 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 227, 5 November 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! An excellent week for open source software enthusiasts as it finally brought the first public preview of the OpenSolaris-based Indiana, a new operating system trying to take over our desktops. Will it succeed? Although the release was marred by controversies and heated discussions on the project's mailing list, the first reviews indicate that Indiana is on the right track. In other news, a new distribution called gOS gets bundled with a US$199 Linux computer, Mandriva's François Bancilhon writes an angry open letter to Microsoft, Debian introduces a new KDE4 live CD, Fedora prepares for a big release day, and Kubuntu developers ponder the future of the project. Finally, don't miss the featured article which looks at the recently released Ubuntu Studio 7.10. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Reviews |
First Look at Ubuntu Studio 7.10 (by Susan Linton)
Introduction
Hot on the heels of the Ubuntu 7.10 release came Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu Studio is a more complete version of Ubuntu primarily aimed at audio / video and graphic artists, but is suitable for anyone wanting a highly capable multimedia system. When I first tested Ubuntu Studio last release, I was very impressed. Many of my usual Ubuntu complaints were gone when using Ubuntu Studio. So while much of the world looked forward to Ubuntu's latest release, I personally looked forward to Ubuntu Studio 7.10.
Installation and first impressions
The installer has changed just slightly since last release. It still uses the older Ubuntu ncurses installer, but now it asks for less user input. The user must still partition or choose an install partition, but otherwise the install process is more or less automated. More hardware is auto-configured and one does have choices of where to install the bootloader. My installation picked up on my other installs and added them to the GRUB menu. The silent boot splash is cleaned up this time and that ugly verbose output box is gone.
One of the first things I noticed when I booted Ubuntu Studio was its look and feel. It offers one of the most beautiful implementations of GNOME I've seen. Their theme is characterized by a dark grey color that is surprisingly easy on the eyes. The contrast between the darker background with the aqua or Caribbean blue highlights makes for a unique and hard-to-replicate foundation. There didn't seem to be any change in this scheme this release and perhaps that's best. Sometimes you just can't improve on a good thing.
Ubuntu Studio 7.10 Add/Remove applications
(full image size: 204kB, screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
The next thing you might note is the amazing amount of software included in the 803 MB download. Perhaps the Internet and office areas might be a bit thin, but the menu is just chocked full of all sorts of graphic, sound, and video applications. From using to editing to creating, it's probably covered in Ubuntu Studio.
Included Software
Again, like last release, there isn't a lot of selection in the office or Internet areas, consisting only of OpenOffice.org 2.3.0 Writer, Firefox 2.0.0.6, and Pidgin 2.2. Beneath GNOME 2.20 we find Linux 2.6.22-14-rt, X.Org 7.2, and GCC 4.1.3. What's not included by default is likely available from software repositories.
Graphics. In this release we find GIMP 2.4.0rc3, Agave (a color scheme chooser), Blender (3D modeller), Cinepaint (image processing), FontForge and Specimen Font Previewer, F-Spot, gThumb, Hugin (panorama creation), Inkscape (SVG), Stopmotion (animation creation), Scribus, Synfig Studio (create 2D animations), and Xsane.
Sound. The Audio Production menu is jam-packed with applications. It has synthesizers, drum machines, electronic keyboards, scratch and mix apps, electronic DJs, creation and editors, special effects applications, and just plain ole players. Some titles include Rosegarden, terminatorX, Mixxx, Freebirth, SnooperLooper, Hydrogen, Audacity, Ardour GTK2, BEAST, Audacious, Sound Juicer, and bunch of other JACK software. There's something in this mix for just about any skill level or purpose. There's a lot of fun stuff in this menu!
Video. Under Video Production we find Cinepaint, Kino, Pitivi (video editor), and Stopmotion. Ubuntu Studio also includes the Totem movie player, but it doesn't come with essential codecs for playback. A pop-up will appear to search for needed codecs, but not everything required for full playback is found. In the end I could play .avi, .mp3, and .mpg.
Miscellaneous software. As usually found in GNOME is a full menu of Preferences. Ubuntu Studio comes with a few wallpapers, several window themes, and some beautiful screensavers. Under Administration you will find the Synaptics Software Manager and the Restricted Drivers Manager that allows the user to install other software and perhaps some needed drivers. This is also where you'll find the Network Tools and Update Manager. It had only been a few days since its release and already there were 54 updates available.
Ubuntu Studio features a pretty "Quit" menu. It contains options to switch user, reboot, logout, hibernate, and suspend. Each are represented by some great looking icons. One little touch that I noticed in Ubuntu Studio is the Leave Message option when your desktop is locked. That way passers-by can leave you a message that will be displayed upon unlocking the desktop.
One of the most noticeable issues with Ubuntu Studio was the GNOME Settings Daemon's "failed to start" error upon login. It only occurred about half the time and logging out and back in was the immediate fix. I found a few applications that wouldn't open, a few abruptly exited when opening test files, and the Add and Remove Software (Synaptic) crashed on me a time or two. When applying the updates, all installed without issue except for some conflicts with Audacious plugin files.
Hardware support
Most of the hardware on my HP Pavilion dv6105us was auto-configured. The resolution was set to the optimal 1280x800, the sound worked out of the box, and the touchpad and add-on USB mouse worked just great. My wired Ethernet chip worked out of the box using the reverse engineered Forcedeth drivers, but my wireless is almost always the exception with any distro.
Like the last release, a full working NdisWrapper isn't included in repositories for Ubuntu Studio, so I tried to use the Restricted Drivers tool to enable my Broadcom wireless Ethernet chip. The Restricted Drivers utility installed bcm43xx-fwcutter and I was asked where my Windows drivers were located. I navigated to them and the utility reported success. But my chip still wasn't activated and no device entry for it appeared in the Network Manager. I tried modprobing the driver, but it still didn't work. I ended up installing the kernel headers and the build-essentials through the Synaptic Software Manager and building NdisWrapper myself. Then I could extract the drivers from the Windows partition and use them. Now I have my wireless connection with WPA at boot.
The Restricted Drivers tool worked well installing the NVIDIA proprietary graphic drivers for my graphics chip.
However, there were some little problems. The first of note was that Suspend to Disk (hibernate) and Suspend to RAM (suspend) didn't work this release. They both worked really well last release on this same laptop, but this time the machine would not finish going to sleep and, of course, could not wake up. It seemed to just lock-up. I did notice that CPU scaling worked out of the box and the battery monitor applet appeared when the A/C power was unplugged. Another issue was with the sound server. It would become deactivated during periods of inactivity and some application would reactivate it, but some others could not.
Conclusion
Although I thoroughly enjoyed Ubuntu Studio in the past and this release of Ubuntu Studio seems sound for the most part, I couldn't help feel my enthusiasm wane. It's still a fun and useful system, but it just didn't excite me as before. At first it felt like I was reviewing the same Ubuntu Studio that I did six months ago, with the only real improvement found in the installer. There is a new wallpaper, but that image was used in other areas last release. The base code and applications have been updated, but it seems some things regressed, such as video file playback support (or available codecs). It had a few more crashes and inoperative applications than the last release, and the error when starting GNOME was new. With the suspend options also broken, one has to wonder - what happened?
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| Miscellaneous News |
Indiana controversies, Mandriva vs Microsoft, OpenBSD 4.2 interview, Debian KDE4 live CD, Fedora 8 and PulseAudio, Kubuntu future, end of Trustix
 Project Indiana, one of the most eagerly anticipated free operating systems in recent years, has hit a new milestone when it released the first public preview last week. For those who missed the story, Indiana is an attempt to bring Sun Microsystem's Solaris to the desktop, as an alternative to Linux. The project is an initiative of Ian Murdock, a well-known developer who founded Debian GNU/Linux back in 1993, but who has been working at Sun since March 2007. Indiana's first preview is a GNOME live CD with automatic hardware detection and setup, and a graphical installer - quite similar to many Linux live CDs available today. However, it also includes a number of much fancied (though less visible) features, such as the famed ZFS file system and DTrace, a dynamic tracing and troubleshooting framework.
The euphoria over the release was somewhat spoilt by two major mailing list fights - the naming of the release and the /bin/bash issue. Following Ian Murdock's suggestion that this release should really bear the name OpenSolaris Developer Preview as it represents the most complete OpenSolaris release to-date, many members of the OpenSolaris user community expressed strong objections. The second fight was due to the project's decision to use /bin/bash (from GNU) as Indiana's default shell, rather than Sun's traditional Korn shell, KSH-93. As was later explained by Dave Miner, this wasn't a conscious change on the part of the developers, but rather a convenience that helped them to get the Indiana preview out on time. But the explanation only arrived after a large number of heated arguments were posted by some disenchanted members of the OpenSolaris developer community. Overall though, Indiana's first public release is surprisingly good - not quite usable as a desktop system (it lacks too many applications), but certainly an attractive demo showcasing OpenSolaris to a much wider audience that was possible until very recently.
Indiana Developer Preview - OpenSolaris for the desktop
(full image size: 214kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 Another piece of news widely reported by many Linux news sites was the sudden appearance of a $199 Linux computer at WalMart. This in itself wouldn't have been all that exciting, except that the system runs a Linux distribution called gOS. What? You've never heard of gOS? Well, neither has DistroWatch until last week, but that didn't prevent it from being supplied as an operating system on a low-cost computer, available at a major retailer in the United States! Quite an achievement, given that many well-established Linux distributions struggle to gain presence on the shelves of computer stores. Aside from the surprise appearance, gOS is an Ubuntu-based distribution using a heavily modified Enlightenment window manager. In the media, it was often presented as a "Google OS", but the project's web site states that gOS is not affiliated with Google in any way. Even so, the distro developers are clearly enamoured with Google applications and services, which form an integral part of the gOS experience. The computer and the OS are meant to attract less technical computer users, but its low-end specifications suggest that it might be too sluggish to be really enjoyable. Still, it's hard to beat the price!
gOS 1.0: an Ubuntu-based distribution with a modified Enlightenment desktop
(full image size: 375kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 Those who follow François Bancilhon's occasional blog posts will probably agree: the Mandriva CEO is not the most diplomatic PR representative a company could dream to have. But you can't fault him for being outspoken and emotional when things don't go his way; previously he demonstrated it with his outrage (post in French) following the French parliament's decision to adopt Ubuntu rather than Mandriva, and last week he presented similar passion when he wrote an open letter to Steve Ballmer. In it, Bancilhon accused the Microsoft CEO of dirty tricks following a large-scale sale of Mandriva-based laptops to the government of Nigeria. From the post: "Wow! I'm impressed, Steve! What have you done to these guys to make them change their mind like this? It's quite clear to me, and it will be to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve? There is various names for it, I'm sure you know them."
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 With so much interesting news hitting the open source wires, the stable release of OpenBSD 4.2 went almost unnoticed. Luckily, ONLamp's excellent tradition of talking to the OpenBSD developers after every release continued last week when they published a 3-page interview with several OpenBSD developers: "This release comes with some amazing performance improvements: basic benchmarks showed PF being twice as fast, a rewrite of the TLB shootdown code for i386 and amd64 cut the time to do a full package build by 20 percent (mostly because all the forks in configure scripts have become much cheaper), and the improved frequency scaling on MP systems can help save nearly 20 percent of battery power. And then the new features: FFS2, support for the Advanced Host Controller Interface, IP balancing in CARP, layer 7 manipulation with hoststated, Xenocara, and more!"
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 Also released (and also buried under other, more exciting news) last week was the fourth beta of the upcoming KDE 4.0. Up until recently the easiest way to check out the progress made by the KDE developers was to download and boot the openSUSE-based KDE Four Live, maintained by Stephan Binner. Now there is a second option - a Debian-based solution called KDE4 Beta4 live CD: "Thanks to the efforts of the Debian Live project, it is quite easy to create customizable live CDs. We have created live CDs with current KDE4 beta4 for i386 and amd64 architectures." Interested beta testers can download the ISO images from here: debian-kde4beta4-live-cd-i386.iso (418MB, torrent), debian-kde4beta4-live-cd-amd64.iso (426MB, torrent).
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 Next on the release calendar: Fedora 8, code name "Werewolf". Scheduled for release this week on Thursday, the last-minute bug squashing is still in progress following the quiet announcement of the Fedora 8 RC3 installation DVD and live CD images. Getting them now is actually an excellent way of beating the release rush on Thursday; as pointed out by Max Spevack, these RC3 images are as good as final - at least in terms of configuration of package repositories. That's because until Thursday, users running the RC3 builds will still receive updates from the "rawhide" directory, but as soon as Fedora 8 is out, they will be automatically and seamlessly redirected to the stable tree. Just a little user-friendly touch by the Fedora development team.
Compared to the project's previous release, Fedora 8 feels like a relatively minor upgrade, but it does ship with a few interesting features up its sleeve. One of them is PulseAudio, a new sound server: "PulseAudio is a next generation sound server for Linux, making all sorts of 'ear-candy' possible: from dynamically changing the volume of individual applications to hot-plugging support for many different devices. Fedora 8 is going to be the first distribution to ship and enable PulseAudio by default and with this in mind we talked to Lennart Poettering who is the upstream and Fedora developer of PulseAudio and Avahi about the work he has put into this." Expanding on the subject, Linux.com has also published an article about the new sound server entitled Why you should care about PulseAudio.
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 While Ubuntu has been improving by leaps and bounds with each new release, many of the best features and technologies are only being added to Canonical's flagship distribution, rather than across its full product range, which also includes Kubuntu (as well as Xubuntu and Edubuntu). Can anything be done about this? From the user point of view, the easiest option is, of course, to switch to a distribution that treats KDE on an equal footing with GNOME, such as Mandriva Linux or openSUSE. The alternative is to hope that Canonical will fix the problem in the future. Juan Carlos Torres offers some ideas in Quo Vadis, Kubuntu?: "Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. We have to make this clear, to ourselves, and to our community. A large part of user expectation is largely based on what we have been doing in the past: trying to catch up with Ubuntu. And users have now grown to expect that. But why do we need to define ourselves and our goals based on Ubuntu? Can Kubuntu not stand on its own merits? ... Once we have accepted that fact, we can start to define Kubuntu as it really is. And then we can decide where we are headed, what we really want Kubuntu to be."
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 Finally, sad news for the fans of small, fast and secure Linux distributions designed specifically for servers. Comodo has announced that effective December 31, it will discontinue the development of the free Trustix Secure Linux: "Comodo regrets to announce that it will discontinue all distribution, updates and direct support for Trustix Secure Linux effective December 31, 2007. The user support forum will continue to remain online throughout 2008. Comodo will continue to support the Trustix Enterprise Firewall as a going forward product through at least the end of 2008, and will introduce version 4.8 before the end of 2007." The UK-based Comodo acquired Trustix in 2003 and employed all of its Norway-based developers in an attempt to develop an enterprise-class firewall, alongside a free, server distribution. But the project was left in limbo after most of the original developers left the company earlier this year. A sad end of an excellent distribution that has been in development since the year 2000.
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| Released Last Week |
SystemRescueCd 0.4.1
An updated version of SystemRescueCd, a specialist, Gentoo-based mini distribution designed for disk partitioning and data rescue tasks, is out. From the changelog: "Updated ntfs-3g to 1.1004; updated Parted to 1.8.8; new sources for the default kernel (rescuecd and rescue64); fix - option setkmap was broken in sysresccd-custom script; fix: network booting via PXE was broken on 64-bit (rescue64); fix - docache was broken with the hard disk easy installation; updated Oscar (French tool to backup data); added option boothd=xxx (boot an installed Linux from hard disk); added raid monitoring tools (mpt-status and cciss_vol_status)."
Vyatta 3.0
Dave Roberts has announced the release of Vyatta 3.0 Community edition, a specialist, Debian-based distribution for routers and firewalls: "Vyatta today announced the latest release of its open-source networking software. The Vyatta software combines router, firewall, and VPN capabilities into an integrated solution that delivers twice the performance of proprietary network solutions at half the price. As the third major release, Vyatta Community Edition 3 adds a number of changes and enhancements, including: IPSec VPN - Vyatta now supports dedicated site-to-site (branch-to-branch or branch-to-HQ) virtual private networking and supports the most widely used cryptographic algorithms. Multi-link PPP (MLPPP) - MLPPP allows customers to increase WAN bandwidth by using multiple low-speed circuits. BGP scaling and security enhancements - improved BGP scaling provides faster routing convergence with many peers." Read the full press release for more details.
MEPIS antiX 7.0
MEPIS antiX 7.0, a light-weight edition of MEPIS Linux, has been released: "MEPIS has announced the 'Lysistrata' release of antiX, a light-weight derivative of SimplyMEPIS 7.0. This version of antiX is built using the MEPIS Linux 7.0 core including the MEPIS 2.6.22 kernel and utilities, but mostly it has a different set of default user applications: Fluxbox and IceWM window managers, AbiWord, Gnumeric, Scite, Nano, Iceweasel, Sylpheed, Pidgin, XChat.... AntiX is designed to work on computers with as little as 64 MB RAM and Pentium II or equivalent AMD processors, but not K5/K6 processors. After installation, even 32 MB RAM has worked. The new ISO images are available in the 'released/antix' subdirectory at the MEPIS subscriber's site and at the MEPIS public mirrors." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.
ClarkConnect Server/Gateway 4.2
ClarkConnect Server/Gateway version 4.2 has been released: "Community Edition 4.2 is now available. Highlights include: improved hardware driver support (Linux 2.6.9 to 2.6.18); mail archiving; content filter group support; web browsing anti-virus support; web proxy access control; web site upload via FTP and Windows file sharing; encrypted file systems support; new Flexshare features. Version 4.x supports upgrades from ClarkConnect 3.0 and later. Upgrades from version 2.x (or systems originally installed with 2.x) are not supported. Known issues: some legacy Dell/Megaraid RAID cards are not supported; localization is incomplete." Please read the full release notes for further details.
StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5.0.6
StartCom Ltd. has announced the final release of StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5.0.6: "StartCom MultiMedia Edition is most famous for its audio and video manipulation capabilities, but also for the wide range of the delivered applications. Today an updated version of this superb operating systems has been released. The enhanced usability of the desktop applications, in addition to various audio and video players, makes the StartCom MultiMedia Edition an excellent choice for the home desktop computer. A new design and the advanced 3D OpenGL driven effects offer some real computing fun, while a TV, video and file streaming server and client make sharing of music and video throughout the local network a snap. More outstanding applications like Cinelerra, Rosegarden, Audacity and many, many sound manipulating effect tools, synthesizers, samplers, sequencers round the picture." Here is the full press release.
GoblinX 2.5 "Mini"
The "Mini" edition of GoblinX 2.5, a Slackware-based live CD featuring the Xfce desktop, has been released: "GoblinX Mini 2.5 is released. The GoblinX Mini edition is the son of GoblinX and contains only the Xfce windows manager and GTK+ applications. Main upgrades since release candidate 1: added script to use module on the fly from Thunar and Nautilus; upgraded gtkKeyboard Layout, gtkSource, gtkHDInstall; upgraded Media Manager and added new policies to HAL and Ivman; added a hidden Ivman home folder because other applications need to save settings; added Xbindkeys and configured special keys; corrected sudo/su and shadow errors." Visit the distribution's news page to read the release announcement.
GoblinX 2.5 "Mini" uses the latest Xfce destkop
(full image size: 1,866kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
OpenBSD 4.2
Theo de Raadt has announced the release of OpenBSD 4.2: "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.2. This is our 22nd release on CD-ROM (and 23rd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install. As in our previous releases, 4.2 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system. New and extended platforms: PCIe UltraSPARC IIIi machines like the V215 and V245; AlphaServer 1200 and 4100. Install and upgrade process changes: new install method - for the most popular architectures, the FTP sites have a 200MB install ISO file, which contains the base set, permitting non-network installs; allow the specification of an NTP server during installation. Improved hardware support, including native Serial ATA support...." Read the detailed release announcement and visit the OpenBSD 4.2 page for a full list of new features.
openSUSE 10.3 "Live"
Michael Loeffler has announced the release of openSUSE 10.3 "Live" edition, now with a hard disk installation option: "From today the live edition of openSUSE 10.3 is available as a GNOME or KDE live CD. Both contain the same software as the 1-CD installation editions from the launch time. The live system can be used as a production system or as a rescue system. Or you can just check out how openSUSE 10.3 runs on your computer without touching your hard drive. The live CDs are available as 32-bit in English only and for the first time they contain an installation option on the desktop. Just click the icon and installation to your hard drive will start." Read the short release announcement here.
dyne:bolic 2.5.1
Denis "Jaromil" Rojo has announced the release of an updated version of dyne:bolic, a live CD with a collection of multimedia software: "Dyne.org foundation proudly present dyne:bolic 2.5.1, code name "Dhoruba", a 100% free multimedia GNU/Linux operating system. What's new in 2.5.1? Support for Java (now GNU GPL) out of the live CD is the special entry of this release, along with bug fixes and snappy support for network booting of thin clients with BOOTP/PXE as documented in our manual. Ekiga has been moved out, but the Iaxcomm and Kiax phone applications (Asterisk native protocol) are pre-configured to work with Blasterisk, the experimental ((i))ndymedia telephone service - just press hash. Upgraded software includes X.Org 7.2 and MPlayer." Read the full release announcement for more information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
October 2007 donation: NimbleX receives €300.00
 We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the October 2007 DistroWatch.com donation is the NimbleX project. It receives €300.00 in cash.
The idea of a donation to NimbleX came up just a few weeks ago. Shortly after the project launched Custom NimbleX, a PHP-powered web applications for generating Linux live CDs, many DistroWatch readers emailed in to tell us about the existence of this unique way of generating a live CD - without having to learn a scripting language. Just select your options from the succession of screens and off you go; a few minutes later, your perfect live CD will be ready for download. But last week I noticed that the project's web site was down. I emailed Bogdan Radulescu, the project founder, who assured me that he was working day and night to bring the site back online after it suffered from a major hardware failure.
Sending some cash to NimbleX seemed like a good way to help. Bogdan was surprised and delighted: "I can't believe my eyes! You sent me €300! I think I haven't got that much in 2 years! I'm supper happy. I will start surfing for a development machine and a new hard disk drive for the server." Following a tough weekend of hard work, I am pleased to report that Custom NimbleX is up and running once again - except that it is powered by better hardware and faster Internet connection. Don't say that DistroWatch doesn't make a difference! :-)
As always, this monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to NimbleX.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a PowerPack competition), digiKam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$15,290 to various open source software projects.
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New distributions added to database
- Indiana. Indiana is a binary distribution of an operating system built out of the OpenSolaris source code. The distribution is a point of integration for several current projects on OpenSolaris.org, including those to make the installation experience easier, to modernise the look and feel of OpenSolaris on the desktop, and to introduce a network-based package management system into Solaris. The resulting distribution is a live CD install image, and is fully permissible to be redistributed by anyone.
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Arktur. Arktur is a German, server-oriented Linux distribution based on Slackware. It is primarily designed for use by educational institutions.
- gOS. gOS is an easy-to-use, Ubuntu-based distribution designed for less technical computer users. Its main features are the use of Enlightenment as the default desktop and tight integration of various Google products and services into the product.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 12 November 2007.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Custom NimbleX (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2007-11-05 10:50:51 GMT from Pakistan)
Just configured custom ISO but when I finally click to generate ISO and begin download, nothing happens. Am I doing something wrong os the site is down???
2 • Multimedia distros (by wegface on 2007-11-05 11:00:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Its a shame none of the multimedia focused distros really come up to scratch. Jad, Demudi, Ubuntu studio, 64studio all much of a muchness. Goes to show that the audio apps available on linux just aren't mature enough yet. I wish they were believe me.
3 • RE:1 (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2007-11-05 11:04:01 GMT from Pakistan)
Ok, made it on Opera and it worked, use Opera or Firefox to generate your custom NimbleX ISO.
4 • gOS - YAU (by parkash on 2007-11-05 11:14:30 GMT from Germany)
Wow... Yet Another Ubuntu...
I'm generally against using Ubuntu (don't know why, it just doesn't appeal me), however I think I will try this one out... I just loooove the looks :D
If I just had the theme, I would only have to install E17... Anyway, it's pretty :).
5 • Kubuntu (by PP on 2007-11-05 11:26:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ubuntu is the distro #1, but it would be even stronger if it gave more attention to KDE. Roughly 40-50 of Linux users seem to use KDE, and it will be difficult to switch once you are used to it's komfort and konfigurability (pun intended!).
I am a KDE & a Kubuntu user, but am ready to switch to another base if Kubuntu starts slipping.
KDE4 will bring a new twist to all of this - it will be exciting. In the meantime, I just wonder how GNOME became so popular. I think KDE is one of the "Killer Apps" of Linux, along with command line shell, and the idea of package repositories.
6 • Nothing to see here... (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 11:45:06 GMT from Romania)
-- Ubuntu Studio is just a respin, nothing more, and nothing to say about.
-- GoblinX 2.5 "Mini" is such a mess! While it looks like a tremendously well-engineered mix of XFCE and "good tidbits" from GNOME, it lacks coherence. It overwhelms you, and they don't even bother to add a generic network configuration tool -- they only seem to care about PPPoE!
-- It's not clear whether StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5.0.6 is based on FC5 or on Mother Teresa's version of libraries (only SJVN can be so shortsighted to think it's based on AS-4.0.4, while none of the libs version match, not even glibc!). And what is the non-existent ML-6.0.6 that you can find on server as packages only?!
-- Strangely, I seem to be the only person in the known Universe who experiences a reduced responsiveness (i.e. it's slower) of Fedora 8 over Fedora 6 or RHEL5 clones, with the same drivers!?!
7 • gOS (by Michael J King at 2007-11-05 11:50:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
It was nice to find out about gOS Linux just a few hours before the launch, I was able to download the distro and try it very quickly before the server was overwhelmed. Its very pretty and simple to use though I dont like the all green minimize/maximize/quit MACOSX window buttons,
I have tried it on various computers, and installed it on my T21 thinkpad for now.
It has only what is necessary for a PC connected to broadband and an ethernet/USB connection. The wireless/network utilitys are not included and have to be added after install. since that is what it is being sold for at the moment.
There will soon be a cheap laptop from the same people so its worth keeping an eye on this one!
8 • Nimblex (by Glenn on 2007-11-05 11:55:54 GMT from Canada)
I am glad to see that distrowatch awarded the cash to the Project. Its concept is a good one where we, the users, can select what we want to have in our system from the beginning and then assemble our own distro. It is a good idea and I certainly hope it develops further.
I've tried it and have been impressed by what I got.
i know it is still early days yet for it but what a nice start
Nice piece of work Bogdan.
Glenn
9 • Re: Kubuntu (# 5) (by Tsela on 2007-11-05 12:00:00 GMT from Netherlands)
@PP: I'm personally a GNOME user. I like the uncluttered interface and the clean look and feel (I like my desktop to stay out of my way). I don't always agree with how GNOME does things, but in 90% of the cases I am satisfied. I tried KDE, but it has never done it to me: cluttered interface (I *don't* need 5 rows of toolbars), slows my computer to a crawl, and I just feel it looks too much like Windows. It *doesn't* stay out of my way (to take back your pun, it never felt komfortable to me). Definitely not a "killer app", more a "killing app", at least for my computer :) . And with CompizFusion, GNOME has all the eye candy KDE could ever dream of, while still being responsive enough on my computer.
There are only two KDE apps I regularly use: K3B (only because my first experience with Gnomebaker was a big failure. I might look at it again) and Kile (I just cannot find a good GTK application with the level of LaTeX integration Kile has).
Finally, I think KDE strayed too much away from the UNIX philosophy: it's one big monolith, which I found never played nicely with foreign apps. GNOME *feels* more modular (whether it actually is is not the problem here, only how it *feels*).
Now I'm not saying that I'm a GNOME enthusiast either. I'm trying Xfce (if I can solve a few sticking points, I might just switch to it), and I'm eyeing E17 (hoping that it won't be irrelevant by the time it's ready for release).
Anyway, just my two cents on why this particular GNU/Linux user prefers to use GNOME rather than KDE.
10 • Huh? Who donated to who? (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 12:05:34 GMT from Romania)
"the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation" includes "Mandriva Linux ($405, a PowerPack competition)".
Wasn't Mandriva who donated the Powerpack?! How could DW have donated it to Mandriva?! By buying it?! But then, you can't count the whole price for the value.
11 • gOS - a refreshing alternative (by Alter Ekko on 2007-11-05 12:08:19 GMT from Norway)
Downloaded it yesterday; the distro is in it's early development, so
many things don't work (could not see the contents of my partitions,
no sound here) as they will later (I'm sure.)
But on my newish HP laptop (screen 1280x800) and a several years
old small form factor 2.4GHz Aopen desktop gOS booted ok.
I could surf the Internet and try some of the many Google apps from
the Enlightment menu. (And I'm using it here to write this text.)
The looks of gOS is somewhat different to what I usually prefers in
linux, but nevertheless I found it interesting and pleasing.
One thing that makes gOS quite important is the fact that it
is installed on the inexpensive - and already much talked about
- Everex linux computer. I guess the Everex-installed gOS might
differ somewhat from the downloadable distro, but it will give a
pretty good idea of what it will look like for those buying that
computer (or a future laptop with the same OS.)
on't know if the gOS download
12 • Re: 6 • Nothing to see here... (by Eddy Nigg on 2007-11-05 12:08:53 GMT from Israel)
Most base and system packages of StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5.0.6 were taken from Fedora 5 originally, however these are not the binaries of Fedora. The similarity to Fedora ends there about. StartCom MultiMedia Edition is not based on AS or RHEL!
ML-6.0.6 is the next version of the MultiMedia Edition, which is in the making right now. The latest release of the ML-5 series is an update of the previous OS.
13 • RE: 12 • Re: 6 • Nothing to see here.. (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 12:18:52 GMT from Romania)
Thanks, Eddy!
14 • FreeBSD (by ArchUser on 2007-11-05 12:27:51 GMT from United States)
There are Ubuntu, Kubuntu, ??BUNTU but nothing about FreeBSD 7.0. Beta2 is out for 7.0 and 6.3 and nobody did try yet, please? No reviews, no comments...
Thank you.
15 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 12:54:39 GMT from United States)
Very good DWW this week.
NimbleX is very deserving of the donation.
16 • Revving up for Fedora 8 (by Duhnonymous on 2007-11-05 13:09:22 GMT from United States)
Exciting past few weeks. New OpenSuse, Ubuntu, and now Fedora. I'm really looking forward to Thursday.
17 • Shame on Comodo. (by Joaquim Gil on 2007-11-05 13:09:42 GMT from Portugal)
It's a shame Comodo is dropping the free Trustix Secure Linux. Hopefully someone will pick up the sources and make it reborn.
18 • Dyne, Blasterisk, CD burning apps etc... (by Caraibes on 2007-11-05 13:10:11 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Just a word to say that I am currently downloading the new Dyne... As always... I am glad there's now a GPL'ed Java... I wish Jaromil would enable gnash by default, so things would be easier...
Dyne comes with Blag's Blastersik (thanks Jebba !). That is free voip to landlines ! I enjoy it, I wish I had more friends and family with a landline! I am glad Dyne offers Blastersik, as I don't use Blag anymore as my main desktop (although it is a fine distro). I wish Jebba would publish a wiki page on how to install Blasterisk on Fedora. Now that I think of it, that might be something for Eddy Nigg from StartCom ! Eddy, why don't you release a 1 cd version (a mini version) of your product ? I say that because DVD's are a pain to download...
And I wanted to answer post #9, from Tsela: I use Gnome only. I used to install K3b & Amarok, but I now don't I use Brasero, and the native Nautilus CD burning app... Both are good enough. And I am now very happy with RythmBox for the music & podcasts.
Can't wait for the upcoming Fedora 8 ! I am still on Gutsy, it's fine, except that if I am listening to the radio via XMMS or another app, when someone skypes me, there's no sound in Skype... I have to shut down the XMMS, and call back the person on Skype in order for the sound to work... That wasn't the case in Fedora/Mandriva/Suse...
19 • Correct choice!!! (by anonymous on 2007-11-05 13:11:37 GMT from Malaysia)
I truly feel that NimbleX is one of the most appropriate recepient!
20 • Re: 11 gOS (by Alter Ekko on 2007-11-05 13:31:57 GMT from Norway)
Sorry, I was a little too fast describing gOS. On the desktop computer
I *was* (after some thinking) able to mount the partitions manually
(as root/sudo) in a console. (Clicking the desktop partition icons had
no effect, and inserted USB pendrives did not show up. Less user friendly
than in Ubuntu - but things might change.)
With partitions containing media files now available, the Xine media player
played (mpeg, avi, flv, even vob, mp3) files very well - and *with* sound.
NimbleX:
The NimbleX sub100 version is my favorite.
21 • Indiana (by Harry on 2007-11-05 13:39:03 GMT from United States)
Downloaded and burned the Indiana live CD but was unable to figure out the user name and password. Should have been supplied, or generated automatically.
22 • NimbleX (by Béranger on 2007-11-05 13:43:23 GMT from Romania)
Now I remember why I ditched NimbleX! It's because its website is using Flash, for instance you need Flash to see the screenshots! This sucks. (So I choosed Wolvix instead.)
23 • Re:Re: Kubuntu (# 9) (by PP on 2007-11-05 13:49:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
@Tsela
Even as I praised KDE, I have to say I can't stand its defaults. Can't stand single-click, since years of windows use have made me a permanent double-clicker. Can't stand too many bling-bling effects, don't like toolbar defaults, and often don't like default apps for file types either.
But that's no problem because KDE is so konfigurable. I spend 5 minutes after an installation, and have my ideal desktop.
The meme that GNOME is faster than KDE should actually deserve to die, see eg.
http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html
With QT4 coming along, I suspect KDE4 to run clearly past GNOME in the coming years.
Finally, the KDE apps that I find most valuable are Konqueror, Konqueror and Konqueror. I just love to have a split-screen file browsing where I have my computer on one split, my website server on one, and a wireless SSH access to my laptop on one. It's just so amazingly komfortable way to manipulate and transfer files wherever they are.
24 • Re: Kubuntu (# 5) (by Gman on 2007-11-05 13:52:12 GMT from United States)
In response to Tsela's response:
I am a KDE user. I just feel more comfortable using it and I like the way it can be configured to my liking. I'm trying to figure out much of what you said about KDE, for example:
cluttered interface - What part of the interface is cluttered?
I *don't* need 5 rows of toolbars - Uh? Where do you get 5 rows of tool bars?
never played nicely with foreign apps - elaborate. I've used Gnome Apps in KDE.
GNOME *feels* more modular - Again, elaborate.
Last, what distro are you using when running KDE? think this makes a difference.
It's one thing to say that you just feel more comfortable in Gnome and that is why you choose it, but to say things about KDE that are puzzling just doesn't make sense.
25 • RE: # 21 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2007-11-05 13:56:14 GMT from Italy)
That was a common complaint. It is "jack" anyway:
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=171034
26 • 24 • Re: Kubuntu (# 5 (by Béranger on 2007-11-05 13:57:20 GMT from Romania)
> GNOME *feels* more modular - Again, elaborate.
Rhââââ !!! We want KTea (Tea Cooker) in GNOME... sorry, we want gTea!!!
And I would also need gUmbrello gUML gModeller ;-))), because Dia just sucks!
Otherwise, should you ditch Mono-based apps, GNOME *feels* cleaner ;-)
27 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 13:59:37 GMT from United States)
> its low-end specifications suggest that it might be too sluggish to be really enjoyable
512 MB of RAM and a 1.5 GHz processor is more than sufficient for the everyday user, even with KDE or GNOME. It wouldn't be enough for most DWW readers, but for a single mother with 4 kids, a limited budget, and only needing to check email, surf the web, do a little word processing, and organize some photos, it will work fine. I use a laptop with far lower specifications, and it is lightning fast without one of the big DE's.
I do think it's a shame that some of the "mainstream" Linux distro developers are ignoring anyone with older hardware. Linux has a monopoly on hardware more than 3 years old, so we should take advantage of it, especially considering the percentage of working desktop computers that are in that range. Most people only upgrade when they are told their computer is too old, so if we support that hardware, we will see Linux market share skyrocket.
28 • RE: low-end specifications (by Béranger on 2007-11-05 14:05:31 GMT from Romania)
> I do think it's a shame that some of the "mainstream" Linux distro developers are ignoring anyone with older hardware.
I *do* think it *is* a shame! A decent Linux with X should be able to run with 256 MB of RAM and a 800...900 MHz processor.
For instance, GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.2/3.3 can run decently on such hardware, but newer versions... rather not.
This is why there is a *need* for lightweight distros based on XFCE, Fluxbox, Openbox, WindowMaker, whatever...
29 • Re 18... (by LIonel on 2007-11-05 14:07:41 GMT from France)
> Can't wait for the upcoming Fedora 8 ! I am still on Gutsy, it's fine, except that if I am listening to the radio via XMMS or another app, when someone skypes me, there's no sound in Skype... I have to shut down the XMMS, and call back the person on Skype in order for the sound to work... That wasn't the case in Fedora/Mandriva/Suse...
Just a thought: maybe the XMMS in your Gutsy is configured to use OSS sound output (which requires exclusive access to sound) instead of ALSA sound output ?
30 • RE: 29 • Re 18... (OSS sound output) (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 14:16:16 GMT from Romania)
Hint: aoss
http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/sound/alsa-oss
http://beranger.org/index.php?article=1232
31 • What??? No FLUXBUNTU! (by Nemo on 2007-11-05 14:22:03 GMT from United States)
I can't believe no mention of the most exciting new *buntu - FLUXBUNTU.
32 • RE: 31 • What??? No FLUXBUNTU! (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 14:26:24 GMT from Romania)
OK, here it is:
http://releases.fluxbuntu.org/7.10/rc/
http://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/~hardwarehank/fluxbuntu/7.10/rc/
http://fluxbuntu.0x12.com:8080/releases.fluxbuntu.org/7.10/rc/
Oh, wait! It's still Release Candidate!
So there is no Fluxbuntu ideed ;-)
33 • UbuntuStudio is a Ultimate Ubuntu Ripoff (by Ryan on 2007-11-05 14:40:26 GMT from United States)
It looks like they ripped their theme off from Ultimate Ubuntu. I was never a Ubuntu fan until i tried this distro. I am unsure why Ladislav has left it off. Its great distro. I am really amazed what just one developer can do. Look at Mepis and what Warren has done. Anyways, if you want a fully featured out of the box version of Ubuntu, you have to grab the torrent over at ultimateubuntu.info
34 • Re:What??? (by ArchUser on 2007-11-05 14:55:17 GMT from United States)
I am waiting for CONSOLEBUNTU...
35 • Re:29 & 30, Thanks, guys ! (by Caraibes on 2007-11-05 14:55:41 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Thank you Lionel and Anonymous from Romania.
I am going to use both tips to improve my Gutsy experience. Right now I am dual-booting Gusty & Mandriva, but I plan on a Gutsy/Fedora8 setup soon !
Those are the little details that make a "perfect desktop"...
As I am reading those reviews of Mac OSX Leopard, I feel it might be ok for a "wealthy Joe 6 pack", but in no way right for me, as I feel FLOSS in general is better adapted for my needs.
36 • gOS and GPL (by davemc on 2007-11-05 15:05:49 GMT from United States)
It just seems funny to me that this distro flew in under the wire and literally nobody heard about it, or knew anything about what was going on except the dev's and vendors. Since its using Ubuntu it definitely has GPL elements, and therefor is required to post the source code and jump through all the hoops all other Linux/BSD distro's go through. I hope you all keep your eyes on this one, because breaches of GPL simply cannot be tolerated, regardless of how much we all love the fact that Linux is breaking big with a major distributor. That said, this OS definitely looks like it will take e17 to the next level, and I certainly hope it attracts the attention of some heavy hitting devs to contribute more to that WM, which I see as the future of Linux. That is, WM's that are much more responsive, less bloated, yet provide all the functionality and eye candy needed by the bulk of the worlds desktop users. While both GNOME and KDE are in fact very robust WM's which already have a ton of base development and huge foundations, they are only good now for the mid to high end range of systems. Flux, blackbox, whitebox, etc.. are all too complex or require more direct Linux experience to fully utilize. This is where e17 comes in about the same area as xfce does, which is to fill the gap, and both of those WM's are simply wonderful.
37 • KDE vs. GNOME (by voislav on 2007-11-05 15:17:51 GMT from Canada)
The most cited reason for using KDE over GNOME that I've seen (no scientific data here) is that KDE is very, very configurable. GNOME is much more difficult to customize, so either you like it or not, but with KDE you basically get a slate that you can draw your own desktop on.
Single click, double click, default apps, windows effects, windows look, it's all very simple to change.
At this point, there is really not much difference in the applications that come with the two environments, you can run KDE apps on GNOME and vice versa with no problems and both are equally "bloated". So it comes down to simple preference and I don't think that anyone is going to be convinced that their environment of choice is inferior.
38 • Ubuntu Flavors (by 2cents on 2007-11-05 15:22:18 GMT from United States)
Come on IMO all these ubuntu flavors are not true distros. They are just cookie cutter of something that can be produced with either a theme or an install of a couple of packages. Why are they placed so high on Distrowatches weekly? I have nothing against Ubuntu, I think it's pretty darn cool for new people to Linux. But they are not inventive enough for me to read about them or ubuntu for the past 3 weeks. When did DistroWatch turn into UbuntuWatch? sad really.... I hope we don't see another ubuntu or ubuntu flavor spot next week.
39 • Debian-based KDE4 Live CD (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 15:26:02 GMT from Finland)
Hmm... I tried that Debian-based KDE4 Beta4 Live CD and my initial impression is that it's currently better to test KDE4 from Live CD's. I don't think I'd want to start using KDE4 full-time yet, it just feels too incomplete. Still, it's nice that some distros have made it available for testing as a Live CD.
On a more positive note, the Debian Live project seems to make good progress. I've experienced troubles earlier when I tested some Debian Live CD's but this KDE4 Live CD runs without any major problems -- and I tested it on a computer that doesn't always play well with Linux distros. A recent PCLOS Live CD, for example, just dropped me to the command prompt on this computer (that's not supposed to happen, or is it?) and several other Live CD distros either fail to boot or get the X configuration wrong. No such problems with this KDE4 Beta4 Live CD. :-)
40 • Ubuntu (by Charles on 2007-11-05 15:32:58 GMT from United States)
Is it just me or is anyone else sick of hearing about Ubuntu? I used Ubuntu since the Warty Warthog days and I noticed that Ubuntu's performance over the years has degraded. There are so many services installed and enabled with a default installation that I feel as if Ubuntu tries to satisfy everyone and is therefore becoming the Windows of the Linux community. It's bloated, slow compared to other distributions, and the latest release feels more like a beta release than a final product.
I have since ditched Ubuntu and went with PCLOS. There's no looking back for me. I don't "hate" Ubuntu, I simply find that it doesn't do what I need it to, but I still have Dapper Drake running on the family computer. Perhaps if Hardy Heron fixes some of the problems I experienced with Gutsy, I might give it another shot. Until then I'm sticking with PCLOS.
41 • # 9 Kile (I just cannot find a good GTK application ... (by Antonio on 2007-11-05 15:34:44 GMT from United States)
Kile is awesome!
Kile (I just cannot find a good GTK application with the level of LaTeX
integration
However, there is also TeXMaker. It also works and it is developed by the person who first developed Kile. You can take it for a ride. I have both and would recommend both to anyone that needs a TeX/LaTeX editor.
42 • gOS (by mdotson on 2007-11-05 15:40:07 GMT from United States)
When I saw a news article on gOS I went looking for it on the net. Found the site, downloaded and installed on my home HP computer. It was a standard Ubuntu install, just with a very well put together Enlightenment-Google desktop. All my HD partitions were picked up, and all USB drives recognized. The PC version sold at wal-mart is said to me media ready, much the same as Linspire, so I assume they have preloaded all necessary codecs for that. The download version only took about 10 minutes to get up to speed on Ubuntu repositories. Works well once you install mplayer, VLC, xmms, etc. gOS is very fast on my 2.5GHZ HP, and I would think runs quite well on the Everex machine. Everything is there a Linux geek would need, either included or in the repositories. The Google integration is interesting and well thought out. As a Google desktop concept this could well be a forerunner. This will work well for Newbies as long as Everex has good documentation. Enlightenment is not as intuitive on the desktop as Gnome or KDE for a newcomer. As long as they(newbies) do not do a lot of tweaking it should work great for e-mail, word processing, internet access, music and video. I'm seriously considering buying a preloaded unit from wal-mart just to see how it performs. Who can go wrong at $199.00. At the worst, if the system is sluggish, it can be upgraded to improve the performance.
43 • And now for something different (by ES on 2007-11-05 15:44:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
All this banter about 'buntu and stuff - if you haven't tried the all-new, singing, dancing Puppy Linux 4 (yes, four) alpha, you haven't lived.
Those still foolin' with proprietary boxes and plastic loptips need not apply:
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/test/puppy-4.00alpha1
44 • Debian-based KDE4 Live CD (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 15:48:38 GMT from Canada)
I also tried that Debian-based KDE4 Live CD. I know it's only beta, but I wasn't impressed very much. It looks to me that they are going after the "Vista Experience" (hope I wrong). Does better UI really mean aero or aqua themes, see through panels and widgets? I'm just afraid it will become next Vista.( Why would anybody switch to vista anyway, besides DX10? )
I think, I will stick with Gnome for now and try Kde next year.
45 • #42 gOS computer (by ray carter at 2007-11-05 15:55:54 GMT from United States)
"it can be upgraded to improve the performance" - we're talking here a via c7 cpu - I'm not that familiar with the c7 but have experience with the c3 - and it is not that fast - rule of thumb was that a c3 was about 80% of a Celeron - I would hope the c7 might be a little better, but I really would not expect much more - it will probably be about equivalent to a 1.2 Celeron. And there is not much of an upgrade path - you can add memory, but the cpu is permanently mounted on the motherboard - no upgrade path there.
46 • Fedora (by Jim on 2007-11-05 16:09:51 GMT from United States)
A big problem with Fedora IMHO is the IRC channel on freenode #fedora. What few times I have tried to get a question answered have been met with hostile responses that made no attempt to answer the question. Failure to manage this aspect will effect the success of the project IMHO. Both openSuSE and Ubuntu have gotten this one down pat. Both provide a helpful IRC channel to ask questions. Even if they can't answer the question. They don't attempt to treat you in a jerky way like they do on fedora IRC.
47 • 36 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 16:41:45 GMT from United States)
The GPL requires only that you release the source of GPL'd code you borrowed from others if you are distributing the distro. You can develop for your own use as much as you want, in private, but if you give someone a binary for GPL'd code you need to give them the original source that you worked with, plus any modifications.
So I believe they are in compliance.
48 • Re:46 (by Anon on 2007-11-05 16:53:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm sorry, but you are basing a community on an IRC channel?
So, just because you asked a question at a specific point in time, yet no-one was forth-coming with the answer, as no-one could help you at that point in time, no one was available to moderate it at that point in time. Are you getting the point here, do not put faith in an IRC channel, use a message board, that will go some way to negate the "timing issues" that make using "IRC as a method of support" very problematic, for any community.
49 • Kubuntu (by rexbinary on 2007-11-05 16:59:25 GMT from United States)
Sounds like it's clear that people want Kubuntu to be a KDE based Ubuntu that matches in features.
50 • #43 (by klu9 on 2007-11-05 17:00:20 GMT from Mexico)
if you haven't tried the all-new, singing, dancing Puppy Linux 4 (yes, four) alpha, you haven't lived.
that sounds like I shouldn't be alive... like you want me dead... it's another Puppy death threat!!!!
FBIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!
/jk
51 • Qu 43 Do computers dance that well? (by dbrion on 2007-11-05 17:13:02 GMT from France)
"dancing Puppy Linux 4 (yes, four) alpha"
and What does alpha mean???
52 • KDE (by Jesse on 2007-11-05 17:14:19 GMT from Canada)
Usually I avoid KDE vs. Gnome debates, but I'd like to share
here. I prefer KDE for three reasons:
1. The way it's set up by default makes sense to me. I like
the way it's organized.
2. The central control panel is great.
3. Power. I find KDE apps tend to be more powerful or better
integrated into the rest of the desktop. The file browser, for
example. I can access http ftp ssh(fish) and local files al
in he same window and it works seemlessly, regardless of
where the files are.
Gnome, while a decent desktop, seems to go out of its way
to hide things from me. I pretty much stopped using Gnome
when they changed the file selecter dialog. I felt like it was
making me jump through hoops to get things done.
I know many people disagree and that's fine. Gnome is a good
environment. Sometime it surprises me how many of the
major distros focus on it, rather than KDE or Xfce.
53 • Fedora tip (by rajihammer on 2007-11-05 17:16:38 GMT from United States)
As mentioned in the Fedora write-up, downloading the F8rc3 and installing it now (three days before official release), is affectively getting the official release early. They are bit-for-bit identical. Beat the rush, I am. Check out the links in the write-up, all is explained. I'm stepping up from FC6 to F8, plus a step up to 64bit. Thanks to DistroWatch I've tried many distros, but bye-golly Fedora does the job for me, and it's fast!
54 • KDE/GNOME (by scribe63 on 2007-11-05 17:17:17 GMT from United States)
The desktop Distroz i use daily, Debian/Etch, 64Studio, and Edubuntu, all come with GNOME as the default desktop. But being an avid KDE user back in the day, i always install and use Konqueror, K3b, Kpdf, and Kile.
I have come to appreciate the simplicity of GNOME Desktop UI, but Nautilus cannot touch Konqueror as a file manager and more, Evince does not compare to Kpdf, and i haven't come across any GNOME app. that can replace K3b and or Kile.
Both GNOME and KDE camps have there pros and cons, i just wish they would inter-operate more smoothly.
For instance, being unable to simply copy/cut and paste between Nautilus and Konqueror and vice versa.
To me Konqueror is one of FOSS killer apps, from file management (split windows), web browsing, document viewing, application launching, etc.. you can almost run a desktop just using it.
55 • Re: Fedora tip (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 17:26:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
You shouldn't encourage people to use pre-release stuff without letting them know what they're getting themselves into. F8rc3 is NOT bit-for-bit identical to final, two serious enough bugs were discovered late to warrant two more respins:
http://qa-rockstar.livejournal.com/5669.html
Wait for the proper final release people, there is a reason for it.
56 • RE: #6 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 18:04:31 GMT from United States)
"Ubuntu Studio is just a respin, nothing more, and nothing to say about."
I'd be interested in hearing about the other Debian-based distros you know of that have a realtime kernel that works correctly from the start and full suite of audio, video and graphic apps installed by default.
57 • gOS GUI (by Marcus Moeller on 2007-11-05 18:05:39 GMT from Germany)
I find the gOS modifications (theme) to e17 very impressive. Okay, its a bit green but the layout improves the usability of enlightenment a lot.
We are currently polling for YOUR favourite desktop environment in our Slackware based distribution called easys GNU/Linuxand decided to add e17 (gOS mod) as option. If you would like to see this kind of enlightenment on easys GNU/Linux, too please vote for it at http://easys.eu.
I promise that we will spend some time to change the color to something more 'silver' ;)
Best Regards
Marcus
58 • Leopard (by kangaroo kid on 2007-11-05 18:46:24 GMT from United States)
Mega thanks to Uphuck and Eskurza for giving us Christmas in November.
Leopard for the AMD pc is coming friday.
59 • is DW much less Fedora minded as oposed to *Buntu? (by stefan on 2007-11-05 19:18:09 GMT from Netherlands)
Hi all,
lately i have been noticing a relative silentness around Fedora. I mean Fedora 8 is due out this week and it has hardly been discussed at all, especially compared to *Buntu where every tribe/alpha was announced, reviewed, discussed. F8 is now at RC5 and it has been rather difficult finding any progress reports on it apart for some screenshots. no beta/rawhide/rc reviews at all imho.
I have nothing against ubuntu (in fact all three of my pc's are now running Gutsy) but there has been SO much unbuntu this and that that I am tiring of it. I can hardly post a reasonable question on the forum without having:
1) no response (if is a technical question not related to bling)
2) have an idiot n00b response
3) have sunk from the main page within hours by "countdown to hardy heron" or "i love ubuntu" threads.
Ubuntu is great but this kind of community is starting to wear on me and i am thinking about switching to Fedora instead but wanted to read more about it.
The buzz around OpenSuSe 10.3 was rather good but in the end is sucked SO very much that i hurried back to ubuntu x64, my oh my yast still s*cks bullocks.
and maybe switching to fedora would be smart if i wanted to get my RHCE.
cheers,
stefan
60 • re: to 55 about 53 (by rajihammer on 2007-11-05 19:38:27 GMT from United States)
Those bugs were addressed in rawhide and are patched on installation. If that is not the case, the first encouragement came from the Fedora write up in the DWW, I'm merely echoing it. As Max Spevack said in his blog post Nov3rd "Chances are that if you installed a Test release of Fedora or a Release Candidate, you want the final version of the release when it is available -- you don't want to stick on Rawhide.
By altering the default settings in fedora-release at the right time, and also by using redirects, the Release Engineering team can achieve this affect without requiring the user to change anything.
So if you have installed one of the Test versions of Fedora, you are already all set up the way you need to be. Your machine will "become" Fedora 8 at the right time."
I'm hosing my system anyway, so if the update method doesn't work for me I'll have a three day wait for the F8rc5 release ie. Fedora 8. Those few bugs were found and fixed before Max made his post and he made no mention of rc4 or rc5, maybe because he didn't need to. The update redirects in yum will give me rawhide updates until Thursday, then it switches to F8 update in yum, no thinking on my part (which some would say I do quite well). I'm not a too afraid. I'll pay attention here in case a good argument is made to the contrary.
61 • Nice DWW, gOS and my rant on the open letter from Mandriva CEO. (by kensai on 2007-11-05 19:53:46 GMT from Puerto Rico)
Thanks for another great issue, I just appreciate the effort writing a newsletter takes. So Ladislav Bodnar, for making this possible weekly, I do appreciate your efforts.
gOS really looks promising as a Linux distribution to be installed on the PCs for the general public, those who are used to Windows, it just has every service and applications those kinds of persons use at clear sight.
For those who want to read a rant on the matter discussed in the Mandriva CEO open letter to Steve Ballmer, I made a post about my perspective, if you care to read, I will appreciate. Here is the link:
http://kensai.blogsome.com/2007/11/04/my-rant-on-unthinking-people-and-why-is-people-better-than-market/
62 • NimbleX Donation (by RHoagland on 2007-11-05 19:55:58 GMT from United States)
I just wanted to let you know how pleased I was to hear about the donation to the NimbleX project. The idea of a web-based custom live disk is really quite an ingenious way of delivering the experience that you want, and offers an easy way to help get friends and family interested in what Linux is and what it can do. It's a great little distribution, and I hope they keep up the great work!
63 • re 21 (by areuareu on 2007-11-05 20:28:48 GMT from France)
The root password is opensolaris
64 • gOS (by Whitt Madden on 2007-11-05 20:37:18 GMT from United States)
I for one, welcome our new gOS overlords!
65 • Cinepaint Correction (by Anonymous on 2007-11-05 21:47:23 GMT from United States)
Cinepaint (video editor)
Cinepaint is a deep paint manipulation and image processing tool forked from the GIMP _NOT_ a video editor.
http://www.cinepaint.org/
66 • RE: # 20 gOS by Altr Ekko (by Cassia on 2007-11-05 22:07:20 GMT from Canada)
Hello what were the commands that you use to mount the partitions in gOS? I have been trying the sudo command but my hard drive just comes up blank with nothing liste. Also did you have to download any other codecs to get the Xine Media player to work properly - I can get sound but no video from my video files.
Thanks
67 • RE: 59 (by Landor on 2007-11-05 22:32:05 GMT from Canada)
As distros progress and it's been said here many times, things become commonplace and you spin up a distro and go, ahh, new kernel, other apps updated, this removed, that added, new theme, then usually you yawn and think, good solid system (or not as the case may be).
I think this "may" be the case with Fedora 8, a new sound system for sure, but other than that, a solid release as was 7, and for someone looking for a distro they can rely upon to do what they want on a foundation that is steeped in historic reliability (from RH to Fedora), then I don't think you'll find a problem with 8 as your choice, and as you said, an added bonus working on a system as base to help you towards your RHCE if that's a goal.
Typing all this as I watch RC5 finish up burning for a spin.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
68 • re #59 (by dooooo on 2007-11-05 22:40:09 GMT from Jordan)
well..
I tried fc8beta3 . the only problem was the package manager (yum) .
the YUM GUI crashed a lot (It looked heavy on my P4 2.4GH 1GB RAM desktop) and no repo's where available except (development) so no useful packages could be installed .
my advice is to wait for the final release and I hope YUM would perform faster - we had it enough with Yast .
sorry for my poor English .
69 • Ubuntu Studio Development (by Jurjen Stellingwerff on 2007-11-05 22:45:40 GMT from Netherlands)
It is true that the last half year has not stabilized Ubuntu Studio much. But they did an import thing. They introduced all their changes into the normal Ubuntu repository. Now there are a lot more eyes to the remaining problems and a lot more hands to fix it. The next version will be based on a very stable Ubuntu LTS version. Expect much more stability in Ubuntu Studio at the same moment. People at Ubuntu are really investing much time into their relation with upstream developers this will have effects.
70 • gOS (by Tony on 2007-11-05 22:53:50 GMT from United States)
I think it is good that a large retailer like Wal-mart is offering a low cost Linux system. My main concern is the marketing of this system will be low. By that I mean a lot of consumers will buy the Linux box thinking their Windows software will correctly run on it and then the computer will be returned a short time after the purchase. The Wal-mart consumer needs to know that for $199 they are buying a Linux system and that it will be different. Different meaning, non-Windows.
71 • Kubuntu and KDE (by Bryan on 2007-11-05 23:20:21 GMT from United States)
I agree strongly with #5. I use Linux nearly exclusively now, and find I have two large preferences: an apt-get/debian-based system and KDE. I became attracted to ubuntu mainly for the vast community and attraction of having answer to my problems even before I have had them (google answers almost any question, but there's ubuntuforums and irc for anything else).
However, kubuntu is certainly the kid sister to ubuntu. That's fine for the most part, but a general disappointment. I know I get the OS without cost, so I am not complaining, but I can see why people may be attracted to pclinuxos, for the well-cared for KDE experience.
However, since I am using linux both at home and for my office, I am looking for a stable, consistent distro that will keep humming away for years. For that, I really only want a big, reliable player - debian, ubuntu, fedora, suse, mandriva for example. Even better, every debian or ubuntu system I have ever had simply updates from releasew to release without needing reinstallation....and that is ease of ownership.
I will stick with *buntu for now, but I as an individual I would rather see ubuntu shift its focus on KDE.
Speaking for the minority (or am I?),
Bryan
72 • Distrowatch Weekly Reader Comment Rankings (by Unny likes Corn on 2007-11-06 00:01:49 GMT from Canada)
Ha Ha, I moved up one spot to #72
73 • New KDE4 Live CD (by Peter Cruickshank on 2007-11-06 00:20:38 GMT from Canada)
A Debian based CD is a really welcome addition. I know the last time I tried the Live KDE4 CD, all I got were error messages. It's still mind-blowing to think that they expect a stable finished release by December 11th.
74 • MEPIS (by speedygeo on 2007-11-06 00:29:21 GMT from Romania)
The Mepis estimated release date is the Thanksgiving day, as Warren spoke, November 24th I guess. I'm an european man!
75 • Klikit Linux, good for newbies. (by Soloact on 2007-11-06 00:48:47 GMT from United States)
I was cruising my Bookmarks and came across the link to Klikit Linux (based on Kubuntu, on DW's waiting list since Aug1,2007), checked out the page and found that they had recently released another "alpha". So I thought I'd give it a try. Found that it is quite easy to use, and has a "storehouse" for easy-to-install apps (sort of like Kanotix' klik or Linspire's). Seems to be a good choice for Linux Newbies, as someone seeking to migrate from MS-os would find it very user friendly. Hope it passes Ladislav's probation requirements and gets added to DW soon. Just a thought from a learning-end-user. Cheers everyone!
76 • Re: 28 ─ The 'big' DEs and older hardware (by vzduch on 2007-11-06 00:53:03 GMT from Germany)
«I *do* think it *is* a shame! A decent Linux with X should be able to run with 256 MB of RAM and a 800...900 MHz processor.»
It's a bit hard to come up with a direct comparison and I can't speak for GNOME (of which I never was a fan), but KDE always used to run reasonably fast on my machine when it was still equipped with an Athlon (Thunderbird) 900 MHz CPU and 256 MB of SDRAM. OK, granted, SUSE 9.3, back in 2005, was a bit unresponsive, but that changed with 10.0 and openSUSE 10.2, which I used before switching to Kubuntu Feisty and then to Fedora 7 ─ which finally made it possible to install KDE without having to install GNOME.
F7 was one of the most responsive KDE systems I ever tried. It was only beaten by Sidux, which I chose not to keep as my main desktop due to its comparably complicated update and maintenance procedures.
In the meantime I upgraded my system to 1 GB SDRAM and an Athlon XP 2400+ (Thoroughbred B) CPU making it even more fun to work with a KDE distro.
77 • Re: 59 (by rajihammer on 2007-11-06 01:38:55 GMT from United States)
I agree with a lot of what you said. Go ahead and try Fedora 8, give it a couple of weeks, I think you'll like it. Less hand holding, more hands on. And responsive.
Raji
78 • A quick look at puppy 4.00alpha-seamonkey (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-06 04:55:15 GMT from United States)
I must say, finally some nice gui interfaces to setting up the video and getting to my USB thumb drives. And as usual, puppy was fast. For the very small distros, I'm down to basically dsl and puppy. I may take another look at NimbleX.
Nice work guys. :)
79 • gOS & GPL (by Tom on 2007-11-06 04:56:03 GMT from United States)
Yet another excellent DistroWatch issue.
Far and away, the most important comment so far is #36.
-> gOS and GPL <-
davemc, is poster #47 correct? Is gOS in conformity with GPL?
80 • Re: #2: Multimedia Distros (by ozboomer on 2007-11-06 06:10:11 GMT from Australia)
Well, I've tried to install and run JACKLab, 64Studio, 64Studio live and Ubuntu Studio and have yet to get anything other than 64Studio to work -at all- in the last couple of months. In most cases, the support (distribution site discussion groups) was trivial/unhelpful/non-existent and there wasn't even a useful FAQ for Installation (Problems).
I have maybe 3 or 4 non-RT Linux distributions that I use for various tasks on a number of PCs/notebooks... but, disappointingly, none of the RT/Audio distributions I've tried are in any way workable for me. This means I have to stick with Window$ and continue to use (almost-)10-year old software as it's the only system that works with my not-so-horribly-under-configured 'music PC' (Celeron 2.4Ghz, 256MB RAM, 3x IDE ATA HDD, DVD/CD-R/W)... and I'd really like to use Linux because of the wealth of MIDI/Audio software available.
The search continues...
81 • re: 67 Landor .... RC5? (by stefan on 2007-11-06 07:19:17 GMT from Netherlands)
Hi landor,
thanks for your insights. did you say you downloaded F8rc5? i heard that was the goldmaster, but I can't find it online ..... could you tell me where you got it? If i can get it now that would be better then thursday with the download rush.
thanks.
stefan
82 • Distrowatch (by Terry on 2007-11-06 09:04:46 GMT from United States)
It does seem to me that Ubuntu does get more attention at DW than it should. There are distros out there that work better for other people. Heck Ubuntu doesn't even have a graphical Grub bootscreen.
83 • Re: 60 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-06 09:10:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Great that you're confident in experimenting with Rawhide and test releases, but your first post was recommending people should use RC3 as a way of getting F8 ahead of time in general. You were furthermore claiming it was "bit-for-bit identical" to final, which is untrue, and without a warning and all the gotchas you described only later, simply misleading.
84 • #83, 60 Fedora RC3: who needs the mirror? (by herman on 2007-11-06 10:51:22 GMT from Europe)
There is no problem.
Once Fedora is out, start the torrent and your image will be on your hard drive very quickly. There's no need to take a mirror, the more people are downloading and thus seeding Fedora 8, the faster it will all be.
It's not the Crazy Sales week in the department store, you know, no need to rush.
Some people new to Linux and not of the warez d/l type seem to not know how torrents work, let's tell them about it.
85 • gOS "saying goodbye to closed software"? (by Carlos Eduardo on 2007-11-06 11:34:11 GMT from Brazil)
In http://www.thinkgos.com/about.html I found 2 contradictory statements:
"To get ahead of ourselves, we're saying goodbye to closed software..."
"We recommend Google for just about everything... Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar, Maps, Docs and Spreadsheets, and more. We'd like to welcome you to the idea that Google already is your "operating system.""
Have they forgotten google aps have closed source?
86 • New Sidux Preview (by jeffcustom on 2007-11-06 12:34:43 GMT from United States)
A new Sidux preview has been released. I encourage everyone to give it a try. I see all the Ubuntu/Kubuntu/PCLOS talk on this board and I think I'm in on one the best kept secrets in Linux. Sidux has a very fast KDE desktop and great tools in place to tame sid. I'm running very current apps, with a snappy desktop with no issues at all for several months now. Getting the latest release from your installation, including artwork, is just an apt-get away. Oh, did I mention the metapackages for all the additional applications you may want? Take a look at the preview or just install the Gaia full release, run the smxi script for dist-upgrading and enjoy!
87 • 79 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-06 12:50:50 GMT from United States)
I wrote post 47 and may have responded incorrectly. I truly thought that they were not yet offering a download, but rather that it was a plan to offer a download, based on an earlier visit to their website.
After spending some time there just now, I do see downloads being offered with no source code. Even goofier than that, they claim to be using some kind of Creative Commons license. I do not believe they know what they are doing with regard to the licensing aspects of a Linux distro.
Some communication with them might be necessary.
88 • Re: 66 gOS partition mounting (by Alter Ekko on 2007-11-06 13:17:35 GMT from Norway)
Cassia asked:
>Hello what were the commands that you use to mount the partitions in gOS?
>I have been trying the sudo command but my hard drive just comes up blank >with nothing liste.
The same experience here too at first.
The problem is finding the names that gOS is giving the partitions.
On a first computer the SATA HD with 4 partitions got names
/dev/sda1 to 4 which is the usual way.
A second computer with an IDE/ATA disk strangely also got the
same sda1 etc names.
A third computer again with a IDE/ATA disk got /dev/hda1, hda5 etc
which is what I have been used to through the years.
So my advice is to find the partition program in the Menu, start it to
see what names are given to the partitions on your computer.
Then using a console: cd /mnt
sudo mkdir 'somename'.
sudo mount (let's say) /dev/sda1 somename.
My computers have several fat32/Windows partitions and
directly after boot the gOS shows their Icons on the desktop,
but empty. Once the partitons are mounted manually those
icons can be used to show HD contents. (Therefore it's easier
to use the desktop icon names instead of 'somename' :-) in
the mounting process.
>''' Also did you have to download any other codecs to get the Xine Media >player to work properly - I can get sound but no video from my video files.
Here the video files played with sound and video without any new
installs from the internet. (And that was a pleasant surprise since
'mother' Ubuntu live distro tells us to get this and that.)
But on the other hand - YouTube vidoes (on it's web page) could
not be shown on my computers, gOS lacked the necessary elements.
AE
89 • RE 88 and Cassia : finding unmounted partition names. (by dbrion on 2007-11-06 13:35:21 GMT from France)
I believe the most general (not only for gOs) is to type
man fdisk # to know what will be done
fdisk -l (or sudo fdisk -l ).
I never had pbs with that way of doing (-l is not destructive) but, according to an old man of fdisk, cat /proc/partitions would do the job..
All this is from memory, but I use that every week end without pbs if I loose a partition/add a disk...
90 • gOS revelations (by Sokraates on 2007-11-06 13:39:40 GMT from Austria)
A nice distribution, I must admit. It looks rather similar to LinuxMint but brighter and somewhat, I don't know exactly why, friendlier.
After reading about it the first time, I browsed through their site and then their forums. Much to my surprise I learned that Quinn Storm (of Beryl and Compiz-Fusion fame) is working on gOS.
Furthermore their plans for a gOS-laptop sound interesting (here is the link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139196-c,fullfeaturednotebooks/article.html). The article is very interesting. I was surprised to learn that Everex is a subsidiary of FIC, which in turn is developing the OpenMoko.
Concerning the source code: it is not easily accessible yet but there is already a button "Browse Source" under "Developers" on the website. The according to the website source code is "coming soon".
91 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-06 14:45:54 GMT from United States)
>>> Concerning the source code: it is not easily accessible yet but there is already a button "Browse Source" under "Developers" on the website. The according to the website source code is "coming soon".
OK, that sounds better. They should be in compliance with the GPL "soon".
I'm still not sure about the claim to a CC license. Perhaps that applies only to their contributions that are not derivatives of GPL'd software?
92 • Ubuntu Studio's theme (by Azrael Nightwalker on 2007-11-06 15:30:54 GMT from Poland)
Actually, Ubuntu Studio's theme is quite painful to use in the long run, especially with LCD displays. 95% of web pages have a light background, which with a dark system theme makes your eyes tired much faster than on lighter system themes. Besides, it's much easier to read dark text on light background than a light text on a dark background. That's why dark system themes are not useful in the long run.
93 • Re: Kubuntu (# 5) (by Tsela (by Terry on 2007-11-06 17:29:31 GMT from United States)
"I'm personally a GNOME user. I like the uncluttered interface and the clean look and feel (I like my desktop to stay out of my way). I don't always agree with how GNOME does things, but in 90% of the cases I am satisfied. I tried KDE, but it has never done it to me: cluttered interface (I *don't* need 5 rows of toolbars), slows my computer to a crawl, and I just feel it looks too much like Windows. It *doesn't* stay out of my way"
Huh? Are you talking about Explorer? Because what you described is NOT KDE at all. 5 toolbars? Where? I've never seen a desktop with 5 toolbars in my life, let alone on KDE. You *can* make that many if you want, but I've never seen anyone do it. Last time I looked Gnome had 2 toolbars whereas KDE has only 1. You want your desktop out of your way? So do I, that's why I use KDE instead of Gnome. With KDE, auto-hiding the (only 1) toolbar is a click away. I can also put the toolbar anywhere I want, docking it to any side of the screen. Try that with Gnome. The default layout does look like Explorer, but you completely change that in less than 30 seconds. Slows your computer to a crawl? Again, are you talking about Explorer? Because I've used both Gnome and KDE on the same computer with the same distro and KDE was NOT any slower than Gnome.
"Finally, I think KDE strayed too much away from the UNIX philosophy: it's one big monolith, which I found never played nicely with foreign apps."
Since when? I use all kinds of apps on my computer, both KDE and Gnome in KDE, and they all work fine.
I rarely get into these KDE vs. Gnome flame wars, but I had to reply to this post because everything this guy said is completely untrue. If you prefer Gnome, more power to you, but don't go around making crap up about KDE like this.
I like 'buntu, but it does seem like their support of Kubuntu is slipping fast. Yes, what we want is a KDE-based 'buntu with the features being as good as Ubuntu, but they're not delivering that; they never have and it's getting worse. Enough of waiting on them to support KDE equally, it's time to look for something different. I'm trying out Saboyan and Sidux next.
94 • Re: #43 Release of Puppy Linux 4 alpha (by The Infamous Mark South on 2007-11-06 18:29:08 GMT from Switzerland)
#43 wrote:
"if you haven't tried the all-new, singing, dancing Puppy Linux 4 (yes, four) alpha, you haven't lived."
So, let's try to understand this: Puppy 3.0 came out on October 3rd, and there was a bugfix release of 3.01 on October 15th. Version 3 was in alpha for - what? - a fortnight and then spent a few days going through beta to final.
And on November 5th, Puppy 4 alpha is announced, but with the kernel reverted to an earlier version than was used in version 3. Puppy 4 alpha uses 2.6.18, which is getting on for a year old, whereas Puppy 3 used 2.6.21.
Does that mean that Puppy 3 was just a complete mistake, and should have been named Puppy 3 STS (Short Term Support) Edition?
Either someone is having a laugh, or there is some amazing new development methodology being fabricated that no-one else has yet discovered. Or perhaps something is wrong somewhere.
95 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-06 18:41:21 GMT from United States)
> Or perhaps something is wrong somewhere.
The only thing wrong is that you still post here. Someone wrote that he/she likes a new version of Puppy and you give us a dissertation about all the reasons it is wrong, without actually saying anything valuable. Wow.
96 • Re #95 (by The Infamous Mark South on 2007-11-06 19:51:41 GMT from Switzerland)
The anonymous person who attacks me every time I post something here wrote:
"The only thing wrong is that you still post here."
My post #94 was a post discussing a recent release of a Linux distro. #95 was a personal attack on me that contained nothing about Linux at all.
Perhaps Ladislav should consider automatically removing posts containing ad hominem attacks?
To the author of #95: take a break from Puppy and try some other distros. Believe it or not, there is Linux life and work outside Puppy, even if the development processes are not as wild and exciting as they could be.
97 • Puppy flavors... (by ChiJoan on 2007-11-06 20:20:55 GMT from United States)
Hello Everyone,
Please sample if you choose or not. Just like other small Live Distros have multiple flavors and sizes to try lke DamnSmall Linux, Puppy, Slax, and others. It's not a bad thing to have a fluid style of bringing about a new version. Don't be that critical of new development as Linux grows on the bits and bytes of code masters I can only thank for their hard work. Puppy has brought new life to many old systems and laptops.
As to G/OS and Wal-Marts, looks like Reno, NV. won't see any. It would be better to order that motherboard they mention in case my Via-C3 (Xandros 4) ever goes out. Sure I have an AMD-AM2 Dual-Core with Mepis, but it's always good to have back-up systems.
Did anyone else know Pioneer Linux has seven years of support?
Thanks for DistroWatch Weekly,
ChiJoan
98 • Re #94 (by roadie on 2007-11-06 20:24:42 GMT from Canada)
Mark South,
Really, the continuing barely disguised Puppy bashing and innuendos becomes very tiring very fast. I thought we were done with this.
Your post #94 was not a discussion on a Linux distro. It is entirely possible that an earlier kernel was used because it worked better for more users. Kudos to Puppy for fixing it, if it was not right.
Calling Puppy 3 a "mistake" is a cheap shot and I'm quite sure, beneath you.
Re #96
>Perhaps Ladislav should consider automatically removing posts containing ad hominem attacks?<
Careful what you wish for, your posts could come under that heading.
By the by, exactly why are you infamous?
roadie
99 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-06 20:38:25 GMT from United States)
> To the author of #95: take a break from Puppy and try some other distros. Believe it or not, there is Linux life and work outside Puppy, even if the development processes are not as wild and exciting as they could be.
Yet another useful post. I don't even use Puppy. I'm just tired of you posting condescending, uninformative, and irrelevant/inaccurate responses in this forum. Your post #94 is completely void of content.
> My post #94 was a post discussing a recent release of a Linux distro. #95 was a personal attack on me that contained nothing about Linux at all.
Your post was a rude attack on someone who wrote a friendly post proclaiming that he/she likes Puppy. My post was not a personal attack. It was a statement that your post adds nothing to the discussion.
100 • Fedora 7 (by roadie on 2007-11-06 20:49:49 GMT from Canada)
Been trying the Live Cd Kde version of Fedora 7, my usual "frugal" install, but I'm wondering if anyone else has run into problems getting the desktop to load. It configures X properly and starts but never finishes loading.
I know it sounds like a memory problem, but free shows normal usage, pretty much the same as any other distro I've tried.
Running df shows 49%, granted machine specs are modest, 800mhz, 256 ram, Duron processor, but within specs according to the Fedora site.
Is Fedora 7 more resource hungry then others? I do like the setup procedure during boot, hardware detection was perfect. Just be nice to see a desktop.
Also, does anyone know some boot cheatcodes? I could'nt find any reference to them on the Fedora site.
roadie
101 • Reply to roadie (#98) (by The Infamous Mark South on 2007-11-06 20:57:37 GMT from Switzerland)
Hi roadie, remember the time you asked "Who is Mark South?" and I mailed you to introduce myself? You never replied. But today you raise some interesting points, so take a moment to consider the reply, OK?
First, let's remind ourselves what my post #94 came from. It was the announcement of Puppy Linux 4 alpha being released on 5 November 2007, 2 weeks after the bugfix release of version 3.01.
#43 wrote:
"if you haven't tried the all-new, singing, dancing Puppy Linux 4 (yes, four) alpha, you haven't lived."
Does that not seem like a slightly overstated claim, especially when the chief developer's blog says that he has reverted the kernel and there is stuff not working at all?
And you wrote:
"Really, the continuing barely disguised Puppy bashing and innuendos becomes very tiring very fast. I thought we were done with this."
Actually, I'd be equally delighted if the Puppy fans who come here stuck to posting facts. I might have had no issue with a comment that had said merely that 4 alpha was now out.
"Your post #94 was not a discussion on a Linux distro. It is entirely possible that an earlier kernel was used because it worked better for more users. Kudos to Puppy for fixing it, if it was not right."
It was not a discussion, because it takes two to have a discussion. It was a remark to the effect that it's hard to understand the development model of a major release at fortnightly intervals.
As for the kernel, I guess that's an issue for Linus rather than me. He saw fit to release several kernels since 2.6.18. Take it up with him.
"Calling Puppy 3 a "mistake" is a cheap shot and I'm quite sure, beneath you."
Well, I didn't call it that. I wondered aloud ("Does that mean...?") whether the chief developer considered it a mistake, since he dumped it entirely one month after the initial release. Not all the Puppy fans were happy about that, apparently.
"Re #96
>Perhaps Ladislav should consider automatically removing posts containing ad hominem attacks?<
Careful what you wish for, your posts could come under that heading."
Ad hominem means exactly that. Questioning the Puppy development methodology is not ad hominem. A post that merely attacks a person for expressing their opinion is ad hominem. I am confident that Ladislav knows the difference.
"By the by, exactly why are you infamous?"
Because it takes real infamy to be attacked personally for stating facts. And the evidence from here, reinforced several times in the past few weeks, is that I have achieved genuine and undisputed infamy.
Finally, there's a difference between criticism and plain distro-bashing. Some very fine examples of the latter can be found at:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22891
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22926
102 • RE 81 - 5/9/93 - 94 (by Landor on 2007-11-06 21:07:07 GMT from Canada)
81:
Hey Stefan,
I pulled it down via Torrent, the link in this week's DWW. You're very welcome as well. I might split my time with Fedora 8 and Gentoo for a bit, it might be nice running a binary system periodically and I've always held a special place for RH, so Fedora fits :) I've even considered bouncing between three, the third being Slack.
9/93:
I have to agree with Terry totally here.
One of the first things I did when I returned to Linux after years of absense was investigate the various WM's/DE's. I found a number of extremely detailed reviews comparing the two based on performance and hands down KDE beat the modular aspect of Gnome flat out "IMO".
I also prefer the aesthetics of KDE in comparison to Gnome and a lot of the functions available in KDE are not available, or as easily replicated in Gnome.
Skip ahead a bit now to my use of Gentoo and this is where I applaud them totally with KDE. I cannot find a distro that KDE is as responsive as it is with Gentoo. Then given the fact that you can install the specific KDE package you want, it's a winning combo. For example, if you ran something like Debian, Mepis, Kubuntu and the like, and wanted to install say "Ktouch", you would pull in the Education Package with a number of apps you didn't want. That's not the case with Gentoo. This was just one of the factors that made me give Gentoo a shot, so Monolithic? I think not. At one time even with Gentoo, though maybe I'm wrong, but as always with every flavour of Linux, they're all different, and KDE is far from the demon it's being painted to be in #9. I have it running on quite a few high end and low end machines and I see "instantenous" execution of apps, thee most configurable desktop, and eye candy? lol
So PP/#5 if you find some of the KDE flavoured distros not meeting your needs maybe give Gentoo a shot if you're willing.
Terry, this is from only my personal experience as a Gentoo user. I tried Sabayon a couple times and I found it very slow indeed. One of the reasons I thought of why it may be so slow is the over-use of use flags in the make.conf file. I couldn't believe how many were in there, I never counted, but when I went to take a peek, I thought, OMG! The man has everything in it but the kitchen sink, which might add such a broad scope of functionality, but severely hinders performance.
I had also wished that I had found this out prior to Ladislav's article regarding his update problems with Sabayon and included Gentoo into that. Knowing what I know now, I would've totally refuted his stance based on so many use flags in the make.conf it would a) make compile time extremely longer for quite a lot of apps, and there are instances where one use flag will block a compile because of another use flag being enabled where you can't have the two. When I did find it out, I immediately thought of the article and based on the make.conf alone felt it unfair to include Gentoo in the article.
RE: 94
I thought about this and immediately came up with a number of possible scenarios for another quick release. First and foremost that came to my mind was the fact that Barry has some specific goals in mind and has the time to implement them. Then another regards the regression of the kernel, possibly he has found the newer kernel he was using has changed too many things that do not fit with his current goals of Puppy, or it's possible it's strayed too far into the future and not able to keep the audience that puppy was originally intended for, those looking for, or in need of a lite distro.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
103 • @102: landor (by stefan on 2007-11-06 21:16:21 GMT from Netherlands)
Hey landor,
thanks for the reply. if you got you f8 from this link:
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
it still says RC3 there for me. I did find a leaked RC5 mirror though so in 825 mbites i will burn it myself and give it a go. i does look good and fedora is almost the only distro that actually innovates, although i am really fearsome of a rpm based distro and the dependency hell FC6 gave me. My heart still lies with deb based distros (and unix) but at work i have 4 RHES5 servers, 4 CentOs servers 2 FC2 servers and unfortunately just 2 debian servers ...... so maybe i need to switch as well.
I did notice that ^$%#$@@# with F8 and Ubuntu 7.10 i still cannot get my external 24" docked tft screen working .... it works fine with M$ Vitsa and Sun Solaris but the latest batch of distros cant get it working with anything other then vesa (neither nv or nvidia).
Stefan
104 • No subject (by roadie on 2007-11-06 21:24:10 GMT from Canada)
Mark South,
Basing your post #94 on the contents of post #43 shows only that you have something of a hair trigger. The poster liked Puppy 4, great for him, certainly no reason for you to jump all over Puppy, simply because you apparently have major issues with Puppy devels or the forum.
I never called it a discussion, you did.
No thanks, I don't give a rats ass why the kernel was changed, you however seem to care greatly.
"By the by, exactly why are you infamous?"
Sorry to disappoint you, but I fear that "genuine and undisputed infamy" resides only in your own mind.
By the by, please spare me the links to the Puppy forum, I have no intention whatsoever of reading about your petty squabbles.
Enough of the cheap Puppy bashing please.
roadie
105 • Re #96 (by average anonymous on 2007-11-06 21:53:30 GMT from United States)
My observation, maybe it's how you "discussing" specific distro. you really don't like, gave people the strong negative impression.
> "just a complete mistake",
> "should have been named STS (Short Term Support)"
> "perhaps something is wrong somewhere."
It would be more appreciated if you say, I ran rev 3, such and such not working, rev. 4 fixed that problem, the rev. 3 was complete mistake.
if you tried to get support of rev.3 and been told it's no longer supported, then you can name it STS
perhaps + something wrong + somewhere is just too vague to even consider as opinion.
106 • RE 100 - Fedora Live-CD (by KimTjik on 2007-11-06 22:49:32 GMT from Sweden)
For a Live-CD environment I suppose 256MB with a slow processor is to push the limits. For a standard install, not from a Live-CD, it shouldn't be a problem though. I really wonder whether Fedora had the Live-CD in mind when specifying hardware requirements. I doubt it. It would most likely work if you had a newer CPU architecture with a better memory controller.
Is Fedora a resource hungry distribution? Some of it's features aren't for sure making it slimmer, like SE Linux, but a standard install will work pretty well on you hardware. On the other hand I doubt whether Fedora is an optimal choice in view of more specialized distributions for lower hardware specifications. Be aware that Fedora recommends a minimum of 1GB if you intend to run it Live totally from RAM; it could be an indication respecting your question.
...
I really would like to help the Fedora project by testing the 8th release. Unfortunately I'm too busy right now. Its implementation of PulseAudio is very interesting and could help Linux making much needed progress. "Codecs Buddy" is on the other hand not for me, but I'm not criticizing it, because it's not Fedora's or Red Hat's fault we have such a messy and ridiculous patent infected multimedia environment. Network improvements are always welcomed, so I hope the new features will be good.
107 • Why do live CDs seem to work better than a hard disk install? (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 00:25:01 GMT from Malaysia)
I was able to boot from the Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD into a graphical desktop with functioning wireless on my Acer 1694 notebook. After installing to hard disk, Ubuntu wouldn't boot unless I added a 'nosplash' option and I could no longer connect to my wireless network (WEP). http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224349&highlight=acer_acpi suggests that I need to install an acpi module but it's strange that the wireless works when running the live CD (without any additional modules required).
I had installed OpenSUSE 10.3 a couple of weeks ago but couldn't boot even with 'splash=no'. Booted from the SUSE live CD yesterday without any problems and copied xorg.conf to my hard disk install which now boots flawlessly. Interestingly, both xorg.conf files used the same 'radeon' driver.
Why do the live CDs seem to work so much better than a hard disk install?
108 • re 107 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 00:29:59 GMT from United States)
An alternate disk, (and a little know how) is all you need ;^)
109 • @108 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 00:51:34 GMT from Malaysia)
"An alternate disk, (and a little know how) is all you need"
Wireless didn't work after installing from the Kubuntu alternate CD either. Are you saying that the acer_acpi module is available on the alternate CD? I had a look at ubuntu-7.10-alternate-i386.list and it doesn't seem to be listed.
So how does one go about it?
110 • @108 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 00:52:08 GMT from Malaysia)
As far as SUSE is concerned, I installed to disk before the live CD was released last week (which would be equivalent to installing from the "alternate" CD in Ubuntu).
111 • Fedora & XFCE (by normnmiles on 2007-11-07 02:19:08 GMT from United States)
Does anyone know of or recommend a Fedora derived distro that uses XFCE as the default desktop? Something similar to Zenwalk, Wolvix, Vector, or Dreamlinux?
112 • Re: to Fedora and XFCE (by rajihammer on 2007-11-07 04:41:42 GMT from United States)
XFCE is available on Fedora, not default, but it's there. Check it out. And be sure to wait for the final release on Thursday, because nothing else is safe. Thanks for the chastising "anonymous"
113 • 86 Secret is out - sidux (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-07 05:18:28 GMT from United States)
Oh great, now the sidux server will be overwhelmed. :)
@93 • Re: Kubuntu, - Be careful, you might like sidux and get hooked.
@94 • Re: #43 Release of Puppy Linux 4 alpha - well, I downloaded puppy 4 alpha k2.6.21.7. "Or perhaps something is wrong somewhere." - Yes, somewhere.
I tried puppy on a Compaq presario 1230, failed to complete booting. Maybe the kernel was too current. I should have tried dsl. :/
Time to boot NimbleX before it gets any later.
Keep your live CD in the tray and a figure on the restart button...
Fract Al Guy
114 • KDE4 rant (by Ariszló on 2007-11-07 09:59:46 GMT from Hungary)
Congrats to the maintainers of the Debian-based KDE4 live cd: I could test KDE4 using their live cd. I have never been able to get into GUI with Stephan Binner's openSUSE-based live cd.
And now the rant. KDE4's kLickoff is horrible: you just click, click and click forward and backward to find an application in the menu which keeps hiding the directory structure. It looks good and it is the least convenient Start Menu solution I have ever tried.
Konqueror, the best file manager ever made on earth, is replaced with a "usability enhanced" Nautilus-clone. You can still start it by typing "konqueror --profile=filemanagement" but many of its killer features will not appear by default if not lost altogether. It is still continued as web browser even if it is beaten by Firefox in many features.
Perhaps, it is time to switch to GNOME? Why should I use a clumsy kLickoff rather than GNOME's convenient menus and why should I dump the best file manager on earth for a Nautilus-clone if I can dump it for Nautilus proper?
115 • No subject (by Ariszló on 2007-11-07 10:04:26 GMT from Hungary)
"It looks good and"
I mean it looks good but...
116 • Game Server (by James M. Dyer on 2007-11-07 13:02:52 GMT from United States)
Yellow Dog has a Power Mac G5 Dual Processor based system.
Specs: 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, SuperDrive.
PlayStation 3 consoles are used for the nodes.
There are two versions available, one with 8 PS3s, and one with 32 PS3s.
You can read about it here:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/index.php?submit=software&submitimg[hardware][solutions]=1
Now, my questions:
Can this system serve a multi-player "PC game"? ( Starcraft, Quake 2, World of WarCraft. )
If not, are there any similar Intel-based systems available?
Last one, which distro performs the best as a "multi-player game server"?
Thank you for your time.
117 • Different *buntus and distros (by whocares on 2007-11-07 15:30:50 GMT from Finland)
Come on people sit down and use the only one DEBIAN! ;)
118 • #117 Seconded, kind of (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 17:11:06 GMT from United States)
For stability, Lenny yes, but for the best stuff sidux is the shiznit, Rolling releases and the smxi and sgfxi scripts, what more could you ask for?
119 • AB ORIGNE (by Anonymous on 2007-11-07 19:53:22 GMT from Canada)
Re post # 53 etal - Puppy versions
-------------------------------------
It was not the kernel which presented problems & subsequent roll-backs ~ it was incompatibility of some Apps hastily chosen
A situation familiar to all
Alpha - rather than state it as a question - why not say it as you intended _
Alpha is well known in release naming convention -to represent the first in a possible series
As you already knew - loosely based on the Latin alphabet
Be thankful we none have (yet) resorted to this :
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin.htm
Or worse:
http://images.google.ca/images?q=latin...
Barry Kauler himself does not describe (his) versions as a "Serious O/System"
Rather, a useful tinkerer's paradise which anyone is welcome to alter or contribute as they see fit
Containing "User Contributions" which he often immediately adopts ~ then may or not just as fast drop.
It is not at all unusual for even the most devout fans to be confused as to the "current status"
BK seems to not keep many changes documented - often forgets what has been recently altered
OR who contributed what
His method is to be entirely flexible & "It is just a hobby" if anyone cares to use it, fine -
That strategy will not change unless it all becomes too onerous -
Nor, to the relief of fans, did he impliment the community "Schism" as he posted in the Murga forum
To try & make some sense of all if anyone is curious/even cares (or can - a very daunting task)
See Barry's Development Blog & Forum announcements:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23328&start=15
What is confusing/rightfully crtiqued > How may any version be called "FINAL " yet also state the series is still under development
Is there a Latin term for "never say never?
Ad captandum vulgus _ is to invoke ~ Abyssus abyssum invocat
Aut disce aut discede
120 • Love dat Puppy!!... (by Dusty on 2007-11-07 22:02:07 GMT from United States)
I started out with da Pup at ver. 2.17.....Saved settings to a usb zip drive...worked nice till a net attack.....since then I use it as a live cd with web downloads saving to a thumb drive.....No complaints though....it is a great little distro.
Just downloaded Pup. 3.1 and that is heaven!.....EXCEPT!! it uses a new light weight web browser for local files which fails to execute the doc files. The new light browser is also the pits on the web......Atleast there is still Seamonkey......other than that It's great.....three cheers for puppy!.....
121 • RE: 101 (by Puppy Fan on 2007-11-08 00:11:14 GMT from United States)
Thank you for your comments...
"Actually, I'd be equally delighted if the Puppy fans who come here stuck to posting facts."
and honest admission...
"It was a remark to the effect that it's hard to understand the development model of a major release at fortnightly intervals."
I don't understand to much about development models either...
but I still like puppy!
122 • @108 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 00:25:42 GMT from Malaysia)
So the conclusion is that wireless works on an Acer notebook while running the Ubuntu live CD but not after installing to hard disk.
Using the 'alternate' CD for installation doesn't make any difference as one would still need to download the acer_acpi module from a third-party repository:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3567642&postcount=27
Interestingly, Mandriva doesn't need any additional modules to get wireless working on the same machine and, more importantly, there are no discrepancies in functionality between the live CD and a hard disk install (unlike Ubuntu).
123 • fedora 8 (by imrek on 2007-11-08 00:37:57 GMT from Austria)
looking forward to fedora 8 (i can probably start the download today by the time i get home from work :))
suse 10.3 doesn't perform too well on my laptop...
124 • Puppy Linux (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 04:01:10 GMT from United States)
WOW, Puppy is rating better than
Vector, Arch, FreeBSD, and Xubuntu?
125 • Partial answer to 108 ... and subsequent questions (by dbrion on 2007-11-08 06:22:53 GMT from France)
"Why do the live CDs seem to work so much better than a hard disk install?
"
As far as Suze is concerned (UBU linux remains mysterious) there is a ~1 month lag betw. the HD release and the life CD: some bugs may have been fixed?
If you have tried Suse and PCDSD (3 weeks ago, me seems; unless there are many Anonymous de Malaysia) there are strange USB questions :
what happens if you insert an USB flash disk? if you remove it after umounting? if you reinsert it? if you remove it wildly (physically, without removing?)
What happens with PCDSB and a 160 G (or more) USB external rotating Hard Disk?
126 • Bingo Dingo (by Lobster on 2007-11-08 13:20:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
Puppy 3.01 is released - bug fixing the major upgrade to a new kernel
Puppy 3.02 is not released yet and will feature further bug fixes
Also not out but undergoing development is the community edition Puppy 3.03CE aka Talking Stick. Probably out Dec 2007/Jan 2008
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/TalkingStick
. . . meanwhile Barry Kauler our main developer tries a little experiment. Compiling using K2 and using GTK2 only programs, he uses svg for icons (rendered into png) and completely new but tiny programs. It is still recognizably Puppy but now it is good enough to be an Alpha release - so he calls it Puppy 4 Alpha1 aka "Dingo". He releases the Dingo into the wild. Bingo Dingo. People are enthusiastic and offer support. Early days . . .
Meanwhile in a parallel dimension
a puplet of Puppy 3.01 is undergoing trials . . .
http://tmxxine.com/tmx/
Stay near your teleportals for further info :)
127 • When M$ attacks (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 14:22:31 GMT from United States)
Now that M$ is attacking Linux, how long will it be before they attack the *BSDs and OpenSolaris?
128 • F8 is officially out (by Duhnonymous on 2007-11-08 15:28:11 GMT from United States)
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/en_US/sn-OverView.html
I just fired up my torrents.
129 • RE: 127 - hasn't MS been attacking since the dawn of Linux? (by KimTjik on 2007-11-08 20:34:02 GMT from Sweden)
I don't want to pick on words, but there's no "now that MS is attacking", because they've been busy attacking continuously for many years. On the contrary MS has suffered some serious setbacks recently: SCO's (whether openly sponsored by MS or not) fiasco, MS loosing its appeal and then withdrawing from any new appeal against EU's antitrust ruling and Russia deciding to make the whole school-system be invaded by penguins.
And seriously why would they attack the real old man "BSD"? Then they have to attack one of its offsprings as well, Apple. MS has money, but with a stronger competition on the desktop market I doubt they can risk to make too many enemies. Mixed operating system environments become common, so it wouldn't be smart of MS to pick a fight with their own costumers. Besides that Red Hat becomes economically stronger, and hasn't yet been in any real confrontation with MS. IBM isn't the best friend of MS either. No, frankly I don't see MS becoming any stronger. MS is by habit engaging in all kinds of antitrust lawsuits, and its patent claims isn't even worth a paper, since they seem unable to become something other than words.
Maybe MS might flex its muscles on arenas where the patent system is weak (unfortunately including the US) or in countries where filling the right pockets make wonders, but besides those "normal matters of the business world" (MS isn't any strange monster, it's just a company doing what most companies are doing) I view the ground for Linux and other Unix-like systems safer. Am I naive?
What could be a reality, if the US patent system isn't modernized, is a more polarized world: a Linux friendly EU, Russia, China with others party, and a US with others party forced to keep on fighting legal battles. On the other hand MS is greatly needed. To me it looks like MS' animosity encourage and enforce the Linux community to become better, and with Linux follows a lot of related projects which gain BSD as well. MS hasn't got everything wrong, but a huge attitude problem towards open-source.
130 • re: 129 When M$ attacks (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 20:55:08 GMT from United States)
I agree that M$ has been attacking Linux for a long time. Remember the Halloween Document? They just seem to be ramping up with the IP infringment claims and all these sleazy deals (Novell, Turbolinux, etc...). I'm just wondering if they scare big Linux users (corporate users) away from Linux, and they move to something like FreeBSD, would M$ then attack FreeBSD? Their ultimate goal is to scare everyone to Windows products. No one would choose Windows on technical merit, so that's their only option.
131 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 20:55:56 GMT from United States)
> Maybe MS might flex its muscles on arenas where the patent system is weak
Except for the fact that IBM has a much, much larger patent portfolio, and probably with more valid patents as well. Microsoft has been patenting the trivial for a few years. IBM's portfolio played a large role in MS accumulating their own patents.
Plus, Sun, Novell, and others have a lot of patents as well. Just because MS makes noise doesn't mean we have to care. We don't even know that a court would enforce most of their patents. Beyond that, patent infringement is not like copyright infringement. You can invent around patents. They can't "shut down" Linux distributors. Microsoft has to worry about antitrust as it relates to patent enforcement. That is a US-based strategy that would not get anywhere in most of the world.
Do you really think the US Congress would sit on its hands while large corporations that contribute generously to their campaigns are being attacked by nonsense patent lawsuits? Doesn't work that way, those large corporations would order their employees to start passing legislation to get rid of software patents.
132 • RE: 128 (by Landor on 2007-11-08 20:57:09 GMT from Canada)
I picked it up lastnight, there were a number of mirrors that had it available right away, I think it was even available via Torrents from linuxtracker.org.
I have to say it's been pretty decent thus far too, I only just installed it now.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
133 • I agree (by KimTjik on 2007-11-08 22:12:46 GMT from Sweden)
"Do you really think the US Congress would sit on its hands while large corporations that contribute generously to their campaigns are being attacked by nonsense patent lawsuits?"
No I don't think so either, at least not when put into a wider perspective. It's probably just a matter of time before the current patent dilemma is taken care of. I could though see a temporary polarization, but I could just as well be wrong.
Let's hope these contributions make the necessary changes come true soon (this is a difficult concept for me grown up in a society where such contributions are viewed as bribes; I'm not criticizing your system, but just explaining why my comments lack a natural understanding of it).
134 • CD images to DVD (by bishop01us on 2007-11-08 22:14:33 GMT from United States)
Hi, I'd like to try different versions of Linux, but I'm running out of CD-R. I know CD-R aren't real expensive any more. Thing is, I already have a bunch of CD-RW and DVD-RW.
Most of the versions of non-DVD versions of Linux I see are just a bit larger than the CD-RW will handle. Can't seem to find a way to burn the CD versions to DVD-RW either. Not with my software.
Was wondering why the folks that make these distributions don't scale back on the size of the CD versions to allow them to be put on CD-RW. Or, perhaps there's a way to burn the CD versions to a DVD-RW.
Thanks.
135 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-08 22:18:04 GMT from United States)
> grown up in a society where such contributions are viewed as bribes; I'm not criticizing your system, but just explaining why my comments lack a natural understanding of it
They're viewed as bribes here as well, but sometimes bribes are legal. I just hope the bribes work in our favor rather than against us.
136 • re #134 (by dooooo on 2007-11-08 23:16:39 GMT from Jordan)
"Most of the versions of non-DVD versions of Linux I see are just a bit larger than the CD-RW will handle. Can't seem to find a way to burn the CD versions to DVD-RW either. Not with my software."
I'm not sure whether the problem is the size of your CD-RWs or with your software .
the size of a CD-RW and a CD-R should be the same . unless you accidentally bought 650MB CD-RWs .
"Can't seem to find a way to burn the CD versions to DVD-RW either."
well , maybe It is the software .
try alcohol 120 % (http://www.alcohol-soft.com)
or DAEMON Tools (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php)
I hope my post will help you enter the world of Linux .
137 • Ubuntu Studio (by Cyrus Cathey on 2007-11-09 00:29:57 GMT from United States)
Loooking forward to it!
138 • Puppy (by Anonymous on 2007-11-09 00:43:17 GMT from United States)
The only thing Puppy did wrong was the version number.
At version 2 after I believe 2.03 they made a "chubby puppy" with more apps and a later 2.6 kernal that had problems. They did get it fixed with the 2.13 release around when the 3.0 alpha was out.
If they had called 4.0, 3.10 or a "chubby puppy" edition it would not have been a issue. I have a feeling there will be other 3.X releases before and after 4.0 comes out. Personally I wish they would support 1.X and 2.X with updates. Some older machines need a 2.4 kernal.
BTW, I have Puppy 2.13 running on a circa 1999 K6 333mhz with 168mb memory and copied on to a Win95 800mb HD. Runs great, I just pop the floppy in and go.
139 • Fedora 8 is out (by rajihammer on 2007-11-09 02:32:39 GMT from United States)
Here we are Nov. 8th and Fedora 8 is out and at the top of DistroWatch!! My paranoid self tells me that it will be off the home page before a week is out, displaced by nothing much at all. Bets?
140 • @125 Re: USB questions (by Anonymous on 2007-11-09 04:17:49 GMT from Malaysia)
"If you have tried Suse and PCDSD (3 weeks ago, me seems; unless there are many Anonymous de Malaysia) there are strange USB questions :
what happens if you insert an USB flash disk? if you remove it after umounting? if you reinsert it? if you remove it wildly (physically, without removing?) What happens with PCDSB and a 160 G (or more) USB external rotating Hard Disk?"
Hi dbrion. PC-BSD automounts my USB flash disk on /dev/da1s1. On unmounting the disk, the icon remains on the desktop as an unmounted volume until the disk is physically removed. On reinserting the disk, it automounts again on the same mount point. If I remove it without unmounting and then insert again, it automounts on a different mount point (/dev/da1s2) and the mount command shows that /dev/da1s1 is also still mounted (as an empty directory in Konqueror). Suse handles the disk in an identical manner (except that the names of the mount points are different).
I have a 120 GB USB hard disk and it is handled identically with regard to automounting and unmounting (or removal without unmounting).
Did you have problems with USB disks on PC-BSD?
141 • Re posts #134 &136 ~ CD vs DVD (by Anonymous on 2007-11-09 05:37:49 GMT from Canada)
Agreed, the burnable sizes chosen, often seem to be less than optimal for intended useage
You may already be aware of this ~ otherwise, please note:
Some drives are capable of "overburning" (@ user's risk) but no CD can approach the capacity of DVD
DVD is the better design - (see Google for how they are made)
inherently more resistant to accidental surface damage to data
http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/finrepx4c.html
The capacitiy of DVD vs CD is vastly different, will vary dependent on type & OEM Mfg's intended usage
Basicly, the usual default sizes noted are :
650 - 700 MB for CD versus the much larger (denser data storage) of 4.7 GIG for DVD
Pls see Google for sizes & use.
Examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disk_erasable
AFAIK - If the burnable data has already been mastered as a CD image, E.G. for an ISO
- it would require a re-mastering of sources to burn as a DVD
See applicable utilities for both, cdrtools & GUI "front-ends" for Linux
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=cdrtools+for+DVD+%2FCD+-RW+&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
142 • Re 140 Yes "Did you have problems with USB disks on PC-BSD?" (by dbrion on 2007-11-09 09:42:25 GMT from France)
Thanks for the help, I tried to find out the origin..
I had the following pbs :
with a 160 g external disk, PCBSD refused to mount it, and "told" it was ... too big.. I will wait for another release. and it is PCBSD problem.
The other issues I met while VMplaying PCBSD ( the mount points "labels" changed; if wildly removed, I got a reboot...) can either be attributed to VMplayer (there remains some hope, with newer versions) , a starving configuration of PCBSD (I put ~250 M; with KDE, it is short but often works slowly and can be fixed) or to me....
143 • Re: 134 • CD images to DVD (by Bishop01us on 2007-11-09 09:53:02 GMT from United States)
136: (dooooo) It's been a long time since I actually 'looked' to buy CD-RW disks. When I last purchased some, 'only' 650 Meg were available. So it wasn't a mistake, it was the only option. Just did another hunt, and I do see there are 700 Meg CD-RW disks. Not many different types, but there are some. Having some of them would eliminate my concerns. Break out the credit card.
141: (Anonymous) Thanks for the info. As referenced above, my issue was not looking hard enough to see that 700 Meg CD-RW disks actually 'do' exist now.
And by the way, 'not' having any 700 Meg CD-RWs didn't keep me from trying out quite a few Linux distros. In fact, I'm currently running openSUSE 10.3 on a older Dell box, but I must have tried about 25 different distros so far over the last few years.
Sooo many choices. So few CD-Rs. :-)
Thanks for the help.
144 • Granular Rising (by ThirdEye on 2007-11-09 21:15:28 GMT from United States)
Observe the ascension of "Granular"!
145 • fedora 8 (by It on 2007-11-09 21:45:19 GMT from United States)
what are the system requirements for fedora 8? please
146 • RE: 145 - Fedora 8 system requirements (by KimTjik on 2007-11-09 22:53:03 GMT from Sweden)
Fedora 8 requires an Intel Pentium or better processor, and is optimized for Pentium 4 and later processors.
* Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
* Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
* Minimum RAM for text-mode: 128MiB
* Minimum RAM for graphical: 192MiB
* Recommended RAM for graphical: 256MiB
Above is a quotation from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/ArchSpecific
But as already discussed, it's my opinion that the live-CD is a bit over the top for the specifications above. If you're close to these limits go for the DVD.
147 • LinuxMint Down? (by ourdee on 2007-11-10 12:51:36 GMT from United States)
The LinuxMint site seems to be down since last night, no updates with mintUpdate.
148 • Mint 3.1 Review in german (by Anonymous on 2007-11-10 12:52:58 GMT from Germany)
Here is a Mint 3.1 Review in german:
http://stonie.homelinux.net/articles/2007/11/05/linux-distributions-test-nr-2-linux-mint-3-1
149 • linuxmint.com (by Clem on 2007-11-11 00:43:41 GMT from Ireland)
It's a DNS problem with the registrar (servage.net) and they're being slow to respond. It was supposed to be back up today and it hopefully will be tomorrow. We'll be moving to a new registrar in a few months since it's the second time we're having problems and downtimes with this one.
Clem
150 • RE: 149 • linuxmint.com (by Clem on 2007-11-11 00:43:41 GMT from Ireland) (by awong on 2007-11-11 01:47:33 GMT from Canada)
Yay! Clem is back! Thanks for the update; I'm missing my Mint updates and want to read if there are any Skype 2 issues with Mint (it's probably just my webcam or graphics card, though).
151 • Installed openSUSE 10.3 from Kde Live CD (by openSUSE User (1yr) on 2007-11-11 02:51:14 GMT from Australia)
Install on Acer 1644wmli notebook
More info on specs here: http://www.ciao.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_1644WLMi__6480479
Live cd fully recognised all hardware but the user (linux) account kmixer was/is not working - no sound (not loading drivers), it worked/works fine in root account. Power management now works very, very well in the kde version only (not yet in gnome) and is back to being the BEST, IMHO!
Installed from root account and all ok - sound working in all user accounts. Noticed a bug in Yast2 software management tool where no package info was being displayed (just name of package). New updates have fixed this issue! For me, only one bug remains, smart --gui does not launch from shortcut/launcher (works ok from konsole) and is easily fixed by modifying the launcher/shorcut properties to point directly to smart directory.
Conclusion: openSUSE 10.3 (Kde) is a great OS for Laptops/Notebooks! Bugs will always be around on new releases and they get fixed (if reported) in good time by openSUSE devs.
152 • re 151... Commented too soon... (by openSUSE User on 2007-11-11 06:58:51 GMT from Australia)
For me, only one bug remains, smart --gui does not launch from shortcut/launcher (works ok from konsole) and is easily fixed by modifying the launcher/shorcut properties to point directly to smart directory.
Smart package manager seems to have been fixed by the updates, good!
But because I mainly use Smart PM, I forgot about another Yast bug yet to be fixed,
Yast2---->Software-----> Community Repositories. This sets up all the community repos in non-enabled state, ie user/admin decides which ones to enable.
There is a fix (worked for me) at following link:
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/SuSE/2007-11/msg00883.html
OK, the problem is in /etc/YaST/control.xml, the URL for
external_sources_link tag is wrong.
Stano
Another person provided the following link (which works for me):
http://download.opensuse.org/YaST/Repos/openSUSE_103_Servers.xml
The above bug apparently only concerns the Live Cds.
I found a bug (I think?) that concerns me more, kbilliards does not have sound effects, though it plays music ok. :-) Can anyone confirm or deny same?
Cheers
153 • gosh! gOS! (by capricornus on 2007-11-11 09:49:50 GMT from Belgium)
I just installed gOS on my dedicated test pc (ASUS:K8V Sempron2600 HD:SATA MBRAM) and it went just as fine as all the --buntu' s and derivatives like Mint. Amarok and VLC are easily installed and work just fine. Of course the whole came with overwhelming Google stuff, but it let' s itself to be uninstalled if necessary.
The only problem I have so far: my USB devices/sticks are not automatically recognized nor mounted.
154 • Codecs for Ubuntu Studio (by Tree on 2007-11-11 11:15:33 GMT from United States)
Susan, I thought everyone knew about http://plf.zarb.org
155 • RE 113 Thanks (by dbrion on 2007-11-11 16:04:40 GMT from France)
"113 • 86 Secret is out - sidux (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-07 05:18:28 GMT from United States)
Oh great, now the sidux server will be overwhelmed. :)
"
Their server seemed well organized enough, install was (too) simple and very quick... I wrote too simple because there was no package selection (this is a pro if one begins or is in a hurry, a con if one knows what one wants). Anyway, thanks for reminding it existed.
BTW, I useed 320 M RAM to VMplay it : as KDE works during install(and install can be ressource consuming), I could notice there was no locks/stalls/unpleasant delays, as far as I could play... => for real *new* PCs (not virtual ones, where memory is smaller) KDE or Gnome do not seem too RAM greedy. As both are slightly more comfortable than Windows XP, it is almost a matter of no choice btw. stable versions.
156 • paldo (by JAG on 2007-11-11 17:37:12 GMT from United States)
Hey, Ladislav... here's a link to the paldo md5sums.
http://forum.paldo.org/index.php?action=topic&topicnr=269&pagenr=1#post1543
157 • sidux fluxbox (RE 155 by dbrion) (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-11 19:57:59 GMT from United States)
When you boot the sidux live CD or an installed sidux, you can choose your desktop from either KDE or fluxbox. Fluxbox pops up in like 2 seconds or less and uses at least 100MB less ram than KDE. From fluxbox you select programs from the KDE pool or you can go grab even lighter ones like those dsl uses. Best to stay clear of any GNOME related apps unless you don't mind loading yet another whole library and dependency set. GNOME is not so well supported in sidux (SID). A set of light apps was discussed on the sidux forums. Read their go at a Xfce version where they stayed away from GNOME, looking only at light apps.
I'm running sidux, installed in less than 10 minutes on my 1.6GHz AMD box. Of course, since sidux is Freedom pure, you may want to install some non-free apps, just keep it quiet. :) The next release of sidux could happen any day now.
Keep your live CD (not your coffee cup) in the CD tray...
Fract Al Guy
158 • Re 152 ---Kbilliards uses wav files for sound effects (by not a bug on 2007-11-12 01:49:34 GMT from Australia)
kbilliards does not have sound effects
No (closed source) codecs, no sound effects. Linux coders should use opensource codecs!
159 • RE 157 Sidux (by dbrion on 2007-11-12 07:45:11 GMT from France)
Sidux offers the choice between many desktops, as Mandriva does ( I believe one can even start without desktop in Sidux; I am sure of it in Mandriva: this might be convenient if one punctually needs a lot of RAM in a simple task (not only for maintenance; VMplayer does not freely add memory to one's computer.) .
Sidux boots faster than a Mandriva configured with Gnome apps and KDE (I could have a KDE working -at least often, with VMplayer, and it did not break- with 170 M RAM and no swap file...).
The main drawback of Sidux remains in her poor (at least by default) language and before all key,qp recognition - laptops keyboqrds are glued....), which make her not that user friendly. Else, she seemed satisfying and your hint about her was a good idea.
160 • #114 • KDE4 rant withdrawn (by Ariszló on 2007-11-12 07:53:17 GMT from Hungary)
All hope is not lost yet:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150883
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.0_Release_Beta_Goals#Konqueror
Number of Comments: 160
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| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
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