 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 260, 7 July 2008 |
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Welcome to this year's 27th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! What were the most exciting Linux events of the first half of 2008? The continued success of Linux on ultra-portable laptops? The arrival of KDE 4? The miscellaneous distribution releases? Our lead article takes a quick look at the most interesting events in the Linux world that shaped the year so far. In the news section, the first stable release of Gentoo Linux in 14 months hits the download servers, Ubuntu receives high marks from French legislators, Xandros acquires Linspire and its software assets, PC-BSD releases the first BSD with integrated KDE 4.1, and OpenBSD prepares for the forthcoming release of symbolic importance - version 4.4. Also not to be missed, news about Ikki Boot, a compilation CD with an excellent collection of rescue utilities, and the latest distro statistics from this site's web server logs. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the DistroWatch.com's monthly donation for June 2008 is the MythDora project. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story |
A quick look at Linux events of the first half of 2008
With the first half of the year 2008 now behind us, let's take a look at some of the most interesting events that shaped the past six months.
Probably the most important Linux-related story of this year was the continued success of Linux on ultra-portable laptops. These simple Internet devices, pioneered by ASUS in the form of its Eee PC and later "copied" by just about every major hardware manufacturer, are largely responsible for the growing perception among the general public that Linux is just as effective an operating system as any of the mainstream alternatives - all without the extra costs and limitations present in proprietary products. In fact, such was the success of Linux on the Eee PC that Microsoft was forced to spend a large amount of money on promoting Windows and has reportedly cut the price of its specially built Windows XP to as little as US$26. Despite that, it might still end up on the losing side of the battle.
The second most exciting -- but also disappointing -- event of this year was the arrival of KDE 4.0, a new generation of the popular open source desktop. Unlike the Eee PC which was welcomed with universal ovations among the Linux users and fans, the new KDE has only succeeded to turn off many Linux enthusiasts. There is no denying - KDE 4.0 was the buggiest and most feature-incomplete release ever produced by the otherwise highly capable KDE team. Although the project did warn the public that their initial release might be more suitable to developers and testers than for general desktop consumption, the fact that it labelled the product with a "stable" number caused that several distributions have accepted it in their releases. The result was a disaster, as witnessed by these distribution's mailing lists and forums where many dissatisfied users vented their frustration. With the release of KDE 4.0, the project has damaged its reputation to the point that many Linux users are having serious doubts about the quality of the upcoming KDE 4.1 as well. Will the KDE development team regain the trust of their users? We'll have to wait and see.
On the distribution front, we have had the pleasure of seeing new releases from all major Linux makers. Once again, Mandriva seems to be a winner here, earning high marks from both the reviewers and the users on various forums for its 2008.1 release. Fedora, on the other hand, was the exact opposite - the distribution's first release under a new project management has been rated rather poorly by most reviewers, while it also received a major thumbs down from their KDE users. Ubuntu 8.04 and openSUSE 11.0 were interesting releases which were generally praised in most reviews, although a part of their user base was somewhat more critical over some stability problems and bugs. Nevertheless, it is clear that openSUSE has made huge strides towards improving some of the aspects of the distributions that were often criticised in the past, notably the speed of YaST and the system's boot time, while the newly introduced Zypper has turned out to be a powerful and useful addition to the existing package management toolkit. Still, it seems that Mandriva was the distribution that found the best balance between features and stability. Despite that, the company continues to struggle as its flagship product still lacks the mindshare and popularity of the other three distributions.
What can we expect in the next few months? Apart from an occasional alpha build and an odd minor release, not much is likely to happen in July and August, the two months traditionally associated with summer holidays in the northern hemisphere. But come September, things will change quickly. Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 is expected to arrive at about that time and while this huge community project has never attained its projected release target, the current state of its testing tree suggests that a delay, if any, shouldn't be too long. Next, it will be the all-new Mandriva 2009 in early October, with the distribution's first real attempt at integrating KDE 4 into its product. The end of October should bring two back-to-back releases of Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.10, while the middle of December is reserved for the excitement of openSUSE 11.1. Will Fedora learn from its recent errors of judgement? And will Ubuntu introduce any major features now that its hands are no longer tied by the need to plan 3 - 5 years ahead? And will Mandriva be able to maintain their stability edge over other distributions in the upcoming release? We'll look at the second half of the year for the answers.
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| Statistics |
Debian GNU/Linux - the new "Number One" distribution
Interesting statistics emerged from last month's web logs on DistroWatch.com. Ubuntu, formerly the most widely-used Linux distribution among the visitors of DistroWatch, has lost its number one position to no other than its parent - Debian GNU/Linux. This is of course largely due to the fact that, as of Ubuntu 8.04, the distribution's Firefox browser no longer provides an identifiable user-agent string:
• Ubuntu 7.10: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071204 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.11
• Ubuntu 8.04: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008060309 Firefox/3.0
As a result, Awstats, the web log analyser deployed here to make sense of the Apache web log, now classifies Ubuntu as an "Unknown" distribution, together with Slackware Linux and other operating systems that don't provide a custom user-agent string in their browsers. While this, of course, doesn't mean that Ubuntu has lost its popularity, from the DistroWatch web server's point of view, it is Debian GNU/Linux that is now the most frequently used Linux distribution to access this web site.
In the above table, the third column represents the percentage of all users visiting DistroWatch.com with a Linux or BSD distribution. For the data from the current month and other statistics please visit distrowatch.com/awstats.
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| Miscellaneous News |
Gentoo Linux 2008.0, Ubuntu in Assemblée nationale, Xandros acquires Linspire, alpha PC-BSD 7 with KDE 4.1, OpenBSD 4.4 beta tagged, Ikki Boot live CD
 After an endless wait, the Gentoo project's first stable release in 14 months finally hit the download mirrors on Sunday. As always with this popular source-based meta-distribution, any new release is merely a way of providing an up-to-date set of installation and live media, and does not represent a must-have download for existing Gentoo users. However, for those who intend to perform a new installation, the new images provide the latest kernel, thus increasing compatibility with more modern hardware. One caveat which was already reported by two DistroWatch readers and which was also mentioned on the Gentoo forum - the live CD seems to contain a bug that prevents GRUB installation on some systems. If this is your case, there are alternative (non-live) minimal or universal installation CDs, which can be downloaded from the distribution's download page. No in-depth reviews of the product have been published so far, but those interested in a first-impression style quick look at the new Gentoo 2008.0 live CD can read this report (with screenshots) by Phoronix.
Gentoo Linux 2008.0 live CD arrives with a new installer, lighter desktop, and no branding.
(full image size: 92kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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 Who says that Linux isn't ready for the desktop? Those readers who follow general Linux news will remember the decision taken last year by France's Assemblée nationale to switch the laptop computers of their members to Ubuntu. So how did the switch go? Very well, apparently - at least according to ZDNet France which summarised the experience in this article. (Note: if you don't understand French, please ask our friend Dbrion - he'll no doubt be extremely happy to translate the story into English -- of sorts -- for you.) Except for a few initial problems that prevented synchronisation of the deputies' agendas with smartphones and the necessary adaptation period, the French legislators seem to be overwhelmingly satisfied with their new operating system. The author of the article also interviewed five députés who confirmed that the move to a free operating system was generally viewed positively, without any major revolt among the members. One of them even gave Ubuntu 10 points out of 10, while none reported any problems regarding interaction with non-Linux computers and devices. Overall, it's a great success, no doubt. And the moral of the story? It's obvious - if you can get your country's legislative body to switch to Linux, you too will be working only 35 hours per week and get 5 weeks of vacation per year ;-) Now, can somebody please install Linux on Mr Sarkozy's laptop? Maybe that way he would finally come to senses and give up his ridiculous push for EU-wide legislation to ban peer-to-peer Internet traffic!
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 Xandros, a provider of Linux-based solutions for (mostly) the enterprise Linux market, announced last week the acquisition of Linspire, a company known for its Linspire and Freespire Linux distribution and the CNR software installation service: "Xandros, Inc., the leading provider of custom OEM Linux solutions, next-generation Linux desktop and server products, and advanced cross-platform Windows-Linux management tools, today announced the acquisition of Linspire, developer of the CNR software distribution facility, and the Linspire and Freespire Linux desktop operating systems." According to this Q&A session with Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos, the acquisition won't affect the current Linspire and Freespire users in any way as both distributions will continue their existence as before: "Q: Will Freespire continue to be maintained as an open source project? A: Yes. Q: Will Xandros maintain separate Xandros and Linspire/Freespire lines of desktop products? A: Pending further planning, at this point both product lines will be maintained. Q: What will happen to existing Linspire/Freespire users? A: No changes are planned." (Note: if you prefer a more soap-opera style twist to the Xandros-Linspire deal, head over to the web log belonging to Kevin Carmony, the former CEO of Linspire. While it doesn't contain much valuable information, it certainly beats the Xandros press release in terms of entertainment value. ;-)
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 Kris Moore, the founder and lead developer of PC-BSD, has announced the availability of a new alpha build of PC-BSD 7. Apart from the usual updates, this is the first BSD-based operating system that includes KDE 4: "After several weeks of porting and hard work by KDE on FreeBSD and PC-BSD teams, I'm pleased to make our first PC-BSD 7 alpha with KDE 4.1 (beta 2) available! This release is quite a bit different from our previous alphas, as the jump from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.1 is very significant, and required us to port our entire codebase over to compile and run with Qt 4. As such, I fully expect to have many bugs appear in this alpha, and will appreciate your help in finding and fixing them." If you are interested in checking out the latest PC-BSD 7 alpha or in reporting any KDE 4.1 bugs to the KDE development team, you can download the two CD images from here (both CDs are needed for installation): PCBSD7-Alpha-07032008-CD1.iso (652MB), PCBSD7-Alpha-07032008-CD2.iso (578MB).
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 Preparations for the forthcoming release of OpenBSD 4.4 are in full swing after Theo de Raadt, the project's founder and lead developer, tagged the development tree as OpenBSD 4.4-BETA last week: "Theo de Raadt has tagged 4.4-beta. Snapshots should be available soon for testing, check the mirrors for availability. Read below for the full commit message. We need users to help test all parts of OpenBSD and report any critical bugs and problems you can find so we can release a fully functional and stable OpenBSD 4.4. Editor's note: There has been a lot of new functionality added over the last two hackathons. In this editor's opinion, this should be one of OpenBSD's greatest releases, coinciding with a very historic version number. Let's all pitch in and do our part to squash any outstanding bugs." The installation ISO image containing the 4.4 beta code is now available from the project's snapshots directory: i386/install44.iso (215MB), amd64/install44.iso (235MB)
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 Finally, a DistroWatch reader has sent us news about a useful live CD that could be of interest to readers who need a good collection of data rescue utilities. Called Ikki Boot, this CD isn't a new distribution, but rather a compilation of various data rescue tools that exist on the market and that can be accessed from the boot menu. It includes three mini-distributions - Parted Magic, RIPLinuX and Toutou Linux (a French desktop distribution based on Puppy Linux). The boot menu also provides a quick access to several other utilities, such as the popular Memtest86+ (a memory testing tool), Super Grub Disk (a utility for restoring the GRUB bootloader), Offline NT password (a Windows password-cracking tool) and Darik's Boot and Nuke (a utility that safely erases hard disk content). The project's web site is in French only, but most of the utilities on the CD are provided in their English versions. The Ikki Boot 1.6 live CD is available for free download from here: Ikki_Boot_1.7.iso (235MB).
One of the components included on the Ikki Boot CD is Toutou Linux, a Puppy Linux-based distribution for French speakers.
(full image size: 292kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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| Released Last Week |
Sabayon Linux 3.5
Fabio Erculiani has announced the final release of Sabayon Linux 3.5: "Sabayon Linux x86/x86-64 3.5 stable release. Distribution features, updates, changes since 3.4: Linux kernel 2.6.25.9 with extended wireless, laptop (UMPC, like Eee PC), file system (Unionfs, Aufs, Squashfs, ext4, NTFS-3G) support; really fast boot time; out-of-the-box hardware detection, input devices, GPUs, wireless networks; easy-to-setup 3D desktop and gaming support, thanks to Compiz Fusion 0.7.6 and a set of free top-tier games; AMD/ATI Catalyst 8.6 and NVIDIA 173.14.05; X.Org server 1.4.2 (7.3), automatic input devices configuration through HAL; a set of ready-to-use applications and desktop environments - KDE 3.5.9, GNOME 2.22.2, Xfce 4.4.2, OpenOffice.org 2.4, Firefox 3.0, Google Earth 4.2 and Picasa 2.7, Flash 9, Java 1.6 (IcedTea), Innotek VirtualBox 1.5; Entropy, a fast, user-oriented, Sabayon Linux package manager...." Here is the full release announcement.
Sabayon Linux 3.5 comes with highly up-to-date software packages and a brand-new desktop theme.
(full image size: 194kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Slamd64 Linux 12.1
Fred Emmott has announced the release of Slamd64 Linux 12.1, an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to the x86_64 architecture: "Slamd64 12.1 is released, containing major new features such as GCC 4.2.3, SCIM, and greatly improved CJK support. Additionally, installation from FTP and HTTP sources is now supported. This release is mostly an incremental improvement over 12.0, including: Linux 2.6.24.5, X11 7.3.0+, glibc 2.7, Apache 2.2.8 with SSL support and PHP 5.2.5, KDE 3.5.9, Xfce 4.4.2, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, Java (JRE and JDK) 6u6. Like previous releases of Slamd64, 12.1 provides seamless FHS-compliant 32-bit compatibility, via a multilib system (/lib for 32-bit libraries and /lib64 for 64-bit libraries). This provides easier and increased support for both existing 32-bit software (in most cases, you can just install a package designed for Slackware with no special work needed)." Read the release announcement and release notes for more information.
Foresight Linux 2.0.3
Paul Cutler has announced the release of Foresight Linux 2.0.3, an rPath-based distribution showcasing the latest GNOME technologies: "The Foresight team is proud to announce the latest release of Foresight Linux. Foresight 2.0.3 GNOME edition is a minor release, featuring the latest release of GNOME, 2.22.3. GNOME 2.22.3 features a new login manager for users, as well as a number of bug fixes and updates. Foresight 2.0.3 also includes Banshee 1.0 as the default media manager, an updated kernel, and a number of software updates. Foresight uses a rolling release - users who are already using Foresight have the option to install these updates via PackageKit. There is no need for users already using Foresight to download a new image, the updates are already available!" Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Poseidon Linux 3.0
Christian dos Santos Ferreira has announced the release of Poseidon Linux 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution enhanced with software for scientific and academic purpose, including applications for numerical modelling, 2D/3D/4D visualisation and statistics: "Our team is proud to announce the new Poseidon Linux 3.0! Poseidon Linux was designed as a friendly and complete desktop, based on open source software and aimed at the scientific community. This operating system is based on Ubuntu and inspired by Quantian Linux. It offers several specific tools in the areas of GIS, 3D Visualization, Mathematics, Statistics and several other fields of research. It also has all the software expected in a modern desktop, such as office suites, web browsers, e-mail readers, etc. The new release supports Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, English and German languages." Here is the brief release announcement (in Portuguese), and further information is also available on the project's English web site.
Poseidon Linux 3.0 - an Ubuntu-based distribution enhanced with scientific software
(full image size: 830kB, screen resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
GoblinX 2.7 "Micro"
Flavio Pereira de Oliveira has announced the release of GoblinX 2.7 Micro edition, a Slackware-based mini live CD with Fluxbox as the sole window manager: "GoblinX Micro 2.7 is released. GoblinX Micro is the smallest version of our distribution and contains only Fluxbox as a windows manager and GTK+ applications. Main upgrades since RC1: corrected some small errors and bugs; added xf86-video-openchrome and cdstatus; added an interface to build modules with Slapt-get help; added a GUI for removing modules from the live CD; added more Nautilus actions; added Totem as an audio CD player option; added extra folders to be used as a package repository; added a media package repository to Slapt-getrc; added some missing applications to Fluxbox menu; added bookmarks to Fluxbox menu; added a pre-defined menu with icons as an option; upgraded some packages and libraries." Visit the distribution's news page to read the full release announcement.
Ubuntu 8.04.1
Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first update of a product that comes with free long-term security support: "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release. This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers. The Ubuntu team has focused their efforts on resolving issues reported by people deploying Ubuntu out in the real world, including: Firefox has been upgraded to the final 3.0 release; the Samba client allows LANMAN authentication again; various problems with the FUSE interface to GNOME's new virtual file system have been fixed...." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Gentoo Linux 2008.0
Gentoo Linux 2008.0 has been released: "The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named 'It's got what plants crave,' this release contains numerous new features, including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the live CD. Live DVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree. Highlights: updated installer - the installer now only performs networkless installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the Live CD; improved hardware support - moving to the 2.6.24 kernel added many new drivers for hardware released since the 2007.0 release; updated packages - Portage 2.1.4.4, a 2.6.24 kernel, Xfce 4.4.2, GCC 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1." Read the complete release announcement for further information.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
openSUSE 11.1
The openSUSE project has published a roadmap leading towards the next stable release of openSUSE, version 11.1: "With openSUSE 11.0 out the door, it's time to start thinking about openSUSE 11.1. The public release of openSUSE 11.1 is scheduled for December 18, 2008, six months after the release of openSUSE 11.0." The development will kick off with the first alpha release on July 24th; this will be followed by one more alpha release a month later, four beta releases in roughly two-week intervals, and two release candidates in November. If everything goes according to the plan, we should be able to celebrate this year's Christmas with a brand new openSUSE release. For more information please visit the project's roadmap page.
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
June 2008 donation: MythDora receives US$500.00
  We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the June 2008 DistroWatch.com donation is MythDora, a Fedora-based distribution designed to simplify the installation of MythTV on a home theatre PC. It receives US$500.00 in cash.
A number of readers have emailed us requests for a donation to one of the "MythTV" distributions. MythTV, an open-source software licensed under the GPL, is a UNIX application which turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network-streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or home theatre PC. MythDora integrates MythTV into a standard Fedora live CD for easy installation and use. In addition to MythTV and its plugins, MythDora also includes extra Linux packages that are needed for MythTV to run, and drivers for hardware commonly encountered in machines intended to run MythTV. Also included in MythDora are several video game emulators, and extra tools and scripts. For more information please visit MythDora.com and MythDoraWiki.com.
Dennis Hand, the founder and co-developer of MythDora, has emailed DistroWatch to say "thank you" for the donation.
As always, this monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. These vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to MythDora.
Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme (figures in US dollars):
- 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
- 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
- 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
- 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
- 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA (Linux webcam support) ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500)
Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of US$18,183 to various open source software projects.
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New distributions added to waiting list
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DistroWatch database summary
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Vacation notice
It's that time of the year again when your DistroWatch maintainer needs to take a little break from DistroWatch to enjoy some peace and tranquillity. From this week on, the DistroWatch news section will be maintained by Dr. WT Zhu, while DistroWatch Weekly will be compiled by Susan Linton. As for myself, see you again next month!
Ladislav Bodnar
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| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Ikki Boot #2 (by Jollyx on 2008-07-07 11:37:02 GMT from Spain)
But there is a 1.7 version on their website.
Direct link: http://download.tuxfamily.org/ikkiboot/Ikki_Boot_1.7.iso
Sorry for double posting.
2 • PC-BSD (by Eric on 2008-07-07 11:38:16 GMT from Canada)
Indeed, the PC-BSD team is making miracles. I'm highly excited about KDE 4.1 on a BSD base. As long as it has the ULE_SCHED as default, it will be right as rain, and carving history thus I will vote in PC-BSD a consideration for the next Distrowatch.com donation. Those guys are awesome, and haven't received one yet. The land of Debian is in shift, and I am promoting BSD to many since its got the level of quality and standardization I seem to prefer. Debian and Linux/GNU in general are moving too fast in ways, and our knowledge of the Linux/GNU land now, will be basically pointless within the next 2 years from such rapid shift and change. FreeBSD is most likely going to be my home soon one again. Anyone wanna join me?? :)
3 • Linux at the european parliament (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 11:42:47 GMT from France)
Following the Assemblée Nationale model, Michel Rocard (french deputy at the european parliament) and several other deputies are pushing to migrate the european parliament to linux. They asked the APRIL (french organization defending free software) to help convince the other deputies.
The APRIL asked M. Sarkozy and to all the candidates before the presidential election what was their positions on software patents. M. Sarkozy gave the most ignorant and archaic response of them all. He is clearly the biggest enemy to free software.
4 • @2 (by arno911 on 2008-07-07 11:48:16 GMT from Germany)
I say yes, give them a donation!
but I'll stay with Debian and sidux.
ask in two years again!
:-)
b.r.
arno911
5 • KDE 4 (by Leo on 2008-07-07 11:56:40 GMT from United States)
I have to agree. I have attempted a couple times to use KDE 4 in Kubuntu. The number of stability and performance issues, and the number of rough edges here and there, together with the lack of functionality in some areas (many apps still need to be ported/written), all of this made me switch back to KDE 3. I think KDE 4 has great potential, but should have probably be kept in the RC state until really golden. But, power to the people actually building the software. If they like it this way, so be it. Thanks for all the work, folks.
In the end, I think It was a great decision from Kubuntu's dev team to offer it as an alternative, but base Kubuntu 8.04 on KDE 3.
6 • Good Time (by divadgnol67 on 2008-07-07 12:04:19 GMT from United States)
Have a good vacation and thanks for a great site
7 • More on KDE 4 (by Leo on 2008-07-07 12:07:50 GMT from United States)
As usual, the LWN readers provide intelligent, balanced views on KDE 4:
http://lwn.net/Articles/288799/
8 • Sabayon 3.5 just great (by tuxesp1 on 2008-07-07 12:26:01 GMT from Italy)
after trying the live and installed on my HD.
I could say this this the best realese of sabayon made out of there.
you guys are great and thank you for the community and hard work.As food ,in linux we can test different smell:debian ,slack ,gento ,rpm ,pc-bsd smell and so on.
viva linux
viva bsd,
viva l'italia.
9 • openSUSE 11.1 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2008-07-07 12:54:33 GMT from Italy)
I hope there aren't too many innovations. I hope it is more of a "consolidation" release.
I am glad anyway KDE3.5 is still going to be an option.
10 • Re 3 I agree with you, but the influence of the Assemblée Nationale (by dbrion on 2008-07-07 13:02:43 GMT from France)
might be very small...
"M. Sarkozy "(..)" is clearly the biggest enemy to free software"
And, as he can get rid of the Assemblée Nationale (the symetric is very difficult) and as the French deputies are, in a majority, from the same party than Mr Sarkozy(and know they might get unemployed, and nobody knows whether they are popular *now*), it might (will?) be funny to have French Deputies typing, on their looovely linux lâppies, anti free software laws, as they are in a position of order receivers (well paid, clumsy secretaries to be slightly unkind with their position in a presidential regime)....
As for the anti PtoP positions (and practices : P2P is de facto very difficult), they are at least 4 yrs old, AFAIK (i.e 3 yrs before Sarkozy's election)..........
11 • No subject (by Frank392 on 2008-07-07 13:21:36 GMT from United States)
Debian testing is the best Distro out there, I have it on my system for about a year now and the only problem that I see is it should not be call "Testing" is way better than Ubuntu, actually I'm more afraid of running Ubunutu than Debian testing.
12 • @2 - Eric (by texasmike on 2008-07-07 13:23:53 GMT from United States)
Well, Eric.. thats a first for me... "Debian moving too fast". Slow and steady wins the race, my friend.
13 • DW Awstats for "HITS" are more SPIN (Bent Truth) than actual Facts as relating (by To Unique Visitors! on 2008-07-07 13:24:33 GMT from Australia)
While this, of course, doesn't mean that Ubuntu has lost its popularity, from the DisroWatch web server's point of view, it is Debian GNU/Linux that is now the most frequently used Linux distribution to access this web site.
In the above table, the third column represents the percentage of all users visiting DistroWatch.com with a Linux or BSD distribution. For the data from the current month and other statistics please visit distrowatch.com/awstats.
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/
I am sure Mr Bodnar is aware of this fact but he still spins the same old worn-out tale about HITS reflecting number of real visitors.
NB: Hits = number of files on a page (and not all DW pages have the same number of files, e.g. adds and images). Thus if some click-addicts reload the front page (e.g. to see the various values of DW PHR for their beloved distro) several times a day, even though they may be much less in number they will generate a higher HIT percentage than more numerous visitors who may visit once the info page for their distro of interest.
DW PHR "Rankings" and Awstats "Hits" are meaningless and of little value for anyone who respects truth and facts, IMHO.
Bing Lee
14 • @9 - OpenSuSE 11.1 (by BhaKi on 2008-07-07 14:05:26 GMT from India)
> I hope there aren't too many innovations. I hope it is more of a "consolidation" release.
Me too. OpenSuSE 11.0 is a big leap in the history of the distribution. They should dedicate a release to let the dust settle to ground.
> I am glad anyway KDE3.5 is still going to be an option.
The shift from Bzip2 to LZMA for RPM payload compression is a nice innovation by the OpenSuSE team in 11.0. This innovation is saving up lots of space on the DVD and is allowing them to include 4 full-featured desktops - XFCE, KDE4, KDE3.5, GNOME - on a single install DVD.
15 • @13 (by BhaKi on 2008-07-07 14:30:40 GMT from India)
> I am sure Mr Bodnar is aware of this fact but he still spins the same old worn-out tale about HITS reflecting number of real visitors.
> DW PHR "Rankings" and Awstats "Hits" are meaningless and of little value for anyone who respects truth and facts, IMHO.
If they are meaningless to you, don't take those numbers into your calculations. But please be reminded that they do convey some information for some others.
16 • Re.: KDE 4 (by Flavio on 2008-07-07 14:32:31 GMT from Brazil)
Dear Leo
I'm using KDE4 in Kubuntu 8.04 and for about a month and it's a lot more stable then when it was released. I tryied KDE 4.1 beta backported and it's not so good, so I stayed with the regular KDE4 from official repositories and I have very little or even no issues in my day-to-day activities. Missing features are supplied by KDE3 alternatives, like adept and amarok. From KDE4, konqueror, okular, dolphin and a lot of software is running very well.
Maybe you should give Kubuntu KDE4 another try ;)
17 • Mandriva (by plock on 2008-07-07 14:37:47 GMT from Sweden)
I agree that Mandriva 2008.1 is the best Linux OS release ever.
18 • Re 13,15 Meaning of hits (by dbrion on 2008-07-07 14:46:59 GMT from France)
If awstat numbers are unique ("sort -u" is > 30 years old, "select unique .." has been existing in many data bases queries since at least 20 years), they reflect (with some reservations clearly stated) the number of computers with a given OS connected to DW....
One cannot know whether their user is satisfied with his OS / computer (why look at a site showing new distros, then?), nor whether he always will be satisfied... One cannot either know whether there is a link with the needs, if any, of the real world....
19 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 15:08:03 GMT from Canada)
I keep reading that the reason pclos has few packages ( and alot of older ones) is because the packages are so thoroughly tested before being made available.
could it be that they just dont have enough packagers ??
20 • About KDE4 (by goom on 2008-07-07 15:29:59 GMT from France)
I disagree what's written about KDE 4.
Of course KDE 4.0 is not suitable for everyday use but as far as i remember the KDE team had never said that KDE 4.0 would be usable. This is the perfect example of the famous "release early, release often". How to improve KDE 4.0 while being in alpha or beta stage ? I think there are more users of KDE 4.0 than there were testers for KDE 3.97 so more bugs can be found. Moreover (some of) developpers had waited KDE 4.0 to be out to start migration of their KDE apps.
As a big fan of KDE, i would like to remind that from KDE 3.0 to KDE 3.5.9 there are nearly 6 years of improvement and i would not use KDE 3.0. It's the same for KDE 4, it is promising but it still need improvement to get rid of KDE 3.5.9
I think there was a misunderstanding from users who though that KDE 4.0 would be at the same level as KDE 3.5.9. This misunderstanding was also due to distribution that include KDE 4 as default desktop since it was not ready to be a default desktop, especially compared to KDE 3.5.9
So i have no doubt about the future of KDE 4. I am just waiting few months to switch from KDE 3.5.9 to KDE 4.x
Don't be hasty, Master Ladislav ;-)
21 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 15:41:57 GMT from United States)
The only misunderstanding about KDE 4 is that it was labeled a "release" and included in distros. And one of the stated reasons for doing that was to get more people testing it. It's a load of garbage. At best KDE 4 is *still* in an alpha stage.
Maybe it will be ready in a couple of years, but as for me, I'll stick with projects I can trust.
22 • Re: #13 DW Awstats... (by Jan Janson on 2008-07-07 15:48:22 GMT from Netherlands)
> Thus if some click-addicts reload the front page [...] several times a day [...] they will generate a higher HIT percentage...
Unless you can prove otherwise, the description clearly says: "Only one hit per IP address per day is counted."
Although I have often wondered what the stats would show if that was reduced to "one hit per IP address per reporting period"
23 • re: 18 and not planning to change (by Connected through Debian on 2008-07-07 15:48:23 GMT from United States)
Looking at Distrowatch may have nothing to do with being unhappy with one's current distribution. I follow the latest releases on Distrowatch, occasionally take another distro for a spin, and read reviews and opinions, because I am interested in the current state of GNU/Linux development. I am quite happy with Debian, but I like to stay informed.
I bet I am not alone in that!
24 • HPD @13 (by john frey on 2008-07-07 16:18:57 GMT from Canada)
You clearly have no understanding how hits works. This is not a measurement of advertising as you presume. Indeed they measure hits too but each hit is from a unique IP in a given span. ie Hits Per Day.
So one visit by someone from an IP address is the same as 5,000 visits from the same IP address.
The hits on advertisements are typically not even registered by Distrowatch.com. They are typically measured at the site that the advertisement links to.
I don't know where you get the idea a hit is comprised of the number of files on a page. That's a new one to me.
No one I know has ever said that DW HPD is a measurement of anything but the numbers of visitors to the DW pages of each Distro. People use it for bragging rights but it is not a scientific measurement of anything.
25 • Ikki Boot CD link not working due to new version (by Uriel Sigala on 2008-07-07 16:20:48 GMT from United States)
Just tried the link to the 1.6 version and found out that there is already a version 1.7 at http://download.tuxfamily.org/ikkiboot/Ikki_Boot_1.7.iso. The 1.6 version was removed.
Have a great day,
Uriel
26 • Awstats mystery (by PP on 2008-07-07 16:24:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't get it. How is it possible that 54% of DW Linux traffic uses an unidentified distro? What are these other than Slackware and the latest Ubuntu?? I mean all the big ones are already counted in: *buntu, suse, fedora, debian, mandriva, pclinuxos and mint. Does anyone have any credible guesses as to what the 54% are? Have many of the major distros had releases where there are no ID strings?
27 • re 23 : happiness with ones distr... (by dbrion on 2008-07-07 16:25:50 GMT from France)
I did not want to hint that pple were systematically unhappy with debian!
But they may be unhappy (or know they will be unhappy, if they are in a mood/necessity to buy new HW) with their PC or their OS.
Basing ones decision on stats is almost (I know I omit support ) as irrational as making a referendum before buying clothes and one can try to recommand other distrs than the distr. one uses ...
But stats (and the fact that they can be made unique, by very old and reliable pieces of software(that is why 18 answered to 13) , which removes multiple hits ) remain interesting in themselves...
28 • Kevin Carmony (by john frey on 2008-07-07 16:30:24 GMT from Canada)
His blog is sure a fun read. I agree, much more entertaining than any press release. In fact the whole Q & A session at LWN reads like a press release. Certainly AT's answers all sound like they are lifted from a press release.
29 • Ubuntu in France (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-07 16:33:03 GMT from Canada)
Ah, I liked this nugget:
"Except for a few initial problems that prevented synchronisation of the deputies' agendas with smartphones"
They should've used Mandriva. :)
30 • Slanted View of KDE 4 (by Joe Sixpack on 2008-07-07 16:33:17 GMT from United States)
Exactly who's faith did KDE 4 lose?
Everyone knows that a) it was the first release of a new line and b) KDE 4 had tons of innovations, changes and rewrites.
Knowing this, a lot of people like me stuck with KDE 3.5.x. It was completely stable, and well maintained even after KDE 4's release. It isn't like this is some little known secret. The KDE team was very clear about this issue.
Having said that, there are a lot of people who actually *love* KDE 4 after it's 4.0.x updates.
31 • DW donation nomination (by PP on 2008-07-07 16:34:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd like to nominate Mint Linux for a donation. A couple of arguments:
It has made a major contribution in making Linux a welcoming experience to new users. Mint came out of nowhere and has shot to the top of distrowatch page hit counter. But it is also being used a lot, not just viewed (as shown by the awstats above).
In some sense, Mint is already "too successful" to be affected by such a minor donation, which I think should in principle reward new innovative efforts. But still, I'm amazed that it hasn't received a donation given it's stellar entree into the linux scene.
This all from a person who is not a Mint user (I've just once checked their live cd), just a casual observer...
32 • @26 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-07 16:37:44 GMT from Canada)
Well, I can think of one obvious case immediately: people who install a mozilla.org tarball onto their distribution, instead of using the distribution package.
33 • Solution: Linux On Problematic Hardware (Notebooks) (by Bob on 2008-07-07 16:38:12 GMT from Austria)
Most distros proved barely useful on several of my Laptops. I recently tried to concentrate on major distros such as Fedora and Suse. They both have been disappointing (WLAN, etc.). Kubuntu and Mandriva gave a better impression but both of them would die if the suspend feature was ever used.
After stumbling upon the latest Pardus release I was pleasantly surprised. This one is polished and (almost) everything worked out of the box on my Vaio (haven't tried my other hardware yet). The last good AND convenient distro I remember was PCLOS while it was still fresh - but that's a long time ago.
Will I use Pardus in future? Probably not on most systems. The main reason is that I need a 64-bit OS and Pardus is strictly 32-bit at this time. But I do recommend to try Pardus to someone who has problems finding a matching Linux distro to their Lappies.
34 • This was a good read (by Amy on 2008-07-07 16:47:21 GMT from United States)
I read the blog and press on the xandros and linspire and found it fascinating. 2 years or so ago when xandros had a free version I was using it full time on all my computers but dropped it after version 4 came out and they dropped the free version. I have been using mepis and debian since then and like both a lot better.
I am not sure if this will be a good thing for them or not but it might as I saw others say on other sites that it could be their down fall but we will have to see.
Also about KDE 4. I did try it and found it disappointing like others have mentioned and I had been a fan of kde for almost 5 years and now I have switched to XFCE on all computers I own. Although the only thing I do not like about XFCE is the file manager does not support ftp like the one for kde.
35 • 29 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 16:49:01 GMT from United States)
I know that you are speaking tongue-in-cheek, or at least trying to give that impression.
Nonetheless, if this experiment works out, there could well be a big increase in the Linux market in France and elsewhere. Many of these Ubuntu users will move to Linux at home. And few companies are better positioned for this than is Mandriva. I view the move to Ubuntu as potentially a very good thing for Mandriva.
36 • Sabayon (by MacLone on 2008-07-07 16:49:40 GMT from Mexico)
Regarding Sabayon Linux: I have tested since 2xx. The main problem with this distro is the Gentoo base and the way software is installed by compiling. I know is the best way to have adequate and fast software specific for your system, but is dog slow.
This guy Fabio has been trying to make Gentoo more user friendly and i have noted a LOT of improvement in the 3.5 release but...he should look ahead and change the gentoo base, Sabayon is heavily bloated and the new software installer has the same speed problems despite it uses binary too. What's wrong? i don't know but all that development would be much more useful with a more mature base like ubuntu or mandriva.
This is just a piece of advice to Fabio and his truly great work.
37 • Re: KDE 4 (by Leo on 2008-07-07 16:57:40 GMT from United States)
Flavio @ 16: thanks, I'll try the latest (I missed the last two updates), maybe in the eeepc (happily running kubuntu from a usb flashdrive).
Goom @ 20: I agree, in the end this is a discussion about whether to "release early, release often", or "release when it's ready", tow long standing paradigms in OS. Let's all loosen up a bit, KDE is an amazing project, and whatever paradigm they choose, we should just let go.
Personally, I think the Ubuntu family of distros found a nice middle ground, they release on a steady schedule, and they choose to release as early as possible, without compromising stability too much. But hey, that's me, it's a wonderful world with 100's of distros for each taste, let's appreciate it ...
38 • Gentoo - 'It's got what plants crave' (by Budda Magoo on 2008-07-07 16:59:26 GMT from United States)
My guess is, that would be a nice rich manure?
39 • Debian users - biggest number of hits (by DeniZen on 2008-07-07 17:32:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Statistics eh .. ;)
There must be a fair few happy users of 'Epiphany' and 'Iceweasel' hitting this site I guess.
Go Debian!
Though I suspect maybe the majority in the '54% unkown' are Ubuntu 8.04 users without browser ID string.
@ Mr Magoo (38) - I thought exatly the same punchline when I saw the Gentoo tagline ;) But, toungue in cheek .. of course ;)
40 • RE 35 are French politicians good/convincing linux advocates? (by dbrion on 2008-07-07 17:39:12 GMT from France)
", if this experiment works out, there could well be a big increase in the Linux market in France and elsewhere. Many of these Ubuntu users will move to Linux at home"
These users are 500 French politicians + their assistants=> 1000 men...
That is not such a big increase (french ...tax collectors are more numerous, and they are likely to be linuxed...) and the symbol may be/get very negative if politicians get untrusted...
And I really do not know (no recent vote results, I do not remember the percentage of voting / not voting people) whether French politicians can convince anyone, now... anyway, are they technically apt?
41 • @29 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 17:42:44 GMT from France)
Indeed, I don't get why they choose Ubuntu. Mandriva has better support and is best suited for organizations like the Assemblée Nationale. I really don't get why they chose Ubuntu. It was ATOS Origin who suggested Ubuntu. Maybe they didn't want to loose their contract to Mandriva and the government doesn't know shit about Computers anyway. I believe they chose Ubuntu so they don't have to compete for support with a real linux distributor. As usual, the government listens to whoever give them bribe. It was really a dumb move. Ubuntu is for newbies who don't know how what partitions are and how to install linux. Mandriva is more secure and the company would have done a much much much better job at supporting it than ATOS will support Ubuntu. What can we do now? I hope they think a little more for the european parliament.
42 • @ 30 - KDE 4 'love' (by DeniZen on 2008-07-07 17:43:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Having said that, there are a lot of people who actually *love* KDE 4 after it's 4.0.x updates."
I honestly cannot see any good reason for an end-user to 'love' KDE 4 - yet.
It may be innovative under the hood, but it feels like a concept / working demo in use.
I'm sure its 'like-able' enough if one is so inclined (I thought it looked and felt poor when I tried it).
If anyone could tell me what is to 'love' about it (now - as it stands - not what it may or may not become when its 'finished') I'd enjoy reading a list of KDE4 'loves'. I may have misssed something.
While I happen to prefer Gnome on the whole, KDE 3.5.x is a darned fine DE that is a pleasure to use for work and play.
43 • Sabayawn, KDE, Mint (by drizake on 2008-07-07 17:50:20 GMT from United States)
I don't use Sabayon for the same reason I don't use Gentoo: I don't like Portage. I downloaded it to check it out because I was impressed with it a couple of years ago when I tried it, but this version will not even boot for me while the old version did (same exact 2+ year old Dell PC).
I agree with those that say KDE4 is not ready for production. It's OK that you can still use KDE3, but KDE4 should not be the default. For people who find Linux on their own (I discovered Red Hat 7 on a CD that came with a text book. No one gave me a live Mint CD to try.), Fedora and Suse are a couple of the obvious choices when downloading their first distro. They probably won't even know what KDE is and might associate KDE4's bugs and quirks with Linux in general.
I'm still happy with Mint. :)
44 • @ 29 • Ubuntu in France (by Serge Matovic on 2008-07-07 18:25:40 GMT from Canada)
Hi Adam: YES they should have used Mandriva. I'm using it, and so successfully !!! But did You/Mandriva try to convince them to use Mandriva instead of Ubuntu? Was the cost of Mandriva an issue with them. I just don't understand why they choose Ubuntu?
Keep up the great Mandriva distro.
serge
45 • Stallman,BBC,Linux,free and proprietary software (by nedvis on 2008-07-07 18:29:38 GMT from United States)
French youth urged to fight copyright law
http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?newsid=6320
It's not the Gates, it's the bars By: Richard Stallman
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7487060.stm
46 • re 44 You forget the audience.... (by dbrion on 2008-07-07 18:44:03 GMT from France)
It is the same political party which voted the copyright laws... cf @44, and , from @41, you can imagine there are people in France (I do not know in which proportion) who do not respect that much french politicians and therefore , logically, would have kindly given 500 french politicians + their helps ... Windows ME....
47 • RE: # 36 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2008-07-07 19:02:30 GMT from Italy)
I have suggested them to change base distro as well (my suggestion was Debian, which has by far the most derivatives and is extremely flexible).
As a result I was abused by the "look at me, Mom, I am running Gentoo!" kids.
Changing base distro is anathema to them, not going to happen unless Gentoo dies.
48 • KDE 4 vs. KDE 3.5 (by Nanlee on 2008-07-07 19:17:39 GMT from Canada)
The discussion about KDE 4 and KDE 3.5 is very similar to Vista vs. XP and many comments above showed very similar reaction, when Vista was released. All of a sudden, the once heavily criticized XP became the OS of choice.
49 • RE: # 48 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2008-07-07 19:27:36 GMT from Italy)
Psst, don't tell them. Some people don't want to hear the truth.
50 • #26 (by dooooo on 2008-07-07 19:37:29 GMT from Jordan)
"ID strings" can be changed easily .
Examples :
* You can change them in Konqueror from the settings menu .
* In Firefox's about:config you can add 'general.useragent.override' preference .
I'm a Debian user who uses a modified string . So I'm not from the 8.8% users counted in the table .
BTW you forgot that a lot of visitors use Windows machines to visit the site .
51 • @44 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-07 20:29:00 GMT from Canada)
I honestly don't know. It's not a side of the business I'm very involved in, everything I do tends to be based around the individual user side of things. I'm sure lots goes on in such cases that I just don't know anything about. It sounds like the poster of 41, whoever s/he is, knows more about it than I do!
52 • DEBIAN (by Frank392 on 2008-07-07 20:31:54 GMT from United States)
Debian testing is the best Distro out there, I have it on my system for about a year now and the only problem that I see is it should not be call "Testing" is way better than Ubuntu, actually I'm more afraid of running Ubunutu than Debian testing.
53 • Re's (by Landor on 2008-07-07 20:47:21 GMT from Canada)
RE: 29, 41, 44, 51...
I think the bribe part should be ignored of course. It is a bonus that Linux was considered regardless of the distro. With that said though, it truly is a shame that Mandriva was not the choice, and I'll probably get flamed for this, or openSUSE/SUSE. Both in my opinion would be a far better choice based on their time in the field overall. Ubuntu is a project that's still only really testing the waters in this area, while Mandriva and openSUSE/SUSE have been at the game a long time, in whatevr guise previous or current.
Speaking of this, and I know you said that you don't work in this area and know little of the topic, but any big deals being worked on that you do know of and are able to talk about Adam?
Keep your stick on the ice... (or floaties on the water)
Landor
54 • RE:2 BSD Is A Littlle Devil Indeed! (by Landor on 2008-07-07 20:59:03 GMT from Canada)
Watching the little guy creap up on the competition so to speak is amazing. I've installed all three variants with ease, DesktopBSD, PC-BSD and FreeBSD. The learning curve is but little, and in truth, from past experience I am more at home with Unix or BSD, so I guess I can't be an advocate of how simple the transition is/was.
Regardless of that, they're doing a wonderful job and as with the Linux Kernel, so will BSD grow in hardware detection. I do believe at a slower pace as you said because of their desire for a rock solid base system that few can find fault with. In that arena they always have reminded me of Slackware or Debian, to a small degress of course. Stability and Functionality. What a concept :)
You also can't beat the fact that the Kernal "and" Userland are both maintained by BSD. Making the whole base system that more integrated, flawless and respinsive (to a degree).
An all around great project in whatever form you want to create it from. Some things may be missing, but for those willing to live with that fact, the benefits are quite obvious once you've played with it for a bit.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
55 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 20:59:44 GMT from Germany)
I wanted to try Debian a while ago. The only thing Debian is missing (or at least I couldn't find it) is an "official" not official repository for all the software that can't be included in the official repositories due to stupid laws, something like Mandriva's http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/. I even asked in the forums, still couldn't get an answer.
I like Mandriva a lot, I have absolutely nothing to complain about, but I just wanted to try something else. So that was the end of Debian on my machine.
56 • RE: 55 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 20:59:44 GMT from Germany) (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 21:06:52 GMT from Romania)
Dummy, it's http://debian-multimedia.org/ -- full stop.
57 • RE: 55 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 20:59:44 GMT from Germany) (by Anonymous on 2008-07-07 21:09:41 GMT from Romania)
BTW, either you didn't ask in a Debian forum (they have mailing lists, you know), or you were not able to formulate a clear question!
http://debian-multimedia.org/ is also referenced in the official page http://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs
58 • RE: 26/32 (by Landor on 2008-07-07 21:13:18 GMT from Canada)
Another reason would be Gentoo. "If" I am not mistaken only the binary build of FireFox (and maybe Opera?) only pass on the info as well.
I would think most source based distros would do this, as you said Adam, building it from source would negate it being inserted. With the number of such distros and also BSD, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that number at all.
Speaking of Gentoo, I tried the installer in both modes and had the same problem. I hope they do fix it, and I'm going to recreate both again (as from the CLI it showed a bit more info than the GUI earlier on in the install than just with GRUB) and pass on the info. It's a show stopper for sure and a rerelease should happen in my opinion whether Gentoo prefers the method of a command line install with a minimal or chroot environment or not. It was an advertised update that should've never left the gate in that condition.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
59 • @53 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-07 21:13:56 GMT from Canada)
There are ongoing projects many people don't know about, like our extensive involvement in IT development in Angola, and our big OEM deals in Brazil. Aside from that, well, there's a netbook that will be released...er...at some point...which is pre-loaded with Mandriva. I'm not supposed to say much about this (I really don't know why, there's some gremlin somewhere in our PR department who is addicted to secrecy for no apparent reason, I swear...) but it has sneaked out into public a few times, so sufficiently dedicated Googling will probably turn up some info on it. :)
(super secret uber-l33t hint: try the fifth result for the search 'mandriva netbook' - there, that was tough)
60 • The big relases... (by Paul on 2008-07-07 21:14:48 GMT from Germany)
Well, I must admit that Mandriva has released the best distro (for the second consecutive half-year) in terms of innovativeness/Bleeding edge and stability. Kudos to them. Fedora, SUSE, Ubunutu, they are all more or less okay, but way more buggy or slower than Mandriva. It seems as if the small french company has done its homework.
Were there not Mandriva, I probably would have now Debian stable or Centos running on my machines.
61 • Gentoo's Bug In The LiveCD Installer (by Landor on 2008-07-07 21:32:32 GMT from Canada)
I immediately went to check on the info regarding the problem with the Kernel and installing Gentoo before I did a double install of it again to pass on the info to the devs and found there is already a release for fix. Go to the mirrors and download 2008.0-r1 if you are interested in testing it. I'll post back here regarding my luck with it.
Again though, and I'm not sure how long it has been fixed, I found the lack of information on the main page about the error, and the fix deplorable and you can bet I'll be commenting on that. That's the kind of thinking they need to put into place, fix the problem inform the community. Something happening, inform the community, etc... Not just a post in the forums. If they can update the mirrors they can update the main page.
Thanks as usual Adam, I'll be checking it out, and as I've said, I truly hope Mandriva keeps growing, and I have no doubt it will. I was a huge fan of Mandrake of old.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
62 • future of kde (by mike on 2008-07-07 21:45:16 GMT from Turkey)
First I want to say that I am a debian and kde user for 3 years. And I am very happy that debian-kde team decided to stick with kde 3 with the upcoming release. That's great. I tried kde 4 a lot of times, but it has still a lot of bugs, I know that it has a lot of new technologies such as plasma, I appreciate your work kde developers but stability is an important factor and still most applications crash frequently in kde4 and you still say that it is stable enough. Well I don't think so.
And also, kde developers seems rather angry to users.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3535
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/17753.html
When I read this blogs of kde developers, I was disappointed. I hope kde developers rethink their opinions and listens to kde users, if they don't I think they will lose a lot of users.
63 • Mandriva horrible with floppies (by NK on 2008-07-07 22:34:33 GMT from United States)
I agree with mandriva been a good release, but it should be noted that it *can't* handle a floppy. The floppy program is extremely buggy, and practically a showstopper for those that still needs this legacy functionality.
64 • desktop dominance who cares? (by john frey on 2008-07-07 22:35:00 GMT from Canada)
There is an embarrassment of riches in the subnotebook market. It's getting so the choice is not just about which Linux but also CPU architecture, power consumption, storage media, size and weight.
At this rate it looks as if we have already won the subnotebook market. Just hope it becomes as important as the PDA or Smartphone markets.
Hey maybe MS will ressurect Win98 so they have something that runs fast on low spec hardware. Of course by the time they finish bunging in the drivers for the new hardware and adding DRM it will be bloated and slow again:)
65 • KDE4 (by Sergio Fernandes on 2008-07-07 23:19:37 GMT from Portugal)
I use KDE4 daily, compiled from trunk using a utility calles kdesvn-build. works great. I can't imagine myself going back to kde 3.5.xx
Some things are broken, but usable. I surf the web with konqueror, listen to music with amarok 2.0svn, etc...
It's fast. good looking..A real joy to use it.
66 • FreeBSD (by BlueJayofEvil on 2008-07-07 23:56:05 GMT from United States)
Just last night I printed out some documentation and pulled out a few books from my bookshelf and burned a FreeBSD DVD, and installed it for use as a desktop system. The results? I'm typing this right now on KDE 3.5.x on FreeBSD 7, with the experimental ZFS implementation set up. So far, so good. The only gripe I have with it is the Ports Collection isn't as nearly up-to-date as many GNU/Linux distributions are with their repositories. But I guess that's just an unavoidable side-effect of having stable, thoroughly-tested software in your repo.
67 • KDE 4 (by Jesse on 2008-07-08 00:06:37 GMT from Canada)
When I started using KDE4 there were a few stability issues and some missing features. However, over the past month or so most of the problems have been ironed out. KDE 4.0.x may not be feature-rich enough for production yet, but it is fun to play with and, at the moment, stable.
I've put a few non-techie people in front of KDE and they haven't had any problems using it in their day to day home use. I'm very much looking forward to 4.1
68 • KDE 4 (by wam on 2008-07-08 01:57:16 GMT from United States)
Im a full time GNOME user, but ive been using KDE 4 in OpenSUSE for a few days. It works very well if i may say. It can ALMOST turn me into liking KDE.
I just wonder as of now, who dose the best KDE 4 distro?
69 • @ 24 • HPD @13 (by john frey (by Bing Lee on 2008-07-08 02:13:46 GMT from Australia)
You clearly have no understanding how hits works. This is not a measurement of advertising as you presume. Indeed they measure hits too but each hit is from a unique IP in a given span. ie Hits Per Day.
IMHO, it is YOU who has "no understanding of how hits work" (specifically those of the subject matter!). :-)
Some stats for you to consider:
Countries.........Pages...........Hits.......Bandwidth
United States.....638,313........4,477,689......60.44 GB
Reported period Month Jul 2008
First visit 01 Jul 2008 - 00:00
Last visit 08 Jul 2008 - 00:00
Unique visitors.......Number of visits........Pages...........Hits..............Bandwidth
255,566................733,856................2,646,487.......15,403,408......198.95 GB
..............(2.87 visits/visitor)..... (3.6 pages/visit)...(20.98 hits/visit)....(284.27 KB/visit)
255,566 / 7 = 36,509 Unique Visitors per Day
June daily average unique visitors = 32,849 (985482 Unique Visitor IPs / 30 days)
(There is a significant increase from last year)
Operating Systems
Versions............... Hits............Percent
Windows...............8,211,638...........53 %
Linux....................5,965,776...........38.5 %
Others....................808,913............5.2 %
Macintosh..............464,492............2.9 %
BSD.................... .37,348............0.2 %
Advanced Web Statistics 6.5 (build 1.857) - Created by awstats (plugins: geoip)
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/
Mr Frey, perhaps you could enlighten us (me) on what (20.98 hits/visit) means. Please take into consideration that we have Averages for Unique Visitors (Unique IPs), Number of Visitors/Visits (including multiple visits), Page Views Per Visit and HITS Per Visit, the BASIS of this week's DWW Table and commentary.
FYI: I am well aware of how DW PHR Tabulation works (i.e. it is based on ONE UNIQUE IP PER DAY visits to the respective DW distro page) and have NOT questioned that in my original post! I did say it is meaningless and Mr Bodnar himself has downplayed its worthiness on a number of occasions (Google around and you will confirm it yourself).
@18 (dbrion)...you are right, DW could display Unique IP visitors by OS Browser ID strings but they choose not to do so. I suspect that some "top-ranked" garage distros would show low figures by such methodology.
As for Debian showing high HITS percentages, it should be taken into account that other Debian-based distros (e.g. the still popular Knoppix) also use the Debian Browser ID strings.
70 • Gentoo -r1 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 03:59:25 GMT from United States)
Just downloaded an 'tried' to install the latest gentoo fix.. .i.e. 2008-livecd-r1. Uh, the gui installer works as it should. Yayyyyy - you can install with no errors. The problem (No boot loader)
71 • RE: 64 (by Landor on 2008-07-08 04:07:48 GMT from Canada)
Hey John :)
I was discussing something similar with my son today after he read today's DWW.
He said, nobody is bashing MS today and I told him it was a good thing, and most people just don't get it anyway.
We tend to forget these companies are worth 100's of millions of dollars (if not more) and have been making their bread and butter due to Windows.I explained that to him and this:
If Dell had started out, in that garage selling low-cost Linux PC's only, and never changed (we'll use 1994 as their startup year for this theory) and only sold systems with Slackware (only as an example). Would Dell still be in business, or if they still were, as wealthy and robust as they are? I doubt it and most wiould have to agree. Especially since it's only been in the last few years in my opinion that Linux could truly compete on the deskotp, and still in some areas cannot. I know in 99/2000 when I left Linux couldn't.
So to make a long story short, these companies are far from the lessons they learned and profits they made due to selling systems with windows installed.
What we should be thankful for is the fact that now that they've made their mark, are financially strong, they can financially take that risk and put Linux out on their systems/devices.
As you said, who cares about the desktop, but I'd actually say, who cares about Windows on it. Microsoft actually helped Linux get on the desktop because of the money these companies made, and with each new attempt by each company, you're sure to bet there will be another company taking notice :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor.
72 • @38 • Gentoo - 'It's got what plants crave' (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 04:58:48 GMT from United States)
Sounds like the new honesty policy has started. Pretty smart though it lowers expectations and when it doesn't boot, well heck it was only a piece of sh$t anyways.
73 • Gentoo (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 05:19:28 GMT from United States)
The minimal installation disc of Gentoo 2008.0 installed flawlessly, and had many improvements (especially the new profile setup) over the previous "release." There are plenty of other distributions to choose if one wants a GUI installer; stick with the CLI for Gentoo.
The Gentoo community is doing much better than in the recent past, even though one could never fathom such given the negativity surrounding the project here on DW.
74 • RE 72, 73 There is a great analogy between Gentoo now and (by dbrion on 2008-07-08 06:27:36 GMT from France)
Mandriva 2006 (logrotate bug) and 2007.0 (broken package manager the first week they released: I had to show it to be believed by one of my friends , who looooves MNDRV).
It was great and fashionable, then, to write Mandriva was dead, an organic fertilizer, etc... Some people thought *and keep on thinking* this superficial opinion was very sort-sighted and rather coward...
Gentoos difficulties (and skills) seem greater than Mandriva's in 2006, as they have 10 processors to support (Debian has slightly more, but their devs/maintainers are more numerous) and to test (finding real machines with rare processors is not obvious).
75 • @73 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 06:35:03 GMT from United States)
You know what they say sh$t happens. Now we see it also gets 'released'.
76 • We are in big trouble (by Personne on 2008-07-08 09:46:16 GMT from France)
Sarkozy: yes this little man is full of energy, but his head is full of crap.
77 • Re 76 (by dbrion on 2008-07-08 10:06:18 GMT from France)
Et la version Urubu docile de la plus grande merveille du monde libre sert à 300 députés, sous la dictée de leur Maître, à fabriquer des lois considérées comme liberticides (DRM)....
78 • Browser ID, Mint, and Klikit (by Soloact on 2008-07-08 11:16:07 GMT from United States)
I have my browser ID set to "Windows" on my Linux boxes, of course because of those websites that either don't know any better, or refuse to change.
Regarding LinuxMint and Klikit Linux, IMHO they should merge efforts. The reason being is that both of their KDE versions are very close in what they do. The Klikit team can make the KDE version and the current Mint team could stick with their Gnome version. This would free the Mint team from KDE (although Mint KDE is the best Mint, IMHO), which seems to be an afterthought. Sort of like Kubuntu is a very stripped-down afterthought to the Ubuntu family.
79 • re: 68 (by Leo on 2008-07-08 12:12:29 GMT from United States)
Hey Wam
I use Kubuntu, but I heard many people say that open suse provides the best KDE 4 experience currently. I am planning to swith to KDE-4 when Kubuntu does, by October (next release) ...
80 • RE: 44 It could be the money thing. (by Eddie Wilson on 2008-07-08 12:31:48 GMT from United States)
The reason that Mandriva wasn't chosen could be the cost. I don't know anything about Mandriva's distributions but don't they have a paid version? I know that Novell has OpenSuse and SUSE. Our company uses SUSE because its an enterprise edition and they thought it would be more stable. Wouldn't cost be a large factor in changing to open source? I do use Ubuntu, and I've used it for several years with great success but thats just me. I've thought about trying Mandriva but what would I be losing by using the free version?
Eddie
81 • Gentoo (by SomeGuy on 2008-07-08 12:54:30 GMT from Australia)
"After an endless wait" seems a bit harsh as gentoo can be installed from other live cds when you have a PC as new as yesterday. Sysresccd (updated much more frequently) is an example but there are other non gentoo distros that work fine.
Most distros I would be annoyed with if there was a long gap between live CDs but gentoo is a bit different here so I don't know if it should be judged the same way.
Gentoo is endlessly an up to date install (with a network install)
Although I do see it in a different situation I hope the changes in the Gentoo foundation will see more regular live CDs all the same.
On a different note some reviews I would like to see are, a test say installing a xfce system on minimal install trying to copy the installers install as closely as possible followed by a comparison to see if the installer is up to scratch.
Comparing against other distros is hard I think as Gentoo users install what they want not a standerd ubuntu fedora package as much as the live cd does offer a more fixed solution.
I wonder if bad press will get in the way of Gentoo's userbase growing resulting in less devs and live CDs etc.
82 • Frugalware (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 13:02:39 GMT from United States)
I see a new test release of Frugalware. That's an overlooked project. I've seen that they continue to add more specialized packages. There are only a couple of reasons I don't use it now. There are not enough users, hence not enough forum activity. There is no support for old releases, so you have to constantly upgrade. That's a little harsh for me.
Nonetheless, it's a great distro and I hope more users give it a spin.
83 • re:80 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 13:24:34 GMT from France)
You mean they have chosen Ubuntu for the shipit program?
Seriously, I don't believe they are that greedy with tax payer money. The contract they took with ATOS Origin costs several tens (hundreds?) of thousand of euros. The cost of the CD to install the OS is not really important.
For your info, You loose nothing by installing the free version of Mandriva, but you gain software that cost money when you install the paid version (plus support). The software that cost money costs money on Ubuntu too.
Ubuntu has a ship it program, so you can save about €0.1 when compared to Mandriva (you have to burn a blank CD, unless you install on virtual machine or use some tricks to avoid burning the CD). I'm not sure that €0.1 really makes a difference for a contract of more than 800 desktops with support.
The cost of the support from Mandriva is not the issue here, because ATOS could have installed Mandriva and support it too. That is what free software is about. However, they chose Ubuntu, even if Ubuntu is harder to support and doesn't provide all the feature you would think a government would need. I strongly believe they did it because if they had chosen Mandriva, would have had to compete with Mandriva itself on support, and we all know Mandriva is better cheaper at supporting Mandriva than anyone else. Hell, If they wanted, I'm quite confident the Mandriva team could support Ubuntu better than ATOS.
84 • RE 80 : The reason Mandriva was not chosen was not the cost. (by dbrion on 2008-07-08 13:32:28 GMT from France)
"reason that Mandriva wasn't chosen could be the cost. I don't know anything about Mandriva's distributions but don't they have a paid version? "
Mandriva has a paid version (with complicated softwares like VMplayer or Scilab preinstalled, but one can install them by oneself : just takes time, and with a paper book!!!) which costs 60E$ -about 80US$.
When a company wants Mandriva preinstalled, its employees trained, etc, it is much more expensive than the individual users boxed edition, as there are special needs... like RedHat or ...Canonical .
For training highly skilled, qualified people (in the 1866-1870s, you had carpet-baggers|beggars?) like french politicians, it takes a lot of hard work, and this has nothing to do with helping a normal linuxer able to fix things by himself.... These efforts need a lot of time, and are paid anyway...
I fear the main reason was that, in any French newspaper, and therefore of any French politician minds, if (s)he reads newspapers, whatever their political opinion, there is the "Ubuntu==Linux" way of "reasoning" (sorry, I do not keep Libération nor Le Figaro).
85 • RE : 83,84 Thanks (by Eddie Wilson on 2008-07-08 15:05:46 GMT from United States)
Its a little hard for me to understand the French political system or mindset. Still I thank you for your answers and I believe that I will try Mandriva to see if all the praise on this distro is true.
Good Day,
Eddie
86 • @69 (by john frey on 2008-07-08 15:57:21 GMT from Canada)
Well, by Gosh, you are indeed correct. The measurement of files (Hits) per visit is what is credited to each OS, not unique visits.
This is no doubt some dastardly plot by Ladislav to manipulate the figures to display what he wants to see rather than the true figures. Oh the shame.
Seriously, though, I wonder why it is set up that way? Perhaps that is the way Awstats displays the data and a more representative sampling is not available unless one were to code it.
87 • RE 69 But what happens if the ratio : (by dbrion on 2008-07-08 16:10:03 GMT from France)
hits per unique id per day
is more or less constant whatever the distribution?
Then, sorting them by distribution keeps some sense (and I cannot imagine a distr -even Windows- having a browser such broken one has to restart it to come back.... nor fanbois clicking everywhere in the hope that their working linux get credited with more hits...)
88 • re 80 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 16:10:14 GMT from Germany)
Hey Eddie,
Mandriva Free can do everything that Mandriva Powerpack (the paid edition) does. If you run Free all you have to do is visit http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and push the PLF button. Powerpack is more like a way to support Mandriva than getting a better edition.
89 • @71 (by john frey on 2008-07-08 17:03:49 GMT from Canada)
Ever time I think of Hamilton I think of the movie Canadian Bacon:)
Well I don't feel quite as generous to those companies and Microsoft as you. For starters Asus made their mark selling motherboards and so does not owe their success to Microsoft.
Should we be grateful to that MS has been such an abusive monopolist that the manufacturers, who allowed themselves to be pushed around, are now looking for alternatives. Another factor is the EU courts and their ongoing pressure that has allowed those toadying manufacturers to timorously offer Linux. Yet another factor is the 3rd world market that MS has intimidated into adopting Linux through demands to reduce "piracy." Not to mention that MS has priced and bloated themselves out of that market.
When I started using Gnu/Linux in 2001 it was ready for the desktop. Granted hardware compatibility was limited but it was certainly ready to be marketed like Apple/Mac on specific hardware and on a broader range of hardware. That's not long after you stopped using it.
I think we have a conjunction of factors and with the subnotebook market being almost entirely Linux maybe that will carry over to the notebook market as well. My title referenced the Desktop PC as opposed to laptops, smartphones, etc. Certainly I am passionate about seeing free software take over as the desktop OS for as many devices as possible. I'm just thinking the desktop PC may very well be a niche market in a few years as people replace them with other devices like set-top boxes, gaming consoles, subnotebooks, smartphones, laptops, etc.
90 • 88 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 17:12:25 GMT from United States)
I don't think that's entirely correct. I believe there are some pieces that are distributed at a cost included in powerpack. There are, of course, more qualified DWW readers named Adam who can comment.
91 • re 90 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 17:44:19 GMT from Germany)
You are right. Sorry, I forgot Cedega because it has no value for me.
Cedega is included in Powerpack but you have to pay to get it.
There are also the Fluendo Codecs. They are included in Powerpack but you don't need them. You can use the PLF codecs instead (free).
92 • "RE 90 :Mandriva Powerpack (by dbrion on 2008-07-08 17:52:00 GMT from France)
"pieces that are distributed at a cost included in powerpack"
A nicely printed book (it makes things very comfortable, if one cannot browse the Internet while installing).
A DVD with printed labels... (not an ugly DIY one)
perhaps some professional help...
Nothing someone who is accustomed to install will deeply miss (88 was answ to 80 who worried about PP, and I think E. Wilson is very competent).....
Else, the remaining can be compiled/ or PLF downloaded and installed, but it is slower and more complicated.....
I very quickly test mandrivas free, and, if they are satisfying (and satisfy one of my colleagues after 3 months trials), I buy PowerPacks to give friends/relatives I.
93 • Mandriva (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 18:40:17 GMT from Canada)
Agree with commentary in the DWW and some of the above comments that Mandriva was the better one among the major distros. But, its failure in properly support dual monitors due to some bugs forced me to go back to the previous version of Mandriva. Hopefully, they can fix this bug with some sort of update.
94 • RE: To All Who Has Helped (by Eddie Wilson on 2008-07-08 18:42:32 GMT from United States)
Thank you very much to everybody who has responded to my questions about Mandriva. I am looking forward to trying out this much praised distro. Downloading and installing tonight
Eddie
95 • @80 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-08 19:02:09 GMT from Canada)
These are all the packages that are exclusive to the Powerpack edition of Mandriva:
FlashPlayer
FlashPlayer-plugin
RealPlayer
RealPlayer-rpnp
VMwarePlayer
VariCAD_2008-en
VariCAD_View_2008-en
acroread (plus several dozen ancillary packages)
arkeia
arkwui
cedega-small-mandriva
gstreamer0.10-fluendo
opera
picasa
skype
All of these are commercial software that we cannot legally distribute to the general public (the license forbids it); we have to negotiate a license with the publishers to distribute them to paying customers. You won't find any of these in Ubuntu, either. Of course, some you can download for free direct from the publisher (Acrobat, Opera, Picasa, Skype etc). The ones most people find interesting are the Fluendo plugins (note that this is a *subset* of the full Fluendo bundle: it contains ASF and MMS demuxing, and MP3, WMA and WMV playback) and Cedega (which is for running Windows games on Linux).
Aside from those packages, the Powerpack comes with a printed manual (if you get the full box edition) and a month of online installation support (if you get the box edition, slimpack DVD edition, or the one-time download edition, but not if you get the PWP subscription).
On the French government thing: that's not a particularly French thing. In most cases in *any* country where a large organization is deploying a new piece of software to a large number of users, it will pay an external company to do this - usually a specialist third party reseller / integrator. In this point, the actual software itself is not what it's paying for. It's paying for the work in customising the software to the company's needs, the work in actually deploying it, and - if desired - training for its staff to use the software. The French will be paying Atos to do this for them with Ubuntu, just as otherwise they may have paid Mandriva (or one of our resellers) to do this, or a Microsoft reseller. There may well have been cost implications in this choice, but they would not necessarily be down to the cost of the underlying software.
Do let us know how you get on with Mandriva, and feel free to poke me if you have any problems, I'll do what I can to help out.
96 • question for Adam Williamson (by Grandpa Simpson on 2008-07-08 20:10:41 GMT from United States)
Will there come a day when Mandriva defaults to Gnome? I know you can use either DE, but the fact is that the choice of default environment sets a tone for the whole distro and indicates where the developers place their emphasis.
Ubuntu is vulnerable as the choice for people who want stupid-easy Gnome.
97 • @96 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-08 20:33:03 GMT from France)
That, I can answer.
Mandriva now support both GNOME and KDE. There is a KDE installation CD and a GNOME installation CD. The GNOME one defaults to GNOME.
If you have the KDE one, installing all the software of the GNOME one is one command:
urpmi task-gnome
98 • Mandriva netbook: GDium (by Frederik on 2008-07-08 21:27:57 GMT from Belgium)
The Mandriva netbook is called GDium: http://www.gdium.com/
99 • @96 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-08 22:21:44 GMT from Canada)
I appear to have misplaced my crystal ball, so I can't answer that. :) However, there's no plan in the foreseeable future to make the Free and Powerpack editions default to GNOME or to make the GNOME version of One the default One download.
100 • RE: 89 (by Landor on 2008-07-09 01:20:26 GMT from Canada)
John Candy, it's always the good ones that go early, sadly. Canadian Bacon and Uncle Buck are classic!
I tend to be more on the optimistic side of things and it fits here.
You forget a key point in the history of our pc's. Do you remember PC-DOS? Then came MS-DOS. If it hadn't been for the advent of MS (and yes I know ripping off IBM to a degree) producing a DOS, IBM still would've been the overlord of the Hardware/OS market, at the least for some period longer than they had been. Given this scenariou, the "Compatible" would have never taken off like it had for whatever period of time until someone else produced a disk operating system that was able to be ran on an "IBM Compatible" machine.
So in essence ASUS was able to make their mark partly because of MS.I know we're getting into semantics now, but it's pretty clear. It had to be one company that ran the guantlet first that paved the way to today. If it wasn't MS it could've been some fictional name like Cordoba Soft or Plymouth Soft, and we'd be complaining about them maybe.
The desktop may have been comparable to a degree at the time, but it wasn't "completely" for all aspects of "normal everyday use" that anyone in general may have used it for. Let's take a look at one key feature in communication that people used then that Linux lacked in considerably, webcams. You can say well that's hardware, but what about the clients? They did support webcams when Linux still has "some" clients that don't even have this feature, and that's just one area.
But that's enough of toting the Windows banner. I'm no fan, but if it wasn't for the advent of MS-DOS assisting in the mass creation of the PC-Compatible, we would have definitely been delayed in the technological whirlwind we've seen over the last two decades.
I remember discussing cable tv with someone long long ago and I said that one day, it will be interactive, our phones, tele-communications (internet was still restricted then) and a whole lot more will be coming from the lines. Today we have it, and as technology grows, I agree with you, desktop systems will be replaced, I just wish the cpu's for laptops etc were on the e high-end, if they were, it's all I'd own :)
101 • Re: 100 A bit of history (by Nanlee on 2008-07-09 01:27:33 GMT from Canada)
Actually, it was MS-DOS first, then came the PC-DOS, IBM's attempt to cut a piece from the big pie from MS. But, it failed.
102 • RE: 101 (by Landor on 2008-07-09 02:15:36 GMT from Canada)
They were both released in 81, a cooperative project between the two companies that eventually IBM ending up taking dry, but that's another story :)
103 • Re @86 @87...AWStats and "HITS" (by Bing Lee on 2008-07-09 04:25:17 GMT from Australia)
Here is some info for clarification of what actually constitutes "HITS":
Awstats Explained
[..]
Hits
Hits are the amount of visits a site receives plus the amount of connections per user. Each user that displays a web page may make multiple connections to the server to download images, text and any other information that may be needed for the page to display. This is all logged and is displayed as the amount of total hits a site receives.
[...]
http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/RRZ/Software/awstats/awstats.htm
The following might be the place where one can obtain answers to technical questions regarding AWStats configuration:
AWStats Forum
http://www.internetofficer.com/forum/
I will sign off on this topic with my original reservations about "HITS:
NB: Hits = number of files on a page (and not all DW pages have the same number of files, e.g. adds and images). Thus if some click-addicts reload the front page (e.g. to see the various values of DW PHR for their beloved distro) several times a day, even though they may be much less in number they will generate a higher HIT percentage than more numerous visitors who may visit once the info page for their distro of interest.
104 • Re: 31 • DW donation nomination (by awong on 2008-07-09 04:27:03 GMT from Canada)
I second the nomination for Linux Mint to receive a DW donation. Last year I spent a lot of time trying out all the major distros (well, the top 25) on my older P4 and it worked the best on my configuration of odd-ball hardware, so I made the jump into Linux using Mint. I'm still very happy with Mint and I'm able to do all my daily tasks on it; I've also installed it on my newer P4 and my wife's new lappy.
105 • @68 KDE4 (by BhaKi on 2008-07-09 06:45:35 GMT from India)
OpenSuSE has the best KDE4 anytime.
Next would be Mandriva.
106 • Best KDE4 (by Knight who says Ni! on 2008-07-09 11:22:25 GMT from Finland)
Those who compile the latest development version from source get the best KDE4, since the development is ongoing and fast. KDE 4.0 was alpha quality. And it appears that KDE 4.1 will be beta quality. KDE 4.2 might actually be release quality -- let's hope so.
There are still lots of configuration options and other features that need to be added to KDE4 before it can be considered ready for wide adoption. Also further optimization for speed and stability are needed. And more KDE3 applications need to be ported to KDE4. Additional KDE4 themes to choose from would also be most welcome, I'm not a great fan of the default Oxygen theme.
Nevertheless, KDE4 is clearly making very nice progress and it will become an awesome, beautiful and powerful desktop environment once it matures a bit more. Don't lose your patience. Good things come to those who wait.
107 • What? (by davemc on 2008-07-09 17:30:12 GMT from United States)
So, was this weeks DWW about KDE4 being buggy, Gentoo still sucking, or Debian gaining on the PHR? If your supposition was that all those things are true then congratz! KDE4 is still crap, Gentoo is still in deep trouble, and Debian still is THE stable distro of choice. You should have named this weeks DWW, "Nothing new here, move along!"
108 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-09 17:59:04 GMT from Germany)
Regarding Debian and PHR. I'm glad to see them doing well. But I think Mandriva's gaining in PHR has been more impresive. It was behind Debian not long ago.
One year ago Mandriva was in the 9th place with around 750 PHR. Now it is in the 6th place with around 950 PHR.
Mandriva came back from the dead. And tomorrow Mandriva 2009 second alpha is supposed to be released. Maybe it reaches 1000 PHR soon.
I want Gentoo, Slackware and all the good old distros to do well.
109 • @62 and the kde bashing (by Some Other Guy on 2008-07-09 20:09:04 GMT from United States)
And also, kde developers seems rather angry to users.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3535
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/17753.html
He's not a kde developer he is a _contributor_ and his rant needs context to be understood. He is complaining about the people that do nothing but complain about kde4, they don't contribute bug fixes, code, testing time, or even constructive feedback. It is those types of people that kde doesn't need (nor does Gnome, Xfce, or all of free software, TBH). Saying X program sucks, I like version number X better isn't helpful to anyone.
110 • Gentoo (by SomeGuy on 2008-07-10 01:19:50 GMT from Australia)
I don't really know what I think about the people, infact I think if more critics to the politics joined gentoo it would be a good thing. But at the moment I like the distro and I find I a bit strange that people that don't like the fact it's not installer orientated at the moment bashing it to death but at the same time will say nothing about Linux From Scratch which is also unique like that.
111 • Acronis True Image 11 and Issue with Current Linux Renditions (by Linux Tip on 2008-07-10 04:55:34 GMT from Australia)
Acronis TI 11.0 does NOT work with inode 256 size (It sees files system error and offers sector by sector backup option, which is apparently very, very slow and produces large image files). To avoid this issue, format your partitions with inode 128 size (if your distro partitioner allows it, some do - Yast2) or pre-format your partitions with another disk utility, e.g. Acronis Disk Director 10 or a recent Linux partitioner that defaults to inode 128 size (GParted in Ubuntu 8.04) and install without formatting. I am not sure that all distros will allow you to install on a pre-formatted partition without formatting but I know openSuse will and I am pretty sure Mandriva and Fedora also will. As for Ubuntu, I think the alternate cd iso allows it, too.
Cheers
PS: Acronis will also spit the dummy if it encounters some other advanced Linux options (not sure which ones exactly but indexing and encryptions would be ones to lookout for). Acronis also seems to turn off support for files larger than 4 GB upon restoration (which additionally means it will not create partitions with > 4 GB support). So, for me, Acronis is losing its shine when it comes to Linux usage.
112 • 111 Acronis (by RollMeAway on 2008-07-10 05:12:22 GMT from United States)
Give this a try:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm
I use it in the "unlimited partitions" mode, to protect one installation from even seeing the others. I ONLY use this program, exclusively, to create, resize, move partitions. I do only use ext3 however. I backup images of valuable distro partitions, to an external USB H. D. and can restore same to a different H.D. This is an easy way to duplicate a finely tuned installation to another machine also.
Life saver several times for me.
113 • Linux's sad wireless drivers (by Stephen Hardy on 2008-07-10 06:41:37 GMT from Australia)
I have an elcheapo ACER laptop, cost was nix & it came with Vista Basic, just the sort of thing that begs for a clean install of a good LINUX OS. Alas all versions of linux released this year wont work with the built in wireless chipset. Seems madwifi have 2 driver models, the old one with loads of undocumented hacks & the new model ath5k. Now i understand the need for the new model but that dosnet give me wireless access. True, a geek could use a wrapper but that sucks as both a solution & an excuse to ignore this problem, especialy for newbies comming from VISTA. This subject need a serious tourch shone up its ass because firstly its a major problem & it wont get fixed until it gets the attention it deserves! Urgency will lead the more programers helping out & then this problem will start to go away a lot faster than it is now. Please do something, even if its just to rag on the bottlenecks or lack of driver path/manufacturer support please!
114 • @111 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-10 07:14:24 GMT from Canada)
Yes, Mandriva can install to pre-created partitions without formatting. When offered the choice of partitioning methods, choose custom partitioning, then assign your pre-created partitions as you like. At the next screen you'll be asked which ones to format - just uncheck any you don't want to format.
115 • DW Nomination (by texasmike on 2008-07-10 13:15:55 GMT from United States)
I nominate the Grandfather of a multitude of distributions; Debian. The reasons are self explanatory, I believe.
116 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-10 13:38:17 GMT from United States)
"it wont get fixed until it gets the attention it deserves!"
It gets a lot of attention. It won't get fixed until the hardware companies stop hating Linux users. Here's the thing: even though the wireless doesn't work, Linux users keep buying the laptops, so why should the hardware manufacturers do anything for us?
117 • @40: (40 • RE 35 are French politicians good/convincing linux advocates?) (by Anonymous on 2008-07-10 14:32:04 GMT from France)
The French don't have a high view of their politicians, but they consider them not IT savvy at all.
The symbolic image of this was former president Jaques Chirac, shot during the inauguration of the new National Library, being shown a computer. He had apparently never used one before, as he was being explained what a mouse is. The word "mouse" didn't imprint his mind, he said "mulot" instead (in french, "mulot" is a variety of small field mouse) and he was completely clueless about the whole thing.
So, I think that if people get to know that their clumsy deputies could manage to use that stuff called "Linux" or "Ubuntu" or "Free Software", it's good publicity for that stuff.
118 • re 117 (by dbrion on 2008-07-10 15:06:11 GMT from France)
You suppose french MPs will be trusted enough to be believed (though they are clueless in many technical domains : that makes them folklorical but rather nice people).
If they are thought of as pure docile (obeying Mr Sarkozy's orders, if/when He gets unpopular) liers, their opinion about linux will be very irrelevant and skipped and they may/will lose any influence..
119 • Re: Asianux 3.0 Server! (by Larry Apakian, iXi on 2008-07-10 16:00:25 GMT from United States)
I've contacted the Asianux website and thought I'd pass on their comments word for word concerning Asianux and acquiring all images required for a full install! This is probably the most stable working release to date, I had major problems with earlier releases actually working when the boot disc was created! -Larry
Herein is their reply:
Asianux does not openly distribute our binary packages and ISO images.
The Asianux partners, RedFlag Software (CN), Haansoft (KR) and Miracle Linux (JP) can provide the complete package. Please contact the partner of your choice.
Red Flag Software Co.,Ltd.
Add : 6/F. Zijin Building, 68 Wanquanhe Rd., Haidian Dist., Beijing 100086, P.R.China
Tel : 86-10-8265-6655
Fax : 86-10-8265-8096
Email : redflag@asianux.com
Miracle Linux Corperation
Add : San Marino Shiodome 5F 2-4-1,higashishimbashi, minato-ku,Tokyo 105-0021 Japan
Tel : 81-3-5404-5050
Email : miracle@asianux.com
Haansoft, Inc.
Add : 20~22F., Prime Center, 546-4 Guui-Dong, Kwangjin-Gu, Seoul, 143-200, Korea
Tel : 82-2-3424-3168
Fax : 82-2-3424-5990
Email : haansoft@asianux.com
VietSoftware, Inc.
Add : 8 Fl, 51 Le Dai Hanh Street, Hanoi, Vietnam
Ta Quang Thai
Tel : 84-4-9745699
Fax : 84-4-9745700
Email : contact@vietsoftware.com
Regards,
The Asianux Support Team
120 • @81 • Get it through your head (by Anonymous on 2008-07-10 18:39:37 GMT from United States)
Yes, you could run emerges up the back side but they were so damned old compared to other distros. Yes, you can update daily but the devs were so far behind that Gentoo would have looked old fashioned.
Just because you can update every day does not mean that you are on a par with the rest of the industry.
Just try to hook up your ipod! There is a patch that has been sitting there waiting for inclusion but nooo some other eyecandy of the week (or month) has grabbed the devs attention. libipoddevices is still looking at old files and will no longer compile
This is the situation with source based distros, I like it because it 'used' to remove most of the contention between versions now the problem is that not all the the emerge scripts are kept in sync. Try the revdep-rebuild it has been failing for weeks now for that very reason. That utility should never fail!
So it is broken what is it going to take to fix it? The patch is sitting right there. Just like so many others, what does it take? I could show you open tickets for failed 'Gentoo' utilities with fixes that have been sitting there for more than two years.
If they won't fix their own utilities, what can you expect? Just try updating gcc on an AMD64 and then run revdep-rebuild. Missing libraries!
Hey! It's been happening for two years!
Tell me I'm lying, tell me I'm exaggerating
ref.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125728
Happy Birthday 125728, you are two years and three months old today.
and it is a Gentoo utility problem yet..geeze...
121 • @ 120 (by DeniZen on 2008-07-10 19:32:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
If Gentoo really is that broke, then move away.
What is even the point of persevering - if - (if) it is that much bother.
There was a time (I remember) when Gentoo was rather fun.
Long, drawn out fun al lthe same that usually ended in a (not fun) dissapointing bork.
Life is too short for that much unneccessary fiddling, and to short for things that do not work, offered by organisations that dont seem to want to fix it, or have become incapable of fixing it.
(I repeat - IF what you say is true - I dont know either way)
There are plenty of distro's out there that still suit those of us who like to 'tinker' - but that still stand a chance of remaining usable and stable as long as the user doesnt mess them up. Pursuing In-built, inherrent likelyhood of failure is .. well ..pointless.
I'd move to a different distro If I were in your shoes. Like ..Now.
122 • @ 116 - Wi-Fi (by DeniZen again on 2008-07-10 19:43:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
I agree with some of your statement, but regards the rest of it, and the quote you quote -
I'm sure that very few Manufacturers will actually 'hate' Linux.
They are profit making orgs, that need not ('unnecessarily') direct resource into providing Linux drivers/support.
Thats unfortunate - but understandable.
Maybe, one could argue that they would sel la few more units if it advertised 'works with Linux' - but then they have to support it
They dont want herds of well meaning, enthusiatic newbies or .. ham-fisted whiners clogging their support channels do they?
And regards W-Fi, these companies know that ndiswrapper exists.
OK its a 'dirty' solution, but if it works, why not just use it and just get on with life, or if one is that committed to not using it, change hardware.
Harsh, but generally speaking - thats life.
123 • asus eee pc 4 gb (by noobie on 2008-07-10 20:05:56 GMT from Finland)
Is this noobie thing or Asus thing: when you make that tiny error that you apt-get install firestarter, it will not start. And you apt-get remove firestarter and it creates errors, not succeed. And what can be understood here is that asus eee pc has iptables but its kernel does not support it. And firestarter is not working because of it and you can't even remove it.
What can I do with this firestarter? Now I don't like it.
124 • What's really broken? RE: 120 (by Landor on 2008-07-10 20:28:23 GMT from Canada)
Gentoo's Utility Program? That's odd, I read in the plethora of posts there that nobody knew what it was, except for one person from Gentoo in a quesstion they answered on a blog or the like, to say the problem was in libtool.
Now I may see a post about "that doesn't matter what the problem is, it's not fixed still". Well, I'll deal with that now so we don't have another instance like on that bug page. It does matter since as far as I know libtool is not maintained by Gentoo. Also, what I did read is they did not want a "dirty" fix for it. It would seem many of the Gentoo people (myself includedd) run multiple versions of GCC and the fixes posted there would create far too much work for those using the gcj use flag.
You really need to stop trolling about Gentoo weekly, seriously. You want a fix for you that won't work for others, but that doesn't matter does it?
Here's the relevant info regarding the blog post if anyone is interested.
"Most might have already seen it but I just want to reference the
recent blog post by Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò on the topic:
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/articles/2008/04/14/what-about-those-la-files
From the post's comments:
> richard77 said about 7 hours later:
> Is libtool the root cause of the gcc/revdep-rebuild infamous bug?
> (gentoo bug >#125728)
>
> Flameeyes said about 7 hours later:
> Yes that’s exactly what is causing that."
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
125 • Question to Adam Williamson (by Anonymous on 2008-07-10 21:18:22 GMT from Canada)
Did they fix the bug with dual monitor support on Mandriva 2008.1?
The problem is simple: the 2008.1 version can detect and display on both monitors. But, once you move the mouse from the main monitor over to the second monitor, you can't move it back. I noticed there were several posts on different sites describe the same problem they have, but have never seen the solution or update. Do you know anything about it? BTW, the 2008.0 version did not have this problem.
126 • joining the fray;) (by john frey on 2008-07-10 21:29:22 GMT from Canada)
Ok, I'm not up on this issue at all but I see a couple of problems with what you have said Landor.
First of all why is this package and tool not deprecated if it is not supported and has not been for 2 years?
I understand libtool is not maintained by Gentoo but is it being maintained? Yes it is, latest snapshot release is July 2008. So if Libtool is not working with Gentoo why doesn't it get patched to work? That's what patches are for. Perhaps Gentoo does not ever patch anything?
Blaming software that works perfectly fine on other systems and does the job it is supposed to doesn't fly. Either fix revdep-rebuild, remove it from the repositories, replace it with another tool or patch Libtools so that it will work.
What am I missing here? Please enlighten me.
127 • Frey into the Fray :) RE:126 (by Landor on 2008-07-10 22:25:46 GMT from Canada)
My point was there is a fix for it, but the workaround (did you read all the posts?) causes those with multiple version of GCC to have a hell of a time. This is of course for those using the gcj use flag only. So in essence Gentoo can fix the problem yes, but only creating another problem. You yourself have to admit that's no fix. I don't know if you read into it further, there are people trying to eliminate the .la files currently. This in itself will fix the problem for everyone (I believe), and believe me, it's no small task. I do believe it's the best solution, and until it's completed there is no real fix for it that will satisfy everyone, and not create more bugs in the process.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
The problem has 0 to do with revdep-rebuild itself really. There's no actual flaw, and you couldn't remove revdep-rebuild from Gentoo as it's an integral part of it (handling reverse dependencies).
What he's spitting out clearly is half-truths here regarding the situation. Which as we both know is quite easy to do. I've even asked the person to list which files are so out of date and not putting Gentoo at par with the rest of the community (if being at par with the rest of the community is a prerequisite to running a distro, most of them would be dust by now :) ) and he's not addressed the query to date. Which for me says a lot.
Hope you're enjoying your day/early evening John.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
128 • ??Landor, what is wrong with what the guy says? (by Anonymous on 2008-07-11 00:21:32 GMT from United States)
There is a problem involving an integral part of the Gentoo system that is failing because of a problem. It has been on the books for two years.
He was gracious enough to provide this link:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125728
Don't talk about half-truths until you understand his perspective.
It is broken and hasn't been fixed in over two years. Landor are you some kind of apologist? Gentoo is borked and you are in denial.
129 • 122 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-11 01:34:34 GMT from United States)
Actually, they hate Linux. Otherwise they would let the Linux community produce, maintain, and support open drivers. There's no proprietary technology to protect, absolutely none. It's completely free to them. They do this just because they're in the mood. That's hating Linux.
ndiswrapper is quite a hassle and doesn't always work.
130 • Gentoo Needs Drobbins. (by Anonymous on 2008-07-11 01:51:10 GMT from United States)
Gentoo is a freaking mess......... Imagine dropping a RELEASE ISO without testing it. They fix 'the bug' and drop another release 24-hours later and it won't install without errors. (See Gentoo Forums/Install/ dhcp etc..
If you want a source based O/S than check out FreeBSD. You can tic developer during the install;; that installs kernel & userland, from there you can set 'make flags in /etc/make.conf rebuild the world. Next you can install Xorg and the desktop system that you want. FreeBSD has right at 19,000 ports/programs you can build from source.
www.freebsd.org
131 • Re 129 (by Nanlee on 2008-07-11 02:23:58 GMT from Canada)
Actually, 122's comments make sense. It will cost more for those manufacturers to provide support to Linux than they might get for selling a few more products. It is not the cost for developing the driver but rather the cost to have staff knowing Linux at their technical support call center. Plus, there are so many different "flavors" in Linux and many of them need type commands (sounds like DOS), how is it possible for them to provide technical support for all of them. If they fail to provide the right support to some Linux distros, then it will hurt their reputation. It just doesn't worth the trouble for trying to get this tiny market.
Quite often, people comment on this site saying it's good to have another new distro. They think the more the better. Think again, it may be just the opposite.
132 • Trolls (by Landor on 2008-07-11 02:48:19 GMT from Canada)
I'm done replying to the trolls who can't even post with a name so you actually know who's posting what.
I wouldn't doubt the latest is the same key person jumping to a new topic. But who knows.
Oh and if it is? Wanna be as up to date with Linux do we? Use BSD (no insult to BSD either)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
133 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-07-11 03:32:49 GMT from United States)
> It is not the cost for developing the driver but rather the cost to have staff knowing Linux at their technical support call center.
Not if the drivers are written by FOSS developers. Nobody expects them to support something they didn't write. And the key is that an open driver usually needs little support anyway: the hardware is detected, the driver is installed, done. If they included drivers with the hardware, sure, but the main advantage of open drivers is that the hardware "just works".
134 • @116 (by On the mark! on 2008-07-11 03:52:33 GMT from Australia)
>>>>Here's the thing: even though the wireless doesn't work, Linux users keep buying the laptops, so why should the hardware manufacturers do anything for us?<<<<
Exactly!
135 • @122 My stance on drivers (by BhaKi on 2008-07-11 04:07:49 GMT from India)
Who needs support? Can a company support all the 1000+ operating systems in the world? Even if the company misses one OS, it amounts an anti-competitive practice. Clearly, support and fairness can't co-exist. The best strategy is to give out all hardware programming documentation that the developers of the proprietary drivers had. I'm not saying that you should give out hardware programming documentation and be silent. You can provide, in addition to hardware programming documentation, drivers (closed/open, free/paid doesn't matter) for popular OSs like Windows, Linux, *BSD so that 90% of the people will be saved from the task of writing drivers. However, complete hardware programming documentation MUST be provided. Only then, people won't be restricted to use OSs amongst the finite set dictated by the hardware-manufacturer.
"We provide drivers for Windows, Linux and *BSD. The users of other OSs fuck off" is logically equally bad as "We provide drivers for Windows. The users of other OSs fuck off". A better way would be "We provide drivers for Windows and Linux. In addition, we provide documentation on how to program our hardware. The documentation we provide is exactly equal to the documentation our windows-driver writers and Linux-driver writers have had. So if you happen to use other OSs, you can write drivers with feature parity or you can point your OS manufacturer to the documentation"
Some people may suggest that an even solution would be "We provide open-source drivers for Linux. The users of other OSs can either port these drivers to their OS or they can point their OS manufacturer to this source". This is more evil than it appears to be. As a person with 2 years of experience in assembly programming, I must say that "Source != Documentation".
As you can see, it's not really an additional hard job to provide programming documentation. You just need to release the programming information which was available to your windows-driver and Linux-driver teams. You need not release any details about how your hardware is internally designed. So no trade secrets are required. All that's needed is just how to program the hardware.
-------------------------------------------------------
Open formats, open protocols, open specifications, open interfaces, open standards and documented hardware are dying under the weight of "open-source". Please rescue them.
136 • 132 (by Dick Cheney on 2008-07-11 04:18:33 GMT from United States)
@Landor
I assume you mean me. I post several comments each week. There are a ton of anonymous from US posts and most are not me. I didn't post 130.
137 • @125 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-11 05:50:37 GMT from Canada)
Multiple outputs are handled in completely different ways by different drivers; there's not a single bug with all multi-head situations. I'm aware of the bug you're talking about, I've never yet been able to pin down exactly what causes it or how to resolve it. It doesn't occur in all cases - I have two different multiple head situations here and neither has any problem. I believe it's related to a specific proprietary driver.
138 • Ref#132 Landor (by Verndog on 2008-07-11 06:00:33 GMT from United States)
Just post to the comment number like I just did. I question even those that put their name in. Who knows who's who around here anyway.
I guess they take it personally if someone disagrees with them so they use Anonymous.
It seems a bit quite around here since Ladislav has taken time off.
139 • @138 et al re:Anonymous postings and other heebie geebies (by Anybody's Gues(t) on 2008-07-11 06:26:00 GMT from Australia)
Why not have a forum for this rather than allowing anyone to add comments here, if it's such a problem??
Whether Ladislav wants add this feature is up to him. And you're right VernDog 'tis a bit quiet round here... shucks I had my headphones on with the volume all the way down! =;-P
Have a good weekend y'all!
140 • Linux and Laptops / subNotebooks hardware (by DeniZen on 2008-07-11 06:37:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
I can understand the frustration that a User may feel wants to run a Linux Distro on theier lappy, or Sub Notebook etc, only to find that in some cases, there is hardware compatibility issues.
I have always thought of laptops (and smaller) as almost proprietory.
What if I didnt like the keyboard on a Laptop - I cant change it. I can upgrade very little - aside from the Ram and the Disk.
It is , what it is.
If it came with a Windows OS - as the vast majority do - then , no doubt there would be a disk, or disks full of drivers to make the item work with Windows.
Its a big call to expect a chosen flavour of Linux Distro to match that.
Its a big call for the Manufacturers to think about making sure that al lthe hardware is compatible with 'Linux' or to open it all up tp OpenSource.
If they did provide 'Linux' support - what would they provide - rpm's? - compat with which RPM based Distro? - Debs? is that Debian, or Ubuntu. Which release - last years? This years? - the next one?
If they release source code (the best option obviously) and an instruction regards how to compile (Like Ralink did for their Wifi NICs for example)
- would that suffice?
For me - yes maybe , in terms of both practicality, and in terms of the company's 'open-ness'
But for many, it would be hell. And there would be a lot of user support issues.
And thats just the NIC card I'm talking about. If there were more fundemental elements of the hardware that needed a compiled module, then there would be an all but impossible situation.
The answer is to do some research up front - 'is it likely to work'?
or
Accept that you have an item that was not meant for Linux, and that it is unrealistic to bang fist on desk when it simply proves to be the case.
Someone said above that there are probably too many flavours of Linux Distro now. While I like the idea of choice very much, I can also understand that viewpoint.
Disto hopping, I suspect is a daily hobby for many. If it doesnt work out of the box - it ditched, and if something isnt perfect , then the partition is flattened and 30 mins later another flavour is geting installed. (and a post here or somwhere stating that Distribution 'X' is cr@p!)
The plethora of Linux 'Flavours' builds in a 'flutter-by' approach, and the opportunity for 'Drive by installings' in the user, and an impossible task for a Manufacturer.
I'd suggest that folks slow down, take time to think. Do some research, keep it real.
its getting better all the time, but hardware development continues to move ahead faster than Linux world can keep up. And may always do.
There may come a day, but for the forseeable future this Planet has a 'Designed for Vista' sticker on it. We can only peel it off and try.
141 • Forgot to add (by DeniZen again,again on 2008-07-11 06:54:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
Forgot to add
My suggestion (and my personal practice) is simply to ignore 'this years model' regards hardware, and go for something just a little bit less cutting edge.
(and a bit of research too)
That way, there is a better chance that the Linux Community - or even the component manufacturers- have made some headway regards Linux compatibility.
Upgrade the HD if required/possible, and then shovel as much RAM in as it will take.
It stand a chance of getting off the ground, and it it does - it should fly ;)
It cost peanuts this way too :)
If you have, or want, or plain need a new shiny thing, fair enough. But you may accept that you will be running the OS that came with it - for a while at least.
142 • gentoo fanboy (by debo on 2008-07-11 07:53:28 GMT from Australia)
Landor, you are coming across as a gentoo fanboy. It seems that in your mind you are right and anybody who has a different opinion than you are wrong. You give opinions and make requests of others but I can't see anywhere that you offer solutions or are even prepared to write something constructive about gentoo.
I am not a fanboy of any particular distro, using several and favouring one. Gentoo is not one of my favourites but I don't deride it.
If you want to talk up gentoo and look past their failings and promote your love affair for it then that is fine. But be constructive in your comments and replies and not defensive or abrasive. Give us insight, answers and something constructive to answer questions posted. It is easy to sit down and bark orders and shoot derision. It is a bit harder to actually do something constructive.
You are obviously are a person of knowledge and experience in linux, just your comments are lacking.
143 • RE: 138 (by Landor on 2008-07-11 09:16:57 GMT from Canada)
True, my main issue is/was that the person "seemed" to me to be taking the same tone along the same lines as in regard with the other post(er). So it left me to wonder. I'm going to drop replying to the Anonymous commenters from the US, regarding Gentoo anyway. Any time I point out something they avoid it like the plague and go on a new rant. As I've said, says a lot in my opinion :)
RE: 142
Have you been following their posts, and mine? With scrutiny? Explain to me where I didn't use insight and something constructive in let's say post # 124 or 127?
You say my comments are lacking, but honestly, I believe your comprehension on the facts of the matter is lacking. Truly.
It's obvious, and I'll say it again, this one person posts something that bashes Gentoo, then once called on it, never once replies. He trolls here waiting for someone to post either something negative about Gentoo, or positive, to which he replies accordingly. You call that an difference of opinion? I call it trolling.
Twice now though I've seen you post in a contradictory manner regarding me. Please feel free to skip over my posts in the future if they cause you so much concern.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
144 • RE 61 : Thanks for the infos (by dbrion on 2008-07-11 09:34:00 GMT from France)
"Go to the mirrors and download 2008.0-r1 if you are interested in testing it."
I went after giving them some time to fix (tout vient à point à qui sait attendre), and
want to thank you for the info (it was such an obvious bug it was likely to be quickly corrected, but some seem to have the "rolling upgrade" way of reasoning... which may make people with lousy|no IT connections very unhappy). I did not see any trouble with their new Gentoo, in a brainless install: the only trouble I noticed with the previous betas had been fixed (it was gfortan unable to create executable... like in HP-Ux in 1988-91 : the fix[recompile gcc and gfortran] was easier than a century ago).
Have a nice day, and thanks for hinting for BSDs in another post (the first alphas were almost perfect)...
145 • re #143 (by debo on 2008-07-11 10:43:09 GMT from Australia)
Your response emphasises my post. You are threatened by constructive criticism.
146 • Mandriva 2009 Alfa 2 + KDE4 (by killer1987 on 2008-07-11 12:24:28 GMT from Italy)
i tried mandriva 2009 (KDE4 edition)... damn, it rocks!!! the feature more unstable remains plasma stuff (and plasmoid) but mandriva 2009 and kde4 promise me great things...
147 • Mandriva (by your average Mandriva user on 2008-07-11 12:27:29 GMT from Germany)
Mandriva 2009 alpha 2 has been released. It's testing season.
Happy testing everyone.
148 • @ 127 (by john frey on 2008-07-11 14:31:30 GMT from Canada)
Good morning Landor,
I have to reluctantly agree with 2 other posters here. Your bias is definitely showing. You say the problem has nothing to do with revdep-rebuild. Ok maybe it doesn't. You also said that the problem lies with Libtool. That's not true either. Just because it is not working properly with Gentoo does not make it broken.
The problem definitely lies with Gentoo. As a previous poster points out 2 years not fixing a bug for an integral part of the system. That looks very bad. The one poster referred this bug and libipoddevices. They are not responsible to make a list of problems to prove their point. That poster expressed an opinion, made a convincing argument and backed it with some facts.
I'm afraid that you come across like you have your head in the sand in regards to anything negative in Gentoo. It's just as easy to say "nothing wrong with Gentoo, prove it to me" without facts, as it is to criticize without facts.
I have now read quite a bit about the issue and although I see the bug may be difficult to fix that doesn't excuse that it is not fixed in a timely manner. Maybe people are being too hard on Gentoo, then again, where there's smoke there's fire.
149 • RE 148 (by Landor on 2008-07-11 16:34:29 GMT from Canada)
I know we differ in this but I don't see how he really backed it with facts. Truly, and that's my main and only arguement. He blamed revdep-rebuild right off the hop which shows (that if he followed the bug, and suffers from it on his machine) he doesn't know what he's talking about, or trolling. It's also very telling in this regard since he's yelling out for a fix that is no fix at all, and only passing the problem off to other users.
The problem does lie with libtool. If you owned tires that were an extremely hard rubber that slid on our ice and said the tires were the problem and someone say in south america told you they were not, who would be right? :) Both, and I'll concede that fact. It's Gentoo specific true, but also it's a problem with the specific tool.
I agree it should be fixed as well. I never thought it shouldn't. It seems, and no offence John, you're assuming that I'm defending aspects that I didn't even mention. I have stated quite a number of facts on this and as long as people read into what I'm saying, or ignore what I have said, they'll believe I am biased and taking a do or die, Gentoo's perfect stance, which is far from the case in any of my posts regarding it.
My point is and has been this. The man trolls, to me it's clear. Second, he blamed "Gentoo's Tool", which is in err. Then posts all the information that makes it clear that it's not the tool. Which shows he's wrong, trolling, and yet continues to use a distro the man would otherwise have you believe he abhors. Especially without once saying what he's done to try to correct this issue, and others he's spoke of, himself. "Volunteer Community" no?
We had some rain here early am. Seems to have helped cool it off a bit compared to yesterday. Hope you're having a great day thus far and a great weekend to come.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
150 • Donations (by wam on 2008-07-11 19:34:52 GMT from United States)
I agree..Linux Mint would be a good next donation.
151 • @145 (by Anonymous on 2008-07-11 23:15:52 GMT from United States)
He doesn't troll either..just picks up the banner and gets into a nit with everyone that doesn't share his world view.
152 • I observe that openSUSE Forums are having a "Noob" Invasion (by Observer on 2008-07-12 00:15:02 GMT from Australia)
Maybe not as big as Ubuntu's but there is a LOT of them asking lots of silly questions! Haha....It seems there IS a price to pay for success!
153 • KDE 4 Mandriva (by wam on 2008-07-12 02:57:50 GMT from United States)
KDE 4 is looking awesome. Im a GNOME guy, but geeeez! Mandriva's KDE 4 is almost if not nicer than SUSE's KDE 4. Keep up the good work KDE and Mandriva!
154 • Re. Post #78 Linux Mint $ Klikit (by Distrowatcher on 2008-07-12 03:58:52 GMT from United States)
Perhaps you should read The Linux Mint Blog and their philosophy about Branding.
I was very surprised at the author's comments considering the very nature of Linux.
I posted a polite and respectful response, reminding the author of the Ubuntu logo/branding - splashscreen etc. in the early versions of Mint.
This apparently struck a nerve as my comment was almost immediately deleted.
Needless to say, your suggestion would not be welcomed with open arms and minds.
155 • RE: 154 Who's Line Is It Anyay (by Landor on 2008-07-12 05:50:17 GMT from Canada)
When I read blogs and long spiels about things like that topic I often become curious about things.
First thing that springs to mind is the use of the Word Linux. I know tons use it, but how can you stop someone from using a name that has another poretected name it. Even just morally. Very odd post indeed.
I read all the comments too. I didn't see one regarding the branding. I did see the normal lips to cheek kind of comments though.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
156 • @153 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-07-12 06:20:49 GMT from Canada)
The KDE 4 look you see in SUSE and Mandriva is actually just how KDE 4 looks out of the box, more or less. We have not yet customized KDE 4's appearance at all for Mandriva, and I don't think SUSE really have done so for SUSE either. So you should really credit the KDE designers, not us. :)
We'll get around to make it look uglier^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprettier for Mandriva within the next few pre-releases, most likely.
157 • Thr Asus *pioneering* work..... (by dbrion on 2008-07-12 09:28:04 GMT from France)
"ultra-portable laptops. These simple Internet devices, pioneered by ASUS in the form of its Eee PC " this weeks DWW...
Oh, I naively thought it was the ugly, children meant XO/OLPC...
It was designed in 2004... with an anticommercial, water and dust proof keyboard....
Asus work might be considered as copying/hardware downgrading...
For serious info about the asus, I was very surprised because, usually, English written Wikipedia is better than French one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC has today (wikipedia is unstable) explanations about the filesystem/disk structure of the eeeeeeeePC silicon hard disk.
158 • France Parliament (Assemble Nationale) and Linux. (by AhJay on 2008-07-14 00:43:33 GMT from United States)
Michel Rocard (french deputy at the european parliament) is a very respected politician: wise straight, honest talk.
And he is instrumental at getting the French parliament to understand the value of using open source.
Mr. Sarkozy is just a pragmatic politician, with very low opinion ratings...
So Mr. Sarkozy has there very little understanding, and say there... and it is a good thing. He just cannot deliver.
So it is rational to expect that Mr. Rocard point of viewprevail, and Linux be adopted there.
And it is a good thing.
Then Mandriva or Ubuntu?
Does it really matter?
After all any good Linux Distro can run good Linux Software, which is what really counts, because mostlikely, the Eu and French parliament will finance Linux Software with tax payer money, and make it GPL3 available.
The smart thing to do there, may be to use several distros, and let users decide which one works the best, and to their tastes.
Then Mandriva, and Suse will be in good positions to please their respective customers...
This is my 2 euro/cents.
Ahjay
159 • Open Suse 11.0, slighty disapointed. (by AhJay on 2008-07-14 00:58:08 GMT from United States)
Hello:
I have used mostly Fedora, and Suse for many years now.
The latest version of OpenSuse 11, with KDE4 has been a disappointement: too many things just do not work, and worse interact (negatively).
The problem is part mine, party OpenSuse: my expectations were too high, and the amount of problems quite high.
Also OpenSuse should have told us about KDE 4: what works and what does not!
I am not going to sell OpenSuse short, because in the past they had excellent, good and bad releases, and the next one hopefully and rationally could be outstanding.
For the short time, I may use an other distro, probably Ubuntu because its just works...
Three suggestions:
=============
1) Consider changing from artificial fixed schedule, to release when it is ready.
2) Possibly just focus at getting the basic to work (drivers, wifi, less bugs) rather than aiming at the moon.
3) Keep it simple: it is easier to build from there.
Also as a user I do not really mind felling smart rather than stupid: I am just human.
Note: KDE4 will be great, no doubt... but it is not ready yet.
Just say what works there, and what dos not.
No offense to the OpenSuse developers there, as usual, great work!
160 • @159 Ubuntu because its just works...[So says another Ubuntu PROPAGANDIST!] (by Ubu & Co does NOT work for me! on 2008-07-14 03:53:19 GMT from Australia)
and has not worked for last 3 releases (if one considers 8.04.1 a new release).
Anybody who says that a given distro "just works" without a qualifier that it does so on their hardware, is either CLUELESS about Linux reality or a DEVIOUS and SHALLOW distro propagandist. Learn the facts or get a life!
>>>>The problem is part mine, party OpenSuse: my expectations were too high, and the amount of problems quite high.
Also OpenSuse should have told us about KDE 4: what works and what does not!<<<<
It was pretty clear what to expect and YOU had/have a CHOICE of 3 or 4 DE to install from - Gnome, Kde3, Xfce or Kde4 - and your complaint is invalid, IMHO!
If you want stable, use kde3/Gnome.
FYI: This is what the release annoucment said:
Announcing openSUSE 11.0 GM
http://news.opensuse.org/2008/06/19/announcing-opensuse-110-gm/
"...On the Desktop
Whether you use GNOME or KDE, the openSUSE 11.0 desktop is a beautiful experience. Users have the choice of GNOME 2.22, KDE 4, KDE 3.5, Xfce, and more!....
.....KDE 4.0
openSUSE 11.0 is the first openSUSE release to include a stable release of KDE 4.0. This release includes sweeping changes in the KDE desktop, and represents the next generation of KDE. This release includes a new desktop shell, called Plasma, a new look and feel (called Oxygen), and many interface and usability improvements.
KControl has been replaced with Systemsettings, which makes system configuration much easier. KDE’s window manager, KWin, now supports 3-D desktop effects.
KDE 4.0 doesn’t include KDEPIM applications, so the openSUSE team has included beta versions of the KDEPIM suite (KMail, KOrganizer, Akregator, etc.) from the KDE 4.1 branch that’s in development and scheduled to be released in July and for online update.
Note that KDE 3.5 is still available on the openSUSE DVD for KDE users who aren’t quite ready to make the leap to KDE 4 .....
161 • Re....OpenSuse should have told us about KDE 4 (by They did on 2008-07-14 04:08:47 GMT from Australia)
KDE 4.1
As we’ve already discussed, KDE 4.0 is still maturing and may lack features that experienced KDE users expect. However, KDE 4.1 will be much better in these respects and is expected to be released in late July. Shortly after the 4.1 release announcement, it will be available from the openSUSE Build Service repositories, enabling users to update via 1-click-install — albeit not officially supported. However, if you want to run the latest and greatest from KDE, you’ll be able to do so (and help testing as well!)
The next openSUSE release, openSUSE 11.1, should be out in December of this year and include a thoroughly tested and well-integrated KDE 4.1.x right out of the box.
http://news.opensuse.org/2008/06/17/sneak-peeks-at-opensuse-110-kde-with-stephan-binner/
162 • RE: Head In The Sand, Apologist, Fanboi (by Landor on 2008-07-14 06:26:32 GMT from Canada)
Look at my posts, look at 160, and figure it :) No offense of course to you John :)
Here's to a great DWW Tomorrow!
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
163 • opensuse 11 and KDE 3.5......... (by suserer on 2008-07-14 08:23:22 GMT from Australia)
is just how it should be.
Number of Comments: 163
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