 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 191, 26 February 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week's issue starts with a first look at VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO, an enhanced edition of the Slackware-based distribution designed for small businesses and home users. The news section then covers a variety of topics, including a couple of recent "distro wars" between Ubuntu and its competitors, reasons for the longer than expected delay of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, an announcement about the upcoming Community edition of Puppy Linux, and a surprise merge between two Slackware-based projects. Information about the upcoming releases of SabayonLinux 3.3 and Pardus Linux 2007.1, followed by the usual list of new distributions, concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Reviews |
First look at VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO
by Susan Linton
VectorLinux is a distro that I tested only a couple of times before, but I was very impressed with the system. Then, as now, it was a pretty, complete, and stable alternative to heavier or more complicated offerings. It dresses up Slackware and adds needed functionality, yet remains true to the Slackware tradition.
The Install
The VectorLinux installer is very Slackware-like. It's a bit simplified for users, but adds a lot more auto-detection and assisted configurations. In fact, it's very similar to what we find in Zenwalk. After one prepares their disk if needed, they choose their swap, install, and extra partitions. Choices in file systems include ext3, ReiserFS, and XFS. It seems VectorLinux defaults to ReiserFS. The one can choose any extra "bulks" they wish which include the kernel source or OpenOffice.org. After which they can choose to install some extra packages that include Firefox, XScreenSaver, and The GIMP. From there it's time to confirm by choosing one of the following:
- Install - come on matey, go for it!!!
- Back - wait ... I've changed my mind!
- Abort - I'm scared my system will turn to toast.
From there one can choose to install GRUB, LILO, or cancel. After reboot (at least in my case) one moves on to the final configuration steps. These steps include keymap, time zone, network, sound, X, and passwords. One quirk I noticed with other tests that remained in this release is the reboot during the first boot of the system. This is always a bit alarming as no other system does that, at least not without warning. It tends to make one think there is a problem, until you either remember VectorLinux does this or find all is well with the second boot.
The System
VectorLinux is a really pretty system starting from the boot menu and continuing through the silent boot splash. It matches the KDM theme and KDE splash exactly, making for a professional first impression. The desktop itself looks great as well. With a tasteful wallpaper in place and beautiful icons, it completes the look really well. There are a few more pretty wallpapers available too. I think perhaps they should have used a more attractive window decoration than the KDE default of Plastic. The default fonts aren't very nice, but all I did was was change from DejaVu Sans Light to DejaVu Sans and enabled anti-aliasing to better that. The menus are set up conveniently and logically. It appears to be the KDE menu, but have other applications and utilities added.
VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO beta 1
(full image size: 841kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
KDE is version 3.5.6, they are using a 2.6.20 kernel, X.Org is still 6.9.0, and GCC is 3.4.6. Whereas I was quite pleased with the kernel and KDE version, I admit I was a bit disappointed to find X.Org and GCC lagging a bit behind the curve. In the menu we find many applications for daily tasks. SeaMonkey is the default browser suite, but it also comes with Konqueror. Firefox is available at install and Opera is in the repository. There are several IRC and instant messaging choices, as well as news readers and graphical downloading applications.
OpenOffice.org 2.1 is available for installation as well as The GIMP. Xara Xtreme, gtkam, digiKam, and XSane are also included. Xfce and Fluxbox are available for installation from repositories. Xfce is still not polished yet, but it does include the same icons on the desktop as found in KDE for popular application and Help. Fluxbox is very basic, but does have a nice menu ready.
Multimedia support is very good in VectorLinux. VLC and Xine are available by default and MPlayer is available during install as an extra package. I found VLC lacking in many respects, primarily because it just didn't work for me here. Xine worked on more common video formats. MPlayer however played any format requested and I had no trouble with Google videos or YouTube. I would suggest that the developers reverse this situation by making VLC and Xine available as extras and using MPlayer by default. Also included are browser Flash and Java support, graphical CD and DVD creation tools, and audio players such as Amarok.
There are plenty of games to distract one from their work. These mostly encompass the KDE games, but include a few others as well. FrozenBubble is available from the VectorLinux repository.
Gslapt and slapt-get at the command line are the primary software managers. Slackware's installpkg is still available under the hood as well, if desired. There are repositories already set up and software for these later versions is available for install. I installed several packages using the various methods and found all worked rather well. I actually encountered no problems. The new applications appeared in the menus, opened, and functioned well.
The menu contains quite a few other nice system tools and utilities for configuration and usability. The crowning jewel is perhaps the Vector Administration System and Menu. It is a container for various system configuration tools such as networking, including wireless connections, hardware set-up, Samba shares and printing configuration, start-up services, and more. Also found in the menu is KMyFirewall which is a graphical front-end for defining iptables rules and implementation. vcpufreq is included for power saving and vl-hot-config for USB and other removable media. There are plenty of other applications for monitoring system functions and net connections as well as setting up cron jobs, performing backups, and to manage printing. The only problem I encountered with this beta release was the print manager and Samba configuration. The print manager is actually a link to the CUPS web configuration utility and despite the cupsd being started and listening on port 631 with no firewall rules blocking, the browser could not connect. Clicking on the SambaWeb configuration did nothing.
Hardware detection was very good with VectorLinux and most of the basics were either auto-configured or detected and offered for confirmation. The network connection was set up during the post-install configuration after auto-detection of my Ethernet chipset. I merely input my chosen machine name and clicked on DHCP. From that point on my Internet connection is available upon boot. Sound was auto-detected during that same post-install configuration as well and I was given a confirmation box to use ALSA emu10k1 support. My scanner was auto-configured and available upon the opening of XSane. There are some configuration choices when setting up the X server, but most can use the configuration offered. On my desktop, I had no problems other than the printer problem described above.
Laptop Support
When I saw how nice VectorLinux was and noticed all the wireless tools and utilities available when testing VectorLinux on my desktop, I decided I wanted to test it on my HP laptop as well. Things didn't go quite as smoothly on the laptop as on the desktop, but it wasn't too hard to work around most of the issues. If you've ever set up any Linux distribution on your laptop, you can probably achieve satisfactory results with VectorLinux as well.
The install went like clockwork on my laptop, but manual configuration was needed soon after. The first task was to bring the X resolution to the recommended (and desired) 1200x800. Auto-configuration used VESA, but this is only capable of the standard resolutions such as 1280x1024, 1024x768, 800x600, etc. The nv driver from X.Org 6.9.0 did not support my NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 chip. I was forced to install the proprietary drivers from NVIDIA and add my desired resolution to the xorg.conf file. Even then X wouldn't display the 1200x800 until all other choices had been taken from the mode lines. However, the hardest part of all this was restarting X several times until I got it right. The only blame I can assign to VectorLinux here is in using an old version of X.Org. They should probably upgrade to at least 7.0, and I'd like to see 7.1 myself.
The second hurdle was to get the wireless connection working. VectorLinux ships with bcmwl5 and bcm43xx for chips similar to mine, but mine won't work with those. So, NdisWrapper is needed. At first NdisWrapper wouldn't install my driver as it detected a previous bcmwl5 was present. All that was required here was removing the existing bcmwl5 and then installing mine from the Windows partition. However, it still took several minutes to accomplish a wireless connection. Devices were present, connection details were set up, and connections were said to have been made. Yet connections beyond the machine were impossible. Long story short, it took blacklisting bcm43xx for all to be well. WEP was no problem at all. After manually tracking down blockers, I could use the graphical set up and connection tools. I do not attribute these difficulties to VectorLinux or suggest something is wrong with their system here. Auto-detection did as it should and inserted the module most chips similar to mine. I just have a newer chipset that isn't supported by the included drivers (yet).
The last issue was with power saving and battery monitoring. The cpufreq utility is present as stated above and appears to work. The klaptop utility included with KDE seems to work well for changing profiles to suit the conditions of powered or not and monitors the battery life well. However, I wasn't able to track down the problem(s) with getting stand-by and suspend to work. They do work with openSUSE and PCLOS on that laptop, so I know it's possible. I obviously have some more work to do here. Nevertheless, it doesn't work out-of-the-box, at least for me.
Sound and the touchpad worked great as well as hot-plugging removable media or a USB mouse.
Conclusion
All in all I really like VectorLinux. I think it's a beautiful desktop system with good tools and nice selection of applications. Extra attention to the interface makes for a polished and professional appearance. It seems to work extremely well on desktop systems and can work well on newer laptops. Hardware detection is good and system performance is great. I found it to be stable, fast, and very functional. My only real complaint is with the old X.Org version. Otherwise, I found this beta quite pleasing and I look forward to the final release.
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| Miscellaneous News |
ESR's Ubuntu switch, Mandriva's "substance", further delays for Debian Etch, Puppy Linux Community, Ultima and Wolvix
 There is nothing wrong with a healthy distro war every now and then. Eric Raymond's anti-Fedora tirade, which the famous author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar sent to several web sites and mailing lists last week, provided exactly that. He listed several shortcoming of Fedora Core, both technical and philosophical, and gave his reasons for switching to Ubuntu -- that's after some 13 years of being a loyal Red Hat and Fedora user. Predictably, his action created a stir among the users of both distributions and many online forums saw heated debates on the subject. But is he right? Is Fedora really on the verge of becoming a shrinking niche? And more importantly, what are the Fedora developers doing to address the criticism and to provide a better operating system for their users? As always, all opinions on the subject are welcome!
* * * * *
 Eric Raymond wasn't the only person who expressed a strong opinion on a couple of distributions. Mandriva's Adam Williamson also wrote some philosophical comments on the perceived popularity of Ubuntu and its comparison with other distributions: "To me Ubuntu is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a triumph of style over substance - it's not that it doesn't _have_ substance, but it doesn't have any _more_ substance than anyone else (it really has less); it just uses style to give the impression that it does." He also explains his reasons for believing that Mandriva, as well as openSUSE, are better distributions than Ubuntu.
The problem with these kinds of opinions is that many people tend to compare only one aspect of Linux distributions - the code. But a "distro" is not just a CD image or three that people download from an FTP server and install on their computers. A Linux distribution is much more than that! It's a complete infrastructure, including the code, web site, support options, documentation, bug-tracking facilities, third-party community portals, software repositories, etc. Comparing two distributions should not be limited to just one aspect of it, but should include one's entire experience of using it on a daily basis.
As an example, let's take a look at the support mailing lists provided by the two distributions. Ubuntu has dozens of them, Mandriva has two - newbie and expert (if you are neither, where do you go?). The Ubuntu mailing lists receive dozens of posts every day, the Mandriva ones get just a handful of messages at most. The Ubuntu mailing list is well-attended by several Ubuntu developers and even Mark Shuttleworth is known to answer questions every now and then. In contrast, when is the last time you saw a Mandriva developer helping out on the mailing lists? Not for years! And that's before we start on the subject of the Mandriva Club web site usability or the documentation. Even worse, any criticism of some of these aspects always seem to fall on deaf ears at Mandriva. Any surprise that users are flocking to Ubuntu?
Yes, Mandriva Linux is an excellent distribution. Unfortunately, that's no longer a sufficient attraction. Without improving the entire infrastructure around the project, it will never be able to compete with Ubuntu, no matter how good its code is.
* * * * *
 Why is the much-awaited release of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 Etch delayed? While some of the popular media is quick to attribute the reasons to the controversial Dunc-Tank initiative that caused a mini-uprising among some Debian developers, the simple truth is that Etch is late due to an unacceptably high number of release critical bugs. But let's leave the explanation to the expert, or more precisely to Martin Krafft, a Debian developer and the author of Debian System - Concepts and Techniques. Last week, he gave a talk at a conference which was entitled "Debian etch: does that itch scratch yet?" The slides, which include the overview of the Debian project and interesting charts of release-critical bugs over time, should give anyone an insight into the current status of Etch. And how much longer before it's declared stable? As always, nobody knows for sure, but the way things are at the moment, it still seems at least a month or two away....
* * * * *
 Barry Kauler, the founder and lead developer of Puppy Linux, has announced that the project's next release will incorporate ideas from the entire Puppy developer and user community: "The next release of Puppy is going to be 2.15 Community Edition, incorporating improvements and ideas that Puppy enthusiasts want. Official releases of Puppy are created by me, and everything gets filtered through me, which is good from the point of view of maintaining a unified development of Puppy. However, now is the opportunity for users to have a more direct input to the final product. Here is a forum thread. Note, I'm still here, and will test the alphas/betas on all my hardware and also offer suggestions and contributions."
* * * * *
 In a world where on average 2 - 3 new Linux distributions are created every week, it's nice to see when two independent developers decide to merge their ideas and code into one. This is what happened last week when Martin Ultima, the developer of Ultima Linux, and Kenneth Granerud, the creator of Wolvix GNU/Linux joined forces: We've been so lucky as to have a new developer joining the Wolvix team. Martin Ultima from Ultima Linux. He'll be helping us develop and improve Wolvix alongside with developing Ultima. Welcome aboard, Martin, and thanks for joining us." More details about the decision can be found on the Ultima user forums and Wolvix web site.
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| Released Last Week |
Vyatta 2.0
The Vyatta project, which develops a complete, Debian-based firewall and router distribution, has announced the release of Vyatta Community Edition 2.0: "Vyatta today announced that Vyatta Community Edition 2 (VC2) is now available for download from the Vyatta web site. VC2 is the latest freely-available, community-supported release of Vyatta's open-source router/firewall product. In comparison to the previous release, VC2 delivers improved performance and hardware compatibility while enabling greater community innovation through its compatibility with Debian GNU/Linux." Read release announcement and release notes (PDF format) for more information.
Linux Mint 2.2
Clement Lefebvre has announced the stable release of Linux Mint 2.2, code name "Bianca": "Bianca is out and available for download! Many thanks to the Linux Mint community from which we managed to gather precious ideas and feedback. We've brought a lot of changes into Bianca and we hope you'll like it. Here are the main changes: Minty Artwork and a brand new desktop... We've put a lot of efforts into Bianca and started writing our own applications and our own packages. A new repository was added to Bianca for users to be able to get the latest innovations through APT upgrades. It is also possible to upgrade from Bea to Bianca." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
dyne:bolic 2.4
A new stable version of dyne:bolic, an independently developed live CD with a collection of open source tools for multimedia production, has been released: "This release improves user-friendliness introducing Xfce-4.4 as the new default desktop, customized for the scheme of interaction that is familiar to dyne:bolic users. Another important new feature is the ability to create an encrypted nest to prevent access to personal data stored in home directories. No complicated notions are required, our user-friendly set-up deals with USB and hard disk storages as usual, in case the nest is encrypted you'll see your home icon upgraded to fortress, then everything that goes in your nest is protected." Read the full release announcement for further information.
sidux 2007-01
After 3 months of development, the sidux team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the sidux 2007-01, a distribution recently launched by several ex-KANOTIX developers: "This is the first official sidux release after stabilizing and largely rewriting the distribution framework, further efforts in that direction are ongoing to improve the hardware support/detection and streamline the live operations. While the first release concentrates on two KDE flavors (lite and full), special purpose releases and support for other desktop environments and window managers are planned. The ISO is completely based on Debian Sid, enriched and stabilized with sidux' own packages and scripts." Read the full release announcement for more information.
Kurumin Linux 7.0
Kurumin Linux 7.0 has been released. The latest version of the popular Brazilian distribution arrives some four years after the project's initial release and is intended as a "long-term" desktop solution with extended support. Kurumin Linux 7.0 is based on Debian Etch and offers up-to-date software, correction of problems from the previous release, and a number of new features, such as full NTFS read and write support and newly introduced kernel modules for wireless networking and Bluetooth. To read the full release announcement and to find more details about Kurumin Linux please visit the project's home page (in Portuguese).
Kurumin Linux 7.0 is the project's first release with long-term support
(full image size: 1,866kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Vine Linux 4.1
Vine Linux, a popular Japanese distribution for Intel and PowerPC computers, has been updated to version 4.1. This is a minor update consisting mainly of security and bug fixes that have surfaced since the release of version 4.0 exactly three months ago. The latest version of the distribution uses kernel 2.6.16.36 with wireless networking support and hibernate functionality. It also includes GNOME 2.14 desktop, Firefox 2.0.0.1 web browser, Anthy and SCIM Japanese input method, VL Gothic Japanese fonts, Totem and BMP media players, X.Org 6.9.0, a number of server components, and a graphical installer with hardware auto-detection and several new features. Please read the release announcement (in Japanese) and consult the release notes for further information.
Zenwalk Linux 4.4 and 4.4.1
Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 4.4: "Dear community, Zenwalk 4.4 has been released. This version of Zenwalk utilizes the new Xfce 4.4 desktop and kernel 2.6.20. It introduces many new features and utilities: everything has been polished in many ways. The automount system has been enhanced to detect and handle more CD/DVD devices, including dynamic mount points management. Fusesmbtool has been updated and can now be launched from the Thunar file manager on any folder in order to browse network shares. Zenwalk 4.4 introduces the hotname system: with a few mouse clicks you can rename any USB mounted device to your preferred 'nice' name." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
BOSS GNU/Linux 1.1
The BOSS development team has announced the release of BOSS GNU/Linux 1.1, India's first operating system with an ambitious goal of supporting all official languages in the country: "BOSS Tarang v1.1 released with the following features: refined set of packages; Firefox (v2.0b2) compiled with Indic language printing support; Thunderbird replaces Evolution; update-manager added for daily system updates; Java Runtime included; read and write facility with NTFS partitions; USB webcam modules included; now we can install BOSS from Windows; graphical installer; faster system start-up and login; user-friendly GNOME desktop; simplified menu organization...." Visit the project's main Wiki page to read the full release announcement.
ParallelKnoppix 2.4
ParallelKnoppix 2.4 has been released: "This has kernel 2.6.20.1 with the paravirtualization support, KVM compiled in for both Intel and AMD, and QEMU with the kqemu kernel module (big thanks for GPL release). There's also a rom-o-matic boot ROM at /cdrom/kvm-pxe.iso. I'd like to get a virtual compute node running on top of PK using one of the virtualization platforms, for demonstration purposes and pure cool factor." Read the rest of the release announcement on the project's home page.
Knopperdisk 0.4.0
Knopperdisk is a Gentoo-based distribution designed to run from a USB storage device. After exactly one and a half years' development, a new version was just released. One particular among the many changes: "You always had to enter the USB device during the boot so the initrd would know which device to mount which would function as the real root file system. Instead of initrd now initramfs is used, and you no longer have to enter the USB device. It's taken care of automatically for you, by scanning all the available SCSI devices, trying to mount them and check whether the Knopperdisk image is present or not." Find more details on the project's news page.
GParted LiveCD 0.3.3-7
A new stable version of GParted LiveCD has been released: "We are happy to announce that GParted LiveCD 0.3.3-7 has been released. Based on Gentoo Catalyst, it is now running Fluxbox. Many video drivers have been added so it should work on most x86 computers. We tried to make it as useful as possible so it can be run under VMware and VirtualBox. Changes: hang at shutdown has been fixed by coming back to old version of baselayout; VirtualBox can now boot the ISO, if typing at prompt VESA, which will force VESA driver to be set in xorg.conf; some icons have been added." Here is the full release announcement.
* * * * *
Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
SabayonLinux 3.3
The developers of SabayonLinux have announced that version 3.3 will be released in early March. As we have come to expect from this bleeding edge distribution, it will come with many exciting features: "SabayonLinux 3.3 release is nicely on track and will be released in the first days of March, sporting a lot of new exciting features, bug fixes and a brand new artwork. We're currently working on getting eINIT tightly integrated with SabayonLinux and we've finally completed rewriting the award winning Acceleration Manager using QT 4.2." Read the full announcement for further details.
* * * * *
Pardus Linux 2007.1
The Pardus Linux project has published an estimated release roadmap at the end of which we should see the release of an updated version 2007.1. An internal beta test has already started while a public release candidate is currently scheduled for 9 March. The final release is expected a week later. Please read this mailing list post (in Turkish) for further details.
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Felinux. Felinux is an Italian desktop distribution based on Slackware Linux.
- Resulinux. Resulinux is a Brazilian desktop-oriented distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux.
- Syxoo Biznis Linux. Syxoo Biznis Linux is a Kubuntu-based distribution optimised for business use.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes our latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 5 March 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Zenwalk (by Sage on 2007-02-27 09:30:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Susan mentions this one and it has an entry above, too.
Definitely one to avoid. The installer is broken and requires considerable experience to overcome. Distros have moved on - the dinosaurs are gone. Installation and detection is solved. And, incidentally, the Zenwalk Forum is stuffed with bigots who delete any hint of dissent and will likely ban you if you step out of line by telling them like it is! No prizes for guessing from whence it emanates.
2 • Best Partions setup (by Douglas on 2007-02-27 09:44:47 GMT from Germany)
When setting up a new distro for home use what is the best way to arrange the partitions and the basic file system (ie mount points) given 2 drives a fast one and a big one. The goal being a fast system.
Where best to put the swap, root, home etc?
What software would you use to tune your new distro setup?
I know this is almost off topic but every time I set up a new distro I wonder about this.
Douglas
3 • No subject (by linbetwin on 2007-02-27 10:02:15 GMT from Romania)
Totally agree with Ladislav on the subject of what makes a distro great. With Ubuntu, everywhere you turn you find help, the forums is undoubtedly the biggest and friendliest of all Linux forums. Their wiki is still a mess, but you can find a lot of useful information if you know how to search. You can bash Ubuntu and Shuttleworth all you want, I still think Ubuntu is the best and most promising Linux environment (i.e. distro + infrastructure + community). Mutatis mutandis, Ubuntu is the Mac OS X of the Linux world. That was their goal from the beginning and they're doing pretty well.
I am currently running PCLinuxOS .94/2007 TR1 updated and with beryl. It's very nice and stable so far. It looks beautiful, although fonts look ugly in some applications. But the software categories view in Synaptic is a mess.
Downloaded Zenwalk for the first time and tried to install it in VMWare. I don't mind text-based installers, but this one is almost as newbie-unfriendly as Gentoo's. I gave up. Why would I need a distro like that, anyway?
4 • Sidux (by weg on 2007-02-27 10:19:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
If u think ubuntu support forums are good then get yourself to sidux-irc or forums, where you will find a helpful, respectful of newbie community, with the answer to nearly any problem very fast. Add that to a lightning fast debian sid, a good balance of apps and excellent hardware support/ detection. Give Sidux a whirl today, if u haven't already, it may be young, but already very mature. Peace.
5 • Zenwalk (by Jean Azzopardi on 2007-02-27 10:49:11 GMT from Malta)
I've been using Zenwalk for 2 weeks at home, and have since installed it on an older pc (192 MB RAM, 333 mhz Intel Celeron) and a school DELL pc.
It flies along, much faster than Xubuntu, looks attractive, and the installer, while different from Ubuntu, has absolutely nothing to do with Gentoo. Not as easy as Ubuntu, but not hard either. A friend of mine who did not use Linux before managed to install it on a laptop without problems.
6 • No subject (by Eudoxus on 2007-02-27 10:51:33 GMT from Latvia)
Although I in a way agree with Ladislav I still think that Ubuntu is one of the most overrated distros around. Generally it is one of the best distros there are, but still it is till far from being the best distro period. I switched from Ubuntu to SuSE and to my mind SuSE is more polished and more stable system and I can not see any difference between SuSE forums and Ubuntu`s. I allways receive help when I need.
In dact it is partly Ubuntu`s evangelical approach to lunx that make me really sick - all this talk about humanity, all those ubuntu t-shirts. This is just stupid and childish. I run an OS on my machine, not an image of humanity.
7 • ubuntuforums (by Loki on 2007-02-27 10:55:58 GMT from Serbia and Montenegro)
Has anyone of you ever posted or at least browsed the official ubuntu forums, www.ubuntuforums.org ? If you did (or didn't), go to it now and read the last line on the main page. What does it say?
And they have the guts to say that they are helping the free software community. They should be ashamed of themselves.
For those of you that didn't get it, the forum uses proprietary software, vBulletin, instead of many (good?) free alternatives.
8 • RE - Zenwalk (by Sage (by John on 2007-02-27 11:03:34 GMT from France)
How can you tell that Zenwalk's installer is broken ? Do you mean that the thousand users that installed and currently use Zenwalk are all blind ? Do you mean that sweetcomputing.com testers , who found Zenwalk as one of the most easy to install Linux OS are stupid ?
Zenwalk is a great project, with one of the most active and friendly user community around.
I know what happened to you Sage. I saw your offending posts on Zenwalk support forum, and I understand quiet well why the moderators decided to kick you out.
John.
9 • Mandriva mailing-list (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 11:07:30 GMT from France)
According to your own website, Mailing Lists are listed there:
http://www.mandriva.com/en/mailing_lists
So:
- 2 support/discussion mailing lists
- 14 developpers mailing lists
- 1 newsletter
- 3 security mailing lists
I really think there's nothing more in Ubuntu than what exists in Mandriva or OpenSUSE.
10 • Sidux (by valmar on 2007-02-27 11:22:09 GMT from Switzerland)
I agree completely with 4. I have been watching Sidux since it was announced, and I think they are doing a wonderful job. I received help from their forum very quickly for the issues I had until now. The only problem I think Sidux has is with the artwork, but it's only release 1 and they say they had license issues with that. Of course everyone has his/her favourite distribution, but I think that Sidux is worth checking out. If I remember correctly, once ladislav said that his favourite distribution was Debian unstable updated weekly for stability issues. I think this is as close as its get to a stabilized Debian unstable. And most of the core developers are ex-Kanotix developers, so we are talking about experience people.
Best regards to all
11 • ESR (by Ohnonymous on 2007-02-27 11:31:20 GMT from United States)
Eric makes a number of good points, in particular his criticisms of rpm and yum really level with the reality of the situation. I'm sure the Debian community is thrilled to have him aboard. :D
12 • RE 2 Very partial hints for Hd tuning. (by dbrion on 2007-02-27 11:42:11 GMT from France)
Dr Douglas
Here are some very partial hints for disk tuning/optimisation.
They should be cross verified (2 colleagues and I had to tune a servers' disk 2 yrs ago, I still remember the names of the softs; BUT...
(although we achieved in having -:-3 access times, it was time consuming and one can make errors...)
** Where best to put the swap, root, home etc?**
If you have many data, and are not that regarding on access time, the home should be put on the big disk, else ...
Classically, the swap should be put on the fast disk. The Freebsd book (chap 11.2.1.2 in the French vers) recommands putting the swap in _both_ disks, and somewhat big. (I recommand, for trouble shooting purposes, _removing the swap with swapon /swapoff (see the man) It works on unconnected PCs_)
**What software would you use to tune your new distro setup? **
Read the man ual of hdparm and download, compile and run bonnie
(http://www.textuality.com/bonnie/) : it tests the speed of the disk for different operations...you can have an idea of what you are willing to to (it is not the same thing compiling, reading texts and watching videos...) and you decide if it is woth trying to improve with hdparm .
** I know this is almost off topic but every time I set up a new distro I wonder about this. **
These are interesting questions, anyway... (A slow disk can be annoying).
Avec toutes les reserves d'usage (et plus encore)...
13 • Resulinux (by Piras on 2007-02-27 11:45:39 GMT from Brazil)
The Resulinux would have to be little time in the wait list. After all, it is a steady, innovative and fully functional distribution, that already formed to its redor an ample and very active community. Moreover, it makes use of an excellent support forum. It already deserves, at last, to be between the permanent distributions.
14 • ESR is Oh So Relevant... (by Eduardo O Padoan on 2007-02-27 11:56:35 GMT from Brazil)
This facts says it all:
http://geekz.co.uk/esrfacts/
15 • Fedora and the world around... (by Caraibes on 2007-02-27 12:09:04 GMT from Dominican Republic)
I am back to Fedora now, FC6, after 3 months with Mandriva, a week with OpenSUSE 10.2, and a week with Edgy... On my desktop, Fedora is simply the BEST.
So in a way I did the opposite of ESR...
But that doesn't mean Ubuntu isn't good. As a matter of fact, Dapper sits happily on my laptop, and I enjoy the LTS concept !
But it just seems that RPM distros have a better hardware detection than their DEB's counterpart...
What I like about Fedora, and it is also true in a way with Ubuntu, it is that the project is backed by a big company that makes money from that distro afterward, so they have to make sure to back it up the right way...
It seems that (so far) the Red Hat business plan makes more sense that the Canonical one, but only time will tell, we'll see...
I get ESR's point about lack of multimedia (it took some tweaking, with Livna, and fedorasolved.org to make it work), but have a look at Alcatel-Lucent's lawsuit against Microsoft for the mp3 patent... That is clearly a reminder why Red Hat is cautious.
Keep in mind users can always install Blag, an excellent Fedora alternative, with most "free as in speech" multimedia stuff working. I ran on Blag for most of 2006, and was very happy with it. I switched to plain Fedora as an experience, and I am also very happy.
In a way, Blag already does what Fedora might do soon : 1 cd install... I think it would be nice for Fedora to jump on the wagon of the Live-cd installer, like many other distro. However, having the DVD with the "kitchen-sink" is good also !
One word about Vector : I think it is a nice distro, I ave the Std version installed on various slower PC's, but I look forward to the SOHO, as I personnaly need either Gnome or KDE to enjoy a "real" desktop experience (no offense to Xfce, but Thunar doesn't do networking like Nautilus)...
My last word about Eric Raymond : his rant about FC smells like propaganda for BuntuSpire ;)
16 • Zenwalk (by Goh Lu Feng on 2007-02-27 12:20:19 GMT from Singapore)
I think that though the installer is text based, it is not that unfriendly. Not especially when there is a nice manual at http://manual.zenwalk.org/en/ch02s04.html#d0e420. If newbies find it unfriendly, they can always refer to this.
I am in the process of installing Zenwalk 4.4 on 128MB ram machines for a charity project to give computers to less privilege kids in Singapore. Having ran Zenwalk 4.0 and 4.2 before, I must comment that that more ram seems to be used after booting into the desktop.
In earlier versions of Zenwalk on 128 MB ram machines I had not touch swap after booting into xfce desktop and could run Openoffice and Firefox without much lag. But this is not the case for Zenwalk 4.4. I suspect that it may be due to xfce4, but have no evidence to confirm this. Any similar sentiments?
I find it sad to find a userfriendly distro (think zenwalk is my baseline for that) that can be installed on 128MB ram and can run FF and OOo without lag. Granted that there are distros that run on less ram, but such distros may not be as easy to install. Of course there are light weights like damn small linux and puppy, but I feel that they are a bit minimalistic IMHO.
I'm just wondering how come Linux can' t run that well on old machines these days. Please correct me if I am wrong.
17 • RE #11 (by derda on 2007-02-27 12:34:38 GMT from Germany)
RPM certainly needs maintenance, but that doesn't mean the rest of ESR's statement made any sense. He actually accuses Fedora to hamper the "liberation" of computer users by stubornly insisting on free software... that's weird on so many levels, I can't even start to express my astonishment.
18 • on mandriva (by Rigo on 2007-02-27 12:50:52 GMT from Philippines)
i agree with ladislav. you do not only market your code but everything in your distro... when it comes to marketing, folks from mandriva are known for criticizing other distro... they don't realize that if you are not selling then there is something wrong with you, and you don't blame your competitors if you are losing!
remember this:
LOSERS CRITICIZE, WINNERS ANALYZE!!!
(as said by Mr. Colayco, a Filipino entrepreneur)
19 • Ubuntu and VBullettin (by Jean on 2007-02-27 12:55:17 GMT from Malta)
For those of you that didn't get it, the forum uses proprietary software, vBulletin, instead of many (good?) free alternatives.
This issue has been raised many times in the forums. The forum's stability and ease of use apparently is 10x to vBullettin. If you don't like it, take it up with the administrtor.
20 • Zenwalk (by Patrick Useldinger on 2007-02-27 12:56:39 GMT from Luxembourg)
The Zenwalk installer IS broken in some places, and bug reports get repeatedly ignored. Plus, the distro has completely lost its lightweight philosophy which made it special and useful. So now it's just one of many to me.
21 • ZenWalk (by ilgufo on 2007-02-27 13:05:10 GMT from Italy)
ZenWalk is a really good distro...
The installer is easy (it's the same of slackware, but it isn't hard to use :P), and the look & feel is nice :D
There is only a problem...
I think that firefox isn't a good choiche as default browser... It use too many RAM.
Bye.
Gufo
22 • Etch delay (by hound_dog on 2007-02-27 13:16:46 GMT from Finland)
Thanks for pointing out Martin Krafft's excellent presentation on the reasons why Etch has been delayed.
The main reason for delaying Etch hasn't been, like some sensation-hungry journalists have assumed, the number of release-critical bugs or the disagreement over the fund-raising project called Dunc-Tank. Instead, the main reason has been the unfinished kernel, which has delayed the final version (RC2) of the installer. Debian just can't release without an installer.
A couple of weeks ago the installer team already announced that they would start the preparation of Debian-Installer RC2, which would then be used for the Etch release. But that turned out to be a bit hasty promise because the final kernel wasn't quite ready yet.
Then, last Friday there was a post from the installer team on the mailing lists, saying that they've finally got the much awaited release-ready kernel and that they are currently preparing to release the Debian-Installer RC2. Hopefully this second attempt is more successful than the first and we'll see RC2 announced soon.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2007/02/msg01000.html
When the installer is ready, the only main blocker left before the final Etch release would be the amount of release-critical bugs. Krafft's presentation explains that the packages with RC bugs are either fixed or removed from Etch. However, Krafft's presentation also says that about 30% of RC bugs are directly related to the kernel, so getting the kernel ready should bring the bug count down considerably.
As Krafft concludes, good things come to those who wait and Debian 4.0 ("etch") will be released when it's ready. That's the way it is and that's the way it should be.
Still, it's good to see that they're making progress getting closer to release.
23 • Mandriva (by Reiver on 2007-02-27 13:22:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have said it many times on the Mandriva forums, but they cannot understand that their product is much more than some pressed discs, downloaded iso's and package updates. Oh well, I suppose some company's are destined to run themselves into the ground. If the linux market was perfect they wouldn't exist, unfortunately the fan boy's and the ill informed keep them afloat....at least for now!
24 • Zenwalk (by McDazz on 2007-02-27 13:27:50 GMT from Australia)
After a few years of using Slackware, I decided to give Zenwalk a go after reading an article in Distrowatch.
I absolutely loved it - for the first few releases that is.
For some reason, they changed the direction they were heading in and I eventually lost interest and went back to using Slackware.
I still use Slackware on Desktops and Servers, however, now Ubuntu has found it's way onto my laptop.
While I still like the control I get with Slackware, the ease in which Ubuntu installs, detects hardware etc etc on my laptop has made it a winner in my eyes.
Forget about dual booting with XP - with Ubuntu, I have no need for XP. :-)
25 • RE (Zenwalk - by Patrick Useldinger) (by John on 2007-02-27 14:22:20 GMT from France)
Hi Patrick,
You wrote "the distro has completely lost its lightweight philosophy"
You assume without giving any example, could you explain what you mean ?
You wrote "The Zenwalk installer IS broken"
Same comment, this is only an assumption. As far as I read and contribute to Zenwalk support forum since 1 year, no user as never reported the installer to be "broken". Of course there are always some users that need more explanations than others to understand, specially Microsoft Windows newcomers, but we can't consider these problems as bug reports...
So what next ? what are you going to find broken in Zenwalk ?
John
26 • Zenwalk 4.4 (by chenjk on 2007-02-27 14:25:06 GMT from United States)
I have been using Zenwalk 4.4 for the past week, and it ran just fine. The major difference I have noticed since 4.2 is a MUCH longer boot time, my guess is it's due to kernel 2.6.20 (I am on a laptop, so can't blame is all on 2.6.20). Beside the longer boot time, I am still loving Zenwalk. Beats Win xp.
27 • Zenwalk broken installer RE 20 (by dbrion on 2007-02-27 14:52:04 GMT from France)
Il a de beaux restes: the installation was quite straightforward, no need to babysit it... The install was on a virtual disk, with VMplayer, on a USB1x exetrnal drive. It was neither long not difficult. the only problem s when one does not like the disk potioner : the Zen team writes that, in this case, one can use, say, Mandrivas disk portitioner . This I did (but, if my religion had been with PClinuxoss, I would have used it)..
The rest was very easy, one nice feature relying in the sound : they remind that the sound level can be cured with the mixer, once installed (it avoids louds cries when one makes mispeelings).
RE 16 As for memory greediness, it was not that obscene : I used 96 M (I do not suppose VMplayer nor XP would cheat), and it compiled supplement apps without problem, while I browsed in monted USB keys... Abiword could open, too.
Vim worked fine, with _syntax coloring_ (the latest versions of Mandriva have no more syntax coloring with vim, in profit of eye candy: this feature avoided many errors and is *really* useful, not a meaningless fashionable gadget).
28 • Zenwalk slowness (by pinakidion on 2007-02-27 14:54:05 GMT from United States)
There is a great thread called the 39 Meg Desktop that is very helpful. I'm afraid I can't link because I am at work (any site with php-based forum software is blocked.) I tried it and it works (except for lxpanel). Very very quick.
I am trying a variation of the suggested components for a school-based project here:
openbox
pcmanfm
lxpanel
I keep getting seg faults when compiling lxpanel, but I hope to figure that out soon.
The problem I get is that even with ICEWM + pcmanfm as the only things running, I'm still using 384MB Ram. Most of it appears to be sleeping services and daemons.
However, using hotplug instead of coldpkug does significantly reduce my boot-time.
If you want really good and quick distro for old PCs, I recommend Absolute OS. www.pcbypaul.com
I would be using it, but I need a 2.6 kernel for various things. Boots in seconds on an old Pent 2MMX 200Mhz with 128MB RAM and run quick, quick, quick. His homemade font installer is great.
29 • the 39 Meg Desktop (by John on 2007-02-27 15:03:52 GMT from France)
The 39 megs desktop thread :
http://support.zenwalk.org/index.php/topic,5014.0.html
30 • Zenwalk * 1 (by tom on 2007-02-27 15:07:04 GMT from United States)
I find your post pure FUD.
Zenwalk is a fine distro and I have had no problems with the installer.
All forums have ways of banning offensive FUD and it sounds like you got what you deserved.
31 • Ubuntu forums (by as on 2007-02-27 15:09:25 GMT from Ireland)
While you will usually get a quick response on Ubuntu's forums, I found it often consisted of the likes of 'Go to Applications-> Accessories -> Terminal' type responses. This is no doubt helpful for a lot of people who are just starting out with linux (most of whom seem to start with Ubuntu these days), but can be irritating when you are reasonably familiar with Linux and want a simple answer without trawling through long pages of well meaning but useless posts. It also means you're bombarded with results when searching for anything, which often aren't much use.
Sometimes there's an advantage to a smaller community, where you may not always get the answers you need, but forum posts tend to be informed and relevant.
I suppose this just comes down to a matter of taste, though.
32 • Hey dude, you're getting Linux on that Dell (by Tazix on 2007-02-27 15:23:39 GMT from United States)
This is good news... I may just get a Dell Laptop afterall:
http://tinyurl.com/2rg37h
Cheers!
33 • #32 - linux on dell (by ray carter at 2007-02-27 15:40:59 GMT from United States)
If it ever materializes. Dell has, from time to time, offered Linux on high end machines - that's not enough. What we need is an option for Linux on every machine from the top to the bottom. Their argument about which Linux(es) to offer is somewhat specious too, I'm happy buying a machine with any Linux distro, realizing that if one works I should be able to load my personal favourite.
34 • RE:33 (by Tazix on 2007-02-27 15:47:35 GMT from United States)
True. I want to see them actually put it up as choices on every "customize" page.... instead of having to google for some obscure link (that you can't find on their site), to get to the "n" series, that come with FreeDos.
35 • #31 (Ubtunu Forums) (by Justin Whitaker on 2007-02-27 15:53:10 GMT from United States)
That's not exactly the case as...the forums are really there for the new linux user, and to provide a meeting place for the community.
Yes, you do need to wade through 1000 posts to get to the one you need, but that is more of a function of people being unable or unwilling to learn how to use a search function to find the answer they are looking for. As a result, you get 1000 "wine is broken posts" or "OMFG the update broke my system, killed my goldfish, and stole my girlfriend" type posts.
The upside of all of this is that the Ubuntu community is friendly, helpful, and most of the people there want you to succeed in switching to Linux, not just Ubuntu.
If you really need deep technical help, the crew on IRC are the guys to go to. They sit in channel all day and night, answering the most arcane requests.
Contrast that with the communities at other distributions (Zenwalk, Vector, and others are not exactly helpful or friendly to the noob), and you can see why people congregate around Shuttleworth's brainchild.
36 • No subject (by ex-man on 2007-02-27 16:00:38 GMT from United States)
Let's see: According to one of the leaders of the open source movement, Fedora, one of the most popular Linux distributions, is a pile of junk. (a) It can't be trusted, because it will for some reason break randomly and render your system useless. (b) Linux is completely useless without proprietary software being installed by default. Linux should not be run if Microsoft software is not installed by default. (c) The developers have no interest in consumers, only in their own hobbies. Fedora is just too tough for your grandmother.
That's good for Linux. Microsoft would never use that kind of gold, would they?
Of course, it got ESR in the distrowatch headlines, which is exactly what the kid wanted. When he turned 18, he found that throwing a tantrum in a grocery store got a visit from the police rather than just attention. So now he throws tantrums on news sites. Good luck, Freespire community! I'm sure this is what you had in mind.
He's a filthy scumbag with no interest in advancing free software. He's done more to hurt Linux than anything Microsoft could possibly have done. Microsoft can't buy this kind of publicity.
37 • Sabayon founder loses father (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-02-27 16:00:44 GMT from Italy)
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=268&Itemid=2
As many of you know, Fabio Erculiani is the young founder of Sabayon Linux.
He is an extremely kind and grateful person.
38 • Check out Dream Linux! (by mike on 2007-02-27 16:16:28 GMT from Poland)
A lot of attention has been given to Zenwalk, Ubuntu and Mint but I love the latest release of Dream linux. It has a lovely desktop and uses the lightning fast XFCE desktop. It's very fast and easy to install. Dream linux uses a dock bar to open programs quickly and has a similar look and feel to the Mac OSX. It comes with "easy install" which lets you add programs such as Google Earth, Picasa, Opera, and Skype with just one mouse click. I can't wait until they release the final version of the Beryl-Aiglx multimedia edition.
I think this distro deserves a lot more attention and is a serious contender to the likes of Mint and Kbuntu.
39 • a sidux issue (by AV1611 on 2007-02-27 16:30:59 GMT from Ukraine)
Well...though I appreciate sidux developers' efforts ( I like debian, so all the deb's heritage is what I'm aquainted with), I think they ought to give a more stress to hrdwr compatibility.
A good old MatroxG450 + NEC72VM. What could be simplier than that combination of video?
Yet it couldn't give the correct 1280x1024*75Hz, but some 1280x800(???). Actually, the graphical env-t didn't run at all (and what in the world is the name of the sidux' equivalent of the xorgconf?)
40 • Sidux (by Nelson lobo on 2007-02-27 16:41:34 GMT from India)
Hats off to Sidux. It just takes10 sec to boot into the kde desktop. Excellent in all respects.
41 • Merger Warning (by PastorEd on 2007-02-27 16:41:41 GMT from United States)
In a world where on average 2 - 3 new Linux distributions are created every week, it's nice to see when two independent developers decide to merge their ideas and code into one. This is what happened last week when Martin Ultima, the developer of Ultima Linux, and Kenneth Granerud, the creator of Wolvix GNU/Linux joined forces...
Laidislav, sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's not. Remember the HORRIBLE MESS that happened when an excellent distro, J.A.M.D. merged with Blue LInux to become Ares Linux? The Ares developers took an excellent working distro with a vibrant thriving helpful community and turned it into a mean-spirited rantfest with only one release of alpha code. It was heartbreaking.
So, to the users of Ultima and Wolvix - I hope the best for you. But don't let what happened to J.A.M.D. happen to you...!
42 • Sidux, Debian Sid on the Bleeding Edge (by craigevil on 2007-02-27 16:45:02 GMT from United States)
If you want a distro that is both bleeding edge and stable take a look at Sidux. The development team is always ready to answer questions in the forum and in the IRC. The manuals and wiki are well organized.
sidux is always bleeding edge technology, packed into a tested and stable combination which is ready for use. It is moving very fast, and will always bring you the hippest and most interesting developments first. sidux is also one of the few operating systems where you can get a 64bit system with real 64bit compiled applications - and providing 100% compatible access to Debian Sid.
43 • Re 25: Zenwalk (by Patrick Useldinger on 2007-02-27 16:47:23 GMT from Luxembourg)
If you haven't noticed that the distro has become more heavyweight, and if you are one of those who ignore my bugreports on the Zenwalk forum, then it comes as no surprise that you say that it's all assumptions. Read the Bugs section in the forum. Or ignore it, like your friends. FWIW, my userid on the forum was uselpa.
And no, I don't need extra explanations. I have been using Slackware for years.
44 • Zenwalk (by CTYI_Student on 2007-02-27 16:57:06 GMT from Ireland)
There is no problem with the installer, it may not be as easy to use as others such as Ubuntu and Fedora Core but it works. I find Zenwalk to be an easy to use distro which is great even for higher end computers.
45 • The customers are always right ! Patience heals ! (by Michael scb on 2007-02-27 17:08:52 GMT from Malaysia)
I totally agree with Ladislav on Mandriva's attitude/ego/whatever !
In my case, i didn't want to have anything to do with mandriva since its conception/teratogenic transformation. However, i wished Mandriva could turn back the clock.
As for zenwalk4.4.1, it flies !!!! like the airbus A380. Vector5.8 is no less agile. However, with regards to the whole installation and configuration including the number of reboots, Zenwalk wins !
46 • Fedora (by Dano on 2007-02-27 17:10:45 GMT from United States)
Of all the distros I have tried I found I had the most difficulty with Fedora, all the way to version 6 I tried each new offering hoping for a polished, workable desktop and each time I was disappointed. The blatant bugs that were allowed to exist in a major release were to me unforgivable. I just want something that works and I never could get it to work. I stick with Suse for a major distro and PCLinuxOS for a killer up and comer. Mepis, Debian and Ubuntu are ok too for the Debian side of things. These distros all have their issues but generally they lack the showstopper bugs out of the box that Fedora seems to let slip by release after release.
47 • RE: # 41 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-02-27 17:11:02 GMT from Italy)
"Remember the HORRIBLE MESS that happened when an excellent distro, J.A.M.D. merged with Blue LInux to become Ares Linux? The Ares developers took an excellent working distro with a vibrant thriving helpful community and turned it into a mean-spirited rantfest with only one release of alpha code. It was heartbreaking."
Trouble is, that wasn't a real merger. J.A.M.D. was already dead, as Jim Luchas did not join the Ares Desktop development.
Here is what I found:
http://distrowatch.gds.tuwien.ac.at/weekly.php?issue=20040112 post #16
I agree with that post, because I was a J.A.M.D. user.
48 • Zenwalk for educated people only (by sweetnsourbkr on 2007-02-27 17:12:54 GMT from United States)
People who think Zenwalk's (or Slackware's for that matter) installer is broken should go back and learn how to install something first.
Zenwalk's installer is about as no frills as you can get in Linux. Believe me, there are a few more difficult (or 'broken' as you might put it) installers--try OpenBSD and see how 'broken' that is.
Oh, and try installing openSUSE in less than 20 minutes.
Zenwalk is not for everyone. And apparently, not for those people who can't learn to install something.
49 • re 48 - Zenwalk (by Patrick Useldinger on 2007-02-27 17:34:09 GMT from Luxembourg)
Well, call it as you wish, but I've reported a bug for 3.0 which JP promised to fix for 3.2. It was not fixed in 3.2, not in 4.0 and not in 4.2. Then I gave up, because obviously nobody cared. BTW, I did include the solution, the fix would have been easy.
If you install a swiss-french keyboard, and then you're unable to use the @ sign (among others), I call that broken. Unless you manage to type an email address without the @ sign. Changing to a VT doesn't work either.
And yes, I can fix it easily. But Zenwalk is not for users who want to modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf after installation.
It's not because the installation worked for *you* that is is flawless. Open your mind. There's more than your personal installation to cover. And arrogance is not going to help, I've probably done more installations than you.
Discussing OpenSUSE or OpenBSD is off-topic. And the OpenBSD installer is hard, but not broken - it does what it's supposed to do in a correct way. Swiss-french keyboard included.
50 • Fabio Erculiani (by M1k@ H@cK on 2007-02-27 17:49:22 GMT from Italy)
Le mie piu' sentite condoglianze ,Fabio.
Buon lavoro con la tua splendida distro..........
51 • Douglas #2 (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 17:54:26 GMT from United States)
I started out thinking I was going to write a post at the bottom to help Douglas with his partition issue. I too used to have problems determining how to set up partitions until I found zenwalk v.1.X. Most distros were set in their ways and wanted to set it up their way or no way. It was almost impossible to dual boot to two linuxes on the same box. It would want to take over or mess up the other and then have the gaul to say that their partition was unusable after you wasted a hour and told it many times to leave the other alone. Most of the problems were usually caused by the boot loader install routine and the instructions to manually do it from a floppy left much to be desired.
But, as I started reading these posts on Zenwalk and thinking of Douglas and my experences with Zenwalk of late I suggest he use Qtparted or if he has something like partition magic or commander to use that. If he doesn't dual boot use PCLinux and do the automatic and then go back and set the swap smaller to about 2X the memory in the PC.
I wasn't going to say anything but I have some P2 3xxmhz machines with 128mb of memory and Zenwalk black screens on all of them with no explanation. There needs to be a minimal install with XFCE or iceVM or something if not the need for a Slackware based distro with these computers in mind would be much needed in the linux world.
Zenwalk it is nothing against you just fix the darn installer and don't just hang and don't tell us when you have a problem. It gets very anoying to stare at a black screen forever to hope that something good will come out of it. But you are right if you are fairly linux smart you can play with undocumented command line options learned from other distros and get it up to read log files to find your looping timeouts to questions that the installer could have asked or tell us that we need to add something to the command line. You are not the only Linux in the would and I should not have to memorize every option I had to enter 3 months ago when I last installed your software especially when it gets longer every time I install. Help screens tend to jog my memory sometimes. Woops I said it.
52 • Dell (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 18:07:25 GMT from United States)
There is quite the buzz on this.
People have been complaining to me about dell dropping rebates and increasing their prices $50 and up for Vista. They are also not happy about open office option gone and the high costs for the new office. The ones that can bite the bullet but and do it.
But the ones that can't come to me and I set them up with linux.
They do make a great laptop platform for linux, everything just works.
If they can get a $399 laptop out again with Linux and free shipping I bet they would sell a ton at the Cosco and the phones will be ringing off the hook.
BTW, I never could find the page with the U series either.
53 • Mandriva / Ubuntu etc (by AdamW on 2007-02-27 18:26:23 GMT from Canada)
Wow, you can't write a little blog post these days without it getting everywhere...
First of all, my blog was not intended to be critical of Ubuntu or of the review it responded to. So I'm sad about the comment about criticism versus analysis (if you read my entire post, it's _expressly_ an analysis of what other distros can learn from Ubuntu) and the one about MDV developers bashing other distros (I just don't see that one at all, I follow MDV development extremely closely and the level of bashing of other distros is extremely low).
Ladislav, as a previous commenter noted, your mailing list comparison is unfair. From a glance at that list of Ubuntu lists it's clear the comparison doesn't hold. There are a bunch of development related lists, announcement lists and regional lists. We have these kind of lists too, yet you didn't count them in your comparison. I only see a couple of dedicated support lists in that page.
You also failed to mention the Club forums (which are open to all), community sites like MandrivaUsers.org, or Mandriva Expert (a dedicated support site) - http://expert.mandriva.com
I also disagree that criticism falls on deaf ears - we regularly make changes to all aspects of the distro and community that are based on user feedback, or initiated by users.
And I'd like to know what you think is wrong with our documentation.
54 • RE #51 (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 18:29:53 GMT from United States)
Well said #51, we should not have to opt out. This no this and no that gets ignored half the time or is using a different tems is a pain. The software should detect and opt in and set it correctly based on what was previously installed. If it doesn't know it should ask and it doesn't have to be graphical. Just give us some feedback.
Things like what happend in vector shouldn't happen. Putting up the firewall before the network printers are detected and shutting down the ports before detecting the printers. Having a short list of wifi drivers and not prompting for more or not noticing there is a valid ethernet connection to get more drivers (to use instead) is very agrivating especially with many laptops now having wifi and ethernet both built in. If the wifi doesn't work don't mess with the ethernet settings and let us enter a fixed IP and/or WEP key if what you have doesn't work.
55 • ESR Vs Fedora or ESR Vs Linux! (by Wassim on 2007-02-27 18:37:22 GMT from Algeria)
ESR's opinion shocked me when i read it!
Ok as linux user he has the ability to criticize Fedora (no matter what he is criticizing) or whatever distro, but as a linux evangelist he has no right announcing his switch to another distro as the best solution to avoid Fedora's “Persistent failure” -as he says-.
Best regards
56 • winehq (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 18:41:38 GMT from Germany)
i still wait for wine rpm version 0.9.31 for mandriva...:(
why they need so long?
57 • say what you will , but. (by neighborlee on 2007-02-27 19:23:24 GMT from United States)
The only thing that matters is at the end of the day, the pereceived trust of the userbase. I see far too often people having nvidia/ati problems, and it shows in my use as well as current reviews by other people. I think ubuntu has some wonderful components to it, but if I can't trust that it has good organizational abiliities then I will go elsewhere, and that is precisely what Im doing is deciding on just that matter.
I might feel its got the 'most' going for it afa a distro goes, but I also see too much in the way of problems related to what I feel is bad Quality Assurance , and that is very troubling considering that for marekt share its going up against ( virus's notwithstanding) M$ and other well done distros. I used to be able to straight up install nvidia-glx, but that no longer is the case, and if something has changed then they need to make sure its noted somewhere to avoid confusion ( and I mean in the properties section of nvidia-glx). We all appreciate ubuntu's efforts to give us a freely available quality distro, but issues like x breaking so often does little to advanced the trust it has slowly built, and may give rise to people going elsewhere. I hope they are able to resole these issues and gain peoples trust back. I still, - at the end of the day wish linux was ONE distro instead of 100 +, thereby letting everyone work 'together' on one solid distro making linux the best it can be, and removing confusion from new users and current users alike, as they try to sort through all the madness and decide which company has it right for linux. IF you dont believe me and many others that struggle with this issue, you can go here and verify that even scholars agree , that sometimes too much choice is bad:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200
cheers
nl
58 • I agree with ESR..... (by kiwi on 2007-02-27 19:25:24 GMT from New Zealand)
Yep - I have to agree with ESR - I've recently left Fedora too, because of the **far lower** number of packages in RPMs (as opposed to debs) and "RPM hell" (and yes, I can use alien, but that's a **kludgy** way of running a distro).
Redhat should use the "smart" package manager (which supports just about all package formats - rpm, debs, etc etc).
Yum is an **absolute joke**, and that goes for rpm too. Kludgy blimmin' format .... The one thing RH has going for it is its good SELinux support, but imo that's no longer enough...
59 • More than the distro (by Tom on 2007-02-27 19:57:30 GMT from United States)
It was the Ubuntu website that first drew me to that distro. Compared to all the others, it is so much simpler and easier to navigate. I tend to judge the quality of a product based on the quality of the web page (not that this is always correct, but I default to this). Plus the forum was easy to figure out, and answers were quick.
60 • 56 re wine 0.9.31 (by AdamW on 2007-02-27 20:22:18 GMT from Canada)
ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/.../wine-0.9.31-1mdv2007.0.i586.rpm
it is better to go through your distributor's repositories than to rely on upstream packaging, in most cases.
For details on all Mandriva media (repositories): http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Policies/SoftwareMedia
61 • RE #58 (by derda on 2007-02-27 20:48:44 GMT from Germany)
kiwi wrote: Yum is an **absolute joke**, and that goes for rpm too. Kludgy blimmin' format ....
I can't say anything about yum, i never used it. But RPM, the format, is not worse than Debian's deb package format. It is just that Debian enforces a very strict packaging code and Red Hat apparently does not.
62 • Fedora, Zenwalk, Vector, and system bloat (by Nathan Fisher on 2007-02-27 21:09:03 GMT from United States)
First, I thin ESR was out of line on a couple things, however he is right to criticize yum because it is definately the slowest package manager I've run accross. However, I've had just as many breakages in deb based distros as in rpm based distros. Truth be told I don't like either.
I've used Zenwalk, and for the most part I like it. The installer could be more informative but worked for me. However, I'm not so arrogant that I am going to say my experience means it is good. It was good for me, but ovbviously some have had trouble with it.
Vector has always been an underrated distro and I'm glad to see Ladislov give it it's due. There are issues of course but they get worked on. This is the case in all distributions. I think there is far too much emphasis placed on using nvidia and other drivers, however. Frankly that is not what Vector is about anyway, it is intended to be a lightweight easy to configure distribution, not necessarily on the bleeding edge of eye candy. It would be nice to get your desired resolution of course...
What I laugh at though, are all the comments and claims that various distros offer a lightening fast desktop. Very few do. Xfce4, as good as it is, is painfully slow on a 500mhz machine. Combine that with a bunch of unneeded services and daemons running in the background and some "lightweight" distributions slow to a halt. If you truly want a fast desktop on a slower machine you have to make do with a lightweight WM like fluxbox or icewm (there are dozens of others) and eliminate as many running processes as possible. This can be done in distributions like Slackware or Vector quite easily, but the claim that Xubuntu is a lightweight is pure folly. It is just plain slow, and it takes a lot of work to speed it up. Interestingly enough Windows XP is faster than a lot of these so called "fast" distros, which is a crying shame. A Linux desktop can be faster and there are examples out there, however they are too often dismissed as "niche" distros or just plain ignored. I'm a strong proponent of Puppy but there are several other good choices as well.
I'm also disappointed to learn that Dyne:Bolic has switched over to Xfce from WindowMaker. This will surely come with a perfromance hit. Yet another example.
Of course the good thing about Linux is the fact that there is so much choice available. We can discuss the relative merits of one distro over another all day and at the end of the day everybody can potentially run their own version of the perfectOS.
63 • Reply to post #58 (by Finalzone at 2007-02-27 21:15:37 GMT from Canada)
> Yep - I have to agree with ESR - I've recently left Fedora too, because of the **far lower** number of packages in RPMs (as opposed to debs) and "RPM hell" (and yes, I can use alien, but that's a **kludgy** way of running a distro).
Number of packages means nothing if most of them are not actively maintained and are outdated/obsolete. In Fedora world, obsolete packages are retired and they are no reason to maintain them . At least, source rpm are available to packagers wishing to rebuild the binary by simply modifying the SPEC file.
As for "RPM hell" it is clear you don't have any clue what you are talking about because you don't know how package manager works. Have you tried to use dpkg command to install a debian package without using apt-get command? Hint: a "DPKG hell" exists.
>Redhat should use the "smart" package manager (which supports just about all package formats - rpm, debs, etc etc).
That is not a very good reason
> Yum is an **absolute joke**, and that goes for rpm too. Kludgy blimmin' format ....
Let see, you can configure yum much like you can with aptitude. If yum were a joke, can you explain why it is used by million user, ported to RHEL, used by Yellow Dog, got tremendous amount of plugins?
>The one thing RH has going for it is its good SELinux support, but imo that's no longer enough...
Obviously you did not know some of technologies like NetworkManager your favorite distribution use are contributed by Red Hat. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
64 • 62 (by ex-man on 2007-02-27 21:31:10 GMT from United States)
I appreciate what you are saying, and definitely agree that Xubuntu is a joke when used on old machines - you don't want the kitchen sink approach for that type of computer.
However, I have used Debian Sarge on a less than 500 Mhz machine with few performance issues. And I do a minimum Debian Etch install with xfce and it runs just fine. You have to configure the machine in that case, but as I seriously hate bloat, I like to do that on any machine.
My only gripe is that the documentation and support for this approach is not nearly as good. If it doesn't look and smell like Windows, the community is largely not interested. As for the performance of XP, that depends, but in some cases it will definitely be better than Ubuntu. I have not seen it perform better than Debian Sarge, though.
I wish the low-end of the market, which Microsoft does not care about, were receiving more attention from the big Linux distros.
65 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-02-27 21:32:41 GMT from France)
RE 58
<<
The one thing RH has going for it is its good SELinux support, but imo that's no longer enough...<<
And, excusez du peu, support for the OLPC (which might affect a young and numerous population, that is greater than support for x quarelling linuxers)......
RE 57
<< sometimes too much choice is bad<<
There are much more than 100 distrs accessible to US but am am more lucky(I avoid distrs which have no Freedom AZERTY keyboard during install (for passwords......) and it seems even easier for Swiss or Belges...).
One can drastically limit ones choice by fixing some criteria :
do they acknowlege their translators (KateOS does, edubuntu doesnot)
are they original (Elive is in her looks, gobolinux is in her building, but seems just like another one)
can they support somewhat old, memory limited, hardware : as XFCE clones 15 yrs old CDE (without cutting and pasting between virtual terminals....CDE has it under HP-UX on very old boxes...) this gives a starting point...
are they generally meant (Mandriva, Suze, and debian are, perhaps Zenwalk or KateOs with som adjunctions) or very specialised (repair, games, sciences, geosciences?)?
Once one knows what one wants, there is not _that much _ choice.... The value of what has been eliminated remains (it was not *my* criterium, but other pple may have better ones than me.)..
For a home computer, and a single user, it is very easy to choice...
Putting distrs in concurrency (rescue CDs vs science live CDs????) would reduce the choice, and some (good/existing anyway) ideas would remain ignored...
66 • Reply to post #63 (by Wassim on 2007-02-27 21:32:50 GMT from Algeria)
Thanks for the "Clarity". I totally agree with you.
67 • Tired of Silly DistroWars (by kilgoretrout on 2007-02-27 22:59:22 GMT from United States)
It's a slow day so I read through all the comments posted today. How depressing these distrowars are. Name calling, abusive comments, endless arguing and ranting over which flavor of linux you should use. Please just step back a little bit and observe that they are all linux and there's not all that much difference among them. I guess that's why the infighting is so bitter - because the differences are so small.
68 • Zenwalk (by UZ64 on 2007-02-27 23:10:39 GMT from United States)
Not sure how anyone can claim Zenwalk is getting "heavy," unless you're talking about a couple of Zenwalk-specific tools to make using the system easier, like the ZenPanel. Speed and swap usage is about where it was for the last several versions on this 1.7GHz P4 with 256 megs of RAM and a 256-meg swap partition. Not sure how it's "slowed down," because I'm not seeing it.
IMO, Zenwalk in its current state is a near-perfect desktop OS, and has been for a while. Sometimes it's a bit *too* cutting edge (upgrades break the system far too often), but it's a very nice distro to use.
69 • # 1 • Zenwalk by Sage (by Akuna on 2007-02-27 23:57:28 GMT from France)
Well, as it well known, one's man meat can be another man's poison...
I've had the very exact opposite experience with Zenwalk to whom I attached myself for about a year now...
The forum is very friendly & in fact I have some very good friends there.
JP, the project leader is very present & personally answers a lot of the posts (just like Mark Shuttleworth seems to do ;) ) I have seen him implement a lot of the users suggestions including a few of mine & sometimes in just a matter of a couple hours after the initial suggestions were made. Although it seems on occasion he neglected some suggestions deemed very important by their initiator such as what you claim happened to you & 'Uselpa' .
So yes... Zenwalk is not perfect... and?
Everyone building this distro, like many others BTW, are voluntary enthusiasts who offers their free time & do their best to offer good software, good tools, good documentation & a good community to the best of their ability... some of them mere newbies just a short while back, like myself, who felt that things were simple enough to learn some & put their hands under the hood.
Surely this deserves more than your spite, don't you think?
Criticism can have the virtue to be constructive & useful nonetheless & I'm sure many of the comments which have been raised as a result of this will be helpful to us, even though you did not intend it that way.
70 • The matter of choice and how diversity might harm development (by KimTjik on 2007-02-28 00:26:59 GMT from Sweden)
I'm in no way an expert Linux user, more likely the contrary, but I'm figuring out as time goes by. Anyway, in my experience it looks like diversity is slowing down progress in some aspects. The expert user will usually be able to figure out workarounds for nearly every possible problem encountered, however he makes up for a very small part of the whole user base. Without mentioning any specific distros I'll describe a real life scenario I experienced a time ago when preparing a system for an organization:
- the distro of my choice has worked well before in basic desktop environment and I didn't expect otherwise this time
- unfortunately the extra configuration needed to set up a working sound-system for conferences did give so much hardship so I gave up
- then I saw good comments here on DistroWatch about a smaller distro, but with a stable organisation of developers, so I gave it a shoot. It looked a lot more polished, was surprisingly efficient, did what I wanted and I felt happy. Unfortunately the booting process wasn't compatible with my hardware, even though every Linux distro should be able to support such a standard setup, and it left me with an unsolved issue of just being able to boot the system in every 20th attempt.
- a bit disappointed over all wasted time I now choose one of the most popular distros, not because it has been a favorite of mine, but I thought: "okay, this can't possibly go wrong".
- just as the second it did everything what I wanted, maybe not as polished and with some small annoyance, but it was definitely good enough. Unfortunately (I'm sick of that word now) it proved to have some kind of bug which made it difficult to boot the system. I can boot the system by every time entering the grub menu and boot from a certain line, but the strange thing is that that line has nothing to do with boot parameters, it's however a workaround, even if totally illogical and irrational. My own attempts have been unfruitful and no response so far from the huge community. Instead of making a fourth choice of distro the system is working pretty well besides the boot issue, so I hope to find a solution.
Does this mean that I'm full of anger and despair and don't want to touch another Linux system? Not at all. However I think this illustrates that the diversity probably distracts nearly all distros from actually being developed into totally ready stable systems. Sometimes I even think that the competition between Linux distros, which should be a good thing, at times goes wrong: everyone defends their great ideas and try to prove why their solution, or at least attempt to, is the best.
I really appreciate the specialized distros, but at the same time I wish that each main branch of Linux could work closer and more coherent with its off-springs. Many smaller distros are needed for several reasons, like special tasks or for specific language support, but still it would be wonderful to see them engage in a joint attempt to collect together and organize all knowledge and support for the user base.
71 • It aint heavy, it's my distro... (by Probiscus syphonus on 2007-02-28 00:44:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
Oh, I really love all the bickering, it's great entertainment at times ;P
It just wouldn't be Linux community otherwise would it? ;)
Anyway, I've tried so many distro's over the years, I'm left pondering whether my time could have been more productive. I've seen more breaks in Linux in that time than a 'Kit-Kat' factory! It keeps fueling that twisting obsession that is 'distro hopping'.
I've come home again to the distro that got me hooked Linux. Yep, that old favourite called KNOPPIX, the live cd revelation.
Ver 5.1.1 is lovely for remastering into your own home grown OS, helped by ample, longstanding "how to's" on the web.
Now if I could just get the NVidia thing sussed I'd be home and dry......
72 • Diversion from flame wars (by ImmanuelCant on 2007-02-28 00:56:53 GMT from United States)
If Steve Jobs would sell Mac OS X that worked on any PC for $100 a copy,
he would take away 75% of Microsoft's desktop sales in 2 years or less.
Maybe the Hildebeast gave Gates Steve's FBI file, so Billy Boy has a hammer.
73 • RE:52 (by Tazix on 2007-02-28 01:48:51 GMT from United States)
It's the "n" series... not U. And it comes with freedos. I suspect "n" is for "no-os".
Anyway... here's the link for ya:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/alliances/en/linux?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
74 • USB Flash Boot BiOS option ? (by Fotograf on 2007-02-28 04:09:35 GMT from Canada)
finally I got a mobo with a USB boot optioon in BIOS in addition to hdd CD or SCSI it has 4 usb options: usb floppy, usb cd, usb hdd
and usb_zip drive ! Which one of those I must try to boot from my Flash drive (PC Linux OS) ? I did try all 4 one by one but could not boot to my Linux....OS is missing
75 • Ubuntu vs. Mandriva vs. openSUSE (by Mike Elkevizth on 2007-02-28 04:31:07 GMT from United States)
I have to second the authors views about why people are switching to Ubuntu. I am one of those users switching to Kubuntu because of the same reasons. I used Mandriva - back when it was Mandrake - for the simple reason that it was superior as far as the OS goes. But no matter how superior the OS is there will always be a need for support which is why I left Mandrake for another distro way back then. I am in the middle of switching now from openSUSE to Kubuntu because of another support related issue. OpenSUSE is, from what I can tell by using both distros, superior to Kubuntu in quite a few ways as far as out-of-the-box operation goes. But when it comes to trying to update software, and then a full distro upgrade, where do I begin at where openSUSE falls short. I'm sure Ubuntu isn't perfect, but from what I can see, it is the closest distro to being that.
76 • Support from Distributions (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-02-28 05:42:13 GMT from United States)
"With Ubuntu, everywhere you turn you find help, the forums is undoubtedly the biggest and friendliest of all Linux forums." -- I have to disagree. Gentoo's forums and support pages are very thorough and accurate, for users of all distributions. I'm not a regular user of either Ubuntu or Gentoo, though I've used both for some time. I find that when I'm trying to solve a tough, esoteric, or rare problem, the Ubuntu forums usually have many messages from people experiencing the problem and many other messages from people making reasonable suggestions, but then the last message I read is usually, "Ummm, it's been a month since anyone posted. Is there any solution yet?" In contrast, Gentoo guides, forums, and documents regularly get me out of jams with SuSE, FreeBSD, Fedora, Slackare, and so on.
Of course, when it comes to paid technical support, I don't really see any competition to Red Hat. I'm truly impressed by their deep and rich experience and professionalism.
My five personal favorites for asking questions and getting clear answers quickly from humans (as opposed to searching through archives) are as follows, from best to worst:
1) JAMD (Rest in peace. I have yet to see such great support from anywhere else.)
2) Vector (Incidentally, home to some from JAMD)
3) Yoper (There seems to be a high level of zeal, and a bit of over-zeal)
4) OpenSUSE (It's hard to actually catch an expert, but they can usually tell you a really easy way to do something.)
5) DSL (They aren't afraid to tinker.)
77 • Vector (by Pumpino on 2007-02-28 05:46:47 GMT from Australia)
Thanks for the great review of Vector. I plan to download the SOHO beta version reviewed in this week's DW. What are people's experiences with Vector - especially with its package management? I like the screenshots and its philosophy. I guess there's nothing like trying out a distro for yourself though. :)
78 • Forums (by Lyn David Thomas on 2007-02-28 09:16:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Contrast that with the communities at other distributions (Zenwalk, Vector, and others are not exactly helpful or friendly to the noob), and you can see why people congregate around Shuttleworth's brainchild."
I couldn't disagree more, from my experience Vector has one of the friendliest forums of any linux distribution that I have seen.
Yes a distro is far more than just the downloaded programs, its the community and the support that is available. On this front Vector has proved to be a great home for me.
Distro wars can all be very entertaining but not very productive. All distros can learn from others and in an active community that is what happens.
79 • Friendly support (by Caraibes on 2007-02-28 12:15:07 GMT from Dominican Republic)
After reading this week's comments, I think it is mostly unfair to criticize those distros : Zenwalk is a good distro, I used it for a while, and the Forum & IRC was very friendly. The installer worked just fine. Vector is friendly as well, I use it now on other PC's becuase it has more stuff out of the box, which is nice, but bottom line is Vector & Zenwalk are very similar, both good !
About YUM being slow, I wish the guy who wrote that would try the SUSE package manager, YAST, which is way much slower, and a real nightmare... I still wonder how come OpenSUSE has so much ranking on DW...
RPM distros are great, much tougher sometimes that the DEB's... But I think Fedora is the best of them, everything runs somooth. Mandriva is good too, I ran it for 3 months, I enjoyed it, but I came back to Fedora, because I think it is honestly better and more stable.
I know ESR jumped ship to BUNTUSPIRE, no problem, but he is very unfair with Fedora, a mighty good distro.
Distrowars are fun at the beginning, but counterproductive on the long-run... Same goes for Linux vs Gnome, he shouldn't be so harsh, it feels like he's a teenager...
80 • Etch bug count going down (by linbetwin on 2007-02-28 12:23:22 GMT from Romania)
The Etch release-critical bug count has been going down in the last couple of days. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ Maybe the release is not so far away after all.
81 • BUNTUSPIRE (by Eddie Wilson on 2007-02-28 16:39:43 GMT from United States)
Can anybody tell me where the term BUNTUSPIRE came from without sounding really stupid. I have a feeling someone is just making fun of someone.
82 • On Ubuntu, Mandriva and OpenSuse (by james horns on 2007-02-28 16:41:39 GMT from Netherlands)
Hi
just some random thoughts:
1. Linux is an excellent kernel, it has excellent tools and a very interesting development model behind it. The most part of all distro I've run over the years (I'm a Linux user from 1996) are in fact very good, some are excellent (ubuntu among them) just a few truly innovative in the sense they've changed the way linux has been perceived in non linux ecosystems. It's my belief that both Mandriva and SUSE had set the Linux Path toward desktops some years ago by providing users with nice looking desktops and first class administration tools .
2. I've been a loyal Mandrake/iva user and sponsor from 1997. I still find it's the most straightforward distro to install, HW recognition is the best while administration tools are unmatched. Mandriva livecd is by far the most advanced out there (not to mention it was the first to enable axgl out of the box). Just one little thing made me shift to Opensuse: Xinerama extensions over Intel Cards don't work in DrakX (at least in 2007.0) while they're a breeze to setup in SaX2 - Since I've become rather lazy with the age I prefer not to fight with xorg.conf anymore if I can.
3. Both Mandriva and SUSe (and to a certain extent also Fedora) stand over Ubuntu (which I started to use from the very first version) in terms of innovation and overall quality although I admit we're talking of top class distros. Again I believe it's just my personal taste, I actively use Suse, Mandriva and Ubuntu everyday for my work. I've the feeling that poor old Mandriva has lost some of its reputation lately and maybe it'll turn out I've a thing for lost causes but I really feel all this Ubuntu thing being a bit overblown....
Cheers everybody !
PS Thanks Ladislav for this weekly effort which it's a mandatory read for me.
83 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-02-28 16:59:24 GMT from United States)
To those of you who complain about the speed of Yum or Yast (yes, they are slow if you've used Debian or Ubuntu), remember that they are still faster than the package manager that comes with Windows.
84 • Linux on Dells and OSX versus an MS world (by Alan on 2007-02-28 17:34:38 GMT from Poland)
I checked out Dell's idea storm at http://www.dellideastorm.com/ and spent some time reading some comments and it does seem like there's a tremendous demand for computers coming pre-shipped with Linux--I don't think this is just a small group of people who are spamming Dell.
It just makes sense for them to do this and I think it could be the start of a change--people should have a choice and would give the Linux community a great boost and expose the "general public" to what's going on outside of the MS universe. MS has such a stranglehold on the market and their heavy-handed approach towards countries contemplating the switch to Open source and Ballmer's constant threats of Linux patent violations need to be stopped. If Dell goes ahead with this and it's successful, I think other companies will follow suit.
Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora or Mandriva would all be great choices to include on these Dells and I think the majority of people would stick with using the installed OS. It could be the start of a small revolution and finally force MS to include open standards in Office and maybe get ATI and company to provide drivers for the Linux community. I'd love to see these babies ship with Open Office, Firefox, Opera and a Linux distro and I'm sure the demand is out there. As DW proclaims--let's put the fun back into computing and give people a choice.
Having said all this, I wish that Steve Jobs had allowed Dell to ship the OSX with their machines--I'm almost certain that Apple could capture 20-30% of the market in a few years and this would be great for weaning the world off of MS products. The true Mac addicts would still splash out to get the latest I book and remain faithful to the company. I just don't get why Jobs won't let this happen! This would really shake up the status quo and open up the rest of the world to non MS products--I don't think it would hurt the Linux community and could be a type of renaissance in the variety and quality of programs being developed.
I'd also love to see Google develop some version of Ubuntu and push their online Office suite more strongly--I believe that they have the clout to bring about a bit more balance in the world dominated by Redmond products.
Well, that's my two cents worth. What do the rest of you think?
85 • Forums (by Claus Futtrup on 2007-02-28 17:47:34 GMT from Denmark)
#35 - Contrast that with the communities at other distributions (Zenwalk, Vector, and others are not exactly helpful or friendly to the noob), and you can see why people congregate around Shuttleworth's brainchild.
I find Zenwalk forum to be very friendly - others with a broader experience says the most friendly they have ever experienced. Any person can have a bad day. I guess the support forum experience is individual for each case.
Best regards,
Claus
Zenwalker
86 • RE 83 : Slowness of Windows/Linux package managers (by dbrion on 2007-02-28 18:22:13 GMT from France)
<< remember that they are still faster than the package manager that comes with Windows.<<
It is obvious that Microsoft Windows does not really need a package manager : her softs are so perfect ( I hope : I paid for it) they cannot grow better unless I can get proves of it, written in a informatical language...=> my computer does not need a web connection to upgrade XP; I suppose, if Vista needs a web connection, it is because they are conscious she is not grown-up => just wait till Vista is OK without Web upgrade.
BYTW, I would be glad to see a bug I would have paid for...
Now, for Linux: even if Mandriva was not as perfect as Windows, the rare upgrades I had to do were from carefully selected lists and minimalists => there was no need for Web corrections and (directly) for support {I sometimes read FAQs aand forums to see whether pple met similar pbs than me; it remained rare}.
=> I suppose support , fast package managers and web upgrades are meant for immature, imperfect Oses such as Vista and some specieses of Linuxes (the latter getting exceptionnal) ..
Their slowness is then of little, if any, consequence....
87 • Ironic to see discussions on "forum X beats forum Y" (by h3rman on 2007-02-28 18:55:58 GMT from Netherlands)
Apparently, the differences between the distros are not that shocking, so now the quality and friendliness of user forums is the issue.
I recommend anyone using distro-independent forums first. After all, a lot of things Linux are distro-independent. And it keeps one away from tunnel visions.
88 • re PC-OS bundling (by Anonymous on 2007-02-28 20:27:01 GMT from Germany)
There has been a lot of discussion in the past over how M$ coerced computer sellers into bundling Windows with their systems using discount incentives. Recently we've seen legal moves by the EU and others to fight the bundling of media players in Windows (there is now a version of XP without M$ MediaPlayer (& Vista?) and restrictions on hardware player compatibility in apps like iTunes.
Perhaps regulatory bodies should be taking the same approach with computer hardware sales. All new systems should have a free OS provided, whether or not they have a commercial OS bundled --- and the free OS should be something functional, not just FreeDOS. There are any number of suitable free OS options, and an installable Live CD would also serve as a useful rescue disk.
This would help open the IT market to FOSS at the consumer level.
89 • No subject (by Eudoxus on 2007-02-28 20:35:39 GMT from Latvia)
About YUM being slow, I wish the guy who wrote that would try the SUSE package manager, YAST, which is way much slower, and a real nightmare... I still wonder how come OpenSUSE has so much ranking on DW...
=====================================================
Basically there are three reasosn:
1) SuSE is very polished and one of the best distros around
2) You can install smart which is as fast as synaptic
3) Slow package installer is not a time critical task. There still are lot of people who are not that impatient when they get at updating their box.
Last but not the least - YaST may be is slow, but it is reliable toll.
90 • RE 86 (by KimTjik on 2007-02-28 21:19:18 GMT from Sweden)
Was that comment serious, or am I too slow to catch the irony?
I'm both a user of XP and Linux, and even if I prefer the latter I see no point what so ever in flaming anyone of them. Nevertheless if your comment was serious then I don't get it:
- MS Windows in itself doesn't really include any software to speak of, besides some basic administrative tools, a web browser most avoid and some few other.
- Even the above is continuously updated, which to be fair is the same thing as using a package manager in Linux, and concerning XP it continuous to so be even up to this very day. Some bugs have workarounds, but no real solution. That isn't because MS is bad, but it's very hard to do anything perfect; honestly nothing is close to perfect in the real sense.
- You can't buy an XP in no need of updates; what you can get is XP SP2.
You could argue that many updates are Internet related, but even at the workplace of small companies the use of Internet is crucial, so to find an isolated PC connected to nothing isn't very real.
Your last comment, if serious, doesn't make any sense at all. What you describe is a static PC market without evolution of new hardware, which of course could lead that utopia "perfect os" you're talking about.
When everything is continuously changing on the hardware front and how people choose to use their hardware, it's inevitable that developers run into compatibility problems. As it is now you've got to develop something that covers several generations of hardware. There's no chance for humans to create anything perfect in such an environment, not even abundant economic resources will be a saviour.
91 • Yum (by Ohnonymous on 2007-02-28 21:51:29 GMT from United States)
Yum is being optimized so maybe in FC7 it will be about on par with apt-get, but till then if you want to try something different you have to wait a bit longer. As for the Fedora updater, it crashes every time I try to use it, deleting all the files it downloaded in the process. Not what I would call user friendly.
92 • RE 90 My comment was half serious. (by dbrion on 2007-02-28 22:10:08 GMT from France)
" so to find an isolated PC connected to nothing isn't very real"
My laptops are real, as I found web in hands of monopols...
Have you objective proofs (not web countings, of course).
In any entreprise, PCs are connected to firewalls.... and do not need that many upgrades (who do not happen during working hours)..
I know at least 4 professionnal Linux boxes which were never updated (they rely on firewalls): for 2 deskdops, the users do not want any upgrades
(even if I tell that 4 yrs may be a little long in Linuxs scales).
For servers, users upgrade their favorite softs in the traditionnal way (BYTW, such situations led to GoboLinux), when they feel it necessary : a systyran would not be that astonished if he found, say, 50 Fortran compilers, for exemple... but our sys"admins" go on thinking there is a typical Joe user..
<
I do not think of economy, I think of _users_ (if they did not exist, would there be a market?). If one decides
a)to buy a PC, all the necessary stuff (Windows, some 6 months released cards)
b) to wait 6 months for a Linux supporting the cards (I do not even lose time with Cygwin => CLI script are Lx compatible),
c) and to do this every 2 years,
the technological evolution is , from a user point of view, taken into account with a negligible lag in front of the users life expectancy .
=> from an individual point of view, it can be rather a staircase market, static during 2-5 yrs, with fast upgrades... It may be the same thing for services.
I use professionnaly a 10 yrs old HPUX box -as long as it holds- (that makes me laugh when I read XFCE, KDE ... are innovating : some artists made nicer than CDE screens, but technically ????).
It connects to 2 Lxes servers, where I can upgrade what I need...
BYTW, I know why software upgrades are a nightmare, whatever the installer may be :
nobody sensible will program them during hours he is awake, and,
"as softs never will be perfect",
they can be even worse than before,
and all that automagically !!!!
That is why I prefer fully tested OSes, and professionnally, one can only tell, without too many lies, "this version was fully(???) tested for your needs(???) and was more or less satifactory, (anyway more than the other few we tested)' ; the next "full" tests take a long time).
93 • Vector Linux (by Principal Skinner on 2007-02-28 23:50:02 GMT from United States)
I have nothing but positive things to say about the Vector community. The folks there are knowledgeable and courteous.
As for the distro itself, I thought the fonts in 5.1 SOHO were pretty rough. Certain web pages and any OO.org document looked blocky and crude. Gearheads brush this off as a n00b concern, but c'mon, basic office work is a primary reason to have a computer in the first place. We're not all running servers out of the guest bedroom.
Ms. Linton's experience with anti-aliasing gives me hope that this issue has been addressed in 5.8 SOHO. There's little else to hold back a distro that is fast, stable, and comprehensive.
Oh, Chief Wiggum also wanted me to tell everyone he loves Vector.
94 • February donation (by ladislav on 2007-03-01 02:16:37 GMT from Taiwan)
Guys, it's the first day of March so a DistroWatch donation is due. Any suggestions?
95 • #94 - donations (by ray carter at 2007-03-01 02:22:15 GMT from United States)
Elive.
96 • #94 - donations (by Andrew on 2007-03-01 02:35:23 GMT from New Zealand)
Sidux
97 • RE: 96 Elive (by ladislav on 2007-03-01 02:37:20 GMT from Taiwan)
I won't donate to Elive until they stop doing all the silly tricks trying to hide their stable ISO images. That's just a very bad idea that puts off many potential users, not to mention that it increases the time it takes me to find the ISOs.
98 • RE 93 (by dbrion on 2007-03-01 02:37:42 GMT from France)
g95 (http://www.g95.org), kateos, elive...
99 • Re: Linux on Dells and OSX versus an MS world (by GL on 2007-03-01 03:16:15 GMT from United States)
Alas, Apple will never port OSX to run on non-Apple hardware. Apple is ultimately a hardware company, not a software company. It makes its profits on sexy hardware that costs twice as much as a comparable PC. Steve Jobs pulled the plug on Apple's unprofitable decision to allow Mac clones 10 years ago. He won't make the same mistake twice.
That's too bad. OSX is really the best Linux distro out there now. It (and Windows) provides an integrated look-and-feel that other Linux distros lack. As an Apple and Windows veteran, my biggest problem with Linux is the consistent inconsistency between program interfaces, menus, etc. The user spends lots of time learning how to comprehend, navigate and use new programs, something the typical home or business user doesn't like to do. Until this is addressed, Linux will never score big in the consumer/corporate marketplace.
100 • #94 - donations (by vukota on 2007-03-01 03:31:56 GMT from United States)
Dreamlinux
101 • donations (by pingtrace on 2007-03-01 04:17:54 GMT from Finland)
Help Support Source Mage
http://www.sourcemage.org/node/1814
102 • Donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 05:01:01 GMT from United States)
MintLinux
103 • RE: 99 (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 06:26:52 GMT from Australia)
GL from United States wrote
"That's too bad. OSX is really the best Linux distro out there now."
I believe you will find that OSX is NOT a Linux distribution at all.
Check out the DW front page = Select Distribution - it is not listed
Is it not based on BSD ? about the most stable UNIX type O/S
This makes OS X a member of the 'nix family (just like Linux is)
So all that you can say is some thing like this (if its what you believe)
"That's too bad. OS X is really the best 'nix type distro out there now."
But calling (or thinking that) OS X is a linux distro is far from the truth.
Sorry to be pedantic about this - but your statement is misleading ?
This is just one of many places you can refer to
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
in the very first paragraph it states
"Mac OS X is a Unix-like operating system etc."
?
104 • Donation: XnView (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 06:28:51 GMT from New Zealand)
XnView is a useful image editing tool that can successfully edit IPTC fields, among other things. It seems highly regarded, but the interface could really do with some polish. Make them promise to use the donation for the GUI.
http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html
105 • Distrowatch Donation (by John on 2007-03-01 09:03:36 GMT from France)
Zenwalk ;)
106 • Re: donation (by Bart on 2007-03-01 09:40:19 GMT from Netherlands)
The MCNLive guys are doing a great job: http://www.mcnlive.org
I believe that they deserve a donation.
107 • Distrowatch Donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 12:11:50 GMT from Austria)
sidux !
108 • donation (by donald on 2007-03-01 12:21:19 GMT from Germany)
i vote for sidux, poor lil distro
109 • donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 12:25:39 GMT from Germany)
sidux :)
110 • donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 12:28:38 GMT from Germany)
sidux!
111 • Distrowatch Donation (by Werewolf on 2007-03-01 12:32:23 GMT from Romania)
My vote goes to Frugalware.
112 • Donation for Mint ! (by Caraibes on 2007-03-01 12:55:00 GMT from Dominican Republic)
I think Linux Mint is the most interesting new project, so I would give them the donation... (from a Fedora/Ubuntu/Vector user )...
113 • Distrowatch Donation (by Andreas on 2007-03-01 13:28:36 GMT from Germany)
sidux
114 • Cor 98 Ideas for donations. (by dbrion on 2007-03-01 13:32:50 GMT from France)
Subject was donations:
two applications may be interesting, as they are both popular under Windows, and _superior_ under Linux (their users or their parents know it):
gcompris, for young children (games may be very difficult to program, there is sound, movement and intelligence) for youg children. I do not know whether it is too localised (used only in French) and whether they need donations (they used to slightly "tax" Windows users)...
g95 : the function 'suspend' can only work under Linux, though Windows is slower...(it is used to stop then restart from a stable point intensive calculations,/*which may last days in image processing */.. or to protect them against supply failures .). There are also great efforts to link with complicated C structures, and memory leaks detection easily activated.... This is considered as a ones'man agile work and more than 1000 persons contributed, according to the manual and the daily blog...
Sorry for the lack of subject. of 98....
115 • Donation (by Tazix on 2007-03-01 14:42:58 GMT from United States)
I agree with Mint for a donation... even though I don't personally use it.
I've handed it out to a few people to "try Linux". Of course these aren't average users... they are tech savvy... but only with windows. I wanted to ensure that their first "out of box experience" wouldn't be riddled with "I can't view squat on the Internet without jumping through hoops".
It takes a bit of wooing to even get fellow IT folks to LOOK at alternatives.
116 • Re: 103 - Linux on Dells and OSX versus an MS world (by GL on 2007-03-01 14:50:30 GMT from United States)
Re: "Mac OS X is a Unix-like operating system etc." My bad. Thanks for the clarification and the information on the background of OS X.
Wikipedia also describes Linux as a "Unix-like computer operating system family." I amend my statement to read, "OS X is really the best Unix-like computer operating system out there now."
117 • Mac& Unix... (by Caraibes on 2007-03-01 15:06:29 GMT from Dominican Republic)
"OS X is really the best Unix-like computer operating system out there now."
Maybe, but it is not free, neither as in beer nor as in speech... And you need that fancy trendy expensive hardware to run it...
Once you have a Mac, you can then sport that elitist arrogance those guys usually have...
118 • Distrowatch Donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 15:08:46 GMT from Germany)
sidux !
119 • Redhat EL 5 (by Stefan on 2007-03-01 15:18:36 GMT from Germany)
Wasn't there a release date scheduled for Feb 28th?
120 • Interface potpourri (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 16:02:12 GMT from United States)
As an Apple and Windows veteran, my biggest problem with Linux is the consistent inconsistency between program interfaces, menus, etc.
I totally agree. The mix of interfaces presented by apps created with different libraries (KDE, gnome, Qt, gtk, XFCE, X11, etc.) is confusing, even for me. It would be too much for my parents.
And because no interface has a monopoly on the best-of-breed apps for linux, it's hard to use only one gui library app.
Please donate to digikam or another 16-bit image editor.
121 • Re 120: Interface potpurri (by GL on 2007-03-01 17:34:18 GMT from United States)
"Because no interface has a monopoly on the best-of-breed apps for linux, it's hard to use only one gui library app."
Excellent point. The KDE and GNOME office suites are integrated within the desktop environment, but some apps are incomplete or nonexistent. OpenOffice and Firefox are the apps I use, but they are not native to the desktop. My understanding is that integration for these is improving every day, especially with GNOME.
122 • Donation (by Anonymous on 2007-03-01 20:22:51 GMT from United States)
I suggest XFCE because it will help keep old desktops running after being abandoned by Microsoft, yet still feels comfortable to Windows users.
LyX and R are more specialized, but are good quality products that have helped the Linux desktop a lot.
123 • RE: 116 (by h3rman on 2007-03-02 00:59:27 GMT from Netherlands)
"OS X is really the best Unix-like computer operating system out there now."
That depends.
What does it mean, "the best"?
Least DRM'ed system? Uhm..
Fastest system? Ehh..
Most configurable desktop? Well..
Best at being free software? *Ugh*..
Most attractive on the server? Haha!
Most easily installable on any hardware you like?
Most secure BSD? Nope.
So, I'd hesitate a bit in this thing calles "who's best".
Yes, I use Mac OS X once in a while. Usually works. It's just not as charming as Linux, and it's not free software (as in freedom).
124 • Desktop wars are over and (by Fractalguy on 2007-03-02 03:00:56 GMT from United States)
I win! At least that is how I feel, playing with this Mint liveCD.
Let me tell you what happened, on a lark I wondered if Mint could play Berlind's interview with AMD's Henri Richard that uses flash or some such.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=363
So I booted my Linux Mint 2.2 CD with its Firefox. It worked - no big deal. Then I fired up Amarok for some "radio" music. Then Synaptic to install NVU so I could edit a few files on my USB.
I've got a Gig of RAM and it was hardly half used, so I figured I might as well really push it. I saw on http://ecogeek.org/content/view/459 they were arguing about light Linux desktops like IceWM. Well there you go, how about IceWM on Ubuntu or even Mint?
So I searched for IceWM in Synaptic and there were a dozen or so files, hmmm. OK, install them! It took less than 100MB more, so that's still not pushing things. But what about logging into it?
I didn't want Mint to reboot, so I just tried logging into another user, like switching user. But alas, only one user at a time: Mint. OK, unlike KNOPPIX, I found I could add a user with its new password. Cool and now I'm logged into the new user right now in IceWM (Mint) with the music still going in the other user. And I have changed the IceWM theme to "slashdot" *don't throw anything at me, please*. It has dozens of themes, all installed from the repo. I find Firefox here and gedit and so on, all ready to go.
I can switch between the users with F7 (for mint) and F9 for the new user. Not sure why F8 got skipped, maybe in my fooling around.
So the bottom line is, you can have many desktops and move between them according to your whim. I already have GNOME and KDE (added) on my old P450 (uptime is 198 days). I guess one can add KDE, Xfce4, enlightenment, fluxbox and another dozen listed to your Mint and still listen to music.
The music is getting out of control so I'll send this off and switch to the mint user and find something else on the radio there. :)
125 • Distrowatch Donation for sidux (by Anonymous on 2007-03-02 07:39:41 GMT from Germany)
young non-commercial linux startup with good ideas and a straight orientation
126 • #94 - donations (by jlee on 2007-03-02 15:12:34 GMT from United States)
Microsoft
With a cash infusion to encourage development,
Vista become viable on the desktop.
127 • 126 (by Anonymous on 2007-03-02 16:25:09 GMT from United States)
Give Microsoft a break. They're one company competing against the world, subject to doing everything behind closed doors. They're doing pretty good considering their software development model. I've used Vista and it's almost competitive with some Linux distros.
128 • Question 124 (by dbrion on 2007-03-02 16:36:00 GMT from France)
I do not see the memory result of having 2 desktops:
are the memory prints added (as I fear)?
Can one remove one user (say, for having more memory avalaible) ?
I seldom use iceWM (typically, for having as much memory as possible, even if I always find my configurations ugly) and I do not remember whether one can copy and paste between virtual terminals under IceWM(this is not a crucial need in this case, as I chose Linuxes according to my keyboard, but it is comfortable).
Thanks (now , I wonot brutefarcely install twice virtual Linuxes, one comfortable, the other to run.......There is some hope for somewhat smarter things).
Sincerely.
129 • Donation (by Deb on 2007-03-02 17:40:07 GMT from United States)
I too will put in a vote for Sidux. They have done such a great job in such a short time. Everything just works, at least for me anyway. I have several different computers, 2 that I use for play and one main. Sidux installs and runs easily on them all.
130 • Vote for Sidux (by Bill Savoie on 2007-03-02 20:48:08 GMT from United States)
I have been very impressed with Sidux. They have come so far in such a short time. It is very good for everyone to have a quick way to get Debian off the ground and into our computers. This kind of work will open the path for the whole open source way of doing things.
Debian is great, but there is so much to learn, and a live-CD has a way of making the process easy. The other thing that is so great is how slick it looks. I want to show Linux to everyone! So a big vote for Sidux and the wonderful work they do.
131 • 128 • Question 124 by dbrion (by Fractalguy on 2007-03-02 21:33:51 GMT from United States)
Hi dbrion, liveCD first. When I added another user, mint2, the system adds /home/mint2 with some files there to my RAM usage. Not a noticable amount. Then when logged into mint2 there is an additional usage of RAM, but again it was small. What surprised me was how there was only like 60MB of RAM disk used to add the iceWM software (I should have written it down). This is because a lot of what I would need was already on board from mint's GNOME. As I start up some applications as the mint2 user, the RAM usage continues, Firefox takes some. Then I fired up gedit from CLI since it was not on the menu. Just typed
gedit textfile.txt &
Also there were other programs for the CLI like nano, xclock, xcalc, top, and so on.
Now when I log out from mint2, the screen goes black for a moment and I'm dropped back into mint where I had a bunch of stuff going on. This frees up the session memory for mint2 user, but not mint2's ram disk files which are very small. To really clear up some RAM, log out of mint leaving only mint2 in iceWM. That would be a hoot. :)
If RAM is an issue, I can remove iceWM and its associated programs from the RAM installation using Synoptic. Again, I was impressed how little they used. To the extent that a desktop is compatible with the GNOME libraries, one could add many desktops with little impact.
You can see KNOPPIX has half a dozen on the CD that are KDE compatible. I think the list includes Xfce, IceWM, wmaker, larswm, twm. But some don't have much going on in their menus when you log into them. You can switch between some of these without logging out or closing your programs, which is cool (find that function choice in the menus, I wonder what the CLI for that is).
I don't think you can copy and paste between user sessions. Maybe someone could suggest a CLI chat between sessions like from the old UNIX days. :) Oh, and if you are really feeling Windows withdrawal pains, IceWM had Win95 and XP themes. :P
Here's what I'd recommend in regard to using Ubuntus on a hd install. Start with Mint, get it going with all its cool media stuff. Then add desktops to that, starting with KDE, Xfce4, blackbox, enlightenment, fluxbox, flwm, fvwm, jwm, lwm, openbox, qvwm, tinywm, windowmaker, xfwm4, etc. I think the whole shebang would be only about 6GB fully loaded. :)
My ubuntu P450, 256MB system with GNOME, KDE, Xfce, fluxbox desktops only uses 4.1GB on the hard disk.
132 • Fedora vs Ubunutu (by Andrew on 2007-03-02 22:47:05 GMT from United States)
Personally Fedora is my persoanl distro of choice between the two, and Ubunutu isn't even in my top 3 of linux distros. It is a good distro, I just don't care for it much.
I like how Fedora always incorporates the newest technologies within their distro, and it's really not too hard to add mutlimedia support into Fedora. Just avoid mixing FreshRPM's and Livna.
My other two favorite Linux distros are Linspire (but they really need to get a new release out, 5.0 is getting rather dated), and Lunar (although their can be build issues from time to time).
133 • Donation suggestions (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-03-03 14:29:55 GMT from United States)
I think the Dillo project is great proof of the programmers' skills and work ethics. The code is amazingly tight and stable, and the programmers dedicate a lot of time to making it usable.
Additionally, this is from the Dillo home page:
The Dillo project is frozen:
Frozen, waiting for funds or sponsorship.
Looking for interested developers that want to work steadily on it.
Both core developers have regular jobs and have almost no spare time.
We have a very advanced port of Dillo to FLTK2.
-- Feb 25, 2007
I believe that donating to the Dillo project would allow the core developers to justify spending some more time on it, and/or it would allow the core developers to pay other programmers to do what they need to do. (It's absolutely amazing how much code you can get from someone for a lousy $50.)
134 • Thanks for 131: multidesktop Linuxes. (by dbrion on 2007-03-03 17:11:46 GMT from France)
Fractalguy,
Knowing that it is possible and that one might gain RAM is a very good new (the extreme case I saw was a desktop-less way of working à la DOS, which is obviously unpleasant) :
I intend to use as a future workaround for emulated Linux (professionally, I must use XP on my desktop, and I also have to use "compiled for Linux" binaries/libraries (very closed sourced..)... OS choices are somewhat complicated... ).
As I do not know what XP will consume for softs updates (-they love their users- it would be the same thing with Lx... these updates are made by night, of course...) emulated Linux has to use as little RAM as possible : it may remain comfortable if I have
1)a desktop I am accustomed to, -for preparation, profiling and testing-, and
2) a lighter desktop to launch prepared and profiled softs during the night, where I wonot babysit ... Using a desktop PC as a kind of server (at least, just for computing : one needs a CPU, a Hd, and some RAM ...) is not that wild, as desktops PCs are "used" (waiting for rat clicks or keyboard hits) for a very limited time...
135 • Donation (by John on 2007-03-03 18:48:12 GMT from United States)
How about VectorLinux for this month's donation?
136 • Donation (by cheezy on 2007-03-03 21:18:55 GMT from United States)
How about either Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, or Mepis for a donation?
137 • donation suggestion (by Glasiad on 2007-03-03 22:00:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
There are so many projects worthy of donations but my vote would have to go to Mint Linux this month. It's probably the interesting and promising project working to bring Linux OS's into wider use (a horrible prospect to some people I know!)
As to discussions of 'best' distros, I'm reminded of the saying "standing on the heads of giants" - a saying that refers to scientific and cultural achievements. Certainly Red Hat/Fedora, Slackware, Debian, SUSE and now Ubuntu are the 'giants' of the Linux world and my hats off to them. However I'm more interested in who's standing on their heads. Mint, Vector, Dream and Knoppix come to mind (among others of course)
138 • Ubuntu-mandriva (by Geert on 2007-03-04 00:50:29 GMT from United States)
I could not agree more with Adam Williamson. I have tried diffeerent versions of Suse, Mandriva and Ubuntu, but after the initial waw with every ubuntu distribution, I got into deep problems. Under the user friendly hood, it is a very geeky and spin-based distribution.
The forums are crowded but mostly useless: the same questions are asked by different people many times, and no answer is coming, except if you go to debian boards, where you get the real information.
I am not a geek, and not a terminal patient like most geeks. So I had to go back to Suse and Mandriva time and again. Even now.
Moreover, don't forget that the business approach of Ubuntu is perhaps not really sustainable. Probably they are not building the Linux base (even not technically), rather cannibalizing the distributions with a different business model.
139 • Debian-Installer RC2 -- Status and schedule (by hound_dog on 2007-03-04 14:11:07 GMT from Finland)
For those who are wondering what's delaying the Debian 4.0 ("etch") release, here's a status update and a release schedule for Debian-Installer release candidate 2. This should be the final version of Etch-installer and lacking this installer is currently the main blocker for the Etch release.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2007/03/msg00115.html
For the reference, the Etch release process hasn't been quite as bad as it may look. Etch was for the most parts ready for release in December but there were a couple of unresolved release blockers that have delayed the final release: the kernel, the installer (which needs the kernel), and some difficult-to-fix bugs.
The delay has allowed Debian developers to add some extra polish to Etch (translations, themes...) and, of course, to fix more bugs. There has also been talk of adding the option for PPPoE network configuration in the installer -- hopefully this new feature has managed to make its way into D-I RC2. :-)
140 • #138 distro differences (by ray carter at 2007-03-04 16:45:41 GMT from United States)
In comparing Ubuntu with Mandrivel and SUSE and making editorial comments, there are a few opinions with which I disagree.
1) I moved to Ubuntu from Mandrake about a year and a half ago. Primary reason: it was more polished, and much easier to maintain. Upgrades and updates have happened seemlessly. I always had difficulty with MDK - especially with upgrades. I seemed, in the past, to have fewer upgrade issues with SUSE, but I've recently revisited, and I find that things basically have not progress with SUSE - it's installation and setup remain virtually unchanged from several years ago. It is a PITA to have to manually enter repository sources in yast after doing a DVD install. The system should come with reasonable defaults and/or allow you to select from various sources. I'm informed that there are scripts to facilitate that - only problem: I don't know how to find the scripts, and a newbie, in particular, would find that a daunting task. I've not revisited MDK recently, but expect to do that in the not too distant future. Bottom line: *buntu is very easy and fast to install and set up - SUSE certainly is not, and MDK does not seem able to upgrade itself very well.
2)"Moreover, don't forget that the business approach of Ubuntu is perhaps not really sustainable." - I guess time will tell. It looks sustainable for the forseeable future.
3)"Probably they are not building the Linux base (even not technically), rather cannibalizing the distributions with a different business model." - I see no basis for this assumption. It looks to me like they are making a distro which is much more usable - easier to install, setup and maintain. Even if they are cannibalizing - it would seem to me a good thing since they are, IMHO, providing a more usable product. I have seen many folks installing *buntu who have not previously used Linux or who had previously tried and rejected it: I do not believe they are 'cannibalizing' if, by that, you mean stealing users from other distros. If you mean 'using assets developed by other distros' - is that not what OpenSource is all about? Taking, modifying, improving, giving back. No one can accuse *buntu of not giving back - look at the growing number of distros based on *buntu.
4) I find it no more difficult to find answers to *buntu problems than those for any other distribution - in fact, many answers are the same no matter what the distro. I do find fewer problems to solve than SUSE and than I recall from MDK.
Overall I view *buntu as a polished product, whereas improvements on SUSE seem to have stalled three or four years ago; again, I've not checked MDK recently, but it certainly seemed that *buntu surged past it in ease of installation and maintenance about two years ago. Hopefully I'll find that MDK is now back in competition, but I have read recently of upgrade problems - I've upgraded seven *buntu installs fairly recently and had one minor problem with one system.
141 • RE 139 : Ubuntu-mandrive (by dbrion on 2007-03-04 16:50:18 GMT from France)
(Ubuntus)"forums are crowded but mostly useless": this is not exact; for example, I found some doc about VMplayer and VirtualBox (this doc was of some use, once one omitted 75% of the ritual text about Winblows....). Perhaps one can find some doc about the cooking of spaghettis, too (it is highly useful for Linux/ Windows lover not to starve)... It is rather a matter of relevance.
The main pb is that some forums where moderators try they remain concise, non redundent and somewhat related to the topic (I think of Zenwalk) are viewed as over-slimmed....
As far as Mandriva is concerned, I neither see style nor substance in their removing vim's syntax-coloring... Zenwalk has kept it, even if they use transparency. As Zenwalk has only one big CD floppy, one has to compile everything is missing (I do not rely in package installers anymore, each distr having her own one; keeping trace of installation scripts [ for my needs ] seems a conservative way of protection against unneeded diversity...). That is one basical but useful use of vim (and mispeelings are then a lost of time) .
If I did not think SourceForge is highly funded (as I do think for R -I like both-), I would have asked for donations to Sourceforge...
142 • PCLOS TR3 released!!!!! (by Werewolf on 2007-03-04 22:03:58 GMT from Romania)
I hope that is the last TR from Tex and i'm waiting for the official release!
pls Ladislav list this relese in the news (home page) page.
143 • donations (by ray carter at 2007-03-05 02:16:03 GMT from United States)
I would indeed concur with the nomination of SourceForge.
144 • BLAG, Fedora Core 6, PCLinuxOS, Sidux (by RobNyc on 2007-03-05 06:21:22 GMT from United States)
I have to give props to these distros.
Blag for being the best at its duties and standing up for its words.
Fedora Core 6 for great support on irc channel
PcLinuxOS(PCLOS) for being the easiest of the distros and eye-candy out of the box.
And Sidux for the being the best Debian Sid, Great Support Channel and again for being Debian Sid.
I have left Ubuntu after a year. Am finding my home in either BLAG(FC6), PCLOS or Sidux(Debian Sid).. I'm tired of seeing how things keep Ubuntu keeps changing stuff release per release and sucking.
Number of Comments: 144
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SELKS
SELKS, a product of Stamus Networks, is a Debian-based live distribution designed for network security management. It provides a complete and ready-to-use Suricata IDS/IPS ecosystem with its own graphic rule manager. The system also includes Kibana IDS/NSM dashboards (for visualising logs and other time-stamped data) a Scirius (a rules management interface for Suricata). SELKS is released under the GNU GPLv3 licence.
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