 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 394, 28 February 2011 |
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Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian take the lion's share of news talks taking place over the last few days. While the first test release of Fedora 15 gets delayed due to a show-stopper bug, its unofficial ARM processor team delivers a new Fedora beta build for testing. In the meantime, Ubuntu hits the headlines for all the wrong reasons and this time it's the project's economic need that takes over in a relationship with a free software project, the Banshee music player. Debian, on the other hand, gets a pat on the back from the Free Software Foundation over its new kernel-without-the-blobs policy, although the project still falls short of getting on the list of truly free GNU/Linux distributions. This week's feature story is a first-look review of the Ubuntu-based Wolfer Linux 2, while the Questions and Answers section presents a list of web browsers available on the UNIX platform. There is more, including a link to an article which responds to our last week's review of Debian "Squeeze". Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (27MB) and MP3 (23MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
A look at Wolfer Linux 2
 The Wolfer Linux distribution is developed by a small team who seem to be operating on two assumptions: one, that Ubuntu makes a good base from which to build a distro and, two, a good user interface can go a long way toward making a good product. Wolfer, version 2, is based on Ubuntu "Lucid", a long-term support release that is nearing its first birthday. The downloadable ISO image is approximately 780 MB in size and doubles as a live DVD and installation media.
The live disc boots into a text menu which lets us select whether we'd like to try Wolfer without touching the hard drive or perform an installation. Taking the default option boots us into a GNOME 2.30 desktop environment. The menu bar and task switcher sit at the bottom of the screen, an icon for browsing the file system and another for launching the installer sit on the desktop. The theme is big on grey; the wallpaper is grey, the menu bar is grey and the icons feature grey. The application menu uses a high-contrast combination of black text on a white background and it crams a lot of items into the small space.
There are the usual software categories down the middle and, moving the mouse over these categories causes specific applications to be shown on the right. This is fairly standard, though the even spacing of the application entries may take some getting used to. To the left side of the menu are three tabs to move us between the default application menu, a system/shutdown menu and recently selected items. Up at the top of the menu is a button for showing commonly used entries. The system tab not only lets us shutdown the machine or logout, but also displays resource usage information. Personally I find the menu a bit crowded. Maybe if I had a few weeks to get accustomed to the layout I would come to appreciate the layout and short-cuts, but as it is I thought the menu behaviour drifted a little too far away from the norm for my habits.
Wolfer Linux 2 - browsing the web and accessing the application menu
(full image size: 302kB, resolution 1366x768 pixels)
As I previously mentioned, Wolfer is based on Ubuntu. The installer is the same as the one featured in Ubuntu 10.04 and the installed applications are largely the same too. Rather than walk through the whole thing step-by-step, I'll instead try to focus on what differs in Wolfer compared to its parent. When I asked Hari Yulianto, the project's lead developer, what sets Wolfer apart he told me that Wolfer has "a desktop display that we designed to be more elegant and easy to use for new Linux users. Apart from the desktop, we also equip it with office software, Internet applications, multimedia players, and some tools to repair and reset the system." He added that users will want to try Wolfer because the distro is "elegant and easy to use."
Wolfer Linux 2 - the system installer and the Guake terminal
(full image size: 219kB, resolution 1024x768 pixels)
Once I finished installing Wolfer and logged in I found that I had to agree with Hari. Though the application menu took some getting used to, there are little tweaks to the interface I found appealing, things I probably wouldn't normally consider. For instance, there's a quick link to the system's control centre next to the application menu. There's also a button there to kill applications in case they hang, an issue I did not encounter while using the distribution. Upon logging in a notification appears briefly letting us know we can press F12 at any time to get the Guake virtual terminal. This is a small terminal window that appears at the top of the screen. There is also an icon in the system tray which will bring up the small terminal window. Since I'm often using and dismissing terminal windows, having the readily available shortcut was nice.
Regarding the array of default applications, most of them are the same as those available in Ubuntu, but there are a few differences. Wolfer replaces the Firefox web browser with Google's Chrome, version 7. Also in the Internet menu we find the Transmission BitTorrent client, the Gwibber social media client and Pidgin for instant messaging. OpenOffice is installed, as is the Evolution e-mail client, the VLC multimedia player and a disc burner. The GIMP image editor is included, as are a document viewer, the GNOME configuration tools and the usual small apps for editing text, adding numbers and working with file archives. For fun, a few games are included and, in their effort to make Wolfer easy to use out of the box, the developers have included a Flash plugin and codecs for playing popular media formats.
The distro provides two package managers, Synaptic and Add/Remove Applications (also known as gnome-app-install). Synaptic, as usual, worked smoothly and I encountered no problems. When running Add/Remove Applications I found it also worked well. It features a simplified interface, but for most people's purposes the functionality is all there. Though when I clicked on the tool's Help button it caused an error to be displayed telling me that to view the help documentation a package first had to be installed -- an unfortunate message to encounter when trying to find out how to use a package manager. Aside from the two GUI package managers, Wolfer includes an application to handle security updates. The update manager worked well, provided lots of information to the user and I had no problems there.
One thing I was disappointed by is that Wolfer appears to use the same packages (with the same versions) as its base, Ubuntu 10.04. This may seem to make sense until we look at the mountain of updates that awaits us immediately after installing the operating system. When I first booted Wolfer I discovered over 350 waiting updates. This makes for just over 300 MB worth of downloads, following a 780 MB ISO image. I think it would be preferable if these updates were applied to the image before it is made available for download, much the way Ubuntu does with its LTS point releases.
I ran Wolfer on two test machines, a generic desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card) and found everything worked out of the box. My screen was set to a good resolution and audio worked without any configuration. On my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card) I had a similar experience with everything working properly. Again my screen was set at an appropriate resolution, audio worked on the default install and my wireless connection worked without any problems. My touchpad also worked as expected. Performance on both machines was middle of the road, good without being extraordinary. When I moved Wolfer to a virtual environment, I found it functioned well with as little as 512 MB of memory.
Wolfer Linux 2 - the package manager
(full image size: 283kB, resolution 1024x768 pixels)
Whether a re-spin project has merit is a debate which often rages around projects like Wolfer. From a technical stand point Wolfer is basically Ubuntu with some multimedia codecs, some extra packages and a different theme. But the Wolfer developers aren't out to reinvent the wheel, but rather make the wheel more accessible to Linux new comers. In my mind whether the project is useful and a success hinges on whether they have indeed made a more novice-friendly desktop. I'm not in a good position to judge as I've been using Linux systems for over a decade, so I turned Wolfer over to someone who primarily uses a proprietary operating system (with the rare trip into Ubuntu-land) and asked his opinion. He told me he found the theme more pleasant than Ubuntu's and navigating the menu layout came more naturally. Additionally with all the codecs pre-installed for him, he didn't have to turn to the package manager for anything. So while Wolfer may not bring technical improvements to the table and I generally found their UI changes unappealing, my test subject did see their efforts as an improvement.
If you have already settled into the Linux scene and have gained some comfort with the operating system, Wolfer probably won't give you anything new. But if you're standing outside the Linux community and considering which distro to try, Wolfer is one option that will make the transition easier.
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While on the subjects of the Ubuntu family of distros and new Linux users, I think it's only fair to mention the Psychocats Ubuntu website. It's an excellent resource with clear tutorials covering getting, installing, securing and customizing Ubuntu and its children distros. The site also discusses such topics as adding multimedia codecs, configuring WINE and performing backups. The tutorials are well written and often provide screenshots or examples to help novice users along. Though not as complete as the official Ubuntu documentation, the smaller size of the Psychocats website makes finding information on common tasks easier. If you, or people you know, are starting the Linux journey, I recommend Psychocats as a starting point. Thanks to Marti who wrote in to let us know about this website.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Fedora - alpha delay and ARM beta release, Ubuntu vs Banshee controversy, Debian and its relationship with FSF
 The first official test release of Fedora 15, originally scheduled for arrival tomorrow (Tuesday), has been delayed by one week due to a major show-stopper bug. The H Open has summarised the decision: "The Fedora project has postponed the release of the first and only alpha version of Fedora 15, originally scheduled for 1 March, by a week. This was due, at least in part, to a bug in X server that occurred in connection with keyboard layouts for such languages as German or French and prevented users from successfully logging into GDM. Subsequent milestones in the release schedule for Fedora 15 remain unaffected at present, and the final release is still scheduled for 10 May. The fifteenth Fedora release is currently planned to be the first version that won't require a special boot parameter to be submitted to the installer in order to format a storage device with the experimental Btrfs file system." The article also quotes Red Hat's Josef Bacik who suggests that Btrfs should become the default file system in Fedora 16.
On a separate note, Paul Whalen has announced the availability of the first beta release of Fedora 13 for the ARM processor: "The Fedora 13 ARM beta release is now available for download. There are still a number of packages that haven't been built for ARM due to build failures or missing dependencies. Because we're a little behind the primary architectures we have the ability to look at later releases to see if these failures have been fixed -- thankfully a large number include support for ARM. Because of this we expect that with Fedora 14 and 15 we will be closer in line with the primary architectures. A new root file system is available for download here. The password for the root account is 'fedoraarm'. Instructions for using the root file system can be found here." For more information please see also the release notes.
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 While Canonical is no stranger to making controversial decisions which are then relayed in popular Linux news media, often it's the journalists who keep digging up "dramatic" stories related to the most popular desktop Linux distribution. Last week it was Ubuntu's relationship with GNOME and the Banshee media player that hit the headlines. Slashdot has a nice summary of events: "Canonical has reacted to backlash over its insane deal with Banshee by establishing a marginally better new deal. Banshee is a media/music player for Linux (and Windows and Mac OS X) that supports music purchases via Amazon MP3. It will ship with Ubuntu 11.04. Amazon pays 10% to its affiliates -- websites and software that send it business. Banshee had been donating its Amazon affiliate proceeds to GNOME. But Amazon's MP3 store competes with Canonical's MP3 store, Ubuntu One. So Canonical thought that it should help itself to 75% of the affiliate money from Banshee/Amazon sales and leave 25% for GNOME. The Banshee group said no thanks, we'll disable Amazon for Ubuntu users. Canonical is refusing to let Banshee disable Amazon. It has instead said it will contribute some money from Ubuntu One to GNOME but it still intends on keeping the lion's share for itself." Network World also covers the story.
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 The relationship between Debian GNU/Linux and Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been stormy at times, with the result that FSF does not include Debian in its list of recommended free distributions. Nevertheless, with the recent release of "Squeeze", whose default kernel comes without any proprietary components, the world's largest Linux operating system project has come a step closer to the FSF ideals. Debian's Stefano Zacchiroli explains the situation: "Historically, the relationships among Debian and the FSF have gone through mixed fortune (and that's quite an euphemism). On the one hand, Debian is committed to 100% Free Software, is an open project explicitly inspired by 'the spirit of GNU', has been sponsored by FSF in its infancy, and properly calls itself 'GNU/Linux' (or even "GNU/kFreeBSD"). On the other hand, Debian is the project who considers the GNU FDL license to be only conditionally free and which is not considered to be an entirely free system according to FSF. As a long time member of the Debian Project, as well as an FSF(E) fellow, I've always felt a bit sad about this state of affairs. Not because the two projects should have aligned goals; they clearly focus on different aspects of the quest for a free (software) world. Not even because they should agree on how to build a free distribution: history has shown that FSF technical positions do not always get along with Debian's more 'pragmatic' style, as embodied by point 5 of the Social Contract."
Our last week's review of Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 has generated a heated debate not only on this website, but on many other Linux discussion boards all over the Internet. Naturally, as long as there are such important things as free computer operating systems available for anybody to try out, there will be conflicting opinions. Our review met with many rebuttals and here is one of them: "Yes, the installer isn't flashy. How can it be, and support as many different hardware platforms as Debian does? Keep in mind that the install scripts are fundamentally the same for every hardware platform, from serial console SPARC to IBM 360 and everything in between. Mr. Smith missed just how much work had to go into translating that install into a 'graphical' mode to make some people happy, when anyone who looks at the 'graphical' and text installers side by side will notice that they do exactly the same job in exactly the same way. This is important so as not to have to maintain 12 (or whatever it is this release) different installers. I'm quite pleased that Mr. Smith took the time to give Debian 6.0 a real workout before writing his review. And I even understand his reservations about 'by being so general, so universal, I felt 'Squeeze' didn't excel at anything.' Maybe, 'Squeeze' excels at being general and universal?"
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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Web browsers for Linux
Browsing-for-browsers asks: The other week's comments on chroot-ing Firefox got me to thinking -- is there a "safe" browser on Linux? Firefox has become very popular, and a target of blackhats... And since there is nothing "safe" in this dangerous world I'll rephrase my question: What full-featured FOSS browsers are available for Linux besides Firefox and Konqueror?
DistroWatch answers: You're right, there's no completely secure and full-featured web browser, but there are some good open-source web browsers out there. Aside from the ones you mentioned, Firefox and Konqueror, you might also try Chromium. Most of the big-name distros (including Fedora, Debian (and its family) and openSUSE) make it fairly easy to get Chromium. Another good option is Epiphany, a web browser designed for the GNOME desktop. The Epiphany website contains a helpful page with installation instructions for various distributions. Though not open source, the Opera web browser runs on Linux and FreeBSD.
Assuming your primary concern is security, you could consider running your web browser in a virtual machine. I find VirtualBox to be easy to set up. Browsing in a virtual environment can be inconvenient as it cuts you off from directly uploading your files, but for day-to-day browsing it provides an extra layer of protection. When you're on the road, browsing from a live disc, such as the one provided by KNOPPIX, will help you avoid malware, such as key loggers.
Do you have a topic or question you'd like to see covered in DistroWatch Weekly? Send in your submissions to jessefrgsmith@yahoo.ca.
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| Released Last Week |
Jolicloud 1.1.1
Jolicloud 1.1.1, an Ubuntu-based distribution for netbooks with heavy integration of social networks, has been released. This minor update brings support for older NVIDIA graphics cards and other legacy hardware. From the release announcement: "We've received hundreds of stories from people around the world who are dusting off old computers from their garages, turning them into cool Jolicloud computers, and using them as Internet browsing machines, family Skype boxes or donating them to schools. That's why we're dedicated to making Jolicloud OS compatible with all types of legacy hardware. Today, we released a new Jolicloud OS 1.1.1, an update which solves installation issues on legacy computers using older NVIDIA graphics cards. This means that if you have an old computer lying around it is even more likely now that Jolicloud OS will run on it flawlessly. If you own an old Dell computer and had issues to install the 1.1, the new release should fix this."
Linux Mint 10 "KDE"
Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 10 "KDE" edition: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 10 KDE." The release includes the new KDE 4.6 desktop as well as various improvements in Mint's software, update and upload managers: "This edition comes with the latest and recently released KDE 4.6. The Software Manager gives you a nicer browsing experience, with a better categorization of software and the use of application icons. If you're not interested in receiving updates for a particular package, simply right click on it and tell the Update Manager to ignore updates for this package. The package will then be added to your 'ignore' list and you won't receive any updates for it in the future." Read the release announcement for an overview of the main features and see the what's new page for a detailed list of improvements (with screenshots).
Linux Mint 10 "KDE" - a KDE 4.6 desktop with a minty flavour
(full image size: 798kB, resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
PC-BSD 8.2
Kris Moore has announced the release of PC-BSD 8.2, a desktop BSD system based on FreeBSD: "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.2 (Hubble edition), running FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE, and KDE 4.5.5. Version 8.2 contains a number of enhancements and improvements, some of the notable changes are: added ability to select file-system type and encryption during auto-partitioning; able to toggle between MBR/GPT partitioning; various bug fixes to the wireless network managers; updated the display wizard with many new supported resolutions; added 'extractonly' option to pc-sysinstall for installing to a pre-mounted disk; fixed some disk install errors from loading incorrect geom_ modules...." See the release announcement, release notes and changelog for more details.
FreeBSD 8.2, 7.4
Ken Smith has announced the release of FreeBSD 8.2: "The FreeBSD release engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: Xen HVM support in FreeBSD/amd64 and Xen PV support in FreeBSD/i386 improved; ZFS on-disk format updated to version 15; aesni driver for Intel AESNI crypto instruction set; BIND and OpenSSL updates; GNOME updated to 2.32.1; KDE updated to 4.5.5; many miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes." Read the release announcement and release notes for further information; there is also an errata page with a late-breaking news about an OpenSSL issue.
Toorox 02.2011
Jörn Lindau has announced the release of Toorox 02.2011, a Gentoo-based live DVD featuring the KDE (version 4.6.0) desktop: "After the release of the 'GNOME' edition on the 8th of February it's time for the new 'KDE' edition too. And here it is: Toorox 02.2011 'KDE'. It contains of course all the improvements of the 'GNOME' edition (the '200-lines' kernel speed patch, GRUB 2, installer extensions). Nearly all packages were updated. The Linux kernel is the same as in the last 'GNOME' release (a patched 2.6.37-gentoo). Toorox 02.2011 contains KDE 4.6.0 as desktop environment. The X.Org Server was updated to version 1.9.4. The office suite is now the latest LibreOffice 3.3.1. The new images are stored in the download section; they're available as 32-bit and 64-bit systems." Here is the release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- Singularity Linux. Singularity Linux is a distribution based on the Fluxbox edition of Linux Mint, using both the Fluxbox window manager and the GNOME desktop environment.
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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, 7 March 2011.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Banshee and Ubuntu (by Eric on 2011-02-28 09:43:44 GMT from Netherlands)
How difficult is it to install Banshee in Ubuntu (rethorical question? So I would say Banshee should make a perfect product and we are all eager to install and then all revenue will go to Gnome.
2 • Wolfer (by Smirsch on 2011-02-28 10:56:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wolfer? Never heard of it ! Whatever happened to Wolvix? That one was good.
And - 780Mb .iso? That smacks of blatant ineptitude, or worse, based on the 700Mb limit of a CD. One so abhors waste; the 3.92Gb wasted on a DVD really rankles. These guys really don't care - just a little more thought and consideration would've clinched it! Good review, unimpressive distro.
3 • RE: 2 (by Landor on 2011-02-28 11:37:12 GMT from Canada)
"And - 780Mb .iso? That smacks of blatant ineptitude, or worse, based on the 700Mb limit of a CD. One so abhors waste; the 3.92Gb wasted on a DVD really rankles. These guys really don't care - just a little more thought and consideration would've clinched it!"
That's a fairly narrow view, isn't it? You can't come up with viable reasons why a distribution would stop at a certain size instead of adding gigabytes of crap that nobody really wants? I surely can.
How about a USB install? DVDRW? Saving bandwidth for those that pay a heavily toll in developing/or isolated countries? Saving time in the download? Bandwidth again, but how about the toll on the mirrors, or people seeding the torrents? Quite a few good reasons instead of stuck on this concern over wasted space.
To quote someone recently, "just a little more thought and consideration would've clinched it!"
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
4 • web browsing and security (by R on 2011-02-28 11:49:55 GMT from Ukraine)
Browsing from a VM or a LiveCD? Seriously?
I couldn't get a malware even while browsing with Internet Explorer on Windows without a firewall or antivirus.
The risk of getting a malware through a web browser on Linux is low enough to not justify overkill security measures like VM or LiveCD.
If you really want that more security just setup SELinux/AppArmor/Smack/whatever and put a browser inside of a container instead of using full-blown VM.
5 • Psychocats (by Neal on 2011-02-28 12:58:02 GMT from United States)
At least the good work done by Psychocats received a nice plug from DW.
Back when I used Ubuntu or Ubuntu derivatives someone on the Ubuntu forums suggested the Psychocat website to me and it was a real timesaver...
As for the 780mb download...It really should have been around a 1000mb download with all the updates ready for the 10.04 base.
6 • RE:Banshee (by Eddie on 2011-02-28 13:29:21 GMT from United States)
I never have understood the move to Banshee. For me it's really irrelevant anyway. I use the superb Rhythmbox.
7 • Browser Security (by Sitwon on 2011-02-28 14:02:03 GMT from United States)
While the browser does play an important role, I think the bigger issue is that most users fundamentally misunderstand web-based threats. Such misunderstanding was implied by both the wording of the question and the answer given.
A VM environment would (somewhat) shield you from the least common and least dangerous of online threats. (Yes, there are worse things than a buffer-overflow in your browser.)
8 • Is Jolicloud GPL or Not (by NotSoJoli on 2011-02-28 14:17:56 GMT from United States)
I couldn't get an answer to this on the Jolicloud support sites (Facebook), but after reading all the "prohibitions" listed in their Terms of Service (http://www.jolicloud.com/tos), is Jolicloud actually GPL? I could understand the restrictions with their "Service" being provided, but then they state that their desktop interface is also part of their "Service". I didn't think GPL could restrict distribution and modification.
Sorry for asking here, but as I said, I couldn't get a response in their official channel.
9 • Banshee/Ubuntu (by Don Sanderson on 2011-02-28 14:58:47 GMT from United States)
Never have been quite convinced by Ubuntu's "humanity to others" motto.
The Banshee profits 'redirection' is another in a growing line of things I've seen in the project that convince me "humanity to Mark" may be a more accurate assessment.
I have moved away from all 'buntu based projects except one. That one I am working on migrating to pure Debian as we speak.
Enough is enough, if I want a 'dictator' rather than a 'project leader' I'll just go back to MS.
10 • Ubuntu, Banshee (by eric on 2011-02-28 15:31:34 GMT from United States)
Come on, Canonical. Are you trying to drive people away from Ubuntu? I've been an active member in the Debian and Mint communities for quite some time. We've always had a steady amount of Ubuntu "refugees," but the numbers are exploding.
I'm glad I left Ubuntu when I saw it turning into a corporate-driven proprietary Mac OSX clone.
11 • 780MB Wolfer (by zykoda on 2011-02-28 15:40:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
Why use optical media when a 1GB USB stick is ideal?
Why not complain about 4.4GB Squeeze! it does not fit on a 4 GB USB stick?
Anyway, it's all on hard disk if it's been downloaded!
Leave CD/DVD to the "entertainment" industry!
12 • Ubuntu music store (by Jesse on 2011-02-28 15:43:15 GMT from Canada)
The Ubuntu folks have found a way to make money and donate funds to the GNOME project. I'm not seeing a downside here. I'm living in a region where I can't use Amazon's music store, so it's nice to be given another option. As a bonus, purchases I make through Ubuntu One benefit GNOME. How is this at all a bad thing?
13 • RE:Banshee and Canonical (by Eddie on 2011-02-28 15:46:55 GMT from United States)
What's the problem with the Amazon, Banshee, Canonical deal. This all has to do with commercial products, MP3s and such and will have no affect on anyone here. Canonical is a business and as such Mark Shuttlworth is not a project leader nor is he a dictator. He is a businessman who has made a large investment. This is the kind of mess that can happen when you get mixed up with Banshee and its MONO.
14 • @10, 11 12 (by Don Sanderson on 2011-02-28 15:50:48 GMT from United States)
@11 "Why not complain about 4.4GB Squeeze!"
That is an 'installation' DVD not a 'live' DVD, BIG difference.
Their live spins are very much in line with many others for size.
@10, I agree.
@12, not complaining about Ubuntu One but the 'hijacking' of profits from Banshee and Ubuntu's basic attitude. They 'refuse to allow' Banshee to disable Amazon on their software? Sounds very Redmond to me. :-(
15 • @13 (by Fewt on 2011-02-28 15:54:24 GMT from United States)
Stop spreading FUD, Mono has nothing to do with the issue.
16 • Canonical and Ubuntu (by forlin on 2011-02-28 16:01:26 GMT from Portugal)
This is not about the Banshee issue as I don't know it in detail. In general terms I think that Canonical need to establish a better separation between commercial and community activities, maybe doing something similar to the Fedora and Suse model regarding Red Hat and Novell. Its not possible to create and develop a distro without incurring in expenses. Users give back collaborative work, but expenses still need to be funded. The absence of that separation will always give way to question marks about what is financing what.
17 • @13 (by Don Sanderson on 2011-02-28 16:04:24 GMT from United States)
I'm sorry but in my opinion (yes, a humble one) arguments over profits from multimedia sales and 'humanity to others' just won't mix well.
Profits from service will, and have, worked well in the OSS arena.
I'm really quite concerned as to where this will lead next for 'buntu.
Hence my move back to Debian.
Ubuntu is easy, but a bit scary.
Debian isn't quite as easy, but close, and solid and dependable from a software, and philosophy, standpoint.
Just my 2 penny's worth.
@16, Good comment. RHEL and Suse are what I referred to above.
18 • Pardus (by Robert on 2011-02-28 16:09:17 GMT from United States)
Yet another Ubuntu derivative review, seriously? Where's the Pardus 2011 review?
19 • Thank you Debian, I feel reassured because you are there! (by Vishwanath on 2011-02-28 16:25:53 GMT from India)
"Squeeze' excels at being general and universal?"
Hey does Debian also excel at being able to mother as many distros?
Does Debian excel at being able to provide the infrastructure for such a humungous project?
Does Debian actually excel at being able to "actually" guarantee a free operating system?
Let us thank Debian for what it is! Thanks really that Debian is there!! Honestly, no other distro gives me such comforts. Though I myself actually use Ubuntu, Mint and some other derivatives, I guess somewhere deep inside I feel reassured because Debian is there; I feel reassured because Ubuntu is Debian based.
How is anyone missing this?
I really would like to see a survey on this issue! "Do you feel a sense of security that Debian is there?"
20 • Chrome(ium), Opera (by mechanic on 2011-02-28 16:31:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Why the great rush to include Chrome(ium) in distros? C. can't even render many web sites properly yet, similarly Opera has problems rendering some pages. Return to Firefox, you know it makes sense!
You have to wonder why so many people feel the need to push out their own distro, substantially like one of the majors (Deb., Ubuntu, Fedora) with minor artwork tweaks. Yawn. What we want are easy to set up distros with all the usual wifi drivers, Dropbox, Flashplayer and a few codecs. Funduntu hits the spot for me! I would be using PC-BSD though if it didn't hang periodically with my system - something to do with the processor.
21 • toorox (by forlin on 2011-02-28 16:34:34 GMT from Portugal)
I've been trying to download the Toorox iso but so far I cannot access the locations linked in the release announcement, nor any of the Toorox sites. Does someone else had the same problem and found any alternative solution?
22 • Alternative Lightweight Musicplayer (by Guy on 2011-02-28 16:35:07 GMT from United States)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guayadeque/
23 • RE;9 and 10 . There is still freedom in ubuntu (by dopher on 2011-02-28 16:55:22 GMT from Belgium)
Why would one move away for such a thing. As long as you can still apt it away and replace it with something you want it is no issue in my opinion. And Eric, the people, you talk about, might be moving away to debian for several reasons. They want more control or they get influenced by all the bad posts and articles about ubuntu or whatever. Fact is, debian has a different target audience.
Ive been using slackware for many years on the desktop. But i've moved to ubuntu 10.04 LTS since it came out. And i'm very happy with it. Sometimes i miss slackware's simplicity when i want to hack a bit, But the complete desktop experience and the daily ease of use is more important to me.
When i installed ubuntu 10.04, i have removed all of ubuntuone, gwibber, used ext3 as default to reduce continuously harddiskactivity in ubuntu, and some other stuff I didn't want, and added the software i need. I have a lot of different hardware from scanner, printer, syncing mobile phone, usb headset, et etc. It all simply works (but maybe i'm an exception). It's also very stable, especially since 10.04.1. For me it's just the best desktop i'v ever had, plus I'm still in control. It's just linux I don't see myself just quickly moving away to yet another distro because of some bad ambiance created by some fanatics. My computer is too important for that.
I'll probably use this LTS release till the end of the support and then make my decisions. If the next LTS release has turned into some really commercial product. Or really drastically chanced in a way I don't like I will move away.
One thing I want to add as well. A lot of those fanatics talk the way the wind blows, but really contradict themselves because a lot of them use spyware like skype and a lot of google spyware products.
My advice would be to use whatever you like and follow your own opinion. My opinion is that the latest ubuntu 10.04 LTS is a great stable and nice looking distro. And that's why i keep using it. I'm also pretty much thankful for the work they did.
24 • @23 (by fernbap on 2011-02-28 17:33:54 GMT from Portugal)
"When i installed ubuntu 10.04, i have removed all of ubuntuone....."
Well, that's exactly what Mint did to Ubuntu, besides adding a bunch of really well made utilities.
That's why Mint is so popular. It's Ubuntu without the Canonical ideosyncracies.
25 • Singularity Linux (by Hawkeye on 2011-02-28 17:51:09 GMT from United States)
I am interested in low resource distributions for my grandson, who has an older laptop. A new distribution that utilized fluxbox and gnome intrigued me.
Although I commend the individual's (hence the name Singularity (?)) enterprise, I can hardly call this a completed distribution. How many other distributions on your current list have no repositories available to them, and require a complete re-installation to update?
My comments, again, are not intended to criticize the designer, who obviously as a fairly clear picture of what he thinks a segment of the desktop computing community wants/needs, but he needs some help, support from like minded users, and resources before his effort joins your list of distributions.
Your website is not only a much visited site for seasoned Linux/BSD users, but a site of investigation for current Windows users who are either curious about a new computing experience or frustrated with their current one. Singularity Linus is a worthwhile endeavor, but in my opinion, not yet ready for 'prime time' scrutiny and daily use.
26 • Review or look on (by GeekBoula on 2011-02-28 18:02:11 GMT from Canada)
Je me questionne sur vos choix de review! Plusieurs porte sur des variantes de Ubuntu. Selon moi ce n'est pas de vrai distribution à part entière. On peu le voir par le très très grand nombre de bébé Ubuntu. J'aimerai que vous regardiez de vrai distribution basé sur les sources comme par exemple Arch, Gentoo, Pardus, Mandriva, Slackware, frugalware, Nutyx etc... Car sans ces vrai Distro, il n'y aurait pas beaucoup de distribution. Ce sont eux que l'on doit mettre en valeur. Peut-être aussi des Distributions comme Vector Linux, Zenwalk et autres.
Car les copiesbébévariante de Ubuntu c'est un peu redondant car à chaque semaine il en sort une dizaine. C'est presque ridicule...
Enfin ce commentaire ne remet pas en cause l'estime que j'ai pour Distrowatch.
27 • Review or look on (by GeekBoula on 2011-02-28 18:03:07 GMT from Canada)
I wonder about your choice to review! Several concerns variants of Ubuntu. To me this is not true in its own distribution. We just see the very large number of baby Ubuntu. I'd like you to look real distribution based on sources such as Arch, Gentoo, Pardus, Mandriva, Slackware, frugalware, Nutyx etc. ... For without these Distro true, there would not have much distribution. They are the ones that we should highlight. Perhaps also as Distributions Vector Linux, Zenwalk, and others.
For copies baby variant of Ubuntu is a bit redundant because every week he takes out a dozen. It's almost ridiculous ...
Finally, this comment does not undermine the esteem I have for Distrowatch.
28 • 'Several showstopper bugs' (by Adam Williamson on 2011-02-28 18:05:37 GMT from Canada)
"The first official test release of Fedora 15, originally scheduled for arrival tomorrow (Tuesday), has been delayed by one week due to several show-stopper bugs."
Actually it was delayed due to *one* show-stopper bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=676827
this was the only unresolved bug in Alpha RC1 accepted as a release blocker for the Alpha.
29 • midori web browser (by klhrevolution on 2011-02-28 19:27:19 GMT from United States)
Midori is the web browser to use. Quick, userscripts, add-ons, etc. this little browser makes one think back when firefox was actually the browser to use, now midori steps in where firefox2 should have been going -- imho.
twotoasts ;)
30 • RE: 24 (by Dopher on 2011-02-28 19:31:34 GMT from Belgium)
I think that ubuntuone has nothing to do with mint's popularity. The utilities you mention probably did the trick. Mint was build on "the Canonical ideosyncracies", as you call them.
To give you an example, before ubuntu i used slackware. And after a fuill install of slackware, i removed at least 500 MB of stuff i didn't need. And then i installed stuff i needed.
That was btw a point i tried to make in post 23. In ubuntu you can still apt it away, if you don't need it. and personalize your OS.
31 • RE:15, You are correct but it's minor FUD (by Eddie on 2011-02-28 20:17:06 GMT from United States)
Very true, but it makes as much sense as Canonical turning into Redmond or other such comments. Now that is true FUD. Besides I've never dissed MONO and I'm not the first one who brought up the Banshee/MONO crap. It was done in an earlier issue of DWW comments. If it was my opinion, which it is not, It would still be know as FUD weather it was true or not. I'm not wanting to argue with anyone, I just want to keep the conversations civil.
32 • Arch (by zykoda on 2011-02-28 20:33:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/archs-dirty-little-notso-secret/
33 • Midori (by tyhee88 on 2011-02-28 20:51:12 GMT from Canada)
@klhrevolution-About your comment about Midori-I've found Midori to be fast and stable when using it in XFCE, and usually prefer it when using XFCE (though I still open FF sometimes if only just to use Better Privacy to get rid of flash cookies-and am in FF now.)
On Gnome, though, I've had bad luck with it freezing on me on occasion when trying it at various times going back about a year and ending a couple of weeks ago, on a variety of distributions-so it has never lasted on my Gnome installations for more than a couple of weeks.
Epiphany, though it is the default Gnome browser, also has excellent performance on XFCE. Both seem much faster than FF or Opera.
I can't comment about Epiphany or Midori in other desktop environments.
Of course, ymmv.
34 • Banshee/Ubuntu (by Jonathan Vasquez on 2011-02-28 21:19:49 GMT from United States)
I definitely don't agree with Canonical redirecting Banshee's money away from GNOME. Banshee is doing a great thing by donating the money that they would normally keep, to help fund GNOME.
Canonical is has turned into a greedy company and I'm very disappointed that they are even involved in OSS. I use to think Mark was awesome for taking his money and just "out of heart" helping out the F/OSS community, but I guess I was wrong and he wanted something back in return.
I'm also glad I left Ubuntu and went to Arch/Debian. At least I can be in a community where people actually help each other and try to help upstream devs as much as possible.
35 • 21: Toorox (by arthur on 2011-02-28 21:19:55 GMT from United Kingdom)
I can't access the site either. First tried to d/l the distro last night, but completely dead as it is today.
36 • ref - 35 • 21: Toorox (by forlin on 2011-02-28 22:11:00 GMT from Portugal)
Its working now. I'm downloading from the link in the DW front page announcement.
37 • @21, 35, 36 : Toorox download site still not working.. (by Mark Pace on 2011-02-28 23:01:52 GMT from United States)
The following message greets those who try to download Toorox Gnome or KDE.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This webpage is not available.
The webpage at http://toorox.de/toorox_downloads/Toorox_02.2011-32bit_GNOME.iso might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Hope this gets fixed so we can give this distro a whirl..
38 • Toorox Server down (by Jörn on 2011-02-28 23:05:17 GMT from Germany)
Hi @all!
Sorry, but i have problems with the server.
I hope, that it will be solved tomorrow.
You can download Toorox 02.2011 "KDE" from the second mirror:
http://1st-ck.de/toorox/Toorox_02.2011-32bit_KDE.iso
http://1st-ck.de/toorox/Toorox_02.2011-64bit_KDE.iso
Greetings
39 • Reactions to the DistroWatch Debian Squeeze Review (by Fred Nelson on 2011-02-28 23:42:03 GMT from United States)
Kudos to Jesse for not being too insecure to mention that other sites had responses to his review of Debian Squeeze, and for linking to what was, in my opinion, the best of most balanced such article.
40 • Toorox_02.2011-32bit_KDE_DVD (by dick on 2011-03-01 00:31:47 GMT from United States)
Having the same issue with http download, I picked it up via fast torrent download here:
Toorox_02.2011-32bit_KDE_DVD
http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=4af3fe5ec965196c472f327e4c0efa5f49f20565
41 • Banshee & Ubuntu (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2011-03-01 01:08:20 GMT from United States)
I hev no problems with Canonical making money, as long as it doesn't do it underhandedly, though I agree with 16 in that a good separation. I say this as though I don't have Banshee on my Ubuntu (10.10 currently) install.
@21 I, for one, won't be moving away from the *Ubuntu family any time soon. I have tried Mint. I found it nice, but moved back to Ubuntu and Kubuntu. the main reason is the easy in-place upgrade utility. Why keep downloading 700 MB for a live disc when you can upgrade from within (bring in about 500-600 MB during the Lucid > Maverick upgrasde).
42 • Audacious (by Duhnonymous on 2011-03-01 01:09:42 GMT from United States)
There's really no point wasting your time with lame all-in-one solutions when you can have a real music player in Audacious. Of course, if I went insane and decided I wanted one, I would still use Exaile. Anything else is just bloated and a waste of good resources.
43 • Review of reviews and upcoming reviews (by Jesse on 2011-03-01 01:13:23 GMT from Canada)
Re: 39:
>> "Kudos to Jesse for not being too insecure to mention that other sites had responses to his review of Debian Squeeze, and for linking to what was, in my opinion, the best of most balanced such article."
I appreciate that, but actually Ladislav found and posted the link to Curt's blog covering the Debian review. Up until this morning I hadn't been aware of the post. However I did read it and I think Curt made some good points. We exchanged a few e-mails today and I think he is a stand-up guy. As you said, his is probably the most balanced response article and I like that he's able to take a different stand while being polite about it.
Some people have asked about this week's article and upcoming reviews. I generally try to take suggestions from readers first as to what I should review. Wolfer was a review by request as will be my next article. If you have a preference as to what you'd like to see covered, drop me an e-mail.
44 • Singularity Linux (by Moose on 2011-03-01 02:11:53 GMT from United States)
@Hawkeye
Thank you for looking at Singularity Linux. I know that without a repository it won't last long, and if anyone could explain how to do this (or simply set one up for me) that would be wonderfull. The current version (as yet unreleased) actually dosen't contain either Gnome or Fluxbox as I don't like where Gnome 3 is going and Fluxbox got too cluttered. I have instead installed XFCE 4.8, and am presently working on creating a more unique user interface and adding several other features in order to make this distribution worthwhile. In essence, it's not nearly ready yet, but it will be.
45 • Reviews and stuff.. (by davemc on 2011-03-01 02:27:04 GMT from United States)
Interesting review Jesse.
Browsers. There are so many. Pick one, or many and use what works well. Rekonq works wonders for me. Iceweasel (Firefox) will always be there as well. I find I am really looking forward to FF4's release though.
46 • distros on DVDs (by Candide on 2011-03-01 02:49:14 GMT from Taiwan)
#2 said: "And - 780Mb .iso? That smacks of blatant ineptitude, or worse, based on the 700Mb limit of a CD. One so abhors waste; the 3.92Gb wasted on a DVD really rankles. These guys really don't care - just a little more thought and consideration would've clinched it!"
#3 replied: "That's a fairly narrow view, isn't it? You can't come up with viable reasons why a distribution would stop at a certain size instead of adding gigabytes of crap that nobody really wants? I surely can."
Both of the above commenters have a point. I actually wish that more distros would stop worrying about staying under 700MB and start making DVD *.iso files available. I get a bit annoyed when I install a distro from CD and then have to download another gigabyte of files to get a fully functional desktop system. In terms of protecting the environment, there is no more "waste" involved in using a DVD - the disks are the exact same size, so a CD in a landfill isn't any worse or better than a DVD.
At the same time, no point in trying to fill a DVD with it's full capacity of 4.5GB if you don't need that much space. In fact, bigger *.iso files mean bigger downloads, so bloat does have a price.
47 • Banshee & Debian's installer (by eco2geek on 2011-03-01 03:03:15 GMT from United States)
Re: Canonical's treatment of the Amazon MP3 store in Banshee -- Is there any way to "turn off" Canonical's affiliate code in the configuration settings? I'm glad Distrowatch mentioned this, because it wouldn't have occurred to me that Banshee's Amazon MP3 store access was a source of money to anyone via an affiliate program. It's kind of cheeky of Canonical to unilaterally decide to funnel money to itself. It's also kind of cheeky of Banshee to build the affiliate program functionality into the program to begin with, especially if it's not user-configurable.
Note that Amazon's MP3 store uses a proprietary download program and there's a version that runs just fine on Ubuntu, at least in the US -- so there's no need to go through Banshee.
The last time I used it, Debian's graphical installer was exactly the same as their ncurses-based installer. The only difference was that it ran in X windows and had nice, anti-aliased fonts and pink accents. From the Squeeze screenshots out there, it seems not much has changed, except it's now got blue accents. Kind of makes you wonder why they bothered to code it when the ncurses-based installer works just fine.
Oh yeah, mouse support. Maybe using the spacebar and the tab key scares people.
48 • @19 (by win2linconvert on 2011-03-01 07:50:43 GMT from United States)
Yep. Though I am glad that there are those who take Debian where Debian leaves off and take it to the next level to provide and even easier and more convenient OS for those of us who are just to lazy... ur... I mean unwilling, or lack the necessary skills it takes to make an Ultimate Edition, I know... a shameless plug for my favorite distro.
win2linconvert
49 • Web browsers for Linux (by Thomas Mueller on 2011-03-01 08:33:16 GMT from United States)
Article on web browsers for Linux ignores Seamonkey, whiose browser component is based on Firefox, sharing much of the same code, but which also included mail and newsgroups, and IRC: like Netscape Communicator as compared to Netscape Navigator. Seamonkey unfortunately has much less name recognition than Firefox, though both are from Mozilla.
50 • Re 23: (by hobbitland on 2011-03-01 08:56:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yup, I do the same I use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and rip out the crap like Mono, Ubuntu1 and add my own stuff like Pyhon 3.2, LibreOffcie 3.3.0.4, Firefox 4.0b12 etc... I even remaster my own LIVEDVD iso.
A iso can be put on a USB stick or even booted from a hard disk ISO using grub2. If you already have grub2 installed you can add an entrty for ISOs you like to try:
menuentry "Ubuntu Linux 10.04.1 LTS amd64, 2.6.32-28 (iso)" {
set ISO="/boot/UBUNTU-10.04.1-AMD64-LIVEDVD.iso"
loopback loop $ISO
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$ISO noprompt
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
Just stick your ISO in "/boot". Burning a CD or DVD is really old fashion. For systems that do allow booting from USB stick its easy just make a grub2 CD to chain boot the USB stick:
Create "cdroot/boot/grub/grub.cfg":
set default=0
set timeout=60
set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
set menu_color_highlight=white/blue
set superusers="grub"
##password grub ???
menuentry "Chainload Disk 1 MBR (sda)" {
set root=(hd0)
chainloader +1
}
menuentry "Chainload Disk 2 MBR (sdb)" {
set root=(hd1)
chainloader +1
}
menuentry "Chainload Disk 3 MBR (sdc)" {
set root=(hd2)
chainloader +1
}
menuentry "Chainload Disk 4 MBR (sdd)" {
set root=(hd3)
chainloader +1
}
menuentry "Reboot System" {
reboot
}
menuentry "Halt System" {
halt
}
grub-mkrescue --output=GRUB_BOOT_MANAGER-1.98-1-LIVECD.iso cdroot
I tried "unetbootin" but find it too limiting as I want to put multipel ISOs on a USB stick or a hard disk. Grub2 lets you do it!
51 • @49 (by megadriver on 2011-03-01 11:17:10 GMT from Spain)
Yeah, Seamonkey is awesome, and very underappreciated, indeed. Imagine It's basically Firefox+Thunderbird+KompoZer, but smaller and faster...
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Check out the latest beta. It has the potential to eat both Firefox and Thunderbird for lunch! No silly, pointless stuff like Panorama or Sync. No "Chrome GUI envy". It's also a better "Opera" than Opera, if you know what i mean.
Now, if some kind (and skilled) soul would port the Vimperator and Muttator extensions to Seamonkey...
52 • mp3 store (by Jesse on 2011-03-01 13:20:11 GMT from Canada)
>> "Canonical's treatment of the Amazon MP3 store in Banshee -- Is there any way to "turn off" Canonical's affiliate code in the configuration settings? I'm glad Distrowatch mentioned this, because it wouldn't have occurred to me that Banshee's Amazon MP3 store access was a source of money to anyone via an affiliate program."
As I understand it, what Canonical has done is switch from using Banshee's Amazon store feature to getting Banshee to use the Ubuntu One mp3 store. They're not redirecting the money Banshee would get, but rather using a different store and collecting the money that way. If you really want to run Banshee on Ubuntu without using Canonical's code, you could compile Banshee from source code. See their download page at: http://banshee.fm/download/
53 • RE:52, A good explanation (by Eddie on 2011-03-01 13:32:45 GMT from United States)
Thanks Jessie. That is the best explanation that I've heard on the whole story. Also I'm hoping that Rhythmbox will still be able to use the Ubuntu One store. Rhythmbox seems to work perfect for me. Banshee isn't bad either.
54 • web browser (by samuel on 2011-03-01 13:33:24 GMT from Italy)
I also use seamonkey for browsing and mail, wish it had a calendar extension.
55 • TooRox not downloading (by GreenWolf70 on 2011-03-01 14:51:03 GMT from United States)
I have tried the Distro Watch links, the second set of links (secondary servers?) and even the last torrent links and they all time out. Any idea when this gets fixed?
56 • Toorox (by Rick on 2011-03-01 15:14:33 GMT from United States)
I downloaded and tried the latest KDE offering fron TooRox and you are better off using Sabayon.
57 • @47 (by Patrick on 2011-03-01 15:32:20 GMT from United States)
I really don't understand comments like this.
So you'd rather use the proprietary Amazon MP3 downloader and give all your money to Amazon instead of using the Banshee plugin and allowing either Banshee or Canonical to skim off a little to support their development of open source code? Why is it that so many people object to open source projects making a buck this way? You do realize that browser makers also make a buck off of the search traffic they generate, right?
I think it's great that developers can use systems like this to support themselves financially, allowing them to continue to provide free software. It's not like it's hurting their users in any way. Personally, I would go out of my way to use whatever method would generate affiliate money for a developer. Even though I'm not using it now, I might get Banshee just to download MP3's from Amazon instead of downloading them from Amazon's website directly so I can give a little support to the Gnome project when I spend money on music.
58 • #18 Pardus (by Robert) (by DShelbyD on 2011-03-01 15:32:26 GMT from United States)
"Where's the Pardus 2011 review?"
Caitlyn reviewed Pardus 2009 very favorably in mid 2009, so my guess is that Ladislav would say it's too soon, even though, and this is intended as loose observation, not provocation, we get the latest from more popular distros as they are released. IMHO, Pardus is simply outstanding . . . KDE4 at its best, and it deserves standing in the "more popular" ratings. It lacks some packages that are important to me, but the staff is relatively small and the Pardus Worldforum community very genteel.
In other words, I agree with the sentiment but doubt it will be honored without some diligent lobbying.
59 • #55; #38 • Toorox Server down (by GreemWolf70 & Jörn) (by Mark Pace on 2011-03-01 15:41:16 GMT from United States)
In post #38 Toorox Server down (by Jörn on 2011-02-28 23:05:17 GMT from Germany); the message we got was:
Hi @all!
Sorry, but i have problems with the server.
I hope, that it will be solved tomorrow.
------------------------------------------------------
Looks like Jörn is working on the problem, but so far the download site is still down..
60 • @ the Banshee tripe (by jerkwad on 2011-03-01 16:56:39 GMT from United States)
Banshee has made just under $4,000(US) in the last six months from their Amazon sharing, you are essentially arguing over who gets the pennies from the change tray at the end of the day.
61 • Pardus (by Jesse on 2011-03-01 18:39:10 GMT from Canada)
>> "Where's the Pardus 2011 review?"
>> "In other words, I agree with the sentiment but doubt it will be honored without some diligent lobbying."
No need to lobby. It's on the to-do list.
62 • #50 (by zykoda on 2011-03-01 21:16:33 GMT from United Kingdom)
Little bit perverse to use optical media (old fashioned)!
How can one guarantee (hd0) is sda; (hd1) is sdb; and (hd2) is sdc?
They can swap over! but what the hell!
Better use (unique) Labels or UUIDs?
But you can't do that with whole disks?
LVM2?
OR have I misunderstood?
63 • RE: 15/31 (by Landor on 2011-03-01 21:53:53 GMT from Canada)
Well, I'll be the first to openly state what some may consider that word (I dislike it, wholly). All of our community should get rid of anything MONO related. I don't even care if it's getting funding from Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck. Hell, I'll even go as far as Wile E. Coyote. Richard Stallman warned people for a long time about Java, Sun's Java. Look at the boat Google is in now. The man knows what he's talking about. Far more than the mindless here who just bash MONO only because others have, which is common, take a look at this week's comments, we have a person who has to remove half of a gigabyte from a Slackware install after it's done then install more software, when you select pretty well everything that gets installed or not..lol! A common trait among this community, doing everything backwards, or bleating along.
I remove MONO instantly from anything I use. I applaud Fedora for removing such a thing as well. But all the "We want freedom to prevail, unless it gets in the way of when we don't care and want proprietary freedom" flag bearers (for lack of using a better name....think about it) will scream that there's nothing wrong with MONO,
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
64 • RE:63 (by Dopher on 2011-03-01 22:41:29 GMT from Belgium)
Hi Landor, just a quick reply on the half a gig comment you made. That person was me.
I don't know if you ever really used Slackware. I have, for over 6 years. A full install is highly recommended if you want to use slackware the same day. I think that most long time slackware users will tell you the same thing.
There is no dependency tracking in slack, so it's better to do the full install, and then remove what you don't need, then do it the other way. That is, and I want to mention this again, if you want your slack install functional from day one.
Ofcourse you can do experimenting before and find out when you removed too much, but most people with a dayjob and real outside social life don't have the luxury of lot's of spare time.
65 • Mono (by Jesse on 2011-03-01 23:06:48 GMT from Canada)
@68:
Landor, you seem pretty strongly against Mono, but you didn't mention why. Would you mind sharing your reasoning? I mean, Mono is licensed under the GPL, it's FOSS and the patents Microsoft holds on it are covered by their Open Specification Promise. From a legal/philosophical stand point I don't see the issue.
From a technical stand point I would certainly agree there can be issues getting some Mono/.NET projects working. But you seem to be coming at it from a political/freedom perspective. Could you enlighten us?
66 • Grub Version on Fedora 15 (by Jeffersonian on 2011-03-01 23:12:24 GMT from United States)
Hello:
The upcoming version 15 of Fedora still uses GRUB version 0.97.
In theory, it does not matter, because GRUB 0.97 is very solid and does the job.
However I use a multi-boot system with Mint 10, which uses GRUB 2.
This creates an issue with Fedora updates when a new kernel replaces an older one: the scripts is not able to update correctly the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, among other (similar) issues.
Could I suggest that Fedora could support both GRUB 0.97 and/or GRUB 2, ideally automatically, but user selected (install time) would also be OK.
Since I touch this topic, it would be great for most distros to be GRUB 2 (or GRUB 1) tolerant and update automatically the grub.cfg file, at install time.
By the way: Mint 10, somewhat does this... but it is a bit buggy, especially with NVIDIA driver.
Jeffersonian.
67 • @66, GRUB (by Fred Nelson on 2011-03-02 00:00:33 GMT from United States)
The problem is that a distribution has no way of knowing who has control of the MBR of the primary drive. Worse yet, most assume that you will choose it to manage the bootloader, which isn't true in the majority of cases for anyone that uses more than two OS's (by definition, only one distribution can be installed on the MBR on each drive).
Ideally, every distribution's installer would politely ask whether the user wanted to (a) install on the MBR and try to seek out all the other partitions (as GRUB 2 does by default, much to my annoyance during installation; first thing I do is add "GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true" to /etc/defaults/grub), (b) install on the partition and only update one's one kernels (as most GRUB 1 distros do by default, which I find the most convenient as you can at least set up a master GRUB to chainload to it), or (c) don't install *any* bootloader, but update a GRUB configuration file on a specified partition (without touching anything already there!). (c) is what you're asking for, and I know of no distribution that has the capability to do so, unfortunately, though for safety I'd probably opt for (b) anyway and keep chainloading.
68 • @57: Banshee and Amazon (by eco2geek on 2011-03-02 06:05:56 GMT from United States)
@57: >> So you'd rather use the proprietary Amazon MP3 downloader
>> and give all your money to Amazon instead of using the Banshee
>> plugin and allowing either Banshee or Canonical to skim off a little
>> to support their development of open source code?
Besides the fact that I'm German (that was humor! Humor, I tell you), I don't have a problem spending a little more and sending it to the GNOME foundation. (Canonical? H'mm, I'd have to think about that one. They're not a non-profit.) But I want to choose to do so. In other words, I want to *know* about it, right up front. They make it very clear in their user guide...
http://library.gnome.org/users/banshee/1.8/amazon.html.en
...but since I probably wouldn't have ever read the user guide, I wouldn't have known.
>> You do realize that browser makers also make a buck off of the
>> search traffic they generate, right?
Yes, that's why Opera's no longer charging for their browser, and Wikipedia says that the Mozilla Foundation got $56.8 million (!) in 2006 from their arrangement with Google. The difference is, I don't have to pay to use Google. I do have to pay to buy MP3's from Amazon.
69 • KANOTIX (by mik on 2011-03-02 08:35:43 GMT from Italy)
Wellcome back KANOTIX !!!
70 • Re: 62/50: grub2 cdrom to boot any internal / external disk (by hobbitland on 2011-03-02 09:05:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, we grub2 the numebring scheme has changed. All hard disks and external hard disk are treated as "sda", "sdb" etc... Even on systems with IDE drives it treated as "sda".
So hd0 always maps to sda, hd1 to sdb and so now. We with "grub.cfg" example I have given you can make a CDROM that can boot from internal and external disks.
You cannot create a bootable CDROM that uses UUIDs and make it work on any system. The example I gave works for chain loading the MBR in the 1st 4 disk. It does not matter whether they are IDE/SATA/SCSI/USB. This grub2 CDROM works on any system and is only needed if your system does not boot USB sticks.
So carry a remastered Ubutnu-10.04.1 LTS LIVEDVD iso on a USB stick plus a grub2 bootable cdrom. A bootable LIVEDVD on an USB is faster than CDROM and is better than an install on a USB stick. Being readonly means you cannot screw up your portable OS and it does not destroy your USB stick by constantly writing to it.
Personally I do not like UUIDs. I like to use "/dev/sda2" type partition control and at least I know what I am mounting.
71 • Pardus 2011 (by rodnal on 2011-03-02 09:53:53 GMT from United States)
Before even Jesse plans to review Pardu 2011, I can say that Pardus 2011 is much better than Lmint 10, and much more responsive than OpenSuse 11.4, but less workable than Kubuntu. It is pretty quick in Firefox 4 and looks nive with LibreOffice!
72 • #70 (by zykoda on 2011-03-02 11:36:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
PLOP boots from USB on all MY systems. (not older than 11 years)
Of course, I don't know about others' experiences!
Nothing wrong with CD booting be there a CD drive.
Introducing an extra sata (automatically sda) caused sda -> sdb; sdb -> sdc
which would boot from you CD! But what of the /etc/fstabs & swap? unless UUIDs/Labels are used instead of partitions (/dev/sda2)? Not yet evaluated what will happen when extra distros are installed to new sda? OK shifting sand!
73 • Re: 72/70 Booting USB from CDROM on old systems (by hobbitland on 2011-03-02 11:47:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, I also tried plops 1st but it has one major problem. Plops cannot boot from USB sticks attached to hubs. For example via the front USB panel. There are no plans to fix it was teh author wants to keep Plops size small enough for floppy disks.
That is why I went about making a GRUB2 CDROM to boot to USB sticks on older systems. I do not see any point of using Plops as GRUB2 is so much more configurable like making rescue CDs or USB sticks at the same time as having multiple USB iso on a USB stick or external HD.
74 • Re: 72: sda/sdb vs UUID (by hobbitland on 2011-03-02 14:28:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, I tend to fix my partitions once when a new system is bought. Namely I use the primary for booting. Linux will also boot off a logical partiton as well. But nowadays I tend to use VMware Player or VirtualBox to test distros
sda1 Windows
sda2 Linux stable (production version
sda3 Linux testing
sda4 extended
UUIDs are great if you have loads of partitions which i don't as I have a number of virtual machines instead. In the older days people multi-boot but nowadays its better to use virtuaulization for testing.
And Plop cannot boot Linux directly and so you still need Grub or Grub2. So you might as well get rid of Plop and use Grub2 directly. There is nothing that Plop can do but Gurb2 cannot. But there are things grub2 can do but Plop cannot.
75 • Gparted (by rood on 2011-03-02 16:48:01 GMT from United States)
Isn't it somewhat unusual that Gparted is in the bottom of the Distrowatch's list? If you are hopping distros ,you must use Gparted, so it should be right on the top. I mean, everyone uses it, so why should it be at the bottom? It is the most important little program that any distro hopper needs, and loves.
76 • #74 (by zykoda on 2011-03-02 18:00:09 GMT from United Kingdom)
PLoP of course allows USB booting when not supported in BIOS.
Personally I find the following partitioning more versatile if BSD is required on a single disk for instance.
sda1 Windows (if you must or just grub)
sda2 extended (sda[5-15] swap, up to 10 X linux) the sata/SCSI limit!
sda3 *BSD1 stable
sda4 *BSD2 testing (primary partition limit!)
Having extended partitions before the two final primaries allows BSD not to interfere with the linux "logical partitions".
Get extended early: beat the "hardware" limits!
77 • RE:76 Thanks (by Eddie on 2011-03-02 18:10:47 GMT from United States)
Good info on something to try. I've been having some problems with my multi-boot system that I couldn't get a handle on. Mainly my Linux and BSD installs. This may be what the doctor ordered.
Thanks,
Eddie
78 • @ #76 - Partitioning scheme with BSDs (by Ralph on 2011-03-02 18:21:52 GMT from Canada)
I find your scheme of putting the BSDs in the 3rd and/or 4th primary partitions works with FreeBSD no problem, but FWIW I've never been able to get OpenBSD to work in anything but the 1rst primary partition (not that I've tried very hard)....
79 • #78 (by zykoda on 2011-03-02 18:41:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's a while ago I discovered that using the scheme @74 with *BSD on say sda3 caused fouling up of the following extended logical partitions, but the scheme @ 76 worked. However, I have been far from exhaustive in testing all BSD's. Interesting that OpenBSD looks like it needs the first partition! I shall make a mental note. Thnx.
80 • @63: Mono (by cba on 2011-03-02 18:51:24 GMT from Germany)
So, what is the difference between Mono, Wine and Samba, if there is one?
Mono, Wine and Samba are all free software.
I cannot remember that Wine and Samba which both try to increase compatibility with Windows software and technologies, respectively, are condemned in a similar way.
81 • #78 OpenBSD install (by zykoda on 2011-03-02 19:08:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
The following suggests other possibilities! RTFM (encyclopedic).
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Overview
But I don't deny your experiences.
82 • @ #81 - OpenBSD intall (by Ralph on 2011-03-02 19:50:52 GMT from Canada)
Just so there is no misunderstanding: OpenBSD apparently installs just fine to any primary partition, but I was not able to get it to boot from any but the first. I was using Grub legacy and tried to chainload it from my first hard drive (OpenBSD was on the third hard drive). However, I now have reason for installing OpenBSD to either the 3rd or 4th partition so I will eventually try again. This next time round I am likely to try chainloading it with Grub2....
83 • Seamonkey (by GeekBoula on 2011-03-02 22:30:45 GMT from Canada)
I can confirm in j'utilse Seamonkey daily for several months now and it seems more stable than Firefox. I was tired of repeated freezing firefox. Chrome I do not like it.
Seamonkey also offers many opportunities for web developers.
84 • Sure (by missing on kde3.5 on 2011-03-03 04:16:21 GMT from Brazil)
"2 • Wolfer (by Smirsch on 2011-02-28 10:56:11 GMT from United Kingdom)
Wolfer? Never heard of it ! Whatever happened to Wolvix? That one was good.
And - 780Mb .iso? That smacks of blatant ineptitude, or worse, based on the 700Mb limit of a CD. One so abhors waste; the 3.92Gb wasted on a DVD really rankles. These guys really don't care -"
Positively,sure!
Because the small bias in midias price, an 780Mb distro burned into a 4.2GB DVD is not desirable but bearable. But a distro relesead in a 4.2 Gb iso is really sad. My large pendrive is 4GB (that means it has only 3.8Gb available inside it). Well, they could think a bit more before release their distro and realise there are people out of there who would like to install the distro into a pendrive!
85 Mono (by fernbap on 2011-03-03 02:52:19 GMT from Portugal)
My issue with mono is that it is a blatant attempt from MS to keep developers tied to the .net model, hence tied to the MS universe.
Any developer concerned with development of OSS should not use mono at all, imho.
On the other hand, if a developer is used to develop .net apps, mono is the easy way out. It will not release him at all, but will at least allow him to move quickly out of windows.
86 • @80, Mono, and @76, Number of Partitions (by Fred Nelson on 2011-03-03 04:42:01 GMT from United States)
@80: The main difference is that WINE and Samba are designed for compatibility only. Its authors do not propose to use WINE to write new code, and Samba authors do not propose that the SMB protocol should replace NFS or any other UNIX-native protocols in UNIX-only networks.
Mono, on the other hand, is not advertised as something to use for compatibility only, but rather to write new code in. With Linux-specific bindings no less (GTK# for one); imagine if the WINE project ported GTK+ to the Win32 event loop and somehow encouraged people to write new programs in it and you'll see how it's a very different animal. Whether that's a good thing or not depends a lot on your perspective on things (I think it is not, but do not wish to get into it now, other than to say it is mostly not the theoretical patent issues), but that is the major difference between WINE/Samba and Mono.
@76: The 2.6.28 kernel finally removed the stupid 15-partition limit. Now it is a stupid 63-partition limit instead (or 60 practically speaking), but that is much more reasonable IMHO. 130 is now even possible, though I would not recommend it as most other tools apparently have problems over the 60th or 63rd partition. For details, see http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=152404
BTW, when I tried FreeBSD a while back (when I still erroneously believed that there was a 15-partition limit), the BSD sub-partitions were called sda16, sda17, etc..., when I booted into Linux so they *do* count towards the new 63-partition limit, FWIW.
87 • Pardus 2011 (by rodnal on 2011-03-03 07:34:33 GMT from United States)
When Jesse is going to review Pardus 2011, he is going to have real trouble in reviewing it, as Pardus 2011 is an independent OS in the same line as Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, Redhat etc, and the difference s that it is made in Turkey. As a KDE centered OS, Pardus 2011 excels above any KDE version of the so-called mainstream GNU/Linix distros!
There is no Gnome version, so one has to be an expert in KDE to review it.
88 • RE: 64 (by Landor on 2011-03-03 21:36:23 GMT from Canada)
WoW. I honestly don't know what to say. I'm speechless. Let me gather my thoughts and composure for a moment.
You mean to tell me that all we've been told about Slackware/Slackware Linux Inc. being clean, cruft free, a barebones "extremely" Unix-like Operating System (even stuff about Patrick Volkerding)isn't true?
WoW.
I guess that kind of fits as I did find some things that Jake said contradicting. He used to imply that Patrick Volkerding built Slackware for him and his wife, that was pretty well it, the only people he cared to use it. If any one else found it useful, then hey, all the power to them. That contradicts the fact that the only thing Patrick does for monetary gain is work on Slackware and of course as stated above, created Slackware Linux Inc. Not an organisation, but an Incoporated Company. I guess that's not really a contradiction. He could very well have only created it for him and his wife and set up the business for anyone who just wants to hand them money without using it. Yes, a definite alternative viewpoint. Don't get me wrong either, I'm not denouncing him for wanting money, not at all. I fully support him in getting you to needlessly install everything while thinking you have this amazing lean system that you spend twice as long configuring it, to the point that in full gratitude you send him money. Before any of you make this point, I will for you, "Yes, I bet he's happy knowing I support his rights too". Why wouldn't he be?".
I'm still shocked though. I mean, WoW. All those options in the installer to hand pick single packages to be installed, or not, and they don't work, or they could break your system! Who would have thought! I guess they're there for fun, a little diversion from how great, speedy, stable, etc, etc, Slackware is "if" you install the full DVD (as recommended).
Now me, I know I must have just been pushing my luck. I never once installed the full DVD (as recommended) and never once had any conflicts. I know for sure it just had to be pure luck since Slackware has all these dependency problems and I obviously understand now that its own installer can't install it properly unless you install the full DVD (as recommended). I won't ever do that again, I assure you! I don't care howm much time it takes from my day job or my social-life, just like 'you' Real Slackers'. It's the full install for me! I'm doing things the efficiently lean Unix-Like Slackware way from now on! I'm installing everything, removing what I don't want, then installing more again! How could I have thought anything else could be more efficient, or beneficial to my day job or social-life!
Thank You so much!
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
89 • Kanotix (by m1k on 2011-03-04 00:51:32 GMT from Italy)
Last Kanotix runs really great on an intel atom 450 based netbook !!!
Are you looking for a Debian 6.0 , KDE ,fast and smooth?
Give Kanotix a try !
90 • Pardus 2011 (by forlin on 2011-03-04 03:12:06 GMT from Portugal)
I'm one more who would like DWW to review Pardus, as a way to bring the users attention to a very polished Distro with an excellent implementation of KDE4.
Kde is a very interesting and complete desktop environment but its quit heavy for light or old hardware. In the era of the netbooks and tablet Pc's, I don't understand why they haven't implemented yet a light version of their main offering.
91 • @90, KDE Plasma Netbook (by Fred Nelson on 2011-03-04 04:21:58 GMT from United States)
They have, see here: http://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmanetbook/
Yes, it's still not for the most underpowered of computers (I don't see it working with smartphones, for instance), but then neither is GNOME (even small-screen optimized GNOME 3) or even XFCE. If you need something to work on the lowest of low-powered devices, you use a DE built for it from the ground up.
Personally, I'm glad that KDE is still designing primarily for desktops and non-underpowered netbooks. We already have enough environments specializing in small screens (Android, Meego, and now GNOME Shell and Unity) that it's nice that there's still a DE primarily aiming for desktops (KDE, and XFCE by default), which contrary to popular opinion, aren't going anywhere anytime soon no matter what the latest fad is.
92 • re; 88 (by dopher on 2011-03-04 08:24:07 GMT from Belgium)
Landor, In my opinion you most certainly deserve the drama queen award. Anyhow, it's kinda weird how you tried to make a point there.
You completely missed my point. First of all you won't "break" the system when you don't use a full installation. But it might break certain apps.
I did some minimal slackware installs in the past, starting of with less then a 500 mb installation. and then added the stuff i need. My experience was, that i learned a lot, but that it took me a lot of work to get everything functional. It's nice to create a lean server. And for a testbox is nice to find out how it all works.
I just don't wanna spend days to get my main desktop to work properly. Normally you use your main computer to do some work on. Not to work on how to get it all running.
93 • Pardus - mirrors, mirrors, where are the mirrors? (by gnomic on 2011-03-04 08:54:20 GMT from New Zealand)
Pardus I'm sure does have some merits - gave the live CD of past versions a run. What I have found baffling and frustrating with this distro is where they hide the live CDs. Find the massive install only DVD simples; find the live CD sampler, not so easy. On at least one occasion I have wound up with an install only image, whereas a live medium was the goal. The state of the art is an image with both functions anyway. And where are the mirrors if any? I normally seem to be able navigate through most sites but the Pardus site seems more inscrutable than most. Maybe someone can explain my obvious errors? Perhaps things have radically improved of late; my most recent experience was with the last release of 2010. I'm afraid I was reminded of the bad old days of labyrinthine sites like HP when actually finding a printer driver was more or less a matter of chance.
94 • RE:VortexBox (by Eddie on 2011-03-05 01:28:09 GMT from United States)
Has anyone tried out VortexBox? It looks interesting but kind of a different mix with all of the MS references. Don't know what to think of it yet.
95 • @94 VortexBox (by dive.ed on 2011-03-05 14:24:21 GMT from United States)
Eddie, I have been running it for a few weeks on an old Dell that I use for testing. Once set up it works well as a media server.
96 • Continuation of 95 (by dive.ed on 2011-03-05 14:47:40 GMT from United States)
Sorry, hit submit before done commenting.
It is set up to only use one HD so I would suggest that you start with a drive big enough to hold all your media. Also look at the way it names the files it creates before ripping your collection. The default can be changed with a little effort if you have a different preference. It correctly identified most of my music CD's, but not all. It also ripped most of the DVD's I have tried on it, 4 out of 5, but that is too small a sample to grade it.
The current version is based on Fedora 14 so it will probably work on any box that can handle Fedora. I have been able to easily connect to it and access the media files from several different computers with multiple OS's. I should note that my in house network is wired for GB and all my switches and PC's use GB so throughput over the network is not an issue for me.
For an out of the box media server it is easy to work with and use if you stick with the default configuration. Ed
97 • #18, #58 Pardus review (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-03-05 16:13:41 GMT from United States)
Actually the delay in the Pardus 2011 review is entirely my fault, not Ladislav's. I have a review that is almost ready for submission. My business has been doing well and keeping me busy. In addition, over the past 10 days I had a wedding in the family and I moved from the suburbs into the city. I've just been way too busy to put the finishing touches on it. I hope to submit the completed review to Ladislav on Monday or Tuesday at the latest. It's then up to him when to publish.
For those who miss my writing I do have my first post on O'Reilly Broadcast in about four months out: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/03/a-good-technical-recruiter-is-worth-their-weight-in-gold.html I hope, with the move benind me, to be able to do more writing in the near future. That does include writing for Distrowatch now and again.
98 • @97 (by sudonym on 2011-03-05 18:04:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
Looking forward to reading the review.
Good luck with the new home.
99 • Debian review (by davemc on 2011-03-06 02:24:32 GMT from United States)
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=148695
Good review there on Debian. Short and does the project justice in terms of fleshing out what it is in concise manner.
Hey on side note, what do you folks think of the liquorix project? Worthy of DWW donation award?
100 • RE: 92 & Liquourix (by Landor on 2011-03-06 03:13:27 GMT from Canada)
#92
I tried to use subtle sarcasm in response to a comment of yours not too long ago and it was lost on you, so I figured the only thing you'd understand was overt dramatics. You can't blame a man for what he has to work with...
Here's a direct quote from your comment at #64:
"There is no dependency tracking in slack, so it's better to do the full install, and then remove what you don't need, then do it the other way. That is, and I want to mention this again, if you want your slack install functional from day one."
So you are saying that if you don't install the whole DVD and use the useless options (one can only surmise that from your comments) of selecting individual applications your install will not be functional.
Then in your comment at #92 you backpedal really fast and change it around with this by trying to put it on me:
"You completely missed my point. First of all you won't "break" the system when you don't use a full installation. But it might break certain apps."
Do you even know what you're trying to say? Seriously?
So what is it? I don't think you know at this point of the game. I've also come to the conclusion (I did earlier I should say) that I obviously know more about Slackware than you do since I've had absolutely no problems installing 'only what I want' as opposed to the great and lean way you do it, install everything, remove half a gigabyte, then add more..lmao! I gotta say it again, just to say it, "WoW!"
-----
Liquourix is just another example of how much the non-free complainers have available to them. There's no easy libre option available to those that want something simple, yet the boon of having the enhancements readily installed. Every time you turn around in this community you see the hypocrisy of comments from the non-free complains crying about their rights being taken away from them, Debian's stand on the exclusion of non-free blobs in the kernel as just one of the more recent examples.
I'd rather see a donation go to any one of the Libre projects. They truly have 'everyone's' best interests in mind.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
101 • Damn Vulnerable Linux (by Guest on 2011-03-06 16:41:05 GMT from Canada)
Damn Vulnerable Linux, shown on this site as Active, is actually down.
Shown here: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=dvl
I don't like posting something offtopic on this thread, but there doesn't seem to be another obvious way to do get it flagged.
102 • @ 91 • ref 90 KDE Plasma Netbook (by forlin on 2011-03-06 19:59:56 GMT from Portugal)
Thanks for sharing. It seems the plasma KDE Netbook it around since late 2009.
What I did really mean @ 90, was something the like the Xfce is to Gnome.
The KDE Plasma Netbook is more like a complete KDE installation catered for the smaller screens of netbooks.
103 • RE: 102 (by Landor on 2011-03-07 00:12:42 GMT from Canada)
I've often wondered what it would take to fork 'some' of KDE, enough to make it a stripped down DE by default. I looked at it a bit and the problem I've seen is that KDE is far more integrated than any other DE, even more so than the three series.
I haven't installed the four series manually, but I don't think you're even able to build it piece by piece (modular) in Gentoo as you were the three series. That alone tells me how hard it would be to create something smaller based on the four series.
In my opinion the only option left is the Trinity Project and doing modular builds to make it even more lightweight than it already is.
I'd like to see the day that Trinity actually hits the Portage Tree in Gentoo and not just be an overlay as it is currently.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
104 • Donation (by Landor on 2011-03-07 00:35:45 GMT from Canada)
To make it formal, I just checked previous donations and I'd like to nominate gNewSense for a donation.
I don't doubt the project is currently hard at work building their next release which I believe is to based on Debian 6.0 instead of Ubuntu. A donation would surely help such a project that we have so few of compared to all there is that's not libre.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
105 • RE: 104 Donation (by ladislav on 2011-03-07 01:45:45 GMT from Taiwan)
Before nominating a project for donation you should also check whether they accept them.
106 • RE: 105 (by Landor on 2011-03-07 01:50:27 GMT from Canada)
You caught me, I was going to check and didn't. :) But since it's supported by the FSF wouldn't making a donation to the FSF be the same as making a donation to gNewSense? So it would be to gNewSense by proxy. You could request that the donation go directly towards gNewSense possibly?
I won't tonight, well, maybe later, if not then tomorrow, I'll e-mail them and see how it could be done. :)
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
107 • RE: 103 KDE "light" (by LinuxFreak on 2011-03-07 09:01:25 GMT from Germany)
aptosid "KDE lite" and Zorin OS 4 "Lite" come to my mind - have you ever had a look at them? I don't know if they just reduced the number of apps in these releases to make them fit on a CD, or if they actually managed to make the whole DE a bit lighter so it might run on older HW, too.
I'm sure there's quite a few other distros also featuring a KDE "light" flavor, so it might be well worth looking into them to get some ideas to how it can be done.
Number of Comments: 107
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| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Full list of all issues |
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LinuxDefender Live! CD
LinuxDefender Live! CD was a BitDefender re-mastered Knoppix distribution. It was designed to provide users of both Windows and Linux computers with virus incident rescue tools. Whether your Linux mailserver just got rootkited or your Windows gamestation just got Slammer'd, it's LinuxDefender to the rescue! Just put the bootable CD in your drive to start a turn-key Linux OS which comes packed with almost 1.5 gigabytes of utilities. This distribution contains two world premieres: the world's first ever SAMBA 3 compatible commercial antivirus and FULL NTFS write support - available using the captive NTFS write project.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
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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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