 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 208, 25 June 2007 |
|
Welcome to this year's 26th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! A Linux distribution is not just a CD image we download from the Internet; for many of us the social part of a project, such as any interactive communication channels, are equally important. In this week's feature story, Mark South examines how one or two poisonous individuals can spoil the experience for many other users. In the news section, we take a look at the importance of the various language-specific distributions on the market, examine the new features in Ubuntu 7.10, introduce a new YaST module for creating custom live CDs, and link to a story featuring the PCLinuxOS Control Center. Finally, don't miss the excellent article written by Linux Weekly News on the subject of backporting newer software and patches into a stable distribution. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
|
| Featured Story |
One year with Puppy Linux (by Mark South)
The sad tale of how the hope and excitement of a promising distro turned to fear and loathing in Linux land.
 Most distro reviews focus on installing and using one release of a recent distro. But when people decide to stick with a distro, or abandon it after a longer period of use, the reasons are more to do with the entire distro experience, which includes the distro technology, its package management, the size and reliability of its package repositories, the ease and speed with which bugs are reported and fixed, the quality of the documentation, and the social experience of being part of the distro's community, as exemplified by its forum and IRC channels. Here I relate my personal experiences with Puppy Linux over the course of approximately one year.
* * * * *
I hated Puppy Linux the first time I saw it on my screen. Well, why was it on my screen in the fist place, you may very reasonably ask? The time was early 2005, and I had been spending some of my spare time searching out and testing small Linux distros for use on older computers. Where I live in Switzerland, there are numerous home users (including many of my friends and neighbours) still running Windows 98 on modest hardware, and finding a Linux distro that they could easily convert to seemed like a worthwhile use of the aforementioned spare time. Also, I had recently become acquainted with Knoppix, which had impressed me with the power and potential of live CDs. I had also already tried Damn Small Linux (DSL), which (in spite of its appallingly naff name) had been interestingly usable on my already-ancient Toshiba portable from the mid-1990's, although it would only run in live mode on that machine, and simply refused to install at all.
So when I looked back through the distro release announcements on DistroWatch and observed that Puppy 0.9.7 was less than 60 MB to download, I didn't have to think very hard about giving it a try. Naturally, I was expecting it to be something like DSL. I was totally disappointed. The display was stuck at a clunky-looking and somewhat flickery 800x600 (even though my display would do 1280x1024), and there seemed to be no way to get onto the net without using a dial-up modem. To clinch matters, there was a freaking SEAGULL on my desktop! If the seagull hadn't clinched things already (and pretty much everyone who's ever lived by the sea knows what I'm talking about :-), things were made even worse by the fact that after I removed the Puppy CD and rebooted, there was a file called PUP001 that had been written to my hard disk's first partition entirely without my permission. I promptly tossed the Puppy CD into the round file and resolved never to allow any kind of Puppy near my beloved computers ever again.
Well, it turns out that even the strongest resolutions don't always stand up well against everyday human curiosity. Fast-forward the clock ahead to early 2006. It was now about a year since I had first tried Puppy. It was a new calendar year and I was inclined to forgive and forget, especially since Puppy's version number had passed the magical milestone of 1.0 in the meantime. The release announcement promised that 1.08 was full of new stuff, and besides that there didn't seem to have been any fun new live CDs released in the past couple of weeks, so what hardcore distro junkie could resist? So I downloaded the ISO and burned that fateful CD.
I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. Well, that's an understatement. I was impressed. And even that's an understatement. I was delighted to see how far Puppy had come during the course of the year for which I had left it entirely out of consideration. The new live CD booted smoothly and ran quickly. After answering a few start-up questions about mouse and keyboard, the system was up and running. There was a simple wizard interface to set up the network, and another to set the desktop resolution to 1024x768, correct for the machine I was using. There was also quite a useful choice of software available in the menus. The window manager and general graphical design were still pretty basic and really quite ugly (and that blasted seagull was still lurking around somewhere!), but looking beyond that to the actual functionality of the system gave me a strong sense that Puppy had entered onto an interesting trajectory that could, in time, make it a really important and useful distro.
When this Puppy started up, it brought up a web page in a modest browser, namely Dillo (sadly now deceased, and deeply missed by many small and light distros). The page contained a selection of links that directed the user to the Puppy home page (informative), the project's documentation Wiki (thin), and the main user forum for Puppy. Now, I had always tended to stay away from forums of all kinds because of the high levels of flaming and social ignorance that they often contain. But, what the hang, I had already broken a resolution by just booting the CD. So over to the forum I went. I lurked for a few days while I picked up useful tips and tricks on how to get the best results from Puppy. At the same time, I was experimenting with a new capability that had appeared in Puppy 1.08, which was the ability to use a multi-session CD and have the session saved back to the live CD in place of needing to save to a hard disk or a USB key. Neat as the multi-session CD idea was, there turned out to be several complications in getting it to work properly, so I registered on the forum and began asking my questions. The responses I received were generally very helpful and so I persisted (although I never actually did get the multi-session CD to work until after Puppy 2.0 came out).
As I hung about in the forum learning the quirks and strengths of Puppy, I began to notice that many of the questions being posted by other Puppy newbies were about things to which I knew the answers, so I began getting involved with helping others to get better results from their Puppies. I saw this as giving back to the community a fair share of some of the help that I had already received. Besides, the more I used Puppy, the more I came to appreciate its almost unique mix of small size, efficient use of resources, compatibility with a wide range of hardware, and genuinely useful range of built-in applications, and the more I became an enthusiast and a dedicated supporter of the Puppy project.
So when Barry announced that he was beginning work on a redesigned Puppy, to be designated as Puppy 2.0 and based on the 2.6 kernel series, I eagerly joined the alpha testing programme, downloading and trying out each new alpha as it was released. The pace of development was exciting, with a new alpha being released almost every week or so. The mood in the forum was intense and highly competitive. Every participant wanted to be the first to get their test reports in, and to be the one to flush out the most bugs, especially because the earliest test reports were the most likely to be the ones to be acted upon. If you waited 24 hours to download and run an alpha of Puppy 2.0 you may as well not have bothered, someone else would already have been there ahead of you.
Finally, after what seemed like an age, but was, in reality, only a few weeks of test programme, Barry released Puppy 2.0. It was fantastic. Here was a 60 MB ISO image that could be downloaded in a few minutes, burned to a CD in a few more, and booted up and running in another five minutes after that. There were wizards to set up Ethernet, wireless, sound, printing, and so on, and they all worked pretty well. The running system could be installed to the hard disk or a USB key, or you could simply run from the live CD and when you chose to shut the system down, it would ask you whether you wanted to save the settings to a save file on the hard disk, a USB key, or even the CD itself (if you had burned the CD as multi-session). While the system was running, it fitted entirely into memory, so long as the machine it was running on had at least 128 MB of RAM. This meant that the newest Puppy ran respectably quickly as a live CD on systems that would have struggled to run heavier distros, even if they had been installed on the hard disk.
Puppy Linux 2.16 - a minimalist Linux distribution designed to work great even on modest hardware
(full image size: 206kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
By now I was thoroughly convinced of the potential for Puppy to be a near-universal solution for revitalising numerous computers that had become too old and too slow to be able to run either "redmondware", or even the majority of other Linux distros. I had become an enthusiastic advocate of Puppy, deliberately promoting Puppy to other Linux users, to my everyday acquaintances, and to the DistroWatch readership. For example, I was one of the first to nominate Puppy for the monthly DistroWatch award, which was eventually given to Barry in late 2006.
During this phase I had developed, thanks to the intensive alpha testing phases, quite a lot of experience in making Puppy run on a variety of hardware. I had even managed to make it run on a 133 MHz Pentium with 40 MB RAM, which was not as simple a task as one could have hoped, and which involved a certain amount of preliminary trickery with Smart Boot Manager and a TOMSRTBT floppy! By this stage, instead of mainly asking my own questions, I was mainly answering questions in the forum, especially those related to getting Puppy to boot, run, and install. And here is where I committed my first major mistake.
It all started innocently enough. A new user on the forum posted a question about booting Puppy, saying that the boot was hanging at the message "looking for puppy on hdc...." When I first saw the thread, one of the forum moderators had already replied, saying that the D was probably a bad burn, and they should burn a fresh one and try again. However, I knew better, being quite familiar with that message from one of my own testbed machines. So I replied as well, saying that in cases like this, it was worth trying booting with "ide=nodma" to turn DMA access off. This did actually turn out to be the solution to the problem, so at first I was filled with that pleasant feeling that one gets when one has been able to help someone else by leveraging one's own store of experience, at very little cost to oneself. I was so wrong.
With hindsight, I realise that I should have expected what followed, but hindsight wasn't available to me at the time. Shortly after this episode, my posts began vanishing from the forum. I would post a reply to a thread, see it in the thread, and a few minutes or hours later it would be gone. Posts to inquire if there was anything wrong with the forum were met by responses that said "the posts don't always go through if you make a mistake while sending them, or if you refresh the page too soon, etc, etc." It isn't only the private detectives among my readership who have already deduced that these explanations were coming from the same moderator with whom I had had the temerity to disagree on a technical matter. When I complained to the forum owner about my posts being randomly deleted, he asked me to show him proof. Which I couldn't easily do, since a vanished post doesn't look like much! I did begin quietly asking around among other forum users, and was even more dismayed to discover that I was not the only victim, and that several other people were having their posts silently deleted.
The records show how much cheerleading I did for Puppy, and the positive results for the project. In October 2006, Barry received an award from DistroWatch, which he used to support the various hosting efforts being managed by himself and others in the Puppy community.
Around this time, under the huge load caused by numerous newcomers interested in Puppy, the Puppy forum began to go down (or, more frequently, simply slow down so far as to time out on every request) almost routinely. There was no unified strategy that the community chose to implement. Different groups reacted differently. Barry himself stopped visiting the main forum and set up his own forum, for Puppy developers only. Astonished as I was at this turn of events, I suggested that Puppy, like many other popular distros, should have its own forum at LinuxQuestions.org. Bary gave his agreement in principle, and so I went off and conducted the necessary negotiations with Jeremy at LQ.org. This included getting links to LQ.org from the Puppy site, as well as setting up several other Puppy regulars with special accounts at LQ.org. The main forum was eventually moved to a better server and the problems decreased in severity, but the LQ forum was an invaluable backup during the long phase during which Puppy had no effective forum of its own.
Barry continued making changes and enhancements to Puppy through all of these tribulations. Occasionally he asked for suggestions. I particularly asked for support of RTL818x wireless drivers, which were eventually included (although I never did get any of my Realtek wireless cards to work with Puppy, alas). Along with several others on the main forum, I also requested that the Swiss keyboard map should be built in to Puppy - the Swiss keymap is different from both the German and French keymaps - but this never happened. The only result of my request was that one of the forum moderators told me that I should edit my Xkbdlayout in xorg.conf. This rather missed my point. I didn't want only to use a Swiss keymap myself, I wanted to be able to distribute Puppy to my friends, neighbours, acquaintances, and business associates. They all use Swiss keyboards here in Switzerland, so without a Swiss keymap there was no point in me promoting Puppy to my potential Linux market.
At this point, any reader is wondering something along the following lines: "Puppy has included some neat tools for remastering the live CD, why not just include a Swiss keymap file and build a new ISO for distributing in Switzerland?" Obviously, that was my first thought. And here is where my enthusiasm for Puppy took another blow. Once I considered distributing a remastered Puppy, the first step was to read carefully through the licence on Puppy. It was not a pleasant surprise to realise that Puppy was under a purely proprietary licence! It's easy to fall into the habit of considering the GPL to be a relatively unimportant part of a Linux distro's attributes, until the absence of the GPL stops one from distributing one's changes. Instead, in this case, I would have needed explicit written permission from Barry to distribute a remastered Puppy. I obviously wasn't the only one who felt restricted by the licence, because about this time there were a couple of other people agitating for Barry to open the licence, including Nathan Fisher, who distributes Grafpup, a derivative of Puppy. Barry did eventually announce on his developer blog (in response to a direct question from me) that he had changed the licence on his proprietary components to the LGPL. By the time that had happened, though, my relationship with Puppy had already taken a fatal turn.
My posts, as well as those of others, were continuing to vanish, while the forum moderators (whose posts never vanished spontaneously, strangely enough) continued to deny all knowledge. A new thread in the forum was begun by someone with the title "Suggestions for Forum Improvement", and I posted a suggestion, with a note at the end asking anyone who saw my post to quote it before it vanished. The next thing, my post was moved to a different section of the forum, under "Totally Off-Topic Conversations"! Some other forum members complained in the original thread. Their posts were also re-filed as off topic. It got rapidly worse. I received a message from the forum owner, quoting my request that others quote my posts before they were deleted. He said "I don't know what you are trying to do" and issued me with a banning order. I would have thought it was obvious that I was trying to avoid having my posts vanish with no trace....
Well, I still kind of like Puppy the distro, but I no longer run Puppy at all. Linux isn't just about the distro. It's about the community that one learns from and shares with, it's the ability and freedom to take a distro as a base and change it for one's own needs. It's about being valuable and respected based on one's own contribution, not just sucking up to forum moderators, even when they are wrong. I'm still somewhat sad that all the fun and potential of Puppy was eventually flushed away by the sum total of the bad experiences. But the year I spent with Puppy not only taught me a little bit about Linux, but it taught me a lot about people, and it taught me that choosing a Linux distro is about a lot more than reading package lists.
|
| Miscellaneous News |
Localised distributions, Gutsy Gibbon features, product-creator module for YaST, PCLinuxOS Control Center, backporting kernel patches
 While most of the major distributions are currently taking a well-deserved break from recent release sprints, many of the smaller projects are busy finalising their own new versions. This is particularly true of the various country- or language-specific distributions on the market. As an example, last week we saw new stable releases from NepaLinux, a distribution designed exclusively for deployment in Nepali-speaking environments, and Hacao Linux, a project delivering a desktop Linux solution for Vietnam.
Although these releases might not be of great interest to the majority of DistroWatch readers, they are nevertheless a very important part of the world-wide Linux ecosystem. Not only they provide a free operating system that anybody can obtain at no cost, they also do an enormous amount of translation and localisation work while, at the same time, creating small centres of Linux-related activities in their particular spheres of influence. Sure, NepaLinux or Hacao Linux are unlikely to ever challenge the dominance of Ubuntu or openSUSE on our desktops, but the selfless contribution of these developers, often working in adverse conditions of low and expensive bandwidth, deserve our admiration. This is free software world at its best!
NepaLinux 2.0 - a Debian-based distribution made in Nepal
(full image size: 499kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 One of the talking points of the Linux community during the past week was the announcement covering the new features in Gutsy, the next stable version of Ubuntu. What can we expect from version 7.10, scheduled for release in October this year? Besides the usual package updates, such as kernel 2.6.22, X.Org 7.3, GNOME 2.20 and KDE 3.5.7, the new release is aiming to also include packages for the second release candidate of KDE 4.0 and to be one of the first distributions providing the newly merged Compiz/Beryl 3D desktop features. A new Ubuntu mobile edition, designed for the handheld and embedded market, should also be available at the same time as the main release. Several smaller improvements are also being implemented in the distribution's server edition. For a full list of ideas that are being considered for Ubuntu 7.10, please see this announcement on the Ubuntu developers' mailing list.
* * * * *
 In recent years, as many projects provide easy-to-use tools, it has become increasingly easy to create custom Linux distributions or remaster the existing ones. The latest project that joins this trend is openSUSE, with a tool called "product-creator": "Jiří Suchomel has created a YaST module that makes generating KIWI images a breeze. As mentioned earlier, you can choose to create Xen and other virtual machine images too." The module is in an early development stage, but once it works as advertised, it should become an integral part of all new openSUSE releases. For more information and screenshots please see Make your own distro, in easy steps.
* * * * *
 PCLinuxOS has been gaining much attention on DistroWatch in recent weeks, but what makes the project so successful and different from the rest? It's the PCLinuxOS Control Center, of course! That's according to this article by Linux-Blog.org: "I really like the PCLinuxOS Control Center and its ultimate control of system administration items. If you like configuring things by hand, you can do so as well - the Control Center will read the same configuration files that you'll alter. It's handy for new and seasoned users, it's something that can automate repetitive tasks you may do. It gives you an alternative to manually editing configuration files." The author gives examples of using the PCLinuxOS Control Center in real-life situations, such as when enabling file sharing, configuring networking, printing and other hardware, modifying the various options of the boot process or setting up remote desktop access. Read the full article here.
* * * * *
 We have previously discussed the subject of "backporting" software, i.e. providing newer versions of popular packages to a current stable distribution. In theory, this is a good way of keeping reasonably up-to-date with the fast-evolving open source software world. However, backporting newer versions of a package (or patching an existing version of a package with code from a newer version) can be risky - it can introduce new bugs or even render the user's system unstable. Jonathan Corbett from Linux Weekly News has written an excellent article on the subject. It examines the evolution of the Linux kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and its several new patches that have been introduced into the kernel since the initial release: "The end result is that, while running uname -r on a RHEL4 system will yield '2.6.9', what Red Hat is shipping is a far cry from the original 2.6.9 kernel, and, more to the point, it is far removed from the kernel shipped with RHEL4 when it first became available. This enterprise kernel is not quite as stable as one might have thought." Read the rest of the story here.
|
| Released Last Week |
MoLinux 3.0
Following a short beta test, MoLinux 3.0 has been released. MoLinux is an Ubuntu-based Spanish Linux distribution developed by the government of Castilla la Mancha and designed for deployment in government offices and educational institutions around the region. The main features of the release are: based on Ubuntu 7.04 with kernel 2.6.20 and GNOME 2.18; improvements in hardware detection; migration assistant for data and configuration settings from other operating systems; addition of a system restore option in case of file system corruption; improved translation into Spanish; OpenOffice.org 2.2.0; Firefox 2.0.4.... Please see the distribution's home page (in Spanish) to read the full release announcement.
MoLinux 3.0 - a Spanish distribution based on Ubuntu
(full image size: 1,947kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 2
John Morris has announced the release of White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 2, a distribution built from the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4: "White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 2 is now available for download. This covers Update 5 from upstream plus a few errata released since. The recent OpenOffice.org and OpenOffice.org 2 updates are included. The previous policy of skipping every other Update from upstream is being reconsidered in light of the year gap it has caused. Every quarter was a bit often for me to respin, annually seems a mite too far in the other direction." Here is the brief release announcement.
Mandriva Corporate Desktop 4.0
Mandriva has announced the release of Mandriva Corporate Desktop 4.0: "Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Corporate Desktop 4.0, the brand new version of its enterprise-dedicated work station." Some of the product's key features include: "Directory administration and integration: a new tool to set KDE user rights from an LDAP directory; mobility: simplified configuration of secure remote access and simplified configuration of 3G data cards; security: support for data encryption, high security authentication, secure connections and an interactive firewall; ergonomics: a completely new design for the desktop and integration of the latest 3D technologies." Find more details in press release and on the distribution's product pages.
NepaLinux 2.0
NepaLinux is a Debian-based distribution localised into Nepali and targeted at general desktop systems of private users, government organisations and schools in Nepal. NepaLinux 2.0 was released earlier this week: "Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya released the localized Linux distribution, NepaLinux 2.0. NepaLinux 2.0 comes up with additional choices to the end-users in the sense that it offers two different localized working desktop environments - GNOME and KDE. NepaLinux 2.0 package comprises of two CDs, with GNOME bundled on one and KDE on the other. Features of NepaLinux 2.0: Linux kernel 2.6.18; localized and updated GNOME 2.14; localized KDE 3.5.5; localized OpenOffice.org 2.2 with upgraded Nepali spell checker; localized SeaMonkey suite; XKB and SCIM input systems...." Read the full release announcement for further details.
Hacao Linux 2.16
Nguyen Quang Truong has announced the release of Hacao Linux 2.16, a Vietnamese desktop distribution based on Puppy Linux. The key features of the new release include: new Vista graphical user interface; auto-detection of local and wireless networks; printing support with CUPS; Hacao.Office 2.20 (office application suite); Java installer; Skype Internet telephony client; GIMP image editor; ability to install Windows applications with Wine and WineXS; video chat with Yahoo; support for watching Vietnamese TV online (20 channels); more software localised into Vietnamese. Please read the full release announcement (in Vietnamese) for more information.
Tuquito 2.0r5
Tuquito is a Debian-based, easy-to-use desktop Linux distribution developed in Argentina and localised into Spanish. An updated version 2.0r5 was announced yesterday; it features the following new characteristics: Beryl 3D desktop is enabled by default for NVIDIA and Intel graphics cards; Firefox 2.0 with many new add-ons; Linux kernel 2.6.21; updates to important libraries and components, including glibc and GCC; K3b 1.0; support for several new webcams; automatic network detection and configuration. Please read the brief release announcement (in Spanish) for further information.
LinuxConsole 1.0.2007
Yann Le Doaré has announced a new release of LinuxConsole, an independently-developed, modular Linux live CD designed for (not only) older computers: "LinuxConsole 1.0.2007. This official release brings lots of new features: NTFS-3G - no more limitation when using NTFS partitions; 2.6.20.1 kernel; X.Org 7.2 (Games3D ISO); GNOME 2.18 and GParted (CD ISO); Busybox 1.4.2; lcinstall.exe updated to avoid losing 'config.sys'; eject CD when used in live CD mode; many system tools added; Evolution updated to 2.10, Firefox to 2.0.0.4.... Many tests have been successfully done: old computers (16 MB RAM), new computers (serial ATA and 3D drivers), booting from CD, hard disk, floppy, network, and installing from MS Windows 98, 2000, XP and empty disks." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement.
* * * * *
Development and unannounced releases
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Alt Linux 4.0
Russia's Alt Linux project has published a release plan of the upcoming Alt Linux 4.0. Six different editions are planned; the first of them, the "Server" edition, is expected this month, while the final one, the general purpose "Master" edition, is scheduled for release in the second half of September. For further details please see the project's roadmap page (in Russian).
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
Translations of Top Ten Distributions page
Many thanks to V. Mark Lehký who have translated the Top Ten Distributions page into Czech. The story is now available in 10 languages: Czech, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Translations to other languages are most welcome - if you'd like to help, please email your work to distro at distrowatch dot com (preferably in plain text format using UTF-8 encoding).
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 2 July 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Two notes (by Béranger on 2007-06-25 10:09:22 GMT from Romania)
RHEL4: "This enterprise kernel is not quite as stable as one might have thought." Maybe not "stalled", but "stable as in not crashing" it is! Backporting features was actually a great thing, as it added support for mainstream hardware (esp. with U4).
MCD4: I am terribly disappointed with Mandriva lately. The new Corporate Desktop is not yet in the store -- how was it launched then, if you can't buy it?! As for the "distro for the masses" (2007.1 Spring), I noticed that an installation from the DVD is far less buggy than an installation from the KDE "One" CD, but I have a machine w/o DVD, so it's a dead end. They have promised to release Spring on CDs too, but here June is ending and no sign of such a thing. It's only horrible that Mandriva thinks just like Fedora and skips releasing the distro on CDs too -- except for the "One" CDs, which are (I am sorry to say) buggy.
2 • White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 2 (by Joaquim Gil on 2007-06-25 10:14:47 GMT from Portugal)
Glad to know [b]White Box Enterprise Linux 4 Respin 2[/b] is out! I will update from Respin 1 in a customer of mine.
Thanks Distrowatch for the heads up!
3 • Forums, Puppy, and other distros... (by itsthemedication on 2007-06-25 10:48:14 GMT from United States)
Quite and article on Puppy. I find it hard to believe that non-flame posting would be deleted, but there are some nut cases out there. I like the new Puppy and I also had no idea about the proprietary license. Mandrake forums used to be pretty bad, with lots of arrogance and flames. The new forums are much better. A good moderator is worth his/her weight in gold for the overall distro experience.
4 • PUPPY Linux (by Sorenson2743 on 2007-06-25 11:04:04 GMT from Canada)
I have used Puppy off and on like the writer and, as he says, it's a shock when it is learned that a distribution like Puppy is not released under the GPL. And the forum experiences are a familiar story too ... two other distro's had the same support attitude and essentially went down the tubes (or never recovered) after the shoddy tales became public knowledge,
So I won't use Puppy anymore, nor continue to recommend it to my friends. There's too much choice in the Linux world to be burdened with non-GPL licenses and dictatorship fiefdoms in forums. Pity, because Barry has done a superb job in creating and advancing his distribution.
Thanks for the honest appraisal and tale of Puppy!
5 • Installing Debian made easy (by mikko on 2007-06-25 11:09:20 GMT from Finland)
Debian is a great GNU/Linux distro made entirely of free software. But sometimes Debian can overwhelm you with too many choices. For example, before you can actually try Debian's cool new GUI installer, you need to work your way through a series of multiple choice questions.
Like, which is the latest Debian release -- is it Sarge, Etch or Lenny? And what's this talk about Stable, Testing and Unstable? Which should you choose? To make things a bit more complicated, Debian supports several architectures and there's more than twenty installation CDs and four DVDs available for each architecture. Debian Etch defaults to Gnome desktop, but there are also special CD images for KDE and XFCE. Or maybe you should just download the smaller Netinst CD? Once you've figured out which images you need to download, you also need to decide which download method you want to use -- http/ftp, bittorrent or jigdo?
In a continuing attempt to make Debian "sexy" and easy for new users, a new web page has now been constructed to make installing Debian less of a hassle. You need a javascript-enabled web browser and then you should point your browser to the following address. The web page will choose the right Debian installation media for you. Enjoy! :-)
http://get.debian.net/
6 • Mark South's problems with Puppy management (by EduardoZ on 2007-06-25 11:27:38 GMT from United States)
That was an interesting tale. Still, it's only one side of the story. We've all seen face to face and web relationships fail. And, it's amaaaaazing how one party may have no concept of how they promoted the failure. As I'm now using Puppy 2.16 on old hardware, I was glad to see there were no tragic flaws described about the OS itself.
7 • Any aother distro than Puppy..... (by Mika Hack on 2007-06-25 11:30:01 GMT from Italy)
not released under GPL???
Let us know!!!
;)
8 • PCLinuxOS (by Nikoolinux on 2007-06-25 11:36:31 GMT from France)
Any idea where this "so wonderful" system control center come from ?
Give us a break.
The author says : PCLinuxOS control center is not exactly like the Mandriva control center, since PCLinuxOS control center contain more options... (compare the two screens).
This is crap, as the two additionnal categories are sub-categories from Mandriva options........
"but it’s also true that they (PCLinuxOS) maintain those packages themselves AND make them better. " Incredible strong argument !
I don't say that improvement of existing tools isn't possible, I just say that PCLinuxOS didn't improve things THAT much. Besides, they just made their mandriva-clone simply ugly....too bad, for an improvement.
One interesting thing they did : including SynapticPackage Manager.
But that's all.
This distro isn't even international....
Conclusion ? Still waiting for a rating system OTHER than the one used in distrowatch since the visiting rate of a website doesn't reflect at all the quality of a distro.
9 • No subject (by Elive new STABLE released! on 2007-06-25 11:37:27 GMT from Italy)
Whoah FIRST to tell it! ;)
http://www.elivecd.org/
10 • PCLOS Control Center (by confused on 2007-06-25 11:38:08 GMT from United States)
Isn't the PCLOS Control Center a Mandriva/Mandrake creation from the old 9.x series?
11 • Elive new STABLE released (by kanishka on 2007-06-25 11:38:46 GMT from Italy)
Ehm I switched the "Name" and "Subject" fields, sorry... :(
12 • Hacao desktop background (by Pumpino on 2007-06-25 11:41:42 GMT from Australia)
I love the Hacao desktop background in http://distrowatch.com/images/screenshots/hacao-2.16.png.
Does anyone know where I can get the background image from (without downloading the entire ISO) or a similar background? :)
13 • Release schedule (by DistRogue on 2007-06-25 12:10:51 GMT from United States)
Where did Sabayon go in the release schedule? Last issue, it said v3.4 was due 6/30, but what happened to that? Seriously, Gentoo's up there, but not Sabayon?
14 • PCLinuxOS All The Way (by robnyc on 2007-06-25 12:11:28 GMT from United States)
This distro is the best alternative to buggy/slow Ubuntu/Kubuntu ..
Always thought it was special been using it for a year
15 • 13 Release schedule (by ladislav on 2007-06-25 12:15:04 GMT from Taiwan)
SabayonLinux published a release schedule previously, but it's no longer up on their site. Besides, they did not follow it anyway.
16 • re post#1 (by Jordan on 2007-06-25 12:30:24 GMT from United States)
Hey, Béranger, you may be a candidate for PCLinuxOS. :)
And Texstar makes no bones about forking (my word here, he
may say "clone" or "starting point," etc) from Mandrake/Mandriva.
17 • Puppy (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 12:36:12 GMT from Australia)
My post is in response to # 4 (Sorenson2743), as well as a question to knowledgable readers.
My understanding is that Barry did eventually change from a purely proprietary licence to LGPL, and that the limitation at this point was Mark’s issue with all that had happened up to that point, as per the article.
The LGPL is at the following site http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt
The only thing I could comprehend as a restriction in the LGPL was the following (Please keep in mind that it is possible I have misunderstood the whole LGPL document)
"14. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Library into other free programs whose distribution conditions are incompatible with these,
write to the author to ask for permission."
Although i have played with some Distros, I am not knowledgable enough about “Libraries”, nor what this means.
Would someone be so kind as to explain the implications or sum up what this means.
Thanks if you could.
_________________________________________
Ladislav, would it be practical and of any value at this time (or perhaps a little further down the track if this sort of thing is uncovered with more distros), to include what type of Licence the Distro is under?
18 • Re: #12 (by wheaties on 2007-06-25 12:38:56 GMT from United States)
You can find the excellent background image of Hacao at http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Drops?content=25334
19 • No subject (by Known only to Mark South on 2007-06-25 12:54:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sadly, Mark South is correct in every detail he relates. Retired professors aren't noted for their exaggeration, nor their intolerance towards fellow travellers; they have long track records of helping others. The Puppy Forum issue breaks down to the extremely talented, generous and in other respects, tolerant, John Murga, who funds the venture at his own expense. Being pre-occupied with life's little problems, aren't we all, he has entrusted moderation of the Forum to his old mates - one in particular. Although politicians do this all the time, they invariably live to regret it. Purely from a mathematical stance, it is, statistically, almost certain that the most suitable person for any task will not be one of your own circle!
Turning to the technical side, we all make mistakes from time to time, but on the Puppy Forum there is one who persistently offers wrong or bad advice, apart from denigrating other contributors. The same one that Mark complains is utterly devoid of good manners.
Puppy survives and so does the Forum, the latter considerably neutered, without three important contributors. Time to bake some humble pie, send out some apologies and change the b***** moderator(s). Notwithstanding, there are some fora operated from the USA that have managements far worse than Puppy, totally intolerant of dissent - indeed, I am convinced that they are spokespersons for the wicked Bush-monster, himself.
20 • 60 hours in sidux livecd (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-25 12:58:17 GMT from United States)
I've just spent the weekend running in sidux, like its KDE. Only had a few problems like I can't figure how to install nvu or kompozer. The spell checker on Iceweasel thinks everything but "in" is misspelled (must be German settings).
Ooops, I hit blank line here and many misspellings went to OK but not all. Oh well, strange.
I did install fvwm-crystal and launched it in another session. Wow is it pretty. So I have two sessions running. It hasn't got most of the apps on the menus but I can launch them from CLI. Some other apps I'm playing with are geany and links2. Anyway, fairly nice looking but I could use a tutorial on getting at the "forbiden" non-free apps :) - why is nvu/kompozer not in the repos? It is as open as Mozilla, right? I see klik is on the tool bar. Hmmm, must try that. :)
And re puppy. What do those who wuold drop its use suggest as its replacement? DSL? AUSTRUMI? How about BeaFanatIX?
21 • About Puppy & PCLOS... (by Caraibes on 2007-06-25 13:01:11 GMT from Dominican Republic)
First, I understand Mark's point of view.
Especially about Puppy not being GPL'ed... That sucks ! It should be GPL'ed !
But as of the forums fights, I feel it happens often, in various forums... It is just the way human beings interacts, they sometimes fight and get mad at each other...
That said, I always carry the Puppy live-cd in my toolbox, as it is a wonderful troubleshooting & rescue tool... I enjoy it a lot !
Now as PCLOS's control center, it will be fair to call it Mandriva's control center. Texstar does an outstanding job, I appreciated all the progress in PCLOS2007 (I have it now on another partition, alongside with F7 & Feisty). But let's not forget PCLOS is based on Mandriva, that is nothing to be ashamed of, as Ubuntu is based on Debian & so on...
22 • PcLinuxOs (by dubigrasu on 2007-06-25 13:14:34 GMT from Romania)
I totally agree that PcLinuxOs Control Center is a wonderfull tool and that PcLinuxOs is great too, but from that article one can get the impression that Mandriva's control center is some kind of humble begining,and PclinuxOs'CC is bigger, better and done right. The author keep saying that in PclinuxOs you can do this and that, but hello!... you can do all of those things in Mandriva too!
Don't get me wrong, I love both of them, and I had a hard time deciding wich one to use(so I use both!) because there are great distro, but I think that the article is very unfair written regarding to Mandriva.
Mandriva is not the stupid cousin...in fact, I think that Mandriva 2007 PowerPack was one of the best distro (if not the best) wich apeared last year.
On the other hand I'm very very pleased to see PclinuxOs climbing Distrowatch's top ten and see Ubuntu position not so safe...
23 • RE 20. - 60 hours in sidux livecd (by MK09 on 2007-06-25 13:41:10 GMT from Slovenia)
You can find debian package of NVU here: http://www.nvu.com/download/nvu-1.0.ubuntu.5.04.deb
It works on my sidux box.
For the non-free aps you should edit (as root) your /etc/apt/sources.list file to look like this:
############################################################
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb http://sidux.com/debian/ sid main contrib non-free firmware fix.main fix.contrib fix.non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main
#############################################################
Then as root you should run the following two commands:
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907
gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | apt-key add -
and after that:
apt-get update
Now in synaptic you should find plenty more aps.
24 • puppy (by mark on 2007-06-25 13:42:22 GMT from United States)
Just wanted to say excellent article on puppy
I use it as a rescue cd, ubuntu being my main
and centos now and then. Great read.
25 • Re: 29 (by Eric Chapman on 2007-06-25 14:05:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
>>> there are some fora operated from the USA that have managements far worse than Puppy, totally intolerant of dissent
Indeed yes, and I've parted company with one of them for that reason.
26 • language (by Tdreiser on 2007-06-25 14:06:40 GMT from United States)
The fact is that if you are a mover and shaker in this world,
YOU LEARN ENGLISH
This may not sit sit well with some,
too bad, cry me a river!
27 • Re: 25 (by Eric Chapman on 2007-06-25 14:06:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
The one above should refer to 19 of course, not 29.
28 • Puppy (by anon on 2007-06-25 14:10:04 GMT from United States)
Thanks so much for insightful and honest article about Puppy.
I am a long time DSL user. My favorite DSL is 0.8.3!! It "just works". I put it in a small partition and use it to recover when the bigger dists crash :). Also, I let it manage the LILO root partition.
It is truly amazing what damage those angry people can inflict on those around them. Kinda makes you really respect openness and the non-censorship present in our "free" society,
And the amazing gift the GPL was to the world!!
I really enjoy DistroWatch.
Right now I am waiting for another SLOW Ubuntu install.
My preferred Linux is Knoppix 5.0.1-DVD. It's all there and it all works.
Keep up the GREAT work.
anon
29 • Puppy and Sabayon (by davemc on 2007-06-25 14:11:42 GMT from United States)
I am an absolute fan of both these top quality distro's. Having tried (litterally) them all now, these two are the shining gems and the best kept secrets of the linux world! To address some things here --
1.) PuppyLinux was/is the creation of Barry Kauler. It is totally unique and not based upon any other distro. It is remarkably flexible and shockingly small (small enough to reside purely in RAM), and is the best of the best when speaking of the mini distro arena. Dont let forum experiences sour your taste, because it is not the forum that makes Puppy what it is, rather, it is the (quite litterally, im sure) thousands of development hours on Barrys part. Barry has nothing to do with those Forums, and so I find it quite petty and immature that one would base thier opinion of a Linux Distro on his/her forum experiences, which has absolutely nothing to do, one with the other.
2.) SabayonLinux is following its release schedule. Whatever gave you the impression that its not? The announced release of 3.4loop3 was for 6/30!.. Is it 6/30 yet?!!!!! Sheesh!
I am beta testing for Sabayon, and I can tell you that it WILL be following its release cycles on schedule! If that should change, then lxnay will announce the who, what, when, and where.
Sabayon is, in fact, what Gentoo should have become (as commented by the Gentoo founder). It is the new generation of what a Gentoo derivate can/should be and it gives you all the power of everything Linux is capable of. IMO, it is the distro for the 21st century, while all the others still strugle for an identity and to find thier place in a landscape where we may very well be seeing the end of the M$ desktop dominance (due in large part to Vista and M$'s usual FUD tactics backfiring). The commenter above is quite right when he points out that DW is NOT the place to discover the accurate truth about distro differences, strengths, or overall quality (see the very prominant blog above about the guy crying over his forum woes and how that somehow had anything to do with PuppyLinux for a good reason why DW is both unprofessional and nothing more than a FUD whore), and for that reason im sure, Sabayon is not listed as one of the top 10 (even though it sits firmly at #7, and will very soon unseat Debain at #6).
30 • fastidious forums (by nybronx on 2007-06-25 14:17:45 GMT from United States)
This old "distro" hopper has found that every forum has their good and bad moderators. Even my PCLOS. However they SEEM few and far between in PCLOS which is one of the reasons why I use it. Like with any family, you will not always agree. IMHO it is just that sense of family that makes this such a good distro. As for the Command Center. Sure it's not specific to PCLOS but it works so well. Sure Mandriva does it just as well. But it is just a part of the whole experience. WHich PCLOS does better than any other distro I could name.
31 • What type of Licence the Distro is under? (by Ozi on 2007-06-25 14:18:16 GMT from Pakistan)
It is about time this info is added for all Distro under Feature after Release Date before Price, so that any change in Licence is reflected when it affects a paricular version.
Once digging start there will be quite a few more.
32 • @26 - english (by CeVO on 2007-06-25 14:18:21 GMT from Spain)
Sorry mate, I am no native speaker of English, but I may say I have a near native command. I live in Spain, and as such, I have a very good command of Spanish as well. Apart from that, there is my native tongue and two other languages I speak adequately.
As such, I feel entitled to say your remark about people having to learn English utterly sucks. It is so WASP to feel America is the centre of the universe, that I wish you were taken away in your sleep to another continent, and experience first hand that your attitude is absolute male cow dung...
33 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 14:24:24 GMT from Ecuador)
>>26 • language (by Tdreiser on 2007-06-25 14:06:40 GMT from United >>States)
>>The fact is that if you are a mover and shaker in this world,
>>YOU LEARN ENGLISH
What an awful thing to say.
34 • RE: 29 Puppy and Sabayon (by ladislav on 2007-06-25 14:25:30 GMT from Taiwan)
The announced release of 3.4loop3 was for 6/30!
Where is the announcement? The only one I saw was this one:
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7541
which promised loop3 on 5 June.
35 • Control Center (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 14:42:30 GMT from United States)
The same functions in pclinuxos are available in Mandriva provided you install their additional drak wizard rpm. The difference being pclinuxos has it installed by default.
36 • Question : do distributions acknowlege their sources? (by dbrion on 2007-06-25 14:55:19 GMT from France)
It does not hurt, and is done currently in the *real* world (translate : pple who use and sometimes even buy OSes, when these OSes have some value {this sometimes happens even with GNU/linuxes}).
I know it is not as sexy as a mindless race (my kernel has an higher number, my screens are better during install/upgrade -ie once every 16 months, if one is not conservative at all-).
On a quite different, moving and shaking, subject [@26]: what does "sit sit " mean?
37 • Puppy no GPL? Illegal distro (by h3rman on 2007-06-25 15:16:41 GMT from Europe)
You cannot just relicense GPL software to LGPL, let alone proprietary.
If the main developer(s)/the Puppy leader(s) don't understand licensing, that's too bad.
But you have to comply, otherwise if you get big, the FSF will sue you.
And should.
It's as simple as that.
So I'm curious to know about the details in this Puppy case.
38 • RE 26 and some more... (by KimTjik on 2007-06-25 15:19:02 GMT from Sweden)
I know it's a struggle for some of you Americans to adopt to a world in change. Poor suds! I don't know how many times I've had to listen to rivers of tears of lost Americans not understanding the strange cultures outside the boarders of the US. I've seen so many of them trying to build their mini-USA within a very limited living space, even if it makes them terribly isolated from the real excitements and adventures of life. I'm amazed to see how the potentially most diverse of nations, yes how such a multi-cultural society has developed into one of the most narrow-minded mono-cultures of our world.
Oh there's a lot of positive things to say about Americans, so don't get me wrong here, but the comment you made was a sad reminder of a fundamental obstacle for peace; what you don't understand you tend to fear and fear has the potential of generating nasty varieties of racism and violence.
...
From here it's not too far to the question about how important the state of a forum is. Someone made the comment that you should make a clear distinction between the technical state of a distribution and its forums. For the already initiated Linux-user that's probably a sensible and pragmatic approach. However new users will understandably depend a lot more on the forums, so their impression and evaluation will hence be affected by how the forums are run. So in this sense Puppy, or even more Barry, could become a victim of its own users.
From a scientific point of view it's a known fact that emotions play a big part in decisions we make, even the stock-market is mainly driven by emotional decisions, why it's so hard to make accurate predictions. Without the involvement of emotions a human being is actually totally incapable of making a complex decision; he will perpetually calculate pros and cons but never be able to make up his mind. So I can't understand how it ever would be possible to deny the interaction between the Linux-distribution itself and its forums. This has nothing to do with maturity; it's simply our human nature.
39 • No subject (by Eudoxus on 2007-06-25 15:27:14 GMT from Latvia)
The fact is that if you are a mover and shaker in this world,
YOU LEARN ENGLISH
This may not sit sit well with some,
too bad, cry me a river!
=================================
What a nonsese! Even If I master a couple of languages besides English (which is obviously not my native) I still prefer a distro which is localized. That's why I don't use PCLOS (there are other reasons for that decision too). They should learn from Debian, Ubuntu and Mandriva.
Besides (I don't want to offend anybody) but sometimes speakers of those big languages (especially English) are disturbingly arrogant when really they shoud be humble as their native language is the only on they can use.
40 • Executive Summary of Puppy Article (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 15:31:43 GMT from United States)
I useded Puppy. Somebodies was mean to me. Boo hoo wah wah i goes home now and sulks.
I have rarely disagreed with DW's choice of articles, content, and editorial writing, but this article is just an opportunity for the author to let off a little public steam. Maybe he was wronged -- sounds like it from one side of the story -- but this one-sided argument doesn't do anything toward resolution. It's just finger-pointing, and surely there are more mature ways of settling arguments like this other than airing laundry with the unstated but obvious intent of hurting an innovative distro. For instance, the GPL argument is now moot -- Barry did the right thing, and even if he had gone another route, well, it's his distro and he can do what he wants, and you can use what you want. Shame on a technical user for not informing himself, and for then crying about his lack of information. I call FUD.
41 • Pupy Forums Article (by Oiving on 2007-06-25 15:33:58 GMT from United States)
That was an incredible article for me to read because I've seen
those behaviors around the distro forum world and always shrugged
it all off as "part of human nature," etc... and continued to participate.
I agree very much with the stated notion that there is more to a distro
than the packages, etc. That community has got to be supportive and
that is most often achieved by clever moderation ("clever" meaning
leaving people alone vs moving posts from one area to another with
a note about *why*, etc..). Good forums are also a product of veteran
users who regularly give input and answers to the various issues that
invariably emerge. Newbies have to feel welcome and that they have,
in fact, come to the right place for their installation problems, etc.
That said, there are a few "generic" forum hosts around such as
Linux Questions, etc, where some of us migrate to get more info.
But that home community for the distro itself really has to be special,
in my opinion.
Shame on those Puppy people. (I made myself laugh there)
42 • Puppy License and forum (by Nathan Fisher on 2007-06-25 15:35:11 GMT from United States)
Puppy Linux, like most other distros, is a collection of hundreds of other software projects. Many of these have different licenses. We have the MPL, some projects are on a BSD license, and cdrtools has one license for the sources and one for the build tools (though this is not an endorsement of such!). To say that Puppy is or is not GPL is wholly innacurate. In fact there are only a very small handful of distros that are all under one license.
In fact, quite a few OpenSource projects include code which originated under different licenses than the rest of it as well. The only part of a typical Linux distro which can be said to be purely GPL in fact is the Linux Kernel itself, and even so you can still be running proprietary modules for a large number of things. Puppy runs the Linux kernel just like all other Linux distros.
This situation, like most in the human world, is nowhere near as simple as some want to make it. I think it would be foolhardy to do as some readers are suggesting and label distros based on their license, as well as discriminatory. Who get's to decide which distro can be called GPL? How much non-GPL code is allowed to be used before a distro loses it's stamp of approval and cannot then be called a GPL distro? Let's think first before we turn into bigots, even if it is completely unintentional.
Now let's clarify a bit further. The scripts which differentiate Puppy from other distros, which in effect make it Puppy rather than DSL or some other distro, were all originally copyrighted to Barry Kauler, which is not the same thing as a software license anyway. Barry has since clarified the situation, removed the copyright declaration, and released the lot of it under the GPL.
While I would not want to suppress the publication of this article I feel that it's publication as the lead story in Distrowatch Weekly is quite damaging to the distribution's image and was not a very responsible thing to do. Articles such as this ought to at least come with a disclaimer that they do not reflect the views of the site management. That is, unless the intent WAS to damage the image of Puppy Linux. In fact I keep seeing this sort of thing more and more, as evidenced by the quite numerous speculatory and generally negative articles on Gentoo and Mandriva. I personally think many of these articles should have been researched a whole lot better than they were, coming from a site that is for many their main source of news about the Linux and/or OpenSource worlds. This one is just another in an increasingly long line, but hit home because frankly I know more about it than I do about Gentoo or Mandriva.
As for the Puppy forum, well I can honestly say that I've had both good and bad experiences there now. I think it is very apparent that the author has a chip on his shoulder about one of the moderators, but I have no trouble at all believing it might be for valid reasons because I have seen both the good and bad in people. I would like to point out though that there is a large constituency of forum members who would be appalled at the sort of thing he mentions were it found to be true, and a lot of us spend a good deal of effort sticking up for others.
43 • GPL & Puppy (by winsnomore on 2007-06-25 15:38:18 GMT from United States)
@h3rman
I doubt your understanding of GPL. GPL doesn't stop you from developing your software .. if the things you do are not using GPL software then they are your to do what you please.
Puppy might have been dumb to think they will become "big" by having proprietary licensing that they may be able capitalize on .. but I doubt if they were on the wrong side of the law.
BTW this is not the only way some good distro's have shot themselves in the foot .. look at Mepis going downhill faster than even Mandriva did.
All in rather futile attempts of monetization early .. too early.
44 • @ 26 (by Anon on 2007-06-25 15:38:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Which English would that be? English, or American-English?
45 • Control Center and Language (by itsthemedication on 2007-06-25 16:03:21 GMT from United States)
Anonymous (#35) got it right - control center, even in Mandriva Power Pack is a stripped down version. One of the first things I always do when installing Mandriva is download the full MCC version AND THEN check "expert" in the drop down menu. Now you have all the options. I don't remember seeing anything in PCLOS that wasn't in the MCC (and I use both distros). Why would Mandriva PP install with a stripped down CC? Beats me, but the complete MCC is available.
One thing I would like to see done on the MCC or PCLOS CC is a popup log that shows exactly what files are being written to during the wizard process. It would help the Linux newbie to quickly gain considerable insight into the inner workings of Linux, and I have to believe that it would be an invaluable tool. Another thing I'd like to see is a quick, serachable, drop down list of all the installed cammand tools. I was trying to remember the 'enscript' command the other day, and I had to google code printing. You tend to load tons of these command compact and useful tools and there is no way to remember them if your mind is slipping a bit like mine...
As for language, I think the so called movers and shakers better start studying Mandarin (and I'm American)...
46 • Puppy Article (by Jesse on 2007-06-25 16:05:15 GMT from Canada)
I was disappointed with the article from Mr. South. It falls on my ears as whinny and pointless. He's complaining (without proof) that he's been wronged on some web forum. Granted, a hostile environment is hard to work in, but here's the thing, you don't have to post to that forum. You don't have to offer your advice to every question. You don't have to counter the moderator. No distro or community is perfect.
Now, granted, I've never used Puppy or lurked in their forums, so Mr. South could have a valid point. But why not write an article about forums and community in general, rather than give us the play by play of his Puppy experience? It sounds like he just wants to vent some frustration and complain about seagulls.
47 • Hacao (by Nelson Lobo on 2007-06-25 16:08:22 GMT from India)
Please support english language in Hacao. It looks excellent.
48 • Re @30 (by Nikoolinux on 2007-06-25 16:21:02 GMT from France)
"As for the Command Center. Sure it's not specific to PCLOS but it works so well. Sure Mandriva does it just as well"
You didn't get it obviously.
You should say :
"Sure it's Mandriva's tool and it works so well under PCLinuxOS."
"Sure PCLinuxOS does it just as well as Mandriva."
Don't confound ;-)
49 • RE: 25 Language (by bitbangerok on 2007-06-25 16:41:48 GMT from United States)
I have a lot of trouble with this attitude. But it is a prime example of forum troubles. "Engage brain, before opening mouth". IF this was in response for the request for a Swiss *keyboard*, it was very off the deep end.
English may be "THE" language for the moment, but other languages have been the Universal language in the past: Latin, Greek, French, Spanish. Who knows how long English may last, 5 years or 500 years?
As far as which English question? Each language has many dialects, including all of the universal languages I listed above. Relax, take a deep breath, and count to 10 before injecting anger, or hatred or even love into a computer forum.
I also find that the comment "wicked Bush-monster" is way off the deep end for a *computer* forum. I had to withdraw from one forum because the owner injected their own politics into Linux. There are other forums for political debate.
50 • Mandriva'CC (by dubigrasu on 2007-06-25 16:41:56 GMT from Romania)
Nikoolinux is right! CC is Mandriva's tool in fact and it was there long before PclinuxOs even exist...Why is it that some keep saying PcLinuxOs CC? It's in fact borrowed...It's true that Tex did a great great job, but give Mandriva credit please...
51 • #12 Drops = KDE-Look Wallpaper (by nedvis on 2007-06-25 16:57:45 GMT from United States)
Here the wallpaper you want:
http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/25334-1.jpg
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Drops?content=25334&PHPSESSID=cae
52 • No subject (by GuestToo on 2007-06-25 17:25:04 GMT from Canada)
MarkSouth wants to use the fr_ch keymap. The fr_ch keymap no longer exists. Xkb now uses the keymap called ch, with optional de and fr variants. So you can use this:
setxkbmap ch -variant fr
or you can put this in xorg.conf:
Option "XkbLayout" "ch"
Option "XkbVariant" "fr"
i have explained this many, many times, as clearly as I know how, but he refuses to accept it. He want to be able to put this in xorg.conf:
Option "XkbLayout" "fr_ch"
That will not work anymore. This has nothing to do with Puppy, the xkb keymaps were changed a long time ago, about 2005, I think.
See the Puppy forum, where I try (again) to explain this:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=82006
Also in that thread is discussion about the nice gui program that Dougal wrote that allows you to easily select various keymaps and variants, and that is included with Puppy. It also refers to the wmkeymapper Keymap Changer package i made ... quote:
"The French flag is configured to change the keymap to le Français, Suisse-Français, et le Français Canadien."
see: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13454
I have also read posts in the French section of the Puppy forum in which MarkSouth was told by other Puppy users that they had no problems with French keymaps, and even referred to my keymap changer package.
Puppy has always included the French variant of the Suisse keymap.
I have been a moderator in the Additional Software section of the Murga Puppy forum since it began. I have never had the ability to delete any posts. If i click the "delete" button, it says that I do not have permission to delete posts. I can not even delete any of my own posts. I am certain that the other moderators have exactly the same restrictions.
No one has ever asked why my nick is "GuestToo". A long time ago, the Puppy forum was different software running on a different server (goosee.com). The Puppy forum did not require registration, and I usually posted as "Guest". Occasionally, after I submitted my post, it simply disappeared. It occurred to me that it might be because "guest" might be something like a reserved id, so I decided to try "Guest2". At the last moment, i typed "GuestToo" ... and that's how I ended up with the nick "GuestToo". The reason I ended up with that nick was because long ago, on a different Puppy forum, with different people, with only Barry as the moderator, my posts were disappearing. I do not know if MarkSouth's complaints about deleted posts are valid or not. I do know that I have never deleted any posts, that I do not even have the power to delete my own posts, and that posts on other forums can and do sometimes disappear.
Nathan Fisher's comments concerning the GPL are clearly articulated, I do not need to add my own comments.
Ladislav, as far as I am concerned, the Featured Story by MarkSouth is largely nonsense.
53 • No subject (by Nnyan on 2007-06-25 18:00:11 GMT from United States)
@38 I suggest next time you want to see befuddled people come to a major city in the US during the prime tourist season. I would recommend NYC. Its a passing sport looking at the Europeans wandering about like fish out of water. But seriously Americans are not the only ones that are having issues adjusting, look at the French. I have numerous friends in England that are heading elsewhere for various social reasons. Let's not get into how many countries where they are slaughtering themselves.
Now I'm not saying that I agree with the language comment by #26. I'm a firm believer that Americans need to get off their asses and be polygots, well maybe just learn one additional language. But thats a broad brush you wield.
So far my wife and I have been to Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Germany, France and New Zealand. No crying or problems adjusting here.
54 • Puppy Linux (by Hervé on 2007-06-25 18:07:43 GMT from Belgium)
Puppy Rocks .......
People are people and have their faults but let's not forget the great work done in Puppy Linux.
So many people criticize this or that Linux distribution but seem to forget that the magic and beauty of GNU/Linux is CHOICE and diversity.........
If only one Linux distribution was the best, fastest, used by all,recommended by specialists ...etc. then we will have a monopole OS like Win****. So I'm happy to have diversity and the freedom to choose ......
Just a one cents thought from Belgium...
Greetings
55 • Puppy Linux & whining (by roadie on 2007-06-25 18:10:38 GMT from Canada)
I've used Puppy Linux, I think it's a very innovative distro.
I don't like it tho, just not my kind of distro, I prefer Slackware. The article by Mark South comes across as whining and personal problems with a moderator.
I see no reason to attack a distro based on that, just don't use it then. I saw the same thing with the highly praised Vector Linux, while it's a decent distro, some of the forum moderators are arrogant fools who, at least in the past deleted and altered posts.
I therefore don't visit the Vector forums but I still use the distro.
My question is this: Just who is Mark South and why does he get to whine and blatantly attack a distro because he had problems with a mod?
56 • ArchLinux community (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 18:25:12 GMT from Canada)
I totally agree with Mark opinion about distro beeing more than software and on the importance of the social part of a project. This is one of the main reason why I choosed to keep ArchLinux on my desktop. This is probably one of the best (technicaly and friendly) community out there !
57 • May the fork() be with you. (by Ultra on 2007-06-25 18:32:57 GMT from Canada)
Peace.
58 • Vector forums (by Joey on 2007-06-25 18:34:37 GMT from United States)
(in post 55) you are so right about the Vector moderators! There
are signs of even mental illness there (in my opinion): one
mod with a biblical name even denied being involved with Vector
by email to me when I queried him about delivery of a disc I had
purchased (a few years ago). They edit your posts! They have
little fights and vendetas with patrons there. It's hard to stay
away from as comedy entertainment or like a train wreck.
59 • May the fork() be with you. (by Ultra on 2007-06-25 18:34:54 GMT from Canada)
Peace.
60 • @26 English language (by parkash on 2007-06-25 18:42:47 GMT from Germany)
Ok, there's a couple of things with the English Language:
- It's fairly easy to learn
- It's fairly easy to speak
- It's fairly simple for computing purposes.
Nevertheless, I totally disagree with you. Why? Simple, in my opinion , English Language is a somewhat poor language (my very personal opinion). But, never mind my opinion, I just find it utterly limited for anyone to think that English would suffice to be a "World Class Leader" or sth.
You know? There ARE other lands, other cultures and other languages out there. In Germany, for instance, people don't like to speak in English (many of them can't either); in Mexico, unless you go to some touristic beach, you won't be able to communicate in English; in France, people don't like to speak in English; in Spain people don't like it also.. Not to mention any number of lands in which people can't even speak English...
Your attitude is exactly that kind of attitude that hurts people's feelings --curiously, that attitude is beginning to be the distinctive of the gringos...
61 • cpx-mini - my new fave live CD (by Dan MacDonald on 2007-06-25 18:46:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yippee!
I've got a favourite new mini-distro, its called cpx-mini
http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/cpx-mini/index.html
Its not even in the DW Top 100 although it really should be. Even on a pretty modern machine, I still find KDE, GNOME too sluggish to match XP for speed. XFCE has become pretty flabby now too. ROX is the fastest desktop environment for Linux and I'd been looking for a distro that would have ROX pre-configured combined with the joys of having apt-get access to the Debian repositories and this is exactly what cpx-mini has delivered! You get a lightning fast, super-responsive desktop on anything with 64MB RAM or more (not tried ROX or cpx-mini on a 32MB RAM machine yet...) and cpx-mini includes VLC, Firefox, xmms w/ mp3 playback, j2re and more.
Unfortunately the current release is a bit dated as its based on an old Kanotix release (well, 2006, that is old in Linux terms) but the developer promises an updated version based upon sidux will be released soon. The current iso is also missing a GUI text editor (like scite), GUI archive tool (like xarchiver) and a proper picture viewer (I use feh with ROX, but gqview would be nice too). This would be no problem if you have a working internet connection like most Linux users. However, assuming everyone is connected to the net is a dangerous trap many distros get caught by and many end up being almost useless without internet to get the necesary apps or libs.
If elive had auto-login and Thunar integrated well with the (very recent) e17 desktop then I'd be recommending that instead to most people. My other fave Linux distro, JACKLAB, is also absent from the Top 100. JACKLAB includes pretty much every Linux app I need, I just wish it had a ROX desktop option too!
Ladislav: I've tried searching Distrowatch just looking for distros which include xdtv 2.4.0 yet it dosn't mention JACKLAB, which I thought was the only one to include this app. Please correct this, thanks!
dan
62 • Arch Linux (by parkash on 2007-06-25 18:46:44 GMT from Germany)
@56: I completely agree with you. Gentoo community used to be so. And with the Fedora community I also feel very good.
63 • Re: 43 • GPL & Puppy (by h3rman on 2007-06-25 18:57:22 GMT from Europe)
@Winsnomore
I understand the GPL.
Therefore I was asking whether someone could come up with the details regarding Puppy, i.e. what programs were not GPL'ed, since the author of the above Puppy article doesn't specify anything, making it sound as if "Puppy" is proprietary which is a but funny.
I agree with you on Mepis a.o.
64 • RE: 50 (by devnet on 2007-06-25 18:59:30 GMT from United States)
"Nikoolinux is right! CC is Mandriva's tool in fact and it was there long before PclinuxOs even exist...Why is it that some keep saying PcLinuxOs CC? It's in fact borrowed...It's true that Tex did a great great job, but give Mandriva credit please..."
I do give it credit silly. I put a screenshot right beside it so you can see where it came from...Mandriva! Duh! I don't hide that it came from Mandriva. Having more categories is a plus for new users and I feel, as it is my blog and my place to publish my opinion, that it is beneficial for new users to have those categories and to separate package management out of the PCLinuxOS Control Center aka PCC (which is what Tex has rebranded...which isn't illegal mind you...It HAS to be done...we can't use the Mandriva name.)
You'll never hear Tex every discount Mandriva or badmouth them.
65 • Puppy a great community (by Lobster on 2007-06-25 19:02:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Not everyone Loves Puppy?
http://tmxxine.com/pup2/img17.html
I am a moderator on the Puppy forum.
With a similar lack of powers to GuestToo.
I am also official cructacean.
We are a very serious distro community - not.
I have been 'banned' from posting comments on this forum.
Do I castigate Ladislav? Of course not. He makes decisions on the
basis of [insert unknown criteria] or it may be a programming glitch.
I still enjoy and use Distrowatch
and if you are reading this I am unbanned. Hooray.
Puppy is a small download
Try it. Add EZpup. Many of us Love it.
You might be surprised how good it is.
The forum incidentally is rather excellent
and newby friendly. Again try it for yourself . . .
66 • puppy (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 19:04:10 GMT from United States)
I was confused by this licensing issue, so here I found useful info--
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14247&start=60
This is what Barry said in a post on the forum (see link above)--
"Puppy is open source, free. The only thing that I "own" are the names "Puppy Linux" and "PuppyOS" and some logos. Yes, there are a few scripts in Puppy that have just "copyright Barry Kauler", which could be seen as placing some restriction, but I intend Puppy 2.14 will have "LGPL" on those -- mostly because most of them are getting to be multi-author efforts, and it's a bit silly having just my name as copyright owner.
Awhile back I dumped the "permission required" thing for creating ones own distro, as the naming is the only issue and that is quite clear in the legal text in the FAQ.
Actually, the naming rights thing also applies to domain names, and 'puppylinux-foundation.com' is in violation. However, as has been discussed elsewhere, enforcing is not practical for an individual."
This is what I suspected, it's not a license issue, it's a copyright issue, very similar to the Mozilla Firefox branding issue. The software itself is not in conflict with the LGPL.
67 • Pupy pupy run anywere (by Luis Medina on 2007-06-25 19:06:38 GMT from Mexico)
I did use puppy linux some times hardware was a problem and problem gone thanks to this distro i has no used recently but have a cd to emergency ready to use. Puppy linux has ben sabed my work a cuople of time...;)
68 • PCLOS, Mandriva and CC (by frapelli on 2007-06-25 19:15:52 GMT from Italy)
Control Center "moral" patent belongs to Mandriva, and it seems sort of unfair to review it as "PCLOS CC".
*But*, the fact that the two distros share the same CC, and PCLOS is more popular (I would say "much more") than Mandriva, both here:
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity
and here:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
should reasonably prove that the main reason of PCLOS popularity is not the CC.
Anyway, I think I am going to give Mandriva a try (PCLOS already installed since release .91).
69 • Re@68 (by Nikoolinux on 2007-06-25 19:27:48 GMT from France)
"should reasonably prove that the main reason of PCLOS popularity is not the CC."
No. It doesn't prove anything else than website clicking.
Which is far from really representing the quality and popularity of a distro.
Distrowatch rating should be based on polls done monthly and requiring IP identification, and login/passwd to vote.
Just a thought.
70 • elive stable download (by frapelli on 2007-06-25 19:29:25 GMT from Italy)
Reply to #9 and #11
Seems not possible to try it without a donation...
Is it a new formula: "You pay a fee for a trial, if after 30 days you decide to keep using it, you can have it for free?"
71 • Mark's Puppy article (by Dougal on 2007-06-25 19:33:30 GMT from Israel)
I think that, as usual, Mark has over-exaggerated a bit...
First, Ladislav: I think you should have checked the GPL issue and mentioned something about it, maybe verifying it with Barry. More below.
Mark was one of the few people I liked on the Puppy forum and I was saddened to hear he was banned. I also don't think much of some of the moderators and think we'd be better off without them.
But I also think he is putting too much emphasis on this.
If he had problems "proving" to the forum owner that he's being censored, he could have personally asked people (such as me) to message the owner about this.
It is important to remember that moderators, by default, are going to be lousy people: what do you expect from someone who spends their day sitting in front of the internet, looking through a forum?
It's just like all the people who go to the Sun CEO's blog and post that Linus's comments about Sun are FUD. They obviously spend too much time in front of a computer and **pay more attention to Linus's words than he does**.
Every now and again it is good to get up from in front of the computer, go out and play with the cats (or the neighbors' cats, if you don't have any).
As for Sage's comment ("Known Only To Mark"), I always found retired professors (just like other retired people with nothing particular to do with their time -- like create a Linux distro) to be extremely bored and annoying. They just look for people to latch on to and bug with their rumblings.
(I once had one show me his first computer, some old TexasInstruments contraption with a little printer that can be attached onto it -- he had many stories about it, too! What a great way to spend your time at uni...)
I'm not saying that's what Mark is like, but his academic status should not be used to try and give credence to what he wrote. I think he is getting a little paranoid with some of his ideas.
Now more on licensing:
Puppy is developed by a retired person living in the-middle-of-nowhere, Western Australia.
He is quite evidently not interested in profiting from Puppy, or dealing with legal issues.
The license problems Mark refers to (which, as he states, have since been amended) are the instances of
#(c) copyright Barry Kauler 2006, www.puppylinux.com
at the head of Barry's scripts.
I'm sure Barry gave them much less thought than Mark has (he added copyright statements to his webpage only after it was suggested by users).
However, let's have a look at a Knoppix script (from DSL):
# KNOPPIX General Startup Script
# (C) Klaus Knopper
So Knoppix and all it's deriviatives aren't GPL??
C'mon, all ye eager DWW posters, boycott them. Thank you.
Another one: I have an old PCLinuxOS iso here, look what's in /etc/inputrc:
## Mandrake Linux Configuration
# (c) MandrakeSoft, Chmouel Boudjnah , Pablo Saratxaga
So Mandriva and PCLinuxOS aren't GPL?
All us non-lawyers (and probably lawyers, too), should contact the FSF to clear things up for us if we think something looks strange, they probably understand the GPL better than we do.
I think the main thing to note here is the difference between COMPANIES and INDIVIDUALS.
Companies have lawyers and want to make money, hence you should be suspicious of them and always assume they're trying to screw you, even if it doesn't look like it.
Individuals who make distros are doing it for fun and are not likely to be interested in legal matters, so even if it **seems** like they might be trying to screw you, you should try and think about it and see if there's another way of looking at it, since they probably aren't.
72 • Factual correction to PCLinuxOS Control Center article (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-25 19:50:43 GMT from Canada)
The article on the PCLinuxOS Control Center contains a serious factual error which I've reported to the author and posted as a comment on the article. Just to be safe, I'm also posting it here. The wizards the author believes are exclusive to PCLOS are actually Mandriva wizards, they just aren't installed by default in Mandriva.
---
The only reason you see more categories in the PCLinuxOS Control Center is because they install drakwizard (or whatever they renamed drakwizard to) by default. This is the package that contains all the server configuration wizards (Apache, Postfix, Samba etc). In Mandriva it is not installed by default because we don’t want to confuse people who just want to configure their desktop system with a bunch of server wizards.
If you install drakwizard on Mandriva, the Mandriva Control Center looks like this:
http://www.happyassassin.net/extras/mcc.png
11 categories.
---
73 • PCLOS, Mandriva, and distro popularity (by frapelli on 2007-06-25 19:56:15 GMT from Italy)
Reply to #69
Quote
"No. It doesn't prove anything else than website clicking.
Which is far from really representing the quality and popularity of a distro."
I agree about DW rating, but statistics here:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
are not simply based on clicking, and should be more reliable, at least I think so. Here for example Debian ranks second (which is more reasonablein my opinion), while in DW ratings is 6th or 7th.
Another way to guess popularity could be the number of subscribers to the forums, let's say to the official forums, and let's say in the last N mounths. Not sure, maybe.
"Popularity" is also the number of reviews, comments, mentions, polls and so on, you can find in the net. In this case, of course, "popularity" does not not mean "number of users". Seems to me PCLOS gets more attention, and more positive, than Mandriva. But maybe it is simply because that's I that pay more attention to the first.
Anyway, even if Mandriva is more popular than PCLOS, they both are less popular than other distros (Ubuntu and Debian for sure), that do not share the fabulous CC, so I still think it is not (mainly) a matter of CC
74 • Re: 64 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 19:59:48 GMT from Romania)
devnet said: Having more categories is a plus for new users.
You mean like the Synaptic Sections?
http://ricaradu.blogspot.com/2007/06/pclinuxos-2007-synaptic-sections-view.html
75 • PUPPY (by JAG on 2007-06-25 20:03:11 GMT from United States)
PUPPY IS DEFINITELY A PRETTY COOL DISTRO!
I heartily recommend all of you check it out for yourselves!
I would also like to encourage/challenge Mr. Mark South to share with us another review of PUPPY next year...let's see what turns out...
76 • There really is more to a distro than packages (by Irian on 2007-06-25 20:03:20 GMT from Canada)
As a newbie user trying to get her toes dipped into Linux, I agree with some points on the article regarding Puppy Linux. Having a really old laptop (P133MHz, 80MB RAM), I've been searching for a lightweight distro to breathe some life in it, and have tested quite a few distributions on the process. Right now it is running Puppy Linux, which correctly recognized most of the hardware, but I am not entirely happy with it. There has to be an easier way to change the keyboard settings. Searches through the forum on how to change the keyboard layout to a Latinamerican keyboard (which is different from the Spanish keyboard) pointed on manually editing my key mappings, which is something downright scary and intimidating I don't want to do. My post asking for help went unanswered. Computer is now collecting dust as typing is just too annoying.
Other than that detail, Puppy Linux is quite impressive, managing to run pretty swiftly on such an old machine. It has been the only lightweight distro that fully recognizes all my hardware, and the software selection is quite right. The interface is organized very intuitively, and it is very easy and quick to install.
Internationalization *is* important.
77 • PCLOS, English, Debian confusion, et al (by ezsit on 2007-06-25 20:04:14 GMT from United States)
PCLOS is a very nice and polished distribution. The fact that it is based and reliant upon Mandriva is sometimes forgotten by users and the reviewers. The Control Center is a complete rip from Mandriva, as are most of the packages. I am not saying this as a put-down, why reinvent the wheel. Heck, Ubuntu is 98%+ Debian!
Back to PCLOS and being English-only. What is the problem here? If you require localized language support look elsewhere. A distribution is the embodiment in software of the lead developers quest for an ideal balance. If the developer of PCLOS is a native English speaker and does not require other language support, then his/her distribution has no requirement or obligation to support any other language. Heck, the developer(s) release their work for free and people have the nerve to complain that is isn't quite what they are looking for!!! That's chutzpah!
Regarding Debian download and install being too confusing? How can too many download options be bad? Read the webpages, know your hardware, and make your selection. It ain't that hard.
78 • No subject (by JAG at 2007-06-25 20:11:53 GMT from United States)
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2713822466.html
79 • Puppy (by Akuna on 2007-06-25 20:26:12 GMT from France)
Hmmm... It's been a long time I haven't checked PuppyLinux & how good it fares with older ware.
All this publicity has renewed my interest.... I should try it again to see how it has progressed.
Downloading it right now! ;)
80 • Puppy Linux (by Faust-C on 2007-06-25 20:47:03 GMT from United States)
Well that makes 2 distros that have odd people maintaining them. Luckly though most distros dont allow such inapproprite behavior (thank goodness) But people really need to think about the impact they have not only on the distro itself but the users. Ive seen many a time users get shunned (gentoo) and then they have the misconception that all distro communities are like that. As a result we lose some very talented people... UNITY is what we need.
81 • @70 elive gem download (by kanishka on 2007-06-25 20:47:55 GMT from Italy)
Yeah, the "free" mirror does not seem to exist... and there are 0 seeds on Linuxtracker. I donated and downloaded it (burning the iso right now), but I don't like that way of... well, begging for donations. :(
I love the distro though, so I had no choice ;)
82 • English And PC Linux (by Tired of USA on 2007-06-25 20:48:46 GMT from United States)
I was born in America, Server in the Army for 6 years. Discharged after injurys while on duty. If I did not have a learning block on Languages I would be learning German and French right now. We the American people need to start to relize that the world does not revolve around us.
I have to say that the PCLinux Controll Center makes it beautiful and easy for newer users to use this wonderful Distro. If it helps people get into and stay in linux.. is it wrong?
83 • RE 53 (by KimTjik on 2007-06-25 21:00:08 GMT from Sweden)
Nnyan, I believe you and my post was an intentional exaggeration to make a point: originate from a multi-cultural society doesn't necessarily make you an open-minded person. Furthermore I still believe that the social climate of today in the US makes it harder for individuals to break out of the bubble of common perceptions. From own experience I can say that watching/listen to news-broadcast from the US or Russia doesn't make a big difference, it's just as difficult to know whether the information is true or not. A common factor is the quest for world dominance – one has it and the other is striving to get its half back – and hence the whole arena, the society, is politicized to serve a “higher course”.
Swedes usually know a lot about other countries, travel most of all, something that should have humbled them, but no, they still firmly believes they have all the answers and have the most objective balanced view. This attitude of knowing and therefore explaining every complex result with simplified causes is draining through the whole education system and further on in life.
On the other hand all nations have pros and cons and I've a lot of good memories from my time in the US on both and between the two coasts.
84 • RE 72 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 21:33:30 GMT from United States)
Adam,
I don't say that they are only in PCLinuxOS at all.
And I'm afraid we do more than just install that package you're speaking of...why do I know? Because I'm a dev for PCLinuxOS :D
We hack into the code quite a bit (mdb mcc perl scripts) because it isn't compatible with our LiveCD. We rebrand the entire thing also. Hence changing the name to PCLinuxOS Control Center.
85 • Comment 84 (by devnet on 2007-06-25 21:34:04 GMT from United States)
Was me...sorry, forgot to fill in the blanks :(
86 • Puppy on the Web; Hacao (by klu on 2007-06-25 21:35:26 GMT from Mexico)
I've been dipping in & out of Puppy for a year & a half now, and while I haven't been involved enough to comment on the moderators' behaviour, I can say this:
Puppy's web presence is the most goddawful mess I have ever tried to navigate! Just trying to find one thing can lead you on a wild goose(e) chase thru Barry's site, the separate portal, the wiki and numerous forums; with little clue as to whether what you're seeing is the best, up-to-date solution or if some contradictory info will be on the next site, the next page. I often end up doing a couple of cycles thru all those sites when I have a Puppy issue to resolve. And how many bloody Puppy forums are there?!
But I still keep downloading it regularly: I like the idea & the execution, nice touches like helping me get the right video resolution (instead of those distros that "Just Work" but give me a brain-melting blur to work in, with no offer to fix it)
BTW the license issue seems a complete straw man: IIRC GPL is not in opposition to copyright but totally dependent on it. If you don't copyright something you make & publish, then you can't impose the terms of the GPL on those you make use of it. It'll just be in the public domain and people won't have to publish source, allow redistribution etc.
Re Hacao, it looks very interesting with those features, does anybody know if you can switch it to English?
87 • @84 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-25 21:39:26 GMT from Canada)
So, you change some stuff and that requires you to change _more_ stuff in the Control Center, fine, but that doesn't really count as additional usefulness to the end user, does it? It's just behind-the-scenes busywork which all distributors are doing all the time.
My beef is that the way the article is written - specifically the paragraph "As you can see, there are more categories in PCLinuxOS 2007 than there are present in Mandriva. This is because the PCLinuxOS developers have spent time and effort on making sure that a new user can actually configure and use their computer and the operating system to the nth degree" - at least potentially gives the impression that PCLOS actually creates new categories and tools in the Control Center, and that these categories don't exist in Mandriva. As far as I know this is not the case, the categories and tools in question all ultimately originate in Mandriva and the difference is simply one of default layout. If you'd rewrite that paragraph to be clearer I'd have no issue with the article.
88 • Languages on PCLOS 2007 (by Caraibes on 2007-06-25 21:40:25 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Let me comment on PCLOS 2007 and the language issue : I always need French & Spanish, each of them for a different user account (mine in French & my wife's in Spanish).
That wasn't "easily" possible in PCLOS 0.93. Since 2007, that I installed on a new partition on my main box alongside wonderful Fedora 7 and good Feisty... It is now possible.
There's an internationalization tool somewhere in the Mandriva/PCLOS Control Center, and it works almost perfect. The only problem I had was with Firefox in Spanish even in my French account (!!!) not a big deal...
Apart from that, I mostly use Fedora, because it seems to be simply better than the others...
XMMS crashes all the time in PCLOS...
But I have to give Tex lots of credit... The new release improved things a lot !
By the way, next week, I'll start a new Linux adventure : choosing & installing a distro for my (soon to come) Mac ppc (iBook from 2001...)... What will it be ??? Fedora for PPC ? Ubuntu for PPC ? Debian for PPC ???
It will depend, I guess, of the little USB wireless adapter that I will have to buy... Because Ndiswrapper doesn't work on PPC... I guess it shall be Ubuntu, because it includes many wireless drivers out of the box...
Good bye Steve Jobs !!! I won't even dual-boot ! Straight to FLOSS !!!
89 • Anger, Power and a chance to post! (by Bill Savoie on 2007-06-25 21:41:49 GMT from United States)
Nice work Ladislav ! When I first opened the DWW and saw the size of Mark South's article on Puppy Linux, I was a bit turned off. Later in the day when I had more time, I really enjoyed all the details. It is a map on how to get into Linux and what might happen when you least expect. Very good. It also covered a year and thus it wasn't a 30 minute install followed by first impressions. It was an accurate log of an intelligent persons random experiences in the land of Linux. Yes it was not always flattering and it may not even be universally true, but it was Mark's experience.Nice to see KIWI from openSuSE. Last week I switched to SuSE 10.3 alpha5. I love both PCLinuxOS and openSuSE, so many good distros! Trust your intincts Ladislav and keep going strong.. many thanks
90 • RE: 72 (to AdamW) (by Béranger on 2007-06-25 21:42:10 GMT from Romania)
Adam,
This is exactly one of Mandriva's major problems: THE DEFAULTS!
You have made the worst option, for instance, to NOT START Klipper by default in Mandriva Spring. (Bug #30075 is WONTFIX.)
I don't f--ing care about a "possible bug" -- 100% of the KDE users expect Klipper to take care of the clipboard!
I also look for Kaffeine, etc.
Add to this the default "Mandriva" button (yes, it can be removed, but then you got a very ugly button, unlike the "star" one), and you can be sure YOU HAVE SCREWED Mandriva Spring with bad choices!
OK, I have just filed bug #31602. Having nobody to report it so far, this raises a question on the quality of Mandriva's users -- those installing from the "One" CD, not from the DVD. What are they using Mandriva for?! Just for browsing and gaming?!
91 • PCLinuxOS droolings (by linbetwin at 2007-06-25 15:39:53 GMT from )
Everybody accused Ubuntu fanboys of littering the blogosphere with copy-paste howtos and droolings about a distro that sits on the shoulders of Debian. Well, guess what, there's a new kewl kid in town. It grows by 8-12 points a day in the HPD, with almost mathematical precision. You need a lot of nerve to claim that the PCLOS CC is better from the MDV CC, just because they shuffled the modules around. This is supposed to be an objective review, but try pointing out that http://ricaradu.blogspot.com/2007/06/pclinuxos-2007-synaptic-sections-view.html the Synaptic Sections are screwed up in PCLinuxOS and you'll be called an Ubuntu fanboy. They love it when you praise PCLOS for it's polish, but when you point out something that is confusing for new users they freak out.
92 • Puppy linux (by Amy on 2007-06-25 22:22:48 GMT from United States)
puppy linux is all I use on my desk top and one of my laptops and as I have mentioned on other forums if it was not for puppy linux I would have had to though my old laptop away after the hard drive connections inside the computer stopped working.
Puppy linux is the only live cd distro that allows you to remove the cd while running it in order to play dvds.
93 • @90 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-25 22:40:11 GMT from Portugal)
And that is nothing more than your 'f--ing' opinion...
And I'm saying this because I rather have less tools, but all working than a lot of things crippled with bugs!
It's not by accident Mandriva 2007.1 is one of the best distros out of the box, and I'm really hoping 2008 can keep improving.
Oh... before i forget: I LOVE Mandriva KDE button and while this is just my taste, I always have the choice to revert it to the original :P
94 • @90 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-25 22:41:04 GMT from Canada)
The reason for not installing the server wizards by default is simple. Most people don't want to run a web server or a mail server and we felt it was therefore unnecessarily confusing and intimidating to have the server configuration wizards in the control center by default. Do you disagree?
30075 seems entirely sane to me. You would actually prefer having klipper but also having text input areas freeze for five to ten seconds?
You write as if 31602 was an incredibly obvious bug, but...um...I doubt that more than a couple of percent of users edit text files over an SSH link using a graphical editor. I've certainly never done it, or needed to. It doesn't surprise me at all that no-one noticed the problem before now, and it's hardly a crippling bug.
One is generated from the exact same package base as all the other editions. I suspect it comes down to a missing package, in some way.
95 • Re: There really is more to a distro than packages by Irian (by GuestToo on 2007-06-25 23:08:12 GMT from Canada)
To setup the keymap(s), click Mouse/Keyboard Wizard in the menu.
Screenshots of Puppy's Keyboard Wizard (written by Dougal):
http://i7.tinypic.com/5zh05mc.png
http://i7.tinypic.com/5zoiz4o.png
http://i19.tinypic.com/6g1qjpe.png
if those links don't work, you can try these:
http://tinypic.com/5zh05mc.png
http://tinypic.com/5zoiz4o.png
http://tinypic.com/6g1qjpe.png
96 • Re: 77 (by mikko on 2007-06-25 23:23:28 GMT from Finland)
>>Regarding Debian download and install being too confusing? How can too many download options be bad?>>
get.debian.net simplifies the selection of Debian installation media by trying to detect your processor architecture. However, it doesn't take away any of the existing download options. Instead, it adds one (easy) download option.
Want more options? Then, visit this page:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
97 • Re: 88 which PPC distro (by h3rman on 2007-06-26 00:03:44 GMT from Europe)
>> "By the way, next week, I'll start a new Linux adventure : choosing & installing a distro for my (soon to come) Mac ppc (iBook from 2001...)... What will it be ??? Fedora for PPC ? Ubuntu for PPC ? Debian for PPC ??? (...) I guess it shall be Ubuntu, because it includes many wireless drivers out of the box..." <<
I hate to disappoint you, but Ubuntu 7.04 is not available for ppc.
You have to manage with 6.06 LTS or 6.10, but they are less up-to-date (when it comes to wireless stuff). However, you should check out the release notes on what they say about the wireless PPC stuff. After all, there's only a limited amount of chipsets that Apple ships, I assume.
Fedora 7 does have ppc support ( http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ ), and needless to say, so does Debian Etch. Fedora 7 also has improved wireless support, so I'd check out those release notes. Fedora was also one of the first to run nicely on PS3, so that is one of the distros to be recommended on PPC.
98 • Puppy Censoring (by klhrevolutionist on 2007-06-26 00:34:09 GMT from United States)
I can witness to the censoring at the puppylinux forum. They openly talk of banning, printing libel material about those who disagree on whatever the subject maybe.
It is sad that puppy went downhill.. but the ripple effect has been good, those who used puppy are able to gain insight on how to make linux more user friendly and take that back to whatever distro they may use or develop.
99 • @ English Language (by Dan on 2007-06-26 00:43:52 GMT from United States)
One day riding a lift in a Los Angeles skyscraper were two Cambodians chatting away in their native tongue alongside a frail little old Hispanic lady. The Cambodian's speech so infuriated the Hispanic lady she shouted out rather rudely, you are in America now, speaka spanish.
Not all Americans are as rude as the English Only writer. Some of our citizens still cherish the freedom to speak their father's and mother's native language. It may very well be your language.
A word of caution to those who hate our guts. Right or wrong there is a growing movement in this country to return to an isolationists point of view and to abandon all others to their destinies. They are beginning to think Ronald Reagan was wrong to confront the USSR and that Carter was wrong to sit down with Israel and Egypt. They may very well be right. If the influence of the meddling US government during the 120 years could be erased from history the world may have become a better place to live.
Long live the free socialist Republic of Linux! Can we now return to a more sane forum?
100 • re 86 - Hacao Linux (by WhoDo on 2007-06-26 00:58:42 GMT from Australia)
"Re Hacao, it looks very interesting with those features, does anybody know if you can switch it to English?"
Hacao Linux is Puppy 2.16.1 with the EZpup-2 updater all converted to Vietnamese language. Ok, that's simplistic, but basically true. If you want an English version of Hacao then download Puppy 2.16.1, EZpup-2 updater and any of the sfs plug-in packs (office, graphics, web) that take your fancy.
Hope that helps.
101 • Miscellaneous comments (by ladislav on 2007-06-26 02:12:08 GMT from Taiwan)
On the subject of the Puppy article, it was a close call. I was reluctant to publish it at first (ask Mark), because it only describes a problem and doesn't offer any solutions. Also, I found the article a bit too long and tedious towards the end. But later I thought that this experience is something that many of us have had at one time or another on a Linux forum, so we can easily associate with this situation. This is indeed something of a problem in the Linux world - some people who try Linux for the first time might easily get disillusioned after interacting on a poorly moderated forum.
On the subject of xdtv (comment 61) - I've only added the package a few days ago. It's not a small matter to go through thousands of distro release and update all of the 500+ distro pages. Give me some time, please!
On Elive 1.0 - yes, I've seen it. I am waiting for the official release announcement (the Elive news page still hasn't been updated), but if you want to download it, you can use one of these links:
ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/Elive/.iavKuAl2O1/Elive_1.0_Gem.iso
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/elive/.iavKuAl2O1/Elive_1.0_Gem.iso
The path might change in the future, so you need to be fast.
102 • Ubuntu for PPC (by mudcat on 2007-06-26 02:39:53 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu is still available for PPC. However, it is no longer an "official" distribution. It is now community supported. Details are here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ
103 • re 23 • RE 20. - 60 hours in sidux livecd (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-26 03:33:35 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the links, I'll try them next time I'm in sidux livecd.
I did look and ask. The forums are German hosted and will not post or allow posts of this info because of German law. Google led to sources which I tried to compile and run, and tars which also didn't work. Doing compiles I can do, installed geany that way on one livecd test.
I did find their IRC chat going at a fast clip - in German - but I had three years of German in school. LOL, that was many years ago, so I chatted with the two English language chatters there. However, I have found the chats I visit for k/ubuntu, knoppix, elive, Mint, PCLos, sidux, and others to be helpful and friendly.
The suggestions were extensive but I ran into some jams. But the killer was when I decided to download and burn puppy while in livecd, the computer slowed to 0.nothing speed upon putting in the CD. I finally had to kill X, where on the consol, I saw errors relating to the CD drive - no matter what I did. Oh well, it was Boot Time... :(
I'm done downloading elive 1.0 now - half through the burn, so I'll have 4 live cds to test in the next few days. Fun, fun. :D
104 • Re55 - Vector...well, I love the community (in addition to the distro) (by DrCR on 2007-06-26 03:41:09 GMT from United States)
Funny I was going to (well, am) post about how glad I have been with the Vector community since 5.0.1SOHO, then I see posts knocking Vector's forums as well, lol.
If you have a clean nose, why not just contact the ubermoderator, or if the ubermod is a nut, keep going up the chain of command? Maybe that's too simple. Maybe I can't understand because I'm usually the noob asking questions...at least those have never gotten deleted for me lol. :)
DrCR
105 • Puppy - a story from the other side (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 04:34:14 GMT from Australia)
The Puppy article is a good one - illustrating the problematic interactions that people have.
I have a story from the other point of view though. Someone hurt me and I proceeded to ignore them. Since that time the person concerned and their associates have spied on my internet usage, hacked into my computer and stolen my work, posted and sold derivatives of my work on the internet, and threatened me. They move into and dominate any website/forum that I regularly visit - including Distrowatch and Tuxmachines. They refuse to accept any apology or explanaton. They are also advocates of open source and freedom!
So there are flawed people on both sides of the argument. A good moderator is worth their weight in gold for a forum - and it would be great if there were those kinds of moderators available for life as well.
106 • devnet (by dubigrasu on 2007-06-26 04:34:55 GMT from Romania)
Devnet, I really don't like your tone.I din't said that PcLinuxOs is hiding something about the origin of Control center.I still continue to believe that PclinuxOS is great and I am using it since MiniMe93.I have it installed on both my machines at home and at work and it feels very fresh in comparisson with Mandriva which feels somehow "cold".PcLinuxOs forums are friendly and a joy to read.
What I don't like is the fact that many people like to consider Mandriva a poor version of PcLinuxOs which is not.I know that Pclos fans (BTW I am one of them!) are enthusiastic about their distro, but please don't push Mandriva in the corner,it's very unfair!
I hope, I really hope that PcLinuxOs will be number one in top, because indeed a distro is much more than technicall aspects and PCLOS feels complete in every aspect, but don't try to convince someone of something sugesting that he is a "silly" boy!"DUH!"
The way you adressed me calling me silly is not something that I like about a PcLinuxOs developers.I am very disapointed.
About the Tdreiser guy I think that is a troll .I like to believe that no matter what our native tongue is, we are all speaking Linux.
107 • Re: #82 - "Americans" (by USican on 2007-06-26 05:03:54 GMT from United States)
"We the American people need to start to relize that the world does not revolve around us."
A good start would be not presuming that "American" automatically refers to a U.S. resident There are 35 independent countries in the Americas.
As for the English language, the U.K. should get the credit/blame for at least its initial propagation as a world language.
108 • Re: Puppy documentation confusion (by octathlon on 2007-06-26 05:06:10 GMT from United States)
I agree regarding the multiple confusing Puppy websites; it's very difficult to find info about any particular topic; it seems to be a lot of random bits of information randomly strewn about, even though some of those bits are nicely done. I've checked Puppy out several times and it's better and better each time. I have used it occasionally when I wanted to run Linux on a Windows laptop that I don't want to touch the hard drive on -- for example, it's good for safe surfing on unknown public wifi networks when traveling. Though not the prettiest desktop, it's very fast and pleasant to use.
I recently checked back in there and they were talking about plug-in modules being available now, which I thought sounded great. I naturally wanted to find out how they work, what modules are available and where to get them. It took a half-hour of searching before I finally stumbled upon a page at one of the download locations which listed one for Open Office and one called a developer's kit. I never did find any documentation or explanation about them though -- I'm not saying it's not out there somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
-------
A side note: Every week there are inevitably going to be some offensive comments posted, coming from various parts of the globe, yet it doesn't occur to me to assume that most of the people who live in the same country as the offender hold the same attitudes. Those who use a term like "monoculture" to describe a country of 300 million people, a large percentage of which are 1st and 2nd generation of immigrants from all over the world, and think we are all like this guy in #26, are just as limited in their thinking he is. I can repeat this for you in two other languages if you prefer.
109 • OBSERVATION: Distro Downloads from Bigpond (by Peter on 2007-06-26 06:45:16 GMT from Australia)
OBSERVATION: Distro Downloads from Bigpond
[Bigpond is Australia's largets ISP (20-35%?) and provides a free
(unmetered) download server to its Cable and ADSL subscribers.]
[25-06-2007]
downloads....Filename.................Category..............Size.................Date...........ExpiryDate
1. UBUNTU
77......ubuntustudio-7.04-alternate-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 909,676,544 bytes 15-05-2007 17 Jul 07
--------
152.......ubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso....Ubuntu Linux.......516,335,616 bytes....19-04-2007...... 04 Oct 07
20........ubuntu-7.04-server-amd64.iso....Ubuntu Linux........503,633,920 bytes..19-04-2007....04 Oct 07
597.......ubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso........Ubuntu Linux......4,263,823,360 bytes..20-04-2007....05 Oct 07
119.......ubuntu-7.04-dvd-amd64.iso.......Ubuntu Linux......4,255,887,360 bytes....23-04-2007....08 Oct 07
740.......ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso....Ubuntu Linux........731,797,504 bytes...19-04-2007.... 04 Oct 07
114.......ubuntu-7.04-desktop-amd64.iso...Ubuntu Linux........733,171,712 bytes....19-04-2007...Never
182.......ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso...Ubuntu Linux........730,056,704 bytes...19-04-2007...04 Oct 07
48.........ubuntu-7.04-alternate-amd64.iso..Ubuntu Linux.......732,018,688 bytes...19-04-2007...04 Oct 07
SubTotal = 1972 [25-06-2007]
-------
22.....kubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso.........Ubuntu Linux.....728,449,024.......14-6-07....Never
17.....Kubuntu v7.04 Alternate AMD64 ISO.......Ubuntu Linux.....730,697,728.......1-4-07
69.....Kubuntu v7.04 for AMD64 DVD ISO..........Ubuntu Linux....4,686,751,744......23-4-07
25......Kubuntu v7.04 Desktop AMD64 ISO........Ubuntu Linux....732,901,376.........21-4-07
302........kubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso.......Ubuntu Linux......4,617,809,920 bytes...22-04-2007...07 Oct 07
269........kubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso...Ubuntu Linux......727,867,392 bytes...20-04-2007....05 Oct 07
ST = 704 [25-06-2007]
-------------
17.........Xubuntu v7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Alternate AMD64 ISO.....672,507,904........23-04-2007...08 Oct 07
15........Xubuntu v7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Desktop AMD64 ISO........596,207,616.........23-04-2007...08 Oct 07
156........xubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso...Ubuntu Linux.......592,488,448 bytes...23-04-2007...08 Oct 07
88.........xubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso...Ubuntu Linux......719,298,560 bytes...23-04-2007...08 Oct 07
ST = 276 [25-06-2007]
--------------
19.........edubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso......Ubuntu Linux........726,327,296 bytes 17-05-2007......01 Nov 07
86.........Edubuntu v7.04 i386 DVD ISO........Ubuntu Linux........4,653,002,752..........23-4-07
34.........Edubuntu v7.04 Desktop i386 ISO.....Ubuntu Linux...........728,821,760..........04-5-07
ST = 139 [25-06-2007]
UBUNTU TOTAL (Ubu+kubu+xubu+edu) = 3,168 [25-06-2007]
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=cat&id=812&order=filename+ASC
2.openSUSE (falling to 3)
931....openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso....Suse Linux.....3,880,814,592 bytes.....09-12-2006..........Never
172....openSUSE-10.2-GM-i386-CD1.iso....Suse Linux.....703,004,672 bytes......11-12-2006.........25 Jun 07
[25-6-07]
3. Fedora (heading for 2 [1?])
168........F-7-x86_64-DVD.iso..........Fedora........3,447,975,936 bytes.......01-06-2007........Never
479........F-7-i386-DVD.iso............Fedora.........2,900,602,880 bytes......01-06-2007........Never
53.........Fedora-7-Live-x86_64.iso....Fedora.........817,156,096 bytes........01-06-2007........Never
66..........Fedora-7-Live-i686.iso......Fedora.........733,427,712 bytes.......01-06-2007.........Never
54.........Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686.iso..Fedora.........719,859,712 bytes.......01-06-2007.........Never
20.......Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64.iso...Fedora........871,643,136 bytes.......01-06-2007.........Never
Total = 840 [25-6-07(+ 118)]
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=cat&id=1160&order=time+DESC
-------------------------------
[25-06-2007]
4 Debian
25.....debian-live-lenny-i386-xfce-desktop.iso Debian 828,749,824 bytes 29-05-2007 26 Jun 07
87.....debian-40r0-i386-CD-1.iso Debian 679,430,144 bytes 02-05-2007 17 Oct 07
50.....debian-40r0-i386-netinst.iso Debian 166,621,184 bytes 01-05-2007 16 Oct 07
29.....debian-40r0-i386-amd64-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso Debian 618,311,680 bytes 19-04-2007 12 Jul 07
60.....debian-40r0-i386-amd64-powerpc-source-DVD-1.iso Debian 4,362,110,976 bytes 19-04-2007 12 Jul 07
237....debian-40r0-i386-DVD-1.iso Debian 4,698,417,152 bytes 12-04-2007 27 Sep 07
53.....debian-40r0-amd64-DVD-1.iso Debian 4,698,357,760 bytes 11-04-2007 26 Sep 07
Tptal = 541 [25-06-2007]
5. Knoppix (falling to 6)
530.....KNOPPIX_V5.1.1DVD-2007-01-04-EN.iso Knoppix 4,324,202,496 bytes 08-01-2007 25 Jun 07
[25-06-2007]
6. Slackware (falling to 7)
112........slackware-11.0-install-d1.iso Slackware 687,970,304 bytes 03-10-2006 Never
314........slackware-11.0-install-dvd.iso Slackware 3,912,810,496 bytes 03-10-2006 Never
49.........slackware-current-09_Apr_2007-DVD.iso Slackware 3,802,327,040 bytes 11-04-2007 04 Jul 07
Total = 475 [25-06-2007]
7. Mandriva (heading for 5 [4?])
138.....mandriva-linux-2007-spring-one-KDE-cdrom-i586.iso Mandriva 726,663,168 bytes 19-04-2007 12 Jul 07
263.....mandriva-linux-2007-spring-free-dvd-i586.iso Mandriva 4,568,668,160 bytes 20-04-2007 05 Oct 07
45......mandriva-linux-2007-spring-free-dvd-x86_64.iso Mandriva 4,567,937,024 bytes 21-06-2007 06 Dec 07
Total = 446 [25-06-2007]
8. CentOS
84.........CentOS-5.0-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso CentOS Linux 4,287,268,864 bytes 13-04-2007 28 Sep 07
10.........CentOS-5.0-x86_64-bin-1of7.iso CentOS Linux 655,493,120 bytes 13-04-2007 28 Sep 07
230........CentOS-5.0-i386-bin-DVD.iso CentOS Linux 3,717,459,968 bytes 13-04-2007 28 Sep 07
51.........CentOS-5.0-i386-bin-1of6.iso CentOS Linux 655,984,640 bytes 13-04-2007 28 Sep 07
Total = 375[25-06-2007]
9. Gentoo
105........livecd-i686-installer-2007.0.iso Gentoo 734,308,352 bytes 08-05-2007 23 Oct 07
41.........livecd-amd64-installer-2007.0.iso Gentoo 731,957,248 bytes 08-05-2007 23 Oct 07
84.........livedvd-i686-installer-2007.0.iso Gentoo 4,018,810,880 bytes 14-05-2007 29 Oct 07
45.........livedvd-amd64-installer-2007.0.iso Gentoo 3,923,703,808 bytes 16-05-2007 31 Oct 07
Total = 275 [25-06-2007]
10. FreeBSD
190........6.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso FreeBSD 601,229,312 bytes 16-01-2007 Never
12.........6.2-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso FreeBSD 25,444,352 bytes 21-05-2007 05 Nov 07
total = 202 [25-06-2007]
121........FreeNAS-0.671.iso FreeBSD 31,203,328 bytes 24-07-2006 Never
[25-06-2007]
[....]
--------------------------------
Some other interesting stats:
543.....home-3.1.iso ClarkConnect 383,344,640 bytes 03-06-2005 (Updated 18-07-2005) Never
284.....home-3.2.R1.iso ClarkConnect 397,166,592 bytes 29-01-2006 Never
126.....community-4.1.iso ClarkConnect 474,722,304 bytes 19-04-2007 12 Jul 07
total = 953 [25-06-2007]
2252.....BeOS5PEMaxEditionV3.zip BeOS 284,100,837 bytes 26-09-2003 Never
[...]
137......solaris10-u1-x86.iso Operating Systems 3,254,779,904 bytes 29-05-2007 21 Aug 07
The following are stats for two of DW's Top 10 Distros:
131......pclinuxos-2007.iso.....Linux Distributions....731,668,480.....22-05-2007......14 Aug 07
72.......SimplyMEPIS-CD_6.5.00_32.iso Linux Distributions.....712,761,344.....11-04-2007....04 Jul 07
[25-06-2007]
110 • RE: Number 20 (by wegface on 2007-06-26 07:10:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
If u clicked the handy manual icon on your desktop, you would have found the answers you needed. Stick with sidux ;)
111 • In the civilized word, original contributions are aknowleged. (by dbrion on 2007-06-26 07:21:30 GMT from France)
Is it the same thing in the blessed free word (ie, if something outstanding, originally thought by X, has been a source of inspiration to Y, does Y state it is Xs original idea?
As some Unix (GNU/linux, if it works or if they are broke) users come from the academic world, it could relieve some tensions/ego problems; the con is that journalists would have less sexy things to write .
I do not know the way support works, as I have no IT connection and boycott web service providers (they try to be more monopolistic and are less competent than the great US Microsoft).
The affluence on Whine Torrent (en politiquement correct : support) seems to me a very poor indicator of a distribution's techical skills...
Sorry for my miss peelings, (nota: je ne fais pas de fautes d'orthographe en français) but, as long as my money is rising, I neither intend to buy new HW nor to become "a mover and shaker" in the "free" world.@26
112 • RE: 94 • @90 (by Béranger on 2007-06-26 07:56:38 GMT from Romania)
> 30075 seems entirely sane to me. You would actually prefer
> having klipper but also having text input areas freeze for five to ten seconds?
You, Mandriva guys, you are insane! 100% of the KDE distros start Klipper BY DEFAULT... except for Mandriva!!! W/o Klipper, KDE is even worse than GNOME. And worse than Windows.
Guess what? Even RHEL5, when in KDE, starts Klipper by default! It's an *essential* component of KDE, period. (But no, you Mandriva guys are the smartest in the known Universe. Remind me to burn all the Mandriva CDs/DVDs once back home. You piss me off.)
The "freezing" bug is occasional and cicumstantial. When you lack a clipboard manager, Joe Sixpack will believe KDE is retarded. Hey, even Linus Torvalds might start believing KDE is retarded w/o Klipper :-)
> You write as if 31602 was an incredibly obvious bug, but...um...
> I doubt that more than a couple of percent of users edit text files
> over an SSH link using a graphical editor. I've certainly never
> done it, or needed to. It doesn't surprise me at all that no-one
> noticed the problem before now, and it's hardly a crippling bug.
To me, it's definitely a showstopper. I often need to "fix" a PHP or a CSS file which is on a server on a different continent. As I am not a "vim maniac", I always find much more convenient to edit the remote file using Konqueror + Kate (and fish://) or Nautilus + gedit (and ssh://).
But again, if the typical Mandriva user doesn't need fish:// nor Klipper, maybe the typical Mandriva user is retarded. So I am out of this.
113 • We only delete and alter posts when there's a reason to. (by The Headacher (VL forum mod) on 2007-06-26 08:12:54 GMT from Netherlands)
I have to say I'm rather surprised about the posts about the Vector Linux forum here (#55 and #58). I've been using the forums a lot, and even though there have been some unfortunate misunderstandings in the past, we sure try to be friendly.
The job of a moderator however, is to moderate. If you start a thread with a poor title/description (something like "weird problem") we can change that to something more descriptive if we feel like it, or move the posts to a more appropriate place if needed.
Mods can and may delete and edit posts, that's what they're for. If you post offensive content we delete, if your post looks too much like an advertisement we'll cut out the offending part of the post or move the entire thing to the trash.
Most of our users seem quite happy with the forum and the way it is moderated. Perhaps you guys should try again if you happen to have a problem with Vector Linux. If you don't want to give us a chance to prove you wrong that's fine too, but please stop portraying us like a bunch of fools who just edit posts for the sake of annoying people.
Thank you,
Jacco Kramer
114 • RE: 26 & 39 (by JH on 2007-06-26 08:48:45 GMT from United Kingdom)
To 26: That's a very arrogant attitude and a deplorable sentiment to have. You are narrow minded and need to look beyond the shores of the USA!!!!!!
To 39: Please substitute the word "English" in your last sentence with "American". We English aren't all bad and I'm an example of one who is constantly embarrassed by my lack of a second language.
JH
115 • Puppy (by JH on 2007-06-26 08:54:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thank you for a very interesting article about Puppy. I have tried the distro and didn't much like the desktop design. It's very sad and ultimately hurtful to the distro to hear that at least one forum mod is on a power trip.
As someone else posted, the newcomers are the ones who need the most help and the forums are their first port of call when trying a distro. If they get duff advice or an arrogant and unhelpful response, they will vote with their feet. I've done it myself with a couple of distros.
At least (unlike Windows) we have a massive choice when it comes to Linux. If you have a bad experience with a distro or the forums, simply download a different distro and have another go.
Sorry for spamming with 2 posts, but I didn't want to reply to 3 different issues in one.
JH
116 • pclinuxos (by garion on 2007-06-26 10:14:31 GMT from United States)
I would consent with a few postings above questioning the originality/improvement of pclinux over mandriva. I admit that I am mostly a ubuntu user and have only spent a limited amount of time with both pclinux and mandriva on two of my computers, just to try the new releases out. But to a new user like me (new to the distro, not linux apparently), I can see few advantages of pclinuxos over mandriva. The control center is like what people above have mentioned - "identical/copied". The livecd hardware recognition on the particular dell laptop I own is worse. I wouldn't comment much on the prettiness of the artwork, in my opinion mandriva is at least not uglier. Lastly, also most importantly to me, pclinux stripped off all the international support! Pretty much all major distros nowadays have almost perfect support for non-english and eastern asian languages. This is a major retrogression in my opinion. All in all, after a few days on each of the two distros, I simply don't see what the big fuss is about pclinux... The only thing I like about pclinux over mandriva is the feel of freedom, rather than subjecting myself to a company that fools around with a myriad of different but similar products, most of them requiring a fee.
117 • English Language (by parkash on 2007-06-26 10:25:54 GMT from Germany)
@107.. That's the way to go! I'm also an american --proud to be one. But I feel always bad that the "americans" give such a bad image for all the continent.. Sometimes I'd wish my country to be in another continent further from the U.S.A.
--By the way, has anyone noticed there's no other way to referring to a native of the U.S.A.? That's why we call them gringos :p But then again, that may be offensive. :-s
118 • Language issues (by dbrion on 2007-06-26 11:03:47 GMT from France)
RE 116 : Why did not you try SAM? She is multilingual, almost as green as Mint (sorry with the UBUlinux argument in favor of Mint, it is the only one I can remember) and she links tightly to her mother distr PClinuxOS (many IT links). I tried to install her in a virtual qemu disk, without sufferings (it is so Mandriva-like it is easy and boring for me).
BTW, the difference betw. free and non free Mandrivas seems essentially in 3D gadgets and preinstalled virtualisation (it takes time and skill to install oneself). If I am happy with Mandriva (which is richer than XP, as tons of apps are shipped) I buy the commercial version (sometimes without opening the CD). I distrust Mandriva-One: can one ship in a CD as much as in a DVD? This would be unnatural....
I was surprised with elive -1.0 "Gem": from the very start, Arabic is written the wrong yaw. I do not know whether it is fixed later. Any way, it is not the way street names and ads are written if one crosses one sea (I do not know the way us"english" is written in NYC #53 as planes seem unsafe there...; I am sure elive developpers would much suffer finding their way.in any Arabic-spelling country).
I wish PClinuxOS, if she decides to do like Microsoft DOS 20 years ago and have a nicer choice than american, (I believe this is announced) wo not copy this starting menu (and, anyway, that one can know whence this startling menu comes from..).
119 • DistroWatch Rantings (by mudcat on 2007-06-26 12:08:41 GMT from United States)
"As for the English language, the U.K. should get the credit/blame for at least its initial propagation as a world language."
Actually, I believe English is a fork of Norman, which derives from Latin. Of course, this was then built around a Anglo-Saxon-Jute "kernel."
;)
Comment #26 was way out of line. But, so have some of the reactionary responses to it. So, how about a little less nationality-bashing around here? It's bad enough that we have idiotic distribution infighting.
Also, enjoyed Mark's article... it was a nice and thoughtful. However, such an article is necessarily one sided. So, it won't dissuade me from using Puppy -- although I might watch my step in some Puppy forums, as there is apparently some "doo doo" in the yard.
As to the PCLinuxOS vs Mandriva issues, can't we all just get along? Tex is always -- and I mean ALWAYS -- complimentary to Mandriva. Personally, I have enjoyed the most recent Mandriva One releases -- "fit and finish" is at an all time high. But, I still seem to have difficulty getting Mandy to perform as a desktop OS -- especially adding new packages and staying stable over time. I understand from other posts that the full install may be superior, so I guess I'll have to give that a shot. But, Mandriva One is really the comparable product for what PCLOS does and, IMO, it falls far short of PCLOS.
Also, apart from openSUSE 10.2 using Build Service repositories (which have worked very well for me over the last several months), PCLinuxOS is the only desktop distribution that I've been able to maintain for long periods of time without reinstalling. Sure, if you keep a pristine install of any number of distributions, you can keep them updating indefinitely. But, try adding multimedia codecs, plugins, applications outside the main repository -- things a desktop user typically wants -- and I've found that most distributions will starte breaking within a year or less. Say what you will about chaos in the PCLOS package categories, but Tex and Co. have focused on what many end users really want -- ease of install from a single, integrated repository and, ultimately, long term stability. This is also one of the reasons that PCLinuxOS users are not as concerned about release scheduled -- if you upgrade your install through Synaptic, you are always on the latest version. Of course, YMMV. This is only my first-hand experience. It would be interesting to see perspectives from users of other distributions, who have been able to maintain operational desktop systems for long periods.
Re: Kiwi. That's very good news on the openSUSE front. The same remaster/respin features that Fedora, PCLinuxOS/Sam, MCN, and (I believe) Mandriva One users have (actually, I think Debian/Ubuntu users can remaster fairly easily, too, -- but, more CLI "hoodoo" is required) will be available on the SUSE platform. I have not gotten Kiwi and its YaST plugin to work yet with 10.2, so I assume this will only appear in 10.3 and won't be backported. If anyone finds a way to do this in 10.2, please post a link.
Also, this might have been too late for this week's DistroWatch, but it might be interesting to see an article on openSUSE's Hack Week:
http://mugshot.org/visit?post=5gvdSnfS8STD4l
Take care and keep using Linux.
120 • @100 Hacao vs. Puppy (by klu on 2007-06-26 14:11:06 GMT from Mexico)
thanks for that info. Downloading Puppy 2.16.1 now, will get other bits later.
But does that mean that if I want to have a LiveCD with all the features of Hacao, I'm either stuck with the Vietnamese of Hacao or I have to learn how to remaster Puppy to get it in English?
(Well maybe it's time I learnt to remaster anyway; that way I can have Opera instead of seamonkey.)
BTW (to no-one in particular) I went to puppylinux.org to get 2.16.1. They have a link "Torrents". Great! Except the most recent version there is 2.12. So I went to "Downloads". Nope, that page doesn't have 2.16.1 either (only up to 2.16). I clicked on "Get CDs". That opened a new page/tab at puppyos.com. Which didn't have 2.1.6.1 either but did offer a link to ibiblio. Which did finally have a direct link to the iso for 2.16.1.
1,2,3,4,5,6 clicks (including Back to get out of dead ends) and 3 different websites. Just to download their latest ISO. (That's not including my visit to LinuxTracker that was another dead end; no torrent for 2.16.1)
Puppy, please! Sort out your web presence!!
121 • Post # 55 (by metvas at 2007-06-26 14:40:50 GMT from Canada)
Hello: If the post # 55 person can let me know by example of what caused his perceived treatment at the Vector Linux forums I will personally look into it. To date I would think it delusional to make such a statement, Vector Linux forums are legendary for fast reliable and courteous responses to any serious question.
So I am the Co- founder of Vector Linux Darrell. Either put up or shut up as I feel you are posting irresponsible information. Further that you are not in possession of your faculties. Here is your chance to prove your case. As usual all for FREE I await your reply to this forum. Or better yet at the Vector Forum. We are not afraid to defend any situation good or bad.
Regards
Darrell
Co Founder (1998)
122 • English/"America" (by Jordan on 2007-06-26 15:04:56 GMT from United States)
English is the national language of the U.S. The U.S. is known
as "America" by it's friends and its enemies, despite, as pointed out
above, that the word America geographically speaking refers to
over thirty countries in the western hemisphere, most of which have
Spanish as their national language although there is a mix of
languages spoken in many of those countries.
"National language" does not mean "official language." The difference
is we here in the U.S. include Spanish and various other languages
in our driver's education manuals, signs around government
facilities, government correspondences to citizens, etc.
My point is that English is being used commonly, and commonly
has choice as its starting point.
Choose your language. Better yet, learn a couple of others if
English is your first language. Spanish, German and French.
And, as somebody mentioned earlier, a couple of dialects of
Chinese and maybe Japanese wouldn't hurt, either.
123 • POST 121 (by Jordan on 2007-06-26 15:12:13 GMT from United States)
With apologies for a quick double post here: "metvas" proves the post #55's point, it appears........ "roadie" said, in post 55:
"I see no reason to attack a distro based on that, just don't use it then. I saw the same thing with the highly praised Vector Linux, while it's a decent distro, some of the forum moderators are arrogant fools who, at least in the past deleted and altered posts.
I therefore don't visit the Vector forums but I still use the distro."
And "metvas" responds:
"...Vector Linux forums are legendary for fast reliable and *courteous responses* to any serious question.
So I am the Co- founder of Vector Linux Darrell. Either put up or shut up as I feel you are posting irresponsible information. Further that you are not in possession of your faculties. Here is your chance to prove your case. As usual all for FREE I await your reply to this forum. Or better yet at the Vector Forum. We are not afraid to defend any situation good or bad."
That's a rather caustic response, in my opinion.
124 • 112, 118, 119 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-26 15:19:13 GMT from Canada)
beranger, I understand your strength of feeling and it's not my intention to trivialize your issues, but I'm just trying to put them in context. It may be difficult or impossible for you to believe, but I had _never_ heard of _either_ of the issues you mention before this thread (and remember, I see every bug posted to Bugzilla and I read every thread in the official forums, as well as reading all Cooker mail and spending a lot of time in places like this, OS News, Slashdot, the unofficial Mandriva forums etc). In comparison, when there was for e.g. the bug in 2007 which stopped people creating zip files from Konqueror, I couldn't get _away_ from people complaining about it. So, important as they are to you, they're _not_ showstopper issues for the vast majority of people. Now you've raised them, I will try and do whatever I can to get them tested and fixed.
dbrion, of course we can't ship as much stuff in One as we do in the DVD editions, that's common sense. However, One - once installed - is structurally the same as any other edition of Mandriva, and that means you can simply install additional packages from the official repositories, as explained at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Installing_and_removing_software .
mudcat, I hope you're aware of that page; you can get almost any package from the official MDV repos (they're rather a lot bigger than the PCLOS repos). You can find all typically needed plugins and codecs in either the official repos or the most commonly used third party repo (I hope you know which one I mean). On longevity, I installed MDK 9.0 on my old laptop and never did a reinstall until I sold the thing; we were up to 2006 by then. That's...9.2, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 2006...five major versions. I ran Cooker on it, updated daily, and it worked nicely all the time. Not that I'd necessarily recommend that for the typical user, but just saying that it's possible.
125 • Re:124, question for Adam W. (by Caraibes on 2007-06-26 15:55:05 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Ok, Adam, I am interested by your statement :
"On longevity, I installed MDK 9.0 on my old laptop and never did a reinstall until I sold the thing; we were up to 2006 by then. That's...9.2, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 2006...five major versions. I ran Cooker on it, updated daily, and it worked nicely all the time. Not that I'd necessarily recommend that for the typical user, but just saying that it's possible."
-Would you say that if I install Mandriva from a Free 2007 DVD, I can update & upgrade indefinitely to all newer releases ???
If so, point me to a website with a proper how to... I would be interested only for stable version.
126 • RE 124 : I know Mandriva can update herself automagically (by dbrion on 2007-06-26 16:03:39 GMT from France)
But it does not work for those who boycott Web Service Providers (they are more numerous and more hungry than Microsoft=> they deserve more distrust) or for those who have a poor access to the Web (rural zones, any developping country, excusez du peu) or just power shortages, or for those who distrust this mode.
=> I prefer buying , once at the newpapers'seller ,
second, if I am satisfied, at Mandrivas (even if the latter seems sometimes like a PClinuxOS subvention in a civilized world : I know the difference between ideas and informatic ports)....
I know one can manage with parts of the rpms, but I prefer now to recompile in a seperate place what I need *and understand* (and keep the original distr in her full original splendor)..
As Web updates are not that evident for every masses, I would have been fierce if Mandriva had had a chart of spreading linux to Humanity (just a matter of self consistency)...
BTW, if you are in a "borrowing ideas" mood, you could perhaps look for ADIOS linux's (and Belenix's) idea of splitting DVD/CDROMs: though it doubles the download space, it might be nice [in countries where there are no linuxen at the newspapers'sellers] or in bad web conditions, or if one downloads into a FAT32 Windows portition ( as I wanted Linux, I bought XP on FAT32 for interoperability, if pple think ntfs is still young, they might do the same thing)
For longetivity, I have a laptop with Mandriva 9.1, which remains satisfying for my needs, and I have a 4 years series of hourly data from a mdk*, with a kernel 2.2 (this makes a 6 years old data-logger who never crashed and never gone updated, as updates could induce an high ressource demand , incompatible with her day and night work of converting 0.x seconds to 0.y hourly data, and storing/sending them ....).
127 • @125 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-26 16:21:43 GMT from Canada)
That's not exactly what I did (Cooker is the development distro, you say you're only interested in stable). It would be possible, though: you can update between stable releases without reinstalling by using urpmi (basically you set up urpmi repositories for the new release and run 'urpmi --auto-select').
This is not always trouble-free, though. You sometimes run into issues that have to be manually resolved (say, remove a package to let the update go through, then reinstall it once the update is done). How much trouble you have generally depends on how big the installation is and how much you've messed with it since installation. I use this procedure regularly on my mail and web servers and it works fine, but then they're very small installations that don't get much done to them (since they're servers). On a desktop it's more likely to be a bit tricky.
I can't compare it to the PCLOS experience because I don't keep a regularly updated PCLOS system (I just install it occasionally in a VM to check it out).
128 • Forum Moderators (by Ubu Walker on 2007-06-26 16:22:17 GMT from United States)
@ Headacher (VL forum mod - Jacco Kramer) said:
"We only delete and alter posts when there's a reason to....The job of a moderator however, is to moderate....Mods can and may delete and edit posts, that's what they're for."
A good moderator or channel Op is as hands off as possible, ignoring minor or trivial violations of forum rules, banning only those posters whose behavior is creating a bad experience for other users by seriously violating the TOS, or deleting posts in rare cases of serious abuse.
Unfortunately, moderators are often part of a favored group and will defend each other if threatened. Mods often have too much power and are too eager to use it for silly reasons.
I prefer community based modding and patrolling. If a post is abusive or mislabeled, the community can flag it for deletion or editing.
Concentration of power in the hands of a few almost always leads to evil.
129 • Re: Vector Forums (by roadie on 2007-06-26 16:47:12 GMT from Canada)
It would seem that post 113 confirms my comments on posts in the VectorLinux forums being deleted and altered.
metvas: I have no intention of visiting the VL forum in order to engage in the activities that caused me to leave in the first place.
Why? Read post 121 (your post) It say's it all. And I find comments like that from a "co-founder" to be very insightful.
I also have no intention of carrying this any further, we are after all in someone else's house.
apologies ladislav
roadie
130 • Overused words / phrases (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 17:07:44 GMT from United States)
I was just reading some reviews, and I have to say that words and phrases like "fanboy" and "just works" are really annoying. They make me question the intelligence of the author. Dump the slang and say what you mean...if you can.
131 • RE: #43, #63 When Did Mepis Shoot Themself? (by Eddie Wilson on 2007-06-26 18:00:45 GMT from United States)
I read in your post that Mepis had shot themself in the foot. When did that happen and why do you say that? I was just wondering. And by the way to all the people of the world. You are giving yourself a bad image. Don't lump all people of the USA in the same group. There are some stupid people here but that goes for every nation in the world. Stop bashing distros for no reason (like davemc) and stop bashing people for no reason. Lets all try to play nice together.
132 • Some extra remarks (by Mark South on 2007-06-26 18:27:40 GMT from Switzerland)
It's been interesting reading the comments that my story has stimulated. I'd like to add some clarifications in response to some of the comments. (If I don't mention a particular comment, please don't be offended, OK? I found all of them interesting.)
++ Ladislav (#101) is quite right that he considered carefully before publishing the story. I agree that it gets tedious towards the end, probably a reflection of how tedious the last part of the story was to live though! I would give the solution to the problem if I knew what it was, but I don't. How does one contribute to a forum positively when one's posts vanish without warning or reason given?
I am certain that awareness of the problem is a basic step towards solving it.
++ Of course the story is one sided, it is my story, told from my point of view. And of course there are others who haven't had the same bad experiences. Bullies like to keep most people on their side and pick on particular targets. My misfortune was being the chosen target. But it could equally have been someone else as well, in a forum belonging to an entirely different distro. While my story is unique, I believe that there are many similar stories and that it is better to face up to their existence.
++ Some people have argued that Puppy is LGPL, contrary to what I wrote. I believe that is the case since the release of 2.16, which was released after the point at which my tale had ended. To see HOW Puppy became LGPL it may be enlightening to read the following two links:
http://marksouth.tumblr.com/post/1259878 (points to the next one)
http://www.puppyos.net/news/comments.php?y=07&m=04&entry=entry070416-055722
The second one is long, but needs to be read right through to understand how the result came about.
++ Since it throws some light on some of the things I mentioned in my narrative, the reaction of the present Puppy forum to the article can be viewed here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19280
I think it's clear that there is not a uniform view among puppyists (puppyologists? puppyistas? puppesheviks? puppycrats? puppytarians? puppylicans?) of events, whether past or present.
++ Guesttoo persists in a disingenious view of the keyboard issue. I can hack the keymaps as much as I like for my own use. But for me to give a Puppy CD to a fellow Swiss and say "boot it up and follow the instructions", a Swiss keymap has to be available at startup. Barry wouldn't include one, and the licence did not permit free distribution of a remastered version.
++ Dougal suggests that I should have asked others for support at the time of problems. I did that, and all that happened was that those others suffered similar problems....
++ @ Sage and Dougal: My academic credentials are not at issue here. I didn't raise them in the article and I'm not raising them now. I've been out of that world for long enough that it isn't relevant.
++ I have not recommended that people should not use Puppy. I do recommend that anyone who uses any Linux distro should choose one knowing that the community around a distro is one important aspect. Puppy may be better than it ever was, for all I know, which is very little, since I no longer use it myself.
++ Finally, please, everybody, read the following comments in quick succession: #55, #113, #121, and #129. The Vector Linux guys could not have given a clearer demonstration of what we're talking about. I wonder if "roadie" gets it now?
133 • Possible Ubuntu/Firefox bug? (by vzduch on 2007-06-26 18:41:42 GMT from Germany)
I noticed that when entering this comments area (DWW 25 June 2007) with Firefox on Ubuntu Feisty (7.04), at some point in the process of loading the page my entire system freezes. I can still move the mouse pointer around, but I cannot do anything else – neither close Firefox nor kill the process or even switch to a console. I need to hit the reset button.
Is someone else experiencing this? This page works fine when using Firefox 2.0.0.3/2.0.0.4 in Windoze XP.
134 • RE 133 : It works fine too with Iexplore.exe under Windows XP.... (by dbrion on 2007-06-26 18:59:48 GMT from France)
For a mild hint on UBUlinux quality assurance, see http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060828
(popularity and spread have nothing to do with quality, methinks).
Now, there are dozens of linuxen (sorry for my grammar, oh windoze user) easy to download and to install in a stable way...
135 • RE 133: It works fine too w/ Konqueror on Kubuntu (by vzduch on 2007-06-26 19:14:29 GMT from Germany)
I just managed to boot my Kubuntu Feisty installation on my old error-prone hdd (that is still connected to my machine to copy files over) ─ no problem accessing this page with Konqueror. On this occasion, it seems like this problem has nothing to do with Firefox; my Ubuntu also freezes when accessing this page with Epiphany (which I had to install because it wasn't there by default...).
I'll try again with Firefox in this Kubuntu installation. If it works flawlessly, then it's either a GNOME issue or some strange behaviour proprietary to this particular installation.
136 • RE 133: It works fine too w/ Firefox on Kubuntu (by vzduch on 2007-06-26 19:21:47 GMT from Germany)
So I guess it's a GNOME thing or a quirked installation...
137 • re 26 unlicenced troll copy (by genuine_trolls&flamewars_inc on 2007-06-26 20:03:27 GMT from France)
Hey, this is my troll, where did you get the right to copy a non-GPL troll like that?
The copyright belongs to Genuine_trolls&Flamewars after its merger with First_class_baits_inc and the company has no plan to relicence it.
By the way, I need funds for a new company Distro_bashing_inc. It has a future, doesn't it?
138 • Vector Linux forum -- my take (by Caitlyn on 2007-06-26 20:24:07 GMT from United States)
While I've used Vector Linux on and off since v. 1.8 (circa 1999) I really only started using the fora since VL 5.1 or so, perhaps 18 months ago. IME the Vector Linux fora are friendly, helpful, certainly tolerate dissent (I've posted lots of dissenting opinions), and very patient with newcomers. In general they've been excellent. I think Jacco/The Headacher did an excellent job of describing how most of the moderators act. I don't see a lot of posts being deleted or altered but I certainly have seen some moved to the correct forum to get responses or retitled to make the topic clear.
I have noticed the metvas/Darrell can be a bit caustic at times. At other times he's been very helpful to people. I know a lot of very talented developers like that, don't you? I think it's a mistake to judge the fora as a whole because he became a little hot under the collar after reading what he probably saw as an unprovoked attack on a piece of a distro he clearly feels engaged in.
Just my .02... How little that's worth depends on your currency. I don't believe in an America-centric world nor do I believe that English is the only language that matters or that it is somehow universal.
Cait
139 • re: 32, 33 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 20:42:05 GMT from United States)
Amen to that. The person that posted #26 is what we call a "red neck" or "hillbilly" here in the states. They usually say something like, "This is America, learn to speak American!", and, obviously, aren't too bright.
140 • RE: 132 (by Dougal on 2007-06-26 20:44:19 GMT from Israel)
Mark,
First, I'm not sure if even now Puppy qualifies as LGPL -- it is only Barry's scripts that have had that label added to them.
What you keep ignoring here is the fact that Puppy is about as "non-GPL" as **any distro out there** (except for the five or so on the FSF-certified list).
You are making the (very un-scientific) mistake of claiming an unfounded assumption of yours for **fact** -- which is probably what people refer to as FUD (I don't care enough to go and check the meaning of that term).
141 • 133 Firefox freeze (by EduardoZ on 2007-06-26 20:53:23 GMT from United States)
I occasionally get frozen out of text entry in Firefox. This is version 2.x.x that came with PCLOS 2007. I had not had the problem with 1.5.x in PCLOS .93a. I accidentally found that Firefox fixes itself if I open the Preferences dialog, then close it. Having read earlier in these comments about freezes in text boxes due to Klipper... I wonder if that's related.
142 • Re 138 (by DrCR on 2007-06-26 20:56:14 GMT from United States)
"I don't believe in an America-centric world nor do I believe that English is the only language that matters or that it is somehow universal."
Isn't Vector Canadian anyhow? Lav could switch this site over to international sign language, but then we would all argue over the icon choice. ;)
Fyi I'm an American mutt of European background. i speak English and a few words of German, eat mainly Italian, but with a bit of German, Irish, American (fried*, barbecue). Funny how a Americans either have no sense of their heritage, or go _way_ overboard on the other side and refuse to call themselves American rather some hyphenated American. ~
143 • Puppy License and Community (by anonymous on 2007-06-26 21:00:08 GMT from Barbados)
For starters Puppy is a mix (L)GPL. Take a look at http://www.grafpup.org/news/ for an appropriate response to the Mark South article.
Secondly, Mark South is only one voice, the current community have 6255 registered users. Before forming an opinion based on that one voice, one should investigate (www.murga-linux.com/puppy) and come to their own conclusion. Afterall, if someone told me that your mother is a child abuser or murderer or a terrorist should I just accept this.
144 • #121 needs "more discipline" as Nurse Diesel would say (by EduardoZ on 2007-06-26 21:10:31 GMT from United States)
You've already been spanked, but more spanking is in order.
You started off fine:
> If the post # 55 person can let me know by example of what caused his
> perceived treatment at the Vector Linux forums I will personally look into it.
Very nice. Just what a responsible professional would say. But, you must have been steaming, because you finally boiled over:
> To date I would think it delusional to make such a statement, Vector Linux
> forums are legendary for fast reliable and courteous responses to any
> serious question. So I am the Co- founder of Vector Linux Darrell. Either put
> up or shut up as I feel you are posting irresponsible information. Further that
> you are not in possession of your faculties.
Far from professional, this comes off as spiteful and adolescent. A posting like this in public space frees the imagination to wonder what you may post in your own domain. You must be getting some interesting messages from your partners,
145 • Posting #144 (by Oiving on 2007-06-26 22:24:41 GMT from United States)
EduardoZ , that is one of the most accurate analyses I have
seen in this dispute about forums ("fora" to you hoi poloi).
Good on ya.
As for me, I've seen the crappiest of all forum hosting in
not Vector's sanctum, but in Puppy, where you really do
take a chance every time you express yourself, positive or
negative, you may very well be ostrasized with no warning
whatever.
146 • @145 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-06-26 22:38:40 GMT from Canada)
The 'hoi polloi' are the masses, not the elite. I don't know why people seem to get it exactly the wrong way around so often, lately.
147 • Hacao216Pro (by Newbie on 2007-06-26 22:45:04 GMT from Finland)
Hacao216Pro is really Pro!
Just some language module problems, but maybe it can be solved via PuppyLinux, as it is a base for Hacao, what I know.
148 • hoi poloi (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:00:52 GMT from United States)
It's changed. That's evolution.. it's now the elite, it used to be the masses.
From "slangsite.com" ..........
hoi-poloi: The upper echelon of a particular group or of society. (ED, Garret: It has been pointed out that the original meaning of hoi-poloi is, in fact, the lower echelon of a society. I.e., the common people. The submitted definition seems to be a very common subversion of the original meaning, but that's what pseudodictionary is all about.)
Example: The office hoi-poloi have organized an exclusive yacht party this weekend.
149 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:02:10 GMT from United States)
For example, if there were no evolution in language, Americans would still be calling an elevator a "lift."
150 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-26 23:39:18 GMT from United States)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026479/
151 • RE:150 (by JAG on 2007-06-26 23:52:00 GMT from United States)
LOL.....LOL
Funny Stuff...!!!
152 • @120 - Hacao vs Puppy Linux (by WhoDo on 2007-06-26 23:57:19 GMT from Australia)
"But does that mean that if I want to have a LiveCD with all the features of Hacao, I'm either stuck with the Vietnamese of Hacao or I have to learn how to remaster Puppy to get it in English?
Nope. Download 2.16.1, add the Open Office sfs to your / directory and reboot, then install EZpup-2.1.7 (2 clicks). Voila! No remastering required unless you want to give it to someone else in its final format.
==============
"BTW (to no-one in particular) I went to puppylinux.org to get 2.16.1. They have a link "Torrents". Great! Except the most recent version there is 2.12. So I went to "Downloads". Nope, that page doesn't have 2.16.1 either (only up to 2.16). I clicked on "Get CDs". That opened a new page/tab at puppyos.com. Which didn't have 2.1.6.1 either but did offer a link to ibiblio. Which did finally have a direct link to the iso for 2.16.1."
Your best link for Puppy downloads and information is the main page of the PuppyLinux wiki, here:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage
The wiki is constantly being updated by its mods and members of the community. A search of the Page Index will show just about anything you need to know about Puppy, its add-on modules and ancilliary software.
I agree that puppylinux.org is badly in need of updating. It is maintained solely by puppian, the site owner, who seems to have withdrawn somewhat lately. I hope he is not unwell.
153 • @152 Hacao vs Puppy Linux (by WhoDo on 2007-06-27 00:03:03 GMT from Australia)
PS. I should have mentioned that you need to burn your copy of 2.16.1 as multi-session. Puppy supports writing its configuration updates to a multi-session CD-R, including the addition of sfs files and dotpet add-ons like EZpup.
Hope that helps.
154 • One year with Puppy Linux (by Mark South) (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-27 00:05:45 GMT from Philippines)
The reader could be left thinking that author Mark South is no longer part of the Puppy Linux forum, but this is not so:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=124791#124791
Also, the reader could be confused about copyright and license. Authors keep their copyright, but GPL is clear about one thing: if you use GPL, the new work also has to be under GPL. Moreover, rarely will you see developers focusing too much on these issues, so if Barry Kauler, Puppy Linux creator, appeared vague at some point about the issue, he can be easily forgiven - his genius is in writing code and not in pleasing everyone. He is a simple retired professor suddenly laboring like a slave for his new passion: Puppy Linux.
155 • Get Lost, Mark South! (by Penguin Pete on 2007-06-27 01:46:03 GMT from United States)
This is the most blatant smear piece against an innocent and EXCELLENT distro I've seen in most places, but I am shocked - nearly to tears - that a place like distrowatch would put it up. It is enough to make me wonder about this site.
I have used Puppy for years, on and off, and this whole article is one big fat lying smear campaign, and it is quite obviously written by somebody who wants their own distro to pull ahead of Puppy in ranking.
Which distro is willing to stab their own mother in the back if they can get top rating before going commercial, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.
156 • RE: 155 Get Lost, Mark South! (by ladislav on 2007-06-27 01:58:48 GMT from Taiwan)
Well, you know what they say: the only thing worse than bad news is no news. In fact, the Puppy page hit numbers have been steadily increasing since the beginning of the week when the story was published. There goes your theory :-)
157 • #157 (the original) (by EduardoZ on 2007-06-27 02:33:58 GMT from United States)
I saw that! Wah! Forum moderation at work!
158 • puppylinux (by bcmoore87 at 2007-06-27 03:22:36 GMT from United States)
I have experimented with several distributions for use on a notebook computer: 750MHz, 128MB, 10GB HD, modem internet access (software modem).
Puppy linux is very good for this application. Puppy linux detected the software modem and correctly connected to an ISP powered by Microsoft Server 2003. I have been unable to duplicate this on other distributions. (I have tried several times, I really enjoy using a KDE-type distribution, If anyone has a link for help, I'd been very happy to read it.).
I am runnng 2.12, a bit behind. At a typical session, I dail the modem and use Seamonkey to read email and browse. Again, for this use on an old laptop, Puppy Linux is very good.
159 • puppy linux forum moderator (by stolennomenclature on 2007-06-27 03:35:43 GMT from Australia)
I sympathise with Mark South and his bad experience with the forum moderator. Sadly this is hardly an isolated occurence.
Sadly when you give small minded people power, whether it be as a forum moderator or the admin of a game server, they develop a God complex, and begin to wield the power whenever and over whomever they can.
Even more sad is the fact that it would seem that 90% or more of people fit into this category to some degree or another.
Roll on the afterlife.
160 • Post # 55 ans 121 (by Darrell on 2007-06-27 03:50:50 GMT from Canada)
We are in another’s house is correct! I do owe an apology, I believe. With that I apologise to DW for all their commitment and resources spent so we all can have a voice.
When I put out an invitation to what I perceive as an unfounded flame, and I do believe post #55 an #58 for that matter are so overly opposite to the actual events that I was set to go to midfield and draw the sword. So I offered an opening to either back-up a statement or retract it. With a challenge like that one must be prepared to be one who is run through, (looses). I have defended Vector Linux many times in the past. No scars or wounds yet. The Developers, packagers, testers, mods, adims and countless others work very hard to bring a World-class product to you. That, they do so very well. I will always defend them all, knowing they do not need it. Glove thrown, touché…
With sincerity
Darrell
Vector Linux
161 • tracked packages (by Russ Whitaker on 2007-06-27 03:54:52 GMT from United States)
I see xfree86 is still on the tracked packages list. Since their last release is over a year ago, is there any distro using it?
I see you switched from xorg releases to xorg-server releases. That messed up the Skackware page. According to the Xorg site they are planning both xorg and xorg-server releases. Shouldn't you be tracking both?
And just what is the difference between xorg something and xorg-server something? I couldn't find the answer on their web page.
Thanks much,
Russ
162 • @152 & 153 (by klu on 2007-06-27 04:46:20 GMT from Mexico)
thanks :) a little confused then I saw the next post. Will follow those instructions for a "Hacao-like" Puppy.
163 • Subject of the Weekly Collection - Gripes? (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-27 04:58:00 GMT from Philippines)
Ladislav, what is wrong here could be the way the "weekly" articles are collected. If the issue deals with forum issues in Linux, then the article would have been well-placed.
As it happened, this griping article by Mark South received a prominent place in your weekly issue. Somehow it left the impression that Distrowatch is a good place to put one's gripes in.
Let me also add that Mark South is Puppy Linux forum co-creator at linuxquestions.org: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/forumdisplay.php?f=71
The issues he raised concerned another forum. It would have been fair for him to discuss how he fares in linuxquestions.org.
Mark South did well contributing to the Puppy Linux forum, and as far as I can gather, he is still subscribed to it.
164 • 163 Subject of the Weekly Collection - Gripes? (by ladislav on 2007-06-27 05:16:37 GMT from Taiwan)
I see you switched from xorg releases to xorg-server releases.
Yes, I should have explained the reasons, but I forgot about it - I'll do it next Monday.
The problem with X.Org is that since it switched to a modular design starting with 7.0, it's no longer a single package, but a collection of separate packages - not unlike KDE or GNOME. Also like GNOME (but unlike KDE), X.Org increments version numbers of some of the packages without incrementing the main version number of X.Org. If you look around the package lists of the various distributions you might come across some that ship with xorg-server 1.2.0 and some that ship with xorg-server 1.3.0, yet both of these belong to the same X.Org - version 7.2.
So in the same manner that the distribution tables list libgnome (but not GNOME) and kdebase (but not KDE), they now also list xorg-server (but not X.Org).
The only problem is that some distributions (e.g. openSUSE) renumber all xorg package version numbers to correspond to the main X.Org release; if you look through the current openSUSE package list, you'll find a package "xorg-server-7.2". As such, there is no way of knowing whether this really is 1.2.0 or 1.3.0. I hope they'll stop this practice, but who knows.
As for the "messed up Slackware page", it will be fixed in due course (please give me some time - it's no small task to update 500+ distro pages).
165 • RE: 163 Subject of the Weekly Collection - Gripes? (by ladislav on 2007-06-27 05:22:04 GMT from Taiwan)
Well, if you read through the comments, you'll see that quite a few people enjoyed the article. But it's also true that an unusually high number of readers have complained about its inclusion here, so I don't know. Please see also my comment number 101 above.
166 • To Distro or not to Distro..... (by Landor on 2007-06-27 05:26:30 GMT from Canada)
I've been reading quite a bit recently regarding distribution's bloat, senseless menu options and too many options.
I have to agree with all of that totally, and many distributions suffer from some form of desktop or configuration FUBAR for a novice.
Linux Standards seems to a solution that may take care of some problems for the end user/novice. But, what if the distro doesn't conform?
Ubuntu has it set that it becomes a struggle for a novice to edit anything as root, not to mention that gnome gives the look and feel of a MAC system. Kubuntu (which I do run as my main distro from time to time) corrects the root problem a bit since with KDE it's a bit more integrated.Both though run like dogs on anything older than a few years, and certain app or desktop environments lag as well and have for some time. Pclinuxos is confusing in it's desktop environment to say the least. For simplicity it as well has some way to go. I found it quite odd that after looking for cd/dvd writing software I found it under "Archiving" (or such). To me that is not simplicity in the least. But what do I know :)
One of the main questions I get from the plethora of people I have nudged the Linux was is: "Where did (insert program name) go after I installed it? It's nowhere in the menu!!!"
The above happens with "every" distro that I have seen thus far at some time or another. A reason for standards IMO. A very good reason for a person to say, why am I running this when I can't even find my applications I install.
I've found one thing in the 24 or so years of computing, especially regarding Linux, to have an ideal system that is friendly to you, you do two things:
A) Build the system (hardware) from scratch.
B) Build the software from the same, based on what you want, need, desire, or are intrigued by.
Personally I am lucky enough to have the ability from a lot of years of experience with OS' such as Unix, Posix, DOS, Windows and of course, Linux to be able to build my own system. Which I am currently working on based from Gentoo.
For the end user, who just wants to have something work out of the box with little care or knowledge of a CLI, all Distros have a long way to go and to argue over such things as a control centre is crazy.
Let's hear it for a standard that brings the desktop environment to something that all users can work with as root or as a user with confidence and ease, whether in the menus, cli, or editing some configuration.
Anyway, enough of my rant :)
BTW, Great work Ladislav! I always look forward to Distrowatch Weekly and I have to say IMHO, it is the BEST!
167 • RE: 165/163 (by Landor on 2007-06-27 05:40:23 GMT from Canada)
I think you should be commended for stepping back and not making a political decision and censuring Mark's article regarding his experience with Puppy.
Far too many times we see moderators, developers sweep dissension in one form or another under the carpet and ask everyone to put on their rose coloured glasses and smile.
For whatever the reason, Mark felt slighted, many of us have in many forums. I avoid them like the plague, too many years of experience. I for one was glad to see the article posted without censure. It lets everyone know however perfect, sweet, and friendly we say our community is, it's not always, another thing to work on, regardless of being human and unpredictable.
As I said Ladislav, Great Work and don't feel as you have to answer to the reasoning for the article's inclusion :)
168 • RE 109 thank you, Peter, for your numbers. (by dbrion on 2007-06-27 07:50:32 GMT from France)
two facts are interesting:
* the ratio of x86/64, which remains high ("old" computers are more numerous, or 64bit linuxen are too young)
* the ratio of DVD/CD is high, too (a CD is less interesting; perhaps a tiny mini cd (wget+perl+basic Linux) would be sufficient for downloading the rest of a distribution...as cygwin does (500k, as basic Linux is replaced by Windows...).
* the rise of Mandriva, which is consistent with DW hit pages and DW connected OSes counts (they were published in 11/06, but the figures remain consistent till the end of the month).
I linked this, before I read your post, with Adam W very good interview, but, as biglakeserver's users do not always read DW, there may be another cause
(I know that,
when an UBUlinux gets broken (too many mindless automatic updates) and
when her owner does not want to put XP back (this may happen, I do not know why),
instead of going to Whine Torrent to beg desperately for support,
some smart pple ask their friends to install a serious linux)....
169 • Distro wars week? (by davecs on 2007-06-27 09:25:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't recall the announcement that it was Distro Wars Week this week on Distrowatch. Did I miss something?
170 • re: firefox on Ubuntu (by Anonymous on 2007-06-27 13:35:13 GMT from United States)
I had the same problem with an earlier release of Ubuntu-- try using the official upstream binary from Mozilla's website. Surprisingly lighter, speedier and more stable than the binary packaged in most distros-- they compile it with the older version of gcc (3.x), for some reason which I can't explain, it seems to make a difference.
171 • Re 172 (by Caraibes on 2007-06-27 18:04:17 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Cher ami,
Plutôt qu'une guerre, je comparerais la rivalité des distributions actuelles à une compétition sportive. Bien sur, les critiques sont parfois acerbes, voire injustes, mais il n'empêche que de la diversité ressort un esprit innovant, créatif...
Je suis quant à moi très enthousiasmé par les "grandes" distros, telles que Fedora, Debian, et Ubuntu...
Qu'il y ai des problèmes, bien sur, c'est normal, ça fait partie de l'expérience... Mais tout ce développement est assez passionnant !
Amicalement,
172 • RE 172 : Vous ne pourrez jamais avoir de diversité avec les grandes (by dbrion on 2007-06-27 18:43:18 GMT from France)
Les grandes distributions doivent etre loyales avec leurs usagers, même s'ils sont conservateurs et maintenir un niveau minimal de qualité.
Mandriva arrive à être innovant dans des domaines soigneusement choisis, me semble-t-il, mais c'est très difficile et cela ne durera que si ses talents sont reconnus (peut-être comme dans le monde universitaire: les chercheurs ne manquent _jamais_ de se citer; ils peuvent commettre tous les péchés, mais oublier de citer ses sources est LA gaffe) malgré quelques erreurs. L'avantage des petites distributions est qu'elles peuvent tester de bonnes (ou de très mauvaises) idées sans être freinées par une loyauté vis à vis d'utilisateurs payants ou d'actionnaires. Si ensuite ces idées ne sont pas reconnues....
C'est d'autant plus facile à apprécier que, maintenant, des logiciels d'émulation existent et peuvent être mis en oeuvre presque sans effort et rendent la reconnaissance du matériel moins critique, voire sans objet (il existe une distribution qui ne reconnaît AUCUN matériel et qui pourrait être très pédagogique)...
[je suis beaucoup plus indulgent avec une petite distr qu'avec une grande, ne serait ce que parce que je peux être tenté de faire acheter une grande par mon patron ].
C'est pour ça que je suis d'accord avec tout ce que vous écrivez, sauf la taille des distributions...
Sincèrement.
173 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-27 20:51:21 GMT from France)
>>The fact is that if you are a mover and shaker in this world,
>>YOU LEARN ENGLISH
>>This may not sit sit well with some,
>>too bad, cry me a river!
The way things are going, you'll soon have to learn chinese !
And I'm sorry to think that the ones who will have the hardest time will be the native english speakers, as they usually don't have the culture to learn something else than english. In Europe you usually speak your native language (!) and learn english plus at least one other language; at least you are able to "understand" 2-3 languages (latin languages are somewhat similar). I don't think that english/american people could handle it :-D
174 • Re: #132 (by roadie on 2007-06-27 21:06:19 GMT from Canada)
Mark South,
No, I don't get it. You are obviously referring to my post about your article and having reread the article, I see no reason to change my opinion of it or of the way you portrayed Puppy Linux in the article.
You start off by saying: "I hated Puppy Linux the first time I saw it on my screen."
You then explain why you were trying it at all (modest hardware), fair enough.
The screen resolution thing can be a real PITA for a newbee (were you?)
But the seagull thing, now really, thats kinda petty, I mean I've yet to see a stock desktop background that I liked. You don't like the seagull, (and by the by, I agree it's ugly), then change the thing.
As I stated in my post, I tried Puppy, it was'nt my cup of tea, but as I recall, it had lots of frontends created by, I assume Barry (tho I'm sure others contributed) to change all kinds of things, setup the net, send Granny an email, etc: So I'd be surprised if you could'nt change a background fairly easily.
The save file thing? I knew about that before I fired Puppy up, did'nt much like it either, but I knew it was gonna do it, I don't recall how I knew but I knew.
You are responsible for knowing these little details going in, I've even had distro's that wanted to install themselves, forget that Jack! But you have to know they might. It's your machine.
Now this was a long time ago and I could'nt give you version numbers (I try a lot of distro's) but that stuff was all there (frontends)
So, yeah, I did'nt think that part of your article was really in keeping with a "professional review" of Puppy Linux and correct me if I'm wrong, but if you write an article on a site with the readership and ethics of DW, are'nt you assumed to be something of a professional? More later.
I liked the first part of the Puppy 2.0 review, well done.
You then get into the forum thing. Oh yes, the FORUMS, they can be little lovelies can't they? You no doubt have gathered that I have some experience in that department. Short and not very sweet.
Now I did'nt spend a lot of time on the Puppy forums, but I do recall that Guest Too was pretty helpful, wrote a lot of scripts and so forth, the others, Sage and Dougal, I know nothing about nor any moderators.
But, the forums have little to do with the distro itself, I mean sure they're tied to it, but you can't judge a distro based on the forums.
You'll run into moderators who are meatheads and mindless idiots and arrogant fools in any distro's forum. They live for that stuff, they work their up to be moderators cause they love having the power and they thrive on the crap they toss around.
You can't judge a distro based on idiot forum mods.
Now the keyboard fiasco, really, could'nt you get the file you needed or edit or whatever and be happy? This is Linux and Linux ain't perfect, sometimes you have to throw the hood up and get down and dirty.
In you're article that along with the forum was obviously a major problem for you and I believe it clouded your judgement of Puppy.
That came across to me as whining.
Then we hit the GPL deal. quote, "It was not a pleasant surprise to realise that Puppy was under a purely proprietary licence!"
See, thats the part that bit me in the ass, I mean, thats a harsh statement, to me at least, you're saying that Puppy Linux is the same as " the Redmond monster " and that's a big deal. I feel that you should'nt write things like that unless it's really true.
I followed the link you posted and in it, the Puppy developer clearly states that Puppy itself is free, only some scripts are copywrited and I figure thats fair, he wrote the scripts.
But the link comes way after the article, in the forum, could'nt it have been included or the GPL thing cut from the article altogether? I mean, you say in the article that it was changed to LGPL so you knew it was'nt proprietary when you wrote the article so why mention it at all.
That came across to me as a an attack on Puppy Linux, and here's where we hit the "more later"
Because it was done on a site with the aforementioned readership and ethics of DW, it requires (at least in my mind ) a certain degree of professionalism and I did not see that.
That's what makes it a blatant attack.
A lengthy post, I know, and really enough for me.
Real life calls,
roadie
175 • Puppy Linux (by Chris Steffen on 2007-06-27 22:11:55 GMT from United States)
Having read your experiences with Puppy Linux and its forum staff, I've decided to follow suit and abandon Puppy Linux. I also used it for a while, but never realized the extent of corruption in the Puppy Linux community.
Hence, I've destroyed my PL disks, and I refuse to promote PL to anyone who asks.
My favorite distro of late has been Ubuntu. I've stuck with it since I heard about it about a year or two ago, and I enjoy it very much. Its devotion to Open Source and Freedom has impressed me, almost as much as I've been impressed by its amazing community.
For users running old hardware, I'll be the first to suggest Xubuntu, the Xfce spinoff that was designed for the same market as PL (from my understanding). Yeah, it's a 500MB download instead of 60, and as such, takes a good bit longer to obtain, but with the Ubuntu Community at hand, it won't steer you wrong.
Thank you for sharing your views on Puppy Linux. I always love hearing the good and bad of each distribution, so I know what to expect and what to promote.
176 • #175 Puppy, Chriss Steffen (by EduardoZ on 2007-06-27 22:20:47 GMT from United States)
Wow, you are quite the follower! I read the first 2 paragraphs, waiting for a punchline that would acknowledge how silly such a reaction would be. Still waiting.
So, does this Xubuntu run completely from RAM? On a machine with 128MB? Leaving the CD-ROM boot device available for other uses? No? So, it's not much of a substitute for Puppy.
177 • RE:175 (by JAG on 2007-06-27 22:22:08 GMT from United States)
Hey Chris, Could you share with us your experiences with puppy and the forums...also which versions were you using?...
178 • Post #176 and being functional with some grace (by Bill Savoie on 2007-06-27 22:33:00 GMT from United States)
Mark South wrote a personal experience. It was true for him, and he wrote it down without fear. Rodie doesn't agree, well enough. But doesn’t a Distro experience include the forum? With 500+ distros to choose from, why not think about the whole experience. Yes it was long, but Mark was really into it and that is how it got so long. I can relate to that. Rodie’s post was even long, he too had passion. Good. Now neutral reader, you have choice. We all know Puppy is a very useful Linux. It is an active distribution, it might have a forum with less than ideal function, and it works well on older laptops! Great. I saw that right away. Most people will get that impression. We know how personal experiences can be, we all have them. As an adult, I have child like rants occasionally. I can allow that in others. It just takes a small sense of humor.
Without humor we all become literal and writing an article becomes a 20 hour job. Maybe Roadie should submit an article to ladislav?
The fact that we are dysfunctional (we attack the messenger, rather than address the subject) is normal for isolated programmers. We are clear thinkers about software code, but not about our emotions. We are all on the road to growing up. We keep the kid for energy, and the adult for laughter!
179 • Puppy Linux Article - can't Ladislav read? (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-27 23:08:04 GMT from Philippines)
Hello, Mark, Roadie, and all,
Puppy Linux has been in Distrowatch for a long time, and I guess Ladislav himself read the licenses inside Puppy, so why allow a "proprietary" argument slip through that article? In the link that Mark provided (much later, here in the forum), Barry Kauler clearly referred to the issue as "dead", meaning, he has tried to correct his shortcomings about it as he possibly could. So why let that matter slip through and still bring it up for DW readers?
Enter Chris who just now decided to abandon Puppy Linux and even destroy his PL disks - clearly, the damage was done. Ladislav should make an explanation so this will not happen again.
Mark's forum experience is a personal experience, and there are many energetic contributors to the forum who could have helped him, for example, Nathan or Dougal (respected Puppy forum contributors who have also posted their comments here). But Mark chose to leave, see his forum posts:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/search.php?search_author=marksouth2000
Even then, it was in good humor, with a statement like: "PS To all the many friends I have made here, goodbye. I expect that this is the last posting I will ever be able to make, even if it lasts longer than a few minutes."
Again, I hope that Ladislav will help clarify the issues before any damage spreads. The Puppy Linux project is a praiseworthy project and isolated views about it should not be taken to mean a general one.
180 • RE: 179 - Can't Ladislav Read (by Landor on 2007-06-27 23:39:13 GMT from Canada)
Twice now I've seen you point the blame of the article at Ladislav. For me, that is quite questionable.
Ladislav never once has stated he is a professional journalist. I believe, unless he states otherwise, he was most likely asked to include the article in DWW and as he has said, pondered the inclusion to great depth. That being said, he no doubt took a lesson in an old journalist's addage, "The facts as they are seen will not be supressed based on "my" views". Commendable to say the least.
Your new issues regarding the licensing of Puppy that Mark spoke is in err. Mark clearly stated in his article that the comments "were" correct for that period and had changed. To openly involve Ladislav, asking him if he read the post makes me ask you, did you? It was quite clear.
Anyway, with that said and done, I will wrap this up. This is about experience. Many people who have read this without any direct loyalties towards Puppy, or disputes for that matter, in which I believe you hold the former, have stated this is about one of the problems we see that holds things back for some of the people who come over to linux.
One of the main things that this community has to put more polish on than the Desktop is the SuperGeek persona that Linux carries. We have to start looking at things more objectively. Try to spread more growth, open acceptance of disagreements without becoming "unconditionally loyal" and responding due to that feeling. I know many, many Linux and non-Linux users who when they think of this OS think of SuperGeeks who will fight to the death of their keyboard over anything said wrong about the OS/Linux.
Your disputes about the topic and many others I have seen here have shown me we still have a long way to go. Accept it or not. But walk away with some knowledge that if one person "Feels" this has happened, whether in reality or not, it's a blight on Linux as a whole and we should all strive working on how to resolve an issue as daunting as hardware detection is/was.
Anyway, my last comment on this specific topic.
Keep your stick on the ice....
Landor
181 • @180, 179 - Bias and balance (by WhoDo on 2007-06-28 00:29:54 GMT from Australia)
The problem most Puppy devotees would have with Mark South's article is the clear bias it presents. The problem that most would have with Ladislav's publishing of it, initially without comment, in DWW is that Distrowatch has heretofore been a respected source of news and reviews for those interested in Linux. As such, it doesn't matter whether Ladislav is a "professional journalist" or not. What matters is that as the Editor-in-Chief of DWW he should attempt to present an unbiased or at least a balanced view, regardless of who wrote the article. It would have been more appropriate if Ladislav had offered an alternative viewpoint, or at least offered equal space and prominence to an alternative viewpoint.
That said, I strongly urge all readers regardless of their current perceptions about Linux forums in general, and Puppy Linux forum in particular, to follow the advice I was once given by a wise man ... "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see". In this case it might be "Believe none of what you read and only half of what you see." Visit the forum of your choice and make your own decisions. Don't "go off half-cocked" on the basis of anyone else's good or bad personal impressions. Those are not facts.
182 • RE: 181 (by Landor on 2007-06-28 01:30:42 GMT from Canada)
I stated I wouldn't continue on this topic again. I haven't seen Ladislav deny any rebuttal regarding this topic and has continued to allow it to be discussed. I'm quite sure the more fevered individuals on the opposing side have no doubt requested en-masse to have their side of the story at the top of issue 27 for all to see.
I know you are a moderator over in the Puppy forum and I can understand your desire to stand beside your forum/distribution/community against any stalwart smears that you may or may not agree in the validity of.
What you have failed to understand that in all of this, and what I can be quoted (post 180) as attempting to convey. If one person feels this, many do. If one person feels they have been wronged, we can truly do the real-time math and come up with numbers to show how many others feel this.
I know for most here it comes down to Puppy being slurred. Hell, I don't really like Puppy myself, it has it's merits and I'm sure at some time or another I may use it for someone on an older system. But I can't understand why people are poking at Ladislav since he made his intent clear in the introduction of this week's issue. It wasn't about one person's problem with a forum/distro. It was about how this has happened to a growing majority, the feeling of being slighted in some way while communicating with people via forums, irc , and the like. Ladislav, IMO, isn't covertly working towards the demise of said distro with some underground elitist linux faction to thwart all the fun over in your forums (tongue in cheek here of course)
I don't understand why people cannot see this as a reason for all of us to go out of our way to improve the experience for everyone. Why people cannot grasp the reasoning as such by Ladislav.
It's easy for me to say, I know, "Let's forget about it being distro-specific" since I hold no loyalties either way. But in reality, that is what should be the focus, and as I said, what "I" perceive as Ladislav's point in it's inclusion. Help fix a problem before it becomes even worse.
We all know that since Linux has been growing in popularity we will find more of this in the future, just like we'll eventually find more security threats in the form of Viruses, Worms and the like. Let's focus on trying to worry about fixing something that's maybe slightly broken, instead of something beyond repair.
That's my view of the inclusion of the article, a warning, an eye-opener, to how we treat others in our community here.
Oh, and by the way, this is definitely the last, last comment on this topic :P
I'll gladly discuss anything remotely constructive regarding it though. landor.ca@gmail.com
Keep your stick on the ice...
183 • Puppy (by JAG on 2007-06-28 02:07:13 GMT from United States)
This is one of the places in the Puppy world that I check out way way more often than the forums...http://www.puppylinux.com/news/index.php
It will help you stay on top of the frequent and hard work of BK and others.
Watch the puppy grow...!
184 • re 182 (by WhoDo on 2007-06-28 03:10:35 GMT from Australia)
Landor said: "I know you are a moderator over in the Puppy forum and I can understand your desire to stand beside your forum/distribution/community against any stalwart smears that you may or may not agree in the validity of."
This is just plain incorrect. I am NOT a moderator in the Puppy forum and my only desire was/is to see the issues raised by Mark South and others treated with balance by DWW.
Landor also said: "I can't understand why people are poking at Ladislav since he made his intent clear in the introduction of this week's issue. It wasn't about one person's problem with a forum/distro. It was about how this has happened to a growing majority, the feeling of being slighted in some way while communicating with people via forums, irc , and the like. Ladislav, IMO, isn't covertly working towards the demise of said distro with some underground elitist linux faction to thwart all the fun over in your forums (tongue in cheek here of course)"
To quote Spiderman (sheesh, I never thought I'd do that) "With great power comes great responsibility". My problem is that Distrowatch, DWW and by extension Ladislav as Editor-in-Chief of both, are very powerful influencer's in the Linux world. That power brings with it the responsibility to provide balance in reporting AND editing. I have no problem with Mark South freely expressing his opinion of Puppy or its forums, but I object to those opinions being published *without comment* as the lead article by such an influential publication as DWW. Contrary to your statement, Ladislav only commented WELL AFTER the fact, and after any damage may already have been done. That is NOT responsible editing, IMHO.
My post was NOT intended as a defence of Puppy, nor even an attack on Ladislav, but was rather a plea for balanced editing and reporting and for readers to make up their own minds based on facts, not opinions.
185 • Pioneer Linux (by tony on 2007-06-28 03:24:38 GMT from United States)
Just wondering if you have tried Pioneer Linux lately? I've abandoned Xandros and found this distro to be really nice. I visit you site on a weekly basis, but never see any current info on Pioneer. Just curious why you don't track this distro with the others?
BTW Pioneer Basic 2.1 is out: http://www.tapioneer.com/downloads.php
And tomorrow something called Explorer 1.0 will be announced...
186 • RE: 185 Pioneer Linux (by ladislav on 2007-06-28 04:06:46 GMT from Taiwan)
I visit you site on a weekly basis, but never see any current info on Pioneer.
You are joking, right? Since December last year there were 16 Pioneer announcements on the main page - much more than for any other distro. See for yourself:
http://distrowatch.com/index.php?distribution=pioneer
If you like it, why don't you write a review and tell the rest of the world about it?
By the way, Pioneer Explorer 1.0-beta is out already:
http://www.tapioneer.com/press/062807_Rel.htm
and you can download it from here:
http://downloads.tapioneer.org/Pioneer_Explorer_1.0_Beta1_i386.iso
187 • Re 168 (dbrion) (by Peter on 2007-06-28 04:20:59 GMT from Australia)
t>wo facts are interesting:
>* the ratio of x86/64, which remains high ("old" computers are more >
>numerous, or 64bit linuxen are too young)
I am not really qualified to comment on this. Perhaps it could be a topic
for DW editor to raise in one of the ensuing weekly issues?
I notice that the ratio is approx 3 to 1 (i386 to x86/64) in Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, Debian, etc (when the webmaster of Bigpond file server has provided both varieties of the same version distro).
>* the ratio of DVD/CD is high, too (a CD is less interesting; perhaps a tiny mini cd (wget+perl+basic Linux) would be sufficient for downloading the rest of a distribution...as cygwin does (500k, as basic Linux is replaced by Windows...).<
You are right in the ratio observation to the extent it does not apply to Ubuntu editions, see below:
597.......ubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso.......
740.......ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso...
The old majors (Fedora, openSuse, Debian, etc) previously failed to provide live CDs (and even DVDs) and seeing the popularity of Ubuntu rise (IMHO, "Live CDs + DVDs played a good part in that), they are now all releasing or planning to release "Live Install" CDs and DVDs. I think this is a positive move and in time CD downloads will increase in relation to DVDs.
Live CDs are good for trying out an OS and a better option for those that do not have fast download internet plans. Net install CD isos are probably more popular with the experienced users and also those that have fast and high download limit Broadband plans.
Linux might be "Free" as in "Free Beer" but broadband plans (bandwidth) is very expensive, as you have already mentioned. IMHO, this is an area where Linux needs to greatly improve on. My XP updates were about 4 Mb this month and when I checked my Linux system, there were a couple of hundred MB waiting to be downloaded (I gave it a miss because my current plan allows only 400mb and extra 15c a MB for anything over that).
>* the rise of Mandriva, which is consistent with DW hit pages and DW connected OSes counts (they were published in 11/06, but the figures remain consistent till the end of the month).<
I have compiled some other figures for downloads of previous versions and the major distros have large download figures which may indicate popularity and that many may probably be still running with those.
>I linked this, before I read your post, with Adam W very good interview, but, as biglakeserver's users do not always read DW, <
Yes, Adam's interview was very good (thanks DW) and I am sure some BP users do read DW because PCLOS download numbers have increased by nearly 200% (from 50 > 137 [heading for 200?])
>there may be another cause (I know that, when an UBUlinux gets broken (too many mindless automatic updates) and when her owner does not want to put XP back (this may happen, I do not know why), instead of going to Whine Torrent to beg desperately for support, some smart pple ask their friends to install a serious linux)....<
I have had my fair share of issues with UBU (lost my Extended partitions on about 4/5 occasions due to incompatibility between Partition Magic and GParted). Ubuntu and most other distros , except SUSE (in expert mode), will not install on a preformatted ext2/3 partition without formatting it first.
In Australia, Ubuntu seems to be very popular with the PC Magazines and it is the most released distro over the last few years. Six weeks after its release and it is on the July edition DVD of PCUser (which came out 15 June) and is sure to be followed by the other three PC magazines that publish here in due course.
188 • RE 133: 3D Acceleration problem perhaps (by vzduch on 2007-06-28 07:21:54 GMT from Germany)
I seem to have narrowed down my freezing problems to something with enabling 3D acceleration for my Nvidia driver (1.0-7184). After upgrading KDE to 3.5.7 in my re-installed Kubuntu and at the same time enabling RenderAccel and AllowGLXWithComposite in the xorg.conf, the freezing returned when trying to start Konqueror.
Now I commented these two options out and there is no more freezing ─ at least for now. Perhaps I could get some feedback on that (RenderAccel w/ Nvidia driver in *buntu).
189 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 08:15:40 GMT from France)
"when I checked my Linux system, there were a couple of hundred MB waiting to be downloaded " I did not think it could be THAT huge :
~9 yrs ago, I had managed, on an Unix system, to do some real-time processing.
The first thing I did was to prohibit my sys-tyrans to automagically upgrade, as it could induce big load spikes (even if the new soft was not worse than the former, which should a least be proven)....
=> the Unix-manufactured kept being paid... to shut-up....
I never changed my mind on this automagical update, even if I did not know this could be that dangerous for a cheap datalogger (under DOS, it is a 50000 lines loop, under any Linux, it seems cooler), say.
I first explained the high ratio of x386/x64bits by the age of Australian (say) computers; this seems inconsistent with the high number of downloaded DVDs and the only explanation which remains _to-day_ is some form of conservatism ; it seems consistent with a recommended article linked in DWW : as buyers are fed-up whith high kernel numbers (wrightly or wrongly, they think it is a sign of i=unstability), serious Linux manufacturers keep the kernel numero and upgrade as far as possible...
I never saw UBUlinux working [saw fedoras, tons of WhiteBoxes, Aurochses , Debians and Mandrivas, ) I know UBUinux is very often downloaded/bought with newspapers, as one of my patient and king friends spends half his free time replacing broken UBU with working Linuxes on his intern's computers (and he has many interns....)
190 • 189 subject was RE 187 (BigPond download stats) (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 08:26:33 GMT from France)
s/king friend/kind friend/
191 • No subject (by English at 2007-06-28 09:55:22 GMT from New Zealand)
> The fact is that if you are a mover and shaker in this world,
> YOU LEARN ENGLISH
> This may not sit sit well with some,
> too bad, cry me a river!
Like it or not the author of this rather indelicate statement is correct.
The world runs on English.
In China, twenty percent of all book sales are already English language books, and by 2020 China will have more English speakers than native English speakers in the rest of the world combined. You almost have to know English to communicate with people from a variety of other nations.
I don't think English is easy to learn at all. It has too many exceptions (grammer exceptions, spelling exceptions, pronunciation exceptions). How can anyone tell which of the nine different ways to pronounce "ough" is correct in a specific instance?
I agree with the comments with people from the U.S. tending to not look beyond their shores (the fact that one-third of those living there between the ages eighteen and twenty-four can't locate the Pacific Ocean on a map says more than enough about this). They will have to either adapt (something they have done very well for the last two hundred years), or get left behind in a rapidly changing world.
192 • Re 189 (by Peter on 2007-06-28 10:31:33 GMT from Australia)
Regarding size of updates for my Linux System, you are right - it is about 130mb. I was mistakenly looking at the size on disk for the packages and just panicked a bit because my MBites were on the limit.:-)
130mb is still large but it can be trimmed down to say around 70mb for essential system files + FFox and TBird (15mb was just to refresh the channel cache on smart package manager).
I have a multi boot setup on an old p4 1.7Ghz system(512 MB RAM) using XP, openSuse 10.2 x 2 (1 standard and 1 MMedia system) and SAM2007 + 1 spare 10 GB partition for another OS (openSuse 10.3 or something else?). But this machine is too noisy for my liking and now mainly use my Acer notebook, its nice and quite. I am looking around for a suitable linux distro for this nbook pc but have not found one that does what I want in terms of power and cpu control, function keys and display resolution (including good fonts for firefox).
Cheers
PS: openSUSE works much faster than XP on the old P4 above and fonts display is as good or better on an 17" LCD. Fedora 7 live cd works great on nbook but fonts display in ffox is very poor.
193 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 10:55:08 GMT from United States)
@h3rman
"I understand the GPL."
Obviously not. Mark South's article refers to "the licence on [Barry's] proprietary components". If you understood the GPL at all, you would know that it doesn't adhere to other components packaged with it, and that it takes just one such non-free component to make a distribution non-free. The GPL requires that the source of the GPLed components be made available, but it has nothing to say about the right to put restrictions on the remastering of a distro with proprietary components.
#19
"Purely from a mathematical stance, it is, statistically, almost certain that the most suitable person for any task will not be one of your own circle!"
Was your major in sophistry? This "mathematics" is irrelevant, because it applies to any "circle" from which you might try to select someone; it is no argument against selecting from your own circle, and there are many other reasons to do so.
Ladislav: publication of Mark South's article strikes me as irresponsible. The licensing fluff is a big todo about nothing -- it was nothing at the time, and it's less than nothing now that the licensing was changed. And the forum fluff is based on South's unsubstantiated perception that his posts were deleted -- not on any evidence that they were. He inferred that the moderator started deleting his posts in retaliation for his giving better technical advice in the forum. This is highly implausible. I've seen plenty of instances of vindictive moderators, but with so weak a justification; if his posts were deleted vindictively, we can be pretty sure that he said some insulting things that he's not reporting. Which doesn't justify the deletions, but the point is that one should not be so credulous as to take Mr. South's report as authoritative.
194 • re: #191 (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:01:59 GMT from United States)
"Like it or not the author of this rather indelicate statement is correct."
Correct or not his statement is moronic when addressed to someone who does speak and write English but needs a keyboard layout for typing in Swiss French ... or perhaps his comments were directed at the Vietnamese distro. Who knows? What we can know is that "TDreiser" is an idiot, and not likely "a mover and a shaker".
195 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:08:46 GMT from United States)
@Landor
"I'm quite sure the more fevered individuals on the opposing side have no doubt requested en-masse to have their side of the story at the top of issue 27 for all to see."
There's a word for people who write that sort of thing. It's not a nice one.
"I don't understand why people cannot see this as a reason for all of us to go out of our way to improve the experience for everyone. Why people cannot grasp the reasoning as such by Ladislav."
Perhaps "people" don't agree with you because they're bright and/or right and you're not.
196 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:21:00 GMT from United States)
"Which distro is willing to stab their own mother in the back if they can get top rating before going commercial, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader."
You folks with your paranoid ravings about Ubuntu "going commercial" are, quite frankly, insane.
197 • Qu 191: (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 11:22:17 GMT from France)
"They will have to either adapt (something they have done very well for the last two hundred years),"
Are American that old?
BTW, as I find Linux lovers existence interesting, if they are in a travelling mood, they should at least be able to "read" their way: it is thoroughly ridiculous, very unpleasant, and even sometimes expensive/dangerous, to beg/buy one's way in a poor country (all english (it might work with French, too: never dared to try] speaking pple are not always kind peaceful bywalkers [the nice pple often work or are at home]).
Sorry for my mispellings, but american is my 6th language (chron. order)
198 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:30:34 GMT from United States)
"hoi poloi
It's changed. That's evolution.. it's now the elite, it used to be the masses."
No, it hasn't changed, some people are simply mistaken as to what it means. The original Greek is literally "the many", and every dictionary says it refers to "the masses". The slangsite.com entry is stupid, and doesn't even spell it correctly (hoi polloi).
199 • Puppy (by Me2 on 2007-06-28 11:37:32 GMT from United States)
"WhoDo" said, "It would have been more appropriate if Ladislav had offered an alternative viewpoint, or at least offered equal space and prominence to an alternative viewpoint."
What the hell do you think this space you're using now is? It's a lot more than "equal space," in fact, it's reams and reams of "alternate viewpoint(s)."
Sheesh.
200 • hoi poloi (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 11:40:00 GMT from United States)
It's changed, lie machine. Even in 1935 there was a movie comedy about it with the title "hoi poloi" with the characters making fun of the "hoi poloi" by trying to train three bums to become "hoi poloi."
The meaning of hoi poloi changed a century ago.
201 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:42:26 GMT from United States)
@Mark South
"Some people have argued that Puppy is LGPL, contrary to what I wrote. I believe that is the case since the release of 2.16, which was released after the point at which my tale had ended. To see HOW Puppy became LGPL ..."
Someone so ignorant of GNU licensing should not be writing anything on the subject. There is no such thing as an "LGPL" distribution; most components of GNU/Linux are licensed under the GPL, which is more restrictive (enforcing more freedom) than the LGPL.
202 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 11:55:59 GMT from United States)
@Mark South
"I have not recommended that people should not use Puppy. I do recommend that anyone who uses any Linux distro should choose one knowing that the community around a distro is one important aspect."
This is a very foolish recommendation. There is no way to know ahead of time (as you yourself said "hindsight wasn't available to me at the time") whether some moderator on some forum associated with a distribution will as some time in the future turn out to be a jerk, and it would be phenomenally silly to pick a distro based on such considerations. Your recommendation comes out of being very self-centered -- you wanted to contribute to the forum but were thwarted, but that simply isn't relevant to the vast majority of distro users, for whom the distro and its "community" are not ends unto themselves; for most, a distro is a tool for achieving other ends.
doesn't
203 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:02:00 GMT from United States)
"It would seem that post 113 confirms my comments on posts in the VectorLinux forums being deleted and altered."
It does no such thing. How does a statement that deletions and alterations do occur, but only when necessary, "confirm" that your comments are being deleted and altered? Unless you know yourself to be a particularly disruptive poster, the sort for which deletions and alterations are necessary.
204 • RE 173 Native English speakers can learn many languages (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 12:06:39 GMT from France)
"the ones who will have the hardest time will be the native english speakers, as they usually don't have the culture to learn something else than english"
Ce point me surprend:
dans les années 80-90, les Peace Corps(américains) étaient respectés (et respectables IMO) en Afrique de L'Ouest parce qu'ils savaient (ordre aléatoire) parfaitement le français, l'Arabe (très utile si les gens en voulaient à l'ancien colonisateur et, même s'ils comprenaient parfaitement le Français, pouvaient devenir sourds et muets...) et quelques langues locales. Je ne sais pas ce qu'il en est advenu maintenant (normalement, le français serait maintenant plus honni que l'anglais en Afrique de l'Ouest).
Le Texas et la Californie seraient actuellement plus qu'à moitié bilingues, me semble-t-il.
205 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:11:35 GMT from United States)
"I prefer community based modding and patrolling. If a post is abusive or mislabeled, the community can flag it for deletion or editing.
Concentration of power in the hands of a few almost always leads to evil."
Since "the community" is made up of a bunch of individuals, and not everyone puts the same amount of energy into flagging posts, evil arises anyway. Daily Kos, which uses community policing, is a good example. The rating algorithms there have undergone numerous changes, never with satisfactory results. There are always gangs and cliques who are able to troll-rate into oblivion any post they don't approve of (most notably, criticism of Israeli state policy). Community policing is necessary when the community is as large as DKos, but for small communities one or more proven mature and neutral moderators are superior -- this is how moderated usenix groups worked in the early days of the 'net -- moderators were actually elected.
206 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:16:13 GMT from United States)
@dbrion
1) Members of the Peace Corps were not typical Americans.
2) California and Texas are bi-lingual in terms of English-speaking white and Spanish-speaking latino population, but "native English" speakers, i.e., whites, are rarely bilingual.
207 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:22:45 GMT from United States)
"it's changed, lie machine."
No it hasn't, you ignoramus. The Three Stooges, who play trash men in the movie, are the paradigmatic hoi polloi, lowly folk.
208 • Q 206 What are "typical Americans"? Do they exist? (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 12:22:51 GMT from France)
"California and Texas are bi-lingual in terms of English-speaking white and Spanish-speaking latino population, but "native English" speakers, i.e., whites, are rarely bilingual"
I am not really sure of that fact,but, if 2 languages cohabit in about the same places, pple feel obliged to learn the othe one's (just to know they are not laughing at you), to a certain extent.
209 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:31:56 GMT from United States)
"I am not really sure of that fact"
So what? I live in California and you don't -- in fact, 1/3 of my town is latino.
"but, if 2 languages cohabit in about the same places, pple feel obliged to learn the othe one's (just to know they are not laughing at you), to a certain extent."
You really don't know much about American culture, do you? The very facts about American culture that people have been criticizing here. In the U.S., we have "English only" political movements, scapegoating of Mexican immigrants, and talk about building a fence between the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed latinos feel obliged to learn English; white Americans, generally, feel no such obligation to learn Spanish.
210 • Are ""English only" political movements" typical American? (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 12:41:02 GMT from France)
What is the proportion of those typical American?
"You really don't know much about American culture, do you?"
I do not claim to know anything about any culture. I am sometimes happy to read scientifical/technical papers, often written in English/american.
Does a nation-specific culture exist?
211 • No subject (by truth machine on 2007-06-28 12:47:33 GMT from United States)
"What is the proportion of those typical American?"
In my experience and estimation, around 70%.
"Does a nation-specific culture exist?"
In the U.S., yes.
212 • RE 111 Vous etes bien pessimiste, j'avais pensé 80% (by dbrion on 2007-06-28 13:01:58 GMT from France)
Le monde sera plus grand une fois standardisé et uniformisé (et on n'aura pas autant de langues à apprendre, ce qui est bien fatiguant)
213 • Re: 204, 206, 207, 208-211 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 13:03:58 GMT from United States)
Sorry, wrong board! I thought this was a board about Linux!
Oh, here we go: www.LinuxQuestions.org
214 • re: 211 Typical Americans? (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 13:34:18 GMT from United States)
There is no nation-specific culture in the US. Heck, most Americans visiting Texas for the first time think they're in a different country. Utah is ultra-conservative while northern California is full of hippies eating nuts and berries. As far as the "official language", there was a national referendum (I think it was national, I was living in Massachusetts at the time) back in the 80's to make English the official language. It was voted down.
215 • "English only?" (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 15:06:47 GMT from United States)
Il doit obtenir outre de votre cheval et anglais élevés. Apprenez français, espagnol, allemand, comme le font la plupart des Européens.
216 • re: 215 English Only? (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 15:48:46 GMT from United States)
You'd think we'd want to know the language of the neighboring countries at least, n'est pas? What with NAFTA and all. To get back on topic, a new Blag is out! Yay!!!!
217 • PuppyLinux, but more general re-thinking about linux forum moderation (by jobezone on 2007-06-28 15:49:38 GMT from Portugal)
I wonder if by electing moderators for a period of time, and being able to revoke their "seats" anytime by some amount of "voting", would improve things?
218 • Volatile Editorials in DWW (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 16:40:08 GMT from United States)
Ever since I first read Mark Storey's commentary on his experiences with Puppy Linux (both the software and the forum) I've felt conflicted. I respect Ladislav immensely, and trust his judgment on including this article. On the other hand, the article did read very one-sided and attacking. In the end, my trust of Ladislav won out.
Ladislav, perhaps it would be good to preface the controversial articles with a disclaimer, or some other words to provide context. Something like you said in Post 101? Perhaps on the lines of:
I was reluctant to publish this at first, because it only describes a problem and doesn't offer any solutions. But later I thought that this experience is something that many of us have had at one time or another on a Linux forum, so we can easily associate with this situation. This is indeed something of a problem in the Linux world - some people who try Linux for the first time might easily get disillusioned after interacting on a poorly moderated forum. While this article is one man's story of his experience with Puppy, there are certainly many stories of other forums - and the stories of their moderators and admins.
219 • You're bass ackwards (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 16:56:13 GMT from United States)
To Lie Machine:
The movie was about the stooges training to BE hoi poloi. Watch it or even just look at a trailor.
220 • Hoo boy (*sigh*) (by Joey on 2007-06-28 17:02:18 GMT from United States)
Say, folks, wrt English etc.. The United States, currently being led by a retrograde moron with fascist leanings, is already in enough negative waters in the political arena. Must we drag Linux into the "hate America and Americans" rhetoric?
Linux was not invented by an American. Maybe Bokmål or Nynorsk should be the default language (and keyboard!) for Linux.
221 • No subject (by John Roberts on 2007-06-28 18:18:49 GMT from Greece)
I am really sorry about Mark's opinions. Barry's work has been exceptional and Puppy is the most amazing OS I have tested during the last two years. Nathan is right in his comments.
222 • 220 Hoo Boy (by Anonymous on 2007-06-28 19:21:44 GMT from United States)
<>
Of course! Haven't you figured out by now that there is no topic which can't be morphed into "I-Hate-Americans" and not a week on DWW has gone by without at least one American-bashing post? But of course it's only right and proper that we be condemned at least every 5 minutes for having the audacity to choose to be born in the US and then go around arrogantly speaking English all the time.
223 • Comments by Nathan Fisher (by Mark South on 2007-06-28 20:34:37 GMT from Switzerland)
Nathan Fisher, creator of Grafpup (http://grafpup.org) has reacted strongly to what I wrote in my article. He has published most of his comment #42 above on the Grafpup site at
http://grafpup.org/news/?p=205
He disagrees with me about (a) licencing and (b) the nature of the Puppy forum.
To (a) I have to say, Nathan is mistaken No licence means private copyright, which for software is exactly what "proprietary" means, sole i.e., property of the author. Feeling strongly about this issue does not change that fact, and there has never been a time when Puppy had "no licence".
To (b) the answer is best left to Nathan's own words, in reply to a comment on the page referenced (http://grafpup.org/news/?p=205). He writes, and I quote verbatim:
"I’ll put in a rebuke if and when I see someone picking on another person who does not deserve it and/or is unable to defend themselves for whatever reason, but quite a number of those on the Puppy forum are out of control lately so I’m sure that will just either be ignored or spawn a lot of hate towards myself. Sadly, from my perspective it is all the newcomers, because for a long time when I joined the forum was about the friendliest and most helpful to be found in the whole Open Source world."
Wow. That seems way harsher than anything I said in my article.
224 • PCLinuxOs (by Distrowatch Reader on 2007-06-28 22:28:52 GMT from United States)
It seems that at this time PClinuxOS simply works better than MOST other Distros.
And I believe that all the hard work by Texstar and company, is finally being recognized and appreciated by others.
225 • RE: 222 (by Landor on 2007-06-28 23:43:25 GMT from Canada)
The main part of the attack was firstly and unjustly caused by someone (of USA birth I do believe) flaming another for not using perfect "USA-English" diction.
Hmm, I wonder if this falls into a category of racism. I'll have to speak to my S.O. on this, since she is a Social Psychologist.
It goes to show with other themes of discussion present this issue that most cannot see beyond their own blinders and consider the message instead of the words, or their feelings/impluses created by them.
I've seen so many carry the torch of equality this week more than most, fair treatment, etc. Yet, I've seen very few practice it during their comments. This language bashing is more of an underlying problem that I had hoped to express to others here, to no avail, sadly
Keep your stick on the ice....
Landor
226 • @199 and Bias and Balance - Puppy (by WhoDo on 2007-06-29 00:00:35 GMT from Australia)
"It would have been more appropriate if Ladislav had offered an alternative viewpoint, or at least offered equal space and prominence to an alternative viewpoint."
Me2 wrote: "What the hell do you think this space you're using now is? It's a lot more than 'equal space,' in fact, it's reams and reams of 'alternate viewpoint(s)'."
What these posts are NOT offering is "equal ... prominence" when compared to a DWW lead article. Many people may read the articles and not bother with the reader comments section. Read @218 for another balanced approach to the problem I was attempting to address.
227 • language (by hab on 2007-06-29 00:11:02 GMT from Canada)
So much smoke, so little fire.
Many, most?, of us already speak linux as a second language!
I figure we should all go learn nostratic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic or something.
cheers
228 • Opinion on Puppy Linux Forum: conflict with general observation (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-29 00:19:02 GMT from Philippines)
@Mark South
It is difficult to reconcile your portrayal of the Puppy Linux forum to the often-mentioned friendliness of the place. Just take a look at these reviews:
http://www.performancepccanada.com/?...Reviews
--> "do a web search for "puppy linux forum" and there you will find support like you would not believe."
http://www.linux.com/articles/56429
--> "As the Puppy is a non-commercial project, the only support option is the active Puppy Linux Discussion Forum, which is good for both novices and pros."
You may be thinking that you have been excluded from the Forum, but you were not. You chose to leave. And after leaving the place for 1/3 of a year, you would then be writing about it? If we follow this practice in dealing with Linux forums, do you think this will lead us to any intelligent discourse?
I am writing here because I am sad, too sorry for you and Ladislav, who have done a disservice (perhaps unintentionally) to an innovative distro with that article.
229 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 01:11:00 GMT from United States)
So...for those of you out there that think PCLinuxOS can't take from Mandriva and just rebrand stuff etc.
What do you think all debian based distros do? Are they all just clones of Debian? Is CentOS getting flack because it's a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Pull your heads out and quit having double standards. We're all Linux...start acting like it.
230 • doing "disservice"/intelligent discourse, etc (by Oiving on 2007-06-29 01:12:05 GMT from United States)
Umm.. excuse me, Raffy, but I've been to the Philippines.
"Intelligent discourse" there is done with machetes, torches and
guns. Where do you come off preaching your "saddness" and "sorrow" about a free speech environment here at Distrowatch?
231 • RE: 227 (by Landor on 2007-06-29 01:50:52 GMT from Canada)
Maybe Ladislav should switch the official language to Ancient Gaelic or Nostratic as you said.
I could see this as a great way to compensate for language bashing or flaming regarding dislike over any article in DWW. Too many people would be spending their time learning/translating the articles hoping to understand them to have time to flame. ;) ;)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
232 • Elive_WHY Different file sizes between- LinuxTracker, & Ladislavs links (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 02:24:13 GMT from Australia)
Elive_WHY Different file sizes between- LinuxTracker, & Ladislavs links
I stopped the Linuxtracker Bittorrent download at about 5 to 10 MB into the download (yes, it was that slow), so i saw how big that file was in comparison to the download which I ended up with in no time from the link Ladislav proved for Elive in post #101. It was 40 to 50 MB bigger than the LinxTracker Elive. Both were labeled as "Elive_1.0_Gem.iso", so its not like there is any indication of a test version or anything
Anyone have any ideas why this is?
233 • Elive - MD5 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 02:28:46 GMT from Australia)
one more thing.
Seeing as how the file sizes are different, and the Elive site wont show the MD5 (may be it does if you pay),, Anyone know what the MD5 is for the Elive provided in Ladislavs link. (keepin in mind that there is a difference in file size between LinxTrackers, and the file provided by the LInk from Ladislavs link in posy #101)
234 • Elive - (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 02:37:47 GMT from Australia)
Oops, i just did some checking from the actual site, rather than rely on my memory.. it looks like the difference is not as big as i recall. and that after checking the file size in LInxtracker - actuall label, and then i realised the difference was one of bits to bytes (1024 bytes to a MB). so i was reading Bytes straight out of my file manager.
235 • RE: 232 Elive_WHY Different file sizes (by ladislav on 2007-06-29 02:38:17 GMT from Taiwan)
See here for explanation:
http://elivecd.org/gb/Main/News/_articles/63.html
This seems to be the latest file at the moment:
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/elive/.Fewveknyk7O2/Elive_1.0_Gem.iso
236 • 230: "Intelligent discourse" there is done with... (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-29 04:39:58 GMT from Philippines)
ha ha ha :) Thank you.
237 • Appalled - One year with Puppy Linux (by John Murga at 2007-06-29 07:33:40 GMT from Switzerland)
Appalled by the fact that Ladislav would publish what is really is nothing more than a veiled attack on several people (including myself).
Appalled by the way that myself and the community have been portrayed ...
And pretty fed up with a group of people who seem intent on either having things their own way, or discrediting anyone who disagrees.
If you want a better idea of events head over the forum, and watch the build-up to these events.
It is pretty obvious that censorship doesn't and hasn't ever taken place.
Cheers
JohnM
238 • Puupy GPL, Distrowatch GPL? (by Erstwhile on 2007-06-29 09:23:46 GMT from United States)
I find it ironic that Distrowatch is knocking Puppy for not being GPL, when Distrowatch itself is not GPL or even CC
In fact Distrowatch is copyrighted:
"Copyright © 2001 - 2007 DistroWatch.com"
Such hypocrisy! I wiil stop using Distrowatch. I am tired of the banner ads and lack of open content on Distrowatch.
239 • PClinuxOS innovating work. @224 (by dbrion on 2007-06-29 09:28:34 GMT from France)
"And I believe that all the hard work by Texstar and company..."
a) Is it a just a choose, cut and paste work?
b) Or is it an innovative work?
If the first case (a) is right, take any paper, in any (US or other) lab, and you will see that , in the _civilized_ world, pple acknowlege their sources... Does PClinuxOS do it ? (these are real questions, not rhetorical ones: I am not at all interested in PClinuxOS , as she is monolingual, but practices of the blessed free world are soo amusing) .
BTW the intellectual value of "this worlks" argument is losing its strength, as emulating can give some life to unsupported HW... and HW evolves.
240 • Who is Mark South? (by Anger_Linux _User on 2007-06-29 09:44:35 GMT from United States)
Who is Mark South?...and exactly why is he allowed to take a personal feud, with a Puppy Linux Forum moderator and publish a feature article on Distrowatch.
I agree with the post that Mark South's whining is completely unprofessional and would also say that Distrowatch publishing this unprofessional article has lost all legitimacy in the Linux world! Not to mention that Distrowatch should be held liable for damage to the Puppy Linux distro by a personal attack by a Distrowatch Newsletter writer.
All Linux Devs should stand up for Puppy and request that their Distros be pulled from being represented by Distrowatch.
Warning to all Linux Distro Devs, you will be the next victim, if you F*** with Distrowatch. Distrowatch has been given a license to kill any Distro. Mark South has single handed taken Distrowatch down south!
Shame on Distrowatch! You have lost another Linux user!
241 • Re: 224 PCLOS (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 11:46:16 GMT from United States)
Personally, I find it buggy. Sound doesn't work for half the apps.
242 • PuppyLinux (by klhrevolutionist on 2007-06-29 11:48:43 GMT from United States)
Thanks to distrowatch for running the story by Mark S. It is long time over due for the folks at the murga forum. Not to mention the irc chatroom.
243 • RE 240. (by dbrion on 2007-06-29 14:20:42 GMT from France)
"You have lost another Linux user!
"
Est ce que Distrowatch va faire de la concurrence à UBUlinux (+300% de relations publiques, -10 % de valeur ajoutée < je suis maintenant sûr du signe>) ou à Duh!duh!PClos (désolé, @64, de vous emprunter librement votre argot -celà n'est pas illégal, je le sais-; cependant, j'ai l'élégance d'essayer d'écrire en français correct)...
" Distrowatch has been given a license to kill any Distro"
Ce que j'ai remarqué dans DWW est la bienveillance avec laquelle sont traitées les petites distributions (les grosses, je les achète chez le marchand de journaux, voire, beaucoup plus cher, si elles me donnent satisfaction, chez le fabricant ).
"Mark South's whining is completely unprofessional "
M.S. parle, en termes sincères(me semble-t-il), de son expérience basée sur son _temps libre_
"Who is Mark South"
D'après ses "posts" (plutôt gentils et intelligents), il écrit un Anglais sans "fôte d'orthograffe "et sans argot. Il est inattaquable sur la base de la cohérence interne (même si je suis en désaccord avec lui) et le seul argument logique (on ne peut pas prouver que des posts ont été détruits) me semble un peu trop cynique pour le salut de mon âme....
OTOH Thanks @211, @230 for my long term survival! I was in a travelling mood...
Nota Si le fait d"écrire en Français correct est un crime,
a) je peux aussi écrire en argot, comme le font beaucoup d'américains.
b) le cybercafé où je suis est tenu par un Chinois. Est ce que DW n'est pas à Taiwan?
244 • Re:238, 240, etc. (by Welkiner on 2007-06-29 17:44:52 GMT from United States)
What a relief. I wish a few more would make the same decision. In their absence we can get back to discussing and "debating" Linux issues without being hateful.
Keep up the Great Work, Ladislav!
A little house-cleaning now and then is good.
wb
245 • Puppy license (by MarkUlrich on 2007-06-29 18:11:17 GMT from Germany)
In the past, Barry often explained, that he likes to code, and that he does not like to deal with organizing things.
He never released Puppy under a propriatary license.
He released Puppy under *no* license.
This is what caused confusion. Then in the forum, he was requested to clarify the license issues, so that people could be shure he would not release it under a propriatary license *in future*.
Concerning Copyright:
The FSF has the Copyleft. As Copyleft is no term accepted by jurists, Code under the GPL usally includes Copy*right* notes.
One goal of the FSF is, to help small coders to the the rights on their code.
This is an important issue, because this right is in danger by patent-laws.
So lets summarize:
Barry added copyright-notes to early versions of Puppy. This is no violation of the GPL, in contrast, the GPL encourages this.
The only thing Barry did wrong was to be too lazy to explicitly add one of the free licenses to his scripts.
I'm very concerned how some people spread FUD, also the forum starts getting polluted with such bullshit simply because people do not read the licenses.
I'm concerned even more, as since some weeks two of our most important repositories are under heavy denial of service attacs.
I just wonder what it has to do with "freedom" to spread again and again wrong stories that already were clarified in the past, and using childish "solutions" like script kiddy tools trying to to destroy the community.
Mark
246 • Puppy - Distrowatch -Licensing (by Gn2 on 2007-06-29 18:18:48 GMT from Canada)
Much against better judgement - A couple quick comments:
When MarkS first noted licensing - it was orrect Pupy was NOT in GPL compliance - it's up to the USER - if thati s important - to validate whether that has now changed !
WHY is Ladislav being catsigate - for provicindg a valuable public service - A one stop resource of most Linux disttibutionbs.
DistroW is no more responsible for validation of user contributions
than would be a vehicle info source for the milage claims found therein.
It is up to the USER to verify - if any are willing to believe & act accordingly to any ONE source for all info - they deserve any bad end results possibly encountered.
The MOds of Puppy are purposely misleading all - they are fully aware only TWO persons there have full (Admin) delete abilities.
Neither of which will admit - how can you post proof - after the fact ?
Unless a "trap" is set - & who wants to restort to such kiddy antics
The very same oposter - Whbodo - who now cries foul - was very recently posting & poihting to DW as "validatuion" of Puppy's supperiority supperiority -
Why because the "rankings" proved it !
He took immediate offence when it was posted those were NOT acurrate as any "ratings" - (for reasons already noted)
Such itemes are more like any other "Public poll" < ONE more attempt at taking fickle pulse of public -
Which has benefit of being so popular - any business would be blind to ignore the increased readership - hence exposure to benfit of all - valid or not.
Much of the "General Populace" don't WANT accuracy - they demand hand -holding, being part of a "populist movement" & no personal effort or responsibility to think for selves.
Why else do forums exist - the user's manual or Google would supply all "generic" data needed.
Get off the sanctimonious podium - it is self deluding !
Thank god people of integrity and courage - such as Ladislav do exist
if the detractors here had their way - one more voice for democracy would vanish also.
247 • No subject (by MarkUlrich on 2007-06-29 18:21:10 GMT from Germany)
>One goal of the FSF is, to help small coders to the the rights on their code.
Sorry, typo. Should be:
One goal of the FSF is, to help small coders to keep the the rights on their code.
Or more detailed:
to keep the rights on their code, so that they can share it with others.
In the past (80ies, early 90ies), when a lot of code was released as "freeware", companies claimed patent-rights on those programs, so the authors lost their right on them.
Mark
248 • OOPS (by Gn2 on 2007-06-29 18:27:48 GMT from Canada)
Sorry for typos - the fonts are so fouled up (KDE) keyboard is wonky
& no time to replace it yet.
(pounding the keyboard - re-typing "sometimes" worked - gettiog worse now as all can see)
Such is 8>{ life in AI.
249 • Ubuntu in the News section (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 19:21:22 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, thank you for combing the U, Ku, Xu, and Edu-buntus in the news section. It was overwhelming when they each had their own entry.
250 • re: 249 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 19:22:18 GMT from United States)
D'oh, that should be *combining*.
251 • PCLinuxOS 'Popularity' (by Limulus on 2007-06-29 20:22:12 GMT from Canada)
As was pointed out earlier here, PCLinuxOS has dramatically risen in the HPD stats:
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity
But in terms of OS share on distrowatch.com itself only has about a quarter of Ubuntu's:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
And what I wonder about (and apologies if this has been brought up before) is that if you look at the Google search volume for "Fedora", "Debian", "Ubuntu", "SUSE" and "PCLinuxOS":
http://www.google.com/trends...all&sort=4
PCLinuxOS has almost none by comparison to the others (and contrast with Ubuntu, which had a similar rise in both Google search volume and HPD on Distrowatch)
So what exactly is going on here? Is PCLinuxOS to Ubuntu as Opera is to Firefox? (some would say better, especially their vocal supporters, but has far fewer users)
252 • (continued) (by Limulus on 2007-06-29 20:43:42 GMT from Canada)
(sorry; I forgot to add this at the end)
What is causing PCLinuxOS’ HPD to be so high?
253 • 239 • PClinuxOS innovating work. @224 (by Anonymous on 2007-06-29 20:51:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
If you go to the PCLinuxOS home page, and then the "About Us" link, you'll be taken to
http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=70
where you'll find
"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.
In addition to Mandriva, PCLinuxOS would also like to thank the developers of the Gentoo, OpenSuSE, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu as we also use patches and bugs fixes from those distributions."
along with other kind words.
I've noticed Texstar often thank/complement other distributions in the forum on multiple occassions as well.
Seems like the developers do give due credit.
Cheers
254 • DistroWhine DistroWahh DistroWimper DistroWTF? (by beany on 2007-06-29 22:06:01 GMT from United States)
Sure the PCLOS hits have climbed...perhaps the growth was helped a bit when OpenSuse hits began to drop after the MS deal.
From reading the comments here, there seems to be a lot of distro bashing going on. When I come to this site I never know which distro will be the punching bag for the week. It's sooo exciting!! Even when it's my choice distro. Punch away you bitter little people..you've come to the right sight. But on the other hand maybe we should say something positive every once in a while. Do we need favicons, emoticons or maybe some bitchicons on this sight or what?
255 • Puppy (by JAG on 2007-06-29 22:45:41 GMT from United States)
C'mon.....Puppy 2.17.....You KNOW it's going to be good...!
256 • How about fract-icons? (by Fractalguy on 2007-06-29 22:56:23 GMT from United States)
I've been enjoying a number of recent releases of liveCDs the last few weeks, staying in each for a few days. It is amazing and thrilling to see the diversity of appearance, apps choice and general feel of each one.
Then I've read this whole DWW issue and I'm discussed. The regulars here have let a few trolls from "otherworlds" trash the place: the language issue, the forum issue, the stats issue - sure they maybe important but not to the extent of total nuclear war.
Anyway, back to distro-watching. Earlier in the month I played with Accelerated-KNX-1.1, puppy-215CE, Kanotix-CPX-miniBFX-2006.2, SAM-2007.1test1, granular-0.9-test, elive-0.6.9, LinuxMint-3.0-Light, mandrivia-2007- spring-one-KDE and GNOME. I spent a week in Mint, then one in sidux-tararos, then back to my HD PCLos for a few days. I just finished three days in Elive-1.0 (very pretty) followed by the last day in gutsy-desktop-i386.tribe2 (xfce). And I'm posting from Mint 3.0 Xfce - just out. Next up already burned will be puppy-2.16 and slax.6.rc4.
So just where should a total-hopper-guy go for fun if DW becomes yet another road kill on the hiway from Redmond? If you regulars value this resource, please ignore the trolls from the great north-west. I'm finding whole GNU/Linux scene from Linux up the stack to the desktops is an amazing ecosystem well worth sampling and enjoying. The artistry in some of these distros is really wonderful. And I'm coming from a computer background dating back to paper tape and teletype. (yea, and I had to walk to school in the snow too) :P
In about 4 hours my download of DL_2.2_070701MMGL_en.iso will be done and I'm outa here - almost caught up: three to go. Keep on smiling. :)
257 • Distrowatch needs a forum (by Beatnik on 2007-06-29 23:39:35 GMT from Panama)
Hey Ladislav,
Please could you add a FORUM here in Distrowatch?, I think with it, we could discuss all topics with some kind of logical order, with the current comments method, you find 200 comments about Puppy License mixed with 50 comments on other topics.
Today I downloaded Qemu-Puppy distro, and I will try it with a 2GB USB flash pendrive. The innovation here is that you can use it as an O.S. carrying your files on someone PC, just like if it were windows of some program native of windows or linux, without needing to boot it.
This is really brilliant.
Big Hurrah for Virtualization developers.
I also want to try Dreamlinux, Elive, Yoper, and the upcomming Sabayon 3.4.
By the way, thanks for Distrowatch.
258 • Linux Phone (by Beatnik on 2007-06-30 01:06:28 GMT from Panama)
Apple have their iPhone, but Linux has the FIC 1973 Openmoko phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RcCFrf-NW0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjhzm_hpEbo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgUZSwOWMEM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRvtAAXTIlg
http://www.openmoko.org/
I think I will buy one of those instead of the ultra-expensive iPhone.
259 • RE: 258 (by Landor on 2007-06-30 03:02:28 GMT from Canada)
I really like that phone. Very nice concept and design.
A little heavy though for the market when it comes to price. Marketing against other phones should be a consideration. They said that the mass market end user price will be in the area of 400 US. For many end-users I'm sure it will be a bit daunting.
They will no doubt have a really good commercial sales run though.
Thanks for the info leading me to look deeper into it!
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
260 • Re: #203 (by roadie on 2007-06-30 04:53:11 GMT from Canada)
truth machine: You are in error.
Actually, post #113 does confirm my post.
If you read my post, I never said "my" posts were being deleted or altered and they were'nt.
Other posts were being deleted and altered and I dinna like it.
roadie
261 • Re #237 (by roadie on 2007-06-30 05:15:58 GMT from Canada)
John Murga,
I would imagine you are indeed somewhat appalled by the treatment Puppy Linux is getting. Probably very unexpected, "out of the blue", as it were.
As for watching the buildup to this, for me thats not possible, I mean, there's a helluva lot of forum topics to sift thru.
Possibly a couple of links might help? I know there are always two sides to a story and in most cases only one gets told, in this case as a featured article.
roadie
262 • Re #240 Who is Mark South and why....... (by roadie on 2007-06-30 05:21:04 GMT from Canada)
I asked the same question.
Never did get an answer.
A question for you tho?
Why would you give up Linux because of the article?
roadie
263 • PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous on 2007-06-30 06:04:25 GMT from Romania)
Initially the argue was about the way devnet's article might give the impression that Mandriva is inferior to PCLinuxOs, but PCLinuxOs as a team do give credit to Mandriva, no question about it.
264 • Re: #237 Was it revenge? Pride? (by roadie on 2007-06-30 06:36:24 GMT from Canada)
John Murga,
Ok, I got off my ass and looked around the forum a bit.
Now please don't take this as some form of support, cause I know little of you or the way you run your forum, BUT
One lil thing I noticed was that both Mark South and another vocally active critic of your forum wanted to be moderators and were turned down ........very interesting.
No reply is needed or in fact wanted. I'm just trying to figure out why the article by Mark South was written in the first place.
roadie
265 • Re: #256 Trolling? (by roadie on 2007-06-30 06:46:27 GMT from Canada)
Fractalguy,
If nobody stands up and questions one sided articles and distro attacks, do you really think you'll have all those distro's to play with?
You won't, all you'll get is Microsoft, Mac & Linux, but the Linux will be Microsofted.
roadie
266 • Reader Comments column too wide (by Ariszló on 2007-06-30 06:56:13 GMT from Hungary)
I can only read it full screen. Even at full screen, it overlaps with the Archives column and the ads below it. So far I have been happy with 1280x1024.
267 • Wow, what's going on with this Puppy mess? (by PaulBx1 on 2007-06-30 07:16:37 GMT from United States)
I have read Mark South's whine about a supposedly hostile Puppy forum.
Funny thing is, the only example of any hostile behavior I have received there has come from 3 people (none mods), one of whom was Mark South! Examples:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9106
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=8909
My initial impression of Mark South was that he got some strange kind of enjoyment over delivering snide remarks to linux newbies. Fortunately he toned it down after a while and decided to be a little more civil.
Another I have crossed swords with was gn2. His thing was obfuscation, as far as I could tell. He delivered some whacks to people too. I was not surprised he was finally banned from the forum. Some members are just not worth the trouble.
Some of my posts got lost too. Mostly around the time the old forum was getting overloaded and lots of posts from everybody were getting lost. I'm guessing the paranoia started then, for those inclined to it.
I got into one of these things in another forum, where I am an admin. Someone was unable to log in and post for a while after he and I had a minor argument, so he of course decided I was the cause of it, and quit in a huff. Guess what folks, forum software ain't perfect. Internet communications are not flawless either. And computer hardware, the servers, occasionally flake out too.
gn2 says, "Neither of which will admit - how can you post proof - after the fact ? Unless a "trap" is set - & who wants to restort to such kiddy antics"
To paraphrase gn2, "I wish to accuse Puppy mods of shady dealings, perhaps destroying their reputations - but I don't want to be bothered with supplying proof!"
OK, here's the deal folks. If you have a personality conflict with a mod in a forum, then go somewhere else. Just go. Or as an alternative, just put up with it; one bad hat (if such there is) does not a bad forum make. Don't post pissy, one-sided rants about your experiences in the forum. The crap will fly back on you more than on the one you seek to attack.
Puppy Linux is great; the Puppy developers are great folks; and the Puppy forum, despite being filled with flawed human beings, is great too. And it ain't hostile there!
268 • Re: #267 (by roadie on 2007-06-30 07:33:21 GMT from Canada)
PaulBx1,
I followed those links but I did'nt see anything I would consider hostile behaviour.
Maybe some pettyness on the part of Mark South, but we've already seen that in his article.
Am I too thick skinned? (thickheaded?)
roadie
269 • No subject (by PaulBx1 on 2007-06-30 07:48:27 GMT from United States)
No, you're right. That is about as hostile as it gets over in that forum.
270 • what happened to DreamLinux links? (by Anonymous on 2007-06-30 08:07:00 GMT from Australia)
What happened to the dreamLinux Links. They dont work. I tried dreamlinux.com , but all i get is one of these search engine sites that looks fairly much the same as people who register internet names purely for the purposes of selling them.. (some of these companies register names as soon as they expire, so that if someone had not paid for the re registration of the domain name for whatever reason. (forget, late payment, misplaced or whatever), then you are forced to pay them what they ask, if you want the domain back...... I do not have kind words for these people. It really is a shame that people resort to doing this sort of thing. any other links for DreamLinux
271 • @246 - the beat of a different drum (by WhoDo on 2007-06-30 08:10:11 GMT from Australia)
Gn2 Obfuscation: "The very same oposter - Whbodo - who now cries foul - was very recently posting & poihting to DW as "validatuion" of Puppy's supperiority supperiority -
Why because the "rankings" proved it !
He took immediate offence when it was posted those were NOT acurrate as any "ratings" - (for reasons already noted)"
Actual WhoDo posting @ Puppy forum: "My original point about the Distrowatch rankings is still a valid one; Puppy and PCLinuxOS are climbing the rankings and IMHO they are doing so on the back of a philosophy that the OS ought to be familiar and easy-to-use for those switching from M$. "
As any sane reader can easily see from the quote above, I was simply opining on the reasons for Puppy's continuing rise in popularity, and comparing it to the rise of PCLinuxOS on the basis of a shared philosophy toward M$ refugees. I don't see any "offence" in my response. Do you?
Gn2 has long been possessed of a somewhat "convenient memory", but what his flawed recollections have to do with this particular debate are beyond me. The facts remain that DWW is influential and needs to take its responsibility for guarding that influence that seriously. I'm sure Ladislav would admit to that.
As for Gn2, the disaffected often seem confused when attempting to recall the reasoning for their state; perhaps because they often have only emotions rather than reasons to recall.
272 • Misc RE 257 (Virtualisation) and @253 @263 Official/sincere point of view (by dbrion on 2007-06-30 08:20:04 GMT from France)
Beatnik,
"This "(Puppy Linux on qemu)" is really brilliant.
Big Hurrah for Virtualization developers.
I also want to try Dreamlinux, Elive, Yoper, and the upcomming Sabayon 3.4.
"
Normally, Dreamlinux and Elive should work (as at least 95% of Linuxes, any *legal* Windows and BSDs; meseems), but , if Sabayon uses 3D effects, you might get disappointed (too slow, unless you have a new PC).
Qemu-Puppy is not just a qemu+iso (that is very easy), as it has been reworked not too write too much on an USB Flash device.
However, this leads to Potemkine (cheating) linuxen.. As qemu is slow (not too much with live x*.isos) , perhaps all the apps you need have been Windows-ported (and are faster and sometimes better), which make linux's future soo interesting.
@253 "Seems like the developers " (of PClos) do give due credit"
and @263 "Initially the argue was about the way devnet's article might give the impression that Mandriva is inferior to PCLinuxOs, but PCLinuxOs as a team do give credit to Mandriva, no question about it."
The point is @64: which is the _sincere_ way of thinking of the developpers (not the official, I already know
but
which might be hypocrite)? I really cannot make up my mind (and, with (alph order) Cygwin, Debian, KateOS , Mandrivas, PCBSD, SAM, WhiteBoxes and Zenwalk on HDs, I am not in such an hurry...).
273 • dbrion (by JustCurious on 2007-06-30 09:02:32 GMT from Romania)
You have all those installed on hardisk?And if so ,what on earth you do with them?I mean, I have installed Mandriva, PCLinuxOs , Debian , a partition dedicated for distro-hopping and sometimes I think I'm nuts.Just curious...no offense.
274 • RE 273 (by dbrion on 2007-06-30 09:25:55 GMT from France)
Mandriva and Cygwin are part of a dual boot; Cygwin at work, too
(I asked my boss *not* to give me WhiteBoxes..)
PCBSD, Zenwalk (and newer Mandrivas) as qemu or VMplayer images to test for portability of compilation chains for my *favorite* apps (before I port them to Mandrivas).
An austere VMplayer image of Debian for cross-compiling for etrax/fox (before I buy the chip whith a Linux kernel -but without screen, keyboard, etc...one adds what one can/wants) .
So are Mandrivas 2007.x (before I buy) at work [for running *closed* source binaries [ I do not know where the sources are, but this Linux-compiled professional stuff is not too buggy].
As Red Hat seems to have a strange policy of *selling* llinuxen with non-standard kernels (which is non standard and leads to unportability), WhiteBoxes are very popular at work (USB staff is considered as dangerous, and I have trouble convincing it does not hurt!=> 2.4 kernels (on remote connections) are more than sufficient for soft developping/testing/ interpreting the results and colleagues'papers {even in English...} reviewing (with antiword).
275 • I forgot to add (by dbrion on 2007-06-30 09:40:53 GMT from France)
That people who compile are often, in the Holy blessed trendy "free"{not of conformism} word, thought as masochists; in fact, as emulation software is slow [ so is compiling, I know ] my compilation trials are done by night (and I sleep well, though I cascade XP or Linux -> qemu or VMplayer -> the sand boxed system (which whas chosen for stability). I waste thus little time....
=> I know most of my HD are Potemkined ones... and I can have more Open Source under XP Windows than under the Holy GNU/linux...
276 • Pile of Distro's (by JustCurious on 2007-06-30 09:49:16 GMT from Romania)
Ok thanks, I feel much better now, I am not nuts :-)
277 • Puppy Linux / TEENpup Linux (by John Biles on 2007-06-30 14:00:38 GMT from Australia)
OK, What ever you may think of Puppy Linux and its forum, let me say this.
I joined the forum in September 2006 and also belong to other linux forum's, I was amazed at how helpful forum members were and still are. So you want to learn about how Linux works, forget the big over passworded Linux's and burn yourself a copy of Puppy. Boot it up live and experiment. I did that for months and learnt so much. One day I decided to start on a version of Puppy Linux for Teenagers. After working on it for a while, I asked BarryK the creator of Puppy Linux if it would be alright to release that version of Puppy and he said yes, so TEENpup Linux was born. (Now at version 2.0.0) (The forum Member's even host the ISO for me) To me Puppy Linux is the "For Adults LEGO set" Trust me, you can hack it add packages from Debian, Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu mix different versions of KDE, do this, do that and it just keeps humming away.
I'm no programmer, and you'd be amazed at what Apps can be made to run in Puppy. As you can burn a new "You Burnt Yourself" version of Puppy from the Menu in Approx 15 minutes containing all your added Packages and user setting, you can take your O/S where ever you go.
I now run TEENpup 2.0.0 on my PC's Hard Drive and it boots up in under 30 seconds and shuts down in 8 seconds. I have K3B, Digikam, Kopete and more and let me tell you that they startup far quicker on top of a Puppy base then any KDE based distro like Mepis, Mandriva etc.
As for Windows XP, After using Puppy Linux, it's just toooooooooo Sloooooooowww, how long do you have to wait for this thing to boot.
278 • 277 (by Joey on 2007-06-30 14:28:14 GMT from United States)
"..over passworded Linux's.." ??
a-HEM.. anyway, my problem with live CDs is that I have used them
to give me a bit of a preview of what the distro might behave like on
my particular hardware environment and to get a feel for its style, etc, but it too often turns out that there are serious differences
between the live version and the hard drive intalled version.
So I went another route altogether to deal with this: I have two
computers (well, three, but one is "untouchable" so to speak), one is a laptop and the other a desktop pc. I purchased spare hard
drives for them both for the purpose of installing distros and
testing them. Problem solved. :)
279 • Are starting times that relevant? (by dbrion on 2007-06-30 14:53:48 GMT from France)
They should be at least given for some hardware.
If it is for a phone, it is much too long (many starts a day).
If it is for a computer which is closed once a year (professional use for Linuxen) or once a week (professionnal use for XP), one should, to have a fair comparison, know the number of times a PC is shut within a year/a week....
A battery-operated Linux-based cheap datalogger can be kept running for 4 years ....even if the hardware allows but a 30minutes start time, it seems reliable...
As far as fora are concerned, what is the use for reliable, simple software?
(I prefer "you wonot get any help because, if you take a deep breath, you really wo not need " {the XP way and the way I use linuxen} to "if you have a problem, you will be welcome and _perhaps_ some useful help will be given/sold to you")?
Do children need a forum to operatre a Lego?
Are adults more moronic than 5 years children?
280 • Re: 270 • what happened to DreamLinux links? (by A. Wong on 2007-06-30 21:41:23 GMT from Canada)
The Dreamlinux (English) page is working here:
http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/english/index.html
Yesterday I couldn't get to the page, probably because of all the people trying to find out more about the new release.
281 • Forum thread showing Mark South's style (by Raffy Mananghaya on 2007-06-30 22:11:18 GMT from Philippines)
Clarification: This is to point out a basic difference in personal style, which can help readers understand why Mark South eventually felt alienated in the Puppy Linux forum. As I said earlier, Mark South is still a member in John Murga's forum - I hope this post helps him in some way.
Curious observers may want to see how Mark South's style sits with that of the bigger Puppy Linux forum community. The thread retrieved by PaulBx1 (see 267 above) is a good starting point:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9106
That was ONE YEAR ago, so that was about the beginning of Mark's story. If you think about it, Mark South is unlikely to survive the forum for long because of his basic difference in style from that of the bigger Puppy community.
282 • Re: #281 (by roadie on 2007-07-01 00:46:19 GMT from Canada)
Raffy Mananghaya,
I checked that link.
I don't see any smokin guns just people sorta sniping at each other.
Actually, the one post I saw in which Mark South seemed petty, apparently related to a post that has been deleted (edited) by PaulBx1.
Now really, evidence like that does'nt hold water.
And I also think your posting that kind of thing here is just a continuation of what went on in the forums. Sniping.
roadie
283 • Dreamlinux installer (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-07-01 01:16:40 GMT from Italy)
The Dreamlinux installer is still buggy as hell. Especially, it doesn't install the boot loader to partition. Why do people have to reinvent the wheel? Kanotix has a great installer.
284 • Not quite right, roadie (by PaulBx1 on 2007-07-01 01:44:24 GMT from United States)
The posts by Mark that we are talking about are the ones he made *before* the post that I subsequently deleted. Like I said, sneering comments at newbies. This was pretty typical of Mark early on. However I have to admit he settled down nicely a bit later and was quite nice to us "less knowledgable ones". Which is why his rant here really seemed to come out of the blue to me. He musta got out of the wrong side of the bed or something.
FYI, the post I deleted was a slap back in response to his pettyness, as you can imagine. I said his sniping was uncalled for since the board in question was a suggestion board after all. I told him he sounded like he was part of the Complaint's devision of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
"The only profitable division of the company is its Complaints division, which, according to the series, takes up all of the major landmasses on the first three planets in the Sirius Tau system. The theme song for the Complaints division is Share and Enjoy, and has since become the theme apparent for the company as a whole. The main office building and headquarters for the company was originally built to represent this motto, but due to bad architecture it sank into the ground, killing many talented young complaints associates. The downside to this is that the building now read, in the dialect of the planet it was on, "Go Stick Your Head in a Pig.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation
I took the post down later as I decided to turn the other cheek, more or less.
285 • Puppy Linux (by John Biles on 2007-07-01 02:49:48 GMT from Australia)
Hello dbrion,
Not everyone leaves their PC on for days. If your like me, sometimes you just want to check your emails, and it's nice to be able to boot your PC up quickly, check them and shutdown again.
Also it's not just the boot time I like, but also when using Puppy, everything just opens alot quicker.
Hello Joey, Mepis boots up live and then from the desktop you can install it. Does this make Mepis a poor installed Distro?
Basically on my PC installed Puppy to Hard Drive is a 5 minute job. Very painless. Boots and shuts down fine, totally usable.
286 • #277 Using 3rd party packages on Puppy and Free BSD (by Anonymous on 2007-07-01 03:00:52 GMT from Australia)
"Puppy Linux ... you can add packages from Debian, Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu. you'd be amazed at what Apps can be made to run in Puppy."
I'd like to try this since puppy is a speedy platform. Are there any instructions on how to add these packages? If not, would you like to write some for the puppy forum?
Also, has anyone ever tried using Linux packages on FreeBSD? How did they perform?
287 • Using 3rd party packages on Puppy etc update (by John Biles on 2007-07-01 03:29:48 GMT from Australia)
Hello Anonymous,
I will try and write a "How To" in the next few days, so please keep checking the Puppy forum.
288 • Re #284 (by roadie on 2007-07-01 03:46:10 GMT from Canada)
PaulBx1,
Well, I did'nt see anything of these "before" comments on that page and you did'nt provide any links so I went lookin.
From my rather limited search, I saw posts by Mark South that some people might consider as sneering, but I figured you'd have to be pretty thin skinned to be hurt by them. You just take from the source right?
I did come across something however, and it goes a long way to explaining something that I've been wondering about since the article was published. At least in my mind it does.
The question is why.
Why was the article written, published is another kettle of fish, why was it written in the first place.
And why was it written by a very (in the past) vocal supporter of Puppy Linux.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=14506
It's a long one but oh so very intriguing. Call me nuts or delusional ( and I'm sure someone will but.........)
I think they're gonna grab the dog. Run Puppy, run.
roadie
289 • Re: 251 • PCLinuxOS 'Popularity' (by kirios on 2007-07-01 06:24:57 GMT from Malaysia)
Does Google also have usage statistics similar to http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html?
The link provided (http://www.google.com/trends...ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=4)
isn't really any more informative or relevant than Distrowatch's Page Hit Rankings (http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity).
290 • RE: 288 (by Landor on 2007-07-01 10:41:40 GMT from Canada)
I went peeking over there shortly after all this, hmm, flushed so to speak :)
I missed that are of their forum somehow, but in all honesty, I didn't look long, nor hard. I found the normal forum faction splits. Power mongering, insults and the few hitleresque on both sides trying to teach the non-committals to goose-step.
The underlying currents in that forum are definitely powerful. The undertow could pull down and drown Mark Spitz in a heartbeat.
I have noticed though, the majority who have come here to post, and in quite an aggressive manner, have been the "other faction" so to speak.
I've tried to explain that this is more of a underlying problem that they need to look at deeply, to no avail.
Maybe it's time for the puppy to take obedience training and learn how to get along with other dogs.
Oh, and.... "Machine Language" isn't perfect, not when a human is punching in the code.......
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
291 • *yawn* (by Jerry on 2007-07-01 11:21:55 GMT from United States)
Well, here it is, Sunday in the [insert adjective of your choice, i.e. "evil," "wonderful," etc] U.S.A. .. the end of another week of insightsful and enlightening discourse here in the Distrowatch Weekly Comments Section.
Now that we've all changed our [insert noun of choice, "minds," "pants," "partners," etc] we can prepare for the new, blank, fresh text field awaiting us all in the Monday edition of DW Comments.
I for one have [insert verb of choice, "learned," "slept," "drank"] a lot in the past several days of reading the [insert descriptive noun of choice, "opinions," "rants," "lies," "tripe"] here, and I want to [insert descriptive verb of choice, "thank," "kill," "have sex with"] ladislav for providing this space for us.
- Jerry
292 • Re 286 : Puppy starting times relevance... (by dbrion on 2007-07-01 13:56:01 GMT from France)
John Biles,
First I know that Puppy Linux is very fast, even on slow HW. What makes me uneasy is the fact that she is presented as THE solution...
"Not everyone leaves their PC on for days".
An argument based (even in a kind subtle way) on the majority/popularity has one logical solution:
stick with XP!
She is not that buggy, and very stable, and, if scanned for viruses during night, can be operated safely without losing time (and I donot think it is so unamerican: As far as Im concerned, I pick/buy smartness, whencever it comes).
I have a Mandriva (duh, duh...) which, once started, opens any apps I am interested in fast (I do not remember the specifics of my notebook, which I should otherwise write for fairness, and it is fast enough not to measure reliably times).
BTW, just to remind
there is another world than Linux , I check my professional mail under HP-UX(which has no viruses, the box seems 10yrs old).
There are also other computers than PCs : etrax/fox sell a chip + a Linux kernel, and it is mainly used ... for burglar intrusion detection... I suppose the starting/shutting times are not that relevant in this case...
293 • Re #290 (by roadie on 2007-07-01 17:42:51 GMT from Canada)
Landor,
"The underlying currents in that forum are definitely powerful."
Most definitely, one member in particular seems to take great delight in hurling insults.
"I have noticed though, the majority who have come here to post, and in quite an aggressive manner, have been the "other faction" so to speak."
I noticed the same, which is actually what led me to look around there. The "radicals" of any group seem to seek out a public venue.
"I've tried to explain that this is more of a underlying problem that they need to look at deeply, to no avail."
Personally, I think it's gone (been allowed to go) too far. It would take a rather nasty "housecleaning" to restore order.
Actually, I grabbed Puppy 2.16 while I was there and did a "frugal" install. While it's still not what I'm looking for (is anything?) I am impressed with the speed and the thought that went into it. My one complaint so far (and it's a personal, petty complaint) is that the desktop is cluttered. I'd almost rather see that damn seagull.
No, really, I'm kidding, don't bring the damn seagull back.
I think I might try a remaster after I've "fixed" it to what I like. (gotta check that BLOODY licence)
roadie
294 • Fun. (by glenn on 2007-07-01 20:16:09 GMT from Canada)
Look at all the fun people had all week whacking away at articles ,distros, languages, and each other. Wish I had the time to get in on it .
If I ever get to France I'd like to look up dbrion and go with him to one of his cafes for a few wines etc. I like his posts
glenn
295 • @293 Puppy look-and-feel (by WhoDo on 2007-07-01 22:17:31 GMT from Australia)
roadie wrote: "Actually, I grabbed Puppy 2.16 while I was there and did a "frugal" install. While it's still not what I'm looking for (is anything?) I am impressed with the speed and the thought that went into it. My one complaint so far (and it's a personal, petty complaint) is that the desktop is cluttered. I'd almost rather see that damn seagull."
You could download EZpup from http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19113
That would give you a whole heap of look-and-feel options to suit almost any taste.
296 • arguments vs coding - who are you? (by Bill Savoie on 2007-07-02 00:00:22 GMT from United States)
Many of the posts of roadie, and others is a back and forth argument. This is only because rodie is not a coder. He has nothing better to do, nothing better to offer. If all of linux was only this, we would not have the software we type on. We argue perfection of others because we have nothing within us.
May we wake up to our own inner feelings, and know that hate and opposition can be avoided. We all need to chop wood and carry water, and for Linux that translates to code. So go and code, code, and more code.. With love and code to all.. May the new weekly prevent all but those who argue - see this post..
297 • Canadians... (by A. Wong on 2007-07-02 00:32:24 GMT from Canada)
Happy Canada Day! I'm going to try to install Dreamlinux along with Mint and tri-boot (dual boot plus one, is there a real word for it?) with Windoze XP; despite reading about all the DL install issues, some have got it to work. If I screw up everything, serves me right!
Cheers, it's all Linux!
298 • 296 (by glenn on 2007-07-02 01:02:59 GMT from Canada)
Hi Bill.
I've been in software since way back and been thru it all, still going thru it actually so I know what you mean. I just wish I had the time to get in on it also. I distro hop, use puppy and have installed it on other peoples machines. I also use slackware and ubuntu for servers, etc. My main bread & butter is mainframes tho and that keeps me tied up a lot. Healthy and sometimes spicy arguments are good for the cycle. Wish I could get in on it more.
Happy 4th of July coming up.
glenn
Number of Comments: 298
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Random Distribution | 
ELX Linux
Project ELX was started in February 2000 in Hyderabad, India. ELX Linux was a product of Everyone's Linux Pvt. Ltd (formerly known as 3T Solutions Pvt Ltd), a highly progressive organisation of young, dynamic and hardworking professionals yearning for perfection. It started with only 15 developers and today a brilliant team of over 25 Linux professionals have been working for ELX. ELX Linux was a fully featured Desktop Operating System with user friendliness as its basic feature. The easy-to-use desktop does not demand any learning curve for a typical Windows user and was very easy to use for a novice in computers. ELX comes with a vast variety of applications starting from word processors compatible with MS Word, other productivity applications like spreadsheets, presentation tools, and also CD burning applications.
Status: Discontinued
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
