 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 206, 11 June 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 24th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week marks the start of a slower season on the distribution release calendar; all major new versions are now out and many users have been enjoying their newly updated Linux desktops. But is there still anything exciting going on the distro scene? You bet! This week's DistroWatch Weekly asks the readers to comment on their "distro hopping" habits, reports about Linux Format's annual distribution mega-test, links to an open source software article in The Economist, and reports about the new linuX-gamers live DVD. Finally, don't miss your chance to suggest new packages to be tracked after the upcoming DistroWatch's package database update later this month. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Featured Story |
Distro hopping
How many distributions have you run on your main desktop system during the past two years? If your answer is "more than one", then you are probably not alone. It seems that the current trend among Linux users -- or at least among those of you who frequent DistroWatch -- is to change a distribution every few months.
Take a look at this piece of statistical evidence from this site's web logs:
The two tables compare the percentage of distributions used to visit DistroWatch.com during the last month (May 2007) and the first 10 days of this month (June 2007), as logged by the web server. The last column of each table represents the percentage of visitors using a certain distribution; as an example, among the Linux users who visited DistroWatch during May 2007, 28.7% used Ubuntu to browse these pages.
Now let's observe the trends. As we can see, some distributions recorded significantly higher market share during the first 10 days of June than during May; most notably Fedora (up from 3.6% to 6.0%), PCLinuxOS (up from 5.6% to 6.5%) and Linux Mint (up from 1.8% to 2.8%). It can't be a coincidence that all three of them released new major versions towards the end of last month (PCLinuxOS 2007 was released on 21 May, Linux Mint 3.0 on 30 May and Fedora 7 on 31 May).
These figures seem to suggest that many of you who visit DistroWatch regularly switched to a new distribution in the last couple of weeks. openSUSE seems to be the biggest victim of this trend (down from 5.8% to 5.3%), but all other distributions that did not release a new version recently also dropped in terms of market share.
So here are a few questions for this week's discussion: Did you switch to a new distribution recently? If so, why? Did you just test one of the new releases and liked it so much that you decided to keep it? Or did you find it exciting to run an operating system with more up-to-date software? If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason? Are there any readers who have used the same distro for the past two years? Please discuss below.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Distributions enter "shoulder season", Linux Format's distro showdown, The Economist on Ubuntu, Xandros - business as usual
With the release of Fedora 7 in late May, we have now entered the "shoulder season" of the distribution release calendar. With the possible exception of Slackware 11.1 (or will it be 12.0?), no major project is expected to publish a new version before around late September or early October 2007. Last week was a perfect example of this slow-down - only two stable versions (one of which was a regional distribution catering for a specific language group) were announced during the week. Nevertheless, there is still a lot to look forward to before the next major release wave generates new excitement; the upcoming SabayonLinux 3.4 is in heavy development and should be out before long, while the openSUSE project is about to complete its fifth development build of the forthcoming version 10.3. So don't stop visiting DistroWatch even if things are slightly slower than usual - we'll keep bringing you news about any interesting ideas and exciting projects as we learn about them!
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  Linux Format has published its annual "distro showdown", a comprehensive test of the most popular desktop Linux distributions available today. This year's evaluation included eight distributions -- Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Mandriva Linux 2007, PCLinuxOS 2007 TR4, SabayonLinux 3.3, Slackware Linux 11.0, openSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu 7.04 -- and covered various aspects, such as security, hardware compatibility, performance, community and software selection. The review gives preliminary standings in each category before concluding the test with a final ranking. And the winner? Ubuntu, which won three of the five categories, finished as the top distribution, ahead of openSUSE and Debian. The only categories that Ubuntu did not win was security (openSUSE was rated the best here) and performance, where the top prize was snatched by PCLinuxOS.
It is always a pleasure to see a mainstream, non-technology publication reporting about Linux and open source software. The latest issue of The Economist caries a long article entitled Bringing free software down to earth, in which the author introduces the readers to Mark Shuttleworth and his vision of the world of software: "Rather than seeing open-source software as one of two competing ideologies and focusing on the struggle, Ubuntu thinks about the user. Ubuntu is a complete bundle of software, from operating system to applications and programming tools, that is updated every six months and, says Mr Shuttleworth, will always be free. Taking the hassle out of open source is intended to move adoption beyond politically motivated enthusiasts and encourage mass adoption of the software on its merits." Read the rest of the article here.
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 Xandros, a company which was created from the ashes of Corel Linux in 2002, but which has failed to excite the Linux community in recent years, has finally entered the headlines of Linux publications. Unfortunately, for the wrong reasons. After concluding a business, technical and Intellectual Property collaboration deal with Microsoft, many free software enthusiasts expressed their dismay over the agreement (see this article by Groklaw or this one by ITWire). But even before this deal, Xandros had never been a community player (it has failed to release a single piece of its own software under a free licence) and the only raison d'être of this Canadian company was to profit from free software. And while its first two releases of Xandros Desktop brought some interesting advancements into desktop Linux, the company later abandoned its innovative spirit and desktop enthusiasm to focus on business Linux instead. Disappointing, to say the least, from a company that held so much promise in its early days....
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Here at DistroWatch we have talked about the so-called Linux web sites that happily disseminate sponsored anti-Linux propaganda from their pages. Last week, the Free Software Magazine published a parody on the subject of Microsoft's ongoing smear campaign against Linux, targeting Linux news sites: "...you want to place your ad on articles and pages that relate to your competitors, so you can have that juxtaposition sitting right there. An article about your opponent? YOU NEED TO BE THERE. My suggestion is to target all of your opposition sites as well, and offer huge sums for advertising space on their sites. Some of them will go for it because they can't afford not to." Even if you disagree with the DistroWatch position that accepting such advertisements for publishing on Linux news sites is an insult to the community of Linux developers and users, this is still an entertaining article to read. Enjoy!
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| Released Last Week |
STUX GNU/Linux 1.0
STUX GNU/Linux 1.0, a live CD based on Slackware's "current" tree, has been released: "STUX GNU/Linux 2007 (version 1.0) released." From the changelog: "Upgraded to Slackware current as at 1 June 2007 and KNOPPIX live CD 5.1.1 (kernel 2.6.19); fixed problem with installation on SATA hard disks; all STUX utilities deeply reviewed; NVIDIA proprietary driver updated to 1.0-9755 + legacy driver 1.0-9631 for old cards; save live CD persistent configuration on ReiserFS partitions; install compressed image on ReiserFS partitions; Acx wireless firmware upgraded; fully integrates with other pre-installed operating systems; Compiz 0.5.0; fully VMware/QEMU compatible." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement and changelog.
Càtix 1.3
Càtix is a Debian-based live DVD with support for Catalan, a widely-used language spoken in Spain's Catalonia and some neighbouring regions. Càtix 1.3 was announced earlier today; some of the important changes and new features include: read and write support for NTFS partitions; X.Org 7.2, pre-configured for 3D desktop effects with AIGLX and Beryl; use of Unicode as the default character encoding; Unionfs 2.0 overlay file system compressed with Squashfs, providing 4.5 GB of software on a 1.6 GB DVD images; auto-detection of USB storage devices; Linux kernel 2.6.21 with KDE 3.5.7, GNOME 2.18.1, OpenOffice.org 2.2.0, Iceweasel 2.0.0.3 and many other applications. Please read the comprehensive release notes (in Catalan) for detailed information about the new release.
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Development and unannounced releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
The annual package database update
As has become customary, June is the month when the list of packages tracked by DistroWatch gets updated to include new packages that you would like to see listed in the distribution tables. If you have a package that you believe is worth tracking on DistroWatch, please either email us directly (email address at the bottom of this page) or leave a comment in the forum below. Please note, that not all requested packages will be added, but those that receive the most requests will be considered for inclusion.
One set of packages that have been requested frequently during the past few months are the various 3D desktops, especially Compiz and Beryl, but also Metisse. However, with the ongoing merge between Compiz and Beryl, it isn't quite clear what the end result will be; will Compiz and Beryl still exist after the two projects have merged or will there be a new package? Maybe some of our readers who follow the project can provide suggestions as to which package(s) to track. Also, does anybody use Metisse? Is it worth listing?
Several packages have undergone a name change or have been forked due to various issues and these will be renamed in the DistroWatch tables shortly; here is the list:
The new package list will be finalised and announced next Monday, 18 June.
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Enlisy. Enlisy is a Linux distribution optimised for i686 processors (Pentium II or better), with InitNG as its init system and Apport as its package manager. It is currently aimed at the more experienced Linux user.
- Linux For Clinics. Linux For Clinics is an Ubuntu-based distribution with the goal of providing a Linux-based OS with a complete software package aimed at medical professionals and hospitals as a free and complete alternative to proprietary software.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 June 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Xandros Linux OCE (by Kees on 2007-06-11 09:28:15 GMT from Netherlands)
There is a Free (downloadable) version of Xandros available:
http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=4178
2 • Suggested packages (by linbetwin on 2007-06-11 09:48:53 GMT from Romania)
Ladislav, how about tracking some accessibility application lice orca and gnome-mag?
3 • Distro Hopping (by Mark W. Tomlinson on 2007-06-11 09:49:30 GMT from United States)
Even though I'm a self-avowed distro "junkie", I've been running Ubuntu as my primary desktop since versiion 4.10 (Warty Warthog). I have tried numerous other distros in that time - from live CD/DVD, installed to my second HDD or "sandboxed" on a scratch HDD.
Why? I like to look around, see what other camps are doing - and just plain variety (one of the reasons I more-or-less left Microsoft). So, why haven't I switched to the latest "gee-whiz" distro? I've yet to find anything that I'm as comfortable with as Ubuntu.
While no distro is perfect, I've yet to find another that matches my needs, wants and comfort level as well as Ubuntu does.
4 • Corr. #2 (by linbetwin on 2007-06-11 09:50:54 GMT from Romania)
I meant to say, "accessibility applications like orca and gnome-mag."
5 • distro hopping (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 09:53:30 GMT from New Zealand)
I've consistenly used Ubuntu in its latest version since soon after Hoary arrived, but where earlier I shared OS time between Windows and Linux I now share OS time between Linux and BSD. I often download a newly announced distro/BSD and will most likely try the Live CD version or an installable version in VMWare. My most recent interest is in the growing number of MythTV-optimised versions of distros like Knoppix, Fedora and Ubuntu. I don't change my main distro much, but I will experiment with new arrivals just to see what is what. Fedora's latest Moonshine got an extended run as the Live CD desktop effects work for me, but I don't plan making any major shift from Debian--BSD is my alternative OS option.
6 • Distro Hopping (by Sander on 2007-06-11 09:55:56 GMT from Belgium)
I was a distro hopper myself, trying everything I could find, from Slack to PCLinuxOS, from Suse to Vector.
But since I installed Ubuntu Edgy I found that I just don't want to do it anymore. With any other distro it seems like I just try to get it as good as Ubuntu...with more effort and troubleshooting.
Mind you, I'm not saying Ubuntu is the best, just that it's what's best for me....like poster # said, it's just what's most comfortable.
7 • who cares about Xandros (by Marius on 2007-06-11 09:58:24 GMT from Romania)
With so many good , free and completely open distros out there I think Xandros is in a bad position right now. The only way for a distro to succed is to go fully open. Suse have realised this and Mandriva have not , which is probably part of the cause for their recent decline.
8 • Swiched openSUSE->Kubuntu (by pp on 2007-06-11 10:00:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Talking about recent switches.. I very recently went from openSUSE to Kubuntu, after having been a pretty solid SUSE supporter for couple of years.
The main reasons were:
1) I had messed up my system and there was a need to reinstall, no matter what.
2) I had problems allocating a large amount of memory for a program under Crossover office in SUSE, which I for some reason managed to do in Ubuntu. Basically a small technical problem that I I couldn't resolve "fast enough" in SUSE.
3) I've always liked APT, and disliked SUSE's "rug" tool, which is slower, even if it works like APT.
But I'm not a crazy distro hopper - my partner uses the same desktop and I try to keep things stable. I've always been on KDE, essentially only using Mandrake, SUSE and now Kubuntu over the last 4 years..
On a more general note - I think DW readers are the "exploring elite" of Linux users - hard crowd to please and quick to switch. That's good for competition and evolution of the Linux desktop! Let's keep the distribution makers on their toes!
9 • Distro Hopping (by Robster on 2007-06-11 10:09:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
I switch distros a lot – mainly between Debian and Mandriva based distros.
I also seem to do is switch between Linux and Windows on a regular basis.
10 • Suggested packages (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 10:24:56 GMT from France)
I would suggest qemu or VirtualBox, as emulation applications.
11 • Distro Hopping (by Nick on 2007-06-11 10:25:19 GMT from United States)
It's extremely difficult to add a new app to any linux distro that you have. When you go to one of the repositories, download the app, and then try to install it you find out that it depends on this library and that supporting app, which you don't have, which in turn depend on that library and that supporting app, which you don't have, which depend on that kernel, which you don't have, and on and on ad infinitum.
Going to a completely new distro is a quick temporary fix to this dilemma.
This, by the way, seems to be the achilles heel to the free software concept. When developers don't have a financial interest in having their software installable and usable, they could care less about same.
12 • Packages splitting is the problem (by she on 2007-06-11 10:33:47 GMT from Austria)
I do switch distros a lot, although I clearly have several favourites (rpath linux, pclinux os and especially zenwalk)
The biggest problem of Linux is that distributions cripple software packages. Often you have to install headers, often you have to find out the name of a package, and so on.
This is annoying.
If you compile from source into a Gobolinux-like hierarchy, the overall system design becomes a lot cleaner. I must know because I myself use similar scripts, and since I keep all packages in a central database, i dont have any real problem with dependency hell.
If I alone can do it, I expect big distributions to be able to do so too AND make it EASY for the user.
But none of the big distributions make it easy for the user.
They make it difficult.
How do you ever want to beat the simplicity of Windows if you make life harder for your user?
Stop acting as if you are better than the user, and DO HELP the user.
(This goes to the big distributions)
13 • Distro Hopping (by David on 2007-06-11 10:35:07 GMT from United States)
Good article!
I regularly distro Hop .. but of late have pretty much settled on Ubuntu and PCLinux OS 2007 over the Last 2 years I've tried all of the following.. Fedora core 6 & Fedora 7; SuSE 10.1 /10.2 ; Vector 5.8 various live Cd's Puppy , DSL and Ubuntu & PCLinuxOS All have their advantages but the ones I keep coming back to are PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu.. Just have never found a package management system better than APT and these distros are the easiest to configure for my particular needs. right now I'm using ubuntu 7.04 CE Which gives me easy access to some of the tools I need every day.
Though I've pretty much settled on these two distros I will continue to check out the others from time to time.. just out of curiosity. Fedora would be a favorite and so would SuSE if they'd just change to a better software packaging system.. Fedora and SuSE both take about 3 times as long to get configured the way I want them.
Just my 2cents worth..
cheers , David
14 • Distro Hopping (by Simon on 2007-06-11 10:36:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have a couple of HD's on my machine.I've stuck with FreeBSD on one of them for the best part of a year now.I tend to hop around using the other HD - I just like to see what's out there and how it performs
15 • Distro Hopping (by zenarcher on 2007-06-11 10:38:44 GMT from United States)
Over the past two years, I have run SUSE and Fedora here. I like them both a lot. In fact, I have multiple computers here and currently run SUSE on two desktops and one laptop, while running Fedora 7 on a third desktop system.
I find SUSE a bit easier to install and configure than Fedora and find SUSE to be somewhat easier to find latest package updates. I'm strictly a KDE desktop user. I'm perfectly happy with either SUSE or Fedora.
I've tried Ubuntu and Kbuntu three or four times during the past two years and just have not been successful in implementing them. I've tried Automatix with them and hosed my system every time. I know that a large number of people are very happy with Ubuntu, but it just doesn't seem to be for me.
I started Linux with Mandriva (then Mandrake) and I'm just familiar and comfortable with an RPM based distro, I think. I'll be staying with SUSE and Fedora, probably continuing to use both.
16 • to #11 on Distro Hopping (by pp on 2007-06-11 10:39:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
"It's extremely difficult to add a new app to any linux distro that you have...Going to a completely new distro is a quick temporary fix to this dilemma."
That's true of the latest versions of the programs (not available in repos), unless you use something like Gentoo or Arch. This problem is also bigger if you use a small distro with a small repo - that's why big distros (like debian or ubuntu) always give you an edge.
But I think that the reasons for distro hopping are not just negative. I think the reality is that the desktop linux scene evolves at an amazing pace - there is lots of new stuff to see and experience every quarter of the year.
17 • Distro hopping (by Debian n00b on 2007-06-11 10:40:04 GMT from Slovenia)
It's logical to see WinXP users on this sit so much. They're mostly fed up with XP, Vista is either to expensive to buy (or upgrade your hardware) or people just realized that there's other OSes than Windows. For me the first site to come, when I was looking for distros, was Distrowatch. I used to hop around alot-tried everything from Vector, Zenwalk, Slack, Ubuntu, openSuse, Dreamlinux. So I was working with Ubuntu for quite some time (at least year and half).But....
I recently switched from Ubuntu to Debian Etch-reason? I thought I give it a go and see what happens (Etch was just released and I wondered how Ubuntu's "daddy" will work). I found it to be faster than Ubuntu (and not by a small factor), and since I was used to Ubuntu it wasn't so hard for me to do "the switch". Hardware worked great, so why not? Even got Debian on my aging PC (433MHz, 192 ram, 8MB "graphics card"), but I put on E17. So for me hopping days are over. Debian is the one-maitanance is easy, works flawlessly day after day-I have my PC running for average of three/four weeks and I can't believe how responsive it still is (if I have XP running for 3/4 days I MUST do a restart).
18 • distro hopping (by simon on 2007-06-11 10:43:22 GMT from New Zealand)
i'm hopelessly addicted to exploring new linux distros, but haven't hopped for well over a year, as i always wind up coming back to slackware, and can no longer be bothered setting everything up how i like it only to discover that the distro sucks more than slackware and so winding up back where i started.
i do get the attraction of ubuntu...it feels very friendly, polished and well integrated...but it also feels like swimming through custard, everything is so damned slow. my slack boots in about ten seconds and never crashes, and doesn't suffer from the "achilles heel" nick mentions above (or at least, i've never come across a package that didn't work nicely in slackware after building it from source).
which is not to say i'm completely happy with it...i miss gentoo's portage, and would love to be part of a huge growing community like ubuntu...but for now i'm not hopping...just visiting distrowatch every day and waiting for that perfect distro to appear.
and yes, i have tried arch. :)
19 • LinuX-gamers Live DVD (by REMF on 2007-06-11 10:51:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Linux-Gamers should add Scorched 3D and Wormux to their gaming live-DVD.
20 • Packages (by Pumpino on 2007-06-11 10:55:11 GMT from Australia)
I'd like DW to track Kaffeine. It's the main media player in KDE!
As for distro hopping, I must have tried 50+ distros over the years. At the end of the day, I always end up sticking with PCLOS and Kubuntu as my main distros. I still like the excitement of trying a new distro though and waiting to see if it has the potential to earn a permanent spot on my machine.
One distro I've admired from afar is Arch. I like its philosophy - fast, simple, great package management with bleeding edge packages. However, having to setup up everything from scratch leads to me discarding it every time. Networking, audio drivers, etc.
21 • Distro Hopping (by simplyjat on 2007-06-11 10:56:14 GMT from Singapore)
I am a distro hopper, to an extent that i have 13 different linux distro's on my machine a any given time. currently I have Sabayon, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Frugalware, openSUSE, slackware, Arch, PC Linux, Centos, Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo, and then i have FreeBSD.
They all have there positive and negative aspects. I work of one distro for a week/fortnight and then switch to another and so on. Sometimes They all are provide really good experience.
I think the hype given to Ubuntu is really big and it does not deserve the same. It is not the most user friendly distro available, it is leading in terms of community support, but i think that is also fading. Have anyone visited the forums lately and noticed how noisy they are ? Is it really good for a distro to have noisy community forum ?
I installed Feisty the day it was released, on my new dual core workstation. And i was disappointed. The installer page where you select mount points degraded for eft. It is non-intuitive and counter productive. Why do you need to refresh all the devices when you edit only one. And why do you want to hinder mount points editing directly. With Eft you could directly edit the mount point but the fiesty first you have to click edit, then edit in separate dialog and after that whole screen will be refreshed. I seriously do not know how can someone come up with this idiotic interface.
This was not the first things. second comes the /etc/hosts bug. Is ubuntu sleeping. why is this simple configuration bug still there in feisty. Yeah I know that there is a workaround, but the workaround does not mention what to do in case of domain name. Its just plain lame unfriendliness. .
Then Feisty still fails to install on AMD X2/ATI combination.
I don't want to start a distro flame war but before saying ubuntu is good people should look at debian. Debian is 1 up from ubuntu.....
22 • open source v. microsoft (by conrad on 2007-06-11 10:56:25 GMT from United States)
If you want a no-brainer system Bill Gates is more than eager to give it to you at a cost. Everything in Windows will cost you financially or restrict your freedom to do things your way. Microsoft's position is that the user is dumb and lazy and wants the easy way out. Bill will give you just that at a fee. For those who complain that things in Linux or BSD are difficult at times, you forget that everything is documented and there are info and man pages for you to read. Open Source operating systems are a learning experience that eventually leads to freedom of choice. I am 57 years old and I have been using a computer for only two years. I have built my own towers and I have tried a lot of operating systems. I would rather struggle with my ignorance and read and learn than to continue making Bill Gates richer. And if you haven't realized it, Windows can be cracked a lot easier than any operating system. If that wasn't the case, why must you pay for security and still end up with a system that can be cracked with a virus or worse? I would rather struggle with a problem for weeks than return to being helpless with Microsoft and just mail Bill Gates my wallet. I just pray I live long enough to learn how to program in c and c++. I also hope to live long enough to somehow contribute to the open source community instead of just taking the way I do. I also cannot overstress how much admiration I have for the programmers that maintain the packages so many of you complain about. And if I had one hero in the computing world it would be Richard Stallman and Linus who helped make all of this possible. I am also awed by the people who headed the UNIX development like Thompson and Richie. So, before you get yourself worked up about software packages and other problems with Linux and BSD, please remember what Microsoft offers and how much money is involved-your money.
23 • @ #11: (by Vincent on 2007-06-11 11:00:25 GMT from Belgium)
I don't think I understand what you mean. Most distro's out there have a decent package manager that resolve all dependencies for you, no? Maybe I'm spoiled with apt-get (Debian at work) or pacman (Arch Linux at home), but I have very little trouble getting software to work.
And unlike in windows where you have to find a good program, go to the website, download, double click and go through the install routine, all I have to do is fire up my terminal, search for a a package (command1) and install the package (command2).
24 • Switching to PCLOS (by Randy on 2007-06-11 11:14:47 GMT from Germany)
If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason?>>>
Yes, I switched from openSUSE to PCLOS and I'm NOT going to go back! The reason - Suse is finely polished, but extremely bloated distro, with very unresponsive desktop. I find PCLOS very polished as well, but with wonderful performance. In former times I was very impressed with the Arch philosophy, actually I still am... however it takes a lot of time to configure Arch. IMHO the performance of PCLOS is comparable to that of VectorLinux, PCLOS is a good compromise and perhaps the best package-based distro today. Respect, TEXTAR!
25 • Distro Hopping (by Rick on 2007-06-11 11:15:25 GMT from United States)
I now have the ultimate distro hopping setup without changing my distro. I use vmware server running on my everyday Kubuntu box to try out distros and once and a while run xp from another hard drive. Consequently, if a distro will not install on a virtual machine, it doesn't get much notice from me. So far, I haven't seen anything that would make me switch, but I have lots of fun trying different distros. I also get ideas for packages to install on Kubuntu, such as Tasty Menu from Linux Mint. Now my other linux machines are kept more for backup than testing.
26 • OS hopping (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 11:15:52 GMT from France)
For leisure, I hop regularly between
XP (stable: 80% of the apps I use are GPLd, with a nice feature: they have been carefully ported, and are sometimes superior to their Linux equivalent) and a
Mandriva 2006, I do not want to upgrade (she is enough for my hardware) as my favorite apps are compiled by me, without any [other than me ] substacted value go between...
SourceForge should be acknowledged for their *serious* contribution to Free Software, whatever the OS...
At work, I have RedHat derived s, HP-Uxes and XP => the traditionnal way of installing (no Linux distr supports) is the best I can use and leads to ..
The choice of *not* distro hopping is supported by tens of VMplayer or qemu installations (I find rescue systems: if I cannot buy a Mandriva, I can be sure a compilation chain will work on any Linux with the right libraries).
This way of testing does not seem such biased, as 3D effects (I can see from live CDs and show) are not that interesting -for me and pple I show these innovating effects- (they seem new; tout ce qui brille n'est pas or...).
The fast release cycles are another deep reason *not* to distro hop: compare the length of Mandriva's 2006 errata (one yearly release) with Mandrivas 2007.0+2007.1 (this is the counterexample) or with Debian's4.0 (which has slow releases, and is therefore laughed at)...
As far as specific ways of package handling, I try to avoid them as much as possible; they can lead to monopols, and are not portable....
27 • Distro hopping (by Gianfranco Peducci on 2007-06-11 11:18:12 GMT from Italy)
I'm using Ubuntu, Debian etch, and Vector.
I've tried in the past several distros SuSE (no thanks), Fedora (no, no thanks), PCLinuxOS (uhm.. no thanks), and many others.
I'm still loking for a distro for old machines, but hv not taken any decision yet.
28 • No subject (by fjohn on 2007-06-11 11:19:14 GMT from Greece)
Recently I went from Kubuntu to shine new Fedora 7. After I have been install the last Kubuntu 7.04 (not so good...), and before goes again to openSUSE 10.2 ( a stable and always a good one distro) I deside to try the new Fedora. Wow... this distro is REALLY good, solid, with a lot of new goodies.
I keep this distro for a while (probably until new openSUSE 10.3 or upcoming release of Freespire 2.0)
29 • XP User = me (by meep on 2007-06-11 11:20:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am an XP user using distrowatch to try and gage people's opinions on different distros. I have decided to change to Ubuntu or maybe Linux Mint after my exams.
I am changing to linux and I might to a bit of hoping just to see what is out there because I don't want to change to Vista with all its DRM built-in and mainly because of its monopoly on the market. I have to say that I have been strongly encouraged by the quality of some applications such as GIMP which on my windows XP all for free!
The turning point for my was when I tried a Ubuntu Live-CD and it all worked first time!!! Live-CDs are quality and are the best thing to convert users to GNU/Linux.
The only thing that I am going to miss is Counter Strike Source and MATLAB so I'll have to dual boot.
Anyway I thought that I might encourage you guys with that.
Meep
30 • Distro Hopping (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 11:24:34 GMT from Germany)
That list of distros that distrowatch visitors actually use is quite interesting and it's easier to read than the plain web log statistics in percentages (listed on the awstats page). Maybe this easy-to-read version of the list would deserve its own page?
"Did you switch to a new distribution recently?"
I'm past my distro-hopping days. I've used ubuntu in the past but now I prefer debian "testing" (with some bits from "unstable"). Overall, ubuntu is a very nice distro and they've improved upon debian on some areas but I also feel that ubuntu does some things worse than debian. Debian is the *real thing* while ubuntu is just a modification of debian, and that's why I prefer debian as my main desktop.
Choosing my main desktop distro wasn't too difficult. But linux makes it easy to dual boot between two distros and choosing the second distro for my dual-booting setup was a bit more difficult choice. Ubuntu, although very nice, is too similar to debian to make it worth the effort to dual-boot between these two distros. After shuffling through half a dozen or so candidates, I was left with archlinux and sourcemage.
In the end I chose sourcemage because compiling everything from source code seems to fit well with the "open source" idea of linux. And the "sorcery" package management in sourcemage makes it exceptionally easy to install applications this way. And sourcemage is refreshingly different from debian, so I can switch between these two distros whenever I get bored. I've had this dual-booting setup between debian and sourcemage for almost a year now and I'm still very happy with it.
I still read distrowatch weekly regularly to view the latest news from the other distros but I just don't see what benefits trying some other distro could offer in addition to my own "perfect setup." :-)
31 • Re 29 Perhaps you will be missing Counterstrike bu there are clones (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 11:31:32 GMT from France)
"The only thing that I am going to miss is Counter Strike Source and MATLAB so I'll have to dual boot"
For Matlab substitutes, you might have a look at (decreasing compatibility order) :
Octave (shipped with Suze and Fedora; compiles well under Mandriva and Cygwin, Windows installer)
Scilab (converts code from Matlab; compiles under Linux; Windows installers..) or
even, with some rewrite,
R (*.deb and *.rpm, I think, Fedora and Suze installable, very nice under Windows...)
You are right, anyway, to keep dualboating...
32 • Distro hopping, propaganda (by psic on 2007-06-11 11:32:04 GMT from Slovenia)
I used to distro-hop quite a bit, and visited Distrowatch all the time. I ususally had two distros installed, and played around with different desktops as well (Xfce, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox...). But I've not switched distros now for about two years, ever since I first installed Gentoo.
Why? Basically because I've grown so familiar with it. I've long gone past the 'tinkering' stage of any distro install and am now happily just using my computer. I've also installed it on my server, where I started out with Debian, but again, I am so familiar with Gentoo it was easier and quicker.
If I was installing a desktop now, I'd probably go with OpenSuse or one of the Ubuntu flavours, possibly Linux Mint. These distros seem very easy to use (I've tried both on a separate partition), very user-friendly.
The only thing I'm wary of when distrohopping is very small distributions which are often on the brink of dying out. Gentoo has increadible documentation and support, and switching to something which doesn't...
As for anti-linux propaganda on linux sites, I totally agree that it is an insult to the Linux community. I work part-time as an IT journalist and I can't stand poorly-written articles, even worse are articles by people who have obviously been bought. Seeing a site about Linux and open source with tons of Flash adds jumping around everywhere just gives me a headache, especially if it's for commercial operating systems and the like.
DistroWatch, however, is IMHO one of the best Linux sites bar none. The info is usefull, and monday just wouldn't be the same without a DistroWatch weekly :)
33 • About distro hopping... (by Caraibes on 2007-06-11 11:35:05 GMT from Dominican Republic)
-Did you switch to a new distribution recently ?
-No, not for my main box....
-If so, why ?
-I moved my slower PC's from Vector to Debian Etch.. Very happy with it, I am using mainly Fluxbox, but sometimes booting back to Gnome for the settings...
-Did you just test one of the new releases and liked it so much that you decided to keep it ?
-Well, yes, I upgraded my main box from FC6 to F7, and I was very pleased, I plan to keep it that way until F8... The upgrade was done with a clean-install... F7 is VERY NICE !
-Or did you find it exciting to run an operating system with more up-to-date software?
-Indeed, I was getting really tired with FC6, mainly because of FF 1.5.0.12, since I like to use the FF available from the repos... But I kept FC6 until the release of F7 on my main box.
-If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason?
-I briefly tried OpenSUSE 10.2 in December 06, and found it sluggish, bloated, with a bad package manager, so I don't plan to use it again, plus I disagree with their alliance with Microsoft. I actually ran Mandriva 2007 for 2 months afterwards, but came back to Fedora (FC6, then), because it is simply better, cleaner, less bugs, better package management (no offense to the MDV guys).
-Are there any readers who have used the same distro for the past two years?
-Well, no... I use to "distro hop" a lot in those days, as I was finding my way around all those distros... It took me a while, but I want to say that sometimes, different distros work better for different hardware :
For example, on my old Toshiba 4300 laptop (Celeron 796Mhz, 192 megs of ram), I still use Xubuntu Dapper, with Fluxbox, only because of the wireless (RTL 8180) out of the box.
On my main box, because of the conflict created with my TV card, I can only run efficiently a RPM based distro, This is why I am a Fedora user. Last year, I enjoyed Blag a lot, but came back to Fedora... As of PCLinuxOS, it is too complicated to have a nice multilingual system, as I need a Spanish account and a French account, same goes for Mepis.
Otherwise I try to stick with Debian, who really would be my OS of choice, philosophically, I have it on all my other PC's, and it is great !
Bottom line, I am now trying to stick with "original" distros, and I don't go very much to the "offsprings". In my view, Debian & Fedora are the very best out there !
That doesn't mean that I am not interested by the other, as I always have those live-cd's in my toolbox : Ubuntu, Mepis, PCLOS, Puppy, MandrivaOne, DSL.... Recently I also tried ScientificLinux5 live cd, but I just can't go back to FF1.5 !!!
To conclude, I want to congratulate Ladislav for this great website, and also to all the devs out there for their wonderful jobs !!!
34 • Distro hopping (by Peter on 2007-06-11 11:46:59 GMT from Netherlands)
I used to hop between distros a lot, right up until the time I nearly lost all my data because I didn't want to wait for the backup. Anyhow, I have now settled on PCLinuxOS 2007 final for my laptop (since TR1), which is my main working station.
Sometimes I feel the urge to install Ubuntu on my desktop PC, just to check out where they stand at the moment, but I really can't miss some of the Windows programs I run there and absolutely hate dual-booting and VMware just doesn't give the full performance. I even tried Wubi, but Ubuntu wouldn't start correctly, so I am left with one Linux and one Windows PC.
35 • Distro Hopping (by Casey on 2007-06-11 11:53:27 GMT from United States)
Since warty came out, I've been solidly with Ubuntu. Just works over here. I do test distros, (virtual machines are a lifesaver), and occasionally build a different box to test features, but for day to day usage, as well as the peace of mind of DOT deb, Ubuntu suits me fine. (Debian Etch is nice as well, but a lot of an operating system is in its quirks which you get used to...and I like Ubuntu's quirks better.)
36 • Distro Hopping (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 12:02:16 GMT from Canada)
I've been useing Slackware for the last 5 years.
Love it, will never switch.
I get to try out other distributions by installing for other people.
The most common ones since Jan 2006
that people ask me for are, in order:
1- Ubuntu (and derivatives) -> 83 installs
2- Fedora/Red Hat -> 64 installs
3- SUSE -> 30 installs
4- FreeBSD (not Linux I know) -> 8
Note that Debian is not on the above list.
But I know it's more popular than my list indicates.
37 • #11 (by slack on 2007-06-11 12:03:37 GMT from Zimbabwe)
#23
Slackware doesn't even complain if you do not add dependencies during install.
38 • Distro selection for Chinese language user (by T.BAO on 2007-06-11 12:14:34 GMT from Netherlands)
Considerations from Chinese language user, from my own experience on distro hopping:
(0) Fedora 6 looks ugly and buggy under Chinese locale.
There is no OFFICIAL repository for dirty codecs.
I dislike RPM.
(1) OpenSUSE 10.1 is the most eye pleasing for its font set, configuration, and other localizations.
But YAST (specially software package admin) is too slow.
There is no OFFICIAL repository for dirty codecs.
(2) Mandriva 2007 ranks second in terms of look and feel of Chinese localization.
(3) Debian Etch was my main distro for more than a year. APT is superior to RPM.
But some softwares (especially for desktop users) get too old.
(4) Ubuntu Feisty is now my main distro, because I have a Macbook.
But the default look under Chinese locale tires eyes.
After studying OpenSUSE's fontconfig files and alien-ing its "Founder" Chinese fonts packages, you can make any distro looks better under Chinese locale.
39 • Distro Hopping (by IMQ on 2007-06-11 12:17:09 GMT from United States)
I have been distro hopping for quite sometimes. I can even say that since the discovery of DistroWatch many, many moons ago.
Why hopping?
First. Because it's fun.
Second. I want to get familiar with as many distros as I can, part of the fun factor.
Third. Different distros have different look & feel about them, even though they are are based on the same KDE, GNOME, XFCE, or whatever. The differences are not big but more than enough to become a favorite over the others.
Fourth. I want to know which distros work well with my hardware: build-it-yourself machines and no-way-to-build-it-yourself laptops.
Fifth. Because I want to. :)
Sixth. Because I can. :) :) :)
Which distros I use?
So many favorites.
Just to name a few: Debian Etch, *buntu, PCLinuxOS, Vector, Slackware, Zenwalk, Mint, SimplyMEPIS, CentOS. Most often Debian Etch.
Right now, I am using CentOS 5 for this message.
40 • Distro hopping (by Wanlace on 2007-06-11 12:17:27 GMT from United States)
I find that I do less distro hopping now that I am more experienced with using Linux. My focus has shifted from trying out new features to maximizing productive uses of the software.
It has become easier to avoid changing distros also, because of the increasing maturity, stability, and feature-set of the major distributions. A number of my earlier changes were because 'X' component would not work with 'Y' machine (or required too much effort to get and keep in working order).
I used to be a big SuSE user until I tried to update to 10.1 and found myself irritated by the bloat and the crummy package management changes. Now I have increasingly turned to Ubuntu variants for my various machines (Ubuntu/KUbuntu/EdUbuntu/XUbuntu), also Debian 'Etch', and in one case Fedora.
A special note about Fedora: I was going to install Ubuntu on that particular machine, but it did not install correctly with that particular AMD Turion hardware setup. Tried a few other distros, finally Fedora Core 5 worked like a charm, no hiccups whatsoever. It has continued to work well for me on that machine (now Fedora 7) but the one glaring negative in comparison with Ubuntu/Debian is the package management. Even with recent Yum/Puplet innovations, the Red Hat/Fedora system still has more problems and takes longer that an APT-based system. I dread the updates on Fedora - with Ubuntu or Debian it's a snap.
I may differ from some users also in that I tend to have multiple, older computers available on which to run different distros, so I really never have to 'hop', just 'add'. I wonder how many other DWW readers find themselves in that camp?
41 • Distro Hopping (by paul marwick on 2007-06-11 12:18:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
When I first started using Linux I spent a great deal of time hopping from one distro to another. Mainly because I was less than completely happy with any of those that I tried. In the first couple of years that I used Linux I used Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian and Slackware. I then spent a fairly extended time running Ubuntu.
However, for the last 18 months or so, I've used Zenwalk almost exclusively. While I still try out new distros occasionally, I have not changed the main distro on either my laptop or my desktop machines in that time. :) I started with Zenwalk at v2.6 and I've just installed 4.6.1..
42 • Distro Hopping (by parkash on 2007-06-11 12:25:42 GMT from Germany)
It's been a while since I don't use the same distro for more than 3 months...
Yes, I installed three new distros in the last few weeks: PCLinuxOS, DreamLinux and Elive... Why? Because I was bored :)
Right now, nevertheless, I've been using Arch, for 3 or 4 months more or less (surprising for me).... The last time that I used a distro for so long, was with Ubuntu, although I never really got to like it...
I think there's a lot to discuss about distro hopping, mainly because every distro has its pros and its contras.
My favorites so far:
- Arch .-lightweight, incredible package management, very community oriented, fast
- Parsix .-debian based, lightweight, easy to use (tools for ndiswrapper, wireless, etc)
- Fedora .-very polished (at least fedora7), fairly stable, the most beautiful boot screen (rhgb) I've seen, very good mixture 64b::32b
- Mandriva .- beautiful artwork, fairly stable, useful control panel
Anyway, I really like to hop btw distros, and probably will keep on doing it.
43 • apps are very easy to add in linux (by NErancher on 2007-06-11 12:34:47 GMT from United States)
RE #11
"It's extremely difficult to add a new app to any linux distro that you have. When you go to one of the repositories, download the app, and then try to install it you find out that it depends on this library and that supporting app, which you don't have, which in turn depend on that library and that supporting app, which you don't have, which depend on that kernel, which you don't have, and on and on ad infinitum."
Not true at all with most popular distros. Very, very rarely is there a problem.
"This, by the way, seems to be the achilles heel to the free software concept. When developers don't have a financial interest in having their software installable and usable, they could care less about same."
Also not true. Tex, Warren, and those assosiciated with their projects, are prime examples of this. There are many others.
Either you haven't tried anything recent, or you are merely someone that is here spreading false information in hopes that it will scare someone away and keep people on Winderz. One or the other. That's my conclusion.
44 • Distro Hopping (by wheaties.box on 2007-06-11 12:35:15 GMT from United States)
While one of my favorite pastimes is trying out the "latest and greatest" among Linux distributions, none of them have ever been able to keep my attention for more than a week or two at best. My main computer has had Slackware Linux on it for over 5 years, and I always seem to go back to it after a short stint with the newly released top-player distros. As of this writing, I'm running Slackware-current and eagerly awaiting Slackware 11.1 or 12.0 (whichever it may be, though I have a feeling it might be 11.1, since a lot of the -current packages suggest it).
I prefer Slackware's stable environment, its speed, and the ability it gives me out of the box to do everything I need and want to do. I can do a full install of Slackware in about 20 minutes (fdisk and everything). Installing the more main-stream distros on the same machine takes at least 45 minutes. While running Slackware, the programs seem much more responsive. I installed Fedora 7 on my computer just after it was released. I couldn't stand how long it took to get the terminal up and ready for me to use. Also, I do a lot of development, and Slackware provides basically anything a developer could want straight out of the box. Other distros seem to have a hard time including development tools on their install discs.
If I want to install a new program in Slackware, I simply grab the source or the slackpack and install it. If it complains about a missing library when I try to run it, I install the library. If I want to do this automatically, I use swaret. I find this system of installing programs incredibly more reliable than any RPM-based distro, and I believe it approaches apt in a subtle way. Like I said earlier--no other distro seems to satisfy my needs as well as Slackware, but I do enjoy seeing what others like and use.
45 • distro hopping (by salparadise on 2007-06-11 12:37:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
I used to distro hop a lot. After a couple of months exclusively using OSX I've recently come back to Linux (and oh what a relief it was to return) and am running Linux Mint. Why? Because it's built on Ubuntu and doesn't require me to mess about installing the last few bits to make it workable (codecs et al).
I've used pretty much all the main distros over the years, since the sad demise of what used to be Mandrake, it's nice that PCLinuxOS, LinuxMint and Ubuntu are around to fill the gap.
46 • re #16 (by NErancher on 2007-06-11 12:39:13 GMT from United States)
"This problem is also bigger if you use a small distro with a small repo - that's why big distros (like debian or ubuntu) always give you an edge."
Not always true either, especially given time to work out the kinks. I was using kubuntu for many months, there is a lot of junk in their repo that I don't see anyone using, and a lot of it is support files for other stuff. You need to look at the quality of what's in a repo, not quantity.
47 • Distro Hopping (by Blaze on 2007-06-11 12:40:27 GMT from Finland)
Here's one who's been on the same distro (Gentoo) for about two years. I switched from Windows, and have had absolutely no regrets. While I'd sometimes like to try something else (than Gentoo), I haven't for two reasons: 1) I'm very satisfied with Gentoo 2) Gentoo's helluva hassle to reinstall, should I want it back
I need another computer to test stuff on...
48 • Distro Hopping (by TheoDreiser on 2007-06-11 12:40:54 GMT from United States)
Distro hopping days are long gone.
PCLinuxOS 2007 on drive 1
Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.4 on drive 2
Game,Set,Match !
49 • Distrohopping (by Brach on 2007-06-11 12:52:08 GMT from United States)
I used to hop all the time because I was not very experienced using Linux. And every distro update for the major distros (COMPATIBILITY ISSUES, bells and whistles, shinys, and video acceleration, xorg updates) sent me jumping around trying different major distros like Ubuntu, Suse, PClinuxOS, Fedora, etc.
I finally was totally satisfied with Ubuntu. Because it is simple and does what I need out of the box. I don't want to 'compute' all the time I just want to use it. I would spend more time breaking broken systems than actually using it.
50 • Hopping (by UZ64 on 2007-06-11 12:55:48 GMT from United States)
My distro hopping days have slowed down a lot since finally making the switch full-time, from Windows to Zenwalk, around a year and a half ago. Previously, I partitioned some free space at the end of my drive and installed everything there, to get the actual "feel" (speed-wise), and I was still learning so the added work of partitioning helped.
Now I know the "feel" of each distro type (Slack-based, Debin-based, Ubuntu-based, Red Hat-based, Mandrake-based, etc.), so I tend to not care as much if it's not running at full speed, and these days I tend to prefer live CDs for trying out new distros (although nothing beats an old-fashioned install disc for installing an OS to the hard drive).
I still use VMWare in Windows for those installer-only distros (since there's no proper Slack version, and all of my previous attempts to get it to work in Zenwalk have failed). I use spare, unpartitioned space on my hard drive for those must-try installer-based distros that don't run in VMWare and don't have a trial, live CD version.
51 • Distro hopping? (by Ed Borasky on 2007-06-11 13:01:22 GMT from United States)
Well ... there are times when I want to see what all the fuss is about on some distro or another. But for the most part I'm so used to Gentoo that I rarely do more than test the ISOs when they come out.
When you come right down to it they are all pretty much the same once they take up residence on your hard drive. The two major binary package management / repository systems are for all practical purposes the same, although in *quantity* of packages I still think Debian has a substantial edge over the RPM-based systems in the *main* repositories. For servers, it's probably a toss-up between Etch and RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux for stability and security.
I recently got a new AMD64 dual-core box and took the opportunity to look at all the popular distros again. I didn't try openSuSE for some reason, but I did try Fedora Core 6, CentOS 5, Debian Etch, and Feisty Fawn as well as the old standby, Gentoo 2007.0.
For general use I think I would recommend CentOS 5 over Debian Etch simply because Xen virtualization is available at install time and just works out of the box. But I'm sure Fedora 7 has that too. I ended up sticking with Gentoo because I think it's the best distro for a scientific workstation, which is what I mostly do.
52 • I've used quite a few distros...current Ubuntu user (by ThinkBuntu on 2007-06-11 13:01:58 GMT from United States)
I've used Zenwalk, PCLinuxOS, Debian, openSuSE, Ubuntu, Sabayon, and Mint all for extended periods of time (more than a few weeks) but I've finally settled on Ubuntu. After using KDE enough, I decided (or realized) that my work patterns are such that I'm much more efficient in GNOME, and that it tended to get in my way less. This is difficult to substantiate rationally, as I prefer K3b to Gnomebaker, Konsole to the Gnome-terminal, and in general am a big fan of KDE or Qt apps. However, now I'm 100% GTK, and I find that this gives me very good performance. When I start mixing in KDE apps my performance takes a big hit, strange to say.
In any case, restricting myself to a GNOME-oriented distro narrows down my choices significantly to: Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuSE, Foresight, Linux Mint, and one or two others. Of the three "easy-to-use" ones, I prefer Ubuntu for performance and my faith in its long-term health, as well as its excellent, reliable repositories. Mint is nice as well, but I don't see the draw once you know how to set up codecs, etc. properly. I definitely prefer Ubuntu's two-panel approach, being a former long-time Mac user (since OS 7). Foresight simply refused to install, getting hung up on post-install scripts, but it looks like a promising project that I'll take a hard look at when they release 2.0.
Anyway, whether you're a developer, designer, scholar, or just a simple desktop user, Ubuntu along with Debian really offers the most flexible experience. I think that 7.10 will be a milestone release with all the latest features, but not missing 6.06's stability and speed. And maybe they can polish up that Human theme to make it more like a tigereye stone and less like a toilet bowl.
53 • list of packages (by elcaset on 2007-06-11 13:06:06 GMT from United States)
The following are the packages I'd like to see added to the list: iceweasel, nicotine+, gslapt, flash, gnash, libdvdcss, FFmpeg, dillo, azureus, graveman.
While some of these are codecs instead of packages, It would still be helpful to know if these are included in a distribution or not.
54 • Distro Hopping (by al3xanr0 on 2007-06-11 13:10:23 GMT from United States)
Everyone learns at differing paces. The initial intent of my distro hopping served a twofold purpose, the first of which involved deciding which one of the distros would best suit my practical needs. The second was to determine which would foster an environment ideally tailored to my level of comprehension. Now that I am a more seasoned (a little salt, pepper, paprika, etc) Gnu/Linux user, burning isos to disks is about the extent of my distro hopping. Some actually get booted past the log on splash, but more often than not they are the victims of their own 15 seconds of fame. For example I started with RedHat 7.3 I have since then settled with Debian Stable and Testing. Amidst my learning curve (which was very steep, never having had formal training) I have been know to frequent distros like Mandriva (8.2, 9.0, 10.1, 2005), Fedora (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) Ubuntu (warty to present), and a personal favorite of mine prior to switching to its current Ubuntu base Mepis (2004.0, 3.3.1, 3.4.3). I think you get the gist. No matter hard hard I tried to like other distros I would always seem to gravitate to Fedora (probably due to a deep seeded and deep rooted subconscious loyalty to my first distro RHT) and Debian which I discovered in my frustration with Fedora among others. In recent times, nevertheless, I have developed an affinity for PCLinuxOS (every thing Mandriva could have, should have, and would have been) which has become replacement for all of the rpm based distros I have ever used including my beloved Fedora sadly enough. However, I have not found an alternative for what is in my opinion the best binary distro on the planet -Debian. Quite frankly it is my conclusion after sampling some of its best derivatives namely Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, 64 Studio, etc Debian will remain unmatched. Only time will tell but for right now I am more than content with my Debian Testing and PCLinuxOS machines.
al3xanr0 -_-
55 • Re: Distro-hopping (by ThinkBuntu on 2007-06-11 13:12:22 GMT from United States)
"I think the hype given to Ubuntu is really big and it does not deserve the same. It is not the most user friendly distro available, it is leading in terms of community support, but i think that is also fading. Have anyone visited the forums lately and noticed how noisy they are ? Is it really good for a distro to have noisy community forum ?"
I don't see the trouble with forums being noisy. That just means that people need help, and we're helping them. Ubuntu is setting new marks not in software development, but in terms of a smooth user experience and quality of free, community support, all while keeping the distro as "free" as possible. The perfect example of this is Codec buddy, which is a good middle ground allowing Ubuntu to ship almost completely a free distribution while giving the user what they need.
The great thing about Ubuntu is that it does everything for you except what it can't do (for idealogical reasons), but still leads you every step of the way to get done what you need. Debian is of course excellent, but it doesn't cater to the end-user in the way that Ubuntu does. Easy to overcome? Yes. But worth your time? For a modest speed increase and the inherent pride of using Debian, I don't think it's worth wasting any more time configuring a computer, unless it's a hobby.
56 • Distro Hopping and Statistics (by Sokraates on 2007-06-11 13:14:01 GMT from Austria)
In may 2005 I've switched from Windows to Kubuntu 5.04 and that's where I've stayed ever since, two updates and two clean installs later. Later I also installed Kubuntu on my then new laptop.
Over the past years I've tried a few distributions, some on a live-cd, some I installed in VirtualBox, some I installed on a separate partition (recently PCLinuxOS 2007 and Linux Mint 3.0). But none of them incited an urge to switch. One reason might be, that once your distro is well configured, switching would force you to reconstruct everything. Add to this, that you may have to accomplish the tasks with new and alien tools.
As it stands now, I prefer to experiment with new software on my system instead of changing it as a whole.
As for the Statistics: I usually surf a round a bit, when trying a distro, but usually I read DWW during lunch break at the office ... from a WinXP-machine. So when looking at how many Windows-users visit DistroWatch (there has been a chart on this, some issues back, I think), the local time of the day should also be considered. :)
57 • distro hopping (by Sam on 2007-06-11 13:14:58 GMT from United States)
According to my wife, I have a new distro installed on my laptop every week. That's not quite true, but looking at distro hopping is a good question!
My 64 bit AMD desktop has dual-booted XP & Debian since 3.1 (now Xp and Etch) -- work gets done between me and the spouse in Debian, Oblivion, SPSS, and Arcview GIS in XP.
I tend to do more work on my laptop so over the years my laptops have seen various distros. When first using linux I changed distros probably every month or so before ultimately running back to XP out of frustration with the learning curve. Once I got the hang of the learning curve enough to configure the system to meet my needs and get most things to 'just work' my distro-hopping would occur maybe every couple of months -- usually due to some minor technical issue I eventually found annoying enough to try to see how another distro handled it.
Over the last year I must have kicked up my linux geek factor a notch or two as I've only changed distros once -- went from an Automatix-ly screwed up Ubuntu Feisty (had perviously used Edgy from release straight through upgrading to Feisty) to using openSuSE 10.2. I'll upgrade soon to 10.3 in hopes of seeing some improvement with the various package managers, but otherwise the distro is polished, professional, works *perfectly* with my Dell Inspiron 6400 (something Ubuntu was failing to do.. ehem... ehem... and Dell chose this one???).
From memory, the distro-hopping history here includes:
Ye Olde Dayes
Corel Linux
Turbo Linux
Red Hat Linux 6
-- XP --
Red Hat Linux 9
Debian 3.1
Slackware 9ish
SuSE 9.1, 9.2, 9.3
SuSE 10, 10.1 **dropped due to screwed up Zen(NOT)works**
-- Serious Distro Hopping Phase --
Mandriva 2006
PcLinuxOS 2006, 2007 (test releases)
FreeSpire 1 beta
Dreamlinux
Sabayon (newer worked to my liking)
Gentoo 2006.1 (? think that was the release)
Fedora Core 5, 6
Zenwalk 4ish
Ubuntu 5.10, 6.04
PC-BSD
Desktop BSD
Nexenta
Xandros (and people pay for this one... why??!?)
--Settled Phase--
Ubuntu 6.10, 7.04 (probably would have stuck with this if not for Automatix, Beryl problems, network management problems, slow reponse, bloat)
SuSE 10.2
58 • No subject (by Amy on 2007-06-11 13:20:18 GMT from United States)
I am always switching trying to look for one that fits all my needs and its fun to try new ones out too.
The first distro I used for many years was mandrake now called madriva. I switched away from them after they changed their name. The next one I had was xandros for a year and ever since then I have been trying to find one I like.
I think how ever I found one that does do all my needs except for playing dvds and that is mepis but because it does not play dvds I am still looking. MEPIS is the one I am using right now though.
59 • Distro hopping. (by nightflier on 2007-06-11 13:20:22 GMT from United States)
I hopped around for a long time before settling on Vector, which has been on my main desktop for almost two years now.
I still keep trying out new releases on another box which is dedicated to experimentation. Watching the evolution is fascinating.
I did switch one computer to PCLinuxOS. Bought a laptop with a Vista demo on it (Home Basic). After re-partitioning the drive I just kept testing distros until I found one that got all the hardware working and performed well. PCLOS met the challenge so it stays.
60 • Packages (by Paul Messina on 2007-06-11 13:20:46 GMT from United States)
I'd like to see Wine listed as a package.
As for distro hopping, I use Ubuntu for my main machine, but it's always nice to see what's out there on new distributions.
61 • Re: XP User = me (by j on 2007-06-11 13:20:59 GMT from Estonia)
"The only thing that I am going to miss is Counter Strike Source and MATLAB so I'll have to dual boot."
MATLAB has native version available for linux ( http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/requirements.html ).
62 • distri instead of distro (by elcaset on 2007-06-11 13:31:16 GMT from United States)
Does anyone know why distro is used as the abbreviation for distribution, instead of distri? Couldn't find any answers searching on the net.
63 • Stats and new packages (perhaps R) (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 13:33:52 GMT from France)
R could be added to the package list: it is a graphical and statistical language, whith its own compilation chains and dependency management for its (#800) plug-ins [plus those one makes, plus).
As it was designed for stats and teaching, it might be very useful (it goes farther than stats, one can solve Sudoku, too, with one of its packages/plug-ins).
R is released every 6 months (may and december, often), for Linux and as source; one week later, it gets Windows ported.
To be compiled (if there are not binary packages/installers or to upgrade), it needs a Fortran compiler (in fact, gcc front-end); one can use
g77 which NEVER changes.
g95 which changes everytime a bug is corrected or something new is added.
gfortran (regular release cycles).
BTW : it is impossible for a distr to capture the release cycles of such applications => if one wants to have one's favourite app up to date, one should, as life time is limited, never distr. hop...
64 • Distro Hop (by G Rajesh on 2007-06-11 13:36:00 GMT from India)
I am a suse user since 2000. Still I just love it!
But, I've tried Mandriva (then Mandrake), Fedora & Ubuntu also. I could not get along with Mandrake. Fedora? Package management is worse. You could not install from DVD after installation and YUM is slooooow.
Ubuntu? - Really rocks!!! Great community, Great Desktop. But I feel the stability of the packages therein is not good. Though the OS as a whole does not crash, the packages often do, at least for me. I have just installed Feisty, let's see how stable it is!
To my Suse, now. Yast is a great tool. Just no matching therefor in any of the distributions I've used so far. But package management is lousy. I does not keep the downloaded packages any where. If I have 2-3 systems, then I'll have to download seperately or I'll have to resort to external package management tools like smart.
Well, every distribution has its pros and cons. To me, I have decided to stick to Ubuntu Fiesty (unless it often crashes) till OpenSuse-10.3 is released.
Suppose, package management in suse is still the same? What else? Stick to Ubuntu!!! ;-)
65 • Distro hopping (by Tom on 2007-06-11 13:39:39 GMT from United States)
every few months I get the distro itch and try out other distros, thinking that I will be more happy with a solution that takes care of more of the system for me, but despite this I always go back to my mainstay distro, it has had the fewest problems over the years, is always up to date and easy to mold into whatever I need, from a barebones server to a desktop bonanza.
Thanks Arch Linux, the simplicity of Arch bypasses so many problems and allows me to learn more about Linux every day. I am vastly more empowered by Arch, so I will stick with for the long haul!
66 • distro hopping (by Thibaud de Borggraef on 2007-06-11 13:40:17 GMT from Belgium)
I have used Arch for 2 years and am quite happy with it. Nevertheless I regularly try other distro's when they are coming out: Fedora, OpenSuse and Debian. Before Arch, I was a Slack user but became disappointed with the slow evolution of it. In fact, with Arch I found a distro that combines the advantage of Slack (you can and must configure it on your own), Debian (very good package manager) and Fedora (easy to use and without the temptation of doing as in M$ window$).
For now, I am also trying to install (not so difficult) and use/configure (more difficult) Lunar and I am envisaging the "great jump" to it. This will be my main distro and I will be then regularly hopping to Arch, Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse;
67 • Distro Hopping (by Clem on 2007-06-11 13:45:27 GMT from Sweden)
I used to distro hop all the time. Why? Because it was fun :)
Now that I'm developping stuff on Mint I don't really have time to test everything I want anymore... (or maybe those two new kids of mine have something to do with that as well.. ) :)
My best moments with Linux:
- Slackware (wonderful distro, recommended to anyone who is serious about learning about Linux and who's passion goes beyond eye-candy/comfort on the desktop),
- Mandrake (for a little while when they were fun...), and Mandriva is still a bit fun... now and then (they're getting better lately).
- Debian.. especially testing.. (now this is probably the most powerful system ever.. a lot of tweaking involved but a lot of fun too, you need to try that at least once!),
- Kubuntu.. simply a really good KDE system.
- Fedora and SUSE, although I never "stayed" with them more than a few weeks (because of their package management), I always loved hopping with them. Especially with Fedora and the great quality of their artwork.
I wish I had had more time with PCLinuxOS, I can really see how good it is and it truly deserves the attention it's getting at the moment.
Caution: We're working hard at making Mint the distro-hopper's stopper so don't try Linux Mint :)
Distro-hopping is probably one of the things that are the most fun about Linux so distro hop as much as you can and enjoy the hundreds of systems out there just waiting to be downloaded :)
I personally believe Mint, PCLinuxOS and Fedora are among the best three desktop systems at the moment. With all three of them recently released how can you not distro-hop? :)
Clem
68 • Distro Hopping (by Ted Summers on 2007-06-11 13:49:28 GMT from United States)
First off, my laptop is my primary computer and my Desktop is my secondary computer. My laptop is running Ubuntu 7.10, and has been running Ubuntu as my primary Operating System for 3 years now. The reason for this is because I find it well suited for my day to day needs, be it basic or technical in nature. I think Ubuntu offers the "Best" of what GNU/Linux has to offer even if it does not do so right out of the box.
Now as to my Desktop, It has become more of my beta test system. My life as a Systems Administrator currently sees to it that I must know primarily life in the MS Windows world. However 1st and foremost I am and always will be a Technical type of guy. That being said GNU/Linux is my preferred choice in Operating Systems. When I started in out with GNU/Linux my very 1st experience was with RedHat 5.2 I believe back in 1998. The learning curve was great for me back then, however being the Technical person that I am, I enjoyed it. It was a new frontier for me to explore.
So now with the release of Fedora 7, I felt it was time to revisit a old friend. It now sits as the primary / only operating system on my secondary computer. It has come a long way and I think it is a great operating system for the Server room. However for the client side desktop or laptop I think it still has a way to go.
As far as GNU/Linux goes, I think these are the top two distributions that I would go with for a client and server team. I personally love and enjoy working with GNU/Linux on a daily basis. I can't hardly wait till the day when it takes more control in the business workplace.
69 • Re: 62 - why distro instead of distri (by linbetwin on 2007-06-11 13:49:48 GMT from Romania)
It's like combination -> combo, ammunition -> ammo, etc.
70 • im a small fry in the pond (by tony on 2007-06-11 13:52:28 GMT from Sweden)
i have tried mandrake a few years ago and thought it was king.
after a long break and fed with windows i decided to make the
jump to linux. i went straight for mandriva spring 2007 (a natural selection)
and found it had not really moved on since v10.
then i tried centos because of the pure fact that their website was harping
on how great it was and the community would help if you had problems.
well i did have problems and the community forum could be compared
to a grave yard.
by now i began feeling letdown by linux so i thought i would give ubuntu
a test, i had good reason everybody i spoke to seemed to be in a hurry
either to work or home to use it. for me the experience was not the same.
i dislike the install guide, to me it was awful and partitioning was a pain.
it had me going around in circles.
i began thinking hey windows is bloated, insecure, has bugs and expensive
but it least it works sometimes.
Last weak while speaking to a friend about my linux adventures he suggested
that i try suse 10.2 and so i did. the installation was a breeze so i thought hhmmm its good but mandriva does that too. when suse 10.2 open the kde desktop and i clicked on that animal thingy (start button) i was blown off my
seat. to me this program is the best everything about 10.2 is a killer.
within half hour usage i knew then that i wanted to be a linux expert.
i will go as far as saying this. suse 10.2 is one real slick piece of kit. its
smooth, some how it feels sturdy and everything is easy to apply plus the sound, flash, internet worked out of the box. the first time i installed it i
never had to do anything for it to work. DAM!!!! i love this kit.
as for windows xp its now retired and as for vista it wont be tight till another
2-4 years, another 3-4 service packs, another 200gig hard drive and this
list could go on and on.
happy hopping and i hope you find the linux you like.
im officially a suse addict
ps. they did do a deal with microsoft :( is that a good thing or bad?
tony
71 • Re: # 68 (by linbetwin on 2007-06-11 14:02:00 GMT from Romania)
Ubuntu 7.10 hasn't been released - unless you're using Tribe 1 - and Ubuntu didn't exist 3 yrs ago. Unless you wrote your post in Oct. 2007 :-)
72 • Distchange (by Vytas on 2007-06-11 14:04:04 GMT from Norway)
I was ubuntu user last year. Ubuntu was my first distro. Then i gained some knowlage about linux and moved to archlinux. (last month). Arch shows much better perfomance and gives latest software. Despite that i use arch i stil keep ubuntu in my hdd and participate in ubuntu comunity.
73 • Distro Hopping (by Ekin Akoglu on 2007-06-11 14:06:47 GMT from Turkey)
Below is the list of Linux distributions I have used over past 2 years:
1. Mandrake/Mandriva 10.1, 10.2, 2006, 2007
2. Fedora Core 4, 5, 6
3. Vectorlinux 5.8 SOHO
4. Debian 3.1
5. Suse 10.0, 10.1, 10.2
6. Slackware 10.2, 11.0
7. Knoppix 5.0
8. Ubuntu 6.10, 7.04
9. Damn Small Linux
10. Slax
12. PCLinuxOS 0.93a, 2007
13. Zenwalk
14. Pardus 2007
15. Gelecek
Finally, I stick to Fedora Core 5. It is the best distro for my laptop Acer Aspire 1362LCi for the following criteria:
Hardware recognition, forum support, yum, available software, gnome (of course!), my addiction to rpm, familiar (for me) init scripts.
Below is my preferred software:
1. Multimedia: Amarok, Mplayer
2. Internet: Thunderbird, Firefox, Gftp, Kget, aMSN, Azureus, Lynx, wget
3. Graphics: Dia, Gimp, Kolourpaint
4. Programming/Text Editing: Emacs, vim, LaTeX, MATLAB, GNU C++, Python, awk, GMT, NCARG, NCL
5. Office: Evince, OpenOffice.org
74 • I'm a MEPIS man (by Fred McKinney on 2007-06-11 14:08:58 GMT from United States)
Like most in here, I'm an ex-Windows user, because, in my case, I did not like the idea of an activation system in XP one little bit plus I was having some hardware compatibility problems in Windows 2000 that wouldn't go away even after a fresh re-install. I had been long considering a switch to Linux and dabbled some with Knoppix before the problems with Windows 2000 happened in early January of 2005, and from that day forward for me, it was goodbye Micro$oft, hello Linux!
The first distro I ever used was Mandrake, which was OK, although it got to where the desktop wouldn't boot up after a few weeks of use. I reinstalled after this 2 or 3 times until discovering MEPIS. MEPIS was nice and solid, but I missed Mandrake. Well, at a Barnes & Noble where I was living at the time, I found a book+DVD combo of Mandrake 10.1 PowerPack, so I tried that, and it worked without it failing to boot into KDE, and it was the distro I used for over a year until last summer, when I ran into some other stability problems, which wasn't the first time, either, so I decided it was time to shop around for another distro. Not to mention, Mandrake would freeze up whenever I tried to run Rosegarden (MIDI sequencer and music notation program)
I looked at several, including SuSE (this was several months before their infamous Micro$oft deal -- needless to say, I won't consider them anymore after that), Fedora, PCLinux, and Ubuntu, but I had also read that MEPIS 6.0 was in the works, and I tried it, and I was instantly hooked. Also, this last spring, I upgraded to MEPIS 6.5 when the final edition of it came out and while I may dabbled with a few live distros, I haven't installed any other distros since.
I've tried several distros on my computer and in fact, almost switched to Ubuntu once until trying to run Rosegarden on it -- and I kid you not, just like Mandrake, the mighty Ubuntu froze up more solid than a block of ice. MEPIS, on the other hand, has never had a problem with Rosegarden, and since I am a musician, I do use it on occasion. Therefore, I've lately found myself always coming back to MEPIS. In fact, I consider MEPIS to be THE best replacement for Windows, if you're looking to dump Windows entirely, like I did.
75 • No subject (by Eudoxus on 2007-06-11 14:10:18 GMT from Latvia)
Some months ago I decided to switch to linux (I was fed up by MS busyness strategies). After reading many reviews I decided to install Kubuntu Edgy Eft. After dissapointment I gave Ubuntu a try and was disappointed even more. Then I went for SuSE - and it was really better than Ubuntu (in many ways but mostly in terms of user-friendliness). For a while it went good, however after some time I got in some troubles. Moreover I was fed up by some SuSE issues - such as package management, speed etc. Then I decided to find another user friendly distro. I tried PCLOS, Mint, Vector, and some others and unexpectedly for myself arrived at Debian and going to stick to it. It is mostly reliable, good software choice, user-freindly in a way, i.e., provided that you have some basic knowledge of linux. Debian offers a good control over system (no bloat) and it is really fast.
76 • Add ZSH (by package db on 2007-06-11 14:21:55 GMT from Canada)
I think zsh should be in your database if its not already ^_^
77 • Serial Distro Hopper (by mjs on 2007-06-11 14:31:30 GMT from United States)
I’m probabaly the biggest distro hopping-whore in this survey. I paid—yes, paid—for SuSE 10.0. This was before stumbling upon Distrowatch and discovering the wonderful Open Source community.
Since then I have tried every—yes, EVERY—distribution on the Distrowatch “Top 100” list (and then some), with varying degrees of success and failure.
The ones that knocked my socks off (in no particular order of favor):
Sabayon - outstanding function and form. Oddly, very simple to use. Takes away the intimidation of using Gentoo and portage.
Elive – love Enlightenment and the folks that put together Elive do it right; like Thunar but it needs embedded search functionality. Love all those Debian repositories
PC LOS – the Ferarri of distros, in my opinion. The perfect marriage of form and function: all the eye candy with zero hit to performance. I love the Mandriva control center to. PCLOS hits on all the right notes…but it’s a KDE distro and I find myself moving toward Gnome
Mandriva (yes, Mandriva): love the Control Center. I found it fast and responsive; adding repositories was a snap with urpmi; like the smallish menu (abhor SuSE’s monster menu)
Vector: Super fast and responsive, but had problems at install every time. I like the supreme confidence that the folks at Vector have in introducing their releases. They take a lot of pride in their product, as they should.
Dreamlinux: Nice, very nice. They do Xfce better than anyone else, and I love that they use Enlightenment’s Engage app dock (the best one out there, in my opinion). But it uses Thunar. If it weren’t for it not having an embedded search function I would prefer it to Nautilus and Konqueror. Thunar is by far the most responsive file manager I’ve used.
The distros that feel like a comfortable pair of shoes:
Mandriva
Ubuntu
The Dogs:
SuSE – slow and I find help (looking for solutions/documentation b/f going to forum) difficult. Adding repositories has always been a bitch.
Fedora – I’m giving 7 a ride right now (and holding out hope that I can keep it), but re-enabling SE after initially disabling it broke my system and required a re-install. Package management is horribly slow and unreliable
Ubuntu - I have a love/hate thing with this distro. I like that it’s not bloated, but it’s too simple and I find myself having to install too much software to make it useful.
The one thing that I have found useful about distro hopping is that I’ve had a chance to try every desktop available. I was initially a KDE fan, as SuSE was my first Linux experience and I felt comfortable with it. Now I’m becoming a Gnome fan because, unlike KDE, it’s uncluttered and more intuitive to use.
78 • Distos i like/use (by wam on 2007-06-11 14:37:53 GMT from United States)
Ive been using Linux for around 5 years or so...... Ive tried i know hundreds of distros.....The ones i like the best are....,
1-Mint
2-Ubuntu
3-PCLinuxOS
4-CentOS
5-Fedora
6-Mepis
7-Blag
My real true loves are Mint, Ubuntu, and PCLinuxOS.
79 • spelling error (by Al at 2007-06-11 14:39:47 GMT from United States)
security (openSUSE was rated the best here) and performance, where the top price was snatched by PCLinuxOS.
================================
You mean 'top prize' not price???
Al
80 • #29 Matlab (by jared on 2007-06-11 14:51:53 GMT from United States)
They make matlab for Linux. One less app you need Windows for:
http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/current_release/linux.html
81 • Distro Hopping (by RELAXION on 2007-06-11 14:59:11 GMT from Romania)
I've been switching linux distros for about 10 years now, and my distro of choice is still Mandriva. Yes, it is FAR from perfect and it sometimes gives me headaches, but it's the closest to my heart. But there are some linux distros that i just loved.
1 -> SimplyMEPIS. What can i say, SimplyBEAUTIFUL. It was the only distro (out of about 30) that works correctly with my hardware (no other linux distro managed to work with my ATI video card, my ASRock mainboard and proprietary video drivers. Actually, they all work right after install, but after the first shutdown the video starts working in frames, even if i donnot install/upgrade anything. Really don't know why, never found a solution. I think there is a compatibility issue originating from the mainboard). The downside - it runs slower on my PC (Sempron 2800+ 768mb ddr2, sata hdd) than Mandriva.
2 -> VectorLinux. Wow! I nover thought that a Slackware-based distro could look and work this way. Great drivers, great config tool (VASM), good looking. The downside - not as easy to use as Mandriva and i have problems configuring the order of my soundcards (SimplyMEPIS (with some editing) and PCLinuxOS are the only ones that ordered my soundcards correctly)
3 -> PCLinuxOS. Many say that this distro is better than Mandriva. Well, in terms of detection, drivers and looks it surely is better than Mandriva.
So, why still Mandriva? Because i find urpmi to be the easiest tool (most probably because i am so used to it.. :D), because it liiks nice, because it has a large repository and because it supports projects like Frozen Bubble.
82 • No Hopping (by CeVO on 2007-06-11 15:02:34 GMT from Spain)
Please define hopping! If it means actually USING different distros, I don't do that. For actual use, I have MEPIS. I use it for all my tasks, even at work. My boss s OK with me using Linux, and MEPIS is the perfect work horse for me. It is easy to use, reliable, unbreakable and very flexible.
I TRY other distros. PCLinux, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Suse, DSL, Debian. And then I always find something that works easily in MEPIS, and not so easily or not at all in the others.
When I judge from the MEPIS forums, it seems to specifically appeal to that type of user: people who use MEPIS as their base system, since it is so sturdy and flexible.
83 • Free Software Magazine: parody (by nix on 2007-06-11 15:03:44 GMT from United States)
"You have to learn, in a big company, that advertising should get top priority in your budget. Because it doesn’t matter if your products are substandard, it’s about how pretty the box is and how many people believe your hype."
Are you sure this is a parody?
84 • Re: #29 Counter Strike (by jared on 2007-06-11 15:04:11 GMT from United States)
Also Counter Strike can be played in Linux using Cedega .
http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb/games/view.mhtml?game_id=3524
85 • Hopped away! :) (by JB on 2007-06-11 15:04:20 GMT from United States)
I hopped from Novell products when they went to bed with
Microsoft, and lately away from Xandros for the same
reason.
I wonder who will be next to fall into Microsoft's grasp.
BLAG preaches "..overthrow corporate control of information and technology through community action and to spread Free Software."
I'll bet they'll be one of the last to go.
86 • Hoping on one foot (by Jesse on 2007-06-11 15:08:53 GMT from Canada)
I tend to stick with one distro for my home environment. At work, I use a combination of distros, depending on what fits the job.
For the past four years:
Home -- Fedora
Work -- Knoppix, gParted, Clone-Zilla LiveCD, ntpasswd Live CD
87 • RE 80 What is the price for matlab under Linux? (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 15:09:36 GMT from France)
Often, such softwares are free as in beer under Windows for students (even though they have been developped under Unix/
(??Linux??)). I do not know whether prices are so interesting under Linux (I had an intern last year who used free Windows professional apps.he had because he was a student=> he then did not want to goto Linux=> As this work was not related with Linux soo bright future, I had to add Cygwin to be compatible with my softs....).
Octave is a free (as in open source) clone of Matlab (as OpenOffice is a clone of MS-Word) . As Octave's development was not that intensive, I thought of Scilab (find the matlab-> scilab converter) or R, with much extra work.
For choice, one just have to know IMO :
* the *price* of linux MATLAB (is it better/cheaper than the Windows one?).
* the amount of work if one has to freely (as in beer, but takes time)port..
* the future of Octave, Scilab and R (which of them is interesting to learn?).....
88 • Distro Hopping (by klhrevolutionist on 2007-06-11 15:19:02 GMT from United States)
I hope that others hop to www.Sidux.com and give it a spin. A great distro indeed.
I frequently visit distrowatch and am constantly using it as a portal to find more information and news updates concerning distro's. A lot of distro's seem to be dead or dying. And the few that are active are not general purpose IMHO.
Maybe time to define what a distro really is ? And then partition the categories so people can find the gnu/linux they are looking for.
Example: live-cd, mini, all-purpose, security, etc..
89 • Distro Hopping (by Eoghan on 2007-06-11 15:36:27 GMT from United States)
Sure, I've jumped around; but, really it's a hassle reconfiguring everything just how you like it, so I've cooled it. But I did recently switch to SimplyMepis..and I found home.
Presently have Ubuntu,PCLOS,LinuxMint & SimplyMepis (my favorite). All four are the best of the lot that I've tried (and I've tried several).
90 • Package selection (by Andrew Yeomans on 2007-06-11 15:37:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
Current package selections seem rather light on music management programs, such as Rhythmbox / Kaffeine / Banshee.
And how were you handling iceweasel / icedove / iceape? Are they included under firefox / thunderbird / seamonkey? I'd suggest they were, but this needs to be made clear.
91 • Distro hopping (by Gigi on 2007-06-11 15:39:55 GMT from India)
Distro hopping?
Well I have tried more than 50 distros and their releases in the past one year that I have been using Linux. The longest period of time I ever used a distro was Mandriva 2007 from November 06 to Jan 07. At times I install more than a distro a day. If fact, at any point of time, my system is set to multiboot more than three distros.
I was pleasantly surprised to see distrowatch coming up with this topic. Nice to know I am not the only one doing this. (Of course my friends call me distro-unstable) and all that.
However, I must clarify that though we people try distros more than necessary, we often depend on one distro for our tasks. Irrespective of what I try, I usually go back to the big four (Ubuntu/Fedora/Mandriva/Suse) when it comes to a task.I also have one of the above four always on my machine no matter what I try.
92 • distro hopping (by Big Bear on 2007-06-11 15:42:09 GMT from United States)
I also look through many of the distros to keep up on the changes and innovation coming through Linux.
One of the things I do most often is make recommendations to clients about what would be the best distro for their needs and experiences.
I officially endorse PCLinuxOS as a home desktop as well as Linux Mint.
For Enterprise business solutions, I most Often suggest CentOS
I Almost always try to push for GPL versions and FOSS whenever and whereever feasible.
Hopefully the day will come that many of the codecs for dvd and audio usage will become gpl or have a gpl equivalent.
Until then, I will recommend Distros that utilize the non GPL versions of software, because the end user is most concerned with functionality. That is the reality of user based service, which is what most of these distro makers are accommodating.
Each client is a different user an has unique environments and needs that make it an interesting and unique challenge to match up each user to the distro best for them. That's why I distrohop.
Big Bear
93 • Distro-hopping (by kanishka on 2007-06-11 15:42:29 GMT from Italy)
Wow, many interesting posts in this week's DWW! Great!
I confess I am a distro-hopper, because I'm still quite new at Linux and I feel the curiosity to try everything. And, as some said, it's just plain fun ;)
In response to Clem's comment (#67)... Well I stumbled upon Mint, and now it's the only distro that doesn't want to leave my desktop's HDD! ^^
Not that it stopped my hopping, but it's very close.
Other distros I like:
PCLinuxOS > The production distro on my laptop. It's the only other distro I can compare to Linux Mint, so there it stays.
Fedora > It seems very much improved on its predecessor. I'm trying it and it impresses me.
Sabayon > Latest addiction to my Grub. Very impressive!
Elive > This one has a soft spot in my heart. If only there was a stronger community... (PS Thanathermesis announced the 1.0 stable! http://www.elivecd.org/gb/Main/News/_articles/62.html)
Other ones I liked but are not installed ATM: Dreamlinux, Debian, Ubuntu, Zenwalk, Vector, openSUSE.
The world of Linux is every day more exciting!
94 • Distro Hopping and Packages (by Mike on 2007-06-11 15:44:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
The first distro I tried was Mandrake (10?), which I didn't enjoy very much - that lasted less than a week as I recall. Then, I tried Debian, when Sarge was still testing, and I've never left! I've tried dozens of other distros, but never considered moving off Debian.
Incidentally, I am curious as to why both Nautilus and libgnome are on the package list, yet only kdebase is listed, considering that Nautilus is 'just' a file browser (not that's there anything wrong with that - in fact, I prefer using Nautilus), whereas Konqueror is both a file browser and web browser.
95 • Distro hopping (by Peter on 2007-06-11 15:47:33 GMT from Bulgaria)
Well, I think distro hopping is a normal process in open source world, because there are too many choices and you have to try to know. Once you find something that works for you, you most likely stop (I stopped at Arch). If you do not, then likely you have too much free time... :)
And something about the stats - I really doubt that they really represent distro hopping in action - normally if your distro releases a new version (or just install CD), you go to Distrowatch... And there is a positive relation to new release annoucement and ranking - when a distro has a release, its rank clims up, even for small distros. Once I thought that if I make a distro that releases new install CD every other day, with several versions (GNOME, KDE, boxes, e17 etc), it will easily beat Ubuntu ranking, with no regard to its technical merits... Anyway ranks are fun to read, but in no way 100% representive :)
96 • Package selection - Hardware support (by Andrew Yeomans on 2007-06-11 15:53:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Although it's likely to be too tricky for Ladislav's 2007 package list, it would be really useful to know the degree of hardware support in any distro.
Maybe a count of included device drivers and/or supported hardware id codes would be a guide. Though I know there are issues when vendors re-use codes or the drivers don't actually work, it would still give a pointer to a maximal or minimal support, and may encourage the distros to do better.
I'd really love to see someone write a "Hardware Compatibility Advisor" application build around the various hardware detection / reporting apps. Which would report whether a distro fully supported given hardware, ran with proprietary drivers, no recognised, etc.
97 • Time to remove Xandros from Distrowatch (by Bob on 2007-06-11 16:04:23 GMT from United States)
I think perhaps it is time to de-list Xandros from Distrowatch as a Linux distro.
98 • The Distro 2 step (by nybronx on 2007-06-11 16:08:56 GMT from United States)
Hello everyone my name is nybronx and I am a "distro hopper" . (everyone says, "Hi".
Reading the comments just made me teary. I did the "HOP" for years. Well since my first successful install of RH5 and Mandrake whatever. I echo most when I say I WAS always looking for that distro that just worked. Until I tried the RC1 of PCLOS. Man I gotta say this one, gets it. I could easily sprout platitudes about this distro i.e. look, forums, etc. But most of that is known. Where PCLOS stands out for me is the way Texstar and his posse put the product together and maintain it. Never a lack for help if needed. Heck, I gave them money (and I am cheap). No sir for quality, support and fun can,t beat PCLOS. IMHO (but one never knows does one??) hehehehe
99 • Distro Hopping (by Nick on 2007-06-11 16:17:59 GMT from United States)
Didn't mean to ruffle anyone's feathers but I still maintain that adding apps to any linux distro is unnecessarily difficult. Granted, if you stick with what's given to you by the particular distro, i.e., apt-get for debs or rpms, and only install packages from their repositories then things will probably work. But that's not freedom. When you go to freshmeat or kde or gnu or some other repository outside of your distro's control, then chances are that you're in for a world of grief when you try to install the app. This is true even if you elect to compile from source.
100 • @8 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-11 16:18:18 GMT from Canada)
Mandriva has been providing a full distribution that is both free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer since 1998.
Mandriva development has been open, public and heavily community-based since 1998.
Every piece of software Mandriva has written is under a free / open source license.
The only packages in Mandriva Linux which are restricted to either box purchasers or Club members are commercial packages which we do not have a license to distribute to the general public.
I'm finding it hard to see where you think we could be _more_ open.
101 • correction #100: @7, not @8 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-11 16:18:49 GMT from Canada)
sorry, that was a reply to #7, not #8.
102 • Distro Hopping (by Airdrik on 2007-06-11 16:22:05 GMT from United States)
I suppose I fit into that category, though this is really the second distro that I've switched to (excluding fedora 4->6 a couple of years ago).
I switched to PCLinuxOS on account of a number of positive reviews that have been going around about how great a desktop it is, and I must agree.
I picked it over Ubuntu and Sabayon, primarily because of the Control Center. (though I will be getting one of the Dell Ubuntu PC's as soon as the $$ falls into my paypal account).
The switch was due as Fedora was getting rather slow. I never used 3d effects because without them it was slow enough. I love how PCLOS zips along now full 3d effects, et al. (even faster than sabayon was in live CD mode, when everything needed was in ram, which was still faster than before nailing Fedora). I also never managed to get wine working properly, but now that works fine.
The only issues I have now are that the usb ports are dying on the laptop, and we have no internet in my appartment (not even a land line phone), So I can only install things on the weekends when I'm at my parents' place doing laundry :p
Aside from that, PCLOS just zips along nicely on my R40, and my wife and I are happy. (both of our favorite color is blue ;)
103 • @26 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-11 16:22:33 GMT from Canada)
The reason 2006's errata list is short is that it's entirely incomplete. I started working on the Errata heavily with the release of 2007; I try to list every slightly significant issue that is experienced by more than one user, to my knowledge. The 2006 Errata was an incomplete compendium of miscellaneous issues at release time, and it has barely been updated since release. If it was written in the same way as the 2007 and 2007 Spring errata it'd actually be considerably longer: the release quality of 2007 and 2007 Spring is higher.
104 • DVD on Mepis (by dennis on 2007-06-11 16:24:04 GMT from United States)
Regarding post 58, I just recently ran Mepis6.5 until switching to PCLinuxOS yesterday. Had several problems with Mepis (digikam will not download, no config menu with K9Copy, will not print flash content, etc.) however, if you want to play DVD's with Mepis, simply download and install libdvdcss2 from http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.9/ (the deb version). Worked for me!
105 • Another package : ntfs-3g (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 16:29:56 GMT from France)
For dual-booters, viruses hunters, or simply for pple who share external disks (2 years ago, when I wanted a dual-boot, I had to specify : "install the XP I buy on FAT 32"; I knew it is less reliable and less flexible than NTFS...).
3 months ago, it was part of great claims in distrs release announcements....
BTW the package list, as it is, remains very useful and easy to use to choose a distr (at least for emulation..). The idea of a short and long list makes that one is not scared by to much info at a time. I hope adding packages will make it even more useful.
106 • RE 103 Sorry, I just tried to give other indicators than popularity. (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 16:43:39 GMT from France)
I did not feel that the care to register and cure errata had increased, as my 2006 works good for me.
Paradoxically, a great errata list, with remedies, could be an indicator of good quality?
(it is the same problem as measuring police/doctors performance) .
I do not fully disagree with that idea and perhaps will try a 2007.0 or (incl) 2007.1 on a real (not virtual... I already did it) disk....
107 • "Distro hopping" (by Chris Norton on 2007-06-11 16:47:05 GMT from Australia)
I am glad that "distro hopping" happens in the Linux world. If it didn't I'd worry that we are sliding too much into the ways of proprietary software - being locked in to a single vendor. The fact that people are still able to jump between distros is a good thing in my book.
I've been using Ubuntu for my primary computers for nearly a year now and liking it a lot. As well as Ubuntu on my desktops I've been using Slackware on my server for several yearsand used to use it as a desktop distro. As well as this I still dabble with Windows. :)
Overall, I think it's great to be able to look at what different groups are doing and decide for yourself which one is most in line with what you want. And being able to change if you want without having to worry about losing everything is a blessing!
108 • distro hopping (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 16:47:36 GMT from United States)
I like to hop around at the time when there are tons of new releases, like now. I quintuple boot and get to play around. I typically have one core distro and most of the time I just dual boot it and Windows. My core distro for the time being is Debian, before that it was Kubuntu.
109 • This post is made by the same Lady who posted above. (by Amy on 2007-06-11 16:58:03 GMT from United States)
I just want to add to what I said.
When I started with linux it was mandrake 8.2 and I got it as a Christmas Present from My parents and it was the full pay version with all the features you could get at the time. I also purchased around the same time red hat 6 I think, how ever with red hat I could not get it to work so I ended up using mandrake.
I used mandrake for many years and got the news versions as they came up and I was even a member of their club how ever after the name change I felt that the product did not work as well as it used to so I went looking for another one.
I tried ubuntu right after that and hated it as it took over 2 hours or more to just get it set up to do what I wanted.
I then tried xandros and even paid for it, I loved it as it did exactly what I wanted right out of the box and it was even able to connect to an exchange server which I need at work.
After work made me get two monitors xandros no longer worked and tech support with them was not helpful but I do know they were trying it just would not work.
I then tried open suse and that had the same problem as xandros.
Same thing with centos.
I then tried MEPIS and it worked with the dual screens and even did every thing I needed it to do.
Now at home it was a bit different after I stopped using Mandrake.
Like work I did use xandros as I paid for 2 copies of it a business version and a home version.
How ever at home for the fun of it I tried many different linux distros as it was fun trying them.
I tried centos, open suse, mint linux, ubuntu, kubuntu, pclinuxos, debian, gentoo (could not get that to work), zenwalk, vector, puppy (one of my favorites), a linux (could not get it to work), kateos, Symphony OS, Pardus, Pioneer (this one messed up the cmos on my old laptop), Sabayon (Just tried this one this morning and I might be switching to it), and a few others I can not remember the name of.
How ever at home at this time I am using mepis as it finds all the hard ware as most of the above did not.
110 • Distro Hopper (by Auronandace on 2007-06-11 16:59:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
I suppose I could be classified as a distro hopper too. I've tried many different distros but most of them have had little to no impression on me.
I always like to see how Ubuntu is getting along so I usually have that on my pc. I don't think it's one of best but certainly agree that it's one of the easiest.
I recently tried PCLOS 2007. Wow! It was fantastic. The repos had absolutely everything I wanted, including the nvidia drivers. I must say that I dislike KDE and thus chose to install Xfce from the repos, and thus expected some compatibility problems with beryl. However, I was completely wrong and it worked like a charm. PCLOS is highly recommended by me.
However, ever since I stumbled across Zenwalk I couldn't help but stay there. It's my main system and the first one that I tried that was Slackware and Xfce based (I'm a sucker for the Xfce desktop environment, very customizable). I'd very much like to see their repos expand a bit more, but since it's based on slackware it's got a huge amount of packages available to it, if you know where to look.
Another thing I'd like to mention is that Wolvix is an awesome distro and certainly doesn't get the credit it deserves. One of the very few distros that meet almost all my needs from initial install.
To sum up, I'd say that I'd like to keep my eye on the happenings in the Linux community and thus am willing to give most distros a try.
111 • SAM 2007.1 makes it easy to set up my NVidia 3D card! (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 17:06:08 GMT from United States)
I've tried dozens of distros, but none of them are as easy to configure NVidia 3D cards as SAM 2007.1, which is based on PCLinuxOS. It comes with 4 different versions of NVidia drivers to choose from and found the one that is right for me. Also there are a load of 3D games out there that can be downloaded via the Synaptic software updater.
112 • Distro Hopping (by Steve Carr on 2007-06-11 17:09:02 GMT from United States)
I've been using Linux exclusively on my home computers for about a year and a half. My first distro was Mandriva 2006. After about 6 months, I switched to Ubuntu 6.06, and this year I upgraded it to Feisty. I'm very happy with Ubuntu. I also have Slackware running on a spare machine but don't use it much. I may try PC Linux but it would have to be real good to replace Ubuntu.
SC
113 • Distro Hopping (by GreenWolf70 on 2007-06-11 17:09:22 GMT from United States)
Just over a year ago, I decided that I had enough of MS right after buying MS Office and seeing the dialog box that said if I did not register with MS my copy of Office would be crippled. It was the proverbial last straw. Now I am no noob having started with the C64, then the Amiga and later the PC. I taught myself Modula and AmigaDOS, DOS and VB along the way. So I started my odyssey in Linux, beginning with Suse, Fedora/Redhat, and Ubunta, quickly moving on to Mandrake/Mandriva and never being satisfied.
I was looking for a distro in which I did not have to learn to use the command line, I just have grown tired of continually being forced to learn another language. In fact, I have a short list of things that will quickly get me looking for another distro:
1. No command line, everything must work using GUI, including installation of all proprietary drivers.
2. All hardware correctly detected, especially wireless and NIC.
3. More stable and faster than WinXP (Baseline).
I discovered PCLinuxOS at version 0.93 and each iteration has been greatly improved. Sabayon 3.3 64bit was making inroads, but with PCLOS 2007, I have moved all 7 of my PCs to back to PCLOS. I have Fedora 7 downloaded and will give it a try when I have time, but I am very satisfied at the moment with PCLOS and waiting for the next release of Sabayon.
My wish list is to have World of Warcraft and other MMO games running native in Linux and better SLi/Crossfire drivers. Linux needs cutting edge video and sound drivers to get the MS gaming crowd to move over to Linux. When they move, then hardware and driver development will shift from MS to Linux. MAC is nothing to worry about as long as they are a closed architecture system and I understand that their deal with MS for the bailout was just that, remaining a closed system.
114 • distro hopping (by IA on 2007-06-11 17:15:36 GMT from Andorra)
I find distro hopping very worrying. That means a lot of people are losing their precious time.
How about doing something useful and provide linux with a full blown colour management system?
Just a wish
115 • Distrohopping (by mjs on 2007-06-11 17:37:10 GMT from United States)
#110:
You might want to try SAM linux, as it's PCLOS-based (the first of many derivitaves to come), but with a native Xfce desktop (with a nice app dock).
Dreamlinux also does Xfce nicely, and they have all the Debian repos bridged. Dream is good stuff.
I'm giving Fedora7 another look until it pisses me off again.
116 • Shoulder Season - Why (by Steve on 2007-06-11 17:53:47 GMT from United States)
I looked at the release statistics (design QA engineer) and wonder, could it be that the shoulder season is because most of the developers are in school and take the summer off? Are there statistics about the age ranges of the developers to validate this hypothesis?
Great service, this DistroWatch. Keep up the good work!
117 • MATLAB (by j on 2007-06-11 17:59:23 GMT from Estonia)
* the *price* of linux MATLAB (is it better/cheaper than the Windows one?).
MATLAB is priced same for linux and windows, also the student versions seem to have the same pricing
* the amount of work if one has to freely (as in beer, but takes time)port..
porting from MATLAB to Scilab should not take a lot of effort (they are very similar in syntax), unless you are using some specific functions that are not available in Scilab.
* the future of Octave, Scilab and R (which of them is interesting to learn?).....
Scilab is very easy to learn if you already know Matlab. R is different, but very useful for people who are doing work/research in statistics.
118 • distro hopping (by AI on 2007-06-11 18:01:04 GMT from United States)
CMYK by default for the GIMP would be nice too.
119 • Distro hopping ...hope I never stop. (by beany on 2007-06-11 18:04:27 GMT from United States)
I've been solid with PCLinuxOS for over a year....since I leaped over from a dwindling Kanotix. Though I prefer to distrohop with the livecds I usually keep 2 extra partitions free for installation. I've even purchased Suse but never came close to liking it. I felt guilty about forking over 60 bucks for a distro I hated and immediately made an extra donation to PCLOS. I have installed it on 3 different laptops and 2 desktops with no problem. Currently I have Ubuntu Feisty, Linux Mint and OLPC (so cute) installed. I have become so comfortable with the workings of PCLOS only SAMLinux has been been flawless. that of course makes it less fun to play with.
120 • distro hopping (by luddite on 2007-06-11 18:06:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
In the last 3 or 4 months, I have used Fedora 6 mainly. In the last few weeks I have tried: Ubuntu 7.04, Debian 4.0 Etch, Debian Lenny, xubuntu 7.04 and finally Sidux.
I may try Fedora 7 eventually, but I am happy with Sidux for the moment.
Distro hopping is a luxury offered by the enormous choice of distros. There is no perfect distro, IMHO, only the best one for the linux user at the time.
121 • Distro Hopping and Hoping (by Ridgeland-WI-USA on 2007-06-11 18:16:27 GMT from United States)
I started with FC4 then SuSE 10.1 then FC6 then Ubuntu as my main distro. In between I've tried over 20 hopping and hoping for a complete Linux, one I would be able to use to replace Windows on other people's PCs.
I keep staying with Ubuntu (6.10, now 7.04)
I'm part of the trend --- I try out potential winners that DistroWatch says were just released. I just burned Linux-Gamers, tried it out. Not my kind of games.
I tried PCLinuxOS to see. Dropped it.
I just got a Dell-Ubuntu and reinstalled Ubuntu and cloned it to another partition for a 'sand-box'. Next I'll put Fedora 7 on it. I plan to have Ubuntu, Fedora and maybe Suse or PCLinuxOS on this PC and have two more partitions to keep hopping and hoping for the killer OS I can spread to other user's PCs.
If Dell is making a market for a free Ubuntu, why not the next step and make a $10 Ubuntu that has non-free 'essentials' like mp3, dvd etc. Properly setup with a little commercial software Linux could blow a big hole in the MS monopoly.
122 • DistroHopping Hop (by Zenwalk4me on 2007-06-11 18:18:54 GMT from United States)
After trying literally over a hundred distros in about seven years of using linux/bsd. I've found that Zenwalk 4.6 is fast smooth and fully packed. I know that sounds like a weird advertising jingle and zenwalk really is different. For me it's letting the penguin skate on smooth ice compared to using distros that make him skate on rough concrete.
Start up times are so good, approx 10-15 seconds, that I don't think about needing the latest hardware anymore, and if I do sucumb to buying the latest and greatest hardware Zenwalk will be super fast on that too.
I used ubuntu off and on since the hoary hedgehog release. It does have some nice features and yet those flawed updates bother me. Does debian release updates that break the user's system? The most recent update of the kernel caused lots of posts at the ubuntu forums. Not a peep was heard from Canonical however. Instead forum fanboys bashed people who dared ask how updates that cause problems continue to be released. Despite ubuntu's user friendly "linux for humans" jargon they have shown themselves to be more like what they appear to be focused on the corporate mindset.
123 • "Free" Xandros (post#1) (by Joey on 2007-06-11 18:21:02 GMT from United States)
You are still supporting Microsoft when you use
Xandros software, free version or commercial version.
Proceed at the peril of Linux, which Xandros no
longer really is now.
124 • My turn about xandros/linux :O) (by Jordan on 2007-06-11 18:24:20 GMT from United States)
Xandros is of the linux kernel still (for now).
Does that make it linux (kde used extensively even
though a xandros custom version).
Yes it is linux still. It is just that microsoft
is benefitting from xandros use now that xandros
company has basically sold their soul to the devil.
125 • Distro-hopping (by Judland on 2007-06-11 18:24:51 GMT from Canada)
For the past two years I've been using Mandriva on my main system.
I've experimented with other distros during this time on my spare system, but have not found any that justifies replacing Mandriva.
126 • packages (by speedygeo on 2007-06-11 18:28:23 GMT from Romania)
I suggest to monitorize the following packages:
korn
KAlarm
VLC Media Player
KTorrent
K3b
Thunderbird
Firefox
Amarok
Tomboy
Gizmo
OOo
Synaptic
KDiskFree
Korganizer
KPDF
Gimp
Kooka
GParted
These are the packages I wish in a ideal distro.
127 • Re #22 (by DG on 2007-06-11 18:29:28 GMT from Netherlands)
You don't need to be a C/C++ programmer to be able to contribute to Open Source. Many projects are always looking for help with documentation...
As for distro hopping, why switch distro just to try a package that isn't available when some, like Lunar Linux, allow you to create or modify your own package description, and even to submit it for inclusion in the main package repository.
128 • Distro hopping (by Turjan on 2007-06-11 18:33:27 GMT from United States)
I'm a moderate distro hopper ;).
I had one computer that had still Mandrake 9.2 on the disk until a week ago, the first Linux distro I ever tried. I was curious what this talk of PCLOS 2007 was all about. So I replaced Mandrake with it, and I have to say, I'm impressed. I expected to have only a short look at PCLOS, but I guess it will stay. It's fast, looks nice and doesn't seem to be buggy. If there's anything to say against it, it's the relatively small repository (sufficient for standard users though).
My main work laptop sports Fedora 6 in dual boot with Windows. The main reasons for this choice are that some software I use is only packaged for Fedora and Redhat, and more importantly, for some reason, Fedora is the only distro that will install on my laptop. Except Fedora 7. Upgrade and new installation both failed, but I read that there is a workaround for this bug now. I will see.
I also wanted to install Fedora 7 on my main desktop computer. Now my DVD drive was broken, and this brought me to try the netinstall of Debian, which I had never looked at before. Debian has a surprisingly nice GUI installer now, with lots of explanation, and very easy to use. I'm even more impressed about their repositories. It's very easy to install some legacy packages that I need for some exotic program packages I have to use. Looks as if Debian will stay for a while.
On my oldest computer, I installed Zenwalk some time ago. It is very slow on that old machine (much, much slower than Win XP), and it killed my largest ntfs partition. Didn't impress me.
Other distros I tried briefly: Ubuntu (buggy installer; helpful community, but my bug report was closed as "solved", which it wasn't); Sabayon 3.2 (cool distro, but slightly too buggy for my taste).
129 • com 117 (the origin was answ. to post 29) (by dbrion on 2007-06-11 18:38:37 GMT from France)
"MATLAB is priced same for linux and windows, also the student versions seem to have the same pricing"
But is the Linux version better/equivalent/ worse than the Windows version (it might be expensive to test)?
(I know that SPSS linux version is a command line....while SPSS Windows version is a nice GUI [+ CLI for automation]). Even with free software, it is worth asking oneself this question.
I do not know either whether students prices are localized....
"Scilab is very easy to learn if you already know Matlab."
At least in 2004, Scilab had even a Matlab to Scilab converter....
But noones IMO knows what will be Scilab's licence/status within 3 years...
" R is different, but very useful for people who are doing work/research in statistic"
Not only : you can link R to any C/Fortran library, like Perl/Python (thermodynamics, chemistry, geography, biostats...).
Just for Sudoku fun, try (or google "R sudoku library)http://rss.acs.unt.edu/Rdoc/library/sudoku/html/00Index.html ...
While R's future is not that worrying in a 2/3 years range, I really do not know anything about Octave's future ( a real Matlab clone -free beer, free speech, free anything...- I cygwin-installed for a relative (by compiling) in 2002)...
"
130 • distro hoping (by arijit on 2007-06-11 18:50:02 GMT from India)
I was a distro hoper too! I used ubuntu, kubuntu, opensuse, mandriva in past few months before Debian/etch came out. Since April I'm as stable as Etch. :)
131 • Arch Linux (by ataraxia on 2007-06-11 18:59:25 GMT from United States)
I'm in total agreement with post 65. I enjoy trying out other distros and other OSs entirely, but I always come back to Arch. Up-to-date and versatile? Hard to beat.
I wouldn't recommend it for hard-core enterprise use (it's a bit TOO cutting-edge for that, with no security-updates-only option), but for desktops, and servers that can afford more risky update strategies, it manages to improve on the Slackware concept without spoiling it.
(I just wish I knew what had become of Arch's founder. Haven't seen him post in their forums or commit to their CVS is ages...)
132 • Distro hopping (by Tervel on 2007-06-11 19:00:27 GMT from Austria)
I use Debian Testing on my main machine, Xandros on a second, PCLInuxOS on third (PCLInux was my primary OS maybe a year, then I played with it, broke it and couldn't fix it by myself, i haven't tested the new release yet). I have a 500 mhz computer as a test machine for light distros- had Zenwalk, Dreamlinux,PUPPY on it. I have also installed WinXP for occasionaly testing some windows programs and as a option to Linux but I hardly use it, mainly for printing.
My first Linux experience I made it with Knoppix 3.2 - I made hdd-install but had it only a week, then I tested DeliLinux,VectorLinux-they were to spartanic for me. Then I installed Xandros 3 Deluxe and was very happy because it was so beginner friendly and provided better hardware support (on my hardware). It was my primary OS but as times go bye I noticed that Xandros provided much smaller number of apllications in the repositories, there were no frequent releases etc.
The reason that I still have it is that I haven't migrated my data yet (i'm lazy) and because it's fully configured to my needs .A plus is to keep it was also that I had to change twice the mainboard ( 3 different boards) and all went fine.But this is probaly true for every distro.
I tested also Ubuntu /Kubuntu Dapper and found that Ubuntu was very polished and not cluttered al all. Ubuntu runs on my parents pc. Kubuntu was not bad too but I think PCLINUX OS and Mepis offer better KDE experience.
133 • distro hopping (by tomtoo on 2007-06-11 19:00:47 GMT from United States)
For the past couple years, everyone in our house has used live Linux as their daily OS. I tried several installed distros a few months ago, just to see what was out there. Both MEPIS and Fedora impressed me for various reasons.
Both MEPIS and Fedora have now survived for a while without breaking. I have proposed that the family switch to either of these installed distros, but there is no interest among the desktop users.
The desktop users in our house, who may best represent the great bulk of computer users, aren't interested in experimenting. They don't visit Distrowatch. They just want something that meets their needs and when they find it, they don't switch.
134 • Distro Hopping (by jay on 2007-06-11 19:12:53 GMT from United States)
I want to be a distro hopper but so far I have only gotten 2 distros to work with my laptops' wifi card (Broadcom 4318) and those are Ubuntu and PCLOS2007.
With PCLOS it worked right out-of-the-box from the LiveCD and with Ubuntu it just takes some tweaking.
So every time a new distro comes out I install it on an extra partition and then spend a few hours fiddling with the wifi.
Some one said that most distros are the same and with the real difference being the package management and the community. But if that's the case why can I get wifi working with Fedora, CentOS, openSuSE, and Knoppix?
135 • Linux play machine (by Luis Medina on 2007-06-11 19:18:14 GMT from Mexico)
Well, i will try this new distro to gaming a little and vew how fun can i get from linux
136 • Xandros sheame (by Mercado on 2007-06-11 19:22:37 GMT from Mexico)
When a use Corel Linux by first time, i think wonderful things to this super easy install distro and was just a dream... Xandros arribe and hope stiil but quick show the reality about anty community effort and just $$$ interes about explote free software... Ubuntu show a totally oposed point of view and its make more susses and I use Ubuntu.
137 • distro hopping (by hab on 2007-06-11 19:27:15 GMT from Canada)
From what i've been reading here and in linux support forums it seems that most of the posts are coming from former and current win users.
I count myself lucky having never had to use windoze for anything other than supporting windoze users. I have always found it too brittle and unstable for day to day use.
I picked up linux in the fall of '95 in the form of a four disk walnut creek cdrom set (remember those?). IIRC it had slackware, debian, redhat and one i can't remember.
It also had the sunsite and tsx11 repos plus a whack of documentation on it as well.
My first sucessful install (on a 4meg 386 with three hds totalling c.400meg) was slackware, then redhat and debian. I settled on slackware.
Since then i've tried all of the major and many of the minor distros. My main criteria was always to find a distro that i could slide in front of a windoze user with the least amount of hassle and confusion. Mandrake served that end well for quite a while but i switched to pclinuxos about two years ago and run it on both my lappy and desktop.
I have installed maybe twenty systems for ex windoze users with it and the results have been remarkably trouble free.
I have always had an abiding interest in emulation. When vmware had their trial releases years ago i had windoze running in it on a 266mhz mandrake machine.
It was slow but an enlightening experience. It was'nt hard to see where it would go. With the power of todays hardware it is now pratical to use emulation so now i test distros (and other oses) with vbox or qemu.
As to what distro people run? Who gives a shit? Linux is linux!
cheers
138 • RE 129: MATLAB (by david_e on 2007-06-11 19:35:57 GMT from Italy)
Matlab under linux is equivalent to Matlab under windows: there are no differences. Personally I prefer Matlab under Linux as it's by far a better environment to work in if you had to code FORTRAN or C and use your own code in conjunction with Matlab.
139 • Package Request: mc (Midnight Commander) (by afs on 2007-06-11 19:41:18 GMT from United States)
An oldie, but goodie ... for those times when one has to use the command line.
140 • distro hopping (by Euchrid on 2007-06-11 19:44:57 GMT from France)
Did you switch to a new distribution recently?
no, not since opensuse 10.2 is released.
I used to hop from mandriva (too buggy and I dislike the way they treated their founder) to ubuntu (too buggy too and quite fed up with command lines, it is not at all a user friendly distro no matter what the buzz around it says), from sabayon (much too slow to install or update and too many useless packages installed by default or too few for mini ) to fedora (too easily broken). I tried PCLINUXOS and sticked to it about six months (0.92 and 0.93) and have never been able to make my i18n settings be kept after a reboot. In The world of free software there is WORLD and I can't understand how such an America-centric distro can be considered as a top distro.
I like Opensuse for the nice and original desktops in both KDE and Gnome, for there GUI tools, for there up-to-date software repos (or the community ones associated to them) for there excellent i18n. Of course Yast to hancle packages is awful but smart does the job. But the main reason why I don't hop again is that now all the family uses linux and I don't want to have to reboot XP anymore because I tried an other flavor of Linux. Sorry for my english but I'm from France.
141 • Distro Hopping (by Ruben on 2007-06-11 19:58:22 GMT from Belgium)
Everything you work with, needs maintanance, also computers. They tend to get clogged up with older or not so often used software, unused libraries, etc. Therefore, once and a while, a complete reinstall is necessary.
I choose a distro at the moment, depending of its repository and versions of standard installed software, reviews, and why not, take the risk sometimes and use something new. As a consultant, it helps giving the right advice to the right person.
But it seems that I always tend to go back to the first distro I ever used. Linux and other OSS have evolved tremendously compared to, let's say, 1998. Bad distributions don't exist, they are all equal. But you can't discuss tastes and colors.
Every distro has it's flavour, just choose the one you feel comfortable with.
142 • Re: #134 (by Sam on 2007-06-11 20:00:14 GMT from United States)
Ah, Broadcom! The reason that most linux distros do not have out-of-the-box support for your wireless card is that the good folks at Broadcom fiercely guard the specs for their firmware. Proprietary firmware isn't terribly linux friendly. There are, of course, plenty of workarounds.
For Ubuntu or Debian based systems I've had good luck with the fwcutter package (look for bcm43xx-fwcutter.deb). Instructions for installing it are pretty straight-forward and are available on the Ubuntu user forums (among other places).
Alternatively, ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net) is available either as a source package from Sourceforge.net or, more likely, is easily accessible in many distros' repositories. Although, as is often the case, the newest version of ndiswrapper seems to work with a wider range of cards than older versions.
I also recommend the knetworkmanager package -- it solved many of my laptop's wifi network management issues.
143 • Distro Hopping (by ezsit on 2007-06-11 20:03:37 GMT from United States)
My Linux experience goes back to 1998 and SuSE 5.3. I then went on to try Slackware, RedHat, AptLinux, Vector, and Caldera (the easiest to get installed and configured back then). I then gave up for a few years and went back to my familiar Windows, OS/2 (which I ran until about 2002).
I purchased RedHat 7.3 and almost stuck with it, but I still did not feel that comfortable. In 2005 I downloaded Mandriva 2005 LE and had a great time switching completely from Windows. I used Mandriva 2005 LE for almost a year, all the while trying live CDs like Slax, OpenLab, PCLinuxOS, Kanotix, Mepis (almost made me switch from Mandriva, but not quite).
I then tried Ubuntu 5.04 and thought it was great. I ran it side-by-side with Mandriva for a couple of months. When 5.10 came out I switched from Mandriva and thought I had found my long term solution. I tried Ubuntu 6.06 and was highly disappointed. I stayed with 5.10 until 6.10 came out and switched then. I ran Ubuntu 6.10 for several months and then tried Debian Etch 4.0. Wow! It was faster, more stable, worked with all my hardware, and was easy to install and configure. I run Debian Etch 4.0 now and couldn't be happier. I downloaded the KDE install disc 1 and fetched the rest off the mirrors. It was easy and highly configurable. It took a little longer to install than Ubuntu or Mepis, but I have none of the oddities that either of the two top Debian derivatives add in the name of user friendliness.
Unless I change hardware that I cannot get working under Debian, I plan to stick with Etch until the next stable Debian comes out. If not, then Ubuntu would be my next choice.
144 • News from SymphonyOS (by Marc on 2007-06-11 20:32:54 GMT from Canada)
I heard they got a new release on the 6th of june.
You can see it on that page : http://symphonyos.com/cms/?p=16
Good Hopping !!!
PS : Dont know why DW did not mention it !!!
145 • distro hopping experience (by kle on 2007-06-11 20:36:05 GMT from Paraguay)
I resumed some of my experience and arguments for decisions/choices in http://clickdimension.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/about-linux-distros/. Think it would have been way to big to place it here.
Possibly there are some aspects i am missing, since i tried to write the whole text on the fly. So it certainly is not complete, but it is just my impression about several aspects i use to have in mind.
146 • Tablet Notebooks - TX1000 (by Rich on 2007-06-11 20:46:48 GMT from United States)
I have been shopping for a distro since I changed my notebook computer. There is little support for the display res (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora all fail in safe graphics mode) but Mint worked as did Sabayon. Where's the tablet support in all this? I'll keep hoping to distros until I find one that supports passive Galax tablet input and display res. Forget about the fingerprint authentication and HP Pavillion launch buttons all over the notebook. Linux is fine for desktops with standard interfaces but I'm begging for tablet notebook support (UPC, tablets, OQO, etc.) so we can finally rid ourselves of proprietary apps and O/S.
147 • comments (by Jason on 2007-06-11 20:59:53 GMT from United States)
I like trying out distros because I'm interested to see what they are doing, I'm just curious. I have mainly used BLAG for a couple years.
Some comments.. if you use yum or apt, most of the dependency hell goes away unless your distro has a poor repositories or it's really weird or closed sourced stuff. Smaill distros can have great repositories, BLAG has over 2 DVD's worth of repositories. Personally these days, I consider a distro to be the Install Media + repository. APT and RPM are not apposing things, you can use APT quite fine with RPM, it's in fact the recommended method on BLAG. Installing software is easy unless it's closed source not following conventions. For instance if it's some install script.
148 • Everlasting Hop Stopper (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 21:15:30 GMT from United States)
If you want to fart around and waste time, keep on hoppin'. If you want to use GNU/Linux exclusively, for a server or desktop, just install Debian (or maybe Ubuntu) and be done with it.
Debian: It's what all the smart people who don't bother visiting Distrowatch any longer are using.
149 • Windows to Linux and on to more Linux (by Oiving on 2007-06-11 21:16:10 GMT from United States)
All I was trying to do after I left Windows 98 was
find a linux that wasn't ugly. The fonts in the
early days were terrible.
Then came the ms fonts, where you had to sign the
user agreement, etc, and it looked better, but still
a far cry from as good as Windows.
Now pclos is one of the few with crappy fonts for some
reason. But I hopped to Zenwalk and whoa! the best
and fastest and prettiest of all!!
150 • Package Suggestions (by Anonymous on 2007-06-11 21:21:25 GMT from Germany)
frozenbubble
java
kaffeine
konversation
ktorrent
mediawiki
qemu
virtualbox
151 • Linux Format distro shakedown (by davecs on 2007-06-11 21:46:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am a subscriber to LXF here in Britain. I must admit I was not impressed by the test. One area where the distro I use, PCLinuxOS, did well was in Software. Some of the points were awarded for the number of releases. So the three extra Test Releases before 2007 Final, due to failings in getting things right first time, got PCLinuxOS (and similarly other distros) extra points! On the other hand, PCLinuxOS came 7th of 8 in "community". Huh? After the problems this April with the site going down, and the way everyone rallied round, this was perverse.
Ubuntu was awarded the top spot on Hardware support because ... it had the most kernel modules in its default kernel. Now it may well support the most hardware, but really -- the only way to test hardware support is to run it with a variety of hardware. This didn't happen. The whole test was a succession of number crunches, with very little actual testing of the distros, except in the section on speed, etc.
I was not impressed. Not impressed at all.
152 • Distro hopping (by tom on 2007-06-11 22:13:33 GMT from United States)
LOL some use the term "distro hopping" like it is a 4 letter word.
To each their own I say. Without distro hopping I would be using Windows 95 (or worse :) )
What is the advantage of distro hopping ? I get to see new gadgets, programs, or ideas. New desktops, new gui tools.
If you want to "take a tour" of interesting stuff take a peek at :
DSL ~ Gotta admit, very impressive for 50 Mb
Graff (puppy) ~ Woa ... Openbox + rox + LXPanel. Talk about "roll your own".
Wofvix/Slax ~ Heck these distros are sooo versatile.
Dyne ~ Wow, very cool concepts.
Fedora ~ Fedora is looking very polished these days.
Sabayon ~ Sabayon is awesome, simply awesome.
Debian ~ "Like a rock"
Zenwalk ~ Bleeding edge Slackware. Fast too.
Arch Linux ~ Ah Arch.
Ubuntu ~ This has been my "distro of choice" for new users. The forums are friendly and welcoming to new users.
Does distro hopping make me any less versed in Linux ? Waaahahaha ~ rofl
Who decided all you self proclaimed "one distro experts" are in fact so knowledgeable anyway? A bunch of ivory tower snobs you are.
I have learned a lot of tricks and new ideas. At the core, Linux is well Linux. If you can learn a few tools you can sys admin any distro. The tools and gui may change, but the CLI remains the same.
Ill grant you an /opt here or a /usr/local there, /etc/init.d vs /etc/rc.d, but come out of the ivory tower, they are not all that different, LOL
If you are using 1 distro exclusively, time to get out of your shell.
153 • RE: 144 News from SymphonyOS (by ladislav on 2007-06-11 22:24:09 GMT from Taiwan)
Two reasons:
1. The project only posted a very brief, one-line release announcement. No changelog, no details about any new features and updates, no nothing. If they can't bother to publish a half-decent release announcement, why do you expect DistroWatch to do it for them?
2. The release was a disaster. I tested it on my spare computer and I found it buggy beyond belief. Just one example: there is a prominent Thunderbird icon on the desktop, but Thunderbird is not even included on the CD! How much more sloppy can you get?
Give this one a miss.
154 • Distrohopping? (by davecs on 2007-06-11 22:24:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
There is of course another view -- that you install an operating system in order to USE your computer, the operating system being a means to an end and not an end in itself.
155 • siwss army knives are usefull, but too cumbersome to spread your sandwiches (by Tistje on 2007-06-11 22:36:28 GMT from Belgium)
In 1999 I started off with linux distro's checking out Red Hat 5.2 and 6.0. I found them hard to use, but still having potential.
In 2000 Mandrake 7.0 made me reserve my old 486 as a permanent linux box and by the time their version number went up to 7.2 (in 2001) I ditched Windows since Mandrake had most of the functionality I needed as a developer (python-addict) and desktop user.
I stayed with Mandrake (always ugrading to the newest versions) until some smart German created a distro that runned off a CD somewhere in 2002 (yes I'm talking about Knoppix). Initially I used the live cd for running a linux distro on someone elses computer, later when they added an installer, I became a fulltime debian unstable user, still testing every new mandriva release, but without any ideas of turning back.
New knoppix variants started to appear at a fast pace and I discovered Distrowatch (hurrah!). Two years of trying out loads of distro's have arrived.
In 2004 Ubuntu arrived to the market and I stayed with it ever since. (still trying other distro's from time to time)
This year Debian 4.0 (etch) overwhelmed me and Mandriva delivered real nice desktop with 2007 Spring edition. Both conquered one of my three pc's (with Ubuntu still on my main desktop).
I also tend to carry 2 live CD's around: a custom ubuntu desktop cd (localised + added/removed packages) and Puppy Linux (Barry Kauler really knows how to make a distro small, usefull and beautiful. Somehow he seems also to be great at running a community.)
I do look foreward to try out Sabayon 3.4 when it gets released. I'm afraid Mandriva will need to make place for this one ;-).
FLOSS is such a great playground. Never had more fun learning new things.
156 • broadcom wireless and distro hopping (by glas on 2007-06-11 22:37:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
I admit to being a distro testing junkie butr most fail when it comes to easily configuring broadcom wireless on my laptop.
Two notable exceptions: Pardus and Mint. Pardus works virtually 'out-of-the box' while Mint takes some tweaking.
Pardus is now my main desktop distro and will stay so for the forseable future but I like to keep other distros in reserve.
Currently installed PCLinuxOS 2007 on a reserve partition and I must say - it's very good. It might even stay!
157 • Hopping madness (by Dan on 2007-06-11 22:37:58 GMT from France)
The thought that there is always something better out there is fuel to change distros. I have gone through from Xandros, Suse, Ubuntu, Archlinux, Zenwalk, Vector, Slackware and probably some others. It took all this to realise that the more I switch distros the less productive I was and the less it benefits the community. I now, after a long spell with Ubuntu have switched to the mothership of Debian for my desktop machine and have been very happy with it. I run Sidux on the laptop, which gets its packages straight from Debian sid repositories and I am happy with this also. I find most of the other distros too bloated. The only other I would consider would be Archlinux.
Linux distros IMHO, when installed get better over time. Adding to them and tweaking them. As they dont need reinstalling (for most distros) it makes sense to get everything working on one distro and just use it. Find what you like and stick with it. This way you find you can gain knowledge and contribute back rather than take all the time.
158 • New Packages (by Dan MacDonald (aka danboid) on 2007-06-11 22:50:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
I would very much much like to second the addition of
libdvdcss2
w32codecs - most distros call it this don't they?
ntfs-3g
ffmpeg
The above have been the best suggestions so far. Packages no-one has mentioned so far that I would like to see monitored include:
rox - Thunar is very nice and I do actually prefer thunar to rox but rox is the best choice of file/ desktop manager for those trying to run X on very old or embedded hardware ( <= 64MB RAM ), as I learned from running pdaXrom on my Zaurus.
xdtv (xawdecode) should replace xawtv not only on Distrowatch but across the board in all distros. Most distros still seem to ship with the horribly outdated app that is xawtv. xdtv has a similarly archaic xaw gui BUT it offers WAY more features and options and most importantly is the only good, fully-featured, working analogue (v4l(2)) capture tool I know of for Linux that is capable of capturing DVD res analogue video smoothly with rt capture preview.
DeVeDe
k9copy - these last two packages make up for the 2 big missing features from k3b i.e easy batch transcoding of movie files onto a video DVD (DeVeDe) and shrinking DVD9 to DVD5 (k9copy)
dvd::rip
libmad
unrar / rar
java / j2re
rosegarden
ardour
kdenlive
Below this line are packages which depend upon having an internet connection to be of any use and so I don't deem their inclusion quite as important as the above mentioned.
gnash
flash
amule
ktorrent
The sad thing with Linux now is that I couldn't recommend 1 distro that would fit everybodies needs and instead I would have to ask them what they wanted to do with their computer first.
Packaging and programs hasn't been a big problem for Linux for years now really. Binary compatibility across all Linux versions per architecture would be better though - hopefully that will happen one day? If you're using one of the major distros (Debian, Suse or Fedora based) you very, very rarely have to compile stuff as most people provide packages for these distros if they're not in the repos.
Linux needs a stable hardware ABI so that manufacturers can provide Linux (if only for x86) drivers with their hardware. Unfortunately, the kernel guys really don't like this idea and your average computer WILL NOT be prepared to patch and recompile the kernel if it takes anything more than a couple of mouse clicks -IF a patch was available, of course. I have compiled a number of kernels in the past but still I try to avoid it at all costs and I will try other distros to try getting hardware to work before any kernel re-compiling takes place. Solaris doesn't have this problem AFAIK so maybe Nexenta or another Solaris-based OS could prove to be the best FOSS *nix desktop OS of the future?
159 • To #29 & Distro Hopping (by Peter Brady on 2007-06-11 23:16:43 GMT from United States)
I distro hopped for a while before I landed in Debian. I'm sure many of you would prefer Ubuntu on the desktop, but I've found its performance and administration is not as easy as Debian (granted I hate GUIs). I still hop often, especially for music creation, there are some great distros out there for music, I'm just not settled on one yet.
#29 You can use MATLAB in Linux, in fact they are one of the commercial software companies which proudly supports Linux, also if you want an alternative to MATLAB try out octave. And certainly UT2004 is a great FPS as well as other great free FPSs to replace Counter Strike
160 • Hopping is fun (by Im a hopper on 2007-06-11 23:19:42 GMT from Canada)
Long time listener, first time poster.
I have used various distributions over the years. Started with Redhat 5.1. I have used the following distributions in no order:
Redhat, Mandrake, Slackware, Stampede, Debian, AltLinux, ASPLinux, Corel Linux, Linspire, Freespire, Xandros, Ubuntu, Pclinuxos, Kubuntu, Libranet, Knoppix, Berry, Fedora, Redhat Enterprise, Centos, Startcom, Mepis, Yoper, TurboLinux, Kanotix and Suse. These are what I remember. Out of linux world used Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and SCO.
Thanks for your site, it keeps me hopping!!!!
161 • Distro Hopping (by brinx on 2007-06-11 23:20:15 GMT from Australia)
Guilty as charged! I'm one of those who tried Mint & liked it so much I've changed to it ??permanently??. est thing for me was Mint's ability to recognise storage peripherals - particularly those on the usb chain - plus it is a very pleasant distro to work with.
162 • hopping on the linux wagon (by bob on 2007-06-11 23:23:07 GMT from United States)
been "hopping" for about 3 months now. here's my take. Madriva is pretty, but wants you to sign up for a bunch of different things. simplymepis i like. ubuntu is ok. i currently have 16 burned cd's. the cd's i have are 2 versions of gentoo, helix, dynebolic, artistx, sidux, mandriva, simplymepis, linspire, santa fe, ubuntu 7.04, gutsy (ubuntu 7.10) and arklinux. i've also tried and thrown away fedora core, debian (it had a text base install which i could not follow) and a couple others that have slipped into the past. out of all of that, Musix and Kanotix (from Germany) found and used my sound card as well or better than windoze xp. the sound card is a cs4236 inside a dell optiplex 400 mhz machine. yes i found a couple of fixes for that in simplymepis and ubuntu forum pages. but, why should i have too?
signed
Hopping for the Wrong Reason
163 • Distro Hopping (by JumpStreet on 2007-06-12 00:07:18 GMT from United States)
Fair cop. For a while I was always installing the latest and greatest (Centos 5, Ubuntu/Linux Mint, Fedora Core 6, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS) but lately have settled on Linux Mint. Of course with Fedora Core 7 out and OpenSuse 10.3 on the way, looks like my hard drive is going to get another workout. To be honest, installing Linux is a lot of fun and I hope it stays that way.
164 • distro hoppoer and installers (by ritch on 2007-06-12 00:22:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
im a distro hopper because linux is deeply flawed, in that for the average user, if it isn't in a repository you can't install it!
obviously there are ways, but not with your average user
an operating system without a simple way to install what the user wants is not much of an operating system, and not much freedom.
i hop from one distro to the next hoping as it involves that someone will design a simple installer mechanism so i can get some real practical use instead of heading back to windows, there the fact is there is no documentation on installing other than from a predefinded repositroy even in the idiots guide for dummies
on a spectrum it was load"" to install msx it was cload for cassette :/ then the program name
why should a mordern system be so much harder?
linux will fail in the long run if it dosen't take of the superiour geeky hat and help user actually install on their systems
we will be distro hoppers looking for the holy grail till we get sick off the same problems over and over again and switch back to windows! (i can down load anything that exist for windows and install it easily!
/ you can't under linux) instead if you raise the problem the geek's in the community condems you as microsoft secret agent, i would happily bin my microsoft's abusive products if they're was a proper installer mechanism
the linux community needs to wake up, fix that one tiny thing, and it can rule the world !
ignore it could burst the home market bubble and slowly die
know lots of people i have convinced to try it only to ditch because of that 1 reason
i use sabayon and xandros
sabayon works and has a huge amount of progams packaged with it, so there is less problem's needing to install something, but it is still limited!
xandros because its the only distro that really works full stop with my broadcom based wireless cards
i love the politic's of linux, i think richard stallman is one of the greatest men of our age.
i agree completely with the ideolgy, but linux dosen't have a future long term and can never compete with windows or mac if i dosen't address this issue! i think it will eventually
but it pisses me of enough to keep looking back at window instead of linux,
more often than not now i boot in to windows, so come on sabayon a little bit further and we may have the first truely windows killer distro!
cause i really want to be a purely and completley windows free! just 1 tiny little thing stopping me and a million other people starting linux domination
165 • distro sampling (by ray carter at 2007-06-12 00:34:13 GMT from United States)
I would not call what I do 'hopping', but I do like to check out what is happening with other distros. I've been using Gentoo exclusively on my mini-itx box for several years now - recently completed a new install as the old one was quite out of date for a number of reasons. My desktops have been settled on Ubuntu for a couple of years now, and about a year ago I switched several computers at the local library from Mandrake to Ubuntu since, IMHO, it was easier to admin. Several months ago I started buying Linux Pro magazine on the newsstand (since then I've ordered a subscription) - one of the primary attractions is the monthly DVD. I always have meant to do some testing of current distros, but usually wind up short of time to do the downloads and, basically, lack of direction as to what to try next - Linux Pro solves both issues nicely. I had been using Ubuntu on my laptop since I got it about a year and a half ago, and recently installed the new Mandriva Spring - was pleasantly surprised to find support for the slightly borked Intel video bios (previous remedy was a proprietary, commercial driver from XIgraphics). But, I could not find the driver for my Atheros wireless card, so continued looking and found that Ubuntu 7.04 includes that driver video driver too, so installed that. At any rate, I find that checking new distros on some sort of regular basis does occassionaly provide benefits.
166 • distro swapping (by spiritraveller on 2007-06-12 01:52:53 GMT from United States)
For the past few years, I have been a hopeless distro swapper. I have run at one time or other, probably 1/4 of the distros listed on the front page.
Mandrake, RedHat/Fedora, Debian, Centos, Gentoo, Arch, DSL, dyne:bolic, etc, etc, etc...
Why?
Because I am a chronic procrastinator, that's why. Testing out different distros is one of many ways that I can avoid doing what I know I should be doing.
I am now sticking with Ubuntu. It is fortunate that Ubuntu has arisen as what seems to be the standard Linux distro. It has filled the hole that RedHat left when it started this whole "enterprise linux" business model.
And it gives me one less excuse to do something that sucks time away...
Instead, I now procrastinate by posting on Distrowatch Weekly News!
167 • distros (by DaveK on 2007-06-12 02:17:31 GMT from United States)
I've switched over to Simply Mepis, and have no use for Suse since they went only Open Source. I also have found an apt-based a welcome relief from an rpm-based system for ease of use.
168 • @ #162 regarding Debian (by Turjan on 2007-06-12 02:31:47 GMT from United States)
Debian Etch has a very nice and easy GUI installer. Unfortunately, you have to type "installgui" at the prompt to begin the GUI install. It's not very intuitive for someone new to Linux, but the installer will tell you if you press F1 before making a choice, as suggested.
169 • I want to see more BASIC packages (by Anon on 2007-06-12 02:49:44 GMT from New Zealand)
I keep seeing all of these requests for exotic new packages, when most of the difficulties I encountrer with Linux comes from hardware support in the basic packages.
I would suggest adding these at a minimum:
dvd+rw-tools
lm_sensors
net-tools
pciutils
procps
shadow
sysfsutils
usbutils
wireless-tools
wpa_supplicant
It makes absolutely no sense to me to track packages like tar, while not tracking lm_sensors, wireless-tools, or wpa_supplicant. Knowing the available versions of the latter three will tell me if what I have will work with the distribution (if I have done a little research to tell me what minimum version I need), while any reasonable version of tar will do more than I will ever want to do with it.
170 • No subject (by Mel on 2007-06-12 03:12:54 GMT from United States)
Yeah, I used to distro-hop alot. Seems sometimes your first experience sticks with you. I installed debian when kde was 2.2 (potato? can't remember). Now I find myself in a quandry. I don't have the time now to fiddle like I used to because of 3 young kids. I like PCLinuxOS and Mepis the best because they just work for me. However, I am a debianite and I would love to find the time to learn more (tinker) and evolve my Linux knowledge. For instance, the problem for me is I install PCLinuxOS and it just works. Nothing to learn how to fix. Nothing to really get working. Then I install Debian and it doesn't do this or that and I want to learn, but don't have the time. So, I hop around to see what's up. Can't figure out why Ubuntu is so popular. I think sometimes that it stirred up such a commotion when it came out, that everybody was jumping in because everyone else was and people figured "hey this distro is #1 on Distrowatch...everybody's talking about it...must be good...guess I should use it, too". My goal is to find more time to get deeper into Debian. Until then, PCLinuxOS is the one (I even gave Texstar 20 bucks). I admire Tex and the Ripper Gang so much. Such a small team putting the big guys to shame. They took Mandriva, made it stable, got rid of that URPMI crap, put in codecs, made an installable live CD and made a great looking desktop that works. Congratulations to PCLinuxOS! I'm sorry to say I was disappointed when Warren took Mepis and switched to Ubuntu base. I thought he had a great distro back in the 2003 version days and that's where I WAS going to stay. I also hope Freespire can get their act together. It wouldn't even mount a USB thumbdrive for me. There's no excuse for that. What will ultimately make me happy and a true Linux-only user is when suspend and hibernate mature. My Thinkpad has XP on it. Why? Because it sits by my Lazyboy recliner and when I get the urge to surf or email I just come out of standby and GO! Sorry for the long post.
171 • not a hopper (by atk on 2007-06-12 03:14:40 GMT from United States)
I don't consider myself a distro hopper, but I do enjoy trying out all kinds of distros and live CDs on my test box.
On my regular boxes, I ran Mandrake for years on my home file server and desktop. Around 10 or so, it started giving me trouble, so I switched to Suse on my desktop, and later my server. However, when Novell ruined Suse (10.1) and then sold out the community, I had to move on. After much testing, I settled on Ubuntu Dapper for my server because I wanted to leave it be for a few years. It is working great. On my desktop, I have switched to PCLinuxOS, and I love it. To complete my tools, I always have the latest Puppy live CD around. It is amazing.
I plan to stick with Ubuntu on my server, PCLinuxOS on my desktop, and Puppy for anything else. Couldn't be happier!!
172 • Distro Hopping (by Honaby on 2007-06-12 03:32:59 GMT from United States)
I'm a distro hopper also... but recently i've been using and promoting Ubuntu a lot. My home pc is currently configured to dual boot between Ubuntu Studio (Feisty) and XP. I've installed Ubuntu on 2 laptops already and several computers on one of my previous employers company.
I started my Linux distro adventures on Redhat 7, moved to Madrake, then SuSE, then Fedora, tried Mandriva again, loved Yoper for a while, then back to SuSE/OpenSuse, and ofcourse Ubuntu (and now still using it).
Although one of the problems that I have which is common is that my present employer is more of a Microsoft based company. And my specialty is more of .Net and previously Java, so i'm stuck with Windows @ work. I wrote this comment using XP with the all new Apple Safari for Windows.
I'll probably continue to recommend Ubuntu and use Ubuntu as my personal OS for a very long time.
173 • Distro Hopping (by Jimbo on 2007-06-12 03:35:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've very recently switched to Ubuntu from XP after my computer went into total melt down and wiped everything from my hard drive (long story). After having heard allot of differing opinions of linux, i have to say i'm very impressed, apt-get is currently my favourite thing in the world!
Fortunately I'm getting a new computer soon with 120Gb hard disk so i want to install vista (It comes with it so i want to get my moneys worth), Ubuntu and have a spare space for trying out other distros. I really want to try Slackware, I figure if anything i'll probably learn how stuff in linux really works.
174 • Hop, hop, hopping (by Wrawrat on 2007-06-12 03:38:54 GMT from Canada)
After 2 years with Ubuntu Linux, I hopped to Fedora 7 since my job requires me to work with some applications (mainly the IBM Cell BE SDK) which are well supported by other distros.
Fortunately, it turned out to be a bliss! As much as I hated FC6, I can only praise Fedora 7. Not only it's significantly faster (apart for pirut/pup), it seems to work better. Network shared can be accessed without having to log off, wifi works correctly (for some reason, my wifi card worked better with Ubuntu 6.10 than 7.04), spacial mode isn't that bad, etc. Had some issues, but nothing I couldn't overcome. Let's say they came a long way since the last time I kept a RH-based distro on my computer for more than two days (RH 6.1)!
175 • 29 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-12 03:54:16 GMT from United States)
Matlab runs on Linux, both in a native version and with Wine. As already stated, you can run Matlab programs with free alternatives. You should not have to dual-boot for that!
176 • best distro and hopping (by Elven on 2007-06-12 04:24:48 GMT from Slovakia)
what distri is the best? difficult to tell it. in the past, Linux was not the best for the desktop use. But now is KDE, Gnome and some other fully funcional, and good for normal people. But what is the best? nobody know... :)
To Clem: Hi. i am currently using Mint Linux Cassandra. Great distro
To laco: ten hopping je vlastne samozrejmost, kedze coraz viac ludi ma:
1) rychle pripojenie do internetu
2) napalovacku
3) vlastny pc na pokusy
4) dostatocne pevny disk
5) slobodny softver nic nestoji
And now the same text to english:
Hopping is a normal thing, because many people now have:
1) fast internet connection
2) CD/DVD burder
3) own PC for trying
4) enought sice of harddisk
5) free software have no cost
177 • distro hopping (by Jim on 2007-06-12 04:29:45 GMT from United States)
I used to use a seperate computer that had alot of issues to test my distros ive jumped around everywhere. I started on ubuntu then went to Linux Mint and finally found that i prefer sabayon the downside is the time it takes to compile things from source but it works great with my laptop. Ive been using sabayon since december and i love it. I still distro hop but i do it on my main computer with virtualbox wich is a great emulator for those that like to test distros i recommend it if you only have one computer or if you prefer just to do it all on one computer like me. Distrowatch i love yalls site your my homepage.
178 • No subject (by Basel on 2007-06-12 04:31:33 GMT from Saudi Arabia)
Did you switch to a new distribution recently? If so, why?
I recently tried F7 but did not like it even though they have done a great job.
Did you just test one of the new releases and liked it so much that you decided to keep it?
I have yet to try PCLinuxOS.
Or did you find it exciting to run an operating system with more up-to-date software?
This is one of the reason I frequently try new distros.
If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason?
I have switched from Slackware/SuSE to SimplyMEPIS because I find it simple to use and the apt-synaptic is totally awesome. I tried Kubuntu as well but my usb drive did not work and the default set of apps is so limiting and some apps crashes often.
Are there any readers who have used the same distro for the past two years? I would say Slackware.
179 • distrohopping as a sport (by jaslar on 2007-06-12 04:35:04 GMT from United States)
I'm definitely slowing down. I use enough unusual programs that are unlikely to be in any one repository that it takes a while to set up a distro. I was tempted, while waiting for the final PCLOS, to hop to Ubuntu or Mint -- but the live CDs for those two (a wonderful invention, and better than virtualization for really testing your system) revealed that neither one could find my wireless card. So I hung on for PCLOS 2007, and am glad I did. I also downloaded Gnome for PCLOS (a single Synaptic click!). Now I've got drop shadows, wobbly windows and a spinning cube.
At work, I'm still at Dapper Drake, and am perfectly comfortable waiting out the upgrades until Beryl/Compiz is stable, and integrated.
Bottom line: I seem to have developed a taste for stability, reliability, and the ability to actually get something done.
But it's still fun to burn a live CD and give it a spin, just to keep up. It was the need for drop shadows in Gnome that finally nudged me away from PCLOS .93. You never know what's going to grab you.
180 • Distro Hopping (by Jon on 2007-06-12 05:12:37 GMT from United States)
When I am at work, a strictly Windows environment, I frequently visit Distrowatch during my breaks. This might explain why Windows has such a high ranking on Distrowatch. All the distributions seem the same to me after the initial installation. I seem to use fewer and fewer applications as the years progress. In the next few months, I will probably turn my computer into an Internet Kiosk and forget about all the other applications.
181 • Distro Hopping (by Antoine at 2007-06-12 05:21:45 GMT from Switzerland)
I have switched from Gentoo to Kubuntu. The reason was that I build a new box and that the 2006.1 Gentoo cannot even boot on it. So, I installed Kubuntu 7.04, just a day before Gentoo 2007.0 was released. However, I am happy with Kubuntu, and will stay with some time.
182 • @139 re mc (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-12 05:22:30 GMT from Canada)
mc is not a sensible package to track if you want to see how up to date distributions are, because there hasn't been a new upstream version in two years. 4.6.1 was released on July 23rd 2005.
183 • No subject (by Kantor on 2007-06-12 05:31:11 GMT from Romania)
I have installed a lot of distribution's, but I thing that Debian is the best (for me)
184 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-12 05:35:50 GMT from Kazakhstan)
I do hop much these days.
No distro has settings that suit me, so I have to mess arround a lot with each of them. I like to have my desktop completely clean, no icons, panel autohides to show a nice oceanic background.
KDE is best here as it hides the panel almost fully, Gnome with autohide size=0 still shows a thin line and XFCE leaves an ugly thick bar. Gnome also lacks the ability to change font size of the clock.
I like terminal to look like a piece of semi-transparent glass with no borders, no tabbar and no menu. I could only achieve this with Gnome and XFCE, though Yakuake is very promising.
Ubuntu used to be my favorite (because of addition of chess:), but since it's Compiz has an annoying bug where title bar of maximized windows becomes inaccessible, I leaned to PCLinux for a while. I currently play with Zenwalk, because I like it to have all development dependencies and so I can compile packages I want, but I do miss the cube.
I've tried about 8 other distros before but none of them were as attractive.
As to package tracking on DistroWatch, I'd like WINE, QEMU (or other OO emulator) added.
185 • RE 116 "Shoulder Season - Why" (by dbrion on 2007-06-12 05:36:36 GMT from France)
"
I ...wonder, could it be that the shoulder season is because most of the developers are in school and take the summer off? Are there statistics about the age ranges of the developers to validate this hypothesis?
"
Perhaps the developper age is not the reason, but the
users age.
I interpret the "relative" decline of UBU linux connected number as the fact I think it is mainly used by students, who proudly install her on their parent's PC. At the first (automagically downloaded from the wild wild Internet!!!) bug, or when exam saison comes or when their parents become conscious, they come back to great stable systems such as Windows XP...
This week, one could compare by eye statistics of connected systems and page hits numbers/rankings: The rank (2nd) of the brontosauric Debian (she was hailed as such as she was released) in the number of connected systems differs from her rank(betw.5 and 7, according to the integration lag) in the DW page hit counts (perhaps Debian is not interesting, but Debian users are open minded enough to look at other distrs, from a stable and comfortable system they do not want to get rid of).
Seasons of interests and peaks in page hits were analysed (and used) by Zenwalk -as far as I remember-(to decide whether they should become popular or not, say, by releasing or not in August).
It seems to me that, if a distr has a tiny FTP server, they should release in August and betw Christmas and 01/01...
186 • Distro Hopping (by Giorgio Beltrammi on 2007-06-12 06:18:49 GMT from Italy)
I switched to Mac in december 2003 and from this to Linux Mandriva in october 2005. Since november i'm a satisfied Ubuntu user.
I'm on Dapper Drake since his release and i have not intention to leave them.
Although i had tried more and more Linux distros in live session, i am still faithfull to my Ubuntu 6.06.
Bye from Italy :-)
187 • Distro Hopping (by Gallienus on 2007-06-12 06:29:45 GMT from United States)
I started with red hat 5 or 6 I think, tried caldera desktop linux, stayed on debian 3.0 for a few months, moved to mandrake 7.2 then 8. Tried slackware 8 that I got as a free disk from linux format, that was on my hard drive for about 2 hours then it was back to debian 3.1 for a while. All this I did just to start learning about linux, all that time I considered windows my main os.
Then I tried Slackware 9 and I was hooked on it. I've always had a second hard drive so I was dual booting slack and windows xp for the longest time. Then I bought a thrid hard drive for the sole purpose of sandboxxing different distro's just to see what they were like. I've stuck with slack going through 10, 10.1, and 11. Around 10.1 I started looking for a new distro, slack is great but I was reading about all the improvements in opensuse, fedora core, mepis just to name a few. I figured it was time for a change.
I don't think I've hopped as much as some people but I have tried at least 8 different distro's over the last year. vector 5.8 FC4 and 6 opensuse 10.1, elive 0.4 and 0.5 arch, mepis, debian 4.0 sabayon 3.26,oh and linspire, yes I admit it I tried it. I even tried ubuntu, the length of time that took to install it was only a few minutes shorter than the total time it stayed on my hard drive.
Then I tried sabayon 3.3. Slackware is gone my sandbox for other linux's is gone and I don't think I'm going to be changing distro's for quite some time if ever. And I'll be sending Fabio some money in pay pal.
188 • Try SchizOS (by SchizOS on 2007-06-12 06:32:53 GMT from United States)
For the ultimate in distro-hopping, I put together a meta-distro called "SchizOS" that boots into an entirely new distro every day. This is achieved by encoding each distro as a virtual machine image and streaming them using moka5 LivePC Player. The contents of your documents stay around, but the rest of the distro changes. It's an easy way of playing around with a lot of distros. I feature each distro at http://www.distrooftheday.org.
189 • Distro Hopping (by Lyn David Thomas on 2007-06-12 07:18:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well I don't hop so much as put my toe in the water regularly.
Started off using Mandrake 8.0 and tried:
Xandros
SuSe
Debian
Lycioris
And about a dozen others
Settled on Vector Linux and have used it as my main distro for the last 4 years or so.
However I do try other distros to get the feel of them, honourable mention goes to BLAG - who'se politics I respect - have tried so many others, basically just about everything that I can - because you can always learn new things and see new angles.
Don't think I'll move away from Vector, it combines excellent support with a solid distribution and fulfills my needs.
190 • feedback from distro hoppers (by DG on 2007-06-12 07:23:35 GMT from Netherlands)
When you try out a new distro and find that it doesn't do x, y or z (support your wireless card, handle your screen resolution, etc), do you actually bother to report that back to the distro itself?
It is far better to inform them directly than letting them find out second-hand from the DW comments afterwards. Filling in a report on their bugtracker might mean it isn't forgotten and is fixed for a future release.
191 • A suggestion for the package database update (by latte on 2007-06-12 07:51:25 GMT from New Zealand)
My suggestion for a package to be added is "Geany" - a great little IDE.
Beautifully designed, very robust and very small.
It has a very clean and uncluttered layout, and is also easy to customise
and has nice touches like being able to change the size of the toolbar buttons. Geany is a really good alternative to the more heavyweight IDEs like KDevelop and Anjuta.
The Geany home-page is here -
http://geany.uvena.de/
192 • No distro hopping (by fdavid on 2007-06-12 08:00:57 GMT from Germany)
The same gentoo installation since 2003. This is the one and only OS on my box. Ok I must admit that many parts of the original box have already been replaced, but the os. :-) I just keep or mirror the disks, some kernel configuration and voila...
Why hopping if you found the distro best suits your needs?
Many thanks for distrowatch, that helped me to find gentoo after 2 years of experimenting with other distros (suse, mandrake, redhat, slackware, debian, vector, etc.)
And I'm still a regular reader of distrowatch, but I don't even think of switching. Just try to follow the trends in the world of distributions.
Sometimes I wish that Ladislav would be more informed and unbiased about gentoo, but he resists. ;-)
Otherwise I'm a happy reader of distrowatch and it's an indespensable source of information.
193 • Suggestion for new 'package to track' (by Mark Wyatt on 2007-06-12 08:35:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
I would suggest adding the package 'Planner' (formerly known as Mr Project, I believe).
This is the Gnome project management package (Gannt charts, etc) and I consider this an 'Office' package, but some distros put it in 'Software Development' in the menu system.
194 • RE 190 (by dbrion on 2007-06-12 08:52:46 GMT from France)
"When you try out a new distro and find that it doesn't do x, y or z (..), do you actually bother to report that back to the distro itself?"
No :
the only two bugs I saw were
a) a urpmi broken (if it was a bug, and not a messy install *from me *, it would be so obvious that I did not need to go to CyberCafé to bug report) => I started compiling a little more that what I had hoped (that makes anyway less typing that pple wining about the naughty, naughty CLI)....
b) Arabic (and Farsi, I thought) were misspeeled from the very start of edUBU in nov. 2006-> if they are meant to be mass given, through the holy grace of Internet (this makes the UBU chart unconsistent with the way they transport Linux, as Internet is not that wide spread=>
cygwin found an intelligent solution three years ago,
UBU linux goes on claiming she is superior to anything....),
it would be sooner or later corrected (it was the same thing as writing hsilgne instead of English and could be verified with any Mandriva disk or with TV or with Arabic speaking pple...) and to laugh in the meantimes.
195 • Linux "hopping" vs Vista (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 11:18:50 GMT from United States)
This is not a bash of any operating system (I have
PCLinuxOS 2007 on my old pc and Vista Premium on
this new Acer notebook computer). This is a serious
question for anyone interested enough and knowledgable
enough to answer:
Have any of you at any time run across a Linux
distribution that works as good as Vista? I mean
with multimedia especiall, and streaming video from
the internet in particular. Please understand that
I am a Linux advocate, but I was shocked when I got
this notebook with Vista on it and found that the
things I was always struggling with in various
distros over the years just worked BEAUTIFULLY with
no tweaking at all in Vista. I HATE that!
What that tells me is that Linux is still behind
Windows/Microsoft after all this time! That is
sad and disgusting.
Please answer this with no flaming; I want a distro
on this notebook that is not a step down from Vista.
Perfectly syncronized audio/video from David Letterman's
site, for example. Same with CNN streaming video and
Fox News, etc (no "greasemonkey" needed with Vista).
Pop a DVD movie in and it just plays perfectly, no
"codecs" to download and install from a repository.
So far it appears that the state of Linux is still
inferior to Windows, sorry to say. I know all about
the "political" part of it and Microsoft's tactics..
indeed, that is the main reason I am going to get
rid of Vista for a Linux distribution that can
match its functionality.
Is that possible?
- Jerry -
196 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-12 11:28:08 GMT from United States)
"Pop a DVD movie in and it just plays perfectly, no
"codecs" to download and install from a repository."
You should consider moving to a country with different patent laws.
If you want something that looks like Vista and acts like Vista, you've already got the right OS. Linux can meet certain needs very well. Acting like pre-installed Vista is not one of those needs. If you want an answer that provides information, change your post to at least pretend it's not a troll. How about if I ask you, "Is there a version of Vista that is not inferior, you know, one that looks and acts exactly like Mepis?"
197 • Distro Hopping (by tao on 2007-06-12 12:03:21 GMT from United States)
I have favorites like everyone else and usually will stick with one until one of my favorites comes out and I have to try it out. But right now the only distribution that will run on my PC are Debian, Fedora or PCLinuxOS (and derivatives). These are the only distributions that will properly detect my Dell E207WFP (20" wide screen) monitor properly. Ubuntu Feisty and it's derivatives (sadly including Mint) do a very poor job of detecting this monitor. The previous version of the Ubuntu OS (and derivatives) detected the monitor properly so that to me seems like a step backwards (at least for me).
198 • Ubuntu-7.04 testign quality and Tried Debian 4.0 installer broken (by hobbitland on 2007-06-12 12:11:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
I found quite a few bugs with Ubutntu 7.04 like:
1) Not working with PTP cameras
2) Screen saver kicking off during a game (ie ET)
3) Screen refresh arte problem
4) Mencoder 1.0rc1 producing corrupt sound
5) Xvidcore-1.1.2 encoidng is slow
6) VMware hansg while installing windows.
These are quite terrible bugs. Ubtuntu is released every 6 months. However, some shopuld be labelled "testing" or "unstable" releases. I solved most of my problems by installing old packages from Ubuntu 6.06. Like Mencoder 0.99, Xvid-1.1.0. I also used the stnadard WMPlayer 2.x from VMware and that worked.
I tried Debian 4.0 and it won't even install. It eitehr keeps complaining about media not found or hangs during grub installation. Neither of these problems existed in Debian 3.1. This is terrible.
It seems that Ubuntu 7.04 ahs gone through very little testing. At present I am back to Ubuntu 7.04 usign soem packages from the more stable 6.10 release.
My requirements for a distro are:
1) Multimedia apps MUST not be crippled like OpenSuSE
2) Must have multimedia stuff like MP3 in the official reposys.
3) Must have a FREE version to download for basic installation
4) Must be installable from a singel LiveCD (not liveDVD)
Additional software can always be downloaded and a local CD reposy created. That is what I do with Ubuntu-7.04 as I keep a Ubuntu-7.04-extras CD for updates/official DL of OpenOffice, Firefox and VMWare etc...
1) Must install from livecd that
199 • RE: 195 • Linux "hopping" vs Vista (by simplyjat on 2007-06-12 12:27:28 GMT from Singapore)
I think you are new to game (distro hopping). You did not tried we enough.
As answer to you question for linux distro, here is a small list
- Sabayon
- Mint
- BLAG
- Fox
Pick any one and see how good vista is....
200 • Re:195 (by Beatnik on 2007-06-12 12:39:55 GMT from Panama)
Answer: have you tried Sabayon Linux?
Well, the DVD version runs all of these file types without codecs out of the box:
DVD movies from original discs; .mp3; flash; .jpeg; .avi; .mpeg;.wmv; wma; .real, etc...
My Story with Linux:
One day I was so curious about the new Windows "Vista". I was so idiot that I thought it was the best OS in the planet (well I just knew about windows, dos and mac and heard little of Linux, Unix at that time).
Then, I started to search for Vista, I even downloaded a RTM version which I Installed and cracked. What happened: it doesn´t recognized my USB ADSL modem, and other devices (maybe in the forthcoming service packs they will include more drivers?)
And the Aero effect was not so out of this world like I thought and I could only use Vista in my newer PC with 512MB ram, because when I tried to install it on my older PC I got a message that it won´t run on that PC with 256MB Ram.
Then I started to search for videos of Vista and found a site comparing 3 OS and I saw them on these order:
http://www.abadiadigital.com/noticia1778.html
1- Windows Vista (I thought: "wow, these is very good, more beautiful than XP")
2- Mac OS Leopard Preview (Then I saw the mac video and thought: Oh, I can´t believe it "Mac OS is 100 times better than Vista in their GUI and functionally, and I said to me "I think I will buy a Mac in the near future).
3- Linux (GNU/Linux XGL/Compiz): Well, when I saw that video it really BLEW MY MIND and you can call me Linuxer, Linuxmaniac, Linuxero (in spanish) since that very important day in my life, it opened my eyes to another OS called Linux (which I only knew it was a free OS, just for programmers and software developer geeks).
That video converted me instantly to Linux.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws
The first distro I tried was Ubuntu 6.10 and I liked it, but was a pain to get the codecs and was frustrated because it didn´t come with the Beryl/Compiz Cube Desktop.
Then I searched for Distros that came with Beryl/compiz out of the box and found in a wikipedia article Kororaa and Sabayon names, that was one of my happiest days in my life when I ran Sabayon Live DVD and I was wobbling windows and moving the cube. (Second time Linux blew my mind but this was on my own PC).
That was on February /2007
Now I dual boot my 2 PCs with XP and some flavor of Linux (Love Sabayon, and love to try other Distros, but Sabayon is a keeper for me).
The Distros I have tried until know in order of trying:
1- Ubuntu: I have respect for my first distro, but it was slow and no codecs. And it was Gnome, now I love KDE. (Tried versions 6.10, and 7.4 + Kubuntu 7.4)
2- Sabayon: Excellent. Love it, it recognized my local wired network effortlessly. Is my main distro and the one who blew my mind on my desktop PC with codecs, and Beryl/compiz playing all my files. (Versions 3.26 and 3.3 all good, also tried the mini cd versions but I recommend the DVD, because it comes with Open Office and more softs than the mini cd)
3- Mandriva: Good. 2007.0 Gnome is running on my old PC, also tried 2007.1 One
4- Mint 2.2 Biana Gnome: Good. Tried Gnome (waiting for their new KDE).
5- Mepis 6.5: Regular. This one had serious problems with my old PC with recognizing the screen.
6- Sam: Excellent. Love it, I tried it first than PC Linux (waiting for the stable version. Now I don´t know why in their latest version do not include Open Office? that´s too bad. One step ahead and now two steps back?
7- Musix 0.99 Multimedia Distro. Good on my newer PC, dont work on my older PC.
8- Dyne-Bolic 2.4 multimedia distro. Very Good
9- ArtistX 0.3: Multimedia distro. Excellent
10- PC Linux: Well I had a bad downloaded .iso, but I could play a little with the live CD and I like it.
Conclusion:
If you are newbie like me, I recomend you to try these distros:
Sabayon DVD, PC Linux CD, Sam, Mint and Mandriva for out of the box experience.
If you are graphic designer or audio/video creator I recomend you to try Dyne-Bolic and ArtisX (oh, and wait for the forthcoming JackLab).
Hey Ladislav thanks for Distrowatch
201 • For distrowatch packages (by Beatnik on 2007-06-12 12:47:44 GMT from Panama)
Ladislav,
Please add the Virtualization packages:
-Qemu
-VirtualBox
and the 3d Desktops:
Beryl/Compiz/Metisse
Thanks
202 • POST 196 (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 13:23:01 GMT from United States)
(from an "anonymous" of course)
My post up there was not a "troll."
Now, go away while I scroll back up and read the
several posts with real answers to my query in here.
- Jerry _
203 • No subject (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 13:32:54 GMT from United States)
I'm using a name now, is that better?
You did not "query". You trolled. Otherwise you would not have included a bunch of irrelevant commentary about Vista being superior. All you have to do is list the things you want to do with your Linux distro. Keep the commentary to yourself. It is very offensive.
204 • "Geany" (191) and other packages (by dbrion on 2007-06-12 14:13:41 GMT from France)
I tested geany under XP and she seems very beautiful, indeed.
It is already packaged for 9 linuxen+1BSD format (plus source)...
Other interesting packages would be
for emulation/virtualization,
qemu's accelerator (works today often better under Linux than under Windows). GPL'd now.
for matlab orphans (student licences do not last a whole life):
octave
gnuplot (a CLI plotter, generating postscript: was (is?) used by octave for plotting. Can work by itself and is very light (for automating). Seems GPL'd
Is there anything to tranform one's PC into a phone, a coffee / spaghetti machine, a dancing star? (I suppose it can be a jukebox and a TV)
205 • 203 (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 14:22:01 GMT from United States)
It appears you've got a mental problem or something,
anonymous (using my name still keeps you anonymous,
plus it shows who the real troll here is).
And your troll worked didn't it.. you got me to
respond to a non contributing moron who can't
even post his(?) name here. LOL!
Now, again, go away, also be mindful of Distrowatch's
server logs and the admin's ability to know where
the "anonymous" posts come from.
Posts from those who have replaced Vista with a
comparable Linux distro for this notebook computer
is what I'm "trolling" for, not flames, as I asked
in my first post up there.
- Jerry -
206 • NTFS-3G (by Clarion on 2007-06-12 14:37:07 GMT from Sweden)
Please add NTFS-3G! This finally reliable NTFS driver is a huge breakthrough for dual booters, security experts, administrators (recovery, rescue) and basically for anybody who needs to access the speedily increasing number of external/movable NTFS devices for whatever reason on Linux or FreeBSD (the package name here is fusefs-ntfs, FreeNAS includes it). Stable NTFS-3G versions with new features and functionalitues are released fairly often, sometimes more than once in a month and it would be great to know which version our current favourite distributions use. Thank you!
207 • COM 206 add clamscan to ntfs-3g... (by dbrion on 2007-06-12 14:47:53 GMT from France)
that bundle might be superior on Windows partitions......
208 • Re: Page hit rankings and market share (by kilgoretrout on 2007-06-12 15:31:36 GMT from United States)
I remember not so long ago DW would admonish readers that the page hit rankings were just for fun and should not be taken as an indication of relative market share or anything else for that matter. Now you are publishing articles that equate page hit rankings with market share and analyze fractional percentage variations in the page hit rankings.
Unless you have the statistical survey data to back it up, I wish you would refrain from making these outlandish claims, sotte voce.
209 • re 164 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-12 15:56:48 GMT from United States)
First of all #164 post, learn to focus your thoughts. Don't use run on sentences. Your post is such an eye sour. Still I don't think you're trolling, I think you are inexperienced--
You don't need repos to install software.
(a) download the source off the web, it will be a tar ball.
(i) extract the tar ball.
(ii) cd into the directory you just created.
(iii) ./configure (this is the dependency hell part, you have to have all dependencies installed to get beyond this point)
(iv) make (this compiles or builds the binary from the source code)
(v) su -c "make install" (this installs the binaries, libs, man pages etc in the proper place)
(b) download the rpm or deb off the web
(i) the package manager will resolve dependencies and install the software.
Method (a) can be time consuming and frustrating, but method (b) is how you would do it in Windows, except better! In Windows if you had a dependency failure, instead of it downloading the extra dependency, the installer simply wouldn't continue instead.
210 • Distribution Switching (by Brian Masinick on 2007-06-12 16:27:58 GMT from United States)
In response to the question posed about which distribution people use and how often do they switch, for me, I maintain about a dozen partitions on two distinct desktop systems. At least 95% of the time, I run the same primary desktop. I also maintain a separate partition for specific browser and Email content, so I can readily switch between systems, yet with a few simple commands, retain most, if not all, of the context for the bulk of my desktop work.
Moreover, by simply mounting partitions from another distribution, I can either read or copy any files or information used on another system.
That said, I use SimplyMEPIS for the bulk of my routine work. I love Debian based systems and a stock Debian system is great, too (and I always keep one available). But for every day use, SimplyMEPIS is hard to beat. It has all of the basic stuff I use for 3/4 of my work all set up with zero messing around. Occasionally I will tweak a configuration, appearance, fonts, etc., but even when I upgrade between versions, I can immediately work without any disruption.
I am sure there are other distributions that are nearly equivalent. PCLinuxOS seems to have a strong following. I have had great success with Kubuntu, especially the recent 7.04 release. But even with that, I have to run Easy Ubuntu steps to get the system equivalent in capability to SimplyMEPIS. Freespire does a good job in this respect, too, but the current stable version is older than the stable version of MEPIS, and the new test version, though promising, is not stable enough to use on a daily basis for the kind of work I do. Therefore, SimplyMEPIS stays.
I like Xandros releases very much, too, but SimplyMEPIS is still a better fit for what I personally do.
211 • I distro switch to test, not to change my preference (by Brian Masinick on 2007-06-12 16:33:57 GMT from United States)
Though it is possible that I may one day switch my preferred system, my main purpose in switching around is not to switch my main desktop system, it is to test new software - kind of a hobby, and also my way to contribute in terms of feedback, reporting my opinions and preferences, and discussing them with others.
212 • Re: # 208 (by linbetwin on 2007-06-12 16:39:14 GMT from Romania)
Those are not page hit rankings, but stats about the OS'es and distros people are ACTUALLY USING when visiting distrowatch.com
213 • No subject (by Man Nicholl on 2007-06-12 16:42:22 GMT from Canada)
I switch because I'm still looking for the perfect distro. Sure, Linux is far ahead of Windows at the moment, but that isn't really saying much. I'm waiting for the perfect one, one that will have everything I could possibly want.
I suppose a big part of it is that I find it more fun to install and mess around with new distros than actually using the distro. I suspect that this is the same for the majority of the Linux users as well.
214 • Re: # 195 (by linbetwin on 2007-06-12 16:54:26 GMT from Romania)
Hey, Jerry !
I also think that Vista is great. You get to watch endless hours of online video, while the OS is slooowwwly copying a file from one HDD to another. Or haven't you noticed yet the speed with which Vista copies or moves files ?
And how about the times when it says it's searching for solutions to your problems ? That makes some users think Vista is so smart, almost human-like. But after a few minutes it invariably tells you it found no solution.
And Jerry, if you were a Linux advocate and I were Linux, I'd fire you.
Wait, you're not Jerry Seinfeld, are you ?
215 • Distro switching (by argon on 2007-06-12 17:13:59 GMT from United States)
I have been running FreeBSD since 4.4 / 4.5. I have look and tried some Linux distro's for fun; but I have always prefered to use FreeBSD as my desktop.
216 • re: Distro switching (by argon on 2007-06-12 17:13:59 (by argon on 2007-06-12 17:16:51 GMT from United States)
PS: Currently on an XP box because I need Active X for work. :-(
217 • To hop or not to Hop......... (by Neo-Leper on 2007-06-12 17:24:49 GMT from United States)
I use to distro hop often with my main computer. I kept trying to find the right Linux OS I felt comfortable with. Then I would end up back with XP for awhile. Now I am using Ubuntu and I am very happy with it. Some of the more commercial Linux distros I lost interest in. I personally feel that a computers OS should be free. This is not because I am cheap. I would rather spend my money on games and other software. For example when I installed Ubuntu this time it had a trial version of CrossOver Personal. I was so impressed with CrossOver I deleted my XP partition and bought CrossOver Personal.
So on my main computer I will keep Ubuntu only. My second computer I will still Distro Hop. (My third computer will have an SME Server on it shortly.)
218 • Switching distros (by Stephen Wilson on 2007-06-12 17:30:12 GMT from United States)
Like a number of posters, I've dabbled in other distros but am most comfortable with Ubuntu.
Initially (about 2 years ago) I tried 4 or 5 distros before settling on Ubuntu. When I became more comfortable with Linux (as an ex Windows user) I started experimenting with about 10 or 12 other distros -- mostly as dual boot with Ubuntu, but sometimes wiping the drive clean and installing another distro. Usually I took about two days for me to start feeling like returning to Ubuntu. I know each distro has its own peculiarities that you need to figure out, but mostly I gave up on them because of usability issues.
At this point, it would take a lot for me to completely switch from Ubuntu, although I will likely still test drive other distros when I get bored or start thinking "there must be something better out there that I'm missing."
219 • RE: 27 & 132 (very fast distro for old boxes) (by Anonymous on 2007-06-12 17:35:22 GMT from Germany)
27: "I'm still loking for a distro for old machines, but hv not taken any decision yet.!"
132: "I have a 500 mhz computer as a test machine for light distros- had Zenwalk, Dreamlinux,PUPPY on it."
Give NimbleX a try. The fastest KDE for a 500 mhz computer!
http://distrowatch.com/nimblex
Review http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/12630
220 • Ubuntu to Fedora (by s3raph1rn on 2007-06-12 17:51:32 GMT from United States)
I recently switched from Ubuntu 7.04 to Fedora 7. The reason for my switch was 3 fold.
First i have been meaning to try something other than Ubuntu for a while and Fedora Looked promising.
2 the tech company i work for (Centuric) recently became a certified reseller of IBM servers. On the P series servers they *only* run AIX, SUSE, or Redhat. I have tried openSuse before and found it terribly slow and bloated. The Vista version of Linux. And since AIX is not a feasible option for my Laptop i decided to go with Fedora since it is Redhat based. I would have kept Ubuntu however my boss thinks Ubuntu is essentially, "a toy for home users not permitted in the enterprise environment because it does not support the kind of hardware environment and customized kernels we want to run." I don't know what he was talking about but since he pays me handsomely for being an intern and all I used it as an aid excuse to switch.
3 Is Fedora is known for being well liked, solid, and very up to date. These are all powerful reasons for me to try it out.
After using it for just under 2 weeks i really like it. I had a few pains with this installs because i wanted to uses rieserfs and xfs (eventually forced anaconda to do it) and my suspend doesnt work (with no one reporting a fix) but thoes are minor things. Over all my packages/programs are more up to date, I have made my self more diversified, and i have strengthend my linux skillz!
221 • Sidux (by Eric on 2007-06-12 18:25:35 GMT from Canada)
Yes, I'll admit to being a distro-(man)slut during my 1st attempts in switching to GNU/Linux from Windoze, and the 1st distro I installed over XP was EvilE (EvilEntity) http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=evilentity , WAY back when I downloaded the .ISO from school since I only had dial-up at the time. Starting my Linux adventure with such a distro had me in the mindset of learning, and actually TRYING to get the distro working, its part of the fun using Linux. So thats also where download managers came to be my addiction ;), but since then I've tried countless distro's, with EvilE being my 1st. I started jumping around to SuSE and then trying Debian, but eventually settling in Arch Linux. And I owe my 1st loved distro to EvilE since it was so much work and fun to get working for a Linux noob like me, so Arch REALLY fit my bill.
Since then, from Arch I've migrated to Sidux since its last Release by the name of TARTARUS-KDE-lite, which is amazing since something very special had to attract me away from the perfect control and package management of Arch. Seeing how Sidux is based on Debian Sid, it's amazingly amazing and cutting edge, as of right now(Tuesday the 12th of June), kernel 2.6.21.5 is installed and working flawlessly and even though its the newest kernel, theres a script called du-fixes-h2.sh that is your best friend for dist-upgrading your system safely within sidux (kernel upgrading and ATI/NVIDIA binary 3D accelerated driver installs too), its got a VERY VERY friendly community and IRC room, and I quote "dist-upgrading in X is like changing a wheel while driving" :D AMAZING analogy/metaphor
Also it DOES default to using the hda naming scheme instead of sda, even though I don't mind either way, since I use UUID's.
I have so many repos set up, and almost 2000 packages installed by synaptic's count and get this NO PERFORMANCE DEGRADATION. But I also use XFS, my main internal drive and is set up as 4 partitions (a ext2 /boot of 124 MB, an XFS 50 GB /root (128MB log), an XFS 140 GB /home (264MB log), and an 8 gig swap) and finally a brand new 750 GB Seagate external drive which is also entirely XFS :) . And have 3 performance increasing fstab mount options for each XFS partition ( noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8 ) and keep each XFS partition defragmented with their awesome utility of xfs_fsr.
I have the "shame" repo set up since its a specialty repo created out of request on the Sidux forum by a guy codenamed shame, lol, thanks shame, As Beryl is easily run under my Geforce3 beautifully. And I DO NOT have Beryl autorun/autostart during startup/login ;), its only for show or enjoyment or playtime.
So all-in-all Sidux is my home now, and sometimes it performs even faster than Arch, so thats FAST, seeing how Debian does have such low requirements, and most Sidux software (Ex. the Kernel) is i686 compiled/optimized. And I have very few startup daemons/services.
My input on this distro-hopping subject may be late, but I hope for anybody hoping on trying a new distro(or reviewing a new distro instead of the overrated *buntu's) would be welcome, and would probably find a home on many other's hard drive as their main boot/work distro. Like really having that review in comparison to Mint is actually impressive, seeing if you add the extras yourself, its JUST AS GOOD AND BETTER than Mint, including much faster performance from the awesome .deb and apt based system ;)
Hope I wasn't too boring, and helped Sidux along it's path to adoption, it HAS won my hda over. :)
222 • "linbetwin" (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 18:49:18 GMT from United States)
You're FIRED.
Meanwhile, I've never seen a "looking for a solution"
you speak of.
And I watch news and Letterman videos.
Some of you are rather creepy and I wonder why you're
here. I'm here to find a suitable distro for this
notebook computer. If you can't contribute to that
idea, or many other constructive ones around this
forum, then go away like "anonymous" did.
For what it's worth, I just tried two in live
CD mode; Mint 3 and Sabayon 3.3.
Neither worked very well, but I think I may be
able to tweak Sabayon if installed to my hard drive
rather than in live CD mode. It couldn't figure out
the proper screen resolution and offered only
two much samller modes, but if I installed to
hard drive I could go into /etc/X11/xorg.conf and
edit in the right one.
Mint couldn't figure out my wireless conection
for some reason.. stayed dead. But Sabayon had
no trouble with that.
- Jerry -
223 • RE 222 : "find a suitable distro " for (Jerry no 1)'s computer. (by Dbrion on 2007-06-12 18:59:21 GMT from France)
As Vista seems gorgeous, perhaps such a fragile deity needs RIP or System Rescue CD or a (Knoppix plus some know-how), in case she breaks or get a virus....
224 • RE:153 • RE: 144 News from SymphonyOS (by Marc on 2007-06-12 19:00:50 GMT from Canada)
Thanks Ladislav for pointing it out, you just prevented me
from downloading it.
I still think it is a nice project, but maybe need to straight down
it's tracks.
Thanks for DWW and long live.
225 • Trying to find a suitable distro.. (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 19:19:23 GMT from United States)
For you little sickies around here who think I'm in love
with Vista or who think I'm a "troll" for Bill Gates or
whatever, maybe you should look around some of the
Linux distribution forums where I've been participating,
with the same name, for 10 years now. Join and look..
Here's the most recent, short little thread at
Vectorlinux forums, started by Joe who has a notebook
similar to mine (he's one of the administrators there):
http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2852.msg19783
226 • One more thing... (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 19:25:48 GMT from United States)
..also, you (the sickies) might be insterested in viewing
a thread I started, in exhasperation and a bit of anger,
over at the Xandros forums, having to do with my abject
disappointment with the Xandros/Microsoft deal:
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=31450&highlight=
227 • Re: # 222 (by linbetwin on 2007-06-12 19:30:10 GMT from Romania)
Jerry, you've just fire me UP!
Too bad we can't compare the Mint and Sabayon liveCDs with the Windows liveCDs, since there are none. And we'll never see a Windows liveCD, unless it's one that locks itself inside the CD drive and forces the BIOS to only boot from that drive.
It's not fair to compare the preinstalled, preconfigured and tweaked Vista on your laptop with an OS you have to installed yourself. You didn't find the "looking for a solution" dialogs in Vista because the laptop maker took care of your drivers and hardware configurations. Would you blush if I asked you if you've ever installed Vista yourself ? Of you course your Vista laptop works out of the box, since it probably came in a box. Did Mint or Sabayon come in a box ?
It's also not fair to compare Linux to the monster from Redmond to which the entire hardware and software industry caters. Commercial apps, freeware, shareware, malware... it all works on Windows. Noboby can aford to sell a peripheral without Windows drivers. And believe you me, without this ecosystem Windows would be shit.
228 • Re #188 distrooftheday.org (by DG on 2007-06-12 19:40:54 GMT from Netherlands)
Wow cool. I should probably read the web page, but is there some intelligence/selection behind the choice of distro? What's to stop it if it chooses a source distro like Gentoo, SourceMage or Lunar ?
229 • No subject (by Lycanthrope on 2007-06-12 19:41:15 GMT from United States)
I feel some anxiety here. Install Zenwalk and be happy, fast and free.
230 • RE: 195, 202, 205 and my own comments about hopping (by KimTjik on 2007-06-12 19:44:36 GMT from Sweden)
Jerry, sometimes you got to understand that whatever intention you have, what actually gets through in a post is the wording and phrases used. So no matter how sincere you are words like "that is sad and disgusting" feels kind of harsh and confusing in relation to what you might have wanted to convey.
Some already gave you some suggestions. You're main concern is streaming video, including flash-players I suppose. According to what you write you don't use Vista 64bit. Yes Windows 32bit has support for a lot of such streaming videos... or does it? Actually it doesn't, but since Adobe and other software developers at the moment more or less owns these media formats on the Internet, and since they're focused on MS operating systems the support for us others will suffer.
On the other hand if you would be running Vista 64bit which should have been the standard if all predictions would have been fulfilled, unfortunately you would be a lot more limited unless you forced a 32bit version of some browser to run the show (you can do this with Firefox in both Windows and Linux); now we're talking mainly about flash-players. So why hasn't MS fixed this? Again you have to get focused: who is behind the software in question? In other words put these questions to the one who can do something about it; it's not MS and it's not some Linux distro.
MS will of course not make its own formats available for Unix-like systems (but we know our ways around that obstacle, don't we?), but many others are making life easier for us Linux users as well. Hence you sometimes just need to know what video format is needed. That's the same in Windows operating systems: MS doesn't own RealPlayer, QuickPlayer and so on, so either you install these software packages or you search for free-ware "hacks" of those formats. OK, you had problems viewing clips of David Letterman's show, so I decided to see if it was some kind of flash-player we're talking about. It's not, it's the old good RealPlayer format! I'm watching it right now in Fedora 7 64bit (RealPlayer is of course the standard 32bit). What's so hard in installing RealPlayer? I mean many Windows users, like myself, prefer RealPlayer over MS own MediaPlayer. My point is, and I know this by experience, you can't expect to get all media to work right out of the box. It just isn't happening!
I had a real mare-dream getting editing of a video-format used by my digital camera to work in Windows XP. The solution? VLC codecs and a hack and I could get my video-editing software to function. VLC, a very MS like product, or what do you think? Even how hard MS try, making users dumb by not knowing what is happen every time a question in a click-click box appears but clicking anyway does in fact hurt the user and make him unable to solve arising issues.
I'm a hardware enthusiast who build, tear down, over-clock and test performance of devices. Windows still is the main operating system when folks need guidance for RAM settings and so forth, and inevitable that leads to some support of Windows itself. Man what strange questions you sometimes get! Some are building their own systems and over-clocking with phase-cooling, but still they can't get their Windows to either install or function properly. These continuous experiences help me getting things into perspective: whatever operating system you choose you ought to have some basic knowledge. Hence these systems like PClinuxOS, BLAG and others are good and have great support out of the box for multimedia (honestly far broader support than Windows XP or Vista), I still think it's good for users to try to get a understanding of what is going? what media is to be used preferably for what? and so on.
Vista? Most of my hardware community friends who are 100% into Windows and nothing else have abandon Vista, even though they initially bought and installed it. So in it's current state there's no reason what so ever for Linux to feel intimidated by Vista, on the contrary.
Sorry for this long rant folks.
Hopping and I: in a sense, but not really. Slackware 10-11 and Vector 5.* is what I've preferred on older machines for quite some time now. BLAG is always on some system (nice community and funny attitude besides working on most hardware - still preferring though BLAG on Fedora 5), Pardus is on two systems (I really want to see how this project is developing, if most documentation wouldn't have been in just Turkish or Dutch it could have been a bigger player), Arch is a favorite, PCLinuxOS on one just to know what folks are talking about plus some gaming, and Fedora 7 64bit is probably staying for quite some time as my main system (I really want to learn virtualization better besides the 7th version being the best so far). I just built a exclusive *nix system which should be protected from any harmful software! so most of these systems will eventually migrate to this rig.
231 • @Jerry post 195 (by davecs on 2007-06-12 20:02:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
It is not too difficult to make PCLinuxOS automatically play your DVD when you insert it.
Check here:
http://docs.mypclinuxos.com/Playing_DVDs_with_Kaffeine
232 • Re: #174 (by Mark South on 2007-06-12 20:07:48 GMT from Switzerland)
"...for some reason, my wifi card worked better with Ubuntu 6.10 than 7.04."
When the kernel changed to 2.6.20 in Ubuntu 7.04, a lot of older drivers were blacklisted. Look at /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist for a long list.
233 • Vista = DRM (by Beatnik on 2007-06-12 20:15:59 GMT from Panama)
Hey, dont forget the new price included in the MS Vista box:
D.R.M.:
$-Digital
$-Restrictions
$-Management
With the job to make your life more ¿"easy"?
Taking control of your media files deciding if you can or cannot see this or that content?
No thanks M$, I will stay with my favorite linux flavor and will be using XP until I learn enough about Linux.
By the way, what happened with that italian distro called Fox, seems interesting.
I have noted good quality on italian Linux distros: Sabayon, Dyne-Bolic, ArtistX. I am waiting for Fox:
http://www.foxlinux.org/
In their site they said its time to explain to all the community whats happening with FoxLinux project. (This in italian, hey if you know spanish, italian is easy to understand). Hoping these will be good news and not another distro about to die.
I also wanna try Fedora 7 and OpenSuse.
234 • Distro hopping - maybe :) (by M Singh on 2007-06-12 21:09:20 GMT from United States)
Have been using Debian GNU/Linux (testing) for as long as I can remember.
Sure, I have hopped from Sarge to Etch to Lenny.
235 • post 231 (by Jerry on 2007-06-12 21:36:12 GMT from United States)
Davecs thank you...
Funny you would show up. :) I just tried to install
PCLinuxOS 2007, which I now have happily on my old
pc :) on this new laptop.
It went through the process then just gave me the
command line text at the end. I logged in as root
and typed "startx" and got errors about my xorg.conf
file, which I hadn't touched... dang it, I would like
Texstar's magic touch to take over this laptop. :)
I have to go to the PCLinuxOS forums and look around
for laptop computer discussion.
Thanks again,
- Jerry -
236 • distro hopping (by William Tetrault on 2007-06-12 22:19:16 GMT from United States)
I regularly check distrowatch and read of new releases and/or distros, and, very rarely, try one of them that really appeals to me. However, I always come back to Gentoo. I've been using it since early in 2002 (v. 1.1), and really have not found anything else that satisfies me as much. Even Sabayon, which is a spruced up Gentoo with a dynamite installer, didn't do it for me. Am I in a rut? or what?
237 • distro hopping (by Eduardo on 2007-06-12 22:54:02 GMT from Brazil)
I use to experiment interesting distros when their final releases are anounced at Distrowatch web page, just because I'm very curious about new technologies and improvements the Linux Community produces, specially for final users. I use Ubuntu as my favorite distro since the release of Hoary 5.04 (april, 2005) and I still keep it as my default desktop Linux, now with the recent Feisty Faw, but I recently tried PCLinux OS, Mint, Fedora, Dreamlinux and Mandriva for a while. These are great distros and they all have both positive and negative aspects. But, as Debian and Gnome based distro (the kind of thing I simply love), Ubuntu still remains perfect for me (of course, it's only my personal opnion).
238 • Distro hopping (by Stauntonel on 2007-06-12 23:16:50 GMT from Netherlands)
For me it's all part of my linux learning curve. I started with Suse then stumbled on ubuntu. I really like apt/synaptic as a packagemanager. Started to explore other debean based distro's. There is so much choice, and i guess that's what i like the most!
239 • distro switching (by marvinudy on 2007-06-12 23:21:41 GMT from United States)
I am a self confessed distro junkie and try new/upgraded distros upon there release. Favorites are kept for rotating use and comparison to new releases. Two machines are used with 16 distros on the 'old' machine and six, so far, on the 64 bit capable machine.
Current favorites are Sabayon 3.3, Puppy 2.xx, PcLinux 2007, Suse 10.2, Mint 3.0, Xubuntu 7.04 and Mepis 6.5.02-64.
I look for the following for evaluation: ease on intall, espically Grub, hardware recognition, ease of updates, stability, eye appeal and general overall 'feel'(undefined). My preference is for KDE desktop or XFCE for simplicity.
My current 'workhorse' is Sabayon 3.3-64.
Old machine: Intel 1.6GHz, 1Gb mem,100Gb Maxtor drives, ! 80Gbbackup and 64Mb AGP Gforce MMX-400 vidio card.
New machine: Intel core 2 duo e6420, 2GB GSill DDR2 ram, 1 250GB SATA HD, 1-Lite Scribe SATA DVD/CD combo and PNY 256 7300GT PCIe video card.
240 • 208 • Re: Page hit rankings and market share (by ladislav on 2007-06-13 00:04:23 GMT from Taiwan)
You didn't read the article correctly. The statistics presented in this week's DistroWatch Weekly are taken from the Apache logs, not page hit ranking stats. In other words, they are real usage data among the DistroWatch readers. Maybe I didn't make it as clear as I should have, but I did mention that the figures come from the web logs on DistroWatch.com.
241 • distro hopper (by na5m on 2007-06-13 00:17:12 GMT from United States)
why do i Distro-Hop?
cuz im a Distro-Ho!
242 • RE: # 211 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-13 01:05:39 GMT from Italy)
Hi Brian, nice to see you around. You know me from both the ExtremeTech and the Libranet forums. Hint: my nick there started with a S and ended with a 4 figures number (please, if you recognize me, don't write my nick here).
I feel exactly like you about trying new distros or even new operating systems.
Since I decided, long ago, that Debian and SUSE are my favorites, I have never changed my mind.
However I have ben using OS X for about one year now and I love it.
243 • Distros (by Maggie on 2007-06-13 01:08:35 GMT from United States)
Shall I say "fun", you bet! I have switch from Mandriva to PCLinuxOS and Dreamlinux. I supposed you want an answer as to why, why not? For many years I have worked on linux and finally the work load has been lifted. The pleasure of not having to go into a file and fix "stuff" is wonderful!
I can play music, watch movies, change settings, surf the internet without having to load file extensions, applications,software and patches. Who wouldn't want that "goldmine". The community is growing ever so popular and the technology is changing so fast that linux should be in every home. IT WORKS! better than ever. Beginners can now run, not walk, into the "linux world". At my age I'm looking for "ease" of use w/o having to jump hoops. The quicker I can move from point "A" to point "B" is a "my kind of system". PCLinuxOS and Dreamlinux offers a quick responsive "distro" it does what I want it to do not what it wants to do (does that make sense?). The 3D desktop (beryl) is so much fun, I'm excited about the new stuff that will come out and I know that I can count on DistroWatch (I'm not building you up just stating a fact) to be on top of the changing linux world so I can have place to come and grab the latest report.
Maggie
244 • Dreamlinux and Granular (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-13 01:45:29 GMT from Italy)
2 very promising distributions.
Some thoughts:
1)The Dreamlinux installer is an utter mess: I tried 2.2 RC3 "Multimedia GL". There is a choice of 3 partitioners, but choosing your favorite partition plus swap is extremely akward, it keeps ignoring your choice (I suppose also because I have 3 HDs with a dozen partitions). Also, no chance in hell that the boot loader will be installed to partition. Why oh why people choose something as ancient as Morphix as a base for their distro? The Kanotix installer is much more mature. Also reaching the forum is virtually impossible.
2)Granular: very nice improvement on PCLinuxOS. Also it managed to install Grub to partition, something its parent distro has never done quite right (but I must try again).
There is no recognition whatsoever for Texstar and the Ripper Gang, but somebody else in the forum remarked that, and they replied that by the final release there will be all due credits.
Also I found it a bit unusual that all the eye candy is in the root account, but personally i don't care at all.
245 • Distro Hopping (by John Biles on 2007-06-13 02:01:41 GMT from Australia)
I am more a Distro Tester than Hopper.
Not being able to find one Distro that filled my needs, I took what was needed from many different Distro's Debian, Mandriva etc and on a Puppy base created TEENpup Linux which is currently at Version 2.0.0 (See Puppy Linux Forum to download)
Puppy Linux offers freedom to be creative that other Distro's don't allow with it's inbuilt ISO remaster which allows you to create a live or install CD of your own, cool! hey!
246 • Gamers distro works? (by Luis Medina on 2007-06-13 03:29:11 GMT from Mexico)
Somebody could download the iso file??? The link just send an empty file (0 bytes)
247 • Distro Hopping (by Papawoob on 2007-06-13 03:32:55 GMT from United States)
My main production OS has been PCLinuxOS for over 2 years and Mepis for almost 2 years before that. I keep PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Puppy,and Debian updated on my main HD all the time and I use 2 other HDs to distro Hop.I cannot imagine NOT distro hopping. Long live Linux and BSD!
248 • 192 "Why hopping if you found the distro best suits your needs?" (by dbrion on 2007-06-13 07:28:32 GMT from France)
Because either :
a)one has a lot of time and is lazy enough not to read good docs, often coming with compilation based distrs (T2 and gobolinux interested me, not for the austere fun of compiling, but for the structures I can copy to upgrade my favorite apps)
This often happens whith unbought PCs (the parent's ones) in a parasitic ' "market" '.
b) one wants to buy another PC, as one PC is dying or the US dollar is rising/will rise.. If one has time, tests can be done with an emulator (there are enough pple going to Wine Torrent weeping "gimme, gimme , quick, quick, some free drivers for the expensive hardware lazy Linux developpers yet ignore, and that without the naughty, naughty CLI"=> waiting 6 months and preparing every port under Windows (mingw/ cygwin/ emulators) seems to me a minimal matter of dignity, if some harware is not Linux recognized)..
=> personnaly, I have two laptops, one with a Mandrake 9.1 or 9.2 ( distr numerology is passionating....), which is enough, and another with a Mandriva "2006" I want to upgrade this year... Both are sufficient for me ( my
8 years
nephew can put a DVD into them and have magically a TV; it is not an Affaire d'Etat, Jerry le Clown).
Professionnaly, I have been negotiating (translate I won) during months for (hundreds or thousands of) hours of cluster PCs (ie CPU + RAM + disks+ some eth links betw. them and to driving/ storing calculators).
These calculators have neither screens, nor keyboqrd, nor mice, I doubt they can play music or video (they can produce such stuff).
They are just meant to be used (not in the UBU sense,
just used).
Development and prepairing tests (to know how many hours one must ask) were mostly made under Windows XP + VMplayer + Mandriva 2007.0 (to get some bug free test applications, who were then copied (not ported; it was a plain copy as binaries are not open source at all..... malheureusement) for time estimations [ else it would have been somewhat difficult to negociate computer time ....]).
These PC clusters are Linux powered (but a commercial Linux: the sysad did not know the kernel number
< translate : kernel numerology was a stupid question , as the 2.2 | 2.4 kernel must not work, but the user's apps >
and the price of the blessed free OS (but solid) makes Vista a charity market
[ sorry for the harshness of the term : it was used by a Linux loover about the OLPC; ]...).
These PC clusters are not scheduled to stop (translate : whether it sucks or is a breeze at starting time is not that relevant) within 4 months...
249 • cdrkit instead of cdrtools (by brian on 2007-06-13 07:37:13 GMT from Germany)
Good to see that you follow the more widely used, more trustworthy and reliable branch of the cdrtools codebase.
You definitely will get some heat for that, but I applaud your decision.
250 • Switching Distro's (by Rob on 2007-06-13 07:37:58 GMT from Australia)
I can't say that I regularly switch distro's, because until recently I've had an older system that I've been more than happy to run Puppy Linux on (for a number of years now). I've recently upgraded my computer (passed on from my son) and unfortunately there were problems with puppy and Gxine.... so I tried SUSE 10.2 but found the performance unreliable - it would freeze every so often - I loved the look, but the performance reminded me too much of MSwindoze! Then I tried the latest version of PCLinuxOS and I am rapt. I regularly visit Distrowatch to check out the latest distro's, but now that I have PCLinuxOS working properly, I don't think that I will change anytime soon. But who knows - as they say, never say never! PS Puppy still has a special place in my heart 'cause it's a brilliant distribution!
251 • distro-hoppin (by rabid0 on 2007-06-13 08:04:18 GMT from United States)
Used to love to hop, arch has pretty much ruined it for me, still like to see new stuff, but my interests have now moved on to different window managers rather than whole distributions, arch's package management just can be beat(in my eyes) where else can I do full system upgrades daily to have all the newest versions of apps without worry of something seriously breaking. I still check out live cds here and there, but not with any serious thoughts of ever installing a different distro, I have an arch install(partition) with kde and e17 and another arch partition with fluxbox. Vector used to be my distro of choice and I have that on a partiton here too, but possibly not for long as I dont really feel like booting into it anymore. I've tried most of the linux's out there and bsd and don't think I'll be changing from arch anytime soon, just can't imagine why I would. Puppy is also one of my favorites, awesome little distro, had it installed at one point, but dont see the need anymore, it works fine off the livecd for its tools. Thnx much to all the people that do all the hard work on this stuff, I give back by helping others when I can. Happy Distro-Hopping to those who are still looking!
252 • edit typo (by rabid0 on 2007-06-13 08:07:26 GMT from United States)
OOP'S -arch's package management just *"can't"* be beat
253 • #209 (by ritch on 2007-06-13 09:48:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
my point was the installing/dependancy hell part.
it is to much of a pain in the arse for new users to adjust to and they leave after trying a distro, rubbishing linux!! (i know many)
saying it's impossible to use!
and from a regular user's point of view, this is very correct!
until the linux community finds a way as windows and mac did to have an easy install method, it can never be a big deal!
and we will still be locked into the abusive drm of microsoft for our computing needs
the majority of linux users that dual boot with windows and distro hop is testiment to it flaws!
i want a system i don't need to dual boot with windows!
one that can stand by it's self and be easy to use!
(i know many that say they will change when you can install without all the crap!)
the linux community has to open it's eyes and address this issue instead of replying with correct and i understand completely what you are saying, but to the average user it is geek bable and of no use, and a turn off to linux! (a million miles away from installing on windows)
for linux to compete in the home market it does have to make install a hell of a lot easier, lets hope it happens and soon!
and a point i want to use a computer for practical needs not spend huges amounts of time dealing with a difficult install method!
254 • note to above 253 (by ritch at 2007-06-13 10:00:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
i am very computer literate i started on spectrums writting my own programs through atari st, amiga, windows 3.1 - xp!
i am very computer literate if i find it dificuilt what does that say about other people who may want to try linux
linux is the best operating system in the world apart from one massive flaw INSTALL and dependancy nightmare
255 • #209 Your post was perfect, thanks for clarifying... (by dbrion on 2007-06-13 10:32:52 GMT from France)
Perhaps you should have added, before ./configure
./configure --help (and less README/ INSTALL)
I suppose most of the pple may be very happy of knowing what they are installing, (just for anatomic reasons: they have shoulders, and some stuff above shoulders)
instead of misspeeling hundreds of demagogic lines about the ugly,ugly CLI and Linux loove and future. laughable credos...
Sorry for my "huges"(stolen from 253) misspeelings, but English is not my native language...
256 • hoping again (by ritch on 2007-06-13 10:57:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
distro hoping again!
this time debian
have tryed many debian based, but not debian it self
read a lot about the new release, like what i hear
hopefully this will be on my hard drive for a long time!
257 • respect to #209 (by ritch on 2007-06-13 11:03:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
like to join #255 dbrion in congratulating #209 in his post
it gave many the imformation that is to hard to find on installing on linux
sorry if my post 253 didn't communicate that
and i than you!
258 • Answers to Distro Hopping questions (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-06-13 13:22:49 GMT from United States)
Did you switch to a new distribution recently? -- Yes. We have a dozen computers in our household, and most of them have switched from openSUSE to Fedora 6, and some have also switched to Fedora 7. Additionally, a couple have switched to Slackware 11.0.
If so, why? -- Back when I used DOS, I would always install the newest versions of MS-DOS and X-DOS. When Windows was around, I stuck with Windows 3.11 until I thought I had to switch to Windows 95. I always dragged my feet with Windows, using 3.11 until 1998 and Win95 until 2002. Since then, I have installed hundreds, probably close to a thousand versions of various distributions. I guess my best answer would be that I enjoy when new features and software show up in new versions of operating systems, which is probably why I have liked Windows less and less since 3.11.
Did you just test one of the new releases and liked it so much that you decided to keep it? -- That's never happened to me. I've never installed a distribution that I was simply "trying out" and stuck with it. Sometimes I go back again to ones I've tested before. The closest I ever was to "love at first sight" was with Sorcerer Linux. I saw the cumulative impact of compiling all of your software for your specific hardware, and Sorcerer did better at resolving dependencies and making installation easy than Gentoo did. It was one of two distributions that ever fully gave what they promised, Slackware being the other. Sorcerer let you customize your software down to the smallest piece, using an easy menu system.
I have, of course, upgraded from one version to another and stuck with the upgrade. That doesn't seem to me to be so much of "testing" a release.
Or did you find it exciting to run an operating system with more up-to-date software? -- Yup, that was a big part of it. Drivers are almost always worth installing a new operating system for. Try the Radeon R200 cards (like the All-In-Wonder 8500DV that everyone in the world seems to have owned and nobody could get to work right in Windows -or- Linux) in Fedora Core 6, then try Fedora 7. What a pleasant surprise! Usually, though, it's wireless network drivers that make me switch distributions or download new versions.
If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason? -- Though I have been "assured" by people in the openSUSE development team that the MS-Novell contract isn't how it looks, two problems yet exist. 1) This contract with MS has given the unshakable illusion that Novell is trying to pay the piper (or thug) apologetically. MS's new accusations of patent violations seems to reinforce this. 2) I'm getting a totally conflicting analysis from each authority who comments on the contract. Some say it's to protect Novell from patent infringements, though Novell claims they never infringed, leaving us to wonder why they paid so much money. Others say it is a technology sharing contract to help merge MS Office and OpenOffice standards, though MS has said they will never adopt OO standards and they refuse to license MS formats to be compatible with GPL or BSD. More and more confusing talk about major issues has left me feeling lied to.
I switched to Fedora. I started my Linux journey with Red Hat 8.0, and I had been a Red Hat user for some time because of their firm position on freedom. I switched to SuSE, because I found them to have a richer OS, and they seemed to be on the same page for licensing. I was thrilled with Novell's acquisition, partly because they GPL'd YaST. When I switched back to Red Hat (as in Fedora), I found them to be just about as easy to use, but now they have a very rich set of software, too, and they have a better software management system. Their position on software freedom hasn't changed whatsoever. That is why I switched back.
Are there any readers who have used the same distro for the past two years? -- My server is still running SuSE 10.1, and it has been running SuSE almost exclusively for close to four years.
259 • Winchester, VA (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-06-13 13:25:48 GMT from United States)
"It is always a pleasure to see a mainstream, non-technology publication reporting about Linux and open source software." -- The Winchester Star in Winchester, VA ran the story about the MS-Xandros deal. Does that count? :-D
260 • Package List (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-06-13 13:35:19 GMT from United States)
I know this would be difficult, but is there any way to add a list of supported drivers? A list of things like "rt2x00, r8180, madwifi" and whatever else has just come out that isn't in the mainline kernel or common to all distributions. Not having a single hard-to-install driver can be a showstopper on an otherwise winning distribution.
261 • comment 162 (by bob on 2007-06-13 14:15:23 GMT from United States)
168 • @ #162 regarding Debian (by Turjan on 2007-06-12 02:31:47 GMT from United States)
Debian Etch has a very nice and easy GUI installer. Unfortunately, you have to type "installgui" at the prompt to begin the GUI install. It's not very intuitive for someone new to Linux, but the installer will tell you if you press F1 before making a choice, as suggested.
thanks: i downloaded debian. and used the internet install and typed installgui at boot. it operates faster than ubuntu on my computer. but still no sound. so i bought a book on remastering iso and will try to put debian and the driver for my sound card on the same install cd. hey It Could Happen. :-)
262 • Distro Hopping (by Dale on 2007-06-13 15:55:56 GMT from United States)
I have several hard drives for my Thinkpad R40 and each one has a different flavor of linux on them. I update each distro when a new release is available. I have had very few problems with any of them.
OpenSuse
Fedora
Slackware
Ubuntu
Arch
FreeBSD
Mint
Foresight
Gentoo
The latest version of Gentoo, 2007, is the absolute worst release ever. I have tried to get a successful install with the live CD, live DVD and minimal CD, with limited success. I eventually had to reinstall 2006.1 and update the system. This too was very hokey and didn't get all the packages updated.
If this is what is to be expected from the Gentoo team in the future, I will bypass this distro and use others, maybe Open Solaris. I posted on the Gentoo forums and was met with a lot of RTFM attitude, so some don't inspire others by their help.
263 • @244 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-13 16:15:35 GMT from Canada)
"There is no recognition whatsoever for Texstar and the Ripper Gang"
Given the minimal recognition given by them to Mandriva and the Mandriva volunteer development community, who furnished them with the vast majority of their package database: excuse me while I fail to shed a tear. :)
264 • Distro Switches (by Mel on 2007-06-13 16:19:22 GMT from United States)
I switched from Suse 10.2 to Ubuntu mainly because of the Novell deal with MS.
265 • DistroHopping (by The_Dadu on 2007-06-13 16:32:34 GMT from United States)
Used to work for Cadbury - Ever see a clucking bunny??
True, but not the reason. I'm curious about what is coming, what might have been. I'm fortunate enough to have several machines of varying ages and like to play to keep my mind active. I am an English speaker (some will argue, in spite of growing up in NJ) and don't need the other language support so critical to many of you. My main, newer equipment runs mostly PCLinuxOS2007 with one still on 0.93a (started on 0.92) and one dual boot laptop that came with WinXP. Before settling on PCLinuxOS as the current best solution for me about two years ago, I tried Slackware, Mandrake, Mandriva, DSL, Knoppix, Debian base, and a variety of 'buntu's, PCLOS was the first that was well-rounded enough to make the move to Linux full time at home. I still use WinXP at work. I have older machines running a mixture of OS's including mostly Debian variants. I try a variety of live CD's and some virtual machines to see what is new, who has a good idea (so I can recommend it to my favorite tech team, The Ripper Gang), I really enjoy the diversity of the Linux community. For example, I am curiously following the SymphonyOS desktop but don't really see any advantage in Beryl/Compiz except as eye candy.
266 • Off base! (by The_Dadu on 2007-06-13 16:45:12 GMT from United States)
263 - huh?
Texstar is well known as having started out as a Mandrake (pre-Mandriva) third party developer and that PCLOS was based on Mandrake. from the 'About' page of the PCLinuxOS.com website:
'PCLinuxOS was originally based on another distribution under the name of Mandriva and shares many features of Mandriva such as the Control Center and the Draklive Installer. Texstar and team would like to thank the developers, contributors and others associated with Mandriva who may have indirectly contributed to the PCLinuxOS distribution.'
244 - Let's give Granular's development team some time to come up to speed with their attributions - they haven't even gotten beyond Development releases yet!
267 • Re: 195 • Linux "hopping" vs Vista (by kirios on 2007-06-13 16:54:09 GMT from Malaysia)
"What that tells me is that Linux is still behind Windows/Microsoft after all this time! That is sad and disgusting... I know all about the "political" part of it and Microsoft's tactics.."
Some of us would find it "sad and disgusting" that the absence of some multimedia codecs (for legal reasons) can lead anyone to conclude that Linux is inferior to Windows. Most of these codecs can be downloaded and installed painlessly and there is a lot of reliable information about codecs available on the user forums. Of course you do need to know how to use a browser. :-)
"Have any of you at any time run across a Linux distribution that works as good as Vista?"
Vista is a big improvement on XP but mainly because it has a lot of features that were already available on Linux (UAC, 3D desktop etc).... although Vista's implementation of some of these features is a bit weird - why do I need an administrator password to empty the Recycle Bin?!
I would suggest you switch to Mac OS X - it works out of the box, has a proven safety record and can be an especially powerful environment for someone with Linux experience.
268 • One cannot base the superiority of an OS on package management apps. (by dbrion on 2007-06-13 17:32:27 GMT from France)
Suppose you think rpm is superior and you have Windows + cygwin (a bright idea of RedHat, with an intelligent way of downloading from the Internet) and want to look at some rpms (source rpms,say)
http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/rpmtools/rpm2cpio.pl?revision=1.2
links to a perl script, and cygwin has perl
(+ cpio, + any zippers + tar; else, she could not install herself!)
Even some Wiondows binaries have been made, perhaps out of a joke ( google search "rpm cygwin").
BTW Cygwin's installer looked very much like Mandiva's "expert" mode of package install....
On the reverse way, one can manage that clicking can direcly execute one installation , at least under Mandrivas (one just has to enter the root passwd, which is not shocking at all...) and even of anything the clicked stuff needs.. => one can have programs installed à la Windows.
BTW, one should distinguish two windows:
the familial one, where installation is a breeze
professionnal one, where, unless you have admin rights, you can install NOTHING.exe without hierarchical autoriz
269 • 268 continuation (by 268 suite on 2007-06-13 17:41:05 GMT from France)
hierarchical permission [ for example, ask your hierarchy to have some GNU windows ported apps - say, cygwin's 200 first packages- and th'e amount of work will be thought tremendousenough to grant you , either admin's rights or a room in a lunatic asylum..
.In the first nice case, if viruses are a matter of worry, there are risks (bankrupcy for your boss, firing for you)... With GNU ports, it seems not too dangerous...]
270 • Re: 266 • Off base! (by kirios on 2007-06-13 18:00:34 GMT from Malaysia)
Wonder why I can't seem to find any mention of Debian on Ubuntu's 'About Us' page (http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/faq)
271 stro Hopping (by Jason on 2007-06-13 18:12:58 GMT from United States)
Since making the switch to Linux about 3 years ago. I have found an unparalleled freedom. Part of that freedom for me is the ability to change my OS. I look at personal computing in a very person oriented way. If hardware were the body and software were the clothing that gives it flare, then the OS is well ... "underware" existing somewhere between the body and clothing. Furthermore, since I find watching the distros evolve and change so exciting, I find it necessary to change my "underware" frequently... Metaphorically speaking that is. ;-)
272 • Re: #265 (by Mark South on 2007-06-13 19:51:44 GMT from Switzerland)
"...favorite tech team, The Ripper Gang...."
It's funny how little confidence that name inspires in me. The single worst thing about PCLOS is the names.
And yeah, now that you mention them, where have they got to this week? Normally they're in here foaming at the mouth at the slightest mention of Ubuntu, and that got mentioned in #3 already....
273 • The linuX-gamers Live DVD (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-13 20:22:05 GMT from Italy)
It sounds very promising, but I don't like running an OS from a Live CD/DVD for long, especially a gaming one. So please next time add an installer.
And BTW, what happened to Games Knoppix? That was the best I ever tried.
274 • Windows Vista funny videos (by Beatnik on 2007-06-13 21:37:28 GMT from Panama)
Hey, take a look to some funny videos about Windows Vista:
1- D.R.M. = CRAP
A load of C.R.A.P.
ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind suggests that CRAP or
Content,
Restriction,
Annulment, and
Protection,
is a catchier phrase than DRM - Digital Rights Management. Why does he think this technology is crap? Once you've bought music or other content to play on one device, it won't play on any other device because of the proprietary layer of CRAP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKI_w_VBoTQ&NR=1
2- Video with a different lyric to the song "start me up" of the rolling stones when windows 95 was released, applied to their new O.S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kql8cWqiv8&mode=related&search=
3- Windows VISTA SUCKS Horribly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0sy2i5FMcI&mode=related&search=
4- Microsoft own presentation of Vista new "voice recognition" with some "UNEXPECTED" FAILURE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiG7KFDYkLI&mode=related&search
275 • Distro Hopping (by Jim on 2007-06-13 21:57:18 GMT from Canada)
I am guilty of Distrohopping to the nth degree! Here is my patttern, I wonder how common this is:
Jan. 2006, try Linux for the first time with Knoppix 4.0.2 live.
May, 2006, install Kanotix alongside WindowsXP.
Aug. 2006, remove Windows and go entirely Kanotix.
October, working in a Suse Enterprise environment, so go entirely with Suse 10.1.
November, miss Kanotix so reinstall Kanotix to dual boot with Suse.
Jan., try installing Knoppix 5.0.1 to the hard drive.
Feb., install PCLinux OS TR3, dual boot with Kanotix again.
May, buy a second hard drive, install Suse 10.2.
Install Kubuntu Feisty Fawn on hard drive one.
I must be insane, but there are so many excellent distros it is hard not to give into temptation and try them out!
I don't think I am alone!
Cheers!
276 • post from kirios (by Jerry on 2007-06-13 22:04:39 GMT from United States)
"I would suggest you switch to Mac OS X - it works out of the box, has a proven safety record and can be an especially powerful environment for someone with Linux experience."
That's a thought, but I'm commited to Linux. Mac gets
bragged about a lot around where I work, for the simple
reason that imacs and other apple stuff is all there is
there. Also, at my kid's school there is all imacs. So
I know about that mac functionality.
But Linux is the one that remains open source and that
has community involvment in some of the distros (even
openSuse despite the Novell/Microsoft connection).
I want a great Linux on this high tech laptop!
- Jerry -
277 • Distro hopping (by Klateau on 2007-06-13 22:10:36 GMT from United States)
I have several computers that are sitting around waiting to be put back into service, some so old they will never be a primary system. So I like to take new distros 'out for a spin' on them. I do not have a favorite distro, they all have at least one aggravating flaw that keeps me from saying 'this is the one'. Ubuntu comes closest, and that's whats running on this machine, along with XP pro. Linux is 'this close' to replacing Windows completely in my home, which has 4 desktops and 2 laptops, along with 4 'backup' machines. The primary sticking point is apps that work on one distro and not another, and the sometimes annoying procedure for installing new apps. Lack of hardware support for audio and video cards is the other thing holding me back. None-the-less, I'm amazed how fast Linux has evolved. Distros like Vector, PC, Knoppix, and Sabyon do not have full time development teams, yet put out a slick, polished product. Way to go!
278 • Re: 268 • One cannot base the superiority of an OS on package management apps. (by kirios on 2007-06-13 23:42:50 GMT from Malaysia)
But isn't it true that the main differences between distros are in fact installation and package management tools, hardware detection, and documentation/support?
279 • @266 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-14 01:36:07 GMT from Canada)
Many of the packages in the PCLOS repositories are MDV packages, rebuilt and with the changelog removed. This makes many MDV development volunteers understandably upset as it effectively denies them credit for their work, though that may not be the actual reason PCLOS does this.
280 • "Hopping"? Migration please :-) (by Gary Woodman on 2007-06-14 02:43:57 GMT from Australia)
I'm not so much a 'hopper" as seeking balanced hardware & software, I tend to change OS when I change hardware, I like to see what's new and wonderful in the Linux world, and I feel I have some responsibility to be able to recommend something to Windows refugees.
I started with computers back in the days of punched cards, reel-to-reel tapes, and CRAMs (anyone remember them?), so I'm not fussed over a command line; I still always have an xterm (or equivalent) open, and I prefer dselect to synaptic or similar.
I never liked Windows (started with 1.0 on an 8088-based PC with a Herc graphics adapter), and jumped to OS/2 2.0 as soon as I could, used that for several years. I started my Linux journey with Slackware (cut over 30 floppies from a Walnut Creek CD-ROM), went on to Red Hat because I saw the importance of a package manager, went on to Debian when an upgrade broke my RH6, and very happy with that for some years. In the mean time, on spare machines, I've also tried Suse, Caldera, Knoppix, Morphix, Xandros, PCLinuxOS, and some others I've forgotten (not to mention toolkits such as System Rescue).
Debian is more a box of parts than a packaged distro, and when I bought new(ish) hardware (a Thinkpad T40, the most powerful machine I've ever owned), I thought I'd go for a new(ish) distro as well, necessarily Debian-based because of its best features, the package manager and the focus on maintainability.
I installed Ubuntu Dapper in its beta days and have run it happily on my T40 for 18 months. It is a good desktop environment, good hardware recognition, good stability and good suite of apps, if somewhat bloated and non-granular (ubuntu-desktop depends on a lot of useless crap), and seems overly complicated for the equivalent of a dist-upgrade.
Or I might find something new and wonderful that is even more general-purpose than (K)Ubuntu; PCLinuxOS has come a long way and I installed it recently (on both my T40 and a USB drive) with few dramas, and it seems set for success at least as a home for victims of M$.
I have some tips on how to address Ubuntu bloat and may go on to gutsy, or I may wait for the next LTS version; Debian has spoiled me for this type of support. I may even move to PCLOS or something I've yet to try (or hear of), for which, mega kudos to Distrowatch. Sadly, no-longer-appropriate partitioning decisions mean that I will have to reinstall my prime OS, and I don't think I have dapper media any more; I might as well download something newer, smarter, and sexier. It's horses for courses, or as my biker mates say, different strokes for different folks. Linux is Linux, and we're all better off for it; I doubt we'll ever see another proprietary OS like OS/2 or BeOS. Vive la difference!
281 • @278 (by Gary Woodman on 2007-06-14 02:58:46 GMT from Australia)
Yes, I believe so, it is amost all Linux and GNU under the bonnet; but remember, package distros may have their own configuration tools, which may or may not be released to the community. And artwork, while not a functional element, or of significance to many, definitely distinguishes distros.
282 • distro hopping (by Don on 2007-06-14 03:17:54 GMT from United States)
Before I caught the Linux bug, whenever I was at a retail store that sold computers, I'd always would check out and play around with the computers on display and see what they were like. I got a kick out of it. Little did I grasp how alike they all were, being all Windows or Apple machines. Now, I get that same kick trying out different Linux distros. I enjoy getting it all to work. It's like test driving a different car. I just want to know what it's like. This past year I've used MEPIS for 3 months, Mint for 5 month, and SAM for the past month on my desktop. I've tried out a ton of others. I'm trying to discover where my taste is, be it KDE/GNOME/Xfce or Debianish/RPMish/Slackwareish. I'll continue to switch distros because it's now my hobby instead of fantasy baseball/football.
283 • Re #271 OS as underware (by rglk on 2007-06-14 03:49:24 GMT from United States)
Jason wrote:
"If hardware were the body and software were the clothing that gives it flare, then the OS is well ... "underware" existing somewhere between the body and clothing. Furthermore, since I find watching the distros evolve and change so exciting, I find it necessary to change my "underware" frequently."
So that's why Windows stinks ... no change of underwear for years and years.
284 • Distro hopping (by kirios on 2007-06-14 06:17:03 GMT from Malaysia)
"Did you switch to a new distribution recently? If so, why?"
Installed PCLinuxOS on my desktop last week, partly because I've been using Mandriva One recently but prefer Synaptic to urpmi, and partly because I was intrigued by the Distrowatch page hit rankings. Couldn't get PCLOS working on my laptop though, which was a surprise because Mandriva One runs perfectly on both machines.
"If you switched from openSUSE to Fedora or PCLinuxOS, what was your main reason?"
I stopped using openSuse last June when they released 10.1 without any functional package management. Used Ubuntu (Dapper and Edgy) until April this year, then switched to Mandriva One - primarily for the 3D-desktop but also because it works with most of my hardware (unlike Ubuntu).
By the way, Mandriva seems to get a lot of negative reviews. Would it be fair to surmise that the reasons are mostly non-technical?
285 • RE 278 What is an OS (for me, it is a kernel; the rest is support/service) (by dbrion on 2007-06-14 06:32:50 GMT from France)
"But isn't it true that the main differences between distros are in fact installation and package management tools, hardware detection, and documentation/support?"
Are these differences relevant?
Normally,
a) at least three package management systems have been Windows ported from Linux, as almost any *open source* application can (open source, for me, is not a Pavlovian cult object but something comfortable : there exists closed source apps under Linux, you know {think of SPSS, Matlab, say} ).
b) package management have been created as a workaround of the tediousness, ugliness (one is free not to look at compilation screens) and slowness of compilation. They are not part of Linux (and msi is not part of Windows kernel).
If a package management application breaks, or if one wants to upgrade some apps without downloading terabytes of stuff (most of it goes to the junk-bin), or if one wants >1 versions of apps, compilation remains the most natural way and often works with Windows + (cygwin|mingw), too.
c) documentation is the same for any well structured free soft . Of course, credit card sized live CDs are not shipped with man files, but they should...
d) support? I never used Wine Torrent for MS Windows, nor for Mandriva (at home and work) and RedHat derived (at work). Friends of mine who have debians neither did.
What is support?
e) Hardware detection?
I suppose you want to speak about the most obscene aspect of Linux ecosystems: pple buying (or getting someway) very expensive shiny cards,
"to have their friend's jaw drop",
and begging
' Oh unpaid Linux developper, gimme, gimme, quick,quick, a driver for my expensive card. Else I ll tell your distr is crappier than xx distr'.
This mindless (and growing, I fear) pressure leads to badly packaged distrs (some packages do not install, as they were compiled with other versions of libraries, and there are too many packages to verify) one has to fix, if needed.
I fear it is a growing trend, as more volunteer work is demanded with shorter delays (ie : their work will be dropped sooner and sooner).
PLS do not tell me that Linux does not cost anything, and that makes the difference with M$Windossss (I suppose it is trendy to misspeel it) : my boss is ready to pay for part of a good quality Linux (the price of which makes MS Vista charity busness) but not for hardware (he wisely wo not buy a 10$ keyboard for a PC cluster).
286 • Distro Usage Trend (by William Barath on 2007-06-14 07:20:05 GMT from Canada)
I have been using SuSE, reliably since I installed version 6.0. I made the switch from the venerable Slackware 4.0 which I had been using for a couple years.
I installed SuSE 6.0 because I had been reading about the massive package list (9G of software!) and had been limited to my InfoMagic CDROM sets up until the point where I finally got an unlimited dialup account (shared slip accounts to 5 roommates via my Slak box.)
I have installed Debian Potatoe+, assorted Red Hat5+, Mandrake 8+, Fedora 3+, Knoppix, and PCLinuxOS systems for friends, but not SuSE because it (via YAST) exposes too much of the underlying system to the users, which is great for admins but not great if you want to set someone up with essentially a kiosk machine that they can't break easily.
I've visited Distrowatch countless times from these fresh installations, and I try out new distros via QEMU and test the browser by hitting a few favorite pages, among them Distrowatch.
If you are like me and want to evaluate the new features of a distro [without yawning through someone's 12-page installation summary, followed by a short thumbs up or down based on their personal favorite list of features], particularly testing things that don't work yet on your distro or a friend's, then there's nothing better than QEMU and a livecd with an overlay filesystem to explore those critical areas. Assuming that the livecd will boot in QEMU! Some don't, I won't mention any names, but they are missing out as virtualization is *it* right now, and QEMU is the fastest open solution on the market.
Anyhow, if one in 20 people exhibit my behavior it would roughly explain the distrowatch "Visiting OS" data fluctuations.
287 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-14 08:08:50 GMT from Kazakhstan)
Could you update Solaris page a bit?
Express Developer Edition 5/7 is out with some nice features and package updates.
288 • RE: 287 (by ladislav on 2007-06-14 08:13:12 GMT from Taiwan)
Please email me the full package list and I'll be sure to update the page.
289 • PARDUS (by litepenguin on 2007-06-14 08:59:22 GMT from Canada)
Gee--- this distro really rocks!!
Definetely the most complete and pro linuxOS i have tried so far.
My only complain: Wish they had better support & documentation in english.
290 • Com 286 Qemu' s speed and HW recognition (by dbrion on 2007-06-14 09:41:07 GMT from France)
I agree that qemu is very interesting and fully open source; however,
qemu + kqemu is faster or breaks (qemu's accelerator kqemu , now full GPL, has a kind of horrible (Greek letter) my keyboard does not like; it is even worse in Windows....).
VirtualBox is half GPLed.... and has a newer version since one week. It is very easy to use, but difficult to trace (qemu, as a CLi, can be looked upon with despise, but has history mechanism)
One cannot give hope that a virtualizer can solve hardware problems : they are rather used to hide them.... for classical hardware (there is no hope for emulating a coffee machine, though it is full of 8 bits 8051 soft => perhaps a free 64 bits port would give 8 times more coffee, or coffee you drink 8 times faster, for productivity)
No emulator AFAIK can emulate such great useful hardware.....
291 • complements 290 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-14 10:52:11 GMT from France)
I forgot to add the very informative and clarifying link " http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/SpringVirtualizationGuide?language=en " about some (free, half free) emulators/ virtualizers.
292 • Re: 288 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-14 10:56:33 GMT from Kazakhstan)
I'll try to get Solaris people do it. I have yet to squeeze space on my laptop to install it and check what packages are there.
293 • MS Linspire Deal (by Nick on 2007-06-14 11:38:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter.php
294 • The Code: Linux Movie (by Beatnik on 2007-06-14 11:45:57 GMT from Panama)
Hey, look what I found:
This finnish DVD Movie/Documental about the creation of Linux OS.
http://www.code.linux.fi/
Google video in english (59min):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3498228245415745977&q=The+Code+Linux&total=120&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Google video in spanish (51min):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6729008725344610785&q=Codigo+Linux&total=33&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Another movie about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs:
"Pirates of Silicon Valley" (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
Google video in english:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1552555273778978142&q=pirates+of+silicon+valley&total=55&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4
Google video in spanish:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7039094381603369679&q=pirates+of+silicon+valley&total=55&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
There you have 2 interesting movies for our Geek pleasure.
295 • Symphony 2007.06 released (by Alan on 2007-06-14 11:56:36 GMT from Poland)
Hi everyone!
Just wanted to mention that a new version of Symphony is available--the update hasn't been mentioned on Distrowatch and the only reason I found out was by reading the latest linux reviews. Symphony uses the Mezzo desktop which is quite different than KDE and Gnome and the distro is also now Ubuntu based. I haven't played with this new version yet but it sounds promising, although Symphony's website says that it's still pretty buggy at the moment.
If you're looking for a "different" desktop experience, then check out Symphony at http://www.symphonyos.com
Best,
Alan
296 • Distro hopping (by jason mazon on 2007-06-14 12:23:18 GMT from United States)
The main reason why users switch distro is because they are not completely satisfied with the one that they are presently trying. There is always a sense that the user is missing a new technology or an easier way to do things.
In my case, I have settled on three distributions which I use on my two desktops together with Windowz: Kubuntu, Mandriva Spring, and SabayonLinux. These distribution tend to stay up with the most current technology, especially Kubuntu and SabayonLinux. Plus, they tend to be easier to install with other distros and Windowz.
Unfortunatelly, I don't see a sophisticated "Chessbase 9" under Linux or easy video editting, thus Windowz. Thank you.
297 • why nI switched (by kosta on 2007-06-14 14:41:05 GMT from United States)
I switched to PCLINUXOS 2007 because I read a review on DistroWatch. I had been using Ubuntu, but became concerned when I discovered the Feisty Fawn did not play sound on my laptop - this is why I read the PCLOS review and decided to give it a try. So far, PCLOS works very well for me.
298 • Distro hopping (by Claus Futtrup on 2007-06-14 17:53:16 GMT from Denmark)
Do not hop around - analyzed and found Zenwalk. The right distro for me.
Best regards,
Claus
Zenwalker
299 • Linspire sold out to M$ !!! (by Caraibes on 2007-06-14 18:26:47 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Lots of forum thread about the new deal signed between Linspire and Microsoft...
Seems like all the majors are going to bed with Balmer...
Hopefully GPLv.3 will show up and wipe those treacherous deals...
Time to back the rally free distros like Debian, and hoppefully Fedora (if Red Hat stands firm)...
300 • My distro wonderings. (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-14 18:38:47 GMT from United States)
I'm definately a distro hopper, maybe even a distrofloater. I like to try new livecds and see if they can last me several days. Some never get passed booting, some fail the screen test. Some last a week. I have my "stuff" on a thumb so after the screen test (1280x1024) they better see my thumb. :) Sometimes I don't return to my home drive (PCLinuxOS) for a month or more. I started this month in sidux and then moved to Mint 3.0. Now I'm back in my PCLinuxOS .92 HD. I might visit my original PCLos sometime soon......
Here is a quick list of my installs and live hops over the last 4 years.
http://www.geocities.com/e_8013/distro-list.txt
It started with running KNOPPIX for 5 weeks on a zapped Win2000 box. The box was read only (still useful) until my guru fixed it. I got an emachine to play Linux dual boot (Mandrake and then Mepis) I sold that for a self-built which I still use, Linux only.
Of course Distrowatch was/is the main source of distro info. Many thanks.
301 • Distro hopping (by Stillborn on 2007-06-14 19:35:19 GMT from Finland)
I was distro slut about two years trying to find working distro for me ending up with suse and kubuntu, but there was still some unexpected crashes with my hardware.
Then I found ZENWALK 3 and it felt good. I only used it one month (slut that I am) before I tested vector and slackware again, but then I was convinced that ZENWALK is distro for me and I have used it since that day.
302 • RE: 289 Pardus (by KimTjik on 2007-06-14 20:13:39 GMT from Sweden)
Yes it does! And what makes it even more interesting is that the developers behind Pardus do invent their own solutions, thus getting a more distinct identity. Hm, some Pardus icons and symbols feel a bit too cute to me though; it's like a have to say to observers: "don't bother about the silly pussy-cat there, this is actually a pretty good package-manager"! Strange isn't it, but my wife really likes those funny creatures in Pardus.
Just as you I wish the documentation in English would have been better. They're working on a wiki, but for now it doesn't help much; instructions for the Pisi package system isn't ready and much more. If documentation in English would have been in level with other popular distros it could easily attract a lot more users. As it is now I get the feeling that Turkish and Dutch users know a lot more useful "secrets" than I do.
I actually did choose Pardus as the main operating system for an organization of volunteers who need it to run different multimedia and ip-communication for conferences. I've put together a manual and some ready to use configuration-files in case they will screw up. Let's see if the choice was good, but for several months now it has done its job excellent.
303 • zenwalk (by Imitis on 2007-06-14 20:15:31 GMT from Latvia)
I started using linux with slackware. Used Xfce as my desktop. then found zenwalk..then it was called minislack. And am using it to this day..
even my little brother uses zenwalk on his computer about year and he is happy.
thanx alot for this great distro..
304 • RE: # 295 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-06-14 23:53:06 GMT from Italy)
"Symphony uses the Mezzo desktop which is quite different than KDE and Gnome"
I hope it gets ported to Debian, so all you have to do is 'apt-get install mezzo"
305 • Linspire now.... (by Bob on 2007-06-15 01:00:37 GMT from United States)
Add Linspire to Xandros as "distros" which should be delisted from distrowatch.
306 • @305 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-15 05:15:34 GMT from Portugal)
In that case, Novell would have to leave too.
307 • re #188 SchizOS (by Anonymous on 2007-06-15 06:12:52 GMT from Australia)
"For the ultimate in distro-hopping, I put together a meta-distro called "SchizOS" that boots into an entirely new distro every day."
So now there is a distro-hopping distro! Will this multiplicity of distroing ever stop? Anyway, with only a 30MB sized engine surely you must only be demonstrating the wallpaper of each distro and not its entire functionality. And what is more the engine is a Windows exe file demonstrating different Linux distros!
308 • Slackware Linux 12.0 RC1 (by Ariszló on 2007-06-15 07:53:37 GMT from Hungary)
Pidgin is back:
xap/pidgin-2.0.1-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to pidgin-2.0.1.
http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386
309 • Re#32 PARDUS (by litepenguin on 2007-06-15 11:05:12 GMT from Canada)
PARDUS is indeed a very unique distro in that it's a highly polished and an almost-perfect distro. This is truly a rarity among so many linux distros out there.
I have been using PARDUS over a month now and have yet to encounter a single problem. Despite trying very hard finding a deficiency till now with this distro in order to uninstall it and hop to another distro, i've failed. It's simply the best distro i have used over the years. Everything worked out of the box after i installed it on a laptop and two desktops at home. Not only that, it also boots pretty fast and works even faster once it's loaded and running. Besides, it boast its own KDE-based admirable GUI.
It's now very clear to me that i'm going to keep this cute "lionix" permanently on my home desktop and laptop and will always look forward to updating it every six months or so. On the other hand, i should mention that the other day i installed PARDUS on my boss' laptop too. Thus, i'm just hoping that he'll get hook into it, therefore allow me to install PARDUS on my machine at work.
Meanwhile, i hope that the truly smart developers of this amazing Turkish distro eventually realize that PARDUS now has a steadily growing number of loyal fans beyond Turkey and Europe --- and in response to that, hopefully they'll adopt English as the main or default language of the distro.
Once this is done, i strongly believe there's nothing which can, possibly, prevent PARDUS to get itself among the first five or ten distros here on Distro Watch's popularity list in no time.
310 • Distro Hopping (by Feargal on 2007-06-15 12:35:55 GMT from Ireland)
O.K. I admit it. I hop around quite often. I started my Linux journey with Mandrake 7 and since then I've gone through I don't know how many. At the moment I'm using Xubuntu. It's not the fastest to load but once there it zips along nicely. I'm just a home user doing regular stuff. Linux is in my opinion ready for the home user.
311 • Non-distro-hoppers (by Benjamin Vander Jagt on 2007-06-15 13:35:54 GMT from United States)
If I may make an observation, it seems that people who actually use their computers for some sort of useful yet non-IT business don't switch OS's much at all. Some of my clients are savvy enough to install just about any operating system, but they use their computers for various legal, medical, and government purposes, and they will go for years with the same OS installed.
312 • re 305 Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks Ubuntu might be next! (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-15 14:24:35 GMT from United States)
It looks like Ubuntu might be next - then what wouyld happen to Mepis andMint!?!
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5160975921.html
I'm playing in PCLos 2007 livecd since last night. I installed Xfce4, logged out and back into Xfce4. Seems to be running nicely except I can't add work-spaces. I also added software like nvu.
In post 300, I link to my list of distros I've tried. I'm thinking of making a spreadsheet, like I did when I started distro-hopping, showing features that are a must for me. Many distros that get high raves here are non-starters for my machine.
Pardus is an example of those that won't even boot! Others get stuck somewhere in the graphics, like the test release of Ubuntu does (all other ubuntu releases have worked great). Others will not give me 1280x1024 easily or at all.
Berry 0.81 looked good but the cursor was frozen and the English support wa poor. That also was the issue with the new very fast booting Accelerated-KNX-1.1, boots in a minute though.
The next show stopper is not accessing my hard disks and USB drives (some are FAT32). I know how to mount/umount etc. But there is no indication of where they are on some, like /mnt/hda1 or /media/ or even other non-standard names like win_a.
Media support is next, but usually these can be installed. I am puzzled about the repos for Debian and sidux to get media goodies.
Finally, some are just plane ugly. Example: Freespire 1.0.13.
313 • Pardus (309,302) (by dbrion on 2007-06-15 14:33:59 GMT from France)
I saw 3 nice things in the last *stable* version of Pardus :
a) They _fully_ separate the demo role of a live CD from the installation role of the installation CD => if she were French localized, I could give the live Cd to anyone, without fearing data loss/ friends loss..
b) The modest ressource demands ( her life Cd's KDE seemed to work, at last em Portugues do Brazil, under qemu, with 128 M [ its default option...] , at a reasonable slowness => I could understand....){ there was no additional disk provided, as liveCDs sometimes are smart enough to steal the HD's swap portition, if any...}
c) I am not at all competent with quality of English doc, but I begun to read the Pardus and Gobo linux docs : they are rather based on the principles who led to their results than aimed to some particuliar feature (both distrs are developped by University labs), thus being very pleasant to read (principles may remain, but, due to technological evolutions, specific tips will soon(er or later) get outdated).
The choice of Python for initialisation scripts led Pardus to have 10 times less code, and to understand where the bottlenecks in initialisation were; they then generalized to package management -I hope I do not grossly over simplify-).
This astonished me much, as Python, in 2004, was considered (and *was*) to be at the same time very smart and very buggy, and was therefore prohibited...
I supppose Python is less (?not at all?) buggy, today, as OLPC uses Python as part of her launching engine, methinks..
314 • hopping from one to another (by Oiving on 2007-06-15 14:41:41 GMT from United States)
That's what's so good about linux is the variety.
We can even develop out own!
315 • CPM.... (by dbrion on 2007-06-15 15:00:55 GMT from France)
From "http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html"
I see # 200 CPM based IT-links:
Is this a real CPM? an emulated one? 187 jokes?
They might be the pple who *never* changed their OS and have very sensible, long lasting, hardware choices...
316 • Linux Server (by Porter on 2007-06-15 15:12:18 GMT from United States)
Looking for a linux distro (server) to run on a 733Mhz, 128MB of RAM box with KDE or GNOME GUI. Any suggestions?
317 • re 312 PCLos 2007 livecd, re 280 and #258 (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-15 15:12:41 GMT from United States)
I goofed, it was IceWM I added in this liveCD session, not Xfce4. Anyway, it is running OK mostly. I can log into either KDE or IceWM but neither lets me configure desktops. (shrug) Adding IceWM used less than 50MB of my 1GB ram, so the swap is not touched yet. I'm back to the KDE side and will likely stay the day (while the market is open).
There has been discussion of MATLAB here. I haven't tried Octave but I will. I used MATLAB for years at a job, both in Windows and Linux.The Linux version worked better. :) Anyway, when I started playing with Python, I noticed a similarity to MATLAB. It has most of the maths and easy to use variables/structures. I have recommended it as a free MATLAB, but now I may have to add Octave. :)
280: "I started with computers back in the days of punched cards, reel-to-reel tapes, and CRAMs (anyone remember them?)"
Well punched cards and mag tapes - yellow teletype paper with paper tape too. :D Those were the days. I still have a few FORTRAN card decks including JCL, ready to run. LOL Nope, don't remember CRAMs. :/
And I enjoyed #258 by Benjamin Vander Jagt. Good post. :)
318 • re 316 • Linux Server (Porter) (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-15 18:24:02 GMT from United States)
"733Mhz, 128MB of RAM box with KDE or GNOME GUI."
Wow, those are heavy desktops for 128MB ram. There are very nice but light window managers like IceWW, e17, JWM, or fluxbox. Take a look at Puppy, DSL, elive, or even KNOPPIX booted into IceWM. Then install Debian and select a light desktop when you need a window manager.
319 • re #326 - linux server (by ray carter at 2007-06-15 19:40:43 GMT from United States)
My suggestion would be to not plan on KDE or Gnome. IMHO they're too heavy for 733mhz - I'd really recommend you look at something 'lighter' - my preferences are Enlightenment and XFCE. You might have a look at Elive or maybe Xubuntu.
320 • RE: 316 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-15 20:34:44 GMT from Germany)
For Desktop with 733Mhz and 128MB of RAM with KDE try NimbleX
http://distrowatch.com/nimblex
Review http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/12630
For Fileserver try FreeNAS
http://distrowatch.com/freenas
321 • distro switching (by Dave on 2007-06-15 23:43:10 GMT from United States)
In past year have done a full install of Ubuntu 6.10, Simply Mepis, and Suse 10.0. I have each installed on some old hard drives and swap them when needed.
I usually use a Puppy Linux live CD for internet browsing because it loads fast and works with Verizon DSL without having to install all their software. I have also tried Feather, Buffalo, and Knoppix live CDs. I use XP at work because they don't believe in Linux.
I abandoned MS at home for several reasons: cost, waiting for scan disk, and having to reinstall software with repeated retarts for every piece of hardware and software.
322 • Linux (by linux on 2007-06-15 23:55:04 GMT from Canada)
I would just like to thank Mr Linus Torvalds for creating the linux kernel and giving us the ability to argue with each other of which is the best distribution. As the SUSE distribution says "Have alot of fun" with whatever distribution you like!.
323 • Your O.S. + Files PORTABLE: Qemu-Puppy (by Beatnik on 2007-06-16 00:59:52 GMT from Panama)
Hey, this is a very interesting project, I think every distro should have a version you can have in a Flash USB of 512Mb or 1Gb.
The new feature is that you can take and run your O.S. + files like a portable system without needing to boot or install, just opening a window with your O.S.:
"QEMU-Puppy is an OS and a set of applications on a USB memory stick. This OS can be booted natively, or on top of an other, already installed, OS. Just borrow a PC, boot your own environment and return the PC unaffected."
http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/index.html
324 • cdrkit instead of cdr (by Anonymous on 2007-06-16 03:39:45 GMT from United States)
Your statement:
249 • cdrkit instead of cdrtools
Good to see that you follow the more widely used, more trustworthy and reliable branch of the cdrtools codebase.
You definitely will get some heat for that, but I applaud your decision.
I hate to disagree with you on this one. How can cdrkit compare to cdrtools.
More trustworthy?
To what extent?
Did you know that the fork of cdrtools does not fully comply with the GPL.?
Cdrkit seems to violate the GPL as many publish
binaries but the sources do not contain the sources for "cmake" and "libcap".
The GPL requires to distribute "complete source" in case you distribute
binaries...
More widely used?
Yes probably because the Ubuntu's, which seem to rule include it in by default. Other distros still use cdrtools package from Joerg Schilling's site.
What is wrong with using these?
To the packages question.
Packages to include/consider
please keep tetex as some distributions have not moved on to texlive. keep both.
wine
kile
texmaker
gnuplot
maxima
xen
quemu
Thanks
325 • Suggested package (coreutils) (by Steve on 2007-06-16 07:47:38 GMT from United States)
I recommend coreutils. It is essential to Linux.
How could we get things done without cp, rm, ls, md5sum, etc.?
326 • RE: 325 Suggested package (coreutils) (by ladislav on 2007-06-16 07:53:10 GMT from Taiwan)
Coreutils is already listed and tracked. Please check
http://distrowatch.com/packages.php
to avoid suggesting packages that are already tracked.
327 • Cor 313 KDE, Pardus and memory greediness (by dbrion on 2007-06-16 09:30:01 GMT from France)
I mixed Pardus with Stux.linux 1.0, which has a really impressive RAM kindness and I qemulated;
Pardus stable live CD could work with VirtualBox (I did not trace the settings; she started without any pb, else) and with qemu (200 m, std-vga [ the default screen seemed frozen] ; I have it traced though the bash "history", without effort...) ; Portugues do Brasil was supported, but the KDE help was English....(pour l'exotisme, c'est raté..).
they have another nice feature : they acknowledge their translators (as do DW and KateOS, among many others, I hope).
328 • RE 323 The link was interesting, (by dbrion on 2007-06-16 15:10:50 GMT from France)
as it highlights the role of qemu and qemu's accelerator.
Another solution consist in
a) assume 95% of the PC are Microsoft Windows powered, and, if one wants to wander with and USB key, without having to restart a colleague's PC (suppose it is being virus scanned, to remain politically correct), the best think is to have Windows apps=>
they ship special Windows ports, who do not use the USB key flash as buffers, thus avoiding any supplementary virtual OS ...
This was achieved by
http://www.framakey.org/Main/Index
The last ports were Vim and Xemacs, before they ported OpenOffice (it has buffers.) and thunderAnimal....
BTW what is the difference betw
1) a PC Windows povered and running 2*qemu + 2 Damn smalls Linuxes + OpenOffice
and
2) a Linux powered PC running 2 VMplayer + one (XP + Word) + one (W98 + Excel) + one Intel Fortran Compiler?
Which is the most GNU-like? In terms of kernels running?....
I suppose ndiswrapper has not been Windows-ported...
That makes stats based on labels (the name of the browser) difficult to interpret (unless one ?optimistically? supposes the majority of the users does not have such monster PCs), even if they are based on a full month....
329 • Multiboot afternoon... (by Caraibes on 2007-06-16 18:21:35 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Well, after all these emotions, I am now multibooting F7, PCLOS 2007 & Debian Etch, so this setup might prevent me from more distro-hopping !!!
(just for fun, don't take it too serious)
By the way, I am really impressed with the new PCLOS, as it is well internationalized : I had my account in french & my wife's in spanish...
No conflict between my scanner & my TVcard : good !
Those guys are good indeed !
330 • New Distro: Copland (by Dave on 2007-06-17 03:53:09 GMT from United States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_PPC
331 • ? Perhaps add Swig to the database? (by dbrion on 2007-06-17 13:49:34 GMT from France)
For students who want to convert code (natively interpreted or dynamically linked) from Matlab -often used as a teaching tool, at least in France, 3yrs ago- (cf post 29) . Apart from R (provides a full compiling environment under Linux, binary package manager -much rpm-like - under Windows, but the syntax is somewhat different from Matlab's), two solutions are simple (octave and Python, the latter being much spred , but the interface with user fuctions lacks) .
Swig can handle this issue of interfacing with user functions, in a very general case :
a) Octave.
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Dynamically-Linked-Functions.html#index-dynamic-linking-492
Octave can dynamically load C++ functions .
http://ocgmod1.marine.usf.edu/OI/.
hints that Octave (test version; there is a great gap betw. her test version and the stable one, I fear) has a package manager, and that functions written in Fortran can be easily linked, too (they quote gfortran and g95, the two active GNU fortran compilers).
Octave can be edited with emacs or vim, thus making a not too uncomfortable GUI....
Octave could be found, last year, in many important distr (this year, I tested only some of the *not* top ten, to add more variety and wait till the top 10 are sold by newspapers sellers at the railways stations...)
b) Python (idea of Fractalguy #317 : its syntax looks much like Matlab's one) is shipped with almost any Linux distr, but the issue of interfacing it with Fortran written functions is not so straightforward :
with C functions, the natural way seems to use SWIG (makes wrappers, specific to Python (or Perl, or Tcl, or Lua, or...) and it seems not too difficult to interface C to Fortran or to convert F77 code to C by f2c (to have a hint of the C structure underlying the Fortran parameter calls)....
=> Perhaps swig should be added to the database, too?
332 • Distro Hopping (by Dennis Sharp on 2007-06-17 16:47:13 GMT from United States)
I have used various Linux distros for the last 10 years. I use Suse 10.1 as my primary desktop, but I have another box that I try out others on. I am always downloading new distros large and small just to see how they compare as far as ease of use, multimedia capabilties etc. (I guess it's an addiction!)
333 • Mint 3 Cassandra (by Dark Horizon on 2007-06-18 00:55:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've been through a fair few Live Cd's Linspire, Knoppixs, Elive, Dream Linux Mm, Ubuntu a number of flavors. I've tried Fedora on HD,
However, The most recent offering from Mint "Cassandra" I have to say has arrived at the point of saying A version of Linux that just about anyone can use. That's the main thing about Linux , its been almost unusable by the masses. The likes of Linspire while offering a wide range of services its not free. Mint is free to download easy to use and has all the basics you need to get started. It doesn't have everything and no doubt the Linux aficionado's would be looking for more up to and including left handed quibble drivers with go faster stripes.
If you just want a distro that just works, easy to use and customizable; right at the moment you need look no further Mint 3 Cassandra. Nice set of tools with it too.
Well that is up to the next distro that catches my eye; the march of Linux goes from strength to strength
334 • still hopping !!! (by Caraibes on 2007-06-18 10:49:53 GMT from Dominican Republic)
The multiboot fever goes on !
If I have some free time this afternoon, I'll wipe SL5 for Ubuntu, then I'll have F7/Feisty/PCLOS07...
I guess I'll settle there for a while...
The reason why I didn't stick nether with Debian nor with SL is my problematic TVcard (Lifeview Flyvideo 2000)... it works great with Fedora, MDV, PCLOS, the Slack offspring... But not with RHEL clones nor with Debian...
I'll give another try with Ubuntu Feisty.
Number of Comments: 334
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Ophcrack LiveCD
Ophcrack LiveCD was a specialist SliTaz-based live CD containing Ophcrack, an open source Windows password cracker that uses rainbow tables. The graphical program included on the live CD was reputed for being able to crack alphanumeric Windows passwords of up to 14 characters in usually just a few seconds.
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