DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 432, 21 November 2011 |
Welcome to this year's 47th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week's feature story is a first-look review of ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" edition, a little known Linux distribution featuring the KDE desktop with a BeOS-like theme. Is it just a modified Debian with a BeOS face or is ZevenOS a project that could find its niche among certain users? See below to find out what we think. In the news section, users give the brand-new openSUSE 12.1 a warm welcome, Linux Mint founder reassures GNOME 2 fans about the project's continued support for a more "classic" desktop even after the switch to GNOME 3, and The H Open Source looks back at the Ubuntu project and wonders whether its current drive to establish itself on touchscreen devices is a smart move. Also in the same section we have links to two interesting interviews - Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth talks about the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian, while MINIX creator Andrew Tanenbaum regrets an old decision which prevented his operating system from taking over the world. Finally, we are pleased to announce that Haiku, an independently-developed open-source operating system inspired by BeOS, has now been listed on DistroWatch. Happy reading!
Content:
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
A first look at ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune"
There are few subjects in operating system circles which will trigger as much nostalgia as BeOS. The operating system, perhaps best known for its responsiveness, led a relatively rocky and sheltered life. Yet it lives on in the hearts and minds of many and has spawned a number of modern projects in homage. One such project is Haiku, another is ZevenOS. Today we're going to look at ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" edition, a modern Linux distribution which tries to recapture some of the BeOS spirit using Debian "Testing" as a base. According to the distribution's website, the project tries to be a BeOS style of Linux with a strong focus on performance and multimedia. At the time of writing there are several editions, a full KDE 4 edition, a LXDE-based minimal edition and a MATE (GNOME 2.x) edition. There's also a plain ZevenOS (without the "Neptune" suffix) which is based on Xubuntu. For my trial I decided to focus on the KDE edition of ZevenOS.
The download for the KDE ISO is approximately 1.3 GB in size. Booting off the ZevenOS "Neptune" DVD we're brought to a KDE 4 environment which is laid out in the classic desktop style. On the desktop we find icons for launching the installer and browsing the file system. There are two help files which explain the workings of the installer, one file is in English, the other in German. It is recommended that the hard disk be partitioned before launching the installer and, for this task, we're provided with a copy of GParted. I found running through the installer to be a quick process. On the first screen we set the root user's password and create a regular user account. Then we select which partition to use for the root file system. Next we tell the installer where to install the bootloader. Assuming we got our partitions in order ahead of time the rest of the process is pretty painless.
ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" - system installer and documentation (full image size: 272kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
When we first boot into ZevenOS we're brought to a graphical login screen which is themed to look like a desktop window. The layout is quite clean and the buttons to select users, power off the machine and change session settings are large and colourful. Logging in brings us back to the KDE 4 environment. On the desktop are icons for accessing the project's forum, opening the disk manager, launching the package manager and browsing the file system. The background is a subtle project logo. At the bottom of the screen we find the application menu, quick-launch buttons for the web browser and e-mail client, the task switcher and system tray. When we open applications we're presented with windows that have BeOS-style decorations.
ZevenOS comes with a large collection of software and there is a little something for everybody. The Chromium web browser is included as is Icedove (Thunderbird). The Konqueror web browser is provided, we also find the Kopete instant messenger program, KTorrent and network monitoring tools. LibreOffice is available in the menu, there are remote desktop applications, the K3b disc burner and a document viewer. We find the VLC multimedia player, a simple desktop recorder and the Eclipse developer environment. The GIMP and KolourPaint are provided. For people concerned with their privacy, the TrueCrypt device encryption application is included. We're given a full range of multimedia codecs, the Flash browser plugin, Java and GCC. Behind the scenes we find the Linux kernel, version 3.0. Being based on Debian "Testing", ZevenOS users will have access to over 30,000 software packages along with smaller collections of software provided by the distribution's own repositories.
Software packages are handled by the graphical application called Muon Software Centre. It's a fairly friendly program which bears resemblance to older versions of Ubuntu's Software Centre or the Mint software manager. On the left side of the screen we can choose viewing available software or installed packages. On the right side of the screen we're shown software categories and, as we descend into more specific categories, we're shown packages. Each package has an install/remove button next to it and a "more info" button. Clicking on the "more info" button presents to us a screen with detailed information about the selected package. Software packages are also given a rating out of five stars, helping users pick more popular (and hopefully more useful) software. When we click the install/remove button the package manager queues the action and leaves us to continue browsing the repositories. My only complaint about Muon Software Centre is the lack of progress reporting when multiple actions are queued. We can watch individual packages download and install, but there doesn't appear to be any way to watch and cancel pending events.
ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" - package manager (full image size: 178kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Besides the Muon Software Centre, there is also the Muon Package Manager. This graphical program performs similar functions and has a similar layout to the Software Centre. The big difference I found was the Muon Package Manager, along with its slightly more cluttered interface, includes the ability to upgrade packages. In fact, aside from opening a console and using the apt-get command line program, this second package manager seems to be the only option for applying security updates. I did not find any dedicated update manager or update notification applet.
I tried ZevenOS on two machines, my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card) and a generic desktop box (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card). ZevenOS worked quite smoothly on the desktop machine. The screen was set to its maximum resolution, the interface was responsive, boot times were reasonable and sound worked out of the box. On the laptop the experience was similarly trouble-free. My Intel wireless card worked without any effort on my part, sound worked out of the box, my screen was set to an appropriate resolution and my touchpad worked as expected. Desktop responsiveness was above average for a KDE distribution on both machines.
ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" - browsing the project's website (full image size: 142kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
So far my experience with ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" has been fairly uneventful. The distribution takes Debian's "Testing" repository, adds some packages, some custom repositories and hardware support, making for a smooth end-user experience. The installer doesn't have a lot of options, but it worked well enough on my equipment. The DVD comes with a good collection of software, covering a wide range of categories and the multimedia experience out of the box is solid. I'm still not won over by the Muon software handling tools. The Software Centre, while friendly, feels limited and the package manager's interface is a bit cluttered. Both tools I found to be a little sluggish, but they worked without any errors during my trial. Performance was about what I'd expect from a modern KDE desktop: good, but not amazing. For users trying the distribution there may be some concern with the heavy flow of package updates from Debian "Testing", but during my trial it didn't cause any problems. All in all the Zeven 2.0 "Neptune" edition has worked well for me and it presents a nice KDE desktop on top of Debian "Testing".
Aside from the window decorations I don't see any connection between this project and BeOS. One could get the same effect by taking a distro like SimplyMEPIS and changing the desktop theme. It's tempting to write off ZevenOS as just another Debian derivative with a different collection of artwork, but I'm not sure that's a fair evaluation. ZevenOS 2.0 "Neptune" doesn't just have nice artwork, but a good collection of programs and easy-to-access documentation. It does a good job of being user-friendly while staying out of the way -- desktop effects, for example, were not in evidence. ZevenOS may not be in the same class as some other Debian-based distros, such as Linux Mint "Debian" edition or SimplyMEPIS, but it's not doing badly for such a young project. Hopefully the developers will expand on the installer and add a dedicated update utility for future releases. If you're already happily using a Debian-based distro I don't think there is anything here to win over hearts and minds. On the other hand, new users, especially those seeking a distribution with a German-focused forum, may find what they're looking for in ZevenOS.
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Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
openSUSE 12.1 feedback, Linux Mint's GNOME dilemma, Ubuntu health check, interviews with Mark Shuttleworth and Andrew Tanenbaum
The long-awaited openSUSE 12.1 was released last week. Although it will take a while before the first in-depth reviews start appearing on Linux websites, it seems that the first impressions of the new openSUSE have been largely positive. Andreas Jaeger has summarised some of them in "openSUSE 12.1 Launch Feedback": "Looking over twitter messages directed to our @openSUSE account, here are just a few comments about openSUSE 12.1: 'Really impressed (I'm not impressed easily) with all of the added configuration and customization openSUSE 12.1 brings.' 'Hats off to the openSUSE folks - 12.1 is a solid release'. 'I've just upgraded my main workstation, everything looks so polished and well done!' Reviews by journalists included praise like: 'All in all, this looks like one of the most exciting openSUSE releases in some time.'" The author also provides some interesting statistical summary, noting, for example, over 93,000 downloads during the first 24 hours after launch. It's interesting to see that 47% of them were downloads of the various 64-bit editions, while by far the most popular medium to download was the installation DVD (rather than the KDE or GNOME live CDs). For German-speaking users a traditional boxed edition with documentation will be made available shortly: "Open Source Press is producing a German openSUSE 12.1 box which will be available soon, this retail edition is a version of openSUSE with a complete printed end-user manual, installation media, lots of vouchers and more."
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Perhaps the most awaited upcoming distribution release is Linux Mint 12, the first release candidate of which has been out for over a week. However, the new stable Mint is likely to arrive with a much more noticeable delay than the project's previous releases, while the testing periods are also expected to last longer. The reason is, of course, the new GNOME 3 desktop which requires substantial "mintification", as well as the integration of the as-yet-little-tested GNOME 2 fork called MATE. And although the work is progressing fast, Clement Lefebvre has detected some apprehension among those Linux Mint users who do not wish to switch to GNOME 3: "I understand the fact that some GNOME 2 users are extremely concerned. Whether it's GNOME 3 or MATE, these technologies are recent and they're not as mature as GNOME 2. It's important to understand that they represent our future though, and that sticking to GNOME 2 would make the situation in terms of packages and runtime conflicts with both GNOME 3 and Ubuntu completely unmanageable. In other words, if we were to stick to GNOME 2.32, Linux Mint would no longer be compatible with Ubuntu and you would not be able to run GNOME 3 in Linux Mint. We were one of the last distributions to support GNOME 2, we're amongst the very few to support MATE and we're innovating on GNOME 3 to ease this transition and make people feel at home on this new desktop."
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Ubuntu's determination to establish itself as a viable operating system on touchscreen devices has left many desktop users wondering about the distribution's future on their computers. Richard Hillesley from The H Open Source has written an excellent article summarising the evolution of the project, starting with a tentative approach to improve Debian for desktop use and now reaching a state where the goal is to provide a simplified user interface that would work across multiple devices. But will this gamble pay off? From "HealthCheck Ubuntu - The search for unity": "The issue for existing users is whether the minimalistic demands of a netbook or smartphone interface, which may use a keyboard, a click or a touchscreen, are equal to the demands of a conventional desktop user with a different set of priorities. ... Shuttleworth's gamble is that users will change their minds as they gain familiarity, that Unity will gain traction as a universal interface, scalable across all devices, and that it will be as attractive to a certain class of user as Apple claims to be. Only time will tell whether Oneiric Ocelot, and the advent of Unity as the only choice for the Ubuntu desktop, marked the moment when Ubuntu began to scale the heights of universal acceptability, or fell back to earth with a bump."
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In the meantime Debian developer Raphaël Hertzog reminds us that Mark Shuttleworth (pictured on the right) is not just the Ubuntu founder and developer, he is a Debian developer too. Here is a brief extract from an interesting interview entitled "People Behind Debian: Mark Shuttleworth": "Many people are starting to understand this: Ubuntu is Debian's arrow, Debian is Ubuntu's bow. Neither instrument is particularly useful on its own, except in a museum of anthropology ;) So the worst and most frustrating attitude comes from those who think Debian and Ubuntu compete. If you care about Debian, and want it to compete on every level with Ubuntu, you are going to be rather miserable; you will want Debian to lose some of its best qualities and change some of its most important practices. However, if you see the Ubuntu-Debian ecosystem as a coherent whole, you will celebrate the strengths and accomplishments of both, and more importantly, work to make Debian a better Debian and Ubuntu a better Ubuntu, as opposed to wishing Ubuntu was more like Debian and vice versa."
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Finally, a quick link to another excellent interview. This one is with a well-known and highly respected computer science personality who doesn't often talk to media - Professor Andrew Tanenbaum, the creator of the MINIX operating system. Although MINIX has been around since 1987, its use is still largely confined to universities and computer laboratories. So why is it so and why isn't MINIX one of dominant operating systems in the world today? "The reason MINIX 3 didn't dominate the world has to do with one mistake I made about 1992. At that time I thought BSD was going to take over the world. It was a mature and stable system. I didn't see any point in competing with it, so I focused MINIX on education. Four of the BSD guys had just formed a company to sell BSD commercially. They even had a nice phone number: 1-800-ITS-UNIX. That phone number did them and me in. AT&T sued them over the phone number and the lawsuit took 3 years to settle. That was precisely the period Linux was launched and BSD was frozen due to the lawsuit. By the time it was settled, Linux had taken off. My mistake was not to realize the lawsuit would take so long and cripple BSD. If AT&T had not brought suit (or better yet, bought BSDI), Linux would never have become popular at all and BSD would dominate the world."
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
File systems for USB flash drives
Files-to-go asks: What is the best open-source file system for a USB flash drive?
DistroWatch answers: Assuming you're running a Linux distribution you'll find all the file systems available to you are implemented using open-source software. Even technologies like NTFS, which started its life as proprietary technology, have been re-implemented under open-source licenses. So rather than concern ourselves with the specific license involved I think it's best to focus on compatibility vs capabilities.
If you're planning to access your flash drive from a variety of computers and operating systems the best file system choice is probably FAT. While not impressive in its capabilities, FAT is widely supported and most operating systems can both read and write to FAT partitions. The next option down my list would be NTFS. Linux supports reading and writing to NTFS, it's well supported in big name, closed-source operating systems and the BSDs can read (though typically not write to) NTFS.
On the other hand, if you're accessing your flash drive on Linux systems only, then you can look at file systems with better performance and capabilities. The ext3 file system is solid, well tested and supported across distributions. It also has the benefit of having a journal, providing a little protection for your mobile data.
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This week's Q&A was short, so I would like to share something else with you. Do you ever find yourself on the command line and suddenly wondering how many files are in a directory and how much space they use in total? Do you find yourself opening a graphical file manager, browsing to the directory in question, right-clicking on the folder and looking up the properties of the folder to see the disk usage and file count? I used to do that and I quickly got tried of it and wrote a small script which would provide the information for me.
The following script will search through the current directory (and sub-directories) looking for files. It keeps a running total of the size of the files and the number of files it finds. In case you are interested in a different directory, the script will accept the name of a directory as its one argument. The script, written for the tcsh interpreter, is as follows.
#!/bin/tcsh
# usage: treesize (This prints the space used by the current dir tree.)
# usage: treesize /home/myhome (Print space used by myhome tree.)
if (${#argv} == 1) then
set target=$argv[1]
else
set target=`pwd`
endif
echo -n Space used by ${target}:
find "${target}" -name "*" -type f -printf "%s\n"| awk 'BEGIN{total=0}; {total+=$1}; END{printf(" %d\nFiles: %d\n", total, NR)}'
Saving the above script to a file in your user's path will allow you to quickly find out how many files are in a directory tree and how much space they consume.
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Released Last Week |
openSUSE 12.1
openSUSE 12.1, a brand-new version of one of the oldest and most prominent Linux distributions on the market, has been released: "Time to present to you openSUSE 12.1. This release represents more than eight months of work by our international community and brings you the best free software has to offer. Awesome improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, Xfce and LXDE; your own Cloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system. openSUSE 12.1 comes with the new GNOME Shell 3.2. We presented you with a taste of GNOME Shell on openSUSE 11.4; since then, many bugs have been squashed and numerous small improvements have made life on the Shell more comfortable." See the release announcement and release notes for further information.
openSUSE 12.1 - the KDE edition featuring KDE 4.7.2 (full image size: 479kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Incognito Live System 0.9
A new version of Incognito Live System (also known as "Tails"), a Debian-based live distribution with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user, has been released: "The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.9, is out. Notable user-visible changes include: Tor upgrade to 0.2.2.34, this fixes CVE-2011-2768 and CVE-2011-2769 which prompted for manual updates for users of Tails 0.8.1; suppress Tor's warning about applications doing their own DNS lookups; Linux 3.0.0-6, which fixed a great number of bugs and security issues; upgrade Iceweasel to 3.5.16-11; Torbutton upgrade to 1.4.4.1-1, including support for the in-browser 'New identity' feature; FireGPG upgrade to 0.8-1+tails2, users are notified that the FireGPG Text Editor is the only safe place for performing cryptographic operations and these operations have been disabled in other places." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete changelog.
IPCop 2.0.2
A bug-fix update of IPCop, a specialist Linux distribution for firewalls designed primarily for home and SOHO users, was released yesterday: "IPCop 2.0.2 is released. Version 2.0.2 can be installed using the installation images or as an update from version 2.0.1. You need to reboot to use the new kernel after upgrading to 2.0.2. In addition to a few updates to software used in IPCop, version 2.0.2 fixes creating CA certificate which did not correctly work in 2.0.1. Noteworthy: the GUI uses 8443 instead of 445; SSH uses 8022 instead of 222; access to IPCop and to the Internet from internal networks (aka Green, Blue, Orange) is very much different - spend some time with the various options you will find under 'Firewall Settings' and the online admin manual; several translations are complete, other languages are work in progress; backups from 1.4 series can not be used; add-ons made for the 1.4 series will not work." Here is the full release announcement with relevant links.
Puppy Linux 5.2.2 "Wary", "Racy"
Barry Kauler has announced the release of Puppy Linux 5.2.2 "Wary" edition, a bug-fix update of the project's mini-distribution designed to run efficiently on older and low-resource hardware: "I am pleased to announce the release of Wary Puppy version 5.2.2, our build of Puppy Linux that targets older hardware. This is a minor upgrade and bug-fix release of Wary 5.2. Although if you look in the release notes you will might not think it so 'minor'. This is also the début of Racy Puppy, which we think of as 'Wary on steroids'. Racy enhances Wary to run on recent hardware, with X.Org 7.6 and 3.0.7 Linux kernel. Here are the release notes specific to the Wary and Racy builds: GTK+ 2.24.8, fixed slow drop-down lists and SM insert-key crash; new applications: Planner project manager; Wary is built with 2.6.32.45 uniprocessor kernel, Racy with 3.0.7 multiprocessor PAE kernel...." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Tiny Core Linux 4.1
Robert Shingledecker has released Tiny Core Linux 4.1, a mini-distribution featuring the flwm window manager with a custom package manager and configuration utilities: "Team Tiny Core is proud to announce the release of Tiny Core and Micro Core 4.1. Change log: updated pcmciautils 018, sudo 1.7.7, FreeType 2.4.7, imlib2 1.4.5, libpng 1.2.46, BusyBox 1.19.3; updated tc-config new boot code pretce for raid and LVM support; updated tc-config dropped default TZ=UTC as such default (UTC) is embedded with no need to set TCZ; updated tc-config for better detection of /dev/rtc and handling of loadcpufreq; updated tc-config for microcore without X; updated tce-setdrive improved error handling; updated tc-terminal-server for new kernel; updated ab, fixed OnDemand bug; updated mnttool, added -g option for user defined initial position when used in .xsession...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a detailed technical changelog.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to database
- Haiku. Haiku is an open-source operating system, currently in development, that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the Be Operating System (BeOS), Haiku aims to become a fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful system for computer users of all levels. The key highlights that distinguish Haiku from other operating systems include: specific focus on personal computing, custom kernel designed for responsiveness, fully threaded design for great efficiency with multi-processor/core CPUs, rich object-oriented API for faster development, database-like file system (BFS) with support for indexed metadata, and unified, cohesive interface.
Haiku R1 Alpha 3 - an open-source operating system inspired by BeOS (full image size: 65kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
- Liquid Lemur Linux. Liquid Lemur Linux is a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's testing branch. It comes in two editions - the default one featuring the Xfce desktop environment, while the alternative comes with the WindowMaker window manager. Other features include a customized Cairo-Dock, the Liquorix kernel and Debian kernel options, including support for older PCs via the i486 kernels, and lots of custom scripts and artwork.
Liquid Lemur Linux RC1 - a Debian-based distribution with a customised Xfce or WindowMaker (full image size: 331kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- SmartOS. SmartOS is an OpenIndiana-based operating system for servers, incorporating Zones, ZFS, DTrace and KVM into a single unit.
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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, 28 November 2011.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • File systems for USB flash drives (by macias on 2011-11-21 09:39:50 GMT from Poland)
Excuse me? Pendrive is not HDD, so one should use specialized fs for pendrives, otherwise the lifetime of it will be dramatically reduced.
2 • Ubuntu, Debian (by Ron on 2011-11-21 10:00:05 GMT from United States)
I can't say I hate Ubuntu. But it seems to me that many are assuming that everyone will be cloud hopping in a few years. I tested Windows 8, same thing there. Gnome 3, same thing. Ubuntu same thing.
I fell in love with Ubuntu before they officially released. I knew they where on to something. I stayed with them, even as I was hopping from distro to distro, I would always go back to Ubuntu. I think it is great what Ubuntu is doing. I am just not crazy about it. So now it is all Debian for me. And I love Gnome, but I am not crazy about Gnome 3.
BUT... the great thing about Linux and opensource is if one doesn't like something they can usually find something they do like. this is what I did. A couple of years ago I started to use Debian. Mainly because Ubuntu got me use to the set up. I love the Apt family package management. I think it is one, if not the, best one out there. (Not meaning to start a package management war :) )
I can see how close Debian and Ubuntu are. There are features that started in Ubuntu and went back to Debian. Ubuntu is more like Fedora. It is experimental is many ways. Debian goes for stability BUT has the great feature, if the user chooses, to go to testing or unstable.
I want to add this. It seems to me that Mint Linux is the balancer. They are trying to meet in the middle of where Debian is and where Ubuntu is. I think they are doing this successfully. Debian the bow, Ubuntu the arrow, maybe Mint is the arrowhead.
I never found a distro I hated. Granted, I do favor some over others. But just because I love Debian does NOT mean I hate the rest. I am no longer using Ubuntu but I don't hate it either. I don't hate Gnome 3. But I will be moving on to XFCE once Gnome 3 is the default for Debian. I am mainly a desktop user and hate feeling left behind.
After reading all these article about Mark Shuttleworth. I was in such awe.... Self-made millionaire... went to space for over a week.... Started Ubuntu.... I tell you what. I almost created a statue of him. He almost became the household god, lol.
I think it is great he has done all of this. I think it is great that he has helped Linux on gneneral move forward. But somehow this feels like damage control since Linux Mint passed them in numbers. I hope I am wrong. Ubuntu, Debian and Mint are family. There is no need to compete or for others to see it as a competition.
3 • Linux Mint 12 is GREAT! (by Andy on 2011-11-21 10:06:42 GMT from New Zealand)
I don't think the Mint devs have much of a "dilemma" at all. They have done an **outstanding** job of Mint 12! I've gone over to Mint (from Ubuntu) and I won't be going back. You would never guess that they are using Gnome 3.0 - they've done a great job with making it usable. **Go Mint!**
4 • Mint (by Lazy Noob on 2011-11-21 10:27:50 GMT from United States)
Thats why I like Linux Mint. You get a reasonable answer for why Clem is going in a certain direction. I might not like it, but at least I know it technical and not ego based. I wish I could help out technically, but myHello World skills aren't there yet.
5 • New SuSE&Mint (by Snazzie on 2011-11-21 11:16:06 GMT from United Kingdom)
Need to read the release banners rather carefully, e.g.: "Awesome improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, Xfce and LXDE;" It's the default Gnome version that's ready for release now, the others are the 'newest' older releases! Always disappointing to have to wait for one's favourite DE, non-Gnome to emerge; just want to encourage the developers of those alternatives and let them know they are appreciated, as well! Good news for Haiku, though.
6 • Mint (by ix on 2011-11-21 11:19:08 GMT from Romania)
I have never really liked Mint, maybe it's because Ubuntu never seemed difficult enough to want something easier.
Something which I found silly was the fact that nobody said anything about the interface before the RC. I don't like secrecy. Clem could have just said: "we are trying to make Gnome 3 look and feel like Gnome 2, we are also working with MATE, because we want to have it as an option".
See? That was not so difficult, was it?
7 • gnome and unity (by Thomas on 2011-11-21 11:22:56 GMT from Germany)
Even if I personally do not like the mobile-device interfaces of gnome-shell and unity - I could see some merit in developing these IF linux on tablets were extremely important. But as things are now: even if I wanted to go out and buy a wonderful tablet to take advantage of these new interfaces, I couldn't. There isn't one, AFAIK, there isn't even an announcement of one. I have (grudgingly) bought an ipad2 and hate the restrictions it imposes on its users; I would love to buy a Ubuntu tablet and be free to do whatever I like. But all I'm getting is an interface that mocks me: if a tablet with Ubuntu existed, that's what it would look like. But you'll have to make do with your desktop and just pretend...
8 • ext3 (by Anonymous on 2011-11-21 11:57:45 GMT from United States)
ext3 isn't a friendly choice of file system for the BSDs. You are better off with FAT in a mixed environment.
9 • openSUSE (by tonny sofijan on 2011-11-21 12:05:05 GMT from Indonesia)
well, for me openSUSE 12.1 is quite dissapointing, expecially their liveCD KDE version. I ran it from VirtualBox with 512MB mem and it struggle to run (or not running at all, may i say). It ate about 4xx MB of RAM just to go to KDE.
So far, there's none liveCD I tested so far that use so much MEM just to boot to the DM.
10 • ZevenOS and ZevenOS-Neptune (by Eppo on 2011-11-21 12:45:45 GMT from Germany)
Have a look to the about of the ZevenOS-Homepage: http://www.zevenos.com/about to understand the difference between ZevenOS and ZevenOS-Neptune. Only ZevenOS (not Neptune) is mimicking the look and feel of BeOS. btw. ZevenOS 4.0 will be released soon.
11 • Tale of an empire (by William on 2011-11-21 13:00:28 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu built a castle, decorated it with unique color, erected a flag, staged a banquet, then took all the old potholders out of the kitchen and hung them on the living room wall.
Proven to be some of the smartest developers in Linux, Ubuntu could have foreseen this non sequitur and fixed it before so many hands were burned.
As it is, the Ubuntu desktop will remain the flag of the vanquished.
12 • @6 (by null on 2011-11-21 13:02:52 GMT from United States)
But, Clem DID speak about his plans for LM12 before the RC.
13 • OpenSuse Summary (by Bob on 2011-11-21 13:04:20 GMT from Austria)
Gnome & KDE: UI rendered unusable after changing screen resolution
1st attempted workaround: install NVIDIA drivers in IceWM then install KDE Conclusion: Failed. Newly installed KDE freezes before boot completes. Gnome was not tested with NVIDIA drivers because this seems to be oSuse related (did not come across any other distro which gave me comparable screen troubles)
2nd attempted workaround: install KDE, remove ALL screen effects, configure screen resolution in Openbox first, then do the same thing in regular KDE Conclusion: Seems to work this way but feels too risky for me, especially when anticipating future updates.
XFCE: Looks good at first, but the package manager crashes when attempting system updates. Ciao XFCE!
LXDE: This is the only DE within oSuse which could work for me (more or less). LXDE might need some more time to catch up with the "big three". But it consumes about 200MB less system memory than the "uberbloat" KDE and boots much, much faster.
14 • treesize (by Magic Banana on 2011-11-21 13:26:37 GMT from Brazil)
The proposed script looks overkill. Here is an alternative that works with any shell:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ] then set . fi echo Space used by $1: `du -hs "$1" | cut -f 1` in `find "$1" -type f | wc -l` files
15 • Q&A (by Omari on 2011-11-21 13:38:38 GMT from United States)
Filesystems - that's a good question. Lately I have simply stuck to FAT for all flash drives. FAT's inability to attach user IDs to files actually works to its advantage here. If you plug the drive into different computers, with a filesystem like ext3 the UIDs have to match or you will get unexpected results. UIDs don't add security for a flash drive because anyone who gets the drive has the data; the only way to secure it is by encryption. One problem with FAT is the file size limit--I think it might be 4GB. It's definitely too small to hold a DVD image. When you hit the limit, the error messages you get are not helpful either. But split(1) is an easy way to fix this. I never thought to try NTFS on a flash drive, but I imagine it would suffer from the same UID issues, plus I have memories of it not being writable on Linux (that has probably changed in the past few years though.)
File disk usage--is there some reason not to use du(1)?
16 • Why was Unity built on top of Gnome? (by vw72 on 2011-11-21 13:51:50 GMT from United States)
I keep wondering why Unity was built on top of Gnome, other than Ubuntu being Gnome based.
If Canonical built Unity on top of KDE and had unity be another plasma workspace, then they could have an underlying core that is cross platform with an interface that could be tailored for each device. Regular Desktop - Desktop Workspace, Laptop/Netbook - Netbook Workspace, Table/Phone - Unity workspace.
That approach would seem to have allowed them to maximize the experience based on the platform. For instance, many say that OS X and iOS are merging. That is true, but that doesn't mean if you have a Mac, you will be running the iOS interface.
While I applaud Canonical on trying to expand Linux (and Ubuntu) into new platforms, I'm not confident that the approach taken was the best. Then again, I would be happy if they proved me wrong!
17 • File disk usage (by megadriver on 2011-11-21 14:02:33 GMT from Spain)
May I suggest ncdu? http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu
18 • Q&A (by Thomas on 2011-11-21 14:05:35 GMT from France)
There is another problem not mentionned previously with ext-like fs on USB. It's the caching behavior. I used to try ext3 on my usb drives, but if I copied big files to them, although the transfert bandwith seemed high, it only used the caching capablilties of the FS.
That led to long times for unmounting the drive.
Of course, all in all, the total transfert time is the about the same for both FS (FAT and ext3) but with graphical tools you get a progress bar for copies, not for unmounting. So no ETA.
As for disk usage, the du(1) command is just what everyone needs.
19 • Smartphones (by Fsfer on 2011-11-21 14:17:47 GMT from United States)
Similar to the comment above in regards to tablets, there is no smart phone available that one can run gnu/ Linux on as a stable daily Os.
I had hopes for android, but aside from the kernel, the firmware and user space is closed and not free-software.
The world desperately needs a true open source (at the minimum- free-as in freedom even mor) smart phone.
Shuttleworth, are you listening? I would do it myself if I had money, know how, or time.
20 • Ubuntu Fonts (by Marco on 2011-11-21 14:22:02 GMT from United States)
I have run into a minor, but annoying bug in Ubuntu 11.10 (but not in 11.04), so have been trying other distros.
This weekend, I tried the Live KDE version of Open SuSE 12.1 and the bug is not there (so I am guessing the bug is probably upstream in Gnome, because it also appears in Fedora 16 (but not in 15), but I am not technical enough to know for sure), and I liked that the apps that matter most to me (Firefox and Libre Office) were defaults. I am sure that Konqueror, KWord, etc, get the job done, but for playing around with Live USBs, it is nice to see familiar faces.
But, I keep coming back to Ubuntu as an end-user not because I find the differences between Unity, Gnome, and KDE so earth-shattering, but because it is the only distro I have seen that has default fonts as readable as MS-Windows. And that matters when you are picking a desktop distro.
21 • discovering bodhi linux (by ken on 2011-11-21 14:36:12 GMT from Satellite Provider)
Without a reliable network connection I didn't know how to have Linux on 256 RAM machine. Remembered a discussion here about Bodhi, sometimes back. Got the image through torrents, more that 8 hours waiting, but the patience paid. Thanks to Bodhi developers.
22 • Gnome 3 (by JPlace on 2011-11-21 15:57:28 GMT from United States)
I do not like Gnome 3 and I feel it is a shame the UNity desktop has been forced upon us.
I have used Ubuntu for several years although I have dabbled in other distros. I like to build my desktop from the ground up from the command line and Ubuntu has made this the easiest.
However -- because I love Compiz and they're effects, I must stick with an older release of Ubuntu to have these work easily.
I have noticed that Ubuntu's hit rankings have dropped and are going down. So -- I feel that I am not alone. Perhaps they need to look at the path they're taking... or perhaps they are throwing all us loyal Ubuntu users under the bus with their eyes on another prize...
23 • #1: Not true (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-21 16:19:47 GMT from United States)
What you say was true of early SSDs including "pen drives", but it isn't true of current technology. There are tests which indicate these devices may have a longer lifespan than conventional rotational drives. A "normal" filesystem is fine, which is why development of most SSD-specific filesystems has ground to a halt.
What filesystem do you recommend?
24 • Drives (by Jesse on 2011-11-21 16:27:33 GMT from Canada)
>> "Excuse me? Pendrive is not HDD, so one should use specialized fs for pendrives, otherwise the lifetime of it will be dramatically reduced."
That might have been true several years ago, but the like span of these devices is quite long now. You can use a flash drive for years with a journal these days. I would be much more worried about losing such a tiny device. You're likely to no longer find the flash drive useful due to size restrictions or because they become obsolete rather than due to drive wear from writing.
>> "ext3 isn't a friendly choice of file system for the BSDs. You are better off with FAT in a mixed environment."
That's why I suggested only using ext3 if you're using Linux only.
>> "The proposed script looks overkill. Here is an alternative that works with any shell:"
That will definitely work too. There is more than one way to do almost anything in the shell. I do wonder though why you call my script with two commands "overkill" and prefer your script which uses four commands? Style? A dislike of awk?
25 • You can't please everyone (by Corvo on 2011-11-21 16:29:25 GMT from United States)
I honestly fail to understand why people feel that they must constantly express their distaste for the direction Mark Shuttleworth is taking Ubuntu with Unity. Or even why people continue to bash GNOME 3. Each has their pros and cons, but they have definitely improved since they were first released into the Linux world. Give either a chance for a week or two before making an opinion (and please try to make it CONSTRUCTIVE). Moreover, people need to understand that nothing is being forced on anyone, but there is no point in sticking to older technologies like GNOME 2. If you still want GNOME 2, your best bet is to take a look at distributions like CentOS or Fuduntu. Me, I just want something that works and works well, without me having to spend time tweaking things or customizing. For me that something is Ubuntu with Unity.
26 • ZevenOS Neptune (by David McCann on 2011-11-21 17:03:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
I assume from this review that Jesse is American, because ZevenOS-Neptune only lets you have a US or German keyboard. If you choose anything else, it just changes it back: you need to run a script at startup to override that. I also found a few problems with the repository: broken programs, or items which wouldn't install because the dependencies were missing. The original ZevenOS is much better, especially if you miss your BeBox.
27 • File systems for USB flash drives (by macias on 2011-11-21 17:08:54 GMT from Poland)
@23, you are referring to SSD drives, while this was about simple pendrives. Even with case of SSD they die sooner than HDD.
I don't recommend anything (only reading other recommendations) because I _have to_ use FAT.
@24, the lifetime is about a year in my case apparently. Using pendrives just like HDDs (5 days a week, 8 hours a day, live projects on them -- i.e. non-stop writing and reading) kills them in about a year. Sorry, but my HDDs can take more (much more) than that.
28 • Haiiku and Minix (by Mathew John Roberts on 2011-11-21 17:22:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
YAY!
Finally, haiku has been added to distrowatch. I'm glad that this has happened. They work hard on that and it is coming along nicely. I especially like the fact that you can install it within an extended partition. I only know of linux and haiku that can do that (if only other OS's could...).
As regards Andrew's reasoning about linux's success, sorry, I don't buy it. He makes it sound as if there was just the one BSD distro. I reckon there is a lot more to linux's success than just BSD being hampered. (Tinkerer's curiosity, community spirit, a technical itch to scratch etc.)
That aside, I like minix. Can't wait for the next release. Now if only they would allow installing it inside an extended partition...
29 • Ref# 25 (by Mike cougar on 2011-11-21 17:27:57 GMT from United States)
That's because Ubuntu is known the world over as the most popular Linux. Mint is rarely known outside Distrowatch.
When your popular you get attention.
30 • Haiku is here long time (by skywaker on 2011-11-21 17:42:49 GMT from Slovakia)
Nice to see Haiku operating system, yes i know its not Unix like but its POSIX, have BASH, Python, Perl, and in this list here is not VLC and Firefox 2 who Haiku have too. Haiku is small , eficient and very usable operating system.. Here in linux world are more people who like simplicity, this people like me use fluxbox, openbox, and xfce and haiku is for this people.. the main problem is missing apps, today i read on haikuware.com, that one man port Apache Harmony Java to Haiku, there is QT4 library port by www.qt-haiku.ru and there is other nice think like Clockwerk video editing aplication, or WonderBrush for vector picture layer editing.. yes all this is in this new OS..
31 • Linux on smartphones? (by Maxwell Smartphone on 2011-11-21 18:12:05 GMT from Finland)
#19 Fsfer
Nokia's Linux devices, the older N900 and later N9, run Debian based Linux and very well if I may say so.
32 • Syllable OS (by David McCann on 2011-11-21 18:46:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Now we have Haiku listed, how about Syllable? We have Syllable Server, but that's just a Linux distro; Syllable Desktop is very different. Like Haiku, it's POSIX compliant. It has a similar amount (or lack) of software, and rather better hardware support in my experience.
33 • Muon (by Ray on 2011-11-21 18:51:32 GMT from United States)
I agree with your assessment of Muon having recently used it in Kubuntu Onieric (misspelled?). Anyhow, While the Software Center part of it was nicely styled, the issue I had was with the Package Manager part. It did its job, however I was unable to find a way to have it confirm added changes when a package removal was requested. It simply marked additional changes without you even knowing it. I consider this to be a major failing (as IMO most would) as it will remove critical system files without your knowledge. Unless you know by heart the related dependancies of every package and know what you are doing expertly, this is a MAJOR liability.
34 • Compiz on new Ubuntus (by albinard on 2011-11-21 18:54:21 GMT from United States)
@22: There's no need to stick with older Ubuntus if you're a Compiz fan like me. Compiz runs just fine on Lubuntu 11.04 (the native LXDE version), even on elderly hardware, and it only struggles slightly with Lubuntu 11.10 on the same hardware.
35 • Muon... Again (by Ray on 2011-11-21 18:56:38 GMT from United States)
I have to point out tho, I am no linux guru (altho I do enjoy using linux and playing with new distros) so I fully admit, that my experience with muon could also be my own error (yes I am never ashamed to admit when its operator error lol). But having gone thru all related options and settings I could find/knew of, I was unable to find a way to have the program ask to confirm additional changes realted to package removal.
36 • @24 (by Magic Banana on 2011-11-21 19:02:27 GMT from Brazil)
I love awk... when it is necessary. You can do anything with awk (it is Turing-complete).
Calling multiple commands not only is more elegant (following the UNIX philosophy of simple commands that achieve one task very well) and readable but probably more efficient too. Notice that the different commands are executed in parallel on our multi-core processors.
Moreover, printing the file space usage in bytes is hardly readable. Thanks to the -h option of 'du', you obtain prefixes such as k, M and G.
Finally, your proposal depends on specificities of tsh, which is far from being the most popular Shell. When working on multiple system, portability is a must.
37 • Mint (by Vorian on 2011-11-21 19:11:23 GMT from United States)
I've never seen the use in Mint. You can spend 15 minutes on Ubuntu and have the same thing as you get in Mint. Plus, I've always have found Mint to be a bit on the buggy side, especially 11 and the RC of 12. I'm not much of a Unity fan but I like it more than I do Gnome 3, which is just terrible. And yes, I have spent time with it. I tried to like it but I just can't.
38 • USB sticks/pen drives lifespan (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-21 19:26:36 GMT from United States)
macias, I don't know what brand of drives you are using but... I have an old Lexar JumpDrive that I use to transfer files between machines constantly. I have customers who won't allow "foreign devices" (i.e.: my netbook) on their networks and I use this little pen drive to move things back and forth all the time. It's ext3 formatted and it is seven years old. I have had only one such device die quickly on me.
I will point out that there are other points of failure on USB sticks (i.e: the connectors) so a failure is not necessarily the filesystem. Jesse and I did not make a distinction between SSDs and USB sticks because they are the same technology and the same issues apply.
39 • DE's and Linux (by rob on 2011-11-21 19:55:46 GMT from United States)
KDE4 is just now starting to stabilize, GNOME 3 and Unity are largely heralded as disasters... why can't developers get their desktop act together?
I've seen LXDE and XFCE explode in popularity in recent months and users are becoming more open to lightweight window managers such as openbox or icewm. I'm currently running Debian squeeze + XFCE and couldn't be happier.
I predict the downfall of large DE's in the near future. Bodhi seems to be doing things right. Mint's lightweight editions are very nice, much better than Ubuntu's poorly-maintained step-children.
KDE is pretty, GNOME 3 is... well, KDE is pretty, but it can't stand up to the demand for lighter, more usable DE's.
40 • Awk and shell (by Jesse on 2011-11-21 20:14:16 GMT from Canada)
>> "I love awk... when it is necessary. You can do anything with awk (it is Turing-complete)."
I can't argue with that, awk is such a flexible tool. I love it too.
>> "Finally, your proposal depends on specificities of tsh, which is far from being the most popular Shell. When working on multiple system, portability is a must."
It's true tcsh isn't as popular as, say, bash in the Linux community. Though I find csh and tcsh are fairly popular in the BSD realm. And, so far as I know, it's available on all distributions. I wonder about your usage of /bin/sh in your script. I'm sure you realize different distributions point /bin/sh to different shells. Usually bash, but also dash or other shells. Relying on plain "sh" may make for some unexpected results.
41 • options (by mz on 2011-11-21 20:22:07 GMT from United States)
@ 37, Well I always liked Mint, at least for the few months I used it. It was very familiar and exactly what I wanted out of the box with no changes needed, none at all. I wanted that out of the box when I first tried Linux, and I think a lot of new users would agree when they are just starting out. Of course now I love minor tweaks and fiddling with KDE every now and then, and making things work just how I want. I'm probably not switching my main distro but I like what I see out of the new Mint much more than what I see out of Ubuntu's Unity and generic Gnome 3. It's nice to know there are options out there that give me what I want out of the box with out extra effort, something I'm already comfortable with from the get go. @39 Like I said, options. I really like KDE4 and have never seen it eat the kind of RAM that Vista does at idle, even with desktop effects enabled and doing other tasks. Moore's law says computers are only getting faster and more powerful, why not use the extra oomph a little if you got it?
42 • Sequential vs parallel (by Odra on 2011-11-21 20:39:12 GMT from United States)
@36
"Calling multiple commands not only is more elegant (following the UNIX philosophy of simple commands that achieve one task very well) and readable but probably more efficient too. Notice that the different commands are executed in parallel on our multi-core processors."
True, but you are piping (is that a word?) these commands and no matter how many cores you have it is more efficient to pipe just two. ;-)
43 • @40 Shells (by Magic Banana on 2011-11-21 20:39:41 GMT from Brazil)
I tested this tiny script with dash, which is one of the most restricted Shell (hence one of the fastest). According to its man page "only features designated by POSIX, plus a few Berkeley extensions, are being incorporated into this shell". Usually, a script that works with dash guarantees a same result with other Shells, which implement the POSIX features too.
44 • @42 Pipes (by Magic Banana on 2011-11-21 20:50:19 GMT from Brazil)
"True, but you are piping (is that a word?) these commands and no matter how many cores you have it is more efficient to pipe just two. ;-)"
I am not sure to understand what you mean. When piping, the commands on both side of the pipe are executed in parallel (most POSIX commands read and write line by line). Notice also that 'cut' only treats one line.
45 • Heading back to WIndows - sadly (by Michael on 2011-11-21 21:52:33 GMT from Germany)
I must admit that I am utterly disappointed by the way, Linux and its dstributions are heading in general. No, I am not a newbie, trying to troll as things don't work at once. I began my Linux-experience in 1998 and switched completely to Linux in 2000. All of my business-critical work was done on Linux-machines (mainly RedHat and later Debian). My desktop of choice was Gnome, right from the beginning. Everything was fine, it was stable it just worked, I was so enthusiastic that I even worked with some fellows on a back then pretty well known and well respected linux-distro.
Then, one fatal day after many happy years in Linux-land, I got in touch with Gnome 3 on my three years old PC and my three months old Samsung-Laptop. It didn't work, crashed my systems. The fallback-mode could later be started, but it had its quirks. Printing didn't work anymore, neither did scanning. I tinkered - to no avail.
Okay, ditched Debian, tested Fedora. Same thing. Went to Suse. Bang - my Laptop-screen ain't even detected. How am I supposed to do work? Then I tried Ubuntu. Unity failed to work and - even worse - my harddrive-filesystem on the PC got corrupted after the install (saving my precious data from /home was quite a feat this time!). And no, the harddrive is not dying. It is apparently a bloody bug in Ubuntus installer.
No, that ain't enough, there was more frustration. The latest Wine suddenly refused to support Software that was supported previously. Canons DPP cannot be installed anymore and I NEED that application in order to do my business and satisfy my clients.
Consequence: Bought a copy of WIndows 7 and installed that (Beurk!). Really, I do not like WIndows - but right now, it is the only OS apart from OSX that allows me to do my business. What the hell are the Linux-devs doing? Have they completely gone nuts to ditch all that made people migrate to Linux? Where is the stability and reliability? Do they really have to tinker with all that cloud-computing and tablet-ready software-nonsense? Come on! YOU COULD DO BETTER!
Sadly, Linux lost me right now (for probably an extended period of time) because of the inability of developers to do things right. Gnome 3? Unity? KDE4? All of those DE's are a complete nightmare from a serious business-type-end-user-perspective. GIVE US SOMETHING THAT WORKS. And grow up and leave the Kindergarden. There is no need to play every six months with new toys and break everything that worked for years.
Am i sick of it? You bet. Why do I rant here? Because I really hope that several devs read it and start to think about the consequences of their acting. I want to got back to Linux and Gnome. But I can't. *sniff*
46 • #45 - If you used a distro designed for business use (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-21 22:04:21 GMT from United States)
@MIchael: I dare say if you had stuck with a distro designed for business use (i.e.: Red Hat Enterprise or one of the free clones) you would have had none of the problems you described. Fedora and openSUSE are cutting edge/bleeding edge test beds for enterprise products but are utterly inappropriate for business use. The same can be said for the six month releases of Ubuntu. Red Hat doesn't change everything every six months, which is the "kindergarten" you referred to. In reading your rant I wonder if the failure really belongs to Linux or if it belongs to you for choosing distributions that simply are not appropriate for your intended use.
47 • ¨why isn't MINIX one of dominant operating systems¨ (by Andre Gompel on 2011-11-21 22:05:18 GMT from United States)
Why isn't MINIX one of dominant operating systems?
For many reasons, but probably not the ones mentioned by Andrew Tanenbaum. Linux became the leading open source operating system, because Linus Torvald, initial... and continuous dedication to the mission, because also of the superb and often underestimated work from Richard Stallman (aka RMS).
The RMS lead FSF (Free Sofyware Fundation) spearheaded the design of compilers, linkers, editors the GPL license and many other Linux building blocks...
Thousands of great volunteers willing to bring their contribution, with an open mind, and open heart too... they are often academics, but also computer science, electrical engineering, and lots of other trades...
Companies like SGS (Silicon Graphics), SUN Microsystems, IBM and many more also gave "Closed source" to the FSF !
Linus Torvald, like Richard Stallman were (still are!) very focused. They have very different personalities, and this is probably a good thing.
It is also time to give credit to Berkeley, INRA, MIT and many more academic institutions in the world for their invaluable contribution. I hope more will join.
About Minix, the current ¨Minix society¨ seems to me to be very closed, my two attempts to join, for an embedded version did not get me anywhere...
Minix today looks more like a closed computer hackers club than a vibrant community, but that could change, I hope that will: still time to do something of value, with a different ... and very open perspective.
Since 1492, we do know that the openness of the books to everyone is what made the 16th century renaissance. They killed Tyndale, and tried to kill Pierre Bayle though.
Andrew , impress us... again. A.G.
48 • Dash (by Jesse on 2011-11-21 22:09:35 GMT from Canada)
>> "Usually, a script that works with dash guarantees a same result with other Shells, which implement the POSIX features too."
I'm sorry, but that's not quite true. A lot of what determines whether a script will run depends on syntax, not just features. Your script would work fine in dash and bash. It might work in ksh, but it wouldn't run in csh or tcsh because of the difference in syntax.
49 • You can't please everyone. Really? (by fernbap on 2011-11-21 22:09:15 GMT from Portugal)
I find funny that people suggest that the direction both Canonical and Ret Hat are going is to build a Linux niche in the touch screen devices, and say that as a justification for pushing gnome 3 and Unity in general public distros. I know that distros like Fedora are meant to use the linux user base as a testing ground for new tecnologies, and i'm ok with that. But what are they thinking? That the typical linux user base is touchpads and smartphones? It is not. The typical Linux user base is desktops and laptops. They are barking at the wrong tree, i'm afraid. They will never get the feedback they need. As i don't think they are that stupid, then the explanation lies elsewhere, and perhaps only Red Hat or Canonical can tell us what it is. So far, they didn't provide it.
50 • Debian Derivatives like Ubuntu, Mint: Not so good for Kernel Work. (by Andre Gompel on 2011-11-21 22:34:06 GMT from United States)
Hello: I like them, especially Mint 10 (Mint 11, was not as good).
But they are not adequate (very difficult!) for building the Kernel etc... The standards Makefile, just do not work well, and building the ¨Kernel the Ubuntu way¨ is so far a largely undocumented and unpleasant (tedious, time consuming, difficult) endeavor !
Fedora is hard to install, on my machine, because of lack of drivers. (Nvidia, etc...). But it is still the best platform for a simple build and install of the Linux Kernel. My attempt to install Fedora 16, was very time consuming and so far unsuccessful.
A.G
51 • GNOME2, MATE GNOME3 (by Bert on 2011-11-21 22:37:31 GMT from Belgium)
I installed Neptune-mate last week, and because it is very early days for MATE, it bears no use criticizing it. It just works. Of course, lots of functions still needs implemented. This said, I'm going to leave Neptune-mate as it is for a whileand go and look back at it a few weeks from now.
I DO look forward to the new Linux Mint 12, which also shall have MATE DE. I couldn't try it yet, because ubiquity always hung as I tried to install it. Hopefully this 'll be fixed in the final release.
But I did have a look at their version of GNOME3, and I must say: this is a big step forward concerning GNOME3. I hope the other distro's learn from Linux Mint 12.
52 • Re: #46, Caitlyn (by Michael on 2011-11-21 22:41:32 GMT from Germany)
"I dare say if you had stuck with a distro designed for business use (i.e.: Red Hat Enterprise or one of the free clones) you would have had none of the problems you described."
Beg your pardon, but the older CentOS-releases refuse to boot on my laptop, the newest release ships a Wine which is broken for my "mission-critical-software". So how shall e.g. RedHat and it's clones be a solution in my case? I can understand that you suggest that the problem is perhaps the end user, but sadly, this is simply not always true. It is not a PEBCAK-thing I am talking about here. It is a general problem about Linux-devs forgetting about getting the basic things done. And this has sadly been a problem for several years now.
E.g. Mandriva, which I ran on a spare partition for bug-testing, was so kind to let me know that they were unable to fix a bug that left ViaC3 processors incompatible with Mandriva - because there is no one to maintain the linux-package (???). Case closed - Bug unfixed. WTF? Suse once told me that the bug I was experiencing didn't exist. (Graphical glitches) Errm? I could see it everytime I started Suse. Red Hat once answered to a bug-report a whopping six months after it was introduced. It was a mission-critical bug.
Sure, working on new stuff can be more interesting than fixing bugs, but if bugs are not fixed and things are broken, it is no wonder that people are really forced to look elsewhere for a working OS.
New customers are hard to find. Old customers can easily be lost - forever. Let's hope that things get better in the future. But I honestly doubt it right now.
53 • why isn't MINIX one of dominant operating systems in the world today? (by Quotator on 2011-11-21 23:33:18 GMT from United States)
"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
http://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html
In the early 2000s, I bought a home computer for $1500 and it came with M$ Windows 98. I believed at the time that it was the greatest thing and really liked it. Then later, I tried to burn cds and it had roxio and failed many times, many bad burns and lost diskettes. The machine did not connect to the internet. Later I wanted to connect it to the internet. I needed antivirus and had dialup modem called winmodem. I had a friend who was a university professor. He gave me a copy of Mandrake 9.0 Linux and Red Hat 8.0 and then later Red Hat 9.0 Shrike. I installed it on the machine and voila, my burning cd problems went away no more burning problems. I used XcdRoast and cdrecord by Joerg Schilling. I was able to connect to internet via dialup and had an INTEL 536 EP modem which Phillipe Vouters maintains well up to this point. I did not need antivirus and life was beautiful. It came with tetex, openoffice, and lot's of free software. It(machine) ran well I liked it!
To get back to the quote, Minix was the inspiration for Linus's kernel. GNU provided the tools to build the operating system and Linus's kernel and we got a great OS to use that worked great and made it a keeper for me. I did not know that BSD had existed, I tried them later on and I liked them, very similar to linux, but a little different. I could not connect to the internet with it on dialup with a winmodem, did not know about serial modems yet :( Now, I use both Linux and BSD and feel that both are great each in its own right! There are some advantages to both and will leave it at that.
The quote by Linus is very intriguing but also the creator of Minix has a great point about the lawsuit(s). Then Linux too had the threat of SCO and it always menacing to sue. Windows M$ always threatens Linux everyday and there have been distributions that have pacted with M$ like SUSE/OPENSUSE and also the android guys. For each android device that is sold, M$ is making money off them. This is not cool, but M$ does not want to lose its BIG market share, if it loses it looks for ways to rip off the people that are winning. Also it would be nice to figure out how much code from M$ is in the Linux kernel and how come *BSDs don't worry about this? Many friends say that *BSDs are the closest one gets to a TRUE UNIX system and not Linux, but I don't know like them. I have friends that have used SunOS, Sparc, and Vax, but I just saw them.
54 • Smartphone (by FSFer on 2011-11-22 00:22:18 GMT from United States)
@31 Maxwell Smartphone
As far as I know, the n950 ran debian in a chroot. The N9 can apparently be hacked to run debian, but is not fully functional as debian as the only OS interacting with the firmware. I had great hopes for the N9, but it has been killed and nokia is firmly in bed with MS now.
I hold out slim hopes for Tizen, but am not optimistic given recent history.
55 • #52 - Same issue (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-22 00:31:49 GMT from United States)
You keep going on about consumer grade distributions (Mandriva, openSUSE) as if they are supposed to run your business. They aren't. I've been involved with Red Hat for years, either as a consultant or as a customer. They do NOT take six months to respond to a bug that's mission critical to their customers, period. I'd love to see your interaction with Red Hat on that one. I am, of course, assuming you have a RHEL subscription. If you don't then you are, of course, in no position to complain because you simply aren't a customer and aren't due any support. My business does have a few subscriptions for just that reason.
FWIW, Slackware and some derivatives also don't release every six months and are rock solid stable.
The fact is that the server rooms of major corporations, government agencies and departments, the major stock exchanges, airline ticketing systems, critical systems for utility companies, and on and on all run Linux all the time. Why? Unlike WIndows it's stable and reliable. Of course, they don't run consumer grade or hobbyist distros. If the state of Linux was as you say these companies and institutions would not be running it.
WINE is a toy and should never be depended on for business use. There are other, better solutions but none of them are free.
When you bought Windows 7 I hope you bought a slew of anti-virus and anti-malware software to go with it. You'll need them, unlike on Linux. Heck, if that's what floats your boat more power to you. My business will continue to run on Linux.
56 • script (by Candide on 2011-11-22 00:51:47 GMT from Taiwan)
Did anyone get the script to work? The first time I tried it, I got this error message:
files.sh: /bin/tcsh: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
OK, I changed the shell to /bin/bash, but got this error message:
files.sh: line 11: syntax error: unexpected end of filefiles2.sh: line 11: syntax error: unexpected end of file
57 • Red Hat (by Jesse on 2011-11-22 00:52:04 GMT from Canada)
>> "They do NOT take six months to respond to a bug that's mission critical to their customers, period. I'd love to see your interaction with Red Hat on that one. "
I have to disagree here. In my experience the customer service coming from Red Hat in recent years has gone from good to completely sub-par. Issues are ignored, questions aren't answered and bugs are left unfixed. I'm in the process of moving some clients off Red Hat because their service (or lack of) has alienated myself and them. Combined with the somewhat disappointing RHEL 6 release and they just don't see any reason to keep paying enterprise level money for what they're getting.It's a shame, I used to really enjoy working with Red Hat, there aren't many products that came close to their level of polish and support, but they appear to be sliding downhill.
58 • RE # 14 Alternative shell script (by Candide on 2011-11-22 01:02:31 GMT from Taiwan)
Re: 14 • treesize (by Magic Banana on 2011-11-21 13:26:37 GMT from Brazil)
I should add that your shell script works fine.
59 • USB drive filesystems (by Joseph on 2011-11-22 01:07:34 GMT from United States)
There's a file system no one's mentioned yet: UDF, the same format used for DVDs and rewritable disks. It has defect management (very useful for USB drives), and one should have no problem reading on machines with Windows XP, OS X and Linux on up, and no real problem writing on machines with Windows Vista on up. You can check out UDF on Wikipedia to get an overview of the different versions and features of UDF.
UDF is able to be read/written on most Linux, Windows and OS X systems, unlike ext3, and fits the question the user originally asked in that it is a genuinely open standard, an "open vendor-neutral file system" with ISO and ECMA standards and developed and administered by an association rather than a manufacturer.
60 • #57: Red Hat (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-22 01:08:49 GMT from United States)
Jesse, now I'm curious: what is "disappointing" about RHEL 6.1? I didn't deploy 6.0 (I never deploy dot zero releases of anything if I can help it) but I've really been pleased with 6.1. I certainly don't see a lack of polish. Also, I'm really surprised by your experience with Red Hat support. Which channels are you using? How do you ask questions that are ignored? Which bugs went unfixed once acknowledged? How did you follow up? Did you escalate when you weren't satisfied? I'm not doubting what you're saying. It's just 100% polar opposite of my experience.
Please note that I haven't worked at Red Hat in six years and I own no stock in the company. However, my business recommends and supports their products.
61 • Curious about SLES/SLED support (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-22 01:12:12 GMT from United States)
Since we're discussing enterprise Linux support, what have people experienced with SLES/SLED support since SUSE/Novell were sold? How is the support under Attachmate?
62 • @45 - Michael (by Bert on 2011-11-22 01:56:39 GMT from Belgium)
I can understand your frustration. You need a solid distro for you business that does not have to be changed every 2-3-6 months. And one that supports your hardware to the full.
Have you tried Debian Stable (6.0.3 at this time). It'll still be around for a while, and it is rock solid. And what problems are concerned: there is a large and active community out there.
Ubuntu Lucid (10.04.3) is also still around and works like a charm.
Both of the above come with OpenOffice.org, but if you would rather work with the latest LibreOffice, it really is a piece of cake to remove OpenOffice.org and install LibreOffice.
Lucid 10.04.4 is expected to hit the servers on January 25th 2012.
63 • win AV (by mz on 2011-11-22 03:17:35 GMT from United States)
@55 to be fair Caitlyn there are plenty of free security products for windows, in fact I just updated my subscription to avast by simply resending a little information. I have to admit though that ignoring the part of my hard drive where vista lives and not double checking virus scan logs makes life a lot easier. If no one at my house ever booted into vista I think that keeping my relatively cutting edge consumer grade distro going would be considerably easier that keeping all the junk in windows scanned & updated. Everything just works for me in Linux land a lot easier than windows, but I guess some have certain needs or other reasons to use something else.
64 • @56 Treesize (t)csh syntax issue (by RO on 2011-11-22 06:12:02 GMT from United States)
I had the same unexpected end of file issue until I changed the rest of the syntax to bash/sh/ksh format:
#!/bin/bash # usage: treesize (This prints the space used by the current dir tree.) # usage: treesize /home/myhome (Print space used by myhome tree.) if [ $# -eq 1 ] then target=$1 else target=`pwd` fi echo -n Space used by ${target}: find "${target}" -name "*" -type f -printf "%sn"| awk 'BEGIN{total=0}; {total+=$1}; END{printf(" %dnFiles: %dn", total, NR)}
More fundamentally, I have followed Tom Christiansen's classic advice ( http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot with an update from Bruce Barnett at http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/CshTop10.txt ) for the last 15 years or so in avoiding the use of csh (and its derivatives like tcsh) for "real-world" scripting in my various jobs supporting applications on, and system administration of, Solaris servers. The fact that my Mint 9 installation did not include tcsh out of the box, reminded me of that, also.
Now, let the csh vs bash/sh/ksh flamefest begin ;-}
65 • stability (by ix on 2011-11-22 06:30:32 GMT from Romania)
I find it funny how, when a piece of software finally gets stable, the developers discard it, to create something new and unstable. It seems stability is a dead end for developers. It is too bad that stable software is usually not maintained after being discarded, it requires little work.
66 • re #45,52 leaving Linux for Windows 7 (by gnomic on 2011-11-22 07:25:04 GMT from New Zealand)
Hmmm, so you set off to use GNOME 3 as an environment for serious work, when it is still essentially a public beta, in my humble opinion at least. And you planned to make your business depend on Wine supporting some complex Canon photography software for Windows? And you were taken aback when your new Samsung laptop wasn't fully supported in Linux? And so on. It sounds as if you have done the right thing in deciding to move to Windows 7, which is almost certain to be more suited to your needs. Are you sure your expectations of Linux were realistic? You seem to be very optimistic for someone with a lengthy period of using Linux.
67 • #53 (minix 3) (by zykoda on 2011-11-22 07:44:43 GMT from United Kingdom)
I await with bated breath the first production release of Minix 3. http://www.minix3.org/ is a relevant site but there are links within for more up to date activity.
68 • @67 (by Bert on 2011-11-22 09:39:44 GMT from Belgium)
I think you got a point here: expectations.
69 • Re: File systems for USB flash drives (by AnonymUser on 2011-11-22 12:16:44 GMT from Philippines)
In the article, you wrote: "The ext3 file system is solid, well tested and supported across distributions. It also has the benefit of having a journal, providing a little protection for your mobile data."
Enabling journaling in a USB flash drive is, in general, not a good idea since such drives don't even have the wear level algorithms found in SSD's (whose write/erase lifetime already worries some users). The (pure) Linux file system I'd recommend at the moment for USB flash drives would be Ext4 with the journaling turned off. BtrFS might be an option in the future.
70 • ZevenOS review (by Wine Curmudgeon on 2011-11-22 12:19:26 GMT from United States)
The Zeven Xfce/Xubuntu release is pretty nifty, too, and I'll be curious to see what they do to it when it's upgraded to Xfce 4.8,
71 • @45 Michael - Headed back to Windows (by DavidEF on 2011-11-22 15:17:52 GMT from United States)
I understand your frustration. I'm glad you were able to use Windows for your purposes. Don't forget to keep a diligent eye on all your various Windows and other software updates as well as antivirus/antimalware. I'm sorry linux stopped working for you. But, as you say, maybe it will again one day be useful to you. I have some friends who tried linux because I recommended it to them, yet found it didn't fit their computing style, or just plain didn't meet their needs. I have others who loved it and use it exclusively.
One important lesson I've learned, in the short seven years of my linux experience, is that there really is no reason to be harsh or insulting toward any Operating System or its users. Simply put, all platforms have both strengths and weaknesses. Any time you choose to use one OS to the exclusion of others, there is a cost to you.
Every OS is a compromise. It's not that the Operating Systems are not as good as they should be, not complete, or whatever (although some are). It is simply that some design features are incompatible with others. So every OS vendor chooses what to include and what to exclude. And every user should choose an OS that represents the fewest compromises to their specific usage pattern. If no one OS is sufficient, then it is possible to use two or more different Operating Systems, whether on separate computers, or as a dual- or multi- boot, or through virtualization.
I've found that the best option to meet all the computing needs of my household is to use Linux (in my case Ubuntu latest) as the main OS on all my computers, and keep one copy of Windows installed in VirtualBox for the few Windows-specific applications I still need.
72 • USB Filesystems - my humble opinion (by DavidEF on 2011-11-22 15:48:17 GMT from United States)
I believe FAT is really the best overall option for USB drives. Even if you only ever intend to use linux with your USB flash drive, there will always be a chance that you really need to access it from a Windows computer.
I formatted some drives with ext3 in the past, thinking I would only ever want them accessed from linux. In fact, I thought of it as a way to make my files more secure, because Windows can't generally read ext3, and linux generally respects the file permissions.
It wasn't long before I realized that I needed to access the filesystem in Windows. It wasn't that I wanted to read the files on the USB drive, it was that I needed to save some files I had created or downloaded on a Windows machine, so that I could transfer them to my laptop.
Then, I tried splitting the drive into two partitions, one for the files I wanted to only access in linux, and one for moving files between Operating Systems. That didn't last long. I found it to be cumbersome, as well as a waste of space, because the filesize could be no greater than half the USB drive.
Finally, I went back to FAT, which is what the USB drives come preformatted with anyway. I decided keeping my files a little more secure was not worth all the effort. After all, it's not like I had confidential company info on the drive or anything. I wasn't using encryption or any other means to make the files truly secure. It just didn't matter that much. Additionally, the file permissions gave me a big headache at times, like when I wanted to move a file from my laptop to another user login on another system at my home. The FAT formatting didn't have that issue.
USB flash drives, preformatted in FAT, are inherently portable (physically, and across OS), and insecure. Changing the FS can change both of those aspects, for better or worse. I discovered that these two inherent characteristics are ultimately the reasons I buy and use USB drives, so there is no good reason to change them. As always - YMMV!
73 • 45 going back to windows (by mandog on 2011-11-22 15:58:02 GMT from Peru)
Such bad luck you should try a distro that suits all your needs and is stable Salix fits the bill, Ubuntu Fedora Suse are all unstable using untested software you should know this the time you have used linux. on the other hand so is win7 I get constant freezes and connecting to a static ip takes forever. my main linux box is Arch as it lets me do my work its slow to setup but then it just works. don't update for the sake of it if it is running and set up leave it alone CentOs runs for years without touching it.
74 • Support (by Jesse on 2011-11-22 18:20:31 GMT from Canada)
>> "Jesse, now I'm curious: what is "disappointing" about RHEL 6.1? I didn't deploy 6.0 (I never deploy dot zero releases of anything if I can help it) but I've really been pleased with 6.1. I certainly don't see a lack of polish. Also, I'm really surprised by your experience with Red Hat support. "
In brief, hardware support and the installer were disappointing. During recent tests I found RHEL wouldn't install on hardware other long term supported distributions would handle. I also found the installer would choke on some disk layouts (especially RAID) which made getting up and running harder. Fortunately in that case it wasn't a situation where enterprise level support was needed and we were able to go a different route.
As for support, that's a longer story. I will say some support contacts have been good. I don't mean to paint them all with the same brush. Some of the staff over at RH are great. But enough of them have been rude or unsupportive to the point of driving people away.
I'm also curious as to how SUSE has faired under Attachmate, if anyone has stories to share. I haven't tried them yet because they were in transition. I'm curious to see how SUSE came out the other side.
75 • Classic view (by Bert on 2011-11-22 18:23:57 GMT from Belgium)
When working on Win7, but you really want a menu and all the rest (Win95-98-xp), there is a program called "classic shell" that brings back the win98 to win7 to you desktop.
Try it. .
76 • @64, WinAV (by TobiSGD on 2011-11-22 18:37:38 GMT from Germany)
Keep in mind that the most (any?) free Windows antivirus solutions are only free for personal, but not for commercial/business use.
77 • @74 (by setenforce1 on 2011-11-22 19:04:48 GMT from Germany)
i am curious which distro has better installer than red hat in your mind and i am curios which enterprise level support in linux world have you ever found better than red hat and i am curios how many times have you ever touched red hat and fedora?
78 • #63/76: Anti-virus software, #72 USB filesystems (by Caitlyn Martin on 2011-11-22 20:06:13 GMT from United States)
#63: #76 pretty much answered this issue. Most (and all decent, respected) AV software for Windows that is free for personal use generally requires a paid license for business use. Every business/government environment I've worked in had paid AV software. Since the original poster was talking about his business I've kept the discussion in that context.
#72/69: I rarely have to deal with Windows anymore. I do keep one FAT32 formatted USB stick but all the rest are ext3/4. ext4 with journaling disabled does make a lot of sense. Oh, and yeah, not having the data readable by Windows is part of my motivation. I consider it a little bit of extra security by obscurity. If I lose a USB stick or if it is stolen it just won't be readable by the casual Windows or Mac user.
79 • context is everything (by mz on 2011-11-22 21:07:51 GMT from United States)
You're right Caitlyn, I don't think anything as free as say clamAV/clamWIN would cut the mustard for a primary windows AV for business. At least the last time I checked they didn't quite measure up in terms of detection.
80 • @45, windows 7 and gnome 2 (by ken on 2011-11-22 21:59:49 GMT from Congo, The Democratic Republic of the)
Does windows 7 use gnome2? I love Gnome 2 but will only leave linux for another OS that will use gnome2.
81 • KDE Trinity (by Woody Oaks on 2011-11-22 23:33:21 GMT from United States)
What a great name; and what a joy to run a proper KDE desktop again. Remember ControlCenter? Remember KDE 4.x? (Not a problem: KDE Trinity will help you forget those mistakes.) I do wonder, though, how well Trinity compares with LXDE and XFCE in the realm of resource management and use.
82 • Failed script (by davemc on 2011-11-23 01:06:22 GMT from United States)
#64 - I tested your script with the following results:
"Space used by /home/davemc:filespace.sh: 11: filespace.sh: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string"
A good conversation evolving here about Enterprise level OS's and stability overall. Michael definitely has a great point there and it is true that Developers appear to be hell bent on reckless "innovation".
83 • @80 (by Bert Mariën on 2011-11-23 01:20:04 GMT from Belgium)
Of course Windows 7 does not use GNOME. But you can make it look like it uses the classic shell.
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
He, I use it. I do not like all the other stuff.
An "old" Windows environment; or a GNOME, is all I need to wrk on.
84 • Re: 81, KDE TDE Trinity (by Andy Axnot on 2011-11-23 15:17:06 GMT from United States)
Yes, it is a great name and it's wonderful what Timothy Pearson and his crew are doing with TDE. For a nice example try the latest Porteus 32 bit version, which has both TDE and LXDE on a live CD (which also makes for a great frugal install). My thanks also to Ladislav and Distrowatch for the donation to TDE.
Andy
85 • #84 cost of cd versus dvd (by jack on 2011-11-23 23:23:42 GMT from Canada)
This is being typed on Porteus live 32 bit. beautiful Perhaps a little more time could be given to the screen which gives the passwords. Reach for a cup of tea and you will miss it. In Canada CDs cost almost 3 times a DVD Being cheap I tried burning on dvd but it would not load Many thanks for a fast loading live OS.
86 • correction to #85 (by jack on 2011-11-24 01:21:16 GMT from Canada)
It does load from a dvd
87 • Gnome 3 (by John on 2011-11-24 02:28:51 GMT from United States)
I read a lot comments about how much Gnome 3 is terrible. I love Gnome 2 but also like Gnome 3. Could someone give a list of complaints other than I hate it. Maybe because I am still testing it on my spare drive and not using it as my full time desktop I am missing something.
88 • Gnome 3 (by mz on 2011-11-24 03:49:18 GMT from United States)
@87 I personally find the idea that anyone would design a desktop where you couldn't shutdown the computer without knowing a special key combination so be a loathsome and completely unforgivable decision from the perspective of the average user. I'll admit I can't backup my other concerns about totally changing the desktop paradigm with enough testing time to know if the issues have any reasonably intuitive workaround; however, as I stated omitting a simple GUI way to do a basic function that every user will need eventually and hiding it with some leet key function known only by the cool nerds is unforgivable and makes the entire project lose nearly all of its credibility in my eyes. I'll admit I never was a Gnome fan to begin with but why on earth do they not have a place to click that says shutdown? I had the impression that the old version was meant to be a GUI DE that everyone could use, why hide a basic function?
89 • Gnome 3 Coal Burner release (by Bob on 2011-11-24 05:21:52 GMT from Canada)
Think of this. Most computers in standby mode use more energy than when powered off. For the sake of argument, lets say standby uses 2 watts, power off uses 1 watt (unplugged uses 0 watts).
Lets say that the average user is in standby 12 hours a day (admit it, you all use your computer for the other 12 hours!) With Gnome 3, for sake of a "better user experience", the Gnome devs have now committed you to using an additional 4.38 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year than you would have with Gnome 2. (calculation: 1 watt x 12 hours * 365 days / 1000 = 4.38 kwh)
It isn't a big difference. But let's say there are 1 million Gnome 3 users. The little bit of extra juice used by Gnome 3 adds up to a whopping 4,380,000 kwh a year. In terms of dollars, I estimate an additional $500,000 per year in electricity costs.
Personally, I'd rather keep my 50¢, save a few pounds of coal, and power off.
90 • Gnome 3 (by M1k on 2011-11-24 12:40:41 GMT from Italy)
Gnome 3 is just for tablets......you cannot remove the power cord from the socket.
91 • Re 90: Hope they keep the Gnome 3 classic (fallback) (by hobbitland on 2011-11-24 12:54:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
I really hope they keep the Gnome 3 classic (fallback) option as that is what I plan to use. I will see what RHEL 7 chooses then that will be what I use.
Ubuntu has dropped to 4th now use the dis-unity desktop. I don't think the dis-unity desktop will be sucessful without the powerusers will are fleeing. If Ubuntu 12.04 LTS does not inc a Gnome 3 with fallback like "gubuntu" I think Ubuntu is doomed.
Ubuntu will find it almost impossible be sucess on phones and tablets. They will gets sued to death by patents trolls.
92 • improved implementation of the ext4 file system? (by Roy H Huddleston on 2011-11-24 14:40:16 GMT from United States)
I noticed this on the ZevenOS.
93 • correction to #86 (by jack on 2011-11-24 18:12:55 GMT from Canada)
The dvd will load on a 64 bit amd 4 core cpu,( this is being typed on it) but will not load on a Celeron 2mhz 32 bit cpu. (the celeron is old). The cd loads on the celeron.(loads fast)
94 • @59 Thanks for the tip! (by jason from canada on 2011-11-24 19:49:39 GMT from Canada)
I've been searching for a cross-platform filesystem for a while. This is a godsend. I'm aware of UDF but thought it was a file system only for DVD. Now I've tried it out for a few days on my windows and linux boxes and found no big issues. For people who want to use UDF, here are a few tips:
1. Change the partition type to FAT or NTFS; otherwise windows wont automount. 2. Format under windows: format x: /Q /FS:UDF 3. Format under linux: mkudffs --media-type=hd -b 512 /dev/XXX
There are some small glitches such as if not cleanly removed under linux, windows have trouble reading it. Also windows are a little slow to mount it. But I can live with these.
Still FAT is more portable but UDF is a good alternative with no restriction on filesize.
95 • More HAIKU OS news please (by ruth on 2011-11-24 19:52:13 GMT from Spain)
Hi, Great to see that added to the database. I would like to read more news about Haiku. I tried on an old Pentium3 and it worked great. Thanks.
96 • Hey Adam W. (by buntunub on 2011-11-24 19:59:19 GMT from United States)
Remember from last week's discussion you commented that Mint is getting a free pass with their work on MSGE?..
Well, eat your heart out!
link to article here: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jamies-mostly-linux-stuff-10006480/linux-mint-12-released-the-peacemaker-10024867/
"What about functionality? Well, it is an interesting combination of Mint 11 (Gnome 2) and Gnome 3. Click the Mint Menu icon at the bottom left corner, and you get something that looks pretty much like the Mint 11 menu. It neither looks nor works exactly the same as the old Mint Menu, but it is a very good approximation created within the bounds of what is possible under Gnome 3."
Given the findings here (plus my own testing), and given Ubuntu's dramatic fall on the DW PHR's, one can conclude that "the people have spoken" when given a choice between Unity and/or GNOME3. Now, assuming there has been a metric truckload of cash spent on developing these new models (and I am sure there has been), one could also infer that a large chunk of the Open Source enthusiasts are Desktop users who prefer a Desktop friendly DE such as KDE, XFCE, and GNOME2 who's interests simply do not align with the special interest contributors. This is my take on it and I could be wrong, but this also seems to be strongly reflected across multiple websites and forums across the community spectrum.
97 • @88 (by django on 2011-11-25 10:19:00 GMT from Netherlands)
Spot on!
Gnome3 gives me headaches and stress because I can't find anything intuitively. Shutdwon should be part of Gnome3. Period.
Mind you, I'm also very reluctant to move over to for example google chrome because it doesn't have this drop down list of addresses I typed in before. How good that software might be, I will never use it. Lately I have encountered the same "feature" in Opera and so now I'm sticking to Firefox forever.
98 • Gnome 3 (by Judd on 2011-11-25 16:06:27 GMT from Canada)
How sad, these Gnome 3 code grinders are sooo out of touch. They took all criticisms that Windows gets by accident, then did them all on purpose. Gnome went from first to last in a split nanosecond. Gnome 3 has become a boutique DE.
99 • Why upgrade? (by Joseph on 2011-11-25 18:15:42 GMT from United States)
@45 If a change to WINE caused a problem with a program you use, why upgrade WINE? If WINE was running the Windows programs you needed to run without problems, then there's no need to touch it.
You could also have run that copy of Windows you bought in VirtualBox and continued to use Linux as your desktop.
Similarly with Gnome 3. Maybe you were left with no choice because the distro you were using moved to it, but there's always XFCE, which seems like a clone of Gnome 2 anyway. There's also KDE, a nice, normal, non-touch-oriented, standard Windows-like metaphor desktop.
Regarding SUSE, you probably had an Intel video chip in your laptop that simply needed the "nomodeset" option appended during boot. Chris from The Linux Action Show tried the latest release of OpenSUSE, 12.1, on a laptop Linux always fails to install on because of dual graphics chips. OpenSUSE 12.1 was smart enough to detect the issues with the laptop and drop into a text-based install automatically!
100 • Congrats to HaikuOS (by klu9 on 2011-11-25 21:10:53 GMT from Mexico)
Congrats to HaikuOS, the heir of the OS that got me started "hopping", back when Win98 kept crashing 5-6 times a day AND would give me a message on restart that made it sound like it was *my* fault. Grrrrr....
Downloaded, installed and booted the BeOS R5 Personal Edition in no time. Damn it was fast, light and stable! Of course my first "hop" also introduced me to the delights of hardware incompatibilities, missing drivers and trawling the internet looking for solutions, which often involve this crazy thing called "the command line". :P
Oh, how things have changed in the last ten years.....
101 • Good Job (by gabbman - Gord on 2011-11-26 04:02:22 GMT from Canada)
I have not used linux for the last few years and drop by just to see what's going on, Jesse and Ladislav it is as it I never left, you are doing a great job here keeping the information flowing.
Thanks
102 • Linux Mint 12 (by Neb on 2011-11-27 03:52:21 GMT from Canada)
I was reading about Mint 12 from many sources and one thing is really true - it is a very, very good solution to make people like Gnome 3. It is done with stile and genius. However, the first thing I was concern about is: drafting using DraftSight and Bricscad. As for DraftSight it couldn't be installed because it needed a rendering library part that I couldn't resolve after several search through the Net. Then I installed Bricscad and it was fine except that it behaved a little unpredictable. I didn't spend much time around it - I just wanted to see what am I going to deal with in the future. At the end, I am not really happy about Gnome 3 and all the changes. I see no reason for it and even if they have to happen, why would such a free (as freedom) group of people intentionally limit us, the users, from having a choice and just saying: it is the new way - so take it or leave it? I don't believe that even MS would do such a thing to their customers. I think it is maybe a step in the right direction but it was done the wrong way. I also believe that other developers of different applications should have warned about the changes and be given time to adjust and change what ever they needed to change to make it all play nice together. However, I am in no way any kind of expert but again, I thought that Linux was there for people by the people...
103 • Opensuse 12.1 kde (by walter_j on 2011-11-27 06:30:12 GMT from Canada)
I tried mint 12 but still have trouble with the gnome 3 foundation of mint. I can't put my finger on it right now, but it rubs me the wrong way...
I also tried opensuse 12.1 gnome 3, but after a few days wiped it for kde version. The kde version is kde done right. I wish kubuntu was as solid as this. Everything i tried worked and worked well. Even my azentech x-raider 7.1 sound card worked in addition to the motherboard sound system. I struggled so much with kubuntu on this issue and never did get it working properly. This is a keeper I think. Even though they made a deal with those that can't be named.
104 • USB drive filesystems (by Alan on 2011-11-27 07:49:44 GMT from United States)
One corner reason to use a GNU/Linux filesystem, like ext3 or ext4, is for placing a directory tree under git control. I have found it useful to manually extablish the UID and GID of my account to match that of the Git tracked directory tree on other systems. A bare clone of a git tree is made on the flash drive. I think this bare tree is not readable as text.
It is not possible to use this approach on FAT filesystems. Of course, I don't try, because I am happy with the solution.
105 • linux mint (by jon on 2011-11-28 03:06:11 GMT from United States)
Well I got to download the new mint 12 , and it did not take long for me to make my mind up on this one eather , one or the other. this inbetween thing is'nt working.......but that is just one mans opinion
Number of Comments: 105
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• Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
• Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
• Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
• Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
• Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
• Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
• Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
• Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
• Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
• Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
• Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
• Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
• Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
• Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
• Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
• Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
• Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
• Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
• Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
• Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
• Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
• Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
• Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
• Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
• Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
• Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
• Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
• Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
• Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
• Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
• Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
• Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
• Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
• Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
• Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
• Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
• Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
• Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
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Pop!_OS
Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring a custom GNOME desktop. Pop!_OS is designed to have a minimal amount of clutter on the desktop without distractions in order to allow the user to focus on work. The distribution is developed by Linux computer retailer System76.
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