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1 • Tiny Core and CentOS-5.3 (by bugz on 2009-03-30 08:50:02 GMT from United States)
Another great Monday for all DistroWatchers. Tiny Core looks interesting because of the small size and classic looks... I will give this a try. CentOS 5.3... I'm waiting for this update, nice to hear it will be available tomorrow. Can't wait for this one. Thanks DistroWatch.
2 • Unity Linux - PCLinuxOS breakup (by Muhammad Fahd Waseem on 2009-03-30 09:18:51 GMT from Germany)
So the PCLinuxOS setup is breaking up. This distro came in with a bang - I remember the number of users shooting up... But is it going to die a slow death? Divided, we fall?
3 • Nouveau! (by AbacusMonkey on 2009-03-30 09:19:13 GMT from Australia)
This is a great advancement for the linux community. Trust Fedora to be out front with integrating it. Kudos all involved. Keep up the good work.
4 • pclinuxos we have all seen this before (by NK on 2009-03-30 09:26:09 GMT from United States)
Is this to be expected when you have a single person exerting full control over things?? A similar thing happenned with Mepis when Warren Woodford single handedly managed to kill the burgeoning developer community dot Mepis as he kept full iron fist control. A few from dot Mepis even headed over to pclinuxos to face the same problem down the road now once again. It's certainly within the trademark holder's rights to do anything they want with their product (outside of the GPL) but one has to wonder what happens when there is a single "king" ruling over the code base which many users are dependent upon. I have worried about this problem for sometime with pclinuxos esp. with the obvious delays there with a patch release.
Kudos to the Puppy Linux distribution for their recent release which shifted to a community based developer model, which is 180 degrees from the "single figurehead" and which the release ironically coincides with these problems.
5 • Fedora Nouveau test day (by Gigi on 2009-03-30 09:26:40 GMT from United States)
Fedora Nouveau test day:
The bugzilla entry is not a requirement. However, people who faced problems opened Bug requests out of simple courtesy/participation. What the test does require is a fedora project account to edit the wiki page.
6 • TC, alsa and services (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 09:33:35 GMT from Germany)
it seems that the problem of persistancy with alsa has been solved:
http://tinycorelinux.com/forum/index.php?topic=913.0
For start/stop services, cli is your friend when you don't find the service for which you are looking in the gui control panel; you can list the services and start or stop them without difficulty issuing /etc/init.d/service start (or stop, etc.).
Additions to your review: TC also supports most of 3g umts modems. TC lives well together on other system; just copy the kernel and initrd files over to the boot directory of your distro, adjust your menu.lst, and at boot, choose the corresponding entry for TC.
TC community is very responsive and I hope, too, that the collection of software increases quickly. Anyway, it is a wonderful distro.
7 • Wolvix 2.0-beta1 (by Tom on 2009-03-30 10:06:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
Good to see another article about TC. There are some other distros out there & for new readers i thought i'd add a Monday morning cautionary tale (or is it tail?) http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1040.msg4956.html#msg4956
Hope you all have a good week and recover from the weekend quickly ;) Regards from Tom :)
8 • No subject (by rusmanik on 2009-03-30 10:08:56 GMT from Indonesia)
Poor PCLinuxOS. It is a bad news for linux world
9 • Set things straight on MEPIS (by Carl on 2009-03-30 10:13:13 GMT from Spain)
Poster #4 should check his facts and get them straight. MEPIS is doing very well, and so is its community: - Art work designed by community - All MEPIS assistants open sourced - New MEPIS Network Assistant enhanced by community devs - Multiple packagers for community repo add extra juice to MEPIS - Supported Sub release (Antix) on more to come - Ongoing projects on development by community.
So no, MEPIS is going in the other direction, and is gradually becoming more distro driven.
10 • Typo (by Carl on 2009-03-30 10:18:46 GMT from Spain)
That last sentence should of course read:' .... becoming more community driven'....
11 • @9 (by Frisco on 2009-03-30 10:18:52 GMT from United States)
Thank you, Carl. I was about to attempt something similar about Mepis/antiX.
Only to add that the forums at Mepis Lovers and at antiX are rich with info and very user friendly, just like the distros they make.
12 • Re : 4 & 9 (by Brooko on 2009-03-30 10:24:25 GMT from New Zealand)
NK - Carl's 100% correct - Warren has really embraced Community involvement. One I'm personally involved heavily in is our own Community run package repository. We use it to keep the most popular apps current - which is important especially as Debian Stable slowly ages. And Warren has endorsed it - it's now one of the default repos in the sources list on the live-cd.
It's taken a while, but we feel Mepis is headed for brighter and better things. Definitely no 'iron-fist' here.
13 • Tiny Core - Portable Perfection (by Justin Eastham on 2009-03-30 10:31:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
"I have to admit that I never really saw the point of these mini distributions in the past where you had to use a cut-down set of applications which made life harder. Sure, they were small, but in a time when computers are really fast and powerful, who cares about little tiny systems that can't do everything out of the box?"
TinyCore is a god-send !! At last; a system I can put together very easily; that gives me a web-browser, disk-partitioning tool (gparted), tools to format/read/write NTFS partitions; and all in UNDER 50MB. None of the other utility distros (System-Rescue-CD, GParted, etc.) fit inside 50Mb, and DSL is more a desktop distro than a recovery tool. Finally, I have the perfect credit-card sized live CD, with all the tools I need. TinyCore; I don't leave home without it ;-)
14 • PCLinuxOS (by Pumpino on 2009-03-30 11:05:14 GMT from Australia)
I haven't used PCLOS for some time now so it's interesting to hear what's been happening. Has anyone got links to any interesting posts in the PCLOS forum?
As for distros with a single developer, look at Slackware. The oldest surviving distro and one of the most stable. However, I do think it's rare. Having only one or two developers in control is usually a recipe for a limited lifespan. The recent delay with CentOS 5.3 being released is another example of this. It means that only one or two people need to leave a project and the distro becomes a statistic. That's why the big five of Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva and openSUSE will be the ones in it for the long haul.
15 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 11:18:36 GMT from Canada)
too many egos at pclos - people used the distro because tex was good at what he did - the others , while working hard , just did not have his skills . All those that left wanted there own spotlight and were just waiting for a way out
16 • Another Great DW Weekly! (by Jeff on 2009-03-30 11:27:22 GMT from United States)
You can add whatever functionality you would like to TinyCore. The g95 Fortran compiler ran fine as a binary.
DW Weekly just gets better and better! Thank you
17 • @14: Good example (by Muhammad Fahd Waseem at 2009-03-30 11:58:09 GMT from Germany)
Single developer driven distros don't have to die out... Like Pumpino pointed out, Slackware's an outstanding example. I think #15 may be on track there: Egos. But perhaps we'll only really know when Texstar or some of the leaving developers comment.
18 • Interesting Week Ahead (by Notorik on 2009-03-30 12:03:53 GMT from United States)
Very nice rundown on TC Chris. I wasn't completely clear on the different ways it could be saved/installed to the hard drive. I would have to disagree with the Mepis "naysayers". I just installed it (Mepis 8.0) on a laptop and found it quite satisfactory. It found the wireless drivers automatically, and the whole installation was effortless. AntiX, a very fine derivative of Mepis, seems to be doing very well also. I haven't been much of a fan of Debian based distros (Wolvix-Slackware being my OS of choice) in the past but Mepis + AntiX are giving me pause for thought.
Having said that, Wolvix is still the best choice for me but one should give credit where credit is due and Mepis is a quality distro with a very helpful and loyal community.
19 • this week (by dave on 2009-03-30 12:31:21 GMT from United States)
Well once again,another fine issue of Dww.MY interest was sparked upon reading the open.Ive been a big user of PCLos for a while now,and an occasional visitor to the forums.from what ive seen there hasnt been any posts or "hints"to whats been going on behind the scenes and this is all new news to me.I seem to recall a couple of months back a simple comment found here that referred to the demise of PCLos .Ipassed it off then as a hate comment but now I wonder if the anonymous poster came from "within"?I guess we are all left to wonder now of the future of this fine os.I will say that imo the new release isnt quite what the 2007 release was,and it[2007] may go down as the "height"of the PCLos days.I think"its gonna take some doin"in order for this os too continue as an incredible top 5 distro in the linux world in the years to come..........sad. On a different note I expressed my 5 year old's love for Quimo last week and was delighted to see mention of this fine distro for children this week.She's learning the linux way and spends time with this distro daily without having to go online,learning all the way.When she has friends over they too are intrigued by the friendly eskimo.It makes me think of the local transfer station and the stack of discarded older computers they have there.they dont allow locals to take them and opt to sell them.Im thinking of asking them too allow me to refurbish them[as most of them are working]and distribute them too some of the needy children in my town with a fresh install of Quimo!
20 • PCLinuxOS waning popularity (by Richard on 2009-03-30 12:31:32 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOs with it's waning popularity and lack of direction provided me the impetus to let the 'big' boys show off their stuff in action.. To my surprise 'Fedora' has been my biggest suprise and now my favorite. The little distro's were once good but some showed slow development and lack of new direction and in the case of PCLinuxOS this is what turned me away from them. A community driven distro needs a leader for it's direction but it also needs the community to help in it's development. When personalities become the issue then it's doomed to either die a slow death or disappear completely. This is unfortunate for PcLinuxOS.
21 • No subject (by Michael King at 2009-03-30 12:55:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
With comments about single developer led distro's I thought i would mention that Puppy linux has had its first release without its patriarch Barry Kauler at the helm and its looking great, lots of new features. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=40443 I really like the new Puppy webtop as well http://pupweb.org/desktop/
22 • PCLinuxOS (by Robert A. Eiser on 2009-03-30 13:20:59 GMT from United States)
Just like my post last week, I see egos involved. It takes a lot of ability to write great code, but sometimes it goes to the head. Not every doctor can be Dr. House. But many will try! Bob "open mouth" Eiser
23 • Texstar returns (by dhlawrence on 2009-03-30 13:24:42 GMT from United States)
Great job Captain Texstar, now that you have made those mutanous scalawags walk the plank, we can steer the good ship PCLinuxOS onward to triumph and glory at the "Pillars of Linux", all the time laughing at the inept Suse and Fedora monsters.
Long Live PCLinuxOS, glowing star of the linux distros !
24 • TinyMe & Unity (by KDulcimer on 2009-03-30 13:46:40 GMT from United States)
TinyMe is part of Unity. I guess I should have made another blog post to clarify that.
25 • PCLinuxOS -- a user's perspective (by simfox on 2009-03-30 13:49:46 GMT from United States)
I'm a PCLinuxOS user, not a developer. I'm really thankful that Texstar is back at the helm. The distro seemed to loose direction and momentum over the past year, so much so, that I was seriously considering switching. The things that made PCLinuxOS attractive to me in my academic profession and for daily use by all five members of my family (rolling release, reasonably cutting edge but put together so that everything just works, Apt for upgrades, PCC control center, KDE-based, responsive and friendly forum, etc) seemed to be unraveling in the absence of Texstar. I'm not dissing the dev team; just stating the obvious.
I just asked my sons, who frequent the forum more than I, whether they were aware of a developer walk-out. They dispute the Distrowatch report, noting that various developers have come and gone over the past year, and the changes at MyPCLinuxOS.com occurred without acrimony.
The latest release (2009.1) is good, but not fantastic. I for one, hope that Texstar will be able to shepherd the distro to KDE4.X.y with the same technical excellence he brought to his Mandrake RPMs (where I first encountered his work) and all the subsequent years of stellar PCLinuxOS releases.
Quite frankly, if Texstar decides to shake things up a bit with his team, that's just fine with us PCLinuxOS users. And if the shake-up results in more transparency for the development process, then everybody wins.
--Simfox
26 • Sad news from PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous Penguin on 2009-03-30 13:53:17 GMT from Italy)
I was really beginning to like it, everything worked out of the box for me with 2009.1 And now this. I hope it doesn't turn into another Kanotix/Sidux case.
27 • Tiny Core answer to netbook issues? (by GreenWolf70 on 2009-03-30 13:58:32 GMT from United States)
Tiny Core sounds like the perfect answer to those early netbooks with the 2 and 4 GB SSD's. But I'll wait a while until it is a little further along. Good beginning though. Good vision of where they want to go.
I've loaded up PCLinuxOS and it's still the best distro right out of the box, in my opinion. Everything works and there is no need to go into terminal command mode. It's still the best distro for those folks coming over from Windows. I especially like the utilities folder, Gui, rather than terminal, repair progs. Back to pursuit of the Holy Grail of no use of terminal commands, everything is in the GUI. Long Live the King!
Hate to hear about the issues over there with Texstar and crew, but it sounds like there was an attempted palace coup while the King was away. It failed, it was bloodless and they are moving on. What's the problem? Every now and then the best leaders purge those who can not see their vision. Read Demming, its the normal evolution of organizations. I'm just glad the original vision is still the guiding star.
As far as waning popularity, PCLOS will pick back up with this new version as soon as people start using it again. Fedora has a fatal flaw in it network manager and Suse has headed in the direction of being a corporate desktop most suited for control by corporate IT admins, it just isn't home user friendly anymore. I like DreamLinux over both of them, but it's just not as developed as PCLinuxOS.
BTW, I am so tired of reviewers complaining about distro backgrounds, or themes...really, quit wasting space and talk about how the distro works. Almost everyone changes the background or theme as soon as they get a new distro working and no one picks a distro because of its theme. Its like commenting about the different smells of farts, a total waste of time. JMHO.
28 • Qimo For Kids (by Schalk Neethling at 2009-03-30 14:04:50 GMT from South Africa)
Hey everyone,
Thanks so much for the link to my interview on OpenSource Release Feed, hope everyone enjoys the interview and contributes to the project.
Kind Regards, Schalk Neethling
29 • Re:26 (by Sertse on 2009-03-30 14:05:46 GMT from Australia)
I don't know such about the Kanotix/Sidux spilt, but knowing how it ended up, you can say in hindsight that spilt wasn't too bad after all?
I mean sidux today has formed into a well maintained,l respected distro, that more or less achieves its goal of making sid usable for day to day use. Most of its reviews are positive, and it was active forums and irc.
If the consequence of PCLinuxOS is something similar, well it is still a good thing no?
30 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 14:14:14 GMT from United States)
@23
There was no mutiny...Texstar didn't even have anything to do with people leaving OR staying...remember, he only came back 2 weeks before final..this was brewing well before that.
31 • Another good read (by bibi midi on 2009-03-30 14:17:42 GMT from Saudi Arabia)
Hello. This is another great issue and good read for all Linux lovers of the world. To Chris & Ladislav good job keep up the good work.
Tiny Core Linux looks promising. I'll have a go at it very soon.
The good folks at Puppy Linux did a great job releasing the 4.2 version. I tried toying with it to see if it can detect my usb 3G dongle modem but it seems it cannot. Is 4.2 has OOTB support for 3G usb dongle? Anyone successful with it i appreciate pointing in the right direction.
32 • Spreading FUD (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 14:28:07 GMT from United States)
As I predicted a few weeks ago right here on DWW forms that PCLinuxOS would go down in the record books. And everyone thought I was spreading FUD!!! HA!!! And It finally has because of macho egos. Another one bits the dust. Now when will my other prediction of Gentoo come true???
33 • RE 32 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 14:39:58 GMT from United States)
Over the past 5 years there have been many packagers for pclos come and go. The distro still hmms along.
34 • broken image links? (by tom on 2009-03-30 14:41:15 GMT from Australia)
the image links on this page (eg. http://distrowatch.com/images/screenshots/tiny-core-customdesktop.png) give me a 403 forbidden error (Forbidden / You don't have permission to access /images/screenshots/tiny-core-customdesktop.png on this server).
35 • pclos troubles (by buster on 2009-03-30 14:51:29 GMT from Canada)
As I write, there is only one thread on the Pclos forums discussing whatever it is that is going on, it has been locked after 12 replies: http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=58&topic=55927.0
36 • nv driver (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 15:01:05 GMT from France)
The nv driver is not developped by NVIDIA. There are 3 different drivers available: the official proprietary NVIDIA driver, the nv driver and nouveau. Both nv and nouveau are open source. NV is more mature but does not support some features that NOUVEAU tries to support
37 • RE 23 (by changturkey on 2009-03-30 15:01:32 GMT from Canada)
Posts like this make me shake my head.
38 • PCLinuxOS still a major distribution ? (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 15:01:48 GMT from Canada)
Maybe it is a good time to revisit the "Top Ten Distributions". MEPIS is pretty close to PCLinuxOS in the last 6 month "Page Hit Ranking". Another examples are Arch, Sabayon and Puppy that are now from far higher than Gentoo and very close (or higher) to CentOS.
I think the "Top Ten Distributions" is now obselet.
39 • There's more to the Story (by JMiahMan on 2009-03-30 15:15:59 GMT from Satellite Provider)
I must say with all sincerity. It has nothing to do with macho egos. Yes maybe a few egos got hurt in the process, but as it's been said in earlier posts this had been brewing for a while. There's more facts then that of what was presented in the story, much more deep rooted then I think any story will be able to explain. There's reasons Tex left, but in his return he was a different person. Over the course of that year PCLinuxOS survived off of community members. Very talented packagers and people. Behind the scenes PCLinuxOS became more organized, and took on a life of it's own. It was struggling to become more community oriented. Projects like Santa's Little Helper allowed new users to try there hand at packaging being guided by veteran packagers. One single man controlling PCLinuxOS became a thing of the past. Tex came back a very different man, the old Tex would have embraced this. Instead this Tex that came back didn't. He tried to grab the reigns from what was now a very capable group of developers and experience. Instead of patiently guiding people, he tried to exert his authority right away (again not like Tex in the past). 99.9% of the work on 2009.1 wasn't actually Tex's it was all community support. PCLinuxOS was forming into something much brighter behind the scenes, and really if people were willing to visit sites like myPCLinuxOS and Hack.MyPCLinuxOS they would have seen a semi underground community forming. Not forming out of egotistical pursuits, but forming out of the dream Tex used to have of giving PCLinuxOS up to the community one day. This was their tribute to a leader who had inspired them all. A Leader that said anyone can learn Linux and create something. Whether it be a hardware database, a single rpm package, or another distribution. With a different man returning with what would seem a different set of dreams, I know I was crushed to see the person who represents Tex (no one knew this until right before release, not even Tex's closest developers some of whom have been with him since the beginning) now blog so divisively about the situation. From all of this trouble though PCLinuxOS will still rise from it's ashes at least the ashes of the dreams that once drove it to success and become Unity. The sparks that kept PCLinuxOS alive have manifested themselves into something grander, taking the mistakes learned from PCLinuxOS the heart and dream of PCLinuxOS comes together to be Unitfied. Not one person, but one community. A community based on openness, a community based on learning, a community that carries on the dream that once sparked us to action. This spark is now being flamed, fed with the desire for progress, for something better, something fresh. A new way of handling things. Yes PCLinuxOS is Texstar's and always will be, but Unity through what once was his dream will become something much bigger then PCLinuxOS could have ever achieved in it's current form. God bless both parties.
40 • Unity added to the waiting list (by Landor on 2009-03-30 15:19:07 GMT from Canada)
I can't seem to find the logic behind adding a distro to the waiting list here that doesn't even have any kind of release for testing/download available.
Would I be able to create a webpage, call my distor LandorX and get on the waiting list and be announced here?
Yes, I know they "intend" on going forward, fact is we haven't seen that "yet" and truly wonder what if any reason do they get on the waiting list for other than page hits "currently".
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
41 • PCLOS - Actually an opportunity? (by dialup on 2009-03-30 15:47:00 GMT from United States)
I'm posting this using a legacy version of PCLOS (on my internet computer). I'm using another distro for other computers/tasks, but I haven't found anything better than PCLOS for this purpose. It's a daily reminder that a distro doesn't have to bloated to be best for a particular task.
I'm reluctant to depend on "one man" distributions. But otoh, most enterprises do need a leader. In life, I've been in only one work group which functioned well as a "democracy". My primary reason for not adopting subsequent versions of PCLOS was that, several years ago, I felt theat leadership/direction was lacking. Too many individuals doing their own thing and presuming to speak for PCLOS.
The first thing that needs to happen is for Tex to decide if he wants to continue. The, if he does, the direction PCLOS should take. My 100% self-interested preference is that it should continue as a KDE/rpm distro, but based on Fedora. A number of users seem to have re-discovered Fedora and KDE 4.2.1 is "getting there". So, there is opportunity.
Start off with a MiniMe+ as the base version. That is, include the capability to run Gnome/GTK apps as well. While my preference is KDE for the desktop and most apps, I'd also like to have (most of) the dependencies to download and run The Gimp, bluefish, pan, sylpheed, etc. But, please, no OO.
And to finish off my wish list, more fine-grained packaging of KDE 4 applications. Unfortunately, some of my must-have apps have been "moved", requiring the installation of too many apps I don't want for one I do want. (Examples, Akregator and KMail in kdepim and Kate in kdedev.)
42 • @ #40 (by JMiahMan on 2009-03-30 15:55:26 GMT from Satellite Provider)
I guess if you had pretty much all of the development crew along with any supporting spinoffs/remasters from one of the top 10 distros here backing your development LandorX might be added too. At this point if these remasters want to survive they either have to create and maintain their own core, or support and find another one. The latter would be an easier choice. There's more then just the few that were listed in the story all coming together. It's actually a pretty big deal. Check the Unity site out and get involved then you can create LandorX and have it on Distrowatch.
43 • No subject (by chemist on 2009-03-30 15:57:58 GMT from Germany)
@36: nv ist "free", but it is only maintained by the NVidia Corporation. Look at the changelogs, there are no other names than those of NVidia Corp. programmers. Moreover, the nv driver is obfuscated. It is opensource and free, but that does not help you much, because you do not know what the driver exactly does. You have to guess. Therefore, the nouveau team abondoned the obfuscated nv driver and tries to write nouveau without knowing anything for sure about the NVidia hardware. In this sense, nouveau is the real free "nv" driver. You know exactly what nouveau does in contrast to nv.
44 • security (by desktopuser on 2009-03-30 16:12:17 GMT from United States)
Another outstanding review. The explanations of the various ways of "installing" and adding software was interesting and informative. I do wonder though about the recommendation of Tiny Core to a beginner.
Recently, security has been given lots of attention here, or rather the approach to security with regard to a root account. The sudo system with no root account is considered by some to be an important factor in the choice of a distribution.
Since there is no mention of account privileges in the review, can it be assumed that Chris' preferred "sudo" system is used by default? Maybe is it an easy matter for a beginner to establish such a sudo system with no root login.
Or is security unimportant for web surfing (with a live system such as Tiny Core) as long as one doesn't use some "persistent" option that saves configuration changes?
45 • 39 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 16:13:17 GMT from United States)
"Tex came back a very different man, the old Tex would have embraced this. Instead this Tex that came back didn't. He tried to grab the reigns from what was now a very capable group of developers and experience. Instead of patiently guiding people, he tried to exert his authority right away (again not like Tex in the past)."
That is total BS, slanderous and defamation of character. Tex came back to save his baby AFTER people had already left to start their own project which had been planned all along.
46 • @ 45 (by KDulcimer on 2009-03-30 16:25:17 GMT from United States)
"Tex came back to save his baby AFTER people had already left to start their own project which had been planned all along."
There never were plans "all along" to have a mass exodus from PCLinuxOS after the 2009 release.
47 • locking/deletion of threads on PCLOS forum (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 16:30:21 GMT from Canada)
It's sad to see that every thread about the current situation is being either locked or deleted on the PCLOS forum.
Nice knowing you, PCLOS, but I can't support this.
48 • RE: 42 (by Landor on 2009-03-30 16:31:11 GMT from Canada)
Well, first off, it doesn't really matter how many devs are at a project. Bottom line and something you actually "failed" to address is that there "is no" iso available for download, testing or otherwise. So in essence your blurb failed to answer it, and although it wasn't directed at Ladislav, I'm sure it was obvious I was intending to get an answer from him regarding it.
On your quaint little quip about LandorX...No, I'll have to decline such a gracious offer. I personally don't put much faith in running with a crowd that jumps ship en masse.
I'm not a big fan of PCLOS to begin with (that's an understatement) but I'm quite sure as with last week's article regarding Tiny Core/DSL, there's far more to be heard than just this one group's side. Far more. Matters not though in my view of things.
Old addage, there's your story, theirs, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
49 • Fedora and Solaris (by Jesse on 2009-03-30 16:34:28 GMT from Canada)
I'm really glad to see Fedora leading the way with the new video driver. I like nVidia cards, but always feel odd using the closed source driver. Good to see this option is finally going main stream.
I'm also happy that OpenSolaris is continuing to grow. I cut my (UNIX) teeth on solaris back in school and would like ot see it become more popular.
One question though. Why is it that OpenSolaris can integrate Gnome with ZFS, but ZFS can't be added to the Linux kernel? Aren't both cases of mixing licenses? I'd like ot hear form someone who can answer this.
50 • @ 48 (by KDulcimer on 2009-03-30 16:49:13 GMT from United States)
Unity won't be directly having end-user releases. Think of it this way: TinyMe, Granular, and a few other ex-PCLinuxOS-remasters have joined together. Rather than place any one of those at the head and have everybody else base off that distro, they all collaborate on a common core, Unity.
So in a sense, when TinyMe makes a release, Unity will have had a release. And when Granular makes a release, Unity will have had another release.
Unity isn't a traditional Linux distro, no. It's really more a common core.
51 • Is there hope in Unity (by Former PCLinuxOS User on 2009-03-30 16:50:46 GMT from United States)
I hope Unity will have a better or more friendly forum. The PCLinuxOS forum is what let me away from PCLinuxOS. They are or were very arrogant!
That was the reason for switching to Ubuntu. I rarely experienced flaming on there forums. Forums are the lifeblood of ANY distro. Friendlyness is a must. Welcome new users and answer each question like it was the first time being asked. Your mainly dealing with Mac/Windows users afterall. This nonsense of "google is your friend" , just doesn't cut it!!!
52 • Tiny Core -- revolutionary? (by DaveW on 2009-03-30 17:06:12 GMT from United States)
Thanks for a very interesting review of Tiny Core. It seems to have the potential to truly revolutionize the way personal computing is done. It's the first really new Linux distro idea I've seen in quite a long time.
I think it obviously deserves the next DistroWatch donation as well as support from anybody interested in being part of the next generation of FLOSS computing.
53 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 17:09:01 GMT from United States)
Puppy Linux # 3 on Distrowatch...??
http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=1
54 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 17:12:05 GMT from United States)
Wow! # 3 for real
55 • @53 & 54 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 17:15:21 GMT from United States)
Yeah, I downloaded it & it seems to have some widgets like the clock & calendar, probably aimed at windows refugees!
56 • PCLinuxOS, Granular, TinyMe and others dissapointed when upgraded (by capricornus on 2009-03-30 17:45:37 GMT from Belgium)
On the 8 or so pc's I run, 1 is my own test pc and 1 is myown stable working horse. On my working horse, PCLinuxOS was entitled to run the Linux Partition. First the GNOME edition, which ruined itself when upgraded. A moment later, Granular 1 replaced it, but ruined itself too when upgraded, too. I tried Xubuntu 9.04 rc and I was very pleased by its speed of booting and its ease of managing. I installed GNOME over it, and it runs with all the completeness of this GUI. But that's personal, I know. The point is: PCLinuxOS lost me. It ran perfectly, and then it did not anymore. I lost PCLinuxOS and I do hope in Unity they will find a new future. Holy Father,...
57 • No subject (by orerestedest on 2009-03-30 17:47:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't think I'm in danger of continuing the soap opera theme...I have to say all the character assassination is a little bit off topic and not really relevant to Distros and the Watching thereof...
So...for those interested, a bit more on the new evergreen...
http://www.crn.com/software/216401684
58 • TinyCore: a great 'little' distro! (by Han Nicolaas on 2009-03-30 17:59:48 GMT from Netherlands)
Another nice issue of DistroWatch Weekly, thanks very much! Nice review of Tiny Core. I use it for 2 weeks now and it's very fast: using the PPR/TCE 'install' method with several applications loaded, my system with 512 MB RAM takes 40 seconds to load. I agree the software available is a little bit limited, but I'm sure this will get better in the future. By the way, I use Opera instead of Firefox and it's working great. For me TC is a great distro!
59 • re: 56 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 18:37:04 GMT from United States)
If PCLOS 2009 is a testament to the work now being done by the Unity guys then I would probably have pass on any final product. Too many things that worked on 2007 are broke in 2009. I'm sure they did their best but nobody does it like the star dude,
60 • RE: 50 (by Landor on 2009-03-30 18:40:46 GMT from Canada)
So by your own view of it, it's not a distro and doesn't warrant being on the waiting list to be a "listed distribution".
What the project describes it as, and your own comments, in essence it's nothing more than a build tool. Not to demean the size or base of that, but a build tool for a group of distributions none the less.
I would "personally" even go as far to equate it with the work Daniel Robbins does in building the Funtoo stages. Nothing more than a small base to actually building a distribution, and I'm sure not many (if any at all) would consider such stages a distribution.
Also, if there's going to be no available public releases perse', isn't that more akin to a closed project?
As I stated earlier, and my reason for the topic, I see no reason why a non-distribution should be listed as a distribution, on the waiting list or otherwise.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
61 • Qimo (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 19:01:17 GMT from Canada)
I love the Qimo project!
I would like to encourage everyone to support green computing initiatives, and recommend Qimo for some of that DW cash. Every computer we keep out of the trash and put into the hands of children is a boon for the future.
62 • eeebuntu, the best distro for my Asus eee 1000h netbook (by teobromina on 2009-03-30 19:10:19 GMT from Spain)
Just to draw your attention to eeebuntu
http://www.eeebuntu.org/
which is, according to my tests, the best distro for my Asus eee 1000h netbook.
I wanted to bring the page address of this distro here, because it cannot be found easily in the web and it is a very good solution to install Linux in such small devices.
63 • RE: # 29 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2009-03-30 19:19:02 GMT from Italy)
"I mean sidux today has formed into a well maintained,l respected distro, that more or less achieves its goal of making sid usable for day to day use. Most of its reviews are positive, and it was active forums and irc."
It depends on your priorities in life: If you enjoy living a dangerous life, than it might be OK: I mean, always the latest kernel, sometimes without even the necessary dependencies, logging in and out doen't work for me...
I want an OS which works without trouble most of the time, not one which needs constant care and attention. That is me, though...
64 • "As The Distro Turns" (by beany on 2009-03-30 19:24:54 GMT from United States)
All drama aside...I've been a very happy PCLinuxOs user for a long time. I have it on my main desktop and my netbook. Both flawlessly. I have 3 friend running it on their laptops and they seem very happy about it. We all do our updates without hitch and are satisfied with the amount of available apps in the repos. I use the forums without issue. I used Kanotix regularly before and was saddened by its downslide. I just don't see the deterioration in PCLOS right now. You guys can be such drama geeks sometimes.
65 • PcLOS and SLED 11 (by Shrek on 2009-03-30 19:26:14 GMT from United States)
PcLOS worked perfectly on my Acer 6930 Laptop, and I mean perfectly. Any newbie would be able to get this distro up and running on the laptop. To bad for the troubles.
I know its "taboo" to mention Novell's SLED 11, but I am, and have for the last two years or so, paid for and use the SLED products on my big home system. This release seems to be another outstanding product, with much needed updates. WTG Novell!
(and now let the Microsoft / Novell bashing continue)
66 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 20:08:59 GMT from Canada)
pclos 2009 just wasnt up to scratch and i could see why tex didnt want his name associated with it.
What they need is proper management structure
67 • re: 66 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 20:29:39 GMT from United States)
The repository was left in pretty bad shape. The could have cleaned up a little before they left.
68 • PCLOS (by historyb on 2009-03-30 20:32:26 GMT from United States)
I remember reading DW a while ago, a long while ago and it was opined that either Mepis or PCLinuxOS would not be here. It looks like PCLOS might just be the one that dies.
69 • PCLinuxOS -- a future? (by Mr. Rogers on 2009-03-30 20:46:43 GMT from United States)
I was pleasantly surprised by PCLOS 2007 and very disappointed with 2009.1. I agree with others posting here that things must have gone awry between the two releases and it's really a shame. I hope PCLOS can be resurrected, fixed and continue on because it was my best initial experience with Linux back in 2007 when I left the Windoze world. For now, I'm back to Ubuntu, Mint or Mepis.
70 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 21:34:59 GMT from United States)
'So by your own view of it, it's not a distro and doesn't warrant being on the waiting list to be a "listed distribution".'
Perhaps I should have clarified. I didn't say it wasn't a distro-- I said it was not a traditional distro. It is very much a distribution in my mind. Whether or not it's enough of a distribution to merit being listed on DistroWatch is not really my call. I personally think it is and I know quite a bit about Unity's setup.
71 • RE: 70 (by Landor on 2009-03-30 21:47:11 GMT from Canada)
What does a simple base that is "only" going to be used to build other systems, and not be distributed itself have to do with it actually being a distribution. Again, with no userbase for that "actual" build system, no iso or image for the public to use/test/preview.
I'm not being rude here and have 0 intention to be, maybe you can actually clarify by stating what you believe a distribution means in your mind. I've always believed for a "single" distribution it had to be actually distributed "itself". That's not the case at all with what your project is doing/talking about doing. Again, it speaks of just a build tool, and again, like I compared it to, a stage1-2-3 tarball like Gentoo has, or as mentioned, Daniel Robbins does.
There's been three posts now, two from you and what I believe is another person involved in the project and all three times it's yet be to defined in any way as a distribution.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
72 • 68 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 21:58:28 GMT from United States)
That could happen historyb considering some on the unity team are telling people not to help PCLOS in private messages. Right KDulcimer?
73 • RE #41 & 50 PcLos (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 21:58:54 GMT from United States)
I agree but let us not forget SAM, It was pretty darn good. It just didn't have the WiFi support that PCLOS had that worked sometimes. Currently I have replaced Sam on that machine with Mint 6.0 but it too has WiFi problems. But Puppy 4.2 Wow, even the wifi. They sure have a lot of catching up to do.
I think they should clean up the repos get Tiny Me in working order and move to a KDE 4.2 version
74 • #71--I agree (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-03-30 22:17:36 GMT from United States)
I'm with Landor on this one. Unity is, at this point, a concept or an idea, not a distribution. If there is code nobody but the Unity developers have seen it. As far as most of us know it's vaporware. Certainly if a new Unity or Unity-based distro emerges it deserves coverage on DistroWatch.
I'm involved in a project that isn't ready for prime time yet either. There have been no announcements and there won't be any until we have something for the community to look at and test.
75 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 22:23:43 GMT from United States)
"I could have run Tiny Core from the live CD; however, I wanted to be able to test operations using the optical drive, so I 'installed' it to the hard drive instead."
like many lightweight (and perhaps some heavy) live distros, boot: tinycore toram allows you to eject the cd after booting. some distros (such as austrumi, and possibly tinycore) do it this way unless you tell them not to, but either way the toram code works in tinycore.
76 • KDE 4.2 goes to Debian unstable. (by sertse on 2009-03-30 22:37:09 GMT from Australia)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2009/03/msg00157.html
It will happen sometime this week. Will the first real test for sidux for some time, after having a pretty smooth ride the last few months
77 • PCLOS (by Former PCLOS user on 2009-03-30 22:48:24 GMT from Canada)
As a former long time user of PCLOS I must say I'm not surprised at these recent developments. When Tex left for 'hiatus' there was a complete lack of transparency as to what was happening with the distro as a whole. Lack of information, lack of updates, broken packages in the repos, and a generally belligerent attitude by some of the senior forum members got me to look for a more 'stable' distro.
A simple announcement (with REAL information) with periodic updates from Tex might have helped to avert the infighting and misinformation that we see now.
78 • PCLinuxOS (by exploder on 2009-03-30 23:23:09 GMT from United States)
It is unfortunate about people leaving PCLinuxOS but this type of thing happens every now and then. I honestly do not think there was anything wrong with texstar checking 2009.1 before it's final release, this is pretty standard in my opinion. In all fairness, I also think everyone acted in the best interest of the distribution and the community.
PCLinuxOS has always been built in such a way that it works on as many machine as humanly possible. PCLinux does not follow trends of distributions that include the "latest, greatest", that doesn't necessarily work with all hardware. For example, PCLinuxOS uses a version of xorg that is mature, KDE 3.5.10 and a kernel that has working graphics card drivers available. I can appreciate this common sense approach and wish more distributions used the same good judgment
It is my opinion that PCLinuxOS will be around for a long time to come. People want something that actually works and PCLinuxOS does just that. It is nice to see a distribution that is built with some independent thought and not a clone of something else. PCLinuxOS will overcome the departure of some of it's team and continue to be a successful distribution.
79 • In reply (by Chris Smart on 2009-03-31 00:05:49 GMT from Australia)
43 • No subject (by chemist on 2009-03-30 15:57:58 GMT from Germany) Thanks, this saved me from posting this :-)
44 • security (by desktopuser on 2009-03-30 16:12:17 GMT from United States) You're right, I should have mentioned this. So many things to write in so little time! As per the interview with Shingledecker, Tiny Core is not really designed for multiple users, "Tiny Core currently supports adding users but primarily for the purpose to allow SSH access," he wrote. As such, the default user pretty much has full sudo access, as though they were root.
49 • Fedora and Solaris (by Jesse on 2009-03-30 16:34:28 GMT from Canada) As with Linux distributions, the desktop is not a derived work of the kernel so it's perfectly fine to have userspace applications under a different license. It's only if you include a program which calls, uses, or is a derived work of something else that means you need to follow the license - if the license requires it. The GPL does require this, but other licenses like BSD do not.
In short, if two pieces of software have nothing to do with each other, then they are merely aggregate works and can be distributed together under two completely different licenses. Yes, this means you could ship proprietary software with a Linux distro, so long as the license of the proprietary software allows distribution.
ZFS cannot be included in the Linux kernel because it would become a derived work of the kernel and would therefore need to be under a compatible license, which it's not. If ZFS is released under the GPL2, then it could be (but if it's under the GPL3 then it can't be, unless the Linux kernel is re-licensed under GPL3 also).
75 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-30 22:23:43 GMT from United States) Thanks, I didn't think to check the bootcodes, but I still wanted to be able to just boot the distro from a persistent storage, rather than having to insert and load from the CD with each reboot.
80 • PCLOS (by jaslar on 2009-03-31 00:39:43 GMT from United States)
Like many above, I'll express gratitude for the distro that worked well with my hardware, gave knowledgeable and useful support from its forum, and provided me with years of mostly trouble-free computing.
I left PCLinuxOS after the Big Upgrade. It just wasn't stable on my system. But I had, and have, every confidence that those issues will be ironed out. Meanwhile, it gave me a chance to look over the big guys again. Fedora 10 is gorgeous -- although I have to say that its wireless management issues (inability to login automatically), and the persistence of that problem would never have been tolerated by the PCLOS community. The problem would have been fixed. I don't understand why it hasn't been in Fedora.
Or maybe I do. Distros dependent on one person are vulnerable. That's the truth. Distros dependent on big groups of people are sometimes slow to respond. That's the truth, too.
So we make the best we can of the many options open to us.
I repeat: I'm grateful to the fine work of the PCLOS developers in the past. I wish them well in the future. The Linux world is a complex ecosystem, and may the most evolved win.
81 • Hmm (by Nobody Important on 2009-03-31 01:53:29 GMT from United States)
Wow!
I liked PCLinuxOS 2007, but the project's opacity drove me elsewhere. I mean, it was fine and all, but I can get my Linux elsewhere, in a place that actually _says_ something to its community occasionally. And the mods tweak me, too, even if I've never posted a single comment - nasty, dry comments that showed disrespect for users.
2009.1, however, suffered from stagnation. While I could put up with a lot of little problems and issues in 2007, having to do them in 2009 seems a little weird, especially since Fedora and Ubuntu have gone well past that level. Little things, like having to hack the xorg.conf file when two video cards are attached, or a wi-fi card not working, that sort of thing. I can't blame the distro outright - it's obviously tuned for a certain time period - but I can't say I liked it's stale taste either. Even Debian managed to be a bit more "on the ball," so to speak.
Unity looks to be the same as PCLinuxOS - closed, gated community that throws ISO files over the wall every once in a while. I hope this initial gut reaction is incorrect. That really doesn't interest me much, considering that's what I'm trying to get away from by using Linux.
In any case, the next few years will continue to be interesting enough to keep me glued to my chair. Hopefully we hear some good news dangnabbit! Well, I amend that - CentOS's new release is good news, I suppose! Bravo, developers!
82 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-03-31 01:53:43 GMT from Canada)
kdulcimer banned me and others from pclos for no good reason- one bad apple.............
83 • @82 (by KDulcimer on 2009-03-31 02:30:59 GMT from United States)
I never had the powers to ban anybody on PCLinuxOS.com.
Are you sure you don't mean MyPCLinuxOS? I've banned a few people there.
84 • RE: KDE 4.2 goes to Debian unstable (by Mark on 2009-03-31 02:38:50 GMT from Australia)
Wow. That is great news.
I hope there will be a new release of Siddux following this change, especially if it has a 2.6.29 kernel.
85 • Ref Fedora 10 networking problem(s). (by dialup on 2009-03-31 02:51:07 GMT from United States)
Have you tried the new NetworkManager update? The list of fixes can be found in the March Fedora-package-announce mailing list archive entry for the package. (I use system-config-network instead and it was updated in early Jan. )
Do take advantage of bugzilla to locate/track any serious problem you're having. There sometimes are work-arounds and testing updates (user beware).
One difference between PCLOS and Fedora is the frequency of releases. With Fedora, the good news is that there will be a new release in ~6 months. The bad news is that something that works now may be broken.
86 • Re PCLOS Saga/Split (by Observer on 2009-03-31 03:05:41 GMT from Australia)
>>texstar Re: Distrowatch this morning « Reply #13 on: Today at 08:49:20 PM » All of this happened well over a month ago. It was a non event. There have been many packagers who have came and left over the years. Life goes on and so does PCLinuxOS. I find it interesting Distrowatch approached Unity when they never made an attempt to contact anyone here. http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=58&topic=55927.0 <<
Gettinther PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:35 pm
Tex left the dev team about 10 months ago leaving me more or less to pick up the pieces. I did so until a short while ago. Following a dispute with another devs that I will not mention, myself and most of the devs decided to leave. This group includes myself, Sal, Gri6507, Stumpy842, and partially Neverstopdreaming since he also keep maintaining his key packages for pclos. Thac has stopped all development work. This leaves now Tex and Etjr as "the development team". Most of the developer community around pclos has joined us, hence the closure of mypclinuxos. All the remaster except for pclinuxos-gnome and bel have joined our team. Our beef was never with Tex but he decided to show up way too late in the fight to have any bearing on the outcome.
I tried my very best to keep this whole affair from being made public but some above comments really irks me. How can someone even dare to call me anything but a pclos dev is unreal. Coming from Bigbear, it's rich.
http://forums.raiden.net/viewtopic.php?t=20324&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
87 • ethics, open, and on occasion, closed (by Glenn on 2009-03-31 03:10:31 GMT from United States)
82, re. ethics and open-ness in a discussion about Open Source Linux distros:
I find it interesting that you post with no subject but moreso that you post as Anonymous. Full disclosure:I happen to love Canada, frankly never cared for PCLinuxOS all that much, very much like TinyMe and KDulcimer.
I sometimes wonder at the pettiness of people far more brilliant than I whom I benefit from every day using excellent Linux distros. Tech geniuses, like all others in society can sometimes be rather unkind, scrappy folks. I have zero idea why you may have been banned but in any community there comes a time forum admins have to deal with flamebait and the like. We've all seen plenty of venting online and in the end, I begin to wonder if anything productive comes from -not- hitting the "off button" on some folks on -some- occasions?
For those who might be thinking "censorship is ALWAYS a sin in the open-source community"- I happen to be a full-on evangelist. You wouldn't ever want me to be quiet or ask me to leave your chosen community... or would you :) ?
There really IS a time for every purpose under heaven, even a time for folks to disagree, separate and get on with real working relationships that produce good things. One of the things I love most about 'nix is the incredible variety of distros and good work we can accomplish from the majority of them.
Great job Chris, truly loving DW! -Glenn
88 • Tiny Core (by RollMeAway on 2009-03-31 04:38:55 GMT from United States)
I'm having trouble understanding what Tiny Core offers that Puppy has not already covered. All of the install modes, running from ram, module addons etc. have been in Puppy for a long time. I do think one problem with Puppy is there have been too many completely different bases. One or more was even based on Slackware! There have been dozens or more pups that were simply the basic distro with one individuals favorite modules added, and presto another pup.
Is that what we can expect from Tiny Core now? Dozens of people adding their preferences and releasing "A new distro"?
89 • PCLinuxOS (by RollMeAway on 2009-03-31 04:49:09 GMT from United States)
I personally DO NOT want to hear about all the squabbling and infighting.
I WOULD like the see an interview with texstar. I would like to know "Where the hell have you been the last year?" Why did you go? And most importantly, what is your vision for the future of PCLinuxOS?
90 • @43 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-31 05:43:08 GMT from France)
Thanks for enlighting me avout the nv driver, I didn't know that. So the NVIDIA corporation release 2 different drivers. One that is plain proprietary and one that support a subset of the features of the first but that is legally GPL'd but not in spirit. So that doubles their cost and people will end up developping their own driver and use NOUVEAU. In a not so far future, they will realize how stupid they've been and will open source the proprietary driver just like AMD. So that cost us more than 3 times the cost of normal driver development plus the cost of reverse engeneering and 10 years of mess for nothing. Those suits like to waste resources it seems and we wonder why there is a financial crisys.
91 • @ 89 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-31 05:57:41 GMT from Satellite Provider)
That is the question isn't it? A lack of leadership and openness from the beginning is what caused the mess. What's going to keep this same thing from happening again? I'm trying to find something different now. It's a down right shame. Be weary of distributions like this that aren't truly open to the community, who knows what else is gong on. If I still wanted to be a PCLinuxOS user I would flood the forum with questions. Hopefully the Unity project will learn from all of this and chose a better path.
92 • 91 (by Anonymous on 2009-03-31 06:08:14 GMT from United States)
Actually everything was running good without Texstar until two weeks before release when things got funky. People started making decisions without considering other team member opinions.
93 • @ 92ni (by Anonymous on 2009-03-31 06:41:35 GMT from Satellite Provider)
Do you know where Tex went, why and if he's going to go again? Why isn't PCLinuxOS being open about this. Does it think it's users don't need to know? I donated at one time to PCLInuxOS, shouldn't I be able to know? I thougth it was a community distribution.. So tell the community what's going on.. If you know and then stories like this won't happen. Then we won;t have stories of the young and distroless..
94 • PCLinuxOS again... (by Xtyn on 2009-03-31 08:19:42 GMT from Romania)
PCLinuxOS 0.93 introduced me to the linux world and for that I will be forever grateful. Texstar was always low profile. It was evident there were problems but nobody squeaked a word, the repos had been frozen for a lot of time and the 2009 release finally came after 2 years. I understand Texstar for abandoning the project for a year, people do have personal problems but I don't want such a distro. 6 months ago I switched to Ubuntu and never looked back.
Long live Ubuntu!
95 • Why we say this or that distro is best (by Frisco on 2009-03-31 10:52:20 GMT from United States)
This PCLinuxOS talk reminds me of the discussions about choosing distros and calling them "best."
"Long live Ubuntu" could be "Long live Mepis/antiX" for us who have discovered its functionality on our machines, but this discussion seems about 10% functionality and 90% stuff I have no concerns about when testing distros for our facility.
Personalities and other background issues like developers coming and going, etc, seem to have too much power in the linux world, if I understand this week's thread about PCLinuxOS and the few other distros mentioned with staff changes, etc.
If it affects the repositories and abilities to keep the operating system tuned up, etc, then perhaps we should all get together and form a cadre of developers who keep an eye on such things and can implement the actions necessary to keep repos viable, etc.
96 • Yawn... (by Notorik on 2009-03-31 11:24:07 GMT from United States)
...Boring...
#74...What did you say that "project" is?:)
97 • pclinuxos not the first (by NK on 2009-03-31 11:48:19 GMT from United States)
@95 unfortunately many problems erupt in distros and turn political in nature and end up affecting users one way or another. It seemed like gentoo had to muck through problems some time ago. Maybe it's inevitable. Maybe having "one guy" at the top makes it too heavy and stifling for those that expect more of a democratic process. But while a democratic process may seem good, maybe there needs to be that "one guy" that needs to steer things in the right direction.
The thing I hold against pclos is no regular release date addressed and instead a couple of the top guys saying sit down and be quiet. Ubuntu probably set the bar for other distros to follow in this area and when you start to creep towards the top of distrowatch list the number of users on board practically demands it. As I see it, that "one guy" texstar dropped the ball by not being able to turn it over to a competent team to take over. Whether the ones that left were the important cogs or not I do not know and it probably doesn't matter if texstar is at the helm again, as he is capable (albeit slowly) to keep developement going. That is if he doesn't have to go away again for whatever reason.
I'm not saying it's pclinuxos even. I still remember how the dotmepis community was set ablaze by Warren (for whatever reason). Now everyone says Mepis has a wonderful community blah blah blah. Well until the "top guy" decides differently that is.
98 • Leaders need to learn (by pozz053 on 2009-03-31 12:18:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's easy to be hard on leading figures in these distros, forgetting that they are only human, and their whole training and professional development is often counter to the needs of collaborative work. It's noticeable that the problems often come not so much through exercising an iron dictatorship, but while trying to relax it. The moment the team starts to think for itself and do unpredictable things, leaders often start to worry and clamp down again. They need to learn the skills of inspirational but hands-off leadership. It's not easy. Looks like Puppy has come through the transition in good shape. Whatever happened in the past, Warren seems to have learned and Mepis is in excellent shape in every way - strong community, incredibly good distro.
99 • PCLinuxOS (by rtrj on 2009-03-31 13:33:24 GMT from United States)
I've used PCLinuxOS for about 3 years now it has been a trouble free and a pleasure to use. I've had few problems with the "forums" but I do admit they are restrictive. Being on the inside things started getting weird when Tex left last summer. There were not straight answers to a community that seemed truly concerned about him and questions were ignored or deleted. Everyone has a right to privacy but unanswered questions brew paranoia. I think many of the forum members wondered if there would ever be a 2009 edition, if you asked about it the post would be deleted! In PCLinuxOS I have seen some of the most talented developers in the Linux community, but do childish actions and lack of accountability go hand in hand with talent? I've trolled as many of the forums I could find to try to make sense of this mess and from where I stand I see hurt egos on both sides not willing to fess up or shut up. It is a total shame that feuds like this take place, it has the potential to destroy a lot of hard work and a distro family in the process. Unity doesn't start buy running away and starting your own game. I bet mistakes were made on both sides that need to be admitted and forgiven.
rtrj
100 • Community Distro (by Joble at 2009-03-31 14:42:49 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS will rise, or fall, by the whim of the community it supports.
It is situations like this that test the community, and the PCLOS Community is rising to the challenge. Don't count us out yet.
101 • pclos (by dave on 2009-03-31 14:52:50 GMT from United States)
......one has too admit an interview with Texstar here on Dww would draw the crowd.There's a huge fanbase out there that just wants to know what lies ahead,although it's unlikely tex will agree to it.I or we dont care about what happened,just want to know where its going.
102 • Survival of the fittest, and all that .. (by DeniZen on 2009-03-31 14:56:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re PCLOS, and the others that have gone, survived, imploded / exploded.
I think some issues stem from a perception that 'something' that is close to a garage industry / small-co-op / one-person-band / .. dictatorship ;) / is lkely to provide any of its userbase with a dependable long-term expectation. It might do, it might not.
Popularity, and robust advocacy from an user-base, or a lively forum is no yardstick of how steadfast a Distribution project's underpinnings may be.
I think that the potential predeliction of the the (semi-mythical) 'Linux Community' towards Distro's that appear to have no 'dirty-fat-cat' / 'corporate' underpinnings will inevitably mean some folks will wake up to find their 'OS' is no longer going to be supported.
It is for this reason that rightly, or wrongly I have tended to stick with one of the a 'big 'uns' (Debian, as it happens) for any situation where I want to be able to depend on things for the forseeable future.
Debian has had plenty of Personnel / Personal explosions, but to my eye never looked to be threatened as a Distribution.
I continue to enjoy tinkering with other Distro's but there are few I would *genuinely* expect to be still using in ..5 years time - even if I wanted to. I suspect I will likely be using Debian. Time will tell ;)
But thats 'Linux' for ya I guess, as it stands.
The ubiquity, choice and sheer plethora of Distributions is both a strength , and an Achille's heel (and, frankly one of the main reasons for such a very fragmented so-called 'Community')
There's just too many 'general Desktop' Distro's now - I mean really...
Personally, I wish there were less 'flavours', but perhaps a better specialism.
And that those Desktop orientated flavours that remain to exist to be stronger, better underpinned, better supported and better resourced, and more capapble of sustaining a increasingly unified 'Linux Community' as a result of that.
'm sure e.g. PCLOS is/was/may-be a fine project. I dont mean any disrespect to the ex-devs, nor Mr Texstar, et-al, but theres no reason why the most of us would actually miss (e.g.) PCLOS one bit - is there? What genuine niche does fill that (many equavalents) do not? Equivalents that may be a a little less volatile in their structure...
103 • Well.. hmmm.. :) (by Frisco on 2009-03-31 16:59:33 GMT from United States)
Sorry.. just a thought; it seems that the thing I see as most useful (and what we contribute our money to) is the software (and the information laden forums).
What is being discussed here seems more akin to concern about a couple's marital problems overheard through the walls, when one or both of them are our auto dealer or our favorite shoe store managers.
104 • redundancy? (by Tom on 2009-03-31 17:39:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think it's good to have a lot of different distros covering essentially the same markets. When one no longer suits a user it is relatively (technically) painless to just move on, add another OS to the multi-boot if you think things might pick up again later. It makes linux, as a whole, more survivable.
Also for developers there's room to move from 1 distro to another without the need to sit, suffer and eventually explode. I think it would be great if more of the energy & talent went into multimedia apps, drivers, Wine.
The Wine forums really need a big tidy up before we can expect to see many people leaving M$ & their 'lovely' skinable apps behind. It's not enough to hear that an app "wont work", we need to hear which distro and what hardware it didn't work on. Also knowing which of the standard tricks were attempted would be helpful. A few people with the talents and patience of Ladislav & Chris Smart could do a lot for linux by sorting out the tangle in Wine forums.
Sorry for the rant Good luck all and have fun, regards from Tom :)
105 • DW (by Tom on 2009-03-31 19:50:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
DW is an invaluable resource and deserves more resources, not less. Losing either Ladislav or Chris, even to another project, would be a tragedy. Keep up the good work chaps, thanks from :D
106 • No subject (by forest on 2009-03-31 20:14:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #102
Good point I reckon (and has been said before above)...the bigger the better...able to withstand the odd hiccup with family fall outs...
Unfortunately it seems from past comments that if you have a "key wo/man" who falls foul of the troops...and troops abandon ship/mutiny then the vessel goes under...if only until the ship is refloated.
Trouble is while the cap'n is busy baling out the barky the passengers have all made bookings on a different seaworthy schooner...and are already on the horizon.
The crew have all found new berths and are busily getting to know their new shipmates...swopping yarns around the binnacle on different ways of navigating the straits of Linux. In short the crew have set a new course and are as happy as Larry...until they broach to on the next lee shore that is...
That's the beauty of a free software...nobody has to stay with anything they are no longer happy with...there's ALWAYS something else new to play with.
I would surmise most folk have a stable, "standard(?)" distro that is the reliable link to the internet, WP, etc, etc. Further surmise is that very few folk in reality trouble to search the forums...as has been said before, why waste time trouble shooting when you can try out another distro?
And, "Top Tip"... washing your dirty linen in public is a sure way to convince folk to steer clear...on the grounds the entire outfit could fold and time spent doing your best to help with someone's pet project might be considered as time wasted.
Getting back on topic...has anyone tried the Xubuntu beta? If this is a beta then not bad at all, (rather like that Wolvix beta). Wifi just worked and has been up for a couple of hours without any drop offs at all. I agree 2 hours is no big deal...my point was wifi link just worked from the instant after boot. Enter PW and away.
107 • re#106 (by hab on 2009-03-31 22:07:51 GMT from Canada)
Linux is a neophiles delight. Organize your install (like /home on a separate partition) and moving YOUR stuff down the timeline becomes rather trivial!
I could never get the "my distro is better than yours bs". It's ALL friggin" linux.
Right now i have elive 1.0 installing on a spare box. It looks interesting. What other domain can one play in where the choices are as wide and deep as they are in linux?
cheers
108 • Look out! April Fools Virus!! (by Frisco on 2009-03-31 23:45:26 GMT from United States)
Windows OSs only though. LOL.
Sorry, had to say that as we cruise along in our *****Linux***** distro.
Toodle-oo. :o)
109 • @102 (by Notorik on 2009-04-01 01:01:02 GMT from United States)
Diversity is also key to survival. It is not always the biggest and strongest that survive.
However, we are using metaphors from science and applying them to operating systems.
We will always have this coming and going of different Linux distros (as with all things). As you know, (BodhiZazen) human thought breeds duality, i.e. thinking that this one is better than that one. In the end it doesn't really matter does it?
110 • PClinuxos (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-01 01:09:50 GMT from United States)
I've deleted this 4 times now, because I get long winded. Short, short, abbreviated version.
Sorry to see the Devs go, but perhaps given the ... quality.. of some of the work recently it is time for them to get some fresh air somewhere else.
Big Update was less than smooth, left many users with issues that didn't seem to get corrected fast enough. I can only assume that there was a lack of testers available, my subscription to the Dev team mailing list long ago was found and removed ^.^
The 2009.1 release, even delayed a few weeks.. probably should have been delayed longer. It is a solid release, but with "The man" returning for what ever duration of time.. This drama could have been avoided with more talking I think.
Ah well, Good luck unity, I'll try the ISO when ever you actually get around to producing one. Always interested in new distro's.. even though PCLinuxos is my home.
111 • re#110 (by hab on 2009-04-01 01:57:33 GMT from Canada)
It really is irrelevant as to who stays and who goes. There is some user base or community support/affiliation for one group or another but in the end it really doesn't matter much, apart from what ever personal emotional entanglement with a project or distro that any individual has.
Pclinuxos is derived from mandriva which used to be mandrake which was originally based on redhat. Ubuntu is based on debian and itself has become the object of derivation. There is a definite pattern here one can reasonably hope/expect will continue.
All of the chatter over who is doing what with/to whom, and a buck and a half will buy you a cup a coffee! There really are far more interesting things in the linux realm to engage with!
cheers
112 • Re #111 (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-01 03:09:10 GMT from United States)
Very true, it doesn't matter who stays or goes.. If the spirit of the distro and community stays the same.
If I had a dollar for every time devs left a distro, I'd give Mr. Gates a run for his money I think.
As long as people are willing to step up to the challenge, and continue the growth of "linux" as a whole.. Really doesn't matter in the long run which distro stays, and which distro goes.
Lots of fun distro's out there, I use to be a Mandrake user waaaaay back in the day. Switched from Red hat... Not that I was proficient at it by any means, it was experiementing and learning.
113 • best wishes (by Anonymous on 2009-04-01 03:16:22 GMT from United States)
I think Tex and Warren are the same guy. He just wanted to experiment with a few distros, Mandriva & Ubuntu & Debian anyway, until he makes things simple enough that his grammy could use. Cept his dog died and he had to take some time off.
Cause there isn't two other Linux people who really want to make things that easy... cept for those Turks and Clem, maybe Mr. Knopper. Mr. Knopper seemed to disappear for a while too... but he couldn't be Tex/Warren because he is a God! And if his dog died then Mr. Knopper would simply reboot that dog and everything would be fine.
Although they aren't Gods, Tex and Warren have been Big. Gigantic. For a while, these were the guys who were showing us how desktop Linux should be done. Best wishes to them both.
114 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-04-01 04:37:15 GMT from United States)
I am full of confidence that PCLinuxOS will go on
115 • @ 113 (by DeniZen on 2009-04-01 09:04:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Tex and Warren have been Big. Gigantic. For a while, these were the guys who were showing us how desktop Linux should be done..."
Indeed, esp. for regular Home Users - Absolutely so.
Though your post was humorous (made me laugh anyhoo) I think that statement represents a very fair observation.
There was nothing else that was anything like Mepis , nor PCLOS just a few short years ago. Those two defined the: Compact, 'everything works', easy install, 'Home User', easy to use Distro ( of which since, we now have quite a choice).
While the bar is continually being raised in this respect, I'm sure that remains Warrens agenda, and no doubt it may still be Tex's also.
116 • Redhat maybe going propriotary?!?! (by Guy on 2009-04-01 13:47:38 GMT from United States)
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090401/tc_infoworld/130503
117 • No subject (by Eyes-Only on 2009-04-01 14:45:49 GMT from United States)
Yeah riiight! And read the bottom line of that article re: "RedHat".
"April Fool's" indeed!
Amicalement/Cheers!
Eyes-Only/"L'Peau-Rouge"
118 • Re 116 (by Myself on 2009-04-01 14:49:35 GMT from United States)
Hey Guy......I hope you're not as stupid as your misspelling of proprietary would imply.....I hope you KNOW today is April Fool's Day. To everyone else, if you need a laugh, by all means check out the link. I wouldn't bother, though. It's not funny enough to read all of it. That being said, I sure would like to know more about the blowup of the PCLinuxOS family because I, too, donated to keep the family a strong unit. As for Unity, I'm not sure about this. I will wait and see what is said about the future of Texstar's distro. If he says nothing, he will speak volumes and I shall move on to one of the "biggies". If he enjoys the fact that a lot of people care about using his distro, then he should talk about it very soon or I fear more people will leave the community. I used PCLinuxOS from .92 to 2007 and I stood by Tex and the Ripper Gang and more than patiently waited for 2009. I don't know how much more patient I will be for his side of the story and what his plans are for the future of this fine OS. There are too many options with linux. I learned the same thing with women..there are other fish in the sea and sometimes it's time to move on. Obviously, I will not donate to Unity. I do not trust KDulcimer. Sorry.
119 • userful (by Jairo Mayorga on 2009-04-01 16:01:58 GMT from Colombia)
Dear sir Well for tinycore, please look at www.userful.com and www.koolu.org and www.campu-party.com.co Thanks
120 • PCLinuxOS (by No Kidding on 2009-04-01 16:25:29 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS is dead!
Texstar is dead!
Happy April 1st everyone!
121 • PCLOS/UNITY (by Landor on 2009-04-01 19:11:37 GMT from Canada)
I used the recent PCLOS release and found many flaws. All of which made me believe that PCLOS took two years to be a failure "this release". Sure, and a disclaimer, "that's just my/one personal opinion. Regardless. I found the system showing "rot" over the period I ran it. I installed or tried to, various packages from their repositories that I use day to day that are normally not in a distro and 6 of those packages were either missing dependencies crucial to their running or after installing did not in fact install at all, which blew me away. No, I did not go to the forums or IRC regarding this, simply due to the level of such errs, if I found 6, I truly believed there had to be many more and still do.
Now we look at this split of the development ranks. A lot of hyperbole is being shot out about Texstar's absence. I thought about this and dismissed his absence as the complete reason this release was an utter mess. The man was gone for a year and PCLOS had devs that were supposedly very competent in their respective areas. Some of which have their own remasters of PCLOS, which further shows they at least know enough to remaster, build a system. These were the guys who put the core of the release together, these were the guys who built the packages for the repositories.
Now, Texstar comes back, takes the reins because he sees reason, and at least in my personal opinion he had pretty good reason based on the repos alone. I also feel he should have done some spring cleaning and delayed the release again until the repo problems could have been fixed. That is truly poor management.
The group band together and leave. But, also they start a project for their own core called "Unity". When I see a msssive group of people running off from any one of thing like that I can't help but see it as childish and inapropriate, moreso when whatever they want to believe they are a contributing factor in the problems (the build, the repos, etc) the release had which in my opinion speaks volumes of their kind of commitment and abilities.
I personally can't believe that there wasn't talk of a split before their reasons to split. What further makes me believe it is the one comment that KDulcimer himself refused to answer about the private messages here. He bounced on the banning of a user from the forms in instant semi-denial, but to the remark of him sending private messages to other users and such not to help PCLOS. Very immature indeed that is, but again speaks volumes and lends credence to the fact (in my own opinion) that this was a split that was being formed for some time. I have to wonder how old some are, I'd hate to think it's adults with this grade 6 schoolyard mentality. To top it off, the project is being called "Unity" of all things.
I don't think I'll ever test PCLOS again, can't say for sure. I can say I won't be giving a shot to any of the sub-projects based off this "Unity". PCLOS' recent release which they were obviously the core behind it's build, it's repositories, and their own loyalty, integrity coming into question isn't much of a "core" I put much stock into.
Anyway, just my two cents from running 2009 for a bit and what I've observed here and picked up from various other mediums invoving said topic.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
122 • PCLOS/UNITY (by NK on 2009-04-01 19:43:05 GMT from United States)
I don't think that the split as originally indicated had animosity with it. I think that it had more to do with the "one guy at the top" syndrome. Let's face it, it's incredibly difficult to push along a large software project like this distribution when there is little financial support. Also, pclinuxos has had increasing difficulty dealing with release dates and roadmaps. In other words, the differences are primarily technical and not personal.
123 • PCLOS 2009 (by kilgoretrout on 2009-04-01 20:11:55 GMT from United States)
I don't understand the negative comments as PCLOS 2009 runs fine on my hardware whereas 2007 wouldn't run at all due to it's ancient kernel which couldn't handle my then fairly recent intel 965 motherboard and and core2duo processor. PCLOS is what it always was, a very good remake of mandriva(here, 2008.1), suitably modified with an eye toward rolling updates which include the more recent desktop apps that people want most. I thought the idea was to leave that base alone for stability and update, kde and other userland apps as new versions came out and include favorite browser plugins, codecs, proprietary drivers, etc. that the majors wouldn't or couldn't distribute for legal or ethical reasons. Seems to have worked pretty well for a lot of people and I don't see a whole lot of change from that template with the most recent PCLOS release.
124 • The Irony of it all... (by Tom on 2009-04-01 20:40:50 GMT from United States)
How ironic that the developers that could not find unity with PClinuxOS left to start Unity Linux!
125 • Ripper Gang Rips PCLOS a New One! (by Ensign_Pulver on 2009-04-01 20:54:27 GMT from United States)
How sad and truly "ironic" that the Gang of 4 - - who were former fanatical supporters of PC Linus OS, have dealt their own distro a body-blow. This can't have been a smooth divorce - - just look at the pain caused by "Da Big Update" . . . . . . that thread on the PCLOS forums reads like a horror story.
126 • re#125,#123 (by hab on 2009-04-01 21:36:36 GMT from Canada)
from #125 "just look at the pain caused by "Da Big Update"
Actually i am supporting 3 former windows users now transitioning to linux and i have them on pclinuxos. for no other reason than that it works. I upgraded those 3 varied and diverse boxes with only a few minor xorg farts, which i trivially fixed.
re#123 Yeah, i can't figure that out either! How many of us are glass half full types vs. glass half empty types i guess? My knowledge of and experience with that distro concurs with what you stated.
cheers
127 • Good names (by Tom on 2009-04-01 21:54:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Another Tom :) Yes, i didn't notice at first but it's very Taoist or something, the seeds of Unity growing from disunity
128 • cheers (by Tom on 2009-04-01 21:58:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm with Pratchett on half full glasses. "Heyt That's not my glass. Mine was much bigger", "and it was full"
129 • Did you try Hybrid isos ? (by glyj on 2009-04-01 22:31:02 GMT from France)
Mandriva is trying to build Hybrid isos of the upcoming Mandriva 2009.1 spring. you can directly copy the iso on one USB key and boot it !
I tried the Gnome RC1 test release, and It worked quite well for me. (HP pavilion laptop)
I think you should have a look.
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_RC_1#Hybrid_ISOs
regards, glyj
130 • Can Tex (by CobraBob on 2009-04-01 22:57:18 GMT from United States)
Give a comment here or at the forum? I'm a bit of a "noob" and after trying several distros I was about to make a donation this week when I read the probs going on. Gonna make me wait and see. PCLOS worked quite well but my big prob is shaking off to much of the you know who OS.
And one I thought worked and totally blew up in my face was Vector 6. And Caitlyn? I read a DW back that you had written a negative review/report on Vec. Where can I read that?
131 • First Mepis Dies, Now PCLinuxOS (by Anonymous on 2009-04-01 23:13:36 GMT from United States)
Who will be next to disappear?
I guess it's always the same with these vanity projects. Most users would be well advised to just stick to one of the big boys.
132 • No subject (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-01 23:20:43 GMT from United States)
Landor, PCLinuxos has had its faults and bug issues... But before this 2009 release, the testing involved was intense. I would read the amount of effort in the dev and support mailing lists (when they were publically accessible), and the commitment was fierce.
Tex came back mid march, comment wise, on the forums and has unceasingly been answering questions and solving issues. (I went digging for comments about this whole dev split)...
But what I know of tex, he's always been closed about airing dirty laundry. The bad blood with mandrake(mandriva) was something that was frowned upon discussing, the Whole distrowatch issue with the 2007 release was frowned upon talking.
It doesn't help the community at all to air dirty laundry, so I don't know if tex will discuss why the Devs left. Yet the Devs who left, didn't hesitate to grant their interviews, and comment here. That speaks volumes to "Unity" ...
We can't know the full details of the cituation, and we can only speculate. But if the Devs in question had put half the effort they've put into spreading their story, into solving their issues. I don't think we'd be here right now, discussing the "Political" future of PcLinuxos.
It seems like something that was a long time coming, and it also seems like it all could have been avoided. I'm sure Tex informed at least one mod/dev at PCLOS why he left, an I think that was all he had to do. An it was his baby from day one, so stepping back in to see whether or not things ran smoothly was his perogative.
All I know is this, After the "Big update" I stopped using pclinuxos. I blew it clean off my hard drive, and installed a remaster I made prior to "The big update".
An this was before tex came back, this update never should have been rolled out to the repo's, and should have been tested more thoroughly. I hope, in the future.. PCLinuxos and/or Unity wont so much use their entire user base as guineaa pigs, but a sounding board for ideas. It drives away users, when it bricks your machine after an update. (Makes it unusuable and requires a reinstall to become stable again... That's a Microsoft trademark, not one of the linux world..)
133 • Re: #131 (by Bongo Bill on 2009-04-01 23:22:05 GMT from United States)
I agree.
These developers are wasting everyone's time just to give themselves an ego-boost.
They could be contributing to an existing project instead of duplicating effort where it's neither needed nor wanted.
But the good news is that I think most users are now waking up to what's going on and are abandoning the vanity projects in droves.
134 • Re : 131 (by Brooko on 2009-04-01 23:59:48 GMT from New Zealand)
"First Mepis Dies" "I guess it's always the same with these vanity projects"
What - were you trolling? Noticed no name either - so you must have been ....
Can assure you Mepis is alive, well and healthier than ever. And it's never been about 'vanity'. Where the heck did that come from anyway. Suggest you check posts 9, 11 and 12 - or better, read and keep in mind the famous Mark Twain quote at the bottom of the page. Then we could avoid drivel like this in the future.
135 • @121 (by KDulcimer on 2009-04-02 00:40:38 GMT from United States)
Landor,
I didn't initially respond to comment #72 for a couple of reasons. One, I think I have the right to face my accuser. If the person accusing me doesn't have the honor to identify themselves, I'm not sure why I have to answer. Second, some people are only interested in getting as much dirt as possible. The writer of #72 seems to be interested in throwing mud while holding a "shield" of anonymity. Third, it seemed nobody was really interested, or if they were, I doubted their motives for being interested. As it is, I don't believe you have the best interest of either PCLinuxOS or Unity at heart so I will decline to answer you as well.
"I personally can't believe that there wasn't talk of a split before their reasons to split."
We never started talking about splitting until we started having severe problems. Our plan after PCLinuxOS 2009 was to start on PCLinuxOS 2010, possibly with a rebase.
"He bounced on the banning of a user from the forms in instant semi-denial"
I said I never could have banned anybody on pclinuxos.com because I never had the powers. I then asked if he maybe meant mypclinuxos.com. I had admin powers there for a couple of years.
As far as the "Unity" name, you might want to consider this: there are several distributions which are now "unified" in a common core. From my viewpoint, it really is not about politics and all about the technical structure.
Might want to knock some of the ice off your stick.
136 • Ref - 121 • PCLOS/UNITY by Landor (by Verndog on 2009-04-02 02:10:18 GMT from United States)
I agree on a lot of what you stated. I also think after some thought , that Texstar will once again bring PCLinuxOS back from the dead. Out of the ashes will arrive a newer and better PCLinuxOS.
I'm NOT a PCLinuxOS fan anymore, but I think were not privy to the whole truth.
the proof is in the pudding, as they say. All we have to do now is watch "Unity" and PCLinuxOS and see who prevails - if any.
137 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-04-02 03:11:42 GMT from United States)
"But if the Devs in question had put half the effort they've put into spreading their story, into solving their issues"
Tex should just come out and release something about his side, don't they have a magazine? Why doesn't he just speak through that. Not saying something seems like Microsoft (sorry for the cuss word) :)
138 • xine has changed it's website (by elcaset on 2009-04-02 03:36:21 GMT from United States)
Apparently, xine has changed it's website. Distrowatch still links to the old, now defunct site. The new site is : http://www.xine-project.org
139 • The most leet distro ever! (by Mr Wiffle on 2009-04-02 03:41:59 GMT from United States)
Karamad Linux! When can we expect a review? =)
140 • Re: 131 (by Sertse on 2009-04-02 06:02:07 GMT from Australia)
Mepis is not dead, rather it's experiencing a 2nd revival imo..., from the lows of the mid teens, it's back into the top ten again.
I will acknowledge that Mepis at one point seem to be in troubles, much like PCLOS is in now..but Warren has learnt from that lesson and benefiting from it.
141 • FAQ - Is the information on your site accurate? (by Rivet on 2009-04-02 07:10:32 GMT from India)
"Don't be shy to point out any errors you find; just send me an e-mail and I will fix them immediately."
For comments in the Comments of DistroWatch Weekly, please clarify whether to point out any errors in either Comments or e-mail explicitly.
Please put the "explicitly" in the Introduction of DistroWatch Weekly.
142 • No subject (by forest on 2009-04-02 08:48:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #136
And the first one to call the new distro, wait for it..."Phoenix"...wins the toaster.
BTW why are we still going on about, "he said...she said"...it's like being in divorce court, actually it's worse...you can get closure in a divorce court.
And on topic, has anyone even thought about trying any distros this week...?
143 • No subject (by #142 on 2009-04-02 11:59:53 GMT from United States)
Vector Light 6.0 Final just arrived and I'm downloading it right now. I can't wait to try it. I still want to know what Caitlyn's "secret" project is...is it Vector related or perhaps something on the Red Hat/server/enterprise side...
144 • Tinycorelinux based on SliTaz ? (by David on 2009-04-02 13:03:49 GMT from France)
Have looked into Tinycore 1.0 and found a lot of files comming from SliTaz such as inittab or network.conf who is realy specific to SliTaz. The boot process look similar and demon start scripts are also from SliTaz but all references to them seems to be removed.
Why Robert Shingledecker dont give credits to the SliTaz team ?
145 • New Wolvix Review and truth about rebasing in Ubuntu? (by Tom on 2009-04-02 13:34:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Has anyone read the Wolvix review in SoftPedia yet, i'm only halfway through but it's got some nice screenshots http://news.softpedia.com/news/Test-Driving-Wolvix-2-0-0-Beta-108338.shtml
Also i read that Wolvix is rebasing to Ubuntu? http://wolvix.org/article.php?id=24
Lol, Notorik seemed to be in such a hurry that #142 got muddled into name rather than subject but all seems cool to me :)
Good luck all and regards from Tom :)
146 • @ 145 Tom (by DeniZen on 2009-04-02 14:31:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Tom, check the *date* on that 'Wolvix is moving to Ubuntu base' article ;)
The Softpedia Wolvix 2.0 Beta review contains a couple of slack (pardon pun!) observations I noted:
Namely that the user was left to 'guess' the logins for the live CD Not so! - the user just needs to press F1 at the boot prompt - as clearly instructed on the screen - and there they are. Poor show that a reviewer failed to spot that.
Also the review mentioned that it was not clear as to how to install the Live CD to HD. Well theres a big, icon on the desktop that says 'Wolvix Control Panel' - (thats got to be worth checking eh?!) and boing! - theres the option right there.
I did post follow-up comments.
Other than that, the Review itself was very glowing
147 • @ 144 (by DeniZen on 2009-04-02 14:38:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
*cough* ..;)
148 • Caitlyn's 'Secret' Project, and the 'promise' of another Desktop Distro (by DeniZen on 2009-04-02 14:54:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
When/where did Caitlyn call it a "Secret" Project?!
I recall mention (and used as an example of good practice as I remember) of a project that an individual (Caitlyn) was involved with, that it was being worked upon, but that the Project wasnt going to be leaked as 'vapourware' until there was something (or if there ever is something) tangible to offer to testers.
That is just good practice, and it remains a good example of good practice. Far better than 'its gonne be better than my ex-lead-dev's project, and its going to be called 'Impunity', and we dont know what it will be or what core it will use, but stay tuned' (kind of thing')
I cant get excited because someone has offered a concept name or has registered a domain name! Show us something (potentialy) *different*, amazing or special / specialist that is better/different than 40% of all the other Distro-clones out there now.
149 • @ #145 Tom (by Eyes-Only on 2009-04-02 15:31:20 GMT from United States)
ROFL Tom! Good Ol' Wolven!! Glad to see that he's still got that fab sense of humour of his, eh? He & Oithona - the perfect coding team if ever there was one!
While on the subject: I can't wait for the 2.0 Final to come out of Wolvix! Yeah, I'd get the beta but I'm getting kind of too old now for all these "re-installs" once they hit "final" or whatever. Plus I have to decide which distro on my drive needs to go in favour of... -sigh!- If only everyone had my problems. LOL!
Hey Forest? ( #142 ) I did a frugal of the Puppy-4.2 onto the HDD this week on the day it came out and I'm happy as larry with it! Really good show! It's simply amazing the amount of software the Gang could fit into a 100meg .iso file, eh? And the looks are stunning to say the least! I don't normally care one iota for JWM so for all the years I've used Puppy I've usually replaced it immediately with IceWM, Openbox/LXpanel, or Fluxbox. To me, only VectorLinux could ever get JWM to "look right". Now I have to add Puppy-4.2 to that list!
At any rate, since doing the frugal that's the only distro I've used since.
Amicalement/Cheers!
Eyes-Only "L'Peau-Rouge"
150 • #143 How did that Happen? (by Notorik on 2009-04-02 15:31:55 GMT from United States)
Yeah, I did get messed up there on 143.
Caitlyn never called it a "secret" project, I was just playing and trying to see if I could get her to surface and maybe drop a little hint. I never really expected her to fall for it.
How about a generic Ubuntu derivitive like HoHumBuntu, BoredtotearsBuntu, or even YawnBuntu. These could spawn their own derivatives: Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Grumpy, & Bashful! They could be just like Ubuntu but with a different background pictures...
#144 Interesting. If that is true it might explain some things about the whole DSL situation. Oh no, I don't want to get that fired up again now that It appears there has been a lull with the whole PCLinuxOS thing.
#145 Wolvix is looking good on my machine. I like the options to use Xfce, Fluxbox and Openbox.
151 • Ref#144 SliTaz or DSL (by Anonymous on 2009-04-02 15:40:41 GMT from United States)
How do you know that SliTaz , didn't "steal" that code from DSL where Robert Shingledecker first wrote it.
152 • No subject (by forest on 2009-04-02 17:36:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #151
"Steal"? Hang on a mo...I was under the impression the notion of all these licenses was ensure that code IS shared...and subsequently adopted and improved upon for the benefit of everyone else.
I can appreciate a nod of thanks to someone who added/refined a particular section of code, but I was unaware that said developer retained intellectual rights.
Surely that is the whole ethos of "free software"...and please don't hesitate to correct my impression.
Oh and BTW...I was only making a brief stab at humour (?) when i coined the term "Phoenix"...I was attempting to join "rising from the ashes " with uNIX...
153 • Mepis, PCLinuxOS, etc., etc. (by Doctor Platypus on 2009-04-02 19:21:13 GMT from United States)
I agree with the earlier commenters who have complained about the rapid appearance followed by the inevitable disappearance of many minor distros.
There's no point, people! Stop making 'me too!' distros and use your skills to help out on a worthwhile project. All you are doing is dissipating energy and accelerating the inevitable entropic death of the universe!
154 • Mepis, PCLinuxOS (by Jose on 2009-04-02 19:49:25 GMT from United States)
The reason for the little distros is to improve upon the Major distros. PCLinuxOS really improved on Mandriva. I can remember when Mandriva (then Mandrake) released a version with some serious issues to include problems with reading CDs via Supermount. PCLinuxOS stepped in and created what Mandriva should have been. Mepis filled the same gap with Debian. Debian was just a hassle to install and configure. Mepis stepped in and gave us a wonderful Debian. Lets not forget that Ubuntu started out as a "Little Guy" and look at where they are at now! They used to be just another Debian variant. Over the years I have tried many distros but keep coming back to PCLinuxOS and Mepis. For now it is Mepis, PCLinuxOS 2009 just isn't up to the standards I expect from Tex.
155 • An argument *for* one-man projects, but not "me-too" projects (by Pearson on 2009-04-02 19:55:04 GMT from United States)
Like most things, the choice to create a small project vs. joining a large one is not as clear as some seem to think.
The problem (or benefit - depending on your goals) with joining a major project is that your voice is one of many. The community may reject your ideas or implementation. That makes for a good, consistent project but what about the guy who has a great idea for a totally different package manager?
One of the things I like about some of the distros is that they make good bases for a customized offshoot. I'd like to see more projects that, rather than being a full-blown distribution, are steps to customize (add to, modify, whatever) existing base distributions. Something like skinny-debbie, or (I think) PupLets.
156 • Re: After 135 PC-LOS(t) (by Anonymous on 2009-04-02 21:02:17 GMT from United States)
I wasn't going to say anything, to each his own but after reading 135. Wow.
Go ahead and try to install the 07' version before the madcapped fun and run the package manager. Talk about Beryl hell. I agree it is time to re-pull from a parent then strip the name like they used to do.
I gave up on this mess after the 08' mini but did give 09' a try. Not enough there to get me back from the parent.
Mandriva One 09', yes you can get the "non free" bits you just have to add a line to the package manager, it is not 2005 any more. What a tired argument.
Also the XFCE version works just great as a TinyMe replacement and will actually run on CD and not go to sleep for 20 minutes while on start up.
157 • #151 SliTaz or DSL (by David on 2009-04-02 21:20:27 GMT from France)
Just have a look to the code. DSL and SliTaz have 2 different architecture, but Tinycore works like SliTaz.
158 • No secrets, just nothing tangible to report yet (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-04-02 21:45:18 GMT from United States)
Denizen gets the gold star. There is nothing secret about what I'm working on. It just isn't ready for public consumption yet and too many things are still in flux for me to make any statements yet. I don't want to say anything which might not turn out to be true.
No, it isn't related to Vector Linux. It actually is going to force me to distance myself from VL to avoid a conflict of interest. Pity, really, because I do like Vector Linux, the developers, and the community around that project.
It also isn't related to Red Hat.
As to details... when they are finalized people here will know about them. Fair enough?
159 • Speaking of Red Hat... (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-04-02 21:48:33 GMT from United States)
My employer before I took on the contract at Red Hat might raise some eyebrows. I caught some of the news today (not related to Linux) and had to write about my own recollections:
http://ever-increasing-entropy.blogspot.com/2009/04/former-aig-ceo-hank-greenbergs.html
Now aren't you glad to know that company uses Linux heavily? Not exactly great PR for Linux or something I'd brag about just now. Of course Linux had nothing to do with their problems.
160 • Perfectly legit for PCLOS existence...look at Mandy at the time! (by Sertse on 2009-04-02 21:53:33 GMT from Australia)
I'm often swayed by the no "me too" crowd but if you look closely PCLOS, even by the criteria has a legit right to exist...
Mandriva at that point has made one of the worst releases its history. (And not just "imo" - asks in the Mandy forums, look at any review around for it, it's univerally condemning).
Mandriva was (still is) one of those distros that never really pays much attention to the community.Mandriva sees itself as primarily a corporate company...the comminity being a side show.
Their redeeming feature for a long time was to employ a community PR rep, thank Adam Williamson for going beyond the call of duty and actively ommunicate with the community, and get them passed on to Mandriva.
It's only now, after Adam's sacking etc and the associated outrage, that Mandrivia is even "slightly" opening up, with the talk of the steering committee, still many are skeptical.
In face of those conditions it was perfectly legit for PCLOS to fork at the time.
161 • PCLinuxOS (by Warp0 on 2009-04-02 22:04:01 GMT from United States)
Well, the 2009 version installs clean with no or minor problems on everything I've tried from an X20 to an X61 (5 computers in total). As an update, it installed perfectly on 2 computers from 2007 but choked on one (Dell D620). I had no problems on any computer with 2007, but that went through 4 TRs, the 09 went through three. So I found 2009 pretty darn good and haven't had any problems yet on any of the computers.
Tex & (most/some of) the rippers split ... well ... lets just say that I'm just glad to see Tex back.
162 • re: 160 (by glyj on 2009-04-02 22:40:55 GMT from France)
"Mandriva was (still is) one of those distros that never really pays much attention to the community.Mandriva sees itself as primarily a corporate company...the comminity being a side show."
In many aspects, Mandriva is one of the most open distro. Let me explain. It's quite easy to become a Mandriva packager and have an access to almost everything in cooker svn. Everything is based on confidence: You have an access but mandriva thinks you won't break anything.
The steering commitee is on its way, the relationship with the community will become clearer, I think.
About mandriva : the company is trying to make money to live. All the code written by mandriva is under GPL, though. The corporate server is not much more than an old rocksolid mandrivalinux free edition with some tools added (like pulse).
I think we can't blame the company for trying to make money to live. They give as much as they can to the community. example ? Some mandriva developpers code for the KDE project (among others).
It's really very very sad that Adam had been fired, I must admit.
Is PCLOS trying to make money ? Not that much. It's possible to buy the DVD only if you want it (~6$, but only 1.80 $ is for pclinuxos)
To sum up all this: PCLOS is a very good distro, but I think you are a bit hard with Mandriva.
regards, glyj Mandriva user, since 1999
163 • RE:146 Wolvix 2.0 Installs and reviews (by JB SKaggs on 2009-04-02 23:45:17 GMT from United States)
I have now performed four different HD installations of Wolvix 2.0 and each was competed in less than half an hour on four distinct systems.
I am somewhat new to Linux outside of Ubuntu and so was nervous to try something new, but I wanted to try SLackware based system but without having to configure everything myself.
I was very pleased with my experience. The only issues I had related to Nvidia's new video drivers (already part of the WOlvix DIstro). But my graphic performance increased by almost 30% over Ubuntu 8.1 in game play (Guild wars). In Ubuntu with all the x-windows special effects turned off I was only able to run guild wars at low or medium graphic quality. Under Wovix 2.0 I was able to run maximum graphics settings with no noticeable change to me game play!
I ran Glxgears under Ubuntu 8.1 and at 1024x768 16 depth I got an fps about 2300 same settings on Wolvix I acheived an fps almost 3000.
The one issue that Ubuntu has somehow solved was the securerom bug in wine. I have not seen any other distro acheive Ubuntu's success at getting securerom game protection to work.
I can honestly say that Wolvix 2.0 for me has been a it just works when I run it distro. Very noob friendly for people like me. And I find myself logged into it for more than Ubuntu now esecially when I am running gimp or Guildwars.
JB SKaggs
164 • Another Mandriva Clone? (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 04:10:47 GMT from United States)
Based on Mandriva, the Unity-Linux core distribution will provide the steam to many smaller and more specific distributions.
165 • Re: 164 (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-03 05:21:22 GMT from United States)
You're counting your chickens before they're hatched.
That's assuming they can get off the ground in the first place, they have a lot to overcome first.
An a Lot of it will be inter-conflict between that many dev's trying to establish "Who's on first" in leadership roles apparently.
But that's my $0.02... If they can overcome some of the issue why so many of their devs left pclinuxos.. Then they can possibly do great things.
166 • Judging by info posted by "Gettinther", Unity project should do well, IMO! (by Observer on 2009-04-03 07:06:39 GMT from Australia)
Gettinther
ireland.gif PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:30 am
We are currently rebuilding the core packages with GCC4.3.3, Glibc2.9, Python2.6. We've updated all the building tools (libtool, automake, autoconf). We are going through every package and updating them to latest. So far we have used pclos, mandriva and Fedora for various elements. We are probably closest to pclos since we are using them as the starting base. That choice was made to have a "comfortable" zone for the dev community. By the time our system is complete, we probably be closer to mandriva than pclos since the build tools are so outdated that recent apps cannot be compiled anymore.
http://forums.raiden.net/viewtopic.php?p=123384#123384
Gettinther PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:19 am Please can we let this story go to rest? I for one hope that pclos continues and do well. We have chosen our path to have a more democratic system. People at unity are currently working on their favorite fields and work pretty much as cells. You could say that I am currently heading the core technical development with Chrisz, David and Mdawkins but this is only in order to have a core ready quickly for broad testing and this was done by mutual consent. The kernel is developed by David, Dkudos, Kdulcimer and Vaughan. The web sites are developed by Devnet, Didouph and Kdulcimer. There are several other sections that have been opened for development such as Programming languages, internationalization, DE support, livecd and drakxtools. We are 26 members working on the unity development and more people are joining regularly (we started with 18 people 3 weeks ago). We also received technical support from Caos Linux and Mandriva.
Key technical decisions are made at meetings on irc and using polls on the development forum. This forum will be opened for "anonymous viewing" once this whole sad story dies down. We have nothing to hide but we don't want any more harm to be done to either pclinuxos or ourselves.
In short, we are not pclos, we don't want to be pclos. We will create our own base, by ourselves for ourselves. We will use what we learned but we will never again depend on one person. We are a team and decisions are taken at team level.
http://forums.raiden.net/viewtopic.php?p=123533#123533
------------- Cheers
167 • Re: 65 (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 08:17:58 GMT from United States)
There were only 6-7 people on the pclos dev team 4 left 3 stayed.
168 • re: 166 (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 08:22:05 GMT from United States)
Let's hope he doesn't begin to leave others out of the development decisions like he did over at pclos.
169 • No subject (by forest on 2009-04-03 09:31:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #159
Au contraire, Caitlyn...you missed the perfect sound bite (slightly "TIC" ((Tongue-in-cheek..)).
You might have said.."DESPITE the problems in ABC whatever, Linux never missed a beat and gave a rock solid performance even as the ship went under..."
You see...absolute truth, not to mention total spin...followed by speculation that "very likely" had it NOT been for Linux, ABC whatever might have gone under much sooner...totally unprovable either way, LOL.
And returning to topic...has anyone found that the latest (yesterday) updates to Xubuntu 9.04 beta resulted in their PC rebooting the instant you pressed play in ANY media player?
Yes mum, I will send a fault report to young Shuttleworth.
170 • hmm (by Tom on 2009-04-03 10:05:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
@163 JB Skaggs Gaming seems to really push the limits of a mcahine and OS more than anything else (although multimedia can push some aspects). It's interesting to hear that Wolvix performance outranked other distros. Wolvix beta1 is noob friendly !?
@150 Notorik The different window-managers are looking good now. It looks like people are having fun experimenting with the variety of packages and getting some very nice results :)
@149 Eyes-Only Could the frugal install of Wolvix read data or use the /home of another distros frugal? Wolvix was originally designed as a LiveCd distro but now has LiveUsb? Can a LiveCd use data stored in a frugal or does frugal mean not storing data within the OS's normal pathways?
@146 DeniZen Dohhh, lol. I got hit a day late heheheh I enjoyed the review too, and the previous one http://news.softpedia.com/news/Test-Driving-Wolvix-2-0-0-Beta-108338.shtml http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/wolvix-2.html some good screenshots. It must be difficult to review a product as though through a noobs eyes and also to know when to use the forums, in case you're just experiencing a rare glitch or whether it's a real issue. Dedo got a reverted desktop but seems to be the only person who got the old one. The Softpedia author made it clear it was easy to find answers, and some places to look. Interesting to hear from '163 JB Skaggs' that as a noob he had none of the problems mentioned in either article. We often put a lot of effort into 'dumbing it down' or 'playing down' to the noobs, is it really necessary? Sometimes it even seems mildly insulting to make assumptions about people.
People seem to be makin assumptions about a lot of things without actually trying out Wolvix as a LiveCd even. If there were a lot of fights in Wolvix then people would be more willing to try it and would be talking all about it. I've made at least 3 attempts to start fights and flaming wars in the Wolvix forums and they've all fizzled out. Another problem is that the Wolvix repos include a good range of applications so it doesn't have a huge array of sub-distros springing up.
M$ have the right idea - release something that doesn't work and act like an immature brat or big bully and then everyone will buy into it.
171 • Noob doesnt mean dumb (by DeniZen on 2009-04-03 13:20:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
I agree Tom, 'noob' merely need mean 'not yet experienced in/of' It doesnt necessarily follow that a 'noob' is dumb' !
I've never considered myself _especially_ dumb, but I've sure been a noob in a number of areas in my time, and wil lbe (indeed hope to be) again.
We are dumbing down the Planet. It will come a time where a generation will expect to be spoon-fed with everything and anything.
I'm all for making things easy, but sometimes its not appropriate. Should an ArchLinux Network install be dumbed down so that a noob who hasnt read the Wiki could do it by intuition? - No! Should Ubuntu (aka 'Linux for Humans' and all that ) be darned easy to install? Yes.
These days, It seems that nearly all reviews demand - as a v. high priority - that 'newbies' are spoon fed.
i would never suggest making anything into a 'dark art' or adding obstructiveness for the sake of it, but - I vote - let people have the chance to work something out for themselves (where appropriate) And to enjoy their accomplishment.
172 • @ 167 (by KDulcimer on 2009-04-03 14:05:08 GMT from United States)
Of those 3 that stayed, 1 was no developer but simply a server admin/graphics person, 1 has produced very good work but time-wise has not been very involved, and the third was Tex who hadn't been involved in PCLinuxOS development in months.
173 • No unity here (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 14:26:54 GMT from United States)
What the "Ripper Gang"(aka Unity), should have done, was keep their mouth shut until they had a produce to give the Linux community. Right now it's just vapor ware, and we all know where that ends up - vapor trash.
I still believe that out of the ashes PCLinuxOS will rise once again. No good ever comes from ripping off another ones hard work. Interesting name "Ripper Gang", don't ya think?!
I hearing the same mantra, namely we wish PCLinuxOS the best and no hard feelings. If that were the case then why leave. Why not stay and work out any issues you had. Leavings easy. The easy route. Staying is a mans way. It would have showed character. Instead you leave and then named you new(?) produce Unity. Sound fishy or at best some message to the aforementioned team.
174 • Re: #172 #173 (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-03 14:39:20 GMT from United States)
Regardless, 4 disgruntled devs is an obstacle in itself to overcome. I also had a feeling part of the Base would be PCLinuxos.
#173 That is neither here nor there, They had issue and split. Either they will make it, or they wont. They have obstacles to overcome, and yes it's still vaporware until they put out a release. But lets not judge until we get our coaster....er.. ISO to test.
They had their differences, so they left.. An rather than keep it private, and dignified, they decided to air dirty laundry. That's on them, something they'll have to live with. Only thing that saddens me is, I've watched these people work over the years.. I would have thought, despite their professional differences, they could have left in a dignified manner that wouldn't have hurt the opensource community. Instead they had to be devisive and throw in this speculation and bad karma about both the distrobutions.
People wont be inclined to use any distro where bad blood is abound. Where some may say enough to establish they moved on, others will continue to spread that bad blood around to try to seperate themselves from their past.
An that's Primarily what I see Dulcimer doing, he isn't being vocal with the merits of his/her new distro.. He's literally pouring gasoline into the flames. That's what this interview, and comments are all about from a readers standpoint.
Now if that's what dulcimer intended, I don't know.. That's just what I gather from what he has said in these comments. An what I gather from reading the so called "Interviews" above. There is a high road, and a low road people.. Differentiate between the two of them.
175 • Hijacked (by Tom on 2009-04-03 16:08:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
I feel this forum has been hijacked by some very immature brats. Please find somewhere else for your petty bickering. If this is what linux is about then i'm not impressed.
No doubt this bad behaviour will result in significant air-time next week while other distros will continue to be ignored. I notice that even TinyCore is being largely ignored this week, despite it's revolutionary concept, in favour of the squabbling brats.
176 • Re: 172 (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 17:01:31 GMT from United States)
The website/admin person working to update the gcc packages on pclos? Yes I can package too as well as neal, ken, don, jrd etc...so we will survive.
177 • #171 (by Notorik on 2009-04-03 17:34:51 GMT from United States)
I haven't installed Arch Linux but I did read the Wiki and it seemed pretty straight forward. I agree that almost everything is getting "dumbed down". I mean we have warnings on coffee, warnings on plastic bags (i.e. don't put this over your head), instructions on cereal boxes on how to open the box! If you can't figure it out just RIP the damn thing open. With the number one threat to the environment right now being over-population, do we really want to be warning people not to put bags over their heads? If someone is dumb enough to put a bag over their head would they even be smart enough to understand the warning? I once saw a sign that said "Stamp out illiteracy, read!" Who was that intended for? If someone illiterate was passing that sign they wouldn't be able to read it to know they should start reading to become literate. I would say the vast majority of people don't want to think, they want to be told what to think, or that it is ok to think for themselves but only within predefined boundaries which is why Windows is still at the top of the OS software game.
Tom, it doesn't matter if Wolvix is in the top ten on Distrowatch or not. It will get where it needs to go on it's own merits (I don't know that it actually needs to "go" anywhere). It may not be at the top of xyz list on whatever website. People should give it a try though along with the other quality distros listed here and see if it's for them.
178 • Squabblin' and Testin' (by Landor on 2009-04-03 17:44:36 GMT from Canada)
I did squabble a bit, but voiced my "personal" opinion, then dropped the topic, as good sense dictates (sometimes..lol).
Shortly after the topic was dropped I went testing again for my core system to be used every day on all of our boxes here, except say the console(s).
Anyway, I found that for every box, and all hardware was for the first time perfectly configured by one distro only. No manual intervention at all. Debian Lenny really surprised me. I've never really been a big Deb fan. I considered it as bloated as many others and left it alone. Let's face it too, it is, if you do a Desktop then Standard install. Some people might enjoy the freedom of having 9 million image viewers alone but I'm not one of them. So after I found out the hardware worked flawlessly on all systems, and it's running the KDE 3.XX series of course, I built my main system from the base, manually.
I did want to avoid that one factor, the effort is a pain in the *ss anymore. All things being equal though, wanting what you want usually means effort though. One little oddity I did find and checked online to see if others had to and they had was the fact that for some odd reason if you run aptitude in place of apt-get it will sometimes pull in extra files need for further functionality/configuration than apt-get does. Anyone else ever observe this?
So I guess I'm one of the guys who isn't helping the KDE4 progression, oh well. I do have to say though, it's boot time across all systems is astounding, responsiveness is just as impressive, then the addition of synaptic and the debian-multimedia.org repo and it's really a great and stable build.
Anyone looking for an even lighter system but basic, I checked out the graphical install of the "Desktop" only with LXDE and it's basically empty right out of the box, but well configured. Nice start for a far leaner system.
Be nice to see you do a how-to/review of the Lenny build from netinst Chris. Maybe I missed something you might pick-up :)
Now I'm off to doin' a bit more testing of the Fedora Beta!
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
179 • re#177 (by hab on 2009-04-03 17:50:33 GMT from Canada)
No kidding. We live in a society/culture where people are regularly protected from their own stupidity! Talk about dumbing down homo sapiens sapiens.
25,000 years ago, if you were stupid in your environment, you got dead! Nowadays not nearly so much. Its like the human race is breeding in a stupidity gene as we get more technological.
cheers
180 • frugal (by Tom on 2009-04-03 18:26:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm really curious about whether different frugal installs from different distros, or even the same (is that possible?) distro frugalled twice, can read the data stored in the other? I've completely avoided using frugal installs so far.
Being in the top 10 does make a difference. People, especially noobs, are more likely to try a distro that's seen as being popular, even if the 'popularity' is caused by bumping or bitter in-fighting.
181 • re #177 #179 (by beany on 2009-04-03 19:04:51 GMT from United States)
check out the movie "Idiocracy".......it's brilliant.....I think Wall-E borrowed much from it..
I checked the new Puppy.....I have to say it soft rocks.
182 • re#181 Idiocracy (by hab on 2009-04-03 19:38:43 GMT from Canada)
Downloading the torrent now! Thanks.
A friend of mine used to say "there's no stupid screw". He figured everybody, himself included, should have a spot behind their ear where one could stick a (presumably properly insulated!) small screwdriver and tighten down a notional screw a few clicks when ones "reality' got a little flakey.
Played with puppy several years ago. Gotta revisit it. I am currently somewhat enamored of dreamlinux and moonos especially. Elive 1.0 on an older pIII 550mhz 394meg ram 10gb hd box runs well, with some alacrity. Kinda gives me a minimal hardware requirement for a lower end box that is still completely usable. Just starting to get into enlightenment a bit.
cheers
183 • No subject (by forest on 2009-04-03 19:53:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re the above theme of "stupidity rules, KO..." so sort of on topic 'til it gets purged, but this has to be one of the best, (and naturally sexist...but both ways so it gets cancelled out you might think, LOL), spotted in a subway nr Reading, UK (so that says it all probably...)
"All men should be sterilised at birth..." Followed by..." Pity your Dad wasn't..."
184 • #180 (by Notorik on 2009-04-03 19:55:57 GMT from United States)
I disagree. I first tried Wolvix because I thought the name was cool and then I went to the website and it looked cool. It was only later on that I found out that it is a real workhorse of an operating system. Wolvix has it's niche. It is the only os I use on a regular basis. However, it may not be for everyone. The people who come here and only try the top ten on the list are of a certain mindset that would probably prohibit them from enjoying Wolvix even if they did try it. I am guessing that these are people who have almost been forced away from Windows by some horrific disaster and are still really looking for Windows only called something else. Now, clearly the top ten on the list are all going to be superior to Windows so it's a win for them and they are all happy and satisfied. That's ok with me. I kind of like the fact that Wolvix is a nice little secret. Of course babbling on endlessly about it on Distrowatch isn't going to help keep the secret but fortunately not many people read this on Friday.
185 • PCLinuxOS, Unity Linux, people flapping their mouths (by Spiral of Hope on 2009-04-03 21:08:38 GMT from Canada)
I read through most of these comments. People have a completely backwards understanding of what happened and why, and what's happening next and why. Some of the comments seem intentionally Wrong and trollish.
PCLinuxOS will live on, because it has no choice. That's what a project does when there's at least one interested developer.
Anyone who talks about toy distributions or the dilution of people power haven't themselves done any work on a project. Variety is essential, because there are always different desires and goals, even subtle ones like on the various "desktop" Linux distros.
Tex has completely downplayed any concern over this. So has any other voice I've heard from that team. Whether that's being done as damage control or out of actual belief does not matter one bit. They still have passion and they will continue on.
The people who left PCLinuxOS did it in as graceful a way as they individually could. Most users would not notice the transition. I'd say that it's a good thing that the developer exodus happened right around release time, when PCLinuxOS is fairly strong. Hopefully any 2009 issues can easily be solved by the remaining developers. Tex being active again counts for a *lot* in that department.
Unity has some amazing people in it. Not just developers but users. It isn't vapourware in the least, if for no other reason than all but two PCLinuxOS remasters have joined the Unity team. There's already been some internal ISOs released for testing purposes. It's real.
Unity may or may not be useful for an end-user. It's likely to be an outstanding base for anyone with minor Linux knowledge to remaster their own system (mklivecd ftw). But every sub-distro that's based on Unity will itself also be remasterable. I for one will either be joining whatever TinyME becomes or will be remastering something for my individual preferences and needs either from TinyME or Unity directly.
A lot of other things mentioned in this thread were news to me - issues with the forums for example.. I was never big on forums in the first place, and my issue posts have all had reasonable responses.
I'm sure that Unity will address any known technical or social issue PCLinuxOS was facing. All its participants are open about discussing their past experiences and thoughts on improvement.
Even if Unity has some fundamental developer disagreement, the entire idea is to make it possible for splinter remasters to be able to easily create a distro that addresses their own specific needs and preferences.
Some discussion I'm most interested in these days is to have a specific focus on developer-user interaction, most likely with a couple of fairly new positions in most open source project.s.. that being a user-developer liaison and a PR group that both work with the documentation team.
-
I have no clue how distrowatch works, but it looks like this POS unthreaded comment wall won't make followups reasonable enough for me to care about discussion. Find me on the Unity forums if you need me, or email spiralofhope at gmail
186 • @184 (by Frisco on 2009-04-03 21:37:05 GMT from United States)
"The people who come here and only try the top ten on the list are of a certain mindset that would probably prohibit them from enjoying Wolvix even if they did try it."
Indeed. That list is 100 distros long! It's a no-brainer to head on down the list, and click on those distros and read about them (there are reviews links for many of them and a wealth of other info including links to their respective forums, etc).
It's a great, rewarding experience to learn of these many linux distributions, to say the least.
Co-incidentally, we now have Wolvix running on an old Thinkpad that was donated just this past Monday to our nursing college. We went with it *4th* following antiX, which is on three machines here, Zenwalk and Mint.
187 • re#185 (by hab on 2009-04-03 22:19:28 GMT from Canada)
I think the point here has already been made here!.
"WHO FRACKING CARES!"
What ever happened is between the people involved and is on them! Anything else is a (re)airing of something that is less than a transparent situation. You or i were not there, did not here anything directly with our own ears, and can do nothing else than regurgitate anecdotal hearsay.
Please, something more diverting than dirty laundry. Anything else is so Appley or Microsoftish!
cheers
188 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-04-03 22:30:56 GMT from United States)
"The entire idea is to make it possible for splinter remasters to be able to easily create a distro that addresses their own specific needs and preferences."
That is the primary reason some of the remasters decided to give unity a go and had nothing to do with the split of the pclos crew.
189 • What really happened. (by Anonymous on 2009-04-04 00:10:53 GMT from United States)
Lead Developer: I'm only going to listen to you, you and you. The rest of you can shut up.
Other Team Members: We want to be heard too.
LD: No! You don't have ability to understand the technical skills of a distribution. (snicker)
OTM: Oh yeh we do.
LD. No you don't! We gonna leave you out of further discussions!
OTM: No you are not! We are locking the servers until you listen.
LD. I don't care! I'm leaving and taking these guys with me so I can start my own team and I can listen to who I want!
OTM: Well leave then you ole meanie!
LD: neener neener boo on you!
190 • Ref#178 - apt-get vs Apptitude (by Verndog on 2009-04-04 02:48:28 GMT from United States)
"...if you run aptitude in place of apt-get it will sometimes pull in extra files need for further functionality/configuration than apt-get does. Anyone else ever observe this?..."
Landor. You have hit on a rather touchy item there. I have followed that argument over at the Debian forums. It appears to be split down the middle. My opinion is that Aptitude is newer and much improved, and some Debian old-timers don't want or don't trust Aptitude and still use apt-get. It's been around for quite a long time. There's some threads by one known as "richn" that strongly believes in Aptitude. Follow one of his posts and you'll soon discover what I mean.
I myself believe that Aptitude is the best way to go. I'm just so use to apt-get, it's hard to change ones ways. Aptitude can be used both CLI or curses.
I find it of interesting that you bring this subject up. I also think Aptitude is much better at handling dependencies.
191 • PCLOS 2009.1---> not by "Texstar" (but the fans love it!) (by Creit where credit is due! on 2009-04-04 03:17:47 GMT from Australia)
texstar Administrator Re: PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Final Released « Reply #25 on: March 11, 2009 » >>Quote from: Jurek on March 11, 2009 Thanks Tex + Ripper<<
Thank you but the real work was done by gettinther and the ripper gang. http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=54831.msg439005#msg439005
texstar Administrator Re: PCLOS still OK? «Reply #11 on: April 01, 2009»
"I said this before and I'll say it again if it were not for the developers there would be no 2009 release. The reason for the hold up was due to some people saying things were decided upon and I could not find who decided what, where it was discussed and why some were left out of the decision making process."
"What it boils down to was a disagreement between the lead developer and the administration. The developer decided to leave and some people followed."
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=56052.msg448903#msg448903
192 • Re: 185 (by The man with one red shoe on 2009-04-04 03:28:41 GMT from United States)
The people who left PCLinuxOS did it in as graceful a way as they individually could. Most users would not notice the transition.
Okay this isn't trolling, but an honest thank you.
I really needed a good hearty laugh over this. Yeah, Comments here are less than graceful. The interview is less than graceful.. However their departure wasn't noticed much, for which I am thankful.
Graceful means you don't do a interview, then hit up distrowatch with comments like dulcimers. I'm glad you have internal iso's, Release them so people like us don't consider them vaporware.. An can give it a try. Really, we can only take your word for it, until you do.
Anyhoo, Good luck Unity. Honestly, Good luck Welcome to the Community, (Honest heartfelt comment not snark) Hope to see some great things from you guys.
193 • PcLinuxOS, what is the point now? (by panther86 on 2009-04-04 07:16:05 GMT from United States)
To my understanding, pclinuxos was formed due to the fact that mandriva was going through very hard times around the 2005 ish area (with 2006 releases being terrible) and mandriva was a complete mess, so PclinuxOS formed to keep the good parts of mandy alive but to reform it, 2007 PcLinuxOS was probable the best linux releases.
But now, if you look, mandriva has recovered and is thriving again (they have bounced back to at least 6 on distrowatch, when they were i think at 9 or 10 at worst) and has taken PclinuxOS spot (after being at no 2) but PclinuxOS, is going through their own troubles and now they are playing the whole game again, the team breaks apart, and then they get to the rocky start (pclinuxos 2009, not that its horrible, but it just feels like old mandriva, its pretty much pclinuxos 2007 service pack of updates with a new crappy theme, but all tools, still say 2007 on them, and they continue to keep printerdrake after mandriva themselves left it long ago)
But now that they are breaking up again for the "reform" not both projects are hurting, but yet the 2 wouldn't be in existence if it wasn't for mandriva's struggling, but now mandriva after the 2008 releases has shinned it magical touch again, and 2009 Mandriva and Mandriva 2009 Spring RC1 are much more polished, updated, more packages, prettier, and pretty much just better, 2009 mandy was released in october, pclinuxos 2009.1 was in march or w/e it was, but yet mandy feels newer and more updated, and with the mandy 2009 Spring RC1 again is shaping up pretty well and may be one of the best releases.RPMdrake and URMPI i personally feel are better the synaptics (which is not as user friendly) and not as fast, and PClinuxOS has much less packages then mandriva does.So my question is, what is the point of pclinuxos? i mean mandriva is more open and stable now, and pclinuxos is in bad shape, why can't they migrate back? im sure textar would be welcomed back, and will only be the true "unity"
194 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-04-04 08:41:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
@177 Notorik I agree. I like everyone in Wolvix & their forums at the mo and i don't want to see the atmosphere of open friendliness, curiosity, collaboration on desktop artwork/icons and more to get swamped by closed-minded people looking for a fight.
@163 JB SKaggs A 30% increase in graphics performance by switching to Wolvix!! Graphics, multimedia and gaming are the 3 main blockers to large scale uptake of linux at the moment.
@ All It's easy to assume that work=office but artists have told me that Wolvix is great for working at art.
I currently prefer carrying a Hunter Cd around for when i need to do office-y things on other people's machines, or help them fix their M$ errors or simply to watch a movie. It's easy to think that tiny distro=old machines. Think again.
Top-end machines really need Wolvix 2 installed to get fast results and significantly better performance. It doesn't need a lot of work to set it up as the revolutionary TinyCore. It's also not for old machines and it doesn't pander to noobs but for top performance, fast & from top-end machines try it. http://wolvix.org/get.php Frugal, usb, Cd or even hard-drive installs.
I guess no-one will notice this post, so back to the irrelevant in-fighting ...
195 • Q: nice distros to carry w/ you on a usb hdd? (by CuriousChimp on 2009-04-04 10:11:48 GMT from Japan)
Hi all,
I'm not sure to post my question here is ok or not, so if you think this question is inappropriate, please ignore me.
I decided to set up a linux on an external usb hdd for my roommate. My roommate is a medical doctor (so at least he's got a brain), but his linux experience is limited. The reasons I'd like to use an external usb hdd are 1. he travels once in a while 2. he plan to work for an NGO which means he'll travel to somewhere in Africa or in SE Asia where no PC repair shops are expected 3. he already broke or lost expensive notebook PCs, and he doesn't want to own a new one.
If he got a linux distro on the usb hdd, then he can hook it up to any PC w/ external hdd boot support. That's the idea. In fact, he was assigned a PC box (vista sh*t installed) here, but it's really eff'ed up e.g. really slow && the administrator password was not given (actually the admin forgot the password) which means he's unable to install skype, unable to update flash (plugin), etc.
Netbooks is an alternate option, but we're living on an isolated island where there's no electric shops (absolutely no computer shops), and we feel uncomfortable to buy a netbook w/o actually touching it.
In short, here's what I want: 0. any linux/bsd distro which is 1. installable on an external hdd (I just ordered 160GB usb2) 2. good hardware auto detection + setup (optionally good to have boot time options to 1. boot on a known hardware after saving the specific configuration for fast boot 2. boot on a new hardware to detect and setup all the kernel modules etc) 3. automatic and rolling update/upgrade (my roommate is gay) 4. optionally or alternatively (but preferably) to have bootlinux.bat or something like that s.t. linux can boot up from running windows. (iirc, we used to have such on old slackwares) 5. preferably a light distro (e.g. mepis antix) because we don't know what kind of PCs are available in the rain forests of SE Asia.
Any distributions you suggest? Thank you very much for your time.
196 • 195 & 194 (by Tom on 2009-04-04 10:56:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sorry that was me in 194, i hit submit without checking my name & email was in.
@194 I would obviously recommend Wolvix. It doesn't need updating constantly and just works well. At the moment the new beta1 still has work going on but the Hunter version is all good and installs easily. Wolvix is easy to update and is very light on resources. The colour schemes and al make it naturally energy efficient although the main focus was on being easy on tired eyes so that work is the focus rather than special effects (which can be added anyway). http://wolvix.org/get.php
With regard to the 2 tiny distros you mentioned please overview/skim-read what the bulk of the postings in this forum are saying and draw your own conclusions. Wolvix is ready now and works right now (even the beta1), it's slackware based but user-friendly.
Good luck and regards from Tom :)
197 • Parted Magic (by jack on 2009-04-04 13:29:51 GMT from Canada)
The Parted Magic forum has a number of posts that have 0 replies--apparently since jan of this year Documentation, especially tutorials ,seem to be one of the achilles heels of Linux. The author of *Gparted *acknowledges that some people seem to have problems resizing an extended partition, and offers additional information. Unfortunately, for me, there still seems to be something missing. My present ignorance applies to a hardrive which has 2 linux OSs. I want to take out the first OS and put a different one in the same space (using the same partitions?), without changing the second OS If anyone can recommend a book, online tutorial, or blog about partitioning I would be very happy thanks Thanks
198 • re 197 Parted Magic (by illiterateborgibo@otenet.gr on 2009-04-04 16:24:08 GMT from Greece)
The problem is that I am a newbie and I might confuse you!
I did have the same problem about 2 years ago and I happened to find the following from the documentation included in Suse's cd, from where I learned to partition and boot. The documentation is: Suse Linux Documentation Part VIII. System/Chapter 28. Booting and Configuring a Linux System ( file:///usr/share/doc/manual/susellinux-manual_en/manual/cha.boot.html) Same Chapter 29. The Boot Loader(........./cha.grub.html) Same Chapter 1. Installation with YaST/1.8. Installation Settings (......./sec.i.yast2.proposal.html)
Now this documentation is from 2006 and you might be able to find it googling, asking for the exact Chapters by Suse.
As for deleting one OS, you can simply install the new one on its partition. Care must be taken about the bootloader. Installing the bootloader on Master Boot Record as most probably your new distro will suggest will enable you to boot either OS.
By the way I use Gparted for partitioning etc.
Hope this has helped,
regards by a newbie.
199 • @195 (by john frey on 2009-04-04 16:33:14 GMT from Canada)
I think the biggest problem with your idea will be that many computers you encounter will not boot off external usb hdd.
Modern motherboards include usb boot options and "other boot devices" in the bios. As recently as 4 years ago those were not universal options. You can be certain that your friend will encounter 4 years and older computers and that they will not be the high end computers that would have many bios options. You will have better results with a usb flash disk than an external usb hdd. Booting from usb flash has been an option longer than booting from usb hdd.
Another problem will be accessing the bios to set boot options. Many admins for those computers will be ignorant of bios options and will not want anyone messing with potentially crippling settings. Some of those computers will have password protection on the bios and the passwords will be lost or forgotten. Passwords can be removed by resetting the cmos with a jumper or by crossing out 2 connectors but those items are far from standardized so your friend will need to become familiar with the many different locations and styles of cmos reset jumpers. The best case scenario is having a motherboard manual to locate them.
I think your best option is still a notebook. Netbooks, while convenient and portable are not built as solidly as a good notebook.
If that does not fit the bill I suggest the next best option is a live CD with a usb stick to store data. That is both the cheapest option and the most reliable. Many computers will already be set up to boot off the CD avoiding having to mess with bios settings. All the computers you encounter will have CD drives and be capable of booting from it. There may still be issues setting boot options which is why this is my next best option.
Find a live CD that fits your requirements for applications, hardware compatibility and speed and burn a bunch of copies to take along.
Check out Slax. Most Slackware based distros are good for older hardware IME.
200 • #195 (by Notorik on 2009-04-04 17:17:42 GMT from United States)
I agree with #199. I would also suggest taking several different distros with you on cd. As mentioned previously, Slackware does nicely on older hardware. You might want to try Puppy, Wolvix, Pardus, Vector Light 6.0 (tends toward newer hardware I think). I have had success with Mepis 8.0 (and AntiX) as well but may not support older hardware. If it was me I would also take Tiny core and a copy of DSL too. Word of caution, I have found operating systems installed on flash drives to be quirky. Puppy is probably the best option there because it runs in RAM and has a special setup to reduce the number of times it writes to the disk. You might also try Austrumi.
201 • #198. partitioning (by jack on 2009-04-04 17:47:37 GMT from Canada)
thanks for your reply I did a search of Suse on google and got a LOT of posts. And a lot of confused posts One of the more confused is "Two partitions starting at 1?" http://forums.opensuse.org/search.php?searchid=944524 Thanks . So much to learn so little time.
202 • 201 & 198 (by Notorik on 2009-04-04 18:16:49 GMT from United States)
If you are new at this you might try Wolvix. It has an installer that includes Gparted. You could go here too for more info for newbies:
http://wolvrik-howlatthemoon.blogspot.com/
203 • re#201 partitioning (by hab on 2009-04-04 18:48:04 GMT from Canada)
Start with a bare drive, or use gparted or some such to create (for ibm compats) an msdos disk label. (For the curious go gparted, /device, /create partition table, /advanced and check out the disk label options avaiable.) Under the msdos scheme of things a harddrive can have up to 4 primary partitions. One of the primary partitions can be flagged as an extended type. An extended partition can contain up to 64 logical partitions.
Now linux really doesn't give a rats ass what your primary/logical scheme is it just takes what you give it (presuming what you did is workable!) and goes. That other (so called)os is much, much, much pickier with partition types so YMMV!
To review: i take a 1000g drive and divvy it up as 4 250g primary partitions. I can, in the partition process, flag one partition as extended type and create up to 64 logical partitions in it. Much more here: http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Partition.html
cheers
204 • RE: 190/197 (by Landor on 2009-04-04 19:03:04 GMT from Canada)
#190
Hey Vern...Haven't seen you here much lately, how ya been doing?
I've noticed it before and didn't think much of it. After going across so many boxes though as I've done I did notice it more clearly. I knew it was ncurses as well and like you, I find myself still using apt-get for the most part, it's really hard to teach an old dog new tricks sometimes eh? I also looked for the richn's posts (quickly) and didn't come across them. I'll spend a bit more time looking though since you've caught my cuirousity about the topic. I'd like to see some of his points on the matter.
Also, I'm wondering, how did, or has, your experience with PC-BSD go? We don't see many speaking of the BSD project(s) here much anymore and that's truly a shame. I still have a partition/drive sittin' here with BSD proper installed on it and it's working well.
Thanks for the reply and enjoy!
#197
Jump to the command line as root, either with Sudo or what your distro that you want to keep allows and type cfdisk at the prompt (if it's installed). That will bring up the command line partitioning program. It's really straight forward. Just remove and write the changes of the partitions that hold the distribution you want to remove then let your new install do its own partitioning of the free space when you go to install it if you're not comfortable with partitioning yourself. It's a pretty simple fix that way.
One thing I'd caution though, it's possible if it's your second install and I don't know your boot setup, but it might be the one governing the boot process and such, has control of grub. So you might end up with a non bootable system after removing it. It might not be the case since as I said I don't know your boot process and what's installed, just a word of warning
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor.
205 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-04-04 19:19:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition
206 • #195 - Vector Linux (Light?), #200 - A little misinformation here (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-04-04 20:20:23 GMT from United States)
#200: @Notorik: Vector Linux does NOT tend towards newer hardware. The Light version, released the other day, is specifically aimed at legacy hardware. They did a lot of work on 6.0 to make the X configuration work with older, poorly supported video chipsets.
#195: @Curious: Vector most definitely supports installation on to a USB external HDD. I would go with the Standard version if you have 256MB of RAM and a 450MHz processor or more, Light for 64-192MB of RAM or an old processor. IME Vector has better hardware support than most of the others suggested. It's one of the things that attracted me to the distro in the first place.
207 • #206/#195 (by Notorik on 2009-04-04 20:48:56 GMT from United States)
I stand corrected. At this point Wolvix is in 2.0.0 beta1 and although it's very stable, Vector Light 6.0 just went final and it is probably the better choice for what you need.
If you decide to go with a netbook make sure it also has some way to use dialup. I don't know exactly where you are going but from the sounds of it there may not even be internet access available. You might want to try HAM radio. :)
208 • CentOS (by Nobody Important on 2009-04-04 21:05:31 GMT from United States)
For those who care:
CentOS 5.3: a nice update of artwork (looks very professional, as one would hope - one of the nicest free OS' I've ever seen, in fact) and a good set of (subjectively depressingly) stable software. If you're looking for an OS with problems to manage and correct, Cent is not for you.
Worked out of the box with a system that most older OS' usually crash X on. Debian 4.0, for example, required some xorg.conf modification (Debian 4.0 as well as sidux, PCLinuxOS, and several others). CentOS had no such problem. Throw in the RPMFusion repos for multimedia and 3D drivers, add the GUI package manager, and Cent shines as an unmarked gem for desktop usage. Wi-Fi support might be the only con - this thing is running an extremely heavily modified 2.16 kernel. I haven't been able to test it much, but my hopes are not high. Wired Ethernet worked without a hitch as usual, though, and it does come with the latest and greatest Network Manager that Red Hat developed and then spread throughout the Linux landscape.
I would without a doubt trust this software wholeheartedly in the enterprise. No wonder RHEL does so well!
209 • Apt-get vs Aptitude (by Verndog on 2009-04-04 22:26:57 GMT from United States)
Here is a good read on the subject of Apt-get vs Aptitude:
http://pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get/
The author prefers Aptitude and there are a lot of comments afterwards.
210 • Fedora / Nouveau (by Adam Williamson on 2009-04-04 22:36:57 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for the comments on nouveau, guys. Sorry I haven't been around much lately - haven't had time. We'll likely have a follow-up event for nouveau, radeon and intel testing in a week or two, to confirm fixes for the problems identified in the initial events, so keep an eye out.
211 • #205. partitioning (by jack on 2009-04-04 23:08:25 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for the link The following is from it:
"First, I am creating a Primary partition. I could just as easily create an Extended partition encompassing the entire hard drive, but will need this Primary partition for later demonstrations."
--an Extended partition encompassing the entire hard drive--
I have not seen this mentioned before. Is there any reason why a person who is going to install only Linux systems should not just do that. ie. have the whole drive as an extended partition with many logical partitions within it ? thanks
212 • No subject (by Conscript on 2009-04-05 00:49:10 GMT from United States)
>128 There is an aptitude-gtk in Debian's experimental branch. I'm looking forward to it replacing other GUI tools (synaptic).
213 • re#211 partitions (by hab on 2009-04-05 01:04:26 GMT from Canada)
No there is not. The partition numbering scheme is affected only. If i remember correctly it is something like this hda extended as a first partition is had5 and subsequent logical partitions inside it are hda6 hda7 etc. There was some bios(?) limitation on booting linux root filesystems from partitions past 1024gb limit or some such on really archaic hardware.
But yeah "logically" create away, experiment, its YOUR system, and btw .............. have fun, .......learn!
cheers
214 • No subject (by forest on 2009-04-05 03:20:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #199.
Ref boot off usb...I've got a Compaq Evo, c2002, and that will boot off usb...assuming you can find a suitable distro that will boot off a usb stick. This is off U9.04 and has been up all day. And it runs quite well. Needless to say it's a Ubuntu so it is very well supported. That said it is quite true DOAS are still in their infancy and I would suggest you use a fairly big stick...>4GB.
To the traveller...if you are that fussed, why not take as many distros as you can beg, borrow or steal, or as a very last resort...buy... and mess around until you find something that suits. Suggest also you confine your distros to CDroms...it would be a bit irritating if you only had DVDroms...and your machine...
As mentioned above, ref different distros...it is all good practice and of course might help to keep you amused/educated/informed...and you certainly won't get bored.
Bon Voyage.
Ref the PW thing, and if anyone knows better just do the correction thing, but, I was under the impression that once you remove the lithium button cell on the motherboard, all PWs are "forgotten" so to speak. Reinstall the lithium cell and you have a "virgin" system again.
You can also try this:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00379616&dlc=en#N783
I imagine other motherboards will be similar...
215 • Re: What really happened (by Joe User on 2009-04-05 11:34:27 GMT from United States)
#189 Thanks for that comment. It sheds a lot of light about really went on between the main developers and the other "lesser" members of the team. But, it seems that the "lesser ones" were a lot more significant than they were being made to be. Sounds like, at the very least, there was some elitism going on there.
216 • re 211 jack (by illiterate on 2009-04-05 13:49:38 GMT from Greece)
I am going to tell you what I do with a hard drive:
My scant knowledge from what I have read in Suse's manuals as stated above is:
You can create four primary partitions only, in the normally available hard disks, which are made so complying with Microsoft's instructions and wishes. If you have a hd with a GPT Disk Label which has a different architecture there is no restriction to the number of primary partitions and consequently there is no need for an extented/logical partition.
I usually make one primary which holds swap.Another one to put one distro, my favourite and a third to use as its /home.The rest of the hd is allocated to the remaining 4th primary which is an extented. There I can make, if the hard drive is a SCSI, SATA or Firewire up to 15 logical partitions. If it is an (E)IDE hd up to 63 logical partitions!
Now from my personal experience: You can delete and rewrite a primary without any problem. But you cannot delete a logical unless it is numbered as last.Otherwise all the logicals after it change number and there is confusion. you will not be able to boot them any longer. That is me mind you, if you are experienced you can of course instruct the kernel of the change, I believe. Another thing from experience: No matter what type of hd you have and how many hds, the newer kernels understand and handle only up to 15 partitions of any kind. Not counting the extented one, one of the 4 primaries.
To do a proper job after you learn to partition is to learn to edit the bootloader, usually grub, which resides in /boot/grub/menu.lst ( careful is l not 1)
Sorry for the long comment,
illiterate
217 • #216. partitioning (by jack on 2009-04-05 14:12:42 GMT from Canada)
"...But you cannot delete a logical unless it is numbered as last.Otherwise all the logicals after it change number...
THANKS I do not remember having seen this before The only problem with experimenting is when I screw up something else which is also on the hard drive (I am really good at this!) which then takes a lot of time to fix Re: grub There seem to be a lot of posts on this subject in various forums; grub seems to be more complex than it appears at first sight Thanks again
218 • re 217 (by illiterate on 2009-04-05 15:22:16 GMT from Greece)
Since as I remember you waned to delete one distro and put another, you can simply install the new one on the old one's partition, provided you know the partition, ask during the install for manual partitioning, ask for the boot loader to be installed at the MBR and then open /boot/grub/menu.ist, after installation, and read the instructions. You can easily edit menu.lst Should look something like that:
title whatever root (hd0,1) chainloader +1
(hd0,1) is actually hda,2 Numbering in Grub starts from 0 not 1. So 0=1, 1=2 etc. 0 could mean a as well as in hd0=hda, sd2=sdc etc.
For any subsequent distro that you will install ask for the bootloader to be placed on its root partition and edit grub as above. Grub will grab the distro from the first (+1) part of root and will serve it to you! always edit grub of the distro's grub you placed in the mbr.
illiterate
219 • Lvm? & travelling (by Tom on 2009-04-05 16:05:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wrt chats about Partitioning there was an excellent article about a month ago ;) http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090309 Now, at last, i'm beginning to see the advantages of LVM! It's only taken me 3 weeks or so. I still don't understand it but now it's moved from an esoteric high-brow curiosity to something likely to have immediate relevance for me, at some point.
I find that on old machines there can be a slight advantage in OS's and swap-partitions being very close to the front of the drive where read/writes occur faster (?!?) and also it seems that Primary Partitions do make a marginal difference in access speed. Sometimes a marginal difference is the difference between 'not working at all' and 'just works'. Also there seems to be some issue about what's in the first 1024Mb(?) of some really old drives or for old mbords? I keep being told that there's no difference between Logical partitions inside an Extended partition versus Primary Partitions but i keep observing a difference although that could well just be because it i lack a 'double blind' test. A Logical Partition inside an Extended partition sound like a sub-folder inside a folder, or like using a floppy disk to get an external drive to boot.
Wrt travelling and using a variety of different machines. I would recommend get 2 or 3 distros that are made to run as LiveCd's, preferably from different forks. An external drive but ideally one that could be linked up internally as an ide drive (i found an adapter that allows the opposite way around so i'm able to use internal drives as external usb drives) and of course a boot floppy using that skilful techniques that allows some old machines to boot off Usb even when the mbord doesn't support that. Floppy drives do fail quite fast and cd's get 'accidentally lost' but both should be replacable at certain places. 'Accidentally' leaving a cd might help a local person learn the joys of linux so please try to do this quite often ;)
Good luck and regards to all! Some interesting chats going on here now, thanks folks :)
220 • re219 swap (by hab on 2009-04-05 22:11:30 GMT from Canada)
Putting a swap partition on an entirely different drive is probably a better solution. In a system with two harddrives and say a linux install on both drives in dual boot config., then i would make a swap partition for one linux on the other drive and vice versa, tell each instance of linux which swap partition explicitly to use. This keeps system activity on one physical drive and swap on another.
I know that it is a mild waste of drive space but with (and i really can't believe i'm saying this!) terrabyte drives available whats a wasted gig or two!
Actually i remember reading a discussion about using swap files vs swap partition were a little faster but i never really followed it up.
Al tough practically speaking on my 1gig p4 box my system almost never dips into swap.
cheers
221 • Ref#204 (by Verndog on 2009-04-05 23:53:40 GMT from United States)
No, I haven't used any flavor of BSD's a quite a while. I was rather forced to use XP since I have a need for Skype and video.
Getting back to that Apt-get vs Aptitude thought. I mistaken his handle over at debian fourms. It's rickh not rickn. And he has a provided a lot of info on the subject. It appears many debian users are split down the middle. As far as the debian developers are concerned, they prefer Aptitude. One thing to keep in mind is the management. One way or the other. You can't have Aptitude remove stuff that was acquired by using Apt-get. I guess it's common sense but that topic has come up before.
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