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1 • Mandriva community (by ix on 2012-05-21 09:22:46 GMT from Romania)
There already is a Mandriva community distro, it's called Mageia. I just don't see the point of doing exactly what Mageia is already doing.
2 • RazorQT on Extix (by mjjzf on 2012-05-21 09:22:55 GMT from Denmark)
Glad to see a live system featuring Razor. Still wish they had gone for a sexier theme, though - the one in the picture looks like Windows 95, and QT can be really nice.
3 • @Robert Cole (by John on 2012-05-21 09:30:40 GMT from United States)
Excellent story on accessibility, thank you very much for that.
I lost my eyesight in my left eye about eight years ago. My right eye is fine but is at an increased, although still tiny, risk of suffering the same thing. Tiny as the chances are, losing the sight in my other eye is one of my greatest fears, so it is at least reassuring to know these efforts are happening and that I will still be able to use the computer (and my current operating system). The computer is an important tool for both work and enjoyment, and I expect keeping access to it would be a huge step toward keeping life on track.
4 • Ubuntu 70% EC2 (by Toolz on 2012-05-21 09:46:32 GMT from Vietnam)
I got pushed for time reading the Shuttleworth article and scrolled to the bottom. There it said: "Ubuntu will be on 5 percent of PCs this year but hasn’t caught on with consumers. In some data centers, though, it dominates" ... I thought "huh?!" ... and scrolled up again para by para ...
... and abt one third down it says: "About 70 percent of the servers running on public cloud computing systems such as Amazon.com’s (AMZN) EC2 rely on Ubuntu" - pretty surprising I say.
5 • Thanks for such a great article on accessibility (by Yasser on 2012-05-21 10:44:42 GMT from India)
Thanks Cole for sharing with us your inspiring and informative story on computer accessibility. I was beginning to dislike Linux and love Windows, but your article gave me an entirely new perspective about Linux and Windows. You opened my eyes to the importance of Linux (which I had merrily dismissed) and made me see its significance in a way I had never seen before. It was moving to learn about the beautiful work that happens behind the scenes in the opensource world.
I've discovered a new-found respect for Ubuntu & Debian.
All the best for everything in life. God bless.
6 • Meaningful, important feature story! (by Billy Larlad on 2012-05-21 11:14:23 GMT from United States)
Excellent article, Robert, and bravo to the Distrowatch lads for forgoing a review in order to publish it.
I was especially interested in the article because I noticed earlier today that the GNOME Foundation is asking for donations in order to "make 2012 the year of accessibility!" I visited the site just now in order to get the URL; lo and behold, our man Robert Cole has a testimonial featured on the site!
Those of us who are joyed that somebody's life was made easier because of the work done by accessibility developers should consider making a donation to the GNOME foundation, or any other project that makes Linux more accessible.
7 • Robert Cole (by Jack on 2012-05-21 11:17:25 GMT from South Africa)
I too discovered Linux - PCLOS/Mandriva et al - in say 2005 - the Cube blew my mind and I increased my productivity by say 500% - still use it and glad to see KDE3.5 has made a comeback - I wrecked my eyes watching an arc welder as a kid and have wizened up considerably - no permanent damage - take care and good luck - nice touch
BR>Jack
8 • accessibility (by Henk V on 2012-05-21 11:19:23 GMT from Netherlands)
Thanks to mister Cole for your interesting article. I wonder if anyone has experience with Knoppix and its solution ADRIANE (http://knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html) in this regard. I have normal eyesight, but my mother's eyesight is deteriorating. She likes to read very much, so I am looking at possible solutions. She is an absolute beginner with computers by the way.
I know and like Knoppix, so I feel it might be a good possibility.
9 • access (by Robert W. Hayden on 2012-05-21 11:25:35 GMT from United States)
I am fortunate to have only the deterioration in vision that comes with age but have been frustrated with the current crop of distros and GUIs that work so hard to make the screen illegible. I am thinking of pale grey on white text and invisible scroll bars. I was attracted to Unix/Linux when it was all about getting work done as efficiently as possible but now it seems to be more about competing with Microsoft to see who can have the interface with the latest styles and least fuctionality. I would love to move up from Mepis 8 and Win2k but it seems like the only options I can find are moves down.
10 • Accessibility (by pearson on 2012-05-21 11:44:12 GMT from United States)
A *very* well written article by Mr. Cole. It was not only informative and descriptive, but it was well written. Many years ago, there was a member of a local Linux mailing list who was blind. This may have been before Gnome and KDE, but I do know he used the command line exclusively, because of the screen reader.
I would think that it should be pretty easy for any of the text-based installers, like Slackware, to have or use a screen reader. Is this not as simple as it sounds?
Again, thanks to Distsrowatch and Mr. Cole for getting my week off on a positive, thoughtful, tone.
11 • Multi System R4 (by LinuxWarrior on 2012-05-21 11:53:19 GMT from Germany)
That´s a very good tool. You can even create a bootable external FAT7FAT32 formated harddrive with all the Linux Distro´s and PC Tools (like Hiren´s Boot CD , ct Boot Cd , Barth PE Boot CD ) you want .
That´s what I have created for my support issues
All the best for this Distro and Distrowatch as well
LW
12 • Access - reply to #9 by Bob (by macronsfx on 2012-05-21 11:59:58 GMT from Malaysia)
I think Vinux is a really good distro, which is in and of itself a worthy cause to contribute to... It has screen readers, screen magnifiers and I think importantly, especially post #9 by Mr. Bob, colour changers that can enhance contrast. It is based on Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10) in the most recent version so it has the best of Linux and Open Source though not the most recent but that will improve of course. Only thing to be aware of is not to blanket upgrade the packages as the heavy customizations done by the developers are pretty profound. I'm not in any way affiliated to Vinux so I have no conflict of interest in plugging for this software. I'm just glad there're guys and gals out there like Joanie, the developers of Orca, Vinux, NVDA etc. who have good hearts, God bless them. And certainly God bless to Mr. Cole (and Mr. Bodnar of course) for bringing up this rarely talked about topic.
13 • Feature Story-Linux accessibility (by Jagdeesh on 2012-05-21 12:14:25 GMT from India)
@Robert Cole...Thanks for taking efforts of writing such a unique article. It is 'eye opener' for the 'blinds' having healthy eyes.
By publishing your article, Distrowatch has certainly raised it's scope and standard and has become much more praise worthy and respectable....that's what I feel.
14 • accesibility (by greg on 2012-05-21 13:17:35 GMT from Slovenia)
thoguh i am not bling my eyesight is close to that. luckily it can still be corrected with very thick glasses. but i too am puzzled by certain distros that have strange default colour themes and setups.
they simply do not look clear. I haven't tried installing and OS with eyes closed, but it sounds like an interesting challenge that i am sure would make me appreaciate my thick glasses.
15 • Donations (by gmr on 2012-05-21 13:29:06 GMT from Brazil)
How about giving the next distrowatch donation to an opensource accessibility project?
16 • Accessibility and donations (by Marko on 2012-05-21 13:49:33 GMT from Croatia)
I have message to coders out there and to my self a year ago when I had perfect vision. I've lost sight to one of my eyes due to Multiple Sclerosis and the same thing will probably happen to my other eye. So one minute you're healthy coder next you are learning how to use computer all over again, it can happen to anyone. Please consider accessibility for your software. And yes Distrowatch why not donation to some opensource accessibility project?
17 • Feature Story - Virtual Cage of Choices (by Annon on 2012-05-21 14:10:36 GMT from United States)
That's a very enlightening cover story. It's hard to think that any group of people are still segregated from the rest of society based solely on a condition rather than a belief or race. But there it is. The ugly side of corporate America still seems to be extorting money from a group of people based on what looks to them as a life style choice. Corporate America may say otherwise when confronted by this ugliness but actions do seem to speak louder than words when it comes to accessibility.
I can only speak for myself but I'd drop all of my Microsoft/Apple products like a bad habit if there was just something else that I could use instead. Problem is, no one seems to be able to step up. Ubuntu seems to be getting close but even they really aren't ready for the main steam consumer.
The only reason I even use Microsoft Windows at all is for my TV entertainment. I simply can't get away from using my TV tuner with Windows and Microsoft Media Center. There is just nothing else in the Linux world that works quite as well or quite as easily. XBMC and MythTV are two very worthy mentions, but even they don't compare to Microsoft when it comes to incorporating additional hardware like TV cards. Microsoft has simply made it too easy to use Windows and any apps like MMC. Microsoft is still pretty much the only choice for the average consumer since the consumer almost always just wants their stuff to work. (Did we learn nothing from Apple in this philosophy?)
And that's the problem with Linux. You really have to know a lot more than you probably want to know in order to get things like a TV tuner to work with any sort of app in any particular distro. Linux is just horrible when it comes to simplicity. And it's even more complicated when there are different GUI's to consider too. The average consumer is usually a non-technical person who just doesn't care. They only want to use a computer to update their Facebook profiles or record the next episode of (insert favorite TV program here). My illustration of a TV tuner is just one example where even sighted users are still held in that virtual cage of choices. And in my case, I can either remain in that Microsoft cage or quit my job (and my life) to learn about how to program something in Linux - it's nice to have that option but it's still not a real one.
18 • @16 - donations (by Pearson on 2012-05-21 14:15:29 GMT from United States)
I second this recommendation! A donation to an accessibility project (no, I don't know of any specifically) would be an *excellent* idea!
19 • Fedora - other spins (by Jason on 2012-05-21 15:06:19 GMT from United States)
It's a shame that Fedora gets framed as only being GNOME. Like Ubuntu, there is a variety of desktop versions, KDE, XFCE, LXDE. Not only are these are well polished distros of Linux, I find these a lot more interesting than the standard GNOME version of Fedora. Unfortuately because they aren't set up as their own project with a funny name (Kedora, Xedora, Ledora?) they are ignored in the press.
20 • Feature story - Linux accessibility (by Verndog on 2012-05-21 15:33:13 GMT from United States)
While I don't have a need for it , I now have a new found appreciation for its development.
What a great story and kudos to DW for allowing Robert to open our eyes to a world that we may never know.
I've seen those programs in passing while install the latest distro. From now on, I will have a much better understanding for its uses.
21 • MultiSystem (by eamonnb on 2012-05-21 15:54:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Good to see MultiSystem get a mention. Been using it for about six months. It's great to be able to have programs such as Clonezilla, Bitdefender and Gparted ...as well as OS's...one one usb stick. However I have found it has quirks. My laptop won't boot from it...but it will from Unetbootin. Some OS's won't load onto the usb...and others don't behave. I found that the Mints/Ubuntus worked without a glitch. YMMV...but I still find it useful once it's idiosyncrasies have been worked out.
22 • For those of you who expected a review of ROSA 2012 Marathon (by Caitlyn Maritn on 2012-05-21 16:06:36 GMT from United States)
My review of ROSA 2012 Marathon was published by O'Reilly this morning at: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2012/05/the-russians-are-coming-a-firs.html
23 • Feature story on Accessibility (by champted on 2012-05-21 16:21:15 GMT from United States)
Many thanks to Robert Cole for his quite lucid and informative article and to Distrowatch for publishing it. I know some visually-impaired computer users, and now I can discuss (and possibly address) some of their concerns with them more effectively.
24 • Mageia 3 - Mandriva 0 (by Anonymous on 2012-05-21 16:25:15 GMT from Italy)
http://blog.mageia.org/en/2012/05/21/mageia-comes-full-circle/
25 • Another reason why open source is best (by TheBullDog on 2012-05-21 17:50:40 GMT from United States)
Excellent article Robert. This is why I love Linux, and keep coming back to Distrowatch. I routinely see new and innovative ways to use Linux; and, I'm always impressed with the dedication of the open source application developers. It makes me feel good knowing that there are people out there who freely give of their time to help make life better for others. Good show.
26 • New Linux Distros (by dude on 2012-05-21 18:14:01 GMT from Kuwait)
I'm trying Linux Mint 13 RC with MATE. It Rocks! I've been using it all weekend. This will probably be my main distro for the next few years. The familiar MATE desktop environment is great.
I noticed something about most new Linux distros. They come with features like "without Unity", "removed Unity", "replaced Unity" or "instead of Unity". There seems to be a growing trend of Linux distros that don't have Unity. Maybe Mark Shuttleworth should take note of that. I have to say one thing good about Unity though. It's much better than the fugly Metro interface Microsoft is putting with Windows 8!
27 • RE: 19 (by Landor on 2012-05-21 18:17:02 GMT from Canada)
I always found the Fedora spins as nothing but an afterthought really. The reason being is the amount of time they stay on the servers. You can go back years and still find older official Fedora releases on the servers but the spins get deleted with each new version. So, in my opinion only, it appears that the only real releases worth keeping are the official ones.
I found this out one day when I was experimenting with Fedora's upgrade process from release to release. I went look for and older version of a spin and low and behold there was only the current release there.
How can a community take them seriously when they don't even warrant the extra space on the servers by Fedora itself?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
28 • Desktop environments (by Alex on 2012-05-21 18:25:38 GMT from France)
If you like KDE, you download Kubuntu, if you like Unity, you get Ubuntu, if you like XFCE, you try Xubuntu, if you like Gnome3, you get Extix, if you like E17, you download Bodhi, you want LXDEm you download Lubuntu etc, etc
But, now the problem is over. You want, KDE, Gnome3, Gnome2, Unity, E17, JVM, Openbox, XFCE, LXDE, you simply download one distro; Hubryde from France and your problem is over.
29 • Fedora spins (by Karlos on 2012-05-21 18:27:41 GMT from Italy)
@19 Jason
Kedora, Xedora, Ledora are horrible names. Fedora has a lot of spins for every type of user (Security, Scientific, Games, Robotics, Electronic Lab, KDE, LXDE, XFCE):
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
30 • Installing with my eyes closed (by Pearson on 2012-05-21 18:39:47 GMT from United States)
Inspired by today's feature story, I think I'll try installing Linux (in a VM) with my eyes closed, using one of the distros he mentioned. It should be interesting.
31 • Fedora - other spins (by Jason on 2012-05-21 19:11:56 GMT from United States)
@27 - For the KDE, XFCE and LXDE spins, they have available versions 13, 14, 15, 16, the beta for 17, and nightly spins. That doesn't sound like an after thought to me.
@29 - Those names were my attempt to poke a little fun at Ubuntu names, not a serious suggestion.
32 • @Robert Cole article (by WoodCAT on 2012-05-21 19:29:06 GMT from Canada)
Thanks for your very interesting article. Very well written too.
It made me realize that there are many users like you, for whom, using a computer can be a challenge, but thanks to selfless people in open source community, computers are more accessible. Makes me one happy Linux user. Who knew accessibility Windows software can be so pricey!
Great feature Distrowatch!
33 • Mageia (by skin27 on 2012-05-21 19:29:38 GMT from Netherlands)
I will try Mageia 2 tomorrow. It's now ranked sixth already. Haven't used version 1. Can anyone tell me what makes Mageia special compared to other distributions? I mean there's lot of talk about governance, organization and infrastructure, but is there something that make it outstanding from a technological or user point of view?
34 • mageia addedvalue (by Vincent on 2012-05-21 19:43:54 GMT from France)
Desktop independance
and the MageiaControlCenter, still unmatched.
35 • Fedora spins (by claudecat on 2012-05-21 19:54:50 GMT from United States)
While it may be true that the spins remain on Fedora servers for a shorter period of time (comment #31 seems to dispute that), it doesn't mean they are not worthy of consideration. I find recent Fedora's KDE spins to be remarkably well done - better (for me) than the default in some ways. I get better battery life using Fedora (KDE - with jupiter enabled) than the default gnome-shell version or any other distro with KDE or gs. Fuduntu (gnome2) does a bit better.
36 • Mandriva (by bero on 2012-05-21 20:22:11 GMT from Switzerland)
I've been somewhat involved in the effort to get Mandriva Linux under the control of the community, so I may have some answers. Don't consider this in any way an official response though - I'm not a Mandriva employee (I'm a community member, so I do refer to the new project as "we"), I haven't been involved in all talks, and the structure behind the new organization is yet to be defined fully, so some things are simply too early to tell.
Some people are asking why we aren't joining Mageia's effort - I can answer that, to some extent.
Mageia has forked an older version of Mandriva, and in the mean time, lots of progress have been made on both sides. One side joining the other (without taking a lot of time to make sure all improvements get merged) would mean throwing away all the progress made in the last months on the other side. I'd imagine this is also why Mageia is not too thrilled about rejoining the Mandriva effort right now.
Second, there's some disagreement on technical issues that can't be resolved easily - most importantly the package manager. Mandriva has updated to rpm 5.x a couple of months ago while Mageia prefers to stay with rpm 4.x.
There are a couple of valid arguments for both sides (the main reason for wanting to stay with 4.x being that it doesn't change, so packages don't need to be adapted etc.), but we believe the advantages of rpm 5.x very much outweigh its disadvantages - rpm 5.x is very actively developed, introduces a lot of new features that are useful both for Mandriva Linux and its various spinoffs, and it's maintained by the person who has maintained rpm for decades, and is most familiar with the codebase.
Another consideration is compatibility - Mandriva, ROSA, Unity Linux and probably a few others are based on Mandriva trees created after Mageia was forked - we need to make sure the users of these distributions can upgrade to the next release painlessly.
Mageia is a nice distribution and we do hope to work together more in the future (to some extent, we already do - "stealing" patches is fairly common) - but right now, there is no good reason to switch over to a different codebase.
37 • Accessibility, Re:8, Knoppix and @Robert Cole (by Matthias Jung on 2012-05-21 20:23:52 GMT from Germany)
I have no experiance with Linux Distros for blind people but I think Knoppix Adriane should be a good starting point. First of all Knoppix was one of the first Live-Distros if not the very first and secound Klaus Knopper, witch ist the maintainer of Knoppix, is married and his wife Adriane (!!!!) is blind. So I think this distro should be useable for blind people. Here are some Wikipedia Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix#Adriane_Knoppix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Knopper
38 • Mandriva (by gmoro on 2012-05-21 20:32:23 GMT from Brazil)
Been involved in mandriva development for some time, its clear that an merge with Mageia will mean a lot of loss for one of the sides, so I don't really see this happening so easy. Besides that I think that Mageia and the new community could easily cooperate (patches and specs) since the changes needed to porting RPM4 RPM5 are not so big. And since some foundations are very similar, a lot of work can be done together .
Anyway, is a new era for Mandriva and people must understand that a new community could bring a lot of good stuff to the scene.
39 • New distros #26 (by mcellius on 2012-05-21 20:45:12 GMT from United States)
Dude, I haven't tried the Mint 13 RC yet, although when the final release comes out I'll probably take a look at it.
But about whatever Mark Shuttleworth ought to learn from the various distros, I think he's already learned it. Maybe you hadn't noticed yet, but Ubuntu now comes with Gnome 3, Gnome classic (fallback), and it easily installs and runs MATE and Cinnamon and just about whatever else you might like. Options, lots of options.
It seems the Desktop Environment wars are over. We ALL won! It's Linux, and we can run whatever we like.
40 • RE: 31 - 35 (by Landor on 2012-05-21 21:16:56 GMT from Canada)
#31
Care to provide a link to the mirrors? I actually just looked at their official mirrors and actually didn't find a thing. I even checked the US Redhat mirror. Seems they either deleted 16 releases except for KDE and GNOME, or they've moved them to some obscure directory on the respective servers that has absolutely nothing to do with 'releases'. Which further cements my claim that they in fact do not take the spins seriously.
Now someone will come back and say, no, they do, they're just not part of this or that, and they're over here now. That's nice, and irrelevant since they're not placed with normal releases if they are in fact somewhere on the servers.
#35
How they run isn't the point at all. ASUS could make the best Atheros based wireless card in existence but it wouldn't mean doodly-squat (recently watched The Outlaw Josey Wales again :) ) if they took that version off the market in 6 months.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
41 • Responses to various posts regarding accessibility (by Robert C. on 2012-05-21 21:25:36 GMT from United States)
#8 (Henk V) - I sincerely apologize. I do not know how ADRIANE Knoppix slipped my mind in writing the article as I have used it in the past and it si a wonderful distribution. Mr. Knopper and all behind its development have done a great job at making a very accessible live (or installable) distribution. Not only does it utilize the Orca screen reader, but it also has the the Compiz eZoom plugin enabled. The last time I used Knoppix (version 6.7.1) I was instantly able to zoom in on the screen by holding down the Super key (the standard Windows key on most keyboards) and scrolling upward (away from me) on my mouse wheel. I was able to zoom out again by holding down the Super key and scrolling downward (toward me) on the mouse wheel. I would definitely recommend ADRIANE Knoppix to other users with visual disabilities. It is an excellent distribution. I sincerely apologize for not mentioning this great distribution in the article.
#10 (pearson) - From my understanding, the console based Speakup screen reader is built into the kernel and is available in Slackware, but I do not have any experience with Slackware personally. Another great example is GRML, a Debian-based command-line live distribution for administrators. I have a copy fo this installed onto a SD card which I use when I work on computer systems. When you boot into GRML and when you get to a command prompt, simply type in the following commands to get Speakup up adn running:
modprobe speakup_soft
espeakup
GRML should be up and talking after that.
#30 (Pearson) - I have not personally tried Vinux nor Trisquel, although I have heard a lot of great things about them from other blind users on mailing lists in which I am involved. I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my home desktop using Orca with great success; I am actually writing this from my Ubuntu 12.04 installation. I have installed Debian and Arch in virtual machines using VirtualBox with great success. Unless things have changed recently, I believe that you have to use a special "mini" Debian netinstall image in order to have a talking text based installer. Unfortunately, I cannot find the link for this image right now.
To all other posters, thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words. I am very thankful to DistroWatch for publishing this article. I was very surprised to find it posted here today! And thanks to everyone for reading. I appreciate the time you took out of your day to read this article.
Kind regards,
Robert
42 • fedora spins (by james on 2012-05-21 21:26:09 GMT from United States)
http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/spins/linux/releases/
43 • more fedora spins (by james on 2012-05-21 21:30:25 GMT from United States)
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
44 • RE: 42 (by Landor on 2012-05-21 21:33:46 GMT from Canada)
See #40.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
45 • Too many Mandriva forks (by makruger on 2012-05-21 21:52:51 GMT from United States)
What the Linux community at large needs is standards, consolidation, leadership, and good project management, not more forks. This will help ensure a reliable product. For this reason, all the Mandriva forks should join forces. The alternative is just a whole lot of alpha software, and the Linux community already has enough of that.
46 • Reply to 45 (by bero on 2012-05-21 22:08:18 GMT from Switzerland)
And that's exactly what's starting to happen now.
Unity and the various builds based on it is already back to getting everything from the Cooker repository.
Rosa is heavily involved in all the talks and will almost certainly end up working on the same repository.
The next version of Ark (which was never a Mandriva) will start using the same repository because now that it's a community project, it does all we need.
We hope others forks and related projects will follow... The project is clearly open to everyone.
47 • Fedora stuff (by Jesse on 2012-05-21 22:12:39 GMT from Canada)
@Landor,
If you go to the Fedora website, go to the download section, then pick a spin, it will say right under the main download link "Older releases of this spin can be found at...." and it gives the link. The link takes you to the same place James provided in post 42. The link to the older versions is right there on the download page, they're not hidden or moved to some obscure location and you don't have to hunt through mirrors. I don't see how Fedora could make it any easier for people to get legacy versions.
Speaking of Fedora spins, I'm planning to download one version or another of Fedora next week to review. If anyone has a preference to which spin gets reviewed, please drop me an e-mail.
48 • accessibility (by frustrated on 2012-05-21 22:50:40 GMT from Canada)
The article on accessibility really hit home with my aging eyeballs. All the user comments about really bad distro choices in default screens are especially relevant. One has to wonder if the designers are so focused on visual and 3d effects, that they have forgotten their end users?
Especially irksome are quirky or unexpected screen actions. Let's use as an example a recent release of Backtrack. (I could have used a number of other distros as examples, but having recently tried this distro, I know others can recreate the following complaints with this distro). If you want to see the bootup messages without straining your eyes, you can pass a parameter on bootup: vga=normal, or perhaps vga=769. So the first few lines during bootup scroll by legibly, when without warning, the size reverts back to some microscopic font size. Is there any way to enforce vga=769 during bootup?
And what about Xorg? It used to come with a configuration utility like xorg-config or xorg-setup that worked well. Now there is a switch (don't remember, maybe something like xorg -setup?), But the fine control that the previous method gave is gone. I want to be able to click ctrl-alt+ or ctrl-alt- to change screen resolutions. And control-alt-backspace no longer kills X. Yes, the xorg faq explains how to edit config file to revert to previous behaviour, but why make changing the behaviour so convoluted? And then there's having to muck around with xrandr. Why did they screw things up? If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Any suggestions or recommendations on dealing with these issues would be appreciated.
49 • RE: 47 (by Landor on 2012-05-21 22:54:36 GMT from Canada)
Obviously people fail to understand exactly what is stated.
They do not exist in the release on the public mirrors. I checked four to make sure. I haven't touched a spin in a few years, from what I remember, and I rarely forget, they used to exist on the mirrors and were easy to find. That's no longer the case. Also, when they did exist on the mirrors they WERE removed in place of the latest release.
Being in another directory does not change the facts above, nor does it change that they are not considered important enough to be placed with releases.
You should have read comment #40 as well.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
50 • Mandriva (by Adam Visitor on 2012-05-22 00:54:12 GMT from Canada)
Let Mandriva die, and help Mageia to mover forward!!!
51 • Feature Story Slashdotted (by eco2geek on 2012-05-22 01:56:20 GMT from United States)
Congratulations, your story on accessibility's been Slashdotted:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/05/21/1417221/the-state-of-linux-accessibility
And thank you for an interesting read. It's amazing that you were able format your hard drives using the accessibility features on Ubuntu.
Jesse @47: Heck, (my perception is that) Fedora is a big contributor to GNOME. Show us what they've done with their latest.
52 • Fedora (by dude on 2012-05-22 03:34:07 GMT from Kuwait)
I tried Fedora LXDE in my quest for an Ubuntu/Unity replacement. It's a great distro and it's very fast. It didn't have a very good 'out of box' user experience though. I tried Lubuntu for a while. It also has LXDE instead of Unity. It's not bad, but I started getting bug report popup windows. Neither Fedora LXDE or Lubuntu beat the Linux Mint 13 RC MATE distro for usability and a good 'out of box' user experience though. Linux Mint 13 has 2 alternative desktop environments, MATE and Cinnamon, but not Unity. That's probably why Linux Mint has a higher page hit ranking than Ubuntu. Linux users are just saying NO to Unity!
53 • Another benefit of audio installation is that headless installations are easier (by Anon on 2012-05-22 04:18:32 GMT from United States)
Greater accessabilty helps everyone.
54 • Re: Feature Story Slashdotted (by Robert C. on 2012-05-22 04:40:14 GMT from United States)
To eco2geek (post #51),
As far as a GUI partitioning tool, GParted is actually very accessible as well. The first time I installed Ubuntu with my eyes closed was quiet a frightening time. I actually used to have to use my cell phone's camera to zoom in on the screen to go through the installation process, and boy was that a neck breaker. :) I still have to use this method when going through Fedora's FristBoot process after installing via a live medium.
I am grateful for what minimal amount of vision I have, but (as I mentioned in the article) I believe it one day will fade away. This is one reason why screen reader technology si so important to me now. I am able to use the eSpeak synthesizer and listen to my e-mails at 400 words per minute (if I am correct at Orca's maximum speech rate). That is a LOT faster than reading while using magnification.
Kind regards, and thanks for posting about the story being Slashdotted. This has been a day full of surprises for me!
Take care.
55 • @52, and Fedora Review (by cflow on 2012-05-22 05:00:28 GMT from United States)
Over half of all distrowatch views (not hits) are from people viewing from windows.
Over 20 million users are reportedly using ubuntu based distributions.
Out of these 20,000,000, around 10,000 follow the distrowatch page hit ranking.
Ubuntu Forums still has a lot of people asking for support with unity everyday.
With all this in mind, You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts in your beliefs of desktop environment usage. A lot of people use Unity, and you must respect all of these users' preferences, whether you like Unity or not.
I like kde, but I acknowledge that not everyone likes its complexity and integrated features that not all will use. End of discussion there. ;)
@Jesse:
Now, as for what fedora version to choose... Looking at the very few changes of GNOME 3.4, and by how you didn't like the last release, I might ask that you review the desktop that you like the most. But if you really must review the main edition, with the desktop you dislike, I suggest that right after installation, go directly to the gnome-shell extensions website and install the items you believe are needed, in your view, in order to make the desktop "usable" to you. That way, your review would be much more informative to the users than a "same ol' bad review" like the one you had in fedora 15 and 16. (Seriously - 3.4 hasn't really changed much in defaults, other than the number of extensions you can install - I don't think you'll like its defaults again)
56 • Corrections (by cflow on 2012-05-22 05:40:55 GMT from United States)
When I meant "same ol' bad review," I really meant to say "same old 'this distro is bad' review." I don't want to insult anyone - I like your reviews a lot Jesse!
57 • @55 & 'bout the review (by greg on 2012-05-22 06:10:44 GMT from Slovenia)
@55 - "I like kde, but I acknowledge that not everyone likes its complexity and integrated features that not all will use. End of discussion there. ;)"
Uf integrated features. Don't get me started. i believe they are too integrated and that user should get some notice that if they uninstall something the integration might not work good. first thing I uninstalled was kmail (since i use TB) and now i keep getting error messages. i tried to reinstall the kmail, which fixed the error messages for a short while. but now they are back with a vengance. too much integration. ok and if there is it should pop up a red window when you want to remove part that is a part of this integration.
review - would be interesting to see the review of the LXDE spin and see how it's coping with ram and perhaps an older maschine (vbox).
58 • Multi system, mandriva, etc.. (by JR on 2012-05-22 06:12:23 GMT from Brazil)
@11 • Multi System R4 by LinuxWarrior
-->"You can even create a bootable external FAT7FAT32 formated harddrive with all the Linux Distro´s and PC Tools (like Hiren´s Boot CD , ct Boot Cd , Barth PE Boot CD ) you want ."
I loved this idea, I think I'll buy an external hard drive exclusively for this! thank's for bringing that up! thank's DWW too!
@36 • Mandriva by bero
great explanation, I wish luck to you all!
It seems to me that the problem of mandriva is finally being removed, after all, our criticisms were not always for the company and their business decisions, the company Mandriva has always been the problem, the software has always been of excellent quality!
@55 • Fedora Review by cflow
-->"Over half of all distrowatch views (not hits) are from people viewing from windows.
Over 20 million users are reportedly using ubuntu based distributions.
Out of these 20,000,000, around 10,000 follow the distrowatch page hit ranking.
Ubuntu Forums still has a lot of people asking for support with unity everyday.
With all this in mind, You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts in your beliefs of desktop environment usage. A lot of people use Unity, and you must respect all of these users' preferences, whether you like Unity or not."
it was not better to have ignored the impolite comment?
-->"But if you really must review the main edition, with the desktop you dislike, I suggest that right after installation, go directly to the gnome-shell extensions website and install the items you believe are needed, in your view, in order to make the desktop "usable" to you."
does not seem fair to the reader / end-user first make gnome3 usable for later review it, even if he explains it! It would be like installing a distribution which defaults to text mode (command line or core - hardcore) and install kde first to review it later! (exaggerated a bit, I know, is just to try to explain my point)
59 • Idle thoughts for idle CPUs (by ums on 2012-05-22 06:15:06 GMT from Germany)
No mention of the original tool for the job, at's redheaded stepbrother?
"batch: executes commands when system load levels permit; in other words, when the load average drops below 0.8, or the value specified in the invocation of atd."
60 • corrections (by JR on 2012-05-22 06:20:18 GMT from Brazil)
should have a question mark and not a comma at the end of the following sentence:
"It seems to me that the problem of mandriva is finally being removed, after all, our criticisms were not always for the company and their business decisions"
maybe it makes sese now...
61 • Fedora options (by snail on 2012-05-22 06:48:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
Jason (19) got it right first time. Long-term user of Fedora Xfce. All the wonderful flexibility of Xfce without the pain of Gnome! Always the powerful back-up of the RH organisation.
Speaking of accessibility, did anyone mention Knoppix, yet? Great pioneering work by Klaus.
62 • Batch (by Jesse on 2012-05-22 11:27:15 GMT from Canada)
>> "No mention of the original tool for the job, at's redheaded stepbrother? "batch: executes commands when system load levels permit; in other words, when the load average drops below 0.8, or the value specified in the invocation of atd.""
Batch by default doesn't run commands when the system is idle, just whenever the system can handle another job. On your man page it suggests a load of 0.8, on my system it defaults to 1.5. This can be altered, but by default it doesn't run programs when the system is idle, just when the system isn't extremely busy. It's also not recommended for multi-user environments, which narrows its scope a bit.
63 • accessibility article (by Nate on 2012-05-22 13:53:41 GMT from United States)
As a person with optical disabilities and a friend of others who also have them, I've always seen accessibility as a neglected priority in most of the software communities. I read this article to a friend of mine who is almost blind, and he cried. If Distrowatch ever does a "it's the 20th anniversary of Distrowatch, let's celebrate, here's a compilation of our best stuff from those 20 years" special publication; this should be in it.
64 • @58 (by cflow on 2012-05-22 15:47:53 GMT from United States)
"does not seem fair to the reader / end-user first make gnome3 usable for later review it, even if he explains it! It would be like installing a distribution which defaults to text mode (command line or core - hardcore) and install kde first to review it later! (exaggerated a bit, I know, is just to try to explain my point)"
I guess it's true. But I point my idea out under the context that the reviewer doesn't like how the desktop works in the first place, and anticipating nothing but the same if reviewed again. The review just wouldn't be very useful, and just repetitive here at Distrowatch. Thats why I still really wish for Jesse to review any fedora desktop spin other than the GNOME edition.
65 • Fedora review (by claudecat on 2012-05-22 16:44:47 GMT from United States)
My vote would be for a review of the KDE version of course. That would avoid the inherent "issues" with gnome-shell. My issue with gs isn't the interface so much as the lack of configuration options.
FWIW, I've tried all the major distros' KDE offerings and would place Fedora in the top 5 along with openSUSE, Arch, Slackware (-current) and Mint. Gentoo also does well, but will vary with different USE flags, etc.
66 • @39 (by Gnobuddy on 2012-05-22 19:12:36 GMT from United States)
mcellius wrote:
It seems the Desktop Environment wars are over. We ALL won! It's Linux, and we can run whatever we like.
============================================
Unfortunately I cannot find any current Linux desktop environment that is not a huge step back from KDE 3.5.x.
Today's "heavy" DE's use two to four times as many hardware resources, run much slower, and still lack some of the best features from the "obsolete" KDE 3.5 series.
Today's "light" DE's may run fast enough, but it's like a trip back to the early primitive days of desktop environments. For example PCManFM is truly tragic compared to what Konqueror could do five years ago.
Like most users, I don't really care two hoots about the kernel and system tools. I care about the desktop and applications I use daily. And in that regard, KDE 3.5.x was the best I've encountered on *any* operating system. Today's Linux DE's are all big steps backward.
Thanks to the Trinity Desktop Project, I still run KDE 3.5 - but there are very few choices of current distros on which Trinity will run.
-Gnobuddy
67 • linux (by colin on 2012-05-22 22:01:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
Linux is getting a bit boring recently , not being funny but every distro is the same as every other wither a few cosmetic adjustmestments. Linux is Linux. it needs something new to make me go wow I want to try it again. Its just to easy for every person to come up with their own version of it these days might give linux a miss till something fantastically new arrives on the scene its just the same old things of updated versions of the same old distros, and no one mentions the software thats completely outdaed compared to the linux OS the software looks likes it almost caught up with windows 95 unless u count wine but that still needs some work.
68 • @67 (by cflow on 2012-05-22 22:03:07 GMT from United States)
"Like most users, I don't really care two hoots about the kernel and system tools. I care about the desktop and applications I use daily. And in that regard, KDE 3.5.x was the best I've encountered on *any* operating system. Today's Linux DE's are all big steps backward."
"Thanks to the Trinity Desktop Project, I still run KDE 3.5 - but there are very few choices of current distros on which Trinity will run."
It's rather strange. Checking all the registered distros in Distrowatch, Only one of them actually lists trinity as an official desktop. Yet if KDE 3 was actually as good as you tout, I would have thought the demand of Trinity would have influenced a lot of these distro-developers to keep it officially, just like how the gnome 2 fork influenced Linux Mint and others to keep that desktop around. I do know that OpenSUSE keeps KDE 3.5 (not trinity) in their repos, but how can you actually prove the "step backwards" among desktops? The market thinks of you as a minority, so you must really prove it with better information, you know, other than "because I said so", and resource usage :)
69 • desktop designs (by Mike Thomas on 2012-05-23 03:02:48 GMT from United States)
In the world of desktop interfaces it seems that new ideas just take a while to get noticed. Of course these guys were working with GNUStep but it certainly resembles another desktop or two.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/toilde/?source=directory
70 • Light KDE (by greg on 2012-05-23 06:41:58 GMT from Slovenia)
"Light KDE" is RazorQT. still under development but on idle in vbox it used 140 MB. with many new computers coming out with 2GB+ ram i don't see memorry usage really being an issue. it's there to be used.
71 • Re: Launching tasks when computer is idle (by Anon on 2012-05-23 13:57:27 GMT from Norway)
'man uptime' says: "Load averages are not normalized for the number of CPUs in a system, so a load average of 1 means a single CPU system is loaded all the time while on a 4 CPU system it means it was idle 75% of the time."
Just want to point out that the expression of (desired) critical levels may vary depending on the number of CPU's in the system. For example, on my 4 CPU system:
15:33:49 up 8 days, 2:15, 2 users, load average: 1,25, 1,39, 1,55
and a bit later, while fiddling with this post to DW:
15:51:33 up 8 days, 2:33, 2 users, load average: 0,80, 0,74, 1,00
Not a biggie ;) I am looking forward to your good practical tips every week, Jesse.
72 • @70, Light KDE (by TobiSGD on 2012-05-23 19:09:23 GMT from Germany)
'"Light KDE" is RazorQT.'
Except that they both use Qt they have nothing in common. RazorQT is not KDE light, in the same LXDE is not Gnome light just because it uses GTK.
"with many new computers coming out with 2GB+ ram i don't see memorry usage really being an issue. it's there to be used."
Of course it is there to be used. The question is, to be used in which way? I personally prefer my RAM being used by my applications or as cache rather then just being used up by the DE/WM for whatever.
73 • Nobody likes siduction? (by Chris H on 2012-05-23 20:04:34 GMT from United States)
I like siduction.
I run smxi, Google Chrome and XScreensaver GL Slideshow.
Installing siduction is a problem now. As Ferdinand Thommes states on the siduction home page, only the lxde version fits on a cd. Burning to a dvd is too fast and often results in a disk that won't boot. He could vastly increase his market if he removed 25 to 30 meg of software from his iso's so that all siduction versions could fit on a cd.
I installed the lxde version on a computer and, with the help of smxi, added the gnome and xfce desktops and the debian kernel.
I did get a successful burn of xfce and am setting it up now.
Chris H
74 • @68 (by Gnobuddy on 2012-05-23 20:15:14 GMT from United States)
how can you actually prove the "step backwards" among desktops? The market thinks of you as a minority, so you must really prove it with better information, you know, other than "because I said so", and resource usage :)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fair questions. Some of my answers:
You can't "prove" a software preference to the entire world. If you use Linux, the market thinks of you as a minority too. Presumably you have your reasons for believing Linux is better, but what information can you use to convince everybody else? People have been trying for at least ten years, with little success - Linux is still below 5% usage on desktops.
So I can't prove it to the world, but I can tell you why the new DE's are a step backwards for *me* - and there are several reasons, related to the way I use my computer and the type of work I use it for.
For example, last time I checked, Dolphin is clumsier and has much less capability than Konqueror (for example making ssh connections, ripping CD's to flacs, FTP connections, remotely editing documents on a web server, splitting into three columns so I could compare files in three separate folders at the same time). Konqueror was literally the best file manager/ file tool I've seen on any operating system, and a passable web browser as well, though IMHO that was never it's strength.
Another example: the best image viewer I've found for my purposes is Kuickshow - light, quick, minimal wasted screen space, and I can preview ten new digital pics at once by typing "kuickshow DSCN354*" at a command line. Well, Kuickshow is gone from KDE 4.x. The replacements I've found all waste enormous amounts of screen space, or can't be called with multiple images as arguments, or have other flaws for my usage pattern.
Similarly, the best minimal text editor used to be Kedit. One file at a time, no wasted screen real estate. It's gone from KDE 4.x.
How about Kile? I still use Latex for generating mathematical documents. Last time I checked, KDE 4 versions of Kile were buggy and incomplete.
Amarok? Used to be great on KDE 3.x. It was a buggy mess on every version of KDE 4.x I checked.
How about all those weird new menu replacements and search tools? I find all of them slower and clumsier when I'm trying to launch any of my familiar applications. Muscle memory knows where they are in the old KDE 3.x menus, the new search tools are equally slow on the 100th usage as the first. No learning curve required, but you also can't use them any faster as you get more experienced.
What about the shiny new features? Twitter? Facebook? RSS feeds? Flashy animations? Desktops that are not desktops, but instead some sort of weird widgets? Well, I don't have any use for a single one of them. So the "improvements" are not improvements for me, merely useless add-ons that slow down the DE and increase resource usage.
Those are some of the reasons why the recent evolution of Linux desktop environments has been backwards from my point of view. We may have more bling animations and translucency and better icon sets, but actually less capability in the areas where I want it most. I don't care one jot about animations, especially if at the same time it's become harder or clunkier to do actual work.
Worst of all, we Linux users still don't have the one thing Microsoft got right even as far back as Windows 95: a universal and comprehensive control panel where a user can control most of the hardware and software configuration without difficulty. Mandrake came closer than any other distro with their collection of Drak tools - and Mandrake is now on its very last legs, fighting for survival. Those Mandrake tools never got adopted and incorporated into KDE, Gnome, and Unity, which would have surely helped the cause of Linux adoption.
I can see that I am in the minority simply from the fact that I can't understand the rush to buy $800 Apple tablets that have less computing power and storage than a $300 netbook. Frankly, I don't understand the direction in which personal computing has been heading lately, on every operating system. Very little of it seems to be geared towards actually getting any work done.
-Gnobuddy
75 • siduction (by Mac on 2012-05-23 20:23:56 GMT from United States)
Have installed siduction kde from dvd with no problem on 2 pc's. Wish they would make it a bit easier to understand how to put the boot loader on partition like aptosid. It has always put it on partition the way I want it. But I use aptosid and siduction kde and like them both.
Have fun
Mack
76 • @66, 68 - TDE (by Andy Axnot on 2012-05-23 23:39:17 GMT from United States)
I am another diehard fan of KDE 3.5 and now Trinity. I have to admit I find it very odd that TDE has been so little adopted by distros, but I think that most have just decided that that particular battle has been fought and lost. They accept that the newer DEs are the future and feel any effort spent on the old is wasted effort.
That's all I can think of to explain it. Pity, but there it is. Maybe someone else has a better answer.
Andy
77 • Adopting DEs (by Jesse on 2012-05-24 00:20:26 GMT from Canada)
I think the reason Trinity hasn't been adopted more is a lack of demand. Even in distributions which offer Trinity it is rarely used (according to package statistics). A few months back I believe the PCLinuxOS developers gave the same reason for not adopting a desktop environment (either GROME 3 or Unity, I forget which). They said they were open to the idea of packaging it, but there was no demand from the user base.
Last time I checked Trinty was available in Debian (and its derivatives, including Ubuntu), Fedora, RHEL and Slackware. I think openSUSE has a 3.5 options too. This means most people can install it if they want it, even without compiling. But if most people aren't installing it and not asking for custom spins then why would a distro go to the trouble of making a Trinty spin?
78 • @28 Desktop management war (by TuxTEST on 2012-05-24 03:15:47 GMT from Canada)
@28 Alex
I totally agree with you! This discussion has become ridiculous. With the choices we have, the question does not arise. It's a waste of time and energy in my opinion.
For your information Hybride is a Distro from Quebec/Canada
79 • several comments (by JR on 2012-05-24 03:43:51 GMT from Brazil)
@74 Gnobuddy
"I can see that I am in the minority simply from the fact that I can't understand the rush to buy $800 Apple tablets that have less computing power and storage than a $300 netbook. Frankly, I don't understand the direction in which personal computing has been heading lately, on every operating system. Very little of it seems to be geared towards actually getting any work done."
It's not to get the work done, it's for entertainment purposes IMHO, which is why Linux has to reach tablets too but, you are right about DE's, desktop is one thing, tablet is something else, meaning: do not use the same UI!
@76, 77
I think jesse is right, the users "decided that that particular battle has been fought and lost." I hope that does not happen with mate/gnome2...
80 • Trinity Desktop Environment, Razor-Qt (by Elcaset on 2012-05-24 10:16:26 GMT from United States)
I wouldn't give up on Trinity Desktop Environment. I love using KDE 4 on most hardware, & Trinity Desktop Environment (the fork of KDE 3.5) on older hardware. There actually are a lot of Trinity users. If you check out the Trinity mailing lists, you'll see they are very active.
Also, Razor-Qt is looking like it will be a good option for a very fast Qt-based Desktop Environment.
Cheers,
Elcaset
81 • @78 TuxTEST Hybryde (by Elcaset on 2012-05-24 11:05:20 GMT from United States)
According to Distrowatch, "http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=hybryde" Hybryde is based in France, not Quebec. Can someone from the Hybryde project clarify this.
Cheers,
Elcaset
82 • @74 Gnobuddy (kde 3.5) (by DavidEF on 2012-05-24 12:18:48 GMT from United States)
I don't know why Trinity isn't catching on more, but I have an opinion. I think it has a lot to do with lack of demand, as Jesse said (Post #77). I see multiple alternatives to the dead Gnome2 springing up and thriving, including the fork, MATE. But, the same can't be said for KDE 3.5. Maybe the 4.x series is "good enough" for most people.
I personally use more KDE/QT dependent applications than Gnome/GTK dependent ones, but I use a Gnome-based desktop (Unity) because I like it better. And the KDE apps I use have all been successfully ported to the 4.x series. I know how it is to jump through hoops to get what you want/need out of a DE. I've had my share. I actually tried the Trinity project at the start, because of one little game my wife loved that hadn't yet been ported over. At the time, Trinity didn't work very well (on my hardware), so I finally gave up and told her she would have to live without the game. Now, they've gotten it ported, and all is well. But, I was willing to jump through some hoops to try to hold on to something.
83 • How to access older reviews, newsletters, podcasts etc.? (by JEJ on 2012-05-24 13:42:33 GMT from Denmark)
DistroWatch is one of the Linux-related pages I visit most often, but it happens that I miss some the reviews that are tracked in the "Latest Reviews" section. My question is if there is a link to a page within DistroWatch tradking reviews over a longer period of time? If this is not the case, I would like to suggest that such a page be made, like e.g. distrowatch.com/latest_reviews or something similar. It seems that good efforts may be wasted if links to reviews are only visible for a few days. The same holds true for the "Latest Newsletters" and "Latest Podcasts" sections. Just a suggestion for you hard working people behind DistroWatch.
84 • @83 Older DWW's (by DavidEF on 2012-05-24 14:32:15 GMT from United States)
If you look on the top right side of the page on any DWW, there is a column marked "Archives" wherein is listed several older issues of DWW. Is that what you're looking for?
85 • RE: 83 (by Landor on 2012-05-24 16:00:16 GMT from Canada)
I agree. This is something that bothered me as well at times. Sadly, there's no alternative that I know of, except for reviews of course. The only way to see the missed reviews is by visiting each distribution's page and hoping you find a new one. The podcasts and newsletters can be circumvented by RSS on their own respective sites. I like listening to a few podcasts that are amazing in my opinion. Ubuntu UK, Going Linux, and GNU World Order are my top three favourites. Decent people, acting properly, using decent language, and having fun too.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
86 • @85 Reviews? (by DavidEF on 2012-05-24 16:24:34 GMT from United States)
Landor, please explain. I don't know what reviews DistroWatch has had which are not in a DWW issue. Those old issues are all readily accessible from the top right corner column of any DWW, including this one.
87 • @83 and 85 Old stuff (by DavidEF on 2012-05-24 16:30:43 GMT from United States)
Sorry, JEJ and Landor. I just looked at the "Latest Reviews" section on the Distrowatch front page. Now I see what you're talking about. I had just assumed you meant Distrowatch reviews, which are in the DWW's every week. I apologize to both of you for being ignorant and non-helpful.
88 • RE: 87 (by Landor on 2012-05-24 17:04:44 GMT from Canada)
No reason to apologise at all. Not everyone can know everything, or catch the intent instantly. I've seen many a thing here that made me think, 'What?', then I finally figured it out at some other point.
When someone's being non-helpful is when they're communicating in a way that offers absolutely no solution, or in silence when they may/or do know the answer.
I'd take his request a bit further and say that there should be a 'reviewed' last week section, and the same for newsletters and podcasts in DistroWatch Weekly. That could be a workable answer, though it adds more work either way. It could even be entitled, 'Around The Web', then the listings in three separate groups.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
89 • @83 (by lutz on 2012-05-24 19:04:18 GMT from Germany)
as David says, there is a "archives"list at the right hand of DWW.
at the bottom of the list there ist a link: Full list of all issues
then use search-function in your browser.
hope this helps
90 • Running processes when CPU is idle etc. (by William Barath on 2012-05-24 23:50:07 GMT from Canada)
There's a complement to 'cron' called 'batch' in the cronutils package which runs a process after a given time, once the load level falls below 1.5 or whatever level you set when you run 'atd'
~$ echo "big_backup.sh" | at 7pm # soon after 7pm ;-)
~$ echo "big_backup.sh" | batch
This is good mostly for them you're in a memory-constrained environment and want to avoid swapping by running a big job when the system is not loaded.
If your system is more CPU-bound and memory isn't the issue then try this:
#!/bin/bash
$*&
while sleep 1; kill -STOP %1; do
read a b c a=$(( 0${a/.*/} + 1 ))
sleep $a
kill -CONT %1;
done
This runs the process for one second, then sleeps it for a number of seconds equal to the system's 5 minute load average, rounding up. The busier the system is the less resources it will use.
91 • hybride (by TuxTEST on 2012-05-25 00:19:38 GMT from Canada)
@89 Oupss ! You are right! I had read on the web that Hybride Nivanos was developed by hobbyists of Ubuntu in Quebec .. Finally it is not important
Hybride is a brilliant idea!
@Caitlyn Sorry if you have a bad translation in my comment.
In french: I meant * par contre *
It is an expression often used to start an argument! Sorry my english is not 100%!
You made a good job! Continue
92 • Robert Cole's article. (by Skurge on 2012-05-25 02:03:45 GMT from United States)
Apologizing? really? Fail. It's a well written piece about a fairly important subject. I have no disability that limits my access to my computer, but to downplay the point of accessibility? Irks me a bit. The accessibility options in the various Linux distro's are extremely important. I'm sure this will draw fire, but Oh well. I appreciate the article. It reminds me of where I could be.
93 • Mint is overrated... (by tek_heretik on 2012-05-25 04:50:08 GMT from Canada)
I know this is off topic but Mint is OK under the hood, the GUI is dreary and the functionality is pathetic. Before anybody flames me, I have 8 years experience tinkering with many different distros and desktops, I think I have earned the right to be a critic. I have used Mint as my ONLY OS but switched to Kubuntu for GUI functionality reasons.
94 • Re. 93 • Mint is overrated... (by Anon on 2012-05-25 12:23:34 GMT from Norway)
I am not using Mint, but... How about at least one concrete argument for the alleged better GUI functionality of Kubuntu?
95 • Kanotix (by Artis on 2012-05-25 14:44:55 GMT from Italy)
Debian,Ubuntu,Kde?
Just give Kanotix a try!
Superb distro and friendly forum.
96 • Re: 94 (by tek_heretik on 2012-05-25 16:08:50 GMT from Canada)
Something as simple as remembering window size and location for starters, something Win-DOHs users are used to and will miss with Mint. Here is another, I managed, for the first time ever (I have been trying to this for years with other distros but was unaware the floppy module in the kernel is off by default) in Kubuntu 12.04 to get my floppy drive to work properly, and create device icons and links for it. The depth of settings are endless in KDE, just the opposite in MATE and Cinnamon. It took me a good 10 minutes to find the GUI font size adjustment in Cinnamon, they moved it to a separate place for some reason, the default size 10 is ridiculously huge, lame.
97 • KDE (by azurehi on 2012-05-25 20:46:21 GMT from United States)
Re # 93, 96: Obviously you like KDE's configuration options. There are so many distros to choose from. I prefer Mint 13 MATE. Ironic you complain about font default size 10 in Cinnamon when this week's Distrowatch has an excellent article about Linux Accessibility.
BTW, just What does "lame" mean, as you use it? The word has entered the vernacular but is so overused and non specific.
98 • RE: 97 (by Landor on 2012-05-26 06:31:07 GMT from Canada)
What does the article have to do with the font size being too large? Seriously. Shouldn't choice and preference denote opinion instead of the current theme? I can't stand hideously large fonts, nor can I stand very small fonts. What's even worse is when someone makes everything all dark, then makes the text hard to read as well, and tiny too.
Obviously he prefers functionality over non-functionality. You see how easy it is to take a different spin on things?
Vernacular has entered the vernacular when it comes to this community, and it's greatly overused, and at times non-specific. I usually find nerds using it who want to sound impressive.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
99 • Liberte Linux (by Not Me on 2012-05-26 08:15:59 GMT from Canada)
I'm using Liberte Linux booted from a 2gb USB drive right now. It works great! I think it's faster and easier to use than Tails. Plus, all the network traffic is encrypted. The persistent storage feature works well and it's password password protected. Tails gives you a larger portion of the USB drive for persistent storage though. You can easily access the unprotected free space on the thumb drive with Liberte. Liberte recognizes the wifi adapters in my desktop and 2 different laptops with no hassle. My favorite feature of Liberte is that I can get to websites my ISP blocks. I give Liberte two thumbs up!
100 • #83 How to access older reviews, newsletters, podcasts etc.? (by JEJ on 2012-05-26 08:58:32 GMT from Denmark)
Thank you for the comments for my post #83.
Yes, as Landor and DavidEF have noticed, I am talking about the stream of "Recent Reviews" to the left of the DWW page, and not about the DWW reviews (which actually happen also to be listed among others in the "Recent Reviews").
I wonder if this list is generated by a computer or by a human being. In any case, I think it should be straightforward to add new reviews to a list of reviews covering a longer period of time.
The main problem is that particularly in periods with frequent releases of popular distros, the traffic on the "Latest Reviews" list is so heavy that you can easily miss interesting reviews.
I am of course well aware of the DWW Archives which I have also used quite a lot, but they do not keep the "Recent Reviews" from the relevant weeks.
101 • #83 How to access older reviews, newsletters, podcasts etc.? (by JEJ on 2012-05-26 09:02:47 GMT from Denmark)
Oops, I forgot to say that I think Landor's suggestion in post #88 would be a very good solution to this problem.
102 • 96 • Re: 94 (by tek_heretik ...) (by Anon on 2012-05-26 11:26:53 GMT from Norway)
Thanks - sounds like valid points. I also second Landor (#98). There is some absurd 'creativity' to be found at various places.
103 • WM/DE (by BirdMan on 2012-05-26 14:37:42 GMT from United States)
Fluxbox is nice and it is being actively developed, why not use it? Your windows remember where to go and it looks great.
104 • RE: 103 (by Landor on 2012-05-26 19:33:21 GMT from Canada)
While Fluxbox is being actively developed, so are other WMs as well. I prefer Openbox in comparison, and feel (meaning my opinion only) it's a far better alternative to Fluxbox because it's written in just C.
That's extremely subjective of course though.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
105 • @97 Re: Lame (by tek_heretik on 2012-05-26 20:31:41 GMT from Canada)
From Urban Dictionary dot com...
"just plain stupid, un-original, or lifeless. barbed wire tattoos, butterflies, and tribal tattoos are lame, they say a lot about the person who gets them.
sarah got a butterfly tattoo on her lower back. that's so lame, i'd rather get a d*ck on mine, at least i'll be more original."
My own personal take on 'lame'...something out of place or weird, unnecessary, etc.
Somebody else mentioned accessibility, well that is easy to find so why not make the font a normal size to begin with, if somebody is SO BLIND, they need to have a huge font, they won't get Mint installed by themselves in the first place, lol.
106 • @97 Re: Lame (by mandog on 2012-05-26 22:18:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Yes lame usually means useless or words to that effect.
The default font in Mint is 10 as in Ubuntu/ Gnome shell/KDE4, and most Linux distros there is the odd 12 but that is very rare now, I would not say its large by any means more like normal to me in fact Win7 has a almost same size font. perhaps some people are running the wrong screen resolution to be getting large fonts. I'm running a modern monitor 1920x1080 full HD monitor so that may be the reason my fonts look normal. Or is there some hidden motive behind the comments?
By the way it took all of 10 secs to find the font size the same as most gnome/KDE distros much longer in win7.
I have not seen a floppy drive for years I should not think there is much support for them now in the bleeding edge distros.
107 • @106 (by tek_heretik on 2012-05-27 02:09:50 GMT from Canada)
My HD monitor IS at 1920x1080, I finally did find the setting in Cinnamon and 9 was a much more suitable size, one size smaller made a huge difference, no pun intended. I have no clue what Win-DOHs 7 looks like and really don't care, I completely abandoned ANYTHING Microslop a couple of years ago, I even refuse to use Skype because they bought it. All that being said, NO HIDDEN MOTIVE, after using KDE 4.8.2 in Kubuntu, and then doing a Mint/Cinnamon live test spin just opened my eyes, I am not a typical hardcore 'fanboy', I just call a spade a spade, which is MINT IS OVER RATED, seriously, it's great for non-free under the hood stuff but the GUI is drab, dreary, clumsy and way TOO simple.
As for your font size change setting 10 seconds, Mint moved it, it's not in an obvious place anymore.
As for your floppy drive comment, I happen to be old school when it comes to upgrading my BIOS, etc, which I did successfully with Kubuntu and a floppy (downloaded the Win-DOHs executible, unpacked it with ARK and copied the contents to the floppy), I still have and can find new excellent utilities that will STILL fit on a floppy, why would I want to waste a whole DVD+R for a couple of kilobytes? Hmm?
108 • @106...one more thing... (by tek_heretik on 2012-05-27 02:17:26 GMT from Canada)
I am a former Mint user and Mint forum member, after I did the live test spin of Mint 13 (Cinnamon), I went in to the Mint forum and and posted these same opinions, so it's not like I came HERE to spout off about them like a chicken, went right in to the roost, lol. :-P
109 • @108 (by mandog on 2012-05-27 08:36:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Fair Comment on your floppy, My point was modern motherboards don't even have connections for a floppy nor do laptops notebooks or tablets the norm now is flash-drives so Distro support will be patchy.
I think the font size 10 is based on Times New Roman as that is the news paper standard print and different fonts are different sizes.
For your Info I,m also a member off the Mint forums since the 1st release, and most others I don't really think I qualify to judge the distro on a font choice or size or I think its drab? That why I use Arch Linux as my main distro. That way everything is my decision.
110 • KDE (by Dude on 2012-05-27 10:39:01 GMT from Kuwait)
Lots of talk about KDE this week. It seems like people are switching to KDE to get away from Unity.
111 • Floppy drive (by Jesse on 2012-05-27 12:28:49 GMT from Canada)
Most modern machines don't have a place to connect a floppy drive so it might be time to invest in a USB thumb drive for your tiny files. On the other hand, I plugged a floppy drive into a machine running Ubuntu 11.10 late last year to rescue some old data and the drive worked without any configuration or tweaking on my part. YMMV.
112 • Basic functionality matters! (by Bruno Sanchez on 2012-05-27 13:33:46 GMT from Brazil)
Sincerely, I don't want any "accessibility software" in my favorite distro. Not that I be against that kind of software, but because there's just too much bloat (unuseful, unnecessary software) in almost any distro under the Sun.
Accessibility software is something quite specific. It's only needed by visually-impaired computer users, and they are a very small parcel of the world population. So I think a few distros especially made to those people would be much better than hundreds of general-purpose distros with some sort of accessibility enhancement.
What Linux devs must do is provide their distros with "basic functionality" that REALLY WORKS. For instance, I thought the Slackware-based VectorLinux 6.0 Standard Gold was capable of giving me an ABNT2 keyboard (the national standard in Brazil) with all keys working, but it wasn't. At least one key (the one configured as "slash question degree" in the br-abnt2 keymap) simply didn't work, no matter what I could do inside /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/querty.
And I have found even worse keyboard issues in other distros, either Slackware-based or not. If such a basic functionality is still to be addressed by some distro makers, no wonder why XBMC and MythTV are not on par with their "equivalents" in Windows Media Center...
Yes, Linux must care about BASIC FUNCTIONALITY before trying to mimic Windows, which is a first-class multimedia platform. And VectorLinux devs, in particular, should learn how to make a keyboard selector like that of Parted Magic 5.10, a fantastic distro which gave me a fully functional ABNT2 keyboard out of the box. (PCLinuxOS 2012.02 Phoenix Edition also did it! Why not Vector, nor Zenwalk, nor antiX?)
113 • @106 (by fernbap on 2012-05-27 13:54:25 GMT from Portugal)
"it's great for non-free under the hood stuff but the GUI is drab, dreary, clumsy and way TOO simple."
What you are describing is Gnome 3, not Mint. I wonder how many people think that gnome 3 was a step in the right direction, besides its developers.
So, i understand your frustration. The fact that Mint is popular is because, unlike other major distros, it is trying to overcome, with cinnamon, gnome3 ideosyncracies and make it usable, however there is still a long way to go.
I invite you to try the MATE version, or any other non-KDE distro, because there are a few good desktops available besides KDE.
114 • 113 (by Landor on 2012-05-27 20:44:40 GMT from Canada)
It sounds like he's commenting on Mint. If he wasn't he would have said so. Oh, and you can add me to that list you're compiling. I think they're taking GNOME in the right direction.
Mint is popular only because it's building its view of what GNOME 3 should be? Do you have some proof to verify this claim?
Personally, I think he got it right. It's all the non-free crap that they feed everyone that makes it popular. You know, for the people that don't really care about Libre software, just that they don't have to buy a copy of another operating system that they don't know how to administrate properly, and they get all the non-free crap their heart desires.
If KDE wasn't such a resource hog I'd still be using it daily. Other than that, there's really no other DE that's anywhere near as good as KDE on an administration level, and that's a technical fact. Before anyone tries to argue it, make sure whatever you're going to tout can match KDE in administration/configuration options/settings. If you use anything like 'but', 'just as good in my opinion', don't post it, you already know it doesn't compare.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
Number of Comments: 114
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Chimera Linux
Chimera Linux is an independent distribution which uses an unusual combination of technologies behind the scenes. Chimera Linux uses BSD userland command line tools, the Clang/LLVM compiler toolchain, dinit for service management, and APK for package management. Chimera Linux strives to keep the design simple while still providing the experience and features most users want, such as multiple desktop environments, Flatpak support, a graphical package manager, and easy access to desktop configuration tools. Chimera Linux does not have a system installer, instead providing manual command line instructions to bootstrap the operating system from a live environment.
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