 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 338, 25 January 2010 |
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Welcome to this year's 4th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Have you ever bought a commercial distribution? While the vast majority of Linux-based operating systems can be had for free, there are a small number of commercial projects that sell their enhanced editions, usually targeting newcomers to the Linux world. Today's feature article takes a look at one such project - Italy's Hymera, a Debian-based distribution with an array of user-friendly features. In the news section, testers report vast improvements in Ubuntu 10.04 boot times, Lubuntu developers release a new alpha build for public testing, Slackware Linux gets a rare but well-deserved media exposure, and an article questions some of the claims made by OpenBSD with regards to security. Also in this issue, Qimo 4 Kids prepares for a launch of a brand new version while the Question and Answer section looks at running Linux on Apple hardware. Finally, distro hoppers rejoice - eight new distributions were submitted to DistroWatch last week alone; see the New Distributions section below. Happy reading!
Content:
- Feature: Hymera and commercial Linux
- News: Booting Ubuntu in 15 seconds, Lubuntu update, Slackware articles round-up, insecurity of OpenBSD, Qimo 4 Kids 2.0
- Questions and answers: Linux on Apple hardware
- Released last week: Tiny Core Linux 2.8, Càtix 1.6
- New additions: DigAnTel, Element
- New distributions: Alpine Linux, Gosalia, LFU, MCL, simpleLinux, stali, ÜberStudent, Ubuntu Electronics Remix
- Reader comments
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (44MB) and MP3 (44MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Hymera and commercial Linux
 For almost as long as there has been a Linux operating system, there have been companies trying to sell it. At the best of times, this is a tricky move. After all, as we know, Linux distributions are offered up by the dozens completely free of cost. In a lot of areas, open source advocates will burn CDs and DVDs and hand them out without charge. Looking at that sort of market, a market saturated with offerings of products gratis, it must take an optimistic mind to envision making a profit. Yet some have that vision, and a rare few turn it into a reality.
Red Hat is probably the best example of a company which has managed to get into the Linux game and survive. In fact, not only have they survived, but their business model of selling support for enterprise-level products has paid off well. Some other companies, like Novell, have tried to follow this approach, though none have done so well, as Red Hat has. But that's in the enterprise market, what about Joe & Jane User sitting at home? Attempts have been made to sell to that market too, in various forms. Take a look at mobile devices, where Android is making waves, and the TiVo, which has invaded dens around the world -- both products are bringing Linux to the masses, whether people know it or not. The flexibility and stability of the Linux kernel has made it ideal for dedicated equipment, causing its adoption into all sorts of arenas. (I'm not likely to forget the first time I received a support request from a user who had installed a Linux application on his router.) Yet, these are cases of Linux working in the background, largely out of sight. There have also been experiments in selling desktop Linux systems to home users, though will less success.
Xandros and Linspire both attempted to woo new Linux clients by marketing themselves as friendly to Windows users. Though, in the process, they seem to have alienated much of the Linux community and gained the attention of Microsoft's lawyers (Linspire, formerly Lindows, was sued over their choice of name). Neither distribution has had a new release in over two years and both appear to be discontinued (I tried to get in touch with Xandros to see if they would like to make a statement concerning their distributions, Xandros Desktop and Freespire, but as of time of writing, no reply has been forthcoming.) Mandriva has, through thick and thin, attempted to make selling desktop Linux a profitable venture and after many missteps and some scary financial times, they seem to be pulling through. Their survival may be due to the Mandriva team being willing to give away their product to those who want it and, at the same time, sell a similar commercial product. It may also be that Mandriva offers such a wide range of products as to be attractive in many markets. The iMagic team, though fairly new to the scene, has also been trying to make a go of selling a desktop Linux system. While they have a solid product, the lack of physical media or gratis edition in their product line doesn't bode well for their future.
The truth of the matter is, while some distributions can make money, or at least cover their costs, by selling physical media and accepting donations (Linux Mint brought in nearly US$30,000 in donations in 2009), selling a Linux desktop generally doesn't pay well. Nor does a commercial desktop sit well with some members of the free software community, who feel their software should be free of charge as well as libre. And, while I have nothing against someone trying to make a living selling open source software, I too find myself drawn to distributions which are created by the community, for the community. So it was with some surprise I found myself putting down a little of my hard earned cash for a copy of Hymera. Or, rather, trying to put down a little of my hard earned cash.
Obtaining Hymera
Hymera is a distribution which hails from Italy and their web site offers pages in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish. The English translation is pretty good and there are just a few places where I noticed odd phrases. Their slogan, for example, is "Easy, Funny and Safe" and it is hard to tell if, in this case, "funny" is intentional. I like to think it is. The entire web site has a professional appearance. Information is easy to find and the menus are arranged in a way which make sense. On the Hymera site, they offer a number of flavours of their distribution. These products include their Open edition, which can be downloaded free of charge; there's the Desktop edition, which is similar to Open, but comes with a printed manual and technical support; and the on-line store includes USB drives with Hymera and boxed versions of their operating system. At some point, I found myself looking at the selection of products and thinking, "I want one of those." It was here I ran into a small problem: I'm Canadian.
Actually, the fact I'm Canadian usually isn't a problem, but Canada uses postal codes (zip codes to some readers) which include both letters and numbers. Apparently, this is somewhat uncommon in other parts of the world and Hymera's web site wouldn't accept a postal code with letters. I contacted the company and asked about this. Shortly after, I received an e-mail asking me to try again; the site had been updated. I did and found my postal code was accepted, but my province was not. Again, Canadians have provinces rather than states and the system wasn't familiar with the regions of Canada. Another e-mail query from me resulted in another quick reply and I was asked to try once more. The third time was the charm and my purchase went through. At first, this may seem like an embarrassing glitch, but it shows that the customer service team at Hymera is paying attention and willing to quickly correct problems as they come up. In my experience, this hasn't always been the case with commercial Linux distributions.
Fast forward a few days and I had a boxed copy of Hymera in my hand. The DVD case, which resembles a regular movie case, is covered with the distribution's logo, slogan and a list of features offered by the operating system. All in all, it's attractive and likely to be appealing to customers. I find it interesting to compare the feature list and powerful product image that is presented on the Hymera case as opposed to the functional look of the OpenSolaris disc envelope or Ubuntu's friendly, philosophical container. However, my policy is to avoid judging DVDs by their covers and so I set about trying Hymera on my test systems. My test machines were my trusty generic desktop (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM) and my LG laptop (1.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM). To see how the distribution would function with fewer resources, I also ran it in a virtual machine with 512 MB of RAM. The Hymera box claims that the operating system requires a 700 MHz processor, 4 GB of disk space and 256 MB of RAM to run properly. As both of my machines met these requirements, I popped in the DVD.
System installation and first boot
Right away, Hymera's graphical installer starts up. The installation software, which defaulted to English, is attractive and very simple. Whether the simplicity is welcome or not probably depends on the beholder. The process kicks off by asking the user to accept a basic license agreement. With this out of the way, a network name is selected for the machine. The installer then moves on to disk partitioning, offering to automatically set up partitions or allow the user to manage things. A variety of file systems are supported, including ext4, ext3, ext2, ReiserFS, XFS and FAT. If the user tries to continue with the installation without first creating a swap partition, the software pops up a friendly notice explaining why a swap partition can be useful. Though the partition manager has an unusual layout, its easy to use and I had no problems deleting old partitions and creating new ones. With my disk set up the way I wanted, the installer copied Hymera's packages to the hard drive. There doesn't seem to be any option to pick and choose which packages are copied and I ended up with a full 3 GB of software. The entire copy procedure took just over five minutes on my desktop and a little under ten minutes on my laptop. The last step in the process is setting a password for the root user and creating a non-root account. Like everything else in the installer, some tips are provided to the user, explaining what's going on and why. The installer then reboots the system.
Hymera Evolution - the installation screen
(full image size: 329kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
One glitch came up when I installed Hymera in a Virtual Box virtual machine. During my first boot up, I saw the usual graphical splash screen and the progress bar. After the splash screen, but before the login page, I received an error saying a problem had occurred with X. Checking the X configuration file showed that Hymera had detected the video card as being a "vboxvideo" card and assigned a "vboxvideo" driver for it. As this module couldn't be found, the X session terminated. Changing the driver to the proper setting and restarting X fixed the problem. Also related to video, I found that Hymera set my screen resolution to a medium level. Most other distributions I've tested recently have tried to configure screen resolution as high as possible and I'm not sure if this was a quirk of my machines or if Hymera takes a lower setting on purpose.
Hymera starts up with an attractive, graphical boot screen with a progress bar along the bottom. With the boot process complete, the boot image fades out and is replaced by a login screen. The login screen looks fairly standard, with a box for typing the username and password near the top and various buttons below, which allow the user to select session types, switch languages and perform actions such as rebooting or shutting down the machine. Logging in brought me to the most beautifully crafted GNOME desktop I've yet to see. The blue-themed patterns, icons and layout have an enticing, professional look. The desktop has icons for a web browser (which is a re-branded Firefox), e-mail client, and links to the user's home folder and trash. On the taskbar are the usual application menu, volume control, network status indicator and clock. There are also short-cuts to an application which will search for files, and a screenlets control. Screenlets, for those not familiar with the term, are desktop widgets, or plasmoids if you're a KDE user. Hymera comes with a collection of screenlets to monitor the system's CPU, disk usage, local weather and there are some which are just for fun.
Hymera Evolution - first impression of the desktop
(full image size: 731kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
Applications, hardware and security
The application menu of Hymera is filled with a wide range of software. There is the usual collection of small, useful programs, such as a calculator, text editor and archive manager. The distro also comes with the usual collection of popular GNOME games to pass the time. Additionally, in the application menu we find a music player, a video player, a webcam utility, CD ripper, CD/DVD burner and GIMP. OpenOffice.org 3.1 is installed and includes support for MS Office 2007 document formats. I was surprised to find a copy of Adobe Reader 8 in the Office section, usually some other PDF viewer is used, but Reader works well enough. The Internet category contains a re-branded Firefox 3.5, BitTorrent client, Skype, an e-mail client, a terminal server client, and instant messaging software. Hymera also has tools to change preferences, enable or disable system services, manage user accounts, install package updates and handle drivers. One program I hadn't seen pre-installed before is Cairo-dock. This program creates an OS X-style taskbar and launcher along the bottom of the desktop. The effect is actually pretty good, if the regular taskbar is moved to the top of the screen. The application menu doesn't contain any development tools, nor was I able to find a firewall manager - those need to be installed from the repositories. What do not need to be installed are media codecs and Flash. These are set up on the system at install time and make visiting YouTube, playing movies and listening to music no-hassle ventures.
When I first started using Hymera, I expected to run into menus written in Italian or to boot up to find my keyboard layout wasn't recognized. For the most part, my locale was not an issue. My keyboard was properly detected and text was displayed in clear English. Though there were a few exceptions I found to this rule. The iMobile application, a program which is unique to Hymera, displayed text in Italian. Adobe Reader also displayed text and menus in Italian and some parts of the Cairo-dock program were Italian, while others parts were displayed in English.
Otherwise, my hardware was handled well. Removable media, such as CDs and digital cameras are easy with Hymera. New media gets a corresponding icon when it's attached and I had no problems accessing or managing devices. My sound worked without any tinkering and my network connection was enabled at start-up. Hymera was able to detect and use my laptop's Intel wireless card without any special work being done and my Novatel mobile USB modem was detected, though not configured.
Hymera uses the Synaptic package manager, a graphical tool which is probably familiar to anyone who has used Debian, or one of its off-shoots. When Synaptic first runs, it displays a helpful message about how the package manager works and then gets out of the way. Hymera has its own repositories, which currently contain over 24,000 software packages. Chances are, if you're looking for an open source application, it's in the repository. I was able to install new packages, remove unwanted items and run updates without any problems. Under the Synaptic front-end there is the popular apt-get tool for people who prefer the command line way of doing things. The distribution is based on Debian and that shows up most obviously in package management. The performance of the desktop also displays its Debian roots; the system is quick to respond and generally used less than 500 MB of memory.
There are some aspects of Hymera which are secure and others where improvement could be made. The installer makes sure the root account is password protected and that a regular, non-root, account is created. On the other hand, the installer does not offer to encrypt partitions, which would be useful for laptop owners. Logging into a desktop as root causes the background to turn red as a warning against carelessness. While most network services, such as web and secure shell are disabled, NFS and Samba are running by default. No shares or regular user accounts are set up to be shared through Samba, which makes me wonder why the service is running at all. Local users are able to see the contents of other users' home directories, including the files of the root user. I understand leaving user directories open to facilitate sharing files, but the root account should, in my opinion, be locked down.
Hymera Evolution - Cairo-dock in operation
(full image size: 999kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
Conclusions
Going into this review I was curious to see if Hymera would bring anything new to the community. More specifically, does this distribution provide anything special which would make it worth purchasing? One thing I will say for Hymera is that it doesn't fall into the trap some commercial distributions before it have: it doesn't try to be Windows. Previous ventures by Xandros and Linspire, in particular, stand out as brands which took a Linux base and tried to make it look and feel as much like Windows as possible. I suppose this was to entice customers away from Microsoft and into the open source community. The problem with this approach is a lot of Linux users don't like Microsoft products and aren't likely to recommend or support products which tart themselves up to look like the closed-source giant. Up until recently, I would have said that Red Hat, MEPIS and Mandriva are the only commercial desktop distributions which have stayed firmly inside the Linux camp (Novell signed a patent agreement with Microsoft in 2006 in an effort to make their products more compatible with the closed-source giant). For richer or poorer, they are out to sell a better Linux product for Linux users. Hymera is following those performances and, for being new to the scene, not doing badly at it. They offer Samba shares and Adobe Reader for Windows users and, for that matter, the optional Cairo-dock for OS X fans. But, by and large, this is a product for people who want Linux. Hymera has also followed in Mandriva's footsteps by providing a free edition of their product alongside a for-purchase edition. Hymera sells physical media copies too, as opposed to iMagic, which currently provides neither physical media, nor an open circulation edition. To top it off, Hymera sells technical support for multiple languages.
Is it worth buying? As always, that question can only be answered by the customer. I would say that a person who is interested in a very newcomer-friendly Linux system, who wants all the codecs, Flash and various add-ons working out of the box would be well advised to take a look at Hymera. More experienced Linux users, who feel comfortable configuring their systems and searching for packages probably won't find new value here.
Hymera is a new member of the Linux community, having made their first release just six months ago. Being new, there are still areas where they can expand and improve. For instance, I'd like to see the installer offer more features, such as partition encryption, configuration options for the bootloader and package selection. I'm sure these options could be offered under an "Advanced" section so as not to confuse less experienced users. The Hymera website says they have an upcoming server edition and I'm looking forward to seeing what they put together. It would also be nice to have a Hymera live CD for people who want to test drive the distro without installing. As for day-to-day experiences with the operating system, it's a solid offering. The system is stable, with the eye candy resting on a firm Debian base. My only other wish would be for the GNU Compiler Collection to be added to the default install for people who like to tinker; there's already 3 GB of data on the DVD, a few more packages won't hurt.
On the positive side of things, Hymera is newbie-friendly, has a great, polished desktop and lots of software and codecs right out of the box. Aside from the installer, the system is flexible and the large collection of software (both on the DVD and in the repositories) is a great asset. From my experience thus far, Hymera isn't as strong an offering (commercially or technically) as Mandriva, but I'm hoping that we'll see more of Hymera in 2010.
Personally, something else I'd like to see is more free distributions offering commercial options. Partly to appeal to home users who would like to purchase physical media directly from their favourite projects and partly in the hope of generating more revenue, and jobs, in the open source community. Mostly, I would like to see more distributions offering a for-sale version to appeal to the business community. At various times over the past ten years, I've been in a position where I can suggest open source solutions and managers typically don't like to hear terms such as "community supported" or "free of charge". Even small companies seem to prefer "value-added support" and "competitive pricing" when they're reviewing options. Sometimes I wonder how many copies of Clonezilla or FreeNAS I could have helped sell if those projects offered Purchase buttons on their websites and promised to respond to all (paying) customer queries within 24 hours. I'm not suggesting free software projects get rid of their gratis products, but rather that they expand to offer a commercial option, even if it's identical to the free edition, with a client ID number thrown in. A lot of people believe the old saying "You get what you pay for" and I think the open source community should consider that.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Booting Ubuntu in 15 seconds, Lubuntu update, Slackware articles round-up, insecurity of OpenBSD, Qimo 4 Kids 2.0
 With the recent second alpha release of Ubuntu 10.04, many users have started experimenting with the development code of what promises to be yet another highly-anticipated Ubuntu version. Although these are still early days, there are already some unexpected surprises, such as 15-second boot time found in the latest alpha build: "On ChannelWeb, Ed Moltzen tried out the second alpha and reports that Ubuntu boots in only 15 seconds, compared to an already estimable 20 seconds for the initial alpha release. By comparison, tested on the same PC, Windows 7 came in at a surprisingly respectable 30 seconds (which is no doubt much faster than Vista would have fared), even beating out Fedora 12 (37 seconds), but still twice as slow as Ubuntu. Moltzen's system is based on an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 clocked at 2.80 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM. Canonical's goal for Ubuntu is a 10-second start-up time, said Moltzen." The article also comments on the news that Ubuntu is considering a possibility to offer some of the often requested proprietary applications as part of its operating system.
In the meantime, it seems that the developers of Lubuntu, a still-unofficial Ubuntu variant featuring the lightweight, but modern LXDE desktop, are a step closer to releasing their inaugural version at the same time as Ubuntu 10.04. Last weekend, the availability of the second alpha build of Lubuntu 10.04 was announced on the project's mailing list: "The second alpha of Lubuntu is now available for testing. There aren't many changes between alpha 1 and alpha 2, don't expect big surprises. The next release (alpha 3), which will be released after the feature freeze, will be more interesting. Features: LXDE packages up-to-date; LXDM; the new PCMan File Manager for testing (type "pcmanfm2" in a terminal); many wallpapers and start icons to be able to switch easily and to test the result; first customization with a splash screen; installable with Ubiquity. Known bug: alpha 2 may not boot on VirtualBox in Ubuntu 9.10." Interested testers can download the CD image from here: lubuntu-lucid-alpha2.iso (362MB).
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 Slackware Linux tends to be overlooked in favour of more mainstream distributions by most online media, but last week was an exception as several publications decided to give the oldest surviving Linux distro project a closer look. In "Slackware Linux - less is more", IT PRO writes: "Slackware doesn't have a picturesque, simple-choice, resource-hogging GUI installer, but for all that, many would argue that Slackware is just as easy to install, that the installer has more clarity than most, is more flexible, and that it is easier to customise a Slackware installation for the precise requirements of more advanced users and system administrators." Slackstuff.com has joined the chorus of positive Slackware coverage in "Ode to Slackware": "Slackware is just right for a back-end system administrator who wants a server that is up and stable in 15 minutes or a simple, fast workstation with the install of the default KDE desktop or Fluxbox window manager." Finally, on a more technical note, MakeTechEasier explains how to install and run Slackware 13: "The philosophy behind Slackware is to keep the system as UNIX-like as possible. There's not a lot of automatic configuration and you won't find many bells and whistles, but you'd be hard set to find a more stable and mature distribution."
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 OpenBSD is considered one of the most secure operating systems on the market, with all its code scrutinised for potential flaws and vulnerabilities. Or at least that's what the developers like to tell us. But can we really trust it? In an article entitled "The insecurity of OpenBSD", a blogger raises some doubts and highlights some of the possible problems with OpenBSD: "An argument often made by proponents of OpenBSD is the extensive code auditing performed on the base system to make sure no vulnerabilities are present. The goal is to produce quality code as most vulnerabilities are caused by errors in the source code. This is a noble approach, and it has worked well for the OpenBSD project, with the base system having considerably fewer vulnerabilities than many other operating systems. Used as an indicator to gauge the security of OpenBSD however, it is worthless. The reason being is that as soon as a service is enabled or software from the ports tree installed, it is no longer the default install and the possibility of introduced vulnerabilities is equal to any other platform." A well-researched and referenced article that exposes some of the claims made by OpenBSD proponents. It is followed by over 100 comments which are also worth reading.
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 Still on the subject of BSD-based operating systems, here is an interesting interview with Josh Paetzel, the director of IT at iXsystems (the company which sponsors the developments of PC-BSD and FreeNAS): "iXsystems directly funds the development of PC-BSD. We employ Kris Moore, the lead developer of PC-BSD. iXsystems also contributes the hardware that the PC-BSD infrastructure runs on, as well as the space, power, bandwidth, and administration that those machines require. Our marketing department works to promote PC-BSD visibility, with boxed sets of PC-BSD available through retail outlets, such as Microcenter and Fry's, and arranging for PC-BSD to be represented at trade shows with speakers, demonstrations, and promotional materials. PC-BSD reciprocates by providing iXsystems with a viable FreeBSD based desktop operating system, as well as a community of testers and volunteers using PC-BSD as a desktop operating system on a wide variety of hardware." The upcoming release of PC-BSD 8.0 is in final stages of development, with the completed version expected shortly.
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 We conclude the news section with a quick update on Qimo 4 Kids, an Ubuntu-based distribution designed for very young children. According to the project's web site, the developers have started working on version 2.0 and here are some of the highlights expected to appear in the next release: "Qimo has a brand new friend, an adorable little polar bear girl named Illa (pronounced ee-lah, it is Inuit for "friend"). Illa will be the focus of a whole new theme for girls, featuring shades of pink and purple, to match the boyish-blues of the existing Qimo theme. She's also sure to appear in a new set of Tux Paint stamps, so your little ones can create their own Arctic artwork featuring our loveable pals. While we're on the topic of new themes, Qimo 2.0 will not longer limit the theme to the 'qimo' user account. Instead a Qimo session will be selectable at the login screen, just like GNOME, KDE and Xfce are today. That means you can create individual accounts for each of your children, or start using the Qimo session with an existing user."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux on Apple hardware
An-Apple-polishing-penguin asks: Could you talk a bit about running Linux on the Apple platform?
DistroWatch answers: There are quite a few reasons you might consider running Linux on your Mac (or MacBook) hardware. Perhaps your Mac is about to become unsupported, or maybe you prefer the Linux operating system over OS X. Maybe you just feel experimental. Perhaps you want to turn your Mac into a server without a graphical interface chewing up CPU cycles. Whatever your reason, Linux running on a Mac is an interesting idea and one that usually works well because Macs don't have exotic hardware combinations. There's not a lot of guesswork when it comes to figuring out which video card or sound card you're going to be dealing with.
Last summer, I configured some MacBooks to dual-boot with Linux and there are some tips I'm happy to share with anyone who is considering doing the same.
- Backup your data. Whether you're planning to dual-boot or go 100% Linux, backup your data first.
- Grab a live CD of the distro you plan to use and test drive it on the Mac. Make sure the distro will boot and that all your hardware works.
- If you're planning to dual-boot OS X and Linux, I highly recommend using a third-party disk partitioning tool, not one of the one which comes with OS X. I've tried using Apple's disk partitioning tools a number of times and they have never worked properly for me. On Intel Macs (or Mactels), I've found GParted LiveCD to be very useful.
- There is a great step-by-step guide to installing Linux on a Mactel located here. This tutorial is written for Ubuntu users, but it has some good tips regardless of which distribution you decide to use. I advise reading the whole thing before embarking on your iLinux adventure and paying special attention to the section on rEFIt.
- If you want to talk with other people who have installed Linux on their Mac machines, check out Linux on your Apple Mac. The site has news and tutorials for people migrating their Macs to Linux. It also has a forum for people who want to swap stories, get help and share their knowledge with other iLinuxers. It's a good resource, covering a wide selection of distributions.
Once the operating system is installed, running Linux on a Mac is pretty much like running Linux anywhere else. Does anyone here have tales of running Linux on their Mac to share?
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| Released Last Week |
Càtix 1.5, 1.6
Càtix is a Debian-based distribution and live DVD with complete support for the Catalan language. The project has announced two new releases - Càtix 1.5 is the last Càtix featuring the KDE 3 desktop while Càtix 1.6 is the distribution's first version that defaults to KDE 4 (version 4.3.4). The GNOME desktop is also available for selection from the boot menu. The KDE desktop and applications represent the only difference between the two versions; the rest of the system is based on Debian's unstable branch with many of the latest applications included on the DVDs. Both releases use Linux kernel 2.6.32.3, glibc 2.10.2, GCC 4.4.2 and X.Org Server 1.7.3.902. Read the complete release announcement (in Catalan) for further information.
Càtix 1.6 - a Debian-based distribution for Catalan speakers
(full image size: 1,617kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Tiny Core Linux 2.8
Robert Shingledecker has announced the release of Tiny Core Linux 2.8, the world's smallest graphical distribution: "Tiny Core Linux 2.8 is now posted. The theme for this release is to have a single directory for extensions and dependencies. This greatly improves systems resources by having a single copy of dependencies and it also greatly improves flexibility in 'moving' applications present upon boot, dependency auditing, and both batch and selective updating. Change log: updated FLTK to 1.1.10; updated FLWM with more traditional close button layout; updated appbrowser to support new onboot.lst and extension support structure; updated appsaudit - new menu section OnBoot to support maintenance of onboot.lst; updated and reorganized cpanel, added 'OnDemand', 'TCE Update', 'USB Install', 'Run Command', 'Xkill', and 'Xvesa Setup'...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a more detailed list of changes.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Alpine Linux. Alpine Linux is a hardened Linux distribution based on uClibc and BusyBox. The project started as a fork of LEAF, a single-floppy distribution, but expanded to include additional software packages and security features, including DansGuardian, Samba, a complete build-from source environment, 2.6.x Linux kernel support, stack-smashing support from GCC, PAX kernel security, and better package manager, with dependencies, upgrade paths and pre- and post-install scripts.
- Gosalia. Gosalia is an Ubuntu-based distribution designed with ease-of-use in mind and targeting non-technical computer users.
- LFU. LFU (Learn Free with Ubuntu) is an Ubuntu-based distribution with extra educational applications from different knowledge fields.
- MCL. MCL (Matt's Cool Linux) is an Ubuntu-based distribution with a cleaner user interface and useful additional applications, such as Krusader.
- simpleLinux. simpleLinux is a Slax-based mini-distribution. It features Xfce and KDE desktops, fast boot, a variety of performance enhancements, and support for popular media formats.
- stali. stali (sta[tic] li[nux]) is a new Linux distribution based on a hand-selected collection of the best tools for each task, with each tool being statically linked (including some X clients). It also targets binary size reduction through the avoidance of glibc and other GNU libraries where possible.
- ÜberStudent. ÜberStudent is an Ubuntu-based distribution for higher education and emerging-generation high school students who wish to learn to excel at the tasks and habits of top students and researchers, and anyone who can benefit from easy-to-use yet powerful computing. Like Ubuntu, ÜberStudent is a complete operating system with programs for everyday computing tasks, but it also comes with an additional core of expertly configured programs and many user-friendly extras, designed to increase the chances of an academic success.
- Ubuntu Electronics Remix. Ubuntu Electronics Remix (UER) is an Ubuntu derivative with electronics software included. The aim of the project is to make using Ubuntu for electronics as easy as possible.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 1 February 2010.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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1 • Hymera, a funny system (by frnz on 2010-01-25 09:53:02 GMT from Italy)
Ciao,
just dropping a few lines from Italy about Hymera slogan.
The correct translation should be "amusing" and not 'funny'. At least as far as i read it in Italian
2 • SSD boot in 10 seconds & Mint (by Johannes on 2010-01-25 10:15:31 GMT from Germany)
"Canonical's goal for Ubuntu is a 10-second start-up time"
Wasn't this a target for computers with an SSD?
Also, very pleased to know that Mint did receive that much donations - they deserve it, it's a great distro!
3 • Another wave of vanity distros? (by Chris at 2010-01-25 10:29:42 GMT from France)
'Matt's cool linux'??? I was hoping that 2010 would bring a new wave of consciousness about vanity distros...apparently not...
4 • Maketecheasier article - Slackware (by Barnabyh at 2010-01-25 10:30:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hmm, the article is weak. Anybody can just install Slackware and take a few screenies of the process. Seems like a rush job to put something on the page and get some traffic. There is virtually nothing there about 'how to run Slackware', although it's nice slapt-get got a mention.
The comments section is more interesting but in a way you could say they are doing the reviewers job for him. Just dumping newbies after the initial installation has finished and say 'there you go, it's installed, and by the way should you need more packages use slapt-get' doesn't seem fair.
There's lots of good stuff out there he could have researched and provided links to, like http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/sdeg/index.htm . Most of it is still valid. There's also a nice write-up on How-to-forge fro Slackware 12 which spans around 9 pages if I remember correctly. That should be the standard for a guide on how to get a system up and running.
5 • Insecurity of OpenBSD (by Schaiba on 2010-01-25 11:43:29 GMT from Romania)
Security is zero if the user makes poor decisions at key moments. Plus the author has way more to learn about and should then come back and re-view his opinions. It's sad that such uninformed people do bad to various projects. Keep up the good work, guys.
6 • simpleLinux (by spot at 2010-01-25 11:53:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Anyone succeeded in d/l ? The servers are extremely slow and the mirrors demand javascript, which is ON, already. Other than that, they seem to want me to open scripts globally. Bad choice of mirrors, as they must be trying to send me stuff I really don't want to see. Developers with something attractive to offer would do well to avoid foot-shooting by opting for apparently easy mirrors with stings in their tails!
7 • Mac and Linux (by macias at 2010-01-25 13:28:41 GMT from Poland)
If I am not mistaken RMB on Apple Mac OS X is configured as Ctrl+LMB. Is this really working in Linux? I am asking/doubting because such shortcut is already hardcoded (at least in KDE) to work as, well, ctrl+LMB.
8 • Ubuntu on Macbook Pro (by BenJammin on 2010-01-25 13:54:44 GMT from United States)
I dual booted Ubuntu 9.10 on my MBPro5,5 (late 2009 model). I used the BootCamp application to repartition my drive. I set up a 60gb partition for something called "Windows"...yeah, i've never heard of it either. Then used the amazing rEFIt as a boot loader.
Using the link in your article above to the ubuntu wiki, i configured everything fairly effortlessly. Some things that DO work that i did not expect:
--Keyboard lighting and dimming
--Volume buttons
--webcam
--SOME multi-touch mouse gestures work (two finger scroll, two finger tap to right-click)
As many owners will tell you, the most notable piece of hardware on a mbpro is the multi-touch mouse. I do wish i had a graphical tool to modify a few aspects of the mouse, like pinch to zoom, 4 finger swipe (alt tab, show desktop), 3 finger swipe (forward/back), and the sensitivity when typing. The mouse is very large and seems to still be active when typing, causing unintended clicks and moves.
Overall though, the ubuntu distro and linux community have done an AMAZING job in building a fantastic desktop! Kudos! Perhaps we need an official ubuntu distro...MacBuntu anyone?
9 • commercial linux (by srinivas.v on 2010-01-25 14:00:18 GMT from India)
Just repackaging an existing GNU/Linux GNU/BSD distribution is not going to
make any distro commercially succesful. If Redhat has succeeded it is because
of its marketing and positioning as an enterprise workstation product. But there is
no "real" GNU/Linux distro positioned as a desktop variant. Instead of piggybacking on ***dows it is better for commercial GNU/LInux variants to be
what they are rounding of few quirks which are inherent in many distros like
1. hardware drivers.
2. Front ends for system configuration
3. Making the partitioning more verbose and easy to understand.
4. Recommend the users about the alternate apps available in the GNU land.
10 • Mouse button on a Linux Mac (by Jesse on 2010-01-25 14:02:49 GMT from Canada)
@7: It's been a while, but I do recall a short-cut key on Linux which acts as the right mouse button. Though I don't think it was the control key. I think it was one of the function keys, F11 or F12.
11 • well, why not help to host simpleLinux files? (by farizluqman on 2010-01-25 14:08:29 GMT from Malaysia)
@simpleLinux is founded earlier already, around year 2007. But I'm now uploading to the web, and many people demanding it... I will spend some time to upload to more FREE hosting... I will ask for help... from another mirror provider... China was not build in a day...
I'm uploading to MORE and MORE mirrors now... I'll stay in touch later
12 • Linux on Macs (by Jeroen Diederen on 2010-01-25 14:09:47 GMT from Netherlands)
I am a happy user of Linux on several Macs. I run Debian Lenny on a PowerBook G3 Pismo and Karmic Koala on a MacBook 2,1. RMB is possbile, I have it set up with mousemu as F12.
I can tell that everything works on my MacBook 2,1. This is an incredible achievement. I am now working 100% in Linux as I can do everything from within Linux, even managing photos and music.
13 • Slackware in 15 minutes; utf-8 support (by cba at 2010-01-25 14:29:04 GMT from Germany)
"Slackware is just right for a back-end system administrator who wants a server that is up and stable in 15 minutes or a simple, fast workstation (...)"
It would be true if Slackware would not disable utf-8 by default. Although it is possible to change this, it is always a pain and it costs too much time:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Slackware-FAQ#
Q.29_Does_Slackware_use_UTF-8_.28Unicode.29.3F
http://www.piir.ch/slackware-linux/unicode-utf-8.html
Utf-8 is default in Suse since Suse 9.1 and it is also default in RHEL since version 3. With regard to languages with special characters (accents in French or ä,ö,ü in German) and the fact that UTF-8 is now default in almost any Linux distro, it costs too much time to integrate Slackware in such common utf-8 environments.
14 • Rabbits! Rabbits! Rabbits! (by RipVanWinkle at 2010-01-25 15:56:55 GMT from United States)
we need more ubuntu derivatives, we have an army of muppets and each need their own personalized *buntu
15 • RE: 14 *That's the Beauty of Open Source* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-25 17:43:50 GMT from United States)
That's the beauty of open source distributions. Everybody has the right to spin their own distro if they want to and they can call it anything they want mostly. Just a guessing I would say appox. 80% of all distros are derivatives of other distros. It has gotten so easy to do that I'm sure we'll see many more. And that's fine. I see nothing wrong with the open source model. I'm not really sure what you meant about an army of muppets tho???
16 • etc (by Reuben at 2010-01-25 17:47:35 GMT from United States)
The solution on the mac is to buy a microsoft intelimouse. Then you can have all the buttons you would ever need. I've never liked any of apples mice, from the hockey puck to the mighty mouse.
Also, the article on OpenBSD security was meh, but the comments following it are great. My thought on the issue is that admins on server might want to have fine grained control of permissions. However, for desktop use, a simpler solution is often needed.
17 • MFL, Simple Linux ... Linux XP ... Mas Os (by meanpt on 2010-01-25 17:51:22 GMT from Portugal)
MFL is hosted in deposit files and ... I had to gave up of it, as the downloading was slow and the connections kept going down.
Simple linux ... well ... then, tried tje mirrors, and ended up running away from porno adverts ...
Paid or Not? Gentlemaen, the Mac Os Snowl Leopard costs euro 50 ... so, if someone can as good as a snow leopard, please, be my guest and charge me euro 50 and, in the end, I'll still have to choose between the distro and the Leopard ... and lately I've seen linux desktops being market between USD 40 and USD 50 ... like Linux XP ...
18 • re.6 & 11 (by spot at 2010-01-25 18:18:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's not the quantity of mirrors, but the quality, farizluqman! I finally got a copy but had to watch some fictitious guy flexing his pecs and wait for the 'free', aka slow, d/l.
Quite a long boot-up (on a machine four times faster than that of the developer) but video card correctly identified and my DHCP interrogation put me on-line immediately. The strong feature is Xfce and Slackware base, but there is deference to Slax and most of the default apps are regular KDE ones. Probably not the optimum selection, although that's subjective. Having done all that work, surely a more critical selection of apps could be used? Especially to speed things along and reduce the overheads?
This distro is OK, no more. Needs to hone if it is to stand out. Perhaps this will happen over time. Frankly, I couldn't see anything that specifically marks it out for 'doze refugees and incomers for whom there is implied attraction.
19 • Macbook Mouse (by BenJammin at 2010-01-25 18:23:21 GMT from United States)
quote from Reuben:
"The solution on the mac is to buy a microsoft intelimouse. Then you can have all the buttons you would ever need. I've never liked any of apples mice, from the hockey puck to the mighty mouse."
I specifically was speaking about tweaking the settings on the onboard multi-gesture mouse on the macbook pro. I have plugged in an ext mouse when needed, but would rather use the built in one. :)
20 • Are is plural (by Grammar Police at 2010-01-25 18:30:56 GMT from United States)
there is a small number
there are a small number.
The word is happens to be singular, are is plural. The phrase "a small number" indicates more than one which would require the use of the plural...
So write "there are a small number" 1000 times.
21 • Kwort (by Offtopic at 2010-01-25 18:53:52 GMT from Greece)
Kwort 3 is based on CRUX not Slackware.
22 • PC-BSD and Ubuntu (by Tre Cool at 2010-01-25 18:54:24 GMT from United States)
It's got to the point now that I just don't consider any ubuntu based distro like mint! To be a real distro of it's own I just call it ubuntu! Testing all thease ubuntu distros you will find they just have a pretty wallpaper and codecs! I know how to setup ubuntu for what ever I like so i don't find any use for thease specality distros but I respect their effort and I hope they help someone. But to a unix admin I see them as a cute toy. Ubuntu being the real distro behind it .
Poor clem :( (the Linux mint dude) I hope he's not in the poor house will 30,000 a year Pay rent in Ireland? I guess every bit counts!
I'm very happy to see the new PC-BSD is comeing! Keep up the good work kris!
23 • Grammar (by dragonmouth on 2010-01-25 19:08:07 GMT from United States)
Methinks Grammar Police needs to go back to the police academy. The subject of the sentence is "number". It is singular, therefore the verb also needs to be singular, meaning it must be "IS".
24 • Error on Fedora 13 in "upcoming releases" (by Andrew Fountain on 2010-01-25 19:08:32 GMT from Canada)
I don't know if the dates have changed since you make the schedule, but they are way off from the release schedule that you have linked to. For example, the first alpha is not until March 2nd.
25 • Number is singular (by Grammar Terrorist at 2010-01-25 19:15:08 GMT from United States)
The word "number" is actually singular. The word "numbers" is the plural form. It is easy to get confused in this case because "number" is modified by the plural prepositional phrase (say that five times fast) "of commercial projects".
A less awkward usage might have been "...for free, a small number of commercial projects sell..."
If'n yer gonna nitpick...
For the sake of context: "While the vast majority of Linux-based operating systems can be had for free, there is a small number of commercial projects that sell their enhanced editions, usually targeting newcomers to the Linux world."
26 • Hymera (by dragonmouth on 2010-01-25 19:23:55 GMT from United States)
In October, I installed the free version of Hymera. I found that:
The installer is very good - left panel shows a list of tasks to be performed. Right panel is used to provide any info needed to perform the install.
The disk partitioning tool provided was very detailed. Better than GParted.
The translation of some prompts and instructions from Italian to English was "interesting" but understandable.
On my P4 2.0 ghz test machine, the install took about 20 minutes.
Some menu items were still in Italian.
I could not find any way to change the default monitor to my specific model by using the GUI.
I could not find any way to reset the refresh frequency using the GUI.
I did not pursue Hymera further since I am not particularly fond of Gnome.
27 • Commercial Linux (by Supernatendo at 2010-01-25 19:32:05 GMT from United States)
While the Idea of a company generating revenue from Linux commercially is not necessarily a bad thing, I think many factors will prevent Linux's commercial success as a stand-alone product.
Consider Google, they are in a unique position where Google can benefit from additional ad revenue, and thus justify distributing Linux in a commercially profitable manner. Other companies such as mandriva, canonical, and Hymera do not necessarily have that luxury and must rely on selling proprietary codecs and tech support in order to sell it (arguably much less successfully) as a standalone product.
Google will succeed where others have struggled because they already have a large user-base and they will more or less hide the fact that they use the Linux Kernel (hence the absence of the GNU aspects of Linux) thereby circumventing the ( IMHO absurd) "You get what you pay for" meme that currently plagues the software world.
If other companies can find a way to utilize linux in a creative manner as these other companies were able to do (Google, TiVO, TomTom) then Linux will gain more positive light as being a viable source of commercial profitability, but I see Linux becoming more a service included "Gratis" with the purchase of a device than being marketable as a stand-alone product. When you think about it even Microsoft "struggles" in comparrison when selling Windows as a stand-alone unit rather than as an included service...
28 • Mint or Ubuntu (by sankaran at 2010-01-25 19:36:01 GMT from India)
LinuxMint is superb, well tested, better ubuntu and out of the box and deserves all credits, yet there are two annoying things in it. Try whatever, its firefox google bar will route all searches to mintified google page. Ironical to see, mint reports installing ubuntu packages as unauthenticated though Mint is built on top of Ubuntu
29 • Mac (by JR at 2010-01-25 19:45:30 GMT from Finland)
I run Tiny Core on mine. The MBP pretty much flies, the boot time is 7s on the latest release.
Nice'n'portable, everything works.
30 • commercial options (by Anonymous at 2010-01-25 19:52:01 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the interesting review of Hymera.
The comments of the final paragraph about "commercial options" make a lot of sense, particularly with regard to offering services that business clients prefer.
For personal users in some countries a "commercial option", where the distributor/vendor has paid royalties and license fees, may offer a 100% legal way to have access to popular copyright-protected capabilities. For many of us, civil legalities do not represent the highest ethic - a 55mph speed limit sign might mean you should drive at least 55 or you are impeding the flow of traffic. But it's good that 100% legal options are available.
31 • opinions on hymera and the unessecary ubuntu respins (by irc.sindustries.org on 2010-01-25 20:08:25 GMT from United States)
For one, hymera installed and ran great, although sluggish at time as expected with kde4. But when I choose ENGLISH as my language, I expect all of my applications options menus to be in ENGLISH also. Hymera team should fix this. Moving on, all of these ubuntu respins...how many are there so far? Obviously not enough? What more could you possibly do to ubuntu after so many respins of it? Yet I see 4 or 5 more "ubuntu based" distros on the waiting list today. This is getting rather annoying.
32 • Linux Kernel (by Sly on 2010-01-25 21:23:36 GMT from United States)
I just read an interesting article about the orgin of updates to the Linux kernel. Apparently contributers include major companies such as Oracle/Sun, Intel, IBM, Novell, and the evil empire MS.
Quite interesting.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/
Where does that kernel code come from?
Date: January 20th, 2010
Author: Selena Frye
33 • Hymera buggy as hell (by MacLone at 2010-01-25 22:21:02 GMT from Mexico)
Sorry to say this but i have tested Hymera many times since the first and it always dies at Xorg. The first time it could not even pass the grub splash screen nor vmware nor phisical computer amd64 3000+. Later they released a new version which i could install but not use unless i select vesa at xorg.conf. It is the worst ditro i ever tested, really. Sorry for the Hymera guys but failing on VMware and a real computer with the exact same problems is a BIG BUG period.
34 • money for distros (by Henry Shock on 2010-01-25 22:28:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Rather than paying money for a shiny box, I prefer to download the free-as-in-beer version of a distro and then, if and when it proves to be good and useful, donate money to the project (or buy the t-shirt, lunchbox, cuddly penguin, etc). The benefits of this are (a) you can keep trying different distros until you find the one that fits your needs and tastes best, with no financial penalty, and (b) the makers of the best distros are rewarded financially, not the makers of the shiniest boxes.
35 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-25 23:21:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #14 & 31. What's all this nonsense about too many spin offs from Ubuntu? This sort of attitude is akin to "1984", "thoughtcrime" and the "Thought Police".
If these references mean nothing to you then you need look no further than a google search...you could try "techno luddite" too.
The GNU "license" allows for spin offs:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
If you feel there are too many Ubuntu spin offs then you should read the above and reflect that someone, somewhere is simply indulging themselves in a harmless pastime and doubtless educating themselves at the same time.
The real issue is why "you" deceive yourself into thinking you have a valid comment to make...especially when it amounts to decrying educational self improvement.
Unless you have been asleep for a hundred years...you should be aware GNULinux can be adapted to almost any kind of distro one wants. Numerous scripts have been evolved to allow even an "ordinary" hobbyist to do just that.
Ubuntu is an ideal candidate for customisation, if you will, because it is well supported by virtue of being backed up by a large, stable organisation, and unlikely to suffer from self destructive internecine squabbling amongst its staff.
Anecdotal evidence suggests Ubuntu runs on a very wide range of platforms and and that has to be a "good thing" surely??
Simply because Ubuntu may not work for you is no reason to knock other folk's efforts.
36 • linuxppc mac user: CRUX PPC (by mangus on 2010-01-25 23:41:27 GMT from Italy)
i'm a long standing mac user and i love CRUX PPC
37 • Ubuntu nonsense (by jg at 2010-01-26 02:45:45 GMT from United States)
Certainly, everyone and his dog can make an Ubuntu respin, but that doesn't mean that Distrowatch should further clog the distro database with yet more irrelevant "This is ubuntu with a new wallpaper and a slightly different set of apps installed from the same repos" distros -- particularly since they will no doubt quickly become orphaned distros when nobody wants to go to the trouble of installing a whole distro just to get the same thing they can get with a couple mouse clicks in synaptic.
Perhaps it's time for Distrowatch to employ a more rigorous criteria for accepting new distro announcements, such as asking for a list of specific features that differentiate it from its base distro, and refusing to consider criteria that is simply a different set of apps installed from the same repos available to the base distro.
38 • ReSpins (by Anonymous at 2010-01-26 03:55:57 GMT from United States)
I use Debian with a Window Maker desktop and a wallpaper I found on the net.
Does that make my use a new distro?
I have no intentions of releasing or announcing it, so I guess not.
I think a Distro should have some resources behind it.
Like distribution servers or tech support etc.
I am just a user, not a distro maker.
39 • Insecurity of OpenBSD (by ozonehole at 2010-01-26 04:19:26 GMT from Taiwan)
I was an OpenBSD user for a few months. Like the (anonymous) author of the "Insecurity of OpenBSD" article, I discovered that if you make any criticism (however constructive) of OpenBSD, you've insulted a religious cult and you can expect rabid retaliation. I'm not surprised he posted anonymously.
Example: the OpenBSD installer runs a nice little script that helps you set up a network. But if you later want to reconfigure the network, that script is unavailable to you. So I asked on the OBSD mailing list if that script could be downloaded from anywhere, or was there a way to extract it from the installer, so I wouldn't have to reconfigure by editing cryptic ASCII configuration files.
Well, apparently I insulted their God - "What's wrong with editing text files!!??" "When you run OpenBSD, you're THIS TALL, so suck it up and start editing." "Go write your own script if you need one." "Hey, if you want some wimpy setup program that holds your hand, why don't you go back to Linux?"
So I did. Happy Ubuntu user now.
cheers,
OZ
40 • ReSpins (by srinivas.v on 2010-01-26 06:42:31 GMT from India)
I agree with comment no. 38. Distrowatch should watch out for "Duplicate" distros
which do not in reality " Remaster " the original distro except for few eye candy
icons or a flashy dock. The remasters should be something like Pardus. They
are hell bent on making a mark for their product. writing custom scripts to
ease the use of GNU/Linux.
41 • Tiny Core (by Sanjay on 2010-01-26 07:14:56 GMT from India)
I don't know how it become possible for OS comes in 10MB size,thanks to its makers, who made it possible. Its really a fast distro , I know its lacks lots of feature but remember in 10MB it provided so much that we can't imagine.
A nice blog on tiny core 2.8 can be found here
http://www.linux2u.co.cc
42 • Debian (by brad on 2010-01-26 07:47:59 GMT from United States)
If you're new to Linux, you should try something based upon Debian ie; Debian, Ubuntu or even Mint. Mint is great for newbys but Debian itself is about as easy to use as Ubuntu or Mint.
If you're into RPM, go with PC Linux OS. Its' preconfigured and has everything you need to get started into the world of Linux.
Just my thoughts.
43 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-26 11:32:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Respins again.
I suppose it comes down to defining what a distro is. If "you" feel it must be absolutely innovative, to be a new distro, then you must either write it yourself from the ground up or you can wait around for someone else to do it. And if you can't write code...
Well, the completely innovative, ref GNULinux, approach appears not to be happening, does it? How many different bases do we have at present, as in, Ubuntu or Arch or Suse or wotever? How many do you need. How many office apps are there? Again, how many do you need?
[You may have read about "Hurd", but only as a concept or work-in-progress, with only a handful of devs, comparatively speaking, writing code:
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-news]
Perhaps GNULinux has peaked, in the evolutionary sense? As in a handful of base distros have evolved and nobody can be arsed to develop others.
Hence the pragmatic approach of building distro after distro after distro on a solid, well supported code base, with decent sized repos.
I would posit that from here on all we shall see is refinement on refinement.
With the advent of scripts to enable folk to create their own private, personalised distro the way is open for those to pursue the purist line, say, ie to have only open source apps in "their" distro...to those who would mix and match from both open and closed sources. Not forgetting of course, finding stuff that will run on your platform. This would go some way to getting round the "First Law of Linux"...
Perhaps this is as far as "we" can go, virtually limitless (well possibly a bit of hyperbole there) options so that the "my distro is better than your distro" nonsense becomes a dim and distant memory, best forgotten.
44 • Define distributions by repositories not by web sites (by Ariszló on 2010-01-26 12:19:17 GMT from Hungary)
Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu: one repository so one distribution
45 • RE: 37, 40. *A Matter Of Opinion* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-26 13:25:02 GMT from United States)
Okay, I see now who you are upset with. You are upset with DistroWatch. You can't stop the respins nor do you have a right to try so It seems you just don't like DistroWatch talking about them. Well you are opening up a whole different set of problems if you start picking which distros are worthy of being listed on DistroWatch. What is your plan for deciding when a respin BECOMES a distro worthy of being listed. Maybe the problem is that there are no set rules to decide when a respin becomes a distro or when it isn't a distro. Who would have the right to set those rules? DistroWatch can set their own rules for this website and it's nobody else's business. That's the way it is for all of us. If a person can't handle respins then don't deal with them. You can't stop them so why bitch about it. There is no problem here people so why try to make one. Let people have their fun and try to use a little intelligence and exploration when looking at all these different distributions. You may find a little gem hidden in one of those respins. .
46 • Respins (by Patrick on 2010-01-26 15:01:48 GMT from United States)
I agree 100% with Eddie in 45. I would like to add that I for one would feel cheated by Distrowatch if it would only start to mention or list a distro once it became big and popular. I would be like "now you mention it, everyone else is already talking about it", and feel like Distrowatch had missed its purpose. If there is one site where I expect to hear from a distro from its first humble beginnings as someone's pet project until it became the hottest new distro on the block, it would be Distrowatch. That is its purpose.
And in what horrible way does yet another Ubuntu respin inconvenience you? If it is a dead-end project, you see an announce fly by and never hear from it again. So what's the big deal? How does it "clog up" anything? If you really feel a compulsion to try every distro ever mentioned here, that is your problem. If not, then what's the harm? Just let it be and let competition take its course.
47 • Ubuntu Survey request (by Duhnonymous at 2010-01-26 15:12:27 GMT from United States)
The above article makes mention of some comments about a forum thread being highlighted on UbuntuForums.org. It seems no one can properly research this, and the fact is that the survey itself is misleading and badly put together.
I strongly suggest that anyone interested read the following post:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8665955&postcount=24
whiprush wrote: "This isn't about what you would like to see by default or what you would like the overall focus of Ubuntu would be, we're merely trying to figure out what kind of 3rd party applications people would like to see."
It would be nice to see a professional survey at ubuntu.com rather than this moronic attempt at PR, if anyone at Canonical really is interested in our opinion.
48 • Commercial Linux (by Jesse on 2010-01-26 15:37:31 GMT from Canada)
I agree with the comments made by Super in post @27. Google can afford to play around in a lot of different areas, including Linux. Most commercial Linux companies are stuck with a smaller budget and less income sources. And, given that Linux is free of charge from other projects, commercial vendors really have to push their ease-of-use, packaging and support to stand out in the crowd. I think the successful Linux vendors will be the ones who can really push their product through out-reach movements and advertising.
Eddie (post 45) also has a point about the complaints regarding new distros. Free software grants people the right to customize their Linux distro of choice and re-release it. Complaining about that is akin to protesting the GPL. Maybe some of these projects will stick around, most of them will likely fizzle. But it's silly to protest their creation. They don't subject from anything, they don't infringe on your rights. And, frankly, complaining about new distributions on a website dedicated to providing information on distributions and new releases seems counter intuitive.
The idea of limiting distros by repo rather than by website won't hold water. DSL uses Debian's repos as I recall, but most people will claim DSL is a legit distribution. CentOS repackages its upstream project to the point of being binary compatible, but most people will likely consider CentOS a distro and with good reason.
49 • Remixes & the poll. (by KevinC at 2010-01-26 15:41:00 GMT from United States)
It seems ppl, for the most part, only have issues with Ubuntu remixes...perhaps, this somehow correlates with some of the avarice often expressed for Ubuntu, proper. While there may be more Ubuntu respins than others....it seems there are never any complaints about Fedora/ Gentoo/ Arch/ Debian remixes ( and tho the 1st 3 have not spawned many children, how many Deb-based distros are out there?? NTM, Ubuntu itself).
As to the poll, from my understanding this is related to the Software Center, which will replace Synaptic w/ Lucid. It was at first to be called Software Store (notice in Karmic, packages have costs associated with them). The plan, IIRC, is to offer packages such as Photoshop for sale via the Software Center. These would be Windows versions with a runtime/ prepackaged version of Wine binaries (i.e, Google's Linux Picasa). The poll is laying the groundwork for what Canonical plans to offer for sale via the Software Center, insofar as, mainly, Windows software to run under Ubuntu.
50 • The real scoop on "number of" (by GrammarDoctor on 2010-01-26 15:53:14 GMT from United States)
@23, 25: This is tricky and easy to get wrong. "GrammarPolice" is correct, but his reason is not. The correct verb ("are" or "is") is singular or plural in agreement with the *object* of this sentence (because the subject, the pronoun "there", is indeterminate in this regard). "number of" is a collective noun which can be singular ("the number of") or plural ("a number of"). I.e. it depends on "a" or "the"!
So, the correct form is: "There are *a* number of distributions..."
reference:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm
It may help to remember this by substituting the almost-synonymous "some" for "a number of" and trying out the result. I.e., you would say "There Are some distributions," not "There is some distributions."
51 • MacLinux for PPC, and Linux respins (by Vakkotaur at 2010-01-26 16:08:25 GMT from United States)
It's pretty easy to find a Linux version to run on x86-ish hardware, even if it just happens to have an Apple logo on it.
The older apple hardware is PPC, and then the choice narrows quite a bit. I've had a go at using Gentoo on a PPC Apple laptop. It works.. after a fashion. But I'd much rather have had something slightly more recent (x86-ish) and more choice.
[No, I really don't know enough of *bsd to want to try go the NetBSD route on that laptop. I'm not trying to learn (another) OS, but use the stuff that ought to run on it.]
As for 'respins' - why not? I'd like to know the base as early as possible though so I can skip things of no interest more easily: 'ABCD Linux [Ubuntu based]' would be a useful start. While I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, I don't see the point of deriding it or its daughters. There have been a few times when my choice has come down "Which Slackware variant do I like best?"
52 • What a JOKE!! (by Jon Iverson at 2010-01-26 16:35:41 GMT from United States)
Basically EVERYTHING Linux, once the movement gained momentum, is a re-spin/re-mix of one variety or another. Utuntu itself is a re-spin/re-mix of Debian; Mint is a re-spin/re-mix of Debian/Ubuntu; etc., etc, ad infinitum. While each of these adds much in the way of usability and value to the original, the truth is that doing such a re-spin/re-mix always tweaks someone's twisted sense of proprietary correctness - and with that tweaking voices are heard suggesting that those involved in such activities, from developers on down to Joe or Jane User, are at best highly suspect in the choices they've made.
Wake up people! As Jesse said in post #48, [i][b]"..Free software grants people the right to customize their Linux distro of choice and re-release it. Complaining about that is akin to protesting the GPL. Maybe some of these projects will stick around, most of them will likely fizzle. But it's silly to protest their creation.."[/b][/i]
Products that not only stick around but clearly thrive, such as Linux Mint, are the very essence of what the GPL envisions. That certain self proclaimed Ubuntu purists would object to such success sounds much like the objections formerly leveled at the newly created Ubuntu project by self proclaimed Debian purists back in the day. Get over it will ya! The community is well served by the foresight and clarity the GPL provides, so throwing stones from inside your own favorite house of glass is foolish.
53 • ... (by M1k at 2010-01-26 17:18:17 GMT from Italy)
Agree...changing desktop is not making a new distro!
One Buntu..stop...!
I do love Blag...Sidux...Dynebolic....let "commercial" stay away!
It is just my humble opinion...
Linux is hacking...in the real sense of the world...
54 • No subject (by jg at 2010-01-26 17:26:27 GMT from United States)
A distro having its own repos (with software that is somehow different than the base distros repos) is just _one_ criteria that can indicate a new "distro" is something more than just a respin.
I repeat, it would be a very good idea for Distrowatch to adopt a policy that, in order to be considered a new distro, that distro _must_ have some piece of software/data that is truly different than what is contained in the base distro's repos. Otherwise, there's absolutely nothing that such a distro offers which is the least bit noteworthy. If all Distrowatch becomes is just a listing of every respin in existence (and with the further development of things like SUSE Studio, and the like, this problem of minor respins posing as new distros is about to explode), then Distrowatch will become irrelevant.
I used to look forward to Distrowatch's listing of new distros, interested to see some possibly new innovation. Now, I barely skim the list. And Distrowatch's database of distros is more bother to peruse than it's worth (because there's way too much unnotably "me too" distros in the database to wade through). If I wanted to find a linux distro suitable for my needs, it's actually quicker and easier to use Google than it is to use Distrowatch, and that's a rather damning criticism given Distrowatch's purpose.
It should be of utmost importance to get a handle on the respin problem before it explodes (which it will). Having a policy now will eliminate future complaints of "But you reported on lots of Ubuntu repins before. And now that MeToo distro has a new respin tool, you suddenly stop reporting on respins? You're a Canonical flunkie.". It _will_ happen. History is on my side.
55 • Distributions vs Respins (by Ariszló on 2010-01-26 18:03:46 GMT from Hungary)
Personally, I have no problem with the large number of distributions and their respins but I cannot see why Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu with exactly the same repositories are labeled different distributions as opposed to Fedora, Fedora KDE spin, Fedora LXDE spin, which are not treated as separate distributions.
Wouldn't it be better to add a Respins row with links to each distribution's Summary like this:
http://distrowatch.com/ubuntu
Respins | Kubuntu <http://www.kubuntu.org/>, Xubuntu <http://www.xubuntu.org/> ...
http://distrowatch.com/fedora
Respins | KDE <http://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/>, LXDE <http://spins.fedoraproject.org/lxde/>, Xfce <http://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/> Games <http://spins.fedoraproject.org/games/> ...
56 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-26 18:06:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #54.
Hmm, so every new distro must have some new software/data before it is considered noteworthy...and you see no new innovations...DW will become irrelevant...
Two options: if you are not in agreement with the site policy you could start your own, or accept folk think differently from yourself and simply enjoy what's on offer.
57 • RE: 54, 55 *There Is NO Problem* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-26 18:50:28 GMT from United States)
Why do you people still say there is a problem. People are making a problem out of nothing. "There are just too many distros to choose from." is a famous MS troll line. Do you think that someone who has not talked to anybody or had any contact with someone using linux is going to go to DistroWatch and pick out a distro to install. I DON'T THINK SO. Furthermore people have no right to complain about the number of respins. It's none of their business. It's none of your business. You won't accept reason, you ignore the spirit and power of open source software, you want things in a nice neat little package. Weather you know it or not this has been talked about for years. You want things to be redefined to your way of thinking. If the linux open source community's way of doing things upsets you so much maybe you should move on to something more in line with your way of thinking. Maybe BSD. Also as you read in this comments section a lot of people do not have any problems with respin distributions. This thing has been talked to death ...again, with the same result as always. There is no problem.
Now let's talk about some important stuff.
58 • *buntu derivatives....or debian derivatives (by *buntu-user on 2010-01-26 18:53:23 GMT from United States)
Ok, seems the derivative war has started up again. So, I'll help fan the flames a bit. If new distros should really be different, why should Mint be considered its own distro? I am a previous KMint 7 (kde edition for those not with the naming convention of kde) user but converted to Ubuntu 9.1. I liked mint, but it was buggy and different apps would crash for little or no reason, like right clicking in the root directory and selecting properties (not the point). Anyway, maybe Mint has a few different apps, rebranded everything, but under the hood, there are still debian/ubuntu labels. So Mint=modified ubuntu=modified debian. I'd keep Ubuntu though, due to the fact of the popularity and backing that it has and the importance it represents within linux/gnu. But, maybe try putting all the different *buntus on one page. I'm sure most users know how to find different *buntus if they had a list and goggle. But, I don't mind the way things are now either. Distrowatch is good as it is and I enjoy the DWWs.
59 • Mint/Ubuntu/Debian (by Joy at 2010-01-26 19:55:30 GMT from United States)
The implication is that Mint users would be just as happy with Ubuntu, then? And Ubuntu users would be just as happy with Debian?
I think not.
I think that there is a sort of evolution going on in the linux world, and that the small but inevitable increments of that dynamic are evident in the Mints, Zenwalks and Vectors (from Slackware) ad infinitum around.
One user will say they went from any distro to any other. That's not evidence of anything except that user's words. Mint's popularity alongside Ubuntu's says much much more, as one example.
60 • amarok documentation and distro differences (by jack at 2010-01-26 20:46:02 GMT from Canada)
Ubuntu 9.10 comes with amarok
I wanted to listen to an online radio (http://radio.zvezdelin.net/) but couldn't figure out how to; so I clicke the " online help" button and got a window saying no such file. So I googled "amarok how to" and one of the responses was from the kde forum. answering a similar problem .
Some one called "mamarok" said :
you can download a script...
WTH just imagine if that applied to my wish to access Amazon, Newegg, BBC world, etc
One of the big differences between distros is the amount of documentation that they supply. Mepis, for example, is outstanding in both quality and quantity of the help that comes with their distro.
Poorly written help is bad enough but NO help is inexcusable.
61 • No subject (by Anonymous at 2010-01-26 23:19:10 GMT from United States)
Hmmmm...I think the problem is a divide between 2 schools of thought now in the FOSS community. The old guard does not (as some say 'round here) cotton to the fact that Linux can be made easy (or as some say, "dumbed down"). I think some feel Linux (or any 'nixs, in general) bely exclusivity. While some of the respins may be a bit much....I mean who is to say what is of value to someone else??? For example, suppose one doesn't have broadband @ home but can access it at school or work or whatever....then a distro like SuperOS (which is just Karmic w/ codecs and apps) could be of value. Same would go for language specific (or culturally-specific) respins of <name your distro>
It's obvious (to me @ least) that a lot more effort goes into Mint vs. SuperOS (or Crunchbang or Vector or AntiX, etc, etc.) BUT, where is the line drawn? And when you draw it then, to some extent, you are limiting freedom---which is what I thought was the prima facie concept underlying FOSS. Another cliche we have in the U.S. is "it all comes out in the wash." That applies herein---for the most part the "change the theme" & add some codecs/ apps respins will come and go---why lose sleep over it???
That being said....I'm playing w/ the Omega respin of Fedora 12---which is just Fedora w/ the codecs installed and the RPMFusion repos enabled. Could I have dl'ed Fedora 12 and done it myself? Sure, but as I get older I get lazier & it's not an issue for me to have it done for me & you can bet your rent money I don't lose any sleep over that. ;>)
It's really a very simple equation here....if you don't like then don't use it. And since I'm the king of cliches here---maybe it's best if you have nothing good to say then say nothing at all.
62 • RE: 61/SuperOS (by Landor at 2010-01-27 03:18:28 GMT from Canada)
If I read you correctly, you're stating that since they don't have broadband at home it would be easier to obtain SuperOS at school and use it at home, meaning they wouldn't have to deal with all the downloading of extra packages to get the same functionality?
If that's the case, I can't see that as accurate. Not really. If you downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 from school and did an install then updated to all the latest packages I'd bet my last dollar that the upgrade from 9.10 and the easy installation of some packages would be far less of an upgrade from SuperOS when the person finally installed it. SuperOS due to sheer size would have a massive amount of updates, not to mention the download time at school compared to the time it would take to get 9.10.
About the whole debate on Ladislav changing this, or excluding that. You forget something very simple, this is his website, not a democracy. He's been doing this for a very long time and you can be certain he has a very specific criteria already and the bottom line is, it's his choice what's included or not on the site.
Personally he could have 10,000 Ubuntu clones in his database and it wouldn't mean crap to me, it's his business, literally.
I couldn't believe there were people actually thinking they could tell him it was about time he changed his policy. Shit, people take a lot of liberties.
Keep your stick on the ice..
Landor
63 • Respin on respins ... (by jake at 2010-01-27 04:36:41 GMT from United States)
From another angle ... I run Slackware as my go-to desktop. I've been running it as my main desktop for over a decade and a half.
HOWEVER, it's not vanilla Slackware. First I install the base package, kernel source & programming tools. Then I compile the kernel for the hardware in question, and install the result, followed by whatever other hardware support I need. Next, I install the GUI, followed immediately by removing the desktop's so-called "artwork". Then I pick & choose the applications I actually use, and install them. After that, I get the network up and running. If I'm planning on browsing the Web, I install Adblockplus, Flashblock and Noscript (and/or ClamAV, if the box is about to become an email server for Windows users). Usually, I compile applications before installing them (where possible). When I'm done, I have a lean & mean variation of Slackware, customized to suit my own, or my customer's needs.
Should I release the end result as " the jakeware distribution" (Maybe "pizzaware" (c.f. my post from a couple weeks ago)), with an optional kitchen-sink kernel for people who aren't using my identical hardware?
Likewise, should I release the similarly stripped-down and customized version of Slackware 12.2 (with security updates, as required) that my 73 year old Mom & 94 year old Great Aunt have been happily using for months, perhaps calling it "AuntieWare"?
If yes to either of the above, why? If no, why not?
64 • Remixes (by Max on 2010-01-27 07:49:18 GMT from Italy)
Everybody is free to create and distribute his personal remix of a distro, no doubt about it. I like freedom, obviously. Ladislav is free to include or exclude whatever he likes, obviously.
Anyway, I think there are two kinds of products:
1. Distributions
2. Remixes
and they are different beasts IMHO.
Personally, I made a .iso file of my Ubuntu system using Remastersys: it has a Linux Kernel, some added repos, codecs and a dark wallpaper. I use LXDE as default and removed the IRC application because I don't need it.
If I call it "Maxxixx", then create a website where one can download the ISO and announce its availability, saying "Maxxixx, an easy to use OS designed for older hardware and for people who don't like chat but like listening to music and watching dark wallpapers", will it be included in DW database?
Sounds creepy...
65 • @ jake, 63 (by Untitled at 2010-01-27 08:23:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Jake:
Yes, if you want to.
Reasons:
1)Why not?
2) Nobody can stop you.
Suggestion:
Change the name to AuntieX.
66 • What is a distro? A miserable little pile of secrets! (by megadriver at 2010-01-27 08:25:12 GMT from Spain)
This is the "rule of thumb" I tend to use:
Same main repo = Same distro
Different main repo = Different distro
But I agree that this is Ladislav's site, so it should conform to Ladislav's preferences.
Also, the more distros, derivatives, remixes, spins, etc., the more choice. And choice is ALWAYS good.
67 • sorry guys (by farizluqman on 2010-01-27 10:36:03 GMT from Malaysia)
@hi guys... simpleLinux download links has been updated... No more ads will be found... download at 20MBits... 10-30Minutes for hi-speed dsl....
I'm so sorry for any inconvenient...
68 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-27 13:56:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
...and on the topic of choice and customisation, this is for the desktop; looks as if this may be just the ticket for some folks:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69197.html
69 • 68 (by Barnabyh at 2010-01-27 14:25:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks for that, looks good. Conky and gkrellm do all that for me, without crashes. No need for gdesklets/superKaramba/KDE4 widgets. Guess I'm old school :).
You enjoy.
70 • Bing Ubuntu! (by corneliu on 2010-01-27 17:29:28 GMT from Canada)
According to this https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2010-January/002396.html Ubuntu will make Yahoo! the default search engine in the next release. As you all know Yahoo uses Bing. So now Ubuntu defaults to Bing! I guess this is just one more reason not to use Ubuntu (among many other reasons e.g. mono).
I've got two things to say:
Bang Bing!
Bang Ubuntoo too!
71 • RE:70 *I Will Change It.* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-27 17:46:49 GMT from United States)
I read the same thing. I don't like the Yahoo search so I will change it. Problem taken care of. As far as MONO goes that is a dead debate. It will creep into all Gnome distros and then into Kde Distros. Still nobody has proved MONO to be evil. Still not worth debating.
72 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-27 18:26:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #70
Corneliu, I see you have been learning from the master of spin...the statement (from your link) does not say Yahoo is to be the default search engine, FULL STOP. The element of user choice has not been eliminated. Suggest you re-read the release.
So what if Bing is used by Yahoo? Canonical is canvassing folk, even at this very instant, for what "commercial" apps they would like to see included in Ubuntu repos.
Perhaps it might not have occurred to you that it is possible to enjoy the obvious advantages of open source with commercial stuff...after all it is not a new thing...does "Wine" ring any bells?
It is difficult not to form the impression that purists get angry with stuff completely outside their "control", tho' why they should want to control something which allows for unlimited diversification is a mystery.
Ref your concerns about "mono"...I'd be more concerned about "monomania"...we are talking about an OS, no more, no less...there is no Church of GNULinux.
I daresay Shuttleworth.M will get over your disappointment with Ubuntu...
73 • RE: 71 (by Landor at 2010-01-27 18:39:39 GMT from Canada)
When you factor in things like bing, mono, silverlight, it's a huge concern. You're talking about using a product or technology based on supporting a company that at its very kindest has teams set up to do as much damage to Linux as possible. It's also bent on combating OSS in general.
I can't see how using any technologies derived from MS could be anything but evil, or damaging to GNU/Linux/OSS/FOSS.
By visiting and watching a silverlight based site we're actually supporting the use of an MS technology, then supporting proprietary software. More and more, proprietary/closed source is scaring me. A lot. People are being tracked all over the world now, and it's getting worse. Not just in the use of computers either, phone calls are being monitored in various countries, everyone's movements are tracked in some fashion. At least with OSS/FOSS we're aware of what's in the code, and you can bet someone in the community will look for anything nasty in almost every piece of code.
Here's an example, ask Ladislav if he would face a court battle to release information regarding visitors from to the site to the Taiwan Government or the American Government, and possible incarceration, or just hand it over, willingly. He may (since it's a hypothetical scenario) answer the former, but what happens when the chips are down. This is no offence to Ladislav either, just an example. Give people more power by giving up your personal freedoms and you have given them more reason to further pursue ways to take away more of your freedoms.
Not directed at you Eddie, I forgot something last week when I was making my comments regarding closed source/proprietary software, 50% of the people here still use windows to visit this site, 41% use Linux, how many full-time Linux users are posting here, 41%? Less? The latter is probably more accurate, a lot less I'd wager. I was trying to explain the need for FOSS to what, proprietary OS users? My folly.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
74 • RE: 73 *I Understand What You Are Saying* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-27 19:15:49 GMT from United States)
I can understand what you are saying. I've just never seen so much hatred for an open source application. I may be mistaken but isn't MONO open source? The way I look at things also is when you want to destroy something or somebody it's best if you try to sneak up on them. Like a surprise attack. Everybody knows about MONO. Everybody knows the supposable threat. You have lawyers that say they can do it. You have lawyers that say they can't do it. The very most that MS maybe could do is to stop anybody from using c++. Any application that uses MONO would have to be redone. Also I don't look at MS as ever being powerful enough to stop the open source movement. Sad to say that I am using MS Windows at work. (It's their computer) I do use linux at home. Anyway people who have been around the open source community for a few years, (7 for me), knows how far Linux and BSD distros have come. MS has tried and they can't stop us. They are just not powerful enough and we are not stupid enough to let them. There is nothing wrong with being cautious tho.
75 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-27 19:27:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #73
I can hardly believe my eyes..."At least with OSS/FOSS we're aware...piece of code.
So, nice, ordinary Mrs Turkish Lady Housewife in Ankara, or Istanbul, knows exactly what is going on in Pardus does she?
Pardus is sponsored by the Turkish Gov't, see here:
...................
Organisation and political background
Development road map
The two organizations which make Pardus possible are the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE) and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). UEKAE is the largest research institute of TÜBİTAK and carries out scientific research and contracts technological development in cryptology and information security, business development efforts as direct “sales” to larger corporate and government sectors. UEKAE also develops programs for large software systems. The company has as one of its aims, the development of a corporate desktop and emphasizes the need for corporate management tools. TÜBİTAK is both the funding agency for scientific and technological research in Turkey, and conducts scientific and technological research through its various departments.
In September 2003, TÜBİTAK and UEKAE conducted a preliminary assessment of Turkey's IT industry requirements, the results of which showed the need for an open source operating system to be used by national security agencies.
UEKAE took the lead and started the Pardus project. Figure 2 shows the Pardus project's timeline, from the planning phase to where the project sees itself in the year 2010.
A year later, in 2004, TÜBİTAK/UEKAE jointly financed and supported the design and implementation of the Pardus project, with UEKAE having a major role on technical matters and determining the strategic directions of the project. Thus, while Pardus GNU/Linux gained prominence with the first release of its live CD in 2005, the strategic planning, design, consultation, and eventual deployment of Pardus to the general public goes much further back in time.
.......................................
So, you can state positively then that open source stuff is inherently safer than MS?
I'm all for nationally sponsored distros, but let's not be totally naive...
Personally speaking I'd feel a LOT happier knowing certain people were being tracked, especially when I recall two office blocks being turned into runways...
76 • RE: 74 (by Landor at 2010-01-27 19:33:45 GMT from Canada)
It's not hatred on my part at all. If anything I would call it dire concern. MONO is a validation of work MS does in my opinion.
I'll use the analogy I used last week of someone drinking and driving. If the person is drunk, drives, and injures people, yet, one day he's drunk and hits another car, not injuring them, but due to his actions he actually saved them from being hit by a larger vehicle just moments later, ensuring their survival, do you applaud him, thus validating his actions?
OSS or not, just my opinion, I see the use of MONO as a validation of MS and its Holiness, by a community that has felt so many wrongs by MS and will even more as MS steps up its crusade against Linux since it's more of a threat than ever. This is one of the key components, MS is now taking GNU/Linux far more seriously than it ever has.
I hope you did understand I wasn't taking a stab at you in any way, especially in regard to your use of Windows, or not.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
77 • Ubuntu using Yahoo search (by Jesse on 2010-01-27 20:07:23 GMT from Canada)
I think the switch by Ubuntu to use Yahoo search is a complete non-issue. It takes all of two clicks to change the search engine Firefox uses. People who care about the issue can switch in less time than it takes to post a complaint about it.
As for Mono, it doesn't have much to do with Microsoft. Mono is open source software which implements a technology. Declaring Mono a bad idea is similar to saying we shouldn't have GJC (GNU's Java implementation).
78 • Yahoo on Lucid (by Michael Raugh on 2010-01-27 20:47:50 GMT from United States)
It's a non-issue to a lot of people, definitely, Jesse. Myself, I'm a little disturbed to see Canonical climbing into bed with Microsoft -- or, if you prefer, with Yahoo, who is already in bed with Microsoft -- because *everybody* who makes a deal with Redmond eventually gets damaged by it. It's not going to stop me from using future versions of Ubuntu, but it shakes my faith in Canonical's judgment severely.
-MR
79 • Ignore mono? (by RollMeAway at 2010-01-27 21:08:36 GMT from United States)
Miguel de Icaza, Microsoft MVP:
http://ulyssesonline.com/2010/01/15/ubuntu-manual-project/
Why does ms think so highly of the promoter of mono on linux?
ms empty promise:
http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono
After mono is fully entrenched into linux,
ms will take down the 'promise' web page,
and turn loose the lawyers.
Nothing legally binding about a promise.
80 • Search engine... (by KevinC at 2010-01-27 21:38:23 GMT from United States)
BTW, it's not C++ that powers .net, but C# (read, C-Sharp). Perhaps, MS is waging a war of attrition here---Mono...the new deal w/ Ubuntu...copyrighting sudo. Who knows? One thing ppl. seem to forget, tho, is that Canonical is a business & the deal was apparently an attempt to make money...as is the new reports that Windows softs will be offered for sale via the Software Center (which was originally to be named the Software Store, iirc) with a runtime version of Wine binaries.
In all fairness, tho, I posted this link awhile back:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/11/dotzler_on_schmidtt/
Asa Doltzer, the co-founder of Firefox is recommending that Firefox change the default search engine from Google to Bing. He states that MS/ Bing's privacy policies are stronger than Google's...this in lieu of Eric Schmidt's (Google's CEO) iffy statements regarding privacy, namely:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
And...
"If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
81 • Re: #76 MS vs. Linux (by sly on 2010-01-27 22:46:14 GMT from United States)
Based on what I've read, MS is may also be contributing code to the Linux kernel. If that is true, it's like the ultimate trojan horse.
82 • Lubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 (by Henning Melgaard on 2010-01-27 23:21:37 GMT from Denmark)
Today I have been reading about Lubuntu 10.04 alpha 2, i Distrowatch Weekly.
Earlier I have been ranting and complaining about the later versions of Ubuntu (9.10 and the alpha versions of 10.04)
9.10 performs pretty bad with my Integrated Intel Graphic Card 82865G, and so far 10.04 simply will not boot. I get as far as choosing the language I want to use and "Try Ubuntu without installing". And then no more.
So, I booted up on a live cd with Lubuntu 10.04 alpha2. I could allready feel
"a laugh and a half" was on its way expecting another failure. And then the damn thing booted without any problems. It even, by defalut, came up with a nice screen resolution: 1152x864......
Just to make sure that it is not me who's going crazy, I downloaded Ubuntu 10.04 alpha2 again, burned the iso to the very same disk that I had just put Lubuntu on (it's a rewritable), put this very same disk into the same drive on the same computer and hit Restart......NOPE Ubuntu 10.04 alpha2 will not boot on my hardware - but Lubuntu 10.04 alpha2 does without any problems..................?................
If anyone has any idea why it would be more than welcome....
83 • Another stellar review of Mint 8... (by KevinC at 2010-01-27 23:28:08 GMT from United States)
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-mint-helena.html
Nothing but praise....and Dedimedo was far from praising Karmic (which, has worked well for me, tho). He ranks Mint 8, along with OpenSUSE 11 Gnome, as the top Linux distro. I've been playing with Mint as of late (as well as Omega Fedora 12 remix) and the KDE Mint 8 RC1...I must admit, Mint is fairly impressive. I have installed as dual boot with Karmic....and lately have been booting into Mint more. Also, I have like 8 computers in all at my house & having all the multimedia stuff ready to roll is a time-saver with multiple installs. Apparently, the Fluxbox edition of Mint is to return this go-around, as well. Might be a decent option for my netbook.
84 • Landor (by anticapitalista on 2010-01-28 01:18:47 GMT from Greece)
Landor, I'm still waiting for the email :) (I mean that positively).
About, what is or what is not a distro. I agree with Eddie Wilson (et al).
Celebrate the difference (and in its initial French, my French is appalling, sorry)
and who cares if someone wants to make available a 'slightly' different version of a mainstream distro. Good on them. Like it or leave it.
Vive le difference (is that almost French?)
85 • Variety is the spice .... (by RollMeAway at 2010-01-28 04:37:29 GMT from United States)
If any two people that read these pages were to install the same distro, (any distro)
I venture to say, in a weeks time, the two desktops will look nothing alike.
We all have our preferences for looks, applications etc.
That is why I find it useful and interesting to look at all the variations of the different releases.
Anyone feeling compelled to offer a variation on any operating system will undoubtedly
have tweaked it in some way, that I may not have thought of.
For this reason I try most all desktop systems listed on DW, especially any live version.
86 • Ubuntu respins: legit distros or waste of time? or a blessing? (by PFYearwood on 2010-01-28 06:03:16 GMT from United States)
I tried several different distros in my early attempts to switch from Windows to Linux. Mandrake/Mandriva. Fedora. and others. I tried Debian. I found that for me, Ubuntu was the right distro. I have tried, and rejected Kubuntu and Xubuntu. No particular reason. Just never felt right to me.
I came across Beatrix, later called Debris, as a nice small distro based on Ubuntu. It went inactive for awhile around U7.04. Now, it is back on the ball. Nice little distro. But, by the time I added back in the apps I wanted, it was back to full size Ubuntu. (It would be a good base system for someone who wants to use VM or VBox) I started using Mint. It added functionality that I never could get right with Ubuntu. I am also using Ultimate Edition 2.5. WOW! What a mass of software. 3.0Gig with the 64 bit version. Talk about usability.
I have Mint 8 on my 12 y/o Compaq PII 400 Mhz with 312 Meg RAM and it works better than my HDD that has XP Pro. I have also used Vector Linux on it and it worked well. It just did not have the software available that .deb and Ubuntu has. Also, it does not have liveCD in the most recent release. Here is why I need to use liveCD.
My main, and more modern, system, a Shuttle with Celeron 430 with 1 Gig, lost its IDE hard drive/ CD drive controller. Had I been a Windows only user, I would have to get a new motherboard, that ,right now, I cannot afford. So, I popped a liveCD into my external CD/DVD drive and the system was back online.
I first used Ultimate 2.3. It did all I wanted and my wife could watch Youtube. Mint 7, Gloria, also worked. Both had Flash preinstalled. You need Flash for Youtube. I got Mint 8, Helena, but it would not work. It did not have Flash on the CD. Ubuntu never has Flash in the distro CD, so that was out. And, I wanted to use the most recent version, for security reasons. It is now running Ultimate Edition 2.5
My Shuttle runs reasonably well for a live DVD based system. Using a Ubuntu respin has kept my system running. I have not yet had to lay out scarce cash to get my computer back to specs. I do take it down at times to try out a new liveCD. It has run 4d 10h as of now without problems. All because of a Ubuntu respin. Oh, the IDE controller went out before Christmas. Between the antique Compaq and the live DVD of the Ubuntu respin, I have not been offline or without a computer.
So, I do believe there is a good reason to have all those Ubuntu and other respins, since Vector is a child of Slackware. Try using the Distrowatch search utility and see how many derivatives there are of each main distro . Nice lesson.
I know there are other live CD distros but the Ubuntu family was what I had on hand. I used what works for me.
Paul
87 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-28 09:17:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
More on the Yahoo vs Google issue, but only for those not bored witless already, however there are some interesting comments following the article:
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2010/01/is-ubuntu-cheating-mozilla-wit.html
Ref #86.
Seems like Paul finds respins an invaluable tool, if only to maintain family harmony...I bet very few of us EVER anticipated that angle, lol.
88 • RE: 80, 87 *Thanks For The Correction, Also Unlimited Joy* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-28 13:26:30 GMT from United States)
@RollMeAway: Everybody has lawyers. That's part of the game. People should not automatically think that MS is always correct and that they are always going to prevail. That's simply not the case. Don't empower them.
@KevinC: Thanks for the correction with C#. That's not the first time I've done that.
@ forest: Talking about harmony, the open source community has to be the happiest bunch of computer users in the world. Think about it. No one is forced to use any software they don't want to and also the choices are unlimited. All it takes is a keystroke or mouse click and a user can have anything they want. You just can't get any better then that.
89 • No subject (by KevinC at 2010-01-28 14:02:51 GMT from United States)
Well, for whoever took the time to read Dedimedo's review of Mint, I think that pretty much answers the question of Mint's differences (e.g., Mint offered the legacy driver for his IBM T42's ATI FireGL, whereas Karmic did not---he even has an article r/t all the hoops one has to jump thru to get the deprecated drivers to work with Karmic, due to the updated xorg). IMHO, finding and installing an older, no-longer-supported driver is value-added, which goes way above and beyond just codecs and a fancy theme. Also, he stated Samba sharing worked out of the box, as well as sound (which didn't, with his older hardware and Karmic). In fine, I would opine that is the difference Mint offers---which can be summed up in 2 words: polish and execution. Both of which add up to a much better out-of-the-box experience. Mint 8 has won me over (egads, I'm bordering on fanboyism here). Next up, in my odyssey to find the right distro for my stubborn netbook (eee 1200HA), Mint 8 and AntiX. Karmic ran fine on it, but, for once w/ Ubuntu, I couldn't get the fonts as I liked. It's just this 10.1" lcd--even Windows fonts are not that great & fonts are one thing that MS has always done well, IMO.
Speaking of MS, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of Mono. If they backed out on their promise they would lose any credibility at all within the tech community. I don't see that happening. As a matter of fact, MS has been rather docile, in terms of lawsuits in recent times. I opine they've been somewhat neutered with all the anti-trust actions/ lawsuits pointed their direction. Also, I think with desktop market share being what it is, MS can afford to be magnanimous (i.e, with the relative success of Win7 and, in general, positive reviews of said product). However, if Linux started to make inroads into their marketshare---well then all bets could be off.
Also, still interested to see DW's take on Mint 8---a review is still forthcoming??? And in case you missed, I repeat, for KDE 4 fans, the Mint 8 edition of KDE is now available (RC1):
http://www.linuxmint.com/download_ce.php
90 • MS contributions and search (by Michael Raugh on 2010-01-28 14:21:21 GMT from United States)
@81: As always, sly, MS believes in promoting open source in ways that help to sell more Windows licenses. The code MS contributed to the kernel to helps the Linux kernel work better under their HyperV hypervisor.
@87: Interesting link, thanks. I don't think I'll jump on the "Mozilla is getting screwed" bandwagon, but I tend to agree that this is Microsoft buying marketshare for Bing any way they can. They've also been trying to cut deals with major news organizations to have Bing be the only search engine allowed to index their articles. After all, Bing is not doing too well competing on the technology so it's clearly time to fall back on the usual tactics.
And in an amusing Pollyanna moment, someone remarked to me in an email that I should look at the Canonical thing as "Microsoft is going to pay people to use Ubuntu." Sure.
-MR
91 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-28 14:52:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #88
See #72 first para, lol.
(T-i-c warning for the following btw...)
Actually I would suggest Mac users are probably the happiest, they are obviously not short of a bob or two (bob, for the uninitiated = cash, dosh, wonga, folding)...but arguably a bit short on common sense.
Ergo they are very happy to buy into S.Jobs utopian vision of nice trendy gadgets and consequent associated "lifestyle". Lump for lump Mac stuff might be 3 times the price of an "equivalent" PC or lappy, yet the disciples of MAC are HAPPY to cough up...nobody has to force them, to echo your remark.
In today's UK's DT (broadsheet...allegedly highbrowish) we read that Steve has just brought to market his latest must have...a tablet. An absolute bargain at ONLY just over £500 (HUNDRED) which gets you a stonking great 64GB (yes you did read that correctly) of SSD storage.
And you can SURF the net, read net books and, and, and...everything with it.
We read from some of the really clued up hacks and journos...who of course KNOW these things, that this NEW technology could sound the death knell for netbooks...despite it not even having a lid...or proper keyboard.
Crikey, I never realised it might be the "death knell" thing...again...now I'm going to worry that PCs are going to be the death knell of mainframes...
So, this is my argument that proves, beyond any possible shadow of doubt whatsoever, Mac users are the happiest folk in computerdom.
Turning to happy open source users, nah, we argue all the time...
92 • RE: 91 (by KevinC at 2010-01-28 15:49:55 GMT from United States)
Kinda off-topic, however, watched a kinda nifty you tube vid earlier about how MS stole Apple's thunder (it's a several part deal):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjVidOFqBo
Also, in related links (off to the side) was a Steve Jobs/ Bill Gates interview.
BTW, I don't think the IPad will be that revolutionary...looks like a blown up ITouch w/ a name that sounds more along the lines of a feminine hygiene product. From what I've seen this device is like a "meh" moment....it's not like MS hasn't been in this tablet PC game (Tablet XP has been around for yrs. with only a lukewarm response at best). Functionality-wise, it's like a compromise between the SmartPhone and Netbook, w/ the disadvantage of size vs. the former and the lack of power vs. the latter. I'm sure the Mac fanboys will love it, but I don't foresee this as being anything other than a niche product.
93 • RE:91, *That Explaines It* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-28 15:56:02 GMT from United States)
I've often wondered why Apple users are so bubbly (with a strange stare). I know now. "Ignorance is Bliss".
We may argue all the time but its only about good stuff.
94 • RE: post 89 Mint (by Jesse on 2010-01-28 15:57:48 GMT from Canada)
Kevin, I may look at Mint when the new KDE edition hits its final release. Right now there are a few other things I'm interested in test driving first.
Actually, if anyone has a distro/OS they want me to review, don't be shy, feel free to e-mail me about it. If it sounds interesting or different I'm likely to give it a try.
95 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-28 16:34:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re #94.
Jesse, expanding on your theme apropos testing distros by request/to order sort of thing...and in order to be seen as even handed, perhaps you might consider testing a purely open source distro one week say, and then a distro along the lines of Mint with a hint of "commercial" code the next.
It goes without saying you could not be expected to keep this up week after week after week.
Might I further suggest you allot a bit less time/copy describing the install (to hard drive), as in don't bother and run as live. This would allow you more time to "play" with the actual apps therein.
It might also get round, hopefully, some of the "different platform" probs encountered in past reviews.
Were you then to have a set of "standard tests" you could apply, viz, wifi, media playback, ease of connecting to a printer/scanner/camera/wotever etc, etc.
This is a sort of "level playing field" approach, which might, rpt might, satisfy the majority of readers.
96 • Jessie's Review of Mint (by sly on 2010-01-28 16:48:41 GMT from United States)
Please don't wait too long. I don't want to see the release get 'stale' before the review is undertaken. It wouldn't look good to have a newer version in the late stages of dev. when performing a review....and that applies to any distro.
97 • Reviews (by Jesse on 2010-01-28 17:32:27 GMT from Canada)
Sly, the thing is, Mint 8 KDE isn't even out yet. Though, as you point out, their next version of Mint is already well in progress. It looks like the Mint community is doing fast, staggered releases. Taking this into consideration, I may hold off doing a review until Mint 9 comes out, to make sure it's still a fresh product. It would be nice if they put out each edition around the same time.
Forest, you make some good suggestions. Did you have a "pure" free/open source distro in mind? There are only about eight or nine of them, so it's a short list to select from. Actually, the Mint project has an edition that's almost purely FOSS for people who like their style, but not the non-free apps. As for installs, I generally spend a week with each distro and installation takes about twenty minutes -- not a lot of time. It also tests the ease of install, and the performance when run from a disk. I think both of those are important.
98 • Mint review... (by KevinC at 2010-01-28 19:02:15 GMT from United States)
Yeah, the KDE version is RC1 currently...tho the Mint folks are usually pretty quick from RC to release---also there is supposed to be a 64-bit KDE version w/ Mint 8 (& don't forget the return of Fluxbox Mint, which should be interesting). In all honesty, a review of Mint should be fairly easy, as the install is dead simple & there's little to do once the install is done, other than tweakage to particular taste (e.g, I prefer the panel on top, ala Ubuntu w/ a dock for oft-used proggies on bottom---I've played w/ Awn, Cairo & Docky). Cairo, in Open-GL mode gets the nod for shear eye-candy effects; Avant (Awn) is probably more stable and practical; Docky is okay as well--tho, I haven't used as much. And you're right, I think the universal Mint edition is Mint sans the non-free stuff & with all the language packs. As an aside, the Omega Fedora 12 respin is rather nice...other than the huge PITA of getting the proprietary NVidia drivers working...i.e, blacklisting the Nouveau driver in grub per a kernel parameter. Also, booted the live-CD of the Fedora Community Remix...it was huge, an everything and the kitchen sink DVD (ala Ultimate Ubuntu). Mint 8 KDE is kinda like this as well...the sheer # of installed apps is daunting, tho, it is a DVD.
99 • RE: 98 *New Release for AWM* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-28 19:49:51 GMT from United States)
KevinC I do believe that there is a new release for AWN but I'm not sure what article I saw it in. The article even showed screen shots using new themes. It looked really nice. I just can't remember where I saw it. If anybody else knows tell us please.
Eddie
I did do a Google search and had no luck. I should have used Yahoo! ;)
100 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-28 20:17:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #97
Jesse, no I don't have any "pure" distros in mind at all. If anything I lean the other way and have no ethical dilemmas about software per se.
I own to being smitten with Ubuntu xx or Mint xx, for the very simple reason they are simple to install, boot and run...on my kit. They answer my immediate needs of being able to "just work".
I do delve into the hobbyist regions from time to time and have tried dozens of distros (and different versions thereof). Those distros I have tried have been, sometimes, the result of a review either from yourself or CM.
Sometimes I have just looked at the wind up at the end of the editorial of DWW, seen a distro I liked the look of and had a bash at it...very scientific as you can see, lol.
101 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-28 21:00:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
More chuckles on the iPad from:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/15487/anything_the_ipad_can_do_linux_can_do_better
The copy is blah, blah but the last comment in the "forum" after might explain everything...it seems that not only are Mac folk happy...they are happy 'cos they are "cool".
Just to stay on topic there are plenty of references to GNULinux in the copy with veiled reference to an ipod beater, albeit vague.
102 • #97 DW's Delay of Review of Mint (by sly at 2010-01-28 21:47:08 GMT from United States)
I've look at the Mint 8 KDE RC briefly and was a tad underwhelmed when I compared it to the main or Gnome Edition, and, if I were comparing apples to apples, at first glance, I like OpenSuse's 11.2 KDE version a little better.
I didn't mean to influence you in a negative way (delaying the review). I was simply 'tapping my foot' impatiently in anticipation of the review of the main (Gnome) edition.
103 • No subject (by KevinC at 2010-01-28 22:17:25 GMT from United States)
I've only use the KDE Mint a bit....just an install, tweaking and a little browsing. It seemed fine to me, tho I'm not a huge KDE 4 fan. My 1st impression of Linux was like Fedora Core 2 with Gnome, many yrs. ago. And somehow I always have been more comfortable w/ Gnome. I will admit KDE 3.5 was pretty darn good---and I'm kinda warming to KDE 4. Some of it still seems to get in my way tho. Also, I installed Gnome-Shell in Karmic---did not care for that much @ all. If that is the future of Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 is not forked---well I may be a KDE 4 advocate. I like OpenSUSE's KDE as well (& the OpenSUSE Gnome is nice as well). However, I had some stability issues w/ it. The weekend before XMas I had some family over for a dinner & I was showing my Linux install off to some relatives that are more tech-savvy than your average Joe. I was playing music with Amarok and it hard-locked my machine several times. Not the best advert to try to get ppl. to use Linux...anyway, in anger, I wiped OpenSUSE and was back to Karmic, at the time.
104 • Re #100: distros that "just work" _ Re #101: happy "cos they are cool" (by Jon Iverson at 2010-01-28 23:18:37 GMT from United States)
Re #100:
Like Forest I find that Ubuntu xx and Mint xx are my two favorite distros, with Mint getting the nod because it installs out of the box with virtually everything I want or need for my personal desktop immediately available. The few extras I remove or install to complete my system are completed in just minutes, which makes me as an end user quite happy. It's been said that Mint is "Ubuntu done right," and that's a statement I and an exponentially increasing number of Mint users agree on.
I've worked with dozens of distros over the years, on assorted laptops and desktops, some high end and some not so high end machines. However since transitioning from Ubuntu to Mint a couple of years ago I've not looked back. Like others I'm sure I sound more than a little like the Mint 'fanboy' I've become, but I make no apology for it. I love Ubuntu for all it offers, and many others as well for the same reason. But for my purposes Mint has taken the best of Ubuntu and polished it in such a way that what's lacking out of the box in the parent distribution becomes immediately available in Mint - all of which makes this user a very happy camper.
Re #101:
Mac folk are happy not only because they've bought into the "cool" factor hype typified in Mac's TV spots, but moreover because they are possessed of an appliance operators mindset by nature rather than that of a true computer lover. That SJ has marketed his buttoned up hermetically sealed operating system and its high $$$ proprietary hardware requirements effectively to such a crowd tells us that the pool of such users is increasing as the world settles more and more for others doing their thinking for them.
And that worries me a bit. I too, as I grow older, find myself more and more inclined to settle for the best available open source offerings, including favorite distros that "just work." No longer desirous of spending time with each and every new offering that comes down the pipe, instead I turn to DW and other sites for insight and information. If something genuinely catches my eye or tweaks my imagination, I may take a look. However for the most part I find myself part of the open source version of the 'it's cool cus it just works' camp, and rather content to leave it that way thank you.
Still I happily admit that the open source journey of discovery is entirely an individual affair - something that each of us work out in our own way, making it one of the many reasons our open source community, big and noisy as it may sometimes be, is so genuinely cool!! ..Mac heads should have it so good!!
105 • No subject (by KevinC at 2010-01-29 00:25:28 GMT from United States)
I find that more and more I enjoy the "just works" distros. I used to get into all the DIY distros....I can recall doing Gentoo and Arch when they 1st came out & at that time they were really quite a task...h**l at that time even getting Fedora or later Ubuntu to work with stuff like Flash and Java was a pain. While I keep telling myself to do an Arch install I just keep putting it off....I know Arch is a good distro (Gentoo/ Funtoo as well) and it's a satisfying journey...
@98: I recall seeing something about a new version of AWN recently as well....can't find it now either. Also, saw some nice themes for Docky at Deviant Art recently....tho I haven't played with Docky as much...I do like Gnome-Do (& yes I know it's an evil MONO app).
106 • Fedora 12 experiences (by zygmunt on 2010-01-29 08:41:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Fedora 12, after a myriad of up to minute updates and bug/security fixes now works for me. Apart from having to specify nomodeset as a kernel parameter for an onboard ATI chipset (known problem) The following following software is usable. Skype, Opera (with flash), DVB-T USB TV under kaffeine, RPMfusion repos have been added. The desktops used have 512MBytes of RAM with shared memory onboard graphics and so I have used the i686 version of Fedora 12 which uses significantly less RAM than the 64 bit version. This choice gives a slower 64bit floating point performance but overall quicker machines on daily task execution. A machine with fancontrol does not cooperate with ACPI nicely (ECS RS485M-M motherboard) and shuts down with false critical Temperature issues when enable_acpi_resources=lax is specified as a kernel parameter. All efforts to resolve this problem have been unsuccessful in the attempt to have a COOL and QUIET machine. The newest version of Skype uses pulse audio and was the most recent software to come into productive use after trying for many months. The Gnome desktop has been used in preference to the yet immature KDE4. With the issues noted Fedora 12 with noted additions offers for ME all the necessary present functionality of a desktop machine. No doubt others will demand social IT, shared video/pictures and potted music which I have not tested.
107 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-29 19:11:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ah, more fan mail.
Just got around to reading this, more for the purists possibly?
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69182.html
108 • RE:107, * What a Bummer* (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-01-29 19:51:44 GMT from United States)
What a piece of junk. The bad thing about it is we have already seen something like this with the gOS system that was offered in Wal-Mart. It was very limited at what it could do. It did give linux a black eye for a time. It wasn't even fully open but then again neither is this pc. Back to the drawing board.
109 • The Review and Evaluation Process (by LLR on 2010-01-29 21:32:25 GMT from Hungary)
Jesse while I really do enjoy your style, I have some reservations on the approach of the reviews. If you allow me, I like to present a few related contemporary issues, and some seemingly forgotten ones.
I believe one does not buy a computer just to please the manufacturer, or install some Linux systems just only further the idea of the developers of the distributions. One should obviously have some ideas of what tasks to perform on it, how to organize and utilize its resources. To find the appropriate distribution, or at least the possible closest to it, one may need to install number of distributions for testing during an extended period of time. This needs some planning, and introduces some restrictions.
Most likely, one wants to control strictly the locations of installations, and under no circumstances should allow to trash any part of the already installed (Windows, BSD and/or Linux) systems and data sets on the hard drive(s). Also, many home computer users get their Internet connections thought the telephone, or cable TV lines. Unfortunately, in this cases, to establish an Internet connection is not necessarily a trivial task. While in some distributions it is really simple, in others it is convoluted, cumbersome or confusing, and there are still such distributions in which it is simply impossible. In the reviews, problem areas occasionally surface mostly connection with wireless connections. It would be really nice if you could use similar conditions for testing your desktop system. Also, Internet connection is far more important than the particular office system provided with the distribution, yet the Office System is an entry in the Feature Table of Distrowatch Distribution Description Tables, and there is no entry for Internet Access at all. Why?!
Feature descriptions, dealing with problem areas are frequently handled without proper reference to specific documentation. Books for home users are practically nonexistent. How many Linux book tells how to switch languages for keyboard entry, to assign ikons to particular programs or frequently needed utilities and locate them on the desktop or put them in the tray. I have not seen a single book that would explain the various Internet access protocols with step-by-step configuration descriptions. Some on-line documentations are loaded with computerese. During the years number of people complained against expressions like "printing to the printer", "configuring the network card". People are interested in configuring the printer to print on paper, and configuring the Internet connections. And maybe networking two or three home machines in the family. So, in addition to plain Internet connection, number of people use a router to share Internet access, or for a hardware firewall. Configuring them in Windows is no issue since the unit comes with Windows software, but it is a really a major stumbling block in Linux. In the comment section, occasionally, number of people argue for using the command line. To do so one also needs up to date reference. Books teaching how Unix was used thirty, or twenty years ago are useless dealing with problems hidden behind nowadays fashionable graphic interfaces.
Therefore, references to specific areas in books or articles were highly desirable.
As time passes, things are changing. We celebrate the new ones, but frequently forget about the older ones. The ultimate motivator of the development of the computer was the ever increasing need for fast calculations. In the early days of the minicomputers, programming and calculations were important, too, but with the passing of time they were devalued to "number crunching", and the developers' interest has gradually diminished, and nowadays programming mostly refers to system programming. Also, in the discussion of office packages the emphases are always on the wordprocessors. Well, I also like to see some words about the programmability of spreadsheets?! In the early nineties Lotus macro programming was the most popular programming language. Does Linux have anything similar to that? Anyway, I feel that a broader spectrum of programming languages should have a more prominent role in evaluating the distribution proved software base.
Finally, there seems to be a major problem with the implementation of software updates. In present practice, corrections and the introduction of new features are not separated. Since new features are the most likely source of contamination, this practice likely results in a never ending self-perpetuating process. Replacing the indiscriminate update scheme would be highly desirable; therefore, efforts in this area should be given higher exposure.
Respectfully LLO
110 • RE:#109 (by jack at 2010-01-29 23:52:47 GMT from Canada)
I second LLR's comments; a;though I am sure he is overly optimistic about more books on linux.
I also feel that reviews should focus on problem areas.
e.g "dual booting". I know that a few years ago there were many posts on many forums by people having problems in this area, but I have recently checked both the Ubuntu forums and the Mepis forums and there are still many problems.
As LLR says, the internet connection is a lot more important than almost any (all?) other apps so a reviewer should definitely evaluate it carefully
111 • Freedoms (by Landor at 2010-01-30 00:33:55 GMT from Canada)
I am in awe of the fact and have been watching off and on for days and not one person here has mentioned the crap that is going on over at sourceforge. It's horrible.
I once stood by Clem from Mint for his beliefs in regard to Iran, not that I agreed with him, but that he made a stand on an issue that meant something to him. I find myself now standing behind Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and any other country that the USA is denying access to sourceforge.
The premise is that they don't want a country they have sanctions against to benefit from open source. When did the USA author these programs? But more to the point, who brings social change? Academics? Learned people? To deny a person growth, to deny a person education, to deny a person the ability to learn freely you deny them the ability to become more. How can stopping them from learning, thus growing, help the world on a whole in any way? How can it bring said country to a point where sanctions won't have to be lifted. It can't, not at all. It hinders it, and shows that even in regard to open source software, something by its very nature is people working together for something better, a country like the USA has agendas that hurt people trying to become more, freely.
I wish every project at sourceforge would leave it in protest.
Oh, and don't reply Forest, I don't want to have to read yet again this week that you still have "difficulty" in understanding.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
112 • #111 (by anticapitalista on 2010-01-30 01:02:46 GMT from Greece)
Thanks for that Landor. I had no idea about what is going on at sourceforge.
A correction though, Clem made a stand in relation to Palestine not Iran.
113 • SourceForge (by Jesse on 2010-01-30 01:47:07 GMT from Canada)
SourceForge is bound by the laws of the country in which they reside. That means they cannot, by law, grant access to their site from some other countries. If they do not follow the laws the USA has put in place, the owners of SourceForge could face fines and jail time. How would moving projects off of SF fix that? It wouldn't. Moving projects to another host (and there aren't many nearly as good as SF) would not help the developers, it would not help SF and it would not help the users. If you think the law is a bad one (as I do) then complain to the American government, the people who made and enforce this idiotic law. Don't punish SF for complying with it.
Besides, where would projects move to? Google is bound by the same laws as SF is. There aren't a lot of hosting options out there with the resources to provide those kinds of services to that many users.
In the mean time, anyone who really wants to access SF from a banned country can do so using tools like tor.
114 • RE: Sorceforge (by KevinC at 2010-01-30 02:36:59 GMT from United States)
You're referring to this, I suppose:
http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/
And I agree that is pretty s****y. Regardless of the leadership of said countries, denying the citizens of these countries access to content is wrong---and I would be willing to bet that many of these citizens probably do not even agree with their leadership which got this collection of countries on the persona non grata list (read G.W.'s Axis of Evil). I was under the impression (from Obama's campaign rhetoric---and I use rhetoric b/c that appears what it is) that we were to begin open and constructive dialog w/ the international community (including Iran & N. Korea) to repair damages done under the Bush administration. Apparently that's all just more empty politicing...as we still seem to be on the same course. And the Patriot Act is still in effect (as my link to Google's privacy policies illustrates w/ Google's CEO stating that Google is circumscribed by the provisos of the Patriot Act and would be required to turn over any information if the U.S. government demanded---and remember that includes information in the cloud as well).
While, I should state that I'm not supporting the stance of Iranian leadership and find Ahmadinejad's anti-semitic/ holocaust-denying statements abhorrent---I'm sure he does not speak for many good ppl. that are citizens of his country. And it's hard to see how an embargo of softs from Sourceforge is going to go about changing the mindsets of the leadership of these countries or how this would be a threat to U.S. security.
Also, Clem's statements were related to Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza & he later posted an apology for some of his heat-of-the moment (and interpreted by many, as rather strong) statements.
115 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-30 04:43:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #111
"Difficulty in understanding" is an understatement.
116 • RE 112 and SourceForge (by Landor on 2010-01-30 04:54:02 GMT from Canada)
Anti, you'll see my e-mail is actually here (hasn't been for a long time..lol) I couldn't find your e-mail anywhere, if you like, feel free and we'll talk about stuff in e-mail. (you're a hard man to get a hold of privately..lol) :)
First, I had Iran on my mind but of course was meaning Israel/Palestine, ty Anti and Kevin.
Ladislav, I'll try not to sway too political here but given the issue it's kind of hard, and this is a very important issue in our community, in direct relation to distributions, of course.
Jesse, two points you're incorrect about:
If people moved from SourceForge they would send a clear sign to the USA they won't stand for Open Source Software being dominated by "any" political agenda. Also, SourceForge themselves could have fought the issue and if they had I'm sure we would have heard of it via blogs and such. Since we did not it can only be assumed there was truly 0 issue with compliance. (more on how they could have at least posed a stand against this in a moment)
The whole Tor issue, I don't find that any kind of solution at all. In that sense it's akin to making good people bad, making them feel dirty. They have to stoop to trickery to obtain something which by it's general definition should already be freely available to them. That's no solution by any meaning of the term.
To how they could have formed a fight/stand against the policy:
Recently (here's the link http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/21/clinton_google/ ) Secretary Hilary Clinton made a speech about Internet Freedoms, countries growing, becoming educated, etc, etc, that in my opinion was just blowing smoke on a topic that obviously obscures the true agendas, proving a definite hypocrisy.
Here's one quote from her and another bit of information regarding policy while dealing with other countries.
"countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century"
"State officials said that internet freedom is now firmly on the agenda when the US is sitting across the table from other nations."
I would personally make a stand on the issue that the USA admonishes countries that take away Basic Internet Freedoms but is doing just that to other countries that need them even more due to forms of repression and the like. I wouldn't just sit idly by and let it happen. I'd also look at hosting offshore. The USA is not the only country with the resources to host such a site as SourceForge, not by far.
One last thing, you have to punish those that willingly comply with a wrong. There's been many atrocities in our history and at least in the last century our world had learned that you just don't point the finger at the person at the top. You have to also take into account those that blindly followed such wrongs, willingly. I'm not saying this is an atrocity on a scale as our world has known at various times, it is a terrible wrong none the less. It's almost equal to (or practically equal to) denying a person the right to read and an education.
What all this shows our community, shows the world, that Open Source Software isn't open. It's governed my a judicial system of any power the minute they choose it to be. The more people like SourceForge comply without a fight, others agree with the reasoning/agenda, the more of a joke the freedoms that such a project as ours tries to invoke become.
How can any Open Source Software project be really taken seriously when access to it be instantly cut-off at the wave of any Government's Magical Wand.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
117 • alpinelinux (by Rod Greenwood on 2010-01-30 10:49:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
I cannot see what the login and password input should be. I burnt the image and tried to get into it but it needs the above. Any suggestions ?
118 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-30 11:21:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
REf #116
This is madness, you state you are supporting nations that support terrorism in turn...and you try to make us believe it all comes down to wanting the planet to know that Open Source Software isn't open.
(Your next post will then try to explain this nonsense away as in "we" did not understand your reasoning...you appear to believe you are the "sage" or is it "guru" of the forum...and we know there's going to be a post about that too, lol.)
You blather on about the US and Basic Internet Freedoms, yet a few months ago you were all for China practicing censorship, via "Green Dam", to "protect" its citizens from "outside influence".
The other countries you support are adept also at limiting their citizens' Basic Freedoms, let alone the internet.
Do you really understand what you are saying, or do you write this rubbish to get attention? Hmm...now let's all have a think about that one...
A huge proportion of your posts are to "correct" someone else. The most recent was in #116, where it seems Jesse is "wrong" on just two points. Said correction amounts to an opinion, followed by another opinion. That in turn is following by what "they" (?) "could" have done.
Your kind of arguments are reminiscent of those employed in the forum in Rome, some two thousand years ago...never mind the truth of the matter, just admire the rhetoric.
119 • On a positive note... (by Elder V. LaCoste at 2010-01-30 12:07:40 GMT from United States)
Not to change the subject but....
I just tried Salix and it is getting my "New Distro of the Year Award". Congratulations guys it is quite an honor(lol yeah whatever)! Special props for this: "Salix is also fully backwards compatible with Slackware, so Slackware users can benefit from Salix repositories, which they can use as an "extra" quality source of software for their favorite distribution." This is what the Linux community is all about. Put this one on your list for small distro that works great on older hardware.
120 • SF and open source (by Jesse at 2010-01-30 13:33:16 GMT from Canada)
Landor, removing projects from Source Forge doesn't send a message to the US government. It sends a message to SF. A message the SF team already agrees with. Removing projects from SF basically punishes people for obeying the laws of their country. (Not to mention it punishes the developers who have to migrate and the users who have to migrate with them.) SF could fold tomorrow and the American government wouldn't care. It's all well and good to ask SF to fight (within the limits of the law) but to get things changed, you have to shoot higher.
By the way, you still haven't mentioned where all those projects might go. That's a lot of data/traffic to deal with.
And if you feel "dirty" using Tor, that's your issue. Some people see it as a useful and legitimate tool to protect and improve their privacy and on-line freedom.
Those things being said, Wikipedia has a comparison of open source projecting hosting sites for people interested in moving to an unrestricted host. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities
121 • ubuntu 9.10 (by ubuntu at 2010-01-30 16:43:05 GMT from Portugal)
Maybe a little beat out of topic, but I couldn't resist.
Early this month the "The Washington Post" presented a review of Ubuntu 9.10.
The article as well as the accompanying comments are very positive about Ubuntu.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/01/ubuntu_910_review.html
122 • Response to 33 (by Anonymous at 2010-01-30 20:57:57 GMT from Brazil)
> "Hymera buggy as hell"
It's based on Ubuntu... Did you want perfection in Debian UNSTABLE?
123 • Forest/Jesse (by Landor at 2010-01-31 03:35:09 GMT from Canada)
Forest, I completely agree with you about not being able to understand anything, or close to anything that I write here. It's quite obvious that you and Jesse both suffer from this affliction. I don't believe I am at fault here at all. Let me give you a clear example that seems to be a weekly ritual for you and as of late has plagued Jesse, as well.
I made the comment: "At least with OSS/FOSS we're aware of what's in the code, and you can bet someone in the community will look for anything nasty in almost every piece of code.", that clearly states "someone in the community. I don't know if you understand what community means, though I figure it's obvious that it means the OSS/FOSS community since the comment was in relation to it.
You then responded, which I honestly did my best to ignore with the absurd notion that I was talking about a housewife in Turkey with this comment: "I can hardly believe my eyes..."At least with OSS/FOSS we're aware...piece of code.
So, nice, ordinary Mrs Turkish Lady Housewife in Ankara, or Istanbul, knows exactly what is going on in Pardus does she?". How you came up with something so ludicrous is beyond me, but that is the norm for you.
Then in a comment replying to Jesse in regard to SourceForge I posted: "The whole Tor issue, I don't find that any kind of solution at all. In that sense it's akin to making good people bad, making them feel dirty. They have to stoop to trickery to obtain something which by it's general definition should already be freely available to them. That's no solution by any meaning of the term". Jesse took that as I was saying I felt dirty for using Tor.
He did such with this comment: "And if you feel "dirty" using Tor, that's your issue. Some people see it as a useful and legitimate tool to protect and improve their privacy and on-line freedom."
Now how in the hell did my comment all of a sudden make me feel dirty using Tor? Is it so hard to fathom or comprehend that learned people, professors, students, the academia, maybe even a judge from said country would feel insulted, sullied, by being forced to use Tor to "sneak around restrictions" (especially a judge let's say). Yet all of a sudden it's "me" feeling dirty.
Now, believe me forest, I won't even try to make an attempt at explaining the differences between the Red Dam issue and SourceForge. You can't even comprehend someone from the community inspecting code. How can I expect you to comprehend that? Seriously.
I think it's best for all parties involved and the betterment of the comments section if at least one of us acts like an adult here and ignores the others posts. I'm going to take that step, please, You, Jesse, do the same. I'll greatly appreciate it.
Ladislav, I'll understand if you delete this post, I hope you don't, as I didn't open this door and I am honestly trying to bring this crap to a conclusion.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
124 • No subject (by forest at 2010-01-31 08:58:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref#123
You are wasting your time, with all this damage limitation stuff, I don't even read it.
125 • Salix, Sourceforge (by Barnabyh at 2010-01-31 12:38:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
Salix is truly a nice OS, tested it recently and it ticks all the boxes for Slackware aficionados who want a more user friendly install to start with.
And, as mentioned in 119 by Elder V, a top approach to co-operation and expandability.
In relation to Sourceforge, without wanting to get too political on this site, but this is a good example on how real world politics influence and misuse technology, and effect us all day to day like it or not. Another example of the typical heavy-handed hit all around approach of the US as we have come to know and love it (slight sarcasm here). Anybody who values their freedom need to move their servers and project HQ's to outside the US if they aren't already.
126 • Using Tor to access Sourceforge from restricted/ barred countries (by Barnabyh at 2010-01-31 13:14:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'll have to agree with Landor here. Although it's an option, nobody should be forced to go down this route just to get access to what should be freely available to them anyway, as was intended by the various authors when they put their projects out there. Some people working on projects hosted by Sourceforge are now cut off from their own work.
Not everybody will be aware of tunneling and such, but even if they are as we are more likely talking about more technically inclined people here, it's about the principle. This is just another example where a democratically elected government, as we always like to think, is unnecessarily loosing the moral high ground, stooping to the same level as regimes in China and Iran through employing blanket bans and restrictions.
127 • Landor and his complaints (by Anonymous at 2010-01-31 14:27:51 GMT from United States)
Something has happened to Landor. He use to report about stuff he and his son have tried and tested.
Now for the past few weeks its all about FOSS, free this and free that and nothing but complaints.
I thought these comments were about distros and stuff along those lines. What gives?
128 • Tor and politics (by Jesse at 2010-01-31 16:15:29 GMT from Canada)
I agree that Tor isn't a solution, it's a work around. A solution would be to have the restrictions which were forced on SF and Google Code reversed. Until that happens, Tor (and similar technologies) provide a way for people to get their work done. For those who oppose the ban, I recommend contacting your elected government representative (if you're in the USA) or the Office of Foreign Assets Control (if you live elsewhere).
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/contacts.shtml
129 • Priciple/morals/rights and naivety (by Antony at 2010-01-31 17:40:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi,
No person and no country is perfect....but what I think _really_ annoys people (including me), is when a country paints itself whiter-than-white - the sheer hypocrisy .....
Even though I usually find myself unable to side with Landor, I think Landor's 3rd paragraph (111) makes some very valid points.
forest, I have come to regard yours as a voice of reason and the humour was pretty good too. But, in closing post 73 you say:
"I'm all for nationally sponsored distros, but let's not be totally naive...
Personally speaking I'd feel a LOT happier knowing certain people were being tracked, especially when I recall two office blocks being turned into runways...."
I have to say that I think it is pretty naive to think that event was 100% as portrayed.
And, if a whole bunch of wool has been employed, then it is clear that any tracking would not have been able to prevent the outcome.
130 • No subject (by KevinC at 2010-01-31 20:26:16 GMT from United States)
Let's not dance around the topic at hand. The fact is that 911 happened and it changed the world and this country. While all the conspiracy theories are beyond the scope of this forum and that topic could really turn into a flamefest---beyond the human tragedy and loss of life (which I do not mean to downplay at all), another ramification in the aftermath was a watershed event in U.S. history insofar as our freedoms being greatly impinged upon. All in the name of "the war on terror." Whereas many here had hopes that with new administration some of this would change; unfortunately, this hasn't come to pass & with events such as the "underwear bomber," which took place over X-Mas---well, politics being what they are.
Singling out certain countries due to the behavior of the their leadership is lame. We should not equate a nation's citizens with the path their leaders choose---and that includes my country--the United States--as well. Don't make blanket statements that we all feel we're on the moral highground---we have a diverse range of political opinion and discourse here. It should also be noted that no one here voted on the Patriot Act or Homeland Defense---these were executive decisions put forth by our president post-911 (which illustrates my point made above). Another point often missed about the U.S. is when disasters occur internationally we're often the 1st to provide aid. E.g, in the aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia the U.S. provided much relief and the chartable donations from the U.S. towards relief were far and away greater than any other country. Furthermore, after the earthquake in Haiti, Americans stepped up to the plate to donate $'s for relief (& in a very fragile economy where money is tight). So, we're not all down with oppressive big brother mindset & I would be sure that many here disagree with the Sourceforge debacle.
That being said, I don't see any problem with Jesse's suggestion r/t Tor---he's offering a practical solution until when/if the problem is resolved. And taking out S.F. without suggesting a viable replacement solves nothing. It's the classic idealism vs. practicality argument. Jesse merely pointed out a workaround and suggested a stopgap solution, while agreeing with the original premise. And what should Sourceforge do---stand on their ideals and be shut down, fined and, perhaps, face prison time??? Being they are providing a service---for free, mind you---I can't see S.F. having a huge allotment in their budget for legal fees to challenge the U.S. government.
With all that being said, I don't see where anyone really disagreed about these restrictions being in place---just the means to whereby we can change the situation. I for one, will contact my congressmen/ women & the White House. The problem here, tho, it seems is once laws are put in effect they seem to take on a life of their own and are never repealed. But one can only make use of the tools at hand. ;>)
131 • Re: 129 (by jake at 2010-01-31 20:33:08 GMT from United States)
Antony, which "certain people" are you talking about? How do you find them, without micromanaging the entire population?
Do you really think that something like Oklahoma can't happen today? One of the perils of living in a free society is that occasionally a nutter slips thru' the cracks ... in Oklahoma's case, it was a good Roman Catholic, Republican, US Army decorated, Gulf War veteran perpetrator. Something to think about.
I don't like using it too often, lest the message become diluted, but seeing as nobody has used it in this thread yet ... It was Ben Franklin who said "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Roll on Monday and a whole new batch of stuff to comment on ... :-)
132 • 130 (by Barnabyh at 2010-01-31 21:53:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
That's true, we always seem to get more and more legislation instead of improving existing one or occasionally withdrawing something that doesn't make much sense.
In the same way that bills always seem to go up but never go down, but strangely salaries can. It's a funny old world.
Seriously though, SF should move house or shut down if they can't deliver any more what they are for. Bad contingency planning. They must have seen this coming and should have at least had a mirror outside the US which they could have switched to now permanently, sticking up two fingers, together with a new legal address.
Unless they insist they want to be an American company or whatever only, in which case they can't deliver and should just shut down. I'm sure they'll find something else to do.
One guy on the comments page on SF said he's got a wife and kid to feed and needs the money. Well, he's not working any ordinary job, and there are standards to uphold here. In Iran people currently risk getting killed while demonstrating and some have been executed standing up for their rights. I bet some of them had young children too.
133 • Re 130 & 131 (by Antony at 2010-01-31 23:23:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
"We should not equate a nation's citizens with the path their leaders choose"
Kevin,
Apologies. It was not my intention, in use of 'a country', to imply that each of its citizens are in are in accord with the leadership.
Jake,
Ahh....you attributed the quote in my post (129) to me. That quote was from forest's (73) post.
Number of Comments: 133
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| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
HispaFuentes Linux
HispaFuentes was a Red Hat-based Linux Distribution developed in Madrid, Spain.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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