DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 369, 30 August 2010 |
Welcome to this year's 35th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! While most of our reviews tend to focus on major and reasonably well-known distributions, it's good to take a look at lesser ones every now and then. As a result, this week's feature story is a rapid-fire review of two projects that have only recently been submitted to DistroWatch (Me-OS, ImagineOS), plus the minimalist Puppy Linux. Read on to find out how they fared in our test. In the news section, OpenSolaris governing board announces collective resignation, Illumos.org opens its doors to attempt to continue the development of OpenSolaris, Mandriva community publishes an "Xfce Live" edition of Mandriva Linux 2010.1, and Ubuntu creates yet another controversy with its proposed default wallpaper for 'Maverick Meerkat'. Also in this issue, two new Gentoo-based distributions and a brief tutorial on sharing files over a home network. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (24MB) and MP3 (21MB) formats
Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
|
Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Under these rocks and stones
In the past few months I've found that I have been focused a lot on the bigger names in the Linux and BSD communities. I have been looking at the mainstream distributions and the headlines and generally enjoying the view. However, an important part of the open source community is all the little projects which dot the landscape and it's a good idea to stop and examine those too from time to time. Keeping that in mind, this week I decided to do a series of rapid-fire reviews in which I took a quick look at the following distributions.
* * * * *
Me-OS
Me-OS is a new distribution (started in February 2010), created by Josh Secrest. The young distribution sits on an openSUSE 11.3 base and has a strong ease-of-use focus. The project's website is small with a pleasant blue and white theme and the project has a friendly and informal feel common to one-person efforts. The project currently offers one ISO download, a 32-bit live CD.
Booting the live disc displays a boot menu with options for adjusting the video settings, language and setting kernel parameters. Booting into the live CD brings us to a GNOME 2.30 desktop with a bright, watery background. The first thing I noticed was a large search box in the middle of the desktop, which works as an application launcher. At the top of the desktop is a quick launch bar, at the bottom is a regular application menu and a taskbar. A collection of icons sit on the desktop, providing links to the user's home directory, an application updater, the system installer, an icon which opens an informal introduction to the operating system, and two icons labelled "App Center" and "Essential Software". The Essential software link basically offered to provide me with Flash and the App Center link displayed a window saying the feature was "coming soon".
The theme of the desktop is strong on black, white and blue with a soft shine which makes me feel a light is positioned to the left of my desktop. The launch bar at the top of the screen is pleasantly out of the way (it doesn't dance or flash like some app launchers do) and it's easily customizable. The application menu is armed with a small collection of popular software, including Firefox, Songbird, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, a music player and IM client. We can also find a few virtual terminals, the usual collection of GNOME configuration apps and the YaST all-in-one system tweaking tool.

The Me-OS desktop (full image size: 238kB, resolution 801x601 pixels)
The installer is, for all purposes, openSUSE's YaST. It walks through the screens of getting the local time zone, setting up disk partitions and creating a user account. On the one hand, YaST does a fantastic job, especially on the disk partitioning and the ability to fine-tune the configuration is great. On other hand, the first screen requires the user accept a license agreement immediately after displaying an error saying the text of the license can't be displayed. It's a small thing, but a user's first impressions are often in the details.
Upon rebooting the machine, openSUSE's configuration program started up and went through its automated steps. Here I ran into another problem where the package refresh process kept timing out. Once I reached the desktop, I found that DNS queries were not resolving. Once I manually supplied the system with DNS look-up servers, operations returned to normal. One thing I enjoyed about the install process is that it brings files and settings over from the live CD environment, so any work or tweaks done to the system prior to installation carry over.
Using the installed system, I found the desktop to be responsive, the distro is armed with a small, yet useful, collection of software and most items worked as expected. New items can be added from openSUSE's repositories via YaST, providing the user with a wide selection of programs. Device detection is fairly solid, with most of my hardware working out of the box. The single exception to this being my Intel wireless card, which is often hit-or-miss. Me-OS's installer recommends users have at least 1 GB of RAM, but I found (via a virtual machine) that the system would run smoothly with 512 MB.
The bad: Me-OS is quite young with a small team. This means that some features (bug tracker, support) and its identity haven't really taken shape yet. It needs some polish and for the features being introduced to fill out.
The good: I had a chance to exchange some e-mails with Mr Secrest and he has a lot of ideas and a lot of energy, which bodes well for the project. He tells me the next release will include better security, bug fixes, new features and a bug tracker for the website. The interface is very friendly and I like the way screen real estate is used. I think Me-OS is a good choice for netbooks and casual computer users will probably like this system. Having YaST available in the distro is certainly a point in the project's favour.
* * * * *
ImagineOS
Next up on the rapid review roster is ImagineOS. This project has its heritage in GoblinX and Slackware. The project's website is small, featuring a grey and green theme with prominent ads. The site features some screen shots, a blog, a low-traffic forum and a live CD image. Firing up the live disc brings up to a grey-themed boot menu with the usual options and leads us to a Xfce 4.6 desktop with floral wallpaper. Along the top of the screen we find an application menu, system monitors and quick-launch bar. Along the bottom is a taskbar. The system is fairly responsive for a live CD and the various applications work well.
I fired up the ImagineOS installer and was given an error message saying it couldn't access my partitions. The error asked me to manually mount a partition and re-launch the installer. The operating system comes with GParted and so I created a new partition for ImagineOS, mounted it and tried the installer again. And I was shown the same error again. After reading the tutorial I tried rebooting and, upon launching the installer again, found it had detected my new partition. Unfortunately, the installer wouldn't let me change any of the configuration settings, so I was stuck with the defaults. At the end of the install process the user is told LILO will be installed and we are asked if we wish to proceed with Default, Simple, Advanced or Continue without any explanation as to what each of these is. I went with the Default choice and it worked out for me because upon rebooting my system loaded ImagineOS from the hard drive.

Installing ImagineOS (full image size: 543kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
The ImagineOS distro comes with a nice supply of pre-installed applications, including Firefox, Thunderbird, the GIMP, VLC, AbiWord, Gnumeric, a PDF viewer, a BitTorrent client and a comic viewer. It's also equipped with Xfce's capable configuration tools. Where the system was a bit of let down is in the realm of package management. The OS uses GSlapt for adding and removing software. The first issue I ran into is, though ImagineOS has its roots in Slackware, it doesn't tie into Slackware's repositories. It pulls from its own small collection of software. It also lacks dependency resolution. To be fair, GSlapt would tell me when I was installing a program which would require additional software, but it wouldn't actually offer to install the dependencies for me. This left me to search manually, wondering if the package I needed was actually in the repository or if I was on a wild goose chase.
Though performance was good once the OS was installed locally, hardware was a bit hit or miss. Mostly hit on my desktop, with no serious problems, but largely miss on the HP laptop, where suspend/resume and wireless refused to work.
The bad: ImagineOS' installer might be one of the most flaky, unintuitive installers I have used to date. The small single repository and lack of dependency resolution was a deal breaker for me.
The good: The combination of Xfce on a Slackware base makes for good performance and low memory usage, but ImagineOS doesn't offer anything here above what other Slackware-based distros provide.
* * * * *
Puppy Linux
My last drive-by review is of Puppy Linux. Puppy Linux has a few web sites (puppylinux.com and pupplylinux.org). Both have a simple, clean style with a format similar to a magazine or newspaper with black text on a white background. The sites are easy to navigate and supply the user with a Wiki, a well-trafficked forum, news and a developer blog. The ISO for Puppy (version 5.1) is a light 130 MB, making for a quick download.
The live disc boots into a blue-themed desktop which is dotted with lots of icons. It's interesting to note that the icons are generally labelled with verbs, rather than application names. For example, there are icons named "write", "paint" and "chat", which I suspect makes finding the proper program easier for novice users. A welcome screen is displayed, giving users some information on how to use the OS. There's an application menu at the bottom of the screen, which is packed full of various light apps (more on that shortly), and the system tray holds a system monitor. At the top of the screen is a box which covers some icons and moving the mouse over this area causes a web browser to open an introduction page on the project's website and the system to emit a barking noise. This was cute the first time, but gets old in a hurry if you keep using Puppy on a regular basis and, by accident, move your mouse over the box before it vanishes on its own.
Puppy's installer is an odd beast. Much of it is done with text boxes and small icons. I like the level of detail the written documentation goes into, but some of the options are likely to confuse newcomers. For instance there are a lot of options as to where to install the system (ZIP disks, internal hard drive, external drive, USB flash drive...) Puppy got me to manually set up partitions using GParted, then copied over the files it needed. So far so good, but when the installer finished and I rebooted, my computer wouldn't load Puppy off the hard drive. I went back to the CD, ran the installer again and this time I received a warning that I needed to manually set a boot flag on my main partition using GParted. With this step done my second attempt at installing went well and I was able to boot locally.
The manual setting of a boot flag brings up a duality which appears to exist throughout Puppy. Being a light distro, Puppy tends to use smaller, less visually attractive programs. There's a lot of manual work and implied knowledge in using many of these apps. However, Puppy supplies a good collection of documentation and hints to get users through these otherwise daunting tasks. Puppy may be the only distro which has asked me to manually set a partition as bootable, but it also supplies detailed steps on how to do this. New users may feel like they're being thrown into the deep end and then provided with detailed instructions on how to swim.
As mentioned previously, Puppy comes with a surprisingly wide buffet of software considering its small size. The application menu is loaded with Gnumeric, AbiWord, mtPaint, a web browser, instant messenger, disc burner, PDF viewer (and creator), backup tools, printing tools and a handful of configuration apps. There seems to be a focus on admin tools, which sets Puppy up to be a good rescue CD. On the application menu we again see Puppy's distinct personality in the way programs are placed in categories. The common naming theme of "Games", "Office", "System"... is partially replaced with "Fun", "Business", "Personal".

The Puppy Linux desktop (full image size: 370kB, resolution 800x600 pixels)
The operating system does a pretty good job at handling hardware. Other than my Intel wireless card, my devices were properly detected. My only real complaint in this area was with VirtualBox integration. Each of the three distributions I looked at this week had some form of integration with VirtualBox, with ImagineOS being the smoothest. Puppy, for some reason, kept mistaking where my mouse was while running in the virtual manager, so getting the guest mouse pointer to line up with the host pointer was a constant battle. Fortunately this was only an issue in the virtual environment and Puppy handled the mouse well when run directly on the test hardware.
Generally at this point I feel I should complain about Puppy running as root, logging in automatically and not prompting the user to create an unprivileged account. These are big "thy shall not" points to people interested in security, but I can't really find it in me to complain about Puppy's approach. It does so many things differently and has such an unusual approach in OS-user interaction that I find myself seeing the single-super-user style as just another quirk. It's a quirk I don't like, but then I'm not the target audience for this project.
The bad: Puppy is different in a lot of ways from other distributions, which will introduce a bit of learning curve for people moving to (or away from) the project. VirtualBox integration could use some polish and having the computer bark at the user when opening the "first run" notes is the second most annoying feature I've encountered this year.
The good: There is a strong collection of documentation, lots of help on the website, and Puppy runs with very low resource requirements. It's a good rescue CD and useful for people travelling with a live disc.
* * * * *
Of the three distributions mentioned here, I don't think any of them are likely to become mainstream in the Linux community. Puppy is well established in its niche and seems happy there. The Me-OS project, I feel, has some potential if the developer can keep up with the work which goes into maintaining a distro. Like Puppy, Me-OS is taking a slightly different path and it'll be interesting to see where they end up. ImagineOS felt like the odd one out of these three. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table, I didn't find anything in its approach to be eye-catching. It sits on a strong Slackware base, but I think the project needs to add something if it wants to attract new members.
|
Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
OpenSolaris governing board resigns, Illumos, Mandriva 2010.1 "Xfce Live", Ubuntu 10.10 proposed wallpaper
Following Oracle's recently leaked memo about what is effectively the end of OpenSolaris as an open-source project, the entire OpenSolaris governing board (OGB) announced its resignation: "Whereas Oracle has continued to ignore requests to appoint a liaison to work with the OGB concerning the future of OpenSolaris development and our community, and whereas Oracle distributed an email to its employees on Aug 13 2010 that set forth Oracle's decision to unilaterally terminate the development partnership between Oracle and the OpenSolaris community and whereas, without the continued support and participation of Oracle in the open development of OpenSolaris, the OGB and the community Sun/Oracle created to support the open Solaris development partnership have no meaning, and... Be it resolved that the OpenSolaris Governing Board hereby collectively resigns, noting that under the terms of the OpenSolaris Charter section 1.1 (and Constitution 1.3.5) the responsibility to appoint an OGB passes to Oracle."
While the open-source developer and user community has always been suspicious of Oracle's intentions following its takeover of Sun Microsystems, this was possibly the company's worst period in terms of coverage by popular blogs and open-source web sites. Robert Milkowski has collected a few interesting links which discuss the future of Solaris and OpenSolaris and which collectively slam Oracle's attitude. But as always in these situations, there is light at the end of the tunnel - it's called Illumos: "The danger for those companies has long been that Oracle would pull the rug out from under them; only the foolish had no contingency plan. The options were to give up on Solaris or maintain a fork. Happily Illumos has stepped in to offer a third path. Garrett D'Amore and Nexenta graciously started the Illumos project to carry the OpenSolaris torch. It is an ostensible fork of OpenSolaris (can you fork a dead project?), but more importantly a mechanism by which companies building on those component technologies can pool their resources, amortize their costs, and build a community by and for the downstream users who are investing in those same technologies." See Illumos.org for further information.
* * * * *
While the future existence of Mandriva (the company) is far from assured, its user and developer community doesn't seem to be too bothered by all the rumours and uncertainty. Last week Stéphane Téletchéa emailed DistroWatch to let us know about a new community release of Mandriva Linux 2010.1 "Xfce Live" edition: "The Xfce Mandriva community is proud to offer its latest release of the Mandriva Xfce One edition. This CD-ROM is based on the Mandriva 2010.1 release (Linux kernel 2.6.33.5, Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8, OpenOffice.org 3.2.0) and offers the latest version of the Xfce desktop (4.6.2). This edition has received a particular attention with respect to polish: more backgrounds, a new icon set (gnome-brave), a different default theme (Ia Ora Steel), new faces for the user login screen, plus some little adjustments. On the software side, we have included: Evolution instead of Claws-Mail, Ristretto for rapid image viewing, Parole or Exaile for playing videos...." For more information please see the project's Wiki page and specifications. Download the English language CD images from here: mandriva-one-2010-spring-xfce4-i586.iso (678MB, MD5), mandriva-one-2010-spring-xfce4-x86_64.iso (704MB, MD5).

Mandriva Linux 2010.1 "Xfce Live" - an unofficial community edition of Mandriva Linux for Xfce users (full image size: 375kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
The Ubuntu project has always been able to create hotly-debated controversies out of rather insignificant decisions. Nudity in its artwork, window button placements, unusual interface changes, the list goes on. Whether this is intentional or just the way things develop over there, we'll let our readers to decide. The latest Ubuntu "gaffe" is the proposed default wallpaper in the upcoming release, version 10.10. Here is an amusing list of quotes of those who have expressed their opinion on the subject: "This is like 'Chuck Norris fart on my screen, and i can't clean it.' ... 'Never commented before despite reading religiously, this was just TOO ugly to dignify with mental distaste, it had to be made public.' ... 'Looks like I was eating a burrito over the 10.04 one and some hot sauce dripped.' ... 'I've seen many bad things in my life and it hurts me to say this, but this is in that list.' ... 'Worst wallpaper in the existence of the universe. This has to be a joke!' ... 'All this talk about paper cuts, and the face of OS for newbies, first of all, looks like a piece of crap.'" For the sake of our readers' well-being we won't reproduce the proposed wallpaper here, but if you really must see it, feel free to click on either of the above two links.
|
Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Sharing files on home network
Sharing-is-fun asks: I want to set up a server on my home network to allow the family to access things like videos, music, documents, etc. I also want to do this using an old PC (PIII + 256 MB RAM) that I'm currently using as a dust collector. I've been using Linux exclusively since Linux Mint 4.0 but still consider myself somewhat of a novice, and I really don't have any interest in becoming an expert server administrator, so I need something that's easy to setup and use.
DistroWatch answers: The first thing you'll want is a light distribution that will run on an older machine with 256 MB of memory. Some people might suggest a server should be run with just a command line and no graphical desktop, but you mentioned being in a novice mindset, so let's go with a distro that is light and has a desktop environment. You mentioned using Mint before and that would make a good starting point as Mint has a LXDE edition, which is light on resources.
The easiest way I've found to share files around the home is to run secure shell on the server. Enable the OpenSSH service and, if the firewall is turned on, then open network port 22. You can then create regular user accounts on the server for each person (or one shared account if you prefer), granting people access. The nice thing about this approach is most modern Linux distros come with graphical tools which make accessing files over secure shell very easy. For instance, the Konqueror web/file browser can access files over SSH using the "fish" protocol:
fish://ip_address_of_server
It will treat remote files much the same as if they were local, allow you to bookmark the location and even offer to remember the username/password. For people running GNOME, it is also possible to access remote files much the same as local ones by going to GNOME's Places menu and selecting "Connect to server..."
Running secure shell as a file server is probably the easiest way to go because most distributions come with the OpenSSH service and SSH clients ready to work right out of the box. Adding access for new users is as easy as creating a new user account on the server. As a bonus, the network traffic between your server and the client is encrypted, so people won't be able to listen in if you're using your file server as a place to store backups.
On the chance some of your family members haven't embraced open source operating systems, they too can enjoy fairly painless access to your secure shell server. Projects like Filezilla make it easy to share files across computers, even if it's isn't quite as seamless as the tools which come with GNOME and KDE. And Filezilla runs on just about any modern operating system. There is also a nice tutorial for setting up an OpenSSH server on the Ubuntu family of distributions (including Linux Mint) here.
Another way to go would be to set up Samba shares on your file server. This has two benefits, the first being that most modern operating systems come with built-in tools for accessing the shares. Samba additionally allows you to use your file server as a print server. The only downside is that Samba has a few more steps involved in getting it working. Samba is worth a look if you have a wide variety of operating systems in your home, or if you plan to share your file server with guests who don't use Linux. If you decide to go with this approach, I recommend reading this detailed tutorial.
|
Released Last Week |
Linux Mint 9 "Xfce"
Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 9: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 9 Xfce. Based on Xubuntu 10.04 'Lucid Lynx', Linux 2.6.32, Xfce 4.6.1 and X.Org 7.4, Linux Mint 9 'Isadora' Xfce features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the open-source world. New features at a glance: new Software Manager - 30,000 packages, review applications straight from Software Manager, APT daemon, visual improvements; new backup tool - incremental backups, compression, integrity checks, backup/restoration of the software selection; better look and feel; new Thunar move to trash and delete options; system improvements - Windows installer, Husse quotes, USB Creator, Default software selection, local repository...." See the release announcement and visit the what's new page for further details.
Vyatta 6.1
Tom McCafferty has announced the release of Vyatta 6.1, a new version of the Debian-based distribution for firewalls are routers: "Vyatta, the leader in open networking and network virtualization, today announced Vyatta 6.1, the latest release of the company's open network OS encompassing enterprise-class routing and network security. With several key advances including IPv6 certification, cloud-specific features and enhanced security, Vyatta continues to expand the applicability of software-based networking across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures. Vyatta 6.1 has received IPv6 Ready Logo Phase 2 certification, verifying the implementation of IPv6 core routing protocols. For cloud providers and enterprises moving applications or servers to the cloud, Layer 2 cloud bridging allows physically separate networks to securely communicate with each other over the internet as if they were on a single Ethernet network." Read the complete release announcement for further information.
Zenwalk Linux 6.4 "Live"
Zenwalk Linux 6.4 "Live" edition has been released: "Zenwalk Live 6.4 is ready. I am happy to announce Zenwalk Live 6.4, which will allow more people to discover the speed and simplicity of Zenwalk without having to install it first. It consists of standard Zenwalk ISO packages following the main Zenwalk release, with same set of applications and the latest Xfce desktop. Additional stuff besides the standard package selection include: livekernel with Aufs and Squashfs 3.4 including LZMA compression; scripts and tools that are needed for creating and running the live environment; Ash; a few localizations for Icecat and Icedove; Sazanami fonts and UIM with Anthy as input method to support Japanese language display and input; a unique custom theme for bootsplash and GDM." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
ArtistX 0.9
Marco Ghirlanda has announced the release of ArtistX 0.9, an Ubuntu-based live DVD that turns a common computer into a multimedia production studio: "ArtistX 0.9 is based on the Remastersys software for creating live media and includes the 2.6.31 Linux kernel, GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3.5, Compiz Fusion and about 2,500 free multimedia software packages, nearly everything that exists for the GNU/Linux operating system. Main features: based on Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic' with tons of updates, Compiz for 3D desktop effects; most of GNU/Linux multimedia packages and the very easy Ubiquity installer. A partial list of software included in the DVD: 2D graphics software - GIMP, Inkscape, Nip2, Krita, Synfig, Rawstudio, Skencil, Hugin; 3D graphics software - Blender, Wings3D, KPovModeler + POV-Ray 3.6, K3D; video software - Cinelerra, Kino, Openshot, Open Movie Editor, Kdenlive, PiTiVi, Avidemux, DeVeDe...." Visit the project's home page to read the brief release announcement.

ArtistX 0.9 - a new version of the Ubuntu-based distribution for multimedia production (full image size: 1,492kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Chakra GNU/Linux 0.2.0
Phil Miller has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 0.2.0, an Arch-based live and installation CD featuring the KDE desktop: "The Chakra development team is proud to announce the availability of 'Jaz', our first live image using our stable repositories. We've been working hard since March 2010 on Chakra GNU/Linux. Ten developers hacking, packing and writing documentations for our new distribution. Chakra is a fork of Arch Linux. We are using Pacman but working on our own package management called 'akabei'. Since the split we created some confusion but we are going in the right direction. Over 5670 packages are now available for our new distribution and over 500 get installed by this media. Features: Linux kernel 2.6.33.7 with LZMA support, KDE SC 4.4.5, X.Org Server 1.7.7, Catalyst 10.6, NVIDIA 256.x and NVIDIA legacy series." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional details.

Chakra GNU/Linux 0.2.0 - Arch Linux with the KDE desktop in a live CD (full image size: 406kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Hadron GNU/Linux. Hadron GNU/Linux is a Gentoo-based binary and portable Linux operating system. The aim of this project is to create a powerful, optimised, modular, reliable and stable GNU/Linux distribution.
- PixieLive. PixieLive is a Gentoo-based distribution designed for netbooks.
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 6 September 2010.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
|
|
Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip. (Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Ubuntu Wallpaper (by arnold on 2010-08-30 09:28:15 GMT from United States)
I like the default wallpaper in 10.04.
2 • illumos & Astaro (by silent on 2010-08-30 09:41:11 GMT from France)
I think that now the name has become officially "illumos" as "III" at the beginning was ambigious and difficult to read. As concerning the "Released Last Week" section, the first one has the title of Mint Xfce, but the text is about Astaro.
3 • Wallpaper (by Aum on 2010-08-30 10:05:38 GMT from Australia)
I personally see nothing objectionable about the Ubuntu wallpaper, and in any case it will be always be replaced by by own photos in very short time.
A storm in a teacup???
4 • Good to review new (just submitted) distros (by Ninad Bapat on 2010-08-30 10:05:54 GMT from India)
Hi
This weeks DWW is great. It would also be nice if this trend be followed further. Review a smaller but known distro and review 1 or 2 leeser known/just submitted/on the waiting list maybe once a month
Thanks again for a great DWW
5 • Puppy woof (by SlaxFan on 2010-08-30 10:46:29 GMT from United States)
For those of us who use Puppy as a rescue disk or to check hardware compatibility, the woof is great. It indicates that the sound card was properly set up and identified. I can see how it might annoy if it's your everyday distro though.
6 • Ugly mimic layout (by Miracles and Magic on 2010-08-30 10:49:00 GMT from Indonesia)
Too bad for me! Me-OS mimic layout looks like ugly MS-Windows.
7 • archhurd (by Anonymous on 2010-08-30 11:08:30 GMT from Canada)
Arch Hurd is a derivative work of Arch Linux porting it to the GNU Hurd system with packages optimised for the i686 architecture :
http://www.archhurd.org/
8 • Sharing files on home network (by Anonymous on 2010-08-30 12:29:56 GMT from Brazil)
An additional hint: sshfs. I've being used sshfs at the client, creating a simple script (I call it "mount-xxx.sh") to start/stop mounting the remote PC's share ("start" and "stop" are the only parameter). As it is mounted, the remote share behaves as a local directory, no matter you are using konqueror, nautilus, thunar or mc.
About SMB sharing: even being the almost unique option for sharing Windows files, I'm not aware of a way to have Unix files shared with their attributes. That is, if you share a directory in a Linux machine, their attributes seem not to be handled correctly when viewed at the other side. There's a kind of emulation of Unix attributes on top of Windows ones. Please correct me if there is some way of doing this better as I'm very interested in this trick, if it happens to exist.
9 • Ubuntu wall paper fine opensolaris not so (by Zac on 2010-08-30 12:32:37 GMT from Australia)
The wallpaper maybe functionally insignificant but is one of those things that touches the nerves of people and can turn new users away in a jiffy or bring them to the fold. Even mature (?) experienced users and reviewers get hung up over the wallpaper. The lesson: choose the wallpaper wisely. Ubuntu 8.04 had a great wallpaper which I'm still using.
Disappointed in Oracle treating opensolaris that way along with the litigation against Google.
10 • Some Comments on Puppy Linux 4.3.1, 5.0, 5.0.1 and 5.1 (by Steve Lange on 2010-08-30 12:54:03 GMT from United States)
You just have to love DWW and the Distrowatch.com website. I found this particular issue of DWW to be particularly clear, concise and informative.
Puppy Linux has--and has had since I began experimenting with it several years ago, very much its own approach. When you set up networking, it warns that there may be problems, but bravely concludes with "Let's Give It a Go". I have a mixed home network with both a Wireless(802.11g) segment and a Fast EtherNet(Wired, 802.3u) segment. Earlier versions had some trouble with my encrypted Wireless segment(WPA2-Personal now), Puppy versions from 4.3 onward have done just fine with it.
When my son(he was twenty then and I was fifty-nine) and I collaboratively built a computer for his use(System Camino, after Star Wars II), we found the then-current version of Puppy Linux to be invaluable for getting a status report on the underlying hardware. High marks, Puppy!
Since my son(Charles) is an enthusiastic gamer(World of War Craft, Halo and others), we installed Microsoft Windows Vista at an early stage though, along with a Windows version of OpenOffice.org.
Puppy Linux' security hole(automatic login as "root") strikes me as an alarming fault, but it has not made any difference in the use which I have made of the OS, which has been somewhat "skiddish". And the price is certainly right!
While I got the implementation of CUPS to recognize my Hewlett-Packard HP J4580 InkJet Printer easily with Puppy version 4.3.1, I have not been successful with version 5.0("Lucid Puppy") and later versions. Installing HPLIP with the PET package manager did not help. I find myself wistfully wishing that the Puppy Linux team headed by the Wizardly Barry Kauler would revert to that earlier implementation of CUPS.
However, with all its little peculiarities and quirks, you "just have to love" Puppy Linux and I certainly do. It approaches the elusive point of perfection as an eminently portable and versatile FOSS operating system.
11 • Ubuntu wallpaper (by LuisG on 2010-08-30 12:57:10 GMT from Colombia)
I think the new Ubuntu wallpaper is hideous, but it's not really a big deal as changing it can be done in 10 seconds (just like I did in 10.04). However, changing the GDM theme in Ubuntu is a non-trivial operation, so it's a decision to be made wisely. Ubuntu 9.10 had a great GDM theme, so why they feel like making it worst is a good decision, is beyond me.
12 • I have an obvious idea... (by linux user on 2010-08-30 12:58:14 GMT from United States)
Why doesn't canonical have a contest for the wallpaper, and the one that gets the most user votes or highest rating gets to be the newest wallpaper. They can't lose, and the community will get to help out and feel like they contributed.
13 • Chakra Rolling release?? (by nemo on 2010-08-30 13:04:43 GMT from United States)
latest KDE 4.4.5 is not. Actually 4.5.1 is about to be released tomorrow. So what are they bragging about ?
14 • Nodezero (by Macheccazzo on 2010-08-30 13:05:12 GMT from Italy)
Node Zero Linux... looks interesting!
15 • RE: #13 (by linux user on 2010-08-30 13:11:42 GMT from United States)
Chakra is on 4.4.5 because 4.5 introduced and had some pretty big bugs. Also, there was a bug with dbus.
Rolling release should mean releasing something that actually works, not just to brag about it...
I believe you should have followed Mark Twain's advice on this one :)
16 • Lots of bark... (by rec9140 on 2010-08-30 13:22:23 GMT from United States)
As to the Puppy "bark" obviously some of you have left your sense of humour at door....
Puppy hint, hint! HINT! Or is it not obvious...
Not your thing no big deal... but as one post put it... its a good way to know the sound was setup and working on start up....change it...I can think of a program that "ribbits" like a frog on start up...
Wallpaper... I normally only see the wallpapers that are included as defaults when they are posted here... some are great, like one of the recent ones was an astronomy based one with a planet view of some sort really great... ubunutus are normally what I would call the ugly catergory... and since I only see them when they show up here as a I scroll on by .. personally again... not that great, but not a big deal as some are making it... and its not going to last more than first boot any way...
As I've finally tracked down the "nude" ubutunu wallpaper a couple of these are great, a few are useless... personally I don't see the big deal.. It meshes with the theme they were pushing/peddling at the time... and some of you are just a bunch of UPTIGHT PURITANS, thats right I am looking at you my fellow Americans... get over it.
17 • RE:Ubuntu Wallpaper and Such (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-08-30 13:22:49 GMT from United States)
I'm sorry but I just can't place any importance in a wallpaper and such minor things. And no I don't think it is ugly and no I don't think it will shock any new users, and no Ubuntu did not make anything worst by changing the GDM theme, wallpaper, buttons, or any other trivial thing and this can go on and on. These statements that everybody are making are opinions just like mine and opinions of this nature are only important to the person who makes them. See where I'm headed with this. These are just personal feelings and different taste that everyone has. I really don't know of any distro that I would keep the wallpaper on anyway but it is fun reading the crazy remarks that some people make.:) :)
18 • Ubuntu Wallpaper (by ericthered on 2010-08-30 13:25:11 GMT from United States)
I know that default wallpapers are generally not a big deal, considering they are replaced in a matter of minutes, but this is not a good first impression for new users. It looks like someone put the Lucid wallpaper in photoshop and smeared some poop-brown on it.
I think Ubuntu would do well to get rid of the vague wallpapers and use some actual artwork. Or maybe a scenic photo.
19 • RE:The Other Ubuntu Wallpapers. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-08-30 13:40:40 GMT from United States)
Did anyone look at the other 17 Wallpapers that will be included with Ubuntu? They are very nice. I feel if a new user is put off on a distro by the wallpaper then they probably are making bad choices anyway.
20 • Ububtu Wallpaper (by Cuda on 2010-08-30 13:46:37 GMT from Canada)
I think the ugly wallpaper is just a trick to attract attention and get people talking about Ubuntu. It obviously doesn't affect the performance as even the most novice computer user knows it can be changed. Past releases seem to indicate this type of attention is one of Canonicals tricks or traits for every release.
21 • Ubuntu 10.10 Wallpaper (by Tony on 2010-08-30 14:10:41 GMT from United States)
I don't like the wallpaper as well, but it's really not a big deal since it can be easily changed. Usually I enjoy the distro reviews the most, however, the jokes about the Ubuntu 10.10 wallpaper made my day and this topic was a great read for me.
Thanks Distrowatch!!!
22 • Pinguy=No More Distro-hopping for me! (by spaceranger1 on 2010-08-30 14:21:26 GMT from United States)
I saw Pinguy in the last issue of DWW and checked it out. It sounded perfect for me and it is. It has everything that I normally install after I DL a distro already included. An excellent Conky, wallpapers that it pulls from the best pictures on the net and then rotates them every thirty minutes, UbuntuTweaks, Elementary Nautilus, etc. I did install XBMC because I gotta have it and the theme, Royal Dragon Light And Dark, not because the default theme is bad, quite the contrary, but because I love those dragon flames in the loading bar, lol. (Along with the black and neon-blue icons and controls). This distro is a must-have if you just want to install a distro and be working a minute later. Thanks, DWW!
23 • Ubuntu wallpaper (by anticapitalista on 2010-08-30 14:25:00 GMT from Greece)
Who cares, but it keeps Ubuntu in the news this week.
24 • Ubuntu Wallpaper Cracks (by Varmint on 2010-08-30 15:18:58 GMT from United States)
Gotta' love all those cracks about the latest wallpaper in ubuntu's desktop. I agree with Tony in post #21 on this one. If it's that important to you, change it. That's what I do, and maybe the team intended for you to do so. Change it, personalize it, make it yours. that's the glory of linux, anyway, isn't it? Gotta' wonder how that one guy knows what Chuck norris's farts look like, though. That even SOUNDS hinky! What a hoot!
25 • Linux for silly beings? (by Alcohol52 on 2010-08-30 15:23:45 GMT from Nepal)
Always there is a fuss regarding ubuntu about silly things- wallpapers, akward placement of buttons, gimp........ that don't deserve the hype that they are given. If they are to compete with windows head on (as they want to) , those trivial things aren't going to help. It is nice to have have beautiful anthlers, but we need strongers legs to evade the hunters. Ubuntu is the best distro around- no doubt but I hate the way they are concentrating the energy on trivial things- just to look sheepishly windowish. Such hype are brought time to time to probably be in news and increase their clicks per day in distrowatch. Ubuntu is a linux for HUMAN beings and it should remain so. Are we users silly enough to concentrate on wallpapers or looks? forget it dudes..........
26 • Why does Open Solaris matter? (by davey on 2010-08-30 15:44:10 GMT from United States)
I get why the curious would want to explore all the OS's and other software out there. But from a quick look, I never understood what was so different and special about Solaris from an end-user point of view. What's it got to offer the user that Linux, BSD, etc dont?
27 • OpenSolaris (by Jesse on 2010-08-30 15:50:27 GMT from Canada)
In resopnse to 26, why does OpenSolaris matter?
I think for a lot of people OpenSolaris was a good way to trial Solaris to see if it would be a good fit. Much the same way someone might set up a test box with CentOS before buying from Red Hat.
The Solaris OS also brought us some technologies that later appeared in other open source operating systems, such as ZFS and DTrace. For a desktop user there probably isn't much of a reason to use OpenSolaris, but it's a good test bed for developers and sysadmins.
28 • Ubuntu wallpaper (by Luke on 2010-08-30 16:06:39 GMT from United States)
I'm usually the first to defend the Ubuntu look...I've always been a fan of the brown, and I'm always quick to point out that pretty much everybody changes their wallpaper and many people change their theme anyway. So I was thinking this was going to be just another over-sensitive reaction to Ubuntu's style.
But, I was wrong...oh so very wrong. That wallpaper is absolutely hideous.
29 • Ubuntu (by azurehi on 2010-08-30 16:08:46 GMT from United States)
The wall paper is certainly not to my taste...but for a major distro, trying to be the number one Linux choice, such a look will drive away those browsing by IMHO. My problem with Ubuntu, Mint, etc. is that, beyond 9.10, my Nvidia 96 driver is not enabled when installing - very hard to install without a mouse pointer - and is very difficult to activate after installation. I use PCLinuxOS now since everything works immediately and it is a rolling release.
30 • Me OS ease of use ? (by Major Dôme on 2010-08-30 16:11:52 GMT from France)
(Me OS) "has a strong ease-of-use focus. "
Are languages (and keymaps, whiche are more essential) supported, and which way?
Does one have to type something with an US keymap (a pqsszord, say) before being able to choose one's keymap (the ever_beta wolvix way)? Or does one have a graphical menu, to set up ones timezone and country, and default keymap options are deduced from that (in 2008, it was the way O solaris started installation)? Can one choose another country/keymap after install?
31 • Boring Things (by Ed on 2010-08-30 16:16:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, Ladislav, but I've appreciated your focus on things that matter to GNU/Linux lately.Going back to a distribution based on OpenSUSE with blue wallpaper and an inferior user interface setup, which is my first impression of MeOS (I could be wrong) would really be a backwards step.
32 • OK Jesse, don't be a tease. (by davey on 2010-08-30 16:18:11 GMT from United States)
So what's the MOST annoying feature you've encountered this year??
33 • Orange splotches (by Anonymous on 2010-08-30 16:20:01 GMT from United States)
While I love to poke fun at Ubuntu and have never really had any use for it, I must admit this seems to me to be nothing. All of their little icons, (see the one in distrowatch next to the story), are in a similar hue of orange to those three little splotches. While a little unattractive they do a lot to liven up the "hey look at me I'm a ripoff of a Mac" theme that they had going in their previous release. Oh and #6, similar window buttons don't make the entire OS a ripoff, Win Vista/7 sure don't have a launcher bar at the top. Now is a distro were to something like say, create their own version of a purple aurora often seen in ads for way overpriced computers, and simultaneously move their buttons to the same eccentric side of their windows while switching to the same rounded shape as that other OS, then that would be making a cheesy ripoff. Seriously, open the Wikipedia article for OS X and Ubuntu and drag the windows next to each other so you can see the screen shots of both of them. I mean isn't it a little too much?
34 • Wallpaper (by fernbap on 2010-08-30 16:36:03 GMT from Portugal)
Probably this will not be the wallpaper.Cannonical has a marketing department, and they would not make such a gross mistake. Default wallpapers are more important than you might guess. They are an important part of the distro's image, and everyone knows first impressions matter. And many, many desktop users never change the default desktop. How many windows users do you know that still use its default desktop? For example, as much as i love Mint, i think it has gone too green. I know, green is the mint color, but that doesn't mean giving you a green overdose. Imho, Gloria had exactly the exact amount of green for a green distro (the most beautiful default desktop so far), and since then the green has spiraled out of control. Mint is still beautiful, but too much is too much.
35 • Osx ubuntu (by Carlos on 2010-08-30 16:40:53 GMT from Italy)
@33- Agree 100/100
36 • Puppy the fastest os on th earth (by Sanjay on 2010-08-30 16:47:27 GMT from India)
This is first review of Puppy 5 lucid which is Ubuntu based. It is the fastest OS I used ever,it feels better than DSL.So I am going to share my Experience with you. My Test Machine:
AMD64 3000+ Processor MSI Motherboard 512 DDR II Ram ESPON C 58 Printer Samsung Monitor.
Read the full Experience here http://www.cellguru.co.cc/2010/07/fastest-os-on-earth.html
37 • Feature (by Jesse on 2010-08-30 17:21:46 GMT from Canada)
>> "So what's the MOST annoying feature you've encountered this year?"
This is probably just chance timing, but my Most Annoying Feature of the Year (MAFY) comes from Ubuntu 10.04... though it's not entirely Canonical's fault. As everyone here probably knows, by default the cursor in gnome-terminal blinks. And, as you probably all know, the GNOME team removed the option from the gnome-terminal application to turn this .... feature off. (It can be turned off, but it's an unintuitive pain.) This is, in itself annoying.
Of course the theme for Ubuntu 10.04 was heavy on purple and black. Which, actually, while strange didn't bother me so much. But what did bother me is that, with the purple theme, this means the gnome-terminal app displays a bright purple background with bright white text and a flashing cursor.
It was like getting dripping water torture from Barney the dinosaur. Yes, it can be changed (though it requires using at least two different programs), but it's a terrible default and easily the worst interface experience I've had this year.
This makes me think that I should have some sort of Best of and Worst of selection for the end of the year...
38 • Wallpaper (by Alan UK on 2010-08-30 17:36:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
Does anyone else suspect that Shuttleworth has struck again...?
39 • RE:More Wallpaper Bull (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-08-30 17:55:55 GMT from United States)
It really seems ashamed that a good DWW was screwed up by the Ubuntu wallpaper story. DWW knows that you will get people who like it and people who hate it and people who don't care but just want to bitch. Why don't you leave the nonsense stories for the little blogs all over the net that nobody gives a damn about.
40 • Ubuntu wallpaper (by Anonymous on 2010-08-30 18:05:13 GMT from United States)
Being a ubuntu admin, after the last wallpaper flap, the people that complain get a wallpaper of the old TV test pattern in black & white with the Indian in the middle.
41 • @ #12 __ An Obvious Idea (by Ed Norton on 2010-08-30 18:22:48 GMT from United States)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Why doesn't canonical have a contest for the wallpaper, and the one that gets the most user votes or highest rating gets to be the newest wallpaper. They can't lose, and the community will get to help out and feel like they contributed."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's a very good idea, one that Canonical should adopt. The Mint project has done just that, and as you suggest it involves the community and people feel like they're a real part of the decision process.
However because we're not talking about Mint and its highly involved community but about Canonical and its top down approach to such things, it would be a major surprise if such an excellent idea were adopted.
42 • ubuntu wallpaper (by Jacques on 2010-08-30 19:12:35 GMT from Canada)
Nothing wrong with that wallpaper. I see a nebula with a big white star in the fog of it and somes red stars. It coud be a hubble picture...
43 • Ubuntu Wallpaper (by Ron LaBorde on 2010-08-30 19:20:10 GMT from United States)
Don't you guys get it? The wallpaper is a give away. See, whenever you do things, always be sure to leave just a little tad of something for the fault finders to complain about. This makes them feel useful because they found something, and just might satiate the urge to continue with fault finding.
And who! What visual imagination some of you have!
Love DW!
44 • Oracle, Ubuntu (by Ron on 2010-08-30 19:23:35 GMT from United States)
I would be very worried about doing business with Oracle and giving them my money. Seems like all they touch they destroy.
Ubuntu default wallpaper.... Who cares. I have yet to see any distro's default wallpaper look good or makes me want to keep it. From brown to purple and now purple with brown spots? What exactly are they smoking over there, lol. Must be some good stuff :-0
45 • Forgot... (by Ron on 2010-08-30 19:24:21 GMT from United States)
Great Distrowatch weekly, as usual :-)
46 • Ubuntu Wallpaper (by Glenn Condrey on 2010-08-30 19:28:00 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu's wallpaper looks like the Hubble Telescope with a bad stygmatism or macular degeneration....
47 • More Ubuntu and blah blah blah (by davemc on 2010-08-30 20:19:15 GMT from United States)
"Ubuntu has purple/brown wallpaper!! News at 7!!"
Is there anyone in the Linux world that did not already know this?.. Anyone?..
Before Lucid they were on puke brown. Now they are on bruised purple. Its all about Humanity. When you get beat up, you get purple bruises, and sometimes have a brownish puke. It all makes sense to me, although Ubuntu/Kubuntu does not beat me up anymore.
Soooo..
Back to Puppy and their absolute and flagrant disregard of all that is holy within the linux world - security! They would most certainly hold a MUCH larger fan base if they decided to finally abstain from such blasphemy as running root as user - the #1 cardinal sin in the Unix/Linux world btw... Its true, it is.
48 • Is eyecandy useful? (by Ed on 2010-08-30 20:24:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
@34: The Debian project has given to me the impression of a poorly managed, unpopular distribution due to its ugly, out-of-date website. Its lack of eyecandy might have put me off if I discovered it at certain eras of my life, as well. These things are superficial, but I have sometimes though 'If they can't make a decent website, what hope do they have of making a decent operating system'. Hence, good wallpaper may be very useful, even if it doesn't fascinate me.
49 • #48 (by anticapitalista on 2010-08-30 20:33:12 GMT from Greece)
The saying "Never judge a book by its cover" comes to mind.
About Puppy, one big plus for it is the various ways you can run it. I mean installed like a 'normal' distro or better options IMO running live on cd, usb, with or without the toram option and my favourite as a frugal install on hard drive.
Can Ubuntu do all that on a box with 256MB RAM or less?
50 • Ubuntu and RAM (by davemc on 2010-08-30 20:35:45 GMT from United States)
#49 - Yes. In fact, last I looked, Puppy re-based to Ubuntu....
51 • #50 (by anticapitalista on 2010-08-30 20:37:50 GMT from Greece)
Ok, I'll rephrase my last sentence to Can an officially released Ubuntu distro do all that on a box with 256MB RAM or less?
52 • Ubuntu and RAM part 2 (by davemc on 2010-08-30 20:41:27 GMT from United States)
#51 - Yes. Ubuntu Server Edition should have no trouble with that amount of RAM. Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) should theoretically also be able to handle it with some small swappage.
53 • #52 (by anticapitalista on 2010-08-30 21:03:22 GMT from Greece)
Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) needs 512MB RAM according to the Ubuntu website and it certainly will not run in a toram environment of only 256MB.
I'll take your word about Ubuntu Server Edition as I've never tried it. :)
54 • oh my god ... (by benq on 2010-08-30 21:14:44 GMT from Germany)
oh my god, it's a wallpaper! A wallpaper! Why do so many people care about it at all?
However, the comments section is really funny, so I guess it's more the comments section that made the "news" DWW-worthy.
I'd vote for the Puppy "WOOOF" as default sound for Ubuntu-logins (only changeable via Gconf editor ... ;-)
55 • DWW (by Landor on 2010-08-30 21:50:44 GMT from Canada)
I found it interesting that the recent release of Puppy grew in size by almost a third in comparison to some of their other recent releases. While as Jesse said, it's still quite small, that's a large jump for a small distribution. It is inevitable that distributions grow in size though. Slitaz is one that has tripled its original size, if I'm not mistaken.
Ladislav, do you still follow Mandriva Cooker? Are things moving along there as usual, or have you seen a slow down? I also hope you enjoyed your time off and welcome back.
What a coincidence that two new Gentoo distributions are listed, especially one being netbook specific. I was occupied most of the week, and weekend, immersing myself in the changes to Gentoo, and installing it on my netbook. I still have a few tweaks left and when all is said and done I'll post at least the compile times to get it to the desktop. A hybrid of sorts that I'm trying out.
Partly due to the above, I'd like to apologise for not replying last week, and thank Adam Williamson for his reply about the release criteria for Fedora. It's much appreciated.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
56 • Oracle (by Dan on 2010-08-30 23:27:31 GMT from United States)
I'm not surprised Open Solaris is getting canned. I am surprised the MySQL hasn't been shut down already. I give that till the end of the year, once the fiscal years adds/losses are figured out by the management.
And just think, Oracle also controls Java.
57 • The many faces of Puppy (by gnomic on 2010-08-31 00:22:27 GMT from New Zealand)
#50 says 'last I looked, Puppy re-based to Ubuntu....'
That's true for the Puppy called Lucid which might be regarded as the current official Puppy. However there are a number of other projects on the go fulfilling Barry Kauler's plan to make Puppy versions which can be based on packages from other distributions. Among these is Spup which is based on Slackware and Quirky. There is also Wary. So it's a complex web which is being woven. Some time ago there was a diagram (on Barry's blog I think) which showed the various strands of development but I haven't been able to track this down of late.
There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here, for those who are able to tolerate Puppy at least. Also there are at least 10 Puppy spinoffs with some momentum of their own based on various Puppy versions, including some which suit older machines.
Aha, stumbled upon this page which includes the diagram mentioned above. Spup is not mentioned however.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-5.0/release-500.htm
58 • Distrowatch Page Views (by Ed on 2010-08-31 01:20:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Why have the Distrowatch page views of the major distro pages fallen recently? Is it because some people are starting work again?
59 • wallpapers (by Josh on 2010-08-31 03:31:57 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 10.10 wallpaper suggestion is horrible. Its like they just threw orange/red on it and said this is art. I'm highly disappointed. I wasn't a fan of the 10.04 purple theme, and this one just strikes me as worse.
@47: thats funny
Speaking of wallpapers, does anyone know the name of the ArtistX 0.9 wallpaper in the image or have a link. I'd appreciate the help as I really like it.
60 • Desktops/themes & branding. (by jake on 2010-08-31 05:22:34 GMT from United States)
It's all about marketing.
Microsoft & Apple understand this, because they are run by marketing. Their engineering sucks, but they know how to grab eyeballs/desks ... The initial "look & feel" of MSFT & APPL machines have remained fairly consistant, with minor interface tweaks release to release, for a couple decades ... and as a direct result, they dominate the desktop world. Not *my* world, mind, but you know what I mean.
Linux distros? Not so much ... With a couple exceptions[1], the themes & desktop art aren't developed by artists under the control of marketing, rather they are developed by the distro developers ... and they ALL completely suck. With no exceptions, it is ALWAYS the first thing I change when checking out any given distro. Face it, devs, your artistic skills are sub-par. Stop it. You are embarrassing yourselves. Stick with what you are good at.
Linux would *probably* do better in the desktop market if developers would agree on a single basic look & feel[2], with no useless and always ugly wallpaper, consistent icon set, consistent fonts, and similarity between task/menu bars and menu options. The way it is today, it's a free-for-all, and one that few can wrap their heads around[3].
[1] One egregious example being Ubuntu ... I think it's clear to anyone with a working central nervous system that Shuttleworth's doing it for the press, not for artistic reasons. Stop advertising for him, you freaking sheeple! FURRFU!
[2] Ain't gonna happen, and I'm not calling for it ...
[3] Vive la différence!
61 • Re: 8 Sharing files on home network (by hob4bit on 2010-08-31 08:21:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hello, I also use "sshfs" to mount remote disks trhough "ssh". The advantage is you can do it as an ordinary user and root cannot see the files.
I have created "smount" and "sumount" scripts. Like the naming convention of "ssh", "scp", "sftp" etc.... I also have "sdd" and "ssync".
62 • @50, @57 (by Shankar on 2010-08-31 08:35:23 GMT from India)
Re Puppy "re-basing" to Ubuntu...
This is a misconception. The latest Puppies (the Lucid ones) do not "re-base" to Ubuntu, they are built in a manner to ensure that Ubuntu packages can be installed natively while still running in Puppy's own architecture (with better speed, Puppy's interface etc.) So,you can install Ubuntu and Puppy packages alongside each other. Spup was meant to do the same with Slackware, Dpup (which now seems to be dead unfortunately) with Debian, etc. The Woof architecture underlying Puppy allows you to make it compatible with a range of distros if you want to build your own Puppy. AFAIK this is a unique effort.
I've recently transitioned to Debian Squeeze for other reasons, but I happily used Puppy for as my workhorse for five years. I can see why it doesn't appeal to some, but it has a collection of what seem really unique capabilities. It is possibly the most portable distro I have ever used. It can be installed on all kinds of media and the Flash drive functionality is extremely well designed, including built in minimising writes functionality, high speed and methods to ensure you don't run out of space so fast (an example - I ran Puppy for years on a 1GB pen drive; I'm running a persistent Debian install and it used up 1.1 GB for itself and, within one week, 1.2GB of more space for a handful of installed packages). Also, back when I first went to Puppy in 2005, it was the only well known distro around (and may still be the only one) that could run off of and save back all files and settings to a CD-R (note, not a CD-RW) in multisession mode. Before flash drives became common here I spent six months with my entire system running off a CD that cost practically nothing.
As said, I can see why some don't like it. Fair enough, and it doesn't quite fit my own needs any more either. But it's got remarkable capabilities that are out of the mainstream, especially in the areas of portability, persistence, speed and now inter-distro compatibility.
63 • Re:#15 Chakra (by silent on 2010-08-31 08:36:59 GMT from France)
So, is Chakra a competitor for Arch or for Kubuntu and openSuSe? In my view, the advantage of Arch is KISS, the fast workflow for new packages with a good level of testing and AUR on the other hand if one needs something exotic. Will Chakra be able to compete with that on their own? For the moment, they have only the easy installation on their side. But, as you mentioned, KDE4 is still struggling. Anyway, Arch already has KDE 4.5, although testing really took lots of time (that is with Arch measures). May be KDE 4.4.5 is slightly better, but is it really a KISS DE?
64 • Puppy -yes it is mainstream (by Miket on 2010-08-31 08:48:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
I am using Puppy 5.1 at the moment and have yet to find ANY task I cannot do. Frankly, it usually does it better and faster than any other distro I have used. I can install any app when I like. I am currently running it from a live cd, loaded in RAM (1.5 Gb) and it has been my OS of choice during the past three months after I developed a problem with my main SUSE installation - not for the first time. It gets better and better, especially as it moves towards the Ubuntu repos. It may stay as my main OS for much longer and it is soooooo fast.
65 • MeOS's Theme (by Alek Smith on 2010-08-31 08:59:10 GMT from United States)
Hey all, Enjoyed this great distrowatch weekly. extensively MeOS is such a great new project!
If anyone is looking for the Black Theme that is used in MeOS I looked far and wide and found it! it's called iRaveH20! (Soon to be know as just RaveH20 they say) I found them here: http://iravefuzion.blogspot.com/
And the Black Theme Used In MeOS (By irave) Here: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=119775
66 • Puppy's 'bark' (by Jim on 2010-08-31 13:11:18 GMT from United States)
I was showing my Mom how a live cd works, and when I booted "Puppy" Linux it of course barked. Who would expect different from a puppy?
67 • Best OS for Blender (by Tim on 2010-08-31 15:22:45 GMT from United States)
Can anyone tell me what their take on the best OS for Blender or any 3D package may be? I am looking for something that does not have a lot of overhead and can handle the rendering pretty quickly.
Tim
68 • Arch, Chakra and stuff (by davemc on 2010-08-31 17:18:12 GMT from United States)
#63 - No. Chakra is an independent project with deep roots in Arch. Its a system that is built around KDE4 with custom tweaks and scripts. As far as I can tell, it has very few advantages over a base Arch install with KDE4 installed other than the custom installer. It completely breaks the Arch mantra of "do it yourself from scratch" for building a custom system that is lean and mean and goes the user friendly route of lots of hand holding. Nothing wrong with that, but its not the Arch way of doing things (not that the Arch way is terribly hard either but there is NO hand holding at all).
KDE4.4 was the KDE ready for the masses. KDE4.5 is even more so. If you have not tried it yet, you certainly should, especially if you used to be a KDE lover.
69 • Re: #60 Wallpaper (by Sly on 2010-08-31 21:23:49 GMT from United States)
I agree with post #60 (by Jake) on the initial look at a distros wallpaper. Distro's should care deeply about their initial look and feel.
For distros I am familiar with, the wallpaper does not bother me as much because I know what's 'under the hood'. And still, I'm not happy until I change it to something more pleasing. Then I am ready test drive it. Unappealing wallpaper in a distro that I am not familiar with may cause me to immediate dismiss the distro without giving it a test drive.
Ubuntu, or any other distro, is not doing itself any favors if it continues to put forth an unappealing default wallpaper. Brown was tolerable because it was Ubuntu's theme. Purple......please let's draw the line
And Ubuntu is not the only offender. The default wallpaper for SUSE 11.2 downright unconscionable. SUSE did redeem itself with the wallpaper for 11.3. So maybe, just maybe Ubuntu will do the same.
70 • Anti-Ubuntu slant? (by Andrew on 2010-08-31 22:40:40 GMT from Australia)
Is it just me or is Distrowatch slightly biased against Ubuntu?
Not that this is a bad thing, it would be worse if Distrowatch was slightly biased FOR Ubuntu...
71 • RE: 60 - 70 (by Landor on 2010-09-01 01:32:02 GMT from Canada)
#60
I've recently rethought a lot of my views in regard to Linux, its development, etc. I agree that a lot of the design is not to my tastes, but really, what is there that fully meets anyone's tastes. Artwork is subjective, and I'm sure whomever designed some of the artwork that we see felt it was totally amazing and were proud of their work. A lot of them may be developers doing this, but they've done something I don't know how to do, create wallpapers, themes, etc. I do know the overall basics of creating a theme, but I'm by no means good at it. I wouldn't even go that far for creating a wallpaper. So, in essence, they're doing a lot better than I could. :)
#70
I don't think you'll find that Ladislav, or anyone writing here, is biased in any way when they're presenting their information about distributions. Well, if anything, I'd say Ladislav has a bias for seeing improvement and benefit of the Open Source Operating Systems. I say that because of his obvious interest and enthusiasm when there's a new BSD flavour produced. I count that kind of bias as a good thing as well, if it even can be called a bias.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
72 • Ubuntu background (by PurplePeopleEater on 2010-09-01 01:52:41 GMT from United States)
I find this weeks comments very telling. Everyone keeps blaming Ubuntu for doing something , such as creating an "ugly" desktop background, just to keep itself in the news. And yet you guys have done all of Ubuntu's work for them.
A ton of unneeded comments regarding Ubuntu's background.
One comment after another about Ubuntu and its "hideous" background.
If Mark could only see you guys now ! :)
73 • Ubuntu (by Ron on 2010-09-01 02:01:03 GMT from United States)
I personally do not hate Ubuntu. They have taken things to a new level with Linux, which I think is great. But when you do that you will get those who hate the change or hate it for other reasons. I went from Ubuntu (was with it from the start,) to Debian Recently. I love how Debian inspired Ubuntu but Ubuntu has given back to Debian. This is the way Progress works. Soon enough another one will come along and change things for the better as well.
Ubuntu has always had questionable taste in colors and themes. But why would that need to be an issue when these themes can be changed. Ubuntu is trying to make things very easy for the average user to the user who doesn't use the computer much and doesn't want to spend hundreds of dollars.
Ubuntu is in the news because it is in the lead. Who knows how things will be in three years and if another will take the lead changing things (forever evolving open source.) That is the way it should be and what makes Linux great.
Personally I can't wait until Ubuntu default themes are bright yellow and pink dots/stripes on a lime green background. I have my sun glasses all ready for that day :-)
74 • puppy forever (by bob on 2010-09-01 02:17:36 GMT from United States)
puppy is basically a live 32 bit distro. who can infect a CD?passwords are a nusance in this context.If something bad gets in ..you simply reboot fron the CD!!!. I use " Macpup opera 2.0" it has E17 desktop with all the bling of aero/mac 10.# on a baby hp with 2.6 celeron and 768mb pc133 ram.P S wallpaper is easily changed on puppy ,I download and change the picture twice a week..
75 • wicked easy *nix file sharing (by Tidux on 2010-09-01 03:19:53 GMT from United States)
There's a FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) module called SSHFS - the fileserver itself only has to have sshd running and properly configured (LDAP might be a good idea to avoid cluttering up /home if you have a lot of users). Similar idea to FISH, but I like it better.
76 • #63 KDE KISS (by gnomic on 2010-09-01 06:37:30 GMT from New Zealand)
'May be KDE 4.4.5 is slightly better, but is it really a KISS DE?'
Surely there is no danger of KDE ever keeping it simple ;-> If I have had a problem with KDE, it was that it always made me wonder whether I was smart enough to use it effectively.
Now we have the semantic desktop, overwhelming simplicity seems unlikely to become a problem. In idle moments we can ponder the question, what is the function of the cashew?
77 • Sharing files on home network (by disi on 2010-09-01 11:16:05 GMT from Germany)
Nice tutorial, that's the way I share my files with the Windows box. There is a nice tool called winscp to connect via ssh.
With my Linux boxes I use autofs and nfs. The advantage is, that the share is mounted, when needed. So if you have a laptop and are connected to the network, just go into the configured folder and browse on. Autofs will automatically mount the nfs share and you don't see anything, like you would browse your local harddrive. If you are not on the network, the folder just appears empty.
disi
78 • #67 - Blender (by Claus Futtrup on 2010-09-01 17:16:01 GMT from Denmark)
Hi there - I can recommend Zenwalk for your Blender work. Zenwalk has low overhead and is configured default to leave your CPU/RAM for your applications. There's a Blender package in the EXTRA repository, ready to be installed.
Best regards, Claus Zenwalker
79 • #74 - Reallty bad security advice. (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 01:33:53 GMT from United States)
@bob: There is no question that you cannot write to a live CD or any other read-only media. That is NOT the reason that Puppy Linux and other live distros that run as root absolutely fail when it comes to security. While the live media is certainly safe what about your writable media: your hard disk and removable media? That is what is vulnerable. That is where your data lives, isn't it?
What make Linux inherently more secure than Windows is that most applications do not run at system/root level. If there is a vulnerability but the attacker only has ordinary user privileges there is just so much they can do. If they are root they are unlimited in what they can do to a system or use a system for.
Yes, passwords and other most basic security issues are inconvenient. However, strip away that inconvenience and you may as well put out the welcome mat for any and all intruders. To make matters worse, you cannot update a live CD as easily as an installed distro so a vulnerability remains even after a patch is available until the next release. Passwords are the simplest and most basic level of security. To complain about having to use a password is equivalent to complaining about having a lock on the front door of your house and having to use a key.
These issues are not unique to Puppy Linux. It is merely one of a number of live CD distros that utterly abandon security in, what to me is an absolutely unacceptable way. I've had my identity stolen. Trust me, you do not want to ever go through what I went through when that happened.
The usual retort I get on DWW to any security measures is something like: "I have never been hacked." First, how would you know if you were? How do you check the integrity of your system? Second, let's assume you have not been touched. You've been lucky. Security through obscurity is no protection at all.
80 • Article on passwords at Infosec Island (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 03:34:49 GMT from United States)
Those of you who don't like passwords or think short simple ones are fine may want to read this: https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/7208--Passwords-Dinosaurs-and-8-Track-Tapes.html
81 • Thanks, Caitlyn. (by jake on 2010-09-02 04:06:12 GMT from United States)
Saved me from typ(o)ing pretty much the same thing.
82 • RE:79, security and puppy again ;) (by dopher on 2010-09-02 04:10:37 GMT from Belgium)
@Caitlin I Think it is true what you say, however if i follow your anology, running as user isn't safe as well.
As a regular user I have almost all the rights to my home directory. This means that running a application/script in userspace can do lot's of harm to my user data. A script or application running as user can modify my home data, it can transfer my home data to the company/individual that wants it, and more.
If you run for example skype from your user space, you have no clue what data it reads and or transfers from your home dir. ( I once checked skype with "strace", and saw it was looking in my firefox profile and lot's of other parts). the skype protocol is also encrypted, so you have no clue what the data stream contains. The same can count for certain firefox scripts, or other "handy" applications and scripts"
The most important part of your system is not the system itself, but your data. A system can be easily reinstalled. So the idea that some users have about linux running as user, and being so damn safe is simply not true. And let's be honest, most user give themself access rights to certain partitions/dirs they use.
That's why I think running as root on puppy is not that bad. As stated, the puppy system is clean when you clear/fresh if you delete your personal storage file.
The biggest security hole is sitting mostly behind the keyboard. The one that is trusting the wrong apllications, doesn't have the knowledge/time to review certain scipts, and getting tempted to using the wrong addons, etc. And that it why I agree with a certain opinion that most of the linux user tend to disagree with: When linux would ever become mainstream it will not be so secure anymore (from a user point of view). Because you can easily use the trust of the user and avoid system wide security. Because it is the userdata "they" want, not the system.
Now, looking at my own experience how I handle this. I know I only live once. that means I can be stuborn or filled with principles and don't get any entertainment at all and run open source tetris, and communicate only though an opensource protocol. But then i would miss out a lot. So I run 2 systems; One with my entertainment stuff like games, skype and other stuff (yes, with windows 7). And one computer/desktop/server running slackware with only apps that I trust, and that computer contains my personal data (financial, email, documents, etc).
You simply can't have it all on one computer if you are really concerned about your data, that is if you like some mainstream entertainment, like i do.
83 • @82 (by jake on 2010-09-02 04:24:08 GMT from United States)
You write: "As a regular user I have almost all the rights to my home directory." --and-- "That's why I think running as root on puppy is not that bad. As stated, the puppy system is clean when you clear/fresh if you delete your personal storage file."
So let me get this straight ... Your data isn't important, you have no issues with it going away/getting stolen, or even nuking it yourself, so you might as well run as root?
::shakes head:: Kids these days ... Not clear on the concept. Thanks, MSFT & APPL.
84 • @83 (by dopher on 2010-09-02 04:35:34 GMT from Belgium)
No, I actually meant that if you delete your personal storage file, you will have a clean system, like in freshly installed. So, the Operating system itself will be CLEAN.
In my previous post I tried to seperate system security and user security. And what i meant with that post is that the user is the biggest problem in security.
Btw, I am used to make backups. Now, when you think your puppy system might be infected, you can delete your personal storage file, and start freshly. And then restore your backup with your documents and stuff.
85 • Again, unclear on the concept. (by jake on 2010-09-02 05:09:14 GMT from United States)
"And then restore your backup with your documents and stuff."
As root? And you don't see the problem with that?
::sighs:: Hopefully you'll learn, before you get bit too badly ...
86 • #82/84: Too narrowly focused, missed the point (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 05:11:38 GMT from United States)
@dopher: You focused on one part of what I wrote and missed a huge part of the point. Yes, if someone else is logged on as you they can do whatever they want with your data. That is a given. If someone is logged on as root they can do whatever they want with your computer. They can hijack it. They can use it to launch attacks on others, to distribute kiddie porn, whatever... These are all things that will be a major headache for you, perhaps with law enforcement. Identity/data theft is only one small part of the security picture.
An infected operating system is pretty much a Windows concept. You're thinking Windows malware and thinking like a Windows user. There have only been a handful of Linux viruses that have ever existed let alone got out in the wild and all of those could be rendered inert by keeping up to date on patches. That thinking, the idea of an infection, mostly does not apply to Linux.
The problem with an OS from a live CD that does not receive regular patches and updates is that a known vulnerability remains open. So, for example, if an application allows for a root escalation vulnerability it can be used to gain root on your system even if you are running as an unprivileged user. That doesn't apply to Puppy Linux, of course, since you are already running as root all the time and anyone who gains access to your system already has all the privileges they need, vulnerability or not.
So, yes, running as root all the time really is an incredibly bad idea. From your posts I get the idea that you don't fully understand security basics and dismiss them out of hand. Again, this is typical of Windows users who seem to think malware and security problems are part of running a PC. They aren't if you run a sane Linux distro and take some very simple precautions.
Oh, and no, you, the user are not the security risk at all. You are supposed to have access to your data and to your system. Yes, you can make a stupid mistake (we all do) and compromise your data. That is NOT what I am talking about when I discuss security since no unauthorized access occurred.
87 • #82: Mainstream multimedia and entertainment (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 05:18:00 GMT from United States)
Skype has a Linux client. There is no shortage of games for Linux. What there may be a shortage of is your favorite games. I do not have a Windows box and it has nothing to do with principles. I'm not missing a thing and there is nothing I want to do that I cannot do with my computers. Just because you don't know it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Oh, and my name is spelled Caitlyn with a "y" in the second syllable.
88 • Correction to #86 - Number of Linux viruses (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 05:59:30 GMT from United States)
That should have read "relative handful of Linux viruses". There are have been a few thousand pieces of Linux malware, including viruses compared with literally millions that have been written for Windows. As I noted above most of the Linux ones are rendered obsolete very quickly and can be avoided entirely.
There was a lovely piece on a Mandriva blog last week about Windows viruses on USB devices and how they are there even when the anti-virus software insists the devices are clean: http://mandrivachronicles.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-linux-computer-is-acting-weird.html
A pretty good follow-on piece followed on how Windows malware issues are treated as universal PC issues when they are not: http://mandrivachronicles.blogspot.com/2010/08/are-these-actually-pc-problems.html
#85: jake, I agree with your sentiment about not wanting to see people bitten by lax security. OTOH, if people refuse to learn or take reasonable precautions they have, to some degree, done it to themselves.
OK, enough on security for now, at least from me.
89 • @88 (by jake on 2010-09-02 06:28:18 GMT from United States)
After close to forty years in computing, I *still* hate seeing people getting bit. Maybe I'm a trifle more of a humanitarian than my curmudgeonly persona suggests ;-)
Daft thing is that it's so simple to `adduser`, make that your normal login, and only login as root when necessary ... why run the risk?
Gut feeling is that folks who insist on being root day-to-day are on a Personal(computer) power-trip, and really don't understand what they are doing ... nor do they really understand the great scheme of things.
But whatever. I'm also done with security, at least for now. Carry on, all.
90 • Windows, games and security. (by spaceranger1 on 2010-09-02 06:43:31 GMT from United States)
If the guy wants to run HIS computer as he sees fit, who are any of us to say otherwise? Games for Linux? Please. I keep Win 7 Ultimate for when I want to play real games, not crap. Let`s all get over this bias against Windows. If Windows had never been invented, Linux still would not fill the void. Don`t kid yourselves.
91 • @90 (by Ron on 2010-09-02 07:35:09 GMT from United States)
Work for Microsoft? Or are you one of those who listen to the MS trolls thinking they are real people?
If Windows wasn't around and Linux was the only one, then of course games and programs would be made for it only, it would more then fill the void. I can't believe you actually typed that, lol.
92 • @91 (by spaceranger1 on 2010-09-02 07:47:43 GMT from United States)
And which of the myriad distros would that be? And would it be Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Enlightenment? Gnu/Linux, BSD, Slackware? Get the point? No, I don`t work for Microsoft, I just notice that MS ignores you people and it kills you. Because Linux will never be anything more than a toy when it comes to desktops, because no one here agrees on anything.
93 • @92 (by Ron on 2010-09-02 07:51:52 GMT from United States)
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Linux is a toy? LMAO. You are amazing. Please, stay with Windows. You two are made for each other.
94 • Microsoft (by Ron on 2010-09-02 07:54:39 GMT from United States)
Microsoft has been known to send out those who pretend to be friends of Linux. They send them to conventions and they send them to forums. They pretend to be all for Linux but then they slowly change it.
They are very intelligent and good at what they do with this.
I take back saying you work for Microsoft. After rereading your post I really don't think you do.
95 • To clear something up (by Ron on 2010-09-02 07:58:27 GMT from United States)
Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Enlightment are Desktop Environments and Windows Managers. BSD is NOT Linux at all.
96 • Re: Security (by Anon on 2010-09-02 08:06:46 GMT from Norway)
It seems to me that dopher may have a (substantial) point. Does anyone really know what an, e.g. (flash) cookie, *cannot* harvest from my userspace? Well, I don't, but then I am also the forever noob.
BTW, I was completely thrown off by reading the creator of Absolute Linux boasting about never bothering to 'adduser'... Yet many Linux news sites continue to mention the distro with a straight face :)
97 • Re: #68 KDE 4.5.1 ready for the masses (by silent on 2010-09-02 08:24:16 GMT from France)
Thank you for the advice, I tried KDE 4.5.1 (Arch). Generally, it was OK. I use GDM, so it is "normal" that shutdown and restart is not available directly from KDE, however the logout widget crashed a couple of times as well, and killing KDE from the CLI is not really a solution "for the masses" . When I switched to GTK+ theme, Plastik window decorator, launched Dolphin, selected the "column" view then the scrollbar was not rendered properly and Dolphin simply crashed every time within a minute of browsing the folders. So, I had the feeling of "it works if you don't touch it" (use KDM, the Oxygen theme and window decorator, etc.)
98 • RE:93-95 (by spaceranger1 on 2010-09-02 08:32:24 GMT from United States)
I know they are, and I know it is. You missed the point completely. Even Landor has brought it up before, people don`t want 100 distros that run poorly. They want one that runs well. They don`t care about window managers, or Linux and BSD. They want an operating system that makes their computing life easier, not harder. 99% of the population have never compiled anything and never will, and they should not have to. Is it Windows? Of course not. But it sure as hell not anything else, either.
99 • Multi-booting. (by spaceranger1 on 2010-09-02 08:37:00 GMT from United States)
Btw, I`m multi-booting Win 7, Pinguy, Sabayon, Puppy 5.1 and Crunchbang because each of them has features and functions I like. Shame I can`t have one distro do them all.
100 • @86 Too narrowly focused, missed the point (by dopher on 2010-09-02 09:13:53 GMT from Belgium)
@Caitlyn ;) (sorry, didn't had your name in my spellchecker)
I'm not a windows only user, i use a bit of everything.
I've ran slackware for 8 years as server and main client, openbsd on my miniserver, but i've also ran puppy for many years without virusses. And i've been running windows for my entertainment since win95. I never had any virusses on any of them, not even on puppy.
I agree with you that a patched system, and running as user is safer. But it won't protect you against applications, scripts and even services/servers running as user in your userspace. The user is always the biggest problem when it come to security.
Also i wasn't really talking about virusses only (but i probably didn't explained myself correctly there), but mostly about another part of security, namely data theft. I've never experienced any virusses(only the pong virus on dos), but i've experience data theft a lot, just like the other 99.9 percent of the users.
Btw, the "stuborn" remark wasn't meant for you Caitlyn, but for myself. I explained that i made the choice there to run my favourite games with the full experience, because i like them. I explained that i didn't want to be stuborn and miss that all just because of my principles (but again, perhaps i had to talk more in the "I" form)
It's all about choices. One can run Puppy Linux, because one likes it, and i think that is pretty safe, if one as user make sane choices. I even think it is perfectly safe to run Windows as your main computer. And with that last remark I lost my credentials, if I had any left ;) jk
But it's okay to have different opinions. Luckily we have choices as well :)
101 • forgot to mention at post 100 (by dopher on 2010-09-02 09:42:41 GMT from Belgium)
@cailyn
I just thought about that we are talking from a different point of view. In my posts i was talking about a home computer with a single user. (which puppy linux is btw)
You might more think as a sys admin. And yes, ofcourse then you want a patched system, and no users running as root. If a user wants to messes with his/her data that's his problem, as long as the system and other users aren't infected.
But from a single user point of view there are different issues to worry about.
102 • Re: #87 Games in Linux (by karaangbugoy on 2010-09-02 10:12:09 GMT from Philippines)
Quoted from #87 Caitlyn:
"Skype has a Linux client. There is no shortage of games for Linux. What there may be a shortage of is your favorite games."
Could it be that there is a shortage of our favorite games because there is a shortage of games in Linux?
103 • root and games (by Jesse on 2010-09-02 11:58:21 GMT from Canada)
I think dopher makes an interesting point. On a single user system where the OS is run from a live CD, really the only long-term point of infection is the user data. Everything else is wiped out, probably once or twince a day. This is the same whether you run as root or a non-root account. If my non-root account is hacked, the attacker can still run scripts, download/upload files, etc
Though, I have to wonder if the risks of running as root (and from a live CD) are really worth the effort saved by not creating another account? Caitlyn is right, while running from a CD means the OS is fresh on each boot, it also means stale packages with security issues. Which leaves the user open to being attacked every time they boot up.
104 • Virus and root... (by disi on 2010-09-02 12:22:57 GMT from Germany)
of course is it more dangerous, if a program from a website runs as root or as user.
The best Antivirus program is the user himself. As long as people fall for false advertisement, there will never be a cure. Windows Antivirus programs are only good, or give a good feeling, if they pop up from time to time and if it's only to tell the user something like "updated database!".
Operating systems are always vunerable, because they have to run programs to work and the programs are on a HD and not e.g. SoC like on a play console or calculators.
There was just recently the bug that debian implemented, that if the library path is not defined, the system searches for libraries to run from the users home directory. So code could be run from the users home directory, if the program has suid set, it could even run the code as root and install stuff systemwide. Whereas, if you are root anyway it can do that immediately.
Just some thoughts about the discussion. :)
105 • On-line safety, #101: Home users (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 17:42:46 GMT from United States)
Jesse wrote: Most people here don't make money off the paranoia of Linux users, we (at least I) make money cleaning up compromised systems. Promoting on-line safety doesn't make me money, it loses me money.... but it helps me sleep better. That's true for me as well. I've made very good money cleaning up the mess after a security incident. I even have an award hanging on my wall from Lockheed-Martin for work I did cleaning up at a federal government agency. I still think prevention and avoiding problems in the first place is the best approach.
#101: @dopher: You really need to remember that today's typical home computer has more storage and more processing power than many servers did just a few years ago. When you add persistent broadband connectivity an ordinary home computer is every bit as inviting a target as a server was not all that long ago. Yes, I am a professional systems administrator and yes, I have that perspective. I seriously believe that nowadays home computers can't be treated any differently than enterprise systems.
Take a look at how a botnet works. It isn't about raw computing power of individual systems but rather to hijack as many systems as possible. There is no distinction between home and business, is there?
106 • Games (by Jesse on 2010-09-02 19:03:26 GMT from Canada)
>> "Could it be that there is a shortage of our favorite games because there is a shortage of games in Linux?"
I don't think this is accurate. There are a lot of games for Linux. Check out some sites like http://happypenguin.org/ and http://www.linuxgames.com/ . Or, for that matter, do a search for "game" in your distro's package manager. They usually aren't advertised as much as games for other systems, but there are some great titles available.
I would agree there aren't as many "big name" games for Linux, but there are plenty of time wasters to choose from. Most of them are free of charge too, which is nice.
107 • Linux, I WILL defend it! (by Ron on 2010-09-02 20:51:32 GMT from United States)
What most people use the computer for is:
Internet - Checking email, watching videos, social networks... Linux covers this.
Open Office covers most of what the average user needs. Abiword for that matter covers it.
And there is much more.
More people are buying gaming consoles as it is, I personally like PC gaming myself. However Microsoft has pushed, bribed and lied with manufacturers so that most games are made for MS Windows. Come on. You buy any premade computer and Windows is installed. Of course manufactures are going to go for that first, not because Windows is better there are just more computers that run it due to Microsoft monopolizing that.
People can use any Linux Distro they choose. I am sure most people will tell new users that Ubuntu, followed by Mint, are they best and easiest to use for the average user.
So when I hear people put down Linux it makes me think that they have a hidden agenda or they pretend to know more then they actually do.
Linux, by default, is just more secure from the start. It is more stable and the fact that it is open source, the code there for all to see, is a major plus. This means some corporation can't hide anything and if their is a security hole anywhere it is fast.
I use Windows for one Game only, you can call it my gaming console in a sense. Everything else is in Debian and Debian suits me just fine.
Yes. I will defend Linux and BSD. It is a proven fact that Microsoft sends people out to infiltrate conventions, forums, etc. If they have to PAY people to do that, then common sense says there has to be an equal and opposite pull for Linux. Difference is I don't do it for money. I do it because I am a strong believer and lover of Linux (as well as BSD.)
108 • correction for 107 (by Ron on 2010-09-02 21:01:22 GMT from United States)
"and if their is a security hole anywhere it is fast."
and if there is a security hole anywhere it is fixed fast.
109 • #107: Linux preloaded (by Anonymous on 2010-09-02 21:47:24 GMT from United States)
#107: @Ron: I bought my HP netbook with Linux preloaded. So did Ladislav. (We have the same model.) Granted HP is only offering Linux in their business line now but they still are offering it.
Dell offers systems with Linux preloaded. They claim that roughly a third of their netbooks are sold preloaded with Ubuntu. They offer larger laptops with Linux as well. I believe they have announced that they are getting back into Linux desktops soon.
Here in the U.S. we have a nice variety of Linux boutique hardware vendors, some of which have been around for many years. Many even have reasonable prices; See: http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/09/7-providers-of-pre-installed-linux.html
ASUS is again offering a nettop (mini-desktop) preloaded with Linux.
So, your statement: "You buy any premade computer and Windows is installed." is just not accurate. It hasn't been in quite some time.
I also don't agree with the "most users" will recommend Ubuntu line. A growing number of people in the Linux community are becoming disenchanted with Ubuntu and I have never recommended it as best for newcomers. Heck, Ubuntu has removed the name Linux from their website. So much for Canonical promoting Linux for the desktop. They only promote themselves and give back painfully little compared to other major distros.
Anyway, my recommendations to newcomers:
1. Mandriva 2. Pardus 3. Linux Mint 4. PCLinuxOS
in that order.
110 • To quick to press enter (#109 is mine) (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-02 21:48:06 GMT from United States)
Sorry, folks. #109 is mine.
111 • Zareason looks cool (by disi on 2010-09-02 22:25:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
I read about them at linux.com. The warranty is cool :)
We keep it simple. If you break something, order a replacement. If you think a piece of hardware is faulty, send it in. The Open Hardware Warranty was inspired by the Make motto: If you can't open it, you don't own it but if you want us to service it like you're accustomed to, that's ok too.
112 • #107 (by KevinC on 2010-09-02 22:56:02 GMT from United States)
That is something I have noticed as well, related to this article:
http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2010/08/keep-linux-out-of-it-please.html
Don't believe it, go to Ubuntu main page and search "linux." Zero results out of zero. Same can be said for Google with 'droid and Chrome. Then go to OpenSUSE, Fedora, or Mandriva...."linux" is easy to find. And Mint and PC LinuxOS...it's in the name.
113 • @109 (by Ron on 2010-09-02 22:59:47 GMT from United States)
You are correct. I should have worded that differently. I should have said many computers come with Windows installed but things are changing slowly.
As far as what people recommend I still think Ubuntu and Mint are on top, though I don't hate any distro. However I am a .deb kind of guy, so, lol.
114 • Ubuntu (by Ron on 2010-09-02 23:06:58 GMT from United States)
I personally am not crazy about some changes at Ubuntu, so I am using Debian. But for my daughters computer (she uses it for the basics, internet, Myspace, etc.) I have Ubuntu installed since it is very straight forward for her.
I think it is great to have a name Like Ubuntu out there that is attracting more new users. Is it the greatest out there? Depends on what one needs I think. The whole point with inner disputes and sometimes disagreements is the fact that any Distro that gets the word out about Linux, that gets more people switching or at least duel booting, is a great success.
Ubuntu is the one, in my opinion, for now. I think everyone here knows how fast things can change though and who knows what the future holds.
WITH THAT SAID. I really do not hate any distro. Some do frustrate me more then others but that is me needing to learn and get use to the way things are done with that distro.
115 • @112 (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2010-09-03 00:55:49 GMT from United States)
I just checked Ubuntu's website and did a search for "Linux". It gave me 1500 results. You don't need to mention Linux right off the bat to promote it, and that is what (K,X)Ubuntu is trying to do. IF someone asks about Linux (maybe heard of it somewhere), then you could give a simple primer or so.
116 • User/Admin, Security (by VscrollM on 2010-09-03 00:59:14 GMT from United States)
I speak as an ongoing novice who used Mac OS X pre-theft, had a long hiatus, and picked back up by acquiring Windows in hopes of moving to Linux (or, now, BSD). Certain mindsets based in short-on-info reasoning form in novice thinking. If we don't lay any of that NoviceThink out, it is even harder for helpful advanced users, and developers, to help us efficiently.
Permissions problems drive many users who don't know all the risks to run as administrator. I don't know how the permissions ramifications differ on Linux distributions. The Linux/distribution prospect might want to study up on the permissions aspect of any choice considered.
Regarding security, it is easy to fall into thinking in two neat categories, physical access as one, remote exploitation as the other. The unsophisticated user who believes that physical security of the computing machine is good, and who looks for and installs what are touted to be robust (if imperfect) security-protective tools for online activity and is somewhat careful with Javascript and Flash, is quite likely (speaking for myself) to run as administrator. Attention-seizing anecdotes may be what would motivate a change--but we shouldn't feel that anyone is duty-bound to shake us up.
117 • On-line Security (by ANON on 2010-09-03 01:22:18 GMT from Canada)
I read an article about nmap a couple of years ago and out of curiosity I installed knmap (kde front-end) and let it run on a range of about 2000 IP addresses. One IP address in the list caught my attention because it advertised port 8080, which I happened to recall seeing in my router admin pages. I typed in "IP address:8080" in my browser and was greeted by the login for a common consumer brand wireless router. I don't remember the model, but I decided to try the typical "admin" + no password login, and to my complete surprise I was logged in! I browsed a few of the pages, noticed there was a few wireless clients logged on and the wireless settings were factory defaults. Why this guy had enabled remote access was a mystery. I had no malicious intent so I just changed his essid to something like "turn off remote access dummy!" (I believe there was a 32 char limit), and logged out with a chuckle, hoping that would open his eyes.
Anyways, this little venture taught me that there are probably thousands of hackers/crackers with more sinister intentions constantly browsing the IP landscape with more automated tools, and looking for ways in.
118 • javascript in your WebBrowser (by RollMeAway on 2010-09-03 02:35:34 GMT from United States)
No matter how secure you think your system is, if you have javascript enabled, as most people do, YOU HAVE NO SECURITY !
If you venture to the wrong web page or click on some flashing icon, even on a known webpage, a malicious javascript could access just about anything you can. Doesn't matter what operating system you are using !
Without something like "NoScript", or similar, you are a destined to be exploited. Even with NoScript, it just slows them down. Firewalls are useless. You have to enable port 80, or 8080 else you cannot browse the web yourself.
Google, Yahoo, facebook etc. exploit this vulnerability daily. They probably know more about you than you can imagine.
The ONLY way you can be safe is to disconnect from the WWW.
119 • #115 (by KevinC on 2010-09-03 02:59:57 GMT from United States)
Here: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Ubuntu's main page, where google will take you. Find a "linux" there.
120 • @ 117 (by Anonymous on 2010-09-03 04:55:13 GMT from United States)
Would you enter someone's house that was unlocked and leave them a note "Lock the door, stupid" or are you only disrespectful of others when you are behind a computer?
121 • @117 and wireless router (by disi on 2010-09-03 07:50:24 GMT from Germany)
What you did is outrages. I would never touch other peoples hard- or software without being asked to.
This kind of behaviour should not be accepted and reminds me on scriptkiddies, especially the name you chose...
122 • #117 scriptkiddies (by Anonymous on 2010-09-03 08:26:03 GMT from United States)
yeah, there are few members on tuxmachines who can track visitors with bots and hack into their computers if they get the chance.
123 • @120, 121 (by ANON on 2010-09-03 09:11:40 GMT from Canada)
How would you prefer to be notified that you left you home network wide open to attack? By your bank and credit card companies? You have a very naive view of what actually goes on in front of your computer.
124 • Robin Hood? (by disi on 2010-09-03 09:19:50 GMT from Germany)
you do not disable someones network and insult him, in order to remind him that his security settings are unsecure! Without you guys there would be no need for all those security features in the first place...
I still believe there are areas in the world, where people do not lock their doors and carry weapons around to protect themselves :D
125 • Re: #109 Linux for newcomers (by silent on 2010-09-03 10:14:53 GMT from France)
Well, it is an honourable list if you mean a Live CD or a static install for rookies who are not yet able even to install multimedia support on their own. However, Mint would not exist without Ubuntu at all, the vast majority of "Mint packages" are available from the repositories of Ubuntu. Pardus is great, but the number of packages in the official repos (without testing and contrib) is fairly limited. The visual design of PCLOS is a matter of taste, in my view it could be improved. Puppy has not been mentioned; I guess it is due to the root login concerns. By the way, I love the philosophy of ubuntu and it is a great distro, like many others.
126 • Break, enter and inform (by Jesse on 2010-09-03 11:02:19 GMT from Canada)
@117: While the actions in post 117 might not be malicious, there are a few things wrong with this picture.
1. Accessing someone else's computer (or router) without permissions is illegal and it's a really bad idea to post your illegal activity on a public forum.
2. Putting insults in their router ID isn't a very nice way to tell them you were there. If you want to educate someone, do it politely. Making someone angry when you've broken the law by accessing their computer network without taking steps to hide your own ID (such as IP address) is also naive. They probably won't call the police, but if they do, the router probably logged your address.
3. If the person didn't already have his system locked down, what makes you think having his wireless connection tell him to will cause him to fix it? If he's running a router with remote access he (or she) probably doesn't know anything about security.
Your intent might have been good, but the approach (and then talking about it) show a lack of maturity. The right thing to do in those cases is, sadly, just leave it alone. This person doesn't know you, they probably don't want your help and will not welcome your advice. Help the people around you (family and friends) get their systems secure and leave anonymous folks alone.
127 • Ubuntu 10.10 beta - Some codecs during install (by trotter1985 on 2010-09-03 11:17:58 GMT from United States)
I'm doing an install of the latest Ubuntu 10.10 beta, released yesterday, and note that the install script - something which has changed very little over the last several releases - now has two interesting options. You can "tick" two boxes during the install, one to add MP3 codecs and the other to do updates. It will be interesting to see just what else, if anything, is added with the first option. I've always been interested in just how difficult folks find it to enhance a basic install of Ubuntu with "restricted extras," and additional codecs from Medibuntu, versus an automated install such as is done with Mint. You can ask the same kind of question for upgrades/enhancements of Fedora, openSUSE and others, but for now I'm watching the Ubuntu trail with interest.
trotter1985
128 • Ubuntu 10.10 beta - Installation Script (by trotter1985 on 2010-09-03 11:22:10 GMT from United States)
In my last message, I meant to be more specific that the complete installation script for Ubuntu has changed, at least on the surface. It is still as straightforward as ever, but the order of details has changed. trotter1985
129 • @126, etc (by ANON on 2010-09-03 11:30:06 GMT from Canada)
Yes, I did a bad thing, and I did it exactly once. I'm sure you are all angels too. You don't know me and vice versa. Do you speed when driving, and by how much over the limit if you do? Did you ever brag about how fast you drove? Do you come to a *complete* stop at every stop sign you encounter. You can lecture me on the morals of my actions, which I'm quite aware of, but take a look at yours too before trying to sound like you're better than me.
The point of my post, which seems to have escaped you, is that yes, there are probably really bad people out there who will use easily available tools to pry their way into your computer. This is a real world example of one way that can happen. Prior posts talk about how bad Puppy is for running as root but gave no indication on how an intruder could actually gain access. This is one such example.
You may now continue with your lambasting....
130 • @129 (by jake on 2010-09-03 12:18:59 GMT from United States)
Paraphrased: "I only walked around the block checking for unlocked doors & open windows once, m'lud! I didn't steal anything, I just left a PostIt[tm] on the teapot of all the insecure houses I found! Surely there's no harm in that? If I were a Bad Guy, I would have stolen the teapots!"
Grow up, ANON. You'll find no sympathizers here. Please note that ladislav has your IP address ... as do all the machines you broke into. Think about it.
131 • @119 (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2010-09-03 12:22:31 GMT from United States)
A post by devolute on the blog you mentioned in 112 said it well,
"It's not important for most users to know that Linux is behind Ubuntu in the same way that it's not important for most users to know that their Windows install sits on a FAT32/NTFS/whatever hard drive"
132 • @109 (by Antony on 2010-09-03 12:51:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think your suggested list of distros for Linux newcomers is bang on.
By the way, I have done an incredible amount of distro-hopping over the years. I do keep an eye on things still, but I think it would have to be something pretty special to lure me away from Pardus.
Regards.
133 • looking for livecd with kde4.5 and Nvidia drivers (not Nouveau) on disk (by bill on 2010-09-03 12:53:57 GMT from United States)
helping out someone who states "laptop will not boot with Nouveau driver" and is not command line aware
anyone know of such?
.deb or .rpm based package management kde4.4.5 with repo for 4.5 would also work
thanks,
134 • 130 (by ANON on 2010-09-03 13:51:34 GMT from Canada)
I deserve you well thought criticism jake. Perhaps you should search for a hacker website and give them a piece of your mind too. Maybe that will put an end to all this web security stuff. And for the IP address, did you want me to email it to you?
For those who really are interested in security and not finger-pointing or veiled threats (if you really want my IP address jake, just ask), I suggest you install nmap (and one of it's front-ends), run it on your local network - use the os-detection flag and run it on the full range of ports. Look at the results, maybe you'll rethink your 'run as root' strategy when you see what others 'out there' can find out about you. And if you have any windows pc's, this may be the thing that makes you reconsider that os.
135 • Ref#133 nVidia drivers (by Verndog on 2010-09-03 16:06:06 GMT from United States)
Bill, I had issues with both my Ubuntu OS's - Lucid & Maverick.
With Lucid after installing Ubuntu's nvidia drivers I kept getting dropped to a VT on bootup. It was a long journey. I mistakenly thought it was Autologin, the realized it was GDM not starting.
Then after removing and re-installing GDM it worked for several boots, then finally crashing again. Finally I found this link: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1467074
and installed nvidia's latest driver for my card - 256.53.
Both Lucid and Maverick now work perfectly.
136 • @verndog (by Anonymous on 2010-09-03 16:24:54 GMT from United States)
thanks, I also found this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia (figuring it could be done in failsafe mode) and a howto to change to vesa at boot which would give them a gui to work in as they're a feared of command line.
137 • @134 (by jake on 2010-09-03 21:14:20 GMT from United States)
You miss my point.
To get back to the PostIt[tm] analogy, most of my neighbors are retired. They would *probably* hide if you entered their house to put a note on their teapot, and you would escape un-molested. Although some would probably call the cops as soon as you left the property, most probably wouldn't out of fear of retribution. Some of 'em would probably never even notice you had been there, until they found the note.
The neighbor to my immediate north is also retired. He was in the Army for close to 30 years. He's mostly illiterate, crippled with arthritis, and bad tempered to go with it. If he found you in his house unannounced, he'd shoot you. No questions asked. As an unfortunate crack-head discovered last year. The jury cleared him, "self defense".
Enter my house without permission, and my 3 SchH3 GSDs[1] will hold you until I arrive to cuff you and hand you over to the police, as a similar crack-head discovered several years ago. The K9 officer who hauled him off got licked by my Alpha Bitch (his police dog is her brother). The Judge who cleared me & the dogs said "stupidity *should* hurt!".
Basically, you are advising people to randomly enter networks *without* knowing what the response will be. Not wise. There are some real nut-jobs out there.
No, I don't run as root, and yes my networks are locked down. It's kind of what I've been doing for a living for close to forty years. No, I don't need or want to look at script-kiddie web sites. And no, there is no software from Redmond or Cupertino in my machine room ... except a 10 year old Win2K box, and an aging iMac, both air-gapped, neither of which has booted in a couple months.
[1] The same three dogs are also certified therapy dogs, and always welcome at the Yountville Veterans Home ... and anchored by one of my Greyhounds or Whippets make for a pretty good flyball team. Context is everything to canines, and the cognizant trainer will take advantage of that.
138 • Why is there no torrent link for Uberstudent LXDE in the news entry? (by Campact.de on 2010-09-04 08:41:57 GMT from Germany)
http://uberstudent.org/releases/LXDE/1.0/uberstudent-lxde-1.0-cicero-desktop-i686.torrent
139 • Shameless self promotion :) (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-04 14:58:22 GMT from United States)
I have a new article on O'Reilly Broadcast that some of you may enjoy with the unlikely title "Are You Intimidated By Breakfast Cereal?" It is about Linux :) See: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/are-you-intimidated-by-breakfa.html
140 • Cereal blog (by Jesse on 2010-09-04 16:26:58 GMT from Canada)
While I think one of the big strengths of the Linux community is its diversity, I do think the way in which that diversity is often presented is intimidating to new comers. Linux users will often suggest five different options in answer to one simple question.
For instance, I often see the "What's a good distro for newbies?" answered with five or six suggestions. Which really isn't helpful to someone looking for a direct answer. The same with desktop environments and media players and text editors etc etc.
Someone who has grown comfortable with Linux will enjoy the wide range of options, but most new comers just want a clear cut answer to their questions and computing needs.
To follow the cereal aisle idea, imagine someone coming from a developing nation going into a super market looking for cereal. The range of choices will be overwhelming and confusing, but to someone who has shopped at the super market for years will feel right at home.
141 • Debian coolness (by Anonymous on 2010-09-04 16:48:55 GMT from Canada)
Forget about Sid, the new cool is to run the Debian experimental branch :-)
142 • #140: The problem with direct answers (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-04 17:43:54 GMT from United States)
@Jesse: The problem with a direct answer is that usually the person posting the question doesn't give enough information to receive a straight answer in return. Which distro is best will depend on a number of factors, including the hardware they are using and what they do with their computer. I would respectfully submit if I just gave one answer, say Mandriva, and the person had low end or legacy hardware they would almost certainly be disappointed with the result.
Going back to the cereal idea, what you say about someone coming from a third world country is true. Would anyone seriously suggest we reduce the number of cereal choices to make new immigrants more comfortable? Similarly we should not limit our choices to make newcomers feel more comfortable. Removing choice is still a supremely bad idea.
143 • @140 (by jake on 2010-09-04 18:01:00 GMT from United States)
Actually, someone coming from the proverbial "developing nation" probably wouldn't understand the western concept of "cereal" ... and indeed, when introduced to the concept would in all likelihood wonder what the point of packaging cardboard chips in a cardboard box was all about.
Likewise, most Western folks going to market in a "developing nation" wouldn't have a clue what to buy ... too many ingredients, not enough food!
I'm reminded of my friend from the former Soviet Union. He was enrolled at Stanford in (roughly) 1984. I was given the job of showing him around Palo Alto. When we got to the old Co-op Market on University Avenue, he was absolutely convinced that it was a "show place" that the government had put together for foreigners, as a kind of propaganda ... in his eyes, there was no way that ordinary people could have access to that kind of thing!
I'll leave the obvious analogies as an exercise for the reader ...
144 • Asking questions ... Someone should write a HOWTO (by jake on 2010-09-04 18:04:44 GMT from United States)
Oh, wait ... someone did!
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
145 • Sharing files on home network (by Thomas on 2010-09-04 18:11:44 GMT from United States)
Your answer to Sharing files on home network will work, but for what he plans on doing, FreeNAS will also work with significantly less effort. I've helped Windows users set up FreeNAS servers with no more help than printing the instructions and handing them the disk with the words "Read and follow label directions" and in a few hours they've all been successful. My FreeNAS server is currently running on an old 400MHz PII with 348MB RAM, but it only uses about 5% of the processor and 20% of the RAM so the machine in question would run it with no difficulty at all.
146 • #144: Great link (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-04 18:18:13 GMT from United States)
@Jake: I had seen that How-To before but had forgotten all about it. It's a very good read. I'd like to think we aren't all "hostile people" but there is certainly a share of impatience with newcomers who don't do any homework in the geek community. As much as I try to avoid it and hate to admit it, I've been guilty of that myself at times. The How-To also has very good advice about how to find answers without having to ask and how to show you've done some research but are still lost and need help. Again, good read. Thanks for posting it.
147 • Choices (by Jesse on 2010-09-04 19:18:00 GMT from Canada)
RE: 140 "The problem with a direct answer is that usually the person posting the question doesn't give enough information to receive a straight answer in return."
In which case the response probably shouldn't be a shot-gun style list of possible answers, but a request for more (specific) information.
I completely agree that the choices we have are good and I'm not in favour of getting rid of them. I am in favour of providing information in a more organized fashion. Putting better labels in the cereal aisle, as it were.
Jake's example of the fellow from Russia was actually exactly what I was thinking of with the super market concept. I read a book a while back about a former Soviet who defected to the USA and he talked about his first experiences with shopping. Disbelief and overwhelming, mostly. I think novice Linux users have a similar reaction to the variety of options in the FOSS community. It's not reasonable to throw two package managers, a dozen text editors and three sound systems at them and expect them to like it. Not at first, it's just sensory overload.
I think new comers need more direct guidance than a fistful of choices. Later they'll grow to appreciate the 250 choices that come up in their package manager when they search for "text editor".
148 • #147: Overwhelming choice (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-04 19:56:52 GMT from United States)
@Jesse: Your comments parallel those of someone on LXer.com who also knew a person newly arrived from the Soviet Union. See: http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/31000/ I am not disagreeing with you. However, in the example gus3 gives the young woman who was overwhelmed on day one was a "power shopper" three months later. I think that analogy fits here too. Yes, on day one things can be overwhelming. That is true whenever you make a significant change in anything and moving to Linux is a significant change. What I don't buy is Mr. Morrison's claim that it is still confusing 12 years later. I have to wonder what his agenda is.
I also agree that sometimes the answers given are not the best for newcomers. That is something best fixed through education and advocacy, not by limiting choices.
It's been a good week on DWW. Lots of topics discussed and mainly respectful and reasoned discussions.
149 • Slackware (by Robert on 2010-09-04 20:56:25 GMT from United States)
It has been several weeks since I ventured into the world of Linux. I started my journey with Slackware and after reading a ton of man pages I was able bring my laptop into a usable, stable awesome machine. After several weeks of installing and re-installing I have now removed most packages and only have fluxbox, gkrellm, nano, eterm and firefox.
To say the least this system is both fast and lean. It has not been easy, many times I would remove dependencies or libraries required by underlying software. I ended up just removing packages and left most of the default libraries intact.
I have lost some functionality, like my wireless mouse no longer works. But I will figure this out as well. I will also continue to tweak this system in hopes to truly understand how the kernel and added software work together.
It has been a fun albeit frustrating journey but I will trudge on.
Robert
150 • @144,146 (by Henning on 2010-09-04 21:42:49 GMT from Denmark)
I, too, have read the document that jake links to. It refers to other people as "idiots" and "losers". Oh yeah, great reading Caitlyn.......... The people who wrote that document may be technically skilled people. But they are "idiots" and "losers" themselves when it comes to one basic skill in human behavior: -Treating other people with just a basic amount of respect.
151 • New Users (by Landor on 2010-09-04 23:31:59 GMT from Canada)
I think a key issue everyone forgets when they discuss new users to Linux is the overall ability of the person coming to our community for the first time.
As it stands right now most new users that come to Linux found out about it in two ways. The first one is mainly through some educational system, or work related. The second is through technical interest. I only consider this for most, not all, as I first stated.
What we have when we view the above are people that are already able to easily understand a lot of the concepts surrounding Linux. For those that go to Linux solely on their own, they already had abilities in the way of problem solving and critical thinking. If they did not, they wouldn't have arrived at this point. It's then fairly given that most people would expect such users to apply the same skills they already have to fixing any issues.
Let's take DistroWatch as an example. I've read here numerous times where people had been using Linux for quite some time and never posted here because of their uneasiness in regard to interacting with the community on a technical level. That leads me to believe that they also felt that way dealing with problems they had with Linux. So in essence, they must have only either observed, researched, or never fixed the problem. Given the fact that they remained tells me they struck out on their own and did what is always done, find a solution.
The type of new users that would be overwhelmed in a cereal aisle are nowhere near the majority of new users to Linux in my opinion, not by far. The group that would be are an extremely small minority. That minority is so small I would imagine that the only way they would generally (remember I said generally here) come to Linux is through the guidance of someone else. Then its up to that other person to help them as needed.
If we consider someone buying a computer with Linux preinstalled, and we're only discussing what is commonly thought of as the average user, then they should have no problems at all with the change as an OEM should have the system configured, and software installed to meet its intended userbase.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
152 • Before You Ask (by Anonymous on 2010-09-04 23:35:58 GMT from Canada)
One source of information that is missed quite a lot is the release notes! An individual will install the latest and greatest version of distro X, something will not work as expected, and a futile web search will ensue. Because the "problem" is so new, no information has been harvested by google yet. Meanwhile, said problem is clearly documented as a known issue in the release notes, but nobody reads them!
I've been stung by that one once, and decided to read them ever since and it's saved a couple of late nights. After a new install of SuSe (9.2 I believe), I couldn't get it to work with my USB backup drive. It would recognize it, mount it and I could start copying files but within a few seconds the transfer would stop. Searched high and low for an answer, nothing. Reinstalled, nothing. Took the damn drive apart! Finally gave up and decided to try later, much later. One day I happened to be browsing the documentation and noticed the release notes which said issue with USB drives if you have a separate /usr partiton...doh...yes, I had a separate /usr.
153 • Re: New Users (by Anon on 2010-09-05 00:20:43 GMT from Norway)
#151, Landor, wrote: "That leads me to believe that they also felt that way dealing with problems they had with Linux."
I believe this is very close to a bull's eye observation with regard to migration to Linux in the 'classical' way, i.e. deliberate change of OS. I myself was wondering and pondering about Linux for TEN years before I dared try the leap (from OS/2). I may of course be an exception, but my uncertainty about my own computer knowledge/abilities may also be a rather common phenomenon. Mildly put...
It is of course a lot easier to migrate today than in, say, 2000, but venturing into the, for many, literally unknown is not something we do easily. So if we want more people use Linux, we must do all we can to make their passage as easy and comfortable as possible. This is where Ubuntu shines. Personally, I am now using Arch... :)
154 • A very special toy (by NippoNoob on 2010-09-05 00:54:43 GMT from Brazil)
. >"Because Linux will never be anything more than a toy when it comes to desktops, because no one here agrees on anything."
Hey, spaceranger1, this is what I do with my "toy" in a regular basis:
I pay all those monthly bills (water, electricity, telephone, etc.). I pay my yearly income tax. I swap e-mail messages with many people around the world, including some relatives in Japan. I send documents to my job site, tens of kilometers away from the countryside place where I live. And I also trade a lot of shares in Bovespa (a Brazilian stock exchange). Last year alone, I earned R$ 37,682.84 (approximately US$ 21,289,74) with some bluechips.
I do other (less important) things with it, of course...
That's the trustful Linux. Just start playing with such an amazing "toy", and you would certainly wish to be a kid for the rest of your life! .
155 • (K)Ubuntu Maverick Beta (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2010-09-05 01:10:22 GMT from United States)
I justy upgraded my Kubuntu from Lucid to Maverick. So far, I've had no problems.
@151 - As they say over on another site, I resemble that remark. I first learned of Linux back around 2002 from a TechTV show. I first tried Mandrake 9 with KDE, but that didn't last long. I've since used Mandriva, (open)SUSE, (K)Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint. Now I have Kubuntu 10.10 dual-booting with Windows 7.
156 • @154 A very special toy indeed (by Anonymous on 2010-09-05 03:38:49 GMT from Canada)
My toy desktop was used to create forms with the GIMP that are mailed to 1,000,000+ people every year. A microdot on each form features your favourite mascot Tux. The penguin is everywhere.
157 • @150 (by jake on 2010-09-05 05:06:35 GMT from United States)
It's called "intentional hyperbole", sometimes called "hospital humor". Nearly all high-stress jobs have some version of it. It's for blowing off steam, and for distancing one's self from potential emotional adversity. It is usually only used between professionals in the field in question, not in front of the lusers & idiots^W^W^W clients. The television series M*A*S*H was/is a good example of the genre.
Except when the professionals really are describing the actions of idiots & lusers *in that category of professionalism*, of course. Like the guy who calls me in to fix the PC on the credenza behind his desk about once a calendar quarter "because it did something funny". Invariably, when I get there I have to dust the keyboard & mouse pad ... and the log files show that nobody has logged into it since I was last there. The guy has never even asked me for the password ...
Back story: This guy is the CEO of a major shipping company. When I bid on the job, something in the way he was talking caught my ear. When he took off for lunch, I asked his secretary if he was fairly computer-literate. She smiled sadly & said "no" in a quiet voice ... And added later (I took her out to lunch) that he had no clue, and in her opinion was afraid to learn. He got the big wammy-zammie, $3,500 dollar PC, she got a similar box, the same motherboard, with slower CPU, less & slower RAM, and much slower & smaller hard-drive. Daft, eh? I intentionally didn't give him the password (easy to say "OOPS! Sorry! the next morning, right?).
In the first month, I got called out eight or ten times "BIDSF", all of which I charged him for. The second month a couple times, the third month once, then it settled into the same quarterly pattern it's been in for nearly 15 years (several upgrades later ...). After the end of the first month, I suggested a special service "just for him", over the weekend, so I wouldn't get in the way of his important job. The secretary volunteered the several hours overtime to "supervise me".
Needless to say, we swapped out all the good kit between her box & his ... including a fan. I commented that "I had found a duct loose, tightened it & quieted the computer down" ... and refused to charge him for the "service" because I "missed it" in the initial installation. About two weeks later, he called me back in "BIDSF" ... as usual, nothing in the logfiles other than fire-up & shutdown. I again refused to charge him. Later in the month he called me out again, and I did charge him. After that, it went to the quarterly-ish schedule. I haven't charged since ... I told him that he's such a good customer (I get lots of other real work from his company) & he always calls before "the problem" gets too big, that it's a freebie just for him.
Remember, techies-in-training, secretaries are the folks who really run corporations (kinda like non-coms in the military). Use them as the resource they are, and ALWAYS treat them well ... the boss, to this day, has never asked for the password ... but I'm here to tell you that he runs a hell of a shipping company. I own stock. But as a computer user? He's a clueless luser^W^W good client :-)
158 • RE: 153 (by Landor on 2010-09-05 06:58:24 GMT from Canada)
As its been discussed here before, it doesn't really matter what distribution a person is using at all. None of them really shine any brighter than the other. The steps are understanding the needs and whomever is providing the installation/support (which in a scenario where someone wouldn't adjust well, that has to be the case, nobody who can't understand or accept change readily looks for it on their own) fully takes that into consideration when filling that role for the individual. I personally could take any distribution and make it work for pretty well any new user as long as their needs were explained to me fully. That's not boasting either, just stating that they pretty well all fit as long as you make them fit.
When many look at Ubuntu they immediately make the mistake that's the opening sentence in my post #151. There really isn't a whole lot that makes Ubuntu extremely user-friendly. Not if you measure it solidly against some other top distributions. Other than some desktop flair and integration, nothing actually stands out. Where the mistake lies is that the view of Ubuntu being amazing and virtually easy to use for anyone brand new to Linux is the fact that people in our community are the ones making these claims. One example of the reason they make this claim would be Video Driver installation. I can tell you that most new users that don't know a lot about computers wouldn't even know what a Video Driver is, So how can this be measured as something that is perfect for new users? I personally would never hand anyone an Ubuntu CD (or any Linux Distribution) that had no experience installing an OS, let alone Linux. So again, that negates the myth, from my perspective only of course, that there's any real new user friendly distribution, not just pointing the finger here at Ubuntu. I'd wager that at a minimum of 95%, all new users to Linux have some kind of technical interest or background. The other 4.99% have someone that fits that criteria supporting them, to some degree.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
159 • Hadron GNU/Linux (by A Gilbert on 2010-09-05 08:49:50 GMT from Australia)
Is it just me who first read Hadron GNU/Linux as Hardon GNU/Linux?
160 • @157 (by Henning on 2010-09-05 09:29:29 GMT from Denmark)
Point well taken.. We use "hospital humor" where I work as well. But we keep that tone of voice strictly to the "staff room".
Think I will use the advice in that document to keep myself from being considered an "idiot" :-)
161 • @160 ... Using advice. (by jake on 2010-09-05 12:01:03 GMT from United States)
That is precisely why you, Henning, are *not* an idiot.
It's intellectual Judo ... Know what you know, keep yourself educated & up-to-date in your field, ask questions where necessary, do your job, and side-step the stupidity. Occasionally someone might need to be slapped on the way by, but hopefully you[1] are capable of teaching and they will sit up and listen ... and if they aren't listening, drop 'em on their arse. Maybe they'll come to their senses. If they don't, chances are good that they will bail out ... and thus be out of your hair, whilst giving you another fulcrum to leverage your career[2].
[1] Generic "you" ... Not singling anybody out here,
[2] Gawd/ess ... Did I really type that? Am I going Corporate in my old age? ::shudder::
162 • Should jake take some of his own medicine? (by Richard on 2010-09-05 12:50:10 GMT from Canada)
Jake, I read Distrowatch and comments on a weekly basis, and you are surely in the top 10 as far as quantity and verbosity of comments goes. Maybe I'm wrong but a lot of your comments tend to be towards security, at least that's what stands out to me. Yet you consistently give out more and more information about yourself through your anecdotes and stories about your life and career. In this set of comments alone you've divulged tons of info about yourself. And you are calling one of your CEO clients a "luser". How do you expect people to take you seriously, especially on the matter of security, when you are so open in a public forum.
There are some real nut-jobs out there.
163 • I think Hadron should be banned! (by Randy J. Anderson on 2010-09-05 21:44:06 GMT from United States)
The folks running Hadron are rude and like to assume we are n00bs!
And one of the answers on its web pages is an insult. => Telling me I'm a n00b and to F-off and get Ubuntu!
Also bad English! I noticed improper spelling! (Is Hadron being ran by a 12 year old?)
I will stay with Gentoo, thanks!
164 • Off Topic Security (by Anonymous on 2010-09-05 22:32:09 GMT from United States)
Does anyone know how to set up an open desktop, but require a password to simply access an email client? Therefore letting anyone use the computer but not just any access to email. Thanks in advance
165 • @ 139 • Shameless self promotion :) (by Caitlyn Martin..) (by Mark Glover on 2010-09-05 22:57:58 GMT from United States)
--------------------------------
Caitlyn,
I enjoyed your response to Graham Morrison. Not sure where he's been these past 12 years but he certainly hasn't learned anything about Linux during that time if he's still utterly confused by the basics. And he's a Linux review editor for Tech Radar UK?! ..Give me a break!
Anyway, what I'd like to ask is what text to speech engine is in use on the O'reilly' Community website? Is it something we can use with Linux?
I listened to your article spoken by the text to speech application in use and found it quite good. If it's available for Linux I'd appreciate knowing what it is so I can give it a try on some of my own projects.
Thank you for your excellent articles and reviews. They are much appreciated.
Mark Glover
------------------------------------------------------
166 • E-mail password (by Jesse on 2010-09-05 23:13:10 GMT from Canada)
@164: Why not set up your main user account on the desktop to auto-login? Then create another, password protected account that has your e-mail client set up. That way most people won't need a password, but whenever you want to check your e-mail, you can "switch user" and enter the password. When you're done, logout and you can switch back to the regular, public, account.
167 • @164 Open Desktop (by Anonymous on 2010-09-05 23:13:30 GMT from Canada)
You could set the desktop manager (i.e. gdm or kdm) to automatically log on a specific user. Both of these desktop managers have gui configuration for that purpose - I'll assume you know where in the menu system to get to the configuration. Or you could install nodm or slim, both of which can be set to auto-login for a specific user, but necessitate editing a file in the /etc directory system.
Here's a good section on the email part. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=407078
168 • @164 (by jake on 2010-09-06 01:57:23 GMT from United States)
Have you looked into adjusting user & group permissions for the process(es) involved?
Please keep in mind that even then, if your users have access to Teh Intratubes and a Web browser, they can still access gmail, hotmail, et alia ... and I still know of a few "semi-open" mail servers that allow telnet connections, if you verify to the owner that you're a person, not a spam-bot.
169 • @162 (by jake on 2010-09-06 02:12:59 GMT from United States)
Robert, what I write is accurate in content ... but the details are munged. Consider, for example, my post in 157 ... The CEO might be a CTO or a CFO or other TLA ... He might, in fact, be a she. His secretary might be male. I may have bought her dinner, not lunch. The credenza might be a return. It's probably not actually a shipping company. His PC might have cost $3,300, or $4,300. Etc. See where I'm going with this? The message (content) is accurate. The details that make it readable? Not so much.
THAT said, to respond to a deleted post, I think it was Ted Sturgeon who said "90% of everything is crud" ... allow me to extend that to "99% of everything you read on Teh Intratubes is crud". So statistically, I'm probably talking crap. Believe me, or don't. Suit yourself, no skin off my teeth :-)
Hopefully someone, somewhere, learns something every time I post.
170 • 158 (by Anonymous on 2010-09-06 04:04:04 GMT from United States)
Hey Landor, who's in the .01% you didn't mention?
171 • RE: 170 (by Landor on 2010-09-06 04:26:51 GMT from Canada)
The one percent?
That's a very specific, and very small group of people in my opinion. A tiny, tiny, tiny fraction coming from what I believe the actual majority of "average computer users" and why I believe we don't see that group in Linux though our community is always talking about them as if we do, or will, en masse.
People who for some reason bought a computer system with Linux pre-installed and have no idea what Linux is, or have no real technical knowledge,do not work in the computing field, and have no direct link to anyone that knows about Linux. It also includes people who again have no technical knowledge, do not work in the computing field, and have no direct link to anyone that knows about Linux, yet for some reason or another has decided to try it.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
172 • @170 (by jake on 2010-09-06 04:32:21 GMT from United States)
"Hey Landor, who's in the .01% you didn't mention?"
I'm not Landor ... but my guess would be boundary, edge & corner cases.
That'd probably include me, Landor, the editors of DWW, & various other loud-mouths willing to have an opinion that doesn't necessarily follow the opinion of world-wide corporate marketing.
(Robert & Henning ... I don't know either of you well enough to include you in the above list ... but please do continue to contribute here. I enjoy reading your comments. Thinking is always good.)
173 • @171 (by jake on 2010-09-06 04:37:31 GMT from United States)
0.01% is one hundredth of one percent ... thus my comment ;-)
174 • RE: 173 (by Landor on 2010-09-06 04:51:04 GMT from Canada)
I'm forever making errors and I actually enjoy it sometimes too. :)
Know who else I enjoyed reading comments from, though we didn't get along and I did my best to ignore him after the one incident, Forest. He happily expressed his difference of opinion and like you I always appreciate that in someone. Shame he doesn't post here now.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
175 • Addition Regarding Puppy (by Landor on 2010-09-06 05:57:56 GMT from Canada)
I've stated before that I always found Barry Kauler's work with Puppy interesting to say the least. There's another project I wanted to mention that I've mentioned here before, Simplux. I think another distribution may have taken that name by now. At the time though, I found in the Puppy forums that someone was melding Puppy and Gentoo, and I found that amazing.
One thing you can say about Puppy is that it has really inspired a lot of people within its community to get excited and experiment by doing a lot of off-beat things with it. The Puppy-Gentoo hybrid being just one.
Like Jake said, thinking is always good. :)
I found the thread. I'll have to see if anything ever came of it in the end. I just looked and there's even a post from March 2010. Anyway, here's the link for those that may be interested
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=25854&start=150
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
176 • #165: Sorry, but I really don't know (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-09-06 06:22:16 GMT from United States)
@Mark Glover: Sorry, but I really don't know what O'Reilly uses for text to speech. My only suggestion would be to use the customer service form at http://oreilly.com/contact.html or e-mail webmaster@oreilly.com My experience with O'Reilly staff is that everyone has always been friendly and helpful. That was true when I was just another customer and I don't think anything has changed in that respect.
I wish I could be of more help.
Number of Comments: 176
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
TUXEDO |

TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
Archives |
• Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
• Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
• Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
• Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
• Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
• Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
• Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
• Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
• Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
• Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
• Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
• Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
• Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
• Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
• Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20 |
• Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
• Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
• Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Full list of all issues |
Star Labs |

Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
Random Distribution | 
ExTiX
ExTiX is a desktop Linux distribution and live DVD based on Ubuntu, offering a choice of alternative desktop environments.
Status: Active
|
TUXEDO |

TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
Star Labs |

Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|