 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 345, 15 March 2010 |
|
Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! With the first development release of Fedora 13, the focus of the online Linux community has once again turned to this popular distribution. But, as emerged in an online report last week, the project's developer and user community is up in the arms over the project's update policy and its blatant disregard for end users' needs. In other news, the openSUSE community releases new live CDs with Xfce and LXDE desktop environments, OpenBSD announces the upcoming release of version 4.7, and Wolvix resumes the development of the Slackware-based distribution with a new development build. Also in this week's issue, a first look at Haiku, an operating system that strives to be a successor of BeOS, and a questions and answers section that looks at loopback devices. All this and more in this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!
Content:
 Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (19MB) and MP3 (32MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
|
| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
A first look at Haiku (alpha)
 When talking about kernel scheduling and desktop responsiveness, it's common to hear people in the tech community talk fondly of BeOS, a desktop system which hails from the 1990s. BeOS had a well-deserved reputation for providing users with a polished desktop and smooth interaction, even when the processor was under heavy load. Unfortunately the product was not a financial success and BeOS largely disappeared from consumer machines. The Haiku project attempts to pick up where BeOS left off and, though Haiku includes very little code from BeOS, it strives to maintain the same sort of look, feel and snappy user interface.
I grabbed the Haiku install image, which weighs in at about 400 MB and acts both as installation media and as a live CD. Upon booting from the CD, Haiku starts up a graphical environment and asks if the user wishes to run the installer or move on to the live desktop. Selecting the latter option deposits the user at a fairly standard-looking desktop. The wallpaper is a soft sky blue and contains the Haiku logo. In the upper-left corner are icons for navigating the user's (and system's) directories. There are also icons linking to the project's release notes and manual. Lastly, there's an icon which launches the installer. Over in the upper-right corner we find a compact combination of application menu (represented here by a blue feather), system tray and taskbar. By default, the system tray displays a digital clock and system monitor. Clicking on the system monitor enables the user to manage running processes.
Considering this is the first alpha release of the operating system, Haiku comes with a pretty wide array of applications. Most of them are small, simple apps, but there's a good variety. The menu provides links to a web browser (which appears to be a re-branded Firefox version 2), a text editor, calculator, CD player, archive manager, a webcam tool (which wasn't able to detect my webcam), screen magnifier, media player, task manager, command-line terminal and an e-mail client. There are also tools available to assist the user in configuring the system, including tools to change the general appearance of the desktop, adjust the mouse, manage printers, select screen savers, adjust the time, configure the network connection and manage virtual memory. While using the system, I tried to play some music and video files. Clicking on a media file would launch the player, but I was unable to get picture or sound out of the program. The system likewise doesn't seem to have the ability to play DVDs nor does it have Flash installed.
Web browsing with Haiku
(full image size: 98kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
For my experiment with Haiku, I used a generic desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM and NVIDIA graphics card), my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM and Intel graphics card) and a VirtualBox virtual machine with 512 MB of RAM. Haiku's ability to handle (or not handle) my hardware is where it surprised me the most. On both of my machines, the video card was handled perfectly. Likewise, the OS didn't have any trouble picking up USB devices, such as a mouse or keyboard. My laptop's touchpad worked without any problems and my desktop's network card was properly detected. On the other hand, I wasn't able to get sound out of either machine, my laptop's network port and wireless card were not picked up and my Novatel USB modem wasn't detected. During my time with Haiku, I wasn't able to get the system to print, even to Haiku's virtual PDF printer. Things worked fairly well when running the OS in my virtual environment, except for the network connection. A little experimenting revealed Haiku wouldn't detect Virtual Box's default network interface; it needed to be offered one of the Intel card options.
Besides the Be file system, Haiku supports a few common partition types. The system was able to detect a NTFS partition and my ext3 partitions, but not my ext4 partition. When running from the live CD, Haiku doesn't automatically mount local drives, but the option is there to mount supported partitions. When a partition is mounted, a corresponding icon is created for the user on the desktop.
Kicking off the system installer displays some documentation about the install process. Specifically, the user is warned that the installer might not be able to manipulate partitions and so a partition should be created for Haiku ahead of time. Instructions for adding Haiku to an existing GRUB boot menu are also covered. As is mentioned in most of the project's documentation, the user is warned about the risks of using alpha-stage software. Moving beyond that screen, we get to the installer itself. It has a terse layout that is likely to appeal to the more technically inclined. From here, the user can select the source media (which is wisely defaulted to the live CD) and the destination partition.
There's a button which brings up a partition editor and, for this release, it seems the editor is really just there to format an existing partition to the Be file system. Once a suitable partition has been selected, the user can optionally choose to use the Haiku boot loader. There's a button which offers to install additional components, but the list of extras is empty. With all the options taken care of, the installer copies the live system to the destination partition. The copy process is quick, taking just a few minutes, and it carries a bonus. If the user has created files in the live environment before running the installer, those files will be automatically copied over to the hard disk.
The Haiku system installer at work
(full image size: 86kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
When the installer is finished, the user can reboot and run their new Haiku system from the local drive. This process is very similar to running from the CD, though noticeably faster and the installer icon is missing from the desktop. When installed locally, the OS used around 100 MB of memory for simple tasks and, after the boot-up process completed, the desktop remained responsive regardless of what I threw at it. I didn't do any scientific comparison, but the system felt like it was performing about on par with a mid-level Linux desktop environment, such as Xfce.
At no point during the installation process was I asked to create user accounts, set a password, or confirm settings. At each boot up, the user is automatically logged into the desktop and given full control of the operating system. Haiku uses command-line programs and a file system layout which will be familiar to anyone who works with the UNIX family, so it was easy for me to create new user accounts and set passwords from the command line. However, doing so does not prevent the administrator, called "user", from being automatically logged in at boot time. In fact, there doesn't appear to be any way to sign in locally as a different user. This leads me to believe the user accounts are only used for network services, like secure shell, at this time. Otherwise Haiku is effectively a single-user system. While on the topic of network services, Haiku doesn't appear to be running any by default, preventing remote bad guys (and gals) from accessing the machine.
After searching around the application menu and the Haiku community forum, I'm unable to find any working package manager or update utility. In other words, the user is left without security updates. Installing new programs or patching existing packages must be done manually by downloading and compiling the desired software. To assist in this process, Haiku comes with the GNU Compiler Collection, version 2.95.3, and other development tools, such as GNU Make. These utilities worked well enough, enabling me to create small programs, but the handful of packages I downloaded and tried to build all failed to compile. I suspect incompatible library versions and the age of GCC 2.95.3 are the prime reasons for the software not building properly.
Using the command line in Haiku
(full image size: 71kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
As the project's documentation regularly points out, Haiku is still in the alpha stage. It may be a developer's and hobbyist's playground, but it's definitely not in a position to move into the home desktop or business markets. The system is quick enough and shows promise, but it's missing a lot of features available in other modern operating systems. In some ways, it feels like Haiku is stuck in the 1990s. Separate user accounts, package management, and a wider range of applications would go a long way to making Haiku more appealing and will hopefully be added later. With the alpha now out in the wild and the system equipped with development tools, I suspect new software and ports will spring up fairly quickly. In conclusion:
- Project in alpha
- Off to a really good start
- Not for production
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Fedora developers stage "unrest", a look at Mandriva's history, openSUSE 11.2 "LXDE" and "Xfce" live CDs, Wolvix 2.0.0
 With the alpha release of Fedora 13 early last week, the online Linux world has once again started focusing its attention on this popular and highly innovative distribution. What new features will the final release come with? And will there be, as has often been the case with the last few releases, any breathtaking and controversial changes that would make some end user shake their heads in disbelief while making others appreciate the new challenges? As always, we will have to wait another two months before the final version is out, but early information about some of the more interesting characteristics of Fedora 13 are now available: "BFO is one of the unique features in Fedora. This effort by Fedora community hopes to completely remove DVD installations in long term. It allows users to download a single, tiny image and install current and future versions of Fedora without having to download additional images." Also found in Fedora 13 is the ability to use the roll-back feature of the Btrfs file system: "Btrfs lets you take lightweight snapshots of the file system which can be mounted or booted into selectively. This means that you can easily take a snapshot of the partition and in case something bad happens, just boot into the older snapshot."
Although it is always exciting to report about new features in a Linux distribution, not everybody is happy with this rapidly changing world, frequent package updates and potential quality problems. Jonathan Corbet, the founder of Linux Weekly News, incited a heated debate last week when he reported about an "unrest" on the Fedora developers' mailing list: "At LWN.net this week, Jonathan Corbet reports unrest on Fedora mailing lists about the frantic pace, growing quantity, and shoddy quality of package updates. Noting that this may be more than 'yet another Fedora flame war,' Corbet writes that a growing number of Fedora users are fed up with the accelerating churn in a distro that they believe should begin mellowing out into the more sustainable pace of middle age." A number of proposals have been suggested to solve these problems: "Proposals for taming this chaos include moving to a rolling release schedule, as well as freezing releases, or making releases look like 'a moderately-slowed version of Rawhide.' ... So far, writes Corbet, Fedora's governance institutions have yet to agree on solutions. He concludes: 'Until those institutions act, Fedora risks looking like a contentious organization lacking a clear idea of what it is trying to do.'" The LWN.net article is currently available to subscribers only, but DesktopLinux has a nice summary of the events here. In response to these debates, the Fedora project has published a Wiki page entitled Stable release updates vision.
To conclude the round-up of Fedora-related news, here is a link to a fairly technical interview with Fedora project leader Paul Frields, talking about some of the lesser-known features of Fedora 12: "One of the most prominent features is the toolset for working with virtual guests, outside the virtual environment itself. With libguestfs and guestfish, a system administrator can make changes on a guest image without having to actually boot up that system. ... Another major improvement is memory management across multiple guests. In a lot of cases, virtualisation is used to host a large number of very similar guests. With Fedora 12, we've introduced a kernel shared memory feature that eliminates duplicate memory areas across guests, pointing instead to a single page in memory. So if you have any two virtual guest machines, each assigned, say, 512 megabytes of RAM, that load many of the same things into memory, the actual memory usage of each machine may be much lower than that 512 MB. Of course, that means that on the same host hardware, you can now fit more guests into the same amount of physical RAM. And this is managed without any special fiddling with configuration, again making life easier for the busy system administrator."
* * * * *
 Mandriva Linux came into existence in 1998 and since then both the distribution and the company have had a fair share of ups and downs. Last week, H Open Source published a lengthy and well-researched article summarising the long and sometimes turbulent history of one of the world's most prominent Linux distributions: "KDE 1.0 had just been released (12 July, 1998), but Red Hat had yet to include the desktop environment because of reservations about the licensing of the Qt C++ cross platform GUI toolkit, on which KDE was built. [Mandriva founder Gaël] Duval not only included the latest version of KDE, but added touches of his own such as making 'access to the CD-ROM and floppy drives transparent.' When Duval returned from his two-week holiday there were more than two hundred messages waiting for him, 'including new ideas, one patch, and two companies (located in the US and Australia) announcing that they had already started selling Mandrake on CDs.' The combination of Red Hat and KDE proved a winning combination for Linux Mandrake, and began a roller coaster ride for Mandrake/Mandriva and its developers that has continued to this day."
* * * * *
 More interesting openSUSE spins were announced last week. First, there was news about an openSUSE-based live CD with LXDE and this was followed by another live CD, but this time containing the Xfce desktop: "Yesterday Andrea announced the live CDs for LXDE, which he built in Build Service with the help of Dmitry Serpokryl. It was a very easy task for me to replace the LXDE packages with Xfce ones in Kiwi definition, so I can present you the Xfce live CDs! The default user is 'linux' with no password, user 'root' uses the same empty password. Some points first: currently the Qt YaST is used (I had some issues with GTK+ one); after the login a warning message is shown (about putting 'linux' into /etc/hosts); you can install the system to hard drive using the Live Installer icon on the desktop." Both of these live CDs are based on the current stable version of openSUSE (11.2) and both are available for the i686 and x86_64 architectures. Quick download links: openSUSE-LXDE-11.2.i686-1.0.0-Build25.1.iso (464MB, SHA256), openSUSE-LXDE-11.2.x86_64-1.0.0-Build8.1.iso (466MB, SHA256), openSUSE-Xfce-11.2.i686-1.0.0-Build9.2.iso (473MB, SHA256), openSUSE-Xfce-11.2.x86_64-1.0.0-Build2.2.iso (474MB, SHA256).
* * * * *
 In our recent comparative review of Slackware-based distributions that use Xfce as their preferred desktop, the author intentionally omitted one popular choice, Wolvix, citing lack of updates on the project's web site. Indeed, there has been no release, stable or unstable, for nearly a year. But just when Wolvix started to look like just another discontinued project, the lead developer announced a return of the living dead werewolf, together with new development builds of Wolvix 2.0.0: "It has been quite a while since there was any development here, but things are finally getting back on track now. The last couple of weeks I've been picking up the slack and I'm in the process of making a new public development release (beta 3). Many packages have already been updated and the development is ongoing." Although the new ISO images are provided for internal testing, they are also available from a public mirror. For those interested in checking out the current progress at this distribution, here is the quick link to the CD image of the most recent development build: wolvix-2.0.0-build54.iso (617MB, MD5).
The development of Wolvix 2.0.0 is now "back on track".
(full image size: 93kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Loopback devices
Going-around-in-circles asks: What is a loopback device and how do I use it?
DistroWatch answers: The term loopback device can be confusing, in part because it gets applied in multiple areas. I'll cover two common ones here.
A loopback device may refer to a network interface that basically sends data to itself. This can be handy for testing network commands or for accessing services on your own computer. A loopback device will give you network access to your own machine, even if you're not connected to a physical network. On Linux (and other UNIX operating systems) the loopback network device is called "lo" and you can see this by opening a command line and running
ifconfig
You should see an entry called "lo" with a full name of "Local Loopback". The IP address for this device is 127.0.0.1 (or ::1 on IPv6-enabled machines). If you were running a web server on your machine or a secure shell service, you could connect to it by accessing IP address 127.0.0.1.
Another type of loopback device is a file which contains, inside itself, a file system. For instance, an ISO file is a disc image, which contains a file system and can, in turn, contain files. A loopback file can be mounted to the system in a similar fashion to the way a disk partition is mounted. For example, the following command will mount an ISO file under the directory "my_dir".
mount -o loop disc_image.iso my_dir
Loopback file systems are also useful if you want to preserve Linux file attributes and permissions on a drive which doesn't support those characteristics. You can store your Linux files and directories inside the loopback file and save the loopback container anywhere, like on a FAT file system. When you access the contents of the container, the Linux file system will be maintained inside. You can create a loopback device for yourself using a few commands.
First we need to create the container file. The following command creates a file 10 MB in size. You can make larger containers by increasing the number after the "count" parameter.
dd if=/dev/zero of=myloop.img bs=1024 count=10240
Next we need to format the container, as we would a regular disk partition. In this example, the container is being formatted with the ext2 file system. The "mkfs" command will probably warn you that the device is really a file, but then allow you to proceed.
mkfs.ext2 myloop.img
We now have a container that has been formatted. The next step is to mount it so we may access the new file system. First we will make a directory to act as the mount point, then attach our container to that point.
mkdir mydisk
mount -o loop myloop.img mydisk
From here on, we can explore the container in the "mydisk" directory. When we are done with the container, we can remove it by running
umount mydisk
|
| Released Last Week |
Frugalware Linux 1.2
Miklós Vajna has announced the release of Frugalware Linux 1.2, a general-purpose, community-built distribution for intermediate Linux users: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.2, our twelfth stable release. No new features have been added since 1.2rc2, but 62 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the pre-releases, here are the most important changes since 1.1: up to date packages - Linux kernel 2.6.32.8, GNU C library 2.11.1, X.Org 7.5, GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.3.5; KMS (Kernel Mode-Setting) is now enabled by default for Intel and Radeon cards; PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is now part of the base system; introduced devtmpfs - you can now exclude /dev from backups, along with /proc and /sys; upgraded KDE (and related) packages to the 4.x branch...." See the full release announcement for further information.
Frugalware Linux 1.2 - the distribution's first release with KDE 4
(full image size: 1,420kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
VortexBox 1.2
Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 1.2, a Fedora-based Linux distribution with the goal of turning an unused computer into an easy-to-use music server or jukebox: "VortexBox 1.2 released. The VortexBox community has been working hard on this release. We have added a lot of new features to make VortexBox the best NAS for SqueezeBox. These include adding the new SqueezeBox Server 7.4.2 and fixing some critical bugs in VortexBox Player. VortexBox Player is now the highest resolutions (192/24) player available that is compatible with SqueezeBox Server (SBS). The new package manager allows new software packages to be installed from the GUI. The Sonos web GUI can now be installed from the GUI making VortexBox the best NAS for Sonos players. We have fixed the MP3 encoding with better support for genre and cover art that works well in all applications." Consult the complete release announcement for additional information.
PC/OS 10.1
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of PC/OS 10.1, a Xubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution: "We are very pleased to announce the delivery of PC/OS OpenWorkstation 10.1 as well as PC/OS WebStation 10.1. With this release we bring many bug fixes and enhancements to the platform. This release is the last release before the LTS release of PC/OS 11. Some of the highlights of this release include: Linux kernel 2.6.31, OpenOffice.org 3.2, Firefox 3.5.8, Amazon MP3 downloader, Empathy for IM, GnomeBaker for burning CDs and DVDs, VLC as the default video player, WINE 1.2, Google Gears, new simplified menu structure, USB Creator can now be used to create a bootable USB drive, UI design is now unified with the GNOME release. With the last release we introduced the Developer Kit and Office Kit which proved popular and they are available for this release as well." Refer to the release announcement for further details.
eBox Platform 1.4-1
José Antonio Calvo Fernández has announced the release of eBox Platform 1.4-1, an Ubuntu-based server distribution for small and medium-size businesses: "eBox 1.4-1 installer released. I just wanted to let you know that we've done a lot of bug fixing and small improvements since the release of the first 1.4 release. Those all enhancements have now been included on a new installer. The installer itself contains some bug fixes and improvements, this is the changelog: X11 UI tweaks; added console-cyrillic package; install l7-protocols if traffic shaping is selected in advanced mode; quote passwords to avoid problems with strange characters; do not allow to enter 'root' or any other existing system user as admin user to avoid conflicts. Note that this installer include also the fixes and improvements from the 1.4-proposed repository." Here is the full release announcement.
eBox Platform 1.4-1 - an Ubuntu-based server distribution with a web-based administration module
(full image size: 148kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
 The OpenBSD project has announced the upcoming release of version 4.7 and has published a product information page. Besides the usual improvements in hardware support and numerous bug fixes, there are a number of new features, such as: "newfs_ext2fs(8) tool for creating ext2 file systems; mkuboot(8) tool for creating U-Boot bootloader images; dynamic Buffer Cache now supported to a maximum size set with sysctl kern.bufcachepercent; dynamic VFS name cache rewrite, now uses Red/Black trees instead of linked lists; numerous NFS client stability fixes; nat-to, rdr-to, binat-to options replace the nat, rdr and binat translation rules in pf...." OpenBSD 4.7 is scheduled for release on 19 May 2010. Orders for the official CD sets (US$50.00) are now accepted through the project's online ordering system.
* * * * *
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Crociato O.S.. Crociato O.S. is an Italian Ubuntu-based distribution with Enlightenment as the default window manager. The project's web site is in Italian.
- Pack4Linux. Pack4Linux is an enterprise-ready Linux distribution geared towards real-time applications. It is based on Slackware Linux, and aims to be powerful and robust, yet simple to use.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 22 March 2010.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Haiku (by kellemes on 2010-03-15 13:15:03 GMT from Netherlands)
Very nice to see Haiku making progress, guess I have to try it out in a vm now.
2 • loopback devices (by shankargopal on 2010-03-15 13:27:30 GMT from India)
It may be useful to also mention the losetup command. When image files are mounted as loopback devices, mount only mentions the loopback file number, which can be confusing. Losetup lets users see which files are mounted on which loopback devices, and also permits manually creating loopback devices and manually releasing them (when umount fails to do so, which I've found occasionally on buggy or beta distro releases).
3 • Mandrake/Mandriva and loopbacks (by Paul on 2010-03-15 13:30:07 GMT from United States)
Mandrake was either the first or second distro I tried, v. 10.1. I know it was the first I got working through persistance and dumb luck. However, I was still a Redmond slave. Currently, I am using Vector Lite on my old Compaq since my Shuttle lost its video. (I was warned about onboard video.) I thought it was rediculous that the cartoon people threatened to sue over the use of Mandrake. Must have thought only a magician could get it to work. I guess they never heard of the mandrake root used by herbalists for several milenia.
Thanks for the explanation of the uses of the loopback network. Wondered about that when I set up my networks at home but never felt the need to learn about their uses.
No board checking
Paul
4 • *Buntu news (by davemc on 2010-03-15 13:38:26 GMT from United States)
Didn't see anything about the *Buntu interface changes. Looks like someone over in Ubuntuland decided to really whack the brown tree a good one and purple fell out of the sky. From brown to purple now - wow, talk about the mismatch of the century. Whats wrong with good ol light blue or tan? Anyway, I normally could care less about such things, but they purple'd up the Humanity Icon Theme too?
5 • @Jesse about "branded" Firefox (by Anonymous at 2010-03-15 13:42:11 GMT from Ukraine)
"Bon Echo" is unbranded, not rebranded version.
6 • mount loop any-file.iso (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2010-03-15 13:46:22 GMT from Egypt)
Another method to mount any-file.iso to see disk content just like using DAEMON Tools under ms-windows to mount any-file.iso
http://www.disc-tools.com/download/daemon+abpro+dtpro+sptd+hashcalc
After make directory to work as mount point say my-cd-dvd
mount -o loop /path/to/iso /mnt/my-cd-dvd
You can watch CBT iso for example
If any another methods you may share your info with us
Enjoy :-)
7 • @ 4 (by Matt at 2010-03-15 13:56:01 GMT from Canada)
I'm not sure why there's so much talk about the interface changes, if people (like me) didn't like the default brown, it's super easy to change the looks of it to something normal like the light blue or something (Clearlooks if I remember correctly), just by going into the Appearance configuration window. So now that the default is purple or whatever it will be, it's still going to be just as easy to get something useful. The defaults really don't seem to be that big of a deal to me and I don't see why other people comment on it like it is a big deal. No personal attacks intended, I just see articles left, right and center about Ubuntu interface changes and my response is always, "Who cares!"
8 • Haiku goes mainstream (by vvillenave on 2010-03-15 13:56:38 GMT from France)
No Flash in Haiku? *Really*?
9 • PCLinuxOS 2010 beta (by yoyo on 2010-03-15 13:57:46 GMT from Mexico)
Do you know if the PCLinuxOS 2010 beta will be upgradable to 2010 final?
10 • Fedora "unrest" (by megadriver at 2010-03-15 14:01:55 GMT from Spain)
Fedora proper (i.e. not Rawhide) as a rolling release distro? Bring it on!
11 • Go Rolling release Fedora ! (by morgan cox on 2010-03-15 14:07:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
If Fedora went to a rolling release model like Arch I would actually use it.
It would maybe damage Arch's growing uptake ?
12 • distrocast rewiev Haiku (by james at 2010-03-15 14:10:18 GMT from Poland)
JD reviews Haiku in 2009-09. I've pasted link:
http://distrocast.org/?p=100
13 • fedora updates (by Reuben at 2010-03-15 14:16:29 GMT from United States)
I'm kind of miffed that Fedora would update KDE to 4.4.0 but not 4.4.1. What the?
Anyways, the DVD installer gives you the option of choosing which repos you want to go with, and you're free to disable updates.
14 • Re : fedora updates (by morgan cox on 2010-03-15 14:30:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
That's what I love about arch now, I got the 4.4.1 update in arch hours before the annocement on kde.org.
15 • RE: PCLinuxOS 2010 beta (by Bill at 2010-03-15 14:41:15 GMT from Canada)
Do you know if the PCLinuxOS 2010 beta will be upgradable to 2010 final?
NO, check the forums as it has been asked several times and it is recommended to download final and do fresh install
16 • Fedora (by Fred Nelson at 2010-03-15 15:09:25 GMT from United States)
I don't believe that a true rolling-release is even on the table for Fedora, despite the shoddy journalism of DesktopLinux; I've been following the devel mailing list. The real issue is continuing the policy of allowing *certain* feature updates, versus going to bugfix/security only like most other large distros. I hope they don't do get more conservative; the current model is part of what makes Fedora unique.
@13: Fedora is going to update to 4.4.1; it's still in updates-testing. Remember how long after 4.4.0 was out before it got into Fedora? Say what you want about Fedora, they do test their updates well.
17 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-15 16:14:34 GMT from United Kingdom)
Did someone mention Ubuntu and Canonical perchance?
For those interested in the more "commercial" aspects of distroism, and the way Canonical views things, see here:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/03/14/canonical_ceo_silber/
18 • Haiku (by Auronandace at 2010-03-15 16:55:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Great to see a review of Haiku. The alpha release was made in september 2009. Since then there has been progress on wireless support and even a native webkit browser called WebPositive.
I gotta say that I am really excited seeing the development of this OS. If you want an up-to-date taste of haiku, try out a nightly from haiku-files.org.
Open source is awesome!
19 • @7 • @ 4 (by Matt at 2010-03-15 13:56:01 GMT from Canada) (by forlin at 2010-03-15 18:05:33 GMT from Portugal)
"Who cares!"
......
:)
Well... anyway, for those who care, here is the best info from the best source
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/308
20 • Haiku/ newlook Ubuntu (by Ken on 2010-03-15 18:07:42 GMT from Canada)
Howdy
Interesting that someone is STILL trying to re-capture the BeOS experience, but I feel that is a lot of work for a limited audience. I am one of those few who actually used BeOS as a daily desktop (albeit for a short while) and I mourn its demise. I used it on a p200 with 64MB of RAM, and from cold start to desktop, that would take about 15 seconds......be that as it may ;D the hardware & OS worlds have moved on, and the features that once gave BeOS an advantage have long been available in competing OS's.
As for comments about changing Ubuntu appearance being easy...how many people do you know that still have Windows looking exactly like it did the day they bought the computer? If Ubuntu is to make inroads to the mass-consumer, it must have the broad appeal. As I see it, one of the most appealing features is the Netbook visuals in the latest UNR...people can just pick it up and start USING IT. PC-phobics and illiterati can get busy with minimal instructions required. The only drawback is that the "human" color theme is not what folks expect in high-tech gadgets; you can bet that MS & Apple spent incredible $$$ on basic theme & interface research.
I think Canonical should even consider having 4 to 6 easily accessed buttons (or a drop-down menu) that allow quick-change between color themes, right at the top.
Just my $0.02
Ken
21 • Ubuntu Remix? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-03-15 18:53:24 GMT from United States)
I like the new change even tho I won't keep it. I don't really know ANYBODY who has left their UI the same as it was when they first installed their os or bought their system. The way I look at it is that it's not really an issue but some people really get upset about it.
22 • No subject (by MrO at 2010-03-15 19:03:13 GMT from United States)
UbuntuLand
I have a suggestion, since you have *too many buntu's all over the place*, why don't you make a BIG UBUNTU DVD using the multicd script suggested last week or so, and make it with menu's so that people can install the UBUNTU of their choice instead of downloading 4 or 5 isos, download the BIG DVD which menu
1) Install Ubuntu
2) Install Kbuntu
3) Install Xbuntu
4) Install Lubuntu
5) Install Ubuntu Christian Edition
6) Install Ubuntu Muslim Edition
if it would fit nicely on a DVD. There you have it. I would be better and more people would appreciate it. Has anyone done it already?
I would like the ability to boot several versions of linux systems, but on a USB. The problem is that USB disk drive lifespan is not much :(
23 • Frugalware desktop wallpaper is... (by PP at 2010-03-15 19:12:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
...the definition of Kitsch
24 • @20 (by Gustavo Leal at 2010-03-15 19:29:46 GMT from Brazil)
I totally agree with you about Ubuntu appearance. No good product will survive with an ugly face.
25 • RE:22 WHAT? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-03-15 19:51:49 GMT from United States)
I think that's a great ideal. If we could anybody to do it.
26 • frugalware wallpaper is... (by bugman at 2010-03-15 19:55:59 GMT from United States)
...the ugliest i've seen in a long time
[but who cares, a couple of clicks and it's gone, like in ubuntu]
haiku, though, it's nice to see they have something working, alternatives to linux are more fun that simply more distros
especially more, well, you know what kind of distros
[pere ubuntu]
27 • Ubuntu and murky colours. (by Richmond mathewson on 2010-03-15 19:56:37 GMT from Bulgaria)
Ubuntu seems at least from my point of view, to have only 2 things badly wrong with it: the daft names for their distributions and their distinctly maladjusted
colour schemes.
However, as Ubuntu is so easy to modify there is really no reason to complain:
one can change one's desktop scheme, pictures and so forth very easily. And,
one can give one's personalised distro a much more 'sensible' name without
having to consult Steve Jobs or The Other Person. I know; mine is called
"The Linux Box" - such much more mature than
Lucid Lynx . . . :)
28 • Fedora (by Chris at 2010-03-15 20:16:27 GMT from Germany)
Fedora should go rolling ;)
I would love to have a rolling release Distro without all that pointless work i have to do in Arch...
BTW: Arch Never worked for me. I tried it about 5 times and everytime i get stuck at things that (Forumquote) "Cant be".
Till Fedora goes (hopefully) rolling i will stuck at Slackware ;)
29 • Ubuntu and Groupthink (by Duhnonymous at 2010-03-15 20:23:23 GMT from United States)
What's really getting people in a tizzy about Ubuntu is the fact that the decision to move the window buttons was Mark Shuttleworth's decision alone, made because of his own personal preference and no other reason. That fact is just now coming out in the long forum thread in UF's Ubuntu+1 testing forum.
Why did it take nearly two weeks for this information to come out? Why did none of the developers involved with the decision even comment about it? Why did Mark wait until the last minute to spring those changes on Ubuntu users unless he knew it would meet with universal criticism and condemnation? The only answer is that what Mark wants, Mark gets. He "yes,but"s every other option until he gets his way.
30 • @29 (by Hmm at 2010-03-15 20:51:59 GMT from United States)
Mark's cash makes the whole thing happen, so if he wants the buttons moved, who cares? Users will just put them back where they want them with gcc or a python script that's already in the wild. Yep, I think it's retarded to move them to the left for UI reasons, but I'm not bankrolling the project. Purple or brown or tan or pink? Whatever.
31 • a rolling release Distro without all that pointless work (by Enlik at 2010-03-15 21:16:03 GMT from Poland)
Maybe PCLinuxOS?
A new version, 2010 is going to land shortly. It's a rolling release distro that provides new version of apps, libs etc., but the "core" system (kernel, some libs...) is kept with no version changes, as far as I know. The distribution is intended to be stable and easy to use. The latter is achieved also by adoption of some great Mandriva configuration tools.
Because of the last big changes in Linux (a OS, not just a kernel), a new version is decided to be made, as an rare exception to rolling release model.
One of the most notable change for end (KDE) user is that KDE SC 3 is replaced by the fourth version (not sure if "3" is available in repositories)...
By the way, it seems it's my first comment here, so I want to say hello. :)
32 • RE: 15 (by Matt at 2010-03-15 21:29:55 GMT from Canada)
I'm not a PCLinuxOS user anyway as I have problems with the way that Mandriva manages their company and treats their users and so I don't use any derivatives of it, but for them and all companies that don't try and make things easy for their users... do you actually intend to drive away fans or are you just too dumb to realize that what you're doing will drive people away. With something like Windows, you have a very infrequent release cycle (I realize I'm totally ignoring the cost aspect) and so it's not so bad that it's recommended that you do a full reinstall of the OS each time (although they do give upgrade options even!). However, with Linux, the release cycle is so short, 6 months for Ubuntu, a year for PCLinuxOS etc, that they shouldn't expect users to pack everything up and redo everything once a year or twice a year.
Not to mention the annoyance of downloading another 700+ MB of stuff all the time, it would be much easier to simply upgrade and download a few hundred MB's worth rather than an entire new ISO worth, it saves time, bandwidth, and annoyance.
Don't think that because I'm comparing Windows and Linux and showing the downsides of Linux that I'm a Windows fanboy and just a troll on these comments, I'm simply point out a large fault of Linux. This isn't a big issue to most of us that run it and have gotten used to it and simply put up with it, however, it's a huge issue for potential converts from Windows or OSX. This has to be addressed (along with many other things) before Linux can honestly tell people it's competing with Windows and OSX.
33 • 9 - PCLinuxOS 2010 beta (by Eduardo Z at 2010-03-15 22:08:20 GMT from United States)
? I thought the last time I did a full install was supposed to be the last time I would have to do a full install. I thought we bragged about PCLOS being a rolling release.
>> NO, check the forums as it has been asked several times and it is recommended to download final and do fresh install
34 • Wolvix? (by Nivaldo Godinho on 2010-03-15 22:15:29 GMT from Brazil)
When is out the new release?
Thanks.
35 • @33 PCLinuxOS 2010 beta (by Anonymous at 2010-03-15 22:16:58 GMT from United States)
I think they went this route to finally get everyone off of KDE 3. Too many where just hanging on to KDE 3 like it was a bag full of Krugerrands. Anyway there is much to like in PCLOS 2010 beta 1.
36 • PCLinuxOS (by Crow on 2010-03-15 22:26:56 GMT from Mexico)
I'm a PCLinuxOS user, have been for several for years now and use it at work Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 16:00 and is highly stable, not once reinstall due to software failure. I use it at home too but that environment is less demanding.
I sometimes install it in friends computers but I don't use the original ISO (God forbid, too many files to update) instead I make a remaster of my own install with the software I have found useful. In all these years I have not learned to use the command line, I'm too lazy and short of time for that but in the end, I don't need it since this distro has many tools to deal with configuration problems.
Just the experience of someone you tech people calls newbie (I'll be an eternal newbie I guess)
About Mandriva, I don't know a thing :-)
37 • Smallest Linux distro (by techqc on 2010-03-15 22:35:17 GMT from Indonesia)
Can anyone here point to the smallest linux distro?
I am thinking about a one-app solution for a task and am looking for an example
of how to do such a thing.
From USB key: Boot up, run app, shutdown.
Thanks in advance for any response.
38 • No subject (by matyas at 2010-03-15 22:38:34 GMT from Argentina)
Fedora with a rolling release cycle like Arch?
Yes please !
39 • Correction, perhaps RE:37 (by techqc on 2010-03-15 22:45:04 GMT from Indonesia)
Perhaps distro is not the correct term for such a beast.
What would be the correct term for a one-app linux system, anyway?
(And Yes, I second the motion - a rolling release Fedora could be a very good thing.)
40 • Frugalware linux... (by Neal on 2010-03-15 23:10:02 GMT from United States)
Why doesn't Frugalware linux get more attention? I haven't even seen a review for the past two years on on Frugal.
@37 maybe tiny core?
41 • Haiku (by anton on 2010-03-15 23:14:04 GMT from United States)
i had looked at Haiku last year is nice thou wasn't able to connect to internet or even get the browser to open a month or so later i found this link to add kde apps havn't tested or done but thought i'd share http://tiltos.com/drupal/node/17
42 • Distro and Re-installs (by Jesse at 2010-03-15 23:19:37 GMT from Canada)
@37:
The smallest (current) Linux distro is probably Tiny Core or one of its flavours. It weighs in at about 10MB. It's pretty bare bones. Slitaz is probably next on the list at 30MB, and it's a bit more general purpose.
@32
Even Fedora and Ubuntu have 14-18 month support cycles for their fast moving distros. So you don't have to upgrade every six months. And if you're looking for longer release cycles, there's Red Hat (seven years) and Debian (I forget off the top of my head how long Debian is supported.) My point is that you're correct that upgrading every year can be a pain, especially if you don't separate your home partition from the OS. But if longer release cycles is your thing, there are plenty of distributions that fit your requirement. Rather than complaining about a "large fault in Linux", perhaps you should look around at some of the options offered for your specific needs.
43 • #37 (by Notorik at 2010-03-15 23:37:03 GMT from United States)
BlueFlops
http://blueflops.sourceforge.net/
44 • Rolling releases (by DG at 2010-03-15 23:39:29 GMT from Netherlands)
As I've commented before, having a rolling release distro isn't the panacea to cure all update problems, because it only really works if the user can update after every change in the base system. If you only update once a month or longer, there is the possibility that new versions of some key packages have been released and other key packages won't work with these new versions.
This caused problems installing Lunar Linux for about 6 weeks last year: the 1.6.4 ISO was eight months old, various critical packages needed to be updated, but they all had to be updated in the right order...
45 • Lubuntu (by George at 2010-03-15 23:50:35 GMT from Canada)
I'm really looking forward to Lub'nOilbuntu
46 • @ 22 (by Andrew at 2010-03-16 01:18:09 GMT from Australia)
Your forgetting that there's even more Ubuntu versions.
Ubuntu Server, Alternate and Desktop, 32 and 64 bit variants = 6 .isos.
Same for Kubuntu and Xubuntu - don't know about the rest.
There's also Edubuntu as well.
If there's 18 .isos just for Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu, and at a guess another dozen odd for the other official releases, it's more like a Blu Ray disc than a DVD. I would _gladly_ pay $10 for a BR disc that contained every 10.04 release and another $10 for a BR disc that contained the most used debs from the repos.
47 • @44 - Rolling release Vs Set Distro Release (by Andrew at 2010-03-16 01:26:48 GMT from Australia)
100% aggreement with #44.
Having a distro that's rolling (they see me rollin', they hating) is fine for the users that know their system back to front. Otherwise you do run into issues (think grandma emerging world).
Set distro releases (non-rollin') don't have this issue as the base is set, just updates.
The best compromise is a set distro release that gives you the option to do a full distro upgrade (think Ubuntu) - so long as it WORKS.
I'm personally over the contstand distro swapping and full-upgrade cycles - I think I'll install minimalist Xubuntu (read: Ubuntu Server + xfce + xfce-goodies + few others) from the 10.04 set and then leave it for 12 months.
48 • @46 You are right (by Mr0 at 2010-03-16 01:41:45 GMT from United States)
There are more than what I posted, I was just going easy :), there are more which will suggest throw in Mint as well, + other *buntu's out there. But a Blue Ray disk with them included would not be a bad idea + repos as well like you suggest. Maybe LInuxCD or other online vendor picks up the idea?
49 • * finally get everyone off of KDE 3 * (by Mr0 at 2010-03-16 01:48:01 GMT from United States)
I believe that not *everybody* wants to get off KDE 3 completely. Check last week or 2 weeks ago, some folks want to run KDE 3 on Slackware 13 because it had KDE 4.2/4.3. Why? Some folks switched to GNOME because they did not like KDE 4.X series. Now KDE 4 series is looking good, only exception I would say is k3b, still annoying media codecs, wonder how some distros do it so it can work, but it is coming along.
On rolling releases,
Fedora has RAWHIDE, but not too many folks are courageous to attempt it :)
50 • Small Linux (by Anonymous at 2010-03-16 02:13:22 GMT from United States)
This worked for me:
http://www.toms.net/rb/
a single floppy rescue distro.
51 • Some of DW's Advertiser's Ads Questionable (by Sol at 2010-03-16 04:24:39 GMT from United States)
Just an observation about certain ads on DistroWatch. The ones in question are for the "Linux-based Netbooks". For several Months now, at least, on all of the ads, when one clicks the link, it brings up the Netbook, but with the message: "Currently unavailable.
We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."
I realize that the ads are paid for, but should be pulled when said items are not available. And, with the "What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?" feature on the pages of these items, they might be thought of as a bait-and-switch-type of ads. Please look into this, Ladislav and gang!
Cheers, everyone!
52 • #34 - Wolvix when? (by gnomic at 2010-03-16 05:38:22 GMT from New Zealand)
Pretty sure I can speak for the developer in saying "When it's done." ;-)
In the meantime http://forums.wolvix.org/ and http://www.wolvix.org/news.php will help in keeping track of progress.
53 • openSUSE is 11.3 (by RB at 2010-03-16 05:44:36 GMT from United States)
Distrowatch front page:
The front page shows open suse as 11.2 in the description, but the title has it correct as 11.3 .
54 • OpenSuSE 11.3 (by Wil Barath on 2010-03-16 09:52:36 GMT from Canada)
Was a fan of SuSE for some time, between my early SlackWare days and my more recent Mepis/Debian/Sidux/Ubuntu leanings...
What I always loved about SuSE was the fine-grained control over package management which is missing from the other distros. In the Debian derivatives, Apt is a bit of a Nazi... if the maintainer thinks that the most recent development library is a requirement for a package, chances are they are wrong and it will work fine with a slightly earlier version, which is compatible with 90% of your other software. Sometimes a package will require other packages as "dependencies" for example KDevelop "requires" the documentation. If all you want is an IDE and you don't want all the other cruft, you are out of luck - you are forced to install it.
SuSE's package manager though, was a bloated and unforgivably slow beast, and became only slower and slower with time as the package base increased. When installing SuSE started taking hours, and getting the software I wanted installed - a whole day - worst than Windows, then I gave up and moved to Mepis, which installed in minutes and got my favourite apps downloaded and installed in time to start using them *today*. That allowed me to stay current with releases, which I enjoy a lot.
Now that OpenSuSE has addressed the speed issues and had some time to mature the new package manager... maybe it's time to try again. =)
55 • alinux (by Andre Prado at 2010-03-16 09:54:59 GMT from United States)
Does anyone know about, or use alinux? It appears to be a Canadian distribution with fairly recent updates. The DW link to the forum doesn't work. The previous release date is 2006 for version 12.8. There is a recent release of 12.9 on 2/22/2010.
56 • #55 (by Andre Prado at 2010-03-16 10:00:45 GMT from United States)
Correction to above:
aLinux
Forum - http://alinux.tv/forum/
57 • GeeXboX 2.0 alpha (by Sol at 2010-03-16 10:19:20 GMT from United States)
GeeXbox 2.0 alpha 1 booted on my computer, but wouldn't play anything. GeeXboX 2.0 alpha 2 flat-out wouldn't boot. These were using the 32bit versions on an AMD64 computer. Nice ideas, though, with the new Enna media center.
58 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-16 12:28:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref "new" hardware, some info on USB3:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/Parts-Peripherals/USB-30--Thriving-the-Vibes-of_4191.html
And still on the hardware/distro theme the idea of BluRay discs, yes, well...
59 • @32 PCLOS (by glyj at 2010-03-16 12:46:12 GMT from France)
PCLOS has nothing to do with mandriva.
PCLOS was a mandriva derivative. Now, this is a totally independent distro.
The packages are more or less not compatible anymore.
I don't understand why you should avoid the distro.
regards,
glyj
60 • Wolvix (by Old Timer on 2010-03-16 12:46:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wolvix is a great distro, fast, well organised and works straight out of the box.
Good to see it return!
61 • RE:29, 32 (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-03-16 12:52:06 GMT from United States)
@29: It still amazes me at the whining that people can do over something that is a non issue. I've even read one comment in an article about the button move that stated "people would not know how to operate the computer because the buttons were moved." How stupid is that? It's so sad that people seem to have nothing to say unless they want to bitch about something that's really not worth getting in a tizzy about. I have nothing else to say about this nonsense.
@32: Matt, who said you have to reinstall every 6 months? You can do anything you want. You can just upgrade, which has worked well when I've done it. You can use a LTS version which is supported longer than standard versions. You can also do nothing and your system will still work. So where's the problem. Maybe you shouldn't tell people they have to reinstall every 6 months. That is simply not true.
As far as a rolling release goes it can work well when done correctly.I've used several distros that has this mode of updating. More often than not it is not done correctly and after a short period of time the system will not be usable. I've seen this happen more than once on several different system. Of course your results may vary has mine has.
62 • @32 about lifetime (by glyj at 2010-03-16 13:01:24 GMT from France)
Mandriva has an offer, the lifetime extension :
http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?cPath=149&products_id=490
And for free, you can use the upgrade option.
I've installed here Mandriva 2008.1 on my system. Since then, I upgraded my system to mandriva 2009.0, then to 2009.1 and to 2010.0, without reinstalling the whole thing.
I have to admit that the option didn't work well the first time. But now this is quite a good tool.
Regards,
glyj
63 • Ubuntu Buttons... (by KevinC at 2010-03-16 13:08:05 GMT from United States)
And it's not like they're not dead easy to change back:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/color-stability.html
Or if you don't play with gconf-editor, there's always Ubuntu-Tweak, which IIRC is available for Lucid.
64 • Frugalware review ? (by Anonymous at 2010-03-16 13:13:22 GMT from Canada)
I would like to see a frugalware review on DWW. How does it compare to ArchLinux for example ?
65 • Buttons (by Alan UK at 2010-03-16 14:56:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think the point being made by post 29 was that Shuttleworth
made the change. It wasn't a team decision.
Perhaps it was vanity on his part?
66 • Ref#61 • RE:29, 32 (by Eddie Wilson) (by Sam Spade at 2010-03-16 15:29:07 GMT from United States)
"It still amazes me at the whining that people can do over something that is a non issue..."
There's so much noise on the ubuntu forums regarding this non-issue. What this tells me, is the whiners have nothing else to add. Cannot help on non-button issues and therefore think there contributing to something of value.
It amazes me that Plymouth, Sound issues, Video issues, Boot issues, have all taken a backseat to this child like nonsense!
REAL issues get left are behind.
67 • re 32 (by williAmp on 2010-03-16 18:45:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
'I have problems with the way that Mandriva manages their company'
I do hope that Matt doesn't wake one morning to find that he has an Intel processor or that something in his computer has come from China, otherwise the poor chap might have to throw himself off a cliff. Ah! there's nowt like folk.
68 • @ 59 (by Nameless Foo at 2010-03-16 19:15:44 GMT from United States)
Funny in there source packages I still see some rpms are imported from Mandriva (see changlelogs in spec files), also it seems PCC, PCLinuxOS' Control Center is heavily Mandriva based. For being it's own separate distribution and for the rpms not being compatible they sure do use quite abit from Mandriva. I guess if someone doesn't like Mandriva those might be reasons to stay away, maybe you should learn more about the distribution you're trying to defend. Not saying you shouldn't defend it, but maybe in a more educated manner so people actually take you and what you're trying to defend serious.
69 • Present day version of Haiku (by Earl Colby Pottinger on 2010-03-16 20:36:38 GMT from United States)
The Alpha release is considered very old (computers move at the speed of light you know).
Not only should test out a more up-to-date nightly build at http://haiku-files.org/raw/ please also notice a link to optional packages at the bottom of the page.
The latest versions support wireless (no encryption yet) and in the terminal window the command "installoptionalpackages" does exactly what it says.
Last but not least, the site for addition programs is found at http://www.haikuware.com/ still there is Alpha/Release2 planned to come out some time this summer. It would be interesting to see a review comparing your experience in a review then since using Haiku 90% the time makes it hard to see how the changes affect others.
PS. Don't be suprised to the sound starts working, mine did not with Alpha1 but was running fine a month later when I updated it.
70 • @68 (by glyj at 2010-03-16 20:39:38 GMT from France)
PCLinuxOS forked from Mandriva for a while now : this is more than two years from now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCLinuxOS#Mandriva_Linux
Since then, both distros are diverging....
regards,
glyj
71 • @ 70 (by Nameless Foo at 2010-03-16 21:47:17 GMT from United States)
Yes they have diverged so much a year ago Tex did another rebase off Mandriva and is still importing drakxtools and packages from them. Maybe originally with 0.4, before the 2009 release he forked off 9.2, but I'm thinking maybe that article now needs to be updated to forked from 2009. There's still left overs on the livecd ie urpmi references etc.. any developer who looks a little deeper then the surface doesn't have to go far. You can point me to whatever articles you like, but I drakxtools and spec files normally don't lie. I mean are you still using a forked improved version of printerdrake? Nope you're using System-Config-Printer now to setup your printing devices, why? Because Mandriva in the 2010 release dropped their printerdrake for Fedora's system-config-printer. Weird, there's strange coincidences like that through the whole system, look at the basesystem package I bet there's a reference to Mandriva.. still. I guess forked now means do a few package updates through in a few patches and rebase on Mandriva every time your tool chain gets old enough that programs don't work. Based on Mandriva naaahh they forked.. At least give credit where it's due and do your research.
72 • @71 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-17 00:46:39 GMT from United States)
PCLinuxOS was last rebased against Mandriva in 2007 not in 2009. 2010 was built from the ground up using packages from their repository. PCLinuxOS has a lot of Mandriva in it in terms of patches and rebuilt packages but then again Mandriva has a lot of Fedora in their distribution.
73 • @22 (by Ed on 2010-03-17 04:11:02 GMT from United States)
have you seen current issue of Ubuntu User
http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Magazine/Current-Issue
"On the DVD * Ubuntu 9.10 Megapack: 7 *buntus on one DVD!
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Linbuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Netbook Remix"
74 • @ 72 (by Nameless Foo at 2010-03-17 06:19:24 GMT from United States)
Ground up as in How? Linux From Scratch? It's interesting how PCLinuxOS has no real installer but uses mklivecd and remaster tools. I wonder how you can build from the ground up with remaster tools. You would have to remaster from some base would you not? So are they using a Older PCLinuxOS base that was based on Mandriva and just updating the packages? Not much of "ground up" work if you ask me. If fact seems pretty messy. That is most likely why there's still unused Mandriva specific files hanging around on the system.
Another thing, there's been a rebase since 0.94 (2007 it's official namle) otherwise the tool chain would have been broken long since. It takes a simple search on Distrowatch to find Adam Williams from Mandriva (at the time, now Redhat) had an issue with PCLinuxOS importing Mandriva rpms and deleting the changelogs claiming the packages as there own giving no credit to the Mandriva Packagers.
This from the ground up rhetoric seems like the very same verbage that was being used with the last rebase to only be placed into question by complaints of Mandriva packagers crying foul. What's the real issue here pride or plagarism, seems to me both.
75 • @74 Ground up (by Anonymous at 2010-03-17 10:11:11 GMT from United States)
Actually you start with an empty partition, you create some folders like proc, dev, and sys. Then you mount -o bind those folders and install some core packages with rpm -Uvh --chroot=/mnt/sdaX. Then you chroot into the partition ,set your grub and root password then boot into the install. From there you add additional packages until you build into a working distribution. After that you run mylivecd and create an iso.
Another thing. There hasn't been a rebase. gcc and glibc was upgraded through the Synaptic Package manager in 2009.
Finally in 2007 they stated they rebased against Mandriva 2007 then spent the next 6 months working out various issues. There was also a credit page to Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse and Debian.
76 • An interesting benchmark (by Crow on 2010-03-17 13:31:32 GMT from Mexico)
Texstar posted this at Phoronix, "These packages may be original creations such as the KDE 4.4.1 tree but may also contain repackaged and modified srpms from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva. PCLinuxOS may also contain patches from Ubuntu, Debian, PLD and Charka. The PCLinuxOS team would like to thank these distributions who may have indirectly contributed to the PCLinuxOS distribution." I think all the developers works using what others do and the benefits are for us users.
BTW Phoronix has a benchmark "Benchmarks: Mandriva 2010.1, PCLinuxOS 2010, Ubuntu 10.04, openSUSE 11.3" http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_distro_fourway&num=1 I have no doubt that the distros will have changed when the final release arrives but is interesting to read it because in the long run is feedback to developers.
77 • RE: 61, 67 (by Matt at 2010-03-17 14:54:07 GMT from Canada)
Many people, myself included for the most part, simply update to whatever the latest stuff is. Update all the packages to the latest stuff, some for security reasons, some for feature reasons etc. Fine, maybe I'm a bit of a noob in that sense and maybe there's some people who prefer to stick with older things for longer and update packages manually or something, but for the majority of people, I would think that when a new release is out, they'd switch to that. If for no other reason than that Canonical (in the case of Ubuntu for example) would likely put more effort into maintaining the current release and put less effort into maintaining an older one. Yes, you can upgrade, which I have done as well, but the problem is that people read in many places online (distro forums, distro websites even) that the best option is to do a clean install. And as for your statement that you can do nothing and your system will still work... that's a recipe for disaster my friend! Doing nothing, leaving security holes un-patched, that's a recipe for allowing hackers in... people always say that Linux is secure, far more than Windows or OSX but that the key to that is frequent updating. So maybe you shouldn't go around suggesting that people just leave their systems, do nothing with them, because patching is key, updating is key, to Linux security. If it wasn't, why would so many Linux update packages (again in Ubuntu because it's what I use the most) are "security updates"? And me suggesting that people have to reinstall every 6 months is true, and something I will continue to say. It's what many posters on forums recommend, and what the companies themselves often recommend!
As for post #67 - I know that a company like Intel doesn't manage their company well, treat their employees well, or even make good ethical or moral decisions. However, I'm not stupid as your post seems to imply which I take offense at. AMD operates the same way, so at the end of the day you're left to choose the "lesser of two evils". However, when you look at a company like Mandriva, and compare it to the hundreds or thousands of other Linux companies or private developers who create their own distro, you are able to choose a company or developer who makes good (ethical and moral as well as in company management etc.) decisions. This is why I choose to boycott Mandriva, because I have other alternatives.
I'm not going to be like one of the trolls on here who rants and rants and then ends with, so this is why I'm going back to Windows, the Linux community sucks etc. etc. etc. I'm going to keep running Linux, and I always will because it's better than the alternatives but you two specifically, and many, many others in the Linux community, really make me mad. Keep your personal (and incorrect) views to yourself for #61, and keep your offensive mockery to yourself for #67. People shouldn't have to put up with reading that stuff.
78 • pclinuxos (by Joy at 2010-03-17 16:36:24 GMT from United States)
It looks like the new pclinuxos is about to come out after the betas are done.
We don't have that installed here, but we're wondering about it; one thing in particular: is it common with that distro to start from scratch if you've had earlier versions on your machine?
Some allow an upgrade/update to keep up with the new releases without having to start over each time. Very few, it appears. ;)
79 • @74 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-03-17 17:29:01 GMT from Canada)
After that thread, PCLOS started giving more explicit credit when they import packages from other distributions, so there isn't really a problem there any more.
80 • incorrect information (by Ron McNair on 2010-03-17 17:32:20 GMT from United States)
i would just like to let the manager of this site that while distrowatch was a great site to develop, not all of the information on many of the linux distros are correct. many say that they are independent, in a sense they are, but truthfully they are not independent because they require a package manager that is of one of the major distros. if you would please improve the site by adding what package manager they use and what major distro the package manager is from then you will have more solid information on the distros. Besides that, distrowatch is a great site.
81 • Matt, 77 (by Barnabyh at 2010-03-17 20:24:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hoping not to get sucked into this little 'feud', but I don't believe when the original poster stated 'You can also do nothing and your system will still work' he literally meant doing nothing at all.
You do not have to upgrade though simply because a new release is out, you could just apply new security updates as and as long as they come out for your older version. You could easily skip a release at the rate of one every six months. Also there's not really a need to update services you're never running.
As to why there are so many security updates for Ubuntu, maybe that is not so much a sign of quality and concern but more a sign of releasing half-baked software with lots of new bugs introduced during development by Canonical themselves. Similarly I heard Fedora is/ used to be a lot more stable after a couple of 100mb updates. Goes with being on the edge and releasing so often I guess. I leave that for you to judge. As long as you're happy +) .
82 • @ 28, Arch Linux usability (by Nittany at 2010-03-17 20:26:04 GMT from United States)
My experiences with Arch Linux have been mostly positive. Not 100% positive, mind you, but I've always been able to install and use Arch on my laptops. I'm not an expert so I'm not the target audience for Arch but I chose Arch due to the advanced age of my equipment and so I wanted a leaner distro. Yes, doing things the Arch way was intimidating for a relative novice such as myself but reading (and re-reading) the Arch Wiki not only got my computer working, it also gave me more knowledge about what Linux does versus just installing Ubuntu. I still recommend an easy-to-install distro to other Linux newbies but I'm happy with Arch and how it brought old hardware back to life.
83 • RE: 66 (by Duhnonymous at 2010-03-17 20:31:25 GMT from United States)
The real casualty in the button dispute is not merely the critical issues of a functioning distribution, but the ability of a company to deliver a product to its customers. The process heavily relies on communication, and that communication right now is nonexistent. This is why I added the "Groupthink" hint into my subject line: because I believe that this issue has raised to light the real problem that Ubuntu faces.
Hopefully, Mark Shuttleworth will realize the value of good PR and start putting it to good use. If he doesn't, then you should realize that we Ubuntu users will be forced to more decisions of this nature (i.e. decisions that divide the community and damage the Ubuntu brand name).
84 • @78 (by Crow on 2010-03-17 20:49:53 GMT from Mexico)
Usually at PCLinuxOS you don't have to reinstall, after the 2010 final it will start rolling again.
85 • #84 Crow (by Joy at 2010-03-17 21:05:04 GMT from United States)
Thank you, Crow. That is good news as two of our operators want the pclinuxos on their office computers now running windows vista.
It is their choice, but the worry was that there would be ongoing re-installs and/or more work archiving files and data.
86 • @ 74 (AdamW) (by Nameless Foo at 2010-03-17 21:23:42 GMT from United States)
My Point was up until that point they were claiming the same thing, that they had deviated from Mandriva, yet they were still importing and using Mandriva packages and with the what they were trying to claim I'm sure it was by no mistake they weren't truly giving credit where it was due. Once again they are claiming a deviation from Mandriva. However it's hard for me to believe that they have truly deviated from being Mandriva based. They're still using DrakConf and various base packages that are still very much Mandriva. Also they have no "ground up" build system, they either have to base a builds off of earlier PCLinuxOS releases or rebase once again off Mandriva.
The person above (Post 32) said they were staying away from PCLinuxOS because they didn't like Mandriva and it was a derivative. glyj (post 59) Said PCLinuxOS has nothing to do with Mandriva. Which is very much false, really it still uses Mandriva's tools and hasn't forked them because quite frankly a vast majority of PCLinuxOS' base packages are in fact Mandriva packages. Granted they may use Gentoo's patches (why gentoo I don't know) for KDE 4 maybe a few Ubuntu patches and check some stuff out of Fedora CVS devel, but that doesn't mean that they have nothing to do with Mandriva. They're stuck with being Mandriva based until they can actually create a clean base, not have to rebase off any distribution and port and maintain those wonderful PerlGtk configuration apps known as drakxtools and actually maintain and develop them.
Until then they're just a remaster of Mandriva with there own branding and repository. If you don't like Mandriva, there configuration tools etc.. there's a likely chance you may not like PCLInuxOS, more so then Mint or any distribution that has nothing to o with Mandriva. Not that there's anything wrong with being Mandriva based, just don't play like you're anything you're not. They're still very much Mandriva no matter how many changelogs or spec files they change or erase, or how many patches they apply from other distributions. At the core is Mandriva and though should embrace that instead of claiming falsely they're there own distribution now no way related to Mandriva. Give credit were it's due and embrace where you came from. It seems there's pride issues though keeping that from happening and when you pretend like something is yours and really it isn't or not all of it is, that's plagiarism. Just say you're a Mandriva derivative and let the users sort out the rest.
87 • RE: 13 and some other related thoughts (by KimTjik at 2010-03-17 21:44:08 GMT from Sweden)
Arch Linux main feature isn't in my view that it's following a rolling release model. It's one of a bundle of features that might encourage or discourage a user to choose Arch. Don't forget that there are other rolling distributions among the ones listed in the top of the subjective DW chart.
If you compare with Fedora, a distribution I've used a lot, they're very different, Arch' BSD style and close to no updates of configuration files. Arch' easier structure is one of the main reasons I choose Arch, both for desktops and servers, both home and at work.
...
I can only speak for my experience using Arch, and sure you need to update it fairly regularly and with attention to the output. How often? I can't say, but I've had equal success with systems being updated close to every week and others once a month or a bit later. It probably depends on how big changes to packages are. Nevertheless I haven't had any problems keeping even remote systems up to date and perfectly functional, systems I have no physical access to at all, and that have gone through serious updates, like going from KDE3 to KDE4. With proper attention to announcements and pacman output it's usually a smooth ride.
88 • PCLinuzOS/Mandriva (by fernbap at 2010-03-17 21:48:16 GMT from Portugal)
So, Mandriva is an evil company. Don't use their products! You would be giving money to an evil company!
Oh... wait... you are not giving them any money! In fact, if you use their product, you will be giving them expenses on bandwidth both for the download of the iso and from their repositories. Mandriva would prefer not to support the freeloaders.
Can't you see how ridiculous this issue is?
The best way to punish Mandriva for being an "evil company" would be to actually use their free products.
PCLinuxOS uses mandriva code? So what? More expenses for mandriva.
I wouldn't, though, but that is a personal choice. I compared its products with others and decided to go elsewhere.
But, if i really would want to punish Mandriva for being an evil company, i would use their free products.
89 • @88 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-17 21:55:21 GMT from Canada)
i fully agree w/ matt on this one, if u stop using mandriva & their products, and at the same time raise awareness in how bad of a company they are, then u can get more and more ppl to stop using it. since they dont make money off individual users, one person using or not using it wont make a difference, but get enough together and if they notice their user base dropping significantly, maybe they'll wake up and make some better decisions to win back users. u always have to try and encourage companies to work for their users so that they put people b4 profit
90 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-17 22:16:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #83
I presume you are being droll?
This change of look...buttons...colour, wotever is of no consequence. We all know these things can be changed in a matter of a few key presses.
If you use Ubuntu you probably just want to replace MS products...and use the computer as a tool.
Ubuntu is here to stay, in whatever form Shuttleworth.M decides.
91 • Reinstalling Linux every release? Try Debian (by Merlin at 2010-03-17 23:50:54 GMT from Canada)
"As always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading."
92 • Stuff: (by Landor at 2010-03-17 23:59:28 GMT from Canada)
Haiku:
You know, this has to be the fasted booting OS I've ever tried. Maybe except for the days of Amiga. I tried it out some time ago on my netbook and it literally flew. We keep hearing a lot about how fast this distribution or that is but Haiku blows them all away after installation. The live environment is no slouch either, as a mention.
As someone else pointed out there is a way of installing more for Haiku, and there are more packages. Also, if I remember correctly, the last time I looked (about a month or so ago) someone was porting GNASH over to Haiku and had it working. I can't recall and I'm not googling..lol
The project is fun but if it took off in any serious direction I'd have some very big issues with it and Palm. Palm owns the intellectual rights to BeOS and although Haiku is built on a lot of open source software it's something that definitely "seems" like it was reverse engineered and I don't think Palm would take to kindly to that, only of course if it took off. Reason being, though BeOS is relatively dead, no company would want to see their Intellectual Proprerty reverse engineered and someone profiting by it.
At present it's a great alternative though and Linux as well as other projects could pick up a few hints when it comes to speed and such.
---
The debate about Mandriva, then Ubuntu not listening to the community and if the community took a stand they'd listen is a huge gamble and one I'm not willing to put any money on myself. I've said this time and time again, when you're dealing with corporate entities they have to put food on their table for themselves and their employees. When it comes to choices in how to best obtain that, they're not going to worry about a "non-paying" community as much as they're going to consider their commercial markets. Simple logic in my opinion. You get something for free but you really believe you have a voice when literally millions of dollars and people's livelihood are at stake for each decision?
To the recent theme, I think the lighter theme is literally ugly as sin, the darker one is nice though. There's a whole lot more though, with all of this. Hell, even Mint screwed up their most recent theme. Bring up the menu and I think the gnome control centre and the next thing you know you're looking at grey from the days of windows 95. Seriously. This big grey blob in the center of the screen, ugly. (before someone misinterprets, I didn't download Mint, I know this from screenshots)
I agree with the one person posting, we need some aesthetics in Linux, if it's not looking like W95-98 (or worse) it's a clone of some other OS or Windows version that is already dated. If not, then like Mint where they actually have a nice look (that I'll admit) they ruin it with BIG UGLY grey blob like menu covering a large portion of the screen (which goes to my first part of this (W95).
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
93 • @ 86 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-18 01:08:50 GMT from United States)
No where I have seen PCLOS claiming independence from Mandriva. PCLOS howeever has nothing to do with Mandriva Corporate or their policies.
Also they do have a "build from the ground up script" using the packages from their repo. A now obsolete manual method was posted a few months ago on mypclinuxos.com describing how to create a core cli install from the packages in their repository. Go check it out if you need more proof. Maybe you can learn how to do it for your distribution.
Every distro pulls ideas, packages and patches from each other. Ubuntu recently posted exciting news about their new theme background changer based on the hours of the day. This feature showed up in Mandriva two releases ago! PCLOS came up with a extra driver removal tool in their 2009 release that later showed up in Mandriva's draklive installer. Finally the whole giving credit where credit is due was nothing more than a PR stunt by Mandriva Corporate.
94 • Haiku (by Jesse at 2010-03-18 01:10:29 GMT from Canada)
It strikes me as unlikely for Haiku to really take off to the point anyone (such as Palm) might take notice. It did take seven years for Haiku to reach their first alpha release. And their OS is missing a lot of modern features. But if the developers do make a lot of progress, I don't think there is much Palm can do about it legally. Haiku is almost all independently developed and what code they took from BeOS was available under an open source license. Since their name change to "Haiku" there isn't really anything for Palm to complain about. There aren't any trademark or source code violations, so the Haiku team is pretty safe.
I do agree it would be nice to see Gnash successfully ported to Haiku. It would make it a pretty decent web-browsing appliance.
95 • OMG Mepis RC3 is nice! (by Nutron on 2010-03-18 01:15:34 GMT from United States)
I just tested SimplyMepis RC3 and it is really nice. It boots smooth. All of my hardware was detected. The install went without issue. Overall this release reminds me of their 3.x days. Good job guys!
96 • @85 (by Crow on 2010-03-18 06:52:32 GMT from Mexico)
You're welcome Joy. I've been using PCLinuxOS for several years at work on a daily basis and is rock solid, that's what is important to me: get the job done. Before PCLinuxOS I had to fight with some distros, reinstall, research obscure commands, that is not something I like :-( sometimes friends tell me that CLI is better and that is like DOS was but I'm happy DOS is history even if I knew how to use it, I'm a Psychologist not a programmer, but I see at the PCLinuxOS forums that some people really enjoy CLI, good for them ;-))
I also have installed it in teachers computers and they adopt it easily, I don't talk about their kids because they adopt anything easily...
97 • sdfsdf sfsdf sf sd fsdt (by Porohov on 2010-03-18 07:51:45 GMT from Russian Federation)
Comment deleted (spam).
98 • No subject (by CYJisGod on 2010-03-18 08:29:04 GMT from China)
Comment deleted (spam).
99 • #97 (by Notorik at 2010-03-18 13:03:33 GMT from United States)
Thanks for that pertinent and timely information Porohov.
100 • RE: 97 and 98 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-18 15:15:19 GMT from Canada)
shouldn't non-english comments be automatically translated or something... this is an english website afterall! and 98 should be deleted as spam.
101 • Linux Virus Responsible for End of World (by Jake at 2010-03-18 17:18:57 GMT from Canada)
lol, I was just thinking....since most of the www is run on Linux servers (isn't it?). In the Terminator 3 movie, the terminator 'dials up' via her cell phone and uploads a virus to servers on the internet (probably Google and MSN) , which then proceeds to turn every machine against man... I assume the virus planted in MSN was only a few lines of code, while the virus needed to affect Google (which runs was Linux) needed to be much more robust.
102 • RE: 101 (by Landor at 2010-03-18 17:58:37 GMT from Canada)
She probably used NMAP to help her but they didn't let us see it like they did in The Matrix..lol Even Scotland Yard was upset about that one. :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
103 • skynet, imo. (by shady on 2010-03-18 18:09:09 GMT from United States)
There should have been a Terminator 2.5 where we saw the transformation of Google into Skynet and their first rudimentary attempts at destroying humanity. Like the ads in Gmail become slowly more morbid encouraging suicide or murder. Maybe later in the film Google could only invite users to its newest services after they have killed an AOL user or set fire to a Best Buy. It seemed kinda hard to believe to me that skynet went straight for Nukes when there were more subtle ways to take over. Its still a rough draft...
104 • Fedora is an experimental distribution (by Rarsa on 2010-03-18 18:43:57 GMT from Canada)
I've always been surprised when people tell me that they use Fedora in an "Stable" environment. I always wonder what they mean by "stable".
Go to the main page for the fedora project
"Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software."
It's been like that from the beginning. They are always trying the latest even if it every now and then breaks.
Fedora was one of my first distros. It was actually my "main" distro and I learned a lot from it. I moved on when I realized that I knew Linux enough to make it my main OS and required a stable environment.
If I want to try what may be coming down the pipe I try Fedora. People requiring a stable system should get a stable distro and stop complaining. They can still use Fedora for experimentation purposes.
105 • @104 And I don't mean it in a bad way (by Rarsa on 2010-03-18 18:47:22 GMT from Canada)
Before someone responds before reading just the title: I think that Fedora is a high quality distribution which is the main source of the confusion.
High quality but bleeding edge. An absolutely necessary member of the FLOSS ecosystem.
106 • RE: 104/105 (by Landor at 2010-03-18 18:56:10 GMT from Canada)
You're correct that it's in a constant state of flux, similar to say sidux in my opinion.
Sometimes though, for new hardware, stability (in this sense of the term) can only be obtained by using a distribution that is in a state of constant change.
One such reason is with my Netbook, an Asus 1005HA. The ath9k drivers are funky at best prior to anything but a 2.6.32 kernel, and even more improved in the .33 release (my opinion only of course). For this reason I need a distribution that's unstable and bleeding edge if I don't want to go through compiling my own kernel for something that's meant to be a quick and easy mobile tool (for my needs of course).
I guess terms like stability are relative, and I do agree with your point. Fedora's not meant to be a Debian Etch or Lenny or Squeeze, don't expect it to be.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
107 • Ubuntu "Lucid Lynx" beta has been delayed! (by Randy J. Anderson on 2010-03-18 23:35:14 GMT from United States)
Apparently, a major bug was found and will be released on March 19.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000695.html
108 • Elive struck by laptop suspend curse (by gnomic at 2010-03-19 05:30:10 GMT from New Zealand)
OK, so hating on Elive was last week. I was meaning to have two cents worth, but never quite got there. However I was going to say that I have used Elive as a live CD in quite a few sessions, and have generally found it stable for this use with long sessions of web browsing. It is an interesting implementation of Enlightenment and the compiz version was blingful.
There are some buts of course. Elive is essentially a one man band as near as I can tell (dons asbestos suit in case the friends of Elive disagree). The forums seem moderately active but some questions go unanswered. Enlightenment I fear can only be regarded as an eccentric choice for a distro with any claims to be mainstream. It's a tweaker's paradise, but I can't see Linux newbies taking to it. And why are all the applications from last year? Firefox 3.0.6? Hello?
The business with the convoluted install requiring payment via the web is just plain silly. Aside from anything else, what if a user wants to install without internet access?
However what has got my goat is the dreaded laptop suspend problem. When I closed the lid of a ThinkPad on an Elive live session the results were not good. This seems to be new with Elive 2, it didn't occur in past versions. As I keep saying, a live CD which tries to suspend is a live CD which needs chucking out the window. That's you I'm looking at, Gnome-based live CDs, where this problem seems to be increasingly prevalent. Now the insanity seems to be spreading. Agh!
109 • @107 Ubuntu (by Johnny Numonic on 2010-03-19 06:31:25 GMT from United States)
Are they still fight about the button placement in the new theme being on the left of the screen instead of the right like most other Linux distributions?
110 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-19 09:45:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #109
That may be true JN...but only the hobbyist folk would bang on about it tho'.
If you are trying Uxx for the first time you would not know any different and I am positive Shuttleworth.M is looking to those folk, migrating from other OSs.
We read Ubuntu already has the greatest take up in Linux land, and a few dissenters here and there hardly make a dimple, let alone a dent.
Reference earlier remarks about the constant stream of updates owing, allegedly, to "less than perfect" code, so what, just think of it as (t-i-c warning) a kind of rolling release. Rolling releases are accepted as the way to go in other distros...Canonical just does it slightly differently...
In any event, it does not seem to bother most Uxx users, if the adoption figures are to be believed, who just get on with the update thing and worry not.
As for the Fedoras, being "bleeding edge" or even "leading edge", if you want to distro that way then why not? In this instance just regard it as being the preserve of the keener hobbyist, shepherded by Adam W. who does his best to keep things rolling...it's a wonder he is not suffering from RSI...I don't suppose this is the only forum he reads.
All that aside, has anyone noticed that GNULinux is becoming "more" commercial, in the domestic realm? I refer to (and this is not just breaking news either):
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/09/24/ubuntu-software-store-generates-questions/
I would suggest that owing to crits or comments concerning Gimp type apps and similar, Canonical have grasped the nettle and have accepted "the" tool for graphics, for the professional user, is not to be found in the "free software" world.
To induce more folk into Linuxland, you might have to include Photoshop (and similar). For "include" read "sell". Canonical know this.
Obviously this software has to be paid for, after all it is a pro tool developed by salaried devs, who have more than just a passing knowledge of graphic art...
Similarly, in my field of interest, sound engineering (theatre) apps, like Smaart for example, are commercial and are not cheap in any sense...and don't run on GNULinux. (Smaart is a recognised tool in pro sound education (to degree level) and is offered at a huge discount for accredited students.)
The point being that, despite what some folk may believe, GNULinux and commercial offerings are "beginning" to merge (the initials are there already...MS).
Simply because GNULinux software is perceived to be free, for domestic users, does not preclude buying professional packages. After all if you need a proper spanner or wrench for a job on your car you would be a bit daft using a hammer.
I would say Canonical have realised, probably from the outset, that to get GNULinux "on the desktop", for the non hobbyist user, you have to include commercial packages. We have all read of the MS devotee returning to wotever because (s)he cannot run their pro app on Linux.
It does not have to be that way.
111 • Forum Hogs (by Ralphie Ralph at 2010-03-19 10:06:47 GMT from United States)
Please for the sake of all who peruse your forums put a muzzle on these two boring wind bags, Forest and Landor (especially Landor). One or two posts of moderate length I can tolerate but the multitudes of endless ramblings are becoming harder and harder to scroll past. If for no other reason have mercy on my poor mouse wheel finger, it's tired.
112 • @110 Ubuntu (by Jean Dixon on 2010-03-19 10:13:56 GMT from United States)
I predict there will be a max exodus of Ubuntu users when they wake up and realize the corporate interests of Canonical out weigh the interests of their users. Just like Mark said... "This is not a democracy." We decide and you accept!
113 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-19 10:22:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #111
Comments were bang on topic RR. Not all of us want to read about packages and CLI you know, lol.
The forum is not the exclusive preserve of hobbyists who, quite frankly, should get out more. Linuxland is a lot bigger than you might understand. LB does try to cover distros from all quarters and I hope you don't skip over that lot?
This is about distros and their use in the world at large. If you suffer from "myopia" and sore finger then perhaps you have the wrong hobby? LOL
114 • No subject (by forest at 2010-03-19 10:38:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref #112
Don't talk rot Jean D, that's not going to happen. If that happened I'd eat YOUR shorts.
To repeat, the world of GNULinux being the exclusive preserve of the hobbyist is fast disappearing, so get over it. IF you were to read of the commercial, non hobbyist uses Canonical gets involved in for then you would know that, LOL.
If anything, commercial apps bought and installed into Uxx, would induce more folk to use it...you would have no reason not to migrate would you?
It might induce more computer manufacturers to include Ubuntu as the resident OS so to speak. For all we know this sort of dialogue has occurred anyway...
Where does it say in any of the "rules" than free software cannot be employed in commercial situations? Precisely, nowhere.
Ref democracy...wot democracy?
115 • Opinions (by Anonymous at 2010-03-19 11:08:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Going on about or denying the same thing again and again does not make it right, or less likely respectively. As for hobbyist users, we all are. Any Pro hanging around here making more than one post would be wasting their time quite unproductively, with the notable exception of A.W.
116 • Is it a myth? (by RB at 2010-03-19 13:15:02 GMT from United States)
Weird, that Distrowatch list Mythbuntu beta before Ubuntu. Maybe the Mythbuntu folks jumped the gun a wee bit :)
117 • post#111 and other thoughts (by Joy at 2010-03-19 14:04:32 GMT from United States)
I tend to agree, Ralph. Sorry to those two if it seems caustic or whatever, but you're a bit much so I scroll by now seeing your user names here, or that arrogant, "keep you stick... blah" tag.
Other thoughts: the "buntu" stuff seems strange given that they are on our side if it's Microsoft we're being alternative to in this Windows dominated computer world we live in (I know, Linux has a huge share of servers out there, but you know what I mean).
If Ubuntu's company has a lot of money, well, maybe we need to address them about our opinions on what they do with their money. Meanwhile, they're Linux, and that is a good thing, bottom line, imo.
118 • @ 111 @ 112 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-19 14:54:12 GMT from Canada)
Amen to that! I'm sick of reading their endless and often incorrect statements every week... but nothing's likely to change so we'll just have to put up with it I suppose.
As for 112, I agree as well, and Forest is way off in disputing that. People like me who use Ubuntu are getting tired of it very quickly. It's just a matter of time before the next big distro comes out and we leave Ubuntu far, far behind. They're getting sloppy with their work as well, for example, the Samsung N130 netbook never had WIFI working out of the box, but there was always a work around for it on the Ubuntu forums. But they changed something recently with an update, and the work around doesn't work anymore. No one currently has any suggestions of how to get it to work at all in 10.04 although we were promised it would work out of the box... quite frankly I'm sick of their garbage products.
It's just unfortunate that there are so few good alternatives out there, most distro's out there have at least one huge flaw that keeps them away from being the "Microsoft killer" that we all hope for in the back of our minds... I just wish that someone would combine some of these distro's to remove those huge flaws by plugging the hole with something borrowed from another distro.
119 • @118 (by Patrick on 2010-03-19 15:39:26 GMT from United States)
Unfortunately, sometimes things like these are out of the distribution's control. I don't know if that is the case for your netbook or not, but sometimes just moving from one kernel version to the next can cause this, and you notice it the most in distros that adopt the latest kernels quickly, Ubuntu being one of them.
Often it is necessary to move to the latest kernel to support new hardware. People would complain if their new hardware wasn't supported. But at the same time, the latest kernel may be incompatible with a driver for an older piece of hardware, if the manufacturer didn't bother to get their driver into the mainline kernel and isn't making sure it stays compatible with the latest kernel. So, other people complain that their hardware isn't supported.
In the end, both distributions and the kernel developers try hard to make things work for everyone, but things are out of their control if manufacturers have crappy Linux support. All the more reason to applaud efforts of companies like Canonical to get their distro into the mainstream. Most of the people who complain about commercialization of Linux don't realize that this is the single most important effort to ensure they will get great hardware support in future versions and will be able to continue to enjoy their distro for free.
120 • board boors and bores (by Scrolling Reader on 2010-03-19 15:41:46 GMT from United States)
I must agree with Ralph (#111), Joy (#117), and #118.
They are more humdrum and self-righteous than politicians or
used car salesmen.
Maybe their sticks are stuck in the ice.
121 • RE: ME..lol/E-17 - gnomic (by Landor at 2010-03-19 16:22:23 GMT from Canada)
"Sorry to those two if it seems caustic or whatever, but you're a bit much so I scroll by now seeing your user names here, or that arrogant, "keep you stick... blah" tag."
Arrogant? I find that somewhat arrogant, to be honest. Arrogant in the way that you assume it's any different that someone posting "cheers" then their name or the like.
I've been asked in e-mail time and time again what it means, Ladislav himself once asked me if I play hockey. I did a bit when I was younger. But, by no means is the term arrogant. It's actually a kind way to finish off each message, showing that even though I may respond in a firm manner "on the topic", that I hope each and every person keeps their stick on the ice. Which in hockey terms means you can't play the game if your stick isn't on the ice, the puck will go right by you. So, I'm hoping that each and every one of you are in the game, enjoying how you live life and not missing out on a thing.
No matter what people say of my comments here and how I interact, I see that as a far better thing than the people here that go after individuals instead of the topic, those that believe they have a right to speak out about people posting here more than them, which is rude in any meaning of the term, or take personal pot-shots for their own amusement (see notorik). I guess kindness in communication, even with differing opinions has been deemed an arrogant gesture these days.
One last thing to note, once I said something about Ladislav banning me next, a couple years ago, Ladislav himself stated that though he didn't agree with some of my views/comments (or who knows, all of them..lol) he found my views intelligent and understandable. Not a direct quote and since I was the recipient I've probably grossly expanded on its meaning...lol I think from that one comment and my continued presence, I'll put more stock in the owner of this site's opinion than those posting here.
----
#108 - gnomic
We haven't seen him here much lately (last year or so, only periodically) but there was at least one person that would disagree with you I think, Hab, remember him since you've been here a while yourself? It was actually some of Hab's interest that got me taking a deeper look at E-17. I posted this week about how Linux needs more aesthetics and to stop emulating other OS' with their themes and overall looks. I truly believe that E-17 is exactly the kind of DE that Linux needs to set it apart, bring that difference, which it does.
Like you though, the problem I see is it being a tinkerer's DE only because of how long it's been in a perpetual experimental stage. I actually wondered if LXDE was going to suffer the same fate as E-17 and not reach a stable enough build to hit a lot of distributions. That part's neither here nor there though, if they could fix whatever they're not happy with and pump out a really good stable then I truly believe we could see widespread adoption of E-17 by various distributions as a separate iso and a whole new batch of themes being produced.
as usual...
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
122 • @28 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-19 16:30:03 GMT from United States)
quote:
'I would love to have a rolling release Distro without all that pointless work i have to do in Arch...
BTW: Arch Never worked for me. I tried it about 5 times and everytime i get stuck at things that (Forumquote) "Cant be". '
Saying "Arch never worked for me" is akin to buying a kit car, placing it in the garage and then complaining it doesn't run.
123 • Enlightenment (by sly on 2010-03-19 17:38:55 GMT from United States)
I've played with the Enlightenment 17 desktop for a while and it's quite entertaining. However, just like Compiz, once a user has explored all of the blingy (is that a word) things it brings to a desktop, it’s time to get back the things that are really important in the OS you use. If my favorite distros ever adopt Enlightenment, I will be tempted to install it, but until then.....
I don't believe that Enlightenment will, in the long run, excite current users or bring more users to Linux. IMHO, it is the out of the box ease of use, which includes complete compatibility with everyday peripheral hardware, such as printers, and compatibility with nonfree software that just isn't available in repositories, that will keep new converts. I saw these as shortcomings when I first switched to Linux as my primary OS, and I believe these are still shortcomings. As a consequence, I have to keep one foot in the MS world, even though I am an avid Linux user.
124 • @115 (by jake at 2010-03-19 18:26:13 GMT from United States)
"As for hobbyist users, we all are."
Agreed. But then you had to ruin it with:
"Any Pro hanging around here making more than one post would be wasting their time quite unproductively,"
Oh. I guess I had best go away, then. So much for that hobby ...
"with the notable exception of A.W."
Got religion?
125 • RE: 123 (by Landor at 2010-03-19 18:36:47 GMT from Canada)
I agree that all the eye candy/effects "overall" are not something that should be a major facet in computing, as well as most of them don't really do much for the actual benefit of using the tools, as I said, most though. As someone pointed out not long ago, there are functions that enhance the experience/usability of various aspects while using the computer.
My thoughts on E-17 and Linux though are about the distinct difference that it brings to the table instead of the general type of WM or DE that we normally see in Linux. There isn't say a commercial offering that sets itself apart on the desktop from any other OS. If there's one area of the user experience that has stagnated (maybe that's not the right term here) it's the desktop. We've been lulled into a similar look and feel for decades now with very little in the way of truly diverging from that look to something that is very different.
I'm not one to talk either, really. The UNR interface for instance, I have a hard time even looking at it, let alone wanting to use it..lol That said, it's interfaces like that, or E-17 that could very well bring a much needed breathe of fresh air to how we view the appearance of the desktop and its functionality. Like Linus Torvalds himself once stated, he hoped that computing did change. The real problem with changes though is the human factor, like the placement of the buttons in the upcoming release of Ubuntu.
I was lucky enough that when I returned to Linux a number of years ago after my hiatus to have decided that I would use Linux solely for my day-to-day computing needs and with that in mind was able to, with some great effort mind you. I personally believe, and this is strictly opinion though, that there are more than enough alternatives in pretty well every area of software that a person could switch to Linux easily, albeit with a bit of effort on their part. That's mainly for personal computing though. For those that are in an industry that they have little to no say in what they're able to use for their daily computing tasks, that's a different story altogether.
Let's hope that not too far off you won't have to find yourself switching back and forth to whatever OS for your needs other than the one you want to be using.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
126 • New platform for Ubuntu? (by forest at 2010-03-19 19:05:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Presuming this will take off and is not just kite flying, see here:
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/commodore-computers-make-a-return-this-year-20100319/
Perhaps you might add this to your list of platforms on which to test Jesse (t-i-c)?
As for earlier comments, was it something I said?
If you don't like Ubuntu find something else to moan about, I rather feel it's yourselves that don't quite get it about Ubuntu.
The following illustrates this all too well.
Firstly, there isn't going to be a "next big thing"...everything is the next big thing and there'll be detractors to that too, whatever it is.
Or #118 "people like me who use Ubuntu" blah blah "are getting fed up" blah blah...so find something else to play with. Perhaps the this "next big thing " will be what you seek? Seems a bit daft to struggle with something which won't work for you.
Btw 118, do any distros do the wifi thing "out of the box" on the Samsung N130? You didn't say in your post. Because you don't know, do you.
Even #117 was a "joy" to read, especially the penultimate sentence.
Joy, do you really suppose Mark.S is the slightest bit interested in your opinion...on how to spend his money.
Canonical is a commercial concern and is into profit making...it is NOT there to pander to your or my personal whim on what a distro should or should not be.
Canonical set out their stall and if you want to buy, etc, etc. the point being nobody is "making" you buy into Ubuntu.
If folk really were fed up with Family Uxx, as some like to believe, then why are we seeing developments mentioned above?
Oh, of course, silly me, they didn't read DW forum.
127 • bloviations (by Bleery-eyed at 2010-03-19 21:40:53 GMT from United States)
From post 111:
"One or two posts of moderate length I can tolerate but the multitudes of endless ramblings are becoming harder and harder to scroll past.
See posts 121, 125 and 126.
128 • My Poor Finger (by Landor at 2010-03-19 22:11:51 GMT from Canada)
It's full of sorrow and pain today.
Having to scroll past posts that have nothing at all to do with the discussion of open source operating systems. How it wishes Ladislav would remove them.
See post like 127.
Meaning, in case you don't understand, at least my posts actually contributed to the discussion of this week's DWW and Open Source Operating Systems. You sir/miss are only hindering that line of discussion.
For the sake of all the readers of this comments section, let's move on from petty differences and likes or dislikes of others and either post on the topic, or not, read specific posts, or not, as is the choice of all us. I honestly practice that weekly, to the best of my ability.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
129 • Alternative: (by Anonymous at 2010-03-19 22:45:56 GMT from United States)
Try Window Maker.
Does anybody currently use it?
Besides myself that is.
130 • 128 (by Patrick H. at 2010-03-19 23:47:42 GMT from United States)
How do you know what the posts are about if you "scrolled past them," stick boy?
131 • WMs (by KimTjik at 2010-03-20 00:37:54 GMT from Sweden)
# 129
I'm using it as secondary environment. It's unfortunately not that often I ran it nowadays, because I found myself to much in symbiosis with Awesome. It's nice to see that Window Maker once more is under development, not just for it's nostalgic value, but because it has several good features.
Landor complaints about desktop stagnation. If only looking in one direction, yes it looks quite the same, but changing a lot of stuff usually makes people uncomfortable. I'm not a frequent reader of this comment section any more, but I'm quite sure I've seen many complaints by Landor about KDE4. So does KDE4 stagnate, or it's just not in the liking of Landor? I suspect it's subdued to subjective opinions, hence progress for one user is stagnation for another. If it wouldn't we wouldn't see folks clinging to KDE3 as an old friend.
The desktop is a supporting interface to ease access to tools. How it looks doesn't matter as long as the user feels it's efficient and does what he/she expects. I just checked a poll at Arch Linux forum, and according to its current state Tiling WMs outnumber both Floating and DEs. Some view Tiling VMs as primitive, even though having advanced features, but for some it's a progress in efficiency.
Thankfully free software give us plenty of choice.
132 • Now GIrls! (by david on 2010-03-20 00:41:49 GMT from United States)
Didn't your Mom tell you "If you don't have any thing nice to say, don't say anything at all"
133 • Good news from CrunchBang Linux (by Anonymous at 2010-03-20 00:55:17 GMT from Italy)
"The first alpha release of CrunchBang 10 is now available... this release is, for the first time, built using Debian sources".
I hope this is the beginning of a new trend.
In the past so many distros were based on Debian.
Debian is rock-solid, (even testing), flexible, it has tons of apps...
134 • RE: 131 (by Landor at 2010-03-20 01:35:34 GMT from Canada)
I have stated, I wouldn't really say complained, that I didn't think KDE 4 was up to par with KDE 3.5, and some functionality was still missing in the 4 series. That's opinion though, of course.
Does it stagnate though, I guess that's relative. In one way they've drastically changed how the desktop works, so no, the project itself hasn't stagnated.
My main point was that we've had pretty well the exact same kind of desktop (except for a couple WMs) for decades. There's a panel, a central menu system a taskbar, icons on the desktop, and "for the most part" they're all pretty well presented in the exact same way, albeit maybe in different places on the screen. It's this nice well accustomed to flat square that we've seen time and time again. That is were pretty well almost all WMs or DEs stagnate. Not only that, but they emulate a Windows or OSX look and feel, depending on each one of course.
This I honestly believe, and only opinion as I've stated, is exactly where E-17 differs from the crowd. It truly gives the desktop a completely different look and feel. We hear all the time about how often Linux is not Windows or OSX and shouldn't be compared to it, yet the desktop pretty well gives the impression that it is extremely similar to one or the other. My observation I would call it, instead of a complaint really, and to fit with my ongoing theme for my discussion this week, is that for Linux to stand out, to really make a mark in innovation we need a DE much like E-17, something to make it distinct. I don't know how many times I've had people tell me that looked at Linux or tested a Live CD, "oh, that's just like Windows, or OSX, I thought it would be different."
Is that a bad thing, I don't know and I'm straying from my point. The only thing I'd like to see is a real major change to the desktop and how we view it. With that, as I said, I think E-17 is a prime candidate for such a task. Will it ever happen though? I doubt it, just like you said, and I stated the same, people find change hard to take. We'll probably see a lot of people upset greatly when Gnome 3.0 finally hits mainstream, just like myself and others found the KDE 4 series lacking.
Anyway, good to see you posting when you do Kim. I hope you enjoy your weekend.
Keep your sitck on the ice...
Landor
135 • @133 #! and the move to Debian (by stuckinoregon on 2010-03-20 01:52:11 GMT from United States)
I wholeheartedly agree, it's great to see crunchbang still up and running and even better to see it based on Debian testing. Also the choice between xfce and openbox is nice. I recently saw that another distro based on Ubuntu is getting ready to make the jump to Debian as well. Unfortunately can't for the life of me remember which one. Not to detract from Ubuntu at all, I just prefer Debian when applicable.
136 • @ 126 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-20 03:11:28 GMT from Canada)
You're incorrect YET AGAIN forest (something I'm also getting sick of... and it seems I'm not alone in that, other posters are sick of your comments as well)! Yes, I am getting fed up with Ubuntu, and look around for even 5 minutes online and you'll see a lot of annoyed Ubuntu users. Users who, like me, started using it because it had the best hardware support out of most distros, it had an easy to use interface and didn't rely on CLI for your basic everyday needs, and although the 6 month release cycle is a little excessive, you always had up to date software on it rather than sitting around browsing in Firefox 2.x while the world is on 3.6. But they've started to disappoint users in the recent past, IMHO they're starting to simply become like the rest, they're nothing special anymore, they've lost that spark that rocketed them to fame, and converted countless Microsoft users.
You tell me to find something else to play with, and then the rest of your comments just make no sense, logically or gramatically. "...the this next big thing..." someone needs to go back to grade school. Also, telling me that the next big thing might be what I seek, that's EXACTLY the point of my older post!!! I'm looking for what is going to take over where Ubuntu dropped the ball. Will it be Suse, or Fedora or maybe Mint will stop just copying Ubuntu stuff and adding a little bit of it's own and maybe branch off and become something so much more than an Ubuntu knock off. And saying it's daft to struggle with something that won't work for me... why else would I be complaining on here, the Ubuntu forums, and other places (well, in most places not so much complaining as trying in vain to find answers to my problems, finding that, yet again, Ubuntu just can't do what I want it to), yes, it is daft, but it's more daft to go back to Windows, and also daft to switch to another half-baked distro.
As for WIFI out of the box on the Samsung N130, I am surprised and offended that you think of me as an idiot! I most certainly have tried other distro's on it and checked to see where WIFI works out of the box and where it doesn't, so I resent your assumption that I have not done so. I have tried Fedora, OpenSuse, Mint (although that should have not even needed trying), Vector, the latest Mepis RC, PCLinuxOS, and a few other ones, and it hasn't worked on any of them. So I'm forced to sit here, typing in Ubuntu on it, being limited by a wired connection. This simply further proves why I should be annoyed with Ubuntu. A year ago, two years ago, Ubuntu had drivers for systems that no other Linux would have drivers for. They were consistently more reliable "out of the box" than anything else. Sure, maybe other distro's could also have the drivers, but you'd have to use CLI to install them or go through some complicated process. However, on 3 of my 7 machines (one from 6 months ago, one from around 5 months ago and then the N130 from maybe 3 months ago or something), the 3 newest ones, Ubuntu can't do anything with them, the one from 6 months ago in fact, Ubuntu can't get the screen resolution right, can't even find the wired Internet connection, can't do any of that stuff, and it's all relatively generic hardware, no custom builds, that machine is in fact a basic HP tower and a year old Dell monitor! Ubuntu is falling far behind and more people than just me are noticing it.
All good things come to an end, all empires fall, look at Rome, look at Britain, and now look at the United States, all the big things we thought would never fall, end up falling. Ubuntu's time has come, it's just a question of what will take it's place. We all know China and Russia are going to replace the United States, but it's certainly up in the air as to what will replace Ubuntu as the Linux flagship distro.
137 • Re 132 - Girls, Girls and the one-app Distro (by techqc on 2010-03-20 03:21:31 GMT from Indonesia)
Wonder if we should be nice to them,
they may have an opening in their organization for someone endowed
with the satisfyingly tight-fitting diplomacy some of the rest of us can point their way...
Anyways, back on topic
After endless searching and rumination over what I am hoping to make
I find no mention of an sort of one-app distro anywhere,
and I nominate the nomenclature for such a beast to be called
a MonoNucleoSys.
I eventually discovered that right inside my Mandriva setup there is an app called Mindi (out of the Mondo packages)
which I hope to seduce into making my first MonoNucleoSys.
(I have already created the first image, but it still has too many loose ends)
It looks like all I need to do is compile a nubile kernel for Mindi to play with
and after mindi has finished, simply strip out all the flabby bits left behind
leaving the vmlinuz and an initrd with my single app embedded to its root.
138 • RE: 136 (by Landor at 2010-03-20 03:43:39 GMT from Canada)
I'm going to take a stab at helping you understand a bit about your situation and believe me, I'm not being rude nor trying to preach to you, only giving you some knowledge that you may already know or not. Nor will I be intending to tell you to suck it up. That's ignorant of anyone, but when you're done reading you might come to the conclusion that you have to.
First to do with the wifi you spoke of. I did a quick check and I found out that the problems people are having with your version of wireless will not hit the mainline kernel (I don't if it's exactly true, I read it a number of times) until the 2.6.34 release. That's the main reason you're having issues, as you're already aware of, currently it's only patches and fixes. To be honest, you can't blame a distribution for something that isn't even a mainline kernel yet. That's the biggest problem with any type of support for closed source and a reason why I advocate not using closed source at all, if there wasn't firmware and patching going on in the first place (as with your wireless) it would be a far easier solution for all of us, like yourself, but more so, the developers in general.
To expand on that for a second too. As you can see with your recent purchases hardware isn't quickly recognized. With the above, it takes a fair bit of time to hit the mainline kernel, then if there's still fixes needed, they take time getting into the mainline kernel again. I've had this very same problem with a completely open source driver, the ath9k which isn't new by any standard and it's only recently that I'm personally seeing any kind of decent behaviour/performance on it. I've basically had to "deal with it" as is.
With the screen resolution you can't really blame Ubuntu either, that's an issue between your monitor and Xorg. First thing I would check is if your monitor supports IC2/DDC. That's what Xorg probes to find out the right frequencies and resolutions. I'd also check the aspect ratio and confer with someone and see if there is any reason why Xorg would be problematic with hit. It's known by the team that there are aspect ratios that "can" be problematic, on differing brands/models, or so I'm to understand.
Really, when it comes down to it, Linux will fall behind in a lot of areas with hardware since there's still vendors out there not providing their drivers open source, of if they do, they're still laying firmware blobs on it. It's beyond the scope of the kernel team alone, let alone any single distribution to have perfect hardware configuration for all hardware within a few months.
Another thing to take into account is most distributions can't even keep up with kernel development due to their release cycles. Most will miss a version, or two, or three during that cycle. To deal with that issue you definitely need something you'd prefer not to have, a truly bleeding edge rolling release, along the lines of fedora rawhide, debian sid or sidux, mandriva cooker, arch, gentoo, etc.
As I said at the start, when it comes to new hardware, you just have to grin and bear it. Many of us have to as well, sadly.
I don't believe Ubuntu specifically is to blame for your hardware problems you've described so far.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
139 • @136 & Landor/forest bashers & KDE 4.x (by jake at 2010-03-20 04:17:57 GMT from United States)
"So I'm forced to sit here, typing in Ubuntu on it, being limited by a wired connection."
What, exactly, is forcing you to sit there, wired to the wall? Other than you purchasing hardware unfit for general purpose computing, that is. Don't you research your software of choice's hardware requirements before plonking down coin on new hardware?
"Sure, maybe other distro's could also have the drivers, but you'd have to use CLI to install them or go through some complicated process."
Oh, boo hoo hoo. Paraphrased, "Mummy, the computer's b0rken, because I can't be bothered to understand how it works! Call someone to fix it, please ... if you don't, I shall hold my breath until I'm blue in the face, and then I'll make myself puke."
Out of curiosity, have you tried Slackware? Or are you afraid of its reputation?
Landor/forest bashers: Grow up. Ladislav and the other moderators of this place allow their posts. You twits have no say in the matter, and are burning bandwidth. Knock it off.
THAT said ... All y'all, try to remember that the UNIX[tm] philosophy was always "less is more". Many small tools that do one thing right, and can be combined to do many different things in an efficient manor. Long-winded diatribes and/or epistles are usually counterproductive in the great scheme of things.
KDE 4.x ... I've been using it since Slackware 13.0 came out (I could have stuck with 3.x, but figured WTF, it's good enough for PV, and took the plunge). With a little fiddling, 4.x is actually quite usable, and even spry (in it's own way). But then I took the time to learn how the thing works, and adjusted it to suit myself. This path might be over the head of most of you.
140 • @135 (by KevinC at 2010-03-22 02:20:59 GMT from United States)
The other distro that moved from Ubuntu base to Debian is eeeBuntu....the new version is now, simply, EB4.
141 • RE: 138/139 (by Anonymous at 2010-03-22 02:23:14 GMT from Canada)
My apologies for the delay in responding, I can only hope that you will get my comments prior to the next issue being released tomorrow.
First of all, to Landor. Once again I am surprised at your spelling and grammer. However, this is not an English teachers forum and so I will leave that alone for now. How can you say I can't blame a distro for something not in the kernel yet? I most certainly can since Ubuntu USED to be on top of things and it's only recently that they've stopped. I have always bought "closed source" hardware like from HP and Dell etc, or at least I have never bought a computer with open source hardware in mind. However, Ubuntu has always been on top of the latest drivers for closed source hardware, until 9.04 in my experience and especially with 9.10, and 10.04 is even worse although it's still in beta so I will refrain from passing final judgement until they release their final product. And out of the list of bleeding edge distro's that you've mentioned I have tried Gentoo, sid and rawhide with the N130 and have not had success, however, I didn't try as hard with them as I did with Ubuntu seeing as I was simply trying them out to see if things would work out of the box. This simply continues to prove my point, that Ubuntu used to be better than the rest, Mandriva still doesn't support half the drivers on my 4 year old Dell! However, Ubuntu has slipped recently. Once again, let me end my response to you by reiterating: Ubuntu used to be the best, they got sloppy and lazy, and now they suck, however, it's a shame nothing has taken their place yet because Linux is now in the time in-between great distro's and we're waiting for the next big thing. Ubuntu's done.
As for Jake, thanks, after a long weekend of work, you really brightened my day, I had a pretty good laugh with the shit you came up with!
I purchase computers that are a good deal, knowing that I enjoy buying them frequently and having many on the go at once in order to test and run different distro's, Windows, OSX and various forms of Linux. I expect Linux to come out with drivers almost immediately for modern hardware, especially by companies like HP and Dell because that's what most people buy and I thought Linux was in the business of winning converts right? Most of the potential converts are not going to own computers with all open source hardware. Instead, they will have an HP or a Dell, like me, and will ditch Linux the instant something doesn't work, like lack of drivers. Nice one Linux.
As for your "paraphrase" of my comment about needing to use CLI and stuff, I would bet I have more computer knowledge than half the people on this forum, but GUI's are simply much faster than CLI. So instead of making me angry as you intended with your post, instead, you made me smile. The only reason I make negative comments in here is because I see individuals like you, and Landor and forest trolling these forums. It bothers me that people like you are allowed to own computers because you give Linux a big black eye with every post you make. You Jake, have probably singlehandedly turned dozens of people away from Linux with comments like that. And Landor and forest are much worse.
As for the Slackware comment, in fact yes I have tried Slackware and I was rather active in some Slackware forums about a year and a half ago. I will end my comments to you by asking if your mother knows you're using words like "fuck". You ought to be ashamed of yourself Jake :) And as for burning bandwidth, I think I am simply doing my part here, trying to better the Linux cause. In taking a stand against people like you and forest and Landor, I am trying, in vain it sometimes seems, to show potential Linux users that we're not all stuck up assholes like you. And as for Ladislav allowing their comments... if he really cared for Linux as it would seem he does by operating such a site, I find it shocking that he allows comments like that on these forums. Oh well, his site, his money, his rules.
Number of Comments: 141
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Random Distribution | 
Lakka
Lakka is a lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a small computer into a full blown game console. The distribution is based on LibreELEC and runs the RetroArch console emulator. Lakka is capable of running on a variety of hardware, including personal computers, Raspberry Pi boards and WeTek Play devices.
Status: Active
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
