 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 290, 16 February 2009 |
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Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest story of the past week was the release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 'Lenny'. After nearly two years of continuous development and a controversial vote or two, we finally get the chance to take a quick look at the finished product - the new live media as well as the 'netinst' network installation CD. In other news, Ubuntu announces that Jaunty will ship with Linux kernel 2.6.28, Wiley publishes OpenSolaris Bible and makes three sample chapters available for free download, openSUSE's Zypper gains Bash-completion improvements, Red Hat publishes a 'State of the Union' address, the Woof project releases version 0.0.0 with support for Arch Linux, and Cuba develops their own Gentoo-based variant distribution called Nova. Also in this issue are links to two interviews - the first with Steve MacIntyre, the head of the Debian project, and the second with Scott Ritchie, an Ubuntu community developer. Happy reading!
Content:
- First looks: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 live CD and network installation
- News: Debian 'Lenny', Ubuntu 9.04 kernel updates, OpenSolaris Bible, Zypper improvements, Red Hat 'State of the Union' address, Woof 0.0.0, Nova - Cuba's national distribution
- Released last week: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0, antiX MEPIS 8, sidux 2009-01
- Upcoming releases: Frugalware Linux 1.0 RC1
- New additions: Progex
- New distributions: Debris Linux, Dotsch/UX, Nova
- Reader comments
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story |
First look at Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 live CD and network installation
Introduction
 Debian GNU/Linux is the one of the oldest surviving, independently developed Linux distribution and the grand-daddy of many others, including the ever popular Ubuntu. Each release is named after a character from the Pixar animated movie 'Toy Story', and so as it is with 'Lenny' - the pair of binoculars with feet. Debian is unique in that the project is entirely community driven and is one of the largest open source projects in the world. It is governed by two major documents, the Debian Constitution and the Social Contract, the latter being at the centre of the recent firmware debate.
Debian has a huge binary repository, consisting of four branches; stable, testing, unstable and experimental. Packages begin in experimental or unstable and make their way down once they have proven themselves suitably stable and bug-free. Only once packages are thoroughly tested do they make it into testing, which in time becomes the next stable release. Debian also includes official support for more architectures than any other Linux distro, with this latest release adding support for ARM EABI (armel), increasing the total number to eleven.
Debian is great for servers as they focus on stability and security, over features and the latest packages. That may be great for a server, but how does it fare as a desktop operating system? The problem with Debian stable in this regard is that it is very slow moving, especially when compared to other distributions. Two years between releases is a long time in the open source world, especially when purchasing new hardware which is not supported by the stable tree! This has brought about the 'and a half' release which made its début in the previous stable release, Etch. It provides support for newer hardware by way of a more recent kernel, X.Org and installer, while leaving all other packages at their current stable versions. This latest release includes the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10, GNOME 2.22.2, Xfce 4.4.2, new lightweight desktop environment LXDE 0.3.2.1, X.Org 7.3, and OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, many of which are already dated.
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 default GNOME desktop
(full image size: 318kB, screen resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Debian is famous for not releasing on time, preferring to instead "release when it's ready". Given what Debian sets out to achieve though, this philosophy does not come as a surprise. How can one release a new stable product which has not been thoroughly tested!? As we have seen with the release of Lenny, internal political issues can also hinder the release of the stable version. So, it was with relief to a great many that Lenny finally made it out the door over the weekend. I took this opportunity to see what Lenny had to offer in the way of a desktop. As previously mentioned, Debian's release cycle is much slower than that of Ubuntu, which pushes out a new version every six months. As such, Ubuntu also includes more up-to-date software and has more liberal support for binary drivers and other non-free software, as well as including numerous scripts and automated enhancements. So what does Debian have to offer?
The first images I downloaded were the GNOME and KDE live CDs. Unlike many other distros, the Debian CD appears rather basic as it boots up. There is no fancy splash screen or progress bar, just the default terminal resolution and the usual text passing by. Apart from a little artwork, the Debian environments appear to be fairly standard. They all load straight into the desktop as 'user' and you're ready to begin! The first thing that struck me was how complete this live CD was, probably the most complete I have ever seen. For a start, it included OpenOffice.org, something that is rarely on a live CD these days due to its size. The KDE version also had a few GTK+ applications, including Iceweasel (Debian's browser built from Firefox) and the GIMP. One thing that annoys me in distributed GNOME environments is the default view setting in the file manager Nautilus, which opens everything in a new window.
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 KDE desktop
(full image size: 476kB, screen resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
The environments come with the Synaptic graphical package management tool, including a system updater. Under GNOME, plugging in my media player caused Rythmbox to start up and my music was available, but I was unable to play it. To my surprise, the same MP3 file played out of the box in Totem. The GStreamer plugins appear to have been installed by default, so other proprietary codecs may also be supported out of the box. Unlike Ubuntu, there are no graphical single-click helpers for installing proprietary software and drivers. Debian does however have a great tool called 'module-assistant' which automates much of the task of building external kernel modules. Installing 'fglrx-driver' downloaded the required packages for my video card, including module-assistant and the development build tools and libraries. Once I had this installed I ran the required module-assistant command:
sudo m-a prepare && sudo m-a autoinstall fglrx
This downloaded the kernel headers, built the module and installed it. Next I had to prepare the X Server configuration file and load the module:
sudo aticonfig --initial && sudo modprobe fglrx
Restarting the X server all worked as expected and after installing 'compiz' and 'fusion-icon', I could test out a 3D desktop, which worked well.
Installer
For a long time Debian had the reputation of being a hard-to-install, hard-to-use distro. It's true that the default installer is console-based, but there is also a graphical installer available (although it's not the default). To test the installer, I downloaded the network install image, which includes a base system on the CD and downloads the rest of the environment via the Internet. The installer is a simple GTK+ front end to their console installer, but it looks quite nice. There is the option for an 'expert mode' for users who want a little more control (such as the ability to install from FTP mirrors). It would be great to see it include a summary of steps on the left hand side, to give the user some feedback on the overall process. The network I was installing on has a proxy which blocks unauthenticated traffic, which caused lengthy delays when refreshing the repositories.
One of the coolest features of the Debian installer is the ability to take screenshots. Simply click the 'Screenshot' button and they are saved on the virtual environment. Pretty neat! The partitioner is not the most user friendly out there, but once you understand how it works, it does the job well. You have to double click on each partition to edit it and complete each task in the panel above, or select an entry and hit the 'Continue' button down the bottom. It does however present the option to automatically partition the drives in a guided manner and also offers LVM and encryption. In expert mode, the installer asks whether you want the initial RAM disk to support all available drivers, or just those needed for this system. It's a nice new feature to help create a more customised system.
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 install partitioner
(full image size: 318kB, screen resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
Once the base system is installed and configured, the installer prompts for a password for the root account and also to set up a local user. It does not check the provided passwords for complexity, which would be a good feature to add. Expert mode asks whether the root account should be enabled at all. If it is not, then root commands are performed via the 'sudo' command, similar to the default configuration under Ubuntu. One little gripe about the installer is the inability to abort easily. One has to hit the back button to get to the initially hidden step menu, select 'Abort the installation' then hit 'Continue'. All in all, the installer is rather simple, but it works very well.
Conclusion
Debian is simple, yet it has very powerful tools for building packages and configuring the system. It is a very stable distribution as it is not overly interested in lots of shiny new features, but rather concentrates on creating an environment that is reliable. For users who want the latest fancy desktop, Debian doesn't provide this out of the box in their stable tree. For this reason, the majority of users run testing or unstable on their desktop, or a combination thereof. This provides them with newer packages, at the cost of supreme stability. Out of the box, Lenny includes all the software that most users would want, with tens of thousands more available at the click of a mouse, or tap on the keyboard. For low-end systems, the new LXDE environment appears to work well, using around 130MB RAM on my test machine. For experienced Ubuntu users, Debian may also be a good fit as it does not automate as much and provides greater control over the system from the get go.
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 LXDE desktop
(full image size: 679kB, screen resolution: 1680x1050 pixels)
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| Miscellaneous News |
Debian 'Lenny', Ubuntu 9.04 kernel updates, OpenSolaris Bible, Zypper improvements, Red Hat 'State of the Union' address, Woof 0.0.0, Nova - Cuba's national distribution
We're never quite sure whether it's going to happen on time, but happen it did! As recently re-scheduled, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 'Lenny' was finally released - not quite on St. Valentine's day (unless you live in Samoa), but not too late for a good weekend party. The release was followed by several interesting announcement, including one by Marc Brockschmidt explaining the new numbering scheme for point releases (formerly revisions): "We would also like to point out that the numbering scheme for Debian releases has been changed - point releases now use a true micro version number, so the first point release will be 5.0.1 instead of 5.0r1. The minor release number will be used for efforts such as Lenny and a half." With the stable release of 'Lenny', the testing branch has now been renamed to Squeeze, which will also be the code name of the next stable Debian release.
Before Debian 5.0 Lenny actually made it out the door, Computer World UK posted an interview with the head of the project, Steve MacIntyre. Steve discusses the release of Lenny and what users can expect: "It's the focus of lots of the work we've been doing for the last two years or so, with many new and updated versions of everybody's favourite packages," he writes. "Many members of our community are happy to run from our testing and unstable branches," he continues, "but the stable releases are very important to the rest where they trust us to just make things work and keep them working." They also discuss the upcoming Debian conference in Spain and what's in store for the coming year - more discussion on non-free firmware!
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 Recently on the Ubuntu kernel mailing list, developer Tim Gardner put to rest the rumour that the upcoming release of Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty Jackalope' may ship with the 2.6.29 kernel, expected to be available before the time of release: "Jaunty will absolutely, positively, and without a doubt, release with a 2.6.28 kernel. Is that clear enough to dispel all rumors?" It was a fair enough question, though, as the release of 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex' went the other way, shipping the latest kernel at the time. You may remember that version 8.04 'Hardy Heron', a Long-Term Support release, shipped with a beta version of the Firefox web browser, while 'Intrepid Ibex' released OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, rather than the newer 3.0 version.
Ubuntu focused technology website, 'Works With U', has published an interview with Scott Ritchie, a community developer who packages the Wine application, which allows some Windows software to run under Linux. So what's in store? "For 'Jaunty' (codename for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04), it will become very easy to install and launch Wine applications for a first-time user without any prior instruction - just double clicking the executable will guide you through it much like how codecs are installed." His biggest piece of advice for users is to "avoid using the latest Wine unless something is broken or you want to help us beta test. People are often frustrated by Wine regressions, but you'll never encounter them if you just use the working installation you have."
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  On the documentation side of the news, The Observatory is reporting about the availability of several free chapters from the just published OpenSolaris Bible, the first-ever book on Sun Microsystems' open-source operating system. These include the excellent 'OpenSolaris Crash Course' and a useful section on ZFS, Sun Microsystems' much-envied file system. All 16 pages from the first introductory chapter are also available. The book may be purchased from Amazon.com (US$31.49), so if you're interested in OpenSolaris, this is a great way to get a take of what the book holds, for free! Currently this is the only OpenSolaris reference book available, but on the horizon sits Pro OpenSolaris, a book expected to be published by Apress in late April. You can download the three free chapters from here:
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 In the middle of last year, we featured an article on Zypper, the package manager developed by openSUSE. While it is very fast and powerful, this doesn't mean that there is nothing left to improve! This week, openSUSE developer, Josef Reidinger, announced improved Bash completion support, which allows you to auto-complete options and commands for Zypper. He writes that as he has had some spare time, so he used it to add support for global options and short versions of commands, as well as help for names of repositories, services and locks. He confirms that his changes will be available in the upcoming 11.2 release, but those running 11.1 will need to download the script themselves.
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 Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO of Red Hat, recently published a 'State of the Union' address. He writes: "Red Hat's accomplishments help us better serve our customers and reflect the tremendous work of our associates. In addition, significant events in the external environment helped shape our business environment and influence our work and lives." Whitehurst then discusses some of the highlights over the past year since his appointment as CEO, covering Red Hat during tough economic times, recent company acquisitions, Fedora and the community, wins in the patent field and finishes up with that quote from Gandhi on fighting the good fight.
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 In last week's DistroWatch Weekly, we brought news of a new project called Woof, by Puppy Linux creator Barry Kauler. His new project is essentially a set of scripts which allows end users to build their own Puppy-like operating system by pulling packages from various other distributions. This week Kauler announced the release of Woof version 0.0.0, and then more recently, an alpha release. He also announced support for Arch Linux: "I have just done a test build, the desktop comes up, sound works, looks OK." The project is starting to gain interest among the community and Barry insists that he's still having fun.
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The last big news story of the week is the announcement that Cuba has launched their very own Linux distribution named Nova. The distribution is based on the popular source-based distribution, Gentoo Linux, which by its nature is extremely flexible and makes building a binary distribution relatively easy. Motivation for the distribution appears to be mostly centred around 'technological independence': "The Cuban variant, called Nova, was introduced at a Havana computer conference on 'technological sovereignty' and is central to the Cuban government's desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island's computers. According to Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at Cuba's University of Information Sciences, about 20 percent of computers in Cuba, where computer sales to the public began only last year, are currently using Linux." Hopefully the development of this distribution will also allow improvements to feed back into the Gentoo project, as well as the open source community at large.
Nova 1.1.2 - a new Cuban distribution based on Gentoo Linux
(full image size: 465kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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| Released Last Week |
antiX MEPIS 8
antiX MEPIS 8, a lightweight edition of the upcoming SimplyMEPIS 8.0, has been released: "The antiX team is proud to announce that antiX MEPIS 8 - a fast and light complete desktop and live CD based on SimplyMEPIS and Debian Testing, with a little bit of sidux - is now available at MEPIS mirrors. This release defaults to a fully customised IceWM desktop (Fluxbox is also installed). In addition to the SimplyMEPIS 8.0 foundation with its 2.6.27 kernel and assistants, antiX has an improved antiX Control Centre, new scripts for screenshots, and phonebook. There are improved and extended themes and artwork for IceWM and Fluxbox. Localisation is much improved in this version. As well as including usual applications such as Iceweasel 3.0.6, Pidgin 2.4, AbiWord 2.6.4 and Gnumeric 1.8.3, antiX 8 also includes the sidux meta-installer, an updated ceni and wicd for wired and wireless connections, UMTSmon - a simple connect program for users using 3G USB modems...." Read the rest of the release announcement and release notes for further information.
antiX MEPIS 8 - a lightweight desktop distribution with IceWM
(full image size: 736kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
trixbox 2.6.2.2
Andrew Gillis has announced the release of trixbox 2.6.2.2, a CentOS-based distribution featuring the popular, open-source PBX and telephony platform called Asterisk: "I just released trixbox 2.6.2.2. This is a roll-up release with a bunch of bug fixes and the latest version of all our packages. All trixbox users are recommended to upgrade to this release. This release resolves the problems with the package manager not working and some PSTN cards causing kernel panic when the system is rebooted. There are also a number of small GUI fixes and enhancements. I also added support for some of the new Realtek network chipsets that are not supported by CentOS 5.2. For existing systems please do a yum update from command line: 'yum update trixbox'; this will get the fixes to the GUI and the package manager. You can also update ZapTel to get the kernel panic fix." Here is the brief release announcement.
Parted Magic 3.6
Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 3.6, a live CD featuring a collection of hard disk management utilities: "Parted Magic 3.6. This release offers a major overhaul in the way Parted Magic boots and behaves. The 'Live' option is back and Parted Magic runs on a machine with 128 MB of RAM. There is also a 'low memory' option that disables unnecessary daemons to speed up systems that only require trivial tasks, like running GParted. The 'Live' option was tested on a PII with 128 MB of RAM. There is a new way to mount devices too, mount-gtk creates a consistent interface to mount file systems found in fstab created by the pmagic_fstab_daemon. Last but not least, the updated package list: GParted 0.4.3, Linux kernel 2.6.28.5, e2fsprogs 1.41.4, NTFS-3G 2009.2.1." See the full release announcement for more details.
ArtistX 0.6
Marco Ghirlanda has announced the release of ArtistX 0.6, an Ubuntu-based distribution with 2,500 free multimedia programs for 2D/3D graphics manipulation, video editing and media playback: "ArtistX 0.6 is based on the great Remastersys software for creating live CDs and includes the 2.6.27 Linux kernel, GNOME 2.24 and KDE 4.1.3, Compiz Fusion and about 2,500 free multimedia software packages, nearly everything that exists for the GNU/Linux operating system. Main features: based on Ubuntu 8.10, Ubiquity installer (tried in VirtualBox, please back up your data as this is the first version shipped with ArtistX). A partial list of software included in the DVD: 2D graphics software: GIMP, Inkscape, Nip2, Krita, CinePaint, Synfig, Rawstudio, Skencil, Hugin; 3D graphics software: Blender, Wings3D, KPovModeler + POV-Ray 3.6, K3D; video software: Cinelerra, Kino, Open Movie Editor, Kdenlive, PiTiVi, Avidemux, DeVeDe...." Visit the distribution's home page to read the release announcement.
ArtistX 0.6 - an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a large collection of multimedia software
(full image size: 855kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
sidux 2009-01
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann has announced the release of sidux 2009-01, a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's unstable branch: "A little earlier than originally planned, we now have the pleasure to announce the availability of sidux 2009-01, shipping with kernel 2.6.28.6-rc1. It concentrates on integrating the changes caused by kernel 2.6.28, stabilising the init optimisations accomplished by insserv, and in particular improving the reliability of the installer and the USB installers. Kernel 2.6.28 doesn't only improve and stabilise hardware support for newer devices, it also adapts the I/O scheduler support for SSDs in order to improve prioritisation of disk access and to speed these up. Another major accomplishment is the deployment of the open-source OpenFWWF firmware for Broadcom wireless devices." Read the detailed release notes for further information.
sidux 2009-01 - a desktop distribution based on the latest Debian "sid" branch
(full image size: 861kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
Big day for the Debian fans - Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" has been released: "The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (code-named 'Lenny') after 22 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10, an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7...." See the release announcement and release notes for a detailed description of the release.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Debris Linux. Debris Linux is a minimalist, desktop-oriented distribution based on Ubuntu.
- Dotsch/UX. Dotsch/UX a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Linux. The purpose of the project is to create a Linux distribution for BOINC, which easily installs and boots from a USB stick, hard disk and diskless clients, and also has some interfaces to set up the diskless server and clients automatically.
- Nova. Nova is a Cuban, easy-to-use, desktop Linux distribution based on Gentoo Linux and incorporating technologies from Ututo and Sabayon Linux projects.
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DistroWatch database summary
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And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 23 February 2009.
Chris Smart
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • No subject (by Sokraates on 2009-02-16 10:12:41 GMT from Austria)
Debian 5.0, Sidux 2009.1 ... what a great week. :)
Regarding Ubuntu Jaunty and the kernel: 2.6.29 won't ship by default but you will be able to install it easily. Details here: http://blog.redvoodoo.org/2009/02/jaunty-kernel-bits.html
The important part:
"Vanilla Kernel Builds
Starting with Alpha 5 we will have available .deb packaged pure upstream vanilla kernels available.
The primary intent for doing this is to allow our community to test kernels without the Ubuntu "sauce", that is things that we add to the kernel to support the Ubuntu distribution. The goal is to help get wider testing of the upstream kernel source by leveraging interesting Ubuntu Community members.
In addition to Jaunty we are doing this for Hardy, Intrepid and the current active kernel development branch. The planned update schedule for each of these is:
* Hardy, Intrepid - Upon a stable upstream point release i.e. 2.6.27.3
* Jaunty - Every RC until release final is declared. Then it will fall into the same cycle as Hardy & Intrepid
* Current active devel branch - Currently 2.6.29 updated on every RC release
The plan is to have them available in the Ubuntu-Kernel-Team PPA, until them you can find them at: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~apw"
2 • No subject (by Jesper Sandström on 2009-02-16 10:20:10 GMT from Sweden)
"...in Cuba, where computer sales to the public began only last year..." Oh the lovely "freedom", "superiority" e.t.c e.t.c of totalitarian socialism.
Nice to see Debian out, sidux looks great as well :)
3 • Sidux (by M1k on 2009-02-16 10:31:12 GMT from Italy)
Beautifull distro!
4 • Cuba... (by forest on 2009-02-16 10:55:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was intrigued by the statement that Cubans wants "technological independence"...so their nation opts for a "community" based OS. And there I was...under the impression Linux was supposed to bring us all together, away from the spectre of capitalism.
Now, if they had said simply they wanted less to do with MS, as do we all...
5 • debian (by tuxesp1 on 2009-02-16 11:01:30 GMT from Italy)
finaly your are there.would like to thank to all the team for the great job done.viva linux,
viva the freedom of choice,
viva fsf
6 • Congratulations for Debian Team (by Daniel Mery on 2009-02-16 11:24:52 GMT from Italy)
Hi everybody,
Good job...... Lenny 5 was released.....
Congratulations for the Debiuan Team.
have fun
dmery
7 • Nova and Sabayon partnership/technologies (by Fabio Erculiani on 2009-02-16 12:11:13 GMT from Italy)
Just for the sake of completion:
http://planet.sabayonlinux.org/?p=225
8 • OpenSolaris Bible links (by J on 2009-02-16 12:16:32 GMT from Australia)
Just pointing out an error-
The link for "Chapter 8 - ZFS" is linking to "Chapter 1 - What is OpenSolaris"
No biggie, just thought you'd like to know.
Hi Mum!
9 • Debian Bugs (by SR on 2009-02-16 12:17:12 GMT from United States)
120 release critical bugs for Lenny is simply, categorcially untrue. A little better fact checking would dispel this.
10 • Where did you find the live Debian CD? (by DWW Reader on 2009-02-16 12:21:44 GMT from United States)
Did you use the Live CD from the Debian Live project, or something from the actual Debian team?
11 • RE: 10 Where did you find the live Debian CD? (by ladislav on 2009-02-16 12:23:57 GMT from Taiwan)
Here: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.0-live/
12 • Debian Live Installer? (by Rahim on 2009-02-16 12:40:52 GMT from Ecuador)
Hi, does anyone know if the official Debian live CD has the installer enabled too?
13 • suggestion for next donation (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 12:43:06 GMT from Canada)
avidemux (http://www.avidemux.org) : a great program designed for multi-purpose video editing and processing
14 • sidux, Cuba... (by ceti on 2009-02-16 12:47:05 GMT from Brazil)
1 - sidux rules!!!!
2 - Actually, the Cuba distro, Nova, is based on Sabayon raher than it's grandfather Gentoo.
15 • RE: 13 suggestion for next donation (by ladislav on 2009-02-16 13:06:36 GMT from Taiwan)
Guys, I appreciate all suggestions for a donation, but also please always include the link to the project's donations page. Because if it doesn't have one, your suggestion is a waste of time and space.
16 • Debian Lenny 5.0.0 (by Alexandru on 2009-02-16 13:50:45 GMT from Germany)
Hi,
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DEBIAN HISTORY its release version has the sum of the major and minor number > 4:
Buzz 1.1 (1 + 1 = 2 < 4),
Rex 1.2 (1 + 2 = 3 < 4),
Bo 1.3 (1 + 3 = 4),
Hamm 2.0 (2 + 0 = 2 < 4),
Slink 2.1 (2 + 1 = 3 < 4),
Potato 2.2 (2 + 2 = 4),
Woody 3.0 (3 + 0 = 3 < 4),
Sarge 3.1 (3 + 1 = 4),
Etch 4.0 (4 + 0 = 4),
Lenny 5.0 (5 + 0 = 5 > 4)
Did you remark this?
17 • Great work on newsletter! (by Jeff on 2009-02-16 13:51:54 GMT from United States)
I am a long time reader of Distrowatch. It is a daily must read. I was concerned about the changes with the newsletter recently. However, the newsletter has retained its high quality level. You are doing a great job! Thank you!
18 • No subject (by Steve on 2009-02-16 14:10:12 GMT from United States)
You mention "we finally get the chance to take a quick look at the finished product - the new live media as well as the 'netinst' network installation CD"; however, I don't see anything regarding the 'netinst'.
This is the first distribution that didn't start after installation. After installation I got a message "Loading, please wait...".
Back to Ubuntu. Their 'netinst' minimal installation works like a charm!
19 • Nova Linux (by Cameron on 2009-02-16 14:15:04 GMT from United States)
Thank you for your kind words on NovaLinux - It's a project that has excited all of us over at the Sabayon Linux team. However, you said it was gentoo based which is partially true, as Sabayon is Gentoo based as well. Nova happens to use the alternate binary package manager Entropy, and happens to feature that in it's video, which would make NovaLinux based on Sabayon.
20 • Lenny & Nova (by Sam on 2009-02-16 14:40:16 GMT from United States)
I'm finding Fedora 10 to be a just about perfect distro for my needs (it received major kudos from me when, at a recent conference, I connected my Thinkpad R61i to the proxima projector, set the desktop resolution for the projector, then found out I was not presenting first. So I quickly closed the laptop into suspend without thinking to disconnect the Proxima, a process that, in the past, would have been having to reboot openSuSE and Ubuntu. Not so with Fedora - it came out of suspend and and projected perfectly.) However, I am downloading the Lenny live CD (Debian? A live cd???) to try out.
So Nova is based directly on Sabayon, not Gentoo? Does this mean Sabayon mixed with a little bit of Cuban nationalism becomes explosive? :)
21 • Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 'Lenny' (by My Linux Page on 2009-02-16 14:50:58 GMT from United States)
Congratulations to the team of Debian for there two years of continuous development. Looking forward to testing there new Operating System. Once again Congratulations!
22 • Number of architectures and little remark (by Raphael Frey on 2009-02-16 15:11:03 GMT from Switzerland)
“Debian also includes official support for more architectures than any other Linux distro, with this latest release adding support for ARM EABI (armel), increasing the total number to eleven.”
Debian does not just support eleven architectures – adding IA-64 (ia64), it now supports twelve architectures. See also on http://debian.org/News/2009/20090214.en.html: “A total of twelve architectures are supported.”
“The problem with Debian stable in this regard is that it is very slow moving, especially when compared to other distributions.”
I do not agree with you in this point – this slow moving perhaps is a discrepance to the free software philosophy, but it is not a problem! The result of this quality control system is the most stable distribution, which means that with Debian you can USE your computer – you do not have to worry about bugs or get angry about applications that do not work as they should. So kudos to the Debian developers and thank you very much for this exciting distribution!
23 • Well done (by Nobody important on 2009-02-16 15:19:53 GMT from United States)
Not only to the Debian team for yet another stunning release, but to the Distrowatch writer(s) for a fact-filled, well written piece. A happy day for Linux fans!
24 • Great work debian (by Rohan Dhruva on 2009-02-16 15:24:20 GMT from India)
Hi,
Nice DWW. Congratulations to the debian team!
I noticed a spelling error - They all load strait into the desktop as 'user' --> it should be "straight" in place of "strait".
Thanks and keep up the great work!!
25 • Debris Linux (by Bobby Hunter on 2009-02-16 15:45:14 GMT from United States)
WooHoo !!!! My favorite distro is finally on the waiting list !
Debris Linux
http://www.debrislinux.org
* ubuntu based
* under 200 MB
* smallest gnome distro available
* gnome desktop is preconfigured to use a single panel instead of two
* NOT infected with mono
* uses 16 bit color (helps it run better on older computers)
* no compiz (but you can get it from the repo)
26 • @ 25: (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 16:06:52 GMT from Italy)
"NOT infected with mono"
Let's go on with this zealot stuff and keep Linux something veeeeeeery far from the big distribution!
27 • Good DWW (by Tervel on 2009-02-16 16:21:53 GMT from Austria)
Great read, thank you Chris and Ladislav!
28 • Nova linux home (by Great Bustard on 2009-02-16 16:25:11 GMT from Canada)
There are no links in the Reuters article to any Nova Linux website. It mentions the Faculty of Free Software at the University of Information Sciences in Cuba: La Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas. (Maybe a better translation would be University of Computing Sciences.)
Their website is: http://www.uci.cu.
The only mention I could find there of Nova Linux was this article: http://www.uci.cu/?q=node/361
I guess distribution would probably be through CD rather than download.
29 • Debian time (by Sergio on 2009-02-16 16:49:54 GMT from Mexico)
Great Debian news.... new versions of MEPIS antiX, Sidux and Debian Lenny have been released!.
I've used Etch since it went stable 2 years ago for my home server and it has worked rock solid. It will be some months until I jump into Lenny, but I'm positively sure that it will have the same great quality.
30 • debian (by gene on 2009-02-16 18:51:27 GMT from United States)
I tried to install debian twice in 2 different vm's on 2 different machines. both failed. I'm not sure the reviewer did a through job of reviewing the new debian installer.
31 • Debian 5 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 19:14:50 GMT from Germany)
Very nice to see that Debian has successfully made a new stable release.
I use Debian as a mixed testing/unstable desktop system (with testing marked as the "default-release" in /etc/apt/apt.conf). For myself, getting the stable Debian release out means mainly that testing and unstable start receiving more up-to-date packages, but I know there are many organizations and individual people who prefer to use the thoroughly tested stable version of Debian for their servers or production desktops.
And the bug-squashing that Debian developers do when they prepare the stable release fixes also many long-existing bugs in unstable, improving not only Debian itself but also the other distributions that are based on Debian. And the many patches that Debian developers send upstream help also the larger free software community.
So congratulations to all Debian developers for a job well done!
32 • @#25,26 Mono (by yelamdenu on 2009-02-16 19:26:52 GMT from Netherlands)
Don't be so childish. There is nothing wrong with Mono from any perspective.
It is perfectly free libre open source software. If you don't need it, don't use it.
This is actually a "NIH" complex: Not Invented Here - this is a mindset in which a technology is "bad" because the "wrong" people invented it or came up with the idea. Completely ludicrous - code is to be judged on its merits. If it's clean, efficient, well-maintained code, there's nothing wrong with it. Not that you'd have to use anything you don't want to use. But do you refuse to play Flash video's? There you have a perfectly closed, proprietary piece of software.
Some Mono-based applications are quite nice, for instance Tomboy, simple example.
Please don't check it out if you hate Mono because G-d forbid that you're ever gonna like it. ;-)
33 • Nova (by click here on 2009-02-16 19:34:19 GMT from United States)
for the page with the iso image for Cuba's Nova Linux.
34 • RE: 26, Whats wrong with that? Just an opinion. (by Eddie Wilson on 2009-02-16 19:36:13 GMT from United States)
@26- Even though many people use Mono and have no problem with it there are several people who do not want it and they look upon it as an infection form MS that is not necessary. That really don't make them zealots, its just a difference of opinions. Enough of that. On to better things.
Congrats to the Debian team for a fine job. I'm sure we will all benefit from their efforts and I look forward to giving it a spin.
35 • Re: Debian (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 19:38:52 GMT from United States)
There is nothing wrong with Debian's installer. I've installed on several machines both old and new with the text and graphical installer and had zero problems.
Maybe your VM??
36 • Progex (by Moe at 2009-02-16 20:41:34 GMT from United States)
I've recently re-installed Progex after having flirted with several other distros. It's one smooth distro that enjoys a simplicity that is compelling to someone who at times just wants to get to work while leaving all of the pain to someone else. So "Thank You!" Progex developers for bearing the pain so I can get some work done.
One more thing I am running the VMware 2.80 version as bundled by Bagside/BagVapp. Those folks have made experimenting with different distros a sheer pleasure.
37 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 21:16:00 GMT from Canada)
OK, this is offtopic but it's breaking news. RedHat signed an interoperability deal with Microsoft. http://blogs.computerworld.com/red_hat_microsoft_partner_up
No IP patents deal though which is really great. RedHat has shown that it is the true leader of Linux. Forget Novell.
38 • Re: 30 (by geezer on 2009-02-16 21:20:47 GMT from Finland)
"I tried to install debian twice in 2 different vm's on 2 different machines. both failed. I'm not sure the reviewer did a through job of reviewing the new debian installer."
I'm writing this from a newly installed Debian Lenny system with a fully functioning Gnome desktop, and I used the netinst version of the Debian installer. It works perfectly. The installer configured my dhcp net connection automatically and I really experienced no problems whatsoever.
The partitioning section of the installer is practically the only part where the user can make mistakes. But if the user always follows the default choices (use the whole hard drive, install Grub into the MBR, and so on), then installing Debian Lenny is really a no-brainer.
39 • red hat signs with MS (by smasher on 2009-02-16 21:28:34 GMT from Australia)
I have read news that says Red Hat has signed a deal with MS like SuSe did But let me guess someone will come out with a boycott Red Hat site now
40 • post39 (by Jerry on 2009-02-16 21:53:00 GMT from United States)
Thank for the link.
41 • debian (by gene on 2009-02-16 22:17:59 GMT from United States)
@geezer
the install failure failed at the same exact point in both VM's, the setup application portion(this is where the netinstall retrieves the applications and installs), right before the install of grub. please don't suggest to users that they should not choose other options that are offered which might not be default. if you should not change the default choices, then they should not be offered in the first place. I choose the separate home partition in both installs and others were default. regardless, it was a failed install in both VMWare and SUNVBox using netinst version. I'm glad you did not have an issue, however I am pointing out that readers should be prepared, for issues as I only changed one default from full partition to separate partition for the home directory, nothing even remotely suspicious and there is nothing mentioned in this review about install problems. you yourself even suggest that users should not try to tweak it for their personal use which strongly suggests that debian is not stable.
42 • re 41 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 22:25:15 GMT from Canada)
gene wrote: which strongly suggests that debian is not stable
What? Debian not stable? Blasphemy!!!
43 • Lenny (by ZBREAKER on 2009-02-16 22:39:34 GMT from United States)
I've been using Lenny for some time now since beta...not a lick of trouble for me.
Congrats to the team on a truly outstanding distro. Just today, I purchased a new HP Photosmart printer...connected it...fired up Lenny...and there it was..configured and ready to use!
44 • gene's vm debian issue (by dj on 2009-02-16 23:04:03 GMT from United States)
What was the nature of your failure?
45 • RE: 41 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-16 23:09:18 GMT from Canada)
Obvious troll is obvious.
Great week for free software! Thanks for the coverage.
46 • Regarding OpenOffice.org (by Draca on 2009-02-16 23:43:42 GMT from United States)
Does anybody know why Debian Lenny was released with OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 instead of 3.0 or 3.0.1?
47 • gene (by valves on 2009-02-16 23:48:15 GMT from Portugal)
gene, maybe your physical support (usb/cd/dvd) has problems, or maybe some piece of hardware (like net card or something). With debian 4.0, I had many troubles with acpi, for example, I had to pass a kernel argument "acpi=off" (or something like that, I don't remember). Well, I'm not a Linux geek and my english is very bad... but I really like debian, and lenny is very nice for me.
48 • Re: #39 -- Not Likely (by Draca on 2009-02-17 00:01:37 GMT from United States)
The deal between Red Hat and Microsoft is nothing like the deal between Microsoft and Novell/SuSE. Red Hat does not acknowledge Microsoft's claim that Linux violates Microsoft's patents; no money changed hands; and both companies were reluctant to do this agreement in the first place. The only reason that they did it is that their own customers demanded it.
Because it is not the same kind of deal as between Microsoft and Novell/SuSE, I think that it is unlikely that somebody will start a boycott Red Hat Web site.
49 • Virtual installs (by Romane on 2009-02-17 00:10:32 GMT from Australia)
Interesting. Lenny failed for people trying it in a virtual machine. Vista fails for me in a virtual machine (don't you love that blue screen of death?), but runs perfectly otherwise. Most systems - Microsoft or Linux - I try to run in a virtual machine have had failures of one degree or another while they run just fine outside of the virtual machine. Have just discovered kvm-qemu, which seem considerably better, but... Got a complaint with it not working in a virtual machine? Try it outside the virtual machine before condemning the baby because the bathwater came out of the tap dirty.
50 • Re: 41 (by geezer on 2009-02-17 00:11:51 GMT from Finland)
"you yourself even suggest that users should not try to tweak it for their personal use"
No. I was merely suggesting that the partitioning section of the installer is the most likely place where the user can make a mistake that causes the install to fail. If you choose the default partitioning option (let Debian take over the whole hard drive), then you can be relatively sure that the install doesn't fail because of a user-introduced mistake.
But if you choose to set up your own custom partitioning scheme, then you should be extra careful making sure that all the partitions (mount points and formatting options) are correctly set before you proceed to download and install packages. The installer would obviously have problems trying to install packages onto partitions that are not properly set up.
I'm not saying that you have actually made a mistake in setting up the partitions. I'm just suggesting that this is a possibility you might like to consider before saying that the Debian installer fails to do its job. IMHO, the partitioning section of the installer can be a bit confusing if you've never used it before.
51 • Debian release version numbers (by Richard on 2009-02-17 00:36:01 GMT from Canada)
Hey Alexandru.
There was debian gnu/linux 0.93r6 which was in 'common' use at one time. You may have to qualify that the version be >= 1.0
52 • Debian (by Pumpino on 2009-02-17 01:40:09 GMT from Australia)
It's great that Lenny has been released. As another poster commented, I'm glad mainly because unstable and testing will once again receive updates.
While Debian is touted as being rock solid, I've used other, more up to date distros (such as Fedora and Ubuntu) and found them to be just as stable, so I question how appealing Lenny is to any setting other than servers. *ducks*
53 • Fight the Good Fight (by Woodstock69 on 2009-02-17 01:41:39 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
Another small but hugely significant correction. Ghandi did NOT say to "fight the good fight". The quote comes from Timothy 6:12, and is in reference to Paul's struggles in, and commitment to, his Christian life.
"Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses."
Can't say that I've had that much of a religious experience using Red Hat, except when something doesn't work, so at least they can attribute and use the quote correctly.
I'll get off my soap box now....
54 • debian (by digger on 2009-02-17 02:07:04 GMT from United States)
Hurrah Debian!
@12 No installer on live cd that I saw. IMHO net-inst is the optimum anyway. YMMV.
@gene (30 and 41). The net-inst.isos have worked for me since before Sarge was released. A while back, I had a Lenny net-inst on VirtualBox (on a Sidux 64-bit linux install), and had no problems. Loaded yesterday's release last night on hardware. No problem. Sometimes iso's burned at the maximum speed don't function correctly ... this has happened to me. You may wish to try burning the iso at the minimum supported speed, and see if that works. Oh, and I've only used the text-based installer, not the graphic installer, which is still fairly new, IIRC.
55 • Sidux and Lenny (by RuralRob on 2009-02-17 02:09:29 GMT from United States)
Sidux 2009.1 and Debian Lenny were release at almost exactly the same time, so I ended up downloading the AMD64 versions of both, with the intention of trying the more cutting-edge Sidux first and Lenny reserved as a backup if I encountered problems. But so far, Sidux 2009.1 rocks! It's the first 64-bit Linux I've tried where everything "just works", including WoW under Wine, VMware Workstation (didn't even need to compile the VM kernel modules), and the Flash plugin.
56 • Sidux (by digger on 2009-02-17 02:16:06 GMT from United States)
Hurrah! Love that Sidux. Using it on my main desktop and lappy.
57 • Sidux (by Pumpino on 2009-02-17 05:59:11 GMT from Australia)
Be careful with sidux in the near future. A stack of packages will be allowed into unstable, including KDE 4.2, so things may break! I suspect they released 2009.1 just prior to Lenny being released so that the 2009.1 ISO doesn't include all these new packages (and potentially cause issues).
58 • debian (by gene on 2009-02-17 06:55:21 GMT from United States)
Guys, comon, I'm just commenting that I had the Debian 5 live netinst fail on TWO different VM's running on TWO different machines. Its not my hardware. the failure occurs at exactly the same place, AFTER all the applications have been fetched and cached for install, and about 10 minutes into installing them. This is something Debian HQ could have tested.
My commentary was to this review, it made it sound like things were peachy keen with Debian 5.0, someone even commented that you should NOT change the defaults for fear of failures or problems.......(implying it was my fault or failure ?)
These are my thoughts, until you can install a distro flawlessly into a controllable environment like a VM, it should not be released. until you can change the defaults to suit your own taste, you should not call a distro stable.
I've not had this problem with the other FIVE (5) debian based distros I have run or do run now. ALL I'm saying is that it failed in a controllable environment. I don't believe that can be overlooked.
And for everyone who got it installed and up and running without problems...I'm jealous, I had really wanted to try this one out.
59 • Debian review (by Hans on 2009-02-17 07:30:31 GMT from Sweden)
A good desktop system needs to work flawlessly and not break in minor or major ways every 6 months, like in distros with a less thorough quality control and faster release schedule.
I've used debian stable professionally as a desktop in various HUGE windows- or macdominated networks since 1999. During this time, I've also tested all of the major and more cutting edge distros. When it comes down to it, imo there is no real substitute for the debian desktop in a professional environment where stability, maintenance time and application choice is key.
Thank you (again) debian.
60 • @58 (by SR on 2009-02-17 07:33:42 GMT from United States)
Have now installed it on 3 machines using my netinst, plus running it in virtualbox on my wife's lappy.
Perhaps, maybe, the problem could be on your end and not the distro?
Ya think?
61 • Debian Lenny released (by Gigi on 2009-02-17 07:33:42 GMT from India)
Debian5 Released
---------------------------
The desktop at my parent's place has been running Debian Lenny for about 18 months now. I installed Etch on the machine and did a effortless upgrade to lenny after a couple of months of Etch. The stability and simplicity can be highlighted by the fact that my brother who has little knowledge of Linux has been using it without me around to help. In fact the last time I was there, I offered to install another distro which he flatly refused.
For some, "release it when it's ready" and "older but stable packages" are so much a requirement. The daring types could always change their sources.list to point to squeeze/testing in a couple of months to make an acceptable compromise. Except when a release is near, testing is fairly close to the other distros in terms of package versions.
62 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-02-17 07:37:29 GMT from United States)
@digger (54)
its not a buring issue. VM's support loading the ISO directly without the need to burn it to CD. I used the graphic installer, not the text based install.
@ geezer (50)
have you even looked at the graphic installer ? I'm not sure how anyone could get confused. its a no brain'er. I assume you were talking about the text-based installer when you say it can be the source of user based errors. but then again, I would call that a programming error for allowing a user to make a choice that could result in a failed install. I understood your point, however it was not the case, I simply opted for the choice of having a separate /home partition.
However it will always be the installers failure if you allow the user to choose invalid options that cannot be resolved programmaticly , so I disagree with your statement:
"I'm just suggesting that this is a possibility you might like to consider before saying that the Debian installer fails to do its job"
If you give me three options and one of them is known to fail, then its not me as the user that choose it that caused it to fail, it was the programmer that failed to do his job, and he is responsible for the failure, One should never blame the end user for the short comings of the programmer. If I'm not supposed to choose that option, then don't give that option.
@ dj (44) I was not offered any kind of explanation for the failure. It simply said the application install step failed. thats all I got in both cases. and it failed before grub was installed. so no god mode or safe mode to recover or repair.
@everyone, I'm NOT trashing debian. I'm just not convinced its ready. This was my second Debian, I tried 4.0, had no luck, and 5.0 refuses to install for me. I've got 3 other debian based distro's up and running great right now, one install running for over 3 years now. And I've never had any failures installing into any VM including vista, xp, 200 or NT40 plus about 40 other distros I've looked at. I trust my VM's. and I do agree with the comments that ubuntu gives better support for newer hardware and drivers.
63 • Fastest Debian-based Distro? (by elimisteve on 2009-02-17 07:50:02 GMT from United States)
So, which is fastest? Debian? sidux? antiX Mepis sounds good, too. Kubuntu feels sluggish. Any recommendations? Thanks, all.
64 • @53 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-02-17 07:51:51 GMT from Canada)
The article does not, in fact, state or imply that Gandhi came up with that phrase. It refers to "and finishes up with that quote from Ghandi on fighting the good fight." The quote in question is in fact the "First they ignored us..." quote (which is sort of part of RH's corporate identity). As you would have known had you bothered to actually read the link. There's nothing wrong with the way this is written, you simply over-interpreted it.
65 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-17 12:59:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Forgot to say thanks for Solaris gen...something more to add to the old education.
Speaking of education, and, further to the Cuban Linux story, and more to the point, still on topic... I was interested to note the story did not provoke more comment at the time...that this is an example of a "free" OS being "pressed", so to speak, onto millions, well OK, slight hyperbole...a lot of folk of computer user manques. (ie. not everyone has got a machine yet; manque = "would be", in this context).
So despite some soothsayers predicting the demise of Linux is imminent owing to a few probs with installation(s) quite clearly this is not true and absolute drivel into the bargain. Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? The whole ethos of free software originally was about freedom of choice...
The only comments I did read, on this forum and others, were more concerned in arguing whence Nova came from (is based on). Why on earth should it matter? This more or less brands the discussion as "hobbyist"!
This may turn out to be one of the pivotal plays in the rise of Linux, albeit being virtually "forced" onto a nation by what some folk in certain places might regard as a totalitarian state. ( As in, yes you can have an MS equipped machine...by the way the premium is...)
It would not surprise me to learn that once Cuba takes on Linux, wholesale, it opens the floodgates to similar states/nations. It will be very amusing to see if MS starts lobbying the Cuban authorities...in the same way they lobbied the ISO members for acceptance of OO.
So there you have it...a freedom of choice, open source OS being "introduc ed" to a nation like Cuba...don't you just love the irony. You could not make this up.
66 • @30 (by Juarez on 2009-02-17 14:11:58 GMT from United States)
Debian is not for everybody. The installer works fine.
67 • Re: Turkey's Pardus, not Cuba's Nova is the real answer... (by sertse on 2009-02-17 14:23:49 GMT from Australia)
Is Nova linux that interesting really? The only thing of interest I see here is that it's from Cuba, and the assumption being Cuba means, the chance of the government imposing mass adoption across the country. Though I couldn't read any actual plans of that being done so yet....
As for government supported Linux. It's not even the first one... Pardus Linux anyone? It's even ranked no 37 on DW. The Turkish govermentt has been supporting this distro, as a pilot program in exploring FLOSS technogies / tech independence since 2004, and reached the point of providing quality, stable releases since 2007. Your usual review sites (including Ladislav here) had reviewed before it and generally found it impressive...
The main difference seems to be that, Turkey as a democracy so it couldn't actually mandate mass adoption, but is that what we want?
68 • No subject (by Sertse on 2009-02-17 14:29:10 GMT from Australia)
Posted too soon. To finish off, here's a link about Pardus and it's influence in Turkey from the European Commission 's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR)
http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/a-new-kid-on-the-block-the-turkish-pardus-linux-distribution
And best of all, the Pardus' devs are nice enough to make it Turkish/English. Anyways, enough about Pardus... haha
69 • Re: 62 (by geezer on 2009-02-17 14:31:59 GMT from Finland)
"have you even looked at the graphic installer ? I'm not sure how anyone could get confused. its a no brain'er."
Maybe you're just smarter than I am? Then again, I'm the one who managed to install Debian without problems. ;-)
"This was my second Debian, I tried 4.0, had no luck, and 5.0 refuses to install for me."
By submitting a detailed installation report you can help the Debian project and improve your chances that the next version of Debian will install successfully for you.
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch05s03.html#submit-bug
70 • @gene @62 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-17 14:36:21 GMT from United States)
I'm almost certain its not the installer and its whatever your doing. If you failed with etch and lenny, chances are you dont know what your doing. Debia-based and Debian are not necessarily the same thing. Especially when it comes to the installer. are you using vmware or vbox?
71 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-17 14:52:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #66
Actually Juarez, Debian IS for everybody...that's the whole ethos of Linux, in fact it says so in the blurb, LOL. (In fact some folk might be "obliged" to use it, LOL!!!)
Granted the folk who have a problem with Debian are wont to blame the "on disc" installer so to speak. But what you might have said is that not all machines can "accept or cope" with a Debian install (or any other distro come to that).
I gather the folk were wanting a bit of help in installation techniques, not a statement that they were not "suitable" for Debian, LOL and I'm convinced you did not really intend to imply same.
Obviously the Debian installer IS perfectly designed, within certain parameters of course...otherwise everyone would be making a fuss. So what it amounts to is this...SOME machines might have been equipped with an iffy combination of hardware, or the partitions on the disc just don't like Debian...ahem..so the cure is obvious if a tad tiresome.
It goes like this, for an installation to hard drive...strip your machine down to the most basic hardware you can...and be prepared to reformat the hard drive prior to inserting the Debian DVD or CD.
I found, whilst quite at a loss one time, that reformatting the disc to just one ntfs partition can work wonders, (dare I remind you to back up your stuff...)
Even Ubuntu can get phased by original Linux partitions left by a prior distro...and frankly if Ubuntu won't install then perhaps to extend Juarez's suggestion...perhaps you might just get to like MS better...not really!
So, on as "bare" a machine as possible, and with standard memory (to begin with), try the install with, as been mentioned above, the default settings. If problems persist you won't get as much flak as by saying you changed the defaults, and, of course it makes it that bit easier for the Debian blokes (and girls) to work out why.
Once you do manage to install Debian Lenny, you can start adding the hardware. From there it should be a case of seeing if and when Debian crashes. One word of caution tho'...it might take some time cos you have to take drivers into account and your bit of kit might be broken...or conflicts...
I think that is a reasonably logical way of doing things if a bit tedious.
Best of luck!
72 • 71 (by Joe Biden on 2009-02-17 15:05:29 GMT from United States)
Wouldn't it just be easier to use a different distro?
73 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-17 15:28:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #67.
Good point sertse re. Turkey, the distro itself is of no real consequence at all, what does matter is that it's in Turkish and from that link the secret squirrels (by extension Turkish gov') control the whole thing...now imagine said squirrels being in charge of the entire project and knowing the code...yes you are ahead of me, already at home, in the armchair, slippers on, feet up and cuppa in hand.
And as you so rightly say government sponsored projects like these are not limited to Cuba and Turkey by any means...
It makes it a bit easier to keep tabs on the traffic...and even if they do find something that defies being read...it simply flags up the user as being someone to keep an eye on, LOLOLOL!!! And believe me governments are REALLY, REALLY, REALLY keen to listen to ANY traffic from anywhere.
Now the ironic bit...some very, very bright sparks are happy to let some not quite so bright sparks develop some open source software/distros/apps etc for the rest of us barely glowing sparks..all in the interests of free speech...hmmm...
That's the problem with Free Speech, everyone knows what you said, and the problem with free software is those who want to know your not so free speech...can...and do.
74 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-17 15:41:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #71.
Why yes it would Joe,( you young scamp, coming out with provocative suggestions, daring the wrath of Debian disciples!).
But, again, if a bloke asks for a bit of help or casts a comment to the stormy waters of Linux, it's no trouble to throw him a lifejacket surely?
Personally, from what I see in the Debian distro, there's nothing particularly exciting anyway, but folk like it so there's no reason not to help as best one can, even if it is very non tekkie.
75 • wow, Debian ( first time user ) (by Anony Moss on 2009-02-17 17:01:54 GMT from India)
Today is the first time I have ever installed debian ( using net inst CD ). Having read so much about packages and applications being 2 years older than the latest and greatest versions, I was not exactly biting my nails. But using KDE 3.5 desktop on Lenny for about half an hour now has blown my socks- this is an excellent software.
Never before on my aging Pentium III hardware have I seen a system so stable, so responsive. Firefox ( ice weasel) does not misbehave on every right click, hardware reporting tools actually show correct hardware, the keyboard and mouse don't freeze randomly. And I've not even tried tuning it yet. The included applications set looks very well thought out. I like it very very much. I now feel foolish for never having tried Debian all these years. There do not seem to be any gotchas here and things work like they are expected to. For productivity this is far more important than the latest shiny icon and version number. Fwiw, I like the desktop appearance a lot too- simple, aesthetically pleasing and efficient. Very well done by the Debian folks, I'm a convert.
76 • 75 (by Benjo on 2009-02-17 17:46:36 GMT from United States)
It gets better. Try using the xfce+lxde version. ;)
I downgraded to a Pentium III laptop after my previous machine (Athlon XP-M 2800+) started having hardware issues. Bought three broken Dell Inspiron 8000s for $40 each, swapped a few parts, and now I have 2 fully functional machines. :D
If you have a 3D videocard, enabling the proper drivers make for a noticable boost. Video files that were unplayable were now watchable.
I've been using Debian since Etch. I like its combination of speed, ease of configuration, and of course stability! I use my laptops for real work and I also dabble in graphic design and music production.
=)
77 • Debian installation controversy (further up) (by Barnabyh on 2009-02-17 18:10:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
I once tried to install a linux distro for an old friend, who back in the day used to be very good with MS-Dos, knew a bit about batch files and scripts, initial ram disk and generally knew a lot more about computers in 1991 than I did, which is absolutely nothing.
The whole project of linux for him failed because he insisted everything but the / partition should be installed on NTFS (/home for example), and he then complained that he did not find himself with a working Unix (as he put it) by the end of the day to his utmost disappointment. No amount of explanation would do, he insisted that MS is the market leader and that as such if linux wants to have any chance of gaining traction it should have to do NTFS natively and support being installed on it.
Well, he's Bavarian - Germans will know what I'm saying here.//ducks//
There really are people who are not ready for linux, or any other OS for that matter, even if they are or have been MS power users once upon a time.
78 • Re: #77 (by Draca on 2009-02-17 18:36:09 GMT from United States)
Being a MS power user is not even a prerequisite for some people, who are simply resistant to change. I have known folks who barely understood MS operating systems and absolutely refused to consider an alternative.
In other words, I think the underlying problem is that humans just do not like change. Intellectual arguments and facts fail to convince going up against that kind of attitude.
79 • Arch 2009.02 codenamed ?? (by houms on 2009-02-17 19:10:48 GMT from United States)
Posting this from archlinux 2009.02 +kdemod4.2.
All I can say is fantastic work fellow archers...
Thanks to the whole Archlinux team for putting out such a quality distro.
ext4 rocks. Man is that boot time fast. And thanks for making the time setup more straightforward.
kde4.2 is nothing like the earlier kde4 releases.
80 • Gandhi (by Xtyn on 2009-02-17 19:15:37 GMT from Romania)
Chris, it's "Gandhi", not "Ghandi".
In the RH article, the name was ok.
81 • RE #38 & 71 Debian (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 01:34:28 GMT from United States)
What is the perfect partioning setup so it is no longer a mystery?
Is it EXT2, EXT3, FAT32? I can set up anything as long as I know.
If I need a /ROOT or whatever why don't you tell me and let me go back? That part it does, lets you go back, but doesn't tell you why.
Why does it just drop to a screen that says network OK fetching updates? Updates to what, I did tell it to get anything. Tell me what you need and if I can't point it to a place to get it, get it later with updater or just pull it from the CD/DVD and move on.
82 • PROGEX (by 123 on 2009-02-18 01:35:05 GMT from United States)
so what happen to the web page to this Distro? or to the distro?
Please update!!
83 • File system for Debian (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 01:43:59 GMT from Canada)
Why don't you try ext4 or btrfs for your Debian install?
84 • RE: 82 PROGEX (by ladislav on 2009-02-18 01:44:44 GMT from Taiwan)
I have no idea. If it's gone, it broke all records for the shortest time between its listing on DistroWatch and its disappearance. But let's wait a few more days before jumping to any conclusions.
85 • RE: 84 Progex (by 123 on 2009-02-18 01:54:55 GMT from United States)
Thank you very much Mr.Ladislav, for the info.
lets hope it comes back, it seam to be a promising distro.
86 • #79 Question on KDE 4.2 (by Glenn on 2009-02-18 02:29:06 GMT from Canada)
Hiya
In your post you state (kde4.2 is nothing like the earlier kde4 releases)
How you mean that? Is it KDE 4.2 itself or ARCH's implementation of it?
I suspect your reply will be yes to both.
Is it faster than 4.1.2 or are there cosmetic and/or function changes on the desktop?
I am curious. I am also too short of time currently to install ARCH and determine that for myself.
I run KDE 4.1.2 on Fedora 10 and I find I really like it. I admit that it is a bit quirky although it certainly is fast and, once I got used to navigation of it, I found I preferred it to GNOME or KDE 3.5, quirks and all.
Thanks
Glenn
87 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 02:56:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 81
Alas I don't know the perfect partitioning setup, LOL...to review what I found helpful is this.
I devote an entire drive to any particular distro, simply because it is less messing around with GRUB asking what you would care to boot into at start up.
I always do a full hard drive reformat first, using pmagic, found on any recent rescue disc (see very recent listings).
I delete all the existing partitions and end up with one that is described as "unallocated".
I reformat this partition to ntfs, cos' in discussion with another it was pointed out that Linux usually "sees" an MS drive which is generally ntfs, (or if you are installing onto usb stick then FAT32, say.)
I am not entirely convinced on that one because I feel it's really to do with the "partition hell" to be found, on occasion, on a hard drive following multiple Linux installations. Just bear in mind this is anecdotal and is probably nowhere near the real reason at all, as in how do you explain a brand new machine...LOL.
Anyway, I digress...when you get invited to partition your hard drive go for the guided option to the entire disc and stick to the defaults. As an aside I note some installers offer you an option of ext2 or 3 or more recently ext4. Generally the safe option, in my experience is ext3. However...
Re #83, indeed why not try ext4. I see some folk report very favourably on ext4, so why not try it too? Nothing ventured...nothing gained as they say. If it does not work for your particular machine it's not exactly life or death is it? You can always try again with ext3.
Ref your last paragraph, I did not understand what you were concerned about...but if it is to do with upgrades during install all I can suggest, at the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, is refer to google and check out forums.
Best of luck.
88 • re 86 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 04:17:41 GMT from United States)
I'm running Fedora 10 with KDE 4.2. I have a modern core 2 duo system. The difference was quite noticeable coming from 4.1. It seems a bit more polished, and a noticeable improvement in speed/smoothness working with it. Menus, starting Konqueror, dolphin, settings/things come up just as quick as 3.5 or gnome. No testing, just perceived observation. Some quirks yet, but much improved, it's getting there.
89 • Mono (by Azzorcist on 2009-02-18 07:22:13 GMT from United States)
I really got blowed by people said that people like mono or not is just an opinion. To me, people who don't like mono is people who don't care is it FLOSS or not as long as it is not from Microsoft or Microsoft's idea. This is so subjective and it is also reflects people who don't know where his feet stand on. Mono is .NET clone that is proprietary framework from Ms. , maybe that's his point for blaming mono project. But remember, GNU/Linux itself is a clone of UNIX (even if it more advanced and better than UNIX now) that is proprietary and so much of GNU/Linux apps is a clone of Windows apps. This kind of people can make Free software development not evolving as its nature, very fast and advanced.
90 • Have an online capable OS before installing Debian (by Joey on 2009-02-18 11:29:41 GMT from United States)
"Hardware detection during installation is good, although, thanks to the Debian decision to make the core distribution truly free and open source, firmware files for Wifi and various network adaptors are missing from the installation CD. These files are to be found in the non-free repository on the internet. For systems which use these interfaces to establish their internet connections, this becomes something of a chicken and egg situation. System administrators in particular, who are apt to turn to Debian netinstall CDs in an emergency, are advised to check how far Lenny remains suitable for their purposes."
The stuff you need to get online is not available unless you're online. *rolls eyes*
Not on the disk.
This info needs to be *clearly* stated everywhere possible to avoid frustration for first time linux users.
I wonder if Ubuntu, et al, would exist if the mother distro was more user friendly wrt things such as this issue of free vs non-free.
91 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 13:20:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 90
I'm glad you said it first Joey...internet connection via wifi. And the further references to Ubuntu and Debian.
At the risk of death threats, excommunication, fatwahs etc, when you see how easy Ubuntu is to get going you might be forgiven for musing about Debian. It seems like a retrograde step...yes there are claims for the stability of Debian but "my" Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is on virtually 24/7 (very eco conscious I am me...) and it has not fallen over yet. I can d/l from the Debian repos' as well as Ubuntu's so there is no advantage over Ubuntu there.
Obviously folk like to play with Debian, but I find Ubuntu rather more advanced out of the box, and, judging from the number of Ubuntu based distros about, a lot of distro writers do to.
To echo the other comments it does seem a bit daft having to connect via Ethernet to get apps so you can use wifi...when you may not have a wired connection to the machine.
I'm not really convinced about keeping this purity thing...when the first thing you do is to get codecs and wifi apps anyway.
Lastly, it must be said that of all the major distros, as far as I am aware of course, Ubuntu is the only one to have a complete freebie book for newbs online. Yes I know it was not actually from Canonical per se..but courtesy of Keir Thomas...but the effort was made neverless...
And let me tell you it has been very, very useful indeed.
92 • Ubuntu (@post91 by forest) (by Joey on 2009-02-18 14:40:55 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu has been #1 on the www.distrowatch.com page hit list for as long as I can remember; I don't recall it being anything other than #1 on that page, although I'm sure it did work its way up from a lower ranking.
We've never tried an install of Ubuntu on our laptop, but have used it on our high tech PC which is used by 28 students at its peak usage. The majority of the students insist on Ubuntu as being "linux," if you know what I mean; it seems that the Ubuntu philosophy has captured the imagination of college age folks here in the U.S.
Mint 6 is working well on our only laptop, we'll see how upgrades go as time goes by.
But I will say that Debian is nowhere to be found in our linux disk pile now, it just made too many people mad so we tossed it (along with Fedora and Blag).
93 • @86 Glenn (by houms on 2009-02-18 14:47:46 GMT from United States)
Your right, I should have been more clear. I would say its both. But 4.2 is a lot more polished then previous versions. Very stable and I have not had any crashes or quirks. Everything is working great... and Arch’s kdemod is a modular version, which pretty much packages stuff without the unnecessary dependencies. Arch’s kdemod3 was great too, but kdemod4 is shaping up to be great in its own right. Kde4 desktop effects are smooth and stable. Who needs compiz? j/k I love compiz too, but kde4’s effects seem better integrated and are certainly stable. You can even easily change some of the behaviors of kde4 to behave like kde3. Like the desktop view and the kmenu layout type. If you get a chance, install lancelot. It’s a nice replacement (single-click) menu for both the new and old style kde menu.
It is pretty damn fast to be honest. Mind you I am running this on an old dell inspiron 8600 Pentium M 1.4Ghz 512MB. With strigi turned off, its using 160MB idle and that’s with a working wireless connection.
I think Arch does kde right.
And Arch’s Arxin is really a breeze for new users. It’s a system configuration tool. Nice pretty gui, if your into that sort of thing. Though I prefer the good ‘ol CLI, its nice to have this available for all the folks that don’t.
Hopefully you’ll find this useful info.
94 • Re #90: Have an online capable OS before installing (by DG on 2009-02-18 15:14:16 GMT from Netherlands)
It seems to me that the install CD should have some hardware detection and checking
on it, and it should try to detect which network cards are connected. The installer should
then warn you about any cards that do not have drivers on the ISO, and give you the
chance to abort so that you can download them before you continue with the installation.
This would be pretty cool as a standalone project that all distros could support for the
benefit of all. Or am I just too optimistic?
95 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 15:16:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 92
For what it's worth I have had a working Ubuntu 8.10 on an old scrapper Toshiba Satellite, but loaded with 256MBs of ram. In this instance internet was via a PCMCIA card 802b/g. Needless to relate the card/chipset was identified and drivers installed in seconds...PW typed in and away we went.
Re. your other point...Ubuntu = Linux = Ubuntu, I was under the impression you could lynched for coming out with that one, LOL.
However it is perfectly understandable because of the amount of effort Canonical puts into PR. This is despite all the majors loading at least one type of machine with a distro of some sort or another.
I have tried Mint, amongst quite a few others, (it was OK), in the past but always returned to Ubuntu, probably cos' of Ubuntu being the first distro for me and I'm sure I read somewhere that primacy takes precedent over recency...
Lastly with regard to your closing sentence, I did not get mad as such with other distros...if the wifi did not "just work" the disc got passed on to others.
This is not to say they were rubbish distros at all, far from it, but wifi was my benchmark if you will, simply cos' I had no Ethernet.
96 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 15:29:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 94
Well there is a function, sort of, on some distros when a flag pops up and says it cannot find a card driver or whatever.
What you could ask for tho' is a library of drivers they bung on Ubuntu...at the risk of over-egging the Ubuntu pudding, it really does take some beating (sorry pun just cracked open, groan) when it comes to hardware detection, preloaded drivers etc, etc. All the Ubuntu lookalikes have these libraries too, so it's not though they were difficult to come by.
97 • @90 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 15:29:52 GMT from United States)
chances are Debian will not be the first distro a new user will use. Not unless he has been led astray.
I am a huge debian supporter and fan, and I can tell you that I would be surprised if a new user approached me about running Debian.
To Debian's credit, it is much easier to install than , say, two releases ago. But Their decision about non-free blobs is one they made, and you can't fault them for sticking to their principles. Even if they dont fall in line with yours.
Also Lenny install does allow you to install the non-free firmware during install from another medium it even prompts you for this.
98 • Ubuntu wifi (by Joey on 2009-02-18 16:11:49 GMT from United States)
How does the connection hold up over time, Forest?
I wish I was techy enough to know why, but getting the wireless to work has been one issue while having the connection remain reliable throughout the day has been the other issue with linux distros.
Ndiswrapper has been a Godsend, but Mint 6 just connected on its own following the WPA/WPA2 key entry; we were happily amazed at that and have also been very pleasantly surprised to see the connection stay up until shutdown time in the afternoon here.
Speaking of Toshiba Satellites, that is what this is with Mint 6 on it.
All we're a bit apprehensive about is what can happen down the line when upgrade time comes along; we've had to start over with new distros several times following upgrades. That is what drove us away from Suse and PCLinuxOS.
99 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 16:44:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 97
Crikey, not at all sure about being led astray by Debian...is there something we should be told about?
If Debian go out of their way to load principles into their CD/DVDs then it's no wonder Debian won't be the first distro a newbie might install.
I gather from your support of Debian it's akin to ascending the realms of Linux 'til you reach the nirvana of Debian. Hmmm...
One "argument" against the ascension into Debian is that other contenders for your/ones faith appear all the time. Many may not even support English as a first language...witness Nova, the new born unto Cuba...that might grab millions in one hit. I can't imagine the Cubans, en masse, will trouble themselves about trying out Debian or any other distro come to that, why would they?
What seems to be absent from a lot of Linux fans is the realisation that countries such as Cuba, Pakistan, Turkey or Spain build their own national or regional distros in the requisite language/dialect, and care not one fig about what "we" fondly imagine are mainstream distros, or how fast they run or 3D effects say. Then there's the "one laptop per child" project...can't see many of them becoming Debian disciples or Arch acolytes.
Your last comment apropos loading into Lenny begs the question and follows your line about Debian becoming ever easier to install...Why did Debian not just go that extra driver, and, rather than inviting you/me/others to install non-free firmware from another medium (to quote yourself), they didn't just bung the firmware on their disc themselves?
Wifi doesn't run on principles.
100 • sidux install on old laptop. (by IMQ on 2009-02-18 17:02:00 GMT from United States)
I tried to install sidux 2009-01, both KDE Lite and XFCE editions, on a Compaq Armada M700 450MH (yeah, it's old), with 448MB RAM.
Both finished installed but fail on reboot. It displayed error message all over then eventually kernel panic.
To confirm the problem with sidux, I installed both Debian Lenny 5.0.0 XFCE+LXDE, then again with antiX 8.0. Both of these were a compete success.
Just curious if anyone else having problem with the new sidux 2009-01 after installation.
I like the fact that the new sidux 2009-01 using newer kernel 2.6.28 which supports my BC4318 wireless with opensource driver. No more ndiswrapper! It worked when I ran sidux in live mode.
Anyway, just curious. When I find the time, I try to install it on a test PC to see if the problem go away.
101 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 17:48:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 98
Wifi is still subject to broadcasting conditions unfortunately, regardless of frequency or ERP (externally radiated power).
As I type, we have pretty poor conditions locally, patterning on TV and my wifi dropping in an out...about 10 times during our "natter" in fact.( But when I say poor what I really mean is that there might be a lift on...ie. distant stations, on the same channel/frequency, causing interference with local reception. You will appreciate when the frequencies are being doled out, nationally and internationally, an enormous amount of effort is put into ensuring radio interference (co-channel) is minimalised as far as possible.
What can't be helped is the emr coming off the Sun tho' , LOL)
The router, 802 b/g is about 25 ft away, but fires through two very thick stone walls (converted barn)., and a heating radiator. Come to think about it, it's two separate buildings, joined togther on the ground floor.
Folk often forget their card/dongle is a transmitter too and with less power, so keeping a connection going is sometimes down to how powerful it is or if the spec is MIMO (more that one aerial) say. regardless of the ERP from their router.
You could do far worse that taking a gand at some of your USA radio hams' sites. Generally they are absolutely first rate and are packed with info. Some sites even deal exclusively with Wifi matters and some of the aerial/anttenna solutions are little short of genius, no really.
When condx are good then the wifi connection I use is up all the time, that is for hours at a time. On the odd occasion, like d/l Debian for instance, the file was 4.4Gbs and took all night to d/l. I do not use bit torrent and being 802b/g the bit rate is not especially fast anyway.
With reference to your maintaining a solid connection during working/teaching (?) hours I would recommend you research the 802 draft n kit. If possible arrange for a specialist contractor to survey your site and, if he/she is at all competant, shift the router around to optimise the signal strength but over a week or so. IE, MAKE SURE IT WORKS before you part with the readies.
You can get all sorts of booster devices which can be tricked up to increase the signal strength..although to be pedantic I should say field strength. ( That you will have to google for yourself tho'...)
Ref your fears on upgrades, I think you just have to play it by ear...I use U8.04 LTS for just that reason...it's supported 'til 2011 and the server version 'til 2013 (I hope that's right...) I've never had any experience of 'wrapper stuff so can't comment.
102 • RE: Nonsense! (by Eddie Wilson on 2009-02-18 18:43:28 GMT from United States)
By Azzorcist."I really got blowed by people said that people like mono or not is just an opinion. To me, people who don't like mono is people who don't care is it FLOSS or not as long as it is not from Microsoft or Microsoft's idea. This is so subjective and it is also reflects people who don't know where his feet stand on. Mono is .NET clone that is proprietary framework from Ms. , maybe that's his point for blaming mono project. But remember, GNU/Linux itself is a clone of UNIX (even if it more advanced and better than UNIX now) that is proprietary and so much of GNU/Linux apps is a clone of Windows apps. This kind of people can make Free software development not evolving as its nature, very fast and advanced."
What kind of total nonsense is this. I'm the one who said that its a matter of opinion and I stick by that. And its my opinion that Mono is not a necessity. I don't like .NET so I don't want a .NET clone on my system. If you want to embrace it then you can.; That's your business but don't try to shove it down my throat. I know where I stand very much thank you. I've been working with computers for 30 years and I am not a newbie. It's MY opinion that a rip off of some else's environment does not advance free software development. There is nothing subjective about it. There is nothing wrong with Mono, but it is not something we should depend on or so states the Free Software Foundation because of the Microsoft C++ patents.(That's the FSF opinion). These are almost all my opinions. If someone's opinion differs then that's fine. What you don't have a right to do is insult someone you don't know because of his or her opinions. On a closing note, I know more people who don't want Mono than people who do.
103 • @99 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 18:58:08 GMT from United States)
With all do respect, all that drivel amounts to little if anything.
By led astray, I mean no new (or shall i say most, Since I know there will be some troll who will want to provide antedoctal evidence to the contrary) linux user would start with "hey I don't know what linux is but let me go and install debian". Unless someone else led them astray into believing that, that was a good idea. especially when they state they want to install via wifi.
Debian was never really designed to be installed by a new user, just as I'm sure windows is not really designed to be installed by a new user.
And no Debian is not the holy grail, but it is MY distro of choice.
As any debian user has their own reason for choosing debian. I run debian because I want to, it is extremely stable great performance, and its reliable. Management is easy and did I mention stability?
Also lest not forget the OS world does not start and end with the desktop.
As far as all these national distros, yeah like I want a government body putting my linux distro together. I can only imagine. While I'm not knocking these distros, pardus is great ,some of us just aren't keen to letting gov't control that aspect of life. Again a matter of choice.
"Wifi does not run on principle"
yeah genius but the drivers that run it are controlled by a license that does not agree with debian's philosophy.Just because you have a different philosophy, does that mean debian should concede its stance to appease you?
Cause if the only thing that is holding you back from debian is not being able to install over wifi, then your welcome to use something else.
104 • @102 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 19:03:00 GMT from United States)
amen Eddie.
Preach!!!
I agree
I don't want MONO
105 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-18 19:30:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 103
Well, that's me told, then...
106 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 19:42:37 GMT from Canada)
@ Eddie Wilson You mean C# instead of C++
Most of the people that are aware of what mono is choose not to use it. Most of the people that use mono have no idea what it is or that they use it. The distros are the main culprit here because most of them install mono by default which is a shame.The long arm of Redmond reaches you anywhere you go.
107 • Debian and the "new user" (by Joey on 2009-02-18 19:49:32 GMT from United States)
"Debian was never really designed to be installed by a new user, just as I'm sure windows is not really designed to be installed by a new user."
Interesting phrase that has been on the Debian front page for years and years:
"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run."
Why on God's green Earth would an experienced linux user need to be informed what an "operating system (OS) for your computer" is?
108 • Lenny (by gene on 2009-02-18 20:12:12 GMT from United States)
After much flack from many, I have managed to install Debian Lenny using the Netinst CD on an actual machine AND used the very same options that repeatedly failed in TWO different VM's running on different machines (VBox and VMware). While the installer did do its job as many said it would, this still leaves the issue where the installer FAILED when installing into a VM. I used the same exact options on a real machine that succeeded as when it failed. This is not an end user issue as many suggested. The installer has issues and may not work as it should. choosing a separate /home partition in a VM FAILS, however making the same choice in a real machine succeeds.
@ SR (60)
Not a chance, I just proved it was an installer issue. Debian Lenny has issues installing in VM's and does not appear to have been tested at all for that environment. So far, 100% failure installing in VM's(4), 100% success installing on physical machine(3).
@geezer (69)
That really was not intended to be offensive - its was written with a smile, I thought it was a simple install option which only required a selection from 3 options, I made a selection - there was no sub options.
@ (70)
that question was answered previous.
@ Joey (90)
I agree with your take and point completely.
I'll close with this thought about Ubuntu: I have used ubuntu as my main OS for at least 4 years now and knew essentially nothing about linux before that(not completely). Ubuntu gave me the skill and knowledge to work through problems with other distro's. It's now 2 days since I got Debian Lenny installed, up and running, and customized to suit my taste and needs. In short, Ubuntu enabled me to use Debian Lenny and work through issues getting it the way I want it. however it feels like its 2 years behind other distros and what they offer. but it DOES feel MUCH more solid and stable, and much much quicker and uses much less memory than other distro's. Its worth it.
109 • @108 (by Anonymous on 2009-02-18 20:35:28 GMT from United States)
I am currently running two Lenny vm's in vbox(v2.1.2) Both installed via netinstall cd. NO install issues. The installer is fine.
Not sure what your problem is . are you running on linux or windows host?
Note both vm's using following layout partition...
swap
/boot
/
/home
for you to say that,
"Debian Lenny has issues installing in VM's and does not appear to have been tested at all for that environment. So far, 100% failure installing in VM's(4), 100% success installing on physical machine(3)."
borders on trolling.
have you stopped to ask, if everyone else has no issues but I do, maybe there is another variable to consider?
110 • umm.. (by Joey on 2009-02-19 00:09:58 GMT from United States)
"..everyone else has no issues.."
Everyone is a big, big word.
Also, if "everyone has no issues" then the user forum concept would never have lasted very long.
111 • Debian WiFi (by Benjo on 2009-02-19 01:31:10 GMT from United States)
For the record, WiFi worked for me "out of the box" with Debian since Etch. I used both the net-install CD and the 1st CD of the full set. My card is an old D-Link DWL-650 CardBus adapter though.
My laptop doesn't have ethernet pre-installed. It's all WiFi from the very start. :P
112 • @64 - Fighting The Good Fight (by Woodstock69 on 2009-02-19 02:03:55 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
"...The article does not, in fact, state or imply that Gandhi came up with that phrase..."
Adam, IF the article referred to in the link is NOT read, then the way you have linked the two ideas, both imply AND state Gandhi originated the quote. Gandhi's quote does not relate to "fighting THE good fight." {emphasis added}
Your article stated: "...and finishes up with THAT QUOTE FROM GANDHI on FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT." {emphasis added}
That's plain and simple for anyone to interpret.
"...had you BOTHERED to actually read the link." {emphasis added}
I do take exception to both the description and tone of your assertion. I did bother to read the article, and still assert that the use of the term "fight the good fight" should be attributed to the Christian Paul and not have it implied that it's a quote from Gandhi.
Why use Paul's words in a heading and then use Gandhi's words as the paragraph content? And yes. At best shall we say it's a difference between Canadian and Australian grammar, at worst it's a poorly constructed connection.
I do accept your opinion that I over-interpreted the way it was written (I don't agree with it), and you may call it semantics, however, I'm tired of the internet/forums/comments being used to spread mis-information and inaccuracies, especially on a high profile site such as DWW.
If it appeases you, my very first distro was a Red Hat one, way back in 1999, and I still use Fedora.....occasionally.....So I'm neither attacking you nor RH.
113 • No Mono, what about Qt, is the club exclusive? (by Anonymous on 2009-02-19 02:11:27 GMT from United States)
Man this is just too reminiscent of seven or eight years ago when I stated I would never allow a QT binary on the puffin farm. Let me tell you choice is good. Why should anyone care what I personally do? Seven or eight years ago there was a whole bunch of name calling just because I wouldn't go to the dark side with everyone else. Hey, but now even Mono.
Let me tell you Mono Haters something...stick to your guns!!
I've gone to the extreme of formatting and rebuilding a server with a different distro just to expunge all QT binary files that were erroneously added to a system update.
I think we should update the terminology however, so going further please refer to me in your own profane terms as a Gnome Lover and QT Denier. Mono, eh, wake me up when they can do something real with it..
114 • Nova (by Jason on 2009-02-19 02:54:02 GMT from United States)
Hmmm at first I thought Nova was a funny name because of all the Nova car stories you here in business tales. Turns out that is just a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
115 • RE: # 103 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2009-02-19 03:18:14 GMT from Italy)
"Debian was never really designed to be installed by a new user, just as I'm sure windows is not really designed to be installed by a new user.
And no Debian is not the holy grail, but it is MY distro of choice."
I find this 2 sentences put together rather contradictory.
If you had written that at the time of Woody, I would have agreed wholeheartedly.
But at the time of Lenny there are distros which are a lot less user friendly.
I know, "common wisdom" says that you should start with Ubuntu. But, as Ubuntu has always been very buggy for me, I don't find it more user friendly than Debian.
Besides, should a new user install an OS, any OS?
My first Linux install was Red Hat, many years ago. I didn't find it particularly difficult, but I found Mandrake even easier.
All my previous experience was using Windows for one year, which I had never installed.
So it depends, really.
116 • Sidux and smxi (by Chris on 2009-02-19 04:08:00 GMT from United States)
I've just installed the xfce version of sidux
and there are no instructions
to install the smxi script in the sidux manual.
I had to go hunting with Google.
Seems you now have to go to http://smxi.org to get the script!!
Chris.
117 • debain (by gene on 2009-02-19 04:51:56 GMT from United States)
@Anonymous (109)
Sorry pal, I don't believe you. first you didn't have the guts to leave a name, second, of the hundreds of linux distros I've installed, Debian is the first and only that refuses to install in a VM. you imply its on my end, but this is the first and only VM problem I have ever had. I stand my ground. I probably have more experience than you do at testing distros, so I'm pretty sure I'm on solid ground. I don't even have problems installing ALPHA releases, why on earth would I think I'm the problem when ONE and only one distro seems to have a problem installing in my VM's ? I sense a debian fanatic who doesn't want the world know that all is not perfect in the debian world. you might better spend your time complaining to the VBOX people and VMware people that thier VM doesn't like debian. Like I said, of the literally hundreds of tests I've run on more than a hundred distros, this is the first install failure.
118 • @117 (by john frey on 2009-02-19 05:52:17 GMT from Canada)
How many of the hundreds of distros you previously installed were netinstalls?
If I recall you previously mentioned that the Debian installs fail at the point that they were to start downloading from tthe net. If that is so I suspect that your network card settings in the VM's are the problem. I bet if you change the VM network card settings to bridged or NAT or some other setting that your problem would be solved.
You are doing a netinstall from a VM. That is not the same as a purely hardware install.
If you previously did a successful netinstall have you reinstalled the VM's with different settings since then? You could certainly be the rare case of 2 separate configurations that Debian can't work with for whatever reason. I suspect it is more likely that your software configuration is the source of your problem.
Just because you have installed other distros successfully doesn't mean that another approach to networking, chosen by Debian, is wrong. Try changing some of your VM settings. Finally it could be that the drivers for the VM's network cards need binary blobs that Debian chose to exclude. I think that unlikely but I'm just trying to consider all options.
Surely you are not saying that Debian won't install for you and you refuse to change anything about your setup because your setup is perfect and so it must be Debians fault.
119 • newsletter (by steve on 2009-02-19 08:28:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
thank you for taking the time to do this, i read it with great interest, i am new to the linux o/s and i love ubuntu ultimate 2.0. keep up the good work and keep testing ( saves me dong it haha ) once again thank you
120 • @108 (by SR on 2009-02-19 09:14:05 GMT from United States)
The only thing you've proven so far is that *you* can't install it, while the rest of us can.
I wouldn't call that %100 empirical proof that Lenny was released early, etc... whatever your claim of the minute is.
It is either 1) a hardware issue, or 2) an issue with the device between the chair and they keyboard.
As the rest of us are using Lenny happily, while you cannot, please ponder wether it's 1 or 2.
And BTW: I would have thrown him a lifejacket, had he asked for help instead of damning the ship ;-)
121 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-19 10:59:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref the ongoing animated debate over Debian installs...the above does seem to indicate there ARE problems with installing to some machines. What does seem to be missing from the debate is info/data on the actual machines you were attempting to install to.
I "eventually" got D5 installed onto my old test clunker...HP Pavillion, Celeron clocking at 1.3 on 512 ram to 40Ghz h/d. H/d reformatted to one ext2 partition. ie. clean ( note gen supplied to avoid the pillory...) I say eventually...it was late, I was tired...you get the picture. All the options were default.
Well, speaking subjectively...a bit of an anticlimax. From the leading debate I was expecting...well, something more really.
I also tried the mephis, sidux, arch, slax, debris and dragonfly.
Some loaded without any issues, some "almost" as in not quite finding the wifi connection.
The, largely unscientific, conclusions I drew were that my machine really is too old for some aspects of modern software. Hence it's an unfair (unrealistic?) supposition to expect Linux in all its forms to "work" to the same degree as it must on much newer hardware.
Another conclusion is that a wired Ethernet connection is almost at the top of the "should have" list. I'm talking PCs in this instance...I know this is of no practical concern to folk who have laptops...ie their need to move around for work say.
Now, making an inductive "suggestion" from the above, unless the kit you are trying to install onto is reasonably newish (<4yrs) it is probably a waste of time to try installing "a" distro and expect the same success as someone who has a more youthful PC.
I venture to suggest this in order to have a level playing field for future debate...if you catch my drift...
122 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-19 11:09:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just caught this (hope it's OK to post this link, otherwise you know what to do Lad') and is pretty much on topic...
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/zdnetuk/community/blog/0,1000000567,10012172o-2000630136b,00.htm
123 • astounding denial (by Joey on 2009-02-19 12:09:56 GMT from United States)
Again, go to http://forums.debian.net/, particularly the "installation" area, and just read; Debian *might* install on your machine and it might not.
Those who resolve their issues are learning, as I did with many distros, but there are those who never do get a particular distro to install on their computer.
Why deny such a simple thing? This is not rocket science, Debian fans; it works on some and does not work on others. It's all over the internet, not just at the above link. Try www.debianforums.org or the Debian section at www.linuxquestions.org or www.linuxforums.org/forum/debian-linux-help at infinitum.
Surely you are not pretending that Debian can install on any machine.
124 • Re:astounding denial (by john frey on 2009-02-19 13:49:45 GMT from Canada)
I'm being paraphrased:)
I couldn't agree more. "Those who resolve their issues are learning." I would add those who refuse to learn won't resolve their issues.
There have been many times that lack of knowledge has caused me to move on and install another distro rather than fight with the current one. While the distro might have been to blame sometimes I never had the temerity to blame the devs for something that could just as well have been my own ignorance. But that's just me.
125 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-19 15:22:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re 124 #
Blaming the distro devs/writers is not really an option as you say...cos if a majority of folk can install a distro then its pretty obvious that either you suffered from "finger trouble" or your kit was not suitable, or perhaps a combination of both. I always use the two above as an excuse...hence my nom-de-forum...forest...thick and green...
Having said that you did not waste time trying to continue on a fruitless task. Good time management and I mean that seriously.
Hopefully, by the time you thought about getting to grips with the distros you could not install at an earlier time...those distros had all been updated and the devs/writers had moved on themselves and were writing better code, so to speak, for easier installs.
(Or, had learned to code as well as those people whose installers did work for you, on the particular machine you had been using .LOL)
I note one Debian afficionado, "admits", (wrong expression really) that Debian has become easier to install recently, well, you didn't write the code...so I would suggest he/she/dev must have got better themselves...which is brilliant for everyone.
I would consider that a more important lesson...learning not to waste time on hopeless tasks...and trying the next distro you fancied a crack at....after all, there are hundreds and that's not including the various alphas, betas, RCs etc etc.
You can never get bored in this game, can you?
126 • Dumb and dumber (by Gene Venable on 2009-02-19 17:11:15 GMT from United States)
I can't decide which was worse -- the discussion of whether Debian is no good because it fails on installation for one user or whether Gandhi ever said something about the good fight. I guess it's a tie.
127 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-19 18:07:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 126
Well Gene, if you thought that was boring you could always click over to the Debian link posted in #123...there's just over 4000 entries on install probs alone...and not just from "frustrated of Fresno" or "stumped in Seattle".
Granted the entries span the past 4 yrs or so...no quick fixes then...but that might be marginally more entertaining, I know I forced myself not to indulge in going further than page 83.
It seems Debian, despite its reputation, does have the occasional problem. Perhaps we might offer a prayer of thanks to Canonical for taking something quite reasonable and turning it into something not bad at all. And, to be as accurate as possible, you very rarely read of probs with Ubuntu.
I note there was very little comment about the other distros released just recently either. Therefore the forum itself decided the topic, which is what forums do I suppose, ergo one man's "boring..."
Ref the Gandhi discussion, I have to agree with you on that one...I heard he stood (until knocked over once or twice) for passive resistance...
128 • The perfect Distro - DOES NOT EXIST (by RollMeAway on 2009-02-19 18:59:06 GMT from United States)
Here is a link to 1,111 pages of ubuntu install/upgrade problems
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=333
No distro is perfect
129 • #128 (by patient223 on 2009-02-19 19:40:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
"No distro is perfect"
WHATT!!!
Let me tell you, sunshine, that.....
No, no nurse, not now, I'm busy ..... Noooo
130 • but.. but.. (by Joey on 2009-02-19 22:44:53 GMT from United States)
"No distro is perfect."
But, what about (fill in the blank)? It's perfect on my (fill in the blank).
I suggest you stop fooling around with (fill in the blank) and install (fill in the blank) no matter what machine you have, even if it's a (fill in the blank).
131 • Where can I get one? (by Notorik on 2009-02-19 23:16:35 GMT from United States)
Where can I get a Fill In The Blank Machine that runs the Fill In The Blank operating system? It sounds perfect! (except for that one Fill In The Blank mentioned above that someone was "fooling" around with).
132 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-19 23:47:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 128
Ah, good point...I wondered who'd be the first to spot that one...that's because it's based on Debian...I expect...
All joking aside, it really is interesting to read all the banter in this forum...it shows folk really do care about Linux, no matter what flavour it is. It is very educational on all sorts of levels...can you imagine being privy to a discussion, in a computing forum, albeit in a restrainedly polite fashion, about the quotes from Gandi, well the old Indian bloke, in one post and the merits or demerits of C.A.D. in another...Why...sometimes there is the very occasional fling on distros...Debian say.
133 • Mono QT etc (by Anonymous on 2009-02-20 01:22:35 GMT from United States)
Stuff like that always seems to like to phone home.
It seems like 24/7 totally net connected.
In Debian Etch QT help subsystems always tried to connect to the net.
So I just deleted QT with APT.
Some people like their computers doing things with the net without asking.
I prefer a quiet machine where it only connects if I want it to.
That's all........
134 • 128 • The perfect Distro - DOES NOT EXIST (by distrowatcher on 2009-02-20 01:33:37 GMT from United States)
Perhaps a better way to phrase that would be "The Perfect Distro For Everyone Does Not Exist.
Got to credit where credit is due. Linux Mint is probably (if not the) distro for converting people to Linux. I have converted many people to that "geek" OS by setting them up with a dual boot system - Linux / Windows. After a few weeks they say they never boot into windows any more. Sometimes only a few minutes of teaching them Linux (using Mint) is all that it takes. Of course, Mint is great for very advanced users also. I have nothing to do with Mint, so I am not plugging their product and don't agree with everything in the Mint philosophy, but the developers are top notch, as are most Linux professionals.
My perfect distro is LFS or Rock. But that is probably going to change since IT is a gone profession in the US an I'm in Grad school (again) studying Genetics and just don't have the time.
Am interested in how other people in the US are fairing with their IT professions
and which distro they would recommend as an alternative to windows.
Have a great day !
135 • The Perfect Distro Does Exist!!! (by Anonymous on 2009-02-20 05:04:42 GMT from United States)
The perfect distro does exist. One mans gold is another mans trash. Puppy and DSL works fantastic on my old PIII (P3). I would not install OpenSuse on it. My dear old pops like gOS because of it simplicity. I use the Commercial version of Mandriva because my business needs support from time to time. My sister like Xandros for its strong Active Directory and MS Domain support features.
My point is, is there will never be a magic bullet Linux OS that is a one shoe fits all. Microsoft also learned a valuable lesson with Vista. But because open source has so many choices: I believe the perfect Linux OS does exist if you are patient and are willing to spend a bit of time and effort at finding it.
136 • RE: # 127, 132 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2009-02-20 07:06:44 GMT from Italy)
"And, to be as accurate as possible, you very rarely read of probs with Ubuntu."
Oh, it must be just me then... Wait a moment, somebody just posted a link to 1,111 pages of ubuntu install/upgrade problems!!!
"Ah, good point...I wondered who'd be the first to spot that one...that's because it's based on Debian...I expect..."
Wait a moment, that is a bit unfair to say the least. Ubuntu is based on Debian *Unstable*. Debian recommends never to use Unstable as your production OS. And having said that, I find Debian Unstable a lot better than Ubuntu. Thus, Ubuntu managed to make something "unstable" by definition even worse.
137 • @128 (by Anony Moss on 2009-02-20 08:37:07 GMT from India)
1,111 pages of Ubuntu installation problems just increased to 1,113!
Seriously, though- it seems that popular linux distros get 9 out of 10 things right, but one thing remains elusive. If Ubuntu 8.04 refused to work with my network card, Fedora 10 had problems galore configuring static IPs in Network Manager. Mandriva One 2009, I was told on the forums, needed installation of a different kernel version ( than the default supplied with the installation CD ) for laptops with > 1GB RAM. I had made the (prematurely) gushing comment ( #75 ) about Debian Lenny earlier, but it refuses to get the sound system working with alsaconfig (amixer reports errors).
SuSE gets most things right ( except the keyboard ) for my hardware.
Seems like we ( as in linux people ) are always 'almost there' but not quite :->
138 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-20 10:54:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re Ubuntu comments...er, um, there was an element of "tongue-in-cheek"...
Of course the Us fall over from time to time, it would be quite something were they not to, LOL. But from personal experience I very, very rarely have a problem with Ubuntu, so that would explain why I give it good press.
But it's in this forum that I was referring to...I don't see a enormous amount of "woe is me, why did I install Ubuntu?"... or "it didn't load for me".
As said earlier, Ubuntu does pop up in a huge number of spin-off distros, possibly owing to the fact there is a large commercial outfit behind it, and, consequently, folk are paid to work full time on coding, so to speak.
Apropos perfect distro; I would posit the perfect distro is the one which works for you without giving you grief. I find, as mentioned before, the machine itself appears makes a huge amount of difference
I have a "better spec" machine which won't look at U8.10 but an ancient Toshi Sat (c.2002, but with added ram) that laps it up (groan).
I installed the Swiss Paldo onto the Toshi last night and it simply loaded, did the biz with the wifi card and was online in a matter of moments. I don't suppose I'll keep Paldo on there for longer than the next interesting distro event. Like many of the forum visitors I suspect I'm a distro junkey and I need a new fix every so often...in other words I install a distro 'cos I can!
Ubuntu is my main "OS" (semantics accepted) so I rely on that for day to day stuff.
I would repeat my speculation that you need a level playing field viz. "identical spec machines", to get any meaningful results when comparing the various attributes between distros.
Debian fans are Debian fans because in the very first place Debian installed into a machine they use...otherwise they would be in the other queue. You can only speak as you find, and folk do, LOL!
But in the context of which distro is good, gooder, goodest it's not really possible to say.
139 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-20 11:12:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just came in...If you were feeling charitable...a reference to how distros perform on different machines...
http://www.enews20.com/news_HP_Mini_1000_Mi_Comes_With_Friendly_Linux_Distro_16472.html
140 • No subject (by akis on 2009-02-20 12:00:25 GMT from Greece)
Playing with Linux is like playing with pazzle. First, you have to find a distro that suits most with your computer or carring the suitable kernel you want and then try to join your applications if they don't include into your distro. So, no distro is perfect but it can be.
141 • re 137 - Mandriva kernel (by Anonymous on 2009-02-20 13:25:00 GMT from Canada)
That thing with installing a different kernel in Mandriva is history. It was needed in Mandriva 2008.1. With current Mandriva 2009 you don't need to install a different kernel for > 1GB RAM.
142 • re: 137 (by killer1987 on 2009-02-20 14:06:40 GMT from Italy)
i quote 141 and i give you the link to the info:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes#High_memory_support_.28up_to_4GB.29_in_kernel-desktop586_.28Mandriva_Linux_One.29
bye
Marcello
143 • Epidemic (by vc on 2009-02-21 07:31:27 GMT from United States)
Does Epidemic Linux have an English version?
144 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-02-21 12:58:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
#143
"Brazilian" Portuguese, as opposed to Portuguese spoken in Portugal, or several African ex colonies.eg. Mozambique or Angola.
Which is a shame.
145 • Debian (by Darkman on 2009-02-21 15:20:43 GMT from United States)
Thank you, Debian devs. Lenny is excellent. It's easy to install, runs fast and with a modest tweak here and there, I can modify it to suit my needs and tastes perfectly.
146 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-21 17:05:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #145
Good news re your success with Debian. You might have glanced thru' the forum and noticed the discussion on Debian. As in some can install with no probs and some can't despite any number of attempts.
It might be very pertinent to know what sort of hardware you were installing on, not least for the Debian devs. I can't believe the Debian devs have not thoroughly tested the distro on as many machines as they can lays their hands on but it is nigh on impossible to perm every combination.
So if you have a moment perhaps you and other Debian fans could mention, in future, what you installed on, mainly with respect to processor and ram.
It would be too large a task for anyone interested to know every molecule of hardware you have installed. Obviously this is a very simplistic survey but it might give an idea of what works or doesn't.
147 • #135 gets it right; good issue with more than just Lenny (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-02-21 21:44:26 GMT from United States)
First, Chris, thanks for another good read. While the focus was Debian Lenny there was a lot more than that in DWW this week. I plan to take a look at Mepis AntiX and Debris Linux. Yes, I know Debris is another Ubuntu clone but I'd like to see what they managed to shoehorn into a mini (3") CD sized distro.
#135 gets it right. I've said time and again that there is no perfect distro and I can find bugs in all of them. (Slackware 12.1 and 12.2 are the closest I've found to bug free.) What serves my needs may not serve your needs and vice versa. What works on one piece of hardware may not work on another. Saying "distro" rocks!" as one poster did above tells us nothing other than we have an enthusiastic fan of "distro".
If something doesn't work for you my first question is always to ask if you've reported the issue to the distributor or asked for help in the distro's forums. Trying an install once and complaining here says that installation on your particular hardware isn't quite as straightforward as it could be. That's a legitimate issue and it's well worth reporting. Having said that just posting here does nothing to determine if the distro in question can really work on your hardware and it does nothing to fix the problem for other users.
148 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-22 01:47:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Crikey, the copy is worse than mine, but interesting nevertheless...take a gand at:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-10168951-240.html
Re #147, last sentence. I was suggesting folk could drop a hint here...if only to avoid searching thu' reams of comments on the more tekkie forums...I was rather alarmed/dismayed to learn of the 4000 odd comments in the Debian forum, let alone the 1113 pages, reportedly, of comments in Ubuntu...anything for the easy option, LOL. Might even suit the developer mateys too...
149 • thx for Mandriva correction, and @147 (by Anony Moss on 2009-02-22 07:16:59 GMT from India)
thanks, folks, for pointing out that the greater than 1 GB RAM is supported in Mandriva One 2009 default kernel ( unlike the 2008 version ), and I apologise for misstating earlier.
To CM@147 and others, as you point out, different distros will have different compatibilities with a specific hardware combination that runs a user's machine. Now, i'm aware there are hardware compatibility lists, and Smolt, but here's an idea- if only for the future-
Once we have a more extensive hardware database, wouldn't it be great if the distro websites can ask a new downloader to select his hardware combination on a page and then generate an ISO for him on the fly? That should mean the CD he burns should provide him the best installation possible with a more optimized OS, and perhaps a smaller download size to boot ( all of us are not on broadband ).
150 • I don't like Mono either (by Azzorcist on 2009-02-22 08:16:14 GMT from Indonesia)
I don't like Mono too. But, I do have simpathy for those folks in Mono Project. They are working very hard tirelessly for us all but people seems not to appreciate it. You may don't like it but don't hate it. That's a different situation. I actually not pointing at you Eddie. I'm pointing at those people called themself as Mono-Haters. But, you seems to defend'em.
151 • No subject (by forest on 2009-02-22 09:53:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re # 149
Compatibility lists? Are they up for perusal? Or are they one of the great myths of the internet...sometimes spoken of but never seen...?
It would save an enormous amount of time if hardware issues were known...it would save a lot of messing around. And pointless defensive/offensive argument too.
Ref the notion of pick and build so to speak; I understand there are such sites but not to the extent, yet, as far as I am aware, of being hardware specific.
You could take a gand at "slax" and see what you think.
That said, the "latest" notion of distros, a la cloud computing, see link in #148, might point to letting the servers worry about hardware compatibility.
And if you do read the articles...the koalas I saw in the Steve Erwins zoo were so inert I thought they were stuffed...even the promised "feeding frenzy" saw only the movement of slowly chomping jaws. So perhaps not the best choice of names for a digger's dynamic distro deployment down-under (groan).
152 • re 151 (by corneliu on 2009-02-22 13:48:30 GMT from Canada)
The problem with Mono is not that some guys want to develop C# applications for Linux. The problem is that Gnome depends more and more on Mono. Many distros install Mono by default. Some distros even make Evolution, OpenOffice etc. depend on Mono. People hate the fact that their Linux applications and desktop environment became dependent on Mono. That's why some of us (including myself) hate Mono. That's why Mono is considered a cancer. And for good reason.
153 • Vector (by Notorik on 2009-02-22 14:54:26 GMT from United States)
Congrats to the Vector team on 6.0. That is news to be excited about. I am going to burn a cd right now. Nice job on the reviews Chris. I am another Distrowatch "fan boy" that can't wait for Monday morning only because I will have something intelligent and interesting to read.
In my experience, using somewhat dated hardware, Slackware based distributions like Vector and Wolvix just seem to work better out of the box.
But hey, anything that gives me an alternative to the OTHER os is fine by me. I like 'em all. I am not attempting to be "insightful" about anything in particular and I think I have achieved my goal.
154 • #152 (by yelamdenu on 2009-02-22 21:31:47 GMT from Netherlands)
The problem is that Gnome depends more and more on Mono.
Define then what "Gnome" is.
There are some Gtk+ applications that work very nicely with Gnome that have Mono dependencies. Yet most Gnome applications do not.
Many distros install Mono by default.
There are also major distributions that install Compiz by default. That in itself means very little.
Some distros even make Evolution, OpenOffice etc. depend on Mono.
Such as?
And or what kind of stuff (not a rhetorical question, I just wouldn't know)?
People hate the fact that their Linux applications and desktop environment became dependent on Mono.
There are always alternatives. For instance, if you can't dig F-Spot, use Gthumb.
I use Debian and Fedora, to my knowledge those are major distros and they have never installed Mono by default in a desktop setup as far as I know.
That's why some of us (including myself) hate Mono. That's why Mono is considered a cancer. And for good reason.
But now we still don't know why you hate Mono. What is it about Mono that sucks, apart from the fact that it might be a dependency to some apps?
The only distro I know that installs Mono by default is Ubuntu. And I guess Suse would do it too but I haven't checked. What distro do you use?
155 • VL6 (by Verndog on 2009-02-23 06:12:14 GMT from United States)
I just downloaded VectorLinux 6.0. I got it installed ok. Being a Grub user, I had some issues with lilo, but was able to configure that as well, after I found out about "/sbin/lilo" to execute the changed lilo.conf file.
The only issue still not resolved is my network. Oddly enough, logging in as root I was able to get it to recognize my DHCP connection, but not as normal user, which of course I want.
156 • Free Software OS??? (by Azzorcist on 2009-02-23 07:05:47 GMT from Indonesia)
For Ladislav or Chris, I still wonder what you mean with "Distrowatch is for free operating system". I see that in some previous version of DWW (I don't remember which issue). What exactly you mean with FREE? Is it FREE as in MONEY or as in SPEECH?
If you mean in MONEY, then you should remove RedHat, Novell, Xandros, etc in the list. But, if you mean in SPEECH then you should exclude Solaris. That one is not free in speech (I don't think it will open sourced).
157 • RE: 156 Free Software OS??? (by ladislav on 2009-02-23 07:17:55 GMT from Taiwan)
Solaris is considered free software - at least according to those who develop it (the following is from an email dated back to September 2005):
Solaris 10 is free in both commonly-used meanings of the word. Solaris 10 is end-user licensed at $0 on any system for any purpose; source code is available under an OSI-approved license from OpenSolaris.org.
Best regards,
Larry Wake
Group Manager, Solaris Product Management
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
If you don't agree, write to them, argue with them, sue them. And check with your domain provider whether "solaris-is-not-free.com" is still available ;-)
Number of Comments: 157
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
| • Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
| • Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
| • Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
| • Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
| • Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
| • Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
| • Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
| • Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
| • Issue 1035 (2023-09-04): Debian GNU/Hurd 2023, PCLinuxOS 2023.07, do home users need a firewall, AlmaLinux introduces new repositories, Rocky Linux commits to RHEL compatibility, NetBSD machine runs unattended for nine years, Armbian runs wallpaper contest |
| • Issue 1034 (2023-08-28): Void 20230628, types of memory usage, FreeBSD receives port of Linux NVIDIA driver, Fedora plans improved theme handling for Qt applications, Canonical's plans for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1033 (2023-08-21): MiniOS 20230606, system user accounts, how Red Hat clones are moving forward, Haiku improves WINE performance, Debian turns 30 |
| • Full list of all issues |
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| Random Distribution | 
OliveBSD
OliveBSD was a live CD based on OpenBSD with graphical environment (IceWM) and various software packages.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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