 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 248, 14 April 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 15th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 last week started a small avalanche of distro releases that will keep us busy downloading and installing new distributions for weeks. But which of them will eventually become the "keeper"? One way to evaluate them all is to follow the development branches of the major distributions as they converge towards the point when they are declared stable and ready for deployment. This is the topic of today's feature story. In the news section, Debian elects a new project leader, ASUS releases a Software Development Kit for the Eee PC, gOS and Symphony OS continue to experiment with unusual user interfaces, and Darkstar Linux announces the availability of Disk Manager, a new utility for managing hard disk partitions. Also worth a read - a rare interview with Texstar, the founder of PCLinuxOS, and another with Jeremy Katz, a well-known Red Hat and Fedora developer. All these topics and more in this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!
Content:
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| Featured Story |
Testing, one two three...
The release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 last week started an exciting period of distribution releases and major product announcements that every "distrowatcher" looks forward to with great expectations. Mandriva has given us the first glimpse of things to come, but others will soon follow. Ubuntu's "Hardy Heron" will reach release candidate status later this week, while Fedora 9 is also closing on the final stages of its development, with the delayed preview release expected tomorrow (Tuesday). A new Slackware can't be far off either. Then in early June, it will the all-new, highly ambitious openSUSE 11.0 with Qt/KDE 4.x, before we get to download "Lenny", Debian's latest and greatest, in September or thereafter.
So how exactly do we decide what is the best distribution for our particular needs? One good way of evaluating them all is to follow their development. This is exactly what I started doing three weeks ago - I downloaded the development releases of all major distributions -- Ubuntu 8.04 beta, Fedora 9 beta, Mandriva Linux 2008.1 RC1, openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 3 and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Beta 1 installer -- and installed them all on different hard disk partitions. Then every few days I booted into each of them, one by one, and updated all installed packages to their latest versions. This is a fairly simple task - all of these distributions now come with a system tray utility that can effect software updates with a mouse click or two, and they all have pre-configured package sources lists.
When comparing distributions in this way, it has to be born in mind that they could be in vastly varied stages of their development. As an example, I found the latest openSUSE barely usable, with Konsole crashing right after the installation - a fact that made me give up on the system early. On the other hand, Mandriva's development branch that I installed on the same weekend was almost completely trouble-free. Of course, Factory (openSUSE's development branch) was in an alpha stage at the time, while Cooker (Mandriva's development tree) was already nearing stable release. Still, even if it isn't always easy to compare the distributions directly, following development in this way gives an interesting indication about what we can expect once the work is completed and the development branches converge towards the point when they are declared stable.
Besides Mandriva, I found both Fedora 9 and Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 to be in a very good shape. Some Fedora testers reported problems with the latest kernel and the upcoming preview release, originally scheduled for last week, was also delayed apparently due to kernel problems, but I found the latest Rawhide (the Fedora development tree) to be very stable and usable. (I've especially enjoyed the new update icon in the system tray which provides a way to perform package updates without launching Pirut or any other package management tool.) Debian too was very stable during my tests. At first glance, "Lenny" doesn't seem to brim with many user interface changes and the Debian installer itself comes with only minor improvements, but that can be misleading. Neither Debian, nor Fedora have integrated any new artwork into their upcoming products, which perhaps also contributes to the feeling that they are just "point" updates, rather than major new versions.
Ubuntu's "Hardy Heron" too is nearing the final stages of development, so I expected a fairly smooth ride after installing the beta some three weeks ago. For the most part it was, although I had to do without the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver (the legacy one for NVIDIA GeForce 4) as it caused a loss of window decorations on all GNOME windows). Other than that, "Hardy" looks good, and the new artwork is a pleasant change from the picture-less backgrounds that Ubuntu used to ship in their previous releases (except, of course, the infamous nude "art" in "Warty").
The more advanced users can also add Slackware Linux to the list of distributions to test. As always, the oldest surviving Linux distro does not provide any one-click update mechanisms in the system tray, so the recommended way to keep up with updates is to download all new packages one by one, then use Slackware's "pkgtools" to install them. Alternatively, there are several third-party package management tools (e.g. Swaret, GSlapt, etc.) which can resolve dependencies and which can keep a Slackware installation "current" in a fashion similar to apt-get, urpmi or yum.
One last word of advice: if you are going to install the above-mentioned distributions and don't want to mess with setting up the bootloader manually, be aware that neither Fedora, nor Slackware will detect and set up any alternative Linux operating system in their default bootloaders. But if you install any of the remaining four (i.e. Debian, Mandriva, openSUSE or Ubuntu) as the last distro, you will get your GRUB populated with all Linux distributions that exist on the hard disk. This way you can boot any of them at your will - and according to your current mood.
This also seems like a good topic for today's discussion. Do any of the DistroWatch readers follow the development in this manner? If so, what are your impressions? Which of the distribution do you believe to be the winner in this round of distro releases? Do you enjoy booting into different distributions each day to update them and to check out their progress? Please discuss below.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Mandriva 2008.1, DPL election results, CentOS vs Ubuntu, gOS Space, Eee PC SDK, Darkstar's Disk Manager, interviews with Jeremy Katz and Bill Reynolds
 Mandriva Linux 2008.1 was released as scheduled last week. The first reviews and blog posts seem to be positive - a few minor issues here and there, but otherwise a solid release that should appeal to both novice and advanced desktop users. The big news here is the out-of-the-box support for the Eee PC, together with the usual hardware compatibility improvements, updated applications, new artwork, a parental control utility, the PulseAudio audio server and Elisa multimedia centre, and a host of small usability and user interface improvements. There is much more, so if you are interested in further details, head for the detailed release notes and take the Mandriva 2008.1 Tour. Finally, a warm congratulations to Mandriva for reaching its 10-year anniversary (well, almost anyway). While the road hasn't always been as smooth as the company's founders and shareholder would have liked, there is little doubt that the distribution has greatly contributed to the spread of Linux as an operating system for the desktop. So once again, congratulations and many happy returns!
Mandriva Linux 2008.1 delivers compatibility with Eee PC, updated applications, and new artwork.
(full image size: 769kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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  The Debian GNU/Linux project has published the results of the Debian Project Leader (DPL) elections which took place last week. The winner? Steve McIntyre (pictured on the right), a 34-year old Englishman from Cambridge, United Kingdom: "The winner of the election is Steve McIntyre. I would like to thank all the candidates for their service to the project, for standing for the post of project leader, and for offering the developers a strong and viable group of candidates. Finally, I would like to congratulate Steve McIntyre, the Project Leader-elect, for his success. The details of the results shall be soon up here." Steve McIntyre is a "debian-cd" team leader responsible for generating the official Debian CD and DVD images. If you'd like to learn more about the new DPL, please visit Steve McIntyre's personal page.
In other Debian news, Martin Zobel-Helas has posted a semi-regular release update with updated "Lenny" release goals and architecture status, while Alexander Schmehl has announced the availability of the eighth and final revision of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge".
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 Red Hat Magazine has published an interview with Jeremy Katz, a Red Hat employee and a Fedora developer responsible for maintaining the package management tools, the installer and the live CD tools: "Since the first official live CD release for Fedora Core 6, we've spent a lot of time on improving the tools used for building live images and helping to make them less of the 'this is a quick hack job that works' into tools that actually can be built upon, maintained, etc. One of the big pieces there is around wanting to have reproducibility for your images - we accomplish this through using a Kickstart configuration for the live CD definition. Fedora 8 was really the first release where we were starting to have more people building live CDs using the tools - the KDE Special Interest Group has been active in doing so since Fedora 7, but with Fedora 8, we also gained the Electronic Lab (FEL) spin, the Developer spin, and the Xfce spin."
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 Choosing a server distribution for a production e-commerce web site is never an easy task. So how do you go about it? Here is an interesting blog post that details the decision process at a service provider which accepted a task of setting up a LAMP server for several of its clients. While no distribution was perfect during the test, the provider has eventually settled on CentOS: "When I ask some Linux guru colleagues who manage production Linux clusters on a regular basis, they all point to CentOS or Red Hat due to its stability and performance record. In other words, you won't get the latest cutting edge packages like with Ubuntu or Fedora - but it is guaranteed to be much less flawed. The bottom line is that distro preference is a personal decision. Personal to the individual who administers the systems and personal to the organization. We've chosen CentOS over Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat. The only option I see that might change is adopting Red Hat due to the technical support that is offered for a fee. Hands down, CentOS provided the fastest configuration time, lowest learning curve, better ROI, superior package management system, and a good fuzzy feeling of stability. Thanks to CentOS, we can get back to our main passion: web development."
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 gOS, the new Ubuntu-based desktop distribution that caught the attention of Linux users when it came pre-installed on the low-cost Everex CloudBook laptops, continues with its user interface experiments. The latest version, labelled as "gOS Space 2.9", includes GNOME as the default desktop, combined with the Avant window manager: "With a stunningly beautiful interface and fun MySpace applications, gOS Space 2.9 introduces a Linux-based operating system designed for the 100,000,000 MySpace users. Now with the new gOS Space dock, you can email, IM, surf the web while surfing through popular TV, movies and music at the same time. The gOS Space dock aggregates the most popular web applications into neat, usable stacks for MySpace, News, Photos, Videos, Music, TV, Tools, and Fun." Although the project hasn't made a formal release announcement, an installable live DVD image is available for download from several mirrors; get it from here: gos-space-20080406-1226.iso (769MB, MD5).
gOS 2.9 Space combines GNOME with the Avant window manager to create an eye-catching desktop.
(full image size: 1,409kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 Last week's new release of Symphony OS was a somewhat surprising event. The project, which is best known for the radical departure from standard computer user interfaces, appeared to be dormant for months, but then it suddenly sprang to life with a new web site and a CD image. Unlike the project's previous releases, the new SymphonyOne 2008.1 is not available as a free download, but as little as US$1.00 will buy anyone access to a download server. This looks like an acceptable amount for many users and the sole Symphony OS download mirror was hammered hard during the weekend. Ryan Quinn, the founder of Symphony OS: "We have had an overwhelming response to our $1 donation-to-download experiment. So overwhelming, in fact, that our server can not keep up. I am spending today doing my very best to locate and set up additional mirrors. To those of you who made a donation but have been unable to download the ISO due to the slowness of the server, we apologize and hope to have this problem corrected soon. We will certainly know to have a much better infrastructure in place for our next release before making it available. If you have been unable to download and would like us to, we are happy to refund your $1 via PayPal. This experiment was never intended to leave anyone unhappy and that is the last thing we intend to do. Those who wish to bear with us will see new download links added today."
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 Here is an interesting development complementing the highly successful Eee PC. According to this announcement, ASUS has released a complete Software Developer Kit (SDK) for the Eee PC, based on Xandros Desktop, Open Circulation Edition: "ASUS, a leading company in the new digital era, today announced the release of a comprehensive software developer's kit (SDK) for the ASUS Eee PC. The new SDK enables third-party developers to easily enhance and extend the popular, mobile, open source platform for educational, telecommunications, and many other uses. The Eee PC SDK provides a complete development platform, including an Eee PC-compatible Open Circulation Edition of the Xandros Desktop OS, the Eclipse development environment, a Qt4 toolkit, a developer's guide, sample applications, and a multilingual VMware testing and debugging environment." See also this story by ITWire. The ASUS Eee PC SDK, together with the Eee PC installation ISO images, is available for free download from the project's SourceForge page.
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 Traistaru Claudiu, the lead developer of Darkstar Linux, has emailed us about the release of an interesting new utility called Disk Manager. Similar to GParted, Disk Manager is available as a separate download (with source code) or as part of a small live CD: "Our team has the pleasure to announce Disk Manager version 0.9.14, a graphical partitioning tool by ALICE (Advanced Linux Installation and Configuration Environment). Disk Manager 0.9.14 is a graphical partitioning utility, with a easy-to-use interface, capable of working with 13 file systems to perform different operations, e.g. verify, format, resize, create, delete, and more. Also, a small live system that is powered by Disk Manager, has all the necessary utilities (a bootloader, networking, even SSH) so you can use it as a recovery console in case of emergency." The Darkstar Disk Manager live CD is available for download from here: darkstar-diskmanager-0.9.14.iso (78.6MB, MD5).
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 Finally, here is a rare interview with Texstar, the elusive founder and lead developer of PCLinuxOS: "My name is Bill Reynolds aka Texstar. I am a 46-year old former banking professional with 17 years experience in retail banking management. I retired from banking in 1997 and started a small home-based computer repair business. Most of my time is spent either repairing computers or working on PCLinuxOS. I enjoy barbecuing, hanging out with friends by the pool in the summer months, watching Nascar auto racing and American football. ... In the summer of 2003 I became interested in live CD technologies after looking at KNOPPIX and MEPIS. I was interested in helping Warren with MEPIS at the time but I had no clue how to build DEB files. Coming from 5 years of packaging RPMs and not really wanting to learn a new packaging system I happened to come across a South African fellow by the name of Jaco Greef. He was developing a script called 'mklivecd' and porting it to Mandrake Linux."
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| Released Last Week |
Mandriva Linux 2008.1
Mandriva SA has announced the release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1, officially labelled as "2008 Spring": "Mandriva, the leading European Linux distributor, today announces the launch of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the major new release of Mandriva Linux, featuring hundreds of improvements which make for a quicker and more powerful distribution that is easier to use than ever. Changes include: a new parental control utility; the Elisa multimedia center; easy support for synchronizing many mobile devices with the GNOME and KDE environments; the Codeina framework; the PulseAudio audio framework has been adopted by default; significant improvements to the Mandriva software installation tools; customized support for the popular ASUS Eee PC; KDE 4.0.2 available in repositories." Read the rest of the press release for further details.
Linux XP 2008
Linux XP is a Fedora-based Russian distribution with the goal of porting the Windows XP user interface to the GNOME desktop. The latest version is 2008, released earlier this week: "Linux XP Desktop 2008 is officially released. It includes many new features and modern desktop themes. There are several exclusive applications in Linux XP to simplify system administration and user data migration from Windows to Linux XP. Features: Windows-like interface; 3D desktop; advanced control panel, simple file system layout, Windows migration tool; advanced network functions; easy installation; full NTFS file system support; easy program installation; advanced security functions; support for all modern file formats..." See the brief release announcement on the distribution's home page and the more detailed release notes with screenshots for more information.
Nonux 4.4
Nonux is a Slackware-based distribution optimised for Dutch-speaking office environments. Version 4.4, released yesterday, comes with the following changes and improvements: updated Linux kernel to version 2.6.24.2; updated Mozilla Firefox to version 2.0.0.13; updated OpenOffice.org to version 2.4.0; updated a number of other applications, including GParted, GnuCash, VLC and MPlayer plugin; added GSlapt, an alternative program for installing Slackware packages, together with a repository from Slacky.eu; added extra drivers for HP printers; added a desktop icon for switching to Belgian keyboard layout (azerty); replaced Aufs with Unionfs on the live CD; removed LZMA compression. Please visit the project's news page (in Dutch) to read the full release announcement.
SymphonyOne 2008.1
Ryan Quinn has announced the release of SymphonyOne 2008.1, an Ubuntu-based distribution with Mezzo, an alternative desktop environment: "The Symphony OS Project is pleased to announce the release of SymphonyOne 2008.1, our first major release in almost a year. SymphonyOne is an almost 100% rewrite of all the Mezzo desktop code, taking advantage of more features of FVWM to provide a smaller footprint and more stable environment. Based on Ubuntu 7.10, SymphonyOne provides a complete desktop environment and full Ubuntu compatibility on systems with as little as a 200 MHz processor. Some of the key features include: based on Ubuntu 7.10 with all the latest updates; completely rewritten Mezzo Desktop; Web App System (similar to Mozilla Prizm but implemented in Orchestra and fully integrated into the system); removed the old desklet system...." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
sidux 2008-01
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann has announced the release of sidux 2008-01, a desktop distribution based on Debian's unstable branch: "A lot later than planned, but now we have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2008-01 'Nyx'. Nyx concentrates on KDE 3.5.9, the large changes implied by kernel 2.6.24.4, the newly added 'resolvconf' facilities to deal with DNS settings in combination with 'Ceni', and our new build system for sidux. Furthermore, a large number of individual functionality enhancements and bug fixes have been applied to the full package line up. The Linux kernel 2.6.24 has merged 'i386' and 'x86_64' as sub-architectures for the new generic 'x86' architecture. Another major topic has been the dissolution of the former 'sidux' menu into the XDG compliant menu categories." Read the detailed release notes for additional information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- AltimatOS. AltimatOS is a new Linux-based operating system featuring the KDE desktop. The project is currently in the very early stages of development.
- IntuxOS. IntuxOS is a new PCLinuxOS-based live DVD developed by a group of engineering students in New Delhi, India.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 April 2008.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • No subject (by nightflier at 2008-04-14 12:11:13 GMT from United States)
Another development release:
http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=6046.0
2 • Mandriva 2008.1 (by Vincent on 2008-04-14 12:25:09 GMT from France)
Latest Mandriva is great !
3 • About developement following (by hoorider on 2008-04-14 12:34:26 GMT from Spain)
I like to follow developement the same way you explained above, but i always use vm's with virtualbox. Nice weekly issue :)
4 • No subject (by Rafael Brianezi da Silva on 2008-04-14 12:44:46 GMT from Brazil)
I use GoblinX and I cannot see GoblinX Premium announcement in DA. I'm intrigued! GoblinX releases Premium edition without ISO, but with full download as modules and packages, but I cannot see mention of it here, but SymphonyOS charge one dollar for download and it's acceptable?
5 • Madriva, Sidux (by Adam on 2008-04-14 12:53:19 GMT from United States)
I downloaded the live CD/DVDs for the new Mandriva and Sidux releases. Both were impressive, but I'm sticking with Linux Mint for now. I like being able to play DVDs and view flash-based movies on Firefox without any additional configuration. Also, I can apt-get kooka, kaudiocreator, lame, and gtkpod without adding any additional repos. :)
6 • RE 4 I suppose the price of two coffees (in the CEE; in Brazil (by dbrion on 2008-04-14 12:56:59 GMT from France)
it may be equivalent to more, better coffees) is not shocking:
WhiteBoxen, CentOS and RedHat offer exactly the same software , but RedHat offers help, too, if one has something complicated (or if one fears that something complicated might happen;
or if one wishes to give (plenty of) money to a company which (among others) has/had many useful ideas;
or if one wishes to show one is rich)...
OTOH, if one wishes to change from MS Windows to Linux, is it reasonable using a credit card on a MS Windows powered PC ? Cybercafés prohibit it, now....
7 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 13:03:04 GMT from United States)
Could someone give a quick description of what are the current differences between PCLinuxOS and Mandriva? Does PCLinuxOS add many substantial things? Do the repositories both contain about the same number of packages?
8 • 7 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 13:26:03 GMT from United States)
It's not your intention, but you are just going to cause lots of debate, argument, flaming, insulting, and very little thought. They're different, beyond that, it's better to just try both.
There's no way you will get intelligent, adult-style answers here on that topic.
9 • CentOS (by Duhnonymous on 2008-04-14 13:29:50 GMT from United States)
It's not really fair to compare CentOS with Ubuntu or Fedora. Personally, I would choose between CentOS, Debian, or Slackware for a server distro.
10 • #7 (by RC on 2008-04-14 13:45:02 GMT from United States)
It is along the lines of taking the Mustang and creating the Roush or Shelby Mustang. Not so much from a performance standpoint as the Mustangs, but from a customizing and upgrading standpoint. Mint, Mepis and PCLinuxOS all start with an excellent base distro and customize it from a general use to a "customized for beginners" version. I highly recommend any of the three if you are new...although PCLinuxOS is my favorite of the three....any oone of them will be a great choice.
11 • Mandriva is superb (by Muktabh on 2008-04-14 13:48:21 GMT from United States)
Having tried almost every release of mandriva since 10, I have to say the latest release is the best one ever. Compiz seems to finally work, wireless support using ndiswrapper gives me better speed than on windows, and codeina implementation is just wonderful. A few tweaks though required (video doesn't work in gnome if compiz is enabled, flash goofs up etc, but most can be solved using the workarounds in 2008.0 and 2008.1 errata) I definitely recommend everyone to try this release. I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised, they have really cleaned up a lot of mess.
12 • #8 (by RC on 2008-04-14 13:49:07 GMT from United States)
I hope that was an "intelligent, adult-style answer". And I hope there will be more of them.
13 • GParted Live (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 14:01:18 GMT from United States)
I'm glad GParted Live is back. It didn't look good at the end of last year. I use this distro all the time to shrink Windows partitions to make room for Linux.
14 • RE: 9 I would choose between CentOS, Debian, or Slackware for a serv (by woody on 2008-04-14 14:06:21 GMT from Korea, Republic of)
Slackware rocks :) I'm running Slackware 12.0 for my server.
15 • Gentoo Review (by arya on 2008-04-14 14:09:05 GMT from India)
Till now, nobody gave any published review of how Gentoo 2008 is working ...............
16 • Tracking development (by Landon on 2008-04-14 14:09:39 GMT from United States)
I too like to follow the development process of my favorite distributions. I keep a couple of spare partitions available for this purpose. As of late they have been occupied with Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04. Both are nice but I am liking F9 just a bit more personally.
Thanks for another issue!
17 • Nice DWW (by Brunno Gomes on 2008-04-14 14:14:04 GMT from Brazil)
Really good one ! congrats...
18 • gOS Torrent (by Michael on 2008-04-14 14:14:18 GMT from United States)
http://linuxtracker.org/download.php?id=b6d6923eece7f98f465b567340520d68b334f7f4&f=gOS%20Space%202.9.torrent (direct link)
I recommend going with the torrent, as the mirrors are painfully slow.
On another note, while it took alil tweaking on my Gateway MX7515 laptop, Hardy amd64 works nicely.
19 • Fedora 9 artwork (by Ariszló on 2008-04-14 14:35:09 GMT from Hungary)
Ladislav wrote: Neither Debian, nor Fedora have integrated any new artwork into their upcoming products, which perhaps also contributes to the feeling that they are just "point" updates, rather than major new versions.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Waves/Round3Final
wget -N http://download.fedora.redhat.com/.../desktop-backgrounds-basic-9.0.0-1.noarch.rpm
20 • sidux (by texasmike on 2008-04-14 14:35:56 GMT from United States)
sidux just keeps getting better and better! Kudos to all involved.
21 • RE 13 : Ones favorite linux can shrink W portitions, too!!! (by dbrion on 2008-04-14 14:41:15 GMT from France)
"glad GParted Live is back. It didn't look good at the end of last year. I use this distro all the time to shrink Windows partitions to make room for Linux.
"
So does any (AFAIK) disk portitionner shipped with a modern Linux, messeems (I use Mandriva ONEs -a live version of Mandriva-, but
I suppose/bet/hope other favorite linuxen can do it well -and
one is accustomed to their ergonomy, and
it is not that useful changing one's habits when doing an operation which may cause dataloss).
Perhaps Gparted live is interesting because of her starting times, or because of her support for old HW?
22 • So glad to see sidux 2008-01 released (by Brian Masinick on 2008-04-14 14:47:56 GMT from United States)
Debian Sid has been its usual self - great software, great minds, but package formats have been unstable at times. Well, I have been running official versions of sidux 2007-04.5 on two of my systems and a hacked together Debian Etch turned Debian Sid with sidux repositories added in, and all three of them have been great. I was having problems with my DVDrom at the time on one system, which is why I created the Debian hybrid - plus I was curious to see whether or not it could be done - the setup I created is not officially supported (who can blame 'em?) but it actually worked!
Nevertheless, I am really glad to see sidux 2008-01 released. I intend to try it out on that old system (a Dell Dimension 4100 desktop) once I get a new DVD RW drive installed.
For those of you who like cutting edge desktop software that actually works, try sidux. There are a few console based tools that may bother a few people, but veterans will greatly appreciate both the tools and the surprising stability of sidux, especially given its volatile and unstable roots. Give sidux a huge thumbs up!
23 • Really glad to see the positive feedback on Mandriva 2008.1 too! (by Brian Masinick on 2008-04-14 14:54:45 GMT from United States)
SimplyMEPIS and sidux are my two main desktop systems, but I always keep an eye on Mandriva too. Mandrake and MEPIS have been two of the brands that I have supported numerous times, and I supported both MEPIS and Mandriva in 2007. So glad to hear that Mandriva 2008.1 (Spring) has received positive accolades already. I have a 2008 Cooker running, based on a previous Mandriva 2008 installation and it has functioned admirably well.
24 • RE: Mandriva/PCLinux OS differences (by leadsling on 2008-04-14 15:00:58 GMT from United States)
"...current differences between PCLinuxOS and Mandriva?... Do the repositories both contain about the same number of packages?"
Mandriva is a commercial distro along the lines of Suse, Ubuntu, and Red Hat/Fedora. It strives to be very easy to use and configure, and supports a wide range of architectures and hardware. PCLinuxOS is a community based distro. Read the above interview by texstar to get a good feel for it. Mandriva mainly uses urpmi , an rpm based package manager, and PCLOS uses Synaptic, an apt based one. Mandriva's repositories do carry quite a bit more software. I use both and I really like both. Your mileage may vary.
25 • Mandriva 2008.1 on my Laptop (by Ronald L. Gibson on 2008-04-14 15:03:23 GMT from United States)
I previously had 2008.0 on my laptop. The desktop seemed to be a bit slower.
I got Verizon's BroadbandAccess to work using the USB727 modem. The press release says that it does Linux out of the box. It worked setting it up as a Dial-Up modem. The number to dial was #777, the login is number@vzw3g.com, and the password is "vzw". One problem is that it doesn't keep the settings after a reboot. I had already selected it to connect on boot. Other than that it is working fine so far.
26 • New releases (by David Howard on 2008-04-14 15:05:29 GMT from Israel)
In the last 5 days I've downloaded and installed Mandriva One Spring, Sidux and Hardy Beta. all worked well as live CDs, but after install to HDD, both Mandriva and Sidux failed to boot, with Grub "Error 2: Bad file or directory type". Hardy gave no such problem, and booted perfectly. In each case I installed grub to partition and copied the grub incantation to the existing Mint-based grub in the MBR. Weird - after scores of installs I've never seen this problem before. Still hunting for an explanation.
27 • sidux (by zbreaker on 2008-04-14 15:09:00 GMT from United States)
As stated...sidux continues to impress the socks off me....sid make simply wonderfull.....it's now my main distro and from what I've seen will not be relinquishing that position anytime soon.
28 • SymphonyOne (by Wolfram Ravenwolf on 2008-04-14 15:09:49 GMT from Germany)
I'm happy to read about Symphony OS/SymphonyOne's latest release. I already thought the project might be dead, but it's far from it, which is great. Especially nice is that it's using Ubuntu as its base now, something I had hoped for (and suggested) a long time ago.
The $1 donation required for early access is a great idea, too, as long as it's made available free for all at a (not too much) later time. I'd even let users enter a higher amount, if they so choose, personally I'd happily pay $10 if it works as well as it looks. Well, I guess I can always donate some more, if I want.
I'll make sure to keep following its development closely because its new UI paradigm holds a lot of promise - especially when I want to set up a computer for an otherwise "computer-illiterate" user who has no prior experience with the "common" (but not necessarily truly intuitive) UI paradigms.
29 • $1 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 15:22:58 GMT from United States)
This $1 idea doesn't sound bad. I think I'll start voluntarily donating at least $1 to every distro I download. (This kind of makes me sound like a cheapskate, but for the longest time I have donated nothing).
30 • gOS (by Boyan on 2008-04-14 15:43:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
> With a stunningly beautiful interface...
> Now with the new gOS Space dock...
... Which is a total rip-off of Leopard's dock and Stacks, by the way, but we will still claim it's ours.
31 • Testing (by Jesse on 2008-04-14 15:49:00 GMT from Canada)
I'm probably not the norm for this site as I usually don't distro hop much and I don't test out new beta/rc distros. I'm primarily a Fedora user and I like to move from (realtively) stable release to stable release. I know, it's boring, but I like my computers to work most of the time.
32 • 29 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 15:50:23 GMT from United States)
I think small donations, $2-$5, are a good idea for most users. Otherwise most users would not be able to donate anything to most FOSS projects. I'd go without if I had to pay $80 or $250 for each new distro/software update. I use only one version of proprietary OS/software, but many versions of FOSS OS/software.
33 • Wallpapers (by AliasMarlowe on 2008-04-14 16:08:58 GMT from Finland)
I don't follow distributions so avidly, or normally pay much attention to their artwork. However, thanks for reminding me of Ubuntu Warty Warthog's unwarty wallpaper selection. I just had to dig them out from that old CD and add them to Gutsy (but not used as wallpaper, lest others be outraged).
34 • Re #26 Mandriva Error 2 (by glenn on 2008-04-14 16:13:17 GMT from Canada)
Hi. I had the same problem. You are probably running a multi boot system and you placed your Mandriva Grub in your ROOT partition and not the MBR.
Here is a description of the problem .
https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=38054
Here is a work past
Edit the grub that you use to boot your system and instead of the
entry you used for Mandriva replace with the following
title Mandriva
root (hd0,x)
chainloader +1
replace x with the partition number that you installed Mandriva on.
Then you'll be in. Well it worked for me anyway and no problems
Glenn
35 • Linux distro "watch" (by mabovo on 2008-04-14 16:14:22 GMT from Brazil)
Interesting article and smart point of view to discuss on this marvelous and proper site.
I've read many testing alternatively several distros and others testing their prefered ones in two, thre or up to four linux diff. distros.
I like to test and compare and follow their development that the reason I always drop here in "distrowatch"
Currently I am testing Ubuntu Hardy in many different desktop configurations with Intel, ATI, Nvidia, proprietary and open drivers to check its development stage not forget to mention the servers too.
Had started a long time ago with Slack after to "Conectiva" and "Kurumin" I tried SUSE, Fedora and Mandriva but consistently was getting preference in Debian philosophy that is the reason I moved to Gutsy and recently to Hardy.
Keeps the good working.
36 • Testing qu 31: Is testing a norm? Must one follow it? (by dbrion on 2008-04-14 16:15:38 GMT from France)
I never install new distributions, as I am very satisfied (now : Thanks A. Williamson linking to erratas!) with my dual boat laptops (Mandriva 2006 on the GNU/linux side -and XP+RedHats bright idea, Cygwin on the other half-, though linuxen are likely to be better today)
:
why should I break something existing and working?
.
OTOH, I test my favourite applications (R , plus what it depends on : compilers, libraries) and its "competitor" (if competition has aa meaning) Octave as soon as they release, or 2 weeks before:
as OSes are meant to execute applications...
.... and, as I know that laptops are fragile, I qemu /VMplay the most interesting distrs (
Skolelinux, Gobolinux, KateOS plus Mandriva - alphas and betas, because of traffic jams- for linuxen,
plus the xxBSDs, systematically),
just to know what I'll put in a new laptop if they are near their cheapest price or if I break one of them...
37 • Ref#31 Jesse (by John Grubb on 2008-04-14 16:17:31 GMT from United States)
Jesse, you use too much common sense for these DW comments. You seem to be a seasoned Linux user. I put it like this. There are three type's of Lunix users.
(1) Those coming from Windows looking for a better solution
(2) Linux Polygamous - Mounting and skipping to every new distro.
(3) Seasoned veterans
38 • SIDUX (by VernDog on 2008-04-14 16:22:18 GMT from United States)
Give Sidux a try. Just download the "lite" version and if you run into any trouble come to Sidux.com for solutions. They are a great bunch of talented users. All willing to help, and not much if any flamming. In fact that's not allowed.
So go here and read what applies to you and your country
and download Sidux: http://sidux.com/Article303.html
39 • Sidux (by capricornus on 2008-04-14 16:25:01 GMT from Belgium)
I discovered Debian thru MEPIS 7, and have learned to appreciate and like what it offers. Yesterday I tried the live CD Sidux light, and it was a pleasant surprise, I will surely go further.
Meanwhile, of all the PCLOS' es I' ve tried, I loved the Granular the best, it does the best and most complete job on my difficult cpu+MB. Not to be forgotten!
I love to try them all, but keep one question sticked on the ceiling: what OS shall I recommend to my best friend, or install on my wife' s pc...
40 • $1 donations (by Glenn on 2008-04-14 16:25:14 GMT from Canada)
Nice idea but I find that a lot of places accept paypal or credit cards only, neither of which I use, especially on the internet.
I prefer bank transfers, checks, money orders, etc.
I few distros/products I really wanted to send money to but they do not seem to be set up for non card payments.
At least thats my impression.
I'm not sure I like the $1.00 download "donation" for that reason.
I suspect many others are in the same position.
Flames go here (----------------------------)
Glenn
41 • Managing Distros (by chris on 2008-04-14 16:26:30 GMT from United States)
I use Sidux as my controlling distro:
Sidux keeps my computers stable:
I don't see a new face
every time I add an operating system.
I use 'grub' from Sidux:
if I install another operating system
which installs 'grub',
I use the Sidux live CD to
reinstall grub from Sidux
if I can't boot directly to Sidux
from the newly installed operating system.
I say 'operating system' because
I have Windows installed on the computers.
It is easy to add kernel options, cheat codes,
from the Sidux startup screen
- 'irqpoll' is needed most often.
Also Sidux often has new kernels
and updates it's 'menu.lst'
If a new install screws up
the Sidux 'fstab', I can easily
continue the boot with CTRL-D:
Mandriva is nasty about fstab faults:
it aborts the boot.
chris
42 • SymphonyOS (by frnz on 2008-04-14 16:38:29 GMT from Italy)
I went for the 1$ approach and downloaded it. I must say that is a very immature product at the moment. A lot of stuff is missing from the interface, and when finally installed an extra program it didn't even show up in the menu. No easy way to configure wifi, no everythng.
The idea is good, they need to work a lot on it.
43 • $1 donation (by Airdrik on 2008-04-14 17:02:59 GMT from United States)
It looks like (on their website) the requirement to donate the $1 to download the cd is only there until 4/18.
That actually seems like a really good deal for the people who manage the servers because the first couple of days to a week after they release a distro, those servers get hammered pretty hard, so the donation could be seen as an (failed) attempt to keep the server activity down for the first week.
As we can see, $1 isn't nearly enough to do that, and they still had to upgrade/increase the download paths available.
I've been interested in this distro more because of their mezzo desktop. It would be nice to be able to use that on other distros (Ubuntu, PCLOS, etc). I'll probably just wait until after the donation requirement is gone (I'm not that anxious, besides there are so many other distros making releases at this time, a lot of people will be doing a lot of downloading and trying out different things)
44 • 40 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 17:03:09 GMT from United States)
What I've suggested elsewhere, but never found any interest, is for a reputable organization to take larger payments (say $50 or $100) and then allow individuals to specify small amounts that go to various FOSS projects. Those projects would get a check when their total donations reach a threshold.
This could be used to avoid the problems that arise with small projects collecting donations, and would allow donations according to the payment preferences of the donor.
Alas, it appears I am the only one who likes the idea...
45 • Linux XP? (by MacLone on 2008-04-14 17:34:41 GMT from Mexico)
Reading about how this LinuxXP russian guys think about GPL and Open source...they should be banned from distrowatch and banned from Linux communty as well as those distros that don't give a damn about GPL licence.
46 • @45..? (by Ma'moun on 2008-04-14 17:46:48 GMT from Jordan)
huh?
47 • Linux XP (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 17:50:09 GMT from United States)
Does their site only work in Explorer. I click the download or buy now link in Firefox, Opera and Konqueror and nothing happens!
48 • @44 (by Landon on 2008-04-14 17:52:48 GMT from United States)
I like the idea also. It would be nice if there was a 'universal linux' fund that we users could donate to. I donate to individual distributions and some FOSS projects but I believe a 'universal fund' would have a better chance of generating donations through fund raising efforts.
A Linux bake sale maybe?
49 • @48 (by Adam on 2008-04-14 17:56:59 GMT from United States)
TheLinuxFund.org is the big one. They are a non-profit that funds and promotes Linux development. You can even get a Linux Fund Visa Card where every purchase equals a small donation. I have one and the female clerks really dig the "cute little penguin". :)
50 • re:21 GParted (by Anonymous on 2008-04-14 18:07:49 GMT from United States)
You are correct, gparted, the application, runs under any linux. Why I like GParted, the distro, is the convenience. If the distro ever ceased operations, things like SystemRescueCD could be used in its place. Now, lets shrink some more Windows partitions...I'll give 'em 2 MB! :-)
51 • @ 30 (by Xil on 2008-04-14 18:19:19 GMT from United States)
I was about to say the same thing. So original.
52 • Linux XP (by MacLone on 2008-04-14 18:35:13 GMT from Mexico)
@46: Do a google for Linux XP and see for yourself. This smart asses sells what they get for free. This is prohibited by the GPL licence, they don't even give the source code which it must be free too. You want to test it? you have 30 days then you must buy. All those distros which think they can get away with it that easily are dead or out of linux community preferences.
Linspire? who bought a licence? they had to do a freespire. Xandros...xandros who? ..Linux XP...am i missing any other?
...........................................
Paying $1 buck for a linux distro that maybe is the first time you hear about it? ...let me test it first, let me decide, if fulfills my need then i could contribute to the proyect. I must say linux never intended to be a commercial product, you get money from your linux services not from the system itself.
53 • Distro 2008 (by Matthew Kenny on 2008-04-14 18:40:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
They should be some sort of distro of 2008 category cause now Linux has some really good choices for everyone. What with some great graphical user interfaces (my favourite KDE) and some great distros coming out soon. Mandriva though already being out I think has a advantage as its first and its in my opinion very stable and user friendly. And I must admit after trying it out this week I was disappointed it didn't come with KDE 4 but after trying to use it installing it though /contrib it doesn't work well to say the least and is quite unstable. So one point for Mandriva and in my opinion its ahead cause of this.
54 • RE 52 Should it be anti-commercial, to the detriment of devs? (by dbrion on 2008-04-14 18:45:34 GMT from France)
" I must say linux never intended to be a commercial product,"
I agree : but what about the download computers : are they wind and sun powered?
There are many developpers who would be happy if/when some extra fees were compensated... or are lucid enough to know they lose money out of free developping....
This is by no way a reason to take some profit (by distributing without paying/acknowledging other pple's work) of unpayed work (ca 150 years ago, unpayed work was abolished in the States, meseems)
55 • Re: #34 (by David Howard on 2008-04-14 19:07:31 GMT from Israel)
Perfect! Thanks a lot. Googling the grub error got me very little extra info. But the chainloader workaround got the two partitions up. I've been accustomed to keeping a fixed grub in the MBR and simply editing menu.lst by copying the grub stanza from the menu.lst in the root partition of the new install. This HDD currently has 7 OSs on it.
I've always used chainloader+1 to boot Windows or BSD partitions, but this is the first time I've ever used it to boot a Linux partition. Live and learn.
Again, thanks a lot. Cheers.
David
56 • Linux Fund Visa Card (by ac on 2008-04-14 19:29:40 GMT from Hungary)
seems that the Linux Fund Visa Card is only for USA and Canada :-(
57 • Free work? (by MacLone on 2008-04-14 19:34:18 GMT from Mexico)
@54: Free work? noup, you have the right to ask for donations. What I meant is that one should not sell what is free. Some shareware devs want a compensation but some do it for free, it is it's own decicion but Linux is a community effort.
What RedHat does is the best way to contribute to the open source and do business with it. I suppose ubuntu does too...that $10 mill. investment won't last forever.
If you like it ...donate!...humm...but Linux XP wants to sell you a licence for what must be free...well, they should ask for donations not to buy a licence...licence? Linux licence? that was stupid...it remembers me Micro...micro...Microwho?
58 • @52 (by shrej on 2008-04-14 19:52:02 GMT from United States)
You didn't mention RedHat, SLED10, and Mandriva Powerpack. Charging for services / distro is within the GPl with restrictions. ie Redhat releases its code but without the branding.
As far as testing. I usually only test near the release dates. I don't get much joy testing something that doesn't run. I am a SuSE user primarily, but have recently changed my laptop to Mandriva Powerpack 2008.
Shrek
59 • @52 (by john frey on 2008-04-14 20:11:58 GMT from Canada)
"This smart asses sells what they get for free. This is prohibited by the GPL licence"
No! The GPL does not prohibit you from selling your distro! Why do people make these totally outrageous statements as if they know what the hell they are talking about?
For starters GPL stands for Gnu Public License so saying GPL license is redundant. Secondly the Red Hat distro is only available by purchase. That is in no way a criticism of Red Hat it is simply to demonstrate that the quote is seriously wrong.
Read the GPL or read an interpretation of the GPL or ask someone who knows. It's not that it's hard to get informed about the GPL. God love us!
60 • Centos vs Ubuntu (by john frey on 2008-04-14 20:39:04 GMT from Canada)
It seemed the author had already made a decision regarding which distro was best. Obviously if you are more familiar with one system than another the one you are familiar with seems the most user friendly.
The one comment that I agree with heartily is about the Debian (Ubuntu) changes to Apache and httpd.conf. I don't have a clue what the reasons for customization are and I expect they are justified. However for someone familiar with Apache, learning the Debian config files is a bit of a PITA.
A more appropriate comparison would be to the enterprise edition of Suse and (to a lesser extent) Mandriva who have been providing those types of servers for longer than Ubuntu has been around. Debian is not designed to be installed as a server with a desktop and is more geared towards users who prefer to manually edit config files and select the software. While Ubuntu is working at building more "user friendly" system it is still early days.
So while this was a bit of an apples to oranges comparison I think the usefulness in the post is to uncover that the hype around user friendliness of Ubuntu compared to more mature and familiar distros is just that, hype. I think they will eventually get to where they claim to be. Their combination of community building, support, marketing and documentation is pretty much the best.
61 • @49 (by Landon on 2008-04-14 21:06:23 GMT from United States)
Thanks Adam.
62 • Mandriva Spring (by Robzilla on 2008-04-14 21:24:12 GMT from United States)
I tried it just over the weekend and it is even better than the last release which was really great. My initial impressions are very favorable!! The fonts seem more clear and easier to read!
I love when new distro's come out. I will say that Mandriva has been each release for a while now and there new business model of giving the one version for free is really great.
I can say nothing but good things for Mandriva. It may not be perfect but they are among the best in my opinion!!
Robzilla
63 • @58 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-14 21:30:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Indeed, there's nothing illegal about selling GPL code (this is actually explicitly stated in the license itself). But you have to provide the source (or commit to provide the source on request) to anyone to whom you sell it, and they have to have the right to redistribute it for free if they so choose, which makes it inherently difficult to sell pure GPL code as code (as someone else can always give away the same code for free). We (Mandriva) don't really sell free software, as all the free / open source software we package is available for free to anyone from our repositories. The Powerpack is sold on the back of the printed manual, the installation support, and the exclusive commercial applications it contains.
64 • Linux license?! Yes... =( (by Ivanov Dennis on 2008-04-14 22:31:21 GMT from Russian Federation)
About a "linux license". Of course, it sounds like M$hits product. But there are two things to mention:
1) Linux XP is anyway just another try to have a piece of big cake. And to deal with giants you should use same weapons, same methodics etc. Or you will loose. So i think there is no bad side in work of Linux XP program
2) There are sometimes problems with Russian Government. I know one story, when some "valuable" person(s) from gov. come to company and ask "show me your operating system license". Of course, they wanted to see M$hit's license. When system administrator of that company said, that (they have) linux, it is free and there can't be any license, person from gov. said that this company is breaking the law. So company paid a HUGE sum to make government happy about "licensing". Yes, there was a story. To deal with that STUPIDEOUS "valuable" persons from gov-nt, another Russian Linux producing company (asplinux) even created special "license". They distribute ISOs images through web for free, but if you want a CD/DVD copy and/or the "license" paper, than you should buy it (for about 6$). So you receive disk, box, book and the license. Yes, we sometimes have such stupid situations - so we have to deal with them, how we can.
. . .
65 • antiX-M7.2-preview2 now available for testing (by anticapitalista on 2008-04-14 22:47:54 GMT from Greece)
For those that want a lite, fast and full desktop, give antiX-Mepis a try.
See the link in my name for details.
Final should be ready in a couple of weeks.
66 • re #26 installed sidux won't boot (by chris on 2008-04-14 22:50:34 GMT from United States)
Installed sidux won't boot from a ubuntu (or other) grub.
The fix:
Use the sidux version of grub:
Boot the sidux CD or DVD and install grub from there:
1 mount the sidux partition ( there are mt directories in the /media directory )
2 # /usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory= /dev/sda (or /dev/hda, whichever works).
Modify the sidux menu.lst as necessary.
chris
67 • SYS 0.21-r3 update (by werner on 2008-04-14 22:55:02 GMT from France)
I updated today SYS to 0.21-r3. Several updated progs, kernel 2.6.25-rc9. The .iso is already of the mirror of uni/max-planck Goettingen: ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/sys/ the mirrors can now rsync it automatically from the folder sys-linux.yi.org/sys/rsync on my server. It's easy to keep ultra-updated the distro, because this isn't much additional work besides of keeping updated my server what im doing already since long time.
68 • Correction of my previous comment, I used html tokens which erased text (by chris on 2008-04-14 22:56:53 GMT from United States)
Installed sidux won't boot from a ubuntu (or other) grub.
The fix:
Use the sidux version of grub:
Boot the sidux CD or DVD and install grub from there:
1 mount the sidux partition ( there are mt directories in the /media directory )
2 # /usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory={path to mounted sidux partition} /dev/sda (or /dev/hda, whichever works).
Modify the sidux menu.lst as necessary.
chris
69 • Testing new distros (by Thomas A. Rood on 2008-04-14 23:12:51 GMT from United States)
I use a similar system. I have a GX110, 667MHz, 320MB RAM which I use. It is setup to use an external SCSI box (SPARC 611) as the boot drive. I keep each distro on a separate SCSI disk and tray assembly. I shutdown and swap trays each time I want to swap a distro inor out. It has the advantage over your system in that the other distros are entirely removed and therefore the worst possible installer still can't mess up something I been keeping updated for months.
70 • Run of the mill hardware.... (by Landor on 2008-04-14 23:14:41 GMT from Canada)
Linux I've found is great for the majority of hardware, there's always some tweak or fix, or working "out of the box" as people like to say. Which is amazing.
One thing that troubles Linux is when something doesn't work out of the box and the fix is intensive. I have quite a number of systems and all but one linux is a super easy install on. The one being a low-end ASUS 478 socket board with a via chipset. Mainly the Unichrome Pro IGP. This chipest is actaully pretty common and it's truly a hassle to get to work in Linux on any distribution. I've yet to see a live cd set it up and configure it too, and usually X fails due to it being detected and configure for via, yet not working. Easy to fix for the live cd though is just either calling VESA from a cheat, or configuring xorg.conf to use vesa and restarting X.
I have to say Kudos though, for every other system I have Linux works perfectly with the hardware I expect it to.
I brought it up because my test box is now the system with the above chipset. I spun up a couple live cds today and as expected the video was a no-go.
Time to dig out an old nvidia card I guess.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
71 • Symphony OS and your concerns (by Alexander Drummond on 2008-04-15 01:05:23 GMT from United States)
Thank you for all of your kind (and not-so-kind) comments regarding our recent release.
First of all, Symphony OS will only be asking for the voluntary $1 download (which nets us about $.66 cents) for one week, until April 18th. After that, the distribution will be available to freely download. If you cannot afford the one dollar donation fee, we will gladly set up for you to download before that date, provided you have a solid reason to do such.
Secondly, we do not hold back source. All of our added packages will be added once the one week donation period is up. As the code is written in Perl, there is no additional information that needs to be put forth. However, if you have any more questions regarding the source, feel free to send Ryan Quinn, our lead developer, an e-mail and he will gladly work with you to get you the code you need.
As for the fit and polish, this edition is using a new version of mezzo, completely retooled from what we've done in the past. As is to be expected, there will be bugs. However, please post any bugs you find in our forum, so they can be rectified as soon as possible. We have already shipped a derivative of Symphony OS on a commercial product before, so we understand the need for a bug-free and solid operating system.
If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me an e-mail (da.kanishATgmail.com) or drop by our forum.
Thanks for your interest in Symphony OS,
Alexander Drummond
Community Leader,
Symphony OS Project
72 • FBSD vs Linux (by FreeBSD User on 2008-04-15 03:37:49 GMT from United States)
For the life of me I can't understand the Linux community. Why Linux? FreeBSD has over 18,000 ports/programs to chose from. Unlike Linux, FreeBSD is a fully functional O/S complete with Userland - Linux is just a Kernel with a distro built around the kernel.
I distro hop also, but I ALWAYS come back to FBSD as a desktop and server O/S. Personally I can't understand the hype of Linux, basically you're using Debian/RedHat/Slack off shoots. As for Linux, Fedora seems to be the front runner of innovation .i.e. SElinux/pulse audio, the rest just clone these systems and rename them with unstable/testing programs a.la. sidux and sit back and say, I've got the latest greatest unstable packages installed.I'm a guinea pig for Debian etc.
Just my 2-cents.
73 • Sidux, lightning fast but not for newbies (by mikkh on 2008-04-15 03:42:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Distrohopping as I do, I get quite particular about what I consider good - and it takes a lot to impress me after trying so many
Nothing with 'buntu' in the title has overly impressed me, but here's Debian like it should be, and the fastest loading live CD I've ever tried
I didn't bother checking it too much as a live CD, I wanted this on my HD ASAP and here I got another pleasant surprise - it installed in a little over 4 minutes !!
Getting Nvidia 3D drivers and Flash installed was fairly painless, but installing Java required a bit of work as I had to install it manually and faff about with symbolic links.
I was also pleasantly surprised I could actually play an MP3 without having to install anything else.
So now I've corrupted it with all this non-free stuff and I had to have synaptic too, but it's more like a usable system now - and it's still a nice fast OS.
The only bug I've found so far, is the Sidux Control Center not working from the menu, but it's just nice to be excited about a new distro for a change, instead of being bored to death
74 • RE: 68 and 66 • re #26 installed sidux won't boot (by Béranger on 2008-04-15 14:18:10 GMT from Romania)
Is it possible that it's for the same cause as Mandriva's bugs:
https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=37897
https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=38054
75 • Sidux and re 64 comments font fix. (by Napoli Bona on 2008-04-15 14:19:31 GMT from United States)
First a fix for the small fonts, appears to be caused in comment 64 by a "big" tag, I hope.
I have installed the new Sidux 2008.1 lite on a test system, and wow, am I impressed. I then install Gnome as I like gnome and found that it was the latest version 2.2. Very nice. Will have to play with this for a while, but it may replace ubuntu 7.10 as my main desktop.
76 • @ 72 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-15 14:25:28 GMT from Canada)
I installed FreeBSD and the ethernet card was not configured automatically. I had to configure it myself. The sound driver was not configured. I had to do it manually. The USB mouse and keyboard generate a kernel panic because the address is not found. There is no Flash.
In my opinion it is not user friendly. Great as server, terrible as desktop.
77 • update to #70 (by Landor on 2008-04-15 15:03:01 GMT from Canada)
Last night I was to find the first distro to work well with the VIA chipset P4M800 live, with no tweaks "out of the box", Mandriva. I was a fan of Mandrake of old and glad to see that it's continuing to not let me down personally after all these years..lol I don't know if this is great or not, I don't know what's expected of it, but I considered it ok when I got 1065 fps from glxgears.
RE: #76
There's workarounds for everything, including Flash as others have mentioned and is discussed on forums. It's like the above chip I'm talking about, I can get it to work on near any distro, facts are, what length do I have to go to do it though. It's far from terrible as a desktop though, not once it's done.
It's nice to find the video works flawlessly for at least one distro with 0 intervention from me. What would it be like though if any of us never had to do anything, or think creatively? Not just with OS', the world would be a sad place on a whole...
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
78 • Selling Free Software (by Anonymous on 2008-04-15 15:09:01 GMT from United States)
Just wanted to add a comment on the selling of free software.
When Richard Stallman started work on GNU, his primary income source was...
Answer: Selling free software! He would probably be upset if you said you can't sell free software. Happens all the time, and I don't think it bothers him at all. It has to free as in freedom, not free as in no out of pocket expense.
79 • @77 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-15 15:20:12 GMT from Canada)
Landor,
I almost agree with you. The problem is how far can one go in order to fix the things that work out of the box in many other distros? I liked the challenge and I felt smarter when I successfully configured most of the things that did not work. It felt really good. But I have been using Linux and BSD at work and at home for two years now, so I'm not green anymore. The BSD core may be cleaner and faster but the desktop is barely usable out of the box. If you have a USB mouse or keyboard you can't even start the installer. In my opinion this is not acceptable. We are in 21st century.
80 • Re 74 (and 26, 34, 55, 66 and 68) (by David Howard on 2008-04-15 15:53:45 GMT from Israel)
I posted the original #26. The subsequent posts in the thread in fact explained the bug(s) and more importantly, provided a workaround. When installing both Sidux and Mandriva, I installed their versions of grub to the root partition. Had I installed their grub to MBR, the problem would not have arisen. Glenn's #34 referenced the bug and provided a solution. In the end I used his suggested fix of editing my installed Mint grub to chainload the Mandriva/Sidux grub. Problem solved quickly and simply (thanks to Glenn and Chris) after much unsuccessful googling.
Cheers,
David
81 • @ 73 (by texasmike on 2008-04-15 16:22:38 GMT from United States)
Mikkh,
sidux comes with a script named smxi. You can use this script to install Java, Nvidia drivers, packages, etc. Using smxi is the preferred way to dist-upgrade. Do NOT use Synaptic to install packages, dist-upgrade. It is not supported nor recommended. To run smxi, init 3, logon as root and run it. I think you will like it. It has spoiled me for sure! Being able to read is the only requirement.
82 • openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-15 16:26:25 GMT from Italy)
It seem that the openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 release date should be 2008-04-17, not 2008-04-14:
http://sathyasays.com/2008/01/20/opensuse-11-roadmap/
83 • The smartalecs from http://www.linux-xp.com/ (by YBK on 2008-04-15 17:22:46 GMT from Germany)
.
The smartalecs from http://www.linux-xp.com/ are are clearly violating the GPL. The source code to what they sell is nowhere be found. My inquiry into the matter has not been answerded to date.
I think, the FSF should sue them in Canada, or where they pretend to sit.
That you, Ladislav, give them the platform to advertise their GPL-violating practises makes me wonder. Sure, we are all a friendly bunch, but never friendly WRT the scams of mafia - whatever origin the con-men might have.
I wouldn't mind your taking their "Russki Linux" from your fine website. Indeed, I would not mind your doing so _and_ reporting their activities to Mr. Eben Moglen.
We do not need any impostors here - you work far too hard to let yourself be used by crooks, however smartly at firs they might come.
.
84 • ...however smartly at first they might come. (by YBK on 2008-04-15 17:26:39 GMT from Germany)
.
And a few of other typos - unfortunately! I have got a new notebook, with an unknown keyboard, so bear with me, please.
.
85 • @79 (by FreeBSDUser on 2008-04-15 17:40:59 GMT from United States)
I am a FreeBSD user and I use KDE as desktop. I didn't have any problem with installer and I have USB Mouse.
86 • Wow now i saw it (by whocares on 2008-04-15 20:29:11 GMT from Finland)
Yup Ubuntu,SUSE,Mandriva...and so on are commercial distros but PCLinuxOs is in the line like "granddads" debian and slackware. LongLIVE PCLOS!
87 • 83: Linux XP GPL Source (by Texstar on 2008-04-15 20:31:27 GMT from United States)
Here are some folders for Linux XP that has SRPMS.
http://mirror.yandex.ru/linux-xp/2008/
88 • Xandros (by whocares on 2008-04-15 20:43:02 GMT from Finland)
It seems that people are getting more interested with this one>maybe eee?
I think they should now release a new version (quickly) and take the advantage of interest. I measn open circulation ver of course ;)
89 • @81 TexasMike (by mikkh on 2008-04-15 22:22:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Cheers, Yes I did use sxmi to install the Nvidia drivers, but I was already investigating other options because it appeared not to work when I first typed it in.
Then I noticed something had appeared in the terminal window !
90 • @88 Xandros (by mikkh on 2008-04-15 22:45:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes agreed, Xandros 4 OCE is very hard to source, but you can find it on some torrent sites - it should be 885 MB, so avoid the ones that don't match that size. There's no sign of it on their site, just links to the trial version.
And it is the ultimate newbie distro IMO.
I usually have 5 distros installed, one is always Xandros because it's the only bootloader that picks up every other distro - why are all the others so poor in that respect? I suppose running more than one Linux system on the same hard drive is not that popular, but the Xandros bootloader is the multi booters dream
I simply install a new version of Linux - the bootloader must be put on the root partition though, then I boot of the Xandros DVD, press for rescue mode and reinstall the Xandros bootloader back onto the MBR which picks up the new Linux, all the old ones - and Windows of course
Works every time, and saves me having to mess with lilo or grub bootloaders
91 • Ref#81 TexasMike (by Verndog on 2008-04-15 22:58:58 GMT from United States)
LOL! Yes, the ability to read & comprehend.
It's not that difficult. It appears some people are so use
to GUI that when they have to use command type input
they freeze up or get confused. Maybe it reminds them
of the DOS days. Actually you have more freedom at the
terminal command prompt than any specific GUI app.
Sidux got that right.
92 • RE: 79 (by Landor on 2008-04-16 00:35:03 GMT from Canada)
RE: 79
Could the fact that the USB ports were not properly recognized or configured so the keyboard and mouse didn't work?
I've come close a few times to letting my Gentoo install rest for a bit and use FBSD full-time for a few months or longer. I'm also thinking about trying to break my Gentoo install. I doubt it will too, other than maybe something with configuring Xorg due to an upgrade, by upgrading Gentoo. It would be crazy to see how many apps I pull down and compile..lol There'll probably be a couple blocks I'll have to deal with of course, but that's ok too :)
I've done some minor upgrades for security stuff, or for functionality, but for the most part it's going to be something like 9 or 10 months worth of upgrades. I'm curious to see how I'll do when some others have said it's problematic.
Speaking of Gentoo, I'm gonna fanbois it up for a minute...
RE: #91
If I was going to compare sidux on the command line, then I'd say Gentoo got it right actually. There's many reasons I won't use a binary distro and the biggest one is Gentoo has KDE and single apps instead of bundled together. Put that together with the command line and the fact that it's so simple all you have to do is have a basic grade three level of reading to understand how to install it properly and you have a winner for the distro to keep.
To be honest, they make it so easy without even using the easier installer (which someone could have a full Gentoo install in as little as 25 though binary) all you have to do is copy and paste on the command line from the manual for most of it to get it installed.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
93 • @ 92 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-16 02:18:07 GMT from Canada)
I just wanted to install FreeBSD. So i boot from the CD and before I got to install the system I got an error message (kernel panic because an address was not found). I thought FreeBSD didn't like my hard drive but after searching the Internet a very long time I found a case where FreeBSD did not boot because the guy had a USB key plugged in. Then I had a revelation. I replaced the mouse and the keyboard with some old ones that had the round head. After that the installer never complained again.
94 • Gentoo easy...? (by Anon. on 2008-04-16 10:16:28 GMT from Norway)
In #92, Landor wrote: "There's many reasons I won't use a binary distro and the biggest one is Gentoo has KDE and single apps instead of bundled together."
That's an excellent reason! I really wish there was an easy way to uninstall KDE apps I don't use.
"Put that together with the command line and the fact that it's so simple all you have to do is have a basic grade three level of reading to understand how to install it properly and you have a winner for the distro to keep."
Really? As a Linux newbie I have never tried Gentoo because I have thought it to be too complex, not to mention all too _complicated, for non-geeks. You're either exaggerating, or I need to revise my ideas :)
BTW, I find distro hopping to be very educational wrt getting an overview over what approaches/solutions Linux has to offer.
95 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-16 11:46:45 GMT from United States)
"BTW, I find distro hopping to be very educational wrt getting an overview over what approaches/solutions Linux has to offer."
I actually find that I learn a lot about computing in general from distro hopping. I learn a lot of different perspectives on how to approach things, beyond just the assembly of a Linux distribution.
96 • qu 95, 94 : Is distro (s)hopping that educating? (by Anonymous on 2008-04-16 12:47:05 GMT from France)
There are about 1000 dists, and each of them (should, by modern "standards": I do not know why) release twice a year. That would make the repetitive work of downloading, burning and putting in the CD/DVD reader huge ... with little teaching w/r to reading some howtos and good texts about one's favorite ( or interesting ) applications.
Now, lets suppose it teaches you something :
within 20 yrs, this knowledge might be of little use (it seems the same with cars : 25/30yrs ago pple wanting to go from North Africa to West Africa or back all knew how to fix /replace their engine -else, the police stopped them...- but now, modern motors with electronic strategic parts cannot be fixed : the knowledge they acquired became useless, -except with musem cars- and is replaced with the intuitive use of GPS and phones).
97 • #96 - distro hopping (by ray carter at 2008-04-16 14:52:50 GMT from United States)
"There are about 1000 dists" - actually distrowatch show about 360 active distributions.
"and each of them . . .release twice a year" - there are quite a few that don't. Many that have gone more or less inactive, but still maintain a web site, so no 'officially' listed as inactive.
"That would make the repetitive work of downloading, burning and putting in the CD/DVD reader huge" - or do them in virtual machines and install directly from the ISO - no CD/DVD burning or reading.
"within 20 yrs, this knowledge might be of little use" - 20 years? Possibly 20 months, but usually much shorter than that!
98 • Re: 90 bootloader (by Hobbitland on 2008-04-16 15:21:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, when I install an Linux OS I always backup the MBR along with GRUB:
dd if=/dev/hda count=63 of=/boot/virgin_mbr.img
When I install another Linux. I just mount the root disk of the Linux distribution that I want to control the MBR back:
mkdir /tmp/hda5
mount /dev/hda5 /tmp/hda5
dd if=/tmp/hda5/boot/virgin_mbr.img count=63 of=/dev/hda
This way you don't need the installer CD or DVD again.
99 • RE 97 I agree except for the number of distrs (matter of definition) (by dbrion on 2008-04-16 16:01:30 GMT from France)
"1000 dists" - actually distrowatch show about 360 active distributions"
but DW limits himself to distributions for HDisks and supporting x86 family; I do not look systematically for distributions, but I know by randoms readings :
* Elektor (a hobby elektronic magazine) shipped in 2007 the source for an Oszilloscope (commented in German) whose Linux kernel does two things : read and convert to ASCII the outputs of a ADC and give them a date ??? , and sends these ascii strings to a PC with graphical skills...I do not know where one can find the CPU (a DSP, from memory)
* There are at least 3 ARM based kits, one of which is able to run embedded Qt for games
* sometimes, weird distrs ("oriented" towards classical PCs...) advertise here...
*1rst April DW joke lead me to rediscover Knowscience (2005 :as nobody complained, why should she be upgraded?), a Knoppix oriented towards scientifical apps and registered in DW and Knowwmath, a sister distr, oriented towards maths and not registered
but which made a friend of mine happy last week....
"do them in virtual machines and install directly from the ISO - no CD/DVD burning or reading."
This is the only way I found to decide whether I should keep one among these hundreds of distributions...apart from buying Linux Identity Kits who sells nice main distros, with lovely colored CDs and printed howtos...
"
100 • multibooting Linux only (by borgibo on 2008-04-16 19:28:02 GMT from Greece)
re #90. I am a computer newbie and most of my scant knowledge regarding Linux OS, the only one that I have used, comes from trial and error mainly. DW has helped me a lot though.
So that is what I do:
a. First thing is partition the hd with gparted. I give it 3 primary ones and an extended. Then I partition the extended to another 12, called logical, (you can have only 1 extented in each hd). In theory a common hd will allow maximum 15 logical partitions if it is SCSI, SATA and Firewire and 63 if it is (E)IDE. So theoretically you can have 63+3=66 partitions in an IDE hd, which I use, with same number of distros: 66 ! But this does not work with the newer kernels, I think above 2.6.20 which are unable to read above 15 partitions, the extended not counted.
b. As one of the partitions primary or logical is swap, ( about twice the size of RAM ) I am left with 14 which in the extreme case that you do not have any /homes, you can install 14 different distros.( I usually have about 10 in each of my 2 machines ).
c. I install a distro first, i.e. Debian Etch, place Grub in MBR, go as root to /boot > /grub > /menu1st and edit it as follows:
title distro x1 ( this shows in the boot boot menu )
root (hd0,0) ( for grub 0=1 or a, 1=2, etc. i.e hda1 i
in this case )
chainloader +1
title etc for all remaining partitions, up to 12 left.
d. Whenever I install a new distro I place its grub in the root partition and I am done.
This has always worked for me. Rebooting the newly inslalled distro you can chose from the boot menu the partition corresponding to it.
newbie
borgibo
101 • Ref# 100 (by John Grubb on 2008-04-16 23:19:09 GMT from United States)
"d. Whenever I install a new distro I place its grub in the root partition and I am done."
Not sure I understand why you do this? Can't you just leave root partition alone and just update your grub menu.list file?
Thanks, by the way with your take on using grub for multiple installs. A good read.
Of late their hasn't been enough of this. To much my distro is better than yours nonsense.
102 • Ref# 98 - Hobbitland (by John Grubb on 2008-04-16 23:24:59 GMT from United States)
That's a clever trick to save the mbr and then reinstall it back to which distro you what to have grub control. Clever indeed.
I tried some Wizmbr or some name like that. It runs either in Windows or dos, but was worthless. I made several copies and when time came to apply it. It failed meseribly!
103 • Testing, one two boot... (by A Nonymous on 2008-04-17 03:17:41 GMT from Australia)
How about The GAG (Graphical Boot Manager) for testing all those distributions...
http://gag.sourceforge.net/
It installs all that is required into the MBR, and so is independent of the OS(s) you have installed. Just make sure grub (or lilo) go on the root partition when you install each distribution.
104 • Ref#103 GAG (by John Grubb on 2008-04-17 04:10:52 GMT from United States)
That topic came up at the Sid forum. It will not work period. Get use to Grub, its the de facto standard, also start getting use to UUID instead of sdx/hdx. They will all move in that direction.
105 • @104 GAG (by JustInterested at 2008-04-17 04:41:45 GMT from Australia)
The Sid forum? Do you mean the sidux forum or on the Debian sid forum? Can't see why it will not work, period ???!!! The other day I used/installed GAG 4.9 when I installed sidux 2008.1 on a test PC which already had Vista on it. Didn't have any issues and it's still working everyday when I restart it.
What's the issue?
106 • Where's the Ubuntu 8.04 Release Candidate ? (by Coffee on 2008-04-17 10:07:06 GMT from France)
It's already 12 noon here in Europe and still no sign of the Hardy Heron RC.
Hurry up Canonical ... I'm waiting!
:-)
107 • re #101 (by borgibo on 2008-04-17 12:10:12 GMT from Greece)
"Not sure I understand why you do this? Can't you just leave root partition alone and just update your grub menu.list file?"
Sorry but as a newbie or rather computer illiterate I did not know that I could do that.I thought that the specific distro's grub should be included in root partition to enable booting.
I will try that, thanks,
borgibo
108 • 106 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-17 13:28:45 GMT from United States)
It's delayed for a day:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-April/000419.html
109 • Good distros (by Anon. on 2008-04-17 13:31:30 GMT from Norway)
101 • Ref# 100 (by John Grubb on 2008-04-16 23:19:09 GMT from United States): "To much my distro is better than yours nonsense."
Perhaps, and here is some more along the same line.
How do you install e.g. Sidux on a fake raid1 configuration? Sidux seems a good candidate for a permanent installation, but as far as I can see there is no How-to for this procedure.
Archlinux seems to offer much better support for raid configs, but the How-to is not up to date.
And so it goes. Welcome to Linux.
110 • REF# 105 GAG vs Grub (by John Grubb on 2008-04-17 15:46:52 GMT from United States)
Go here to the Sidux forum and read why GAG is bad for business:
http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-9999-highlight-gag.html
111 • Response to Gentoo: OpenRC and baselayout 2 will reach ~arch soon (by TiredOfBeingJerkedAround on 2008-04-17 16:46:05 GMT from United States)
I've been using Gentoo on multiple servers for six years I think the relationship has just about drawn to a close.
I recently installed Linux Mint on a laptop that had everything preconfigured worked perfectly had all the development tools I needed which worked upon download.
There just isn't enough time left in a day to fart around with these changes every so often that rock everything. If you don't make the changes some wise ass shuts off everything and you're dead in the water.
I don't have time for this shit and neither does anyone else! Can't you people leave well enough alone?
I bought into Gentoo six years ago because it was more stable than Sorcerer with almost as much flexibility. Certainly not because I enjoyed reconfiguring everything every so often. Four years ago so a-hole decided to swap everyone to Apache2 overnight. The outcry was horrendous.
If you're around long enough, you'll learn to hate the changes loath the devs for their rudeness and begin to experiment to the point that you will find life outside of Gentoo.
When the updates come through I'll stop updating the system until things start to break then I'm out of here. I need a couple of years between major upgrades and Gentoo has been just too much.
Believe me when I tell you the time invested upgrading to an Ubuntu system will save you time and frustration in the future. You'll be just as current (Gentoo is no longer bleeding edge, just bleeding) and your setup, configuration and maintenance woes will almost be non-existent.
112 • Mandriva (by BlueJayofEvil on 2008-04-18 01:02:18 GMT from United States)
Just tried out the new Mandriva. I love it! They small lag issues I had in the previous two versions seem to have been fixed and everything is running smooth and crisp. I also ordered the Powerpack edition (the slim-case 2 DVD set) and will patiently await its arrival. Keep up the good work Mandriva team!
113 • NewMandriva (by Guy on 2008-04-18 04:07:14 GMT from United States)
This latest Mandriva is sweet! Thanks :)
114 • Dreamlinux (by Dasman on 2008-04-18 12:24:42 GMT from United States)
Dreamlinux seems to be a very stable and attractive distro.
115 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-18 13:21:54 GMT from Canada)
its attractive...............
116 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-18 13:22:29 GMT from Canada)
but like naomi campbell - attractive and highly unstable
117 • ref: 111 "Ubuntu the messiah" (by shrek on 2008-04-18 14:35:14 GMT from United States)
There are often comments that hail the greatness of Ubuntu, but in my experience it is the "kings new cloths" version of linux. It simply crashes on the install of my desktop. Took 5 or 6 attempts with the alternate install to get on my laptop. Then after it was installed, did an update and never ran again.
I have one desktop it worked on, a P4 2.93, 512mb memory and a simple 5200 video card. But when I try anything newer like pci express cards, dual cores,sata drives, etc, it rolls over and dies.
Now, I guess if it could be installed it might be a very fine distro, but there is no way in the world I would recommend it to anyone who is new to linux. I would surely lose a convert by the third time the installer froze.
Shrek
118 • UUID (by jack on 2008-04-18 15:51:54 GMT from Canada)
These seem difficult to read, memorise, retype, or use.
For URLs we have TinyURL
Why cannot we have the same for our drives and partitions?
Thanks
119 • UUID? (by Andy Axnot on 2008-04-18 16:37:24 GMT from United States)
Use UUID to designate hard drives and partitions in personal computers? I don't know if you're serious about that. Isn't that beyond overkill?
Andy
120 • Ref #118 UUID (by John Grubb on 2008-04-18 16:38:53 GMT from United States)
You don't need to read,memorize, retype. Only time to "retype", is maybe in fstab and then you can just copy/paste. You just use it.
I don't know of any other time you have to mess with them. Use "blkid" command to see you unique UUID.
121 • Ref#119-120 (by Just A Guy on 2008-04-18 16:52:55 GMT from United States)
Here's a link that explains more abou UUID with some comments. Seems helpful.
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/short-tip-get-uuid-of-hard-disks/
122 • UUID (by RollMeAway on 2008-04-18 19:25:44 GMT from United States)
Why UUID? What can it do that a simple human readable label can't?
NOTHING!
Why screw up a good working system by over complicating it?
Who benefits from UUID?
Those that would sell licenses. Was this developed my MS?
123 • Novos Linux (by Bsantucci on 2008-04-18 20:52:42 GMT from Brazil)
Esperimentei o Fedora 9 Unbutu 8.4 Mandriva 2008 gostei muito do Fedora e Ubuntu o Mandriva continua sem sal
124 • @123 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-18 20:58:54 GMT from Canada)
Huh?
125 • No subject (by juergen on 2008-04-18 21:40:19 GMT from Germany)
er experimentiert mit fedora und unbootu. soviel hab ich verstanden
126 • 123 (by werner, cayenne on 2008-04-18 21:50:29 GMT from France)
@123 tenta isso, e em portugues e e bom: http://sys.c3sl.ufpr.br/SYS_Linux-0.21-r3.iso
127 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-18 22:55:38 GMT from Canada)
chestia asta pe care o scriu eu acum n-are nici un sens dar asta n-are importanta.
128 • 64 UUID (by Ultra on 2008-04-18 23:47:30 GMT from Canada)
64: Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch...I've got a license for me pet dog Eric and I've got a license for me pet cat Eric.
UUID: Time to have a contest to see if someone can generate duplicate UUIDs!
129 • ref 122 uuid (by Bill Gates on 2008-04-19 00:49:33 GMT from United States)
Get use to it dude. It's the wave of the future. Can't stop it. Yell and scream all you want. It won't cahnge a thing.
130 • OpenSuSE 11.0 Beta 1 released (by Anonymous on 2008-04-19 05:49:13 GMT from Italy)
http://news.opensuse.org/2008/04/18/announcing-opensuse-110-beta-1/
"The openSUSE team is proud to announce the first Beta release of openSUSE 11.0! There are many exciting enhancements and features in the new release. Among these is the incredibly fast package management (libzypp), KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1, a beautiful new installer, installable live CDs and much more."
131 • RE 123 Ongoingly lies from French Guayana (wish it gets independant) (by dbrion on 2008-04-19 09:26:24 GMT from France)
Just download that, whithout knowing what it does and it will, onece burned (no link to the md5 sum) :
* unselect the other linux portitions
* hide W$ softs,n if you have...
but
.....
e bom !!!!!!(it is good)
....
according to the "authors" opinion...
I put quotes around author, as it seems to be wild copying other authors work (and spitting on their sources) and zipping "work".
There are better, seriously documented (natively in Portugues (often " do Brazil") or multilingual) linuxen which are tested, too!!!
132 • Liebe Lehrer, liebe Schueler! (by arno911 on 2008-04-19 10:53:36 GMT from Germany)
sidux e.V. is pleased to present to you today the first version of sidux-seminarix at http://sidux.at/seminarix for download. This is a educational project that merges Seminarix with the base of sidux. Seminarix is aimed at schooling teachers as well as pupils with free and open software to make computer training in schools less costly and more effective. The project was initiated in March 2007 by Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann, who works in the education of students for a teaching credential. First based upon Kubuntu, sidux e.V. started to port it to sidux with the help of teachers and interested users. With sidux as a powerfull free and open Linux distribution the Seminarix project now has a fast, easy to maintain and always current base.
sidux-seminarix is enriched with a comprehensive amount of learning software from the realms of education, culture and science. It has a programstarter icon on the desktop for the educational part that will allow for the Linux newcomer, be they teacher or pupils, to access the software in an easy way and get acustomed with the system. The programstarter also easily enables the user to install further educational software that did not fit on the CD. Weblinks and further information eases up that process.
sidux-seminarix is not only a Live-CD but can also be installed side by side to an existing Windows installtion on a harddisk, or by itself on a harddisk or on other devices like an USB pendrive. For more information on these topics please refer to the sidux manual. Help is also available on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in the sidux channel. An icon on your desktop takes you right there.
Users already working with sidux can easily add seminarix functionality by installing the packages throught the metapackage installer.
personal remark:
something went wrong with the announcement on the distrowatch frontpage. announced 2 days ago there is still no sign of seminarix, but ubuntu has its place. Of course, German pupils and teachers might prefer the "african schoolsystem" edubuntu -g- all better than PISA -lol-
133 • Qu 132 : How is sidux seminaris localized? (by dbrion on 2008-04-19 14:33:09 GMT from France)
Does it support any keymap?
Is it translated into some non German languages? Then, which ones?
What kind of pupils is it intended for?
FYI, Skolelinux had (among others) R and Kicad (electr(on)ic drawing/ PCB sketching) which makes it intended for 7/77 yrs old pupils...
FYI again : The comparison with EdUBU is courageous : the only (I dislike bad experiences) edUBU I tried had Arabic written the yaw gnorw (i.e. th European way) in the starting menu (i.e. at the fist place!) ... which makes an education-oriented "distr" utterly unconsistent and ridiculous...
Just another question : Is your link OK (then, there might be a traffic jam and this explains partly my questions)
134 • @133 (by arno911 on 2008-04-19 14:47:41 GMT from Germany)
hi,
the sidux Seminarix is available in any language supported by Debian Sid.
Its main audience (at this state) is German teachers and pupils. (yes, from 7-77 yo is a good estimation. some apps are for older pupils, some of the stuff is even usable for pre-school education. as a hint, take a look at the KDE educational apps.)
The link is correct and working fine for me.
For more information, join sidux in irc.oftc.net or their forum.
Im sorry that I myself cant contribute the really details as I am not a member of the seminarix team. people involved in the project are:
Roland Engert (RoEn)
Björn Jilg (BlueShadow)
Thomas Kross (captagon)
Hendrik Lehmbruch (hendrikL)
Dinko Sabo (cobra)
Ferdi Thommes (devil)
Fabian Wuertz (xadras)
Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann (emile)
b.r.
arno911
135 • additional info for first time users (by arno911 on 2008-04-19 14:57:18 GMT from Germany)
once the grub appears, hit F4 and choose your language and you should be fine.
for additional cheatcodes the sidux manual applies.
b.r.
arno911
136 • RE 134 (by dbrion on 2008-04-19 15:01:41 GMT from France)
Hi
Very sorry for the question about he link, it works now...
I ll qemulate her tomorrow (to day, my PC unaccelatedly qemulates Gentoo-2008.beta....installation).
Have a nice week end und vielen Dank.
137 • openSUSE 11 Beta 1 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-20 02:13:43 GMT from Italy)
I downloaded and installed it. Simply astonishing!
It is going to be the best distro *ever* and one of the best operating systems available today.
138 • SYS 0.21-r3 , @131, ref 123 (by werner, guiana-caiena on 2008-04-20 02:53:34 GMT from France)
SYS I recently updated to v. 0.21-r3. On this version, all (few) reclamations w.r.t. version 0.21-r2 were corrected. Iself installed it this week on 4 computers without any problem, too. Plenty persons downloaded it, on the 3 mirrors -- only via the site of softpedia about 700. All serious reclamations I verify, but not of trolls.
SYS contains almost 17 GB software pached on a DVD to 4.4 GB. It installs full-automatically within 10 - 40 min (depending on the speed of the computer). All essential packages I self adapt, compile, pack , in difference to many other distros, mainly .deb , which copies packages from others. In the last version is kernel 2.6.25-rc9 , 2.6.25 (definitive) is on my site downloadable. However, because the number of packages is very big, it's impossible Iself compile and update steady-steady all packages, and thus less-important packages I take from other distros. It's normal and even the principle of OpenSource that you always start on the base what others did and than improve it and substitute things by your own ones. Distros like Zenwalk, Goblin, Wolfix take even many essential packages from other distros. My distro has already plenty peatures what others don't have, and principally it's so easy to install and use that many neighbours which didn't/don't understand nothing about Linux, after I installed it them and then gave them an install DVD, and after they seed that it's just put in the DVD and everything installs automatically, they gone to them friends in turn and installed it there, this is here in Guiana-Caiena the form how the distro progresses very good.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/SYS-34168.shtml
139 • SYS (by werner on 2008-04-20 03:02:29 GMT from France)
For example, Zenwalk, Goblin, Wolfix take the kernel directly from Slackware. Kurumin, a big brasilean distro with a forum of millions of persons, take it from Kanotix. etc. I adapt, compile, pack my kernel self for sys, since long time, cf http://monkey.is-a-geek.net/mn.tgz/
140 • Seminarix (by arno911 on 2008-04-20 10:21:48 GMT from Germany)
I just learned that Seminarix is not on the frontpage because its on the dw waiting list for a year as a separate distro now but with no updates on the website :) Chances are good, that this will happen soon.
my apologies to dw
b.r.
arno911
141 • sidux.com is down (by arno911 on 2008-04-20 10:22:50 GMT from Germany)
due to a hardware failure. they are working on it already.
142 • RE 138,139 : la 8ième merveille du monde.... (by dbrion on 2008-04-20 14:06:49 GMT from France)
"My distro has already plenty peatures what others don't have, and principally it's so easy to install "
That any other OSes (even linuxen) are more or less unusable... according to its "authors" ongoing and ongoing tens of unconvincing "posts" , here (the " are meaningful...).
As for the way of rigorous(not empirical) testing, I suppose it wonot be answered (or considered as blasphemtory trolling by His Majesty).......
143 • "94 • Gentoo easy...? (by Anon. " Confirm @92 (by dbrion on 2008-04-20 14:39:32 GMT from France)
I tried it (the beta version of 15 Apr 2008) on an unaccelerated qemulated machine (the ratio of CPU; virtual/real seems 1/15 and my laptop might be a little old and slow => the ratio w/r to a new PC might be 1/30) and ....
the install times were coherent with Landors'post (slightly longer, as I went gardening instead of babysitting this binary install, and I chose Gnome + xfce as desktops).... and the interaction times were negligeable (suppose you must acknoledge the fact that (many) packages are broken, like in old XXXes : tedius (though with the Holy Mouse) interaction times are very long..)
Except for language (and key,qp!) recognition, the install menu was very simple (I tried it only in text mode) and comfortable. At the end of the install ... one can reboot (!!) and one can chose between the desktops one has selected (+ twm, a no RAM consuming window manager I find convenient + nodesktop) As , when qemulating, RAM is a bottleneck, this is a nice feature I noticed in Mandriva 2008.1 (an alpha 2 one, AFAIremember).
My favorite applications (R, etc) could be compiled and did not show, as far as I randomly tried, any defect..
At no moment did i find it difficult ....
144 • SYS (by werner on 2008-04-20 15:16:41 GMT from France)
@142 No, continue to write !! Its good that I have my troll here, which give me often the oportunity to write something about my distro :)
145 • Ref 141 • sidux.com is down (by Verndog on 2008-04-20 15:54:00 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the post. Maybe I should have went to IRC and found out what happened. It's been a couple of days for me that I couldn't get to sidux.com
146 • @145 (by arno911 on 2008-04-20 19:05:10 GMT from Germany)
its been about 18 hours for everybody else. could be a different issue on your side, maybe isp related?
b.r.
arno911
147 • RE 143 (by Landor on 2008-04-20 21:16:21 GMT from Canada)
I'm glad to hear everything went ok. Looking at your other post in reply to mine, I noticed I did leave soemthing out that would increase the install time for some with the binary install, the USE Flags. They can be a bit rough when you're trying it out for the first time. I had to do a couple reinstalls of a few apps to get the functionality I wanted after I first installed Gentoo because I missed a few Flags I need for them at the onset.
I should've also mentioned that the DVD is probably the best if you want a quick and easy binary install since it's loaded with software. All anyone has to do is remember not to do a network install.
I never installed Gnome or Xfce but I'm guessing even Gnome would be a faster install over KDE, but that's only my opinion of course. Currently I'm looking at something lighter as a WM, though I love KDE. I just want a bit more responsiveness and see the bigger DE's and such as a waste of resources, and also as I said before, one would certainly extend the usable lifespan of our systems we have in our home..
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
148 • RE: 147 (by Landor on 2008-04-20 21:18:40 GMT from Canada)
"when you're doing a binary install" should read as "when you're using the installer"
149 • 147 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 01:40:51 GMT from United States)
Do you have a link for the binary install? I hadn't heard that before, so I went to the website, and can't find it anywhere.
Maybe I need better glasses. A binary install of Gentoo would be worth trying *especially* if I can install just Kate without all the rest of the garbage that always comes with.
I use about 12 packages on my work machine, and optimizations would probably give me some non-trivial speed improvements for my number crunching activities.
150 • RE: 149 (by Landor on 2008-04-21 02:11:20 GMT from Canada)
Binary is available vis any of the cds or dvds. Just make sure you do a networkless install and only select GRP packages.
I didn't ntoice a huge amount of KDE software on the beta which I thought I'd run in VBox today. I'm fairly sure Kate wasn't there. I may be wrong though. I didn't see anything for optimizations or use flags in the beta. Also the beta from that I saw only has GRP packages available. Maybe I should've read the release notse :)
The previous full release did have the optimizations to select though.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
151 • 150 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 02:22:46 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the fast response.
It never occurred to me before to look at the networkless installation documents because I have network access. (Of course I was always under the impression that Gentoo required compilation of everything, so I wasn't looking for a binary install.)
My preference would be a binary install of a base system (I doubt there would be much advantage to compiling that anyway). Then I'd run a lightweight window manager and compile my apps on top of it.
Thanks for the info. Maybe if Gentoo would advertise the binary install they'd have more interest.
152 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 02:39:00 GMT from United States)
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153 • RE: 151 (by Landor on 2008-04-21 05:14:49 GMT from Canada)
The base system, even if you do a manual install, is a tarball, which is binary.
But you're right too. Beyond the base system, when using the installer for a binary you get everything else like Grub, Slocate, Cron, etc... as binary, and like you said, a WM or DE which would greatly increase the speed of the install since not many people use 40 or 50 apps daily. The browsers and such are heavy for compile time of course. Some of the bigger ones. But even with a full source install I never once came anywhere near the exaggerated claims of 72+ hours some have made. I wonder if they were trying to put it on a PII 266, installing the whole portage tree, or something along those lines. :)
II even did an alternative install (which of course you can do with any linux basically) on a system through Fedora via the terminal and chroot Even that wasn't as lengthy 72+, nowhere near. (shrugs)
Maybe they should have a pre-installation page (I don't remember what it looks like now, the installtion docs) that spells out the options of installing then leading to the page. I'm not gonna check, so if anyone wants to rip on me that they already do, that's nice..lol
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
154 • Cor 123 (among many others) big theories and principles (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 08:08:20 GMT from France)
"the principle of OpenSource that you always start on the base what others did and than improve it and substitute things by your own ones. "
You
*************** "forgot"
to add :
and make the changes (improvements ?) one made avalaible to anybody.....
Number of Comments: 154
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