DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 443, 13 February 2012 |
Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! GhostBSD is a relatively recent attempt at conquering desktop computers with a custom build of FreeBSD. The project's version 2.5 is promising to be the most polished to-date so Jesse Smith decided to investigate. Does it offer a solid alternative to PC-BSD or indeed desktop Linux? Read below to find out. In the news section, Robyn Bergeron is appointed as the Fedora project leader, Canonical ends Jonathan Riddell's contract together with formal support for Kubuntu, openSUSE announces plans to celebrate its 20th birthday, and FreeBSD is shaken by accusations of chaotic release engineering. Also in this week's issue, the never-ending comparisons of Ubuntu and Linux Mint continue, while former Pardus Linux developers hint at a possible fork of the distribution. Finally, if you are a privacy and anonymity freak, don't miss our Questions and Answers section which deals with browser data and their possible role in tracking and identifying users. Happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (27MB) and MP3 (28MB) formats
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Two and a half ghosts - GhostBSD 2.5
A few weeks ago we talked about the PC-BSD project and how it places a user-friendly desktop on top of a FreeBSD base. It seems only fair then if we also examine another FreeBSD-based project with similar aims, though with a slightly different approach. GhostBSD recently released version 2.5 of their desktop operating system and I decided to take a look at what it has to offer.
GhostBSD is a relatively young project. It started as basically a live GNOME environment on top of a FreeBSD base. The project didn't have an installer and appeared to be presented mostly for demo purposes. In recent months the project has expanded. The website has been redone, a graphical installer has been added to the live media and GhostBSD now comes in two flavours: GNOME and LXDE, both offered in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. I opted to try the LXDE edition which is available as a 625 MB ISO image file. Booting off the CD brings us to a LXDE desktop where the task switcher and application menu are placed at the bottom of the screen. In the upper-left corner we find an icon for launching the project's installer. The wallpaper is rich with greens and shows us a picture of a frog.
The GhostBSD system installer is, so far as I know, unique to the project. Though it goes through the same basic motions as most other installers it does so with a simplified approach. The installer's screens tend to pose simple questions with few options, making the process fairly stream lined. It begins by asking on which disk we'd like to install GhostBSD. Then we're asked if we'd like to take over the whole disk or set up partitions. Here I ran into a problem. When I opted for manual partitioning I was able to create the slices I wanted, but then trying to proceed to the next step didn't work. No error message was shown so I'm not sure if the installer didn't like my layout or if I encountered a bug. Backtracking I told the installer to just take over the entire disk, which caused the installer to quickly close with a message saying it had completed the install.
Obviously something had gone wrong. Going back in I found the "take over the entire disk" option only works if the drive has free space, that is the installer won't destroy existing partitions. On the one hand I'm glad the installer isn't destructive, on the other hand I think the option could be renamed to "use all free space". This second time through I removed some partitions and let GhostBSD take over the free space as it saw fit. Once the disk has been partitioned we're asked to set a root password and create a regular user account. We're also asked if we'd like to install a boot loader. The installer copies its files to the drive and we're prompted to reboot.

GhostBSD 2.5 - running Gnumeric (full image size: 296kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
Booting into the freshly installed GhostBSD we're presented with a bright green graphical login screen. Signing in brings up the same LXDE desktop we saw before. There are no pop-ups, no welcome screen, no security updates notification. It's a plain, uncluttered, no frills sort of desktop. All of the operating system is squeezed onto one CD so there is a limited amount of software available, but the developers have managed to include the essentials. Looking at the application menu we find the Firefox web browser, the Pidgin instant messaging client and Transmission for handling torrents. Both AbiWord and Gnumeric are included for office work. The menu contains an audio player and a video player. During my trial I found all my media files would play without requiring additional codecs. There's a document viewer, image viewer, task manager, wi-fi manager and printer manager. There is a graphical package manager, which we'll cover later, and some basic network tools are included. The menu contains a text editor, calculator and virtual keyboard. I found neither Flash nor Java, but both the GNU Compiler Collection and the Clang compiler are included. Behind the scenes GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD 9.0 and features that project's base utilities and kernel.
I tested GhostBSD on two machines, a desktop box featuring a 2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a NVIDIA video card. The operating system performed smoothly, detected all of my hardware and generally performed well. Boot times were a bit longer than I would expect from a modern Linux distribution, but otherwise I encountered no issues. I also ran GhostBSD on my HP laptop which features a dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM and an Intel video card. Again, start-up times aside, the operating system performed well. By default my Intel wireless card was not utilized, but I was able to find and load the required firmware. When sitting idle at the desktop I found GhostBSD used around 60MB of RAM, leaving plenty of memory for applications.
GhostBSD, being based on FreeBSD, can use the same command line tools to install and update software from the FreeBSD Ports Collection. In addition to the usual command line tools, GhostBSD comes with a graphical front-end for package management. I'm of the opinion the GUI looks a bit like Synaptic with software categories on the left side of the window and detailed package information on the right. We're able to search for software by name and by using keywords. For the most part the graphical front-end worked well for me. I did find if I tried to perform two tasks at once the manager would sometimes crash, but as long as I stuck to a one-at-a-time approach it worked well. One problem I ran into was that clicking the button to upgrade all installed packages would immediately result in a message assuring me the system was up to date. A quick check showed this was not the case and the message was due to a missing index file in the Ports directory. The command line tools were also unable to detect if updates were available. Once I had manually installed the Ports Collection I found the command line programs were able to identify software which could be updated, however the graphical front-end continued to falsely claim the system was up to date. This strikes me as a rather dangerous bug with the package manager as it's likely to lull users into a false sense of security.

GhostBSD 2.5 - running Gnumeric (full image size: 390kB, screen resolution 1024x768 pixels)
I found using GhostBSD to be a curious mix of good and bad, smoothly working parts and malfunctions. Most of the time, the day-to-day tasks went smoothly. The operating system has a tiny memory foot print and I found the system to be quick, the menu was easy to navigate and there was a good supply of codecs and media support provided straight out of the gate. Installing new software was straight forward, the FreeBSD base is solid and stable and there's a small, but useful collection of applications included by default. Yet every so often I'd run up against issues which required some time to work around. The issue with the package manager not recognizing available updates was one example. Not having my laptop's wireless card detected automatically requiring the proper module to be located and loaded was another. The installer is functional, though manual partitioning posed a problem.
I suppose what it comes down to is GhostBSD does place a nice face on top of FreeBSD. It provides a pretty layer with useful software which allows a user to pop the CD in, test drive the operating system and get straight to work. However, it's probably best if people trying GhostBSD have an understanding of the underlying operating system. This project lowers the bar to trying a FreeBSD install, but does not remove that bar and potential users should be prepared to do a little digging around under the hood from time to time.
It is my impression that GhostBSD is off to a good start and just requires a few extra touches to make it a really user-friendly desktop. A little work on the installer could make it a first-class piece of software. Other little touches like putting the FreeBSD Handbook on the desktop and making updating the system's packages easier would make GhostBSD a really appealing system. As it is, despite its warts, I do think it makes it easy to get a FreeBSD desktop install in place with a minimal amount of fuss and that's a worthwhile venture. Even if you're not planning to install the system, GhostBSD's light live CD provides a good method for previewing what's coming out of the FreeBSD camp these days.
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Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
Robyn Bergeron, Kubuntu funding, Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, 20 years of SUSE and FreeBSD, Mandriva and Pardus updates
Fedora project leaders (FPL) tend to come and go and this process seems to have accelerated over the last few years. The long-serving Max Spevack was replaced by Paul Frields in January 2008, while Jared Smith took over the helms in June 2010. Now, less than two years into Smith's leadership the current FPL is about to step down: "One of the things I like most about the Fedora project is the opportunity for people to move and grow in (and out) of different roles and responsibilities. The position of Fedora Project Leader, in particular, has never been a long-term leadership position, but one that regularly invites new people to assume the role and bring new ideas and new energy to the project. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my thoughts about being the Fedora Project Leader and inform you of upcoming changes in Fedora leadership. Any time we make leadership changes in Fedora, we that that challenge seriously, and do everything we can to make the leadership transition as smooth as possible."
Fedora won't go leaderless though as the link in the above paragraph also introduces the new Fedora leader. Her name is Robyn Bergeron (pictured on the right), she is a resident of Phoenix in the USA, and she has been a Fedora Program Manager and a member of the Fedora marketing team since late 2010 when she was employed by Red Hat. From Robyn's personal blog: "By now, most of you have probably heard that yours truly is the new Fedora Project Leader. I'm not going to get too preachy or soapbox-y here, but I have a few things to say. Big shoes to fill, I have before me. Some of the smartest and wisest and most inspiring people I know have sat in this seat; over the years since I joined the Fedora Project, they've become dear friends, co-workers, the peeps I can count on for advice, and guidance. These are interesting times, folks, and we have a TON of stuff going on in Fedora right now that is on the hockey-stick path to Awesomeness. The *rest* of smartest and wisest and most inspirational people I know are the diverse group of contributors who drive the Fedora Project forward every day; you all are the Doers, the people who make things happen, the people who take ideas and turn them into actions."
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Perhaps the most widely discussed topic on Linux websites during the past week was Canonical's withdrawal of funding and support for Kubuntu, starting with version 12.10. Jonathan Riddell announced the bad news on KDE blogs: "Today I bring the disappointing news that Canonical will no longer be funding my work on Kubuntu after 12.04. Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu, and support the projects with infrastructure. This is a big challenge to Kubuntu of course and KDE as well." Jonathan Riddell, Kubuntu's founder and project leader (DistroWatch interviewed Jonathan back in August 2005), was on Canonical's payroll ever since the project became an official Ubuntu subproject, but it seems that, with all the recent drastic changes in orientation, desktop design and target market, Kubuntu's presence in Canonical's line-up perhaps seemed a little awkward. As if the company wanted to further distance itself from the traditional computer desktop and associate the word Ubuntu with Unity, touch-screen interfaces, TV sets and other modern gadgets. Kubuntu, with its vanilla KDE desktop interface, might have started to feel archaic in Canonical's future plans, a distraction from the company's ambitious goals to capture a much larger market share.
Of course, all this doesn't mean that Kubuntu is about to disappear. On the contrary, it might even prosper under a more open, community approach. Still, the overwhelming pessimism didn't stop some journalists and bloggers from burying the distribution. KDE and Kubuntu developer Richard Johnson vents his anger at irresponsible reporting in "Kubuntu Is Not Dead": "Kubuntu is not dead, it is in fact just as alive today as it was last month. Those of you who are posting things like, 'Time to jump ship' or 'Kubuntu is dead', where do you get your facts? Did you happen to read Jonathan's blog post? Where in there does it say that Kubuntu is dead? Why jump ship? Why jump ship to another distro that is only supported by a few instead of a larger community? ... Canonical is not stopping Kubuntu, they are stopping the funding. Stopping the funding doesn't mean that Kubuntu is dead. If you support the idea that Kubuntu is dead because of this, then damn near every distribution that you want to jump ship to is also dead. Jumping ship in a time like this equates to nothing more than a slap in the face of everyone who has worked their asses off to offer to you, free in every sense of the word, Kubuntu. Remember, Jonathan was the only paid Kubuntu developer, everyone else did it for free. Don't disrespect their hard work with your flawed logic."
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In the meantime, Canonical has been busy vying businesses with a new product: Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix. Mark Shuttleworth has announced the product on his blog: We're publishing an initial version of the Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix today, based on Ubuntu 11.10. Deployment teams have long been modifying their Ubuntu installs to remove features like music players or games and add components that are a standard part of their business workflow. This remix takes the most common changes we've observed among institutional users and bundles them into one CD which can be installed directly or used as a basis for further customization. Before anyone gets all worked up and conspiratorial: everything in the remix is available from the standard Software Centre. Packages out, packages in. No secret sauce for customers only; we're not creating a RHEL, we already have an enterprise-quality release cadence called LTS and we like it just the way it is. This is a convenience for anyone who wants it." Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is available for download from here (after registration and after agreeing to a licence agreement).
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So which one is better? Ubuntu with Unity or Linux Mint with Cinnamon? If you still can't make up your mind, ZDNet's Terry Relph-Knight is here to help with an in-depth review entitled "A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint": "Ubuntu and Linux Mint are both stable, mature distributions with a wide range of compatible applications. If you're a business requiring commercial-level support for which you're willing to pay, then Ubuntu is the obvious choice. Home users who want out-of-the-box support for a wide range of media and can put up with the slightly later release dates might well prefer Mint. Some people take a rather dim view of Ubuntu's default earth-tone colour palette, and Mint certainly provides an appropriately cool green-and-grey alternative. Ubuntu does offer desktop themes in alternative palettes, although the default 'orange'-hued Ambience theme arguably has the most polished appearance. Then there's the choice between Ubuntu's Unity interface and Linux Mint's modifiable GNOME 3 shell. As we've seen, the UIs for both distros are works in progress, and in practice both offer an easy switch to variations on the earlier GNOME 2 if you don't get on with the default offerings."
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It is perhaps hard to believe, but this year will mark the twentieth anniversary since the birth of SuSE Linux (as it was known back in 1992). Brian Proffitt looks back at the two turbulent decades: "While Linux itself celebrated its twentieth anniversary in high style last year, 2012 will be the year of the lizard, as SUSE Linux steps up to celebrate two decades as the world's oldest commercial Linux entity. The company has announced it 'will showcase major historical milestones throughout the year and discuss plans for the future at a series of events throughout the world that will include SUSECon 2012, the premier event for SUSE customers, partners and enthusiasts,' according to a press release out today. But this relatively long existence almost didn't come to pass, as what began as S.u.S.E. GmbH in 1992 has undergone two major takeovers, a partnership with Microsoft that led to near-revolt in the Linux community, and a heretofore-unknown consideration by Red Hat to purchase the German Linux company just prior to the turn of the century. According to Kerry Kim, who is now Director of Solution Marketing at SUSE Linux, then-SuSE Linux AG approached Red Hat to possibly acquire SuSE around the 1999-2000 time period."
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With FreeBSD also about to enter its third decade of existence and with new stable releases arriving at semi-regular intervals, one could easily come to a conclusion that everything is going great in the world of the popular open-source operating system. But as with any project of this size, voices of discontent are never far away. The most recent one came from John Kozubik who has a few harsh words for the FreeBSD release engineering process. Nathan Willis reports for Linux Weekly News: "On January 16, John Kozubik posted to the FreeBSD-hackers list and expressed his disappointment in some of the recent trends in the project. Namely, an increasingly-slow release cycle, too many overlapping "production" releases, and an estrangement between the core developers and end users when it comes to support issues like bug fixes. The list has since debated Kozubik's assessment of the situation in a heroically long thread, but while the majority agree that FreeBSD would benefit from refocusing its energies and polishing its processes, it has not yet developed a concrete plan of action. Kozubik himself is not a FreeBSD developer; he manages enterprise production environments that run almost 1,000 FreeBSD machines. As he explained in his initial message, he was disappointed to hear that the next point release of the OS, 8.3, has been pushed back to March 2012 -- more than a year after 8.2."
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Mandriva Linux may not be as old as either SUSE or FreeBSD, but it has established itself as a well-known Linux entity on a worldwide scale. Sadly, its days could be numbered as yet another financial crisis engulfs the Paris-based company. Peter Cannon takes a brief look at Mandrake and Mandriva's highs and lows: "Released in 1998 and based on Red Hat Linux 5.1 Mandrake (Mandriva) was probably ahead of its time in respect of trying to get people to pay for Linux by running the Mandrake Club. Basically the club, which was closed in 2009, was a paid membership, yearly fee, in bronze, silver or gold, and optional corporate status. It gave you access to releases before the public. Members also got access to the Powerpack edition for free, (two releases per year). Powerpack had proprietary drivers, a (legal) DVD player and the official Adobe reader. It also gave access to dedicated update and download mirrors, meaning better performance, and it also provided a closed forum and support, help desk etc. Thereby being amongst the first to offer in effect support contracts for their products."
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Another Linux distribution currently fighting for survival is Pardus Linux, a Turkish project that has garnered some following over the last few years. But with those responsible for funding unable to come to a firm decision, talks about a possible fork of the distribution have intensified. Susan Linton reports for OStatic: "In a lengthy explanation Pardus developer Bahadır Kandemir said, 'They are not shutting down the project, they are killing it very slowly.' He's speaking of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and their recent decisions that spell nothing less than the abandonment of this wonderful Linux distribution. Political climates are volatile and evolving by the day in the Middle East and it appears this little project may be yet another casualty. Kandemir explains that many of those in management who cared and supported the project were reassigned or given early retirement. Boards were manned with 'non-academic and non-talented people who have nothing to do with science, research and development.' Despite TUBITAK denials, developers have been resigning on a daily basis, according to Kandemir. He said that Pardus had about 35 developers last year and now only five remain."
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Tracking and identifying users through web browser data
Am-I-anonymous asks: I've heard that my browser can be uniquely identified and tracked. Is this true, should I be worried about it?
DistroWatch answers: When you visit a web page there are typically many pieces of information which get transferred to the server. The name of the browser, its version, which operating system you're running, which add-ons you have installed, your IP address, information stored in cookies... The list goes on. Quite often your IP address itself is enough to uniquely identify the computer during one session, but over multiple sessions, is the browser unique? Maybe not entirely unique, but probably unique enough to make a guess at who you are.
After receiving this question I did a quick scan of a web server's log files and found even when ignoring IP addresses and cookies, it was possible to identify many users uniquely just by looking at the browser's name, version number and operating system. That being said, some websites seem designed to make people think their browser is more identifiable than it really is. Take this page, hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Visiting this page declares my web browser unique. Changing my IP address and returning to the page again identifies my browser as still being unique, which makes the verdict suspect. However, even if the page comes to the wrong conclusion it does show the visitor some of the information available to web hosts and packet sniffers which can be used to take a fingerprint of the browser.
As to how worried one should be about this, I suppose that depends on where you are and what you're doing. And, for that matter, what your privacy concerns are. A friend of mine likes to say browsing the web is a bit like yelling in a public place and people should act (and post) accordingly. Personally I think that's a good piece of advice. Still, if you're interested in making it more difficult to track your browser there are some tools available. Items like the user-agent switcher extension for Firefox can make the browser change its identity at will. The HTTPS Everywhere extension helps to prevent people from listening in on your network traffic and technologies like Tor and web proxies can help keep a person anonymous. Privacy seekers should probably prevent their browser from accepting cookies and maintaining a history as those things make it easy to track a person's browsing habits.
While we're on the topic of privacy I'd like to bring up something I see as an inconsistency among a vocal minority in the open-source community. It seems whenever a story appears talking about Ubuntu's OEM installs sending a "count me" signal to Canonical or PC-BSD installs checking into BSD-Stats there is an explosion of people complaining about privacy violations and demanding the feature be removed. Yet, at the same time, those outraged comments are being posted from browsers which send ten times more information to the websites where the posts appear and our package managers send more information to repository mirrors almost every day. There seems to be a misunderstanding as to just how much information our computers transmit and to who and by what methods. For those interested in seeing just what their computers are sending to the outside world I recommend installing Wireshark and taking a look at the traffic being sent over the wire.
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Released Last Week |
Sabayon Linux 8
Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 8, a modern Gentoo-based distribution with a choice of GNOME 3, KDE 4 and Xfce desktops: "Busier than busy bees, we're once again here to announce the immediate availability of Sabayon 8 in all of its tier-1 flavours. If you really enjoyed Sabayon 7, this is just another step towards world domination. There you have it, shining at full bright, for your home computer, your laptop and your home servers. Linux kernel 3.2, GNOME 3.2.2, KDE 4.7.4 (4.8.0 available in the testing repository), Xfce 4.8, LibreOffice 3.4.4 are just some of the things you will find inside the box. Read the full release announcement for more details and relevant links.

Sabayon Linux 8 - the default KDE desktop (full image size: 260kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Webconverger 11.2
Kai Hendry has announced the release of Webconverger 11.2, a Debian-based, browser-only live CD designed for Internet kiosks: "11.0 was a great and popular release. Thank you! 11.2 builds on that with: Firefox 10; Linux kernel 3.2 with TCP proportional rate reduction; removal of confusing tab groups from Firefox, making things simpler; stop accidental downloads of unknown mimetypes, therefore saving precious bandwidth; for developers - build upgraded to live build a42 from Debian Live and source has moved to Github; 10 second retry on net error for cases where network isn't quite ready; more (non-free) wireless firmware - realtek, libertas, brcm80211 and atheros, which means your wireless kiosk will almost certainly work. Here are the full release notes with notes on upgrading and future plans.
Superb Mini Server 1.6.4
Superb Mini Server (SMS) 1.6.4, a Slackware-based server distribution, has been released: "Superb Mini Server version 1.6.4 released (Linux kernel 2.6.39.4). This minor release brings security updates to 2.6.39 kernels for CVE-2012-0056 local root exploit, where a local user could gain root privileges by modifying process memory, and for various packages such as OpenSSL, Samba, Apache server, PHP. This is the last release with GCC 4.5.3 as we will follow Slackware 'Current' with GCC 4.6.2 and 3.2.x kernels. The 3.2.5 kernels built with GCC 4.5.3 are available from the SMS kernel repository if anyone wants an early upgrade. Also Eric Hameleer's OpenJDK packages adopted, replacing JDK and JRE packages. The SMS live CD now issues default passwords at login prompt to help the lazy ones, and comes with kernel 3.2.5, just for the fun of it. Read the rest of the release announcement which includes a changelog.
CrunchBang Linux 10 R20120207
Philip Newborough has released an updated set of CrunchBang Linux 10 "Statler" CD images, a lightweight Debian-based distribution featuring the Openbox window manager: "As previously discussed, I have updated the 'Statler' images. The new images do not constitute a new release, at least not for anyone who is content with using the previous 20111125 images. However, due to some concerns which were expressed over the default use of Backports packages, there are now two sets of images, 'stable' and 'backported'. The 'stable' images ship with Debian's stable kernel (2.6.32) and stable X.Org (7.5), while the 'backported' images ship with Linux 3.2 and X.org (7.6) and automatically track any packages that enter the Debian Backports repository. Both sets of images use backported versions of Iceweasel (10.0) and Geany (0.20). Also, GDM has been restored as the default display manager. See this forum post to learn about the changes in this release.
AV Linux 5.0.3
Glen MacArthur has announced the release of AV Linux 5.0.3, a Debian-based multimedia oriented distribution with a custom kernel enabled for low-latency audio performance: "AV Linux 5.0.3 'Tube' has been released. It represents some important refinements and tweaks to the very successful 5.0.2 release. AV Linux 5.0.3 will be the last ISO update of the 5.0 series and for the first time it is accompanied with a 3-part YouTube screencast detailing what's new in AV Linux 5.0.3. Highlights include Trulan Martin's 3.0.16 Kernel, Iceweasel 9.0.1, gThumb replaces GPicview, better OOTB M-Audio Fast Track Pro 24-bit support, LinuxDSP's PEQ-2 demo, a few handy hidden scripts and important updates to almost every featured Video Editor. Changelog: move to Linux ernel 3.0.16 with USB duplex fix; supply performance CPU defaults for AC and on-demand defaults for laptops running on battery.... Read the rest of the release announcement for a full changelog and a screenshot of the default LXDE desktop.
Thinstation 5.0
Mike Eriksen has announced the release of Thinstation 5.0, a small and open-source thin client operating system based on CRUX: "After about a year of development Thinstation 5.0, the successor to Thinstation 2.2.2, has been released. Thinstation 5.0 is based on the CRUX 2.7 code, but the user front-end is very much the same as previously, i.e. it still uses build.conf and thinstation.conf. There are of course some new things to learn (2.2.x is more than five years old) but the soul and spirit is all the same. However, there are new requirements: a simple build requires 64 MB of RAM and an i686 class processor is required. This is 16-year old technology, any CPU post 2003 works and almost any post 1996 does. For package developers Thinstation 5.0 is great news. It is so easy now to add own packages or modify existing ones thanks to the standardized CRUX code base. Read the release announcement and visit the project's website to learn more.

Thinstation 5.0 - a thin client operating system based on CRUX (full image size: 1,318kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
NetBSD 5.1.2
Soren Jacobsen has announced the release of NetBSD 5.1.2: "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that version 5.1.2 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 5.1.2 is the second critical/security update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons. Please note that all fixes in critical/security updates (i.e., NetBSD 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc.) are cumulative, so the latest update contains all such fixes since the corresponding minor release. These fixes will also appear in future minor releases (i.e., NetBSD 5.1, 5.2, etc.), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements. NetBSD 5.1.2 is dedicated to the memory of Yoshihiro Masuda, who passed away in May 2011. See the brief release announcement and the detailed release notes for further information.
Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7r2
Alan Baghumian has announced the release of the second revision of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7, a desktop distribution and live DVD based on Debian's stable branch: "The second and probably the last update release of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7, code name 'Raul', is available now. This version comes with several updated packages including GNU Iceweasel 10.0 and also merges all the published security and bug-fix updates as of February 10, 2012. It is hard to believe that it has been seven years since we published our first public release. We have come a long way and are hoping to be able to serve our user community as long as we can. Soon we will start to work on the next version of Parsix GNU/Linux which will be shipped with GNOME 3.x series and GNOME Shell extensions. Stay tuned. See the release announcement and release notes for further details.
Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.02
Anke Boersma has announced the release of Chakra GNU/Linux 2010.02, one of the first distribuitons featuring the recently released KDE 4.8 desktop: "The Chakra development team is proud to announce the first release of the KDE 4.8 series, code name 'Archimedes'. With this release KDE is updated to 4.8.0, kernel to Linux 3.2.2. A new theme, Ronak, is introduced. Updated Qt, boost, Subversion, Phonon packages, libxcb stack, to name a few of the newer base packages included. A switch to GRUB 2 has been decided on, to be more compatible with other operating systems. Chakra is now offering a DVD and CD edition. The CD edition gets you to a minimal working KDE desktop, with only a text editor, file manager, web browser and a simple media player installed. The DVD includes all the language packs, most of standard KDE applications, LibreOffice 3.4.5, Amarok.... More details in the release announcement.

Chakra GNU/Linux 2012.02 - one of the first distributions shipping with KDE 4.8 (full image size: 829kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Frugalware Linux 1.6
Miklós Vajna has announced the release of Frugalware Linux 1.6, a general-purpose distribution for desktops and servers: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware Linux 1.6, our sixteenth stable release. No new features have been added since 1.6rc2, but 93 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. Here are the most important changes since 1.5: updated packages - Linux kernel 3.1.10, X.Org Server 1.11.2, GNOME 3.2, KDE 4.7, LibreOffice 3.4.5, Mozilla Firefox 10.0 to name a few major components; i686 and x86_64 ISO images are now hybrid and we no longer build separate USB images for these architectures; cpupower can be used to configure your CPU power management; UEFI/EFI support has been removed from i686; UUIDs are now used by the installer when generating the /etc/fstab for new installs.... Read the remainder of the release announcement for a full list of new features and upgrade instructions.

Frugalware Linux 1.6 - the default KDE 4.7.4 desktop (full image size: 519kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to database
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New distributions added to waiting list
- SmartRouter. SmartRouter is a Brazilian specialist distribution for routers, firewalls and proxy servers. The project's website is in Portuguese.
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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, 20 February 2012.
Jesse Smith and Ladislav Bodnar
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • R.I.P. Pardus (by goek on 2012-02-13 09:20:13 GMT from Germany)
Sad. It´s like they want the remaining developers to resign. I never used it other than a live CD two years ago, but I was impressed with the energy put into the Kaptan, the artwork, icons. Reading the reviews I expected Pardus to get huge, once packages grew. Also it was cool to see some new Linux, not Ubuntu Remix #244. I hope the best for the developers. I hope they find new satisfying jobs.
2 • Chakra (by TheBullDog on 2012-02-13 09:29:07 GMT from United States)
If anyone is thinking of downloading Chakra 2012.02, use torrents instead of the main server. It looks like the main server is getting hit pretty hard (reported 19 hours to download) versus 1 hour via torrent. And, if you seed the iso for a bit yourself, that will help.
3 • Chakra (continued) (by TheBullDog on 2012-02-13 09:35:22 GMT from United States)
To access the Chakra torrents, go to www.chakra-linux.org, and click on Get. That's where you'll find torrents for the particular flavor of Chakra that you're interested in.
4 • Kubuntu (by Greg on 2012-02-13 10:08:01 GMT from Slovenia)
I am glad to see that Kubuntu will continue it's development. I am also surprised with this Cannonical act. As for why the dropped it - KDE as far as i know offers similar looking interface to that found in Unity (and good for tablets) as well as netbook interface. In fact they plan to make KDE based tablets to support the project wiht the money from the device. So i don't think that KDE look and feel is the reason. i bet they weren't even trying hard to market the product.
5 • GhostBSD (by Toolz on 2012-02-13 10:44:02 GMT from Vietnam)
The website seems to suggest 3.0 is going to be out soon. I hope that builds on the current high-quality release.
6 • @2 (by chon on 2012-02-13 12:27:01 GMT from Thailand)
I downloaded the 2 DVD editions together in just 3 hours.
7 • @2 (by Toolz on 2012-02-13 13:35:15 GMT from Vietnam)
I always default to the torrent where available - if only to show those who might feel themselves in a position to make pronouncements on the protocols I use that bittorrent has highly legitimate uses. I hope Distrowatch will continue to provide torrent links - where available - in their articles.
8 • @4 Kubuntu (by DavidEF on 2012-02-13 14:01:38 GMT from United States)
My opinion only - Ubuntu dropped Kubuntu financial support because, as Jonathan Riddell is quoted above saying "Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu, and support the projects with infrastructure." Likely, they are trying to further "Unify" their focus on Unity, by saving their pennies for development of Ubuntu proper.
Why should the KDE based Ubuntu get support and not the others - LXDE, XFCE, etc.? It makes perfect sense, and it doesn't even have to indicate that they don't like KDE, or don't care to have Kubuntu developed. But, of course "they weren't even trying hard to market the product". They have said from the beginning that their official product was the Gnome one. Now it is the Unity one. Others are just nice to have around. They are still supporting the end-users' choice by continuing to support all of these other derivitives with infrastructure, which, by the way, IS a financial support, as it costs money to provide.
9 • Pardus slow death (by Neal on 2012-02-13 14:55:06 GMT from United States)
The "slow death" sounds much faster than thought....Makes me sick. I've used this distro for the past two years with not one single issue...I'm not sure which way to go now.
How is the Chakra project? Is it stable and easy to use with features known to work well with a variety of hardware?
Politics....always getting in the way of progress.
10 • Frugalware Linux 1.6 (by sumbu on 2012-02-13 16:13:15 GMT from Malaysia)
Hello distrowatch. Please review Frugalware Linux 1.6 for next issue.
11 • Panopticlick (by Buzz on 2012-02-13 18:08:37 GMT from United States)
"Changing my IP address and returning to the page again identifies my browser as still being unique, which makes the verdict suspect."
I don't think IP plays any part in browser fingerprinting.
12 • Mandriva, Kubuntu (by Ron on 2012-02-13 18:33:17 GMT from United States)
It gets so tiring hearing about the issues Mandriva has. Its like this annoying, endless drama. I am glad that Mageia is here taking its place. Seems like Mandriva has made nothing but bad financial choices. Maybe it really is time for them to just go. (I don't say anything against Mandriva with hate. But if any of us saw a helpless animal in pain and suffering and there was no way to help it get better, then would we let it lay their screaming or put it out of its misery and just shoot it.)
Kubuntu. Well this makes sense. Canonical seems to be slowly distancing themselves from a lot. I predict in the near future that they will completely withdraw from any connection with Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu. Though I do see them keeping Edubuntu around as a marketing gimmick, or at least a version of it. Soon we will see Canonical say that Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu will have to change their names. Which is cool, no need for panicking. If worst comes to worst they can jump aboard with Linux Mint or even better yet base them completely on Debian.
Ubuntu seems to have its own new, hidden direction. I am sure more and more will see this in the future or maybe Shuttleworth will come out and just finally say it.
Again. There is no need for people to get all upset with this. There are many choices with Linux. Honestly Debian already has it all, the rest of the Debian based ones, imo, are just clones with a few slight differences. Which is great for them and those that want something like that.
13 • Kubuntu (by Julian on 2012-02-13 18:54:37 GMT from United States)
Never been a Kubuntu fan myself -- it's always been like a less useful version of the main Ubuntu release to me. Performance is poor on an old eeePC. It has no more right to have its development funded than the feature-rich and quick-performing Xubuntu.
I think it's too bad Canonical won't take LXDE and re-work THAT for their "unifying" television-smartphone-tablet-notebook-desktop interface. We want a DE that is responsive rather than one that gets bogged down using the swap partition .... even when RAM and processing power are limited, like they usually are on phones/tablets/netbooks/televisions.
14 • @12 Mandriva/Mageia (by Major Dôme on 2012-02-13 19:00:48 GMT from France)
"I am glad that Mageia is here taking its place." I believe that most of the original developpers of Mandriva went with Mageia (at least, those who had another job). Therefore, I was almost happily surprised with Mageia 1: though forking and being very careful with contributions of Mandriva is a long task, they succeeded in offering (at least)2 DE without making it a Public Relation trick, and I had all the packages I needed. The fact that they have 2 DE is sufficient (in case one is broken, or is not liked, there remains some hope), this is not a matter of desktop war. The only flaw I saw was a rare,exotic soft -qemu-arm-, which broke under Mageia 1 and not under FC 15/16 . But it could have been the symetrical way..
"Seems like Mandriva has made nothing but bad financial choices. "
May be the name and the walls in Paris did...
15 • Thinstation 5.0 (by Hmmm on 2012-02-13 19:01:40 GMT from United States)
I was looking at the Thinstation client and the install is simple enough. The server side was confusing even for me. Did I miss something or is this just one piece of the puzzle? Do you need SMS or CRUX installed on another PC running all the time on another machine? I couldn't figure out the server side of it.
16 • Finger print (by Jesse on 2012-02-13 19:05:31 GMT from Canada)
>> "Changing my IP address and returning to the page again identifies my browser as still being unique, which makes the verdict suspect."
I don't think IP plays any part in browser fingerprinting. "
My point was that when the same browser visits the site with cookies cleared and a different IP address the website wasn't able to recognize it and falsely declared it unique.Without clearing cookies and changing the IP address it's possible the site would have recognized the browser as having recently been to the site and simply displayed its original answer rather than check its database again to see if it was unique. In short, I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt by starting fresh each time rather than simply clicking "refresh".
17 • Tave Over Pardus? (by Craig on 2012-02-13 19:23:56 GMT from United States)
Surely there are some devs who'd like to take over Pardus. It's too good a distro to just go down the toilet. PiSi are the only packages I can make with ease and I'm just a layman. .
18 • Pardus (by Landor on 2012-02-13 19:42:28 GMT from Canada)
We're seeing a repeat of the drama that surrounded all the stuff with Mandriva and OpenSolaris, from Pardus now.
From the wording of the information it begins to sound like they feel vindicated and righteous discussing how many that have left the project.
I really hope we don't have a repeat of the time/year or so that followed the initial outbreak, and then spread into various parts of the community. Learn a little self-discipline people, and learn to weather a storm or two, you might not feel the need to mutiny like children at every turn.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
19 • RE: 17 (by Landor on 2012-02-13 19:46:04 GMT from Canada)
It sounds like the devs are the ones causing the demise of the distribution, and you want them to keep it going? So far all word from Pardus itself is that it's just going through some changes, changes that the devs don't like, so they're taking their ball and going home, ruining the project that they're blaming others for.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
20 • Kubuntu (by Mike on 2012-02-13 20:06:53 GMT from United States)
Kubuntu is a much better product than that freaky looking ubuntu.
21 • Mandriva (by Ron on 2012-02-13 20:43:19 GMT from United States)
HaHa. Just had a thought. Maybe Microsoft will buy Mandriva. Change the name to Microdriva (Was going to say Mansoft, but that sounded to pornographic.)
Hey, you never know ;-)
22 • Chakra (by claudecat on 2012-02-13 20:57:55 GMT from United States)
Chakra has quickly become one of the best KDE distros out there, and I look forward to installing Archimedes. Their bundle system flawlessly separates the gtk stuff from the rest of the system, leaving one of the purest KDE environments available - at least out of the box.
23 • Dogs bark, but the caravan goes on (by Microlinux on 2012-02-13 22:05:31 GMT from France)
In this buzzing world of hype, one value gets easily overlooked: perennity. Some time ago, I've rediscovered Debian, which I had already been using since the days of Potato and Woody. Their implementation of KDE may be a bit behind, but it's one of the cleanest I've seen so far. No unnerving bugs, everything just works as it should. Plus, Debian will always be around, and folks can count on a polished new release every two years or so. When it's ready.
24 • Kutbuntu & Pardus (by Duy Nguyen on 2012-02-13 22:09:13 GMT from United States)
I have been distro-hopping for the last seven years and it has been great, but I think Linux has matured to the extent that we need to have only one or two flavors to compete with Windows and Apple OS. Sadly, I do not think that that day will happen any time soon. There is too much distro-loyalties out there. I think the people in charge of funding different projects are beginning to ask questions. "Why should we support Pardus when everyone can download Ubuntu for free?" In our current economic environment, every single dollar counts. Kubuntu and Pardus are just the beginning of the cutting.
25 • Kubuntu, Pardus, Xubuntu (by Vakkotaur on 2012-02-13 22:18:09 GMT from United States)
I tried Kubuntu years ago (never cared fro Gnome, myself) and it seemed alright, but I went with PCLinuxOS as it set got more right than *buntu did as far as I was concerned. That Ubuntu is withdrawing financial support from the KDE branch is hardly a surprise. They have the one thing they want to deal with, and let others deal with the rest.
I wound up switching to Xfce even before the KDE 4 thing as I was using aged gear that needed a lighter touch. I got used to it.
The past week or so I'd been trying Pardus on a new A6-equipped laptop. I suspect Pardus would be fine on something not quite so new, but I had all sorts so troubles, settings seeming to change at random, and some hardware not really recognized. I will congratulate Pardus on being the *only* distribution where I've ever seen Catalyst work correctly - the administrative version asked for a password and opened. Xubuntu has yet to do that (I have to sudo amdcccle). Even so, I wound up installing the Xubuntu 12.04 alpha 2 and that has been working correctly, recognizing all hardware right. I realize that is largely if not entirely a matter of the the 3.2 (with 3.3 backports for some things?) kernel.
I wanted to like Pardus, and I think it has some good ideas. Kaptan is something other distributions ought to look into, for one thing. Alas, Pardus just didn't work out for me.
26 • Pardus: Maybe it is time. (by uz64 on 2012-02-13 22:48:21 GMT from United States)
Pardus always was, IMO, a great distro. Although I haven't run it myself as my main OS for long, I always appreciated it and followed its progress, trying out new versions. They always impressed me (with one recent release being an exception, but later point releases fixed that). But... maybe the time is about right for someone to step up and say that they've had enough, and tell the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey to go fork off.
The sidux guys continued on as aptosid nearly flawlessly (except the name, but that's beside the point...), and some Mandriva developers seemed to have been very successful so far with Mageia, IMO blowing away Mandriva's own offering by being more Mandriva than Mandriva itself. If the guys could get a group set up and get started on the fork, and keep interest in the project, Pardus could live on (in spirit) further into the future. And as more of a community effort, if enough interest is gained, they could be able to do things that they weren't traditionally able to do. Who knows, forking could present new possibilities.
I would like to see a fork happen. With the latest news, the sooner the better.
27 • #13 (by Andy Prough on 2012-02-13 22:49:43 GMT from United States)
Interesting that you don't get good performance on an eeePc with Kubuntu. I've got openSUSE 12.1 with the KDE Plasma Netbook running, and it's actually one of the fastest booting devices I own. It seems to run very well with no jerky video. Which version of KDE did you last try with Kubuntu? I think the stock version with openSUSE 12.1 right now is 4.7. Possibly if you were using an older version, you may have run into some trouble there.
28 • Kubuntu (by rich52 on 2012-02-13 23:11:05 GMT from United States)
I'm suprised about Canonical's move to defund Kubuntu. Personally I think Kubuntu has gone a very long way since it's inception. I think it is right up there with Fedora's F16 KDE version. Very stable and with a lot of the latest software. Unity and Ubuntu still makes my head spin. . . and I'm waiting for 12.04 to finally come out. Hopefully it won't be another disaster waiting to happen. Developers need to finalize their 'shells' and start working on the software that operates in them.
Rich :)
29 • Ubuntu ED Remix (by Hey Oh on 2012-02-13 23:34:11 GMT from United States)
Mark is very upfront about VMWare being in the mix, but what he does not mention is that the image offered bundles Adobe and h264 products, as well. If you have concerns about security or about indirectly contributing to the h264 patent empire, you might want to skip this remix.
30 • Kubuntu and Stuff (by Marti on 2012-02-13 23:48:54 GMT from United States)
When I saw the first pics of Unity, I immediately downloaded the LXDE package via synaptic for my 10.04 LTS box. Never looked back. I have had Ubuntu since 7.10 on this same machine; I bought it pre-installed.
I tried a Kubuntu LiveCD and even installed it on my ready2go box: a refurb, dual core, 4GB RAM eMachines PC for when the above dies. I just never got comfortable with it. Obviously smart people are working on KDE. There's a peppermint on that box now.
It is sad that they are defunding Kubuntu, since there has been such a long-term relationship. I just do NOT get Unity; the push for Unity; this excitement over Unity. As an OPTIONAL desktop: sure! It's just a diff mindset. To each their own.
Although I am NOT a developer, I started with menus and terminals and by God I'll die with menus and terminals.....with nary a single desktop icon.
31 • Mint 12 KDE, Kubuntu, KDE (by fernbap on 2012-02-14 00:08:13 GMT from Portugal)
Decided to give KDE another chance, installed Mint 12 KDE and Kubuntu. KDE is not my cup of tea. The fact that i'm considering using Mint KDE in itself just shows how bad gnome 3 or Unity really are. Mint KDE is very polished and a great KDE implementation. KDE is, in itself stable, complete, and a complete desktop, and so i need to explain why KDE is not my cup of tea. Perhaps the best way to describe my issues with KDE is by describing one of its most important components, Dolphin. I open Dolphin, What strikes me immediately is the waste of space. Much space uselessly wasted on my desktop. If i called a file manager, i want to look at files, and those are inside a windows that uses roughly just half the space that is being occupied in the desktop. What enrages me every time i use dolphin is it not showing the space left on the device, which is one of the basic infos that anyone needs in order to work with files. If i drag and drop files or folders, i will need an extra nouse click to select wether i want to move or copy them. Much, much better, is to have sensible defaults, like Nautilus: drag and drop in the same device=move, drag and drop across devices = copy. In the few ocasions when you don't want to do it, then you tell it what you want to do. That is what Dolphin is: lost, lots of useless info continuously shown, while mantaining serious usability issues. Busy, busy, busy and not efficient. Dolphin reflects the concept of KDE. It is just not the concept for me. The simple fact that i am seriously consider using it while i wait for cinnamon and/or MATE to grow just shows really how bad gnome 3 is.
32 • Memory Usage in Newer Versions of KDE (by uz64 on 2012-02-14 00:18:24 GMT from United States)
I just installed the latest version of Frugalware, 1.6, in a virtual machine. Because I don't have a ton of RAM to just waste (1GB), and since it uses a text-based installer, I decided to set the virtual machine's RAM to 256MB. The intention was to up it to 384MB before actually booting into to distro; I've had such bad problems just trying to start KDE4 in the past, I wouldn't dare try running it with 256MB. But I started it up... and only after logging in did I remember... oh shit! It's still set for 256MB! Oh well... it'll probably just fail to load and I'll be sent directly back to the login screen, like so many times before, and from there I can shut down and correct this.
But something bizarre happened. KDE--version 4.7 in this release--did *not* crash. I received an error message in the system tray area that Nepomuk could not be started after numerous tries, but I don't care--my experience with Nepomuk (along with Akonadi) is that it's useless, a waste of memory, and was always one of main programs to crash when running KDE4. The system is now reporting an uptime of about 20 minutes and 166 megs (out of 256) used, with only 34MB out of ~485MB swap space used.
What the hell... am I reading this right? With KDE4 running?! That is quite impressive. An accident with a completely unexpected (and surprisingly pleasing) outcome. So my question is... has there been any tests recently of the various versions of KDE4? Like 4.0, 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.7, etc.? And maybe a comparison of the last stable version of KDE 3 (3.5.10) vs. the latest versions of KDE4 (4.5, 4.7, 4.8, etc.)? It would be an interesting read.
33 • Panopticlick fingerprinting mechanism is accurate (by sdalton on 2012-02-14 00:39:09 GMT from United States)
and it doesn't rely on cookies. Beyond the combination of variables conveyed within your browser's HTTP request headers (exact browser version user-agent, O/S, service pack, .NET version installed, accepted lang encodings, etc) the panopticlick fingerprinting mechanism employs flash to create a manifest of the fonts installed on your computer.
If you disable flash & immediately retest, note that your retested "uniqueness" will be MUCH lower (underscoring the NON-importance of reading/setting cookies to accomplish this fingerprinting). Consider: How many zogbillion fonts are there? How many permutations... what's the likelihood that another PC will have EXACTLY the same selection of installed fonts? Again, rather than guessing/suspecting... you can verify this by uninstalling most, or all, non-stock (for your O/S disro) fonts then immediately retesting via the panopticlick page.
34 • Waning Star (by Toowoomba Linux on 2012-02-14 00:41:24 GMT from Australia)
Canonical removing support funding for Kubuntu is the tip of a systemic enterprise change in Canonical's focus - a focus that will cause the Canonical/Ubuntu star to gradually wane...
Is Canonical killing the goose to produce more golden eggs? I wonder (worry) about Shuttleworth's current vision of Ubuntu/Unity being a contender on the mobile/touchscreen market. Ubuntu made its impact by making a Distro so people could easily migrate from Windows to Linux - and they did a masterful job at that. They could have (eventually) become the premier Business Desktop of the 21st Century; I believe they were capable of trumping Microsoft at their own game...
Now they're trying to move into Mobile devices; which, from a business/marketing perspective is a mistake: 1. iOS and Android are currently entrenched in the popular press (and the public's mind) as "THE" only choice. 2. iOS and Android are mature and well developed OS with large vendor support and independent developers - I doubt if Unity has similar support (without the stats I may be wrong there) 3. Microsoft's attempt to gain a foothold in the mobile OS market, is, at best a moderate failure. Considering that MS has much greater resources (marketing and vendor subservience) than Canonical; how could Canonical possibly do any better?. (yes MS's OS wasn't good either) 4. Didn't Intel (a multi-billion dollar industry) attempt a mobile OS?
Does anyone know what market share Ubuntu/Unity has currently got in the Mobile market? Are there any vendors/manufacturers who are installing Unity as their base OS? Are there significant advantages of Unity over Android that could be held as a USP? This is essential info from an investor's perspective and one which I have not been able to uncover.
Ubuntu's Business Desktop Remix is about 3 years too late - it could have been such an markettable innovation that it could have landed an upper-cut to MS's market domination. But, alas this is 2012 and not 2009 and they have missed a golden opportunity to become the premier Office/Business Desktop. Why? Support for XP is coming to an end. It is still the most widely used Desktop OS on the Market. Canonical needed to establish it's business Desktop credentials long before the end of XP date. Now Offices and Businesses will simply migrate to the next version of Windows instead of closely looking at a specialised Business Desktop that's known for it's security, stability and support. Unless Canonical has a spare $300+ million marketing budget (the same budget that MS used to tell us that Vista wasn't crap) they cannot possibly get the message out in time.
Unless of course they ....
Cheers Martin
35 • KDE and Panopticlick (by Jesse on 2012-02-14 01:18:21 GMT from Canada)
@32: I don't know about any full benchmarks comparing memory usage of the various KDE releases. However, over the past couple of years whenever I've tried openSUSE I've made attempts to install and run it with small amounts of RAM in a virtual environment. The last couple of releases installed and ran with 256MB of memory. I find distributions running KDE4 generally use around 200MB of memory or less.
@33: Panopticlick doesn't use cookies for finger printing, but it does use cookies to check whether you've been to the site before. Thus they can skip some steps if they detect their cookies on your browser. They cover this in their FAQs https://panopticlick.eff.org/faq.php As I explained above I didn't clear cookies to avoid finger printing, but to make sure their cookies weren't causing the site to treat me differently during the test.
36 • Re. 34: "Innovation" doesn't mean what you think it means. (by uz64 on 2012-02-14 01:25:32 GMT from United States)
"Ubuntu's Business Desktop Remix is about 3 years too late - it could have been such an markettable innovation that it could have landed an upper-cut to MS's market domination. But, alas this is 2012 and not 2009 and they have missed a golden opportunity to become the premier Office/Business Desktop."
Removing a few games and sticking a few "business" programs from the repository on the space freed on the disc is definitely not an innovation. All it is is a slightly modified Ubuntu, with a few "business" applications so they can claim that they have a brand-new product that can fill special needs that supposedly plain Ubuntu can't. It still has that some pathetic Unity (though GNOME 3 is pathetic in its own ways, as well), and I don't know why any business would want to run it. Unless they run their business on tablet computers.
37 • Waning Star reply (by Toowoomba Linux on 2012-02-14 02:50:29 GMT from Australia)
"Removing a few games and sticking a few "business" programs from the repository on the space freed on the disc is definitely not an innovation. All it is is a slightly modified Ubuntu, with a few "business" applications so they can claim that they have a brand-new product that can fill special needs that supposedly plain Ubuntu can't. It still has that some pathetic Unity (though GNOME 3 is pathetic in its own ways, as well), and I don't know why any business would want to run it. Unless they run their business on tablet computers."
btw. I agree with you 100% from a technical perspective....I assume your a Linux user and have some knowledge of Ubuntu. However, what I'm talking about is branding a product for non-linux users - the concept of a "Business Platform" allows a USP (Unique Selling Position) for Canonical to Business and Office users.
A good marketer puts themselves in the shoes of the demographic. Try to imagine a user (using an office desktop) who has only used Windows and has been told that WinXP isn't being supported any more. Try to imagine a Business owner who has an office of WinXP Desktops knowing that support is coming to an end.... they're all probably in a cold sweat.
It does not matter if it's a tweaked version of vanilla ubuntu - from a demographic perspective they see "Business Remix" as an inexpensive alternative...
Cheers Martin
38 • #32 (by Andy Prough on 2012-02-14 03:55:59 GMT from United States)
Yes, KDE is much faster since 4.7 was released, and is much better on memory usage. Speed and memory optimization is mostly what the KDE engineers have been working on in their recent releases, and it really shows.
39 • Re. 37 (by uz64 on 2012-02-14 05:30:46 GMT from United States)
The only problem I have is with your use of the word "innovation" which is far too often misused, when it is typically completely false, as a buzzword for purely for marketing reasons. I understand why you used it now, but I still think it was the wrong (and a misleading) way to put it. Let the marketing guys talk how they want--that doesn't make them right. They're only speaking $$$. Passing big fancy words around and not knowing what they're talking about just to get a bunch of "ooohs" and "ahhhs" and hype their new product doesn't make it right. Any dictionary would prove it.
40 • Re. 38 (by uz64 on 2012-02-14 05:47:44 GMT from United States)
All I can say is that, with all of my past experiences with KDE4 on a machine with low memory, I am highly impressed that KDE even got past the splash screen, let alone allowed me to open Dolphin and Konsole (out of curiosity to run "free -m" because the desktop showed up in the first place) with no crashes. I think it's about time I re-consider using KDE4 again; I was disappointed with it even on my system with 1GB RAM (KDE's minimum of 384MB plus Firefox on top of that led my system to swapping and thrashing real quick), but with that big of an improvement in a configuration that it would not even start in before, it's showing some serious promise as an every-day usable desktop to me.
While I still wouldn't use it with only 256MB of RAM, I have a feeling the latest version would run quite well with what I've found the be the absolute minimum requirement - 384MB RAM. I never would have expected such a huge improvement.
I went to KDE's site and found mostly the same "new feature, new feature, new feature", which is great, but I've always been disappointed that with every new feature, KDE becomes more of a resource hog. I'm glad to see they have finally realized this and are taking such big steps to fix it.
Some accidents really are shockingly good. Great job, KDE team.
41 • Jumping Ship (by l2ulinux on 2012-02-14 06:12:49 GMT from United States)
May I as a new user say something with out all the older Linux users jumping down my throat. On many of the forum older users are refusing to help many of the new users are telling them how dumb they are for asking stupid questions but to the new user did not know the answers.
I was looking thru the net checking out blogs and old forums and came across a remark make by a user.
The user was writing a email to a older user than he was and old time programer . The remark made was about the silly questions the new users and some that used Linux a year are two were making to the forums.
Well a couple of days pasted and the user was back at the forum he had setup and ran across the most stupid question there , Man it just was burning him to tell the old user about the post when he seen IT WAS A POST FROM HIM ABOUT A MONTH AFTER HE START TO USE LINUX
42 • more on Kubuntu (by Greg on 2012-02-14 10:31:33 GMT from Slovenia)
@31 "Perhaps the best way to describe my issues with KDE is by describing one of its most important components, Dolphin."
you have a problem with KDE because one of it's applicaitons? ok it's one of the main ones. but still it's only an application. DE is much more than that. it is also the way windows are drawn, applicaitons base components etc. For example if you want more efficient look you can simply use Krusader (with is another K file manager). there are a lot of good Qt applications, but for exampel i also use certain gnome ones and Kubuntu along wiht KDE made it sure that they integrate nicely..
As for the Debian alternative - Debian is good stable OS and i like it a lot, however compared to Ubuntu plenty things do not work out of the box. and this is exactly what Ubuntu is about. To give users with no linux knowledge the chance of installing or testing the OS with live media and it will work out of box (mostly). Debian has strict free software policy so for example when trying debian stable on a laptop the touchpad as well as some special keys (screen brightness) didn't work at all. Chrunchbang worked as did all Ubuntus and Ubuntu based derivatives. i know some drivers were likely missing. a few commands and they get installed, but that's not what i would call a user friendly OS. Ubuntu notifies the user of better drivers and offers them to install it. so for someone that meets linux the first time this is potentially a fantastic experience.
And finnaly regarding KDE performance/speed. Kubuntu (probably also other KDE distros) has a lof-fat package that increases perfomance by a lot. additionally KDE is not just default desktop variant it also has tablet interface as well as netbook plasma. so for it to be netbook friendly one should try the appropriate interface. as well as reduce the special effects. and even the default desktop has a classic version which i prefer as it is more similar to the old windows environment and to me it seems quite intuitive - been so since i used 95 and later one of early Red Hat versions (mostly at the time its use remianed limited to testing purposes as i couldn't get the phone modem to work)
43 • Ubuntu Business Remix (by Gustavo on 2012-02-14 11:21:48 GMT from Brazil)
Simple test:
1 Start Ubuntu Business Remix Live CD 2 Open LibreOffice Writter 3 click Maximize window button 4 Try to UNmaximize
You can't. There is no unmaximize button (nor close, minimize windows).
And they call it "Business" Remix.
44 • Pardus reality. (by Antony on 2012-02-14 11:25:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
Absoloute shame about Pardus. And, I think, someone has gotten hold of the wrong end of his stick (again) :(
45 • Re: 43 (by Nanlee on 2012-02-14 12:50:23 GMT from Canada)
"There is no unmaximize button (nor close, minimize windows)."
Really!! It maximized your BUSINESS permanently. LOL
46 • kde (by Mac on 2012-02-14 14:45:02 GMT from United States)
I use aptosid kde and kubuntu!! For many reasons. Hope kubuntu stays around for a long time!! Been in linux for 5yrs and thanks to ubuntu for the start it gave me.
47 • A Racy live USB microreview (by silent on 2012-02-14 17:17:52 GMT from France)
I created a live persistent Racy Linux 5.2.2 (a Puppy derivative for modern hardware with a 3.0 kernel) on a 1 GB USB, primarily for university classes in spreadsheeting, as unfortunately I have to use a borrowed notebook with encrypted HDD with proprietary OS on it. All went well, the only problem was that I had to add manually the 852 code page kernel module in order to mount VFAT partitions (pendrives), but there is a GUI for that. I added some pet binary packages from several puppies ranging from kernel 2.30 to 3.0. I have even found a Libreoffice 3.4.5 pet at puppylinuxjose. I added Icewm, and also a proprietary presentation viewer through wine. I still have 160 MB left for the documents. This is the best option that I could find for creating easily a live persistent USB OS on only 1 GB. I am looking forward to any other proposals. Unetbootin worked, but apparently only Ubuntu can be installed as persistent live USB, and I had no room left on the 1 GB pendrive when I updated apt-get and tried to install some packages. Live USB Creator (Ubuntu) has greyed out the persistent storage. Fedora Live USB creator apparently only works with Fedora images as checksum fails with any other distro, so I haven't tried it although it can be a good option with a bigger pendrive.
48 • GhostBSD (by Dave Postles on 2012-02-14 18:03:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
It's very promising, I think. If you are into different desktops, you can download and install the Cairo Dock to its Gnome 2 desktop. Don't all BSD OSs take longer in boot time? That's my impression from using both PC-BSD and GhostBSD.
49 • Re 47 (by Maître d'Autel on 2012-02-14 18:30:27 GMT from France)
@silent: you can install full versions of Mandriva (at least, last year) , Mageia and Fedora on an USB stick: you just have to put the USB stick and choose the disk you want to install into as such (and same thing with grub). Then, is can be written to, and the package managers work, though _very slowly_ w/r to an external USB drive (rotating mechanical disk -which remain faster and more cost -effective. And how can you find 1G USB sticks (in a French province town, I cannot find anything below 8G)?
50 • @48 (by Klanger on 2012-02-14 20:35:51 GMT from Poland)
Yes, GNU/Linux starts faster then any BSD (Open, Net, Free/PC/Ghost, DragonFly).
51 • Re: 43 (by Matt on 2012-02-14 20:49:39 GMT from United States)
You must be new here.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bamf/+bug/842566
52 • Dolphin (by dmatt on 2012-02-14 23:39:03 GMT from Slovakia)
@31 Sad, that you are so enraged and still never managed to explore KDE Dolphin menus at least a little bit. In Settings/General you can set showing space left on any medium. Presx Fn keys to turn on/off panels with unneeded information (and discover other functionality) and suddenly there is the file manager you were asking for. All the settings are kept for future sessions as well. I took me 30 seconds to set it that way and it is not something I do regularly.
Copying/moving functionality is achieved with CTRL,SHIFT modifiers, normal drag and drop gives you context menu with additional actions like unpacking etc.You can even drag&drop among tabs (press CTRL-T to open new). If you need even more space, you can get rid of Dolphin menu with CTRL-M, make fonts smaller and even get rid of Dolphin windows decorations through System Settings/Desktop Settings.
I can see that you would like different defaults for Dolphin and you are accustomed to different drag&drop behavior, but the rest is just misleading rant. I would reccomend to press F1 in frequently used KDE applications. Lot of small gems are hidden there.
I beg to differ and consider Dolphin (together with other default apps as Okular and Gwenview) as strong selling points for KDE. But do not feel pushed :)
53 • Dolphin @52 (by fernbap on 2012-02-15 00:13:23 GMT from Portugal)
My point about Dolphin is simple: it doesn't really matter how much Dolphin can be costumized, i just simply think that a group of people that selects those defaults does not in any way share my opinion on what a file manager should be. And i used dolphin as an example of the ideas and concepts behing KDE as a whole, because Dolphin not in any way an exception to the rule, it truly reflects the standards used by the KDE developers. I never said KDE was bad, in fact i said the opposite, so your remarks that i am just ranting have no place here. All i said is that it is not my cup of tea, and that is a matter of opinion, and everyone has the right to have one. Under my opinion, the menu is just horrendous. And the fact that i know that i can replace it with something usable is no argument, because someone decided to chose that menu as the default for KDE. Clearly, the KDE developers and I don't share the same ideas on what a DE should be.
54 • Dolphin (by Jesse on 2012-02-15 00:40:35 GMT from Canada)
I'm a fan of KDE and I have to say fernbap's comments on Dolphin were pretty spot on. From about KDE version 4.0 to 4.7 I found Dolphin a very frustrating application to use. It's rather badly laid out, in my opinion, and doesn't seem to fit with the design of other KDE applications. As a result I've tried to avoid using it. However, I will say that Dolphin in KDE 4.8 has proven to be quite good. I feel they've sorted out most of the issues I had with the app and I'm finding it pleasant to use these days. I do think the Dolphin developers have been listening to feedback and making gradual improvements over the years.
55 • Dolphin (by Andy Prough on 2012-02-15 03:13:34 GMT from United States)
One of my favorite Dolphin functions is the ability to hit the F4 key from any directory path, and have the terminal open up to that path.
I haven't used other Linux file managers recently - do other file managers also do this? It's a fantastic function, saves a lot of time.
56 • dolphin (by JR on 2012-02-15 03:15:46 GMT from Brazil)
maybe if we press Ctrl + shift + tab + delete + home + please + backspace, dolphin will turn into nautilus :)
just kidding! of course ... but for me even the name "Nautilus" is nicer!
57 • @50 (by Oko on 2012-02-15 04:01:14 GMT from United States)
Does it really matter whether Linux or BSDs start faster or not? They are server grade OS and servers usually do not shut down (or they are not supposed to do so). The average uptime of my desktops running OpenBSD is usually about 60 days (that is how long usually it takes for my power company here in U.S. to turn off my computers by messing up my power). So I really do not care how long does it take to boot since I am booting once every 2 months. By the way my super computer running PUIAS 6.1 Linux has now uptime of almost 9 months (it has power back up) and its OpenBSD firewall has uptime of almost two years (with back up power). Since the super computer runs always memory test and hardware check up it takes about 15 minutes to boot (it has 64 GB of RAM) which is 5 times longer than it takes OpenBSD desktop to boot even with fsck after power failure (disclaimer: I run soft updates). For your information a file server running DragonFly with couple terabytes of data forcefully shut down will boot probably in less than two minutes if the data was mounted using Hammer file system.
58 • Dolphin and BSD boot time (by Greg on 2012-02-15 07:44:27 GMT from Slovenia)
@55 not sure if they have the F4 key, but open terminal here function is available in Thunar (haven't used Nautilus for a while but it's probably there as well). in Krusader the comand line is alwas at the botom (Norton commander style...)
@57 Boot time matters a lot to people that use portable devices such as notebooks. They are usually not on all the time to conserve the battery power. OpenBSD is a good server grade OS, however PC-BSD and Ghost BSD are aimed at desktop users. Additionally, traditional PC desktop sales are dropping with the increase of sales of notebooks, netbook, ultrabooks, tablets etc. so boot times are increasingly getting more and more important. Except to Microsoft. But even they are are pursuing faster boot time in win8.
59 • Re: #49 (by silent on 2012-02-15 10:15:51 GMT from France)
Yes, a normal install of any distro is possible to a ~4 GB USB pendrive, but what is the point in that? It is going to be slow with continuous writes to the flash drive (although by now top speed USB sticks are around 30MB/s). With Puppy the original system (~ 100 MB "LiveCD" read-only squashfs) goes directly to the RAM, and the overlay filesystem is only written back periodically and at the end of the session or when the RAM is filled. Therefore; if for a notebook with (only) 1 GB RAM a 1GB USB stick with compressed filesystems does the job, why should I pick a bigger one? I could get a 1 GB stick for less than 4 EUR.
60 • @51 (by Gustavo on 2012-02-15 11:36:19 GMT from Brazil)
I believe you didn't understand. It's not a beta release.
61 • @51 (by Gustavo on 2012-02-15 11:43:11 GMT from Brazil)
Sorry, my mistake. It IS a beta release. Not sure if this happens on regular Ubuntu 11.10. Anyway it is a critical bug.
62 • @10 Frugalware (by Neal on 2012-02-15 15:44:32 GMT from United States)
No-one knows how to use it, and it takes all day just to download the iso.......4gb+ for a text install mystery distro!! Plus from what I've heard, support is lame on the forums anyway.
But yeah, a review would be welcomed.....maybe someone could shine some light on this distro.
63 • Dolphin (by beany on 2012-02-15 18:20:38 GMT from United States)
As with many tasks you have to decide whether you need big heavy toolbox with more tools or just the tiny light weight tool box with hopefully the right tool.
Dolphin is just the most easily tweaked and customizable file browser except for that "other native KDE file browser". It has many more custom service menus at hand to enrich your control over your files. KIM in particular is amazing in its capabilities. Instant animated gifs, web galleries, flash videos...it goes on. The incorporated compression service menu is amazing. There seems to be a batch process for any type of file. Dolphin remembers how you want to view individual folders which is incredibly helpful. Yes it's a powerhouse in BOTH the positive and negative way. I always have PCManFM installed for my simpler needs. I absolutely love it because it's at the other end of the spectrum.
64 • @57 (by Klanger on 2012-02-15 18:50:00 GMT from Poland)
Boot time doesn't matter to me as well.
I have a lab server running DFBSD and I'm very happy with hammerfs. I also had DFBSD on my netbook (also with hammerfs). In fact pkgsrc was a major stop for me.
I was looking into OpenBSD world, but my netbooks wireless is not supported, since I only have wireless at home...
65 • @53 (by dmatt on 2012-02-15 23:23:52 GMT from Slovakia)
@53 Group of people responsible for defaults in your case are distribution (Mint or Kubuntu) people. Vanilla KDE Dolphin screenshot could be seen in Dolphin Help and is fairly minimal I think.
I accused you of misleading ranting because you never mentioned in original post that it is possible to easily change Dolphin to look like you want it. This was meant for people who do not know Dolphin and might have wrong impression about its capabilities from your post.
KDE is complex and trying to achieve lots of advanced stuff at the same time. It was designed that way from very beginning by the authors. It allows for windows tiling, compiz-like functions, includes loved/hated semantic desktop, etc. You are expected to set your own preferences when preparing system for your personal workflow.
It is obviously not everybody's cup of tea but in bigger picture it is another interesting choice for people in Linux.
66 • RE: 44 (by Landor on 2012-02-16 00:16:59 GMT from Canada)
I wasn't going to bite, since I usually just ignore you, but hey, maybe you'll finally learn something, I'm sure though I won't. I'll avoid character assassination though, as I know Ladislav prefers to keep this a little clean, and unlike you (and others), I don't normally feel the need to make little quips in reference to others to get my points across :) It's the same reason why I didn't comment further regarding my comment(s) about Mint. People never get the point.
So, explain something to me. Enlighten me as to my err. What information have I missed that clearly states that the department in Turkey plans on destroying Pardus, and the developers had no other alternative than to be turncoats to the project, and give up on it totally because there was ABOSLUTELY (one of rare times you'll 'ever' see type in uppercase) nothing to be done to work towards a better future for Pardus.
I personally don't believe 'you' are going to be able to point me to that information. In fact (though it could have changed magically) the only information that has been given about their intentions to keep the project is that there are some changes to be made, but Pardus would continue status quo (pretty much).
Prove differently, and not some propaganda from dissatisfied geek that's pouring on the drama with nothing but their irrational behaviours and assumptions backing them up.
Let's see what end of the stick you've got hold of.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
67 • @65 (by fernbap on 2012-02-16 03:24:59 GMT from Portugal)
Look, i'm not trying to start a debate with you about KDE. I will never convince you, you will never convince me. "Group of people responsible for defaults in your case are distribution (Mint or Kubuntu) people" Really? then show us any major distribution where the defaults are not those. "You are expected to set your own preferences when preparing system for your personal workflow" really? Or is that not the task of distributions? If what you are saying were true, we would have a lot of KDE distributions, each showing their own KDE. However, that is NOT what is happening. Are distribution mantainers that lazy?
68 • #15 Thinstation 5.0 (by zykoda on 2012-02-16 07:33:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
Figure me not also! Manual does not seem to help much.
69 • Scientific Linux (by Stefano Padovan on 2012-02-16 11:34:25 GMT from Germany)
I am new on Linux,using Lubuntu on a VM on Mac and Fedora 16 on a pc as main OS.I am Science oriented (astronomy) for data reductions and other stuff(Iraf,Starlink).SL is very good but just as a beginner:why it needs so much memory?Lubuntu on a VM on my Mac is 1g (because I want,could be less),SL starts with 2g minimum.Just to learn (rookie) why it is so ram demanding compared also to Fedora o RH.Thanks anyway...Linux Rulez! S.
70 • @66 (by Patrick on 2012-02-16 14:44:37 GMT from United States)
Landor, can't you see though that you're kind of doing the same thing? Just like he is pointing fingers to those in charge, you are blaming the developers that are leaving. But neither of you know what's really going on internally. Can you point to information that clearly shows the developers are being unreasonable for resigning? If not, why are you accusing them of improper behavior?
Maybe some were let go and others were supposed to pick up the slack and decided they couldn't handle it. Maybe their working conditions changed. Things were shaken up and what previously was a good solid team has become a poisonous and frustrating work environment. Or what if their pay is being cut, and they just can't support their families? I don't know. More than likely you don't know either.
And I'm not blaming those in charge for making changes. With the tough economy and budgets being cut all over the place, I can see that there are probably more important pursuits that need the money. After all, there are many capable distributions that they could use without spending money on them. In the grand scheme of things, maintaining an independent distribution shouldn't rank high on the list of any responsible official.
The point it that without being privy to their internal kitchen, throwing accusations around it just pointless and unnecessary.
71 • Pardus and posts 70 & 66 (by Antony on 2012-02-16 19:29:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have used Pardus since it became available. I have read developer’s mailing lists/blogs, forums and official statements. Still, I completely agree that I don’t have an intimate understanding or special knowledge of the problems that have affected Pardus.
I never actually laid any blame though. I said that what had happened to Pardus (a pretty exciting and innovative distro), was a real shame, as I have said before. I have never actually said more than that.
In reference to the ‘wrong end of the stick’, I was meaning that his interpretation of the situation was well skewed. as you rightly point out we all have access to basically the same (limited, and not firsthand) information. So, it is pretty irritating when someone (with that same available info) declares to the effect that the damage caused is the sole result of inflexible devs throwing toys out of the pram.
Things are not as clear-cut as portrayed by Landor (and would have others believe). There have been a variety of reported factors leading to this breakdown, some of which include the workload of the corporate as well as the ‘home’ edition. I have read of this (‘tiredness‘) being a problem, and reason for an eventual resigning. Other problems mentioned was management, and changes in management, people unsympathetic to the project drafted in, other departments allowed to poach members from the Pardus ’pool’, failure of expected plans for education project, and also possible sweetner from Steve Balmer as well.
I would also like to point out that I have seen no evidence that these ‘irrational’, ‘improperly behaved’ devs set out to scuttle Pardus and I think it is a disgrace to casually describe them as such.
72 • Ubuntu 10.04.4 (by Henning Melgaard on 2012-02-17 06:42:38 GMT from Denmark)
Running Ubuntu 10.04.4 from a usb-stick. Best version of Ubuntu, that Canonical has ever made.....
73 • Re: 72 Ubuntu 10.04.4 best release ever (by Hobbitland on 2012-02-17 12:25:51 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, yup I agree that Ubuntu 10.04.4 is best ubuntu release ever. Unfortunately with dis-unity this will be the last good ubuntu release out of the box.
I have been remastering Ubuntu 10.04 for some time and even Ubuntu 11.10 of course with Gnome 3 fallback instead of the dis-unity desktop. I do not like what Mint is doing as there are too many different versions. Besides if I use Mint I still have remaster it so might as well use Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is still the best distro base but shame on the choice of packages now. Debian is no no because of the 3 year support. I will not even think of using a server OS that has only 3 years support. 5 years is the absolute minimum.
I will have to make my own remaster of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with exactly what I want and Ubuntu branding removed of course.
74 • Re: 73 (by Matt on 2012-02-17 14:58:09 GMT from United States)
You have too much time on your hands.
75 • re:73 Ubuntu 10.04.4 (by Henning Melgaard on 2012-02-17 17:44:12 GMT from Denmark)
Yes, sadly it will be the last of it's kind. Does anyone know how the MATE project is progressing ?
76 • Re: 71, Pardus and posts (by Coffee on 2012-02-17 19:23:50 GMT from France)
> Still, I completely agree that I don't have an intimate understanding > or special knowledge of the problems that have affected Pardus.
I think, nobody does as long as the details are not made public. There's been a lot of speculation about the demise of Pardus. But one of the more obvious reasons for it has been curiously absent from the debate: Politics.
According to the predominant neo-liberal ideology, western governments (i.e. NATO member states), are not supposed to use taxpayers' money for the "greater common good", especially when such a project gets in the way of private business interests. The outraged howl "unfair competition", dutifully amplified by the ever obliging corporate media, is a standard reaction in such a situation. Another reaction, which is less visible and usually goes unnoticed, is that omnipresent lobbyists negotiate the demands of their corporate employers with members of governments behind closed doors. And, for ideological reasons (see above), more often than not the outcome of such negotiations (or should I say "deals"?) is very favorable for the corporations. I think it possible that Pardus fell victim to such a "deal" of the Turkish government with one or more of the usual suspects (Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle etc.), not because of the money it cost (which was peanuts) or because of the competition it might have posed to commercial software (which was negligible) but because of the bad example it set. Government sponsored projects that cost little and benefit many, simply cannot be allowed in our crooked economic system. Similar things seem to be going on in Spain since the right-wing government came to power last November. And who doesn't remember the media storm and the extreme scrutiny of the corporate press when Munich and Vienna dared to announce their migration from Windows to GNU/Linux, while massive software roll-outs and tens of millions paid for license fees during the decades before went completely unreported? And so on, and so on ... Ultimately, I think, it's all about funneling taxpayers' money into private pockets.
But again, in the absence of any concrete evidence, all of this can only be speculation. We may never know the reasons why an excellent GNU/Linux distribution had to be killed. A political brain might be able to estimate the probability of the above scenario, though.
77 • Pardus (by burlslabs on 2012-02-17 21:06:48 GMT from United States)
Re #76: you present an interesting and likely Correct view of the decline of Pardus.
Thanks.
78 • Re: 74 remaster for USB stick (by hobbitland on 2012-02-18 07:32:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hi, I remaster for USB stick which I carry all the time. We use Ubuntu on servers and desktops it save time remastering when installing new machines.
I also remaster the proper way using command line in a chroot which is a lot faster and more flexible than remastersys. Every month or so I update my remastered Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with latest Firefox, Java, Flash, Libreoffice etc. I work in IT so not time wasted.
Most derivatives of Ubuntu are pointless just different choice of packages and a few minor changes. I do not waste time on beta quality distros which are supported less than 2 years. Its a shame that Debian which aims for servers is supported only for 3 years.
Only looked at Ubuntu 11.10 because I consider it the last beta quality release before Ubuntu 12.04 and had to work out how to get rid of dis-unity properly. Of course I research 11.10 in a virtual machine and chroot.
79 • Re. 64 - Frugalware (by uz64 on 2012-02-18 08:09:35 GMT from United States)
I can download ALL FIVE DVDS of Frugalware in a day, so seriously, what are you talking about? And luckily you only really "need" the first DVD, so that's, what, 3-4 hours max at my download speed of 300-310KB/sec [that is, assuming "all day" to you is 24 hours]?
And what's with this "no one knows how to use it" bullshit? Sure, it's not for absolute beginners (and I'm not one myself), but if you'd look through my previous posts you've see that I've had quite a good experience with Frugalware 1.6. Specifically, the version of KDE4 included.
Some of my distro history: SuSE 9.x (briefly) alongside Windows XP; Zenwalk; Ubuntu 8.04-9.04; and currently, Debian 6.0. I've never used Frugalware as my primary OS, as you can see, and I had no problems.
Congrats for slamming Frugalware for things you have no clue about.
80 • Frugalware (by greg on 2012-02-18 14:02:54 GMT from United States)
Someone asks for a review, and then gets a personal attack? People, not distros (which are just things), are important. Sorry, for the sermon.
81 • Frugalware (by Neal on 2012-02-18 15:22:31 GMT from United States)
More proof that a competent reviewer like Jesse should do a Frugalware review.
Its not a mystery distro like I said earlier so much but perhaps Frugalware receives too little press.
I'm using Frugalware 1.6 xfce as I type. No major issues but I think the installer still needs some work...the text version was working O.K but the gui version would always fail on this release.
82 • RE: 70 (by Landor on 2012-02-18 18:09:13 GMT from Canada)
Patrick, you should have been more astute and asked Ladislav to delete your post instead of changing it to @66 instead of 44. You proved my point for me in every single instance.
I tried to explain that these developers were in the wrong, acting impulsive, etc, and every single one of the 'excuses' you came up for them proved it even more if any one of them was the case.
First, if they quit a job and had family, without securing another job first, they're obviously selfish, immature, and irresponsible for cutting off all their income altogether because it's been lowered and they can't survive on that amount. Then it would be nothing. Second, again we're talking about immaturity. They can't handle the team changing, right, so they foster a poisonous and frustrating environment in which their only recourse is to quit themselves. This shows a lack of maturity again because the world changes, people move on, and they have no professionalism. Professionals understand this about life, and positions held. So what, they become vicious over it? Sad. Third, their workload picks up a bit and they can't handle it, so they just quit? No communication maybe? Anyway, this shows immaturity again, they don't like to have to try to increase output so they automatically think they're going to fail without trying and quit. It's not very professional either.
Thank you for pointing out that yet again, in any scenario the developers are at fault. Nor am I twisting around what you said. Think of this as a project manager would, or someone interviewing these people for a job they're now applying for, you'd draw the same conclusions. Who in their right mind would bail on a project they 'supposedly' love so much, but also quit a paying job in the current economic climate? Seriously. No, most managers and such wouldn't even want to take a chance on them in a new job.
But let's be realistic here, 35 developers quit the project out of 40. You don't find that a bit odd? It doesn't sound at all like sheep to you? It sure does to me.
Let's look at another real fact. Regardless of why they left, they're destroying the project. The fact is that the department has said it will continue, but with 35 developers quitting, how can it, especially if the other 5 give up now too? That ruins the project utterly, there's no other thing someone can say because it sure as hell doesn't keep it going, does it. On top of that, it puts our whole community in a bad light. I said this before about all the other drama. If I was the administrator of the project, I'd honestly shut it down now and be done with Linux, the community is fully of irresponsible, immature, unreliable, and unprofessional people. That's the only way it can be views based on 35 people leaving for the above reasons you've stated, and just by that many quitting period.
Why shouldn't the project be restructured? I'll give you another scenario on why they could have left, and it shows all the same things. Maybe it was restructured because it was proving to not be working? They had two bad releases from what I understand. I personally know the second last release wasn't that good. I know CM agreed as well. Then CM was supposed to review the last release over at O'Reilly, but I didn't look. They run Pardus in the enterprise and put people's hard earned money (taxes) into building it, and there should be some accountability. If they have two bad releases, they sure as hell can't let that kind of thing keep going when they depend on it for critical government deployment. Meaning, it's just not on some student's laptop.
So, who do we blame for it going wrong? The administrators only, or do we blame the people who actually built the bad releases? And to think, some here people want them to continue building Pardus while they built two consecutively poor releases. You might say I'm being hard on them, but no I'm not. Where would RH be with its business if they built two poor releases in a row. It doesn't matter the scope of it, facts are they depended on it as an enterprise solution.
-------
Antony, I won't be replying as I've gone back to ignoring you again for what you asked Jesse (a writer here) and Ladislav to do atthe end of your comment that was edited out. I can't begin to even fathom the mindset. What did you really want them to do for you, seriously.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
83 • Pardus (by CrashMaster on 2012-02-19 15:53:30 GMT from United States)
Landor,
If you had read Bahadir and Ozan's posts on Pardus you wouldn't appear so out of touch. Developers who resigned were demoted, reassigned to different cities, and otherwise had their lives disrupted by the new administration.
Yet you say "the community is fully of irresponsible, immature, unreliable, and unprofessional people."
You don't know these people, do you?
You don't know what went on, do you?
You pull *&^% out of your *&^ and fling it, in some feeble attempt of appearing intelligent. Ain't happening, bubba, ain't happening.
Keeping your stick on the ice is a sure way to miss scoring goals.
84 • @53 (by JoeInMN on 2012-02-19 20:35:51 GMT from United States)
"My point about Dolphin is simple: it doesn't really matter how much Dolphin can be costumized, i just simply think that a group of people that selects those defaults does not in any way share my opinion on what a file manager should be."
So the defaults aren't a good fit for you, then. Thing is, if they set the defaults so that it's all just the way *you* like it, then it wouldn't fit *someone else's* opinion of how things should be. If everybody liked their stuff exactly the same way, then we wouldn't need system settings of any kind. Do you never change your wallpaper, or your panel applets, or your window manager theme from the defaults? As long as the devs enable you to easily have what you want, how they set their defaults shouldn't be an issue when considering the usefulness of the application itself.
85 • @75 11.10 UGR (by simon on 2012-02-19 22:22:26 GMT from Hungary)
11.10 Gnome Shell Remix is the best version of Ubuntu. It's fast as the light and looks clean with Holo GS theme, Faenza icon theme! It's an OS from the future! Not that child head sized icons like in Unity.
86 • Kubuntu (by John on 2012-02-20 03:51:30 GMT from United States)
I think it is good thing Canonical dropped support for Kubuntu as Ubuntu implimentation of KDE is just poor, and I have tried just about evryone release, and I am surprise there is actually a paid developer on it. Kubuntu feels like a badly put together UI as bad as Red Hat/Fedora ideal of how KDE should look like. If you want a properly implement KDE, try a KDE centric distro like SuSE or even Slackware and in fact, apart from Ubuntu, the ther office "Buntues" are badly implimented. For Example, Xbuntue is too heavy compare to other Xfce distros, and the developer seems to be trying to recreate a Gnome look in Xfce which I believe defeats the purpose of Xfce which is mean to be light weight.
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