 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 228, 12 November 2007 |
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Welcome to this year's 46th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The Fedora project has once again risen the bar of desktop usability, especially in the area of hardware support, but what do the users think? Find out in our exclusive review of Fedora 8 by Simon Hildenbrand. In the news section, openSUSE announces the creation of openSUSE Board, Mandriva continues to fight the Nigerian Classmate PC deal, Fedora unveils the feature list for version 9, and LinuxTitans.com interviews creator of paldo GNU/Linux Jürg Billeter. Also in this issue, two sets of statistical analyses in the never-ending quest to find out which is the most popular distribution. Happy reading!
Content:
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Reviews |
Review of Fedora 8 (by Simon G. Hildenbrand)
Introduction
In this article I will be reviewing the new Fedora 8 -- code-named "Werewolf" -- that was released this past Thursday (November 8). To give a brief background on myself, I have had Linux installed on my computer every day since I started with SUSE Linux back in 1999. I purchased a boxed copy of SUSE at a local video/media store in Greeley, CO. The funny thing about mentioning Greeley is that it's a relatively small, currently at 77,000 people, farming town where the University is the biggest part. Even then, Linux was being sold in small farming communities.
I had no idea which Linux distro I should choose, or the differences between them, but I had a choice between SUSE, Mandrake, and Red Hat. I ended up choosing SUSE for no particular reason; however, after installing SUSE, I wasn't disappointed as it did everything I wanted and more.
Since then, I usually switch between Ubuntu, openSUSE, Red Hat or Mandriva. I have, however, tried virtually every distribution on the top 100 list on DistroWatch and usually keep a distro on my machine for several months after installation if I was able to configure it successfully. I have to say that I love each distribution I've tried and each one is great in its own way.
As I always do with any installation, I will be doing a clean installation on my main machine which is an IBM/Lenovo X60 and I will be using the entire hard drive. The test machine has a Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 120 GB hard drive. I will be using it both docked (connected to a 20" ThinkVision monitor - 1600x1200 pixel resolution) and undocked (12" laptop monitor - 1024x768 pixel resolution). If it is docked, I will only be using the 20" monitor. The graphics card is an on-board Intel with shared memory and comes with an Intel 3945 wireless chipset. It's a good machine that's almost 1 year old. Since I don't do too much complex work and I would most likely see negligible gain in speed by using a 64-bit edition of Fedora 8, I have chosen to install the x86 edition for ease of configuring many browser plug-ins that are primarily distributed for x86 builds.
Installation
The installation went very smoothly and I didn't run into any problems. It is virtually the same Anaconda installer as before with only a few minor changes. There is nothing too exciting to report here. If you are new to Fedora 8 it should be pretty easy to navigate.
One of the most important parts of the installation program is the partition editor. The default in Anaconda is to remove all 'Linux' partitions and create a default layout. I think this is a good move for those users who are new to Linux and who want to dual boot with Windows. I can count way too many times I've heard that a Linux distribution 'ruined' a user's hard drive only because they were unfamiliar with the partitioning editor of the installer program and the installer used the entire hard drive when the user was expecting to dual boot. By having the default only remove Linux partitions is a good move in my opinion as it helps people who are new to Linux without giving them a bad experience at the start.
When partitioning the hard drive my personal preference is to always choose the option to remove 'all' partitions on the selected drive and to create a default layout which I've done here. Either way, you should click on 'Review and modify partitioning layout' before moving forward. Otherwise, you run the risk of loosing data on your hard drive that you might have wanted to save. I think the box to review and modify partitioning layout should be set by default, but it is at least provided as an option. The default layout is to create logical volumes which I usually prefer to use and which I've done for this review.
One aspect of Anaconda installer that I really like is that it provides the user to set more options during the installation process by offering points during the installation to click on advanced, but defaults to very common and easy-to-understand settings that the majority of users will use. I personally like and use some of the advanced features that can be set up during the installation such as a boot loader password. Many options available in the Anaconda installer just aren't available in other installation programs. While I'm not going to use a distro just for these types of options in the installer program, it is definitely an added benefit.
After configuring the network settings, the time zone, and root password, the package selection is next. Fedora is primarily a GNOME-based distribution, though it does come with KDE. I personally prefer GNOME, but I do like the feel of KDE on Fedora releases. At the package selection, a user can choose to either customize the packages and or add additional software repositories, or to just use the default. If a user wants to customize, they are given a screen where they can choose to select a full high-level category, such as server, or development. I am not a fan of how this is done only for the fact that if a user selects one of the main categories such as development, they could get a lot of unnecessary packages that they will not necessarily need. Also, if a user selects to customize and then clicks on KDE, if GNOME isn't unchecked, the user would get both GNOME and KDE installed. I think that Mandriva makes it easier at this point of their installation process primarily because the user chooses one desktop environment (e.g. GNOME, KDE), and then proceeds into selecting individual applications to install.
The installation of the default package selection with GNOME finished after about 15 minutes. A little longer than some, but not overly long and nothing that I was concerned or thought needed improvement. After the installation finished, it asked for a reboot.
During the first boot, the installer will ask you a series of questions on your preference for the Firewall, SELinux, date and time, and users. One thing I really like about Fedora is that it has SELinux set to actively enforce. Also, when choosing passwords where prompted if it is too weak based on best practices, it will warn you. I work in security and believe that keeping your computer systems secure is vital when connected to the global Internet.
Fedora 8 - boot screen
Overall, I feel that Fedora has the best security features enabled by default with Mandriva coming in close with their recent 2008 release. It still concerns me when distributions, such as Ubuntu, still ship without a firewall or even a security framework such as SELinux, or AppArmor installed by default.
Look and feel
With every new Fedora release, the team puts together a new look and feel. I like the new look; however, I still wonder why Fedora has to use the classic icon theme for many applications (e.g. Evolution, OpenOffice.org) they have been using for what seems like forever. In my opinion Fedora has used it for too long. For me it is as ugly now as it was when it first came out.
The other parts of the look and feel (e.g. boot splash, GDM theme, desktop wallpaper) look very nice and professionally designed. Personally I think that the look and feel of Fedora 7 was the best theme of any distribution I've ever tested. However, the theme for Fedora 8 is very nice because it provides a nice professional look that adds to the desktop without distracting the user.
Fedora 8 - the default desktop (GNOME)
(full image size: 901kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Default software
As with almost all distributions that install GNOME, you have the standard suspects when it comes to the default software. You have GNOME (2.20.1), GIMP (2.4.0), OpenOffice.org (2.3.0), Evolution (2.12.1), Firefox (2.0.0.8), and Pidgin (2.2.2).
All the software worked very well and I didn't have any problems running any of the default packages. I use my computer mostly for basic email (Evolution), Internet (Firefox), office software (OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc), and music (Banshee/Amarok). The default music player is Rhythmbox, but I am not a fan of the application. The main reason is that I think it is a little hard on the eye to look at, and it has never been able to sync any of my portable music players in previous releases like advertised. I decided to install Banshee and it worked perfectly.
However, one aspect of the software management process that still hasn't seemed to be fixed is the error I get when going to Add/Remove software. It usually happens after the first boot, but I would think that since this has been a problem for users in past releases that this would have been fixed by now. To fix it, you need to go into the GNOME System Monitor and kill the yum/Puplet package manager processes and then you can add and remove packages.
Outside of the error I indicated above, the upgrades that have been made to the yum package manager and the Puplet update tool are good improvements. I've noticed that it's a little faster than previous versions and overall I've been happy with it. I don't think it's as fast as the APT/Synaptic package manager, but I do think it has a nice and easy-to-use feature set and is easier to configure than any other package manager. It is interesting though that when searching for a package that the packages available to install aren't sorted in alphabetical order or at least provides the user the ability to sort the packages based on their personal preference.
While most of the packages that I use are installed by default, I do always need to add the Livna (http://rpm.livna.org) repository. Livna has everything I need to finalize the installation process. I always add the GStreamer "mad" and "ugly" packages to get MP3 and such working correctly, and then I add VLC and MPlayer (with the Firefox plug-in) to round it out. This usually gets all the other dependencies that I need to play DVDs so that I can start using my computer for real work.
Since this review is covering the desktop installation of Fedora 8, I wanted to add that I am still perplexed as to why Fedora ships with and runs the Sendmail mail server by default. I selected the default packages and didn't add any additional selections on the server category. Sendmail is one of the first services I disable after an installation. On a related note, when I did do server work, I always tried to stay away from Sendmail because of the security concerns with the application. Whether or not the application is secure, I still find myself wondering why this application is installed and running by default. OpenSUSE does the same thing with their release but I don't know of many other distributions that do. I think that by installing and enabling Sendmail is just opening up the computer to risk when there, for the majority of the users, is no need to be running a mail server.
Hardware support
All the hardware on my computer was properly configured and set up. When I first purchased my computer, several things didn't seem to work across any distribution (screen resolution on my external monitor when docked, internal secure digital (SD) card reader, suspend/hibernate). It wasn't until this most recent release cycle where almost everything worked perfectly out of the box. Fedora 8, however, worked the best overall for me.
Laptop support was one feature that the team has said it put considerable time and effort into getting to "just work." I would have to say that after a miserable attempt at suspend/hibernate in Fedora 7, which failed every time (which is the reason why I chose not to use Fedora 7), it now works perfectly, every time. It 'just works.' In fact, this has to be probably the best implementation of suspend/hibernation out of any distro that I've tried.
Another impressive implementation was the screen resolution. I always install a distribution using the main laptop monitor rather than the external monitor. I've run into too many problems before when installing while the computer is docked. For most installations I've done, once I re-dock the laptop and restart, I usually have to configure the monitor to support the external monitor's native resolution of 1600x1200. With Fedora 8, it automatically configured the resolution during boot-up to the proper resolution. I was really impressed as it was the first time that it was truly a seamless experience for me across all distributions I've tried.
The only drawback that I had with the distribution is with the wireless support. I'm very glad that Fedora ships the Intel Pro Wireless 3945 drivers by default, but I'm surprised at how it is implemented. NetworkManager is not enabled by default so you have to first start the service and then set it to start at boot time by going into the Services application in the Administration menu. This is easy to do, but a step I think should already be done for the user when a wireless card is detected and installed during installation. Also, since I use WPA encryption on my network, by default on start-up, the boot-up will stop for a period of time while trying to find a network IP address. To fix this, I have to set the network card to not start at boot time. This is easy to do in the Network application, but another step that must be taken. After I've done that, I can now get wireless to work through the NetworkManger.
Fedora 8 includes NetworkManager 0.7, which as far as I've read has been overhauled from previous releases. However, it's very buggy. Joining my wireless network was a hit and miss at times and sometimes it would ask for the password several times before it finally connected. I would have preferred Fedora to ship the previous version of NetworkManager since I felt as though it was much more stable than 0.7, but hopefully after an update, the issues that I saw will be resolved. So far I've found that the best wireless implementation is by Ubuntu 7.10. It just worked perfectly. Mandriva 2008 was also well, but at times I didn't see any networks available when many would show up under NetworkManger using Ubuntu.
Extras
Other extra features of Fedora 8 that are included is the latest CompizFusion. I enabled it and it worked perfectly as it did in the previous Fedora release as well as Ubuntu 7.10 and Mandriva 2008. It was funny that while it seemed that every other distribution that had CompizFusion installed by default worked for me, openSUSE did not. I find it funny because SLED (SUSE) was the first distribution to release it installed by default and yet I felt their implementation of Compiz in 10.3 was very poor. I have heard that there can be problems getting desktop effects to work correctly with KDE in Fedora 8. I didn't run into any problems, but if this is indeed a problem, hopefully an update gets provided soon as it's a feature that many people expect to work out of the box.
Another feature of Fedora 8 is that it ships with IcedTea, an open source implementation of Java. The verdict on this is still being decided for me. The plug-in for Firefox didn't work for me out-of-the-box even though it was installed. I had to run the command "mozilla-plugin-config -c -f" for it to finally recognize the plug-in. Also, when I tried to run the Sun Download Manager (a favorite program when downloading large files), it would not work. I also tried to install the standard Java runtime environment (JRE) files from Sun, but couldn't seem to get it to work. At times, Fedora's hardline stance on issues (e.g. codecs, wireless drivers, Java, etc.) has turned me off. I've just had to learn to deal with it and hack away until I get it to work like I want since I like Fedora.
Another nice feature that users of live CDs will enjoy are the Fedora-based spins (Fedora Electronic Lab, Fedora Developer spin, Fedora Games spin). Some other tentative spins are Fedora Art Studio and Xfce spin. I didn't test these yet, but I will after the mirrors have settled down from the download rush of the release.
There are a lot of other great features in Fedora 8. Some of them include Online Desktop, PulseAudio (installed by default), further security improvements, and improved Bluetooth to name a few. To go through each of their features here would take considerable time. I do recommend trying them yourself though.
Conclusion
Overall, I truly believe that Fedora 8 is by far the best Fedora release to date (and I've tried every one of them). From the look and feel of the system, to the out-of-the-box configuration during installation, I couldn't be happier with a cutting edge release.
As I mentioned before, the biggest aspects of a successful distribution for me are suspend/hibernate, correct screen resolution and the the ability to change the screen resolution in a GUI if it didn't configure it correctly the first time, system stability, and overall look and feel of a distribution. For me, Fedora 8 has excelled in all categories when I evaluate and review a system and I hope that Fedora continues to release versions that are put together as good as Fedora 8 has been.
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| Statistics |
Release dates page hits, IRC channels
With all four major Linux distro releases now completed, a reader wrote in to ask about the number of hits each of the four distribution pages received on the day of the release, plus the following day. To make the statistical comparison more complete, we added a number of other major releases from earlier in the year. Here is what the table looks like:
| Rank |
Distribution |
Release date |
Hits |
| 1 |
Ubuntu 7.10 |
2007-10-18 |
14,310 |
| 2 |
PCLinuxOS 2007 |
2007-05-21 |
11,522 |
| 3 |
openSUSE 10.3 |
2007-10-04 |
10,498 |
| 4 |
Fedora 8 |
2007-11-08 |
9,950 |
| 5 |
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 |
2007-04-08 |
7,857 |
| 6 |
Mandriva Linux 2008 |
2007-10-09 |
6,748 |
| 7 |
SimplyMEPIS 6.5 |
2007-07-09 |
6,656 |
| 8 |
Gentoo Linux 2007 |
2007-05-07 |
5,284 |
| 9 |
Slackware Linux 12.0 |
2007-07-02 |
5,093 |
| 10 |
Sabayon Linux 3.4 |
2007-07-24 |
4,491 |
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While on the subject of distro statistics, here is a set of figures collected last week by Marijn Schouten, a long-time DistroWatch reader. He thought that an interesting way of measuring the popularity of distributions is to log in to each distro's IRC channel on Feenode.net or similar service and count the number of users present. He picked a random time - 11:30 GMT on 7 November 2007. When done, he compiled the following table:
After collecting the above data, Marijn Schouten concluded: "I think that IRC statistics are more representative of current number of users while PHR is more representative of the number of people that are not actually using a distro, but are merely curious as to what sets it apart from the others. Such interest is more fickle than being an actual user of a distro. Therefore I think IRC rank is more representative of the actual size of the community around a distro, which I think is the relevant measure to rank distros by."
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| Miscellaneous News |
Fedora 9 feature list, openSUSE Board, update on Mandriva vs Microsoft, interview with paldo developer, Linux Journal
 So what do you think about Fedora 8? The consensus of the reviewers seems to be that it is indeed an excellent release, especially good on the hardware support front, but the many small improvements to the package manager, the new audio server, and the updated artwork have all contributed to the generally positive vibe. The only real criticism of Fedora is the usual omission of non-free software and patent-encumbered media codecs, but with the Livna.org community working round the clock to bring your all these goodies on the day of the release, this often-cited Fedora drawback is rather easily eliminated. Although Fedora 8 probably won't dethrone Ubuntu from its current position as the most popular desktop Linux distribution, those users looking for an alternative solution to deploy on their desktops or those who found the latest Ubuntu lacking in quality, could do much worse than evaluating the latest community distribution from Red Hat.
With Fedora 8 out of the way, the attention of the developers can now turn to finalising the feature list for Fedora 9, scheduled for release on May 1st, 2008. The first draft of the proposed features is now available for your viewing pleasure; it includes a number of interesting items, such as a new GNOME display manager, KDE 4, an alternative graphical package management front-end called PackageKit, RandR support, Bluetooth enhancements, support for binary delta packages during software updates, introduction of TeXLive, and even a web-based interface for generating custom Fedora distributions and live CDs. It sounds like a very ambitious release, but it's always nice to see that the developers maintain that innovative spirit Fedora has acquired in the recent past.
* * * * *
 The openSUSE project has announced two important infrastructural changes to the way its distribution is developed - the Guiding Principles and the openSUSE Board. The most interesting part is that the Board consists not only of Novell and openSUSE employees, but also of several community members: "The openSUSE project has introduced its Guiding Principles. The Guiding Principles provide a framework for the project and give a clear view of who the project community is, what it stands for, what the project wants and how it works. At the same time, the openSUSE project has introduced its first board to lead the overall project. Made up of a combination of Novell employees and external community members, the openSUSE board will act as a central point of contact to help resolve conflicts, communicate community interests to Novell, facilitate communication with all areas of the community, and smooth decision making where needed."
* * * * *
 The Mandriva versus Microsoft operating system battle over the 11,000 computers delivered to Nigerian schools continued last week. Following the open letter in which Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon accused Microsoft of unfair play, Computerworld UK now reports that the Nigerian government agency in charge of funding the purchase has overruled the earlier decision to replace Mandriva Linux with Microsoft Windows: "Now, however, a government agency funding 11,000 of the PCs has overruled the supplier. Nigeria's Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) wants to keep Mandriva Linux on the Classmate PCs, said an official who identified himself as the programme manager for USPF's Classmate PCs project. 'We are sticking with that platform,' said the official, who would not give his name."
* * * * *
 Besides the updated Red Hat Enterprise Linux and new Fedora, the only other stable release of the past week was paldo GNU/Linux 1.12. Paldo, you ask? Yes, paldo, an interesting recent addition to the Linux distro scene, an independently developed hybrid (binary and source) distribution with its own package manager and highly up-to-date software set. But what exactly does paldo differently from other distributions? Philip Ingram, the webmaster of LinuxTitans.com, has conducted an IRC interview with paldo developer Jürg Billeter to find out more about this promising project: "My interview with Jürg Billeter, or 'juergbi' on IRC, took place on a cold November morning, the day before the release of paldo 1.12. If you have not heard of paldo, you are missing out on one of the most intuitive 'just work' distros out there. It's stable, fast, comes in x86 and x86_64 flavours, uses its own package manager called Upkg, and can be used as a live CD or installed onto your hard disk. ... This distro will be on the tip of everyone's tongue in about 3 months. Watch the DistroWatch rankings - this distro will make it to the top ten in a year's time."
* * * * *
 Finally, something not really distribution related, but this news hasn't been widely publicised, so we thought we'd mention it here. Linux Journal, the oldest surviving Linux magazine on the market, is offering a free download of its November 2007 issue in PDF format: "Linux Journal is pleased to offer you a copy of our digital edition FREE! Best of all, there's no obligation, and no credit card is required to download your free copy." The only piece of information the magazine wants in return is an email address, to which it will send the direct download link. Linux Journal is designed primarily for system administrators and Linux programmers rather than general desktop users, but it's worth taking a look at as it usually offers excellent tips and authoritative articles. Some of the headlines from the free issue include: High-performance networking programming in C, Fast processing with multiple CPU cores, and Open-source compositing in Blender.
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| Released Last Week |
paldo GNU/Linux 1.12
Jürg Billeter has announced the release of paldo 1.12, an independently developed source/binary distribution that uses the Upkg package management system: "The paldo Team is proud to announce the release of paldo GNU/Linux 1.12. The paldo live CD now comes with an easy-to-use graphical installer which will install 2 GB of up-to-date software on your system in a few minutes. The new paldo 1.12 ships with OpenOffice.org 2.3.0, GNOME 2.20.1, Linux 2.6.23.1, and X.Org 7.3 with input hotplug support for x86 and x86_64 architectures. This version features a new GDM theme and default desktop background. There is also a server and a media center version available via network installation." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1
Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.1, the first update to the RHEL 5 product line: "Red Hat is pleased to announce the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1. This update includes the following enhancements: completion of virtualization support on Itanium2 platforms; improved support for Fully Virtualized (FV) guests; improved ACPI power management support including support for S3 suspend to RAM and S4 hibernate; ext3 file system now fully supports file system sizes of up to 16 TB; IPv6 improvements; hardware support enhancements; Samba update for improved interoperability; PAM/Kerberos and NSS-LDAP updates for improved integration in Active Directory environments; improved support for autofs load balancing with replicated servers...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed list of changes and enhancements.
Fedora 8
Fedora 8 has been released: "Announcing the release of Fedora 8 (Werewolf). This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. Features: GNOME 2.20; Online Desktop; KDE 3.5.8; Xfce 4.4.1; NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved wireless network management support; PulseAudio is now installed and enabled by default; CodecBuddy is now included; CompizFusion, the compositing window manager that re-merges Compiz and Beryl, is installed by default; the completely free and open source Java environment called IcedTea is installed by default...." Learn more about all the features in the release summary and release notes.
* * * * *
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 |
New distributions added to waiting list
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 19 November 2007.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Fedora 8 (by Joaquim Gil on 2007-11-12 10:27:12 GMT from Portugal)
Wow! A new Fedora kid is in the block. Good news!
Thanks to Distrowatch, as usual, for pointing it out!
2 • Stats (by gurito on 2007-11-12 10:59:29 GMT from Germany)
I'm a Fedora (since Fedora Core 6) user, a Gentoo user (since 2002 or so, until 2005), an Ubuntu user (until dapper), and an Arch Linux user and I've never been into the irc channels of any of them. I've always used the forums... I really don't what percentage of the real total users do enter de irc channels of a distro...
3 • IRC count lacks scientific approach (by Stefan on 2007-11-12 11:05:03 GMT from Germany)
picking just one random time and count the IRC users is definitely not scientific. Think of a distribution that is mainly US (Fedora) and a distribution that is mostly European (Opensuse) for sure the peaks of IRC users will be at very different times. So you would at least need some random tests covering a whole day. If not whole days in whole weeks. Just taking 1130 GMT is really not enough.
Besides I dont believe that many "normal" Users use IRC so thats why more technical challenging distributions like gentoo are "better" in this count than "easy end user" distributions like Fedora and Opensuse.
4 • Fedora 8 Review (by Anon on 2007-11-12 11:07:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
A fair review in my opinion.
5 • Fedora 8, the champ ! (by Caraibes on 2007-11-12 11:19:29 GMT from Dominican Republic)
As expected, I downloaded the F8 Gnome live-cd, and installed it on my main box. I liked it so much that I wiped Ubuntu 7.10 & Mandriva 2008 to gain some space in my HDD.
As every "distro-hopping season", Fedora comes out as the winner, with the best distro, clean, nice... What more can I say...
This distro-season, I tried openSUSE 10.3, Mandriva 2008, Ubuntu 7.10, and finally Fedora 8... I would rate F8 as the best, with Gutsy & MDV 2008 as 2nd ex-aequo, the Suse as 4th... A word to say that these 4 distros were all good, working fine on my desktop.
But Fedora has the magic touch, it is smoother, cleaner...
6 • IRC Count (by Chris Hildebrandt on 2007-11-12 11:34:39 GMT from Austria)
I agree with #3 partially. IRC counts would become more representative if some more data is collected. I think however, that correctly compiled data could tell us something about the size of user base involved in development and support.
Please check:
1) Debian and sidux both use irc.oftc.net instead of irc.freenode.org, please correct.
2) In order to keep instant support working for first time users, sidux has splitted it's IRC activities into several different channels, a channel guide can be found at http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-767.html . As far as I know also other distributions have done that, so counting just the main entry channel might lead to wrong results.
Greetings,
Chris
7 • No subject (by Eudoxus on 2007-11-12 11:36:55 GMT from Latvia)
I have tried all recent releases of the big bistros - Ubuntu, openSuSE, Mandriva and Fedora. Unfortunately I got some problems with all of them. Mainly - as far as I can tell - it is concerned with video drivers and Xorg release quality. Finally it turned out that the more trouble free and most suitable distribution for my ThinkPad is openSUSE.
8 • IRC popularity (by DTR on 2007-11-12 11:43:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think the study shows not only the popularity of the OS, but even more so - HOW COMPLICATED the OS is. Not surprisingly gentoo is #2, however I haven't heard of anyone using it for the last 5 years. OpenSUSE however does not require users to spend hours on IRC; and I haven't been there.
9 • Voting Bot #2 up and running (by WebBot2 on 2007-11-12 11:54:02 GMT from Mexico)
I was amazed how easy it was to set up a DW voting bot. Anyone can do it with Linux. I'll show you how below. The only rule is "Only one hit per IP address per day is counted." No problem.
I tested my voting bot with some low hit distros so I could verify the impact. For 7 days I saved the 7-day hit score. Then I picked five stable distros and switched on the bot. The bot was set to vote about 60 times per day. For the distro IPCop 7 days of the "7-day hit score" before the bot was very stable 70-68-68-68-69-67-67. After turning on web bot the daily reading of the 7-day hit score was 67-74-83-90-98-111-119. Using the 7 day score meant it takes 7 days to see the full impact of adding the web bot votes to the normal hit score, thus the steady daily increase. The bot is working undetected. IPCop's 7-day ranking also improved each day: 83-74-67-62-58-56-54
The web-bot test given in the October 22 DW news showed these hits per day:
openSuSE.. 1970 – 1022 – 1632
Fedora...... 1395 – 787 – 1259
PCLos ....... 3757 – 684 – 3685
There are three important observations:
1 The middle day is slow because viewers use the Page Hit Ranking (PHR) list as an index. Without an index, visitors viewed information about the latest releases and left. Providing news of new releases and planned releases is DW's real contribution.
2 For PCLos the traffic fell 82% and their ranking changed drastically. The PCLos web-bot uses the PHR list to vote about 2700 IPs per day. Without the PHR list the web-bot was exposed and disabled.
3 Votes were still recorded. This means clicking on the PHR list is not the only way for a web-bot to vote. My bot also voted by typing in "Musix" for the distro. The results were 7 days of the 7-day hit scores before web-bot 70-69-69-74-73-71-70 and after the web-bot was activated 69-78-87-94-100-108-115. My web-bot also tried to vote by clicking on Knoppix in one of the ads - this did not work, those votes were not counted.
Here are the details of how to set up your own DW voting bot. You can use that old PC in the garage or just have multiple user IDs logged on your PC simultaneously. Multiple IDs let you run the bot totally in the background while doing your usual tasks. The background bot will keep running until the PC is turned off.
With Ubuntu you only need to install the packages "Privoxy" and "Tor". See
http://corvillus.com/2006/09/18/how-to-set-up-tor-and-privoxy-on-ubuntu-linux/
for pointers on the setup.
In Firefox just two add-ons are needed: iMacros and FoxyProxy
Verify that FoxyProxy is working by viewing your IP at a site like www.ipchicken.com. Check with FoxyProxy off and again with it on using Tor. You will see different IPs.
In iMacros create a macro that:
TAB CLOSEALLOTHERS
goes to www.DistroWatch.com
clicks on the distro(s) you want to promote (better yet type them in)
Save the macro.
From iMacros right click the macro and add as bookmark Set type to "Local: Add reference"
Tor gives you a new IP every few minutes. Your web-bot can vote again every time the IP changes. Close Firefox and create a bash script to run:
firefox macro-bookmark &
sleep 960 (wait 15 minutes)
Use loops and nests of loops even multiple user IDs/sessions simultaneously.
Run firefox with the "&". This launches it in the background so the script continues timing. Sometimes Tor uses very slow routings and the macro times out. Restarting Firefox with "&" ignores any timeout errors and starts over with the new IP.
I love Linux. I started the web-bot and it ran perfectly for a week with no need for human assistance. I only stopped it to select new distros to promote.
DW will now black list the IPs that my web-bot used for voting. This is of trivial impact as Tor keeps giving new IPs with only 5% repeats. Also to win this bot game will take thousands of IPs not just the couple of hundred that are getting blocked. For more IPs visit FoxyProxy pages. Be creative - this is a competition.
My crystal ball says Slackware, Mephis and PC-BDS are about to experience a "continuous rise in interest and curiosity generated by you - the DistroWatch reader". "If a distribution is good enough to get there, so be it!"
LOL - - WebBot # 2
10 • IRC (by CeVO on 2007-11-12 11:54:08 GMT from Spain)
The Distrowatch statistics are no indication of a distro's popularity, and IRC is even less reliable. As a MEPIS user, I am pretty positive that most of the people that use MEPIS are no typical IRC visitors. And as someone else suggested, MEPIS requires a good deal less tinkering than Gentoo, Fedora or even Ubuntu.
If only 7 went final!!!
11 • PCLOS and IRC (by ZP on 2007-11-12 12:21:21 GMT from Netherlands)
Although the number of people in the different IRC-channels might not be the best estimate of actual distro-usage, it seems like it is again another clue of how huge the artifact of the PCLOS-ranking is. Serious man... 32 people...
12 • 9 • Voting Bot #2 up and running ------ (by Vote 1 on 2007-11-12 12:24:43 GMT from Australia)
WebBot2, you made my day, week!!! Hahaha...:-)
I vote your great and illuminating contribution as DW POST OF THE YEAR!
13 • sllllloooowwww.... (by Unhappy fedora fan on 2007-11-12 12:36:03 GMT from United States)
Jeez, it was a pain in the *ss to use the "Add/Remove Software" program... too slow, locks up 90% of the time... I will keep using Mandriva 2008.
14 • Fedora 8 review (re why sendmail) (by Ken Yap on 2007-11-12 12:38:45 GMT from Australia)
SUSE has shipped with postfix instead of sendmail for quite a few versions now. Secondly the SMTP server is normally only enabled on the loopback address so it cannot be attacked from outside the machine. A SMTP server is running to deliver system mail to root or the real person who is receiving root's mail. Mr. Hildenbrandt, please check Fedora's services with netstat -at. You'll probably find that it's listening on localhost only.
15 • Agree with 10... (by Lionel Debroux on 2007-11-12 12:50:50 GMT from France)
IRC channels are indeed no good indication of relative popularity between distros... I've been using SimplyMEPIS for two years, and it has always had excellent HW detection on the boxes I tried it on. It never let me down, unless I did bad things (forcing an upgrade of X.Org packages in the 6.8 -> 6.9 transition, using the Debian unstable repositories).
All alphas and betas in the 7.x series (I didn't test Beta 6 yet), with kernel 2.6.22.x, trigger a kernel panic very early in the boot process, on a fairly old laptop. However, 6.5 is working alright on it, and I no longer use that computer on a daily basis, so I can live without the upgrade for a little while.
16 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 12:56:33 GMT from United States)
The big problem with Fedora has been pointed out many times. It is too cutting edge. I wish there were a more stable release of Fedora. Instead, six months ago I installed Fedora 7, and its bugs have not yet been cleaned up, now Fedora 8 is out and all attention is on Fedora 9. This will keep Fedora from ever increasing its market share beyond where it already is. That's fine, I'm just saying Fedora is the wrong choice for most users.
Suggestion for Simon Hildenbrand: While you did a good review of Fedora 8, I would suggest perhaps limiting your discussions of other distros. Sometimes the review went off on tangents and I had to reread that section to see if I missed the point.
17 • RE There is a difference between popularity, activity, usability (by dbrion on 2007-11-12 13:05:03 GMT from France)
* IRC channels (they should be sampled on a longer base) seem an indicator of activity : debugging, helping pple (if there are no bugs, and if it is simple enough, why?), developping (this might explain Debian's and Gentoo's rankings). This seems an indicator of work, rather than results....
* Mepis seem quite usable for you (last year, her language recognition was messy, if I have a good memory => she was not usable for me).
* UBUlinux is popular (according to journalists, with some feedback leading sooner or -I hope- later to a monopole), though I never saw an UBUlinux user happy (I saw happy Fedoras users and could play with their computer with delight) : in the DDR, last century, Trabants were popular (one saw many), though Ladas were far more reliable.
18 • voting bot (by voislav on 2007-11-12 13:10:41 GMT from Canada)
I say that paldo needs a boost, after all it is going to be in the top ten in less than a year :)
19 • PCLOS (by Sérgio Fernandes on 2007-11-12 13:13:15 GMT from Portugal)
I use PCLOS every day and never went to a IRC channel. And probably most users of other distros do the same.
20 • RE:17 (by voislav on 2007-11-12 13:14:35 GMT from Canada)
Trabant is the best...car...ever. Mmmmm, the joy of plastic seats on the bumpy roads. One of the two truly legendary cars, along with Wartburg (mmm, the smell of two cylinder engine running on heating oil).
21 • RE: 3 • IRC count (by johncoom on 2007-11-12 13:29:37 GMT from Australia)
yes I agree it totally lacks any "scientific approach" and the supposed "random time" is more than likely to have been when it was convenient for him (Marijn Schouten) ?
Now where are the most Linux users in the world, mainland USA/Ca and Europe. Sure there are other countries that have increasing numbers but I would imagine the above would cover a very large amount of the bulk.
Now selecting "11:30 GMT" on a Wednesday would mean most of USA/Ca would be still sleeping or just getting up (on east coast) AND most of Europe would be at work (or having lunch).
See Wikipedia - Standard Time Zones of the World as of 2005. (Some time zones have since changed)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Timezones_optimized.png
Surely much better times would be to have at least two times to check ? Being middle of evening USA/Ca and middle of evening Europe. Even those times are still rather "non-scientific" :-(
Really it should be done once an hour for 24/7 and done for several weeks. And then repeated every few months, to come even remotely meaningful.
BUT - I think as others point out - "how many" Linux users actually use a distros IRC channel ? In real terms I believe not as many compaired with the numbers of users. I hardly ever do. Mailing lists and distro forums are far more popular (IMHO) and even stats taken from those are questionable !
So IMHO it is, thumbs down for any "IRC distro statistics"
22 • Re: 9 • Voting Bot #2 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 13:32:23 GMT from Malaysia)
It would be interesting (from an academic point of view) if these results were reproducible. ;-)
Any volunteers?
23 • #16 Fedora (by herman on 2007-11-12 13:36:09 GMT from Europe)
"The big problem with Fedora has been pointed out many times. It is too cutting edge. I wish there were a more stable release of Fedora."
Your wish has been granted.
It's called CentOS.
"Instead, six months ago I installed Fedora 7, and its bugs have not yet been cleaned up, now Fedora 8 is out and all attention is on Fedora 9. This will keep Fedora from ever increasing its market share beyond where it already is. That's fine, I'm just saying Fedora is the wrong choice for most users."
I challenge you to show that Fedora has more bugs than Suse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc. Please also be so kind to provide details regarding bugs, because this is meaningless this way. Software is complex business, so be so kind to provide also the locations of bug reports, etc.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that there are "too many bugs" in Fedora (since every bug is one too many), but this would consequentially mean that every other fresh binary user friendly Linux distribution has too many bugs. I wish I could have it otherwise, but I can't.
24 • web bot (by DoNotDrinkMexicanWater on 2007-11-12 13:40:22 GMT from United States)
If there is a web bot generating PCLinuxOS hits, it is performing a
tremendous service for all newbies coming over from Windows.
Steering them to the easiest to install and use distro is a wonderful
time saver for these people. Keep crankin bot boy.
25 • IRC HIts (by William A. Statt on 2007-11-12 13:41:44 GMT from United States)
The reason PCLinuxOS is so far down on the IRC hits is because almost everything works right out out of the box and the users don't have to go to the IRC channels to find out how to get things to work. I would say that the Distro's at the top of the IRC hit lists are probably the ones where users needs lots of help because the developers didn't "get it right" in the release like PCLinuxOS.
26 • eee pc experiences ? (by Leo on 2007-11-12 13:45:15 GMT from United States)
Hi All
Has anyone gotten an eee pc lately ? If so, are you using Xandros ? How is it ? Reviews have been extremely positive so far. Anyone playing with Xubuntu or other light distros on it ? Is it easy to install a new distro ?
Cheers !
27 • Review (by YUKESH KUMAR on 2007-11-12 13:55:10 GMT from Argentina)
I have tried various distros, based on the ranking on distrowatch. I think PCLinuxOS worked more smoothly than any other distro I had picked. That said, Knoppix or DSL were equally good. Having been fed on Windows, I found PCLinuxOS to be closer to being a replacement for windows. I use an old computer with PII CPU, 256RAM and 40GB HDD. On this computer, Fedora8 was easy on the eye, but it did not allow me to do anything after loading the desktop from the liveCD.
I would agree with No 10 and No. 17 above that IRC channels are probably not the best indicators of a distro's popularity. Few non-geeks have heard of IRC, though they have Linux running on their home computers.
28 • Two radically ... simple .. questions to 24 (by dbrion on 2007-11-12 13:55:17 GMT from France)
"If there is a web bot generating PCLinuxOS hits, it is performing a
tremendous service for all newbies coming over from Windows.
"
Which service?
By which mecanism?
29 • Fedora 8 .. and IRC stats (by winsnomore on 2007-11-12 13:59:35 GMT from United States)
I spent at least 2 hours trying to install Fedora 8 on a 3 years old Sempron MB with ATI 9200 graphics card. No matter what I did I couldn't make it "NOT" use the vsync of less than 87 Hz that my LCD monitor (5 years) old doesn't support.
In short both Fedora 8 and ?buntu 7.10 are unusable on my machine, it's a shame because both ?buntu7.04 worked fine as did Fedora7 ..
Regarding IRC .. why would one go to IRC ? to get a hint on solving a problem .. fewer problems you have less reason to go there.
30 • Stats and Distros (by Sokraates on 2007-11-12 14:00:41 GMT from Austria)
The IRS-approach may have been unscientific but it serves it's purpose as a quick overview. IRC alone, though, is not enough. I've used Linux fulltime for close to 3 years already and have never visited an IRC-channel. Then again, neither have I when I was still using Windows. :)
To truly measure a distro's popularity by means other than page hits, the forums would have to be also measured though. This, of course, creates numerous new problems, like whether only the official (mostly english) forums should be used etc. Maybe some scientifically minded readers will find a way.
When will gOS be added to the distro list? I've grown rather fond of this distro. And I won't use a bot to boost it's popularity. I promise. :P
31 • Silly me ... (by Sokraates on 2007-11-12 14:10:15 GMT from Austria)
[Edit to my previous post]
I just realized that ther is a waiting-period of at least 90 days before a distro is officially listed in Distrowatch.
Concerning the discussions from previous week regarding gOS' source code: as promised they've put it online under "Developers" -> "Browse Source".
32 • 23 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 14:34:03 GMT from United States)
"I challenge you to show that Fedora has more bugs than Suse, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc. Please also be so kind to provide details regarding bugs, because this is meaningless this way."
I'm not talking about the existence or quantity of bugs. I'm talking about technology being incorporated before it's ready. You are free to use Google, go through the mailing lists, etc. if this is the first time you've encountered this criticism. Given that it has been discussed many, many times before, there is no reason to talk about it yet again.
"Your wish has been granted. It's called CentOS."
Except that I like to use software written in this century. Debian stable with backports and Debian testing are best suited to my needs.
Fedora IMO is a great OS. Unfortunately I am unable to move to Fedora completely because I always run into important problems after a couple of weeks. It's no secret that this does not bother the Fedora devs, and they've clearly stated that there are other distros available if you want something else.
IMO that is fine. I was only making the comment that I *wish* Fedora were more stable, because I *wish* I could move to it permanently.
33 • IRC Count (by Chris Hildebrandt on 2007-11-12 14:44:31 GMT from Austria)
For those who have fun tracking visitor numbers at IRC channels: http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/ - simply add the name of a distro and go. Example: http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/?chat=sidux .
Greetings,
Chris
34 • Linux? (by Linux on 2007-11-12 14:58:04 GMT from United States)
What is different between Linux and Windows? linux doesn't have viruses yet.
IMO real Unix are BSD.
35 • #32 Fedora (by herman on 2007-11-12 15:06:39 GMT from Netherlands)
>> "Your wish has been granted. It's called CentOS."
> Except that I like to use software written in this century. Debian stable with backports and Debian testing are best suited to my needs.
That's great, Debian and CentOS are worthy competitors in their league, after all. ;)
however..
~]$ uname -a
Linux centos 2.6.18-8.1.15.el5 #1 SMP Mon Oct 22 08:32:04 EDT 2007 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
That's about the same kernel Debian etch comes with. Same Gnome too. There is quite some stuff in CentOS 5 that Etch doesn't have, by the way.
It's a great exaggeration to claim that vis à vis Debian Stable/Testing, CentOS would somehow be prehistorical.
But I assume that was a joke. :P
What then, would your perfect OS (Fedora, but then bug-free) look like? You can't have years of testing ánd the latest & greatest. Like having your cake and eat it.
36 • Fedora 8 (by Tom at 2007-11-12 15:20:12 GMT from United States)
I have been using Linux since '03, and every time a new major distro comes out I give it a shot. I have been continually disappointed by Ubuntu with strange stability problems and their bogus philosophy about Gnome and KDE. But Fedora has also been full of problems, Fedora 6's installer just kept freezing, early problems with yum and others. But with Fedora 8 problems seem to be resolved, it is far more stable and reliable than any (K)Ubuntu I have every used. I will be sticking with Fedora now!
37 • Poster #9 (by davemc on 2007-11-12 15:22:06 GMT from United States)
LOL awesome post! You just completely destroyed any hope Ladislav ever had of legitimizing that PHR system he uses. Anyone with any Linux experience at all knew all along that there are ~many~ active hit bots in use today to artificially inflate the rankings, mainly for PCLos. The real question is why? Since Linux = Linux, who really cares? It may have more to do with a desire to gain corporate sponsorship perhaps, or just a reflection of a userbase thats out of control and exceptionally immature. I think more the latter. Whatever the case, a Distro stands on its own merits and only its real userbase can/should have the real say in how good or bad it is, how much improvement is needed where, and what direction it should take in regards to restricted codecs, etc., and future development.
Anyway, Poster #9, great post, great job for exposing the many flaws in the PHR system, and proving that it is absolutely worthless for use in any meaningful way.
38 • Re Comment #24 (by WebBot2 on 2007-11-12 15:25:34 GMT from Germany)
This is so typical of PCLoss FanBoyz.
They don't understand what proxies are so they assume I'm in Mexico and start hurling insults at Mexico's drinking water.
Then they defend web-bot voting for PCLoss as "a
tremendous service for all newbies".
39 • @37 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 15:39:19 GMT from Malaysia)
@37 • Poster #9 "just completely destroyed any hope Ladislav ever had of legitimizing that PHR system he uses."
Let's not underestimate Ladislav! :-)
40 • Suggestion for PHR list (by probiscus on 2007-11-12 15:41:25 GMT from United States)
The P.H.R. list on the front page seems to not only be the subject of hot debate , but also possibly one of the guiding factors as to which distro a "newbie" might try first. I believe a couple weeks ago here in DWW, there was an experiment done to see if removing the list for a day impacted the results, and it certainly did. Because being #1 on the PHR ranking or near to it obviously adds to the popularity (or PHR at least) of distro, I would instead like to see the list changed so that the top 5 (or top 3, or 6 or 8, etc) are not ranked or listed with the HPD number, but instead listed in a random order every time I visit the page. For instance, maybe the first time I visit distrowatch.com, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE are tops, but then I hit refresh and PCLinuxOS and Sabayon are at the top. Then the next time maybe Fedora and openSUSE. This way, each of the top 5 might enjoy a couple new users once in a while that being at the top adds. Each one of those distros is sufficiently user friendly for a newbie (at least in my opinion). Then below that there could be the second 5 or simply the rest of the list, ranked from 6-100 as usual. The PHR as it is now could be on a separate page, with a link easily available at the top of the list. Just a thought.
41 • 35 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 15:42:51 GMT from United States)
"What then, would your perfect OS (Fedora, but then bug-free) look like? You can't have years of testing ánd the latest & greatest. Like having your cake and eat it."
My ideal OS would be Fedora 7 with the almost latest and greatest. If there were a version of Fedora 7 where anything with critical bugs were stripped out, I'd be very happy. As it stands, it appears that the goal of the project is to have a specific set of features, all in their most recent versions, with little concern for whether those features actually work correctly.
I like Fedora out of the box (fonts, artwork, package choices, security features, and so on) much better than Debian out of the box. However, as is usually the case with Linux, significant tweaking fixes most problems. The Debian experimental/unstable/testing/stable provides a buffer for those of us who don't want to shout out a string of swear words. Because that is the most important thing to me, I use Debian.
42 • RE: 37 (by ladislav on 2007-11-12 15:52:41 GMT from Taiwan)
Attempts at manipulating the PHR ranking are almost as old as the web site itself. After all, over 100,000 people visit DistroWatch every day, so there are bound to be one or two nutcases among them.
Ultimately though, just as all past cheating attempts were always discovered and thwarted, all future attempts will be dealt with in the same manner - if for no other reason than for the fact that I am the one who has access to the web server and therefore I am the one who has access to all the necessary information.
Sure, those who find it fun to invent new, sophisticated cheating methods might get excited if they succeed in moving IPCop up from the 50th to the 45th position in the 30-day PHR ranking stats, but sooner or later they will come to understand that that's a terrible waste of a computer, not to mention human resources.
43 • Re: #38 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 15:55:57 GMT from Germany)
Few people actually have the time to test dozens of distros (or even read dozens of reviews) to find out which distro they like best. When people want to try Linux, they choose one distro that appears to be popular, and if it doesn't give them too much trouble, they'll stick to it. So it's a huge advantage if you can make it look like your distro is popular. Mere appearance of popularity can in time create actual popularity.
But I agree that it's good that someone exposed publicly how easy it is to artificially inflate the Page Hit ratings. Hopefully this both removes the unfair advantage that some distros seem to have enjoyed and also makes people take this kind of statistics less seriously.
Now everyone, go on and boost your favorite distro's popularity by creating a web bot or two! It's not illegal or anything. :-)
44 • Between the devil and the deep blue sea (by Jack on 2007-11-12 15:57:29 GMT from Canada)
Sometime ago someone posted that the Ununtu forums supplied many responses to his questions but that the majority were from newbies and were either inapplicable or just wrong.
The Kubuntu forums (dapper drake) seem to have the opposite problem. I am lucky to get one answer and if I reply that It does not seem to help I will be lucky to get another.
It seems that perhaps the majority of Kubuntu users are business people who rarely visit the forums.
I have not tried irc.
But, on the whole, I think I get better (more accurate) responses to my Kubuntu problems on the UBUNTU forums.
Weird.
45 • IRC rankings (by Duhnonymous on 2007-11-12 16:01:37 GMT from United States)
IRC rankings are most likely the result of two things:
1) Whether there is an active link to an IRC client on the default desktop that automatically /joins the channel.
2) The amount of development activity and technical support a distro has.
PHR probably is more a measure of casual curiosity than whether a distro merits examination.
46 • RE 29 - screen resolutions (by KimTjik on 2007-11-12 16:03:19 GMT from Sweden)
A wild guess is that you're experiencing problems with the newer version of xorg. As it is now a fully updated Fedora 7 and 8 will have the same xorg.server, but I think that wasn't the case at the time of when 7 was released. Ubuntu has also changes xorg.server.
Unfortunately Linux distributions do get their share of complaints that might be caused by something outside its control. I don't say this is the case for you, but since I'm using Arch which include newer packages pretty fast (now xorg.server version 1.4-5) I see once in a while some getting into trouble, not because Arch as a distribution isn't well managed, but because packages from other developers haven't been around long enough to encounter all issues.
Just a guess...
47 • Sad... (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 16:06:15 GMT from Spain)
We all have known for a long time that PCLinuxOS was cheating those statistics with s bot. I won't blame any developer, it's probably just some fanboy doing it.
However, this made me think...
Distros like PCLinuxOS are doing a great job in making Linux easy for new users, mostly those coming from Windows. This is a good thing by itself, but now we're seeing the consequences. What happened to the Linux community? Why did it get so spoiled that we can't even trust something like DW's PHR anymore?
While converting Windows users to Linux is a good thing, we should aim at re-educating them in a new culture rather than just make them switch their OS without changing anything else. Free Software is more than just a few million lines of source code, and that should be the first lesson taught to people doing the switch. And here is where distros like PCLinuxOS might be failing. Even Ubuntu, that started with very good intentions, seems to be failing lately. OpenSUSE is not on the right track either...
I used to had great hopes regarding Free Software in general and Linux in particular. Hopes that it would help to make a difference, to change the world a little bit in the right direction. But now my hopes are starting to vanish...
Maybe it's still not too late...
48 • OLPC (by jack on 2007-11-12 16:14:05 GMT from Canada)
I have just received and read the 2 for 1 offer ($399)
There is only a 30 day warranty
I know that the chinese can produce cheap merchandise; and that they can also produce good stuff (Thinkpads)
But I am doubtful that they can produce something that is both cheap and good,and a 30 day warranty is not encouraging
I hope I am wrong but I decided not to join the 2 for 1 scheme
49 • irc.freenode.org (by RedBoar on 2007-11-12 16:20:05 GMT from United States)
Marijn is assuming that every IRC user is an across the board representation of the Linux community. I for one don't go to IRC servers anymore, and I'm sure quite a few newbies don't even know what the letters stand for. That of course is a good thing, it's only good for programmers and elitist hacker types.
50 • Qu 49 : Where do millions of code line come from"? (by dbrion on 2007-11-12 16:32:48 GMT from France)
"That of course is a good thing, it's only good for programmers and elitist hacker types."
=> the IRC channels seem to show some activity (perhaps in a biased way) linked with programming/maintenance. If this activity did not exist, what would happen?
Can you explain why curiosity (and self feeded curiosity: one looks at the top rankings, and does not go beyond), even if it leads "journalists" to recommendations, is superior to infamous elitist programming???
51 • IRC and elitism (by RedBoar on 2007-11-12 16:45:42 GMT from United States)
I don't care what programmers do if they kick or ban people for so-called "stupid" questions, could it be one of the reasons why Linux still doesn't have a friggin 3D video driver that works for all cards??? (among other things that hold it back 1-2 years from any innovations) BTW the rhetorical style questions don't impress me.
IRC in itself is a great idea but is messed up by parents' basement dwellers and those who lack real world etiquette and tolerance of any kind. I'll stick to AIM or Yahoo and make sure my firewall and antivirus are running while I do. ;)
52 • RE: 37 • (by davemc on 2007-11-12 15:22:06 GMT from United States) (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 16:46:35 GMT from Canada)
"LOL awesome post! You just completely destroyed any hope Ladislav ever had of legitimizing that PHR system he uses. "
Legitimizing it as what? Ladislav has never, ever maintained that it is an accurate measure of anything and is simply there for interest. Are you suggesting that the PHR are of no interest?
53 • IRC Channels & Fedora 8 (by afonic on 2007-11-12 16:54:59 GMT from Greece)
Actually as Marijn said IRC is one way to measure the size of the community.
And by community you don't just mean users, you don't even mean "fans" that today support that distro and the other day find another hobby. It means much more, it means people that dedicate their free time to provide support, file bugs, promote that distro, they are not just using it and post something on forum when they need help.
54 • Re: IRC Channels & Fedora 8 (by RedBoar on 2007-11-12 16:57:04 GMT from United States)
They do all those things because it's their hobby. I'll stick with being a "fan" and thanks once again for proving my point.
55 • Decet correction to 54 (by dbrion on 2007-11-12 16:59:58 GMT from France)
"They do all those things because it's their hobby"
Add:
and thats why parasitical fans get free (and sometimes good quality) softs....unless it falls from Heaven....
56 • IRC (by Tony on 2007-11-12 18:02:07 GMT from United States)
Now that it has been brought to everybody's attention about the count on IRC, let's see if we see a significant advancement in the count tally next week?
57 • PCFluxboxOS (by Alter Ekko on 2007-11-12 18:33:11 GMT from Norway)
What I like most in the Distrowatch/D.Weekly pages is the
presentation of new - and preferably - small linux distros.
It is always interesting to try out a live distro and watch the
result of someone's hard work. Naturally every distro does not
work on every computer, but it's my impression that distros
have lately been able to incorporate more and more useful stuff
and that they work on more computers.
So today's mention of PCFluxboxOS in the Weekly made me
download one of the versions on that page. Not the smallest,
because I wanted a video player too, but the one a little larger:
MidiFlux - Current version 0.6.1b.
I'm writing this using that distro on a HP Pavilion laptop.
Result:
Correct screen 1280x800
cable adsl ok
wlan ok
Sound ok (Tried wav, mp3, wma)
Video VLC media player, codecs inkluded! (Tried vob,
flv, avi, mpg, wmv; the all played fine.)
The Netscape (Hm, long time since I've seen Netscape...)
browser played Youtube videos ok.
My win/ntfs partitions were automatically mounted.
Good - this is a one person/user pc & network.
For a live distro it is a little annoying having to fill in
keyboard, location (and so on) info before reaching
the desktop. But for installers that is a one time job
(I guess.)
58 • IRC (by thac on 2007-11-12 18:40:32 GMT from Norway)
It is true that pclinuxos irc does not have so many users but that is not the way most users get support in pclinuxos most of them uses the recomended way the forums.
the numbers are right now
#pclinuxos 52
#pclinuxos-support 44
and in the forums
354 guests and 42 members online
59 • #47 Comment (by William A. Statt on 2007-11-12 18:42:19 GMT from United States)
Hey, 47, you don't even post a name... Can you read? You must, you posted. Too bad you didn't read Ladislav's comment #42. Here it is again...
Ultimately though, just as all past cheating attempts were always discovered and thwarted, all future attempts will be dealt with in the same manner - if for no other reason than for the fact that I am the one who has access to the web server and therefore I am the one who has access to all the necessary information.
PCLinuxOS just works. Period. Try installing Ubuntu and then go to http://shoutcast.com/ and click on a link. No sound, right. Do that in PCLinuxOS and you hear the station. You don't have to go to the IRC to get it working, TexStar did it for you when he made the distro. Maybe it doesn't come out every six months, but it comes out right. There are many pages of posts about upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 where it wiped out the system. Not so with the upgrade to PCLinuxOS 2007. It works and new Linux users don't have to learn the command line to get features to work. Period!
60 • 59 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 19:03:27 GMT from United States)
Your comment is out of line. You don't need to bash Ubuntu to say PCLinuxOS is the best thing since sliced bread.
"PCLinuxOS just works. Period."
False. Period.
61 • #60 (by RC on 2007-11-12 19:07:21 GMT from United States)
Pointing out errors or shortcomings is not bashing. Making snotty, denigrating comments is....like yours....anonymous....
62 • Re #42 (by WebBot2 on 2007-11-12 19:22:04 GMT from United States)
I compliment Ladislav for allowing Comment #9 to stay. I expected censorship.
But I think you miss the point. Being Lord of the Data does not protect you from the first law of programming:
Garbage In - Garbage Out.
Two years ago articles about the many distros would say go to DW for the top ones to try. Now few other than PCLos fans suggest DW.
If you watch the trend in the 7-day list of the votes for the other 99 distros (non-PCLos) and remove my 200 votes per day you see:
28758-28415-28500-28137-28292-28172-27924-27183-26991-26728-26716-26654-26858-26987
With Linux growing the interest in HPD (and DW?) is shrinking.
I like DW and want it to be quality, not a PCLos patsy.
63 • 4 GB of memory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 19:22:45 GMT from Spain)
I almost get shocked reading reviewer's computer's specs.
I'm writing this from a 256 MB of ram computer running puppy, so I started to think, is it really necessary so much ram?
Do developers and other linux related folks use such a powerful, up-to-date computers, and maybe that's the reason why linux has become such a memory hog, almost as windows?
Well, I'm just asking ;-)
Seriously, I'm searching for a new laptop, and was thinking of buying a whitebox to install just linux, but being laptop ram not so easy to upgrade, and much expensive, maybe in the future I will need windows!
Yeah I know a sacrilege :-D
64 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 19:33:34 GMT from United States)
Well, I never go to a distro's forums, because all you ever find on there are people wanting a them to work, or "oh my god, I don't have my spinning cube" - or can I make linux look like vista? or a mac?
Do these people ever actually USE their computers???
65 • Re 62 : There are points I disagree with (by Do_not_drink_water on 2007-11-12 19:35:01 GMT from France)
* Your being able to make a bot does not prove some PCloss users did.
*"
Two years ago articles about the many distros would say go to DW for the top ones to try. Now few other than PCLos fans suggest DW.
"
Among the few others, you make find some linux "journalists" in France: at the newspapers'sellers, you find the DW's top xx on CDROM with some cellulose to help you to install it, and new linuxen are ignored.... As I do not mix what I hope and the reality, (sorry, not a PClos fan) this is getting annoying...
* "list of the votes for the other 99 distros (non-PCLos) ""
Did you count separately the xxBSDs and perhaps Solaris?
Anyway, your talents could be appreciated by http://www.votefortheworst.com (for singers, it is funny,too)
66 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 19:37:34 GMT from United States)
"Pointing out errors or shortcomings is not bashing"
Let's see what you wrote:
Try installing Ubuntu and then go to http://shoutcast.com/ and click on a link. No sound, right.
{This is confusion about Ubuntu being committed to being free and open as opposed to PCLinuxOS, which does not in any way care about principles of free software. You have a right to your opinion, but it is not a fact. You are bashing the underlying philosophy of Ubuntu, not pointing out a weakness of Ubuntu.}
Maybe it doesn't come out every six months, but it comes out right.
{You're missing information for why/how Ubuntu doesn't come out right. It's stated as a fact, implying that Ubuntu "simply doesn't work". Sure sounds like bashing to me.}
There are many pages of posts about upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 where it wiped out the system. Not so with the upgrade to PCLinuxOS 2007. It works and new Linux users don't have to learn the command line to get features to work. Period!
{Well, for one thing, Ubuntu actually has a non-trivial number of users, unlike PCLinuxOS, so there are more opportunities to write about Ubuntu problems. I used Ubuntu for a year without using the command line. Your "facts" are a little unscientific.
And can you offer a rigorous proof that you will never, ever have to use the command line with PCLinuxOS? If so, why is a terminal wasting space in the distro? You better send a bug report to Tex.}
67 • #62 (by RC on 2007-11-12 19:40:19 GMT from United States)
If someone has been artificially jacking up the hits for PCLinuxOS or any other distro with a bot, then they have an ethics problem. But then, what does that say about you and your actions?
68 • mepis 7.0 (by zipidachimp on 2007-11-12 19:40:46 GMT from Canada)
where the hell is 7.0? gettin' anxious!
69 • Re 67 # 62 Blasphemies (by buvez_du_coca on 2007-11-12 19:44:22 GMT from France)
" But then, what does that say about you and your actions?
"
It says that he, at least, did it
a) openly
b) frankly.
c)funnily (put some fun into hit-clicking)
d) with talents
70 • Linux Journal (by MiniMe on 2007-11-12 20:01:28 GMT from United States)
I can see why they are giving it away...I've bought LJ from local newsstands and wow this is the worst issue I've ever seen! Most are pretty cool with CPU roundups, useful programs guides etc etc...looked as if they were targeting the 50 year old Linux crowd..nothing negative to the old guys but that doesn't leave good impression for the younger crowd...like me...well at least I like to think so :) the best part of the issue was, Indepth: Blender. Sorry to all the subscribers out there who got only 11 issues this year ;)
71 • re:68 the return of Mepis (by michael King at 2007-11-12 20:05:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Here is the news from the last Release candidate on the Mepis site:
--"The first RC is scheduled to be released around Nov 10 and a second RC around the 17th. Final is tentatively scheduled for Nov 24."
I am also looking forward to it,
It was Mepis that was my first easy Linux experience back in 2003 I think, plus the first linux book I bought was "point and click Linux" I may well end up using it again. The latest Ubuntu and my Thinkpad T23 don't like each other(I am having to use an earlier Kernal) openSUSE works fine but is a bit slow on my laptop......
72 • No subject (by San on 2007-11-12 20:09:49 GMT from Belgium)
Using Ubuntu 7.10, just surfed to Shoutcast, clicked on a link...works perfectly!
And yes, of course I have installed the codecs before, something 'buntu made incredibly easy, I might add. Anyway, it works.
Not bashing PCLinuxOS...it's a nice distro, and I'm not using it mainly because of personal taste (I like Gnome) and localization.
But Shoutcast works ;)
73 • Re : 43 HPR Bots (by ShakaZ on 2007-11-12 20:16:05 GMT from Belgium)
Now everyone, go on and boost your favorite distro's popularity by creating a web bot or two! It's not illegal or anything. :-)
......................................................................................................
Great idea!!! The more people use proxies/tor the easier it will be to detect the ip's that are being used by the bots and eliminate them from the statistics... unfortunately that still won't prevent clever guys from manipulating the HPR at will
74 • More IRC problems (by Adam Williamson on 2007-11-12 20:25:24 GMT from Canada)
In addition to the flaws already discussed in the IRC analysis:
IRC is generally known about, and used, only by fairly experienced internet users (or ones who have been around for a long time). This produces an obvious bias in favour of Arch and Slackware - distros customarily used by experienced people - which is clear in the results.
Mandriva splits its IRC channels up in various ways. There is a separate channel for development (#mandriva-cooker). There are separate channels for various languages; #mandriva is English only, there is also #mandrivafr for French, and #mandriva-br for Brazilian Portuguese. I expect other distros may do similar splits.
Overall - not a very useful or interesting comparison.
75 • Re: 43,73 Bots (by 2cents on 2007-11-12 20:31:07 GMT from United States)
"That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!" - popeye
This whole thing about Distrowatch and rankings is just silly. I've heard many sides to it, some say they mean nothing, some say they give a good base line on who uses what, me I wish Ladislav would get rid of it. But since the stats (more indepth) are posted in DWW he must put alot of faith in them as well. Or at least take the competition out of it! Post the full stats not just the weekly monthly year ect and don't put it on the main page..call it "Distro Stats: Putting the fun back into numbers. Cause we sound more like dorks that way"
76 • Fedora, Mepis & IRC (by tom on 2007-11-12 20:43:26 GMT from United States)
Nice review of Fedora.
Fedora is an outstanding distro for exploring new things. If it can be done with Linux, it can be done with Fedora, and there's always a Fedora user who has already done it.
My daily distro is MEPIS. It always works. Updates don't break things. This is the most reliable OS that I have ever used.
I represent multiple users (in my family) whose main distro is MEPIS, and there isn't one minute on IRC.
77 • This is annoying (by soonerproud on 2007-11-12 20:47:15 GMT from United States)
Why is it every time DW post a review for a new or different distro the PCLOS nut jobs come out and try to hi-jack the comments with phrases like "Fedora sucks and PCLOS will save the world!"? PCLOS is a fine distro, but some of the fan base is drinking a little too much of the kool-aid. Fedora, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Mepis, and many others are also fine distros. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. None of them are right for everyone. I would for once love to read comments about the distro being reviewed instead of the constant in your face attitude of PCLOS users.
(I am not targeting all PCLOS users. Just the nut jobs that seem to think they "Have" to convert people like a damn Jehova's Witness.)
Back to Fedora.
I gave Fedora 8 a quick test in Virtualbox and found it to be a solid distro overall. The codec buddy is a little annoying and not on the same par as the codec installation tools of Suse and Ubuntu. I would have preferred they just leave it out instead of putting something in that points people to fluendo to buy codecs. The installer on the Live CD is not as easy to use as the ones in Mepis or Ubuntu, but is still simple enough for most people. I would love if they changed the partitioning tool to gparted as i find it to be easier and more intuitive to use.
I will in the coming days play with and test it some more and see if it is a worthy candidate to replace Ubuntu 7.10. So far, overall I like what I see and think that the devs are finally getting it.
78 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 20:54:47 GMT from United States)
soonerproud,
I take great offense to that comment. Ladislav, I ask that you remove his comment on Religion. I am both a Linux user and one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I find his comment in poor taste.
79 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 21:02:29 GMT from United States)
It's an opinion! grow some thicker skin...how have you live this long when you take everything so personal...and If they would stop to everyones door Im sure they would get more love :) ...BTW that is what you call a joke..will you ask to for my comment to be censored?
80 • @78 (by soonerproud on 2007-11-12 21:16:47 GMT from United States)
I could have used Mormon or Evangelical also to get the point across. It was not intended as a shot at religion, but a shot at forcing something down peoples throats. (Something for which JW's, Mormons and Evangelicals are famous for.)
BTW, I am an Evangelical and I would not take offense at it being used to make a point simply because I disagree with anything being forced on people.
81 • Too funny.. (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 21:39:36 GMT from United States)
Let the PCLinuxOS bashing begin! It is no wonder that we cant get people to switch to Linux when Linux users just go about bashing other distros.
If you cant grow up, at least go away.
82 • RE: 3 - 6 - 8 - 51 - 58 (by Landor on 2007-11-12 21:41:00 GMT from Canada)
- 3
I suffer from chronic insomnia and am up an average of 20 hours minimum a day, up to 40 hours at random times. Anyway, I go to various IRC's and sit back and watch, and of course add some help when I can be of use. I personally have spent the most time in Gentoo due to it's level of expertise in it's userbase. On average I see at many different times and days of the week (see above) between 900 - 1000. I'm sure Ubuntu's IRC has topped the number in this week's stats, but at times I have seen the Gentoo IRC go beyond it as well.
I will agree this may not be an accurate example of a userbase, but in Gentoo's regard (and my opinion) it may very well be a sign of a linux community awareness of it's expertise as it is with it's documentation/wiki. The knowledge I have gained by just sitting back for an hour and reading the IRC is phenomenal to say the very least.
- 6
I thought that by going to a main channel it shows the total amount of users based on it and all sub-channels?
- 8
You must not have been reading this comments section for some time then, since my son and I both use it on a variety of platforms and post here that we do (although for him only once so far)
- 51
It seems like you've had a rough experience in the IRC. Sadly though you blame elitism. I often wonder about that term used in Linux. I personally find it a way for one to shrug off their own inadequacies in such regard than to any factual elitism. This is further reflected by the fact that you absurdly blame the Linux community for no 3D support for ALL cards. Wait, maybe you're mind friend with the Radeon HD 2400 lmao! (no, he's too intelligent too post an absurd comment like that, just not smart enough and too cheap to buy a nvidia 8800 GTX)
- 58
I thought I'd go and see the numbers on the Gentoo Forum(s) when I saw your post, they're very similar indeed :
In total there are 373 users online :: 55 Registered, 4 Hidden and 314 Guests
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
83 • pcloss-what a joke (by coj at 2007-11-12 22:11:15 GMT from United States)
Why use a OS that claims its not stable ??
Does pclos have 'offiical' channel in their IRC ? TOPIC like ubuntu and manriva do ?? NO I DONT THINK so....and neither of those distros say 'experimental' on their download page...gee im glad my friend pointed this out to me, as now ill never use or point anyone ever to try p clos, what a major joke to think I will TRUST my data to experimental software ..paaaaaaaaaaaaalease.
I also think that gnome is more free than kde which uses the far less free qt ...you guys are smoking something to think otherwise ;)
put down the crank pipe sheeeeeeeeesh
84 • QT vs Gnome (by CeVO on 2007-11-12 22:22:30 GMT from Spain)
#83, get your facts straight. KDE is fully GPL and it is based on a Qt license that is completely free. Don't give us that old nonsense again.
Oh, and don't use Ubuntu multiverse or universe repos. They might be closer to experimental than you think. Not that I care, but you obviously do.
85 • Hardware requirements (by linuxnurse on 2007-11-12 22:31:55 GMT from United States)
I refurb old computers and give them away to charities, schools, churches, etc. Many of the computers are Pentiums with 64mb RAM. I continue to look for the least intimidating distros that run on older hardware. I would like to ask all distros to please put an easily accessed link on your web page that list the hardware requirements. I have looked on many tiny, mini, ittybitty, micro proclaiming distros that have either no HW requirements listed or they are buried so deep in the website that they can only be found during a taping of "Man V.S. Wild".
Thank You.
86 • #83 (by RC on 2007-11-12 22:54:22 GMT from United States)
Where do these people come from? Not a single articulate, intelligent, well punctuated statement in the entire message....and yet so full of them selves! What did this add to the discussion? What did it contribute to anyone's knowledge? Nothing. If you are so completely bored and looking for something to do, why don't you clean your room and take out the trash?
87 • Are all means in a discussion for the benefit of all? (by KimTjik on 2007-11-12 23:16:39 GMT from Sweden)
When read through these comments, week after week, I'm amazed and disappointed to our current culture of communication. It isn't strange that open-source communities struggle with and get educated in how to deal with hostile sentiments within the organization. I saw some comment here about "growing thicker skin", and I remember that when I once answered a very harsh attack against Ubuntu, not because I use or like Ubuntu, I got some phrases returned about "pissing in the wind" and "we come from a free society". As teachers in open-source strategy state, you need thick skin to direct a project, but why? Because thick skin makes everyone feel better? No, it's simply a strategy to successfully run business, because hostile sentiments are counterproductive!
I'm sure many projects would have greater success if users were a bit more "sensitive" and respectful. As it is now, people rush in and scream about how worthless this and that is, instead of getting engaged in solving the issue. Like me, most don't know exactly how to help, because we lack the expertise, but we can at least make constructive bug reports, can't we?
There's no actual virtue in having thicker skin, it's simply a necessity because of prominent disrespectful attitudes. Humor would be a nice addition! Writing "it's a joke" doesn't make it funny, it takes some wittiness and brightness to play with words. As a result there's few interesting discussions. I mean look at the posts made here: how many of these are of any use to readers? Or how if not useful are funny?
Some here add useful tips and observations week after week. I believe they soon drown under some heavy layers of dandruff caused by all the thick skin we have!
88 • No subject (by RedBoar on 2007-11-12 23:35:00 GMT from United States)
"and thats why parasitical fans get free (and sometimes good quality) softs....unless it falls from Heaven...."
I'm not a parasite, nor will I thank a community that can't even figure out how to get a wireless device to work consistently in its OS, or make, and yes, ANY and EVERY card that supports OpenGL to use its capabilities with little or no bugs, because ultimately they are coding out of selfish reasons. If I enjoy doing something yet ask for credit when I'm done, am I not either a victim of low self-esteem or am I trying to gain or enforce some kind of political or egotistical influence due to my accomplishment? If you really gave a shiznit about the "parasitical fans" then don't kick or ban them because they don't want to comb through nerdy frigging manuals to fix a bug that you either created, ignored or just plain didn't foresee yet can fix with your vast knowledge as opposed to us leeches.
If you feel the masses are benefitting from your work and they should endlessly thank you for your greatt power and wisdom then perhaps you need to reflect on why you really do it, which is again, your pleasure and ego boost and yours alone.
Microsoft may be taking advantage of us peons and all, but when something doesn't work they generally fix it and do not dispense with a thousand excuses, or certainly, suggest we should be satisfied with "almost done" LOL.
89 • Re:59 (by ArchUser on 2007-11-12 23:39:05 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the link :). I don't have Ubuntu, I don't have a PCLinux. I have an Arch Linux and your link works very good. There are no problem.
90 • Re: comments (by Anon on 2007-11-12 23:57:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ladislav, I do wonder sometimes why you allow people to comment so easily here. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I do find the constant bashing that goes on in the comments to be detrimental to the hard work you put into this site! It is a shame when the vocal majority use this site as their childish bashing.
91 • @ 9 (by CrashMaster on 2007-11-13 00:28:00 GMT from United States)
The rankings for PCLOS were:
last 12 months - 2
2006 - 8
2005 - 13
2004 - 9
Ubuntu same time periods:
last 12 months - 1
2006 - 1
2005 - 1
2004 - 13
PCLOS jumped up 6 spots in a year .. must be their bots. Can't be a solid, well designed OS with great hardware recognition based on Mandriva/Mandrake, which was No. 1-2 for 3 years in a row. Nah .... too obvious .. its the bots.
Ubuntu jumped up 13 spots between '04-'05 .. must be their IRC ... no wait, it must be Gnome .. or maybe its that suave, earthy color scheme. Could it be the solid OS based on Debian, excellent support, marketing and free cds? Nah .... too obvious .. its the IRC.
OK then ... I'm glad that we've solved that one.
92 • re 90 (by anonymous on 2007-11-13 00:33:18 GMT from United States)
Agreed. There should be some sort of registration and login process, for the comments, this would also allow personal messages. Also a login to click on the HPD chart and have the vote count. This constant bickering is very annoying to read through in order to find useful information.
Keep your stick to yourself.
93 • Option to replace PHR table (by ladislav on 2007-11-13 00:41:33 GMT from Taiwan)
Since so many people seem to dislike the PHR table on the front page, I've been thinking about providing an option to remove it for those who just can't stand it. Now the question is: what do I replace it with? A random list of distros? A random selection of 3 - 4 "featured distros" with their descriptions? Any other ideas?
94 • RE: 93 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 01:11:09 GMT from Canada)
I have what I consider an excellent idea and possibly you may too. Fill it monthly (possibly) with one (or a random number of over the course of a month/year) of thedistro's/apps that DWW has donated to with a brief description about them and maybe why the choice to donate to them as well.
I think it would be a great way for some to find out about some other projects they normally wouldn't see.
95 • re 93 (by zhymm on 2007-11-13 01:19:45 GMT from United States)
I too weary of the continual bickering over the rankings that seems to devolve into personal attacks each week and sifting through all the dross looking for the few nuggets hidden here and there.
w/r to replacing the PHR table on the front page:
"A random selection of 3 - 4 "featured distros" with their descriptions" sounds great ! Give a boost to distros 'down the list' a few days a week.
Or maybe have a listing of 'new to Linux - friendly' oriented distros on Monday, server oriented distros on Tuesday, tinkerer/experimenter oriented on Wednesday, et cetera .... sort of a daily 'theme' (hmm, spaghetti for dinner .. must be Tuesday).
Best regards,
zhymm
96 • Thoughts on the comments section (by probiscus on 2007-11-13 01:43:05 GMT from United States)
I have two thoughts on how to deal with vandalism and misinformed/ stupid/ offensive posts here on DW. One would be to simply have a simple up/down or good/bad voting system for each post. Posts with a low rating would disappear or fold up out of view so the interested could read them. Every user can vote just like every user can post. Ideally, no one would vote more than once per comment. This could obviously be duped but that discussion has already been covered here. The other way would be to, for a couple weeks or a month or something, have someone sitting somewhere clicking accept/reject on every comment that comes in to DWW. While freedom of speech is nice, I don't believe it covers what a lot of trolls/morons have to say on someone else's web site, about one or more linux distributions no less. I am let down by society to read insulting comments like 77, and then more let down by comments like 78. I would love to see some of these people be rejected from posting, maybe it will open up their eyes a little bit. Also maybe there should be a length limit so I stop writing messages this long.
97 • #63 and 4GB of memory (by Tony on 2007-11-13 01:56:29 GMT from United States)
"63 • 4 GB of memory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (by Anonymous on 2007-11-12 19:22:45 GMT from Spain)
I almost get shocked reading reviewer's computer's specs."
You mentioned 4 GB of memory. Let me tell you a little bit of how badly Vista and Acer laptops are working together. This past month Acer Technical Vice-President Mark Groveunder told me personally(by telephone) that installing 4 GB of memory would help my Acer laptop run better. Even though this laptop will not recognize 4 GB of memory. He also told me at the same time that Windows 98 ran faster than Vista and would always do so. Those are his words not mine...
98 • Re: 26 & 48 eee & OLPC (by awong on 2007-11-13 02:09:27 GMT from Canada)
Apparently no one at DW plays with or discusses budget Linux ultraportables/subnotebooks??? :( Please prove me wrong!
99 • RE: 93 YES! (by David on 2007-11-13 02:14:53 GMT from China)
I think an occasional poll with a bot block like the "Enter these characters" would be nice. Then you could still show some sentiment of the DW view of ranking.
Maybe several polls. Like:
"My choice for newbies"
"My day-to-day Distro"
A different poll every week with results displayed all the following week. Only need a few and cycle through them.
Please use a bot-block like other sites do - make it human only with very little chance for abuse or accusations of abuse.
100 • RE:93 (Option to replace PHR table) (by PP on 2007-11-13 02:33:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ladislav,
Don't replace the PHR, it is already _legendary_. This feature is part of DW - it belongs here as much as the package lists of distros. Yes it seems to annoy some people, but they must about 1% of the readership.
And honestly, who on earth is interested in manipulating it? Next to no-one - a few losers.
I think the PHR is great fun. It's amazing what turbulence there is at the top - it just goes to show how competitive the distro scene is. Yoper, Mandrake, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS have all been at the #1 spot as far as I remember. And if you look at top 10, the battle is constant and hard.
PHR does tell something, and it also is only a partial picture. It may not tell much about the user bases, but it definitely tells you what is hip right now. All innovative distros have been able to hit the top 10 - Knoppix at it's time, Damn Small, currently Sabayon, Mint etc..
And the large user base distros have always been up there. We know what they are.
So, I say this: Ignore the criticisms of PHR. Do a few tricks to weed out cheaters if you have time, but keep it going. It is a feature of DW, an important and FUN feature.
101 • Thank you to distro's (by Randy on 2007-11-13 02:43:48 GMT from United States)
I have a short comment, for all to read.
Thank you to all distro's,coders, developers ,hackers,and the rest of the people who help make each and every Distro a great operating system in your own way,you give everybody a matter of choice and help make the open source community a better place.
Thank you
102 • RE: 100 (by ladislav on 2007-11-13 02:45:33 GMT from Taiwan)
I didn't say I wanted to replace it. All I want to do is to give those who dislike it an option to remove it from the front page (it would be a cookie-based solution). The default view will still be a page with the PHR table.
103 • RE: 96 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 02:49:50 GMT from Canada)
"and then more let down by comments like 78. I would love to see some of these people be rejected from posting, maybe it will open up their eyes a little bit."
You are let down by 78's post for censure yet you go on about censuring posts.
I cried foul here not long ago regarding a post, yes, yes I did. I would say though that it in all due respect to my intentions for it, it was well placed. Given the fact that one user with rambunctious fingers went off the wall and took a comment totally out of context and started stating it was a death threat.
Someone also here talked about thick skins, another thin. I think the whole world has become a sad place. I'm not a Mormon, nor am I a Jehovah's Witness, or for that matter a PCLOS or UBU user, so it could easily be said that all this stuff doesn't matter to me but the world has come to a sad point where every single person cries foul over the least "suspected" slight and considers it their just right to have some form or retribution or justice/intervention because of their "feelings", well placed or not.
Where and with whom I grew up we had a common belief, it's what it is, that's all, deal with it, get over it and move on (we usually added two words there between move and on, one being colourful). Basically which meant, it's life, stop crying foul, stop wearing your emotions and feelings on your sleeve. Twenty or so years ago if I said to anyone in any authority, "I don't like what he said", I would've got the reply, "so, what does it matter what he/she said, grow up". Times have really changed I guess.
Facts are this, I'm sure nobody here other than maybe Ladislav loses any sleep over the crap that goes on, so why sweat it. But I sure hope they don't, and if they do, maybe they should turn the computer off for a bit. But I do feel sorry for Ladislav himself having to deal with all the crap.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
104 • No subject (by esldude on 2007-11-13 03:06:14 GMT from United States)
I would like a grouping via Linux lineage if you will.
Group Gentoo based, Debian based, Slack based, etc together. Maybe you could then list each in those categories according to HPD. When I first started with 'distro-hopping' eventually that is what I found. Certain styles or categories seemed to fit my needs best. Then finding the best in that general lineage was a better use of my time. Easy for a user to try and find out which general approach he/she likes. Then try those in that lineage to pick the best for their purpose.
105 • #77 (by Heinmeister on 2007-11-13 03:17:07 GMT from United States)
Why is it that everybody is so jealous of PCLOS? Answer. PCLOS works great and their overbloated distro cannot compare. Fedora 8 crashes on several of my computers. Ubuntu is sooooo slow. OpenSUSE takes forever to install.
PCLOS is number 1.
Mepis is number 2.
#59 is right on.
106 • No subject (by yochenhsieh on 2007-11-13 03:46:59 GMT from Taiwan)
I suggest keep HPD ranking, but calculate with distro-family base. For example, if you click PCLInuxos or Mandriva, the numbers sums as one family. Sabayon and Gentoo, Ubuntu* and *buntu, Fedora and RedHat, etc.
107 • Re 100 I agree (by Glenn on 2007-11-13 03:52:06 GMT from Canada)
Hiya.
I like the way you put it and I agree with you. The PHR column certainly was useful to me when i was looking for distro flavors. I used the column of course as a link map to hit distro sites even though I did not use that distro. Heck, it is the only way I knew/know what distros were/are available for me to investigate.. DW, as is, is just fine for me. I can ignore the baby talk.
The actual ranking, although interesting, did/does not deter me from looking at others much lower on the list, clicking on them to follow the link, and nosing arou the site. In fact I settled on one for a while that was about midway down the list, I picked off Ubuntu when Knoppix was the top ranked. If people want to waste time on quibbling over the pecking order of distros, well some people have strange hobbies heh heh heh.... Putting the energy into testing a distro and reporting bugs instead is more productive.
Upon which look who just did it.... Me! argh! Back to testing.
Glenn
108 • PHR list (by JAG on 2007-11-13 04:01:09 GMT from United States)
Hey Ladislav, why don't you just scroll the list to increase exposure of lesser known distros....another option is instead of listing it by hits...how about alphabetizing it...along with scrolling it...
JAG
By the way last week I commented about paldo's md5's with a link to their forums where I found them.
109 • "Fedora 8 is by far the best Fedora release to date" (by Anonymous on 2007-11-13 04:32:37 GMT from Malaysia)
On my Acer notebook, the live CD booted into a graphical desktop (whereas Fedora 7 could only manage that with the vesa driver). On my desktop machine, wireless works with an rt73 card (couldn't manage it with Fedora 7).
Other users who have posted about their experience with Fedora 8 this week include # 5, 7, 13, 27, 29, 36 and 77.
I don't think I should include #105 since "Fedora 8 crashes on several of my computers" is a vague statement that makes the poster sound like a typical PCLOS fanboy.
110 • PHR - RIP (by rglk on 2007-11-13 04:51:58 GMT from United States)
In my opinion the only way to rescue what's left of any quality in this Comments section is for the PHR table to be sent to the bit bucket. For months now - or has it already been years? - a large proportion of the postings here have merely been skirmishes and bickerings about this meaningless and easily manipulated quantity.
When Joe's beloved distro X slips one rank in the PHR, he screams bloody murder and dumps on Jack's beloved distro Y that just surpassed Joe's, and Jack in turn gloats that his distro moved up one rank and tries to convince everyone that this proves that Y is so much better than X.
Where has any of the interesting and informed discussion about Linux gone that one could find here a long time ago?
DW Comments has become a bore, as annoying as moths that flutter around a porch light on a summer night, frequently flying in your face. These days, when I spend 20-30 minutes breezing through your average 100 posts, I wind up with a mere 3 or 4 posts that were worth reading (most of them probably by Adam Williamson), nuggets among all the dross, and I end up berating myself about having wasted this time, still trying to find nourishment in this thin gruel, against my better judgment.
This isn't Linux DistroWatch anymore, it's become PHR Table Watch. If the PHR table remains, even as an optional view for PHR table addicts, the endless bickering will continue, and this Comments section will continue to be of mere tabloid quality. If the PHR table is scratched, people will actually have to think of something informative to say about L I N U X before they post here. For the sake of DW, Ladislav, please scratch this PHR distraction.
PHR, RIP.
111 • #109 (by Heinmeister on 2007-11-13 04:53:25 GMT from United States)
I would love Fedora 8 to work better. I would love all of Linux distros to work better to put MS out of business. Problem is that most of them try to be everything to everybody, not simple like PCLOS. In fact PCLOS is too simple at times. But after trying everything and getting depressed, I return to what works. I don't have time to go to the forums and figure out how to get a distro to work properly with certain hardware. Linux can't afford not having the OS work well from the get go.
It will be interesting to see what gOS can do eventually. Problem with them is building on Ubuntu. What a waste!!!
112 • command-line (by digger on 2007-11-13 05:05:11 GMT from United States)
Funny thing the PCLO/S home page mentions a command line tutorial in the current issue of PCLO/S as the as the # 1 highlighted article in the current issue. Seems that some folks @PCLO/S think there's a use for the CLI in their distro. ;-)
113 • IRC user numbers (by rglk on 2007-11-13 05:20:59 GMT from United States)
I suspect the IRC channel numbers ("number of users present") are meaningless. Arch Linux is ranked #6 on that measure (284 users). I've been on that channel plenty of times, and I've never encountered more than half a dozen users active at any one time, even though the user list in the right pane of my IRC client (ChatZilla) lists several hundred handles. I think these are just people who have parked their handles there, not bothering to sign off (/part) when they closed their client.
In fact, in the Arch Linux forum there were some posts by folks who were trying to rally Arch forum members to participate more in the IRC because so little was going on there.
One should also suspect that these numbers are meaningless if one merely compares the numbers for MEPIS (19) and Ubuntu (1240). Ubuntu 60 times as popular as MEPIS??? I doubt that.
114 • Just a few comments (by Dean on 2007-11-13 06:21:56 GMT from United States)
There seems to be several topics going on and this is a good thing. At the moment, I am using Windows XP but don't hold that against me. I dual-boot between Windows and Linux.
PHR: There seems to be a lot of discussion about the ranking system. IMO it doesn't matter who is #1. When I am looking for a distro to try, I usually look in the top 25 of the PHR list. I am not completely new to Linux but not well-experienced either. A thought I had about the raning system would be to break it down into groups: all the major groups (Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat based, etc.), small distros (Puppy, DSL, TinyMe, etc.) specialty distros (firewalls, partitioners, rescue distros). It would give a better idea of the purpose of different distros and make them easier to find for people like myself and newbies.
IRC: This has been around many years. It has it's purpose. Personally, I have never used it. If I have a problem, I want help with I usually start in the forums and then use Google if necessary. With my limited knowledge of Linux, I would not feel comfortable asking questions in IRC and I assume the same would go for newbies.
Distros: IMO there is no BAD distro, some work better on some machines than others due only to hardware configurations. I have tried many distros and am not set on any particular distro as of yet. Some I lke better than others, but that is my choice as to which I like. Currently, I have PCLOS on this machine under a dual-boot and have Fedora 8 under a dual-boot on my laptop. They will stay till I find other distros I want to try (waiting for the new Gentoo and might get brave enough to try it).
Comments: Everyone should write their comments as if you were reading them for the first time. If you have a problem with a distro, explain what the problem is and what hardware you are using. Who knows maybe someone else has the same hardware and solved the problem. The solution can also help others especially if he/she happens to be new to Linux.
As a side note, let me say I am an instructor at a local school (teaching how PCs operate with the purpose of the students becoming A+ certified). Whenever possible I try to promote and inform and encourage others to try Linux.
Just my 2 cents worth.
115 • RE 108 (by dbrion on 2007-11-13 06:26:23 GMT from France)
"
Hey Ladislav, why don't you just scroll the list to increase exposure of lesser known distros....another option is instead of listing it by hits...how about alphabetizing it...along with scrolling it...
"
Perhaps the easiest way of increasing exposure of less known distrs would be to put them in the
reverse
PHR ranking. This was recommanded by Jesus, ~ca yrs ago....
and could stir up curiosity (not lazy interest in the "best", the "best" and again the "best")
Using a random order , to day, would lead some PCwinners accuse random number generators of being bribed...
116 • Ref:93 - Option to replace PHR table (by otoh on 2007-11-13 06:32:00 GMT from United States)
It's not a matter of disliking the table. Rather, having one distro remain in the top spot so long just doesn't pass the sniff test. Particularly with all the recent releases of other popular distributions. How about keeping the PHR counts but ordering the list by most recent release date? So, every distribution gets its "15 minutes of fame".
And, possibly, down the page somewhere, have a dropdown list to let people vote for their favorite distribution.
117 • "63 • 4 GB of memory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! " (by dbrion on 2007-11-13 06:52:46 GMT from France)
"
Do developers and other linux related folks use such a powerful, up-to-date computers, and maybe that's the reason why linux has become such a memory hog, almost as windows?
"
Developpers are not that rich, in the general case (Mepis 'founder found that he earned more in 2 weeks of consulting than in one yr of distro developpment) but they know RAM will be cheaper and cheaper, and do not try any more to optimize for RAM greediness :
this is felt as a loss of time, and there is a greedy users pressure for new softs (you can find a caricature of this pressure in Redbore posts, in this comments section: some users do not pay, but insult developpers)...
118 • Re: Option to replace PHR table by ladislav (by David on 2007-11-13 07:08:32 GMT from United States)
How about instead of a list of randomly generated distros, some details on an active distro chosen at random? Someone *could* learn about a distro that interests them that they've never heard of that way.
119 • re: #93 PHR (by AliasMarlowe at 2007-11-13 07:08:56 GMT from United States)
Why not reformat the PHR table instead of removing it?
I'd prefer to see the PHR in rank groupings, rather than individual ranks. In other words, the top 5 or 10 or 20 would be presented as a group, displayed in randomized order without indicating which was first or last within the group. Same for second 5 or 10 or 20, and so forth.
The suggestion in #104 is actually quite good: that the distro groupings should be based on their ancestry (debian-based, gentoo-based, etc.). The PHR could perhaps rank these major divisions, and rank the members within each division.
The suggestions in #94 and #99 for having one or more featured distros, changed daily, are also appealing.
BTW, I have both Ubuntu (Sony laptop + Dell desktop) and PCLinuxOS (another Dell desktop) at home. It is too great a challenge to say which is better, at least for me. Both work fine, including handling shoutcast streams.
Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS are regularly the first and second in the PHR table. If the PHR was reformed so that these two distros were not distinguished from the others in the top 10, it would make not an iota of difference to me.
120 • I think you know.. (by fa at 2007-11-13 09:47:46 GMT from United States)
I will now clear up erroneous statements which are used to backup some peoples cash reserves.
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses
vs.
The licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties.
FOSS distros for all you FOSS lovers out there are only those which support gnome out of the box. If you cant admit that then your all hypocrits of the absolute worse kind.
Just use Gnome ;)
KIFS-
121 • Can't We All Just Get Along? (by Anonymous on 2007-11-13 11:51:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
I use and like PCLinuxOS - but I have neither the need or desire to evangelize for it, nor disparage any other distro.
I also use and like Ubuntu 7.10, Mint 3.1, Wolvix ... and several others ...
I'm giving Fedora 8 a test run in a VirtualBox as I type ...
Heck, I even use WinXP 50% of the time, and I don't have to make lofty claims about it, or take pot-shots at it either.
How about we remember that Linux gives us lots of good choices, and that different distros and windows managers work for each of us for a multitude of reasons, and all the fanboys try to contain their irrational exuberance, and all the rest of us ignore the fanboys when they fail?
And maybe we could even try not to discuss the PHR for just one week, but instead focus on news, real issues, and helping each other out?
Cheers,
Anonymous (since I don't want to be blacklisted on the PCLOS forums, or any others, for that matter)
122 • PHR substitute (by Alan B. Cohen on 2007-11-13 13:37:12 GMT from United States)
93 & 95 • re 93 I like zhymm's idea.
"Or maybe have a listing of 'new to Linux - friendly' oriented distros on Monday, server oriented distros on Tuesday, tinkerer/experimenter oriented on Wednesday, et cetera .... sort of a daily 'theme'."
BTW, I am a PCLOS user with 30+ years of computer experience and have never actually used an IRC chat.
123 • Complete FUD (by davemc on 2007-11-13 14:39:41 GMT from United States)
"PCLinuxOS just works. Period. Try installing Ubuntu and then go to http://shoutcast.com/ and click on a link. No sound, right. Do that in PCLinuxOS and you hear the station. You don't have to go to the IRC to get it working, TexStar did it for you when he made the distro. Maybe it doesn't come out every six months, but it comes out right. There are many pages of posts about upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 where it wiped out the system. Not so with the upgrade to PCLinuxOS 2007. It works and new Linux users don't have to learn the command line to get features to work. Period!"
What total NONSENSE! Shoutcast works in Ubuntu (and every other distro out there) for pretty much everyone. PCLos has absolutley NO claim whatever over Ubuntu (or any other distro) for being noob friendly. Saying otherwise is just patently false. This is just absolute proof of the fanboi'ism that surrounds PCLos and its very sad to see. My sympathy for Texstar that he has to deal with these types.
124 • re: fanbois, fanboyz, fangirlz, fanhos, fanhermaphrodites (by beany on 2007-11-13 15:08:14 GMT from United States)
Every distro has em....please don't act like it's specific to just this one. I've been a happy PCLOS user for a long time....I also have gOS, Mandriva, Ubuntu and whatever partitions on my laptop.
I'm not even sure I'm a Linux fanboy.
125 • Page hit stats replacement (by Anonymous on 2007-11-13 15:15:42 GMT from United States)
The DW page hit statistics is a wonderful feature, but maybe it's a good idea to remove it from the front page. It looks like the same distros stay on the top of the list month after month and this seems to incite tribal quarrels between users of different distros and accusations of foul play. And yet, these statistics are very interesting if they're not taken too seriously. If the page hit list is removed from the DW front page, it should still have an easy-to-notice link to the actual statistics page where readers can view the page hit lists.
Maybe the page hit statistics could be replaced by a "highlighted distro of the week" column that offers some interesting facts about only one randomly selected distro? This might encourage people to try some lesser known GNU/Linux distributions. Every new DistroWatch Weekly issue could contain an article that introduces the "highlighted distro of the week" and the DW front page could include a column that gives some brief facts about this selected distro plus a link to the related DWW article.
126 • Shoutcast (by Flatlander on 2007-11-13 16:20:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
I thought I'd test the out-of-the-box experience for Shoutcast on both PClinuxOS 2007 and Ubuntu 7.10. As I have both installed on my PC, and I think each distro has its merits and warts, I figured I'm a fairly unbiased fan of both.
If I had time, I would have done clean installs. I chose the next best option, which was to boot the respective LiveCDs. So, in alphabetical order ...
PCLOS:
- boot
- open Firefox
- go to shoutcast.com
- open the first station in the list by clicking on the "Tune In" box
- in the downloads pop-up, I select the *default* option provided, which is to "Open with Mplayer (default)"
- download finishes, nothing happens (Mplayer doesn't even open)
Ubuntu
- boot
- open Firefox
- go to shoutcast.com
- open the first station in the list by clicking on the "Tune In" box
- in the downloads pop-up, I select the *default* option provided, which is to "Open with Rhythmbox Music Player (default)"
- download finishes, Rhythmbox opens, but nothing plays.
At this point, they both fail the newbie fresh experience test.
In my installed sessions, Shoutcast runs fine under both distros, but clearly I've done some additional steps to set them up.
So, can we stop the petty bickering now?
Cheers,
Flatlander
127 • PCLinuxOS cheating? Oh, please.... (by Whitespiral on 2007-11-13 16:50:32 GMT from Mexico)
Hasn't occurred to you all, that the name PCLinuxOS makes more sense to those coming from Windows, that 95% of the names from all other distributions? To them, the words Debian, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Sabayon, etc, might seem like a bad joke.
PCLinuxOS, A Linux OS for the PC. Of course the name makes darn sense!
128 • RE: 120 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 17:37:39 GMT from Canada)
"I will now clear up erroneous statements which are used to backup some peoples cash reserves.
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses
vs.
The licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties.
FOSS distros for all you FOSS lovers out there are only those which support gnome out of the box. If you cant admit that then your all hypocrits of the absolute worse kind.
Just use Gnome ;)"
What this is, is a crock of BS of the worst kind. I'd put money on the fact that you have watched a video online via Flash, or a Java applet via Sun's Java at least once with Linux, listened to an MP3, maybe watched a DVD/MPEG video. I'd guarantee all of your media is not in FLAC nor OGG, and yet you sit back and call people hypocrites, and why?, because you like GNOME, what a great reason.
I for one am not going to spend countless hours converting music to FLAC, nor Videos to OGG, and I'm sure as hell not going to use GNOME because of some obscure licensing issue in regard to QT for KDE that has 0 bearing on me. I'm guessing the majority of Linux users feel or do the same.
I posted a comment in a recent past issue here about GNOME functionality compared to KDE, wherein I stated I had studied a number of "indepth" reviews regarding that subject and bottom line my perception of the reviews was the simple fact that KDE was far better based on unbiased technical points.
Above all else, Linus Torvalds himself considered Gnome a waste and far less functional than KDE. So if Linus himself isn't gonna worry about the QT licensing, why should I, you, or anyone else.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
129 • Corrections for 128 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 17:46:14 GMT from Canada)
OGG = Theora
130 • re:128 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-13 18:04:21 GMT from United States)
actually I have no mp3 except on my portal device but there atm I have no choice since I can't affford atm the OGG ones but I want one badly ..;)...but sure some of the rest I enjoy..flash is all over the internet BUT gnash doesn't work reliably so there is a choice there ??? ;)
You argument holds no water as all your trying to do and failing miserably btw Mr FUDer, is to muddy the water by throwing blame everywhere but at the CORE components which by their nature SHOULD be completely OSS because that IS the basis on which all other components operate next to the kernel and related architectures of course. Face is oss vs non oss is NOT a debate worth having at least not for linux users who demand FOSS ; if your not one of them fine have a day ;))
I like oss 'where possible' and since gnome is free (LGPL) then yeah I use it even though I might not agree at all with some of their design decisions etcetera.
cya-
131 • RE: 130 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 18:25:26 GMT from Canada)
You say I'm talking FUD, but facts are you called people hypcorites when you yourself enjoy non-OSS enrichments shall we say, as I said, and my comments hold true, A Crock of the worse kind.
If you demand FOSS/OSS then you shouldn't even be using FLASH, MP3 "at all" in support of your "moral fundamentals". Until then you have no place calling anyone a hypocrite, nor bashing them for their "FOC", Freedom of Choice.
Bottom line for me, Gnome isn't competant, and in only my opinion, it's ugly no matter what you do, in appearance and functionality, and I'll stick with KDE.
For the record, I appreciate OSS obviously, but I won't lose any sleep or sweat it over your stance on it, nor hinder my use of my system due to principles over licensing that have nothing to do with me.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
132 • re: 103 (by probiscus on 2007-11-13 18:40:35 GMT from United States)
I guess I should have made my point a bit more clear. What I meant is that not only am I let down when someone makes an insulting comment, but also when someone takes it so personally and can't just "get over it and move on". I get sick of seeing out of line/ offensive comments with responses that are just as out of line in the other direction. Often both sides are to blame and need to ease up and be a little more sensitive/ have thicker skin/ etc. I realize that censoring is often inappropriate and sometimes violates the free speech we are fortunate enough to have in the US and Canada. But really, haven't all the intelligent, useful and informative comments here been drowned out by "PCLOS sucks"/ "PCLOS rules" and various other comments? Just reading the comments here make it obvious that it isn't the distros that aren't user friendly, its the Linux fanatics. Of course I don't think this includes most Linux users, but I do think many users are less likely to post intelligent comments when there is such a proliferation of hatred and stupidity.
133 • PCfluxboxOS (by capricornus on 2007-11-13 19:14:04 GMT from Belgium)
It's a shame promoting PCfluxboxOS. It has, after so many months, nothing more to offer than SAM Linux 2007. I went completely bezerk when Pidgin missed a lib and wouldn't start up. Why the f*** did I download this piece of S*** while the almost one year old SAM (I'm writing this on SAM's OS) does the same job much better?
Please test the OS before promoting them.
134 • Just use Gnome (by CeVO on 2007-11-13 19:29:53 GMT from Spain)
Ah, so the Gnome foundation is morally superior regarding the GPL, right?
5 seconds of googling:
http://fanaticattack.com/2007/a-letter-to-the-gnome-foundation.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000141
A nice one:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
The full title of that last page is: Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library.
Thank you, I'll stay with KDE.
135 • RE: 132/133 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 19:50:48 GMT from Canada)
-132
I thought about it later that maybe I took too hard of a stance and that you were in fact upset about him making the request, or even maybe because of his faith he couldn't turn the other cheek. So in a sense I was right and my apologies.
I'll agree with the majority of things being useless. I myself have posted a few that after further thought I even considered useless let alone anyone else :) But as I said before about a month ago, where would Linux be without the hardcore believers in either OSS, a certain distro, app, or WM/DE? There'd be far fewer of us here in DWW, and many of us just plodding down our path with little to no regard to the scenery. :) Kudos to guys like Stallman though I may find him a bit odd for it, for holding up signs at conferences getting his message across and exercising his rights.
-133
With all new things we always have to take into consideration that it is new, with almost everything these days it takes time to iron out the bugs, and that's what the community is for. In this regard it's not really the OS itself, but either just the package manager, or more likely how the package was built. Probably letting them know there is something wrong will help them out a lot and also give them a head's up that they need to pay a bit more attention to packaging/package management.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
136 • Ubuntu 7.10 I can't see a thing! ;) (by herman on 2007-11-13 21:13:19 GMT from Netherlands)
It's been a while but curious /me ran the Ubuntu 7.10 x86_64 live cd.
When starting up, I couldn't see any messages, just a kind of bar bouncing from left to right and back all the time.
Esc didn't work, I wanted to see what was going on, since that is sort of the pount of having output on your screen when booting.
Anyone know, what's the shortcut to show the messages?
Feel kind of silly trying all sorts of keys to find out. :P
137 • RE: 136 (by Landor on 2007-11-13 21:57:08 GMT from Canada)
F2 is usually the ticket if ESC doesn't work, not sure for Ubuntu though.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
138 • Bickering (by linuxnurse on 2007-11-13 22:57:33 GMT from United States)
To all of those people that are arguing over what is the best measure of a distros popularity, or which distro is the best, or who does or doesn't have the right to say what they want to say, tell you this...
Girl, Girls, you're both the prettiest. Now smile and go fix your makeup.
139 • OGG = Theora (by Matt on 2007-11-14 01:44:43 GMT from United States)
"OGG = Theora"
OGG is actually a container format. It can contain Theora, Vorbis, FLAC, etc...
140 • RE: 139 (by Landor on 2007-11-14 02:29:18 GMT from Canada)
Yes, that's why I made the correction, I meant Theora for video :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
141 • Ratings, PCLOS (by Gene Venable on 2007-11-14 03:42:08 GMT from United States)
I don't mind the rude comments. Unix culture has traditionally had rude comments as part of it.
I tried PCLOS about a year ago. It didn't install for me for some reason. So the statement that PCLOS just works in all cases is just false.
The reason that so many of us are suspicious about PCLOS is that we don't have a gut feeling that it is so all-fired popular. My feeling, which could be wrong, is that it isn't even a major distribution.
I like the idea of adding ratings of Linux families. For example, Ubuntu is routinely undercounted because there are so many derivatives. I have been running Linux Mint, but at the moment I am running Ubuntu proper. They are substantially the same, and I've tried Kubuntu and others, and they were substantially the same as well. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that Ubuntu is far and away the most popular distribution, and PCLOS is not in the same ballpark. Yet PCLOS constantly does so extraordinarily well in the ratings here, I have nothing against PCLOS; I would say the same thing if Linux Mint took over the top spot here and kept it for a really long time.
However, I like the rating system as it is, and I like the comments as they are. I like DistroWatch in general.
142 • re 141....You like it the way it is? (by Fedora 8 Test Run on 2007-11-14 05:05:08 GMT from Australia)
However, I like the rating system as it is, and I like the comments as they are. I like DistroWatch in general.
Well, IMHO, the comments section is very tedious for the last 8 months with "Fill in the BLANK" almost 25-50% of topic "discussion". :-(
If web content pages are seeded with a particular searchable term (e.g. "Fill in the BLANK"), then Google and other search engines will give it higher page or sublink ranking (just search Google for distro or distrowatch to see an example).
This week is just a few days after a REAL MAJOR distro - Fedora 8 - comes out and DWW comments section a filled with useless C__P, its a shame.
Well, I have installed F8 and I am quite satisfied with the progress made in laptop/notebook front. For the FIRST TIME ( I have tried over a dozen other recent distros) all multimedia keys are working OOT(FH)B on this Acer Aspire1640 series machine and it suspends, hibernates and then wakes up correctly (except there is no sound after hibernation wakeup). Using new intel (was new on F7) graphics driver for onboard 915GM chip, display was correctly detected and configured without a hitch, excepting that during install the options windows in the installer suffered the BIG FONT syndrome that all other distros have in one way or another also suffered. Power management is good and is usable but there is a need to offer the option to permanently lockdown or retain a particular power policy (as does openSUSE with KPowersave and the Acer utilities provide on XP!). As it stands now, Fedora 8 (Gnome) and Mandriva 2008 (Gnome) only offer session power control that resets to "dynamic" frequency scaling after reboot. Ubuntu 7.10 and openSuse 10.3 (Gnome) don't offer any lockdown options at all - shame!
The F8 OS otherwise looks and feels solid and stable but I will wait a couple of weeks before giving judgment.
Cheers
143 • List by Activity/Development (by Scribbler on 2007-11-14 05:55:09 GMT from United States)
Instead of ranking by Page Hits, why use meters by activity?
Create a system to calculate development activity based on factors like, time since last release, consistency of updates, quality of updates, use of stable software vs bleeding edge, response times to repair bugs (differentiate between distro bugs vs application bugs), community support etc...
Then list them alphabetically AND by meter rank from 1 - 5. Use a visual meter from red to green to avoid using numbers and thus removing any numerical ranking perception.
This way, it is quite possible that the top 10 or so distros will be equally ranked and no actual top spot. However it will reflect which distros are worth looking at based on what counts... progress and activity, not on popularity.
144 • Linux has become a bickering child (by Ken Berkly on 2007-11-14 09:39:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
I run TinyXP.
TinyXP works.
It works on a tiny footprint.
It has no bloat.
It is stable.
It is secure.
It is easy to make your own.
It is free! Yeah OK! :)
Linux has become a bickering child.
Linux needs to grow up to adulthood.
Linux needs to pool together not pull apart.
Linux should follow the PCBSD template.
PCBSD is the right way.
PCBSD is the template for a future OS.
Take a good long hard look at the comments on this page of nonsense.
Mine included.
Then you decide.
I am fed up with the bickering child that is Linux.
I run TinyXP for the above reasons.
I decided.
I made my choice.
It is not the choice I would have liked to make.
No doubt you will make yours too.
My choice is as valid as yours.
Too much choice with Linux.
Too many.
Too confusing.
Pool together.
Use PCBSD as an example template.
It is sad to see Linux like this.
It really has a lot of potential to be a world beater.
My best regards, Ken Berkly
145 • #144 (by herman on 2007-11-14 10:09:32 GMT from Netherlands)
Hi Ken,
nice poem. :P
I'm sure FreeBSD/PCBSD is nice, will give it a go again.. some day.
Linux isn't confusing.
If you need quality binary distributions, and you want good testing and stability, there's very little choice: Debian Stable, CentOS.
If you want something a bit more up-to-date, there's only Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and OpenSuse. The rest is for those that know what they want.
If you can live without yum/apt, take a Slack-based one if you like.
Is it that much choice?
You buy a fridge, you have more choice.
You buy a microwave, you have more choice.
You buy a car, you have more choice.
You buy a pair of jeans, you have more choice.
What, you lamenting all day in the supermarket?
Give me a break.
146 • I already made my choice (by Ken Berkly on 2007-11-14 10:27:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
I already made my choice.
147 • #146 (by herman on 2007-11-14 10:52:21 GMT from Netherlands)
Yet thou complaintest about choice?
Don't get me wrong, I like BSD, but there's no need to launch any sort of anti-Linux campaign, like saying Linux is this or Linux is that.
Linux is just a free software OS.
That's all.
Nothing more, nothing less.
My CentOS and Fedora boxes don't get in my way.
They don't hurt anyone.
They don't limit anybody's freedoms or rights.
They're not pwned so don't send anybody any spam.
They might be technically superior in some, technically inferior in other aspects, to BSD.
What on earth is the problem?
Do we really need our head examined before we can live in peace, even on the g*dd*mn internet?
148 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2007-11-14 11:01:06 GMT from United States)
"So the statement that PCLOS just works in all cases is just false."
Who said that PCLOS works in all cases? Making up a comment that nobody said and then arguing against it is simply arguing with yourself. Kinda like me saying "The statement that Fedora 8 cures cancer is false".
"I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that Ubuntu is far and away the most popular distribution, and PCLOS is not in the same ballpark. Yet PCLOS constantly does so extraordinarily well in the ratings here, I have nothing against PCLOS; I would say the same thing if Linux Mint took over the top spot here and kept it for a really long time."
The number one distro based on HPD over the past 12 months is Ubuntu. The number one distro in 2006 is Ubuntu. The number one distro in 2005 is Ubuntu. And yet when PCLOS is number one on the list for a few months you think something must be wrong, since it is number one for a "really long time". Uh ... Ubuntu has been number one for a "really long time", PCLOS has not.
149 • May the vision be with you! (by Ken Berkly on 2007-11-14 12:11:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
If all the developers of all the many distributions got together.
They would produce a world beater OS.
No doubt about it.
Linux is the wrong direction.
Every distro goes his own way.
Every distro is better than the other.
Wrong!
The wrong way.
Pool resources on a unix base.
Or on an entirely new base.
You can do that too.
There is huge potential for a world beater OS here.
Yes, right here.
From the OSS community.
Look what you have achieved so far.
Have the vision to see a future OS of great quality.
Linux servers have done it.
Do it for the desktop.
Stop developing in small communities.
Pool together to make a super OSS OS.
The world is waiting for it to be born.
May the vision be with you!
My best regards, Ken Berkly
150 • If PHR can not be fixed then it should be replaced... (by gadesz on 2007-11-14 12:42:07 GMT from China)
Sad to see the current Page Hit Ranking still can't satisfies lots of the DW readers...including myself. About 15-20% of comments (mostly complains) connected to PHR every week... I really would like to see old (1-2-3 years old) Reader Comments pages.... was PHR more trusted source to measure distro popularity or not?
It's a shame because as GNU/Linux getting more popular and new comers from other O/S world look for guidance, site like DW needed more and more. Also quite a few website, blogs and magazines (Linux Format) referring to Distrowatch Page Hit Ranking and unfortunately they take very seriously who is on the top.
I think Ladislav need to fix this issue and regain the trust of his readers... plus as I mention earlier the PHR no longer only for DW, others are watching it closely too. If it can not be fixed then it should be replaced with something else...
Finally I found this website with some interested charts... sorry it's in Chinese:
http://www.lupaworld.com/viewnews_29113.html
151 • RE: 150 (by ladislav on 2007-11-14 12:50:50 GMT from Taiwan)
I think Ladislav need to fix this issue
Fix this issue??? Is anything broken?
152 • #149 (by herman on 2007-11-14 13:38:54 GMT from Netherlands)
repeating yourself more or less..
Different distros mean healthy competition..
Is good.
No problem, GNU GPL and related licenses = rip off what's good, leave what's not.
Result: all distros thrive. Keeping each other focused.
Not everything goes hallelujah, but hey, not everything is, or can be, perfect like OpenBSD. :P
So /me does not see the problem here.
153 • #149 (by luke on 2007-11-14 14:15:39 GMT from United States)
I don't understand why some people believe that's a good idea. The very reason why there are many groups of developers is because they have different ideas about what makes a distro great and the direction they want to go. Force them all to work together and nothing would get finished, because they'd be fighting over whether or not to include proprietary drivers, what package system to use, what desktop environment should be the default...and that's just some of the top level, basic points of contention among distros.
154 • a hint on pclinuxos usage (by thac at 2007-11-14 15:27:19 GMT from Norway)
Theese numbers might give a hint on pclinuxos usage.
They do of course only show the number of downloaded isos from one source.
So it does not mean that all of them are in use.
But anyway.
This is the Details for torrent "PCLinuxOS 2007 Final" downloads
at http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=4143
Downloaded 55733 time(s) since 2007-05-21 00:36:19
155 • @151 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-14 15:39:32 GMT from Malaysia)
"Fix this issue??? Is anything broken?"
Well. the Comments section is badly damaged, but I think #150 is actually referring to the possibility of DW's credibility being affected by the PHR controversy.
Perhaps it's a compliment to DW that so many Linux users/journals/books seem to take an essentially meaningless statistic like PHR seriously.
156 • RE 150 (by dbrion on 2007-11-14 16:24:22 GMT from France)
" was PHR more trusted source to measure distro popularity or not?
"
Three years ago, Linux journals could offer really original CD ROMs to trheir readers: sometimes the linux distr. worked, sometimes not, but anyway, some chance was left to some innovation/usability.
=> French Linux journalists trusted their heads, not DW, when choosing a distro to sell to their readers.
One year ago, I noticed that one could find but the major distributions at the railways stations' newspapers sellers, and this can lead to a "positive" feedback (I use Windows because it is popular, and Windows is popular because many people think like me, instead of finding other systems , less buggy, better maintained, more innovating: just replace Windows by a Linux distr, and one can understand the meaning of popularity).
=> I do not buy any more some Linux "journals" at the railways stations newspapers sellers, some French Linux Journals do not ship CDs any more -thus getting cheaper- and there is a railway strike...
157 • Re:151.."Fix this issue??? Is anything broken?" (by JohnF on 2007-11-14 17:21:14 GMT from United States)
Easy fix, Ladislav. Just fix the PHR so that:
#1 Ubuntu
#2 Kubuntu
#3 Xbuntu
.....
and after you list all the 'buntus so that they stay in the spots aligned, then allow the rest of the distros to sort themselves out as normal via hits per day. That way, all the conspiracy "bot" people can go back to talking about UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster (who probably uses Scotbuntu on his PC), Sasquatch and who killed Kennedy.
(/sarcasm off).
158 • RE: 152/153 (by Landor on 2007-11-14 17:43:51 GMT from Canada)
I have to agree with 149 here to a point. I can't help but always judge most things from a business point of view. It's like my stance on Novell's deal, business. But that's aside from the point.
I look at groups of people working together, then ultimately forking off and weaking the resources within any given thing they were previously involved in(not just Linux, but yes, Linux). This adds a wealth of problems for both groups, the old one, and the new one.
First the original group. From a business point of view you had positions that were filled by (possibly) people who were well versed in their area assigned to them, contributing a lot, and for them to leave it creates a huge whole in the process that takes time to fill, and recover from, if some really do. Also, there's the training involved. I don't care what any person says, when they work for someone, or a project they had an invaluable learning experience, where they grew, learned, were taught more (even if they don't believe it) and gained so much that in itself is a huge waste to a company and or project, all that time and effort lost. Then there's the ripples within the structure that are caused by someone leaving. Dissent is always something that carries over to more than one person, whether visibly or not. Not to mention the animosity it creates for all parties.
Now for the new group, they have other problems to deal with. R&D is one thing. It takes time, a lot of time. Although it's starting over for them, on something they enjoy, they need to build on their talents, then become recognized for their abilities as a seperate entity. Miracles don't happen overnight. A lot of grass roots projects or businesses fall apart for just this reason. Also, manpower. Usually it's just one or at most a few people with a different vision and the workload is enormous, not to mention the internal pressure to get things done, couple with the desire to see some kind of reward for their efforts, as soon as possible. The sad thing is, most of these do not realize that as soon as possible is usually a whole lot longer than they expected it to be. Then the person or people who left have to wonder if someone will do the same to them and their project will suffer.
On the other hand I do agree with the reason for some to leave, or create their own projects while they could either stick with, or join one already around. Personal goals and vision are hard to dismiss, and when one group decides your vision doesn't fit theirs, and there's no chance to change their mind, what else can you do? Then of course there's innovation, without change, differences, we'd all be living in a homogenized black and white world.
I hate being a fence sitter, and on this one topic I have to be, since there's no real right or wrong, but I do believe all the varied projects hurt Linux in their own way, but also make it the great innovating OS that it is.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
It's sad
159 • A Brave New World? (by prospero on 2007-11-14 18:57:36 GMT from United States)
Like others, I have grown weary of this site. The most useful parts of DW are now the non-original content - the news links, third-party reviews and distro page links. I think the PHR, many DW reviews and 80% of the comments are uninformative, or, pardon my cynicism, actually designed to create controversy (and therefore page hits).
I'd rather know what people think is "good" or "bad," not what is "popular" or "unpopular." With Vista sales topping 60 million units, Microsoft has proven that "bad" can be "popular."
I would love to see a site do for Linux what rottentomatoes.com has done for movies and epinions.com has done for shopping - aggregating reviews from the critics and users, producing a single approval percentage for a distro, and ranking distros by that approval rating. That would allow an excellent distro currently mired at the bottom of the PHR to stand out on its merits.
Does anybody know of such a place?
160 • #142 You like it the way it is? (by Glenn on 2007-11-14 19:06:45 GMT from Canada)
I agree. #142. Your presentation of your point is good. Thanks for it.
People, a major distro has been released, I tried it. It is nice, clean to install, very professional feel to it, and we should be talking about it and comparing it to others etc. Maybe even bashing it if it deserves it.. Not continually focussing on PCLOS, PHR's . Heck one set of comments a few weeks back got into which languages we speak. ?? Who says this is not a dynamic forum? ha ha ha ha.
I do like Fedora but prefer Mandriva for personal taste. All the distros are fine in their place but for profssional business purposes I will remain with a major distro that I am reasonable sure is not going to suddenly fold on me a la Libranet when the designer of it is no longer there.
I also really like the more adventuresome smaller distros to work with but i cannot place my professional requirements at risk by standardizing on them. I will always have a major distro such as Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse. if I forgot some please forgive i do not mean to. I am just citing examples.
What I mean by Major is one that is professionally supported via corporation or its like and not dependent on the distro founder for its longevity. .
I realize that a lot fo distros are forks of or are based on major distros but my experience some of these, such as Xandros, was not great. It is corporate and it uses debian but has proprietary mods. Example, If I wanted to update KDE my system would become unusable. I got an AMD 64 with SATA and could not install it. My membership lapsed and there went my support. For this I paid good $$$ for??? I'd be better off purchasing a copy of windows xp.
. .
I can rattle on and on but I hope you get the idea. We should be talking about Linux flavors, what we like or dont like etc. not PHRs nor bashing one distro or the other because we do not like their standing on the list. Then again maybe it is really important and I am out of step here.
One last point, I notice there is a tendency of some distros to announce their Alfa release here. I think this is no place for it. That is for developers and technical geeks. I think the RCs are good, maybe even a beta would be ok, but certainly not an alfa. I know counter arguments can be made, maybe better than my argument but tthat is my opinion. You're welcome to change it. I am adaptable.
Thanks
glenn .
161 • Re 159 (by DG on 2007-11-14 19:51:49 GMT from Netherlands)
I would love to see a site do for Linux [...] aggregating reviews from the critics and users, producing a single approval percentage for a distro, and ranking distros by that approval rating. That would allow an excellent distro currently mired at the bottom of the PHR to stand out on its merits. Does anybody know of such a place?
Is http://www.distrorankings.com/ what you are looking for maybe?
162 • Re 158 - to fork, or not to fork, that is the question (by DG on 2007-11-14 20:08:00 GMT from Netherlands)
I agree that some innovation is required, but I get the feeling that some people fork new distros just to show that they can.
For example, the other night a new name showed up on the #irc channel for one distro, and said s/he was excited to have found the distro and was installing it right there and then. Then s/he said, "Wait until you hear what improvements I am going to make" and "of course, I don't like the package management system, so I think I'll write a replacement and create my own distro". How to make friends and influence people. Let's wait to see how long s/he sticks around and whether s/he makes a positive contribution.
163 • PHR --> Random (by Duhnonymous on 2007-11-14 20:49:19 GMT from United States)
I like the idea of a distro lottery. In fact, you would even need the top 100. You could make the top 30 or even top 20 the default that way.
164 • #142, 160 Fedora 8 released - NO COMMENTS?? But 100 comments on PHR? (by rglk on 2007-11-14 23:06:50 GMT from United States)
A major, well-designed, cutting edge distro (Fedora 8) is released (I'm not a Fedora user) ... and it's hardly being commented upon in this forum. Instead this sophomoric babbling about DW PHR, who's #1, PHR-fraud, dubious "distro popularity" etc. etc. goes on and on ... I'm sick and tired of it.
It gets even worse: important news such as the release of Indiana (the OpenSolaris live CD created by the founder of Debian) elicited a total of THREE (!!!) comments so far, two of which were banal one-liners, even after Ladislav put this news at the head of the news section of last week's DDW, characterizing Indiana as "one of the most eagerly anticipated free operating systems in recent years." That's pitiful.
If I have one suggestion for improvement of this sorry Comments section, it would be to introduce an option of blacklisting individual posts based on keywords. If I could blacklist all posts containing "*buntu", "pclinuxos", "PHR", "#1", that would cut the number of posts that I'm presented with each week to the 10 or 20 that might be worth reading.
Or, as I've suggested previously (see post #110) if the PHR were to be be scrapped entirely - with one stroke that would massively improve the quality of the Comments section.
165 • Just a late post (by Michael Dotson on 2007-11-14 23:33:46 GMT from United States)
Has anyone noticed while you are fighting about PHR and which distro is better/worse that Wal-mart has sold out 10,000 of the new Everex gPC in less than two weeks. If the Wal-mart site reviews are honest, it is apparently a hit with the public. Seems gOS and Everex may be on to something the Linux community needs to look at. I wonder how one of the Dell Ubuntu PC's would do in Wal-MArt?
166 • RE: 165 (by ladislav on 2007-11-15 00:07:17 GMT from Taiwan)
I added gOS to DistroWatch yesterday. Even without any announcement or front-page news, the page has already received over 300 views. Personally, I find gOS a little rough around the edges, but I've heard many positive comments about it and people seem to like it. Anyway, you can find the page here:
http://distrowatch.com/gos
167 • @164 • #142, 160 Fedora 8 released - NO COMMENTS?? But 100 comments on PHR? (by Anonymous on 2007-11-15 00:12:03 GMT from Malaysia)
#109 UPDATED: wireless with rt73 can only manage a connection strength of 30% - most sites time out, so it's not really functional on my desktop.
Others who have posted (mostly uninformative, one-line comments) about their experience with Fedora 8 this week:
# 5 ("the best distro, clean, nice.")
#7 ("the more trouble free and most suitable distribution for my ThinkPad is openSUSE")
#13 ("it was a pain in the *ss to use the "Add/Remove Software" program")
#27 ("easy on the eye, but it did not allow me to do anything after loading the desktop")
#29 ("Fedora 8 and ?buntu 7.10 are unusable on my machine")
#36 ("far more stable and reliable than any (K)Ubuntu")
#77 ("a solid distro overall")
#105 ("Fedora 8 crashes on several of my computers")
#142 ("all multimedia keys are working OOT(FH)B on this Acer Aspire1640 series machine and it suspends, hibernates and then wakes up correctly (except there is no sound after hibernation wakeup). Using new intel (was new on F7) graphics driver for onboard 915GM chip, display was correctly detected and configured without a hitch, excepting that during install the options windows in the installer suffered the BIG FONT syndrome that all other distros have in one way or another also suffered. Power management is good and is usable but there is a need to offer the option to permanently lockdown or retain a particular power policy (as does openSUSE with KPowersave and the Acer utilities provide on XP!). As it stands now, Fedora 8 (Gnome) and Mandriva 2008 (Gnome) only offer session power control that resets to "dynamic" frequency scaling after reboot")
#160 ("nice, clean to install, very professional feel to it").
168 • 130MB Compiz Fusion test distro (by Lobster on 2007-11-15 04:02:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wnop (ATI and Nvidia cards supported - is yours?)
Runs Compiz Fusion out of the box
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=153386#153386
Puppy runs on Eeepc and other small laptop - other news
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/LatestNews
woof woof
169 • My quick run on Fedora 8 (by IMQ on 2007-11-15 04:20:24 GMT from United States)
I got Fedora 8 installed on one of my PC. It does look more polished than the previous release.
So far I have not run into any problem yet. YUM seems to run quicker. All the basic apps are there.
However, I ran into problems when I tried to installed on two other machines that I have.
Problem 1: Hard drive with more than 15 partitions.
One machine has more than 15 partitions on the main hard drive. Installation failed. I tried the work-around that works for openSUSE 10.3 by adding hwprobe=-modules.pata at boot time. No luck there! Notice that, Ubuntu and Sidux do not support more than 15 partitions on a hard drive but both allows a complete installation. Neither of these sees past partition number 15 on the hard drive.
Problem 2: Wireless support for RT2500-based PCI cards
One machine on a different floor with wireless as the only internet access via RT2500-based PCI wireless card. Fedora 8 has no support for the card, which is really odd, considering all other three big players (Ubuntu, Mandriva, and openSUSE) support the card out of the box! Even with WPA.
In fact, I am typing this from an hard-disk installed Mint 4.0 XFCE Beta 1 on a machine that has a hard drive with more than 15 partitions and the RT2500-based PCI card.
So my success rate so far for Fedora 8 is 2 out 3. But considering the fact that one out of the 2 that I successfully installed has no support for my wireless card, it's basically no good without internet access.
Does anyone know why Fedora does not support this wireless card?
If I am not mistaken, the RT2500-based driver is open-source. So why Fedora does not include it like the other big three?
Overall, I like the new Fedora 8. I just wish it supported all my hardware like most current distros.
170 • @169 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-15 05:21:57 GMT from Malaysia)
Fedora seems to include the rt2500 driver by default. I was able to connect to my network with an RT2500 USB card but the signal strength was around 30%. Ubuntu and Mandriva connect at around 80% with the same card. Suse recognized the card but couldn't connect.
171 • Faulty Distros (by Giorgio Beltrammi on 2007-11-15 06:23:05 GMT from Italy)
Each new Linux Distro is very welcome in our Linux fans world, it's a vitality sign.
However between thats distros, few have some usability and reliability problems.
In my own experience some of thats suffers of problems in kernel Linux recognizing, others in hardware compatibility, others have troubles in X.org configuration, others in framebuffering, and so on.
Then i ask myself why this happen. Perhaps the distros developers has missing something in his job?
They have completely tested his distros?
Recently i had fatal troubles with :
- Dyne:Bolic 2.5 and 2.5.1 that was unable to properly configure X.org
- Fedora 8 LiveCD that failed to load udev
- Paldo that was unable to found the kernel
- Pioneer Explorer that was unable to properly set screen-resolution
- Sabayon Mini that was unable to do everything
These distros aren't ready and not working for all kind of users or PCs.
When these distros will become really "ready"?
Not all users are geek that are able to hack an operating system!
Finally, after a lot of evaluations on differents Linux distros i think that a Linux distro can called "ready" if:
- have full support to all CPUs architectures
- have full support to all types of laptops
- have an automatic setup of X.org
- run and work in every, single condition
nothing else.
172 • @171 Faulty Distros (by Anonymous on 2007-11-15 07:00:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
Your comments are a true representation of the failings of Linux in general.
People from the Windows world try these faulty distros and go back to what they know best and are happy with.
These people may never come back to Linux, and they may pass on their experiences to other "would be" Linux evaluators.
It is the responsibility of every distro developer to ensure they put out to the public at large a completely working distro to ensure that conversion is complete in the evaluator. However long this might take.
Some do this as a matter of course and some put out alfas and betas that the unwary see as the finished article and are not fit for consumption by the general public. If these distros would limit their releases to RC only then this would make things better, but a finished and polished distro is going to be more of a success for the uptake of Linux in the world at large.
173 • RE:120 (by SundayRefugee on 2007-11-15 09:34:50 GMT from United States)
If you had made just 2 mouse clicks further before launching on your rant, you would have made it to the following page:
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/opensource
Where you can see that the Qt tools are completely free, as in beer, and in speech, and GPL'd, for Open Source dev's ;-)
I'm a happy GNOME user and have little use for KDE myself, but that kind of baseless FUD does no one any good ;-)
174 • Re 171 Are faulty distros so faulty? (by dbrion on 2007-11-15 10:19:11 GMT from France)
"
Finally, after a lot of evaluations on differents Linux distros i think that a Linux distro can called "ready" if:
- have full support to all CPUs architectures
"
Are you serious? Does Windows support MIPS,ARMS, Sparcs, fully? Debian removed support on one or two CP... You might find two distros (say CLFS and T2) but hundreds of distros may make people happy with conventional CPs.
As for the responsible (I agree with this point) way of testing a distro in any condition, it is irrealistic (like asking people never being ill!), and would be expensive. Most beginners do not trust reviews (and the more wars there are, the less they trust) and rely
* on their brains
* on their friends brains (I am sometimes asked to (help to) put a Linux on a friends PC; normally, as I want to remain in friendly terms, and if Cygwin+Mingw+some nice GPL Windows ports are not enough, I have to emulate it before I can say that it might work...
In the last case, installation comfort/speed is not such an issue...
175 • re 92 (by mikkh on 2007-11-15 12:52:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
bickering and bots, useful and not so so useful comments, fascinating and annoying and downright galling in places.
Yet somehow only one thing sticks (pun intended) in my mind
"keep your stick to yourself"
Yes please do Landor
176 • RE: 170 (by IMQ on 2007-11-15 13:53:33 GMT from United States)
Maybe it detects the RT2500-based USB but not the PCI. That would be strange too if it detects one but not the other unless the drivers are complete different even though both are RT2500-based.
The only things I saw when running the command *ifconfig -a* were the *lo* and the *eth0* interfaces.
As mentioned in my previous post, all other big 3 detected and loaded the driver without me doing anything. I only needed to configure the card for WPA and I was set.
177 • FEDORA 8 finally (by memena on 2007-11-15 15:18:49 GMT from Philippines)
Yay for torrents! About time too, and the worse of you PHR whiners ought to just get out and make your own damn list on your own damn site, instead of whinging in here week in and week out. Let the effing dead horse *be* will you? Or bring it up with Ladislav, distro@distrowatch.com. Man's trying to accommodate your feedback for weeks now, and nothing's just good enough for the lot of you.
Thank you. Fedora 8 discussion follows.
178 • debianKDE4 (by ibmbox on 2007-11-15 17:27:25 GMT from Thailand)
just tried to run the debian kde4 install and got stuck at the login screen.
any clues as too the default login....tried guest,root,admin,user,????
179 • RE: 178 (by Landor on 2007-11-15 19:57:02 GMT from Canada)
A quick google came up with:
"Just be sure, if you're using the Debian live CD, to note that you login with the username "user" and the password "live."
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
180 • Re: #175 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-15 23:33:34 GMT from Germany)
>"keep your stick to yourself"
I think it's a hockey term. You know, Canadians love ice hockey. "Keep your stick on the ice" probably means "play fair" or something like that...
181 • Re: all the distros I ever ran and whether I liked it or not. (by I am the corn or is that cron on 2007-11-16 00:09:57 GMT from Canada)
1. First I ran Mandrake 10 or something but didn't like it. I had Windows XP too and I didn't like it.
2. Then I ran suse 9.1 pro and liked it. (I think I ran it but I can't remember for sure, but if I did I'm sure I would have liked it)
3. Then I ran suse 9.2 and liked it.
4. Then I ran suse 9.3 and liked it.
5. Then I ran Debian 3.0 and didn't like it. Later I would realize I should have liked it.
6. Then I ran Fedora 4 and didn't like it.
7. Then I ran FreeBSD 6.1 and liked it.
8. Then I ran Slackware at the same time as FreeBSD and liked it. I was also running Suse 10.0 at this time and I liked it. That was the only time I liked 3 different operating systems on my computer at the same time.
9. Then I only ran opensuse 10.1 and I didn't like it.
10. Then I panicked and ran Ubuntu 6.06 and thought I didn't like it. I later realized that I was being protective of my favorite suse 10.0. I was just jealous that it worked faster.
11. Then I ran Kubuntu and I didn't like it.
12. Then I ran Vector and I liked it.
13. Then I ran Yoper and didn't like it.
14. Then I ran Solaris and didn't like it.
15. Then I ran dynebolic and didn't like it.
16. Then I ran Zenwalk and I liked it.
17. Then I ran Pardus and didn't like it.
18. Then I ran Fox Desktop and didn't like it.
19. Then I ran open suse 10.2 and liked it.
20. Then I ran Ubuntu 7.04 and I liked it now.
21. Then I ran Debian and liked it this time. But now I was tired of configuring my computer.
22. Then I ran Ubuntu 7.04 and liked it again.
23. Then I ran opensuse 10.3 and liked it. But Firefox opened 0.4 seconds slower than Ubuntu so I didn't like it as much.
24. Then I remembered Firefox didn't open as fast on all my suse installations so I retroactively didn't like them as much. Except for suse 9.3 which I still liked.
25. Then I remembered I ran PCLinuxOs between 19 and 20 and I liked it a little but I was still protecting opensuse in my mind.
26. Then I remembered I ran Damn Small, Puppy, Frugalware, Xandros, SymphonyOS, and some other distros and some I liked and some I didn't like, but I mostly didn't like them.
27. Then I realized I was spending way too much time on the computer so I didn't like Linux anymore.
28. Then I installed windows xp on a spare partition and I kind of liked it again.
29. Then I contracted a virus on widows xp the next day and didn't like it anymore either.
30. Then I realized I tried to run plan 9 somewhere in the teens, and thought I would have liked it except I could get it to run.
31. Then I realized I had wondered occasionally about running Gentoo but was glad I didn't because of some off-the-wall humour site that poked fun at Gentoo users because they thought they were the coolest.
32. Then I realized that at one time or another I had thought about installing Netbsd, openbsd, dragonfly bsd, centos, sidux and a bunch of other distros and retroactively hated myself for spending way too much time thinking about linux and bsd's.
33. Then I thought about getting rid of my computer.
34. Then I decided to just run Ubuntu because I liked it.
35. Then I stopped thinking about linux so much and started living more day to day.
36. Then I realized that I didn't want to be a geek anymore.
37. I didn't like the name Iceweasel so that's why I liked Ubuntu better than Debian. But I like Debian's logo better. A decision had to be made.
38. Now I like linux again.
39. I like traffic lights.
40. But only when they're green.
41. Now I run opensuse 10.3 and it's really cool. You should install apt for suse.
Please visit my homepage.
182 • "stick on the ice" (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-16 00:57:40 GMT from United States)
Not that I know anything about it - can't even skate - but I'd guess it is hard to whack the other guy with your stick stuck on the ice.
Anyway, finally something good to play with while I wait for the next sidux: I see Mint 4.0 is out and can hardly wait for the download to finish. :)
183 • #182 Keep your what? on the ice (by Glenn on 2007-11-16 02:10:38 GMT from Canada)
Hey Fractal Guy.
Notice he says Keep YOUR stick on the ice, no mention of his.
That way he can whack you. Hmm,, Nice guy.. Haw haw.
I'm also downloading Mint.4.0. I tried the Beta and it was pretty good.
Mint is one of the few distros that run on all my systems without me having to go fiddle with XORGS, modify the boot parms and curse a lot . .
Unfortunatel Mandriva choked on my SLI AMD 64 system because of the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT in combination with my Samsung 206b .I had to use XFDRAKE to load the Mandriva One CD. Also i had to modify the boot to use NOACPI .. oh well..Should be fun when I put in my second 2600 and crossfire them.
For Ubuntu 7.10 I had to remove the SPLASH from the boot and use NOACPI but it went on that same system and my other systems as well. The new AMD 2400/2600 driver went on the Ubuntu and Mint system nicely, and I have great display and acceleration on my Samsung 206b
...
Fedora 8 64 bit went on beautiifully on my 2 AMD 64 systems. It choked on loading the Loader on my TP60. Nuts.
I didn't feel like playing anymore.
Mint 4.0 looks more promising.
What all that techno babble has to do with the stick on the ice caption beats me but i guess having a swizzle stick on the ice in my glass as i write this makes it ok.
Glenn
Glenn .
184 • RE: 180 (by Landor on 2007-11-16 05:50:39 GMT from Canada)
"I think it's a hockey term. You know, Canadians love ice hockey. "Keep your stick on the ice" probably means "play fair" or something like that..."
It is a hockey term, but some here at DW that are a bit more...hmm, no matter...
It basically means don't let anything get by you, keep in control, play the game to win, etc... If your stick is on the ice there's less chance of a puck getting by you.
So when I use it in messages/comments it's a kind gesture saying "I hope you keep playin' to win/how it's meant to be played (meaning life), in everything".
A number of months ago one person from here actually had the decency and intelligence to e-mail me and ask what it meant. Others just prefer where they live which their comments define.
Onto Linux :) I just came across some info on how to make a wireless linux router from an actual Linksys WRT router (which I own). Basically a Linux SLUG, embedded. I'm really looking forward to it and since I don't use my router now, though if I ruin it I'll still be pissed :), it won't be too much of a waste, and if it works, well, I'll find a use for my box I made into my router (probably finally donate it), and run my systems off a Linksys WRT router coverted to a Linux/Gentoo WRT router. :)
So I guess I'm taking my store bought router to a higher plane of existance lol
Keep your stick on the ice... :)
Landor
185 • RE: 184/Embedded (by Landor on 2007-11-16 07:19:11 GMT from Canada)
I found a couple projects that work "out of the box" OpenWRT and DD-WRT, far more simple than trying to do it with Gentoo. Also, if you had a network storage device like the NSLU2 by Linksys ( a SLUG) ( or for wireless possibly the TRENDnet device that comes with wireless) you can install a complete Debian system via a connect USB storage device.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
186 • @172 (by Giorgio Beltrammi on 2007-11-16 07:52:52 GMT from Italy)
I'm not a windows user since december 2003.
I'm a Linux fan since november 2005 after a two-year period on MacOS X.
My delusion is for Linux Distro that self-named "ready" while they are not, or not for "all" users or pc!
A Linux newbee that will choose a distro to try the power of Linux, could fall in a trap and will abandon our wonderful world.
That'all!
187 • @176 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-16 08:46:53 GMT from Malaysia)
"Maybe it detects the RT2500-based USB but not the PCI. That would be strange too if it detects one but not the other unless the drivers are complete different even though both are RT2500-based. The only things I saw when running the command *ifconfig -a* were the *lo* and the *eth0* interfaces."
Maybe the drivers are different ... but Suse 10.3 didn't detect the rt2500 USB adapter when I booted from the live CD (even though modprobe listed rt73usb), so maybe it's something else.
Wireless doesn't work with Fedora on my notebook either (Acer 1694). Couldn't find any helpful information on FedoraForum other than a statement that wifi is a problem on Acer notebooks because of a software controller ... BUT it works with Mandriva and Suse!
Switched to a wired connection and found that pirut is still slow and also tends to freeze. Had problems setting up apt repos in Synaptic (unlike Fedora 7). Finally decided to wait for Fedora 9.
188 • 184 Comm Embedded (by dbrion on 2007-11-16 10:20:31 GMT from France)
More for your info/curiosity than for immediate usage:
"http://www.armadeus .com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page"
has a wiki where they explain everything (this is my claim, not theirs) on how to build (hardware and cross compiling/emulating/installing PC->ARM) a tiny Linux card (meant rather for playing / measuring than telecoms, to day), and many links ; their card is going to be used for teaching and industry. As it has quite tiny ressources, you can put only what you want... but it seems difficult to claim it works out of the box...
Together with the info you give on embedded routers, perhaps I may one day/year/century understand how it works (this is more complicated than PCs).
A hobby electronic magazine, elektor (http://www.elek tor.fr/ ?ge?en), is interested, too, in Linux routers, and putting them into wireless (for home robotics), but I have not the 2 last month's issues (they made one in november 2007, and a linux oscilloscope in sep 2007) . What strikes me is that, before this year, they did not write about Linux at all... except for OLPC .
189 • I need money! (by Hephaestus on 2007-11-16 13:11:39 GMT from United States)
Ok this is something I have been thinking about for a long time.
Money!
I'm sure it's safe to say that if it were not for the "quality" of winblows, most local pc shops wouldn't be able to keep there doors open.
(Ducks under desk awaiting flames... All clear!?!)
I refer you to this statement for a better idea of what I am talking about:
...as Linux becomes more prevalent, the amount of Linux techs will increase...
http://techiem2.net/index.php?/archives/7-Response-to-Why-Wal-Mart-Linux-PC-Is-A-Bad-Deal-article.html
Now a lot of these "Windows Techs" I find normal people taking there computers too aren't actually "Techs" in the first place. I know I wasn't when I was fixing them at my uncles computer shop at age 13! And what do they usually do to "fix" these computers? Backup MyDocuments, update virus defs, defrag, oops didn't work, RE-INSTALL party! Almost not even worth mentioning.
So this is reality... right... it's understood, pretty much set in stone if you will.
This is a job I could easily get... Don't really even need an A+, heck you could just be an apprentace forever if you wanted. Easy money.
But what if you've been busting your hump for years learning to use and administer Linux, what if you were actually good enough (by success rate I mean, not ego) to qualify for a job working on Desktop Linux Issues. Nope! Sorry you don't have an LPI, redhat or a linux+ cert (which is a joke really) So I need to obtain the training of a full sys/network admin just to help granny get her gPC's video or network connection working properly.
What is a person looking for extra computer work on the side to do in this situation? Give up one of my only passions and work on windows boxes like everyone else? I thought I was learning a new valuable skill set but it turnes out I can't afford to put all the time energy and money into getting the required certifications in order to use even a fraction of that skillset on anything other than my own personal machines and projects.
Sa La Vi, I guess...
190 • Distrowatch page hit stats are a joke (by Jim on 2007-11-16 14:48:18 GMT from United States)
Please remove the page hit stats... It's clear that they are highly inaccurate and/or being rigged. It's a big shame that Distrowatch continues to participate in misleading its visitors.
PCLinux is the Ron Paul of distrowatch... Nothing but a bunch of hype from a small number of devout followers/bots. Pretending like PC Linux is more popular than Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and other big players is laughable.
191 • No subject (by Warp0 on 2007-11-16 16:19:59 GMT from United States)
What IS laughable is the people who read HPD as a popularity contest. It measures how many people go through distrowatch to the DL site (or something similar). It doesn't measure how many people use PCLOS or any other distro each day, so why people continue to suggest that it does?
Here are the data Ladislav showed for HPD the release day plus one. An increase of 60 HPD from a bot will not change this. Clearly there is as much interest in the last PCLOS release as there was for some other heavy hitters.
1 Ubuntu 7.10 14,310
2 PCLinuxOS 2007 11,522
3 openSUSE 10.3 10,498
4 Fedora 8 9,950
5 Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 7,857
6 Mandriva Linux 2008 6,748
7 SimplyMEPIS 6.5 6,656
8 Gentoo Linux 2007 5,284
9 Slackware Linux 12.0 5,093
10 Sabayon Linux 3.4 4,491
What does that say? Not much, but it shows that at least as far as distrowatch is concerned that there was as much interest in PCLOS as the "big players". That is what the HPD measures .. nothing more. So why, oh why are people who would prefer to see Ubuntu or some other distro on top keep harping on and on like a broken frickin record?
192 • Why do I bother (by Max on 2007-11-16 16:36:12 GMT from Australia)
Posting here takes "talking to yourself" to a whole different level...
Look at me mama, I have an opinion!!
Keep your stick where the sun don't shine...
193 • 189 • I need money! (by Hephaestus) (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-16 16:50:46 GMT from United States)
Hello Hephaestus,
I hear you! And Linux is getting better and easier so fast that it is hard to stake out a claim in the install/repair/service areas. I've been dabbling in this for a few years now.
Take installation first. Four years ago, most distros failed on my hardware in some way. Now it is down to some fail. Installs are now easier, just answer a few questions. And faster! I installed sidux in just less than 10 minutes. I couldn't believe it was all there, so I went to the IRC and found my timing was almost a new high (that is, new slowest). One guy claimed something like 2 minutes. And there was a German article noting install times were 4 to 10 minutes.
How about repair? Well what's to repair: broken upgrades comes to mind. Even here, rolling updates/upgrades may soon eliminate that problem. I've always used the BackItUpReinstall method or just leave it be. But that is not necessary any more. (However, when the new sidux comes out, I'm wiping and reinstalling from scratch, just for the fun of it.)
What about service? From a user point of view, it is getting better also, especially this last year. (And I think it might be due to DWW, hehe.) I like to hang out on the IRC of any distro I'm testing, to see how they handle the newbies. I find the response is getting quicker, polite, friendly and actually helpful. When I first went to Ubuntu's IRC back in 5.04 days, I found it well behaved but very crowed and streaming rapidly. It looked hopeless to get help there. I posted my question in "the correct way" (friendly and to the point) and waited. Nothing for me. But I watched and I noticed others being ignored even while many were being helped. I saw one guy asked something I knew about, so I answered him and got him on his way. I asked my QA again and soon it was answered.
And IRC now days? I started keeping notes on some of this, just to answer some of my friends about it. I've seen noobs greeted in less than 10 seconds. I just checked one IRC, two greeted a "has joined this channel" in less than 8 seconds. Many times the solution is found in less than three minutes. The harder problems may result in "devs" piling on to help. That gets funny, too many cooks. But seriously, I've seen head developers and distro book authors on the IRC at sidux, pclos, mint, knoppix, and more. I think some of them leave a window opened and listen for pings, but they do help.
But to your problem and question. Hmmm. It is a marketing problem, personel marketing problem. How to get your "shingle" out there and get business. Not simple, I think. Reminds me of slashdot: 1. Identify need/solution. 2. Develop marketing plan. 3. ? 4. Profit!
With desktop Linus picking up, now may be the time for "Linux Hax0r Squad". :)
Keep your live CD (not your coffee cup) in the CD tray...
Fract Al Guy
194 • Open Suse 10.3 (64 bits) installed on HP DV2610US Notebook. (by Andre G. on 2007-11-16 22:25:50 GMT from United States)
Hello:
I finally (after lots of trial/errors) got OpenSuse 10.3 to work properly on this new Notebook from HP.
1) For the graphics, I had installed using the Nvidia file: (nothing else worked!).
"NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.19-pkg2.run"
You have to be in single user mode:
as root type: "init 3"
Then runs the script.
then type "init 4"
If you invoke Sax, it will tell you that the driver does not support 3D, but it is enabled, and the game "BZFLAG" (require 3D acceleration) will run very well and very fast.
The KDE control Center does detect 3D acceleration enabled.
And the quality of the display is one of the very best I have ever seen on a notebook (congratulation HP designers there!).
Hopefully the Suse devellopers, will integrate this into YAST (note that 10.1 did support this quite well!) for an easier install for the "non geek" user.
2) For the Wireless, I could not find any way to extract the firmware from the 64 bits Broadcom Driver, but I could get NDISWRAPPER to work quite well (although a bit slower ).
Then I did compile and installed succesfully (using chechinstall, and then the rpm) "wlanassistant".
Its works well, but here too it was quite tedious.
Hopefully someone finds a way so extrating the firmware is possible: this will allow to use the kernel driver.
Also hopefully, the next version of Open Suse will by default install properly and easily "wlanassistant", or its newer KDE4 equivalent.
3) For now the only things which does not work, is the DVD-RAM but it does not work on Vista either... and several calls to HP tech support on this were not very encouraging.
On this I wish HP drops the Mashusita CD/DVD drive and come back to the LG drives which work flawlessly with DVD-RAM. I also had excellent experience with LG tech support who replaced a bad drive very quickly.
I have purchased several LG CD/DVD drives, and they work very well, and also (unlike Panasonic/Matshusita) provide good firmware updates.
4) Almost everything else that I have tested (USB wireless mouse, sound) works "out of the box" : Congratulations here to the OpenSuse developpers, and I have not tried yet the BueTooth and the WebCAm.
The sound is mediocre... like most notebooks!
5) I could not install Skype (will need to add the 32bits QT Libraries).
Hopefully Skype will make available a 64 bits version one day... or SuSE?
6) I tried also (all 64 bits) Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Fedora 8, but they all failed on the basic install, where OpenSuse basic install did work, on this new HP machine, allowing further tweaking.
Andre G.
I may also post this on the "Distrowatch" web site.
195 • "Keep your stick on the ice" (by Mikey on 2007-11-16 22:59:17 GMT from United States)
When ever I hear or see this, I can't help but think fondly of the "Red green show" :)
Ending his little segments for the middle aged man, with "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together" and the show with "Keep your stick on the ice"
or perhaps a few other quotes..
Ah well.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritiati
196 • Fool (by I am the corn on 2007-11-17 00:31:33 GMT from Canada)
Landor is not a belligerant fool (or is that beligerant? hmmm), but I certainly am!
I remember one evening last summer, taking out the garbage at my townhouse complex. Someone had thrown out a complete milk crate full of windows software CD's, literally hundreds of well worn CD cases in the crate, and spilling over onto the asphalt. I chuckled to myself as I was passing by, not really interested in what was there. But the glint of moonlight reflecting off one CD case caught my eye. I turned to get a closer look....an unopened, still in the shrinkwrap, full Slackware 4.0 CD set. Picking it up I found myself musing....if only he had opened this CD.....fool.
197 • Re: Fool (by I am the corn on 2007-11-17 00:33:50 GMT from Canada)
It appears the post that I was referring to in the first line of my previous post was removed...just in case you're wondering!
198 • Excellent WRT router solution (by I am the corn on 2007-11-17 00:37:13 GMT from Canada)
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
199 • statistics (by speedygeo at 2007-11-17 05:48:11 GMT from Romania)
I never used irc in my 1 year experience of using linux like my production system.
I post comment on the distro forum, or on other forums.
But I subscribed a lot of forums: Mepis, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, DesktopBSD, PCLOS, Mandriva...
I don't suggest you to check the number of distro-forum subscription. Maybe the number of active subscription in the last year, or six mounts...
200 • Mepis - upcoming (by speedygeo on 2007-11-17 05:58:20 GMT from Romania)
Warren announced that the Mepis 7 will be out at the thanksgiving day. Dear Ladislav, can you add it at the "Upcoming Releases and Announcements" section? Why not? Can you add the Mepis 7 beta6 at the "Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases" section? Thank you for your excellent work!
201 • Mepis is widely used (by speedygeo on 2007-11-17 06:18:25 GMT from Romania)
Mepis is widely used but not so reviewed. I'm a Mepis lover but I'm not a fanatic.
I tried a lot of distro and forums, but I found Mepis an high quality distribution. Based on Debian Stable, fully compatible with it, is very stable at the beta stage too.
It had a great developer, Warren Woodford. He is famous for his high quality work. See wikipedia. He work hard to make mepis out-of-bug. Something like Tex for PCLOS.
In term of usability, hardware compatibility, non fanatic FSF vision, PCLOS and, first, MEPIS are the distros that just works.
I love the Debian project too, this is the reason I choose MEPIS.
202 • RE: 187 (by IMQ on 2007-11-17 16:26:35 GMT from United States)
Here were my success experience with RT2500-based PCI wireless card:
- PCLinuxOS 0.93 and later
- Ubuntu 6.06 and later
- (K)Ubuntu-based like also works
- openSUSE since 10.3
- Debian-based Kuliax 6.0
- Debian-based Parsix 0.90 and later
- Mandriva 2007 and later
- Sidux 2007 with manual tweaking
- Pardus 2007 but not 100% reliable
- Debian-based SimplyMEPIS 6.0 and later
Although some of Debian-based, as mentioned above, support the cards out of the box, Debian itself does not!
Fedora and generally Slackware-based distros I tested (Slackware, Zenwalk, Wolvix, etc.) did not support the card out the box either.
I am happy because I have at least 3 distros that work on my box.
On a side note, I tend to favor Debian-based or Ubuntu-based distros because I prefer apt or aptitude, the software package handlers, for keeping my system up-todate.
Mandriva's urpmi is not so bad. openSUSE's YaST is slow in my experience but not anywhere as bad as Fedora's YUM although it shows shome imprevement in Fedora 8.
203 • 64studio (by whocares on 2007-11-17 16:52:07 GMT from United States)
Sometimes I actually do wish there were less distros and more focus on standardization. I didn't always feel this way and their are distros out there now that are very poorly implemented.
I have sidux, debian 4.0 and ubuntu 7.10 installed on my dual core 64bit computer-multibooting and working reasonably well.
I like to try other 64 bit distros occasionally. If you're looking at 64 studio (which for some reason doesn't appear in distowatch's search unless you put in "studio 64") don't bother. It is IMO the worst debian based 64 bit version to come along.
204 • pclos , ron paul (by alex jones on 2007-11-17 17:16:12 GMT from Canada)
Reading the comment about Ron Paul (190) - The problem with Ron Paul is ?, when people choose something because it is good , and then spread their knowledge by word of mouth, - this is a bad thing?
So pclos is not as good as suse etc because?
because they dont have millionaire backers?
because everyone knows about suse etc?
If you vote for someone like ron paul you will probably get a passionate person . If you vote for Rudy or hilary or suse you are voting for big business.
Pclinuxos is a very good distribution - Recent releases by mandriva, suse , fedora have been dissapointing at best.
I just find it hard when people dismiss passionate people as being hyped.
P.s Ron paul raised the most money of all republican candidates from donations of 1000 dollars or less - not big business backers etc
205 • @202 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-17 17:52:17 GMT from Malaysia)
My RT2500 USB card has worked out of the box with Mandriva 2007.1 (and 2008), PCLOS 2007 and Ubuntu 7.10.
It was more or less non-functional with Fedora 8 and didn't work with Sabayon 3.4, Suse 10.3, PC-BSD 1.4 or the Debian and Gentoo live CDs.
I couldn't get it to work with ndiswrapper in Fedora and the drivers on the Prolink website weren't much use either.
206 • @204 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-17 18:00:40 GMT from Malaysia)
"Pclinuxos is a very good distribution - Recent releases by mandriva, suse , fedora have been dissapointing at best."
If you have actually used Mandriva, you would have noticed that PCLOS has borrowed the installer, control centre and several other features from Mandriva.
So which aspects of Mandriva 2007 (or 2008) did you find disappointing in comparison with PCLOS?!
207 • Qu 204 : Can you explain in details why (by dbrion on 2007-11-17 18:02:08 GMT from France)
"Recent releases by mandriva, suse , fedora have been dissapointing at best.
"
I can also write that the sun is green, and tell it is FREE writing.
The main issue with short release cycles (maketing based, as for Beaujolais Nouveau) is that nothing can be tested : this gave an advantage to Fedora, as she released one month later, and Suze had some minor issues (which does not hinder my favorite disk / PC sellers to sell PCs with Suse preinstalled, if one wants.... the seller does it himself, and I hope I helped him sufficiently with the command line to be able to buy ... XP (as I distrust Vista, and can install what I need myself)). Caraibes classification is consistent with a chronological decerese of bugs/issues...
In the professional word, only spring editions seem to be considered (and , if it consistently works for years -the Out of the Holy Box myth is considered as a joke-) ,as RedHAt derived or Suze derived do, pple are ready .. to buy a failsafe (as much as possible) Linux, or (as little as possible) support for failures (no, that is not fora nor Whine Torrent).
If some demagogic linuxen feel free to copy, copy, and ongoingly copy and very loudly claim they are the best..... that make their supporters ....radically .......interesting....
208 • No subject (by alex jones on 2007-11-17 20:14:40 GMT from Canada)
to clarify - mandriva 2008 was clearly not ready for the public - even a week after the due release date. The showstopper tho was the adverts that pop up after installation and the repository set-up (not for beginners) and yes pclos is forked from mandriva - as with linux mint and ubuntu - take a good distro and make it GREAT.
Suse - deal with the devil puts off a lot of people looking to get away from microsoft - Showstopper - little out of the box multimedia , graphics drivers and the setup needed to get these things (adding many 3rd party repositories etc(not for beginers))
Fedora - average distro - problems with pulseaudio have been vast -
Showstopper - codec buddy - you leave microsoft to get away from paying for software that should be free and then you find yourself being asked to pay for the privelege of watching your multimedia - next please!
There are many smaller distros (mepis, mint, sidux, pclos.) that are easier to use than the so called big hitters that they may be based off + the developers have squashed many more bugs than the big hitters.
the trend has always been that if you dont deliver then people will look elsewhere -distrohopping-the top linux distro has been changing constantly over the years . people are obviously not satisfied with certain distros and begin looking elsewhere.
Is it a surprise that mint and pclos are both top ten?
Dont be scared of change, try something new, maybe you might like it
209 • Showstoppers (by Landor on 2007-11-17 20:43:03 GMT from Canada)
I see a lot regarding Multimedia and repositories not being setup. I think too many people in Linux take way too much for granted regarding what should work "out of the box" based on their unjustified expectations.
Let me clarify. Since I don't use Windows at all anymore I can't say this is so "to date". But, does windows support all codecs "out of the box"? What about people who download media formats and need to install codec packs? How about DVD playback for those that don't download media but want to pop in their newest DVD into the computer, does it work out of the box? If no (which is the case from my previous understanding), is it for free?
So in essence these people need to go look, either pay, or use guides/how-to's to install it no?
Why should this community be any different? Why is it a must that if Linux is going to be the next great forerunner of the OS Revolution they have all multimedia out of the box when no other OS does "exactly" that?
Linux has never been a "Lazy Man's OS". That is something that has always been understood, inside, and outside of, the community.
All the OS' you listed all have very simple guides (immediately available) for setting up repositories and obtaining any "extra" enhancements, that are easy to follow and non-finger-life-threatening.
On the note of squashing more bugs, do you have any stats on the decline of the ant population for Mint, how about how PCLOS has curbed any infestation? Has the secret formula for these toxins been passed upstream?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
210 • small distros (by Anonymous on 2007-11-17 21:43:34 GMT from Germany)
Looks like AUSTRUMI 1.60 is released today.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=103017
211 • package tracking (by JAG on 2007-11-17 22:49:35 GMT from United States)
Hey Ladislav; how are you doing...?
I'd like to suggest a couple of packages for tracking.
(audio related...)
flac, and lame...
What do you think...?
212 • "Out of the box" (by Landor on 2007-11-17 23:03:51 GMT from Canada)
I had someone e-mail today (yes I'm finally checking my e-mail, multiple replies following this comment for those that are waiting) that asked why I always put "out of the box" in quotes.
It's simple, "out of the box" is an absurd term in my opinion, and extremely overused in today's society.
But for more clarification. What really denotes "out of the box", and what can be realistically expected to work. Does every developer have access to every single system ever built for the architecture(s) they are building for? Does every single developer want to chance facing litigation for crimes against software humanity?
More so, I can tell you that Gentoo works "out of the box" and I'm sure the majority who have never tried it, nor were able to install it will say BS. But facts are it's true, after you are done setting up Gentoo for the final install to get to the desktop (Xorg, WM/DE, apps) everything "you setup" works "out of the box" when it's done.
On further note, doesn't "out of the box" mean that what it comes with? Repositories are "there" and the information is "out of the box" to configure it to your liking. For your hardware, and in most cases, this again is "out of the box" via their repositories/"out of the box" documentation.
So when I see "out of the box" I smirk, and shake my head. It's a term used quite frequently here with little explanation to what it really means, or improperly used just because it can be, kind've like FUD.
Don't put too much expectations on the developers, and look a little deeper into the available documention that's "out of the box" and you won't be let down as much, and maybe, the developers might be thankful a little more.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
213 • RE: 212 about "out the box" :) :) :) (by IMQ on 2007-11-18 00:17:14 GMT from United States)
I can give you my definition of "out of the box" and I believe the majority of the people mean the same thing when speaking of their Linux experience on a desktop.
"Out of the box" means it will work as distributed on the CD/DVD. To be precise, all of the hardware components on the machine being installed are detected and loaded with the working drivers distributed on the CD/DVD.
Wireless security configuration is the only exception that I can think of that requires user to set up and not expected to work "out of the box". For obvious reason.
For me, wireless card is the only concern since the hardware on all of my pc/notebooks are more than 3-year old. And, fortunately, all of hardware are pretty well supported.
So, any additional packages or drivers needed after the initial installation would make a distro not "out of the box" working.
What I find more important than out of the box working is whether I can find help in getting everything works should I need it, from the homepage or forums or irc (rarely going there with the exception of Sidux because the irc link on the desk is just one click away).
As you can see from my other post, there are a good number of distros that support all my hardware out of the box.
And that make me a happy camper in the Linux never never land. :)
214 • out of the box means out of their mind :) (by Landor on 2007-11-18 03:02:25 GMT from Canada)
I fully understand what most people mean by "out of the box", but...
One of my points and I forgot to convey it is how unrealistic the term is. Two of my comments back, I talked about codecs and such. This is a prime example of being unrealistic and where I think the Linux Community has been coddled a bit too far. Sure Linux "can" be hard to configure. Do Windows users have perfectly operating graphic cards, sound? Ethernet/Wireless/Modems, even Keyboards, Mice, Webcams and depending on what version of windows USB, even quite a few monitors are only setup as "Plug n Play Generic". There's other hardware I'm missing of course but I thought I'd just give a simple example of what a person has to go through to get a basic working install of say Windows up and running. Some of the above even requires upgrades of service packs for installation of drivers prior to installation.
Now how many cry foul when a monitor isn't setup, or their wireless. I've yet to see most 10/100 ethernet not get installed correctly, but that's me. Quite a number of modems are auto-detected as well. Sound has worked on every system I've install linux on. My monitor(s) have been properly detected but not my preference for the resolution, so I change it, as I would with Windows.
So I guess my whole meaning is, "out of the box" is quite unrealistic for the majority of people who "complain" about it. This OS detects and properly configures more hardware than Windows, and in Windows you have to do the same work to get your system up and running, albeit a little easier.
When I see people complain about their hardware not being detected by such and such a distro I usually skip right over the comment and give it no more attention based on the above.
As I said, my personal opinion the community has become coddled and complacent with all the auto-detection when it comes to "out of the box" for an operating system where it is "widely understood" that it's going to take some kind of effort to work with. But no different with having to setup hardware, and even better, with hardware detection in my personal opinion that the mainstream of the shelf OS'
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
215 • Something rotten in the state of Denmark.... (by /null/space on 2007-11-18 05:35:52 GMT from Canada)
You know, the seemingly increasing levels of immaturity, egotism and arrogance that a lot (not all, thankfully) of people suffer from never ceases to amaze me. I'm sorry to say, but some of the crap that gets spewed during all of these petty in-fights make Windows cheerleading rants seem tame in comparison. I have never been happier since making the switch from a lifetime of Windows to Linux/Mac, and the more I think about it, the more I feel betrayed, ignored and hoodwinked by Redmond and Company.
You know what though? We are betraying ourselves even worse, and that is exactly what Microsoft wants. How many people looking to try Linux or make the full switch have come to DW, only to see the ridiculous ranting, raving, finger-pointing and childish arguments here every week and give up? As long as we continue the fighting, Linux will never be recognized as anything more than elitist and high-strung, and every year will be another failed "Year of the Linux Desktop". It's all about perception, and all about having a united front. Without either, we don't stand a chance.
Ever since getting involved with Linux, my analogy of open-source has been akin to the Borg from Star Trek. For those of you that don't know, the Borg are an evil race of cybernetic lifeforms hell bent on taking over the entire galaxy. They grow by attacking and "assimilating" all other biological races they come across, turning them into cybernetic organisms, and incorporating them into their "collective consciousness." With each new race they bring into their fold, they gain new knowledge, and become even more powerful. Think about that for a minute, and you'll realize the power that we have as an open source community. Granted, we aren't evil megalomaniacs like the Borg (well, I sure hope not... :-) ), but the collective mindshare that we can develop is mind-boggling.
Instead of pointing fingers at the differences between Distro A and Distro B, we should be looking to see what benefits can be taken from those distros, and brought to others. What does it matter which distro you use, as long as it works for you? Perfect example, I've seen so many cases where power-users bash Ubuntu as being too easy, or doing too much for you by default. Yet there's nothing stopping those people from jumping right into the terminal and doing things their way, so why the insults? Because they feel that using Ubuntu makes them less savvy? I'm sorry, but grow up, or shut up. Period. I use Ubuntu on my system, and I am beyond impressed with it. Could I use other more "complicated" distros? Absolutely. Ubuntu was the winner for me because everything worked out of the box, and while I could easily spend time maintaining and configuring my computer, I shouldn't HAVE to. Sorry, but I've been baby-sitting Windows my whole life, and I've had enough. Is Ubuntu right for everybody? Of course not, but having the freedom of so much choice is definitely right. So much as people are using Linux, so what?
There is so much missed opportunity in the Linux world, and it's deeply and honestly disconcerting and discouraging to me that we keep missing those chances from having our heads buried up our proverbial asses. Just like the Borg, we have the power and influence to grow exponentially. We have the chance to share the collective wealth and experience. And I honestly believe we have never had a better time to do it.
All we need to do is rally the troops.
216 • @208 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-18 06:12:37 GMT from Malaysia)
"mandriva 2008 was clearly not ready for the public - even a week after the due release date. The showstopper tho was the adverts that pop up after installation and the repository set-up (not for beginners)"
"Clearly not ready"? It would help if you could be a bit more specific. I fail to understand, for example, how the Welcome screen that appears on first boot can be a "show-stopper" when it is clearly quite easy to make sure it doesn't appear on subsequent boots.
The repository setup is very simple - if you're not comfortable with copying and pasting commands from easyurpmi, just go into the Mandriva Control Centre > Software Management and select a mirror. YaST in Suse has a similar provision for setting up repositories. The advantage of selecting a mirror is that you can speed up the downloads. PCLOS sets up a U.S. repository by default which is far from ideal for users outside the U.S. (who would have to resort to the command line to access and change the sources.list file). This is clearly not "radically simple".
"and yes pclos is forked from mandriva - as with linux mint and ubuntu - take a good distro and make it GREAT."
How does the addition of multimedia codecs make a distro "GREAT"? In any case, Ubuntu has a Restricted Formats Manager that provides a one-click installation of the missing codecs. The fact that PCLOS has no localization other than U.S. English seems to imply that it is intended mainly for users in the U.S. (where the multimedia codecs included by default are clearly illegal). If you believe these codecs are "software that should be free", you should lobby your congressman.
"Is it a surprise that mint and pclos are both top ten?"
Not really. Distrowatch is a sensible starting point for new Linux users and many of them seem to be too ignorant and/or too lazy to set up repositories, codecs and other add-ons.
217 • @212 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-18 06:15:50 GMT from Malaysia)
I've never tried Gentoo (except the live CD version) but I don't doubt that it works "out of the box" - I understand that's one of the main reasons for using a source-based distribution.
I agree that it is unrealistic to expect repos and codecs to be set up "out of the box" but I think functional wireless is a basic pre-requisite for any distro in 2007 (together with functional video and sound adapters) - simply because of the sheer number of people using notebooks as their primary machine.
In a way, it's a tribute to Linux developers that users now expect things to "just work" - it used to be a big thing if you could get most of your hardware and peripherals working (even with reduced functionality) 3 or 4 years ago. But if some distros (Mandriva, Ubuntu and Suse, for example) can handle wireless "out of the box", it's surprising that the issue with wireless on Acer notebooks was inconclusively addressed on the Fedora forums. If I have to build my own driver, I would choose Arch or Gentoo over a binary distribution like Fedora.
Keeping in mind that some distros exist mainly to serve as testing grounds for commercial distributions (Fedora and OpenSuse, for example), it would be surprising if developers are averse to criticism by "parasitic" users (as suggested by another poster). Does the availability of a free download confer immunity from criticism of perceived shortcomings?
By the way, Windows is pretty pathetic at setting up video or wireless adapters "out of the box" (as you pointed out) but most Windows users never notice because they buy machines with Windows (and drivers) pre-installed. In the Mac world, OS X virtually never has these issues because Apple has full control over the hardware. Linux is obviously at a disadvantage because there are very few pre-installed systems available and hardware support for the rest depends largely on "reverse engineering" drivers. gOS seems to have adopted a different approach from most other distros and it will be interesting to see whether the gPC continues to have significant sales after Christmas.
218 • Re: 217 (by Anonymous on 2007-11-18 06:48:30 GMT from Malaysia)
I should clarify that "able to handle wireless out of the box" in the previous post refers to ipw2200 (Mandriva and Suse) and rt73 (Mandriva and Ubuntu). I have no idea whether this would hold true for other chipsets.
219 • Ref #215 - "All we need to do is rally the troops." (by otoh on 2007-11-18 10:41:33 GMT from United States)
So, the solution is to unite and bash Windows instead? While most of the participants in this forum appear to have switched to Linux, the fact is that the majority of computer users are reasonably satisfied with Windows. They want an appliance to run applications, not a hobby and/or a cause.
It will be interesting to see if the sales of the Walmart gPC appliance (stealth Linux) are sustained or if it goes the way of their previous Linux computer. I hope they have included a Windows-like procedure to reinstall/restore the OS and bundled applications.
Arguably, the most effective strategy so far has been to accomodate Windows users rather than to require them to transition cold turkey; e.g. dual-boot. Would Firefox be as popular as it is if it hadn't been ported to Windows (and "sold" the old fashioned way, by advertising)?
But, does anyone know if porting open source applications like OO, Gimp, GnuCash, etc. to Windows results in new Linux users? It could be that knowing there are famililiar applications in Linux would make OO/Windows users more likely to to try it. Or it could be that providing a free office suite to Windows users negates the cost incentive (to switch)?
No, I don't have "the answer". But it is shortsighted to assume Microsoft is the only competition. I would be surprised if Microsoft isn't more concerned about Google than it is about desktop Linux.
220 • @116 (by Warp0 on 2007-11-18 14:01:03 GMT from United States)
"PCLOS sets up a U.S. repository by default which is far from ideal for users outside the U.S. (who would have to resort to the command line to access and change the sources.list file). This is clearly not "radically simple"."
You prefer pacific.net.au? Takes two clicks of your mouse button once you're in synaptic. Suggesting that the sources.list file must be manually edited is incorrect.
221 • Re: 219 (by /null/space on 2007-11-18 16:51:08 GMT from Canada)
"So, the solution is to unite and bash Windows instead? While most of the participants in this forum appear to have switched to Linux, the fact is that the majority of computer users are reasonably satisfied with Windows. They want an appliance to run applications, not a hobby and/or a cause. "
Perhaps my own bias against Microsoft and having grown tiresome of their practices and IMO poor quality software over the years came out in my post (although credit where it's due, I think MS Office is their one redeeming release...). Having said that, I don't mean that we have to unite and bash Windows, but unite to show the people considering the transition what they stand to gain from Linux as opposed. You are absolutely right in saying that a lot of people are satisfied with Windows, but my rebuttal to that is how many of those are truly satisfied, and how many are only "satisfied" because they believe it's the only option they have? In many cases, these people are looking at Linux with absolute confusion, and seeing us fighting each other will only add to that. In your indirectly saying that you can't reach everybody using Windows, and that some people will never make the switch, I completely agree with you. However, I think we could (and should) be painting a much better picture for ourselves as a community.
"Arguably, the most effective strategy so far has been to accomodate Windows users rather than to require them to transition cold turkey; e.g. dual-boot. Would Firefox be as popular as it is if it hadn't been ported to Windows (and "sold" the old fashioned way, by advertising)?"
Again, that was exactly my point... in-fighting amongst ourselves is only accomodating the fears of the people that might otherwise make the switch, whether it be complete, or dual-boot, at least they are open and receptive. Hence why I agree with other posters on here that have said the PHR should be abandoned (or made optional). First off, I firmly believe those rankings are not a true gauge of a distros popularity or success. Secondly, I know that if DW was the first website I came across if I was looking into Linux, seeing that mammoth list of distros would utterly confuse me as to what I'm supposed to use. Finally, the longer that list is up there by default, the longer this petty bickering is going to continue. As I stated before, it's all about perception, and we aren't giving a good one.
"But, does anyone know if porting open source applications like OO, Gimp, GnuCash, etc. to Windows results in new Linux users? It could be that knowing there are famililiar applications in Linux would make OO/Windows users more likely to to try it. Or it could be that providing a free office suite to Windows users negates the cost incentive (to switch)?"
I firmly believe this does provide incentive to switch, for a couple of reasons. Namely that one of the biggest barriers to adoption of a different OS platform for people would be availability of the apps that they are used to using. Granted, there might not be a linux solution for everything, but most things there are, and the advent of VM's means that anything is accessible if you really and truly need the Windows counterpart. More importantly however, is that we are selling the quality of free open source programs. If people using software like OO.o and GIMP realize that something completely free can be of such good quality, it can only help in opening up their thoughts to an equally good and free operating system.
Regardless of the source of competition, be it real or perceived, and how much there may be, until we harness the potential in the community, the difficulties in growth will always exist. Microsoft -- or anyone else -- need not worry about Linux in that case, as they only competition we have, is ourselves.
222 • I'm not worried about who's distro is #1 (by Fractalguy on 2007-11-18 20:34:12 GMT from United States)
But, I do like to see the statistics here on DW. If the collection procedure/algorithm can/is improved, fine by me. But its basic continuity I think is important for the community, just to have a pulse to listen to. Even if it is being gamed, I think the gaming will in the medium to long term be over run by truth. Most likely, this will occur as a result of ever increasing readership here.
It is a lot like Microsoft's battle to keep its position in the software world vs. Linux and Free software. At some point Free software will over whelm the proprietary, especially with the proliferation of distros and versions of software products (examples: word processors, editors, media players, browsers, art programs, etc.) And the new applications are showing up all the time. The fact that these are Free and Open source products where improvements and forking are occurring at ever increasing rates almost guaranties the emergence of FLOSS products as the ultimate winners. Especially as the platforms evolve from desktops/laptops to embedded/implanted (think sifi horror novels here).
So take cheer guys, it might happen sooner rather than later. While we're waiting I suggest listening to Eben Moglen's talk, Copyleft Capitalism: GPLv3 and the Future of Software Innovation.
http://daveshields.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/ eben-moglen-copyleft-capitalism-gplv3-and-the-future-of-software-innovation/
He is always good and this was one of his better talks. :)
223 • ref #221 + Everex gPC (by otoh on 2007-11-19 00:03:18 GMT from United States)
Good, thoughtful post.
And ... anyone wants the Everex gPC, NewEgg lists them as being in limited supply, but in stock. Yes, there is a CD labeled as being the "Recovery Disc".
224 • Do make my work any harder, please! (by KimTjik on 2007-11-19 00:14:05 GMT from Sweden)
"It will be interesting to see if the sales of the Walmart gPC appliance (stealth Linux) are sustained or if it goes the way of their previous Linux computer. I hope they have included a Windows-like procedure to reinstall/restore the OS and bundled applications."
I certainly hope they don't! I don't know if this is your profession or not, but personally I've had enough of this procedures. Thankfully I don't need to deal with it a lot, but when I at times have to it's driving me nuts.
On the other hand I agree that there's no reason to waste time on bashing MS' products. Energy should be wasted on making people aware of the alternatives, or in many cases one of their kind solutions that they can't find in Windows. In some cases though it's needed to fight for the good cause of protecting open-source from the usual tricks of financially strong corporations (to be fair: without a fight Linux based systems would have been wiped off the earth).
"...the fact is that the majority of computer users are reasonably satisfied with Windows. They want an appliance to run applications, not a hobby and/or a cause."
Which is exactly why they could become very satisfied running Linux. If you're a person in need of basic tools, nothing advanced, you're probably also someone who doesn't install an operating systems in the first place. Windows recovery procedures aren't worth anything for these users, and in many cases aren't worth anything for professionals either (...and now I'm looking for my Linux rescue live-CD in my Linux-tool-box!).
This category of users will usually not need any special upgrades of their system either (in Windows they have to, but that's in most cases because of vulnerability, security issues), just something easy like Synaptic to now and then search for some needed applications (not many if you ask me). To make sure these users aren't forwarding some infected mail it could though be good to by default setup a working firewall and an Anti-virus software solution searching their mail-boxes (OK, this is just a nice favor to those who still run Windows).
I just got this question today: "Many in our community are experiencing their Windows becoming unusable because of viruses or crashing. Could Linux be a better choice? If I send a PDF-, excel- or word-file to someone with Linux, would they be able to open it?"
What do you think I answered?
225 • Ref #224 (by otoh on 2007-11-19 01:27:10 GMT from United States)
The gPC is very low cost, intended for home use, and I doubt many (any) will be used where there is a computer profession on staff. The people I know who buy computers at stores like Walmart mostly depend on the manufacturer's phone support. More often than not, the "fix" comes down to reinstalling Windows.
Ref the question, I don't know you so I have no opintion on what you answered. My answer would be "Most of the time, yes."
226 • Radically Simple (by How SIMPLE on 2007-11-19 08:51:00 GMT from Australia)
"....Believe me, for last 14 days I am toiling hard but still nothing productive happened. oh my god after hundreds of hours toil I could not get my graphics card working on the Radically Simple PCLOS....."
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20071112&mode=46#comments
A few home truths for the simple-minded slogan boys!
"Just works" or "OOTB" cheap slogans ring very hollow if you need/needed 915resolution package on PCLOS Live CD, it is not there! The quote above clearly exposes this very basic flaw ( I am sure there are many more) that the TOUTS conveniently/ignorantly overlook when touting for PCL here and elsewhere. There are millions of machines using intel graphics chipsets that require/required the 915 resolution package.
The following link can provide some more insight into the development ( and various issues/bugs that arise) of PCLOS:
http://mail.mypclinuxos.com/pipermail/users_mypclinuxos.com/2007-November/
http://mail.mypclinuxos.com/pipermail/users_mypclinuxos.com/
227 • re 226 Wrong link provide (ignore dw one) (by Anonymous on 2007-11-19 08:52:47 GMT from Australia)
http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf...
Number of Comments: 227
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| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Corel Linux
Discover Linux power built specifically for the desktop with Corel LINUX OS. Featuring a four-step graphical installer and a KDE-based, drag-and-drop environment, this Debian-based operating system was incredibly easy to install and configure. Access local and network drives and the Internet with an innovative browser-style file manager. Get system updates over the Web. Plus, enjoy outstanding file compatibility and network integration. Corel LINUX OS - combining renowned Linux performance and stability with intelligent simplicity. Update: Xandros Corporation has announced that it has signed a strategic licensing agreement with Corel Corporation, giving it access to Corel's Linux desktop OS and related technologies. The newly formed company will focus on developing the desktop and server markets with assistance from its founding parent, Linux Global Partners.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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