 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 353, 10 May 2010 |
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Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Mandriva Linux, a distribution that was one of the first to understand the concept of user-friendliness on the desktop, is apparently for sale and in negotiations with two potential buyers. That's according to some unconfirmed reports that appeared on the Internet over the weekend. But the company itself remains mute on the issue, while the development of the upcoming version 2010.1 continues unabated. In other news, Red Hat explains the genealogy of its enterprise kernels, Debian and Slackware update KDE to version 4.4.3 in their respective development branches, Sabayon announces availability of daily, bleeding-edge DVD builds, and Astaro apologises for last week's updates that went terribly wrong. Also in this issue, The Economist magazine explains the reasons for setting up a Launchpad account, while The Times urges users to abandon Windows and to switch to Ubuntu. Finally, for the fans of lighter distributions we have a first-look review of CDlinux, Canonical's announcement about a new "Unity" desktop for netbooks, news about a special edition of Unity Linux with Enlightenment, and an introduction to an inaugural release of Quirky, a new mini-distribution from the developers of Puppy Linux. There is something for everyone - happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First look at CDlinux 0.9.6
 If you've ever looked at the project website for CDlinux, you might not have noticed anything particularly eye-catching. It's a small project with a small, simple site. And it's not a project which attracts a lot of attention. However, the open source community is full of hidden gems and CDlinux is one of them.
Before trying the distribution, I got in touch with Zhao Xun Hong, the creator of CDlinux, who invites people who speak Chinese as badly as I do to call him "Ben".
DW: Why did you start CDlinux?
ZXH: Thanks for asking. CDlinux was first started as a system rescue and maintenance tool around 2000. At that time, I and my friends all had both Linux and Windows installed on our systems. The most annoying thing was that LILO got overwritten by Windows frequently. A floppy or CD-based mini-distro would be handy to solve this problem. That's why I first started CDlinux.
DW: Will future versions have an option to install to a Linux partition? Right now it seems the options are to install with a USB drive or Windows.
ZXH: Yes, we do have a plan to support installing to a Linux partition. But that will only happen after 1.0. The truth is, we haven't found a reliable way to write GRUB's boot record to a partition yet, especially when it is a logical partition. I find that some top distros that use GRUB also have the same problem. The current installation wizard in CDlinux either doesn't write a boot record (installing to NTFS) or writes a syslinux boot record (installing to VFAT). The bottom line is that we won't destroy user's data or their original boot loader.
DW: How can volunteers help the project? Translations, coding or testing?
ZXH: Volunteers have already helped us a lot. We'll be more open and we anticipate more volunteers joining us.
DW: Are there any other thoughts you'd like to share with the readers?
ZXH: Let's work together for a brighter future for open source.
Zhao Xun Hong also mentioned in our exchange of e-mails that a few bugs had been discovered in the 0.9.6 release. To correct these, a bug-fix release, version 0.9.6.1, was released shortly after.
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The CDlinux distribution is a small live CD which can be put to a number of useful purposes. The project attempts to balance a small image size with a wide range of features and languages, making CDlinux a good rescue tool, demo CD or USB-based operating system. The name stands for Compact Distro Linux, though its small size should not be confused with distributions targeting older hardware. The current release of CDlinux, 0.9.6, requires computers have PAE capability to run the OS, breaking ties to older hardware. The latest release comes in three flavours:
- Standard -- a small but functional desktop system
- Community -- which comes with a more complete set of features for a modern desktop
- Mini -- a small, 30 MB download, featuring console tools only
For my test drive, I grabbed the "Community" release to see what the system had to offer with all the bells and whistles. The distro kicked off with a boot menu, offering several different optional languages including French, English, German, Japanese, Chinese and Russian. Passing beyond the boot menu, the user sees the CDlinux logo for a few seconds before being logged into a Xfce desktop. The background is a pleasant blue and the icons are bright and intuitive. A taskbar lies across the bottom of the screen, equipped with an application menu, quick-launch buttons, volume control, network status and clock.
CDlinux 0.9.6 - making use of the office software
(full image size: 113kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
CDlinux "Community" edition comes with a surprisingly wide range of software for such a small download. The user is treated to Firefox (3.6), Skype, a BitTorrent client, remote desktop tools, Filezilla, AbiWord, Gnumeric, the GIMP and a PDF viewer. The application menu is rounded out with a calculator, text editor, file archiver, task manager, Pidgin IM client, an image viewer and DOSBox. The system also comes with Tor, for people concerned with their online privacy. CDlinux includes a multimedia player, partition imaging utility and the usual collection of Xfce configuration tools for adjusting the look and feel of the system. Completing the software selection are Flash and popular multimedia codecs, supporting MP3 and many video formats.
There were some surprises to be found on the compact distro. For example, the system comes with Avast anti-virus, but the software requires a registration code to run. The distribution also comes with WINE, allowing the user to run many Windows programs. In fact, the Games section of the application menu contains shortcuts to running games which come with Windows instead of the usual collection of Linux time-wasters.
CDlinux 0.9.6 - web browsing and multimedia
(full image size: 162kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Something which really sets CDlinux apart from other distributions is its installer. The system installer allows the user to transfer the system from the live CD to either a USB drive or to place it inside a Windows partition. There is no option for a typical standalone hard drive install. Reading through the documentation on the project's web site shows it is possible to install CDlinux locally in a standalone fashion, but that's not really what the operating system is designed to do.
Having used CDlinux primarily as a live CD and not a regular install, looking at the distribution's security takes a slightly different twist. For instance, I wasn't regularly checking for package updates. However, there were some points of interest. The user is logged in under a non-root account, "cdl", and it's possible to perform administrative tasks using sudo. The only network service I found running out of the box was a secure shell server. By default, the user isn't given a password which prevents remote logins. Setting a password for "cdl" enables remote secure shell connections. I found CDlinux would mount any local drives during the start-up process, giving access to all recognized partitions. Plugging in new devices, such as digital cameras, would cause the device to be mounted and a corresponding icon to appear on the desktop.
CDlinux 0.9.6 - installing CDlinux and imaging the disk
(full image size: 115kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
During my time with CDlinux, I tested the distro on two physical machines and in a virtual environment. The little distribution worked very well on my desktop machine, (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card) properly setting up audio and giving my desktop the desired resolution. I encountered no problems on the desktop. My HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card) was handled well for the most part. Again, my screen was set to the maximum resolution, sound worked out of the box and my touchpad was configured properly. Unfortunately, the system didn't pick up my Intel wireless card, nor my Novatel mobile modem. The distribution is based on Slackware and the connection shows in the system's performance. The desktop is light and responsive, the distro feels simple and functional. During my tests with the virtual environment, I found the Community edition of CDlinux would run Xfce smoothly with less than 256 MB of memory. If less than 128 MB was available, the OS would drop into a text console at start-up. According to the project's website, the Standard edition will boot up with 64 MB of RAM available.
CDlinux is a well-crafted mini-distro which manages to pack a lot of functionality into a small image. It has the ability to function as an on-the-road desktop for people who want to carry their operating system in their pocket and it also has tools, such as the partition imaging software, which make it a good rescue CD. It's fairly light on resources, making CDlinux feel like a smaller version of KNOPPIX and additional functionality can be added to the distro using Slackware packages, making CDlinux suitable for a wider range of tasks. The only thing I felt missing was an option to install the distribution to the local hard disk. While this could be done manually, I'm looking forward to seeing it as a feature of the system's graphical installer. I think CDlinux fits in nicely with the family of other small distributions, such as SliTaz GNU/Linux and Damn Small Linux in the mini-distro niche.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Mandriva for sale, RHEL 6 kernel genealogy, Ubuntu "Unity" desktop, KDE 4.4 in Debian and Slackware, Sabayon daily builds, Unity Linux with Enlightenment, Astaro update troubles
 Let's start this week's news section with some bad news: it appears that Mandriva S.A., a Paris-based company that has been developing the popular Mandriva Linux distribution for over a decade, is for sale. That's according to this post at Mandriva Linux Online (in French). The article claims that the company's financial situation has deteriorated dramatically this year and selling the enterprise is the only alternative to closing it down completely. It mentions two potential buyers - a London-based lightapp Ltd and Linagora from France, both of whom have apparently entered into negotiations with Mandriva. There has been no official word from the troubled company, but the article quotes a procès verbal du CA as published on the Boursorama forum (in French) last week. Mandriva has been through numerous ups and downs throughout its short history, but up to this point it has always succeeded in finding a way out of trouble. But even if the company does get sold, there is a strong possibility that the new owners will continue the development of the distribution with the existing team. In the meantime, the Mandriva's development branch (Cooker) keeps moving towards the new stable release, with a large number of updates to Perl-related packages and KDE 4.4.3 over the weekend.
* * * * *
 In contrast with Mandriva, Red Hat, Inc is a picture of financial health, with its share price, profits and customer base on the increase despite the prolonged economic downturn. A new version of the company's flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has recently entered beta testing. Although these are very early days of a distribution that will be supported for many years after its release, the more technically-minded users and system administrators will probably enjoy reading the article entitled Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Kernel: An Overview and Genealogy to learn more about the most crucial part of the operating system: "When Red Hat announces a new major Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, such as with the recent Beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, invariably among the first questions asked is, “What is the kernel version number?” The answer to this question is never a simple one-number reply. The construction of an enterprise-caliber kernel is an extremely complex exercise that requires close evaluation of hundreds of individual features and interactions. This blog outlines how we create our Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernels."
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 The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), the bi-annual meeting of key people responsible for the development of the distribution, starts today in Brussels, Belgium. As with previous events, a flurry of press releases is expected to hit the wires during the week. The first among them is an announcement about a new "Unity" desktop environment (Mark Shuttleworth's blog has a more detailed post on the subject) designed for the Ubuntu Netbook edition: "Canonical today unveiled a new desktop environment called 'Unity' at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Belgium. Unity will be the desktop environment for Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, released in October 2010, and is available today to developers building applications for the netbook environment. Unity is designed for netbooks and related touch-based devices. It includes a new panel and application launcher that makes it fast and easy to access preferred applications, such as the browser, while removing screen elements that are rarely used in mobile and netbook computing."
Ubuntu Light powered by Unity - a new desktop design for netbooks
(image courtesy of Canonical.com)
It's always nice to read about a Linux distribution's success in reaching new frontiers, well beyond the realm of technical users. In this respect, it was interesting to note that The Economist, one of the world's most respected magazines, has recently opened a Launchpad account. Matthew Revell asked a representative of the publication for their reasons and plans: "We're migrating the existing Economist.com stack from ColdFusion/Oracle to a LAMP stack running Drupal. At present, we're about half way through -- if you visit a blogs page, channel page, or comments page they will be served from Drupal, but the home page and actual articles are still served from ColdFusion. There's a migration and synchronisation process happening in the background between Oracle and MySQL. ... We chose Launchpad for its usability, mostly the workflow around reviewing code (merge proposals). It provides excellent tools for managing distributed teams, and we are a very large distributed team, with three locations where development is occurring on either side of the Atlantic."
On a related note, another venerable British publication, The Times, now urges users to stop using Windows and to use Ubuntu instead: "You know that thing that happens on your computer, when you are using Windows? When you ask it to do something, and it thinks about it, and then it keeps thinking, and then you go off and make a cup of tea, and it's still thinking, and you want to head-butt the wall, again and again, until gets all smeared and red and bloody and bits of your brain are raining down on to your shoes? Yes? Well, there's a way to stop that happening. Stop using Windows. Use Ubuntu instead. ... My Ubuntu setup is faster than a PC and prettier than a Mac. But best of all, when you ask it to do something, it does it. Or, at worst, it doesn't do it. It doesn't think about it, for hours, and then mysteriously go off the idea. It doesn't crash. It doesn't break. I don't know why everybody doesn't use it."
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 Following the recent release of KDE 4.4.3, two distributions that have been resisting the upgrade to the 4.4 series have now jumped on the bandwagon. The first one is Slackware Linux which promptly announced that its development tree is now in beta, with the upcoming release of version 13.1 just around the corner. The other one is Debian GNU/Linux, which has accepted KDE 4.4.3 into its "unstable" branch: "Today, the 3rd of May 2010, KDE SC 4.4.3 has been uploaded to Debian sid (unstable). This is the first of the 4.4.x series that Debian has had (outside of the experimental repository and an unofficial repository), and so far the whole of it is awesome. There is a new KDM login window which looks great. Upon logging in, Strigi and Nepomunk start up and begin the indexing of the local system (and, likely my FUSE-mounted drives, since it probably doesn't know better and I didn't stop it). Nearly everything has a new release, including a newer Kontact suite (4.4.3) for email and calendaring. I had to re-add my local file for my local address book, but the Akonadi (network-accessed) resources such as my home Kontact calendar and my Google address books all worked fine after the upgrade to KDE SC 4.4.3."
* * * * *
 The Sabayon Linux project announced last week that a set of daily ISO images of the distribution's GNOME, KDE and CoreCD editions for both the x86 and amd64 architectures are now available from its download mirrors: "After several weeks of testing and ironing, we are happy to announce the public availability of daily (or nightly if you prefer) Sabayon Linux (Standard and CoreCD editions) ISO images. The aim is to improve packages and general system functionality testing during a release's life cycle by providing always up-to-date installable Live CDs and DVDs. Our stable releases are just 'snapshots' of these ISO images, so you will be able to know (and report) about possible hardware and software issues before a new version is published." The announcement is concluded by the usual word of caution: "This is the bleeding edge of bleeding edge, do not use them on production systems." If you are interested in checking out the progress the Sabayon development team has made since its last stable release, see the iso/daily directory on the project's download mirrors.
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 While on the subject of testing bleeding-edge releases, here is something for the fans of Enlightenment 17. The Hungarian branch of the Unity Linux project has announced the availability of Unite17, a live CD based on Unity Linux 2010 RC1 with the latest development build of the Enlightenment window manager: "The Unite17 project is pleased to announce its first Unite17 version. What is inside? Based of Unity Linux RC1 core (Openbox removed); Linux kernel updated to 2.6.31.13; Enlightenment E17 0.16.999.063, does not include Ecomorph; themes, wallpapers; aMSN, Skype 2.1.0.81, Transmission, Mozilla Firefox 3.6 and Thunderbird, MPlayer, XMMS. This Unite17 release is a 'raw' system, I hope you will like it. Please remember that Enlightenment DR17 is under heavy development, it is not stable." Here is a quick download link for those who wish to take a look at the release: unite17.iso (718MB, MD5).
* * * * *
 Most operating systems in use today come with update functionality that corrects security issues and important bugs discovered after the product's release. But how do you know that these updates will work as intended? Last week the CEO of Astaro, the producer of Astaro Security Gateway (ASG), had to publish an apology after the company's engineers issued not one, but two disastrous updates in one day, preventing Astaro machines from connecting to the Internet and disabling web and mail proxy functionality: "Systems with IPS activated could not download the new patterns because all network connectivity was blocked. As is usual, systems with IPS deactivated do not download new patterns either. ... Then, incredibly, at 12:25 CEST our Up2Date servers began distributing anti-virus (AV) pattern version 12407 which included a signature incompatible with the AV engine our systems are running. On systems with dual AV scanning enabled the web proxy was not working and the mail proxy was not forwarding email." Although many ASG users were not amused by the events, it's always nice to see the CEO explaining the situation, apologising for the troubles and outlining steps that should prevent such mishaps in the future.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux hardware support
Frustrated-with-hardware asks: Why is Linux still unable to produce simple, user friendly solutions to basic problems like getting a commonly sold laptop, using a major manufacturer's video card, to output video to a TV screen? Together with the built-in microphones on laptops that can't be used and the built-in webcams on laptops that can't be used, this inability after having reached considerable maturity in development is more than a little disappointing.
DistroWatch answers: The world's wide variety of hardware is the thorn in many an operating system's side. Linux actually has remarkable built-in driver support, possibly the best of any operating system I've used. So why are there so many issues with video cards, microphones and webcams? The problem largely rests in two areas.
1. Hardware manufacturers. The reason other operating systems (such as Windows and OS X) appear to have such good driver support is because when you get a new webcam or printer, you generally get a CD with drivers from the manufacturer. The OS itself doesn't need to come with those drivers, because the hardware vendor is supplying them. If you go grab a vanilla Windows install disk, you'll quickly find a lot of hardware doesn't work out of the box, you'll need to manually get drivers from the manufacturer.
The Linux community is growing, but doesn't have enough market influence to cause some vendors to supply drivers for the Linux kernel. This results in kernel developers trying to fill the gaps where they can.
2. The other big factor is the consumer. One aspect of running Linux is taking responsibility and making sure you buy hardware that will work with your operating system. Take a look at a hardware compatibility database or ask around your distribution's forum before buying a new video card, printer or webcam. It'll save a lot of hassle. It will also, gradually, send a message to hardware vendors. For example, I almost always buy HP printers now, because they've had a pretty good track record running with Linux and I avoid Canon machines because their Linux support has been, in my experience, poor. One person making that choice isn't tipping the scales, but a few million users buying a specific brand, and politely stating to the vendor why, can make a difference. When you're buying equipment, don't be afraid to ask the sales person if their hardware is compatible with Linux and make sure you can return the item if the device isn't recognized. Linux does support a range of video cards, microphones and webcams if you're willing to shop around.
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| Released Last Week |
NexentaStor 3.0.2
Anil Gulecha has announced the release of NexentaStor 3.0.2, an enterprise-class unified storage solution built upon the foundation of the open-source Nexenta Core Platform and OpenSolaris, including the ZFS file system: "On behalf of the NexentaStor team, I'm happy to announce the release of NexentaStor Community Edition 3.0.2. This release is the result of the community efforts of Nexenta partners and users. Changes over 3.0 include: many fixes to ON/ZFS backported to b134; CIFS/DFS support backported; multiple bug fixes in the appliance. With the addition of many new features, NexentaStor CE is the most complete and feature-rich gratis unified storage solution today. Quick summary of features: ZFS additions - deduplication (based on OpenSolaris b134); free for up to 12 TB of used storage; Community edition supports easy upgrades; many new features in the easy-to-use management interface; integrated search." Here is the brief release announcement.
DEFT Linux 5.1
Stefano Fratepietro has announced the release of DEFT Linux 5.1, an Ubuntu-based live CD featuring some of the best open-source applications dedicated to incident response and computer forensics: "DEFT Linux 5.1 is ready. What's new? Update - Sleuth Kit 3.1.1 and Autopsy 2.24; update - Xplico to 0.5.7 (100% support of SIP - RTP codec g711, g729, g722, g723 and g726, SDP and RTCP); update - initrd; Dhash report bug fix (reports were not generated); DEFT Extra bug fix (a few applications do not work if the operator click their icons, added the dd tool for x86_64 machines). Since 3 June we have been developing DEFT Linux 6 (based on Lubuntu 10.10 'Maverick Meerkat') that will be released on 2 December 2010." Read the full release announcement for more information.
PCLinuxOS 2010.1
PCLinuxOS 2010.1, a bug-fix update of the recently released version 2010, is now available for download: "PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE 4 edition is now available for download. Linux kernel updated to 2.6.32.12-bfs. Linux kernel 2.6.33.2 also available from our software repository, KDE SC desktop upgraded to version 4.4.3. Added support for Realtek RTL8191SE and RTL8192SE WiFi cards. Added support for Microdia webcams. Added vim console text editor. Added udftools. Fixed CD-ROM ejection when using the copy-to-RAM feature. Fixed KDE new widget download. Updated NVIDIA (195.36.24) and ATI fglrx (8.723) drivers. Updated all supporting applications and libraries from the software repository which include security updates and bug fixes. Please note if you have already installed the PCLinuxOS 2010 release you can simply update it from the Synaptic software manager." Here is the brief release announcement.
Quirky 1.0
Quirky is a new Linux distribution created by Barry Kauler, the founder of Puppy Linux, "as an avenue to explore new ideas." The project's inaugural stable release was announced earlier today: "This first release is quite straight, not very 'quirky'. Some of the interesting ideas that I want to try are still to come. The focus for now is to test a lot of the new stuff in Woof, such as Rerwin's analog and 3G modem detection/setup scripts. Here is a summary of features specific to Quirky 1.0: GRUB Legacy and Grub4dos; Flsynclient - synclient GUI configuration of touchpad; Openbox, Fbpanel, JWM window managers; numerous updated applications (AbiWord, Pmusic); 2.6.33.2 kernel, updated firmware, bug-fix patches; new tray applets - Traytemp, Powerapplet, Freememapplet, Retrovol...." Read the complete release notes for more information.
Monomaxos 5.0
Dimitris Papadatos has announced the release of Monomaxos 5.0, a Greek Ubuntu-based desktop distribution on a DVD: "This is the fifth release of the Monomaxos Linux operating system localized for the Greek language that comes as a live DVD. It supports playback of every kind of multimedia material (including HD video) and any kind of Internet content out of the box and can also be used for setting up a stand-alone Media Center (including XBMC Media Center). It contains OpenOffice.org 3.2 in Greek with enabled spelling check (also in English). A large variety of open-source software installed in this live DVD provides solutions for all needs of the modern user and makes a powerful operating system for use on desktop or laptop PCs." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement.
Monomaxos 5.0 - a Greek desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu
(full image size: 920kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
VectorLinux 6.0 "KDE-Classic-Live"
Robert Lange has announced the release of VectorLinux 6.0 "KDE-Classic-Live" edition, a live CD featuring the legacy KDE 3 desktop: "The VectorLinux team is happy to announce the release of VectorLinux 6.0 KDE-Classic-Live. KDE 3 veterans will appreciate that this release retains the solid KDE 3.5.10. There are many updates compared to the original, install-only release. The Live-installer has been improved. Live mode makes it simple to test compatibility with your hardware before committing to a permanent installation. KDE-Classic is configured with full web and multimedia capabilities out of the box. Firefox has all the plugins that VectorLinux users are used to - Flash 10, MPlayer and Java. Further functionality from VLC and Xine ensures that you will be able to handle all common audio and video formats. Amarok is ready for your music collection. The King of CD/DVD burning, K3b, is also included." Here is the full release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
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New distributions added to database
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 17 May 2010.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Cd linux (by bunny1985 on 2010-05-10 09:37:39 GMT from Poland)
There are two disatriubutions that uses cdlinux name?
http://cdlinux.pl/
http://www.cdlinux.info/wiki/doku.php/
2 • Mandriva (by Mahmoud Slamah on 2010-05-10 09:57:49 GMT from Egypt)
Really bad news about Mandriva :(
Mandriva provide many things : easy to use { this suitable for new users switch from ms-windows to GNU/Linux } , and Beautiful distro , support many languages { like Arabic in my case } and many other languages...etc
Generally there are also PCLinuxOS which based on mandriva and focus on easy of use ,,,,, etc
3 • Linux hardware support (by megadriver on 2010-05-10 09:57:55 GMT from Spain)
Agreed 100% on the answer. That's exactly what I always tell to Linux naysayers.
4 • Linux Hardware Support (by Kurt_Aust on 2010-05-10 10:17:02 GMT from Australia)
I for one can feel Frustrated-with-hardware's pain, as the inability to use some equivalent to "Theatre mode" output to a connected TV is a showstopper class bug in regards to my switching over to Linux (for my main desktop, inability to recognise ICH10R raid 10 is the other).
Sure I can get the video card to output to the TV, but only as an extended desktop, not really useful as the TV is 10m away. I can't help but feel that fixing this is something more in X.org's field, there really needs to some way to easily specify that the secondary screen is to be used as a clone of the main desktop and automatically scale videos to full screen, some sort of API or similar that the various media players (totem, mPlayer) can access.
BTW, it's not hardware related, I have 2 desktops (nVidia FX5200, ATI HD4850) and 2 laptops (ATI X700, Intel X3100) and I can't get a satisfactory outcome from any of them.
5 • Mandriva (by Stuart on 2010-05-10 10:27:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Very sad news about Mandriva being up for sale. I remember it as having the best hardware support for many years, but unfortunately it lacked the marketing success of distributions of Ubuntu, despite contributing more back to the Linux kernel and upstream.
I hope a benevolent buyer is found soon.
6 • hats off (by Leroy on 2010-05-10 10:32:24 GMT from Serbia)
"In contrast with Mandriva, Red Hat, Inc is a picture of financial health, with its share price, profits and customer base on the increase despite the prolonged economic downturn."
Go RH!! :) Well, it's also because of the prolonged economic downturn... this is how smart or shall we say, grown-up Linux companies exploit the circumstances. Although I'd like to see even more push and initiative into the markets hit by the crisis. Some Linux companies grab Tokyo SE jobs, others reinvent netbook interface... oh well :) Really, that's exactly how it should be. As long as people stick to what they know and can do, it's fine.
7 • Ubuntu Unity ... uh ? ... (by meanpt on 2010-05-10 10:55:51 GMT from Portugal)
... "page not found" for unity-ubuntu-light-instant-on
8 • CD Linux 0.9.6. ... rather confusing realease announcement (by meanpt on 2010-05-10 11:05:50 GMT from Portugal)
I was following this distro's career but got stuck and gave up after reading their later release announcement back in April: "While the downside is that you can't run CDlinux 0.9.6 on older CPUs (5×86, K6, Pentium, etc.) any more, not even the Mini edition". What in the hell is 5x86? ... do they meant all the 32 bits x86 architecture processors? ... ok ... lets move to the next distro ...
9 • Mandriva up for Sale . . . (by Robert Fox on 2010-05-10 11:11:07 GMT from Germany)
This could be positive - or severely negative for my favorite
distribution - After all these years and stiff competition, I still
think Mandriva has held its own and has great products.
Guess we'll have to see where the winds of change bring us next.
Wishing all the best from a long standing and big time fan of Mandriva
Linux!
10 • ... DSL = Dead small love ... Hip Hurra to the new lady TinyCore ... (by meanpt on 2010-05-10 11:20:24 GMT from Portugal)
... no one is taking good care of DSL anymore while TinyCore is getting better and better ... TinyCore is the new skinny beauty on the bolck, despite not still very user friendly for some but becoming the reference in the light or mini or whatever you may name it, distro's cathegory. I also have DSL permanently installed but I do not use it as an alternative and serious working tool anymore.
11 • Hardware for Linux (by AT on 2010-05-10 11:28:19 GMT from Pakistan)
One of the beauty of Linux is that almost every hardware can be used. but that requires a lot of expertise. a Linux Beginner cannot do that.
I remember my beginner days when i was trying to run winmodems on Linux and they just did not work. so i shopped around for weeks trying to find modem that comes with Linux driver. I found one eventually and used it on Mandrake.
But i agree with Jesse, that after that better thing to do was to first search for hardware online and find out its compatibility with Linux and then buy. We all are potential buyers for vendors and its time they should know that we exist.
12 • re: #4 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 12:09:28 GMT from France)
You can use xrandr with almost any card. Use the option --mode same-as. Type man xrandr for more informations. Nvidia has its own tools and does not work with xrandr AFAIK (am I mistaken?), but they have their own tools: TwinView. check nvidia-settings.
The french government sucks for not supporting Mandriva. They use Ubuntu with a support contract by ATOS Origin. They are clueless.
13 • Linux hardware support (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 12:18:11 GMT from Brazil)
Agree with the author.
A problem: it's not so easy in some cases to find a HCL in the internet. For printers, for instance, it seems there is an easy-to-use and well-trusted central point. However, I don't remember a site like that for video cards and webcams, for instance.
So, the suggestion for someone: how about creating a focal HCL service for Linux? I remember vaguely OpenBSD to publicize its HCL in its release notes. Would Linux distros be the ones which should do it?
14 • The Times, now urges users to stop using Windows and to use Ubuntu instead (by anticapitalista on 2010-05-10 12:29:00 GMT from Greece)
Not really. It is an article by someone suggesting using Ubuntu.
15 • Re: CDlinux + showing veiws of Mplayer ? (by John Coombes on 2010-05-10 13:01:38 GMT from Australia)
Does not every one know the best thing is VLC = http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Plus for all True Open Source and cross-platform enthusiasts this is the only thing to use !
16 • Linux Hardware Support (by James L on 2010-05-10 13:18:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
It is all very well preaching to people to check and buy hardware which is supported by linux,but most people contemplating switching have already got hardware. In my case I have three expensive printers all of which work perfectly on Windows 7 but do not work at all on Linux or Work in a limited fashion.
17 • Re: CD Linux 0.9.6. ... rather confusing realease announcement (by greenpossum on 2010-05-10 13:35:46 GMT from Australia)
#8: No 586 means 686, i.e. Celeron or better. PII, K6 etc don't qualify. It's unfortunate but the proportion of such machines is diminishing as they die off. Not compiling for 686 misses out on some CPU instructions, e.g. CMOV, that can speed up certain operations.
18 • @16 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 13:39:52 GMT from United States)
One thing to consider for printers that don't have linux support is Turboprint. It's not free, but if it supports your printer and if it is cheaper than replacing your existing printer then why not.
19 • Haiku OS (by haiku fan on 2010-05-10 13:46:28 GMT from United States)
I noticed that the Haiku Project released a new version yesterday, Haiku OS R1/Alpha 2.
20 • Mandriva and stuff (by davemc on 2010-05-10 14:15:34 GMT from United States)
#12 - "The french government sucks for not supporting Mandriva. They use Ubuntu with a support contract by ATOS Origin. They are clueless."
I am sure Ubuntu won that contract for more reasons than just popularity. It also has huge financial backing that gives the Distro an edge in flexibility and efficiency, ie. they can promise to meet all customer needs/demands at lower bid and, because of the developer resources and other things, should be able to actually follow through on time, and still have resources left over for other projects. I am sure the French Govt. was just looking out for their own (sic. taxpayer) interests and took the most competitive offer.
Glad to see that my mentor Distro Sabayon is still trucking along, and happy to see Wolfden take a much deserved lead role in the project. I have every confidence that well see nothing but greatness come from the team for the foreseeable future. It has come a long ways since I last used that OS and they have pioneered some ground breaking accomplishments (binary package manager, light edition, GNOME edition).
21 • Hardware Support (Jessie's Answer) (by Sly on 2010-05-10 14:16:53 GMT from United States)
Jessie, your answer to the hardware question was dead on. I searched long and hard for a print driver for my Canon printer and finally found one from Canon-Europe that worked partially with OpenSuse.
I learned my lesson on hardware support the $hard$ way.
22 • Turbo Print (by Jesse on 2010-05-10 14:17:38 GMT from Canada)
I'd like to second to comment made in post 18. Several years ago I bought a copy of Turboprint and it did a great job of bringing some printers back to life. As I recall, it was only a one-time purchase of around $20. Not bad when the alternative was to go buy another printer.
23 • Hardware for Linux (by Eljo on 2010-05-10 14:18:08 GMT from Netherlands)
What is so difficult that they can make a Linux system but not a hardware driver? I think It's about time the Linux community needs to focus on driver support and not on coming out every 3 months with a new Linux sub version.
If all new and modern hardware will fit on Linux than people will switch to Linux not before that. It's all about the money, maybe Linux is free but if users need to buy expensive hardware than ... No Linux. imo The Linux community always approaches this big problem from the wrong angle.
24 • Switch to Linux (by forlin on 2010-05-10 14:29:01 GMT from Portugal)
Are you using Windows?
"When you ask it to do something, and it thinks about it, and then it keeps thinking, and then you go off and make a cup of tea, and it's still thinking, and you want to head-butt the wall, again and again, until gets all smeared and red and bloody and bits of your brain are raining down on to your shoes? Yes?"
heheheheheh
yes, it's true !!!
25 • Euro Linuxes (by Sam on 2010-05-10 14:29:44 GMT from United States)
Re: Mandriva. Ever since Gael Duval got the can, I've been expecting this. Mandriva is a very good distro, but it has felt like over the past 5 years they really haven't dramatically improved the way Ubuntu and Fedora have.
Re: Monomaxos OS. A Greek linux distro? Does the OS allocate CPU resources too generously, borrow too much from the swap disk, and all the while some guy nicknamed "Fab" is taking bets on when the system's going to crash? (with appologies to the people of Europe, I couldn't resist)
26 • @#20 Re: Mandriva and stuff (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 14:43:00 GMT from France)
I think you didn't get the point. Ubuntu did not won any contract. Ubuntu is the product. They didn't even take a contract from Ubuntu's developers, Canonical. No, no, no... they choose ATOS Origin. Arguably, ATOS is bigger than Mandriva, but ATOS doesn't know linux as Mandriva does. Mandriva, S.A. would do a better job at supporting Ubuntu than ATOS would!
Ubuntu is free so anyone can sell it and support it. You can do it if you want. the french government is clueless because they bought it from a generic IT company that has no linux expertise or very few when the Paris based Mandriva S.A. was just next door and provides top class linux support, perhaps the best in the world for the desktop. But they go with ATOS. Either they have been bribed or they are plain stupid.
27 • @23: Hardware for Linux (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 14:57:03 GMT from France)
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. It is not a matter of resources. You can put 1000 developers on it and it won't work. The problem is the hardware vendors. They work hard to make it difficult to write drivers for their products on purpose. They don't want their hardware to run on Linux. The status of the Linux drivers is actually very good when you consider how hard it is. Look at Mac OS X, AIX, BSD or Solaris. Linux does a VERY good job despite the hardware manufacturers. The hardware vendors only want Windows.
Linux does run more hardware than Windows anyway. Windows can't run on ARM or MIPS processors for example. It is just that your local store does only sell hardware designed for Windows and not to run on Linux.
28 • Re: Recent release of KDE 4.4.3 (by silent on 2010-05-10 14:59:44 GMT from Belgium)
I have still quite easily managed to hard freeze KDE 4.4.3 just by playing with the GUI for the appearance setting and turning on and off compositing a couple of times. Also, as usual, some official plasmoid kept on crashing after the update. But once all cleared, it is stable with some minor bugs.
29 • Quirky (by jack on 2010-05-10 15:01:49 GMT from Canada)
It seems,according to info listed by DW, that it has no cd/dvd burner.
This also seems to be the case for some other "light" OSes.
What does one use?
30 • @23 Hardware (by Patrick on 2010-05-10 15:08:33 GMT from United States)
Eljo,
What is so difficult is that hardware drivers are often out of the control of Linux developers. If Linux developers don't know how to talk to a particular device because the hardware manufacturer doesn't make this information available, they can not write a driver.
The best case is when the device manufacturer supports Linux by writing a driver for a device and pushing it upstream to the Linux kernel developers so it can be improved and maintained.
The second best case is when they make documentation available that explains how to talk to their device. There is a high likelihood someone else will write a Linux driver for the device that will be in the mainline kernel and maintained.
A worse case that may seem good in the short run, but isn't that great overall is if the device manufacturer provides a binary, closed source driver for their device, but no information about it. It will make your hardware run now, but if they decide to drop support for your device later or don't keep their driver up-to-date, your device may stop working in the future.
The worst case is when the device manufacturer writes no driver and makes no information available at all. Someone may make a valiant effort to reverse engineer what is going on, but there is no guarantee of success. The blame falls completely on the hardware manufacturer and there is nothing Linux developers can do about it. What "right angle" would you suggest the Linux community take here to solve this problem? Other than avoid this kind of hardware?
31 • Re: Mandriva (by kilgoretrout on 2010-05-10 15:27:32 GMT from United States)
Sad news on mandriva. I wish their devs all the best. Unfortunately, nobody has found a way to make a consistent profit off of desktop linux. The most successful linux, company, RH, dominates the server market with Novell getting some share and Ubuntu desperately trying to penetrate that market. Mandriva also tried its best to break into the server market but never had much success. It's too bad as mandrake/ mandriva was one of the original innovators behind user friendly desktop linux.
32 • Mandriva for sale (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 15:44:01 GMT from Italy)
Bad news. For me Mandriva is one of the very best.
I haven't always felt that way, but now I feel that I like it better than my old favourites, Debian and (open)SUSE.
It is the last remaining "commercial" distribution, based on polish and ease of use.
The previous commercial distro which was sold, Linspire, has died, together with Xandros which bought it (meaning they don't do a desktop distro any longer).
If Mandriva goes, the only one left (for my tastes) is PCLinuxOS.
33 • Linux Hardware Support (by Christopher Bieda on 2010-05-10 15:44:19 GMT from United States)
Amen to that: I tell all my Windows customers that they are foolishly limiting their options (and REALLY good options they be!) if they buy hardware that is not supported in Linux. In particular, I too, praise HP printers for that reason (though God knows, the Windows drivers for same are an abomination, especially the "full-install" packages for AIO's!).
34 • #12 Mandriva (by jérome on 2010-05-10 15:47:26 GMT from France)
You're wrong :
"Mandriva a répondu à l’Appel d’Offre de l’Assemblée Nationale en s’associant avec des intégrateurs locaux renommés, comme Atos Origin ou Steria."
Atos was a partner of Mandriva, those who won were two french societies : Linagora and Unilog... And Linagora is today the french society who wants to buy Mandriva... funny (or sad, I don't know) is'nt it ?
35 • There goes Mandriva (by Basilio on 2010-05-10 16:37:06 GMT from Puerto Rico)
One of the basic distributions with a long history of commitment to improve Linux, but haven't hange its business model. I order to survive, you must not be strong, nor rich, nor intelligent, but to ADAPT to the times. I hope Mandriva find its way through, they have faced very difficult troubles in the past, and have stood still.
36 • VectorLinux (by Josh on 2010-05-10 16:52:44 GMT from United States)
I just wanted to voice my appreciation for the KDE 3 spin of VectorLinux. I've been a long-time KDE fan, but the 4.x.x releases have been very disappointing and annoying to me. It's nice to see a relatively mature distribution offering an official spin for those of us who used to prefer KDE to GNOME.
Thanks!
37 • Hardware & Mandriva Best Wishes (by John on 2010-05-10 17:07:41 GMT from Canada)
One printer company I've found that specifically supports linux and I know works on .deb and .rpm platforms is Brother. I've used laser and inkjet printers and MFCs from Brother and they just work.
As for Mandriva - I hope they make it through with a decent owner. I've used them for years (actually bought the deluxe edition of version 9 a few years ago) and they have always had the best hardware support and smoothest user experience.
38 • Vector & KDE (by Steve on 2010-05-10 17:20:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Vector is a decent distro with few strange habits. It's mature and 3.5.10 usually runs well with it. Have not tried the new release yet, but from past performance it should be a good one.
Who's tried it??
39 • Mandriva - collateral damage (by dialup on 2010-05-10 17:52:35 GMT from United States)
Still hoping it's just a rumor. My personal preference is rpm-based distros that allow a custom install. And for my internet computer, I prefer KDE. I'm using 2010.0 and was looking forward to "Spring".
Also, what impact might this have on future versions of PCLOS?
40 • The Times and Linux (by Gene Venable on 2010-05-10 18:05:14 GMT from United States)
It's of course not true that The Times recommends that people give up Windows for Linux, as you say:
"another venerable British publication, The Times, now urges users to stop using Windows and to use Ubuntu instead"
The truth is that a columnist for The Times makes that recommendation. Attributing his opinion to The Times itself is just wrong.
41 • RE:Not Hardly (by HackNsack on 2010-05-10 18:42:07 GMT from United States)
If the writer is an employee of "The Times" everything they print that he writes is an endorsement. You are just wrong, there is no disclaimer by "The Times". What is your problem? You don't even live in the UK.
42 • @39, Mandriva 2010 Spring (by Fred Nelson on 2010-05-10 19:14:36 GMT from United States)
I'm trying out Mandriva 2010 Spring (KDE version) now; installed it from the beta and have updated it since then. It's already nearing Release Candidate stage and is in pretty close to its final form. Just like 2010 was six months ago, it is already very stable at this point. Given how long paperwork takes, I think that 2010 Spring is safe regardless of whether and from whom Mandriva gets bought out, and is shaping up to be a great release! It's Mandriva 2011 I'd be more worried about...
43 • #41 is an endorsement? (by anticapitalista on 2010-05-10 19:27:36 GMT from Greece)
No it isn't and the editors don't need to have a disclaimer. The guy who wrote the article is not writing on behalf of the Times and putting forward the Times policy on OS. (unfortunately).
If it really was the policy of the Times to support linux, then they wouldn't have chosen a distro based on a tax-haven island would they ? :) :)
44 • about selling mandriva (by SAFAD on 2010-05-10 19:57:41 GMT from Algeria)
what is the price for the Mandriva Enterprise ?
Thus More
Its Sad That it will die now
and will it release 2011.0 as a final speak ?
Best Regards
45 • London Times Support of Ubuntu (by Marti Martinson on 2010-05-10 20:12:25 GMT from United States)
It was interesting to read the snippet about The Times' support of Ubuntu Linux. Well, at least one writer's support. I, too, use Ubuntu on a box that I bought pre-installed with 7.10; I do each and every update AND upgrade, but I think I will stay with the LTS releases from now own. Yes, I am running 10.4 now.
For The Times to support ONE distribution seems to miss the point of the freedom we seek. He does suggest for us to "move along" about other distros, so I hope people that are VERY new to Linux will find distrowatch.com. Trust me, before my 6 year old laptop died of H/W issues, the only distro with working sound was SliTaz.
Besides, someone may like LinuxMint better.....But the article and the reference to it are appreciated.
46 • Ref #41 - "Not Hardly" (by dialup on 2010-05-10 20:13:38 GMT from United States)
"If the writer is an employee of "The Times" everything they print that he writes is an endorsement."
The article [ http://tinyurl.com/38xdzz4 ] is in the Tech & Web section; it's not an Editorial. It's the author's personal endorsement of Ubuntu, not of Linux in general. He writes: " Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution of Linux. What does that mean? Buggered if I know. If you do, and you are feeling a powerful urge, already, to recommend a different version of Linux, then let me stop you right there. Is it easier to use? Is it prettier? No? Well, not interested. Move along."
47 • Vector kde3 (by Pedrito Manuelo Rolano Roca on 2010-05-10 20:20:56 GMT from United States)
Good and fast, cousins. Even in live cd. Hard drive install snappy, orale!
Mantenga su palillo su asno,
- Pedrito
48 • #8, #17: i586 and i686 confusion (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 20:38:31 GMT from United States)
#8 wrote: "What in the hell is 5x86? ... do they meant all the 32 bits x86 architecture processors? ... ok ... lets move to the next distro ..."
#17, greenpossum responded: "#8: No 586 means 686, i.e. Celeron or better. PII, K6 etc don't qualify"
The response is entirely incorrect. i586 is classic Pentium class hardware (Pentium I, AMD K6). i686 refers to anything Pentium Pro or better including the PII.
49 • MANDRIVA :'( (by KaMMed on 2010-05-10 22:04:55 GMT from Morocco)
Mandriva is one of the greatest Linux distros of all time, known of its easy to use applications like the admin center ( Mandriva has been one the first distros that made everythg graphical ), that was my first experience with the Linux World , i realy hope that the team will continue developping and that will not be the end of one of the greatest Linux distros ever.
50 • response to #23 (by gmamakis on 2010-05-10 22:15:40 GMT from Greece)
With all due respect, I think it would be proper to comment without making any political or call-it-whatever-you-like remark, as a) Greek people are not happy they are in this situation most of them feeling they have been mocked by their governments (more or less what other Europeans feel for Greek citizens), b) three people (4 with the fetus) were killed by the uprising following the whole situation and c) it is not the proper place to start a conversation like that.
I think that the whole driver thing in Linux has been a pain in the neck for quite a long of time.. I can hardly forget the days of RH6.2 learning PERL scripting in 3 hours in order to modify the driver of a linux compatible modem from Olitec so as to extend it for a KFlex56 modem with a resembling chipset...Or still not being able to find the correct Canon Driver for the printer/scanner/photocopier/coffee-maker piece of machinery I use @ home
51 • correction (by gmamakis on 2010-05-10 22:17:09 GMT from Greece)
sorry the response was for comment #25
52 • Ubuntu Unity Desktop vs Unity-Linux Desktop (by getoutofhere on 2010-05-10 22:23:37 GMT from United States)
Why did Ubuntu pick the name Unity Desktop when there is already a Unity-Linux distribution? Seems like there is going to be some serious confusion going on!
53 • The Times @ 40 and others. (by forlin on 2010-05-10 22:31:24 GMT from Portugal)
"Attributing his opinion to The Times itself is just wrong."
As many of us are placing their opinion, I'd like to express myself too.
What is "The Times"? It's a public media. As usual, it has an editorial chief, journalist, and casual contracted chroniclers. Every news, article, or chronic is reviewed and approved by the editorial chiefs. For me, as a Times reader, whatever is in there it's a Times statement, opinion, report, etc. Unless the opposite is expressly disclosed.
I would not consider that anything less than a Times "Editorial" would void whatever is written under the trade mark "The Times". So, I do not think that it is mandatory to differentiate the following:
- The Times "now urges users..."
- Mr. Xip, a The Times -whatever- "now urges users..."
Sure, I may be wrong. This is only my feeling of common sense.
54 • #48 (by greenpossum on 2010-05-11 03:04:53 GMT from Australia)
Sorry, I mean PI and K6, not PII and K6. Not that you'd get much joy running a full distro on a PII or a PPro these days.
55 • @#29 Quirky burner software (by James c on 2010-05-11 03:07:48 GMT from United States)
Posting this from Quirky and there are both Pburn and Burniso2cd to use for burning discs.
56 • Mandriva (by Reron on 2010-05-11 03:35:34 GMT from United States)
As others have suggested, with the potential sale and death of Mandriva, another big loser could be PCLinuxOS. I know the Ripper gang like to say PCLOS isn't based on Mandriva anymore, but one quick look suggests some very close resemblance. If you go into the PCLOS control center, there is still branding with the Mandriva name in some of the applications. LOL It will be interesting to see what comes of PCLOS if Mandriva goes away.
57 • @56 (by Crow on 2010-05-11 04:06:11 GMT from Mexico)
PCLOS will stay, see maybe you didn't know but there is no more Ripper Gang, they left and PCLOS is well with a new group of collaborators, just today Texstar announced the Open Box version, I'm writing this from a PCLinuxOS 2010 with Task-LXDE installed in an Atom 2.6 with 1GB memory and is fast and snappy, I can have Amarok in a light environment..
There are many who likes to think PCLOS will sink (and LOL about it) but I don't think that will happen, not with that community.
As for Mandriva is sad what happens, was my first distro when it was called Mandrake, after the fusion quality went down, I distro hoped for a while and found PCLinuxOS: solid, simple and with people who likes to help.
58 • @56 Mandriva (by Master Crash on 2010-05-11 04:45:51 GMT from United States)
As others have suggested, with the potential sale and death of Mandriva, another big loser could be Unity-Linux. All of their packages are direct ports from the Mandriva package pool.
59 • RE#55 A new distro hops. (by Anonymous on 2010-05-11 04:56:09 GMT from United States)
I agree Quirky is pretty darn good, you just download what you want and use it. You don't have to install anything. Of the new 10.04 distros the LUBUNTU seems to be the best for older hardware, XUBUNTU was a disappointment mainly because of speed and finding what you need on the menus can get aggravating. Regular UBUNTU was pretty solid if you have the ram for it.
60 • Quirky rocks (by FatFreeDistroUser on 2010-05-11 06:13:12 GMT from Macedonia)
Quirky is a lovely fat-free distro. Much better than any version of Puppy I've tried so far (even the woof-based ones).
It flies on ancient hardware, but if you have modern hardware (desktop,notebook or netbook), now you can finally unleash its true power.
Multicore CPU + ATI graphics w/ OpenSource drivers + Quirky = Win :)
The next point version (coming very soon) will fix the rough edges and finally bring JWM back (I never liked the change to Openbox/FbPanel).
61 • Shame about mandriva if true. (by Retro68 on 2010-05-11 06:19:21 GMT from United States)
If its true about mandriva being sold, it truly is a shame, it is a gorgeous, stable desktop. I ESPECIALLY loved the installer in the free edition, ubuntu could learn FAR MORE than a thing or two from mandriva. I can only hope that if sold, and mandriva continues development, I hope the new devs hold to the same level of user friendly desktop excellence mandriva has always shown
62 • re: #53 - The Times (by Eric on 2010-05-11 06:28:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Sure, I may be wrong."
You are. The Times makes a clear distinction between editorial articles (i.e. 'official') and opinion pieces by other writers. It's quite common for two different Times writers to express opposite views on some subject on successive days, and this isn't because The Times has changed its mind in those 24 hours. It's because, contrary to what you appear to think, The Times management doesn't force its own opinions on writers, but welcomes differing views on all subjects.
The article being discussed was the writer's personal view, not an official view from The Times.
63 • Yet more Quirky (by gnomic on 2010-05-11 07:27:09 GMT from New Zealand)
As a couple of people have already said, Quirky will burn CDs/DVDs. In fact I mainly use burniso2cd (which uses cdrecord) for burning Linux isos to CD these days. One handy thing about it is that it burns at 4x speed when asked, unlike various other Linux CD burning softwares which blithely ignore instructions re speed.
One quirky aspect was using 97% of CPU when playing a commercial DVD on a P4 1.6GHz machine with 768MB RAM. Dunno what that was about. The gui was still responsive. The video card is a Matrox G550. Still at least Quirky 1.00 was able to run X Window on the box unlike a couple of other recent distros I tried, eg PCLinuxOS KDE 2010.1.
Another recent Puppy version of interest is dpup, though development seems to be stalled at present, no new version since 25th January. Worth a look.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/dpup
64 • Hardware compatability (by Ashbrook on 2010-05-11 08:17:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
A little investigation before purchasing means that I'm not left with useless hardware.
My list of preferred manufacturers includes HP for printers and scanners, Nvidia for graphics, Logitech for webcams (including those with in-built microphones), and iRiver for music players.
Spend a bit of time looking at what other Linux users have and the problems they encountered, and buyers won't have problems.
65 • ref @62 Times (by forlin on 2010-05-11 09:33:47 GMT from Portugal)
As I said, I may be wrong, but I'm not sure you are right too. It's a theme for longer talk and this is not the right place for it, so:
I'll resume as follows:
- "The Times" claim that "we can highlight content and articles that we believe will be of interest to you." . ok, not yet too relevant for untie.
- Hugo Rifkind, author of the article is a current columnist at The Times, as seen at the Wikipedia. Look both magazine name and columnist name.
- "a columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series" (see wikipedia)
- One of the columnist types is the "Advice columnist" (see wikipedia, again)
Then, I may conclude that The Times had advised it's readers to use Linux
Sic: "The Times makes a clear distinction between editorial articles (i.e. 'official') and opinion pieces by other writers"
If you provide a citation, and elaborate a beat about "other writers", it may help understand your point of view.
66 • CDlinux - one favorite among others (by Per Aspera on 2010-05-11 10:09:32 GMT from Norway)
CDlinux (ver.0.9.5) have been sharing disk space both on my ordinary
(Windows mostly) laptop and on a ASUS EEE 900.
PC install - I let the CDlinux do it's own install; no trouble at all.
EEE: I was not able to install but copied the files from a working directory
on another pc to the 12GB EEE flash drive. Then some editing of the
original grub file on the other/primary EEE flash chip was necessary).
I removed the Xandros distro that come with my EEE - I had some
trouble with it.
But Puppy and a Xpud distros are installed there too. Three small distros
doing a great job. Choices are good!
Unfortunately in CDlinux I am stuck with English/American keyboard.
Documentation says that another keyboard can be installed, but don't
explains how.
In Puppy choosing keyboard is an easy task. Xpud can be changed too,
but on my EEE it 'forgets' those settings.
67 • @ #48 and #54 on CDLinux running architecture processors (by meanpt on 2010-05-11 10:14:55 GMT from Portugal)
I test my distros on a VirtualBox hosted by a Pentium M (1.3 Ghz) XP Pro Dell Latitude D40= Machine (old but reliable after all these years, against my new HP Tx laptop which went for repairing for the 6th time) and the distro doesn't boot at all. Says my processor doesn't allow PAE, despite this being activated in VBox by default (which is awkward). Whatever is right or wrong, whatever the reason, I already invested the available time I had for this distro and will move on. I know this isn't a top performer shinny new machine but tha'ts the reason I tried CDLinux.
Thanks anyway for your processor's architecture clarifications.
68 • goldman sucks (by Leroy on 2010-05-11 10:59:59 GMT from Serbia)
@Gmamakis
Hang in there. The only thing your friends can do to stand with you is to vacation in your beautiful country this year and that is exactly what a lot of us will be doing.
Back to linuxes: PCLOS Openbox is out, I'll download that right now. I'm very curious about that.
As for the Times argument, I'm afraid it stops with post #62. That's all there is to say. Btw, I was a little disappointed that no major or even minor for that matter mainstream media gave any attention to Ubuntu, except this excitable feller and his column. That's really a big problem for Linux in general, that it lives in specialized tech sites and blogs only.
69 • Fit for print -- The Times (by Jesse on 2010-05-11 11:06:29 GMT from Canada)
Regarding the debate over the article in The Times, there's a difference between what a paper is willing to publish and what they endorse. But the headline "A writer for The Times encourages Linux use" doesn't get nearly the reaction the headline "The Times encourages people to use Linux" does. It's shorter, more dramatic and tricks people into thinking The Times is taking a stand.
Imagine for a moment I wrote a column trashing, oh, Apple, for instance. It would be correct to say, "A columnist for DWW takes a shot at Apple". It would be incorrect to say, "DWW takes a stance against Apple". But, chances are, the latter headline would run because it gets people's blood pumping.
Chances are the editors, publishers and owners of The Times don't care what OS you use. But one of the people who happens to write for them does. There's an important difference.
70 • 5x86 (by nightflier on 2010-05-11 13:06:46 GMT from United States)
One of my early CPU's was a Cyrix "5x86". It was an oddball competitor to the early Pentium. I think it's safe to drop Linux support for those by now.
71 • :) ... hum ... this PCLOS OpenBox thing got it right (by meanpt on 2010-05-11 14:47:48 GMT from Portugal)
:) .. it works fine ... on a virtual machine with 256 MB of RAM ... I'm scratching my head while imagining how it would rock, and by that I mean rocketing, on the real hardware of one of those portable space shuttle machines ... this is too bad cause makes me worrying too about the future of Mandriva ...
72 • @ #69 - "Fit for print" by Jesse (by Jon Iverson on 2010-05-11 14:48:52 GMT from United States)
To be precise, the actual headline in The Times reads:
"Why Ubuntu excites me more than Windows or Macintosh"
If one reads the article it's immediately clear that the author is setting forth personal not corporate views, and doing so in a typically humorous yet to the point manner. As Jessy says, nowhere in the article itself or the headline in question is it even remotely insinuated that The Times encourages people to drop Windows and use Linux.
Come on people, read what's there without reading things into it that aren't there..
73 • Confirmed: Mandriva in Acquisition Talks (by Master Crash on 2010-05-11 15:49:14 GMT from United States)
French open source firm LINAGORA has confirmed it's exploring a purchase of Mandriva.
http://www.itworld.com/open-source/107324/confirmed-mandriva-acquisition-talks
74 • Based On Mandriva (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-11 16:30:18 GMT from United States)
Are there any distributions other than PCLinuxOS that are based on Mandriva?
75 • Mandriva based or a direvitive (by Anonymous on 2010-05-11 17:03:50 GMT from United States)
AltLinux
PantherOS
Unity-Linux
76 • Less Than 3 Hours Left. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-11 17:12:09 GMT from United States)
There are less than 3 hours left to get "The Humble Indie Bundle" and you choose the price to pay. It includes 5 games and I've heard that if they reach the $1,000,000 mark they will open source three of the games.They are now at the $953,194.00. They do support Linux along with the other two platforms. Who says independent games developers can't make money.
http://www.wolfire.com/humble
77 • RE:75, Mandriva Based. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-11 17:31:36 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the list.
78 • re: #74 - Based On Mandriva (by Anonymous on 2010-05-11 17:37:16 GMT from Finland)
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=Mandriva&status=Active
79 • Peppermint OS One, released on Monday May 10th (by forlin on 2010-05-11 21:37:49 GMT from Portugal)
great preview/review at "linuxcritic.wordpress.com"
Final thoughts - bottom line
" I gave it a strong thumbs up in my original review, and I think that with the changes that are already coming for it, it’s only getting better."
80 • Mandriva (by Rufus on 2010-05-12 00:29:26 GMT from United States)
With the ultimate demise of Mandriva a possibility, let's look back at why they lost money. It's simple - their business model was to sell desktop subscriptions at a time when Ubuntu was entering the market and giving away an equal or better product for free. Mandriva didn't seem to realize that their competition wasn't MS or Apple - but Ubuntu, Suse, etc...
As for what happens to distros based on Mandriva, ie, Unity and PCLOS, it will be interesting to see what happens. The RipperGang can't be too happy about this - even if they claim otherwise. And what about Unity Linux ? Those x rippergangmembers must be pooping in their pants.
81 • Bummer for Mandriva (by shady on 2010-05-12 03:28:03 GMT from United States)
Why couldn't one of the 475416876 buntus die instead?
82 • Why can't the 475416876 anti-Linux bad-mouthers like yourself die instead? (by Dmitrus on 2010-05-12 06:49:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
@81
Thank you for your outstanding FOSS advocacy suggestion !!! In my organization, that would take the number of linux desktops currently running in the world today down by 36,300 units. Reconsider your comments carefully before you post.
Having trialed 12 distributions, Ubuntu / "the Ubuntus" (we use 21 versions and derivatives organization-wide, all supported by our tech support team) is/are the only one/s that could ticks all the required boxes, both then and now, and continues to do so 3+ years later. Our server OSs are a mix of Solaris and BSDs, depending on country, but formerly were mostly Microsoft until just over 2 years ago.
We need standardized installs for custom purposes. Yes, we could roll our own with Debian. Financially that was more expensive than utilizing the specialist Ubuntu derivatives as they are. We are not lazy, we are in business.
Another important point is that it was felt that the workforce should be able to use the same software at home, for personal purposes, as they do at work, so we use very little customization. Our latest Staff Survey shows employee family uptake of 61% of linux at home as a direct result of workplace adoption. So, that's around 56,000 Linux desktop installs. So why don't YOU tell them you're going to stop them using their computers?
Perhaps you would care to state what distro/OS you would prefer our users use to please your childish foibles? Then I could tell you if it was even considered for shortlisting, or where it failed. We had over 700 testers working 9 months full-time on OS/distro selection. We continue to have a team of 30 test fo future use. You think you have more clue than us? Go ahead, buy us out - if you can.
I am no Ubuntu-lower in any way, running nothing but FreeBSD at home, but I'm sick to the back teeth of these "your momma so fat" digs.
Don't like it? - Tough. It's none of YOUR business. It's OUR business.
You have social interface apathy? - Keep silent.
Want to help? - Then I suggest you keep silent, again.
Have a hidden agenda? Shout it out, come clean.
So much for mutual support. It's people like you that undo years of advocacy by tens of thousands of people.
Have you even read the Mark Twain comment under the comment box?
83 • Re: 82 (by jake on 2010-05-12 08:10:52 GMT from United States)
"we use 21 versions and derivatives organization-wide, all supported by our tech support team"
How costly and complicated. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably try to undermine my Boss & take over the IT department. Consider:
"We had over 700 testers working 9 months full-time on OS/distro selection."
Full time? Really? 700 people, full time, for 9 months, at US$40,000/year on average[1][2]? That's somewhere in the neighborhood of US$21,000,000 ... or a million bucks per version, just in salary, before we get into hardware costs and overhead (bog-roll, management, coffee, electricity, HVAC, halon, medical, insurance, whathaveyou) of the test group.
If your story is even close to being true, I'll bet you a plugged nickle that I could cut your company's non-hardware IT costs by over 90% ... and if I worked in such a company, I'd make a case for myself to take over IT to senior management.
[1] New grads, ~30K ... me, a trifle more ;-)
[2] Don't make me convert to Euros or GB Pounds ... it's 1AM here, I need sleep.
84 • Mandriva PCLinuxOS (by Mandrake Gates on 2010-05-12 11:24:16 GMT from United States)
So when Mandriva tanks does PCLinuxOS go with it?
85 • @84 Golly Gee Wally (by Anonymous on 2010-05-12 12:09:12 GMT from United States)
Nope. PCLOS is strong like the bull. Moooo!
86 • grub (by jack on 2010-05-12 17:08:59 GMT from Canada)
In your interview with Zhao Xun Hong, the creator of CDlinux he makes the following comment:
The truth is, we haven't found a reliable way to write GRUB's boot record to a partition yet, especially when it is a logical partition. I find that some top distros that use GRUB also have the same problem.
Surely if a person so competent has problems with grub2 then there should be a lot more discussion for us mere mortals
87 • Re: 81 (by shady on 2010-05-12 17:26:45 GMT from United States)
Mark Twain and I looked over your reply and could only come up with...
huh?
88 • @83 ... unless ... you outsource the testing ... (by meanpt on 2010-05-12 17:56:55 GMT from Portugal)
... and ... well ... the figures are way under your baseline ... it happens ...
89 • RE: 30 (by Landor on 2010-05-12 18:57:53 GMT from Canada)
#30
"If Linux developers don't know how to talk to a particular device because the hardware manufacturer doesn't make this information available, they can not write a driver."
That's actually not accurate at all. A lot of drivers for Linux are completely reverse-engineered. This takes time but if it wasn't the case a lot of our current drivers would be missing. Hats off to the kernel devs for their obvious skills in that regard.
#37 The problem with brother is the actual hoops you have to jump through to get it installed compared to some other printers. Printing in Linux is still arcane in my personal opinion. Also, I'm no fan of HP and other companies that are on the closed firmware kick. That's not really supporting Linux, only partially.
#59 "I agree Quirky is pretty darn good, you just download what you want and use it. You don't have to install anything."
The whole think contradicts itself. You download what you want but you don't have to install anything? Could you explain that for me?
#70
Actually you're correct to a point. Cyrix first started out with a 386/7 chip. They were a lot faster than comparable Intel chips of the time in my personal opinion. The were bought or merged by/with National Semiconductor and then I'm pretty sure VIA bought Cyrix. They were also (early on) cheaper and had more bang than the alternative AMD chips.
#77
Eddie, I was surprised. You're not stupid by any means of the term and yet you asked at the one site where all you had to do was look for the info you wanted. It's like asking a FireFighter where you can find some water.
#83
I found his whole rant hard to believe. First thing I noticed was the first set of numbers, 12, then 21, almost reversal. I was going to make my reply simple, for a change..lol Give me your company's website so I can go see the fine work they're doing. :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
90 • Re 87, 82, 81 (by NobodyImportant2 on 2010-05-12 19:21:30 GMT from Canada)
Shady, why so cynical?? If you spent much time on the Ubuntu forums, you can extrapolate that there are literally thousands of us who have converted our girlfriend, father, mother, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, neighbors, customers, grandparents etc to Ubuntu. (Sarcasm intended).
Jake: Would be nice if Dmitrus' company can give some lessons to Munich.
91 • Re 81 _ (by Andy Axnot on 2010-05-12 19:58:30 GMT from United States)
Shady, that's funny. I agree, we would never miss just *one* of the 'buntus.
Andy
92 • @89 (by Patrick on 2010-05-12 20:13:54 GMT from United States)
"""
"If Linux developers don't know how to talk to a particular device because the hardware manufacturer doesn't make this information available, they can not write a driver."
That's actually not accurate at all. A lot of drivers for Linux are completely reverse-engineered. This takes time but if it wasn't the case a lot of our current drivers would be missing. Hats off to the kernel devs for their obvious skills in that regard.
"""
If you would have bothered to read the rest of my post, you would have noticed this:
"The worst case is when the device manufacturer writes no driver and makes no information available at all. Someone may make a valiant effort to reverse engineer what is going on, but there is no guarantee of success."
The line you quoted was obviously intended to make it clear that the blame for lacking drivers lies with the hardware manufacturers, not with the kernel devs who would like nothing better than to support all hardware. Then I added the clarification about reverse engineering you missed.
Anyway, I do agree about the hats off to the kernel devs that can do this kind of reverse engineering. Still, with the complexity of todays hardware, I wonder how often this still can be accomplished successfully. I would really like to see some numbers on the number of drivers that get added to the kernel either by someone at the company where the hardware is made or by someone else based on public specs, and the number that get added after reverse engineering. I am pretty sure the percentage of reverse engineered drivers would be really small. They may be biggies though (like the Nouveau drivers?), and that would make perfect sense because you'd have to be quite motivated before you'd consider undocumented hardware "worthy of reverse engineering" to take on such an arduous task.
"""
Also, I'm no fan of HP and other companies that are on the closed firmware kick. That's not really supporting Linux, only partially.
"""
Don't get me started on that subject. I'll thoroughly explain my opinion on firmware some other day. :)
93 • RE: 92 & Mandriva (by Landor on 2010-05-12 22:58:13 GMT from Canada)
Actually I skipped over most of the comment for # 23 (due it in my opinion being basically absurd, and reading further just now cemented that fact...lol). So I was missing the context in which you were replying, and of course your final part, my apologies.
I'm hoping that I'm correct that we're in the same mind when it comes to them. I'm also anti-firmware based drivers in kernel, as I've stated before. I can't understand how Linus can agree with creating drivers for something that (even if only partial functionality in some cases, some recent wireless N drivers come to mind) relies on something that the kernel developers have no control over the code. Then in the same instance our community will admonish inclusion of closed source drivers and such in distributions. A bit of a hypocrisy there. I'll go even further to add in another old argument, then they'll go after things like mono.
----
Mandriva:
I agree with 81 and 91. I'd rather give up a "Foo-Buntu" than see Mandriva disappear. Mandriva hasn't disappeared yet though and that distribution has a way of resurrecting itself when times are tough. I wouldn't count it out yet like so many people are doing since the announcement.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
94 • Buntus (by fernbap on 2010-05-12 23:42:30 GMT from Portugal)
This is getting ridiculous.
What are you trying to say? "It takes a real man to do a distro from the start, those that base theirs on Ubuntu are just sissies"? I hope not.
There are many distributions, most of them based on another distribution. If people chose Ubuntu as their base, they have their own reasons. Perhaps, if other distros were better than ubuntu, they had chosen that other distro.
Don't try to question the people who chose ubuntu to build their distros on, as i would never question why Sabayon is based on gentoo or zenwalk is based on slackware. They all had their reasons. If many people are chose Ubuntu as the base to build on, they too had their reasons. Perhaps because Ubuntu is a good base to build on?
If Parted Magic was based on Ubuntu, would it be a worse product and lose its identity?
Time to get real.
Mandriva? Well, it's always sad to see a distro disappear (hope not), but that's life. If Mandriva disappears, there was also a reason for that to happen.
Or is that because the reason behind all those Buntu rants is just because some people just don't like to see anyone succeed?
95 • RE #89 - Landor (by Anonymous on 2010-05-13 00:00:23 GMT from United States)
I think what #59 was getting at is Quirky can be a true "Live" CD. You boot up a basic install with the live CD and it gives you access to the Repo so you can install and try various packages "live". If the installed package doesn't work you car reboot try another package from the Repo. I keeps you from installing packages that do not work with your install before you even install Quirky to your hard disk.
(RE: #70)I Had one of those Cyrix 5x86 motherboards it was advertised as a P1 chip with a pin out of a i486 and used a modified i486 motherboard. Mine was the 133mhz model and it worked great a number of years then all the I/O ports slowly quit working (ide0 then ide1 then the fdd etc).
I moved everything to a P1 200MMX motherboard and used it a number of years until I couldn't give it away because it barely had enough memory to run puppy (48mb).
96 • RE #66 - CDLinux (by Anonymous on 2010-05-13 00:03:45 GMT from United States)
Try the new EasyPeasy 1.6 on that EEE 900.
The web cam works now (on 1.4 it did not) and it doesn't have the 0% battery monitor error that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix has currently.
97 • mandriva (fire)sale? dissappearing into chaos? whatever! (by hab on 2010-05-13 00:10:27 GMT from Canada)
I had mandrake as my primary desktop os from v1.0 till around v7. I liked it then and to some degree i still do, although now it is relegated to a test box.
I just can't get behind all the seeming angst and hand wringing over it's potential passing. It either will survive or it won't.
Rule one on this planet.
Evolve or die!
Won't be the first. Wont be the last!
cheers
98 • post #93 (by Geeeeeze Luweeeeeze on 2010-05-13 00:28:35 GMT from United States)
Well then ............... perhaps you should create a new alternative operating system.
Then no one (especially you) will need to fret about Linus Torvalds agreeing with anything or not.
Geeeeeze Luweeeeeze.
99 • hardware support (by Rich H on 2010-05-13 02:36:09 GMT from Mexico)
Actually I've found most 32 bit distros to have excellent hardware support, and HP printers rock!
Now if I can only find an amd64 bit distro that will actually support NVIDIA integrated video cards. NVIDIA is not a fly by night manufacturer for heavens sake, they are kinda mainstream.
No point in releasing any distro if people trying to use it cant SEE what they are doing. When will developers get a clue? Googling this issue for Ubuntu and it first appears about 8 years ago.
The latest amd64 iterations of Ubuntu, SUSE, MINT, FEDORA and Gentoo do not. Grr.
100 • @53 and others. Opinion pieces are not editorial (by rarsa on 2010-05-13 02:59:17 GMT from Canada)
A balanced and fair Newspaper will print opinion pieces from disenting columnists. Some may be for one issue, some others against it. That's what a decent newspaper should do. It is sad to see papers that enforce editorial opinions on their journalists. So, As much as I'd like to see mass media endorsing Linux, that's not the same as having a columnist endorsing it. You can quote the columnist and say "such and such endorsed Linux in an opinion piece in The Times".
101 • 475416876 buntus (by Anonymous on 2010-05-13 03:12:12 GMT from United States)
/*
81 • Bummer for Mandriva (by shady on 2010-05-12 03:28:03 GMT from United States)
Why couldn't one of the 475416876 buntus die instead?
*/
I did not know that there were soooooooooo many buntu's like that :(, I know that there were too many, but I did not know the exact number.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Sadly, that number of buntu's, plus .... red hats, debians, suse's, gentoos, ...., have nothing to do with ONE M$. One M$ kicks and beats the rest easily.
/*
Well then ............... perhaps you should create a new alternative operating system.
Then no one (especially you) will need to fret about Linus Torvalds agreeing with anything or not.
*/
Why? there's FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/Darwin/..., why invent another one, how bout another buntu to add to
475416876
Also,
Don't worry about Mandriva, it will be BACK just like Arnold the governator said in one of his movies :). It is like Christ, it will be resurrected, and come back to life in 3 days. Hopefully, they learn from their mistakes and not shoot themselves in the foot, ie., fire Gael Duval, Adam W, and other great people that helped them tremendously. These guys really helped Mandrake/Mandriva be a contender, sadly the
475416876 buntu's wiped off the No. 1 spot held by Mandrake/Mandriva for a good while. They have taken the linux world by storm, yet wish one DAY they do BEAT M$ at it. IT would be nice to see a linux, BEAT M$ for once. I am dreaming right?
102 • buntu (by shady on 2010-05-13 03:28:39 GMT from United States)
Although I didn't think all the buntu boosters would come out of the woodwork and rally against my initial comment, I'd like to point out the lol ironic part that I don't even use Mandriva, but I DO use an RPM based distro: Fedora. In my head, I imagined that some of the development techniques get shared, and Mandriva is like the 4th biggest RPM distro out there (RH, Fedora, Suse?). DEB distros are strong, and if one DEB distro died, it wouldn't hurt the collective as much as a major RPM distro would. I don't so much care about Mandriva as I do as keeping RPM distros running strong.
103 • Somebody rescue Mandriva? (by Jordan Thomas on 2010-05-13 10:49:31 GMT from United States)
Surely there is an entity out there who can turn Mandriva's woes around.
I was a Mandrake user way back when. Just a shame it's dying now.
104 • RE 13, 102 Mandriveries (by Lieutenant de Vaisseau on 2010-05-13 15:00:30 GMT from Argentina)
RE 13 : "The french government sucks for not supporting Mandriva. They use Ubuntu with a support contract by ATOS Origin. They are clueless.
"
It was a limited contract for the Assemblée Nationale (which does not depend on the government, as powers are separated....). And there is no link with technical abilities and nationality (if a foreigner is better, the government might buy -what he thinks - the best).
RE 102 : "Hopefully, they learn from their mistakes and not shoot themselves in the foot, ie., fire Gael Duval, Adam W, and other great people that helped them tremendously. These guys really helped Mandrake/Mandriva be a contender "
I suppose it is ironical...
Firing good developpers is not an economical error (Gael Duval was fired at the first MD bankrupcy : he was *technically* very competent, but it has nothing to do with profit -just ask Balmer-).
Adam W became quickly a RH engineer, and Fedora/CentoS users were not that sad about it.
For economical "models" : I noticed there were a lot of economical models experts here in DWW (at least, their expertise consists in writing about it). It is very sad noone of them became the PCLOL clone CEO.
105 • RE:89, Sorry, Other Things On My Mind (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-13 15:57:10 GMT from United States)
"Eddie, I was surprised. You're not stupid by any means of the term and yet you asked at the one site where all you had to do was look for the info you wanted. It's like asking a FireFighter where you can find some water."
Thanks Landor......I guress. :)
106 • #99 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-13 16:00:59 GMT from United States)
Why don't you demand Linux support from nVidia? They are not a fly-by-night small company and they can't even support their own hardwares, nor provide API or working specs for their hardwares so developers can write workable drivers.
Or if you think Linux device drivers for 64-bit CPU (or any CPU, for that matter) are so easy to do, why don't you show us how even you can do it in a few hours?
107 • RE #36 'a relatively mature distribution' with kde 3 (by Karen H on 2010-05-13 19:34:38 GMT from United States)
Another kde3 distro is kanotix.
There was a version released Dec 27, 2009,
but Ladislav doesn't have a link to the release announcement on the kanotix data page.
It is debian Lenny, my favorite linux flavor.
There is a Google Chrome browser for debian,
but not for Slackware, the Vector base.
Google must have gotten a license for Flash from Adobe,
because there is a Flash version included in the Chrome package.
On my weakest hardware, Chrome does full screen YouTube,
but Firefox does not.
The following is from the kanotix site:
quote
Dear Kanotix community!
Yes, Kanotix is still alive, Kano is working on a new release.
The new release will base upon Debian-Lenny and it will contain a lot of new packages like
* Kernel 2.6.32.2 BFS patched
* Kde 3.5.10
* Openoffice 2.4.1 (im ooo3 iso 3.1.1 mit den Paketen von http://www.openoffice.org/)
* Grub2 (1.97 beta 4)
* Wicd 1.6.2.2
* Wine 1.1.35
* Iceweasel 3.0.6 (xulrunner 1.9.0.16)
* Icedove 2.0.0.22
* Kanos scripts for installing the nvidia and ati drivers
...and many more...
Who wants to test Excalibur right now can download one iso containing openoffice 3.1.1 here:
Excalibur OOO3 2009 32 bit
end quote
To copy another poster,
"Flames go here (------------------------)"
108 • PARDUS 2009.2 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-13 20:03:27 GMT from Canada)
FROM
http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=3302.0
* Pardus 2009.2---> Beta 21 May 2010
* Pardus 2009.2---> RC 28 May 2010
* Pardus 2009.2---> 4 June 2010
109 • Hardware users. (Reply to 94) (by jake on 2010-05-14 05:20:43 GMT from United States)
"What are you trying to say? "It takes a real man to do a distro from the start, those that base theirs on Ubuntu are just sissies"? I hope not."
Don't be daft. ALL distros are good, and the more the merrier. Rather, it's the attitude of the fanbois that are being eyeballed derisively. As I wrote elsewhere, there are only a few types of hardware users. Roughly, these fall into three camps:
fanboi (fangrrl): Someone who takes personal exception to anyone criticizing their OS/platform of choice. For the most part, comments from these people can be safely ignored. Seriously, fankids, the OS and hardware don't give a rats ass about you, personally, nor does the billion-dollar multinational corporation whose shareholders you keep happy with your disposable income ... Why are you so emotionally attached to your kit? Seek help.
user: Someone who just uses their OS/platform of choice. Users may or may not be technically inclined. The cognizant reader can usually separate the wheat from the chaff when users comment. Most users have a preferred OS/platform, but aren't emotionally attached to it.
admin: Someone who knows that all hardware sucks, all software[1] sucks, all OSes suck, all fanbois/grrls suck, but occasionally a user can become enlightened. Comments from admins usually walk the blurry line between trolling and cold, hard reality.
Please note: I did not mention any OS/distro, from any corporation, in the above commentary. There is a reason for that.
[1] There is no such thing as software. Software is merely the current state of the hardware.
110 • @107 kanotix (by RollMeAway on 2010-05-14 05:23:26 GMT from United States)
Kanotix once was my favorite distro, until kano apparently got burned out.
Your quote was posted:
Posted by : caillean on Sunday, December 27, 2009 - 08:12 PM
The iceweasel and icedove versions listed were obsolete at THAT time.
The post prior to that was on Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - 03:23 PM
If kanotix is still alive, it certainly is breathing slowly.
I would love to see kanotix make a comeback, but
it they stick to debian stable I doubt many will follow.
111 • KDE 3.5.10 version of dpup - puppy spin which can use debian packages (by gnomic on 2010-05-14 08:02:25 GMT from New Zealand)
Those with a taste for novelty, or possibly nothing better to do, might be interested in a version of dpup with KDE 3.5.10 which some enthusiast has produced. Not tested here as yet, but sounds like it works for some at least from the comments.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=55301&sid=35fe5e4b3743bce0445eed05e52eb116
From the dpup site -
Dpup, while being based on Debian Lenny repositories, also uses a large portion of Debian Sid (Next Release) code, to keep up to date with newer application versions.
112 • hardware sites? (by Tom on 2010-05-14 08:13:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :)
The article mentions "just looking up sites" but does anyone know any good sites? The only ones i have seen go straight into dtail about model numbers without having a general "HP = good, Cannon = bad, click 'here' for exceptions". This makes linux extremely difficult to buy for.
People may often start with a lot of hardware that was initially bought for Windows but over the years they become interested in making sure they buy for linux. Why does it have to be so hard to research into which manufacturers generally support linux?
Please, if you know any websites helping people pick stuff for linux then please give us a list of sites
Many regards from
Tom :)
113 • Mandriva (by Tom on 2010-05-14 08:18:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ahh, my first distro. Everything was so beautiful and elegant until i bloated my installs. Great to hear 34's comments
"Atos was a partner of Mandriva, those who won were two french societies : Linagora and Unilog... And Linagora is today the french society who wants to buy Mandriva... funny (or sad, I don't know) is'nt it ?"
Let's hope Linagora can turn it around and make this as visible & successful as Ubuntu to the mainstream.
Good luck & regards from
Tom :)
114 • Hardware compatibility (by Jesse on 2010-05-14 11:14:09 GMT from Canada)
Tom,
Chances are most of the bigger distros will have hardware compatibility lists on their website. For example, Red Hat has a list of certified hardware here:
https://hardware.redhat.com/
There's a Ubuntu database of hardware with ratings and reviews here:
http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/
If your distro of choice has a forum, you could ask there where you can find a complete and up to date compatibility list.
115 • #112 -- Re: hardware sites? (by Anonymous on 2010-05-14 14:44:49 GMT from United States)
My favorite hardware site? Google. Put "Linux" as the first term in the search, along with the make and model of the hardware. Google seems to give me most relevant results compared with Yahoo. I don't use other serach engine much because of this. Google searches also seem to be positionally sensitive, the first word has more weigh, followed by sedond word, and so on. I don't know that for sure, just my impression of such, if I switch words around when I search.
Beware that some hardware makers use different junks -- uh, chipsets - in the same make and model number, too. Wifi cards are prime example of such. Also with private labels like Dell hardware and no-name hardware are common, some of them simply are similar hardware but different brandname and model number.
Sometimes, substitute "Linux" with "Debian", "Ubuntu", "Redhat", "Red Hat" may also help. This is because these users don't know to ask or write about "Linux" in their questions, but uses just their brand of Linux distro. It helps most other Linux users if you put Linux in there for the web search engines like Google to pick them up and spit them out when someone else searches.
Even if you don't iknow the make and model, some searches like:
Linux supported scanner
Linux supported web cam
Linux supported webcam
Linux supported midi controller
Linux supported midi usb
can give some reasonable leads, too. Try replace the word "supported", with "work" may give other results.
Of course, some hardware may never work with Linux. It's no worse than the cases where you can't find driver for your version of Windows. There are plenty of those, that's why I prefer to see opensource drivers instead of proprietary drivers, even under Linux.
116 • KDE-3.x Re 38 (by Adjudant Tifrice on 2010-05-14 15:29:25 GMT from Switzerland)
"38 • Vector & KDE (by Steve on 2010-05-10 17:20:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Vector is a decent distro with few strange habits. It's mature and 3.5.10 usually runs well with it. Have not tried the new release yet, but from past performance it should be a good one.
Who's tried it??"
It is overearly to draw any conclusions, but from very quick tests in a live mode, with unetbootin on a "net" "book", I could happily notice:
* it had a full featured gvim, with syntax highlight (I noticed it lead to to a 10% gain of debugging times), which is a nice contrast with 2 weeks ago PCLOL's fan "boys" sarcastic comments....
* everything one needs to add extra softwares (*.h, header files) were supplied and there was a working gcc (then , building (gfortran + R) and (Qt4+Lyx) was not difficult at all (on a new loop back partition).
It was not RAM greedy at all (about 200M, like old KDEs : is it astonishing???), and everything I played with worked
The three flaws I saw were :
a) the absence of
a1) the gimp
a2) OOffice (they claim it is on their depos : but it is very difficult to add them on a life-cd image...
b) getting a nice AZERTY key,qp was possible, but with a three stage menu: this is not so unpleasant for omericoins, but it is possible to be more {user,beginner}-friendly
117 • Quirky 1.1 (by FatFreeDistroUser on 2010-05-14 17:37:54 GMT from Macedonia)
Quirky 1.1 RC is out:
http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=01594
What's new: many bug fixes, up-to-date drivers, new and updated apps (see changelog).
Also, for the first time, there's Quirky-Retro which should work with much older hardware and supports almost every dial-up modem out there :)
118 • More on the "how do I find hardware info" thread ... (by jake on 2010-05-15 01:49:29 GMT from United States)
A good place to start for (usually) older laptop Linux compatibility is:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
It's been useful to me several dozen times when moving folks from Windows.
Side note: Ladislav, have you ever considered making the comments threaded?
119 • Mandriva official blog (by glyj on 2010-05-15 06:32:12 GMT from France)
http://blog.mandriva.com/2010/05/12/about-mandrivas-current-situation/
regards
120 • @ #118 - Jake's threaded comments suggestion.. (by Jon Iverson on 2010-05-15 16:14:20 GMT from United States)
Ladislav, count me in along with Jake as one who believes going to a threaded comments format would be a step in the right direction!
121 • Sidux Won't Boot bug. (by Karen H on 2010-05-15 19:18:15 GMT from United States)
I was ready to reinstall sidux.
It refused to boot giving messages
complaining about a read only file system.
Glad I went to the sidux web site.
Sidux reports that the bug has been fixed now.
If your sidux won't boot, set
CONCURRENCY=none
in /etc/default/rcS.
In the new version of rcS,
there is no CONCURRENCY setting.
It looks to me like the package
udev-config-sidux
contains the fix.
smxi is now still reporting
that it is unsafe to 'dist-upgrade' sidux.
122 • Vector classic kde (by Karen H on 2010-05-15 19:20:09 GMT from United States)
Permit me one flame.
I did an install of the latest Vector.
lilo is the only bootloader offered.
That's classic all right.
Where have the vector people been for the last few years?
123 • #121 re: Sidux Won't Boot bug. (by Anonymous on 2010-05-15 21:44:50 GMT from United States)
Maybe that's one way to do it.
On an older laptop I have, I simply added some 15-20 second waits in grub config so grub won't try to load the kernel right away. And that seems to boot up fine without messing with /etc/default/rcS concurrency flag.
I suppose older machines may have slower hardware BIOS init time and the hardware did not have enough time to properly initialize before the kernel started doing it's querying.
124 • RE: 118 /122 (by Landor on 2010-05-16 02:10:40 GMT from Canada)
#118
I think for the amount of comments we get here it's easier to reply with it not threaded, especially if there's multiple replies in a single post. Like this one. :)
#122
You have to remember that Vector is Slackware based and that's Slacware's default boot loader. Grub may be the more common boot loader for Linux but I know more than a few people who wouldn't trade in lilo for it. It's no different that wanting to use KDE3 over KDE4 or say the tons of people that use some of the more minimalistic WMs. Hell, I even know people that use TWM still and others that write all their frontends for their scripts in xdialog. New or more popular doesn't always denote the best choice for everyone. :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
125 • Re: 124 (by jake on 2010-05-16 04:09:37 GMT from United States)
Presumably, Landor uses FAT-12, as shipped with MS/PC-DOS 1.x, for his preferred filesystem. After all, why bother with sub-directories, when everything can be stored in a single, non-hierarchical directory. The only question I have is, does Landor have all his word-processing documents stored as a single file?[1]
[1] Yes, I've seen it ... don't ask.
126 • a question (by hab on 2010-05-16 04:33:02 GMT from Canada)
Well my xbox project is on hold until i find a disc that it's cdrom drive can handle. Apparently, quite picky it is, as to what you stick into it. Kinda reminds me of an old girlfriend i had years and years ago!
For a new wrinkle, i just bought a g3 powermac (blue&white) with a 400mhz cpu, 512m of ram, mac os 10.3.9 and an 80g drive. A fairly usable machine for 30$ Ca.
I currently have yellowdoglinux installed and have had the box running ubuntu ppc 10.04. Neither i find, is wholly satisfactory. Research shows there are a few other distros that run on powerpc but i turn to the readership here for recommendations as to what else to try. Any heads up would be appreciated
Thanks
cheers
127 • RE: 126 (by slacker_mike on 2010-05-16 05:53:03 GMT from United States)
for PPC you have a couple options depending on what you like. Debian supports PPC really nicely and can suit most users of various skill levels. CRUX PPC, Arch PPC, and Slackintosh are options if you are more of a minimalist. Then lastly there is Gentoo. For non-linux options OpenBSD and NetBSD all have good PPC support. Personally I run Debian Lenny on a iBook G4 and have no complaints.
128 • @93 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-05-16 10:59:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
"I'm hoping that I'm correct that we're in the same mind when it comes to them. I'm also anti-firmware based drivers in kernel, as I've stated before. I can't understand how Linus can agree with creating drivers for something that (even if only partial functionality in some cases, some recent wireless N drivers come to mind) relies on something that the kernel developers have no control over the code."
They have to do that anyway. Almost every peripheral that exists today has 'firmware' - control code that runs on a processor in the device itself. You can almost never have any control over that code.
Whether the code is burned into memory on the device prior to shipment, or uploaded into the device from the host system at boot, is a distinction that makes very little difference. It's arguable that the latter option is *more* open, as it at least affords you the vague possibility of creating firmware that actually is open; there's no way you can do that for a device where it's burned into a read-only memory chip inside the device, is there?
129 • @99 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-05-16 11:03:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Er, what? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say, but I can't find any way to make it even vaguely make sense.
All I can think of is you happen to have a system with an odd bug whereby one of the NVIDIA drivers (of course, you don't state which; nv, nouveau or nvidia?) happens to work in 32-bit distros but not 64-bit. I assure you this is not a common issue; there's thousands of people using NVIDIA graphics on 64-bit editions of many distros, perfectly happy, with each of the above drivers.
You should provide some more detail about your situation and file a bug report with the appropriate driver developers.
130 • @102 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-05-16 11:07:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Um. A few points.
Most importantly, there isn't some huge gulf between RPM and DEB. They're just packaging systems. 'Shared development' can happen no matter what the packaging system is. The major RPM-based distros don't use each other's packages, they're too different for that, and they can take patches and ideas from DEB distros just as easily as from RPM ones, it really doesn't make any difference.
Second, actually if a single DEB-based distro died - Debian - it would have a very significant impact on all DEB-based distros, because all major DEB-based distros are directly derived from Debian. But this is just happenstance; the packaging format really doesn't matter, it just happens to be the case that there are several major RPM-based distros that are independent of each other and do not need each other to survive, whereas no-one happens to have used Debian's package format in setting up a non-Debian-based distribution, so only Debian-based distros use DEB.
It really, really doesn't matter what the package format is. If Mandriva were to disappear it wouldn't really affect other RPM-based distros any more than it'd affect DEB-based ones, or ones based on some other package format entirely. It'd just have an effect on the whole ecosystem.
131 • @104 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-05-16 11:09:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
Please don't compare me with Gael - he was a founder of the distro and the company and very involved with the direction of both for a long time, I was just a community support guy and part-time packager for a few years.
132 • RE 131 : I did not mean to compare... (by General Motors on 2010-05-16 15:02:56 GMT from Argentina)
As I came to mandriva after G. Duval 's firing (and since then, I do not know what he became : companies are often meant to survive their founder(s), -else B Gates would not have retired-...) and noticed that you were very helpful , even for me!
As for Mandriva's disappearance, it is rather a matter of seasonal routine, like "la floraison des marronniers" : when a 'journalist' lacks of inspiration, (at least in Spring), he 'informs' his readers about the phenological stage of trees...
133 • RE: 128 (by Landor on 2010-05-16 23:38:42 GMT from Canada)
That's not a valid argument for the allowance of firmware blobs attached to a kernel's driver since even a CPU is firmware based given your basis.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
134 • RE: 125 (by Landor on 2010-05-16 23:46:21 GMT from Canada)
Floppies have always been my friend. What would we do without 512k of space to store "tons" of info without having to do the absurd task of changing directories..lol :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
135 • re#127 (by hab on 2010-05-17 05:16:34 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for the input slacker_mike, i did a debian lenny net install earlier today. Everything works except video resolution is stuck on 800x600. As i get time and energy i will find a fix cause 800x600 just sucks!. Just swapping a dvd burner into the beastie at the moment. Gotta burn some tiger .dmg files and the box needs a burner!
I'll check out Arch ppc and CRUX ppc when the dust settles. Debian always did work for me!
cheers
136 • North Korea - Red Star Linix OS (by Leonard Whistler on 2010-05-17 06:52:51 GMT from Canada)
Can we get a ISO image of North Korea's Red Star Linux OS?
Number of Comments: 136
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