DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 242, 3 March 2008 |
Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The delayed FreeBSD 7.0 was finally released last week and there is a lot to be excited about - especially if you deploy this excellent operating system on servers. But how about the desktop users? Is this latest version ready to take over our workstations? Read our first look review to find out. In the news section, the Debian release team contemplates the inclusion of KDE 4 in "Lenny", KNOPPIX springs to life at CeBIT with a new live DVD, Mandriva continues its relentless march towards version 2008.1, and Fedora discusses improvements in NetworkManager. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch February 2008 donation is Frugalware Linux, a community distribution from Hungary. Happy reading!
Content:
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Featured Story |
First look at FreeBSD 7.0
I remember well the first time I attempted to set up FreeBSD 4.x as a desktop system. After configuring the X window and launching KDE, I was greeted with something that only a computing masochist could find enjoyable - no mouse or sound, unsightly jagged fonts, lack of a graphical package manager and other configuration tools... It took hours of searching and following "geeky" documentation before I was able to load the correct kernel modules for the USB mouse, install prettier fonts and set up anti-aliasing - all by editing obscure configuration files in Vim. Needless to say, the first impressions weren't good. Despite an obviously elegant system with a large number of packages available for installation, the tedium of setting it up as a desktop system was discouraging, to say the least.
So when FreeBSD 7.0 was finally released last week, I decided to make a new attempt at installing and configuring FreeBSD for the desktop. Have things improved? Would I be able to tweak the FreeBSD of today into a desktop system without wasting hours of searching and command line configuring? These were the questions going through my mind while booting the installation CD on my test box - an older Pentium 4 1.4 GHz machine with 384 MB of RAM, two 120 GB hard disks, an NVIDIA GForce4 graphics card, a generic LCD monitor with a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, integrated sound and network chips that are recognised by most Linux distributions, a USB mouse, a DVD burner... all pretty standard if somewhat outdated hardware.
I didn't expect all that much. After all, I read the release announcement, so I knew that the FreeBSD development team had spent most of its time on such tasks as speeding up the performance of SQL databases and porting the ZFS file system from Solaris - features that are of little interest to most desktop users. In other words, FreeBSD is still predominantly a server operating system and although there is nothing that would stop a knowledgeable or determined user from setting it up as a complete and functional workstation, it is unlikely that an average computer user would find it particularly enticing.
That said, things have certainly improved since FreeBSD 4. The USB driver is now part of the kernel, so there is no need to load it manually like in the old days. Likewise, the sound card and network card worked out of the box. As for the fonts, these too looked infinitely better in the stock KDE than they used to just a few years ago. Some of these improvements are the result of the included software components (e.g. the latest X.Org 7.3 and its configuration utilities), rather than the work of the FreeBSD development team, but this won't matter to an average end user.
FreeBSD 7.0 includes no branding, but some sample wallpapers are available from the project's logo page. (full image size: 292kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Package management is another area that has been through major changes. The old favourites, such as pkg_add, cvsup or portupgrade are still present, but the latest FreeBSD now also includes freebsd_update, a tool for keeping a FreeBSD installation up-to-date with security updates (in binary format) with minimum of fuss. For the ports, a new tool called csup, now part of the FreeBSD base system and intended as a better and faster alternative to cvsup, is also available. With over 18,000 FreeBSD ports ready for installation, these tools will surely come handy during the initial setup of that perfect workstation.
While command line package management utilities were always dime a dozen in FreeBSD, many desktop users would probably prefer a graphical tool along the lines of Synaptic or Yumex. There is some good news here too. Thanks to the efforts of the DesktopBSD project, its graphical package management utility called dbsd-pkgmgr (part of sysutils/desktopbsd-tools) is now available in the FreeBSD ports. I was familiar with this tool from my earlier explorations of DesktopBSD, so I decided to install it on the fresh FreeBSD 7.0. Apart from a few glitches (it looked for /usr/ports/INDEX-6 at start-up, but since this was FreeBSD 7, I created a symbolic link called INDEX-6 which pointed to INDEX-7 to make it work), I was able to install several packages, including GnuCash, Opera, KTorrent and others. The best part of this tool is that it supports both binary and source installs - all from the comfort of a nice GUI.
The package manager developed by DesktopBSD is now available in FreeBSD ports (full image size: 72kB, screen resolution: 831x584 pixels)
I spent much of the weekend installing binary applications that I normally use on my workstation - that includes Apache with PHP and SQLite support, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GIMP, Liferea, gFTP, KTorrent, Kaffeine and others. All seemed to work fine and I have yet to see any of them crash. I haven't had a chance to install any of the proprietary graphics drivers or browser plugins and I haven't tested the extent of support for popular multimedia formats - this is one area which will be of interest to desktop users. If I get the time, I will report about these in next week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly.
Security in FreeBSD is handled in accordance with UNIX principles. The project has a security team which issues GPG-signed security advisories and distributes them via a dedicated security mailing list. This, however, is limited to security issues found in the FreeBSD kernel and userland, not in ports - hence the reason why the project rarely issues more than a dozen security advisories per year. With the ports, the situation is different - as a general rule, FreeBSD users are expected to upgrade the installed ports to the latest versions in regular intervals and there are also tools that alert the user to security problems in installed ports.
So would FreeBSD 7.0 make a decent desktop system? I haven't run it long enough to be able to answer the question, but from my initial testing I would be perfectly happy to give it a more intensive try. It certainly looks like a nicely crafted system, with extreme attention to detail - at least when it comes to the kernel and userland. The new package management utilities and improvements in security handling are also impressive. But don't expect to insert the FreeBSD CD and boot into a gorgeous graphical environment - that's not what the FreeBSD development team had set out to achieve. Luckily, with projects like PC-BSD or DesktopBSD, one can have the best of both worlds - the speed, stability and reliability of BSD, combined with an intuitive installer, package management and system configuration tools of the Linux world. If you don't fall into the "geek" category of computer users, you can always trust the two above-mentioned projects to deliver the goods.
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Miscellaneous News |
Debian 5.0 "Lenny" updates, KNOPPIX 5.3 CeBIT edition, what's new in FreeBSD 7.0, Cooker vs Rawhide, RHEL risk report
We'll start this week's news round-up with an update from the Debian Release team. As announced on Sunday by Marc Brockschmidt, the upcoming version of Debian GNU/Linux (code name "Lenny"), will bear the version number 5.0: "For reading this far, you receive the small reward of the knowledge that Lenny will be shipped as Debian 5.0." Also of interest (especially to KDE fans) is the status of KDE 4 and its possible inclusion into Lenny: "There may be a possibility to include KDE 4 in Lenny. The efforts on KDE 4.1 have been quite promising and seem to be leading to a desktop environment which can fully replace KDE 3. The KDE team will provide betas and release candidates of the 4.1 release in experimental. In the event that KDE 4.1 is on time, and there are no major issues, an upload to unstable in order to include it in Lenny is possible." Otherwise the development of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 appears to be progressing smoothly and the final release is still expected in September 2008. See the Debian Release Management page for more information.
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New versions of the popular KNOPPIX live CD may not come out as fast as they once used to, but that doesn't mean that the project is no longer active. In an announcement that will surely please all the fans of the distribution that started the Linux live CD revolution back in 2002, Klaus Knopper revealed that a brand new version would make its appearance during this week's CeBIT exhibition in Hannover, Germany: "The first edition of KNOPPIX 5.3.0 is included in c't magazine 06/2008 published during CeBIT 2008. After CeBIT, it will be available on the KNOPPIX mirrors for download, mostly unchanged." What can we look forward to? "Linux kernel 2.6.24; KDE 3.5.8 with Compiz Fusion as the 3D window manager; updates - cloop 2.624 realtime decompression with threads and experimental 'suspend' feature; Debian Etch + testing, Iceweasel and Icedove updates; OpenOffice.org 2.3.1; VirtualBox OSE; special accessibility features - ADRIANE Audio Desktop and Orca graphical screen reader." And if you can't wait for the public release, we have more good news: LinuxTracker has the torrent. Get it from here: KNOPPIX_V5.3.0DVD-2008-02-12-DE.iso (4,334MB).
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The great tradition of interviews with BSD developers which ONLamp.com started a few years ago continued last week - after the much-anticipated release of FreeBSD 7.0. "The day has come... FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance and now can take advantage of multi-core/CPUs systems very well... so well that some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD systems showed release 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostgreSQL or MySQL. Federico Biancuzzi interviewed two dozen developers to discuss all the cool details of FreeBSD 7.0: networking and SMP performance, SCTP support, the new IPSEC stack, virtualization, monitoring frameworks, ports, storage limits and a new journaling facility, what changed in the accounting file format, jemalloc(), ULE, and more." Better performance, faster networking, improved hardware support, top-notch security and more - read all about it in the highly technical 4-page interview entitled What's New in FreeBSD 7.0.
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If everything goes according to the plan, Mandriva Linux will be the first major distribution to make a new release during the upcoming "release season". Version 2008.1, scheduled for public release on April 9th, reached release candidate status last Saturday, with all the major pieces now in place. Besides major improvements to package management and wireless networking, upgrade to KDE 3.5.9 and new default GNOME applications for certain tasks (Brassero for CD burning, Transmission for BitTorrent downloads and HomeBank for personal finance management), one noticeable feature of this release candidate is the new artwork (see screenshot below). The only thing that remains to be done between now and the end of March is to fix any remaining bugs. Mandriva Linux 2008.1 seems to be poised to continue what the company started with version 2008 - to regain its reputation as one of the most user-friendly and polished desktop Linux distributions available today.
Mandriva Linux 2008.1 RC1 includes updated desktop theme and artwork (full image size: 794kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Cooker, Current, Factory, Rawhide, Sid... the publicly accessible development branches of the main distributions continue to evolve at a rapid pace. But how do they compare? Austin Acton, a long-time DistroWatch reader, has decided to give some of them a little test by installing and running Mandriva's Cooker and Fedora's Rawhide. The result? "The experiment was far more surprising than I had originally expected. Notably, there is no clear 'winner'. Each has very notable strengths and weaknesses - in fact, I'm even not sure which one I will end up using. Additionally, while Mandriva is often referred to as a 'derivative' of Red Hat, there's clearly very little similarity remaining. So I spent a few hours jotting down my findings in hope that other people (read: geeks) will find them interesting. If I'm lucky, developers for each will note some of the problems and make my decision even harder."
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The Fedora Project web site continues to publish regular interviews with the project's developers and contributors. Last week it was the turn of Dan Williams, the developer of NetworkManager, to appear in the spotlight: "GNU/Linux systems have often come under attack for the difficulty involved with setting-up and configuring various wireless devices. Thanks to NetworkManager we now have a system that allows us to quickly and easily connect to different networks. As a result of improvements made to NetworkManager during the Fedora 8 release cycle the developers are ready to deliver some incredible new features, including ad-hoc networking, multiple active devices and internet connection sharing. To find out more we talked with Dan Williams, Fedora project member and NetworkManager developer."
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Finally, something for the users of enterprise Linux distributions. Red Hat Magazine has published an interesting article entitled Risk report: Three years of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Its goal? To measure the overall risk of running Red Hat Enterprise Linux in terms of vulnerabilities and threats: "The aim of this report was to get a measure of the security risk to users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 during the first three years since release. We've shown that although on the surface it looks like Red Hat released a large number of security advisories, many of them do not apply to usual or default installations, and only a very small subset are a high risk. It would be foolish to draw conclusions about the future state of security in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 solely on the basis of this analysis of the past, however what we've tried to do is to enumerate the level of vulnerability and threat and hence overall platform risk."
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Released Last Week |
grml 1.1
Michael Prokop has announced the release of grml 1.1, a Debian-based distribution with a large collection of GNU/Linux software especially for users of text tools and system administrators: "grml 1.1 with codename 'Skunk' is available." What's new? "Several improved, updated and extended configuration files; new grml-scripts: arename.pl - rename audio files by looking at a file's tagging information, grml-live - build framework based on FAI for generating a grml and Debian-based Linux live system, grml-paste - command line interface for paste.grml.org, grml-vnet - create persistent tun/tap devices with bridge handling; new boot parameters: micvol - configure mixer / volume settings of microphone channel, lvm - activate present logical volumes (LVM), nolvm - completely disable LVM code/checks...." Please see the release announcement and release notes for more details.
pfSense 1.2
Chris Buechler has announced the final release of pfSense 1.2, a small firewall based on FreeBSD: "The pfSense development team is proud to bring you the 1.2 release! This brings the features and bug fixes from more than 16 months of development since the 1.0 release. Already widely tested and deployed throughout the release candidate phase, this release provides the finishing touches on releases already proven in a wide range of network environments. The changes since RC4: Improve CARP input validation; clarify text and fix typos on several screens; revert DHCP client to default timeout of 60 seconds; reload static routes when an interface IP address is changed by an administrator; fix a few areas allowing potential cross site scripting; fix a couple issues with package uninstalls...." More info in the release announcement.
DragonFly BSD 1.12
Matthew Dillon has announced the release of DragonFly BSD 1.12, a BSD operating system originally forked from FreeBSD 4 in order to develop a radically different approach to concurrency, SMP, and most other kernel sub-systems. "We are happy to say that the 1.12 release is now available! This release is primarily a maintenance update. A lot of work has been done all over the kernel and userland. There are no new big-ticket items though we have pushed the MP lock further into the kernel. The 2.0 release is scheduled for mid-year. Of the current big-ticket item work, the new HAMMER file system is almost at the alpha stage of development and is expected to be production ready by the mid-year 2.0 release." Read the release announcement and check out the detailed release notes for a complete list of changes.
FreeBSD 7.0
FreeBSD 7.0 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the 7-STABLE branch which introduces many new features along with many improvements to functionality present in the earlier branches. Some of the highlights: dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability shown by various database and other benchmarks; the ULE scheduler is vastly improved, providing improved performance and interactive response; experimental support for Sun's ZFS file system; gjournal can be used to set up journaled file systems, gvirstor can be used as a virtualized storage provider; read-only support for the XFS file system; the Unionfs file system has been fixed...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Slax 6.0.1
Tomáš Matějíček has announced the availability of an updated version of the recently released Slax 6. What's new? "Module manager will display correct info about 'slik' modules; activate refused to insert a module which was activated last time (before reboot) because of some empty mount points left- fixed; slax-version now shows correct version number; trash bin was not empty; swap partitions were not auto-activated due to a bug in linux-live scripts; raise sound volume for 'front', 'center' and 'side' channels; kdeglobals set to force Konqueror to follow 'slik' addresses without asking; a stripped version of vi in Slax, symlinked vi from busybox; disabled Flash plugin in Konqueror; added MadWifi wireless drivers version 0.9.4; added Memtest86 2.1; delete some unneeded C++ files in the 'devel' module." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information.
Momonga Linux 4.1
The Momonga Project has announced the release of Momonga Linux 4.1, a Fedora-based distribution made in Japan. This release represents a revision, or a security and bug-fix update, with most of the base system remaining unchanged from version 4. However, the kernel has been updated to version 2.6.23 and so were a few more visible desktop and server applications. Other changes include the addition of Fastladder (an open source edition of the Livedoor RSS Reader), FALF Player (a music player for KDE), Tasty Menu for KDE, Drupal, LZMA compression support and other features. Please read the release announcement (in Japanese) for more details.
Parted Magic 2.1
Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2.1, a specialist Linux distribution designed for hard disk partitioning tasks: "Parted Magic 2.1. This is mostly a bug-fix release. The only major improvement is support for ext4 in VisParted and Linux kernel 2.6.24.2." From the changelog: "Updated to linux kernel 2.6.24.2, NTFS-3G 1.2216; VisParted now creates ext4 file systems; fixed PXE booting; fixed multi-boot CD problem; merged 'List Partition Tables' into VisParted; added Netcat and some other networking programs to Busybox; Added Squashfs LZMA kernel drivers; added all upstream changes from GParted CVS; removed the GTK+ H20 theme and replaced it with Clearlooks; fixed xxd and dd placement; fixed missing pmodules directory in the make USB program; fixed the desktop files getting deleted bug." See the complete changelog for a detailed list of all changes.
PelicanHPC GNU Linux 1.3
PelicanHPC GNU Linux is a new name of what used to be known as ParallelKnoppix, a live CD project with a goal to make it simple to set up a high performance computing cluster. Now based on Debian GNU/Linux (rather than KNOPPIX), the project has announced the release of PelicanHPC 1.3. From the changelog: "make_pelican allows a password to be specified, the default is still 'live'; make_pelican allows you to specify a storage device to mount as /home, the default is still to use a ramdisk; the setup routine has been greatly improved. At this point, I think that Pelican is in good shape. I am not planning on making more releases until several months from now, unless some important bug surfaces." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement.
SystemRescueCd 1.0.0
SystemRescueCd 1.0.0, a Gentoo-based distribution with a collection of hard disk partitioning and data rescue tools, has been released. From the changelog: "Programs are now compiled for i486; added Xvesa to fix problems with the graphical environment on some hardware; added a 64-bit alternative kernel (altker64); merged all the old initramfs files into a single initram.igz file; the PXE boot can now download the sysrcd.dat file using the TFTP protocol; rewrote autorun with support of the HTTP source; fixed problems with the network configuration boot options; updated the default kernel to Linux 2.6.24.2 with Reiser4; updated the alternative kernel to Linux 2.6.22.18; updated GParted to 0.3.5, NTFS-3G to 1.2216; improved the wireless network support (drivers and firmware); updated the Memtest86+ floppy disk image to 2.00...." See the rest of the changelog for more details.
SystemRescueCd offers a handful of graphical applications, including GParted, Dillo and Firefox. (full image size: 72kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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DistroWatch.com News |
February 2008 donation: Frugalware Linux receives US$340.00
We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the January 2008 DistroWatch.com donation is Frugalware Linux. The project receives US$340.00 in cash.
Frugalware Linux is an independent distribution developed by Miklós Vajna and a small developer community. It was originally inspired by the simplicity of Slackware Linux, but the developers also included Pacman, the excellent package manager from Arch Linux. Pacman, and its graphical front-end, now form an integral part of Frugalware Linux. The project also prides itself on providing the very latest software packages in the repositories, on having a regular 6-month release cycle, and on providing complete security support for the distribution during its lifespan. Frugalware Linux might not be a particularly widely-used distro, but the dedication of the development team is exemplary and they continue to deliver improved releases every few months.
As always, this monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to Frugalware Linux.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$16,583 to various open source software projects.
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Russix. Russix is a specialist, Slax-based live CD with a collection of software tools designed for auditing wireless networks.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 10 March 2008.
Ladislav Bodnar
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • FreeBSD 7.0 (by Joaquim Gil on 2008-03-03 10:30:45 GMT from Portugal)
Started working with FreeBSD 7.0 last week and I can tell you: IT ROCKS!
Thanks for another DistroWatch Weekly Release. :)
2 • Congratulation to FreeBSD team (by Daniel Mery on 2008-03-03 10:44:45 GMT from Venezuela)
Hi, FreeBSD 7.0 is now arriving, Congratulation to FreeBSD team for its great effort. Regards, dmery
3 • No subject (by mika hack on 2008-03-03 11:04:55 GMT from Italy)
Mythdora.....looks really cool...!
4 • FreeBSD as a server though? (by dino vliet on 2008-03-03 11:35:24 GMT from United States)
Hi, why haven't you tested FreeBSD as a server because that's the role it'll probably be used for predominantly. I am curious to find out the pro's of using glabel, gmirror and gjournal all at once.
5 • RE: 4 FreeBSD as a server (by ladislav on 2008-03-03 11:38:34 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, that would be a better way to test the OS. Unfortunately, DistroWatch is now running on Debian, otherwise I would have most likely upgraded to FreeBSD 7.0 by now. Maybe some of the readers would be able to answer your question?
6 • FreeBSD ports/packages GUI (by Eric on 2008-03-03 13:11:07 GMT from Canada)
Indeed the desktopbsd-tools package manager is a gem that should be made current and use for FreeBSD more officially. I'm glad that 7.0 RELEASE is out and I have made a DVD to install instead of only CD's.
You should really give it a try for the distrowatch server again, only trick is I had to recompile the kernel to include the awesome new schedule (SCHED_ULE), everything was like butter after that and shaved ~4MB off the GENERIC kernel. ;)
FreeBSD ROCKS !!
7 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 13:38:37 GMT from United States)
Thanks for your review of FreeBSD 7.
I think the Frugalware project is very deserving of a donation. One of the problems once you move away from the most popular distros is limited binary package selection. Not Frugalware. I was really surprised by the number of up to date packages available. It is also very fast and appears to be stable.
The only drawback of this distro that I have noticed thus far is that the community is small, so the documentation is not as complete as with some distros, and the forums are not as active as with some distros.
Frugalware is a good project. Thanks for donating to them.
8 • Learning FreeBSD (by Ted Maul on 2008-03-03 13:52:34 GMT from United States)
What are the best websites for general FreeBSD hints & tips? What is the best way to learn unix on FreeBSD? I have a spare computer and would like to give it a go, as I have heard nothing but great things about FreeBSD 7.0
Thanks, Ted
9 • No subject (by PCLinuxOS fan on 2008-03-03 14:02:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
dear BSD users - what are the main advantages of BSD over GNU/Linux you'd like to point out to someone who's used BSD for about 5 minutes in the last 5 years?
10 • Debian number (by Alexandru on 2008-03-03 14:02:51 GMT from Germany)
Hi,
The first time in Debian releases the sum of major and minor number is greater then 4:
1.1, 1.2, 1.3 - The maximum sum is 4, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 - The maximum sum is 4, 3.0, 3.1 - The maximum sum is 4, 4.0 - The sumis 4, and, 5.0 - The sum is 5 !
11 • FreeBSD 7.0 (by My Linux Page on 2008-03-03 14:13:46 GMT from United States)
I remember installing FreeBSD a couple of years back and it was daunting. No GUI all text. Great for servers but for the average Joe you could forget about it. Most people coming from Windows most have had a heartache. I'm glad this great OS is getting it dues.
12 • Often wondered myself (by davemc on 2008-03-03 14:22:17 GMT from United States)
Poster #9 above pretty much mimics my query. The BSD's seem to always lag far behind the top GNU/Linux distro's on pretty much every front, so, it always leaves me respectfully wondering, "whats the point?". I say "respectfully wondering" because BSD is a grand daddy, and thus, well deserving of respect and awe from all of us *nix users. But (there always is a, "but"), GNU/Linux does seem to be the most widely accepted *nix platform and thus attracts the heaviest development. I am not knocking BSD in any way, mind you, just observing the above, and the fact that Unix has evolved over the decades and will continue to do so, but, like the Neanderthal, older, less adaptive variants will become obsolete at some point.
13 • freebsd (by jackson on 2008-03-03 14:30:06 GMT from United States)
I have been a Linux and BSD user for ~8 years and I love them both. FreeBSD presents a complete operating system, where the kernel and userland are all contained within the main FreeBSD CVS repository and are all, with a few exceptions, coded and maintained in-house. Linux distributions are a collection of things, the kernel from kernel. org, the userland from GNU, etc. Aside from the installer and certain scripts, such as acpi stuff or whatever, your XYZ Linux distribution does not really "create" a full fledged operating system in house,
I find FreeBSD to be extremely stable as a server and, with a few important caveats, a fine desktop or workstation. The main issues with running FreeBSD on a desktop are (a) Adobe has chosen to provide no native Flash 9 support and (b) Nvidia has chosen to provide no native proprietary driver for the AMD64 platform (the binary driver works well on i386). I have been using FreeBSD on one of my desktops for years and it works great.
For package management, one can use "pkg_add -r " to install a binary package. Furthermore, after changing the PACKAGESITE environmental variable, can even pull down updated packages from the 7-STABLE repositories. These packages are updated for security updates as developer resources permit. Otherwise, one can choose to use the ports system to install from source. I typically use packages for things like Xorg and the big desktop environments like KDE etc. and ports for other, smaller things. The nice thing about ports is that you can set compile time options. For example, if you want to compile Mutt with the sidebar patch, you can simply select it as a compile option when you install the Mutt port. No manual work required. You cannot easily do that in any binary-based Linux distribution. Want firefox installed without CUPS support? No problem, just deselect it when you install the Firefox port. Want to set a system option to never install anything GTK related? Just set that in your make.conf file. Or maybe you to set mplayer as the default video player for any application that provides different video backends. Again, easy to do.
This fine-grained control is what makes FreeBSD great on a server since, for example, you can compile Apache with _only_ those things you need. This level of control also makes it a great desktop operating system for power users who want full control over their machine.
Like I said at the start, I love Linux and FreeBSD. I love OpenBSD. Each of these operating systems present their advantages and disadvantages. Maintaining an Ubuntu desktop might be easier and quicker for most folks, but you are basically stuck with the binary packages that the MOTU people decide are appropriate, unless you want to learn Debian packaging and roll your own, in which case nstalling the port in FreeBSD and choosing your options is much, much easier.
Check it out and decide for yourself.
14 • RE 12 (by Neanderthal man on 2008-03-03 14:30:59 GMT from France)
"GNU/Linux does seem to be the most widely accepted *nix platform and thus attracts the heaviest development"
What about Apples? They are *BSDs, too, and ... more popular than GNU/linux.... What does heavy mean? A stone is heavy; an obese man, too; development may be valuable, useful, seriously tested or ... buggy, without any originality.
15 • Freebsd 7 (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 14:52:19 GMT from Thailand)
Well to me and many there are two things that any freebsde MUST have to compete with linux.. (1) Nvidia drivers for both 32 and 64 bit systems (2) Flash 9 suport..if we cant see youtube or cnn videos that is a showstopper
I really doubt freebsd can address these two...for that reason i have much more faith in opensolaris distros like nexenta...
16 • FreeBSD (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 15:08:53 GMT from United States)
It's important to keep in mind that you will be disappointed if you want to use FreeBSD as a drop-in replacement for PCLinuxOS, the same as you would be disappointed using PCLinuxOS as a drop-in replacement for Windows.
Different OSes are designed to do different things. I've also heard similar comments made about e.g. Slackware or Arch. If you limit yourself to only the things done well by the most popular Linux distros, FreeBSD will look like a dinosaur on life support.
OTOH, if you judge PCLinuxOS or Ubuntu on the strong areas of FreeBSD, you will be scratching your head wondering why PCLinuxOS or Ubuntu have any users.
You need to widen your perspective beyond the, "Let's see if the least competent Windows user who has limited needs and does not know how to use a keyboard and will not read documentation feels comfortable with this OS." That is not the appropriate question to ask of every OS. There are enough that focus on Windows users already. There's no reason for FreeBSD to jump into that arena as well (though DesktopBSD and PC-BSD are there already).
17 • No subject (by Eric on 2008-03-03 15:13:12 GMT from Canada)
@9 #1 Faster and more responsive than Linux on a task even on heavy system resource use, #2 much more stable; solid as a rock an an unmovable as a stabilized steel reinforced concrete wall ..... So why not top it off? #3, an integrated kernel & user land for higher quality code overall the system to keep it more secure than any Linux distro
@15 Not like either of those 2 are FreeBSD's choice, they are both company owned binary packages that are internally made and supported ONLY by NVIDIA and Adobe respectively, Closed source has held back your requirements thus far, FreeBSD is doing its best, with what is has that isn't encumbered by patent law and able to be sued for, java has recently been plainly awesome, kudos Sun!! Isn't it a lovely situation your blaming the BSD's or any Linux for?? You sir from Thailand, are just as good for wanting such closed crap to happen, instead make them open their products, and the situation would disappear within the year.
How do you like them apples?? Note I use BOTH FreeBSD and Debian Sid as my primary workstations interchangeably for their own strengths.
18 • Re: 15 (by BlueJayofEvil on 2008-03-03 15:45:26 GMT from United States)
They do have nVidia drivers for FreeBSD. I'm not sure about 64-bit, but my 32-bit installation is using it right now and it works well. Setting up Xorg to use the nvidia driver requires a little bit of work (fairly easy, though) but it works like a charm.
And second, Flash 7 works on FreeBSD, and Flash 9 can work if you use the Linux compatibility feature (obviously I'm referring to using the Linux Flash 9). And if that doesn't work, use WINE to install the Windows version of Flash on the Windows version of Firefox/Opera/etc.
I'm glad I chose to try out FreeBSD 7. I'm learning a lot about how it works and how to do stuff I took for granted in most Linux distro's.
19 • RE: #3 Looks can be deceiving (by Landor on 2008-03-03 16:02:15 GMT from Canada)
I thought I'd take a look over at the MythDora page and see what it had to offer that other Myth TV specific offshoots of distros didn't. So I took a look at the info on the main page and changed to their MythDora 4.0 release info.
While doing so I found some information about upgrading that didn't "look too cool" coming from the developers of the project:
DO NOT UPGRADE FOR THE HELL OF IT. MYTHDORA HAS BEEN TESTED USING WHAT IT COMES WITH. IF YOU POST SAYING THAT YOUR HAVING PROBLEMS AFTER UPGRADING, DO NOT EXPECT A REPLY FROM ME.
Then there was another part on the same page about the game emulators that come with the distro:
- 16 different game emulators (Don't ask us how to use them)
So I can only gleen from the above two that if you upgrade from an older version to a newer release that's supposed to work (shouldn't previous functionality continue with a new release unless otherwise stated?), well too bad. They install specific packages that are obviously there for a reason but don't know how to run them. Does that mean nobody tested them? If someone tested their functionality (emulators) then someone knows how to use them and they could be supported no?
Right off the hop I read info about a distro that says one thing twice. We won't support or help you without any concrete reasoning for it. Then it makes you wonder if some of the installed packages were even tested, which makes you wonder if there's some, are there more?
Doesn't look cool at all. .
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
20 • Why not cover Metalinks? (by Ant Bryan on 2008-03-03 16:20:45 GMT from United States)
I think it's time that DW at least mentioned metalinks, which list mirrors & checksums. They're frequently used for ISO downloads, and instead of a link to a download from a single server & separate MD5/SHA1 files, they distribute the load between a whole mirror network among other things.
http://www.metalinker.org/
21 • Enjoyed the FreeBSD review (by Brian Masinick on 2008-03-03 16:29:04 GMT from United States)
Thanks for writing about FreeBSD 7.0 in this week's edition. My background goes way back to the eighties in my use of commercial BSD based UNIX systems, so I am always interested in what is going on in the BSD camp. For desktop use, I find the PC-BSD derivative of FreeBSD to be easier to set up because it takes care of configuring the X server for you and installing common software used on the desktop. Because there are efforts like this one, as well as DesktopBSD and a few others, I suppose the FreeBSD project continues to stress the development of server capabilities. The fact that PC-BSD is specifically designed as a desktop system is indicative of the fact that you can do desktop computing with FreeBSD, it's just not as automatic as many of us are used to with the stock FreeBSD installation.
Personally, I want to experiment with FreeBSD 7.0 more to determine the specific steps needed to hone it into a useful desktop system, which I am confident it can handle very well.
Meanwhile, I continue to actively use a number of Linux-based desktop systems. I multi-boot anywhere from six to a dozen distinct instances on my two desktop systems and I run one additional Linux distro from my hard drive on my laptop system, plus I use many others Live and loaded into RAM.
Given my long history with the BSDs I would like to keep abreast of their development and become more adept at installing and configuring them specifically for the desktop. We all know that they do a great job in the server environment. I'm equally convinced that they can do a good job on the desktop, it's just not as automated for us because we have to configure more features. With Linux compatibility mode available, there is certainly more than initially meets the eye available on the BSD systems.
Thanks again for an informative weekly update.
22 • Re #19 (by Fred on 2008-03-03 16:30:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think the upgrade warning applies specifically to the newest release, which is a major release as it says 2 paragraphs up on that page "MythDora has undergone almost a total revamp. Things are in different places and paths so be sure to read the changelog."
As for the game emulators quote, my take on that is that it would probably be illegal for them to post instruction, not that they didn't test. Just a guess though, so feel free to confirm or infirm.
23 • MANDRIVA 2008.1 RC1 screenshots + review (by moondowner on 2008-03-03 16:30:30 GMT from Macedonia)
I made a nice and short review on Mandriva 2008.1 rc1, so if anyone is interesteed in reading it, or lookin in some screenshots, here it is
http://mklinuxos.blogspot.com/2008/03/news-mandriva-20081-rc1-released.html
Ladislav thanks for the sneak peek at FreeBSD 7.0 will definitely try it :)
24 • Re:8 • Learning FreeBSD (by LM on 2008-03-03 16:38:04 GMT from United States)
I started FreeBSD with 7.0 beta1 and now I have on the computer Release. I don't know why I waited so long (I was Linux user). I bought Greg Lehey book, 100 BSD Tricks from D. Lavigne and Unix power Tools and there are on the FreeBSD site their handbook.
25 • RE #22 (by Landor on 2008-03-03 18:19:28 GMT from Canada)
I read the info on the release being a major release/revamp.
What I found distrubing was the developers didn't state it would break an upgrade, or that it should not be upgraded but fully installed fresh. But they went on to say that they will not reply to anything regarding a broken upgrade, but did little to explain why in any form.
. I still stand by my belief that it's not cool :)
The emulators in their anouncement is a key selling point, but they don't support their use. Their statement "leads" (yes easily a false assumption) one to believe that it's not even to be discussed via the forums there, which would normally be a key place any user would go for help regarding the distro or a package therein.
I don't know, maybe I'm reading it wrong. I don't know the developers, nor the distro. What I do know is that how I read it at first, and still do, is I was told via their documention not to ask any questions about two major points in their distro as I won't get a response (no response on the emulators is based on the comment and no response about a broken upgrade). Not a good start for someone looking at a distro for the first time. Especially when the distro is an alternative to many other Myth variants. You would think the developers would be a bit more forthcoming as well as helpful.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
26 • SLAX updated again... (by torque2k on 2008-03-03 18:42:28 GMT from United States)
FYI, went to DL SLAX and found they've already released 6.0.2: http://blog.slax.org/2008/03/03/slax-602-is-here/
Enjoy!
27 • RE 26 (by Landor on 2008-03-03 18:50:05 GMT from Canada)
Now here's a developer that has his head together and understands things for what they are:
"Also note that the Slax logo at DistroWatch is outdated. Please don’t write to me about it, I know it. I can’t change that. Slax’s logo has been modified five times in the past few years, and people@distrowatch have better things to do then updating the icon once per year."
Now if something is cool, that is in my opinion :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
28 • Up-to-date binary packages for FreeBSD? (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 18:53:59 GMT from United States)
I wonder if there is a binary package repository for FreeBSD that gets updates when new versions of applications are released?
A couple of months ago I tested DesktopBSD and found it quite easy to install, and it gave me a nice KDE desktop. However, the GUI package manager didn't find binary versions of all the packages that I wanted to install, and so I re-configured the package manager so it could install packages also from the ports tree. The package manager installed also the dependencies for the applications that I wanted to install from the ports tree, and it spent a lot of time compiling things from source.
I got the impression that the ports tree includes more applications than the binary package repository, and also that the ports tree often has newer versions of many applications than the binary repository. I finally gave up on DesktopBSD because I've got an old and slow computer that doesn't have much RAM and it becomes very slow when compiling packages from the ports tree starts using the swap memory.
But I'd be willing to give the new FreeBSD a try if there is a binary package repository that has lots of applications that are updated often. The GUI package manager from DesktopBSD is quite nice, but I'd rather just use it to install binary packages and not compile anything.
29 • Re: #12 (by Rex Bygraves on 2008-03-03 19:00:23 GMT from United States)
The BSD's seem to always lag far behind the top GNU/Linux distro's on pretty much every front, so, it always leaves me respectfully wondering, "whats the point?".
The exact same criticism could be leveled at Linux when compared to Windows - Windows is easier/has more software/better hardware support, etc. than Linux.
The BSDs don't 'lag behind on every front' - some proprietary software is harder to get hold of for BSD, and hardware drivers can take a little longer to appear (neither of which the BSD devs have much control over). On the other hand, FreeBSD is faster and more powerful than linux and I've never had a BSD update break my system before.
The huge improvements that have gone into the release of FreeBSD 7.0 show just how active and skilled the developers are. As others have said, if you're looking for a Windows replacement in FreeBSD, you're going to be disappointed. If you want BSD on your home computer, try DesktopBSD or PCBSD instead of FreeBSD.
30 • Re: Mandriva Linux 2008.1 (by Distrogue on 2008-03-03 20:08:51 GMT from Spain)
"Mandriva Linux 2008.1 seems to be poised to continue what the company started with version 2008 - to regain its reputation as one of the most user-friendly and polished desktop Linux distributions available today." Funny, I remember that DW trashed Mandriva 2007 before its release...
31 • #16 (by PCLinuxOS fan on 2008-03-03 20:17:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
I will NOT exchange PCLOS for another distro in the nearest future anyway... :-)
32 • RE 9,12,31 Merci beaucoup (by dbrion on 2008-03-03 20:32:15 GMT from France)
pour la richesse de votre information sur un "système " * orienté vers l'originalité profonde, au point d'en être multilingue et d'avoir été cloné par Mandrivel. * dont la "politique" de sûreté est dictée immédiatement par des pressions externes, sans aucun recul :( les éventuels résultats peuvent être calamiteux d'ici un an, pour tous ceux qui auront essayé d'avoir un bureau le jour, un miniserveur la nuit) . * qui tire toute sa valeur de clics de souris, et de sa place dans un clicoconcours (au fait, quelle est la couleur des flèches? je suis daltonien)
OTOH, thanks to the many BSDs users/tryers, and their wise, objective advices in this week and last week DWW (I almost could start FreeBSD with only their advices, and begun to reread their manual one can find in an iso (7.0*docs.iso on one of their well tended download sites, which do not break).
33 • Emulators (re. 19, 22) (by UZ64 on 2008-03-03 21:02:23 GMT from United States)
Emulators themselves are technically not illegal; they're just pieces of software that allow a computer to "act like" a completely different piece of hardware (in most cases). On the other hand, some systems have a copyrighted firmware which is required to run, which *is* illegal to obtain, basically making it illegal to even use the emulator. Some emulators which emulate hardware containing a proprietary firmware simply come without this image, and require the user to know how/where to get it. By downloading the firmware, you're pretty much breaking the law... but at the same time, it'll allow you to play pretty much any games for the system.
As for ROMs; dumps from actual, copyrighted games are illegal, and I would assume that any hacks of actual copyrighted games would be illegal too. However, a completely home-brewed ROM is legal, as long as it was started from scratch, not using any copyrighted material (graphics, sounds, etc.). And I know there are a lot of ROM sites that claim that it's legal to download ROMs temporarily... but they must be "deleted within 24 hours." As far as I know... complete bull****. It is illegal to get a hold of ANY copyrighted game, especially those you don't own. It's even illegal to download ROMs of games you *do* legally own, but in my opinion it's an example of fair use. Still, according to the law, it's illegal. It's illegal for the site to even be distributing files containing copyrighted software. Period
That's my view on it, don't take it as 100% fact; it's just my understanding from the research I've done over the years on the subject. I just happen to be interested in emulation myself. Also, I'm not sure of laws outside of the US.
As for the site's tone... it seemed pretty ridiculous. If they don't want anything to do with emulation, why even put emulators in their distro to begin with? Sure, they're just saving their asses, but still, they just come off as sounding hostile towards emulation in general and anyone who wants to use it... WHILE LISTING IT AS A FEATURE. There's just something wrong with that.
34 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 21:03:03 GMT from Canada)
New knoppix , Wonder if it will be as revolutionary as the first live cd.
Interesting to note that it is still above sidux in the phr
35 • Mandriva 2008 (by Capri Chopin on 2008-03-03 21:06:44 GMT from United States)
Mandriva 2008 forme vraiment jusqu'à soit une distribution gentille. Espoir I sûr qu'ils continuent à s'améliorer. J'ai examiné le plus défunt candidat de dégagement. Il court grand sur mon ordinateur. Je voudrais offrir mon appui dans de toute façon possible aux réalisateur
36 • @30 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-03-03 21:15:16 GMT from Canada)
Well, that was kind of the point? In DW's opinion we blew it between 10.0 and 2007, and began "to regain its reputation as one of the most user-friendly and polished desktop Linux distributions available today" with 2008. The use of the word "regain" wouldn't actually make sense *unless* they thought releases prior to 2008 were bad.
37 • to #31 (PCLinuxOS fan) (by a_linux_user on 2008-03-03 22:12:36 GMT from Canada)
Don't and be happy.
38 • Frugalware (by mu_co happy Frugalware user :) on 2008-03-03 22:34:53 GMT from Poland)
It is good to see Frugalware getting the donation. Developers of this distribution deserve it for sure.Small, really fast, wast repository and most off all very helpful community. Yes, community is not that big, but I bet that having a problem you will never be alone on their forum, and there will be people trying to help minutes after your post for help. Forum seams not very active cause Frugalware most of the time just works, and there is not that many times you need help or something to write about on forum. System is stable, updates itself well, so you enjoy working with it instead crowding Frugalware forum. Of course I speak of my own experience with Frugalware, as this distro works very well on my computers since 2 years. The new version is going to be here in just a few weeks and I encourage all mid experienced users (or new users wanted to learn more about Linux) to try it. To say it "distrowatch" way -> Put the speed and comfort back into computing. Try Frugalware ;D
39 • @17 (by Steve Bergman on 2008-03-03 22:37:52 GMT from United States)
#1. Prove it with actual data.
#2. Prove it with actual data.
#3. Prove it with actual data.
Unsubstantiated claims are just so much noise. Support your assertions.
40 • PCLinuxOS funboyism = It's not even funny anymore (by nedvis on 2008-03-03 22:45:06 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS fun wrote: "I will NOT exchange PCLOS for another distro in the nearest future anyway... :-)"
Who cares, PCLinuxOS fun? Didn't you realized post like yours are not only distracting, meaningless and downright boring but ,also, the reason some people in this forum developed their hatred towards PCLinuxOS. You're just doing disservice to PCLinuxOS project and community. I like PCLinuxOS too and I'm really active PCLinuxOS forum visitor and project supporter ( one more check is on its way to Texstar P.O.Box ) but would never accept sort of funboyism you are exercising here at DW. Next time you want to post something ,please, read the red line just above the Submit comment button.
41 • BSD would be great if... (by RuralRob on 2008-03-03 23:06:07 GMT from United States)
The one thing that keeps me from trying FreeBSD is the lack of a native virtualization environment. Seems to me that BSD would be a great VM host; if VMware or VirtualBox were available for it, I'd jump to it in a flash.
42 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-04 00:12:51 GMT from Brazil)
Congrats, frugal!
43 • Mandriva (by shrek on 2008-03-04 01:53:54 GMT from United States)
Tried Mandriva 2008 RC1 on the home computer. Very nice. I used the 64bit version and could not get Flash to work, so went back to the I586 version. Flash worked fine.
I am a long time SuSE user, and switched because of Distrowatch. Congrats to the Mandriva team for making a nice disto.
shrek.
44 • some rambling, and re43 (by a1b1 on 2008-03-04 02:37:33 GMT from United States)
Got Mandriva RC1 2008.1 KDE here too, very nice, very fast. No unexpected problems, except one that I also had with 2008.0 on my system. Changes to the task bar don't save after reboot (changing the clock, or making the bar transparent, moving things around, etc.). They revert to default settings after reboot. Removing the clock applet, then adding it back make it function normally. I don't know why it does this with my system, others reported it for 2008.0 as well on their forum, thought they'd have fixed it by now. RPMDrake is getting better too, finally know how much you are going to download, nice for those of us either on dialup, or that have to watch how much we download. It would be nice if there were an overall download progress bar showing how much downloaded, how much left, estimated time left, etc., instead of a separate one for each package.
For Flash in 64bit, did you try nspluginwrapper? It worked fine to get flash going in Sidux 64 for me, takes very little effort. Install instructions can be found easily on google.
45 • #12 (by Anonymous on 2008-03-04 03:05:14 GMT from Thailand)
I am the author of #15 (will Distrowatch PLEASE get a decent threaded forum feature?) and linux sound (ALSA) simply sucks for a desktop Try mixing sound from a java applet and amarok...you can't because java uses oss(because that is still the unix standard) and Amarok uses alsa.( know about aoss but that can't be used with applets and it also has limitations with oss apps) This is with integrated sound and no I will not buy a sound card as that is no longer something people should be required to do. FreeBSD and Solaris both give SIMPLE WORRY-FREE sound mixing the way a user wants, To the other points, I know it is not freebsd's problem that nvidea does not realease specs and that abode does not either..It is too bad cause I do like FreeBSD..it is far more logical than linux. #18 I know about emulation and hope it has improved in FreeBSD 7 I remember a lot of problems in PC-BSD with it and even if you get it going it is still not a good solution. Should I really be forced to use one instance of firefox for youtube and one with everything else? The linux one will play youtube but will not have proper integration(eg print support) with FreeBSD.
46 • @43 / 44 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-03-04 03:25:41 GMT from Canada)
nspluginwrapper should be installed and enabled on x86-64 One and Powerpack editions of Mandriva by default: if you were testing the x86-64 One edition of RC1 and it wasn't installed, then that's a bug, please report it. :) With Free it's not installed by default I don't think, but installing it should be as easy as 'urpmi nspluginwrapper'.
47 • Mandriva (by wam on 2008-03-04 03:35:46 GMT from United States)
I just downloaded Mandriva RC1 GNOME and i have tell you...Its SWEET! Mandriva has a winner here. I do wish they would use Synaptic as their package manager though. Its very fast and very stable. It may be a keeper. Do i keep Ubuntu ot Mandriva? LOL
48 • Mandriva (by wam on 2008-03-04 03:37:30 GMT from United States)
I forgot to say,...Im getting ready to try KDE RC1 now.
49 • Mandriva (by Anonymous on 2008-03-04 05:02:16 GMT from United States)
I have been testing Mandriva since beta 2, and I am impressed. I always liked Mepis for the way it supported my hardware, but this last round just wasn't doing it. Now, Mandriva has stepped up and is doing better while just being a RC. Guess which one is staying on my hard drive.
47, you're right. Adding Synaptic would be nice, but their package manager isn't bad.
50 • Mint 4 KDE is fine ! (by Fotograf on 2008-03-04 05:37:53 GMT from Canada)
just downloaded and installed the 1 Gb iso could not boot a live DVD unless pressing F6 and --noacpi nosplash no apic -- options ! this trick was written in the Release Notes
51 • BSD v Linux (by BryD on 2008-03-04 10:59:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Eureka !
I have found a operating system that works very well as a Server and as Desktop. Its called Windows, any one else heard of it.
52 • @#51 (by CeVO on 2008-03-04 12:51:25 GMT from Spain)
'Eureka !
I have found a operating system that works very well as a Server and as Desktop. Its called Windows, any one else heard of it.'
Where did you find windows server? Via emule ;)
Congrats with the license fees. I think I would join the majority of servers on the internet and use Linux. In case you never heard of it, it sort of powers Google. Ever heard of that?
53 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-04 13:00:19 GMT from United States)
Eureka! I've spotted a Windows troll. I hope your message is deleted.
We don't go trolling on virus and spyware sites, why do you insist on bothering us?
54 • GUI "Roll your own"? (by Ed N. on 2008-03-04 14:14:17 GMT from United States)
In the stone age, I wrote a simple DOS (can I use that word here?) menu that allowed a tech to pick from a list of applications to include in an install. Once they were done the program would create DOS install disks that included only those things that they tech requested. That way a secretary did not get Fdisk but the CIO did get Visicalc.
Is there a distro that included only the OS and an app that did the same thing as my "builder" script. (i.e. create an ISO by getting the latest program versions from the web and adding them on the fly?)
If there is not such a distro I offer this as a challenge. Give me a year or so of working with Linux and I might do it myself.
55 • Re #54: "Roll your own" (by Anonymous on 2008-03-04 14:24:29 GMT from Switzerland)
Not only has it been done, it's already online:
http://custom.nimblex.net/
NimbleX pwns U! :-)
56 • microsoft>nokia> Trolltech (by jack on 2008-03-04 15:59:15 GMT from Canada)
Nokia buys Trolltech, Microsoft " buys" Nokia.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7276907.stm) Whither Linux?
57 • knoppix 5.3 (by Chris on 2008-03-04 17:16:34 GMT from Canada)
I haven't seen 5.2 yet. Looks like a yearly release of knoppix, which is good. I don't like having to always upgrade when the new released are brought out on an almost daily basis.
It doesn't look like much is new for 5.3 I'll wait for Knoppix 6 - 2010 has a nice ring to it.
58 • freeBSD and NVIDIA (by jay on 2008-03-04 20:03:20 GMT from Belgium)
So why does everyone keep claiming that "it isn't FreeBSD's fault" if there aren't any 64 bit drivers? Why would NVidia release drivers for about any OS under the sun but not for FreeBSD 64 bit? The fact is that Nvidia developers have pointed out time and again that the 64 bit FreeBSD kernel makes it impossible to write a driver and that just a few small changes would do to solve that. Do the FreeBSD developers know this? Of course, they have known it for many months. Have they solved it? Nope, just like they still haven't produced a decent PAE alternative. I gave up on FreeBSD because it could access only so much of my RAM and PAE just has too many disadvantages (but then 64 bit has even more). All in all, it's good as a desktop for older computers and great as a server OS - but anything in between is far better serviced by Linux/Solaris/Mac/Windows.
59 • Mandriva RC1 GNOME (by Tony on 2008-03-04 21:50:00 GMT from United States)
I downloaded Mandriva RC1 GNOME and gave it a test drive on my Acer Aspire 5570 laptop. This is the "very first" Linux system I've tested where the Atheros wi-fi worked without a problem.
When time allows, I'll go beyond the LIVE CD. The main thing I would change would be Synaptic. Thanks Mandriva(and of course that includes Adam)!
60 • @59 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-03-05 00:33:36 GMT from Canada)
That's great news - can I ask if it was with the native driver (madwifi) or ndiswrapper, out of interest? (If it just worked and you didn't have to do anything, that would be madwifi). Glad you're enjoying RC1 so far.
61 • 20 • Why not cover Metalinks? (by ladislav on 2008-03-05 01:41:08 GMT from Taiwan)
Could you please write up a short story about Metalink for publication in DistroWatch Weekly? I don't think many readers know about Metalink (I for one don't know anything about it), so if you could explain in more detail how it works and include your personal experiences, that would be great. Thanks in advance :-)
62 • 60 Adam Williamson (by Tony on 2008-03-05 02:31:48 GMT from United States)
Adam - I did not have to use ndiswrapper, that is unless Mandriva did it automatically?
I chose Atheros > Operating Mode [Managed], Encryption Mode [Open WEP], Encryption Key [--], and chose Automatic IP (BooTP/DHCP) then [ok].
I picked up my wireless signal and one of my neighbor's signal too!
63 • @62 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-03-05 02:59:34 GMT from Canada)
Great, so that's using madwifi. That's good news as some people had trouble with it in 2008, glad to hear it's going okay in 2008 Spring :). Thanks for the feedback.
64 • First look at FreeBSD 7.0 (by FreeBSD_User on 2008-03-05 08:05:31 GMT from United States)
Hello, I would like to address some errors in the review:
With nearly 16,000 FreeBSD ports ready for installation, these tools will surely come handy during the initial setup of that perfect workstation.
There are 18153 ports available for installation.
I didn't expect all that much. After all, I read the release announcement, so I knew that the FreeBSD development team had spent most of its time on such tasks as speeding up the performance of SQL databases and porting the ZFS file system from Solaris - features that are of little interest to most desktop users. In other words, FreeBSD is still predominantly a server operating system and although there is nothing that would stop a knowledgeable or determined user from setting it up as a complete and functional workstation, it is unlikely that an average computer user would find it particularly enticing.
There is quite a bit of usability in FreeBSD as a Desktop Operating System. The FreeBSD porting teams for both KDE and Gnome cover the Desktop scenarios.
FreeBSD now also includes freebsd_update, a tool for keeping a FreeBSD installation up-to-date with security updates (in binary format) with minimum of fuss.
FreeBSD Update has been part of the base system since the 6.x branch.
Security in FreeBSD is handled in accordance with UNIX principles. The project has a security team which issues GPG-signed security advisories and distributes them via a dedicated security mailing list. This, however, is limited to security issues found in the FreeBSD kernel and userland, not in ports - hence the reason why the project rarely issues more than a dozen security advisories per year. With the ports, the situation is different - as a general rule, FreeBSD users are expected to upgrade the installed ports to the latest versions in regular intervals and there are also tools that alert the user to security problems in installed ports.
One such applications is called "portaudit" that will handle security with respect to the ports system.
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/ports-mgmt/portaudit/pkg-descr
Just curious; who is the author of the article?
65 • re: Freebsd 7 (by Anonymous on 2008-03-03 14:52:19 GMT from Thailand) (by A Non-hypocritical Nix User. on 2008-03-05 08:18:18 GMT from United States)
Well to me and many there are two things that any freebsde MUST have to compete with linux.. (1) Nvidia drivers for both 32 and 64 bit systems (2) Flash 9 suport..if we cant see youtube or cnn videos that is a showstopper
I really doubt freebsd can address these two...for that reason i have much more faith in opensolaris distros like nexenta...
There are 32 bit drivers; I cannot comment on the 64 bit drivers.
I did take a particular note of your Flash comment. You want Flash 9 support; but you didn't mention that it should be both 32 bit and 64 bit support. Perhaps your omission is based on the fact that Adobe doesn't put out 64 bit Flash.
Now taking into consideration that you need both 32 and 64 bit video drivers and Flash. Since you need both; then by default Linux doesn't constitutes a desktop because there are no 64 bit drivers for Linux. That would be a show stopper for Linux. Are you trolling? Sounds like it.
As for the 64 bit drivers from some other place; not Nividia, you may want to consider project Nouveau: nouveau.freedesktop.org/
And as for non-adobe flash (64 bit support; linux too); please refer to the Gnash project; however, it is Flash 7 support.
Regards, A Non-hypocritical Nix User.
66 • Qu 64 Is the difference 19000-16000 ports relevant? (by dbrion on 2008-03-05 08:31:38 GMT from France)
What would be more interesting is whether the reviewed OS played a role in [detecting bugs/ developping/promoting] the packages they ship, meseems (I remember that Frugalware anonnounced they had included the latest version of Ocltave: this makes a nice ad for Octave).
There are other figures whose difference seems meaningless (if OSes were racing horses, I would have a different opinion) : DWW links to a comparison between Fedora and Mandriva, on a laptop: the time it took to eat the laptops battery were tabulated under some options, which is nice -it is one function of a laptop to be alive far from the main supply- but the difference (less than 10% is likely to be unnoticed: the only element I saw was that beagle -which is ressource consuming, among which CPU ->battery- could not be installed on the less greedy distribution.....
67 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-05 09:39:55 GMT from China)
replace Page Hit Ranking with Upcoming Releases in the mainpage
68 • 64 (by Anonymous on 2008-03-05 15:02:03 GMT from United States)
I don't know what it is with BSD types. Every time I decide to give a BSD a serious look, I run into users like the author of post 64. That seems to be the typical BSD user: they're everywhere, including their forums.
FreeBSD, a great OS if you are able to ignore the users.
69 • Perils of Distro Hopping (by Glenn on 2008-03-05 21:14:47 GMT from Canada)
Hi Gang. The perilous Journey of distro hopping.
I looked at Dreamlinus and after testing it on Virtualbox I decided to install it in a partition on my TP60. On this TP60 I have winxp, Mandriva. Ubuntu 7.10, Linux Mint, Geubuntu. With all that, whats one more distro? Always room for just-one-more. I burnt the ISO and went thru the installation procedure which seemed straight forward enough. I instructed the installation to install GRUB on the Root partition and NOT the MBR. Ok.. Great. All done.... I rebooted. hmmm,,, Cannot boot. Thats funny... No worry, I had Supergrub,I figured that would fix it right up.. I used Puppy to look at my partitions thinking I would Update my Grub Menu.lst which was on SDA7. Funny, Dream Linux's footprints were all over it. I looked at other partitions which had /BOOT/GRUB/MENU.LST on them.. Same thing. Those partitions i could see that is, A couple disappeared on me. I think DreamLinux was trying to tell me something. It wanted to be boss.
I figured I would fixup the MBR manually with supergrub but for some reason it did not see anything.... I said ok, I'll use gparted and see whats going on.... It saw nothing also, not even a useable partition. Wow. this HDD was messed up.... I played a bit and then decided to give Parted Magic a try as a last resort. I booted it, used TESTDISK and it found my deleted partitions. I then rebuilt the partition table with it and i was back in business. Parted Magic is now rooted firmly in my repair kit. Nice piece of work there.
Notes. 1. Did I take a backup first ER, AH, ER. I'll leave that one for now 2. Did I use a test system or my Production system.... er, ah ,er... I'll leave that one for now also. 3. Did I follow install correctly... Yes. I have done many over the 40 years I've been in the field. 4. Did I try all possible recoverys ,,, yes, I resorted to Parted Magic as a final desparate attempt. 5. Did i try to find other recovery tools... Yes, i found one. It ran and found the missing partitions and only then did it say to send $49 to activate the recovery portion of that utility. Not nice so forget that! Tell me up front next time 6. Will this now limit me from more distro hopping? No... This is rare but I will be a bit less daring than before (Maybe).
7. DreamLinux. Well obviously it is not for me but that does not mean do not try it. I did see a couple of other hits similar to mine on their site and furthermore this is an RC that I tried. Something went wrong and I really did not have time to debug and send in problem report to them.
For those windows users reading this and chortling. I have had Windows XP choke and blow my HDD also once in a while so this is not a linux quote FEATURE endquote. (grin) In fact i did try Windows recovery hoping to re-instate the MBR similar to FDISK /MBR. No go.
Anyway thats what happened to me this weekend in distro hopping. This coming weekend I plan to go fishing instead. Glenn
70 • RE: 69 • Perils of Distro Hopping (by IMQ on 2008-03-05 22:34:33 GMT from United States)
I also tried out DreamLinux 3.0RC1 and it was a disaster. So I posted my experience on DL forums. It seemed I was not the only one.
Nevetherless, I used gpart as suggested in the DL forums and I had the partition table recovered. I could boot into 5 out of 9 bootable partitions.
However, WinXP was not bootable. No big deal since I hardly boot into it and only keep it around just in case and to help out friends and family members every once in a while who, unfortunately, are still unable to break free from Windows.
71 • #69,70 - distro hopping (by ray carter at 2008-03-06 01:13:07 GMT from United States)
Exactly why I now have one system on which I do nothing more than install and test. I bought a gOS motherboard for $60 from ClubIT.com along with 2gb ddr2 memory for $50 - $25 rebate, and utilized the case, hard drive etc from an old P2 system I found lying around at the local library (I manage their public access systems).
72 • @65 (by Steve Bergman on 2008-03-06 05:44:20 GMT from United States)
Nice try. But modern Linux distros use nspluginwrapper out of the box. It really does not matter whether a 64 bit plugin is available. 32 bit plugins work just fine with 64 bit browsers these days. So if you have a 32 bit plugin, you're set.
73 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-06 10:32:14 GMT from Thailand)
#65 I was not trolling, Mepis 64, Vector Linux 64(Beta)(super easy setup) and even Debian (Lenny) all have 64 bit drivers for Nvidea cards..Please do your homework... and nouvea isn't useable...
I use linux cause it is the best free alternative to window..but from an engineering point of view FreeBSD is better.. (I am on vaaction now and post from windows machines in PC rooms)
74 • Re: 68 (by Béranger on 2008-03-06 15:52:47 GMT from Romania)
> FreeBSD, a great OS if you are able to ignore the users.
No, you must be able to ignore the developers! They're even worse!
75 • Mint 4 KDE (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-03-06 15:55:02 GMT from United States)
Mint 4 KDE don't seem to be well tested to run on a wide verity of computers, on three computers I ran the Live CD, one it ran with no problem, two the splash started showing text, I got video noise and it would not fully shut down and it would not install, three it would boot fine from the menu to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner and stop.
In case you think I'm not being fair, the md5sum was tested on the .iso and the finished dvd as well.
Any distro that will only install on some computers will not succeed as a mainstream distro.
"Mint uses the sudo method, like Ubuntu, with no root password." But this release has an app in the main menu that you can click and will add root and setup the root password, so you can use "SU" like a normal Linux system.
Mint has a lot of nice features, to bad it's not more hardware compatible and the installer can use some help so that the grub install is not hidden, on step 6 of the install, if you don't click the advanced button you will not see any mention of Grub and you will get Grub installed to the MBR, or so it seems, because on the two computers I was going to install it on, it never got past step 6. :(
76 • BSD vs Linux (by Anonymous on 2008-03-06 16:38:39 GMT from United States)
For those of you who are considering trying FreeBSD or are just curious as to why some of us prefer BSD to linux, here is a very interesting comparison of the two : http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php Of course, this is just one man's opinions.
77 • What's wrong with post #64? (by Tim on 2008-03-06 16:41:36 GMT from United States)
Saw a couple comments regarding post #64. What's wrong with correcting the details in the FreeBSD 7 review? He wasn't rude in my opinion?
78 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-03-06 16:45:33 GMT from United States)
> No, you must be able to ignore the developers! They're even worse!
My only experiences with developers of BSD are what I've read from Theo, but I don't think he's affiliated with FreeBSD.
My experiences are in the forums and when a journalist or blogger writes about one of the BSD's. I can fully understand why there's not more coverage of BSD. No matter how minor, there's going to be an extreme, passionate response to any errors or any mild criticism. I wouldn't want to cover BSD for any news outlet.
79 • Pot:Kettle (by Marcato Captan on 2008-03-06 22:59:55 GMT from United States)
I can fully understand why there's not more coverage of BSD. No matter how minor, there's going to be an extreme, passionate response to any errors or any mild criticism. I wouldn't want to cover BSD for any news outlet.
Yeah, they need to be more diplomatic and media friendly - like Stallman and Torvalds!
80 • re 69 • Perils of Distro Hopping (by Glenn ... from Canada) (by zhymm on 2008-03-07 00:51:12 GMT from United States)
Wow! Same experience for me w/ DL 3.0 rc1
Worked fine as live CD. Decided to install to a partition of a HD I've reserved for distro testing. Lo and behold DL was not satisfied with one little 10 GB partition but decided to wipe out the whole drive. Fortunately, all that was lost was a handful of recent distro releases I'd been playing around with. And that Dreamlinux CDRW was quickly erased to make way for a different recent release (Mint miniKDE).
Must make a note to check out PartedMagic, too (thanks, Glenn!).
Best regards,
Zhymm (also named Glenn)
81 • Ubuntu release (yawn) (by mikkh on 2008-03-07 02:27:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sixth "Alpha release"!! Are they really that desperate to keep their name in the headlines? Who else makes that many alpha releases available - no-one, that's who
Come on now, I don't mind testing a beta release or two, but that is taking the mickey IMO
82 • Qu 79 : Are diplomacy and media linked with Operating Systems? (by dbrion on 2008-03-07 10:12:11 GMT from France)
"Yeah, they need to be more diplomatic and media friendly - like Stallman and Torvalds!"
Perhaps the care to avoid/detect bugs should be more relevant, and make the presence of fora unuseful.... thus leading (perhaps : I never use fora to configure *my* favorite GNU/linux) to exasperation when people try to help on fora.... I noticed, from this week DWW , that RedHat contributes to about the half of the security failure detection/correctiion, most (> 90%) of these security failure being localized in nice desktop|desktop applications : as RedHats sells servers, the detection of desktop applications (users cry in fora for sexier, sexier, more quickly released is financially funded ... by servers buyers : what do you think these server buyers/users think of demagogic user (very short term) friendliness?)
83 • New Elive .............FYI (by deb on 2008-03-08 22:26:51 GMT from United States)
Just an FYI in the event you wanted to install the newest Elive (some of us do have play machines) you CAN'T. When you click the install button on the taskbar up pops a box saying " I'm sorry Elive is in big developement stages at the moment the installer is being rewritten.
I doubt I would have downloaded had I known that so I'm just posting a FYI.
Of course maybe there is a work around that I'm not aware of.
84 • RE/RE and Distro-Hoppin' (by Landor on 2008-03-09 19:19:13 GMT from Canada)
#33
Thanks for the info. I understood most of it, and you got my point. They made a deal about it yet don't want any discussion regarding it.
#77
I wondered the same thing. He wasn't bashing or rude in my opinion. It's funny some were talking about thin skins no? :)
#79
I near spit when I read your comment. It's one of the more humourous ones I've seen in some time here, and bang on :) We thought along the same lines and you beat me to the post!
#83/Distro-Hoppin'
Thanks for the head's up. Wasn't their last release similar I think, a development release?
I've slowed down a lot when it comes to testin'/hoppin', one due to time constraints, the other for reasons like that. Another is I've been back in Linux for over a year now I think and I was going to say novelty, but that's not it, maybe the offerings of many of them has dulled a bit. I remember someone saying something last year along the lines of most distros are quite the samy when it comes down to it, other than functionality. When you download a KDE based distro you can expect things like Amarok, K3B, Kopete, etc.. It gets kind of humdrum in the end. I've come to the point where I look for something that stands out a lot. Recently there really hasn't been a lot of that. It's mainly just another layer of polish, which says a lot for Linux and Kudos to all.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
85 • @84 (by Deb on 2008-03-10 00:03:51 GMT from United States)
I agree Landor, things have sort of gotten ho hum. I still like to see what might be new though so I keep on hopping (grin) I do want to say I read DW each week and enjoy your posts so much. My main is Sidux right now, but have you tried the new UE.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ultimate
I have to say I have never been a big fan of Gnome but I am liking this distro. Folks on the forum are a lot of fun too! That in itself makes is a a big plus for me.
86 • typos (by Deb on 2008-03-10 02:25:26 GMT from United States)
@85 Yah, I can type. Really. What that last line SHOULD read is..... that in itself is a big plus for me.
Sheesh , have another I will.
Number of Comments: 86
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