended up back at the XP boot screen. ARGH.
My next attempt will definitely include crossover office so I can attempt to keep some things around that look familiar to the M$ user. It is the shock of not only changing the OS, but also trying to change every single app the user is familiar with all at the same time. I'm trying to ease her into it now. She is using Thunderbird for email and Firefox for web browsing, and maybe I can get her to use Open Office on Windows one day. The point is the next time I get her to try Linux, at least most of the apps she is used to will already be there as well.
165 • Why Arch figures so low on Distrowatch ? (by Anonymous on 2006-12-22 00:49:25 GMT from Canada)
I am not sure why Arch always manages to slip too low on Distrowatch. Exceptionnaly, the latest 7 Days page rank places Arch at 14th number. I think that this is because a lot of users gives very good comments and review after this DWW.
The stable 6 month places Arch at 23th. I fail to understand why despite being one of the most innovative distro, Arch fares so badly on Disto popularity. It is no doubt the fastest Linux, in its default form. It is also extremly configurable, has almost every appplication, has AUR and on top of it has one of the best community. This community is continuously growing and very willing to help. Arch is similar to gentoo and Slackware, with the added advantage that it has binary packages, a fast and easy to use package manager and more coherence in the whole system. But gentoo still always figures much higher on Distrowatch.
Ladislav : after your "Quo vadis, Linux distribution?" editorial,
(http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060828#commentary)
you posted a comment (#136 to be precise) in which you said that " the "top 10" distribution list will be revised" to include Arch. We are still waiting for that revision of the top 10 list. This list is used by many people as a list of the "best distributions". I think Arch should have a place in that list. This will help this distro to gain more popularity and become even better !
166 • Arch linux (by AC on 2006-12-22 08:55:53 GMT from United States)
" It is no doubt the fastest Linux,"
No doubt? Do you have benchmarks to support this claim? I didn't think so.
167 • RE 162 256 Mo RAM are not sufficient for testing modern distrs. (by dbrion on 2006-12-22 11:02:28 GMT from France)
If you want to test modern distr and be happy with them ( no swap) you should have at least 512 M ( if you have a big PC tower, it is often cheap and easy to install, after , of course, cross validating this idea).
In 2003, I had a 128 M tower, with Win98 aand Cygwin: it never crashed. As I decided to try a Mandrake 9.1, I added what I knew my softs would need plus what I feared a nice looking Linux would eat=> it led to 384 Mo. Now, when I buy laptops, I ask for more than 512M to have Mandrivas or Xp running without unexpected crashes or too frequent unexpected swap (one can configure Linuxes with a tiny swap filespace, for testing for memory greediness ) . If I add/ make software, I try to guess or calculate her memory hungriness.
(Nota I write about Mandriva as PCLinuxOS is Mandriva based)
As most developpers are obeying to the Holy Delay cult, plus some forms of despise towards old CPs, plus the pressure of adding new functions, I fear they do not feel the need (have not time) to optimise for memory use, except for some specialised distrs . I also fear they won't need it | have time to do it, as memory prices get lower and lower and pressures higher and higher...
I know people who were happy with a 2|3 years old Whitebox, which once stopped in two years, as their memory was multiplied by three ( it took them time to make the difference between disk and memory, once they understood, they had memory bought=> I fear their choice of memory could not be explained on rational grounds) => they were much happier whith text processing, mail and IT playing plus proprietary soft maintening. This is a (2 PCs * 2years * 365 days * 24hrs) more serious test, though empirical, I think, than writing after an hour of trial a Pardus Linux rocks.... This also gives its full value to the claim of accelerating boot process....
I saw a Solaris SUn work ( real time acquisition and processing) without unscheduled stopping between 1995 and 2002, till 'safe' power supply burned it: system 'upgrades' were _forbidden_.
Good luck.
168 • No subject (by mw on 2006-12-22 13:18:05 GMT from Australia)
I began the year with Arch, which is truly a beautiful distro, fast, simple and clean. I got a bit tired of buggy packages within the last month though and have been running Debian testing since which i'm very pleased with so far, very stable and now I don't have to avoid packages i'd like to use. I do miss the simplicity of Arch though, Debian seems overly complicated and inconsistent in comparison (apt/aptitude/dpkg), and building deb packages isn't such a simple process. I'd love Arch with Debian testing reliability.
Anyway, maerry xmas, happy holidays and all that.
169 • Re 166 benchmark (by Anonymous on 2006-12-22 14:57:57 GMT from Canada)
Well ... I don't have scientific benchmark to support this claim. From my personnal experience, you can get a very fast desktop from ***any*** modern distribution if you are willing to open the hood and do some tweaking. In the case of Arch this is different. Arch is fast ***in its default form***. The base system is not bloated as some other distro, but it's not difficult to install the packages you need for your perfect setup (and only them).
Yes, you can get a faster system with gentoo, but this will need a lot of work. If you are like me and you have 2 young children that run everywhere in the house, you cannot spend 10 hours to optimize things and you appreciate a system that is fast, stable, lightweight and easy to configure.
With arch, I can have both a social life and a wonderfull desktop ! ;-)
170 • SuSE with toung out (by Bill Savoie on 2006-12-22 16:27:14 GMT from United States)
Remember all those SuSE ads with a person sticking out their tongue? Flaunting authority was a good thing. It was a Linux struggling, like us.
Unfortunately everything changes, and now SuSE is authority. The deal with M$ was without review, a top down decision, where the little ones suffer. The fall out continues: “Jeremy Allison Leaves Novell in Protest”.
http://www.linux-mag.com/content/view/2838/
Linux became what it is because it was free. Now Novel is showing us, all you need is money, to mess up people’s cooperation and good will. Little wonder it happens at Christmas. It is, after all, the connection between money and power, vs the connection with spirit at the dark time of the year. May the Linux spirit be part of the springtime for 2007, as the stock market (Novel, M$) falls to new lows.
May all open source programmers enjoy inner peace and be filled with love. It will be a new and better year.
171 • It's PCLinuxOS for me! (by Fractalguy on 2006-12-22 18:01:01 GMT from United States)
Now coming up on 3 years since I switched from Windows 2000 to Linux. I tried running installations of five distros, a few weeks each, on my Linux Box and settled for PCLinuxOS. Mandrake 9.2, Mepis, SuSE, and Lindows were the runners up.
I keep up with the latest here on distrowatch, trying many of the liveCDs. Thanks for a great site. (Merry Christmas.)
This year my wife gave up on two of her old Win98 boxes at her office, so I put Linux on them. The first one was a P200 to which I added a little RAM. Its 18GB disk failed and a scrounged 6GB hard disk refused install any Linux, so was formated to FAT32. The P200 then served fine for 70 days uptime as an extra surfing box with KNOPPIX, the only liveCD I could get to run on it.
When the second Win98 box (a P450) was "tossed", I parted out the P200 and installed Ubuntu 5.10 on the P450. After live upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06 and adding KDE and Xfce desktops, my wife uses it all the time (in KDE). She prefers it to Windows! Enough of Windows XP at her office, hehe. This box now has 129 days uptime, while she averages at least one reboot a day on her "professional" XP-Pro at work. They have a professional contract for the server also which has gone down several times since its installation in April. (shrug, yawn).
172 • The fastest Linux (by Ariszló on 2006-12-22 19:57:28 GMT from Hungary)
The more RAM you have, the less you percieve speed differences. Debian with its default kernel may feel very slow on a Pentium IV machine with only 256 MB of RAM but it is quite OK with its alternative, i686-optimized kernel. Arch is fast out of the box. The speed difference is so obvious that you don't need any scientific benchmarks. With 1 GB of RAM all distros are fast.
173 • Fastest Linux (by warpengi on 2006-12-22 20:10:42 GMT from Canada)
Even with 1.5 GB of ram there is a noticeable speed difference between fast distros like Arch Linux, Slackware and it's derivatives and regular desktop distros. Of course any distro runs acceptably with that amount of ram. Damn Small screams but I don't normally run DSL with that amount of ram:-)
174 • Fast (by tom at 2006-12-22 23:06:21 GMT from United States)
"mini" distros like DSL, Puppy, Austrumi are fastest ...
For a "mid-size" distro Arch, Zenwalk, and Fluxbuntu are IMO the fastest.
If you gentoo or tweak you can improve performance further then "out of the box".
Last, I downloaded Ubuntu Feisty Herd 1 and, well, it is faster the 6.04 or Edgy :)
175 • Vector's new release... (by Caraibes on 2006-12-22 23:26:21 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Just a word to tell you how impressed I am by the new release of Vector Linux 5.8 !
I recommend it, as it seems to be a great step for that distro, and a major concurrent for Zenwalk & Xubuntu...
Fantastic system for those of us who like most things to work out of the box...
176 • 172 (by AC on 2006-12-23 06:23:21 GMT from United States)
The last time I did a network install of Debian, an optimized kernel was installed by default. But beyond optimized kernel and glibc (which is readily installed), most optimizations make little or no difference. I haven't seen any benchmarks that indicate otherwise.
177 • Re: Pardus English support (by Ariszló on 2006-12-23 14:43:51 GMT from Hungary)
IMQ asked: Does the final release of Pardus support English after installation?
Yes, it does. I am writing this from Pardus 2007.
178 • Some Recent Hoppings (by Ricardo / RR_Fang on 2006-12-23 23:04:28 GMT from Brazil)
After downloading some distros during the week, spent some time today trying out some distribuitions on my "crash dummy"/test computer. Here is my thoughts and results:
Archlinux (via FTP) - The fastest distribuition I have ever tried. But i must admit i didn't went so far with it. The setup was nice, you have total control over what you configure and install, and i had no problems at all. Still, after it, i got some troubles and wasn't able to install Xorg/KDE. So i really cant say very much about it... I may give it a try again later.
Debian (Sid/Unstable via a daily Netboot image) - My first try installing it didn't go very well, but the second try went well, and in some time got a fully functional system. Simply great for me, potentially my next choose (either Sid or Etch) as my main OS. Needs some tweaking to get the best from it, but worth doing it.
Pardus 2007 / Kurulan - Very simple installer, lacks some options during partitioning, but nothing critical. And I'm impressed, it's very professional, well polished and stable. Only got a problem with Firefox but nothing a update didn't solve :) Currently writing this post from it. But i cannot use Pardus as my main OS, it lacks support for Portuguese (Brasil). Anyway, worth giving a try, and for sure something to keep an eye on.
===
Merry Christmas everyone, and a great New Year!
179 • Re 178 : kde on arch (by Anonymous on 2006-12-23 23:52:06 GMT from Canada)
kde works very well on Archlinux (at least for me ...). It is available in "extra" repository. You also need to add 'dbus' 'hal' to rc.conf daemon's list for full media:/ kioslave experience.
I invite you to try arch again. If you have trouble, you can always ask questions to the forum
http://bbs.archlinux.org/
You will see that our community is very willing to help you to get a perfect desktop.
Merry Christmas ... and have fun with arch in 2007 ;-)
180 • #165 (by Steve on 2006-12-24 14:33:12 GMT from Italy)
[quote]
Why Arch figures so low on Distrowatch ?
[/quote]
Maybe because installing is a real pain in the axe?
After reading several comments here I thought I would give it a try so I downloaded it this morning and I installed it. At first I found problems partitioning the free space on the hard disc, for some unknown reason the installer would refuse to install if I choose a separate /boot partition, then I couldn't install the packages (apart from the base one) without getting errors like "udev conflicts with XXX" where XXX could be pcmcia-cs, hotplug and others.
Now after finally installing successfully the base system I did a "pacman -Syu" and then rebooted, now all I get is an endless series of
atkbd.c Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0
errors at boot time.
Enough for me, I've never ever so many problems with all the other distro's I've tried on this spare pc.
Good bye, Arch.
181 • Arch #180 (by tom on 2006-12-24 15:37:33 GMT from United States)
Yes, I think you are correct in this.
Arch is difficult to install. Perhaps try the desktop CD.
I had difficulty the first time I tried to install Arch as well.
Read the installation guide, install just the base, then update and install additional packages with pacman....
Read any information you are given with an update.
Look on the Arch forums or the arch irc.
HTH
182 • Arch Linux (by warpengi on 2006-12-24 15:45:22 GMT from Canada)
I think as
Steve's comments point out it should be stressed that Arch Linux is a very different distro.
Arch is great if you want to learn more about Linux. Arch is great if you want complete control of your system. Arch is great if you want to try building packages (the easiest package builder I've tried). Arch is great if you want to build a fast Linux desktop. Arch is simple if you are experienced enough to build LFS.
Arch is not really difficult but it will not necessarily just install like a lot of other distros. Expect to get some errors that you will have to research and use the forums. Don't expect to understand it all at once. Expect to encounter a steep learning curve. Expect to reinstall at least once. Not all of those things are true for everyone but that is a short list of expectations everyone should have to avoid disappointment.
The feeling of getting a complete Arch install running is awesome. This distro is not for everyone but is fantastic for those it caters to.
183 • Arch (by Steve on 2006-12-24 16:52:28 GMT from Italy)
I was not complaining about having to work on it, in fact right after the base system was installed I had to mess with ifconfig/route/resolv.conf to have internet capabilities and that's ok with me.
The thing that drives me mad is a broken system after updating the whole thing, I think there is really no excuse for this.
You can call me lucky but during the last years even Windows XP has been less troublemaking with updates, in fact I have never had a broken, unbootable WinXP system after live updating.
Also, I have never experienced such problems with any other distro I have tried during the last months.
Meanwhile I have deleted Arch, installed PCLinuxOS 0.93, did a apt-get update/upgrade (171 packages, 411 Mbytes), rebooted and -guess what- everything is STILL working fine!
Maybe one day I will try again, at this moment I am too annoyed of Arch to give it another go.
I am also tempted by Elive, during Xmas holidays I'll try that one too.
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.
Steve.
184 • Top 10 list Vs survivor list (by Anonymous on 2006-12-25 01:45:30 GMT from Canada)
This discussion about Arch, the release of version 0.8 alpha and the office installer is very benefic. The last 7 days statistics now place Arch in 12th position with more hits than KNOPPIX, Slackware, Gentoo, Freespire, FreeBSD, Kubuntu, CentOS and Xandros.
My original question for Ladislav was about the "top 10 distribution list". Do you still plan to change that list to include "the five survivors" you talked about in your "Quo vadis" editorial (cf DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 166, 28 August 2006) ?
I would suggest the following list
Ubuntu
Mandriva
SUSE
Debian
Gentoo
KNOPPIX
PCLinuxOS
Slackware
Arch
FreeBSD
A new list should be an interesting way to begin the 2007 year.
Merry Christmas Ladislav and thank you for your good work !
185 • RE: 184 Top 10 list Vs survivor list (by ladislav on 2006-12-25 03:01:01 GMT from Taiwan)
I am working on updating the list, but I don't think Arch will make it this time. Although I do feel that Arch is an excellent, unique distribution that deserves more credit than it gets, nothing indicates that it is popular enough to be in the top ten list. The only change I will make in the current list is to replace Xandros with PCLinuxOS.
186 • Re : 185 (by Anonymous on 2006-12-25 05:18:40 GMT from Canada)
Thank you Ladislav for this information. I respect your point of view, but I would like to see some innovative distributions listed on that page. May I suggest a compromise ? On that page, you have also the "Top 5 RHEL-based distributions", "Top 5 Beginner-Friendly Distributions", "Top 5 Multimedia Distributions", "Top 5 Source Distributions", etc. I suggest to add a "Top 5 most innovative distributions" where you could list distribution that are innovative, unique or very interesting projects. That list might contain for example Arch, GoboLinux, SymphonyOS, Damn Small or Nexenta. These projects add something new to the linux/unix world instead of just repackaging or marketing something already done elsewhere.
187 • do not give up? (by Luis jacquez on 2006-12-25 15:29:54 GMT from United States)
I think for all of you around the globe , instead of try to find the perfect Linux OS and say that you and your buddy or who ever you think it is better than any one on the Linux OS .we should get more time with or hand dirty on the job and provide more help to the developers every distro have bugs ,i been trying Linux since ...like red hat 6.0 or mandrake and Suse I been trying the free download and
the retail store for awhile , fancy distros Xandros,Linspire,Simple Mepis,but all of them make me disappointed .
Linux Community on line,we are the power to succeed on the OS Wars if we keep united.
Dreams to come true ,linux should be stuck on You!
L.Jacquez.
P.S. Merry Christmas to all.
188 • #54 (by Tim on 2006-12-25 19:02:04 GMT from United States)
And so will more that 5000 active forum members, the beautification project, PCLinuxOS Magazine, TinyME, and all the other active projects oriented around the best distro out there.
Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year
189 • KateOS seems slighltly underrated (by dbrion on 2006-12-26 17:14:30 GMT from France)
at least from Language Support point of view.
I VMplayed it (full install [ selecting packages seemed complicated], following _strictly_ their web page for the boot sector and choosing Freedom keyboard (AZER) to install (it is better for passwords....) and French as the final language (more languages are claimed) .
It worked OK with 256Mo RAM (no swap detected). For developments needs (the rest, I do not know) there is a gfortran compiler, a gcc with frencised error messages and deskdop (which is very beautiful ) icons are fully in French (Eduntu's live CD icons are 50% arabised AFAIK => If Edubuntu is considered a multilingual, KateOS can rightfully claim for some more advanced language support . => The advantage was that it could be downloaded very fast....
I hope it is a good Christmas new
190 • Going for Debian @ full speed (by Yagotta B. Kidding on 2006-12-27 23:36:30 GMT from Germany)
.
Going for Debian / RHEL @ full speed
Well, not only for Debian. Indeed, the (x)Ubuntu-family or its derivatives (Linux Mint, Mepis) might be a good starting point for any home or semiprofessional user. They are easy to set up, and fun tu use, so there. I wish them well.
But when considering a server installation, Debian is first choice, on par with Red Hat. Why NOT use opensuse, once considered a decent alternative to the two main distros?
Opensuse suffers from bloat. Moreover, its administration is a mess. Repositories change from version to version, five (!) package managers are supplied, but neither works reliably enough for a true professional environment. For a home system you might live with it (or even deliberately play games of rug vs. smart, or yum vs. yast, etc.) but for a professional's desktop suse is no good choice. Former versions up to 9.3 were fairly consistent, 10.0 was still half-way acceptable, but what came afterwards is an utter mess. 10.2 no different - try to upgrade or compile your kernel if you do not believe, and you will.
Kernel compilation issues aside, suse does not upgrade well; to get the job done you have to install it afresh - just like Windoze. Once again, this might be a nice challenge for distro hoppers here, who love to play. Yet for a pro it is one more clear deal breaker. Mind you, I shunned the known stories about Movell and MS-Linux, and any other political issues.
My advice is: always get a distro which updates & upgrades easily and reliably. Blow Novell - get Debian instead. Good even on tight budget, works like a charm, upgrades smoothly as silk.
Second piece of advice for pros in distress: if you REALLY need support on every-day basis, get Red Hat. They are renown for the quality of their support. Your customers WILL love you (and extend their contracts). RH has got best support engineers money can buy.
If working with less affluent custs, give them CentOS - the same unfakeable Linux for a lot less mullah. Be prepared for some serious work, though. No hand-holding here! Well, almost - there is a great Linux community out there, isn't it? Luckily, there is.
Happy hacking in 2007!
Yours,
YBK
.
191 • Listing mode (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2006-12-27 23:46:11 GMT from United States)
Hi. May I thank and compliment Mr. Bodnar again on the excellent work making and maintaining DistroWatch, and may I also request that the development and testing release announcements be reduced to single-line announcements, like Slashdot does?
Cheers
192 • I hope Edubuntu has better language support now (by dbrion on 2006-12-28 15:34:21 GMT from France)
From early download (26/10), I was surprised of their language support for the alphabetical reasons (I fear needs for young people are more important than for adults):
Arabic
From the starting page, where one is given the choice betw. many languages, it was very strange; at first I thougt there occurred a reform affecting the sense it was written (I forgot Arabic #15 yrs ago). Normally, Arabic is written from right to left [ this was confirmed a)by watching TV : shops and ambulances were as I knew in Baghdad ad Gaza; b) by VMplaying a Mandriva
install => I saw that Farsi was affected, too;
c) by asking : There are many bilingual ppl in France and I don't know they would be such GNU/Linux happy if a naive teacher gave their son/sister... a brand new "educative" live CD { with a button to install...}.
=> I feel it was as if an European had a choice beween [alphabetic order] hsilgne, namreg and hsnerf...
Kde icons were half correctly subtitled (the right way), else in English ( it is perhaps better not no translate....)
French
support was better, however Gcompris exists in a full 100% French version (Kaella), and I did not understand why it was 10% Anglais, 90% Franzoesich. Most people think that mixing languages is bad taste, especially for education...
The argument "you just have to redownload/upgrade/update" may be discarded by the fact that one has often bad / no IT connections. I know (googling "MICROSOFT arabic support", and by daily practice) one can find better than Edubuntu ....
I repeat, it was a early download but "the" linux 'market share ' is not that wide any language shoukd be grossly neglected ... Any way, I won't download any EdUBU this year (White Boxes seem much more serious)...
193 • re release announcements (by Fractalguy on 2006-12-28 19:46:39 GMT from United States)
One line announcements? No! I like them the way they are. I would only ask for slightly more info on an announcement: whether the release is a liveCD and what the download size is. These two infos are sometimes missing.
The great release info here is what makes this the distro shopper/hopper's favorite site.
Good work, and Happy New Year!
PS, I'm posting from the new elive liveCD. Boy is this nice eye-candy. Been on it since last evening. For a while some of the "features" had me confused, like moving the mouse to the right too much went off the world into "somewhere" land. Duh! It went to the next workspace. Anyway, elive has some nice ideas.
194 • Linux in 2006 (by Hootiegibbon on 2006-12-28 22:10:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well for me there are two distros that stand head and shoulders above the others my '/home' is with PCLinuxOS a distro that I first tried over a year ago, and have since become an active forum member, Texstar and the RipperGang create a truly user friendly OS, and with 0.94 (PCLOS2007) will see many more people switching to it.
The other distro of mention (imo) is PuppyLinux, Barry K and the development team have made a real marvel, Puppy is a pleasure to use, easy to reconfigure to how you like it and has a good community to boot. I am eager to try the forthcoming 2.13.
I'm sure that 2007 will be a busy year for the developers of all distros and some may fall or 'drop off the radar' as the year progresses, I doubt that either PCLinuxOS or Puppy will fall in to this category, I don't think that the user communities would allow it!
Jase
195 • The changing (hardware) needs of Linux (by mikkh on 2006-12-28 23:51:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
One of Linux's main bragging points is it's ability to run on older systems, I personally think the i386, i486 support is ridiculous when you can pick an i686 system up for loose change, but that's not the reason for this post.
With my financial status heavily reduced recently, I'm no longer running a 2 Ghz+ main PC with 1 GB RAM, and I didn't realise how greedy some of the modern distros are, untill you try running them on <1 Ghz machines with 256 MB RAM.
Even Puppy is not really happy unless you have 256 MB RAM or greater
I'm running Vector on this Athlon 700 with 256 MB RAM and it copes well, but I wouldn't even attempt to run PClinuxOS or Suse - or basically anything KDE based.
A lot is made of Vista's outrageous hardware requirements, and I saw some Linux diehard extolling the virtues of Linux against Vista on one site.
"will run in 128 MB of RAM" was one of his statements
will limp along badly like XP does would be more accurate.
No doubt someone will reply they're still running Slackware 1 on a PC Fred Flintstone threw out - and they're happy with that, but I think that's just a geeky form of self harm - or extreme tight fistedness.
The truth is, to run Linux nowadays you need a fairly modern PC, whereas 3 or 4 years ago, almost every distro would run in whatever you had
196 • 195 (by AC on 2006-12-29 09:52:21 GMT from United States)
The problem is neither with the Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux system, nor the age of the distribution, but with the demands of certain desktop environments (and apps like OOo). But some of us get along quite well with xfce4 or with a lightweight window manager and there's no "self harm" in that.
That said, the newcomer will rightly feel cheated if one extols the vrtues of GNU/Linux on old hardware and in the same breath refers to OOo as a worthy replacement to MSOffice and to the user-friendliness of KDE or GNOME. There should always be the caveat: if your hardware is particularly old, there's always a trade-off between the performance and features of the software available.
That said, sarge and GNOME can be used to do a lot of day to day activities on a <1 GHz, 256 MB machine quite well. but a 486 is really only suited for tasks like a home firewall.
197 • Re: release announcements • 191, 193 (by Ariszló on 2006-12-29 14:21:20 GMT from Hungary)
Since this is DistroWatch, I agree with Fractalguy.
198 • 195 Flints do not rust. (by dbrion on 2006-12-29 14:25:10 GMT from France)
I VMplayed (on a rough way, it divides CPU speed by >=two, slows disks access in an unpredictable way on Windows, and memory size can be decided; see EULA 3.x for more details ) on a natively 1.9 Ghz 768 Mo PC (I bought; where does Fred Flintstone live?) XP (I bought too, my financial status improved as I predicted).
Except for KateOS (who was given 186 Mo, after a successful installation with 256 Mo : as she claims for some tuning during install, it was an unfair trial) all were given 256 MO
KateOS
raced (no objective benchmarking), as usual and kept being beautifull and localized
WhiteBox liberation (2.4 kernel)
installed without a click... All installation dialogues were logical, the most interesting point residing in her CD checking. As one can not always be intelligent (or it was done in purpose?) only the root could be installed. French support was satisfying, except for man ( 70 % of letters... I suspect a bad keyboard choice of mine; it can be fixed with cygwin, there remains enough RAM...) . Thanks to {Distrowatch and Beauregard Parish public library}'s rigorous and conservative politics, some (very well running) system can be rescued (installed without developpment headers, and their installer had another job, I hope). GNOME seemed OK, hardware recognition was as heroical as feared ( except for CDs, which I think is enough).
Olivebsd (feb 2006)
is a very _modest_ liveBSD : it played well, specific text editors/ word processors/ calc sheets are accessible from ICEWM (it is more beautiful than Mandrivas ICEWM, which exists: well known distributions give/sell choice between window managers).
Her list of software (from their home page) seems uncomplete :
she has at least a partial _unclaimed_
3.3.x gcc
(I did not check for all the collection...) The most interesting thing was g77, who seemed running (the lack of simple hardware recognition means it won't automatically bite any disk, but makes non trivial tests heroical => it was only tested for presence and 'helloing the word'....) The choice of 256 Mo is a bad conscient choice of mine [if one is accostumed to luxury ] for complicated life CDs...
All these distrs were meant for [<= 4]86 distributions and worked well, as forecasted, on new (though simulated) PCs .
199 • RE 166 (from AC "Do you have benchmarks to support this claim") (by dbrion on 2006-12-29 14:35:56 GMT from France)
I would like if there are links to smart scientifical benchmarking methods: the need of benchmarks if there are too many distrs is obvious for me, but I feel that brute force (cut the swap ; top ; lower/increase the memory in a geometrical progression ; valgrind strategical softs) is not sufficient, especially for interactive softs (or even EULA infringing).
Anyway, thanks for this question/idea.
200 • RE 195 (by Tazix on 2006-12-29 16:56:10 GMT from United States)
I run Xubuntu Dapper on a Celeron 500 laptop w/ 128MB of RAM, without a hitch.
For a machine with less umph I'd go with something like DSL. Of course then you are reverting back to a 2.4 kernel and have to manually mount / unmount stuff, etc.
There are 3 major things that cause Bloat on a modern lightweight desktop... the xserver (xorg vs. TinyX / SmallX), Video Drivers (Free 2D vs. Proprietary Binary 3D), and how many BS applets / plugins you include on your lightweight desktop.
This goes for XFCE, ICEWM, FluxBox, any of them.
My point is, the lightweight desktop alone, isn't the only factor for reducing memory footprint.
-Taz
201 • More on message 200 (by Tazix on 2006-12-29 17:02:40 GMT from United States)
Oh... and carefully choosing your window manager and session manager also plays a role in the memory footprint.
-Taz
202 • Ubuntu etc. (by Dave W on 2006-12-29 20:46:54 GMT from Canada)
Just adding my comments on the questions posed in this week's DWW. Love DWW btw, and look forward to more in the new year.
Although my work involves RHEL, I almost exclusively use Ubuntu on my home Linux systems. The fact that it "just works", has a large and up-to-date support community, and I've never had a single hiccup with package management are primary reasons. Ubuntu has been my first real experience with Debian, so perhaps there is some underlying/hidden appeal there as well.
I play with Knoppix and DSL LiveCD's some, and look forward to building up a Linux From Scratch system in the new year as well, primarily for educational purposes.
But I don't experiment much with new distros "just cause". My desire is to have my linux boxes develop some stability and added-value, and not constantly be new nifty but largely as-installed installations.
As for predictions, I think there's room for someone to shine in comprehensively handling the proprietary drivers and formats as well as media rights management in a way that can keep everybody happy.
Looking forward to more DWW next year,
Dave
203 • PClinuxOS (by Sayagain on 2006-12-31 11:33:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Glad to hear it Tex:
"54 • PCLinuxOS (by Texstar on 2006-12-18 18:32:24 GMT from United States)
Well I plan on being around this time next year. I'm having way too much fun!"
I have been running PClinuxOS .92/.93 trouble free for the best part of 2006 and it's good to hear I can look foward to more of the same in 2007.
Happy new year all
Sayagain
204 • RAM shortages; what happens with too much RAM? (by dbrion on 2006-12-31 16:22:24 GMT from France)
Elive
needs exactly 128 M to be VMplayed as a live CD, with no swap (this includes USB mounting and browser subsequent splashing à la Windows). This figure is somehow confirmed by a nice demo shipped with elive where she qemulates herself ( one emulator could somehow make mistakes, but two???). A stage of emulation divides very roughly CPU speed by 2 / 3 (and leads to random IO latencies). The innermost emulated elive kept being decent with a 1.9 G original CP. The only problem was that I did not know how to configure the background to distinguish at a glance(qemu is is somewhat sober). { By the way, her language selection seems decent for Arabic and Farsi, and French is well supported.) . I wonot use it except for qemu-lating because Debian are likely to be used at work, after some intensive testing.
Mandriva 2007 with KDE and 190 Mo
could automount and konqueror splash two USB ( that made 2 windows, it was a USB-Hub mistake ) without Annie Crash. As some selection was done during install, it could be a bad test (live CDs reflect the idea of their author, and can thus be reproduced.).
Installation of
ZenEdu (nov 2006)
is straightforward (no clicks, good multilingual manual) and it can be runned with 100 Mo; I saw no (gracefully solved) problews with 200 Mo. At this stage, some tools like antiword and Lynx should be used for quick text reading (they have some great value for text checking for mispellings/ blunders/ inconsistencies without any doubt of who wrote the text or in distant computing [ one uses very expensive distant computers because they have good CPs and interestings disks (not flints) but not because of their eye candies (too distant...)]. I do not know why there is not a live CDs (teachers could test it without rejection, I think, if there is no installation button in the CD).
Their installation lacks a trace ( White Box has, and one must acknowledge it before continuing).=> I will see if my nephew likes an emulated ZenEdu.
There are some common sense remedies to memory starvation, but what about
memory cramming/ gavage
[ if there is too much memory, and subsequent disk swaps, one does not know what will happen with memory leaks : I think this once lead to the choice of Debian as ppl did not know what would happen with 4 G RAM => Economic reasons (based on working day costs and the price of data losses if one user panicked) led to halving the memory (the 'lost' RAM was RAMdisked, as in early 1980s CP/M) which lead to a scheduled stop.
205 • Good news for Quick Cluster builders (by Bill Savoie on 2006-12-31 19:52:27 GMT from United States)
Now that the new year is here, management is upgrading our Desktop computers. This leaves a lot of good old computers, on the surplus dock. Upper management never funds our need for big computers, so I thought why not build a Linux Cluster with a bootable live CD.
After spending the slow Christmas week, downloading different live CD's like BCCD, I was very fustrated. Many of the live CD's only worked with old keyboards. It is fustrating to be tapping on a usb keyboard and have it do nothing. I was impressed by parallelknoppix but it had bugs.
As of Dec 31, there is a new 2.2 version of ParallelKnoppix !
Thank you open source world !!
206 • How to give Linux broad appeal? (by Joe P on 2007-01-01 05:32:12 GMT from United States)
I would like to have the non-free components included with a version of Linux that is cheap, but not necessarily free. I am willing to pay something for easy installation, especially for media playing and recording software.
As it is, I have to do something illegal, or beyond my capabilities to install the free players so they play videos, etc.
On the other hand, it may be that there is a slow-road approach to develop all open source solutions, and that we should be patient.
I am not sure that both paths aren't worthwhile, but I would be a willing user of a cheap/not free OS.
Number of Comments: 206
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Chitwanix OS
Chitwanix OS was an Ubuntu-based distribution that has been crafted to fit the needs of computer users in Nepal. It comes with the Sagarmatha desktop environment (a fork of Linux Mint's Cinnamon) and it also offers various user-friendly enhancements. The developers of Chitwanix OS are cooperating with user communities in Nepal in order to translate the operating system and applications into Nepali, as well as Tharu, Newari, Gurung and Magar languages.
Status: Discontinued
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