 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 379, 8 November 2010 |
|
Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! With the two big 4th quarter releases (Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14) now behind us, it's time to enjoy the fruit of the hard work the two distro's developers have done over the past several months. But which of the two big distributions should you choose? Jesse Smith interviews Jared Smith, the current Fedora project leader, before examining the latest version of the Red Hat-sponsored distribution - read on for some suggestions and recommendations. The world of free operating system never sleeps though, so this week also brings information about some interesting developments in the world of Ubuntu (with news of an eventual transformation to Wayland as the distro's preferred display system), PC-BSD (with a new snapshot release that includes a choice of KDE, GNOME, Xfce and LXDE desktops) and Mageia (with a roadmap targeting March 2011 as the time of the project's first release). Also in this issue, don't miss the Q&A section which gives hints on blocking access to inappropriate websites and the new distro sections with an arrival of the newest operating system designed for older computers - CTKArchLive, based on Arch Linux. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (38MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
|
| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Trying on a new Fedora
 When it comes to reviewing distributions, I find that the most difficult one to write about is Fedora. Not for technical reasons -- setting up a new install of Fedora is as easy as falling off a bicycle and typically less painful. The aspect I find difficult is personal and comes from familiarity. I have used Fedora (and Red Hat Linux before that) on a regular basis for about a decade. I find that using anything for that amount of time results in either becoming accustomed and comfortable with a product's quirks, or overly irritated by them. In my relationship with Fedora, I find I've experienced both. Once every six months I find myself impressed with the wonderful new features put forward by the Fedora team and, at the same time, I find that little rough patches irk me more than they should. At any rate, I bring this up because I really wanted Fedora to have an objective evaluation and, despite my human nature, I hope I have done that. Please excuse any evidence of rose-tinted glasses.
First off, I think it's worth mentioning that the Fedora Project has a new website. What was previously a fairly plain white and blue affair is now a bright and colourful presentation. Personally, I find the new look appealing and easier to navigate than the old site. There seems to be more focus on the community aspect of the project now than on just its technical characteristics. I think this gives Fedora a more open, friendly face. I especially enjoy the group photo on the front page which features a person wearing FreeBSD's daemon horns, it shows the team has a sense of humour.
Before the launch of Fedora 14, I had a chance to run some questions by Fedora's new Project Leader, Jared Smith...
* * * * *
 DW: Jared, as memory serves, this will be your first Fedora release as Project Leader. Have there been any surprises in your new role?
JS: There haven't been many surprises. The Fedora Project is very open and transparent about the work it does, so I had a very good idea of what to expect when I took on this new role. That being said, I must admit that I was a bit surprised that we only needed to build one release candidate for the final release of Fedora 14. I was very pleased with how smooth the release engineering for the Fedora 14 release worked out.
DW: Looking at the feature list for Fedora 14 it seems that a lot of work is going toward keeping the project on the bleeding edge, especially where developer tools are concerned. Is there any specific feature that you feel really stands out?
JS: I don't think there's one feature that's head and shoulders above the others -- this release has a lot of great new features in many different areas of Fedora, from systems administration to development to end-user applications.
DW: One of the items on the feature list is OpenSCAP. For people who haven't used this technology before, could you please explain how it works?
DW: The Fedora Project is offering the latest release on Amazon's EC2 cloud. Does this provide feedback, usage statistics or benchmarking you can use?
JS: No, not really. There's nothing different on the feedback mechanisms in the EC2 image than in a regular Fedora installation. As you might imagine, we take user privacy very seriously, and we don't collect user information without the user opting in. (For example, you can opt-in to using the Smolt application to report limited system information.) We also get some very general feedback from our mirrors about how many systems check for system updates, but other than that, we have no other methods for tracking installations.
DW: You said a few months back that you want to help users become open-source contributors. Have you seen progress on that front?
JS: Absolutely. I think we're starting to do a better job of highlighting ways that users can contribute back to Fedora and collaborate with the greater open-source community. There's still a lot of work to do, but we're certainly improving the way we help mentor new collaborators within the project. Our design team, for example, has put out some design bounties as a way of encouraging new contributors to join the design team. The bounties have also served as a tool to help showcase the tools and methods that the design team uses to do their work, so that others can learn from their experience.
DW: Fedora is a cutting-edge distro that has a lot to offer developers. Is the project also working to attract newcomers to the Linux community?
JS: Of course! One of our main goals for the redesign of the new fedoraproject.org website was to better introduce Fedora to those people who might be new to Linux. Based on some very early feedback, it appears that the new website design is having a positive effect in that regard.
DW: You've been doing a lot of travelling in your new role. Where do you see Linux and FOSS making the most headway, geographically?
JS: It's a bit difficult to name just one location, so I'll have to make some generalizations. I'm seeing Linux and FOSS make a lot of headway in various areas of the world, but especially in countries where there is a prevailing attitude of openness to FOSS within the government. Several Latin American countries, for example, have strong commitments to FOSS within the government, and that has really helped with FOSS adoption within the private sector as well. I'm very excited to see the growth of Linux and FOSS in emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China.
DW: Is there anything you'd like to add, about Fedora, Red Hat or open source in general?
JS: I'd be remiss if I didn't give thanks to all the various teams within the Fedora Project that have helped with the Fedora 14 release. My thanks go out to the packagers, the release engineers, the testers, the designers, the translators, the writers, the ambassadors, the marketing team, and everyone else who played a hand in making Fedora 14 a success.
* * * * *
For my experiment with Fedora 14, I used the 32-bit GNOME edition. Fedora also provides a KDE flavour and both desktop options come in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. Additionally there is an install DVD with a more complete collection of packages. For people on fast networks, the distribution provides BFO, a minimal boot environment which runs over the network. Recently the project has also encouraged other spins, which allow community members to put together a variety of flavours, including LXDE and Xfce editions.
The Fedora CD launches into a GRUB menu which allows the user to boot into a desktop, either with the project's defaults or with failsafe video settings. The system loads fairly quickly and presents the user with a graphical login screen. At this point the system waits for a few seconds and, if it isn't interrupted, will log in to the distro's guest account. The desktop environment is GNOME 2.32, which has an intense new wallpaper and the design brings to mind a glass window breaking in hyperspace. I like the new look, though I find my eyes sometimes straying to the shards on the right. As usual, the application menu and system tray are located on a menu bar at the top of the screen and the application switcher is located along the bottom. On the desktop are two icons, one for exploring the computer's file system and the other launches Fedora's installer.
Fedora 14 - working with the distribution's administrator tools
(full image size: 262kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
The application menu is loaded with a fairly standard set of programs. There we can find Firefox (version 3.6.10), Evolution, an instant messaging client and a remote desktop client. There are disc burners, CD rippers, a music player and video player. There is the Shotwell photo manager, a small collection of games, and the usual group of little programs for editing text, managing archives and a calculator. GNOME is also equipped with a good collection of programs for changing user preferences, such as the look & feel of the desktop, mouse behaviour and preferred language. A little experimentation shows that, by default, Fedora does not come with codecs for playing popular media formats. Nor does the distribution come with Flash (or the open source Gnash player). These extras can be found in the RPMFusion add-on repository.
One of Fedora's strengths, in my opinion, has always been their collection of administrative tools. That tradition continues in Fedora 14 and we find programs for creating SELinux policies and trouble-shooting SELinux conflicts. There's a flexible firewall manager, a simple (yet effective) package upgrade utility, a user-friendly services manager and network configuration tools. During my trial I found that all of these worked smoothly.
The distribution's system installer hasn't changed much over the years and it doesn't need to. Fedora's installer provides a nice GUI for walking the user through choosing a keyboard layout, storage media type, the local time zone and setting a root password. Partition management is easy and Fedora provides a powerful set of options for resizing, creating and deleting partitions. After partitions and mount points have been configured, the installer confirms the boot loader's settings and goes to work copying over the necessary files. My only complaint regarding the whole process comes from setting up a root (/) partition. When installing from a live CD, the user must format their root partition with the ext4 file system, a restriction not found in most other distributions. After the system is rebooted, Fedora runs a configuration wizard which informs the user of the project's licensing. The user is then asked to create a non-root account, set the current date & time and (optionally) send a hardware profile to the Fedora Project. A few seconds later, a graphical login screen is displayed.
Fedora 14 - the system installer
(full image size: 187kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Fedora didn't do badly with my hardware. When running on my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card) my screen was set to a suitable resolution, audio worked out of the box and my webcam was picked up, though it required a little tweaking to get it working smoothly. Unfortunately my Intel wireless card was not detected. As with previous releases, my touchpad worked, but didn't treat taps as mouse clicks. The mouse behaviour can easily be changed in the system settings. I'm happy to report that the video card issues I experience with Fedora 13, where my laptop would slow to a crawl, have been resolved and performance this time around was good. Running the latest Fedora release in a virtual machine showed that Fedora would boot and run smoothly with 512 MB of memory -- less than that would cause sluggish performance. I was pleased to discover that this release integrates well with VirtualBox and running Fedora as a guest OS was a seamless experience.
The Fedora project has gone through a handful of graphical package managers over the years. The distro's current front-end to package management is called Add/Remove Software. It's an interesting beast in that it's a little different from other mainstream package managers, but it has bits and pieces which are familiar. For instance, the layout comes across as a simplified Synaptic with a nice icon set. Software categories are listed down the left side of the window, specific packages are shown on the top-right and a description of the currently highlighted package is shown at the bottom. The categories and package selection work much the same as Ubuntu's Software Center, and a simple click marks the package for installation or removal. The application is also equipped with various filters, which reminded me of YaST's package handler.
After a new piece of software was installed, the system would offer to run it for me, which I thought was a nice touch and saves users from hunting through the menu to find a new item. Unfortunately, I found the Add/Remove Software tool to be slow to respond to my input. Clicking on a software category would cause the application to take a few seconds to process my request. I also found that the application would request my root password again for each new package (or groups of packages) I wanted to install. For example, if I installed GIMP it would prompt me for my password, if I then tried to install a game, the prompt would appear again. Perhaps this is intended as a security feature, but it's a restriction I don't usually see in package managers. Underneath the GUI is YUM, the command line package manager. Running from a terminal, I found YUM to be fast and smooth. The Presto plugin, which downloads delta updates rather than entire updated packages, is enabled by default. On average, I found that this reduced my bandwidth usage by about two-thirds when performing updates.
For people who want to install updates from a GUI, there is a small update utility available. I only used it twice, but I found that it did a good job balancing information with a tidy interface. It worked well and I didn't encounter any problems. I would have liked to see more progress information as packages were installed, as very little is shown to the user after the update process is kicked off. One last note on package management: when a user tries to run a program from the command line which is currently not installed, the system will check its repository information and, if a match is available, will offer to install the missing program. This is very convenient and I found that my occasional typo didn't slow down the system much while it checked for a match... most of the time. Making a typo while a software update was in progress would bring my command-line work to a sudden halt.
During my trial I found most aspects of Fedora to be secure. Most network services were turned off by default, SELinux is running out-of-the-box and the Fedora team maintains their good track record of staying on top of security updates. The one thing which stood out as a sore point is that if secure shell is enabled then any regular (non-root) user can login and remotely shut down the machine. For home users this probably won't be a big deal, since if another user is logged in a non-root account is blocked from performing the shutdown, but this could provide an unpleasant surprise for people running test servers. I'm curious as to why this characteristic is in place since, as far as I know, other distributions don't allow regular users perform remote shutdowns. The big new change in this release is OpenSCAP and I took a look at the pieces currently available. At the moment it's very much in the early stages and my first impression is that of a toolbox where sysadmin tools will soon be placed. Hopefully we will see more of this technology and its documentation in Fedora 15.
For the most part my time with the latest Fedora release was pleasant. I think a good deal of polish has gone into Fedora 14 and I have enjoyed using it quite a bit more than I did version 13. I only encountered one notable bug and that was immediately after completing the install. Upon reboot, I forgot to remove the live CD and so was brought to the CD's boot menu. I selected "Boot from local drive" and was told the system wasn't able to boot. Removing the CD and letting the machine boot normally from the hard drive worked. It's a bug I normally wouldn't have found, but it struck me as odd that the CD wasn't able to turn control over to the local disk. Otherwise, once my system was up and running, my impression of Fedora 14 is that it's solid and performs well.
Fedora 14 - performing a backup and working with SELinux
(full image size: 213kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
There are a few specific items for which I believe Fedora deserves praise. For instance, in recent releases I've found myself wrestling with SELinux and, often as not, disabling it to get rid of the warnings. To date I haven't had any problems with SELinux in Fedora 14. I'm also happy to see Deja Dup, the easy-to-use backup tool, is prominently featured in the application menu. It's a great program which combines flexibility with an intuitive interface and it's nice to see Deja Dup on display. I also had a chance to test drive a Fedora 14 USB Flash drive this week, thanks to Ms Schiltz at Red Hat. For the most part the USB edition worked just like the CD edition, with the exception that the USB drive comes with OpenOffice.org pre-installed and the CD does not.
In the end the impression I get from Fedora is that it is more a development and testing platform than it is a desktop for your average home user. There is very little multimedia support, no Flash, and (on the live CD) no office suite installed by default and the project maintains a short support cycle (about thirteen months). The project has a more friendly feel to it now than it did six months ago, but it is still targeting the more technically inclined members of the community who don't mind working around the occasional quirk. If you like to stay on the cutting edge without being cut, or if you want to keep up with the technology going into Red Hat, then Fedora 14 is an excellent choice.
|
| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Ubuntu embraces Wayland, PC-BSD launches first 9.0 snapshot, Mageia announces roadmap, MeeGo's growing pains
 There is never a dull moment in the world of Ubuntu. After the previous week's announcement about Unity becoming the default desktop in the project's upcoming release, last week brought another radical change: Wayland, an OpenGL-based display management system, is to (eventually) become the distro's default display system. Although this is unlikely to happen before the release of Ubuntu 11.10 in October 2011, Mark Shuttleworth argues that the move will be great for those manufacturers (and users) who have good open-source drivers for their graphics hardware: "The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We'd like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we're doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it's an area we can make a useful contribution to the project. We're confident we'll be able to retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode, so this is not a transition that needs to reset the world of desktop free software. Nor is it a transition everyone needs to make at the same time: for the same reason we'll keep investing in the 2D experience on Ubuntu despite also believing that Unity, with all its GL dependencies, is the best interface for the desktop. We'll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there's no reason for them not to be there on day one either." The blog post has already generated nearly 200 reader comments some of which are also worth the read.
* * * * *
 The developers of PC-BSD, an easy-to-use FreeBSD-based operating system targeting desktop users, have announced the start of a new development cycle, leading towards version 9.0. Kris Moore, the project's founder and lead developer, revealed some of the upcoming improvements and additions in his "9 Current Snapshot Available" mailing list post. It includes plenty of good news for the (long-neglected) users of the GNOME, Xfce and LXDE desktops: "I'm pleased to make available our first 9-Current alpha snapshot for you to begin playing with. This testing snapshot contains MANY new features and improvements that we plan on including in the eventual release of 9.0. However, by no means is this snapshot 'feature complete' or to be considered stable. Expect to find bugs and things to change over the coming months as we refine features. Here's a short list of some of the major changes from the 8.x series: ability to select system meta-pkgs at install / post-install time, with various desktops such as KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE; new PC-BSD Control Panel; PBI format has been completely overhauled and reimplemented as CLI." Testing installation and live DVD images for i386 and amd64 architectures are available for download from the project's FTP server.
* * * * *
 The Mageia project, created by the former employees of Mandriva Linux, has published a rough roadmap of its inaugural release, scheduled for the end of March 2011. The final build will be preceded by two alpha versions, the first of which is expected as early as next month (December). Other Mageia news from the just-published "Mageia: under construction!" blog post by Anne Nicolas include creation of a build system, mirror setup, Wiki documentation, logo submission deadline and distro specifications: "After the installation of the servers, hard work has started on the build system installation and configuration. The system administration team is basing the new infrastructure on Mandriva Linux One, adding lots of cleaning and improvements. Puppet is the main software used to centralize the administration and Misc is working on writing all the needed script for the Mageia environment. Together with lots of bug fixes and improvements, Iurt is now installed on build nodes. Iurt is a recompilation bot which monitors lists of packages of different architectures and recompiles each package in a separate clean chroot each time it is needed."
* * * * *
 Finally, a link to an interesting article about MeeGo, an Intel/Nokia-sponsored Linux operating system for mobile devices. Although the project has released its second major update in recent weeks, some tension is starting to emerge between the main protagonists of the distribution. David Neary writes in "The MeeGo Progress Report: A+ or D-?": "The project has had some teething problems. Troubled Nokia has changed CEO, and the founding father of the Maemo project, Ari Jaaksi, has been among a number of high-level software executives to leave the company, leading some to ask whether Nokia might have a change of heart about the platform. The first MeeGo device for Nokia, originally expected at the end of 2010, will now appear in 2011, according to recent comments from new CEO Stephen Elop, as Nokia strive to ensure a good first impression for its first MeeGo device. There are some early public signs of friction in the working relationship of the stakeholders in the project, also." The article focuses on the yet-to-be-released MeeGo for handhelds (rather than the already available netbook edition), but it does give an interesting insight into the current situation within the project.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Blocking access to inappropriate websites
A little while ago one of our readers posted this question in the comments section of DistroWatch Weekly: "There seem to be plenty of programs to block Internet pornography from kids for Windows or Mac, but not many available for Linux. Can someone recommend a suitable program to block access to pornography in Linux?" There weren't many responses so I'd like to offer some options.
The best solution for the job will depend on a few factors -- specifically your comfort level with configuring Linux software, whether you're trying to prevent your kids from accidentally stumbling across pornography or forcefully blocking it, and if you have specific sites in mind or general topics.
For instance, let's assume that you would like to keep your children from accidentally clicking on a link that takes them to a pornographic website. And we will also assume that they're not actively trying to find such sites. The easiest solution is to have them use Firefox and install a filtering extension such as ProCon. You can install this extension from within Firefox with just a few mouse clicks and it will block most obvious pornographic material by default. It can be configured to filter specific material too via a simple GUI interface. While this solution is easy to implement, it is also easy to disable, so you have to assume the computer user is okay with being restricted to certain sites. The extension doesn't actually block your machine from connecting to the unwanted website, it simply prevents Firefox from displaying it.
On the other hand, if you're planning to block a small list of specific websites and want to forcefully lock things down, some distributions provide tools for the job. Mandriva, if I recall correctly, has an easy point-n-click interface in its Control Center. The Mint distribution also comes with a simple domain blocker. The downside to this approach is that the filter requires that you type in each forbidden domain name and there are a lot of pornographic sites out there.
Another option is to allow access to specific websites only. This is handy if you have a dedicated computer just for the children. You can make a list of sites you want to them access and stop traffic to all other sites. The Firestarter application (available in most distributions' package repositories) is a really good point-n-click tool for this sort of setup. I find it's an easy program to work with and recommend this approach if you want to really lock down the net. The main drawback of this solution is that if adults are using the machine, then the restrictive filter gets in the way.
A fourth approach will allow you to block pornographic sites based on content and makes it difficult to disable the filter. This requires that you create a web proxy on your machine with a filter that will search out and block keywords. All web traffic is redirected through the filter regardless of which browser is used, making it more difficult to by-pass. Joe Bolin wrote a tutorial on setting up one of these filters in his article A parent's guide to Linux web filtering and I think it is a good read. The downside is that this is the most complex solution to put in place.
Of course, these are all technical solutions for your own computer. Sooner or later your children will have Internet access at school or at a friend's house and those computers might not be as protected as your own. For that matter, they may stumble across the more traditional forbidden magazine. It's probably best to address that possibility before it happens.
|
| Released Last Week |
OpenBSD 4.8
Theo de Raadt has announced the release of OpenBSD 4.8. Some of the more interesting improvements in hardware support and software updates of this release include: "ACPI-based suspend/resume works on most machines with Intel/ATI video, machines using NVIDIA graphics will not resume the graphics; OpenSSH 5.6 with many new features and bug fixes; Mandoc 1.10.5, a utility used to build all manuals in the base system and in Xenocara from mdoc and man sources; over 6,400 ports, major robustness and speed improvements in package tools; package highlights - GNOME 2.30.2, KDE 3.5.10, Xfce 4.6.2, MySQL 5.1.48, PostgreSQL 8.4.4, Postfix 2.7.1, Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8 and 3.5.11, OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, PHP 5.2.13, major components - Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.5 with X.Org Server 1.8 + patches, FreeType 2.3.12), GCC 2.95.3, 3.3.5 and 4.2.1 + patches, Perl 5.10.1, our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS and DSO support...." See the OpenBSD 4.8 release page for more details.
Fedora 14
Fedora 14, a new version of the leading edge, free and open-source operating system with many innovative features, has been released: "Fedora 14, code name 'Laughlin', is now available for download. What's new? Load and save images faster with libjpeg-turbo; Spice (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) with an enhanced remote desktop experience; support for D, a systems programming language combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages such as Ruby and Python; GNUStep, a GUI framework based of the Objective-C programming language; easy migration of Xen virtual machines to KVM virtual machines with virt-v2v...." More information can be found in the press release, release announcement and release notes.
Sabily 10.10
Mehdi Magnon has announced the release of Sabily 10.10, an Ubuntu-based distribution with a collection of Islamic software and a web-filtering utility: "The Sabily team is proud to announce the release of the new version of Sabily 10.10, code name 'Al-Quds'. What's new: new 'Al-Quds' pictures and wallpapers, new Plymouth and GDM themes; new screensaver pictures; new Sabily logo; Zekr 1.0.0; new software - Alfanous - Quranic search engine. New from Ubuntu 10.10: new Ubuntu Software Center; the Ubiquity installer has been redesigned to be easier to use as well as to install drivers and download updates during installation; GNOME 2.32; Evolution 2.30, much faster; Shotwell has replaced F-Spot as the default photo manager." Here is the brief release announcement.
Sabily 10.10 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with a collection of Islamic software
(full image size: 986kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Alpine Linux 2.1.0
Jeff Bilyk has announced the release of Alpine Linux 2.1.0, a distribution designed for x86 routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes and servers: "Alpine Linux 2.1.x brings several new features: Linux kernel 2.6.35.x kernel, GCC 4.5, Perl 5.12, Asterisk 1.8, PostgreSQL 9.0, Dovecot 2.0; PHP/Apache 2 support; initial support for udev as alternative to BusyBox mdev; X.Org Server 1.9 (with udev and hotplug support); GTK+ 2.22; Kamailio 3.1. Some of the minor fixes include: ping as normal user works; the package alpine-base ships /etc/alpine-release; 'lbu package -' should work even if there are pre/post scripts to lbu; less verbose Alpine init, only show error if any; no info message about not starting mounting modloop; encrypted apkovls should work again." Here are the complete release notes.
Sabayon Linux 5.4 "Experimental Spins"
Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of five new "spins" of Sabayon Linux 5.4: "Our crew, is happy to announce the immediate availability of E17, Xfce, LXDE, SpinBase/OpenVZ, ServerBase Sabayon 5.4 'spins' built on top of Sabayon 'SpinBase' ISO images. Under the 'experimental spins' umbrella, the Sabayon developers are going to experiment with new stable releases with different package compositions. The E17 Spin contains the Enlightenment 17 desktop environment. Xfce and LXDE contain the respective desktop environments, while SpinBase/OpenVZ contains an OpenVZ template ready to go." Read the rest of the release announcement for a summary of features of each spin.
Webconverger 7.0
Kai Hendry announced the release of Webconverger 7.0, a Debian-based live "kiosk" distribution that boots into the Firefox web browser. The biggest change of this release is the base system update from Debian "Lenny" to Debian "Squeeze": "Webconverger 7.0 marks a huge milestone for the Webconverger browser-only operating system, since the Debian base system has upgraded from 'Lenny' to Squeeze'. The 6.2 to 7.0 changelog has several highlights such as: upgrade from Mozilla Firefox 3.5.8 to 3.6.12; switch from Splashy boot animation to Plymouth; upgrade from Adobe Flash 10.1 to Flash 10.2; faster booting thanks to Debian Live's live-boot and live-config. There has been a community discussed privacy change whereby Webconverger 7 reports its version to a ping service." Here is the brief release announcement with a screenshot and some relevant links.
* * * * *
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
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 15 November 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 • Web Filtering (by G R on 2010-11-08 10:58:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
What about the DNS solutions?
At a quick glance, OpenDNS has a freebie one here:
http://www.opendns.com/familyshield
As long as the filteree (?) doesn't have root access and can't change DNS records, it's probably the easiest and most foolproof (as far as these things can be). Only downside is it isn't FOSS, but then again the content on these websites isn't CC...
2 • Re: Fedora review (by silent on 2010-11-08 11:27:30 GMT from France)
If installing multimedia support, Flash, or office suite is an issue, there are some remixes (Omega, Fusion, etc.) already including them, or one can just create a custom Live CD with Revisor. I don't think that Fedora is meant to be used on servers; if one needs long term support then RHEL, CentOS, or Scientific is the way to go. If Fedora provided LTS, who would buy RHEL anyway? ;)
3 • Web Filtering (by meanpt on 2010-11-08 11:33:11 GMT from Portugal)
Whenever possible, OpenDNS is also my preferred solution.
4 • "setting up a new install of Fedora is as easy as falling off a bicycle" (by Santa on 2010-11-08 11:37:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
I beg to differ. After many attempts to install F14 in standard(Gnome) and Xfce 64bit versions using custom partitioning, I failed. Then I allowed it to install using the hated LVM default, American locale/language/keyboard and it worked first time. Then I had to confront all the nonsense of installing 'non-free' items, to find that even the Adobe Flash for 64bit is only 'experimental' - and refused to install (at least, on the timescale I was prepared to expend). I used to like Fedora, but what with the bloat, the blind obedience to copyright Law, dubbed by the Mint guys as misguided government interference, or words to that effect, it's time to say goodnight. My advice to those seeking trouble-free Linux operation is to ensure the developers are located in Ireland, Australia, Germany, China? and a couple of others with enlightened social structures.
5 • Fedora 14 LXDE (by meanpt on 2010-11-08 11:54:51 GMT from Portugal)
It's light enough to work in a virtual box with 450 MB of RAM thrown in, and idles at 115 MB after booting. But, again, the princess fell from the horse. Either in a live session or booting from the HD, IOAPIC kernel crashes occurs in each booting. After a first selinux update we are "offered" more 94 updates after which the background was lost and the IOAPIC problems remained. When a locked screen happens one may loose the password - had to reinstall it as it was my faster way to move on). Why can't these supposedly high mark distros offer weekly updated (and tested) iso(s)? After a month it becomes impractical to update a system. I'll try now the XFCE and see what happens. And no, no more Gnome trials on Fedora this time. Heck ...
6 • Ubuntu going Wayland & other things (by megadriver on 2010-11-08 11:55:46 GMT from Spain)
While not the biggest fan of Ubuntu, I have to applaud this bold move. I hope they are ready to back their words with code (and money!), though.
CTKArchLive looks very interesting. I may "convert" the old memory-limited PCs of some friends of mine to Linux with this. It would be great if an Arch-based solution could do the trick!
I'm sad to hear about the Meego project having problems. I like its concept much, much more than that of Android.
7 • Fedora (by LAZA on 2010-11-08 12:35:06 GMT from Germany)
@4: your lucky!
My try to install Fedora 14 new on an existing partition killed my LVM where my /home now WAS...
Fedora 13 did it without any problems, also my /home-Partition was integrated.
8 • Not add/remove Software!!! (by kami84gr on 2010-11-08 12:44:04 GMT from Greece)
Hi, I just want to clarify that Fedora's graphical package manager is not called "Add/Remove Software" !!! Its name is Package Kit , which is a cross-distro graphical package management tool.
I suggest that you correct that on your review cause it sounds a bit akward...other than that, nice review!
http://www.packagekit.org/index.html
9 • RE 8 (by 1234 on 2010-11-08 12:55:43 GMT from United States)
wow actually someone read the review!!
but you are correct about that unles they change the name in the menu
10 • Package Manager (by Jesse on 2010-11-08 13:12:25 GMT from Canada)
@8,9:
"Add/Remove Software" is what the package manager is referred to on the menu and it's what appears in the title bar of the program. Technically, yes, it's Package Kit (or gpk-application) if you want to be technical, but they don't call it that.
11 • #2: RHEL 6 release coming soon (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-08 14:05:27 GMT from United States)
I can safely say that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will release very soon. Within a month or two after that release new versions of CentOS 6.0 and Scientific Linux 6.0 should appear. That means that the option of a stable, enterprise grade distro with relatively new applications will be out there for both the server and the desktop.
12 • Fed14 Slow boot (by jjames on 2010-11-08 14:38:04 GMT from United States)
My experience with Fedora 14, was it installed very easily, no problems whatsoever.
To areas I question is.
1) Boot up time takes 40 seconds, Ubuntu Lucent and Maverick) takes 19 seconds!?
2) The cd is about as large as Ubuntu and yet doesn't come with any Office products.
13 • re: Wayland (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 14:42:54 GMT from United States)
nVidia has no plans to support Wayland. Shuttleworth is essentially planning to break his users desktops for no good reason, again. After the botched migration to Pulse Audio, you'd think he'd learn.
14 • @10 (Jesse) (by kami84gr on 2010-11-08 15:45:26 GMT from Greece)
Well, Fedora tends to give different menu names to some programs, mainly to help the new users find their way around. But that also hides the original name which the team responsible for the creation of that tool has chosen.
It's not a big deal I know, but I'd rather see in this or on your next reviews , the correct names of those applications even inside a parenthesis , next to the alternative name. Although this is something that fedora sould have done also in their menus.
P.S. I always read distrowatch's reviews on distros ;-)
15 • Wayland (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 16:04:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wayland is referred to twice as an "X server". It is not an X server, it's a completely new display system.
16 • PC-BSD 9 (by Izaac on 2010-11-08 16:23:33 GMT from Mexico)
Let's see if they complete the long waited Bluetooth support out of the box for this version =)
17 • RE:13 So What? (by Eddie on 2010-11-08 16:28:02 GMT from United States)
You are trying to panic people for no reason. Wayland is more or less already compatible with all the drivers that x supports. nvidia has never loved open source so they are acting normal. Anyway it's going to be over a year before this could happen and then the effect will be nil.
Pulse Audio works just fine and furthermore maybe you shouldn't let a propitiatory closed corporation tell you which open source applications are worth using. They could care less.
18 • Fedora 14 is buggy (by danger on 2010-11-08 16:28:26 GMT from India)
I feel fedora 14 is buggy on my system.
19 • Fedora 14 Live media and OpenOffice.org? (by Scott Dowdle on 2010-11-08 16:48:53 GMT from United States)
Fedora has some package overhead, mainly with regard to SELinux, that makes fitting OpenOffice.org on the Live media challenge. As a result, OpenOffice.org is not included in the LiveCD media. I thought there was going to be a LiveDVD media this release but apparently not. One new feature for the upcoming Fedora 15 is to change to the compression used to one that saves more space... so hopefully LibreOffice will fit on the LiveCD media in Fedora 15.
Regarding codecs for patent encumbered media types, RPM Forge is your friend. Flash should be the same to install as on other distros... but no, Adobe does not offer a 64-bit repo... and if you want to use the 64-bit Flash you have to download their "Square" release which is basically a tar.gz of the flash library that you copy to /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins (or something very close to that, it's in their install instructions).
One thing not covered in the review is the great support for virtualization provided Fedora if you have VT in your CPU and can run KVM. Unfortunately the SPICE supported added in Fedora 14 takes a lot of manual work and neither virt-manager nor virt-viewer provide SPICE support yet... but I believe that will come in Fedora 15.
To the people who have had issues with installation using a customized partitioning scheme... I'd strongly recommend you see if the issue is reproducable and report a bug. I've done a lot of installs with various partitioning schemes and I've not run into any problems myself.
To the person complaining that the Fedora install media gets outdated very quickly and even a short time after the initial release there is a lot of updates... I completely agree. I happen to like Fedora's active update process although they did recently adopt a new update policy that should see less disruptive updates. I think the quickly outdated install media is balanced by the easy ability to make personal respins and remixes of Fedora... and I'd like to see more activity in the remix community with Fedora spinoffs. Someone already mentioned Omega and Fusion... but there is also the Fedora Unity project that periodically releases updated install media that many find useful. While I'd love the Fedora Project to come up with refreshed install media once a month that simply isn't practical given the 6 month release cycle and all of the chaos that would cause with them making physical media for shows... and the greatly increased mirror activity that would cause. Luckily, presto does offer a significant reduction in the bandwidth needed to keep up with the updates... or one can simply switch them into security updates only mode... which I'm told exists but I haven't tried it.
20 • Wayland (by zygmunt on 2010-11-08 16:58:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
Not before time does one have the decision to make a paradigm shift fron X(11) to Wayland in the support of a display system for Linux. Although not a Ubuntu fan, at present, that could be a decisive move in my conversion. One would hope that simplification and purging could be achieved and that truly open efficient 3D, stereo graphics drivers, rooted in the kernel, and having all the networkability of the replaced X could ensue. This would spell ashes to ashes, dust to dust for all non-conforming distros. Let's hope that the change is quick and efficient and does not follow the ever lasting changes in KDE and Gnome. Let's hope the graphics server is fit for all affairs.
All a matter of Wayt and sea.
21 • LXDE missing (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 17:14:32 GMT from Germany)
LXDE can not keep save monitor settings.
But others like gnome, kde, xfce can do it easy.
Which else program i can use in LXDE for monitor settings?
the second thing i dont like in lxde is that it can not easy make program symbols, bonds and the file manager can do not much.
22 • /etc/hosts (by technosaurus on 2010-11-08 17:14:51 GMT from United States)
there are several lists of NOT-family friendly sites, just add them to your /etc/hosts file like this (127.0.0.1 == localhost typically)
127.0.0.1 bad.site.here
or to redirect bing.com to google
72.14.204.103 bing.com
23 • Wayland - DOA - Long Live X! (by rec9140 on 2010-11-08 17:15:32 GMT from United States)
I will let nVidia determine what runs on my system so long as nVidia continues to provide OEM drivers for their cards for Linux.
I don't have the hang up others have, about open/closed... I don't care, and also know its a waste to fight that battle with them. They are NOT going to open up their info for drivers, period. I'll take their free drivers for Linux. And no, don't even bother to mention noveau to me.. crap.
Wayland is DOA, as its not X, and thats enough right there. No one is going to write a version of program y for X and then another for someother desktop windowing system. Not happening. Lack of support by the graphics systems is just another nail in the coffin. This is going no where quick.
I don't look for many of the downstream distros to support this move, if any.
And as for pulseaudio... its still garbage and still incompatible with the better WM, KDE.
I don't care for that kind of vision to make things more complex and difficult in Linux than they already are... this does nothing to help Linux as a whole. Matter of fact it hurts and hinders use from corporate/enterprise down to the desktop.
Once again *buntuLand is just making a choice to be different and grab headlines and make noise... when no one else follows along this will be quietly dropped into the bit bucket it belongs in!
24 • Xorg (by Gustavo on 2010-11-08 17:16:27 GMT from Brazil)
Xorg is not efficient and has some regression on most upgrades. Goodbye Xorg!
25 • @19 Comment on the last paragraph of your post. (by kami94gr on 2010-11-08 17:19:21 GMT from Greece)
In order to avoid the outdated install media, and get the full release installation that comes with the dvd version, I personally use the netinstall method.
That way I get the full pack of programs that were intented to be in the standard installation (including OO ) and it downloads the most recent versions of them, so after the reboot my systm is already complete and up to date ;-)
26 • A bit of nitpicking (by Luke on 2010-11-08 17:22:50 GMT from United States)
Wayland isn't an X server, so it's incorrect to say it will become the default X server. It's a replacement for X, and has the ability to spawn an X server of its own. So X applications will run through an extra layer, though supposedly it's pretty thin.
Personally I don't care much for desktop effects and always turn them off when I can, but it's an interesting idea. If nothing else, competition is always good.
27 • Re: 7 • Fedora (by LAZA on 2010-11-08 12:35:06 GMT from Germany) (by Finalzone on 2010-11-08 17:24:37 GMT from Canada)
@7
"My try to install Fedora 14 new on an existing partition killed my LVM where my /home now WAS..."
It turned out you did not reset the LVM partition to the original state on Fedora 14. Doing so will display your existing home, root, swap and you should be able to erase both root and swap leaving /home intact. I am not sure if some people figured that out.
Another major mistake you made is probably the lack of backup.
28 • PulseAudio (by Ken on 2010-11-08 17:52:22 GMT from Canada)
#17-Eddie:
Maybe Pulse-audio worked fine for YOU; all you have to do is search *buntu forums for all the screeching that occurred (for very legitimate reasons) on the first roll-out. I tried on 3 separate PC's with a couple of different sound-cards, and it was NEVER stable and often took the whole desktop session down when it inevitably crashed.
That issue has since been resolved, but the fix was not issued in a timely manner, not was there ever an option to use a different audio package. There are dozens of articles about how to remove Pulse-audio because of this.
I have for years used Ubuntu on my desktops & servers, and will likely continue for the foreseeable future; but I am going to stay at Lucid LTS until the sh!tstorm of a change like wayland is either fixed or dumped. The beauty of Ubuntu is that they get so much right, and worst-case it is an easy switch to Debian if that distro wanders too far down the wrong path.
regards
Ken
29 • Web filtering. (by NOYB on 2010-11-08 18:23:42 GMT from United States)
You should have also mentioned Gnome Nanny as one of the choices for web content filtering.
30 • Fedora 14 (by Old Timer2 on 2010-11-08 18:45:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
I haven't used any Red Hat type distro for years, altho I played with the first few versions for a while about a decade ago.
Looking at Fedora 14 I was a bit underwhelmed.
It is not bad, but not striking either, I would have imagine something better after all of these years.
31 • RE:28, That's Trun (by Eddie on 2010-11-08 18:57:24 GMT from United States)
@Ken
You are correct and there were some problems with Pulse-Audio when it first came out but I didn't have any per-say. Well there were a few very minor problems that were easy to fix. Now I don't understand when you say there was no other option to use anything but Pulse-Audio. The first thing a lot of people did was to uninstall Pulse-Audio and install ALSA.
I use the LTS releases also but I do love to play with the new stuff. People cry about the adoption, or lack of adoption of a linux os by the masses and then they whine and cry when someone tries to figure out a better way and a more uniformed way of doing things. Something does need to change if people do want Linux to be adopted by the masses. Some people don't care and they are in the minority. What's been done in past years has not worked. For the server, embedded systems, and custom applications it has worked but for the mainstream desktop user it has not worked. rec9140 was correct in a way when we stated that "Once again *buntuLand is just making a choice to be different and grab headlines and make noise..." That's not true the way he meant it, but that has to be done to get mainstream support for a Linux system. If no one does that then Linux as a desktop system will be generally ignored except by a few of us. I do know that is okay for some but not for most. There is no reason for anyone to get upset or nasty over this. The ones that do get mad over this move by Shuttleworth probably don't use Ubuntu anyway so I see no problems. People need to have more fun.
32 • UEFI (by RobertD on 2010-11-08 19:09:07 GMT from United States)
On another topic,
OSNews has a great write up on a BIOS replacement called UEFI. It's a Swedish site but there is a great video showing the flexibility of the "OS".
33 • Stop crying!!!!!! (by That Dude on 2010-11-08 19:47:50 GMT from United States)
I don't get what's up with all the people bitching about this, even assuming that it happens. That decision is not final and if it is its a year or to 2 from being implemented.
It's Linux!! Anyone who "relies upon and uses" the network transparency of X, ought to be more than capable of running X no matter what Ubuntu builds in as a default.
If you don't like the GUIs, then don't use them. If you like everything about Ubuntu except Wayland, then run X instead.. If you don't like Wayland and Ubuntu migrates to it, switch to Debian (or Fedora, or Slackware, or Gentoo, or Mandriva, or SUSE, or Alpine, or CentOS, or whatever...)
These complaints don't even make sense. The new user won't care if everything work out the box. And the experienced user has the skills to change it to the way they want.
34 • RE #7 & #27 Fedora (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 19:59:28 GMT from United States)
#27 sounds like a answer I got to a similar question on version 8.
It sounds like it still doesn't play nice with others. I wonder if it still messes up the boot loader?
35 • Fedora CD does not launch into a GRUB menu (by adrian15 on 2010-11-08 20:06:12 GMT from Spain)
>The Fedora CD launches into a GRUB menu
Actually it is an isolinux menu.
Thanks for fixing that.
adrian15
36 • RE:31 Eddie (by Ken on 2010-11-08 20:26:29 GMT from Canada)
You are right; sorry if I came across as snarky...just that I am in the "If it ain't broke..." camp. I had no audio troubles until Pulse.
I would rather see some effort in dealing with the new 2TB/MBR/bios issues than a new bling GUI tho'
regards
Ken
37 • GNOME for PC-BSD? (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 20:57:47 GMT from Italy)
Great news! PC-BSD is a very promising OS, but no way in hell I was going to use it with KDE4! With GNOME it is an entirely different matter.
38 • 13 • re: Wayland (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 21:16:08 GMT from United States)
What do you expect from a rich man playing with his toy.?
39 • Leave Fedora to bug loving "experts" (by Marcello on 2010-11-08 21:21:35 GMT from Canada)
silent wrote:
"If Fedora provided LTS, who would buy RHEL anyway?"
That's the way Ubuntu works...
But that's not all. soon as you find a bug in Fedora, the so-called cummunity says; "File a bug report" But when, say, the bug is with the clipboard manager, how could anybody have escaped the bug? Everybody knows about the goddamned bug!
But nobody gives a shit because the bug will stay on bugzilla until the release is not supported. The bug then disappears from bugzilla and is often reintroduced in the latest release. Red Hat just doesn't play the game with Fedora users.
Fedora is not meant to be a distribution for all users. Some so-called experts might want to lose their time discussing problems, but that's it. Fedora will always remain second-class software in order not to prejudice RHEL the lesser bit.
For now, the only solution is to piggy-back RHEL with CentOS or Scientific Linux. The day Ubuntu sets up a security contest where it can prove equivalent to Red Hat products, I'm switching. Unfortunately. these days, it seems Canonical is more into new interfaces.
M.
40 • Wayland and Unity (by Anonymous on 2010-11-08 21:40:31 GMT from Canada)
While I'm not too crazy about Ubuntu, I think they deserve thumbs up for trying new ways. New Linux desktop perhaps.
Non of the other major distros are moving forward. Every new release all they do is they include new kernel, new version of everything and different background. Is that evolution or progress? No.
I'm also not a fan of Apple which used to use slogan "Think Different", and look at them now!
So I say Bravo Ubuntu, thanks for sticking your head out.
ps. btw all nVidia users (like me) don't have to panic, the changes will not happen over night (if ever).
41 • PC-BSD (by That Dude on 2010-11-08 21:49:17 GMT from United States)
My dream for PC-BSD
Network Manager for my Sprint Mobile Broadband + Dropbox + LastPass desktop app + easy way to get flash for netflix and hulu + Openbox/Tint2 all on PC-BSD. I might pay for all that. While your doing all that, could you put Angry Birds in the PBI.
LOL. I know the BSD purist is going nuts with my silly request.
42 • @39 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-08 21:57:56 GMT from Canada)
"But when, say, the bug is with the clipboard manager, how could anybody have escaped the bug? Everybody knows about the goddamned bug!"
Apparently I have, because I don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
"Fedora is not meant to be a distribution for all users. Some so-called experts might want to lose their time discussing problems, but that's it. Fedora will always remain second-class software in order not to prejudice RHEL the lesser bit."
Except that multiple people who don't work for Red Hat are provenpackagers, which gives them unrestricted commit access to almost the entire package repository; if it's a conspiracy, why are they playing along?
43 • OpenDNS (by Ron on 2010-11-08 22:01:33 GMT from United States)
I saw a few that have mentioned OpenDNS already. I just want to add it is one I have used for a few years now without any issue. My experiences have been positive with OpenDNS. It is free, it has many features and it is very secure.
44 • @ 11-RHEL 6 release coming soon (by forlin on 2010-11-08 22:19:08 GMT from Portugal)
It's good to know that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will release very soon, and new versions of CentOS 6.0 and Scientific Linux 6.0 will quickly follow it.
Caitlyn, do you have some safe information that you can share with us, about what are the old application and version numbers, that will be written off, and what are the new applications, and version numbers, that will replace them, for both the server and the desktop ?
45 • Blocking access to inappropriate websites (by Russ Parman on 2010-11-08 22:31:31 GMT from United States)
Another vote for OpenDNS and web-content filtering. I've found it to be an excellent solution; well worth having a look.
46 • Leave Fedora to bug loving "experts" (by Marcello on 2010-11-08 22:33:36 GMT from Canada)
awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
"Except that multiple people who don't work for Red Hat are provenpackagers, which gives them unrestricted commit access to almost the entire package repository"
Is there any need to explain the mess that ensues? Isn't it Corbet who wrote on the matter?
47 • #44: RHEL 6 (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-08 22:43:44 GMT from United States)
@forlin: Sorry, I don't have a lot of details and even if I did I couldn't share them.
48 • RE: 42/46 (by Landor on 2010-11-09 00:40:47 GMT from Canada)
Also, what about all the ambassadors that graciously spread the word regarding Fedora with financial ties to Red Hat.
I'd also like to point out that Corbet wrote an amazing piece regarding Fedora and its position on Free Software. I don't know what you're talking about with Corbet, but what does his comments about Fedora and Free Software say about his position on Fedora?
I also know a woman that is seriously looking forward to approaching the design team for Fedora so she can give back and be part of the community. Some of that may be due to information I've given her about Fedora, and their community, but I'll say this, if there is any distribution that exemplifies community participation, and trying to embrace every person they can into participating, it's Fedora. I also may even start helping out in some fashion, as soon as I look a little deeper and see where I could fit.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
49 • RE: 48 (by Landor on 2010-11-09 00:51:25 GMT from Canada)
Correction time again.
My first sentence should read: "with no financial ties to Red Hat." Major faux pas there.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
50 • Leave Fedora to bug loving "experts" (by Marcello on 2010-11-09 01:56:29 GMT from Canada)
To Landor
Here's what Cprbet thinks about Fedora:
What it comes down to, it seems, is that the Fedora Project is still not entirely sure of who its users are or how to deliver what those users want.
(...)
Back in October, Fedora 11 users were surprised to discover that a routine update brought in a new version of Thunderbird with significantly changed behavior. In January, another Thunderbird update created trouble for a number of users. In March, some KDE users were surprised to discover that a "stable update" moved them to the 4.4.0 release, breaking things for some users. In all of these cases (and more), contentious email threads have ensued.
Fedora does indeed not hold back on the updates; a quick look in the LWN mailbox turns up over 600 package updates for the Fedora 11 release - in just the last month. This is a release which is scheduled for end-of-life in a few months. Many of these updates involve significant changes, and others have been deemed "worthless". Regardless of worth, there can be no doubt that all these updates represent a significant degree of churn in a distribution which is in the latter part of its short life. It is difficult to avoid breaking things when things are changing at that rate.
So some Fedora developers are looking for ways to beef up the system.
Matthew Garrett posted a proposal for a new policy which would eliminate developers' ability to push package updates directly into the update stream. (...)
Suffice to say, this proposal was not received with universal acclaim. Some developers simply resent the imposition of extra bureaucracy into their workflow.
http://lwn.net/Articles/377389/
Published March 10, 2010
Now, Fedora 16 or 61 or 161 might be a much better release but, as far as I'm concerned, I've had enough of always wondering if I have a configuration or hardware problem or if it's yet another bug.
If Fedora wants a full of bugs rolling release, so be it, but it must be made very clear that Fedora is not for the casual user. As far as I am concerned NO known bug should persist in final releases and the only updates made should be bug fixes because not all hardware or software combinations can be checked by developers. Buggy releases have names: they're called alpha or beta. That's it, that's all.
If you want to deal with a developers's distro who update whatever they feel like and fix whenever they feel like, go ahead. As for myself, I'm not a developer and I don't wish to contribute to this kind of project. If Fedora wishes to continue this way, I see a bright future for CentOS/Scientific Linux/Ubuntu LTS.
To Landor
Here's what Cprbet thinks about Fedora:
"What it comes down to, it seems, is that the Fedora Project is still not entirely sure of who its users are or how to deliver what those users want.
(...)
Back in October, Fedora 11 users were surprised to discover that a routine update brought in a new version of Thunderbird with significantly changed behavior. In January, another Thunderbird update created trouble for a number of users. In March, some KDE users were surprised to discover that a "stable update" moved them to the 4.4.0 release, breaking things for some users. In all of these cases (and more), contentious email threads have ensued.
Fedora does indeed not hold back on the updates; a quick look in the LWN mailbox turns up over 600 package updates for the Fedora 11 release - in just the last month. This is a release which is scheduled for end-of-life in a few months. Many of these updates involve significant changes, and others have been deemed "worthless". Regardless of worth, there can be no doubt that all these updates represent a significant degree of churn in a distribution which is in the latter part of its short life. It is difficult to avoid breaking things when things are changing at that rate.
So some Fedora developers are looking for ways to beef up the system.
Matthew Garrett posted a proposal for a new policy which would eliminate developers' ability to push package updates directly into the update stream. (...)
Suffice to say, this proposal was not received with universal acclaim. Some developers simply resent the imposition of extra bureaucracy into their workflow."
http://lwn.net/Articles/377389/
Published March 10, 2010
Now, Fedora 16 or 61 or 161 might be a much better release but, as far as I'm concerned, I've had enough of always wondering if I have a configuration or hardware problem or if it's yet another bug.
If Fedora wants a full of bugs rolling release, so be it, but it must be made very clear that Fedora is not for the casual Ubuntu-type user. As far as I am concerned NO known bug should persist in final releases and the only updates made should be bug fixes because not all hardware or software combinations can be checked by developers. Buggy releases have names: they're called alpha or beta. That's it, that's all.
Shit man, they come up with a so-called final releases.. but no definitive path to upgrade. You go to the forums and it's "why don't you try "yum update" or "preupgrade worked fine for me" OR "I used the DVD but it didn't work" and you can spend days just finding how you might be able to upgrade.
If RHEL worked this way, all the companies using it would be bankrupt. Here are the instructions only to use preupgrade because developers apparently forgot that /boot would one day need 500MB space:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade
Tell me, is it that complicated, when you have, by default, 3 kernels in /boot to remove one?
So, I'll take the extra months. if not years, it takes for Red Hat to produce a release that really works. Long live CentOS and Scientific Linux!
This will be my contribution for today. If you're not an Adam Williamson @ Red Hat.com and want to go for Fedora, so be it!
51 • # 1 (by CA G Rajesh on 2010-11-09 02:12:01 GMT from India)
Yes, using OpenDNS is an excellent solution. I follow it ... and it's just great! Very simple solution to implement ...
52 • OpenDNS (by Richard on 2010-11-09 02:56:06 GMT from Canada)
OpenDNS is nice in that it doesn't use any resources on your computer. Some consumer routers can keep your IP updated too so you don't need to use ddclient or whatever on a PC.
Some time ago, in the Mint how-to's, Clem was describing how to set up his complicated content blocking solution. I mentioned OpenDNS as a simple alternative, and within a few hours my post had been deleted. What a dick.
53 • RE: Fedora 14 (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-09 03:47:54 GMT from United States)
Guess I`m one of the lucky ones. I downloaded and installed the Fedora 14 Games Spin and had absolutely no problem at all installing it. I`ve now enabled RPMFusion Free and Non-free and I have a fast, well-running system. Cheers to the dev team!
54 • OpenDNS & Web Filtering (by Vukota on 2010-11-09 03:56:54 GMT from United States)
It all boils down to the access kids have and how far you/your kids are willing to go and are educated.
Skipping OpenDNS is not hard as long as you have enough access to re-route traffic. I am sure that kids can use one of the open proxies as well.
Setting all traffic to go through proxy only is a good solution, but complex and if kids have physical access to equipment, nothing is impossible. But if that is the case, they will be able to do it someplace else... Cell phone, friend's house...etc.
55 • "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool..." (by FitzLT on 2010-11-09 04:06:56 GMT from United States)
Comment deleted (off-topic).
56 • RE: 44 - 50 (by Landor on 2010-11-09 04:23:36 GMT from Canada)
#44
Forlin, now this may not be true in any way, but it seems to have some merit in my opinion, a lot of people believed (rumours :) ) that RHEL 6 would be roughly the same as Fedora 12 which is a year old now.
You could always get your hands on the beta again and see what it looks like under the hood. I forget myself, to be honest. Also, you could try Scientific since they have development build going on for the 6 release. :) I've yet to download it myself, but fully intend to.
#50
I noticed you didn't speak about the bug with Adam, I was curious to see what your answer would have been.
Corbet doesn't really say anything completely negative. In fact, all I see is he is stating the obvious, and pointing out that things break.
I don't personally see all the updates as a problem. I would gather that you love a stable system, so do I. I also appreciate up to date applications as well, so it's contradiction for me. That said, I rather enjoy the fact that Fedora will pump out the latest applications (sometimes) and possibly jump a kernel version, as this does, and can, bring in much needed functionality. I'll give you an example. I have wireless N on my netbook that uses the ath9k driver. It wasn't until very recent kernel versions did I see solid improvement/performance for the driver. So, seeing a new kernel during that period, as you could guess, would be a welcome situation for someone looking at hardware specific issues.
Another thing is, most people who use Fedora, do so knowing that Fedora is on the very edge of things, and if they can't accept that some things just might be a little bit crazy for them at some point, they honestly shouldn't be using it. As you personally said, there's other distributions that fit the very serious stability criteria.
To make one more point though, most people who use a distribution, simply are leeches on it. I believe we don't really have a right to demand this or that, or point the finger for specific issues. In any other area of life any single person (if they had any common sense) would feel ashamed if they made such comments and stuff about something that was freely given to them. Yet, on-line, and within the FOSS, it happens daily and they feel justified.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
57 • RE: 56 Way to go, Landor! (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-09 05:13:22 GMT from United States)
Your last paragraph should be required reading all over the FOSS community. Well spoken!
58 • RE: 56 The last paragraph (by Anonymous on 2010-11-09 06:13:38 GMT from United States)
Please practice what you preach. Especially the last paragraph. Otherwise you just come across as hypocritical.
59 • RE: 58 (by Landor on 2010-11-09 06:23:52 GMT from Canada)
Well Anonymous, if you have something specific in mind you should point it out.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
60 • @56 - Huh? (by eco2geek on 2010-11-09 07:36:28 GMT from United States)
>>
To make one more point though, most people who use a distribution, simply are leeches on it. I believe we don't really have a right to demand this or that, or point the finger for specific issues. In any other area of life any single person (if they had any common sense) would feel ashamed if they made such comments and stuff about something that was freely given to them. Yet, on-line, and within the FOSS, it happens daily and they feel justified.
<<
That's silly. It's like you're saying, "Remember, kids, if you didn't pay for it - stick a cork in it, you freeloaders! This isn't Microsoft Windows!"
Actually, Linux distros compete for market share, and there wouldn't be much point to creating them if they had no users. And they wouldn't have many users if their creators held that attitude. Most large Linux distros maintain bug reporting systems and public forums because they want and encourage user feedback in order to fix bugs and get new ideas.
61 • Re. 23: Wayland "Dead On Arrival" (by uz64 on 2010-11-09 07:40:48 GMT from United States)
"I don't have the hang up others have, about open/closed... I don't care, and also know its a waste to fight that battle with them. They are NOT going to open up their info for drivers, period. I'll take their free drivers for Linux. And no, don't even bother to mention noveau to me.. crap."
"Wayland is DOA, as its not X, and thats enough right there. No one is going to write a version of program y for X and then another for someother desktop windowing system. Not happening. Lack of support by the graphics systems is just another nail in the coffin. This is going no where quick."
Are you somehow forgetting that you are talking about free and open source software, and that anyone can modify it and make it run as they wish...? This is not Microsoft or Apple we're talking about... no one says you will have to "rewrite" any piece of software to get it to run on Wayland instead of the X Window System... just change its source code.
"And as for pulseaudio... its still garbage and still incompatible with the better WM, KDE."
WM? WTF are you talking about? KDE is a desktop environment, not a window manager. Sure, it has its own window manager... but that doesn't mean that's what it is.
62 • RE: 60 "Linux distros compete for market share" (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-09 08:41:14 GMT from United States)
Uh, where, exactly? Alpha Centauri? Certainly not here on Earth. Besides servers, Linux basically has no market share and from what I understand from the FOSS community, doesn`t want any. They want it all out there free for the taking, yes? One person says the truth here and all the "insulted" ones will come out in droves shortly. Sorry, he`s right. Someone gave me a bike when I was a kid. I sure didn`t piss and moan about the paint job, believe me. Think about it.
63 • Fedora - unspecified versions (by Snail on 2010-11-09 09:07:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
"File a bug report" they all say. It's irrelevant whether anybody reads or heeds one. I just haven't got time to wade through all that cr*p just to report that something doesn't work. Basically, Fedora management systems don't work. If they want to join the club, they need to run a friendly (underlined) forum.
As for RH, if I'm paying them to get it right, I expect their guys round within the hour to fix their faults. Any longer and I'll be filing for compensation. That's business.
64 • Fedora bug reports (by forlin on 2010-11-09 12:25:22 GMT from Portugal)
@63: "I just haven't got time to wade through all that cr*p just to report that something doesn't work"
Fedora Bugs are really easy and fast to report.
Not a long time ago, while running a Fedora Beta version, something crashed. A bug report was automatically generated.
All I had to do was adding a couple of lines telling what I was doing, and press a button to upload it.
65 • Let me guess (by Yhea Right on 2010-11-09 13:54:37 GMT from United States)
Snail: "File a bug report" they all say. It's irrelevant whether anybody reads or heeds one.
...and you know this how? Did they sent you a notice saying " We did''t read or head your bug report"
Snail: I just haven't got time to wade through all that cr*p just to report that something doesn't work.
Then don't complain when things don't work.
Snail: Basically, Fedora management systems don't work.
Millions of happy Fedora users might disagree.
Snail: If they want to join the club, they need to run a friendly (underlined) forum.
Thousands of happy Fedora forum users might disagree. But let me guess for some reason you have a problem with the forum, couldn't guess why that is.
Snail: As for RH, if I'm paying them to get it right, I expect their guys round within the hour to fix their faults. Any longer and I'll be filing for compensation. That's business.
.....no that is business in your world.
66 • "boot from local hard drive" (by Josh on 2010-11-09 14:31:19 GMT from United States)
"Upon reboot, I forgot to remove the live CD and so was brought to the CD's boot menu. I selected "Boot from local drive" and was told the system wasn't able to boot. Removing the CD and letting the machine boot normally from the hard drive worked."
I use syslinux most to boot parted magic on my flash drive. As far as I know, and I've tested this with a few distros not just parted, the "boot from locak drive" function has never worked for me. It has always rebooted my computer, and I've tried it on a few different ones. Two had windows and one had Ubuntu 10.04. Anyone have an instance where it worked correctly?
67 • Bug Reports (by Jesse on 2010-11-09 14:59:34 GMT from Canada)
>> "Snail: "File a bug report" they all say. It's irrelevant whether anybody reads or heeds one.
...and you know this how? Did they sent you a notice saying " We did''t read or head your bug report""
Actually, they do pretty much that. I tried working with Fedora 12 for a while and eventually gave up on it, but not before filing a bunch of bug reports. A few days ago, I woke up to an inbox with a dozen messages from Fedora's bug tracker. Each message basically said the same thing: that Fedora 12 was nearing end of life and that my bug report would be closed, unresolved. I've received similar spamings for previous versions of Fedora too, suggesting to me that the bug reports may be read but are rarely acted upon. As a result, I've finally seen the writing on the wall and didn't bother to file any reports against Fedora 14.
Fedora is far from alone in this, most big projects have open bug reports that are ignored. I've submitted some reports to projects with patches attached that never get responded to. It's a frustrating process.
68 • #62 Linux market share (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-09 15:54:53 GMT from United States)
@OnoSendai58: Your claim that Linux has "no market share" is simply not factual.
Depending on whose numbers you believe Linux has 30-40% of the server market right now. Linux and UNIX have had a majority share of the server market since 2000. On the desktop the most realistic number is 8-10%. See: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/debunking-the-1-myth.html I actually do have some updated data which has come in since that article was written which further supports those numbers. I'm actually working on an article debunking all the "The Linux Desktop Is Dead" articles we've seen recently which will add that data into the mix. It will also further debunk the idea of using a web counter here and a web counter there to claim Linux has minimal market share, in part by showing web counters which have higher than realistic numbers for Linux.
Most of the FOSS community does want Linux to succeed and grow. There are a few loud and vocal elitists who think otherwise but they are a tiny minority. Certainly the corporate players, including Red Hat, Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell/SUSE, et al are doing all they can to increase Linux market share.
The thing you need to remember is that the word of mouth approach to bringing on board new Linux users has very limited potential and that potential may have already been reached. The key to getting beyond 10% is in preloaded systems for consumers and corporate adoption. There is encouraging news on both fronts right now, but IMNSHO the best opportunity is on the corporate side. People will often take what they use and are used to at work and bring it home as well. On the retail consumer side Microsoft has been very successful at throwing up barriers. Patent trolling against Android seems to be their latest tactic. Despite that, in the U.S. right now you can walk into K-Mart and choose from a couple of models of netbooks preloaded with Android which is, after all, a Linux distribution.
Finally, regarding complaints, I think the existing Linux community is perfectly within its rights to complain when the user experience delivered by a popular distribution is poor. I personally think both Ubuntu and Fedora are doing a poor job on QA right now. That is the biggest barrier to further adoption as long as they are the consumer desktop leaders, not a few loudmouths.
69 • #67: Bug reports and community projects (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-09 16:04:53 GMT from United States)
@Jesse: I've seen the same with the community versions of the big corporate distros. This is where the community distros, the ones with a significant number of developers and users, do shine and do better than their corporate rivals. I have yet to have a bug report ignored by distros like Pardus, SalixOS or VectorLinux. I have seen bugs I pointed out fixed and suggestions I have made acted upon in all three cases.
We need to remember that neither Red Hat nor Novell see the consumer desktop as a primary market or even a desirable market. Red Hat will fix bugs in Fedora if they are likely to anger corporate customers. They do have some really large customers that use Red Hat on the desktop so that does include desktop issues. Novell will do the same with openSUSE. However, if they don't see how corporate users are likely to be significantly impacted there is little incentive to invest resources to fix something. Fixes are often left to slide into the next release. So long as it's done for RHEL or SLES/SLED the corporate objectives are met.
Canonical should be different since they see the consumer desktop as a primary market. Sadly their track record with Ubuntu is as bad as or perhaps worse than the others.
I think those suggesting CentOS, Scientific Linux and Ubuntu LTS as desktop choices have a point. Those tend to be the finished products and the quality is better. For folks coming from other operating systems which don't release frequently the way these distros work, as in having infrequent releases, is familiar and easier to deal with in any case. Six month release cycles are wonderful for geeks who love to experiment and live on the cutting edge. They pretty much stink for everyone else.
70 • Linux market share (by Henning on 2010-11-09 16:07:49 GMT from Denmark)
Well, we could all register in the counter at Dudalibre.com
and prove how many we are
http://www.dudalibre.com/en/gnulinuxcounter
at the moment the counter is moving a liiitle slow.....
Pitty.
71 • #70 Web counters (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-09 16:19:39 GMT from United States)
All registering with a given counter only gives us yet another counter with skewed and unrealistic results. Thanks but no thanks. Web counters all have limited and chosen samples and will never be an accurate way to measure market share.
72 • Fedora 14 (by Vukota... on 2010-11-09 16:55:19 GMT from United States)
I was inclined to go Fedora 14 all the way, but I was looking what additional stable and multimedia repositories are available and I don't see they are well taken care of. Approach of going around the web to get what you need doesn't ensure stability.
I may take more conservative approach in trying it, since I don't want to have broken system in a month or less.
OpenSUSE seems to be paying more attention to their third party repositories, where majority of the useful stuff is in packman repos or in packman + something on top of it (where that something is rare exception, rather than a rule).
73 • @72 (by cba on 2010-11-09 18:26:08 GMT from Germany)
"Approach of going around the web to get what you need doesn't ensure stability."
OpenSuse offers a non-oss-repository by default that can even be used in software patent countries like the USA, a repository which is regularly updated with the help of the original software creators if security problems arise:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3/repo/non-oss/suse
It is only a little help, but the proprietary software in this non-oss repo is essential for many users and, therefore, it is maintained by the distro itself, and this is very important.
In my opinion, Fedora should do the same.
74 • Bug reporting and fixing on Fedora 14 (by meanpt on 2010-11-09 19:29:50 GMT from Portugal)
Well, I don't think we should look at things too statically. Before posting here what happened during my Fedora LXDE first experience, I went for the forum and reported it. The next day I had a request for a further clarification, which I promptly provided. Today I installed Fedora 14 XFCE, the same kernel ioapic module crash ocurred, I ran the updates, rebooted and no kernel crash is reported since. I don't know if they fixed it or if the problem is somehow ommited but I vote for the fix. Nonetheless the number of updates increased from 95 to 120+many and in two months anyone wanting to install Fedora from an official iso may run in the same problem I ran with some debians, with conflicts everywhere during the update and a complete messed up and unreliable instalation.
75 • Fedora, Ubuntu, and things... (by davemc on 2010-11-09 22:15:30 GMT from United States)
Fedora 10-12 were pretty awesome releases. Loved 10 especially as it was a work of art for regular users. Seems we have a new PL now with a different mindset for Fedora and regular users will pay the price for it. Its a shame but it happens, and Fedora always goes through these cycles. Next couple of releases will probably follow suit, but there will come again the rise of Fedora as a user friendly distro, no worries. Till then stick with Mint, MEPIS, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Sabayon, etc..
Ubuntu switching to Unity/Wayland is a great move for them only so long as Nvidia and ATi provide closed source drivers or the FOSS drivers can be brought up to par. If they don't, it will be a total disaster for Canonical. Simple as that. I am sure Shuttleworth is banking on these manufacturers putting their support in to Wayland and moving away from X, as may very well happen. Also, the open source drivers are NOT crap for 2D and Development is proceeding at lightning pace for 3D, so don't count Neaveau out. I am sure that if the open source drivers could be brought up to par with the closed source drivers, that everyone would be using them instead. Afterall, this would greatly benefit Nvidia if they did not have to support the Linux driver stack the way they are now, it would save them a ton of $$$, and its not like they can be harmed by it so long as the FOSS Dev's are working under NDA, as I read that they are now.
Don't be too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater by Canonicals move here. Shuttleworth is no fool. There may very well be alot going on behind the scenes both bad and good inspiring it. GNOME3 is poised to hit the streets and by many accounts, its about to go through the same cycle and mega drama that KDE4 went through. Its only very recently (KDE4.4+) that KDE actually started becoming more than a steaming pile o crap and bugs. GNOME and Wayland will go through the same thing - count on it. I think I will happily stay with KDE, XFCE, and Openbox for another few years and perhaps MintDE or good ol' mother Debian.
76 • Fedora and salix (by Phil on 2010-11-10 00:03:02 GMT from United States)
Unlike previous releases, I find Fedora 14 to be rock solid. Fedora has selinux and a gui firewall running by default, which is more than most distros provide out of the box.
As for salixOS, it has potential, even for a newbee, but one glaring weakness is the lack of a gui firewall in the repositories. A newbee cannot be expected to configure the iptables using the cli. Until salix provides something like firestarter, they'll have trouble attracting mainstream users.
77 • fedora 14 (by Reuben W. Perelman on 2010-11-10 02:52:18 GMT from United States)
My experiance with Fedora 14 hasn't been so great. It started when the installer crashed after trying to add an ntfs partition to /etc/fstab. Then it failed to setup grub on the root partition like I asked it to. After trying to enable desktop effects in kcontrol, I was promptly returned to the KDM login screen.
78 • Fedora, Ubuntu and things... (by fernbap on 2010-11-10 03:23:50 GMT from Portugal)
There is a question everyone in the FOSS world should be asking himself: why would a typical windows user adopt linux?
The reason for this question is obvious, consumer desktop is the big number, and the largest prospective income source, provided that you have enough structure to profit from it.
The answer to it is also simple, imho: give the typical windows user what he expects to get and is already getting from windows.
From the example of Distrowatch's major distributions list, it is obvious that the FOSS world still didn't get a clear answer. From all those "major distributions", whatever "major" they can be under the technical point of view, only 2 1/2 cater the consumer desktop: Ubuntu, Mint and Mandriva.
Fedora is not the solution, and never was. Fedora is a nightmare to any typical windows user. opensuse is... i never managed to figure out what opensuse is...
The irony is that, under the technical point of view, any major distribution could offer a good solution to the consumer desktop, if it was interested. After all, writing some GUIs in order to make the distro management more user friendly is at reach to them. Clem's excelent work on Mint is an example of what can be done in that area without much resources.
So, the only conclusion we can draw from it is that most of the "major distributions" are simply not interested in it.
That is what needs to change in the Linux world, imo. We just can't conquer the consumer desktop market with distros that are derivatives from the "major distributions", managed by a small number of enthusiasts with no resources, because those don't care for doing it.
79 • RE: 60 - 77 (by Landor on 2010-11-10 03:31:08 GMT from Canada)
#60
You took what I typed out of context. I conveyed that basically someone leeching off of something has no right at all making demands, nor do they have the right to point the finger in any kind of hostile manner.
I'm quite sure you'd agree with me that if someone who didn't vote, yet started complaining about how the current administration was ruining whatever, country, project, etc. That would be their problem since they didn't do a thing to try to make it better. Exactly the same as I stated.
Thankfully, and at least the people I know, are not generally like that, outside of the internet that is.
#77
That's very strange. Were you using the dvd or netinstal? I used 14 desktop final and had no issues with point it to the root partition. I also used the KDE RC1 (which simply became final) and had no such problems with as it installed grub to the root partition as well.
The rest I can't comment on, though I hope you got it all straightened out.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
80 • in response to fernbap (by Thomas on 2010-11-10 04:56:47 GMT from United States)
Fernbap, the reason so few of the commercial linux companies focus on the desktop is simple - there is little profit in it. Companies are in business to make money, and with Linux distributions the money has traditionally been made by providing server distributions and support, and lately with cell phones,ie, Android, etc...That's all the more reason linux users should be thankful Ubuntu and Shuttleworth are around. Ubuntu's primary focus is on the desktop, and Ubuntu has invested millions of dollars in making a product that has become the defacto "linux" distrobution for new users to linux.
81 • Fantastic! (by Anonymous on 2010-11-10 05:42:36 GMT from United States)
@67
Actually, they do pretty much that. I tried working with Fedora 12 for a while and eventually gave up on it, but not before filing a bunch of bug reports. A few days ago, I woke up to an inbox with a dozen messages from Fedora's bug tracker. Each message basically said the same thing: that Fedora 12 was nearing end of life and that my bug report would be closed, unresolved. I've received similar spamings for previous versions of Fedora too, suggesting to me that the bug reports may be read but are rarely acted upon. As a result, I've finally seen the writing on the wall and didn't bother to file any reports against Fedora 14.
And in the future....
Fedora 16 a totally bug-free release, since no reports were ever filed!
LOL!
Thanks!
82 • Filtering for kids is feel-good technology that doesn't work. (by jake on 2010-11-10 06:19:43 GMT from United States)
Filters are easy to work around, as I'm fairly certain anyone reading this post is well aware ... and any kid who wants to work around them can, and will. And that is pretty much any kid, anywhere, who has unsupervised access.
Instead, don't allow 'em unsupervised Internet access until they are old enough.
How old is old enough? I couldn't tell you. My own daughter didn't have unsupervised Internet access until she went off to Uni when she was 17. This wasn't a conscious decision, but merely an artifact of the fact that all the household computers were located in my machine-room until around 20 years ago. I'd have probably allowed her a computer in her bedroom when she was in her very early teens, if she had asked, but the concept never came up.
On the rare occasion that she ran across porn or whatever other (potentially) objectionable content (images or text), her mother and I discussed it with her. It probably doesn't hurt that we were raised in a barn, and so was our daughter. This is the real world. Sex and death (etc.) exists. Get used to the idea. It's not going to go away any time soon. Unfortunately, the concept of "parenting" seems to be an art that is becoming lost ...
My daughter assures me that my first granddaughter (born around 10 weeks ago) will have similar parental supervision, and will also be raised in a barn.
Methinks that the urban population of the planet needs to get out more. Would do a world of good in all kinds of arenas ...
83 • @76 salix firewall (by snoop on 2010-11-10 06:48:24 GMT from Greece)
I just installed salix and I can see guwf is in the repositories.
84 • Agilalinux was MOPSLinux ? (by johncoom on 2010-11-10 09:39:21 GMT from Australia)
Ladislav + Distrowatch Teem: You may want to update the distro categories ?
AgiliaLinux was started as a fork of another russian distro - MOPSLinux, which was discontinued in April 2010. Try the MOPSLinux category and links here at distrowatch ! EG: The old website/server does not seem to exist any more !
See http://www.agilialinux.ru/main/about.html
85 • Re: 70 Web counters (by hob4bit on 2010-11-10 10:20:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, web counters do not always work. I block all of them using Adblock. So all my browsing do not count. In fact all the Linux machines I setup are like that.
Linux users are more likely to block adverts than Windows users.
86 • Ubuntu (by win2linconvert on 2010-11-10 12:06:23 GMT from United States)
The way I see it is Ubuntu is his (Mark Shuttleworth) project, being supported and developed with his $$$, and he isn't twisting anybodies arm to make them use it, so quit whining about the decisions he makes about it. If you don't agree with his decisions about his distro, the use someone else's distro or make one of your own. I'm personally grateful to have such a nice alternative to MicroSoft at such an affordable price. So what if it's not perfect or does things a little different. We used to applaud people for thinking and doing things out side of the box. Well... that's my two cents... to which are welcome.
P.S. Let me know if any of you complainers find that perfect OS or that sensible CEO of a software company that take all your advice... Please excuse the sarcasm... It's 7am and I've been up all night. Thanks for another informative issue of DWW.
win2linconvert
87 • @78 (by cba on 2010-11-10 14:11:09 GMT from Germany)
The main problem is that "consumer desktop distros", if they were a real commercial success, would be shut down at once by the MPEG-LA and similar organizations for patent and copyright violation, provided that the necessary license fees were not paid before being sued.
88 • #76/#83 - SalixOS, firewall, and newcomers (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-10 14:18:46 GMT from United States)
#76 @Phil: As already noted SalixOS does have a graphical firewall tool, guwf.
SalixOS developers make clear that they are not Ubuntu and they are not targeting newcomers. Their target audience is "lazy Slackers", Slackware users who want more tools and automation. Having said that, the forums are very newcomer friendly and helpful. However, SalixOS design criteria are not for it to become "mainstream". When judging any distro (i.e.: when I write a review) I believe you have to take what the developers' goals are under consideration. It's really amazing how friendly SalixOS is rapidly becoming without making that a goal.
89 • Filters (by Jesse on 2010-11-10 14:22:48 GMT from Canada)
RE: 82
It's all well and good to have open and honest talks with kids about sex and sexuality, my parents took that approach and I think I'm the better off for it. However, your statements make the assumption that a parent who installs a web filter is trying to actively sensor content from their children who want to see it. That's not always the case. It's entirely possible for a parent to be completely open and honest with their kid and be comfortable regarding sex and still not want their child to stumble across some of the more... extreme websites out there. And, for that matter, some children (and adults) are fine with having that content filtered for them. Web filters aren't always a form of authoritarian or naive suppression.
90 • #78/#80/#86/#87: Codecs, patents and the desktop (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-10 15:20:45 GMT from United States)
#78: @fernbap, the reason the big corporate players haven't focused on the desktop is because there is little or no money to be made there as Thomas stated in #80. The exception is OEM deals for preloading systems, an area where Canonical, Mandriva, Novell, Xandros, Red Flag and Linpus have all tried to compete. Ubuntu has had the only real success in the West on the consumer desktop, while Novell has placed SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on business offerings. Red Flag does ship on some ASUS nettops but their presence is small. The others have all basically failed in the desktop market. Google has moved into this area with Android recently and it is still too early to tell is Android can succeed as a netbook, notebook or desktop OS. I have my doubts.
Regarding Fedora and openSUSE, I agee that they are not newcomer friendly. Both still feel like development test beds for the commercial distros. Both have had some good releases where they came close to being ready for the mainstream but it has never been consistent. In this area openSUSE probably has been a bit better.
#80: I am not grateful to either Mark Shuttleworth or Ubuntu for one simple reason: they've done a great job of marketing but a pretty awful job of QA and delivering a solid product. After looking at 10.10 my articles from last April still stand. In fact, they may not be strong enough. See: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/how-canonical-can-do-ubuntu-ri.html and http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/ubuntu-is-a-poor-standard-bear.html What good is something that is supposedly newbie friendly if it is full of bugs and problems?
#86: First, I have taken your advice. I use other distros which are far, far better. Not perfect, mind you, but not the "garbage salad" Andrew Wyatt referred to: http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/the-linux-distillery/28574-ubuntu-sucks-says-eeebuntu-developer Unfortunately most newcomers to Linux judge Linux as a whole by Ubuntu and their judgment all too often is that "Linux sucks". So, quite frankly, I do believe the Linux community has a right to complain about what Ubuntu is doing to the Linux brand. It affects all of us. fernbap is right: with relatively few resources and Ubuntu as a base Clement Lefebvre has done a much better job with Linux Mint. It's better Ubuntu than Ubuntu.
I'm going to quote something Adam Williamson once said in a response to a Mark Shutlleworth blog post: "We carp because we care." Most everyone in the Linux community wants Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu to succeed.
#87: @cba: The solution is what Dell and HP did with their Ubuntu builds on preloaded systems: include the Fluendo codecs and make that part of the price.
91 • Sound problems in Fedora 14 (by Barnabyh on 2010-11-10 15:46:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
I didn't get sound in Fedora 14 KDE and could not figure out what it was as sound worked in all other distributions on this computer (a true distro hopper). Then I remembered that sound stopped working when an app pulled pulseaudio in as dependency in Kubuntu 10.04.
Looked for pulseaudio in Fedora, removed the support package that binds it into KDE, sound works beautifully. Now to remove the other pulse-libs 'n' stuff.
There are definitely still problems with it, after how many years now, and I can't see the point of it when alsa is working so well. Why is it in a KDE release anyway? Thought that was a Gnome thing. Actually one of the reasons I'm not using Gnome any longer.
92 • 90 "can-do" (by Anonymous on 2010-11-10 16:17:21 GMT from Canada)
There have been a
number of posters on DW who have complained about the number of times Ubuntu and/or its derivatives are mentioned.
There have not been any (iirc) complaints about fedora
Is this a marketing strategy by canonical ?
Imagine if ubuntu made each version with no bugs. There would be very little incentive for a person to try to create his own "distro".
By "feeding" the possibilities of improving the official Ubuntu version you get a lot more media attention; leading to Ubuntu=linux.
I have just been reading the "Fusion" web page. As of last month this was a one man show; and a very good show according to the 2 reviews listed on DW.
One man has achived something that paid (?) developers couldn't?
93 • #92: respins and derivatives (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-10 16:35:05 GMT from United States)
I don't think "One man has achived something that paid (?) developers couldn't?", to use your words. If the paid developers hadn't built the base that one man worked from and improved on I doubt he could have achieved the results he did. Similarly, I doubt Clement Lefebvre would claim that Linux Mint would be what it is today without either Ubuntu or Debian. There is a huge difference between building from the ground up and creating a derivative or a respin.
I don't think Canonical/Ubuntu or anyone else will ever release an OS with "no bugs". It just isn't possible since nobody can test every possible piece of hardware and every possible configuration. What they can do is reduce the number of bugs as much as possible or move away from their policy of not fixing whole classes of bugs during a release cycle.
94 • @93 (by fernbap on 2010-11-10 18:30:05 GMT from Portugal)
"I doubt Clement Lefebvre would claim that Linux Mint would be what it is today without either Ubuntu or Debian"
Yes, Caitlyn, that is my whole point. To companies like Cannonical, Novell or Red Hat, having a "Clement Lefebvre department" would drain very little from their budget.
I don't agree with "consumer desktop not being worthwile under the financial point of view". They could release their products AND be beginner friendly, if they wanted to. All that is lacking is political will.
95 • Using OpenDNS to track IP addresses (by Dastardly on 2010-11-10 19:34:09 GMT from Canada)
I use OpenDNS to keep track of all the IP addresses of my friends and family whose Linux computers I support and maintain. They have dynamic IP's so I install ddclient and openssh server on their machine and add them to my OpenDNS "network". I wrote a simple bash script that uses curl to log in to opendns, retreive their IP address and ssh in to their machine.
96 • RE:90, What? (by Eddie on 2010-11-10 20:06:56 GMT from United States)
"I'm going to quote something Adam Williamson once said in a response to a Mark Shutlleworth blog post: "We carp because we care." Most everyone in the Linux community wants Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu to succeed."
Are you sure that's correct? carp?
Anyway I'm still trying to figure out why you are so bitter. Re-reading the articles that you supplied the links for really conflicts with what others have said in different articles. That's one reason I don't take reviews as a serious evaluation of any product. I guess if everyone said the same thing then there would be nothing to read, correct? What Andrew Wyatt said back in 09 really, in my opinion, is irrelevant at this time. Why the reference to it? I find the LTS releases by Ubuntu very stable and that's what I use. The others, I expect to have a few problems. I haven't had many, and I haven't found any deal breakers yet and I'm not going to use the phrase "it works for me". Then again I'm not going to take the phrase "it doesn't work for me" very serious either. I do consider the 6 month releases to be stable but not for production use. To classify them as "garbage salad" if just childish. Well I just figured out why you referred to the outdated Andrew Wyatt article. (just kidding)
As you've said because of your business back round you look at things a little different then most people and I do very much respect your opinion. From what I gather you feel that a newbie friendly distro should be install and enjoy. I know of no distro where that is possible. Not even Mint. (love their distro, hate their package management and security) I would never install a Linux distro on anyone's computer without performing hardware test first if possible. I can't imaging anyone installing a Linux distro on their own computer if they have never had any dealings with Linux. Most people I'm aware of can't even install MS Windows. I can see how someone could be turned off by a bad experience with a Linux distro. I just don't think that there are any distros that are ready for the newbie to install by themselves yet. Maybe that is the impression that Ubuntu gives that it shouldn't give. The LTS versions are close but I still think that new ones need help. The only solution I know of is to just hope that things improve. Maybe even Ubuntu dissociated from the Linux title would be better. Who knows?
97 • Installation experience on Pentium III hardware from yr 2000 (by Anony Moss on 2010-11-10 20:07:50 GMT from India)
Last week I posted a question on DWW comments section seeking recommendations for a good distro for my parents' old PC. I got some generous and genuinely helpful advice, and it is time for some feedback from my side.
We are talking about a year 2000 Compaq Presario 5000 box, with a Pentium III chip, 733 MHz bus speed, 512 MB of generic memory, 15 GB hard disk at 4400 rpm spindle speed, some basic integrated intel graphics, and a Realtek (RTL8139 family) wired network card.
Based upon the advice of DWW comment contributers, I shortlisted these distros, downloaded them, burned CDs (complete with md5 checksums and slowest burn speeds, where possible), and installed them as the sole OS on this box.
1) Vector Linux 6.0, Standard Edition Gold
2) Linux Mint 9 LXDE
3) Salix OS, Live 13.1.1 (Xfce)
4) Zenwalk Live 6.4 (Xfce)
5) Zenwalk 6.4 (standard edition, Xfce)
Of these, 1) and 5) are standard installation CDs, others boot a Live environment first. Except 3) which is Ubuntu (And in turn, Debian) based; the rest are slackware -based distros. Ok, now the individual experiences...
1) Vector 6.0- this was the CD with the oldest kernel and XOrg, released over a year ago. Could not launch a graphical installer despite trying various options. No problem, I'm fine with a text-based installer, which, frankly, I find saner. I liked the installer a lot. It has more granularity built into it for greater customization, and is peppered with helpful hints for a relatively new user. The disk partitioner included in the installation media told me to reboot the machine after I manually set up partitions, as it could not proceed without rebooting. That was a little painful, but marching on ... The rest of the installation went smooth. Time to boot up the new OS. Hmm, too bad, X wouldn't start. In fact, even the command line hung. I gave up at that point. But I understand that the problem does not entirely lie with Vector, but probably with X and kernel of that generation.
2) Mint 9 LXDE- The only LXDE distro I tested out. Installed this one to the harddisk after the LIve CD booted. I did not much opportunity to ask Mint questions and Mint installer told me no lies. It did not ask me the desired swap partition size, or whether I wanted a separate home partition. Otherwise installation was smooth. It did better multimedia out-of-the-box than other distributions. It even played a wmv file (no other distro could) from my standard battery of multimedia tests. The overall UI was not too smooth under stress, though. With 2 or 3 applications, including a web browser playing youtube open, the system UI started to get sluggish and jerky, and task switching was awkward.
I tested out Youtube on all distros that booted with U2's "New Year's day". Mint performed better than XP, but there were visible frame jumping, for lack of a better term in my vocabulary. Sound was OK. Fonts were OK. Recognized some special keys in my keyboard, though, which no other distro did. Updating mechanism is simple and excellent. Overall, good but not refined enough on this hardware, especially if more than one application is open.
3) Salix Live Xfce, 3.1.1 Slowish and plodding LiveCD, so I tried to install. But the installer prompted me to first ensure that my disk was already properly partitioned with gparted (included on Live media) before attempting to run the installer. Unfortunately, gparted let me down. It wasn't quite intuitive in its setup, and threw up warnings that there might be a need to reboot first, at each stage of partitioning. I ignored this (probably sane) advice and started up Salix installer. Ok installer, and when it was done, I rebooted, and ended up with kernel panic because of unrecognized disk partitions.
On the second try, I first partitioned the disk with the Vector Installation CD and then continued with Salix Live CD's installer. This time installation was successful.
I found Salix OS to be an appealing system. There are too many options and tweakings available for a newbie, though. Example, date incorrectly set, volume controls not visible on desktop, multimedia capabilities need to be installed (there is a menu item available offering this). Their updating mechanism, gslapt, is better, easier to use, and more intuitive than Zenwalk's netpkg though, imho. After about 30 minutes of no activity, the monitor was put on standby by Salix, and could not be brought back to life. I was forced to reboot. This can probably be rectified by the user after some tweaking. For this reason, and others, including the types of applications included, Salix OS is better for an intermediate user. Probably not apt, imho, for someone jumping over from XP.
Screen resolution, artwork, and fonts looked great on Salix OS. UI and user experience was smooth after multiple applications being open. Lag was noticeable after I started "New Year's day" on firefox at this point. Still, better than Mint 9 LXDE. At this point, application/ task switching became noticeably slower. Salix OS worked with most of my multimedia test files, but the rendering quality was not all that great. Overall, performance-wise, Salix, alongwith Zenwalk, was a good (better than tweaked XP) user experience.
4) Zenwalk Live 6.4 (Xfce) was the best performing and smoothest LiveCD. The fonts and icons did not appear as sharp as Salix, though. Also, too bad, the installation from the LiveCD was not as good. I tried to install from Zen Live after my first attempt at Salix, which had failed. Zenwalk too did not ask many questions, iirc, ignored the disk partition meant for /home. Upon rebooting, there again was problem due to unrecognised disk partitions.
5) Since Zenwalk Live CD ran well, I downloaded the Zenwalk standard Xfce 6.4 and burnt it. Decent installer, worked ok. Upon rebooting I find that things differ from Zenwalk 6.4 Live Xfce CD. The resolution is great, icons and fonts appear as sharp if not sharper than Salix OS. The Apple-dock-style bottom panel is great for beginner users. The collection of applications is good. Sound quality is great on my speakers. You tube performance was second only to Salix by a small margin, but the rendering looked better to my eyes. The built in multimedia support played avi files better when compared to Salix. Netpkg isn't quite intuitive to use, though, and I had to select each entry for available upgrades manually, since I couldn't find a single button to select for all available upgrades.
Other good things include a nice notification system that I've so far found working only for browser downloads. Another is storing root authentication for the session for gui based admin tools. I missed that on Salix. There is also a firewall (and firestarter wizard) available on Zenwalk. I'm not sure whether this is required for home users, and whether it will significantly slow down the machine. Any thoughts?
Overall, I think I have found the right distro for this machine and it is Zenwalk. The OS is generally responsive and provides a smooth UI experience, although there is lagging when multiple applications are open. But, then, I'm asking too much of this old hardware. Zenwalk behaves better than XP, and that is enough for the moment.
Zenwalk is the last distro I'm trying so still have to find sore spots, but initial impressions are quite favourable. I also let my parents try their hands a bit on Zenwalk and they seem to like it. So far, so good.
Lastly, credit also to X.org and kernel developers as the latest crop of distros are running well on this box. The free software philosophy needs to prosper. Thanks to all DWW posters who helped out. Hope this long post helps somebody out there.
98 • Mepis (by RobertD on 2010-11-10 20:48:43 GMT from United States)
How come we don't here more about this excellent debian based distro. It's solid, stable and has excellent hardware detection. Also there are some great built in tools designed by the Mepis team.
99 • Ref#98 SimplyMEPIS (by Verndog on 2010-11-10 21:09:25 GMT from United States)
Good question. It's actively updated and is in the 11.0 alpha stage right now. The only reason for little info is, they need to have a full description in order for Distrowatch to publish on the front page.
I didn't realize they used Debian based. I thought all along it way Red Hat.
100 • #96 Six-month Ubuntu releases (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-10 22:08:28 GMT from United States)
Yes, that is a common usage of carp, at least in the New York City metro area where I grew up.
Bitter? Me? You're kidding, right? If I were bitter I wouldn't care about the future of Ubuntu.
You seem to be making the very point I made in my second article which you criticize, Eddie. Ubuntu touts the six month releases as ready for ordinary users. I agree that the LTS releases are much better. Unfortunately, Ubuntu pushes the six month releases as the way to go and they are often just not ready for prime time.
I have also said, repeatedly, that Joe or Jane Average User can't install an OS at all, Linux or Windows or any other. In that sense you are right that no distro is ready for them. None ever will be. The answer for them is always the preloaded system, much like Windows or MacOS. Having said that, some do manage to give a good out of box experience to most users most of the time. Ubuntu isn't such a distro and, yes, since they tout themselves as being for the masses, they need to be. I don't have expectations for them. Rather, they, themselves set the expectations. I always judge a distro by the claims made for it by the developers.
101 • Words, words, words (by Jesse on 2010-11-10 22:25:50 GMT from Canada)
RE: 102
Where I grew up, the term was "harp" instead of "carp". As in, "Stop harping on me." Or I harped on him until I got what I wanted." I suspect it's short for harpy. Language is a funny thing.
RE: 98, 99:
I enjoyed SimplyMEPIS the last time I tried it. When their new stable release comes out, I hope to give it a test run. They do a pretty good job of balancing technical stuff with being newbie friendly, in my opinion.
102 • RE: 100 (by Landor on 2010-11-11 00:45:08 GMT from Canada)
I find this funny, I was pondering the comments made here about Fedora, user friendliness, etc, and thought the exact same thing today about the average computer user can't even install an operating system. Well, I wouldn't say can't, have no inclination how to, or the desire to.
Could you imagine the average user attempting to install Windows OEM with no drivers, or trying to find their driver cds? Yet we feel that Linux is the target for the masses. How could it be, when they barely even scrape the surface of what is now called an operating system. Let alone one they've never tried.
I also find it odd that because of a distribution like Ubuntu every other person and their brother in our community feel that Ubuntu has set the bar as standard for Linux and any other distribution must follow the same goals as Ubuntu or their worthiness as a distribution is put into question. It sounds as if a Major Distribution doesn't adhere to that belief our community feels like the distribution, and the community on a whole, needs to apologise for it.
There was a comment about Major Distributions this week and I just shook my head. What are people thinking. Debian is one, Slackware is another, Gentoo as well. I personally don't see for any reason why those three have to follow any bar/criteria any other distribution has set, let alone Ubuntu, and I'm quite sure the people behind those distributions would agree. So what, to be a Major Distribution now they have to ride the user friendly wave?
Also, Fernbap, you stated that a company like Red Hat could make the whole desktop and user experience more friendly, even if they are not targeting the desktop, as if it doesn't take that much effort. I'll give you an example that I personally came up with that shows why they wouldn't, again only my view of it. If you owned a courier company, had a few spare trucks, and twice a week a package came in directly to your depot that was for a company directly across the street from you, would you say to one of your employees, put this package in the truck, drive around the block a couple times, then deliver over there? What a waste of resources that would be since it was completely not needed. You'd tell an employee to take it over on a cart or something. Red Hat's desktop works for exactly what they need it to work for and why waste resources doing something that there is no need for, especially given their goal customer audience?
I for one don't think any one distribution has any reason to be a standard than any other. Let's try to remember as enthusiasts, the desktop plays a very small role in our landscape and I for one see no reason why any distribution needs to apologise for not being user friendly, if that is their intention, nor do I see any reason to change to pull in a mythical group of people coming to Linux that wouldn't even be able to install it.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
103 • Harp vs. Carp ... Two slightly different concepts. (by jake on 2010-11-11 01:14:37 GMT from United States)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/carp
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harp
104 • @102 (by fernbap on 2010-11-11 01:31:32 GMT from Portugal)
First of all i can say that if i were a windows user and read your post, i would feel insulted.
Yes, windows users are used to install drivers from CDs or pick them on the internet. They are also used to reinstalling windows from time to time. You should get out more.
The live CD is a major Linux breakthrough, and makes not only install a breeze, but also it gives the user an experience on the OS. Most "major distributions" offer a live CD with a graphics installer.
You totally missed my point. I was referring to major distributions not catering the consumer desktop, as if the consumer desktop didn't matter, and specially as if major resources would be needed if they did. The small distros show the large companies what can be done without much resources, and i used Mint as an example of that.
Don't try to convince me that it would make a dent in the large companies budget.
You fail to understand that we all have something to gain if Linux starts being used in larger numbers. What Linux is needing is the to software houses developing for Linux. Presently, most completely ignore it, because its footprint in the consumer desktop still didn't pass the threshold they consider starting to be interesting as a market.
Yes, they could, but they don't. As simple as that.
105 • 93 (by Anonymous on 2010-11-11 01:34:40 GMT from Canada)
My apologies for not being clear.
I certainly did not wish
to imply that the author of Fusion created the whole operating system.
As it says on his home page:
Fusion Linux is 100% compatible with Fedora and a Fedora Remix including packages from Fedora and RPM Fusion software repositories plus some custom packages.
I think that he did add a lot of "polish"
106 • simplyMEPIS, Vector Linux & Trinity (by Woodstock69 on 2010-11-11 02:12:19 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
Great to hear that Mepis 11 is around the corner. Currently my production OS (v8.0). I did enjoy Mint, but since they dropped KDE3 (and Mint 9 KDE being awful) I moved to Mepis. Would be great if someone released a working up to date hybrid of KDE3 and 4 for us neo-Luddites. openSuSE did release a hybrid, but I fear it's out of date now.
VectorLinux 6.0 has the best KDE4 desktop in my opinion, and I'd give it more than serious consideration as my KDE4 desktop but alas, it keeps crashing on my "old" pentium 4 rig after the desktop appears and I try to do anything. It amazes me that 99% of the KDE4 desktops are so boring and identical to the vanilla theme. Where's the imagination gone? And I also dislike this trend towards the Windows7/Mac/Chrome Kitchen/Dark themes. Desktops are supposed to be vibrant, not akin to a funeral.
The Trinity Project put a smile on my face as a fork of KDE 3.5.10 and I do hope they manage to achieve their objectives. Will have to try this one out shortly.
Now if I can get Vector to play with my rig or the MEPIS release is another cracker, I'll be even happier. KDE4 does have many app updates that I wish could be ported to KDE3.
107 • RE: 104 (by Landor on 2010-11-11 02:57:46 GMT from Canada)
"You should get out more."
And although there may be a language barrier here, you should learn to comprehend what was written.
Simple fact the "MAJORITY" (I hope that's clear) of Windows users do not know how to install Windows, they never did, and have no idea what the process involves. I guess when you go out, everyone you meet gets insulted because they don't know something.
I don't fail to understand anything at all. It's you that fails to understand that Linux has done perfectly well for almost 20 years without competing with Windows. Without making the desktop nice and shiny for people that have no idea it even exists.
It's also you and other people that fail to understand a simple logic, usability can and is easily added by the manufacturer. Take mobile phones for instance, and android. Every mobile found adds their own interface, and even their own proprietary crap on top of Android. OEMs that ship computers add their own software, and groups of applications. Not all, but many do. If a manufacturer really wanted to use Linux they would, and they would make a nice shiny desktop and all all the proprietary bloat they wanted to. The fact is, they don't want to, and why? No market share!
The community making it nice and shiny has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with OEMs jumping on the Linux bandwagon and swearing off Windows because of it. Nothing at all.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
108 • Jesse (by jake on on 2010-11-11 02:57:46 GMT from )United States
Re-read my comment on filtering. It's not that I think parents shouldn't play an active roll in their kids computer use, far from it. It's just that I think that filtering is all too often used instead of parenting ... which it fails at. Dreadfully.
Filters are a good crutch for the (mostly) computer illiterate adults with computer savvy youngsters ... but they are hardly good enough to keep your average teenage boy from accessing porn (or whatever) when behind his locked bedroom door. The only thing that'll keep teens on whatever their parents think of as "the straight & narrow" is parental oversight ... And that means keeping computer access in the common areas of the house.
109 • @107 (by fernbap on 2010-11-11 03:25:33 GMT from Portugal)
"usability can and is easily added by the manufacturer."
No, it is not. You just can't take Fedora and make it usable for the consumer desktop.
"The community making it nice and shiny has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with OEMs jumping on the Linux bandwagon"
Of course it doesn't! That's why that task has to be made by the companies.
"The fact is, they don't want to, and why? No market share!"
As i said, they don't want to. Regarding market share, please tell me what cam first: the egg or the hen?
Can't you see that the reason for low market share has to do with exactly they not wanting it?
110 • @109 ... Uh, actually ... (by jake on 2010-11-11 05:06:12 GMT from United States)
I, me, personally, make a Slackware-based solution for my Wife (becoming computer literate, but it's hardly a priority), my mid-70s Mom (techno-phobe) and mid-80s Great-Aunt (techno-can't). They are the epitome of "consumers".
I could do the same with Fedora, but I've been using Slackware since the year dot.
Shiny IS an issue ... and is one of the biggest wastes of time in the FOSS world. Usability is what is important. Desktop art & stuff like Compiz aren't useful in day-to-day life.
Market share is unimportant. FOSS, by it's very nature, is here to stay. Corporate systems are doomed to die, eventually. Don't believe me? Where are Amdahl, Tandem, Data General, DEC, Burroughs, and Cromemco? I'll still have BSD, Minux & Linux source-code available to me long after Apple, Microsoft, IBM and HP are gone.
111 • @79 (by Anony Moss on 2010-11-11 07:09:28 GMT from India)
Quoting-
"You took what I typed out of context. I conveyed that basically someone leeching off of something has no right at all making demands, nor do they have the right to point the finger in any kind of hostile manner."
I'm tempted to add my little voice here. First off, I didn't find the manner hostile of the poster who raised some legitimate issues about state of affairs on many distros today.
Also, if someone complains, he is no longer a user, but a leecher? Just because something is provided free of cost, the users automatically lose the right to report its shortcomings?
Actually, some people care more about things that are freely given to them. They feel gratitude and appreciate the contribution of an individual, or as in this case (viz, linux) the collective effort of innumerable people. Maybe that is why they 'carp', because they 'care'.
And one cannot expect every user (or leecher, if one prefers that term) to contribute to a linux distro or ecosystem. Some people do linux well, some people play harmonica, some people are good at selling cars. Let us not try to kick out the harmonica player out of linux world becasue he can't code or test, and let's allow him to complain once in a while. Taken one way it is a complaint, another way it is valuable user feedback.
112 • Excellent debate in comments section (by Anony Moss on 2010-11-11 07:27:02 GMT from India)
Here're my 2 cents. The whole OS game is going to change dramatically once google introduces Chrome OS. No doubt, linux will benefit from this- better hardware and vendor support, and hopefully some good open-source code that shall be usable by linux distros. In addition, Chrome OS should challenge (and change) the thinking of some distros for the better. Otherwise, Google has lost an unprecedented opportunity to shake things up.
At least, that is what I'm hoping to see- a shake up, and positive change! But not at the cost of stability.
113 • Re: 86 Ubuntu (by DG on 2010-11-11 08:07:22 GMT from Netherlands)
""" If you don't agree with his decisions about his distro, the use someone else's distro or make one of your own. """
No, please don't make your own! Just because you *can* doesn't mean that you *should*. Take the time to find a distro that is close to your needs and contribute to that instead, so that the Linux community as a whole ends up with one stronger and improved distro instead of two weaker ones.
114 • @110 • @109 ... Uh, actually ... (by jake (by Anonymous on 2010-11-11 10:02:37 GMT from Portugal)
"Desktop art & stuff like Compiz aren't useful in day-to-day life."
I'm with you jake, count on me for your guns ... :)
"Corporate systems are doomed to die, eventually"
Not quite. Since the the fall of the cold war corporate concentrations took over, regulation became a clown's circus and those corporations existing today got an unprecedented worldwide power and are the rulers of today's world. We've been living in a new dangerous world where the competition is heading for the market control and not for the product or services.
"Market share is unimportant"
Again, I disagree. Market share reflects the status of what we have done for our freedom and how the message reach others in our environments. FOSS is the seed for this ongoing "subversion".
115 • @ 109 and @107 (fernbap and landor) (by meanpt on 2010-11-11 10:28:49 GMT from Portugal)
:) ... the name of the game isn't market share but "critical mass", the number of existing adopters that makes others see it and wish to try it. Internet have contributed to increase the critical mass of linux in whatever package it comes.
116 • Re: #97 Pentium III hardware from yr 2000 (by silent on 2010-11-11 13:15:49 GMT from France)
You could also try antiX.
117 • Re #103 (by Andy Axnot on 2010-11-11 14:22:58 GMT from United States)
jake, many thanks for consulting a dictionary and letting us know what you found. I wish more people would use dictionaries, either online or printed, rather than arguing from nothing more than personal experience.
Andy
118 • @110 (by fernbap on 2010-11-11 15:51:00 GMT from Portugal)
"Desktop art & stuff like Compiz aren't useful in day-to-day life."
It was you who brought this issue, not I. Who cares about compiz? However, corporations care about image.
What yoy don't get is that many professionals are stuck with windows because the apps they depend on run on windows.
When you see Autocad or Photoshop for Linux, then you know the "critical mass" was achieved. And then, and only then, the professionals will use linux.
That's why the consumer desktop is important.
But i guess what Linux needs to evolve from is from people with your mentality. Fortunately, a new generation is taking over.
119 • RE:100 Good Points (by Eddie on 2010-11-11 16:05:37 GMT from United States)
"Yes, that is a common usage of carp, at least in the New York City metro area where I grew up."
SW Virginia here. We fish for carp and "harp" on not catching any.:)
"Bitter? Me? You're kidding, right?"
Of course I am.
"You seem to be making the very point I made in my second article"
Thank You, and I do agree that most of the time a 6 mo. release is not ready for prime time.
"I have also said, repeatedly, that Joe or Jane Average User can't install an OS at all, Linux or Windows or any other. In that sense you are right that no distro is ready for them. None ever will be. The answer for them is always the preloaded system, much like Windows or MacOS. Having said that, some do manage to give a good out of box experience to most users most of the time."
I'm glad you agree with me.
Eddie
120 • @desktop "bling" (by Josh on 2010-11-11 19:22:48 GMT from United States)
Some of you say stuff like compiz and desktop art don't matter or is a waste of time. Maybe it doesn't in the corporate world, but in the desktop consumer market, I believe it isn't a waste of time. In fact, it may be necessary.
Otherwise, MS and Apple wouldn't have wasted time to go that route. Without compiz, some basic functionality provided by the other 2 is lost, an example would be the small display for minimized windows. Maybe the other flashy effects aren't necessary, but they are wanted by most desktop users, including myself. I've even read comments (can't remember where atm) that compiz was one reason to use linux by some users.
Yes, they provide no useful function, but it does make things look alot nicer, especially transparency.
121 • @111 (by fernbap on 2010-11-11 20:49:13 GMT from Portugal)
"Actually, some people care more about things that are freely given to them."
You are absolutely right.
As an example, there was recently a promotion from a game software house, that provided a bundle of games in a "pay what you want" basis. They showed the global stats, and they were clear enough:
Average payments:
Linux users: $10
Mac users: $7.5
Windows users: $2.5
122 • @111 "leechers" (by Josh on 2010-11-11 21:12:50 GMT from United States)
These leechers may not be able to code or test, but they may provide something just as beneficial, and that's user experience. It may be a good thing to just have people say what they like and don't like about the was a program looks or functions, and the feel of the program and how it flows. It could bring improvement to the app by making it easier to use or less cumbersome at least.
Take google's image search: Today a guy I work with was complaining about it because if you click in the search bar then move the mouse away, if it lands on a picture the focus is taken out of the search box. That can be frustrating indeed. I like the way Linux focuses my mouse's scroll wheel to whatever app its hovering over. Windows does not do this except in some instances. And no, it doesn't bring that app into focus, it just allows me to scroll that app even if its not the program in focus. Not that MS would listen, but I would like that feature since it can be useful without having to switch windows to do something as simple as scrolling.
Finally, @121: Was that the humble indie bundle? That project was a great success considering you could pay anything.
123 • RHEL 6 (by Jesse on 2010-11-11 21:15:06 GMT from Canada)
I haven't seen anyone else bring this up yet. RHEL 6 is now out. The long wait is over.
124 • @ Eddie and Marcello (by Blue Knight on 2010-11-11 21:21:36 GMT from France)
@ Eddie
>"Pulse Audio works just fine"
Yes if you make "yum erase pulseaudio". Useless Pulse Audio crap...
>"Something does need to change if people do want Linux to be adopted by the masses."
I'm not sure we really want this or/neither this will happen...
> "People need to have more fun."
Unfortunately... Idiot.
@ Marcello
Quite frankly, one do not care about what Corbet said! We do not need him to have an opinion, at least I hope people are enough clever for that, but unfortunately I fear to have maybe wrong... People are often just stupid.
> "NO known bug should persist in final releases and the only updates made should be bug fixes because not all hardware or software combinations can be checked by developers. Buggy releases have names: they're called alpha or beta. That's it, that's all."
Well, you can be right but with this you kill almost all Linux distros, if not all OSs!
> "For now, the only solution is to piggy-back RHEL with CentOS or Scientific Linux" (Marcello)
> "I think those suggesting CentOS, Scientific Linux and Ubuntu LTS as desktop choices have a point. Those tend to be the finished products and the quality is better." (Caitlyn Martin)
> "Six month release cycles are wonderful for geeks who love to experiment and live on the cutting edge. They pretty much stink for everyone else."
In fact, six month release cycles suck, for everybody.
Probably yes.
About Fusion Linux, I wanted to try it but then I looked at the apps in the 14 rc version: F-Spot, Tomboy, Giver, Gnome-Do... No thanks! Fusion Linux is a Mono distribution and as such I can't use/try it. I don't want Mono on my linux box, sorry. (Yes, I know I can remove it but it should not be included by default)
125 • Correction (by Blue Knight on 2010-11-11 21:29:07 GMT from France)
At the end of my previous post there was a little mix in the lines. It should read:
> "For now, the only solution is to piggy-back RHEL with CentOS or Scientific Linux" (Marcello)
> "I think those suggesting CentOS, Scientific Linux and Ubuntu LTS as desktop choices have a point. Those tend to be the finished products and the quality is better." (Caitlyn Martin)
Probably yes.
> "Six month release cycles are wonderful for geeks who love to experiment and live on the cutting edge. They pretty much stink for everyone else."
In fact, six month release cycles suck, for everybody.
About Fusion Linux, I wanted to try it but then I looked at the apps in the 14 rc version: F-Spot, Tomboy, Giver, Gnome-Do... No thanks! Fusion Linux is a Mono distribution and as such I can't use/try it. I don't want Mono on my linux box, sorry. (Yes, I know I can remove it but it should not be included by default)
Sorry.
126 • @122 (by fernbap on 2010-11-11 21:29:23 GMT from Portugal)
"Was that the humble indie bundle?"
yes, it was. I used it as an example of what you can expect from the Linux community.
127 • Re: @100 - Ubuntu's out-of-box experience (by eco2geek on 2010-11-11 21:50:10 GMT from United States)
@100: >>
I have also said, repeatedly, that Joe or Jane Average User can't install an OS at all, Linux or Windows or any other. In that sense you are right that no distro is ready for them. None ever will be. The answer for them is always the preloaded system, much like Windows or MacOS. Having said that, some do manage to give a good out of box experience to most users most of the time. Ubuntu isn't such a distro and, yes, since they tout themselves as being for the masses, they need to be. I don't have expectations for them. Rather, they, themselves set the expectations. I always judge a distro by the claims made for it by the developers.
<<
Although one disagrees with Caitlyn Martin at one's peril, I would submit that if her statement that Ubuntu doesn't give a good out-of-box experience to most users is belied by its popularity. To turn that around, if it didn't give a good out-of-box experience to most users, it probably wouldn't be the most popular Linux distribution. We're not talking about something that comes pre-installed on 97% of computers (or whatever the statistic is) like MS Windows here; we're talking about a distro people choose to download and install.
Try it for yourself.
I definitely agree that a six-month release cycle is totally unnecessary, especially when using a package management system, APT, that handles rolling upgrades so well. And I agree that it would be much better to focus on getting a quality release out the door than meeting the next six-month "silly animal name" deadline.
128 • @79 Re: My experiances with Fedora 14 (by Reuben W. Perelman on 2010-11-12 03:13:46 GMT from United States)
I would have been glad to test things out before release, but unfortunately I encountered a blocker that didn't get resolved until after the beta was released. I have no interest in resolving these issues. Anyways, keep in mind that these where my experiences.
129 • Why fixed release cycles at all? (by Anony Moss on 2010-11-12 05:30:36 GMT from India)
Could there be another alternative to fixed 6 or 8 month cycles, and it-will-be-ready-when-its-ready? A distro team could look at the projects it is dependent on... say, when is the next LXDE desktop release, the next X.org release, the next kernel release, the next firefox release, etc., and then decide a suitable time to release their distro when these underlying releases have stabilized to an extent.
What's the fun in releasing a distro, for eg., when KDE 4.5 is a month away.
130 • #129 (by Anony Moss on 2010-11-12 05:32:05 GMT from India)
Actually I meant to write the last line as-
What's the fun in releasing a distro, for eg., with a KDE 4.4 desktop when KDE 4.5 is a month away.
131 • @74 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 05:59:40 GMT from Canada)
"Nonetheless the number of updates increased from 95 to 120+many and in two months anyone wanting to install Fedora from an official iso may run in the same problem I ran with some debians, with conflicts everywhere during the update and a complete messed up and unreliable instalation."
No, they won't. Fedora updates have to go through updates-testing, and updates with dependency issues won't be allowed through.
(I did an install of F13 and update to current F13 for testing the other day; that whole update goes through with no dependency issues.)
132 • @102 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 06:13:19 GMT from Canada)
"Could you imagine the average user attempting to install Windows OEM with no drivers, or trying to find their driver cds?"
You might want to try doing it a few times before you keep citing that old chestnut; I've installed Windows 7 on a couple of self-built systems and it supported all the hardware out of the box. (Much like Fedora did, too.)
BTW, I wish you and Caitlyn would ratchet down a bit on the 'Red Hat doesn't care about the desktop' thing. See, it's not actually true. What's true is that we don't make a whole deal of money on the desktop in the way we do with servers (though we *do* have desktop systems). But RH takes a long-term and pretty holistic view of things. RH does probably as much or more work on key F/OSS desktop engineering as any other company. Have you noticed GNOME 2.91.2 coming out today? Noticed who's doing all the tarballs? That would be mclasen, Red Hat employee. Who employs people to work on the open source drivers for NVIDIA and ATI cards? Red Hat. Do servers need that stuff? Heck no, if they ever run X at all they'd be fine with vesa. Who's paying people to work on GNOME Shell? That'd be Red Hat again. Evolution? Yup. Totem? Check. Heck, we even have one guy on staff for whom working on KDE is part of his job description. If you took away all the RH engineers you might be surprised at how much of a dint it made in the F/OSS desktop, especially GNOME.
So, yeah, RH *does* 'care about the desktop'. Not trying to knock anyone else's contributions here, just pointing out that RH does a lot of the work too.
133 • correction (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 06:13:44 GMT from Canada)
"though we *do* have desktop systems" should read "though we *do* have desktop customers".
134 • @120 (by jake on 2010-11-12 08:23:17 GMT from United States)
Your so-called "bling" is nothing but noise ... and a waste of CPU cycles.
Kinda like 24 inch rims & ultra-low profile tires on an SUV ... which do nothing more than make the vehicle ride even more like the truck that it is. Add on a coffee-can exhaust, and you have a guaranteed headache in day-to-day life.
Or the complete idiots who remove the baffles from their motorcycle exhaust (or purchase so-called "drag pipes") without re-jetting their fuel system ... That "pop-pop-pop" sound when they get off the throttle is known as "lean-popping" ... the engine is running lean, and burning valves.
"Top Gear" did a pretty good episode demonstrating why idiots without a clue should probably not get in over their heads ... They took a pretty decent compact car, added rims, tires, bodywork, brakes, suspension, & etc. ... and promptly slowed the entire system down.
My Wife grabbed my arm and asked "That's what Compiz does, right?" ...
Bling is bloody useless ... Unless you're into shelling out cash to the marketards. If so, please follow your bliss. Who am I to argue.
135 • @131 • @74 (by Adam Williamson (by meanpt on 2010-11-12 12:49:24 GMT from Portugal)
Adam, despite what you say about the F13 updates which, according to you, installed fine, a feature I will not question once I did not test it for a proof of concept, and for the same reason I will not mention F12 updates, but you also did not made any reference to it, I would like to remind you that after the last update on a third installation of F14 LXDE the background was again completely erased showing that the so called in house testing is failing somewhere and this is true whether you accept it or not. My point is, if Fedora is, serious in avoiding future problems with dependencies and buggy updates, than the best would be to update the iso regularly. Small distros like Paldo have been doing it successfully. For the sake of things getting quite and reasonably well done, just do it. Moreover, what is the point in installing something during an hour and having to wait for the night to install globs of updates to find next morning there are missing pieces you can see, making you wonder what more under the hood may be missing without you perception.
136 • Releases and updates (by Jesse on 2010-11-12 13:24:21 GMT from Canada)
>> "Could there be another alternative to fixed 6 or 8 month cycles, and it-will-be-ready-when-its-ready? A distro team could look at the projects it is dependent on... say, when is the next LXDE desktop release, the next X.org release, the next kernel release, the next firefox release, etc., and then decide a suitable time to release their distro when these underlying releases have stabilized to an extent."
The Ubuntu team tried to do something like this in reverse where they encouraged the larger projects to adopt a release schedule closer to the six month cycle. I think their idea was that if upstream released every six months, it would be easier for distros to pump out a release every 6/12 months. Of course, the trouble with setting up such a system is getting many open source developers all onto the same page is like herding cats.
>> "No, they won't. Fedora updates have to go through updates-testing, and updates with dependency issues won't be allowed through."
Yet they occasionally get through. Most of the Fedora system's I've installed have eventually run into dependency problems. Reporting these problems typically results in indifference from the package managers.
137 • #132: Red Hat and the desktop (by Caitlyn Martin on 2010-11-12 14:00:45 GMT from United States)
@Adam: I have NEVER, EVER said Red Hat doesn't care about the desktop. C'mon, Adam! You know better than that!
What I said is that Red Hat cares about the corporate desktop as it has large enterprise customer who use RHEL on the desktop. What Red Hat does not care to do is market to consumers or compete directly in the consumer desktop market. I can cite enough statements by Red Hat execs to back that comment up if you like. Do you disagree?
What I also said was that Fedora, like Ubuntu, doesn't always get things fixed within a release cycle. The focus of Red Hat is on RHEL and I do believe that Fedora is often treated like a development platform which, at least in part, is what it is.
138 • "bling" (by Pearson on 2010-11-12 14:23:59 GMT from United States)
Sure, compiz and stuff are "wasteful", but then I could say that car stereos are "wastful".
Just because something is "wasteful" doesn't mean it's unimportant.
139 • @132 Red Hat and the desktop (by christopher on 2010-11-12 14:27:38 GMT from Netherlands)
This truth is something a linux newbie does not know. At first he uses Ubuntu and believes it is the best Linux distro in the world. In this regard, Canonical gets all the merits for Red Hat's work. Ubuntu is the best Gnome desktop in the world, Red Hat's Gnome desktop, pardon, who?
But this is only a temporary problem. In contrast to Canonical Red Hat makes a lot of money with their Linux products and in doing so they follow always the principles of free software. Something like the proprietary Ubuntu One would be unthinkable for Red Hat, because Ubuntu One is no free software.
In my personal opinion, Canonical is something like Red Hat's "evil twin": They earn almost nothing with respect to their finanical income, they rely heavily on Red Hat, Novell and many other free software contributors to do "their" free Gnome software development work and sometimes they even develop proprietary software. The money aspect is the most severe for Canonical: Canonical and maybe Ubuntu will vanish some day because of Canonical's inability to make money "for a living".
But in some way Red Hat is fully responsible for its unjustified "doing nothing for the desktop" image: There is no RHEL desktop heavily advertised for end users. Even the most cheap and affordable RHEL Desktop product is not advertised in a way that the normal linux user "sees" it. Now it is time to do exactly this after RHEL 6 has been released.
By the way, I have just read that Fedora is beginning to ban security software with regard to what is "right" also in non-US legislations (Are China or Germany with it is infamous "Hacker paragraph" included?). This is ridiculous.
140 • 138 • "bling" (by Pearson (by meanpt on 2010-11-12 15:06:08 GMT from Portugal)
But you do have good sound applications in Linux. Putting too much show-off blings in the desktop is jerking with your expensive machine's resources. Any time I use a windows machine the first thing I do when booting is to press the F8 key to log in in safety mode with networking. Exception made for the machine where I have VirtualBox installed, but even there I always set the graphics environment for performance. All I wanted was to be able do the same when needed to some linux distros which came out of the box full of crap. The alternative is to use crapless distros which is what I do, unless the devs already provided the resource cutting (ram and cpu) needed so one can use what was a blingsy thing taht turned into a productivity station.
141 • RE:Arguments About Bling (by Eddie on 2010-11-12 15:27:01 GMT from United States)
WOW!!! Things are really getting heated up over, can you believe it, BLING. When you look underneath it all it's really a foolish argument to even be involved in. Why you may ask. It's because there are several different sects in the FLOSS world.
You have your die hard server sect where everything or anything that has to do with desktop bling, social networking, cloud computing, and the general computing population are just plain useless and evil. They live in their own world, they are unyielding, and they say "how dare you contaminate my traditional Linux with your foolishness", and they basically want people to stay out of their IT world. These are people who can never be swayed that their way of thinking is not correct in any way, shape, or form. You cannot discuss, or debate with this sect.
Then you have the other extreme. You have people who believe bling is the most importing thing on any computer. They think the command line is nonsense, that a computer without transparency is outdated, that social networking is the main function of a computer, and if it doesn't look good then it probability isn't good. They live in their own world, they are unyielding, and they say "how dare you contaminate my modern Linux with your foolishness", and they want people to stay out of their modern computer world. These are people who can never be swayed that their way of thinking is not correct in any way, shape, or form. You cannot discuss, or debate with this sect.
Why does it have to be this way? It,s obvious that we have two different worlds in FLOSS but what is lacking is mutual respect and balance. You do not show any respect when you call someone foolish for using their computer the way they want to, with a lot of bling. You do not show respect when you call someone antiques for using the command line and using a minimal system with no bling. Everybody has a right to voice their opinions but not if it involves showing disrespect and even hate toward anyone else or even against somebody's FLOSS project. These distributions and or projects do not belong to us but to the community. Let us not contaminate the community by our closed minded, superior attitudes. Don't be misled into thinking that infighting will have no effect on the FLOSS community. Contrary to what many of you believe, when the community dies, FLOSS will die.
142 • 141 • RE:Arguments About Bling (by Eddie (by meanpt on 2010-11-12 16:45:22 GMT from Portugal)
Eddie, as you can see there are people for "bling" and people against too much "bling", because we stated what we think and what we want. What did you expect? To have everyone agreeing in everything? Graphical environments are important whenever the graphical functionality adds capability and productivity. Beyond that is waste for those who can afford waste for whatever underlying reasons and factors, but it doesn't imply we are all aligned and headed for waste. Well, there is always the "cool" factor, but we don't need to embark in a kind of silly and retarded teen behavior seeking to be the coolest kid on the school. This is, of course, a personal statement, and I respect the lovers of bling, whatever they do with it.
143 • 142 (by fernbap on 2010-11-12 17:35:16 GMT from Portugal)
"Bling" is a relative concept.
For example, nowadays virtually noone would not want to have font smoothing, for the simple reason it causes much less eye strain.
However, that was the main reason why windows XP was considered "bloated" when it came out.
Besides being fashionable and looking "cool", which for many is irrelevant, i am sure that, in the future, many things that are considered "bling" today will be considered not only normal but also desirable, for the very same reason why virtually everyone today wants font smoothing.
many things some consider "bling" are considered by others increased usability.
Linux is about freedom of choice, let those who want bling have it.
144 • Fedora 14 in Virtual Box (by Bhupendra on 2010-11-12 17:37:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
I installed Fedora 14x AMD 64 in Virtual Box. Upon adding Guest additions, it crashed. Couldnot find a solution. So went back to PCLinux in Virtual Box. My host is Ubuntu 10.10. Hasn't crashed yet.
145 • @135 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 17:50:28 GMT from Canada)
Sure, I believe you. The fact is, not that many people use LXDE on Fedora, so an update which causes a problem for LXDE but otherwise works fine is likely to get through the updates testing process. I tested a default - that is, GNOME - install, not LXDE.
Have you filed a bug on that problem?
I don't see why you think updating the ISOs would help. All you'd have then would be an updated ISO which had the same bug. =) Updating ISOs is a ton of work for releng and QA; if we were revising ISOs and testing them every week we'd simply never be able to do any other work. It's just not going to happen. Instead of testing and fixing up things in Rawhide in preparation for F15 branching, I'd be spending my life in a groundhog day cycle of testing F14 ISOs over and over and over and over and... (and would we still be re-spinning F13 ISOs too? Would I be testing those as well?)
As I've pointed out before, there's a community project called Fedora Unity which aims to do respins of ISOs for stable releases incorporating updates. Its rate of releasing can be taken as a fairly accurate indicator of the difficulty of the project. But it's there; if you think this is a valuable project, then by all means join up and contribute to it. There's no problem with the tooling being available, all that's needed is the personpower to get it done.
146 • @ 127 & Adam W. (by Anonymous on 2010-11-12 18:04:51 GMT from United States)
Well eco2geek I for one have tried Ubuntu and hated it. I found glitches with it and it main cousin Mint that were unsatisfactory. I liked Mint a lot but probably won't go back there until they have a Debian Edition that I think will work well. It's nice that they are trying to move parts open source and Linux forward over at Ubuntu, but I've had number of problems that I've run into with Ubuntu and those distros dependent on it after the initial joy of using Mint 6 came to and end. Most of what came out of the six month release cycle of Ubuntu and Mint was headaches and resultant apathy, and booting into vista because it was all I had that actually worked. Ubuntu needs to stop focusing on looking like a Mac and start fixing bugs.
As for Fedora and Mr Adam Williamson, I think if Fedora had some way of creating a more polished and desktop oriented version then Redhat would get more of the credit it deserves. I think it would be great for the community and Linux in general if there were a small wing that tried to combine that best ideas and attitudes of distros like Mint and some of the more community oriented distros mentioned in other posts into a Fedora version that tried harder to be more than a RHEL testbed. I don't know how much such an idea would help Redhat directly, but much like the other work for GNOME and KDE it could improve the atmosphere and mind share of Linux in ways that have long term benefits.
147 • @145 • @135 (by Adam Williamson (by meanpt on 2010-11-12 19:53:19 GMT from Portugal)
Hi, Adam,
I appreciate your feedback.
"Have you filed a bug on that problem?"
Done days ago.
"I don't see why you think updating the ISOs would help. All you'd have then would be an updated ISO which had the same bug. =)"
Not quite. One thing is a background missing after 194 updates. Other would be a background missing after installing or running in live mode which would be immediately detected in your home/community testing.
Regarding your work flow, , how do you have so much trouble in updating isos when others with much less resources have succeeded? Redesign and streamline the workflow is achievable for the huge fedora community.
148 • @147 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 20:28:51 GMT from Canada)
The problem space scales with the community. We don't have one ISO to test; we have dozens (boot.iso, DVD both arches, split CDs both arches, and ten or so live images of both arches).
The workflow so far as generating images is concerned is fine. you can build a full set of images for a Fedora release in a day or so; just building a single live image takes 5-30 minutes depending how fast your system is. It's the test process that takes time. we could just respin unsupported ISOs automatically every week, but then people would just complain that they didn't work.
149 • @144 • Fedora 14 in Virtual Box (by Bhupendra (by meanpt on 2010-11-12 20:31:13 GMT from Portugal)
You're lucky. I still have a former f14lxde 32 bits shown in the vbox menu as running, despite having deleted the virtual machine completely. It sounds like fedora got a bit less friendly with virtualbox. For some reason F14 keeps my cooler screaming and wanting to take off from the motherboard to reach the ceiling and hover there. But it did guess correctly the screen resolution without installing guest additions which nowadays is always a terrific good surprise.
150 • @146 (by Adam Williamson on 2010-11-12 20:31:29 GMT from Canada)
For the umpteenth time, Fedora is *not* a RHEL testbed. (If it were it'd have about 10x fewer packages, for a start; have you compared RHEL and Fedora package counts?)
You can see Fedora as a testbed, if you like, but it's not a testbed for RHEL, or not only for RHEL. It's a testbed for a wide range of F/OSS, much of which never ends up in RHEL directly. What I see Fedora as valuable for is as an environment for developing and testing all key F/OSS technologies, not just those which happen to be valuable to RHEL.
151 • @95 • Using OpenDNS to track IP addresses (by Fargo on 2010-11-12 21:50:33 GMT from Canada)
I use it for the same reason. Makes support calls a breeze. I also like to snoop around their PC's once in awhile to see what they're up to. Some of the stuff I find just astounds me! You thought you'd know your friends a little better...
152 • Fedora 14 (by forlin on 2010-11-12 22:52:56 GMT from Portugal)
It's normal that Fedora has a few bugs, because there isn't any software that doesn't have them.
There are many methods and tools to detect and fix bugs, but I'm sure that DW is not one of those used by developers for that purpose.
There are hundreds of distros in the world. Imagine if their users were coming to DWW, to report all bugs found on them... :)
Distrowatch is a reference for many Linux users and it may be difficult for Adam Williamson to avoid replying to some comments placed here about Fedora, even if they'r about some bugs, but this is not really the best place.
What I'd like to highlight about Fedora 14 is that it seems to be on pair with Fedora 13, witch was maybe the best Fedora, since a long time ago. It's possible that is has some glitches, but I'm confident that they'll all be quickly fixed, and F14 will soon become an excellent experience to the user, even better than what F13 is.
153 • Fedora and Ubuntu (by Tony on 2010-11-13 00:42:01 GMT from United States)
I don't know where all the Ubuntu and Fedora bashing is coming from, because from my experience, the latest releases of both distros are very stable. Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 have not had the same issues that earlier Buntu releases had. In fact, 10.10 is arguably the best linux based distro ever created. And Fedora 14, while not as polished as Ubuntu, certainly is no slouch. For me F14 has been very stable, no hardware compatability problems, and no crashes. There are a few minor complaints I have about applications not included in F14, but those can be installed within minutes.
One other thing, I cannot understand why some of you continue to give Linux Mint so many comments referring to it as an independent distro. In my opinion, LM is nothing more than a respin of Ubuntu painted green. While there are a few minor changes in Mint to the menu and update manager. make no mistake - without Ubuntu there would be no Mint. Until Mint uses its own installer and packages, one cannot honestly said that it's an independent distro.
154 • Ubuntu and Mint (by Jesse on 2010-11-13 01:28:44 GMT from Canada)
@153:
Obviously we've had different experiences with the latest Ubuntu. I gave it a short test drive and found it unstable and the installer kept locking up on me. From what I've heard most people got along well with 10.10, but I was one of the unlucky few where it crashed and burned.
As for Mint, perhaps you weren't aware, but Mint has shown their layer of software can be transferred to other distributions. For example, Mint can rest on Debian and has its own installer, so they can continue to exist with or without Ubuntu. Yes, they are more of a layer than an independent distro, but they can choose which distro they use as their base.
155 • RE: 132 (by Landor on 2010-11-13 01:42:11 GMT from Canada)
"You might want to try doing it a few times before you keep citing that old chestnut; I've installed Windows 7 on a couple of self-built systems and it supported all the hardware out of the box. (Much like Fedora did, too.)"
Apples and Oranges, and not every piece of hardware is supported by any OS. The simple fact was clear, and it doesn't matter if there's drivers or not, the average computer user is clueless to the process. Common words heard 'round the world in whatever language, "Stupid Computer". But in regard to your first sentence, I'll decline. I'm quite happy with only ever supporting FOSS and not using anything else at all. :)
"BTW, I wish you and Caitlyn would ratchet down a bit on the 'Red Hat doesn't care about the desktop' thing. See, it's not actually true."
If you had read the whole week's discussion, and chose to look at it from that point of view, you would have saved the three of us some time.
It was in regard to ease of use, bling, proprietary codecs, along the lines of an all in one distribution. I'm well aware the reach that Red Hat, Novell, and others have in many projects. Never was that part of the discussion, or the intent. It was stated that Red Hat doesn't provide all the whiz-bang effects and polish to the desktop, which Fedora doesn't either, and simply being, because that is not either of the two's goals. That is completely true, unless you're going to say it's changed in the Enterprise Market and Fedora was released with one-click installs and new themes instead of providing as close to upstream as possible, similar, but not as much to Slackware.
I can't speak for CM, but I'm sure we were of similar thought on the topic, which as I said, was valid.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
156 • RE:142,143 Sounds Like a Winner (by Eddie on 2010-11-13 02:04:33 GMT from United States)
We all have different taste, different ways of doing things, different goals. I don't expect everyone to agree, that would make for a very boring world. Respect for each other can lead to some very good discussions and can really be informative and beneficial for all. I know that I've learned a lot by just reading the comments section on this very site. I'm always wanting to try new things and the wealth of information we can share will have no end. Thanks to everyone for putting up with my rants and have a great weekend.
Eddie
157 • PCLinux recent releases missing here at Distrowatch (by RollMeAway on 2010-11-13 02:37:37 GMT from United States)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/pclinuxos-releases-slew-quarterly-updates
KDE, LXDE, XFCE, ZEN(minimal gnome), E17, and OpenBox, all 2010.10 versions.
These are more like snapshots, as pclinux appears to be a rolling release distro.
Still, I would expect to see these in the Distrowatch database, if not mentioned on the main page?
158 • RE: 157 PCLinux recent releases missing here at Distrowatch (by ladislav on 2010-11-13 02:45:02 GMT from Taiwan)
Still, I would expect to see these in the Distrowatch database, if not mentioned on the main page?
What do you mean by "DistroWatch database"? The package version data for PCLinuxOS 2010.10 are listed on the PCLinuxOS page:
http://distrowatch.com/pclinuxos
159 • @158 PCLinux releases (by RollMeAway on 2010-11-13 02:55:14 GMT from United States)
Sorry, I didn't go below "Recent Related News" section.
But, why no mention of 6 or 7 iso releases, on the "Latest News and Updates" main page?
160 • RE: PCLinux releases (by ladislav on 2010-11-13 03:13:12 GMT from Taiwan)
But, why no mention of 6 or 7 iso releases, on the "Latest News and Updates" main page?
You should first ask the PCLinuxOS developers why they haven't mentioned it on their own web page.
As always, distro releases are only announced on DistroWatch once they are announced on the distro's own website. As an example, in the last few days many people have been emailing about the availability of ISO images for NetBSD 5.1. I know they are available, but I won't announce the release until there is an official announcement on the NetBSD website. A good case in point was the recent DragonFly BSD release - many people emailed as soon as the ISOs were on their servers, only for the developers to withdraw them later (not once, but twice) because of major bugs.
In short, it's NOT released until it's announced.
161 • @160 PCLinux releases (by RollMeAway on 2010-11-13 03:29:41 GMT from United States)
Aha ..Ladislav, how many times must you tell us knuckleheads that?
I've read that reply many times before. What a patient person you are!
Moving on now ....
162 • Ahh, Fedora 14 and PCLinuxOSE17... (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-13 08:46:58 GMT from United States)
What a great time to be alive. Both beautiful and performing perfectly on my Compaq Presario next to Windows 7 Ultimate.
163 • On "bling"... (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-13 09:17:23 GMT from United States)
I`m sitting here at 3:11am Texas time, the house is quiet and a cat is snoring softly next to me. Perfect writing conditions. Yes, I`m a writer. I`m looking at "Quiet Calm", an animated wallpaper showing a tree on a small island in the ocean with a full moon behind and stars twinkling in the sky and on the water. And I`m thinking that perhaps beautiful things aren`t needed or desired by a lot of users, but for just this moment it is sublime indeed...
164 • Bling, Compiz, and Usefulness (by Anonymous on 2010-11-13 12:21:38 GMT from Switzerland)
I personally find Compiz fantastically useful. Being able to zoom the whole screen with the mouse wheel and move around with the pointer makes many web pages, documents, and complex diagrams far easier to cope with, especially when eyes are tired.
165 • @163 • On "bling"... (by OnoSendai58 (by meanpt on 2010-11-13 12:41:43 GMT from Portugal)
:) Oh ... have two cats getting warmed in the belly of my young golden retriever bitch and the three are slipping (I'm not kidding) ... I'm not a writer but love to right, and I'm doing it (today I felt the need to write some poetry ... I write because I feel the need to do so) in my new Salix 13.1.2 XFCE installation within a 400 MB ram virtual machine, performing like if I owned a twelve Xeon microprocessor machine, while hearing a lineup of my song's collection (... currently hearing Barry White's "let the music play", the next one will be Valérie Lagrange singing "Faut plus me la faire", a bit of the Iranian Sima Bina, Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Andy Timmons closing the foreseeable list) ... and yes, the world seems perfect in these moments ...
166 • Ref# 161-165 hummmm (by Verndog on 2010-11-13 15:02:37 GMT from United States)
Image that. Serenity here at Distrowatch. Its like an oasis amid all the "..my distro can beat your distro up " nonsense.
Thanks for the posts (and poetry) guys. I feel very calm right now :)
167 • "But I still don`t know how to make that cube, lol!" (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-13 19:08:48 GMT from United States)
Just woke up and saw your post, Verndog. Thank you very much. It seemed like a good time, XD. I think in all the tech talk we forget that the things we take for granted would have seemed impossible even 50 years ago. Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Are we not "magic" users then? Let`s just enjoy the magic....
168 • re#167 (by hab on 2010-11-13 20:07:50 GMT from Canada)
Of course the corollary to Arthur C. Clarke's quote is, Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced!
cheers
169 • @168,167 (by fernbap on 2010-11-13 22:09:18 GMT from Portugal)
Actually, that quote is from Isaac Asimov, from the Foundation series
170 • RE: 169 Not hardly, lol. (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-13 22:27:46 GMT from United States)
Trust me on this one. Foundation was written way after the quote I just mentioned.
171 • RE: Whoops! (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-13 22:38:11 GMT from United States)
Clarke wrote that in 1973 to balance out his first two "laws". Asimov wrote a corollary to Clarke`s first "law". Obviously Asimov wrote the Foundation books in the `40`s. My bad, but the point still stands.
172 • @153 Mint vs Ubuntu (by Gaetan on 2010-11-13 23:35:16 GMT from Canada)
Saying that "Linux Mint is nothing more than a respin of Ubuntu painted green" is a lot like saying that Ubuntu is nothing more than a Debian respin painted brown. That was their color theme until recently. Why call Ubuntu a distro but refuse that status for Mint? If there would be no Mint without Ubuntu, the same thing can be said about Ubuntu: there would be no Ubuntu without Debian.
173 • Linux % (by Anonymous on 2010-11-14 00:24:32 GMT from United States)
Interesting server logs at w3schools.com
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
Shows Linux growing to about 4.7%.
174 • Ref# 172 • Mint vs Ubuntu vs Debian (by Linus Torvalds on 2010-11-14 03:27:13 GMT from United States)
Let's go a bit further, and say without out Linux kernel there would be no Debian.
175 • w/ apologies to Adam Williamson (by #146 on 2010-11-14 03:46:25 GMT from United States)
Sorry to offend, I don't always follow the debate on Fedora all that closely; however, I think I stand behind the rest of the premise that some Fedora/RPM based distro with a little extra polish over Fedora and some backing from the Red hat & Fedora communities would do a lot for both Linux and Red hat. For instance the last time I heard anything comparing Deb file usage to RPM usage Deb was used a a much higher rate than RPM. I think if there were a closer competition between the different system bases it would be good for the Linux environment. It would be obviously be good for Red hat if there were more usage of RPM, because then there would be more incentive to learn how to work with RPM based systems and there would be more developers on that part of the Linux ecosystem. Of course Ubuntu and other popular Deb based systems tilt the numbers in a Debian based direction, which means that packagers that only want to learn one system will be likely to pick the more popular one and keep with it. There could be a gradual tilt over time if momentum builds one way or the other, so everyone would probably be better off if there were several very popular distros based on both the most common packaging systems in order to maintain maximum innovation and competition on all sides. Of course there are probably many similar areas where competition would keep different parts of the Linux ecosystem competitive with each other.
176 • RE: 175 Interesting... (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-14 04:26:26 GMT from United States)
...Since openSUSE and others use RPM and I find Fedora and openSUSE to be two of the finest distros I`ve ever used, as well as the most professional and well-maintained. As opposed to Ubuntu and it`s cousins.
177 • Clarke's third law (by jake on 2010-11-14 04:26:36 GMT from United States)
Was indeed written in 1973. It's probably a re-write of something Leigh Brackett wrote in 1942' "The Sorcerer of Rhiannon", towhit "Witchcraft to the ignorant, .... Simple science to the learned" ... Which itself was probably lifted from Sam Clemens' "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".
Asimov started writing the Foundation "Universe" in the 40s ... but the quote mentioned ("If technology is distinguishable from magic, it is insufficiently advanced") came from the first book in the Foundation series not penned by Asimov, namely Greg Benford's "Foundation's Fear", from 1997 ... This quote in turn was lifted from Dr. Barry Gehm's Corollary, which I first read in Analog in the late 80s or early 90s ("Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced").
Yeah, off-topic, technically ... but maybe not so much, in this forum ;-)
178 • RE: 177 All true. (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-14 04:40:14 GMT from United States)
I thought fernbap meant Clarke`s Third Law when he posted, which I as a lifelong Clarke reader knew wasn`t true.
179 • @163 (by jake on 2010-11-14 04:59:35 GMT from United States)
Me, I don't want my computer to entertain me when it's time to calm my mind in the wee hours. Instead, I step away from the keyboard, call a couple of the dogs (Whippets, Greys, and my old multiple-BIS Standard poodle[1]) & we go check on the horses and the barn cats ... usually leaving the house Skogg-cats squabbling over who gets to keep my chair warm while we're out :-)
With the exception of a couple of fora like this one, the computers are for computing, not entertainment. RealLife[tm] comes first.
[1] Buck is currently pissed-off at me because the geese are using our ponds as rest-stops in their migration, and I don't hunt anymore[2]. As I type, he's sitting in front of the fireplace here in the office, frowning at my gun safe ...
[2] Why hunt, when road-kill is so abundant here in Sonoma County? I have a deep-freeze full of Venison & turkey ... The last critter I killed with a gun[3] was a wild boar that was menacing people in the Santa Cruz Mountains ... He sent a friend of mine to Hospital with deep gashes in both legs. Wild boar is good eats.
[3] I varmint with the sighthounds; one of these days I'll rid the ranch of every last $@%^#&% ground-squirrel.
180 • RE: 179 (by OnoSendai58 on 2010-11-14 05:04:42 GMT from United States)
Opinions are like rectums, everybody has one, lol. That`s your`s.
181 • @146, and random thoughts (by eco2geek on 2010-11-14 05:13:55 GMT from United States)
>>
Well eco2geek I for one have tried Ubuntu and hated it. I found glitches with it and it main cousin Mint that were unsatisfactory.
<<
Sorry to hear it. Let us know what distro works for you and why.
Would that Ubuntu had an employee like Adam Williamson who posted in various popular fora. (That is the plural of "forum", isn't it?)
The new Mint is gorgeous-looking. Check out their icons. It's simply terrible that they brand most of their wallpaper, so I can't leech it and use it in other distros. :-P
182 • @181 (by Blue Knight on 2010-11-14 12:44:08 GMT from France)
> "The new Mint is gorgeous-looking. Check out their icons. It's simply terrible that they brand most of their wallpaper, so I can't leech it and use it in other distros."
Well, no, thanks! I hate this smartphone/Apple look, sorry, and I do not want it in my distro of choice...
183 • Re: 180 (by Anonymous on 2010-11-14 17:02:46 GMT from Netherlands)
"""Opinions are like rectums, everybody has one"""
Speak for yourself. I have two! (sorry, I couldn't resist :-)
184 • Enlightenment Libraries went beta 2 (by forlin on 2010-11-14 23:54:49 GMT from Portugal)
The announcement is at Oct.12th, in the enlightenment site, under the title "BETA2 Release of core EFL".
It's a very good news because it's only one month after they reached their beta 1 stage, and it seems they're doing their best to have a stable 1.0 release, before year end.
They're very committed to have a rock solid final product, and they're looking for help from he community to achieve that "we're really interested in engaging with distros to make sure that those libraries and applications are properly packaged and made available."
I tested the beta 1 Enlightenment with the Pinguy E17 remix and I was really impressed with it. It offers an unbelievable quantity of customization items, a number of interesting gadgets, and is as light as any of the Lxde I used before.
I'm really sure that very soon, all the main distros will be offering a version based on E17.
185 • #174 (by zygmunt on 2010-11-15 08:06:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ever heard of Hurd?
Number of Comments: 185
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 |
| • Ussye 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • 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 |
| • 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 | 
Taprobane GNU/Linux
Taprobane GNU/Linux was a distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. It was a live CD with a primary focus of bringing convenience to the user. The word "Taprobane" represents an ancient name for Sri Lanka, a beautiful Indian Ocean island also known as Ceylon.
Status: Discontinued
|
| 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.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
