DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 210, 11 July 2007 |
Welcome to this year's 28th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The all-new Slackware Linux 12.0 should have been the major story of the week, but it was the release of Elive 1.0 that stole some of Slackware's thunder; we will take a quick look at the Enlightenment-powered desktop distribution, link to an interesting interview with the project's founder, and explain why DistroWatch provides direct download links to the Elive CD images. In other news, Fedora's Max Spevack talks about the future and vision of the popular distribution, Kubuntu's Jonathan Ridell explains why KDE 4 will not be the default desktop in Gutsy Gibbon, and Mandriva's Adam Williamson introduces NEPOMUK, a new social semantic desktop technology for KDE. All this and more in this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Happy reading!
Content:
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Featured Story |
First look at Elive 1.0 (by Susan Linton)
Elive has reach its first major milestone with its release of version 1.0. I've tested several versions of Elive over the last two years (or so), publishing my findings a few times. I haven't published a report on Elive since 0.5 and things have continued to improve. I've been testing Elive 1.0 for several days and certainly agree that this release is worthy of the full first release status.
Elive is built from Debian and features the Enlightenment desktop system. Being one of the first distributions to include E17, Elive's implementation is surely showing all the dedication of the team and the refinement gone into the unique look and feel. Elive is engineered with older computers in mind, giving those machines not only extended life but extended life with the all important eye candy. In a landscape of cookie cutter distros, every aspect of Elive is distinctive. They buck the trends and follow their own vision to unparalleled results. Elive is for the user who wishes to be different. Uninitiated folks looking over the shoulder of the Elive user is bound to wonder what in the world is that operating system and probably wish they had it on their machines.
The live CD
Elive is delivered as an installable 700 MB live CD. The different look appears at the boot screen. It matches the default theme rather well and features several boot options. "Default", "acpi_disabled", "failsafe", "16_Bit", "No graphical", "qemu", or "Boot from Harddisk" are among the choices. The silent boot is an exact match for the desktop wallpaper with a wait message displayed in the center and an occasional progress bar appearing under. During boot I was asked about which X server driver and screen resolution to use and NVIDIA with 3D acceleration was two of the choices (old and new). These were not actually available causing the boot process to stop. Next boot I chose "nv."
Soon one is dropped into an all new log-in screen, also dressed-up with impressive animations. The login cube drops in from the top of the screen, the desktop choice bar drops in and moves to the left, a time/date bar drops in and finds its place towards the left, and the shutdown button drops in, moves left, moves down, then moves right. It finally comes to rest in the bottom right corner. Hovering over the shutdown button causes a reboot button to appear at the far right and it moves to the left, stops, and moves back to overlap the shutdown button. Whether this is the work of the Enlightenment team or the Elive developers is unknown and, honestly, unimportant to me and probably other end users, but this is the only distro I've seen with anything like it.
The default theme desktop is somewhat familiar, we've seen it before. That wonderful bluish-gray land/skyscape background animated with twinkling stars is still present. There's a discreet translucent pager at the top right of the screen and a panel with quick launchers at the middle-bottom. Over at the bottom right are a temperature gauge and battery monitor. The panel is a work of art as well. Hovering over the application launchers causes the icons to pulse or grow slightly in size then returning to normal while a blue highlighting bar appears over the chosen icon. The menu has a speed-blur effect as one hovers over the entries. Many of the theme's highlights have a golden-brassy plate background. The default theme is nice, but the Night theme is even better.
Elive 1.0 Night theme (full image size: 705kB, screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
Forming a connection with Elive and the Elive default theme, the updated Night theme wallpaper has a siloquette of the upper left quadrant of the Elive sun logo in slightly lighter color than the dark blue sea/skyscape background. Again the background is decorated with twinkling stars, but our desktop hover highlighter is a golden orb. Seems backwards to me. They should put the golden orb in default theme and put the blue bar in Night. The same basic elements are present: pager in upper corner, panel at the bottom, and applets in the bottom right corner. The menu here also has some special effects as one hovers their mouse cursor over the entries. The entries change from gray to Aqua-blue with a moving background blur of color and a 3D highlight.
One can enter edit mode at the desktop to move, rearrange, or resize each desktop element. One can even add or subtract "desktop modules" as desired. In the menu one finds the Enlightenment Configuration entry that opens a configuration panel. In there are many configuration choices. One can change the background, theme, icons, the monitor resolution, and desktop behavior. The most interesting configuration is the Extensions > Module Settings. It opens a window containing the various desktop modules. I like to add a CPUfreq monitor and clock. Using 'edit mode' I move and resize them to fit in nicely with the default applets.
Elive 1.0 Enlightenment configuration (full image size: 665kB, screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
In those hard-to-describe menus, one finds handy dandy applications for most computer tasks. Browsers include IceWeasel and eLinks; The Gimp, GQview, GTKam, Elicit, and Xsane round out the graphics; and multimedia applications include Cinelerra, MPlayer, XMMS, Rezound, Hydrogen, and Kino. The office applications are AbiWord, Gnumeric, a calculator, timer, PDF viewer, and a notepad. Thunderbird, Gaim, aMSN, XChat, and Transmission are some other communication applications. There are a few game emulators as well. Under the hood we find Linux 2.6.18, X.Org 7.1.1, and GCC 4.1.2. I had trouble with Cplay and Oxine not opening and the menu contains an orphan entry for OpenOffice.org. Other applications functioned very well. MPlayer included support for all the common video formats and IceWeasel came with all the expected plugins.
Also found in the menu is Elive's crowning jewel - the Elive Control Panel. Having the most unique appearance in the Linux world, this control panel does as most control panels do. From it one can configure their network, manage users, customize their desktops, configure hardware, and lots more. I found most modules worked really well for me including a networked printer and my inoperative sound. But it couldn't configure my wireless network, even after loading the Windows driver through NDISwrapper. It only supports WEP, and I didn't have much luck with that. Wired and natively supported wireless cards would probably work fine.
However, I could get wireless with WPA to work at the command line. Interestingly, WEP still wouldn't work at the command line. I wasn't able to ascertain why.
Another small issue was that my sound was not working upon boot or install of Elive. It appeared the correct modules were loaded, but apparently some support was missing. Using the Elive Control Panel audio configuration and selecting my soundcard from a choice list, I was prompted to confirm the installation of some additional software. After that my sound worked wonderfully.
The Installed System
I wasn't able to locate a menu entry for the installation of Elive to a hard disk. Searching around the binary directories I found
/usr/sbin/eliveinstaller
This graphical installer walks the user through the common steps needed to achieve an install: partitioning with GParted or cfdisk, target partition, file system preference, root password and user account, and bootloader options. Installation was very quick and I could even pass the time playing some offered light games such as Klondike or FreeCell.
Booting the new system on my HP Pavilion dv6105us includes the steps of picking a default theme, X.Org drivers, and screen resolution again. At first boot a window opens on the desktop stating that "fine tuning" is required. Clicking "OK" starts the process of reconfiguring packages using debconf. The output shows it is setting locales, background deamons, and updating the package database. My input was asked for time zone settings.
All live CD customizations are lost upon install, so at that point I configured my network by CLI, sound through Elive Control Panel, and set my desktop applets through the Enlightenment Configuration. Core temperature is monitored as well as battery status, but I had to once again resort to the command line to utlize CPU scaling. This involved loading the module for my processor and the CPUfreq modules I like to use. These are found at
/lib/modules/2.6.18-elive/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq
and
/lib/modules/2.6.18-elive/kernel/drivers/cpufreq
At that point I issued the command
cpufreq-set -g ondemand
and my CPU wound down to 800 MHz. There is a GUI applet available through the Enlightenment Configuration > Extensions for monitoring that. Again, there isn't a GUI option for suspend or hibernate and I wasn't successful at the command line.
Being based on Debian and utilizing .deb packages, Elive logically includes Synaptic for its package management with software repositories pre-configured. It is found through the Elive Control Panel > System Administration. As is commonly experienced with Synaptic and high-quality distributions, it performed its tasks without issue.
Removable media is handled "automagically" and the Thunar file manager opens upon insertion. Right-clicking the media in the left-pane opens a menu of action options.
Conclusion
I love Elive and version 1.0 is a wonderful first full release. Just about everything works and works well. The system and applications are stable and fast performing and Elive looks exceptionally beautiful doing it. Elive comes with a well-rounded set of applications that form a fairly complete operating system. There are some great tools available for configuration of user and system options as well as package management. It stirs excitement with its beautiful look and animations. For the desktop I'd say it's complete and ready to go even for the Linux newcomer.
For the laptop user, Elive requires a bit of command line set-up and tinkering to get wireless and CPU scaling to function. WEP doesn't seem to work at all, at least in my case. Even with a moderate level of experience, I still had issues with suspend and hibernate. Elive probably wouldn't be the best choice for newcomers seeking a mobile solution.
Unusual for today's distributions, my sound didn't work out of the box and the graphics needed user input to be configured. The inclusion of an NVIDIA option in the graphics setup is a minor annoyance if chosen as the system just stops and the computer requires a hard reset. All in all, Elive is a very exciting system, but it still has a few areas in which it could improve.
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Miscellaneous News |
Elive and Fedora interviews, Kubuntu and KDE 4, Mandriva's semantic desktop, Gentoo 2007.0 review
Contrary to what some readers might think, Elive is not just a Debian-based live CD with Enlightenment as the default desktop. According to this interview with Samuel "Thanatermesis" F. Baggen, the founder of this interesting project, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye: "Elive started as a live CD, but actually it's more a complete system than a live CD. This is why I have moved from Knoppix to Morphix, and after that to DSS (Debased Scripts Set). Elive has a very good installer with nice internal features, and its own repository with more than 400 packages." And of course, there is also the Elpanel: "I wrote Elpanel as a central control center for managing the entire Elive system. Elpanel has menus and icons to control the look and feel of the system, do some user configurations and general administration. The icons launch a separate but integrated Elpanel menu, with animations that tempt the eye. I have written many tools for Elive, some are visible applications, but most are shell scripts for auto-configuration." Read the full interview here.
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Speaking about interviews, Fedora's Max Spevack has spoken to Technetra about the future of the distribution. One of the questions that came up was the reason for the relatively low rank (currently 4th) of Fedora on DistroWatch's page hit statistics. Max Spevack: "You know, I don't like the competition to see who has loudest fanboys. I have wanted to make Fedora cool, to make it work and make it good. This aligns with Red Hat's larger marketing belief that we're just going to make this software and eventually people will notice it's the best out there on merit. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about where we rank on DistroWatch or whatever. We collect and publish the statistics of how many IP addresses come back to yum looking for updates. We have a page that talks about those results and how reliable they are and where potential fudge factors are. I don't see any other big distribution trying to be that transparent." The full interview is available here.
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The much-anticipated KDE 4 is scheduled for release on October 23rd, 2007, so it isn't unreasonable to expect most KDE-oriented distributions to include the new version with their forthcoming releases later this year. And indeed, openSUSE, Mandriva, Kubuntu and Fedora have all hinted that their next releases will come with KDE 4. At the same time, however, they also seem to lack confidence in making what could be a relatively unstable and poorly tested code the default desktop. As explained by Jonathan Riddell during the recent aKademy meeting, Kubuntu won't include KDE 4 as the default desktop for at least two releases: "This is due to the fact that the next version of Kubuntu (7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon'), will not include KDE 4 because it will not be ready by then. The version after Gutsy would be totally perfect for KDE 4, however, this version will be a Long Term Support (LTS) version. These specific Ubuntu versions are released every 18 - 24 months and aim at long term stability. Therefore they only include packages which are already in a pretty stable and reliable state. And Jonathan Riddell mentioned that he does not believe that KDE 4 will reach that state." Read the rest of the article here.
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Still on the subject of KDE 4, Mandriva has sent out a press release announcing Mandriva's intention to integrate KDE 4 with NEPOMUK, a new semantic desktop technology: "What this means for KDE 4 is really a desktop-wide metadata layer: you can add metadata, like a description and a rating, to any object (objects can be files, of course, but also many other things), and the whole desktop is able to take advantage of it in whichever way is most appropriate for what you're doing at the time. It's a great technology and we're happy to be playing a leading role in developing it." If it all sounds a bit abstract and not quite clear what "semantic desktop" will mean for the end user, here are some resources that might help explain the term: Adam Williamson's blog post, the full press release with a subsequent discussion at Linux Weekly News, and a video illustrating NEPOMUK's capabilities.
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DistroWatch is sometimes accused of focusing solely on negative news about Gentoo Linux, so here is something to balance that perception. In a full-page review of Gentoo Linux 2007.0 in the August 2007 issue of Linux Format, the reviewer, Neil Bothwick, was so impressed with the new release that he awarded the distribution 9 points out of ten. From the article: "The upside is that you have great control over what is installed. It is this control, rather than the ability to use insane compiler flags govern which features are enabled in the software you install, and by disabling features you don't need, you can save space, reduce dependencies, shorten program load times and even lessen your susceptibility to security holes. Building your own kernel is also made easy by the 'genkernel' tool used by the installer, or you can use this to configure your kernel manually. Portage contains almost 12,000 packages, so you won't be short of software." The author concludes: "If you want more control over your system and are prepared to make the extra effort, Gentoo could be just what you are looking for."
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Released Last Week |
GeeXboX 1.1
A new version of GeeXboX, a Linux-based movie player, has been released: "GeeXboX 1.1. Although development never stopped, more than a year has passed without any new official GeeXboX release. This new one is a really good candidate for your HTPC multimedia distribution choice. It comes with an improved hardware support, providing dozens of new drivers (a lot of new WiFi controllers, DVB card chipsets and new remote controls). It also comes with a massively upgraded and more stable MPlayer, which features native decoding of various audio and video formats that used to be available through non-free Win32 DLLs only. Also, GeeXboX now has some decoding speed improvements and the OSD menu has been completely rewritten to provide a lot of new attractive features." More details in the release announcement.
Slackware Linux 12.0
Slackware Linux 12.0 has been released: "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.0! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.0 has many improvements over our last release and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user. Here are some of the advanced features of Slackware 12.0: runs the 2.6.21.5 version of the Linux kernel; system binaries are linked with the GNU C Library, version 2.5; X11 7.2.0; Apache 2.2.4 web server with Dynamic Shared Object support, SSL, and PHP 5.2.3; the udev dynamic device management system; updated versions of the Slackware package management tools...." Read the rest of the release announcement for full details.
Damn Small Linux 3.4
Robert Shingledecker has announced the release of Damn Small Linux 3.4: "Damn Small Linux 3.4 is now released. Final change log: updated MurgaLua to v0.4.1; added libXft.so.2; added acpid, Use boot option 'acpid'; added bcrypt, dropped des; improved emelfm for better CLI support; fixed user umount Debian Woody bug; updated webdata to use bcrypt; updated file backup and restore to use bcrypt via 'protect' boot option; new image has been added: dsl-3.4-initrd.iso. I took a little side trip while working on 4.0 to make a much asked-for version of DSL. The initrd.iso version has the KNOPPIX image packed in the initial ramdisk. This means it is very easy to setup a PXE DSL server. It also means the entire system always loads into RAM. You will need 128MB RAM for this edition." Here is the full release announcement.
Granular Linux 0.90
Anurag Bhandari has announced the release of Granular Linux 0.90, a user-friendly desktop distribution based on PCLinuxOS: "I am pleased to announce the availability of Granular 0.90. Granular is a Linux operating system that is easy to use, user-friendly and filled with fun. For newbies in the world of Linux who want to explore and play around with Linux, Granular is a must try. At the same time, it is well suited to the regular Linux users. Through the various applications included in Granular, you can surf the Internet, write articles, make presentations, chat with friends, listen to music, play games, manage images and much more. Another notable feature of Granular is that it unites the KDE and the Xfce desktop environments onto one CD." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information.
Elive 1.0
Samuel Baggen has announced the release of Elive 1.0, a Debian-based distribution featuring the Enlightenment desktop: "After a long wait, the first official stable version of Elive, 1.0, has finally been released. This version is ready for the end users and not just hard core testers. It is a more intuitive, efficient and easy-to-use system. It has better integration of the file manager and the mime types, a nice kernel especially for multimedia and big process loads, a light-weight foot print, much better compatibility with Windows system, more hardware supported, better graphical recognition, and many more things that you can find in the complete changelog." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information.
Rocks Cluster Distribution 4.3
Version 4.3 of Rocks Cluster, a specialist distribution based on CentOS, has been released: "Rocks v4.3 is released for i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures. New features: Rocks command line - initial release of the Rocks command line which facilitates non-SQL administrative access to the database; PXE First - hosts can now be configured in BIOS with a boot order of CD, PXE, hard disk. Enhancements: based on CentOS 4.5 and all updates as of July 4, 2007; Anaconda installer updated to 10.1.1.63; performance improvement when building torrent files for the Avalanche Installer; database indirects, more flexibility with Rocks variables; Globus updated to gt4.0.4 with web services...." See the release announcement for a full list of changes and enhancements.
Zenwalk Live 4.6
Michael Verret has announced the release of Zenwalk Live 4.6, the live CD edition of Zenwalk Linux: "We are pleased to announce the release of Zenwalk Live 4.6. This version is based on Zenwalk Linux 4.6 and compliments the security, speed and stability you've come to expect from Zenwalk. In addition to the selection of software and tools provided by the standard edition of Zenwalk, included in this Live edition are the GParted graphical hard disc partitioning software, system recovery tools and much more. On the desktop, Xfce 4.4.1 is provided complete with notification support to let systems like udev notify the user about auto-mounted devices such as USB keys, DVD, etc. The Thunar file manager now handles video thumbnails and many new panel plugins have been added or updated." Here is the complete release announcement.
Zenwalk Live 4.6 - a Slackware-based live CD featuring the latest Xfce (full image size: 755kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Ultima Linux 8.2
Martin Ultima has announced the release of Ultima Linux 8.2, a desktop Linux distribution based on Slackware: "After over a year and a half of intensive development, the Ultima Linux developers are pleased to announce the Ultima Linux 8.2 (codename 'Godot') release. This is our first major new version since the 8.1 Beta release last year, and the first stable release since all the way back in January 2006. Among other features included in this release: first stable release with full AMD64 support; improved live CD with integrated, easy-to-use live CD installer; Linux kernel 2.6.21.3 with built-in SMP support; X.Org R7.2 (pre-release) with ATI/NVIDIA proprietary drivers; KDE 3.5.7 desktop with full auto-mounting (HAL/D-Bus); beautifully redesigned default desktop; play MP3s, CDs, DVDs, and more right 'out of the box'...." Read the complete release announcement for more information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Parsix GNU/Linux 0.90r1
Alan Baghumian has published the release schedule of the upcoming first revision of Parsix GNU/Linux 0.90. Expected on August 3rd, Parsix 0.90r1 will be the distribution's first release with native support for AMD64 processors.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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DistroWatch.com News |
"Shame on you, DistroWatch!"
The above is the title of a recent blog post by Thom Holwerda from OSNews. The author found it "uncourteous" and "ungentlemanly" that DistroWatch had published a direct download link to Elive 1.0 CD images in its news item last week - that's despite the fact that the developers of the distribution did not provide any direct download links on their download page. He also asserted that "this is a very lame thing to do" and that he "will be sure to not link to any DistroWatch story until this situation is resolved."
First, a couple of corrections from the post:
- Thanatermesis has never asked DistroWatch not to post direct download links to the stable Elive CD images. I am in regular contact with the Elive developer and I've just checked all his recent emails (just to be sure), but I couldn't find a single one (let alone "numerous requests") where he would ask me not to post these links. So either he is lying to Mr Holwerda, or Mr Holwerda is lying in his blog. Also, I have explained Thanatermesis why his compulsory donations scheme was a bad idea, but he dismissed it on the basis that there was always a slow server for those who can't or don't want to donate. Of course, now the slow server is gone, but the compulsory donation system is still in place...
- In six years of its existence, DistroWatch has never hosted any ISO images of any distribution, including Elive. Again, somebody is making things up.
Is it disrespectful of DistroWatch to provide direct download links to the Elive CD images? Yes, absolutely - and I agree with Mr Holwerda on this point. However, I don't believe it is any more disrespectful than twisting the meaning of the word "donation" or providing non-existent links to a slow download server which, oops, is down and has been down for weeks. I have no problem with the Elive developer wanting to make money out of his hard work, but then he should be straightforward about it and go commercial, instead of playing these ridiculous "you must donate" and "feel guilty if I starve to death" games. Or he should come up with a better way of distributing his work than "hiding" it in randomly named "dot" directories on public FTP servers. That's my view anyway, but of course you are welcome to disagree with it.
Finally -- since Mr Holwerda portrays DistroWatch as a backstabbing organisation with little respect for other people's work while picturing OSNews as a moral-high-ground holding bastion of purity and innocence, here is a question to the author of the blog post: DistroWatch has donated close to US$14,000 to open source software projects over the last three years. How about OSNews, Mr Holwerda?
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Holiday notice
It's that time of the year when your DistroWatch maintainer likes to take a break from his work to enjoy some white sandy beaches and picture postcard sunsets in the South Pacific. This means that, starting from this Wednesday, July 11th, until Saturday, July 29th, DistroWatch will be in the capable and experienced hands of Dr W T Zhu and Susan Linton. Enjoy the ride!
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 16 July 2007. Until then,
Ladislav Bodnar
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Elive downloads (by A. Wong on 2007-07-09 09:13:39 GMT from Canada)
New Linux users may not be aware of all the torrents available for Elive. (Should these be removed as well?) Being able to try out a distro can only help its growth if it is well made. Most projects improve through the input of their communities. It's difficult to maintain a Linux community if there is no current iso to try. Donations can be submitted to support projects. If the author(s) chose the pay only route, then Elive should go commerical. Also, the Elive forum needs help with its maintenance.
That being said, I believe Elive has great potential and I applaud the work that has been done.
2 • Elive (by Mika on 2007-07-09 09:14:27 GMT from Italy)
Elive..... never use it anymore!
3 • Elive (by parkash on 2007-07-09 09:15:16 GMT from Germany)
Well, I don't see why should Distrowatch stop posting direct links to Elive images. As long as the developer doesn't complain...
If I were to donate something in order to download an image, I would likely give away copies of it to my friends... There's nothing specified over not doing that also. And, while it's not the same situation, it's a similar one.
Anyway... I wish you a good time at the beach Ladislav!
PS. I'M THE FIRST!! WEEEE, Again!! :D
4 • Nice Peview of Elive (by Moloch on 2007-07-09 09:17:02 GMT from France)
Thank you for the Elive preview. I used toplay with a very earlier version a couple of years ago and found it too "beta" for my laptop.
I'll try this one (well, as soon as the slow server is back online for the download)
Keep up the good work (and enjoy your holidays ) !
5 • elive and other distro links (by NK on 2007-07-09 09:40:21 GMT from United States)
I agree with your sentiment about elive. However, I wish that bittorent links would be provided so as to not hammer the servers of the various projects. I know that there might be a little logistics, but not much, and would be better for everybody.
6 • Elive (by CombatWombat on 2007-07-09 09:43:00 GMT from New Zealand)
I have watched the releases with interest, trying a few of them, and trying to build e17 on Debian myself. The eLive system is a lot of fun. But functional and productive? Not for me. Bling is good, but trying so hard to find things that should be more easily accessed, and configurable, make e17 a toy imho. So why all of this "donate or I'll die" business? (I noticed it too, and was disappointed.) Sell advertising, or premium CD addons (as I see they are now doing). That way you get those who want it typical distro-hopper style, and those who want an off-the shelf style. :-)
7 • OSNews vs DistroWatch (by James Laslavic on 2007-07-09 09:49:02 GMT from United States)
Looks like Mr. Holwerda bit off a little more than he could chew this time. If a distro is going to claim to be free and open, then they shouldn't be terribly surprised when they're held to it. Having a tiered download system doesn't bother me, but when your free download server is down for weeks (or days, when you've got as many contacts as Elive) and you decide to go ahead with making a new release anyway, there's something slightly icky going on. Seems to me like DistroWatch was simply assuming that Elive meant what it said about being freely downloaded and was holding them to it.
And really, Mr. Howerda can resort to the argument about using up bandwidth if he feels the need to, but for a free and open project, using that bandwidth for downloads is exactly how it should be used. If Elive has not lost site of their goal of being freely distributed and if OSNews has not lost site of its goal of seeing that free and open distros grow and get downloaded as much as poss ible, they should both be thanking DistroWatch for getting Elive attention and for making it nice and easy for everybody to grab a copy.
If they did in fact email Mr. Bodnar and ask him to not post direct download links, then perhaps Mr. Bodnar should not have done that. Only the Elive team and the DistroWatch team will know if those emails ever were sent and received. I personally hope that those emails were never sent and that Mr. Howerda was mistaken, because the alternative would mean that Elive knowingly issued a release when their free download server was down and expected DistroWatch to just shepherd people over to their pay-per-download server while having DistroWatch list them as free and open. That would be very, very disappointing on the part of Elive, and would also reflect rather poorly either on Mr. Holwerda's or OSNews's journalistic credibility. A little analysis would've probably been a good idea before running the smear against DistroWatch.
Bu t hopefully, this was all just a simple technical error on Elive's part and they're willing to say "Thank you" to Mr. Bodnar for providing a working download link during a new release's debut, and hopefully Mr. Holwerda and OSNews will say "Sorry" and review their methods so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
8 • Elive (by Kumarmu on 2007-07-09 10:05:02 GMT from India)
I am in complete agreement with Ladislav Bodnar about the `arm-twisting' and sentimental way of forcing a donation by Elive . The developer should be more forthright and demand a minimum for his efforts and say `no free lunch' in stead of this silly gimmicks.
9 • Have a nice holiday, Ladislav (by linbetwin on 2007-07-09 10:05:46 GMT from Romania)
And look out for penguins in the South Pacific!
10 • Elive download URL (by Marcel on 2007-07-09 10:22:36 GMT from Netherlands)
I saw this donation issue a few weeks ago and I solved the problem by simply not downloading this distro, but selecting a free alternative.
Be commercial and ask (a bit of) money for the download, or be free. Don't treat potential elive-users like they are retarted.
11 • Elive et al (by Sokraates on 2007-07-09 10:24:31 GMT from Austria)
Good reading, as usual.
Regarding elive, I too think that the idea of factually only offering paid downloads and calling the payment "donation" is highly debatable, to say the least.
At the same time I think that Distrowatch should remain neutral towards any distribution, even if you, Ladislav, may have very strong feelings towards or against certain distros. So while I consider it perfectly acceptable to publish an opinion piece on Distrowatch, criticizing elive's business model, or maybe even not offering a download link to it due to the hidden commercial nature of the only working link, I'm against the current procedure.
Even if elive's author has never explicitly stated, that he does not want direct links to the payed server, this intention can easily be derived from the fact, that the server should only be accessible for a fee.
If the community punishes this behavior by offering direct download links, then so be it. But Distrowatch should refrain from promoting such actions.
12 • Elive 1.0 (by Soggy on 2007-07-09 09:47:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
Like Susan, I found this distro immensely interesting, powerful and amusing. It belies the vast effort that must have been expended. For me, everything worked during use as liveCD, but the installed version (yes, the icon is there, Sue, last one on the right) was a different matter. Added to which I am highly unskilled in the CLI-department - useless would be a better description, although I was able to set up my network from the relevant directory entry (didn't work for the rest of the HW, though). The Control Panel did not permit me to access the settings applets as did the live version, despite accepting my P/W - on slower machines, one sees the panellette open and close almost simultaneously. Worst of all, my question about this on the Forum remains unread and unanswered!!
13 • Elive (by Marcel on 2007-07-09 10:25:59 GMT from Netherlands)
I saw the forced 'donation' when I tried to download Elive a few weeks ago. I simply solved this issue by downloading a different distro.
Be free or be a commercial distro. Do not treat your potential users as if they are retarted.
Have a nice holiday, Ladislav!
14 • pppoeconf and incorrect DNS entries (by Craig Sanderson on 2007-07-09 10:26:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
An issue that I’ve been facing with many distros is PPPoE connectivity to the internet. Let me explain.
At home I connect to the Internet through a 4 port ADSL modem. 1 port connects to my IPTV set top box and another port directly to my PC.
Under Windows I can use the built in connector or third party RASPPPOE if I want. The issue is that the modem is a modem and not a router, however the modem does issue an IP address of its own 192.168.2.1 this in its self is not a problem, what is a problem is that is also issues a DNS entry of the same private IP address. Under windows this is ignored by the PPPoE software. Under Linux this address is often placed in the /etc/resolv.conf file and overrides entries that may be issued by the PPPoE access controller. Therefore I can make a connection, but resolving a hostname is not possible because Linux thinks my DNS server is 192.168.2.1. I’ve tried changing eth0 to a static IP and not DHCP, however for some reason resolv.conf keeps being updated with the 192.168.2.1 address. This isn’t much use to me.
Distros that work as expected are PCLinuxOS 2007 and Fedora core 7. Any others using pppoeconf tend to fail.
Any bright ideas from the community would be appreciated.
Regards, Craig.
15 • Elive? (by Syamsul Anuar on 2007-07-09 10:34:31 GMT from Malaysia)
I just wanna say that elive should just go commercial if its does not want any users to download their ISO's freely. I would love to try the enlightenment desktop environment but then again, I'm broke - no money to pay elive. Then I found other better and more quality distro to play with and best of all - free to download. Elive is now version 1.0, but the attitude is sooooo 0.1. Think abt it guys... what makes Linux ... well Linux.
16 • Elive downloads (by ShakaZ on 2007-07-09 10:48:20 GMT from Belgium)
Yeah i think it's pretty lame too from the Elive developer to have that stance on donations. Almost feel ashamed one of the few distros from my country has this politic. He would be much better of being more open, at least providing links to torrents & build a larger community. He could still make an additional commercial version or provide paid support if he really can't live without it.
17 • What would be Elive commercial value? (by dbrion on 2007-07-09 10:54:21 GMT from France)
There are hundred of Linuxen, so I thought of two elive's specificities: * 3D and graphical effects: this is very funny, but some friends of mine installed 3D effects with more stable Linuxen, the first month they told me it was GREAT and I was an idiot not to try them; but now, as I discuss by phone about a given soft and both of us google-search, the innovative bright 3D effect leads to ... strange oaths... These graphical effects are good to play with, but tiring for pple over 40 yrs (who have money to rightly spend). * language specificities: from the beginning, Arabic (àraby) is written the wrong (European) way. It somtimes happens that a typo crawls into a book/newspaper, but _never_ at the very first word. The first versions of Elive, I could download thanks to Ladislas, were interesting enough to make me think about donating. Now, I have made a decision: there remains hundreds of interesting Linuxen...and Windows XP, who deserves its price..
18 • Shame?? (by John Frey on 2007-07-09 11:00:45 GMT from Canada)
So I have to ask, did you post a direct link out of disrespect for Elive? It almost sounds that way in your rebuttal. Did you deliberately search out a link because the web site only offered a paid link or was there some other reason?
That said, the blog post is very inflammatory and the courteous thing to do would have been to check his facts by communicating with you. Sounds like the rumour mill was working at capacity this week. Then again, maybe an article with only 2 major errors of fact is not too bad, considering. Even professional journalists seem to have difficulty meeting that limit.
19 • US Dollar is big money. (by Michael Shee Choon Beng on 2007-07-09 11:13:35 GMT from Malaysia)
DistroWatch has donated US xxxxx.xx to open source projects. It's not easy for a company to depart with that amount of US Dollar made through hard work! Especially when there's no rebate!
20 • Fedora and DW ranking (by KimTjik on 2007-07-09 11:14:31 GMT from Sweden)
I totally understand Max Spevack comment about DW ranking. I even believe users of distros like Fedora and Slackware have a different behaviour when visiting DW, in the sense that they don't have the same need for confirmation about how great a choice they made. Hence no need to click on Fedora or Slackware every they visit.
I've at least noticed this with myself. I know what to expect from Slackware and when some release is out I might use the link in DW instead of my browser bookmark; one hit on the ranking... but that's about it. The same could be said about Fedora and maybe even more since it even less associated with any single individual; for me it's a very good working-horse back on track which still feeds the Linux community with new ideas and solutions; so once more it's one hit on the ranking... but that's about it until next release.
Several other distros has a stronger competitive community feeling: "how are we doing today?... last 3 months?... what are they saying about us?". Nothing wrong about that, nevertheless it's reflected in how DW's ranking is shaped. The only possible flaw that I see in this is that it eventually also affect the "major distribution" section, which makes it difficult for new users to distinguish the "unique forefathers" of Linux branches.
So far there's no reason to worry. Even Slackware is holding on to a very good position despite its more modest approach with less neon and fanfare and so does Fedora and Debian. As long as this more or less fair ranking is maintained, the actual ranking position is of more interest or importance for newer distros or ones driven by a smaller developer base...
... at least that's how I view it.
21 • Elive (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-07-09 11:31:54 GMT from Italy)
It is not a distro I would choose as my production OS. A dist-upgrade to Debian testing broke a lot of things. True, they said so, but it is not what normally happen to Debian based distros.
22 • Happy Holidays (by ceti on 2007-07-09 11:32:39 GMT from Brazil)
Happy holidays, Ladislav. Why don't you come to Brazil? We're going to run the Panamerican Games in Rio de Janeiro in a few days. Rio de Janeiro... beaches, sun, girls, Panamerican games... sounds good, he?
23 • Elive, Fedora, Slackware... (by Caraibes on 2007-07-09 11:42:32 GMT from Dominican Republic)
About Elive, I downloaded it as a torrent, and played with it live... I don't see what the big deal is all about, it's just not my cup of tea... I agree that the dev should go commercial, things have to be clear... Begging on his website isn't a clean-cut attitude...
About Sam Spevack's comment, he's 100% right : Not a lot of fanboys for Fedora, as the distro is a mature one. It is simply the best one out there !
Slackware 12... I am having a hard time downloading the DVD... But I shall dual-boot it with Fedora, as a challenge, as an exercise not to forget cli & the "real-thing" ;)
A word of thanks for SuperGrubDIsk, as it is a very useful tool !!!
Now, KDE4 ? I don't really care, I am a Gnome guy !!! Whenever I don't use Gnome, I use Fluxbox !!! But good luck to the KDE team, as innovations are always welcome !
24 • Elive 1.0 review (by Joey on 2007-07-09 11:46:55 GMT from United States)
That review's conclusions seemed strange to me, "I love Elive and version 1.0 is a wonderful first full release," and then, "WEP doesn't seem to work at all, at least in my case. Even with a moderate level of experience, I still had issues with suspend and hibernate. Elive probably wouldn't be the best choice for newcomers seeking a mobile solution.
Unusual for today's distributions, my sound didn't work out of the box and the graphics needed user input to be configured. The inclusion of an NVIDIA option in the graphics setup is a minor annoyance if chosen as the system just stops and the computer requires a hard reset."
..er, there is nothing "wonderful" about not being able to get sound, wifi and suspend to work on my laptop.
Yes, I agree that the Elive concept is "exciting," but this 1.0 should be .7 or whatever in my opinion.
Nice review, good writing, etc, but I respectfully disagree with your conclusions. :)
Joey
25 • PCLinux OS (by winsnomore on 2007-07-09 12:06:54 GMT from United States)
Once again, I was relieved and glad to see no planned releases from PCLinux OS.
I am wondering if the yahoo's who run Ubuntu/Suse/Fedora etc. think at all about the churn they are causing with the users. Multiple Alphas and Betas are being thrown around and I am sure that experienced and "serious" users are tired for this practice.
Is it because a distro's HPD goes up a bit when they release something .. anything?
I commend PCLinuxOS for not falling into this trap and having built a successful following with a simpler formula.
26 • DW Rankings (by Bryan on 2007-07-09 12:07:55 GMT from United States)
I agree that the DW rankings are only a guideline of interest, if they carry any significance at all. Statistics from repositories are certainly better guidelines of actual use. Although different distros' package management strategies may make these statistics not exactly comparable, the repository information reflects actual use (and persistent use) better.
However, if we went with repository information, I am sure we would find that Redmond's proprietary distro would beat out all of our F/OSS projects. Popularity certainly does not always equal highest quality nor does it equal the most fun. Thus, I am satisfied with DW's ranking system, since it is simply a quick abstraction of the awstats data. Only new readers should confuse the DW rankings as being authoritative use statistics. Trying to abstract information from repositories would be difficult, open to spin from different distro, and probably be difficult for smaller distros who use their own distinct package management systems.
27 • silly elive blog thing (by wegface on 2007-07-09 12:11:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
I just had to make my thoughts known to the author of that blog. His new reply does nothing to dig himself out of the hole. After such a shining review of elive, maybe the devs would reconsider there standpoint, and get these blog writers to shut up. :)
28 • Lies and Damn Lies (by Sally McFreddy on 2007-07-09 12:36:51 GMT from United States)
You know, I don't like the competition to see who has loudest fanboys.
Precisely; and that's clearly all the distrowatch rankings are.
One of the first things they teach you in Statistics 101 is that voluntary response samples are worse than useless. In this case it's worse still, since the fanboys get multiple votes.
There are lots of ways to get a more accurate idea of the true rankings, all of which would unfortunately involve considerably more time and effort. One of the easiest would be to look at each distributions website ranking.
29 • Direct links (by Clem on 2007-07-09 12:42:18 GMT from Sweden)
Shame on you Tom for ranting in public without trying to contact Ladislav :)
I find the whole story ridiculous. I'm in contact with Ladislav on a regular basis (every time there is a release, every time there is a newsletter..etc). He's not the kind of guy who doesn't answer his emails... Tom's attitude was indeed "shameful". What kind of person goes ranting in public before even trying to contact the other party? If you have a problem with distrowatch.com why not contact them before crying out loud that they don't "listen"?
Now, about direct download links... I'd like to bring up something which is somehow related to this story.
I would actually like distrowatch.com to point to http://www.linuxmint.com/download.html instead of posting a direct link to the ISO from one of our servers. The reasons are:
- Download Count: When a user downloads an ISO from a mirror, the mirror can put a script in place to count the number of downloads. If you direct-link to it we loose information on how many people downloaded the ISO.
- Load Balancing: A lot of people visit distrowatch and by posting a link to one of the ISO you put a lot of pressure on one particular mirror. If you linked to the download page instead, visitors would spread to different mirrors depending on their location/preference.
- Money: We advertise on linuxmint.com and this helps us make a bit of money without charging our users for anything. Our mirrors do the same and it's a win-win situation. They mirror us for free and they get money through the adverts they use. When you direct-link to an ISO you bring the user straight the file and money is lost by Linux Mint (because he doesn't see the download page) and the mirror (because he doesn't see the mirror page).
- Maintenance: Most of our mirrors are small. We have people donating their limited bandwith to help us mirror our releases. Sometimes these mirrors can only help for a few days and we need to remove them from the download page. By linking directly to the file you could potentially end up with a 404 error.
As you can see a link to our download page rather than the ISO would be better for us, for our mirrors, for people who are already downloading but also for distrowatch's visitors.
For these reasons I would prefer distrowatch to point to http://www.linuxmint.com/download.html . Of course if they don't I won't go blogging about it (not that I wouldn't want to.. I just don't have a blog :)).
Clem
30 • Re: 25 (by Simon on 2007-07-09 12:51:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Multiple Alphas and Betas are being thrown around and I am sure that experienced and "serious" users are tired for this practice."
Don't be silly :-) No one is forced to use alphas and betas, infact most people stick with one stable release until the next comes out and - at least with suse (and probably the others) - support for a stable distro continues for over a year since the next release. Suse only recently stopped support for the 9.x series, so a user can happily use a stable release for at least 18 months or so before upgrading.
I commend PCLinuxOS for various reasons, but not for this (actually, don't pclinuxos have public alphas/betas? If not I would see this as a weakness)
31 • Elive (by John M on 2007-07-09 12:57:03 GMT from United States)
Elive needs to understand requiring payment is not a donation it is a price for the product. Donations are voluntary. It also sounds like Tom Holwerda has an attitude problem. Maybe he needs a vacation also. Have great vacation.
32 • ELive (by MepisLiveLover on 2007-07-09 13:04:02 GMT from United States)
It doesn't work. It is basically broke from the git-go, unless one wishes to install it and fix all the problems that keep sound from working, wireless from working, Nvidia cards from working, ADSL from working, oh yeah, and there are a few other issues too. And when one does get it working, it turns out to be, IMHO anyway, a great big waste of time. Nothing even close to stunning or new and absolutely must have unique about it. Somebody once started a big flame war (here I think...) when he/she/they/it called PCLinuxOS "stupid". Compared to "ELive 1.0" PCLinuxOS is positively brilliant.
>"Elive is a very exciting system, but it still has a few areas in which it could improve."< It's could only be considered "exciting" if one finds a myriad of issues running and installing a distro as "exciting" Personally, I doubt E17 is going to make much more of a mark in the world of interfaces than it already has.... And Ms. Linton, that control panel you wrote so glowingly of....pretty big praise for something that offers little in the way of innovation and even less in the manner of usefulness. Not to be harsh, but have you read what you actually wrote about it? If you did, then perhaps you merely forgot to edit the lavish and undeserved praise out? But then again, to each his/her/their/its own...... Otherwise, as usual, a very good column.....and as always a good read before the weekly wait for judgement day in the SCOX vs. World(+dog) affair. Thanxx Lad (and Ms. Linton too!) for this weeks once again excellent effort.
33 • I read it (by iollo on 2007-07-09 13:08:02 GMT from Slovenia)
Hope this mess around Elive is sorted soon. This open source fights lately are not pretty to see all over the internet !
34 • Feeding the Elive Troll (by PP on 2007-07-09 13:09:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ladislav: "DistroWatch has donated close to US$14,000 to open source software projects over the last three years. How about OSNews, Mr Holwerda?"
A nice juicy meal for a Troll. Useless flaming from both of these guys.
35 • October releases (by BuildTheFence on 2007-07-09 13:13:56 GMT from United States)
Since Leopard is being released in october , that ballyhoo may drown out everything else.
36 • No subject (by linbetwin on 2007-07-09 13:19:53 GMT from Romania)
1. If you don't like the HPD stats, look at the awstats page.
2. Ladislav shouldn't give direct links to the Elive isos. He's doing the developer a service by giving potential users access to his distro. If the developer doesn't want people to find the freely downloadable iso, maybe we shouldn't look for it. I wonder how many people would "donate" money to get a distro they can't test first.
3. Who cares what Tom Holwerda says ?
4. Ladislav, maybe next DWW you'll publish Susan't Slackware review.
5. Re: #25: PCLinuxOS had quite a few test releases before 2007. You should probably commend Debian or Gentoo. Although, from what I've seen, development releases announcements have an insignificant positive effect on distros' HPD.
37 • elive vs JackLab (by LinFanDan on 2007-07-09 13:22:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wow these arte exciting times to be watching FOSS/ Linux etc! GPL3, OpenMoko 1973 phone being released, all these exciting new distros- especially this latest JackLab release and elive 1.0
I'm surprised there hasn't been more fuss about this new JackLab really, heres why.
In elives favour:
It comes with proprietory GFX drivers (although some won't like this!)
It comes with libdvdcss
better live CD system than JackLabs
In JackLabs favour:
More recent, more stable e17 version (which includes desktop icons) support
YasT is a much more advanced installer than elives. Elives does not support using existing partitions, it insists you format them and Thantermesis (Sam Baggen) says it will stay this way.
YaST is a much more powerful control centre than the (admittedly cooler looking) elpanel
Most apps are more up to date in JackLab than under etch/elive
JackLab includes a whole bunch of apps on the DVD and so might make a better choice of OS for someone who has no internet connection.
Todays announcement was selling JackLab short as it is more than just an audio distro now, its the most complete collection of free multimedia creation software to date, what with cinelerra, ardour, rosegarden, zynaddsubfx, kdenlive, xdtv, kino, GIMP, inkscape, scribus, audacity, abiword, JOST, devede, k3b and codecs, MP3 playback, dvd::rip etc etc.
JackLab also comes complete with KDE if you don't like e17
My wish-list for elive is as follows:
An easy way to enable auto-login
Looks like you still need to go to the terminal to edit the menus in 1.0, this needs to be fixed
swap hydrogen for seq24 or rosegarden, which offer a lot more power in creating a song and also offer drum machine functionality. I was very happy to see elive gain a low-latency kernel for 1.0!
elive already comes with cinelerra and kino but neither of these is capable of capturing analogue video or DVB so thats why I'd like to see xdtv included too.
I tried installing elive 1.0 on my brothers laptop but it froze just after I'd entered my user password for verification and I had to power cycle and so install failed. I've also had 1.0 freeze when I was trying it in live mode on my desktop machine so I've decided to wait for a later version before installing it and I'm going to install the new JackLab for him instead. I checked the md5 of the image and I've also had the elive installer verify the disc to be OK.
Unlike the review above though, I did get the new nvidia binary driver to work under elive, although in my desktop I have an old nvidia card (Geforce4 series).
38 • Thanks for Distrowatch (by fos on 2007-07-09 13:23:28 GMT from United States)
Thanks again for Distrowatch. It is a great service, I visit daily.
Enjoy your vacation!
39 • Fourth is "low"? (by massysett on 2007-07-09 13:27:48 GMT from United States)
How could Fedora's fourth-place rank possibly be considered "low", out of a few *hundred* distros? Sheesh, fourth place is amazingly high. Pair that with the relative irrelevance of the DW page-hit counter, and that was a really silly question.
40 • Re: 2, PCLOS, and DreamLinux (by DistRogue on 2007-07-09 13:31:30 GMT from United States)
Why? Because they "twisted the meaning of the word 'donation'" and pass themselves off as "luxury Linux"? ELive is still a great desktop, and I do plan on reviewing v1.0 no matter how much it gets maligned by angry bloggers like Holwdera. I have no problem with the distribution itself, it's just that the management needs some work. Thanks for the link, DW! PCLinuxOS is a good distribution. It combines an easy-to-use and fully supported KDE desktop with uncommon speed. I just can't use it because (for some odd reason) 915resolution fails to work and my laptop's screen shuts off whenever I close the lid. What's with the sudden surge in Dreamlinux's popularity? Nobody's heard of it, and all of the sudden, it shoots up to #4. It's a good distro, but what's up with that? It's not geared towards the average clueless desktop user.
41 • RE 25 - actually there's no difference (by KimTjik on 2007-07-09 13:32:49 GMT from Sweden)
I will not make comments about Debian and Suse because they're not installed on any of my systems. But to be fair it would be good to first get the facts straight:
PCLinuxOS releases prior to the final 2007: 20070121: Test 1 20070215: Test 2 20070304: Test 3 20070427: Test 4
Fedora releases prior to the final 7: 20070201: Test 1 20070301: Test 2 20070329: Test 3 20070426: Test 4
To me that looks very similar, doesn't it? So what's the basis for your complaint? Keep it mind also that even though Fedora is bigger with more resources their releases aren't any easier. On the contrary since Fedora has support for more CPU architectures and a complex support for virtualization. I have both installed on my main *nix system and feel therefore free to make a comment in this regard.
42 • Elive (by bernie on 2007-07-09 13:33:22 GMT from United States)
i downloaded elive as i do use Mepis an i like Pioneer as it is getting better.... but maybe i just did not see or could not find any way of getting into the desktop but as root .....as it did give the password for it ... i did like the gold an how it shined but nothing was there i could see no way to install it (to try on a spare hard drive) but i see that some people are upset about the link on this great sight . they need not worry that i gave them no donation as i tossed out the cd as there was nothing there i think with you being able to download an try a distro is a great idea then if you like it give them your $$$$$ an not pay them just to toss it out ........but lets face it if NO one gives your Fav distro help they will be gone....... bernie
43 • Ignore Tom Holwerda and his childish rantings (T.H. from OSNews - Elive topic) (by Fr@gzill@ on 2007-07-09 13:35:51 GMT from Belgium)
Ignore Tom Holwerda and his childish rantings (Tom Holwerda from OSNews - Elive 1.0 topic)
Well, first of all, it has to be said that Elive 1.0 is one of the most interesting Distros out there. Enlightenment and Elive are really original, nice, different, useful, and worthy options in the Linux world...
I truly believe that the effort of the developers of Elive and Enlightenment deserve some reward... Other thing is how they present their releases downloads, that are at least confusing, and miscarrying. They should look for another alternatives to manage that. It has to be said, that usually there are also torrents available in their site and in Linuxtracker.org, so people should not complain much if they don't have a direct ftp download.
I have been following Elive since de first versions, and I think the Distro is snappy and Solid, despite Enlightenment 17 not being finished yet.
As someone had pointed out: A distro-upgrade to Debian testing can break a lot of things. True, and they said so. But, is not the only case... Another very worthy Distro like DreamLinux has broken me many things aswell, and still I think both are very useful, good looking, and interesting Distros.
This is not what normally happen, or should happen to Debian based distros, but remember that if you use "Testing" repositories, you are gambling. Anything can happen..., so don't blame the Elive, DreamLinux, or Debian guys, They do their best I guess...
Regarding to Tom Holwerda from OSNews, there's not much to say. The guy is simply not worthy. In my opinion is one of the most despicable elements in the Internet IT news world. Those who follow IT, Free software, and IT news sites in the Internet, since some time ago, know what I mean... I guess his only interest here was to create polemic and attract visitors to their site to try to earn more with publicity.
It seems that Ladislav has taken sometimes controversial, tough, and even rough opinions, decisions and relations with some Distros, people in the IT, or Open source world, Ditrowatch readers, etc. Despite all that, his work and WebSite are huge, and he deserves my respect. This time, anyhow I don't see much controversy, but a try on the part of Mr. Holwerda to gain attention towards him, and towards OSNews.
So My humble advice -if anyone want to follow it- to Ladislav and DistroWatch readers is: Ignore Tom Holwerda and his childish rantings... .
44 • Sure. (by Thom Holwerda on 2007-07-09 13:43:14 GMT from Netherlands)
"Despite all that, his work and WebSite are huge, and he deserves my respect. This time, anyhow I don't see much controversy, but a try on the part of Mr. Holwerda to gain attention towards him, and towards OSNews."
Yeah, that's probably why I wrote that story on my _personal_ weblog, and _not_ on OSNews.
Oh, and it's Thom.
45 • To all. (by Thom Holwerda on 2007-07-09 13:47:35 GMT from Netherlands)
Look people, it wasn't my intention to cause a stir. I wrote this blog entry on my _personal_ weblog, and not on OSNews. The fact that this got linked here does not negate that _very_ important fact. If I was hell-bent on causing a stir, I'd have published this nonsense on OSNews.
All I wanted to do was to explain to the small circle of readers of my personal weblog why I found Distrowatch' actions unacceptable. The fact that DW had to overreact in the way they did here ("backstabbing organisation"? Where did I say that?) is not my problem.
46 • to Thom (by linbetwin on 2007-07-09 14:03:26 GMT from Romania)
I'd have published this nonsense on OSNews.
So that's what it is.
47 • Re: 46 (by Thom Holwerda on 2007-07-09 14:17:02 GMT from Netherlands)
So that's what it is.
It's an insignificant opinion of yet another blogger. So yes, of course it's nonsense.
This is only relevant for myself, and for the few people that read my blog. That's the whole point in a "blog".
48 • post: 45 (by Jerry on 2007-07-09 14:17:46 GMT from United States)
Since the personal weblog entry you refer to, have your osnews.com page hits gone up or down?
49 • Your excuses Thom Holwerda are just escapism...answer to 44 and 45 • Sure. - To (by Fr@gzill@ on 2007-07-09 14:20:29 GMT from Belgium)
Your excuses Thom Holwerda are just escapism...answer to 44 and 45 • Sure. - To all (by Thom Holwerda)
Well, the fact that DistroWatch put a direct link to a download from a medium-litle Linux distro does not constitute an IT new, isn't it? Is not utterly important. Is not a matter of paramount importance for the IT world... C'mon.
Having put it in OSNews as a paramount new or something like that would have been ridiculous. Other thing is if he had put a direct link to the last Red Hat Linux ISO, which obviously would be even illegal...
So your excuses Thom Holwerda are just escapism...
BTW. I have not relation with Ladislav, neither I try to defend him. I disagree with some of his actions/decisions too, but I admire and respect his work, as I said in my former post. .
50 • Elive's donation policy... (by Anon on 2007-07-09 14:30:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
I can not help but find similarities with Mandriva's flawed and seriously skewed interpretation as to the nature of a commercial contract. For example when you have problem with the distro you are in some respects told to shut up, and what you paid was merely a donation. When you are at fault, say when you forget to pay your "donation", it is no longer a donation, it is a commercial contract and you should fear the Mandriva legal team . As you can see, Elive weren't the first when it came to abusing interested parties, users, etc.
51 • Re: #47 (by linbetwin on 2007-07-09 14:34:40 GMT from Romania)
Thom, saying that DW hosted the Elive .iso is a lie, not an opinion.
52 • RE 50 (by dbrion on 2007-07-09 14:38:15 GMT from France)
Cher ânon, A moins que vous fassiez réfèrence à des faits précis (lesquels? que signifie escapism?) Mandriva a toujours permis de tester avant d'acheter . Elive ne le permettait pas, et il est tout à fait déloyal d'attaquer Mr Ladislas sur le fait de permettre à plus d'un, ne lisant pas l'arabe et assez snob pour tester du "flashy-trendy", de l'apprécier d'autant plus qu'elle s'accomode de matériel bon marché... Au cas, cher ânon, où vous seriez tenté de me dénoncer comme corrompu par Mandriva, je préfère Cygwin, une idée brillante de RedHat.
53 • REs: 50 and 51 (by DistRogue on 2007-07-09 14:46:15 GMT from United States)
50: Brilliant point. Mandriva has a relatively small and inactive support community, so you need to get paid support. And they just screw you out of your money. Which makes you wonder why the community is so small... Corporate sabotage? You don't see Canonical shutting down Ubuntu Forums... 51: Pwned. DistroWatch never hosts ISO files, and never has.
54 • what a week! (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 14:58:54 GMT from United States)
Elive: I used it back last Fall, it was nowhere near as full featured as it appears to be in the review. Sounds like they did alot of work to make a full DE out of E17. Making a DE that's not circled around gnome, kde and xfce is rare, so Elive deserves a well earned bravo!
Slackware: What no review of the first release of Slackware that ships the 2.6 kernel by default? DW says that Elive stole it's thunder, which is bs. Which one was posted on the frontpage of Slashdot and hotly debated huh? The linux world doesn't revolve around DW, you can't judge the popularity of a new release by a surge in hits on that one website.
KDE 4: In my opinion Kubuntu is making the right decision. Other distros shouldn't be promising DEs in their next release when they won't have enough time for testing and integration.
55 • Fanboying (by Sam on 2007-07-09 15:01:02 GMT from United States)
I must have robbed food out of the mouths of Elive developers' babies -- I installed Elive on an older compaq laptop d2100 from a recent issue of Linux Format (my $15.99 a month donation well spent).
Seriously though, the Enlightenment interface (and certainly the default Elive desktop layout options) aren't my taste in interface design -- the style looks much too much like the WindowBlinds fare offered at wincustomize.com. Give me clean and crisp over dark and kinda hard to read any time.
As for the electronic "shame on you" vs. "shame on you" with OSnews and Distrowatch, I wonder if there is something to what was pointed out in Post #7 above -- couldn't Elive making a release announcement on Distrowatch.com when their 'free' server was down simply be a bit of distro fanboying behavior (def. = tricks to pump internet traffic to your site for marketing reasons, or pump traffic to distrowatch to pump up your hits on the counter)? Seriously, what good admin would make a major marketing announcement knowing the potential web traffic it would generate while their server was down?!? Oh, I mean, their "free" server... the other paid servers were conveniently up and running.
56 • download links (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 15:07:10 GMT from United States)
DW awhile back promised to only post torrents and mirrors. Well that is still what they did with Elive! Elive was trying to make a buck by simply withholding the mirrors list, there are more honest ways to make a buck, and since those were public servers DW did nothing wrong. If Elive wants to see some of their $$$ return back to their pockets they should simply ask politely for donations. If they have a thriving community they will receive donations and much better than a cheap skate like me giving them a single penny for the links.
57 • Bye, bye! (by img on 2007-07-09 15:16:03 GMT from Mexico)
OSNews is dead for me. I don't like them, I don't like their attitude. I just erased it from my bookmarks. Never to see again
58 • elive - donate to download (by Jones on 2007-07-09 15:21:46 GMT from Germany)
I don't get the 'donate to download' idea. Being a potential new user of elive I haven't had the chance to install and test the Elive distro, yet they already ask me to donate? I don't even know if it works on my machines. I'd donate if it proved to be useful and working but not for downloading the iso. I can't be bothered too look for some obscure 'free download' methods like torrents. If the distributor wants to make me to jump through hoops to get his work, well, I don't jump just because you think I should...
59 • Thom, Ladislav and Elive (by MeltDown on 2007-07-09 15:28:29 GMT from Canada)
1. Fact: Thom's comments appear on his personal blog. Regardless of content, that's free speech. 2. Ladislav's final paragraph re: "$14K to OSS" was not necessary. His arguments were clear and well stated early in his comment. 3. Elive is neat. Let's just enjoy it for "now".
60 • Re: 17 • What would be Elive commercial value? (by kirios on 2007-07-09 15:46:34 GMT from Malaysia)
"Now, I have made a decision: there remains hundreds of interesting Linuxen...and Windows XP, who deserves its price.."
Do you really think Windows XP is worth the price? Even on purely technical grounds? The last time I used Windows Update, it managed to break itself!
61 • Shame on you axe grinding (by Mike Schrimsher on 2007-07-09 15:47:29 GMT from United States)
What is with the axe grinding. Is not all of this work about Linux "freebee or donate or pay up front"? Does the commentator at OS News have nothing more constructive to do with his time? THINK!
62 • Elive vs. Ladislav (by Siggy on 2007-07-09 15:50:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
Never one to pass up a good punch-up, all Linux distro compilers are freeloaders, just like Hr. ObermeisterFuhrer Gates. In the well-trodden case of WG, like so many others he 'borrowed' stuff he gleaned from IBM, XEROX, DR & co. and if they squealed, he closed them down. [I think we did GUIs, mice and CP/M in a previous rant?]. As for Linux, Linus has given everyone the kernel and continues to do so - gratis. It was through the inspiration of his supervisor (that poor guy never gets any credit!) and the perspiration of LT that we are where we are. The whole damn computer show that we enjoy was paid for out of public funds anyway, some via the academic scene but mostly from our favourite whippingboy - the military budget. At least Bletchley Park is now a tourist attraction; shame our stupid PM, Churchill, gave the entire secret folder to the Yanks....
63 • elive (by kanishka on 2007-07-09 15:55:32 GMT from Italy)
I keep an eye on Elive since 0.6, and I can say it's really improving. I never had any installation problems in my 3 PCs, by the way. And, I actually used it for production, and it proved really stable; it replaced PCLOS07 on my laptop. Apart from that, there are 2 things I don't like in Elive: 1- the 'forced donation' model; I made a very small payment, but it's really not classy and will surely made Elive miss new users; 2- the nearly inexistent community (not that it's Thanatermesis' fault, mind you). The forums are more or less deserted. That's a real shame :(
Anyway I like Elive, and I hope it will overcome these obstacles.
My 2 €/c
64 • @50 @53 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-09 15:56:19 GMT from Canada)
Anon, if the experience to which you refer happened recently, please let me know about it (forward me the details via email: awilliamson A T mandriva D 0 T com). No-one who is having trouble with a purchased copy of Mandriva should be told to 'go away' or that their purchase was a donation, this is not something we habitually do. I'll make it up to you.
DistRogue, Mandriva's support community is neither small nor inactive. The official forums at http://forum.club.mandriva.com/ have a hundred posts a day or more just in English - there are several forums for other languages, including a French-language forum of similar size to the English one - mostly focusing on real technical issues, not chatter. In my capacity as the company rep on the forums I read every post and reply to all that I am capable of contributing something useful to, as does my assistant, Rick James. There are dozens of regulars who often contribute their assistance and knowledge to other users. The main unofficial forums at http://mandrivausers.org/ are similarly active and helpful. And the community IRC support channel at #mandriva on Freenode is well-run, always active and full of users who provide help to others. That's not to mention the various support mailing lists, or Mandriva Expert.
As a general point, I should note for clarity that Mandriva Club memberships do not include paid technical support as one of the benefits. Purchases of commercial editions come with thirty days of installation support. Official technical support beyond that must be purchased separately as incidents or a support contract at the Mandriva Store. These terms are of course explained appropriately at purchase time for each product / service.
I don't understand the implication of the "Canonical shutting down Ubuntu forums" reference at all. We have never shut down any Mandriva-related forum to my knowledge.
65 • OSNews (by David on 2007-07-09 16:00:41 GMT from United States)
I have to say that I've found OSNews to be increasingly petulant and self-satisfied recently. At one time it was my favourite site. Perhaps I'm just getting too old...
66 • reviews (by ray carter at 2007-07-09 16:03:18 GMT from United States)
I certainly wish you'd run reviews by a proof reader. There were way too many grammatical errors in the Elive review.
67 • RE 60 (by dbrion on 2007-07-09 16:03:28 GMT from France)
"Do you really think Windows XP is worth the price?" Yes (I do not buy ethics) as
a) I do not upgrade (if it works, why?) and do *not* connect to the web (for obvious safety reasons).. With some free antiviruses, a "no sex, no music, no games" diet, it remains reliable (the huge "it works for me" argument).
b) With VM player/ VirtualBox (running light linuxen like elive or zen) + cygwin+ R + theGimp+OOffice, I operate more *free* (in any sense) than some Linuxen...
It sometimes even happens that Windows ported GPLs are superior to the linux version (R is my favorite. application: it is nicer on Windows than on Linux=> for a beginner who has both an Holy Linux and a Crap Redmond stuff, I advice ... R on Windows); (for developping (me) I advise R on Linux + cross compilation, if it works on Linux)... The great work of porting to XP seems more useful than a clueless race to the nicest screen.... BTW, commercial Linuxen are more expensive than XP (and chosen on different reasons than the "it rocks; its a breeze; install is flawless; its sooo beautifull" usual in depth linuxen comparisons)
68 • Elive (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 16:10:41 GMT from United States)
My experence with the free download server when it was up would time out after about 45 minutes at just about the same spot every time. I have DSl and would try it at all times, even in the middle of the night, all with the same result.
69 • Slackware 12.0 (by Landor on 2007-07-09 16:10:49 GMT from Canada)
After being involved with Linux almost right from the onset, not developing of course, but use, promoting it, etc, I decided that I should finally give slackware a shot.
I did the full install and even though I personally believe it was way too much, even for the Novice or those sliding over to take a peek at what all the hub-bub was about with Linux, the install ran perfectly smooth and every aspect of my hardware was recognized and configured properly.
There are of course some things with the final install that I have to point out that is flawed. Never once did it as for a user to be configured on the system during the generic install, so making it more vulnerable logging in as root. Also, when I rebooted, and yes, this can be fixed, it boot to the CLI and I had to startx manually.
I also found a few things odd in the menus. I picked KDE for my desktop environment, but one of the options in the menu was Utilities >> Xcfe4 Appfinder, why? I'm running KDE. Next error I noted in the menu was an item already in lost and found, the Orage Calender. Next on the list for the menus is it was missing a torrent client, which I would have thought Ktorrent would've been found.
Finally, for the install of the system, as I said, the full install in my opinion is just too much. There are far too many apps doing the same thing. I'd say that going against what they recommend and pick your apps would make it not only quicker, but more simplified, and for the novice, maybe looking at what the full install entails, then doing some research on each app that is offered and picking the one that you find most fits your needs.
I will say this, it's well laid out otherwise, it has very simple ease of you, comparable to any other "out of the box" distro that advertises simplicity, wink wink.
It runs much faster than a lot of the distro's I've tested as of late, except for my own optimized install of the Gentoo minimal of course :)
All in all, it's a great piece of work from a name that is personified with the early beginnings of Linux.
Now if they'd just get some of those dependency issues resolved for package management, this distro would be closer to the top in rankings here just for spead and ease of use alone.
I should've tried it long long ago :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
70 • Thom Holwerda "the infamous" from OSNews - TH from OSNews - Elive 1.0 topic (by Fr@zill@ on 2007-07-09 16:25:22 GMT from Belgium)
Thom Holwerda "the infamous" from OSNews - TH from OSNews - Elive 1.0 topic
I wrote literally in my first post: "Regarding to Tom Holwerda from OSNews, there's not much to say. The guy is simply not worthy. In my opinion is one of the most despicable elements in the Internet IT news world. Those who follow IT, Free software, and IT news sites in the Internet, since some time ago, know what I mean... I guess his only interest here was to create polemic and attract visitors to their site to try to earn more with publicity.
It seems that Ladislav has taken sometimes controversial, tough, and even rough opinions, decisions and relations with some Distros, people in the IT, or Open source world, Ditrowatch readers, etc. Despite all that, his work and WebSite are huge, and he deserves my respect. This time, anyhow I don't see much controversy, but a try on the part of Mr. Holwerda to gain attention towards him, and towards OSNews."
Not to be harsh, but I have to explain a bit why I wrote what I wrote in my first post. Saying that "he is simply not worthy. In my opinion is one of the most despicable elements in the Internet IT news world" could be taken as an unfounded attack if is not explained why.
Well, is already a bunch of years that I follow several It News sites and IT Free Software/Open Source News sites. Distrowatch is an IT Free Software/Open Source News site, specialised in Open Source Distros. OSNews is neither an IT Free Software/Open Source News site, nor a Operating Systems News site.
OSNews is just an IT News site, that mainly compile news coming from other IT and IT Free Software/Open Source News sites. They have stated this publicly in his site.
Despite what many can think, OSNews is in NO way a site the promotes free/OpenSource software. On the contrary, In several post in the OSNews site and in his Blogs the members of OSNews have stated that. They have publicly expressed their disagreement/negative opinions about FSF and Richard Stallman, and towards the GPL licence and the free software movement.
Is very clear to me at OSNews is a site that just want to become more popular and to make more money out of publicity (not that this is intrinsically wrong or evil). And it looks like if they try to disguise it, trough an apparent "pseudo OpenSource" facade.
Regarding to Thom Holwerda, the guy is an student in communication or/and languages at the university, or something like that, while, at the same time he do his stuff for OSNews. He has expressed clearly his anti "free Software" opinions, and he has caused many controversies in his site OSNews. He is know by many OSNews readers to post and express his views, in a brutal, impolite and unfair manner. He can post and express any opinion is OSNews, while the readers and other posters have not right to moderate him up or down. Is the policy of OSNews, which is obviously unfair, arrogant, and far away from from any journalism ethic, practice, and decency.
Although, obviously he has to have learnt many things doing his job, it looks to me that sometimes he expresses opinions that look to many, utterly ridiculous, naif, exaggerated, or simply wrong. Both in OSNews and in his blog. And this, related to the IT-Computers world, and also to another topics in culture, politics etc. His young age and lack of experience in life could help to understand this, but not to share or forgive it.
He has been accused of being: partial, reactionary, fascist, impolite, arrogant, chauvinist, wrong, etc by readers in both the OSNews and his Blog. And the solution he gives to that is censorship...
Despite all that, he seems sometimes so pretentious that it makes me think that he takes himself for a PhD in IT, in Marketing, in politics, in life etc... (maybe I am wrong, but I am not the only one that has this opinion, apparently)
As John M pointed out in his post, "It also sounds like Tom Holwerda has an attitude problem"
Mr. Holwerda (Not sure that he deserves the Mr. treatment... ;) ) is maybe a nice chap, but for what I know about him, according to what he writes, it does not look like that to me... I think, he and the guys of OSNews want to become as or more popular than Slash-dot, and Cnet at the same time, have a lot of publicity and make bunches of money. That is not bad. But during sometime it look like if their site had a relation to the free software idea/movement, while being in reality just a way to gain readers.
Other people have a culture of sharing, giving away, and not only winning money by trying to attract readers trough Open-Source, while at the same time trying to get the money of the Big Corporations. What bothers me is that apparently "fake" facade and policy of their site...
Being in such a position and trying to give moral Lessons to others is not a good idea Thom Holverda...
P.S. I repeat that in no way i have any relation with Ladislav, and I don't share all his decisions and opinions. As someone pointed out is maybe a good idea if people is forced to go to the developers site, and visit his page to download, in order to make some money out of publicity. But, I guess DistroWatch is interested in having the more visits as possible too... New ideas to generate income for the Free software developers are welcome urgently... so the procedure and movement proves itself viable and sustainable .
71 • Elive, OSNews (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 16:27:45 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the heads up, when they play games, I don't want anything to do with them. It's just another way to lock up open source code for profit. Frankly, I don't care if he starves to death, because most of the code in his distribution was written by someone else anyway. Nobody owes him anything, and garbage like this gives a bad name to ALL open source projects.
The best way to resolve this would be to simply delete Elive from the database. I have noticed that there are some other projects (such as wxPython) for which there is no documentation, except for a manual - written by the author - that sells for $50. Not even a thirty page tutorial is available without paying money.
They are free to do as they please, but this crap gives us all a bad name. That said, I visited the Ultima link and it seems that the goal is also to get users to pay for a download.
And as for osnews, they have recently published many pieces of anti-Linux FUD. They have no credibility in the Linux community, or at least should have no credibility.
72 • @64 (by DistRogue on 2007-07-09 16:28:58 GMT from United States)
I was just saying that Mandriva might have purposely shrunk the size of the support community in order to profit from it. That doesn't seem all that out of character for them. I mean, what does a Mandriva Club membership get you? Nothing Ubuntu doesn't give you for free, besides "support". Don't accuse me of fanboyism. I've tried and reviewed several distros, it's just that Ubuntu happens to "Just Work" for me. There are several great distros out there that might work better than it for some people.
73 • Re: 58 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 16:35:18 GMT from United States)
You want to know why a distro would go "pay to try"? Because they know that nobody will be impressed after trying the distro, and that for many of them it won't even work on their hardware, so it is better that they profit from publicity and take advantage of trial users.
It sends a pretty bad signal to me, kind of like a computer manufacturer refusing to offer any warranty.
Elive? Even the guys running the distro don't think anyone will want to use it, so why should I waste my time on it?
74 • RE 71 wxPython tutorial (by dbrion on 2007-07-09 16:41:35 GMT from France)
" other projects (such as wxPython) for which there is no documentation, except for a manual - written by the author - that sells for $50. Not even a thirty page tutorial is available without paying money."
Try "http://sebsauvage.net/python/gui/index.html"
Disclaimer : I am not a shareholder of wxPython but your post reminded me I should look for some doc to use highly portable interesting softs... I correct your post on a detail point (I did like elive, I could discover thanks to DW, but they are getting more and more complicated and add orthographic misspeelings... in Arabic, at least).... Banning her from DW database is not a good idea, meseems...just for knowing her evolution (which seems interesting, as many post about her...)
75 • @Fragzilla (by Thom Holwerda on 2007-07-09 16:46:51 GMT from Netherlands)
"He has expressed clearly his anti "free Software" opinions"
Sure, that's why I contribute my time to the Haiku project. Yeah. I'm anti F/OSS, and that's why I contribute to a F/OSS project. That makes total sense.
Err...
76 • RE: 70 (by h3rman on 2007-07-09 16:51:17 GMT from Europe)
Enough, please don't use this website for such lengthy personal attacks. You are free to not visit OSNews.com and/or Holwerda's blog.
77 • Elive (by Rod on 2007-07-09 17:01:52 GMT from United States)
The statement "So either he is lying to Mr Holwerda, or Mr Holwerda is lying in his blog." is a bit harsh; it would be more politic to say that they "are mistaken".
Otherwise I wholeheartedly agree with DistroWatch's actions and reply to this matter.
78 • elive and Thom Holwerda (by Johnny Hughes on 2007-07-09 17:06:58 GMT from United States)
OK ... first off, OSNEWS is a top notch organization (as is Distrowatch).
Secondly ... Ladislav does this (direct ISO links) with most or all the Distros. (Certainly he does it with CentOS releases).
If someone releases an ISO and makes it public, and if they want to be on Distrowatch, AND if they do not send an e-mail asking specifically not to link directly to the ISO then I do not see the problem.
We at centos have a GeoIP based page that only publishes live mirrors ... and personally I'd rather have a link to that ... BUT ... there is nothing wrong with a direct link.
Both OSNEWS and distrowatch are great and I would like to see this worked out without all the flaming that seems directed at Thom. I think this is just a simple misunderstanding.
I can certainly vouch for Ladislav being receptive to e-mail and working with distro maintainers if asked.
79 • Thom (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 17:23:54 GMT from United States)
Well, Thom thouldn't be thuch a naughty boy. Then the thithtrowwatth guy wouldn't thwear at him tho muth and call him nathty names.
Keep your thtick on the iyth.
Thed Thowenthon
80 • Elive & OSNews editor's blog (by ShakaZ on 2007-07-09 18:00:22 GMT from Belgium)
Well it looks like Thom has had enough of people trying to make him see the light & decided to put an end to the dicussion on his blog : http://cogscanthink.blogsome.com/2007/07/09/morality-is-not-for-sale/
Who talked about censorship... By the way he hasn't answered the fundamental question : what makes it so immoral to link to an iso that is redistributable due to it's license???
81 • / (by Stevo at 2007-07-09 18:08:11 GMT from Slovenia)
Just delete Elive from your database and case closed. We'll see how good they'll do then ;) Sorry but forcing someone to pay is crap-IF you say your distro is free. Go commercial and that's it. I also downloaded Vector 5.8 soho and I liked it a lot-so I donated 20$ for them, but after I tried it and saw it was worth it. And by the way, Elive is not much more than Debian with Enlightenment-A relatively moderate Linux user can accomplish somethingg lke that with a fresh debian netinstall.
82 • Elive direct link (by Richard on 2007-07-09 18:23:47 GMT from United States)
You really posted a direct link to CD image? Is it still up? That's a great idea. I wanted to try Elive awhile ago, but the "slow" server would not get any speed higher than 2KB. That's ridiculous. If they're worried about bandwidth then they should release a torrent and let the downloaders leech off of each other. But trying to force a "donation" just to download software I'm not sure I want to use yet? Forget it. And if OSNews wants to get its panties in a bunch, then I just won't go there anymore. I can their news other places. Plus do I really want to get news from a site whose writers are so misinformed?
83 • No subject (by ShakaZ on 2007-07-09 18:32:12 GMT from Belgium)
The link provided by Ladoslav is down, but by changing the directory starting with a dot you can find another one... this is the one i've just finished downloading from : URL ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/array2/linux/Elive/.Fewveknyk7O2/Elive_1.0_Gem.iso
& thanks to Ladislav for providing these links ;-) Keep on ensuring the redistributable part of free software isn't a joke!!!
84 • 67 • RE 60 "Do you really think Windows XP is worth the price?" (by kirios on 2007-07-09 18:38:51 GMT from Malaysia)
"Yes ... I do not upgrade (if it works, why?) and do *not* connect to the web (for obvious safety reasons).. With some free antiviruses, a "no sex, no music, no games" diet, it remains reliable"
Hmm... interesting. I suppose you need the antivirus for USB drives or floppy disks that you might have plugged into other PCs, but then you'd need to update your antivirus, wouldn't you? Maybe you download virus definition files to your Linux desktop, then reboot into Windows to install them. But you don't really have a Linux desktop since you only run virtual Linux. Quite mind-boggling :-) .... You're just kidding, right?!
85 • Misc (new Linux trends) (by dbrion on 2007-07-09 18:46:11 GMT from France)
"No one is forced to use alphas and betas, infact most people stick with one stable release "@ 30 If one has a favorite application (which has some dependancies, and can be renewed), one shuns all this horrible (greek letters) distributions. Else, it would be cascade of wrecks..... This kind of distr. should be reserved to experimented, methodical testers, who can go beyond the "it just works GREAT" trend, if they have time...
" what makes it so immoral to link to an iso that is redistributable due to it's license???@81 " Je pense que c'était un service rendu à long terme à elive, qui sinon n'aurait pas été connue (même Windows est acheté après qu'on ait constaté "qu'il marche" -ce qui est simple; sinon, on peut vivre très bien sans PC).
"And if OSNews wants to get its panties in a bunch"@82 Le gros problème avec l'OS libre sous GNU/linux, c'est que cela se réduit de plus en plus à un problème de sous-vêtements, voire de testosterone.... Y a-t-il des éléments d'intelligence dans le Sacré Monde de linux? d'innovation? de sens commun?
86 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 18:56:21 GMT from France)
I suppose you need the antivirus for USB drives or floppy disks that you might have plugged into other PCs, but then you'd need to update your antivirus, wouldn't you? No floppy, pls.. I first use the cybercafé antiviruses, then clamscan (which I download for my dualboot; it works OK by night, without loosing time) "Maybe you download virus definition files to your Linux desktop, then reboot into Windows to install them. But you don't really have a Linux desktop since you only run virtual Linux."
I have dual boots and I add qemu/VMplayer/ Vbox Quite mind-boggling :-) .... "You're just kidding, right?!" What about you? Are there less lines of code running in
XP + R + Cygwin + qemu + a virtual Linux or in a real Linux+qemu+ a virtual Windows XP?
Can you explain me (technically) how, when Windows-ported, GPL can loose quality or smartness??
I look for technical / intellectual arguments, not credos/ testosterone-based blabla/
If I accept to p
87 • Re: 75 (@Thom Holwerda) (by Anonymous on 2007-07-09 19:17:23 GMT from Australia)
Dude, give it up.
EVERYONE knows you say and do things in order to delibrately spark attention. You have a history of it...Quite frankly, its getting old. (Its the very reason why I stopped visiting your site altogether).
Its the same strategy as that of George Ou from ZDNet. (and a number of other tech journalists out there). Its why I block sites like ZDNet, eWeek, OSNews, etc. You spark controversy and attention to attain profit. (While there's nothing wrong in making money, its how you do it that makes people wonder how you live with yourself)...But hey, its your reputation, not mine.
"Sure, that's why I contribute my time to the Haiku project."
What? Documentation? How much time is that?
Compared to you: I have donated money, I have written wiki entries, I regularly visit various opensource project forums (especially the newbie section) to help others. I have written patches and even submit regular bug reports that I actively help solve with the developer. I also translate that typical whiney user feedback into constructive criticism for the developer to improve on in the project.
But the biggest difference between you and me, is that I don't seek attention. You do. And now you have a negative reputation.
88 • @72 (by john frey on 2007-07-09 19:25:13 GMT from Canada)
quote: " I mean, what does a Mandriva Club membership get you? Nothing Ubuntu doesn't give you for free, besides "support"."
Well a much nicer desktop distro for starters:-) I know that may sound like flame bait but, honestly, that was my first thought after reading the question. YMMV:-)
89 • Old S*** News (by Sphinx on 2007-07-09 19:25:20 GMT from United States)
Stopped reading that trash after I test drove the new system without adblock or noscript and was blasted by M$ paid FUD rendering any stance of some sort of impartiality as laughable and when I step back and really looked at it overall it appeared to me as just another Linux hating M$ shill and anti-FOSS site well worth ignoring. E*live makes Vista look like dung which may be Thom's real issue.
90 • No subject (by crazypenguin on 2007-07-09 19:28:20 GMT from Canada)
Elive is released as FOSS under the GPL. Anybody should be able to download it or give it away. Also why donate to something I haven't tried. Doesn't work on my laptop. Still needs work.
91 • "Feedback?" (by Oiving on 2007-07-09 19:41:03 GMT from United States)
LOL.. when i saw, "Feedback: "Shame on you, DistroWatch!" as one of the chapters listed in this week's DW I thought we were going to see a poll or commentary from some impartial source to sort of resolve it all and put a nice ribbon on it.
What was there instead? .. a retaliation (repeated, for the most part, from a post good Mr. Bodnar made the other day in this forum).
It's an effective retaliation, mind you. But, hey, shooting back is just making war at the level of the original sling.
Any high ground around here? :O)
92 • Re: 86 (by kirios on 2007-07-09 19:42:14 GMT from Malaysia)
No offence intended. You were obviously not kidding.
I don't think XP+R+Cygwin+qemu+Linux would work for me as I'd feel uneasy browsing the Web while running an XP base, but I'll give Linux+qemu+XP a try. Would save me from dual-booting if it runs smoothly on my (slightly older) hardware.
93 • Elive and downloads (by Emo on 2007-07-09 19:45:34 GMT from Argentina)
Downloading Elive is certainly an issue, but I think it wouldn't be so hard to resolve only if the author of this distribution had the determination to do so. For example, for those who don't want or can't donate money, he could just provide a link to download Elive using bittorrent which, as the community knows, is a great way of distributing big files. In addition, this shouldn't represent a bandwith problem for the Elive author. Isn't this a good idea? what distrowatch users think about it? and what about the Elive author?.
Thanks!.
Regards.
94 • elive - - onebase (by PastorEd at 2007-07-09 20:12:36 GMT from United States)
Is it just me, or does the "you have to donate in order to benefit from my free iso" remind anyone of the Onebase distro?
Which, if memory serves me correctly, also crashed and burned because the developer didn't play well with others?
Hmm... it seems a lesson could be learned here: in the world of FOSS, interoperability is not just a hardware issue... it's also a social one.
just a thought... G.B.Y.L.B.T., PastorEd
95 • Donation & Elive (by IMQ on 2007-07-09 20:12:43 GMT from United States)
For me to make a donation to support the continue development of a distro, I must first be able to download the said distro for a test drive to see if:
- it works with my hardware (obviously) - it very functional for my needs (why else would I want it) - it is pleasant for a day-to-day use - it is easier to use than Gentoo :) (if some claim Gentoo is easy to use, they are not your average users, they are your avarage geek users) - etc, etc.
Those are just a few things I use as a criteria to make donation or purchase of a distro in the past 7 years or so. Sheesh, I spent more money on Linux than I ever spent on Microsoft since Windows 3.1.
Even most shareware authors allow free download for a test drive. Heck, pretty much all freeware for Winslow are free for downloading.
If Elive wants to make money, they are free to do so. I seriously doubt they will be swamped with users willing to fork out money just so they can download Elive for a test drive.
I know I won't. Ever!
96 • Osnews (by Distrowatch Reader on 2007-07-09 20:15:40 GMT from United States)
Osnews is now a second rate site that can only dream of the number of hits per day that Distrowatch has. When Tom Holwerda replaced Eugenia Osnews became a poor shadow of it self.
97 • the issue Distrowtch ws OSNews (by Kantor on 2007-07-09 20:40:29 GMT from Romania)
From a juridical point of view Distrowatch has absolutely right to provide direct download url's. Even Thom Holwerda regards this in that post "I don't think there's anything legally you could do to stop this - the license permits redistribution." So I don't know where is the problem.
98 • Elive downloads (by ezsit on 2007-07-09 20:40:45 GMT from United States)
Directly from Elive's forums, a FTP link to the 1.0 release:
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/elive/.Fewveknyk7O2/Elive_1.0_Gem.iso
99 • PCLinuxOS: There will be further releases.... (by davecs on 2007-07-09 20:45:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
However, what we aim for is that you will not have to re-install. The aim is that for the next few years, whilst the 4.1 compilers hold out, you can upgrade as you go along and there will be no reason to re-install.
The dev team is talking of getting a DVD out with international support included, and at the other extreme a mini-me. And as packages are upgraded, there will be a new "snapshot" iso from time to time. Each release will work off the same repositories.
The test releases prior to PCLOS 2007 were needed because it had been re-based and re-built, because we could no longer compile stuff with the v3 compilers. This may well be repeated next time we have to do the same thing, however we hope that's a few years off, yet.
100 • We want Slack! (by Billy on 2007-07-09 20:53:44 GMT from United States)
I don't understand the editorial decision to go with a long review of Elive over Slackware. There are many of us who use Slackware, in fact it's been useful longer than any other distro. It runs, arguably, the best on the widest range of PCs and it's built from scratch. Slack 12 is big news, period, making some major and some much-needed improvements. How does it stack up to newer projects like Kubuntu? Should a newbie try it? Do the new kernel and toolchain work decently well on the ancient hardware the previous version ran with ease? These are big issues. By comparison I still can't figure out what you'd say about Elive that reflects on that project more than on Enlightenment or Debian etch. Besides a bitch-slap contest on the sidelines with the OSNews guy, I don't get it. Save it for a slow news week and report on the biggest release of the summer.
101 • WEP (by Tom Dison on 2007-07-09 21:01:47 GMT from United States)
To get WEP working, I had to enter the key in this formst:
1234-5678-9A [You must include the dashes]
I could not enter it as 123456789A or 0x123456789A, which is the norm for most distros.
102 • eLive :-( (by KnightFire on 2007-07-09 21:22:38 GMT from Canada)
I've just tried to download eLive, as a Noob would, using only the info provided on the elive.org website - and this distro should definately be classified as commercial! I believe the elive.org URL is misleading, and that the elive-systems.com URL that points to it is more approprate.
PS I've removed links to eLive and OSnews from my system.
103 • @99 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-09 22:06:09 GMT from Canada)
Dave, out of interest, how do you handle major, dangerous updates (such as new kernel releases, new RPM releases, major changes to hal / udev etc)? do you have a separate development track to refine such changes before putting them into the repos used by regular users?
104 • @72 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-09 22:08:26 GMT from Canada)
Just in case you didn't know, I work for Mandriva - I thought everyone here knew that by now, but your reply kinda suggested you didn't, so I'm just being safe :)
I don't know when's the last time you tried Mandriva, but since 2007 Spring, everything Ubuntu provides for free, Mandriva does too. Yes, this includes proprietary drivers and firmware etc.
105 • RE: 95 (by Landor on 2007-07-09 22:08:29 GMT from Canada)
IMQ,
I personally have to disagree with you on your comment regarding Gentoo.
It is definitely easy to use if you take two things into account.
A) the person has the basic knowledge and desire to work a bit with the CLI
B) the person is able to read and follow a set of instructions in the order in which they have been laid out.
Now I'm sure I'll get bashed for this next comment, but it's something I have always felt strongly about. I spent a good part of 10 years working with a command-line only, before there was a GUI worthy of being called an OS instead of basically a multi-tasker for the the CLI which anything pre-WIN95 was IMHO. If someone cannot use a CLI, if they cannot fathom what mkdir, ls, or wget and the like means or their functions, do they have any need for a computer? Is that all computers are now? Game consoles, Web interfaces, Media Players? If that's the case, they're pretty damn expensive ones and I think the people have made a poor choice and really shouldn't own one, at all.
Then, if you consider it, we wouldn't have to deal with people like Mr. Holwerda for the most part, or the person who thought they'd be cool and post the comment found at #79.
I wouldn't call myself a computer guru by any stretch of the term, just a person who has owned one for a very long time, and I built a gentoo system, though not fully setup yet (I'm lazy), easily by following simple directions.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
106 • Slackware & Windows XP (by simon on 2007-07-09 22:11:49 GMT from New Zealand)
Landor (#69) wrote: "Also, when I rebooted, and yes, this can be fixed, it boot to the CLI and I had to startx manually."
What a relief to know that "flaw" can be "fixed". Whew!
Landor (#69) wrote: "Now if they'd just get some of those dependency issues resolved for package management, this distro would be closer to the top in rankings here just for spead and ease of use alone."
Gosh, wouldn't that be great! Quick, someone tell Patrick! Why go to the trouble of knowing what software you've installed when you can cast such annoying concerns aside and--wait for it--be closer to the top rankings in Distrowatch! Yay!
I have an even better idea: foolish Slackers, did you not notice that your flawed distribution confronts you with the COMMAND LINE (gasp!) and has "dependency issues" (not to be confused with anything related to actually working, which it does reliably) and worst of all, it could be higher in the Distrowatch rankings?! Here's the solution: switch to Ubuntu! Problem solved! Now you're NUMBER ONE on Distrowatch! Hooray!
dbrion (#67) wrote: " 'Do you really think Windows XP is worth the price?'. Yes. (I do not buy ethics)".
I didn't realise ethics were governed by the market! That's great news! So I can choose whether to buy them or not, like any other product? Whee! I'm going to "not buy ethics" too, and be a psychopath from now on.
dbrion (#67) wrote: "With VM player/ VirtualBox (running light linuxen like elive or zen) + cygwin+ R + theGimp+OOffice, I operate more *free* (in any sense) than some Linuxen..."
In any sense? Oh that's right, you don't buy ethics, so the ethical sense doesn't count. And I guess the sense of freedom to modify aspects of your system you don't like doesn't count either, because let's face it, Microsoft knows best. Freedom to view the source code and know what the software authors are actually doing on your system doesn't count either, of course, for the same reason. Freedom to give a copy of all your software to other people doesn't count either, because what kind of "freedom" would sharing information with each other be, when that would be denying corporates their freedom to make money off us? You're so right, I can't think of a single sense in which GNU/Linux is more free than Microsoft Windows.
Come to think of it, my idea before (Slackers: switch to Ubuntu) wasn't so great after all. Who gives a toss about being number one on Distrowatch when you can be the number one most used desktop OS in the whole world?! Slackers: switch to Microsoft Windows. You've been misinformed: your brains are unnecessary. The market knows best.
107 • RE:106 (by Landor on 2007-07-09 22:37:52 GMT from Canada)
Ahh, of course, I expected this to come, another person taking much out of context.
If you honestly don't believe Slackware could do with a bit of a face-lift in regards to it's packaging that is fine. Facts are that although it has relied upon it's style of packaging from the onset and yes, it does work, it's a bit antiquated compared to many others and for those that believe Gentoo is hard to use, run into a dependency problem with Slackware and most would find Gentoo far easier.
Yet again, another instance where you were taking my comments out of context, befitting the reasoning for all of your post I might add, to slur and dissent, on a level you feel vindicated and appeased. My comment about Slackware rising to a higher ranking here at Distrowatch was a compliment based on how great the Distro is, if only they could fix a couple things.
Don't you think it's about time? Almost 14 years and even though it "works" They're blown away by many, many distros which have only been around for a fraction of that time, why? Package Management and configuration issues, right off the hop. But yes, it does work, and it works well, but as a frontline contender in "today's" distro market, it's beaten in a few areas. Just an honest opinion.
Or do you believe as others do, Slackware is for the obscure SuperGeek to sit back, hump a can of Jolt Cola and squeeze a pimple or two caused by too many pepperoni pizza binges while telnetting into www.imlonely.com while emacs or vim compiles from source?
If that's the state of Slackware, and it's fellowship, based on your comments, then now I know why it took me almost 14 years to try it.
Regardless, I'm glad I did, as I said, it was the best distro I've tested out of very many in a long time.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
108 • Elive doesn't recognize ATI 2000 Pro! (by Gaston on 2007-07-09 22:38:22 GMT from Canada)
I've tried Elive, it doesn't configure my ATI 2000 prroperly: it suggests a Radeon driver. It's the first time this happens. My old computer normally boots anything thrown at it.
So. I had to use the vesa driver with 800 x 600 definition. YouTube really looks big! :)
It would be a nice idea to provide ID checking at the beginning of the boot process instead of just before installation. As stated on the site, CD engraving is often a problem for newbies.
E17 was surprinsingly stable for me, but it certainly would be better to offer E16 by default.
It's still too early to ask money for this distro, but it looks promising.
109 • Who likes corn here? (by Ultra on 2007-07-09 22:38:39 GMT from Canada)
It's tasty and better than elive!
110 • Elive (by vytas on 2007-07-09 22:39:29 GMT from Lithuania)
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/7464/hikmn8.png chacha
later I checked how much is enough so elive price is 2$ so it is Cheap crap.
111 • RE:87 (by JAG on 2007-07-09 23:18:20 GMT from United States)
Hey, Anonymous could you e-mail me your list of non-recommended linux/it sites...and also your recommended ones.
Thanks in advance...!! JAG
112 • re:20, 25 comments (by rajihammr on 2007-07-09 23:19:49 GMT from United States)
Have to echo commenter 20, without reading Max Spevack's interview, we Fedora users are a different type of Linux user...a little more hands on, a little less hand holding. I've been using Linux since 2000 and Mandrake then Redhat then Fedora. I seldom visit a forum, I'll sort things out myself and as for the visits to DW; I come here to check out the Linux distro world not to cheerlead my favorite distro. I personally would like to see Fedora with a higher ranking, but that's not Fedora's loss, it's the non Fedora user's loss. As for #25.....What?
113 • Re: #69 • Slackware 12.0 (by Ariszló on 2007-07-09 23:28:06 GMT from Hungary)
Landor wrote: I also found a few things odd in the menus. I picked KDE for my desktop environment, but one of the options in the menu was Utilities >> Xcfe4 Appfinder, why? I'm running KDE. Next error I noted in the menu was an item already in lost and found, the Orage Calender.
Those odd things are called desktop interoperability: http://www.freedesktop.org/
114 • @72 (by jrminter on 2007-07-09 23:28:46 GMT from United States)
I'm amazed how quickly some people look for a sinister motive and ignore the inherent difficulties in generating sufficient revenue to meet payroll when so much is given away free.
115 • Ladislav Quote... (by JAG on 2007-07-09 23:30:25 GMT from United States)
Hey all, I came across this story...that Ladislav was mentioned in.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2155918,00.asp
116 • RE: 112 (by Landor on 2007-07-09 23:33:25 GMT from Canada)
Redhat/Fedora are great distros and can either be used by the novice or more experienced users alike. I also feel a bit of a kinship to Redhat being from Hamilton in Canada, some should know why... :) I've always enjoyed the professionalism of the distro.
I did have one problem that turned me off of the Fedora 7, truly, The release announcement. I found it very amateur in the whole hillbilly thing (thang?) Now I understand what fun is about, but from Redhat/Fedora I "personally" (so only my opinion) expected something more professional. I truly wondered how many would take it seriously, or only see it as kiddish based on the announcement.
I will admit though, recently I haven't seen anyone from those ranks fanboying it up in here. Goes to show what I always believed, the professionalism.
As for the post on #25, I shook my head and wondered how anyone could come to that conclusion. I guess they don't appreciate bug-fixes, bleeding edge releases of their favourite software, and continual improvement 2, 3, even 4 times a year. Isn't one of the flaws with Debian considered to be their "It will be released when it does" policy?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
117 • Puppy (by JAG on 2007-07-09 23:38:16 GMT from United States)
Yay! for Puppy...alpha 2.17 ready to roll...woof woof!
http://www.puppylinux.com/news/index.php
118 • @113 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-09 23:44:08 GMT from Canada)
The XDG menu spec covers this. Menu entry files can contain OnlyShowIn or NotShowIn fields which allow you to specify which desktop environments they should and should not appear it. The Xfce-specific apps' menu entry files should contain something like OnlyShowIn: Xfce .
119 • Comments section value (by Jerry on 2007-07-10 00:16:58 GMT from United States)
Well, has anybody changed their mind about anything discussed in here lately?
120 • RE: 113 Interoperability (by Landor on 2007-07-10 00:55:05 GMT from Canada)
So you are telling me that a new user, a novice, who doesn't install Xfce with their Slackware install and picks KDE will not think, why is this here?
BTW, I do understand interoperability I just don't see how it fits with the context of my assessment/review of my install of 12.0. I've tested many distros that offer varied managers/environments and this is the first time I've seen one have an entry to find applications for a different manager/environment that was not installed. Confusing to a novice and as I said would make them wonder why.
My comment regard Orage was simply because it was in lost and found. If it was installed from the full install and it was configured properly, it should not have been in lost and found. It should have been configured properly to appear in the Xfce menus only, or at least in a KDE menu entry, like Office.
Lastly, though you didn't mention it. I was shocked to find that Slackware didn't have Ktorrent or any torrent client installed. That's a huge "woops" in my opinion. Many people use torrents, and Slackware even =has torrents for their ISO's on their site, but not torrent client. I found it a faux pas on their part and noted it.
Finally, I will say this again, the problems I did find were slight. I enjoyed and admired the install of 12.0 more than any other out of the box distro I've tested, it would be even better with a few small things fixed and maybe an overhaul of the package system, which of course isn't for personal preference, since I have no personal problems dealing with it, but for the "typical" end-user of today's operating systems.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
121 • Elive issues (by Joe P on 2007-07-10 01:18:42 GMT from United States)
I agree 100% with Ladislav and the way he has handled this. I also agree that Distrowatch and the donation program are valuable to everyone. As for Elive, I won't waste any time trying it out. If a distro doesn't support WPA and my Atheros based WiFi card I will look for others.
122 • "Feedback" (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 01:51:32 GMT from United States)
"Feedback: "Shame on you, DistroWatch!""
Yeah. Right. "Feedback."
Your "feedback" was a re-post of what you posted in here last week, same words, same points, mainly, "I've donated X dollars (American) to distros, how about YOU?"
Very classy, Bodnar. Very superior to your perceived opponent.
123 • @120 (by charles on 2007-07-10 02:47:51 GMT from United States)
for torrent apps, look in the extra directory. actually use the distro, not just install, look around, and quickly review it.
124 • Took Elive for a spin (by Stephen Wilson on 2007-07-10 03:02:15 GMT from Canada)
The review of Elive this week got me curious, so I just D/L and test-drove Elive in live mode. Yes, the interface is pretty cool, although I found the design of the control panel oddly out of sync with the rest of the look and feel. Apps opened very slowly in live mode, more slowly than I've experienced before.
Oddly, the icons in the tray at the bottom had no labels or even mouseovers. So, you don't know what they are until you click on the and open them. What I found most disturbing was that, after clicking on the icon that was apparently the "Install" function, there was no way to stop it from installing. Clicking "Close" or the corner X simply brought you to the next step in the install process.
Finally, when I tried to find the shutdown, there was none in the menus and no shutdown icon on the desktop. I discovered by accident that moving the mouse near the bottom righthand corner of the screen brought up a close menu.
All-in-all... interesting, but I thought it was pretty rough around the edges still.
125 • Debian Testing (by Caplin Wallberger on 2007-07-10 03:02:38 GMT from United States)
Just an update for anyone who's curious about running Debian Testing as a home desktop system, especially given Testing is described as 'potentially buggy' on the 'major distributions' page here on Distrowatch.
Since Etch was released a couple of months ago, we have had hundreds of package updates without a single problem on any of our machines. Everything has now settled down, and we are back to the usual handful of updates per day. The whole process has been delightfully smooth; it's a great feeling to have the combination of reliability and current software that Debian provides - all without needing to reinstall the OS whenever a new release is made!
Debian Testing on the desktop - highly recommended.
126 • RE : 123 (by Landor on 2007-07-10 03:53:36 GMT from Canada)
Ok, maybe I am not clear enough, although I am quite sure I am, and after re-reading my original comment ( # 69) about the review, I was very clear. I have been discussing the menus, and I've been looking at 12.0 objectively from a new user's perspective. That is how it should be looked at in my opinion. Even new users come here, looking for info about distributions (meaning the comments section), of course this is just an assumption, but I'd wager money on it, given DW's notoriety. (Ladislav? Any stats on this possibly?)
But, to the point, as I said it was in regard to the menus. You or I could easily go to the extras directory and find whatever resides. Will a new user? Will they even know it exists, given the fact few, including myself ever read documentation fully unless it's needed.
Also, FYI, I have been using 12.0, not completely, but roughly for about 75% of my leisure computer related use for the last 5 days. So I would hope in all truth, before you interject with a comment in the future based on assumptions you would read a little bit more in depth and or ask a question or two.
I've also been seeding the torrent since it's been downloaded for the last 5 1/2 days with no limits I might add.
If based on the comments I have received here. The obvious lack of understanding from the userbase for slackware. I have to wonder if I've been doing anyone a service for seeding the torrent for this long if Slackware users are so thin-skinned that they get upset when the very worst someone can find wrong with their distribution, benchmarked against current distros are a few slight menu issues, not having a user configured during the install, and having to startx manually. Let alone the fact that I have "repeatedly" stated that by far regardless of the issues , it is the best distro I have setup and installed in a very long time.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
127 • Re: 106 (by simon on 2007-07-09 22:11:49 GMT from New Zealand) (by kirios on 2007-07-10 04:35:48 GMT from Malaysia)
When I read dbrion's post (#67), I thought he was just kidding, but I guess he was serious about that too....
[...dbrion (#67) wrote: "With VM player/ VirtualBox (running light linuxen like elive or zen) + cygwin+ R + theGimp+OOffice, I operate more *free* (in any sense) than some Linuxen..." ]
128 • 125 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 04:47:56 GMT from United States)
Yes, I've recently been using testing (Lenny) myself. Only a couple of minor problems that were easily fixed. If you are an absolute newbie, you're not likely to run Debian, but if you are, just stick with Etch. Otherwise you should have little difficulty handling the breakages that occur.
I also pulled the new GNOME and KDE desktops from Sid (2.18.2 and 3.5.7). Both have given me no troubles at all. You can also install the 2.6.21 kernel from Sid. Beyond that, you run the usual chance of messing up your dependencies when mixing Sid and testing for applications.
Works great for me. If stability is not an absolute requirement it is probably time to move from Etch to Lenny.
129 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 04:55:38 GMT from United States)
> With VM player/ VirtualBox (running light linuxen like elive or zen)
Just curious, what specs does your computer have? I have a three-year old computer with XP that runs Kubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, Mepis, etc. just fine in VMWare. In fact, I use it as my test machine. I don't see any reason to limit yourself to the "light" distros. I also find that Debian runs as well as any of the supposed light distros with the exception of Puppy or DSL, which are too ugly IMO to count as a modern OS.
130 • Distro Popularity Downunder (OZ) (by Peter on 2007-07-10 05:21:44 GMT from Australia)
[Bigpond is Australia's largets ISP (20-35%?) and provides a free (now metered but non-chargeable) download server to its Cable and ADSL subscribers.]
[15-6-07]
Most downloaded isos (single files) at Bigpond download server P1:
2330....FC4-i386-disc1.iso Fedora 665,434,112 bytes 14-06-2005 Never
2252.....BeOS5PEMaxEditionV3.zip BeOS 284,100,837 bytes 26-09-2003 Never
2250......FC-5-i386-DVD.iso Fedora 3,253,669,888 bytes 21-03-2006 Never
1606....FC-5-i386-disc1.iso Fedora 687,235,072 bytes 21-03-2006 Never
1308....KNOPPIX_V4.0.2CD-2005-09-23-EN.iso Knoppix 728,190,976 bytes 26-09-2005 Never
1122....Mandriva-Linux-2005-Limited-Edition-Download-DVD.i586.iso.bz2 Mandriva ...... 11-05-2005 Never
1119....FC-6-i386-DVD.iso Fedora 3,525,195,776 bytes 25-10-2006 Never
1082....SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD1.iso Suse Linux 629,899,264 bytes 07-10-2005 Never
1042....SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-DVD-i386.iso Suse Linux 3,749,724,160 bytes 18-05-2006 Never
979.....ubuntu-5.10-install-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 647,129,088 bytes 13-10-2005 Never
961.....ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 732,293,120 bytes 27-10-2006 Never
*915....openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso Suse Linux 3,880,814,592 bytes 09-12-2006 Never
832....CentOS-4.2-i386-bin1of4.iso CentOS Linux 647,575,552 bytes 17-10-2005 Never
828....debian-31r1-i386-binary-1.iso Debian 4,688,920,576 bytes 05-01-2006 Never
761.....KNOPPIX_V4.0.2DVD-2005-09-23-EN.iso Knoppix 3,344,640,000 bytes 08-12-2005 Never
707.....ubuntu-6.06-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 3,371,440,864 bytes 03-06-2006 Never
*692.....ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 731,797,504 bytes 19-04-2007 04 Oct 07
684.....Mandriva-Linux-Free-2006-DVD.i586.iso.bz2 Mandriva 2,113,364,089 bytes 06-12-2005 Never
654.....breezy-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 3,291,650,048 bytes 05-12-2005 Never
648.....SUSE-10.0-EvalDVD-i386-GM.iso Suse Linux 3,621,957,632 bytes 09-12-2005 Never
611.....slackware-10.2-install-d1.iso Slackware 668,659,712 bytes 15-09-2005 Never
589.....KNOPPIX_V5.0.1DVD-2006-06-01-EN.iso Knoppix 4,344,862,720 bytes 03-06-2006 Never
554.....FC4-i386-DVD.iso Fedora 2,750,582,784 bytes 13-01-2006 Never
*547.....ubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 4,263,823,360 bytes 20-04-2007 05 Oct 07
540.....ubuntu-5.10-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 3,048,179,712 bytes 10-12-2005 Never
**503.....FC-5-x86_64-DVD.iso Fedora 3,462,629,376 bytes 21-03-2006 Never
486.....KNOPPIX_V5.1.1DVD-2007-01-04-EN.iso Knoppix 4,324,202,496 bytes 08-01-2007 25 Jun 07
481.....livecd-i686-installer-2006.0.iso Gentoo 730,388,480 bytes 28-02-2006 Never
468.....debian-31r2-i386-binary-1.iso Debian 4,685,895,680 bytes 27-04-2006 Never
440.....ubuntu-5.10-live-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 657,975,296 bytes 13-10-2005 Never
420.....6.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso FreeBSD 578,408,448 bytes 06-11-2005 Never
382.....kubuntu-5.10-install-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 671,594,496 bytes 17-10-2005 Never
*359.....F-7-i386-DVD.iso Fedora 2,900,602,880 bytes 01-06-2007 Never
354.....enigma-i386-disc1.iso Red Hat Linux 677,961,728 bytes 23-10-2001 Never
**344.....debian-31r0a-amd64-binary-1.iso [unofficial] Debian 4,691,372,032 bytes 02-03-2006 Never
338.....debian-31r1-i386-binary-1.iso Debian 669,585,408 bytes 31-03-2006 Never
**320.....SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-DVD-x86_64.iso Suse Linux 3,743,195,136 bytes 17-05-2006 Never
313.....slackware-11.0-install-dvd.iso Slackware 3,912,810,496 bytes 03-10-2006 Never
**308....debian-31r0a-amd64-binary-1.iso Debian 4,691,372,032 bytes 12-06-2006 Never
307.....kubuntu-6.06-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 3,657,142,272 bytes 20-06-2006 Never
280....Mandriva-Linux-Free-2006-CD1.i586.iso Mandriva 729,880,576 bytes 15-11-2005 Never
275....SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-LiveDVD.iso Suse Linux 1,734,078,464 bytes 12-06-2006 Never
271.....kubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 4,617,809,920 bytes 22-04-2007 07 Oct 07
257.....ubuntu-6.10-server-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 473,673,728 bytes 27-10-2006 Never
256....KNOPPIX_V5.1.0CD-2006-12-30-EN.iso Knoppix 731,594,752 bytes 01-01-2007 18 Jun 07
253....RR4-Linux-3.0.b0.iso Gentoo 2,903,113,728 bytes 07-02-2006 Never
249....kubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 727,867,392 bytes 20-04-2007 05 Oct 07
247....ubuntu-6.10-alternate-i386.iso Ubuntu Linux 730,931,200 bytes 27-10-2006 Never
240....6.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso FreeBSD 529,784,832 bytes 12-05-2006 Never
237....mandriva-linux-2007-spring-free-dvd-i586.iso Mandriva 4,568,668,160 bytes 20-04-2007 05 Oct 07
131 • Gentoo, DW, OSnews (by nightmorph on 2007-07-10 06:07:05 GMT from United States)
Hey Ladislav, I'm back again. Thanks for the link to that article on Gentoo -- actually, I haven't heard anything about it. None of the devs have mentioned that we were being featured in an upcoming issue, so this is a nice surprise to me, though I'll have to find the magazine somewhere so I can really find out what that author wrote.
Regarding OSnews, if you search around a bit, in recent months there have been a number of articles researching the reporting (and other) practices of OSnews and its chief editor Thom. They aren't saying anything good, either, and from what I've seen after reading the site and its comments (etc.) for a couple of years, I'm very much inclined to agree, so much that I just stopped reading OSnews altogether.
I'd encourage you not to get too riled up about the guy, that he's not worth your time, but I think you've already figured that out, judging by your resounding rebuttal (donation stuff). Well done. :)
132 • Info is power (by Don Go on 2007-07-10 06:13:19 GMT from Philippines)
well...this show that THOM is not very keen about his info...for a journalist not to know facts means its not worth a pint of salt...
This journalist's info is a piece of dirty rags...many people like this kind of news...
Anyway..Go slackware...hopefully slax is release soon
133 • RE: 105 (by IMQ on 2007-07-10 06:31:17 GMT from United States)
You missed the key word *easier*.
134 • About OSNews (by IMQ on 2007-07-10 06:38:17 GMT from United States)
I used to visit OSNews in its early days, but for the past few years I only go there once in a while. Although I can't pin point the precise reasons, I just don't feel it's worth a click any more.
Maybe other web sites I visit already cover the news posted at OSnews. I still have the bookmark, but I rarely click on it.
135 • To Mandriva and PCLinuxOS (by linbetwin on 2007-07-10 06:57:45 GMT from Romania)
To adamw and davecs: Why does the Mandriva One installer (and therefore the PCLinuxOS installer) not include Romania in the list of countries? This is not about i18n, I know you can't fit all the language packs on one CD. I don't need the Romanian locale, I just want to be able to choose my country as location when installing. Bucharest is on the list of time zones, but Romania is not in the _long_ list of countries and territories.
136 • RE 129 Specs for VMplaying (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 07:08:59 GMT from France)
"Just curious, what specs does your computer have? " The memory is what matters: 784 M (both at home, with a 2 years old laptop, or at work, with a 4 yrs old desk top; the age is a matter of patience, but it ends up working). I agree with you that normal Linuxen can be emulated; it is just a matter of resource disponibilty and greediness... at work, when needed, I operate a Potemkined Mandriva 2007.0 to use non free Linux compatible binaries: if they were free, I would have recompiled them! The Mandriva 2007.0 was slightly slimmed in order not to eat too much memory...
I agree with you that any Linux can be emulated/potemkined, but Iprefer to use small ones : the top ten can be bought wwith newspapers, I tested them last year with vmplayer and decided to try lighter ones, as it gives more memory left. R is memory greedy (even when ported! It does not change the way it works...), ieplore.exe does not seem to have memory leaks but is also memory greedy. => I prefer to use native xfece/evince distrs (though kde works, but needs ~30/60 M more)
137 • Re: 135 (by kirios on 2007-07-10 07:19:38 GMT from Malaysia)
"Bucharest is on the list of time zones, but Romania is not in the _long_ list of countries and territories."
Same goes for Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia (with Mandriva 2007.1).
138 • RE 106 Weird definition of ethics vs common sense (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 07:30:35 GMT from France)
"I didn't realise ethics were governed by the market! That's great news! So I can choose whether to buy them or not, like any other product? Whee! I'm going to "not buy ethics" too, and be a psychopath from now on. " Glad to meet some psychiatric expertise! I suppose there exists a Brezhnev linux, in which you can find all the sources; then you can build: a cross compiler (gcc built with nice option) for arm or for ... Windows... then you can compile anything a Windows user would need (useful free-source applications). Of course, ndiswrapper would not be thought as useful; it does indeed give a very odd sense of freedom. As far as I am concerned, I prefer facts and figures to "sense of freedom" Quatsch... If a linux is woth more than Windows, for consistency reasons (not sentimental ones) , I can buy her/ advise her to my boss... but the criteria may be slightly different from "its a breeze, it works out of the Holy box" usual "criteria".
139 • DW Rankings (by Bryan on 2007-07-10 08:59:32 GMT from United States)
I agree that the DW rankings are only a guideline of interest, if they carry any significance at all. Statistics from repositories are certainly better guidelines of actual use. Although different distros' package management strategies may make these statistics not exactly comparable, the repository information reflects actual use (and persistent use) better.
However, if we went with repository information, I am sure we would find that Redmond's proprietary distro would beat out all of our F/OSS projects. Popularity certainly does not always equal highest quality nor does it equal the most fun. Thus, I am satisfied with DW's ranking system, since it is simply a quick abstraction of the awstats data. Only new readers should confuse the DW rankings as being authoritative use statistics. Trying to abstract information from repositories would be difficult, open to spin from different distro, and probably be difficult for smaller distros who use their own distinct package management systems.
140 • Some distros use DW rankings for marketing (official promotion) (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 09:02:05 GMT from Australia)
An example is:
"....After the release of SimplyMEPIS in August, MEPIS climbed to #6 at distrowatch.com and eventually hit #1 in January 2005...."
Thus one can understand in whose footsteps others are following! :-)
141 • Qu 140 Selection on an intellectual criterion (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 09:15:09 GMT from France)
"Some distros use DW rankings for marketing " Are there others than Mepis? Which ones? (Anyway, this info spares me some download time)
142 • Re 141 - Inspector Clouseau (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 09:31:09 GMT from Australia)
- The French intelligence is on my case again? :-) >Are there others than Mepis?< Maybe a slip of the kbd key on my part? :-) But I can see at least one other in the making, and I am sure others (including u) can too! (No need to say which one!)
143 • RE 142 (by Inspector Clouseau on 2007-07-10 09:42:59 GMT from France)
s/o/i/g
144 • elive going commercial (by NK on 2007-07-10 09:44:39 GMT from United States)
elive could go commercial, but before you join it's community, just look what happenned to libranet. All those users were left high and dry!
145 • RE 67: How has that math been done? (by KimTjik on 2007-07-10 10:45:51 GMT from Sweden)
dbrion wrote: "BTW, commercial Linuxen are more expensive than XP (and chosen on different reasons than the "it rocks; its a breeze; install is flawless; its soo beautifull" usual in depth linuxen comparisons)"
If we exclude areas wherein MS doesn't even offer any solutions, thus making a comparison impossible, how did you come to the conclusion that XP is less expensive? What version and for whom? Specialized for any special task?
I've seen MS making such an argument, but only based on the scenario of migration from a MS solution to a Linux one, which for obvious reasons might, just as might not, become more complicated. Still MS argument is very dependent of a lot of "if:s", hence making it less conclusive. Nevertheless every commercial product is dependent on marketing, which is different from your claims dbrion, thus I'm intrigued to see the basis for such a conclusion.
146 • RE 67 How has that math been done (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 11:01:30 GMT from France)
I discussed 3 months ago with a man who sells prints and photocopies: his linux specialist wanted him to ... fully switch to Linux(astonishing).. I asked him how much time would it take to retrain his employees... (which are slow, but as no one is 100% intelligent, should not be fired [and replaced by whom?]). He is a man who takes many advices... and remains XP based (except for the scanner printer link, whence his linux specialist!).. and does not go bankrupt.... This point is inthe hypothesis of a 0 E$ Linux; can Linux have a negative commercial value.... {for very specific purposes, linuxen exist I do not know the price -to day- (ex. PC cluster + _help_ + cellulotic _documentation_ both these things fall from heaven on rainy days, as everyone knows!)}. Telling Linux is good because nothing goes out of one's purse is absurd.
147 • @103 by Adam Williamson (by davecs on 2007-07-10 11:09:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
QUOTE: 103 • @99 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-09 22:06:09 GMT from Canada) Dave, out of interest, how do you handle major, dangerous updates (such as new kernel releases, new RPM releases, major changes to hal / udev etc)? do you have a separate development track to refine such changes before putting them into the repos used by regular users?
------------------------
I'll do my best to answer, my role is not packaging, but testing and being prepared to re-install from time to time!!
Obviously there is no guarantee there will never have to be a re-install, but guys who have been around longer than me got from 0.4 to 0.93a over 3 years without having to re-install. I think that even included moving from 2.4 to 2.6 series kernels (not sure). It also included some major changes to the way hal/udev worked between kernels 2.6.12 and 2.6.14 as I remember. Announcements were made on the web site about necessary kernel updates. I also remember one update with over 100 packages being rebuilt (it may have been perl or python). But it went smoothly. With the 2007 series, the aim is that a "metapackage" and dependencies will handle kernel upgrades alongside normal upgrades.
The answer to your question is "yes". We test in 3 stages, the dev team with potentially system-breaking stuff, things are put there whilst other packages are brought into line. Then our mailing list members with testing stuff, then finally the release.
We advise users to update stuff evenly, that is, don't update packages selectively, update all and regularly. That way, and with good use of dependencies, we have avoided serious problems so far.
Hopefully we'll do as well in the future, but as I say, no guarantees ...
148 • fool! (by get on 2007-07-10 11:29:31 GMT from Spain)
in fact: distrowatch has published a link wich was never published as "public" thats the fact, dont turn any comments against his writers, just erase the link and shut up.
149 • Cor 146 : it was 145 partial answer (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 11:52:29 GMT from France)
"but only based on the scenario of migration from a MS solution to a Linux one" I am conscious the example I gave is based on a migration, as are 90% of the likely cases.... I never heard of a competition between two _new_ solutions, as pple evolved with Microsoft... and their clients are i(95%) MS users. I wish he had switched to Linux, as he might have printed some ps documents... but I could only advice to make an _exhaustive_ price estimation.... The example of cluster PC is a case no other OS adresses than Linux [as did M$ do for desktops!] (thus making Linux monopolistic ...like Microsoft..., or very interesting.... whatever the price!)
150 • RE 146 I'll only see two different opinions (by KimTjik on 2007-07-10 12:03:21 GMT from Sweden)
Following your advice doesn't necessarily make the entrepreneur in question a wise man. No conclusion might be made until both parties have been heard.
Still what surprises me in your comment, like some others, especially in view of how active you are here at DW, is a chain of assumptions. To analyze them based on your reply:
# 1 "linux specialist wanted him to ... fully switch to Linux(astonishing)" - you view the so called "Linux specialist" as alienated from yourself; in other words like you don’t have any common ground why your involvement in the discussion here at DW becomes odd - you already have decided that such suggestions are unrealistic and deserve nothing but astonishment
# 2 "He is a man who takes many advices... and remains XP based" - this might even suggest that you made him XP dependent in the first place - furthermore we're talking about an eventual migration here and not in the real sense a fair comparison, hence negating the truthfulness of you general statement about Linux being more expensive - in deferens to # 1 we don't even know what strategy the "Linux specialist" had in mind besides you thinking that the whole idea was "astonishing"
# 3 "This point is in the hypothesis of a 0 E$ Linux; can Linux have a negative commercial value...." - I didn't, and you didn't either in the post which is the basis for my questions, claim that Linux is equal to a 0 $ scenario - in view of all possible factors every solution on the market has its pros and cons, and I didn't make any comment even suggesting that I had the naive view that Linux is best in absolute everything
# 4 "Telling Linux is good because nothing goes out of one's purse is absurd" - once more: there's no need to make an argument based on a non-existing challenge - actually this is the problem I have with some of your posts, dbrion, that you argue with a cascade of random statements irrelevant to the one/ones it's addressed at (I suppose you in French have the term "pétition de principe" which refers to arguments based on the wrong premises; in a wider meaning it include the importance of adopt to the mindset of the audience)
151 • @67 (by Johnny Hughes on 2007-07-10 12:05:09 GMT from United States)
dbrion wrote: BTW, commercial Linuxen are more expensive than XP (and chosen on different reasons than the "it rocks; its a breeze; install is flawless; its sooo beautifull" usual in depth linuxen comparisons) =========================================== hughesjr says: PoppyCock :)
For an Enterprise Workstation, Windows XP Pro costs (includes upgrades for 2 years): $289.99
MS Office Standard edition (can't do anything in business w/o Office, cheapest enterprise license, again includes upgrades for 2 years): $359.99
At the 2 year point, MS allows you to continue their Software assurance (and upgrade to vista pro and the next version of office ... price for both: $450.00
So cost for WIndows and Office (no antivirus yet or any other apps) is:
Initial-year2: $650 Year3-4: $450
So the cost of 4 years of XP and Office in the enterprise is:
$1100.00
The most expensive Enterprise Linux Desltop out there is RHEL ... It comes in 2 desktop flavors:
Basic Desktop: $ 80.00/year Workstation (dual processor or > 4gb RAM): $179.00/year
So you get a full office suite (open office) and the desktop for:
Desktop: Initial - year 2: $160 Year 3-4: $160
Total: $320
OR
Workstation (if you have Dual Processor or > 4 GB): Initial - 2: $358 Year 3-4: $358
Total: $716
================================= Either way, cost is less for the Enterprise Linux Desktop.
For servers, the cost difference is even more striking (when you add in Exchange server if you want to do mail or MS SQL server, especially).
152 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 12:17:55 GMT from France)
<<# 2 "He is a man who takes many advices... and remains XP based" - this might even suggest that you made him XP dependent in the first place >>-
You 'forgot' to quote I wrote : "He is a man who takes many advices... "
"(astonishing)" was obviously ironical...
<< furthermore we're talking about an eventual migration here and not in the real sense a fair comparison, hence negating the truthfulness of you general statement about Linux being more expensive>> A fair comparison can only happen in 5-10% of the cases... It would not be based on *installation times * esthetics * looove *DW hit scores..
Have you ONE example? (not 2, ONE)! of a _fair_ competition between XP and Linux?
Else, I can notice that GNU/linux loovers are more than biased...
PLSE notice that I took the time to correct my post, telling it was a migration => you "forgot" to quote that... which stengtens my opinion.
153 • RE 151 Thanks (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 12:23:45 GMT from France)
I like numbers... and my colleagues like RedHat derived... (in the most expensive case, it is 40% cheaper!)
and ... I do not pretend to make anyone dependent on anything (I do not sell drugs!)@150....
154 • RE 152 (by KimTjik on 2007-07-10 12:53:31 GMT from Sweden)
dbrion, I didn't "forget" or ignore you correction. I have a lot of work going on here, and when I finally posted a reply it came in some minutes after your correction.
What strengthens or weakens our opinions is up to others to evaluate, hence I didn't see any point of commenting your correction. As humans we're all biased; to present oneself as objective is actually a good proof of even more subjectivity. Yes I prefer Linux, even though this message is written in a XP system due to my employer, but please don't refer to me and others as "GNU/Linux lovers"; it just looks silly and will simply hurt your own reliability. I love my wife, but not Linux. It's just about preferences of tools.
155 • Re. WinXP, Video Editing (by Richard-S on 2007-07-10 13:18:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
This 2 year old PC arrived with WinXP Home SP2. The manufacturer installed all necessary drivers and provided the subsequent updates. MS provides a monthly diet of (very) essential security patches.
I use the PC to run Windows based Digital Video editing and Photo editing programs. It also runs:
- Firefox + NoScript (& Opera); MS IE7 is used mostly for collecting MS updates. - Pegasus Email (free but not "open-source") rather than Outlook. - Open Office rather than MS Office (which I also own). - Good anti-virus & software firewall. (Only one virus detected & then instantly blocked in the last 15 years!) - Anti-spyware & anti-adware, although clearing the web-browsers' caches actually removes most of this junk. - A variety of free & open-source audio & video programs. - VirtualBox
This was a cheap PC, WinXP was bundled with the hardware so cost very little. Even when first unpacked, it "...just worked"!
At present my current Windows based Video Editing software is more convenient & stable than the Linux programs I've tried.
However, this PC would not be suitable for Vista so will continue running WinXP - with ever more frequent excursions to rapidly improving Linux.
156 • Re. Elive (by Richard-S on 2007-07-10 13:34:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
The LiveCD of Elive 1.0 booted & ran my AMD/ATI desktop PC. It needed only a little "fiddling."
Most aspects worked well.
I found the dark "night" theme harder to read than the paler "standard" theme.
The program icons at the bottom of the screen were disappointing: With some other distros, such icons enlarge when the mouse passes over them - not really necessary, but does make them easier to read while getting used to a new distro. (I'd be happy with a simple tool-tip to jog my memory.)
With Elive, passing the mouse over an icon seemed just to produce an apparently useless blue bar.
So, seemed mostly to work well but I'd want to tweak its appearance slightly.
157 • RE 154 I cannot be too agressive vs your contributions... (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 13:41:17 GMT from France)
"please don't refer to me and others as "GNU/Linux lovers""
I did not think of _you_ (BTW I think I wrote linux!) as I know you are very interested in Linux-compatible hardware...and this needs skills (to be underrealistic) I do not have: some of your posts/links may be/are/will be usefull to someone willing to buy new HW (I really am not ironical..) without whining that some respectable distr. does not work for his HW (I know it is a financial issue, not a skill issue..;
it seems to me unfair and useless to maintain such a pressure on distribution makers, even if they were paid for!).
(By emulation, this hardware issues can be kept hidden...)
158 • Berry 0.81 (by Richard-S on 2007-07-10 13:46:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
The LiveCD of Berry 0.81 booted & ran my AMD/ATI desktop PC.
I needed a Red Hat / Fedora based distro.
Most aspects worked pretty well.
One minor point: Change Control and version numbering:
Initial versions of Berry 0.81 had problems with the PS2 mouse. These were later fixed, but the patched distro was still called "0.81" Only the changed MD5 checksum showed that the download had been updated - somewhat confusing!
Again a nice distro which ran well on my PC. I'm looking forward to running 0.82 later today.
159 • Freespire? Cnr? (by puzzled on 2007-07-10 13:46:43 GMT from United States)
Anyone notice that freespire and CNR went very quiet? Total failure anyone?? Not a thing in their forums too.
160 • 105&133 - gentoo ease of use & elive (by ray carter at 2007-07-10 14:15:32 GMT from United States)
IMHO - you're confusing 'ease of use' with 'ease of installation'. Once it's installed, I find Gentoo no more difficult to USE than anything else. There are graphical package managers, etc. - so what's the beef? Yes, it's more intense to install - but that's not use.
I appreciate the discussions about Elive, and I understand why some folks feel cheated by Elive's business model - it's not one I would have chosen, and I doubt it maximizes their revenue stream. As long as they are not complaining about posting of a direct link, I don't really see a problem. IMHO they certainly don't deserve to be 'delisted' as some have suggested - Elive is a valid Linux distro. I've been quite impressed with it in the past - I've not yet tried the latest version, though I shall soon. It's really a good performer, especially on older hardware. I installed about a year ago on a P166 with 64mb, and it runs quite well. I'll hope for Elive's continued success and a change in the business model.
161 • What about Freespire? (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 14:55:19 GMT from United States)
The forums are thriving as of a minute ago.
What are you talking about, "puzzled?"
98 viewers of just one topic I looked at.
Also, "Currently Active Users: 229 (19 members and 210 guests)" as of one minute ago.
What's your problem with Freespire/CNR that you'd come here and post FUD?
162 • To everybody who prefers M$ shit to Linux for reasons of hardware-compatibility (by BhaKi on 2007-07-10 15:39:51 GMT from India)
Remember that a computer system is a combination of hardware and software. Software ranges from OSs to device drivers to applications. All these parts of a computer system need some knowledge about the other parts so as to operate with/on them. Let us focus on the device drivers - devices interface. Hardware manufacturers are supposed to manufacture hardware and specify the details of its software-interface (or programming-interface) so that programmers can make software (OSs or drivers or both) that work with the hardware. These specifications are important because the programmer has *NO* way of knowing about your hardware unless the manufacturer specifies it. In order to help the programmer out of the tedious work of reading specifications of thousands of models/brands of a particular component (say, Graphics Card), the so-called standardization efforts started. For example, the VGA specification, the VESA specification, the x86_64 specification, etc. These specifications put some constraints on both programmers and hardware manufacturers so that everything *WORKS*. In this context, the work of an ethical/good hardware-manufacturer reduces to 1. Making hardware that offers a standards-conforming interface to the programmers. (The hardware may also, optionally, offer more features in addition to those mandated by the standard), and, optionally 2. Providing drivers for the popular OSs so that programmers' work is unnecessary.
Thanks to the evil efforts of hardware manufacturers, most people (including programmers) today forgot the need for complete specifications and dont pester/sue the hardware manufacturers for complete specifications.
If you are a user, educate yourself so that 1. You should be literate enough to question MS - "The data is mine, the NTFS formatted hard-disk is mine. I should have the right to be able to get my data back irrespective of whether i remain your customer tommorow or not. So, I have the right to know complete specification of NTFS". You should realise that the solution to the problem of adding NTFS support to your favourite OS depends on *YOUR* pestering/sueing MS. 2. You should use protocols/formats whose details are available to the general public. For example, if you are a music artist, try to encode your music in formats like .ogg whose details are available to everybody. If you produce music in formats like .mp3, you should understand that your music requires money to be sent to the Motion Pictures group either directly or indirectly from the person who has bought your music. Simlarly, if you produce documents in formats like MS Word, you should understand that only MS knows about the .doc and .ppt formats completely.
If you are a hardware manufacturer, 1. Produce hardware that conforms to freely-available standards, and 2. If you have to produce hardware that can't implement widely-available standards, you must specify the interface completely. Otherwise, most people will blame the OS that they use instead of you. No, supporting Linux isn't the solution.... You should adopt methods which allow any programmer to utilise your hardware completely.
***** The immediate need of the world is not open-source ***** ***** What is most important is the use of open formats, open protocols, open specifications *****
163 • re 162 (by winolfar on 2007-07-10 16:22:28 GMT from Europe)
I say AMEN to that. Right on.
164 • RE: 160 --about "ease of use" (by IMQ on 2007-07-10 17:31:36 GMT from United States)
When I said "easier to use", I meant the Gentoo overall experience. Not just a matter of installling and removing the package.
Because, once installed, all applications run, or more acurately function, exactly the same in every distro, unless the apps are customized somehow to make them different from the rest (why on earth would anyone wants to that, if ever).
OpenOffice.org functions in the exact same way in Debian as it does in Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, etc., assuming they are of the same version. And so does every app.
One cannot discount the process of installing/removing/upgrading packages because it is part of the experience using a particular distro. Installing, removing, and upgrading are all routine tasks that most people do all the time, because Linux and all the apps available for it are constantly being updated.
165 • Distrowatch Elive debacle... (by Eric on 2007-07-10 17:52:05 GMT from United States)
I agree with everything distrowatch said, and love that you have donated to the cause. I am sad, however, personally that Xandros torrents and news are lacking here but that is just because it is my flavor of choice. Thanks for the good work.
166 • "Shame on you, DistroWatch!" (by Arijit on 2007-07-10 18:29:50 GMT from India)
I am a regular reader of the weekly since I'm using to Linux. It is a great source for me about new/old/upcoming distributions. I've never found distrowatch was biased or unfair to anyone. recently after knowing about Elive (from DW itself), I went to the site to download and test it. But I found it'll need donation before I get the download link. As DW reported I found the exact situation there and decided not to use it for the time being. Later I got the iso file from 3rd-party torrent tracker and used it for few days. In my opinion, the distribution is not in a stage that can earn a "must-donate" tag. "It's shame on you, elive!".
167 • elive (by dbrion on 2007-07-10 18:33:49 GMT from France)
There is something about elive which is forgotten: according to DWW link to an interview, she is mainly a "one man work" (with some help and some testing. Can anyone be full time intelligent? In any domain (nice screens, coding, funds raising)? Where does such a man live?
168 • @164 (by davecs on 2007-07-10 22:02:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
QUOTE: OpenOffice.org functions in the exact same way in Debian as it does in Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, etc., assuming they are of the same version. And so does every app.
Not totally true. As a former Gentoo user, I can tell you that, thanks to the USE flags, your packages compile with different functions included or excluded according to your USE settings.
With a precompiled distro, the guys who package the stuff can make their own version of the USE settings, ie, the packagers decide what's in and what's out. I would imagine that on a general use distro, almost everything would be in, but in some, maybe lightweight distros, functions could be sacrificed for speed.
So there is no guarantee that a program will run identically in each version of Linux. Although I would imagine that most will, most of the time.
169 • Freespire (by Jerry on 2007-07-10 22:06:05 GMT from United States)
That certainly was a classic example of FUD by the poster asserting that Freespire was "quiet," (poster name, "puzzled").
LOL. It's been at over two hundred visitors all day long; I know because I've been perusing their forums all day because I love to read there.. that community really is a "community," just look for yourself, "puzzled."
"Currently Active Users: 216 (25 members and 191 guests)" at 5pm Central Time 10 July 2007. :)
170 • pclinuxos (by postaldave on 2007-07-10 22:26:50 GMT from United States)
"Once again, I was relieved and glad to see no planned releases from PCLinux OS."
i thought i was the only one. that is the biggest thing i hate about linux. it's ALWAYS changing and you never know if you are going to land on a stable version.
pclinuxos=perfectly simple.
171 • Elive links (by ladislav on 2007-07-10 22:32:23 GMT from Taiwan)
After a few more email exchanges with Thanatermesis and Thom, I've agreed to remove the direct download links from the Elive news piece - in exchange for a more straightforward Elive donations page that doesn't make the reader guilty of not supporting the project and doesn't talk about a non-existent slow mirror. If you enjoy Elive, go ahead and make a donation; otherwise the ISOs are still up there on public FTP servers, but you'll have to find them by yourselves.
172 • The Meaning of Life (by Anonymous on 2007-07-10 23:33:30 GMT from United States)
Three little dinky kids eagerly running a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of their house. Smiling at all the cars and bicyclists going by. Waving.
50 cents. One lemonade and a small home made oatmeal cookie.
It doesn't get any better than that.
173 • PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous on 2007-07-11 00:53:15 GMT from United States)
"pclinuxos=perfectly simple."
I would ammend that to, "pclinuxos=perfectly simple, especially if you can get it to run on your computer. Otherwise, just get Mandriva, the PCLinuxOS mother and father."
174 • RE 160 164 - Ease of Use and Install :) (by Landor on 2007-07-11 01:35:53 GMT from Canada)
160:
That is and was my point, and I personally do not believe it is all that intense to install either.
How can it be? It takes 2 minor abilities. Basic command line knowledge for linux, and you honestly don't even need that if you go to the handbook for all of it. Then this part echoes the latter of the first, being able to read and follow directions.
My son did the minimal install for me since I was busy, he's 14, albeit a fairly computer-literate 14, but 14 regardless and spent most of his time behind a GUI instead of a command line. I've done the rest of course, well, almost, I'm lazy as I said..lol
164:
Ease of use doesn't always reap the greatest rewards. There's a lot to say for interacting with what your system holds. Does anyone think all Linux flavours should become button clicking mindless installs for the masses only? Where we don't how or what it does as long as it's quick and we get to watch the Paris sex video A.S.A.P. ?
Look at Ubuntu and it's flavours. You say that they all run the same. I beg to differ. 2 installs recently proved out of the box the majority of Apps ran far faster and with less cpu bloat than Ubuntu, one was a fork of it, Mint, the other was Slackware, both flew compared to Ubuntu. I can also tell you that so far the apps installed on my ground up build based on Gentoo minimal fly and use less resources than Ubuntu and it's flavours. Not all things are created equal no?
I tested a theory a couple months back regarding Ubuntu. I had read that by installing fluxbox from the repo will make it run slower in Ubuntu, something that is the norm for many apps. Installing it from source and configuring it manually would correct this. Yes, I am aware that source usually does run faster. But this was more than the normal difference one would note.
When does ease of use mean it responds better, instead of meaning as long as it takes as little of my effort I don't care how it runs? Doesn't the world have that already with a widespread OS?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
175 • Feature request and/or suggestion (by Soloact on 2007-07-11 03:28:31 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, if you have the time and/or desire, I have a suggestion or request for a feature for this site. It would be the inclusion of the Installed Footprint size of a Distro. (For other end users like myself, this means how much hard drive space is needed for the Distro to be installed with it's default settings.) This would really come in handy, especially for the Distros that claim to be made for older computers with smaller hard drives and lower RAM maximums. This information is also useful when finding a Live Distro that works on a machine, where the end user is satisfied that they want to install it to their hard drive. Thanks for your continued great site! Have a great today!
176 • "Shame on you, DistroWatch!" (by Feathers on 2007-07-11 05:03:35 GMT from Romania)
Haha. Hilarious and very well said. Go DistroWatch!
177 • Misc (upgrade / release cadences and Need of the World) (by dbrion on 2007-07-11 05:52:16 GMT from France)
" Installing, removing, and upgrading are all routine tasks that most people do all the time, because Linux and all the apps available for it are constantly being updated" @164 They should not:most of the updates are bug fixes/reintroductions. A continuous / 6 months upgrade policy does not follow the slow rythm of progress (it does not mean there is no progress, but part of the "improvements" can interest only a very small subset of users: it would be more interesting to read changelogs in one's favorite application(s) and the stuff (libraries, to be politically correct) they depend on, thus leadind to knowing what is on one's hard drive....) " ***** The immediate need of the world is not open-source ***** "@162 I do not know the immediate needs of the world(vaste problème...), but hardware loses almost its Holy value within 6 months, specially when it is expensive: hardware handling can only meet very _immediate_ needs of gâtés-pourris snobs. Libraries like lapack keep a huge value after (say) 20 years: this can lead to some respect vs the Sacred Free (free as _not_ posting stupid credos, say!) movement.
178 • OSNews (by none on 2007-07-11 10:43:54 GMT from France)
I can't belive I've seen an OSNews editor talking about morality. So now they know this word ? Do you think they can change ?
179 • Mint Cassandra (by octathlon on 2007-07-11 14:18:25 GMT from United States)
I tried the Live CD of Mint Cassandra briefly on my IBM desktop with 512 MB and nVidia graphics card. Mint seems very nice, but I will just report a few problems I noticed: The Hardware Information crashed on startup every time. When I tried Restricted drivers it just gave a message that I didn't need any restricted drivers and exited, so I don't know how I would choose to use the proprietary nVidia driver. I clicked on Beryl Manager in the menu and my screen went blank white and stayed that way; I finally had to ctrl-alt-bksp to recover from that. I'm not sure what Beryl manager is supposed to do, but it should probably make some checks first before trying to do it, as it is one of the first things a new user sees on the menu and would try clicking on.
180 • #179 Mint (by Glenn at 2007-07-11 14:40:40 GMT from Canada)
Hi octathlon I installed Mint on my ThinkPad T60 (SMP) and I had no problems with the ATI Radeon 1400 Video nor the 3945abg wireless. Although the restricted driver was enabled by the install, i cannot do Beryl etc. either. On my AMD 64 Desktop, Mint Installed fine as well.... In fact Ubuntu, PCLOS, Mint, Slackware & Puppy all went on with very little problems on both systems. Well, I did have to do some adjusting here and there but they were reasonably smooth. I cannot say the same for other distros I tried but that is the nature of the game. I found that the same distro will work on one configuration but not another so to find one that will work on all flavors of systems you have is not as easy as it may look. Seems that "one size fits all" does not apply. Hmmm,, I've had the same problem with Windows also now that I think of it. Of the few I tried (above), the easiest install was Puppy. The most complete was Mint. That is one nice piece of packaging. With regard to Prettyness.. Elive claims a pretty desktop and it has, Sabayon is nicer in my opinion however and is more user friendly also. Have fun! Glenn
181 • 178 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-11 15:14:18 GMT from United States)
Well, Microsoft also now knows the term intellectual property. After copying everyone else's ideas and then abusing their monopoly power to take over the market, Microsoft realized that intellectual property is important to protect their monopoly, so they can continue to steal ideas from others. (You know, like tabbed browsing in IE 7.)
Yes, it is possible that OSNews knows morality. It might suit their purposes today.
182 • Re: #128 (by Caplin Wallberger on 2007-07-11 17:20:00 GMT from United States)
I also pulled the new GNOME and KDE desktops from Sid (2.18.2 and 3.5.7). Both have given me no troubles at all. You can also install the 2.6.21 kernel from Sid. Beyond that, you run the usual chance of messing up your dependencies when mixing Sid and testing for applications.
Just to let you know - Testing now has both KDE 3.5.7 and the 2.6.21 kernel. I personally don't bother mixing unstable; I can wait a few extra weeks for the new stuff to arrive.
183 • Re: 180 Mint (by octathlon on 2007-07-11 18:14:13 GMT from United States)
@Glenn: I'm still running Dapper on the desktop, so I don't know if those issues are just with Mint or if they would also happen with Feisty. That's what I hate about upgrading, you never know what might not work any more. My laptop is a Toshiba with ATI graphics and Atheros wireless. Ubuntu used to work perfectly with the wireless but now Feisty (and Mint) won't recognize it. They also have a bug where USB stops working after the first few minutes. I haven't gotten Beryl to work on it either -- maybe my card doesn't meet requirements. I've tested Puppy, and it works fine on both systems with no tweaking required, but it's kind of a niche distro and not what I prefer for everyday use.
184 • #183 Mint (by Glenn on 2007-07-11 19:17:04 GMT from Canada)
Hi. octathlon Hmm,,,, I'd try Mepis then... That should work fine, stays within your Dapper (and Debian) framework, and it is really great at 3d. I put it on a Toshiba with similar hardware to yours and it slipped on great. Same with a Thinkpad T40. I am sure other distros will work also. I mention Mepis because it did work for me. On a Toshiba, make sure your Fan is operating. It should but if not there are Toshiba utilities in one of the repositories that you can use. I'm sure you know about that anyway but I thought I'd mention it cause I had to do it with an old Toshiba once.
If the currrent version of Mint is causing you problems there then you can be fairly well sure that Feisty will have the same issues. I'd be using Mepis now if it would have got past the ATI 1400 card but It did not and I really did not want to play around with downloading proprietary drivers etc. etc. and worrying about Kernels etc... I have to use these things for work so have limited time for experimentation when I get busy. I look after mainframe software/hardware so I need to be able to slip in my own stuff into the distro I'm using fairly easily so I can access those babies. Have fun Glenn
185 • Pardus 2007.2 is Released (by Chris Hoyt on 2007-07-12 00:13:28 GMT from United States)
The new Pardus release is out! There is a link from the Pardus homepage. I've been downloading all the updates for months, and now it's on a CD.
186 • antiX is architected for i586 (by Fractalguy on 2007-07-12 01:36:15 GMT from United States)
It is aimed at old 32-bit PC hardware having the 2.6.15 kernel. I don't understand this, I thought the 2.4 kernel is kept for the old boxes and i586??
I used to follow BeatrIX and DSL closely where i386 and i486 are used (lowest common denominator and all). Does i586 really work for old boxes dating back to the Win95 days?
I used to have a Win95 laptop but it fell appart (display broke at the attachment points and the battery totally failed).
187 • Misc (Re 186 & 175) (by dbrion on 2007-07-12 05:50:27 GMT from France)
@186 " I thought the 2.4 kernel is kept for the old boxes and i586"
There are 2.6.x kernels for embedded, with low RAM consumption (etrax has 4M RAM, if I remember). i586?? Perhaps they anticipate on hardware getting old....
BTW, you made in April 2007 stats regarding DWW HPD which describe the density function, without aiming to show the superiority of X => perhaps it could interest pple who thind DWW HPD are not statistically relevant (for distr superiority, I understand; but they remain ineresting per se)...
@175 "the inclusion of the Installed Footprint size of a Distro" would be interesting, but many distr offer the choice of customising at install, which makes sometimes the intellectual value of a distr (this is not with 3 menus and packages directly or indirectly copied )...
(in this respect, cygwin -http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin- is the smartest, as it separates the downloading function(with some dependance handling) and the installation. Why, with more than 500 distrs in the free linux world, was not cygwin -which is fully GPL- copied??).
It is about the same problem with RAM greediness, except for live-CDs: customized installed systems can use less memory. BTW, forcing one to hit "startx" (or stqrtx, if one has a Freedom keymqp) before having a window opening can lead to a minimal RAM greediness, ideal for compiling/ running some interesting CLIs..
188 • Elive URL (by Chris on 2007-07-12 06:03:02 GMT from United States)
The Elive URL given in comment #83 is for a 'development version, not stable'. Ladislav's link in the release announcement, no longer available, is for the release version, which is about 10 meg larger than the 'development version', The 'Development, unstable' is shown on the desktop when you run the live disk .
189 • antiX and CentOS 5 i386 Live CD (by Fractalguy on 2007-07-12 06:35:39 GMT from United States)
I'm posting this from antiX which has fluxbox and iceWM. I prefer the iceWM but both are OK. It is nice switching between these window managers without closing anything down. All apps remain up.
I'm listening to a CD in xmms while trying the programs. For some reason the music has gaps (stops playing) for a few seconds about every few minutes. I didn't notice this with CentOS or any other distro. Both CentOS and antiX set up my screen at nVidia 1280x1024 without any fuss which is nice. I notice (using top) that I still haven't used more than 450MB so far, 270MB of that is cached. The desktop "monitors" claims to be using 111MB. These light weight distros make one wish their old computers still worked. :) My 9 yr old P450 is about dead - video problems. And finally, my USB devices didn't auto-mount - oh well. A good start.
190 • Ubuntu Linux's Achilles' Heel: It's tough to install on laptops (by Anonymous on 2007-07-12 11:07:54 GMT from Australia)
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=56109&r=hstory
191 • Re: 190 (by kirios on 2007-07-12 15:54:54 GMT from Malaysia)
So Linux is sometimes tough to install on laptops.
What else is new?
192 • Linux on laptops (by Oiving on 2007-07-12 18:16:58 GMT from United States)
Here's some help with that, for those interested:
http://www.linux.org/hardware/laptop.html
193 • re: 190 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-12 20:38:14 GMT from United States)
So is Windows. Try doing it without the vendor supplied disks (i.e. a new box version of Windows).
194 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-07-12 21:29:26 GMT from France)
Sorry that it's not the best place to ask, but here is my question. I understand that for Debian, the user upgrades to a new version. Are there any other "big historical distros" (such as Fedora or openSuse) that work with that "upgrading way", as opposite to installing afresh? Thank you.
195 • Re:194 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-13 01:05:19 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu works like that as well. And for something more interesting--
The rolling release distros are based on continuously upgrading, examples of these are-- Arch, FreeBSD, Gentoo... I think that the base tends to stay the same in the latter two, but I think everything is included in updating in Arch. Someone can correct me if I'm mistaken.
196 • Re:193 (by kirios on 2007-07-13 06:03:56 GMT from Malaysia)
"So is Windows. Try doing it without the vendor supplied disks..."
Very true. But Windows is painful to set up even if you have the vendor's disks ... cos you spend half a day installing all your programs one by one.
197 • Re: 194 (by h3rman on 2007-07-13 06:25:03 GMT from Netherlands)
If you want to upgrade, for example, Fedora continuously, you can use Rawhide and keep updating that. Granted, that is not a stable Fedora release then. The problem with an upgrade of Fedora from say FC6 to F7 is that too many things may break, because Fedora is more about implementing new technologies than about backwards compatibility. Although it also depends on what you do to your system: if you use external repos, you can expect more issues than if you don't.
So the consensus is that RH distros are better to install afresh than to upgrade, and I think too few people try to actually see if it's true. :) I think the same goes for (open)Suse, of which I have always heard fresh installs are advised.
I guess both ways have their pros and cons.
198 • PARDUS is THE L!nux!! (by canucix on 2007-07-13 07:51:47 GMT from Canada)
Bravo Linux! Bravo PARDUS!!!
199 • No subject (by man_iii on 2007-07-13 08:22:44 GMT from India)
Wow ! Gr8 stuff about ELive, Slackware and Zenwalk ... It has been a very interesting week in Linux distros !!! :-) Happy DistroTurfing ! ;-)
200 • Thom Holwerda... hah! (by KCy29581 on 2007-07-13 11:38:08 GMT from Spain)
Thom Holwerda is nothing but a spoilt brat; he has power over one site and believes that he may add his own comments and twist them to suit his own goals. It is extremely annoying when he lies; he himself used to put direct links to downloads!
Thom Holwerda, go back to your hole and stay there, until you decide to be an impartial (real) news reporter.
201 • "osnews" and holwerda (by Jerry on 2007-07-13 13:36:00 GMT from United States)
I agree with post 200, mainly because of the excuse by holwerda (is that pronounced, "how weirda?") that his attack on Ladislav Bodnar was justified because it was in his blog.
The attack itself was unwarrented, of course, but instead of an apology all we see here is more of his childish footstamping.
As said before, what a waste of a great domain, "www.osnews.com."
202 • Re: 173 (by davecs on 2007-07-13 14:50:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
173 • PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous on 2007-07-11 00:53:15 GMT from United States) "pclinuxos=perfectly simple."
I would ammend that to, "pclinuxos=perfectly simple, especially if you can get it to run on your computer. Otherwise, just get Mandriva, the PCLinuxOS mother and father."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes we have discussed the similarities between Mandriva and PCLinuxOS to death, but there are important differences too. One is the kernel. So it is entirely possible that something that won't run on PCLinuxOS will run on Mandriva. Just as it is equally likely that something that won't run on Mandriva will run on PCLinuxOS.
That's the wonderful thing about Live CDs, you can see what works for your hardware.
203 • RE 202: Live CDs, Is THE Holy kernel an important difference? (by dbrion on 2007-07-13 15:05:58 GMT from France)
"That's the wonderful thing about Live CDs, you can see what works for your hardware. " At least, live CDs should work: this was not the case 2 yrs ago.... A linux couldbe very nice, once installed, but her live CD was a live rainbow, hard to exploit.
Focusing on the HW is not that important : PC are not always meant as phones, jukeboxes (I am specially deaf to this kind of application), and, for important storage applications or for intensive calculation ones, the disk/RAM power greediness may even lead to put expensive graphical cards to junk (else, one cannot have enough disk space with a given power supply!).
The important diferences rely between Mandriva (Duh, Duh, sorry toofreely copy slang from posts two weeks ago) do not consist in HW support, nor in kernel numerology (else, one should wait for Linux 200-666-20000) but on capacity of innovation and originality...
204 • @203 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-13 15:45:06 GMT from Canada)
Except that it is rather important when, say, one doesn't support your IDE controller and the other does.
Talk about innovation all you want but if your hard disk ain't spinning you're not going to get very far...
(I've seen cases of this issue in both directions - vital hardware supported on Mandriva but not PCLOS, and on PCLOS but not Mandriva. Same with all other distros.)
205 • RE 204 (by dbrion on 2007-07-13 15:58:11 GMT from France)
Even with such a utterly ridiculous situation (I am more afraid with the different SATA tribes than with IDE!; the pressure with sound/graphical cards should be a very low priority...) one can begin having a look at what will be the final configuration, either with * Cygwin or (inc) Mingw (when I break one of my dirs under Linux, for an app I develop (R an fortran - based) , I download the last version from Cygwin, swap two lines, and I did not loose thousands of lines...). or with * potemkining (VMplayer gives you an half speed machine, qemu a very slow one)... or with * waiting and reading errata lists....
206 • Pardus 2007.2 (by Caraibes on 2007-07-13 18:29:10 GMT from Dominican Republic)
This die-hard Fedora fan just installed a dual-boot with F7 and Pardus 2007.2. I must say I am very impressed with the Turkish distro, it seems like a winner to me.
Not only for the "out of the box", since we have a bunch of good distros out there doing just that, but I think it is positive to have a government backed Institute from a country (far away from the USA) that created an insependent distro, not for a comercial purpose, but not just as a hobby neither. It seems to be a serious project, aimed at running the PC's in most offices in Turky...
Anyway, I plan to test it hard, to see if it can ever get to such a high level as Fedora !
207 • Fedora (by Anonymous on 2007-07-13 22:02:53 GMT from United States)
Any "high level" I ever got with Fedora, and I started with Core 2, came as a result of myriad tweaking and cnfiguring and downloading of needed programs, files and codecs, etc. Particularly with the aid of "mjmwired."
It sure has never been and is not now a "out of the box" working distro.
208 • "Shame on you, DistroWatch!" (by Robert Janzen on 2007-07-13 22:10:56 GMT from Canada)
"Shame on you, Thom Holwerda!" Get your facts straight first before make fauls accusations!!!
RJ
209 • Pardus (by glas on 2007-07-13 23:04:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just like to second the praise of Pardus I've read in some posts here. I've tested and played with all the "major" distros over the years and but Pardus still rises to the top from a number of perspectives.
It's English language forum, hosted from Holland, is unusually quiet for a Linux distro though, not because it has so few users, but because it has so few problems to post, discuss, and solve.
210 • Hey, Pardus fanboys... (by Anonymous on 2007-07-13 23:09:03 GMT from United States)
How about listing the "number of perspectives" that makes Pardus "rise to the top." Give us some comparison's to other distros you've tried. Tell us why they didn't work and Pardus did.
How about proving that the lack of English forum paticipation is because not few users, but few problems.
Advertising for your favorite distro without substanciation just drags the reputation of that distro down.
211 • Pardus 2007.2 (by IMQ on 2007-07-14 02:08:50 GMT from United States)
I have a problem with the newly installed Pardus.
The password I set up for root during the installation process does not work when I tried to run su in the konsole terminal.
I believe the older version didn't have this problem. Maybe root account was disabled for the new release.
Anyone else experience the same issue.
I did set up 2 accounts: one regular user and one as administrator.
Otherwise the distro is working fine. Some apps still have menu in Turkey, which I have zero understanding.
Pardus does give the impression of most thing work out of the box. It does have a nice look and feel desktop. It only gets better with each release.
Just my humble opinion.
212 • RE: 211 Missing a question mark (by IMQ on 2007-07-14 02:10:18 GMT from United States)
Should be, "Anyone else experience the same issue?"
213 • 211 (by Pardon Us on 2007-07-14 02:17:05 GMT from United States)
"Some apps still have menu in Turkey, which I have zero understanding."
Wait until Thanksgiving. Then you'll understand Turkey.
214 • Re: #210,211,213 (by glas on 2007-07-14 08:10:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Bit surprised from the reaction from some our USA friends so let me just reply: PCLinuxOS is a great distro too and I've installed it on a spare computer upstairs. (But I give M$ a pass).
Regarding post #210, wanting 'proof', I'd like to reply that I'm not trying to win a court case - just forwarding my opinion. Pardus may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's my prefered OS after testing a large number of other distros. The proof is in the pudding (i.e. try it yourself and make up your own opinion).
Regarding language: I converted my desktop to Welsh, my native language - but still a lot of things come up in English. I think that's more of a KDE issue than Pardus itself. Haven't seen any Turkish yet (not that it would scare me if I did).
But if anyone does feel inclined to give it a try, keep in mind that the default language is Turkish and you have to select your preferred language before it starts to boot.
215 • Good old English proverbs! (by davecs on 2007-07-14 11:10:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
@214
"The proof is in the pudding"
My wife says that, too! Along with "You have to cut your cloth", and "Bolting the door after the horse has left". And quite a few others, which never cease to amuse me.
What is even more surprising is that Welsh people, including those who speak Welsh as a first language, are generally far more eloquent in English than the English are!
Anyway, if anyone is interested, the proverbs are:
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating". "You have to cut your coat according to your cloth" "Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted"
:-)
216 • re:207&210 (by Caraibes on 2007-07-14 11:36:34 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Hey, Mr. Anonymous from the USA,
It looks like you never could get Fedora (one of the very best distro in the world) to work ! That says a lot about you :)
I am absolutely not a fanboy, unlike some, I run various distros in my many PC's... Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Pardus (now...) mainly, but I am also familiar with Mandriva, Vector, and various others... I believe different distros suit different types of hardware.
However, when I see a newer distro, created by the Institute of Science of a "far away" country, an original distro that is not based on another one (such as Ubuntu, Debian or Mandriva, with their famous offsprings Mepis, Mint, PCLOS, and *Buntu itself !), I can't help but being impressed !
I am glad it doesn't come from the USA because of all the restrictive laws you guys have in your Nation. I highly regards the USA, however I believe it is better for a distro not to come out of there.
To your credit, I also am a bit puzzled by the Pardus way to handle the "administrator user"... But apart from that, I am giving it a chance, and I'll say it again, it boots alongside one of the finest distro ever, Fedora ! That is why it is such a tough challenge for Pardus !
(I am absolutely not interested by the fact that Fedora is not an "out of the box" distro...)
217 • Fedora (by Anonymous on 2007-07-14 11:50:36 GMT from United States)
Hey, "Caraibes." Your "says a lot about you" reveals your poor reading skills. Here, I'll repost what I posted up there:
"Any "high level" I ever got with Fedora, and I started with Core 2, came as a result of myriad tweaking and cnfiguring and downloading of needed programs, files and codecs, etc. Particularly with the aid of "mjmwired."
It sure has never been and is not now a "out of the box" working distro."
As you can see, "never got Fedora to work" is a lie.
My point, as you can see on a skilled re-reading of my post, is that Fedora is not even close to an "out of the box" distro.
I support you in your struggle to gain reading skills.
Hope this helps.
218 • Re:217 (by Caraibes on 2007-07-14 12:45:48 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Hey, Mr. Anonymous from the USA,
Point taken for the reading skills, as I didn't intended to bash you, and I get your point. My mistake...
Indeed, Fedora needs some tweaks (adding the livna repos and deciding which apps you would like to download...), that is versus the "out of the box" distros of this world, such as Mint/Mepis/PCLOS... But once it is done, Fedora is (usually) much strronger than any other distro around (that is my experience, and I understand how subjective it is, I don't pretend it to be universal...).
But my main point is to give a chance to an new interesting project that is Pardus. -What does it have that Fedora doesn't ? First, it is not a commercial project, nor a "one man's hobby"... Second it is funded by a government, versus Red Hat, so it gives a different perspective. For instance many (not me...) claim Fedora to be only an unstable test-bed distro for RHEL... This couldn't be the case for Pardus... Third, the Pardus devs claim users can upgrade to newer release very easily, without the need to re-install (haven't personally verified this claim, but it sounds interesting). Fourth, it comes from Turky, and it seems they have more relaxed laws as of including various codecs & drivers in the distro, versus Fedora from the USA. Fifth, it is not based on another distro, like popular *Buntus, PCLOS, Mint, Mepis, Sabayon & many others... Pardus is (AFAIK) an original project...
Mr. Anonymous from the USA, this is all in good spirits, and I read your posts with interests, as I enjoy sharpening my own judgment by not agreeing with other posters from times to times. Don't take it as an attack.
219 • RE: 214 Pardus language support (by IMQ on 2007-07-14 13:52:20 GMT from United States)
I don't think I have problem with KDE in English...yet.
One of the apps I tried had part of its menu still in Turkey: MPlayer. Right-click the video screen and I got the menu in Turkey. There may be other apps with similar problem but I haven't tried out all the apps.
I am not complaining, mind you. I am glad they have enough support in English in KDE for me to take it for a test drive.
Pardus is not just a KDE-based distro. It has its own personality and it's doing a pretty good job at presenting itself among the sea of distros.
I have currently one issue with root account or more with using *su* in the terminal. I haven't had a chance to visit their forum to post the question since I figure Distrowatch is more popular place than Pardus at the moment, as far as linux users being aware of there is a distro called Pardus concerned. :)
220 • RE Caraibes : Pardus interesting features (by dbrion on 2007-07-14 14:57:44 GMT from France)
J'ai testé il ya quelques semaines une précédente version stable de Pardus avec beaucoup de plaisir, mais quelques unes de vos raisons me mettent mal à l'aise: " Second it is funded by a government, versus Red Hat, so it gives a different perspective. " Normalement, les développeurs (des universitaires) sont payés par leur gouvernement, ce qui impliquerait quelque loyauté vis à vis de leur gouvernement, qui peut se manifester quand il s'agira de trancher entre plusieurs options : par exemple, si leur gouvernement veut gérer des bases de données, des codecs audio/video passeront en très basse priorité... (ça peut aller jusqu'à imaginer que le gouvernement veut garder l'exclusivité de Pardus,une fois bien testé, mais c'est un pur procès d'intention). Ceci peut à terme affaiblir votre quatrième point...
Les Turcs sont connus pour avoir transformé des Playstations en outils de calcul intensif multiprocesseurs (avec des noyaux Linux), utilisés par des institutions étatiques locales (je crois qu'ils sont disposés à partager leur savoir-faire avec tous!) mais je doute que les capacités ludiques originelles aient toutes été conservées (même si le ratio des prix était époustouflant!)...
Le gros intérét que j'ai vu dans Pardus(et dans l'OS de l'Olpc, fait par RedHat)est que les scripts de démarrage sont basés sur Python, ce qui implique que Python est assez fiable à ce jour (je ne pense pas qu'il l'était en 2004, mais si 2 sources indépendantes et sérieuses l'utilisent maintenant...). Ce choix permet des maintenances/évolutions logicielles très faciles, semble-t-il...
221 • Re:220 (by Caraibes on 2007-07-14 16:00:42 GMT from Dominican Republic)
En effet, cher ami, je comprend la méfiance que l'on peut entretenir à l'égard d'un gouvernement quel qu'il soit. A la fin, c'est le retour de l'éternel débat droite-gauche ou bien Démocrates vs. républicains aux Etats-Unis...
-Faut-il confier à l'initiative privée et laisser carte-blanche aux entreprises ou bien s'en remettre à la "surveillance bienveillante" du gouvernement ?
Mon PC principal est un peu la caricature de ce débat, avec à droite Fedora, "made in USA", parrainé par une grande entreprise, Red Hat. L'une des meilleures distros historiques de la galaxie Linux. A ma gauche, Pardus, un projet du gouvernement Turc...
Le sujet est vaste, et bien sur nous relèverons nombre de petits défauts... C'est normal. Enfin cela reste un thème passionnant !
222 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-07-14 16:56:33 GMT from United States)
I've got to agree that "out of the box" is not my top priority either. I see a lot of new Linux users get confused on this point.
"I had to do configuration myself. Thus, Linux is useless."
"Out of the box" means someone else's configuration. I'm not into that. Some people are, especially Windows users, because they're brainwashed into accepting whatever Redmond gives to them.
By all means, if not having to configure anything is important to you, use that as a way to compare distros. However, please remember that not all users consider that to be the only important criteria. Some of us want our computers to work the way we want them to work, not the way someone else wants them to work. There will never be a distro that does everything just the way I want. For me the package selection, repository speed, support forums, and ability to easily configure my machine are the priority when selecting a distro. That's why I prefer Debian and to a lesser extent Fedora.
223 • E-Live (by RadOH on 2007-07-14 17:43:01 GMT from United States)
I have tested several versions up to 5.0 I believe. It does not surprize me that elive may be in a position of money NEEDS. I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terisim. That being said, If they have lost revinew that once supported there efforts to build a OS, it is there responsibility for there actions.They are no playing in a larger field and I beleive that Linux supporters world wide have spoken, and distro's that think they must show there political stance have the right to do so, and so do the users by not showing there support. Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still.
224 • E-Live (by RadOH on 2007-07-14 17:50:22 GMT from United States)
I have tested several versions up to 5.0 I believe. It does not surprize me that elive may be in a position of money NEEDS. I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terisim. That being said, If they have lost support in there efforts to build a OS, it is there responsibility for there actions.They are now playing in a larger field and I beleive that Linux supporters world wide have spoken, and distro's that think they must show there political stance have the right to do so, and so do the users by not showing there support. Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still.
225 • E-Live (by RadOH on 2007-07-14 17:52:06 GMT from United States)
I have tested several versions up to 5.0 I believe. It does not surprize me that elive may be in a position of money NEEDS. I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terisim.That being said, If they have lost support in there efforts to build a OS, it is there responsibility for there actions.They are now playing in a larger field and I beleive that Linux supporters world wide have spoken, and distro's that think they must show there political stance have the right to do so, and so do the users by not showing there support. Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still.
226 • E-Live (by RadOH on 2007-07-14 17:53:05 GMT from United States)
I have tested several versions up to the first release in 2007. It does not surprize me that elive may be in a position of money NEEDS. I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terisim.That being said, If they have lost support in there efforts to build a OS, it is there responsibility for there actions.They are now playing in a larger field and I beleive that Linux supporters world wide have spoken, and distro's that think they must show there political stance have the right to do so, and so do the users by not showing there support. Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still.
227 • E-Live (by RadOH on 2007-07-14 17:54:52 GMT from United States)
I have tested several versions up to the first release in 2007. It does not surprize me that elive may be in a position of money NEEDS. I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terrorisim. That being said, If they have lost support in there efforts to build a OS, it is there responsibility for there actions.They are now playing in a larger field and I beleive that Linux supporters world wide have spoken, and distro's that think they must show there political stance have the right to do so, and so do the users by not showing there support. Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still.
228 • Pardus 2007.2 (by KimTjik on 2007-07-14 19:00:44 GMT from Sweden)
I don't write this to give Pardus bad publicity, since it's a favorite of mine among newer innovative distros plus being closer to overall multimedia ready from scratch. However a little, or maybe BIG, warning in case you have a system based on the RS482 chipset with an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 integrated graphic-card: the 2007.2 version doesn't work and I have not yet find any solution.
The basis for the warning is that in case you already have 2007.1 installed DON'T INSTALL OR UPGRADE ANYTHING until this issue is solved, or your system will break. Pardus is designed more like Gentoo and Arch in the respect of upgrading, so upgrading a 2007.1 system will automatically give you a 2007.2 system, now since the 2007.2 was released and hence integrated to the Pardus 2007 stable repository.
I hope the developers look into this, I have at least posted about it on Pardus Worldforum and will upload a Xorg.0.log for them to look at. Otherwise Pardus 2007.2 work like a charm on another system of mine. Some few adjustments and Pardus deserves to be a real contender to the top ten distros.
So overall a big thumb up... and a warning in case you have a RS482 chipset and ATI Radeon Xpress 200.
229 • Re:203 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-14 19:47:25 GMT from United States)
"Focusing on the HW is not that important : PC are not always meant as phones, jukeboxes (I am specially deaf to this kind of application), and, for important storage applications or for intensive calculation ones, the disk/RAM power greediness may even lead to put expensive graphical cards to junk (else, one cannot have enough disk space with a given power supply!)."
Was that a tongue in cheek post? I can't see how anyone would say hey, hardware is not really an issue is it? Who needs to use 'em anyway?
How about this instead-- if we don't care about our hardware working, we wouldn't buy it in the first place would we? Of course having your hardware supported is very important. To suggest otherwise is simply absurd.
It's obviously the most important issue for an operating system. What is the very first thing you do if you select an iso for linux, windows, bsd etc? You look at the architecture, that's what you do. And what is that? Because it won't run on an architecture that's not your computer. And what is the very first thing that you do after you install an os? You get the hardware working!
230 • RE to questions about US based distros and comments about Pardus (by KImTjik on 2007-07-14 21:21:30 GMT from Sweden)
Yes a distro not based in the US has its advantages when considering certain movements by Microsoft and maybe more in view of a patent system that has to be changed. Nevertheless when it comes to RedHat and Fedora I don't think there's any reason to worry: Redhat is a tuff contender and have never showed any weaknesses in its approach to Microsofts' threats. Somebody complained about Fedora being difficult to setup as a desktop-system, and yes it takes some extra configuration, but remember that this is caused by the already mentioned threats. Actually we should be thankful for having a colossos like RedHat which doesn't accept being threaten by Microsoft. If that means that RedHat has to choose a more conservative approach to certain software and codecs, so let it be. Besides that it doesn't matter a squat where a distro is based.
Next a response to post # 210:
In view of your challenge it's maybe needed to start off defensive: distros of my preference are Fedora, Gentoo, Arch and Slackware, but still I can appreciate the proven quality of Pardus. In regard to my already posted warning about RS482 and ATI Radeon Xpress 200 based systems, I simply add that sometimes you have to be forgiving and not harshly judge a good attempt to reach a level of perfection.
So what is worth attention in Pardus? - first of all it isn't a slightly modified version of an already existing distro, but offers its own solutions about package managing and configuration tools, so it deserves some credit just for being original - its modified KDE desktop - very polished and having its own identity - is among the faster and snappier I've used and overall the system doesn't demand a lot of memory to run - its menus are for example better organized than in PCLinuxOS (don't get upset if you prefer PCLinuxOS, I use myself from time to time) and many applications are really made to look and function well in Pardus - performance is great and in my opinion compared again to PCLinuxOS slightly better - multimedia support is very good; here again Pardus has the advantage of having packages noticeably better optimized than many even though its repository lacks some useful applications
Is it perfect? No. But no distro is perfect in the real sense of the word. However it deserves more than respect than the author of post # 210 showed. Overall those kinds of senseless remarks with accusations against others of being fan-boys just because they post positive comments about their preferences makes me sad.
231 • Re:222, -"Is Windows an "out of the box" OS ?" (by Caraibes on 2007-07-14 21:41:53 GMT from Dominican Republic)
You wrote : ""Out of the box" means someone else's configuration. I'm not into that. Some people are, especially Windows users, because they're brainwashed into accepting whatever Redmond gives to them."
My answer is (once again) that Windows is absolutely NOT an "out of the box" experience !
It takes a bunch of tweaking to get the goodies, the codecs, the Office suite, and even such a trivial item as a pdf reader !
In Windows, you need to install many, many drivers, to get your system up and running...
I won't even get into the theme of viruses & malwares...
My point is that some Linux distros are actually offering something approaching the "out of the box" experience.
However my personal experience is that in general, users are much better off configuring at least a bit their own system, so they control what happens in the long run. I particularly think of that when using Fedora & Debian. Once tweaked, you're good to go, on the long term.
As of Pardus, I too found some lacking (when it comes to locales), but that doesn't mean it isn't a very promising project. I give myself more time to really give a real feedback about it. I am just so sick & tired of silly reviews like "I just spent 25 mn installing distro X, it works great, here's my review, I used it for about 45mn..."
We need reviews from people who take some time to use the OS... I should kick myself and publish a blog sometimes...
232 • Re. Pardus LiveCD (by Richard-S on 2007-07-14 22:56:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Pardus 2007-2 Very nice LiveCD. Booted without problems within VirtualBox (although my PC has an RS482 & Radeon 200 etc.). The Live CD has a good selection of applications including a firewall, but no HTML editor or SVG editor. Also, no audio or video editor.
As reported by others, this LiveCD has Flash, win32 & multimedia codecs installed: This makes it possible to "listen again" to BBC radio programmes (Real format); replay UK Channel4.com videos (mms: Windows Media); watch Myspace & YouTube type videos (Flash); and replay MP3s.
So, a LiveCD which meets most of my normal daily web needs.
233 • Pardus (by Joey on 2007-07-15 10:52:33 GMT from United States)
Won't run on this laptop (Acer Aspire5900).
You Pardus fanboys are busy at Distrowatch. But like all Linux distributions, your fave may or MAY NOT WORK on some machines. All I got was a black screen during hardware check.
The checksum was a match and the burn was at 4x, so it was a good CD.
Bad distro here.
234 • RE 209 I maintain hardware should not be an issue.... (by dbrion on 2007-07-15 12:46:13 GMT from France)
" I can't see how anyone would say hey, hardware is not really an issue is it? Who needs to use 'em anyway?
" It is obvious I referred to _expensive_ , unuseful HW, such as sound cards or sophisticated graphic cards (which have also power greediness) (BTW, it leads to pressure to pple freely developping some drivers : foras seem full of ppple crying "gimme, gimme, freely and quick, some siolution for my expensive hardware!!"...) . RAM, disks, basic screens, CPUs and keyboards were not meant as unuseful (but I think of the rest as a waste).... As keyboads are important, why do most linux distribution *not* support Freedom keyboqrds? Microsoft DOS did it 20 years ago; I suppose this is the thing zhich should be first *copied* from a serious distr...
The flashy-trendy-expensive rest is very well supported by the laptop's maker, and by Microsoft Windows (it is almost impossible to find a laptop without Windows and every driver installed; classical desktops are more complicated, certes,, but now, laptops are more sold than desktops)...
With fast CPUS and Potemkining/emulation, the hardware is not an issue at all if one is interested in GNU/linux (though I know that solutions based on REedhats brigth idea Cygwin, or on Mingw, are faster than emulating a distribution)....
A last point : History tells people can happily live a long time _without_any computer/OS...
235 • Re:233 (by Caraibes on 2007-07-15 12:55:32 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Joey, instead of whining and being aggressive, why don't you try another distro for your laptop ?
We all know that different distros work better on different hardware, there's nothing new here...
I personally recommend Fedora, which is my favorite (no, I am not a fanboy...), but sometimes Ubuntu does a better job when it comes to wireless drivers...
Pardus is a young project, and of course it still needs some improvements, but it is nevertheless very interesting. That was our point.
236 • Re 224-227 (by Jack the Ripper on 2007-07-15 13:22:47 GMT from Australia)
• E-Live (by RadOH "....I quite testing as soon as I found a link, after an install, about there political position not supporting the USA in there efforts to fight terrorism..." So, are U a Bushie? :-) As far as I am concerned, if true, they take a good stand. "War on Terror" = Necon US Imperialist misadventure/s and most US citizens are against the war in Iraq, as are most of the rest of the people on this planet. "...Work at PCLOS has started on TINY ME which will be released with e17 as one of the desktop choices you will have when installing or as a live cd. So the work started at elive will continue even if they go full retail, Linux users will have a free choice, still..."
Can the "Ripper Gang" do anything more than ripoff other people's ideas? I think the only thing original is a bit of (re) branding artwork (kde, mcc, etc is not).
Jack the Ripper
237 • Qu 236 : "riping off other people's ideas" (by dbrion on 2007-07-15 13:37:18 GMT from France)
Do other distr do anything else? I fear 99.x % is riping off softs in Sourceforge,say, and precompiling or (incl) preconditioning sources to make compiling easier... [ I do not mean it is unimportant: when I buy cakes and rice, I am very glad to get boxes and bags ... but I neither eat bags nor boxes...]
this is the x (in 99.x%) which I do not know...
If it were the case, you fairly cannot complain about PCLOSS stealing others ideas/softs (as any Free software user does...)...
238 • Pardus, being Turkish Government backed.... (by Jack the Ripper on 2007-07-15 13:40:00 GMT from Australia)
will CERTAINLY get bashed by some (and they could be many) for political reasons. Greeks, Armenians, Kurds and some of their friends and allies will oppose (by any means) the emergence of an internationally respected Turkish Distro that will be a goodwill ambassador for international and cross-cultural relations.
Goodonya Turkish Linux - Turkish Delight!
239 • Re 237....Do other distr do anything els (by J Da Ripper on 2007-07-15 13:48:39 GMT from Australia)
I think they do! Some of the Majors actually contribute to LINUX PROGRESS - kernel development and such like. The "ripper gang" only in their dreams can compare to that contribution towards linux.
Some people have no respect to their elders - shame!
240 • RE 238 Pardus future bashing (by dbrion on 2007-07-15 13:51:13 GMT from France)
Je ne pense pas que les grecs diront du mal de Pardus (les Grecs sont les plus chauds partisans de l'entrée de la Turquie en Europe , par sagesse... (il vaut mieux rester en bons termes avec un ennemi héréditaire)). Pardus (au moins l'avant dernière version) fonctionne très bien en Portugues do Brasil, sans que j'aie vu le moindre mot Turc (j'ai vu de l'américain dans les modes d'emploi de KDE)....
Les institutions turques ont toujours tenu au courant leurs collègues (même s'il y a un ou 2 boycotts en cours avec, disons, la France[ dans le dernier cas, c'est vraisemblablement > 2 ] ) de leurs essais interessants pour convertir des Playstations en supercalculateurs... La méthode pour faire de Pardus une distribution facile à maintenir et à transformer est publiée... donc accessible à tous.
Par contre, sur le long therme, je me méfie froidement de *tout* gouvernement...
241 • QU 239 In which proportion? (by dbrion on 2007-07-15 13:58:02 GMT from France)
" think they do! " (do something innovative/original/useful/comfortable whithout copying it. But I do not know in which proportion=> this leads me to be indulgent vs god/Texstar distribution...
BTW you are very unfair vs Americans who go on supporting Iraq liberation: noone in normal mental conditions will trust people who change their minds, and Iraq's war was approved by every political party and >80% of the pple in the States... Keep up with the good job!!
242 • 240 future - http://translate.google.com/translate_t (by JDR on 2007-07-15 14:03:27 GMT from Australia)
240 future • RE 238 Pardus bashing (by dbrion one 2007-07-15 13:51: 13 GMT from France) I do not think that the Greeks will say evil of Pardus (the Greeks are the hottest partisans of the entry of Turkey in Europe, by wisdom… (it is to better remain in good terms with a hereditary enemy)). Pardus (at least before last version) functions very well in Portugues C Brasil, without I seeing the least Turkish word (I saw of American in the instructions of KDE)…. The Turkish institutions always held with the current their colleagues (even if there are one or 2 boycotts in progress with, let us say, France [in the last case, they is probably > 2]) their interesting tests to convert of Playstations into supercomputers… The method to make of Pardus a distribution easy to maintain and transform is published… thus accessible to all. On the other hand, on length therme, I am wary coldly of *tout* government… Number of Comments: 240
-------
Unfortunately, the "biggest patriots" of "Greeks" and some others you will find outside their homeland (USA, CAN, AU, etc).
I have yet to try Pardus but the reviews here made me to want to try it soon!
IMO, it makes good economic sense for states and their governments to invest in Linux or other independent OS.
243 • RE 242 :" good economic sense " (by dbrion on 2007-07-15 14:17:32 GMT from France)
"it makes good economic sense for states and their governments to invest in Linux or other independent OS. " I fear, on the long term, they will invest in * parts of * independant OS ( I suppose they wo not invest that much in jukebox PCs or video-games PCs, except for demos... It would be somewhat paradoxal that states in not_that_rich countries( I think of Turkey and Brazil) give free drivers to rich american pple, who can afford expensive hardware (welfare should remain localized)... This can work on short term, but...
244 • RE 239 In which proportion? (by JdaRipper on 2007-07-15 14:22:38 GMT from Australia)
241 • QU 239 In which proportion? (by dbrion France) " think they do! " (do something innovative/original/useful/comfortable whithout copying it. But I do not know in which proportion=> this leads me to be indulgent vs god/Texstar distribution... =============
Last I read, RH was biggest single contributer to Linux Kernel (about 11-12 % and Suse - Novel 2nd ( 9-10%) and others were Intel , IBM....etc
245 • RE 243 (by Jack Da Ripper on 2007-07-15 14:29:36 GMT from Australia)
>It would be somewhat paradoxal that states in not_that_rich countries( I think of Turkey and Brazil) give free drivers to rich american pple, who can afford expensive hardware (welfare should remain localized)... This can work on short term, but.<
Very true! They have to look at their priorities first. I don't care too much about fancy hardware anyhow.
Over and out!
See u next DW weekly
Jack Da Ripper
:-)
246 • "bashing?" (by Joey on 2007-07-15 15:28:27 GMT from United States)
It is not bashing to understand and express that something is not working.
Bashing would be "Pardus sucks!" Expressing something not working is "It won't install on my machine."
Who cares where it's from? Turkey is a great nation with honorable people, just like about 200 other nations on Earth. Critisising Pardus is not critisising Turkey. At least not from me.
247 • PARDUS made me to love Linux!! (by Anonymous on 2007-07-15 15:31:13 GMT from Canada)
That's all i can say in response to all comments (both negative & positive) about PARDUS.
It would be a great tragic loss for computing technology world if the historical animosities between Greeks & Turks indeed turns out to be true against the advancement of PARDUS, as someone have mentioned above, on here.have been using Linux over ten years now and i would say i have tried more than fifty different distros.
I'm not a Turk, nor a Greek. I'm rather your average boring anglo-Canadian, LOL. As such i'm neutral and as such i can easily testify that PARDUS is the best of all distros i have used so far. It's by far the most reliable, the user-friendliest, the most polished to, even, the smallest details. But that doesn't mean it's the so-called "perfect" or "messiah" distro, and now ready to confront and overthrow Micro$oft's Window$ hegemony from the Desktop of the nations.
PARDUS is on the right path. I believe if it continues on this path, it most probably will attract the wrath of Micro$oft within three to five years time. And that's when all oppressed ppl of computing world will unite under the banner of PARDUS to defend Linux against the above-mentioned vicious giant in Redmond, USA, by throwing their political, technical and moral support for a final victory bringing a just Operating System to oppressed masses everywhere.
Finally, once again, a big thank to PARDUS for making many ppl like me to love Linux!!
Long live Linux!! Long live oppressed ppl!! Long live PARDUS!! Long live freedom!!
248 • There's an easy solution to your dilemma (by KimTjik at 2007-07-15 16:17:36 GMT from Sweden)
The solution? Stop calling people "fan-boys" and your opinions will receive more respect. As it is now your critique, whether constructive or not, will not be viewed seriously.
I've made mistakes myself by being overly critical, but by avoiding personal attacks you might still get help or give valuable piece of information to the developers. Unfortunately my main and meanest machine won't run Ubuntu or any of its "relatives", that however isn't a reason for me to call everyone who successfully runs some *buntu distro a "fan-boy".
249 • About my post # 248 (by KimTjik on 2007-07-15 16:19:19 GMT from Sweden)
It was written as a response to post # 246 by Joey.
250 • RE @236 (by Anonymous on 2007-07-15 16:42:53 GMT from France)
<< Can the "Ripper Gang" do anything more than ripoff other people's ideas? >> It if were so (which I do not know), who cares? Is it not a valuable contribution to the Linux world to provide something that is more "Out Of the Box" than most other final choices (eg. distro)? Do you think that it is mostly a waste of ressources? Personally, I do not think that the ressources dedicated to distros' OOB efforts have come to a proportion such that they mainly deter other directions of contributions, and thus that a readjustment would be called for.
But hey, I am a linux newbie, so my understanding of some realities may well be flawed enough (when existent at all) to secure any reasonable opinion...
251 • freespire 2 RC1 (by bob on 2007-07-15 16:46:30 GMT from United States)
freespire 2 RC1 is finally out and the full non-testing version of freespire 2.0 should be out by the end of the month:
ftp://dropbox.linspire.com/freespire-skipjack/
252 • Re. 246 Pardus Not Working (by Richard-S on 2007-07-15 21:55:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
The Pardus 2007-2 LiveCD does not boot my desktop PC - probably due to the RS482 & Radeon 200 problem reported above.
However, it does boot and run nicely within VirtualBox on the same PC. (This seems to mimic an Intel Video chip.)
253 • fanboys (by Anonymous on 2007-07-16 02:04:51 GMT from United States)
We don't need your egomaniacle opinions, KimTjik. We're in a free country, one where we can express ourselves with such mild coloquialisms as "fanboys" when addressing those we feel that way about.
Your "respect" comes at fear of some sort. Ours comes with time and getting to know people.
Get off your high horse, you're spitting in the wind once again.
254 • RE 236 Out of the Holy Box myth (by dbrion on 2007-07-16 06:36:00 GMT from France)
Il y a des façons intelligentes de donner vie à un matériel coûteux et non supporté par une distribution: VirtualBox est citéé 2 posts au dessus, VMplayer et qemu marchent aussi. Aussi, se concentrer sur le matériel est inutile, tant que les drivers Linux ne sont pas payants => des critères tels que l'innovation, l'intelligence (voire le fait de citer ses sources, si on a un minimum d'éthique ...ou de bon sens) peuvent devenir prépondérants. De plus, si on attend 6 mois avant d'installer un linux sur un PC, il a de fortes chances de marcher parfaitement, les horreurs matérielles ayant été rectifiées.. -------------------------- Is it not a valuable contribution to the Linux world to provide something that is more "Out Of the Box" than most other final choices (eg. distro)? " -------------------------------------------------- Non, car le matétiel se déprécie vite: à long terme, PCLOSS n'a pas d'interet, du fait que de gros progrès intellectuels restent à faire dans l'univers sacré du Libre (pas forcèment parasitique).... "
255 • Pardus (by rglk on 2007-07-16 06:47:15 GMT from United States)
Re Pardus: I'd recommend forgetting about political/religious commentary and simply download the Pardus live CD ISO and run it. You can't help being mighty impressed.
I'm a veteran of testing Linux distros, and I can quickly get a sense of how much competence or talent there is behind any given distro. After playing with Pardus for an hour, I thought to myself: "This distro is going to wind up in the top 10."
Just one little vignette: I'm running a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop which has two hardware issues that most distros stumble over: the Intel 945 integrated graphics chipset and the Broadcom 4311 WiFi chipset. IMO, no distro should stumble over these, as they are being used in hundreds of thousands of computers.
A handful of Linux distros can handle the Intel 945 chipset out of the box (they come with the 915resolution patch included or with the new Intel driver installed by default) but NONE can run the Broadcom 4311 chipset with a native Linux driver (you always have to install ndiswrapper and a Windows driver) EXCEPT for Pardus which handles both!
This speaks volumes about attention to detail and craftmanship.
256 • PARDUS Live CD now available at BP server (by Peter on 2007-07-16 09:03:25 GMT from Australia)
for BP adsl and cable subscribers only (thanks to my requesting this file).
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=details&id=29593 http://files.bigpond.com/library/latestfiles.php
FYI: Live CD does not work on my Acer 1644 WLMi notebook, in any mode. Better luck next time.
Google for the hardware specs info if further interested: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=acer+1644wlmi&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq= t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
257 • Re 255 (by Peter on 2007-07-16 09:25:34 GMT from Australia)
>A handful of Linux distros can handle the Intel 945 chipset out of the box (they come with the 915resolution patch included or with the new Intel driver installed by default) but NONE can run the Broadcom 4311 chipset with a native Linux driver (you always have to install ndiswrapper and a Windows driver) EXCEPT for Pardus which handles both!
This speaks volumes about attention to detail and craftmanship.<
I have the 910/915 chipset and have had similar experience with the display settings as you but have not bothered with wifi because I don't use it or need it at present. But Pardus just mucks up my graphics and all I get is huge text on my desktop screen. Even the minimal option, which I thought might be console mode, logs me into a distorted graphics display. This is not very good because, as you would agree, there are millions of PCs with these chipsets.
From now on I am sticking with the main distros - openSUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora and few other Live (troubleshooting) Cds, Puppy, System Rescue, SAM 2007 and Knoppix.
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