 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 439, 16 January 2012 |
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Welcome to this year's third issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Kororaa Linux is a relatively little-known project whose goal is to deliver a better end-user experience on top of a standard Fedora build. Jesse Smith takes the latest version for a spin to find out whether the small group of Kororaa developers have been able to really improve on its parent. In the news section, FreeBSD's Ken Smith explains the delay between the release of ISO images and the official announcement, Canonical extends long-term support to Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu 12.04, Jonathan Carter takes a look at the latest release of Ubuntu's Unity desktop, and Debian GNU/Linux becomes the most widely-used and fastest growing web hosting platform. Also in this issue, two interesting interviews with openSUSE's Frédéric Crozat and Debian's Steve McIntyre and a link to an excellent overview of Linux Mint, currently the darling of the desktop Linux world. Finally, if you are concerned about the possible effects of the controversial SOPA legislation in the USA on open-source software development, the Questions and Answers section explains the situation in plain English. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (26MB) and MP3 (27MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
First look at Kororaa Linux 16
 Regular readers may recall that toward the end of 2011 I reviewed Fedora 16, the latest release from the Red Hat-sponsored project. Fedora's latest did have some points in its favour -- great hardware support, a smooth transition to systemd and an installer which, while having some issues, is still better than most Linux installers available. But I'm sorry to say that I also found several issues with the release: none of the graphical package managers were useful, Fedora shipped with the notorious plain GNOME Shell as the default desktop environment, the default install comes with a small selection of software and adding non-free repositories is a manual process. All in all the experience had its frustrations and so it was with cautious optimism I approached Kororaa Linux 16. Kororaa is based on Fedora and adds various extras and makes tweaks to the underlying system in much the same way Linux Mint makes adjustments to Ubuntu.
According to the Kororaa Linux website some of the modifications made to vanilla Fedora are the addition of extra repositories, third-party driver support through Jockey, and a full array of useful software is included in the default install. The distribution is available in two flavours, KDE and GNOME, and each edition is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. When I did the review of Fedora I tried the default GNOME desktop and some readers requested a similar look at the KDE edition. For that reason I opted to download the 32-bit KDE edition of Kororaa Linux 16. The live DVD doubles as installation media and its image file is approximately 1.6 GB in size.
Booting off the live DVD takes us to the KDE desktop. On the desktop are icons for bringing up KDE's help files, launching the installer and opening the project's README file. The README document mostly focuses on how to install non-free drivers and where to find help and additional documentation. At the bottom of the screen we find the application menu, the task switcher and the system tray.
Kororaa Linux 16 - browsing the web with Firefox
(full image size: 668kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
I won't go into much detail where the installer is concerned as I didn't find anything to set it apart from Fedora's. It walks us through setting the keyboard layout, creating a hostname, and selecting our time zone. We have several partitioning options, including the manual creation of normal partitions, LVM, RAID and encryption. We can also choose to let the installer work out the layouts for us automatically. The installer's last step is to install a boot loader (GRUB 2) to the location of our choosing. Like the upstream project, Kororaa may require a small BIOS partition to be in place, a feature which hasn't become common in other distributions yet.
The first time we boot Kororaa Linux from the hard drive we're presented with a series of screens. We are asked to confirm the license conditions, set the current time & date and create a regular user account. We also have the option of submitting a Smolt hardware profile upstream. Sending the profile is entirely optional, but I recommend doing so as it gives developers an idea of what hardware needs to be supported in the Linux community. Logging into KDE for the first time my initial impression was that while the desktop is fairly clean and uncluttered it was also a bit sluggish. Disabling desktop indexing brings KDE back to normal performance. I was happy to note that disabling indexing didn't result in the system popping up warnings as I encountered when last reviewing Kubuntu.
Let's take a look at package management next. Kororaa Linux has taken a positive step, in my opinion, by providing Yum Extender as the default package manager front-end. Yum Extender, while a touch on the slow side, has a nice interface and provides the usual collection of filters and features we can expect from a modern package manager. We can search for packages by name, filter items by installation status, view detailed output, manage repositories and perform add, remove and upgrade actions. Once Kororaa had been installed I opened Yum Extender to upgrade all available packages and found there were over 250 items waiting to be installed. Fortunately Yum Extender has a "select all" button and it dutifully slogged through each available update. There is another package manager front-end, called Apper, which is available through the KDE System Settings panel. This interface would start up and stall. After several minutes with no sign of progress or life I'd give up and terminate the Apper application.
Kororaa Linux 16 - applying updates with Yum Extender
(full image size: 493kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
Which brings me to another issue I had regarding packages. Sometimes one application (YUM, Yum Extender or Apper) would kick off an action and either fail or get interrupted or would complete and close down and the PackageKit process would remain running in the background, gobbling CPU and refusing to let any further actions to be performed on software packages. Killing the PackageKit process would cause it to respawn, effectively preventing the administrator from managing software on the system. Managing software on Kororaa wasn't all bad. The YUM command line program works quite well and quickly. It's especially good at performing updates, downloading delta RPMs instead of complete packages. This can save the user up to 90% bandwidth in some cases. And, as I mentioned above, I had no serious complaints when using Yum Extender.
One more item while I'm on the subject of updates. When I upgraded Kororaa's kernel from 3.1.5 to 3.1.6 my systems refused to boot. Switching back to the previous kernel, which was kept during the upgrade, restored working order. I checked for bug reports of this issue, but it appears no one else hasencountered the same problem, so it may be a quirk with my specific equipment.
The Kororaa distribution comes with a great pile of software. Glancing through the application menu we find the Firefox web browser, KMail, KTorrent and the messenger programs Kopete and Konversation. (You may be noticing a theme involving the letter "K".) The KPPP dialer is included, as are Amarok, the KAudioCreator CD ripper, the K3b disc burner, the Choqok micro-blogger client and Linphone for VoIP. The Handbrake DVD ripper is included, along with the VLC multimedia player, Audacity and the Kdenlive video editor. LibreOffice is available in the menu as are the GIMP, a PDF viewer, an image viewer, Inkscape and the digiKam digital camera utility. A sampling of KDE games is featured, as is the KRename utility for renaming groups of files. The KDE Info Center is in the menu, as is the System Settings control panel for managing the look and feel of the desktop.
For protecting our privacy we're given KGpg and Kleopatra. There's a text-to-speech program, a drop-down virtual terminal (which I very much enjoyed using), an archive manager, text editor and calculator. Kororaa includes the upstream system configuration tools. These programs make it easy to manage user accounts, configure the firewall (which is enabled by default), we can enable/disable services, work with SELinux and change the date & time. In the background we find version 3.1 of the Linux kernel and the GCC. Flash isn't installed by default, but it's easy to grab from the package manager. OpenJDK is installed to provide us with a Java implementation. Looking further we find that Firefox is armed with useful extensions such as AdBlock and DownloadThemAll.
Kororaa Linux 16 - adjusting system settings
(full image size: 477kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
I tried running Kororaa Linux on the same computers I used when testing Fedora. One was a generic desktop box (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card), the other was my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, Intel video card). As with its parent, Kororaa properly detected and configured all of my hardware without any problems. My Intel wireless card worked out of the box and found local wireless networks without any input from me. The distribution, while running KDE and associated services, used just under 300 MB of RAM and, after running the system in a virtual environment, I would recommend having more than 512 MB of memory available for the operating system.
Running Kororaa Linux it's easy to see where Chris Smart, the project's founder, has improved upon the upstream distribution. Kororaa comes with a great supply of software and, with the additional repositories configured, it makes adding more packages easy with no need to manually enable third-party repositories. When one factors in the codecs, useful default applications and the Jockey tool for fetching third-party drivers the Fedora test bed becomes more appealing to end-users. I didn't try the GNOME edition, but Mr Smart tells me it comes with GNOME Tweak and extensions (similar to Mint's GNOME Extensions), which should make transitioning from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 a smooth experience. That being said, some of the issues I had with Fedora remain in Kororaa. Specifically package management is still awkward. Having Yum Extender was an improvement over upstream's front-end, but it's still quite slow. The Apper update app didn't work for me and PackageKit would sometimes lock-up and put a halt to any software transactions. Fortunately one can usually fall back to the YUM command line program to get things done.
Nitpicking aside, Kororaa Linux is definitely a step forward. The software available and the relative ease of getting it is nice, the default applications provided are the ones people are actually likely to use and the extensions for the GNOME edition should make using GNOME Shell a much more pleasant experience. If I may borrow a phrase from Mint's fans, Kororaa is Fedora done right. There is still work to be done, but Kororaa has got a good start on making Fedora into a system appealing to desktop users. When corresponding with Chris Smart he wrote something which I feel nicely sums up my own feelings on Kororaa and I'd like to share it with you: "There's so much more to do, but I'm getting there slowly. I think what I've come up with in a year is pretty decent, but it's still a long way to go. Hopefully people see the potential in Kororaa and over time the community can grow. It's getting there."
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
FreeBSD 9.0 update, testing Unity 5.0, new features in Fedora 17, interviews with Debian's Steve McIntyre and openSUSE's Frédéric Crozat, Linux Mint overview
 FreeBSD 9.0 was finally announced late last week. Many DistroWatch readers noticed that the 9.0 ISO images had been made available long (a week or so) before the official announcement went out. The reason for this unusual delay was a late bug discovered after the first set of ISO images had been sent to the FTP servers. Ken Smith explains: "Lots of you noticed that the 9.0-RELEASE ISO and 'memstick' images appeared on the FTP sites a while ago. But as pointed out this release turned out to be an example of why the 'official policy' is that it's not truly released until the announcement email gets sent out. I had not tested using sysinstall(8) to install pre-built packages from the DVD during my initial testing since we're sorta moving away from sysinstall(8). I had just tested installing the pre-built packages using pkg_add(8). Someone noticed sysinstall(8) misbehaved before I got the images put up on BitTorrent and the fix was simply adding one file to the DVD image that the new build infrastructure omitted since bsdinstall(8) doesn't use it. So I went ahead with replacing the DVD images on the FTP site. That's also why we waited longer than normal between the images appearing on the FTP sites and the announcement - we gave extra time to try and make sure the updated images got to all the FTP mirrors. Sorry about the screw-up." So for those who emailed last week to say that FreeBSD 9.0 was "released", here is a quick reminder: nothing is released until it's announced!
On a related note, NetBSD 5.1.1 ISO images appeared on the project's FTP server on January 4th, but nearly two weeks later the new release has still not been announced. In fact, the project's home page still promotes version 5.1 as the latest stable NetBSD. Another screw-up or just plain absent-mindedness?
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 As announced previously, Ubuntu's upcoming release, version 12.04, will be a so-called LTS release, which means that both the desktop and server editions will be supported with security updates for five years. Last week we also learnt that besides Ubuntu, three other Canonical products, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu, will also benefit from long-term support. The H Open in "Ubuntu variants to get 12.04 LTS releases": "The Ubuntu Technical Board has approved three separate proposals which will see Long-Term Support (LTS) editions of the KDE-based Kubuntu, Xfce-based Xubuntu and education-oriented Edubuntu appear alongside Ubuntu 12.04 LTS when it is released in April. The Kubuntu LTS proposal is the second LTS release of the KDE-based variant, the first having been Kubuntu 10.04 LTS. The developers plan to have a five-year support cycle following Canonical's October revision of its desktop LTS plans. The Kubuntu developers say that a 12.04 LTS edition, which would include the stable and mature Qt 4 and KDE 4, should be well-timed, as later in the year Qt 5 will arrive and KDE Frameworks 5 will begin development. The Edubuntu proposal is similar, and tracks the Kubuntu proposal as many of the packages that are not in Ubuntu but are in Edubuntu, are managed by the Kubuntu developers."
The Unity desktop has been subjected to many an unflattering review in tech media since the release of Ubuntu 11.10, so it's with nervous anticipation that many Ubuntu fans await a (hopefully) much-improved desktop experience in "Precise Pangolin", Ubuntu's next version, currently in alpha stages of development. And indeed, the just-released Unity 5.0 seems to have addressed some of the criticism. Edubuntu's Jonathan Carter has given Unity another go: "Yesterday I installed Unity 5.0 and I was pleasantly surprised by some of its new features. I can set the panel background colour. By default, the Unity panel adapts itself to match the wallpaper colour. This doesn't always work out, and with certain background colours it looks really horrible with the icons on it. I set mine to a none-harsh, dark grey and can now see my icons without any desire to fork out my eyes. I can set the launcher panel to be ever present. I have plenty of horizontal screen space and I find it annoying not having a window list present on my display. When I have to hover my mouse to the left edge and wait a few hundred milliseconds before I even see the list of open applications and where they are positioned, it just annoys me. Having them always on-screen is just so much easier. It's fast and more stable. Unity 5.0 is noticeably more snappy than it's predecessors. It also feels less buggy." For information on how to install Unity 5.0 on Ubuntu 11.10 please see this article (with a video and screenshots) by Muktware.
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 Fedora has a reputation of being one of the most innovative Linux distributions on the market. As such, many Linux users like to keep an eye on the features page for the distro's upcoming release in order to see what exciting things are likely to be included (not only) in the next stable Fedora. Michael Larabel has summarised the latest in "Fedora 17 Has More Features: GIMP 2.8, GCC 4.7, oVirt, Etc": "The 'Beefy Miracle' already has a beefy list of possible changes like maybe the Btrfs file system by default, multi-touch advancements, GNOME Shell software rendering, and many other features, but now there's even more. At the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting on Monday (9 January), several more Fedora 17 features were approved. Here's the features that were just approved to be part of the Beefy Miracle: Erland R15 language support; GCC 4.7 as the default compiler; GHC 7.4 update; GIMP 2.8 image application and its plethora of changes; the GNOME 3.4 package set as the default desktop environment and replacing GNOME 3.2 as found in Fedora 16; Lohit Unicode 6.0 support, which is for Indian scripts (Assamese/Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu) with improved fonts too; the Linux kernel in Fedora 17 will now enable the LIO target sub-system for iSCSI and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) support." Fedora 17 is currently scheduled for release on 8 May 2012.
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 Which do you think is the most popular Linux distribution deployed on web servers? If your answer is Debian GNU/Linux, then you are correct - that's based on the latest W3Tech's report: Debian is now used by 9.6% of all websites (up from 8.9% one year ago, and 8% two years ago), which is equivalent to 29.4% of all Linux-based sites. It is also the fastest growing operating system at the moment: every day 54 of the top 1 million sites switch to Debian. This growth comes primarily from websites that are starting to use Linux, because we see in the technology change report that many sites subsequently switch from Debian to the Ubuntu distribution (which is based on Debian). Debian gains market share from all other Linux distributions, mostly from CentOS, openSuSE and Fedora. Debian is a little bit less popular amongst high-traffic sites, but 8.5% of the top 1,000 sites is still very strong. If we look at which web servers run on Debian boxes, we see that Nginx and Lighttpd servers very often run on top of Debian (almost 60%), however Apache still is by far the most popular web server when we look at all Debian servers. An overwhelming majority of all Linux servers use PHP as server-side language, and Debian is no exception." The website you happen to be reading at this moment is just one of the many out there powered by the world's largest Linux distribution ;-)
Still on the subject of Debian GNU/Linux, here is a link to an interview with Steve McIntyre, a former Debian Project Leader and current Debian-CD maintainer: "Q: What are your plans for Debian 'Wheezy'? A: There are three main tracks here. Obviously, I'm interested in seeing armhf release with 'Wheezy'. We've just been added to 'Testing' last weekend, so that's going well. We've got over 90% of the archive built now, and we're mopping up the remaining issues. I'm the primary maintainer of cdrkit at this point, but I'd prefer to have it go away. Xorriso and the associated software in libisoburn is almost capable of replacing all the ageing cdrtools-derived software that we have in Debian, The only missing feature that I'm aware of is creating the HFS hybrid file systems that we use for installations on Mac OS X systems. I've been talking with the upstream folks about this for some time already, and I'm hoping we can finish this soon enough that we can get it into Wheezy. Finally, I've got the ever-growing wish list of things for Debian-CD. We've got the beginnings of an automated test suite that Martín Ferrari has written, but it needs integrating and improving. I want to help get regular weekly, daily and release Debian Live builds running on the main CD build machine. There's work needed if we want to make good installation media for the new multi-arch world, too. The Emdebian people are asking for help making CD images."
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 And speaking of interesting interviews, here is a link to another one -- only this time the interviewee is a (former Mandriva and current) openSUSE developer. From "People of openSUSE: Frédéric Crozat": My name is Frédéric Crozat, I'm 36 and I live in Paris (France). I'm working for SUSE for a little more than a year, with focus on various topics such as SUSE MeeGo, GNOME 3 live image, LXC (Linux Containers) and more recently, systemd. Before that, I worked for ten years at MandrakeSoft and Mandriva, taking care of GNOME. From 2002 to 2011, I was part of GNOME Release Team, making sure GNOME was released on time and with all those nice features. I've been interested in computer since I was a kid (first computer was a MSX Canon V20). The first 'big program' (on a PC 8086 with 10 MB hard disk, if I remember correctly) I wrote was a billing program for my mum (she owns a bookstore), when I was in 7th grade (first in Quick Basic), then I rewrote it in Turbo Pascal when I learned Pascal in 2nd grade and later, I even rewrote it in Object Oriented Pascal (because I bought Borland Pascal 6 or 7, shipped with huge printed user manual which included object-oriented stuff) when I was in college. And my mum used this program (on the same computer) until she closed her shop seven years ago."
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 Finally, a link to a well-written and comprehensive overview of possibly the fastest-growing desktop Linux distribution - Linux Mint. So what is the reason for the project's success? As Richard Hillesley argues in "HealthCheck: Linux Mint", it's the developers' focus on usability: [Clement] Lefebvre's aim is clear. 'There's a new generation of desktops out there', he has written, 'including GNOME Shell and Unity. These desktops are shiny, they look good and they're slowly gaining popularity. They're based on new and exciting technologies but they also come with a cost... they're re-inventing the way we use our computers. It's neither right or wrong of course, but it will only appeal to a certain category of users... and there are a lot of people out there, myself included, who aren't convinced the traditional desktops were bad and who are concerned about not having a choice as more and more people switch towards these new technologies. With Cinnamon we're jumping on these new technologies and we're able to provide something that looks as modern as Unity and Shell, without reinventing the wheel when it comes to user experience.' Mint began as an experiment, and happened upon a niche in the market where people were looking for an easy way to install codecs, and became popular as a result."
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
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SOPA and open-source software
Wondering-about-blacklists asks: Does SOPA pose a threat to open-source software?
DistroWatch answers: In case you haven't been following in the news in North America, SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It's an act currently making its way through the American government and it has caused a great deal of debate and concern, especially in tech circles. There are several aspects to the could-be law, but the main points are that if the act is passed it would allow the legal arm of the government to order the removal of DNS records of sites thought to enable piracy. It would also allow the government to order the removal of websites from search engine results and it would cause websites hosting user-generated content to police that content. Removing a website's DNS records and stripping it from search engine results would, effectively, remove the website from the Internet as far as most users are concerned.
While this act is localized to the United States of America, the effects are likely to be felt around the world if it passes. Your website might not be within the borders of the United States of America, but search engines like Google and Bing do have to answer to American law. A website selling items or services in Europe may rely on Americans being able to find their website. The possible effects of this bill have raised a lot of concerns and there are rumours that websites like Google, Facebook and Amazon may take steps to encourage their users to oppose the act.
Now, back to the question of whether SOPA is a threat to open-source software. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think SOPA is going to have any direct influence on open source in general. The act is concerned with piracy, with shutting down copyright violations. Open source software operates within the realm of copyright law, but doesn't lend itself to violations, at least not through normal use and copying. In fact free licenses like the GPL support copying works, support legally spreading intellectual property. It follows that open-source projects in general will not find themselves under attack if the act passes. While open source in general may not be at risk I suspect, should this act pass, specific projects may come under fire. There are quite a few open-source BitTorrent clients, along with other peer-to-peer programs out there. Likewise, browser plugins which allow a person to easily download content embedded on a web page may be pressured by SOPA. These tools have perfectly legitimate uses, but, like any useful tool, they can be misused. Those cases of misuse may draw the eye of the law and it is hard to tell just how aggressively the law will be used in the event SOPA passes.
To learn more about SOPA, please visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website. Thy have more information on the act and they can help put you get in touch with your local representative if you live in the United States.
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| Released Last Week |
Fuduntu 2012.1
Andrew Wyatt has announced the release of Fuduntu 2012.1, a new quarterly update of the distribution that was forked from Fedora last year: "The Fuduntu quarterly installation ISO image (2012.1) is now available for immediate download. This release marks a shift in release numbering. Going forward, Fuduntu releases will be numbered as follows: Year.Release. As we are a rolling release distribution with quarterly snapshots, you should expect four roll-up releases this year. We do not define a specific release date, we release when we believe it is ready which may happen at any time after the beginning of each quarter. Package updates in this release: Linux Kernel 3.1.6, Chromium 16, Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.55. Many new packages are available in the repository including Xfce 4.8, LibreOffice 3.4.3, and Firefox and Thunderbird 9." Read the full release announcement for a more detailed description of the changes.
Asturix 4
Ricardo López has announced the release of Asturix 4, an Ubuntu-based desktop distribution with a custom desktop environment and many usability improvements: "The team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Asturix 4. Some of its features: a new desktop experience, we have developed a new desktop environment to improve usability and productivity, and to help you stay focused; the biggest color palette in the world by default - we signed a partnership with GiveLifeCS so you can enjoy more than 5,000 colors while using GIMP, Inkscape or another design application; previews - now you don't have to open LibreOffice to preview a document, hit space on any file, with any extension and preview it; integrated social and microblogging networks, such as Twitter, Facebook or Identi.ca; Asturix Bridge lets you add, remove and execute web applications as native applications; Chromium web browser, LibreOffice, GIMP, Clementine, VLC...." Here is the full release announcement with a screenshot.
Asturix 4 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with a custom desktop
(full image size: 886kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Astaro Security Gateway 8.3
Angelo Comazzetto has announced the release of Astaro Security Gateway 8.3, a specialist distribution for firewall and gateways: "I am pleased to announce that we have released Astaro Security Gateway (ASG) 8.300 via our Up2Date distribution network. The main features of this release are Amazon Machine Images of Astaro Security Gateway (along with Astaro Command Center), an integrated connector for the Amazon Private Cloud (VPC), ASG Site-to-Site VPN Tunnels using our RED protocol, support for our Wireless AP50 product, and BGP4 routing support. In addition, we have added numerous tweaks, dozens of stability improvements and increased the performance of many features. This release will solidify your ASG 8 installation and give you the best Astaro experience yet." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes detailed information about all the new features.
Webconverger 11.0
Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 11.0, a web browser-only specialist distribution for Internet kiosks. The new version comes with updated Linux kernel version 3.1.8, Firefox 9.0.1, and several minor security-related tweaks. From the release notes: "I'm very proud to announce Webconverger 11, with the following improvements: Firefox 9; ability to change browser chrome options at boot time; quieter boots; several enhancements on the Firefox Webconverger extension; security tweaks to make the control script harder to override; new logo and site design; networking interface naming bug spotted and fixed. Do have a look at our new public statistics site, detailing Webconverger usage. New users please download Webconverger and test out if it's a good public kiosk solution for your community. We have a friendly support group if you have any questions."
FreeBSD 9.0
The FreeBSD Engineering Team has announced the release of FreeBSD 9.0, a major new version of the BSD operating featuring a brand-new system installer: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on stable/8 and adds many new features. Some of the highlights: a new installer, bsdinstall(8) has been added and is the installer used by the ISO images provided as part of this release; the Fast file system now supports softupdates journaling; ZFS updated to version 28; updated ATA/SATA drivers support AHCI, moved into updated CAM framework; Highly Available Storage (HAST) framework; kernel support for Capsicum Capability Mode, an experimental set of features for sandboxing support; user-level DTrace...." Read the release announcement for highlights and the release notes for a detailed description of new features.
PC-BSD 9.0
Kris Moore has announced the release of PC-BSD 9.0, a desktop-oriented distribution based on the latest stable FreeBSD: "The PC-BSD development team and iXsystems are pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD version 9.0. Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE, this is also the first PC-BSD which offers users a variety of desktop environments to chose from, such as KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE and more. Also available are pre-built VirtualBox / VMware images with integrated guest tools for rapid virtual system deployment, and native support for installing directly to OS X BootCamp partitions. Highlights: improved PBI system, allows library sharing, binary diff updating, custom repositories, digital signing; support for 'freebsd-update' via the System Update GUI; new Control Panel...." Here is the full release announcement.
ArtistX 1.2
Marco Ghirlanda has announced the release of ArtistX 1.2, an Ubuntu-based distribution designed for musicians and other artists, and featuring a large collection of multimedia and graphics software: "After nearly ten years of development and more than ten versions, the ArtistX 1.2 multimedia studio on a DVD is finally here. It's an Ubuntu 11.10-based live DVD that turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio. ArtistX 1.2 is created with the Relinux 'successor of Remastersys' software for live DVDs and includes the 3.0.0-15 Linux kernel, GNOME 3 and KDE 4.7 and about 2,500 free multimedia software packages, nearly everything that exists for the GNU/Linux operating system organized in the GNOME menu. Main features: based on Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' without Unity with all updates (from October 2011); most of GNU/Linux multimedia packages and the very easy Ubiquity installer. The password for sudo and installation is blank (just press 'Enter')." Visit the project's home page to read the full release announcement.
ArtistX 1.2 - an Ubuntu-based distribution with 2,500 multimedia software packages
(full image size: 829kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
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New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Bachata Linux. Bachata Linux is a minimal Debian-based Linux system with fully functional Bash shell (with GNU Coreutils, not BusyBox), TCP/IP networking with DHCP client and APT setup to be able to install any package from the Debian repositories. The installation media is 68 MB, needs no Internet connection and the installation is really quick. The installed system will use 160 MB disk space. (As a comparison, Debian 6.0 "netinst" media is 191 MB, takes long time to install and will use at least 330 MB disk space after installation.)
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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, 23 January 2012.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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1 • PC-BSD 9 released (by django on 2012-01-16 10:35:47 GMT from Netherlands)
As a FreeBSD server user for years this weekend Idownloaded PC-BSD 9.0 and installed it on Virtualbox.
What a surprise to have a beautiful looking BSD based desktop running flash and have everything working out of the box. I played for it a while and noticed the light resources (under 300mb) when first logging in on my XFCE4 desktop.
As a consequence I have decided to jump ship and get rid of Ubuntu on my primary desktop as it almost became unusable due to its memory consumption. With a AMD64 single processor and 4 gb RAM I should have no troubles running a new operating system.
It feels good to head "home" again and use BSD based technology on the desktop as well.
2 • Killer feature (by openSUSE User on 2012-01-16 10:47:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
>When I upgraded Kororaa's kernel from 3.1.5 to 3.1.6 my systems refused to boot. Switching back to the previous kernel, which was kept during the upgrade, restored working order. I checked for bug reports of this issue, but it appears no one else has encountered the same problem, so it may be a quirk with my specific equipment.
The worst I encountered with Kororaa 16 KDE 64-bit edition was a tendency to freeze for a minute or so before shutting down, an issue that didn't arise with Fedora 16. However, after a day or so, F16 was unable to boot beyond being given the (correct!) password for an encrypted Btrfs /home partition. The curse of the missing BIOS Boot partition?
3 • @ Jesse (by Anonymous on 2012-01-16 11:23:33 GMT from United States)
The OSNews blog posting that you've linked to, is based on someone talking out of his hind end. Holwerda did not bother to comprehend the article he linked to. He just seized upon a half-baked idea for his own bloviation on humanity's imminent demise from legislation that hasn't been finalized yet.
Anyway, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are most certainly not going to go dark to protest the latest threat to the human race's very existence. See, they are spending too much money lobbying to include language they like in the bill, to waste their time in pointless 'protests' in support of people that steal their music, movies, games, and software. You know, the problem that everyone is dancing around when they discuss the bill.
4 • SOPA (by ix on 2012-01-16 11:58:42 GMT from Romania)
I think the lesson here is that the rest of the world must separate itself from the USA, and any stupid laws they make or any financial crises they start should not affect the rest of the world. There is an obvious solution to SOPA, sites can move their infrastructure outside the USA, the yankees have their information filtered anyway.
5 • SOPA (by divadgnol on 2012-01-16 12:03:04 GMT from United States)
I for one will contact my local government officials in opposition of this act. Not because I'm a proponent of downloading illegal content but because I believe in limited government.
I support the prosecution of those that sell and distribute illegal content, especially if it directly effects the artist, etc.
I also fear that opensource software that is used by nefarious individuals will be targeted and not the individuals that are using said software.
divadgnol
6 • @5 (by ix on 2012-01-16 12:14:25 GMT from Romania)
Do you fear that Lady Gaga will not have what to eat tomorrow if you "illegally download" her album?
7 • SOPA and prohibition (by silent on 2012-01-16 13:14:18 GMT from France)
SOPA sounds like the effects of prohibition in the US. Some sources claim that ten thousand people died during that period due to poisons added to industrial alcohol at the request of the US government. The era gave birth to some of the largest crime syndicates as well. Criminalizing alcohol had no better consequences than criminalizing drugs. Although there are concerns regarding the constitution and the freedom of speech; this draft is just plain stupid, because it is going to boost internet crime and copyright infringement by actively promoting new encryption, P2P and distributed system technologies without any guarantee of security for the users. The governments will lose even the little control they have over the web at the moment.
8 • @6 (by Antonio on 2012-01-16 13:32:44 GMT from United States)
To answer the question. Lady Gaga and other artists will have food to eat, they can collect food stamps since the govt. is very generous and kind.
As long as Linux/BSD is available for us, they(US Govt) should not block use of our favorite operating systems.
9 • STOP SOPA (by Daniel Mery on 2012-01-16 13:54:32 GMT from United States)
We need to STOP SOPA...
Its about freedom...
:)
10 • ArtistX (by JJ on 2012-01-16 13:55:21 GMT from Netherlands)
If you guys have a bit of free time, think of Marco Ghirlanda, who is sick, and pray for his return to good health. Thank you!
11 • SOPA, PC-BSD (by Ron on 2012-01-16 13:59:57 GMT from United States)
SOPA will eventually have an impact with open source, well with a lot of things. One major issue is between SOPA and the Protect IP act they can shut down websites with simply a complaint. No due process, nothing. While I to think piracy is wrong these two laws are so far reaching that they will have serious impact on the internet itself, as well as open source.
One thing this country of mine likes to do is punish law abiding citizens if it protects corporate profit. They use the excuse it is to create American jobs, but most of those jobs are not even in this country currently anyways.
This will seriously limit and eventually destroy free speech online. This government uses what ever they can to get their foot in the door and then they take it further over time, adding more restrictions. They care nothing about true freedom, the only care that their corporate buddies need more profit which in turn those buddies give them campaign contributions.
Don't let them fool you into thinking SOPA and the Protect IP act is a good thing for America. It isn't. It is also a very bad thing for the rest of the world. Especially those countries that end up adopting laws the USA pushes on them through threats or sanctions.
-----------------------------------
PC-BSD
I am currently using PC-BSD, which is based on FreeBSD. I have had no issue and I am really liking it. The only thing is the boot time is slower then Debian, but the rest is great. PC-BSD has PBI's but to install software the FreeBSD way is easy enough.
12 • SOPA and PC-BSD (by Koroshiya Itchy on 2012-01-16 14:58:25 GMT from Belgium)
1.- PC-BSD is absolutely great and would be my OS of choice should it have the FreeBSD port collection working flawlessly with something like Debian's apt.
2.- SOPA will have a negative impact in USA's economy. Restricting democracy and freedom and trying to stablish a police state (which is not going to work, anyway) is one more symptom of the decadence of a civilisation. Is like when G. W. Bush restricted the access of word-class scientists to the USA. All the values that made the USA great are in a deep crisis. This sounds like the fall of the Roman Empire.
13 • (K,X,Ed,L)ubuntu LTS 12.04 (by tim on 2012-01-16 15:39:04 GMT from Germany)
Why is it not possible to migrate these few LXDE and Xfce packages into Ubuntu Main for the 12.04 LTS release and support this low number of additional packages for the full five year time period?
14 • SOPA (by vw72 on 2012-01-16 15:39:15 GMT from United States)
It appears that SOPA is dead for the time being, as the US House of Representatives has tabled it. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't be resurrected. Evidently the Obama Administration had some issues with key parts of the bill. Whether it will be redrafted to address those concerns in unclear.
15 • ArtistX question (by Colin on 2012-01-16 16:52:14 GMT from United States)
Anyone have any idea how ArtistX is getting that cool traditional menu in Gnome 3?
16 • SOPA (by Anon on 2012-01-16 16:57:50 GMT from Vietnam)
> "It appears that SOPA is dead for the time being, as the US House of Representatives has tabled it."
That word 'tabled' doesn't mean what you think it means.
> "Whether it will be redrafted to address those concerns in unclear"
It's coming in for some heavy tweaking.
17 • SOPA (by schultzter on 2012-01-16 17:00:17 GMT from Canada)
The only reason SOPA might have some effect is the root DNS servers are in the USA. If it ever becomes law how much you want to bet other countries/regions (ex.: EU) are going to insist on root DNS servers of their own - not only to protect themselves against US actions but to have the same powers themselves!!!
And then how useful is the internet going to be if you have to start "DNS hopping" to find your favourite web site?
18 • SOPA (by Anon on 2012-01-16 17:20:16 GMT from Vietnam)
> "And then how useful is the internet going to be if you have to start "DNS hopping" to find your favourite web site?"
A few million of us are using Google's DNS service. The worry is that we might start looking for DNS provision in much less salubrious quarters (of the Internet).
19 • Re: 18, SOPA (by Coffee on 2012-01-16 18:00:31 GMT from France)
> A few million of us are using Google's DNS service.
... that's a few million too many. There are better DNS providers than Google. Isn't it bad enough that Google plants eternal cookies on your machine, that they scan and analyze your mails, your searches and who knows what else? Why would anyone want to entrust Google with their entire web activities by letting them do the DNS resolution?
20 • SOPA (by MarkSmith on 2012-01-16 18:18:56 GMT from United States)
SOPA could kill open source! It only requires a complaint. How many times has linux be call into question. Block a site, can blocking an OS using or running a site be far behind?
21 • Asturix 4 (by octathlon on 2012-01-16 18:33:24 GMT from United States)
Sorry, but that Asturix 4 screenshot is the most hideous thing I've seen yet. It reminds me of all those years of people peering at their Windows desktops strewn with shortcut icons, trying to find the one they want. I guess they figure lining them up nice makes it better? And they're further camouflaged by that busy background. My worst nightmare of a desktop experience.
22 • Is PC-BSD-9.0-live really live or is it a zombie?! (by LLO on 2012-01-16 18:38:48 GMT from Hungary)
Hi:
Once I had the best installation experience with DesktopBSD 1.7, better than anything in the Linux world. But, no good-things last forever. So, I was looking for a replacement, and started to read reviews on PC-BSD. This system looked to good to believe: fantastic installation options and flexibility, option of installing applications packaged together with all of their dependencies. It is a refreshing leeway to escape unnecessary forced updates.
I tried to test the 8.1 live system. After the really fast runoff display one gets the menu. No highlight, no cursor movement recognition, and a 10-second countdown running! (That 10 seconds not enough to read the menu, not to speaking off figuring out how to stop the countdown, and initiate the live run.) The system went on preparing for installation, and few seconds later reported a panic. On a few more trials, occasionally, I got the live system started up using the serial number in the menu following with a fast enter. But, the installation request resulted in panic again. For 8.2, one finds the same crippled menu. I have never been able to start up the live test of this system. I ended up with something like: "run_interrupt_driven hook: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config", followed by the same for 120, 180, 240 seconds ... ad nauseam, nor could I install it. Now here we are with 9.0 with exactly the same results. This time though, I tried both the live and the installation iso-s.
In the past two years I downloaded about 50 Linux distributions. One of them happened to be stillborn, and another just was hanging with a beautiful picture showing a falling drop of water. With the rest I could pass the startup phase. The situation with PC-BSD puzzles me: Is this only my bad lock, or a conspiracy of some "independent" reviewers?! What sort of witchcraft were they using to bring these dead corps to life again, and make them perform as exemplary distros? Has anyone, has experienced similar situations, or has any rational explanation? Thanks LLO.
23 • @22 PC-BSD (by Ron on 2012-01-16 18:46:05 GMT from United States)
I have never had that experience so I really can't help you with that. I recommend going to the PC-BSD forums (which are more active these days,) and asking there. It is most likely a hardware related issue that is not working right with PC-BSD (I am really guessing with that,) but they will be able to help you trouble shoot it.
For me I am surprised the PC-BSD is working out so well. I still Love Linux and will always use and support it, but now I am equally loving PC-BSD.
I also believe DesktopBSD is active again. I never tried it but I think it is great that DesktopBSD and PC-BSD are working on FreeBSD variants that are user friendly.
PC-BSD forum is here:
http://forums.pcbsd.org/
I hope you can trouble shoot the issue :)
24 • @22 (by Alan UK on 2012-01-16 19:18:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
Regarding the countdown when booting from live media, pressing your keyboards' space bar usually stops it on most distros I've tried.
25 • SOPA (by Teddy on 2012-01-16 20:27:58 GMT from United States)
Needs of the individual need to be thought out before even thinking of implementation.
Their should also be provisions for abandonware, expireware, disableware, driverhell, upgradehell, 64bit-hell, featuregate, friendstortion, winstortion, winpro-stortion, merger-orphanation. To name a few.
26 • vapor ware? (by CAI ENG on 2012-01-16 20:43:43 GMT from United States)
Ron wrote:
"I also believe DesktopBSD is active again. I never tried it but I think it is great that DesktopBSD and PC-BSD are working on FreeBSD variants that are user friendly."
I don't know how user friendly they are, because I have consistently failed to complete the installation.
I did submit my questions, including the error message received, to their user fora, but, thus far, with no response.....
I have to write, *BSD at least in my hands, is user hostile.
CAI ENG
27 • @26 (by Ron on 2012-01-16 23:12:42 GMT from United States)
While the PC-BSD forums are more active, at times it still takes a bit to get an answer. You could try the FreeBSD forums since PC-BSD is based on that, however I always encountered hostility of a sort and the words "PC-BSD is not FreeBSD, try asking at their forums..." So I stopped going to the FreeBSD forums. PC-BSD also has a web based IRC channel that you might get an answer faster with, (Maybe, I never used their IRC channel so I am not sure how good it is.)
http://www.pcbsd.org/community/join-us-on-pcbsd
28 • SOPA (by Ryan Farmer on 2012-01-16 23:14:45 GMT from United States)
SOPA may very well make some Free and Open Source software illegal. There is plenty of it that either definitely violates US patents (like some multimedia codecs), and some things that very likely do just because the US patent system is so bloated. They've issued patents within the last 20 years for things like how to swing on a swing, and method for playing with a cat involving a laser pointer. (Check Wikipedia's article on the USPTO!)
SOPA is not just limited to copyright law, it involves patents too (and trade marks even though those are no danger to free software).
Imagine a world where SOPA passes and all Microsoft and Apple have to do is claim that each one of their competitors violates a patent or two of theirs. After SOPA passes, don't be surprised with websites about free software, GNU/Linux distributions, Android, etc. end up being yanked down because SOPA will give Microsoft and Apple new tools in their already unfair fight in the legal system against free software.
29 • @10 Marco Ghirlanda (by Ron on 2012-01-16 23:30:16 GMT from United States)
I missed that post earlier, I hope Marco Ghirlanda gets well soon.
30 • @19 DNS Providers (by Toolz on 2012-01-17 00:27:55 GMT from Vietnam)
> "There are better DNS providers than Google."
Who are the others? Do not mention OpenDNS. Do not mention any service less reputable than OpenDNS.
31 • SOPA - don't forget ICE (by Toolz on 2012-01-17 00:29:02 GMT from Vietnam)
I'm surprised Jesse, nor none of the commenters so far, mentioned ICE. This is a program which, for 18 months now, has been allowing the (U.S.) authorities to "order the removal of DNS records of sites thought to enable piracy" - they've focused on counterfeit goods, mostly branded clothing followed by physical and torrented DVDs, followed sites streaming sporting events followed by betting sites, followed by ... well you know how it goes (first they came for ...).
In the beginning they said agents had posed as customers and purchased infringing handbags or clothing and only then had they moved in to shut sites down. Then they started shutting torrent sites down. No purchases necessary, no hosting of illegal content necessary. One such site was declared legal TWICE by the Spanish courts - then in one fell swooop it was off the Internet. Torrent-finder.com disappeared. Hana Beshara, one of the founders of NinjaVideo, has, I believe, just spent her first two or three nights in jail simply because she posted too incessantly on Facebook about the verdict in her case (she'd been sentenced but her actual appointment to appear at the prison had been deferred).
Jesse, these effects are definitely been felt around the world. More than 300 sites, including a few dozen sites ...let's just come out and say it ... Google, are now offline everywhere.
As far as open source software goes ... well let's talk about open source music - right now companies are taking music off Youtube where they had no right. They're taking sites offline for sharing music when the music had been submitted (for sharing) by the studios. DaJaz1.com came back online just a few weeks ago after being confiscated by ICE. No crime had been committed, but no apology, no restitution.
The final thing about SOPA is the influence it's having already. There's a rush to implement Dnssec, despite reservations, and despite (or because of) the knowledge that SOPA would break it. There's a rush to implement parallel DNS schemes and hare-brained DNS-circumvention schemes - all just begging to be tagged 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong'. Any website that thinks it might just possibly one day be in the cross-hairs of power-tripping U.S. law enforcement is rushing to find servers in this country or that (even China) and registering .tv and .me domains. Torrent sites are now moving to magnet links because they take up less space and it's easier to jump ship when the black helicopters swoop in (it's even theorised that peopl could run torrent servers from a USB stick).
It's all looking very unstable. Right now. This is not so much about what might happen anymore.
32 • PC-BSD, SOPA (by mz on 2012-01-17 00:30:13 GMT from United States)
PC-BSD has always hated my hardware and continues to do so, meaning your not alone LLO/#22. I ran through the installer once and very much enjoyed it as a GUI way to get an OS on my drive, if fact given that it's released under a BSD license I'm a little surprised that the installer hasn't been reworked and packaged with a Linux distro yet. Perhaps there are enough differences under the hood to make switching out the installers of unix clones less practical than parts like the desktop? Anyway, if PC-BSD doesn't hate my video card it hates my NIC, so until I get hardware that 'just works' with a desktop version of BSD I'll just use pfSense as a firewall and leave it at that. Too bad, there is some stuff there I'd like to try if only it liked my hardware a little more.
I think this SOPA thing may well be used to attack anything that someone can find an excuse to have issue with. Didn't part of the problem start when Mozilla refused to play ball on censorship of it's add-ons? I know installing a DVD decryption package on my desktop distro is as easy as going to the repos and installing anything else despite the fact that they don't ship that on any version of the CDs/DVDs that you can download. Both my distro maker and Mozilla are in the US, can they be forced to remove things from the list of what you can instal or be shut down? I think it could happen, after all most members of the current US house think corporate 'people' are 'more equal than other people' as they say on animal farm.
33 • @19 DNS Providers (by Toolz on 2012-01-17 00:55:31 GMT from Vietnam)
> "Google plants eternal cookies on your machine"
Tell me more about these eternal cookies.
> "they scan and analyze your mails, your searches and who knows what else"
What else?
> "Why would anyone want to entrust Google with their entire web activities by letting them do the DNS resolution"
DNS provision is important. I trust Google more than my ISP. I'm far from trusting them with my entire web activities - they have a very good search engine (DuckDuckGo just doesn't come close) and they offer a great DNS service.
34 • SOPA (by Toolz on 2012-01-17 01:02:23 GMT from Vietnam)
> "Didn't part of the problem start when Mozilla refused to play ball on censorship of it's add-ons?"
Are you talking about the Maafiafire add-on? Mozilla knocked that request on the head with great flair and panache and I think the whole thing ended right there.
35 • SOPA (by JokersWild on 2012-01-17 01:33:58 GMT from United States)
Would you kindly remove your site from my internet, I am not the least bit interested.
Sincerely,
Windows Newbie.
36 • Hybryde (by branas jacques on 2012-01-17 01:50:10 GMT from France)
Hi gays, tank for your site, and happy new year.
What about "hybryde systeme" base on ubuntu, you don't speak about it, but it propose a new desktop derived from openbox and give the possibility to try all the X linux desktops in the same system without the need to reboot it. And last remark they don't ask for donation, the money is for conical ............
37 • SOPA (by Real Lies on 2012-01-17 04:07:53 GMT from Poland)
Why are you so afraid of losing American DNS providers? Don't you think the Europeans (or Asians) can't put their own. And with lots of tunneling/encrytion technology popping daily, I am sure SOPA will be a paper tiger. Let the US government implement SOPA and let them be the laughing stock of the computer world.
38 • @15: ArtistX question (by eco2geek on 2012-01-17 06:13:25 GMT from United States)
> Anyone have any idea how ArtistX is getting that cool traditional menu in Gnome 3?
They're using "fallback mode" without a top panel.
39 • Kororaa (by mechanic on 2012-01-17 11:34:07 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have this problem of Kororaa taking a couple of minutes to shutdown too. Is it just down to not having a /boot partition? I don't recall any note about that during partitioning at the install stage.
40 • PC-BSD (by mechanic on 2012-01-17 11:36:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
My hardware hasn't liked PC-BSD since about version 7 or so, something to do with the processor they said on the forums. The machine runs ok then after a random time, usually a few hours, it hangs.
The other killer on (any) BSD is that dropbox won't work with them.
41 • SOPA matters for open source (by NK on 2012-01-17 17:43:11 GMT from United States)
The problem with SOPA for open source is that the same people who are pushing for this legislation call linux users "hackers" and "pirates" and are part of the group that is responsible for the so called "vast" amounts of piracy. So, using linux or using linux tools might aid the circumvention of copyright, and hence copyright holders might shut down websites like Distrowatch if they felt the software used was somehow breaking copyright law.
42 • SOPA (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-17 20:47:01 GMT from United States)
Without copyright protections artists will not be able to pay their bills. The production of genuine art requires near total dedication of the artist: A first chair violinist in a major symphony orchestra, for example, will have completed as many years of academic study for his art as a surgeon for his, and his typical workweek of performances, rehearsals, and home practice far exceeds the normal 40 hours. CD recordings of 60 to 70 minutes of genuine music retail in the range of $8 (for a Naxos CD) to $17 (for Telarc or DG CDs, for example). The LPs of fifty years ago sold for about $3 then which equates to over $20 at current prices. Only the 99 cent MP3 downloads of today are that expensive per minute, but no one can score fashion points for complaining about the iTunes Store.
If you don't like SOPA then propose a better plan. Better yet, turn your attention to the outrage of "software patents", they are a greater intellectual hinderance even than piracy, or demand that copyrights no longer be extended to secret codes (like Micros__t) but that all copyrighted material be openly published so that everyone and anyone can know exactly what is and is not protected.
43 • SOPA is not the answer (by NK on 2012-01-17 22:17:42 GMT from United States)
To any that say "why don't you suggest something better" is committing a logical fallacy implying that we have to put up with this awful legislation because there is no other way. 99.9% of the American public does not illegally download anything. The cure is truly worse than the disease.
44 • 22, 26, 40 problems (by PCBSDuser on 2012-01-17 22:20:42 GMT from Canada)
@22 Maybe you already know this: it's probably firewire-related. If you have a way to disable it, you should get past that. I have firewire on my PC-BSD system, and no problems so far, so I guess it's implementation dependent.
http://forums.pcbsd.org/showthread.php?t=14944
@26 What is your message, or better yet, what's the link to the forum thread you never got replied to?
@40 If it hangs after a random time, could be a lack of memory. I've had that situation before and that was the problem. Each version gets more memory intensive.
45 • SOPA (by entitlementpunks on 2012-01-17 22:50:10 GMT from United States)
I'm all for SOPA or any legislation that forces people to buy their products that someone else created. They are closing down your sites and using DNS to do it because OF your abuses. Congrats Entitlement slackers, you reaped what you sew. It's that simple. There are no gray areas. I did get a chuckle over one comment up there trying to legitimize theft by asking "Do you fear that Lady Gaga will not have what to eat tomorrow if you "illegally download" her album?" HA! if a mob of poor people comes to steal your belongings and things, it's still Theft pal. Sorry. The Governments are closing down sites because of your abuse. The Internet is the CB radio of the 2000's. Back when the CB radio came out, everyone jumped on to disrupt and cause as much trouble and harm they could to conversations. Same with everything else since then. It's People that are to blame, you people who borrow music and services. I love this whole situation because I never steal or borrow. Enjoy slackers.
46 • PC-BSD 9.0 (by Dave Postles on 2012-01-17 23:30:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
I've installed PC-BSD on a range of notebooks from 7.0 onwards and never had any problem. I've just installed 9.0. My only issue is that I cannot get cairo dock to run. Any advice with that would be very useful (by e-mail).
daveapostles@googlemail.com
47 • PC-BSD (by CAIENG on 2012-01-18 01:06:04 GMT from United States)
@44, re: 26
Here is the error message "commitDIskLabel was called without any partition entries for it!"
48 • Error message (by On the fence on 2012-01-18 01:55:51 GMT from Canada)
@48:
>> I did submit my questions, including the error message received, to their user fora, but, thus far, with no response.....
I have to write, *BSD at least in my hands, is user hostile.
Perhaps the reason you didn't receive a response was the question you posted was toward the end of a forum thread in the off-topic part of the PC-BSD forum and the error message appeared at the end of a long rant about other thing and other questions (which were answered). I assume this post mentioning the same error message being posted by a person with the same username is you:
http://forums.pcbsd.org/showthread.php?t=13196&highlight=commitdisklabel&page=4
Try starting a new thread in the proper part of the forum, you're more likely to get results.
49 • @42, SOPA (by Toolz on 2012-01-18 04:53:01 GMT from Vietnam)
> "The production of genuine art requires near total dedication of the artist: A first chair violinist in a major symphony orchestra, for example, will have completed as many years of academic study for his art as a surgeon for his, and his typical workweek of performances, rehearsals, and home practice far exceeds the normal 40 hours. "
Not a valid comparison. The production of my posts on Distrowatch also required many hours of study - my typical workweek of reading Slashdot, Techdirt, and hacking my computer far exceeds the 'normal' 40 hours and the cumulative total far exceeds the study required to become a surgeon.
> "If you don't like SOPA then propose a better plan."
The plan I propose is that they first see how far they can get using current frameworks. They don't abuse the law. They don't abuse basic human rights and constitutionally-enshrined freedoms. They don't go after sites just for linking. They don't go after sites just because of some cultural aversion (ie betting sites). They don't hold sites for 12 months without any due process whatsoever.
> "I love this whole situation because I never steal or borrow."
What hangup do you have about borrowing? Is this some kind of anti-librarianism movement that I haven't heard of?
50 • @47 (by PCBSDuser on 2012-01-18 04:57:36 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for supplying the error message. 48's advice to post in another forum, say the Installation forum, is good.
I'm not familiar with that message, but perhaps the installer is having trouble finding the DOS partition (BSD slice) you chose. Remember that the PC-BSD installer requires the DOS partitions (BSD slices) to already be present on your drive. The installer can only cut up the chosen DOS partition (BSD slice) into segments (BSD partitions). When you post to the forum, it will help to include details of your specific drives/partitions and what you chose. Although the installer is very easy to operate, it does help to make a careful read of the guide section-by-section as you do it. Good luck and don't give up. A smoothly running PC-BSD system is worth it!
51 • copy vs theft (by ix on 2012-01-18 05:45:25 GMT from Romania)
@45 I think you are confusing copying with stealing or borrowing. If you steal or borrow someone's car, he does not have the car anymore. But copying information costs almost nothing. If you copy music from someone, both of you still have it.
I'm for freedom of information, GNU/Linux and Wikipedia are showing us how to do it.
52 • Wikipedia blackout (by megadriver on 2012-01-18 09:53:19 GMT from Spain)
So I went to Wikipedia to check out the blackout page. And, guess what, it can be "defeated" by just disabling JavaScript! Sure, editing is locked, but really... It they want to be taken seriously, they should've tried harder!
Also, in other non soup-related news, Pacman 4 has recently moved from [testing] to [core], bringing package signing support to Arch Linux!
http://www.archlinux.org/news/pacman-4-moves-to-core/
Now tinfoil hat people can give Arch a try, too!
53 • SOPA - ElementaryOS (by Toolz on 2012-01-18 10:58:36 GMT from Vietnam)
ElementaryOS have joined the SOPA/PIPA blackout:
http://elementaryos.org/
Anyone know of any more Linux/FOSS projects doing anything?
54 • @53: Blackouts (by Antony on 2012-01-18 11:44:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
open SUSE also on blackout.
55 • 45 • SOPA (by mandog on 2012-01-18 12:29:54 GMT from Peru)
I never steal or borrow. Enjoy slackers?
Thats a bold statement I dought if anybody can go through life without stealing or cheating.
As far as file sharing goes it should be up-to the film companies etc to wake up to reality 12 tracks on a CD 11 crap, the CD is loosing sales to digital downloads they are to expensive, as for the artist they need to jump ship from the record labels and do as some have done can't mention names as they might block me but a certain group has released several albums exclusively on the net donate what you think its worth grossed over $40million on 1 album more than there entire earnings with a recording contract so will there web site be blocked by Sopa as they are taking money from the recording studios in the eyes of congress and the studios.
Films it costs me £100 to take my family to watch a film that's half of what I earn only to find the only part of the film worth watching was the 5 min trailer.
that is why people download films if they are good they spend there hard earned money with pleasure
56 • SOPA Blackouts (by Toolz on 2012-01-18 12:38:02 GMT from Vietnam)
OpenSUSE looks fine here:
http://www.opensuse.org/en/
But Mageia is blacked out:
http://www.mageia.org
XBMC
http://xbmc.org
and Fedora have a small message.
Could anyone experiencing blackout at OpenSUSE pls report here:
https://www.herdict.org/participate/reporter
57 • @55, Stealing (by Toolz on 2012-01-18 13:05:50 GMT from Vietnam)
> "Thats a bold statement I dought if anybody can go through life without stealing or cheating."
If you're going to use this as the basis for a discussion on a fairly serious website then I think you need to do so with properly formatted sentences and without the grammar/spelling mistakes. Otherwise it just backfires, doesn't it?
58 • @56 open SUSE (by Antony on 2012-01-18 13:15:22 GMT from United Kingdom)
Result I get from http://www.opensuse.org/en/
The page http://www.opensuse.org/en/ is on strike today to fight SOPA and PIPA.
59 • SOPA Blackouts (by Toolz on 2012-01-18 13:56:51 GMT from Vietnam)
I just enabled scripts for static.opensuse.org and now it asks to redirect to http://sopastrike.com/strike - that's a rather cheap and nasty version of a blackout! :)
On a more positive note, OSNews, http://www.osnews.com, is taking part.
60 • Sopa blackouts (by JJ on 2012-01-18 16:02:32 GMT from Netherlands)
Who the hell the US Establishment think they are, the world's policeman? How about blocking out USA?
61 • SOPA and prohibition (by fernbap on 2012-01-18 16:11:44 GMT from Portugal)
We can learn a lot from what happened with prohibition. The key is who is proposing it and with which objective.
Prohibition was pushed by Rockefeller, its objective was very simple: most of the machines used in agriculture as well as cars ran on alchool. The farmers produced their own alchool in order to power their machines. The objective of prohibition was to outlaw alchool production in order to force everyone to convert their engines to gasoline. It didn't matter is the law would be overthrown in the future, it did exactly what it was supposed to do: create an economy dependent on gasoline.
Laws like SOPA are pushed by the corporations, with an objective that will suit their goals. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
As to open source, just imagine Microsoft claiming to have patents over Linux (which it claims) and using SOPA to shut down every linux based website.
62 • SOPA, free software and freedom of speech (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-18 21:15:41 GMT from Brazil)
As some people mentioned earlier (#28, #32, #41, etc.), SOPA *is* a threat to many free softwares. More on that: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/hollywood-new-war-on-software-freedom-and-internet-innovation
For those who believe SOPA is good for artists they need to study certain facts:
* Artists who are not superstar cannot negotiate their contracts. Most of them do not earn a dime on the sell of CDs (they reimburse the major that invests on them). Overall, and as far as I remember, about 2-3% of the sell of a CD go to the artists. SOPA is not for the average artist (who makes almost all her money with concerts... if she makes money at all) but for superstars and, more importantly, for Sony, Universal, Warner & co.
* Every serious (i.e., not financed by a major) study of the influence of the non-commercial sharing of cultural content shows that it has a positive impact on the industry (people discover new artists, go to concerts, etc). You may believe that it does not apply to cinema but it does: people go to the cinemas more than ever.
* Freedom of speech should definitely be placed above copyright enforcement and there are ethical ways to raise money for the artists (and not for the majors and the CD makers that have become useless to some extent), for instance a tax on the Internet connections. The money made by selling cultural content divided by the number of households connected to Internet gives something below US$ 10. This tax could additionally be more wisely spread among the artists, e.g., logarithm of the popularity (that could be measured via a free software you would volunteer to install and that would send the logs of what you read/listen/watch/play) and not an exponential (as it is currently the case). In this way, the state would promote culture (unrestricted non-commercial sharing of culture) and cultural diversity (not only superstars would make a living from their art). It would be a global solution (online newspapers, for instance, could be finances in this way).
63 • PC-BSD 9 failed to boot (by tek_heretik on 2012-01-18 23:27:38 GMT from Canada)
My self-built PC isn't so new that it's too exotic for new distros. Everything else boots, I test live distros on a regular basis and run only Linux Mint 10 64-bit from my hardware Raid. Sorry, it's (PC-BSD 9) junk.
64 • PC-BSD 9 (by TuxTest on 2012-01-19 02:01:48 GMT from Canada)
@63 PC-BSD is not a junk!
I agree that version 9 is not bug-free here and there! I test a few days and actually there are some problems. Well my experience with PC-BSD, I can say is that each version 7.0 - 7.1, 8.0,8.1,9.0 probably 9.1 only the 7.2 - 8.2 - and the future 9.2 was real stable version.
To take the part of the dev team, version 9 includes a many new set of administrative tools. Considered * 9* last release as a just release for me. Version 9.2 will be good and I invite you to make another test in a few months. .
regard
65 • PC-BSD 9 (by tek_heretik on 2012-01-19 02:23:24 GMT from Canada)
@64 Don't get me wrong, I think PC-BSD is pretty cool, I guess it just doesn't like my hardware, it wouldn't be the first distro although my hardware is fairly common.
66 • SOPA (by greg on 2012-01-19 11:05:01 GMT from United States)
@45. As they say, "Never, Say Never".
67 • SOPA and other illusions (by Bill Savoie on 2012-01-19 12:46:54 GMT from United States)
Thank you Distrowatch for going the extra mile to educate the world on the politics of illusion. I missed you yesterday, but I respect your choice to be off-line.
My country (USA) and my State (Alabama) lives in a world of illusion. In this illusion colleges are for playing football, and discussing the history of the civil war, and imagining how the South might have won. I assume it might be similar to Germany, or Japan. Pockets of denial, where meaning is flexible and the facts are forgotten. Couple this ignorance with a downturn in the economy, mostly caused by lack of government oversight in the banking industries, a serious lack of healthcare, rising costs of higher education, and of course, more football scholarships.
Little wonder then, our congress has turned to colonizing the internet, with it is aggressive, ignorant, and delusional power. I hope your efforts bring fruit, but if they don't we will just need to create a 'work-around' with an alternate dns server. Thank heavens for open source and the solutions that honor freedom and intelligence. Time is on the side of freedom, which is utterly simple.
68 • SOPA (by Toolz on 2012-01-19 13:37:02 GMT from Vietnam)
> "Thank you Distrowatch for going the extra mile to educate the world on the politics of illusion. I missed you yesterday, but I respect your choice to be off-line."
Could somebody please confirm or rebut: was Distrowatch offline anywhere for any period of time yesterday? Here I had no problems accessing (at least a couple of dozen times).
69 • @68, SOPA (by Toolz on 2012-01-19 14:00:31 GMT from Vietnam)
> "we will just need to create a 'work-around' with an alternate dns server. Thank heavens for open source and the solutions that honor freedom and intelligence. Time is on the side of freedom, which is utterly simple."
... and then we need a 'work-around' for the 'work-around'. SOPA is not pro-'solutions' - solutions, innovation, will wither if the backers of SOPA get their way. I don't see anything 'simple' about jerry-rigging DNS servers onto an Internet that was conceived and implement in a much more naive era. And please ... it's more than just DNS - that battle was lost 18 months ago. Wake up and get your boots on for the next onslaught, please.
70 • SOPA, DW offline (by Toolz on 2012-01-19 14:23:35 GMT from Vietnam)
I just heard that Distrowatch was offline ('on strike') only in the US yesterday. Excellent!
That's brings to seven the number of 'Linux' sites that took any action, that I'm aware of. (Slashdot refrained from posting for a few hours, I'm not counting them)
Thanks Distrowatch!
I hope I'm okay reposting my link (a few posts got swept up yesterday):
http://slashdot.org/journal/276598/the-sopa-blackout-and-the-300-domains-that-have-already-gone
71 • SOPA, open-source software, and Linux in general (by Darth Chaos on 2012-01-19 15:41:08 GMT from United States)
Actually, SOPA does indeed pose a threat to OSS and Linux. Look at Microsoft and the "patent agreement" deals they made with Novell, Xandros, and Linspire. According to Microsoft, Linux infringes on their patents. If Microsoft can convince the politicians to believe Microsoft's official talking points concerning Linux, then laws such as SOPA and PIPA could indeed be used to block Linux sites - such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint - in the United States. SOPA and PIPA are not about combatting piracy. They are all about legalizing the illegal monopoly tactics of corporate fascists such as Microsoft and Apple.
72 • SOPA (by tdockery97 on 2012-01-19 19:05:58 GMT from United States)
"SOPA and PIPA are not about combatting piracy. They are all about legalizing the illegal monopoly tactics of corporate fascists such as Microsoft and Apple."
Of course. As usual, it's about the money.
73 • SOPA (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-19 20:26:14 GMT from United States)
The plagiarism problem stems from massive uploads of copyrighted material, not with their downloads. No one cares if you photocopy a page or two (or ten or twenty) of a copyrighted book for your own use, but actively distributing such copies in mass to the entire planet is another matter entirely. They are those massive distributors of copyrighted material who are endangering our civilization's ability to generate quality art and literature (and, by extension, that Lady Gaga Stuff too). It seems that too few of the people now grazing with the anti-SOPA flock understand the importance of copyright protection for FOSS: If any copyright can be regularly violated then so can the GPL, and that would allow Micros--t, Apple, and others to appropriate open source code into their own restricted, commercial applications. Don't confuse the Internet pirates with the FOSS community: The open source community carefully guards its GPL copyrights and demands that violations cease whenever they are detected. And software patents are not copyrights at all, and SOPA says nothing of them, so please don't confuse copyrights with software patents.
74 • SOPA and other 'threats' as a techical challenge (by Bill Savoie on 2012-01-19 21:02:06 GMT from United States)
Yes, America is self deceiving and wrong. SOPA is an old style fix in a world that is operating differently. I suppose if the USA places billions of dollars into SOPA there will be two effects; 1) the American Internet will be filtered, 2) the rest of the world will adapt.
Does anyone remember the 'ban' on encryption? Remember how effective it was? Our congress prevented 128 bit encryption, except for government use. It did not work out well, and they finally changed. It was like trying to stop water with a metal hammer. Swing away as they might - it just wasted their time. Few people recognize the past, and how it integrates into the present moment. Ignorance is like that. Remember the scare of 2000, the 'digit rollover' problem? Now the Myan calendar only goes to 2012, so that must mean something.
Ignorance is never ending, because it has no cause and effect. I don't want to get too far from Distrowatch readers, but the USA has been riding out world war II for all the money they could make. The soup being served in our economy is now getting very thin, so the bubble of prosperity is bursting. That decline can not be stopped. It will take a few years before the new path will make itself known. America will need to change, the nature of freedom is just too simple to defeat.
I suspect that firefox can be modified, to open the internet, no matter what force is brought against freedom. All the efforts will just cost money and isolate those who don't choose freedom. The future is bright - because our natural state is free. The law of Karma is perfect in every way. The great security the ego seeks, can only be found by the heart as it gives itself away. Love is not logical, but it is more powerful and lasting than force.
75 • PC-BSD and SOPA (by stuckinoregon on 2012-01-19 23:54:35 GMT from United States)
PC-BSD another great release.
SOPA - Hi, rest of the world. Thanks for all your confidence in the American people. We won't necessarily just sit idly by and let them do this. Mostly because we don't have to. Just check with the MPAA, RIAA, DOJ sites.
76 • @73 (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-20 00:52:48 GMT from Brazil)
You should not blindly believe what the majors are saying. Please read comment #62.
77 • Fashion-Phrase Chatter (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-20 02:41:20 GMT from United States)
That is mostly what we have read here in the forum this week in opposition to SOPA in spite of the fact that there are some very good reasons for opposing this legislation. I am not given to blind beliefs or fallacious arguments, and I do wish that some better legislation can be proposed to stop the on-line piracy, but the piracy must be stopped. And we certainly don't need to add a new burden of some world class commissariat fattening its pockets with an Internet tax levied in the name of global diversity so that the logarithmic might triumph over the exponential (or do I have that backwards).
78 • megaupload shut down (by ix on 2012-01-20 07:56:54 GMT from Romania)
Still on the subject of piracy, megaupload has been shut down by USA officials. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16642369
79 • Piracy/Sharing (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-20 11:26:46 GMT from Brazil)
Piracy is bad: I mean attacking ships (as it still happens today, e.g., near Somalia), etc.
Sharing culture with friends and the rest of the society is good. I would even say it is a fundamental of a society! Calling "pirate" people who share culture is again, blindly reusing the majors' speech.
That basically is the fundamental point: people should be encouraged to share culture, whereas all over the occidental world, the states, lobbied by the majors, try to condemn such a behavior.
These majors have a lot to lose simply because the digital formats and Internet made them mainly useless. In contrast, the average artist have a lot to win: she would not suffer anymore from the superstar policy (the majors feed us with crap and do not promote culture), more people can discover their art and finance in other ways (such as public performances) than sells (which are, even today, the only ways they ever make money with), a better redistribution of additional revenues could come from a tax rather than from denying the fundamentals of the society: sharing is *not* bad.
80 • @79 (by Hrrm on 2012-01-20 13:54:10 GMT from United States)
Music, movies, etc are now looked at, at least in the United States(and in many other areas im sure too) as not culture/art, they are looked at as products. Most people who dream of startdom, most "artists" and I use the term very loosely, dream of being famous and rich, not having their name remembered 300 years from now for the genius of their music or entertainment. As such, the businesses and corporations, and consumers themselves reflect this. There have been copyright laws of some sort around for at least 600 years, for books/music/plays/opera etc, but music and entertainment of the like, though definitely it had its "pop" composers and writers, was still looked at as culture or art. The dream was to write the masterpiece, be it musical or stage.
I can understand one argument that ok, yes, most likely to hear a piece of music when there is no recording, or watch a play(Ill group movies as sort of plays) you had to see it live. So if I wanted to hear the London Symphony Orchestra, I had to hear em live or not at all, and with the advent of recordings, I can have the option to hear em in my room everyday for one price, be it what I paid or for free from the internet. This has changed the dynamic of art, into one not of making it for art's sake, but for making it for money's sake.
Maybe if these laws pass we will stop and look at how we look at art, and start realizing like the previous poster said, that sharing aint bad. Artists have never been big moneymakers in history(generally, always some exceptions with patronage and the like), its only recently you could make in 1 year what someone makes in a lifetime by performing a song once for a CD. So hell if SOPA makes us realize this, suffer for a bit and then change this attitude, well so be it.
Yes I know the broader problems with SOPA, and again, maybe being the laughing stock of the world will make is look at who is running the country(the businesses, not the congressmen) and things will change. But then again, most people see pop music and art as necessities and not luxuries, so maybe it wont change anything.
81 • SOPA (by fernbap on 2012-01-20 18:03:41 GMT from Portugal)
I didn't speak of prohibition as if it had nothing to do with tht present issue.
You all keep discussing how bad drinking alchool may be, when the issue was gasoline all along.
See the connection here?
82 • Toorox 01.2012 "GNOME" edition (by RollMeAway on 2012-01-20 20:25:15 GMT from United States)
Finally, a DISTRO to talk about!
For those who might skip anything "gentoo", have a closer look at Toorox.
This is an easily INSTALLABLE disk, and it is live, so you can check it out first.
Have a look at these screenshots:
http://toorox.de/index.php/en/gallery
Looks like mint is not the only distro to make gnome3 usable.
83 • RE: 82 (by Landor on 2012-01-20 20:53:36 GMT from Canada)
Actually, it's based on Sabayon, at least from my previous experience of looking at it. The distribution that is closely matched to Gentoo would be Calculate, unless you took into consideration its overlays.
It would be more accurate to say, 'For those who might skip anything "sabayon' ".
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
84 • @83 Toorox (by RollMeAway on 2012-01-20 22:47:23 GMT from United States)
I have installed previous versions. Saw no trace of sabayon.
Portage and emerge, eix all the way.
Has a sunrise overlay.
Time for another look?
85 • SOPA and FOSS Community apathy and stuff.. (by buntunub on 2012-01-21 01:59:40 GMT from United States)
"As to open source, just imagine Microsoft claiming to have patents over Linux (which it claims) and using SOPA to shut down every linux based website."
This will happen, and soon. Take it to the bank and refer back to this comment after the fact. The true "enemy" here is in fact the FOSS community as a whole. There is a definite effort to keep our heads in the sand of all the things we know deep down will be the eventual end of all we love. We just sit back and let it happen. You all know this to be true.
In the end, there will be only Cloud services run and controlled by the major Corporations. The era of Desktop Computing and client based apps is over, heralded in with the thunderous applause of the unwashed iphone and tablet zombies.
86 • Abject silliness (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-21 03:43:09 GMT from United States)
Software patents are not copyrights, and anyone who confuses the two knows nothing of which he is blabbering. GNU and Linux software have been carefully copyrighted with the GPL, and it has been the GPL and similar copyrights which have made FOSS possible. This entire web site would never have come into being had there been no GPL copyright. Those who attack copyrights endanger the existence of all copyrights, including the GPL, and thus of Linux too. The "enemies" of FOSS are many, to be sure, and software pirates and their apologists and definitely to be counted among them. It's wonderful to share your toys, your own toys, if you so choose, and if you wish to distribute all of your possessions and savings to others that is fine also. But you have no right to break into your neighbor's house, pillage it, and then give away all of his goods and savings. If you think that intellectual property should be free then generate some yourself and make it free (and see if anyone cares). If you make an illicit copy of some material for your own use you won't really cause anyone any problems, but if you should actively broadcast copyrighted material from your computer and thereby deny an artist or author royalties on which he depends for paying the rent and buying groceries then you are a thief and most likely a thief who robs poor people. Oh, don't forget, if you are an upload-pirate or one of their apologists then you are an enemy of FOSS also.
87 • Toorox (by fernbap on 2012-01-21 13:11:16 GMT from Portugal)
Yesterday i decided to give it a go. Installed the 64 bit version.
First thing i noticed was that it had virtually no codecs installedm as well as that the NTFS partition, which i used as a general repository of files, refused to be mounted from nautilus.
Installed the flash plugin which worked. Then, decided to emerge VLC.
I had to wait 3.5 hours for it to build, which ruined my evening, as i couldn't do anything else, only to realise that VLC refused to work.
Sorry, but i don't have enough time to waste trying to make a workable working environment from Toorox.
88 • @86: theft? (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-21 13:15:48 GMT from Brazil)
According to Wikipedia (and the law): "Theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.".
It is a subtraction, whereas copying is a "multiplication", which is free (or almost free) thanks to the digital technologies. This is a fundamental difference between a material and an immaterial content. Any serious economist would tell you that the cost of a good whose copy is free should drop to 0.
Moreover, the uploader obviously gives her consent to download the files she shares.
We have, here again, an example of how the majors are manipulating the language ("pirate", "theft", etc.) to manipulate our thinking. This basically is "newspeak" (anyone should read George Orwell's masterpiece "1984").
The artist Nina Paley tells the same thing in a one-minute musicals: search "Copying Is Not Theft" on YouTube .
It is true that the GNU GPL, as well as any free software license, are based on the copyright law... but, by definition (freedom 2), they guarantee the user the freedom to redistribute the software as she wishes! Pretending that being against SOPA is being against the GNU GPL does not make any sense. By the way, gnu.org (like every site managed by the Free Software Foundation) was blackout last Thursday in protest against SOPA.
Finally, writing that "poor artists" earn money from the copyright law (i.e., from the sell of copies of their art) is plain wrong. Please read comment #62.
89 • RE:84 + 88 (by Landor on 2012-01-21 15:23:01 GMT from Canada)
#84
Actually, if I recall correctly, and I usually do, the found the information out via their site, forums, or the like. Not the physical distribution so to speak. I looked again and the information isn't present any longer. I may look a little deeper later, but it's really not that important of course. :)
#88
The law is actually written in that manner, according to Wikipedia? I'm amazed. I'm not surprised though by your, how shall I say, 'free' attitude towards the theft of others work(s). It's easy to justify what you did absolutely nothing for than to click something due to your obviously more important want.
Sometimes I wonder why some people even exist in this community at all.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
90 • did the people win anything by barring SOPA? (by fernbap on 2012-01-21 16:51:31 GMT from Portugal)
In case you haven't noticed yet, try accessing the megaupload site.
The government is doing it, regardless of SOPA being approve4d or not.
91 • re:89 (by beanybrian on 2012-01-21 17:02:01 GMT from United States)
How do you feel about libdvdcss2?
92 • @89 Theft in Canada, community and my "more important want" (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-21 21:33:24 GMT from Brazil)
Since you seem to live in Canada, I searched for you the definition of "theft" in your juridication ( http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-151.html ):
"Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent
(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;
(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;
(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or
(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted."
Now, I would like you (or the majors) to explain how sharing a file on the Internet can be named "theft" with this definition (but you can take any legislation in the world).
As for being a good member of the community:
* Would you say that the Free Software Foundation and Wikipedia (both in blackout to protest against SOPA) do not deserve to be part of the community?!
* I go to the cinema, I go to concerts, I go to the theater, etc. This raises money for the artists, whereas buying copies of a CD or a DVD only raises money for the intermediaries (the major, the CD/DVD maker, etc.) and the superstars (the only ones having royalties because they are the only ones who are in a position to negotiate their contracts). The intermediaries mainly became useless (and are lobbying for laws such as SOPA that are against the freedom of speech and of information) and the superstars have far too much money.
* I am in favor of a tax on the Internet connections that would be directly redistributed to the artists/journalists/etc. Either in function of the popularity (but a logarithm of tis popularity) or, better, with every Internet user deciding where her tax goes (à la Flattr). In exchange of this tax: the legalization of any non-commercial sharing between the citizens.
My "more important want" (as you wrote) is the freedom of speech and of information. Copyright enforcement should definitely not be a reason for censorship (and, yes, the law will be abused). And, as I wrote earlier, sharing is the basis of culture. Sharing is good. A society that fights against non-commercial sharing between its citizens is a sick society. The occident is sick.
93 • Re 91: (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-21 21:37:53 GMT from United States)
Now that is a reasonable question. If someone should decode for his own use a product which he otherwise would not have bought (say, for lack of funds) then the copyright holder would have lost no actual royalties from this technical larceny. Nor would he suffer any actual losses from hundreds or thousands of such larcenies provided that none of them precluded an actual sale. But if the decoder (and we will here assume him to be one of these not-so-naughty paupers) should then make that decoded book or movie available for uploading and thus to the entire world then he would be robbing the artist and quite possibly contributing to that artist's impoverishment. Digital technologies have already lowered retail prices of new literature to $10, and $5 releases will soon appear. But absent the fixed costs of typesetting, transportation, inventorying, and such publishers no longer need gamble on a 10,000 run simply to break even, and 60% of $5 is twice the royalty of 10% of the list price of a bound copy. Authors won't need agents to convince publishers to gamble on their works, and publishers won't do much more than transfer manuscripts through a cursory reading and into their servers. But none of this can happen if copyright protections should disappear. Without copyrights no artists will be able to devote their lives to writing or film making. So copy it quietly if you can't otherwise afford to buy it, but please don't splash your loot all over the Internet like the morons who don't know any better or the more serious pirates who merely pretend to be dumb.
94 • Copyright in Canada (by Jesse on 2012-01-22 00:28:10 GMT from Canada)
I think Canada has relatively sane laws for handling copyright, laws which take into account the current digital landscape if you will. In Canada it is legal to download, for one's own use, copyrighted material. The courts here say downloading a song, for example, is legally the same as borrowing a book from the library. Violation of copyright happens when someone shares or uploads content they do not have the rights to. So, for example, I could download and watch a movie in the privacy of my own home (with or without paying for it), but if I were to then distribute it to someone else, then I am breaking the law.
Since the government is aware this may lead to some people downloading items for free and thus harm the income of artists, Canadians pay a small tariff on blank media (like DVDs and CDs) which go to the media owners. It works out pretty well as most citizens here are able to download what they want, the copyright holders are compensated and we don't waste a lot of law enforcement/court time chasing down people who may have downloaded music. The only people are might get charged are people who are uploading large amounts of copyrighted material they don't have the rights to.
95 • Theft and Community Members (by Antonio on 2012-01-22 01:10:54 GMT from United States)
@Magic Banana
In past comment sections, I did not agree with you on some points wrt to GPL and GNU/FSF and agreed with Landor. This time around, I agree with you and give you credit with what you write. Theft is taking things away, when users download files from somewhere, they are only sharing things like the GPL license share code and BSD license share code. The differences are what can I do with the code, with the song/video that I download. I can view/hear what I download, but I cannot distribute copies for friends, then I would be breaking the law :(
I can see the code on GPL, but I improve it, I can keep it to myself and shut up, but if I decide to share it with friends, I have to give that code back to the people who gave it to me in the first place.
I try to make connections with real life scenarios and many issues that plague our world. For instance a mathematics teacher, teaches mathematics and shares his knowledge with his/her students. Those students learn mathematics and methods discover new things and new situations, these students become teachers/professors and study mathematics and keep the sharing. Which method of thinking does this belong to? Closed source or Open Source?
As for members of community, many of use use Linux or BSD or both, some might use OpenIndiana/Nexenta/ or other descendant of Unix. Not everyone agrees with Landor's viewpoints. The nvidia's of the world don't want to share their trade secrets and keep things closed, otherwise other companies would copy them and make better products, therefore they release closed source drivers. I like you would like for them to release their specs and open source their drivers since they are excellent and outperform the nv/nouveau drivers that are opensource, but they will not do it. It could kill off their business :(
Thankfully SOPA and PIPA are put on hold, but the US government has crossed the line and does not respect the Constitution. This is not acceptable and hopefully those politicians are ousted from office. The world is a different place, the government never really did anything to Microsoft despite many lawsuits, but they did break up ATT into smaller BELLS and broke up original Unix :(
96 • Copyright (by tdockery97 on 2012-01-22 02:35:38 GMT from United States)
While I in no way condone the government attempting to control the internet, from what I have seen recently they have only gone after those who are uploading/distributing materials (movies/songs/written material). When they go after downloaders, it is not those who watch movies or listen to songs on various sites. It is those who use torrents to download materials. The reason being that at the same time that they are downloading a movie, they are uploading it to other torrent users. It is with the uploading of content that they are being targeted, which does make sense to me.
97 • Sharing is good (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-22 02:39:48 GMT from Brazil)
@93: I assume you missed comment #92 while writing your own. Please, read it.
@94: I believe a sane law would put no restriction whatsoever on non-commercial sharing. Again, there are others ways to raise money to encourage the production of artistic content (e.g., a tax on the Internet connections). You were making a comparison with libraries and that is, indeed, an excellent comparison: people pay taxes to fund the public libraries. The tax the citizens would pay for the legalization of sharing would be far more efficient, i.e., would have a far better ratio service/cost (your library is far away, it does not have all books, these books costs a lot economically and ecologically to be produced, only a tiny portion of the money goes to the writers, etc.).
@95: It is dangerous to think software and art on the same basis. Software is for the user achieving a work. That is why it should be free as in freedom (see the free software definition by the Free Software Foundation). For art, which, in contrast, aims to produce an emotion, the listeners/spectators/etc. do not really need the freedom to modify (anyway this right to modify should be granted, for the benefit of other artists, far before the current "70 after the death of all authors"). However, I believe the freedom to redistribute (freedom 2 in the free software definition) should be always granted. Sharing is a fundamental of the society. With SOPA/PIPA, the US government not only denies this freedom but even proposes censorship as a way (among others) to enforce this denial!
99 • Sharing is good (by fernbap on 2012-01-22 03:21:00 GMT from Portugal)
I think everyone should pause a moment to think what this world would be if science were not public domain.
What if every scientist decided to copyright his research and discoveries? Would anyone want that?
100 • RE: 91 + 92 (by Landor on 2012-01-22 05:17:11 GMT from Canada)
#81
Easy, I don't use it.
See, let me explain something to people here that I have before but a lot seem to forget it seems, even long time participants here. Anyway, I believe in 'Free' (as in Freedom). I do not use closed source, nor do I use anything that breaches anyone's patents, or copyrights. I figure that if we want our rights respected within this community we sure as hell better respect others rights, that's our obligation, respect. Sadly, I find that even among others that only use 'Free' (as in Freedom) software, my view is rare. That actually disgusts me to be honest, the hypocrites.
#92
Bandy about all you want, you'll justify your disrespect happily. That's more than obvious. The sad part is you actually think you're smart playing around with words and trying to make yourself look credible and intelligent. Not that it is extremely intelligent, it's just that you're bent enough on the topic to spend too much time proclaiming your innocence while deep down we both know you just take, that's all. This community can do without people doing just that. This community needs integrity. It needs to be upstanding because we're faced with people that thieve and manipulate and have massive corporations behind them. You can't tear down something good with good people behind it, but you can when it's tainted. Think about it.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
101 • Dreamlinux (and Debian) better than ever (by Bruno Salviano on 2012-01-22 10:18:07 GMT from Brazil)
*** ... and Debian GNU/Linux becomes the most widely-used and fastest growing web hosting platform. ***
Great! Debian is the king!
BTW, Dreamlinux 5 brought to my PC the power of Wheezy with a splendid implementation of XFCE: The freaking thing is 100% FOSS, all hardware devices were detected/configured OOTB, and media playback is smooth as silk. Just a few days after installing this fantastic distro, stable and extremely easy to use, I feel like a sucker for not doing it before.
The bad news is that I will have to remove a lot of daemons I don't use in desktop-oriented distros. Other than that, I dare to say Dreamlinux is for Debian what Mint is for Ubuntu and what Vector is for Slackware. It's almost perfect!
No, I'm not a "fanboi" and wouldn't even wish to see a DistroWatch review for this magnificent distro. My own daily testing is enough... Nothing is comparable to the actual user experience! In fact, I don't understand why so many people ask for reviews if they are incomplete and often not precise, to say the least. (C'mon, guys/gals, what any website could tell about Dreamlinux 5 that I still don't know?)
If you want to master a distro without the help of anybody, just read their manual/forum, then download the ISO image and start to have fun. Therefore, software reviews would be more useful than distro reviews. For instance, do you know how to use all those programs in AV Linux? What's the point about having new distros being announced every week, but not knowing important details about their software?
Another common issue: In general, reviewers are biased and senseless. They give too much attention to some very bad distros which are famous, but little or no attention to some very good distros which are almost unknown. That's the reason why the masses will never enjoy MirOS/jggimi, CTKarch/ArchBang, Privatix/Incognito, LightHouse (a multiuser puppy), QubesOS (something really special), among other hidden gems.
Sad situation!
102 • ArtistX and beauty (by Marty S on 2012-01-22 12:01:30 GMT from Australia)
Wishing you well Marco Ghirlanda - hope life is full of sunshine - thank you for creating a wonderful OS - one which I have used many times or have taken parts of it to enhance other GNU/Linux Distros ... thank you - our thoughts are with you - Toowoomba Linux
Toorox provides an environment that's functional and beautifully stunning, yet it amazes me that it languishes at the bottom of the Distro list.... is there something that I'm missing?
103 • @101 (by divadgnol on 2012-01-22 12:07:44 GMT from United States)
I too share your desire to see more software reviews. But this may not be the site for such reviews. You have the actual websites and man pages of said software for such things.
Also, like you, I interperet all reviews for what they are ... One persons opinion using specific hardware that may differ from mine. But this doesn't mean it isn't useful. Quite the contrary, one is able to gleen UI, consistency, included software, etc from such reviews.
Like everything else in life, take everything with a grain of salt.
104 • #99 (by zykoda on 2012-01-22 12:27:49 GMT from United Kingdom)
There are not many "scientists" who are free to "copyright" "their" research. They are usually working for/with Governments and/or Companies under classified/restricted disclosure agreements. It is often strategic what is published. Hence the huge interest in industrial (and other) "espionage". One only "knows" what is "released" unless one is willing to "pay".
105 • Research papers (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-22 15:28:42 GMT from Brazil)
Research papers should be freely distributable too, what would probably mean paying for submitting a paper (other good consequences would be "less crappy submissions" and "focus on quality rather than quantity"). The common case, today, is that the citizen pays for the public research and then pays again to access the results of this research (libraries in the universities pays up to millions of dollars per year to subscribe to the different journals). That also explains why poor countries (e.g., in Africa) cannot do research (access to the previous Art is a must). Notice also that the publisher neither writes the papers, nor review them, nor edit them. Here is a recent article, in the Guardian, clearly explaining the problem: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/16/academic-publishers-enemies-science
106 • Ending the war on sharing (by Magic Banana on 2012-01-22 17:17:48 GMT from Brazil)
Here is someone else that Landor would call a bad member of the community: rms. Take a look at this article for instance: http://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html
107 • research papers @105 (by fernbap on 2012-01-22 19:45:57 GMT from Portugal)
And now you are confusing science with technology. Science is and always was public domain. You are not require to pay any royalty each time you apply one of Newton's laws.
108 • RMS's views on sharing and things.. (by davemc on 2012-01-22 20:04:42 GMT from United States)
"Today's digital technology enables everyone to make and share copies. Record companies now seek to use copyright law to deny us the use of this technical advance. The law which was acceptable when it restricted only publishers is now an injustice because it forbids cooperation among citizens.
To stop people from sharing goes against human nature, and the Orwellian propaganda that "sharing is theft" usually falls on deaf ears. It appears the only way to stop people from sharing is with a harsh War on Sharing."
Nice. I will take RMS's views on this any day over Landor's or anyone else's for that matter, because he IS the only authority for the FSF. I have sifted through every one of the comments here concerning this issue and was honestly quite torn, but this is the clincher. We must all stand behind the FSF and support them as the only true authoritative body of the FOSS community.
109 • @107 (by Science on 2012-01-22 21:36:18 GMT from Brazil)
You wrote: "What if every scientist decided to copyright his research and discoveries? Would anyone want that?".
The scientist mainly publish their "research and discoveries" in academic journals (of IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer, etc.). And I can ensure you (I am a researcher myself) that almost all journals require the authors to sign copyright assignments where you basically give the publisher all your rights. There now are a few exceptions: the so-called open access journals such as PLoS ONE (a physics journal).
I am not certain to what extent these assignments are legal in every country (for instance, in France, the so-called "moral rights" cannot be given up). Like many other authors, all my publications are accessible from my website. If a publisher sues me, that would be the occasion to vehemently express the absurdity of the current system where the citizen pays for the research to be done and then for the results to be read.
Talking about a copyrighted Newton's law does not make much sense. The copyright applies to a material work, such as a research paper, that can be copied. You may make a confusion between copyright and patent. These two sets of laws do not have anything in common.
110 • The screaming matches over Unity COULD have been avoided. (by woodsmoke on 2012-01-22 22:43:16 GMT from United States)
There is one thing I have noticed about the "biggies" in Linuxdom. And that is that a lot of them are stricken with a malady know as: "a failure to communicate".
If "Canonical" had done just ONE thing....just one......
If "Canonical" had just made one SIMPLE announcement.... to the effect of:
"Dear Ubuntu users of all flavours.
We have made a strategic decision that the main branch of Ubuntu should experiment with a markedly changed desktop which, we hope, will be scalable through all platform sizes and form factors, from the cell phone to the television. This to better compete in what we see as a rapidly changing hardware environment.
We also realize that moving away from the present, much beloved, desktop environment will upset many, and we apologize for that in advance.
We also, hereby call upon all of the other wonderful distros which are based upon Ubuntu to increase their efforts, apply with renewed vigour, their efforts to maintain and extend what everyone admits is a wonderful desktop environment. This, so that those who do not agree with our move to the Unity desktop may find a happy home with those efforts.
Again, we apologize in advance for what will surely be an upsetting, and unsettling, strategic move, but, again, we think that is best for the long term outlook for Ubuntu in a rapidly changing hardware world."
But, no. As usual, they projected a stony and defensive, bunker-like silence.
All too sad because a few kind and conciliatory words could have done so much good.
woodsmoke
111 • RMS (by Woody Oaks on 2012-01-23 01:40:17 GMT from United States)
Richard Stallman gave us the GPL, which is a copyright form, and emacs, which is copyrighted under the GPL. Should you violate the terms of that copyright under which emacs is distributed I guarantee you that Richard Stallman's lawyers will soon knock on your door. GPL copyrights are carefully guarded, as they should be: Sony, for instance, has been forced to remove GPL copyrighted code which it had been "sharing". Stallman was correct in asserting that "waiting tables is a noble occupation", but I would prefer that the talented artists of this society not need to devote valuable waking hours to such non-artistic tasks. Artists do make money from their copyrighted works, and some can even live on their royalties; those who can't still cash their checks; they don't toss them in the trash. Artists might wish that their checks not be diminished by pirated uploading, but they still value the checks which they do receive. And as for the upload-pirates, they make nothing of value; instead, they they seek kudos for themselves for being "cool' and for being "in step with the in crowd", and they do so at the expense of genuine artists and authors. Indeed, by stealing precious time from genuine artists these upload-pirates are destroying art and ransacking culture.
112 • @101, Dreamlinux (by Toolz on 2012-01-23 03:23:35 GMT from Vietnam)
> "I dare to say Dreamlinux is for Debian what Mint is for Ubuntu and what Vector is for Slackware. It's almost perfect!"
During my short test I found a number of issues. Far from perfect.
Number of Comments: 111
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