 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 225, 22 October 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It is dedicated to the recently released Mandriva Linux 2008, with a first look review at Mandriva's latest release, an interview with the company's Director of Engineering, and a brief note comparing the new releases from the traditional European Linux power houses - Mandriva and openSUSE. In the news section, Canonical releases impressive "Gutsy Gibbon", Fedora mulls development changes, KDE reaches its third beta, and Slackware updates Current branch. Finally, for those of you who enjoy the DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics, don't miss the Site News section, which summarises a brief experiment that took place on the web site last week. It's a bumper issue, so get yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy the read!
Content:
- Reviews: A look at Mandriva Linux 2008
- Interviews: Anne Nicolas, Director of Engineering, Mandriva
- News: Ubuntu "Gutsy", Mandriva vs openSUSE, Fedora 9 development changes, KDE Four Live, Slackware Current, FreeSBIE and DesktopBSD updates
- Released last week: Ubuntu 7.10, Foresight Linux 1.4.1
- Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA1
- Site news: The Page Hit Ranking experiment
- New additions: elpicx
- New distributions: MythDora, TeenPup, Vacarm Linux
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Reviews |
A look at Mandriva Linux 2008 (by Chris Smart)
Introduction
Downloading the 2008 KDE One CD, I wasn't sure what to expect from Mandriva. I had tried Mandrake Linux back when I was first discovering Linux, but as with most RPM-based distros at the time I got frustrated when wanting to install something that wasn't done during the initial installation. Things have changed since then and I was eager to find out what Mandriva was offering.
The live CD
This release is a live CD so I simply booted it on my trusty MacBook. The boot process to get to the installer was as expected these days - lovely graphics and a smooth ride, although it took quite a long time. The screen resolution was not detected properly and this made the fonts look a bit ugly, but I didn't fuss too much about this. The CD boots straight into a configuration wizard prompting the user to select things such as language, keyboard layout and time zone. Finally we get to choose what desktop effects we would like: none, Metisse or CompizFusion. I had a play with Metisse but was not overly impressed, it is certainly not on par with Compiz. From here it boots straight into KDE.
Mandriva boasts that it comes with non-GPL kernel drivers such as those from NVIDIA and ATI. I noticed that my Atheros-based wireless device worked out of the box with the MadWiFi driver. Support for MP3 music and other non-free files works out of the box, too. This is welcome news to users who wish to use non-GPL drivers (as it all works out of the box), but for those concerned with software freedom, it isn't such good news. I'm not sure how Mandriva is able to ship non-GPL drivers with the live system, but no-one seems to care about this any more. Gone are the days when a distribution was covered pretty much under a simple open source license like the GPL 2. Now, end user license agreements are getting pretty strange. Reading the license we see a warning about Mandriva containing software that might not be patent-free and therefore causing their end users to break the law. Is this a good thing? Users concerned about using illegal software should download 'The "purely" Free Software Edition' of Mandriva from their web site. Funnily enough, this comes with a WARNING that it doesn't include proprietary drivers or software!
Unfortunately, the touchpad on my MacBook didn't work properly, but at least it worked like a basic one-button mouse. I also found that there was no support for any of the MacBook's special keys like volume control or brightness, although it did automatically dim the screen when unplugged from mains power. Even the page up, page down, home, end and delete keys didn't work.
The desktop
My initial impression of the desktop was that it was simple and clean. The artwork was nice, CompizFusion worked well and I liked the KDE theme. Konqueror also has a nice sidebar with actions that the 'right click' menu presents and it looks really good. The Mandriva Control Center was very impressive. It was well laid out, clear and easy to understand. The tools were very powerful but simple enough to use and I changed my resolution to 1280x800 easily enough.
The system comes with a nice selection of applications, including everything the average desktop user might need. The desktop layout is well thought out and the application menu is cleanly arranged into groups like 'Tools' and 'Graphics'. I would like to have seen descriptions for applications turned on, however, as users new to Linux aren't going to know what programs like GIMP, K3b or Amarok do. Right clicking on 'Menu' gave me the option to switch to the 'Kickoff' menu style (from Novell) which worked nicely.
Mandriva One 2008 "KDE" - the default desktop
(full image size: 645kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Installation
On the Desktop is an icon to install Mandriva which kicks up the installer. It had a very simple layout with only a few steps to a successful install and it looked nice and clean. I was impressed. All I had to do was tell Mandriva where I wanted it to install itself and away it went copying the system. To my surprise, it supported LVM well and managing this was also very simple. I just had to click on the empty space and make a new logical volume. After watching the progress bar for a number of minutes the installer prompted me to configure the boot loader, GRUB. I was pleased to see that GRUB was installed correctly and did not wipe my Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. The installer did not detect any of my other installed Linux distributions and it did think I had Windows installed for some reason. There is an option to add an entry for your other distributions, the configuration of which is assisted with pull down menus listing available kernels and init images.
After I had finished playing in the live system, I was ready to reboot into my freshly installed Mandriva system. I was greeted with the pretty blue Mandriva GRUB screen, but unfortunately it refused to boot. During initial boot-up the initrd was dying, saying it couldn't mount the root file system. It might have had something to do with the MacBook and the EFI system, or it might have been an LVM issue. Either way I was forced to install it under a virtualised environment instead, which introduced some issues of its own. Mandriva couldn't detect the hard drive, causing the installer to 'crash' and create a bug report. This I solved by creating a new IDE drive which worked just fine.
Package management and system configuration
After completing this install I have to say Mandriva worked quite well. I was first prompted to configure the network, set the root password and create a new user. In this system I had a chance to try the package management system. By default no repositories were listed, but a handy wizard appears which walks you through adding the official update and source repositories, as well as any custom repositories if you want them. (NOTE: the 'source' repositories does not mean 'source code' but more like a 'source of all the Mandriva packages'. You will need this to install anything in the repository that didn't come on the install CD.) Once I had the official sources added, I tried to install SuperTux and Frozen Bubble as Mandriva doesn't come with any games pre-installed. This was easily accomplished by clicking on 'Menu' and then opening 'Remove & Install Software'. Simply searching for the games in this interface and enabling them caused them to be downloaded from the Internet and installed. Mandriva also comes with a system tray update utility, which showed that there were two updates available - tar and util-linux-ng. Nice work, but pretty standard on distributions these days.
Probably that which left the biggest impression on me was the Mandriva Control Center. It is well laid out and split into manageable and sensible sections. The tools themselves are easy to use and fast. This should bode well with users making the move from Windows and those who prefer GUI configuration tools to the command line. In fact, included is a Windows migration tool to import a user's documents and settings. I couldn't test this. Well done Mandriva!
Mandriva Linux 2008 - the Mandriva Control Center
(full image size: 117kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Conclusion
There were aspects of this Mandriva release that I really liked, such as the installer and the Control Center but overall the system didn't really grab me. It is quite a decent, well put-together operating system with all the basics and a few extras like the Control Center and 3D desktop effects. It was stable and ran well, but on the whole it didn't seem to offer anything exciting enough to make me want to switch to the distribution permanently. For the seasoned Mandriva user, I get the impression this will be quite a worthy upgrade, but as for me I'm going to check back when the next release arrives.
8 "Smarties" out of 10.
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| Interviews |
Interview with Anne Nicolas, Director of Engineering, Mandriva
  Women are rare in the Linux world and even rarer in senior technical positions of Linux companies. One exception to the rule is Anne Nicolas, Director of Engineering at Paris-based Mandriva. Since taking up the job earlier this year, the quality and development standards at Mandriva Linux seem to have improved considerably. What's the secret? Anne explains her role and contribution to the Mandriva development process in this exclusive interview with DistroWatch.
* * * * *
DW: Anne, thank you very much for your time. As the first question, could you please introduce yourself? How long have you been working for Mandriva and what exactly are your responsibilities?
AN: I started working in open source as a support engineer at Edge-It six years ago. Mandriva then bought Edge-It in 2004 and I began my Mandriva adventure as a member of the professional support team. During the first two years I also worked as a consultant on several enterprise open source deployment projects. In 2006, I took over the redesign of the corporate product line, starting with Corporate Server 4.
Since May 2007 I am the manager of the engineering team at Mandriva. This team is comprised of engineers who do packaging and development for all Mandriva distributions and a team which is in charge of software and hardware quality assurance (QA). My main role is to organize the teams so that releases can be developed on time and to deliver the desired features. My other important roles are to set development priorities, to ensure quality of Mandriva's distributions, and to establish a good relationship model between the Mandriva employees and the Cooker community.
DW: Looking back at the development process of Mandriva Linux 2008, are there any features or design decisions that you were personally responsible for?
AN: I was specifically involved in ergonomic improvements of the Mandriva installer and the Mandriva Control Center. We wanted to make sure that the installer fit into the new simplified Mandriva product range. The installer was meant to be used by both the beginners and the advanced users, which makes it one of the easiest Linux installers. At the same time, I reviewed the Mandriva Control Center to make it much more intuitive to use. I also worked on Rpmdrake, especially on its ease of use, and made our DrakFirstTime wizard more friendly using web technologies.
Since one of our main targets is new Linux users, we wanted to help them with migrating from Windows. We took an old tool, Transfugdrake, and redesigned it so that it can help users to migrate their data from multi-boot system configurations.
More generally speaking, I also coordinated the main 2008 specifications so that our French and Brazilian teams work in complementary ways, together with other contributors.
DW: Judging by the readers' comments in the recent issues of DistroWatch Weekly, it looks like the new version 2008 is the most bug-free Mandriva release for quite a few years. What do you attribute this welcome change to? Have there been any major changes in the way Mandriva Linux is developed?
AN: We are all very happy to receive so many positive reviews and comments about the 2008 version. There are both technical and "political" reasons for the improvements. Technically speaking, Mandriva now has many years of experience in releasing distributions. These have always been quite good, offering all the best of open source technologies in a friendly environment. The point we had to improve was the general level of quality from one version to another. At the same time, many new distributions, such as Ubuntu, appeared and made Linux users more demanding in terms of innovation and features.
The early positive reviews of 2008 beta versions were really encouraging and they served as a motivating factor for the developers to improve quality. Also, the 2008 release cycle started with opening the Mandriva development process to more contributors - no more Access Control Lists in our Subversion except for some very sensitive components like the kernel. We created a bug triage team that works on bug management for Mandriva distributions; their main role is to increase the quality of bug reports, to obtain more information, and to assign each bug to a developer. It isn't perfect, but it has helped a lot. Moreover, much work has been done on our tools and build systems to make them more reliable and to give more feedback to packagers and testers.
Mandriva has always provided free software using open channels. But for sure, communication and formalisation weren't strong enough, so our upcoming objectives will be to reinforce this position and improve it.
DW: The open source software world can be a rough environment, often dominated by strong, young and bull-headed hackers. As a woman, how do you feel being part of this world? Have you ever regretted joining it?
AN: I must say, you are not the first one asking this kind of question :). I spoke about it with some guys from the team and one of them suggested this answer: "No, I don't have a problem with these guys because they are like my children most of the time - they eat trashy food, they speak trash, they behave like trash and they treat you like trash." Despite that I've never regretted choosing the open source world. It fits my view of software development perfectly and I really think that the open source model is one of the most dynamic and creative development models around. It provides plenty of scoop for creativity and cooperation and no doubt it's just the beginning.
As a woman, I feel like a human being working with other human beings (I hope so :) ). So one may encounter relationship problems in this team as in any other field. It's hard to avoid bias, and of course the Linux world is also suffering because it. But I must say I haven't had any major problems until now (I cross my fingers twice :) ). I think the most important words are open mind and dialogue, sane discussions and respect. Yes, there are very few women in the Linux world, but it's up to them to contribute and to become part of it. It's just a question of interest.
DW: From the technical point of view, what do you think are the biggest obstacles to Linux becoming a mainstream desktop OS?
AN: One of the main technical obstacles is the hardware support level. Even if lots of improvements have been made, there will be problems with more exotic hardware. Even with regard to supported hardware, the support can be incomplete or can lack important functionality. We can see it with printers, PDAs, graphical chipsets...
I would also add two other items: the ergonomic qualities of graphical environments and gaming. Both of them are essential in targeting a wide range of end users. As far as the graphical environments are concerned many improvements have been done, but unfortunately, old habits are difficult to change and the Linux desktop will have to deliver much more innovation. Moreover, the integration of open source software has to become a priority in order to help the users find the best open source software in a smooth, well-integrated environment.
Finally, gaming is also a weak point on the Linux desktop. Many users do not change their operating system because Linux lacks good games. But providing games for the Linux platform is essential if we want to attract more users.
DW: Anne, thank you very much for your time and keep up the good work!
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| Miscellaneous News |
Ubuntu "Gutsy", Mandriva vs openSUSE, Fedora 9 development changes, KDE Four Live, Slackware Current, FreeSBIE and DesktopBSD updates
 The much awaited Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" was released last week as scheduled. It didn't take long before the first reviews started coming in, mostly praising the usability and enhancements in this version. Ubuntu seems to have done a very good job indeed and there is little doubt that "Gutsy" is a worthwhile upgrade for most Ubuntu users. I have briefly tested the new version by doing a clean install on a spare box and I really liked what I'd seen so far; while some users were afraid of the integration of CompizFusion into the distribution, I have found it to be a very unobtrusive feature - there are no wobbly Windows or other effects that might be considered annoying rather than useful, just tasteful transformation effects that give an impression of a smooth and pleasant desktop. I also upgraded an existing Ubuntu 7.04 installation (which was previously upgraded from Ubuntu 6.10) on my Toshiba Satellite laptop and this process too went without a hitch (this wasn't always the case in the past). We should have a more detailed review in the next issue of DistroWatch Weekly, but for now it's suffice to say that "Gutsy" is probably the project's most impressive release to-date. Well done, Ubuntu!
Ubuntu 7.10 - the default desktop
(full image size: 520kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 It looks like the first big distro battle of the release season -- the one between openSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva Linux 2008 -- has been won by Mandriva. This conclusion comes from early reviews of the two products, as well as our DistroWatch Weekly forums, which have witnessed an unusual number of positive comments from users who installed the latest Mandriva, while at the same time a number of others commented about the bugs found in openSUSE 10.3. Further adding to the impression that Mandriva has done a better job with version 2008 was Susan Linton's Battle of the Titans comparative review between Mandriva Linux 2008 and openSUSE 10.3: "Winner: Mandriva 2008. In our little just-for-fun comparison, we, the judges, find that Mandriva wins by 4 categories to 2." What do our readers think? Let us know.
* * * * *
 What do you look forward to the most in the upcoming Fedora 8? If you ask Jesse Keating, one of the distribution's developers, this is what you get for the answer: "Working wireless out of the box. Intel 4965 firmware is in, works well, and NetworkManager rewrite leaves me with some pretty damn good software to manage it. Working suspend/resume. There was a small issue with the backlight upon resume, but now there is a proper hal-info quirk to support it. It Just Works. Working function keys (eject, stop/play-pause/ff/rw, volume up/down/mute, brightness up/down) all with really snazzy looking on-screen indicators. Again rivals OSX. As a side effect, the little remote that came with my laptop just works too." He concludes his experience of running Fedora 8 on a Dell XPS 1330 laptop with this note: "My out-of-the-box experience with this laptop is amazing. If I tried to put Windows back on this I know I'd be playing the driver game, looking at craptastic network control tools, wishing I had a second battery and generally hating life. The fact that we can rival the OSX experience continues to amaze me."
Although Fedora 8 isn't due until the 8th November, the Fedora project has already put up a new Wiki page entitled Proposed Development Process Changes for Fedora 9. One of the suggested changes is the replacement of Fedora "Tests" with a more common "Alpha", "Beta" and "Release Candidate" development model: "Instead of doing three test releases, we would instead move to an Alpha/Beta/RC/Final release mechanism. New names have been chosen to be more descriptive of what each of these releases are trying to accomplish. The uniform "Test1/2/3" was not very descriptive, whereas Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate are more in line with what each of these things are and how they should be treated. These names should also lend themselves better to translation into other languages."
* * * * *
 The third beta of KDE 4.0 was released last week and as has become the norm, KDE's and openSUSE's Stephan Binner followed it with a new CD image containing the latest code: "What would a KDE4 Hack Week be without a new version of KDE Four Live released at its end? This version has KDE 4.0 Beta 3+ (mostly 3.94.1 snapshot) packages from the KDE:KDE4 build service project engrafted on openSUSE 10.3 (if you find your way within YaST you can turn it into a full openSUSE 10.3 installation). Extra plasmoids are included with the extragear-plasma and playground-base packages, no Amarok included as it didn't build. The Plasma setup looks only good at 1024x768 resolution - seems Plasma has still to learn about resolution dependence. SATA CD-drives and network setup should hopefully work better than before and auto-login is enabled." The new live CD image can be downloaded from here (MD5): KDE-Four-Live.i686-0.5.iso (589MB).
KDE 4 - still not quite usable, although progress is obvious
(full image size: 968kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
 The Slackware Current ChangeLog is moving once again! This is the first time the document has been updated since the July 2nd release of Slackware 12.0 (except security fixes), but the changes are rather significant. Those of you who follow the Slackware Current branch are probably the first users running the latest stable kernel 2.6.23.1 and the new X.Org 7.3 with xorg-server 1.4. Note, however, there are a number of known issues with this version of X.Org: "There are a few known problems with this release. Please let us know if you have solutions to any of these. 1. xf86-video-vesa was not upgraded for the X.Org 7.3 release, and running Terminal or VTE under KDE results in an X hang under KDE, or garbage in the terminal under Xfce. 2. The following modules were not upgraded in the X.Org 7.3 release and no longer compile: mkcfm, xf86-input-acecad, xf86-input-dmc, xf86-input-void, xf86-video-glide, xf86-video-impact, and xf86-video-wsfb. Odds are good that due to the driver ABI change none of these are currently working." Also updated were KDE to version 3.5.8, OpenSSH to 4.7p1, PHP to 5.2.4, CUPS to 1.3.3, and a number of other popular packages. The glibc library, however, remains at 2.5 ("Yes, glibc 2.6 is out, but for now we will stick with a known-working version."). For more details please see the Slackware Current ChangeLog.
* * * * *
 Good news for the fans of FreeBSD live CDs. As announced by Matteo Riondato, work on a major new FreeSBIE release, based on FreeBSD 7.0, is now officially in progress: "So, RELENG_7 was branched and it seems a good idea to release a new ISO image of FreeSBIE based on it. It also looks like people want it, so I think it is a really good idea. I must admit I've not a lot of time to work on it, so I'll probably end up using the same configuration of FreeSBIE-2.0.1. The great news is that Unionfs will be enabled by default, like in FreeSBIE-1.x. The only caveat is - will it be stable enough? I know Hiroki Sato committed some fixes to it to HEAD just after the 'approval lock' on HEAD was removed, and it may be a good idea to backport that to RELENG_7, so that users gain a better FreeSBIE experience. Time will tell."
* * * * *
 Finally, DesktopBSD has announced that the project started releasing weekly snapshots of its development branch in the form of installable ISO images: "For those of you who are always excited about trying the latest and greatest features, we provide weekly snapshot ISOs now. They are built every Saturday from the latest DesktopBSD Tools, the most recent FreeBSD 6-STABLE sources and an up-to-date ports collection. The ISO contains a standard DesktopBSD distribution: a live system that can be booted without installing first, an installer that copies the operating system to your hard disk and a large selection of packages for most of your every-day needs. For now, the snapshots are only available for the AMD64 architecture, but we will start providing i386 snapshots soon." The most recent snapshot is available for download from here: DesktopBSD-1.6RC3-amd64-SNAPSHOT-20071021.iso (1,291MB, SHA256).
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| Released Last Week |
elpicx 1.1
The elpicx live DVD is a KNOPPIX and CentOS-based live Linux system with a single goal - to help students to prepare for the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification exam by providing several test emulators as well as a number of LPI reference cards, study notes, preparation guides and other exercises. The project's newest release, version 1.1, was announced yesterday: "Based on KNOPPIX 5.1.1 and CentOS 4.3. KDE help files, KNOPPIX and LPI certification documentation were added, together with software to prepare for the LPI exam 102 (Linux kernel sources 2.4 and 2.6, Sendmail)." Visit the project's home page to read the complete release announcement and changelog.
PAIPIX 7.10
PAIPIX 7.10, a Debian-based live DVD with focus on scientific applications, has been released: "PAIPIX 7.10, the upgraded PAIPIX 7. While PAIPIX 7 integrated in the same DVD the installation, live and upgrade systems, the new PAIPIX 7.10 uses backports to combine the stability of Debian Etch development, X window and KDE with upgraded kernel (2.6.22), OpenOffice.org 2.2 and many more updated applications. New scientific applications were also included. The new PAIPIX 7 GNU/Linux keeps its focus on scientific software but drops the emphasis on a pure live DVD to integrate the installation, live and upgrade systems. These solutions result form using the Debian official packages 'debian-live' and 'debian-cd', making the development of PAIPIX more sustainable in the medium range." Read the full release announcement on the distribution's home page.
Ubuntu 7.10
Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" has been released: "Ubuntu makes no distinction between community and enterprise editions, Ubuntu 7.10 is our best work and is available freely to all. Ubuntu has consistently ranked #1 in reviews of security update responsiveness and effectiveness. The Ubuntu platform is fully certified and supported, making it a secure choice for users looking to explore, deploy and enjoy Linux. Ubuntu 7.10 brings together the best open source and free software available in a stable, robust environment that 'just works'... Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop edition adds an enhanced user interface, improved hardware support, multiple monitor support and integrated desktop search." Read the press release, release notes, and the tour page for more details.
Kubuntu 7.10
The Kubuntu project has announced the final release of Kubuntu 7.10: "Kubuntu 7.10 has been released and is available for download now. Kubuntu 7.10 removed the feistiness, becoming the gutsiest release to date. Improved desktop, updated applications and increased usability features are just a few of the surprises with this latest release. The goal for Kubuntu 7.10, code-named Gutsy Gibbon, was to remove the edge and the feistiness from previous releases and to continue on the creation of a secure and stable desktop environment, on a road to becoming the perfect KDE-based operating system. The development team has once again succeeded in reaching their goals, and we are very happy to bring you this new release. We hope you enjoy your Kubuntu 7.10 experience." Read the comprehensive release announcement for further information.
Edubuntu 7.10
Edubuntu 7.10, a flavour of Ubuntu designed specifically for deployment in schools, has been released: "The Edubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Edubuntu 7.10, code-named 'Gutsy Gibbon'. This release includes both installation CDs and installable live CDs for several architectures. Highlights of this release: Edubuntu KDE desktop - new meta package for easy setup; improved session management applications; easier installation of educational applications; collaborative editing by default; thin client - LTSP. The Edubuntu classroom server install builds on the functionality from the previous release, simplifying common Linux classroom server deployment processes. It includes the very latest thin client software, LTSP-5." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
Xubuntu 7.10
Completing the big Ubuntu release day is Xubuntu 7.10: "The Xubuntu team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the latest release of the Xubuntu Linux operating system - 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon'." What's new? "The latest version of Xfce, 4.4.1, is included in this release, featuring many bug fixes and updated translations. A new theme, MurrinaStormCloud, using the Murrine Engine so it is faster than the themes in previous releases. The most important software updates in Gutsy are the new Pidgin 2.2.0, which is the new name for Gaim, and the new GIMP 2.4, but also includes minor updates to other software. Firefox extensions and plug-ins can now be installed through Add/Remove." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Slamd64 Linux 12.0
Fred Emmott has announced the release of Slamd64 Linux 12.0, an unofficial port of Slackware Linux 12.0 to the AMD64 architecture: "Slamd64 12.0 is released, the latest result of nearly two and a half years of development. If you're upgrading, please pay close attention to UPGRADE.TXT. Here's a short list of highlights: Linux 2.6.22.8 and GCC 4.1.2; support for booting the installer by USB or PXE (netboot); FHS-compliant multilib system; reworked 32-bit compatibility libraries; support for building 32-bit binaries (gcc -m32); seamless support for most 32-bit applications, including Cedega and OpenOffice.org; nspluginwrapper allows the usage of 32-bit browser plugins, including Flash Player; HAL auto-mounting; KDE 3.5.7 and Xfce 4.4.1. Slamd64 12 will be supported with security updates for at least the next two releases." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement.
Foresight Linux 1.4.1
Ken VanDine has announced the release of Foresight Linux 1.4.1: "The Foresight Linux Project is proud to announce the release of Foresight Linux 1.4.1. Foresight Linux is a Linux distribution that features a rolling release schedule, a revolutionary package manager, the latest GNOME desktop environment and an innovative set of excellent, up to date packages. Foresight Linux 1.4.1 features the latest GNOME (2.20.1) and introduces PackageKit. PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions, and use some of the latest technology like PolicyKit to make the process suck less." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details.
Kiwi Linux 7.10
Jani Monoses has announced the final release of Kiwi Linux 7.10, an Ubuntu-based distribution optimised for Romanian and Hungarian users and enhanced with multimedia codecs and other desktop conveniences: "The Kiwi 7.10 live CD for i386, based on Ubuntu 7.10, is available. Modifications to Ubuntu 7.10 include: Romanian and Hungarian localization and language support packages; removed Evolution, Rhythmbox, Ekiga, Asian fonts, and languages other than en, hu, ro; removed Windows applications from the live CD; added Audacious audio player, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Vim, Midnight Commander; replaced Totem GStreamer with Totem xine, added ffmpeg and libdvdcss2; included Firefox plugins for Java, Flash and MPlayer; improved networking support by enabling the pppoeconf GUI, adding firmware for the SpeedTouch USB modem...." Here is the brief release announcement.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
FreeBSD 7.0
Following the recent creation of a FreeBSD 7.0 branch, it seems that the testing process of the project's new major release is about to begin. The first ISO images of FreeBSD 7.0-BETA1 started showing up on some mirrors over the weekend and although no release dates were available at the time of writing, FreeBSD Security Officer Colin Percival hinted that it will hopefully be out by the end of December 2007. Those interested in testing the new FreeBSD should keep an eye on the FreeBSD 7.0 Release Process page.
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
The Page Hit Ranking experiment
As many of you noticed, the Page Hit Ranking table disappeared from the front page of DistroWatch on Wednesday last week. This wasn't a glitch and it wasn't done in order to develop a better ranking system - it was simply a 24-hour experiment to determine how the absence of the table would affect the number of hits each distribution page received. The main reason for this experiment was a continuous string of emails and forum posts from readers who suspect foul play due to the fact that a relatively little-known distribution now occupies the top spot in the Page Hit Ranking table. Could it be that there are a few automatic web bots that load the PCLinuxOS page in regular intervals and thus artificially inflate the number of page views?
This is what we found:
| 16 October |
17 October |
18 October |
| Distribution |
Hits |
Distribution |
Hits |
Distribution |
Hits |
| PCLinuxOS |
3,757 |
Ubuntu |
3,204 |
Ubuntu |
8,885 |
| Ubuntu |
3,568 |
StartCom Linux |
1,047 |
PCLinuxOS |
3,685 |
| openSUSE |
1,970 |
PAIPIX |
1,044 |
Kubuntu |
2,019 |
| Fedora |
1,395 |
openSUSE |
1,022 |
openSUSE |
1,632 |
| VectorLinux |
1,342 |
elpicx |
951 |
Fedora |
1,259 |
| Mandriva Linux |
1,299 |
Fedora |
787 |
Linux Mint |
987 |
| Sabayon Linux |
1,022 |
Mandriva Linux |
704 |
Sabayon Linux |
975 |
| Puppy Linux |
934 |
VectorLinux |
687 |
Mandriva Linux |
974 |
| Linux Mint |
892 |
PCLinuxOS |
684 |
Debian GNU/Linux |
841 |
| Debian GNU/Linux |
890 |
Puppy Linux |
574 |
Puppy Linux |
673 |
| Damn Small Linux |
616 |
Debian GNU/Linux |
571 |
MEPIS Linux |
668 |
| MEPIS Linux |
607 |
Kubuntu |
552 |
rPath Linux |
656 |
| Kubuntu |
580 |
MEPIS Linux |
517 |
Xubuntu |
655 |
| Slackware Linux |
519 |
Ubuntu Muslim Edition |
369 |
StartCom Linux |
630 |
| CentOS |
482 |
Linux Mint |
360 |
Damn Small Linux |
625 |
| Fluxbuntu |
472 |
Damn Small Linux |
356 |
Ubuntu Studio |
621 |
| Zenwalk Linux |
450 |
Freespire |
335 |
CentOS |
526 |
| Frugalware Linux |
442 |
Sabayon Linux |
330 |
Edubuntu |
484 |
| Arch Linux |
434 |
Frugalware Linux |
330 |
VectorLinux |
481 |
| Gentoo Linux |
429 |
Fluxbuntu |
322 |
PAIPIX |
478 |
|
By removing the Page Hit Ranking table from the front page of DistroWatch, the PCLinuxOS page received only 684 unique hits, which is about 18% of the number of visits it received during the previous day and the following day. Of these 684 hits, only 8.5% of the visitors' user agent string reported PCLinuxOS as the operating system used. If we remove from the column those distributions that happened to feature in the front-page news on that particular day (i.e. StartCom Linux, PAIPIX, elpicx and VectorLinux), PCLinuxOS would still rank fairly high - at number 5, just behind Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora and Mandriva Linux).
It is rather obvious that the reason for the high number of hits on the PCLinuxOS page is nothing other than sheer curiosity of those DistroWatch readers who are new to the Linux world and who find it surprising that a relatively unknown distribution is at the number one spot. In order to learn more, they click on the link which takes them to the PCLinuxOS page. Until this curiosity is satisfied and PCLinuxOS becomes a more mainstream distribution, we are unlikely to see a huge drop in the number of visits on the PCLinuxOS page.
Several readers suggested that this was a "problem that needed fixing". If PCLinuxOS continued to lead the ranking, they argued, the table would become meaningless as it would no longer represent the relative popularity of distributions. While this is certainly true, we should also remember that PCLinuxOS did not get to the number one spot by means of a random placement, but by slow, continuous rise in interest and curiosity generated by you - the DistroWatch reader. If a distribution is good enough to get there, so be it! While PCLinuxOS might be nowhere near as popular and widely-used as Ubuntu or openSUSE, it certainly is an excellent project which has a growing and satisfied user base.
Finally, let's not forget one other important thing: once you reach the number one spot in anything, there is only one way to go from there - down ;-)
* * * * *
New distributions added to database
* * * * *
New distributions added to waiting list
- MythDora. MythDora is a specialized Linux distribution based on Fedora and MythTV. It is designed to simplify the installation of MythTV on a home theatre PC. In addition to MythTV and its plugins, MythDora includes extra Linux packages that are necessary for MythTV to run, and drivers for hardware commonly encountered in machines intended to run MythTV. Also included in MythDora are several video game emulators, and extra tools and scripts.
- TeenPup. TeenPup is a desktop Linux distribution based on Puppy Linux. Compared to its parent, TeenPup promises better desktop artwork, improved ease-of-use, and enhanced usability with additional applications.
- Vacarm Linux. Vacarm Linux is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a focus on IT security. It provides users with a system which can be used as a security testing platform and as a desktop system. Vacarm Linux incorporates a collection of about 40 open source security tools designed for intrusion detection, network monitoring and forensic analysis.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 29 October 2007.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • No subject (by Lars Holm on 2007-10-22 13:34:51 GMT from Finland)
"Of these 684 hits, only 8.5% of the visitors' user agent string reported PCLinuxOS as the operating system used."
Just out of curiosity, what was that number on October 16th and 18th?
It's always nice to see progress with KDE4, I am SO looking forward to it. :)
2 • Nice Experiment ;-) (by Eddy Nigg on 2007-10-22 13:37:53 GMT from Israel)
I was also one of the ones who sent an email to Ladislav. Simply our distro (StartCom Linux) had a development release announcement and the missing of the page hit rankings was striking. Now I understand why he hasn't replied (against his usual habits).
However since it already happened for one day I made the following suggestion and asked a few questions. Here some part of the mail:
....I realized that it's back today, so maybe it was just a glitch yesterday. I know that you always said that one shouldn't take them too seriously, so do I think as well. On the other hand, Distrowatch would present a more neutral picture, if the page hit rankings would move somewhere to the back pages...would certain distributions fall and others rise? Would the numbers overall be more flat perhaps? Would lesser known distros have a fairer chance overall, considering the influence distrowatch has by now? Certainly some valid questions...
3 • RE: 1 (by ladislav on 2007-10-22 13:43:06 GMT from Taiwan)
Just out of curiosity, what was that number on October 16th and 18th?
Around 3% on both days.
4 • My experience with Ubuntu 7.10... (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-22 13:54:44 GMT from Italy)
..has been nothing but a nightmare.
I have promised the people here a mini Ubuntu review.
I downloaded the 32 bit Desktop edition.
Installing it was impossible. It hung for hours (seriously) at configuring apt. The reason being that my internet connection is ADSL (pppoe). I had never been offered the option to configure it, so the task couldn't be completed. You would expect a time out, wouldn't you? Nothing like that.
So I fired up pppoeconf. It reported that it was connected, but a ping wouldn't work. That is typical of distros with a poor pppoe implementation.
Even if I had a router instead, there is another (major for me) issue: it would install GRUB to the MBR and I don't want that.
So I downloaded the alternate edition.
Installing this one was another pain in the a...
I needed to start with the "expert" option. It wasn't obvious at all how to do it, at least it wasn't like Debian (and yet they use the Debian installer)
Anyway, this was easily solved: hit "Esc" at the very beginning and you can type "expert"
Expert in Ubuntu has many exotic options, many more than in Debian.
I had to try several times, because by the time tasksel was fired up, I got an unrecoverable error (something like it wasn't possible to determine the release).
After many attempts with several different parameters, I finally succeeded.
And now begins my unpleasant experience with using Ubuntu. Some of the issues I came across:
1)No sound.
2)"alsaconf" is an unknown command.
3)logging out and back in brought me in a totally messed up environment.
4)I copied my Firefox settings from openSUSE. This is something I do all the time between all my operating systems: Linux, Windows, OS X. It doesn't cause serious problems. But in Ubuntu Firefox was trying to start but failed. It did start eventually, after about 10 attempts.
Also, I tried to fire up Firefox from terminal: it simply hangs for about 10 minutes, no CLI output.
Now it was time to add some more software, kubuntu-desktop and a few more packages, about 250MB stuff.
The time it took to download the software was reasonable. But the time it was taking to configure it and install (using synaptic) was *several hours!!!* (I have a very fast computer, a Q6600, 4GB RAM...)
When I was at about 60% of this procedure I really had enough, that was the final straw.
Later I completed installing the packages from terminal with "dpkg --configure -a". It took another hour.
I am going to overwrite it with another distro, possibly Debian Lenny.
It is beyond me how a a contemporary Linux distro can be so buggy and lacking and yet so successful.
I did approach it with a totally open mind, even if I am an openSUSE (and Debian) fan.
Issues with Kubuntu-desktop: in order to log into KDE I had to reboot (not normal in Linux).
The splash screen was replaced by the Kubuntu one, I wonder why.
I have always found the Kubuntu implementation of KDE very disappointing. Examples: no Control Center in the menu by default? You have to edit the menu. Home only in System Menu? Very unintuitive.
And finally there is no Linux-bigmem, so my 4GB RAM are not fully supported.
5 • Mandriva 2008 (by voislav on 2007-10-22 13:59:32 GMT from Canada)
I finally got around to trying out new Mandriva this weekend and I was pretty impressed. First thing, the upgrade from 2007.1 worked with no problems and that is with the 64-bit release, which is the first time I was able to upgrade a 64-bit distro, rather than doing a clean install. New release is noticably faster than 2007, which was a bit sluggish compared to some other distros (Mepis 6.5, for example). The new kernel has full NTFS support, something that was sorely lacking with 2007, which used 2.4.18 kernel (you could still use ntfs-3g, but it was kind of annoying). Compiz-Fusion work out of the box and is pretty stable, it's yet to crash on me. Not a huge upgrade compared to 2007, but a large step in the right direction.
And congratulations to Ladislav on his little experiment. Hopefully this will put a stop to all this "my distro is higher in the rankings than yours" nonsense and everyone will take the rankings for what they really are, a funny little factoid (which means nothing).
6 • Ubuntu 7.10 (by glenn at 2007-10-22 14:02:07 GMT from Canada)
I tried installing this distro and it went in fine on my laptop. 2 hrs start to end including all the apps I need for work. The only problem i really has was installing on my desktop AMD system that has an ATI RADEON HD 2600 XT. The display just would not appear when i was installiing from the CD and the boot stalled. The way I got past this was to edit the boot and remove the SPLASH parameter then continue the boot. Weird. The install completed and my card worked fine albeit no acceleration yet. There is a new driver for it but is still testing and this is not the place to discuss drivers anyway.
.
Otherwise, my experience with this version of Ubuntu so far is much better than what I expected. Faster? Well, you be the judge, I do not think so. Stable? Yup,, so far and I crammed a lot of junk into it.
Pretty? Its Ubuntu! What more can I say?.
7 • PCLinuxOS (by Hillary loves Hsu on 2007-10-22 14:02:47 GMT from United States)
Maybe the PCLinuxOS bots scan the page for the hit list and when they
do not see it they do not make a hit. Hee,hee,hee.
8 • boring (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 14:05:09 GMT from United States)
Well this weekend I up graded to Ubuntu 7.10 as it should be everything worked! It is getting more polished with every release.
But again I dont customize the install. I load it update it and straythere till the next release.
Actually I am finding Linux starting to be as boring as windows, it main stream now. I have about 10 coworkers using Linux.
yawn, nothing to read here.
9 • UbuntuGutsy (by alvinistic on 2007-10-22 14:13:20 GMT from Singapore)
Ubuntu 7.10 works well in my laptop! My laptop can now suspend without error plus i think it is a bit speedier than feisty.
Kudos to Ubuntu dev!
Anyway for those experiencing problem when installing ubuntu gutsy (ubiquity hangs at 82% configuring apt), it's actually not really a bug, but it's trying to contact apt repo which was damn slow during the time of gutsy release. Plugging off my network cable caused it to timeout and continue with the installation. But I'll have to edit sources.list afterwards. A minor annoyance but I dun really mind since it works well in my laptop :D
10 • A note on the Ubuntu ranking, 18th Oct (by Adam on 2007-10-22 14:16:59 GMT from Australia)
I realise it is obvious to anyone who follows the distro release calendar, and in particular Ubuntu releases, but I feel that for first-time DWW Weekly readers, there should be a note that Ubuntu's page-hits are waaay up on the 18th as, coincidentally, it was the long-awaitet Gutsy release date.
For those who didn't know or realise this, Ubuntu's almost-9000 hits on this date certainly stand out far more than the placement of PCLOS.
11 • Ubuntu 7.10 Re: #4 (by MatthewV on 2007-10-22 14:20:32 GMT from Australia)
Anonymous Penguin, I'm not sure what you mean by having to use the alternate edition to install grub to someplace other than the MBR. On the last step of the installer (the gui installer), before you press Install >>, there is an Advanced... button that allows you to choose where you would like grub to be installed.
Also, I wouldn't complain about he number of options in Expert mode, there's a reason it's named that...
12 • Question for Ladislav (by Glenn at 2007-10-22 14:21:31 GMT from Canada)
Hi...
I'm curious. When a user clicks on the DOWNLOAD ISO in the distribution release does that get added to the page hit ranking also? Maybe a dumb question but it is Monday morning here and I am a bit slow.
Thanks .
Glenn
13 • Mandriva 2008 versus openSUSE 10.3 (by cogito on 2007-10-22 14:21:50 GMT from Latvia)
Well, for me it's another way round. SuSE runs better on my average ThinkPad than Mandriva. I installed Mandriva:
(1) Metisse was very slow (I got intel 855 GM chip)
(2) Compiz-Fusion did not work, I got blue screen
(3) Some apps I installed did not work (I was not able to start Mplayer; I installed language packages but OO writer did not find them as If they were not installed).
SuSE (although I have problems with the new intel driver) runs more smoothly on my laptop. And, Yes, it looks much more pretty than Mandriva (althoug I would not say that Mandriva looks bad. It is till better than Ubuntu).
14 • Mandriva (by ShakaZ on 2007-10-22 14:23:23 GMT from Belgium)
Well considering all the praising about the Mandriva release i think i'll have to give it another chance after having neglected the 2nd distro i ever installed for many years. Probably it'll be installed on my fathers' pc first as he showed interest in moving to linux and particularly that distro.
15 • RE 8 Ways to fight boredom. (by dbrion on 2007-10-22 14:24:00 GMT from France)
"Actually I am finding Linux starting to be as boring as windows"
Perhaps (PC-/any)BSD can be more interesting?
Or Solaris, within weeks/months/years?
Or perhaps looking at the lowest ranked distributions (which might be very original or have weird features) can be a way of finding again some passion?
16 • Ubuntu Gutsy (by Anthonye on 2007-10-22 14:25:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sorry, not impressed. The Live Cd install hung for so long I had to do a hard reset. Alternate install worked fine, but apart from having Compiz as default, what else is new? Nice splash screen, and the Ubuntu Studio theme is now much nicer. Killer, as far as I'm concerned, is that from the time you put name and password in to the time you can actually do anything is inordinately long, almost 2 minutes on my system. There also seem to be issues with OpenOffice, with many complaints about dependencies... they eventually seemed to get solved, but it took most of a day before that happened.
I played with it for a day, then scrubbed it and went back to Feisty.
17 • RE: 10 (by Landor on 2007-10-22 14:28:35 GMT from Canada)
"For those who didn't know or realise this, Ubuntu's almost-9000 hits on this date certainly stand out far more than the placement of PCLOS."
I totally agree and maybe when PCLOS does their next release, or even for a general statistical review, Ladislav could compare the page hits between the two, or say the top 5 on their release days over the course of this "release season" we're in.
Sounds like a good idea to me Ladislav :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
18 • *ubuntu 7.10 for PPC? (by just john on 2007-10-22 14:31:00 GMT from United States)
I'm wondering if/when 7.10 Kubuntu for PPC might happen. Latest PPC release I've found is 6-point-something. (Which works okay; I'm not complaining.)
19 • Waiting list (by Me on 2007-10-22 14:31:34 GMT from Spain)
There seems to be a mistake in the "New distributions added to waiting list". I can't see any relationship between Vacarm Linux and the Syllable project.
Are you adding Syllable to Distrowatch or that text just slipped instead of the correct one for Vacarm Linux?
Thanks for DWW!
20 • RE: # 11 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-22 14:49:14 GMT from Italy)
"Anonymous Penguin, I'm not sure what you mean by having to use the alternate edition to install grub to someplace other than the MBR. On the last step of the installer (the gui installer), before you press Install >>, there is an Advanced... button that allows you to choose where you would like grub to be installed."
My bad, then. But I didn't get that far.
"Also, I wouldn't complain about he number of options in Expert mode, there's a reason it's named that..."
In Debian I always use "expert", but the options are fewer and easy to understand. IMO, with Ubuntu you go from an extreme to the other, from almost no options if you use the Desktop edition to too many if you use the alternate edition in expert mode.
21 • ubuntu 7.10 install (by mark on 2007-10-22 14:59:49 GMT from United States)
it hung up on me at apt config and I turned off the dsl modem
and everything has been good since. But firefox has been slow
so I uninstalled ubuntufox and this seems to have helped. I dont run
any thing fancy (compiz) and I turn on and off index cause this is an old
box duron 1250 mhz. I like it and would reccomend.
22 • Ref :19 : Vacarm Linux (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2007-10-22 15:02:00 GMT from Pakistan)
Yes, there looked to be some kind of mistake with Syllable confused/mixed with Vacarm Linux by Ladislav but seems to be corrected now.
Btw Vacarm Linux is all some other language than english, can`t understand a single word on the website .
23 • Chris smart (by fatfreddy on 2007-10-22 15:04:12 GMT from Australia)
Comment deleted (disrespectful).
24 • openSUSE vs. Mandriva vs. Ubuntu (by Mark on 2007-10-22 15:07:21 GMT from Slovakia)
My winner is openSUSE 10.3. I have no problems with it.
25 • RE: # 23 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-22 15:12:05 GMT from Italy)
"My winner is openSUSE 10.3. I have no problems with it."
Basically it is the same for me. The few issues I have are easy to solve.
26 • #23 (by RC on 2007-10-22 15:31:04 GMT from United States)
LOL....while I don't agree with how fatfreddy says it...I do agree with what he says. A Mac based review only targets a small percentage of the audience here. The bulk of the readers are PC based and a review that was based on that architecture would be more appropriate and meaningful. I do think the author did an excellent job though.
27 • RE: Ubuntu 7.10 on Toshiba Satellite (by Rax on 2007-10-22 15:33:00 GMT from South Africa)
Hi
I was wondering if you could let us know the exact model of the Toshiba Satellite model you used ?
I have a P100-429 and have had issues (with edgy and feisty) getting sound to work and with the GPU fan not working.
Do these work by default for you?
Cheers
Rax
28 • Thanks for being the flow of change! (by Bill Savoie on 2007-10-22 15:35:56 GMT from United States)
Thanks Ladislav for another great read. I love the 'experiment' of the missing distro ranking, and your interesting evaluation of the process and how it works. Kind of a reverse Laplace transform. I suppose evaluation of net entries, provides a telliing pulse of popularity, that could also become a ranking system.
I have 14 different Linux distros on my system, with one 100 gig partition holding all my music, photos, chess games, ada programs and other user data. That lets me differentially test what comes out and never store data on the 10 gig distro specific partition. Reading each distrowatch post is like eating candy. I still love openSUSE 10.3, but I could also live with any of the top 10. Thanks again Ladislav for making the flow of change so easy to be a part of.
29 • #27 (by RC on 2007-10-22 15:37:19 GMT from United States)
That is a frustrating issue. I am looking at purchasing a laptop shortly and would like to get a very Linux compatible one. Impressed with the HP 9000 series. I have done searches but can't really find a site with up to date information on compatibility. How can I find out what new (affordable) laptops are compatible with Linux?
30 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 15:39:05 GMT from United States)
I really like the reviews of distros. This is very helpful to those of us who have time constraints. This is a lot of work and I think the reviewers have been doing a great job. There are no perfect reviews, especially when users judge the quality of a review by how much they like the conclusions.
I used Ubuntu 7.10. Quite an improvement over previous releases. Microsoft should be very afraid.
I'm most looking forward to Fedora 8. I've found that the quality of Fedora has improved a lot recently. I've also found that they have very good hardware support.
I just wish these distros would stop doing ugly impersonations of the Vista wallpaper. Fedora 7 has the best default wallpaper I've ever seen.
31 • re: 26 (by who do you want this time on 2007-10-22 15:40:56 GMT from Australia)
please some one see's the point of my comment
Ladislav - Chris have you got the message yet ?
or have I gotta become a "suposed troll" to ram the msg home ?
32 • Page Hit Rankings (by Nobody on 2007-10-22 15:43:42 GMT from United States)
It seems that some people still confuse the Page Hit Rankings with a measure of the quality of a distro, or 'Usage In The Wild'. It simply means that those users hit the Distrowatch link for that site. While it might influence newbies, it's not a viable measurement of market penetration, or a qualitative endorsement of one distro over another.
I would like to see Distrowatch run a Usage Poll at some point, but even that might be skewed. Still, it would give the kiddies something else to argue about.
33 • Mandriva2008/Ubuntu 7.10/Suse 10.3 (by Richard on 2007-10-22 15:46:57 GMT from United States)
Tried all three this week. Mandriva installed and worked without a hitch. For that matter so did Ubuntu 7.10. OpenSuse 10.3 still give me problems with wifi. Overall Mandriva and Ubuntu worked very well. I was impressed with Ubuntu. It has come a long way. On the other hand Kubuntu 7.10 has taken several steps backwords with their installer and the wifi just gave me more problems than it was worth. Thumbs down to them sadly. Until OpenSuse makes proprietary driver installation easier than it has been I can't give them much credit. I installed the software and checked out the additional disk of software drivers that I needed and decided it wasn't going to be worth the additional effort to download burn and install. The DVD Iso took several hrs over my cable connect via torrent. .
34 • Landor, re: 17 (by Adam on 2007-10-22 15:53:16 GMT from Australia)
"... maybe when PCLOS does their next release, or even for a general statistical review, Ladislav could compare the page hits between the two, or say the top 5 on their release days over the course of this "release season" we're in.
"Sounds like a good idea to me Ladislav :)"
Agreeing with yourself? :-D Aye, I second that!
35 • (Ku/U)buntu experiences, Page Hits (by farkwell on 2007-10-22 16:04:47 GMT from United States)
I joined the bittorrent swarms Thursday morning, picked up Ubuntu 7.10 in about an hour, Kubuntu took slightly longer. (There were less peers and I started Kubuntu a bit later.) For both distros, I picked up the Desktop 32 bit version. My processor(s) is(are?) an intel P940, 3.2 gHz dual core, and it supports 64 bit. But I've found that eventually, something won't work because that something expects a 32 bit system.
Anyhow, I burn both to cd, and boot the Kubutu first. Unattended, the video wasn't recognized or something, (my mobo is a gigabyte 81865gme-775-rh with ) I wandered back into the room to find a beautiful multicolored display of junk. So I reboot, this time paying a little more attention to my boot choices. I forget what I chose, but it didn't work. So, fine... let's set that aside and boot the Ubuntu disc.
Beautiful chocolate gnome desktop. Willie Wonka wants to lick the screen. Everything works. (except for stuff needing restricted codecs, this *IS* Ubuntu, not Mint or Mepis.) I didn't want to install it on the HD inside my machine, so I put an old HD in a USB enclosure and told the installer to install to that, using the entire disk. Everything went fine, I remove the CD and reboot. Booting from the USB drive went fine, and I set off to install VLC and MP3 support, a couple of games (Xmame and Alien Arena ... both worked beautifully with next to no setup.) I copy a directory full of settings for firefox, then use F2 "firefox -profilemanager" to add and select that profile. Everything was beautiful. (Ok, no youtube, but I can live with that. It's Ubuntu. Besides, I think I got it set up later.)
A bit of surprise when I shut that system down, unplugged the USB drive and then powered it up. WHAT? Thanks, Ubuntu installer, you farked my GRUB. I reboot with the UBCD and use super grub disk or something, and that automagically fixed it.
I think I could live with the Ubuntu 7.10. One problem that I've had with this hardware (Using Mint 3.0, Mint 3.1, a few beta versions of Mepis 64 7.0, and PCLinuxOS) is that, when playing an AVI video (with MPlayer or VLC or Xine) the colors are washed out and the whites are too bright. I've been blaming my really old monitor (Princeton Ultra72.) The odd thing was, other images (while browsing, or using Gimp) look just fine. The point is: with Ubuntu 7.10 and VLC ... the AVIs played beautifully.
So I take the Kubuntu disc upstairs to my other machine. (Motherboard is an Intel D101GGC, CPU is a celeron of some sort.) For me, the D101GGC has been flaky at best. It has some sort of ATI integrated graphics. The live CD booted perfectly with no interaction from me. Everything worked, except Firefox. If Firefox was on that CD, I couldn't find it. No IceWeasel either. Quite a surprise. Beautiful though. The wife wanted something done, Right Then. So I booted into XP, printed her file, then for fun, put the Kubuntu disc back in the drive. What do I see? Oh look, I can install windows versions of The Gimp, Open Office and (wait for it) Firefox.
So, next time i boot to the live kubuntu, i'll try installing wine and running the windows firefox from there.
Sure, it has Konqueror. Thanks.
NOW: Page Hits ... Probably any distro that is about to release, or has a recent release is going to move up. The default 6 month look back window should smooth that out.
But, with numbers in the 200 to 8000 hits per day range, it doesn't take much effort to manipulate. At the same time, any manipulation can be detected.
36 • The Page Hit Ranking experiment (by vaithy on 2007-10-22 16:10:02 GMT from India)
Dear Ladislav Bodnar !!
Instead of fighting Windows,linux Distros are finishing each other..instead of brotherhood, hatred is pouring in the concerned Distros supporters forums..This is a sad and useless developement...
with regards,
Vaithy
37 • Mandriva 2008 (by agnustic on 2007-10-22 16:12:18 GMT from United States)
I installed the Gnome-flavored Mandriva 2008 from the live CD onto my Intel-based Mac Mini. It's the only one I could get to download properly from a site. Everything worked except for audio. I must have audio. Anyone else have issues with audio? Any suggestions? Please e-mail me if you have a honest suggestion.
38 • RE: 22 Vacarm Linux (by IMQ on 2007-10-22 16:16:47 GMT from United States)
Dr.Saleem Khan said:
"Btw Vacarm Linux is all some other language than english, can`t understand a single word on the website ."
That is not true!
I just visit the site and I can read these words: "distribution Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn)" and "modifications".
If you count 'em, there is not just one but 6 words you can understand in English.
See!
:-)
39 • RE: # 33 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-22 16:17:55 GMT from Italy)
"Until OpenSuse makes proprietary driver installation easier than it has been I can't give them much credit."
IMO, it is now very easy. Just use the new YaST module, "Community Repositories", tick Packman and VideoLan and there you go.
40 • The MacBook reviews!!! (by Moataz Ashraf on 2007-10-22 16:27:00 GMT from Egypt)
Why are they using it for the review? The reviewer is using hardware that only a small percent of users actually use. You can't make a decent conclusion based on this. The reviewer shouldn't then blame problems that he encounters, on the distro. Like the GRUB errors.
If you look around, you will find that almost all the reviews on the Web are done on standard hardware, whether desktop or laptop. Then why all the DistroWatch reviews are done on a Mac?
Next time, try reviewing Ubuntu 7.10 on a PS3, and see if you can get a conclusion from this!
41 • RE fatfreddy 23: Real 'nix machines, Apple and exotic reviews (by dbrion on 2007-10-22 16:27:58 GMT from France)
"
Get Smart - and show people you can do it on a real 'nix machine
"
I suppose fatfreddy is an Unix expert ; is he a
HP-UX expert?
A Smart Solaris expert?
"
Please start telling us what you can do on an IMB or clone machine
"
Please, share your real 'nix expertise.
"
can you dom it with an IBM or clone mechine - what you do on a Mac = rubbish to me and the majority of people"
I am sorry, but majority-based "arguments" make me think .... of Windows, Windows.......
"
Who is interested on what you can do with "my trusty Mac-machine ?
"
I was interested....even if I do not have a Mac.
"or please stop reporting"
Thanks Chris Smart, for a well written report on a somewhat exotic installation of Linux.
Knowing there are other platforms than [PCs, PCs and other PCs, what a bore! ] Linux can support is not that harmful, anyway....
Some other exotic hardware and Linux applications on them might be very intellectually stimulating...
42 • 29 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 16:35:58 GMT from United States)
I'm not sure what exactly you are looking for, but mostly with laptops you should worry about wireless.
Dell offers laptops with Ubuntu on them (Intel graphics and wireless). System76 is also popular, from what I've read. Lenovo has a good history of Linux compatibility. HP pretends to be Linux-friendly, but in my experience, that ends at the door of the marketing department. I don't recommend HP.
There are smaller problems with laptops such as suspend or special buttons. I don't know of a laptop that works perfectly with Linux, to be honest, and I've worked with a lot of laptops. However, you can install Linux on most laptops without difficulty, and use them for most productive purposes without problem.
I recommend the Dell, but that's just my opinion.
43 • Dropping openSUSE for Mandriva (by Walter on 2007-10-22 16:40:31 GMT from United States)
I first tried Mandrake almost ten years ago, and for a time it was always a toss up between SuSE and Mandrake. When Mandrake became Mandriva, I didn't like the new name, I didn't like the way things were going, so I settled on SuSE.
The recent release of openSUSE 10.3 has some nice additions, but I'm still finding it a bit buggy.
I decided to give Mandriva a shot, because it's been a few years since the last time I used it.
Mandriva 2008.0 is a solid release. The installation and configuration were both very easy. As a matter of fact, the install itself went very smooth. It still requires a little bit of know-how, but that goes for any OS installation.
I really am pleased with Mandriva (so much that I went ahead and purchased the Powerpack version).
Keep up the excellent work.
44 • On reading old DWW issues... (by Adam on 2007-10-22 16:42:13 GMT from Australia)
I have just been glancing over the earliest DWW publications for interest's sake, and as a relative newcomer to Linux, I was astonished to see just how much the landscape has changed since mid-2003.
Take, for instance, the following:
"Given that, I don't think there is any reason to worry about the future of Gentoo." (issue 4, 30 June 2003, paragraph 5)
However, within four years:
"Last week, the Gentoo project entered the lowest point of its 7-year old existence.
[...]
"Gentoo Linux, once the most innovative and refreshing of all distributions, will become nothing more than an average, buggy operating system characterised by endless bickering among the few developers that will bother to remain with it." (issue 193, 12 March 2007)
Now, this is NOT a criticism of Ladislav's powers of perception. There is no way he, or perhaps any of us, could have foreseen the turmoil that was to rock the Gentoo boat. As a new Linux enthusiast with an interest in history, I'll be surveying past DWWs over the next few weeks in order to see how we have arrived at our current position.
Meanwhile, I shall ask the following:
What do you, fellow readers, believe to be the most memorable developments in the Linux community over this timeframe? Inspiring (eg. the rise of Ubuntu), disgusting (eg. Novell's infamous partnership), intriguing, fascinating, or otherwise.
45 • RE: #4 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 16:43:22 GMT from United States)
"It hung for hours (seriously) at configuring apt. The reason being that my internet connection is ADSL (pppoe)."
Erm, no. It hung there because it was trying to verify the lines in your sources.list. With the number of people trying to download late last week, the official repo was deadly slow. A lot of us saw this problem. That problem is already resolved.
The rest of your problems appear to be a mixture of not having your repo hookup working correctly and wanting things that Ubuntu didn't provide, like bigmem.
Consider this, if this release is so buggy it takes everyone several hours to install and they must expert mode from an alternate edition, how is it that it's working so well for most others?
46 • RE: # 45 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-22 16:55:29 GMT from Italy)
"Erm, no. It hung there because it was trying to verify the lines in your sources.list. With the number of people trying to download late last week, the official repo was deadly slow. A lot of us saw this problem. That problem is already resolved."
That doesn't make sense, because I am absolutely sure there was no internet connection, or a faulty one (after I used pppoeconf)
"Consider this, if this release is so buggy it takes everyone several hours to install and they must expert mode from an alternate edition, how is it that it's working so well for most others?"
Don't ask me. That is something which happens regularly with Linux distributions (they work better for some, worse for others). With Ubuntu releases I always seem to have more problems than others (but I know for a fact I am not the only one). And besides installing it wasn't the only problem.
47 • Mandriva 2008 vs Ubuntu 7.10 (by Robzilla on 2007-10-22 16:56:56 GMT from United States)
I installed Mandriva 2008 after suffering through the dissapointing experience with Suse. I have used Mandriva in the past and it has always worked well for my hardware. Stability and speed has been an issue but it ussually worked. I tried 2008 one live and it has to be the best Mandriva resease I have ever used. Everything works. My display brightness feature that doesn't work in Linux works in Mandriva. Sound works. Streaming video off the net works. I just need a couple of codecs for dvd play but beyond that, my camera, printer all work fine. Installation and partitioning was easy. Installation was about 30 minutes.
The boot up speed in 08 is faster. Applications open faster. Compiz fusion works awesome. It can be unstable at times but seems pretty usable and looks great! I have to give credit where it is due and so far from my early experiences this distro is the easiest I have ever used! I am going to try the Gnome version soon but for a free release finally(a usable one) from Mandriva this is really stellar work. The people behind Mandriva did a great job!!
With great anticipation I installed Ubuntu Gutsy and for the most part was also impressed. Instalation was extremely fast probably just under 30 minutes. Partitioning was equally easy as Mandriva as opposed to the confusing mess of Suse! The Compiz fusion integration is very impressive in Ubuntu as well. Everything seemed stable however I ran into a few snags. Media playback with streaming video was hit and miss. I had to install mplayer for it to work and some things would work and others would not unlike Mandriva. Also no sound!! I had the same problem with the last release but was able to remedy it. I have a recent Toshiba laptop with all the intel hardware, graphics card and sound card with realtec drivers. I looked on the Ubuntu forums but I could not find a fix and the previous fix would not work. It is an annoying bug and one I thought would be fixed in this release. I think the configuration on my laptop is very common and Ubuntu developers should have ironed this out before release. I will say on the up side the boot time is amazingly fast, faster than any other distro I have used. Wireless support seems improved as well. All in all Ubuntu 7.10 is a fine release once a couple of bugs get worked out I will be using it again!!
I hope with some updates down the road or a fix on the forums will solve this in a short time. Until then Ubuntu has been deleted and Mandriva is back on my Linux partition.
I think the way Mandriva and Ubuntu are configuring their desktops is the future of Linux. Great hardware detection, ease of use, setup and installation. Most media works out of the box or with an easy configuration. Stable and fast desktops and applications. It just keeps getting better. I used to love to tinker with Slackware and Debian to get things just the way I like but it took a lot of time. I still think Debian is probably the best distro ever and Slackware is amazingly fast but configuration can be problematic. I am no expert in computers. I have more skill than the average joe but that is not saying much.
I do see Debian moving in a more easy to use path which I am very happy about.
So far Linux just gets better. Sometimes with distros each release either excells or falls back. With Suse I think they fell back with their latest release while Mandriva went leaps ahaed and Ubuntu continues to get better.
All I can say is I appreciate all the hard work the developers are doing to make such a refined and well made product that is easy to use. I am very grateful to have the ability to use linux!!
Robzilla
48 • @37 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-22 17:09:50 GMT from Canada)
It may well be the same as http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=34901 (I guess the iMac and Mac Mini may use the same sound chip). Check that your output for the same commands matches the output for the reporter of that bug, and if so, add a comment mentioning you're experiencing the same problem.
49 • @30 [Re: "the (Ubuntu) project's most impressive release to-date"] (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 17:12:40 GMT from Malaysia)
"I used Ubuntu 7.10. Quite an improvement over previous releases. Microsoft should be very afraid."
I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on a two-year-old Pentium M notebook with an ATI X700 card. The Ubuntu live CD booted without problems, and also detected and connected to my wireless network using ipw2200 without any manual configuration. However, after installing to hard disk, it gave me a blank screen on first boot for over 3 minutes before getting to the log in screen, took another couple of minutes after logging in to load the desktop, and detected the wireless network but wouldn't allow me to connect.
Plugged in a wireless USB adapter (RT2500) and booted from the live CD again. Was able to connect to the network using the USB adapter but installation to hard disk froze at 90% while "detecting hardware".
It seems obvious that running the Ubuntu live CD does NOT give you an accurate picture of what you should expect from installing to hard disk. And yes, Microsoft should be very afraid - Ubuntu is almost as buggy as Vista now!
50 • RE: Walking down my Linux memory lane (by IMQ on 2007-10-22 17:13:49 GMT from United States)
- First encounter was with Red Hat 5.1 while I was a student. It installed fine on my PC at the time. However, the font was terrible and there weren't that many applications to speak of. I remember ApllixWare or something like that. It was just a quick test to see what Linux was like.
- Then came Mandrake Linux. That was the most user-friendly at that time. There are improvement but the font are still not good enough.
- Then came Knoppix, I believe this was the point where Linux on the desktop actually see significant improvements. Tons of people were interest enough to create a derivative of Knoppix. Although Knoppix was not the first Live CD created, it helps fire up the rapid development and improvements for desktop Linux. The desktop is much more pleasant to eye, as far as the fonts are concerned
- Gentoo also got popular. I even tried it a couple times but it was too time consuming for my taste.
- Then Ubuntu came and the Linux on the desktop landscape shifted to high gear. Just like Knoopix, derivatives of Ubuntu are everywhere.
Those are, for me the most memorable moments.
Of course, we also have SCO vs IBM, then SCO vs everybody. Unforgettable moments indeed!
I am still waiting for the moment when all the popular software boxes in store run on Linux, just like they runs on Windows, Mac.
I am still waiting for the moment when all the major hardware components has driver support for Linux.
It's not the question of *IF*.
It's a question of *WHEN*.
I predict we will see this happen in 5 years.
51 • "Gutsy" (by Tony on 2007-10-22 17:14:58 GMT from United States)
Thank You Ladislav for another fine issue of DWW! Your hard work is appreciated very much!
I posted last week at the tail-end of the comments section about my Ubuntu 7.10 install experiences. I thought that I would elaborate a bit further for this new issue of DWW.
I have a Toshiba Satellite A75 that runs at 3gig with 1.5gig RAM and Windows XP installed. The Ubuntu CD’s were burned properly and verified to be okay.
Round One: I initially tried a dual-boot install with Gutsy and got a “M-Bios Bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC” error. Once the system finally booted and I looked around a bit, it was very sluggish. I thought a restart was needed and the reboot took at least 5 minutes and I had to try it several times to get it ‘to’ reboot. I tried to boot into XP and it had to repair itself because somehow the 7.10 partition program damaged my XP partition.
Round Two: I went for the complete hard drive installation which wiped my XP partition. Even with XP completely gone I had the same bios bug error and my laptop still was very sluggish.
Round Three: I used the alternate 7.10 Gutsy CD and had the same problems.
I did go to the Ubuntu Community several times and noticed that others had the same problems. I tried the ‘fixes’ that were recommended and they did not resolve the problems.
On my Toshiba Satellite I’ve had overheating problems with previous versions of Ubuntu and my battery life is significantly less in Ubuntu.
As I stated last issue of DWW: “I now know why they call 7.10 – “Gutsy”…
I do look forward in receiving my 7.10 CD’s in the mail so that I can try Gutsy once again on my laptop(after I've had a brief break from it) and on a couple of desktop test boxes.
52 • *buntu PPC (by Spike on 2007-10-22 17:15:21 GMT from United States)
6.10 is the last supported PPC release. as in forever.
53 • SuSE 10.3 vs Ubuntu 7.10 (by Embedded on 2007-10-22 17:15:26 GMT from United States)
Wireless!
I have two boxes one for my wife and one for my child using Nvidea 6100 one chip shrinkwrapped AM2 design, ACER/ECS
Sound was recognized by both. Intel Hda driver
Nvidea 6100 chip nvidea driver both.
Nvidea 650 Ethernet chip both.
Broadcom 4306 Motrorola 810 PCI card SuSE no way no how (and I have been using SuSE for a long time.
Same board on Ubuntu 7.10 restricted drivers immediately recognize it and pull in the firmware.
54 • another (k)ubuntu nit pick (by farkwell on 2007-10-22 17:19:09 GMT from United States)
the 7.10 versions have been in beta for a month and the alpha versions went up in june. where are the 7.10 docs? granted, 7.04 docs are going to give the right answers most of the time.
also, with this release, haven't we passed the point where LTS for 6.06 doesn't matter? (by this, i mean that the 3 years of support and updates for 6.06 will end about the same time as the 18 months of support and updates for 7.10.) or am i missing something?
the torrents are still going strong. hundreds of seeds and peers in each.
i sure wish i knew when Mepis 7.0 is planning to come out of beta.
55 • Re: 49 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 17:24:41 GMT from Malaysia)
For the record, installing Mandriva on the same notebook gave me the same functionality as running the live CD (including wireless connection without manual configuration and no framebuffer issues). Perhaps the Ubuntu devs should focus on catching up with Mandriva before they set their sights on the wider OS market.
56 • Distrowatch user would like awstats not Page Hit Ranking (by Greg Weber at 2007-10-22 17:25:32 GMT from Canada)
Read my last paragraph only if you are scanning the comments.
Users come here looking for a recommended distribution.
Distrowatch shows what visitors to the site are using. Here is the distributions sorted and ranked from there :
Unknown Distro 5527256
Ubuntu 5746353
Debian GNU/Linux 1852910
openSUSE 1434340
PCLinuxOS 1148883
Fedora 717810
Linux Mint 650594
Mandriva Linux 632459
MEPIS Linux 272037
Kubuntu 146212
FreeBSD 120296
CentOS 81841
Zenwalk Linux 68493
Red Hat 51229
Pardus Linux 42115
Elive 34267
Vine Linux 31025
Gentoo Linux 18352
OpenBSD 10439
Linspire 8513
BLAG Linux 1686
NetBSD 1548
KateOS 1526
KANOTIX 181
Arch Linux 168
Here is the link: http://www.distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
The first ranking the see is the "Page Hit Ranking" and they follow some of the links. Many of the links are disappointing after you spend the time to check out the site and download and install. The front page should have something better for newbies. Who really cares about "Page Hit Ranking" once they know what it really
"Visitor Hit Ranking" should be on the front page. Visitors using the distribution give it hits. It could be done by a vote, by awstats or like, or both. The main point is it would give people and idea of what others are using and not just what they are looking at.
57 • How to test the MIC on the sound card with Live CDs? (by ChiJoan on 2007-10-22 17:30:38 GMT from United States)
Sorry to ask, but I never had to test this before and now when I needed to...I find there is no program on the Pinoeer Live CD to do it. I'm at work where I don't have that many of my Linux CDs available, but will try the other few I have with me. I just wanted to see if this was a rare item on Linux Live CDs or not.
In case you're curious why I need to test it: Four computers out of ten failed on the TOEFL exam, and I need to trouble-shoot the issue before my next test on Saturday.
Thanks for your indulgence,
ChiJoan
58 • *buntu - Debian (by Emilio on 2007-10-22 17:33:32 GMT from United States)
ubuntu gets sid from Debian - Debian gets Users from ubuntu.
any questions?
59 • @53: Wireless (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 17:48:33 GMT from Malaysia)
Ubuntu 7.10 managed to get wireless working with rt2500 on my desktop (unlike 7.04). I would be quite impressed if it weren't for the fact that I've had wireless connectivity with rt2500 on the same desktop for the last 6 months with Mandriva 2007.1.
60 • Mandriva Linux 2008 is great (by Tsiolkovsky on 2007-10-22 17:55:39 GMT from Slovenia)
In the past few days I had the chance to use Mandriva 2008, openSUSE 10.3 and Kubuntu 7.10 (all with KDE desktop off course). For Mandriva and openSUSE I did an upgrade from previous versions, and here Mandriva 2008 did a splendid work, all went fast and smoothly, which I unfortunately couldn't say for openSUSE. After installed all distributions work very well. I was the most impressed with Mandriva. It has the best tools for configuring the system. Mandriva Control Center is very easy to navigate and use.I also like it how fast Mandriva starts up. Another very important thing to me is the translation of the distribution into Slovenian language, and here Mandriva is also one step ahead of all others. Too bad there is no Mandriva 2008 One CDs with various combinations of languages like they were for the past versions. Thanks to all bringing us such a solid and worry free release of Mandriva 2008.
61 • Ubuntu/Xubuntu 7.10 (by davemc on 2007-10-22 17:55:46 GMT from United States)
Xubuntu first. Processor: P4 - 2.4GHz, 512M DDR2 Ram, initially 2 Hard Drives (40G and 160G), and an Nvidia 4200 Ti. Upgraded from Feisty and went smooth as silk. Everything worked, but previous mucking about during the Feisty days when I switched from a Ubuntu-desktop to a Xubuntu-desktop somehow borked up my settings, which carried over to Gutsy, so I reinstalled with the new release CD of Xubuntu. Flawless install and no issues whatever setting up all my old server crap (LAMP, etc.) As an experiment I shut it all down and put in another 160G SATA drive, 2G DDR2 Ram, a new Power Supply, and an Nvidia 6600GT card. Turned the power on and the BIOS picked up all changes and it booted right up. Xubuntu auto-detected the whole shabang and even popped up with a new restricted drivers message for the new Video card. It switched from the nvidia-old drivers to the nvidia-new and asked for reboot. It did have a little trouble mounting the new Drive, which it detected but it had some corrupted (virus) from an old XP install and I had to reformat it to Reiserfs, and then it auto-mounted just fine with root access only. A quick chown fixed that. Xubuntu-restricted-extra's via Synaptic gave me all the codecs and I had all the multimedia goodies. Great Job Xubuntu crew.
Ubuntu: HP dv2415nr Lappy. ALL hardware worked flawless in Feisty including dual screens and eye candy. Gutsy, another story completely! Upgrade went fine during Beta, but the new unbreakable X and "Screens and Graphics" utility broke my xorg.conf over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Using the Nvidia-settings tool DID finally fix my dual screen problem (sort of) and Compiz worked under twinview, but I got frequent random lockups with spurts of high CPU activity pegging the meters. CPU/GPU temps well within normal. dmesg | tail gave no messages, nor does /var/log/messages output shine any light. /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows nothing out of the ordinary for these freezes. I would say its something unusual to my hardware BUT it seems lots of people are having this exact same issue as noted in the Ubuntu Forums with repeated posts from frustrated users experiencing random lockup issues with Compiz enabled and/or dual screen issues with Gutsy. I did not run dual screen tests with my Xubuntu machine, but I am going to and expect to have the same problems. In short, go back to the Xorg drawing board Ubuntu Devs because you have ALOT of work to do to fix these bugs!!!!!
62 • recent distros (by ray carter at 2007-10-22 18:05:43 GMT from United States)
Because I don't have as much spare time as I'd like, I subscribed to Linux Pro this past summer - figuring that maybe I could at least find time to try out various distros as the DVDs came with the magazine. I'm not really all that hot on having the very latest distros - I run Ubuntu on several machines and will probably update one of them to 7.10 after the dust clears. In the meantime - yesterday I finally got around to trying the Sabayon DVD which came with my latest issue. What a pleasant surprise! It is the first Live distro I've tried that actually set up the borked Intel graphics on my Gateway laptop. And, once started, all I had to do to get the Atheros based Dlink WNA2330 wireless card going was to click on the 'connect network' icon. Late last night I did the full install, and it continues to impress. Will be interesting to see if *buntu and Mandriva can do as well!!
63 • @56 ranking vs ranking (by EduardoZ on 2007-10-22 18:18:18 GMT from United States)
Like so many others, you are over-analyzing the rankings issue. The top 8 identified distributions in your list are among the top 9 distributions in the page hit rankings. Most people with typical needs who try a couple of distros from either list should find something usable.
64 • Mandriva 2008 (by Steve Brennan on 2007-10-22 18:21:40 GMT from New Zealand)
I've played with both Ubuntu 7.10 and Mandriva 2008. Both are really good distro's but personally I prefer Mandriva 2008. I note that a lot of the reviews tend to be on the 'Mandriva One' version. It would be nice to see some reviews on the commercial powerpack version as a lot of the gripes that I'm seeing in some of the reviews (Sun Java not being installed by default for example) aren't true in the powerpack version.
65 • Change (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 18:28:38 GMT from United States)
Shouldn't we attack the problem from another direction. At first I thought about simple polls and of course all the problems associated with that. But if you think about what we are really trying to do as Greg says users are looking for a good "recommend(ation)" that is based on current reality. And I usually find that on the comments page after my fav. distro.(s) are released. It could be a single comment about antiX or a page worth of *buntu comments. It still carries more weight for me than a million page hits. IMVHO the comments page should replace the HR concatenated ala rootly or such. Additionally when I come to the comments page I would like to be encouraged to "vote" or post in any-way to voice my opinion or experience. If I use multiple distributions (we could tie this info together with the search page and inhance it's sometimes rather inaccurate results). Maybe were dealing with too many numbers here. We can combine a simple polling system with user input based on what's actually happening now in the distro world to keep it updated and maybe we could finally put a leash on this puppy for good. Thankyou.
66 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 18:37:29 GMT from United States)
I saw on apple.com a video on the forthcoming os x leopard. Apparantly, it has a feature called spaces which essentially is the same thing as the virtual desktops that I do believe is the crux of the current patent lawsuit against red hat and novel. I find it hard to believe that apple is unaware of the lawsuit which suggests one of two things: 1) they find the suit frivilous and will not last or 2) they are too lazy to remove mention of spaces (i kind of doubt it's 2). Or is that lawsuit already over? I haven't heard mention of it lately...comments?
67 • No subject (by EP on 2007-10-22 18:39:29 GMT from United States)
I want to run Mandriva, but I can't get the live CD's to boot in my notebook using an external DVD rom. I know that it was pointed out to me in a forum that there is a bug with this and I was unable to find a workaround for it. Maybe if I install Free Edition, or purchase the Powerpack? Hopefully it's just the live CD? I don't know. Suse and Ubuntu both work fine on it and I type this from Suse. Absolutely nothing against Suse. I like it very much and have had little issue with 10.3. All the stellar reports on Mandriva, plus I used it back when it was 8 or 9, and I'm interested to give it a whirl.
Anyone know a workaround for this bug before I toss my burned live CDs?
68 • Xu(Ku(Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse - 64 bit - big big trouble (by Bob W on 2007-10-22 18:40:57 GMT from Austria)
Well, Xubuntu might be the one.
Until now my Vaio seemed to favor Redmond products when it comes to 64 bit OSes. I have literally tried all 64 bit distros during the past months and absolutely nothing worked flawlessly.
I wanted to like Suse 10.3 but it didn't like my Vaio's 3945 WLAN. Mandriva suspends and then dies instead of waking up. Ubuntu 7.10 asked me whether I wanted to restart the network manager which had crashed after about 99 seconds - I said no, thanks, and tried Kubuntu 7.10. This one was actually able to connect to my WLAN but experienced - like Mandriva - severe catatonia after I had forced it into the suspend/resume adventure.
Finally, as I started to suffer from Linux-hangover once again, I felt like wasting some more of my time. So I bravely persuaded myself to risk a Xubuntu install. Until now Xubuntu is up and running and does most of the tricks. Just Glade was crashing a few times without further info, but this is hardly Xubuntu's fault.
As a message to desperate Core 2 Duo laptop owners: there is still hope out there! If nothing else works - try Xubuntu. But you'd better find quickly a way how to prevent entering 'sudo' passwords each and every time you tickle the system. Otherwise this security-mania could drive you crazy (alternate install ISO being the reason for Fort Knox behavior?).
A last word to the PCLOS rankings: they seem to be well deserved. This distro was just 32 bits (and probably still is) when I've tried it first, but it was one of the few Linuxes which worked perfectly on my machine. Too bad that I cannot stand the idea that my CPUs are just using the lower half of their registers ...
Hold it! Before I could send you this message my network was down. Why? Got hungry from Linux bashing, put my computer to sleep, went to eat something, came back, computer woke up - network remained sleepy. Thus I'll have to withdraw my Xubuntu recommendation for 64 bit victims.
It's now to decide: wait for Fedora 8 or reserve 100% of my HDD space for Redmond derived products?
Cheers.
69 • wireless, etc (by Jeff on 2007-10-22 18:42:57 GMT from United States)
Freespire is the first distro I've used that actually detects and connects my wireless *at boot,* with no configuration efforts needed.
I may just be lucky to have a laptop that meets Freespire's developer priorities, but gosh folks, that is impressive to me after so many tries with other distributions from openSuse to Vector to Mint to Sabayon to Pioneer and on and on.
The only issue has been the "orbicam" that came with the machine; I have not been able to get it to work, trying even though I actually have no use for it. :)
Everything else is "out of the box" working.
70 • Comparison (by Arijit on 2007-10-22 18:50:30 GMT from India)
My first choice: openSUSE 10.3
working fine on my amdX2
second choice: Mandriva
Ubuntu is now almost like windows for me. Its no longer a playground for Linux enthusiasts.
71 • @67 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-22 18:53:09 GMT from Canada)
Easiest thing to do is probably to download CD 1 of Free and see if that can boot and start the installation successfully. If it can, then you can get CDs 2 and 3, the DVD Free, or the Powerpack (it uses the same install routine as Free, so if Free works, Powerpack will too).
72 • #29-42 - Laptops and Linux (by RC on 2007-10-22 18:54:04 GMT from United States)
I looked at the Dell Linux offerings and saw no 17" versions. The HP DV9620 is a 17" WS with 240g HD and 2g mem for $1000 at Circuit City. That is a lot of goodies for the price, but I have heard that some models won't allow you to downgrade to XP (Vista will come off of anything I buy) and Linux will choke on some of the hardware. So I am a little skittish about jumping in.
I have no brand allegiance since this is my first laptop, but I want something that will dual boot XP and Linux (preferably PCLOS, Mint or Mepis). I also want one with a good record for reliability and long life. A service department that backs there product would obviously be a plus too!
73 • Page HIt Ranking experiment (by goom on 2007-10-22 18:58:26 GMT from France)
Nice experiment, really !
My feeling is :
- readers will more spontaneously click on a distribution that have an high rank than another with a low rank. It is a sort of auto-amplification : "Hum ? Why this distro is so high ranked ? Let's have a look" and click. It should stop after a certain time (the time to "create a name", being known)
- readers are curious, on October the 17th, what were the distribution release ? Elpicx, paipix, startcom that are 5th, 3rd and 2nd in the top 20. You also have Frugalware, puppy and Vectorlinux in the top 20. These last three were visible due to the announcement of the distribution release.
- There are classicals, such as Xbuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva, ... which have nearly always a citation in the Distrowatch weekly
What about PCLinuxOS ? There is a clear drop (3,757 - 684 - 3,685), a drop like we can see for Sabayon (1,022 - 330 - 975) but a huger drop. Could it just be explained by the fact that the PHR had disappeared ? I am (my own opinion) quite sceptical
74 • Mandriva 2008 (by EP on 2007-10-22 19:11:10 GMT from United States)
The lack of 2008 One working is by far the worst part of my dvd drive dying, as 2007 was working pretty slick when my internal was still working.
75 • Choice (by Heinmeister on 2007-10-22 19:31:47 GMT from United States)
It all comes down to what works best for you. Some of you obviously take pride in a distro and that is good. But quit bad mouthing the others. PCLOS gets a lot of hits because it works well, is quick to install, and easy to navigate. I have tried all of the top 25 distros and cannot find one that is perfect. To lure Windows users over to Linux/BSD, you need something that is easy to understand, quick to install, and has plenty of applications onboard or easily obtainable. You definitely do not want bloat and that is what you get with some of the bigger distros. Who wants to spend 2 hours installing an OS? Not me. Windows users will not have a clue to what applications they should install,and Linspire's CNR could really help them. So instead of complaining, why not help make Linux better by offering ideas.
76 • @Ladislav Re: Page rankings (by DrDOS on 2007-10-22 19:32:14 GMT from United States)
I hate to even bring the subject up, since it's been beaten to death already, but something that might help the rankings reflect reality more and be less controversial would be to make the 30 day rankings be the default when the page is loaded.
77 • Madriva 2008 v Suse 10.3 (by Dave on 2007-10-22 19:49:56 GMT from United States)
I've tried them both and choose Madriva 2008.. Just still don't like SuSE's klunkiness and still am not pleased with yast.. Urpmi and Mandriva Just better put together.
78 • PCLinuxOS still the best (by Newbie on 2007-10-22 19:58:55 GMT from United States)
OpenSUSE, Mandriva, and Ubuntu. Tried all of them last week, but still I like PCLinuxOS the most. Mandriva and Ubuntu took about 1 hours to install, OpenSUSE took me 3 hours( i had no clue why). PCLinuxOS took 25 minutes, and everything worked out of the box. Anything available on Ubuntu or Mandriva is on PCLinuxOS as well.
One thing about ubuntu, instead of impressed me, it's kinda disappointed. Fast user switching applet, search index. What does it sound like now? Windows. My believe is that many thing should available through linux, but not installed by default. People who want it can get it right away from the repos. Ubuntu seem to be getting bloater every release.
79 • Mandriva Wins!!! (by Clint on 2007-10-22 20:02:33 GMT from Canada)
I recently tried all the recent big Linux/BSD distributions. I was a long time Ubuntu/Kubuntu user, but that changed after trying Mandriva 2008.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu Gutsy is very buggy, not even usable on my box. I was hopeful with OpenSuse 10.3, but it had too many bugs. I left Mandriva 2008 to try Ubuntu/Kubuntu, but they didn't work well either. I came back to Mandriva 2008, and I am staying for now.
An honourable mention should go to PC-BSD, it ran scripts faster than anything Linux has but it didn't handle my usb Brother Laser printer at all using CUPS or any other method. Also, a great KDE layout & installer. I am looking forward to future PC-BSD releases!!!
This year Mandriva 2008 wins hands down!!!!
80 • How come nobody comments the real chock of the DWW? (by KimTjik on 2007-10-22 20:20:42 GMT from Sweden)
The news about Slackware is a real chock! One of the most conservative distributions goes ultra experimental. Isn't that something to comment?
One reason for the silence could of course be that few of the longtime users, who definitely did at one point use or maybe still do Slackware, aren't frequent visitors of DW. I'm in no way a veteran, but I "grew up" on a healthy dose of Slackware diet. No reason to speculate really, but the silence surprised me.
My impression when looking at the top 10 is that Fedora is gaining momentum. The only annoyance Fedora 7 gave me was the new firewire stack, that proved to be a headache when using certain video-cameras. It would also be nice if "yum" could run faster. The installation doesn't flirt with the public by including MP3 or other restricted stuff (unfortunately that's what get most thumbs up nowadays), but it's one solid, though slightly heavy (compared to my favorite Arch it's suffering from obesity!), distribution.
81 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 20:44:18 GMT from United States)
It looks like the bots couldn't find the code on the front page for a day ;)
82 • @81 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-22 20:50:07 GMT from Canada)
no, that makes no sense. if anyone were using a bot, the presence or absence of the HPD on the front page would make no difference, as you'd run a bot simply by having it go direct to the distro's page (which is a static page). therefore, the fact that a distro's figures change significantly when the HPD is not on the front page is a good indicator that those numbers do *not* come from bots.
83 • Thanks! (by afonic on 2007-10-22 20:53:40 GMT from Greece)
Nice DWW as always.
However I should add that I feel openSUSE 10.3 is much better than the new Mandriva. :)
84 • count popularity by counting hits by os. (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 20:56:20 GMT from Netherlands)
There probably is a simple reason why you don't do this already, but why not show some statistics about operating system used as reported by the browser. If only 8.x percent uses pclinuxos, you do apparently keep count. I would be interested in seeing more about OSes used as reported by brower hits.
To all who complain about the bots... if I would code a bot (I am a coder, not using pclinuxos at the moment) it would most certainly not need a front-page link to have it be counted by distrowatch. I would just load the relevant page and be done, no need to search for a pclinuxos link on the main page. So the fact that it dropped significantly means to me that no bots were used.
Also, just face it: People are interested in PCLinuxOS, stop complaining about it already.
85 • post 83 openSuse/Mandriva (by Jeff on 2007-10-22 21:05:32 GMT from United States)
Why is openSuse better?
Serious and curious.. never tried openSuse. :)
As I said before, I am happy with Freespire.. but still curious.
86 • Distro change (by Terrytorment on 2007-10-22 21:09:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Distro junkie me really over the last 10 years.
Sort of Ubuntu user really although mint has been a favorite of late. So I updated to 7.10 er... had to sort out a few applications from my old set up but nice and free to boot, Nvidia card, yes thanks.
Ok put it on laptop full install.
laptop ati card ran fine but not fast so sat and waited. got bored afterwards so left it.
Put it on two other PC's no Video after install, boo! Ati again and one PC working fine but not full compiz (Ati again) but might keep it on.
Then thought ...Try Mandriva one Cd on laptop... later ummm this is ok nice, happy.....Staying on.
Ah Stick it on PC with no video and yes, very nice, staying on that too.
Surprised? me? yes! Two very good distros with Mandriva winning me over, few glitches with Ubuntu 7.10 ended up with nice surprise from Mandriva.
Welcome home Mandriva!
TT.
87 • PCLinuxOS clever naming? (by technosaurus on 2007-10-22 21:20:17 GMT from United States)
Is it possible that MS users, sick of their bundled *OS* on their *PC*, are looking for an alternative such as *LINUX*. It seems to me that any curious would be linux newbie would be googling or otherwise looking for these terms foremost, thus explaining their high page hit rankings...very clever on their part...whats even more clever is that they follow through with a highly usable and clean distro that is a good welcoming platform to GNU/Linux newbies. The distros based on PCLinuxOS often show similar polish with the same small staff concept. Karoshi, for instance is a much more formidable platform for education (as far as implementation, features and functionality goes - not user support) than its 'buntu alternative Edubuntu. With that said, I still gave gutsy gibbon a go and found it acceptable for a non-newbie, but system configuration was much much more challenging than in PCLinuxOS distros on a time scale factor of about 10 to 1. Its one thing to be a "purist" but to some people their time matters and providing some simple automation or walkthroughs of lengthy tasks is highly prized by those of us who have to do installs on several different machines. With most distros it either works or you have to try to make it work and PCLOS at least gives you the info and the tools in a straight-forward user friendly format. Still I think most of their allure comes from their appropriately straight-forward name.
88 • @87 PCLinuxOS name (by EduardoZ on 2007-10-22 21:26:51 GMT from United States)
I think you're onto something, there. Heh, you've reminded me of several posts in DWW comments a year or two back that claimed the PCLinuxOS name was devoid of personality, and should be changed if the distro expected to grow.
89 • 72 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-22 21:36:17 GMT from United States)
If you are going to buy at Circuit City, explain that you plan to run Linux and want to try a live CD before purchasing to make sure everything works. My experience suggests Mepis has the best hardware detection, but you should take several live CD's with you and try them to see what you find.
HP is big on Broadcom wireless. Mepis should support broadcom wireless on the live CD.
If you want a 17" screen, that's tough, as I'm not aware of Dell, Lenovo, or System76 Linux laptops with that large a screen. Maybe someone else has another suggestion, but your only option might be to use a live CD. If for some reason they won't let you do that (many sales people are dumb) at least find out the video card and wireless specifications.
http://www.linux-laptop.net/ doesn't show any information about that model.
90 • European heavyweights....? (by Mark Turing on 2007-10-22 21:45:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, like your site, catch it most days.....one thing though....yes MDA and Suse are Euro heavyweights but I would have thought that Ubuntu would be considered a heavyweight too now and Canonical/Ubuntu are Isle of Man/London based, possibly you describe it a British distribution (I know the contributors are from all over the world...)
Kind Regards,
Mark Turing
91 • #89 (by RC on 2007-10-22 22:01:57 GMT from United States)
I was going to see if they would let me do the Live CD trial before purchase. I know the 17" throws some limits on me, but my eyesight isn't what it used to be and this is going to be a work tool for a new business venture as well as a "sit on the deck and enjoy the day while computing" toy. I will also use it to enjoy the occasional DVD while on vacations and such. So I just feel like the 17" screen is something worth having. Especially at this price and it is only 15.2 inches wide, so it isn't that much bigger.
Any other insights or advice is welcome.
92 • Maybe PClinusOS is number 1? (by Linuxman on 2007-10-22 22:08:30 GMT from United States)
Harsch comments on PCLinuxOS. Ever thought it may be #1 for a reason? Yeah you threw in that comment in the end of your rant, but comeon!!
I've been a linux follower for about 4 years. I've tred them all
Opensuse, unbuntu, mint, fedora... blah blah.
I never switech totaally over from windows cuz each distro never did everything I needed it to do..
Until I found PClinuxOS.
ITs the best and its number 1 for a reason..
IT'S RATICALLY SIMPLE.. and better than the rest... PERIOD!!!
93 • Laptop compatibility (by Barnabyh on 2007-10-22 22:27:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
For almost guaranteed Linux compatibility on laptops I would still recommend Thinkpad (business class supposedly) or lenovo (the consumer range) lappy's from, you guessed it, lenovo.
Not even that expensive anymore, a widescreen Thinkpad can now be bought new for a little over £500 online. I'ld post a link but then that could be seen as advertising. You know how to Google.
Oh yes, love Mandriva 2008 (tried the Gnome version), Suse still slow and bloated and took ages to install, hate the 'slab' and package management, why does it have Beagle turned on by default? Distro's should come with a lean default install, certainly nothing that slows them down. Mdv's Control Center is clean and clear. Might even purchase the Powerpack as an old Mandrake 7.2/8.1 user, but for now staying with PCLOS and Debian, Zenwalk, and Slackware. Not in a hurry for the latest and greatest, upgrading a perfectly running machine sucks!
Have a good week everybody- we deserve it.
94 • >93 (by cogito on 2007-10-22 22:37:26 GMT from Latvia)
"Oh yes, love Mandriva 2008 (tried the Gnome version), Suse still slow and bloated and took ages to install, hate the 'slab' and package management, why does it have Beagle turned on by default?"
What SUSE version you used? 1 CD version is - as far as I can tell - less bloated than Ubuntu Gutsy and it installs on my really average hardware (Celeron M 1,4 Ghz, 512 RAM) in about 30 min. You just should not enable software repos at the very begninning of install process. You are right about Beagle. This is the first thing I removed from my system after installation. However, tehy at least have made a pop up window which informs you that Beagle may make you system slower as you log in.
I liked Mandriva but there were some bugs that were showstoppers for me. I was Impressed by Ubuntu Gutsy too. Nevertheless, so far I stick with SuSE.
95 • Page Hits (by Ridgeland on 2007-10-22 22:40:13 GMT from United States)
Thank you for proving that the PCLinuxOS hit is purely a bot generated false reading.
Sad that you love PCLinuxOS enough to continue the false reading and render the Hit List invalid and deliberately misled new visitors.
96 • @95 (by PP on 2007-10-22 22:55:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ladislav's experiment proved that PCLinuxOS hits are _NOT_ bot generated..
97 • @90 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-22 23:04:00 GMT from Canada)
Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man purely for financial reasons. Like every other company registered in the Isle of Man for financial reasons, it's a legal fiction, no real work on Ubuntu happens there. Its head office is in London, though, so it could claim to be English from this point of view. I don't think you can really assign a geographical location to Canonical, though, as its developer pool has *always* been spread around the world.
SUSE is not European any more, either, since the buyout by Novell, which is a U.S. company. I think there's more SUSE developers in the U.S. than Germany now.
And I have to be fair, it's a bit tough to call Mandriva exclusively European any more. Our paid developers are split about 50/50 between Paris and Brazil, since the Conectiva merger. Contributors come from all over the world, of course. But we're probably still closer than SUSE or Ubuntu. :)
98 • re:*ubuntu 7.10 for PPC? (by MIchael King at 2007-10-22 23:16:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Fluxbuntu (released midnight, ) has a PPC variation along with the intel and AMD versions... looks like a smart move for those older macs with less power/ram......
www.fluxbuntu.org
99 • Bravo Barnabyh! (by nedvis on 2007-10-22 23:18:53 GMT from United States)
I couldn't say it better than you did :"...but for now staying with PCLOS and Debian, Zenwalk, and Slackware. Not in a hurry for the latest and greatest, upgrading a perfectly running machine sucks!"
PCLinuxOS,Debian Etch , Zenwalk 4.8 and Slackware are exactly the ones I'm running on my machines right now and I'm not in rush of having
my hands on so called latest and greatest.
BTW, just couple links from ITwire :
Ubuntu: where to from here?
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14966/1090/1/1/
openSUSE 10.3: one step forward, two steps back
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14778/1090/
Mandriva 2008: keeping the faith
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14861/1090/
So, I'm going to stick with my oldies!
100 • Bugs in Suse 10.3? (by Yid_Witch on 2007-10-22 23:26:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm having a deal of trouble with this concept of bugs in OpenSUSE 10.3? Has the author been trying to use an early release candidate?
I've tried a lot of distro's over the last year - on assorted hardware... and I've always come back to OpenSUSE because of it's reliability and stability. 10.2 was excellent - and I've been running 10.3 for the last 2 weeks - and running my business on it... and I wouldn't do that if it was 'buggy' or unstable - or had anything wrong with it.
Ok - there's a few configuration changes I've had to make because someone decided that some facilities didn't need to be enabled out of the box - but that was 2 minutes work to fix the problem - and I've now got fully working SUSE 10.3 installations on my server and my workstations. I'll have a look at Mandriva shortly... in a VM... because it was the first one I used seriously several years ago - but it would have to be absolutely and totally stunning, with a control panel setup far superior to Yast, to get me to even consider switching. For the record, I've tried quite a few Debian/Ubuntu based distro's recently... on a spare machine... and they've been the most buggy things I've ever seen - almost as good as M$ Windoze!
In one of my business ventures, I get to recommend linux systems... and with the way SUSE 10.3 is going, I don't have any reason to recommend anything else for server or graphics/general use. Music/audio work... that's a different thing!
101 • SUSE, Mandriva, *buntu, PCLOS, Debian,etc, + a thank you (by Soloact on 2007-10-22 23:49:51 GMT from United States)
As always, my comments are my opinion as an end-user, but a learning end-user.
I've been searching for something that worked on an old lappy for awhile, tried Mint (worked, sluggish), Mepis (worked, sluggish but better than Mint), and several *buntus, SUSE, PCLOS, Mandriva (none would boot). I ended up doing a fresh install of Debian, per a suggestion of a fellow commenter in the past weeks who mentioned DeLi. I used actual Debian, which worked after a long learning experience during installation (a good thing), so now all I have to do is get what I want and discard what I don't want.
Therefore, to that person who made the suggestion, an huge Thank You!
On to the comparison: as I mentioned I tried those different ones on the lappy, but had installed Mepis and PCLOS on a desktop PC. Both worked, but each had issues that I couldn't figure out, but where one worked the other didn't on those issues.
I then decided to just install OpenSUSE, due to the fact that in the pre-Novell past, they had always "just worked". Nice, beautifully polished Distro. However, some issues that I cannot figure out, such as that annoying "no configuration due to xrandr" to get 3D working. I see that is an Intel issue, but I have a Radeon 9800pro. Even installing the drivers from ATi/AMD didn't change that. Also, other programs froze up. So after a week of SUSE 10.3, I'm ready to scrap it.
What to replace it with? I'm not really a fan of the *buntus, so I'll try using Mandriva, as it seems to be getting the praise of reviewers and users. To be fair, SUSE is getting praises, too. I was really hoping it would "just work".
So, tonight I wipe SUSE and give Mandriva the chance. Mandriva, you've got a week to do it or die on my computer.
Why not Debian? Debian is nice for compatibility, but I dislike their renaming of applications. It will probably be a last-resort if Mandriva fails.
On another note, I could just dive into learning everything from the beginning by making a novice-attempt at putting my own together. Maybe later, after I learn more.
Have a great today everyone!
102 • 91 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 00:03:41 GMT from United States)
This isn't specific to Linux, but if you want a 17" screen, check the native resolution!
1280x800 is standard, but when you move to bigger screen sizes, they can crank up the resolution. LCD's will many times only be readable in their native resolution. I know of someone in just your situation - wanting something easier to read - who ended up with 1920x1200. He just assumed he could change to a lower resolution, but the interpolation was terrible. In the end he sold it at a loss of $400 or so, after just two weeks of use. He bought a 15.4" widescreen with 1280x800 resolution and everything was much better.
Also, don't be surprised if your preferred Linux distro has difficulty once you move away from 1280x800. It can require some work (heck, Ubuntu requires installing special packages just to move away from 1024x768). It was a disaster even getting 1920x1200 to work with Linux (don't remember which distro).
104 • #99 (by Barnabyh on 2007-10-23 00:37:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi nedvis, keep enjoying your machines and these four distros !
105 • Re: all the distros I ever ran and whether I liked it or not. (by Unny likes corn on 2007-10-23 00:37:55 GMT from Canada)
1. First I ran Mandrake 10 or something but didn't like it. I had Windows XP too and I didn't like it.
2. Then I ran suse 9.1 pro and liked it. (I think I ran it but I can't remember for sure, but if I did I'm sure I would have liked it)
3. Then I ran suse 9.2 and liked it.
4. Then I ran suse 9.3 and liked it.
5. Then I ran Debian 3.0 and didn't like it. Later I would realize I should have liked it.
6. Then I ran Fedora 4 and didn't like it.
7. Then I ran FreeBSD 6.1 and liked it.
8. Then I ran Slackware at the same time as FreeBSD and liked it. I was also running Suse 10.0 at this time and I liked it. That was the only time I liked 3 different operating systems on my computer at the same time.
9. Then I only ran opensuse 10.1 and I didn't like it.
10. Then I panicked and ran Ubuntu 6.06 and thought I didn't like it. I later realized that I was being protective of my favorite suse 10.0. I was just jealous that it worked faster.
11. Then I ran Kubuntu and I didn't like it.
12. Then I ran Vector and I liked it.
13. Then I ran Yoper and didn't like it.
14. Then I ran Solaris and didn't like it.
15. Then I ran dynebolic and didn't like it.
16. Then I ran Zenwalk and I liked it.
17. Then I ran Pardus and didn't like it.
18. Then I ran Fox Desktop and didn't like it.
19. Then I ran open suse 10.2 and liked it.
20. Then I ran Ubuntu 7.04 and I liked it now.
21. Then I ran Debian and liked it this time. But now I was tired of configuring my computer.
22. Then I ran Ubuntu 7.04 and liked it again.
23. Then I ran opensuse 10.3 and liked it. But Firefox opened 0.4 seconds slower than Ubuntu so I didn't like it as much.
24. Then I remembered Firefox didn't open as fast on all my suse installations so I retroactively didn't like them as much. Except for suse 9.3 which I still liked.
25. Then I remembered I ran PCLinuxOs between 19 and 20 and I liked it a little but I was still protecting opensuse in my mind.
26. Then I remembered I ran Damn Small, Puppy, Frugalware, Xandros, SymphonyOS, and some other distros and some I liked and some I didn't like, but I mostly didn't like them.
27. Then I realized I was spending way too much time on the computer so I didn't like Linux anymore.
28. Then I installed windows xp on a spare partition and I kind of liked it again.
29. Then I contracted a virus on widows xp the next day and didn't like it anymore either.
30. Then I realized I tried to run plan 9 somewhere in the teens, and thought I would have liked it except I could get it to run.
31. Then I realized I had wondered occasionally about running Gentoo but was glad I didn't because of some off-the-wall humour site that poked fun at Gentoo users because they thought they were the coolest.
32. Then I realized that at one time or another I had thought about installing Netbsd, openbsd, dragonfly bsd, centos, sidux and a bunch of other distros and retroactively hated myself for spending way too much time thinking about linux and bsd's.
33. Then I thought about getting rid of my computer.
34. Then I decided to just run Ubuntu because I liked it.
35. Then I stopped thinking about linux so much and started living more day to day.
36. Then I realized that I didn't want to be a geek anymore.
37. I didn't like the name Iceweasel so that's why I liked Ubuntu better than Debian. But I like Debian's logo better. A decision had to be made.
38. Now I like linux again.
39. I like traffic lights.
40. But only when they're green.
106 • Distro rankings (by CrashMaster on 2007-10-23 00:42:25 GMT from United States)
Bots, schmots, are people still trying to find something nefarious about PCLOS being no. 1?
If this is you, do you feel like a bigger man if "your distro" is number one in the ranking? It is unsurprising that people new to Linux would click the "number one on the list" distro to look at. You expect they're there thinking ..."look at all these different versions .. I heard it was confusing ...maybe I'll try number 6 .... no wait .... 23". Uhhh ... I don't think so. Simply being number one on that list gets more people interested in it. Thats what's being counted.
You prefer something else? Ok here, how about this. Your distro is the best in the world and you're oh so very clever for using it. There ... happy now? Now can we stop the whining about PCLOS and hit rankings?
PCLOS is a fine distro and one of the best ones out there IMHO. There are, of course, many other fine distros including recent releases from Canonical, Novel and Mandrake. Chose one you like that works on your hardware bot for the love of all thats holy, can we see an end to the vapid whining about hit rankings?
107 • Mandriva 2008 will not boot for me either ... (by anonymous on 2007-10-23 01:38:51 GMT from United States)
I have the same problems as the author of the review. I can run Mandriva in a virtual machine, but I get the same kernel panic error described here. I have been researching this, and a lot of people are having this problem. This is the first problem I have ever had with any Mandriva distribution.
108 • garbled picture in media players (by William on 2007-10-23 01:47:49 GMT from United States)
Actually more of a post wondering if anybody is having problems with the most up do date media players? It will run fine for a while, then you will get what looks like test patterns..? Don't think it's a flaw with my graphics card.
109 • RE:@105 : Unny you're not alone, trust me! (by nedvis on 2007-10-23 01:53:11 GMT from United States)
What a refreshing post! ( There's still hope for DW Comments, I guess!?)
I don't know for you, my fellow DW readers, but Unny's post was why I
bookmarked this DW Weekly Issue Comments page ( first time vener )
110 • Hits (by Ridgeland on 2007-10-23 01:56:32 GMT from United States)
It's easy to make a bot that loads DistroWatch, goes to the hit parade and clicks on your favorite distro. With Firefox just load the add-in iMacros and make a simple macro per the tutorial's second example. Now every day I can help the distortion by auto-voting for Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora and Mandriva. I just run the macro when Firefox loads. (Sorry PCLos you've got enough false readings.) That explains why PCLos fell right off the chart when the macros had no hit-list to click on.
But of course the fast drop could be just curiosity of clicking on what's no 1. In which case it has become a banner ad.
In any event if PCLos is getting people from MS to Linux that's good. Once in the Linux world as they learn more they can progress to the better distros.
111 • errata... (by nedvis on 2007-10-23 01:56:36 GMT from United States)
first time vener
should read :
first time ever
112 • RE: 105 Ditto ditto dito (by azbaer on 2007-10-23 02:26:16 GMT from United States)
My last post!
#105, I feel the same way, I just want things to work, Im done distrohopping done wasteing weekends compileing a package to get it to work. I switch back and forth between Vista,(I really like it) and Ubuntu.
I work all day on PC's and Servers working for a government enity. I wonder how many POST are from professionals actually working in IT departments, compared to Comp Si students or IT wanttobes.
Since switching back to Windows, I come home kiss the wife, eat dinner, and go for a walk with my Dog. watch a movie or two with
I still use Ubuntu, 7.10 Its great, after all Open source is more then just Linux.
113 • LOL Post #105 all the distros.... (by efi360 on 2007-10-23 02:39:44 GMT from United States)
Oh my god I haven't laughed so hard in I cant remember when!! that is halarious
I saw myself in every I liked it and I didn't liked it. we need more post like this on DW I think most of us who have done a lot of distro hoping and testing can relate. that was too funny, Im still laughing Graet post Unny likes corn. Humer is great
114 • #93 & #102 (by RC on 2007-10-23 02:59:14 GMT from United States)
#93
I have been looking at the local electronic outlets and no one is marketing the Lenovo brand. I will do some searching and see what I can come up with.
#102
The resolution on the 17" is 1440x900. Is that going to prove to be a problem?
115 • Gutsy too buggy (by Eorl on 2007-10-23 03:09:00 GMT from United States)
With gutsy alternate install CD, Fluxbox didn't work (no menu shown). Rexima sound mixer didn't work and the same other applications which I have used for years. I was hoping for a more up-to-date lightweight Debian really (glibc 2.4+). I would not expect a non-default window manager to delay a scheduled release, but I was still surprised and disappointed with 7.10's craftsmanship. I guess I was mistaken to stray from the defaults, but this is why I want to use Linux in the first place.
116 • Ubuntu 7.10 (by Duhnonymous on 2007-10-23 03:10:18 GMT from United States)
Thumbs up from me. Only thing that sucks is gnome panel (which still has every old bug I've noticed for the past three years).
117 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 03:59:25 GMT from United States)
"The resolution on the 17" is 1440x900. Is that going to prove to be a problem?"
Shouldn't be a problem to get support for 1440x900 in most distros. I wouldn't take it for granted, though. You definitely want to confirm that it works.
My bigger concern would be that you're not going to gain much in terms of larger characters due to the higher resolution. Everyone's preferences are different, and you might find changing the DPI to 120 to be a perfectly acceptable solution. It doesn't work for me, so I would not pay extra to lug around a bigger laptop.
I am in the same boat - I like 1024x768 resolution on a desktop computer, and actually prefer 800x600. With CRT's that is not a problem. It takes me forever to find a good 17" LCD monitor, and I can't use a 19" because 1024x768 never looks good on a 19", yet 1280x1024 is still too small. Changing DPI to 120 drives me crazy.
Hence, I hate LCD monitors. I wish you luck. The computer world is built for those with good eyes.
118 • Hits (by Ridgeland on 2007-10-23 04:15:48 GMT from United States)
With iMacros for Firefox it was easy to get a macro that auto votes for several distros each time I load Firefox (only 1 set per day will count I guess). The macro then takes me to my usual home page. See their forum's post for how to set it up.
http://forum.iopus.com/viewtopic.php?p=9962#9962
Have fun distorting the distortion. To get your favorite distro on top just get your distro's forum to help out.
119 • Mandriva (by Arvind Dhavlaa on 2007-10-23 04:35:59 GMT from India)
I am not a big fan of Mandriva but recently i installed it on my PC.
The major bug i found is dual booting is big problem with this destro.
And one thing i like to ask what is the use of 3D desktops?
3D Desktops are always buggy and slow down computers .
Please make a destro which is fast and stable . Mandriva is not up to the mark or i can say nothing special . Linux mint and Vector SOHO are far better than Mandriva.
120 • RE: 66 (by Greg Weber on 2007-10-23 04:53:14 GMT from Canada)
"I find it hard to believe that apple is unaware of the lawsuit which suggests one of two things: "
3) Apple knows about it. They paid the litigators to make it go away. This is according to an article about the litigations.
121 • RE: 67 Live CD not booting in external DVD rom (by Greg Weber on 2007-10-23 05:21:00 GMT from Canada)
If the Mandriva disk starts to boot and hangs after the screen where you are given options, I would suggest you try the option for failsafe, safe graphics mode or even check out the PCLinuxOS http://docs.pclinuxos.com/Cheat_codes/0.93 or Mandriva boot or cheat codes for the livecd.
If the Mandriva disk does not start to boot or hangs before you see the list of options, I would suggest you try adding an entry to your grub or lilo boot loader in Ubuntu or Suse (if they are installed) for the Mandriva liveCD. You can copy the isolinux or grub configuration file and modify it for use with whatever boot loader you are using. You could also try pressing escape with a Ubuntu or Suse disc and then swap in the mandriva disk and type in the info from the mandriva live CD. It is a bit complicated. You could also start it from Windows with grub. I would need more information to know your options though.
Email me with Mandriva as the first word in the title and a link to information about the bug (if you're sure the bug is the reason) and I'll try to help in my spare time.
122 • @117 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-23 06:15:16 GMT from Canada)
You keep saying that changing DPI 'doesn't work for you' or 'drives you crazy' but you don't give any details why. Linux these days has very good support for DPI changes, and there's really no reason why using the correct DPI setting for your resolution and screen size should be a problem at all, meaning that yes, getting a bigger monitor will give you more 'real space' in exact proportion to the sizes in question. Could you explain exactly *what* problem you have with changing DPI?
123 • allopart@santpau.es (by Anna Llopart Alari on 2007-10-23 06:51:26 GMT from Spain)
allopart@santpau.es
124 • who is the winner? (by tuxesp1 on 2007-10-23 07:31:54 GMT from Italy)
nothing will really improve if criticisme is n't allowed.
the winner is GNU/LINUX
125 • pclinux hit rate (by Allan Fearon on 2007-10-23 08:15:06 GMT from United States)
I find it hard to believe that pclinux's hit rate continues to grow whilst even with the latest release of ubuntu it's hits per day decline.
Surely if only out of curiosity, one would expect some upward trend.
126 • Re: 125 pclinux hit rate (by Lanx on 2007-10-23 09:11:31 GMT from Germany)
You have to get the whole picture: Ubuntu's ratings increase in 7 days, 30 days, and 3 months view.
127 • openSUSE or Mandriva (by Phirux on 2007-10-23 09:12:17 GMT from Finland)
I've been using opensuse since 2002 and also now. I've tested both of opensuse and Mandriva and found lot of bugs in opensuse. For example S.M.A.R.T. messages about disk failor, which is a serious bug and Amarok bugs and OpenOffice bugsand... . It's quite clear that Mandriva is the better distro this time.
128 • DWW experiment (by kanishka on 2007-10-23 09:15:23 GMT from Italy)
I don't think that a 24-hour period can provide significant results. I would try a 48- or 72-hour experiment.
Heck, if it was for me, I'd completely remove the Hits ranking; people spend time arguing about it MUCH MORE than about all the other topics together... :(((
129 • @127 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 09:44:19 GMT from Malaysia)
"It's quite clear that Mandriva is the better distro this time."
Mandriva has had 3 excellent releases over the last 12 months while openSUSE and Ubuntu both seem to be regressing.
130 • Voting? (by Duhnonymous on 2007-10-23 09:52:15 GMT from United States)
How about a Slashdot style poll that allows users to vote for "Which distro are you using?" or something like that? That might be more helpful than a HPD stat.
131 • @79 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 09:58:32 GMT from Malaysia)
"I was a long time Ubuntu/Kubuntu user, but that changed after trying Mandriva 2008. Ubuntu/Kubuntu Gutsy is very buggy, not even usable on my box. I was hopeful with OpenSuse 10.3, but it had too many bugs... An honourable mention should go to PC-BSD"
Ubuntu 7.10 and OpenSuse 10.3 were disappointing. PC-BSD seems to provide most of the same functionality with much less hype.
132 • RE 130 Votes or awstats are widely used. (by dbrion on 2007-10-23 10:15:03 GMT from France)
OTOH, DW HPD are unique, as they were/are meant to measure curiosity (not use, not looove) ; with a small or constant proportion of "cheating" (or not at all), they can go on measuring interest in distributions, and give a trend.
133 • @131 (by Béranger on 2007-10-23 10:20:41 GMT from Romania)
> PC-BSD seems to provide most of the same functionality
PC-BSD will never have GNOME. PC-BSD can't hibernate ever. Otherwise, it's very much OK.
134 • RE 129 : Number of Mndv excellent releases (by dbrion on 2007-10-23 10:26:41 GMT from France)
"Mandriva has had 3 excellent releases over the last 12 months "
-1 Mandriva2007.0 was not that excellent, as many packages were broken (and among them, urpmi, meseems, which is part of the installer...).
+1 Mandriva spring 2007 was much better, and my colleagues decided to use only spring releases (as October releases are developped partly during holy days, pple have no time to fully test them; things are made even worse as many major distr release at the same time).
+1? From emulation/VMplaying, I got the impression that Mandriva made **huge progresses*** within 12 months (no more broken packages, even on beta/RC versions;the softs I could test were satisfying).
I have got the feeling that the number of regressions is linked with short release cycles.... developpers seem to work bad under pressure...
135 • No subject (by HAL on 2007-10-23 11:04:51 GMT from France)
Ubuntu 7.10 is buggy as hell! And upgrade from previous version is also often and always a nightmare for many people...
One must wait until there are a few 'patches' before it is really correct.
136 • Best Mandriva Release (by jcp on 2007-10-23 11:11:03 GMT from Portugal)
Mandriva 2008 beats competition this time... ;)
137 • @134 (by john frey on 2007-10-23 11:31:09 GMT from Canada)
I have got the feeling that the number of regressions is linked with short release cycles.... developpers seem to work bad under pressure...
Nail on the head! I wish all the distros would just lay back and release once a year but I guess they need to generate interest and keep the name in the press. Too bad there's nobody to put a leash on the marketing droids.
Just wait, we'll be seeing new releases that should have been point releases of the development cycle being released quarterly. Then again if you're using Sidux or Arch you're always getting new stuff.
... and yes Mandriva 2008 is fantastic.
138 • pacthes (by CeVO on 2007-10-23 11:31:24 GMT from Spain)
#135:
"Ubuntu 7.10 is buggy as hell! And upgrade from previous version is also often and always a nightmare for many people...
One must wait until there are a few 'patches' before it is really correct."
One of the reasons why I am not so hung up on fixed release schedules. I am patiently waiting for MEPIS 7, and know that it will be free of flaws when it is final. And then we have a solid base for new goodies like KDE4.
Speaking of which: KDE does not have a fixed release schedule either. KDE4 has been a long term project with many exciting new features and underlying improvements. Gnome's 6 month schedule may be nice for Ubuntu, but I think that in the end it hinders radical development.
139 • oops (by john frey on 2007-10-23 11:34:57 GMT from Canada)
"I have got the feeling that the number of regressions is linked with short release cycles.... developpers seem to work bad under pressure..."
This was the comment that "nail on the head' referred to. Not sure what I did but I got italics and lost the quote.
140 • try this (by john frey on 2007-10-23 11:36:45 GMT from Canada)
hmm does this get rid of the italics?
141 • @134: Number of Mndv excellent releases (by dbrion) (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 12:20:31 GMT from Malaysia)
"Mandriva2007.0 was not that excellent, as many packages were broken (and among them, urpmi, meseems, which is part of the installer...)."
Yes, Mandriva 2007.0 was not all that excellent, but it was quite good compared to Ubuntu and OpenSuse at the time. Ubuntu had just released 6.10 with the problematic 'edgy' kernel. OpenSuse 10.1 had just managed to 'improve' package management to the point where it didn't work at all.
"the number of regressions is linked with short release cycles"
I think you're probably right about that. Debian and Slackware users don't seem to have so many 'regressions'. Ubuntu's problems seem to have started with 6.06 LTS which was delayed by 6 weeks and still had so many bugs that it needed a 6.06-1 release.
142 • PCLinuxOS (by J. Greer on 2007-10-23 12:24:06 GMT from United States)
I am probably one of the earliest adopters of LInux. I have installed PCLinuxOS on a number of computers in my household and in a number for friends and family. It is easy to use, supports most media formats, and just plain works. Maybe it deserves the number one ranking.
143 • @133: PC-BSD (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 12:31:01 GMT from Malaysia)
"PC-BSD will never have GNOME."
I can't find anything on their site to indicate that they have decided not to ever include Gnome in future. Where did you get this information?
144 • Ubuntu 7.10 Install problems (by JeffM on 2007-10-23 13:05:40 GMT from Canada)
For the first time since I can remember, I had problems installing a ubuntu release.
After the live CD booted, X was all black with a garbled square in the middle. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace corrected this.
After install, first reboot stopped right after the ubuntu splash screen appeared and 2 of my laptop lights started blinking.
I'm sure a quick search would bring me to the solution but its not my primary distro and haven't got the time so I just dumped it.
145 • Missing html tag fix (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 13:21:05 GMT from Australia)
Should be ok now!
146 • Rankings experiment (by Rob Kemp on 2007-10-23 13:35:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
To me the most interesting feature of the table is the massive variation in numbers of hits it shows. 16th=22100, 17th=14746, 18th=28639. Is this variation normal? On the 17th, did the hits get evenly distributed among the lesser-ranked distributions that don't make it into the table, or were there actually VASTLY fewer page hits everywhere, apparently because of the absence of the ranking list?
There are so many questions left unanswered by this experiment.
147 • A slew of topics! (by Landor on 2007-10-23 13:43:17 GMT from Canada)
I have to say that mandriva is a pretty well rounded release. I don't have many concerns regarding it. I wouldn't have really looked at it if it wasn't for a friend of mine bringing their box over and asking if I can find a distro that will work with their new ATI HD 2400 (good luck right..lol). I ended up doing the exact same thing they did, searching forums, the wiki, etc. Out of the few positive posts I found, it was Mandriva. Sadly though, the same problem persists even with it. It's a common problem and not specific to any one distro, it freezing up at X startup, black screen, cpu maxed right out. I'll be phoning them today and telling them to wait for ati to finally release the promised driver this month and go from there.
All in all though, I really liked Mandriva, very clean, responsive, as easy to install as any of the major distros I've seen. Some of the ad stuff on the desktop bugged me though, but who can't fault a company that does provide something for free and looking to keep profits coming in and their employees fed. As I've said before, business is business, and OSS/FOSS is one thing, putting bread on the table is another, it's why I don't fault Novell, and feel nobody should, but that's my opinion.
Another point in Mandriva's favour, Adam Williamson. How many e-mails, forum posts, IRC communications does that man deal with, aside from everything else he does, and even participates here and who knows where else. That kind of dedication to a distro and the community is a big plus for any distro.
Regarding the review this week. Why shouldn't someone review a product on a machine that may not be mainstream for some people, but is mainstream for others. My relation has 3 Apple boxes and has Linux on all of them. My son is so much of a Gentoo Fanboy now :) he put it on his PS3. Soon we'll be seeing Linux being put in Lincolns and such in place of the MS Crap currently going into them. Linux isn't just for compat's, it's for everything now, and I'm glad to see reviews done to show the other side of what Linux operates on for a change. It shows just how diverse this product can be.
RE: 34
Of course I'm agreeing with myself, usually I'm the only one that will, so I had to try to sway Ladislav some way :) And to your post in 44:
I use Gentoo as you may have seen. I can't say enough good things about the project. Now I may not participate in what's going on with the devs, how everyone is getting along, but I can tell you I've seen nothing but decent people really trying to help people, and way above what would be considerate. Like people who just came there to have every single thing answered for them so they don't have to do it themselves, and the community helps them regardless. Amazing.
Oh, on a note with that. One thing I did find about Mandriva that I wasn't tickled by was the fact that I tried to get the video card to work by going to an older version of X11-server (down from 1.3.0) So I installed the spring edition and tried to find a way to get to the 2008 repos to get the latest driver for the card. I was told in IRC that it would cause way too many headaches and such, dependancies, etc. With Gentoo, that's not the case, you can go back and forth between versions of software as needed/wanted and all the dependancies will be pulled in. It's a shame Mandriva's repos aren't backwards compatible. Anyway, I installed the driver manually and it still didn't work, so that idea of a similar problem someone else had wasn't it either. Shrugs.
Like I said though, Mandriva is a great mainstream system this release season. I really liked it, and I can't say that for anything other than two smaller distros, NimbleX and Puppy.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
148 • @143 (by Béranger on 2007-10-23 14:05:19 GMT from Romania)
>> "I can't find anything on their site to indicate that they have decided not to ever include Gnome in future. Where did you get this information?"
http://faqs.pcbsd.org/index.php?action=artikel&cat=8&id=334
--> "PC-BSD is focusing on the KDE desktop, and has currently no plan to offer variants of its system with Gnome, XFCE or Enlightenment, due to development priorities and for the sake of consistency."
See the same page for what they mean by "consistency".
Actually, you can install GNOME... but only because you can get it from FreeBSD, but then... why not using FreeBSD directly?!
PC-BSD is not interested in GNOME.
http://faqs.pcbsd.org/index.php?action=artikel&cat=3&id=95
--> "You can install your favorite window manager from the ports system. They won't have PC-BSD's menus and settings though."
149 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 14:12:14 GMT from United States)
"You keep saying that changing DPI 'doesn't work for you' or 'drives you crazy' but you don't give any details why."
I also said that everyone's preferences are different. Not everything changes correctly. For example, the distros I use do not change all the fonts in the same way when changing DPI. It just looks weird, maybe Mandriva has fixed all that, but it looks different in either Windows or Linux when changing DPI.
"there's really no reason why using the correct DPI setting for your resolution and screen size should be a problem at all, meaning that yes, getting a bigger monitor will give you more 'real space' in exact proportion to the sizes in question"
If he wants to fit more on the screen, yes. I was assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that he is trying to avoid the need for a microscope in order to read the screen. Otherwise the issue of DPI is not relevant.
150 • @148: PC-BSD (by Anonymous on 2007-10-23 14:29:54 GMT from Malaysia)
Yes, I did read the Knowledge Base Q&A before I installed PC-BSD last week. I noticed that http://faqs.pcbsd.org/index.php?action=artikel&cat=8&id=334 was last updated on 2006-12-07 and http://faqs.pcbsd.org/index.php?action=artikel&cat=3&id=95 was last updated on 2005-11-11. I also notice that the site doesn't categorically state that "PC-BSD will never have GNOME" (although the possibility can't be discounted).
151 • 91 (screen resolution) (by jack on 2007-10-23 14:34:31 GMT from Canada)
As a total noobie I spend most of my (retired) days reading books online. Gutenberg is my second home.
I have a 24 inch dell LCD and kubuntu 6.06 sets it at 1024x768.
I use the Opera browser most of the time.
(but text with Konqueror or Firefox is sharp)
Opera allows one to increase or decrease the text size and it remains perfectly sharp.
It is true that some circles appear as somewhat oval but I rarely look at photos.
152 • @150 • @148: PC-BSD (by Béranger on 2007-10-23 14:39:26 GMT from Romania)
> that the site doesn't categorically state
"Categorically"... maybe not. But they don't have enough manpower for more than they do. And they will not have enough for that in the next 2 years. Trust me :-)
153 • Multimedia distros (by Shad on 2007-10-23 14:56:19 GMT from Australia)
In my search for a Windows Media Center replacement OS, I've wondered upon these two distros.
http://www.linuxmce.com/
http://freevo.sourceforge.net
They seem to be able fill in the functionalities of WMC, with LinuxMCE being a better candidate.
I've yet to be able to find any credible reviews for either of these distros.
154 • distros (by pete davies on 2007-10-23 14:57:20 GMT from Thailand)
I have been trying linux for over ten years now, I have installed and tried all the popular distros , and currently have PCLinuxOS installed untill something better comes along.
did try to install kubuntu 7.10 but my lack of ram( 256) meant that it wasn't going anywhere.
..thanks to everyone out there developing these great operating systems for us to download and install at will.
cheers
155 • RE 153 Multimedia (by dbrion on 2007-10-23 15:12:09 GMT from France)
Sorry it is second hand info, but a friend of mine, after trying 4 distrs, chose Mythdora (which has been added to DW database this week) 15 days ago and seems to remain happy with it
156 • Ubuntu does it right...AGAIN! (by rdeckard on 2007-10-23 15:13:25 GMT from United States)
Once again, the Ubuntu team shows how it's done! This latest release is just awesome, especially since they've added support for themes. And I can finally install directly from the LiveCD instead of the alternative setup. PCLinuxOS can't automatically detect a 3COM network card inserted into my Inspiron 7500, but Ubuntu did it without a hitch.
I'd also like to say that I wish the guys working on Ubuntu Studio would get their own dedicated forums, I hate digging around for their discussions. They're still stuck on the alternative setup and have no LiveCD yet, a real disappointment. That, and they've managed to let some 'graphic artist' trash their beautiful theme that they had in their previous version. Oh well, live and learn.
157 • PCLinuxOS and Page Hit Counter (by Archi on 2007-10-23 15:42:04 GMT from United States)
Just went to their website and it says there are nearly 400 visitors there now. Doesn't seem to me that this distro is so unknown anymore.
~archi
158 • @147 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-23 15:45:56 GMT from Canada)
The thing about different releases is one of the genuine advantages of a source-based distro like Gentoo - the biggest single reason why many packages from one release of a distro will not work on another is library incompatibility (apps compiled against one version of a library will not work against another, ABI-incompatible version of said library). As, in Gentoo, you *always* rebuild the binary, this reason doesn't apply, so overall you'll always be more *likely* to succeed in using a 'package' (ebuild) from a different release. If you were using a pre-built, binary packaged distro based on Gentoo, it'd have just the same problem in this area as any other binary distro.
I can work on the hardware detection for the card in question, if you like. What I'd need is the PCI ID for the card (on Mandriva you can get it from harddrake or lspcidrake -v , or lspci -v which also works on other distros), and you to let me know what drivers it works with - right now and also in four or five months, when we're about to release 2008.1. From what you say it doesn't work with fglrx 8.41.7 (Mandriva 2008 One or Powerpack should have automatically detected the card and used this version of fglrx , 2008 Free would have used vesa), but does it work with radeonhd? Or only with vesa?
159 • More Gutsy Gibbon problems. . . (by Donnie on 2007-10-23 17:18:47 GMT from United States)
I've had mixed results with Gutsy Gibbon. I performed the upgrade procedure on an old P-III 450 that was running Feisty Fawn, and it worked great. (Of course, that machine has a cheap video card, so I can't use the Compiz/Beryl effects with it. But, other than that, it works fine.)
I then download the Gutsy .iso and burned it to CD. I then used it to boot my AMD 6000+ machine. Whether I boot normally, or use the "safe-video" mode boot, the X-Server crashes and dies before boot-up can complete.
To test whether the CD was good, I used it to boot my other P-III 450 box. It booted up perfectly, and, since it has a halfway decent video card, the Compiz/Beryl effects work very nicely.
But, since it won't run on my new machine, just put me in the "not impressed" column. With buggy releases like this, Ubuntu is fast becoming the Linux version of Windows.
160 • Typo or just being silly? (by Bill Maloy on 2007-10-23 18:13:20 GMT from United States)
> If a distribution is good enough to get there, then be it!
I think you meant "then *so* be it."
161 • Page Hit Counter expirement - Phase II (by GL on 2007-10-23 19:59:45 GMT from United States)
Here's a control for the Page Hit Counter Experiment:
Secretly and temporarily change the current URL for all distro pages (and href links to these pages) from:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=namehere
to something like:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?linuxdistro=namehere
This will temporarily break all bot settings, default home page settings, etc. that may be incorrectly boosting hit numbers for individual distro pages, and record only manual page hits generated via the ranking table on the DistroWatch home page....
162 • installation? nice... but for how long? (by Doper on 2007-10-23 19:59:54 GMT from Belgium)
With a release every 6 months, it means the ubuntu project is still in alpha/beta stadium? Why else would they release a new version every 6 months. Probably so users test the next beta version.
Btw, "ubuntu" can be replaced by distroX (except for a few real versions like redhat or debian.
You're just used to working with it, and you can upgrade again. And if upgrade not working 100 percent, why not do a reinstall?!
For complete support and possibility to grow with users/software/community/3th party software/support it should be nice to have a "current" main Linux version that users can use for a while, before they have to upgrade yet another time.
I'm aware of the fact that LTS version excist. But really, all energy is being put in newest releases. No way these kinds of distro's make any change to become mainstream.
The possitive thing is that ubuntu gutsy looks great, is very userfriendly and has potential.
163 • re: 54 (Mepis7 release) (by StevieG on 2007-10-23 20:46:08 GMT from New Zealand)
"i sure wish i knew when Mepis 7.0 is planning to come out of beta."
A non-authoritative estimate at the 'MepisLover's" forum for the first release candidate is early-to-mid November. So I guess 7.0 release is a month away if there's any reality behind that estimate.
164 • Page Hit Test & PCLinuxOS 2007 . . . (by Jon Luke on 2007-10-23 21:09:43 GMT from United States)
I think your page hit test and comments regarding PCLinuxOS provide a degree of mis-information that otherwise we might not be privy to. As you seek to cast PCLOS in the role of black sheep while highlighting what you suggest (without any hard evidence) is a possible culprit, supposed bots hammering away at the PCLOS link, it appears that you and those of similar prejudicial viewpoints are grasping at straws while largely overlooking the real import of PCLinuxOS's page hit rank.
Although you grudgingly touched on the crux of the matter in your Page Hit Test writeup, which is simply that PCLinuxOS 2007 is rightly generating a tremendous degree of interest, and increasing interest translates into ever more page hits, never-the-less to cast aspersions on PCLOS and its community without producing solid evidence to back up your offhanded claim of bots at work is totally overboard.
No one believes that PCLinuxOS is poised to quickly become the defacto *numero uno* Distro when it comes to user base and size of community. But everyone that I know who has tried out this amazing distro has come away extremely impressed, and a great many are eager to convert from whatever distro they've been running.
As far as I'm concerned, and I believe I speak for a growing number who have tried out dozens of leading distros seeking one that they are overwhelmingly pleased with, PCLinuxOS 2007 has garnered its current ranking in an absolutely above board manner. It will -- in spite of your suggestions to the contrary -- continue to generate a level of interest that will cause jealously and envy in other possibly more well known or heavily funded Linux communities.
If your readers really want to know what the PCLinuxOS 2007 fuss is about, all they have to do is download and try the distro themselves, then they'll learn first hand what's causing all the excitement!
165 • openSUSE 10.3 buggy??? (by SuSElover on 2007-10-23 21:58:54 GMT from India)
Any1 who says 10.3 is buggy is either
1) trying opensuse for the first time and hence very unfamiliar with yast, or
2) trying a non-M$ OS for the first time in his/her life and hence very familiar with "my computer", but utterly unfamiliar with his/her own computer, or
3) among those millions of innocent buyers who were successfully tricked into buying "secret hardware", or
4) a wise ubuntu-hacker.
prove me wrong ;)
166 • Re 165 and 166 (by mikkh on 2007-10-24 00:34:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Oh dear, this comment page does attract it's fair share of nutters doesn't it?
Let me join the happy throng and thrust my totally unqualified opinions on you, seeing as everyone else is doing it
*buntu lovers - It's a very ordinary distro, and you've fell for the hype of a millionaire backer with good marketing skills - live with it
openSuse diehards - It's so slow, it's painful. Come and paint my house while you're waiting for it load
Mandriva fanbois - Woohoo a release to be proud of at last. Give yourself a pat on the back for being right all these years. Can't wait for Texstar to make it even better though
Gentoo geeks - Look, you're not a god amongst men because you didn't fall asleep while waiting for it to compile, and it's not that hard to install anyway, so take that "I installed Gentoo and kept all my hair" medal off - it looks ridiculous.
*BSD users - Yes, you are gods amongst men, or at least you have my respect for understanding that crazy partitioning scheme.
Slackware Officinados - You follow the path wisely my son - go forth in peace
PClinuxOS Fans - Mandriva done correctly, and yes Texstar is the daddy and don't forget it.
Puppy lovers - for gawds sake go and buy a decent PC
OK, enough of that nonsense and sorry Barry, that was a cheap jibe on Puppy. I think it's a brilliant little distro that a lot of the others could learn from
167 • RE: 146 Rankings experiment (by ladislav on 2007-10-24 01:40:37 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, there was a noticeable drop in the number of visits on the individual distribution pages on the day when the ranking wasn't displayed on the front page:
16 October: 45,015
17 October: 35,303
18 October: 51,290
It seems that many readers use the table as a quick access point to the pages they want to visit. It make sense - unless a distribution is buried deep down in the ranking, it is faster to locate it and click on its name than to select it from the drop-down box or to type its name in the text box at the top of the page.
168 • Page Hit Ranking is less important to me now. (by Exile on 2007-10-24 02:08:10 GMT from United States)
When I was a GNU/Linux newbie (4 years ago?) the DW page Hit Rankings were very important to me. I worked my way down the list from 1 to 20 or so learning what was "popular". Now days I barely look at the rankings. I am much more focused on the release announcements. I will follow the links from there to the DW page for those releases that perk my interest and then follow more links to the distro homepage, forums and review sites. I guess my behavior is typical of the bulk of DW readers, which means that to try and make it "better" or "more accurate" is just a wast of time. It is what it is (SM), don't worry about it.
169 • Suggestion (by speedygeo on 2007-10-24 03:35:50 GMT from Romania)
Thank you Ladislav for your public work.
I wish a page of your site where the readers can poll their favorite packages, the packages they wish in their favorite distros.
For space requirements the distro have sometimes a bad package selection on their installation or livecd.
What are you think?
Maybe it can be so trendy like the distro rank?
170 • 167 • RE: 146 Rankings experiment (by Tony on 2007-10-24 03:38:55 GMT from United States)
I've got to admit that I'm "guilty" of doing just that - some of the time? If you really want to shake things around, invert the selection by having #100 at the top of the list. At least other Distros will be noticed in some way or other...?
It seems the past string of post have been more of a complaint session of different distros. Every Distro is not made for every computer or computer user. I am just appreciative of those who provide them for ALL of us to try out and have fun with. You will not see that happening anywhere outside of the Linux community.
171 • Qu 170 : why 100? (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 06:47:38 GMT from France)
"If you really want to shake things around, invert the selection by having #100 at the top of the list"
The number 333 (say) could be first, then 332. The advantage of putting the ranking list in the reverse order would be triple:
* it is very easy to program
* it has been recommended by Jesus (cf Matthew) a long time ago (which, by the way , makes it not that urgent)
* it would draw attention and therefore curiosity of otherwise very obscure distros...
172 • Observation: Ubuntu (Family) most popular (by download count) at Bigpond Server (by Observer on 2007-10-24 08:46:20 GMT from Australia)
Date...............File...........Size................Downloads
22-10-07......Edubuntu v7.10 i386 CD ISO................728,905,728--- 12
19-10-07......Edubuntu v7.10 PowerPC desktop CD ISO....707,481,600--- 16
St = 28 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
19-10-07......Xubuntu v7.10 desktop i386 ISO.......593,889,280--- 82
18-10-07......Xubuntu v7.10 i386 Alternate ISO....723,580,928--- 42
St = 124 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
19-10-07......Kubuntu v7.10 desktop i386 CD ISO....731,009,024---- 115
22-10-07......Kubuntu v7.10 i386 DVD ISO.........4,595,804,160--- 69
22-10-07......Kubuntu v7.10 amd64 DVD ISO........4,641,318,912---- 21
19-10-07......kubuntu v7.10 desktop amd64 ISO......730,519,552---- 24
St = 229 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 i386 DVD ISO.............4,546,652,160---- 525
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 i386 CD ISO................729,608,192---- 452
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 amd64 DVD ISO............4,519,006,208---- 104
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 amd64 CD ISO................730,691,584---- 56
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 i386 alternate ISO..........726,663,168---- 101
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 amd64 Alternate ISO.........727,488,512---- 15
22-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 AMD64 Server ISO...........535,453,696---- 9
19-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 Server i386 ISO.............524,060,672---- 48
18-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 server only ISO............524,066,816---- 36
23-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 PowerPC ISO.................601,088,000---- 16
24-10-07.....Ubuntu v7.10 PowerPC Server ISO..........583,813,120---- 0
Ubuntu St = 1362 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
23-10-07......Mythbuntu v7.10 i386 ISO................471,484,416----- 35
23-10-07......Mythbuntu v7.10 AMD64 ISO...............496,652,288----- 7
22-10-07......MiniMyth v0.20.2-30 [nfs]................79,313,938----- 8
22-10-07......MiniMyth v0.20.2-30 [ram]................80,357,969------ 7
St = 57 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
23-10-07.....Ubuntu Studio v7.10 alternate amd64 ISO..851,943,424------- 14
St = 14 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
Total Ubuntu Family Downloads = 1814 (5:20 PM AEST 24 Oct 07
http://files.bigpond.com/library/latestfiles.php?go=latestfiles&order=&limit=30&start=0
173 • Re: 153 (by Eric Chapman on 2007-10-24 09:12:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
There was a review of LinuxMCE in the November issue of Linux Format magazine (UK). They gave it 7/10. The review was largely waffle though, with little hard information.
174 • Some More Bigpond Server Download Stats (by Observer on 2007-10-24 09:35:40 GMT from Australia)
Bigpond Server Download Stats For Small Selection (based on number of downloads) Of Current Stable Linux Distro Releases.
1. Total Fedora 7 = 2,344 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)----now----->2364
(Most popular single Linux iso is Fedora Core 7 i386 DVD = 1486 downloads)----now---->1500
2. Total Ubuntu 7.10 Family = 1057 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now--->1820
3. Total openSUSE 10.3 = 811 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now---->833
4. Total Mandriva 2008 = 566 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now---->630
NB: Ubuntu 7.04 family previously had scored 5000 + downloads and was easily No1.
175 • OpenSuse & Mandriva (by Dave on 2007-10-24 10:00:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
After trying OpenSuse 10.3, I've settled on Mandriva 2008. Its smooth, looks good and I'm enjoying using Gnome. I know its a small thing, but the fonts were always too small in Suse and things never looked right. I spent half my time trying to find out where I had to go to configure hardware and system settings and sometimes in Yast I was going in circles. In Mandriva its pretty straight forward and I don't spend ages clicking in this option and that option to get things done. Mandriva seems a solid enough distro and I'm sticking with it for the future. I'm even tempted to buy the Powerpack :-)
176 • RE: 167 • RE: 146 Rankings experiment (by Rob Kemp on 2007-10-24 10:22:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hmmm. The big dip COULD be completely legitimate. There is clearly going to be a significant feedback effect as the number 1 distribution attracts extra hits by virtue of being number 1. But that should apply also to the number 2 distribution. Normally you would probably expect a smaller feedback effect, although with a much more recognizable 'brand' such as Ubuntu at number 2 I would expect the feedback to be about the same as for a less recognizable number 1.
The fact that the other distributions in the top three maintained their share of hits MUCH better than PCLOS did smells very fishy indeed to me.
How could the absence of the ranking table on the front page affect any distribution-boosting bots? It could, if the ranking table itself was used by those bots to keep the chosen distribution's hits within reasonable boundaries. I.e. the bots might be coded to check the current standing of Ubuntu, and keep adding hits until it had been exceeded by a pre-arranged proportion. The idea would, I presume, be to prevent runaway bots boosting the distribution to a million hits or whatever and giving the game away.
I am not anti-PCLOS, it's a distribution I know and like. But equally, I think that clever people who manipulate the ratings on a site like this should not just be left to get on with it - action is needed for the good of the site more than any other reason. I have to say I have my doubts about Ubuntu's rating too.
177 • Com 172, 174 There are amazing figures in BigPond stats. (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 10:23:52 GMT from France)
The ratio of xx32bits/xx64bits is very high (which would mean that, either Linuxen are downloaded for old PCs, or pple distrust 64 bits softs).
The most astonishing thing I saw was there were more edUBU downloads for PPC than for ordinary PCs. I think there might be different causes, not mutually exclusive:
* schools are rich in Australia.
* the difference of dates (EdUBU for PPC is 2 days older).
* perhaps the fact that EdUBU is not that good (at least last year : Arabic was written the yaw gnorw in the starting menu, and KDE had a mixture of French (or Arabic) and English entries: for education, it is hardly acceptable) and that SkoleLinux seems much better, but is not meant for PPC.
I think it might be interesting/funny to compare PCLOS downloads since spring 2007 with downloads of, say, testing versions (therefore very recent,, and downloaded with caution) of Fedoras...
178 • @164 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 11:10:24 GMT from Malaysia)
["it appears that you and those of similar prejudicial viewpoints are grasping at straws while largely overlooking the real import of PCLinuxOS's page hit rank."]
What is the "real import" of the page hit ranks?
Ladislav's experiment suggests that
- many visitors to Distrowatch prefer to access the various distro pages via the link provided in the Page Hit Ranking table
- the PHR table seems to help boost page hits (and advertising revenue) overall (see post 167).
It seems the PHR table does serve a useful purpose after all. It's hardly Ladislav's fault if some individuals choose to treat the PHR as a definitive index of a distro's popularity. Distrowatch's FAQ page (http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=faq) states clearly that he considers it "a light-hearted way of looking at popularity of distribution. Since each distribution has its own page, I though it would be fun to track the number of visitors viewing individual distribution pages."
It's a bit of a puzzle why PCLOS continues to have 3590 hits per day over the past 30 days despite not having a new release during the current "distro season" but this may just be related to the frequently updated apt column at http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pclinuxos (PCLOS being a "rolling release" distro).
["It will -- in spite of your suggestions to the contrary -- continue to generate a level of interest that will cause jealously and envy in other possibly more well known or heavily funded Linux communities."]
I haven't noticed any "jealousy or envy" on the user forums of any of the major distros. There were a number of hostile reactions on the Ubuntu forums but that probably reflects the fact that the Ubuntu user demographic is significantly different from that of Fedora or Mandriva.
["If your readers really want to know what the PCLinuxOS 2007 fuss is about, all they have to do is download and try the distro themselves, then they'll learn first hand what's causing all the excitement!"]
I dual-booted PCLOS with Fedora for a couple of months. It's a pleasant distro with a very good base (Mandriva) and definitely an attractive option for a new Linux user.
179 • distribution bots? (by memena on 2007-10-24 11:47:56 GMT from Philippines)
My goodness people, did you even read the article? Were you able to understand what the experiment demonstrated?
Mr. Bodnar should not need to spell everything out. You're Linux users, let's see those brains working!
180 • Page hits (by CrashMaster on 2007-10-24 11:59:43 GMT from United States)
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/okeefes/PCLOS.jpg
The drop in page hits is not limited to PCLOS in this "experiment", as you can see form the figure showing HPD for the 16th, 17th and 18th divided by the HPD of the 16th (all 16/16 = 1, obviously).
Since there was no replication in the experiment, statistical comparisons cannot be made. The fact that PCLOS dropped more than some of the others may simply indicate that it gets a boost from being number 1 on the HPD list ... nothing more. I supposed it could also mean that Texstar has a mind control ray that he is testing on unsuspecting masses ... but I'm thinking thats less likely than the obvious reason I've just stated.
Nonetheless, Rob Kemp @ 176 raises some interesting points. Me, I'd expect a bigger "boost effect" of being number 1 for a "relatively unknown" distro than one with strong marketing like Ubuntu in No. 2 position. It is interesting in the figure I've shown that Mint and Saboyan, two other "relatively unknown" distros in the top 10 also had significantly larger drops than Suze or Mandriva.
Ladislav pointed out that the increase in PCLOS rankings has been gradual over the last couple of years, and not in jumps as you'd expect if somebody turned on the bots. "PCLinuxOS did not get to the number one spot by means of a random placement, but by slow, continuous rise in interest and curiosity generated by you - the DistroWatch reader."
Limiting the counted hits to one per week (or 2 weeks) per IP (not 1/day*ip which is what I think is being done now) would eliminate effect of bots or fanboys in the mix and would probably be easy to program.
181 • last issue comment, by dbrion (by memena on 2007-10-24 12:00:49 GMT from Philippines)
250 • RE 242 Affectve / love links with numbers are (linuxly??) insane..
By saying that I "like the HPD just fine", I use the word "like" colloquially. What I mean is I find it adequate, or agreeable enough. No, actually there's even less emotion involved; I merely find it "not disagreeable", if you'll pardon the double negative.
No I don't hold it in affection, nor do I "love" love it. Like you say, they are merely numbers. Stuff one shouldn't get emotional over, ever (unless you're an accountant). ;-)
Thanks for the laugh, made my day :-D
182 • Hit Rankings & Evil Bots (by RC on 2007-10-24 13:31:55 GMT from United States)
Jeesh...this is like a science fiction novel. I don't think that PCLinuxOS users or developers are the instigators of a nefarious plot to end the world as we know it. Nor do I think that PCLinusOS is going to crush Ubuntu under it's heel. At least not this year.
Just as an example, I get to work, get the coffeepot going and then sit down at the pc, check my email, then come here and see what new distro's have popped up overnight and download any I find interesting. Then I go to the comment section and look for useful comments and insights...and get a laugh over some of the others. Once or twice a week I then jump over to PCLinuxOS to check their forum for new problems/solutions and see if there are any new announcements of interest. Since I am here, I just use the hyperlink on the hit counter to go there. So...it gets a hit!! Now does that skew the results...yeah..I am sure it does. But no more than the *buntu, Mandriva, openSuSe, Fedora, etc, etc, guy that does the same thing. And I imagine that is a lot of us.
I doubt that this is a "bot war" for world domination. If it is then I think someone is going to be very disappointed. Being number one here has not put PCLinuxOS on more computers than *buntu. And when Ubuntu was number one for so long, it never stayed on my computer for more than a few hours. It is too CLI-centric for me. I don't have the time or interest to learn how to run Linux from the CLI right now. And I imagine I represent the bulk of new users. Certainly the ones needed to make the Linux wave a tsunami. Ubuntu and its derivatives are just not "newbie" distros...no matter how they try to sell that.
Mepis, Mint and PCLinuxOS are the ones I look to and use. Oddly enough...they are all in the top ten distros on this site. MAYBE that is why...not bots.
Most new people coming to this site without a prejudice created by someone else will do what I and countless others have done. Try out the top twenty or twenty five and make a choice. Being number one isn't nearly as important as being in that top twenty five. If it was, then no one would be using anything but Ubuntu. Obviously that is not the case.
I don't believe downloads tell a story either. I download just about every new release in that top twenty five when they come out. They stay on my computer for a couple of hours and I see no reason to change and dump them.
No distro is perfect. It is just that PClinuxOS and Mint are the least imperfect for the needs in my home. And I have no doubt whatsoever that something else fits your needs better. That is one of the reasons there are so many distros.
Ubuntu is not a "lame", "junk" or "trash" distro. It is a very good distro. It just isn't one that fits me and my needs. I don't have the need to bad mouth it just because I don't care for it.... or call anyone that says something good about it or recommends it to a new user a "fanbois"....or accuse it or it's "fanbois" of using bots because it was number one for month after month after month.
The hit rankings are not a life and death situation. Neither is someone using a distro other than our particular favorite. We don't all drive the same car, we don't all eat the same breakfast and we don't all use the same distro.....we will live. And even in the unlikely event that some "lowlife scumbag" is adding a few dozen extra hits a month to the hit counter for his "perfect" distro....I don't think the universe is poised for destruction.
Soapbox turned off.....
183 • Mandriva One - the only that starts on my cousin's laptop :) (by giorgio on 2007-10-24 13:48:44 GMT from Italy)
it's the first time i showed to my cousin how a works a linux distro in his pc...great work!
184 • RE: 179 • distribution bots? (by Rob Kemp on 2007-10-24 13:57:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Mr. Bodnar should not need to spell everything out. You're Linux users, let's see those brains working!"
To me, the definition of a working brain is one that does not simply accept another person's interpretation of the facts without question. You would perhaps also like us to give Mr Gates the benefit of the doubt and not constantly dissect and dispute all HIS pronouncements?
Without intending the slightest disrespect to Ladislav, I have another question. How useful is it in the original article to tell us that on the day when PCLOS received fewest hits, only a small proportion of those hits were generated by machines running PCLOS? A comparison with the proportion of hits generated by machines running PCLOS on the other two days might well tell us something interesting.
I am not asking Mr Bodnar to spell everything out. I am only very marginally bothered by all this. Nevertheless, when I disagree with, or at least have reservations about, the interpretation of a piece of statistical analysis, I feel compelled to mention it. So sorry.
185 • #184 (by RC on 2007-10-24 14:05:21 GMT from United States)
I am stuck running XP from work and I am often in it at home do to using programs unavailable in Linux. So I would fall in the category of clicking on PCLinuxOS but not running it.
186 • RE 184 : Proportion of hits.... (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 14:22:01 GMT from France)
" How useful is it in the original article to tell us that on the day when PCLOS received fewest hits, only a small proportion of those hits were generated by machines running PCLOS?"
I believe it was written to convince us that the hits were not generated by PCLOSS users showing their irrational loove with mouse clicks, but ordinary users of *any* OS, just being curious about PCLOS....
BTW, unless there is a proof, I never think of a conspiracy : mass behaviors may be thoroghly irrational, without doing it in purpose (the mechanism I see for PCLOS is students finding it convenient (without any methods of analysis : it is download, burn, boot and keep/thrash),
talking/mailing about it to their friends; when PCLOS servers got saturated, they went to DW for some info and found ... a funny .mouse driven voting machine ... they had fun with....)..
I do not see any advantage for PCLOS (for UBUlinux, which is a way of advertising for commercial stuff, it is another point) of being the first (it means bigger download servers, and perhaps more critical users on the long term)
187 • Page hits (by DG on 2007-10-24 14:27:14 GMT from Netherlands)
Re #180: Limiting the counted hits to one per week (or 2 weeks) per IP (not 1/day*ip which is what I think is being done now) would eliminate effect of bots or fanboys in the mix and would probably be easy to program.
What happens if unique IP hits per day is simply converted to unique IP hits during the period? If I "vote" it is just counted once whether we are talking about last 30 days, 3 months, 6 months or one year.
And to investigate the "top 10" effect, replace the Ranking on the front page with a "Featured distro list" containing 12 different distros each day, chosen at random. At the end of the month almost all of the 367 listed distro should have had a turn, and we can see the effect on the page hits.
188 • <180 • Page hits (by CrashMaster)> (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 14:40:31 GMT from Malaysia)
Comment deleted (disrespectful).
189 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 14:54:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
"" How useful is it in the original article to tell us that on the day when PCLOS received fewest hits, only a small proportion of those hits were generated by machines running PCLOS?"
I believe it was written to convince us that the hits were not generated by PCLOSS users showing their irrational loove with mouse clicks, but ordinary users of *any* OS, just being curious about PCLOS...."
Yeah but my point is that on the day when PCLOS hits were clearly NOT being inflated, artificially or otherwise, you would not expect to see huge numbers of hits from PCLOS machines. On the days when the figures may have been artificially inflated, someone with a suspicious mind might expect to see a high proportion of hits generated by PCLOS machines. But we have no information about those days.
This is becoming painful.
190 • RE: 189 (by Rob Kemp on 2007-10-24 14:55:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sorry, forgot to sign 189. 'Twas me.
191 • RE 189/190 Do not be too suspicious... (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 15:06:52 GMT from France)
"On the days when the figures may have been artificially inflated, someone with a suspicious mind might expect to see a high proportion of hits generated by PCLOS machines. But we have no information about those days.
"
I agree with you, but one should not be too suspicious, as I see *no* advantage of being at 1rst place (except for ego/ sheepiness?):
*from the distr makers point of view, he needs better servers and may have more critical users.
*From the user's point of view, thre may be bigger traffic-jams during release days...
=> a conspiracy would be unproductive for an entirely free OS...
192 • Bots and PCLinuxOS (by RC on 2007-10-24 15:11:16 GMT from United States)
Jeesh! This has become "The Never Ending Story". Did all this go on when Ubuntu took over the number one spot?
193 • @189, 191 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 15:27:45 GMT from Malaysia)
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070827 provides the answer.
[Quote]:
Ubuntu
DistroWatch web server log 27.8%
PCLinuxOS
DistroWatch web server log 6.2%
[/Quote]
Someone has set up a bot network on Ubuntu machines with the sole purpose of clicking on the PCLOS link. This explains why Ubuntu is #1 on the web server log but PCLOS is #1 on the PHR.
In other news, several UFOs are reported to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle last week ...
194 • #193 (by RC on 2007-10-24 15:42:19 GMT from United States)
...and a herd of pink elephants stampeded in downtown Miami....
195 • No subject (by chuck on 2007-10-24 15:44:03 GMT from United States)
I have only been using linux for about 10 months. I tried Ubuntu 6.10 after reading about the live CD on Lifehacker.com. I was not very impressed, and almost gave up on Linux. I have no desire to use a command line - last one I used was on my Amiga many many moons ago. Automatix and easyubuntu - more trouble than they were worth. I was about to give up when I found this site and tried PCLINUX - I believe the first beta for 2007. Everything worked right from the start. I made room on my hard drive for pclinux and the rest is history. PClinux opened the door for me to try other distro's. My HD on my desktop has XP/PCLinux and Ubuntu installed. This never would have happened if my only taste of linux was ubuntu 6.10.
The point I am trying to make - a lot of the new additions to ubuntu (restricted drivers, restricted codecs, 3d) were already in place with other distro's. I do not think they would be in 7.10 if it was not for Mint, Mepsis or Pclinux (and the likes)
Linux Needs distro's like Linux Mint, Mepsis, and PClinux for 2 reasons.
1. bring new people into the fold.
2. push the big boys to make better products.
196 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 15:50:18 GMT from United States)
> Linux Needs distro's like Linux Mint, Mepsis, and PClinux for 2 reasons.
1. bring new people into the fold.
2. push the big boys to make better products.
I would say it a little differently. Linux needs a variety of distros. Having been a computer user for several decades, one thing that attracted me to Ubuntu (the first time I could seriously use Linux) was the command line, without the ugliness of the Windows DOS prompt.
Some of us believe the command line to be the most efficient way to do things: it's fast and it works as long as you use the right command. PCLinuxOS is not desirable to me because there is an opinion that the command line is evil.
Choice is the answer.
197 • RE 195 "I do not think they would be in 7.10 if it was (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 15:51:39 GMT from France)
was not for Mint, Mepsis or Pclinux (and the likes)
"
I am sure there would not be *any* UBU linux if there was not
a) Debian
to pump, pump, from and then claim one is *the best*
b) The GNU project..
What is the value of exotic HW fancy distro support? To-day? within one year?
198 • #196 (by RC on 2007-10-24 16:01:51 GMT from United States)
And there is the other side of the coin! A perfectly valid, opposite view. I was used to using DOS and then, even better, 4DOS back in the old days. It wasn't until Windows 2000 that I switched to using the GUI for moving/copying files and other tasks because it was so much faster and easier to do it from DOS. I have spent years with the GUI and really don't want to go back now. And most people never learned DOS...so they aren't going to learn CLI. For people like yourself, Linux geeks or sysadmins, the CLI is still the best way to do things and Ubuntu is a great distro for those so inclined. There a lot more folks like me though that just want to get things done easily without learning all those commands and their structure.
I don't think the CLI is evil, and I doubt that PCLinuxOS, Mint or Mepis do either. It is just simple and easy. I don't begrudge you your choice, I respect it. And some day I may join you in the CLI environment, but for now we are two people with two different perspectives and Linux allows us to both have what we want. Can't get better than that.
199 • @174 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-24 16:22:16 GMT from Canada)
it's worth noting that Bigpond had some trouble getting valid Mandriva 2008 ISOs up - they kept managing to upload a corrupted file - so they've only had working 2008 images up for a few days now.
200 • @180 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-24 16:24:43 GMT from Canada)
yeah, Tex keeps bugging me to let him play with the Mandriva mind control ray, but I won't let him unless he lets me use the PCLOS poll rigging bot. :D
201 • #200 (by RC on 2007-10-24 16:38:02 GMT from United States)
LOL...well....if the two of you ever do get together then world domination could be possible....Redmond would be shaking in their boots, let alone Ubuntu.
202 • RE 189-190 The answer is in DWW comments of this week (by dbrion on 2007-10-24 17:04:31 GMT from France)
at number 3.... I remembered only it was a neglectible ratio....
I am now very sure PCLOSS users are too radically simple to make sophisticated cheating bots...
203 • RE: 202 • RE 189-190 The answer is in DWW comments of this week (by Rob Kemp on 2007-10-24 17:44:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
The embarassing thing is I did actually read that. Yes, I suppose I had better go back to PCLOS because I am obviously simple enough.
OK, well that's all my questions answered (twice in some cases) so now I will withdraw with what dignity I can muster.
(The bots are out there ... )
204 • #203 (by RC on 2007-10-24 17:48:27 GMT from United States)
(The bots are out there ... ) ....and they survive by eating human brains....
205 • #204 (by Chris Gallienne on 2007-10-24 17:58:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
So what the hell arte they doing here?
206 • @200 (by DrDOS on 2007-10-24 18:24:10 GMT from United States)
Thank you Adam for the first good laugh of the day.
Actually I'm sorry that I even brought up the subject of bots, yes I did it first, and I was trying to ridicule some of the silly ideas people were throwing out there, not trying to start a conspiracy theory rumor mill going. Well, Ladislav's test showed that there weren't any bots since they would have clicked the link whether it was on the first page or not.
207 • RE: # 201 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-24 18:49:53 GMT from Italy)
"if the two of you ever do get together then world domination could be possible"
Well, not a long time ago Texstar was a Mandriva developer. If only they had realized his full potential...
And BTW, people must like apt4rpm more than URPMI, as I have always done, if PCLinuxOS is so popular.
208 • #207 (by RC on 2007-10-24 18:59:38 GMT from United States)
Actually it was a poor attempt at humor referencing his..."let him (Texstar) play with the Mandriva mind control ray, but I won't let him unless he lets me use the PCLOS poll rigging bot."...comment,
209 • RE: 158 (by Landor on 2007-10-24 23:18:20 GMT from Canada)
You're right, and my err for such a comparison, I knew better but was literally on the edge of passing out while typing that.
I did finally get it to work, it took the new driver to do it. Now as you may or may not have seen there's new problems, like scrolling being at a snail's pace. I at first hoped it was limited to only FF but no, everything..lol So the box is now back with my friend, running VESA and I said I would keep an eye out for a solution to the problem. They did opt for Mandriva though in the end. Due to the card related issues I installed it for them via the free dvd as it doesn't boot to X and such. My friend is pretty good with Linux but the card had them stumped large, and I alone wanted to put my foot through the box more than once :) I will say though, other than the scrolling stuff, the card rocked for the low end of their new line in my opinion, but for driver support can anyone say Nvidia? :)
Thanks though Adam, I appreciate the kind offer.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
210 • that's it (by pete on 2007-10-24 23:20:04 GMT from United States)
i have decided to boycot distrowatch forever!
211 • back by popular demand (by pete on 2007-10-24 23:20:28 GMT from United States)
yay
212 • Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) does not install on an HP DV2160 notebook. (by andre g. on 2007-10-24 23:40:43 GMT from United States)
Hello:
This very recent (and nice) Notebook from HP, is a DV2610US.
It has an Nvidia Geforge 7150 video chip, which seems to be the problem.
This chip is going to be popular (successor of the ubiquious GeForce 6150).
It is a pity that Ubuntu 7.10 "off the box" does not support it.
But it may be a manual install... or an update.
For now, I have just delayed my (first) attempt to use Ubuntu and its variants (Kubuntu). Hopefully, I can try pretty soon.
ag.
213 • 212 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-24 23:47:07 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu doesn't even work with the nv or vesa driver?
Once installed, you can easily use Envy to install the nvidia driver.
The nvidia driver is proprietary, and thus not supported out of the box with Ubuntu. But that should only mean you don't have 3-D support.
214 • Maybe Not, AW! :-) (by Observer on 2007-10-25 00:05:02 GMT from Australia)
199 • @174 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-24 16:22:16 GMT from Canada)
it's worth noting that Bigpond had some trouble getting valid Mandriva 2008 ISOs up - they kept managing to upload a corrupted file - so they've only had working 2008 images up for a few days now.
Yes, I noticed there was some issue with the dvd iso when it disappeared after a couple of days and then reappeared again after one or two days. But at that point the count was around 250 or so and it continued from there, thus we could assume that many of those that downloaded the corrupt version also downloaded the new dvd iso (uncorrupted one) and skewed the download stats somewhat upward for Mandriva!
NB: Ubuntu isos have been up a much shorter time than both Mandriva and openSUSE and they now have more downloads than both of them combined! :-)
215 • 214 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 00:44:34 GMT from Malaysia)
<"Ubuntu isos have been up a much shorter time than both Mandriva and openSUSE and they now have more downloads than both of them combined!">
What are the numbers for *buntu 7.10 Beta (between 2007-09-27 and 2007-10-11)?
If a significant number of users are also downloading the Beta and RC releases, perhaps Ubuntu should take advantage of this by extending beta testing to 4 weeks or longer in order to resolve the bugs that are currently a feature of each 'final' release.
2007-09-27 Development Release: Ubuntu 7.10 Beta
2007-10-11 Development Release: Ubuntu 7.10 RC
2007-10-18 Distribution Release: Ubuntu 7.10
216 • No subject (by Observer on 2007-10-25 00:45:19 GMT from Australia)
177 • Com 172, 174 There are amazing figures in BigPond stats. (by dbrion from France)
The ratio of xx32bits/xx64bits is very high (which would mean that, either Linuxen are downloaded for old PCs, or pple distrust 64 bits softs).
IMO, I think people who run 64 bit OSes are either highly technical or have a need to run it for production purposes. It seems that Feodra, openSuse, Gentoo and other more technical distros are more used by such people.
The most astonishing thing I saw was there were more edUBU downloads for PPC than for ordinary PCs. I think there might be different causes, not mutually exclusive:
* schools are rich in Australia.
* the difference of dates (EdUBU for PPC is 2 days older).
* perhaps the fact that EdUBU is not that good (at least last year : Arabic was written the yaw gnorw in the starting menu, and KDE had a mixture of French (or Arabic) and English entries: for education, it is hardly acceptable) and that SkoleLinux seems much better, but is not meant for PPC.
Unless you had a look at the stats for Ubuntu 7.04, its too soon to make any real useful analysis on this as some of the isos only just appeared. I put the stats up only to make the point that Ubuntu (family) is "popular" Downunder (Au). I will try to get stats in about 4 or 5 weeks from now and then we can make some more analysis.
I think it might be interesting/funny to compare PCLOS downloads since spring 2007 with downloads of, say, testing versions (therefore very recent,, and downloaded with caution) of Fedoras...
There is a search option there and anyone, including you, can do this!
Feel free to do it! :-)
PCL had just over 200 downloads when it expired a few weeks back. That is a 300% increase on the 50 or so for their previous release and is much higher than Mepis, Mint and many other single/Live Cd distros (except Knoppix). That said, it would rank somewhere around 12 (or just below) by number of downloads for current stable releases.
Cheers
217 • 174 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 00:53:33 GMT from Malaysia)
2364
Total Ubuntu 7.10 Family = 1057 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now--->1820">
The most significant stat from Bigpond is that there are more Fedora 7 downloads than Ubuntu 7.10.
It will be interesting to track these numbers when Fedora 8 is released next month.
218 • Re 215 (by Observer on 2007-10-25 00:59:01 GMT from Australia)
215 • 214 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 from Malaysia)
I am not studying these numbers/stats intensely but I did notice that the webmaster there somehow was adding up the numbers for much of the alpha (maybe betas as well) releases of Ubuntu and thus it may give a skewed view of how many actual testers there is. It is also my perception that Ubuntu is their favorite (ie BP webmaster's fav).
219 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 01:01:44 GMT from Malaysia)
2364" >
< "Total Ubuntu 7.10 Family = 1057 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now--->1820" >
< "Ubuntu 7.04 family previously had scored 5000 + downloads and was easily No1." >
It's also interesting that Fedora 7 has 2000+ downloads in October but less than 5000+ downloads since May (which would have taken it past Ubuntu 7.04).
220 • Re 217 (by Observer on 2007-10-25 01:05:32 GMT from Australia)
Not really, Ubuntu 7.10 family are out only a few days, be realistic! I predict that by this time next week Ubuntu Family will have surpassed Fedora 7 totals.
Fedora used to be top of the charts just over a year ago, click on the following link and you can see for yourself:
http://files.bigpond.com/library/latestfiles.php?go=latestfiles&order=bpcount&limit=55&start=15
221 • Re 219 (by Observer on 2007-10-25 01:35:01 GMT from Australia)
2364" >
< "Total Ubuntu 7.10 Family = 1057 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now--->1820" >
< "Ubuntu 7.04 family previously had scored 5000 + downloads and was easily No1." >
It's also interesting that Fedora 7 has 2000+ downloads in October but less than 5000+ downloads since May (which would have taken it past Ubuntu 7.04).
All stats, including Fedora 7's, are since release date of the said distro!
Yes, Unbuntu 7.04 had a 6 week head start but I don't think they will catch up. But there is a point to note that Fedora 7 will probably reach 3000 by the time Fedora 9 comes out and Ubuntu 7.04 (on its own) will be about 3800 by then. If one has/keeps the links to all the isos uploaded to the server, then you can still access the download stats even after they expire, as some of them do due to server needs for space.
222 • Mandriva (by EP on 2007-10-25 04:04:30 GMT from United States)
After all the bugs and issues I was having getting Mandriva One to boot using an external dvd burner, I had to abandon and download the installable version only. Now typing this from Mandriva, got everything working I needed and I must say, I'm very impressed with the gnome implementation.
223 • @214 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-25 04:54:00 GMT from Canada)
okay, good point, you win this round. =)
224 • 64 bit distros (by Don on 2007-10-25 05:16:27 GMT from United States)
Well, I'm sorry to say I've tried nearly all the better known 64 bit distros(including Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva, Mepis, and Sabayon), and only Sabayon works properly on my newly built system(Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe, AMD64 X2 5600+, EVGA GeForce 8800GTS, 4gigs G.Skill DDR2 800 ram, Acer 22" WS LCD monitor). I no longer want a distro that needs constant tweaking. I just want something that is relatively easy to install, works the way it is supposed to without a lot of coaxing nor maintenance, and is fairly easy to customize(I don't expect too much, do I?). Every other distro I tried either would not boot, install, or just didn't work right. I gave them all the college try including dozens of suggestions from the forums. I must say, I do not like Sabayon's lack of update notification nor the whole Emerge Portato thing. But after all I've been through with the other 64 bit distros(especially Ubuntu---ugghh!), Sabayon seems pretty sweet right now. I know it's all about the hardware and I'm sure things will change, but what a frustrating experience. Yes, I know I probably could get a lot of 32 bit distros to work fine, but that's not why I put together a 64 bit system. I'm stubborn.
225 • 64 bit distro's on AsusM2+AMD64x2 (by capricornus on 2007-10-25 06:37:14 GMT from Netherlands)
Don, when I assembled a nice quick system for my daughter (bach bio-engineering), in dual-boot, I encountered exactly the same problems as you did and reported. The one distro that does it is Wolvix.1.10 Hunter. And it handles WINE very fine.
Bút: Wolvix stalls on a Asus??+P4DC, while the others do the job. Well, the job? After a few boots, openSUSE 10.3 doesn't want to exit, Mandriva forgot my name and password. SAM was the only distro that recognised automatically the config ánd my new 19"WS (1440x900 resolution).
The good thing is: I regard installing all the distro's as a hobby. Otherwise I would have had a gigantic fit, I think. And computers don't deserve to dy for, agree?
226 • RE 218 Thanks for this link on real world data. (by dbrion on 2007-10-25 07:09:40 GMT from France)
It is amusing to compare Vixta Linux 6days stats (Fedora based, claims to be radically eay to install, is in DW waiting list) to PCLOS ~ 220 downloads in months:
19-10-07 Vixta Linux v0.95 ISO 725,684,224 83
Perhaps its name was carefully chosen to make google search and remembering easy....
227 • Mandriva developers omitted TURKEY!! SHAME!! (by T.T.Bilgin on 2007-10-25 10:37:06 GMT from Turkey)
there is no TURKEY selection on "choose your county" step of Mandriva Gnome One CD..
How could you omit world's 19. Largest economy with 72 Million People??
228 • I suppose it is because Tukey is not a county (by dbrion on 2007-10-25 11:06:10 GMT from France)
but a big countRy, too big for gnomes...
229 • #224 64 bit, tried it all... almost? (by herman on 2007-10-25 12:00:04 GMT from Europe)
Don, you forgot to try Fedora.
Which, in itself, is too bad if you want a nice 64 bit system.
230 • RE: # 224 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-25 13:11:13 GMT from Italy)
"Yes, I know I probably could get a lot of 32 bit distros to work fine, but that's not why I put together a 64 bit system. I'm stubborn."
You could hardly build a modern 32 bit system even if you wanted.
As to Sabayon, with 64 bit processors *only* the 64 bit edition will work, at least that is my experience.
As to using 64 bit operating systems of any kind, with the only possible exception of OS X Leopard, I have given up until *everything* will be 64 bit, and there won't be the need of a double set of libraries, for instance. I have a friend, a real Linux guru, who is of the same opinion.
231 • More about #224 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-25 15:01:02 GMT from Italy)
And BTW, you'll hardly notice any difference in performance between 32 and 64 bit distros. But you'll have a lot of advantages if you use 32 bit. Not without reason the oldest Linux (Slackware) is officially 32 bit only.
232 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 15:32:39 GMT from United States)
> you'll hardly notice any difference in performance between 32 and 64 bit distros
If you're doing heavy numerical computations, there can be significant speed improvements. Note the use of the word "can" because in my experience more often than not it doesn't matter there, either.
233 • @227 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-25 15:45:52 GMT from Canada)
There's some kind of bug which leads to several countries being missing from the list. It's under investigation. http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23303
234 • 64 bit distros (by Don on 2007-10-25 16:59:27 GMT from United States)
Capricornus,
I agree, no computer deserves to die. I intend to begin testing some 32 bit distros on my system this week. I'll give Wolvix a try. Thanks for the suggestion.
#229,
I haven't tried Fedora simply because I have read that it isn't really optimized for the desktop. Perhaps this is an unfair prejudice. I'll give it a try right away. Thanks.
Anonymous Penguin & Anonymous,
I agree that there is probably very little speed difference between a 32 bit and 64 bit os. But this seems to be primarily because there is very little software written to take advantage of 64 bit(and dual core)processors. I guess I just want an os that will take full advantage of my hardware. I suppose I'm a little impatient and unrealistic in that regard. I think I'll just have to swallow my pride and continue to use Sabayon(unless Fedora wows me)or find a 32 bit robust distro that likes my hardware. Thanks for the comments and suggestions.
235 • #230 (by herman on 2007-10-25 17:17:17 GMT from Europe)
So, you will let your full conversion to 64 bit depend on whatever Adobe's up to? ;)
236 • ELPCIX added to database (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 18:45:59 GMT from United States)
A quick notes:
1. Their server does not seem to be able to keep up with the load demands since being added to the Distrowatch database.
2. Alternate server linked on their site is also heavily loaded.
3. The mirrors listed on the Distowatch database do not have elpcix listed.
Perhaps this group needs to look into Bittorrent or Jigdo to lessen the hit.
237 • RE: 236 ELPCIX (by Anonymous on 2007-10-25 19:02:18 GMT from United States)
ELPCIX is a typo obtained from Distrowatch database page. Also searched with correct project name "ELPICX" and got similar results at listed mirrors.
By the way, the alternate site, distromannia.com, does work. It's just a little slow.
238 • openSUSE wins for me (by jeff_s on 2007-10-25 21:27:23 GMT from United States)
I tried both. Both looked great, had great features.
But bottom line is that Mandriva had the utterly stupid numlock on, which caused my laptop to have the alpha keypad have the numlock on, making to so I couldn't properly type certain letters without turning off numlock. I did all the recommended tricks, like disabling the numlock daemon (what a completely stupid daemon to have), and toggling numlock off in KDE control center in peripherals, keyboard. But it would still happen if I went into something that needed root access, where I'd have to manually turn off numlock with my keypad to be able to log in. But then that caused the whole thing (non root) to go back to numlock being disabled.
This has not happened with any other distro, in any version, with this same laptop, ever. [b]It only happened with Mandriva 2008[/b].
I brought this up in a number of forums, and all I got for a response was "it didn't happen to me, so it's not an issue", from anyone, including the ever patient and ever gracious Adam W (who posts here a lot).
Look folks, it's an issue. It happened. Deal with it.
Thus, all other stuff being relatively equal (both looked nice, and had great features), openSUSE wins because, even though it has some niggling issues, it is solid and does not have any show stoppers. For me, Mandriva's numlock issue is a major show stopper, and quite inexcusable. What's also inexcusable is the response from the pro Mandriva crowd that "it didn't happend to me, therefore it's not an issue".
239 • @238 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-25 21:39:11 GMT from Canada)
I don't recall ever giving that answer.
The reason the numlock daemon exists is quite interesting, it was explained on the Cooker mailing list as follows:
"The reason was complaints Linux wasn't competent to do as windoz did,
remember what the user did last, and leave it that way until he changed it again.
Due to the *nix legacy in Linux, with inherent multiuser and any number of
possible keyboard types to support, the kernel devs apparently felt the place
to manage it was in user space, and so have the kernel always flipping it
into the off state, leaving it up to users to figure out how to have what
they wanted on their own. Distros of a decade or more ago had nothing to
offer users but a recommendation to do it manually, same as Fedora still does
(or maybe just ignoring the issue still) last I checked. The numlock service
was just Mandrake's answer to user prayers for an automated solution.
If I was in the business of manufacturing desktop keyboards, I'd include a
model that had no ability for NUM ever to be off. It's really silly that most
include two completely separate facilities for cursor control, but no
full-time 10-key function that accountants, bookkeepers and input operators
live by. Dumb, really dumb."
Further interesting follow-up from the same person:
"Doing as the BIOS suggests is the right thing to do. SUSE does it via
/etc/sysconfig/keyboard using KBD_NUMLOCK="[YES,NO,BIOS]" (which also
controls KBD_RATE & KBD_DELAY among others). Fedora's been dodging the issue for years. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=107733. NAICT, so has Debian/*ubuntu, who don't even have /etc/sysconfig."
it is, as these things always are, clearly a more complex issue than it appears at first glance. :)
Mandriva's intended behavior is to install and enable the numlock service by default on desktop systems. On laptop systems, the intended behaviour is *not* to install and enable the service. If you have a laptop, this suggests the auto-detection did not work correctly - you can confirm this with:
perl -I/usr/lib/libDrakX -Mdetect_devices -e 'print detect_devices::isLaptop() . "n"'
if it thinks your system's a laptop, it'll return 1. If it thinks it's not, it'll return 0.
So if it gets it wrong, file a bug at http://bugzilla.zarb.org/ , including the output of the command 'dmidecode' run as root.
If you have a desktop but you're using an unusual keyboard (one of those small ones with no numeric keypad), then the behavior you saw is intended but not optimal. I've asked if it's possible to detect these and use the laptop logic for them, not sure if it will be.
240 • @239 @238 correction (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-25 21:39:55 GMT from Canada)
erm, dunno where I got the wrong URL from. of course, I meant bugzilla.mandriva.com , not .zarb.org.
241 • @234 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-25 21:41:13 GMT from Canada)
"But this seems to be primarily because there is very little software written to take advantage of 64 bit(and dual core)processors."
Not really, it's just that most types of code don't really derive any benefit from the extra registers.
242 • Don't you just hate it when..... (by mikkh on 2007-10-25 22:26:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
The second beta is a backward step from the beta 1 that was working fine !
Vector 5.9 is the guilty party this time. The flgrx (ATI 3D) drivers were
working fine in the first beta, now I get an endless loop and have to pick a lesser
driver before the install will continue.
I don't normally bother with beta versions, but Vector has been my favourite for a long time, so I couldn't resist.
243 • RE: # 235 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-25 22:47:20 GMT from Italy)
"So, you will let your full conversion to 64 bit depend on whatever Adobe's up to? ;)"
As if Adobe were the only problem (and it works anyway in openSUSE 64 bit) :)
How about a double set of libraries (which in turn drives Smart for SUSE completely mad)?
244 • @239 (by jeff_s on 2007-10-25 23:40:33 GMT from United States)
Thanks, Adam. I'll check that out with the live CD.
Your explanation sounds reasonable - it's just failing to detect that the machine is a laptop, in the case of mine.
If that part worked properly, I'd be all in favor of the numlock daemon that Mandriva is using. On regular desktop keyboards, it makes no sense to have numlock off.
245 • 64 bit distros (by Don on 2007-10-26 00:25:34 GMT from United States)
"Not really, it's just that most types of code don't really derive any benefit from the extra registers."
Adam,
I would ask "Why", or "Why isn't more code written to benefit from the extra registers", but I'm certain the answer would be over my head. For what it's worth, I really like Mandriva and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the Mandriva One 2008 i586 version to work correctly either. The md5sum was correct, but I suppose it could have been a bad burn. Just to be sure, I'll try burning it again with my other optical drive. I may even download a fresh iso. If it still doesn't work, Mandriva may still find its way to one of three notebooks in our home.
246 • 64 bit never a problem for me... (by Max on 2007-10-26 10:47:46 GMT from Australia)
I have run 64 bit Gentoo for about a year (2005-2006) as my main desktop and hardly had any problems, except for the odd portage package break - hardly a 64-bit problem...
I am now running 64-bit Debian Unstable on a very new Dell M1330 and everything runs beautifully. Even WMV and Xvid files play out of the box! Now that was impressive. They even have adobe's flash in the official repo - installed that and bingo. The only problem I had was one line of text in a config file to get the sound working... Other than that, it just worked.
Finally, I have been running a 64-bit CentOS server for about 1.5 years without a glitch from day one...
You folks have either been extremely unlucky, or you've tried the wrong distros...
BTW, I also run Windows x64 on the Dell laptop... It was very tricky to get the drivers for that as they are not available from Dell's website.
I had to use a tweaked Nvidia driver, hack an inf file to get Bluetooth working, and had to google hard for 3 other drivers... It took me about 3 days just to get all the drivers sorted...
247 • One more reason to run 64-bit (by Max on 2007-10-26 10:53:31 GMT from Australia)
My laptop has 4GB of RAM... A 32-bit OS only gives me about 3.5GB of usable memory. A 64-bit OS gives me the full 4GB to work with...
248 • All hail PCLinuxOS (by Chuck on 2007-10-26 13:06:54 GMT from United States)
It just proves what we PCLinuxOS lovers already know. Thank you Distrowatch. Thank you PCLinuxOS. Thank you Tex.
249 • Qu 248 What is "it"? (by dbrion on 2007-10-26 13:17:41 GMT from France)
"It just proves "
This is a radically simple question...
That is a pity, as a 32 bits/64 bits comparison seems more iunteresting than the holy features of (one out of 5xx) linux distr...
250 • RE: # 247 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-26 13:20:41 GMT from Italy)
"A 32-bit OS only gives me about 3.5GB of usable memory. A 64-bit OS gives me the full 4GB to work with..."
A good, modern distribution will have a kernel bigmem. Debian does (you mention Debian), openSUSE does...
251 • Comparison of bigmem and 64bit version (by William T. Trotter on 2007-10-26 14:04:35 GMT from United States)
Can anyone summarize how a bigmem kernel
on a 32 bit linux distribution would fare
in comparison with a true 64bit version? In
particular, with say 8GB or so or RAM.
252 • 64-bit distros (by voislav on 2007-10-26 14:18:44 GMT from Canada)
The quality of 64-bit distros really varies, I had tried a number of them recently and they varied from would not boot (Ubuntu, Kubuntu 7.04), will boot but crash all the time (openSUSE 10.2) to works just fine (Mandriva 07/08, Mepis 6.5). I find that RHEL and SLED have really quality 64-bit edditions, but those are commercial and are not as fun (bleeding edge).
If you are not running applications specifically written for 64-bit distro, you might as well run 32-bit, since most apps in the repositories that say that they are 64-bit are actually just repackaged 32-bit apps, so there is no gain in performance.
253 • @244 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-26 16:04:35 GMT from Canada)
Sounds good. Like I said, you can test the laptop detection with that perl command, and if you get the wrong answer - 0, on a laptop - file a bug (on the installer) and it should get fixed. If you let me know the bug URL I'll triage it and make sure it gets to the install team.
254 • @252 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-26 16:07:05 GMT from Canada)
"since most apps in the repositories that say that they are 64-bit are actually just repackaged 32-bit apps"
no, this is not true. For all distributions, if a package is marked as an x86-64 package, it has been built natively for the x86-64 architecture. The issue is simply that just building code for x86-64 does not normally give much of a performance boost. Only certain types of operations actually gain a significant boost from the x86-64 architecture. If your app needs to do those operations, great. If it doesn't, you're just not going to see much of a difference.
255 • Re: @82 & Distro ranking (by vukota on 2007-10-26 17:56:33 GMT from United States)
"no, that makes no sense. if anyone were using a bot, the presence or absence of the HPD on the front page would make no difference, as you'd run a bot simply by having it go direct to the distro's page (which is a static page). therefore, the fact that a distro's figures change significantly when the HPD is not on the front page is a good indicator that those numbers do *not* come from bots."
You probably never made one. I did something like this 8 years ago that was more sophisticated than you may eve think about. These days you can write one much easier that those days. If Ladislav was good (what I doubt) in looking his stats it would be easy to spot drop in number of hits for several hours (at least). Back in a days when I did this it would take me 2-3 hours to fix it (after I receive automatic alert). It is extremely easy to pump numbers 3-7 times. If Ladislav really wanted to prevent this he would change at least several things like
1)
256 • PCLOS (by Claus Futtrup on 2007-10-26 18:34:17 GMT from Denmark)
Hi there. It was an interesting experiment to remove the top 100 hit ranking for one day. I noticed it was gone.
Reviewing the experiment as you (Ladislav) describes it in this weeks DW is interesting reading. You suddenly see some spurious distros ranking at the top - they probably had news that day (or the previous couple of days) and therefore people viewed these pages.
It is also interesting to see PCLOS drop to 18% of the scores it gets the other days.
Other distros only drop to about half the score (openSUSE, Mandriva, Fedora, Slackware, Linux Mint, VectorLinux, Puppy). It doesn't matter whether these are big or small distros, old or new, desktop related or not. In this picture PCLOS stands out as being radically different.
I wonder why?
Ubuntu maintained its score - maybe it was around when the latest Ubuntu was released - so they were in the news.
We can conclude that most of the PCLOS hits go through the front page. For other distros, people find their way...
Although my own scepticism is not very likeable (nor is it particularly objective), my conclusion would be that the PCLOS hits are from an unusual access through the front pages.
Unlike Ladislav I cannot see that PCLOS is "just" met with a fair amount of random interest. To be first place on this site does not come by accident or random interest.
There are two possible conclusions - 1) PCLOS has a great PR machine that makes people click their way (consistently) to their Distrowatch page - 2) There is foul play
... a bot which uses random user access information (e.g. from PCLOS user base) - and repeatedly accesses the PCLOS page _THROUGH_ the Distrowatch frontpage. I wonder if this could be coded into a JAVA script (which can then be distributed to many servers - also pages that are not Linux related). Also maybe this access could be made invisible to the user who just loads a few extra bytes (the Distrowatch front page + the PCLOS page).
Sorry for this scepticism. I see how the PCLOS activity hauled ass all of a sudden (in the distrowatch statistics file that you can download) and then never came back down ... that is not the typical character of any other distro listed on distrowatch. To maintain such a persistent increase is not possible through normal "news related" activity - because news becomes old news and interest drops back down.
Best regards,
Claus
257 • Re: @82 & Distro ranking (by vukota on 2007-10-26 18:46:05 GMT from United States)
"no, that makes no sense. if anyone were using a bot, the presence or absence of the HPD on the front page would make no difference, as you'd run a bot simply by having it go direct to the distro's page (which is a static page). therefore, the fact that a distro's figures change significantly when the HPD is not on the front page is a good indicator that those numbers do *not* come from bots."
This is not true! I did something like this 8 years ago. It was custom app that was many times more sophisticated than anything mentioned on these forums. Numbers drop 6:1 is definitely indication of fraud. Everyone else dropped less than 3:1. It doesn't mean that other distros (around 3:1 ration) doesn't do the some (or similar) thing.
258 • I agree (by Anonymous on 2007-10-26 20:36:37 GMT from Sweden)
I'm very, very impressed with Mandriva 2008. Mandriva could be the open source answer to Apple. (read: OS X) The new release looks and feels so polished and professional as you could expect from an commersial OS costing much, much more. A complete product.
I think this one is the finest OS-product the open source world has delivered so far.
259 • @256 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-10-26 22:18:14 GMT from Canada)
Claus, before making serious allegations, you really need to answer the question *why* anyone would write a bot in such a needlessly complex way (going via the front page) rather than simply hitting the PCLOS page directly. Occam's Razor must be accounted for.
260 • Yawn yawn (again) post 256 (by anticapitalista on 2007-10-26 22:20:54 GMT from Greece)
Yawn yawn (again) post 256.
Tell me, what do you think of fluxbox? I'm serious!
2 weeks ago it was released as a 'stable' (though it has always been stable to me) without any fanfare or hype. There must be tens of thousands, at least, fluxbox users out there, many distros use it either by default or as a second choice, yet no-one can be bothered to even comment on its 'milestone' on distrowatch!
Is pclinuxos (add any other distro of choice) bashing so important?
BTW: I have never used PClinuxOs, though I have tried out as live cd MiniMe, PcFluxboxOS and TinyMe.
261 • Future DWW Reviews (by Not a Troll on 2007-10-27 00:52:48 GMT from Australia)
Dear Ladislav Bodnar & Chris Smart
Please consider if it is relevant for 99.9% of people that visit the DWW writing up a review where it is all about what one can do on "my trusty MacBook" ?
If it is not really of any help or use for the 99.9% of people who do not own a Mac ? Then why inflict every one with some thing that may be of interest to the 0.1% of people (re: quote from comment 41= "might be very intellectually stimulating" and notice that was just a "might be")
NOTE: there is no criticism in the way Chris writes or his knowledge etc.
262 • RE: 257 (by ladislav on 2007-10-27 01:11:55 GMT from Taiwan)
Numbers drop 6:1 is definitely indication of fraud.
Please stop these silly conspiracy theories! There are no bots and that's a fact, so please accept it. There might be a few visitors who consider DistroWatch a voting machine, but that's about it.
Or, if you disagree, then prove me wrong. I challenge you to write a bot that will take a distro of your choice to the top of the ranking. How much time do you need?
263 • ladislav (by RE: 261 Future DWW Reviews on 2007-10-27 01:21:30 GMT from Taiwan)
If it is not really of any help or use for the 99.9% of people who do not own a Mac?
If you think a review is not relevant to you or your hardware, then don't read it. Just visit any of the distribution pages on DistroWatch where you can find a number of other reviews, most of which were written by authors who used more "standard" hardware.
Besides, if you are only interested in what the vast majority of people out there use, then I know a couple of good Windows review sites that might interest you ;-).
264 • RE: 263 (by ladislav on 2007-10-27 02:10:30 GMT from Taiwan)
OK, maybe I was a bit harsh, but what I wanted to say was that I strongly disagree with the view that we should only pick "standard" hardware for distribution reviews. Here are the reasons:
1. Firstly, Chris has been doing these reviews on a volunteer basis. As far as I know, he doesn't own a large range of hardware that he can pick for testing distributions. He chooses his MacBook and I respect his choice.
2. Secondly, the MacBook uses the Intel processor so most distributions should work on it. But do they? If something doesn't work, why not? I think those are important questions. I don't own a MacBook, but it's interesting for me to know how a distro fares on Apple's hardware.
3. Thirdly, what exactly is "standard" hardware that 99.9% of people use? I think there is as much difference between a Dell desktop and a Fujitsu notebook as between a MacBook and whatever the word "standard" represents.
4. Should DistroWatch concentrate on a dozen of popular distributions and remove the rest, just because 99.9% don't care about them? Should Debian stop supporting certain architectures because hardly anybody uses them? These are questions that have been asked before and opinions vary, but my view is that these products are relevant enough to continue writing about them. I see no problem if Chris decides to continue using his MacBook for distro reviews.
Oh, and I made a false statement - I don't actually know of any Windows review sites ;-)
265 • RE: 256 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-27 02:36:39 GMT from Spain)
So why don't you stop complaining and write a "JAVA script" to raise Ubuntu's popularity and prove your point?
Ubuntu fanboys are really amusing, they jump from crying foul to dismissing DW as irrelevant, and then I read something like this:
http://abhay-techzone.blogspot.com/2007/10/ubuntu-back-on-top.html
266 • 261 263 264 Mac's (by Tony on 2007-10-27 06:30:32 GMT from United States)
Me 'personally' I enjoyed seeing an article about Mac's and Linux. I look forward to the next review that includes Mac and Linux. From what I read - Chris did good on the article and I'll gladly read his articles Mac related or not.
I can't speak for most DWW posters, but I have always toyed with the idea of buying a MacBook or Mac desktop, but my finances at the time usually keeps me from buying a Mac when I am in the market for a new computer. Regardless of that I feel that one day I will eventually buy one and if the hype is true - I'll enjoy it. If I don't like whatever OS installed, I'll switch to Linux. By reading the reviews(Chris's), I'll have a better understanding of what I can expect.
My thanks goes out to everybody that helped make this week of DWW available to us ALL!
267 • RE 266 : (and others) Architecture support (by dbrion on 2007-10-27 08:56:16 GMT from France)
Perhaps, *today* , a Mac is expensive but the price should be divided by the life expectation (this is a very oversimple approach): wild comparison (a friend of miner with a Mac compared with the number of failures of "ordinary" majority PCs and found within 2 years he had filled the difference of price).
The ability to support many HW is appreciated too by
* industrials (they have money, and, if it is worth the trouble, they can decide to buy linuxen) and
* students (perhaps a great source of linux increase is linked with such HW as Fox cards (http://www.acmesystems. it/) which are used to teach electronics and basic informatics.
BTW : they have neither mice nor screns; the only way to access/debug them is .... via on *outfashioned*, ugly, without_future
Command Line Interface...... It is very strange that it *gets* so popular)....
Will the Holy standard PC remain a standard within 5 years?
268 • RE: 256 (by Landor on 2007-10-27 09:45:26 GMT from Canada)
I hadn't commented on this issue's one topic regarding the HPD ranking because, simply, all those numbers proved is that the page hits are not coming from a system that is running PCLOS "at the time". How many people here run dual boot in linux? I have usually anywhere from 4-8 distros installed. What I would've liked to have seen was the number of duplicate ip's over the period of the 3 days.
No matter though, I don't comment on the HPD ranks, and probably won't for some time again, but I am with quite a few that it's quite odd that a distro like Ubuntu didn't rise past PCLOS during it's release week by a very noticable amount.
Just my two cents.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
269 • RE: 264 (by Not a Troll on 2007-10-27 09:54:19 GMT from Australia)
Dear Ladislav Bodnar
Well I do not try to tell you what to do and in post #261
I did start with the words "Please consider if it is relevant"
It was just a IMHO, perhaps I am wrong ?
But if no one asks then we will never know !
I accept your points in #264 except for the comment:
'what exactly is "standard" hardware' ?
I believe this is simple = IBM or IBM clone machines !
As for your Windows comments - looks like I have tricked you ?
Today I just so happened to multi-boot into WinXP (I have my reasons)
Normally 24/7 I use that distro that all the controversy has been about here !
270 • Ubuntu Gutsy. Linux Desktop has arrived for real (by DeniZen on 2007-10-27 10:36:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hello,
I used tp post in here regularly up until a few months back - when I got rid of my PC's and bought a Mac
Well .. long story - clearly OSX may work well for many, but it didnt work well for me - lots of fundamental issues - A story for a different Forum perhaps.
So, as I have an intel Mac, I turned back to Linux in an attempt to get some basic things working out.
I'd previously been a Debian (and some Mepis) & KDE user, but thought I'd try out the new Ubuntu release for a change as it had just come out
Gutsy is utterly amazing.
Its amazing in understated and not in your face way.
Everything (everything) from the install to the hardware detection to updating, and using he default apps , adding a couple more has gone flawlessly. No hitches.
Its nippy, its got a little bit of Compiz candy (that worked flawlessly too).
And apparently it was a 'rushed release'?!
Well, I'm blown away, and I'm not easily blown away.
We really have got to a point where 'it just works' IMO.
On my intel mac at least - and with my particular peripherals Ubuntu (and thus Linux) has outperformed, and outdone OSX, and by some margin.
OTOH!
I can sense an Ubuntu backlash brewing - its 'mainstream' position will not appeal to the many Linux users who rather like using 'something from the dark-side'. Which is fine and dandy - there are those choices available.
Many Linux users also like to tinker.
No _need_ to do so with Ubuntu any longer - as far as I can see. That in itself wont appeal to everyone!
Therefore its great that we have 'choice within choice'.
I also tried OpenSuse 10.3 - it was good, but there were issues
There was a time where I'd accept the issues and google about to find a fix. For me, I think that time is over, I'd rather avoid it, and spend my time being sociable or productive.
If you just 'want it to work', and work very well, I can see what one of the most obvious choices is - right now.
hats of to Canonical.
271 • DeniZen (by Dubigrasu on 2007-10-27 11:57:21 GMT from Romania)
Glad to see you back!
I am also testing a Mac these days and although I don't intend to ditch Linux (far from it) I,m rather impressed (Tiger not Leopard). I am curious about those "fundamental issues".you were talking about,I mean...what can determine a Mac user to go back to Linux? Was it about technical issues or something else? I remember that you were excited about your Mac a while ago...
272 • Re: 271 @ Dubigrasu (by DeniZen on 2007-10-27 12:38:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hey, how you doin!
Well lots of problems - will be brief as this is not a Mac forum, but
OSX Would not mount my external drive, (unless plugged into the keyboard using slow slow interface) - tried formatting it as mac Native - no difference.
Its slow compared to Ubuntu (and I tried XP 'for fun' too - BootCamped on the same Mac, XP much faster too) Safari can hardly manage to find one webpage it can display properly, Firefox on MAC is lumpy and flaky, Web Multimedia was poor, choppy media playback, many online multimedia pages wouldnt work (even though aledgedly correct codecs installes (Flip for Mac) - Screen font rendition was trully terrible - fuzzy (I tried all the twaeking I could!). Printing quality was poor (tried native and the Canon OSX driver), still got banding in photo's - No decent Office suite, other than paid for iWork 08 - tried MS Office and OO, both cripplingly slow to use, wouldnt recognise my camera, wouldnt recognise my MP3 player, every third or so boot wouldnt make it to the login window,
Kinda tied into using iTunes - which I'm not that keen on
Theres more too, but I forget!
Reinstalled OSX to see if there was a bad install - same problems.
Milage may vary - clearly many ar very happy with OSX - but didnt work out for me.
I like the hardware though
Runs Ubuntu really well ;)
273 • PS one more OX fundemental issue (by DeniZen on 2007-10-27 12:40:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
No native NTFS write support either!
274 • Re. 259 and 265 (by Claus Futtrup on 2007-10-27 13:54:05 GMT from Denmark)
259 - Yes, why access PCLOS indirectly(?)
265 - I am not an Ubuntu fanboy. Googling my name will provide you with answers... but it is irrelevant here. My analysis is on PCLOS vs. other distros and it is only relevant because we don't want foul play with the HPD popularity barometer.
P.S. I do not claim who did foul play. I have no background to claim who did this (if indeed there's someone doing foul play).
Scepticism is healthy. Discussing not why - but HOW - can maybe provide us some eye opening input.
Regards.
275 • Simple questions to @269 and 261 (by dbrion on 2007-10-27 14:34:18 GMT from France)
"
'what exactly is "standard" hardware' ?
I believe this is simple = IBM or IBM clone machines !
" from post 269:
Question 1:
Does IBM continue building Intel (or AMD) platforms?
" the 99.9% of people who do not own a Mac "from post 261
Where does this number come from???? A serious count? A voice coming from heaven???? A keyboard / brains failure???
Info on other platforms than PCs, PCs, again and again PCs might be (as I am not a specialist in astrology, I do not claim that something is sure) very useful in some future....
Perhaps you could ask than DWW review be made out of "copying and pasting" other review, to be sure they coincide with your well founded opinions....
276 • 268 PCLOS hits & Ubuntu release (by Anonymous on 2007-10-27 15:45:08 GMT from United States)
Maybe Ubuntu is losing some steam from its established user base. There's nearly as much assimilation and acclamation for Ubuntu as for MS Windows, and its natural for a certain chunk of users to run the other way. They're probably checking out PCLOS as a possible replacement.
277 • The Fog II or RE: 275 (by Landor on 2007-10-27 15:45:55 GMT from Canada)
I'm going to wave my hand over the crystal ball and see what comes out of the mists for a "computer standard".
(chants linus torvalds over and over)
The answer is.......There is no answer, the standard is what each person makes their standard, basically as you said.
Some people say Intel Chips are the standard, others AMD, then even others say Via. With that said, it's quite obvious the standard is in which the "individual" holds. Market shares in my opinion hold little to no bearing on "hardware" standards. Look at ATI/AMD, if they could get their stuff together (and it "seems" they are trying, where's my crystal ball again) they could easily make their cards/chipsets the standard for Linux at least. But would that make them a standard? No, because something newer always comes along, just as Ladislav pointed out in the information about 1st place, there's only one place to go after being #1.
I've always liked APPLE, simply because they faced off against MS and PC's and have kept their heads above the water, and are have come back from the brink of disaster basically into a wide variety of markets. Speaking of Apple and standards, is the ipod the standard? Not in my opinion. I don't see the reason for an ipod to play music at it's cost when my son and I each have a two gig sansa mp3 player for a fraction of the price and they perform perfectly and are detected in Linux when we plug them in.
If someone handed me a macbook and said, here, put linux on it, it's yours, I'm sure I'd be just as happy to use that if it met "my needs" in performance. This whole standards issue makes me shake my head as I am sure it does you, kind've sounds like a Redmond thing in my opinion.
Just goes to show how some in a community that prides itself on diversity are willing to segregate if it's not what "they" believe.
On another note, I tried out PCBSD 1.4, I loved the overall feel and performance of it. I'm kind've concerned over mixing the different packages branches though, as it's been said that it can cause problems. I think if that is the case they should've built quite a few more packages for their manager before releasing it. I couldn't test all of it either. I looked all over for ndiswrapper or something like it for 1.4 but couldn't find anything, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I'm sticking to my guns and not running a cable to get something going. :) I think in that case though, it would limit a lot of notebooks and such that the wireless is not detected/configured.
I hope the weather is nice in France for your weekend.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
278 • Parted Magic (by KimTjik on 2007-10-27 17:38:21 GMT from Sweden)
Nice to see that Parted Magic 1.9 was released. Unfortunately it looks like GParted has come to dead end. Next 2.x won't include GParted. So as far as I can understand nobody picked up the GParted project after LarryT.
A positive sign though could be that Patrick Verner doesn't have any negative note on the Parted Magic home page anymore (could it be that some felt compelled to support him?).
According to previous information by Patrick, he found it difficult to continue because many used these tools, but didn't give anything back, and secondly most distributions do include their own partition set of tools. Since Live-CD:s still are trickier to run on all hardware, besides the longer boot-time, does anyone here know about another GUI front-end which possibly could be a replacement for the discontinued GParted project?
The whole idea of GParted, an easy to understand graphical interface which makes the risk for mistakes less (that's at least my view and I suppose most new users would agree), was great. Thus I believe such a project, revived or new, still has its place. Hardware change, linux code change, so some day the old stuff might be too old.
279 • Why I'm back to LinuxMint (by Tim Lord on 2007-10-27 23:26:04 GMT from United States)
(Written from my Toshiba Satellite M115-S3094)
I was intending to run Ubuntu 7.10 on this laptop, which had been running LinuxMint 3.0 until a bit more than a week ago. With Mint, it worked very well; there were occasional glitches, to be sure, but that's been true of every computer and every OS I've ever tried. In particular, I was pleased that 3D effects worked nicely.
The Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) ISO I'd downloaded ran fine on it as a Live CD; desktop effects were (as I knew to expect) somewhat more restrained than they are with some distros -- which is pretty smart, considering that they're turned on by default. They also ran just a bit more jerkily than I'd gotten used to, but I chalked this up to running from the CD rather than the hard drive. Even ordinary windows moved very jerkily, which was surprizing, since previous Ubuntu versions worked quite smoothly. (Aside: Live CDs have gone from amazing to more amazing. RAM and processors have both kept creeping forward, which helps make up for the hard-drive bottleneck.)
So, having self-righteously and conscientiously backed up all the important stuff on my hard drive, I installed 7.10 -- a clean, total install. The install was perfectly pleasant, no complaints and much praise. I was impressed by many small aesthetic improvements to the desktop, too. The main reason I didn't keep 7.10 on here is because of problems with the display.
Though the Live CD had detected my 1280x800 screen fine and seemed happy to use desktop effects, once I installed Ubuntu and rebooted, the correct resolution was lost, and desktop effects were nowhere to be had. I tried everything on the short list of things I knew to try. First, I used the Displays control panel to try various Intel drivers -- this laptop has an integrated Intel 950 video system -- but the same Intel experimental mode-setting driver which worked fine for the Live CD system did not work for the installed system; it would allow no resolution greater than 1024x768 (which looks esp. ugly on a widescreen monitor), and desktop effects -- the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed -- could not be activated. Worse, even ordinary window and pointer movement were if anything far jerkier than they had been with the live system. I know that sounds nutty, backwards, etc. -- it is! I am glad that my experience is seemingly unusual, since most reports seem to indicate that Gutsy is going on pleasantly and smoothly, esp. for Intel chipsets like mine.
I booted back into the live system, and copied the xorg.conf file from there into my installed system; that did work a little better, in that on rebooting the system would at least show the desktop at 1280x800. However, all movements were still extremely jerky, and 3D was not even possible.
From this point, I tried removing all traces of Compiz-fusion from my system and reinstalling it: all I got back was the same mostly-busted system. I thought "ah ha! Beryl (rather than Compiz) is what worked on it with mint, let's try that!" -- however, this too was a bust. I never completely lost a working desktop or was completey unable to move around, but I also never got one that worked nearly as well as the smooth desktop I'd had with Mint.
And since I had a recently downloaded LinuxMint 3.1 iso on my main (desktop) machine, I burned that to a CD and installed it to the machine in place of the intended Gutsy; all went to plan, and with about 20 minutes of languidly responding to the few queries the installer makes (user name, timezone, etc), I had a working LinuxMint system. Turned on desktop effects, and I'm back to spinning cubes and dropshadows, which makes me happy.
I see that Mint's newest version (4.0) is just out, and I'm now downloading it; I wonder if it will have whatever oddball juju didn't want to play well with my Satellite.
Upshot: I am a fan of Ubuntu, and have no doubt that the people who are happy with Gutsy Gibbon are happy with good reason. It just sadly didn't cooperate with my hardware. I'm still running Ubuntu, sort of, since Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu proper, and I hope that Mint 4.0 will let me smoothly move to the new tickless kernel (not that I deeply understand the zen of ticklessness, but I do like promises of better battery life as a result) and Gnome 2.20.
timothy
(Cross-posted from my Slashdot journal; or rather, I'm about to cross-post this there ;))
280 • Re 174 ....Update (by Observer on 2007-10-28 01:43:03 GMT from Australia)
174 • Some More Bigpond Server Download Stats (by Observer on 2007-10-24 09:35:40 GMT from Australia)
Bigpond Server Download Stats For Small Selection (based on number of downloads) Of Current Stable Linux Distro Releases.
1. Total Fedora 7 = 2,344 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)----now----->2364
(Most popular single Linux iso is Fedora Core 7 i386 DVD = 1486 downloads)----now---->1500
2. Total Ubuntu 7.10 Family = 1057 (21-10-07 - 4:30 PM AEST)---now--->1820
--------------------------
Total Fedora 7 = 2380
(F-7-i386-DVD.iso----->1514)
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=details&id=28704
Total Ubuntu 710 Family = 2326
ubuntu-7.10-dvd-i386.iso ------->649
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=details&id=31486
ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso----->532
http://files.bigpond.com/library/index.php?go=details&id=31476
Its enough just to check the above two Ubuntu links in 1 or 2 days time to confirm that Ubuntu Family has surpassed Fedora 7 total downloads at BP server in just over a week of its release vs 5 mths of Fedora 7's accumulated download record.
Bp downloads count - 28 - 10 -07 (12pm)
Ubuntu 7.10....>1657
Kubuntu 7.10 ......>309
Xubuntu 710 ----->150
Edubuntu 7.10 ----->91
Ubuntu Studio (64bit alternate) 7.10------>20
Mythbuntu------>83
MiniMyth---->16
----------------
Total Ubuntu 710 Family = 2326
281 • UBUNTU-Gutsy64 : Not good on HP dv2610us (by HP User. on 2007-10-28 02:29:43 GMT from United States)
I have been a Linux user, for a long time (~10yrs).
I have used several distros (mostly SUSE, SLAKWARE, FEDORA).
So far with my freshly aquired HP notebook dv2610us, I found KUBUNTU 7.10 just too difficult to install!
There is a Broadcom wireless chip, and an NVIDIA 7150 (recent).
The problem is that the installer does detect properly theses chips.
Ideally, it should detect "non supported chips", and let the user do a manual install.
Instead, lots of very misleading errors messages!
Trying to fix the install, lead to just too many ways to do it... and so far no real success.
I may keep retrying, possibly reinstalling from scratch but admit some distrust in this distro, at least for the moment.
Wondering if the rush to meet fixed releases dates (like SUSE), does not lead to this kind of problems?
Note that the UBUNTU 64, and 32 that I tried have similar problems, so the issues do not seem to be KDE or 64 bits related.
A lot of users here, seem critical of SUSE: I have used many versions of it, and reconize some slowness, but so far the SUZE installs (not updates!) were a breeze. And if YAST is slow, it is also very solid (excepted 10.1) and easy to use.
Hope I can finally install Ubuntu 7.1 on this HP notebook.
That's all.
HP User.
282 • 281 (by Anonymous on 2007-10-28 03:35:41 GMT from United States)
I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop with Broadcom wireless.
On the first boot, the restricted drivers manager pops up and asks to install firmware. It then installs, you reboot, and your wireless works.
It does detect unsupported chips, and in the restricted drivers manager allows you to install your own driver, even reading from a Windows partition.
283 • RE: # 278 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-10-28 05:13:43 GMT from Italy)
"Nice to see that Parted Magic 1.9 was released. Unfortunately it looks like GParted has come to dead end. Next 2.x won't include GParted. So as far as I can understand nobody picked up the GParted project after LarryT."
I have just tried Parted Magic 1.9 and I found it great. Absolutely the same experience as described here:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070806#feature.
However I didn't know that "Next 2.x won't include GParted."
What will replace it? Won't Parted Magic lose much of its purpose?
284 • Fluxbuntu Gutsy Gibbon RC available for testing. (by K Agashe on 2007-10-28 07:10:36 GMT from India)
Although, not reported to you Fluxbuntu 7.10 RC is available for testing.
http://releases.fluxbuntu.org/7.10/rc/
RC has only install CD, however, final will have Desktop CD as well.
kagashe
285 • Mandriva 2008 vs Suse 10.3 (by Roger Pierson Jr on 2007-10-28 07:52:59 GMT from Spain)
BOTH are deserving of serious consideration. As usual Suse has a
full compliment of programs. But this time Mandriva has an edge that cannot be denied. Most users ( Linux as well as Windows ) should appreciate the overall quality of of both of these offerings.
286 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-10-28 14:40:32 GMT from Hungary)
Check Frugalware's roadmap site at http://frugalware.org/roadmap ...
Frugalware 0.8 (Kalgan) is coming ...
287 • pclinuxos (by ees on 2007-10-28 22:32:54 GMT from United States)
Two Words...... don't hate - it works - yours doesn't
288 • RE: 273 (by johncoom on 2007-10-29 07:22:31 GMT from Australia)
re: • "PS one more OX fundemental issue" -> is this true ?
http://www.google.com/search...q=OSX&as_q=ntfs&btnG=Search%C2%A0within%C2%A0results
For Local Networking:
If one has two computers (a) a Mac OS X (b) a WinNT/2000/XP/Vista with ntfs file system
And the Mac accesses any network "share" folders on the Win/ntfs box then it will be able to access any files and read them (write to the folder, if its been enabled)
Do correct me if you can prove me wrong - I believe any OS can access any other OS across a Network
289 • RE 288 I agree that any *working* (by dbrion on 2007-10-29 08:17:50 GMT from France)
"OS can access any other OS across a Network "
if one has two computers...
But what may happen if you want to detect viruses (clamscan does it nicely) on a Windows partition/external drive? Will you run and network a *suspected* OS?
Number of Comments: 289
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| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Full list of all issues |
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GhostBSD
GhostBSD is a user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. Its default desktop is MATE, but a separate community edition with Xfce is available too. It also features a selection of commonly used software, a rolling-release development model, and a bootable live image with an intuitive graphical system installer.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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