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1 • Wolvix at number 1 !! (by Tom on 2009-06-22 10:35:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
WoooHooo! I can't believe i just happened to get in first this week. Hope you all have another great week. Thanks all at DistroWatch for making this such a great and lively place to be :) Great articles and all :)
Wolvix Cub beta1 still not listed, shock ;) heheheh
Good luck and regards to all from
Tom :)))
2 • Feedback on this weeks DW (by Miq on 2009-06-22 10:55:04 GMT from Sweden)
Relatively... well... empty DW this week. The VectorLinux interview was nice I suppose, even if some may consider it tendentious due to Caitlyn's involvement with the project, but even though I have recently tried the distro on older hardware and found it efficient and attractive enough, the interview did nothing to me. Still, I *LOVE* his shirt! Big extra creds for that! :)
Interesting things are on the move, though. KDE 4.3 about to be released, and it looks sweet. KDE4 has come far from its PR-challenged onset and delivers a wonderful user experience. Functionality, innovation and aesthetics combined while retaining performance. Colour me biased, but I love it! Krita 2 was recently released, and we seem to have a wonderful image editor and paining studio on our hands that is posed to correct all the drawbacks of the GIMP (especially the atrocious user interface).
Mandriva seems back on tracks to reclaim their Mandrake glory days. My thumbs are crossed, and I am very happy to see that we now have the choice of several high-end releases: especially Mandriva, Fedora, OpenSUSE comes to mind, and Mint for those that want a 'Bunto derivative. Other Linux distributions that are well worth keeping an eye on are Lapis Linux and Pardus - the Turks are doing great things with Linux!
If I could ask for an article that be interesting and different, it'd be an overview of some of the "controversial" or fringe distros. AntiX is a good candidate, as is Wolvix. A deeper look at Sabayon would be appreciated. And perhaps just for the hell of it, why not peek at Satanic Linux (or whatever it's called) that apparently became its own distro rather than just a Ubuntu flavour to see what's behind the controversy.
I'd also enjoy some comparative reviews of BSD flavours, and perhaps OpenSolaris. Another article idea is a focus issue on larger distros with spins, f.i. the Fedora DE spins, Mint and KoolMint, and the 'buntus.
3 • Vector Linux (by Vaithy on 2009-06-22 10:55:33 GMT from India)
I already played with VL earlier with their live cd versions.. Though impressed with its speed and choices of applications including VASM I have to discard from my installed partition as it used LILO instead of GRUB,(which is essential for me to recognise other distros in my five partitions). I may again go to VECTOR path if its present version support GRUB..
thank for the Interview Caitlyn!!
4 • @3 (by capricornus on 2009-06-22 11:11:04 GMT from Belgium)
my full support: I avoid LILO at all cost
5 • YUM vs APT (by Xtyn on 2009-06-22 11:20:29 GMT from Romania)
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7382/
APT really kicked YUM's bottom. :)
No surprise there.
6 • useful (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2009-06-22 11:34:04 GMT from Egypt)
Many thanks 4 all useful things in this great website :)
7 • Vector (by Tom on 2009-06-22 11:34:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Given that Caitlyn has worked proffessionally in linux-land a long time it's fair to assume she has good reasons for liking a particular desktop distro ahead of the rest? While the interview didn't seem to be as controversial or critical as some articles i did find it interesting and the links were insightful too. Good to see a Slackware distro 'in the press'. Thanks for another good article Caitlyn :))
It's good to see that the distro Vector grew from, aLinux, hasn't really disappeared but has instead become a successful commercial distro, at £30 rather than Windows >£100 it seems likely to attract people into linux-land - which has to be good right? While i don't often like commercialism it does have it's place and when linked to a Free 'spin-off' (if it's fair to say that of huge projects that have really become completely independent) offers people choice, which is always a good thing imo.
It's interesting to see that Vector has such different aims than Wolvix and seems to aim at the same type of market as Ubuntu. Also interesting that it seems to be concerned with power consumption. Although i couldn't get this distro to work at home it seems well worth trying on my dad's boat, if i can break him out of thinking in restrictive Window terms and veer a little more to a distro-hopers mentality.
I guess i should apologise to Xtyn for not always being dour and dull. Also apologies to the Wolvix team for daring to mention their name in public. I think all of you should go out and party sometime, i mean really let your hair down and have fun away from a computer for a bit sometimes ;)
Can't grub or lilo both/either pick-up on the presence of other OS's and simply add them into the multi-boot menu? I've not had problems but maybe i've just been lucky or maybe that was what prevented Vector working?
Thanks all :))
8 • No MONO (by Xtyn on 2009-06-22 11:40:35 GMT from Romania)
I think Ubuntu shouldn't include mono by default. Mono is not only tied to Microsoft but it's also bloated. Yeah, thanks Novell.
9 • Xtyn - Mono in Ubuntu, and ..Shockware! (by DeniZen on 2009-06-22 12:10:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
I agree, but then Ubuntu is the 'Human' / usable distro, it doesnt have pretentions to be the 'clean' or 'right-on' Distro especially.
Regards ridding a standard Ubuntu install of Mono, is it not just a case of deselcting F-Spot and Tomboy, and then can remove Mono easily enough? I'm fairly sure that is what I did.
Would most of the folks that Ubuntu expects to target, want, or care to do that I wonder?
Though, agreed, it would be better if Mono were not there in the first place.
Cheers Caitlyn for the review, and DW team for the weekly dose.
I think VL ought to havve a default theme that matches Robert Langes shirt .. oh .. ahem .. I see it already does ;)
That shirt is based on Shockware IMO ;)
10 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-22 12:17:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re learned discussion on MONO:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/67387.html
11 • re: 3 Don't install LILO (by Thor on 2009-06-22 12:28:24 GMT from United States)
Install VL without bootloader if you don't want LILO. Why would you replace your primary GRUB bootloader in the first place? Another thing you can do is boot to your primary installation and then do update-grub which will (should) find your VL installation and add it to your menu.lst
12 • reinstating grub (by Tom on 2009-06-22 12:38:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
In a terminal type
sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
should give useful answers like (hd0,1) use your prefered answer that your machine gives you rather than mine
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)
quit
note that setup (hd0) is usually best as (hd0) whatever result you got from your machine. Usually this doesn't overwrite the grub files but i think it may do so copy them somewhere safe jic.
I hope this helps!
13 • @3, etc. (by lucky on 2009-06-22 12:39:28 GMT from United States)
You don't have to install a bootloader with each and every distro you want to try. Unless Vector has changed the installer to require installing LILO (last time I installed it was 5.9 and IIRC it gave options for installing MBR, partition, or skip), you can skip that and then add an appropriate entry in your menu.lst (either direct boot or chainload if you install LILO to the boot partition).
I wasn't impressed with Vector because it seemed to have taken this big turn from the versions I'd tried before (4.x) into a bloated bleeping beast filled with really big icons, really heavy wallpapers, etc. IOW, JAD (just another distro). I found that I got much better performance off the bat by sticking with Slackware because Slackware doesn't try to dress itself up by default (mmm, vanilla). Slackware's installer isn't difficult and the documentation exceeds in quality and quantity what Vector offers.
But I guess if you want a simpler installer with fewer options to confuse you, wobbly windows, fancy wallpaper, and 50kb icons from the moment your system is installed... oh, why do I bother.
14 • Mono (by Nobody Important on 2009-06-22 12:49:29 GMT from United States)
Let's just say there may be a few things coming down the tube concerning Mono.
In any case, to remove Mono from Ubuntu, just type "sudo apt-get purge mono-common" into a terminal. It will remove all Mono apps and Mono itself.
I liked the VL interview. I've never tried the main version of VL, only the light. Maybe that should change.
15 • etoile (by anonymous on 2009-06-22 12:50:15 GMT from Ireland)
Great DW as per usual.. Was wondering if you have any plans to review the current state of the etoile distribution, might be interesting...
http://etoileos.com/
16 • Re (3) (by silent on 2009-06-22 12:55:03 GMT from France)
It is quite easy to add another Linux OS to grub, here it is also with an example for Vector: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-219745.html
Otherwise I tried Fedora and Macpup this week. Well, Macpup Opera is really nice. It appears to be a good starting point for an E17 based lightweight distro.
17 • On LZMA and Vector Linux (by dish on 2009-06-22 13:04:11 GMT from Russian Federation)
AFAIK, Tukaani Linux (another Slackware-based project) was the first to begin using LZMA for compressing packages, see http://tukaani.org/
18 • Vector (by Wil Barath on 2009-06-22 13:06:50 GMT from Canada)
Vector is a great distro to run in qemu/vmware/virtualbox/parallels etc.
It's fast, requires very little ram, so it's really nice for quick state saves. I used to do programming in it that would crash my host OS if I did it outside the VM, being able to nearly instantly recover from a kernel crash by reverting to a save state and having the IDE open and cursor where you were last editing code is quite preferable to reboots ;-)
19 • #11 & 12 and stuff (by davemc on 2009-06-22 13:16:02 GMT from United States)
Thanks for that advice guys. Funny thing is I was fighting with GRUB this last weekend with a stock Xubuntu Hardy install for my server and kept getting a GRUB error 15. I spent the whole weekend fiddling with grub commands until I realized that (somehow) I had two drives marked as boot!.. Gparted helped me fix that problem and then I spent the rest of my weekend immersed in setting up my server - apache, mysql, mythtv, raids, etc. Fun stuff!
PS.. I hate databases!
20 • Good Distro (by Vladimir on 2009-06-22 13:25:42 GMT from Italy)
Vector is good distro I can use from live cd. But this one not work with my computer. I try this one on 3 computers and something always not working. Sometime not boot, sometime not have sound, sometime installer stop.
Tom, do not "grow up". Xtyn should have party with Tom and wear good shirt like Robert Lang.
Is good to see Slackware distro for review. Good interview.
21 • Mandriva at Linuxtag in Berlin (by wobo on 2009-06-22 13:29:07 GMT from Germany)
Last minute information:
It is official now. Mandriva had let the last deadline (today, 2pm GMT +0200) slip by. They did not give any explanation to the community, they did not answer the official request of the Linuxtag press relation manager for a statement, nothing. The last contact I had on Friday when I called Anne Nicolas on the phone. She did not comment but promised to get back to me on Saturday - which she did not.
We are very concerned about all this.
22 • mint (by greenpossum on 2009-06-22 13:43:01 GMT from Australia)
Thanks for that interesting interview with Clement Lefebvre that you linked to. Although I do not use it my main distro, I have seen fit to install it on a computer that I have put together for a friend. Mint puts enough polish on top of an Ubuntu base for media playback to just work, no hassles. And I can see from the artwork that they have also taken care to make the desktop look good. So it's not surprising that they have earned their popularity. Sorry if this sounds like a gushing PR plant, but I really was impressed, playing around with it.
23 • No subject (by Glenn on 2009-06-22 13:46:58 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted at author's request.
24 • Typo in Msg23. Please read this instead (by Glenn on 2009-06-22 13:49:27 GMT from Canada)
For those that like to play with Partitions running various flavors of Linux you may find that the following which works quite well for me to be of use to you.
Lets say I have 5 Partitions which I want to install linuxen on and my Main Linux with the GRUB config is on Partition 1 (HD0,0)
Then my GRUB Config (menu.lst) is like this
Title Main Linux which has GRUB
root (hd0,0)
etc.
etc.
My remaining Linux partitions are defined as follows
Title Linuxa on Partition 2.
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1 .
Title Linuxb on Partition 3.
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1 .
Title Linuxc on Partition 4.
root (hd0,3)
chainloader +1 .
Etc.
It works most of the time, at least for my purposes. One advantage is that when you upgrade the Kernel in one of the Partitions Linuxen you do not have to go edit the menu.lst script in your GRUB each time
I'm sure most of you know this but I thought I'd point it out anyway.
Have a great week.
Glenn
Number of Comments: 23
25 • Vector Interview (by Shawn on 2009-06-22 13:51:52 GMT from United States)
I liked the interview! Always nice to see a face behind the distro. I'm not sure I ever thought of Vector as the "Rodney Dangerfield" of distro's as I always gave it respect! As a matter of fact, it was always a toss up between Vector and Zenwalk when I was in the mood for a Slackware-based desktop and didn't want to install and tweak plain Slackware.
I know GRUB is the standard in the Linux world today, but typing in at the command prompt after adding or deleting an entry from the menu is simple: /sbin/lilo or as another person already said, if you're dual-booting just don't install LILO and let GRUB auto-detect the partition of the newly installed distribution. This article has got me in the mood to try out the newest Vector!
26 • Robert Lange (by Andy Axnot on 2009-06-22 14:04:24 GMT from United States)
Ah, yes, wearing one of those famous "Canadian shirts".
Does this mean that Vector is a "party distro"?
Andy
27 • Fedora benchmarks (by Jesse on 2009-06-22 14:07:47 GMT from United States)
For those who don't want to read through nine ad-filled pages to find out the results of the Fedora benchmarks, Fedora 11 wins by a small margin.
Also, apt beats yum in the Apt vs. Yum contest.
I like Yum, I really do, but it does have some serious problems. Or perhaps the packagers do. I've never had a Fedora system that didn't eventually run into dependancy hell with even with installing packages only through the Yum package manager. It generally does a nice job but versions up to and including the one shipped with Fedora 10 have been pretty slow.
28 • Suggestion: AMD Catalyst "legacy" driver (by KimTjik on 2009-06-22 14:40:28 GMT from Sweden)
If it's possible it could be a good idea to focus on how AMD is deciding to solve their current mess of a legacy driver that doesn't support the version of Xorg most newly released distros ship. I believe it's worth every buzz possible since AMD made good progress until they suddenly abandoned a lot of users of "older" cards, which kind of undo the value of possibly good support for 2xxx cards and newer. To force costumers to upgrade GPUs if they wish good 3D performance doesn't show any goodwill, especially since we're actually talking about fairly new cards.
I made a fresh install on a machine yesterday of Arch. I rolled back xorg-server and its dependencies (by the use of this repository: http://arm.kh.nu/extra::2008-12-31/os/i686/; by the way thanks to the person who maintain it), and installed catalyst-old and catalyst-utils-old from AUR (thanks to webjdm for that package), set pacman to ignore any updates of xorg-server plus some and the kernel before it hits 2.6.30. It works great, but for how long?
...
Vector is the second distro after Slackware that I used back in the days... it was and possible is kind of good, but we as users change as well.
29 • new hard-drive (by Tom on 2009-06-22 14:43:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm getting a brand new hard-drive at last. I'm confident enough with linux now to get a decent drive for my main machine. Although i nearly understand Chris' articles about LVM now i seem to remember someone saying that drives don't need to haev the 4 primary partition limit if some non-microsquish method is used. How do i find out about these? Has anyone tried and what do they prefer for a single desktop slight distro-hopper?
30 • mandriva shoots themselves in the foot yet again... (by panther86 on 2009-06-22 15:00:06 GMT from United States)
i literally don't think mandriva gets it at all.I been with mandriva and a strong supporter for over a year, and over time i just see mandriva just wither away because of their stupid mistakes they make constantly combined with lack of communication.I don't know how they manage to survive, their upper management couldn't rub 2 nickels together.I think it is time for mandriva users to move on pclinuxos now when we are ready instead of being surprised mandriva closes the shop.
31 • re: Mandriva (by Sertse on 2009-06-22 15:08:28 GMT from Australia)
General disappointments about the situation with Mandriva, how could they mismanage things so greatly? Defecting to PCLOS is not really an option; communication is almost a secret as Mandriva...
It's a pity especially as Mandriva itself is a great distro.
On more positive news about LinuxTag, I have heard sidux is sharing the booth with Debian. Hopefully this is a sign about greater cooperation and understanding between the projects.
32 • @3,5 (by zhymm at 2009-06-22 15:12:37 GMT from United States)
Grub (v. 0.97) is available in the Vector Linux repositories (http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/veclinux-6.0/packages/) and includes Kent Robotti's 'grubconfig' tool.
Best regards, Vectorite Old Man Zhymm
33 • re: Mandriva (by Sertse on 2009-06-22 15:16:14 GMT from Australia)
General disappointments about the situation with Mandriva, how could they mismanage things so greatly? Defecting to PCLOS is not really an option; communication is almost a secret as Mandriva...
It's a pity especially as Mandriva itself is a great distro.
On more positive news about LinuxTag, I have heard sidux is sharing the booth with Debian. Hopefully this is a sign about greater cooperation and understanding between the projects.
34 • Distros & Lilo (by Fernando Gracia on 2009-06-22 15:30:57 GMT from United States)
It seems that many Linux users are getting away from Slackware based distributions just because the Lilo bootloader. It is used on Zenwalk, Goblinx, Vector and Absolute only Wolvix is using Grub. All these are excellent distros. The Lilo bootloader in Goblinx usually recognize all partitions in your system by default, so I am using it. Thanks for the interview. Vector still my main system.
35 • Mandriva (by Tom on 2009-06-22 15:42:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well i hope it's not bankrupt or going to vanish. It was my first distro and i really liked all the pretty colours during bootup. I've considered it for my dad's boat to encourage him to take an interest in the verbose bootup. Without this colurful distro linux-land just wouldn't be as pretty.
Has jk got lost? Having a new thread each week is great but takes a little getting used to. I was so chuffed to get in 1st this week. I tried really hard yonks back but never made it and when i got it by accident this week didn't have a good plan lol. I hope jk finds us again and lets us know what he/she has tried and how its gone. Another different type of noob is always welcome imo :)
36 • re#29 new harddrive (by hab on 2009-06-22 16:02:56 GMT from Canada)
Tom
IIRC it goes something like a max of four primary partitions per drive. If one of the extended partitions is marked as an extended type, up to 64 logical partitions can be created in one. Windows, i believe can only be booted from a primary partition. With linux it doesn't matter, primary or logical.
Depending what i'm building, i usually set 3 primary partitions and make an extended partition to cover the rest of the drive. Them i carve it into logical partitions to suit what i'm doing. YMMV
As to where i picked that up, i'm getting a little too long in the tooth, memory gets dazed and a little confused and i just can't recall. I know it was in the first couple of months of my getting into linux, so i suspect it was buried in the linux documentation i was reading at the time.
cheers
37 • re#36 correction (by hab on 2009-06-22 16:14:07 GMT from Canada)
Arrgghhhh!!!!!!
Not enough coffee, ..............................too much haste!
Second sentence should read:
If one of the primary partitions is marked as an extended type, up to 64 logical partitions can be created in one.
My humblest apologies!
cheers
38 • New Distro AV Linux (by Scribe63 on 2009-06-22 16:15:00 GMT from United States)
It is refreshing to see another multimedia oriented linux distro (AV Linux2 -Debian Lenny/Sid) on distrowatch.
Ubuntu Studio 9.04 realtime kernel sucks big time with constant system freeze ups, and i am stuck with it since i blew away my 8.04 installation which was working fine.
It seems like an indefinite and none reassuring wait for an update to 64 Studio 3.0 from 2.1, which was released since june 2008. There is absolutely no clue as to when it is going to be released. Like they say, when it is ready, which to me totally sucks if i have to rely on them solely for an up2date multimedia OS.
So, i am going to give AV linux2 a try, it seems to have the latest audio application (Ardour 2.8), and hope fully a working a 2.6.26-rt1 realtime kernel and a 2.6.29-.4-rt15 high mem realtime kernel.
Any way it's all good, Nuff Respect to the developers.
39 • Definition of older PCs (by Taigong on 2009-06-22 16:56:59 GMT from Canada)
Just saw the news about the first test release of antiX MEPIS 8.2. and it states "MEPIS has announced the availability of the first test release of antiX MEPIS 8.2, a lightweight edition of MEPIS Linux designed for older computers".
What is the definition of older computer? P4 with 512Mb, P3 with 256mb or P2 with 128 Mb? We have see quite a few so called "light weight" distros for older PCs in last few months, and I found that there is a huge differences in what they meant by "older PCs". Personally, I think to clearly state what they meant by older PC or to state what is the minimum hardware requirement for the distro would do a better job to inform the readers about the distro so that people with PCs older than the "older PCs" won't waste they time to download and to try it.
40 • questions for all you mono haters (by lucky on 2009-06-22 16:58:14 GMT from United States)
How many of you refuse to install Gnash or swfdec to avoid using Adobe Flash to view a non-free format? How many of you refuse to traffic in any formats like MP3 with licensing issues? How many of you also refuse to install libdvdcss because it's tied to non-free formats?
I'm willing to bet a lot of this hysterical FUD is being spread by two groups of people. First are the typical FSF types: narrow-minded extremists and zealots who pontificate reflexively against everything Microsoft and who think in simplistic terms like "RMS good, MS evil." Second are ignorant hypocrites who pick and choose which non-free software and formats they use but impulsively jump on these ridiculous anti-this/anti-that bandwagon whenever it comes around because they can't think for themselves.
If you're really against Mono, why? And how many other things are you going to remove from your computer to be "pure" (in the most fundamentalist of ways)?
41 • #40 (by Xtyn on 2009-06-22 17:15:58 GMT from Romania)
Nobody is threatening to sue you if you use mp3's or adobe flash player or skype or anything like this.
Microsoft can do this with mono and threatened it will.
There isn't any reason why free software should be created in mono.
42 • RE: 39 Definition of older PCs (by ladislav on 2009-06-22 17:16:08 GMT from Slovakia)
I can't always quote the whole announcement, but if you click on the antiX announcement link, you'll get the exact answer:
"AntiX is designed to work on computers with as little as 64 MB RAM and Pentium II or equivalent AMD processors, but not K5/K6 processors. 128 MB RAM is recommended minimum."
43 • re#40 (by hab on 2009-06-22 17:23:38 GMT from Canada)
From my own experience i would say a p3 and before is older, a p4 and later is relatively modern.
The amount of memory is considerably more relevant than processor speed in terms of actual usage. More is always better. On modern boxes it seems that if you go to 1gb of ram, that swap is then seldom if ever used.
I know i've done a number of upgrades of boxes from 512mb to 1gb and that seemed to me to make much difference in perceived speed of operation. Windows, especially seemed to gain performance, linux ran with some noticeable gain in speed but perceptually not nearly as much as win.
I don't know that there is any 'official' breakdown of what constitutes an older box but i tend to go more with my own experience based on what i've learned.
cheers
44 • openSUSE survey (by jk on 2009-06-22 17:36:26 GMT from United States)
Hello everyone! I'm taking a survey.
Do you think openSUSE is ready to replace Ubuntu.
a. yes
b. no
I chose b. based on reviews of openSUSE and my experience with Ubuntu. Post your answer.
45 • Vector may replace my Ubuntu (by pfyearwood on 2009-06-22 17:38:53 GMT from United States)
Vector Linux has one major advantage over Ubuntu IMHO. ALSA Configuration utility. Xubuntu is pushed for older machines but has no easy way of configuring onboard sound chips. Vector uses ALSAconf.
I must say that the change in the installer between Ver. 5.9 and Ver. 6 makes it a whole lot easier to load onto my computer. As for LILO or grub, Vector 6 lists all OS on the computer during the configuration part of the install. I also like that there is a 64bit version.
I put Vector 6 on my 1998 Compaq about a month ago and it works great since I used ALSA configuration to set up the ES18XX sound chips. I no longer need the UBS speakers. Won't say I love it, but I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy either.Both do what I want them to do. Don't see the need to pay for windows than have to still add apps to use it.
Paul
It's an Operating System, not a religion.
46 • Vector interview (by Tervel on 2009-06-22 17:46:29 GMT from Austria)
I liked the interview with Robert Lange, thanks!
47 • slack ware and slax (by jk on 2009-06-22 17:53:49 GMT from United States)
...What is the difference between Slack Ware and SLAX based Linux, and would SLAX the live CD classify under Slack Ware or SLAX?...
48 • @44 (by Nobody Important on 2009-06-22 17:54:47 GMT from United States)
That's an interesting question.
I'd say yes in some cases and no in others. OpenSUSE's package manager is sufficient, but weak compared to Debian and Ubuntu's solidity. And OpenSUSE always struck me as a slower distro than Ubuntu, overall.
But, granted, the differences between distros is becoming rather minimal. What OpenSUSE has going for it is the YAST tool, which is getting bigger every second (it grows, like a green fungus).
@40, lucky: Everyone knows Mono is free software. However, the license that Mono is covered by might not even exist, and the details of it are fuzzy at best. Your analogies to DVD's and MP3's is flawed because the companies that control these patents do not have agendas behind them that involve competition with free software like Microsoft does.
Again, there will be more information coming down the tube soon.
49 • @48 (by Nobody Important on 2009-06-22 17:56:36 GMT from United States)
SLAX is a mini 200 MB LiveCD based on Slackware. It includes KDE 3.5 and Fluxbox, and is fairly easy to use. It's not meant to be installed.
Slax was my first Linux, two years ago. :)
50 • first linux (by jk on 2009-06-22 18:01:43 GMT from United States)
My first Linux was Fedora a couple months ago, but I wasn't really in to it back then.
My dad's first Linux, I believe was DSL. When I told him it was probably dead now, he was surprised, even though it was lightweight and old.
51 • Respins can be fun! (by respun! on 2009-06-22 18:10:48 GMT from United States)
I've been having a great time messing around with several of the respins provided by the MEPIS Lovers Forum community, especially those by forum users Danum and Marcos. These "respins" don't often make the headlines, but they can be quite interesting for those who like a particular distribution and do something with it. Mint and PCLinuxOS have also had a lot of involvement in their communities over the years with respins, and of course, Ubuntu (and Debian, its parent) have more respins than any other primary distribution that I know of. I'm having the most fun with the MEPIS variants because MEPIS itself it pretty plain, simple, stable (but doesn't have that constant "excitement factor"). These community respins are nearly as stable as the main version, but they have a slightly different look and feel.
Naturally, each of us has our own preferences, and not all of us like to experiement (but many of us do). The MEPIS Lovers Forum seems to be having a lot of fun with this stuff lately - at least I am having fun with it! :-)
52 • @8 (by jk on 2009-06-22 18:12:57 GMT from United States)
I wouldn't say MONO on Linux is a bad thing, I mean extra programs gives you more options to chose from, yet Linux has copied several of Windows and Mac ideas, which is not exactly a good thing. Linux XP is a rip off of Windows XP, yet they didn't get in trouble, at least not to my knowledge, so what's the big deal if the use one little program. You shouldn't complain about extra programs.
53 • #2 - not affiliated with Vector, #13 - try the Light version, lilo vs. grub (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-06-22 18:17:59 GMT from United States)
First, a hugh thank you for all the positive comments and for civil critical comments. It's all good so far this week.
#2 - Miq: I had to stop volunteering for Vector due to a conflict of interest back in February. I am not, in any way, affiliated with Vector Linux at this time other than as a user. FWIW, I expected someone to object for the reason you raise. Both Ladislav and Chris thought the interview was a good idea for DWW so I went ahead with it. I, personally, think it would get awfully boring to have nothing but reviews in DWW. An occasional interview keeps things interesting.
#13 - lucky: If you liked Vector Linux 4.0 may I humbly suggest you try Vector Linux Light 6.0. IceWM or JWM for the desktop, few (or no) icons, and very lightweight. It is probably pretty close to what you remember but with all the current VL apps and tools available if you want them.
---
On the grub vs. lilo front, VL did have grub in some of the alpha releases and possibly some early betas for 6.0.. It was dropped because they couldn't get some bugs sorted out and at the time large inode support in grub may still have been an issue. They decided to deliver what worked well. Grub, as already noted, is available in the Vector Linux repositories but not during the initial install.
54 • @38 (by illiterate on 2009-06-22 18:47:36 GMT from Greece)
Try musix 1.0r3. For me, I am not a musician, it has the best sound of the best 4 multimedia distros in Linux. I am using M-audio audiophile 24/96 card, amd3800+, 2GB ram.
I have no idea how MS or Apple multimedia OSs sound, but with Musix listening to streams from MR3-Bartok radio( 320kbs/s ) especially with a live concert, is simply stunning.
borgibo
55 • bill@bill.com (by Anonymous at 2009-06-22 20:24:37 GMT from United States)
@44 I think the actual question should be reversed "is any *buntu's ready to replace Suse (or Fedora or Madriva)"
My experience is no it they are not - they lack the richness that the others provide. The others are server and desktop worthy whereas the *buntu's are trying to get there. Also the *buntu's don't have the sets of tools for management and repair/recovery that the others do.
But hey that's my opinion
PS - questions like that are usually only posted to create flame wars and personally I think they should be deleted as soon as posted
56 • I agree and it's all a matter of opinion (by Shawn on 2009-06-22 20:56:45 GMT from United States)
Not sure if Ubuntu is ready to replace openSUSE and not sure if openSUSE is ready to replace Ubuntu. Pro's and con's in each camp. openSUSE has YaST and is a good thing and I used it for a while but eventually went back to Ubuntu. The best part about Linux is that you're free to use whichever distro you want without (hopefully) someone flaming you for using what you choose. Ubuntu, Slackware, Fedora and Arch Linux are my favorite distributions and I replace each and every one of them at some point for the sake of having something different.
I actually have an old computer that has 8 different versions of Linux on it and I can't say I'm in one distribution more than another. Use what you want, help out where you can and keep an open mind. That's the best advice I can give any newbie to Linux.
57 • @ 40 - choice? (by DeniZen on 2009-06-22 21:21:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
'Lucky' - c'mon - is 'choice' the same as 'hate' in your view?
Is it Ok if I choose not to have MONO on my system?
I think it is OK to make that choice.
And in fact, it is pretty cool to have that 'choice'.
Would you prefer that I, or you, or anybody had no choice?
Like many I'm not 'waging' a campaign' , nor feeling like I am a hypocrite.
I just dont especially want to be part of any move towards endorsing, not becoming dependant on MONO if I can help it.
And, I can help it.
You can choose your own path too.
58 • @50 jk, Dsl (by Tom on 2009-06-22 21:22:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Dsl broke into 2 distros a couple of months ago. One of the main devs and a few other people that had been involved with Dsl previously started up an even tinier distro called TInyCore. TinyCore is developing well
59 • @40 (by john frey on 2009-06-22 21:34:52 GMT from Canada)
MS not evil?
Ya right. You'll be singing a different tune when your burning in hell but then it will be too late, won't it?
60 • #40: Replace? For what? (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-06-22 22:10:31 GMT from United States)
#40: jk, in what way would you ask if OpenSUSE can replace Ubuntu? As an easy to use desktop OS I'd say the two are about on par. Personally I prefer the management tools in OpenSUSE. Right now OpenSUSE has the advantage of not having the Intel graphics regression and of supporting some older graphics cards that were dropped by the version of X.org in 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Ubuntu has the advantage in supporting some state of the art hardware that a distro last released in December won't include yet. I've found less show stopping bugs in OpenSUSE recently but that could easily change with the next release. Both are backed by large, professionally run companies and both have lots of good developers on staff.
If you're talking about sales on desktops/laptops, well... it depends. Which does a better job marketing to hardware vendors who preload systems? Right now the edge has to go to Ubuntu. HP offers Ubuntu and SLED (commercial, not open, SUSE). Dell offers Ubuntu. Other, smaller vendors have gone with Ubuntu more frequently over the past year or two.
If you're talking about preferred choice within the existing Linux community the OpenSUSE is at a distinct disadvantage as there are a lot of people who question the Mono licensing and, as a result question the "Open" in OpenSUSE. The deal between Novell and Microsoft also engenders distrust, rightly or wrongly.
If you are talking about the server room in North America where we both live then Red Hat is the undisputed leader, with sales about 9x that of Novell/SUSE. Ubuntu LTS is just beginning to make inroads into the server market and probably will be a significant force in the future.
If you are talking about the corporate desktop in North America once again Red Hat is the clear leader. In this area SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) is a competitor. OpenSUSE never will be do to the lack of available commercial support from Novell. Yes, there are third party companies that will support OpenSUSE but many IT managers tend to prefer support directly from the vendor/distributor. This is also an area where Ubuntu really is making inroads and since commercial support is available from Canonical they have a distinct advantage over OpenSUSE but not necessarily over SUSE as a whole.
On my desktop? Neither is my first choice though I do have an Ubuntu Netboook Remix installation since I wanted to keep the factory OS on my Sylvania. I should also add that I don't think that either of them are bad but there are other distros that better suit my personal needs.
In my business? I live in Raleigh, the home of Red Hat. Right now supporting the local economy is a big selling point. It's Red Hat all the way or perhaps CentOS for small businesses who don't want to pay for commercial support.
So.... I think my answer to your question is "no" but that should not be taken as a criticism of OpenSUSE. I think your question has a false assumption, specifically that Ubuntu is somehow the Linux leader. They are within the desktop niche in this part of the world but that's it.
61 • Minor correction to my long-winded anser to jk (by Cailtyn Martin on 2009-06-22 22:13:54 GMT from United States)
I said "I live in Raleigh". I actually about 25 miles from Raleigh or in the Raleigh/Durham area. The market my business serves includes Raleigh.
62 • LXDE's pcmanfm caveat (by Yeltsin on 2009-06-22 22:46:12 GMT from United States)
I think it is important to note that the file manager used by LXDE (pcmanfm) does not copy symlinks correctly. It is also featured on "rescue" disks- a blunder significant enough that they should rethink what is distributed (if they want such symlinks to point where they should).
63 • A question (by Untitloed on 2009-06-22 22:56:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
This is for all you dual-booters out there... I'm thinking of installing a second distribution on my machine which I use for my work as well.
My question is about the home folder. I would like to share the files on both distros, but what do you think would be the best way to go about it? My thoughts were that as I already have the home files on a different partition and I thought I'd mount it to the home folder on the new distro, but I'm not sure whether that's a good idea?
What do you people usually do?
64 • @ 40 (by Anonymous on 2009-06-22 23:04:18 GMT from United States)
How many of us like to follow the law? ;-P
It is not that mp3 is non-free it is the fact that the "free" encoders/decoders are legally shady, easily solved by purchasing a licensed codec but how many community distributions make that easy? If you distribute anything using lame commercially you'll see how quickly you get sued by Fraunhofer for patent violations.
PowerDVD is the only legal DVD player on the Linux platform (in some jurisdictions, in some jurisdictions libdvdcss is legal)
However you asked about Mono. Maybe, just maybe the problem with mono has to do with the fact that C# programs perform worse than python and don't fill a void on the platform that native programs leave. Mono is meant for legacy applications, not a default dependency and shouldn't be included as a default when there are better choices to fill that 700M disk image.
65 • You guys bug me! (by jk on 2009-06-22 23:28:00 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
66 • CentOS on the Desktop! (by Sertse on 2009-06-22 23:35:02 GMT from Australia)
It should be noted that the CentOS community has recently turned it's attention on covering CentOS as an alternative distro for the desktop. While not personal to me (I'm so cutting edge I use sid/sidux), people may want to check out their newsletter. As noted in their newsletter CentOS is an interesting choice, rock solid stability, and 7 years of support, it's a good alternative when one doesn't care for the latest changes. They make a good case that most "average" users don't want change when not required.
.
CentOS pulse: http://wiki.centos.org/Newsletter/0902 with the feature article, enabling multimedia on CentOS, the first part in their series CentOS on the desktop..
Personally, I hope CentOS gets pushed more as a desktop alternative, being bundled with laptops etc. An unofficial "desktop linux" arm RH , rather than Fedora which is more hobbyist by design.
67 • replies to 41, 57, 59, and 64 (by lucky on 2009-06-22 23:44:44 GMT from United States)
@41: "Nobody is threatening to sue you if you use mp3's or adobe flash player or skype or anything like this."
I don't know what news you follow or don't, but companies are sued over various MP3 patent claims on a pretty frequent basis. As for other things like Flash, go back and look at the history of litigation over it (e. g., Adobe versus Macromedia). There's a reason a lot of "software of convenience" like encoders get stuck in "non-free" and "dirty" repositories: because distribution and/or use of it isn't on clearly solid legal grounds.
"Microsoft can do this with mono and threatened it will."
FUD. There's at least one company whose distros are immune from patent claims by Microsoft: the distros under the control of Novell are immune. There are plenty of other areas where Microsoft hasn't been an antagonist with respect to various open source implementations of their own innovations -- read the libmtp FAQ, for example.
I left out the issue of FAT support in the Linux kernel intentionally since it's related to Microsoft patents. It's also germane to this issue because those of you who insist on "purity" need to remove *everything* under some kind of patent restriction or cloud of questionable status from your computers -- encoders, unauthorized plugins to allow you to read patented formats, etc. That also includes tools for use with MS patented filesystems and the tools to read and write to devices containing MSDOS-encumbered partitions. Ask TomTom about that.
No Mono? No FAT, either. Be consistent.
@57: "Is it Ok if I choose not to have MONO on my system?"
Perfectly fine on your *own* system. The issue is really about if you seek to project your reason(s) to others, either by demands that distros not use it and not even make it available or by encouraging others to avoid using it. IOW, is your position one of tolerance or one of prosletyzing? If it's tolerance, why do I even know your position on the issue of Mono? If it's prosletyzing, what about the sacred choices of others?
"Would you prefer that I, or you, or anybody had no choice?"
Logical fallacy of the strawman.
"I just dont especially want to be part of any move towards endorsing, not becoming dependant on MONO if I can help it."
There's a significant likelihood that you'll have plenty of other choices without forcing your own onto everyone else.
@59: "MS not evil?"
No, it's just a corporation that sells software that has a very sizable market share. Some, like me, think that's because the company's founders had an aggressive vision to fill a need; I accept others think that vision to fill a need was too aggressive. Regardless, "evil" carries too many meanings that I don't believe fit a diverse company the size of Microsoft -- indeed, I think some of the definitions (like being spiteful and angry and filled with malice) fit Microsoft critics a lot better than they fit Microsoft.
"Ya right. You'll be singing a different tune when your burning in hell but then it will be too late, won't it?"
I'm not religious so I don't know all the nuances of various popular religions, but this is the first I've heard or read -- outside of the writings of the Free Software Foundation, which is filled with zealotry but at least they leave issues of heaven and hell out of it -- that hating Microsoft is an article of faith. I wouldn't follow such a religion if it demands I take absolutist stands on particular operating systems or software. Why do you?
@64: "Mono is meant for legacy applications, not a default dependency and shouldn't be included as a default when there are better choices to fill that 700M disk image."
Thanks for replying. It's nice to get one response that's not a knee-jerk response. I think, though, this might be news to the Mono development team and those using it to create new applications.
68 • Hating Operating Systems and Programs (by jk on 2009-06-23 00:01:22 GMT from United States)
Why would anyone HATE an operating system or Programs (besides people who got scammed on LimeWire)? I mean all of them don't have to be your favorite, but you don't have to hate them. My CPU 10 commandments are:
1. Respect thy desktop or laptop.
2. Respect thy operating systems.
3. Respect thy programs.
4. Always read all directioniths.
5. Read thou reviews before getting another operating system.
6. Make sure thy goes to Linux.org before choosing an operating system.
7. Make sure you get thou most recent version of said operating systems.
8. Clean thous computer.
9. Respect others choices on thous computer.
10. Don't drop magnets on your hard drive.
69 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-23 00:26:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Tin Hat for Fedora? Read on:
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4459.html
70 • Lucky (by john frey on 2009-06-23 00:31:17 GMT from Canada)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
71 • Интересно (by Игнат on 2009-06-23 00:33:51 GMT from Venezuela)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
72 • @70 (by lucky on 2009-06-23 02:02:49 GMT from United States)
Oh, I didn't take you seriously. I laughed when I thought there might be someone goofy enough to believe there's a god who only loves those who renounce Microsoft and sends everyone else to hell.
73 • new hard drive (by RollMeAway on 2009-06-23 02:18:26 GMT from United States)
$35
If that doesn't scare you away do check out BootItNg:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm
I have used it for several years, and find it meets all my need.
When used in the 'unlimited' mode, you can have as many primary partitions as your hard drive will allow. I mix linux, windows, bsd and solaris readily. The latter 3 require installation on a primary partition.
You can use it for 30 days without paying any money. By then you will know if it meets your needs, and is worth it to YOU.
No, I am in no way affiliated with this product.
74 • @Lucky and others (by Nobody Important on 2009-06-23 03:06:51 GMT from United States)
Well, I'll just say I've done some very in-depth research into Mono. I have a few issues with your arguments, as well as some of other people's comment as well.
1) FAT itself is no covered by any patents, and is free by itself. The technology to have long filenames in FAT is the patent Microsoft owns. If you remove the long filename technology, Microsoft has no patent jurisdiction whatsoever.
2) As I said above, the difference between MP3 files and Mono is that the Thomson company that owns MP3 patents is not a competitor to Linux and other free software. It's sort of like, if I may use an analogy, Wal-Mart offering to give a special method of distributing merchandise to Target which may or may not be patented and makes some people nervous. You may not admit that Microsoft is evil (I certainly think that's rather silly as well) but it is a competitor, and one that has gone to great lengths in the past to stay on top. I don't blame them for it, but that's what they do.
3) You are forcing your choice onto people who do not like Mono to use it or install it, no? The very Strawman argument you used against Denizen is the one anyone could use right back at you. Besides, no one is suggesting we discard it entirely. Most anti-Mono people suggest putting it in the repository, or making sure that IF there is an issue developers can just pull it out without incident.
4) The immunity granted to Novell distros is, to use this term, thin ice. While Linux has other ways of making sure Mono is protected (such as the OIN, whichy is much, much stronger than any MS "immunity" BS) the license itself is...well...confusing at best. But that's patent law for you.
5) Mono is not a development platform for legacy programs. It is an implementation of the C# programming language, which has both positives and negatives compared to other languages.
75 • Off topic... (by eco2geek on 2009-06-23 03:31:20 GMT from United States)
Peanut Linux? Man, that brings up memories of running Peanut in UMSDOS mode in order to avoid installing a Linux bootloader. (It actually ran pretty well on that filesystem hack.) It brings up memories of all the contortions I went through in order to be able to run Linux without having to install first LILO, then GRUB...
(My very first computer hung with LILO; the second, with GRUB. What's the technical name for a "fear of Linux bootloaders"? Grubalilophobia? Thank goodness those days are long gone.)
Re: that Linux Mint interview - If you're the kind of person who has "Ask me every time" turned on in the Firefox cookie-setting department, watch out for that www.tech-no-media.com website. I don't know exactly how many cookies it wanted to set, but it was over 150. I wanted to see when it would finally stop setting cookies, as if it were some kind of weird contest, but finally ended up nuking Firefox instead.
Re: Mono - I suspect Mono was created not just because Miguel de Icaza liked C#, but also because Miguel de Icaza likes drama. Just what we needed in the Linux community - more controversy.
76 • oh come on (by jk on 2009-06-23 03:31:59 GMT from United States)
Can't we end this stupid MONO conversation? Like 73/74 comments are about this!
77 • yawn (by jk on 2009-06-23 03:34:34 GMT from United States)
Oh sorry now it's 74/75 comment because eco2geek commented about it :P
78 • @lucky (by jk on 2009-06-23 03:37:43 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (disrespectful).
79 • jk (by RollMeAway on 2009-06-23 04:04:29 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (disrespectful).
80 • Vector live CD? (by gnomic on 2009-06-23 04:56:07 GMT from New Zealand)
Would it perhaps help Vector to become more popular if it had a current live CD version available for download? I periodically check their forums but there seems to be no sign of work going on. A beta of live light 5.9 tailed off into nothingness as near as I could tell, and v6 has been out for months now with no sign of a live version. I realise the usual practise is for the live CD to appear after the installable isos. Anyone know what's up with this? Just curious. Have I missed something?
81 • Vector Live (by Cailtyn Martin on 2009-06-23 05:28:14 GMT from United States)
There is a tool called vmklive that can turn any VL install into a Live CD but you do have to install first. VL never touted itself as a Live distro. I don't know if or when a Live 6.0 version will come out. The current priorities seem to be SOHO followed by the 64-bit release.
Smaller distros can't be all things to all people. Personally I have little use for live CDs. I find them slow to use. They are good for a quick look at an OS, I guess. I know some people really like them. Different strokes and all that...
82 • re#81 live cd/dvd (by hab on 2009-06-23 06:08:53 GMT from Canada)
By and large i agree with you altho i would add that they quite convenient to (fairly) quickly trial a distro.
Similarly, to demo linux or a distro to a potential convert or for a windows or mac user's edification. Bit less of a hassle i would say for that kind of purpose.
On a slightly different tack, i find it that your experience as a 'hired gun' largely parallels what i've observed. It confirms some suspicions i've held. Your observations about linux users reverting/relapsing? to windows pretty much coincides with what i've experienced. I'd shorten the time to three months for acclimatization to linux but six months is close enough.
Anyhow keep up the good work. I certainly enjoy reading your stuff.
cheers
83 • Thuffering Thuccotath! (by Woodstock69 on 2009-06-23 06:59:22 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
@68 JK : Directioniths? Thous? After reading that lot you'll either get a pimple on your tongue or start sounding like Sylvester the cat!
Caitlyn : Thanks for the interview with Robert Lange. I've finally downloaded it and will installed it along side LM6KDE and openSUSE 11.1 (come on 11.2....).
Chris Smart : Some brutal comments to your articles and bench-testing at Linux Magazine mate! I feel for ya....
@29 Tom : review http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090406. in the review of Parted Magic, the author (Chris?) mentions "gpt" and his creation of eight primary partions.
To the all the team. Great work. Another interesting DWW.
84 • Trend talk (by Sertse on 2009-06-23 07:08:21 GMT from Australia)
Fedora continues to climb. Tomorrow it'll overtake OpenSuse (2 hit separate them now). PCLOS continues to fall, Puppy will replace it eventually...in 1-2 months?
Maybe it's just me, but overall total number of hits seems to have decreased? A lot more down arrows lately.
85 • GUID Partition Table (by Woodstock69 on 2009-06-23 07:10:02 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
Tom, you might find this relevant also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
86 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-23 07:23:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #84
Probably 'cos folk see all the arguments in all the Linux forums and say it's just like being married...I'm off, LOL.
87 • OpenSuse over Ubuntu (by dedguy on 2009-06-23 09:33:31 GMT from United States)
I don't know if it's been tested, but anecdotally, it seems that OpenSuse run less heavy on my computers than ubuntu. I like that the Suse repositories are more up-to-date than ubuntu's, and I for one think that GO Office, and Mono are really great things (cuz I don't live in a vaccume). Yast is just freakn awesome. And face it OpenSuse is just a more robust (not the same as bloated) system than Ubuntu. To compare it to Windows, then Ubuntu would be the "Home Edition" and OpenSuse would be the "Professional", no, "Ultimate" Edition. Better for small business users, and still a kick ass media center. And I think the CLI environment is better, and the kde is better. The only thing that's almost a deal breaker...Stupid dependency issues that sometimes occur with yum pkgs. I have to admit that debs do a solid job with their pkg manager. But other than the few times that I'll get stuck in dependency purgatory, I get a kick out of the one click install, updated repos, and packages I swear I haven't seen on ubuntu. Great website, and documentations, and great community.OpensSuse.
88 • Not flaming...just answering survey question. (by dedguy on 2009-06-23 09:36:27 GMT from United States)
don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu, great for newbies...
89 • Yum Rpm`s on Opensuse (by blutkehlchen on 2009-06-23 10:03:54 GMT from Germany)
@87 Did i get you right that you use rpm`s from yum repos on opensuse?
If so, then there is the explanation why you get into dependency trouble.
The times dependency hell in opensuse are more or less gone(at least it didint occur to me since 10.0 )
In fact , in my opinion multilib and multi arch support with Yast and zypper ist much better then with synaptic and apt-get.
But ok nothing beats pacman:-)
Grüße
90 • What's the best way to choose repos for Opensuse. (by dedguy on 2009-06-23 10:27:34 GMT from United States)
For the most part, I use the community repos, I just assumed that it was yum, and I might be mixing things up. But switching to kde 4.2 from kde 4.1, and subsequent software, was hell, I finally got sick of all the dependency nightmares and downloaded the openususe 11.1 kde respin... so how can I carefully choose repos that won't cause dependency problems
B.T.W, I like Arch Linux too, but damn do they expect you to do everything, can't take anything for granted (I can only image how much worse gentoo must be) But I did like pacman, yaourt, and compiling my pakages on the network before installing. But Arch is buggy. And for some strange reason, I could not get my kdm to Auto-login. (using kde-mod3.) And quite honesty the boot time on my laptop, really was't that much faster than OpenSuse, maybe 10 seconds. But I like that Arch is minimalist.
91 • @ blutkehlchen (by dedguy on 2009-06-23 10:30:50 GMT from United States)
That previous post was meant for you to answer (of course I'd appreciate an answer from anyone that knows)
92 • @ 87 Awesome! .. oh it done broke .. (by DeniZen on 2009-06-23 10:31:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
Strange, but true no doubt.
Your experience is almost entirely 'the other way around' of my own.
"Lets (not) face it" eh?
These are your opinions, and thats fine, and what this forum is (should be) about.
You happen to come across as presenting them as 'fact' - as wel las being a bit rude to anyone who apparently does not share your attitude towards MONO, and all things that come with an OS that has essentially 'sold out' a fundemental tenet, and principle to MS.
It is also strange that amid your OpenSuse evangelism, you suggest that the whole thing is prone to bork! Which is many folks experience too. Certainly has been mine on each occasion I've been curious enough to try OSuse. out.
But, where 'yum' comes into this, I'm not sure.
I thought OSuse package management was via zypper and yast? no?
Anyhoo, each to their own - just an observation.
D.
(a Debian, occasionally Fedora and recently an Ubuntu (sans MONO) user who really is not 'living in a vacuum')
93 • replies (by Tom on 2009-06-23 10:55:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
@ 62 Untitled
I think that simply having the entire /home on it's own partition is best. I'm looking forwards to trying it on my new hard-drive. The first gnu/linux should help you setup the /home partition (if you haven't already) and then subsequent ones just need to be told to use the /home partition for it's /home too. I am pretty sure that no distro would be dumb enough to reformat the /home but i haven't tried it so take care to backup before trying. I think that already installed distros can be made to use the new /home through adding a line into fstab but guess what? I haven't tried this yet and don't know how to! I'm really looking forwards to playing around with my new and decently large hard-drive :))))
@ 65 & 68 jk
Don't worry about people disagreeing with you or with each other. In linux-land there is no "One Ring to rule them all". Given the sorrow and suffering in LotR (for example) i see this as a good thing. Different people have different needs, linux offers something to all. It's not an easy concept to grasp as our education system and popular media continues to assume that everything must have a single leader despite increasing evidence that greater democracy and less hierarchical organisations have a much greater survival rate than organisations that depend on a single leader who may get knocked down by a bus.
Linux is not made for people that 'just accept what they're told', instead it's about questioning 'accepted beliefs' and getting the best out of each different circumstance, sometimes this takes trial-and-error - hence distro-hopping was born and many of us enjoy doing that for fun now :) I would guess that even the keenest distro-hoppers tend to keep 1 distro fairly stable on their system and then have special areas for testing others, but inevitably they would shift details of which distro and which areas around over time. Don't worry about people disagreeing with each other, it's all part of the fun of the process of getting things right for yourself :) Some people, such as Caitlyn, have a wider experience than others as she works in IT and helps many clients get the most from a huge range of setups. Sometimes people humorously use language that others take to be as serious as when it's normally used and because we all have different view-points we sometimes react badly to our brothers and sisters in linux-land. One big family - imagine the arguments! :)
@ 73 RollMeAway
Thanks, i knew there were options. I was really looking for a free Free one but hadn't stated that so thanks for a good answer there :)
@ 83 & 85 Woodstock69
Brilliant thanks :))) That "gpt" is exactly what i was looking for to help set the partition structure for my new hard-drive :)
So it's called "Extensible Firmware Interface" or "GUID Partition Table"? and has only really been around since 2005?
@ 81 Caitlyn
Ahh, thanks - maybe that's where i ran into trouble with Vector. I've really got to give this distro another go soon.
@ 82 hab
I think 6 months is more accurate. By about 3 months maybe people feel they've got used to all that 's required but it's a false reading. 6 months is slightly after the initial learning curve and into when you're settling down into normal user mode (hopefully although not all of us are that fast at learning).
@ 86 forest
It's a shame people don't spot that even the arguments lead to people helping each other, as Xtyn helped me last week. Also as with 73, 83 & 85 and more in here - people just help each other without dressing it up as an argument sometimes. Some people in here seem to be getting into the idea of helping through emails but save arguments for the thread! What i think i said and what you thought i said are 3 different things ;) lol ;)
I'm glad we miss the make-up sex in here, much as i like you all and i'm sure that's something we have in common ;) rofls
Re: Mono - i don't get what you're all talking about. I want surround sound or at least stereo. Diversity breeds serendipity (happy accidents).
The hit-per-day count might be down but number of posts in here is up with several from new(ish) or previously quiet people so that's got to be good :)))
94 • Andalucía (by Tom on 2009-06-23 11:45:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've previously thought that Andalucía was an independant country in it's own right rather than just an area in spain. The notes for "Guadalinex 6" say its "a Spanish, Ubuntu-based ... by the regional government of Andalucía" or is Andalucía one of those areas of uncertainty like Ireland? Please i don't want a political debate, just trying to ascertain whether there is divided opinion about this area. Ladislav, feel free to delete this post if it's contentious
95 • No subject (by Mandriveiro on 2009-06-23 12:48:32 GMT from Spain)
Re: 94
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusia
http://www.andalucia.org/
Will you come here?
96 • @Tom (by Untitled on 2009-06-23 12:50:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
1. What worries me is whether it's a good idea to share a home folder between distributions, mostly regarding common settings and the likes. My other thoughts were to have another partition for my data and then just mount/symlink it to the home folders, but on the other hand, that's a lot of maintenance...
Anyway, to mount your home partition on to the home folder you need to add the following line to fstab:
UUID=DISK_ID /home ext4 relatime 0 2
change DISK_ID to your... disk ID.
2. As far as I know Andalucía to Spain is a bit like Scotland is to the United Kingdom. A bit more independent than Wales, but not a totally different country. If I'm not mistaken they have their official language (Andalucían?) and have complete freedom over choosing what Linux distribution to use.
97 • Dragon Fly BSD & Whatever (by RAT on 2009-06-23 13:48:54 GMT from United States)
A couple of days ago I decided to try out Dragon Fly BSD. My experiment with Dragon Fly BSD was pretty short. I used the DVD version. It booted up, I typed "startx" and a few hours later, there I was in a beautiful Fluxbox environment. Well actually it seemed like hours but it was just a few minutes. It was fairly slow booting from the live DVD but that is to be expected. It was just a very basic setup with a Firefox browser and not much else. I think the idea is that you customize your own version but you kind of have to know something about BSD to do it. I don't know anything about it so that is where my foray into BSD land ended. It does look very nice though. There is something very interesting about this distro. It has some sort of intangible intrigue that I have yet to be able to define. Caitlyn, do you know about BSD? Would you consider doing a "walk-through-how-to"?
I just loaded Vector onto my machine and so far it is impressive. I did get an error message after the install stating that there were errors during the installation. I don't know what errors but it seems to be working fine.
Kongiri really looks like it could have something going on to take note of.
My secret confession: I like KDE 4 (sorry "old school" geeks).
98 • Kongiri/Kongoni (by RAT on 2009-06-23 13:55:31 GMT from United States)
Apologies to A.J. Ventor and crew. I meant Kongoni.
99 • @ 96 Tom - data partition (by DeniZen on 2009-06-23 14:04:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Tom,
I have done exactly that - i.e. have a seperate data partition with my photos and music on, etc and I mount that on /mnt/store
And symlink to the corresponding directories in my home directory.
It works well, but be prepared to maybe need to work with permissions and ownerships if you change Distro's ;)
Not difficult, and once it is done after install, its done.
And it becomes an easier task once it becomes just part of the routine post install.
Also there is a security aspect, which needs to be considered - i.e _your_ stuff is not in _your_ home directory.
Its not a problem for me on the specific machine that I chose to have done this upon, but this approach needs to be considered carefully I guess.
An advantage . where applicable, or even wanted, is that the data, or storage partition can be e.g. Fat32 and 'sharable' and writable between OS's on a dual boot machine.
I have no need for that, but some may find that aspect useful.
Cheers
D
100 • re#99 last paragraph (by hab on 2009-06-23 15:07:35 GMT from Canada)
I've got wine running and it's stuff (non system files) lives on a 10gb fat 32 partition on one of 3 hds in my main desktop box (~360gb total) primarily to run an excellent sega genesis emulator called fusion. 'Cause i'm still hooked on some of the almost 20 year old sonic the hedgehog games. And i'm gonna hit 60 next month. Oh well boys/men and their toys!
Just an observation about wine. It subjectively seems like it runs stuff just a smidge faster than it does natively.
Being following the mono thing. I don't hate, i don't love it. I am indifferent to it. Just like i am to ms and apple. Maybe we need to find an easier way to express that kind of sentiment.
I posted my view on the novell/ms deal/opensuse entanglement sometime ago. Wasn't popular, but i DO get to create my own reality and opensuse doesn't really do it for me. Mind you if somebody comes to me with a suse system and a problem i will of course help. My bitch is with novell, not with individual suse users.
cheers
101 • Wow, Andalucía (by Tom on 2009-06-23 15:16:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Spain looks amazing. I've just been reading up :) I previously thought it was just the weather and people that made it attractive (and the hot chicks to admire) but even the decentralised government going far beyond even what Scotland strives for, let alone what little power it's been able to gather, looks great :))
As far as separate /home i am looking forward to having firefox work the same and be setup ready in a new distro without me having to poke around at it and import bookmarks etc. Some distros use different packages for the same things so i guess i'll still have to tweak the settings in those but mostly it seems potentially liberating.
102 • @ Tom 101 (by Untitled on 2009-06-23 15:29:44 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's quite easy to export/import your Firefox settings to a new distro... Just copy the .mozilla folder in your home folder to your new home folder and you'll have the exact same Firefox you previously had, including themes, addons, history, bookmarks, everything, actually.
I have mostly done it on Debian and its offsprings and it works flawlessly. It also worked to/from Mandriva, so it's probably going to work with most distributions.
103 • 2 things (by jk on 2009-06-23 15:48:33 GMT from United States)
1. I will try to be more open minded about what other say.
2. A question for Caitlyn Martin: Can VectorLinux be put on a thumb drive?
104 • @ Tom (by DeniZen on 2009-06-23 15:59:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
105 • Nothing Special (by Jose Mirles on 2009-06-23 16:17:50 GMT from United States)
I like VectorLinux. It is fast and very stable. I just wish it was based on the current version of Slackware, like AbsoluteLinux. Other than that, I found it to fit my needs almost perfectly.
On mono, I don't use it. I do use Adobe flash and whatnot. I am not by any means a purist, but I just don't like the idea behind Mono. So I don't use it.
I don't know why you would need libdvdcss. I have a DVD player and a TV.Why watch it on a smaller PC screen?
Anyway, great interview with Robert from Vectorlinux. Cailtyn, next time you interview someone whose product you have reviewed, ask them about the Pro's and Con's you found. It would be interesting to see if they made adjustments to correct the con's.
106 • /home and multiple distros (by john frey on 2009-06-23 16:22:27 GMT from Canada)
It can be a pita to use the same home partition for multiple distros. Using the same /home partitions even with different iterations of the same distro creates problems.
The advantage to using the same /home partition is of course having all your files available.
What is both a blessing and a curse is that you will have the same settings for your desktop between all distros. In the best case this will mean all your bookmarks are already available, when you set up your email client all your email history, saved emails and most importantly address book are already there. Use ssh? All your known hosts settings are preserved. Nice
The curse part of this is that you will not see the default desktop settings provided by the new distro. You will miss all that new artwork and the widgets and window settings. Well you might or you might not. Some of your settings may get overwritten resulting in at best a combination of settings providing you with your own unique desktop and at worst, introducing bugs in desktop applications with incompatible settings.
It's a matter of personal preference what you do. My choice would be what Tom and Denizen advocate. Dedicate a partition to all the files you want, mount it on /home/yourusername/backup (for example). If you use the same username and password on all your installs you won't have any problesm with access or permissions.
One thing I have noticed lately when using multiple distros on the same laptop, whenever you format a partition to install a new distro that partition ends up with a new uuid. So your previously installed distros that mount partitions with uuid can no longer mount that partition. If the previous distros use /dev mount points those remain the same and are still mounted. The old dev system is better in this case.
107 • Vector on a USB stick (by Cailtyn Martin on 2009-06-23 16:41:40 GMT from United States)
2. A question for Caitlyn Martin: Can VectorLinux be put on a thumb drive?
AFAIK any Linux distro can be put on a thumb drive provided the drive is large enough. I know one of the VL developers has a script for this but I don't know if it is in the public repos or not. What VL does not support natively is a frugal install (running from a compressed image) which is often used on USB sticks to save space at the cost of some performance. However, if you have a 4GB stick a standard install should work.
Fair warning: I haven't tried this. If you ask in the Vector Linux forum in the installation section you probably will get better answers from someone who has done it.
108 • Vector (by RAT on 2009-06-23 17:38:53 GMT from United States)
Now I know what the install error was, it installed the wrong audio driver. It installed opti92x_cs4231, I need opti93x. Now when I try to turn off the computer it just hangs and I have to shut down hard. Anyone know how to fix this? If not I'll head over to the Vector forums and see what they know over there.
109 • AuroraUX wrong URL (by Edward O'Callaghan on 2009-06-23 17:59:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Good day,
I believe you have the wrong URL for AuroraUX.
Instead of:
http://auroraux.blastwave.org/index.php/Main_Page
The correct link is:
http://www.auroraux.org/
Cheers,
110 • @5, 27 about yum vs apt (by Finalzone on 2009-06-23 18:15:16 GMT from Canada)
The test is actually flawed because yum and apt use different metadata the setup are not the same and RPM has more metadata do deal than DEB. As pointed out by Rahul on Chris' blog, yum command is different from apt such as "yum -C search" is the equivalent of apt-cache search where "-C" represent cache. Same thing for "yum update" that combine It is also possible for setting yum to apt speed via yum.conf. Chris Smart is learning more about yum and will probably post an update.
111 • RE: 60 • #40: Replace? For what? (by Caitlyn Martin (by Béranger on 2009-06-23 19:01:51 GMT from United States)
"Right now OpenSUSE has the advantage of not having the Intel graphics regression and of supporting some older graphics cards that were dropped by the version of X.org in 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)."
That's true for openSUSE 11.1, but most likely false for the upcoming 11.2. However, 11.1 is supported through the end of 2011, so it's a major choice.
112 • LinuxTag (by ladislav on 2009-06-23 19:34:08 GMT from Germany)
Just a quick note that I am at LinuxTag in Berlin, so if anybody is here and wants to meet up, email me and we'll arrange something. Alternatively, you can come over to the Debian/sidux stand. I've volunteered to help out there and I'll be "on duty" on Wednesday between 11:00 - 12:00 and again on Friday between 15:00 - 16:00, so don't hesitate to visit us!
Of course, full report about the events will follow in next Monday's DistroWatch Weekly.
See you around ;-)
113 • No subject (by Nobody Important on 2009-06-23 20:01:30 GMT from United States)
@81: Is Vector supported bu UNetBoonin?
@87: What distro runs faster is generally dependent on the computer itself. On this laptop, what you mentioned is the opposite. OpenSUSE ran like a large boulder. I only use Ubuntu because it works with this thing; if it didn't, I wouldn't.
@ /Home where and when: Distros shouldn't share Home directories. Ugly business. Rather, use a non-home partition formatted and un-passworded and keep your files there. Bookmark to the locations in Gnome.
@111: Well, 11.2 is still at the least four or five months out, so we'll see, but 11.1 is still the stable version. I doubt Intel's team of programmers can fix all of the regressions in that time - though they're trying, and you never know. The situation will probably get better, at any rate.
@112: I wish I could go. Keep the sedentary of us updated!
114 • /home backup strategy (by hab on 2009-06-23 20:57:32 GMT from Canada)
Rather interesting slashdot discussion going on right now apropos this very subject.
Read it here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/06/23/1823201/...
And maybe weep,.............................................or not!
cheers
115 • #113: Unetbootin (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-06-23 21:18:29 GMT from United States)
AFAIK Unetbootin does NOT support Vector Linux. Vector Linux Live can work with Unetbootin but the regualr installable iso didn't work the last time I checked. There is no official Live 6.0 release yet.
116 • note on MDV and moovida (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-23 23:35:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
Mandriva has actually included moovida for several releases now - it's the new name for Elisa, which has been around for a while. I know this because I package it. :) (Yes, still - my HTPC runs it, sometimes, and my HTPC still runs MDV, so I keep it up to date).
117 • @27 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-23 23:43:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
The problem with the yum vs. apt test is its accuracy seems rather suspect:
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/yum-benchmarks/
now, that's the blog of the main maintainer of yum, so obviously he's not unbiased. :) but generally, if you point a developer to a benchmark of his software that shows it's slow and is actually accurate, he will bluster: he'll tell you some architectural reasons why it's not faster, he'll tell you why it's the fault of some component further up the chain, he'll tell you how much faster the latest SVN version is and how much slower the _last_ version was, and he'll tell you that anyway in the real world the bottleneck is somewhere else so it doesn't matter. He won't usually think of just flat out lying and telling you the test is wrong. So I'm inclined to think Seth's telling the truth, and there's something dodgy about the methodology of the original test. See the post for Seth's take, and his own numbers.
118 • @69 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-23 23:45:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
that article's so absurdly just plain *wrong*, full of inaccuracies and misapprehensions and strange assertions, that I figured it wasn't even worth the time to reply to it. several others did, in the comments, and did a good job of pointing out how silly it is.
119 • re #81 Vector Live (by gnomic on 2009-06-24 00:16:02 GMT from New Zealand)
Thanks for the info about vmklive - guess I'll just have to install VL 6 then. As it happens have just salvaged a 40G drive from a found in the trash machine which needs Windows expungement.
I use live CDs quite extensively and think them the best thing since sliced bread. USB installs are also rather handy, maybe they will tend to supplant live CDs in future. One aspect of the live CD thing is being able to sample the latest and with any luck greatest without having to constantly install and reinstall. As live CDs go, my possibly not very scientific observations are that those based on Slackware are among the most usable as they generally seem quicker. For those who like the real thing, there was at one stage a live DVD of Slackware 12.1 created by one of the stalwarts on the Slax forums. Not sure if he still has it up on his site.
120 • re#119 (by hab on 2009-06-24 03:27:49 GMT from Canada)
Ahhh.......... that would be a 'defenestration' (rhymes with castration) then would it not? ;-)
A perfectly rational course of action under the elaborated circumstances!
cheers
121 • OPEN Suse 11.1 KDE 4 never fully works... (by Jeffersonian on 2009-06-24 04:42:13 GMT from United States)
Hello:
I have used SUSE for many years (along with Read Hat, Fedora, Ubutu and more...).
If I was satisfied with KDE 3 usability, in spite of loving the look, features and responsiveness of KDE 4, I could not find after endless updates and attempts, any way to make it REALLY work, i.e having the basic system up and running, including WIFI, etc...
I am still using OpenSuse 11.1, and like it a lot... when used with GNOME, it is a very good distro.
Could Novell consider for the next OpenSuse release to call KDE 4 Beta if the basic functionality is not there... and not rush for release.
After all who cares about a distro released in time... and broken?
Yes, I know some very large software companies do just that...
But was not the promise of the "Open Source" to gop away from this mode?
Still Jeffersonian...
122 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-24 09:30:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #118 (Fedora and other hobbyist distros)
I despair sometimes, I really do, LOL.
The Fedora article was an opinion of a journo who crafted his article to illustrate a certain point...the following comments were typical of hobbyist guys, who it might be argued, did not fully appreciate what was being discussed and naturally flew to the defence of "their" distro.
Remember, the aim of Linux is to offer an alternative to MS for everyone. It is not the exclusive club or haven for a dedicated, knowledgeable clique of brainy blokes/girls who are a tad sensitive to criticism.
Nobody believes for a moment L Torvalds designed his system exclusively for the hobbyist...except perhaps...hobbyists.
The thrust of articles like that and many others is for promoting Linux as an alternative desktop in the commercial entity sense.
When we see numerous distros being released in other countries, local to a region, and in the venacular, then it is going to be supported, by the authorities who supplied it, as in salary/fees to the programmers who wrote the distro as commisioned, by said authority/goverment, and, via the IT departments in the Unis, schools and local authority departments, say.
In other words these Linux based distros are commercial in the sense money is found, changes hands and a service is rendered.
To those Linux fans who think otherwise then perhaps you might consider that it is here on DW we find articles describing distros from other countries...particular mention is made of whether the release notes are in English or not. And reference is made from whence the distro evolved, see paras above.
On the very, very rare occasion we find a question in the forum asking if "anyone" knows whether a/the distro in question even supports English at all. Never forget the world no longer revolves around English speakers and other folk have ideas of their own...as we are all too aware...
We see the Us poo poohed, but the commercial folk don't do that at all; they, or their bean counters, want to know that, if an organisation adopts Uxx, say, will it be supported and take a very hard look at the money...especially these days.
You cannot imagine seriously the IT depts involved will trawl thru' countless forum entries to solve a problem. They would not have the time...they pick up a phone and get the support they pay for.
[Where I do some volunteer work the IT bloke is constantly on the phone to an offsite service centre...and on occasion the service centre sends over an engineer, or two...to sort out the more complex probs...mind you, ahem, they are running MS...and somebody, somewhere in the building is always, repeat always, finding, successfully I might add...yet another way to "break" the system.]
When we see light hearted banter in this forum, folk either join in with their opinion, or just ignore it. But, there might be folk who look in and say this is just the same as all the other fora/forums, always bickering...I really can't be arsed.
So, back to Fedora, it is laudable there are devotees who are loyal to that particular distro, even to the point of martyrdom...but to others it is only a distro built on a Linux kernal, like many, many others. Would you, could you rely on it for commercial working?
We all know distros either load, run live, install to hard drive or they don't. It might hardware, it might be file systems, it might be anything...reference to help forums suggest it is more likey to be the latter...
The option is to plug away 'til a distro will work or move on. As oft said before, if trying all sorts to get a distro to run successfully works for you then great.
If on the other hand, all you want is a replacement for MS stuff, then doing the hobbyist thing is simply time wasted when, as others before now have remarked, I need a computer for work, not play.
123 • Apple - Steve Jobs (by RAT on 2009-06-24 11:52:19 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
124 • umm (by Tom on 2009-06-24 14:13:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Remember, the aim of Linux is to offer an alternative to MS for everyone. It is not ..." there's room in linux-land for all. See
p://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=dvl
I think some being aimed as entry level and others as 'sophisticated user' and others is definitely a good thing
125 • oops (by Tom on 2009-06-24 14:14:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=dvl
126 • exclusive (by Tom on 2009-06-24 14:16:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sorry forest, i retract my criticism i hadn't got to the word about 4 words later on where you say "exclusively"
127 • re#122 linux's raison d'etre (by hab on 2009-06-24 15:38:23 GMT from Canada)
Forest said:
"Remember, the aim of Linux is to offer an alternative to MS for everyone.
I don't know that , that is truly the case. To outside observers, yes, that perhaps is the goal of some developers and most everyone else looking at the situation would probably agree. Having read most of torvald's and other's interviews and published work in and around linux, i can clearly remember torvalds saying when asked about linux's goals and purpose, answering "to make software that sucks less." And this was 13/14 years ago.
At the state that linux was in then it would not have been able to replace windows. It wouldn't take long to get there, but in 95, 96 linux was most definitely not ready for the average user's desktop. Of course some of us were far too stubborn to listen and ran desktop linux anyway! By probably 98 linux was in a better state to mount an assault on the desktop and here we sit now with linux able to completely run an average users desktop! And the perception that linux's primary goal is to usurp windows.
I came to linux from amiga (which in some ways turned out to be a good training ground for unix) 'cause i was aware of computers from before the day ms came into existence and i remember stuff like gate's (in)famous letter to hobbyists! That and windows was already showing signs of stress on friends boxes. I have avoided ms & it's crap in part for this kind of thing.
Plus i don't really want to do business with a convicted monopolist!
Anyhow, i don't mean to issue take with what forest said because i happen to echo much of what he says.
And i am a 'hobbyist'.
chhers
128 • New distro (by Anonymous Coward on 2009-06-24 16:32:14 GMT from United States)
Hey, I hear there's a new distro called Ubuntu SE (everyone down, incoming).
129 • Smart as a nine year old? (by RollMeAway on 2009-06-24 19:26:26 GMT from United States)
Release 1.0 today:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick
This is the desktop developed for the OLPC project.
I tried the previous version just last week. I could not get the script for a USB stick to work.
Finally, I simply burned the .iso to a CD, and it booted ok.
Really is different. There are many YOUTUBE videos if you are curious.
130 • @90 (imagine) Like Licking Razor Wire With Tobasco Sauce in Your Mouth (by Anonymous on 2009-06-24 22:12:12 GMT from United States)
"B.T.W, I like Arch Linux too, but damn do they expect you to do everything, can't take anything for granted (I can only image how much worse gentoo must be)"
ROTFLMAO
131 • @122 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-24 22:58:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Remember, the aim of Linux is to offer an alternative to MS for everyone."
Er, what? Why do you say that like it's perfectly clear and obvious and everyone agrees with it?
132 • -Fedora too buggy ??? Go for CentOS ! (by Caraibes on 2009-06-24 23:22:20 GMT from Dominican Republic)
I have set a multiboot between Jaunty 64bit and CentOS 5.3 64bit...
I must say I really enjoy Jaunty, except for some random freeze, it is almost the perfect system...
But I must say that once CentOS 5.3 is well configured for one's need, it is very perfect !
I still miss some apps, as RHEL isn't as "user friendly" as Ubuntu... I still feel a bit limited sometimes, but I am amazed about the stability, and the "casi-absence" of bugs...
-Adam Williamson, if you are reading this, have you managed to install Audacity and Miro in RHEL 5.3 (or cone) ???
Anyway, I would strongly suggest all those who like Fedora, but can't keep up with the bugs, to give a try to CentOS... A dual-boot could be a good solution...
133 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-24 23:39:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #131
OK Adam, who do you think GNULinux is aimed at? Bearing in mind the info on distros Ladislav publishes on DW...
134 • @AdamW, Missing dep while installing Miro on Centos (by Caraibes on 2009-06-25 00:17:08 GMT from Dominican Republic)
Here's the deal:
Error: Missing Dependency: libgtkembedmoz.so()(64bit) is needed by package miro
If you have an idea, don't hesitate to post it...
135 • Re: Vector Linux on a USB stick (by eco2geek on 2009-06-25 01:11:02 GMT from United States)
If you download and run the Vector Linux 5.9 Standard live CD, you'll see a "vl-usb-install" script in the System menu. It seems to be unsuccessful because it doesn't create the directories it needs in /mnt before it tries to use them.
The easiest way to install VL 5.9 to a USB thumbdrive is to format the USB stick as FAT16 (that's crucial; in my tests, it failed when formatted as FAT32), copy the complete contents of the VL 5.9 Live CD to the USB stick, and then run /path/to/usb-stick/boot/bootinst.sh (if you're in Linux) or [usb_key_drive]:bootbootinst.bat if you're in Windows.
Which, incidentally, is the exact same way you install Slax to a USB thumbdrive.
136 • @135 - Missing backslashes (by eco2geek on 2009-06-25 01:13:39 GMT from United States)
There were backslashes in that Windows command when I posted it. They seem to have disappeared. :-)
137 • Kde 4 New Release (by JD on 2009-06-25 03:21:51 GMT from United States)
sorry i don't really see how kde 4.3 is gonna be better and faster like you say :( . overall i've been very disappointed with kde 4x witch is sad i loved kde! and even helped them out. it's so sloww! compared to anything else! and crashes for me about 3 times a day. someone wanna fork kde3x and make it better and modern? please do it!
138 • Posting Tom (by JD on 2009-06-25 03:25:43 GMT from United States)
Wow "tom" sure likes posting! do we have a 10 comment limit here ? nah im just jokeing!
139 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-25 07:20:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #131 or 133 or any earlier chit chat ref target audience for GNULinux/distros you could do worse than see here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/26/red_hat_switzerland/
And, ref distros aimed at non-English speaking folk please take a gand at the DW home page...MoLinux.
Spain, it seems, produces more "local authority distros" than other countries...perhaps (tongue-in-cheek BTW..) they are all pasatiempo [ists]?
140 • AVLinux @38 Scribe63 (by illiterate on 2009-06-25 10:48:23 GMT from Greece)
I downloaded and installed AVLinux2.0 after trying it live, as it had a very good sound.
It is a very interesting distro as it lets you configure things that you like like xorg,codecs etc easily, sound is excellent in par with Musix and probably better than 64Studio 2.1 64bit, BLAG70000, Jacklab Jad1.0.
Perfect for newbies or illiterates. :)
I tried to install the rt kernel though and it could not start the x server. Also some problems I had with my printer, which I believe I will get over with. Cannot " apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment " which I like, as there are dependency problems. Not the case with Musix !
A very nice new distro I think, worth checking, by experienced users as well.
A wonderful site this one to learn about distros, its tutorials, (extremely helpful for newbies) etc. Thank you all,
borgibo
141 • RE:#139.MoLinux 5.0.Guadalinex 6 (by Anonymous on 2009-06-25 13:05:13 GMT from Canada)
From the post on DW the spanish OSs seem to be more focused on "user friendly" as an important goal.
Perhaps we should pay a lot more attention to "foreign" versions of linux.
142 • @133 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-25 14:51:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well, the whole point is that 'GNU/Linux' as a whole isn't really aimed at anyone. Linus wrote a kernel for tinkering. He certainly didn't set out to write a Windows Killer (when the first version of the Linux kernel was released, Windows wasn't anywhere near is important as it was now). He didn't even consider Windows particularly relevant. He was working in a heritage Unix milieu, as were the others in the field with whom he was working and to whom he was responding (Tanenbaum et al). It just wasn't some kind of 'let's take down the beast' culture.
Of course, Linux is just a kernel. Then you've got just the several hundred distributions listed on this site to deal with. Are all of them aimed at producing a general-purpose desktop operating system to compete with Windows? Of course not. In lots of places, Linux isn't even used as a general-purpose desktop operating system. Where it is, it doesn't necessarily compete with Windows. It's used by people who've never really touched Windows and have no interest in it, there's projects like OLPC / Sugar which are designing something complete different, there's distros like Slack or Arch which assume a far higher level of user knowledge, experience and commitment than any 'for Joe Public' operating system ever would.
There are, of course, distros which more or less do aim to 'compete with Windows'. Probably the most obvious are Ubuntu and Mandriva. You can add Red Hat in the enterprise space, but not really Fedora in the same way. Fedora isn't exactly aiming to try and release a perfectly polished desktop operating system every six months, although it sort of does...Fedora is mostly about building the important bits you need in order to produce a polished desktop operating system, but _being_ one is not necessarily always the very highest priority. Maybe you could look at it as a concept car. I'm being a bit vague because it's not something that's perfectly defined, but there's a clear distniction in there somewhere.
It's just a bit odd to assert with perfect confidence that Linux is a single big project whose sole goal is to beat Microsoft, because it really just isn't, no matter which way you look at it.
143 • @122 forest (by john frey on 2009-06-25 15:24:03 GMT from Canada)
I believe Torvalds designed his kernel for hobbyists. If you look up the initial release notes IIR you will find a direct reference to that.
Of course nobody believes that is what it is now. Whatever it has become it certainly started out as a hobbyist project for tinkering on.
144 • linux raison d'etre redux & apropos #142 (by hab on 2009-06-25 16:23:05 GMT from Canada)
Look, we sit here with 3.8 billion years of biological evolutionary history behind us, on a rockball ~4.6 billion years old and largely we still don't get it. Computers, computing and gnu/linux/free software are also continually/constantly evolving. Linux is evolutionary not revolutionary. The absolutely key piece is that not only is source available, it MUST be available. While i do not code the import of this is not lost on me.
gnu/linux has, is and will continue to evolve. Because source code is available and the gpl ensures that it will be, people feel confident adding to it knowing that their fixing/extending will not be lost. The linux community appears to have a natural aversion to reinventing the wheel (gawd, that makes so much sense). I have watched linux grow and mature (unfortunately that can't be said for a segment of the wider linux community and hangers on) in so many areas that i find it deeply satisfying. Linux is now in so many 'spaces' that it is unstoppable.
Linux puts computers and computing and by extension software, on a level playing with science/physics and engineering. At least in terms of openness. Science/physics and engineering have responded of course with an uptake in linux/bsd usage. We are building the computer and info sytems infrastructure going forward with *nix, increasingly that *nix is linux. I figure a hundred years now from linux's descendants will be vastly more pervasive. And the ever important source code will still be available.
Upon reflection, not at all shabby for a tiny little 'hobby' project. Kinda gives me a small glimmer of hope for the future of us all!
cheers
145 • @139 (by Anonymous on 2009-06-25 17:48:27 GMT from United States)
"Spain, it seems, produces more "local authority distros" than other countries...perhaps (tongue-in-cheek BTW..) they are all pasatiempo [ists]?"
tongue-in-cheek: Does this mean the cold war is still on since Cuba has adopted 'Gentoo'...
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8789697417.html
All I could think of was when Cuba deported dangerous prisoners and dumped them into US territorial waters off the coast of Florida in the 1960s.
What goes around comes around, now they've got Gentoo...! ;)
146 • Linux tutorials for beginners and experts (by Jan on 2009-06-25 18:00:41 GMT from Netherlands)
In a forum discussion following an article which claims that Slackware is the best for learning Linux, someone gave this link for better and more efficient learning.
http://educhoices.org/articles/Useful_Tutorials...
Jan
147 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-25 18:09:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #142, 143, 143
I would have to say, Adam, John and Hab, that your assertion apropos Linux being, initially, for hobbyists to tinker with is not quite correct...IF...you were to subscribe to/consider/believe the "Origins of Linux" version found here:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/book/ch01_02.html
I cannot imagine this is simple fiction on the grounds it would have attracted some censure long before now.
I would ask you to consider further that it is not really likely that Canonical or Red Hat, to name but two, go to the not inconsiderable expense to bring out distros purely to amuse the hobbyist at large. A swift inspection of any Red Hat release info on DW shows it is not a free distro.
We read that Canonical stand accused of "stealing" other people's work, for inclusion in the Ubuntus...absolute rubbish...again, if folk were to refer to the article on the notion of "copyleft".
We read also that Canonical is, as are other concerns, developing the entity of "Cloud Computing". One need only ask themselves if this newish concept, which cannot come cheap, is only for hobbyists?
The arguments, in response to my own, are in my opinion, a bit on the "splitting hairs" side.
However, having said that, I would say also I sit on the fence a bit too. I am a hobbyist to the extent I distro hop, and play around with DOAS, say, purely to entertain, amuse and educate(?) myself.
However I use U9 (you would never have guessed 'til I confessed), for non hobbyist, general "computing" such as email, WP, media and surfing.
I find that U9, running on a standard, recyled Optiplex 280, clocking 3GHz, but with 2GB ram, is absolutely rock solid stable.
I used to work in an establishment where the kit, computer controlled comms receivers, were on ALL the time, and I mean years and years, mainly to keep the drives (rf frequency) stable, so I know from experience keeping equipment switched on "permanently" causes no harm. I have not switched the machine off at all in weeks. In the mornings a wave of the mouse brings up the desktop just like that...and away we go.
On rare occasions I have been known to use Audacity for editing SFX for amdram, even to using on a (risky, very risky, LOL) full dress rehearsal.
Which brings me to my conclusion and re-assertion that Linux IS for everyone...in one form or another...but I did not consider earlier the need to qualify that statement.
148 • re#147 (by hab on 2009-06-25 18:44:52 GMT from Canada)
Yeah you're right, there is perhaps a bit of semantic hair splitting going on but i think i would cast it as a discussion not so much as an argument. Now discussions can and will occasionally devolve into arguing but that's another story. The student/hobby connection is still there.
I don't know specifically what canonical contributes back, and i am not motivated enough to find out. Whatever it is, it ultimately will self correct in response to external pressure. I can only presume that they, redhat and others have, will and continue to act in enlightened self interest.
ciao
149 • Forest (by john frey on 2009-06-25 20:08:25 GMT from Canada)
"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/...
So we can put that one to rest. It began as a hobby and for hobbyists and that was it's original intention. I doubt Linus had even a glimmer of what it would become.
150 • addendum (by john frey on 2009-06-25 20:13:15 GMT from Canada)
Just browsing that link a little further and Linus was very sure it would not be portable LOL.
151 • @149 (by Anonymous on 2009-06-25 22:14:18 GMT from United States)
"I doubt Linus had even a glimmer of what it would become."
You mean before Linux was even a twinkle in his papa's eye? ;)
152 • dead linuxes (by jk on 2009-06-26 01:04:14 GMT from United States)
When does a Linux become "dead"? Like one Linux hasn't been updated since 1995 and is still "alive". When do Linuxes become "dead"?
153 • re#153 dead linux ? (by hab on 2009-06-26 03:33:05 GMT from Canada)
I don't know that you could really classify any linux as dead. Dormant maybe, comatose even, moribund perhaps. Dead no.
Not until every last scrap of any software/platform/hardware, lineal descendants and their kin and ALL their documentation, associated tapes,disks, card stacks whatever physically ceases to exist, arguably THEN it might be labeled as dead.
In someways if you run this kind of linux today, and you can of course trivially in a virtual machine, you would be in a some small sense be looking at a running fossil. Not really incredibly useful but at the very minimum at least interesting as an artifact.
Think of it more maybe in terms of a strain of some type of dna thing wending it's way down the timeline.
ciao
154 • Dead linuxes - could everything be upgraded? (by Sertse on 2009-06-26 04:53:34 GMT from Australia)
In the end, (or in the beginning heh), everything was source so couldn't it be possible to if you got the time, skills, patience to have everything eventually upgraded? Start with recompiling the compiler, then the kernel, then the basic build essentials...
155 • @147, @148 (by Adam Williamson on 2009-06-26 09:19:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's not hair-splitting. It's important.
There's nothing inaccurate in the reference you cite, forest, but it doesn't support your case. All it says is "About that time, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science student, began work on a kernel for a Unix-like system. Linus had been working with Minix, a Unix-like operating system written by Andrew Tannenbaum primarily for pedagogical use. Linus was disappointed by the performance of the Minix kernel and believed that he could do better."
If you haven't read it already, read the original announcement of Linux:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01
It's pretty obvious from that that he's working in a *nix-environment enthusiast context. Microsoft just doesn't show up.
Why I say it's important is that if you think the only point of Linux is to slay the Microsoft beast, you'll sort of miss the point when you're evaluating various implementations of Linux. If you look at Slackware or Debian from the perspective of whether they beat out Windows as a desktop operating system for Aunt Tillie to use unassisted, you won't really be evaluating them properly. And to an extent it's the same way for Fedora: if you just judge any particular Fedora release as if it were a shrinkwrapped retail desktop operating system for a regular user with no interest in assisting the overall development of free software, you'd be sort of missing the point (although it _can_ work, in some cases, in that context). The point of the Fedora Project is to drive the development of useful and innovative technologies to improve the state of the open source desktop (and other areas) in future: partly this is achieved by releasing an actual desktop operating system every six months, but that's not the _only_ thing involved, or even necessarily the most important.
156 • You know you're a geek when... (by Alvin on 2009-06-26 13:50:42 GMT from N/A)
...you anticipate coming back from vacation so you can see all the new updates in the Debian testing branch!
157 • new drive is fantastic, so far :) (by Tom on 2009-06-26 21:05:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wow, i've been using ancient old hard-drives that were 2nd hand even before my last workplace run them into the ground & then kindly gave them away. The new 1Tb makes a huge difference to my whole system :)) It seems that Ubuntu's gparted is a bit broken, it can't handle making ntfs at all (!?), nor ext3 partitions over a certain size! The old Wolvix Hunter, even without updating it's gparted handled it all completely fine. When i first tried gparted with Ubuntu on this drive it gave me a choice of 10 different "Partition Tables"; the default one "msdos" only allows 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and 1 extended partition (with potentially loads of 'logical partitions' inside that extended one) - the other choices were; aix, amiga, bsd, dvh, gpt, mac, pc98, sun and loop. So that's 3 i'm completely clueless about, 6 i've only vaguely heard of and 1 i know quite well. Although i suspect that almost any of the others would have been a better choice i stuck with the msdos one, mostly through fear and ignorance ;( Perhaps i'll be able to experiment with the others on the dying old drives :)
It's amazing how people seem to be going dotty over one line in a paragraph by forest. I think cutting it down to size and possibly correcting a few typos and inaccuracies (that we almost all use in here) the paragraph looked to me like this "Remember, gnu&Linux is not the exclusive club or haven for a dedicated, knowledgeable clique of brainy blokes/girls who are a tad sensitive to criticism." Of course i only noticed that after posting a remark where i had failed to notice that a full-stop had been clearly meant as a comma! Just look at the rest of the post 122 and you'll probably see what i mean ;) Although i am quite sensitive to criticism and get a bit 'cliquey' sometimes i can't really claim to be 'brainy' let alone 'knowledgeable', yet gnu&linux seems clearly aimed at me too ;))
@ JD, oops, sorry - me again! lol
@ Ladislav
Wow, how is that LinuxTag event going? Is it still on or are you in recovery?
@ Everyone in DW, thanks all
Good luck and have fun :)
Regards from
Tom :)
158 • @146 Jan (by Tom on 2009-06-26 22:24:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wow, thanks for your link there. I've been able to fully download one of the courses and hopefully it'll suit my dad just enough. I think i'm going to try one of them for myself too :) Thanks for the link :)
159 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-27 09:18:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #155
...ongoing debate about whom Linux is aimed at...I believe you proved my point for me Adam. You cited just about everybody engaged in development...you alluded to it not "just" being to replace MS (or Mac possibly), so it must be for folk who used to use MS stuff...
We all know distros are being written for the world and his wife...without any concessions to English speaking folk...I imply the world in general knows very little about distros, let alone specific distros...but you can be assured they ALL understand the concept of FREE...
We even see a certain age stratification...distros for kids (generally educational) such as Qimo...we read about, but I concede don't see much of, the laptop for every child concept. Well, they won't be running MS or Mac, at least AFAIK.
By extention, IF this idea of a laptop for every child really takes off as hoped, and then those children mature into teenagers and so on and so forth, then GNULinux will be pretty global.
Who else have we left out?.
I see too you are pretty passionate about distro stuff, especially Fedora, but I could not really agree with you that the subject is important per se...as mentioned before, by myself and others, we are only talking about an OS not a religion.
Of course it is interesting to learn of different file systems, or new ways of mounting distros (DOAS say), or of refinements to an OS...but really that is for hobbyist folk and professional devs...but for folk who simply want a desktop for "computing" that sort of thing may be a bit "dry".
I read too that it is a good thing that distros are pitched at different targets, skill levels for example...absolutely nothing wrong in that...but again, they are for hobbyist folk. A newcomer would have quite enough of the learning curve simply getting to grips with a Uxx or derivative.
To repeat an old saying about not seeing the wood for the trees, sometimes if you are working so hard on something you don't notice other folk have had different, possibly better ideas and "overtaken" you.
Only a few comments back, #141, there was a suggestion (and I take it at face value...) there could be lessons learned.
Sounds like good advice.
160 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-27 09:49:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Just in, to me anyway.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Is-Ubuntu-Linux-Ready-for-the-Enterprise-568056/
The usual blather by some journo getting paid to fill space. It strikes me it's this sort of rubbish, duff "analysis", caveats etc, etc, which is holding back the tide of GNULinux based OS...mind you Canute thought he could do the tide thing too...and all he got was wet...twit.
Perhaps this journo should read the home page on DW, ref vernacular stuff?
Other folk just seem to be able to identify a need, write a distro and bung it out.
161 • @160 (by Alan UK on 2009-06-27 10:32:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
King Canute knew he couldn't hold back the incoming tide. He did it to show that he wasn't superhuman.
Happens to me all the time...ahh, no, sorry I was dreaming again.
Alan.
162 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-27 10:53:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #161
I beg to differ Alan, in this regard about Canute. I can only point you at the well known 12c chronicles of "Henry of Huntingdon" (of which I will presume we are all intimately acquainted).
Henry is at pains to assure the reader, Canute, or Cnut, as he is probably better known in scandinavian climes, did not know in advance (not being an marine scientist of course) the tide would not stop it's twice daily advance of our fair shores.
However, as is recorded, he soon did become intimately familiar with marine science, especially the tide bit...and learned a bit about humility as well.
To apply this to GNULinux is but the thought of an instant...nothing can stop the advance of Linux.
However, it is best to halt the allegory right there...because the tide only ever gets so far up the beach even on a spring tide with the wind behind it...
163 • No subject (by forest on 2009-06-27 10:55:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
ref #162
ooops how did that rogue apostrophe get in there?
164 • the derived distros (by Curtis Bronson on 2009-06-27 12:15:37 GMT from United States)
Hello linux distro experts.
I have been doing searches for information on which distributions are derived from one another, particularly which ones branch from the older Red Hat (Fedora), Slackware and Debian.
The Wikipedia article has some info, but I would like more about "branches off branches," if you know what I mean.
165 • @ 164 Linux Family Tree (by Untitled on 2009-06-27 13:16:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/LinuxDistroTimeline.png
http://www20.atwiki.jp/mynote/?plugin=ref&serial=50
166 • linuxcd.org (by jk on 2009-06-27 14:33:45 GMT from United States)
The prices on http://linuxcd.org/ are absurd! Why would you pay for a live CD or a USB cable when you can have the permanent version for free? It's weird.
167 • links in number 165 (by Curtis Bronson on 2009-06-27 14:40:31 GMT from United States)
Thank you for those charts! They pretty much paint the whole picture!
Now I have the information I need.
It is good to know it is being kept track of in that way.
168 • re#167 linux (by hab on 2009-06-27 15:09:55 GMT from Canada)
I would not expect it to be any other way curtis, this IS linux after all!
Linux is probably the best documented system that has ever come down the pike!
It has documentation out the ying yang! Maybe somewhat mildly fractured (simple, not compound) and a bit scattered around, but it is there!
I don't for sure know but i suspect that vastly more documentation exists for gnu/linux/free software than for any other system/os.
Linux people tend to be a bit obsessive about this kinda stuff.
Makes sense to me!
cheers
169 • The Trick Worked! (by jk on 2009-06-27 15:30:32 GMT from United States)
Finally, at least one of the Mac users (if you guys still remember them) is switching to Linux! Apparently, he can't get Cheat-engine on Mac for some reason, so he is going to try it on Linux. He is probably going to get either Lin-x or Macpup. Which one do you think is better? Let me know, everyone :)
170 • re#169 (by hab on 2009-06-27 15:56:15 GMT from Canada)
Too close to call.
Decision tree: define the need/look for the software that fulfills the need/look for the platform required to run that software
Al you need to do is reduce that to within the constraint of linux and you can figure out your own answer.
cheers
171 • Linux history (by jk on 2009-06-27 17:41:06 GMT from United States)
I personally like the timeline on http://www.computerhope.com/history/unix.htm
It explains a lot more about the development of Linux and Unix. I like the part where Linux gets sueded. They finally got sued for something they ripped off. I wouldn't call it a good thing since Linux is cool, but Lindows, what did they expect? This also shows that Microsoft hates getting ripped off because Linux is used less than 1% of the whole world as off sometime in 2009, but they got sued 8 years ago, so it could have been more popular then, but not likely unless their was a software "war" between then and now.
172 • osdisc.com (by jk on 2009-06-27 17:58:16 GMT from United States)
Even worse than linuxcd.org is http://osdisc.com/
173 • Canute (by Alan UK on 2009-06-27 18:00:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Damn, just when I thought I knew all there is to know, I get shot down in flames.
My 4 O-levels circa 1980 all for nought...
Alan.
174 • Cnut, carefully ;) (by Tom on 2009-06-27 18:33:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well none of us were even there but i've read old english works with at least 2 versions of this story. I prefer the one that says Cnut got fed up of his sycophantic courtiers making increasingly ridiculous claims about his 'greatness' and did this jolly jape just to force them to get a sense of perspective, to 'keep it real' as we might say these days. In both Machiavelli's "The Prince" and Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" we can see that leaders are often plagued with similar troubles.
Often when people are dragged into trying linux they just want to 'prove' 'it doesnt work' and will do some amazing contortions to avoid the truth of it. They will then usually return to their favoured OS but may try another *nix in the future - probably a different one from whichever you first showed them so as to "save face".
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)
175 • linux documentation/history (by Curtis Bronson on 2009-06-27 18:33:36 GMT from United States)
You are so right, Hab! Linux is about information to the user about all things in the operating system and even its history.
I look at certain portions of the timeline chart and it is interesting to superimpose over it the Windows releases starting with 3.1.
The Linux success is gradual and the future looks bright!
176 • 'Mono Free' !!! (by Anonymous on 2009-06-27 20:06:33 GMT from United States)
Sounds like a good diagnosis from the doctor doesn't it?
Well today the company too the initiative to go 'Mono Free'. We just couldn't tolerate the cloud of threat hanging over our heads any longer.
Only one system to go..it's Gentoo, should probably just format the disk..
Number of Comments: 176
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| • Issue 1015 (2023-04-17): Manjaro Linux 22.0, Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0, Arch Linux powering PINE64 tablets, Ubuntu offering live patching on HWE kernels, gaining compression on ex4 |
| • Issue 1014 (2023-04-10): Quick looks at carbonOS, LibreELEC, and Kodi, Mint polishes themes, Fedora rolls out more encryption plans, elementary OS improves sideloading experience |
| • Issue 1013 (2023-04-03): Alpine Linux 3.17.2, printing manual pages, Ubuntu Cinnamon becomes official flavour, Endeavour OS plans for new installer, HardenedBSD plans for outage |
| • Issue 1012 (2023-03-27): siduction 22.1.1, protecting privacy from proprietary applications, GNOME team shares new features, Canonical updates Ubuntu 20.04, politics and the Linux kernel |
| • Issue 1011 (2023-03-20): Serpent OS, Security Onion 2.3, Gentoo Live, replacing the scp utility, openSUSE sees surge in downloads, Debian runs elction with one candidate |
| • Issue 1010 (2023-03-13): blendOS 2023.01.26, keeping track of which files a package installs, improved network widget coming to elementary OS, Vanilla OS changes its base distro |
| • Issue 1009 (2023-03-06): Nemo Mobile and the PinePhone, matching the performance of one distro on another, Linux Mint adds performance boosts and security, custom Ubuntu and Debian builds through Cubic |
| • Issue 1008 (2023-02-27): elementary OS 7.0, the benefits of boot environments, Purism offers lapdock for Librem 5, Ubuntu community flavours directed to drop Flatpak support for Snap |
| • Issue 1007 (2023-02-20): helloSystem 0.8.0, underrated distributions, Solus team working to repair their website, SUSE testing Micro edition, Canonical publishes real-time edition of Ubuntu 22.04 |
| • Issue 1006 (2023-02-13): Playing music with UBports on a PinePhone, quick command line and shell scripting questions, Fedora expands third-party software support, Vanilla OS adds Nix package support |
| • Issue 1005 (2023-02-06): NuTyX 22.12.0 running CDE, user identification numbers, Pop!_OS shares COSMIC progress, Mint makes keyboard and mouse options more accessible |
| • Issue 1004 (2023-01-30): OpenMandriva ROME, checking the health of a disk, Debian adopting OpenSnitch, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1003 (2023-01-23): risiOS 37, mixing package types, Fedora seeks installer feedback, Sparky offers easier persistence with USB writer |
| • Issue 1002 (2023-01-16): Vanilla OS 22.10, Nobara Project 37, verifying torrent downloads, Haiku improvements, HAMMER2 being ports to NetBSD |
| • Issue 1001 (2023-01-09): Arch Linux, Ubuntu tests new system installer, porting KDE software to OpenBSD, verifying files copied properly |
| • Issue 1000 (2023-01-02): Our favourite projects of all time, Fedora trying out unified kernel images and trying to speed up shutdowns, Slackware tests new kernel, detecting what is taking up disk space |
| • Issue 999 (2022-12-19): Favourite distributions of 2022, Fedora plans Budgie spin, UBports releasing security patches for 16.04, Haiku working on new ports |
| • Issue 998 (2022-12-12): OpenBSD 7.2, Asahi Linux enages video hardware acceleration on Apple ARM computers, Manjaro drops proprietary codecs from Mesa package |
| • Issue 997 (2022-12-05): CachyOS 221023 and AgarimOS, working with filenames which contain special characters, elementary OS team fixes delta updates, new features coming to Xfce |
| • Issue 996 (2022-11-28): Void 20221001, remotely shutting down a machine, complex aliases, Fedora tests new web-based installer, Refox OS running on real hardware |
| • Issue 995 (2022-11-21): Fedora 37, swap files vs swap partitions, Unity running on Arch, UBports seeks testers, Murena adds support for more devices |
| • Issue 994 (2022-11-14): Redcore Linux 2201, changing the terminal font size, Fedora plans Phosh spin, openSUSE publishes on-line manual pages, disabling Snap auto-updates |
| • Full list of all issues |
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View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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