DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 387, 10 January 2011 |
Welcome to this year's second issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Today we have something slightly different on the menu. While most of the time this publication caters to home users, this week's feature story is targeted at enterprise Linux system administrators as we take a first look at LucidWorks Enterprise, a Java-based, cross-platform search engine. Read on to find out how it fared in our test. In the news section we learn about several subtle signs that indicate a proximity of the Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 release before we link to the latest update from the Mageia project and to an article by a well-known distro reviewer who picks the best Linux distribution of 2010. Also in this issue, something for fans and users of genealogy software and a Question and Answers section that gives a few hints to those who think about building their own custom Linux distributions. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (11MB) and MP3 (29MB) formats
Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
LucidWorks Enterprise
In mid-December the Lucid Imagination team released a new product called LucidWorks Enterprise. It's a solution based upon the Apache Lucene/Solr search technology. So you might be wondering - is it a search engine, a desktop search tool, a library? In the documentation for LucidWorks Enterprise (LWE) we receive the following introduction: "LucidWorks Enterprise has been designed to provide you with the search capabilities and benefits of Solr while still providing the ease of use you need to work efficiently in an environment in which data is everywhere, and you need to get a handle on it. While it does provide some great opportunities for programmers to take control and build powerful search applications using those capabilities, it's also been designed to take much of the pain out of using such a complex system."
The above is a good mission statement, but it doesn't really tell us what LWE does or why it's an attractive icing on top of the Solr cake. Fortunately the good folks over at Lucid Imagination were kind enough to provide me with a demo of their latest and greatest so I could answer those questions. The download package, which takes the form of a Java archive, is approximately 86 MB in size. Being based on Java technology, LWE is cross-platform and is supported on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. For the purpose of testing LWE I set up a VirtualBox virtual machine running Linux Mint 9 (which is based on Ubuntu's 10.04 LTS release, appropriately named "Lucid Lynx"). The people at Lucid Imagination also provided me with their "Getting Started With LucidWorks Enterprise" document, a 41-page PDF file.
Before jumping into the technical details of installing, configuring and using LWE, I want to say that the Getting Started guide is quite good. It's a bit of a cliché that open-source documentation is sparse and/or cryptic and that is not the case here. The first two pages read suspiciously like a press release, but past that point the guide is spot on. The PDF gives a short blurb on how LWE works and then jumps into the installation requirements, the steps needed to perform the installation (either via a GUI or the command line) and provides occasional screen shots. We're up and running around page twelve and the remainder of the document covers customizing, more exotic use cases and optimizing LWE to suit your users' needs. Most of the instructions are provided in a straight forward manner and I suspect anyone who is able to install a Linux distribution will have no trouble setting up an install of LWE. The PDF also gives us further insight into what LWE is, so what is it?
In short, we can say LucidWorks Enterprise is a search engine, one which can be customized to suit your business's needs. It's flexible in that LWE will search web sites (remote or local) and index databases and file systems. Imagine your company having its own Google, if you will, where users can search for documents, web pages and database entries via a simple web interface. Further, most of the administrator functions are also provided in a clean web interface. LWE claims to be able to quickly handle millions of documents and can assist searchers by breaking down documents into categories, such as file type, author and source. We'll cover a bit more of that later, but first let's look at the install process.

The LucidWorks Enterprise installer (full image size: 75kB, resolution 640x480 pixels)
Launching the Java archive kicks off the installer and shows us the system requirements (2GB of memory or higher), then asks us to accept the product's license agreement. We're then asked which components we want to install on this machine and which network ports LWE should use. I chose to install everything and kept the default ports of 8888 and 8989. We then select where we want to install the package, it will install just about anywhere, so I plunked it down into the home directory of a user I had created for this purpose. A nice side-effect of this approach is that we don't need administrator access to install or run LWE. From there the installer unpacks the required files and, optionally, launches LWE in the background. We're then given a message letting us know the service is available to be accessed. With the installation completed, we can get to work configuring LWE using our web browser. Any modern GUI browser should do the trick, I opted to use Firefox.
We connect to LWE by pointing our web browser to the server, on port 8989. In my case, this meant using the URL "http://localhost:8989". What we see at first is pretty standard search engine material, a query box and a search button. Over in the top-right corner we find a link to login. Logging in takes us to the administrator console where LWE guides us through adding a new data source. We can select the type of data source we want (local file system, website, database or Solr resource), give the source a name and choose when to index the data. As an example, I chose to index a local directory of documents and told LWE to index the directory immediately. Once the indexing begins, we're taken to a status page which tells us about current tasks in progress, statistics on recent queries and our disk space usage. At this point I went back to the initial search page. Once again we see the query box, but now with a new addition. Over on the right side of the screen is a series of links categorizing indexed data by source, by author and by file type. These are, basically, quick links and I found them quite helpful. The query box works just as it does in any other search engine -- we put in key words and the system returns relevant results with a brief preview.

LucidWorks Enterprise - status summary screen (full image size: 77kB, resolution 800x565 pixels)
Something I found interesting about the way LWE is set up is that if we select an item we want, we're then taken to a screen with more information on the item and provided a link to the item. If the item we selected is a part of a website, the link we're given takes us directly to the appropriate web page. However, by default, if the resource was indexed on a local file system LWE will not send us a copy of the file. I suspect this is for security reasons. We're told where the item is, but it is not duplicated for us. The LWE documentation explains how to change this setting so locally indexed items can be copied and sent to people performing searches.
On the topic of searches, LWE does a good job of implementing common search features. The search page includes auto-complete and spell-check. When results are found, the user is provided with a link to find similar matches. While users can search for documents based on key words and file names they are additionally able to search for documents based on file type and length. For instance, we can find PDF files which contain 40 to 50 pages. The feature I think I enjoyed the most is the e-mail alert. When a user is logged into LWE and they perform a search, let's say for "Linux", they have the option of setting an alert. When the alert is set and any new document matching the word "Linux" is found in the system, LWE can e-mail the user a notification. Fields can be set to limit the number of notifications and how often the system should check for new matches. It's a handy way to automatically keep track of documents of a particular type or subject.
The defaults LWE comes with will probably suite most organizations. I certainly found the initial configuration to be useful. But, for people who want to fine-tune the system, there are some interesting admin tools provided in the GUI. We're able to change the way LWE indexes files, changing the fields the search software examines. We can also add search synonyms, making one search word act like another. For instance, we can make sure anyone searching for "airplane" also sees results for "aeroplane". There's a reverse version of the synonym feature where we can set a list of words we want to ignore. These ignored words are called "stop words" and they usually include "a", "the" and "of", but can be extended to block out other unwanted (or overly common) terms. The administrator is able to schedule updates to the various indexes, setting a unique update interval for each data source. It's useful to be able to update a website's index every hour, or a folder once a day, depending on how dynamic and large the data source is.
Though my experience with LWE was bug-free, I did run into one quirk. Once my install was completed and I had configured my data sources, I thought it would be a good idea to change the administrator password. I didn't find any information on changing the default password in the Getting Started guide, nor did I locate the proper function in the GUI. Upon contacting Lucid Imagination, I was directed to a collection of scripts kept in the LWE directory structure. There are scripts included to help administrators gather information on their users, change settings, configure accounts and reset passwords. There was one more hurdle and that was these scripts require JSON to be installed in the LWE directory. Again, the LWE documentation is a help here and provides directions for obtaining JSON. Once I had the proper script it was a straight forward process to create new accounts and change the default password.

LucidWorks Enterprise - query statistics (full image size: 67kB, resolution 800x565 pixels)
One might wonder how much it costs to provide an organization with their own personalized search engine. Lucid Imagination provides trials free of charge, allowing system administrators to try before they buy. I'm told that developers wanting to work with the LucidWorks Enterprise API can also get copies of the product gratis. Support contracts, for production use and for developers who need more than the free documentation provided, start at US$36,000. I find it interesting to note licensing is based on the number of servers an organization has and not on the number of users or by the number of data sources being indexed. During my trial I contacted Lucid Imagination a few times to ask questions and get advice on my configuration and I always received quick and courteous replies.
A note on system requirements -- Linux users should find that LWE will run on just about any computer that can support Java 1.6 (and higher). Though it's recommended LWE be run on a server with a few gigabytes of RAM, requirements will depend a lot on the amount of data the organization is indexing and how many users need to simultaneously make use of the search function. The virtual machine I created for LWE made use of just 1 GB of memory and featured Linux Mint running KDE. With this environment I was able to index thousands of documents in a few seconds over the network and perform parallel searches almost instantly. Obviously resources will have to scale up with an organization's requirements.
I've spent several days playing with LucidWorks Enterprise and I have to say I am impressed with what I have seen thus far. The system requirements are low, the system is flexible and fast and there are lots of example scripts for developers who wish to expand on the functionality. The documentation is well put together, the admin GUI is easy to use and the end-user interface is familiar. Aside from stepping out of the GUI to change the admin password, I found the whole experience to be smooth and friendly. LWE is built from open source components and, in my opinion, offers an excellent solution for organizations who need to keep track of large numbers of documents in a wide range of formats. If you have any interest in search technology, I recommend you give it a try.
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Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Debian 6.0 nears release, Mageia prepares to launch buildsystem, Linux Mint gets the "best distro" award, Linux Genealogy live CD
The much anticipated release of Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze" did not arrive before the end of the year 2010, as some have speculated, so the wait is still on. But as Susan Linton writes in Is the Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" Release Upon Us?, there are several signs, some more tangible than others, that it won't be long now: "Release critical bugs concerning the next release have been markedly decreasing in recent weeks with persons of major concern dropping to its lowest numbers this release cycle. The total number of all bugs remains relatively high at 1555 (down from over 2,600 this time last year), the real number of bugs affecting this release is down to just 84. This number reflects all bugs minus ignored bugs, bugs in packages not in testing, and bugs whose tags indicate not in testing. This number has been very low and decreasing since the beginning of the new year. But for persons who like more tangible proof, there is little from actual developers at this moment, but there are small clues. One to surface today was mentioned on the Debian forum by a 'Sid' user. He noticed during updates that the latest base-files package changes the codename from 'Debian GNU Linux squeeze/sid' to 'Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.'"
One other interesting news item from the Debian world which is getting ready for a big release. According to Steve McIntyre, the project has recently started building hybrid, dual-architecture disk images containing packages for the two most popular processors, i386 and amd64. Furthermore, the ISO images are now transferable to USB disk drives with a simple "dd" command. Steve McIntyre writes: "We've had a wish-list bug (#551951) open against debian-cd for some time, asking for the creation of 'isohybrid' CD images for i386 and amd64. These are special in that, as well as the normal CD-based ISO9660 file system, they also contain a valid-looking DOS-style partition table. Thus, if you simply copy one of these images raw to a USB stick a normal PC BIOS will boot the image directly. This would be a neat feature, making it much easier for people to use standard Debian installer images on their USB sticks without having to follow a lot more instructions. ... We've worked together in the last few months on porting my old JTE code (which creates our jigdo images) from cdrkit to xorriso and, after a lot of testing and debugging, we now have things working fully. I've added a small amount of code in debian-cd to use the new xorriso features, and for the last couple of weeks all of the i386, amd64 and i386-amd64 multi-arch CDs and DVDs have been built as hybrids."
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Mageia, the Linux distribution created by the former developers and contributors to Mandriva Linux, has published an update on the current work taking place around the project's infrastructure. Perhaps the most interesting item on the update list is information about the package building process which is about to start: "During past Wednesday's packagers' meeting, Mageia packaging tasks have been launched. First packages will be imported in the coming days by about 40 packagers. This goes together with starting the mentoring of new packagers so that every proposal of contributions we received since the beginning can turn into a positive effort. You can join the #mageia-mentoring channel on the Freenode IRC network to discuss all aspects of this subject. In the mean time, 2 representatives have been elected for the packaging team leadership. Our buildsystem, which is a corner stone of the project, is being updated/wrapped up by the sysadmin team and with the great help of Pascal Terjan. We will give you more details about the buildsystem deployment later on." According to the same article, the team is on target for the initial alpha release later this month.
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Many of our readers have probably come across Dedoimedo, a neat website whose publisher, Igor Ljubuncic, has been writing reviews of free operating systems for some time. As the year 2010 came to a close, the author published a grand summary of his testing experiences which he called And the best distro of 2010 is.... The winner? Linux Mint: "You haven't seen it listed above, but it would feature under the glorious title of best all-rounder. And that would have to be Linux Mint. While it did underperform in the first quarter, the third quarter release is just splendid. It's a perfect 10 for the tenth release. Linux Mint 'Julia' has the best overall combination of ingredients. The best desktop theme and menu, the best combination of programs, the best package management. It's the most usable distribution out there, and it's just a pleasure to run. Linux Mint is not afraid to be different. While it is based on Ubuntu, it uses its own set of programs, sticking to goodies like Thunderbird, Pidgin, GIMP, and others, without following the herd mentality of the social integration and application dumbefication. Everything works out of the box, every little detail is carefully placed and designed, there's practically nothing bad you can think of. Upping this achievement is going to be really hard. But the title is well deserved." Those are some superlatives, but with Linux Mint now comfortably on the second spot in our Page Hit Ranking statistics, it's clear that the project is doing many things right.
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Finally, something for those users who are interested in genealogy and in tracing their family lineage. Dale Athanasias has emailed us about the recently released Linux Genealogy CD, an Ubuntu-based live CD with pre-installed GRAMPS (an open-source genealogy program) and GraphViz (an application that draws charts and graphs in GRAMPS): "You might be interested in helping to promote GRAMPS by showing that a live CD exists and that some of the other open source genealogy developers may want to add their programs to the CD." The project's web site offers the following introduction to the Linux Genealogy CD: "The Linux Genealogy Desktop CD 6.1 includes the following pre-installed genealogy software: GRAMPS 3.2.5 as well as GraphViz, a program that draws pretty charts and graphs in GRAMPS. This Live CD is based on Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop CD. In addition to the live session, this disk also allows permanent installation of Linux and genealogical software on your computer's hard drive. This way you achieve adequate speed and the ability to save your data, and can do real work with your Linux software. Everything is similar to the live session, except that this is a permanent setup."
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Creating a distribution
Building-something asks: How do I go about creating my own distribution?
DistroWatch answers: There are a few different ways to go about making a distribution, depending on whether you're looking at creating your own spin of an existing distro to share among friends, making a re-spin to share with the general public, or making your own distro from the ground up.
Let's start with the easy one, making a spin of an existing distribution to share with a handful of people. This can be handy if you enjoy using a particular distribution, but find yourself always performing the same configuration actions with every install. Here we don't need much, just a computer with a fresh install of your favourite Linux distribution and a copy of a program like remastersys. The remastersys program allows you to make an ISO image of your system, with or without your personal files. Really, it does all the work and the only thing you need to do is burn the resulting ISO file to disc. While remastersys runs on Debian and the Ubuntu family of distros, there are corresponding scripts for Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and Fedora.
If you're happy with your creation and want to share it with the world as a publicly available distribution, you'll need a few other things. You'll want a website with a lot of bandwidth, for starters. You'll also want to set up a forum and probably a bug tracker (or a web page to point people to the upstream tracker). You'll probably need some coding experience to help you fix bugs. Your project will probably need a package repository too. Most importantly you will need quite a bit of free time. If any of these items sound daunting it's probably a good idea to join an existing project, rather than branch out on your own. More on that in a moment.
In case the second approach isn't challenging enough, you can attempt your own distribution from scratch. Before doing this, I recommend spending some time working with an existing distribution, probably a small one, where you can learn the ropes and get involved in a lot of different aspects of the building, trouble-shooting and upkeep processes. Some projects which have few members, but lots going on in the community, include (among many others) Linux Mint, PC-BSD and Zenwalk. Assuming you like the experience and thrive in the distro-creating environment, you'll have picked up the skills needed to make your own project. Hopefully working on an established distribution will also show you what can be done to improve the computing experience for others.
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Released Last Week |
Peppermint OS One-01042011
Shane Remington has announced the release of Peppermint OS One-01042011, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the LXDE desktop and many integrated web-based applications: "We are proud to announce the availability of Peppermint OS One-01042011 being the latest respin of our original release. This version offers a fully updated system as of January 4, 2011 and comes with some bug fixes as well as some new features. The default kernel has been updated to 2.6.35 in order to stay more current regarding hardware support and to match the kernel in Peppermint Ice. The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) has been completely removed from this version in order to help with performance and to increase application modularity. The default screenshot application has been replaced with PyShot, a simple Python/GTK+ application." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
Puppy Linux 5.2
Larry Short has announced the release of Puppy Linux 5.2, an independent, minimalist Linux distribution for the desktop. From the release notes: "To create Lucid Puppy 5.2 we began with the popular Lucid Puppy 5.1.1. We then upgraded, updated, and/or improved all of the main programs as well as many of the other programs in the menu and system. We have incorporated numerous improvements from the latest version of Barry Kauler's Puppy builder, Woof. We have refined operation throughout. The first thing up is a very tidy Quickset dialog to accept or change video resolution, time zone, language, locale and keyboard. Next up could be the browser installer with browser default allowing you to change which one you use as the default. And then there's Quickpet with as much good stuff as a Swiss army knife."

Puppy Linux 5.2 - this version comes with many new user-friendly features (full image size: 495kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Superb Mini Server 1.5.5
A new version of Superb Mini Server (SMS), a Slackware-based Linux distribution for servers, has been released: "Superb Mini Server version 1.5.5 released (Linux kernel 2.6.35.7). This release upgrades packages to Slackware 'Current' and brings the latest stable versions of several packages including PHP 5.3.5 and CUPS 1.4.6. New packages in SMS 1.5.5 are Terminator (a tool for arranging terminals which can also broadcast the same output to several terminals), lsscsi (listing SCSI devices utility) and perl-modules which split from Perl package. If you are upgrading don't forget to install new packages and especially the perl-modules package as otherwise you will have problems with Perl modules and SpamAssassin. SMS live CD now has RAID support, which means that it will automatically find, assemble and mount existing RAID arrays while booting." See the release announcement which is followed by a complete changelog.
Alpine Linux 2.1.4
Jeff Bilyk has announced the release of Alpine Linux 2.1.4, a community-developed operating system designed for x86 routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP and servers: "We are pleased to announce the Alpine Linux 2.1.4 release. This release includes an update to 2.6.35.10-based kernels. Hyper-V fixes have been applied to these kernels. Boot scripts have been updated so that if at least one network interface starts successfully, then services that depend on networking will be started. In previous releases (since Alpine 1.9.0) all network interfaces had to start successfully for this to happen. Also, BusyBox contains a fix for a long-standing bug that caused crontab files to mysteriously disappear." Read the rest of the release notes for further details and upgrade instructions.
wattOS R3
Ron Ropp has announced the release of wattOS R3, a lightweight, Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the LXDE desktop: "wattOS R3 is released - loads of new improvements, programs, and new fun. wattOS is a lightweight Linux operating system remastered from the core Ubuntu build. It focuses on a small footprint, low power, and a simple quick interface. A brief list of updates: based upon Ubuntu 10.10; autologin works on live CD and as an option for install to hard drive; lightweight Linux running LXDE; new music player and music/video search tool (foobnix); new simple and fast photo editor (Fotoxx); updated file manager PCManFM with integrated support for network share browsing, trash, applications listed, many improvements...." Read the release announcement on the project's forums to learn more.

wattOS R3 - a lightweight distribution based on the latest Ubuntu (full image size: 495kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- FIDOSlax. FIDOSlax is a Russian distribution and live CD based on Slax.
- DoudouLinux. DoudouLinux is a distribution specially designed for children to make computer use as easy and pleasant as possible. DoudouLinux provides tens of applications that suit children from two years on and tries to give them an environment as easy to use as a gaming console.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 17 January 2011.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • cheeky question (by Tom on 2011-01-10 14:27:23 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :) Does anyone knew of any Linux distros already including LO in their repositories? Or any firm plans to do so from their next release? Apols for cheeky question and regards from Tom :)
2 • PCLINUXOS (by 333 on 2011-01-10 14:33:45 GMT from United States)
Is there any chance that This distro would move to .Deb and drop RPM?
3 • Peppermint OS (by meanpt on 2011-01-10 14:37:32 GMT from Portugal)
They did it again: improved it. On a VirtualBox with 450 MB or ram allowed, one gets faster booting (they made a 10.04 booting as fast or even faster than a 10.10), faster applications running, better sound, better video playing, and it scores as the faster 10.04 LXDE around. Oh ... sorry, mint what? ... Oh, yes, mint pepper ...
4 • @1 (by Tom on 2011-01-10 14:40:53 GMT from United States)
Hey, Tom, I know that Archlinux has libreoffice in its main repositories.
5 • @2 (by 6r00k14n on 2011-01-10 14:48:33 GMT from United States)
If PCLOS stops cloning Mandriva and starts cloning a Debian based system, then they will make the switch. In the meantime, have you tried alien?
6 • cheeky question (by Randy on 2011-01-10 15:02:51 GMT from United States)
Several distros carry it now: Zorin, Pinguy, Mint, Ubuntu. Look for more distros to carry it within a short period.
7 • intranet searches (by marktwain on 2011-01-10 15:54:27 GMT from United States)
seems like htdig would be less expensive than 36000 USD
8 • Start tracking of Fedora spin Fuduntu? (by LarryG on 2011-01-10 16:13:21 GMT from United States)
Any way we could start tracking the Fuduntu distribution? This is a Fedora 14 remix set to have ease of use of Ubuntu. Loaded it on my Asus eee pc 1000 and works wonderfully. The web site for it is http://www.fuduntu.org.
9 • @8 (by Supernatendo on 2011-01-10 16:28:39 GMT from United States)
Sounds like FUD to me =p ( I'm just kidding for those of you that don't have your sarcasm detectors on!)
Weird to see a distro combine the names of two very different distros one being based on red hat and the other being based on debian... Then again I've never really though of Fedora as being all that difficult to use either.
10 • re: cheeky question (by WaltH on 2011-01-10 16:31:58 GMT from United States)
Not to be cheeky, but how does Libre Office differ from Open Office (I'm not where I can do a good deal of research at the moment)>
11 • Re 8: Fuduntu (by Anonymous on 2011-01-10 16:56:36 GMT from United States)
As long as it doesn't bork my Lubuntu and Debian dual boots I'm all for trying. I'm so sick of cleaning up after Fedora's boot loader.
12 • Puppy 5.2 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-10 16:59:54 GMT from United States)
Kudos to Puppy on the 5.2 versionl, it is the only painless installable distro for i586 machines with 128mb-256mb of memory that won't leave you wanting for more. If you have less than 128mb, Quirky 1.4 isn't too bad either.
13 • @#2 & 5 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-10 17:40:48 GMT from United States)
PCLOS will likely never move to being a Deb file based system. If you know about the distro's history then you know that it's founder started the distro as an RPM based system because that's what he was good with. Oh and #5 PCLOS actually pulls parts of it's system from many different distros and is not just Mandriva based anymore. I know that there are some marginal performance gains to be had with .Deb over RPM, but I doubt that that disparity will last forever given how strong Red Hat is as a company, so why would a distro switch? Deb may be more popular, but there is no deficit of RPM packages from what I can tell.
If you really want an easy to use rolling release system like PCLOS but based on .Deb why not try Linux Mint Debian Edition? I'm going to give it a try after I hear some positive feedback about the system after Debian 6.0 comes out. After the Mint team irons out the kinks in working with Debian's rolling branch, or perhaps after Debian creates a stable version of their rolling branch, then I think Mint DE will be hard to beat as a rolling distro.
14 • Ease of use (by Micah on 2011-01-10 17:50:15 GMT from United States)
We live in a sad world if the readers of Distrowatch see a vast difference between Ubuntu and Fedora in terms of ease of use.
15 • Debian and isohybrid... (by Vukota on 2011-01-10 17:56:56 GMT from United States)
Good one for Debian to do "isohybrid". I was banging my head against a wall recently ;-) to get all different distros I wanted to try on my htpc/netbooks without DVD/CD drive. Finally I gave up and purchased external DVD.
Next time around, I am not considering distro w/o "isohybrid'" and it would be nice if Distrowatch can categorize them by it. :-)
Unrelated, what ex OpenSUSE users are jumping ship for (before MS pulls the plug)? I thought Fedora is most logical choice, but it seems to rocky road there.
16 • Debian stuff (by Tidux on 2011-01-10 18:14:05 GMT from United States)
I'd say Debian 6.0 is getting close - they have "beta 2" install media.
@13: Linux Mint Debian Edition is never going to be based on 6.0. It's rolling release because it follows the "testing" repository, not one tagged with a particular release name. After Squeeze releases, LMDE will get a major upgrade as the Debian Testing repositories shift to Wheezy. LMDE is great now, and I'm running it on my main system as the primary OS. I'd wait until the next release to try 32-bit, though - it's been known to crash on livecd startup for x86 this time. The amd64 version, which I use, does not have that bug.
The performance difference between Deb and RPM is due to innate features of the package formats. Red Hat can't do anything about that without breaking compatibility, which as a large company they really don't want.
17 • Fedora related answers (by Scott Dowdle on 2011-01-10 18:27:49 GMT from United States)
If you know where to look you can find daily builds of Fedora even though we are a lot ways away from the alpha release of Fedora 15. Current builds do have LibreOffice.
Regrading respin / remixing tools in Fedora... livecd-creator (part of the livecd-tools package and what I use) is pretty easy to get started with since they have a package that contains all of the kickstart (.ks) files for all of the spins they release (fedora-kickstarts and spin-kickstarts). You can take an existing spin kickstart file, add some packages, remove some packages and then build your own respin. There is a GUI tool name Revisor on top of that but I haven't used it in a while because it wasn't as flexible as manually editing the .ks files and using livecd-creator.
So far as learning to build a distro from scratch goes... going through the Linux From Scratch build once or twice would teach one alot.
Regarding the question about if PCLinuxOS will ever switch to .deb files. Why are you asking? Do you have .deb package files you want to use or are you wanting to using apt-get (etc) rather than urpmi? Or are you wanting to use the Debian/Ubuntu repos? If it is just a few .deb files, then yes... alien is what you want... assuming you can't talk the distro developers into create native packages (or creating them yourself and contributing) for the apps you want that they don't currently have.
18 • @ #16 (by #13 on 2011-01-10 18:37:29 GMT from United States)
I was actually thinking of the shift in post Debian 6 packages and the changes in how the Mint team will have to handle system stability when I said I'd wait till after Debian 6 was released. System stability and the possibility for problems in LMDE after Debian testing moves of the frozen 6.0 branch may be different from what it is now, and that's part of why I wait. Thanks for the info about RPMs and LMDE amd64 though, that's good to know.
19 • @ 7 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-10 18:40:41 GMT from United States)
When the average price for the hardware of your workstations is around $60,000(US), the average price for the security subscription for those workstations $7,000(US) per seat, the average price of the software you are using on those workstations is $15,000(US), $36,000(US) for a supported search feature on your NAS isn't a bad price.
Free is only free if your time is worth-less.
20 • LibreOffice (by Tom on 2011-01-10 19:30:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :) Thanks for all the help there from Randy and Tom ( a great name :) ).
I don't think there are many differences between OpenOffice and LibreOffice right now but it seems that OpenOffice newly under Oracle's ownership is likely to move away from being OpenSource. The community (including some fairly large companies) involved with LibreOffice aim to keep their project OpenSource. LibreOffice is the continuation of OpenOffice which was previously called Star Office. Oracle have kept the name and logo but appear to be following a different path.
Regards from Tom :)
21 • Pardus 2011 (by Scott on 2011-01-10 19:40:34 GMT from United States)
Biggest surprise to me is the release candidate of Pardus 2011. It's like all the best of Sabayon and PCLinuxOS rolled together. It's the best KDE desktop I've ever used.
22 • Linux Genealogy Desktop CD - WHY? (by uz64 on 2011-01-10 20:25:36 GMT from United States)
Alright, I'm not normally one of the people bitching about yet another Ubuntu variant. But out of curiosity, because there was so little information and no screen shots on this 'Linux Genealogy Desktop CD', I decided to download it and try it in VirtualBox anyway. It is practically *identical* to Ubuntu 10.10. Grub screen, system boot screen, login screen, desktop... it's *all* identical. Seriously people, if you run Ubuntu or Debian already, just use synaptic or "apt-get install gramps" to install this distro's one and only claim to fame. Run a non-Debian-based distro? Use your distro's standard package management system and you'll probably come across this "gramps" package to install. I honestly see no reason why this this thing is in existence as a separate "distro"; it's Ubuntu 10.10 with the only modification made being the installation-by-default of a genealogy program and its dependencies.
23 • Re: building your own distro (by Luke on 2011-01-10 20:28:12 GMT from United States)
If you want to share your distro but don't want to pony up for the extra bandwidth, then only offer a torrent. It's ubiquitous enough these days, and in fact that's the first thing I look for when I want to download a full distro. My first choice is a "net install" image, though.
Also, if you want to learn Linux through a small project with an active community, look no further than Arch Linux. I posted a rather technical question on the forum and got a developer response within 30 minutes. They have a relatively small number of official packages, but in my opinion their user repository (AUR) surpasses even Ubuntu's PPA system in terms of both ease of use and number of packages. Admittedly, I am one of those people whose first action upon booting is opening a terminal. But still, I actually manually compiled more software in Ubuntu than I do now with Arch.
24 • @21 Pardus (by Pera on 2011-01-10 20:34:12 GMT from Serbia)
I tried out it because I have had read a lot of nice things about it,but it can't start x on my laptop.Pity
25 • #1 LO (by sudonym on 2011-01-10 20:39:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Pardus 2011 rc.
26 • @13 @16 RPM/DEB performance difference? (by anonymou on 2011-01-10 21:47:04 GMT from Australia)
Where are you noticing a performance difference between DEB and RPM?
27 • PelicanHPC (by Anonymous on 2011-01-11 00:23:30 GMT from Australia)
Comment deleted (off-topic). For corrections please email me directly.
28 • @13, 16, 18 LMDE (by Jack on 2011-01-11 00:49:06 GMT from Canada)
I noticed that after Lenny was released, and Squeeze started development, the testing repository initially went through some pretty wild stability swings that gradually decreased over time. And now testing is very stable of course as everything becomes more and more frozen in anticipation of a stable release. That's how the Debian testing branch works and why it's not a true rolling release. LMDE users should expect a rough ride initially, unless the LMDE admins can hold back those types of changes until they become more stable. But that may mean holding them back for several months and it's a tough task because they really can't anticipate some of the effects that testing updates will have.
Many people (esp. fanboys) in different forums will often say that Debian Testing is so/more stable than most other distro's stable releases. That is just not true. I've been running Debian testing exclusively since the start of Squeeze development cycle, with daily updates, knowing that I might have to tough it out at times, as major features were introduced. And that's exactly what happened. No sound for a month, flaky power management for a couple of months, some KMS issues as it was introduced, still having CPU frequency issues due to the introduction of parallel init scripts, and others. Of course all those issues were/will be fixed by the time squeeze is released.
But it's got me to thinking that I might just stick with the Stable branch once Squeeze is out. Something to be said about not having to wonder what today's update will bring!
29 • @ 26 (by #13/18 on 2011-01-11 01:21:48 GMT from United States)
I could be completely off base there, but I could have sworn I saw some set of comparison benchmarks on Phoronix.com or some such place that gave a general edge to DEB based systems for some given series of tasks over RPM. I've tried to find it again but can't seem to. At any rate I still used good old RPM based PCLOS and don't have any RPM issues that I'm aware of so which ever is still good by me.
30 • DWW and RE: 20/Last Week (by Landor on 2011-01-11 02:06:58 GMT from Canada)
DWW:
Jesse,
There's a with the Question and Answer section. You spoke of there being a few things one could do to create their own distribution. I'd take that as three or more, at least more than two. In the first paragraph that explains the process you speak of the easiest one to do. Then in the second paragraph you discuss web hosting, administration, skill level, all the requirements needed. Then in the third and final paragraph you open with "In case the second approach isn't challenging enough, you can attempt your own distribution from scratch." I didn't see a second approach/option there anywhere.
Ladislav,
In the news item about the Mandriva fork, it ends with "According to the same article, the team is on target for the initial alpha release later this months." It should be month as you know. :)
#20/Last Week
Hey Tom,
I don't see any problems with Oracle continuing, nor any indicators that the project is going to disappear. A lot of people in our community have talked about Open Office disappearing because of the fork. I don't believe that could be in anyway true. A big indicator is this: you have to remember our market share. Open Office isn't just used by Linux users and I'd put money on the fact that there's more people using, or have used Open Office for Windows than all of the people using Linux combined. In my opinion it tells me that it's not really going to matter to those people that some Linux based companies are now backing a fork called Libre Office. Also, I believe the name alone will probably cause more than a few people to stay away from the project. I could be wrong, but I don't see Open Office going anywhere, and I see effort duplicated on a massive scale (considering the size and scope of an office suite), which is truly a shame in my opinion.
Sys was the only one out of that link last week that I had to stop and really think about to remember. To SliTaz, I've been messing around with it for an ongoing side project of mine. It's really a decent project.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
31 • RE: 30 (by Landor on 2011-01-11 02:08:00 GMT from Canada)
oops, first sentence to Jesse should open with "There's a problem with the Question and Answer Section".
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
32 • rpms and debs (by Jesse on 2011-01-11 02:22:30 GMT from Canada)
@Landor: The first two parts were discussing two different possibilities, one where the person is just re-spinning a system for their private use. The second covers a public distribution, which requires a pile of extra tools, resources and work. That's why I broke them into two parts. There's the re-spin for private user, re-spin for public use and then the third option is a completely new distro.
Re: the rpm vs deb debate. The package formats themselves aren't going to cause much of a performance difference, they're just simple archives, really. When people talk about performance they're generally comparing the higher level tools used to manipulate the rpm and deb packages. The speed of apt-get vs yum or Synaptic vs Package Kit.
33 • Time to grow up ... EVERYONE ... (by DigitalLight on 2011-01-11 04:41:02 GMT from United States)
Fuduntu? I hate to point out the obvious, but what is the point of mixing a distribution admittedly targeted at new Linux users and one that is targeted at experienced developers? (ubuntu & fedora) ... Keep them separate please, they both have their place. The *buntu derivatives are starting to get a little ridiculous. I know this was pointed out YEARS AGO (in this comments section actually), but it still continues. And why was everyone surprised by the Ubuntu default interface change? Shuttleworth has stated openly in the past the he thinks "OSX is the pinnacle of the computer user interface." Why is this shocking people? Geez, get to know your own community?
As for Landor and Jesse, the .rpm v .deb debate ended a while ago. Neither has any significant advantage over the other. That goes for speed, features, scalability, and everything else. This isn't '99 anymore.
/* Begin Rant */ My advice to EVERYBODY (even myself at times), look past the distribution. I know this is DISTROwatch.com and the distro-level is where all the drama is located, but they rise and fall. Dig a little deeper, learn the hard (and sometimes boring) stuff, and you be glad you did. And for the love of god, please stop pumping out ridiculous, just for fun, spin-off distributions. It was already easy enough, and in the past several years it has (clearly) become idiot proof. If you are new to all this, please ignore my previous comments. Knock yourself out and have fun. But if you been around F/LOSS for at least a couple of years, you get the point. /* End Rant */
34 • 24 • @21 Pardus (by Anonymous on 2011-01-11 05:36:42 GMT from United States)
What kind of laptop and what is the video card in it?
35 • @23 & a ? (by win2linconvert on 2011-01-11 06:52:30 GMT from United States)
@23 First I just have to say... Luke... I am your father. Sorry! I really am.
Now that that is out of my system. Last week I pointed out that the submit a comment section od DWW doesn't appear in Opera 11, and got this reply.
47 • @20 & @37 (by megadriver on 2011-01-04 12:48:07 GMT from Spain) @20 As far as I know, Arch doesn't "advertise" itself in the browser's user agent by default, like many other distros do. @37 Just have Opera identify itself as Firefox and it will show up. This was posted from Opera 11.
I appreciate the help but I'm not sure how. Thanks for any further assistance you or anyone else may be able/willing to offer.
As always I enjoyed this weeks addition of DWW. Keep up the good work. Thanks.
PS. Sorry for being off topic, I realize this isn't a user forum and not the proper place for these types of questions. Oh and sorry again Luke. I just couldn't resist.
win2linconvert
36 • @35 (by Kailash on 2011-01-11 08:22:29 GMT from India)
Press F12 and click on "Edit Site Preferences" OR Menu -> Settings -> Quick Preferences -> Edit Site Preferences
Go to Network tab and choose from couple of options in "Browser Identification"
Hope that helps
37 • @34 (by Pera on 2011-01-11 09:02:13 GMT from Serbia)
HP Compaq 6715b and ATI X1200
38 • @28, stability of Debian (by TobiSGD on 2011-01-11 09:12:02 GMT from Germany)
Of course there will be a wild swing after Squeeze is released. But it will not be so wild as after the release of Lenny, because this time there were not so significant chnges after the freeze. I also every time wonder why they have build LMDE on Testing, and not on Unstable, seems to be more logical if you want to have rolling release. By the way, if you want to know what the next update brings I would recommend to use apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs. The tools are there, you just have to use them.
39 • When 2+2 is -2 (by meanpt on 2011-01-11 10:33:37 GMT from Portugal)
I've checked some news from the CES 2011 where tablets are the hype and Android Honeycomb did the job for FOSS ... or a sort of ..... in the meanwhile the meego no go stuck somewhere and fortunately Ubuntu had the sight to develop Unity which in turn is being scrapped by the community ...
40 • @33 (by Fewt on 2011-01-11 14:16:29 GMT from United States)
"Fuduntu? I hate to point out the obvious, but what is the point of mixing a distribution admittedly targeted at new Linux users and one that is targeted at experienced developers? (ubuntu & fedora) ... Keep them separate please, they both have their place."
I don't see how the Fuduntu distribution is impacting your ability to use Fedora or Ubuntu.
One of the points of Fuduntu is to provide a version of Fedora that is more user friendly. Even some of us experienced users prefer to just be computer users rather than computer administrators some times too. ;)
41 • RE:33 No Problem Exist (by Eddie on 2011-01-11 14:24:31 GMT from United States)
I understand where you are coming from but you seem to miss one of the biggest drawing points of using OSS and that is the freedom in doing whatever your heart desires with the code. If a person wants to use a free and open distro as a base to build upon then they should be encouraged to do so. You mention digging deep into a distro to learn how it works and that is one good way to do it. Are all of these spin offs needed? Of course not. Are they beneficial? Yes they are. Maybe not to you or not to me but to the person who made it they are beneficial and it is very proper for a person to do just that. There are no good reasons to discourage anyone from doing so. None what so ever. Suggestions have been made that instead of a person making another distro they should help with other projects or even other distros and that is just fine if a person wants to do that and it's fine if they don't. If you have been around the open source world and working with Linux or BSD for a few years then you know there is no confusion in the community with all these spin-offs being made. We know what is happening. New ones trying out the waters will usually stay with one of the big name distros until they learn more and then they will want to try to make their own. We all do that to an extent. Who has a right to tell people that they can't make their own distro (os) using existing code? MS, Apple, or any of the other proprietary companies has that right. It's best to leave the constrictive thinking in the proprietary world where it belongs.
42 • Libre Office (by Flip on 2011-01-11 15:13:01 GMT from United States)
I think The ? about a lot of things we have always know as free wont be for much longer we have been lucky for years as not many ppl payed attention to Linux but now that we have embedded devices phones using it we are going to see this change as there is gold in them thar hills. We as a free community are in a fight for our very lives look at MS trying to buy up patents that nobody owns just like suse they claim to be an independent but its nothing but RedHat always was always has been the only thing I see they own is that awful yast thing or whatever the heck its called money if we dont stop them now we wont ever. it is all about money Linux is the backbone of the internet but none payed attention because not much money could be made but now they see big money to be made hence MS trying to get involved I wont to warn them tho you cant buy what no-one owns!!!!
43 • @30 Open Office and Libre Office (by Patrick on 2011-01-11 16:13:33 GMT from United States)
It doesn't happen too often, but I've been giving this some thought and I agree for 100% with Landor's comments on the split between Open Office and Libre Office. ;) I really don't see anything good coming from this fork.
I know Oracle has a bad reputation in the open source world after what happened with OpenSolaris, and maybe they can't be trusted. But have there been any signs that what happened with OpenSolaris is going to happen with Open Office? I haven't seen any, and would be interested in links that would prove otherwise. The OpenSolaris developers waited a long time before they decided to fork the project. In the end they had no choice because Oracle had pulled the plug. It seems in the case of Open Office, it was completely different: the community pulled away, while there was no sign whatsoever that Open Office was going to suffer the same fate as OpenSolaris. Seems like an unwarranted knee-jerk reaction to me. Wouldn't it have made much more sense to keep working with Open Office, and only fork after it became obvious there was no other choice (which might never have happened)? What is gained by forking prematurely instead of only forking when it becomes necessary? Again, I might not have complete information, but that's my current opinion on the situation. I'd be happy to see information that proves me wrong and shows that Oracle made this fork necessary. It is much easier to hate Oracle than to have to blame the rest of the community for this mess.
As Landor brought out, the momentum is likely going to stay with Open Office due to its presence on Windows and I think Libre Office is going to have a hard time keeping up in terms of features and quality. Again, I hope to be proven wrong about this, but I'm afraid.
Also, at the moment they are pretty much the same thing, but they will likely diverge as time goes by. So now that Open Office finally has gained some mind share in the Windows world as a capable replacement for MS Office, Linux seems to be pulling away on its own island again. It used to be easy to convince someone using Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP and Open Office on Windows to give Linux a try, since they could keep using the same applications they were already used to. It was much harder to convince someone using MS Office that they could switch to Open Office. Now we'll have to convince both MS Office and Open Office users that this other thing called Libre Office they'd be running on Linux is just as good (and who knows if it will be). I know it is available for Windows and other platforms too, but it will take a long time for it to gain the mind share of Open Office. So in a sense, the fork creates confusion, divides mind share from one strong contender to two weaker ones, and puts us back at square one when it comes to brand recognition.
And then there's the Libre Office name. In my opinion, it really stinks. Unfortunately, things like that do matter to the opinion people will have of a project. It is easy enough to read the name, but I find it horrible to pronounce. Could be just me (English is not my native language), but sticking together a French and English word like that to create a product name--it doesn't flow, it just doesn't have a nice ring to it.
I just really wish all this stuff had never happened. Since it did, I really hope the involved parties will come to their senses and at least collaborate. The best thing would be if they would settle their difference and get back together. Some things CAN be undone, if there is the willingness to do so.
44 • LibreOffice & OpenOffice.org (by Johannes on 2011-01-11 16:46:11 GMT from Germany)
@ Landor and Patrick:
LibreOffice has much more supporters that only Linux Distros: http://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/
Since the beginning of OOo, creating a foundation to sustain it was the plan: http://www.openoffice.org/white_papers/OOo_project/openofficefoundation.html
Not to mention than almost all the community made the switch to LibO. LibreOffice is the continuation of OOo, not really a fork.
45 • @44 (by Patrick on 2011-01-11 17:08:41 GMT from United States)
Sure, they have supporters. That doesn't prove OOo doesn't have any. It is still splitting the project resources, diluting the name and reputation of OOo and causing duplication of development effort. I liked RMS's comment in that list of supporters:
"I hope that the LibreOffice developers and the Oracle-employed developers of OpenOffice.org will be able to cooperate on development of the body of the code."
46 • RE: 44 (by Landor on 2011-01-11 17:27:02 GMT from Canada)
Here's a simple question, what does supporters mean in this regard? Financial? Development? We believe in you?
Support is a very broad term and I didn't see how they intend to support it, only that they do.
Even stating X or Y has ten thousand supporters doesn't mean much unless you can validate the advantages of the ten thousand supporters and what they are bringing with their support.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
47 • OpenOffice (by Jesse on 2011-01-11 17:45:55 GMT from Canada)
I think the concern with LibreOffice is a bit premature. OpenOffice has been forked a few times in the past decade without any serious problems. Take a look at Neo Office and Go-oo as examples. In fact, LibreOffice is more a combination of Go-oo and OOo than it is a new fork of OpenOffice. So really LibreOffice isn't spreading resources any thinner than they were before. More of the opposite, really, bringing more various developers into one official project.
Keeping that in mind, I also think it's important to point out there have been complaints for years about the way the OpenOffice development was handled. (Hence the previous forks, like Go-oo.) A move away from OpenOffice to another branch has been on people's minds for a while. Oracle's ill-intent toward OpenSolaris and Google have probably been a catalyst more than a cause.
Support in this case seems to mostly be in the form of developers. The packages and devs of the various distros are now focusing on LibreOffice as opposed to OpenOffice.
48 • @Jesse: Questions and Answers - Missing Idea (by Muhammad Fahd Waseem on 2011-01-11 18:01:55 GMT from Pakistan)
There is another great and easy way to build your own custom distro: the SUSE Studio. While it does not offer uber-many customization options, I used it to build a distro for my university and I was able to do a pretty good job. http://susestudio.com/
P.S. I think DistroWatch ate my last comment. Does it not accept tags? I wanted to include a link to the SUSE Studio...
49 • @47 (by Patrick on 2011-01-11 19:17:03 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the information, Jesse. I should read up on stuff I know nothing about, before I get too worried about it. :) I wasn't aware of the previous forks. Hopefully with the added support, LibreOffice will do a better job of getting the word out than the previous forks, including outside of the Linux world. If the support really consists of developers more than just lip service, things should turn out OK. Still wondering if anyone else has an issue with the name or if it's just me. :)
50 • LibreOffice (by meanpt on 2011-01-11 19:20:36 GMT from Portugal)
According to the hard paper and electronic writings, Oracle's driven OpenOffice only counts with Oracles own developers, while the rest of the community's developers opted to support LibreOffice, Currently the LO team is importing and improving the OO code, and may or not fork from the original code later. At first It may seam Oracle is having a hard time to cope with an open community concept and to integrate it in a successful corporate business model, but I would bet Oracle doesn't want at all to incorporate it as it doesn't fit in its strategy and is a by-product of the acquisition. I'll stick with LibreOffice.
51 • @50 Patrick - LibreOffice's name (by meanpt on 2011-01-11 19:26:59 GMT from Portugal)
I love it as it sounds Freedom, and Libre almost mimics my born language word for free.
52 • LO (by Jack on 2011-01-11 22:42:29 GMT from Canada)
LibreOffice name is a thumbs down for me, sounds terrible in English IMO. I wonder if a nickname can be thought of...LOffice, LibO...LOL. I'll put the suggestion in to OfficeWatch.com
I have a few non-technical friends who use Open Office on Windows and it took quite awhile to convince them that Open Office is just as good or better as MS Office for their needs. I am not going to go through that rigamarole again with LO. I can just see the blank stares as I try to explain what forking a project means and that LO is just the same as OO. It's all fine and dandy for us technical types, but for many others, the ideals behind a project don't amount to a hill of beans.
53 • RE: 47 - 49 (by Landor on 2011-01-12 01:34:58 GMT from Canada)
#47 The issue really isn't a fork, in a way. But first, I wouldn't really consider NeoOffice a fork. It is more of a port, with added functionality/Integration for OS/X. Go-oo, for all intents and purposes was a bit of a flop. It was never really accepted, and general belief was that it was inferior in ways to OpenOffice.org. Now we have LibreOffice combining code from both.
The real issue right now is sustainability, duplicated efforts, and opposing forces (in whatever form). When, and if LibraOffice becomes a working project that brings more to the table than OpenOffice, that's when everyone should be jumping on it.
You made a couple statements about support, developers and packaging/focusing on the inclusion of LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. What developers have been committed to the project that you know of? Do you have a link for it? I don't mind inclusion of LibreOffice in any distribution, but I will immediately admonish, and stop using any distribution that removes OpenOffice from their repositories, limiting my choices. That's what Freedom (Libre) is about, choice. It's why I don't knock anyone using flash, mp3, proprietary. It's why I can use Debian or any other distribution that I'm easily able to make Libre myself, other than their documentation, choice. As an individual I'm able to choose what I will, or will not do. This may not fit with the FSF's views, but in my opinion they fit with using only Free Software, choosing to only use what is free regardless of what is available, or documented about. When groups start summarily making those choices for you, then it's time to look elsewhere to groups that don't. But to finish the point, OpenOffice doesn't fit the FSF's guidelines because of non-free plugins being made available. That has nothing to do with me, because as an individual I can choose not to use non-free and thus be perfectly happy with the fact that I'm using only free software as is my want. So, LibreOffice isn't really libre in my view, and has nothing to offer me over OpenOffice. Though as I stated, it can easily has the opposite effect, to take something away, my choice through the exclusion of OpenOffice in whatever distribution's repositories that I choose to use.
I consider 2010 to be the year of the herd mentality and disloyalty in Linux. There was a fervor of people willing to jump ship and so many they knew following them en-masse. I believe that was the true catalyst and I for one found it extremely unprofessional. I also believe it put the whole of our community in a bad light.
#49
I don't like the name at all, of course. I also found an article at Phoronix where the author mentions the same thing in comparison to KOffice's change to Calligra. It's at the bottom of the article.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODg4NQ
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
54 • Libre (by Jesse on 2011-01-12 01:12:05 GMT from Canada)
Re: 52
If you think your non-technical friends and family won\'t understand project forking and FOSS politics, then why bother telling them? It\'s much easier just to say they changed the name. Lots of products do that. Heck, if millions of people can follow a singer going from Prince to The Artist Formally Known as Prince and back again, I think folks will be able to swallow LibreOffice.
55 • LibreOffice (by Jesse on 2011-01-12 02:50:06 GMT from Canada)
Landor, a quick Google search would provide the support information you're looking for. This article, for example, about 33 developers moving to LibreOffice from OpenOffice: http://digitizor.com/2010/11/01/and-so-the-exodus-begins-33-developers-leave-openoffice-org/
You can also get a list of contributors here: http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/credits/
It should be pretty easy to cross-check those to see who they work for.
Please keep in mind a lot of the people who will be working on LibreOffice are people who wanted to contribute to OpenOffice, but who couldn't get their work accepted. They were forced to submit patches to Go-oo or Neo Office instead. That's why those projects sprung up. Now that there is a more open community around the office suite, we should see more improvements. This isn't a duplication of effort so much as opening the gates to allow effort under one roof.
Earlier someone complained about how they wouldn't be able to show people their software on Windows was the same as the software on Linux, because we'd have OpenOffice on Windows and LibreOffice on Linux. I'm not sure where they came from, because LibreOffice has packages for both Windows and Mac. People will still be able to use the same office suite, regardless of their platform.
56 • PCBSD download (by sprint on 2011-01-12 11:07:08 GMT from Belgium)
What is wrong with that server from PCBSD ??? everytime it reaches around 2.6 Gb it just stops....
no more for me thanks
57 • English (by Tom on 2011-01-12 11:35:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
Allegedly in eskimo ther are many words for snow&ice because they have a lot of it and are affected by small differences that most of us wouldn't notice.
In England we don't even have different words for "free" as in "free lunch" and "Free" as in "Freedom from oppression". We like being oppressed by our aristocracy, parliament and monarch. We annually burn an effigy of a man that took part in a revolution against the King. There was no "Vive la revolucion" here! Libre is an alien concept.
Windows users are using LibreOffice, as are Mac users. LibreOffice was the same code as OpenOffice.
Oracle refused to communicate with their community and refused to allow bug-squad and developers to develop the product. The back-log of work-done reached epic proportions and so in the first week of LibreOffice hundreds of thoroughly tested updates finally made it into the code, into the first few beta releases of LibreOffice. I think some of those have now made it into OpenOffice at last too although they would probably have never made it without facing competition from LibreOffice. Copy&paste is a great way to duplicate work. I am sure clever developers have a more sophisticated equivalent!
If you want to continue using OpenOffice then start using LibreOffice. If you want to start using something a bit different then stay with the product that kept the branded name and the smaller development team.
Regards from Tom :)
58 • LibreOffice again (by Tom on 2011-01-12 11:49:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
There do seem to be a number of misconceptions.
Distros are unlikely to drop OpenOffice unless forced to by Oracle. However, it seems likely that Oracle will start splitting their product into free and non-free versions and will probably start charging for the non-free version. If Oracle do go that route then they will be forcing distros to drop their non-free one.
The question is whether distros, in their newest release, should use by default the name&branding that is likely to become non-free or should they switch to the one whose future has been secured. This is particularly relevant to RedHat and Debian that only release once every few years.
Regards from Tom :)
59 • Naming of LibreOffice (by sudonym on 2011-01-12 14:26:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I think LibreOffice is a bit of an awkward name.
60 • Things are heading faster (by meanpt on 2011-01-12 14:34:48 GMT from Portugal)
Ubuntu will include LO in 11.04 and Salix already includes it in the alfa of the 13.2 XFCE release ... (hope this comment will not be deleted without a justification)
61 • A day at the office (by Barnabyh on 2011-01-12 16:45:14 GMT from Germany)
Seems to me only native English speakers are complaining about the name. I quite like the name as it makes intentions clear, like Libre-kernel.
Several distros have already moved to switch to LO, see last weeks comments. It is also in Slackware-current, hence in Salix alpha.
62 • Office (by zygmunt on 2011-01-12 20:08:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
Copying can be considered to be the highest form of flattery. With MS(TM) Office it seems to be so in the nomination of [Open/Star/Libre..] Office suites. Of course MS can also be considered guilty in this respect. But until such time as a paradigm shift occurs IMHO Office remains, at least in English, the perfect encapsulation for the product, be it MS, Open or Libre. A spade is a spade until it becomes a shovel.
63 • re # 56 - pcbsd d/l (by gnomic on 2011-01-12 22:32:01 GMT from New Zealand)
Don't know about the state of the servers for pcbsd, but if the last release is anything to go by, it may not be worth completing the d/l. Running as a live DVD at least, I found this had a well nigh miraculous ability to crash, freeze, terminate abnormally, and so on. I certainly wasn't having a lot of fun.
64 • LO (by forlin on 2011-01-13 03:44:57 GMT from Portugal)
Brazilian portuguese use the word liberar in the sense of rescue. Spanish often use liberar as in jailbreak (mobiles) Its only my own speculation, but maybe the LibreOffice name, was coined as a symbolic way to translate a "rescue", following its uncertain future under the Oracle rule.
65 • re:61 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-13 08:13:53 GMT from India)
Quite agree with you regarding the connotations of Libre. But I am surprised that English speakers have a problem with it. The same word from which the cherished word Liberty has taken shape, now makes people uncomfortable?
What's next- a petition to change the name of statue of liberty?
66 • LibreOffice (by sudonym on 2011-01-13 11:44:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
@65
It's not the meaning, it's (for some) saying LibreOffice that's awkward. As was pointed out, the two words (forget the meaning) do not gel. I thought that was clear.
How does that translate to being uncomfortable with the meaning of the word? And the petition thing was stretching it just a bit.
67 • Nothing wrong here with the name (by mythus on 2011-01-13 13:29:36 GMT from United States)
Being a native english speaker (with english being my only spoken language), I have no trouble saying LibreOffice. Sounds ine to me. OpenOffice of course sounds better,but I always thought saying it's full name, OpenOffice.org sounded horible. At least LibreOffice doesn't have that .org at the end of it.
In the end though I simply say what I am ussing, whether it be Writer, Calc, Impress.... it doen't matter to me what the name is on the front of it. Instead what matters is that it works and works well.
68 • Office in Slackware (by Barnabyh on 2011-01-13 16:16:12 GMT from Germany)
Apologies, never mind my comment 61. Slackware still comes with KOffice included as office suite of choice. Must have confused it with Salix. Talking out of my a... LO 3.3.0 is on SlackBuilds though for 13.1.
69 • Libre Office (by Neal on 2011-01-13 16:56:24 GMT from United States)
I speak english and Libre Office sounds good to me....
If you wanna give Libre Office a try in Ubuntu or an Ubuntu variant, give these commands a whirl...
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
I like it and it will be a nice addition to any distro you use.
70 • libre office (by Anonymous on 2011-01-13 18:41:12 GMT from Canada)
from google
# Canadian English generally follows British spelling, but often the American ... centre. centre. center. cheque (noun, money). cheque. check. chequered ... www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm - Cached - Similar ► so read libre office as liber office
71 • Problems installing LibreOffice in Mint 9 LTS (by Mark Pace on 2011-01-13 20:29:49 GMT from United States)
------------------------------------------------
For whatever it's worth, installing LibreOffice (LO) in Mint 9 LTS caused a lot of headaches. After loading the LO repository the install seemed to go fine, but when I tried to run LO's word processor it failed to start. Not only that but installing LO completely borked my OpenOffice (OO) installation, which is obviously something I should have been aware of beforehand. So I ended up without either LO or OO available.
Had to do some serious reconfiguration and mucking out, but I finally got OO reinstalled and running correctly again. Bottom line for me was that installing LO before it's pronounced ready and made officially available in Mint's repositories was just asking for trouble. Hope others have more luck with it that I did. For the time being I'll stick with OO and wait for Clem and the Mint team to make LO officially available.
72 • LO in Lucid (by Caraibes on 2011-01-13 21:29:16 GMT from Dominican Republic)
I successfully installed LO in Lucid. Once you have the LO ppa, it borks OOo indeed, but then you go to Synaptic, remove OOo totally, and install from Synaptic LO... Works just fine !!!
73 • re#71,#72 (by hab on 2011-01-13 23:21:12 GMT from Canada)
In any event can one not install for the user only (even a new temporary. test install account) and not do a system wide install. Trivially fixed if it borks something locally!
I have used this method much for installing and testing various software.
cheers
74 • LibreOffice (by Anonymous on 2011-01-14 02:12:24 GMT from United States)
Interesting FAQ @: http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/ As stated: Q: Why are you building a new web infrastructure?
A: Since Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems, the Community has been under "notice to quit" from our previous Collabnet infrastructure. With today's announcement of a Foundation, we now have an entity which can own our emerging new infrastructure.
What does this mean?
75 • LO (by forlin on 2011-01-14 03:03:22 GMT from Portugal)
@ 70 - so read libre office as liber office. So right. liber office sounds sweet and easy to spell indeed.
@ 74 - What does this mean? It means a true rescue.
Does someone believe that Oracle will sometime handle the OpenOffice.org trademark to the "The Document Foundation" ?
I'd like them to. But I doubt.
76 • #74 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-14 03:34:24 GMT from United States)
"notice to quit" Who's telling who to quit what?
77 • Libre Office on Knoppix CD (by gnomic on 2011-01-14 04:29:25 GMT from New Zealand)
Not quite the question asked by Tom above, but I see Knoppix live CD now includes Libre Office v3.3. Knoppix 6.4.3 at a mirror near you.
78 • On the LIbreOffice at LlinuxMint 9 LTS.... (by alexis on 2011-01-14 10:42:08 GMT from Ukraine)
#71 I have downloaded the deb packages from their official site and installed them with "dpkg -i ./*.deb". It got it installed into the /opt, without disturbing the 'native' OOo installed.
It works smoothly.... :)
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/testing/3.3.0-rc3/deb/x86/ "untar" it into a directory, "cd" into that certain dir, and go: "dpkg -i ./*.deb"....
Then go to the /opt/libreoffice/program and run ./swriter # cd /opt/libreoffice/program # ./swriter &
79 • Re: 78 installing LO smoothly by alexis (by DShelbyD on 2011-01-14 12:33:28 GMT from United States)
I also have obtained the LO packages from the documentfoundation site and installed LO in both .deb and .rpm distros.
Since the installation process puts the LO files in /opt, OOo has not been distrubed by the installation. The package contains a readme located in the extracted, top-level folder with installation instructions. Complete installation is a 2-step process, and the second step, using the same command as before but this time from within the desktop-integration folder, places LO items on the "Office" menu alongside those of OOo. Both OOo and LO work.
80 • LibreOffice (by Fewt on 2011-01-14 13:43:16 GMT from United States)
I dislike the name. Think about it, if you are a geek; the name probably sounds fantastic.
If you aren't a geek though the immediate response is "WTF", or "what the hell is LibreOffice"? In real life, I received this response more than once on this topic. It is just another instance of a bad name for what could be a good product that will unfortunately keep it from mass acceptance.
What would a consumer use?
OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office
I can promise you that randomly chosen people will pick #1 or #3, #2 being chosen only if that random person is a geek. I expect LibreOffice to only accel on geek desktops.
When I ran a survey for defaults in Fuduntu (No, non-geeks do not care that the name contains "fud", only geeks do), out of the hundreds of responses only 5 were pro LibreOffice.
Non geeks do not care that Oracle shut down an unrelated product, nor do they care about any of the related politics leading to the LibreOffice fork.
We'll never have any marketshare if we continue to think like geeks in designing the products that we are building to compete with those other guys.
All that said, I still hope that the project is successful and is useful for whomever chooses to use it.
81 • @ 80 LO (by forlin on 2011-01-14 16:01:57 GMT from Portugal)
"I can promise you that randomly chosen people will pick #1" - (OO) -
That is because it's been more than 10 years since OO is known. Apart from news and comments surrounding the fork there was not many talks after the happening (excluding its adoption announcement from a few distros). I didn't even noticed the existence of the "The Document Foundation" (thanks to the commenter who shared the link), but the current talk here about LO seems to be leading readers to an immediate install.
82 • @81 (by Fewt on 2011-01-14 16:11:39 GMT from United States)
You missed my point entirely. How many people log onto distrowatch for the latest news before leaving for their jobs as Doctors, Accountants, Construction workers, or Taxi Drivers?
Not very many. My point is that LibreOffice isn't a name that would be used outside of geek circles such as this, and arguably "consumer" or "non-geek" users won't go near it.
83 • Market Share (by Tom on 2011-01-14 16:42:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hmm, market share suggests that most non-geeks go for MicroSquish Office.
MicroSquish products cost more and therefore 'must' be better, right? Also, almost everyone uses MicroSquish so it 'must' be better, right?
'OpenOffice' sounds like all confidential files are going to end up being broadcast to anyone that wants to look. Have any non-geeks heard of LibreOffice yet?
'Obviously' people would only give something away for free if they couldn't sell it because it was so awful. If something is half-decent then 'they' would charge for it. So, if it costs less than MicroSquish then it must be that much more rubbish than MicroSquish, right?
Corporate users are sometimes more interested in TCO and tech-support costs rather than initial costs. The "cherished word Liberty" is NOT cherished by corporations; quite the opposite.
Regards from Tom :)
84 • TDF (by Tom on 2011-01-14 17:05:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
The Document Foundation say that LibreOffice is NOT a fork. It is just a renaming as happens with products from time to time. The product started with the name "Star Office" and has now been renamed twice in 2 decades.
A completely unrelated company that has not been involved with OpenOffice's development at all in the last couple of decades bought the name "OpenOffice" along with a small handful of developer's employment contracts.
Almost everyone that HAS been involved with the product's development have apparently been told to stop working on OpenOffice and close the websites and stop using the name.
Companies get bought and sold. Names and logos get bought and sold. Products get re-branded or re-named. How difficult is that for geeks or non-geeks to understand? Regards from Tom :)
85 • OOo or LO etc. (by Jon Thomsen on 2011-01-14 17:32:45 GMT from United States)
I think the point is that the vast majority of people who use computers HAVE NEVER HEARD of Open Office or Libre Office or any office suite other than MS Office.
86 • LO at Fewt 82 (by forlin on 2011-01-14 17:48:22 GMT from Portugal)
"You missed my point entirely"
You're wrong !!! "randomly chosen" is like proposing a ballot. See my comment on that sense.
87 • gNewOffice or gnuOffice (by Marti on 2011-01-14 17:55:32 GMT from United States)
Giving the OpenOffice fork to Richard Stallman or the folks at gNewSense might be the only way to keep it free (as in freedom, not as in beer). I, too, am dreading what Oracle is going to do with OO.
Maybe just call it myOffice? theOffice? ourOffice?
Oh, yeah, this comment has just copylefted my suggestions. :)
Wish me luck in trying to install gNewSense.....
88 • Lo (by forlin on 2011-01-14 19:00:17 GMT from Portugal)
New Office org ... copyleft too :)
89 • LO brainstorming (by meanpt on 2011-01-14 19:23:34 GMT from Portugal)
Candy Office?
90 • Lulz (by Fewt on 2011-01-14 19:42:35 GMT from United States)
@86, Use more exclamation points, they obviously make you more right and me more wrong.
@85, The only exception to this would be the advertisement for OpenOffice when you install Java on the Windows platform, but otherwise you are correct.
91 • Fresh start (by Jesse on 2011-01-14 19:54:34 GMT from Canada)
In my experience most people (non-geeks) have not heard of OpenOffice. However, the handful that have do not like it. Those who have tried it generally report it to be slow, missing features and confusing with regard to document formats. They have no interest in trying it again.
A name change may be helpful in that regard as people who didn't like OpenOffice may be willing to true this new LibreOffice, not realizing it's a continuation of the same project.
92 • @91 (by Fewt on 2011-01-14 20:01:53 GMT from United States)
I agree, with the exception that I think it needs a flashier more memorable name. Something like "Turbo Office" for example. I mentioned LibreOffice to someone again not too long ago, and received a "WTF". Maybe it works outside of America, but here, it doesn't.
Does anyone think that the biggest search engine on the planet would have made it if their name was LibreSearch? I don't think so.
93 • LO (by fernbap on 2011-01-14 20:36:46 GMT from Portugal)
i think what matters is marketing. Libre Office should be released in several different builds, each with a suitable name.
For macs: iOffice. Just do it!
For windows: NewOffice Home Edition, without any database component NewOffice Professional Edition, bundled with 15 free trial versions of Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin, etc NewOffice Gamers Edition, including one year subscription to Battlenet.
For Linux: Normal users: LibreOffice hardcore Linux users: I Hate Ubuntu Office hardcore hardcore Linux users: Libre Office console version
94 • 92 • @91 LibreOffice (by Victor on 2011-01-14 21:30:55 GMT from United States)
92 • @91 (by Fewt on 2011-01-14 20:01:53 GMT from United States) "Maybe it works outside of America, but here, it doesn't."
Except Ubuntu! Who would have ever thought that would work? Even my spell check hates it!
And Firefox, what the ??
The grand winner ffmpeg - great software.
Still, LibreOffice name stinks, I admit.
95 • LO (by forlin on 2011-01-14 21:56:14 GMT from Portugal)
@90 - Fewt, my "wrong" was related to your "You missed my point entirely". Though I admit we may both be talking about slightly different issues.
@93 - good laugh, fernbap, good laugh.
96 • LO (by forlin on 2011-01-14 22:07:12 GMT from Portugal)
How bad, I cannot edit, but just an addition. For Red Hat = Red Office
97 • "Squeeze" Deep Freeze (by Anonymous on 2011-01-15 00:08:24 GMT from United States)
http://www.debian.org/News/project/2011/01/
98 • slax-remix - new name and new home (by gnomic on 2011-01-15 00:28:31 GMT from New Zealand)
Those who have looked at the slax-remix formerly to be found on the Slax forums may be interested to know that the project now has a new name and its own website.
See http://www.porteus.org/
99 • Debian sq-di-rc1 (by Anonymous on 2011-01-15 02:07:09 GMT from Italy)
Does anybody know what "Debian sq-di-rc1" means? I mean, obviously rc1 means release candidate 1.. And sq-di, what does that mean?
100 • Debian sq-di-rc1 (by Ralph on 2011-01-15 04:10:39 GMT from Canada)
@99--I guessing sq-di would stand for squeeze-debianinstaller...
101 • Thanks (by Anonymous on 2011-01-15 06:41:15 GMT from Italy)
Thanks Ralph :)
102 • What a palaver ... (by jake on 2011-01-15 06:55:22 GMT from United States)
I still use vi & sc for most of my business needs ... Same text & numbers, after all. It's all scriptable ("macroable"? ::shudder::), and there is no unnecessary GUI cruft slowing down the system. Same result, fewer resources, usable over dial-up ... and a hell of a lot faster for the guy at the keyboard. "Pretty, slow and resource-hungry" doesn't run a horse ranch ...
Yes, I'll pretty up a contract occasionally using GUI tools, when it's warranted, which is rare. More often, I'll send a print job to a tractor-feed daisywheel printer. Gets the same point across, with fewer resources. It's all 7-bit ASCII[1], after all :-)
[1] English being the lingua franca of the Internet & all that.
103 • Ubuntu's natty narwhal (by Chris H. on 2011-01-15 07:49:45 GMT from United States)
As usual, my comment is not part of the current thread, but helpful to some, I hope.
A lot of upgraded packages have been put in the repositories tonight. My nVidia natty installs that were driving me up the wall now run very well, thank you.
Chris H.
104 • FLOSS (by zygmunt on 2011-01-15 08:01:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Seriously: Why not FLOSSOffice: Free, Libre, Open, Star, Soft Office. Lots of Spoonerisms there. just joking.
105 • Office (by Tom on 2011-01-15 12:56:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
@ 104 & 93 I like FlossOffice :) The "bundled with 15 free trial versions of Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin, etc" was brilliant, spot on. I take it that Battlenet is free too?
@ 103 Omg a useful post about a distro! That really interrupted the threads flow!
Lol, thanks all :) Regards from Tom :)
106 • Floffice (by PatrikJA on 2011-01-15 16:47:46 GMT from Sweden)
@ 104 FLOSSOffice seems a bit long... Maybe shorten it to Floffice..?
107 • @105 (by fernbap on 2011-01-15 16:51:42 GMT from Portugal)
Battle.net is free, but useless unless you buy a game from Blizzard
108 • @106 LibreOffice (by bwd on 2011-01-15 17:29:05 GMT from United States)
I'm fine with whatever it's gonna be called, and agree that it doesn't 'flow' well in English (though that doesn't really concern me).
I like this train of thought with FlossOffice, and will offer:
"Flosso"
Enjoy.
109 • ?Office (by Victor on 2011-01-15 17:31:55 GMT from United States)
Suddenly I realized that its the second half of the name 'LibreOffice' that could use a nice upgrade. Since I retired I haven't been near an office. Office, what a narrow minded description of such great capable flexible software.
Yep, Office, there's the bogey. How many out there work out of a bedroom, living room, closet, pantry, coffee shop, internet cafes? How could anyone call those an office by and stretch of the imagination?
Let's get with the show - how about FlexPack.
Have a good day all - Victor
110 • PelicanHPC 2.3 (by michael.setti@inbox.com on 2011-01-15 18:34:04 GMT from United States)
I have tried the release of PelicanHPC 2.3 and was very impressed with it. I was wondering if there is a distro out there that does what pelican does (boot from a master node and have the subsequent nodes boot off of it) and also has general office apps (suite) included so that the nodes can get to work right away in a make shift office anywhere without disturbing the HDs of the machines if so chosen. I think PelicanHPC can be customized but if this work has already been done, why re-invent the wheel. Thanks. Distrowatch is outstanding. Keep up the good work.
111 • nodes? (by Tom on 2011-01-16 16:33:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi :) Errr, what is a node? Am i going to regret asking??
112 • RE: 110 (by Landor on 2011-01-16 17:24:41 GMT from Canada)
I don't know of any distributions that are HPC/Cluster/Parallel, but if you're not aware, I just read that PelicanHPC is built from a script: make_pelican http://pareto.uab.es/mcreel/PelicanHPC/Tutorial/PelicanTutorial.html#make_pelican .
I don't know if there's more information out there than the above link. Although quite terse, some steps from what I read look very straightforward.
Hope that helps somehow.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
113 • what is a node? (by Anonymous on 2011-01-16 18:50:17 GMT from United States)
Look at distributed computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node_(networking)
114 • @111 - Tom: about node... and .... (by Anonymous on 2011-01-16 21:09:11 GMT from Portugal)
About node and a "New Lustre Distro" "Gorda explained that in a typical Lustre installation, a client runs in the compute cluster and mounts the Lustre file system over a high speed Infiniband or 10GbE network"
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/article.php/3920826/Whamcloud-Building-New-Lustre-Distro.htm
115 • Nodes in networking. (by jake on 2011-01-17 01:23:39 GMT from United States)
The concept of nodes in networking grew from the idea of nodes in transportation. In a nutshell, a "node" is a place where discrete packets of information are not being transported. Said packets may or may not be being processed at any given node.
Take a look at the output of `tracetoute distrowatch.com` ... Each of the machines listed between yourself & distrowatch are the nodes between you and distrowatch. Your machine & ladislav's are known as the "end nodes", for obvious reasons. Please note that the owners of those machines can monitor the traffic running across them ... which is why I always say "If you wouldn't shout it from the roof-tops, encrypt it!".
One of my mentors back in the day (might have been Cerf), said "it's a node if it is capable of modifying network traffic" ... Perhaps simplistic, but a fairly good way of looking at it.
116 • new to linux (by adam on 2011-01-17 05:11:43 GMT from United States)
guys im looking for a distro that has all the stuff already included like latest gimp and inkscape , firefox ...im currently running ubuntu nut im looking for something else something new.....i like to work with graphivs and vector graphics and i also need something good like open office but i need everything to be the latest versions though out of the box included in the distro? any suggestions?
117 • Re: 116 (by jake on 2011-01-17 05:53:15 GMT from United States)
What, exactly, are you planning to do with your new distro?
Are you a professional photographer or WWW designer looking to move out of the commercial software world, and into the FOSS world? Or are you a teenager looking for porn? Or something in between? The answer will vary, according to context.
Context, when it comes to "personal living space", is everything ...
Number of Comments: 117
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• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Full list of all issues |
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Random Distribution | 
Anarchy Installer
Anarchy Installer (formerly Anarchy Linux) provides a text-based installer to help set up and customize an Arch Linux based operating system. The installer provides quick access to multiple desktop environments and custom configurations.
Status: Discontinued
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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.
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