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1 • Wayland when (by manmath sahu on 2011-09-26 09:10:31 GMT from India)
Seems, it'll take at least 4-5 years till wayland becomes the mainstay. Pity! Linux is great in the kernel, but beyond it, especially the graphics/rendering stack in association with X is much complicated. The earlier wayland comes into major distros, the better.
2 • Good review (by Anony Moss on 2011-09-26 09:18:51 GMT from India)
I'm glad to know Chakra's making progress. I have tried Chakra twice in the past, and both times was very impressed, although the distro was obviously incomplete then.
Best of luck to their team. I like their approach. Whe
3 • Hello again, Chakra (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2011-09-26 09:55:51 GMT from Pakistan)
Hi Jesse Smith ,
Thank you for yet another nicely written review , I like all your reviews everytime . I am glad this time Chakra Linux did work for you and you could install and test it for us .
Chakra have steadily progressed from day one and is much stable than before . As far as the installer you mentioned is not Chakra`s default one , Appset-QT works equally great on Arch Linux and Chakra team has adopted it for a while and will be replaced by their default one i.e Akabei ( http://chakra-project.org/wiki/index.php/Akabei ) once it is stable enough .
I hope you test review more distros for us depending upon the time you can spare.
Regards,
4 • Hello again, Chakra (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2011-09-26 09:58:30 GMT from Pakistan)
Sorry i meant the package manager not the installer ( Tribe is the installer )
Regards,
5 • Re: Beauty and the BEAST (by megadriver on 2011-09-26 10:25:47 GMT from Spain)
So, are you still vulnerable to this if you use RequestPolicy and NoScript?
http://requestpolicy.com
http://noscript.net
6 • Chakra (by P. M. on 2011-09-26 10:36:21 GMT from Iran)
I tried Chakra Linux for the first time 4 days ago and I'm very impressed. I love the way it handles GTK applications and its use of BURG as the default BM. This is how a KDE 4 distribution should be done.
7 • it was a nice thought (by Anonymous on 2011-09-26 10:43:49 GMT from United States)
To turn on TLS 1.1 and 1.2, click on the upper-left "Opera" icon and navigate the menus Settings-Preferences-Advanced-Security-Security Protocols.
This locks you out of every site you are going to need to use this feature on.
8 • Wayland and TLS (by Jesse on 2011-09-26 11:18:33 GMT from Canada)
I suspect it will take a while for Wayland to be adopted. The X system is quite flexible and works well enough that there really isn't a need to replace it. (A desire, perhaps, but not really a need.) With X slowly improving I don't see much motivation to move to a different graphics system. At least not for servers and desktop machines.
>> "To turn on TLS 1.1 and 1.2, click on the upper-left "Opera" icon and navigate the menus Settings-Preferences-Advanced-Security-Security Protocols.
>> This locks you out of every site you are going to need to use this feature on."
No, it doesn't lock you out of anything. If the more modern TLS 1.1 and 1.2 protocols aren't available Opera automatically falls back to using 1.0. I've got both TLS 1.1 and 1.2 enabled in Opera and I can browse to sites using the older implementation without any problems.
9 • TSL and stuff (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-09-26 11:41:27 GMT from Spain)
megadriver wrote:
----------------------------
So, are you still vulnerable to this if you use RequestPolicy and NoScript?
http://requestpolicy.com
http://noscript.net
--------------------------
Have a look here:
http://luxsci.com/blog/is-ssltls-really-broken-by-the-beast-attack-what-is-the-real-story-what-should-i-do.html
BEAST is based on JavaScript. NoScript should give some protection to you, but you shouldn't relay only on it.
I want to thank Distrowatch for informing about such a dangerous threat.
10 • Re: 7, it was a nice thought ... (by Coffee on 2011-09-26 11:51:41 GMT from France)
> This locks you out of every site you are going to need to use this feature on.
No it doesn't, at least not here. I have all security protocols enabled in Opera 11.51 and I've never been locked out anywhere. But I've never checked which of the 4 security protocols secure website choose. I just looked up my Google mail account. They use TLS v1.0 128 bit ARC4 (1024 bit RSA/SHA) although TLS v1.1 and TLS v1.2 are enabled ... in my opinion not good enough for such a dominant technology company.
11 • SSL FUD and scary news. (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-09-26 13:21:48 GMT from Spain)
I have been looking around for information about the SSL/TSL issue. I think this is a serious threat, but it is being greatly magnified by the media anyway.
In order for the mentioned exploit to work, you have to hit a malicious page that runs a malicious JavaScript code in order to start gathering information for breaking your SSL/TSL via a watermarking vulnerability (by the way, vulnerabilities in CBC encryption modes are know from long time ago). Information gathering takes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes.
So how would you get exploited?
You visit www.evil_place.com, which executes it's evil JavaScript code.
You spend 30 minutes browsing in trivial places.
You then enter www.paypal.com
The attacker decrypts your session cookies, ONLY if the SSL/TSL uses a watermarkable implementation, ONLY if the malicious JavaScript you ran was expecting you to login into paypal.
If you browse with JavaScript disabled/limited or the service you are accessing uses a non CBC encryption, this attack will surely not affect you, even with old SSL versions.
12 • To make a distribution (by Sven on 2011-09-26 15:16:53 GMT from Sweden)
There are lot of distributions, but there is only one Linux Setup named CTKArch. It comes with Openbox and minimal amounts of programs. If you need Gnome or KDE, all you have to do is install them, and you install what you want and have a rolling distribution of your own, thanks to a 20 year old Frenchman.
Try!
13 • TLS 1.2: chicken and egg problem (by Robert Storey on 2011-09-26 16:26:34 GMT from Taiwan)
Re: 7, it was a nice thought
> This locks you out of every site you are going to need to use this feature on.
As No. 10 said, it doesn't lock you out. At this very moment I've got my online banking open right now in Opera 11.51 with all security levels enabled, and it works fine.
As for whether or not it really does any good, that's another issue. My online bank probably defaults to TLS 1.0 or maybe even SSL 3.0.
But as I see it, this is a chicken and egg problem. Web sites don't want to move to TLS 1.2 because not all browsers support it. And at least some browsers (sadly, Firefox and Chrome) don't support it. Someone needs to hold their feet to the fire to get this done. So perhaps if enough people switch to Opera, perhaps Mozilla/Google will get on this and get it done.
Right now, there are no known exploits in the wild to take down TLS 1.0. But the BEAST shows how it can be done. Cybercrime is a lucrative business , and I would not underestimate the black hats. There's really no good reason not to use the strongest encryption available for doing online financial transactions.
14 • Chakra (by Duncan Snowden on 2011-09-26 19:07:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
The stable-base/rolling-apps distribution is an idea that's been rattling around my head for years (but I lack the skill/motivation to do anything about it). Glad to see Chakra giving it a try.
For what it's worth, I think it's a model that would work well for the likes of Ubuntu and Mint, where the focus is on a non-technical userbase. It's much closer to what people are used to from commercial OSes - where the gaps between OS releases are measured in years, but new apps come out and update all the time - than the monolithic all-or-nothing biannual release cycle.
15 • SSL/TLS (by Jesse on 2011-09-26 19:09:21 GMT from Canada)
@11
In response to post 11 I don't think the attack needs to be as shot-in-the-dark as this post makes it sound. For a few reasons.
1. People often get infected visiting familiar websites, not "evil" websites. Well known and trafficked servers are often injected with malicious code. Or serve third-party ads which contain tainted code.
2. The attacker doesn't have to guess which website the user will visit. Not entirely. Using a little JavaScript an attacker can find out if a target regularly visits any websites in a list. So they might check to see if amazon.com, paypal.com, cibc.com, facebook.com etc etc are in the user's history. This makes it much easier to focus the attack.
3. Most users browse the web for more than ten minutes at a time, giving the attack lots of data to use.
So, given the lax defaults in modern browsers (and web hosts) infecting any mainstream website could yield thousands of comprised accounts with relative ease.
As the poster in comment 11 also states, turning off JavaScript in your browser's security settings should prevent the attack.
16 • The BEAST attack (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-09-26 19:35:01 GMT from Spain)
I have been looking around in the Mozilla bug trackers. It seems we won't have TSL 1.2 in the next release.
Jesse wrote:
--------------------------
As the poster in comment 11 also states, turning off JavaScript in your browser's security settings should prevent the attack.
--------------------------
My problem is that I approach security issues from the point of view of my own system. I do think this is a serious problem, but not one that must force us to panic... because I browse without JavaScript enabled and I would not be easily affected.
I am more concerned about how did the WWW crowd allow these watermarkable protocols to be around for so long.
17 • Chakra's stability and speed (by YAAC on 2011-09-26 21:20:12 GMT from United States)
I've been running Chakra on my desktop for over a month. I work from home on this machine and am impressed with the distribution. Stable and fast!
18 • @14 (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2011-09-26 23:08:35 GMT from United States)
That would be a good one for any of the top distros. It would make dist-uprgade operations more smoother and smaller (only the kernel and core/supporting libs). One question though, where would DE/WM upgrades fit in?
19 • SSL / TLS (by Dylan Roesthoff on 2011-09-27 00:21:29 GMT from Canada)
I am surprised Firefox does not even have TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support.
I have a severely locked down Windows 7 computer, using my own software and disabled freakin' UAC (I still hate it)
I downloaded Opera, enabled TLS 1.1 and 1.2, disabled TLS 1.0, then used Opera to go to my bank. My two banks does not support TLS 1.1 and 1.2, I cannot log in ....
20 • Semi-rolling distros (by Joseph on 2011-09-27 01:29:17 GMT from United States)
>That would be a good one for any of the top distros. It would make dist-uprgade
> operations more smoother and smaller (only the kernel and core/supporting libs). One
>question though, where would DE/WM upgrades fit in?
You can already obtain this using OpenSUSE. There are repositories for the latest builds from Mozilla, Banshee, KDE & Gnome desktops, OpenOffice, KDE & Gnome backported apps, kernels, the OpenSUSE Build Service, WINE, proprietary graphics drivers, databases, etc. For instance I stick with the release versions of the kernel and KDE and the programs I use all day like LibreOffice, but have my web browser and Banshee updated to the latest versions through the appropriate repositories. You could also get the latest stable versions of everything by using the Tumbleweed stable/rolling repository, or stick with the default and only get security updates and bug fixes until the next release (or use Factory and get the unstable work-in-progress builds of everything). OpenSUSE really lets you have things your way.
21 • Security (by 123 on 2011-09-27 01:37:28 GMT from United States)
Hi,
I use FireFox with NoScript and Request Policy.
I run Tiger, Aide, Clamav, Chkrootkit, Rkhunter,etc.
I keep my Os constantly updated.
Is there anything else I can or should do?
Am I doing too much?
Is Linux really invincible?
Thanks.
22 • @20 (by Brandon Sniadajewski on 2011-09-27 02:47:26 GMT from United States)
Tumbleweed looks good, but I would rather be able to use the NVIDIA prop drivers without having to reset them after every kernel or driver update. Besides, I can do the same thing with the PPA's for (K)Ubuntu(-based distros). Something like KDE bigfix releases can be had from the Kubuntu Updates PPA (http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/), for example.
23 • Tiny Core (by Allison on 2011-09-27 04:09:25 GMT from United States)
the Linux kernel is about 36 MB, whereas Tiny Core is only 11.8 MB. How come Robert Shingledecker make a whole distro less than the size of Linux kernel it self?
24 • Tiny Core (by Allison on 2011-09-27 04:22:12 GMT from United States)
If one reads "Why is Tiny Core special?" in this link http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/intro.html, one might wonder what had gone wrong with other massive Linux distributions.
25 • wrong numbers (by ix on 2011-09-27 06:04:36 GMT from Romania)
IE6 has 2.65% of the browser market share, not 40%, as Robert Storey says. In fact, all versions of IE put together have less than 40% (wikimedia stats).
Aren't you contradicting yourself by saying that browsers and sites should have TLD 1.2, and then you say that most people use old browsers anyway so it does not matter?
26 • The Number of the BEAST (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-09-27 07:20:17 GMT from Spain)
Dylan Roesthoff wrote:
----------------------
downloaded Opera, enabled TLS 1.1 and 1.2, disabled TLS 1.0, then used Opera to go to my bank. My two banks does not support TLS 1.1 and 1.2, I cannot log in ....
----------------------
This is the real problem. You can have the most secure browser in the world, but if you trust your data to an insecure server, your data is not secure anymore. If you give your banking data to a firm and the firm stores it in a weak server, you are at risk even if you use an unbreakable browser for passing the data to them.
If you use a super-browser that supports TLS 5.6 (just saying) and the firm supports SSL 2 only, then the data is not much more secured than if you used an usual browser.
The problem is that most services out there do not support the latest TLS protocol, so even if your browser does, you will be forced to use a weaker security channel. Now the BEAST has revealed itself, the removal of old implementations is just a matter of time, at least for web services (as SSL remains unexploited for other encryption operations).
However, I bet many administrators that use old versions of SSL/TSL will prefer to switch to a not exploitable cipher algorithm than to switch to another TLS version.
27 • chakra (by Pera on 2011-09-27 08:27:00 GMT from Serbia)
Chakra brings Arch Linux to the masses.Arch Linux for beginners,deadly combination. No one can beat that.
28 • Chakra Review 2011.09 (Edn) (by Phil MIller on 2011-09-27 10:06:01 GMT from Germany)
Thx again Jesse for trying out our nice little distribution. Sorry to hear that your desktop PC still don't work with our distribution. I've almost the same Hardware as you and I'm running it without any issues. Maybe you send me a full list of used hardware you have on that box.
KDE
------------
The services running out of the box in live-mode are default settings by KDE. We only disabled compositing. Indexing seems to be an issue and appset-qt fills up the ram somehow on several machines. We are thinking about reducing default services and let the user decide what he want to start.
Installer
------------
We are working hard to get this part of our tools done. Manjaro-Linux (also Arch-Based), which has a focus on XFCE will help us out with some tools like simplified hardware detection and maybe I'll adopt their installer or parts of it. We started to exchange some source-code in both projects. 2012 versions of Chakra will have a better installer for sure.
Packagemanagement
------------------------------------
Till now we still use pacman and appset-qt as simple User-Interface. This will be replaced by akabei and shaman2 as UI. Both are developed internally and will be public available when ready. Till then we try to do our best with the current tools we have.
Users Choice and DVD Edition
----------------------------------------------
As you mentioned earlier, our repositories grow alot each day.The CD is a minimal setup to start with. Users can build their own desktop on top of it.
We have Takeoff a new launcher similar like mission-control by Apple, lancelot and others in our repositories. There is a GTK-Free Libreoffice which starts faster on our setup as the GTK-pendant. Lot's of simplified UI's are in our pipeline to come. A DVD Edition will come. I think we will start a blog or some for that one to know what tools most of our users will like to have on it so we reduce un-installs. Also we think of making it more flexible to stay on the basic setup and give some extra-packages as option during the install process.
Stay tuned for what will come and ask any questions how to get your desktop running.
regards
Phil Miller - Chakra Project-Leader
29 • Review and hardwae (by Jesse on 2011-09-27 15:31:04 GMT from Canada)
@28
Thanks for the feedback, Phil. I will send you an e-mail to provide data on my test hardware. Looking forward to seeing Chakra's DVD edition.
30 • chakra + torrents (by klu9 on 2011-09-27 16:04:10 GMT from Mexico)
I had already downloaded Chakra to try it out, so it was great to see this review and use it a headsup/guide.
BTW it's not easy finding torrents for Chakra: they're not on the homepage, and on Linuxtracker, they don't have their own category: they're still listed under Archlinux.
Here's the link for Archlinux (inc. Chakra) torrents:
http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrents&search=&category=39&active=1&tracker=0
31 • Chakra (by Blue Knight on 2011-09-27 23:19:49 GMT from France)
Chakra can be interesting but for instance its "KDE-centric", pure KDE, approach is somewhat ridiculous... Really.
Also, unfortunately, in Linux the "semi-rolling" thing is not possible for everything...
> "After this trial I feel if the developers continue to iron out the few remaining bugs Chakra is going to be a hard distribution to beat in 2012."
I don't think so at all. Sorry.
32 • Various odds and ends (by Jesse on 2011-09-28 00:46:33 GMT from Canada)
@21:
Yes, there are other security things you can be doing. Whether you should do them or not depends on how much effort you want to put into securing your system. Security isn't a black and white situation, it's a sliding bar. On one end of the bar is a very secure system, on the other end is convenience and usability. It's a big topic, too big to get into here, but I'd suggest reading up on passwords, shutting down unneeded services and SELinux. Linux definitely isn't invincible, as demonstrated by the recent successful attacks against linux.com and kernel.org
@23:
>> "the Linux kernel is about 36 MB, whereas Tiny Core is only 11.8 MB. How come Robert Shingledecker make a whole distro less than the size of Linux kernel it self?"
The Linux kernel source code, when archived, is around 36MB. The binary of a compiled Linux kernel is generally much, much smaller. I think a fairly standard Linux kernel now is around 4MB. If you trimmed out a lot of optional features it would be even smaller.
@31:
>> "Chakra can be interesting but for instance its "KDE-centric", pure KDE, approach is somewhat ridiculous... Really."
Why? Most major distributions are focused on one desktop environment. Red Hat and Fedora are heavily Gnome centric, Mandriva is KDE centric, Kubuntu is very KDE centric, etc etc. And all of those, like Chakra, supply a way for users to easily install non-KDE software.
>> "Also, unfortunately, in Linux the "semi-rolling" thing is not possible for everything..."
Such as? As I pointed out in the review, it's worked well for the BSDs for several years, maintaining stable releases of the core while supplying rolling versions of end-user software. Why do you think the same approach won't work on Linux?
33 • Re:32 (by 123 on 2011-09-28 02:33:45 GMT from United States)
Thanks Jesse,
I was unaware of the recent successful attacks against linux.com and kernel.org.
Now I've got to go and look them up, since I've missed them totally.
SeLinux always intrigued me, as well as MLS systems, it just seems like a lot of effort
for me to fully learn all about it by casual reading on the net. Someday though.....
Thanks again.
34 • Security and kernel.org under attack (by Anonimous Coward on 2011-09-28 09:55:45 GMT from Spain)
123 wrote:
-------------------------------
I was unaware of the recent successful attacks against linux.com and kernel.org.
Now I've got to go and look them up, since I've missed them totally.
-------------------------------
Have a look here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-security-4/security-breach-at-kernel-org-900485/
This thread contains a copy of the official announcement by the kernel guys.
Jesse wrote:
-------------------------------
(Security) is a big topic, too big to get into here, but I'd suggest reading up on passwords, shutting down unneeded services and SELinux.
-------------------------------
I just suggest reading some documentation and ensuring you have a brain inside of your head. Unaware users are more likely to be attacked by some shape of social engineering than by a dangerous exploit. Common sense is worth more than having all your packages up to date, and having an up to date system is very worthy!
Now, implementing MAC and RBAC in a personal computer represents a big maintenance burden most people can live without. SElinux, GRsecurity, PAX, and many other security patches will block many exploits or, at least, reduce their severity, so they are worth some thoughts. The problem is that most of these things are true aliens: you are adding a layer of stuff that changes how the operating system handles users, memory, code execution and turns the system in something that is "less Linux". Usually, this leads to some apps breaking (for example, Firefox will break with PAX until you configure some flags by your own). In addition, these measures, while protecting you from many common attacks, can bring NEW security weaknesses with them.
This is a topic long debated by the OpenBSD advocates, as they use to defend that proper code auditing is far better that adding a security patch that can silently disrupt your system or introduce new vulnerabilities, just in order to have a questionable defense.
My approach? I would not install SElinux or GRsecurity, or whatever, in a computer which only network access is for casual web browsing. Why? Because the only likely attack vector for a computer that is behind a firewall is your web browser. You can have a very good secured browser just by having it up to date, installing security extensions, keeping a tight configuration and avoiding suspicious sites (read: porn sites). Additional security measures could mean that you would have to recompile your kernel very often and do a lot of administrative work. You can, however, benefit from these measures if you keep services running (i.e: Amule ot rTorrnet) and listening to wide opened ports.
Now, if you really want to experiment (and I encourage everybody to do so) and see how does all this thing work, you should have a look here:
http://grsecurity.net
GRsecurity includes the following interesting features (and many others):
--> Chroot protection (prevents a chrooted app that has been compromised from jeopardizing the whole computer)
--> Role Based Access Control (think about this as a more powerful permission system)
--> PAX (which can be installed separately. It protects your computer against common abuses)
--> It Is not SElinux (which I don't like at all!)
35 • the new linux OS: WillBeSomeshingNoOneKnowsForEver (by meanpt on 2011-09-28 12:03:55 GMT from Portugal)
There you go. The linux foundation has an ever to be grown up baby in its hands. Now they call it Tizen. I call it "will", cause "it will support", "it will be" ... "it will do this", it will do that" ... on so on. Moreover "Tizen development will be open and led by a technical steering team composed of Intel and Samsung.". You got it? I did.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20112580-64/intel-finds-a-way-to-let-go-of-meego/
36 • @35 (by Patrick on 2011-09-28 14:17:03 GMT from United States)
Sigh. I used to be a very happy Maemo user. I was even developing an app for it. Then Nokia bought Qt and Maemo merged with Moblin to become Meego. "Throw out all the GTK stuff you've been doing and the .deb base, we're going to go Qt and .rpm." Yay, my GTK project came to a grinding halt. Then followed years of delay from a perfectly working system back to a system under development with no products in the market. "Meego will come to N900. No, it won't, at least not officially. Or maybe it will." Whatever! I switched to an Android phone. Surely a downgrade from the awesome N900 hardware, but some stability and vision is worth a lot. Now we get Tizen. "Throw out all the Qt stuff we forced you into, now we're going to do HTML5." Glad I didn't bother with Meego. I also won't be bothering with Tizen anytime soon. I'm getting sick of these "let's get one product on the market and then drop the platform" projects. What an awesome way to piss of your customers and developers!
37 • @36 (by meanpt on 2011-09-28 15:29:10 GMT from Portugal)
I don't like Google but there is a huge strength beyond their brand name: working with and caring for opensource communities.
38 • Attack vectors (by Anonymous Coward on 2011-09-28 18:05:28 GMT from Spain)
I wrote:
---------------------------
Because the only likely attack vector for a computer that is behind a firewall is your web browser.
----------------------------
I wrote that assuming that the administrator does not install untrusted software or leaves the computer physically unsecured, of course.
39 • installing linux in computers bought with legacy os (by sam on 2011-09-29 14:02:23 GMT from Italy)
There is a story elsewhere that major oem's might soon sell desktops and laptops with a boot system that will only allow the dominant os in the market. Might be good for the few computer manufactures who preinstall linux ditros and who cannot count on many linux users at the moment. Could be something positive for linux in the long run.
40 • SliTaz ... (by Coffee on 2011-09-29 17:41:33 GMT from France)
For those who've been wondering what has happened to the SliTaz website ... the project hasn't been off-line since days, as I falsely thought, but moved to a new URL, apparently without letting anybody know in advance. The new address is ... http://scn.slitaz.org/
41 • @ 32 (by Blue Knight on 2011-09-30 00:50:15 GMT from France)
> "it's worked well for the BSDs for several years, maintaining stable releases of the core while supplying rolling versions of end-user software. Why do you think the same approach won't work on Linux?"
I have not said it is not possible, just it is perhaps not possible for everything... Well, we talk about a stable base system, right? Well, you'll not be able to update every apps without update some system libs and so, you can say good bye to a stable base system and you are just in a rolling release. Or you don't update every apps and you are almost in a "classic" system.
And I don't consider "it's worked well for the BSDs". E.g. when I have used/tried FreeBSD I have wanted updating Firefox to the last version. For that, I had to update the whole X! Thanks FreeBSD. And the FreeBSD developers found this normal... pfff
42 • Thanks Gurus! (by Bob on 2011-09-30 01:50:46 GMT from Australia)
Many thanks to the Linux and BSD geniuses. I'm just a point and click bloke but I've got GhostBSD up and running and it's looking good!
43 • An easy way to come up with a sane SELinux policy (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-09-30 03:17:50 GMT from United States)
Regarding some of the comments above on security, what many people find daunting about SELinux is the necessity to write a policy that provides adequate protection without blocking the things they want and need. The easiest way to do that is to enable SELinux is permissive mode. What permissive mode does is block nothing but log everything that could have conceivably been blocked. The resulting log becomes the template for a policy -- one tailored to your usage patterns.
44 • @41 @32 (by JR on 2011-09-30 03:25:12 GMT from Brazil)
The rolling-release model is not unstable by definition. The problem is that all updates must be thoroughly tested before being applied to the final system, you feel like you're eternally preparing a version of a system to launch it, is not as easy as it seems for some people, however, I do not think is necessary to maintain a system with fixed versions and rolling applications as long as all updates are tested and approved for the final system, if this condition is met, no matter whether it was the system or applications that have been modified ! It's like being done by LMDE with a separate repository from debian testing, apparently debian testing updates are tested before being imported into the repository of LMDE, if the quality control is done well it should be a great system !
45 • Semi-rolling (by Jesse on 2011-09-30 11:08:29 GMT from Canada)
>> " E.g. when I have used/tried FreeBSD I have wanted updating Firefox to the last version. For that, I had to update the whole X! Thanks FreeBSD. And the FreeBSD developers found this normal... pfff"
I think there may have been a problem with the way you were trying to update Firefox. The underlying X does not have to be updated in order to update Firefox. I'd also like to point out that X is not part of the FreeBSD base, it is part of the ports system. The base system does not have to be updated when you are upgrading software in ports.
46 • @ Jesse (by Blue Knight on 2011-09-30 12:10:05 GMT from France)
> "I think there may have been a problem with the way you were trying to update Firefox. "
No. By the way, at this time, there was some discuss with FreeBSD developers and they said well this was normal because etc... (This was some times ago, I have somewhat forgotten what reasons he gave as I am no more really interested in FreeBSD currently, thanks to them.) But yes, the base system SHOULD NOT be updated when you are upgrading software. But this time, it wanted...
47 • Firefox upgrade (by Jesse on 2011-09-30 15:17:44 GMT from Canada)
>> "But yes, the base system SHOULD NOT be updated when you are upgrading software. But this time, it wanted..."
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The X server is not part of the FreeBSD base, it's a part of ports. Even if you did need additional pieces of X to support a new version of Firefox that does not mean you were required to update the base install. In other words, the base system was not being updated when you tried to install Firefox.
48 • Semi-rolling (by abveritas on 2011-09-30 15:33:51 GMT from United States)
Perhaps a deeper clarification is needed how Chakra is implementing the half-rolling release model.
There are the base repo's (core & platform) and 3 repo's that are build on top of that (desktop, apps & games). The latter 3 are rolling, desktop is for KDE sc and any new KDE moves to stable after a period of minimal 7 days in testing.
Core and Platform are updated when needed, slowly and conservatively, not held for a period of time, and then all updated at once. Updates there are thoroughly tested before moving to stable.
49 • Jesse (by Blue Knight on 2011-09-30 15:40:57 GMT from France)
Maybe, if you say. :-) All what I know is what I said in my first post about Firefox upgrade. And this came in a "normal" upgrade procedure. Even if maybe the things can have evolved since...
But forget it, at that time there was already had a discussion tough, harsh, enough with some FreeBSD developers to try to make them understand the things, to stay polite, without success. Currently, I don't care about this and I no more use FreeBSD...
So long :D
P.S.= @44 Rolling release is a broken model by default for me. You'll have some breakages, even in LMDE... Btw, see their forum.
50 • 49 continued (end) (by Blue Knight on 2011-09-30 17:28:38 GMT from France)
I'd add just one thing, and this is valuable for Linux and BSD, at least in Windows we can install at any time the version we want for every application. (even several versions of the same app at the same time)
51 • @Blue knight @Jesse (by JR on 2011-09-30 18:27:18 GMT from Brazil)
I think it's too early to give a definitive opinion on the LMDE, how to update it is still being developed (and rethought in the way), but there is a system that is always forgotten by us which package manager is responsible for updating with success very early versions of the system, is foresihgt linux with conary package manager, just install an old ISO and type "sudo conary updateall" that the system will be upgraded to the latest stable version successfully.
I know it's an unusual example, but in my tests worked without manual intervention. I tried to update, for example, a PCLOS Gnome 2009 to the latest version, and besides having to manually add new repositories, the work has resulted in kernel panic. Call me crazy if you want but I think it should work if it is a rolling distribution!
there is a description of the process of updating foresight that I found on wikipedia that maybe help understand these issues:
"Foresight uses the Conary package management system. This system only updates those specific files in packages which need to be updated, in contrast to other package managers such as RPM and dpkg which install whole packages. Conary also has the advantage of very granular dependency resolution, and a relatively easy packaging process, with repositories provided to the community, free of charge, by rPath, Inc.
All packages are updated in a rolling release style, i.e. as updates are released upstream, or packagers get to them. Packages move between three branches of the foresight repositories, originating usually at the development branch or in the personal repositories of packagers, after which they are promoted to the Quality Assurance branch, and finally to the Stable branch, intended for users. Snapshots are taken every few months, and new ISO images are produced."
The three repositories, the way they are updated, and the way that conary works is what we should pay attention! It really works, it is a pity that the system is not popular!
52 • @50, It Depends. (by Eddie on 2011-09-30 18:46:49 GMT from United States)
The comment about installing in Windows, any version, any time, is not completely correct. For one thing it depends on which version of Windows you are using and which version of the software applications you are using. Some will surely not install and run in Windows 7 if made for Windows XP or earlier. Not even in XP mode. Furthermore a lot of programs made for Windows 98 would not even install in XP or in 2000. But in Linux, using Firefox as an example, I have had several different versions installed and operational at the same time. So there you have it for what it's worth. This is more my experience than my opinion.
53 • 50&52 (by 123 on 2011-10-01 01:54:12 GMT from United States)
Oh yes,
I currently have Firefox v2, v3, v3.6 ,v5 ,v6 and v7 installed and runnable.
What I need to brush up on is having old aout and new elf libs installed.
Or at least old glibc's with new ones.
This is all on Debian stable, using stable's version of libs.
I myself have seen windows programs install and change system libs
causing problems for other versions.
Although I am sure there is a windows way to fix that.
But I know I am running multi-versions on Linux.
....
Number of Comments: 53
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