 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 344, 8 March 2010 |
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Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It is always nice to have a choice of operating systems to run on our desktops. The PC-BSD project has been doing marvels with FreeBSD - in the project's latest release, version 8.0, the developers have turned the predominantly server operating system into an amazingly easy-to-use desktop system that anybody can install and use. Read our first-look review to find out more. In the news section, Canonical updates Ubuntu's desktop theme, KNOPPIX releases a new version of the popular live CD, openSUSE adds the LXDE desktop to the list of options on its install media, and a project called multicd.sh delivers a script that combines several CD images into one bootable CD or DVD with a single command. Also in this issue, links to interviews with Ubuntu's Melissa Draper and KNOPPIX's Klaus Knopper, some speculation on the possible release date of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and a bunch of useful shell scripts for a variety of common tasks. All this and more in this issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!
Content:
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (46MB) and MP3 (47MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Taking a look at PC-BSD 8.0
 Toward the end of 2009 I took FreeBSD 8.0 for a test drive on an old PC. The experiment went so well that I was immediately looking forward to trying out PC-BSD, a desktop variant of the popular FreeBSD operating system. Unfortunately for me, the new version of PC-BSD wasn't to arrive for several weeks. Like a penniless child with his nose pressed up against the window of a candy store, I went over to the project's website.
The PC-BSD site maintains a very similar look and feel to its FreeBSD counterpart. That is to say, it's well crafted, easy to read, painless to navigate and filled with lots of useful information. The installation documentation especially is a well-done piece of work. Open source projects, and their developers, often take flak for putting so little effort into the user manual. This is not the case with PC-BSD. While browsing, I read the teaser for the upcoming release - and good things were planned. New features include better ZFS support, a live DVD, improvements to the package updating system, the ability to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit system and better binary support for Linux programs.
It felt like a long wait, but in February the PC-BSD team released their latest offering, version 8.0, and I downloaded their live DVD. It's a hefty image, weighing in at just over 3 GB. There's also a USB image file for people who like to carry their operating system in their pocket. For my PC-BSD test drive I used a desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM), my HP notebook (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM) and a virtual environment, provided by VirtualBox.
Installation
I popped the DVD into my desktop machine first and was presented with a boot screen very similar to the text-based boot screen which comes with FreeBSD. The menu allows the user to boot into a live environment, start the installer or try various safe modes. I chose the live environment and, a minute later, was presented with a beautiful KDE 4 desktop. If you've used KDE recently on Linux, the desktop will seem familiar. It has the same taskbar and the same cashew in the corner. There are a few icons on the desktop offering the user help and access to a graphical installer. The application menu is nicely filled out, mostly with KDE programs which I'll cover later. The performance from the live DVD is very good, not quite on par with a mini-Linux distro live CD, but better than most full-sized distributions I've tried on the same hardware.
The installer can be kicked off from the desktop or from the boot menu. In either case, the graphical install process leads us through the usual steps. First, the user is asked to select their preferred language and keyboard layout. Then we have the option of performing a fresh install, upgrading a previous install or restoring from a backup. As this was my first PC-BSD experience, I had to go with a fresh install. The installer also allows the user to either install PC-BSD or the base FreeBSD 8.0 system. This strikes me as a great way to allow people unfamiliar, or uncomfortable, with the FreeBSD text installer to get a server up and running. The next step is disk partitioning and I think PC-BSD may have the most friendly disk partitioning tool I've seen in an installer. One can let the installer decide what to do, perform all partitioning manually, or ask the installer for a suggested layout and then fine-tune the result.
Partitions can be formatted as UFS, UFS-J, UFS-S or ZFS and it's easy to configure mount points. Partitions can be encrypted by simply clicking the proper checkbox. Partition sizes can be adjusted by either typing in the desired allocation or dragging a slide bar, which gives a good graphical representation of what's going on. The next step in the install process is setting a root password and creating a regular user account. The installer actually allows multiple regular accounts to be created at this point and, optionally, one user can be selected to automatically login at boot time. The last two steps are to pick a time zone and then select which optional packages should be installed. With my additional software checked, the installer went to work formatting the drive and copying files. The entire process took about twenty minutes on my machines.
PC-BSD 8.0 - the system installer
(full image size: 44kB, screen resolution 804x632 pixels)
I have to say that PC-BSD probably has the best operating system installer I have yet used. It's beautifully laid out, it has helpful hints and sane defaults all the way through. A novice user could almost click "Next" eight times and have a working system. But, at the same time, almost every page has the option to go deeper, to override the defaults or to pick advanced settings. It's a great, intuitive piece of software and I hope Linux developers take the time to study how the PC-BSD project has approached installation.
Hardware support and software selection
After installing PC-BSD, I poked at my hardware to see what would work and I think drivers are what will make or break the experience for most people. On the desktop machine, my NVIDIA video card worked flawlessly, sound was configured and worked without any issues and my network connection was enabled automatically. My notebook was another matter. When running on my HP machine, the live DVD took a few extra minutes to get to a desktop. Once there, video and sound again worked without a glitch and my network connection was discovered. However, my Intel wireless card was not detected and my Novatel mobile modem was not picked up. When working with the notebook I found I was unable to get the machine to suspend or hibernate. For the most part USB devices, such as cameras or Flash drives, worked, though I found one Flash drive I couldn't write to that works properly with other operating systems. When running PC-BSD in VirtualBox I found performance held steady when browsing the web and editing documents with 512 MB of memory. Below that point, performance gradually dropped off.
The live DVD contains a wide range of software, much of it associated with the KDE desktop. There is a suite of fun, educational programs and a good collection of small games. There are applications for listening to music, playing CDs and watching videos. We also find the usual collection of programs, such as an archive manager, text editor and calculator. The Office section is a bit light, featuring an organizer, address book and document viewer. There's a small development section with tools for programmers. The Internet category features KTorrent, a download manager, instant messaging clients and the Konqueror web browser. The menu contains a few graphic manipulation tools, including applications for grabbing screen shots and photo managing. Last, but not least, there are tools for handling Samba shares and managing user accounts. The control centre is the standard KDE System Settings console and should be familiar to anyone who has used the KDE 4 desktop. From there the user can adjust the look and feel of the system, manage printers and configure desktop services.
PC-BSD 8.0 - finding help and adjusting settings
(full image size: 218kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
There are some programs which can be installed from the DVD which are not included in the live system. These include the VLC multimedia player, the GIMP, K3b and OpenOffice.org. PC-BSD 8 also comes equipped with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for people who want to build their own software. The system includes a wide range of multimedia codecs, allowing users to play MP3s and most video files out of the box. Flash is installed and works automatically when browsing with Firefox.
Security and package management
The PC-BSD project leaves very little to complain about when it comes to security. For instance, the installer allows partitions to be encrypted with virtually no effort from the user. On a default install the only network service running is the secure shell and it blocks root logins. In fact, root is prevented from logging in directly locally too, requiring the administrator to have a regular user account; the root account can be accessed using su. In my mind, this combines the best features of having a root account and the sudo approach used by some Linux distributions. There's an icon in the system tray which notifies the user of any security updates from the project and the whole system sits on FreeBSD's solid base. My only security complaint was that users can see into other users' home directories, including root's directory. Users can lock this down if they wish, but I'd prefer to see more strict permissions set out of the box.
Package management is an area where PC-BSD really shines. Not only does the system come with the command-line tool pkg_add, giving the user access to FreeBSD's massive software collection, it also comes with its own special method for handling software. PC-BSD has a custom package format called Push Button Installer (PBI). These package files are similar to RPM or DEB files in the Linux community, with the important characteristic that they are self-contained. That means PBI files do not have dependencies. Each PBI file installs itself into the /Programs directory, which prevents the /usr sub-directories from becoming cluttered. The self-contained approach also allows third-party developers to package their software and offer it to PC-BSD users without worrying about library version conflicts and other dependency problems.
The PC-BSD package manager is an attractive program with three tabs. The first tab allows users to search the project's repository for software, either by name or by category. Packages in the repository are displayed with their name, a description, a rating and their size. Installing a new package is as simple as clicking on the name of the package and then clicking its download link. The manager's second tab shows packages which have already been installed or are currently being downloaded. Packages can also be removed from the second tab. The final tab displays any updates which are available and allows the user to selectively install those updates. The approach of using self-contained modules is similar to the way Slax and LinuxConsole handle packages, but I find the PC-BSD software manager itself more intuitive to use. Like the system installer, it has a simple interface with the ability to customize settings.
PC-BSD 8.0 - changing update settings
(full image size: 271kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Though the system installer just supports UFS and ZFS, the PC-BSD OS can handle a wider variety of file systems. The live DVD was able to mount my Linux partitions (ext3) and manipulate files. Support for reading from NTFS partitions is also included, though I haven't had the opportunity to test the feature. This is good news to anyone interested in dual-booting PC-BSD with another operating system. For people migrating to PC-BSD, the underlying OS is binary compatible with most Linux applications. Additionally, WINE is included in the project's repository, allowing new PC-BSD users a smoother transition from Windows.
Conclusions
While on the topic of other operating systems, it's hard for me, as a long-time Linux user, not to constantly compare PC-BSD to the penguin. Usually, these comparisons turn out favourably for PC-BSD. For example, PC-BSD runs faster on my systems than most of the full-sized Linux distributions and it generally used less memory. My notebook has an Intel video card and it's a card that has tripped up some of the more popular distros, but PC-BSD handled it without any problems. Likewise, sound worked on both of my machines without any tweaking, a feat Linux isn't always able to match. Some people might not like the PBI self-contained packaging approach, but the OS supports more traditional forms of package management, ensuring PBI files do not have to be used.
After using PC-BSD for a week, I'm very impressed with the project. With the exception of some of my notebook's hardware, I ran into no serious problems. Fortunately the live DVD makes it easy to test hardware before committing to installation. The installer is a work of art, the package manager is easy to use, even for less experienced users. The desktop is attractive, stable and responsive on my machines. The documentation, which builds on the FreeBSD Handbook, is first class and the system's defaults are reasonable. Having popular codecs and Flash pre-installed is a nice touch and makes PC-BSD ready-to-go straight out of the box. In my opinion, this operating system isn't quite as user-friendly as Mandriva Linux or Linux Mint, but it's not far behind and, on my hardware, it performs faster. In my eyes, PC-BSD is ready for The Desktop.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Ubuntu unveils new desktop theme, KNOPPIX releases 6.3 CeBIT edition, openSUSE adds LXDE desktop to install media, multicd.sh
 The new identity of Ubuntu, together with the upcoming changes in the default desktop design, has dominated the headlines of many Linux web sites throughout the week. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth explained the reasons behind the change in a blog post: "One of the real challenges for us has been to find a branding and design strategy which spans the spectrum of audiences, forums and dialogues that we cover. With Ubuntu, it's my specific dream to find a constructive blend of commercial and community interests, not only for Canonical but for other companies. That has made our design and branding work difficult - the distinctive look of Ubuntu lent itself well to pure community messaging, but it was hard to do a brochure for Canonical data center services for Ubuntu on servers. We have not only Ubuntu, but also Kubuntu and an important range of derivatives that all have a role in our ecosystem."
From the end-user's point of you, the visual changes in the upcoming release of Ubuntu 10.04 (scheduled for the end of April) are perhaps more interesting. Many seem to be in favour of the new, light desktop theme, but others find the possible new arrangement of window controls (the minimise, maximise and close buttons) hard to get used to: "The development version is a wonderful area to try new concepts, and this is something that is being tested. I tried to use this for nearly an hour and found that my habit was too strong, and it's not one that I currently wish to change. I decided to revert it to something I'm used to (the far right). I'm not aware of an easy (graphical) method of doing this, which means that we need to pull out some gconf -foo (hurray)!"
Two more Ubuntu-related links. The first one is for those readers who still have doubts about Ubuntu being the most popular desktop Linux distribution. According to a recent poll conducted by Linux Journal, out of nearly 7,000 readers who cast their votes, 31% claim to be using one of the Ubuntu family members as their primary distribution. Canonical's flagship product is followed by Fedora and openSUSE (10% each), Debian GNU/Linux (9%), Arch Linux (8%), Mandriva Linux and Linux Mint (6% each). The poll is ongoing so the results could look different by the time your read this. The second link is a brief interview with Melissa Draper, an active member of the Ubuntu community and a secretary of Sydney Linux Users Group: "When I decided I wanted to use Linux I asked around. A friend had been using Ubuntu since Warty so I installed Hoary on an old computer. I've tried other distros, and despite using Fedora or CentOS for work, I've been with Ubuntu ever since."
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 KNOPPIX, which started as a revolutionary live CD, might have lost some of its glitter in recent years, but project founder Klaus Knopper continues to build regular releases - now with LXDE as the default desktop. Last week, a brand new version was released at CeBIT 2010: "At this year's CeBIT open source forum, KNOPPIX creator Klaus Knopper announced the release of version 6.3 of his popular live Linux distribution. KNOPPIX is a bootable CD, DVD or USB Flash drive distribution of Linux, incorporating automatic hardware detection. It can be used to demo Linux, as an educational CD, a rescue system, etc. KNOPPIX uses on-the-fly decompression, so it can have up to 2 GB of data and software installed on a distribution CD or up to 10 GB of data on a single-layer DVD." The author promises to have an updated version of this release available for free download at the end of March or in early April. In the meantime, check out this excellent review of KNOPPIX 6.3 (in PDF format), together with a brief interview with Klaus Knopper, as published by Linux Magazine
KNOPPIX 6.3 - released exclusively for Linux Magazine and CeBIT 2010
(full image size: 925kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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 Good news for those who would prefer a lighter openSUSE than the standard KDE or GNOME variety. According to this blog post on LXDE.org, the installation DVD of the just-released openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 3, provides LXDE as an option during system install: "openSUSE 11.3 now allows to install LXDE directly from installation DVD or the net-install CD. I'm sure all of you reading this post want to try it, just click here and watch some pictures. Just today I announced on the opensuse-lxde and opensuse-factory mailing lists that we have finally switched to PCMan File Manager 2. Even if it's still in the alpha release stage, it's already feature-rich and stable enough for daily use. Of course, bugs exist and your reports are welcome, so we can fix them. And more good news - we are working on live CDs. Yes, it's taking a long time, but now we should be able to provide you with better ISO images in a shorter time since we have moved from SUSE Studio to the OBS Kiwi system. Preliminary images can be downloaded from here." The third milestone of openSUSE 11.3 is now available for download from the distribution's mirrors.
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Have you ever thought of building a multi-boot CD or DVD image that would boot several distributions depending on your choice at boot time? If so, take a look at multicd.sh. This project provides a script that will generate a new ISO image - all you need to do is to place it in the same directory as your distro images and run the script. From the project's web site: "multicd.sh is a shell script designed to build a multi-boot CD image containing many different Linux distributions and/or utilities. The advantages to making a CD with this script are: you don't need to burn multiple CDs for small distributions; if you already have the ISO images, it is not necessary to download them again; when a new version of one of the distributions is released, you can simply download the new version and run the script again to build a new multi-boot image." All the major distributions are supported, along with many popular utility live CDs and some lesser-known distros.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, command line tricks
Tired-of-waiting asks: When is RHEL 6 coming out? Isn't it long overdue?
DistroWatch answers: I think we'll see a beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 in June 2010 with a final release a few months later.
Perhaps some reasons are in order. I don't have a crystal ball or any inside information. All I have is guesswork. And my guesses aren't always accurate. For example, two years ago I predicted (along with some other eager people) we'd see RHEL 6 shortly after the release of Fedora 9 in 2008. At the time it seemed Red Hat was timing its Enterprise releases to match every third Fedora release. If we look at Red Hat Linux 9 as being Fedora Core 0, the schedule looked like this:
- FC 0 -> RHEL 3
- FC 3 -> RHEL 4
- FC 6 -> RHEL 5
It starts to look like a simple pattern matching test, doesn't it? Obviously, following the pattern, we would expect Fedora 9 to herald in RHEL 6. But it didn't. Instead of getting version 6, we got a series of 5.x releases. Which is all well and good, but it doesn't get the blood pumping. So what happened? I think Fedora 9 had more issues than a prairie farm has gopher holes and Red Hat wisely decided to wait until Fedora stabilized. Their Enterprise Linux 5 series was doing the job and there wasn't any need to rush. Since then, we've seen a steady improvement in the stability and polish of the Fedora releases and I suspect RHEL 6 will be based either on Fedora 12 or 13, the latter comes out in May. Red Hat has a summit coming up in June and that strikes me as being a good time to demo a RHEL 6 beta.
When it does finally arrive, I hope someone at Red Hat sends me a copy, because I'd love to test drive it. Their work on virtualisation is especially interesting to me.
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Commanding-from-the-line asks: Could you show us some useful command line magic?
DistroWatch answers: When I was in college and was learning about the power of the UNIX command line, I was both fascinated and regularly frustrated. The many different shells, short command names and often cryptic options can be a tough cookie for newcomers to crack. But there are an amazing amount of things you can do and I'll share a few tricks with you that I've found useful from time to time.
This first example makes use of four different commands to find out how much time a user has been spending logged in to the desktop. With a little modification, this command can be used to show how much time you spent logged in during one month. Or you could change it a little to show how much time a user was logged into all terminals and remote sessions combined. Login information can be accessed with the "last" command. We can then filter information from last using "grep" -- in this case we're looking for logins by a person called "joe". The second grep command further filters our data down to just login sessions to terminal tty7, which is generally the desktop. The "cut" command then trims away all the data we don't need, focusing on the time field. On my machine, time is displayed in columns 67 through to 71. The heavy lifter on the end, "awk", looks at each line of data and keeps a running tally of the time our user "joe" spent logged in. When all the data are processed, awk displays the total time. Warning: if you play World of Warcraft, you probably don't want to actually see the total.
last | grep joe | grep tty7 | cut -b 67-71 | awk -F : 'BEGIN{hours=0;minutes=0}; {hours+=$1; minutes+=$2}; END{hours+=minutes/60; minutes=minutes%60; printf("%d:%d\n", hours, minutes)}'
Our second example is a script written specifically for the T C shell (tcsh). It uses the "find" command, along with "awk", to find out how much disk space each user account is taking up. The find command looks through each user's directory and gives us the size of every file it locates. That information is then passed to the awk command, which displays a total for the user. You can put the following text in a file and run it to see the script in action.
#!/bin/tcsh
foreach currentdir (`ls /home`)
echo -n $currentdir
find /home/$currentdir -printf %s\\n | awk 'BEGIN{total=0}; {total+=$1}; END{printf(" %d\n", total)}'
end
If you'd like to see the output sorted, based on which users are taking up the most disk space, you can run the above script and then use the "sort" command to put the worst offenders at the top of the list. For example, if we put the above script in a file called "account_size" we could run
account_size | sort -r +1 -1
The "+1 -1" indicates that the sort command should use the second column as the key field, rather than the left-most column. If we just used sort without the "+1 -1", we'd get output sorted by the username.
A third thing I find handy on a regular basis is getting the system to notify me in some way when a command has finished completion. Let's say I'm installing some software and I want the system to get my attention when the installation is finished. I might run the following command:
sudo apt-get install sopwith ; mplayer a_night_on_bald_mountain.ogg
The above example attempts to install a classic computer game, named Sopwith. The semicolon (;) tells the system to wait until the installation attempt is finished and then runs the next command, which in this case is telling mplayer to play some music. Slight variations can be made so that if the first task is successful, we play one tune and if it fails, we play another. In this following example, we'll use the "grep" command to try to find the word "Linux" in a text file and, if we find the word, we'll print a message to that effect:
grep -i linux a_big_text_file.txt && echo We found it
And in this next example we do the same search, but print out a message if we did not find what we wanted:
grep -i linux a_big_text_file.txt || echo It is not here boss
Going one step further, we can do the same search and print one message or the other, depending on whether we found what we were looking for:
grep -i linux a_big_text_file.txt && echo We found Linux || echo There is no Linux here
Tips and tricks on the UNIX command line can (and do) fill entire books. If you're interested in further reading, you might want to get a copy of Classic Shell Scripting: Hidden Commands that Unlock the Power of Unix by Arnold Robbins and Nelson H. F. Beebe.
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| Released Last Week |
Linux From Scratch 6.6
Matthew Burgess has announced the release of Linux From Scratch (LFS) 6.6, a free e-book that gives step-by-step instructions on how to build a base Linux system by compiling source code of the Linux kernel, GNU utilities and other basic components: "The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of Linux From Scratch version 6.6. This release includes numerous changes to LFS 6.5 (including updates to Linux kernel 2.6.32.8, GCC 4.4.3, glibc 2.11.1) and security fixes. It also includes editorial work on the explanatory material throughout the book, improving both the clarity and accuracy of the text." Other important updates in this release include the GRUB bootloader 1.97.2, udev 151, Coreutils 8.4 and gzip 1.4. Read the brief release announcement and the detailed changelog for further information.
Tiny Core Linux 2.9
Robert Shingledecker has released Tiny Core Linux 2.9, a minimalist Linux distribution in 10 MB: "Tiny Core Linux 2.9 is now posted. Change log: upgraded udev to 151 with several rule adjustments and new rules added; updated libstdc++ 6.0.9 to support exceptions; updated glibc 2.9 to support i486; updated wbar - eliminated background relics; updated appbrowser - added 'Provides' to search for 'What provides', also error handling and speed improvements; updated appsaudit - added 'Display All Not Depends On'; updated tc-config - persistent home and/or opt; improved language support by auto-loading locale support extension(s); added functions checkroot and checknotroot for improved user handling; new 'Set TCE Drive' in control panel to setup TCE directory, optional and mydata.tgz from cloud mode...." Read the full release announcement for a complete list of changes.
PC/OS 10.1 "OpenWorkstation GNOME"
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of PC/OS 10.1 "OpenWorkstation GNOME" edition, an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop: "The developers of PC/OS are excited to bring you this new installment in the PC/OS family. Users and customers have demanded it so we have now delivered it. This release is based on the GNOME desktop. We are targeting this release at a more high-performance crowd. What's included? GNOME 2.28, Linux kernel 2.6.31, Empathy replaces Pidgin, OpenOffice.org 3.1, Exaile, Gambas 2, WideStudio, full multimedia codecs, Sun Java 6, Evolution groupware suite, GnomeBaker, Exaile, VLC, GIMP (with all plugins), Google Chrome, Nimbus GTK+ theme and Metacity. As we continue to improve this release we will continue to add software and tools for everyone." Here is the full release announcement.
Elive 2.0
After a long development period lasting more than two years, Samuel Baggen announced today the release of Elive 2.0, a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution featuring an optimised Enlightenment 17 window manager with plenty of desktop eye candy: "The Elive team is proud to announce the release of the Stable version 2.0 Codename Topaz. The new stable version of Elive has a huge list of improvements. Its ease of use makes it suitable for any kind of user along with a totally new Linux experience for those who have not tried Elive before. Changelog: autolaunchers - entirely rewritten with better stability and more features; user configurators - many user configurators added to configure anything; drivers - Linux kernel 2.6.30.9 with support for special hardware and other features like TuxOnIce (hibernation), Reiser4FS, ext4...." Visit the distribution's updated home page and read the detailed changelog for further information.
Elive 2.0 - a Debian-based distribution with Enlightenment
(full image size: 319kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
NuTyX 2009.3
Thierry Nuttens has announced the release of NuTyX 2009.3, a French, Gentoo-based desktop Linux distribution. This is the fourth update in the 2009 series; while the base system, the C library and the compiler remains unchanged throughout the 2009.x releases, a number of small problems have been corrected. For example the Mozilla browser is now in French and the Xfce, GNOME (2.28.2) and KDE (4.4.1) desktops have all been updated to their latest versions. Other important package updates include OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, KOffice 2.1.1, Pidgin 2.6.6 and CUPS 1.4.2. The default Linux kernel has also been upgraded to version 2.6.33. Read the rest of the release announcement (in French) for further details.
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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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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 15 March 2010.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • RHEL 6 (by Tom at 2010-03-08 10:51:09 GMT from United States)
The estimates on RHEL 6 are most likely correct, Red Hat began using an internal RHEL 6 alpha in January. I expect we will see a public beta in April or May.
2 • elive v2 (by Bill Toulas on 2010-03-08 11:00:01 GMT from Greece)
is the new version of elive free to download or is it still comercial?
3 • PCBSD (by david on 2010-03-08 11:04:23 GMT from United States)
@Jesse,
As always a great read on a Monday morning.
On another note, I am planning to install Fedora 12 on an extra machine but am hesitant due to the lack of built in "Extras" support. I have seen others post on here about 3rd party installers but have been unable to locate any. Does such a thing exist?
I am still running elive 2.0 and have not experienced one hiccup.
4 • @ Bill Toulas (by david on 2010-03-08 11:05:44 GMT from United States)
BIll,
elive is free to download but you must pay a min of $15.00 to download the install to harddrive module. You can run in live mode for as long as you want for free.
5 • elive 2 (by Euchrid at 2010-03-08 11:11:19 GMT from France)
As far as I've seen, elive is now free (no cost to download )
6 • @ 2 et 5 (by Intarissable on 2010-03-08 11:23:47 GMT from France)
Certes il est possible de downloder Elive, mais pour ce qui est de l'installer....il faut passet par la case : $ .
7 • Lubuntu, FreeBSD (by ozonehole at 2010-03-08 11:40:03 GMT from Taiwan)
I'm excited about Lubuntu, even though it's still an alpha version. On my desktop, I'm already running Ubuntu Lucid alpha-3, and it's been working fine. So much so, that I've ignored all the warnings and went ahead and erased by Ubuntu 9.10 installation. Hope I don't regret that.
Lubuntu would be good for my eeePC. Downloading now as I write this.
About FreeBSD. I used to use it years ago. I only stopped when version 6.0 came out and I couldn't get it to run on my laptop - lots of hardware issues. Two days ago I downloaded version 8.0. Although I didn't experience any hardware problems, I was surprised to find that some packages couldn't install - fatally since they were packages I needed. I have seen this kind of error in the past and thought by now it would be fixed. Sigh. Well, maybe in version 9.0. Hope the rest of you have more success than I did. I actually did enjoy FreeBSD before, the speed was impressive.
8 • RHEL (by Johannes on 2010-03-08 11:42:30 GMT from Germany)
Thanks for this new release of DWW, great job, as always!
And good to hear about RHEL's next release, these are good news indeed, and seem plausible!
9 • RE: Lubuntu, FreeBSD (by vermaden on 2010-03-08 11:47:37 GMT from Poland)
@ozonehole
Tell me about your package problems, maybe its something that can be easyli fixed.
10 • Afterglow(from reading this edition of D.W.) (by Simone C. at 2010-03-08 11:55:48 GMT from United States)
Pcmanfm 2 is very exciting news! What are the improvements? Interesting review of PCBSD. Why can't PCBSD fit on a CD? Is the new release of Lubuntu installable?
11 • PC-BSD and command line tricks (by Barnabyh at 2010-03-08 12:11:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Another interesting DWW- thanks Jesse.
12 • @ Ladislav (from the LinuxJournal comments) (by meh at 2010-03-08 12:25:49 GMT from United States)
Dear editor, your polling station doesn't work properly.
I have cast 3 votes for the same distro within 15 minutes.
If I can do it, anyone can do it, as I am just " Dick from around the corner " and I assure you, not a hacker.
Anyway, I will stop now and you can have your fun.
I am awaiting your article to see why you needed " votes without a value "
Makes the poll just as useless for determining actual installs as your Page Hit Rankings, no?
13 • Fedora Core 0?? (by ozz on 2010-03-08 12:39:18 GMT from Canada)
1. RH 6 -> RHEL 1
2. RH 7 -> RHEL 2
3. RH 9 -> RHEL 3
4. FC 3 -> RHEL 4
5. FC 6 -> RHEL 5
14 • fixing FreeBSD package issue (by ozonehole at 2010-03-08 12:45:40 GMT from Taiwan)
comment #9 by vermaden:
"Tell me about your package problems, maybe its something that can be easyli fixed."
I wish I had written down the name of the package at the time, but I didn't. But it had "Linux" in the name, and I think it's the Linux compatibility package (if there still is such a thing, been awhile since I used FreeBSD). Anyway, it happened during installation. I have seen this problem earlier, years ago - the installer halts and reports that a certain package cannot be installed, no explanation why. But since there are package dependencies, that can lead to a lot of problems later. I suppose that it might be possible to install the missing packages later from ports - that's something I didn't try this time.
I was installing on an eeePC at the time this happened.
Vermaden, I appreciate any tips you can give me on what to do when I see this error. I might give it a try again.
best regards,
Oz
P.S. I must say that I have always found the FreeBSD community to be very helpful.
15 • Question (by Sattva at 2010-03-08 12:49:40 GMT from United States)
My cd drive/burner quit working, I don't have a usb port for a flash drive. I would like to see an article, or some tips (a link) on how to do an install over the internet. Is it possible to install a distro without burning a cd or using a flash drive? I am pretty sure it is. I am not talking about a network install but installing from the internet which I would imagine could be similar. Which distros make this easy? I know you can run a distro in a virtual environment but I want to do an actual install to the hard drive.
16 • PC-BSD conclusion (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2010-03-08 13:00:13 GMT from Egypt)
From conclusions :
1- " PC-BSD runs faster on my systems than most of the full-sized Linux distributions and it generally used less memory." when you use Slackware you will get speed with little memory consumption :-)
2- "the OS supports more traditional forms of package management"
3- " Fortunately the live DVD makes it easy to test hardware before committing to installation. "
4- many attractive points :
" The installer is a work of art, the package manager is easy to use, even for less experienced users."
" The desktop is attractive, stable and responsive on my machines. "
"The documentation, which builds on the FreeBSD Handbook, is first class and the system's defaults are reasonable."
" Having popular codecs and Flash pre-installed is a nice touch and makes PC-BSD ready-to-go straight out of the box."
But : " In my opinion, this operating system isn't quite as user-friendly as Mandriva Linux or Linux Mint, but it's not far behind "
finally : " In my eyes, PC-BSD is ready for The Desktop. "
Ok will try use PC-BSD :-)
17 • installing Linux from the network (by ozonehole at 2010-03-08 13:00:57 GMT from Taiwan)
#15, you're probably better off buying a new CD drive, but I understand that Linux can be installed over the network. Might be risky, but here's a how-to:
http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html
Good luck.
Oz
18 • network install (again) (by ozonehole at 2010-03-08 13:02:56 GMT from Taiwan)
http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst#netboot
19 • Booting ISO from Grub2 (by lefty.crupps on 2010-03-08 13:06:11 GMT from United States)
@Sattva #15
If you have Grub2 installed already, it seems doable:
http://rww.dreamwidth.org/3100.html
But, this says that you're from the United States; you can find a new or used CD or DVD drive for $15 I would imagine, or even find a friend's computer to take the drive out of temporarily.
20 • Arch is now a major distribution (by Anonymous at 2010-03-08 13:06:28 GMT from Canada)
... and should be added in the top 10 page on this site.
21 • LXDE (by Leo at 2010-03-08 13:10:41 GMT from United States)
There has been a great deal of momentum building around LXDE. And I think it is well deserved. I use it as a secondary desktop (should be there any issue with KDE), and also as a desktop in Kubuntu Lucid while I test it (the KDE version is more recent than in Karmic and I share the same home directory).
Long story short, it is a nice, snappy desktop. Loading the desktop from a cold boot takes a few (10?) seconds in my Phenom X3, and less than a second in LXDE (basically, it loads instantly).
As usual, you get a lot less functionality than with a more complex desktop, but in many situations what you get is good enough (I think netbooks could make use of something so fast).
22 • Boot Linux without using any booting device (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2010-03-08 13:11:37 GMT from Egypt)
# 15 for your question
" Is it possible to install a distro without burning a cd or using a flash drive? "
Read this : http://www.wbitt.com/contributed-howtos/160-boot-linux-without-using-any-booting-device.html
23 • RE: 12, So??? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-03-08 13:15:17 GMT from United States)
Why should anybody even care. Why do you care. Do you have money invested somewhere? Where did you get the ideal that polls are useful for anything except starting fights? How can you even believe polls, rankings, surveys or anything that can't be proven. You can't even prove anything that you've written. That leads me to think you have a hidden agenda, no? Don't waste our time anymore please.
24 • Pay to install Elive (by hotdiggettydog on 2010-03-08 13:36:45 GMT from Canada)
It would be nice if Elive warned downloaders there would be a charge to install the live cd.
What about those who buy the cd from one of the many retailers? Will they still have to buy the installer module?
From what I've seen of the live cd, it is not that special.
25 • Switching buttons in Ubuntu (by Dylan on 2010-03-08 13:44:16 GMT from Ireland)
You can easily move buttons with Ubuntu Tweak.... check this out!
http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/2010/02/02/ubuntu-tweak-0-5-1-released-support-10-04-lucid.html#more-561
26 • "Problems" with Elive (by Anonymous at 2010-03-08 13:58:35 GMT from Italy)
1) On my desktop it doesn't boot from CD, I burnt it twice. It does boot from a usb pen drive, though.
1)The installer is not there or it is not activated. You must go on-line and pay in order to get one! At least they should say so before you download the iso.
27 • RE: Lubuntu, FreeBSD (by vermaden on 2010-03-08 14:03:35 GMT from Poland)
@ozonehole
Contact me at: vermaden [AT] interia {DOT} pl
... or start a thread at daemonforums.org we will se what we can do with that error without hijacking comments here ;)
28 • @ 23 (by meh at 2010-03-08 14:11:54 GMT from United States)
Yes, I have a hidden agenda to waste your time by causing you to obsessively flame me for pointing out comment number 349256 on the linked LinuxJournal article. My evil agenda has succeeded.
29 • PC-BSD default install is insecure! (by luciano at 2010-03-08 14:29:38 GMT from Brazil)
I have used the new release and it is very nice. Except for one aspect: a lot o services enabled by default and open to the world! The developers could care more for this.
30 • #21 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-08 14:38:07 GMT from Canada)
"As usual, you get a lot less functionality than with a more complex desktop, but in many situations what you get is good enough (I think netbooks could make use of something so fast)."
People commenting about netbooks often say that the expected use is "surfing, email and You tube)
Yet it seems that apps to do these are not included in the "light" os
(e.g.lubuntu)
peculiar.
31 • Fedora and PC-BSD (by Jesse at 2010-03-08 14:46:38 GMT from Canada)
@David in comment 3:
If you want the extras with Fedora, try setting up the RPMFusion repository. You can get details on doing that here: http://rpmfusion.org/
@luciano in comment 29:
You said there are a lot of services enabled in PC-BSD by default. When I set up PC-BSD there was only one network service, secure shell, enabled and it blocks root logins. That seems fairly reasonable to me. What services did you find "open to the world"?
32 • Great Article (Thanks Jesse) (by Sly on 2010-03-08 14:55:16 GMT from United States)
I tried one of the 'BSD's a couple of years ago and found it not so user friendly and quickly dumped it. Thanks to your article, I will give it another spin.
33 • Thank You, Dan Born, for multicd.sh (by Lee on 2010-03-08 15:00:40 GMT from United States)
Even if I never use it to install an ISO, thank you for the opportunity
to go to school on your Bash script.
34 • PCBSD-8.0 (by PeanutbutterJelly Time at 2010-03-08 15:05:20 GMT from United States)
i am mostly a Linux user, i have dabbled with FreeBSD & NetBSD a little bit, and never could get wireless working with a rt61PCI version 4.1 (wpa_supplicant hates that card) and i am almost certain it wont run my Intel-5100 wifi card in my laptop, when BSD gets better wifi support i would be glad to give it a spin.
35 • Re #3 Fedora 12 (by Glenn on 2010-03-08 15:22:51 GMT from Canada)
Hi David.
I see Jesse has pointed you to RPMfusion.
You will also want to use
http://rpm.livna.org/
Hlenn
36 • Elive (by Joe Blow on 2010-03-08 15:26:24 GMT from Canada)
Yes, downloads of the v2 liveCD are now "free" ... WOW! But this liveCD is next to useless, missing a LOT of basic features which, presumably, are in the PAID version. No money = no install to disk with (one would hope) features to adjust screen resolution, power down/reboot, etc.
So unless you are the type that gets their rocks off looking at bling like stars fickering off and on at the desktop, avoid this one.
It is, pure and simple, a commercial (not free) distribution, with a "technology preview" as the teaser.
37 • No subject (by Jan at 2010-03-08 15:27:33 GMT from Netherlands)
For those who still dream of Linux world dominance:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/linux-ubuntu-kernel-world-domination,9813.html
The comments with this article are also nice reading enjoyment.
Jan
38 • Fedore + extra, Re 3+35 (by Jan at 2010-03-08 15:30:33 GMT from Netherlands)
Community Fedora Remix:
http://fcoremix.wordpress.com/
Jan
39 • RE: Fedora 12 + Extras (by KevinC at 2010-03-08 16:07:18 GMT from United States)
Don't forget about Autoten (which works with 12) and the easyLife. You can have one or the other and they make installing non-free stuff a snap & also offer some customization options, such as turning off SELinux. Another decent community remix of Fedora, which is not as huge (read, everything and the kitchen sink) as the the Community Remix, is Omega Fedora.
40 • E-leaves me cold (by John Doe on 2010-03-08 16:18:52 GMT from United States)
Joe Blow, your just too funny. I gave up on Elive, not because of the expense but the authors attitude.
41 • PC-BSD live CD glitch (by Anonymous at 2010-03-08 16:41:26 GMT from United States)
I really liked the idea of PC-BSD as well and gave it a try myself, sadly the live 'cd' mode freaked out on me and my screen wouldn't stop flickering after the desktop loaded. I'm sure my 6 GB of ram and quad core processor could handle the 64 bit live DVD, but I guess it didn't like my onboard Nvidia card or something. I guess I'll give it another try next time.
42 • tiny core 2.9 (by sanjay at 2010-03-08 16:43:39 GMT from India)
a review of tiny core 2.9 can be found at
http://www.linux2u.co.cc
43 • Fedora; thanks (by david on 2010-03-08 17:09:31 GMT from United States)
To everyone:
thank you for your replies and suggested ways of automating the install of extras in fedora 12.
-david
44 • @ #40 • E-leaves me cold (by John Doe) (by Jon Iverson at 2010-03-08 17:54:24 GMT from United States)
Kinda hit me the same way JD. Wanted to give it a go in VirtualBox to see what the system was like up close and personal. But when I couldn't install and test it without paying a required ransom of at least $15 US, that was the end for me. Don't mind in the least supporting a project I've come to believe in, but being required to pay simply to test drive a VB installation is not anything I'm ever going to agree with.
45 • Elive Stable/Crippled & The Script (by Landor at 2010-03-08 18:06:47 GMT from Canada)
If you've been using Linux for some time and test distributions and such you should be aware that a development version is Elive is the only one that comes at no cost. So, it should be to no surprise that the stable 2.0 release is a pay release. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that it's a better option than before since it can now be previewed without paying for it.
Also, for post #36 it's a bit unfair to knock a distribution when you obviously are not that familiar with E-17. The resolution and logout options are present and functioning in the 2.0 release.
I'm not a fan of Elive at all and I personally don't use it at all other than a glance due to being curious and I like E-17. That said, he can choose to distribute his stable build however he wishes. That's another part of the freedom with Linux, or more correctly, the GPL. People have to eat, pay bills, live, somehow.
------
Sure the automated script is nice but I wonder how much easier it is than just setting up Grub to boot from the ISO, so is it really worth any time and what do you learn.
Don't feed me any crap about some elite stuff or learning, etc. We're now talking about booting an ISO which is something that's extremely geek and only a very select demographic would want to do it. Based on that, people really can't learn the extremely simple way of doing it via Grub?
To me it's reinventing the wheel for someone that already should be able to build one simply.
What's next, a script to open a terminal because people can't be bothered to type ALT-F2 or look in the menu? Seriously...
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
46 • RHEL 6 (by Scott Dowdle on 2010-03-08 18:31:15 GMT from United States)
As another commenter said, Red Hat has had internal test versions of RHEL 6 for some time so I'd expect to see a beta sooner than June... and probably a final release in June... but that is just my guess.
I don't think the quality of Fedora 9 had anything to do with the delay of RHEL 6... as how would that explain it not coming out after Fedora 10, 11, and now 12? I have it on reasonably good authority that RHEL 6 will be based on Fedora 12 rather than 13. While Fedora 12 originally shipped with a 2.6.31-based kernel there was a recent update that rebased to 2.6.32... which again, is supposedly the kernel version coming with RHEL 6. I think Fedora 13 is going to be based on 2.6.33 but I'm not sure. The alpha comes out this week (unless there is another delay) so we'll see.
How do I explain the delay? This month will mark the 3 year anniversary of the release of RHEL 5. Red Hat has stated that they want RHEL to have a development cycle of 18 - 24 months. Previous RHEL releases were close to the mark of their schedule but RHEL 6 is now going to be more than a year late. As a result of the delay, Red Hat has added an extra year of support to RHEL 4 (I think) and RHEL 5. I I haven't seen any official statement from Red Hat about the delay of RHEL 6 but my guesses as to why are:
1) They decided to slow down the release cycle because maintaining so many RHEL releases all at the same time is a lot of work and delaying lightens the load. I don't have any proof for this guess but it makes sense.
2) There hasn't been any new kernel or feature that just screamed... wow, we should make a new major release for that. Everything they have cared about, they have back-ported to the RHEL 5 kernel. When Linus and the boys switched development models a long while ago it meant that a new mainline kernel would be released every 2.75 - 3 months. Given the fact that even the most aggressive distro development cycles are 6 months that means that a number of kernels simply get skipped and aren't really used by mainstream distributions. I guess Red Hat could have taken 5.4 and called that 6 with the major inclusion of KVM... but since they only rebased a few packages and didn't really change kernel versions it wouldn't have made much sense to call it 6.
47 • Elive n stuff (by davemc on 2010-03-08 18:36:08 GMT from United States)
$15 is nothing these days and its far less than what you pay for Win7. The thing that's got me though is whether that $15 gets you some type of support option. Why pay for an OS that does not offer dedicated support - even Microsoft does that for their pile o crapola. I agree with many commenter's above in that we donate $$ to worthy projects as a culture anyway, and those donations tend to be much more than $15 (at least in my case). The fact of the matter is that Open Source development takes many peoples time and efforts, and time is money. That money has to come from somewhere. If it does not come from us - the community - then where?
48 • #47 $15 is nothing these days ... (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-08 18:50:56 GMT from Greece)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
49 • Power & Memory Usage Of GNOME, KDE, LXDE & Xfce (by mchlbk on 2010-03-08 19:10:47 GMT from Denmark)
Tested by Phoronix today:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_desktop_vitals&num=1
50 • PC-BSD Faster? Than what? (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-08 19:36:59 GMT from United States)
PC-BSD 8.0 vs. Kubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pcbsd8_benchmarks&num=1
51 • PC-BSD 8 (by MacLone at 2010-03-08 20:21:07 GMT from Mexico)
I have tested PC-BSD 8 and earlier and it is always the same instability and slowness. I suppose BSD does not like my AMD athlon nor my Sempron... An AMD problem?
The main reason i can't adopt PC-BSD is that "always" empty lame repo. Sure you can do ports but that's not the idea with PC-BSD.
To the PC-BSD Devs: Stop working on a project that does not fill all what is needed for a serious distro and fill that repos first. It's the same problem release after release.
52 • Elive's hidden charge, bypass? (by End-User at 2010-03-08 20:27:47 GMT from United States)
I'm sure someone willl come up with a way to bypass elive's blatant extortion technique, to get it to install without having to pay. IMHO, this should be okay to do, due to the way the cost requirement is hidden part way through the installation process. Wish I was savvy enough to know how and where to start.
53 • Elive's hidden charge (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-08 20:44:53 GMT from Greece)
If you go to the home page of Elive,
http://www.elivecd.org/
or the release download page
http://www.elivecd.org/Download/Stable
there is no mention that you have to pay a minimum of $15, and the Elive page here at DW http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=elive
says the stable version is free. (BTW DW wrongly states that MEPIS costs $18 whereas in fact MEPIS is free).
54 • Elive (by David Kiwerski on 2010-03-08 20:46:10 GMT from United States)
I downloaded and tried Elive - looked pretty good from the CD, but when I tried to install it to the hard drive to better evaluate it, it told me I had to donate, of jump through other hoops to get the installer.
I don't feel that this distro should be covered as a non-commercial one. If the Elive developers feel that they have that good a product, they should sell it outright, along with a standard warranty.
55 • More books for command line stuff. (by jake at 2010-03-08 21:06:01 GMT from United States)
A couple oldies but goodies for learning command line stuff include O'Reilly's "UNIX Power Tools" and the Mark Williams Company's "Coherent Lexicon". These two are packed cover to cover with tips & tricks ... the Coherent Lexicon is worth it for the tutorial on using UUCP alone ... It's enough to make newbies and crusty old farts alike thank their lucky stars for modern networking :-)
Power Tools hasn't been updated in about 8 years, and MWC closed its doors a decade and a half ago ... I've found both books on the used market for under US$5.00 ... Both are worth owning, especially for folks new to the command line. When teaching UNIX 101, I often recommend the two as optional/additional material to whatever I'm using for a text book.
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596003302 for Power Tools, you're on your own for the Coherent Lexicon.
56 • Elive's hidden charge (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-08 21:11:38 GMT from Greece)
Pressed the button too soon, sorry.
My gripe with Elive is not that it charges a fee, but the way that it does it.
57 • #56 anticapitalista (by Oithona on 2010-03-08 21:20:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
You're right mate. Elive is a live CD (the clue is in the name). Generally live CDs are intended to run live. But they built an installer. And they charge for it. So far so good...
It wouldn't hurt to say so up front.
58 • RE: #47 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-08 21:20:28 GMT from Italy)
"$15 is nothing these days"
Maybe so, but if we donated to every distribution or open source project, donations would run into thousand bucks.
I donate (or buy) to distros, which are really, really good.
After Libranet went, and Kanotix doesn't go beyond test releases (and no support in the English forums), I feel that no distro deserves my money any longer.
59 • RE: 50 Speed (by Jesse at 2010-03-08 22:05:47 GMT from Canada)
That's an interesting read. Maybe I should clear something up. When I said PC-BSD was faster on my hardware, I meant the interface was more responsive and the tasked I performed went quicker than they did when running Linux distros with KDE. The benchmarks in the article (linked in comment 50) are mostly number crunching tests. When I said PC-BSD performed faster, I meant for the things I wanted to do, it wasn't meant to cover all cases. Sorry for any confusion.
60 • RE: 52 & 55 (by Landor at 2010-03-08 22:13:23 GMT from Canada)
#52
There is in fact a very simple way, well, kind of, to install any live distribution. I certainly won't explain how to, especially for this kind of reasoning.
I don't think any reason to circumvent paying for it is decent of anyone. In essence you'd be dealing with his "extortion" as you put it, by doing something that although isn't wrong, but with ill intent, while the developer had no ill intent? Odd way to look at things.
Also, if the distribution warrants that much effort for you to want to bypass the restrictions, shouldn't that also denote it's worth of a basic donation for its use?
#55
Unix Power Tools is an amazing book. I think I've seen you mention Coherent Lexicon before. I've never read it, but now that the title's caught my eye I'm going to be looking for it. Thanks. You can never learn enough, nor know it all.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
61 • @45 using VBox with Elive (by PFYearwood on 2010-03-08 22:22:28 GMT from United States)
You can use Virtual Box and VMWare to test Elive. If you still have the .iso file, have your VBox/VM Player use it as the cd drive. Then, you can run it any time. Just do not use the disc you burned. Yes, it is not a true install but you can still use it. You have to set up a virtual hard drive, so you may be able to save files. Or, save to your host system.
That said, I agree. If you have to pay to test, that puts them in the same league as Microsoft.
LinuxXP is paid distro, but they give you 30 days to test run.
Paul
If you keep your stick on the ice, just stay out of my crease.
62 • RHEL release timing and Fedora (by Woodstock69 on 2010-03-08 22:57:07 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
Jesse,
You logic is flawed with respect to the release of RHEL. You see, given past experience, if FC0=RH3, FC3=RH4 and FC6=RH5 then logically the next sequence is F12=RH6 and F24=RH7! So in actual fact, RHEL6 is late (FC13 is just around the corner).....
With a release cycle of 6 months, we might be lucky and see RHEL7 in 6 years, and RHEL in 18!! (And you thought Debian was slow to release...)
;^)
(I'm being very tongue in cheek, of course, Jesse. Keep up the great reviews and editorials, they're a pleasant and informative read.)
63 • Shell scripts (by Vance on 2010-03-08 23:28:01 GMT from United States)
The fun isn't limited to tcsh users - the following should do the same thing for sh and bash. (Warning: this webform may eat my backslashes; the "find" command below should be the same as Jesse's.)
!#/bin/sh
for currentdir in `ls /home` ; do
echo -n $currentdir
find /home/$currentdir -printf %sn | awk 'BEGIN{total=0}; {total+=$1}; END{printf(" %dn", total)}'
done
64 • #57 (by Kasukta Zabri at 2010-03-09 01:43:10 GMT from United States)
When the new Wolvix comes out I will pay for it gladly no tricks needed for a quality distro with class.
65 • Getting around paying for Linux (by Jesse at 2010-03-09 02:13:45 GMT from Canada)
I think Landor is exactly right in post 60. The developer of Elive is not extorting anyone. You're not being forced to do anything. There are hundreds of Linux distributions and most of them free, so if you don't want to buy Elive there are plenty of other options to choose from. Why would anyone spend their time and effort working around the payment restriction when it would be faster to download another (free) distro?
66 • The Bad Thing is RH Didn't Do Any Clarification (by manmath on 2010-03-09 02:55:10 GMT from India)
RHEL6 release schedule is a real joke. My point here is not about this unprecendented delay, but about no-clarification. RH though promised of 18-24 months release cycle in its RHEL5 docs, it never bothered to explain this historic delay in RHEL 6.
67 • #65 (by Notorik at 2010-03-09 03:02:17 GMT from United States)
I think when you list Elive it would be nice to mention the fact that after you decide to install it you will be assaulted for money. I suspect that most people will pass on the download.
68 • Using Virtual Machines for PC-BSD, distro hopping, family harmony (by PFYearwood on 2010-03-09 03:09:31 GMT from United States)
I used the live option for PC-BSD and liked the look and feel. I decided to install. I did not install bare metal but use virtual machines. I used both VMWare and Virtual Box. PCBSD loaded easily and quickly into both. PCBSD work well in both, picking up audio and Flash out of the box. I guess you could say Box Squared.
Jesse's review matched my own findings. I do not understand what the differences are tech wise between Linux and BSD. Only difference I see is that Ubuntu lists over 28,922 packages listed in Synaptic. PC-BSD has just a fraction of that number in the PBI listing. Maybe one day I'll learn to compile my own, but not in the near future.
One other advantage i see using a virtual machine is that VBox and VMWarre Player smooths out many issues for hardware and drivers. The virtual machine companies supply additions and drivers for the different type of OS. Be it Windows, Linux, BSD or Solaris. you can also adjust the allowed RAM so you can use your selected guest system to its max or run several if you have more than 1 Gig RAM in the host system. And if you don't like the distro, you just delete like any other app, or even easier.
To me, the greatest use of a virtual machine is when you are a one computer family. If you are working in Windows or PCBSD and the spouse wants to use the computer and prefer Mandriva or Ubuntu, you do not have to reboot to change. Domestic tranquility.
VMWare Player and Virtual Box are also eco-friendly. You do not need to burn the .iso to boot. Both can use the raw file like a CD. Comes in hand when you do not have any blanks or your CD/DVD drive is not working. That would be a solution for Sattva's problem up in post number 15.
I do like and will keep PC-BSD. I still have Windows XP for those time I need it, like tax time. Others will show up as they interest me. I currently have three others on VMWare Player. I have trouble using openSolaris on Player so, I'll try again on Sun's Virtual Box.
Paul
Some like Icing on the cake, I like icing on the puck.
69 • Coherent Lexicon (by jake at 2010-03-09 04:55:36 GMT from United States)
Anyone looking for this, try used book stores. It's a largish (1000+ pages) softbound book, with a black on silver cover. The spine reads "COHERENT", reading from top to bottom. It stands out amongst other computer books, easy to see at a glance.
I went poking around to see if anyone but me had a stock of the Coherent Lexicon (I frequent used book stores all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and buy all of 'em I can get my hands on ... don't ask ... I only give 'em away to students who can't afford to purchase their own). I couldn't find anything, but I did run across this:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/TUHS/Archive/Other/Coherent/documents/CohFAQ-v4.2
Enjoy the blast from the past ... and try not to have too many nightmares :-)
70 • PC-BSD (by Cellman at 2010-03-09 05:38:08 GMT from Canada)
@Jessee,
Enjoyed your review, and mirror your conclusions for the most part. The exception for me was finding a workable wireless USB adaptor. The HCL for supported wireless USB devices seems limited to older 54 B & G devices and no newer "N" devices that I could find.... finally found a Zydas "Retail+" adaptor that works well. Hopefully the Devs will upgrade the wireless devices supported to include more recent hardware.
71 • As a followup ... (by jake at 2010-03-09 06:37:56 GMT from United States)
As a followup ... Still poking around, looking for Coherent Lexicon stuff, I ran across this dimly remembered thread from a.f.c:
http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/20001107_Coherent
Looks like CheapBytes/LinuxPress owns (owned?) the rights to the Lexicon, as of ten years ago. More interesting from an historical perspective is a comment from dmr[1] on Coherent, reposted at the bottom of the page. A couple other "names" posted in the same thread.
[1] If you don't know who dmr is, you don't know un*x ;-)
72 • RE: 68 -- PC-BSD apps (by Jesse at 2010-03-09 13:53:43 GMT from Canada)
While PC-BSD doesn't had a lot of packages in their PBI repo, they do have access to the wide range of packages offered by FreeBSD. You can add packages to your system without needing to compile anything using the pkg_add tool.
73 • OpenGEU 9.10 (by Zoe at 2010-03-09 14:22:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi
just for FYI
I notice OpenGEU 9.10 has been released
Enjoy & Love YOUR Linux of Choice
74 • @73 (by Tim on 2010-03-09 14:59:46 GMT from United States)
Hi Zoe. I went to the OpenGEU web site and it is still not available. I am waiting on that release since they are basing their distro on Debian now.
Tim
75 • @ #65 • Getting around paying for Linux (by Jesse)... (by Jon Iverson at 2010-03-09 15:47:56 GMT from United States)
Jesse wrote:
"The developer of Elive is not extorting anyone. You're not being forced to do anything. There are hundreds of Linux distributions and most of them free, so if you don't want to buy Elive there are plenty of other options to choose from. Why would anyone spend their time and effort working around the payment restriction when it would be faster to download another (free) distro?"
----------------------------------------------
While I don't disagree with Jesse's argument in this case, nevertheless what I find distasteful about the latest version of Elive is that there was no up front indication that the downloaded version required a cash payment if one intended to install it for testing purposes.
It was rather like the old 'Bait and Switch' sales ploy we all hate. Get people interested enough to download the distro without revealing all that's in store, then when they click the install button to actually test the OS inform them that short of forking over a heretofore concealed ransom fee they're SOL. ..I don't care how one goes about seeking to justify such a ploy, it simply doesn't fly. If anything it causes far more ill will than good.
However Landor is correct when he says I should have known, given the time I've spent installing and evaluating distros over the years, that Elive was and is a commercial offering with a price tag attached. However I must admit that I too was fooled by their latest ploy into thinking (hoping!) they'd turned a corner and were now intent on building a supportive community based on a fully functional FREE open source OS for a change.
One thing I've settled on is that I'll never take anything from Elive at face value again. As Jesse says, "there are plenty of other options to choose from," so this latest go round with Elive has been my absolute last..
76 • PC-BSD (by Marcelo on 2010-03-09 16:13:18 GMT from Dominican Republic)
We and our clients use PC-BSD in production without failure.
Our Client Have one PC-BSD (7.1) desktop with one server (HTTP and FTP) and his computer working 24h/7days in total 210 days (since the install) without restart!
Our test with PC-BSD 8 was great but we need wait the long therm stability.
With different Dell Workstation we have problem with sound, but the client don't need sound!
77 • Elive's payment discovery gimmick during install (by Sean at 2010-03-09 16:18:39 GMT from United States)
I find the fee disclosure method to be appalling; a cheap trick.
I have lost respect for these Elive people and will never pay attention to their products again.
78 • elive charges (by Juggernaught at 2010-03-09 21:01:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't think there's anything wrong making a charge for an install. But the way the E-live crew went about it was underhanded and makes you suspect the entire project.
What's wrong with telling people up front what the deal with so they can decide for themselves if they want to download and burn the disrto?
Being upfront and honest is good business. Good customer relations. I think they've burnt a few bridges with this tactic.
79 • elive charges (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-09 22:24:59 GMT from Greece)
Glad to notice that Ladislav has corrected the DW information to show that Elive costs $15 and is not free. (He still needs to edit the MEPIS one though from $18 to free)
80 • Distrohopping using USB stick, Sidux XFCE (by Jan at 2010-03-09 22:42:27 GMT from Netherlands)
I have restarted testing/playing with linux-distros again (since 2007 when I was fed up with it), now using USB-sticks.
So no HD-disaster because of bootloader mistakes (GRUB=bah).
I am using Unetbootin for most linux-iso's, LiveUSBCreator (Fedora-based iso's) and Mandriva-seed (for Mandriva-based iso's) and W32DiskImage for Chromium-OS (by Hexxeh).
I am using the PLOP-bootmanager installed on a floppy, which enables me to boot from USB (my BIOS does not support booting from USB, my PC is P3 at 0,5 GHz and 512 MB).
Sidux XFCE failed to succeed in a bootable USB.
However now it has succeeded:
1 Make the USB with unetbooting
2 Edit changes according:
http://sidux.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=10929&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75
the message of 5 march.
Nice, indeed a snappy system.
However I could not find system-update and adding software, and installing my printer.
It also seems possible to install extra codecs in Sidux.
Jan
81 • charges (by oithona on 2010-03-09 22:42:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hmm.. can't agree there ... it's a live CD, and the live CD is available completely without charge.
The charge only applies if you want to install it. the way they have handled this charge seems less than fair. If they advertised it up front I'd have no problem with it. I used to pay $65 to install Libranet, and considered it a bargain.
But to state that there's a $15 charge for a live CD, when there isn't, seems just as unfair.
82 • Re 80, Sidux, not 5 march but 5 february (by Jan at 2010-03-09 22:46:58 GMT from Netherlands)
The edit recipe is in the message of 5 february.
Jan
83 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-09 23:10:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref Elive...vote with your wallet.
I see in a few other forums the feeling is the same...some folk are not too impressed with the buy before you try...on the hard drive.
There might be a case of hidden charges...perhaps in some jurisdictions that sort of practice is against local trading laws...cos if it will not install onto your hard drive could it be labeled "not fit for purpose"?
And, how could you get your money back?
Still, by next week, or tomorrow, there'll be something else to try.
84 • Elive's FAQ (by Anonymous at 2010-03-09 23:36:25 GMT from United States)
This may or may not help:
From the home page link on Distrowatch main page:
http://www.elivecd.org/
Click on FAQ. (was in the left column tool bar area)
The first item explains why there is a charge for Elive.
It also goes on to say that they appear willing to negotiate or help people who may not be lucky enough to afford any payment.
However I myself did not notice anything about payment on the main home page.
85 • Elive (by Gene Venable on 2010-03-10 00:20:24 GMT from United States)
I have tried the live CD version of Elive on many occasions and since I found it not suitable for my needs (but promising), I never discovered the prospective charge.
In theory I would be willing to pay for a good distro, but I would want to know about the charge before deciding to download the CD.
So, I now know not to bother with the live CD for Elive.
86 • Comparisons (by Landor at 2010-03-10 01:15:35 GMT from Canada)
Post #81 makes a valid point here, that Elive (as its name denotes) is a Live Distribution.
Distributions like, say, SLAX for instance is a Live distribution as well. I wonder how the community would take it if SLAX (which is quite popular or was, in some circles) were to ship a version that had a great installer and such, a few extras, yet for that purpose, it was pay. Would people be upset with Tomas or would they be rallying behind him saying, "Well, he works hard, he made it even better and should get some money for his work."
I bring this up because one thing I've found in this community if someone is "popular" or the distribution is, they can do no wrong in the eyes of many.
What would happen if you all of a sudden downloaded the next edition of Mint and Clem had made the main version, except for the international one, pay to install, with the same circumstances as Elive? This is where I think the community would take it very differently. Fewer people would be up in arms and tripping over their own feet to validate his reasoning for it.
I'm sure many here would say that's not true, but think about it realistically for a minute.
Something to think about anyway...
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
(Oh, Jake, Yes, Ritchie is indeed famous, I sort've like Hall though. :) )
87 • @86 (by tonio at 2010-03-10 02:23:02 GMT from United States)
Landor wrote:
Would people be upset with Tomas or would they be rallying behind him saying, "Well, he works hard, he made it even better and should get some money for his work."
I would get upset. I am sure that Tomas does need the money, he asked for donations, but not everyone is quick to respond. I would donate, but he only offers PayPal and I don't trust them guys so I asked if there was another way to help, but he did not return my email :(
He, at one point, had an installer, Slax 5.1.X series, but that goes against his ideals too :(, he says install Slackware, Slax is meant to be run as a livecd. I agree with him now. But people still like to install Slax because of the high customizations that can be done and remasters. I would like to help out, but in other ways. I try to create modules (for users that are on dialup), but not everyone is on dialup :(, and some modules don't work. I can help out in other ways, if there was a sure way of donating like at a bank, it would be better, Make T-SHirts, Caps, Posters other things, I would sure buy them, but NOT AN OPTION.
What do others have to say?
I do not agree if he did such a thing. I would prefer that he let us know about it and not download such a version of Slax. I am a Slax user, it is my POCKET OS, but I don't agree with a paying version of $lax :(
88 • Elive (by Untitled at 2010-03-10 07:00:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Personally I'm not too keen about Elive's maximalism (using every other font in the known universe and every effect available to human-kind) but while looking around I found this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ES&hl=es&v=cH9WLrcsrx8
Obviously somebody there thinks that if sex sell cars it can sell a Linux distributions. at 0.45 one of the girls is so excited by Elive that she has to touch herself.
Does that make anyone reconsider paying for Elive? After all, girls might uncontrollably have to touch themselves around you if you install and run it. Just curious since I'm not the target audience for this.
89 • Ref#88 (by RB at 2010-03-10 07:17:17 GMT from United States)
If you pay the girl instead of Elive, she will touch you :)
90 • elive charge (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-10 10:28:04 GMT from Greece)
#81 The DW Elive link clearly states that the live version is free and that there is a $15 minimum charge for installation. Fair enough IMO.
and
#86 Landor, maybe some fanbois would react like that, but, as I have said before, it is not whether a distro charges that is my problem, but the way Elive has gone about this. Why didn't/don't they say in the release announcement that Elive as live is gratis, but to install costs, like this person does with their little app.
http://code.google.com/p/mpdpss/
91 • elive (by david on 2010-03-10 11:36:43 GMT from United States)
As i posted earlier i did pay for elive, but knew i would have to do so. *I keep up with this project.* I do agree that the developers should make it more transparent that payment will be necessary to do a "complete install".
May i suggest Macpup as an alternative. It's sleek, fast, and somewhat stable.
P.S. I also paid for Libranet - got my monies worth, IMO.
92 • Charge (by oithona on 2010-03-10 13:24:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
anticapitalista - that's true, but in the table below it's listed as the price of the distro - small point I guess but a lot of people (like me) will only look at that table.
93 • Charge (by anticapitalista on 2010-03-10 13:52:27 GMT from Greece)
oithona - good point - and why I think Ladislav should edit his MEPIS page (Unless Ladislav knows something different, MEPIS is free to download, not $18)
BTW - saw the 'announcement' about Wolvix. When the next beta comes out, I'll give it a look.
94 • Elive (by Sly on 2010-03-10 14:56:52 GMT from United States)
I was also turned off by Elive's gimmick. Last year the Elive team were a bit more direct in saying that if you wanted to use the distro, it would cost you. This year, they changed tactics. What exactly does Elive offer that other distros don't. There areother other distros that use Enlightenment, such as OpenGEU. .
95 • Elive (by fernbap at 2010-03-10 16:10:24 GMT from Portugal)
My first and last try of Elive was last year. I "donated" to get the iso, installed it only to realize that if i wanted Open Office i would have to pay for it as well.
I have nothing against paying for a distro, but being forced to pay to use Open Office is too much.
96 • Pay Distros (by Fred Nelson at 2010-03-10 16:37:39 GMT from United States)
The only two distros I've paid for are Libranet (as seems to be common), which was a fantastic way to get Debian on your computer in the days before debian-installer came into being and made it much easier, and Mandriva (then Mandrake) which I got one version of the PowerPack of back in the old days, mostly just to help support the excellent distro.
As Adam Williamson complained about a while back though, it may well have been Ubuntu which basically killed what little was left of the paid home-user distro market. With Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, Arch, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and a host of more minor but still high-quality distributions available both free and gratis, the motivation to pay for a home-user distro these days is pretty much nil. I'd be much more likely to simply donate to a distro I felt was worth it.
97 • RE: 90 & 95 (by Landor at 2010-03-10 17:48:24 GMT from Canada)
#90
I understand how you're thinking and why it bothers you Anti.
For me, I can't understand why so many are throwing up their arms or getting their serial cable in a knot, over something that was obvious the minute you read "stable". With a release announcement or not.
That still doesn't discount your view, or the fact that you're totally right, there should have been some kind of warning. That I'll totally agree on. I think given the way the topic has went this week that warning instead of announcement would be the proper term.
#95
I can understand if there was a cost for further downloads/obtaining OpenOffice and such (Disclaimer: I'm not saying you're not telling the truth, I've said already this week I only give Elive a cursory glance and don't know much about its model specificially) and I can also understand how you'd be upset to look elsewhere. That said though, I believe Elive is Debian based and it should be a fairly simple process of installing a package from a Debian repo (maybe) or at the worst compiling from source. Like I said though, I do understand the issues behind paying then having to jump through that hoop too. I'm just saying there were other options to obtaining it, or any package for that matter.
----------
One thing that was clear to me about Elive was that Thanatermesis (the dev) was interested in making this a for profit venture right from the start. If anyone remembers the dispute over Ladislav having direct download links, or I believe links to faster mirrors, that went on here a couple years ago or so, then you'd have the same opinion. So, in that sense it's why nothing to do with pay options really surprise me at all.
I say all the power to him too. There's already a lot of people making a handsome living with Linux, if he can too, then great. Just be a little more open.
I found this on Wikipedia for Elive while I was trying to find the correct spelling of his nickname:
Tentatively, the next stable release will be openly available for free. This is to be released "tomorrow", a long running joke at elive. It will function freely as a live CD, with a fee charged for installation or a chance to fill out 5 lengthy surveys. (That may re-categorize the software.)
One other note, it seems the Elive site is currently down.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
98 • Elive 2.0 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-10 19:36:41 GMT from United States)
Is it not possible to install an previous unstable release and then upgrade the distro?
99 • Elive gimmick ---- BSD review (by RB at 2010-03-10 22:42:45 GMT from United States)
#90 - "I was also turned off by Elive's gimmick. .."
Yes, exactly. I gimmick. Had he stated UP FRONT that there would be a charge or fee, then people wouldn't be so turned off.
I didn't realize that he charges for you to use OO!? This Elive is sounding more ridiculous by each passing moment!
Sad, that we have a hammer this Elive nonsnese. BECAUSE Jesse had a great review of the latest PC-BSD.
100 • Elive Install (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 00:16:11 GMT from United States)
I have never used Elive.
I have used many others.
What can an open source distribution possibly do to hinder installation?
What's wrong or won't work if one simply (cp elive.iso /dev/hda1),
and made proper changes to the iso's etc directory?
I do know that one would have to mount the iso with loopback first,
possibly using some un-compressor, like Knoppix does.
Unless the iso is encrypted, what is there to stop even that simple method?
If the iso was encrypted then performance would definately suffer.
I can only assume that most people complaining here are basically turn-key users, not the average linux geek.
If it has no option to install, then that's it; end of game,etc.
My problem is that I was self raised on early Slackware and know just enough about the command line to be dangerous. heh heh.....
Maybe I'll download the live iso just to see what all this install module is all about.
Thanks for DW.
Everyone enjoy!
101 • Two new Mandriva live derivatives (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-11 03:46:22 GMT from United States)
Unity:
Basic openbox/lxpanel desktop. Minimal footprint. May run ok in 256 MB ram?
Has NetSurf for a web browser, pcmanfm filemanager, sakura terminal.
"Smart Package Manager" is installed.
MCNLive:
Has KDE-4.3 desktop, will run in 512 MB ram, with swap enabled.
Firefox-3.5.8 browser, and usual kde system modules.
Both have Mandriva's "Configure Your Computer" gui tools.
Both allow adding or removing packages while booted into the live CD mode.
Both allow creating a NEW live CD, after you have tweaked the system to your liking.
Create you own custom Mandriva distribution now.
102 • RE: 101 (by Landor at 2010-03-11 04:41:25 GMT from Canada)
MCN is back?
I considered it dead and gone, like the dodo.
It's a shame it's running 4.3 though..lol
I'm going to have to take a look at MCN again. It was a huge hit a few years ago and quite a few people missed it.
Thanks for the info...
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
103 • Three make the KDE4 transition (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-11 05:43:35 GMT from United States)
Also worth noting on this weeks DW main page:
Three very good KDE3 distributions are making the transition to KDE4.
Mepis, PCLinuxOS, and Frugalware.
The coming weeks will be interesting.
104 • Gnome XP (by Jan at 2010-03-11 12:31:30 GMT from Netherlands)
I have not yet tested this, so it is unclear to me if this is a Linux distribution or a Windows-XP addition.
http://sites.google.com/site/greengnomeoe/frontpage
Jan
105 • GreenGnome (by oithona on 2010-03-11 13:12:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
Its a windows application.
106 • re #104 (by glenn on 2010-03-11 13:13:14 GMT from Canada)
Hi Jan.
It is a Windows XP application.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia
Quote: GreenGnome is an open source desktop environment similar to the desktop environment Gnome for GNU/Linux but run on Windows as a replacement shell of Explorer. GreenGnome has an independent window manager and native applications. Endquote:
Glenn
107 • GreenGnome Install.txt (by oithona on 2010-03-11 13:14:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
First of install please read the GreenGnome freeware end user license agreement.
If you install this software means that you accept the license.
Requirements:
A Windows XP installation with only one user
Version: 1.0 released 15 june 2009
Installation:
1) Copy the GreenGnome folder in C:/
2) Copy the GreenGnome.lnk file in your Startup folder
3) Run msconfig and then in the page BOOT.INI select /NOGUIBOOT and then click OK (don't reboot computer)
4) Click on Start-> Control Panel and Double-click on User Accounts
5) Click on "Change the way users log on or off"
6) Uncheck "Use the Welcome Screen" and click on Apply Options
7) Run GreenGnome.exe and open "Administration" from the menu then click on "Install" (click ok in every window)
8) Reboot your computer
Now you have your GreenGnome operative system installed.
Enjoy!!
108 • surprise, surprise (by forlin at 2010-03-11 14:33:07 GMT from Portugal)
A surprisingly biased review of a distro witten on Wed 10th Mar 2010 17:54 UTC at osnews.
See last comment to it, here:
http://www.osnews.com/comments/22987?view=flat
109 • #108 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 15:24:59 GMT from Canada)
"biased"
For those of us who are handicapped with respect to english please explain how that term is applicable to the review
Thanks
110 • 109 • #108 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 15:24:59 GMT from Canada) (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 15:33:02 GMT from Portugal)
google it
111 • 109 • #108 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 15:24:59 GMT from Canada) (by Anonymous at 2010-03-11 15:38:58 GMT from Portugal)
bias
Media: real or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media, in the selection of which events will be reported and how they are covered
Or ask someone to explain this to you. If needed with a draw
112 • @108 Paldo (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-11 16:51:08 GMT from United States)
Jesse Smith reviews Paldo, and it doesn't work well on his hardware.
What bias?
Me, I almost stopped reading when he said the package manager, Upkg is based on mono. I am biased.
113 • RE: 112 (by Landor at 2010-03-11 19:42:05 GMT from Canada)
"Upkg is based on mono. I am biased."
I know there's a huge difference, and please don't consider this insult at all, it's just food for thought.
Do you have a media player installed that plays WMA or WMV files?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
114 • @113 (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-11 19:54:21 GMT from United States)
My favorite media player is VLC.
Please don't tell me they are flirting with death, er.. mono.
115 • RE: 114 (by Landor at 2010-03-11 20:44:46 GMT from Canada)
No :) Only for output..lol :)
I was getting at using a media player that supports wma or wmv is pretty close to supporting mono, just in my opinion only of course, which of course means squat. :)
I love VLC, have for a long long time. There's nothing it won't play. It's far lighter than most things comparable too. Sometimes. :)
I only use it for video playback though. I couldn't ever get away from XMMS for it's lightness and the ability to do what it's supposed to, play audio, simply.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
116 • Mono (by Jesse at 2010-03-11 21:57:59 GMT from Canada)
I don't like using Mono either. Not because of the politics or concern over how free it is, but because it seems like such a heavy dependency to carry. It seems a lot of Mono apps are really small, simple programs that could get by with less over-head.
117 • GreenGnome DE or OS (by Woodstock69 on 2010-03-12 02:12:51 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
"...it aims to become the first Windows like operative system and follow the Windows architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level....The ultimate goal of GreenGnome is to allow you to remove Windows and install GreenGnome."
A bit behind the eight ball there. I think ReactOS is already there. albeit in alpha....
But then the home page contradicts itself with the info page, as it appears only a DE at this stage similar to the KDE project on windows.
118 • Re: 116 (by jake at 2010-03-12 04:18:39 GMT from United States)
"It seems a lot of Mono apps are really small, simple programs that could get by with less over-head."
Exactly the reason I avoid Mono.
Unfortunately, kids these days aren't learning C and assembler, they are learning IDEs and APIs (and #$%@ VisBasic) WITHOUT learning how the underpinnings work first. Personally, I find this to be extremely shortsighted as far as the school system goes ... On the bright side, my early retirement[1] is being partially funded fixing the problems caused by folks who really don't have a grasp of the big picture.
[1] I still consult, but I haven't had a nine-to-five in a couple decades. I'm 50-ish.
119 • 112 • @108 Paldo (by RollMeAway at 2010-03-11 16:51:08 GMT from United States) (by Anonymous at 2010-03-12 05:17:59 GMT from Portugal)
"Me, I almost stopped reading when he said the package manager, Upkg is based on mono. I am biased."
Paldo was created at 2004, much before the politics around Mono started
"Jesse Smith reviews Paldo, and it doesn't't't work well on his hardware"
There was a person that used to review here, but not now any more, who used to have the same problem of her hardware not working with the distros she was reviewing.
You someone wants to look at a fair review of Paldo, see here:
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/122676
Then, compare it with the Jesse Smith one.
About Paldo owners and Mono, look here, and follow Vala
http://linux.softpedia.com/developer/J-rg-Billeter-7941.html
120 • Sad news (by D1Knight at 2010-03-12 09:01:09 GMT from United States)
This is some some sad news. :(
If you feel led to post a response, I am sure it would be appreciated.
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1320
Peace.
121 • Interessing history (by glyj at 2010-03-12 13:03:13 GMT from France)
I think it's worth to remember the story of mandriva :
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Health-Check-Mandriva-944358.html
Regards,
glyj
122 • Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 (by Henning Melgaard on 2010-03-13 01:08:17 GMT from Denmark)
Previously I have been critisising Ubuntu for suddenly no longer working on my hardware. Certainly Ubuntu 9.10 was a disaster on my desktop : very low screen resolution on my "old" pc with Intel 82865G graphics card.
The first alpha versions of 10.04 were even worse: Would not run on my pc at all.
But to be fair I have to say that 10.04 alpha 3 has been a big surprise. Initially things were a bit strange. Booting on the live cd I was able to choose locale and the "try Ubuntu without installing" option. Then my screen went black for a long time, but finally it came alive again, and I ended up at the familiar Ubuntu desktop.
I was able to install Ubuntu, although some crash warnings turned up. I did a full upgrade, using Synaptic, and Bingo ! : No more crashing. I got the new desktop theme, which I find beautiful. And for the first time, using any Linux distribution, I was able to choose a 16:9 resolution for my 19 inch wide screen flat panel.
Compared to some distributions I miss things in the Ubuntu repositories, such as Opera and Chromium browsers, Frostwire etc. However these things are not hard to find searching the web.
Since I have not been holding back on the critisism before I think it is fair to say: Nice going Ubuntu !
123 • @119: Other Paldo review (by Jesse at 2010-03-13 01:38:15 GMT from Canada)
I read the other Paldo review to see what someone else had to say on the subject and it does read like a good, balanced piece. It's also over two years old.
Truth be told, parts of my experience with Paldo weren't that great. Some of that was bad luck, some of it was hardware issues and some of it was software. There were also good points during the experience and I wrote about those too. Judging by the comments in the Paldo forum and some of the comments which followed the review, it seems some people have greatly enjoyed the distro (which I mentioned in the article). Others had negative things to say. Just like every other distribution. There has yet to be a perfect, one size fits all operating system.
Believe it or not, I'm not biased against Paldo or any other operating system I review. If I don't like a product for personal reasons, I don't write about it. As it was, I gave it an honest chance, gave the developers the chance to talk about their product and tried to tell it like I experienced it.
124 • @122 (by D1Knight at 2010-03-13 02:38:56 GMT from United States)
Hi Henning. I am glad to hear that Ubuntu 10.04 is working much better for you, more than previous releases did. I as well am using the Alpha 3. Thus far, it seems to be pretty solid. It is even better in some areas compared to 9.10 The 9.10 had buggy/choppy system sounds or no system sounds.
I agree, the new theme is much improved over the previous versions. Now the previous versions of Ubuntu's theme/look was not bad, I actually liked it (for variety), but I got bored with the look of it, too easily.
"Compared to some distributions I miss things in the Ubuntu repositories, such as Opera and Chromium browsers, Frostwire etc." OK, AFAIK Opera is not OSS. Frostwire, i don't know I don't use it. Now Chromium, I am using to browse and type this. Chromium browser is available in Synaptic of Ubuntu 10.04 Check it out. Have a great week/end. :)
125 • Ref#122 Ubuntu testing (by RB at 2010-03-13 03:45:55 GMT from United States)
122 • Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 (by Henning Melgaard )
Henning I also have an Intel i865 video, and have great success with ubuntu. Once they get plymouth & mountall straighten out, it will be perfect. I enjoy the new look and feel.
126 • RE: Ubuntu, Paldo & Fedora (by Landor at 2010-03-13 03:55:16 GMT from Canada)
Ubuntu:
I was rather pleased with the nightly builds and the first alpha. They seemed extremely functional and felt more like a RC release than what they were. We might all know that Ubuntu is kind of bloated in different areas but a lot of the polish that goes into it is amazing. I haven't looked at it since the first alpha though.
Paldo:
I found the review by Susan Linton well done for Paldo and what blew me away was the comments afterwards. It seemed like fanbois from two distinct camps literally preyed on a well written review. That's just my take on it.
Side note here: If anyone cared to read the piece on Mandriva provided by the link in #121 and read the separate link about the founder being axed, they'd see a similar scenario. It caught my eye a few years ago and it still makes me shake my head today. The majority of the comments were about USA VS Europe. This community can be absurd at best at any given moment. Kicking up some issue about one country as opposed to another when the whole article was mainly about an extremely innovation developer being canned from a company he created.
Fedora:
Unless I didn't read it correctly, Fedora delayed their first alpha due to it not being ready yet. I found that very odd when the iso's were built on the 26th of February I do believe. I might be wrong on the date, but it was a fair bit earlier than the day it was announced as released and ready for download. Makes me wonder why they even waited. Strange stuff.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
127 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-13 07:29:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Caught this in morning mail alert:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4646909047.html
In essence it is about a forthcoming GNULinux conference.
Interesting comments...did we know GNULinux is foundation of German ATC?
And, lifted from article:
# How to prevent community: Making sure your pond stays small (keynote) -- Josh Berkus, COO, PostgreSQL Experts offers a tongue-and-cheek discussion of community dynamics: ("Users. All of them pestering you and wasting your time. If only you could make them just 'go away'. Well, now you can...").
So now you know.
128 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-13 07:34:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
And for those interested in Fed 13, see here:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8716234495.html
Good morning Adam W; looking forward to your posts.
129 • Re: 127 (by jake at 2010-03-13 08:09:53 GMT from United States)
Uh ... forest, do you know what "tongue in cheek" means?
I'd go into detail, but I'd probably be joking ...
130 • pclinuxOS 2010 (by david on 2010-03-13 12:03:12 GMT from United States)
I have been testing pclinuxOS 2010 beta since it was released and I must say it is awesome in my opinion. KDE 4 has really matured and this beta has been stable as a rock in my experience. It's like windows 7 and OSX combined but with the flexibility and security of linux.
I know there are many of you whom are minimalist and wonder why anyone would want their desktop to look like either of the previously mentioned OS's. But I personally enjoy the eyecandy and it does not prevent me from getting to the command line and doing some real work.
So if you're not a purist and believe there are other desktops out there beyond fluxbox I encourage you to give it a shot.
david
131 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-13 12:50:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #129
Why yes Jake I do...perhaps you missed the last sentence of my post?
However, as always I am happy to explain...Adam W. usually appears in the wake of any Fedora release, (good, bad or indifferent).
He is what is known as "damage limitation"...and works very hard at it too! (lol)
132 • Ref#131 LOL (by FedUp at 2010-03-13 14:24:50 GMT from United States)
131 • No subject (by forest)...
. Let me explain forest. You missed Jake's comment by one. He wasn't referring to your "Adam" comment.
133 • @ 123 • @119: Other Paldo review (by Anonymous at 2010-03-13 17:34:42 GMT from Portugal)
Jesse, I have been reading DWW since almost one year, and use to appreciated your reviews.
About Paldo, I'm only a user and nothing else. It become my preferred distro after I had already try many, really many different ones, but the same equally happens with everybody else about this or that distro. Its normal and is absolutely true that "There has yet to be a perfect, one size fits all operating system."
I may have anticipated many "wonderfulness" when I found your article at "osnews", witch was not the case, specially at the "bottom line", I mean the final part of each review, where are the conclusions, and where I use to start my readings.
I use to hesitate a lot and ask to myself "why should I care" before posting about any eventually sensitive matter, but of course that if nobody cares about anything the world would not progress. If I have overreacted, please sorry and let's get over this.
Regarding Paldo owners, they always have maintained the distro in perfectly working conditions, even that they may have been too busy with other projects and haven't had the time to further develop it. Anyway, the fact that they keep Paldo available to all those who wish to use or try it, is very much appreciated by all of their actual users.
134 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-13 18:02:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #132
Oops! Silly me. I must learn to read numbers. My apologies to Jake & FedUp.
I suspect that semantics may be the problem in #127 tho'...
Your t-i-c appears not to accord with my t-i-c.
135 • @134, tic is not tac (by jake at 2010-03-13 19:35:46 GMT from United States)
tic == whimsical exaggeration (see also "hospital humor")
tac == editorial error, possibly due to english as second language.
This comment brought to you by the "If You Have To Explain It" department of redundancy department.
It's Saturday, this round's on me ... beertender, make mine a pint of Bitter :-)
136 • Re #134 #135 Tic, Tac Toe? (by Glenn on 2010-03-13 21:41:39 GMT from Canada)
Dang. I may as well finish this before somebody else does.
Tic-Tac-Toe (known as noughts and crosses in UK)
tic == whimsical exaggeration (see also "hospital humor")
tac == editorial error, possibly due to english as second language
toe == driving a Brad/nail at a slant :-)
To keep this Linuxy and to avoid Ladislav from confining this post to the
trashcan, look at this link
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/toe
See,,, you guys were on topic all along.
(I think I have had one too many bitters heh heh heh)
Cheers guys
Glenn
137 • Keeping it Linuxy (by jake at 2010-03-13 22:15:08 GMT from United States)
As an exercise for the reader(s) ... Read and understand the man pages for tic, tac and toe. If you're not careful you'll learn a little about your OS of choice's underpinnings ;-)
Ladislav's going to come up with a list of "noughts" for us, but then we all have out crosses to beer^Wbear.
Only one pint before 5PM ... and it's only 14:15 Pacific time, alas.
138 • about Husse & Tota Linux returns? (by D1Knight at 2010-03-14 00:44:27 GMT from United States)
A nice tribute to Mr. Mats Geier (Husse).
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1322
Tota Linux, has been back in action?
http://www.totalinux.org/forum/
139 • SalixOS (by Elder V. LaCoste at 2010-03-14 15:40:11 GMT from United States)
Well this might be off topic but I'm not sure what the topic is right now so here it is. I have been using SalixOS for about 2 weeks now and have yet to experience any problems. The install was flawless, easy, and provided nice choices. I installed LXDE from the repository and it was already set up except for adding a volume control on the panel. There are a lot of distros listed on DW and some are great and some "eh". I highly recommend trying SalixOS if you haven't done so yet. This one is definitely worth the download. After 2 weeks of use it still gets my coveted E.V.L. "New Distro of the Year" award! In fact, it has earned the very first one I have ever given out. You may all commence with the celebration now :)
140 • Intralab forms a partnership with Epidemic GNU/Linux (by Jon Iverson at 2010-03-14 21:04:05 GMT from United States)
For those who may be interested in such things, here's a bit of news from the Epidemic GNU/Linux website.
------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 01 March 2010 11:06
Intralab, a Brazilian national company that manufactures the compact IntraDesktop computers - known for leading edge technology that shaves 85% off of typical energy use and is 90% smaller than conventional desktops - has entered into a new partnership with the Epidemic GNU/Linux community.
IntraDesktop computers are now available for delivery to purchasers with an optimized version of the free Epidemic GNU/Linux operating system preinstalled. Free to the consumer, Epidemic GNU/Linux is based on the Debian platform, guaranteeing continuous updates, complete stability and absolute security to the end user.
“This is the first such 'marriage' of a Brazilian hardware manufacturer and a Brazilian free software distribution,” emphasizes Fernando Segalla, Intralab's Director of Technology. “The result is that the consumer receives a 100% optimized cutting edge computer with the Epidemic GNU/Linux operating system preinstalled, creating a high efficiency machine that for all practical purposes is immune to the viruses that plaque other operating systems. The Epidemic GNU/Linux team certified the IntraDesktop and optimized their latest version of Epidemic specifically for our hardware platform.”
This unique partnership represents an excellent opportunity for end users to experience a leading national Linux operating system while at the same time reducing costs. “Beyond the energy savings provided by the IntraDesktop computer, companies and consumers alike will benefit from having an ultra high quality Linux operating system with zero costs attached,” declares James Benedict, creator and lead developer of the Epidemic GNU/Linux project.
141 • Fedora and other distros must include an X11 video safe mode in the loader. (by Jeffersonian on 2010-03-14 21:45:20 GMT from United States)
Hello:
I am currently using the excellent Fedora 12.
After an unsuccessful Nvidia driver update, my system was "an unusable brick": how unpleasant ! First time with Fedora, but it did happen! I had similar problem with other distros (mostly OpenSuse).
I could bring my system to life after much hacking, but not everyone can do this... and it is a pain...
It would be nice, (and relatively simple!) to have a mode doing automatically what I did manually, in order to recover a system, pretty much unusable with X11 working.
One feature that Fedora 12 (perhaps FC 13 too) is an automatic system repair....
This could be as simple as saving a known working version of the drivers, etc... and allowing to use them in a safe boot mode.
And it also would make "non-geeks" less afraid of Linux...
Please comment.
Jeffersonian.
142 • Re 141 - easy video regeneration (by Brooko at 2010-03-14 23:08:28 GMT from New Zealand)
MEPIS has (on the live-CD) a tool for this. It's in the MEPIS System Assistant.
All you have to do is reboot with the live-cd, and it copies the working xorg.conf back into your actual install. Then reboot again to the install and you'll be back with a graphical system - albeit with either the nv or vesa driver. It is pretty good for newbies.
143 • @139 SalixOS (by D1Knight at 2010-03-15 00:07:22 GMT from United States)
Thanks for your recommendation Elder, to try SalixOS. The review/desktop comparisons of Slackware based distros by Mr. Bernard Hoffmann, almost two weeks ago, peaked my interest in the SalixOS distro. Especially with his closing comments on the distros, in particular SalixOS "It's easy, very easy." Sounds good to me.
I shall definitely give it a try.
144 • #143 (by Elder V. LaCoste at 2010-03-15 00:37:54 GMT from United States)
You are most welcome. I am enjoying it on an older PII machine with about 200 megabytes of RAM.
145 • #141 & 142 (by zygmunt on 2010-03-15 09:47:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
You have raised an absolutely vital point here. And it's been a problem ever since a graphical interface was introduced. The whole X11 interface with possibly proprietary drivers is now looking very unstable and dated. Over the past 8 years it has been the cause of much frustration, and continues to be... increasingly. Choice of motherboard, graphics card and driver for a succesful outcome is increasingly narrow. Although I have mostly managed to squeeze life out of various machine hardware, it has rarely been optimum for performance and/or function. An update of kernel, graphics driver or change of hardware has often effectively bricked a sub-optimally "working" system. This is no way to gain "desktop share". It is more likely to make normal people give up, except for the most very pesistent hobbyists with time on their hands. Even the documentation, where it exists and can be found is often poor, esoteric or just outdated. Of course I have also seen problems on M$ machines as well.
Number of Comments: 145
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