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1 • Top Ten Distributions (by Béranger on 2008-10-06 09:53:16 GMT from Romania)
Wow, nice to see that things are moving... but as I am writing this, the "Top Ten Distributions" page is still the old one!
OBJECTIONS:
1. The only cons for Mint Linux is the fact that they simply inherit the upstream's Ubuntu bugs & regressions, especially as Mint can't afford to maintain their own kernel! (For instance, Parsix maintains its own kernel, it doesn't use the upstream Debian's one.) This way, if Ubuntu works on some hardware, Mint will work too; where Ubuntu fails, Mint will fail too.
2. A non-specified pro for Mint Linux: the theming. No more brown, hooray!
3. Factual error: MEPIS Linux is no more a "possible alternative" to Mint, because it's now based on Debian, not on Ubuntu!
4. When comes to CentOS: X/OS Linux should be marked as DEAD, and no more a valid alternative to anything, as the last time they released an update for version 5 was February 12, 2008! Not only they're still on 5.1 (while other RHEL clones are on 5.2), but they haven't even released all the security patches for 5.1! Disqualifying, period.
2 • Linux Mint (by Gigi on 2008-10-06 09:58:07 GMT from United States)
Good to see the "difference of opinion" with Clement hasn't grown to anything serious.
Giving credit where it is due and remaining objective -- Cheers Ladislav.
3 • RE: 1 Top Ten Distributions (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 10:06:33 GMT from Taiwan)
MEPIS Linux is no more a "possible alternative" to Mint, because it's now based on Debian, not on Ubuntu!
Sorry, I fail to see how that makes MEPIS not a possible alternative to Mint. Both are aimed at the same market and both include various user-friendly enhancements. What they are based on isn't particularly important.
The Major Distributions page is still the old one, good observation. But as I mentioned in the article, I will wait for feedback and corrections (if any) before updating the page.
I've removed X/OS from the list of alternatives to CentOS, thanks!
4 • RE: Both are aimed at the same market (by Béranger on 2008-10-06 10:13:02 GMT from Romania)
«Sorry, I fail to see how that makes MEPIS not a possible alternative to Mint. Both are aimed at the same market and both include various user-friendly enhancements. What they are based on isn't particularly important.»
Wow, if it's not important, then why don't you include PCLinuxOS as an alternative?
The de facto rule seemed to be: for a RHEL clone, give other RHEL clones as alternatives; for Fedora, give Fedora derivatives as alternatives; for Debian (and Knoppix), give Debian derivatives as alternatives; for Ubuntu, give Ubuntu derivatives as alternatives; for Mandriva, give Mandriva derivatives as alternatives. Now, for Mint... give whatever you want as alternatives?!
5 • Kubuntu Beta (by Matt on 2008-10-06 10:14:47 GMT from Denmark)
(K)ubuntu Beta was released this week. In my opinion Kubuntu Intrepid is amoung the most interesting releases this year since it makes KDE 4 usable as an everyday desktop, and a real alternative to KDE 3 and Gnome.
Kubuntu comes with KDE 4.1.2 and so far the Kubuntu Beta seems to be quite stable.
6 • RE: 4 Both are aimed at the same market (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 10:22:31 GMT from Taiwan)
Wow, if it's not important, then why don't you include PCLinuxOS as an alternative?
That's the kind of feedback I am waiting for. If readers want it, I'll put PCLinuxOS in too, but since it's already listed on the page as a major distribution, I left it out. Also, most other distributions have derivatives, so it's easy to find "possible alternatives", but Mint doesn't have any, so adding MEPIS sounded like a sensible thing to do. If people disagree, I have no problem leaving it out.
Keep the suggestions coming.
7 • Knoppix --> CentOS ??? (by ShakaZ on 2008-10-06 10:30:13 GMT from Belgium)
I fail to see what logic hides behind the move from Knoppix to CentOS on the major distribution page.
Do you really feel a livecd showcasing the bleeding edge side of Debian has anything in common with a distro based on the stable enterprise version of Red Hat?
Replacing Knoppix by distros such as Sidux or Sabayon would make more sense in that context...
8 • #4 (by Travis B on 2008-10-06 10:32:00 GMT from United States)
>The de facto rule seemed to be: for a RHEL clone, give other
>RHEL clones as alternatives; for Fedora, give Fedora derivatives
>as alternatives; for Debian (and Knoppix), give Debian
>derivatives as alternatives; for Ubuntu, give Ubuntu derivatives
>as alternatives; for Mandriva, give Mandriva derivatives as
>alternatives. Now, for Mint... give whatever you want as
>alternatives?!
Considering Ubuntu is derived from Debian... Well, doesn't that kind-of destroy your entire line of thinking?
And personally, you don't need to replace one distribution with a derivative of it.--the average user can't tell the difference between distributions-- Hell, I know people who have problems telling the difference between Windows and a *NIX distribution.
As long as they're not using the shell (and if they are, they shouldn't be using distributions like *buntu anyways) then I don't think they'd notice the only TRUE difference between different distributions: the package manager, and the wallpaper you're default'd.
9 • RE: #8 (by Béranger` on 2008-10-06 10:51:46 GMT from Romania)
«Considering Ubuntu is derived from Debian... Well, doesn't that kind-of destroy your entire line of thinking?»
NO. Because RHEL is also «derived from [an older version of] Fedora», and they're two completely different things!
The same stands for the difference between Debian and Ubuntu. This is not the proper place for a flamewar.
Or maybe you wanna think that Mac OS X would be a possible replacement for FreeBSD, eh?
10 • CentOS (by MRaugh on 2008-10-06 11:02:25 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, CentOS maintains a separate repository, CentOS-plus, that provides newer versions of packages and some packages not available in RHEL. They do that for people who want them and warn that enabling that repository (which is disabled by default) could mean losing binary compatibility with "the upstream vendor." So the old-package issue isn't quite as dire as your notes sound, though it's still very true that you don't go with CentOS for bleeding-edge software.
I run CentOS on my home server and use it in my test lab, where current patch levels are important but it's impractical to pay for a RHEL subscription for each temporary installation.
On the Mint question, I wonder: if Mint is an alternative to Ubuntu (as listed on the old page), why can't Ubuntu be an alternative to Mint?
11 • Pro-bono Pro-Mint rant :-) (by Béranger on 2008-10-06 11:07:36 GMT from Romania)
I am not such a fan of *buntus & derivatives, however I'd like to share this with you.
I don't have any Xubuntu 8.04 CD, but only Xubuntu 7.10 and Xubuntu 8.10 Beta... and Mint Linux 5 CE XFCE.
I've burned, on the same blank CD brand, from a same spindle, at the same low speed (8x) and with verification:
-- Mint Linux 5 CE XFCE (that is, based on Ubuntu 8.04);
-- Xubuntu 8.10 Beta;
and I gave them a try on a very old HP Omnibook XE3 (Celeron-128 Coppermine @850 MHz, 256 MB RAM PC100, S3 Savage video).
Results:
-- Xubuntu 8.10 Beta was terribly slow to load, and parts of the desktop were crashing. But it was extremely slow to load on such a system anyway, plus the installer crashed at some point, even when booting directly into the installer.
-- Mint Linux 5 CD XFCE loaded very well as a live system (and rather fast, given the hardware used), and the installation was perfect and functonal; I don't know whether *buntu and Mint use the same LiveCD mechanisms or not, but for low-end systems I can certify that Xubuntu 8.10 is not ready yet, whereas Mint 5 XFCE is very good.
Mint 5 Fluxbox RC1 is also good, but I couldn't see a significant increase in performance over the XFCE flavor.
Or maybe (X)ubuntu's 8.10 kernel, glibc, build options, etc., make it unsuitable for low-end systems...
12 • Kubuntu Beta - stable ??? (by Bob on 2008-10-06 11:10:08 GMT from Austria)
Mr. 5: Did you really try it thoroughly or does "quite stable" mean something different to you than to me? I have tried both - and Ubuntu feels stable but Kubuntu definitely not. This might be related to the new KDE Vista clone (KDE 4) or to the fact that much more manpower is used to polish Ubuntu than Kubuntu.
Mandriva might get to somewhere sooner or later, because one of my installs of their "cooker" versions was even able to suspend my laptop AND wake it up again. No 64-bit distro has ever managed to do this before. What worries me is the fact that they want to release their new Mandy on the 9th. I very much doubt that they'll be able to fix most of the remaining issues until then.
After reading the remark that KDE 4 is a real alternative to KDE 3 and Gnome I'd be tempted to rephrase the whole thing: "KDE 4.1 might eventually be a slow alternative to KDE 3 and Gnome."
13 • major distro releases and Miro (by selket on 2008-10-06 11:24:53 GMT from China)
Mandriva will blow our minds with the next release so far i can tell from the release candidate. its the first KDE4.XX that runs stable. I use it for quite some time now with tons of plasmaoids and plasma didnt crashed ONCE!
Still the package manager is kinda slow. But u dont install everyday tons of programs.
Give miro the cash is ok but i guess some other projects could use it better like LXDE for example
14 • Latest news (by Gene Venable on 2008-10-06 11:27:06 GMT from United States)
Linux Mint deserves the new prominence you are giving it; it's my fallback to Sidux, which is the main distro I use on my new $200 Shuttle system, which is replacing my older cheap clone.
I'm sad to see the retirement of hard-working Barry Kauler of Puppy Linux. Reading his Blog has been something of an education for me, just as an example of the thoughts of a distro builder with integrity and ambition. I am worried that Puppy will fade out without Barry's full participation, though many fine Puppy users are still using and developing it. I myself have strayed -- Puppy was my mainstay for quite awhile, as I ran it on my laptops from a USB drive. Lately I've been sticking with Windows on my laptops because Windows is good at text-to-speech and Linux is lousy, and using my main desktop, that only has Linux on it, more often.
15 • Finally (by Ed on 2008-10-06 11:27:16 GMT )
Yeah, you've finally changed the most popular distros and the choice for the two new ones could not be better. I've tried Mint, and it's just beautiful, smooth and I'm thinking that that is the distribution that I should recommend to new Linux users, no more \"how do I watch movies?!\" :).
As for CentOS, it's a really great system and I don't think that anyone will mind about some older packages, people who use OSes like Red Hat, CentOS, Scientific Linux are more concerned with stability, some advanced features like xen virtualization etc.
P.S. Is there any information about new Debian release - Lenny stable? I'm buying a new comp in few days and I'd really wanted to use Debian as a server.
16 • RE: 13 major distro releases and Miro (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 11:39:17 GMT from Taiwan)
Give miro the cash is ok but i guess some other projects could use it better like LXDE for example
You are welcome to suggest a project for a future donation, but I'd really appreciate it if you could also provide a link to the project's donation page. Thank you.
17 • Knoppix vs CentOS (by baldyeti on 2008-10-06 11:59:37 GMT from Belgium)
With all due respect I have to agree with the view that Knoppix development has somehow stalled as of late. But replace it with an RH-clone? Knoppix has always been about proving debian could work on most hardware, and had recent packages if one's willing to try something else than their latest "stable" version. I see sidux as a much more obvious successor. It's a great live-cd, installation to HD is supported (knoppix only ever half-heartedly supported installation), and has regularly hit its release schedule, all with bleeding-edge debian "unstable" software packages. Please reconsider ;-)
18 • Mention on the Radio (by Steve Riddett on 2008-10-06 12:02:22 GMT from Ireland)
I know this is off topic (sorry) but I just wanted to say congratulations for being mentioned on the radio. Everyday I see more and more evidence around me of growing Linux awareness and it's in part thanks to sites like this that that is true. Good job!
19 • RE: 7, 17 (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 12:09:06 GMT from Taiwan)
The idea here is not to replace KNOPPIX with something similar, but to provide a list of top ten distributions. I don't think that sidux has reached that stage when it can be considered a major distro.
20 • What about Debian 5.0 aka Lenny ? (by vincent rabah on 2008-10-06 12:26:44 GMT from France)
Does anybody have some good new about LENNY, normally it should be out in September ... But always no think !
Let me know :P
21 • major distributions (by Anders Honore on 2008-10-06 12:29:29 GMT from Denmark)
I would rather suggest to simply drop Knoppix and simplymepis from the list than replace them with Mint and CentOS, fine distros they may be.
Ubuntu, SuSe, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware and Gentoo (barely hanging on these days) are clearly in a league of their own as the heavy hitters in the linux community. That mepis and knoppix are now out shows there are/were distros in that list not quite as major as these.
Bringing in ditros that don't really compare to the gravity of these distros just to make up the numbers would suggest the numbers are too big.
22 • MEPIS vs Mint (by Carl on 2008-10-06 12:34:43 GMT from Spain)
I have not tried Mint, so I have no idea about its merits, but I know it is primarily a Gnome based distro, with KDE being a community effort. MEPIS is the only Debian derivative that is 100% KDE centric.
Besides, although official development has slowed down, the community is _very_ active. The MEPIS artwork is completely created by the community, the excellent wiki and manual are community work, the community repo has loads of very uptodate apps for MEPIS, a new community portal (mepiscommunity.org) was launched a couple of weeks ago....
Warren has promised he will open up the MEPIS assistants so they can be further enhanced by the community.....
Considering Linux to be a community effort, I would even go so far as to say that MEPIS is as alive as it was 3 years ago.
All in all, I think there are good reasons to maintain MEPIS as a main distro. All in all, it still is the father of the easy installable live CD's and was the first to create a full Linux experience out of the box for newbies. Some tribute is due.
23 • No subject (by Sertse on 2008-10-06 12:41:30 GMT from Australia)
Mint would be there IMO, if only for the sole fact its now above of all those distros mentioned commonly called the big hitters, only behind Ubuntu and Opensuse. It must mean something
(Though yes I know there are various factors etc, and not the be all end all indicator of popularity e.g. most slackware people I guess won't be types being introduced through dw....)
Though I'm quite indifferent of any others to the list...
24 • When/If Patrick Volkerding will retire... (by Didier Spaier on 2008-10-06 12:45:05 GMT from France)
I hope Briah Cecilia will be on duty for Slackware ;-)
But take your time Pat, we are not in a hurry.
Patrick Volkerding, who founded Slackware Linux in 1993, is still at the head of the project some 15 years later! Quite an achievement that!
25 • Solaris (by Jesse on 2008-10-06 12:47:14 GMT from Canada)
I tried Solaris this past week. While it looks a lot better than it did a few years back, the system certainly isn't aimed at the desktop, but it's getting more user friendly. Sadly, I wasn't able to get my network card running properly. The card would show up in the network manager, cliam to be active, but I couldn't ping out, even to IP addresses. Otherwise, poking around the system, it seemed fairly fast and stable. I'd definately try it again in a few releases to see how the project is coming along.
26 • What is a major distro ? (by Chris on 2008-10-06 12:52:58 GMT from Germany)
I agree with comment 21. Mint and CentOS don't bring significant things to their "base"-distro (respectively Ubuntu and Red Hat).
SuSe, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware and Gentoo are major distributions as they are heavily used and each one has original concepts.
Ubuntu is based on Debian, certainly, but it brings a lot of significant things to its base (ease to use, up-to-date packages...).
27 • RE:10, Mint can only be an alternative to Ubuntu, why?. (by Eddie Wilson on 2008-10-06 12:54:40 GMT from United States)
Before I comment I would like to say that I do use LinuxMint 5.0 KDE CE as my main os. As for the comment that Ubuntu be an alternative to Mint that wouldn't be right as Mint depends upon Ubuntu. I really like Mint, its a good distro that has a very bright future. I've always been a Gnome fan but the Mint Kde is making me very happy at the moment. Simply put, there would be no Mint without Ubuntu and thats not a bad thing. This is just my opinion and nothing really to debate about.
28 • Beranger: Boycott (by Susan on 2008-10-06 13:30:07 GMT from United States)
I knew that boycott wouldn't last. :D
http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/10/06/07/42/08-linux-distro-hating-week-oct-6-1
29 • Mint vs Mepis (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 13:35:19 GMT from United States)
The only issue I have with the situation is that we suddenly seem to be gauging a distro's viability on whether it has a six month release schedule. PCLinuxOS and Mepis have adhered to the "release when ready" philosophy and seem to be being penalized for it from comments on this board and the removal of Mepis from the major distro list. Mepis has been slowed down by Warren's return to work, a situation created by the lack of financial support from users and *buntu spamming sites with alpha and beta releases every other week.
Mint is an excellent distro but, as pointed out before, suffers from Canonicals quality control problems. Six month releases obviously doesn't give them enough time to both innovate and produce quality.
For new users my first choice is PCLinuxOS. If it can't handle something (usually the crappy broadcom wireless) then I go to Mepis. I really like Mint and what Clem has done, but the underlying Ubuntu has always caused me to eventually have to go back and replace it with one of the other two. I wish Clem would throw in with either Mepis or PCLinux (or better yet...all three come together) and produce a killer distro with a solid base.
30 • New distros / Major distros (by ernie on 2008-10-06 13:35:38 GMT from Germany)
Instead of adding Mint and CentOS, it would IMHO be better to include Red Hat (and name derivates like CentOS along the way) and Archlinux. Red Hat because it is a heavy-weight linux-distro (that everybody knows of or should know of) and Archlinux, because it offers a different approach to Linux and is well known by know (= has enough support).
Note: No, I am not a Red Hat or Arch user. :)
31 • MEPIS inactivity comment is unfair (by Marcos on 2008-10-06 13:48:26 GMT from Germany)
I think that the remark about the Mepis inactivity is at least unfair. I do not doubt that Mint deserves its popularity and I think they are doing a great work but as an example if we have a look at the numbers, right now in all the Linux Mint Repos there are 270 packages (48 of them firefox locales and 25 for firefox collateral generated ones: debug symbols and so on). Only in the Mepis 8 beta 32bit repo there are 115 (no locales) and in the Mepis 7 32 bits community repo 390. I know there are not as many as the mepis 7 32 bits where there were more than 500 but we have to consider that since version 8 is based on debian Lenny many packages are up to date.
Even if we do not measure the development efforts as packages output, the efforts required to backport packages to a ubuntu based distro is just a small fraction of the efforts required to package for example, Gimp 2.4.6 for a Debian etch base. Mepis has also its own kernel, assistants, additional drivers, complete desktop themes, 32 and 64 bit versions... whereas several distros on that list do not have all of them.... And it has rolling updates which is very interesting for newbies and experienced users...
And there is also AntiX a Mepis derivative very very active...
32 • RE: 30 New distros / Major distros (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 13:58:10 GMT from Taiwan)
Good points. Yes, RHEL is certainly a major distro that should be included on any top ten Linux distro list. And yet, we should consider what sort of reader the page is designed for and what kinds of readers visits DistroWatch. Checking this month's Apache logs, I can see that there are twice as many Pardus Linux users than RHEL users visiting the site. So all in all, I believe that most of those who are likely to read the Major Distributions page will be less interested in RHEL than they would be in Fedora or CentOS, which are on the list.
As for Arch Linux, I get the feeling that many of the project's developers and users don't really want their distro be on any top ten lists. They are quite happy to continue as they are - living a quiet existence out of any spotlight. It certainly is a good candidate for the page, but maybe it still has some distance to go.
33 • RE: 28 • Beranger: Boycott (by Susan (by Béranger on 2008-10-06 14:04:07 GMT from Romania)
Susan,
It lasts. We're here on "Planet Ladislav", where different laws apply :-)
34 • BIOS friendly Linux? (by Jim Welch on 2008-10-06 14:19:46 GMT from United States)
My laptop and my desktop, require that I know to set several BIOS boot options, to correctly setup Linux. WHY do I have to look this up and figure it out? Is there an installer that knows this and fixes the boot loader? Linux does workarounds for many different hardware problems, why not BIOS? Am I completely off base?
35 • Re: 31 MEPIS inactivity comment is unfair (by ladislav on 2008-10-06 14:19:50 GMT from Taiwan)
The term "activity level" is quite broad - it isn't just the number of packages in the repositories, it's also the forums, blogs, planets, news, etc where one can get a better feeling how active a project is. As an example, check out the two distributions' blogs:
http://www.mepis.org/blog
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/
The last entry on the MEPIS blog is from July 2007 - that's 15 months ago! In contrast, the Linux Mint blog gets updated every few days.
Interestingly, something caught my attention while reading the Mint blog last week: while Warren used to complain that MEPIS didn't bring in enough cash so he couldn't work on it full-time, Linux Mint has managed to raise US$1,800 in September - just from donations and sponsorships. That speaks volumes about where the two projects stand in terms of "activity levels"!
36 • @ 20 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 14:30:28 GMT from United States)
Lenny will be released when there are no more release critical bugs[1] in the "testing" branch, the only people that seriously expected a September release were the ones with no Debian experience.
[1] http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php
37 • Top ten list (by Greg on 2008-10-06 14:34:19 GMT from Greece)
I dont see the need of a top 10. Those top foo lists has since their invention been pathetic anyway. eg. in music charts.
Ubuntu, SuSe, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware and Gentoo and maybe the addition of RHEL and a BSD, most likely FreeBSD.
Theres a decent list of 9.
If you definately want 10 add Archlinux. It seems to be on a roll lately and its been around more than all those overhyped distros eg. PCLinuxOS/Mint/etc.
38 • @ 35 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 14:39:08 GMT from United States)
Technically speaking that just means that the Mint Developers blog more, which usually translates to having more freetime, which translates to they really don't do much in the lines of software development ;P
(Sadly this will be misconstrued because people no longer have a sense of humor)
39 • major distros/alternatives (by Mark Wyatt on 2008-10-06 14:39:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
It seems to me that a problem in the discussion of what constititutes a major distro and what constitutes an alternative is based on the fact that none of us a really absolutely clear of what the definitions are.
For me, the primary criterion for a major distro is that it should be widely used. To be on this list, it should be of interest to the kind of people who are the target audience for the list (which is a bit recursive, but that's a slightly different thing) and it would be good if it brought something new to the table, something which it is difficult to find in other distros higher up the list.
From this point of view, adding centos seems to make perfect sense; one of the more common server-room distros, and it 'brings to the table' a RedHat-alike with low costs of ownership. Maybe that's not for everyone, but that really ought not to be the issue.
Now, kicking knoppix off the list brings a slightly different issue; It really has been a very significant distro in the whole live CD movement. (And, it is good.) So, my suggestion is this: Wouldn't it be better to have a 'specialist distros' page which could have specialist live CDs (knoppix and derivatives), specialist security tools distros, system rescue and specialist small distros? In the context of having a particular objective and fulfilling that need well, isn't this the Unix tools manifesto writ large?
As far as alternatives are concerned, shouldn't the definition be "people who liked x, are also likely to be interested in y"? You know, the kind of things that some of the music referral sites do in suggesting alternative bands that you might be interested in.
That shouldn't mean the same GUI, necessarily - they could but it isn't necessary - nor, necessarily, derived from same upstream source, but, from a 'marketing' point of view, they should be aimed at the same general market area.
The only 'grey' area that comes to mind is that a person might decide that their next distro is going to use a particular package manager, but, even then, I don't think that many are going to say Mepis, for example, isn't quite what I'd like, but I like the out-of-the-box ease of use, so I'll use Debian.
40 • OpenSolaris (by BlueJayofEvil on 2008-10-06 14:42:58 GMT from United States)
I tried one of the recent OpenSolaris "experimental" builds and am quite pleased with it. Major improvements over the 2008.05 release. If this release somehow flops, I'm confident the next one will do better. Kudos to the OpenSolaris devs!
41 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 14:46:52 GMT from Canada)
should pclinuxos be a major distro?
it seems they are finding it increasingly difficult the further they move from the mandriva base
If only they would take some tips from the mint team who seem to be on their way to self sufficiency and have a much better overall product - forum , blog , etc
42 • Mepis (by mac dahlin on 2008-10-06 14:47:13 GMT from United States)
No Mepis communities have closed down and Mepis is in the beta2 stage of its new release. I don't know where you got your information from but it's all wrong.
Check it out here: www.mepiscommunity.org and www.mepislovers.org.
43 • No NetBSD information (by Li-cheng Hsu on 2008-10-06 14:56:17 GMT from Taiwan)
Oops, but where can I find information about upcoming release of NetBSD 4.0.1?
44 • Re 1 (by Gulp on 2008-10-06 15:13:31 GMT from United States)
Hey you forgot to mention that MINT is over bloated and full of redundant applications like "Mint Install" I use to like mint when it was more like ubuntu (simplier with codecs).
on an effort to make it different they are creating an unusable monster.
45 • Re 1 (by Gulp on 2008-10-06 15:15:51 GMT from United States)
One more thing PClinuxOS should be marked as DEAD also :-)
46 • No subject (by anticapitalista on 2008-10-06 15:33:43 GMT from Greece)
"Checking this month's Apache logs, I can see that there are twice as many Pardus Linux users than RHEL users visiting the site."
I'm curious, how do you know? Do all distros consistently show up correctly? (seems a bit spooky to me)
What does antiX show up as, for a personal example.
47 • #41 & #45 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 15:42:11 GMT from United States)
Ahhhh...the return of the PCLinuxOS trolls. How we haven't missed them.....
48 • powerTOP and 5s boot Ubuntu guide/ iso?? (by Dan MacDonald on 2008-10-06 16:08:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was hoping that there might've been some mention of Intel's ground-breaking work on powerTOP which has enabled them to boot Ubuntu in under 5s (GRUB to Desktop) on an eeePC. I did see a video of this in action but I've lost the link. Apparently boot time is under 10s for those without SSDs.
Anyone know of a guide on how to configure your distro to achieve these boot times or even better a distro/iso that is preconfigured like this?
Thanks!
Dan
49 • No subject (by Grobsch on 2008-10-06 16:11:32 GMT from Brazil)
I hope one day GoblinX will get a donation... a distribution that offers so much resources and features like its own packages and source code repository deserves a donation... We only received a four dollars donation once...
50 • Linux Mint cons (by NK on 2008-10-06 16:22:15 GMT from United States)
The lack of bug tracking is a *major problem." My installation has a "hard freeze" problem that has been reported in the forums but no definitive report as to cause or solution has been addressed.
51 • Distribution Ratings, How important are they? (by Brian Masinick on 2008-10-06 16:39:15 GMT from United States)
I would say that distribution ratings reflect the interests of a particular readership. When the whole idea of DistroWatch came into existence, there were discussions about the validity of rating the distros by activity even then, but there were very few metrics out there at the time, so at least having some metric gives an idea how SOME community views the relative popularity of a distribution.
Who can argue sales statistics either? Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) dominates in the enterprise sector, and arguably generates as much Linux software revenue as any major distribution. But would even RHEL stack up to the combined hardware, software, and support services sold each year by Hewlett Packard or IBM? Perhaps they generate 5-10% of the revenue of either of them in the Linux space, but they all provide crucial services in their specific areas of interest.
MEPIS has an extremely loyal group of users, as do Mint, Ubuntu, KNOPPIX, and a number of others. Both MEPIS and KNOPPIX have fallen off the radar because they have not produced updates with the frequency of some of the consumer based distributions. In that light, it does seem that the DistroWatch ratings are favorable to consumer based distributions, and perhaps to hobbyist distributions as well. Anything wrong with that?
It sure would be nice to be able to categorize the top systems by a number of different criteria, but who has the bandwidth to do it? Even here, we see that a choice must be made between reviewing the latest new distributions and gathering statistics of the most popular distributions, even if the criteria do not satisfy everyone.
Sure, I would love to see some categories that would place my personal favorites, sidux, antiX, and MEPIS at or near the top. Here, I'll do it: sidux, antiX, and MEPIS rank as the top cutting edge (sidux), fast and flexible (antiX), and easy, stable, every day system (SimplyMEPIS) for desktop systems. But all that amounts to is my personal opinion, little more.
I like the fact that we have a forum here where we can jab back and forth each week, and where we can read about the newest systems and take a whack at which ones are the latest in the popularity poll.
I give Ladislov and those associated with him a lot of credit for the foresight and the energy that results in this site. I find diversity of both systems and opinions to be one of the finest features here, and I take no threat whatsoever in differing viewpoints - and I often find them interesting and amusing.
I'll keep having my own personal preferences, and I truly hope that all of you do too. Sure makes for an interesting landscape in which to use software - rarely dull and boring.
Let's applaud the new players in the popularity poll. Perhaps our favorites will get a day or a few weeks in the limelight every now and then, But in the meantime, let's just enjoy all of the terrific software that is available to us and thank the journalists who make chatting about it fun and entertaining!
52 • Installing PCLinuxOS on an eeePC 900 with 2.6.26 kernel (by davecs on 2008-10-06 18:01:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
There have been a number of problems with the eeePC unless you stuck to the Xandros system on it. If you want more package flexibility etc, you may wish to try another Linux, but you often run into problems. The guys at eeePCLinuxOS created a number of decent packages, and had the 701 licked, but the 900 introduced sound and webcam problems. Later kernels fixed the sound but sometimes broke the wlan on/off.
Anyway with a little hacking it was possible to get ACPI, Wireless, Sound and Webcam working. Unfortunately the Wired Ethernet is still a problem.
Since updating the article a week or so ago, I have had pm's stating it is easy to follow and works well, so if anyone wants a "real" linux (not saying that Xandros isn't, but there is something inflexible about the version on the eee) to which they can add packages, updates, etc, on their eeePC 900, the instructions are here:
http://hack.mypclinuxos.com/index.php?topic=349.0
53 • Mepis & Mint are my alternatives (by t on 2008-10-06 18:06:10 GMT from United States)
Mepis is my main OS and has been for almost 2 years. I continuously experiment with other distros and the one that competes best with Mepis is Mint KDE (given our needs and hardware). When Mepis 8 is released, I (actually "we") will compare it with Mint KDE and pick one, though it's likely that the loyalty factor will weigh heavily in favor of Mepis.
We have a need for a custom live Linux running from a flash pen. Remastering has not been consistently successful for me, with any of several distributions. So, strange as it may seem, the distro that is easy to remaster and run on a flash pen will have an advantage.
Mepis and Mint provide good community support for low-tech desktop users, are KDE-based (Mint KDE), and offer easy 3d, flash, and mp3. PCLOS may fit too.
Another excellent DW issue. Mint & Cent deserve to be in your top 10.
54 • privatix_8.09.28_xfce_en.iso (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-06 18:23:14 GMT from United States)
Could somebody please post a link so I can directly download the privatix_8.09.28_xfce_en.iso? I don't want to use a torrent, thank you. :)
55 • Who's the target audience for the top 10 list? (by Anonymous on 2008-10-06 18:27:27 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, you mentioned (in post 32) that "we should consider what sort of reader the page is designed for and what kinds of readers visits DistroWatch."
This is an interesting point. Who *is* the page designed for? I've always considered it a good place to point new-ish users to (either new to Linux, or just new to a *new flavor* of Linux). Is it designed for more experienced users? Distro-hoppers?
56 • RE 54 (by aaaa on 2008-10-06 18:30:22 GMT from United States)
The torrent is very fast!, I have just downloaded
57 • Sidux (by geneven@rocketmail.com on 2008-10-06 18:38:56 GMT from United States)
I certainly agree that Sidux is not a major distro. However, it is surprisingly user-friendly and I recommend it. It is poised to move up from the minor leagues.
Thanks to DistroWatch for being gutsy when the situation requires it.
58 • The replacement of MEPIS Linux with Linux Mint. (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-06 18:50:39 GMT from United States)
While I agree with your assessment of Linux Mint (I'm using it to make this post), you are wrong when you say Mepis sites have closed, on the contrary a new Mepis site has opened and the upcoming release of SimplyMEPIS 8.0 based on Debian Lenny could very well be the best Mepis release ever and the Mepis Tools are just as handy today as they everywhere. :)
Also I agree with your assessment of CentOS it's the only way to install RedHat, without of course buying and installing RedHat that is. :)
59 • Mepis works for me, Mint does not (by Dave on 2008-10-06 18:58:21 GMT from Canada)
Mepis almost always works on the various computers I have tried it on. Mint does not, liveCD boots slower, display was missing minimize and maximize boxes, would not do 800x600 75Hz, gnome froze, mouse left random small squares behind.
PLEASE keep Mepis in the top 10, I think it belongs there.
Distrowatch is useful, good work.
Thanks.
60 • @ 56 - Sorry, I don't do torrents. (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-06 18:59:20 GMT from United States)
But I do download a lot of iso's and sometime, someplace the privatix_8.09.28_xfce_en.iso will be posted for download.
61 • Mepis Vs Mint (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2008-10-06 19:33:06 GMT from Pakistan)
Mint is indeed working good, not just another Ubuntu remaster but a complete distribution.Many Ubuntus so called remasters are sprouting out daily, but Mint is not just yet another of those.
Mepis is a complete desktop distribution ever since no matter whatever it was based upon imho.
Im running the currently released beta 2 and I see just igorable issues.
So I vote Mepis as the one to be kept in list of the top 10.
62 • Major Distrubution Subject Criteria (by Greg on 2008-10-06 19:40:50 GMT from Canada)
I say you could also prune the list down to five. I like to see Puppy Linux because it is very mainstream and easy to use while being small and even able to use on old hardware.
Very much major
Mandriva
Debian
OpenSuse/Novel
Fedora/Red Hat
Ubuntu/Kubuntu
Other Popular Easy to use
Puppy Linux
Linux Mint
PCLinuxOS
PC-BSD or plain FreeBSD for BSD
/Begin Ranting (Confirming fool as per Mark Twain quote)
I think the Major Distribution page update is an excellent idea. It is a very important resource. Here is my humble thought to contribute.
I think Major Distribution needs to be clarified. I believe people consider a distribution to be major based on different things. How many people use it? How easy is it to use? Is it for mainstream users? How much does it matter and would it be missed? Is it updated to stay current with peoples needs? Does it offer all the functionality people need? Are we talking Desktop, Server, Laptop, Handheld, Embedded? What sort of Desktop, Server, etc use? Hell Android could change the world. It could go mainstream and be in everyones pocket. It could change the way we work and what we do with some future application. Or maybe not. The point is distrowatch has a specific focus. What do we mean by major distribution? Android has never been mentioned. Major distrobution you can install on your desktop, server or laptop? No Nokia N810 with Internet Tablet OS 2008 based on Maemo 4.0 or Tmobile G1 with android handheld or that embedded linux that saves lives in hospital.
Perhaps distrowatch could find some automated way to maintain this. Get people to ping for voting to judget active users. Judge active distributions by releases etc etc/ Count IRC channel activity, forum activity, message board posts, email list posts, planet posts.
Any way nice work, it can't be easy.
/End of ranting
63 • Linux Hall of Fame (by SAZMD on 2008-10-06 19:44:32 GMT from United States)
It is sad to me to see some distros fall off the radar, so to speak, when they have contributed so much to Linux. If there were a Linux Hall of Fame, Knoppix and MEPIS would deserve to be there. Knoppix was my first foray into the world of Linux - I enjoyed it immensely.
64 • Re: 51 and 55 (by Greg on 2008-10-06 19:56:50 GMT from Canada)
I agree a good deal. Kinda wish we had some pages or sections specifying things like major LiveCD (like somewhere else I noticed on this site) Top server distributions. Top Laptop distributions. Top Linux on your phone or PDA (I wish this site covered this as I dream of a slick linux in my pocket) Top developer distributions. Distributions you can give your grandma to use. Top distributions you can get working with the things that normally are hard for people to do with linux. How to use linux with you cell phone syncronization, mp3 player, camera, other hardware other software etc. The answer to all you linux problems. Which linuxes make the biggest contributions to the community. Well maybe that is me ranting again. But major distribution raises more questions then it answers. Some of the most important linux we never see. I vote whatever powers google. That has made a major impact for me in finding answers to find my way.
"The major distribution is" according to google (kidding)
http://www.google.ca/search?q=the+major+linux+distribution+is&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t
Wow these are kinda like reading my mind. They showed up while i was writing so I didn't see them before I posted.
65 • Puppy Linux Based Distros (by JAG on 2008-10-06 19:58:37 GMT from United States)
Hey! Puppy fans...aside from the core distro...which puppy based distro do you guys like and why...???
Hey Ladislav...how about doing a monthly ranking of derivatives...for example one month you use debian...and the results could be: Ubuntu,Mepis,Sidux,Knoppix,etc....and so on...(and the following month...another base distro...)
Could make for an interesting experiment...and people could be introduced to lesser known distros...what do you think...???
66 • Top 10 distros (by RollMeAway on 2008-10-06 20:25:21 GMT from United States)
There is a ready made list on the Distrowatch.com home page, called "Page Hit Ranking".
67 • Puppy Linux 4.1 is on the loose... (by JAG on 2008-10-06 20:33:49 GMT from United States)
http://puppylinux.com/download/release-4.1.htm
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/
68 • Keep MEPIS on the list!!! (by ezsit on 2008-10-06 21:29:44 GMT from United States)
MEPIS has been around longer than Ubuntu, was one of the first truly usable single CD live and intallable disc combined, and is still under active development. There is also a very active community over at mepislovers.org.
I have recently used Mint 5 XFCE edition and think it is great, but MEPIS has been a leader and innovator for a few years now, and Mint's contributions just do not measure up. Mint is still dependent upon Ubuntu for all the heavy lifting for its development.
69 • Major 4ever (by marco71 on 2008-10-06 21:31:52 GMT from Romania)
Top Ten Major Dist-list should be:
Debian, RHEL, Slackware, Mandriva, (open)SuSE, (open)Solaris, Gentoo, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, in whatever order you want... the rests are more or less derivates
70 • Mepis VS Mint (by qqqqq on 2008-10-06 21:34:09 GMT from United States)
Mepis is a great Distro!
Mint is a malformed clone with codecs, from ubuntu :-)
71 • Minor Correction on Vector Linux (by Caitlyn Martin on 2008-10-06 21:34:17 GMT from United States)
The new live beta by Vector Linux is Vector Linux Light. There was a discussion on the forum and the community consensus was that Lite is too often associated with crippleware. So... it's Vector Linux Light 5.9 Live Beta 1.
72 • Major Distro List and other things. (by LazLong on 2008-10-06 21:52:58 GMT from United States)
Greetings ladislav & all.....
DistroWatch, Weekly, and the Top Ten List has always been indispensable for me & for introducing Linux to new users.
I think Mint & CentOS are OK entries, yet sad to see Mepis & Knoppix taken off (as I see them as more of a milestone and still valuable), but hey it is your site & your criteria/decision. Maybe the Top Ten should be expanded Top 15, Top 20?
My 0.025 cents
I see the core as 4
Source & Scratch
Slack
Debian
RedHat
All the rest as derivations or recompilations and all notable & worthwhile for various reasons.
Choosing only 10 maybe becoming more difficult....
As another poster mentioned. What I thought
was useful in the original top ten list & missing from the current list was the column along the right which seemed to have a running tally of top 5 based on various classification, Top 5 Source, Top 5 Server, Top 5 Nubie-friendly, Top 5 LiveCD/DVD, Top 5 router/firewall etc.
On a completely separate note.
I enjoyed the review of Sabayon 3.5 several weeks ago, and Downloaded the 3.5 Pod CD
I was wondering if you or your readers have any experience/thoughts about Zonbu, another Distro based on Gentoo, free but also has a commercial angle?
thanks for all your work.....
73 • stuff (by Nobody important on 2008-10-06 21:55:17 GMT from United States)
@63: The "Hall of Fame" concept is more interesting to me than "major distros at this time."
Random: The problem for me with too many distros is the lack of .iso files. Ubuntu may plaster their updates all over the place (arguable) but it works, no? We have almost every software news site reporting on the Ubuntu 8.10 BETA! Look at 8.04; it had headlines in major online news sites. While some people don't like it, it is still working.
It's also frustrating to get into a distro and want to download a new copy, only to find the last .iso was made in April of 2007. For my computers without internet, this usually means old components that go nowhere (some of which don't work - often I run into problems that got fixed in the last year). I loved PCLinuxOS when is was recent, but it isn't any more. Hopefully that will change (as the forums say). MEPIS, as well, is getting stale and while changes are coming, but hasn't been updated for a while. Little press means little mind-share; you see how this fits together. The quality of the distro has nothing to do with it.
I use Ubuntu now. No problems; new release looks good. Shout-out to Puppy; I'm using it on a computer that won't boot off the hard drives. It had a good run.
74 • one more (by Nobody important on 2008-10-06 21:58:47 GMT from United States)
Another shout-out, because I forgot.
The GIMP released 2.6 this week. Awesome release, great work, guys. Huge UI improvements.
75 • Barry Kauler's retirement (by Rhino on 2008-10-06 22:07:34 GMT from United States)
I just want to give a big thanks to our benevolent dictator Barry Kauler on his retirement as the lead developer on the Puppy Linux project. His leadership has guided it from its infancy to a large, vibrant community of users. Although I frequently play around with other distros to see how they are coming along, Puppy continues to be my distro of choice. Thanks again!
76 • Re: 35 @ladislav (by Marcos on 2008-10-06 22:12:11 GMT from Germany)
@ladislav I really appreciate that you included the mepiscommunity link in the page. But I think there maybe still some tension about release notes when Mepis 7 came out Of course that Mepis has its cons. Poor communication with Warren. Closed-source assistants and installer...
"The last entry on the MEPIS blog is from July 2007" Thats not true. Are you familiar with the term sticky news? I do not think so. Have you even read the link you sent me?
"while Warren used to complain that MEPIS didn't bring in enough cash so he couldn't work on it full-time, Linux Mint has managed to raise US$1,800 in September"
OMG 1800$! I'm thinking of quitting my current Job to earn again as much as I did on my first internship!!!. I could even hire a few developers. Community repo budget: 0$ (Warrent told us to do it and it was done) And it has been about one year since Warren is working part time on MEPIS and the differences which I listed before still apply...
Latest update of the official mepis 7 repo: 26/07/2008 Even my eight year old nephew can click on the distro web page listed here. I could even teach him how with three clicks from one distro main page checking the repo dates... Have you checked the Mepis wiki? have you checked antix Wiki? Mepislovers forum? Antix Forums? (you know... they are listed here)
Regarding innovation. Sidux's smxi is innovation. Whenever you want we can analyze what you call "enormous amount of innovation"
I wish Mint all the best but we could also analyze the information of those posts you are talking about (also about the virus that some Windows or wine users caught. Twice...). All non-development news are announced in the official Mepislovers forum.
Show me the MEPIS sites which have closed.
When you use terms like "measly", say things that are objectively false "sites closing" , every few months predicting the end of Mepis (like a couple of years ago if I'm not wrong), saying that it is not suitable for advanced users... it is normal that some people find it offensive and unfair.... Maybe we can expect another lacking review in a few months....
77 • Why not Damn Small Linux in Major Distro page? (by Linux Enthusiast on 2008-10-06 23:06:06 GMT from India)
"Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!.......Linux Mint, which has become the third most-often used Linux-based operating system among the visitors of this web site gets a well-deserved place among the elite"
I wonder why don't you list Damn Small Linux on Major Distro page?
The Page Hit Ranking on DistroWatch indicates that for the years 2003, 04, 05, 06, 07, Last 12 months, Last 6 months, Damn Small Linux was 12th, 10th, 8th, 6th, 10th, 9th, 8th most-often used Linux-based OS among the visitors of this web site respectively.
While Linux Mint, which came out in 2006, is ranked 44th, 6th, 4th, 3rd in Page Hit Ranking for the years 2006, 07, Last 12 months, Last 6 months respectively.
Based on that, shouldn't the Major Distro page list Damn Small Linux instead of Linux Mint considering Damn Small Linux "really was/is" has been consistently ranked in the top ten in Page Hit Ranking index over the years.
If Linux Mint remains as consistent in the top ten in Page Hit Ranking index for 2-3 more years then we can think of including it in the Major Distro Page which makes more sense since Linux Mint came on the scene only two years ago while DSL has been there for more longer time.
78 • Mepis vs Mint (by Rich on 2008-10-06 23:14:10 GMT from United States)
It's apples to oranges. Mint is excellent because it is more polished that kubuntu. It works very well on my machines. I started with Mepis. and the Latest beta is excellent and its Debian base a plus I feel in it's favor. Mepis was the earliest distro that I started my Linux career with along with Suse before Novell bought them out. Both are excellent distro's.
Rich
79 • Current (by knifemonk on 2008-10-06 23:18:50 GMT from New Zealand)
A very professional and informative update on the world of opensource, appreciated as always. Glad to see distrowatch getting some more well deserved publicitiy. Anyway... I was just wondering, am I the only one who has trouble choosing between a slackware or debian/ubuntu based distro for a friendlier experience? Or sticking to a particular distrobution altogether? I really do have high hopes for Mint... I am partial to debian sid for my personal use -but-, seeing as Mint is based of ubuntu which is ultimately based off debian I dont have to break any loyalty pacts when installing it to my friends computers! On the other hand I would like to see a hallmark 'user friendly ultra awesome' Slackware derivative to come into fruition for all those people out there without grunty computers or who just want their grunty computers run really awesome, without any stressin... Or is there a user-freindly slackware deriviative already and i've just missed it? Untill something comes up in that respect, im going to give the latest Mint a test-fire. Adios amigos and keep on the good mission!
80 • Current (by knifemonk on 2008-10-06 23:20:34 GMT from New Zealand)
ok, so Mint is debian based now? AWESOME!!!!
why is my subject line 'current'? incase nobody has noticed, the current has picked up pace, anyone else feel that?
81 • @80 (by DoleBludgersInOz on 2008-10-06 23:38:58 GMT from Australia)
I thought Zenwalk was "based" on Slackware (to some degree), it seems to be an OK distro last time I gave it a whirl...
And the upcoming Wolvix should be based on Slack 12.1 I think... The previous Wolvix was nice (running on older hardware)
@Martin Ultima - I think I saw you mention this last week or similar..
I think you should stop standing behind those poor sheep too often (and too close)... Gives you Kiwis a funny itch don't it bro'? ;-)
cheers!
BTW, just kidding about the sheep knifemonk...
82 • has mint gotten rid of that annoying task bar menu? (by Amy on 2008-10-07 00:53:16 GMT from United States)
I used it a few months back and could not find a way to add items to the tesk bar menu.
I my self gave up on Mepis and replace it with gentoo and debian.
83 • PUPPY DERIVATIVES (by JAG on 2008-10-07 02:01:08 GMT from United States)
Here's where you'll get your fill of Puppy Linux... and then some!
http://puppylinux.org/downloads/puplets
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php?f=35
CHECK IT OUT!!!
84 • Kubuntu 8.10 Beta alternate (by RollMeAway on 2008-10-07 02:17:56 GMT from United States)
Installed it over the weekend.
Without asking, it wiped out my MBR with a 3rd party boot manager on it.
Was able to recover, but, what makes this troubling is, I and many others
posted this bug when 8.4 was released.
Otherwise, a very deficient distro. X came up at 800x600 with no means to fix it.
Had to manually edit xorg.conf, which only had about 8 lines in it.
Installed over 200 pkgs to make it usable.
This is the worst KDE4 I have tried yet.
85 • @84 et al (by DoleBludgersInOz on 2008-10-07 02:32:29 GMT from Australia)
Maybe they should change the name of KUbuntu to KObuntu... seeing that it KO's your PC and your expectations.
Stick with another KDE-centric distro which has had longer and better support/implementation of KDE... rather than the tacked on (and butchered) KDE implementation that is (NOT O)Kubuntu. Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Slackware.
Just a miniscule thought.
86 • RE:80, Nope, but here is my opinion.. (by Eddie G. Wilson on 2008-10-07 02:35:49 GMT from United States)
No, Mint is Ubuntu based. I'm sure you know that.
As far as Knoppix goes, it is the disto that introduced me to linux. I thought that I was downloading MS Longhorn and when I booted up the cd it started Knoppix. I thought, "What have I done?". I liked it. I still thought that you had to pay for something for it to be any good so next I used XandrOS 3, then Mepis, then Ubuntu. Now I use Mint 5 KDE CE and my wife uses Ubuntu. Also I use PC-BSD. Anyway my point is that Knoppix and Mepis deserve to be noticed somewhere. If it wasn't for them, I might not have discovered a linux distro or any other. Linux does not disappoint me. Its all good.
87 • Top Distro's (by JS on 2008-10-07 04:44:30 GMT from United States)
Debian
Ubuntu
Red Hat
openSUSE
Fedora
Mandriva
Slackware
FreeBSD
Gentoo
Most of the rest are just derivatives...
Though I have to say, Mepis, Sidux, Mint, and Puppy are all top notch distro's that all have their place / fill a need.
88 • Re. 63 (by UZ64 on 2008-10-07 04:56:39 GMT from United States)
"It is sad to me to see some distros fall off the radar, so to speak, when they have contributed so much to Linux. If there were a Linux Hall of Fame, Knoppix and MEPIS would deserve to be there. Knoppix was my first foray into the world of Linux - I enjoyed it immensely."
Well said. KNOPPIX was also my very first Linux experience, and the one which allowed me to learn without even touching my hard drive. Ahh... nostalgia. It was upsetting to see it, over the years, turn into a massively buggy, SLOW and bloated DVD-ROM, and even more painful to later witness the leaner and meaner CD-ROM version slowly be replaced with that DVD version. Now, the bloated DVD version is the main one, and the latest version is not available in CD format. :(
On the other hand, while MEPIS was decent, it always seemed more to me like a way for Warren to get more money, and therefore I don't feel anything for it. It just always had that feeling of commercial software to it.
On another topic... while I've never been a fan of Puppy, it's kind of sad to see Barry step down. It was never one of my absolute favorites for various reasons (mostly the busy desktop poor artwork and the fact that I didn't care for its special "tools"), yet it always seemed to offer several unique features that very few (if any) other distros had. Hopefully it continues to follow Barry's vision even with a new maintainer.
89 • Major Distributions (by Ulf Dellbrügge on 2008-10-07 04:59:24 GMT from Germany)
I like the new additions to the major list as i do not like the removals. I really miss the top 5 that were listed in the sidebar, when i first visited distrowatch.com. There were beginnerfriendly top 5 and multimedia top 5 and so on. But some distros could be named twice or more in various interests so that doesnt make that much sense. I like the idea to seperate major in core like slack, debian, mandriva, fedora, opensuse (ubuntu? - since based on debian) and from there i can only guess which topics would appeal to the audience of distrowatch.com ...
For a beginner there may be the topic - beginner-friendlie
For a multimedia-enthusiast, you could expect a multimedia orientated approach
For an expert, server? security?
But to make my point, i would begin to centralize thought about what might benefit the "user" or better groups of users. Maybe give him choices, like filter options for Desktop Environment, and so on. On a second thought, that sound like quite a load of work.
90 • RE: 76 (by ladislav on 2008-10-07 05:54:31 GMT from Taiwan)
OMG 1800$! I'm thinking of quitting my current Job to earn again as much as I did on my first internship!
If you are going to quote me, please quote the whole sentence. I didn't say Linux Mint had earned $1,800. I said Linux Mint had earned $1,800 just from donations and sponsorships. There is a difference. Linux Mint has other sources of income, including AdSense, support services, sale of CDs, etc.
Yes, you are right, MEPIS is a fine project. It just won't be on the DistroWatch's top ten list any more, that's all. Of the 330 active distributions on DistroWatch, 320 aren't on the top ten list. I don't think it's such a big deal and I hope nobody does anything silly to themselves because of that.
91 • RE: 77 Why not Damn Small Linux in Major Distro page? (by ladislav on 2008-10-07 06:08:40 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, DSL is excellent, I used it myself on an old laptop before it went belly up. But I think DSL is too much of a specialist distro, targetting a very specific market. For the top ten list, I think let's stick to general purpose distributions only.
92 • RE: 90 (by Marcos on 2008-10-07 08:18:35 GMT from Germany)
It's a pity but I don't care if MEPIS is listed in the top 10. I´m not even questioning if Mint deservers being on the top or if it has more users. I'm complaining about the statements you do which are not true.
I do not know if any MEPIS site will close in the future or even if MEPIS will be discontinued. But, no mepis site has closed so far. It is the opposite. The last post does not go back 15 months. It is true that the MEPIS developement is not as active as it used to be, but even so the development adds many more differences to Debian (even without antiX which is a great project) than other distros you mention to the distro they are based on, and each time there are more outgoing community projects. MEPIS wiki is also more active. It is false that MEPIS is not suitable for advanced users...
93 • Ladislav says... (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-07 13:09:16 GMT from United States)
Ladislav: "MEPIS is a fine project. It just won't be on the DistroWatch's top ten list any more, that's all."
Well, Ladislav once again you are wrong, for the last 7-days Mepis is number 9 on your list, I don't know why you have this personal vendetta against Mepis, no longer care and I know longer find value in your words.
So, while I think you for your past service to the Linux community you have now advanced to number one on my shit list, you should have taken the advice you give from your Mark Twain quoit.
94 • categories for 'best' (by Buster on 2008-10-07 14:06:06 GMT from Canada)
First - Thanks for the great site and the work you do on it.
I like some of the readers' suggestions for categorizing 'Best Distributions'.
1. The big one's in the background deserve a place of their own.
Debian, Red Hat, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo
2. The popular derivatives are a different thing again.
Ubuntu, Mint, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Centos, etc
3. And the specialized disks are still something else that readers might like to know about quickly
GParted, GeeXBox etc
But as you suggested, it's maybe not such a big deal in the long run.
95 • Major Distros (by MRaugh on 2008-10-07 14:15:59 GMT from United States)
#69's remark made me think about French cooking, where there are 5 "mother" sauces from which every other sauce is derived.
Perhaps as an aside to the "major distributions" list, for the information of those new to Linux or investigating new distros to try, someone could put together a graphical family tree of the popular distributions (popular enough to show up on the hit count) showing the "mother" distributions -- Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Mandriva, etc. -- and the derivatives thereof. A blurb on each branch might quickly list the most common characteristics (ex: Red Hat -- RPM package format, usually managed by yum, GNOME dominant).
Just a thought.
96 • openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2 Live CDs (by Linux Enthusiast on 2008-10-07 14:46:19 GMT from India)
The Installable Live CDs for openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2 are now available from here:
http://software.opensuse.org/developer
97 • Re: #93 Ladislav says (by Jan Janson on 2008-10-07 15:06:32 GMT from Netherlands)
Jimmy Johnson: Well, Ladislav once again you are wrong, for the last 7-days Mepis is number 9 on your list, I don't know why you have this personal vendetta against Mepis, no longer care and I know longer find value in your words.
Ladislav made a minor slip mixing "Major Distributions Page" and "top ten list" and you take it out of context and jump down his throat. Read the Feature Story again and give the guy a break.
Disclaimer: I have never used Mepis, and I have no opinion about it either way.
98 • @93 (by Nobody important on 2008-10-07 15:43:21 GMT from United States)
Honestly, Mr. Johnson, please grow up. It's Linux distribution.
Not only this, but Ladislav owns the site. He can do what he wants. Feel free to go elsewhere for your news. Any personal vendetta, honestly, is completely fabricated on your side. I've never seen DW ever report in a biased fashion (except for misunderstandings, often which turn into people complaining about vendetta, not unlike your post; see the Mint debacle a bit ago).
The top ten major distributions, in Mr. Bodnar's eyes, do not include MEPIS. There's no vendetta there.
99 • @ Jan Janson, post number 97 (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-07 15:48:41 GMT from United States)
Jan Janson, you are the one who is wrong, read post number 90 by Ladislav, or maybe you are having a problem with plain English.
100 • @ Nobody, post number 98 (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-07 16:04:12 GMT from United States)
I have never said this is not Ladislav's project and I don't need you to tell where I can and can not go, as far as my post being fabricated, you Sir have your head stuck in the ground.
101 • Re: #91 - the Top 10 List (by Paul F. Pearson on 2008-10-07 16:10:15 GMT from United States)
Ladislav,
Thanks for clarifying the focus of the top 10 list (general purpose distros). I'm still curious about who you perceive to be the target audience. A short paragraph clarifying the purpose and focus of the list can help me, and others, use the list (as a reference, a starting point for new users, etc.).
I guess I should go read the current Top 10 list to make sure you haven't already done what I'm suggesting ;-)
102 • Re: #101 (by Paul F. Pearson on 2008-10-07 16:19:04 GMT from United States)
I said I guess I should go read the current Top 10 list to make sure you haven't already done what I'm suggesting ;-)
Well, as usual, I was right :-) I'm sorry, your Introduction describes the purpose and intent of the list quite well. I'm still *slightly* unsure about the intended reader: (1) an experienced Linux user who may be looking for a distro to recommend to a novice, or (2) a novice user who is unsure which distro(s) to consider.
I like that your Introduction implicitly considers the current activity of a distro (and its support system - official and unofficial) to be a critical factor for someone considering that distro.
Sometime it's the non-technical issues that will make or break a distro.
103 • It's been obvious that Ladislave has a personal vendetta (by Zerias on 2008-10-07 17:16:56 GMT from United States)
It's pretty much clear to everyone that Ladislav has a personal vendetta against Mepis. He still owes a front page apology for his actions during the launch of Mepis 7. : http://zerias.blogspot.com/2007/11/no-distrowatch-was-wrong.html
Little wonder then that Mepis users don't visit or use distrowatch. Most of them know a rat when they see one, and go out of their way to avoid the rat.
104 • Why remove SimplyMEPIS, you'll just need to add it back (by JimC on 2008-10-07 18:16:32 GMT from United States)
Why remove SimplyMEPIS?
You'll just need to add it back. The latest SimplyMEPIS 8.0 release (second 7.9.80 beta was recently released on the way there) is based on Debian Lenny.
Lenny is due out at anytime now, and Linux users will find SimplyMEPIS 8.0 to be a very attractive alternative, thanks to a better install utility, dedicated MEPIS utilities for graphics drivers (MEPIS X-Windows Assistant for installing Nvidia drivers, ATI drivers, etc.), utilities for Network Config (MEPIS Network Assistant), reinstalling GRUB (system assistant) and more.
As popular as Lenny is likely to be, MEPIS 8.0 should move up on the chart pretty fast. I think it's already moving up since 8.0 Beta 2 if you look at recent stats.
So, removing it based on current usage (when Debian has longer release schedules compared to most distros) isn't reflective of where this distro should be in the near future with the next releases of Debian Lenny (and SimplyMEPIS 8.0, which is using a Lenny base).
105 • #79: User friendly Slackware derivative; a community reflects on its distro (by Caitlyn Martin on 2008-10-07 18:27:02 GMT from United States)
#79: I believe both Vector LInux and Wolvix are user friendly Slackware derivatives. Zenwalk is a close third.
If the Mepis community thinks their comments on this forum are likely to attract users they are sorely mistaken. I have nothing for or against Mepis since I haven't tried it yet. I'll probably wait for 8.0 to go final before I consider it. However, I do judge a distro in part by the community around it since that's where I go if and when I have questions. Anytime I see an 'anyone who doesn't agree with us is an idiot' attitude I steer clear.
106 • RE:#93, #103, What has happened to the community? (by Eddie Wilson on 2008-10-07 19:14:13 GMT from United States)
Wow, Jimmy, what kind of point are you trying to make. I never really heard you react that way before. That kind of action does not endear anyone to want to try out Mepis. It can only hurt Mepis and Warren. And no Zerias, DW does not owe anybody anything. Despite what you may think of DW, a lot of new people come here to check out distros. Mepis releases have always been posted as far as I know. Instead of attracting new users who read these comments you are more lightly to get responses like #105. I've been on MepisLovers and I've seen that a lot of people have had problems with the inactivity of Mepis in the pass. It may be better now but it wasn't not too long ago. What people like JimC doesn't realize is that when you become inactive, (which Mepis has been in the past no matter how much you rant that they haven't), you have a tendency to slip in the back a little bit. So if Mepis deserves it I'm sure they will be moved back up and I hope they are. I've never had anything bad to say about Mepis and I have great respect for Warren. I was even planing on checking out the new release. Oh and Jimmy, I was on peoples shit list before you ever came around and believe me, its no big deal.
107 • #105 (about vecorlinux) (by joey on 2008-10-07 19:27:13 GMT from United States)
i cannot use it on my older machine with nvidia5200 card because something in vector makes it load up and get slow no matter what i do in the configuration
mint does better and now i have also noticed that the best on the old machine is anti x by mepis light and faaassssttt!! :)
108 • Perception of Mepis (by Roadblock on 2008-10-07 19:55:39 GMT from United States)
Mepis suffers from a 'perceived' lack of activity. Warren made the decision to take Mepis from Debian base to Ubuntu base for Mepis 6.x. Due to that, Mepis benefited from what I call the "Ubuntu Wave." At that time, Mepis rose to #4 on the Distro Watch rankings list.
Warren was unsatisfied with the long term support that Ubuntu 6.06 LTS offered, so he made the decision to take Mepis back to a pure Debian base (D Stable, currently Etch) Since Debian Stable is updated only once a year (+/-), it appears that there is little or no activity.
In an effort to make Mepis 7 more up to date, we started a Community Repository at www.mepislovers.com (with Warren's blessing) I am on the packaging team there and we have added over 100 packages for Mepis 7 that have been compiled/recompiled from Debian Sid, Debian Lenny and even Ubuntu 8.04. Now that Debian Lenny is about to become stable, (hopefully sooner rather than later) Warren has begun work on Mepis 8. Once it goes gold, the package team will began updating more packages for Mepis 8, as they become viable.
My point is this. I don't know whether Mepis should be considered a "Major Linux Distro " or not, but it is FAR from a dead project. To paraphrase Mark Twain:
"The news of our death has been greatly exaggerated." ;)
109 • Comment on distrowatch's removing mepis from the top ten distro list (by Kerry Walper (mepnoob2005) on 2008-10-07 20:09:01 GMT from Canada)
Fist I to say that some of the posts on this thread were a bit out of hand and taken out of true context too.
I have been using mepis since 2004 and every release is stronger and better. Just because the developer of mepis (Warren) took a regular job for a while, and couldn't spend his time how he would have liked, didn't make me worry a bit. It shouldn't worry anyone else. I could go back and use SimplyMepis 3.4.3 and do everything that I do now. I could use 6.0 6.5, 7.0 or the new almost 8.0 and I could do everything that I do now. So I'm in no hurry for a new release until it gets here.
Mepis is a great operating system. Mepislovers is the number one mepis site.
I have not heard of any sites closing down. You may be thinking how mepislovers became more popular and that two user help user sites joined together to keep things more organized. Our site is an active busy place which says to me we are growing. Lot's of questions to help with there. There are more members each week and if you read some of the testimonials that new mepis users have to say about how great mepis is you might think twice about removing mepis from the top ten.
There is another new mepis ready for release that is rock solid. Every version of mepis I have used has been rock solid. I can't say that about every ubuntu, sidux, kanotix, vector linux, knoppix, kubuntu. Each of these has put out more than one good version. I have beta tested every new alpha, beta, rc and final release that mepis has put out since 2004. Some of the mepis test versions weren't perfect but the finals have been solid.
So to close I have to say that mepis Is better (for me) than Mint. Actually mint wouldn't load up on any of my computers. Couldn't get much out of sabyon, sidux worked good but wasn't as solid as Mepis. All in all every linux I have ever used has had some reason that kept it from taking the top spot away from Mepis or I would be using it now. All of my machines have Mepis as the main os. Only my main box has virtualbox so if I felt like it I can test drive a new os. If I want I can multi-boot several operating systems, all installed to the hard drive and booting with grub but I don't anymore. Mepis and the occasional virtualbox spin is all I need for that.
I've used a lot of distros and tested a lot more but I only rely on Mepis. It's the real king. If you want to know about mepis it's not here at distrowatch it's at mepislovers.org
Kerry Walper aka Mepnoob2005
110 • I am with Roadblock (by Anonymous on 2008-10-07 20:10:23 GMT from Spain)
As another MEPIS user I must say that I also think MEPIS deserves its place in the Distro Hall of Fame. And I also must say some comments are not worthy of the community.
That being said, I think Caitlyn Martin is exaggerating quite a bit. Apparently she does not frequent the MEPIS forums, or she would know that the community consists of 99.9% polite people.
Blaming the entire community for a few outbursts would be like me saying 'Geez, what has happened to Americans? Their politicians have started slinging mud like crazy, so they surely are all a bunch of foul-mouthed street fighters'. Would be a terribly miopic view, wouldn't it?
111 • Re: #99 (by Jan Janson on 2008-10-07 20:43:26 GMT from Netherlands)
I understand plain English. I read the whole of DWW and the comments and it was clear to me in the context of this week's Feature Article about revamping the Major Distributions Page that the "top ten" that Ladislav mentioned in #90 referred to the top ten of the Major Distributions Page, and not the Page Hits Rankings.
Ladislav also said Yes, you are right, MEPIS is a fine project. That seems pretty clear plain English to me too.
I have never used MEPIS. I have no opinion about it either way.
You are a troll, and have not helped the MEPIS cause. I won't respond again.
112 • #110 - I think you are misunderstanding what I said (by Caitlyn Martin on 2008-10-07 20:47:07 GMT from United States)
#110: You are correct that I've never visited the Mepis forums. Why would I visit the forums for a distro I don't use? I am also not judging the community as a whole by posts here. I think I made clear that I haven't come to any conclusions at all about Mepis one way or another because I haven't tried it.
You are blowing what I said way out of proportion. All I said and all I meant was that the over the top posts by a few here don't reflect well on the distro. The comment refers to and is limited to just the posts here, nothing more and nothing less. #107 seems to understand exactly where I am coming from. A few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch and I hope that isn't what I am seeing. No need to be so defensive.
You know what really does concern me about Mepis? It seems from all I've read about it that it's a one man show in terms of development and if something happens in Warren's life everything grind to a halt. That is worrying.
113 • #112 (by anticapitalista on 2008-10-07 20:54:53 GMT from Greece)
"...if something happens in Warren's life everything grind to a halt."
But this has not happened with MEPIS, despite what some people think and some continue to post and suggest. I think this is what MEPIS fans are upset about. Sure development has slowed down, just like with PCLOS for example, but a trip over to Mepislovers and mepis community site will clearly show that MEPIS has not ground to a halt.
114 • #112 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-07 21:05:44 GMT from Spain)
Caitlyn, I am sorry, but I do not think I was being defensive. I merely stood up for a community. Maybe your phrasing was not 100% what you intended it to be. However, when I read '
If the Mepis community thinks their comments on this forum are likely to attract
users they are sorely mistaken'
... then I consider that as a 'pars pro toto' statement. As such, it also concerned me and many people I value over at the MEPIS forums, so I thought I should set the record straight.
Yeah. I also believe Warren being the sole developer is not a good thing. But again, this is not a truth that stands on its own:
- What would happen if Mark Shuttleworth pulled the financial plug on Ubuntu? AFAIK, the Ubuntu business model still does not generate enough revenue to make it stand on its own. Would Ubuntu really survive?
- The community have taken an important step with the community repo, so people are stepping up to participate
- Warren will open up the MEPIS tools, so basically that means developers can join in and work on MEPIS, or even fork it if they so wish: http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17263
So you see, the situation is not as one dimensional as some people may think.
I very much agree on the fact Warren could / should have tried to get more people in. But that does not take away that he single handedly built a distro in 2003 that was way ahead of all other desktop distros at the time. So one man can make a difference.
115 • @ 100 and 103 (by Nobody important on 2008-10-07 22:09:24 GMT from United States)
See me rolling my eyes at you? Watch me do it some more.
It's an operating system. For a computer. And you're getting worked up about a list. About operating systems. For computers.
Take a breather. Take a look at this for a moment. It's a hobbies site about operating systems. It's not that big of a deal if the owner knocks your off the "Top Ten" list. I honestly had no idea it existed until the DWW you see above.
Will MEPIS get less users because of this? No.
Will MEPIS be any less good because of this? No.
Will anyone stop using MEPIS? No.
Will Distrowatch stop printing stuff about MEPIS? No.
Is MEPIS sgtill listed? Yes, under the Mint suggestions section.
Stop making this into a big deal. It's not. You're trolling and it should stop.
Distrowatch has always been a good, balanced site. It's always the oddities of the communities that really make it crazy in the comments (see PCLOS, MEPIS and other fanboys or haters). If you expect an apology, you're sadly mistaken.
116 • Also... (by Nobody important on 2008-10-07 22:12:34 GMT from United States)
I'd also like to point out Distrowatch made a donation to MEPIS in 2007. $300, see this issue.
Imaginary bias, thrown out the window.
117 • Mepis v all (by Serenitude on 2008-10-07 22:32:32 GMT from United States)
First, I want to clarify that many feelings are rather hurt, but the comments thus far are really not reflective of the Mepis community. If in doubt, please just casually browse the forums as a guest. I believe we are polite and considerate to a fault, and our help areas can rival *any* forum's.
I think Mint is a terrific project, and is certainly expanding at a fantastic rate, so no objection there. Keep up the good works Clem.
However, I *do* have some mild curiosity at the pulling of Mepis from the list. For instance, take PCLOS.
First, let me disclaim that it is a *fantastic* distro, and likely the one I'd use if there were no Mepis. That said, I can't think of a problem fantasized of Mepis that PCLOS doesn't actually have - lack of updates, outdated packages, slow release schedule, one man show syndrome, etc.... The only difference I can find is a *very* small userbase compared to the amount of "clicks" here, and lack of a pure community packaging effort not dependant on the developer.
But PCLOS is going to be listed as a Major Distro, while Mepis is not? Any ranking other than PageHits at DW that I can find measure the PCLOS userbase as miniscule. Granted, Mepis doesn't measure alot higher, so the case may simply be that both run so *well* that help, etc... isn't often sought.
But why is one a Major Distro while one is punted? Again, PCLOS fans, let me reiterate that I'd probably be a PCLOS user myself if there were no Mepis, so this isn't intended as an insult, just a comparison of common problems for the sake of this argument ;-)
Also, if Warren were to die tomorrow, Mepis *could* live on. Several of us were on the verge of a community respin to illustrate this point when M8 beta was announced. We thought it prudent to simply turn our attention to testing the beta at that point.
Not only have no sites been closed, *new* sites are opening. This is all the excellent work of a very active community. I myself am currently debugging a kernel to include in the next Antix so that all i586 class machines will be able to boot Anti's excellent distro.
I don't want to read more into this than what is on paper, but the above does make me curious in certain regards.
However, congrats to Mint and PCLOS - both very fine projects.
118 • Major Distributions (by Brooko on 2008-10-08 00:00:56 GMT from New Zealand)
Interesting DW - even more interesting comments section. I am a Mepis user, enjoy the community, helped set up the community repo and other projects. But I am dismayed by some of the comments - so hope some sanity prevails.
Ladislav, I think the confusion at the moment is in the title "Major Distributions", but then the page itself refers to top 10.
Can I suggest that if you keep "Major Distributions", that it is limited to the widely accepted majors :
Eg - Debian, Suse, Fedora, Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu
I'm sorry (I'll show my ignorance) - I don't know where the BSD's fit in this.
Then as an "add-on" under the description of each major, you could list one or 2 recommended 'off-shoots' where merited. Eg PCLOS mentioned with Mandriva. Knoppix, Mepis and Sidux mentioned with Debian. Mint mentioned with Ubuntu etc.
The important thing is giving new users a clue as to how it all fits together, and also point them to newbie friendly alternatives in case they have issues with (or looking for alternatives to) the majors.
My 2c - but this would seem to be a more practical solution.
119 • @118 (by DoleBludgersInOz on 2008-10-08 00:38:51 GMT from Australia)
Baaaaahhhhhhh.. That's a +1 from a Merino for that idea. Good thinking Brooko. Can we shorten that to Bro'? ;-)
cheers
120 • Reply to brooko (by Amy on 2008-10-08 00:57:28 GMT from United States)
I used to think Mepis was awesome do to its awesome hardware support but even though it had good hardware support my sound card did not work with it and it works with other distros. Mepis was the only distro that worked on my dell laptop for a while.
How ever the newest gentoo which I am using right now works with it and the sound even works which did not work on mepis.
But I personally do think Mepsi is better then mint because when I used mint I could not add any thing to the menu as I did mention in another topic.
121 • RE: 118 Major Distributions (by ladislav on 2008-10-08 02:10:12 GMT from Taiwan)
It's a very good line of thinking. My only objection is that I like the idea of giving exposure to a couple of "smaller" projects in this way. As we all know, the mainstream IT media won't report much about PCLinuxOS or Linux Mint, but by including these projects with the "big boys", they might get a bit of attention, maybe some extra funding, etc. Otherwise the page would only include distributions that are already well-known, so it wouldn't be any different from any other "distro round-up" out there.
Somebody has asked about the link to the DistroWatch Apache logs:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
I wish that other Linux web sites published something similar so that we could get a better idea about what people are using. But since I don't have any other figures, I have to believe my own logs, according to which Linux Mint is the third most frequently used distribution to visit this site, comfortably beating both openSUSE and Fedora. PCLinuxOS used to be high up too, but it lost a lot of ground recently. There are some rumours about a new release, so we'll see if it regains some of its popularity, once a new version is out. If not, it might drop off the top ten list too.
122 • RE:118 (by JS on 2008-10-08 04:36:42 GMT from United States)
Very good idea Brooko!! I wish when I had started using Linux a few years ago that type of information would have been available to me, it would have saved much initial confusion as I gained knowledge about each distro and it's offshoots. I hope ladislav seriously considers doing just that!
123 • Ref#118 BSD what? (by verndog on 2008-10-08 05:02:25 GMT from United States)
"I'm sorry (I'll show my ignorance) - I don't know where the BSD's fit in this." I don't know either. I just downloaded PC-BSD today and installed it on another PC that I'm using right now.
Installation was a snap. Absolutely no problems whatsoever! It appears to be a tad slow on bootup. It took over 1+ minutes to completely boot up. It has KDE desktop - I think it's 4.1. I'm not sure of what version I'm running. I've used debian systems and gnome for most of my Linux experience.
The whole concept of BSD is quite different from my experience with Linux. I have a lot of catching up to do. A whole new learning is in front of me.
124 • No subject (by Serenitude on 2008-10-08 05:04:26 GMT from United States)
Another +1 to Brooko's idea.
One question, though - does Ubuntu then get it's own category, or is it an offshoot of Debian?
125 • Re 124 - Ubuntu (by Brooko on 2008-10-08 06:19:53 GMT from New Zealand)
I think given Ubuntu's user base, developer base, packaging etc, there is no way it could be anything but a Major Distribution. Personally it's not my 'cup of tea' - but I'm the first to recognise the support it has garnered.
126 • Re 121 - Major Distributions (by Brooko on 2008-10-08 06:30:06 GMT from New Zealand)
Ladislav - I understand your thought pattern. Unfortunately by picking a few, and applying a different set of criteria (than for the rest), you do run the risk of critique / favouritism. However - it's your site, and I can appreciate the willingness to raise exposure to some VERY GOOD smaller distros.
OK - here's another idea.
Go with my first idea for the "Majors" - it's straight forward and clean.
Then from the other distros (not mentioned in the page), create a pool, and allocate them a 'date'. Then invite the distro management to put together an article (set limits) introducing the wider public to what's special about 'xyz'. Make it a weekly fixture of DW.
This will:
- increase exposure of some of the lesser knowns
- give other readers a chance to compare their own features
- encourage other distros to maybe consider some parts that may be missing in their own distros.
Overall, if it creates interest, it must be good for gnu-linux in general?
By getting the distro management teams to write 'the feature' (within guidelines), it will hopefully not add to your own workload too much.
127 • What's "major distribution"? (by Chris Hildebrandt on 2008-10-08 09:51:44 GMT from Austria)
Answering this question is very much depending on you point of view, and the criteria you use to define the term "major". Here his Ladislav's site, and he decides on his criteria. He does this always very carefully and balanced, while trying to base it on some factual data.
All he can use here are votings amongst his visitors, click rates for distro pages, publicly available statistic data (from GA, Netcraft, Yahoo, ...) and this sites server stats. As you ca see, all that boils down to just one criterium: online publicity.
Other criteria one could look at e.g. would be: All time influence to the FOSS community, installed machines, declared users, commercial success. Every single of the mentioned criteria would be worth a serious hunt for reliable data, and an article presenting the results here at DistroWatch.
Greetings,
Chris
128 • Comment on distrowatch's removing mepis from the top ten distro list (by Kerry Walper (mepnoob2005) on 2008-10-08 12:17:03 GMT from Canada)
This is a long thread...lots of interesting opinions for sure....It boils down to the owner of this site can do whatever is thought needed to keep the flow going...nuff said there. Nobody is perfect, even the great mepis is not perfect but it is pretty close.
All I can say now about the removal of mepis from the top ten distros is that we will be back. I'm not a bit worried either way.
There are a lot of distros that don't get many releases but are great systems. Kanotix, and knoppix as well as many more. I've tried many many distros and mepis is just better. Synaptic runs faster, computer boots quicker, the list is long when you look at how well things work with mepis.
I guess the biggest reason for me continuing with mepis is the mepis community. Mepislovers.org is a friendly place where we welcome all comers. We don't allow bashing, not even window bashing is tolerated. Questions get answered fast and you have a great sense of community.
I think I have used,as my main os, about 8 different mepis releases since 2004. That says development to me.
Maby the top ten list should be changed to 'The most popular distros'
That way we could give honorable mention to those that deserve it. You could have between ten and twenty distros on the list.
I also think that the site owner should give each of the distros on the list a good working over so it could be critiqued with an experienced voice as well as DW rankings.
I would be glad to offer myself as a DW tester. I would write articles about the install of each system and how they worked with various types of hardware.
Anyways I digress from my topic. Have a great day!
129 • #121 Somebody has asked about the link to the DistroWatch Apache logs: (by anticapitalista on 2008-10-08 12:18:43 GMT from Greece)
That was me, well I didn't ask for the logs, but thanks for providing the link.
What I was asking is how reliable are the logs? I mean, how does apache know that a visitor is using DEbian and not sidux for example? Where does apache get its ifo from?
130 • RE: 129 (by ladislav on 2008-10-08 12:45:45 GMT from Taiwan)
From the browser's user-agent string. Of course, not every distro provides an identifiable string (e.g. Slackware doesn't), but most do nowadays.
131 • 'Nothing like a good controversy... (by PhantomTramp on 2008-10-08 12:46:29 GMT from United States)
'Nothing like a good controversy to rack up hits.
The Tramp
132 • Knoppix (by just_me on 2008-10-08 12:47:59 GMT from Spain)
@ 88,
at least you have a Knoppix CD version of its latest release in VMKnoppix.
133 • Seriously, tho. (by PhantomTramp on 2008-10-08 12:55:47 GMT from United States)
I love this site for it's "up to the minute news" of the alternative O.S. scene; I peek at it every day. I don't pay that much attention to ratings as I prefer to think for myself.
The Tramp
134 • RE: 130 (by Chris Hildebrandt on 2008-10-08 15:46:48 GMT from Austria)
Ladislav, actually most distros don't change the browsers' agent string, just those who are interested in increasing their numbers in browser agent stats. ;-)
Greetings,
Chris
135 • Distribution Tree (by drizake on 2008-10-08 16:46:29 GMT from United States)
What we need is a family tree of distros with the original work at the top (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, etc.) and the derivative distros connected as children. If we created a database with parent-child relationships and other attributes (such as totally free, includes proprietary codecs, etc.) and an interface to automatically map out the tree in an intelligible format, it would be easy to keep up to date. You could even use larger icons for the more popular distros. If I was still taking classes, I would try to work this into a course as a project, but I'm not. :)
136 • Now I discovered Mepis (by eselma on 2008-10-08 17:39:29 GMT from Spain)
Interesting thread about Mepis. Curiously, I did not knew about this distro until now, in a effort to get a workable Acer One. Slick installation, and the first beta of Simply Mepis got in few minutes what could not get any other distro besides Mandriva; Linux Mint failed too (but Mepis is Debian based).
By now I am still using Kubuntu at the Desktop and office computers, but when Mepis publish the stable version, both boxes are going to hold Mepis too. May not be at "ten top", but for me now is at the top.
Edward.
137 • Distribution Family Trees and Major Distributions (by Mark South on 2008-10-08 17:44:42 GMT from Switzerland)
@135:
For a family tree of distros, start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gldt.svg
@Ladislav:
While I appreciate your desire to publicise the good work of distros that are working to improve the Linux user experience, it does not necessarily turn a distro into a major distro.
To be a major distro, a distro really needs to have a reasonable history of stability (no shooting stars please) and innovation (actually contributing new code or utilities). If I were writing a list, it would be
Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu.
Including the BSDs would add at least FreeBSD, and possibly both NetBSD and OpenBSD.
There are other distors that have challenged what is possible and led to further innovation: Knoppix, DSL, dyne:bolic etc.
There are many fantastic distros that simply don't qualify to be major. Mint, Mepis, Zenwalk, Vector, Absolute, AntiX and others are astoundingly good pieces of work. But if they vanished, others would fill the gap.
So you might say, my criterion for a distro being a major one would be that its disappearance would inconvenience others that depend upon it.
138 • ..opinions.. (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-08 18:14:16 GMT from United States)
Any views or opinions I expressed where solely my own and in no way did I imply I was speaking on behalf of the Mepis Community, if you don't believe me reread my post and I stand by my post and have nothing to add or takeaway from my post.
So far as trolling goes, anyone calling a person who has an opinion a troll is just plan ignorant or worse and is the kind of behavior one only expects to see in Usenet.
Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion expressed over my post and will be the end of said confusion.
Thank you and good day.
139 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-08 18:44:07 GMT from Canada)
Jimmy must be aware of the fact that when you call someone "number one on your shit list" then you are definitely a troll. That's not an opinion, that's a troll. And you will continue to be a troll until you aknowledge this fact.
Have a good trolling day.
140 • An Anonymous Troll (by Jimmy Johnson on 2008-10-08 19:05:44 GMT from United States)
DistroWatch is a web page, if want to imply that I put Ladislave Bodnar on my shit list then so be.
Remember to never feed a troll. :)
141 • Linus Torvalds on Linux Distributions (by RollMeAway on 2008-10-08 20:06:07 GMT from United States)
Really surprised Caitlyn didn't reference this:
http://news.oreilly.com/2008/07/linux-torvalds-on-linux-distri.html
142 • Opensuse 11, install a package can turn your computer "in a brick" (by AhJay on 2008-10-08 23:04:48 GMT from United States)
This is about OpenSuse 11.0 (amd 64 bits)
A couple of months ago, a simple update did destroy the OS, to the point I has to reinstall Linux.
This week, just installing a package (ultimate++ rpm), turned my machine "in a brick" again (It fails a boot time with /bin/sh file not found" message). Same problem when booting in "safe mode"...
The RPM was from the ultimate++ web site.
The Ubuntu version, worked just fine.
I have used other distros and the only similar problems that I had where the NVIDIA drivers: I still could boot in non-graphic mode, and manually fix it.
It seems than (perhaps because of it startup-script?) Open Suse is more sensitive to this kind of problem than other distros,
It would be quite nice to have a way to undo a failed update, or to be able to revert to some system backup, to recover from this!
(Windows does this).
But may be the best here would be to never touch (in the startup script) anything prior to a successful boot-up.
In this case I will have I am afraid (again) to reinstall OpensSUSE 11.0... wich take quite along time (much longer than Ubuntu-x64 why?)
I really like OpenSuse 11, very polish KDE 3.5 based, but system solidity does not seem to compare well with Fedora and Ubuntu, that I also used extensively.
Should the latest releases (11.1 beta 2) address this problem please post.
AjJay.
143 • RE: 134 (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 00:02:28 GMT from Taiwan)
Are you serious saying that most distros don't come with a custom browser string? Let's see: Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Red Hat, CentOS and FreeBSD all have one. Even Gentoo's binary browser packages have one. Of the big distributions only Slackware doesn't come with an identifiable user-agent string.
144 • RE: 137 Distribution Family Trees and Major Distributions (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 00:20:16 GMT from Taiwan)
To be a major distro, a distro really needs to have a reasonable history of stability (no shooting stars please) and innovation (actually contributing new code or utilities). If I were writing a list, it would be Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu.
So how do you explain that Linux Mint is now the third most-used Linux distro to browse DistroWatch with?
The problem with your classification is that it falls into the same trap as all the mainstream IT media: major == well-known. If it hasn't been reviewed by every computing web site on the net, then it can't possibly be major. So now we have a situation where Fedora is considered major because it was reviewed by ComputerWorld and 60 other magazines, while Mint is not major, because it is only ever reviewed on Blogspot.
In my view, if we just include Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/SUSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu on a list of major distributions, then DistroWatch will be no different from any other publication on the Internet. But we are a specialist, distro monitoring web site. Surely, we should know better than the rest!
145 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-09 00:33:01 GMT from Canada)
new mandriva could be an epic fail
20 plus critical bugs unfixed
loads of problems with upgrades (read the forums)
why not do a debian and push it back a week or so?
146 • RE: 145 (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 00:48:14 GMT from Taiwan)
I've just installed 2009 and have had no problems so far. But it's true that there is a long errata of known issues, so anybody installing the latest Mandriva should take a look at it:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Errata
147 • @145 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-10-09 02:05:01 GMT from Canada)
Most of the issues can be fixed with post-release updates with the same effectiveness as holding back the release and fixing them in the ISOs. The only one that really can't is the issue which prevents mounting LUKS-encrypted partitions at boot (because it's in mkinitrd). I'd have liked to have that one fixed, but nothing's perfect.
148 • RE: 43 No NetBSD information (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 03:27:28 GMT from Taiwan)
NetBSD 4.0.1 ISOs are now available:
ftp://iso.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/4.0.1/
The release announcement should be up soon too :-)
149 • There you go again, Ladsilav.....equating "HITS" (images and other files.... (by Observer on 2008-10-09 08:46:06 GMT from Australia)
>>>>144 • RE: 137 Distribution Family Trees and Major Distributions (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 00:20:16 GMT from Taiwan)
So how do you explain that Linux Mint is now the third most-used Linux distro to browse DistroWatch with?<<<<
...on a web page) with actual UNIQUE IP USERS! And you (should) know that it is not true!
If MINT users get a direct link to DW from their browser and are encouraged, by constant reference on their forums and weekly newsletter about their DW "ranking" position, to re-load the front page several times a day, then MINT will surely show more "HITS". This applies to any other distro in similar situation.
Unless DW can monitor and display OS UNIQUE IP VISITORS per day, then your claim is not very valid, IMHO!
Cheers
150 • No subject (by Sertse on 2008-10-09 08:52:00 GMT from Australia)
But surely even accounting/deducting for all flaws, it still beats the hell a lot of other distros, from quite "major"... the difference is simply too large in some instances....
151 • Major distributions (by Greg on 2008-10-09 09:07:16 GMT from Greece)
This list is totally wrong for the following reasons.
The link from the DW homepage says "Major Distributions".
When you go to the Major Distributions page the title is "Top Ten Distributions An overview of today's top distributions" .
Those 2 are very much different things.
If you want a list of "Top Ten Distributions An overview of today's top distributions" , then there shouldnt even be such a list. The user can just see the Top Ten of the last six months on the first page by default. Thats the "Top Ten Distributions" list.
If you want to have a major distributions list then dont add distributions like Mint & PCLinuxOS & Mepis.
152 • RE: 149 (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 09:13:36 GMT from Taiwan)
Ah, of course, I forgot. Every time a distro does well, it must be because its users and developers are a bunch of cheaters. What else could it be?
Please visit here:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.refererpages.html
and count how many visitors arrive at this web site via Linux Mint's forums and newsletters.
153 • RE: 151 Major distributions (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 09:20:16 GMT from Taiwan)
Please read my post number 144 above. Major distributions are those that people use, not those that some mainstream IT magazines happened to have heard about.
154 • @ 153 I did not say cheaters.... You are twisting the issue from (by Observer on 2008-10-09 09:28:44 GMT from Australia)
AWSTATS HITS does NOT EQUAL UNIQUE IP VISITORS for any OS!
File.........File type......Hits..............Percent
png.........Image.......16232831........78.3 %
html.......HTML ......1307856......6.3 %
gif.........Image........1190925.....5.7 %
css........Cascading Style Sheet file......718755.....3.4 %
php.....Dynamic PHP Script file 663920......3.2 %
xml.........................509066.......2.4 %
jpg.........Image.........81392........0.3 %
So that we are clear what constitutes "HITS". :-)
With respect
155 • RE: 154 (by ladislav on 2008-10-09 09:50:34 GMT from Taiwan)
AWSTATS HITS does NOT EQUAL UNIQUE IP VISITORS for any OS!
Agreed. However, what I don't understand is that how it all matters. All visitors register the same number of hits, irrespective of which OS they use to visit the site. Let's say I get just 3 visitors in a day, two of which use Ubuntu (67% of unique visitors) and one uses Linux Mint (33% of unique visitors). The two Ubuntu visitors register (say) 30 hits each, while the Linux Mint visitor registers 30 hits. At the end of the day, Ubuntu will have a market share of 60/90 == 67%, while Linux Mint will have a market share of 30/90 = 33%. Exactly the same as if they registered just one hit each.
Or am I completely wrong here?
156 • new major-10 is OK (by PP on 2008-10-09 10:56:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
Lots of negative feedback here, but I think the new "major-10" list reflects reality better than the old one. I support the change.
157 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-09 11:55:33 GMT from Canada)
Adam - the problem with releasing and then fixing bugs is that many will "test" the distro , find it buggy or unusable and move on quickly to the next distro.
whats worse is when a new linux user tries a distro and finds it buggy etc
mandriva is not the only distro that does this i know - and generally you guys produce a top product thats getting better year on year.
158 • @157 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-10-09 14:54:24 GMT from Canada)
Er, how to put this?
I am familiar with your argument. It may have been one I espoused myself and even expressed to those more enlightened than myself, before I was gently corrected and put on the True Path. =)
159 • top ten lists are boring and meaningless (by arno911 on 2008-10-09 15:08:16 GMT from Germany)
ok, adding smaller or newer distros to the list of the major distros just to have ten is one approach. but why do we have to be limited to 10? if there are 11 or 13 majors, or only 7, that would be a fine list, too. I dont see why it has to be a top ten list. its about Linux, not pop music charts :)
here is my opinion, not based on facts alone or any statistic i made up, and put into groups:
1. First Linux in Existence, (forget sts) and still alive and kicking:
slackware
2. Second Linux in Existence, (again forget sts) mature and with huge user and developer base:
debian
3. Third in the line, adding package management (RPM, iirc the better apt came later):
Red Hat. Today, no normal guy uses Red Hat, but rather
Fedora or Cent OS
4.now give Gentoo, Arch and Puppy credits unlike many others they are doing their own thing. arch + gentoo for those who like to compile, puppy for those binary distribution fans. not major? but original :)
5. Parent - Child model comes to mind: Mandriva and SUsE stem from RH, Ubuntu from Debian, PCLinuxOS even from Mandriva :) Sorry guys, you are great and only second to the originals, but - sad but true, not original :)!
now we have some huge groups left: the "based on something else" distros
mepis, mint, sidux, wolvix, sabayon and so on.
i didnt mention any BSD yet. heres why: on total user numbers, a BSD will never appear in a top ten list with Linux distros. but someone has to cover them, why not distrowatch ;) my advice:
6. BSD Derivatives as group, like 4. and 5.
FreeBSD DesktopBSD NetBSD openBSD etc.
I know Ladislav doesnt like the idea, but: keep it comparted. its not the same so dont mix it up
another thing is opensolaris
its not linux and not bsd, i really dont know how it could appear on DW, it has almost no users and the only interesting thing besides the great ZFS (used in BSD, too) is the name. Solaris, great book, did anybody NOT read it? its still time :) ok if it has to be listed, make a group
7. specialities
for those fine art linuces and alike: solaris, grml, all the partitioning and system rescue special distros, all the firewall and asterisk and what the heck distros, Elpix, Seminarix, server-only, realtime-audio, gos, lfs, geexbox, - you name it!
the world of open source is colorful, isnt it? :)
my 2 ct
160 • Bad news for Linux community (by Linux Enthusiast on 2008-10-09 15:57:50 GMT from India)
Apple patents OS X Dock:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/08/apple_patents_osx_dock/
161 • re 160 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-09 16:01:44 GMT from Canada)
And how is this bad news for Linux? Who gives a flying shit about dock?
162 • re 161 (by drizake on 2008-10-09 16:09:18 GMT from United States)
Who gives a flying shit about dock?
I'm sure gOS does. They include a dock clone by default. will this US patent prevent distros from other nations (Mint for example) from including dock clones in their releases? they'll still be available from some repos for sure. The DVD codecs available in Mint are not "legal" in the US from what I hear, but that doesn't stop many US Linux fans from using it...
163 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-09 16:22:25 GMT from Canada)
adam the free mandriva cd dosent fit on a cd???
164 • re 163 (by Anonymous on 2008-10-09 17:02:50 GMT from Canada)
Yes, Madriva fits in a CD. There is Mandriva Mini that can install 32 and 64 bit architectures. There is also Mandriva Free on 2 CD set. Also there are two Live CDs: Mandriva One KDE and Mandriva One Gnome. I'll link one of the mirrors here: http://ftp.free.fr/mirrors/ftp.mandriva.com/MandrivaLinux/official/iso/2009.0/
165 • mandriva errata? (by earl on 2008-10-09 17:10:09 GMT from United States)
i was just reading the madriva errata page; it looks like a distro not yet finished!
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Errata
there are workarounds, but it seems like this release is a bit early if the near fatal errors could not have been eliminated once known.
166 • @163 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-10-09 17:33:02 GMT from Canada)
164 is correct. If you want a single CD edition, get One. Free always used to be *three* CDs, in fact - we made it a bit smaller on CD for this release. The Free DVD edition is a full DVD, as usual.
167 • An observation (by Kerry Walper (mepnoob2005) on 2008-10-09 18:13:04 GMT from Canada)
I like DW. It's a great place to learn about new and not so new versions of linux.
I have sent I don't know how many people to this site (a lot) when they ask about linux. Of course I send them to mepislovers.org first as it is a great place to get info fast but when I talk about how many linux's there are out there I always refer to and send people to DW.
One area that is missing in your stats is when someone finds the linux for him and has no time to come back to DW and see what's new. After all why would the average guy come back to a place that is basically a site for the popularity of one distro as compared to another distro. He doesn't need to come back because he has found the linux for him and has no time or need to shop for one that works better. He or she has found the linux that runs whatever brand of printer, sound card, video card or other hardware that the user has. The user is satisfied. Once the average user has found the one that works he or she probably won't come back to DW on a regular basis. If anything they would go to the particular user help user site that is there to assist new users with their system. Mepislovers.org is such a place. That's where we help new users get used to mepis. There are places like mepislovers.org for vector linux, ubuntu, pclinuxos and so on and so on.
So you can see that there is a large number of guys that won't come back here
Ladislav you said this in an earlier post on this thread...
'Quote'
"I wish that other Linux web sites published something similar so that we could get a better idea about what people are using. But since I don't have any other figures, I have to believe my own logs, according to which Linux Mint is the third most frequently used distribution to visit this site, comfortably beating both openSUSE and Fedora. PCLinuxOS used to be high up too, but it lost a lot of ground recently. There are some rumours about a new release, so we'll see if it regains some of its popularity, once a new version is out. If not, it might drop off the top ten list too."
'End of quote'
It appears to me that the reason the pclinuxos stats have dropped off is that they are happy with what they have and have no inclination to come here and try something new that might not be as good. Pclinuxos is an AWESOME system that I would gladly use if there were no mepis. The pclinuxos synaptic slowness and the lack of readily available software made pclinuxos drop behind mepis. Pclinuxos is better than mepis at auto wireless configuration. Full marks to pclinuxos for that. You have to get in there and configure wireless with mepis but it's not hard.
I don't seriously think for one second that all the satisfied pclinuxos users have given up on pclinuxos. I think they have no reason to come here anymore.
I think that explains why you don't get hits from many pclinuxos users. They haven't popped in because their systems are running fine. Same with mepis and I would have to say the same with many linux's. Once the guy gets things going right there is no need to come to DW.
On the same note it's possible the 'real reason' you are getting so many hits from mint, ubuntu and the rest is that maybe they are NOT happy with what they are using and are searching for the next new linux that they are going to try but have not found it yet. Sounds plausible to me.
To rectify this you could add a place in DW where a guy could be counted for real. You know...a spot where we can put our mark as to what system we use on this or that particular computer. One vote per computer. Get some real usable info that way. Possibly more accurate than what's currently popular.
I think you would find that after a few weeks or so everyone would pop in to show what they use and the stats might change.
I refurbish computers from time to time and they all get mepis or pclinuxos installed. They are user friendly systems. Some get windows too but only in a dual boot set up designed to assist transition to linux. In fact I only have installed pclinuxos on two computers and only when I had trouble finding a wireless driver that would work for mepis.
I have a computer in the den with mepis, one in the garage with mepis and my son has mepis/xp dualboot in his bedroom computer.
The thing that makes me stay with mepis, other than the fact that all my gear just works, is mepislovers.org.
I struggled with knoppix, dsl and then mepis in 2004 until I found mepislovers.org. Got my sound to work in early 2005 and never looked back. Questions get replies really quick at mepislovers.org and there are a lot of knowledgeable guys who hang there. It's a polite and friendly place where the biggest rule is no bashing. We don't even let anyone bash windows. No bashing period. A very warm and polite atmosphere. I have a lot of friends there. We all think mepis is the best and we may be right but at every other user help user linux site they all think the same about their own linux. Which is why so many feathers got ruffled with this thread.
I think this is great site which helps promote linux.
A great leader is one who can hear his people.
168 • Re: 144 • RE: 137 Distribution Family Trees and Major Distributions (by Mark South on 2008-10-09 19:00:07 GMT from Switzerland)
@Ladislav:
I wrote:
"To be a major distro, a distro really needs to have a reasonable history of stability (no shooting stars please) and innovation (actually contributing new code or utilities). If I were writing a list, it would be Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu."
You replied:
"So how do you explain that Linux Mint is now the third most-used Linux distro to browse DistroWatch with?"
I don't think I need to explain it. It shows in your logs as a fact, and I believe it. If Mint hangs on, keeps releasing, and manages eventually to distinguish itself from its parent distro, it will eventually qualify as a major distro by my criteria.
But being really popular for a year or so doesn't compare with being in the top 20 for years at a stretch, and having dozens of derivative distros, like Debian or Slackware. Seriously, a list of Major Distros that lists Mint as having the same weight as Debian or Suse would be something of a travesty.
"The problem with your classification is that it falls into the same trap as all the mainstream IT media: major == well-known. If it hasn't been reviewed by every computing web site on the net, then it can't possibly be major. So now we have a situation where Fedora is considered major because it was reviewed by ComputerWorld and 60 other magazines, while Mint is not major, because it is only ever reviewed on Blogspot."
My classification is not based on that reasoning at all. And Fedora is widely reviewed because it has a history of innovation, including stuff that eventually ends up in a lot of other distros. Examples would be networkmanager (and the gnome nm-applet) and pulseaudio.
"In my view, if we just include Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/SUSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu on a list of major distributions, then DistroWatch will be no different from any other publication on the Internet. But we are a specialist, distro monitoring web site. Surely, we should know better than the rest!"
So break with tradition and be genuinely different. Don't compile a Top Ten list. List the major distros. List the Most Innovative Distros. (That would be a mostly different list: Knoppix, DSL, dyne:bolic, SliTaz etc). List the Best Distros for Older Hardware (Absolute, AntiX etc). List the Most Polished Distros (maybe Sabayon, Mepis, Mint, DreamLinux, PCLOS etc). List the distros that offer the most for atrists, or musicians, or gamers, or bloggers. Make a list of Distros Most Easily Remastered.
You could even list the Distros With Supporters Most Likely To Rant and Offer Death Threats to Critics (I won't mention names for fear of calling them from the vasty deep :-)
All this should be easy for you, since you probably have a wider knowledge of distros than anyone.
Break with everyone else's traditions and Distrowatch will stay different from all the other sites. Be brave. Be outspoken. And keep it real.
169 • @168 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-10-09 20:09:46 GMT from Canada)
"You could even list the Distros With Supporters Most Likely To Rant and Offer Death Threats to Critics"
Hey, that sounds like a fun list to be on.
I love cheese!
The government is listening to your thoughts through transistor radios embedded in baseballs!
Die, Mark South, die!
170 • Mandriva 2009 (by genetics73 on 2008-10-09 21:24:39 GMT from United States)
This release is premature. If so many bugs and uncertain workarounds are already known, why not wait a bit longer and MAKE SURE the release works? If Windows OS was put out with all these defects, anti-Microsoft wolves would howl to high heavens. This premature release is damaging to Linux reputation - very sad.
171 • @170 et al Give it a rest (by john frey on 2008-10-09 21:48:02 GMT from Canada)
I've been using RC2 for a multimedia front end to my NFS server on an old P3 with IceWM. I've noticed some minor glitches with video playback and I look forward to seeing those fixed but nothing totally show stopping. Today I updated my repositories to 2009.0 from Cooker and did an update. All is fine.
If you read the errata they say, "several users", "some users", etc. Chances are very good you will see only 1 or 2 of those bugs on your system and maybe none at all. I hesitate to call any OS close to perfection but at the very least I would call this as polished a release as the last few Mandriva release and we all know those have been VERY polished.
I can't wait to get my main system updated but I won't have time until next week. I sure want to see KDE 4 in all it's glory.
172 • @ 168 (by Linux Enthusiast on 2008-10-09 22:05:48 GMT from India)
"List the major distros. List the Most Innovative Distros. (That would be a mostly different list: Knoppix, DSL, dyne:bolic, SliTaz etc). List the Best Distros for Older Hardware (Absolute, AntiX etc). List the Most Polished Distros (maybe Sabayon, Mepis, Mint, DreamLinux, PCLOS etc). List the distros that offer the most for atrists, or musicians, or gamers, or bloggers. Make a list of Distros Most Easily Remastered."
While the majority of the "Lists" are subjective, I do feel the need to have a "List of Top Ten Distros for Older Hardware."
Not many in the world are rich enough to afford a brand new pc and the associated expensive proprietary software. For them Linux is like a gift from the very world in which they live for their second/third/fourth-hand pcs.
With Major distros also supporting Xfce, LXDE or any other "resource-friendly" D.E these days, I think the "Older Hardware" list should prove to be very useful ( I do know some major distros have been providing "resource-friendly" D.E from a much longer time, but that's not the point I am making now).
It would be interesting to know what the reader - comments would be if DWW features a column on proposing a new list of Top 10 Distros for older hardware.
173 • @ 169 (by Linux Enthusiast on 2008-10-09 22:34:49 GMT from India)
I wish you guys provide torrent files of your RCs too.
I have a bit of unreliable internet connection. Because of that if I download the iso files through ftp/http, after downloading 10% of the whole file, I get logged out automatically from my internet connection. Even if I login at that particular instance, the downloading doesn't start resuming and gives me an error message stating "the download has failed."
Also, the policy of ISPs to where I live is that if you keep your internet connection logged in and don't do any work like surfing, chatting, etc., you get logged out after some time (say couple of hours). That automatic log-out happens even if you keep some file for download and don't do other work like surfing. Add to that, I have a very slow internet connection (downloading 25 MB data takes about an hour).
This is where torrent files come to rescue. I can keep continuing and not get any "the download has failed" errors when I get logged out and log back in again. It also helps when electricity trips which is common here.
I tried other Linux torrent sites but could not find Mandriva 2009 RC2 and hence couldn't test it when it came out. Anyways, I am looking forward to downloading and using the just released Mandriva 2009 :)
174 • @173 (by john frey on 2008-10-09 23:20:26 GMT from Canada)
There are FTP clients that will resume after a disconnection. I know gFTP will do that and I bet some of the command line FTP clients do that too.
I like bittorrent myself and recommend using it but there should be no problem finding a way to resume FTP/HTTP transfers.
175 • @169, crazy Adam Williamson (by Mark South on 2008-10-09 at 23:34:26)
I wasn't going to name my suggestions for THAT list, but perhaps one distro that had a release REALLY recently should be on it...?!
Adam, I haven't had the chance to do more than boot up the 2009.0 One CD but it did work and it looked good. KDE4 is something I've been trying to avoid so far, but the newest Mandriva makes it a necessity to explore it I guess.
I plan to try it on my EEEPPPPCCC before long.
@165:
It's a great thing about Mandriva that they are really upfront about the list of errata. Such things occur in any large engineering project, but in the consumer domain they are normally swept under the carpet (for details, see under Redmond).
Putting them in the open makes it far easier to deal with them, or work around them, and shows that they are rpiorities to be fixed in early updates. Make no mistake, Mandriva is actually showing the way to many other distros who simply shout their mantra that \"It just WORKS!\" and try to ignore the issues.
Re 168:
OBTW, for atrist read artist. And I didn't mention Zenwalk or Vector, which was remiss of me, but they could have been given as examples in more than one category.
That's enough from me, I don't want Ladislav to have justification for banning my incoherent ramblings into the same bit-bucket already occupied by Gn2 and dbrion. It must be too crowded in there already.
176 • Mandy 2009 Tops (by Constant Observer on 2008-10-10 00:38:56 GMT from United States)
Running the Mandriva 2009 One CD and it is wonderful. The torrent was much faster with many seeders than downing via Direct, so a special thanks to the Nelander. Could be by years end that Mandriva may take a place at the top. If you have newer and cutting edge Systems, and want ease and flexibility, then I recommend Mandriva, Sabayon, Suse and Debian.
177 • RE: 168 (by ladislav on 2008-10-10 00:44:39 GMT from Taiwan)
We have a lot of excellent suggestions in this week's discussion. One problem is that I am struggling to find time for everything. It would be a nice change if instead of "I suggest you do this" people said "I'll help you to do this". Or even better: "I've done this - please consider using it". Otherwise, I am afraid that many of the suggestions would just remain on my already very long to-do list.
178 • g OS (by Andy Dick on 2008-10-10 03:16:55 GMT from United States)
Tried g OS. Found it had some hidden policies once I ran some things on a root prompt (#) with "sudo su" Nice entry level desktop, not so good options for intermediate to advanced users. g OS truly a beginners desktop O.S. And yes it's another Ubuntu rebrand.
179 • #141: If I had referenced that article... (by Caitlyn Martin on 2008-10-10 05:13:05 GMT from United States)
#141: Thanks for the link. If I had referenced and linked that article someone would have accused me of shameless self promotion :) Now at least I know why that article is getting so many comments all over again.
I honestly find distro wars amusing and a bit childish. Everyone has their own needs and wants and no one distro is right for everyone no matter how well done it is. There is also no perfect distro. I can find fault in every version of every distro I have ever tried. Yet if I point out those faults some fan gets all offended and I get called an idiot or worse. Some people really need to get on with life. Instead of defending a distro to the hilt it would be more productive for them to spend the time and energy working to make improvements.
Folks also need to realize that due to differences in hardware and in usage habits two people may have complete different experiences with exactly the same code. If someone has a bad experience with distribution X it doesn't necessarily mean they did something wrong or are clueless.
Anyway, I'm rambling and it's late...
180 • On a lighter note... (by Verndog on 2008-10-10 06:40:26 GMT from United States)
I'm glad the Distrowatch has chosen to include BSD's in the mix. Even though there not Linux or a distribution. It was because of the article on PC-BSD that I even thought of BSD's. It is quite a bit different than any Linux under the hood. There are similarities, since they came from or inspired by Unix. FreeBSD has a very different feel than anything I have tried, even though KDE4 is PC-BSD's default desktop environment. "Slices" and the like have me scrambling for the manual. Partitioning is another story.
So far though I have enjoyed the experience. Everything has absolutely worked out of the box! PC-BSD's gui install interface is next to perfection. Especially for anyone coming from Windows environment. I even tried the text base FreeBSD, which PC-BSD is based on, and it was a snap.
Again, if it wasn't for the DWW article that Ladislav wrote I wouldn't be using it right now. Thanks!
181 • Mepis and Knoppix Not Major Distributions? (by Stephen Tony on 2008-10-10 07:13:51 GMT from United States)
Your foolish and wrongheaded removal of MEPIS and KNOPPIX as major distribution's only serves to highlight the fact that this site is in danger of sliding down a slippery slope, and devolving into nothing more than an overrated hit counter. Since your obvious intent has always been more ambitious than that, then it's a bit puzzling as to why you would kick both to the curb. Especially when there are other so called "Major" distributions that have not had as much activity as of late as they have had in the past. In fact there are distributions on your top 100 list that don't deserve to be there based solely on the fact that they are nothing but knockoffs of already established distros. In the end, adding nothing but a different look but really bringing nothing new or original to the table. Based on recent activity you could end up removing some very fine distros from your list. PCLinuxOS would be one example, but there are many more. What makes a major distro cannot be measured by how many hits this site gets while people are using that distro. Be careful where you tread with this direction or you will alienate people, like myself, who have come to expect expect more from this site than just serving as that glorified hit counter I referred to. Because if that is all you have to offer, then I for one will not continue making this a regular stop. In fact I will encourage others to do the same. I guarantee you that there are many people who are dismayed by what you have done, and we will make a concerted effort to get this point across in the future.
182 • Classification of Major Distributions (by DG on 2008-10-10 07:19:28 GMT from Netherlands)
Maybe the way round the arbitrary choice by one individual or small group about how to categorize each distro would be to offer a set of radio buttons on each of the distro pages. As radio buttons they would be mutually exclusive and would allow one selection between choices such as:
(x) Not Rated, (_) Beginner (_) Expert (_) Desktop (_) Server (_) LiveCD
with possibly another set of choices for hardware:
(x) Not Rated (_) Wireless (_) Audio (_) Video (_) Old Hardware
The most recent selection per IP is used. Old selections discarded after a certain elapsed time, etc. Inclusion in category only when a certain number of selections are available, and then based on percentage. You get the idea.
This would allow the DW community as a whole to categorize the distros
PS. Re #177 Sorry Ladislav, I don't have necessary web/backend knowledge to implement it for you :-(
183 • Puppy 4.1 (by Kc1di on 2008-10-10 10:33:16 GMT from United States)
Just a note that I've found the latest version of Puppy linux a very good release. It's being used on my old old laptop and allows it to do some amazing things right out of the box.
Barry and the team certainly have done themselves proud witht this one. Sorry to hear of Barry's retirement, but I understand and wish him well.
If you've got an old machine around Puppy 4.1 may be just the Distro you need to get it going again.
184 • Upcoming Release for BlankOn (by Ainul Hakim on 2008-10-10 10:33:35 GMT from Indonesia)
we can see schedule of BlankOn release at http://dev.blankonlinux.or.id/roadmap
and detail at http://dev.blankonlinux.or.id/wiki/JadwalRilis
185 • AWSTATS for MEPIS (by JimC on 2008-10-10 10:35:42 GMT from United States)
ladislav
Are you sure newer versions of SimplyMEPIS are even showing up in a separate category in your AWSTATS?
I'm running SimplyMEPIS 7.0 on one machine and an 8.0 beta on another. But, when I go to sites that show the User Agent reported, none of them are showing anything about MEPIS. Examples:
From http://whatsmyuseragent.com/
TTP_CONNECTION:keep-alive
HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE:300
HTTP_ACCEPT:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET:ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING:gzip,deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE:en-us,en;q=0.5
HTTP_COOKIE:ASPSESSIONIDQCQARBAC=DJPPHHADLONGJCIJFELFKBEE
HTTP_HOST:whatsmyuseragent.com
HTTP_REFERER:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=what+is+my+user+agent&btnG=Search
HTTP_USER_AGENT:Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092814 Firefox/3.0.3
From http://www.useragent.org/
Your User Agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092814 Firefox/3.0.3
186 • RE: 185 AWSTATS for MEPIS (by ladislav on 2008-10-10 10:43:30 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, there are quite a few strings that contain the word MEPIS in the logs, e.g.:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071128 Firefox/2.0.0.11 (MEPIS-2.0.0.11-1mepis1)
(X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092814 Firefox/3.0.1 MEPIS 8.0
187 • Re 177 - Suggestions (by Brooko on 2008-10-10 11:19:49 GMT from New Zealand)
Hi again Ladislav.
Well you laid the gauntlet - so best someone pick it up :)
If one was to try and contribute a rewrite of the 'Major Dists' link (so that you could consider it as an option if you were to change), what would be best method of getting it to you?
Am thinking of a text file by email. Would that be sufficient to be considered? Or would you need it in html?
Can probably have a go at it over the weekend, if you think it would be worthwhile.
188 • No subject (by Sertse on 2008-10-10 11:35:18 GMT from Australia)
I couldn't be bothered search it through the comments again (maybe someone here can?) but I really like the idea of havig a "mind map" with the "base" distros and the derivatives forking out from it. Size of the circle for each distro in the map can represent popularity.
189 • RE: 187 (by ladislav on 2008-10-10 12:59:07 GMT from Taiwan)
Please send me an email and we'll talk.
190 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-10 13:10:18 GMT from Australia)
#167
mepnoob2005 after reading your post I wonder why you are here. Are you dissatisfied with Mepis. Based on the context of what you wrote you must be. But of course it is obvious you are a mepis fanboy.
The mepislovers forum are not the most fantastic forum you make it out to be. It is an elitest forum for mepis fanboys. I am a member of the forum so know that for a fact. I also use mepis, amongst other distros. As stated somewhere above, no distro is perfect. I use the best tool for the job required, Be that mepis, ubuntu, debian, windows or whatever.
I am very happy with my selection of distro's but I like to come here to DWW to checkup on what is happening in the linux world. Also it is a good read. The only thing I dislike is fanboy posts as they are not informative.
You have made a number of assertions of why some people will/do not come back to DWW. Where do you get that idea from? Your post is very contradictive.
191 • Re 190 - Elitist?? (by Brooko on 2008-10-10 13:33:46 GMT from New Zealand)
Oh my - trolling are we?
"The mepislovers forum are not the most fantastic forum you make it out to be. It is an elitest forum for mepis fanboys"
Inflammatory statement - from someone with a grudge perhaps? Noticed you didn't have the decency to sign your name to a statement like that.
Elitist - hardly. From my experience it's a forum where 99% of the time the only bad question is the the one you don't ask (ie the forum is there to help). They're not perfect, they're proud of their distro and community (like most communities are). Enough said.
I could waste more time replying to this inaccurate post - but what would be the point .....
192 • Re 189 (by Brooko on 2008-10-10 13:39:04 GMT from New Zealand)
Ladislav - thanks for the opportunity. I've sent you an email. Will have ago at it this weekend. Not sure how long it will take - but will email you as soon as I have an outline.
193 • One more time about Mint in the Major etc. list (by Béranger on 2008-10-10 18:21:26 GMT from Romania)
QUOTE: "Linux Mint does not adhere to the principles of software freedom and it does not publish security advisories." /QUOTE
It does not publish security advisories because 99.9% of the packages are from upstream and security-patched by the upstream, whose repos are enabled by default!
I am sure that the "minty" tools are updated when a major vulnerability is discovered, but this should be a rare situation.
So I don't see why the emphasis on "does not publish security advisories."
194 • Momonga Linux 5 (by RollMeAway on 2008-10-11 03:43:52 GMT from United States)
I only use English, but used the google bar 'Translate' to read about the 5-RC announced in last weeks waiting list section of DWW. Discovered the homepage is in English also.
As there are few distros based on fedora, I was curious. Here are my notes:
10/06/08:Installed from "Momonga-5-RC-i686" DVD dated 10/03/08.
Install was smooth no events or worries. Gnome is default with KDE4 optional at
login. Booted with no mouse through setup, used alt/. After X started mouse ok.
X started with 800x600, but easily changed through gui to 1680x1050.
Most everything already installed. (5.24 GB H.D. used). Did install gkrellm, nvidia unavailable.
Root password defaults to same as user created during install.
10/07/08:Booted into 1400x900. Could not change it. Edited xorg.conf with settings derived in sidux.
Rebooted: 1680x1050 ok. Momonga website no mention of nvidia, not in package manager.
Downloaded latest nvidia from nvidia's website. Used package manager to install kernel devel src.
>init 3 and installed it. Let nvidia installer fix xorg.conf. >init 5 = X with NVIDIA working OK.
10/10/08:Tray icon notified of 20 upgrades, completed ok. Final Momonga-5 released today.
Themes are bright and colourful. Reminded me of "Rocky and Bullwinkle", if you are old enough to remember the flying squirrel and moose. When you tire of looking for the moose, themes are easily changed.
Overall very stable and usable. Couldn't find a forum, but haven't need one either.
195 • Ubuntu-based (by isleSEAT on 2008-10-11 04:29:18 GMT from United States)
Yet another herbal-based (I mean Ubuntu-based) distro. Its called "Hiweed" (no kidding) !
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05131
196 • BSD (by Landor on 2008-10-11 08:08:54 GMT from Canada)
Glad to hear you took the plunge and it's working out for you. I hope it continues to...I smiled when you talked about slices/partitioning...I warned you about the partitioning aspect, but it becomes second nature once you do it :)
My son has been using PC-BSD on our test box, one of the many, and he loves it too.. I think he's trying to hustle me into not having him build T2 or ROCK..lol
Oh, did you do any mixing of the PC-BSD packages and ports? I've never have a problem myself with it, but I know they warn not to do it...Since I never ran into a problem I wondered if that was more, "use our stuff" than ports...but hard to believe from a community like BSD.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
197 • RE: 193 (by Landor on 2008-10-11 10:04:02 GMT from Canada)
This is where a derivative becomes problematic and good reason why emphasis should be placed on just this reason/subject....
Mint is "considered" a newbie distro, one to bring in people from Windows. What if these people are not aware that Mint pulls in it's security updates from upstream? How are they informed that they really need to update? What if it's a bug/exploit in the code that could make their private banking information at the mercy of some belligerant intruder?
It's ok to say they don't have to inform people because upstream takes care of that for them. It's quite another that someone doesn't know that and maybe is the victim of identity theft due to being uninformed, whether it's only partly due to Mint or on whole, or not...They should be informed. Security, Identity Theft are real-time issues and to pass the responsability off to upstream makes the distro not a major distro in my opinion as well.
I'm shocked you didn't come to this conclusion yourself....Maybe you were too busy hating Linux this week (tongue in cheek of course) :)
But to make my point a little more clearer...Simply due to the fact that Mint considers itself a great alternative for the Windows Convert who would have very little knowledge of even what upstream means, it's a critical issue informing their userbase of security fixes/advisories...
I remember when Ladislav (forget when, last year maybe? Ladislav?) Posted information on the response time to a critical fix to a flaw in the kernel for various distros...That was a very important issue.
I don't know if there is one, but even if mint could link to a feed for advisories would be a "small" step in the right direction...Thus far though, it fails to be a major distro in my eyes if not for this reason alone.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
198 • Major Distributions? (by mikkh on 2008-10-11 13:53:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Surely a 'major distribution' is one not based on another to my way of thinking, therefore not only is Mint invalid, but also the mighty *buntu hype machine - being merely a Debian clone? PClinuxOS is just a Mandriva clone, Sabayon a Gentoo clone etc etc ad nauseum
Puppy is more of a major distribution IMO.
Your 'Major Distributions' is really a 'more info on the top ten in the page hit list'
199 • Mint nice but (by jaynicks on 2008-10-11 14:14:26 GMT from United States)
Mint forces browsers to use their own search page for Google, at least. Push branding without an opt out is a very dubious practice.
There may be privacy issues with Mint access to your search keys.
The real gotcha is if you d/l Opera and use Google search the results get blown into FireFox and are not displayed in Opera.
That's enough of an indication of 'connectivity' (per Mills and Dykstra) to indicate that thisdist is not ready for recommendations to any but a test cloud. This is reconfirmed by the easy to use HI modifications that cannot reset globally to default. My test end user wound up with no resize/minimize/kill app window buttons and unmovable app windows and could not undo.
I could not quickly find the undos/settings either. .I did not bother much 'cause the search engine muckup is sufficient indication of bugs and hazy ethics to ignore it for at least six months.
200 • Major distros (by Anonymous on 2008-10-11 16:03:17 GMT from Switzerland)
A major distro has a few qualities it needs. As Landor rightly pointed out, a major distribution runs their own repos.
@198: Puppy is a major distro, but Ubuntu is not? Can I have some of what you're taking?
Ubuntu build their own packages and pass development upstream, BTW. They are definitely derived from Debian packages (taken from Sid) but the distro has real infrastructure and could survive without Debian if necessary.
Vector and Zenwalk could survive without Slackware in the same way. Mint without Ubuntu could not in its present state. Like many Ubuntu add-ons, they could tell you to install Ubuntu, add the repos with their special herbs, and just "aptitude install mint-pack" to turn it into Mint.
201 • #170 ...This premature release is damaging to Linux... (by jack on 2008-10-11 16:54:42 GMT from Canada)
versus
#175 It's a great thing about Mandriva that they are really upfront about the list of errata
In principle I agree with #175; but...
Perhaps it would seem to depend upon which category of user we have in mind;
I have just looked at the errata list and I am going to wait to see if things are fixed. So, as a newbie, I found the list both helpful and depressing.
However I believe that NOT publishing the list would, for a newbie, be a potential disaster. He would not be able to load the live cd (first listed errata) and would not have a clue as to why.
(When first looking at Linux, and buying boxed sets for the instructions, I was unable to get any of them to load. untill I came across Knoppix (thank the gods for Knoppix).
So, for me as a newbie, although I like the errata list I would really. really, like an OS that "just works"
202 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2008-10-11 18:36:03 GMT from France)
I like the major distro list as it is. In my understanding, it targets newcomers, giving them the Big Name distros plus a couple of the hot newbie-friendly alternatives. Better balance than the 'Computer World' list, and the "We'll hold your hands little baby" list. The landscape provided is perfect for its audience, IMO.
An additionnal "miscelleanous list" could have its use too, with the mention of DSL, Puppy, somethingEEE, Gparted etc.
Anything bigger would have a lot of duplication. A Small Bussinell/Home Server list, for instances, would feature several of the Majors, same thing for a LiveCD list etc.
203 • Ubuntu w/o Debian? (by Serenitue on 2008-10-11 20:51:46 GMT from United States)
@200 - Ubuntu would collapse without Debian. Period. It's not an opinion, it's a f act, and it's not intended to start a flame war. If Debian were to vanish, it would take Ubuntu and Mint with it. End of story ;-)
204 • Re: 203 • Ubuntu w/o Debian (by Anonymous on 2008-10-11 21:25:08 GMT from Switzerland)
"(....) Period. It's not an opinion, it's a fact, and it's not intended to start a flame war. (....) End of story ;-)
So your key message is that although you have no evidence to support your opinion, you *really* don't want anyone to disagree with you.
205 • #204 Ubuntu w/o Debian (by anticapitalista on 2008-10-11 22:01:53 GMT from Greece)
#204 Ubuntu w/o Debian
It is quite simple really.
So how would Ubuntu survive without Debian?
Where would it get its packages from if Debian disappeared?
Slackware? Gentoo?
If so, then it would no longer be Ubuntu, would it?
Unless you think Ubuntu will replace Debian.
206 • No subject (by sertse on 2008-10-12 00:08:03 GMT from Australia)
Well why not. I really think if Debian suddenly vanished, the Debian-ers will go to Ubuntu directly, instead of being upstream as it currently is and go to Ubuntu.
It is still familiar to Debian, and the one that has infrastructure/organisation to support and coordinate such an huge amount of people.
207 • No subject (by sertse on 2008-10-12 00:08:57 GMT from Australia)
Ack. I mean
"will go to Ubuntu directly" instead of being upstream (on Debian) trickling down to Ubuntu.
208 • Beranger holds forth on Ubu... (by handydan918 on 2008-10-12 01:32:14 GMT from United States)
To posit that Ubuntu holds the same status as Debian or Red Hat is preposterous.Ubu is nothing more than a well-funded devolution of Debian that doesn't even contribute anything of note back to the community, by virtue of using their own tool chain. Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mepis is based on Debian. Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
Prefer what you will. Just don't act irrational and pretend to be the voice of reason.
Not on MY watch.
209 • Multi boot friendly (by AhJay on 2008-10-12 01:58:08 GMT from United States)
Ladislav:
the easiest way to try a distro, on a multi boot system, is to have the installer, add a stanza on the Grub (/boot/menu.lst file), and add in /boot the two usual files (vmlinuz_xxxx, and initd_xxxx)
A multiboot friendly (MBF) does this either automatically, or at least allows to do it manually, and also saves a backup of modified files.
Most distros (Fedora, Mandiiva, OpenSuse, Slackware, etc...) by this standard are MBF
Ubuntu 8.04 (amd64) is certainly not multi boot friendly, even in manual mode!
Ubuntu forces a re-formatting of /boot which makes it very difficult !
To me an even more MBF distro will name the vmlinuz and initd files with a name allowing simple identification, like "vmlinuz_ubuntu8.04_2.610"
So Ladislav, could you add a Multo Boot Friendly indicator in the distro description?
Thanks.
AhJay.
210 • ubu w/out Debian (by john frey on 2008-10-12 06:14:54 GMT from Canada)
Well one thing is certain in the near term, that is that Ubu will not have to survive without Debian. The Debian project and infrastructure would have to experience quite a bit of disfunction before disappearing and we are not seeing anything like that at all.
Ten years from now, who knows? I'd bet on Debian still being around and even give odds. Ubu will probably still be around but you'd get slightly lower odds on that.
No matter who does or does not survive, the code will still be around and it will still be free. That's not my opinion, that's the law, thanks to RSM.
211 • RE: 197 and RE: 208 (by Béranger on 2008-10-12 06:55:46 GMT from Romania)
Folks,
There is no need for Mint to issue security advisories on their own.
If you take a look at the Release Notes for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa, you'll notice that the hardy-security repo is enabled by default, so all the users will be proposed to apply the necessary updates by the mintUpdate applet!
Regular users don't need to read security advisories -- they need the proper updates to be available and to be proposed to them. (Think of Windows: normal people don't read their advisories, yet WindowsUpdate pops up with the request to pull the updates in.)
OTOH yes, by some standards Mint is not a "major" distro, but only a polished spin off Ubuntu. However, as long as it's a distro on its own, with a very different theming (and an excellent one) and some configuration tools on its own, it deserves to be considered a major distro if the figures say so!
Sure thing, it bears a vulnerability: if Ubuntu dies or goes wrong, then Mint is in trouble. But again, in the long run, if Debian dies or goes wrong, etc. etc.
212 • acer aspire one and puppy 4.1 (by Dopher on 2008-10-12 11:59:48 GMT from Belgium)
for everyone with the acer aspire one netbook, i can really recommend puppy 4.1
you can make it all work, from frequency scaling to wifi.. and your mini notebook will fly. The standard linpus that came with this acer is pretty nice, but slow.
allright, have a good sunday all. :p
213 • re 209 • Multi boot friendly (by AhJay on 2008-10-12 01:58:08 GMT from United St (by zhymm at 2008-10-12 13:16:25 GMT from United States)
Oh my goodness, yes! I second the MBF indicator. All the *buntus' & progeny's ill behavior in this respect have caused me to avoid them other than as liveCD.
From a multibooting, distro (and DW) junkie ...
Best regards,
Zhymm
First long-term linux affair - PCLOS
Current favorite - Arch
214 • Beranger on Mint (by john frey on 2008-10-12 16:48:28 GMT from Canada)
I first disagreed but now find myself more in agreement. Of course the system of Open Source or Free Software allows for the existence of a "major" distribution that is only a repackaged upstream distro with or without minor revisions or additions. Centos qualifies.
Because the code is free a downstream distro can, in theory, continue past the demise of the upstream distro. Whether it will depends on a lot of factors including the ability of the downstream distro to attract the developers from upstream and to develop an infrastructure to support them.
I still heartily disagree that "There is no need for Mint to issue security advisories on their own."
We all know that basic users don't want to and likely won't read security advisements. If all Mint users leave their auto updates turned on they will be safe as any Ubuntu user, apparently. What this does not take into account is that their are a variety of users with a broad range of computer skills. Some of them are providing technical support for others, some are turning their auto updates off, some are adding 3rd party repositories and still others are installing from source. There are good reasons to only do manual updates and ignoring that some users will do that is foolish. An office environment with 20 or more computers with network storage, network printers and internal http servers should not have automatic updates turned on unless they are willing to lose some or all of their access to the networked resources at times.
If all users are residential users who had their OS installed by a professional or proficient hobbyist then, yes, they will be as safe with auto updates as they would be under Ubuntu with auto updates. If we expand outside that rather limited scope of users then the lack of security advisories is important.
215 • Multi boot friendly Ubuntu (by Anonymous on 2008-10-12 17:26:38 GMT from Switzerland)
Ubuntu installs its bootloader to the MBR by default. But if you choose the Advanced button at the last step of the installation you can choose to install the bootloader to the root of any partition you like.
So all this "Ubuntu is not multiboot friendly" is just more of the usual FUD.
@208: who has ever said that Ubuntu is the same as Debian? And you add:
"Not on MY watch."
Well, has Ladislav made you the moderator of DWW? Because if so, we should be told. And if not, it's Ladislav's watch, not yours.
216 • No sound in Mandriva 2009 (by genetics73 on 2008-10-12 18:02:33 GMT from United States)
Another example of superiority of Mandriva over other distros, not to mention Vista - there's no sound. Maybe it is to spare the hearing, who knows. The fact is, if Windows came without sound, there would be blood spilled. Perhaps the solution is simple, but it is not obvious to me - sound worked fine on Mandriva 2008, on the same computer.
I find this irritating to say the least. And should someone think that Linux users HAVE to be able to solve such trivialities on their own, my answer is: yes, but do not pretend that Linux is better, simpler, stabler, superior to other OSes. The only advantage Linux has is that is free - but then, one gets what one pays for.
217 • @215 (by john frey on 2008-10-12 18:03:25 GMT from Canada)
Many distros install to the MBR and preserve the boot entries for other OS's by default instead of formatting the MBR. That is what is meant by MBF.
Installing the bootloader to another partition requires manually editing Grub. If so many other distros can do better why can't the "user friendly" Ubuntu?
218 • @216 (by john frey on 2008-10-12 18:07:59 GMT from Canada)
Maybe if you had paid for the Mandriva 2009.0 Powerpack you would have sound. Since you believe that you get better value by spending money you should pay for your OS. Don't let that option escape you.
219 • @218 (by genetics73 on 2008-10-12 18:17:18 GMT from United States)
A very helpful suggestion, but I already have a paid-for OS, and it does work, without a hitch. It is NOT Mandriva 2009.
I thought Linux were making claims of superiority, but I suppose the only claim that can be made is that ...Oooops....
220 • @218 (by genetics73 on 2008-10-12 18:32:35 GMT from United States)
I might add that neither printing nor scanning worked "out of the box" in Mandriva 2009 even though the printing did work fine in 2008.
221 • @219 (by john frey on 2008-10-12 19:14:08 GMT from Canada)
You might want to buy more than one OS. Some people do, you know. I'm just sayin'. Especially since anything for free is inferior.
I'd sure like to know what OS works without a hitch. I've never encountered one myself. Well, actually my Smoothwall does, so I lied. I should say I've never encountered a desktop OS that works without a hitch.
222 • re 216 and after (by Anonymous on 2008-10-12 19:14:19 GMT from Canada)
It is not a question of paying for Powerpack or not. Both Free and Powerpack editions are supposed to perform the same regarding this matter. You can't really compare an OS preinstalled by the manufacturer with an OS installed by you. If you want to compare the sound of Mandriva with the sound of Windows buy a computer preinstalled with Mandriva and install Windows on it. There is good chance you'll get a lot of issues (sound, wireless, etc.) with Windows.
223 • @221 and 220 - Mandriva 2009 (by genetics73 on 2008-10-12 19:32:47 GMT from United States)
And still no sound. Suffice it to say that sound worked fine in 2008, not to mention, heavens forbid, that it worked in Windows just as well, without any ado. As to the "manufacturer vs self installation" - I have done and tested both, and seldom had any problems, EXCEPT with Linux distros. I am not a computer-illiterate user, so those snide comments really are neither helpful nor called for.
I am not the only one reporting problems with Mandriva 2009 sound; one particular error message concerns "dev/dsp not found" - yet, the file does exist.
In any event, it is a disappointment.
224 • @223 (by john frey on 2008-10-12 22:35:54 GMT from Canada)
Well since my last post I upgraded to 2009.0. My sound works.
If you don't want snide comments than don't make them. You are disappointed in your install on your hardware. Fair enough.
It's Mandriva 2009.0's fault that your install doesn't work and Linux is not as good as Windows, which works flawlessly... snide magnet.
It's your own fault for attracting snide, unhelpful comments.
225 • RE: 218 Mandriva PWP (by Landor on 2008-10-12 22:51:16 GMT from Canada)
"Maybe if you had paid for the Mandriva 2009.0 Powerpack you would have sound"
I know since you use Mandriva you were not insinuating this...But, I wondered just this scenario...If Mandriva's "Retail Version" had the same flaws that the non-pay versions do, free or one....
I'm curious to see if there's any info regarding just that, this early in the release. It might be worth noting "if" it is the case in any future considerations regarding Mandriva's releases.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
226 • Re 155..."All visitors register same number of hits"---->NOT TRUE! (by Observer on 2008-10-13 00:03:20 GMT from Australia)
>>155 • RE: 154 (by ladislav from Taiwan)
>>>AWSTATS HITS does NOT EQUAL UNIQUE IP VISITORS for any OS!<<<
Agreed. However, what I don't understand is that how it all matters. All visitors register the same number of hits, irrespective of which OS they use to visit the site.......Or am I completely wrong here?<<
I am pretty sure you know the truth but choose to confuse us about the significance of "HITS"!
"HITS" can vary per visit to DW in any number of ways! The following are a few example:
1. A person visiting your front page (distrowatch.com) once, which has more images and files on it (approx 43), will generate more than double the number of hits than others visiting the distro info pages, e.g. distrowatch.com/ubuntu, distrowatch.com/debian, distrowatch.com/fedora, distrowatch.com/suse, distrowatch.com/mandriva, etc), which have about 18 files (images and etc) on them.
2. Someone hanging around the DWW Comments section and reloading that page in order to see the latests posts (when the forum is active) will generate 20 x number of re-loads in hits.
3. Anyone visiting the front page and curiously (or out of excitement about the popularity of their distro, especially if it is not a true major) reloading the PHR ranking table for the various time period positions will generate 40 + x number of reloads in "HITS".
4. Others who prefer speed browsing may turn off images and will generate very low hit count (I am one of them)!
With respect
227 • RE: 226 (by ladislav on 2008-10-13 00:24:29 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, yes, all correct, no problems with any of your points. But I still don't see how all this makes any difference at the end of the month! It's a level playing field, and with more 100,000 visitors per day, I'd guess it all levels out in the end. Also, in all the Apache statistics I've used here, I never quoted "HITS", only percentages.
Anyway, it seems to me that you've made up your mind about the significance of the AWSTATS analysis, so I'll leave it at that. And from the statistical point of view, I find your arguments shaky, so I see no reason to stop using the AWSTATS as an interesting statistical tool.
228 • Top Ten Distributions - Alternatives and Derivatives (by Eddie on 2008-10-13 00:45:34 GMT from Australia)
How about listing this info' for each distribution'...
- Derivative distributions (if any).
- Source distribution (if derived from another).
- Alternative distribution (with similar purpose/intent/goals).
Eddie.
229 • @225 (by john frey on 2008-10-13 00:52:06 GMT from Canada)
No I was not seriously suggesting that paying would make a difference. It was meant to be sarcasm, I guess. I have noticed differences between Mandriva One, PWP and Free in the past. There is a different selection of software, Free does not enable 3D drivers for ATI and nvidia cards, although I don't know what's happening now with the open source drivers for ATI. I expect that the PWP has the same polish and flaws as the other 2. As you say, would be interesting to know if there is a difference.
230 • @225 (by Adam Williamson on 2008-10-13 01:44:29 GMT from Canada)
There wouldn't be any difference.
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Choosing_the_right_edition
genetics, I'm sorry you're having trouble with sound. If you provide some details on your hardware and a precise description of the symptoms, I will do what I can to help.
I should point out that a stock install of Windows (XP or Vista) would fail to work correctly with a huge range of hardware. You would need to research and discover third party drivers to make this hardware work correctly.
Of course, when you buy a computer with Windows pre-installed, you pay the manufacturer to go to that trouble for you. If you were to buy a computer with Linux (even Mandriva Linux, perish the thought) pre-installed, you would be doing the same.
231 • Re 227.... (by Observer on 2008-10-13 02:29:17 GMT from Australia)
>>Yes, yes, all correct, no problems with any of your points.<<
:-)
>>But I still don't see how all this makes any difference at the end of the month! It's a level playing field, and with more 100,000 visitors per day, I'd guess it all levels out in the end.<< I respectfully disagree that it all evens out at the end of the month. Though you could say that is the case between the real major distros (Fedora, OpenSuse, Debian, Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc), because the vast majority of their users don't get excited about their position on the DW PHR table and are much less likely to be re-loading those pages on a regular basis.
Also, unless you are using some other stats, your awstats log does not correspond to the above 100k for unique visitors per day. The following is what I calculated for average unique ip daily visits for 2008:
Month..........Unique visitors.......Unique IP visits per Day (Total per mth/number of days in mth)
Jan 2008.......916690.......................29,570
Feb 2008.......893128.......................30,797
Mar 2008.......961563.......................31,018
Apr 2008.......982884.......................32,762
May 2008.......998179.......................32,199
Jun 2008.......985482.......................32,849
Jul 2008.......849578.......................27,405
Aug 2008.......846084.......................27,293
Sep 2008.......858568.......................28,618
Oct 2008.......361670........................
>>Also, in all the Apache statistics I've used here, I never quoted "HITS", only percentages.<<
Yes, percentages based on "HITS" as percentage of total "HITS"! :-)
>>Anyway, it seems to me that you've made up your mind about the significance of the AWSTATS analysis, so I'll leave it at that. And from the statistical point of view, I find your arguments shaky, so I see no reason to stop using the AWSTATS as an interesting statistical tool.<<
It is always shaky ground when estimating number of users for any distro. IMHO, Unique IP users per day (though also shaky) would be a lot more accurate. You have from time to time provided some of those and they have been very revealing. This will be my last comment on this topic and since it is your business how you run this site, do as you think best!
With respect
------------
PS: Clem's comments in this week's Mint newsletter make interesting reading!
232 • Clem: "...I really want to make a real distribution out of Mint.." (by Observer on 2008-10-13 02:42:37 GMT from Australia)
Clem Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
"....I have to be fully honest with you (I like the “trop honete pour etre poli” kinda thing anyway) paying other people is going to slow me down on moving full time to working on Mint, and this is my number 1 priority (my ambition isn’t just to develop desktop tools, I really want to make a real distribution out of Mint and I need my full 37.5+/week to achieve that)...."
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=359#comment-3957
The question that begs to be asked is the following:
Is Mint NOW not a "real distribution"? :-)
Cheers
233 • Mandriva 2009 no sound by genetics73 (by Verndog on 2008-10-13 02:48:56 GMT from United States)
I'm curious why you don't go to the Mandriva forum and find a solution to the no sound problem. It might be just a simple tweak. Or is your intent to just complain.
I'm not saying your doing this, but I've noticed lately that when someone isn't happy with an OS , instead of just leaving they form a detailed letter saying how terrible that OS is and that they will never come back.
When I find an OS not to my liking I just silently go away and search elsewhere.
234 • RE: 231 (by ladislav on 2008-10-13 02:55:13 GMT from Taiwan)
your awstats log does not correspond to the above 100k for unique visitors per day
The 100,000 figure is the number of all views of the main DW page per day. It's actually closer to 120,000 on most working days, but drops to around 90,000 on weekends.
Maybe it's also worth noting that a number of unique IPs does not necessarily equal to the number of unique visitors, while several identical IPs do not necessarily equate to just one unique visitor.
Yes, the Apache web logs are not perfect, but neither is Google Trends, nor the popularity contests on Slashdot. In the end, we can only guess what people out there really use...
235 • genetics and Mandriva 2009 (by capricornus on 2008-10-13 07:14:56 GMT from Belgium)
I support genetics reporting a problem amidst a crowd of *drake-lovers (Mandriva, PClinuxOS and derivatives). No harm done, I think, I would do exactly the same, but I'd report on which kind of system I was using. I had the same thing with Ultima on a AMD64x2+2GBRAM+Gigabyte MB, I removed it yesterday. I like Sidux very much, but the 2008.3 stops installing without notice. I reported it.
Till now, I had many problems with my AMD64x2; what is running now without problems (sound, VLC, WINE,...)?: WinXPsp3-32bit | XUbuntu 8.04.1 AMD64 | Mint Elyssa AMD64 | Sidux 2008.2 AMD64 and off USB Puppy 4.1 (still not liking WINE and not listening to VLC). SUSE runs too, but installing a detail costs too much time, it offers no added value to a simple user like me. All the others cause some problem, be it with memory handling, GRUB, sound, you name it.
It should be reported here too, I think, to enrich us, not to harm each other.
236 • moderators - the stupid ones, in particular (by icebreaker on 2008-10-13 08:44:44 GMT from South Africa)
Why do some forum leaders appoint dummy mods to wreck the very reason for that forum in the first place. One of the greatest inventions in the linux world is the forum where people hang out and help each other fix problems with that distro. Or their machines, or brains. Most forums also have a fun section where all kinds of stuff can be discussed. There is that sense of camaraderie also - simply a cool place to meet your buddies.
Some mods are real cool - I mean:- how difficult can that job be - they are simple extensions of their previous persona - this time with some extra admin privileges tacked on. But no biggie to most mods - actually a lot of extra hard work, with no real benefit. Its like being a sales manager in a boiler room operation. You were simply stupid enough to take the bait.
As I referee on some, but contribute on all, even as a troll, it is always interesting to observe how folks react, and what gets their BP up. Especially as it is all done blind - like instrument flying. Believe in them. Pilots are the same. Some good, some bad.
On the one forum - nameless for now - there is a newly appointed mod, who is really totally out of his/her depth. Not that there is anything wrong with being a very young, stupid dufus, it just shows, and as nobody is showing this kid the ropes, it will manifest itself later in life, when he/she starts doing all kinds of things really badly. Much like the big banker mess we have. I mean, how difficult can it be to count the dudes money and keep it in a safe place. Or lend another dude some money to buy a house, based on his ability to pay and not the bankers perceived property value or his year end bonus?
In school, the rowdy obnoxious sloth always got censured - we didnt blow the entire class into the weeds. A zero-brain approach would be to censure the offending thread/poster and let the debate continue. That is, after all, what life's battle is all about - choice.
This is not rocket science, simple mature thinking, even in this plagiarized C&P world we live in. Is anyone else having similar problems ?
babe
237 • Cudos Martin (by Distronator on 2008-10-13 09:11:38 GMT from Germany)
Great work on the last Ultima release, Martin!
Number of Comments: 237
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