 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 199, 23 April 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 17th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The week belonged to Ubuntu, whose new version 7.04 was made available as planned despite the skipped release candidate a week earlier. The hype surrounding the new release of the popular operating system completely eclipsed that of another desktop-oriented distribution - Mandriva Linux 2007.1, which was also made available last week, but which generated little excitement in comparison. Also in the news: a new openSUSE-based live CD featuring the latest KDE 4 snapshot, a link to an interview with Novell's Nat Friedman, and an update on the development of PC-BSD. Finally, don't miss our fifth and final part of the overview of top ten distributions, featuring Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Overview |
Overview of Top Ten Distributions (Part 5)
The fifth and final part of our overview of Top Ten Distributions takes a quick look at Gentoo Linux, the most widely-used source-based distribution. It then continues with a brief introduction to FreeBSD; although not based on Linux, as a direct descendant of UNIX and the most popular BSD representative, it gets an honourable place in the top ten list.
* * * * *
 The concept of Gentoo Linux was devised in around the year 2000 by Daniel Robbins, a former Stampede Linux and FreeBSD developer. It was the author's exposure to FreeBSD and its "autobuild" feature called "ports", which inspired him to incorporate some of the FreeBSD software management principles into Gentoo under the name of "portage". The idea was to develop a Linux distribution that would allow users to compile the Linux kernel and applications from source code directly on their own computers, thus maintaining a highly-optimised and always up-to-date system. By the time the project released its 1.0 version in March 2002, Gentoo's package management was considered a superior alternative to some binary package management systems, especially the then widely-used RPM.
Gentoo Linux was designed for power users. Originally, the installation was cumbersome and tedious, requiring hours or even days of compiling on the command line to build a complete Linux distribution; however, in 2006 the project simplified the installation procedure by providing an installable Gentoo live CD with a point-and-click installer. Besides delivering an always up-to-date set of packages for installation with a single command, the other main feature of the distribution is the extensive configurability of many obscure aspects of the system, such as compiler flags. The Gentoo documentation was repeatedly labelled as the best online documentation of any distribution.
Gentoo Linux has lost much of its original glory in recent years. Some Gentoo users have come to a realisation that the time-consuming compiling of software packages brings only marginal speed and optimisation benefits. Ever since the resignation of Gentoo's founder and benevolent dictator from the project in 2004, the newly established Gentoo Foundation has been battling with lack of clear directions and frequent developer conflicts, which resulted in several high-profile departures of well-known Gentoo personalities. It remains to be seen whether Gentoo can regain its innovative qualities of the past or whether it will slowly disintegrate into a loose collection of personal sub-projects lacking clearly-defined goals.
- Pros: Excellent software management infrastructure, unparalleled customisation and tweaking options, superb online documentation
- Cons: Occasional instability and risk of breakdown, the project suffers from lack of directions and frequent infighting between its developers
- Software package management: "Portage" using source (SRC) packages
- Available editions: Minimal installation CD and live CD (with GNOME) for Alpha, AMD64, HPPA, IA64, MIPS, PPC, SPARC and x86 processors; also "stages" for manual installation from command line
- Suggested Gentoo-based alternatives: SabayonLinux (desktop live CD/DVD), VLOS (desktop), Ututo (desktop, free software only)
- Other source-based alternatives: Lunar Linux, Source Mage GNU/Linux, Sorcerer, Linux From Scratch
Gentoo Linux 2006.1
(full image size: 200kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 FreeBSD, a direct descendant of AT&T UNIX, has a long and turbulent history dating back to 1993. Unlike Linux distributions, which are defined as integrated software solutions consisting of the Linux kernel and thousands of software applications, FreeBSD is a tightly integrated operating system built from a BSD kernel and the so-called "userland" (therefore usable even without extra applications). This distinction is largely lost once installed on an average computer system - like many Linux distributions, a large collection of easily installed, (mostly) open source applications are available for extending the FreeBSD core, but these are usually provided by third-party contributors and aren't strictly part of FreeBSD.
FreeBSD has developed a reputation for being a fast, high-performance and extremely stable operating system, especially suitable for web serving and similar tasks. Many large web search engines and organisations with mission-critical computing infrastructures have deployed and used FreeBSD on their computer systems for years. Compared to Linux, FreeBSD is distributed under a much less restrictive license, which allows virtually unrestricted re-use and modification of the source code for any purpose. Even Apple's Mac OS X is known to have been derived from BSD. Besides the core operating system, the project also provides over 15,000 software applications in binary and source code forms for easy installation on top of the core FreeBSD.
While FreeBSD can certainly be used as a desktop operating system, it doesn't compare well with popular Linux distributions in this department. The text-mode system installer offers little in terms of hardware detection or system configuration, leaving much of the dirty work to the user in a post-installation setup. In terms of support for modern hardware, FreeBSD generally lags behind Linux, especially in supporting popular desktop and laptop gadgets, such as wireless network cards or digital cameras. Those users seeking to exploit the speed and stability of FreeBSD on a desktop or workstation should consider one of the available desktop FreeBSD projects, rather than FreeBSD itself.
- Pros: Fast and stable; availability of over 15,000 software applications (or "ports") for installation; very good documentation
- Cons: Tends to lag behind Linux in terms of support for newer hardware, limited availability of commercial applications; lacks graphical configuration tools
- Software package management: A complete command-line package management infrastructure using either binary packages or source-based "ports" (TBZ)
- Available editions: Installation CDs for Alpha, AMD64, i386, ia64, PC98 and SPARC64 processors
- Suggested FreeBSD-based alternatives: PC-BSD (desktop), DesktopBSD (desktop), FreeSBIE (live CD), DragonFly BSD (technical)
- Other BSD alternatives: OpenBSD, NetBSD
FreeBSD 6.2
(full image size: 282kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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As always, if you have any suggestions, corrections or additions to the above overviews, please post them in the forum.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Ubuntu 7.04, interview with Novell's Nat Friedman, "KDE Four Live", PC-BSD snapshots
 If you've had your doubts about how popular Ubuntu really is, then the events of the past week must have removed them once and for all. With the release of its latest and greatest -- version 7.04, code name "Feisty Fawn" -- last week, it is obvious that Ubuntu has been more successful in attracting users to Linux than any other distribution before. In fact, the demand for the new product was so strong that it made both Ubuntu.com and Canonical.com inaccessible for several hours on the day of the release. As a result of this, the web master of Ubuntu.com was forced to replace the usual entry page with a static, text-only temporary page in order to cope with thousands of connections. The distribution's main download server also suffered, although luckily its mirroring system was running smoothly and many FTP and HTTP servers carried the full set of CD images by the time the release announcement hit the news wires.
DistroWatch itself saw unprecedented levels of traffic on the day of the Ubuntu 7.04 release. Our main index page received more than 140,000 views in the 24-hour period (from midnight to midnight UCT) on Thursday, which is about 40% more than it would get on an ordinary working day. The Ubuntu page was accessed more than 22,000 times within the first two days after the release (contrast that with Mandriva Linux, whose page only received 6,700 visits within the first two days after the release of 2007.1 earlier in the week). Even Ubuntu developers were astonished by the sheer amount of interest in the new release: Melissa Draper reported that more than 1,500 users were logged in to the main Ubuntu IRC channel on the day of release, while Kevin Kubasik was amazed to see almost 4,000 people seeding the CD image on the BitTorrent network the next day.
Ubuntu 7.04 seems like a resounding success. The first reviews are already in and it looks like the majority of users are highly impressed with what they've seen so far. If you haven't yet tried the latest from Canonical, please go to the project's download page to get the live CD or visit Ubuntu's ShipIt programme to request the media.
The default desktop of Ubuntu 7.04.
(full image size: 117kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 Lots of Novell and openSUSE news last week. Austria's Der Standard has published a 5-page interview with Nat Friedman, the Chief Technology Officer at Novell: "Nat Friedman has been one of the driving forces behind the development of the Linux desktop for a few years now. First with his own company Ximian, founded together with Mono chief architect Miguel de Icaza, after its acquisition now inside Novell. A few months ago he has been named 'Technologist of the Year' by the VarBusiness magazine for his work around the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Since then he has been promoted to 'Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source', besides the desktop he is also overseeing Novell's server business now." A good read for anybody interested in desktop Linux.
* * * * *
 Stephan Binner, a well-known KDE and openSUSE developer, has released a set of live CDs featuring the latest development snapshot of KDE 4. Unlike the SLAX-based live CD called KLAX, which he used to develop in order to demonstrate new KDE releases, his "KDE Four Live" images are based on openSUSE. After a large, uncompressed live DVD released earlier in the week, a set of smaller live CDs (compressed with Squashfs) is now also available for download. Don't expect trouble-free computing with these early KDE 4 snapshots, but as demonstration tools designed to give KDE users an early taste of things to come, they aren't too bad. The first alpha build of KDE 4 is scheduled for release early next week.
* * * * *
Still on openSUSE, Andreas Jaeger has announced that starting from the upcoming version 10.3, openSUSE will no longer support Novell ZENWorks for software management: "openSUSE is focusing on native software management by using YaST and libzypp, the package management library. ZENworks Linux Management is Novell's solution for enterprise-class resource management for desktops and servers. ZENworks components are fully available and supported for SUSE Linux Enterprise based products and not longer part of the openSUSE distribution." According to this news post by Linux Weekly News, this arrangement appears to be "a popular idea in the openSUSE community."
* * * * *
 Finally, the PC-BSD project has announced the availability of new "tri-weekly" development releases of PC-BSD: "We are proud to announce that beta testers who would like to try the development branch of PC-BSD can now download ISO images updated and built three times per week." The first snapshots, delivered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, are now ready for download and testing from this directory.
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| Released Last Week |
Mandriva Linux 2007.1
Mandriva has announced the release of Mandriva Linux 2007.1, marketed as "2007 Spring": "Mandriva is proud to announce the release of its brand new distribution that provides up-to-date and freshly released open source software: Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring. Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring integrates the latest innovations in the fields of office suite applications, Internet, multimedia and virtualization technologies. Not only does Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring bring to users the most advanced Linux operating system, it also includes some very special new features: WengoPhone, Google Picasa and Google Earth, Drakvirt...." Read the press release, release notes, product pages for detailed information.
Zenwalk Live 4.4.1
Michael Verret has announced the release of Zenwalk Live 4.4.1, a live CD edition of Zenwalk Linux: "We are pleased to announce the release of Zenwalk Live 4.4.1. As you have grown to expect, Zenwalk Live replicates a Zenwalk Standard installation while at the same time adds many features. Also included are the GParted graphical hard disk partitioning software as well as a new utility in ZenPanel (Zenwalk's System Administration Control Panel) enabling a recovery of the LILO boatloader setup on your PC. Zenwalk Live continues to provide a complete development suite for all of you coders and software developers. For you video gaming fans, you'll be pleased to know that Zenwalk Live 4.4.1 includes Mega Mario, Ceferino Hazaña, Frozen Bubble, LBreakout and Wormux." More details in the release announcement.
Zenwalk Live 4.4.1
(full image size: 384kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
ClarkConnect Gateway/Server 4.1
ClarkConnect Getaway/Server 4.1, an easy-to-use, CentOS-based server distribution designed for small businesses, home offices, and networked homes, has been released. What's new? "File server antivirus; Samba PDC (Primary Domain Controller) support; improved server and LAN backup features; new greylist and blacklist support for the antispam engine; greylist antispam engine; e-mail disclaimer; e-mail virtual domain support; e-mail catch-all mailbox support; webmail administration tools; the backup and restore system settings now includes the user database; the firewall has changed to accommodate the new Hot LAN and Blocking features...." Please see the release notes for full details.
Kubuntu 7.04
This is the big release day for the Ubuntu family of distributions and Kubuntu is the first to announce the new version: "Kubuntu 7.04 has been released and is available for download now. Kubuntu 7.04 stepped over the edge, becoming the feistiest release to date. Improved desktop, updated applications and increased usability features are just a few of the surprises with this latest release. The goal for Kubuntu 7.04 was to continue on the creation of a secure and stable environment, working towards the perfect KDE-based operating system. Starting with the excellent base of Ubuntu and an implementation of KDE, Kubuntu 7.04 set out to smooth the rough edges and polish the future of Kubuntu." Here is the full release announcement with a detailed list of new features.
Ubuntu 7.04
Ubuntu 7.04, one of the most eagerly anticipated Linux distribution releases ever, is now officially out: "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce version 7.04 of the Ubuntu family of distributions. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent software installed by default, an incredible variety of add-on software available with a few clicks, and professional technical support from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world." Read the release announcement, check out the release notes and visit the Feisty Tour page for detailed information about Ubuntu 7.04.
Edubuntu 7.04
Edubuntu 7.04, a Linux distribution designed for deployment in educational institutions, has also been released: "The Edubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Edubuntu 7.04. This release includes both Desktop CDs and Server CDs for several architectures. Highlights of this release include: Edubuntu 7.04 integrates the latest thin client technology out of the box for a simple LTSP server setup; Edubuntu Classroom Server consists of two CDs; a server image and a server add-on image with additional educational applications and languages; the distribution has improved documentation featuring The Edubuntu Handbook with tips and best practices...." Find more information in the release announcement.
Xubuntu 7.04
Xubuntu 7.04, a light-weight Ubuntu variant featuring the Xfce desktop, is now available for download: "Thank you to everyone who has helped make Xubuntu 7.04 a reality. Thousands of you have helped code, test, translate and promote Ubuntu and everyone can celebrate today's release. Xubuntu 7.04 contains new innovative features like the revolutionary Windows migration assistance and the Xfce 4.4 stable desktop environment. Already known as a great lightweight desktop environment, Xfce version 4.4 includes a number of improved features that make it a worthy alternative to more memory-intensive desktops such as GNOME or KDE." More details in the release announcement and release notes.
Linux Mint 2.2 "KDE"
After two beta releases, the KDE edition of Linux Mint 2.2, code name "Bianca", has reached a stable state: "Bianca KDE edition was released and is available for download. A miniKDE edition is also available, it features less software but fits on a CD. As usual this release is desktop-ready and comes with support for most video codecs and web plugins. Mint applications couldn't be ported in time to KDE and are absent from this release, however mintdesktop's home folders were added to it. The default selection of packages is large and very up to date: KDE 3.5.6, Amarok 1.4.5, KOffice 1.6.2, Firefox 2.0.0.3. Konqueror is still the default file explorer but Dolphin 0.8 was also added as a tech-preview. The KMenu was replaced with TastyMenu 0.7." Here are the full release notes.
Nonux 4.2
Nonux 4.2 has been released. Nonux is a Dutch, Slackware-based distribution designed for business desktops in Dutch-speaking office environments. The most important new features and package upgrades include: update to Linux kernel 2.6.20.7; update to GNOME 2.16.3, Evolution 2.8.3, Firefox 2.0.0.3 and OpenOffice.org 2.2.0; improvements in monitor frequency detection; support for many streaming audio and video formats through the MPlayer browser plugin for Firefox (MPlayer replaces Totem), support for wireless network cards based on Atheros (MadWifi) and Acx111 (OSS driver) chipsets; reduced CD size due to the use of LZMA compression. Please visit the distribution's news page (in Dutch) to read the full release announcement.
Berry Linux 0.80
Yuichiro Nakada has announced the release of Berry Linux 0.80, a Fedora-based live CD for the desktop, with support for Japanese and English. The latest version is based on Linux kernel 2.6.20.7 with symmetric multiprocessing, ndev/udev and bootsplash patches. The system uses Fedora's Kudzu 1.2.67 and Klaus Knopper's hwdata 0.199 scripts for hardware detection. Among application changes, Berry Linux ships with X.Org 7.1, support for 3D desktop effects with AIGLX and Beryl 0.2.0, and Japanese and English editions of OpenOffice.org 2.2.0, Firefox 1.5.0.11 and Sylpheed 2.3.1. Other package upgrades includes xine with xine-lib 1.1.5 and WINE 0.9.32. For more details please see the full changelog.
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes our latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 30 April 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Kubuntu release (by Slax Fan on 2007-04-23 11:22:50 GMT from United States)
I liked older Kubuntu releases but the i386 version wouldn't boot on my hardware so I tried the 64 bit version on my AMD 64 PC. It booted but never finished displaying the desktop. I verified the MD5 sums. The Ubuntu versions are not as reliable for me as most other live CDs. Not a slam but observation that downloads is not a reliable indicator of popularity.
2 • Ubuntu etc Documentation (by afs on 2007-04-23 11:40:38 GMT from United States)
Anyone know when the documentation for 7.04 will be available?
3 • Ubuntu, mandriva, etc... (by parkash on 2007-04-23 11:50:58 GMT from Germany)
Ubuntu is great in marketing. I'm really happy with the way they boost the use and popularity of Linux. Nevertheless I find the release lacking of innovation. The only thing extra that I have in Ubuntu is support for the special keys in my laptop --something I can live happily without. Apart from that, the kernel is a 2.6.20 (and will be for a long time), wireless support is the same as with other distros (with the same kernel or higher), customized (and very pretty) OpenOffice, etc... Mandriva, on the other hand, doesn't recognize my special keys, ships still with kernel 2.6.17, but understands better the restricted drivers and is, in some ways, more friendly...
Anyway, I'm still happier with Arch than any of the others... Although I think there's no perfect distribution yet... And I like it that way ;)
4 • ubnutu + kde (by random guy at 2007-04-23 11:59:24 GMT from United States)
i have been using feisty since alpha 2. have been enjoying it although i think they put more features in the gnome release than the kde one. i am a kde fan.
speakeing of which i want to try the new kde4 live disk. i have been looking forward to kde4 for a long time.
5 • Gentoo (by KimTjik on 2007-04-23 12:01:08 GMT from Sweden)
I find this to very true: "Some Gentoo users have come to a realisation that the time-consuming compiling of software packages brings only marginal speed and optimisation benefits." Being a power user can be fun, but because of so much else time consuming in life and duties of greater importance it's harder by time to find the motivation to make it the hard, even though fun, way, when the gain, besides the process itself, is scarce.
I don't know if Arch likes to be called a compromise; nevertheless it feels like a more constructive compromise to me (note I write "to me").
6 • Ubuntu trashing PCLinuxOS servers? (by Joey on 2007-04-23 12:01:55 GMT from United States)
Looks like *maybe* Ubuntu not only artificially drives up Distrowatch
page hits per day, but may also have been behind Texstar's server woes
last week:
http://pclossupport.forumsland.com/pclossupport-about44.html
7 • Crashes (by Basil Bond on 2007-04-23 12:10:14 GMT from United States)
In fact, the demand for the new product was so strong that it brought down Ubuntu.com and Canonical.com for several hours on the day of the release.
Maybe it's because their servers run Ubuntu?!
8 • No subject (by Saggie on 2007-04-23 12:11:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
The clogging of servers over at Ubuntu is no guide to its quality. DW itself has constantly suffered from misleading citations in its Hit Rankings, as Ladislav is often telling us. Every day, one imagines, millions of distros are downloaded - and shortly thereafter abandoned by punters who were too willing believe all the hype. Why, right now I can hear the cash tills ringing in the US as the mindless leemings sleepwalk into the abyss that is Vista! What message should we glean from that?
Nor is it correct to state that U 7.04 reviews are all favourable. They are very mixed. A better assessment might be more of the same? The main reason I won't blocking their servers anytime soon.
9 • Re: Ubuntu trashing PCLinuxOS servers (by kanishka on 2007-04-23 12:19:52 GMT from Italy)
"Looks like *maybe* Ubuntu not only artificially drives up Distrowatch
page hits per day, but may also have been behind Texstar's server woes
last week"
PFFFFFT. No comment. This kind of BS won't do anything good for Linux in general.
10 • Ubuntu Feisty install/upgrade poll (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 12:20:15 GMT from Germany)
Ubuntuforums holds a poll where users can report the success or failure of their Feisty installation/upgrade:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=414935
11 • Re: Comment 7 (by James on 2007-04-23 12:30:48 GMT from Lebanon)
"In fact, the demand for the new product was so strong that it brought down Ubuntu.com and Canonical.com for several hours on the day of the release.
Maybe it's because their servers run Ubuntu?!"
Well you're far from reasonable in that deduction, Network congestion that brings down servers is different from what you thought off. In fact Ubuntu is a very stable OS as witnessed by me and the thousands of people downloading it.
12 • Oops, he did it again! (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 12:55:17 GMT from Romania)
"Those users seeking to exploit the speed and stability of FreeBSD on a desktop or workstation should consider one of the available desktop FreeBSD projects, rather than FreeBSD itself."
Ladislav, you're losing credibility. Following the same logic, one should consider Vector, SLAX, Wolvix or Zenwalk rather than Slackware itself.
At the very leastm you could have written: "some users might want to consider...".
Really, Ladislav, this is not what we would expect from you.
13 • Ubuntu (by Kub on 2007-04-23 13:19:14 GMT from Ireland)
I can see that Ubuntu bashing is regarded as something 'cool' or 'hip' in linux community. "No no, it's not really that popular, its all propaganda and marketing". WTF? Even Novell didn't get so much slack for teaming up with Microsoft that Canonical gets for... what exactly? Doing better job than anyone else? Is it all jealousy? Or elitism? As if - so many people is using it so it just CAN'T be good? I'm at loss here with all this negativity, and it's going on for years now. It's almost like some linux old timers are afraid that linux will get too popular with common users.
Just my 2 cents :)
14 • No, he didn't (by Dan on 2007-04-23 13:23:52 GMT from United States)
Ladislav said exactly the right thing by suggesting that users "should consider" the alternatives. If you put his comment in context (i.e., READ THE LINE BEFORE IT), what he is trying to say is that these "pure" versions tend to not have a lot of the desktop-oriented bells and whistles without a lot of work, and even may lag behind. That's why those spin-offs usually are created, to ANSWER those needs. So those who want the complete desktop experience, SHOULD CONSIDER the spinoffs.
He could have written the "some users MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER" thing, but it would have been the exact same thing.
Quite frankly, Ladislav said EXACTLY what we expect and need. Thanks Ladislav!
15 • #3 (by mick bayerback on 2007-04-23 13:26:33 GMT from Netherlands)
Mandriva 2007 spring: best distro ever. I can't stop using it..... A big thanks to Mandriva developers and packagers.
Mick
16 • Gentoo package management (by massysett on 2007-04-23 13:36:15 GMT from United States)
I've gotta disagree with one of the stated advantages of Gentoo: the package management. Portage is becoming an albatross. The dependency resolver is extremely slow, and it still has no way to handle reverse dependencies. Searching through packages takes forever. It is necessary to use third-party tools, such as eix and udept, for Portage to even be usable. Right now, any Debian-based system has a package manager that is much better than Gentoo's. Portage is in need of a major makeover, and I'm starting to think that if it doesn't get one soon, someone will fork Gentoo and use a different package manager (maybe Paludis) and start picking up users. (Sabayon has stuck with Portage, which seems odd to me.)
17 • Ubuntu & UUID (by Baalzebub on 2007-04-23 13:39:24 GMT from United States)
anyone planning on installing Ubuntu/Kubuntu/xubuntu on an extra disk partition better let ubuntu install the bootloader to the MBR because if you plan on letting another bootloader boot it will run in to problems because *ubuntu now uses UUID to handle block devices in fstab so no more /dev/hda1 & etc... it is now some long long string of numbers & letters that resemble something you might find in a windows regestry key.
i don't like ubuntu for implementing this, i am sure the distro runs just fine all by it self, but i rather not let UUID handle my disks...
there should be an option to install ubuntu without UUID...
18 • DistroWars Weekly: Business as usual (by Mark South on 2007-04-23 13:39:53 GMT from Switzerland)
Another Monday. Another edition of DistroWars Weekly. When I got here there 13 comments. Nearly half of those were knocking other distros. (Count them yourselves if you don't believe me.)
Here are some questions I'd like to see answered in future editions of DWW:
When are all the anti-Linux Microserfs going to leave DistroWatch weekly alone and stop randomly slanging Linux distros?
When will the PCLinuxOS team stop being paranoid and resume focusing their energies on development of what I hear is really quite a pleasant distro?
How paranoid does one have to be to believe that Canonical is persecuting PCLinuxOS because they are frightened that PCLinuxOS will destroy Ubuntu?
Is that last one even more silly than the (apparently numerous) cases of the Linux distros that offereded to supplant Red Hat as the OS supplier for the OLPC Project?
When will other distros realise that doing a distribution release within 3 days of an Ubuntu release might just be a waste of time?
Will comments further down on the page continue to become more needlessly combative?
Are the distro knockers who come here actually working for Steve Ballmer, or do they do it just for the sheer pleasant malice of the experience?
Will I ever run out of questions?
Despairingly,
Mark
19 • Inescapable typomagraphical errors (by Mark South on 2007-04-23 13:43:57 GMT from Switzerland)
I wrote "offereded" in my above post (#18). This is, as you will have realised, not actually a word. Obviously, I meant to write "offermarated". Normal service will now resume.
20 • Ubuntu bashing (by ozonehole on 2007-04-23 13:47:47 GMT from United States)
I also don't know what to think about all this Ubuntu bashing. I've been using Ubuntu (among other distros) almost since it's inception, and this release is without a doubt the best I've seen. Although I've only been running it for two days - and I may yet find bugs as I did in earlier releases - the experience so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Everything just seems to work.
21 • Question 16 "and it still has no way to handle reverse dependencies" (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 13:50:06 GMT from France)
What are reverse dependencies? (That might be beyond color, love, ease of don-load..)
22 • 12 Oops, he did it again! (by ladislav on 2007-04-23 13:53:15 GMT from Taiwan)
I don't see your point. What's wrong with suggesting that people should consider Zenwalk or Vector, rather than Slackware, for their desktops? I think it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion....
23 • RE: 14 • No, he didn't (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 13:53:53 GMT from Romania)
Don't tell me that SHOULD and MIGHT WANT TO mean the same!
24 • RE: 17 • Ubuntu & UUID (by Béranger on 2007-04-23 13:56:51 GMT from Romania)
You can change the new UUID style from something like this:
root=UUID=c18758e8-a5c2-4921-816a-f235542574a2
to something like this:
root=/dev/sda1
Beware that all the IDE disks that were hdX are now sdX, thanks to the 2.6.20 kernel and to our Gods. (Yes, I am moving into FreeBSD or one of its desktop spin-offs.)
25 • #15 #3 (by gbetti on 2007-04-23 13:57:16 GMT from Italy)
Agreed.... just wiped out my WinXP partition to make room. I installed MDV 2007.1 ONE (KDE) in less than 20 minutes on my HP athlon64. MM works out of the box, Firefox plugins are already configured...3D works out of the box on my ATI Xpress Videocard. Boots fast...apps are very quick and responsive.. also my wireless works (although not perfectly) via ndiswrapper.
After a number of attempts with Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS which for some reasons left me rather disapponted I've eventually found the right distribution.
Thanks Mandriva !
G. Betti
26 • As the Stomach Turns (by PastorEd at 2007-04-23 13:58:50 GMT from United States)
re: #18 -
Mark, it sounds as if you've got the beginnings of a great soap opera there! {grin}
Perhaps you could work up some kind of plot synopsis, and pitch it to G4...
27 • RE: What's wrong with suggesting that people should (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 13:58:56 GMT from Romania)
Suggesting that people SHOULD use something else implies that the original product is UNSUITABLE for the desktop -- which is NOT the general case, but only the opinion of SOME of the users (the click-click-click type of users).
28 • Gentoo (by fdavid on 2007-04-23 14:00:20 GMT from Germany)
It's surely hard to write a good overview of a distribution in a couple of sentences. But why should the gentoo features always be misinterpreted? Speed optimisation stupidity (which is just for the wannabe kiddies) vs. compilation time is a soo ill-choosen point. This is just not what a source distribution is about. And I'm a bit disappointed to read it again and again on DW, where I would expect a well-founded opinion instead of just using the common misleading stereotypes.
29 • re: 2 - Feisty Fawn documentation (by Steff on 2007-04-23 14:01:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
www.ubuntuguide.org has been updated already.
It's a wiki so possibly the update work is not complete.
Is this what you were looking for?
30 • Ubuntu bashers (by Allan on 2007-04-23 14:01:51 GMT from Australia)
I am getting tired of the Ubuntu bashing around here. Ubuntu has replaced Windows on my desktop and I am a regular (~1/day) visitor to Distrowatch but I almost NEVER click on my distro's page unless there is an imminent release.
To suggest something as juvenile as manipulating the hit rankings just because a distro is more popular says more about the person suggesting. Every distro has a right to exist. If yours isn't getting the same buzz as Ubuntu then consider why that might be and let Ubuntu have its due.
My initial experience with Feisty has been mostly positive with some glitches. They made the right decision in leaving Compiz switched off by default (it does some strange things on my old Ti4200) and smbfs seems to be more flaky than in Edgy.
Allan
31 • Gentoo Alternatives (by Jason on 2007-04-23 14:11:12 GMT from United States)
I'd say that the alternatives for Gentoo are actually Linux From Scratch, Sorcerer and Source Mage.
32 • Ubuntu is very far from being the best but... (by davemc on 2007-04-23 14:15:30 GMT from United States)
I gave Kubuntu more than a fair shot last weekend. Spent the better part of Friday, Saturday and most of Sunday on it, in fact. I hate GNOME so Kubuntu or Xubuntu were the only choices for me. Anyway, Kubuntu has a very long ways to go to catch up to several other, far superior desktop options -- PCLos, Mandriva, SabayonLinux, SimplyMepis, PuppyLinux -- All very much better in pretty much every single aspect from install to autoconfiguration. I was very dissapointed to find that the "Buntu's" dont even preconfigure very simple things like Flash, video card drivers, java, beryl, and a host of other things that come preconfigured in all the above mentioned distros saving me about a full days worth of time and effort. Just to get beryl working on my amd64 machine took alot of wiki/forum scanning and some creative hacking to boot. Flash will not run on Kubuntu Fiesty for amd64 machines at all -- rather far behind the leading pack of distro's where flash does work, and is preconfigured for amd64. Kubuntu community support is also lacking in that area and the Kubuntu IRC channel was flooded with stuff like "I cant get Kubuntu to install please help me!!" kinda stuff so I could not use it as a constructive means to attain help because my requests were simply drowned out. In short, the "Buntu's" fail to impress and still have a very, very long way to go to catch up to many other distro's who are far more functionally packed and serve the average desktop user far better.
Sorry, but the Buntu's are not a suitable, nor desirable option to present to the Linux noobs to wean them off M$ and I think it a big mistake to try that route. Instead, offer those types one of the other distro's I mentioned above (oops, forgot Mint!! sorry Mint lovers), because M$ users are looking for an option where everything, and I mean EVERYTHING including flash, works out of the box with no configuration required by the user after install.
33 • 21 reverse dependancy (by pascal on 2007-04-23 14:26:28 GMT from Sweden)
Gentoo portage knows dependancies, which means it know on what package depends something,
the problem is that if you update packageA which packageB depends on, you might have to rebuild packageB
this is why there is a tool in Gentoo called revdep-rebuild that will check that all binaries have the libs they need available, or propose to rebuild the corresponding pakcage (here packageB)
34 • Re: 23 (No he didn't) (by Tim on 2007-04-23 14:27:26 GMT from United States)
Seems like you're missing the word consider. The word that follows "should" . In my book, consider means to think about it. Seems like maybe this has been taken a little out of context? Relax, no one is forcing you to switch from whatever is your favorite.
Besides this is Distrowatch, one of the best places to get started "considering" different distributions.
35 • Two kind of people (by JP on 2007-04-23 14:29:57 GMT from United States)
In this world there are two kind of people:
The ones that create things, have ideas and are able to materialized them, as Ladislav.
And then there are the others, that since its lack of creativity and capacity to build from his own ideas, are just able to criticize what the other creates even in the absence of errors.
Thanks Ladislav for your work, dedication and courage, because in the middle of this " 500 distribution confusion" that can be for people that is just entering in the linux world, you put a little bit of clarity.
Thanks again
JP
36 • RE: 18 (by KimTjik on 2007-04-23 14:30:38 GMT from Sweden)
I suppose your post had a big portion of irony; otherwise it would just be the same knocking of specified or unspecified distros.
Whatever, I think you exaggerate. Yes there have been some quite ruff argumentation going on in previous DWW, but today I can’t see any real knocking going on: in some cases it more looks like someone didn’t see the underlining joke.
Further I suppose it’s inevitable that open source communities will be blessed and cursed by more argumentation. Why? As I understand it the actual possibility of influence a distro to change or improve creates a stronger drift to have opinions and many of us don’t agree, because every human is unique. So instead of classifying every criticism as “knocking”, the guiding line should be: “keep it civil”. If it’s civil every opinion could be constructive. The problem is sometimes that some take their choice too personal and thus loose manners.
How fun or rewarding would it be if the whole community of *nix users simply kept in line and repeated like a mantra: “everything is great because it’s *nix”. As an example: I did some weeks ago post a comment directed at a developer, of an Ubuntu oriented distro, who happened to engage here and “complain” about problems I had running Ubuntu on specific systems (technical specification was included). For that I was bashed by someone who successfully used the distro in question. Maybe he thought I was knocking Ubuntu, I don’t know. I wasn’t bashing Ubuntu, just trying to convey my issues to a developer. Nothing will really improve if criticism isn’t allowed.
37 • Real Life (by FormerUntu on 2007-04-23 14:31:58 GMT from United States)
Here is something to think about for all the various fanboys and girls out there, I work in the Computer Sciences department at my local community college and in our main "Intro" class the instructor show cases the latest Knoppix every semester. He uses this distro for no reason other than it has a lot of software. The effect has much to be desired... Have you ever tried to explain what every package in Knoppix does to an 18 year old no nothing? In my quest to find him a faster, better alternative, I have demonstrated various Live CD's that were quicker and had a more, how should I say, "tunned" selection of packages. The last three I showcases were Ubuntu, PCLOS and the new Mandriva 2007.1 and the only one that will be supplanting Knoppix next semester is Mandriva One 2007.1 mostly thanks to automatic 'working' Compiz on our old hardware, quality selection of packages, and easy installation of packages such as Google Earth and Picasa. Not to mention the OS itself. It's funny he didn't want to go with PCLOS just because of Compiz. I don't think he really understood when I told him it was based on Mandriva. At any rate, thanks to Mandriva and Compiz more students will be installing Linux on there boxes this summer than the last 4 semesters combined. Basecly all I'm saying the amount of ppl bashing distros only a fraction of the populace interested. No one in my department even knows what distro watch is... So just use what you like, everyone else is....
38 • Thanks Pascal (definition of reverse dependancy) # 33 (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 14:43:07 GMT from France)
And what would happen if A depended on B, and A was the only package depending on B, and one suppresses A? Will B be wiped off, too? (I read debian does); as I compile anything (i.e : my _two_ favourite apps with their parent libraries, as far as I can do without messing with a kernel or X) on separate folders/disks -to compare versions,say, or because my favourite Linux forgot to sheep them-, with all their dependancies, that was transparent to me. Perhaps it might be a rational criterion of choice..
39 • I though it was Linux vs M$ (by M$ vs Linux on 2007-04-23 14:43:54 GMT from United States)
See, I agree with Mark South post 18 and Kub post 13,
I have switched over to Linux 9 years ago, I have been using almost every distro, and yes some I liked and other did not, but this is Linux OPEN SOURCE, you have the choice to try different things.
A challenge to all of you out there, if you get something(LINUX) for free and you love it? why would you be so negative towards it. If LINUX is to be successful then all distros need to work together which they do, most distros have the same packages.
I think this comment will put a lot of fire in here, but in my opinion LINUX overall will start taking over desktop shares, and it has over the 9 years I have seen it grow, OH and I don't care with Distro it is!!!!!!!!
My laptop is Sabayon and desktop is dual boot with FreeBSD and Xubuntu!
so users, if you still use M$(i don't' care if you dual boot), then go ahead and bash every distro out there, to me it means that you are afraid at how much Love is shown to Linux and M$ is losing ground.
Just MY 2 Cents!!!!!!!
PS: In my opinion if you all claim to be such big Linux users then why don't you help someone who is switching over from M$, instead you come and bash on other Linux users. I think some of you don't want Linux to grow up!!!!!!
40 • clark connect isn't fedora based anymore (by random coward on 2007-04-23 14:48:39 GMT from United States)
they moved to leeching of the centos project at least 2 years ago.
41 • The Rise and Fall of Linux Distributions (by linbetwin on 2007-04-23 14:52:31 GMT from Romania)
Little Linux distro X appears on the horizon.
HAPPY EARLY ADOPTER: Hey, I found this great new Linux distro. It works well and has a very small but friendly community.
LINUX MOB: Sounds very promising. Hope this distro will become great and will help spread Linux.
A few years later.
HAPPY VETERAN USER: Hey, the newest version of the formerly little distro X is SO BIG! Millions of people are wiping their windoze off their PCs to install it.
LINUX MOB: WTF, this big shot distro X really sucks! We never liked it and we never said we liked it. They're making it too easy for the windoze clickheads! Pretty soon every Tom, Dick and Harry will be using Linux.
42 • dohh (by random coward on 2007-04-23 14:53:31 GMT from United States)
s/of/off/ for comment #40 please.
43 • Re 24 : Ubuntu & UUID (by Béranger ... (by Serge Matovic on 2007-04-23 14:55:17 GMT from Canada)
Hi Beranger: Just a quick question: Is it possible to use FreeBSD as the "Inernet surfing desktop", especially to play as many as possible multimedia content sites. I'm using Mandriva 2007.1 now, and it's not bad at all, but I am constantly fiddling with Firefox plugins, and still cannot play all the sites.
44 • Ubuntu 7.04 (by G on 2007-04-23 15:06:59 GMT from United States)
I'm very pleased with this release. The easy codec and restricted driver installation helped me get composite up and running and I'm so glad they decided to include NetworkManager. I only wish upgrading would be less problematic. I give this release a 4 out of 5.
45 • Mandriva 2007.1 is the best distro I ever tried !!! (by Serge Matovic on 2007-04-23 15:11:05 GMT from Canada)
Just wanted to clarify a bit my post above: "I'm using Mandriva 2007.1 now, and it's not bad at all .." Well, this sounds like a negative on Mandriva, so I want to state: Dispite not being able to play every multimedia content from internet, Mandriva 2007.1 is in my opinion the best distro that exists !!! And their Control Center is the hart of it all.
46 • 24 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 15:14:11 GMT from United States)
Are you sure you can just change the line like that? I tried and it wouldn't boot.
As for Ubuntu bashing, there is a problem here. Ubuntu users write things like, "Ubuntu is clearly the best distribution" or "Ubuntu is the only Linux distribution that knows what they are doing. All the others are junk put out by ignorant developers."
Then hearing this nonsense, the users of other distributions (i.e., most Linux users) respond by attacking Ubuntu, often with 9/11-style conspiracy claims.
The Ubuntu worshippers then respond by correctly pointing out that those criticisms of Ubuntu are generally not correct. And the vicious circle continues.
The only solution is to ban Ubuntu fanboys, Ubuntu fanchicks, and anti-Ubuntu critics from posting.
47 • Watch the Ubuntu bashing in progress (by IMQ on 2007-04-23 15:16:18 GMT from United States)
Don't even try to block it.
Isn't it amazing?
If a distro did poorly, it is bashed becaused... it is poorly made.
If a distro did well, it is bashed becaused... it is overly *hyped*.
Everyone says no distro is perfect, yet quite a good number of people expect a perfect distro every time it is released.
Contructive feedbacks seem like a difficult things to do, even impossible for some.
I have been using various distros for the past few years and I can tell you: not single distro perfectly matched my preferences but I am a very, very happy user in a Linux camp.
Why? Never in the history of personal computing has people enjoyed the fruits of so many flavors of creativity in desktop computing. There are more creativity in making the desktop more pleasant to use in the past 2.3 years. Obviously some get more attraction than the others. And the bashing begins. Without fail.
Someday I'll dip my toe in BSD water. Just for fun.
48 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 15:17:44 GMT from United States)
And one other thing about the Ubuntu worshippers: it is EXTREMELY annoying to hear the statement that the criticism comes from jealousy or because Windows users find it easy to use. I don't know how you can twist your body enough to get your head up there.
49 • mdv2007.1, pclos and ubuntu (by kilgoretrout on 2007-04-23 15:21:04 GMT from United States)
I haven't used mandriva since LE2005 and was unimpressed with both mdv2006 and mdv2007. I gave mdv2007.1 a test install over the weekend and I must say I'm very impressed. This is the best release mandriva/mandrake has come up with in a long time. I highly recommend the latest mandriva release, especially to those that have been disappointed by mandriva's past few releases. Mandriva really has a winner here.
I don't get the thinly veiled charge about ubuntu somehow being responsible for pclos's server woes and I read through the link cited in support thoroughly. I noted that texstar stated in one post that he believed the ddos attack came from an "old enemy" but I didn't see him mention ubuntu at all. Just interested in what evidence there is to support this incredible allegation.
Finally, re ubuntu going to UUID in fstab. This is from debian as I see the same thing with sidux which is based on debain unstable. As noted in an early post, all hard drives, including ide hard drives, are going to the scsi protocol in the most recent kernel. As a result, the device files for ide drives will go from hd* to sd* just like sata drives. In order to avoid confusion during this transition, UUID was seen as a better way to go since that the UUID of a drive is the same under both the old and new kernels.
50 • re 38 (by Pascal on 2007-04-23 15:23:08 GMT from Sweden)
If you remove A, B will 'by default' not be removed, but it won't get updated automatically (unless you say to portage that B is now part of the packages you want to track (called world)).
but there is a command to clean unused dependancies, that will remove it.
the revdep-rebuild can then check that no package was linked to it without advertising its dependancy. (Some package will link with whatever is present to add functionality even if you don't specificaly request this)
pour la deuxième partie de la question, je suis pas sur de bien comprendre...
51 • Ubantu (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 15:25:44 GMT from United States)
I spent most of the day Saturday with Xubuntu and was a bit disappointed. Xubuntu was the only buntu that would work on my wide variation of PCs on the last go round. It took 4 times to download and no mirrors were available. I had to keep wiggling the mouse and pressing the alt key to keep from losing keyboard/mouse support. One machine I did get to load but the keyboard/mouse were both frozen. The other machine had a blue screen that I could roll (jump) the mouse around. It never would load. I'm moving on, maybe I'll give Mint another try, at least it would load.
52 • Difference between critique and bashing - is there, really? (by Mark South on 2007-04-23 15:29:51 GMT from Switzerland)
Re #26:
PastorEd, the soap opera is unfolding before our eyes, in yawningly predictable fashion. I'm playing the part of the unpopular writer who wants to introduce some novelty into the script....
Now, don't you have to go and walk the puppy? :-)
Re #36:
"...big portion of irony...." Hmm. I wish. Take a look at the comments to last weeks DistroWars Weekly to see how little there is. You can visit the PCLinuxOS forum and see for yourself whether thoughts of paranoia are justified.
"...I think you exaggerate." Let's wait and see, but it would make me very happy to discover that my scenario is exaggerated.
'...mantra: “everything is great because it’s *nix”.'
"Nothing will really improve if criticism isn’t allowed."
Strawmen, nothing more. Implying that people try to be nice and use their common sense is not at all the same as excluding criticism. Here are examples to compare and contrast the two:
1. I downloaded and burned Ubuntu 7.04. I booted it on my laptop with an Intel 945 graphics card. It failed to recognise the correct resolution of 1280x800, and instead presented a desktop at 1024x768. However, a little googling showed that it needs to use 915resolution to set the video BIOS. setting this up according to the manual worked. However, I notice that some other distros, such as Mint and Puppy, detect the Intel chipset and invoke 915resolution automatically. Perhaps the Ubuntu team could look into fixing this in an update?
2. Downloaded Feisty last week!!!!! Wish I hadn't firkin bothered!! This distro is supposed to be the dog's b*ll*cks, but it's a stinking pile of carp!! Didn't work on my machine! I'm telling all my friends to avoid it, and go use PCLinuxOS instead, 'cos that worked first time round for me. I'm actually FORCING all my friends to use it now, even if they don't HAVE a computer, and even if they have to learn English first. It's worth it to be using the stuff that I think is COOL!!!! How DARE Canonical give Ubuntu away for nothing and expect ME to work out how to use it! I'm never gonna try their rotten carp software again!!!! And anyone who likes it is a stinking weenie!!!!!!!!
OK, there might not be enough capitals, exclamations, or swearing in the second example for it to have the ring of truth, but you should get the idea.
Now, I wonder how many flames I'll get from fanbois who fail to understand that the second example is satire...?
Saturninely,
Mark
53 • RE 37 Knoppix is meant as a general purpose life CD (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 15:30:40 GMT from France)
Mandriva (methinks PClinuxOS; I am very doubtfull about UBUntu) can have poorer hardware recognition, at the same time: this fact explains partly that Knoppix is slow to start , but can work on almost any HW (and then, if one has HW problems, one can wait for one's favorite distr to be upgraded...) Two years ago, it was the only life CDs that could sometimes work for me....
The point of UBUntu bashing for me is clear: she was launched as a dist. for everybody, in any part of the world, which is generous and ... in total contradiction with the fact that they heavily rely on the Internet (not on local mirrors, as Cygwin evolved to) to fix their omissions/bugs (if one wants to localise on (an IT disconnected PC)a purely english UBU-derived, this leads to an endless loop)
When one sees arguments besed on
color
looove
politic
54 • Ubuntu Install Headaches (by Ubu Walker on 2007-04-23 15:30:58 GMT from United States)
I got Ubuntu 7.04 up and running on Friday morning. Install was a snap and not complicated at all.
I was also impressed that you could import your gaim buddy list and firefox bookmarks and turn on proprietary drivers with a click of the mouse. Unfortunately, those clicks didn't work, and I hosed X, since there seems to be some sort of issue with 8800 series cards and how Ubuntu packaged the NVIDIA drivers, into "glx-new", "glx", and "glx-legacy" packages. The wizard failed to install the proper driver, and manually installing glx-new didn't work quite right. This is a major bug that has dampened my enthusiasm for Ubuntu.
Judging by the poll, people are very unhappy with Feisty. 38% had a hassle free experience, 23% had a few problems which were resolved, and 39% had a lot of problems that were not resolved! This is not a good sign for Ubuntu, and I might try out a different distro, perhaps Linux Mint.
55 • suite 53 (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 15:36:38 GMT from France)
add
political correctness (we are rebels, we should haaate windows)
and the contrast betw. Ubuntu's technical (an logical) performance (it just works after 1 hr tres, on one PC) and their public relations (no, it is not hype: ...), one can find many more satisfying distrs...or keep (even go back to: don-load figures are rational? indicators) MS-Windows if one finds it works better...
56 • RE: 18 - Comment (by devent on 2007-04-23 15:40:53 GMT from United States)
Mark,
"When will the PCLinuxOS team stop being paranoid and resume focusing their energies on development of what I hear is really quite a pleasant distro?"
Last I checked it wasn't the TEAM making these comments. TR4 will be out this week...that's WITH the website and developers mailing list going down...I'd say they haven't wasted their energies on anything except developing.
57 • 54 I do not understand ..... (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 15:46:43 GMT from France)
"Judging by the poll, people are very unhappy with Feisty"
Is there a great proportion of pple willing to go to a site to write they were ignorant enough to miss the installation?
If their installation failed, how can they go infomagically to the poll site????
Sorry, but those figures are incredible.... and may be somewhat optimistically biased....
58 • Ubuntu helps the GNU/Linux cause (by ctyistudent on 2007-04-23 15:50:30 GMT from Ireland)
I think that the ubuntu project is just what linux needs, it has boosted linux popularity immensly. I think that the ShipIt idea is great and i am going to use it to get cds of ubuntu to distribute to friends so that they too can enjoy the GNU/Linux bliss. I am already using 7.04, i think that it rocks.
CTYI Student
59 • Ubuntu 7.04 documentation (by afs on 2007-04-23 16:24:21 GMT from United States)
Ref message 29:
"www.ubuntuguide.org has been updated already.
It's a wiki so possibly the update work is not complete.
Is this what you were looking for?"
I was looking for the "official" documentation, linked to from the Ubuntu home page ... here: https://help.ubuntu.com
Found in a forum that it had been delayed, but at least when I looked, it didn't say how long.
60 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 16:25:27 GMT from Sweden)
It beats me how some people complain about everything. We'd be giving them Ferraris for free they'd still complain on how much fuel it takes. Enjoy the fact that these distributions are here, make your own choices and prefer some to others but please stop bashing, it's ridiculous.
61 • Fanboys and fangals (by tao on 2007-04-23 16:26:15 GMT from United States)
It's so very amusing to read all the distro vs. distro or linux vs. microsoft stupid crap that people write. I know this is a futile exercixe to write about this in here but why not, it adds to the fun. Does it really matter what OS anybody uses? Do people get a check from MS or any linux distribution for all this "love" you show? Maybe I'm crazy, but shouldn't all this be really very simple? Use whatever OS you want and enjoy using and let everyone else do the same. Does anyone really think they can change someone else's opinion? Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. Seems pretty clear cut to me.
62 • Ubuntu (by Tomasz on 2007-04-23 16:30:03 GMT from United States)
Wow what a great poll, I wonder why all the people who voted and left comments are first time registered users to Ubuntu forums???????????
Also Anyone can say what they want, UBUNTU has done on hell of a job,
One Question, WHO IS NUMBER ONE ON this website?????? YEP.
Have fun ladies, I bet this negative comments toward Ubuntu will really help develop Linux overall into a better OS. IF you got a problem with it file a bug report and help the entire community of Linxu. You dumb A$$.
63 • FreeBSD (by Marcelo M on 2007-04-23 16:32:41 GMT from Dominican Republic)
FreeBSD is "behind Linux in terms of support for newer hardware, limited availability of commercial applications; lacks graphical configuration tools"
We use FreeBSD and Sun Solaris day for day without problems! We dont have this problems on our hardware. We sell new und used computer with FreeBSD or Solaris with the full satifaction of the buyers. Linux had in the history problems with the install of programs from difernts distributions (Install one SUSE RRM Package in RedHat!) In the family of FreeBSD (not NetBSD or OpenBSD), like DesktopBSD, PC-BSD, TrueBSD, FreeNAS, ... all packages are compatible with out problems. We need good, user friendly technology not super high-tech for freaks!
Marcelo M.
64 • News letters (by oldjoe on 2007-04-23 16:33:36 GMT from United States)
I have read every DWW for the last 2.5 years and I loved them all! However maybe it is time to stop allowing comments. In the past the comments were mostly helpful, people offering suggestions giving tips on a Distro. Now it's like no one wants to help. All they want to do is bash, piss and moan. The OSS community is better then this.
65 • PCLinuxOS and Ibiblio (by Carl R. Powers on 2007-04-23 16:41:55 GMT from United States)
Ladislav,
To quiet the speculation regarding PCLinuxOS, how about posting a summary of the recent problems with their servers and the related disc failure at Ibiblio? These were unfortunate and almost simultaneous disparate events impacting this project. I do not see Tex and his dev's blaming other distros for these problems but instead looking positively at their own growth and how best to continue. The Ibiblio mirror is back, other mirrors are coming back on line, there will soon be a PCLinuxOS TR4 plus a new more capable home site. With Tex and his dev's attention to detail and dedication, I expect this distro to continue to improve and grow both in quality and popularity. Users who want to see it succeed are ecouraged to contribute - I intend to.
66 • DW counter (by Howdy125 on 2007-04-23 16:48:10 GMT from United States)
I prefer to use a distro's IRC channel as an indicator to it's popularity and worth .. I'm currently logged into the IRC channels of DW's top 7 .. here are the current numbers of people logged in.
Ubuntu 1322
openSuse 250
Fedora 237
PCLinuxOS 28
Mepis 16
Debian 817
Mandiva 108
67 • iBook kubuntu joy (by Nybronx on 2007-04-23 16:52:30 GMT from United States)
Now I might not be your "usual" user.I wanted to try linux on my iBook G4 and thought I would be spending the weekend. fixing hardware when I installed the 6.0.1 Kubuntu image (couldn't find a fiesty image on any mirrors). But lo and behold, upon upgrading I get a pop-up telling me that a new version of Kubuntu Fiesty for ppc was available. It wanted to know if I wanted to upgrade. Huh...my screen color and size was screwy. wireless nonexistant. Hell Yeah upgrade...Let me say this. All is beautiful on the PPC Fiesty. Quick install of the wireless firmware and my wire free surfing is alive and well. Let me tell you as a PCLOS user I was not surprised. I was SHOCKED that Fiesty did all I wanted and then some. All I can say (tearing now)((really)) Thanks.
ps. The flash thing kinda s**ks though.
68 • FreeBSD cons? (by nix on 2007-04-23 17:02:38 GMT from United States)
"Cons: Tends to lag behind Linux in terms of support for newer hardware, limited availability of commercial applications; lacks graphical configuration tools"
Well, I have to disagree on the FreeBSD wireless support.
FreeBSD 6.0 to target wireless devices
http://news.com.com/FreeBSD+6.0+to+target+wireless+devices/2100-7344_3-5839526.html
Setting up Wireless Cards on FreeBSD
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/04/19/Big_Scary_Daemons.html
FreeBSD Handbook
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.html
PS: FreeBSD Foundation has secured the right to distribute binaries from various companies.
69 • 66 's Figures (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 17:09:28 GMT from France)
They are almost consistent with the figures Mr Bodnar gave last week (the latter seemingly integrated over one day ) :
UBUlinux and Debian are leading (as Debian is no 6 in DW Hits),
Fedora and Suze are about the same.
In your usage-based figures, PClinuxOS and Mint disappeared (they were impressive last week); perhaps it is just a matter of local time, perhaps of fashion...
If they are instant figures, this might give some hints of which parts of the world / timezones prefer one distr... To have a stable idea of usage based popularity, independently of fashion or timezones, it seems to need some longer summing/integration periods (I do not know whether it might be done automatically and simply).
This is another point : in 13 months, I never saw ONE /rational/ (i.e technical, not majority based nor loove based) pro in favor of Ubuntu (that does not mean UBU does not work...)
70 • Ubuntu (by parkash on 2007-04-23 17:13:49 GMT from Germany)
Yup, agreed, Ubuntu has done a Hell-of-a-Job, their marketing is supreme, they have some tiny things (like special keys) running that others don't, and etc... I just don't find myself in it... I'm much more comfortable with Arch, where I can install whatever I want and make a package myself (it is relatively very simple to do it) and submit it. About Mandriva 2007.1, as said before, I would just like to have it with a 2.6.20 kernel. Anyway, congratulations to all of you, Linux community, I find no harm in these rather fun Distro Wars. I think that's what makes us special, So many distributions for so many kinds of people!
I say: Let the wars begin!!!
now, really: I think it is rather positive :D
71 • Thanks (by Darren on 2007-04-23 17:16:05 GMT from Canada)
Once again, I am just going to say Thank You for the work you do Ladislav. You are appreciated.
72 • Re: #35 (by PapaWil on 2007-04-23 17:48:02 GMT from United States)
There are 10 kinds of people; those who understand binary, and those who don't.
73 • Re: 64 (by Stephen Wilson on 2007-04-23 18:06:59 GMT from United States)
Have to agree with oldjoe. It seems the comments section of DWW has degenerated considerably. It's almost like the folks here have no idea why there are 300+ distros. There is not a single distro that users have no issues with. The constant bashing of one distro over another is not constructive and does not lead to better distros. Bug reports of actual bugs do. It seems to me that a lot of GNU/Linux people have this inner need to vent and rant. Is DWW the right forum for this? I don't know. It all seems rather juvenile to me. Where is the maturity level of the people who post here? Ladislav does an excellent job and, over the years, has influenced me to try many different distros before I settled on one that suits me. My distro is not perfect. None of them were. But, it suits me best.
74 • Distrobash.com (by jeffcustom on 2007-04-23 18:11:36 GMT from United States)
Maybe someone needs to create distrobash.com and let everyone go there to vent their frustrations. I used to love to read DW Weekly comments but it's gotten just plain ridiculous. People should just be happy that Linux development continues to thrive and that people have the freedom to constantly evaluate what configuration (distro) of Linux works best for them.
So, to the distro bashers, start your own site and have at it. Let's leave this stuff out of this area.
75 • Bashing? (by J.B. on 2007-04-23 18:16:36 GMT from United States)
Hang on, folks.. critisism is perceived as unfair or "bashing" by those
who have their minds made up that the particular distro being commented
on is wonderful. Too bad, because communication of a constructive
nature comes to a halt at that point, at the point of not taking into
consideration the perceptions and *experiences* of the so-called
"basher."
'Scuze me, but Ubuntu won't install with any stability on *my machine*
but PCLinuxOS always has. Is that a bash? It would be if I were trying
to hurt Ubuntu lovers, but I am only stating a fact; and if my machine
were the onlyl one Ubuntu was scrambled on, then I would have tossed
the whole thing monitor and all into the trash long ago.
Did I say, "Ubuntu sux!"? No. I didn't say that. But my machine *thinks*
that. Are you offended? Then you're overly sensitive or you're a Usenet
flame group refugee.
jb
76 • Mandriva (by Draca on 2007-04-23 18:19:47 GMT from United States)
Currently, the most underrated Linux distribution is Mandriva.
77 • Incidentally: (by J.B. on 2007-04-23 18:21:51 GMT from United States)
Is it a coincidence that the so-called "bashing" in this comments area of
Distrowatch seems to have followed the posting of "Overview of Top Ten Distributions " feature?
Maybe we're just seeing a natural process here.
Relax.
78 • RE 64 : Arithmetics... (by dbrion on 2007-04-23 18:22:45 GMT from France)
"There is not a single distro that users have no issues with."
Modest intelligent distrs like (arbitrary order):
1) KateOS
2) Skolinux
3) DSL
4) WhiteBox
5) Adios.
5 (there are many more) = 0?.....
never went bashed, IMO. Bug reporting is not for over self satisfied distrs.
Bashing seems to me linked with excesses of advertising, and is sometimes widely deserved...
"Trop de pub tue la pub"
79 • Mandriva and kernel 2.6.20 (by AdamW on 2007-04-23 18:56:31 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for all the positive comments on 2007 Spring, everyone, we're very glad you like it. :)
For Parkash, there is actually a very good 2.6.20 kernel for 2007 Spring. As well as the official kernel, there are two established alternate Mandriva kernels, maintained by contributors, that are provided in the /contrib repository. kernel-tmb, maintained by Thomas Backlund, is based on 2.6.20 in 2007 Spring. See http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/...applications_available for instructions on setting up the contrib repository, then you'll find kernel-tmb available for installation. kernel-tmb-desktop (for single processor machines) or kernel-tmb-desktop-smp (for multi processor machines) are the best choice for most systems, so install kernel-tmb-desktop-latest and kernel-tmb-desktop-devel-latest or kernel-tmb-desktop-smp-latest and kernel-tmb-desktop-smp-devel-latest. Then reboot and the -tmb kernel will be available from the boot loader menu.
80 • Feisty kernel (by jack on 2007-04-23 18:57:06 GMT from Canada)
Can we be sure which version it actually has?
(from the Ubuntu site)
After upgrading the computer reported starting Ubuntu 7.04.
I entered 'uname -a' and the system reported that it was using Linux 2.6.17 instead of the 2.6.20 core described in the upgrade specifications.
What's up? Anyone else notice this?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=414935&page=5
81 • SUSE (by DTR on 2007-04-23 19:18:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am so happy that ZEN is going. That was the only "feature" that I really disliked. Everytime anything is changed (that includes every single rpm during system update) it has to index the whole PC for 20min.
82 • The Basher Stopper :) (by Fractalguy on 2007-04-23 20:28:28 GMT from United States)
Hehe - just an idea, but since we have the forum showing the source country of the poster, how about it show the OS also. I bet many of the bashing come from Windows users. :)
Just in case someone wonders, I'm on Mint 2.2 here that's sharing a partition with PCLinuxOS on my test drive. I'm considering blowing both away with replacements when PCLinuxOS is final along with Mint-KDE on resized partitions.
83 • A "gentlemen's bet" with you, Fractalguy :O) (by J.B. on 2007-04-23 20:44:26 GMT from United States)
I'm nearly certain that 1. few Windows users post Linux bashing
in here and 2. most of those who do are also Linux users.
Heaven knows most company desktop machines are Windows,
so Linux home users post from work. :O)
84 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 21:05:15 GMT from United States)
Well, it is nice that we haven't had posts recently from Windows users teaching us that Linux is not ready for most users and that Windows "just works". A Vista effect, perhaps?
85 • RE: 83 (by ezsit on 2007-04-23 21:06:58 GMT from United States)
Even if some, or many, posts come from Windows machines, that does not necessarily mean the users are not also Linux users. For example, I am at work now, on a Windows 2000 desktop, but I use Ubuntu 6.10, Xandros 4, and SuSE 9.3 at home.
I would not want some people assuming that since I post from a Windows machine sometimes, that I am not a Linux user. I have been using Linux since 1997 beginning with SuSE 5.3 and Slackware 3.2.
86 • Popularity is not so popular – What about choice? (by Psile on 2007-04-23 21:33:22 GMT from United States)
I think it’s absolutely hilarious on how people in DWW make comments on particular distributions. I almost feel like I’m in high school again, with all the geeky kids that hate all the popular cheerleaders, football players, and student government preppies. Sometimes it seems that the comments made, are really popularity driven.
I think that Ubuntu, although not a perfect distribution, is something to be admired. I don’t think any Linux distribution has marketed itself in this particular fashion, and has gained a greater user base off computer users and would like some stability and productivity. Is this the Linux users of the past? NO, but so what? Is there no room in the Linux community for these types of users who prefer GUI rather than a CLI? What does the Linux community lose by the average windows user moving to Linux?
My laptop is currently, and happily, running 7.04. In the past is has run other distributions, like Fedora 5 & 6, openSuSE 10.1 & 10.2, FreeBSD (Yes it ran Okay on a laptop, please do not have an aneurism or yell at Ladislav), Sabayon 3.3, and I tried Symphony OS once with little success. I also have tried other distributions on different computers.
I found the Ubuntu was the easiest for what “I” needed, and as you can see I tried quite a few. You know, I made a choice on which distribution is best for me. Isn’t that what the open source movement is all about? People make the choice on what they want and need? Ubuntu vs. PCLinuxOS, SuSE vs. M$, Edubuntu vs. K12LTSP.
My 2 cents, and please keep the change!
Ladislav – Thanks for all that you do, DWW is the first thing I read on Monday mornings, and I start looking forward to the next edition Monday afternoons!
87 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-23 21:55:16 GMT from United States)
> Is there no room in the Linux community for these types of users who prefer GUI rather than a CLI? What does the Linux community lose by the average windows user moving to Linux?
Exactly what I posted about earlier regarding just how annoying Ubuntu users are.
Ubuntu is the only distro with a GUI and the only distro suitable for a Windows user.
Annoying
Annoying
Really really annoying
88 • # 87 - Why? (by Psile on 2007-04-23 22:06:51 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the comments regarding my post. Rather than just tell me I am annoying, can you support your statement? Please tell me why Ubuntu users are annoying or have no place in the Linux community.
Thanks!
89 • One more happy Mandriva user (by Judland on 2007-04-23 22:06:59 GMT from Canada)
Just had to throw my hat in the ring and say I'm very happy and impressed with Mandriva's latest release.
It was such a great idea to include Metisse. In my opinion, it brings real innovation to the desktop workspace. The features of Metisse are things I can use in my day-to-day desktop activities. More so than what Beryl or Compiz offer. They're nice eye-candy, but Metisse is practical as well as having plenty of "wow factor."
The Mandriva devs. should be really proud of this release.
90 • Distros (by Robert Scott on 2007-04-23 22:13:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Am using the latest Ubuntu without any problems. Can't understand why you are all arguing as you have freedom of choice.
Bob
91 • No subject (by roy on 2007-04-23 22:23:59 GMT from United States)
People don't like Ubuntu because it is the Microsoft of the Linux world...and people in the Linux world generally don't like Microsoft...many Linux users dislike/distrust large companies (for good reason), which Ubuntu is one, and believe that the heart of Linux is in user collaboration etc rather than corporate directives corporate funding and mass-media style advertising...
92 • Re 17 (Ubuntu & UUID) (by chep on 2007-04-23 22:30:45 GMT from United States)
Well actually UUID's saved my life when I upgraded to another PC and just put my old HDD (from secondary to master IDE slot) into new box.
The only change I had to do was to change 'root=/dev/sdb1 => /dev/sda1' line in GRUB boot loader.
That's all! =)
I have 6 mounted partitions on this disk and I didn't even touch fstab.
P.S.
You can always look up your _current_ device in /etc/blkid.tab
93 • Full Linux Switch Desired (by Soloact on 2007-04-23 22:49:51 GMT from United States)
I admit that I post from a MSWindows machine. Most of my computers run Linux, in its various distros. The one dual-boot machine will be switched completely to Linux, once I'm satisfied that my Linux desktop will look exactly how my MSWin desktop looks, complete with the "widgets", and when all of my hardware works to my liking (getting close), and all of the "windows-only" programs work to my liking in Linux (there are only a few left, but they're important to me).
Many may tell me that I should try to write drivers, or variations of software, but I remind them that I'm an end-user.
The MSWin machine does use cross-platform programs, such as OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird, GiMP, and others. "My" MSWin desktop is what I want, KDE is what I use on the Linux machines, so the taskbar differences are just fine.
I'm quite sure that there are alternatives to my "widgets" out there in Linux-land, such as Karamba (sp?), but I haven't yet been able to get them to work for me. I also want my Skype phone adapters to work with Linux, but I don't want to dedicate a computer to run FC3, which seems to be the only one out that works with some of these adapters. Also, WINE seems to avoid me, as I know many of the programs written for MSWin installation will work with WINE.
I know, forums, wiki, etc, be patient, I'm getting there, slowly.
Other than the forementioned items, Linux works just fine for me.
Oh yeah, I've tried many Distros and versions. A question I have is, what do I do with these approx 500 CDs/DVDs of Distros and versions that I've acquired over the past few years? For me, that's an huge archive.
94 • RE: 28 Gentoo (by ladislav on 2007-04-23 22:49:52 GMT from Taiwan)
Oh, how much I love comments like yours! No corrections, no suggestions, no nothing - just moaning and complaining! How am I supposed to correct the Gentoo entry? Should I replace it with what YOU wrote?
95 • FreeBSD and Mandriva (by dmw on 2007-04-23 22:55:19 GMT from United States)
FreeBSD-- when I used it, I recall that during the install I selected a desktop and made sure that in addition bash was installed. After that configuring X was routine just as in linux, and the only interesting challenge to hurdle is that the sound module is loaded differently, because it's not a linux kernel. But the documentation tells how to do it, and it was very intuitive and that's it. It took ten minutes to install and configure FreeBSD. The ports tree is huge, similar in size to Gentoo, Debian, Mandriva... installation is easy (make install clean or pkg_add -r). My impression is that FreeBSD makes a lovely solution for a desktop. And the more newbie friendly PC-BSD and DesktopBSD don't even claim to be forks of FreeBSD. DesktopBSD is just a preconfigured FreeBSD, and PC-BSD is the much the same + their one-click pbi installer, and they advertise themselves as "running FreeBSD 6 under the hood."
Mandriva 2007.1-- Love it! The Mandriva Control Center is a very nice gui to get everything done from services to screen resolution. I like that you can toggle 3d effects before logging in through gdm (change session to drak3d), it's good if Metisse, Compiz or Beryl or acting buggy, you can fix it without having to jump to the command line. I found that rpmdrake is easy to configure (add repos) and it's actually faster than synaptic! They don't shy away from making proprietary software easily available, but neither do they shove it down your throat. Oh yeah and users now have free access to the Mandriva club forum and devs want to hear from users. I was very disappointed with the previous release, but the new Mandriva release is one of the best distro releases this year. I love it.
96 • RE 91 (about the Ubuntu bashing) (by Viret on 2007-04-23 22:56:45 GMT from Italy)
Is that supposed to be a rational reason? No, I do not use Ubuntu, though I've tried it, as I did Opensuse, Fedora, Sabayon, Debian and Mandriva. I'm currently a happy user of Sidux. But....
The more people use linux, the better for the whole community. And your idea only lead to a small userbase of linux, since the mass will NEVER take part in an obscure, user-driven community. People do not want to learn the pc. They want to USE it. And rightly so because in life there's little free time and most do not want to use it on learning how to use a pc. The ones who actually like to configure a distro, to try out many distro and to recompile the kernel are few and far between and will always be.
If linux wants to leave the "we are few and all alone in a corner" trap, it needs a large user base.. and that means distros like Ubuntu. Any other vision, like that everyone wil learn how a pc works, is a pathetically idealistic utopia which will never come true
97 • re #66 (by rigo on 2007-04-23 23:34:06 GMT from Philippines)
enough with the bashing... let us based it in reality. numbers don't lie. jealousy creates liars, liars who closed their mind... i am using ubuntu at home but for games i am using win2k. it's up to you to decide what distro to use. if you like mandriva then use it, you like pclos then use it. but forget about bashing just because the distro you like is not getting the popularity, just use it! open your mind!
98 • not a bash (by Slax Fan on 2007-04-23 23:36:25 GMT from United States)
My comments regarding Ubuntu were intended only as an observation, not to bash the distribution. It simply doesn't work well for me. Neither do recent releases of Berry. Even though I like the easy customization of Slax, I can't get DHCP working for my wireless adapter. All of this is why I frequent Distrowatch and greatly admire Ladislav for his contributions to the community. I need a Linux since Windows is becoming more and more hostile to my interests.
99 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-24 00:40:38 GMT from United States)
A "bash" is any comment that does not act to serve as useful or constructive. As I read through the comments this week, one thing became clear: a lot of people just like to bash, period.
If I weren't already a completely-satisfied Linux and open-source user -- which I am, of my own chose and accord -- and I happened to read the "Comments" section this week, I'm afraid I'd be discouraged from ever using ANY of the projects that have been mentioned.
One one hand, readers profess their devotion to bringing more people to the open-source table to enjoy the free, varietal feast.
Yet, frequently, the juvenile nit-picking and quasi-religious zealotry that goes on in this poor excuse for a "community" is so stupid that no intelligent person would like to be a part of the process. The cynical "gotcha" crusades that frequently go on here, even when it's obvious the Website presenter AND the distribution makers have done the best they can, becomes no more than juvenile bullying and pecker measuring.
Give credit where credit is due, or shut the hell up, before you drive everyone away from open-source.
100 • "Open source?" (by J.B. on 2007-04-24 00:56:30 GMT from United States)
Linux is not attracting Windows users based on open source.
It's attracting Windows users based on becoming more and more
Windows-like, in function and especially appearance. Take away
those things and you're left with cli and geeks only club like in the
pre-kde/gnome, etc days.
No, like it or not, the future of Linux in the majority is very, very
Windows-like.
101 • b-b-b-bash is bad (by Kub on 2007-04-24 01:00:47 GMT from Ireland)
Wow, looks like my post started a heating debate. I don't really know if this is the right place for it, since we probably should discuss the news here, so sorry for that.
But.
I think my point just got proven in many posts. People do really bash Ubuntu just because it's succesfull. Oh well.
Tell you what. I'm typing it from Vista (I bought a new laptop, they don't seem to sell any without Vista nowadays), because I managed to - ekhm - damage my fresh Ubuntu install few hours ago. I've been through Mandriva, Fedora and Zenwalk this year and wasn't satisfied with any (Mandriva was close), but I don't feel the urge to put down those distros just because they didn't work for me. Ubuntu worked, although I'm really waiting for UbuntuStudio release, that should be really something ideal for me.
And this thing about Ubuntu being Microsoft of Open Source world... Man, please, then what Novell is?
102 • No subject (by Mandriva Spring on 2007-04-24 01:10:32 GMT from Portugal)
Mandriva Spring is indeed a good release! It was an excellent decision to release with the same core as 2007 and improving the apps space. They have a clear winner, and this is the way to go for them as a company. It shows in stability and technical merit of their kernel and core libs.
Now, if they can just polish some apps and packages and improve web presence they will even be a better option!
Just keep releasing 6 months with a new core every year or every 18 months!
103 • Kubuntu (by Tim on 2007-04-24 01:11:55 GMT from Canada)
Hi again everyone, .... since the of the releases of the new Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu 7.04 I downloaded and tried them (live CD) and in all honesty of the bunch I liked Kubuntu best. I know it's just the KDE version and the others which are essentially the same, but I am not a fan of Gnome even though so many are. I couldn't get my wireless to connect for me on either my laptop nor PC, so I don't know if it was my lack of experience or what, but I never have had a problem connecting on my PCLinuxOS 093a on the laptop nor the PCLinuxOS 2007 TR3 on my PC. In my opinion what I saw was impressive, but not anything that would temp me to switch because if the test releases of PCLinuxOS 2007 are as great as what I think, then the final when it come out will be fabulous.
I know a lot of people will wonder if I like PCLinuxOS that much, .. just why would I download and try the Ubuntu based distros, ... and quite honestly curiosity over what all the interest in Ubuntu is all about is that reason.
I am not here to bash any distro, and believe me I've tested a lot over the past few months. There are a lot of great ones available and my hat's off to all the people who have worked so hard to do this for us. For me and what I want to do it looks like PCLinuxOS would be very hard to replace, because at least in my opinion, even in test release mode it still works more flawlessly, ... at least on my hardware than the rest.
104 • Oh for crying out loud. (by Howdy125 on 2007-04-24 02:19:31 GMT from United States)
Every distro listed on DW works flawlessly.
105 • 88 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-24 03:01:32 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning "misses the point completely".
As I said, you claimed Ubuntu is the only distro with a GUI and the only distro suitable for a Windows user. That's annoying, and it's many times a day that I hear such a thing.
Then you said in your next post "please tell me why Ubuntu users are annoying or have no place in the Linux community". Why did you add the last part?
If you go to the bathroom on my living room floor, I'm going to yell at you. An Ubuntu user, unfortunately, would respond by asking what's wrong with going to the bathroom. Not everyone is an elitist who doesn't go to the bathroom.
If you claim something about Ubuntu, make sure Ubuntu really is the only major distro that does that.
106 • Open or free cad software (by Manuel MS on 2007-04-24 03:38:42 GMT from Costa Rica)
Hello Boyz
This is not a comment, but insted a question -sorry for my interruption-: what is the best free or open CAD software for the arquitects and engineers?
107 • Re # 106 (free CAD) (by Soloact on 2007-04-24 03:43:53 GMT from United States)
There is a list of CAD software for linux, including free and/or commercial offerings, at http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html
108 • thanks (by wazoo on 2007-04-24 03:51:14 GMT from United States)
Another great issue, Ladislov. Thanks! I haven't tried Gentoo, mostly because of the daunting compile times -- but I'm still intrigued by the "when you're done with it, you know how it works" ethic. It clearly belongs in the top 10.
About Feisty -- I was all set to install, but found that suddenly it doesn't seem to support my older wireless card (a DLink DWL-520 -- up to Dapper Drake, it did). Thank Bog for live cds!
So that just means that I, like so many, will cast about to find a distro that DOES work "out of the box." No disrespect to any other distro. I wish them all great success. And it's fun to see them rise and fall in the rankings. May the best one(s) win!
109 • Ubuntu 7.04 - not so hot (by rglk on 2007-04-24 04:00:16 GMT from United States)
I downloaded Ubuntu 7.04 and ran the live CD on my Dell 6400 laptop.
There are two issues that most distros stumble over on this machine.
1. The integrated graphics chipset is the Intel 945. Even though this chipset family is as common as sand at the sea, most Linux distros still don't support the native 1280x800 screen resolution with this chipset by default, requiring me to run a patch (915resolution) by hand every time I boot the live CD. Some of the most up-to-date amd most polished distros do support this resolution now out-of-the-box. This includes Linux Mint, SimplyMEPIS, SabayonLinux. It doesn't include Ubuntu.
2. The wireless chipset in this laptop is the Broadcom BCM4311. This chipset family is also as common as sand at the sea. Starting approximately with kernel v.2.16.10, a native Linux driver for this chipset (bcm43xx) has been included with the standard kernel, and most distros today automatically load this kernel driver module when they detect a Broadcom 43xx chipset. What the makers of all these distros fail to tell you is that this native Linux driver alone is insufficient to support the BCM43xx - you also have to install a bit of firmware that you have to extract from a proprietary Windows driver. I.e. you have to track down a Windows driver, track down the firmware cutter software, and extract and install the firmware. A newbie will not be able to do that. Even if you manage to run through this whole rigmarole, I'm not sure anyone has succeeded in getting this native driver to work.
The sensible thing to do is to forget about using the native driver, to blacklist its module and to go with running a Windows driver via Ndiswrapper. Practically all distros today are delivered with both the correct (i.e. kernel-matched) ndiswrapper module and the ndiswrapper utilities that are needed to install the Windows driver. With a little bit of knowledge it's a quick affair to get the Broadcom chipset to work via ndiswrapper and to set up a working wireless connection.
Not so with Ubuntu 7.04. Like most distros they don't tell you that it's futile to load the native driver. They do include the ndiswrapper kernel module but not the ndiswrapper-utils. You have to download the latter. To set up the wireless you need to download something from the Ubuntu repos, a process that requires a working wireless connection?? Or you have to drag your laptop over to your router and hook up a CAT5 cable for a wired ethernet connection, download the utils and then finally you're able to set up the wireless connection. I can't believe how amateurish this solution is.
I spent almost half an hour just to get essentials going such as the native LCD screen resolution and wireless connectivity. At the end of all this aggravation, I surveyed Ubuntu's offerings and found what appeared like a plain vanilla Linux distro with a rather sparse selection of software, not all of it best-of-class. All in all, something that you might expect from a distro that hovers somewhere around rank #30 on the DW hit list.
I've had this sense of denouement at least half a dozen times before, i.e. every time I checked out an Ubuntu live CD. Someone please tell me what's so remarkable about Ubuntu to warrant the elevated status that it seems to have acquired. I'm not saying it's a bad distro. Rather, it strikes me as being by no means an outstanding distro. There probably are better ones around. E.g. if you need to run a user-friendly Linux desktop, run Linux Mint (if you want to stay within the *buntu family) or perhaps PCLinuxOS or MEPIS or Mandriva or SUSE.
Robert
110 • BSD vs. AT&T (by Vance on 2007-04-24 05:00:35 GMT from United States)
Ladislav-
I'm not sure it's accurate to say that FreeBSD is a derivative of AT&T UNIX. While there is the matter of the AT&T/UC Berkeley lawsuit, a conscious effort was made to purge BSD and its descendents of any AT&T code. It's probably better to say that FreeBSD comes from UCB's 4.4BSD-Lite [http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html].
111 • No subject (by John on 2007-04-24 05:42:47 GMT from Latvia)
I myself have nothing against ubuntu. In fact, I think that it really is good and respectable distribution. However I doubt whether it deserves all that buzz that it manages to get. I started with Ubuntu myself and was sort of disappointed. I have tried many other distros and as far as I can say SuSE, Mandriva and PCLOS are more unfriendly than Ubuntu - there at least you have a decent control center to do administrative tasks. Why Ubuntu teem cannot anything like Yast is beyond me. Now I run Debian Etch and again I fail to see what is so special about Ubuntu if it is compared to Debian. Newer kernel and apps? Well, but what does it amount to being better? I don't know. Etch is more stable and one can do there whatever one can do in Ubuntu. I think that the difference really boils down to something like ideology or whatever name you refer to that what is produced by advertisement.
I hope that nobody is going to call that distrobashing. I you do, then think twice.
112 • RE 96 "free or open CAD software for the arquitects and engineers?" (by dbrion on 2007-04-24 06:32:48 GMT from France)
http://www.archilinux.org/
(in French, sorry) can be viewed and downloaded as pdf;
it gives a list and often howtos (based on Knoppixes, but GPL softs can be installed anywhere with normal (i.e working, not claiming they work and anyone disagreeing is a naughty basher...) Linuxen/PCBSD/ and often Windows...);
As for being the best, it is a matter of individual opinion. or testing for your needs....
113 • cor 112 (by dbrion on 2007-04-24 06:47:15 GMT from France)
112 subject was RE 106.
114 • Ubuntu (by Padil on 2007-04-24 06:50:01 GMT from Malaysia)
I think, Ubuntu lunch their released too fast but Debian released their llnux every years. Ubuntu user can't use Ubuntu easily because they like to update their system everytime. :->
115 • 105 - Thank you. (by Psile on 2007-04-24 07:15:40 GMT from United States)
Just wanted to say thank you for giving me a reason why you think comments like mine and other users who have picked Ubuntu as their distro of choice are annoying. I still do not understand why you are classifying us in this manner, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I value choice. The fact that there are so many Linux distros out there, gives people an alternative to what they are normally trapped into using and purchasing, that being a M$ solution. Ubuntu to me is a choice after my evaluation of different distributions I have tried. If people think I am annoying or a loser but I chose a distro that I felt best suited my needs (stable OS while maintaining my level of productivity) oh well.
I am truly thankful to the open source community (those non and for profit) that help with providing me the ability to choose and non M$ solution.
Thank you!
116 • Choice (by dutchy on 2007-04-24 08:03:39 GMT from Netherlands)
There is a point to be made that it seems that most of you miss. It doesn't really matter which distribution each of us use, what matters is that we can customize it to whatever we want.
Once one has been using Linux for a while, one develops a favorite applications and one of the best things I find is that regardless of which distribution I encounter, I can usually install my favorite applications.
As for aesthetics, what difference does it make? How many people actually keep all the artwork that is default. Isn't one of the first things people do is change their environment to suit their tastes?
I use Sidux, but would feel comfortable using most any variant of Debian. As for distributions like Gentoo and Arch? Good learning tools.
Remember, there is a place for all of the distributions listed here, or they wouldn't be here in the first place. There is no reason to bash other distributions, just don't use the ones that don't suit you. Period.
117 • re 99 (by Slax Fan on 2007-04-24 11:20:08 GMT from United States)
Regarding "A "bash" is any comment that does not act to serve as useful or constructive. ", if your statement was intended as a reply to my post #98, I think my comments could be useful to those who tried Kubuntu and had difficulties similar to mine. At least they would know it wasn't their fault. I still think Kubuntu, like many distros, is worth trying to see if it works well with your hardware and if you like it. When people ask me what distro to try I always refer them to Distrowatch and give them several options that I have tried.
118 • Ubuntu Muslim Edition still in waiting list (by ShakaZ on 2007-04-24 12:24:19 GMT from Belgium)
Hi Ladislav,
i just checked the waiting list for some interesting distro & was astonished to see the Ubuntu Muslim Edition was still there... i am by no means a religious person & was even opposed to the introduction of ubuntu christian edition in the distro list as to me it was just Ubuntu with some religious software added to it. I also agreed to the argument that all distros provided by the Ubuntu team should be referenced under Ubuntu, as a different desktop doesn't make a different distro & it would remove some unnecessary clutter from the front page when they are all released...
However if i recall correctly the ubuntu christian edition was integrated only 1 week after the initial announcement that it had been added to the waiting list... so i wonder, why isn't the muslim edition? Does it have to do with the fact that the chritian edition bought advertising space on Distrowatch or are there other reasons behind this seemingly different ways of handling two very similar products?
119 • RE: 118 Ubuntu Muslim Edition still in waiting list (by ladislav on 2007-04-24 12:32:56 GMT from Taiwan)
Does it have to do with the fact that the Christian edition bought advertising space on Distrowatch?
Yes.
120 • RE: 119 (by ShakaZ on 2007-04-24 12:36:22 GMT from Belgium)
At least you're being sincere about it ^^
121 • Choice according to hardware (by KimTjik on 2007-04-24 13:03:00 GMT from Sweden)
I suppose the goal for Ubuntu and some of the other bigger players are to be compatible with all hardware, at least it would be a great success. As it is now it's a difficult task since not all hardware manufacturers are very keen to help. Nevertheless we all agree that there exist differences between distros, hence I found it very encouraging when Wolvix and Ultima decided to share code and exchange knowledge.
Therefore I can both agree and disagree with some of the comments made about giving bad reports concerning distros (I choose to avoid the b*** word here and to be honest I think it's more or less used like a weapon in the discussion; all sides accusing others of deprive to b******, much like how the word "sect" is used), with the idea that if something doesn’t work for you the just move on and select another distro. Maybe I'll get accused again about making strawmen, but I take my chances. The ideal would be if more distros would support each other; not giving up on their identity, but simply help each other solve certain issues, like hardware compatibility. The first step is to realize that a distro suffers from certain issues. Yes a bug report might be good, but could just as well be "forgotten" if it's viewed as a rare issue. How many dead ends don’t we find for in forums as well, when nicely put questions don’t get resolved (some maybe figure out a workaround without reporting it and others might choose another operating system)?
To then conclude to not bother about the issues and just choose another of the some hundreds distros, doesn’t seem constructive to me. In that way certain issues will be inherited for generations of releases to come, which already has been proven to be the case.
An obstacle to more interaction between distros might be that some strive to be more dominant and therefore lack the interest of doing more besides complying with the license. This is of course just my own guesses based on how commercial enterprises usually work. For minor distros the gains of interaction would possibly be more fruitful.
Some have probably decided that I’m anti-Ubuntu, but that’s not true. On the contrary I might at times recommend it for some, depending on their hardware. Actually I wish that Ubuntu as such a big player would be more universally compatible with mainstream hardware, not because I personally need it to be totally out-of-the-box-ready-to-use, but because I view it as a longtime safe choice when considering what distro to install to new users of Linux. Ubuntu hasn’t really worked out that well on the quite diverse selection of systems I’ve worked with, instead I’ve had best success with Fedora 5 and 6 in this respect (for relatives and friends I usually install BLAG; it’s easy and includes multimedia support; and it’s main developer and his forum is very friendly). For i686 systems Pardus looks like a innovative and reliable choice, at least my test machines run it successfully so far.
Couldn’t there be some sort of cross-over-distro conferences among developers to make them all just as well compatible with hardware? Or does it exist already?
“Thought of Strawman”
122 • No subject (by anon on 2007-04-24 13:35:38 GMT from United States)
I find it funny that when Fedora's site went down when FC6 was released, the ubuntu fanboys were saying it's because Fedora doesn't know how to handle a release, but when ubuntu's site goes down when there's a new release, they say it's because it's popular.
123 • RE: 94 (by fdavid on 2007-04-24 13:39:33 GMT from Germany)
Hi Ladislav,
sory for not being constructive. I listed below some points about gentoo, which may be interesting. I marked the items with SD, which can be most easily implemented in a source distribution.
+ security
* SSP, PaX, etc. patches can be applied in compile time (SD)
* optional Selinux integration (SD)
* glsa-check (you can check your installed apps for security holes with a single command)
+ huge repository with fairly new software versions
+ no real releases, a release means a new live cd, but the system can be kept up-to-date all the time
+ package management is great
* there are a lot of nice features, e.g. slots (multiple versions can be installed of a software) mentioning just one of them
+ use flags: you can really customise your system to your needs (SD)
+ updating config files after installation works with a simple command
+ philosophy of providing software packages mostly unmodified, just as they were released by their author (many people coming from debian see it as rather a drawback)
* an exception: KDE split ebuilds, which are really useful (the software is left unmodified, but you're not forced to install all the bloat, but the apps you really need)
+ metadistribution: supports many architectures, and mixing of different kernels and userlands (SD)
+ good documentation
- compiler flags: wannabe kiddies can play around with them spreading plain stupidity about speed and optimised installations (SD)
- compilation time: yes it's a drawback, but not that dramatic at all, since you can do anythign meanwhile, so you don't have to stare at the screen watching compiler output. You can just simply work with your system, while it's "emerging". (The installation runs with the lowest priority.) (SD)
* for really large apps, like OOo you can also install binary packages
- the community is not that good as it was before
I hope I could contribute some ideas.
124 • Re: 121 Hardware compatibility (by octathlon on 2007-04-24 14:06:10 GMT from United States)
KimTjik> "Couldn’t there be some sort of cross-over-distro conferences among developers to make them all just as well compatible with hardware? Or does it exist already?"
This is exactly the question I have been wanting to ask. One distro is great at supporting, say, the video but not the wireless, another great at X but not at Y. Why can't all that knowledge be pooled so Linux as a whole benefits and all distros will be able to have the best possible hardware detection and support, instead of each distro having to reinvent its own wheel?
125 • RE: 118 + 119 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-24 14:06:18 GMT from Australia)
I too am NOT religious person at all BUT in the cause of building bridges
For those that want to know::- http://www.ubuntume.com/
the UbuntuCE does not need any help as they have plenty of $'s
126 • Re: 79 (by parkash on 2007-04-24 15:07:50 GMT from Germany)
Thanks AdamW, I tried it yesterday. The problem is I didn't find nvidia drivers (and others) for this kernel... Anyway, I also didn't look too hard in the forums...
I sincerely think that Mandriva would have a very good chance of beating other desktop distros... It just needs organisation. :)
127 • QU 126 What would happen to many happy GNU/linux users (by dbrion on 2007-04-24 15:49:51 GMT from France)
if "Mandriva would have a very good chance of beating other desktop distros".
Some may be happy with Zenwalk, FC, Debian, etc.., natively or emulating from, say, Windows... ( I use half the time a real Mandriva, which sometimes qemulates a PCBD -not because BSD music is good [I know from last week DWW], nor from their artwork-,
and I am very glad to VMplay (under Windows XP) ~20/30 distrs: they sometimes have nice, innovating features I am able to appeciate without all these horrible hardware issues (the emulating OS copes nicely with) and "cour de récréation" hit/hype/delay/kernel numerology races.
128 • Re: 126 (by yochenhsieh on 2007-04-24 15:51:45 GMT from Taiwan)
Hi, the nVidia drivers are in the non-free package sources. Use "add..." in the rpmdrake to add package media sources, or try easyurpmi:
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org
You can install kernel-source for your kernel version and install dkms-nvidia, then the kernel modules will be compiled automatically.:)
129 • Re: 126 (by dmw on 2007-04-24 16:51:54 GMT from United States)
There are Nvidia kernel modules specific to 2.6.20 in the nonfree repos. However, I don't think that the main Nvidia kernel module only works with 2.6.17, just click to install the driver and you should have the appropriate kernel module autoselected as well. I don't think you should have much trouble installing the drivers through rpmdrake.
130 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-04-24 17:13:11 GMT from United States)
> If people think I am annoying or a loser but I chose a distro that I felt best suited my needs (stable OS while maintaining my level of productivity) oh well.
I am not saying you are a loser and don't care which distro you use. Please just stop making claims that Ubuntu is the only Linux that does (fill in the blank). Users of other distros tend to dislike that because most distros do what Ubuntu does, particularly offering a GUI rather than CLI.
131 • 109 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-24 17:20:29 GMT from United States)
Your two points are correct, I have them on my own laptop, and it does not appear they are interested in fixing the problem. The BCM issue has been reported, and would be easy to fix, but they apparently will not.
Aside from these two things, Feisty is great. Of course given how many people will face this problem it is not trivial.
132 • Re:32, Re:91 (by Eddie Wilson on 2007-04-24 17:28:17 GMT from United States)
Come on davemc. You know as well as I do, and most other people know it too, that codecs, flash, java, dvd decryption, and such are not legal in the good old United States and should not be included in distros in the U.S. (Stupid laws I know) Also some of them are not included in Windows either, or they wasn't the last time I did a fresh Windows install. By the way I have Ubuntu 6.06.1, and SimplyMepis 6.5 on my computer.
And to Roy, what the hell are you talking about??? Someone isn't evil because they have money. Also to the people with no name, as far as someone who makes a post with the name "Anonymous" If they are ashamed of what they say and who they are I wouldn't waste any time with them. That would be like talking to a ghost. Well enough of this silly stuff. Have a nice and lets be good to one another.
Eddie
133 • My comments on this Distrowatch Weekly (by Claus Futtrup on 2007-04-24 18:13:16 GMT from Denmark)
Hi Ladislav.
It is great to read the Distrowatch Weekly. Ubuntu seems to have an impressive attraction to users, which is great for Linux in general.
I have a summary of the distros you have reviewed for top 10 so far:
Ubuntu
openSUSE
Fedora
PCLinuxOS
Mepis
Debian
Mandriva
Knoppix
Slackware
Gentoo
FreeBSD
I guess you ended up with 11 distros.
It looks like a good choice of distros, with a broad appeal (including FreeBSD, which is currently at no. 16 - but the top BSD distribution).
I am of course a bit sorry not to see you make a review of Damn Small Linux - first of all because it has been in top 10 for a while, but also because it has a different target (given the size constraints) than the other ones. I hope that you will make it a top 12 list and that DSL can be included. I am actually very interested in reading a presentation of DSL from your viewpoint.
Sorry for a bit of critique, but to me your review on Gentoo seems to dig too much into our impression on how the Gentoo project is running more than what Gentoo offers to a user. This might have been a state the project has been into for years, but at least I hope that if the project changes, then so will your "top 10" presentation of Gentoo.
Best regards,
Claus
Zenwalker
134 • Ubuntu and Linux (by EmyrB on 2007-04-24 20:08:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well Ubuntu 7.04 came and went with enough *buntu bashing and praise to shake a stick at. Why do people bash *buntu? If it doesn't work for you, try another distro and move on. This is the beauty of open source, isn't it? I have a triple boot PC which as Ubuntu 7.04, Windows XP and Windows Vista (I am a computer engineer and most of my clients are MS based). I originally had Windows XP and Ubuntu 6.04 on this PC then I upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10, then I added Vista and last weekend I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.04 (with no issues I might add). Now I am no Ubuntu fanboy, I have 2 laptops that *buntu refuses to work on (they now have Foresight and Sidux on them respectively). But I also run through VMware and Virtual Box the following distro's Pardus 2007.1, Debian Etch, Elive 0.67, Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora 7, Debian Lenny and FreeBSD 6.2. Why? I am a sucker for Linux I guess. I am also seriously considering installing a Linux distro on my work PC which currently has Vista on it and it constantly crashes at least 4 times a day. This isn't MS bashing here, but my work colleagues also have Vista on their PCs and it also crashes and locks on them.
I guess my point here is horses for courses, some will love *buntu others will hate it as it is too popular or that it is the Linux version of MS. Open source gave us freedom of choice to choose what best fits our individual needs. Use it, don't moan about it or jump on the petty band wagon of my distro is better than your distro. If you find a distro that works with your particular hardware remember that someone else's hardware is different to yours and your current distro might not work for them. What will you do if they tell you that your current evangelical xyz distro didn't work on their PC, call them a stupid noob, or will you try and help them find what's right for them?
135 • ZenWorks - good riddance from OpenSuSE 10.3 (by RedBoar on 2007-04-24 20:16:08 GMT from United States)
It turned me off to 10.2 entirely, it broke my install once too many times. What a good decision and perhaps it'll motivate me to try 10.3 but Sabayon Linux is second Linux distro on my desktop PC after Ubuntu. :)
136 • Way to increase use of Linux? (by afs on 2007-04-24 20:26:19 GMT from United States)
I live in the U.S. and it's my impression that the majority of Linux users here are individual "enthusiasts". And ... that most non-enthusiasts, even given a choice, would pick the operating system for their home computer that they use at school or work. It's also my impression that (some) other countries are significantly ahead of us when it comes to use of Linux in education, government, and business and other organizations, Since this is an international forum, it seems a good place to ask for opinions on whether the most effective route to adoption of Linux is bottom-up or top-down. That is, should more effort be put into convincing schools, local government, small businesses, etc - rather than other individuals - to try Linux?
137 • About the ones who try to justify the Ubuntu bashing... (by Viret on 2007-04-24 20:41:23 GMT from Italy)
.. by saying that Ubuntu does not deserve its success... and that other distros do the same thing...
sure, other distro do the same in many things
sure, other distro do some thing better (and they do something worse of course too. the perfect distro does not exist)
sure, ubuntu has its problems...
..but who the hell cares? If people are happy about ubuntu... why do you absolutely have to keep pointing out those that you perceive as flaws? I mean, ... what's your problem? And who the hell cares about it?
I repeat again, I use sidux, but I'm happy whenever somebody installs a linux distro instead of windows, and I strongly believe that distros like Ubuntu are critical in shifting a mass of users to the linux world.
If Ubuntu is sucessful, as long as people like it and start to use linux instead of windows, I'm more than happy to see Ubuntu users around. You think there are better distros out there? Happy for you, but you don't need to bother Ubuntu users because of that.... that's really like the geeky kid who despise the popular guy, as someone said before.
And yes, if you can't find me a rational reason of WHY ubuntu damages the GNU/linux community (cause I think that EVERY distro is an asset to the GNU/linux community), well... I will rightly call your comments off as childish resentment over the popularity of the easy distros...
I repeat it once again. EVERY distro is a resource for the GNU/Linux world, ANY pc with linux installed is better than one with windows installed. Period....
138 • Ubuntu and the Windows masses (by Fractalguy on 2007-04-24 21:38:01 GMT from United States)
I'll mention one thing that helps Ubuntu get out there and that is their CD give away program. I ordered 20 CDs every year thru 6.06 and gave them out to skiptical Windows users. The fact that it was in a nice printed holder and printed label CD made it easier than if I hand them a scribbled on e-blank that I burned the day before. Believe me - with the malware in the Window World, they would smile that slanty smile, roll their eyes and toss my CD as soon as I'm gone. But with the pro job Ubuntu does and the links and all on the CD holder, well they aren't as worried. And besides, Ubuntu/Kubuntu comes with open source Windows programs they can look at and try from in Windows. All in all a more sellable package. AND it didn't cost me like a similar package (sans the Windows goodies) from SuSU or Lindows did.
139 • Parkash (126) (by AdamW on 2007-04-25 00:31:40 GMT from Canada)
Parkash, yochenhsieh is correct: as long as you make sure dkms-nvidia is installed (it should be already) and install the -devel package for kernel-tmb, the NVIDIA driver will be automatically rebuilt by DKMS when you reboot.
140 • hardware (by Anonymous on 2007-04-25 02:18:41 GMT from United States)
Alot of people are saying if a distro doesn't work on your hardware move on. They also say distros should work together on hardware compatibility.
On the first point in most cases you download and install a kernel module, the worst case is you have to recompile your kernel to include support for what it was missing.
On the second point, hardware support is the job of the kernel. The linux kernel doesn't vary from distro to distro. Well okay the security patches do, as well as the version used, but the important changes are in the kernel configuration. Lacking support for something? Reconfigure and recompile.
Linux is called Linux because of the kernel. It's the universal thing that binds all linux distros together. When somebody says "hey why don't distros work together on hardware compability?" I just have to shake my head, how naive.
141 • RE: 110 SD vs. AT&T (by ladislav on 2007-04-25 05:02:59 GMT from Taiwan)
I'm not sure it's accurate to say that FreeBSD is a derivative of AT&T UNIX.
The word I used was "descendant" not "derivative". Do you still think it's inaccurate?
142 • 137 (by John on 2007-04-25 05:12:04 GMT from Latvia)
..but who the hell cares? If people are happy about ubuntu... why do you absolutely have to keep pointing out those that you perceive as flaws? I mean, ... what's your problem? And who the hell cares about it?
=======================
If somebody spreads false information then, I suppose, everybody must care. And please note, that tehre is a crucial distinction between bashing and criticism. If there are flaws, somebody must point to them as generally people don't want to live in fool's paradise. I certainly don't.
143 • Question 123 : what do "SSP, PaX, SElinux" mean? (by dbrion on 2007-04-25 06:07:56 GMT from France)
Really, this is very esoteric and mysterious, and the first two cannot be google mis-translated.
And how can one have multiple versions of one's favourite app (or stuff she depends on) without recompiling her (| her parent libraries) from sources and installing where one wants (which can be done with almost any distr. not meant for old PCs nor demos, methinks)?.
I saw pple hexediting (not sure the stoff they used) "opensource" binaries to change paths, which is somewhat paradoxal and seems intellectually exciting...
144 • RE: 143 (by fdavid on 2007-04-25 06:36:17 GMT from Germany)
"Really, this is very esoteric and mysterious, and the first two cannot be google mis-translated."
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/pie-ssp.xml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaX
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
"And how can one have multiple versions of one's favourite app (or stuff she depends on) without recompiling her (| her parent libraries) from sources and installing where one wants (which can be done with almost any distr. not meant for old PCs nor demos, methinks)?."
I hope I understand your question correctly. Portage supports slots, which means that the package manager can handle multiple versions of an app.
In gentoo you don't compile apps with configure, make, make install directly, but let these things and many others managed by portage.
145 • Ubuntu & UUID (by Ariszló on 2007-04-25 07:33:41 GMT from Hungary)
kilgoretrout wrote: In order to avoid confusion during this transition, UUID was seen as a better way to go since that the UUID of a drive is the same under both the old and new kernels.
Nevertheless, it is far from being perfect. Say, you have swap on /dev/hda5, Ubuntu on /dev/hda6 and Test Distro on /dev/hda7 with Ubuntu's grub in mbr. So far so good. Now, you decide to install a new distribution to /dev/hda7, replacing your earlier Test Distro. The new distribution will naturally reformat /dev/hda7 and may as well reformat the swap partition. Consequently, both /dev/hda5 and /dev/hda7 get new uuids and Ubuntu will not be able to use swap and will not be able to mount /dev/hda7.
146 • Ubuntu and hardware (by Ulan on 2007-04-25 08:35:07 GMT from United States)
I have looked at different Ubuntu releases so far, and I think it's a generally good distro. Unfortunately, all Ubuntu versions fail to install a working bootloader on my laptop, regardless which variant I choose. But it's okay, I've been using Fedora and Sabayon instead, which don't have these (and some other) problems.
147 • Hardware compatibility (by KimTjik at 2007-04-25 09:22:17 GMT from Sweden)
Is that what you tell new users of Linux: "reconfigure and configure"? Do you expect that to attract common folks or you're satisfied with the already existing group of Linux users?
What you say isn't false, especially when installing highly configurable distros. However that wasn't what I've been writing about. Some of the big distros trying to attract all kinds of users have a installation process of more and less some simple clicks and attempt to develop a as close as possible to working-right-out-of-the-box-experience. So what or who is naïve? Is that approach and idea of the developers naïve, or are users expecting a product to fulfill proclaimed expectations naïve?
Alright, do you really mean that just because the kernel does support or is equal in several releases of different distros everything will automatically work on any hardware? No you don't, because you did yourself talk about recompiling and reconfiguring. Next is a straight quote from one of the bigger distros:
"The graphical installer enables you to get up and running quickly and easily. A standard installation should take less than 25 minutes. Once installed your system is immediately ready-to-use."
So instead of labeling others naïve: get to the source of the above and similar statements and explain to them how naïve they are. How don’t I get tired of this elitism? True, I myself find pleasure in working with a distro which states the following:
“NOT designed as a newbie distro; it's intended for more experienced users… A base doesn't include fancy tools and auto configuration mechanisms, but rather contains manual configuration tools and few functions, for the users to further develop and/or learn on their own.”
But that’s me! That’s not for the masses, I suppose. I do care about how others could benefit more from Linux or other *nix systems. I wish that new users of Linux in a near future could be sure of getting what the distro itself proclaim to deliver: do you want a system that installs in 25 minutes and is immediately ready-to-use, you get it; do you instead prefer to configure it all yourself, you get it. If that’s what you view as naïve, then please let us all become naïve!
148 • RE: 147 (by KimTjik on 2007-04-25 09:25:41 GMT from Sweden)
Post 147 is a respons to post 140.
149 • Very Nice Work Ladislav (by Bill Savoie on 2007-04-25 09:27:04 GMT from United States)
Wow!! What a nice introduction to Open Source! Your "Top Ten Distributions" is a thing of beauty and invitation to adventure. Thanks for seeing the need and then filling it so nicely.
Our cat caught a creature that woke us up at 4 am. After separating the bird from the cat, and delivering it from harm's way, I could not resist a look at the internet before I went back to bed. As always, your site is not to be missed. Thanks from all of us who are trying to turn the world around. (If you could just help me reprogram the cat?)
150 • Comment 148 The main problem is that all Linux GUIs are bad. (by dbrion on 2007-04-25 11:01:34 GMT from France)
At least for installation
They are very nice looking and flashy, but IMO there lacks the history registration function.
Even if they /seem/ user-friendly, if an user gets in a mess (because he had to answer phone calls, because he is stupid, because the Holy distr is buggy, because.. anything) one cannot understand what can happen .
Commercial softs like SPSS did, _last century_, add this history function; This was smartness, not fashion.
Bash has it, of course. I do not know whether FEDORA registers (do not remember), but it is on an outdated, ugly CLI.
I never will know whether it was mandrivas 2007 ' messiness or -mine- which lead me to have an installation without urpmi (which might be not that user-friendly!!) i know it is difficult to find better linux GUIs than in mandriva's, even in early downloads; I know, too, that there are somewhat worse users than me.
As long as there are no tracking mechanisms, GUI builders wo not be able to make their flashy cli-cli-stuff fully (i.e : in case there is a problem) usable...
Anyway, if I had been a total beginner, I would have rejected that stuff (what is a Ferrari without , say, brakes?) forever...=> this leads me to think that UBUlinux to-days sucesses (in term of downloads, of hits,...) might be Microsoft Windows tomorrow long term triumph... Arguments like 'it is sooo brown/ s(o)+ cheap" will not convince me...
Another point : RE 145 : Thanks for information.
151 • RE 147, ... you're so right (by Tim on 2007-04-25 11:02:59 GMT from Canada)
Your comments are right on the money and I couldn't agree more. Some people seem to think if you want to use Linux you should learn how to do all these little extras (recompiling and reconfiguring) but for the huge majority all we want is to be able to replace MS or find a good alternative, which installs fast and easy, and where you can easily download new software through something simple for anyone to understand such as Synaptic.
If more advance users like to tinker and get a degree of satisfaction from playing around and making things work better then great, and more power to them. Wish I could do that but I don't have the patience or likely at my age the desire to start learning how it's all done. That's why I like the distros such as PCLinuxOS that are easy to install, .. and don't give any frustration to those of us who are relatively new to all of this, but rather let us see exactly how neat and easy Linux can be if you want to migrate to something better.
152 • Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" (by Peter E-L on 2007-04-25 11:54:30 GMT from Australia)
What amazes me is that between one distribution and another, the sound card in my system no longer delivers sound!
When is Canonical going to get the basics right, and do some proper quality control?
LInux, however well marketed, proves that it's not ready for 'prime time' and take on M$.
153 • Distrowatch Top Ten (by Robert Pogson on 2007-04-25 12:41:29 GMT from Canada)
While I think the "Top Ten" is a great idea and certainly reflects the reputations of these distros, I think some of the details are a bit off:
e.g.
"Debian GNU/Linux, Slackware Linux, Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD are more advanced distributions that require plenty of learning before they can be used effectively."
The basic structure of almost all distros is a very similar implementation of the Linux kernel from kernel.org, the GNU utilities from GNU, various GUI tools and window managers, and a universe of applications. I have installed Slackware and Debian and can honestly say to install and run these is not any more difficult than
the so-called "easy" distros like Ubuntu. That makes anyone "effective" in 15 minutes or so on a fast machine. A user is effective if they can browse and create documents. Most popular distros have this basic ease of use. Most admit more advanced usage by delving into details and going up the GNU/Linux learning curve (command line stuff and being root, for instance). It is not essential to use command line to use Debian or Slackware, so I do not think it is correct to call these distros "advanced" or more challenging. They are advanced in that they have been around a long time and have adopted certain characteristic ways of doing things, but mostly these are transparent to the desktop user.
Also,"this lengthy and complex development style also has some drawbacks: the stable releases of Debian are not particularly up-to-date and they age rapidly, especially since new stable releases are only published once every 1 - 3 years. Those users who prefer the latest packages and technologies are forced to use the potentially buggy Debian testing or unstable branches." is rather negative in that a feature of Debian that is probably unique is seen as "forcing". Many distros are of no higher quality than Debian testing so this is not a disadvantage of Debian but a negative comment on other distros that are not as well tested. Debian stable is for those who want the fewest bugs on their systems. Debian testing is for whose who want more/newer features. The existence and characteristics of stable and testing in Debian are positive features of the distro, not negatives. If you look at http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ you will be happy. That kind of quality in a distro with so many packages is amazing. Anyone happy with that other OS in spite of all its bugs does not know true joy.
The distro bashing in some previous comments is unfortunate. Please keep such comments out of the Top Ten. We are a family and should celebrate our differences. Anything in the Top Ten should not be criticised for faults but praised for excellence. These are the superstars, the leading edge of the normal distribution of quality.
Thank you
154 • Top ten (by richard (kc9foh) on 2007-04-25 14:42:30 GMT from United States)
Well let's start here. I switched from windows XP to Vista! What a mistake. Xp is a better OS than vista for one. All my games except The Sims 2 and BZflag(after installing a beta video driver) would work. Even MS own games wouldn't work like rise of the legends. I have used different Linux distros in the past so I decided instead of going back to XP I would try Linux again. The Ubunta's have issues that I cannot quite explain than other that they didn't work on my machine. Flash and video driver were two of the items I can remember. Linux mint looks cool but also similar issues for me. I am right now using Open Suse 10.2 so far no problems except for I cannot get all my MP3's to play in order like I could do in windows. Also I am not to sure yet of the MS&Novell deal watching that closely. I am still evaluating other distro's though. I do like this site so I can sift through the different distros easier. I recommend this site to people that do not know Linux. This way they can see what is right for them. Thank You.
155 • Top Ten (by octathlon on 2007-04-25 15:10:03 GMT from United States)
Thanks to Ladislav for the update of the Major Distributions page. Nice job!
156 • Top 10 (by Tom on 2007-04-25 15:13:15 GMT from United States)
Wanting to express my gratitude to Ladislav as well !
Book marks updated ...
157 • RE 154 Did you try wine? (by dbrion on 2007-04-25 15:46:35 GMT from France)
It is used to have some Windows applications running under Linux, as it would be s(o)+ sad to loose them, and it can be found in DW unique database (activate the full 194 applications list, for a given distr). If you have lost many legal XP games, perhaps it would be worth trying...
A friend of mine uses it to have a legal Microsoft Word running in top of a Mandriva 2006/2007 (both figures AFAIK)
and he is game oriented
(he found OO slow, and the time having all that working would be compensated by the good quality of Microsoft Word...).
The mere existence of such an application gives a realistic idea of the true joy of Free Software...
158 • Re:140 Hardware compatibilty (by octathlon on 2007-04-25 16:37:35 GMT from United States)
Anonymous: "Lacking support for something? Reconfigure and recompile. ... When somebody says "hey why don't distros work together on hardware compability?" I just have to shake my head, how naive."
[Shakes head also] That's like saying, "Why work together on making a better GUI? Just use the CLI", "Why use a package manager? Just compile from source", or why do anything else that makes things easier for the end user. There is nothing naive about the concept of working together to improve a distro's ability to detect and support various hardware, without each user being expected to reconfigure and recompile the kernel for each machine they install on!
159 • Re:100 "Open source?" (by J.B. on 2007-04-24 00:56:30 GMT from United States) (by absinthe on 2007-04-25 18:08:04 GMT from Italy)
"Linux is not attracting Windows users based on open source.
It's attracting Windows users based on becoming more and more
Windows-like, in function and especially appearance. Take away
those things and you're left with cli and geeks only club like in the
pre-kde/gnome, etc days.
No, like it or not, the future of Linux in the majority is very, very
Windows-like."
well, the future of Linux is to develop a stronger and more flexible kernel to provide state of the art features for every sector (i.e. the new virtualization support inside kernel for the server side or, on the onther hand, the faster introduction of new device drivers for media centers).
the future all distros depends by their developers.
if they want to develop a ms-dos like system, where a common unskilled owner is demanded to be both administrator and user, they will develop something like *buntu: easy to configure but with so many abstraction layer between the admin and the system that, if something goes wrong -and it _always_ goes wrong, murphy docet-, you lose your mind finding were the bug is (and do you think that a look'n'fix to the whole source code of all applets is related to admin's job?! uh?!).
if they want to develop a system where administration and usage are two different tasks, they will continue on the road of debian, slackware and so on...
it is just a matter of choice and needs.
I'm happy with my slackware system: I've tried some "automagic" distros but I've to say that every time I've encountered problematic HW, the easiest solution was always the the less engeneered distro.
IMHO,
M
160 • hardware compatibility (by Anonymous on 2007-04-25 18:19:59 GMT from United States)
Well I see that alot of people were quick to jump to parody and hyperbole. Recompiling a kernel to include support for one or two things is about the same level of difficulty as installing and using a custom font. There's something to be said for trying to make something work instead of giving up if it doesn't just work out of the box.
The thing is that there will never, ever be a linux distro that just works for everyone out of the box. But I think what is true is that you can fix most of your problems in half an hour. It usually involves reading a wiki or a forum post, learning a handful of commands and then executing them. You guys act like I just said that everyone should roll their own lfs, just completely over the top. No, I said just try troubleshooting it yourself before you walk off.
I don't feel that a distro should be judged on the whim of whether or not it works perfectly on your system fresh out of the box. If you are the kind of person that won't even change your own tire, then you still shouldn't just walk away if nothing works right immediately. You should buy customer support and use it.
It's not about being an advanced user that micromanages their distro, it's about taking the initiative to spend a little bit of time to either solve the problem yourself or assess that it's too difficult for you to solve.
You want an easy alternative to MS? Not even windows will have everything work right after the install. Do you find, download and install device drivers or just give up on windows? I think you know the answer to that.
161 • Disagree (by kessem on 2007-04-25 19:00:44 GMT from France)
I disagree with Distrowatch. I had a look everyday to see the new Linux Distributions releases ..(distro watch...)
Today they stop.... only have look to the top ten...
An the others ???? Now I'll go to disrorankings..;the same..but not update... it's better than 'business' spirit from Distrowatch
162 • Top 10 (by chep on 2007-04-25 20:56:49 GMT from United States)
IMO it's a good idea to have top 10.
I would also add top N live cd/dvd distros and top N specialized distros (like gParted, m0n0wall, ParallelKnoppix etc).
Off course, N could be as little as 5 in this case... =)
Regards!
163 • I have to agree with you, Lanislav - Gentoo is falling apart :( (by anon on 2007-04-25 22:52:10 GMT from New Zealand)
No word yet on when we will see 2007.0, originally scheduled for February then March.
Yes, I know I get an older version and recompile and update everything, but that takes more time.
And even trivial bugs (like a bad tarball on the mirrors) now take forever to get fixed.
I never thought I would ever consider leaving Gentoo, but after several years, it looks like time to move on.
164 • Top 10 distros (by James LaRue on 2007-04-26 00:03:00 GMT from United States)
An excellent contribution, and many thanks. I find them, on the whole, fair, concise, and good summaries of the best contenders for the person seriously considering Linux.
A couple of typos and one comment:
SUSE. Last full paragraph, ends with "prompted some users to switch distribution." Should be "distributions."
MANDRIVA. 3rd paragraph: "but also with some controversial, anti-community decisions by the company which have alienated a large sector of the distribution's user base." "Anti-community" seems a little harsh and unsupported. The next sentence is clearer. I'd suggest cutting this phrase altogether. Replace it with, "Also," then go on to the points about the website, etc. But perhaps you know best.
KNOPPIX. Last full paragraph: "It has lost some of its originally glory due to the fact that most major Linux distribution now also offer live CD/DVD editions of their product." Should be "distributions."
165 • Ubuntu (by bernie on 2007-04-26 01:06:17 GMT from United States)
have a store an i have used Mepis over 2.5 yrs an linspire for 3 yrs an i have about 15 diff distros here so i have tried them all some i could install an some i could not an some i kinda liked an some i did not but i did not really like Ubuntu but i see how they was doing an so i tried it again 7.04 an i liked it......... i liked how it set up my vid card then when i tried to play an mov file it just downloaded the codes on its own .... i will still use Mepis but i am going to put it on my second hard drive ........ as i just ran it as the live cd an oh yes it set up my vid card as i said but it said i have to reboot for it to work but it did work just find the 3d an all wow it says a lot an my hat off to them ....... i do prefer the kde but with the start button on the bottom it works ok i just changed the 2 bars thanks for letting me put some thoughts together an i guess the run on sentence lol
166 • Distro suggestion (by Bob on 2007-04-26 01:12:48 GMT from United States)
I have more of a suggestion than a comment, but didn't know where else to post it, so here goes...
It seems to me like a linux live CD or DVD has one BIG advantage when surfing the net - it is bulletproof as far as malicious software is concerned. No matter what kind of virus, malware, adware, spyware, rootkits, and whatever else you may encounter when surfing with a live CD or DVD, ridding yourself of it is always just a matter of shutdown to an unpowered state and repowering.
I'm not sure if it's possible for malware to write to the harddrive when running a live CD that prohibits it, but if I have to physically unplug my harddrive or dig up an older computer with no harddrive in order to be assured that I was 100% immune to the type of threats I listed I would consider it. Since the computer won't write to a finalized disc ( or you might use a non-writing drive) any bad actors will be gone without question on the next repower.
So what I wish I could have is a live distro made for surfing ( Surflinux ?). It would have every imaginable media player, picture viewer, interactive web page widget, and whatever else any web page might require for viewing. It would have every known capability as far as connecting, such as broadband modem drivers, dial-up packages, etc. that can be found anywhere. If you couldn't connect and surf with this thing, your computer just isn't plugged in. It would be able to use practically every USB device known without question. It would be able to burn any type of data it encountered ( page reference screenshots, screen captures, downloads, etc.) straight to a DVD or CD and finalize it so as to prevent later file corruption.
I think a lot of people would like something like this. Also, you would never need to worry about somebody physically getting personal data off your computer; no matter what credit card numbers or what not you punched in, or emails you accessed, or whatever, it would all be gone the next time you cut your computer on. Every time someone forgets their laptop in a cab or something I bet they'd have given anything to have been using something like this.
I tried to make something like this, but I'm so far behind the curve it would take me years to get it right. So I figured I would suggest it here in hopes that someone who is more skilled than me ( it wouldn't take much ) will think it's worthwhile or maybe reccomend an existing distro that's already geared this way.
167 • 166 - "SurfLinux" - right on! (by Dave on 2007-04-26 01:54:54 GMT from Canada)
Well said. Thank you Bob.
Any experts out there that could put this together?
BTW, any such thing as a really-fast CD-ROM drive to run it from?
168 • re: 163 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 03:43:35 GMT from United States)
Gentoo does rolling updates, the version has to do with the cd isos and handbook. If you install it now, you will get the latest software. It's not frozen per release, the fact that 2007.0 has been delayed is irrelevant for installation, for that reason at least.
169 • re: 166 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 03:47:01 GMT from United States)
Giving up on storing personal data on a hard drive is giving up alot of freedom for the price of security. To make it viable I think you need to invest in good online storage.
Well I won't go down that road, I feel safe with linux. If I want to feel more safe, I think I'll go to OpenBSD, and then reading up on how to really harden your system before giving up on storage.
170 • Re # 166 & 167 (by rglk on 2007-04-26 04:07:39 GMT from United States)
It would seem to me that many Linux live CD's or DVD's qualify for this SurfLinux that you're looking for. If you want a massive selection of Internet and Multimedia software, go for one of the big DVD's that work well live such as Knoppix or SabayonLinux. If you want speed, go for the Knoppix or PCLinuxOS single CD editions and and install and run them on a 1 GB flash memory drive. If you want security and anonymity go for the Anonym.OS live CD (OpenBSD with Tor and Privoxy). If you want a live CD distro that's strong in multimedia applications go with dyne:bolic.
Or if you want to make your own live distro you could start from a Slax base, add all the Internet, multimedia and security apps you want and run the result from a flash memory stick. MySLAX Creator makes it quite easy to build custom Slax-based distros.
171 • The downfall of Gentoo (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-04-26 04:40:59 GMT from Italy)
I predicted the future downfall of Gentoo in 2003 already, unless they would make considerable changes, especially in attitude. My posts then were seen as flame from a troll, but it seems that they were spot on.
Now I am sorry that a beautiful distro like Sabayon is still based on Gentoo.
I wish it were based on Debian instead.
172 • 2003, the year of Desktop Linux? (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-04-26 04:58:58 GMT from Italy)
The above idea has always been in my mind. It was the year when we saw, for the first time, highly polished distros like Mandrake 9.1, Libranet 2.8. and 2.8.1, but especially SUSE.
If I had liked SUSE 8.2, I was absolutely in love with 9.0.
But reading Ladislav's new Top Ten Distributions reminded me that 2003 was also the year when some of the best and most loved distributions were started: Knoppix, Mepis, PCLinuxOS... It was also the best year for the then very promising Ark Linux. And it was the year of another great distro: J.A.M.D. Linux.
It was also the year of kernel 2.6.
There hasn't been another year like 2003, IMO. Since then we have only seen an evolutionary improvement and an unreasonable proliferation of distros.
173 • No subject (by bogdan2412 on 2007-04-26 06:41:36 GMT from Romania)
I just like to post a little thing that starts to annoy me. When people say "Distribution X doesn't detect my sound card, Linux is not ready to take on M$" do you think about the fact that Windows NEEDS drivers too? Why do you live with the perception that windows has NO driver / hardware problems whatsoever?
I have to flip in a SATA driver floppy in my computer to even be able to *install* windows xp for example. When I plugged in a old sound into my old computer, windows xp failed to detect it for example. Didn't find a driver anywhere on the net.
Windows is not perfect in hardware support, the only reason it supports "more" hardware than Linux is because until recent years Linux wasn't even an option for a desktop computer for the masses. Hardware vendors made drivers only for Windows and some for the Mac. Every time i buy a piece of hardware it comes with a nice little CD "windows 2000/xp driver". If you never had those CDs I really wonder how much percent of your hardware would work. People are doing the best they can. It's kind of impossible to make a distro that works with every single hardware piece ever made. It should support the middle part of hardware (not too old / not too new), which I think Linux does well. The problem is that windows gets well made drivers for new hardware, while linux doesn't..
For the Ubuntu bashers, as someone said proprietary drivers / software can't be added by default to a distro because it's not really legal everywhere. Ubuntu 7.04 offers a very nice clean interface for installing these software from repositories and it works just as well. Also for the wireless network the package "bcm34xx-fwcutter" (or something similar) automaticaly downloaded and extracted the needed firmware in order to run the wireless card. If you just search the package list you find all the things you need. It's just not included by default.
PCLos is a very nice distro and i use it alongside Ubuntu, but it isn't in any way revolutionary, neither is Ubuntu. I really don't understand why you made those posts. Both are distributions that work very well (at least on my computers).
174 • Knoppix (by Tom on 2007-04-26 07:06:42 GMT from United States)
166, 167, 170 & Friends,
My family has used Linux for 5 years. This post represents several people with several computers. We are not true computer hobbyists. We use computer application software to make our lives better.
Our single most-used operating system has been Knoppix (and an early Kanotix which was basically an enhanced Knoppix).
We have run Knoppix mostly from flash drives with write protect switch, with each person saving his/her configuration, and with dozens of klik files providing a wealth of toys to play with. Each time we boot, we boot into a pristine immaculate personalized system that works.
We sympathize with those who we read about in forums of the major Linux distos. We know their pain because we have paid our dues in the past, laboring with CLI tools to make our installed systems work, and then laboring again after updates broke them again.
We laugh at the Linux and BSD cheerleaders who, after trying a distro on one system (with no printer, scanner, or camera), extrapolate their isolated experience and wave their pompoms, vigorously supporting a distro that they barely know.
We do our best to ignore purists who complain about bloat and then qualify their standards, struggling with inferior software that is incapable of producing professional quality results.
We know that we are the fringe of the fringe... people who want quality, user-friendly FOSS that truly just works.
But life has been good out here on the fringe! Thanks to Knoppix.
Best wishes to all of you,
Tom and family
PS. Well, I best fess up, we have only HP printers and scanners and we are aware of some Knoppix problems with other products. And we have a flash device that, for a year, Xandros would mount but Knoppix and some other distros would not. And Knoppix obviously does not include some important media players. Hmm... pretty big PS and here is another...
Final PS. In our ongoing experiments with install-to-harddrive Linux, it appears we have found two recent distros that may actually provide an effortless quality experience... and they have easy-to-configure firewalls. It may be that even we, at the fringe of the fringe, have a choice.
175 • Top ten distros: Fedora (by pingviini on 2007-04-26 07:45:39 GMT from Finland)
Fedora and Redhat have lots of advanced security related stuff (SELinux, stack smash protection etc.) even in the default install that most other distros still lack. That - good, high level security - could be mentioned in the pros and cons list as a positive plus for Fedora.
176 • my thoughts about ubuntu (by garion on 2007-04-26 12:02:04 GMT from United States)
Well, I came here after fiddling with my feisty installation for a few weeks, just to read what people think of this new release... and saw this prolonged ubuntu attack and counterattack :). Anyway, I've been using ubuntu on and off for years, since their 4.10 version. when I first popped the feisty beta cd into my dell e1505 laptop a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised, everything that should work worked, out-of-box. It has been a while since I attempted a linux installation on a laptop, so I figured, hey, looks like linux is making a good progress in becoming a layman's os! I have to say, I do like Feisty, it works pretty nicely, and fast too.
But then all this happiness fell apart a few weeks later, when a just pre final release update broke suspending on my laptop, so I tell myself, it's not released yet, that's what beta is like. Then Feisty was officially released, on time, nothing changed with my broken suspending. So I figured I couldn't count on the dev team, I gotta do something about it, I searched forums, discussed with users online, tried a million different things by hard booted my laptop about 50 times, yet nothing worked. I gave up before this insane experiment kills my computer. Then I popped in the final live cd, thinking maybe something subtle is broken, I should probably do a clean install... well... the live cd won't boot X anymore, not with any graphics settings! But wait, this is also something that worked on beta cd, hmm wonderful. A quick search on the forum shows that many many ATI users suffer from this problem, if not all of them. I ask myself, how hard is it to try the live cd on a few (10-20 different machines) to make sure they boot at least? What is the big rush of pushing a buggy final release out of the door, just to stick with the "release schedule". Hey, even Microsoft knows it's better to push it back if Vista doesn't boot a significant number of machines. I am sure this is not just with Ubuntu, but I personally was very disappointed just because I liked this distro a lot, and wished that it could quickly become something that can compete with Windows in desktop market, but looks like it's not ready yet. Well, I am not giving up yet, I am going to look around for some other distro on my laptop for the time being, instead of pulling my hair and suffering painfully from things like suspending or booting broken haphazardly between daily updates.
177 • Debian (by DeanLinkous on 2007-04-26 12:48:27 GMT from United States)
IMO Debian is not on the other end of the spectrum, it is at least middle-of-the-road nowadays.
IMO saying this
>>stagnation and reluctance to make radical decisions that would take the project forward.<<
seem kind of contrary to everything that was wrote before that statement. I would say simply maintaining everything is one hell of a forward step along with the things Debian is known for.
178 • My choice. (by Graham Hamblin on 2007-04-26 13:08:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Having used Slackware since it first came out I still have a soft spot for the beast but it's not the one for most I guess unless you know what's what.
SimplyMepis and PCLinuxOS are the easiest to get on with and work out of the box without problems.
Currently using Kubuntu. One or two little snags like RealPlayer requiring old library files which too a bit of finding and missing codecs etc.
179 • printers (by wauters on 2007-04-26 13:08:07 GMT from Australia)
I like my printer canon pixma Ip6000D with all option CD printer ect.. it will be very nice to get one unique drive for all if somme one can help me about this I real want to get out of windowsxp
thank you to all and goog like for linux projet
JPW
180 • re: 179 - printers (by ray carter at 2007-04-26 14:55:34 GMT from United States)
Canon support sucks. HP and Epson support is quite good. Buy another printer - it's a lot cheaper than an MS upgrade.
181 • RE 179 Perhaps try virtualisation? (by dbrion on 2007-04-26 15:19:35 GMT from France)
Perhaps another even cheaper solution, if your printer works on XP, would be to emulate Linuxen: the main advantage is that you just have no more worries with hardware matters, you just have to wait till , whithout whining, till a Linux solution is found for your hardware (50 % of the Linux review are virtual, this month);
the three drawbacks are that it remains virus sensitive (but, with some luck and a no sex/no music, no ... diet, your computer can remain OK), it is slower than natively run (this may be unpleasant) and the third, much more subjective, is that some pple think of emulating as cowardly cheating, and one can think your PC is running under Windows though most of the instructions (90% for me) it executes are GPL 'd (one has a Linux kernel that runs (not too much, I hope), plus a MS Windows kernel (not too much either, I hope) , plus VMplayer/Qemu/Parallel/Virtual Box, plus what you want, where you want)...
182 • Re: 179, 180 printers (by octathlon on 2007-04-26 15:25:23 GMT from United States)
And don't forget to look up the printer in the database before buying, to make sure it's supported.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting
183 • RE: # 136 and a couple comments (by PEBKAC on 2007-04-26 15:42:49 GMT from United States)
# 136 - Personally I would say individually. I have learned much from
working in the computer science department at my local community
college. For one, the financial and legal choke hold educational
institutions have to endure by certain unnamed corporations cannot be
understated. My school happens to be an "Authorized (unnamed
corporation) IT Academy" (or whatever there calling it this semester).
The fear instilled into every level of the administration is so strong
that they even fret when "Open Source" software is simply mentioned as
an alternative to the status quo. Those who actually know they have a
choice are few and far between. Students learn about linux though our
101 intro class from 2 mostly ignorant and severely misinformed
micro$erf$. One of them is genuinely interested (If you call wanting to
increase your pay through *nix knowledge with the least amount of work
possible 'interested'). The other openly admits to being in love with
the win32 API. One of our resident IT level 2's actually installed an
untu on his machine. If you knew this guy you'd be amazed he even spent
the time to download the ISO. The marketing that created this
environment has morphed into a kind of prison decorated with unfulfiled
promises and disparity. The only bright light shining through the
dimwittedness is the constant "Wow!" I hear when I run Beryl on my *nix
box or complete assignments using non unnamed corporation software. "I
didn't know that was possible." Is the main phrase I hear every day.
Thanks to the Mandriva One LiveCD and it's ability to run Compiz on our
low end machines I sparked the imagination of an entire class who would
have normaly completed there assignment with the standard Knoppix CD and
thrown it away or forgotten about it shortly afterward. Don't get me
wrong, I use it a lot. but does an 18 year old MySpacer really need port
analyzers and text based web browsers? Choice is good but if you throw
the entire tool chest at a linux virgin there just going to throw it
back at you and run. An amusing scenario that played out after the Fista
launch takes the cake. Higher ups were all a glow with the Fista glitter
and wanted the entire facility ready to upgrade over the summer ASAP.
The surprisingly cautious IT guys argued in favor of keeping the current
'little better than crap'-ware. This of course was a ruse in order to
delay the labor of upgrading over 5,000 systems (no apt-get
dist-upgrade, what a shame) so they could test/play with it on there
personal machines and a few 'Demo Stations' (one of them will be in my
lab!!!) Knowing I am a linux guy, they asked me what I thought about
having a Fista station there. I decided to refrain from answering that
question and formally requested a linux station to be set up adjacent to
the Fista box. I was told that, that would go against there 'contract
requirements' with unnamed corporation. Like the Fuhrer said, "Money
trumps all". Schools are the battle ground of the industry. These
software companies are like drug dealers, hook 'em young and keep
churning out the flashy crap. They make people think they actually need
them. All I'm saying is, it may take a long time but you have to beak
the system from within. P.S. I am completely digested with they way some
of you act in here. You are setting a bad example for the virgins I send
over. It's pretty simple, the focus is freedom! Stop acting like
arrogant Macintosh users from the 90's and get back to the roots of the
movement. If someone bashes your distro and you get offended then you
have more problems than you think and you need to work it out in a
therapy session or three. Turn the negative into a positive or at least
refrain from retaliating over religion. You believe this is better than
that because you believe it is and think you have a lot of yourself
invested in it. That 'can' be a good thing though. If more people invest
themselves in socially responsible issues like the FLOSS movement it
will create a posative feed back cycle with no end in sight. It's pretty
sad to see adults act this way while there's a dying planet underneath
that computer you love so much. We have a unique opportunity to help
educate humanity in a way we've never had before. To let such an
opportunity go to waist is a travesty in itself. I use linux because
it's the right thing to do for myself, my family and my community. Think
about that the next time you people decide to trample everything were
fighting for. BTW I use Sidux, PCLOS, nUbuntu, SLAX, Pure Debian, Cent
OS, Fedora, NimbleX, Sabayon, Underground, Knoppix, gNewSense, Anonym.OS and Pardus just to name a few. And I love 'em all!!!
184 • No subject (by is this a joke ? on 2007-04-26 15:51:10 GMT from France)
'Today we interrupt our regular schedule of distribution release announcements '
Does Lanislav need money for advertising ? Is he paid by majors Redhat,Mandriva, Debian to make them the top ten ? on which base ?
why top ten is different on distroranking ?
very strange......
185 • Re: 175 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 17:17:07 GMT from United States)
Re: 175
Fedora and Redhat have lots of advanced security related stuff (SELinux, stack smash protection etc.) even in the default install that most other distros still lack.
Seconded! Actually Fedora/Redhat are employing about 10 security technologies that most other distros aren't. Security should be a major differentiation feature on distrowatch.
186 • Ubuntu is Too Buggy & More (by asphault_jesus on 2007-04-26 17:27:43 GMT from United States)
I know it's not popular to bash ubuntu, but it needs to be stated that the canonical distros are far buggier than, say Debian's Testing.
Right now, etch is "minty fresh" new Stable and an excellent distro with a graphical installer and very nice desktop options.
I highly recommend the xfce4 desktop if you want to experiment on old hardware (< 1ghz.) I've got kde running very nice on a 1.2ghz thinkpad with 512mb of ram. xfce4 is very, very fast on the same machine. Don't forget to add www.debianmultimedia.org to /etc/apt/sources.list
May I also recommend there be more categories than just Top-10 distros. For example, Top-3 firewalls, Top-3 penetration testing distros. It's important to reinforce the flexibility and amazing tool sets built with GNU software.
187 • re: 66 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 17:34:52 GMT from United States)
So is IRC is used by people to report that everything is working fine or to ask for help with something that is not working properly? If it's the latter, the lower numbers would be better.
188 • A review well worth reading (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 18:34:57 GMT from Germany)
I've just finished reading a review (or is it a blog article?) about Debian 4.0 ("etch") and, while reading it, I realized that not all people know yet that the latest Debian release is just as good (if not better) than any of those popular Debian-based distros.
Here are some select excerpts:
"This bears repeating, with emphasis: Installing Debian is no harder than Ubuntu. All my drives were automatically detected, just like Ubuntu. I'm beginning to wonder, just how much of Ubuntu is already there in Debian? It looks like a lot more than I thought."
"Debian 4.0 is as ready for the desktop as any other distro out there -- and by any other, I include Ubuntu and Mepis. Both of those are great, but Debian is running so well and is so easy to use, I wonder what the fuss over the others is all about."
Now read the rest of "All roads lead to Debian":
http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2007/04/all_roads_lead_to_debian.html
189 • 188 (by John on 2007-04-26 18:53:07 GMT from Latvia)
You are right. I am running etch and it works good. I have used ubuntu for some time but was somehow disappointed. Now after using Debian I really see no reason to go for Ubuntu. It is fast, it is stable it is flexible and slim. I do not know why ubuntu is that popular.
190 • re: 188, 189 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 19:41:53 GMT from United States)
Not bashing, but did Ubuntu contribute some of the improvments to Debian, or did the Debian people do it all themselves?
191 • Fedora 7 Test 4 has been released (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 19:53:29 GMT from United States)
The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and
final test release of Fedora 7!
Test 4 is for beta users. This is the time when we MUST have full
community participation. Without this participation both hardware and
software functionality suffers. We need your help. Join us!
Road Map And Release Schedule
=============================
This is the final test release before the final Fedora 7 release, which
is scheduled for May 24, 2007.
For further information see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7/
192 • re: 184 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-26 20:53:55 GMT from United States)
Where have you been? The last few weeks have featured proposals for the top ten in DWW. And there has always been (as long as I can remember anyway) a "major distribution" section on Distrowatch. Sheesh!
193 • RE: # 186 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-04-27 01:31:06 GMT from Italy)
"I know it's not popular to bash ubuntu, but it needs to be stated that the canonical distros are far buggier than, say Debian's Testing."
Now and again somebody finds the courage to say it.
194 • end the distrowars (by agendelman on 2007-04-27 01:52:32 GMT from United States)
I'm really happy to see so many users stand up and declare their distaste for the infantile flame wars that, for a time, seemed to define the direction in which distrowatch was moving. It's all linux, and it's all better than windows.
We develop an attachment to one distro or another for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are practical, and some are emotional. Yet if they represent our own taste and needs, they are valuable for us. The linux community is larger and more diverse now, and there is no longer the unified linux culture that we once knew. It's impossible now to please everyone. We must do better at coexisting because the user friendly distros that recent windows converts demand are still developed, maintained, and supported by the enthusiasts who are willing to file bugs, backport updated apps, provide help with writing documentation, and offer support on forums. We're not at war with each other, we just have different needs and interests. We all have a stake in seeing linux advance, and we need each other.
I use several distros, and among my favorites are slackware, debian testing and mandriva. I enjoy some of the "derived" distros like vector linux, pclinuxos, kanotix, and mepis. I also try to keep up with what fedora and opensuse are up to because the contributions to linux, especially in the enterprise, made by red hat and novell are very substantial. I enjoy different distros for different reasons. Slackware offers a first rate opportunity to just learn linux. Editing a text file from the CL is not nearly as scarey as some make it out to be, and Patrick's annotated comments are a great help. There are so many debian derived, and now ubuntu derived distros out there. I learned that they could be managed better if I knew some debian. The installer got better, the documentation is excellent, and adding http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ to the sources.list is no big deal. Try
it sometime and find out why distros derived from debian are so good.
I agree with a recent comment here that mandriva is the most underrated of all the distros. Most of the complaints levelled against mandriva by the community have now been solved. A full featured free edition is now available to the community as soon as it's available to club members. Mirrors are automatically set up and include firmware, nvidia and ati drivers, sun java etc. Sites like plf.zarb.org and smart urpmi make mirror configuration a snap. Plf free and non free mirrors offer easy and automatic access to all media files. The unparralleled mandriva control center will do what you expect it to as well as offer access to windows shares in mixed networks with just a few clicks.
So there's really a linux for almost every mood, need and taste. I'd rather use my time enjoying what I like, and, if I've got the time, helping where I can, than bashing someone for enjoying something else.
195 • The level of anger - spilling out, yet everything is free. Why is that? (by Bill Savoie on 2007-04-27 03:19:32 GMT from United States)
Have you noticed the level of anger on this forum? Wonder why that is?
Every Linux on Distrowatch is free, yet people are still angry. Distrowatch is free, yet people are again angry. Anger is everywhere.
Here is the real answer. It isn't about Ubuntu, OpenSuse, or Slackware being imperfect. That is just the excuse. Anger is always self hate. Anger gets blamed on others, but it is always self centered. So why does it mostly come from the USA? The USA use to be a place where ideals were high, now we are starting to see our own stink. The Iraq war keeps getting worse. We here in America, are now only good at complaining. (Yes this rant is from America) We are deep into the phase of decline and decadence. All cultures go through the same circle of samsarha, USA included. What we are going through now will break down the delusion and allow us to begin again at the beginning. In that next stage will be finally willing to learn from others. Currently we are stuck thinking we are teachers. But all we know is anger. We have lost patience, and we don't know how to mediate, and enjoy silence.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world, take note, we are only you with a different initial condition. We are you and you are us. The real sickness is that we think we are separate, so we act out that separation. If we could all see our underlying union, then the world would start to heal itself. (Yes this is a rant, but it still needs to be said. We need to open our hearts and learn to listen.)
Linux is a world wide movement to provide all with free software. It is a beautiful gift we give each other. Meditate on the beauty of Open source code, open your heart, and respect yourself as part of all this. Give up your anger. We are all one.
196 • #195 (by AW on 2007-04-27 06:13:42 GMT from United States)
I come to DistroWatch to learn about the technical innovations and differences of the various Linux Distrobutions.
If I was looking for psychobabble I would go to psychobabble.com.
197 • Top Ten distributions (by Suggestor on 2007-04-27 11:22:15 GMT from Germany)
A suggestion for consistency. Knoppix alternatives are labeled as "Debian/Knoppix-based" alternatives, while Ubuntu alternatives are labeled as "Ubuntu-alternatives". Knoppix has as much in common with Debian as Ubuntu, so I would suggest to change one or the other.
198 • Peace & Love ! (by Caraibes on 2007-04-27 11:42:33 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Peace & Love for all Linux & BSD !!!
We shouldn't be so angered at each other...
That said, a bit of discussions is fun, but we should have more respect.
Howeever, I'll cheer up my 2 fav's, as usual :
Debian & Fedora all the way !!!
;)
199 • Top Ten Distros (by Anonymous on 2007-04-27 12:25:36 GMT from United States)
It is wholly inaccurate and a disservice to those seeking a good, solid, _easy_ Linux distro to put Debian in the "difficult" category with Slackware and Gentoo. Debian is great for those of us who want something that just works and is painless to manage. In reality, Debian is not very different from and not more difficult than Ubuntu or Mepis. Distrowatch has a responsibility to be fair and accurate. The idea that Debian is hard to use is a misconception.
200 • RE: 197 Top Ten distributions (by ladislav on 2007-04-27 12:25:51 GMT from Taiwan)
Knoppix has as much in common with Debian as Ubuntu
Hmm, I think many people will disagree with you on this one. Knoppix is compatible with Debian, but Ubuntu is not.
201 • RE: 199 Top Ten Distros (by ladislav on 2007-04-27 12:37:10 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, so everybody agrees that Debian should be placed with Fedora and Mandriva, rather than Slackware and Gentoo? Historically, I think Debian was always a geek distro, but 4.0 is very different. Certainly not as novice-friendly as MEPIS, but perhaps no longer as hard as Slackware.
202 • re: 190 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-27 14:00:55 GMT from Finland)
>Not bashing, but did Ubuntu contribute some of the improvments to
>Debian, or did the Debian people do it all themselves?
There's more collaboration between Ubuntu and Debian developers than most users realize. Debian mostly does things their own way but they've taken (and are still taking) from Ubuntu some things that Ubuntu has done first. Development of binutils, gcc, python and java seem to be currently some of the main areas where Ubuntu leads and Debian follows.
Debian did its own versions of Xorg and Gnome for Etch and Debian is doing a pretty good job in these areas. (Etch would have got Gnome 2.16 if they had known beforehand that the kernel problems delayed the release for four months, and Gnome 2.18 is already making its way to Unstable.) Debian's version of KDE is arguably better and less buggy than Kubuntu's -- this, at least, seems to be the general opinion of many users who write about their experiences on forums.
As far as general newbie-friendliness and ease-of-use features are considered, Debian was a long way behind Ubuntu at the time when Sarge was released but now that Etch is out and the development for Lenny has started, Debian is quickly catching up with Ubuntu in most areas. Things like Debian-specific artwork, a default boot splash and an official Debian live-cd with hd-installer are currently under development. Debian will never install binary drivers by default but it makes them available in its "non-free" repository and there is also an unofficial APT repository for the patent-encumbered codecs (www.debian-multimedia.org).
Ubuntu depends on Debian with the majority of their packages, especially for the packages in "universe". During each of its release cycles, Ubuntu updates a large number of their packages from Debian Unstable (first at the very beginning of the release cycle and then again when they are close to the final release). However, Ubuntu's problem is that they can't support those various packages they take from Debian Unstable as well as Debian proper can because Ubuntu has less developers. Packages in Ubuntu's "universe" are not officially supported by the Ubuntu security team.
I'm not sure if I managed to answer your question. In short, I'd say that Ubuntu has helped Debian to catch up with the "cutting edge" in some areas but mostly Debian follows its own path and it doesn't really depend on Ubuntu. Still, Debian takes some things from Ubuntu and Ubuntu takes a lot of things from Debian. There's plenty of co-operation, but also some competition, between Debian's and Ubuntu's developer and user communities, and Ubuntu is generally considered as a valuable member of the larger Debian family.
203 • re: 202 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-27 14:09:09 GMT from Finland)
>Development of binutils, gcc, python and java
Of course, I meant "Implementation of binutils, gcc, python and java".
204 • re: 202, 203 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-27 14:25:50 GMT from United States)
Yes, thank you for the info. I thought I had heard early on that Ubuntu would be contributing back to Debian is some way.
205 • A linux to beat Windows (by Peter on 2007-04-27 21:39:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
There are many distros at the moment but the trouble with them is that they are competing with each other instead of with Windows.
Surely there must be one enterprising linux producer that can take several Linux distros and put the best and easiest bits together to make a Super Linux that can take on Windows. Manufacturers will start providing linux versions only when an adequate alternative to Windows is released.
For example PCLinuxOS and Vector Linux have an excellent video package which displays streaming webcams, straight out of the box, BUT Vector needs a degree in Computers to setup on a hard drive, and both those distros require a great deal of experience to set up anything but the most popular printers. Freespire is easy to setup a printer with, plays streaming content, but it's let down by poor software for playing music, which sounds choppy even on a PC with 1 Gig of RAM.
The rest cannot play streaming content without a lot of command line tweaking.
If you want to attract Windows users to Linux, someone really needs to make a distro that does all of these things, out of the box, because Windows users aren't used to having to search through repositories, and having to type nonsense into a command line.
206 • Re: A linux to beat Windows (by Ariszló on 2007-04-28 06:36:53 GMT from Hungary)
Peter wrote: The rest cannot play streaming content without a lot of command line tweaking.
As for Ubuntu, all you need is install and launch Automatix:
http://www.getautomatix.com/
207 • RE: # 201 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-04-28 07:34:23 GMT from Italy)
"OK, so everybody agrees that Debian should be placed with Fedora and Mandriva, rather than Slackware and Gentoo? Historically, I think Debian was always a geek distro, but 4.0 is very different. Certainly not as novice-friendly as MEPIS, but perhaps no longer as hard as Slackware."
Very true.
208 • RE: # 172 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-04-28 07:59:23 GMT from Italy)
I want to add something else to my own post (how much I wish there was an edit feature :) )
"There hasn't been another year like 2003, IMO. Since then we have only seen an evolutionary improvement and an unreasonable proliferation of distros."
There has been also too much experimentation from some distros, especially SUSE: change that, add new features, obsolete old loved ones... It has driven some users mad. I still can't forgive them for getting rid of apt4rpm. And please don't tell me that it has been replaced by smart: configuring smart takes a lot more time and in any case smart-gui can't hold a candle to synaptic.
Fortunately Debian's approach to innovation is very careful.
209 • RE 205 : One is free " (by dbrion on 2007-04-28 09:36:18 GMT from France)
to type nonsense into a command line."
One can even train a cat to walk randomly on a keyboard, thus avoiding having ones nice little fingers tired..
One does not even need a carefully designed command line to type nonsense...
However, what will happen
1) if a GUI is misleading/misleads you?
2) If there are new versions of your favorite soft in SourceForge, say, and you want to test them without/before installing (this might even be new versions of fully transparent screens UBUlinux sometimes automagically ships, see this weeks DWW post 176 , say). Installation without testing (which means having different versions) may be funny (at least to read the results)...
If you find CLI does not have sense, how could most Linux applications merely exist? You can add sense (for you: this can make posts more convincing) to CLI by manning the command, or asking for help...
210 • A question for Madriva guru (by IMQ on 2007-04-28 17:42:03 GMT from United States)
I downloaded both the Mandriva One 2007.1 KDE and the Mandriva 2007.1 Free DVD sometime last week. I also just downloaded the MCNLive Delft RC1 last night.
I installed Mandriva One 2007.1 KDE on my test machine and I wanted to install additional packages from the DVD.
The question is: How do I add the DVD so that it can be install via urmpi?
I followed the instruction here, but it did not work.
[Begin Instruction]
Recovering lLost CD/DVD Media Sources
Let's say you did urpmi.removemedia -a (which is discussed on a different page) and you want to recover your CD's or DVD as media sources again. To accomplish this you can perform the following command to get them back:
urpmi.addmedia --distrib cdrom removable://mnt/cdrom
Special Note: For this to work, you need one of your Mandriva CD's or DVD in the cdrom before pressing enter to run this command.
[End Instruction]
Here were the error messages:
[root@mandriva-a21m ~]# urpmi.addmedia --distrib cdrom removable://mnt/cdrom
unable to mount the distribution medium
Since there is no /mnt/cdrom, I changed this to /media/cdrom and got the error message
[root@mandriva-a21m ~]# urpmi.addmedia --distrib cdrom removable://media/cdrom
this location doesn't seem to contain any distribution
The DVD was inserted but not mounted at this point when running these commands. When the DVD was inserted, there is a pop-up dialog asking whether to "Open in New Window" or "Do Nothing".
I clicked on "Open in New Window" and the DVD was mounted at /media/2007S-Free-i586-DVD
I got the same message running the command whether the DVD was mounted or not.
Thanks in advance for the help.
211 • Ooop! Typo (by IMQ on 2007-04-28 17:44:41 GMT from United States)
Should be Mandriva guru in the 'Subject'
Should be *via urpmi* in the question.
212 • Ubu Alt. CD... The only way to go. (by PEBKAC on 2007-04-28 18:58:41 GMT from United States)
I... I...
(Breath Man, BrEATH!)
I...
No I can't do it, I can't... No, you can't make me Mr. Shuttleworth!!!
No, no... NO!!!!
(Muffled screams emanating from the background transform into a plethora of tribal drums and fanatical celebratory songs, sung my local savages in proclamation of there great white gods victory over the last resistor to there resistance.)
All is well now and the enjoyment of the CLI is dead!
The excitement of configuring your own .conf files from templates is replaces with automated proprietary driver and codec instillation. All the freedom I used to hold dear is gone and the only option left for a person who loves to wrestle with there OS in order to make it truly there is converting back to windows in an attempt to decompile and recode. (I'll just think of it as the biggest .conf file of all time) So what it'll take decades but who cares!!! At least I'd be able to re-distribute it by then. Everyone could have a completely open source version of Microsoft Windows 95!!! How about that!!!
213 • Re:210 (by Anonymous on 2007-04-28 22:17:38 GMT from United States)
Try urpmi.addmedia --distrib cdrom removable://media/2007S-Free-i586-DVD
If that doesn't work I suggest registering and posting on the Mandriva Club forum for help.
214 • RE: # 201 (by DeanLinkous on 2007-04-28 23:02:30 GMT from United States)
I would say as easy as it gets in general. Of course, proprietary bits and some multimedia require installing. But overall, etch is so easy I am thinking about going back to woody to have something to do after install. ;)
I have 3 different machines and I install etch - and use it. Nothing else to do. Even tweaking wise there are various tools to use from module-assistant to rcconf to the tools included with gnome itself. On one machine I do Xorg -configure to get X setup nicer but that is as hard as it gets IMO.
Certainly not hard anymore - by a long shot.
215 • yet another re: 210 (by agendelman on 2007-04-29 02:17:03 GMT from United States)
IMQ
You might also try,
"removable://media/cdrom/i586/media/free" (without the quotes)
216 • RE: 213/215 (by IMQ on 2007-04-29 04:44:50 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the tips.
RE: 213
I tried that and it gave the same problem.
RE: 215
I might try that one tomorrow after I install Mandriva One 2007 Spring on another test machine. I have it installed on my laptop already, just for testing.
While I was waiting to see if I could get a tip here, I tried this on MCNLive Delft RC1 installed on VMware Server on my Debian 4.0 desktop PC, I got DVD added using the following command (If I recalled it right):
urpmi.addmedia --distrib cdrom /mnt/cdrom/i586
After that I was able to install OpenOffice.org from the DVD.
The MCNLive did not auto-mount the DVD so I did the manual mountin of the DVD. Hence the command line as shown.
I also was able to add DVD to the laptop as well.
In both cases, the trick is to provide the path to the /i586 folder after the DVD was mounted. Basically changing
from:
removable://mnt/cdrom
to
/mnt/cdrom/i586
PS: I am not familiar with Mandriva, so for me it is a trial & error kinda thing.
217 • Re: 210 (by yochenhsieh on 2007-04-29 11:33:58 GMT from Taiwan)
Hello, IMQ. You need to use the path of the rpms, so I think it should be
removable://media/cdrom/media/main/release/
Or something like that. :)
(Sorry I don't have the DVD at hand right now, but I think you should got the idea.)
218 • PClinuxOS is a Balloon ! (by chin on 2007-04-29 16:48:00 GMT from Turkey)
That is all.
chin
Number of Comments: 218
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| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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| Random Distribution | 
CAELinux
CAELinux is a live DVD Linux distribution dedicated to computer-aided engineering (CAD) and finite element analysis. Based on Ubuntu, it features a full software solution for professional 3D FE analysis from CAD geometry. It includes the Salome 3D pre/post processor, Code_Aster non-linear/multi- physics FE solver, Code-Saturne and OpenFOAM CFD solvers, Elmer multiphysics suite, GMSH, Netgen and enGrid 3D meshers, GNU Octave, Rkward, wxMaxima, Scilab, and more.
Status: Dormant
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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