 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 205, 4 June 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The release of Fedora 7 last week has been the dominant topic on many Linux web sites and DistroWatch is no exception; we'll comment on the release, bring you a first-look review, and present details about the project's upcoming version 8, scheduled for release at the end of October. In other news, Turbolinux introduces the world to a media player and portable operating system called Wizpy, Mandriva seeks solutions for its current financial troubles, Gentoo founder comments on SabayonLinux, and Debian updates its "volatile" infrastructure. Finally, as DistroWatch celebrates its 6th birthday, we are pleased to announce that the May 2007 donation was awarded to VectorLinux. Happy reading!
Content:
- Reviews: First look at Fedora 7
- News: Fedora 7, Turbolinux Wizpy, Mandriva shareholders' meeting, SabayonLinux interview, Debian-volatile updates, Emacs 22.1
- Released last week: Fedora 7, Linux Mint 3.0, Zenwalk Linux 4.6
- Upcoming releases: Ubuntu 7.10-alpha1, SabayonLinux 3.4-beta3
- Donations: VectorLinux receives US$350
- New distributions: Linux ICE, NixOS, VDRLive
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Article |
First look at Fedora 7 (by Chris Smart)
 The last time I used Red Hat was version 5.2 back in 1999 when I was introduced to Linux by Andrew Tridgell (of Samba and rsync fame). At the time I found myself falling into 'RPM hell' where lack of dependency management drove the end user, me, insane. But today the clouds parted, the sun shone through my living room window and with the release of Fedora 7 I knew that now was the time to tempt fate once again. So let's begin.
As we have come to expect from modern Linux distributions the initial boot loader was aesthetically pleasing and simply graphically cool. The installer quickly booted and prompted me to check the DVD for errors - a very handy tool to ensure that the image you downloaded and have now burned to disk did not become corrupt along the way. The installer is graphical, starting X and made use of a mouse to perform most tasks, all in a nice GTK+ environment. My AMD machine uses RAID 5 with LVM (Logical Volume Management) and I was pleasantly surprised to find that upon selecting 'custom partitioning' my RAID arrays and also my LVM configuration were both detected. Brilliant.
I hit the 'Edit' button after selecting my LVM volume group and created a new logical volume called 'fedora'. Selecting this as my / partition I then proceeded to the next screen which was the boot loader. Unfortunately the boot loader configuration did not automatically detect my existing Linux installations (even though it had detected the LVM volumes containing them). I had to manually add them so that when GRUB was installed to the MBR (Master Boot Record) I could still boot to my other systems.
Selecting 'Configure advanced boot loader options' I was happy to see that the boot option 'noapic' that I added at boot time was automatically included for me. On my MacBook I was also pleased to see that by default Fedora was to install GRUB to the /boot partition (hd0,2) instead of the MBR (hd0) which was clever. The only file systems on offer were ext2 or ext3 which seemed a little strange, especially as the console showed support for ReiserFS, JFS and XFS. The rest of the install process was quite straightforward, configuring such things as my network settings, host name, time zone and clock as well as setting the root password.
Fedora 7: package installation
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I left the package selection set to 'Office and Productivity' which would install the GNOME 2.18.0 desktop environment. Certainly for KDE lovers out there this was the time to customise their selection and pick KDE over GNOME. Simply hit the 'Customize now' button and on the next screen deselect 'GNOME' and instead tick 'KDE'. This was impressive as I was concerned that with Fedora being GNOME-based there would be no automatic package selection for KDE users, but the installer took care of everything with a single click! At this point it also allowed me to add some additional repositories for the package management system, however not knowing of any I left this for now. Right. So far the installer was proving very easy and I have to say that at this point I was very impressed by the stability and power of the installer. Leaving the system to install I went and made a cup of coffee.
After an install time of approximately 12.3578 minutes and 805 packages later the process was complete and I was ready to boot into my new system. The kernel started whirring away, detecting all of my hardware and preparing the system for initial boot. Wow... I had seen the graphical boot process of Fedora in the past, but this was really... what's the right word? Classy. The system didn't look super fancy using big bright colours and eye popping effects, just some handsome pastel-like artwork and an eye pleasing progress bar. You got me there, Fedora. Very, very nice.
Fedora 7: boot process
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Once the system completed loading I was presented with the configuration of the system. Agreeing with the license I continued onto the firewall configuration. It is great to see desktop machines (yes, even Linux ones) coming with a firewall by default. I left the firewall enabled which only allowed SSH access through and continued on. The next step was for the configuration of SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux). By default this was set to 'Enforcing' which I thought might give me some trouble down the track. Still, being the default option I left it set as it was and began to ponder the future hassles that would come my way when I tried to get random services and drivers working. The time was correct for my machine, but surprisingly NTP (Network Time Protocol) was disabled by default. Easily remedied.
I was then prompted to submit my 'Hardware Profile' to The Fedora Project which will give them information on what hardware is popular. By default this was set to 'Do not send profile' which in my mind is the right move. I chose to send my information anyway, it's not like I'm using pirated software or have anything to hide :) Next it was time to create a user, a very simple and straightforward process. I was pleased to see Fedora include various options for network login. Finally I confirmed that my sound card was working and then I was greeted with the Fedora GDM login screen.
At this point I must congratulate Fedora on an excellent install process. The installer is very clean, clear and easy to follow yet can be very powerful for advanced users. I very much like the post install configuration implementation as this makes the distribution of a single image much easier to manage, but also makes the install process less complicated and drawn out. Well done.
Now it was time to check out what Fedora had to offer and how it would stack up to everyday usage. Fedora correctly detected my screen resolution at 1280x1024 and configured X to use the 'nv' driver. The default Fedora desktop was very clean. The quality of artwork remained consistent within GNOME, sporting the same hot-air balloon artwork seen previously. Browsing around the GNOME system one does get the feeling that Fedora might be stuck in the early 90's. The artwork is clean, there's no doubt about that, but the colour scheme seems a little dated. Nautilus is also configured to open a new window every time you browse to a folder instead of using the built-in browser functionality and did somewhat remind me of Windows 95. Still, there was plenty to be happy about.
Being a DVD installation I expected the default install to have all the applications I would need out of the box and I was not disappointed. The default user environment was configured with various folders to store one's photos, music, pictures and downloads and there were programs to fulfil each of these tasks. Firefox was the web browser of choice which opened up to a Fedora welcome page, while Evolution played the role of email client, calendar and everything else related. There was also a ripper to convert your CD collection to flac, ogg or wav along with media players to play them. Included by default was a BitTorrent client, no doubt to encourage users to seed the ISO image they just installed from.
Fedora 7: desktop
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I was very pleased to see that the applications in the menu had helpful names for the most part. For example, Xsane was called 'Scanner tool' and File Roller named 'Archive Manager'. This extended somewhat to the package management system where I was able to search for 'mobile phone' and it came back with a variety of packages to choose from. Great for users who are new to Linux and aren't sure which programs do what. Actually, I found an application in the menu called 'Internet Messenger' and not knowing what it was, I opened it. To my surprise it was Pidgin (formerly Gaim)! This was my first time to actually use Pidgin, so I can see the value in using such a naming convention.
Within the package manager were three views; 'Browse', 'Search' and 'List'. The 'Browse' window was quite easy to navigate. Packages were firstly broken down into sections such as 'Applications' and 'Servers', and then further into groups. The selection of one of these groups, such as 'Editors' and 'Printing Support', revealed the individual packages associated with them. From here I was able to select the packages I wanted like 'poedit' and 'bluez-utils-cups' simply by ticking the empty box and hitting 'Close'. Back at the main screen the 'Apply' button proceeded to resolve dependencies and then downloaded all required packages from the Internet and installed them. Done. If you can't quite find what you're after, the ability to search should help you out and if that still doesn't help you can get a list of all packages, both currently installed and those that are available.
Unfortunately for most, playing encrypted DVDs, using Java, watching your favourite wmv video clips, listening to your mp3 collection and getting some 3D action on NVIDIA cards are all still an issue with Fedora 7. Out of the box Fedora played my flac and ogg files but none of the other test formats that I threw at it, which included: mp3, asf, mov, wmv, divx, xvid and swf. I also couldn't see an easy way to configure my system to use the NVIDIA driver. While generally this situation is improving, the problem is that users who are new to Linux won't be able to use their shiny Linux system as they might expect and will have to get into some (potentially off-putting) command line dirty work. After some Googleing around (if that's even a word) I found the Livna Repository which has support for Fedora 7 (another popular repository is FreshRPMs). Adding this was reasonably trivial, I first configured sudo and then installed the livna RPM from the command line like so:
sudo rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/7/i386/livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm
This automatically added the livna repository to my system and when I then searched for things like 'nvidia' lots of results appeared. To get support for the above files working on my system, I ran:
sudo yum install libdvdnav libdvdplay libdvdcss gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-* xine-lib-extras-nonfree
Unfortunately, when I tried totem-xine and totem-mozilla they both failed to install complaining about GConf conflicts (a problem with adding non-official repositories, I guess). Although I had libdvdcss installed Totem wouldn't play DVDs, which I assume was due to a dependency that has been stripped of this capability. Nevertheless I simply proceeded to install mplayer-gui which worked just fine.
As for the NVIDIA driver and my system, it was a simple case of installing 'kmod-nvidia' which downloaded all the required packages, installed the kernel module, GLX package and configured my system to use the NVIDIA driver. All I had to do was log out and back in again and 3D was working. Very simple, once you know what to install! Upon reboot, however, I was not able to use NVIDIA as the system could not access (among other things) the /dev/nvidiactl device. This was where SELinux came into play. Simply turning it off and re-installing the driver solved the problem, though I'm sure there is a proper way around this issue. Other than this I did not have any SELinux problems (that I noticed) which was good, although SELinux still seems a little complicated for the average user. It's nice that it just seemed to work most of the time, but when something doesn't work the easiest step is to just turn it off.
CPU speed stepping was enabled out of the box, which was a great thing for my MacBook. Unfortunately suspend to RAM didn't work at all; well actually suspend worked very well but resume didn't ;) I also enabled 'suspend' in the KDE power management options but it spat up an error saying it 'could not start pidof'. While suspend did not perform as I was hoping it would, hibernate was successful. The touch pad on my MacBook didn't work as expected under Fedora either, but the quick addition of a USB mouse gave me the ability to right click and scroll. An addition to the next Fedora that would make everyone's life that little bit happier would be the auto-configuration of multimedia keyboards. The extra buttons on my ever faithful Logitech keyboard were all dead and on my MacBook I couldn't adjust brightness, control the volume or eject a CD through the function buttons.
Overall, KDE just didn't seem quite as refined as the GNOME desktop. The default KDE profile not only installed QT applications for most tasks, but also the GTK+ equivalents from GNOME. This seemed a little strange because if someone was after a KDE / Qt desktop they wouldn't need the GTK+ applications as well. I also noticed that the desktop-effects application for configuring Compiz was not installed with KDE, yet turning it on was trivial under GNOME. Simply opening the 'Desktop Effects' application and clicking the 'enable' button resulted in instantaneous Compiz goodness. All of the effects, wobbly windows, spinning cube, the switcher and scale were very smooth. Once I had the NVIDIA driver installed on my desktop it also worked perfectly out of the box, I didn't even have to touch xorg.conf! It's great to see effects like this included by default in many new distributions. Speaking of X.Org, one feature I really liked was the way the system prompted to re-configure X if it failed to start. This means end users less knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of X won't be left stranded should things go awry. Excellent stuff.
While Fedora doesn't seem to have made great advances in the ease of configuring those finer things in life (like non-GPL drivers and non-free codecs), it's not overly complicated if you're willing to get your hands a little dirty. Once you start needing to customise the machine outside of standard Fedora boundaries though, things can become a little less reliable. Nevertheless, I did rather enjoy my Fedora experience, with the stand out impression being that it felt solid right down to the core (excuse the pun). From the initial boot of the installer the system exuded a sense of stability which filled me with confidence the more I used it. The installer is probably the best I have ever used and is very powerful while remaining simple to use. Top marks for that. Overall, the default GNOME install of Fedora is very good and (non-free software idiosyncrasies aside) as a Linux distribution in itself I thought it was excellent. If what you are after is a reliable, stable, easy-to-use yet powerful Linux distribution out of the box, then Fedora fits the bill nicely. Just be prepared to struggle a little if you need those *cough cough* non-free bits.
8 out of 10 'Smarties'.
About the author: Chris Smart is the founder of Kororaa, a Gentoo-based Linux distribution, and the maintainer of Make The Move, a Linux advocacy web site. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Fedora 7, Turbolinux Wizpy, Mandriva shareholders' meeting, SabayonLinux interview, Debian-volatile updates, Emacs 22.1
 The much publicised release of Fedora 7 last week signalled the beginning of a new era for Red Hat's free distribution. Gone are the days when the company's senior executives blindly insisted that Linux was a product designed for computer hobbyists and best left in the hands of professional developers who knew what they were doing. Nowadays, Fedora is presented as a much more community-friendly distribution, which is evident from the increased interaction between Red Hat's employees and third-party contributors. As an example, users are now invited to suggest ideas and submit feature requests for the upcoming Fedora 8, scheduled for release later this year (see below).
This is just one of the many signs of the changing face of the Fedora Project. This new-found transparency and willingness to accept ideas from outside of the traditional development spheres have the potential to turn Fedora into a much more important desktop player than it is at present. A distro with a human face? Or a project desperately trying to compete with the more successful players on the market? The first reviews, which will undoubtedly start showing up within the next few weeks, should provide some answers....
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  Japan's Turbolinux, one of the world's oldest Linux companies and the maker of a Linux distribution designed for the Japanese desktop and server market, has announced the start of worldwide sales of Turbolinux Wizpy, a Linux-based pocket media player: "The Wizpy allows users to carry a complete Linux desktop in their pocket. When plugged into a PC's USB port the user is given the opportunity to boot-up the Linux system that resides in the Wizpy's memory. User settings, passwords and bookmarks can be stored inside the Wizpy, with the desktop set up to the user's preference so that no matter what PC is used to host the Wizpy, the user gets their familiar desktop."
Based on the above quote, it seems that Wizpy doesn't just play music and movies, it also doubles as a portable Linux computer which you can boot up in any Internet Café to access your data and work in a familiar environment. Certainly worth a consideration if you travel frequently and need to work in a secure environment instead of the one usually offered in most Internet Cafés. The Turbolinux Wizpy has been on the shelves of Japanese electronics stores since February (see this page at Amazon.jp) and its 4 GB model should be available worldwide later this month, retailing for about US$280.
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 Last week we asked you what you thought of the new initiative by Dell, the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers, to start selling computer systems with Linux pre-installed. As always, the news drew mixed reaction, with some readers happy to see a major hardware vendor starting to offer an alternative operating system on its products, while others were disappointed by the limited range of these Linux-based computer systems. But what are the experiences of those users who have actually purchased one of Dell's Ubuntu PCs? Here is a report by Technocrat: "I voted with my wallet for pre-installed Linux from Dell. I think this is a good start for having alternatives to Windows for some average users." And the author's conclusion? "The bottom line so far is that I'm very pleased with the value I got with this machine. My first evening of use has been very satisfying. With the dual core processor and a gigabyte of RAM it's very, very smooth and quick. Note that I purposefully didn't do anything that required the command line. It has been a good experience."
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 The Mandriva web team has published a summary of the recent shareholders meeting which took place in Paris on May 25, 2007. Among the issues discussed were various solutions to improve Mandriva's current financial situation and to transform the company into a profitable business: "There were many questions on the company situation, the numbers and the strategy. People were trying to understand what's going on, why the results are what they are. There were many questions saying "why don't you do this or that?" For instance, a common question was: "Why don't you sell computers with Mandriva inside?" It's a valid question: if FNAC, Carrefour, Walmart and Fry's were all selling PCs with Mandriva, we would make a bit of money every time and our problems would be solved. The answer is: we've tried many times." Read the full story if you are interested in learning about Mandriva's financial position and possible solutions to its current problems.
Still on the subject of Mandriva, Russia's CNews reports that the company has quietly opened a development office in St. Petersburg: "Mandriva, a producer of a Linux distribution, has started its work in Russia's northern capital. The office was opened in cooperation with Linux Center: 'Linux Center has been the official distributor of Mandriva Linux in Russia for a long time. That is why it was logical to open an official representation in cooperation with our company,' Sofya Vinnichanko, Linux Center Executive Director told CNews." This move follows the recent low-profile layoffs at Mandriva, which included several experienced developers and senior community contributors, as part of the company's cost-cutting measures.
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 Speaking about finances of Linux companies, Novell has published its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2007, which ended on January 31st, 2007. The bad news is that the company posted a loss, with sales of software licenses being down by 9% and sales of maintenance contracts down by 4%. But in between all the doom and gloom there were also some positive signs: "The company's Open Platform group, which means SUSE Linux products and services, accounted for $23.6 million in sales, up 37 percent, and had an operating profit of $2.7 million - a far cry better than the $1.1 million operating loss the Linux-related products had a year ago." For more details please see this report by IT Jungle.
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 LXer has published an interview with Fabio Erculiani, the ever so enthusiastic founder and lead developer of SabayonLinux. What are the main reasons for this young distribution's tremendous success? "1. Vision: this pushes the roadmap concept to the past. Sabayon Linux does not have pre-established roadmaps, doing a distribution is not a peace plan. You never know what would happen next month, you can't know if people will like your strategy, your features plan, your ideas. So we must keep to be as smart as possible and react fast. 2. No politically-driven decisions: many distributions are politically constrained. We aren't, and we'll never be like them. We are simply on the users' side. Do you want Mono? We have it. Do you want Java? We have it. Do you want proprietary drivers? We have found a way to implement them."
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 While the Gentoo-based SabayonLinux is a rapidly rising star on the Linux distro scene, Gentoo Linux itself has been struggling with various issues over the last couple of years. Daniel Robbins, the original founder and mastermind of Gentoo, has made an interesting comment about SabayonLinux: "What excites me about Sabayon is that it reminds me of the early days of Gentoo - when we were focused on doing innovative things like dependency-based init scripts, game CDs and other things that hadn't been done before. When Gentoo was still young, Portage was not a religion but an evolving experiment of how to build up our distribution more efficiently. Fabio has that same passion for excellence and for going beyond what others thought was possible, and I expect Fabio to enjoy the best of success with Sabayon." In the meantime, two more Gentoo developers -- Bryan Østergaard and Alexander Færøy -- announced resignation from the project, citing the usual culprits: frustration over lack of advancements and ugly infighting among the developers.
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 Andreas Barth has published a message announcing updates to debian-volatile, a service that provides up-to-date packages for those applications and utilities whose usefulness tends to "erode" over time (e.g. virus scanners or spam filters). The most important news is that this service now also supports the project's latest stable version - Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "Etch": "In the past few weeks, there have been a lot of improvements to the debian-volatile service. We finally had the time to add a suite for Etch to volatile. During these changes, we also archived woody, and upgraded to a newer version of the archive scripts." Setting up a Debian system for these "volatile" updates is simple - just add the relevant repository to your sources.list file and perform the usual update. For more information please see the home page of the debian-volatile project.
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 Finally, something for the hardcore geeks: a new major version of GNU Emacs, a popular text editor for UNIX, was released over the weekend. The first major update in over 5 years, Emacs 22.1 comes with the following new features: "Support for the GTK+ graphical toolkit; drag-and-drop support on X; full support for images, toolbar, and tooltips; customizable window fringes; many user interface tweaks; abbrev definitions are read automatically at startup.; the Kmacro package for managing keyboard macros; full graphical user interface to GDB; new modes and packages, including Calc, Grep, TRAMP, URL, IDO...; Leim, Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, and the Emacs Lisp Intro included." Despite the new release, Emacs is still no competition for vi, but it's nice to see that Richard Stallman's most prominent software application is getting some much needed overhaul (just kidding, of course ;-). For more information please read the full release announcement here.
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| Released Last Week |
sidux 2007-02
The second stable version of sidux, a Debian-based distribution built by some of the former developers of KANOTIX, has been released: "After three months of development, we are proud to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2007-02 for amd64 and i686 systems, shipping in a 425 MB lite KDE and a 690 MB full KDE flavor. Our second official sidux release has concentrated on overhauling the early boot sequence and adapting to a wider variety of desktop environments and window managers. While this release only ships in two KDE flavors (lite and full) again, we're looking for interested maintainers contributing to special purpose releases or tweaking support for other desktop environments and window managers." Read the rest of the release notes for additional information.
sidux 2007-02 - a live CD bringing us the latest from the ever-changing world of Debian "Sid"
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Linux Mint 3.0
Linux Mint 3.0, code name "Cassandra", has been released: "This is Linux Mint 3.0 based on Linux Mint 2.2 'Bianca' and compatible with Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty and its repositories. Important new features: the brand new mintInstall and the Linux Mint Software Portal; GNOME 2.18; kernel 2.6.20; OpenOffice.org 2.2; Thunderbird replaces Evolution as the default email reader; Sunbird and the GIMP are now installed by default; GNOME Control Center replaces mintConfig as the default control center application; drag & drop support in mintMenu with many other improvements; Sun Java 6; Compiz, Beryl and Emerald installed by default; new artwork...." Read the full release notes for more details.
Linux Mint 3.0 - a new version of the Ubuntu-based distribution with improved usability
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Foresight Linux 1.3
Paul Cutler has announced the release of Foresight Linux 1.3: "The Foresight Linux team is happy and proud to announce the release of Foresight Linux 1.3. New features: this is the third Foresight Linux release with GNOME 2.18 and contains minor fixes and improvements; Beagle 0.2.17, tweaked for Foresight Linux; we have upgraded Epiphany web browser to version 2.18.2; the outdated 'Firstboot' mechanism has been replaced by our modified version of autoconfig from Knoppix; Pidgin updated to version 2.0.1; X.Org 7.2, the new graphical server makes it easier for users by automatically installing monitors and video cards without editing configuration files; the latest Compiz 3D window manager, installed by default...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Fedora 7
The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 7, code name "Moonshine": "Howdy, cousins! Welcome to our little Fedora hollow, where we've brewed up some mighty, mighty Fedora 7 Moonshine for your enjoyment." The latest version of the popular distribution comes with a number of new features, including "spins", or variations of Fedora built from a specific set of software packages, the latest GNOME 2.18 and KDE 3.5.6 desktops, fast user switching, improved internationalisation support, a new SELinux troubleshooting tool, significantly faster package management utilities, a new kernel-based virtual machine technology, and many other enhancements. Please read the release announcement and consult the release notes for detailed information.
Musix 1.0r1 and 1.0r2
Marcos Guglielmetti has announced the release of Musix 1.0: "After two years of hard work, the Musix project team is proud to announce the release of the first stable version of Musix. Musix is a 100% free multimedia operating system derived from KNOPPIX and Debian stable, designed for artists as well as general users. This new release includes the Linux Kernel 2.6.21. The documentation was updated and many important applications were upgraded (among those: Ardour 2.0.0.2, Rosegarden 1.5.1 and the Musix's Control Panel). Some new programs were also installed (MScore, Nekobee). Many bugs were corrected and some new functionality added." Visit the project's download page to read the full release announcement.
Ubuntu Christian Edition 3.2
Jereme Hancock has announced the availability of an updated release of Ubuntu Christian Edition: "We have just released Ubuntu Christian Edition v3.2 (Feisty). This release fixes one potentially serious bug in the IEs4Linux Installer. The IEs4Linux Installer was deleting the bin folder that it created from the users home directory during the clean up process. This release also marks the end of the Ubuntu CE Installer. The Ubuntu CE Installer allowed users to easily add additional Christian and Educational programs to Ubuntu CE. We have decided to discontinue this feature since there were some issues with the Ichthux install option." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
AUSTRUMI 1.5.0
A new version of AUSTRUMI, a Slackware-based mini live and installation CD designed for older computers, has been released. From the changelog: "Added translations in Greek, Italian and Russian; replaced Unionfs with Aufs; added gnubiff, a mail notification program; added gtk-iptables; added xonclock, an on-screen analog clock; added Xpad, a sticky notes application; added HomeBank, a personal accounting program; updated AbiWord, Bluefish, Firefox, GIMP, GQview, Nmap, NTFS-3G, OpenSSH, PHP, Xchat, X.Org; replaced Apache with Hiawatha, gtkfind with Searchmonkey, aria2 with wget, XProc with HardInfo; updated kernel to version 2.6.20.6." Visit the distribution's home page to read the full changelog.
Zenwalk Linux 4.6
Jean-Philippe Guillemin has announced the release of Zenwalk Linux 4.6: "The Zenwalk Team is happy to announce that Zenwalk 4.6 (code name 'Red Pill') has been released. The up-to-date kernel is now at 2.6.21.3, providing KVM support. New init scripts and several performance enhancement have also been committed. The Xfce desktop is provided in version 4.4.1, with notification support to let systems like udev notify the user about auto-mounted devices (USB keys, DVD...). The Thunar file manager now handles video thumbnails and many new panel plugins have been added or updated. X11 compositing (aka translucency, window shadows...) is available out of the box. The most important change in 4.6 at system level is the new tool chain, with GCC 4.1, which has been fully implemented." Here is the full release announcement.
Pioneer Stagecoach 2.1
Dianne Ursini has announced the availability of the "Stagecoach" edition of Pioneer Linux 2.1, a combined server and workstation distribution based on Ubuntu: "Technalign, Inc. has released Pioneer Stagecoach 2.1 of its base Linux operating system. Pioneer Stagecoach 2.1 is being released on DVD. Many enhancements were added in the latest version of Stagecoach on both the server and workstation. Additions to the workstation include OpenOffice.org 2.2, additional games, Guarddog Firewall, as well as the KlamAV anti-virus utilities to name a few. On the server side, Postfix, Sendmail, PHP, as well as SpamAssassin were added to the mix. Webalizer was also added to allow analysis of traffic on web sites on Stagecoach." Find more details in the press release.
Grafpup Linux 2.00
Nathan Fisher has announced the release of Grafpup Linux 2.00, a Puppy Linux-based distribution with a comprehensive collection of software for graphic designers and other imaging professionals: "Grafpup 2.00 (final) is officially on the mirrors. This release comes with some really bleeding edge features when compared with previous versions, such as a 2.6.20.2 kernel, revamped package management with dependency resolution, GIMP 2.3.14, Cinepaint 0.22 with the Ufraw plug-in, a brand new control panel, cdrkit replacing cdrtools, Openbox replacing IceWM, and a host of other changes. In addition to the light-weight Openbox desktop, you can also easily download and install both Xfce and KDE. The software repository has blown up to include over 1,100 titles (and counting)." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
Grafpup Linux 2.00 - a specialist distribution for graphic designers
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Fedora 8
The Fedora Project has announced a preliminary release schedule for its next version - Fedora 8. The testing will start with the release of Test1 on 1 August 2007 and conclude with the final release on 31 October 2007. Please note that the proposed schedule is just a rough draft; all of the recent Fedora releases were delayed by several weeks during the development process. For further information please see this Proposed Fedora 8 Release Schedule.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
Six years of DistroWatch
Last week, DistroWatch celebrated its 6th birthday. The project was first announced on 31 May 2001 as a single-page site listing major features and package versions of a dozen popular distributions. In the following years it has expanded rapidly and it now attracts over 100,000 readers on most working days. Many thanks to all our fans, supporters, sponsors and critics who have made it possible for the site to become one of the most popular open source news sites on the Internet!
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May 2007 donation: VectorLinux receives US$350
We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch.com May 2007 donation is the VectorLinux project. It receives US$350.00 in cash.
VectorLinux is one of these rare distributions that were around at the turn of the century and still keep going today. Although originally designed as an operating system for older, low-specification computers, in recent years it has grown into a truly usable desktop distribution and live CD with a variety of graphical configuration utilities, excellent hardware detection, great artwork, and out-of-the-box support for the latest graphics cards. One nice aspect of the project is that even though they sell official CD sets from the VectorLinux online store, they also keep providing their releases for free via public mirrors. As a result of this continued confidence in their products, this month's DistroWatch donation goes to Canada - to Robert Lange and his small, but innovative development team that just keeps going year after year!
VectorLinux 5.8 Standard Live - functional computing with Xfce
(full image size: 462kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Shortly after sending the donation, we received this email from Darrell Stavem: "I do not know exactly what to say. We at VectorLinux receive donations from time to time; this, however, is the largest donation by far ever. If thank-you is acceptable, then thank you for your kind generosity, from the VectorLinux community as a whole. We will not forget your generosity. Thanks again. Regards, Darrell Stavem, VectorLinux."
As always, the monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to VectorLinux.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a PowerPack competition), digiKam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$13,340 to various open source software projects.
* * * * *
Translations of the Top Ten Distributions page
Many thanks to Andreas Lundqvist and Jan Braunisch who have translated the Top Ten Distributions page into Swedish, and also to Stanislav Hoferek who has translated the same article into Slovak. The story is now available in 9 languages: Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Translations to other languages are most welcome - if you'd like to help, please email your work to distro at distrowatch dot com (preferably in plain text format using UTF-8 encoding).
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- Linux ICE. Linux ICE is a distribution of Linux developed specifically for car computer use. It is based on the popular Ubuntu, but it has been slimmed down and optimised for performance in the mobile environment, and includes many features that other Linux flavours lack when it comes to in-car integration.
- NixOS. NixOS is a Linux distribution featuring Nix, a combined package and configuration management system. Its main features are the ability to roll back the entire system configuration to an earlier state, package dependency resolution based on cryptographic hashes, ability to install multiple versions of the same package, and support for both source and binary packages. NixOS is developed in the Netherlands by the Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University.
- VDRLive. VDR Live is a French Linux mini distribution that promises to transform computers with DVB cards into personal home theatres. The project's web site is in French only.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 11 June 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Wooohooo 1st post (by john frey on 2007-06-04 10:09:25 GMT from Canada)
Happy birthday Distrowatch. I was here for the early days and remember the one page display was very useful when I was trying to find the distro that would work the best for me.
Sure has come a long way since then. Nice to see Vector getting the donation, I have installed it a few times and find it useful for older machines and VERY fast on newer machines.
2 • Fedora (by Simon on 2007-06-04 10:39:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
I tried the Fedora KDE live cd without much luck - the live cd worked fine but the install didn't, wouldn't boot up just seemed to freeze with no obvious error (yes, I've used the checksum and media check on the cd) so I'm downloading the standard install dvd now to try that out - last time I installed Fedora (core 3, I think) I used the standard installer and, as suggested in the review above, it was a joy to use. This Fedora version is really pretty and with the promise of better KDE support I decided it would be worth another try - I have opensuse and debian at present.
3 • Fedora 7 and Radeon class GPUs (by Seatux on 2007-06-04 10:49:47 GMT from Malaysia)
Avoid Fedora 7 if you are still stuck with ATI's cards, but apart from that it's a good challenge to Ubuntu. Now, where are the promised fglrx drivers already?
4 • Fedora 7 ROCKS, Ubuntu 7.04 is AWFUL! (by Elijah on 2007-06-04 11:03:17 GMT from India)
Glad to se a nice review of FC7. I've installed FC7 and found it to me much much more FASTER, reliable and stable than Ubuntu 7.04, which has become so bloated that its latest release drags on my machine, while dapper and earlier versions ran so snappily on the same PC. Also, I never get to see its splash screen but just text roll up the screen (except for dapper) but FC7's bootsplash appears and looks so elegant.
The BIGGEST and most important difference was the speed: FC7 feels a LOT faster and PRETTIER than Ubuntu. It has one of the most, if not THE most, beaultiful lookin gnome desktops I've seen.
Once u have added all the non-free stuff, FC7 is a PLEASURE to use. Way to go Fedora! I'm thoroughly impressed with this distro, although its not as polished and user-friendly as openSUSE 10.2.
5 • NixOS (by Boris Kolar on 2007-06-04 11:09:19 GMT from Slovenia)
Finally something innovative in Linux world :) The Nix package system really seems amazing. Definitely a distribution to watch closely.
6 • F7 fglrx drivers (by afs on 2007-06-04 11:12:25 GMT from United States)
See http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=156434
7 • RE: 3 • Fedora 7 and Radeon class GPUs (by Béranger on 2007-06-04 11:27:17 GMT from Romania)
It depends. My old and crappy ATI Radeon 9200SE (R200) works PERFECTLY with the open-source driver under F7.
Fsck fglrx!
8 • F7 - non-open software installation (by afs on 2007-06-04 11:31:58 GMT from United States)
... and other installation tips:
http://howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_fedora7
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f7.html
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f7/
9 • Fedora live CD: big install button and Python? (by dbrion on 2007-06-04 11:33:24 GMT from France)
* There was something unpleasant with Fedora live CD, it is the big install button.
Even if a live CD is a breeze, has soo nice balloons, etc... perhaps all that is not a sufficient reason to install her (specially in a limited version which has not even a gcc....). Try to give such a beatiful CD to children, and youll see whether their parents get Linux friendly once installed over their work..... (demo cars are not used the same way as ordinary cars: in the real world, demo and usability functions are separated)
*Python
Something made me surprised, it is that Python (as root) was one of the top programs running (and using CPU) once the live CD had its X/gnome stuff lanched....
What is it for? I never found any hidden python before on live CDs...
10 • fedora 7 looks (by Barnaby HomeUser on 2007-06-04 11:38:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Fedora 7 looks very Zenwalk inspired to me. All light colours and airy feel and ballons.
11 • Re:3 (by Gleadhach on 2007-06-04 11:40:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Avoid Fedora 7 if you are still stuck with ATI's cards, but apart from that it's a good challenge to Ubuntu. Now, where are the promised fglrx drivers already?
Not all ATI cards are affected, only those that depend on fglrx for 3-D acceleration, for example my Radeon 9550 works fine with F7. Fedora should not be criticised for a third party driver that does not support the version of X running in Fedora 7 My only criticism of Fedora 7 thus far is the sound bug in Gnome, shouldn't be there, but at least there's a fix available.
12 • Fedora 7 (by KimTjik on 2007-06-04 11:54:11 GMT from Sweden)
I haven't had the time to do much yet, but I'm also very pleased with the Fedora 7 release. I did choose the 64bit and it works flawlessly. The installer is as stated in the review very good (when it comes to grub I'm lazy and select it to be installed to the boot partition and then I just clip and paste the parameters over to my default GRUB installed to MBR; I find that so easy because whenever a change of kernel change GRUB I'm just back to clip and paste again; maybe not a very sophisticated routine but it works good for me).
I don't know if the one who mentioned that Fedora 7 is fast use the 64bit as I do, but nevertheless I can confirm that the 64bit is really fast and responsive. The desktop is for example loaded in something like 2 to 3 seconds.
What I've had some problems with is the "Virtual machine manager", for some reason I do get a error "the file does not exist" while running the wizard of creating a new virtual machine, and that when I chose to install to a virtual disk image as a file, both in Xen and in Qemu. According to instructions the manager should create an image if the file doesn't exist, and it does but still ends up giving the error already mentioned, which is a bit confusing. From command line I then created a virtual disk by Qemu, selected it from the "Virtual machine manager" but it ends with the same message: "the file does not exist". Either I'm stupid, either there's something fishy about this manager.
However Fedora is a good working horse, and thanks to Livna and other alternative repositories you can make whatever you want.
Looks is a subjective matter, but I like the Gnome theme of Fedora 7. Alright you can as in the review argue like it looks old-fashioned, but just to design because everything is so much more polished about it. I would say it's even a bit fashionable and instead of old-fashioned you could say it has a retro style generated by modern computer graphics.
13 • Regarding post #8 (by Jordan on 2007-06-04 11:57:55 GMT from United States)
I have been using Mauriat Mirandal's great "mjm wired"
site for years for clear command line instructions on
getting things going in Fedora. Nice to see that site
included in a post here..
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f7.html
14 • fedora, ubuntu, etc (by cornel panceac on 2007-06-04 12:00:40 GMT from Romania)
i believe every distro has it's own strength and it's own weakness, and while it's good to emphasize the good points of a distro we should avoid being critics, maybe we must instead suggest ways to do things better. so please stop saying "_that_ distro is the best/worst", we already know that any distro is the best for someone, so forget about fights, will you? let's work together, if we can, and if we can not, let's start learning how to do it :)
15 • re 2 (by garion on 2007-06-04 12:24:19 GMT from United States)
interesting, I had the exact same problem as yours when trying out fedora livecd (gnome version) on my laptop. the hdd installation won't boot past kernel loading. the same cd works on an old laptop fine. i didn't try the dvd, since this error by itself is disheartening enough.
16 • Re: #14 (by John Lennon on 2007-06-04 12:42:37 GMT from United States)
i believe every distro has it's own strength and it's own weakness, and while it's good to emphasize the good points of a distro we should avoid being critics, maybe we must instead suggest ways to do things better. so please stop saying "_that_ distro is the best/worst", we already know that any distro is the best for someone, so forget about fights, will you? let's work together, if we can, and if we can not, let's start learning how to do it :)
Let's all gather round in a circle, hold hands and sing some nice, happy songs together! Feel the love and the sense of oneness with the universe flowing through you! Now, where did I put my tambourine?
17 • F7 (by parkash on 2007-06-04 12:44:38 GMT from Germany)
:( After finally getting my wlan card finally to work, I had problems shutting down (due to nvidia, i presume), and firefox32 is too slow :(
And my rhgb doesn't work :( I get only text :(
Nevertheless, I'm amused :) Good work Fedora!
18 • Hapy Birthday Distrowatch!! (by Mark South on 2007-06-04 12:57:30 GMT from Switzerland)
@ Ladislav: Happy Birthday for Distrowatch. Six years, hmm? I seem to have been reading it for most of that time, so you and Distrowatch have given me many hours of pleasant enjoyment over those years. Thank you.
Re #14: Cornel, are you new to DWW? Most people only come here to bash other distros. To hear the bitterness of the complaints, you would think they had actually paid serious money for their free distros....
The past couple of weeks, I have been spending my copious free time playing with Absolute Linux:
http://www.pcbypaul.com/absolute/
It's a custom version of Slackware with quite a few extra configuration tools to make it friendlier for newbies, and a one-package-per-task package selection (a similar approach to that taken by Zenwalk). Paul Sherman has taken a lot of care to make sure that the distro runs efficiently in small quantities of RAM, so that Absolute can be used to revitalise older machines.
Best wishes to all DWWers (barring the usual flamers, of course :-)
19 • try metalinks when possible (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 13:05:04 GMT from United States)
You should link to metalinks when possible. Instead of using a single link to a server, they can list all mirrors for an ISO, along with info that allows downloads to be repaired when there are errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink
http://www.metalinker.org/
20 • cheap comment! (by tabbot on 2007-06-04 13:10:15 GMT from India)
that plug against emacs, even though done in just, is plain cheap.
21 • FEDORA $#@%$#%$ (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 13:32:55 GMT from United States)
ahhhgggggg nice, very nice , but come on it is a nightmare to set up the wireless card NO ndiswraper, this guys at fedora are nuts, they need to step to the 21st century yes I know i can downloaded from the internet, but how if that is the only way i have to connect to the internet, and what about the dependencies?.
22 • JACKlab b1 (by Dan MacDonald (aka danboid) on 2007-06-04 13:47:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Happy birthday Distrowatch!
DW has long been a fave site of mine and an invaluable tool for Linux users - thanks for all the hard work Ladislav - I really don't know how you do it!
Anyway, I know its only a dev release still and JACK Lab b1 does still have a couple of rough edges (all of which I believe will be solved in the next beta) but for me b1 was a very special event in my 11 years of using Linux and I wish it had got a more prominent mention in this weeks DW weekly.
Why is JACK Lab so good, compared to say Ubuntu Studio? As of b1, the JACKLab Audio Distro (JAD) comes with all the best FOSS music apps and plugins as well as
xdtv - why does no other distro come with this app? Its the only fully working gui app I know of that does a good job of capturing analogue video.
DeVeDe - very few distros ship with this tool which is the easiest DVD authoring tool for Linux
KDEnlive - the easiest video editor for Linux right now
Ardour 2.0.2 and Rosegarden 1.5.1 - the very latest stable versions
picwiz - easy batch image resizing under konqueror
audiokonverter - great audio conversion tool for konqueror
JACK 'just works'
JAD's k3b comes with MP3 and other codec support ootb unlike ubuntu-studio which can't even play MP3s or videos without a network connection to upgrade and download stuff.
cinelerra, gimp etc etc.
Although JAD b1 does include most of the codecs you'd need, it doesn't support playback of encrpted DVDs and hence it also doesn't come with k9copy, but adding DVD support is only 1 very small rpm install off (libdvdcss2) and if you want k9copy you just download a package called vamps and k9copy off packman and you're all set! I'm sure installing k9copy would be tricker on a ubuntu studio box with no internet connection.
People who think Linux isn't ready for music probably haven't tried the new stable ardour version or the (admitted not free, but still very good and worth paying for) Energy XT2. See the JACK-pack on this site:
http://people.jacklab.net/metasymbol/software/
There are tutorials for XT2 on that same site. Unless its been updated in the last few days, the jack-pack may have an outdated binary which you may need to replace with the one from the official XT2 page.
http://www.energy-xt.com/xt2.php
Energy XT2 should be out of beta by the time JAD 1.0 final gets released and I think these two projects (and ubuntu studio) will go some way into popularising Linux as a multimedia creation platform.
23 • re:20 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 13:54:16 GMT from United States)
That was just a joke, a wink, wink remember the vi/emacs debate? Nudge, nudge, say no more!
Anyway it's fantastic to see Vector getting that nice donation. They are an excellent distro, just everything done easy, fast and lite. Alot like Zenwalk, but sadly not as popular.
24 • Upcoming Releases and Announcements (by X.Bao on 2007-06-04 13:56:32 GMT from Singapore)
There look like some mistakes here.
.
.
.
# 2007-10-04: openSUSE 10.3 (see roadmap)
# 2007-10-06: Frugalware Linux 0.7 (see roadmap)
# 2007-10-11: Ubuntu 7.10 RC
# 2007-05-31: Fedora 7 (see proposed release scheduled)
# 2007-11-XX: Gentoo Linux 2007.1 (see roadmap)
# 2007-10-18: Ubuntu 7.10 (see release schedule)
# 2007-10-XX: sidux 2007-04 (see roadmap)
.
.
.
25 • wizpy (by ray carter at 2007-06-04 13:58:06 GMT from United States)
The turbolinux wizpy would seem to have much potential - depending on capabilities and accessories. e.g. - if it has a usb port and memory card slots it could become a nice alternative to a laptop for downloading digital photos in the field - the mind staggers - I'll be excited to see one!
26 • Fedora (et al) Upgrades (by Hal on 2007-06-04 14:00:15 GMT from United States)
I prefer RedHat-based systems for a variety of reasons, and have been using CentOS on my development system. I need to be *using* the system a lot, not fiddling with it. But there are times I wish for a little faster rate of progress (2 years this last time).
I've seriously considered switching to Fedora, especially with the combining of Core+Extras, provided I would not have to completely resintall every time I upgraded. Scanning the forums though, the consensus still seems that using the upgrade tools is still a risky proposition, especially if skipping a release.
I for one would see *enormous* value in a reliable upgrade tool. Clean installs are simply too time consuming to do every 6 months, by the time I restore all the .ini files and whatnot.
27 • Fedora and Gentoo, plus some comments on Mandriva (by Ed Borasky on 2007-06-04 14:04:22 GMT from United States)
I too tried out Fedora 7 over the weekend. I have to agree with Chris Smart -- I left Red Hat when they stopped selling Red Hat Linux at 9 and went to Debian, followed by Gentoo. But Fedora 7 looks like it will replace Gentoo on all of my systems except the AMD64. I haven't tried it on my laptop yet, but that will happen next weekend.
I'm keeping Gentoo on the AMD64 because it's a hard-core scientific workstation. I think right now that's Gentoo's only defensible niche. As a "cheap Linux desktop" -- email, office tools, web surfing, non-proprietary multimedia, etc. -- Fedora 7 will do everything, and it isn't all that bad at science either. For example, R and the BLAS/LAPACK/ATLAS libraries are in the repository, LyX is at 1.5 beta level, and quite a few other scientific desktop features are there. In addition, Red Hat sysadmin skills are a marketable item and Gentoo skills aren't.
On to Mandriva: 'For instance, a common question was: "Why don't you sell computers with Mandriva inside?" It's a valid question: if FNAC, Carrefour, Walmart and Fry's were all selling PCs with Mandriva, we would make a bit of money every time and our problems would be solved. The answer is: we've tried many times."'
It ain't gonna happen. I don't think the executives at Mandriva understand sales or marketing, and I suspect they don't understand technology either. They don't have a viable business plan. Remember the "Law of Three" -- people have room in their minds for only three "big names".
Right now, those are Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/SuSE and Ubuntu/Debian. Gentoo, Mandriva, etc. are also-rans. At least Gentoo had the presence of mind to "incorporate" as a non-profit foundation, rather than pretend that the world worked otherwise. Mandriva, hang it up!
28 • Fedora 7 (by Kantor Zsolt on 2007-06-04 14:23:50 GMT from Romania)
I was pleased to see Fedora 7 released, I have installed to test the new release, but I think that Fedora is to quickly developed, and released, and not to much tested. For example the chess game crashes if you want to close it, the GUI packet manager tends to be slow, and consumes a lot of memory . . . .The distribution uses very new software packages, but the quality is not so good
29 • RE Danse du scalp rituelle autour de Mandriva (by dbrion on 2007-06-04 14:31:31 GMT from France)
What are the scientifical /juridical groundings of the "Law of Three"
I see big names
1) Bill
2) Gates
3) Microsoft
BTW, I professionnaly use White Box and cygwin (you see, I am internally consistent... and have no time to check for logical consistency), and both are great Red Hat derived (none of them lead to trouble..
30 • Fedora and Other Filesystems (by Blake Leighton on 2007-06-04 14:43:42 GMT from United States)
"The only file systems on offer were ext2 or ext3 which seemed a little strange, especially as the console showed support for ReiserFS, JFS and XFS"
I realize it has been a long time since you installed any Red Hat based distro, but these filesystems are avaliable, but they force tou to pass the arugement at boot time like you did with the noacpi command.
31 • sabayon (by random guy at 2007-06-04 14:50:28 GMT from United States)
a great distro, proud to be a regular there. btw why is there a "release plan" link next to the listing for sabayon's 3.4 release that links to their home page?
32 • NIXOS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR (by Faust on 2007-06-04 15:02:56 GMT from United States)
After all my whining and complaining a new force comes in with something new. Ill be installing later to see how it goes but from the docs and IRC channel I see ill really like it I SUGGEST YOU UBUNTU ppl give innovation a chance!!!!
33 • Re#15 (by Simon on 2007-06-04 15:03:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Not just me then with fedora live cd issues (nice to know). I recall that when I had suse on the install pc I had to install it with no apic support (which I think just adds that to the boot parameters) so I might try the box again with that at boot. I don't remember whether I needed that on the previous (debian) install though.
Another oddity with installing the fedora live cd - it only asked for a root password, no regular username/password setup. I assume that this should get done after the reboot?
34 • happy bday distrowatch! (by Brad on 2007-06-04 15:27:10 GMT from United States)
wow 6 years! happy birthday! seeing the archive of the one page site (progeny? lol) brings back memories!! here's to many more years of the best site for linux users everywhere!
35 • Xandros sells out (by Ohnonymous on 2007-06-04 15:56:11 GMT from United States)
Microsoft now "collaborates" with Xandros, and will offer "covenants" to Xandros customers.
36 • RE 32 : Nixos and innovation. (by dbrion on 2007-06-04 16:03:03 GMT from France)
Faust,
perhaps GoboLinux (or Gentoo, or Paldo) are more elaborated, beside having different versions on the same disk (which seems most difficult with classical package managers unless one bypasses the rpm, say...).
I was happy emulating Gobolinux vers. 13 (14 is a release candidate), and
read that Gentoo could handle various versions (thus limiting Nix's innovative features to automating massive "rollbacks"?).
Modern linuxes (not only UBUlinux) aim at desktop, music and video, not that at compiling/developping (je le déplore...). This is not the same audience: as Gentoo and GOBOlinux are older, they might have better/sexier HW recognition, list of applications which are now fashionable....
37 • Nvidia/ATI video (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 16:37:14 GMT from United States)
In every Linux review I read, the author talks about drivers for Nvidia (or occoasionally ATI) video cards. Am I the only one in the world who uses via onboard video? What am I missing out by not shelling out $150 for a vid card?
38 • Nvidia/ATI (by CeVO on 2007-06-04 16:43:02 GMT from Spain)
'What am I missing out by not shelling out $150 for a vid card?'
Nothing. My laptop has an Intel 945 and it runs smooth as silk. The onboard nVidia card in my desktop PC has higher FPS values, but who cares??
I have MEPIS running on both machines, and Beryl runs equally well on both (of course, I use it for fun, not for serious work yet...)
Intel should create simple AGP / PCI Express graphic cards with their 945 family chipset on it. It would make a great and affordable component for a Linux box.
39 • re: 22 JACKlab (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 17:36:54 GMT from United States)
Thank you for listing all the apps. I couldn't find that list on the official site. I was curious about Cinelerra being included since that is hard to get working. Any other distros come with Cinelerra (besides JACKlab, elive, and Dyne:bolic)?
40 • No subject (by Luya Tshimbalanga on 2007-06-04 17:39:12 GMT from Canada)
>> Upon reboot, however, I was not able to use NVIDIA as the system could not access (among other things) the /dev/nvidiactl device. This was where SELinux came into play. Simply turning it off and re-installing the driver solved the problem, though I'm sure there is a proper way around this issue.
It turned out Livna Nvidia package used the old /etc/udev/device configuration which is fixed by now. You can turn SElinux on.
41 • re post 35 (by Jordan on 2007-06-04 17:45:51 GMT from United States)
Oh, grow up ("sells out").. it's business, it's the evolving relationships between different platforms and OSs out there.
Linux is not a religion, it's another OS, a kernel.
From the Xandros info page on the subject:
"Companies today are running a mixture of Linux and Windows systems," said Andreas Typaldos, Chief Executive Officer of Xandros. "Cross-platform data centers are a reality. To meet evolving customer needs, vendors need to recognize the value of sharing intellectual property, developing more interoperable solutions and providing management tools that are familiar and easy to use."
"For Microsoft, the agreement is the latest in a series of collaborations with Linux platform and open source software providers. This list of collaborators includes Novell Inc., JBoss, XenSource Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Zend Technologies Inc. and others."
Choices and growth, it doesn't get any better than this. :)
42 • About Fedora 7 (by Biomega on 2007-06-04 17:47:13 GMT from Mexico)
I'm really excited about the new release of fedora, and more for the post of this week =D
43 • Happy Birthday Distrowatch (by luddite on 2007-06-04 18:02:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
..and many happy returns!
I visit Distrowatch nearly every day.
Keep up the excellent work. Distrowatch is a real asset to the world of linux.
44 • Re : fedora 7 looks (by Barnaby HomeUser) (by John on 2007-06-04 18:04:14 GMT from France)
Yes, it's funny to see an enormous project like Fedora steal ideas in a smaller project like Zenwalk.
In a few weeks everybody will agree that Fedora has created a nice and original artwork design ;)
John
45 • Vector was my first experience with Linux (by KimTjik on 2007-06-04 18:52:03 GMT from Sweden)
I forgot it in my first post, but I was really happy to see Vector being rewarded. Everything about Linux for me did start of with Vector - yes I'm not a veteran user - and from there to it's dad Slackware. My impression is that there's always been a good friendly atmosphere among developers and users of Vector, which is nice.
RE 44: Honestly: who cares? Who does steal from whom when it comes to looks is quite irrelevant. No-one is really unique when it comes to looks. The only one who feels it's stolen is probably someone with strong sympathies for the so called robbed distro. In the end the user will probably "steal" whatever wallpaper and themes he or she prefers.
46 • Fedora 7, the true FOSS distro (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 19:04:45 GMT from Portugal)
Looks/Usability are in my book, the road to success! Fedora 7 highly scores in this aspect, so cudos to them!
47 • From Russia With Love (by Jesse on 2007-06-04 19:12:34 GMT from Canada)
I noticed in the Mandriva news section there is mention of Mandriva setting up an office in St. Petersburg. However, the quote
says the office is in Russia's captial, which would be Moscow.
48 • Sabayon (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-04 19:34:08 GMT from Italy)
It is nice to hear that Sabayon is getting recognition by the very founder of Gentoo. This is a great satisfaction after Sabayon and his developer had been treated as a pariah by the the Gentoo developers and moderators.
Go Sabayon, go!
49 • RE 46 FC7 live CDs vi looks bad....and unusable. (by dbrion on 2007-06-04 19:35:34 GMT from France)
Perhaps they should steal Window's vi (a smart free port ) syntax coloring.... This feature is very useful. What are the install button and the baloons for (if it is a matter of Mbytes)?
Emacs, which is more sophisticated and slower, will thus grow popular if they keep reasonable upgrade rates....
As for FC 7 in her full splendor and usability (if any), I 'll wait till it is sold by the newspapers shop ( there is no need of exhausting a server).
50 • Welcome to the Darkside (by Satan666 on 2007-06-04 19:47:04 GMT from United States)
Welcome Xandros to distro hell, we have a "special" spot reserved
just for you.
51 • Dell and Linux (by Tazix on 2007-06-04 19:50:09 GMT from United States)
Well... I can't claim disappointment with Dell's Linux offerings because they have stated that it was their "initial offering". I'm pretty sure it takes time to test / certify drivers and such for the products not offered.
That said... I'm waiting for a sub-notebook like the D420 to be offered, before I show my support and buy a Dell.
I am, however, disappointed that other than a little "Open-Source PCs" link on the front page... there is no choice of Linux when you look up a standard Dimension E520 or other model that they sell linux on. Yes, I know the Linux ones have a "n" on the end of the model number... but the whole point to offering a choice of OS is to SHOW that choice (if applicable to the model) no matter how you are getting through the web site. (And show the microsoft tax discount if you choose linux).
So, yes... in that sense it's a very feeble attempt by Dell.
52 • Where is the audio feed? (by Robert Smits on 2007-06-04 20:22:40 GMT from Canada)
Is or is not DW a podcast?
By labelling it as one, people expect to find an audio feed - certainly I do, and no amount of looking at DW shows me where to get anything like an audio feed of the DW Weekly News letter.
Don't get me wrong - I understand this is a volunteer supported project, and I'm not asking you to do something extra where it's not provided. I do value the written DW Weekly News, but shouldn't you change the name of the RSS feed to something besides DistroWatch Weekly Podcast if there is in fact NO audio podcast?
My apologies if I'm mistaken and there is in fact an audio feed hidden somewhere on the DistroWatch website.
I do appreciate all the work that goes into providing the news, so thanks.
53 • Fedora 7 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 20:36:32 GMT from United States)
Yum seems much improved. In fact, I've had few complaints except mirrors being unavailable (too popular I guess).
Does anyone have complaints about yum? Looks like Fedora is now worthy of serious consideration as my main desktop.
54 • PCLOS in Manila, Philippines Government (by Jack Daniels Esq on 2007-06-04 21:00:29 GMT from South Africa)
Greetings - one of our affiliates in the capital Manila, reports that several schools have adopted PCLINUX 2007 as their de facto OS. Of more significance is that the local Government has adopted PCLINUX 2007 & tossed MS XP/W2K out the window ....
Great work Texstar & the Ripper Gang.
BR>Jack
55 • RE: (53) Does anyone have complaints about yum? (by Béranger on 2007-06-04 21:15:05 GMT from Romania)
No, I have no complaints about yum per se, it seems improved, but:
1. Yumex is crappy. The 1.9.x line (which is a rewrite) sucks. The latest stable Yumex was 1.2.2.
2. Pirut is still clumsy, but I had to use it: Yumex freezes at 30% (after building package sacks) with all the 3rd party repos enabled.
Now, a favorite incompatibility between Livna and FreshRPMs packages:
http://www.beranger.org/blogo2/pirut_f7_conflict.png
56 • Happy 6th DW Anniversary! (by Soloact on 2007-06-04 21:16:50 GMT from United States)
Six great years of Distrowatch! Been there from the start, even through the "Timesavers" days. Many thanks to Ladislav for continuing to bring us this great site.
Happy Sixth, and many more! :-)
57 • happy birthday! (by jaslar on 2007-06-04 21:50:25 GMT from United States)
Happy birthday! Please accept a virtual keg of beer!
58 • Of Turbolinux/Wizpy, iPod/iTunes, Microsoft/Zune and AUSTRUMI (by litepenguin on 2007-06-04 22:38:11 GMT from Canada)
Wizpy sounds like a great gadget. Can't wait to have my hands on it.
However, i hope somebody out there take on Turbolinux/Wizpy example, and develop a similar gadget powered by AUSTRUMI, as this distro is the litest and fastest OS to this date.
AUSTRUMI therefore is an ideal OS waiting to run on pendrives or use it to operate mp3 players, instead of slow and bloating Mac (iTunes/iPod) and Windows (Zune/WMA) properiety hardware/software.
59 • RE: 52 Where is the audio feed? (by ladislav on 2007-06-04 23:05:30 GMT from Taiwan)
DistroWatch Weekly Podcast is just one of the several RSS feeds availalbe on the site. You can subscribe to the non-audio RSS feed for DistroWatch Weekly here:
http://feed43.com/distrowatch-weekly.xml
60 • emacs (by Anonymous on 2007-06-04 23:27:05 GMT from Canada)
I found really interesting the fact to most recent popular distro do not include emacs anymore. I think this is a good choice, because there is a lot of better text editor like kate or gedit. Emacs will probably disapear in the next years in the face of these powerfull and easier to use editors.
61 • RE: 60 emacs (by ladislav on 2007-06-04 23:35:07 GMT from Taiwan)
Emacs will probably disapear in the next years in the face of these powerfull and easier to use editors.
Oh sure, people have been saying this since the early nineties. But I still know many people who, given the choice, will always reach for one those totally unintuitive and ancient text editors (like Emacs or Vim), instead of the new, "easier-to-use" ones. And don't forget that Kate and Gedit need an X server to run, while Emacs and Vim don't.
62 • Happy F7 user here !!! (by Caraibes on 2007-06-04 23:50:00 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Just to tell the world (well, the geeks reading the DWW comments...) that I happily performed a clean-install of F7 on my FC6 box, my main PC... I decided to go for a clean install, because I have all things well backed up... I only used the live-cd, and it went really smooth...
I am using the Livna repos, so far so good...
I also have an ATI Radeon 9200 video card, no problem whatsoever...
Very polished release, so far I am very impressed !
Kudos to the Fedora people !
63 • 55 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-05 01:46:51 GMT from United States)
Pictures like that give us a reason to use a Debian-based distro.
64 • #47 St. Petersburg (by Stephen Wilson on 2007-06-05 02:52:05 GMT from Canada)
The report actually said: "Russia's northern capital," which probably refers to the city's long history as the Imperial capital of Russia until the revolution.
65 • #55 (by vipernicus at 2007-06-05 05:25:35 GMT from United States)
I don't use Fedora, but I at least know that you never mix Livna and FreshRPMs.
66 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-05 05:32:08 GMT from United States)
" I've installed FC7 and found it to me much much more FASTER, reliable and stable than Ubuntu 7.04, which has become so bloated that its latest release drags on my machine, while dapper and earlier versions ran so snappily on the same PC."
People who write this sort of thing don't have the faintest idea how computers or software work. There are many factors that can affect performance, but "bloat" per se is not one of them. It's sad that a fraudulent marketing campaign designed to sell overpriced "cleanup" utilities on M$ Windows has had such a pervasive effect, even on Linux users.
If Ubuntu 7.04 is slower, less reliable, or less stable than FC7, the reason is not to be found in this silly, ignorant catchterm, "bloat".
67 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-05 05:34:51 GMT from United States)
" Emacs will probably disapear in the next years in the face of these powerfull and easier to use editors."
If you think that kate and gedit are "powerful" compared to emacs, then you know nothing about emacs and its power.
68 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-05 05:38:00 GMT from United States)
P.S.
"I found really interesting the fact to most recent popular distro do not include emacs anymore."
What the hell are you talking about? Every distro contains emacs in its repository, and very few distros has ever come with emacs out of the box. Nothing has changed, nor will it any time in the foreseeable future, for reasons that are apparently beyond your grasp.
69 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-05 05:44:03 GMT from United States)
"Yes, it's funny to see an enormous project like Fedora steal ideas in a smaller project like Zenwalk."
It's funny that there are people who can't grasp the fundamental concepts behind open source. If you think using other people's ideas is theft, you should stick with Windows and the RIAA.
70 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-05 05:52:07 GMT from United States)
"that plug against emacs, even though done in just, is plain cheap."
Since you didn't pay for it, why are you complaining? Heck, why are you complaining at all -- it was a JOKE. I'm a diehard emacs user, and I thought it was pretty funny. Get a life, a sense of humor, and lost.
71 • #66, 67, 68, 69 and 70 (by Stephen Wilson on 2007-06-05 06:01:31 GMT from Canada)
Well. Someone got up on the crusty side of the bed this morning.
72 • RE: 69 • No subject (by truth machine) (by John on 2007-06-05 06:25:27 GMT from France)
"It's funny that there are people who can't grasp the fundamental concepts behind open source. If you think using other people's ideas is theft, you should stick with Windows and the RIAA."
LOL, I just meant that it's a lack of imagination, and a bit ridiculous from a big project like Fedora to steal its main artwork idea in another project. I never wrote it was a crime, of course it's open source.
It was a kind of joke, do you know the fundamental concept of jokes ? Or maybe you can't grasp it ?
John
73 • 58 : Lightpenguin, I would wait before deciding on hardware (by dbrion on 2007-06-05 06:41:00 GMT from France)
and software issues, and not jump on AUSTRUMI comme la vérole sur le bas clergé breton...
"However, i hope somebody out there take on Turbolinux/Wizpy example, and develop a similar gadget powered by AUSTRUMI, as this distro is the litest and fastest OS to this date"
I hope there will be the OLPC, which will be long lasting (water-and dust tight, shock resistent=> in the long term, it might be very economical). it will be shipped with an OS, and, if I remember reading that Microsoft forced a supplementary HD plug (for dual booting), perhaps it might be booted in two Linuxen as well(or better: that is a matter of opinion about Windows), or softs could be easily added.. From mem, I think there are already USB plugs.... => this makes a very light, low consuming real PC, with a lot of RAM (they added 64M) ,
radio (for IT connections, except I suppose in deserts, dictature and war zones,
and wih localisation everywhere -there are more unreasonable bets- (I was not that happy with Austrumi's QWERTY keyboard....). the main problem I see with OLPC is how to get one (buying/ smuggling/ stealing...), but I know some geeks who think they will be happy..
"AUSTRUMI therefore is an ideal OS "...
The ressource greediness of Austrumi (which is limited and interesting, I agree) does not seem that different from elive's, KateOS's or Zenwalk's,and higher than DSL's (it would be linked with a need at starting, I think: once X is started, it lefts a lot of memory for the user, but one needs > 80 M to start/DSL needs perhaps 30 or 50, do not remember)...
.
74 • Small correction (by cdonges on 2007-06-05 07:19:11 GMT from Australia)
I guess it should be Fedora 8 in the 'upcoming releases' on the 31 Oct. And it should also probably be after Ubuntu (or do you know something I don't...)
75 • Vector Linux (by Lyn David Thomas on 2007-06-05 07:22:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thank you for the donation, this long term user of Vector Linux would like to say thanks for the recognition - I am sure this will be put to good use :-)
76 • Emacs or vi UGH I use JOE (by Distrowatch Reader on 2007-06-05 08:38:13 GMT from United States)
Vi is actually painful to use.
Emacs is the Gnu/Hurd kernel.
Long live JOE the easy text editor.
77 • RE 76 s/use/learn/ (by dbrion on 2007-06-05 09:02:07 GMT from France)
Once vi is learned, it is not ressource consuming and it can give some notions of regular expressions (I recommand it to colleagues : then, they can use sed, and change the names / formats of hundred of images / and convert them / without a tremendous amount of clicliplaying (that would either break the mouse or their delicate little fingers, instead it takes a 5 lines script)).
vi is useful too as the redo editor for ksh/(tsh is the free equivalent)....
emacs is the basis for at least 2 ides, one for R and one for g95 (eclipse is much more ressource consuming). (As I use vi, I am too lazy to learn emacs).
Both have been Windows ported (and not Linux massacred), where a serious intellectual environment is likely to remain stable...
78 • #55, #63 (by h3rman on 2007-06-05 09:48:31 GMT from Europe)
Isn't it amazing!
Linux people where art thou going??
Step 1.
First, someone install a free software OS.
Step 2.
Then, (s)he allows two *conflicting* (as most people know or should be able to search-engine-up), *third-party* repositories to totally mess up their system.
Step 3.
Then, for whatever reason, (s)he publishes that fact on the internet by way of illustration.
Step 4.
Then, Debian/Buntu fanboy/grrl can cheer how fabulous dpkg/apt supposedly is and how much rpm/yum is to be avoided. Yeehaw!!
Step 5.
Call for education!
Haven't we all learned at Sunday School:
*Thou shalt not mix the Livna and Freshrpms repositories!*
79 • re: 78 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-05 11:46:42 GMT from United States)
*Thou shalt not mix the Livna and Freshrpms repositories!*
I agree. I thought this was common knowledge for Fedora. I know Stanton Finleys installation notes spelled it out in black and white.
80 • Re 78 (by Serge Matovic on 2007-06-05 11:57:38 GMT from Canada)
Hi h3rman: Your comment is Great !!! Boy, did you hit the point well.
81 • LinuxMint and forums (by jack on 2007-06-05 13:38:25 GMT from Canada)
I have just downloaded Mint and(as live cd) spent sometime browsing their forums.(I am posting this using the live Mint cd).
Some weeks ago I posted here suggesting that one way of evaluating how popular a distro is, is to see how many people are on line at any given time.
At that time someone pointed out(humourously) that if an OS had no problems there would be few at the forum.
That perceptive observation has come home to bite me.
Since that time I have had occasion to request help (as a newbie) a couple of times on the K/Ubuntu forums(i use Kuuntu 6.06). I recieved either no responses or some brief ones.
It would seem that the number of newbies(like me) overwhelms the number of really experienced users.
Reading the Mint forum, with its detailed and explicit explanations, offered by the support people was quite a contrast.
However this seems to be a "catch 22" situation. Any OS that becomes very popular is bound to have many more newbies with problems.
This is perhaps just an another way of noticing the INEVITABLE lack of documentation for any system that changes as fast as linux does.
The Mint live cd is great.
82 • Dell/Ubuntu (by octathlon on 2007-06-05 14:24:38 GMT from United States)
Reading the latest reviews and forum posts, it appears that you are no better off buying a Linux laptop from Dell than you are just doing everything yourself. For example:
http://www.bryceharrington.org/Photos/DellUbuntu/troubleshooting.html
Almost everyone is reporting incorrect screen resolution (!?!! - no excuse for that) and problems with suspend, among other things. No wonder Dell wants to hide the Ubuntu computers. I've been following this situation to decide between Dell and System76 for my next laptop; so far System76 remains in the lead.
83 • Buying a Laptop for Linux (by davecs on 2007-06-05 15:08:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
The best way to buy a laptop for linux is to get a live CD of a either your favourite Linux distro, or if your favourite one doesn't do a live CD, use the live CD of one you can live with.
Then try it out on other people's laptops.
OK you won't be able to test Suspend to Ram or Hibernate, but you can find out how well the graphics might work, and the built-in wireless.
Then buy that same model.
I admit that my one came with an unwanted Windows XP license, however, when I tried to source similarly-specced laptops with no OS, I found them to be more expensive. So if Microsoft weren't trousering my cash, who was?
84 • Emacs vs vi (by davecs on 2007-06-05 15:09:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
... is precisely the type of argument that scares the bejeebers out of potential converts to Linux.
85 • Another Subject... (by parkash on 2007-06-05 16:01:17 GMT from Germany)
Have you seen?? Xandros goes to the darkside!
http://www.osdir.com/Article9854.phtml
86 • Re:73 AUSTRUMI, OLPC & HARDWARE (by litepenguin on 2007-06-05 16:20:07 GMT from Canada)
Merci dbrion :)
You're absolotly right about OLPC, as being the ideal candidate for powering next-gen mp3 players & pen drives, like Turbolinux does now.
Just like many people, i'm still testing and learning about OLPC. As you have pointed out, it's indeed a very promising distro. Hope they don't delay its release again.
Meanwhile, i believe OLPC will become avialable (probably for free or for a nominal fee) once the project is completed. And once that happens, coders, probably, will start developing its derievetes for all kinds of multimedia gadgets, including mp3 players.
Likewise, almost certainly, non-educational derievetes of OLPC will emerge for running on desktops and all kinds of laptops. Therefore, no need to worry about buying, smuggling or stealing an OLPC laptop, in order to obtain its OS :)
On the other hand, i, partly, agree with you about AUSTRUMI's limitations. It certainly has a long way to go. But i strongly believe it's the slimmest and fastest distro to this date.
I wouldn't compare AUSTRUMI to DSL or similar to distros.
For one thing, DSL is openly misleading about it's size. Because, DSL, unlike Austrumi, only provide almost-useless apps on a 50 MB business-card CD. Therefore, you, afterward, are forced to select more apps in order to have a decent, working distro. And needless to mention, this makes DSL bloating two to three times -- that's much than the 50MB size it propogates.
And i would definetly not compare AUSTRUMI to KateOS or Zenwalk either, as those distros are way too bloating that it wouldn't be even fair to consider comparing AUSTRUMI to such resource-sucking hogs. I believe it's quite possible that AUSTRUMI may get even much slimmer, and faster once it reaches maturity after several more releases in a year or so. In the mean time hopefully it's derivetes will start emerging sometime soon.
But going back to OLPC, let's really hope it comes around on time, as some people (justifibaly) think that it may revultionize the computing world for better, both software and harware wise.
---------------------
P.S. I have been reading your postings regularly since a long time.......and it was often only entertaining to try to understand as to what you have written :) However, lately, your angle have improved dramatically --- so much so now that i not only enjoy reading your postings, but i also understand and appreciate what you are actually saying. But at the same time, i just wish my french was at least as good as the quarter of your english.
87 • Vector Linux (by nightflier on 2007-06-05 17:23:57 GMT from United States)
I'm very happy to see that Vector got recognized and rewarded.
88 • Re #73 & 86 Linux for the OLPC (by rglk on 2007-06-05 23:04:31 GMT from United States)
If you want to check out the Linux distro that Red Hat has put together for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, you can get it here as a live CD:
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/sdk/latest/livecd/
It's basically a trimmed down Fedora Core 6 (size around 300 MB) and offers "Sugar" as a Desktop for kids as well as a very basic Gnome desktop. The distro is still under heavy development.
Robert
89 • Boycott Intel - Intel's OLPC machine (by rglk on 2007-06-05 23:18:52 GMT from United States)
If you care about a terrific non-corporate public service initiative such as Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC), boycott Intel and buy AMD instead.
Intel has come out now with a competing OLPC machine that uses Intel's microchips instead of AMD's, and they are applying strong arm tactics, including dumping these machines at way below Intel's cost, to shove their product down the throat of the relevant decision makers in third world countries.
Since Intel will be losing money on this (at least in the beginning), their motivation can only be to corner the market by pushing Negroponte's project into oblivion and deny their arch enemy AMD large profits, as the OLPC machines will eventually be distributed by the hundreds of millions, if Negroponte's tireless efforts bear fruit. The entire thing was Negroponte's and the MIT Media Lab's brainchild, and he's been travelling >300 days a year for the past two years promoting this project.
I find Intel's behavior despicable, and I wish them bad luck. They are walking in the trails that Negroponte (who is getting nothing out of this) has blazed and are trying to make a fast buck, using highly questionable corporate marketing tricks. In the end, it's the children of the world who may lose.
Do you remember, some 15 or 20 years ago, when Japanese and Korean chip manufacturers who were supported by huge conglomerates and subsidized by their governments grabbed the exploding market for RAM memory chips and pushed American competitors out of the field by dumping massive quantities of these chips at below cost? American chip makers, Intel included, were screaming bloody murder then, and eventually were pushed out of the market. Now Intel is doing something similar, with a different product line.
They are in good company. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Windows XP, selling it in third world countries for around $3 per copy, principally to contravene the large scale adoption of Linux in those countries.
Robert
90 • Debian Live 20070528 (by gharsallaoui chamseddine on 2007-06-05 23:19:13 GMT from Tunisia)
i have found this :
Debian Live 20070528
Downloads: 2,037
Developer: Debian Developers | More programs by this producer
License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
Price: FREE
Last Updated: April 27th, 2007 02:35
Category: MAIN :: System :: Operating Systems :: Linux Distributions
in this site
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/Debian-Live-15395.shtml
Debian Live is a Debian SID Live CD.
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide.
Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 8000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower.
At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.
91 • Debian Live 20070528 (by gharsallaoui chamseddine on 2007-06-05 23:42:43 GMT from Tunisia)
*** re Debian Live 20070528 (on 2007-06-05 23:19:13 GMT from Tunisia) ***
i have found this :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Live 20070528
Downloads: 2,037
Developer: Debian Developers | More programs by this producer
License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
Price: FREE
Last Updated: April 27th, 2007 02:35
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category: MAIN :: System :: Operating Systems :: Linux Distributions
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
in this site :
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/Debian-Live-15395.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
screen-shot :
http://linux.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Debian-Live-Screenshot-15395.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Live is a Debian SID Live CD.
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide.
Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 8000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower.
At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.
:)
92 • OLPC & a website for exposing/ stopping INTEL's campaign against childeren (by litepenguin on 2007-06-06 02:37:09 GMT from Canada)
I appreciate for taking your time to write a great posting (#89) about INTEL's war against millions of childeren around the world.
I should mention that i'm aware of INTEL's dirty campaign aiming to destroy MIT/Negroponte's OLPC project before it's even officially born. However, i didn't know the extent of it, as you detailed in your posting. Therefore, i didn't write anything about "Intel's OLPC" in my post (#86).
I sincerely hope that INTEL fails miserably in this. But we ALL have to boycott INTEL's products at every opportunity for this to happen. In fact i hope somebody set up a website educating people about INTEL vs. CHILDEREN and invite them to flood Intel with emails demanding to cease it's dirty campaign immedietly.
93 • sabayon, gentoo and dw. (by energyman on 2007-06-06 10:26:40 GMT from Germany)
@48
Sabayon was not treated like a 'pariah' by the gentoo devs or community.
I just want to ask you something: if you fork Fedora. Do you expect support from Fedora devs?
And the second question: if you fork, do you think it is ok to abuse the original's infrastructure?
Has Sabayon its own rsync- and distfiles-mirrors or does it still rely on gentoo's infrastructure, hurting gentoo users?
About the 'gentoo news'. I am 'glad' that only the negative aspects are reported. So two devs left. And and the same time, a handfull joined or came back. Yes, resigned devs do occasionally come back.
But DW only reports of the devs going, not of the devs joining or rejoining.
Why?
Why not report on the devs leaving Suse/Novell?
I smell some prejudice against gentoo.
Really, what is your problem? You don't have to use it. Still a lot of people seem only to be happy, if they can report something bad about it. Gleefully happy. Why?
94 • RE: 93 sabayon, gentoo and dw (by ladislav on 2007-06-06 10:47:15 GMT from Taiwan)
If you find any positive news about Gentoo, please to email it to me. I'll be sure to include it in the next issue of DWW.
95 • sabayon, gentoo and dw (by energyman on 2007-06-06 11:05:15 GMT from Germany)
ok, lets see:
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò back
Debra Waters back
new dev Christoph Mende
new dev Joe Peterson
did you mention any of the four? Nope. Just that two are leaving.
If you don't mention new devs, don't mention the ones leaving too.
Or, even better, not only put gentoo under the 'lets find something bad' microscope, do this for all distributions. I am sure, we will see a lot of dev fluctuations EVERYWHERE.
96 • RE: 95 • sabayon, gentoo and dw (by ladislav on 2007-06-06 11:24:03 GMT from Taiwan)
Developers leaving or joining a project is not news. The reason I reported about the two developers who left was that they had published their reasons for leaving Gentoo. In other words, it was the manner in which they left the project that I found interesting, not their resignations per se.
Please don't be blinded by your love for Gentoo. The distribution continues to be plagued by serious problems, such as high developer turnover, lack of innovation, lack of strong leadership and personal infighting. Believe me - I have absolutely nothing against Gentoo; quite the contrary, I have always liked the project and I sincerely hope it can regain its old spirit of innovation and fun.
Am I biased against Gentoo? It's possible, I suppose - I find it difficult to judge myself. But I do know that last year I donated US$500.00 to the Gentoo Foundation. Do you think it's possible to be biased against a project and send a large donation to it at the same time?
97 • sabayon, gentoo and dw (by energyman on 2007-06-06 11:33:29 GMT from Germany)
well, all devs leaving write a good bye mail. And of course is there a lot of critizism in this mails - or they would not leave.
But the new guys get introduced too. And you don't mention them.
About the problems: from my point of view there aren't as many or big problems. There is a lot of noise and there is a handfull of poisonous people, making the life of everybody else hell. But the basis is still strong.
Yes, a strong leader is missing. Someone able to shut the poisonous group up. Not everything is well. I hate the new installer and the gnome-based livecd. The dev-turnover could be lower. I don't close my eyes in front of the problems. I know them. Really. I am reading the mailing lists, forums, bugzillas.
But a lot of distris have the same or other problems - and you don't see it in 'the news' like gentoo problems.
98 • Vector (by glas on 2007-06-06 12:03:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Glad to hear Vector is getting some recognition and donation from DWW.
I run a computer repair shop here in Wales and we sell refurbished computer systems usually with Vector 5.8 Std installed on machines with less than 750Mhz proccessers and less than 200 Mb RAM.
It's a very stable and easy to use/learn OS great for those new to computers - as well as those with some experience.
Congradulations to the Vector team.
99 • DISTRO LINUX IN THE PHILIPPINES (by Froilan Gajudo on 2007-06-06 12:04:36 GMT from Philippines)
hi i am new here
my name is froi from the philippines a software developer
i would like to start a distro for pinoy use
i am a linux fan and have tried a variety of linux distros
and i would like to know if you can help me create my own distro's
such as customizing the boot logo, etc, etc.
thanks
and more power
100 • re 73 Austrumi and other distres: it is a timescale issue. (by dbrion on 2007-06-06 12:58:16 GMT from France)
For example, if you want to play music, you would be very unhappy with a 0.3 seconds delay (it would be like a satellite communication in the eighties). If you want to compile medium apps or run repetitve tasks, typically you launch before going to bed and you want your PC to be ready at breakfast time.... => starting times are, in this context, fully negligeable.
"DSL, unlike Austrumi, only provide almost-useless apps on a 50 MB business-card CD. Therefore, you, afterward, are forced to select more apps in order to have a decent, working distro."
I intend to use DSL to launch, in a professionnal context, closed-source (no need for a compiler...) Linux ported apps, who need an X terminal, from Windows, using VMplayer: as far as now, it can be done with a slimmed Mandriva2007.0, but I can thus give 100 M more to XPs antivirus, if needed (it works during the night, I hope) or access to the GIMP .: If I must use a light weight distr, wo not use any app (except the GIMP)...
The points which make me feel ill at ease with Austrumi (both are not fully localised) are the folowwing:
* one does not know what they have (see DW very useful pages)
This is a middle term problem (for other distrs, one can fix in some extent their (momentary) absence with shipping lists in DW pages ).
* it is obviously made by brilliant students : what will happen if they marry, get children and a job (should young smart linuxers be doomed to remain lonesome and jobless??) This is a long term problem...
If Austrumi lasts, old PCs will be rarer and rarer (and will be replaced by more powerful -to-day's ones), her localizations will become more numerous (perhaps she will speak French...)=> she wonot remain lightweighted...
I used VMplayed KateOS and Zenwalk to compile my favourite apps (R + extensions+ geography) and other which should interest me (qt4 and grass and everything grass needs) . Both did it in forecasted time, except for miswriting a compilation chain (this is my fault) => if I break a PC, I am sure my apps can be ported from an USB key very fastly, and then upgraded, from almost any development (or general purpose) oriented distr.
I suppose you were demanding them very fast response times but, for my use, they were more than sufficient..
BTW I see from DW OLPC page (and verified the presence of 80% of my ingredients with her VirtualBoxed beta iso) the same compilation chain could *almost* work natively with the OLPC CD... and
two /(at least) out of three/ very nice OLPC reviews
...
101 • Intel and OLPC (by Anonymous on 2007-06-06 13:31:05 GMT from United States)
How does it hurt kids in the third world if Intel is willing to sell laptops cheaper than OLPC???
It might bruise Negroponte's ego, but I've always been taught that lower prices are better.
102 • RE 101:" I've always been taught that lower prices are better.' (by dbrion on 2007-06-06 13:50:11 GMT from France)
* Yes, for the same thing.
Does Intel sell water and dust-tight PCs ? (there is a funny way of knowing whether a laptop is water tight: try it with Coca-Cola , whisky or cafe...)
* Is Intel'PC fitted to countries where there are no mains supply (or very bad one?). How long will their battery last?
One should not look at the price, but at the ratio:
price/(estimated life time).
(this was the same issue with Japanese cars in the early eighties: they lasted one year: a twice more expensive car could last 15 years...
. At last, Korean and Japanese RAMs had the same life expectancies than Intels ones, and were cheaper...)
103 • RE 55 (by KimTjik on 2007-06-06 16:25:58 GMT from Sweden)
Your post has already been addressed, but out of interest I've tested or simulated what you did and shouldn't have done. Mixing Freshrpms and Livna does at times brake Yumex, but you shouldn't do that anyway.
On the other hand Yumex doesn't support well its feature of selecting repositories. Refreshing after a change and it hangs. After the process is killed and you restart the program changes previously done isn't implemented.
Besides that I haven't observed any oddities in Yumex. As a GUI it's a lot easier than Pirut if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
So as already have been said:
- don't mix Livna and Freshrpms
and:
- if you use Yumex, enable and disable repositories the old-fashion way like "gedit etc/yum.repos.d/*" and on the first instance of "enable=..." in the repository set a "0" for disable and "1" for enable; after that open up Yumex.
104 • Re: 99 Pinoy (by davecs on 2007-06-06 16:59:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
A few Philippines official bodies have recently adopted PCLinuxOS. We do have a couple of guys from Philippines already posting at the PCLinuxOS forum (in English), but did you know there is an internationalisation project for PCLinuxOS which will be bearing fruit very soon. This is hosted at http://www.mypclinuxos.com
If you would like to help add Pinoy to the internationalisation, existing distribution, one that already seems to have made some inroads in your country, you'd be very welcome to join the effort.
Having got the English-only LiveCD out, we are hoping to follow up with a LiveDVD with all the internationalisation, but even if Pinoy is not ready in time, it will be possible to add stuff later.
105 • qu 104 . how many supp Moctets does internationalisation take (by dbrion on 2007-06-06 19:12:34 GMT from France)
per language?
And did you have asiatic-arabic; ?farsi?- languages verified.?.. against Mandriva starting menu, say.
106 • Re #101 Negroponte's OLPC project vs. Intel's laptop (by rglk on 2007-06-06 19:24:50 GMT from United States)
The crucial difference, I believe, is in motivation. Negroponte's OLPC is a non-corporate public service project. For all I know, it may be not for profit, too. All their efforts are focused on doing their best to enable hundreds of millions of children in neglected parts of the world to get an education, to learn something about the real world.
I'm certain that's not Intel's objective, their's is to make maximum profit and to increase market share or entirely dominate the market. I don't think they have the best interests of the intended audience in mind, i.e. a large fraction of the children of the world. To Intel this is just an opportunity to make money and hurt a competitor, i.e. AMD.
Like every huge successful transnational corporation Intel is very skilled at marketing. They may well succeed in talking the relevant decision makers in first and third world countries into going for an artificially low cost Intel OLPC that is inferior to Negroponte's OLPC, kill Negroponte's project and then beef up the price to make their profit or leave all these children with an inferior machine that principally benefits the corporation but not the children.
I see a parallel here to Linux vs. Microsoft. You can figure out what the parallels are - they're obvious.
Robert
107 • RE 102 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-06 20:22:39 GMT from Europe)
"(this was the same issue with Japanese cars in the early eighties: they lasted one year: a twice more expensive car could last 15 years..."
I see you know your way around hyperboles. :P
But if I'd be serious I'd prove you wrong.
The Japanese car industry was completely mature by the early eighties, earlier actually.
108 • Re: 99 DISTRO LINUX IN THE PHILIPPINES (by johncoom on 2007-06-07 02:59:04 GMT from Australia)
You could do as davecs says in reply 104 above by all means, I think it is a good product and use it my self.
But to start a another distro "for pinoy use" seems to be rather pointless when there already is a Filipino distro called "Bayanihan Linux" It may be better for you to see if you could join that project ? rather than create a yet another new Distro :-(
Distrowatch page = http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bayanihan
Bayanihan Website = http://www.bayanihan.gov.ph see the Developers section
This is just a suggestion for you !
109 • Kubuntu/Intel (by robzilla on 2007-06-07 05:50:45 GMT from United States)
I have to say I read a lot of comments of people hating on Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
I have used Kubuntu a long time ago and was not that impressed. I just installed the latest version and have to say, Wow! What a very nice OS. It is very stable, fast, easy to use and configure. Just a really nice system.
I have used them all but for now I think Kubuntu will be on my laptop a while!
I heard someone say to boycott Intel. Why? They are a business and as such compete. Are they ethical? Who knows, is any large business really ethical?
I will say all of the intel hardware on my laptop works very well with Linux because Intel supplies Linux drivers. Maybe I am an idiot on this but I have to say I am very pleased with Intel.
Robzilla
110 • re 107 (by dbrion on 2007-06-07 08:02:21 GMT from France)
* But if I'd be serious I'd prove you wrong.
The Japanese car industry was completely mature by the early eighties, earlier actually.
*
you are right . Just translate *mature* by * realizing the dream of making stuff which breaks just after the warranty period* .
They zere forbidden to do that in Europem but there is q word more Southern.
The ethics of such practices , dear Anonymous, are not that interesting in countries where roads can be bad... and wages very low...
The OLPC hardware can last 6 years , methinks even in hot/ rainy/dusty conditions - most children walk to school on long distances. these are not conditions to put a parasitic linux and expensive useless cards on one s parents PC -....
In this casem the comparison with MICROSOFT practice cqn be very mild, as MICROSOFT , sometimes; sells good innovating products -language recognition say--.
111 • RE 16 I found a lo+ve song (by Anonymous on 2007-06-07 08:26:45 GMT from France)
"Let's all gather round in a circle, hold hands and sing some nice, happy songs together! Feel the love and the sense of oneness with the universe flowing through you! Now, where did I put my tambourine?
"
John Lennon
Glad you are back; you did not only forget your tambourine, but some songs. For UBU linux lovers, I thought of
"la chanson du décervelage" A Jarry, ca 1898 (sorry, it is not localized, but Google crook-translation can be great in this case)
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/.../chanson-du-decervelage_16341.html
112 • Debian Etch for desktop??? (by Anonymous on 2007-06-07 09:07:48 GMT from Canada)
"Debain as a desktop system A good alternative to Ubuntu"
Yep, believe in your eyes, beacuse you read the above headline correctly. It's the headline of a long article written buy a guy out there who wants us to believe that Debian 4.0 Etch is "ready" for mass desktop usage.
I know it's hard to believe, and it's equally very hard to imagine as to what this guy is really up to, or talking about. But try going on the following link to read it all for yourself, and see if you can believe any of the stuff he's talking about:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/article/debian_as_a_desktop_system
113 • Automatix on Debian (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-07 10:10:49 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu officially recommends not using Automatix because it will/may screw up later upgrades. Ubuntu recommends their meta-package that installs desired third party packages. What does Debian recommend?
114 • Fedora a seriuos contender for Desktop (by Luis Medina on 2007-06-07 15:09:42 GMT from Mexico)
With version 7 i think that fedora will recover the first place to be the mos used distro and my desktop its one of the first to migrate from ubuntu to fedora.
115 • Linux vs MS Vista RAM (by jack-daniels esq on 2007-06-07 17:12:15 GMT from South Africa)
ZDNet just publish a report that Vista is going to need up to 4G addressable RAM, which makes the 64bit architecture more of a reality/necessity - simply to run properly!! OH WOW !! And all I wannadoo is write a couple letters, dump some pix on my website & check out some real fine porn!! Oh Man ... we're talking Cray Super Duper Terra Tory Yadda Yadda Yadda here ...
Oh Well - thank Gawd I have PCLOS + Beryl + Metisse
Enjoy
BR>Jack
116 • RE: # 93 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-07 21:53:55 GMT from Italy)
"I just want to ask you something: if you fork Fedora. Do you expect support from Fedora devs?
And the second question: if you fork, do you think it is ok to abuse the original's infrastructure?"
Was it a fork or was it a derivative?
To me it looks like the latter.
Red Hat/Fedora have had plenty of derivatives and nobody has ever complained, AFAIK.
117 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 02:19:09 GMT from United States)
112: Your comment makes no sense. I use Debian and it has some very good qualities. It may not be best for you, but your comment makes you look like a child. There is no reason Debian can't be useful to a wide group of people.
109: Not only that, but AMD owns ATI and the only thing Linux users have gotten is the middle finger with regard to free drivers (or even binary drivers for that matter).
118 • re 49 & gentoo & fedora (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 05:41:53 GMT from United States)
vim coloring: edit your .vimrc file with a couple of lines and you have syntax highlighting. Wow ten seconds of work to make vim as you like it, certainly less time than it took to write your post #49.
gentoo: distrowatch has been reporting gentoo's demise for awhile now due to dev infighting and flux, but on the end user side I have experienced no broken ebuilds, and the documentation was up to date. The wiki (community created content) however, needs some cleaning up, but still it's very good. The forums haven't showed any unusual increase in people leaving, it still has a healthy community. I don't think that it will fall apart anytime soon.
fedora 7: it's foss purity was so inviting, I couldn't help but soil it with nonfree software and fonts. :-) Very nice btw, just don't like them depricating the ide nomenclature (oh yes my ide hd still works, it's just I keep having to remember that I'm not using hdaN, hdc, hdd etc)
119 • Re 118 Polychrome vim and CDROMS... (by dbrion on 2007-06-08 08:53:07 GMT from France)
"vim coloring: edit your .vimrc file with a couple of lines and you have syntax highlighting. Wow ten seconds of work to make vim as you like it, certainly less time than it took to write your post #49.
"
I know: live CDROMS are meant to be as appealing as possible, not to be a mixture of half configured stuff, so that beginners try other softs... How can a beginner edit a CDROM? with a hammer?
120 • Re:#117--Debian on the desktop?? (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 09:38:40 GMT from Canada)
Well pal, just for your info, i should indicate that DEBIAN is one of the distros, which i run on my machine. And i'm happy to declare that i (for the most part) like it. In fact it's one of my fave distro.
However -- honestly speaking -- i don't believe that Debian is ready to face the music on the desktops of the masses. It can easily frustrate an average computer user and force one to throw in the towels.
Now, do you really believe that Debian is ready to be on the desktop of an average Joe, like Ubunto does nowadays?? Do you honestly believe in that??
121 • RE: #120 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 11:06:40 GMT from Germany)
"Now, do you really believe that Debian is ready to be on the desktop of an average Joe, like Ubunto does nowadays?? Do you honestly believe in that??"
I do. Ubuntu is based on debian, is it not? And if you're a debian user, you already know that many of the ease-of-use features in ubuntu (like package management and debconf that preconfigures many packages to make them Just Work) actually come from debian. Now, ubuntu has made a fine job in packaging the latest gnome for their each new release and new versions of gnome always come with some nice new features that make it easier to use. If you've got the latest gnome, your distro is easier than a distro that has an older version of gnome. (Although, lately there hasn't been too many new things in gnome -- maybe it's time to switch to kde?)
But ubuntu itself doesn't bring much new original things in addition to things they've taken from debian. They just usually have newer versions of programs, at least if you compare ubuntu to debian's stable releases. There was lately great fuss about the new init system in ubuntu (because it was one of the very few original inventions made by ubuntu developers) and everybody wrote how fast ubuntu now booted. (Only some users said they didn't notice any difference in boot times.) And then it turned out that ubuntu still uses the old sysv init scripts that can't utilize the advanced features of the new init system. LOL!
But debian has a "secret weapon" that ubuntu lacks -- the "testing" branch (which is the development branch for the next debian release, lenny). Both ubuntu and debian have a bleeding edge development branch (in debian it's called "unstable") and neither ubuntu or debian recommend ordinary users to use this bleeding edge branch. And both ubuntu and debian have stable releases, although ubuntu makes them more often and debian tests their releases more thoroughly. But only debian has a "testing" branch that is a kind of compromise between "stable" and "unstable". "Testing" is relatively up-to-date but not bleeding edge, and it's stable enough for desktop use.
I firmly believe that debian "testing" has a good chance to challenge ubuntu as a popular desktop system in the near future. I mean, why not? Debian has a good installer and the "testing" branch now gets security updates from security.debian.org. It's pretty safe to use debian "testing" because any major bugs are detected already in "unstable", so they will be fixed before they get a chance to hit "testing". Archlinux users take pride of their "rolling releases" where package archives are updated every day and the official archlinux releases are just snapshots of this "rolling release". Debian "testing" uses the same concept. All that is needed now in order to make debian "testing" better known and more accessible to new users is that debian needs to start making similar snapshot releases of "testing" as archlinux does. :-)
122 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 12:02:38 GMT from United States)
> Now, do you really believe that Debian is ready to be on the desktop of an average Joe, like Ubunto does nowadays?? Do you honestly believe in that??
Yes.
123 • re:119 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 14:07:12 GMT from United States)
It might surprise you to learn that the config files are dynamically created and loaded into ram so you can edit them without the hammer, sigh.
What is it with all this retarded arm chair ponficiations on what the beginner wants or needs? I can't imagine a beginner saying "since vi doesn't have syntax highlighting, linux is not for me." A beginner won't know what vi is, or what the live cd is.
And most importantly the beginner, not being used to having 100s of choices of OSs, hasn't learned to dismiss an entire distro on the basis of something completely trivial, such as the default setting of one of the text editors.
It's cute when someone defends these kinds of prejudiced judgments with a "I'm only thinking about the beginner", because it has nothing to do with that.
124 • post 120 (by Oiving on 2007-06-08 14:11:05 GMT from United States)
..ummm..... you said, "...i don't believe that Debian is ready to face the music on the desktops of the masses."
'Scuze me, but can anybody here REALLY, SERIOUSLY name a linux distribution that is "..ready to face the music on the desktops of the masses?"
I know we all have our favorite distro, and most here have, as I, used MANY linux distros before we came to a (probably temporary) conclusion that Sabayon or Xandros or Mint or PCLinuxOS or Zenwalk or Debian(?) or Fedora or Mepis or Suse should be tried by everyone because it "just works."
But, gosh folks, let us be objectively honest here: after over a decade of linux and hundreds of distros and thousands of developers there is still no "linux for the masses," even though, in my opinion, linux itself is for the masses for the simple reason that if you spend the time you're going to find a distro that is for YOU.
Windows can't offer that. They can only offer Windows.
125 • RE 123 vi color flame war? (by dbrion on 2007-06-08 14:43:36 GMT from France)
Cher Soldat Inconnu,
Que les flammes de l'Arc de Triomphe brillent éternellement pour toi....
"It might surprise you to learn that the config files are dynamically created and loaded into ram so you can edit them without the hammer, sigh."
And, when you unplug your computer, they are magically saved? Keep on surprising me...
"A beginner won't know what vi is, or what the live cd is
"
Perhaps he has a right to know it. You, know, they are humans, too..
a) vim is unknown, and so must be shown
b) If I show a gorgeous Windows XP based vi to a colleague, he will be glad (if he programs) and willing to know more about vim.
c) If I show him/her a lousy vi, from a balloon CD (perhaps I 'll buy the DVD...Last years Fedora was interesting), we'll lose our time .
The main point is that live CDs should be for demo or hardware testing, and not for installing (or there should be separate CDs)
BTW I did not check you for time management consistency....
BTW I wish I had learned emacs, too..
126 • Gentoo lacks leadership (by Anon on 2007-06-08 17:44:40 GMT from United States)
I have been a Gentoo user since 2004. I peruse the mailing lists as a means of keeping up to date. While I have gotten to know some of the developers of Gentoo through use or through bugzilla, I think the vast majority of devs to excellent work.
That said, when a flamewar erupts of the mailing lists -- for whatever reason -- it tends to spiral out of control because there appears to be no authority to come down and say "STFU and stop it."
The gentoo council does little in the cases, and they recently experimented with a censorship department called proctors which seemed to get poor reviews and irk first amendment freedom types.
Gentoo is a wonderful distro and fills an important need for those who like to keep up-to-date with particular software and want to live in a non-rpm environment. However, Gentoo's lack of leadership, the lack of an authority figure to come down and say "This is the way it's gonna be," leaves everyone with an opinion an equal footing when it comes to trying to espouse a policy or correct a wrong. It's great being democratic and egalitarian. However, in Gentoo, this is a bad thing, and there is no control when a sensitive situation arises, tempers flare, and long-time developers up and leave.
My 2C is that Gentoo needs to elect a chairman/woman and have that person oversee the council and get things under control. Otherwise, there is a risk of anarchy, and more core people leaving the project.
I find it interesting that several months ago, drobbins attempted to make a return, and within days (I think), packed up his marbles and left again.
It's not fun in Gentooland now, but for the average user, things proceed normally. For the future, Gentoo needs to look carefully at its leadership structure and establish firmer controls on its development community.
If not, I believe it only a matter of time till users start seeing the effect of the lack of leadership and choose to leave the distro. I know for me, the thought has crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
It's a soap opera now, and that is both unprofessional and immature.
127 • RE: 89 OLPC (by Anonymous on 2007-06-08 22:25:13 GMT from United States)
I agree to a point. It has already become too much of a polital football and they are all starting to look like loosers. It is going to be a big let down for Negroponte as he is in the middle.
The Intel machine is going to run a cross if windows ce/vista.
Today Asustek released a sub 200 dollar us intel pc.
Their logic why buy two 99 dollar OLPC for Negroponte (one for you and one for charity) get a new older chip intel linux laptop for $200.
BTW #117, AMD is no hero to linux either, I agree about the ATI drivers. They have still not released any drivers of late and even 7 year old ones will not work. They won't even release the TV out specification for s-video for their media center cards.
128 • Fedora gets no respect (by rajihammr on 2007-06-08 22:53:58 GMT from United States)
So I've noticed that an alpha of Ubuntu 7.10 and a distro devoted to that massive group of Catalanian speakers sit atop the DistroWatch home page for several days, meantime Fedora 7 slipped down and off the homepage like scoop of ice cream on a child's slide.
129 • ATI R200 open source versus ATI's FGLRX drivers on Fedora 7 (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-06-08 23:46:12 GMT from United States)
To share my personal experience regarding ATI cards with Fedora, ATI hasn't yet caught up their new drivers (not a big surprise) for compatibility, and they probably won't ever bring their legacy drivers up to date. This makes is difficult and occasionally impossible to use new ATI GPU's with 3D acceleration on Fedora 7. However, ATI's drivers probably will be available soon. As always, check with Phoronix for drivers or for patches and hacks to make drivers work right.
As for the legacy GPU's, the open source "radeon" driver in X.org 7.2 (or "7.3", I guess?) works flawlessly. GATOS, 3D acceleration, 2D acceleration, and other features all seem to work absolutely perfectly. In fact, I can now play Half-Life 2 under Wine on my old 8500DV All-In-Wonder and it runs very smoothly. Even the legacy FGLRX driver never even gave me 2D acceleration without locking up my system, (which incidentally has been fixed by Patrick Volkerding in Slackware 11.0,) had no GATOS, and sometimes rebooted my R200 based systems when doing a lot of 3D.
Way to go, DRI! Now let's see that in the new Radeon's and Nouveau, hehe.
-Benjamin Vander Jagt
130 • Re: Debian on the desktop?? (by jaakko on 2007-06-09 00:56:09 GMT from Finland)
"Now, do you really believe that Debian is ready to be on the desktop of an average Joe, like Ubunto does nowadays?? Do you honestly believe in that??"
I just read a blog note that seems to answer your question. It says:
"While Ubuntu and a standard desktop Debian both use GNOME, Debian runs faster.
And I'm not sure why. If you only read Web news about Ubuntu and Debian, you'd think that the people behind the extremely popular Ubuntu took an unformed, hard-to-use Debian and performed some kind of magic, bringing some kind of mystical computing power to the people. But Debian is surprisingly well-formed on the desktop, the install procedure is surprisingly like the alternate install of Ubuntu, and once you're up and running, there's not all that much different (except that Debian 4.0 Etch comes standard with more applications and, as I've said, runs just that much faster). And I haven't found running or maintaining Debian to be something only an "expert" can be -- especially since I'm far from being one myself.
It's marketing. Brilliant marketing."
http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2007/06/inconvenient_truths_pc_vs_mac.html
131 • Re: Debian on the desktop?? (by Turjan on 2007-06-09 10:42:56 GMT from United States)
I always thought the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu is a two-way street. Ubuntu makes use of all software development of the Debian Project, whereas all ease-of-use improvements by the Ubuntu developers make their way back into Debian. Isn't that true?
In principle, I found that most Linux distributions get more and more easy to use. They also get more and more similar. The main differences are the package managers and installers. The rest comes mostly from the same development teams, anyway, just slightly adjusted to the respective distros.
132 • a bug in this issue :-) (by Dmitry on 2007-06-09 11:16:34 GMT from Russian Federation)
Guess this should be fixed:
"Summary of expected upcoming releases
...
* 2007-10-31: Fedora 7"
Please replace "Fedora 7" with "Fedora 8"
Dmitry
133 • Tests en double aveugle. (by dbrion on 2007-06-09 13:25:58 GMT from France)
Some posts gave me the idea of asking :
why are some Linuxen tested and reported *without* their names (they could be given one month later=> avoiding servers overwork?). This is used for comfort-linked products, to avoid affective side-effects/ biases... This could also be a basis for a game (guess which Linux I've tested, answer some subsidiary questions, and you ll win......).
134 • Happy 6th Anniversary (by Beatnik on 2007-06-09 20:54:26 GMT from Panama)
Hey Ladislav,
Just wanted to thank you for Distrowatch, I check this site everyday, since I started to play with Linux this year, it has been very informative for me, I love Linux, and hope someday to learn it in a more advanced level. Well everyday I learn something new, and Distrowatch is the first site in my search for knowledge.
Thanks for Distrowatch and Happy 6th Birthday
135 • RE: 127 • RE: 89 OLPC (by Anonymous on 2007-06-10 06:02:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
Can you provide a link to this sub US$200 Asustek computer so we can compare to the OLPC and Classmate?
136 • Re:135 (by Beatnik on 2007-06-10 11:41:35 GMT from Panama)
Hope this helps:
Comparison chart including OLPC, Intel Classmate, Asus EEE, Palm Foleo:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Ultra-cheap_ultra-mobiles_matrix
Flash presentation of the Asus EEE:
http://event.asus.com/eeepc/
Quote from:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=73003
"Taipei, Taiwan, June 5, 2007 – Majority of activities conducted on the laptops today are Internet related. Whether it´s checking emails, reading news, communicating with others or simply utilizing online share spaces, Internet usage has become a big part of the daily computing operations - for both work and fun. To accommodate the increasing total Internet computing demands as well as growing number of users, both young and old, ASUS launches the revolutionary Eee PC to provide users with a new mobile Internet experience like never before.
EeePC 701 Specification
Display：7"
CPU & Chipset: Intel mobile CPU & chipset
OS: Linux/ Microsoft Windows XP compatible
Communication: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet; 56K modem
WLAN: WiFi 802.11b/g
Graphic: Intel UMA
Memory: 512MB, DDR2-400
Storage: 4/ 8/ 16GB Flash
Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
Audio: Hi-Definition Audio CODEC; Built-in stereo speaker; Built-in microphone
Battery Life: 3hrs (4 cells: 5200mAh, 2S2P)
Dimension & Weight: 22.5 x 16.5 x 2.1~3.5cm, 0.89kg
137 • OLPC : Not only the price should be looked at (by dbrion on 2007-06-10 13:29:46 GMT from France)
But a reasonable assumption about life duration: the fact that the OLPC is water (and dust) tight interests geeks,as it can/will be able be used for long durations outside a room (for burglar intrusion detection/animals detection and counting with a web cam, say...) .
Manufacturers are very pudique / silencious about this "detail", and consumer who type/clicliplay on the sea side, say, can have a laptop broken with bad connections ....
Normally, both common sense and warranties of an ordinary PC prohibit working out of a room, and one has to multiply prices by two or three to have a laptop one can carry anywhere, against any kind of weather.....
Specifical 32 bits hardware (armadeus/ FOX+etrax; both are short series, Linux KErnel powered and popular chips, easy to google search) are, in an unprotected version (the mere motherboard, without even plugs) about 90(resp 160) E$; one has to add #50 E$ for plugs and a bare bone supply ( I do not know the price of a LCD, which should perhaps be added, too...). Making a reliable, *long lasting* stuff out of this can be very expensive (I have no idea of what must be *added* again).
BTW Thanks Robert for reminding the OLPC (I hope I did not misunderstand) is not just a chip powering a Linux kernel, but a pedagogical project ; one consequence IMO of this objective/goal can be that chidren should not have to worry about their hardware, and that the hardware should last as long as they go to school..
and learn some basic operrations (divide a price by the life expectation/duration, si le cendrier ne se remplit pas)
RE 127 Even a 199 US$ price for the OLPC would not be a charity price (at least, it depends who benefits from charity...)
138 • OpenMoko Linux phone news (by Beatnik on 2007-06-10 15:38:09 GMT from Panama)
Hey, I like this new wave of Linux powered hardware: Laptops, Wizpy mp3 player, and now OpenMoko Neo1973 phone.
If you are planning to buy an iphone, be sure to check this Linux phone with touch screen like the iPhone:
http://www.texyt.com/FIC+OpenMoko+$350+open+Linux+mobile+phone+launch+00100
"$350 open Linux mobile phone on target for September launch.
The world's first open source mobile phone will be available this September priced at $350, its developers have confirmed. The FIC Neo1973's final printed circuit board design is complete, said OpenMoko staff at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, today.
The touch screen 2.5g phone offers WiFi and GPS. CPU and memory are both being improved or expanded from earlier specifications, said William Lai of OpenMoko's community development department. “Early users and the development community have asked us for more power”, he explained.
Like Apple's iPhone, the Neo1973 is controlled entirely by its touch screen. However, given the importance of the touch interface, this is a key area still in need of improvement prior to launch, OpenMoko staff admitted.
In a brief hands on test at Computex, the touch screen proved difficult to use, responding consistently only when tapped or scaped with a fingernail, and often ignoring input with the wider area of the fingertip. The device can also be operated more easily with a supplied stylus, staff said, but the phone does not have a clip or docking bay to hold this.
original specs (they plan to improve them):
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Neo1973_Hardware
139 • XP + WM5 + Various Distros (by Jack Daniels Esq on 2007-06-10 21:28:19 GMT from South Africa)
Hey Gang - anyone have a WM5 alternative ? My new IPAQ is now an expensive Bubble Popper that I use on the Throne
Cannot use it for anything. Dont care if its Beta !! Anything !! Please.
Have finally dropped everything XP/2K in favor of PCLOS - which kicks butt so hard it hurts - even the branches dont come close & imitation is the ultimate compliment.
Seriously - I must have used/installed 60/100 distros & gave up on them all. Too kinky & unstable - even Mandriva started to blow. This Distro just gets better with time - the upgrade path is beautiful too. Robust !! Even with Beryl running - say what Vista? - and you simply overdrive it, with say 10 screen, it is easy to fix X, with 3/4 keystrokes.
Anyone with a little more journalistic expertise than this Smarty-Farty who writes your reviews ? Have tried reading them - seriously - but its like reading a lousy restaurant review [one you just ate at, that sucked] where the writer lauds on and on and on and on about the wonderful 9 course meal that he & his whale just scarfed, plus the 2 bottles of wine that he cannot pronounce, nor afford & he thinks that nobody knows that he was just comped the entire meal - If you get my drift ??
Later >> Jack
Number of Comments: 139
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