 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 249, 21 April 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It's that time of the year when the fans of Ubuntu rejoice over another new release, while those jealous of the project's growing success on the desktop would rather stay away from the Internet. But Ubuntu is not the only option; although delayed by two weeks, Fedora 9 will arrive in a blink of an eye, while openSUSE 11.0, one of the most technologically advanced distribution releases the Linux world has ever seen, is also making huge strides towards the planned release date in June. In other news, Red Hat and OpenSolaris take different views of the alternative desktop, Mark Shuttleworth opens a discussion over the future of Gobuntu and gNewSense, Mandriva introduces a new urpmi feature for adding third-party repositories, and sidux announces the release of sidux-seminarix, a Debian-based distribution for schools. Finally, don't miss our feature story: a first look at Draco GNU/Linux, an unusual distribution that combines Slackware's base system and NetBSD's packages into a powerful desktop Linux solution. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Featured Story |
First look at Draco GNU/Linux 0.3 (by Susan Linton)
 Draco GNU/Linux is an interesting system. Once based on Slackware, it could be described as a Linux system using NetBSD package management. Version 0.3.0 was released last week and I realized I'd never tested it before, so I figured it was about time. Draco is offered in two install images: the 232 MB minimal system and a 596 MB desktop system. I chose the desktop edition.
The Install
As of this release Draco is now independently developed, but its Slackware roots are very much evident starting with the installer. The branding and coloring has changed, but little else. As with Slackware, you'll need to have a partition available before starting the setup. The cfdisk utility is included for partitioning if you need it. The rest is as easy as any other, as the install wizard will walk you through the rest of the procedure, including setting up a user account and root password. You are given a kernel choice of either 2.6.23 or 2.6.16 (that is referred to as 'legacy'), and LILO is offered if you require a bootloader.
After install, Draco boots to a graphical login, but the simplified interface doesn't include an option menu. F1 is supposed to change the session, but Fluxbox wasn't listed. If you would like to shut down, type halt with the root password. To restart, use reboot with root password. Upon log in, a nice Xfce 4 desktop is started. It's not fancy, but it does have a customized Draco red wallpaper and an adequate list of applications in the menu. Xfce 4 was stable, responsive, and performed really well. Fluxbox in Draco looks great, but I suffered a few freezes while doing very little within it.
Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.0 with Xfce 4
(image size: 155kB; screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
Software Management
Some of the applications shipped with Draco include Graveman, Bluefish, AbiWord, and Gnumeric. For graphics work there's Blender, the GIMP, and Inkscape. Audacious and gxine are included for audio and video playback. Some networking applications include Firefox 2.0.0.11, Pidgin, Liferea, Pan, Thunderbird, XChat, and Transmission. As you can see, it has most basic areas covered without overlap.
If you'd like to install some of your other favorite applications, then you will need to become acquainted with the primary feature that distinguishes Draco from other distributions: DracoPKG. DracoPKG is the software package manager. Reminiscent of APT, one issues easily remembered commands at a prompt. For example, one might use dp install <package_name> to install a given application. Some other more commonly used commands might include dp remove <package_name>, dp replace <package_name>, or dp info <package_name>. Unlike APT, DracoPKG can utilize the NetBSD pkgsrc sources to build an application (and its dependencies) if no binary is found. You could probably think of it as a blending of APT and Portage.
I tested DracoPKG on several packages, and I found it worked fairly well. It seems to scan Draco FTP mirrors first looking for a binary, and if found it is downloaded and installed (as well as any dependencies). If no binary package is available, DracoPKG begins scanning NetBSD mirrors looking for source packages. Small packages such as Nano and gedit installed without a hitch, but the more complicated VLC didn't work out so well. VLC and its many dependencies actually did (build and) install, but it would not run. It crashed out as soon as it started. The next boot after the VLC install, my slim.conf file was missing which left me at a terminal login. I'm not sure there's a connection; it's just an observation.
One notable drawback I experienced while using DracoPKG was excessive amounts of time required for it to complete some tasks. After the compile and install of an application, it seems it goes through the list of installed software checking to see if they require rebuilding or updating, and this process is quite time consuming. Updating the pkgsrc data took an extremely long time. All in all, using DracoPKG was fun and problems like I found with VLC would probably be rare, but it does have a little bit of a learning curve for those not familiar with pkgsrc. More information on DracoPKG can be found on Draco's Wiki, while NetBSD provides a package list.
Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.0 with Fluxbox
(full image size: 211KB; screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
System and Hardware Support
Hardware support with Draco is about what you find with Linux today. I tested it on my trusty HP Pavilion laptop, and most basic hardware was enabled automatically at boot. X started at the optimal 1280x800 resolution for my laptop and sound worked out of the box. If connected, the wired Ethernet connection was available at log in. Removable media is detected upon insertion and an icon is placed on the desktop. All of this is just what one would hope.
Advanced laptop features are not supported so well. Modules for CPU Frequency Scaling are available and you can insert the profile into the /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor file. There is no battery monitor available as default, but xfce4-battery-plugin is available for installation. Suspend and hibernate options aren't addressed.
My primary concerns are with CPU Scaling and the wireless Ethernet. Since my wireless chipset isn't supported by Linux, I accept that not all distros will work with it. So, I consider myself fortunate if NdisWrapper will bring the chip to life and I was fortunate in that respect with Draco. But I wasn't quite as lucky with Wpa_supplicant (WiFi Protected Access software).
One nasty little bug encountered was when trying to mount my Windows partition on NTFS. The partition did not mount and the system eventually became unresponsive.
Conclusion
I have to say that Draco GNU/Linux is a very interesting distribution and I had quite a bit of fun testing it this week. Draco does have its community and many satisfied users, but I think it's still a bit rough around the edges. I didn't really have any major issues, but I did have a few small problems. I enjoyed my time with Draco, but it probably won't become my main system on this laptop. However, if you like Slackware or Xfce, you might like Draco.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Fedora 9 delay, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release, openSUSE's OBS update, Red Hat and OpenSolaris desktops, Gobuntu vs gNewSense, sidux-seminarix
 The delayed "Preview" of Fedora 9 was finally released late last week. As mentioned in the announcement, this release is only available for download via BitTorrent, while the upcoming release candidate, scheduled for general availability tomorrow (Tuesday) should be also provided in the form of direct downloads from Fedora's FTP and HTTP mirrors. (Update: the Fedora 9 release schedule has been updated with a "not really public" release candidate 1 on May 1st.) Effectively, the Preview is designed as a final check for the release candidate to make sure that there are no nasty surprises later this week. But as has become customary with Red Hat's community distribution, the final release has slipped once again: "At today's regularly scheduled meeting, the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) decided that Fedora 9 release will be slipping by exactly two weeks. Because of other slippage, coupled with some technical difficulties during this previous week, our Preview release was unexpectedly stalled. The Preview release is where we expect to catch all manner of last-minute bugs, do very heavy QA, and otherwise perform all the final spit-and-polish. There needs to be sufficient time between the PR and the release for testers to find and report issues."
Fedora 9 Preview, released on Friday, comes with updated artwork.
(full image size: 636kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
If you've ever installed Fedora, CentOS or any of the dozens of distributions that use the Anaconda system installer, you might be curious about the current status and future plans of what is probably the most widely-used Linux installation program. Seth Vidal and Will Woods unveil a few secrets in this interview by Red Hat Magazine: "In the future we plan to better integrate pre-upgrade with the Fedora mirror system - the list of available releases will be on the mirrors, and when we do a new release you should be able to get a nice pop-up that says something like 'Fedora 10 has been released [click here to upgrade]'. Someday it should also let you pick your favorite mirror and get upgrades from 3rd party repositories as well. And, of course, we plan to do full i18n support so everyone worldwide can enjoy easier (and saner) upgrades."
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 This week belongs, of course, to Ubuntu. The world's most popular desktop Linux distribution continues to keep the promise it gave us in 2004 - to provide regular stable releases every six months. Ubuntu 8.04, code name "Hardy Heron", is the project's second version that bears the LTS (Long Term Support) badge, and although the CD images won't be available until Thursday, the official press release has already been sent out: "Canonical Ltd. announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS raises the bar on the Linux desktop experience. It includes the latest, stable version of many core products, and in that spirit is the first distribution to bring Mozilla Firefox 3 (Beta 5) to millions of users. The combination of Linux and Firefox make Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a superb web desktop, with fast browsing and greatly reduced exposure to viruses, web forgery and spyware." The announcement also notes other improvements, such as enhanced photo experience, music sharing and download, better video, productivity enhancements with clock and calendar integration, and a slick desktop with the latest GNOME.
For those users who aren't able to download the CD images or those who prefer the official media, Ubuntu's ShipIt service has started accepting requests for Ubuntu 8.04 desktop and server editions. And if you are in a festive mood, don't forget to check out the Hardy Release Parties page in the Ubuntu Wiki for information about Ubuntu release parties in your area.
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 Many people expect the upcoming release of openSUSE, version 11.0, to be possibly the most important breakthrough in terms of desktop Linux usability enhancements and user interface updates. One of the magic tools that helps the developers accomplish their goals is openSUSE Build Service (OBS), an infrastructure for building openSUSE packages. A major update to OBS was announced last week: "The 0.9 release will help grow a world-wide network of build service instances. OBS instances can automatically interact with each other and reuse projects residing on other OBS instances. New installations of OBS are automatically configured to work with the main openSUSE Build Service, which makes it easy to set up new instances and minimize network traffic while keeping data in sync automatically. Developers now have the ability to build all packages from the openSUSE Factory (development) distribution. The 0.9 release also adds the ability to automatically create multilib packages using baselib for processor architectures that support 32- and 64-bit binaries."
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 There is a new package management feature in the recently released Mandriva Linux 2008.1 that will make it much easier to add third-party package repositories to Mandriva Linux. How does it work, you ask? Simple as a pie: "This is maybe one of the most useful features in the new Mandriva 2008.1. Indeed, previously users were using web sites like easyurpmi to add official Mandriva mirrors, but also to add third-party mirrors, such as PLF. While the Mandriva Media manager allowed adding official Mandriva repositories, it was impossible to add any third-party ones. Since Mandriva 2008.1, a new option allows adding mirrors from a list. With this option, urpmi.addmedia will try to add the nearest mirror. The only thing needed is a server giving the list of mirrors in a format compatible with urpmi.addmedia. A new option --mirrorlist, and a new special variable $MIRRORLIST have been introduced."
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 A topic that always stirs heated debates in the Linux community is the suitability of Linux as a desktop operating system. Last week, Red Hat published a press release entitled What's Going On With Red Hat Desktop Systems?, arguing that while it was true that desktop Linux had made huge strides over the last few years, nevertheless it was still very hard to build a sustainable business model around it: "As a public, for-profit company, Red Hat must create products and technologies with an eye on the bottom line, and with desktops this is much harder to do than with servers. The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't provide a practical alternative. Of course, a growing number of technically savvy users and companies have discovered that today's Linux desktop is indeed a practical alternative. Nevertheless, building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities." The press release also touches on the subjects of the Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD) and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) projects.
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 Speaking about alternative operating systems for the desktop, here is an interesting update on Project Indiana, which intends to bring OpenSolaris into much wider use than ever before: "The first steps towards this goal have been realized in the latest developer preview release of OpenSolaris which offers a complete GNOME desktop environment as well as a package system and an installer. The final release will take place in May and the distribution will adhere to a six-month release cycle, just like Fedora and Ubuntu." A new OpenSolaris release every six months? That sounds exciting enough, but a lot will depend on the ability of Sun Microsystems to generate revenue from the project: "The point of creating a distribution, says Murdock, is to promote widespread adoption so that Sun can reach the open source community through massive volume and then reap the rewards later when some of those adopters decide that they want commercial support services and help building out bigger infrastructure."
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 Free software is another topic that often comes up in debates between Linux enthusiasts. Should we adhere strictly to the four software freedoms as advocated by Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation (FSF) or do we compromise occasionally in order to bring more users to Linux? For those who believe in the former there is an interesting development with regards to Gobuntu (Ubuntu's "libre" distribution) and gNewSense (an Ubuntu-based project sponsored by FSF). Mark Shuttleworth: "The 'current and future' thread on this list has got me thinking. Perhaps we really are on the wrong track, that the only way to meet the needs of the gNewSense folks is to have completely different source packages to Ubuntu. If that is the case, then I think it would be better to channel the energy from Gobuntu into gNewSense. ... I'm not sure that the current level of activity in Gobuntu warrants the division of attention it creates, either for folks who are dedicated to Ubuntu primarily, or to folks who are interested in gNewSense. I would like us to have a good relationship with the gNewSense folks, because I do think that their values and views are important and I would like Ubuntu to be a useful starting point for them. But perhaps Gobuntu isn't the best way to achieve that."
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 Finally, sidux e.V has announced the release of sidux-seminarix 2008-01: "sidux e.V. is pleased to present to you with the first version of sidux-seminarix. This is an 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 powerful 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." The sidux-seminarix CD image is available for download from here: sidux-2008-01-nyx-kde-seminarix-i386-200804120045.iso (689MB, MD5).
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| Released Last Week |
BeleniX 0.7
BeleniX 0.7, a live CD based on OpenSolaris, has been released: "We are pleased to announce the availability of BeleniX 0.7. This release marks a considerable change in the evolution of BeleniX. As of 0.7, BeleniX is a source level derivative of Project Indiana. As such, it has most of the Indiana features except for image packaging which is still in the works. Version 0.7 is installable to the hard disk and supports ZFS root. Following are the highlights of the release: re-branded Caiman installer installs BeleniX to ZFS root; the distro constructor is adapted as the BeleniX constructor; fully packaged, all software is delivered via SVR4 packages; includes the full 64-bit kernel and libraries; properly integrated and themed KDE 3.5.8..." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
BeleniX 0.7 with the default Xfce desktop, KDE 3.5 is also available
(full image size: 571kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.19
Guardian Digital has announced the release of EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.19: "Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.19. This release includes many updated packages and bug fixes and some feature enhancements to the EnGarde Secure Linux installer and the SELinux policy. New features include: several enhancements were made to einstall, the EnGarde Secure Linux Installer; the 'Language Selection' screen now works and will complete the installation in the language (and with the associated keymap) you select; network configuration information is also carried over from the live CD configuration, if present, into the installer; several new packages such as Alpine, Netcat, Nikto (2.02), pam_userpass, watchdogd (0.90), and SmokePing; the latest stable versions of MySQL (5.0.51a), Apache (2.2.8), Asterisk (1.4.18), BIND (9.4.2)...." Read the complete release notes for more information.
Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.0
Draco GNU/Linux is a distribution based on Slackware Linux and "pkgsrc", a package management system developed by NetBSD. A new version, 0.3, was released a few days ago: "Introducing Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.0. Featuring kernel 2.6.23 (with optional 2.6.16), glibc 2.6.1, GCC 4.1.2, and OSS 4.0. Selected packages from pkgsrc are available through the repository and on an ISO image. This release also introduces Draco Desktop. Draco Desktop contains the latest stable Draco release, bundled with software from the latest pkgsrc branch. Draco Desktop defaults to Xfce, with Fluxbox as an option." Here is the brief release announcement. Draco GNU/Linux 0.3.0 is available for download either as a minimal base system or a "Desktop" edition, an installation CD with Xfce and Fluxbox window managers.
DragonFly BSD 1.12.2
Matthew Dillon has announced the availability of an updated release of DragonFly BSD, version 1.12.2: "DragonFly BSD 1.12.2 released. A significant number of bug and security fixes have been merged from current to the 1.12 branch over the last two months and we have rolled a new sub-release, 1.12.2, for the benefit of our users. We recommend that 1.12 users upgrade. In addition there is a known issue related to building pkgsrc packages from source which is addressed in the above release notes. Basically the M4 package sources needs to be patched. This applies to HEAD users as well." Changes: "Fix wide symbols (wstring, wint_t etc) support in gcc41 (libstdc++); add libc support for gcc41 stack protector; update bzip2 to 1.0.5...." See the release announcement and release notes for further details and errata issues.
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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
- Turtle Kevux. Turtle Kevux is an operating system based mainly on the Linux kernel and GNU, all compiled with uclibc. It is a fully functional desktop system.
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DistroWatch database summary
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 28 April 2008.
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Fedora 9 (by lalala on 2008-04-21 11:27:49 GMT from United States)
I wonder if the KDE version of Fedora 9 will at least include the official artwork that the Gnome version does, unlike previous versions. Fedora has always treated KDE users like second-class citizens. It will also be interesting to see if Fedora 9 KDE can be installed without also having to install a lot of Gnome dependencies.
2 • linux music video (by Mr. Pink on 2008-04-21 11:35:23 GMT from United States)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gvw73U_VpU
3 • Draco Linux & More (by Ricardo "Fang MoonRupt" on 2008-04-21 11:51:39 GMT from Brazil)
Having used pkgsrc before, I must admit it's a very simple and powerful ports-like package management system, and once you learn how to deal with it you can really expand the number of packages (and options also!) well over the binary ones made available. Draco is a promising mix, but still needs more polishing... Worth keeping an eye on it and try it again in the future :)
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About Red Hat's point of view about desktop Linux, I personally do not agree with their press release, but I currently lack arguments based on facts than experience to go against it. Linux is for sure ready for the desktop, at least for "active" users -- those who control their system and not let the system control them, adapting it to their needs, building a new reality --, but this is not enough for commercial viability.
I just hope this negative point of view doesn't affect Fedora, their most desktop-oriented project which is innovating more and more each release...
4 • #1 (by herman on 2008-04-21 11:52:36 GMT from Netherlands)
[i]I wonder if the KDE version of Fedora 9 will at least include the official artwork that the Gnome version does, unlike previous versions. Fedora has always treated KDE users like second-class citizens. It will also be interesting to see if Fedora 9 KDE can be installed without also having to install a lot of Gnome dependencies.[/i]
Fedora doesn't treat its KDE users like second-class citizens; it's just not the default. After all, there can only be one default, and Fedora happened to choose GTK+ for many GUI configuration tools, but this doesn't mean necessarily that KDE users are treated like second-class citizens.
If you feel this is the case, please don't hesitate to complain because it's not in the interest of the Fedora project and it's contrary to what the project is aiming for actually.
Hell, even self-proclaimed Gnome hater Linus T. has run or is still running Fedora on his workstations. :P
He ain't complaining. :)
The wish to have no Gnome-libraries is, frankly, a bit silly (I mean that in the kindest way possible).
If you want the leanest and meanest system possible, what are you doing with a binary distro like Fedora (or the others) anyway? After all there's more 'overhead' than just libraries of a DE you don't like to use. Slackware might be for you if you wish to stay pure.
(I'm sure it's real fun to be a Qt or Qtk+ purist, but for those few extra megabytes it's a completely irrelevant thing.)
One of the first things I do on a fresh Gnome system is install K3B, Kooka, a few other 'KDE' apps, and even Konqueror these days, and all that has no effect whatsoever on the system other than a few extra MB of storage 'wasted'. Big deal.
5 • Suuusan! (by Béranger on 2008-04-21 11:53:51 GMT from Romania)
> while NetBSD provides a package list.
Better try http://pkgsrc.se/ or http://test.pkgsrc.se/ to look for the available ports.
And http://pkgsrc.se/statistics.php is giving numbers.
> Suspend and hibernate options aren't addressed.
Quoting http://trac.dracolinux.org/trac/wiki/draco-using : "The kernel in Draco supports suspend and hibernation, but does not include an out-of-the-box solution. KDE is known to work with several laptops, GNOME is unknown. A simple script should be enough to get working suspend on your laptop. Known issues: OSS may refuse to shutdown due to activity on the sound card, restart the oss (/etc/rc.d/rc.oss restart) on wakeup."
Most likely network will fail on wakeup too.
6 • Fedora delay (by Jordi on 2008-04-21 11:56:34 GMT from Spain)
Being almost a Fedora fan, this delay is a pity, but i guess it's ok if this way ensures a trouble-free release.
By the way, it is about time that you can upgrade from one version to another within the installed system and using the internet.
It's weird that u have to download the full DVD to upgrade a Fedora system to its latest version instead of doing a simple ubuntu/debian like upgrade.
For me is one of the most annoying missing features in Fedora, and i'm happy this will be done over hopefully for version 10.
7 • Draco (by SpanishFlown on 2008-04-21 11:58:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
Good grief, Ladislav - early liquid lunch? ''fun'? 'enjoy'? This one is truly terrible - on a par with the grisly GoblinX and one or two others. Poor Patrick doesn't deserve this. As an educationalist, I'd normally want to encourage young guys to do their best. However, I can always make an exception. Bring back the thumbscrews and garotte. The sooner these fellas leave the scene the better.
8 • Draco (by SF on 2008-04-21 11:59:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Apologies, Ladislav - Susan was the perpetrator.
9 • re: #4 (by lalala on 2008-04-21 11:59:44 GMT from United States)
You need to learn to read, then go back and see my post again. I never said I didn't want any Gnome libraries, I was wondering if Fedora KDE could be installed without installing half of Gnome. I fully understand some Gnome files will be installed, I just don't want Gnome files installed that should have nothing to do with what I have installed on my system.
10 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 12:06:25 GMT from United States)
"The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't provide a practical alternative."
This is a statement from someone with a business background? It makes no sense. You can't enter a market if potential users don't know you have a good offering?
Better tell Apple. Nobody knew anything about the iPod in 2000, so why did they waste time developing the iPod? What they should have said is that they crunched the numbers and didn't think they could make it work. They don't need to write all this other FUD that supports Microsoft.
I also think they are making a mistake. They are letting Ubuntu be the first distro for everyone starting out in Linux. In the next five years, do you think that will have no impact on enterprise sales?
----
Thanks for the interesting review of Draco. I get plenty of news and reviews about the big distros, and test them out myself. It's reviews of small projects like this that I've never heard of that I enjoy.
11 • Draco (by olear on 2008-04-21 12:08:37 GMT from Norway)
Thanks for the review of Draco, things still need some polishing, but give it time.
Regarding suspend. It's works perfectly fine in KDE (also XFCE and Fluxbox with some tweaking), tested with several laptops using Intel and nVidia. And the network does not fail on wakeup, Béranger.
Unfortunate some packages in pkgsrc are broken on Linux, and Draco reflects that, hopefully the Linux support will improve.
olear
Draco GNU/Linux
12 • Draco, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Gnome & KDE (by drizake on 2008-04-21 12:15:53 GMT from United States)
I downloaded Draco the day the announcement was released. Major props on the download speed, especially from overseas. I didn't like the lack of live-CD functionality and a graphical installer. Those two things are a must on new distros IMO.
Don't try upgrading Linux Mint Darnya to Ubuntu 8.04! Even if you use apt to install ubuntu-desktop beforehand, it still doesn't work. Believe me, I tried it. :)
Speaking of Ubuntu 8.04: I don't recommend installing KDE4. I had a bad experience and ended up reinstalling Ubuntu from the CD over again. Of course, it's still not as bad as having to re-install Windows. Remember all the rebooting, driver CDs, and endless downloading of updates that went along with re-installing Windows? It used to be a weekend long task. I can install and setup a Linux distro in about an hour and I'm ready to go. :)
I'm with herman on the Gnome/KDE discussion. I prefer Gnome, but I ALWAYS install kooka and K3B.
13 • RE: 1 • Draco (by olear (by Béranger on 2008-04-21 12:36:40 GMT from Romania)
> And the network does not fail on wakeup, Béranger.
I agree that this might be the case, but still this depends on what NIC adapter is involved and what kernel are you using.
14 • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (by Joaquim Gil on 2008-04-21 12:48:36 GMT from Portugal)
Barely can wait by the final release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS!!!
15 • Re: Fedora 9 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 12:54:14 GMT from Germany)
Don't ask me why but the Fedora KDE4 CD includes the gnome-panel package as dependency.
16 • @1: (by jef on 2008-04-21 12:59:32 GMT from India)
I don't know which world you are in. Fedora has come with same default wallpaper on both GNOME and KDE for all the recent releases.
17 • #5 Beranger, #7 Fun (by Susan on 2008-04-21 13:03:18 GMT from United States)
I saw that, but "a simple script?"
I meant it wasn't addressed in the interface. I've only seen one distro that cut support out of the kernel that I can recall, so far as a review of the system - it's not addressed.
#7, It was fun! But then again, I run Gentoo - so perhaps I'm a masochist. :D
18 • re: 16 (by lalala on 2008-04-21 13:05:44 GMT from United States)
No it hasn't.
19 • fedora 9 (by shrek on 2008-04-21 13:06:36 GMT from United States)
The fedora preview worked SWEET! Installed and ran perfectly on the HP Laptop. Can't wait for full distro!!
Shrek
20 • SYS 0.21-r4 (by werner, guiana-caiena on 2008-04-21 13:20:55 GMT from France)
I released this morning SYS 0.21-r4. Many updates and some new progs. Kernel 2.6.25, wine 0.9.60, new radeon-xorg driver, etc etc The install .iso is already on the mirror GWDG/Uni/MPI Goettingen: ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/sys/
21 • #9 lalala (by herman on 2008-04-21 13:21:57 GMT from Netherlands)
>> You need to learn to read, then go back and see my post again.
All right, learnt to read, reveni, revidi. :)
>> I never said I didn't want any Gnome libraries, I was wondering if Fedora KDE could be installed without installing half of Gnome.
Sorry for that, last thing I wanted to do is chase off potential Fedora users with pedantic arrogance. :) But I smelled that "I want only Qt libs" folk, a type of purists I don't understand.
Well obviously package management will try to do its best but at times it might be less tight than possible.
I've nothing but good experiences with the way the packagers handle that for Fedora these days.
>> I fully understand some Gnome files will be installed, I just don't want Gnome files installed that should have nothing to do with what I have installed on my system.
They won't be installed; Anaconda offers you lots of options when installing so you're on it when installing the system.
22 • #15 gnome-panel in Fedora KDE (by herman on 2008-04-21 13:28:11 GMT from Netherlands)
>> Don't ask me why but the Fedora KDE4 CD includes the gnome-panel package as dependency.
I haven't tested the KDE version yet, but it might be the login screen which has a kind of bar for picking languages to log in with, sessions, I think even input methods (?) and stuff like that. Like many other system GUI tools they use GTK+ for that.
That might just be it, but go ahead and toast me if it's complete nonsense. :)
23 • Fedora/Ubuntu (by davemc on 2008-04-21 13:33:53 GMT from United States)
Looking forward to both releases, although much moreso for Ubuntu. Fedora truly is coming along nicely, although it still has some ways to catch up to Ubuntu's ease of use. Fedora 9's published road map really does have some enticing features included. I do hope that Hardy releases as bug free as possible because Gutsy release was rather messy.
24 • Re: 10 (by Anon on 2008-04-21 13:35:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
[blockquote]"The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today's Linux desktops simply don't provide a practical alternative."
This is a statement from someone with a business background? It makes no sense. You can't enter a market if potential users don't know you have a good offering?[/blockquote]
I have a business background and I believe that the article makes an accurate state of affairs with regard to the desktop market. It appears that you fail to understand a monopoly market, in particular this monopoly market. For a public company to try and penetrate the Microsoft controlled desktop market will be too risky as far as the investors are concerned.
25 • fedora vs KDE (by Hersy on 2008-04-21 13:36:08 GMT from Turkey)
I have used fedora 8 for 6 months, I used KDE as my default desktop environment, but I had no problems with it. But it would be better if the configuration tools (based on gnome) would be based on Qt or being ported to Qt, because their looking is not very good when using kde.
26 • RE: #1 Fedora 9 By lalala (by Rip_Van_Winkle on 2008-04-21 13:50:14 GMT from United States)
hey if you dont like Fedora's build of KDE you can always roll your own, they dont call it Open Source for nothing...
27 • No subject (by herman on 2008-04-21 14:04:59 GMT from Netherlands)
>> Fedora truly is coming along nicely, although it still has some ways to catch up to Ubuntu's ease of use.
28 • #23 (by herman on 2008-04-21 14:12:11 GMT from Netherlands)
No idea what went wrong with post 27, but what I was trying to say..
>> Fedora truly is coming along nicely, although it still has some ways to catch up to Ubuntu's ease of use.
Some of that won't happen because Fedora is never going to make it easy to install, for instance, binary graphics blobs.
I haven't used Ubuntu for years, I might check this one out again. But I think that Ubuntu and Fedora have each their own easy GUI tools for various things, where in one area on one distro you might have to do things manually in the command line, in the other you can use some wizard, vice versa.
Both are cool, I'm just sticking with one because I get tired of distro hopping easily. So for me it's Fedora+CentOS right into the next decade. :P
29 • Mandriva Rocks! (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 14:17:44 GMT from United States)
I used to run linux on my old desktop, and have used all of the major distros. I was quite a distro hopper. But when I replaced my old desktop with a laptop in November I didn't jump to install linux. I tried a few flavors on live cds (Ubuntu, Zenwalk, Mepis, Suse, Fedora), but none of them could recognize my wireless, and some of them couldn't even load the nvidia driver and I wouldn't have a display.
I was just too busy to want to learn what driver I needed for my wireless card, and how to configure it to just work. So I lived without linux on my pc.
But I tried the new Mandriva release and it works! Wireless just works, after a simple edit of xorg.conf I have the right resolution for my monitor and it for once set up getting into the repos automatically. So the first time since I got my laptop I installed linux on it with confidence!
After months of running Vista only, the speed and stability of Mandriva is amazing. I'm a happy camper, and glad to be back in the world of linux.
30 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 14:27:12 GMT from United States)
"For a public company to try and penetrate the Microsoft controlled desktop market will be too risky as far as the investors are concerned."
Then that is what they should have said. Go back to 2003 when Red Hat's CEO said Windows is a better choice for the desktop.
Red Hat went out of their way to say the Linux desktop is hopeless. Take the next sentence, "Of course, a growing number of technically savvy users and companies have discovered that today's Linux desktop is indeed a practical alternative."
In other words, if you're comfortable with compiling all of your software and have lots of hours to spend in your mom's basement you might be able to figure out how to run Linux. If you enjoy the learning experience of reverse engineering your own hardware drivers, you will just love Linux.
No. What they should have said is, "Linux is a suitable alternative on the desktop. It's not more difficult than running Windows, but the learning curve will prevent it from having mass appeal in the coming years. We do not see that we will be able to profitably expand our business to the desktop market." You don't need all this garbage about technical users and Linux desktops not being viewed as a viable alternative. There's no possible way a person unfamiliar with Linux could interpret Red Hat's statement as anything other than, "it's not ready for prime time - use Windows".
31 • kde on fedora (by Bobby Hunter on 2008-04-21 14:28:11 GMT from United States)
I've never understood why every distro needs to have every DE. That's just silly and a waste of dev time. If you like KDE then choose one of the many excellent KDE distros (slackware, mandriva, mepis, sidux). And if you like gnome choose a gnome distro (fedora, debian, ubuntu).
32 • Red Hat and Desktop Linux (by Justin Whitaker on 2008-04-21 14:31:45 GMT from United States)
The press release/article (who can tell which is which these days) from Red Hat is a little disingenous, don't you think?
Mandriva makes a decent showing in terms of revenue on desktop Linux products and service.
SUSE doesn't sell the boxed set out of altruism, and there appears to be enough desktop sales to warrant keeping the boxed version and Novell Linux in their product line.
So there are three publicly traded Linux companies (if we can call Novell that now), and the only one that does not have a retail OS box available is Red Hat.
Now, I bought the boxed RH Linux sets way back when, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the boxed sets were still available at Borders, and you took your life in your hands when installing Linux.
I always found RH to be buggy, so perhaps it was better for for them to concentrate on the server/applications space and leave the desktop to the community.
There is nothing wrong with sticking with what you are good at, but it's a bit fallacious to say that "the desktop is hard." Others are doing it. So could they. They choose not to, but they should be a good Open Source citizen and not denigrate the competition.
33 • Preinstalled Linux: Lenovo looks better than Dell (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 14:42:00 GMT from United States)
Lenovo is offering preinstalled Linux on their top of the line products (T61, R61):
http://shop.lenovo.com/.../All/US/Landing_pages/Info/08/Linux
Dell only offers Linux on older hardware. Also Lenovo’s distro of choice is SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Ubuntu is a good distro but is really for the home enthusiast, SLED is targeted for the corporate user. But I would rather have SLED on my home PC since I work with SLES professionally.
34 • RE 31 : Multiple Desktops.. (by dbrion on 2008-04-21 14:48:04 GMT from France)
"I've never understood why every distro needs to have every DE. That's just silly and a waste of dev time."
Well, if supermarkets had only one type of clothes (say : red ones, blue ones) it would be a waste of user time, going from supermarket to supermarket to get clad .. specially if one wants a Scottish kilt....
I found rather nice from Mandriva Spring (alpha2) and Gentoo to give the choice btw. different destops, from the beginning (if one wants to change, launch applications very RAM greedy, one can be very happy to restart with Icewm (say); else, one can be very comfortable with Gnome/KDE/Xfce for current use (did not see any noticeable change in RAM greediness with those 3 DE : but I could very fastly and superficially test it on the same distr....)...
35 • C'MON! (by Whiney McGee on 2008-04-21 14:58:47 GMT from United States)
Always a pleasure to read DW on Monday mornings... I never post, but I wanted to this week to express my DEEP sadness that after more than two years with my iMac, there still does not appear to be a linux distro out there that is geared toward intel-based macs. I know, the adventurous can cobble together something that boots - but that's not really the same is it? WTF? I thought Fedora - ages ago - put out a press release saying they would be supporting them... mactel-linux.org appears to be dead, no updates in over a year - is there some resource anyone knows of that has info I am missing?
36 • Wireless Mint/Ubuntu (by Jim Welch on 2008-04-21 15:39:06 GMT from United States)
I tried the 8.04 CD in live mode. Still no joy for my wireless Atheros AR5007EG in my Compaq F750us laptop. I don't know if it would work if I installed over Mint. According to MADwifi, I can patch Mint. Vista was too many problems, so I tried XP, no drives for much. Now I am trying Linux (user for 10 years). Also, no VGA output for projector.
It it so hard to find out what will and what will not work on a new release, if you want details and not Press Releases. LWM sure helps though.
37 • sidux (by texasmike on 2008-04-21 15:57:06 GMT from United States)
Just curious. Any recent sidux converts here? Or any that tried sidux, but had issues and moved along? Lets hear about your experience.
Mine for one has been great! It offers Debian's most up to date packages, it is the fastest distro I have seen to date and the support forum is outstanding. There is even a script (smxi) that is run as root in runlevel 3 that takes care of installing / uninstalling kernel's, video drivers, some application software, etc...
I hope to hear from you!
38 • #36 (by herman on 2008-04-21 15:59:04 GMT from Netherlands)
>> "It it so hard to find out what will and what will not work on a new release, ..."
It's not hard.
Intel graphics+Intel chipset+Intel wireless works out of the box.
(They may call it Centrino, but with Centrino you might find nVidia graphics in it too.)
Especially if it's about half a year, one year on the market or so, it works great.
I'm no Intel fan, but there you have it.
Nobody should bother running Linux if (s)he's not prepared to check what the well-supported hardware is.
Mac OS X doesn't run on your toaster, stopwatch or UltraSPARC either.
39 • Suse 11 Beta installer (by eodchop on 2008-04-21 16:05:05 GMT from United States)
Tried this in VMware and burned the iso to a disk. Boots fine but the installer is crap. Tried in VMware and on a pc. Looks nice but still is majorly buggy.
40 • RE: 35 • C'MON! (by Psile on 2008-04-21 16:14:49 GMT from United States)
I've have great success with installing Ubuntu 7.10 on my MacBook. The only device I could not get working was the iSight Camera. I did not a single problem with booting, mounting, or installing software, or with my wireless.
Throw the CD in, Hold "C" at boot, and install away!!
41 • Ref #37 SIDUX (by Verndog on 2008-04-21 16:19:14 GMT from United States)
Hi texasmike, I'm still with it. No not a new convert but a convinced one.
I see the sidux.com is back in service. I had to go to their irc channel for info. That's always scary for me. Real time and all.
I like your enthusiasm texasmike ! Very contagious.
42 • sidux e.V. is non-commercial (by arno911 on 2008-04-21 16:20:45 GMT from Germany)
thats what the e.V. is for
otherwise it'd be Ltd. :)
43 • sidux (by nightfly086 on 2008-04-21 16:40:39 GMT from Spain)
I have installed and used, over the years, Mandrake 8.2, Knoppix 3.1, Kanotix 2005, Kubuntu 6.10, PCLinuxOS 2007and Mandriva 2007, plus well over a dozen LiveCD's (recovery, kiosk uses, etc), but now I've been using Sidux for well over 6 months. It's fast, it's quite stable, there are enough configuration tools (albeit some are text mode) and updating is a breeze.
Is it perfect? No, the biggest drawback I see, at least on my system, is the font rendering (something it may have inherited from it's Knoppix/Kanotix ancestary), though it has improved somewhat. Maybe not visualy as polished as the Canonical offspring, but impressive in it's homegrown tools, extensive documentation and hardware support.
Do keep up the good work !
44 • Sidux (by Sugger on 2008-04-21 17:03:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes, texasmike, I've used the 32 & 64 bit versions and quite like them. The smxi script is not for novices and I've never quite been sure I've installed the right modules. The Gates-Bush-Dell axis and their acolytes are a curse on the planet with their monopolist stupidity - the rest of the world is equally keen to see them off. In Europe, we are terrified that their big bucks corruption will pollute our legal system, too. For the moment it is still not possible to patent an idea or concept over here, only a tangible device.
Haven't tried the Sidux forum yet, but was warned about the brusque style of PCLinuxOS.
45 • @ Sugger (by texasmike on 2008-04-21 17:16:42 GMT from United States)
Hi Sugger,
Believe me; the sidux folks are nothing like the pclos people. I know first hand and dropped them like a turd long ago. Give the forum a shot sometime. You decide.
46 • Re: 37 - sidux (by Kaufhaus Schneider on 2008-04-21 18:04:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
> Any recent sidux converts here? Or any that tried sidux, but had issues
> and moved along? Lets hear about your experience.
Intrigued by the claim that sidux works the "miracle of turning unstable into a stable and reliable operating system for every-day usage" I searched Debian's bug tracking system only to discover (http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/) that Sid -- upon whose repositories sidux users overwhelmingly draw for updates -- has by far the greater number of "release critical" bugs, followed by Etch (the "Stable" release) followed by Lenny (i.e. Testing).
Objectively speaking, then, if you're attracted to sidux for its up-to-date packages, but are also concerned with stability and security, you're better off installing Testing/Lenny...
47 • Fedora (by klhrevolution on 2008-04-21 18:18:43 GMT from United States)
Fedora is consistent with it's artwork, this wallpaper which is in the screenshot above is very nice. Anybody got a link ??
48 • @18 (by jef on 2008-04-21 18:23:38 GMT from India)
Comment deleted (insulting).
49 • Mandriva Spring 2008.1 Experience (by steve on 2008-04-21 18:25:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi,
..just so the community knows this. Used the One live CD on a Fujitsu Siemens laptop - everything worked, though had to restart X to use the Wifi (which worked as advertised, the first time I've had a painless follow-your-nose WiFi up on a live CD - I'm no expert in this).
Installed the live CD on an old '98 Asus BX6r2 box which somehow never shuts down cleanly (BIOS options clash make APM / ACPI fight). All went as advertised, now shuts down OK, DL all software, thrashed it with hours of making backups without twitch. This rig has a PCI / SATA card with a large disk; everything works smoothly. Even with a 700MHz PIII.
I can't find a problem; this release does everything I've thrown at it. Gets widescreen right, easy to use, does what it says on the box for 5 days now. Nice.
Sidux, VL and slackware families are good (but don't shutdown cleanly on this rig).
Think that's it...
Steve
50 • RE: 49 (by Landor on 2008-04-21 18:40:32 GMT from Canada)
I have to say I have been impressed with the recent release of Mandriva as well.
I did find one problem though, which the fix was easy for. I installed Mandriva on the test box and it's the only system in my home with windows on it. When the installation was finished up, there was no entry in Grub for Windows. Not a big deal, but I clearly remember the last release of Mandriva which I tried to install on my buddy's computer detecting and configuring a menu entry for Windows. No big deal, and the only complaint I could find for it.
It even detected my monitor which is an old Dell Proscan, 20 inch for that system. Only one other distro detected it and configured it properly before as well, Kubuntu. But Kubuntu didn't get the Unichrome chipset configured where as I said last week I think, Mandriva did.
For the people cranked over the artwork for Fedora, why even bend to prove something you already know and get worked up about it? For me the sky is blue, maybe for others it's Salmon, what does it matter in the course of our day?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
51 • ubuntu 8.04 (by Mike on 2008-04-21 18:58:10 GMT from United States)
Joaquim Gil
Just download the RC now and do the daily updates and you'll have 8.04 LTS. I've been running it now since Alpha 5 and doing the updates daily and every thing works great and lots faster.
Mike
52 • @48 (by lalala on 2008-04-21 19:27:44 GMT from United States)
I only see Gnome screenshots, I'm talking about KDE. Who's the idiot now?
I know when i installed the last few Fedora's (DVD or live cd, can't remember which one) I didn't have the official wallpaper. In Fedora 8, I didn't even have the new color theme. No matter what you say, or what names you call me, I am still right. Fedora w/ KDE is a joke.
If Fedora would take some lessons from openSUSE or Arch's KDEmod, then Fedora w/ KDE would be a great distro.
53 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 19:30:58 GMT from Canada)
lalala, why bother?
why don't you give Mandriva a try?
54 • @21-Herman (by lalala on 2008-04-21 19:34:12 GMT from United States)
When I installed Fedora 8, I unchecked a lot of useless Gnome files in Anaconda, guess what, it still got installed.
rhythmbox--unchecked it, got installed anyway
totem--unchecked it, got installed anyway
totem-mozplugger(whatever it's called)--unchecked it, got installed anyway.
You can see where I'm going with this. Even though I checked KDE and not Gnome in the install, Fedora still wanted to install all these Gnome files that just shouldn't need to be installed.
55 • #37 sidux (by xet7 on 2008-04-21 19:58:34 GMT from Finland)
I have Fujitsu Siemens Amilo AMD Sempron laptop. Parsix works fine on this laptop, tested new test-version and looks good, didn't yet got VirtualBox working, maybe because of kernel settings in that version. mplayer mozilla plugin and w32codecs worked great with windows media and apple.com/trailers and fullscreen.
I tried Ubuntu 8.04 beta, which first was fine, but then updated to kernel version that had frequent one second freezes, and had some kernel bug that filled /var/logs with many GB:s of log files so that my harddrive became full. Then there was search program running on background, and evolution data server with dependencies to ubuntu-desktop, both taking CPU to 100% utilisation.
I tried sidux, but it too had frequent one second freezes, but didn't fill the logs like Ubuntu.
Now I'm on Fedora 9 Beta that is really the most stable:
1) VirtualBox is working, but USB devices that are on right click menus are disabled.
2) cups-pdf didn't work correctly but logged access errors, so I had to disable SELinux to get it enabled.
3) When I tried to use windows media with Firefox, totem plugin prompted to buy codecs from Fluendo. Sure, why not, so I bought them and tried them, but they didn't work right, even with SELinux disabled. (Windows Media did work right with Parsix and Ubuntu with Mplayer mozilla plugin and w32codecs.) I have tried w32codecs rpm that I found with google and Fedora's mplayer plugin (gecko-mediaplayer) and plugin from Mplayer webpage, and still the news page http://www.mtv3.fi/uutiset/ doesn't start to show news properly.
4) New gdm, so there's no possibility to autologin like in Ubuntu and Parsix that haven't updated to newest gdm yet.
5) My pcmcia esata card and external 0.5GB drive works great, more stable than in other linux
6) Leo literate editor: hmm, where's python-tk package? I installed one in scientific python but it gives errors with leo.
And maybe some other little bugs, but overall Fedora 9 beta works very nicely. Haven't searched yet fixes for the problems I mentioned, if someone knows fixes to them it would be cool :)
56 • @1 (by MaMa on 2008-04-21 20:01:01 GMT from Jordan)
+9999999999999999999999999999999
------
Take it easy please brother, They're just a fanatic ignorant people!!
Indeed, Fedora with KDE is a JOKE.
57 • 54 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 20:33:53 GMT from United States)
Sounds like you need another distro, such as Mepis or Arch or PCLinuxOS or Sidux or Gentoo. I'm sure you can find what you want in one of them.
58 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 20:49:48 GMT from Canada)
or Mandriva
59 • sidux @37 (by jrick on 2008-04-21 20:49:54 GMT from United States)
I used to use sidux exclusively, and it was (and still is) one of my favorite distributions. There were a few things I didn't like about it though, font rendering being one of the biggest problems. I'm sorry, but the default fonts just look like crap. The other thing that I didn't like (at the time, I don't know if it has changed since then) is their attitude toward KDE4.
I am now running Arch with KDEmod. One of the best things I like about Arch is their philosophy. See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way . Package management is very simple too. Ever wrote a legitimate package in under two minutes? In Arch that is possible. :)
My fonts are much better now also. Thanks to the simplicity of Arch and the power of Pacman, I am using Fontconfig, Freetype, Cairo, and libXft with the lcd patches. (See http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?O=0&L=0&C=0&K=-lcd&SeB=nd&PP=25&do_Search=Go )
And here's a screenshot of my desktop so you can see what quality fonts look like (IMHO): http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/2857/mydesktopma3.png (looks best on a LCD monitor)
60 • openSUSE 11 (by quickshade on 2008-04-21 21:01:51 GMT from United States)
All I can say is it blows the other distros out of the water with KDE4. In fact I don't care that it's a beta as it's running so nice right now I don't see a need to change. I think all these distros rusing KDE4 out the door are going to suffer down the road while OpenSUSE is going to blow right past everyone else.
61 • RE: # 39 Suse 11 Beta installer (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 21:03:54 GMT from Italy)
I installed openSUSE 11 Beta 1 without a hitch.
I could even use it as my daily OS.
But YMMV, it is after all a Beta 1, two months away from the final release.
62 • RE: # 46 Sidux (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 21:13:28 GMT from Italy)
"Intrigued by the claim that sidux works the "miracle of turning unstable into a stable and reliable operating system for every-day usage" I searched Debian's bug tracking system only to discover (http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/) that Sid -- upon whose repositories sidux users overwhelmingly draw for updates -- has by far the greater number of "release critical" bugs, followed by Etch (the "Stable" release) followed by Lenny (i.e. Testing).
Objectively speaking, then, if you're attracted to sidux for its up-to-date packages, but are also concerned with stability and security, you're better off installing Testing/Lenny..."
That is why I use Parsix as my second distro, a little know, great distro. It is basically Kanotix with Gnome, based on Lenny and released often.
As to Sid being *totally* unreliable, that has always been said loud and clear by the Debian devs.
63 • Fedora 9 is shaping up nicely (by ffbull on 2008-04-21 21:17:09 GMT from United States)
I've been using Fedora 9 for about two months now on my desktop at home. I haven't had any upgrade issues, which is rare for me and fedora. The only issues I have notice aren't with fedora, but with Firefox 3 and extensions. Fedora has a KDE4 spin, but it was very buggy. Although I must admit I have found KDE buggy in just about every distro I have used except for Slackware and Arch. I see alot of improvement in how fedora is handling KDE. By developing a KDE4 live build, Fedora is actively involved in preparing KDE4 for everyday use. Every bug report counts. Developers, Thank You.
64 • SIDUX Convert (by rj on 2008-04-21 21:23:30 GMT from United States)
I have been using Sidux for about 2 months now, I absolutely love it, it's very stable to be such a fast-moving target. I still have PCLOS on my fiance's desktop, and I dual-boot my work laptop with Mandriva 2008.1 (nice!).
In regards to PCLOS forums and users...I have found them to be wonderful unless you ask The Forbidden Question ("When does the new version come out?"), in which case you will be flamed by Tex and everyone down until you are crispy. I always found it quite disrespectful and childish. It takes less effort to answer "I dunno" a thousand times than to flame someone just once, but the distro is still quite awesome and stable.
65 • Suse (by satan on 2008-04-21 21:28:01 GMT from Canada)
I heard that Suse 12 will merge with Windows 7 to give us the most bloated desktop ever. Is that true?
66 • Suse continued (by satan on 2008-04-21 21:30:03 GMT from Canada)
And you don't have to worry about patents.
67 • Firefox beta 5 on Ubuntu (by Tony on 2008-04-21 21:32:02 GMT from United States)
Does anyone else feel concerned about this decision to ship beta software, especially one of the most used applications, on a long-term release? I use Firefox beta 5 and it's still got some outstanding bugs to fix. If it were in Release Candidate phase, I'd be more OK with it, but not beta. I used the latest nightly and it is a great improvement over Beta 5, especially with respect to the "Awesomebar."
I suppose they'll release 8.04.1 in the summer with Firefox 3 final? Looks like Fedora is doing the same thing... I guess it's common to ship beta software on final distribution releases.
68 • @ 54 (by daniel on 2008-04-21 22:36:10 GMT from Germany)
agree with you.
I f you control what you install, use Arch.
I use XFCE4 (gtk based) and don't have any gnomelib installed.
69 • 67 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-21 23:28:10 GMT from United States)
I think that programs like Firefox are okay. They don't want to move a LTS release from FF 2 to FF 3. They will, however, be constantly offering new versions of FF throughout the life of 8.04. Two years from now, FF 2 would seem very dated, and they'd likely even have to do their own security updates, as Mozilla will probably have abandoned FF 2 by then.
As far as low level components go, I think it is rock solid, definitely not beta software.
I thought about this myself, then realized that on a long-term release what they're doing is about the only choice there is.
70 • Reader Comments (by Ultra on 2008-04-21 23:46:35 GMT from Canada)
The problem with the reader comments section is that it's used like a forum. lol, it's like going back to a hotel every day to see what someone's written in response to your guest book entry. Any comments on this? I'll check back in a day or two...
71 • Ref# 64 - PCLOS forums (by Verndog on 2008-04-22 00:01:02 GMT from United States)
That forum has a chip on their shoulder for some reason. There are a few that are regulars there that are very kind AND helpful, but for the most part, rude and obnoxious. I ask a simple question regarding speeding up boot time. I compared it to my them fast XP boot. They missed the point entirely. Kept hammering away at my XP boot times and just a couple of people got the message and suggested what I could do to kelp speed up Linux boot time. PCLOS, NEVER AGAIN!
72 • Ref# 70 Guest book comment (by Carl Comment on 2008-04-22 00:04:43 GMT from United States)
Okay, I'll comment. Your comment was very funny! I'll have to remember that one. I can only imagine someone commenting someone else's guest book comment.
In fact most people comment here thinking, hoping, trolling, that someone else will comment back to them. I guess it makes them feel good their alive. That's all I can see about this nonsense!
73 • ref# 71 (by trend on 2008-04-22 00:37:31 GMT from United States)
I moved on from that distro also for simular reasons. Have even found a few of the moderator(s) totally arrogant.Not to bash then totally,they could do much better.
74 • #65,66 (by ray carter at 2008-04-22 00:40:53 GMT from United States)
Somewhat doubtful since OpenSuse bears little connection with the commercial SuSE Linux Enterprise products which are owned and sold by Novell.
75 • Draco NTFS (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 00:50:29 GMT from United States)
Quoting the Draco review....
One nasty little bug encountered was when trying to mount my Windows partition on NTFS. The partition did not mount and the system eventually became unresponsive.
...This bug is nasty. I got it when I installed the NTFS-3 package into PCLOS 2008.
You check the boxes in the hardware setting tab after you run the NTFS setting application. All is swell until you reboot. If you wrote anything on a USB key it will be toast. Anything that wrote directly to the NTFS share (like from open office) will be scrambled up (updates?). But if you copy to the share it will be OK.
After a few more boots all your shares disapear with a error until you figure it out and turn it off. It keeps you from connecting with your network card until you run the networking wizzard again. Disabling/Enabling stops working for some reason. I guess it may be because I have NTFS network shares.
I've toasted two USB keys on two different machines due to this. I was tring to save the configuration onto the keys. I also think it corrupted the windows partitions on the same machines. It gets worse the longer you use it, the first sign will be a NTLDR error then you'll lose the partion table if it not turned off. I think I caught it in time the third time. Fingers crossed. Like another poster said a few weeks ago there needs to be a rescue cd to recover partitons be it windows or otherwise.
76 • @ 62 (by texasmike on 2008-04-22 01:28:54 GMT from United States)
Forget what the Debian developers tell you. Listen to what I tell you. sidux has a lot of stability built into it. A lot of the Debian developers have a hard time accepting sidux. And that's fine. I used to run pure Debian and believe me, half of them don't know what they're talking about.
Is sidux perfect? No. Stable? Yes. Fast? Yes. Secure? Yes. Up to date? The most. Helpful forum? Extremley. Oh, and about KDE 4... I hate it, too. They have a lot of work yet to do and the longer it stays out of sidux, the better.
77 • RE: 36 (by Soloact on 2008-04-22 02:52:06 GMT from United States)
In LinuxMint (at least in the latest KDE version), Open up your Synaptic Package Manager with all of the repositories enabled, and do a search for Atheros, then install the driver from there rather than using MadWiFi. I think it was forked from MadWiFi.
I haven't checked to see if it is included with the latest Kubuntu.
78 • satan@hell.com (by satan on 2008-04-22 03:57:17 GMT from Canada)
Ok, I must admit. I got it all wrong. Suse will not merge with Windows. The truth is that Windows will release a version in between Vista and Windows 7. The name of this version is Suse 12.
79 • @56 (by jens on 2008-04-22 04:39:05 GMT from India)
You are still very much mistaken. . Fedora has always included the same wallpaper for both the desktop environments. If you want KDE, you shouldn't use the DVD but the KDE live cd which is top notch.
80 • @65,66 and 78 (by jrdls on 2008-04-22 05:11:51 GMT from Guatemala)
FUD
81 • Mandriva experience (by Verndog on 2008-04-22 06:52:40 GMT from United States)
I just installed Mandriva. WoW! IS all I can say right now. It's very impressive. Especially the fonts. Someone here mentioned that. That's the area coming from Windows that is disappointing. This newest Mandriva is great in that area. The speed seems good. I just am right now using it. I'll have to give it a while before I can determine if it's a keeper. Sidux is my choice and the front runner.
82 • @30 and other - Linux is not a suitable desktop (by neo on 2008-04-22 08:56:32 GMT from France)
Having worked with Fedora 8 for 8 months one my professional laptop, I have to admit that Linux is not a suitable alternative for an efficient daily use desktop. The problem is not directly related to Linux itself, but to third party softwares that most users need and which are not available on this plateform or are "half-backed".
Take VMWare: several minor glitches make it a pain to use every day.
Take iTunes, Photoshop (and please, don't tell me to use Gimp),...
Take Adobe Flex Builder; though it is available, it took me days to discover major bugs that prevented my project from working properly under Linux (working well under Windows).
Take games !
I keep on thinking that the lack of 3rd party best sellers will remain the main reason why users won't switch. That's why Linux on the server is suitable: you can find most RDBMS, Java servers,...
IMHO (H stands for "humble"), Linux is a suitable web desktop - no more; that's why Linux was a reasonable choice for the EEE PC (though I've read that 60% of EEE PC owners switched back to XP).
But if you want a full fledged desktop, efficiency, install and forget about the system, take Windows, or if you're not a gamer, MacOS X.
After 8 months of Fedora 7/8, trying to convince myself that it was a reasonable choice, I switched back to Vista (yes Vista !). It's 3 months now, and I can tell you: I don't regret this choice; I'm way more productive that I've ever been. And the Aero interface is way nicer than Gnome (not to mention KDE...) with the half backed, choppy CompizFusion and the unmature Emerald.
Nevertheless, I keep on keeping an eye on DistroWatch, against hope believing in hope...
83 • Comments on @82 professionalism.... (by dbrion on 2008-04-22 09:08:04 GMT from France)
"Fedora 8 for 8 months one my professional laptop'
Professionalism?
"Take iTunes, Photoshop (and please, don't tell me to use Gimp),..."
Oh, I thought music was linked with productivity (the latest slogan) ... of milking cows.... (and, in many offices, loudspeakers are removed to avoid conflicts, in the real world...)
As for the ugly (not expensive enough to feel GREAT) Gimp - mais si, parlons en : ce qu'on veut éviter est souvent le plus significatif- is concerned, I ll ask my boss to
fire
all the unprofessional people using it, either under Windows or RedHats clones (they have nice desktops, though RH does not believe in it), as it is unprofessionnal....
"
84 • #81 Mandriva and fonts (by Steve on 2008-04-22 09:09:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
One of the early design goals (back in '98, wasn't it?) for Mandrake (as it was then) was to have beautiful fonts. These early versions used to scan the drives looking for TT fonts in Windows partitions & they would be imported onto the Linux system. Guy called "Bero" behind that I seem to remember.
My main rig has VL (soho 5.8.9 in daily use), an early Mint (now unused), Sabayon (3.4f in occasional use) and sidux (occasional use) on it. If my server 2008.1 install stays happy think I'll drop 2008.1 on top of the old Mint partition.
Worried about booting though; VL went on last and was very careful to detect and set up all bootable partitions as boot options - yet when putting 2008.1 on the server it didn't find any bootable partitions (that machine also has VL and mandrake 9.1 partitions). But that was the live install disk - hopefully the full install DVD will find my Sab / sidux / VL bootables.
Time for pen and paper.
85 • Fedora artwork (by Ariszló on 2008-04-22 09:25:00 GMT from Hungary)
klhrevolution wrote at 47: Fedora is consistent with it's artwork, this wallpaper which is in the screenshot above is very nice. Anybody got a link ??
RPM: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/Packages/desktop-backgrounds-basic-9.0.0-1.noarch.rpm
SRPM: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/source/SRPMS/desktop-backgrounds-9.0.0-1.src.rpm
info: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Waves/Round3Final
86 • @79 (by lalala on 2008-04-22 11:19:08 GMT from United States)
In what reality is the Fedora KDE live cd top notch. I know I did not get the same wallpaper before, so it is the fault of the Fedora team not doing a nearly good enough job on KDE.
87 • RE 86 A wallpaper war would be absurd (should at least be funny) (by dbrion on 2008-04-22 11:22:05 GMT from France)
as wallpapers are the firts thing to be changes, whatever the OS and the qualification of the user, when a computer begins to be used...
88 • RE: # 84 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 12:08:58 GMT from Italy)
"Bero" (Rosenkraenzer) worked for Red Hat and was a famous KDE guy.
Then he resigned and founded his own distro: ArkLinux.
89 • @ 80 (by satan on 2008-04-22 12:36:28 GMT from Canada)
let me tell you about FUD and Suse.
Novell put pressure on every other distro by caving in to Microsoft FUD.
90 • @ neo (by texasmike on 2008-04-22 13:14:02 GMT from United States)
Good luck to you, neo. As for myself, stability & security are more important than fancy eye candy. But at least you keep an open mind. That's half the battle.
91 • Re: 32 (by Anon on 2008-04-22 13:32:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
Mandriva makes a decent showing in terms of revenue on desktop Linux products and service.
Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Mandriva is a loss making company, and Red Hat a profit making company. Self explanatory!
and the only one that does not have a retail OS box available is Red Hat.
That may be, but they do offer a yearly subscription for their Enterprise desktop (fully supported) from as little as $80 (€72.60, £48.40). Okay it's a bit pricey and it doesn't have a nice box, but the price is still reasonable and the absence of a box is hardly a shop stopper.
92 • 82 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 13:47:02 GMT from United States)
I always tell everyone to use what works for them. For some individuals, *shock*, Windows is better. It looks like the problem you've got is that you are locked in to proprietary software with either no native Linux version or else native Linux versions with bugs.
I feel your pain. Luckily I can do everything I need with open source software, though it took a couple of years to be completely migrated.
When it comes to feeding yourself, you have to use what works, no matter what maintenance burden and performance hit you might encounter. You can always run Linux in VMWare or run andLinux for things like web surfing to get the security advantages of Linux.
That said, please don't equate Fedora with Linux. It's just one distro. In _my_ humble opinion, far from the best distro.
Good luck.
93 • RE 91 : La danse du scalp autour de Mandrivel recommance (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 14:05:01 GMT from France)
Et, à défaut de décence (notion intraduisible en ânonnien) , on peut avoir le bon senss d'attendre ... qu'elle soit en faillite, après avoir :
* renfloué des compagnies techniquement performantes, mais plus en difficulté qu'elle.
* rendu des utilisateurs (et des cloneurs monolingues, heureux les simples d'esprit) heureux (mais manifestement pas Monsieur l'Ânon).
NB
Si le profit était un indicateur de qualité, il faudrait choisir entre :
a) Microsoft
.....
z) Microsoft.
NB , in your "post"
"the absence of a box is hardly a shop stopper"
I buy Mandrivels (sorry to useyour terms, Monsieur l'Ânon) for the box, else it would be a *show stopper (I get far cheaper Mandrivels with Linux Identity Kits, as I can get with PCBSD) ... and one can get RH clones (Whiteboxen, Centos ) at no price...
PLEASE : do not claim that I use Mandriva because I am French : I use more RH (clones) than Mandriva....
It is jusyt a matter of décence (obviously cannot be translated )
94 • 1 & 15: Fedora KDE4 artwork & gnome-panel (by Ariszló on 2008-04-22 14:43:38 GMT from Hungary)
lalala wrote at #1: I wonder if the KDE version of Fedora 9 will at least include the official artwork that the Gnome version does...
I am writing this from Fedora 9 Preview where the default wallpaper for KDE 4 is Fedora Waves Night from desktop-backgrounds-basic and the default icon theme is Fedora-KDE. All other eye candy is KDE4 default.
Anonymous wrote at #15: Don't ask me why but the Fedora KDE4 CD includes the gnome-panel package as dependency.
It is required by NetworkManager-gnome, a panel applet used in both Gnome & KDE4. KNetworkManager, the panel applet for KDE3, has not been ported to KDE4 yet. So to use NetworkManager with KDE4, you need to install either the KDE3 libraries for KNetworkManager or Gnome Panel for NetworkManager-gnome. Whichever you choose, you will end up installing libraries for at least two desktop environments: either KDE4 and Gnome or KDE4 and KDE3.
95 • Fedora (by whocares on 2008-04-22 14:45:10 GMT from Finland)
must go web site if using Fedora
http://www.freewebs.com/dnmouse/
96 • Re: 94 (by Anon on 2008-04-22 16:00:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
"I buy Mandrivels (sorry to use your terms, Monsieur l'Ânon)"
My terms??????
"PLEASE : do not claim that I use Mandriva because I am French"
Sorry, the only person making generalisations here is you, don't try to tarnish others with the same brush.
"and one can get RH clones (Whiteboxen, Centos ) at no price.."<./blockquote>
A fair point
97 • blockquote (by Ariszló on 2008-04-22 16:16:26 GMT from Hungary)
It is </blockquote>, not <./blockquote>.
98 • RE 96 Mandriva's usual ânonesque bashing (by dbrion on 2008-04-22 16:24:52 GMT from France)
For the hint that Mandriva == French (which is a nonsense)
"30 • Re 26 (by Anon on 2007-03-26 14:12:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
I had some difficulty in interpreting your post as the grammar is poor. .....
Unless you can give me a strong arguement against, I will take your point as yet another ill-formed reply from a Mandriva supporter! Clearly you have learned well from Bancilhon's example!
"
Do you wish that I find other ânonnesques posts, say in 2007, december??? From a (self-proclamed) management "expert???
that would be an answer to
"My terms??????
"
(perhaps I did not quote exactly, but I respected the meaning....)
99 • One week of moderation (by DG on 2008-04-22 17:17:10 GMT from Netherlands)
Ladislav, could we please have just one week of moderated comments,
to cut out the non-constructive flamage, my distro is better than yours,
page hit ranking discussions, and limit to comments in that week's DWW.
100 • "is the suitability of Linux as a desktop operating system." (by dbrion on 2008-04-22 17:43:22 GMT from France)
THis week"s DWW.....BTW why only GNU/linux?
There are two points:
Are free desktops suitable?
Can a professional society, trained to support/servers and long-lasting hardware (not flashy-trendy one) make benefits out of (not that buggy) free (as in no cost for the user) desktops?
It is obvious that, for 99% of the users, free desktops (and they begin being ported to BSD and O.Solaris....) are sufficient.. (no need for support ==>... no need to buy RH's or xxx's help ...).
But I remain very surprised by the "idea" that a user satisfaction might be linked to profits made by a society, or by the (anti-)PR policy of this society... I naively thought there technical aspects should be predominent ... unless a user is a shareholder or a journalist......
101 • I think you are barking up the wrong tree (by Re 98 on 2008-04-22 18:16:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
102 • RE 101 (by dbrion on 2008-04-22 18:30:54 GMT from France)
a) I maintain that the quality (and even her future!!!) of a distr is, by no way, linked with the
instantaneous
notion of profit (else, M$ would be of huge quality.... even RH's efforts to make Windows better -Cygwin- make it hard to believe...) nor the kindness of their fora (meant to bug-fix... it is a bug indicator)...
one is never rash enough w/r to this kind of "ideas"
(Re "I do not find your rash judgement very hospitable at all.
")
b) The notion of coincidence is highly unprobable when one choses to type a five letters name ......(RE "a prejudicial opinion against me based on the words of another.") and noone can prove I am right or not...mais je n'irai pas en enfer pour ça.
103 • Gentoo Release Schedule (by Waiting- on 2008-04-22 19:57:22 GMT from United States)
I didn't see a 2008.0 release schedule but clicking on the link brings up a page that hasn't been updated since January 23, 2008. Have they given up?
If they release within two months of Ubuntu they're going to look "Oh, so me too!". What is this going to do for the September schedule? Just write it off like last year?
How can any company commit to using a distro that won't keep it's commitment to it's own users?
104 • Fluxbox Matters (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 20:05:41 GMT from United States)
I got an ad in the mail today from DELL they're pimping a fully loaded desktop PC for $299 sans monitor.
Last year and this year are the years of the laptop & notebook computer, they're getting lighter and cheaper. Some are slow to learn, M$?
From my perspective because we are expected to setup and use them everywhere. I have found that the very best desktop for this is Fluxbox and I applaud those distros that are creating Fluxbox based distros.
No need to keep chasing up or down to the menu just right click. I know XFCE has an excellent offering as well in this department but it takes too much gnome underneath to make it work as well.
Kudos to the Fluxbox distros! When all the ASUS and HP crowd get tired of lugging around mice, they'll come knocking!
105 • @84 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-22 20:11:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Mandriva still has the drakfont utility you remember, which can import TrueType fonts from Windows utilities. However, it's not a feature we emphasise so much any more, as there are far better free TrueType font sets than there used to be - Bitstream Vera (or rather the DejaVu derivative which we now use) and Liberation most notably. It used to be that you really couldn't get any very decent general purpose, free TrueType fonts, hence the importance of easy import of Windows fonts, but that's really not the case any more. Almost all distros use DejaVu out of the box, and it looks very good.
106 • @103 about Gentoo (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 20:26:46 GMT from Canada)
Gentoo is dying. I'm sorry but it's time to move on.
107 • Mandrive Look; Mandriva DVD (by Verndog on 2008-04-22 21:02:23 GMT from United States)
I've used Mandriva for a day now, and it's look is still stunning to me. Nothing in the Linux world comes close. I don't mean eye-candy, I mean the color-saturation, especially the fonts, it just looks beautiful. I wish it wee a little bit faster on boot. Maybe tweak the processes a bit.
I wanted so much to play DVD's , but it so a no go. Sad. The Totem had an error complaining no MPEG-2. Tried other players. Also no good. I searched and found gstreaming and found that is already installed. The DVD's were ripped, not protected. It just won't play DVD's, period. The beauty of the display I wanted to see how the DVD's look. Most distro's look cheap while playing DVD's.
After I get some time, I'll find a good Mandriva forum and ask questions.
108 • @107 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 21:13:06 GMT from Canada)
You need to setup the software repositories (official and PLF).
Then install all the good stuff that is not available in the official release due to legal issues (codecs, libdvdcss, etc)
109 • @107 (by Mandriva repos are here on 2008-04-22 21:16:02 GMT from Canada)
the easiest ever repos setup
110 • dbrion (by Anon on 2008-04-22 21:41:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm sorry, I think the point in 101 (explicitly referring to 98) totally missed you there.
In reply to your other point, I do not see why you are discussing profit as reflection of quality, nobody brought that up.
Somebody questioned the strategy of Red Hat by saying that Mandriva attracted significant revenues from the desktop market. However significant revenues alone do not justify entering a market, wealth creation (i.e. profit) does. What Red Hat are saying is that the market is not sustainable, i.e. there is not enough demand in the market to make a profit.
In terms of it's corporate operations Red Hat focuses on servers, because that's the sustainable market and is generating the profit for them. It takes no genius to work out that the company making more profit generally has the better strategy, part of that strategy is the choice of market, therefore from a corporate perspective the desktop market isn't worth the hassle today.
However I have great faith in Ubuntu, the project is leading the way for the desktop market. IMHO Ubuntu's admirable marketing is laying the foundations for a sustainable desktop market in the future, not now!
111 • Quick howto for multimedia (by FACORAT Fabrice on 2008-04-22 22:13:02 GMT from France)
+ Add Official Mandriva and PLF repositories ( if not already done ) :
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist '$MIRRORLIST'
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://plf.zarb.org/mirrors/'$RELEASE'.'$ARCH'.list
+ For Totem, add the needed gstreamer packages :
urpmi gstreamer0.10-mms gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-lame gstreamer0.10-faad
+ For Kaffeine or others xine based player, add the needed packages :
urpmi win32-codecs ffmpeg
+ Add encrypted DVD support :
urpmi libdvdcss2
Now enjoy.
112 • Gentoo Release Schedule (by Landor on 2008-04-22 22:29:32 GMT from Canada)
Ok, yes it has been some time, but let me ask you this, do you have Gentoo installed? If so, why is the release important to you?
I don't understand this community, seriously.
Whe have the guys who go nuts over distros having releases every month or a few. Then we have the guys who think there's way too many releases, too often, and there should be a 6 or 12 month release schedule. Not to mention long term Distros like Slackware or Debian who do not release every 6 months. I don't see anyone saying those two are dying, and far from it..lol I personally feel that with Gentoo's age, and current negative position in the media they should go to a yearly release cycle, and why not, since any using it knows it's a rolling release anyway.
I can see a reason for a yearly release for some of the "Hallmark" Distros, Other than that, there's no real reason in my opinion other than market share to release more than once a year. Companies and Corporations as you pointed them out, would rather have a rock solid platform based on working functionality than something that isn't truly ready for whatever reason.
I don't know Mr. Robbins, nor much of the ongoing dilemma with him and Gentoo, only bits and pieces. But what I have seen makes me wonder if it's only adding to whatever problems Gentoo may have instead of helping it. My opinion is whenever the man makes some kind of statement that's caught up by the media it causes yet another flourish of negative media towards the distro, but as I said, that's just my opinion.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
113 • 112 • Gentoo Release Schedule (by ladislav on 2008-04-22 22:43:18 GMT from Taiwan)
The fact that Gentoo doesn't make a new stable release every six month is not a problem. They have every right to decide when they would release something or whether they would release anything at all.
The problem is that Gentoo has a stated goal of producing two stable releases per year. It also has a release engineering page, which states the same and it even lists a detailed release schedule at times. But then the project misses the release, leaves the release engineering page unchanged and fails to inform anybody about the reasons for the missed release. That's what bothers me.
If they remove their release engineering page, I will have no complaints about Gentoo's release philosophy. But as things stand now, you'll have hard time convincing me that Gentoo has no project management and communication problems and that everything is fine with the distribution.
114 • fluxbox distros (by anticapitalista on 2008-04-22 23:07:10 GMT from Greece)
#104 Fluxbox (and openbox, and icewm) based distros are flourishing, though they rarely get any hype from the mainstream Linux press.
There are plenty of up-to-date lite distros for users to try.
Here is a very selective list.
antiX, TinyMe, TinyFlux, Fluxbuntu, debris, icebuntu, pud.
115 • Linux Desktop, @82 (by werner, guiana-caiena on 2008-04-22 23:14:19 GMT from France)
ref @82, Linux desktop:
With some of your details I agree, but not with your general conclusion.
It's correct that it's less the linux kernel but the programs what makes Linux desktop-able or not. And it's correct that 80% of the programs are simply waste. And it's me whom most reclaim instead of stay quiet where IS something wrong since long time what have to be corrected finally. However, there are a lot of programs which work sufficiently or good !
And we have also to distinguish, if we speak about the needs of 80% of the population with normal/average needs , or about the needs of 1% specialists of the users, and what programs we refere to.
I agree that GIMP hasnt certain effects what Photoshop has. And the new MS Office have some advanced effects which are still missed in Open Office. But everything what 99% of the people need for household / small-commerce- documents, they have. For other, more professional uses, Linux has other special / specialists programs. We cannot put too much seldom / special effects into the normal programs, otherwhise they will becoming too complicated for simple people. Dont put too much more into Oo or GIMP !!!
There are really some apps which have no right more to exist. One example is xine. However there are always others, ex Mplayer. With this and plenty codecs installed, you watch better video than under W$. And with avidemux and audacity, you can make all no-professional mounting work very good.
What however is urgently necessary for improve the desktop-useability of Linux, this is to make several things more simple, not more complicated. And the best way to do this, is to observe, how simple people come clear with Linux and its installation, and then rigorously correct the problematic itens instead of to justify them.
Whilst W$ has to gain its money and thus (at least during the time it growed) had to do inconditionally what the most number of people want, the problem with Linux is that the programmers have other income and other need and ideas than what 90% of the population want to use. I think the two sides aren't incompatible. But the side of the (potential) user's need, inclusive functional simplicity, until now is rather abandonned in Linux, and need more care. This includes a better contact of the programmers with users (or better, not-users, asking them why).
116 • fluxbox for the masses (by fluxboxer on 2008-04-23 00:41:30 GMT from Germany)
ok its a bit too much :-) but for the ones who
dont need or dont want or cant run a full fledged kde or gnome -
it just works. the standard theme is ugly, thats all ;-)
117 • 112 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 01:44:14 GMT from United States)
My understanding is that a Gentoo release is the same as an Arch "release". It's just a snapshot of some of the packages available at that time.
Unless I'm missing something, releases don't mean a whole lot, so long as you've got an installation CD that can be updated after it's installed.
118 • Mandriva errors adding repros (by verndog on 2008-04-23 01:58:26 GMT from United States)
I get the following errors using mirrorlist(yes, I'm root)
# urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist '$MIRRORLIST'
Unknown option: mirrorlist
119 • ref 118 found errors (by verndog on 2008-04-23 02:04:55 GMT from United States)
I found my own error. I had to use 2008.0 for some reason 2008.1 was failing trying to had swap. 2008.1 is a livecd, 2008.0 is not. So I entered install from icon using 2008.1 but when trying to configure /, /home swap, it fail swap no explainations!
I then used 2008.0 so the above links were for using 2008.1
Thanks
120 • IceWM,Mandriva & Mom (by Guy on 2008-04-23 03:00:04 GMT from United States)
KDE was would barely work on my moms old computer, running from the live cd. But when I tried to log back in using IceWM it was much better. So I installed it to the hard drive using IceWM. Then logged back in with KDE after the install and KDE works fine now. Hope this helps someone :-)
121 • RE: 111 --A question for you, if I may. (by IMQ on 2008-04-23 04:07:07 GMT from United States)
I installed from the Mandriva One 2008.1 KDE LiveCD but I also downloaded the Mandriva 2008.1 Free DVD.
How do I add this DVD, using the command line *urpmi.addmedia* like in your post, so I can install packages from it?
Thanks.
122 • REF 121 Mandriva repros (by verndog on 2008-04-23 05:46:30 GMT from United States)
Use use a console and root and then copy and paste. But if you have 2008.1 then use the link above #109 "Mandriva repos are here". I had touble because mine is 2008.0 and you need to read the fine print. It's automatic!
123 • RE 108 People do not buy/download/keep PR/commercial strategy (by dbrion on 2008-04-23 06:09:48 GMT from France)
". It takes no genius to work out that the company making more profit generally has the better strategy, part of that strategy is the choice of market, therefore from a corporate perspective the desktop market isn't worth the hassle today.
"
I suppose youi are writing about a commercial strategy.... What interests users (not shareholders,
not self proclaimed management 'experts', not journalists/bloggers, just
people who use something) in the real world is its
technical
value.... (therefore, no matter whether the vendor is a good or bad seller : : for example, THE PR success in the "linux world', Ubu linux is widely downloaded ... and widely
cleaned off -replaced with XP or , if pple are not fully disgusted (this happens), any serious Linux their friends/teachers installs-)..
All of your notions of 'better' are based upon commerce ... which interests neither the developpers (the Gentoo devs showing it to a caricatural extent, and the Gentoo users remaining very happy!!) nor the end users (the latter choose to buy/download/keep technical value, not PR/stratègie de café du commerce)... and I can safely bet there are more Ubuntus cleaned off than XPs/Vistas, today...
Writing that Mandriva is going to bankrupcy (it might be a matter of habit) without serious arguments (and yours are not serious) could lead people not to buy Mandriva (as they fear there might be no support) if *here* were a place to make serious decisions....
It is totally irreponsable.
BTW I noticed that Mandriva 's strategy was courageous (is it a notion you likely cannot understand) and offered its users(and its cloners) innovative GPL'd features .. What about Ubulinux??
Can they technically contribute anything original by themselves?
Except Blue Screens of Hope (they are not W$) from automagic "up"grades?
And RedHats contributes much to the debugging of browsers... and can decide not to invest in desktops....
124 • Cor 123 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 06:28:57 GMT from France)
s/108/110/
125 • RE: 122 --You misunderstood my question. (by IMQ on 2008-04-23 08:06:55 GMT from United States)
I know about the easy urpmi set up link, but my question was how to add the Free DVD as a source for installing packages from it.
I found no eay way to add it, hence the question on how to add it using command urpmi.addmedia. The example in #111 is for online sources, not local like DVD/CD.
I had got it to work once with older version of Mandriva but I don't recall how to it with 2008.1 release. Even the Easy URPMI page has been updated.
126 • @125 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-23 08:39:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
From the man page:
urpmi.addmedia [options] cdrom://
is the location of the media directory in the CDROM or DVD.
127 • @126 (correction) (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-23 08:40:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Oops, DW ate the angle brackets.
urpmi.addmedia [options] {name} cdrom://{path}
{path} is the location of the media directory in the CDROM or DVD.
128 • call me names, (by arno911 on 2008-04-23 11:38:46 GMT from Germany)
tell me im biased, but in my humble opinion ubuntu did something good for linux by putting millions into marketing, BUT
on the other hand, they took the good debian and gave nothing back but an ocean of socalled .deb files, which, if you install them on a "real" debian, sooner or later WILL crash your system.
thanks for the promotion, but will the kids please leave the playground if all they can do is tearing down the baskets ? leave it to the real guys!
so, yes, ive seen a lot of people moving away from Microsoft Windows and using *buntus, but Ive also seen alot of people realizing that ubuntu is nothing but a good start for newbies and than switching to more "true" distros. which is fine :-)
greetings arno911
129 • Mandriva 2008 Spring (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 11:51:48 GMT from Italy)
I have just tried Mandriva 2008 Spring.
It has managed to really annoy me.
Configuring a working pppoe drives me mad. They have had this bug for ages and they don't seem able to solve it.
Next: the *tiny* KDE menu. Why? I know it can be configured, but why I should i start using a distro with a lot of extra work? And a noob doesn't know how to do that.
And where is the "file manager-super user mode?
At least I couldn't find it, extremely annoying.
It looks to me that Mandriva has hardly changed since 9.1, five years ago.
I am sorry, because I don't believe Mandriva is a bad distro, but all these issues (and more) are enough to keep me away from it.
130 • Re: 123 (by Anon on 2008-04-23 11:55:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
I suppose youi are writing about a commercial strategy.... What interests users in the real world is its technical value....
OMG! Are you listening?
Yes I am talking about commercial strategy! In the article Red Hat was talking about the a "sustainable businessmodel", which forms part of commercial strategy. It seems that while I am addressing the specific issue of commercial sustainability (i.e. exclusive to companies), you are discussing sustainability within the entire linux community (which includes some participation by companies) as a whole, which is not the point of the original article .
131 • RE 130 : A view limited to commercial and PR aspects (by dbrion on 2008-04-23 12:19:42 GMT from France)
is very short sighted (even if it is the topic).
If RH had only profit in their objectives, they should buy ... housses and M$ shares : they do not claim they are THE model anyone should follow....
Messeems they know they cannot do anything : for example, training pple (not sys ads, but ordinary users) to use fastly and efficiently some desktops apps (there is a huge need, even in MS world) can be a way to gather some money, and this is an aspect of training they donot WANT to do (they prefer doing well what they are accustomed to, which is rather nice: a tailor doesnot sell fried fish...).
Perhaps, Suze or MNDRV can bet they can train ordinary users (and bosses be ready to pay for some training), and raise enough money to make some profits... This is just an example one can imagine ways of making money outside of THE RH model or the UBUg PR... (can I dare to remind you that you wrote I was not open-minded enough.....)
132 • @ 129 to the annoyed guy (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 13:52:29 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (insulting).
133 • Shortcut (by Guy on 2008-04-23 14:17:47 GMT from United States)
How can you make a shortcut to get root priviledges?That would be very convenient.Usually I log out and in to become root. :-)
134 • @133 (by juergen on 2008-04-23 14:30:04 GMT from Germany)
You dont have to logout and login, just start a second session - as root.
Or open a terminal, get root privileges and start the app you want.
That way, when you are done with the dirty root work, you just close the root session and get back into your user session.
i dont like sudo, but a shortcut to gksu or kdesu or whatever would bring up a root login.
hava good one
135 • Re: 130 (by Anon on 2008-04-23 14:32:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
If RH had only profit in their objectives, they should buy ... housses and M$ shares
Not necessarily, Red Hat's skills lie within the IT sector, not the management of investment portfolios for profit. These are two distinctly different business lines, and that Red Hat would not enter into the latter as their skill set is better suited to the former.
The more you reply, the more prove to me that you fail to understand real business. Are you willing to admit that you are out of your depth here?
(can I dare to remind you that you wrote I was not open-minded enough.....)
Yes, in the context of your incorrect assumptions about me, not the discussion of the article. I consider this a pathetic attempt to twist the facts to make you look favourable, by all means continue to do so, it's only your reputation that is likely to get damaged by it, not mine.
136 • @ 133 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 14:37:18 GMT from Canada)
make a shortcut and in the command section type "kdesu konqueror" (without quotes)
137 • @133 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 14:38:40 GMT from Canada)
he was talking about browsing files with root privileges, not about login as root.
138 • Stay on topic (by ladislav on 2008-04-23 14:49:12 GMT from Taiwan)
Please guys, remember that the topic here is distributions. Stay on topic and your posts won't be deleted.
139 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 14:56:09 GMT from Canada)
Ladislav, you forgot to mention the stick on the ice. It's playoff time, things get more physical at this time of the year.
140 • 132 Clam down (by Nanlee on 2008-04-23 15:15:44 GMT from Canada)
You "sound" a bit angry. There is no need to be angry on 129 and calling him (or her) bias. Based on what you said in your post, I can say that the problems that 129 mentioned were facts and you provided solutions to them. That is good. But, please remember, it is easy when you know which button to push (or where to click). If it takes a lot of time for someone to find out (or fail to find out) where and how to click, then it may be annoying.
I have a feeling that you are a little bit worried about posts like 129 would damaging Mandriva's image and deter potential new users (I may be wrong). Therefore you try to tell the others that these posts were biased. It doesn't work that way. If you read some of the previous posts regarding the PCLinuxOS forum (#64,71,73), then you would probably know that it was exactly how PCLinuxOS lost some potential users, although PCLinuxOS is a good distro. So, be nice to criticism, provide solution or help, it will a long way to promote your favorite distro.
141 • @138 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 15:17:58 GMT from Italy)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
142 • What is the death of a distro... (by dbrion on 2008-04-23 15:27:05 GMT from France)
" @103 about Gentoo (by Anonymous on 2008-04-22 20:26:46 GMT from Canada)
Gentoo is dying. I'm sorry but it's time to move on.
"
That reminds me of a sys "ad" who told me, 20 yrs ago 'Fortran is dead' ... there are noww 3 free OS Fortran compilers, Windows ported like most of the good quality opensource, one gratis compiler ... and I managed to bypass sys "ad"s...
This reminds me of Mandriva, in 2007 and 2006..... it was fashionable..... on ill assilmilated {economy|management] notions/phraseology....
OTOH
Thanks, Landor for hinting, last week, that Gentoo had a binary install mode (else, I would not tried having a full compiled distr while qemulating.)
This info was hinted, too, in Feb or LMarch 2008 GNUlinux Magazine, where there was an article about emerge ... which shows that the dead, unmanaged Gentoo is still able to communicate (c'est un miracle !!!).
However, such article in cellulose papers can arouse curiosity among tons (I hope) of readers, and there are people who do not want IT access (they do not live in caverns, would be blind, nor in monasteries, just distrust ITSPs) or live in islands or Africa (divide the speed by 200 in favorable cases).
Having sometimes a release one can put in LI{K,C,P] -Linux Identity {Kit,Package,} a nice Newark based journal (but with identity pbs!!) one can find in railways stations -
would be nice (and , when used, this uncommunicating, unmanaged distro seems very reliable, according to friends of mine who use it to store their work)
143 • @141 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 15:39:41 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
144 • @143 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 15:45:32 GMT from Italy)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
145 • 143 Fairness: (by dbrion on 2008-04-23 15:47:24 GMT from France)
Though I admire Debian and use mostly RH clones, I often give Mandrivas to friends .. and we remain friends.
@129 was a list of unpeasant features (the p+oe is known, ergonomy cannot be perfect and never will be : the only solution is to have paper doc, to tweak it)
This list did not shock me in any way... (I know other Mandrivas 2006 historical *huge* issues and reporting them was not unfair at all on the long term...)
146 • @145 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 15:55:41 GMT from Italy)
"Though I admire Debian and use mostly RH clones, I often give Mandrivas to friends .. and we remain friends"
Yesterday I gave a friend a Mandriva DVD. I know he likes it. No comments whatsoever from my part.
147 • @144 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 16:13:25 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
148 • @144 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 16:15:14 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
149 • RE 147 You are totally right with ergonomy issues.... BUT (by dbrion on 2008-04-23 16:31:47 GMT from France)
"Those were not facts"
I agree with you, but ergonomy 'details ' can be very annoying and having them fixed is a good thing (when I must teach something linked with programming, I manage that my victims get an ergonomy adapted to their tastes/skills - vi for the vim lovers, scite/nedit for the vim not lovers, say, so that subjective issues do not blurr what they need to learn).
Considering them with too much harshness needs
a) another logrotate bug
b) et un troupeau d'ânons.
150 • #147 Please be civilized (by Nanlee on 2008-04-23 17:35:08 GMT from Canada)
You probably have done more damage to Mandriva than the critics. If you disagree with the statement "Mandriva didn't change since 9.1", just give examples or list some of the important changes, then people will know.
151 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 17:52:15 GMT from Canada)
Nanlee, thanks for the advice. About the damage that I have done I don't really care. I don't really care which operating system people use. I'll tell you this: guys that are not biased can tell a good distro from a bad one. Here at distro watch people said bad things about Mandriva before but I didn't react because they were objective and had substance. Mandriva is not perfect. There is no such a thing as perfect software unless it is a one liner something like "Hello World!" type of application. His attitude and his arguments annoyed me, that's all. I won't comment anymore on this matter.
152 • @129 (by john frey on 2008-04-23 18:03:50 GMT from Canada)
Anyone who does not know how to launch a file manager with root privileges without having a menu entry has no business being there. It is the equivalent of giving users a root login by default. I see this issue as helping to maintain stability and usability for users.
If it's a problem for you then there is a distro out there to scratch that itch, I'm sure.
Strangely we have this sort of criticism all the time. It seems to be a lack of willingness to learn the way a particular distro works and an expectation that every distro should provide exactly what the reviewer wants without considering that others might prefer something different.
I tried a live CD that lacked an email client one time and it wasn't until someone pointed out that an email client on a live CD is not much use to those using the live CD as their regular boot medium. It wasn't what I would want but it filled a niche. DSL doesn't provide NTFS read out of the box, lots of small distros have small repositories that don't provide this or that app while the larger distros are bloated with heavy desktops. Live CD's run slower than an installed OS, the ones that run out of ram to address that issue don't provide OpenOffice. One distro provides only free software and won't play proprietary files while the ones that provide everything to work out of the box are skirting the line with the GPL and endangering software freedom. Language support, hardware support, ease of use, lack of freedom....
Why can't one distro provide something that will fill everyones needs and expectations? I wonder.
153 • RE: 127 --Hi Adam (by IMQ on 2008-04-23 18:12:22 GMT from United States)
Here was what I did:
urpmi.addmedia MDV2008SFree cdrom://media/2008S-Free-i586-DVD/i586/media
but I got these messages:
adding medium "MDV2008SFree"
unable to access medium "MDV2008SFree".
Did I do it right?
MDV2008SFree is the name I gave for Mandriva 2008.0 Spring Free.
154 • BeleniX 0.7 & Intel Corp. Ethernetcard Issues... (by FreeTibet on 2008-04-23 19:11:58 GMT from Canada)
To whom it may concern, I have tested BeleniX 0.7 recently, and have had issues with my wired network card working. I had contacted the developers to give them my hardware information after testing BeleniX before, and asked for driver availability for my network hardware. Obviously, the drivers didn't get into the mix. I am offering my info to the Solaris community in hopes they can get one of my interfaces working so I can truly test the fullness of your desktop. My network info is as follows: Intel Corp. Ethernetcard, 82544GC Gigabit Ethernet Controller, 82801EB (ICH5) PRO/100 VE Ethernet Controller. Also, including a NetWork Applet would be helpful, as the KDE Control Centre Network Connections does not even recognize the Solaris operatiing system, nor does it list it as an option for a network connection. Another suggestion is to pare down your desktop to the basics, like PCLinux's MiniMe, and get everything working out of the box for most users, and then let them build it the way they want or need for it to be a functional desktop. Thanks for your help!
155 • Working with two monitors (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 19:37:09 GMT from Canada)
I had some fun playing with several linux distros over the weekend. It was on my son’s old PC with AMD 3800+ with 1G ram and Win XP/DreamLinux dual boot. I put two old video cards on it (one PCI and one AGP), the BIOs automatically disabled the on-board video port and used the add-on cards. The XP picked up both cards immediately, right click on the desktop to bring up the pop-up menu and chose properties to adjust the video setting to meet my need and it worked great. The Dreamlinux worked on only one monitor and did not see the second card. So I decided to try some of the other linux distros with their live CDs. Here are the results:
Mint 4 worked with only one monitor
Open Suse 10.3 worked with only one monitor
Sabayon 3.4f could not find any video card
Fadora 8 could not work with the video card
Then I tried Mandriva One 2008 Spring, it found both video cards and both monitors were working. I was excited, well, for a minute, just to find out that after my mouse pointer moved from the main monitor to the second one, it won’t come back to the first monitor. It was like being trapped by a glass wall. Tried all the tricks I could think of, and failed, I turn off the computer. Next I tried PCLinuxOS, wow, it worked right away. The mouse pointer can move back and forth, and I could open applications on both monitor. It’s almost as good as the XP, except I couldn’t move an open window from one monitor to another. So, to use an application on the second monitor, I have to move the mouse to that monitor and open the application from there. May be there is a trick to make the two monitors work as one big desktop like the Windows, but I didn’t know how. Knowing that PCLinuxOS is Mandriva based, I tried my favourite live CD, MCN Toronto, also based on Mandriva. Again, it worked right away. Similar to PCLinuxOS, I could not drag an open window from one monitor to another, but was able to open applications on both monitors. One thing better than the XP was that I could put different pictures on the two monitors. After seeing two Mandriva based live CD worked well but the latest Mandriva didn’t, I tried the previous version of Mandriva One (2008.0). Sure enough, it worked.
So, after playing around for two days, I found only the previous version of Mandriva or Mandriva based distro worked, out-of-the-box, with the two monitor setup on my PC. But, it was disappointing to see the newest Mandriva One didn’t. Hopefully, they can fix the problem.
Just want to share the experiences, it might be interesting to someone.
156 • Run as root, Mandriva changing... (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-23 19:48:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
The geeky way to run stuff as root is to open a console, type 'su', enter your root password, then run whatever you want from that console. Anything run from a console when you are root has root privileges.
The slick GUI way is to install the 'openasroot-kmenu' package, which will give you root operations in the right-click menu in Konqueror. This is described in more detail in the Wiki: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Editing_configuration_files .
How has Mandriva changed since 9.1? Well, hmm, let's see. That's a whole major kernel revision ago - 2.4 to 2.6. So now you don't have your CD writer emulated as a SCSI drive any more. :) We have an update notification applet. We have backports and candidate update repositories. There's an update repository for contrib. There's a live CD version of the distro, including proprietary drivers. rpmdrake's been completely redesigned, twice. About a dozen new drak* tools have been introduced. 2008 Spring supports, at a conservative estimate, about three times as much hardware as 9.1 did, and has over three times as many packages. Firefox exists. Printer configuration is automatic. WPA-EAP is supported. So's WPA-PSK. The Wiki exists. The Club is free. So are the official forums. Printer configuration is automatic. Synchronization support for portable devices is way better. We pioneered the packaging of Compiz. The package metainformation storage and retrieval system has been completely overhauled. The Mandriva tools are capable of configuring repositories automatically. There's a public non-free repository.
Oh, shoot, I have to go out now. That was only about 2% of the whole list...:)
157 • RE: # 156 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-23 21:57:43 GMT from Italy)
"The geeky way to run stuff as root is to open a console, type 'su', enter your root password, then run whatever you want from that console."
Adam, I did something very similar. In "Mandriva Control Center" you can start a "root konsole". I did, I started Konqueror and changed some configuration files. Then I couldn't save the changes. By that time I was feeling incredibly frustrated, being unable to take the other route, log out and log in as root.
This matter of "Mandriva didn't change since 9.1" has been taken too seriously. I wrote "It looks to me that...", and I wrote it in a moment of frustration. If I really believed that Mandriva is such a crap, I wouldn't even bother downloading and trying it.
158 • To much whining (by RideTheWind on 2008-04-23 22:04:25 GMT from United States)
Recently I read an article that stated if ms goes down it'll be from a way to bloated os. That's a company problem.
Reading DW it seems if something happens to Linux it'll be a user problem. This doesn't work. Your distro sux. WAAAA WAAAA!
Mommy he/she/it called my distro a bad name.
From ms's proprietary crapola to something that only costs me a cd and some time to go and retrieve all kinds of apps free and configure my desktop anyway I want, you know-FLEXIBILITY and FREEDOM, I find I have nothing to complain about.
Frustrating as heck at times but a learning experience.
Yeah, I've run into nerdysnobs/elitist types that look down their keyboard at someone who isn't some kind of techie/pro and it is sometimes amusing and also sad. Instead of helping they chew somebody out for not having some kind of instinctive knowledge of what to do and seem irritated at some noobs inexperience. Probably sent em back to ms.
And there have been those that bend over backwards with patience to walk someone thru a problem over multiple posts.
A lot, well, in fact 97% of what I know I learned on my own or from reading because I wouldn't post anything so I could either get yelled at or totally ignored. Am no Linux guru by any means but I'm getting ready to try SEDK(Solaris Developer) and see if I know as much as I think. The DVD should be here soon.
Folks, lighten up. Those that work and give away-Bless You.
Those that charge/ask for donations-Cool.
Those that whine-pfffffft!!!
Lad, love the DW. Great work.
159 • @157 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-04-23 22:26:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
That's odd. I just tested, and it worked fine. I opened that root console and edited a file in /etc both with nano and gedit. I then confirmed that I can't edit the same file from a normal console as a regular user.
160 • Mandriva 2008.0 PowerPack vs 2008.1 (by verndog on 2008-04-24 04:54:44 GMT from United States)
I got 2008.0 that has Power Pack on. I later downloaded the latest "springtime" 2008.1 version. The newer version is livecd, but for some reason it fails when it tries to make swap.
The real question I have, that Power pack has extra stuff on it. Can I use that if I install from 2008.1 ? Also, what's on the power pack that I can't download somewhere? I made a huge mistake by clicking on the "do you want to load the cd into the hard drive. Now I have less space. I was afraid to remove the files, thinking some list files needs it now.
I'd rather use the newer version 2008.1 and find a newer Power Pack later.
Thanks for any answers from the Mandriva experts here. I need to find a good Mandriva forum, but the home page is confusing in that regard.
161 • interesting comments (by hab on 2008-04-24 05:52:11 GMT from Canada)
Shuttleworth makes some interesting obervations in this beeb article, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7358483.stm, although personally i'm waiting for the flatulent ferret release!
cheers
162 • RE 152 : root privileges... (by dbrion on 2008-04-24 07:13:32 GMT from France)
"It is the equivalent of giving users a root login by default. I see this issue as helping to maintain stability and usability for users"
You are right, if there are many users or if you wish that they know how to competently manage (or get accustomed to use without too many harms) a production computer.
In the case of a system one installed oneself, with 1 user (plus the root), I do not know...
Having a no security computer can work if
a) one is a distro(s)hopper
b) in the case of very careful (and lucky) users: I saw one ((s)he had root privileges, in order to use commercial packages under Linux and I was astonished by malpractices (from my point of view). In fact, it was less dangerous than changing recursively any permissions, and it lasted for years ((s)he told me (s)he made copies of his/her work on a better managed computer every week: that protected from HW failures AND malpractices..)
163 • #155 - Very interesting (by Michael on 2008-04-24 14:44:13 GMT from Sweden)
As a Mandriva userusing graphics-heavy applications and going the multui-monitor path I found commen #155 very interesting. I'd really like to see a response from someone with technical insight into Mandriva and derivatives.
To qualify as usable for graphics and software development workstations, and perhaps high-end desktops, these things should work:
* Multi-adapter/monitor set-up
* Cross-adapter mouse movement
* Cross-adapter window movement
164 • @ 160 (by Mandriva forum on 2008-04-24 15:02:52 GMT from Canada)
Regarding the swap issue, I'm not sure but it could be a bad burn. Have you checked the md5sum?
I've never used Powerpack, so I'm not sure but the powerpack software is pretty much autonomous, so it shouldn't have dependencies outside powerpack. If you add the PLF repositories you will have all the functionality that comes with powerpack (play DVD, unrar, skype etc)
165 • @ 160 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-24 15:05:53 GMT from Canada)
Click on my name on my previous post to go to the forums.
166 • openasroot-kmenu works great (by Guy on 2008-04-24 16:47:42 GMT from United States)
Thanks Adam for your help.
167 • ubuntu reviews, just read the release notes instead, people. (by Dopher on 2008-04-24 23:08:44 GMT from Belgium)
I saw there are 5 reviews of ubuntu 8.04 added at release date. Isn't that something.
In the old days people actually tested the distro thoroughly, came up with tips and hints and described how it behaved in daily use ( the installationproces is not the most important thing, really. If it installs great, and daily use actually sucks, thenthe review means nothing)
Now they just come up with a copy/paste variant of the ubuntu releasenotes, some crap on how it installed, a bunch of standard screenshots, and that's it.
complete waste of time, I tell ya.
168 • re:167 (by Dopher on 2008-04-24 23:12:25 GMT from Belgium)
oh yeah, i forgot. Is there some mental institute where they want to help people re socializing by letting them write standard reviews of Ubuntu to get some work experience or so??!
Because it appears so.
169 • reviews (by anticapitalista on 2008-04-24 23:25:41 GMT from Greece)
Well to be fair it is not just reviews of Ubuntu that are generally crap.
IMO most reviews of distros are crap as they (as you point out) are totally superficial.
How many of the reviewers come back 3-6 months later and see if the distro is still working properly?
170 • 167 reviews (by Ultra on 2008-04-25 00:10:24 GMT from Canada)
lol, good one, might as well head over to TCS screenshot page for the review
171 • ref. 167 - 169 (by verdog on 2008-04-25 00:23:53 GMT from United States)
There was a guy that had a blog and he gave a good "review" of Sidux. In fact his review made me start using Sidux. It was not a review per say, but it was his experience installing and running Sidux and what he thought of the system. Pure and straight forward. You could tell he wasn't a professional reviewer, just a guy that tried Sidux and waht his experiences where. I wish more would do the same.
I tend to think of reviewers as critics. Either they find what's wrong or either they already made up their minds from the get-go.
I liked the idea this blog user made. He just installed Sidux. Stayed with it for a while and gave his personal experience. He had a lot of hits and comments. Positive. Not just for Sidux, but the way he conducted himself.
172 • swappiness (by Ultra on 2008-04-25 01:55:33 GMT from Canada)
Is vm swappiness only related to your swap partition? Or does it affect swapping programs to and from memory in general? I don't have a swap partition so just wanted to know before I go out and waste my time playing with the value. I read somewhere you can improve desktop performance by lowering the value.
BTW, does anyone monitor their swap partition to see if it's actually used? When I first started running Linux 3 years ago I used to allocate 2 times my memory, around 1gb. I never saw it used once so I started reducing the size down to equal what I had in physical memory. Still no usage. Then upped my main memory to 1gb and downed swap to 512mb. Nada usage. Recently I built a mini-itx board with 1 gb ram and am running a full install of opensuse on a 4gb flash stick, no swap partition. No problems yet and it's been running for 3 months. I don't skimp on the use of apps either so apparently swap is a waste of disk space for desktop use.
173 • RE: 172 (by IMQ on 2008-04-25 07:11:13 GMT from United States)
The computer will use swap when RAM runs out.
This happens when I have many programs open along with Firefox with numerous tabs. Even my machine has 1GB of RAM.
There were a few times the swap partition was not on for some reasons and the computer response was practically near zero to mouse movements or keyboard strokes, I managed to turn on swap partition and the computer was responsive enough to close down some programs.
Whether or not swap is used depends on what programs are running. Even with 1 GB of RAM, I noticed swap partition is often used up to 300-400 KB of 1GB swap size, but I have not seen it used up all the swap partition.
174 • ref. 172 (by verndog on 2008-04-25 07:18:37 GMT from United States)
I have wondered that myself. I think it's old school. Maybe if you run a server it comes into play. By the way how did you determine there was no usage? Did you log onto the swap partition?
175 • Messy Linux (by Anon. on 2008-04-25 08:20:55 GMT from Norway)
@158, who wrote: "Reading DW it seems if something happens to Linux it'll be a user problem. This doesn't work. Your distro sux. WAAAA WAAAA!
Mommy he/she/it called my distro a bad name."
Deservedly so, for whichever distro, although the reasons may vary. The entire Linux scene is a mess. Probably mainly due to the Cambrium era mindset of most Linux developers and ditto geek wannabes. Take Vi(m). No sane person accepts to be "greeted" with anything of a similar nature under any other circumstances and yet Linux people have managed to convince each other that this is an application for users. Tells you something...
Now, to reinforce the unfriendliness, there are crucial apps which require sudo (distro mercifully unmentioned). If the poor newbie user has not had the "foresight" to add his himself to the 'sudoers' file, he spends an hour or more trying to figure out how to do that and then how to exit Vi(m) - only to find, if he succeeds in the first two, that his editing mistakes has destroyed sudo beyond repair. Good one.
Or take the hda/sda/(hd0) and what have you conundrum. I just tried the new Kubuntu, which now comes with the 'sda' convention. Only problem is, it still counts PATA devices first, while GRUB counts SATA devices first. Since I happen to have two SATA disks, booting failed. Excellent. Of course, *buntu is not alone in this idiocy - I've seen the same with Sabayon and Archlinux. How is a curious, open-minded newbie to deal with such?
Do Linux developers ever talk together? No. They do their own thing, the old way.
A real Linux user or developer is a person who prefers a car without wheels.
176 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-04-25 08:35:24 GMT from France)
"does anyone monitor their swap partition to see if it's actually used?"
I do , when I have a swap portition : as I qemulate, it makes times utterly unpredictable (bot slow, anyway) and it might be a memoryleak symptom... Even on native systems, swap recovery can last hours..
If I do not rely on programs, I have a PC with no swap portition (if there is a memory leak, it breaks ... and ext3 is reliable enough... it is faster than getting out of swap and it is the most eficient way I found to find errosr/ debug ).
I bet you already know that swap can be (des)activated [man swapo{n,ff}].
177 • 176 subject was (by dbrion on 2008-04-25 08:36:22 GMT from France)
RE 172
178 • RE 175 Is vim a symptom of madness? (by dbrion on 2008-04-25 08:53:10 GMT from France)
"Take Vi(m). No sane person accepts to be "greeted" with anything of a similar nature under any other circumstances and yet Linux people have managed to convince each other that this is an application for users. Tells you something..".
I is funny, as one of my colleagues asked me for vim ... under Vista (as (s)he has phones calls, (s)he does not like editors where one can type anything ,even unwantedly... and there are undo commands!!
zertzrezt
.As some commands can be used in fully automated editors, some tedious tasks can fully automated... making their user interface irrelevant). FYI (s)he is young, smart, married and catholic : I hope h{is;er} children will be thought very useful CLI utilities...
Just a question : is there an objective (in the zoological sense) definition of geek?
179 • Re: VIM symptoms (by Anon. on 2008-04-25 09:00:15 GMT from Norway)
dbrion wrote "Just a question : is there an objective (in the zoological sense) definition of geek?"
Alas, that is beyond me, like most things. However, since I am wasting my life trying to figure out the Linux beast, I might have a subjective answer one day :)
180 • RE 175 - nobody force anyone to use Linux (by KimTjik on 2008-04-25 09:04:41 GMT from Sweden)
I wouldn't say that the "Linux scene is a mess", but it might certainly be confusing for a new user. Hence I find pretty useful to have a site like DW to even though subjective pointing out the main distributions and some guidance.
I don't like sudo, but I'm not sure in what distributions aimed at new users you experienced those sudo-issues. Wake me up if I'm wrong, but isn't that usually explained and configured while installing many of the now most widely used distributions. That has at least been my experience while helping and administrating several systems for new users.
The su option with a root-password is fundamentally the same as what is used by Microsoft, even though the system and developed software for it made it worthless. Just because software developers of MS applications made a mess of security, why should that be inherited by Linux? So what's the big deal about sudo, or if someone so prefer su?
The vim example makes no sense at all to me. I've used Linux for several years, but except some Slackware installation I've never been forced to use vim. Nano isn't as powerful, but easy enough for anyone to use. Besides that I do get the impression that many Linux-users these days edit stuff in the X-environment anyway; gedit or kwrite or something down that line. So what we have is a variety of options. Linux isn't one company so the freedom of choice is greater. Shouldn't that be viewed as a strength? Why attack the geeks, don't they have a right to exist and make whatever choices they like? There are so many distributions nowadays aimed at the new Linux-users, so try to get over your anti-geek atitude (I'm far from a geek, but without them we wouldn't have come this far).
The GRUB issue though seems like a valid point of concern, even though I've personally never encountered it. Nevertheless Linux developers can't be expected to "talk to each other" in the sense that MS or Apple folks does, because it's not one community. You're the communication link; developers seldom have any time left for surfing the forums, and hence depend on for example constructive bug reports. If some users would interact more, sacrifice some few minutes, some issues would have been solved a lot faster.
Linux is forced to develop and improve, no doubt about that. Still there's another more positive side of the same coin.
181 • Re: 180 - nobody force... (by Anon. on 2008-04-25 09:45:38 GMT from Norway)
Kim Tjik wrote "Still there's another more positive side of the same coin."
Certainly. Like we need geeks to explore the nooks, we need criticism to get past the crannies. I am mostly in full agreement with what you wrote, but I think we would benefit from becoming more critical on the whole. We generally tend to brush off the problematic when it is to do with Linux, is my impression. Such an attitude just delays improvement and we all lose.
The app I had in mind is 'yaourt' and comes as an option in Archlinux. With it one can easily install community ported/maintained packages. Now, Archlinux uses su as default, so when yaourt stopped cold because the user was not in the sudoers file, I was a bit surprised. Okay, so I had to add myself to the list with visudo, which offered vim as the only choice of editor. Given that I prefer nano, I was forced into the corner I explained above.
All this is fine and dandy, technically speaking, but it is no way to woo new users. Of course, Archlinux takes some pride in being for the somewhat experienced users, but I find that the example is still valid to illustrate a less than productive mindset that is too pervasive among linuxers. IMHO.
The GRUB problem shows that there is all too little communication between the FSF/GNU and the various distro developer groups. The situation is hilarious, but still serious. Variety and choice is fine, but cooperation is fine also. There is too little of the latter.
182 • Re 180 - No nano in Slackware? (by Ariszló on 2008-04-25 09:50:26 GMT from Hungary)
KimTjik: I've used Linux for several years, but except some Slackware installation I've never been forced to use vim. Nano isn't as powerful, but easy enough for anyone to use.
Use Pico in Slackware if you prefer Nano to Vim:
http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.1/faq.html#1.3
183 • RE 181 Is disto(s)opping linked to intellectual producivity? (by dbrion on 2008-04-25 13:52:00 GMT from France)
"valid to illustrate a less than productive mindset that is too pervasive among linuxers."
Have you any measure of the productivity of mindsets? (in kilograms, meters, say).
Interesting discoveries often (I do not write always) occured with no productivity goal (and it is a happy thing, as economical references changed on the long term)... Reducing GNU/linux, in its generality (and the example of a little known application) to some immediate support of already out-fashioned HW or of shareholders (some being clever enough to have a long term vision, or rich enough .. .not to care) is the ebst way of getting nothing..... not even knowlege, if , instead of reading good books, one distro(s)hopps.
184 • @128 Seminarix Sidux-Edu localization + Ksimus (by dbrion on 2008-04-25 14:22:58 GMT from France)
Arno
I suppose you are the same (no identity problems) who linked with Seminarix last week.
I tried her under qemu (not for networking, not for HW recognition there fore), as a live CD, with 220 M RAM :
it could start fastly (which makes her {likely to be }useful/usable on old HW, in a superficial approach) , the only flaw was that the initial GRUB has too short a timeout (cannot be changed on a CD).
The language selection (by F4) was clear, with no misspeelings in the name of the language (makes her different from EdUBUntu, last year) andf I therefore could choose French.
As KDE started (this sometimes does not happen with so little RAM on other distrs) I was greeted by ... an English page... (I tried to figure out the reaction of a French teacher who can buy, in any supermarket ... a fully localized Vista/XP PC...)...
The menu was in English, too, and I could open a Konsole (unlike Zenwalk) and verify gcc existed (will try to connect a disk next week), the key,qp CRTW keymap was OK and top was working..
I tried to start
Ksimus
(simulates logical gates) : half of the menu was in French, the other in English (for me it is not that bad, but for young people?) .... but I was very glad to discover this application I did not know...
However, it was impossible to virtually connect a LED to a gates output, say... and the help was a KDE error message..... (Skolelinux has Kicad, which is not a simulator but has some help).
Ksimus web page (2003) was no help....
I wonder whether chosing shipping Ksimus was
a) an error
b) a nice way to give her a second start (but it might terrify some users, in the short therm -I remain cool-) and this is part of a courageous strategy.
As for the localization issue, the
dead
uncommunicating
delay ignoring
Gentoo (sorry for the mere obcenity) letter writers say "
Translations: Translations are an important part and free software has spread into markets because of translation into some uncommon languages. "
There seems to be lucid people in the strange free world...
185 • OpenRC Developer Tells User "See, I can license my software as I see fit." (by OpenRC Something Worth Hating on 2008-04-25 16:05:26 GMT from United States)
Developer gets in a snit and tells user to leave Gentoo.
":)Wed, 02/01/2008 - 14:56 — roy
:)
See, I can license my software as I see fit. You, as a user, have no say what so ever in this. You don't like it fine, use something else or write something better.
However, the bad news for you, as a Gentoo user, is that you'll be using OpenRC sometime soon as the key Gentoo people have already agreed to it. The Gentoo port, or rather OpenRC ebuilds are already available. Don't like that? Don't use Gentoo when that happens. Or use another init system in Gentoo - einit is quite good and I interact with the lead developer for it a fair bit.
I would imagine that you're using links to browse this site then as xorg is pretty much BSD licensed as well Eye-wink
If you are using xorg then I would guess you're being a tad hypocritical Sticking out tongue
"
ref.
http://roy.marples.name/node/338
186 • Re: 183 about productivity (by Anon. on 2008-04-25 17:58:26 GMT from Norway)
dbrion wrote: "Reducing GNU/linux, in its generality (and the example of a little known application) to some immediate support of already out-fashioned HW (...)".
A lot of smart ideas, choices and decisions are realised in the Linux world. Every day. Sadly, too often they are overcome and even actively resisted by almost the same measure of poor decisions, inertia and downright group chauvinism. The result is today's Linux scene and its corresponding market share.
If you don't like my examples, I can give you others, but I am sure it isn't necessary. That a distro and its bootloader can't agree on how to count, speaks volumes.
187 • @184 (by arno911 on 2008-04-25 18:56:00 GMT from Germany)
yes its me :)
about localisation: its a pita. please keep in mind: the current seminarix was tested having German schools in mind, (unlike the normal sidux its based on it defaults to German at boot time) thus the other 2xx languages have not been tested, and I am fully aware of some glitches in the general linux (and or GUI)-localisation.
and as I said before, I'm not involved in the seminarix development and composition. please join the sidux forum or irc for more info.
b.r.
arno911
188 • small addition (by arno911 on 2008-04-25 19:00:20 GMT from Germany)
grub countdown cant be stopped by any interaction, like chosing the language. 5 seconds is too much if you want the defaults (english, vga=791, ...)
and the welcome page you saw comes only in English and German, if anything other than German is selected as language, you will be presented the English rease notes. its not a bug, its a feature *g*
b.r.
arno911
189 • correction (by arno911 on 2008-04-25 19:01:27 GMT from Germany)
grub countdown CAN be stopped by any interaction
190 • Ubuntu 804 smb bug (by Naploi Bona on 2008-04-25 19:24:29 GMT from United States)
Downloaded and did a fresh install of the release ubuntu 804 as well as a distribution upgrade on a different PC. Both the install and the dist upgrade went well, however, the new setup doesn't show network shares when browsing via smb on either system. This problem was not present in the beta version, so I suspect a last minute fix broke something. Ubuntu forums are currently being hit so hard, my browser times out. Hope a quick fix come soon.
On the other hand, wow, its very fast and the fonts are very good after setting then to subpixel with slight hinting, this includes a very improved font display in Open Office 2.4 as well.
;^)
191 • Annvix stopped development (by Dr. David Johnson on 2008-04-25 22:30:14 GMT from United States)
I was surprised and pretty bummed out to learn this. It's a great mini-server distro with high default security, that runs on older, limited hardware. First Trustix and now Annvix. Guess I'll have to resort to hardening Debian myself... or does anyone have suggestions for alternatives?
192 • Linux Hot In Brazil (by Samba on 2008-04-26 03:51:38 GMT from Australia)
Brazil's Ministry of Education ("MEC") is installing Linux in labs used by 52 million schoolchildren, reports KDE developer Mauricio Piacentini. Piacentini's blog post describes MEC's "Linux Educacional 2.0" as "a very clean Debian-based distribution, with KDE 3.5, KDE-Edu, KDE-Games, and some tools developed by the project."
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2003071647.html
193 • RE 188 : Grub ergonomy.. (by dbrion on 2008-04-26 09:09:41 GMT from France)
"grub countdown cant be stopped by any interaction,"
I agree, but one must have time :
* to understand the menu (on a demo CDROM, it is likely quite new).
* to start the interaction (when I qemulate, I have some other apps being tested; one can be disturbed by phone calls; one can have some tea getting too hot....).
Very long grub times(30s; infinity) are less stressing and this cannot fixed on demo liveCDs....
Anyhow, thanks again for letting known Seminarix (it might be almost perfect for German teachers/pupils, except -to day- with Ksimus).
194 • RE 186 (by dbrion on 2008-04-26 09:18:28 GMT from France)
"The result is today's Linux scene and its corresponding market share."
I do not download/buy market share, I *use*(sometimes develop) softwares (and know they are today a little less buggy than 20yrs ago, and often infinitely less expensive at initial price -I do not take into account the time to fix/test them, but it is often worse with commercial softs -harder to fix if broken--)
"That a distro and its bootloader can't agree on how to count, speaks volumes."
At a given time ... The history of bugs/unpleasant features/delirious ergonomy in the commercial world can be talkative, too.
I am very surprised that all the examples you go are linked with installation/configuration: As I think softwares are meant to be used (and one can buy preconfigured PCs), if you want to convince, can you find ONE example(not a volume, ONE) in the *real* world of software using???
195 • Linux might be good for "BRIC" (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets (by + Other Edu Projects on 2008-04-26 09:39:04 GMT from Australia)
But it seems to be LIMPING along on the much varied hardware of the desktop consumer market. I can attest to that with experience.
For about 1 year my Acer 1644 wmli laptop/notebook, with 915 GM Graphics card and LP154W01-TLA2 display, has been having serious screen display issues with various distros and continues to do so with the latest releases (Mandriva 2008.1 and K/Ubuntu 8.04). Xorg people have bug reports on the same hardware but NO RESULTS YET (maybe in 10 yrs time?). In anycase, I plan not to bother for years with any distro that has a 2008 release and fails to setup correctly my simple hardware. Ubuntu and Mandriva have had 2 releases and failed both times -- goodbye for 2 yrs, at least!
--------
to
X.org.0.log:
(II) intel(0): LGPhilipsLCD
(II) intel(0): LP154W01-TLA2
(II) intel(0): EDID vendor "LPL", prod id 0
--------------------------
+ /* Bug #10304: "LGPhilipsLCD LP154W01-A5" */
+ /* Bug #12784: "LGPhilipsLCD LP154W01-TLA2" */
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/xserver.git;a=blobdiff;
h=9fa5fef9e3566cc2344f5e10c0b1fa9ed1b54c9b;
hp=8b5e69d9a5fea419ecb487f2314f5ecc1a14e429;
hb=fc092334ac0a323b80a9602cb8bf60ca9dee3bfa;
f=hw/xfree86/modes/xf86EdidModes.c
Bug #
10304
12784
11603
: Add quirks for several physical size issues.
-------------------------
On top of my frustration with the laptop above, I recently pulled out from semi-retirement my old P4-1700 with Debian Etch, Fedora 7, Mandriva 2007.1 and OpenSuse 10.2 install partitions and a changed monitor setup and discovered the mad Linux world of system-wide dpi setting. A simple (and widely used) old Dell E770s Crt monitor caused endless issues that Mandriva and OpenSuse 10.2, two distros with the "best" hardware setup tools, still fail to fix. With a bit of work, I managed to get Debain and Fedora 7 to now have correct 96x96 dpi resolution. Me thinks Xorg development is the soft underbelly of Linux.
NB: I had first installed all the above 4 OSes when using an Acer LCD (1280x1024@60) Monitor.
Talking of fast distros with snappy application startups, Word 97 on W98 (with 512 MB RAM on P3-450) is the fastest - almost instant - startup I have ever seen.
:-)
Cheers
196 • Re: 194 (by Anon. on 2008-04-26 16:04:48 GMT from Norway)
dbrion wrote "I am very surprised that all the examples you go are linked with installation/configuration (...)"
Well, if you consider the context, you shouldn't be, but thanks for demonstrating my point: even when a braindead installation setup flunks, leaving a new user totally helpless, too many people in the Linux "community" are willing to gloss over it. That the developers of several Linux "flagships" let this particular problem live on through more than one distro version, is bad. Very bad. It shows that user feedback is not being taken seriously, despite numerous reports, and not only from me. Even worse: why did the developers not think of it, or at least *test* it, in the first place? I can readily understand that you would prefer to discuss something else.
As for Kubuntu, once an experienced user has fixed the menu.lst, it appears nearly flawless on the couple of boxen I have tried it (64-bit) on. I don't like sudo and might find other minor dislikes, but those are subjective.
197 • Mythbuntu 8.04 on main page (by johncoom on 2008-04-26 16:17:39 GMT from Australia)
Ladislav - Have a look what you have written for the AMD64 torrent,
is not 'ubuntustudio' etc. note: hold mouse over, the url link behind is OK
You may want to correct this typo error ?
198 • Re: 197 • Mythbuntu 8.04 on main page (by johncoom on 2008-04-26 16:23:57 GMT from Australia)
opps - not the Torrent its this 'ubuntustudio-8.04-alternate-amd64.iso'
The url link behind goes correctly to the Mythbuntu 8.04 amd64 etc.
199 • too many buntus (by arno911 on 2008-04-26 18:38:53 GMT from Germany)
guarantee confusion, i can understand that. almost the whole frontpage is spammed with it...
:-)
200 • Whats the best linux version for hardware in a Toshiba x205 Satellite model (by robert on 2008-04-26 23:33:42 GMT from United States)
Whats the best linux version for hardware in a Toshiba x205 Satellite model Computer thats my Question , some like debian and gentoo based work but the audio front things like the headphones don't work in linux like they do in windows vista
201 • Info on Toshiba computer hardware (by Robert on 2008-04-26 23:45:07 GMT from United States)
Computer info for my Toshiba X205 Satellite Computer
my Computer uses a Intel Core Duo CPU @ 2.00GHz
Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT card
2Gb RAM
it can run either x64 based Pc , so both linux types run
it uses RealTek High Definition Audio card in the laptop
and I have a sound blaster card for the laptop too which I think their are some drivers that support the sound card but I don't think they come with most of the linux out their its a
ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook Email Sign Up
it would be nice if all linux came with drivers for the sound blaster card by default I need it for the speaker system too work with using linux otherwise needs windows ever time I may need to play music with it
also it has that hd dvd drive for movies , does linux play hd dvd movies yet? or can it? like play them
202 • Found a Fix for the default sound card here problem that all the linux versions (by Robert on 2008-04-27 03:31:40 GMT from United States)
Found a Fix for the default sound card here problem that all the linux versions seem to have builtin too it
For RealTek High Definition Audio card
http://www.deltanova.co.uk/493/
Below is some of the text of it for more goto that web link above it
Gentoo Linux - Toshiba Satellite X200/X205 (part 4)
Time for an update on my progress of installing Gentoo Linux on my Toshiba X200-20S. I have been managing to get audio playing out of the integrated speakers, so I assumed it was all working and setup correctly, wrong. When I tried to plug in my headphones the audio continues to be played out of the speakers. The problem appears to be an unsupported codec chip (ALC286). Now the good news is that support for this chip has been integrated into the 2.6.23 series of kernels. The downside is that they have not yet been marked for testing as gentoo-sources. I could try a vanilla kernel but I’d rather have the gentoo tweaks. Once it’s available for testing I shall give it a shot and see if it solves my problems.
Knowing the chip isn’t correctly supported could also explain an issue I was having enabling sounds in Gnome and it locking up. This is another thing to test with the new kernel.
I have also been putting some work into the Xorg.conf. Furthur refinements are needed but this version (see below) supports the touchpad a little better, using it as the core pointer, and allows the use of an external USB mouse.
203 • No subject (by Robert on 2008-04-27 03:34:41 GMT from United States)
or maybe thats not a good. fix...?not sure
204 • *buntu bias and hype (by mikkh on 2008-04-27 10:47:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
I always used to think distrowatch was reasonably unbiased but I've just noticed, and not for the first time - a multi 'buntu' release artificially kept near the top for days at a time, when it's quite clear from the RSS newsfeed section that at least half a dozen other new releases have occured too.
It's now the third day and the casual observer would think nothing else has been released - and the EIGHT alpha releases, all reported in distrowatch, that is so obviously hype, it's a joke.
The latest PC mag I've just bought contains no versions of *buntu for a change, but I expect next months editions to be over burdened with a *buntu fest and I always feel sorry for those not interested in Linux having half the DVD wasted by Linux distros. Even for people interested in Linux, the versions offered are so far behind the current releases, it can really only benefit people on very slow connections.
I wouldn't mind if *buntu really was the ultimate in Linux distros, but it's not IMO. It's good, but not that good, and it annoys me when I ask people if they've tried Linux, and they say yes I tried *buntu because it was free on my cover mounted DVD, came attached to my packet of cornflakes, or was given to me by a friend etc
205 • @202 (by Guy on 2008-04-27 12:08:01 GMT from United States)
I'm using the latest Mandriva on my SonyNR220 and have the same issue when plugging in headphones. Someone here told me to go to the sound controls and disable the front output. Well it worked! Now I can use headphones without speakers being on. Hope this helps you.
206 • RE:204 (by Dopher on 2008-04-27 13:40:40 GMT from Belgium)
I have to agree. It would be enough to see ubuntu/xubuntu/kubuntu as ONE 8.04 release. And therefore only mention the 8.04 release once (with referrals to the xubuntu/kubuntu/*ubuntu releases in that one distribution release message).
It's not only the distribution release messages, but also the flood of, mostly very shallow, reviews, and then there are also the banners to make it complete.
Appearantly it's *ubuntu-week, and we can avoid it. Well we can. Just stay away for a week or so, and perhaps the *ubuntu storm is over.
207 • Re: 204 • *buntu bias and hype (by Ariszló on 2008-04-27 14:01:23 GMT from Hungary)
It has been stated several times that releases without detailed release notes will only be listed under Latest Distributions. If a distributor does not take the trouble to write a couple of sentences about the new release, Ladislav will not either. No release notes, no announcement under Latest News and Updates.
Apart from Clonezilla, none of the distributions released after the Ubuntus have provided release notes. The Clonezilla release notes are here:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=812090
BTW. 04/26 Clonezilla • 1.0.11-5 should point to http://distrowatch.com/clonezilla (and not to conezilla)
208 • RE 196 (by dbrion on 2008-04-27 14:06:20 GMT from France)
"leaving a new user totally helpless, too many people in the Linux "community" are willing to gloss over it. "
That is why there are install parties in towns...
"That the developers of several Linux "flagships" let this particular problem live on through more than one distro version, is bad. Very bad. "
Perhaps they suppose users can read an howto (if there is a text processor, a browwser, the implicit hypothesis is that people can read & write...)
For example vim (cf @175) has been used for 30 years, is almost bugless : there are books, papers about it, and , if I buy something, I look at the contents before....
Even blondes ,
(cf @175 : "
A real Linux user or developer is a person who prefers a car without wheels.")
in Europe, can change a wheel if there is a flat tyre... and they do not use a comb, not an eye liner to change a wheel :
I hope that distroshoppers are sufficiently clever to choose some not that bad tools, and decide about a rational method to decide whether it is usable (!= profit, != easy to install/fix)
(not I download, burn and cry -or hide behind mythic users)
"It shows that user feedback is not being taken seriously, despite numerous reports, and not only from me. Even worse: why did the developers not think of it, or at least *test* it, in the first place? I can readily understand that you would prefer to discuss something else."
It just shows that developper can sort between:
* serious users feedback
* uttelerly irrational cries from distroshoppers (sometimes messing usability and market shares : see Windows ME , totally unusable but M$ made profits).
209 • sys 0.21-r5 released (by wl,cayenne on 2008-04-27 14:35:28 GMT from France)
Yesterday I released sys 0.21-r5. Its install DVD is already on the mirrors, f.ex. http://www.br.kernel.org/SYS/?C=N;O=D . The new version comes with a special protection for the users: the browsers are blocking sites which desrespect the open-source principles, try to censor or auto-nominate them open-source police or registering distros, or are corrupt or other kind of parasites. Until now, sys was downloaded appr. 1500 times.
210 • RE: 204 *buntu bias and hype (by ladislav on 2008-04-27 14:43:08 GMT from Taiwan)
multi 'buntu' release artificially kept near the top for days at a time, when it's quite clear from the RSS newsfeed
Ah, we have similar comments with just about every release of every big distribution - there is always somebody who thinks that a distro is kept on top for too long or it is kept up on top not long enough - nothing has changed.
Please guys, before you start typing any more accusations, remember that I have no interest in keeping Ubuntu or any other distro on the top of the news. Ubuntu does not sponsor (and never has sponsored) DistroWatch in any way. And even if it did, it would change nothing - distro release news are reported as they come, with no special treatment for any of them.
211 • RE 209 Thanks : As I bet 2 weeks ago, (by dbrion on 2008-04-27 14:52:31 GMT from France)
2008 will be fool'year : an undocumented, untested, based on copying/compressing "distribution" has a rolling release policy....
212 • ref 210 The Raise of ubuntu (by Jphn Grubb on 2008-04-27 15:36:22 GMT from United States)
Some people just like to complain. It's just that simple. I'm not a ubuntu fan, but I appreciate ubuntu for all that it does for Linux, all the exposure it has. I'm not the lest bit upset because of the front page display of ubuntu LTS. Canonical has made ubuntu successful.
The problem some people have is the evangelico drum beat of free software, world peace, etc, while Canonical charges through the nose.
213 • SYS (by werner on 2008-04-27 16:00:11 GMT from France)
@211: Make a better one
214 • Re: 208 (by Anon. on 2008-04-27 17:02:45 GMT from Norway)
dbrion wrote: "Even blondes ,
(cf @175 : "
A real Linux user or developer is a person who prefers a car without wheels.")
in Europe, can change a wheel if there is a flat tyre... "
Hehe :)
French pronouncements about blondes are about as profound as Norwegian statements on wine.
Real blondes use Windows. Sad, but true.
215 • re: 210 (by Dopher on 2008-04-27 17:19:08 GMT from Belgium)
I didn't believed that distrowatch/ladislav manipulates anything. Though, i just found the *ubuntu flood overwhelming. That's why i replied with 206.
216 • Gentoo Release Schedule (by Lnddor on 2008-04-27 21:09:34 GMT from Canada)
I was pondering your reply for some time before deciding to reply or not Ladislav. I came to the conclusion I was doing a disservice by not replying Now I see a flurry of posts missing, among them, yours and mine on this subject.
I went to the Gentoo Release Engineering page and scrolled down the section pertaining to 2008.0. Before I read that I read a "note" that was highlighted, "Note: These are estimated dates. Actual release dates may vary." A sound precaution for when problems arise and a deadline can't be met. We have to remember, with all things, life happens, and "this is a volunteer project"..
You are correct though, it does state March 2008 for the release date, and yes, that should be changed. Not a really big issue when you consider there is a link there under the heading "Phase" for Release Information.
After going to that page, which I personally consider only common sense to do for anyone looking for information on the release. I find another disclaimer at the top of the page: "Disclaimer : This document is a work in progress and should not be considered official yet." Which is basically saying the same thing, life happens and don't consider this written in stone...yet" As I scrolled through the information I found a release date of May 5 for 2008.0 .
Will I hold them to this? No, sure Gentoo has had some internal problems, and just like any country suffering a severe economic recession, I wouldn't expected a newly elected government to turn the tide and return the country back to Eden in a few short weeks or months. Problems to be fixed take time, and as with the first page of the Release Engineering Page, some small things get missed while the bigger picture is being dealt with.
I found this information easily, and within a few short clicks. I find it shocking and also inexcusable that you yourself were on the same page and didn't see it, or if you did, you left it out. I would've thought that as a journalist you would be a bit more investigative in your procedures. But as I have stated before I have seen times when your information was incorrect or you left things out that would've shed a different light on things (for example reading the docs for Gentoo's USE Flags, yet you had to for a BSD install).
In the end, it's a vollunteer project, giving something away freely. They are also in the midst of attempting to correct any problems. I don't see them in the light you do, even more so now after "just a couple short clicks" and finding out the needed information.. The release is moving forward to some degree. The main page is being updated frequently. The new "monthly" (for more ingelligent of a schedule for volunteers) is being released regularly. Not to mention that the portage tree is being updated daily.
You can't convince me that Gentoo has the level of problems you currently believe it does. Nor can you convince me you do apropriate research and investigation as a journalist.
I was going to go to my own build of Linux that I made from scratch, it's basically done now, but for the time being, Gentoo's going to continue to receive my support, their obvious efforts in going forward deserve no less.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
217 • Is their any reason to run 64bit software in linux than 32bit linux software (by Rob on 2008-04-28 00:22:29 GMT from United States)
Is their any reason to run 64bit software in linux than 32bit linux software, since my computer can run both , I don;t notice any speed difference over them, or difference in stable that I can notice, what do you think about the difference between them since the 64bit can run 32bit etc.. thats the only thing I can think of, otherwise theirs no big use of 64bit for a normal user, like gaming etc.. or I am wrong with that?
218 • Linux is good but their will always be new games that require windows to run (by Robert on 2008-04-28 00:43:54 GMT from United States)
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=article-game
As much as I like linux I got to say that as long is their games that are windows only and require windows to run, them , the ones that wine can't ever to too run etc.. their will be the need to dual boot between os, like for example games like the witcher and other ones , for me at least for playing games I need windows, and will always do , no matter how nice linux look or if you can get online with it, the games I buy most of the time don't support or never will support linux , its a true but sad fact of life, also I don't no but things like veoh may not install on linux either in the web browser I think
219 • Ubuntu distress (by Geert on 2008-04-28 00:48:57 GMT from United States)
Some ubuntu/kubuntu parts make it a distro for entousiasts only:
- the startup is extremely slow. At least a lot slower than Mandriva, Opensuse, puppy and many others.
- very heavy on resources. Every application is very slow. Amarok works fine on Opensuse power pc of 500 Mhz. Blocks on Ubuntu on a 2 Gb, 1.5 GHz intel.
- why not one distribution. Having Gnome and KDE leads to an hopeless mess.
- hardware recognition is fine, but the integrated administrator tools of Mandriva and Opensuse are totally lacking. You just get the standard Gnome and KDE tools.
- What makes Ubun
220 • 217 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-28 00:52:23 GMT from United States)
You are correct - for the average user, there is no benefit and a lot of hassle from using 64 bit. I used 64 bit for a while for heavy numerical work under the impression that it was faster. Then I found out that it was actually slower, because I wasn't using large enough datasets.
It's only if you are using more than 4 GB of RAM or working with extremely large datasets that there is an advantage.
Aside from that, you will work hard getting many things set up, so it's probably better to dual-boot into 64-bit for those few instances you might possibly need it.
From http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html:
"Because the pointers are larger, R's basic structure (the cons cell) is larger (normally twice the size). This means that R objects take more space and (usually) more time to manipulate. So 64-bit versions of R will typically run slower than 32-bit versions. (On Sparc Solaris the difference was 15-20%, on Linux on Opteron around 10%. The pattern is not universal on Intel Core 2 Duo the 64-bit version is around 10% faster on both Linux and Mac OS X.)
So, for speed you may want to use a 32-bit build, but to handle large datasets (and perhaps large files) a 64-bit build."
221 • Just wondering what do you think of the new kde 4.0 , I dont like the look of it (by Rob on 2008-04-28 00:59:18 GMT from United States)
Just wondering what do you think of the new kde 4.0 , I dont like the look of it
for example that menu bar at the bottom of it or the fact that it does not seem to come with normal icons on the desktop , those upper right program seem to be like their trying to copy vista apps a little too much , what do you think about the vista like programs for example that clock and other apps, its a ok thing but I am not sure I like the black bar on the bottom that one that goes from left to right etc.. it really lacks the style or look I kind of think , the feature of downloading images for the desktop is the only new thing I like so far about it
222 • a Intel Core 2 Duo so the 64bit would be faster right? (by Robert on 2008-04-28 01:03:33 GMT from United States)
Intel Core 2 Duo the 64-bit version is around 10% faster
I have a Intel Core 2 Duo so the 64bit would be faster right? from what I read their?
223 • 217, 220, 222 64 bit vs 32 bit linux (by Ultra on 2008-04-28 02:00:29 GMT from Canada)
I have half of a core duo (really!) and I tried 64 bit and 32 bit versions of 2 linux distros - opensuse and ubuntu. I found the 32 bit to be just a little bit faster in both cases. Also things like flash worked on the 32 bit without hassle, whereas on the 64 bit it took a some tinkering. I originally thought I'd like to run 64 bit 'cause I wanted to take full advantage of the processor's capability, but after my experience, I don't see the need. 32 bit works just fine, is faster and less hassles.
224 • Flash is bad (by Robert on 2008-04-28 02:29:20 GMT from United States)
Sometimes I don't like that flash stuff online , and browsing without it at times a good thing, just look at all thoses web ads that use flash and audio in them , talking to you thought the web browser etc.. a lot of sites misuse that program they call flash too much , sure their are a few excepts like www.muppets.com for example
225 • 222 (by Anonymous on 2008-04-28 03:25:58 GMT from United States)
In the example of this program, it's faster. I think that they are just making the point that anything can happen, though 32-bit will usually be faster.
If you believe you might gain from 64-bit, the best thing is to try both 64-bit and 32-bit of your main distro and see what happens when running your software.
My advice is that even a 10% speed difference isn't worth the headache for the vast majority of users. It really was a PITA when I tried it.
226 • 64 Bits Linux vs 32 bits Linux.: -- 64 bits is visibly faster -- (by Anonymous on 2008-04-28 05:55:01 GMT from United States)
I have an Athlon dual core 64 bits, notebook.
I did find both Linux (Suse 10.3) and Vista 64 bits to be significantly faster than the original 32 bits. I could not quantify, but the gain in speed is probably 30% else I would not have notice!
The only issue that I have with Suse 10.3 x64 is that several applications, like Skype, are not available as 64 bits, and just do not run "out of the box" on Opens Suse x64. Please post here if you are aware of a distro which support 32 and 64 bits apps.... like Vista x64 does!
---
227 • Re: 208 - User documentation (by DG on 2008-04-28 07:31:19 GMT from Netherlands)
dbrion wrote: "Perhaps they suppose users can read an howto (if there is a text processor, a browwser, the implicit hypothesis is that people can read & write...)"
I've been a Unix user for 25+ years, but have to admit that the one big failing in the Linux world is documentation that is suitable for use by new users wanting to try Linux. In many instances you have to search the web, but you have no idea whether the page that appears to be what you want but was last updated in 2002 is still relevant to the problem at hand, or that toolX only applies to 2.4 kernels and you really need toolY but there is scant documentation for it, or that the online documentation comes in Info format and you need to learn Emacs to be able to navigate it.
The commercial Unixen (Solaris, HPUX, etc) all had complete, current and coherent documentation. Microsoft provides links to complete and current documentation even if if is incomprehensible to anyone who isn't steeped in MS jargon and TLAs.
So, yes, users can read a howto, but first they have to be able to find it, to have confidence that it is still current and relevant, and that it is written in a format that they can actually navigate.
228 • Re: 226 - 32+64 bit support (by Anon. on 2008-04-28 07:34:55 GMT from Norway)
Most any 64-bit Linux distro will support 32 bit apps running in a chroot environment.
Google for "chroot", "dchroot"and/or "schroot". You can have easy access to e.g. Skype from your default 64-bit desktop and install other 32-bit applications to your heart's content :)
229 • RE 227 I was writing about vim: (by dbrion on 2008-04-28 07:45:35 GMT from France)
which has doc in any format (even cellulotic one). For new/exotic/unuseful apps (some get outfashioned before they release!) , I agree that the doc might be unusable/inexistant/highly redundent... (sometimes the 3 at the same time!) but not for vi!
Number of Comments: 229
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