 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 460, 11 June 2012 |
|
Welcome to this year's 24th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Diversity is a key characteristic of open source software, not only in the code, but in the ideas and the people. People who work on Linux and BSD come from all around the world and bring with them a wide range of ideas, values and ways of looking at things. Users in open source communities
never need to settle for the "one size fits all" approach because there is always someone, somewhere, trying something new. This week we focus on that diversity by sharing the words of several developers and leaders from different projects.
In our news section we link to a podcast featuring PC-BSD's
Kris Moore, an article by Canonical's Chase Douglas on the subject of multitouch interfaces,
a blog post from Red Hat's Tim Burke who talks about secure booting and we link to an in-depth interview with Slackware's Patrick Volkerding on the origins and development model behind the world's oldest surviving Linux distribution.
Also in this issue we look at the latest release of the cutting-edge Fedora distribution and find out what new technologies are coming out of the Red Hat backed community project. Then Jesse Smith takes us on a brief tour of two other, lesser known projects readers have asked about and reports on his findings. As usual we round out the issue with a list of distributions released last week and a schedule of exciting new releases to come. We here at DistroWatch wish you a pleasant week and
happy reading!
Content:
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (32MB) and MP3 (28MB) formats
 Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch
|
| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
A Look At A New Hat -- Fedora 17
Fedora 17, the "Beefy Miracle", was released on May 29 and, as usual, was presented in a number of different flavours and builds. Besides the default GNOME spin there are also custom spins for KDE, Xfce and LXDE enthusiasts. There are other, more specialized spins too, including a Games spin and a Security spin. Each of the various flavours is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. Faced with so many options I asked DistroWatch readers to vote on which edition should be featured in this review and the result was close with the KDE spin narrowly beating out Xfce's for first place.
While waiting for my KDE live CD to finish downloading I took some time to read through the project's detailed release notes. There is a good deal of information to be found in the Fedora documentation and I'd like to just touch on some of the highlights for this release. Despite its appearance in the previous Fedora release, the Btrfs file system is not available at install time for Fedora 17, but we're assured it can be added post-install. (Btrfs is expected to return as an install-time option in Fedora 18.) Also in regards to file systems the ext4 file system should now work with partitions up to 100TB in size. New containers have been added, providing separate sandboxes for services, allowing multiple versions or configurations of the same service to be run. The systemd init system has been improved and now allows processes started at boot time to have their own private temporary (tmp) spaces, providing improved security and isolation. A feature has been added to SELinux which will optionally prevent users from running debugging tools to read the memory of processes. The GNOME packages in Fedora have been updated to GNOME 3.4 and the desktop now supports integrated application menus. The KDE edition comes with a new service called KSecretService, which will allow non-KDE applications to access (with our permission) stored passwords. Additionally Fedora gives pluggable media its own directory with exclusive user access, ensuring the user plugging in removable devices has control over their data. Last, but not least, Fedora has improved support for multi-seat configurations, allowing multiple users to use one computer by attaching additional docking stations.
The live disc weighs in at a little under 700MB and booting from the CD brings us to a KDE 4.8 desktop. The background is decorated with fireworks and a folder view widget sits on the desktop, containing an icon for the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find the application menu, task switcher and system tray.
Fedora 17 -- The system installer.
(full image size: 271kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
The Fedora installer, Anaconda, hasn't changed a whole lot over the years. It runs us through the usual steps, asking us to confirm our keyboard layout, set a hostname, confirm our time zone and create a password for the root account. In the partitioning section we're given a good deal of options. Anaconda can use free space on the disk, shrink existing partitions and use the resulting space, overwrite an existing install or we can choose to manually set up our partitions. The manual option is fairly well laid out and, again, comes with many options. We can opt to set up RAID or LVM, we can encrypt partitions and we can choose to create new ext2, ext3, ext4 and XFS partitions. The last time I installed Fedora it insisted on having a special BIOS boot partition, and I was pleased to find this is no longer a requirement with Fedora 17. However, the installer does still insist on the root partition being formatted with the ext4 file system. Our last step with Anaconda is to confirm we want to install a boot loader (GRUB 2) and then the system goes to work copying over the required files to the hard drive. The only hiccup I encountered with the install process was when I first started using the live CD I accidentally launched the installer before I was ready and opted to close the installer's window, at which point the system rebooted, rather than just close Anaconda. That surprise reboot aside, the process of testing the live CD and installing Fedora was smooth.
When we boot into Fedora for the first time we're presented with a wizard which asks us to configure a few key points of the system. We are shown licensing information and then asked to create a regular user account. We're then asked to set the current date & time or, alternatively, enable network time syncing. The last screen of the wizard invites us to send a hardware profile to the Fedora project to let the developers know what hardware needs to be supported.
Once the wizard is finished we are shown a pleasant blue graphical login screen. Logging in displays the KDE 4.8 desktop. It's a fairly laid back presentation. There are no pop-ups, no welcome messages, just some icons on the desktop for browsing the file system. The first time I logged in I found the desktop environment to be quite sluggish. Some investigation revealed this lack of performance was caused by a combination of several things happening at once. The operating system was running prelinking, indexing my files & folders, checking for updates and desktop effects were enabled. Once I turned off effects and indexing and gave the updating and prelinking processes a chance to finish, Fedora became quite responsive. This initial sluggishness only happened the first time I logged in and performance remained high as the week progressed.
In Fedora's application menu we find a variety of software, much of it sticking to the KDE theme of the spin. We're provided with the Konqueror web browser, KMail, the Blogilo blogging client, the Konversation IRC client, desktop sharing applications and KTorrent. Network connections are managed by the Network Manager service. The Calligra office suite is available, as are KThesaurus, Amarok for playing music, the k3b disc burner and the Dragon multimedia player. The KDE system settings utility lets us adjust the graphical environment and we are provided with the KDE user documentation. There is a tool for transferring ISO images to USB thumb drives and the usual minor apps for editing text files, managing archives and running simple calculations. The KGpg and Kleopatra privacy tools are included along with a few small games. Fedora comes with a collection of system administration programs for configuring user authentication, managing the system's firewall, enabling/disabling services, managing the clock and handling user accounts. There's no Flash plugin in the default install, nor popular multimedia codecs, nor compiler. Attempting to play a media file would cause the multimedia application to offer to hunt down the proper codecs for us. Sometimes it was successful, but in most cases it came up empty. Fedora's repositories do not include many codecs and no proprietary software, such as Flash. The Fedora documentation suggests we visit third-party repositories to find these items and provides a link to RPMFusion. After enabling the free and non-free RPMFusion repositories (and the Adobe repository) I found the media players were still unable to find the codecs I wanted and I had to manually select the required packages from the distro's package manager. Looking under the hood we find Fedora comes with version 3.3 of the Linux kernel.
A few minutes after logging into my Fedora account a small notification appeared letting me know updated packages were available. The day after Fedora 17 was released there were 93 updates waiting to be applied. The Apper application handles updates, displaying a list of available packages and letting us check off any we do not want. As the week progressed I found all of the Fedora updates (around 160 or so in total) applied quickly and cleanly. Package management is also handled by the Apper application. The manager displays software categories in one large display area and we can click on a category's icon to browse the software present in that category. Items can also be found by searching for them by name. We can queue packages to be added or removed with the click of a button and, when we're ready, all of our actions are processed at once, locking the package manager. I found Apper provided a good front-end for package management. It was fairly responsive and I found its interface to be simple and straight forward. Sometimes Apper was a little slow when refreshing its repository information, but otherwise using it was a positive experience. For users who prefer working from a terminal, Fedora comes with the YUM package manager. I found YUM worked quickly and without any problems. I especially like that the package manager supports delta RPMs, which means when applying updates we only download the pieces of packages which have changed, rather than downloading the entire package again. This greatly reduces the amount of bandwidth used when downloading new versions of packages.
Fedora 17 -- Updating software packages.
(full image size: 249kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
I ran Fedora 17 on my HP laptop (dual-core 2GHz CPU, 3GB of RAM, Intel video card) and observed that it performed well with my hardware. Boot times were good, the desktop was responsive and all of my devices, including my Intel wireless card, were picked up and worked without any problems. Sound worked out of the box and my screen was automatically set to its maximum resolution. Logging in and sitting at the KDE desktop without running any additional applications used approximately 230MB of memory.
During the week I also tried Fedora's latest release in a VirtualBox environment and experienced similar results. The only drawback to using the virtual environment was that the desktop effects, when enabled, slowed down the desktop's responsiveness. When effects were disabled Fedora ran smoothing in the virtual machine.
Most of my impressions of the KDE spin of Fedora's latest release have been positive. The desktop environment is quick and stable, the Apper package manager worked smoothly and quickly. As usual, Fedora's administrative tools were useful and problem free. The admin utilities may not be as pretty as Mageia's or Ubuntu's configuration tools, but they are quite powerful and system administers should feel right at home. The documentation provided is detailed and it's good to see minor improvements to security, such as removable media mounting and new SELinux features. I noticed the problems I'd experienced with the system installer in previous versions, such as stalling and cryptic error messages, were not present in this release and it was good to see the venerable Anaconda receiving some polish.
Fedora 17 -- Adjusting system settings.
(full image size: 347kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
There were a few issues I ran into, not bugs for the most part, but design choices that didn't suit me. As I've mentioned before the Fedora installer doesn't allow users to choose their root file system, something most other distributions (including Sabayon, which also uses the Anaconda installer) support. Getting third-party repositories is a bit more of a run around in Fedora compared to distributions like Mageia, Debian or Ubuntu. However, my big concern with regards to this spin is that in trying to be a pure KDE platform the distribution sacrifices a good deal of functionality to maintain its purity. It is the same concern, really, as I had when running Chakra. Fedora's KDE spin contains applications for most tasks, but they're probably not the applications users will want. Konqueror, Amarok, the Calligra office suite, Dragon Player and KolourPaint all have basic functionality, but not on the same level as Firefox, Rhythmbox, LibreOffice, VLC and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I realize swapping these applications would taint the KDE spin, but I think the added functionality would be welcome. If memory serves, the other Fedora spins are similarly faithful to their particular desktop environments and I think it would be nice to see a more practical live CD spin, one that was a bit more general purpose and a little less dedicated to one environment.
What my experience this week really boiled down to was I spent a lot of time up front getting Fedora arranged the way I wanted it -- after the initial install, I applied over 90 updates, turned off various effects, disabled indexing and workspace features, tracked down three third-party repositories and spent a few hours downloading all of the pieces of software and codecs I wanted. In short, it's a more involved process than the install-and-go experience I usually have with big name distributions. However, once everything was in place I found Fedora to be a solid, cutting-edge distribution with useful tools, good documentation and an active forum community. The administration tools in particular are quite good, Apper provided a better package management experience than I usually have on RPM-based distributions and the security improvements (as provided by SELinux and systemd) didn't get in the way. It may take a little while to get Fedora 17 to a point where it feels comfortable, but it's a good platform once the furniture is rearranged.
|
| Miscellaneous News |
Interviews with PC-BSD and Slackware leaders, the ongoing secure boot saga and the status of multitouch on Linux
PC-BSD, the desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD, is gearing up for a new stable release. Version 9.1 of PC-BSD is currently in development and will come with a number of improvements. Some of the new features will include better ZFS support, including ZFS mirror creation during installation, management of software jails via the graphical interface and a PC-BSD server option which includes PBI utilities. Project leader Kris Moore recently gave an interview with BSDTalk and the podcast can be downloaded from BSDTalk's website.
* * * * *
The developers at Canonical, the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu distribution, have a tendency to experiment. One of their on-going projects is to bring advanced touch interfaces to the Linux desktop, whether those interfaces take the form of touch screens or trackpads. Canonical's project, uTouch, builds on top of the work done by the X.org project to detect and support touch devices. Chase Douglas, a developer with Canonical, suggests, "Soon we will be carrying around multitouch tablets with a traditional Linux desktop or similar foundation. In order to provide a high-quality and rich experience we must fully exploit multitouch gestures. The uTouch stack developed by Canonical aims to provide a foundation for gestures on the Linux desktop." When combined with Canonical's work with Android phones the future looks promising for people who wish to run Linux on their mobile devices.
* * * * *
Last week we linked to a blog post from Matthew Garrett, an employee at Red Hat, who talked about secure boot and how the Fedora team was planning to handle it. As one of the options being explored involves working with Microsoft the reactions which rippled through the Linux community were predictable. In an effort to clear up any misunderstanding Tim Burke, VP of Linux Engineering at Red Hat, has posted a blog of his own addressing the secure boot and signing key issue. The explanation contains some good news, "In the interest of freedom of choice, some users may not want to utilize this secure boot capability. In the UEFI system menu, they are able to disable the feature and things should operate like they do currently." There's some less pleasant news too. Mr Burke also suggests people wishing to "Take Fedora and rebuild custom variants to meet personal interest or experiment in new innovations... can also participate by simply enrolling in the $99 one time fee to license." And he concludes on the hopeful note: "Suffice it to say that Red Hat would not have endorsed this model if we were not comfortable that it is a good-faith initiative."
 Up to this point we have heard from Red Hat employees and Fedora developers on the subject of supporting secure boot, but what do developers of distributions derived from Fedora think of the move to support secure booting? Chris Smart, the man behind the Kororaa distribution, summed up his thoughts in an e-mail as, "For me, it's sort of like this: If Fedora does not support secure boot, then neither Fedora nor remixes like Kororaa can boot on computers with secure boot enabled
(that's obvious). If Fedora does support secure boot however, then remixes still can't
boot on computers with secure boot enabled (loosely speaking). So actually, there's isn't really any freedom lost to Kororaa. We couldn't run on secure boot machines anyway, whether Fedora
supported secure boot or not. The only advantage is that Fedora can (and
we could too, if we got a key)." Mr Smart goes on to say, "Kororaa will probably require users to disable secure boot if they want to run version 18, that's at least until we can get a clearer picture of what's happening... I think it's important to realise too, that this only affects brand new computers (and those with secure boot enabled by default) -- that's going
to be a small percentage of the user-base who are installing Linux in
the short to medium term."
* * * * *
Patrick Volkerding is the Founder and Benevolent Dictator For Life of the Slackware project, the oldest surviving Linux distribution. In an
interview with LinuxQuestions.org, Patrick Volkerding
discusses how he got involved with Linux and open source two decades ago. He also goes into the succession plan for Slackware, the Slackware development model, his opinion on the current trends in desktop environments, potentially disruptive changes to Linux such as systemd, his favorite beer and the question he wishes interviewers would ask him. Throughout the interview Mr Volkerding displays his characteristic sense of humour and emphasizes his interest in adopting technologies which work and which solve problems, rather than embracing change for change's sake.
* * * * *
 Despite the fact Linux's market share has continued to grow over the years it's not all that often we see desktop machines being shipped with Linux as the default operating system. The Mint team recently partnered with CompuLab to create the mintBox, a small, portable computer specifically designed to work with the Linux Mint distribution. The mintBox is compact and comes with a network port, wireless networking and Bluetooth. The tiny computer features several USB ports (and supports USB 3 connections), HDMI video output, 4GB+ RAM, a 250GB hard drive and a dual-core CPU. According to a blog post from Clement Lefebvre, "Going forward, the mintBox is likely to come pre-installed with Linux Mint 13. Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon is fully functional, with 3D effects, and without the need for ATI drivers on both the mintBox basic and pro models." More details on the mintBox can be found on the Linux Mint website.
|
| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
|
A tale of two projects
Occasionally I get requests to review open source projects and, while I have time to look them over, I find I don't always have enough to say about the experience to warrant a full review. With that in mind this week's column is dedicated to two requests I received to review projects which looked promising. Though both projects appeared to have a lot to offer going in I found my trials to be short and so ended up with two mini-reviews...
Openfiler 2.3
About a month ago when I mentioned doing a series of reviews on open source NAS projects one of the requests I received was to try Openfiler, a product which can be downloaded for free and is backed by commercial support. Looking over the website gave an initial positive impression. The website includes a documentation section, a forum, a link to the project's IRC channel and a number of paid support options are showcased. The Openfiler NAS is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds with an ISO image that weighs in at about 315MB.
Booting off the CD brings up a menu asking if we'd like to run a graphical installer or a text installer. I opted for the graphical option. Then we're asked if we'd like to perform a media test on our CD. For a brief moment a screen pops up saying "Welcome to rPath Linux" and then the Anaconda installer launches. The version of Anaconda which comes with Openfiler looks to be a few years old and was probably current around the time Fedora Core 6 was launched. Still, despite its apparent age, the installer does a fine job of walking us through the required screens and features helpful tips down the left side of the window.
The installer asks us to choose our keyboard layout, then we can opt between automatic and manual partitioning. Going with the automatic option allows the user to review and edit the installer's choices, providing us with a safe path through the partitioning process. Anaconda supports LVM layouts, RAID, the ext2 and ext3 file systems as well as ReiserFS and XFS. Newer file systems such as ext4 and Btrfs are not in evidence. We can then choose which, if any, network devices are enabled at boot time and manually configure them. We then select our location and time zone and conclude by setting a password for the root account. The whole process was fairly straight forward and the installer copied over the required files quickly.
Booting from the local hard disk brings us to a text screen. We're shown links to the project's forum, commercial support options and license. We're also given a link to connect with the NAS web interface. Openfiler runs a web server on port 446 and allows HTTPS connections only. While at the NAS's terminal we have the option of logging in as the root user.
Earlier I mentioned the version of Anaconda which is used to install Openfiler appears to be several years old. The more we explore the Openfiler system the more we find old, some might say out of date, software. The boot loader is GRUB Legacy, the kernel is version 2.6.26 and is marked as having been compiled using the GNU Compiler Collection version 3.4 back in 2009. Further exploration reveals no common package management tools, no manual pages and no compilers. The nmap port scanner is available as are common GNU command line utilities. Aside from the web server we also find a secure shell server and Sendmail running on the default install.
Switching over to the web interface we're greeted with a login screen. Here we can use the root username/password to login or, if we have created a regular user account from the command line interface, we can alternatively login with another account. Logging into the web interface shows us the current system load at the top of the screen and a list of hyperlinks. These links are for logging out, showing more status information on the NAS, checking for updates and shutting down the NAS. Clicking on the Status and Update links I found didn't produce any effect.
In the middle of the web portal screen we see an alert box warning us our account will expire in 15 days (This warning displays regardless of which account we use to login.) The web interface contains no controls for adding volumes to the NAS, no account management options aside from changing our password, no way to manage services, no detailed status information.... We can bring up a panel which will let us set quota limits on existing volumes, but that appears to be the web portal's only NAS-related feature. A quick look at the screen shots provided on the project's website show menus for performing additional tasks, but these menus didn't appear in my interface, regardless of which web browser I used. Further browsing of the Openfiler website shows there are articles on performing an install of the NAS, but no documents dealing with operating Openfiler post-install. No tutorials are provided for adding or managing volumes. I did find a link to purchase the project's Administrator Guide, which costs 40 Euros to download.
Openfiler 2.3 -- Web interface
(full image size: 63kB, resolution: 1366x710 pixels)
At this point I got the strong impression Openfiler was a zombie, a project which had started off with a nice website and goals of commercial success, but that had faded away a few years ago and no one had bothered to mention it on the website. I did find the community forum to be semi-active and there are announcements about upcoming versions still being posted (though no evidence new stable versions have been released) and there was a notice about the project's bug tracker moving to Launchpad, but following the link shows the Launchpad account doesn't exist. I also noted most of the recent posts were spam. If Openfiler is an active or useful project the developers are doing a very good job of hiding it.
So far in the past two months I've experimented with three open source NAS solutions and, while each had its strong points, each one also had noticeable gaps in its features or functionality. Putting aside Openfiler, where the current stable release is outdated and doesn't appear to do anything (at least not without paying out unusually large sums of money), I previously looked at FreeNAS (a FreeBSD-based option) and OpenMediaVault (a Debian GNU/Linux option). The former was solid and had some nice features and great ZFS support, but I felt it lacked flexibility and its web portal could have been touched up a bit. OpenMediaVault has a great interface and is quite flexible, but I found updating and changing features through the web interface was a hit-or-miss experience. While both are basically good and I'm sure these NAS projects will improve over time, I think there is still room in the open source NAS market for a flexible, secure, user-friendly solution. Working as a developer on NAS operating systems might not have the immediate appeal of creating desktop distributions, but we have hundreds of open source desktop distributions. We have very few NAS solutions and it is a niche which still has room for growth and refinement.
FuguIta (Blowfish Disk) 5.0
I'd now like to talk briefly about another project. One of our readers wrote in and asked if I'd cover one of the live CDs based off the OpenBSD project. The project from their list of suggestions which seemed to be the most promising, that is the one which still appeared to have active developers, was FuguIta. The name, according to the project's website, means "blowfish disk". FuguIta is designed to provide users with a working install of OpenBSD which runs entirely from a CD. Apart from the base OpenBSD platform, FuguIta includes a graphical window manager (IceWM), an e-mail client, web browser and media player.
The downloadable ISO for FuguIta is compressed and about 300MB in size. Once the file has been downloaded and uncompressed it expands to nearly 700MB. I'm sorry to say this is where I hit a wall. I tried booting from the CD in a couple of machines and couldn't get it to progress as far as the configuration screen, a surprise as plain OpenBSD will start on this same equipment. Still, despite my poor luck with the disc, if you can get it to run the documentation and screen shots provided by the FuguIta project look promising. It could be a good way to test the waters of OpenBSD.
|
| Released Last Week |
Snowlinux 2 "Cinnamon"
Lars Torben Kremer has announced the release of Snowlinux 2 "Cinnamon" edition, an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution: "The team is proud to announce the release of Snowlinux 2 'Cream' 'Cinnamon'. Snowlinux 2 'Cream' is based upon the LTS edition Ubuntu 12.04 and is supported for 5 years until April 2017. New features: Linux kernel 3.2; Cinnamon 1.4-UP3; GNOME 3.4; Chromium browser 18; Thunderbird 13 and Firefox 13; Cinnamon themes; terminal colors; open as administrator; open in terminal; better software selection; improved speed and response; new look and feel; system improvements." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional information.
2X OS 7.1
2X Software has announced the release of 2X OS 7.1, a specialist Linux-based operating system for thin clients: "2X Software today announced the release of 2X OS 7.1 featuring a light, straightforward, efficient and visually pleasing Linux operating system offering a variety of connectivity clients including 2X RDP, Citrix ICA, VMware View, VNC and Linux NX and HTML. The new 2X OS v7.1 offers both simple and advanced desktop implementation depending on the user experience, requirements and hardware capacities. The Simple Desktop Manager for compact installations between 1 GB and 1.5 GB enables a full operating system to run on older hardware. This implementation has very little memory usage and is also suitable for very low specification thin clients. The Advanced Desktop Manager features local applications such as a media player, text editor, task manager, calculator and file manager." See the press release for further details.
Sabayon Linux 9
Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 9, a Gentoo-based distribution for desktops and servers: "We're once again here to announce the immediate availability of Sabayon 9 in all of its tier 1 flavours. If you really enjoyed Sabayon 8, 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 server. Linux kernel 3.4, GNOME 3.2.3, KDE 4.8.3, Xfce 4.10, LibreOffice 3.5.3 are just some of the things you will find inside the box. Gentoo Hardened features, Rigo -- a new way of browsing applications, ZFS tech-preview, and PAE kernel for x86 editions." Here is the full release announcement.
SystemRescueCd 2.8.0
SystemRescueCd 2.8.0, a Gentoo-based live CD with specialist utilities for data rescue and disk management tasks, has been released. What's new? "Updated standard kernels to long-term supported Linux 3.2.19 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to latest stable Linux 3.4.2 (altker32 + altker64); fixed USB installer script for Linux: usb_inst.sh; updated GPT fdisk to 0.8.5 (fdisk utility for GPT partition tables); updated FSArchiver to 0.6.15 to support recent features in Btrfs and ext4 file systems; updated firmware files in the initramfs from Linux firmware 20120502; Updated DBAN to 2.2.6 (hard drive disk wipe and data clearing program); updated GRUB 2 bootloader to 2.00beta6 (GRUB 0.97 is also provided); updated list of kernel modules to put in the initramfs (storage and network); do not attempt to find sysrcd.dat on extended partitions." Here is the complete changelog.
* * * * *
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
|
| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
|
Summary of expected upcoming releases
|
| DistroWatch.com News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 18 June 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
|
|
| Tip Jar |
If you've enjoyed this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly, please consider sending us a tip.
(Tips this week: 0, value: US$0.00) |
|
|
|
 bc1qxes3k2wq3uqzr074tkwwjmwfe63z70gwzfu4lx  lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpw3jkc7tzw4ex6cfexyfua2nr  86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le paypal.me/distrowatchweekly • patreon.com/distrowatch |
|
| Extended Lifecycle Support by TuxCare |
|
|
| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Fedora (by Ajay Chahar on 2012-06-11 08:14:35 GMT from India)
I've been enjoying Fedora 17 since its release. However, I've run into multiple problems with its ACPI implementation. There are times when its stuck booting for a solid minute or so when my laptop is plugged in.
Anyway, another great issue!
Cheers!
2 • @1 (by John Doe on 2012-06-11 08:43:09 GMT from Germany)
I had a similar problem with Fedora 15 (stuck booting); solved it by booting with biosdevname=0 . That way the wired interface name became eth0, rather than p10p1.
Perhaps it's also an issue with 16/17?
http://fossdev.blogspot.de/2011/07/fedora-15-wired-network-interface-named.html
3 • Fedroa 17 acpi (by Chris on 2012-06-11 09:57:41 GMT from Germany)
I too got some acpi problems with Fedora 17. when acpid is enabled my Notebook shuts down without a warning even if the DE is configured otherwise.
Sadly it seems that this Problem was reported nearly a year ago in the Bugtracker.
4 • @3 (by Chris on 2012-06-11 10:06:31 GMT from Germany)
I forgot to mention that F17 does that when pressing the Powerbutton.
5 • Fedora 17 (by kc1di on 2012-06-11 10:42:29 GMT from United States)
nice review. I found a nice little script call autoplus that help a lot in tracking down and install many of the codecs and programs to fill our Fedora's complement.
But I think your right that today it's time for Fedora to make life a little easier for the end user and include some of the viable options as default.
6 • NAS (by Nico on 2012-06-11 11:02:07 GMT from Belgium)
Indeed openfiler 2.3 went out in 2008. i tried it last year and succeed without problem to have a "normal" web interface but even so the admin manual is a must have to get a working NAS (i didn't have it btw). The fact that the project seems to be not active at all is a big issue for such a product. Personnaly I went with NexentaStor CE, wich is not open source but the free edition is a nice product fully based on ZFS. The only issue with NexentaStor is that you must be full of RAM to get good perfs.
my 2 cents... ;)
7 • Fedora / KDE (by Pierre on 2012-06-11 11:42:15 GMT from Germany)
Quote: "Fedora's KDE spin contains applications for most tasks, but they're probably not the applications users will want. Konqueror, Amarok, the Calligra office suite, Dragon Player and KolourPaint all have basic functionality, but not on the same level as Firefox, Rhythmbox, LibreOffice, VLC and the GNU Image Manipulation Program."
I often find that I agree a lot with the conclusions of the DWW feature stories but today I have to disagree on a part of the conclusion made by Jesse.
It is especially about the Amarok / Rhythmbox comparison which hit me, because me and a lot of friends, even those that prefer GNOME, Xfce or even something more lightwight, agree in one point: Amarok is one of, if not even THE most feature rich music player.
This is the reason why I found it absolutly wrong to name Rhythmbox a better and more feature rich option compared to Amarok, simply because it's not true. It might be, that it suits your taste more than Amarok, but it's not more feature rich or better at all.
Although I admit, that Firefox, LibreOffice, VLC (with qt-interface) and GIMP would be nice to have additions, everyone is free to install them post install. And especially the brand new Calligra Office Suite deserves attention and to give it a try. I think it fits the most people's needs, looks and performs quite well for such a young office suite that is a complete rewrite of KOffice.
Some Distros, especially lightwight ones even don't deliver a complete office suite and just give you gnumeric and abiword at hand, which aren't better at all and I never read complaints about that.
Each desktop environment and distro features its own apps for the daily tasks and I think that it is right to deliver them by default.
Everyone is free to replace them with other programs that fit their taste and needs more than the default ones.
Greetings from Germany!
Pierre
8 • Fedora installer + ext4 (by Gigi on 2012-06-11 11:42:34 GMT from Japan)
The Live CD/DVD installer forces the root filesystem to a ext4 filesystem because the compressed image is a ext4 filesystem. The Live media basically just extract it during installation.
If you use the traditional install media, you can select other types of filesystem for root. You can have a few more options including upgrade an existing installation.
9 • Polluted Linux (by Onederer on 2012-06-11 12:54:35 GMT from United States)
Basically, pure Linux is like being cripple, and trying to walk without any help. It's like buying a lawnmower with plastic blades. I'll take a polluted Linux that comes loaded with all the non-free apps. available, No hassle getting going right after the install.
Chasing around for this app. and that app. and missing dependencies is only for those who want to be explorers like Christopher Columbus all over again. At my age, I no longer have the patience nor the stomach to do that anymore. I've made a resolution to be from now on, a Linux user, and not a Linux Mechanic.
I've been using Linux from it's inception. Now that I'm retired, I'll take my Linux the easy way. I'll be happy to get my emails. and use the necessary applications to get along in this society. I'll be quite happy to leave the exploration of new innovations to the younger generation.
10 • Downloaded Packages + RE: 8 - 9 (by Landor on 2012-06-11 13:46:27 GMT from Canada)
Downloaded Packages:
It's kind of hard to believe that it took three hours to download packages that someone would need for day to day use on a system. It plays as if it's a fault of the distribution's. If it really took 'literally' three hours then either your connection to the internet is extremely poor, or the server is extremely slow/possibly weighed down with traffic. But three hours, that's unrealistic unless it's at dial-up speeds.
#8
He has already been made aware that Fedora just decompresses the image during installation when he did his last Fedora review. But still felt the need to comment about it when he knew he should be using the DVD if he wanted to choose another file system.
#9
Actually, no, 'FLOSS' is not like that. What you're stating is a perception, nothing more. I easily do all my day to day tasks without patent encumbered/closed source software. To state otherwise actually demeans the efforts of those that do bring us applications that our freedoms are respected with.
How can you associate a FLOSS system with having to look for applications, or missing dependencies? The Libre builds based on the Linux kernel that I've used all have package management systems with binary packages installed.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
11 • #9 (by jack on 2012-06-11 14:33:14 GMT from Canada)
Microsoft>>>linux>>>azure>>>mono>>>redhat>>>$99>>>secure boot
Are there any linux OSes that do not have an indirect (or direct) relationship with Microsoft?
A section of DW detailing this would seem to be an essential aspect of any FOSS periodical
If a developer of a linux "remix" has to pay $99 it will certainly reduce the number of remixes
Waiting for Groklaw's view on this.
12 • kernel design (by Nate on 2012-06-11 14:34:16 GMT from United States)
Jesse Smith:
I know you're short on time, but if possible in a few weeks, could you please do a questions and answers article on kernels? Here are some possibles:
1: While micro-kernels are designed to run as much as possible in userland as opposed to in the kernel and macro-kernels do the opposite with the exception of 3rd party applications; what are the criteria for hybrid-kernels? A lot of sites are unclear about the design criteria for what is and is not a hybrid-kernel.
2: How are nano-kernels different from micro-kernels?
3: What are we supposed to call the pieces of the system which are not userland? Please don't say "Kernel Land" because it sounds like a military themed Disney ride with drug laced popcorn.
4. When one has a micro-kernel running another kernel as an application, such as in mklinux, how is Linux able to act as an application instead of an OS? To my knowledge, Linux was never designed with this kind of setup in mind, but I could be wrong. For that matter, how are other applications running under the micro-kernel able to use the drivers running within Linux? Do they use custom modules to allow Linux to perceive other processes on the same level?
5. Why are drivers integrated into the Linux kernel instead of as secondary processes? I could understand if it was in the early days when Linux was only designed to work on a x86 with ATA drives, or if it was like OS X with only a few hardware configs in mind, but why are drivers integrated components now?
6: What are some of the ways SELinux modifies the Kernel?
13 • respins with secure boot (by Nate on 2012-06-11 14:40:50 GMT from United States)
Is there any reason some of the distros won't just use the license keys from other distros? For example, if Ubuntu gets a secure boot key, couldn't Linux Mint just use the same one? For that matter, couldn't all of the Linux distros share one key or a handful of them?
14 • Fedora and Openfiler (by Jesse on 2012-06-11 14:46:08 GMT from Canada)
Just a quick update on Openfiler. There is a newer version on their website now for download, version 2.99. The download page lists it as "final" release, but the documentation indicates an earlier version (2.3 I think) is the latest stable release. If you're interested in NAS systems, it might be worth waiting to see where the 2.99 branch goes.
>> "This is the reason why I found it absolutly wrong to name Rhythmbox a better and more feature rich option compared to Amarok, simply because it's not true. "
I don't believe I've ever said Rhythmbox is more feature rich than Amarok. Quite the opposite. However, the reason I greatly prefer Rhythmbox is because it keeps things simple. It does one thing and one thing well and has a clean interface. Amarok always runs incredibly slow on my systems, the interface is cluttered and it often crashes when I try to use it. That's why I view Rhythmbox as the better player.
>> "If it really took 'literally' three hours then either your connection to the internet is extremely poor, or the server is extremely slow/possibly weighed down with traffic."
You're making two assumptions, one that I downloaded all packages as one big batch. Such was not the case. It was a matter of downloading some packages, finding I was missing something else, downloading more packages, applying updates, discovering something else was missing, downloading more packages.... And two, you're assuming you know how many packages I downloaded. Since you don't know what I downloaded, you really don't have anything upon which to base your time estimate. Yes, it really really did take most of an afternoon.
>> "He has already been made aware that Fedora just decompresses the image during installation when he did his last Fedora review. But still felt the need to comment about it when he knew he should be using the DVD if he wanted to choose another file system."
I think it's interesting you believe I should download an entire DVD just to select a different file system. Almost every other distribution in the world allows users to select their root file system from live media. Fedora insists they cannot do it, even though other distributions using the same installer do not have this artificial limitation. As long as Fedora keeps crippling their distribution I am going to continue to mention it in reviews.
15 • Re: 14 (by Kristof on 2012-06-11 15:11:07 GMT from Belgium)
Well, in fact you did call Rythmbox more feature rich:
" all have basic functionality, but not on the same level as "
and
"I realize swapping these applications would taint the KDE spin, but I think the added functionality would be welcome."
It's quite hard to understand this in a different way. ;-)
16 • Slackware, Patrick Volkerding interview (by JWJones on 2012-06-11 15:16:10 GMT from United States)
Haha, loved the question he wishes interviewers would ask him. Slackware, ftw!
17 • gnome versus kde (by ulf on 2012-06-11 15:31:38 GMT from Netherlands)
Bullshit, that gnome and kde comparison discussion, gnome and kde are just overlays.
You can install every program you want, if you have a favorite.
And you guys call yourself unix / linux guru`s its pathatic.
greetings from holland.
18 • Re: 9 (by Jason on 2012-06-11 15:55:22 GMT from United States)
The funny thing about the codecs is Fedora is taking a more hard line approach than the FSF on these. You can have a distro with mp3 support and still be considered a free system by the FSF.
19 • Rhythmbox (by Jesse on 2012-06-11 15:56:08 GMT from Canada)
@15:
>> "Well, in fact you did call Rythmbox more feature rich:"
No, I did not. Once again, when I said Rhytmbox was more functional I wasn't talking about features. As I said before Amarok is an application I've always found buggy and prone to crash. Rhythmbox just works for me. Sometimes "functional" doesn't mean more features, it means the features present actually work.
>> "It's quite hard to understand this in a different way. "
Perhaps there is a translation issue?
20 • Patrick Volkerding Interview (by Apostrophe on 2012-06-11 16:37:45 GMT from France)
Thanks for the link to the interview. Very interesting! What a competent, enlightened and witty guy Patrick is. Shame, that after devoting almost 20 years to Slackware he cannot afford health insurance for himself. Clearly, business acumen is not one of his many qualities. Which makes him even more likable in my eyes. But something has to be done about this. Maybe, all those who run Slackware on their servers and clients for commercial purposes should occasionally (annually?) receive a gentle reminder of the fact that 'the fundamental things apply' (as the song goes) to developers of free software as to everybody else: People must be able to make a living from what they are doing, otherwise they're forced to give up. It's as simple as that. I'm sure, most companies that use Slackware would much prefer making a regular donation to the project than paying huge sums for license fees of commercial software. As to the rest of us ... we can always buy Patrick's books, Slackware CDs, t-shirts etc. Every little bit helps.
21 • @19 (by gnobuddy on 2012-06-11 16:53:31 GMT from United States)
"Amarok is an application I've always found buggy and prone to crash. "
---------------------------------------------------------
Sadly all too true, ever since KDE 4 was first rolled out. On later versions of KDE 3.5.x Amarok was quite stable and at the time was my preferred way to manage my music.
This is one of many, many reasons why I've never been able to like any version of KDE 4. To this day, it doesn't do quite as good a job as KDE 3.5 did in many areas.
It's hard not to look at the current state of the Linux desktop as evidence that the open-source development model has some major flaws in it. It makes no sense at all that in 2012 the two major Linux desktops are less functional than they were in 2007 - and that many of the "light weight" alternatives are less capable than the old Windows 95 desktop was fifteen years ago.
I've been Linux-only since 2001, and in those eleven years I've never been more discouraged with the state of Linux than I am now.
-Gnobuddy
22 • Fedora 17 additions (by arnold on 2012-06-11 17:02:34 GMT from United States)
If you want additional functionality for F17, try this:
http://easylifeproject.org/
23 • NAS (by Anngus Williams on 2012-06-11 17:02:52 GMT from United States)
@jesse have you tried Open-E Data Storage Software V6 Lite (DSS V6 Lite)
is a FREE version of Open-E DSS V6 delivering unified file and block storage management operating system (OS) with Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) functionality.
http://www.open-e.com/products/open-e-data-storage-software-v6-lite/
24 • Fedora review (by claudecat on 2012-06-11 18:15:50 GMT from United States)
Very nice overview of the KDE spin of Fedora. I've been happily testing/using Fedora with KDE for a few versions now (since gnome-shell arrived) and believe it to be (surprisingly) one of the best KDE distros. Only the lack of codecs, etc make it a bit of a pain for new users to set up. I use Fedorautils for that and it works well but could be more logical in its menus and nomenclature.
One thing I love especially in Fedora is the yum (cli) package manager. Fast and efficient, and it shows you what's going on while it does its thing. Delta rpms, as mentioned, are a boon to those of us with limited bandwidth. I wish deb based distros would embrace this functionality. AFAIK, openSUSE is the only other distro that does deltas by default - and not as extensively.
Nice work Jesse!
25 • @21 (by Andrew on 2012-06-11 18:24:05 GMT from United States)
I know how you feel and share some of your frustration. That said, I don't find it all that terribly depressing because the rest of the community seems to be working to rectify the problems. Case in point, Gnome-shell is terrible for running and jumping between many applications simultaneously (in my opinion) but features some nice overlay, HUD, and audio/chat plugin functionality not present in Gnome 2.x. I found by running Cinnamon, I can have pretty much all the advantages of both worlds, and so that's what I continue to do on my much-corrupted-with-third-party-software version of Fedora 16. Yes, the core WMs are a step back, but it's being worked on and the core WMs are evolving in stride.
-Andrew
26 • RE: #21 (by mcellius on 2012-06-11 18:24:21 GMT from United States)
"I've been Linux-only since 2001, and in those eleven years I've never been more discouraged with the state of Linux than I am now."
I've only been using Linux a little more than a year, so my perspective is very different, but what you say makes sense to me, too.
My own feeling is that we have a powerful and capable open-source community, but it's divided. The freedom of the open-source community allows it to be divided, of course, as everyone has the right to pursue their own interests, and the diversity that results brings the possibility of great innovation. But it also brings stagnation, as most people seem to want to work on little personal projects rather than collaborate on the big things.
I mean, what if the developers of those hundreds of Linux distros got together to create real "killer apps" for Linux? We could probably have real alternatives for every Windows or Mac program, removing the need for anyone to have to keep Windows as a dual-boot option. Think of all the reasons people give to explain that they still need Windows: most of those reasons could probably be erased if our community could work together.
Or what if many of them joined an existing distro and added their expertise: would they help move the Linux world move forward faster? I think of the bugs I find in every distro I try, and wonder if there were only enough people working on them, could the nujmber of bugs be reduced dramatically?
It seems to me that too much of the Linux and open-source worlds are spending too much time fighting each other and jockeying for position. Instead of people trying to get a distro to climb up the Distrowatch list, what if we could work together to get Linux - all of it - to climb together in terms of world marketshare?
I don't want anyone to lose any freedom at all and don't believe there should be any force or compulsion in this, but I'd sure love to see the community come together and advance open-source the way we know it could happen. Yeah, I know it's idealistic, but as far as I can tell this movement began as an idealistic effort. This would require some people to set aside personal efforts in order to support a greater good, and that's an extremely idealistic thing. It's not easy and not everyone could do it, but I believe we need such people.
27 • Fedora 17 on VMWare (by David on 2012-06-11 18:32:40 GMT from United States)
At least installing from the DVD, F17 is broken on VMWare out of the box in multiple ways. First, X won't start and corrupts the terminal display badly when it tries. It worked fine on Fedora 16, but on 17 I had to copy an xorg.conf from a Mageia VM to get it to work.
Then, with X working, it "crashes" to a display with a sad computer a message something like "Oh no! Something have gone wrong.A problem ocurred and the system can't recover. Please contact the system administrator. " A generic and completely unhelpful message that's been re-used from the past apparently for several different problems. The solution this time is to uninstall the "gnome-shell" package, whatever that is. Then GDM comes up fine and you can log in.
Also, as another commenter pointed out, I agree with Jesse on the apps, but he totally missed the mark on Amarok.
28 • Practicality (by /dev/zero on 2012-06-11 18:55:08 GMT from United States)
"If memory serves, the other Fedora spins are similarly faithful their their [sic] particular desktop environments and I think it would be nice to see a more practical live CD spin, one that was a bit more general purpose and a little less dedicated to one environment. "
Yes, and in general, I am constantly amazed at how Linux distros prefer forcing their own particular idiology on their users rather than providing an efficient, usable experience.
Gnome3, unity, installation of non-free drivers, and a host of niggling little things I won't bother to mention.
Flame away, all. Nice to see ya.
29 • RE: @26, @21 (by fernbap on 2012-06-11 19:22:44 GMT from Portugal)
First of all, please take in mind that what we call a "distro" is nothing more than the assembly of a set of programs. A distro can be made with no software development at all, just some branding and artwork. There is too much to chose from for any distro mantainer to reinvent the wheel. Which explains for the large number of distros.
Linux depends on a few "large" projects. Gnome and kde are probably the largest ones.
Those projects have, imho, one thing in common: they are influenced by the entities that influence the community of developers, and cater their needs. The fact that Linux is basically not sales driven keeps it hard for those projects to keep in touch with what the "public" wants, they mostly cater what the developers want or what the entities supporting them want.
It is almost impossible to say to a developer community: "ok, this is what seems to be best, now let's focus on further improvement keeping this model", or even "now it is time for us to, instead of keeping improving what is already working, move to another project that we all recognise is also needed". It would take a benevolent dictator to make it happen, which shows the importance of benevolent dictators on linux as a whole.
What in fact happens is a certain "public servent" mentality: constantly looking for ways to keep doing the exact same thing. So, projects like Gnome are periodically shaken by a complete dismantling and reassembly in order to justify the existence of the developer community in the first place.
In my view, that is hardly moving forward. The drive is not the correct one.
That also explains why linux has so few "killer apps", compared to the commercial environment. Because a "killer app" would be in most cases a large project, and the large communities are too busy trying to reinvent the wheel.
Ardour comes to mind as one of the few "killer apps", but it is as such mostly because of the work of a single man, not as a community effort. Mint also comes to mind, basically as the work of also a single man, that, wether he admits it or not, is establishing himself as a benevolent dictator.
Freedom is not equivalent to lack of leadership.
30 • RE: #28 (by mcellius on 2012-06-11 19:24:25 GMT from United States)
No flames, but I dont understand what you mean about "forcing" a particular ideology. As an example, you mention Gnome 3 and Unity.
I don't understand it because any distro that runs Gnome3 can also support other desktop environments, so users can use anything they prefer. The same with Unity. So although Fedora comes either with Gnome3 or KDE, and Ubuntu with Unity, these distros will also run about anything else you like. I don't see any "force" in that. MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, LXDE, Xfce - whatever, they can run whatever you choose. As can most distros, I believe.
I've tried lots of distros, some I like better than others, but I've never felt forced to use any distro or any desktop environment. So what do you mean?
31 • re#30 FWIW (by hab on 2012-06-11 20:02:12 GMT from Canada)
I've been on Linux exclusively for nigh on 17 years (Oct. 95 was my start date). In that time i've had the oppertunity to play with many distros, window managers and desktop enviroments. I've never felt like there was anyone holding a gun to head forcing me one way or the other.
I freely admit that i don't particulary care for Gnome 3 or Unity hence i am running KDE 4 but this is not a position i feel forced into. The early releases of KDE 4 were not particulary good (in my opinion) but as the later releases piled up it has, for me anyways, become very useable.
The freedom of choice in Linux is wonderful and that is what keeps from running anything else as my primary desktop.
cheers
hab
32 • *Please* be more precise about partition type in Fedora (by Adam Williamson on 2012-06-11 20:25:36 GMT from Canada)
Jesse: "There were a few issues I ran into, not bugs for the most part, but design choices that didn't suit me. As I've mentioned before the Fedora installer doesn't allow users to choose their root file system, something most other distributions (including Sabayon, which also uses the Anaconda installer) support."
Can you _please_ stop repeating this unequivocally? I'm sure I've corrected you on it more than once, it's just bad form to keep stating it.
The situation you describe holds _only_ when installing from a live image, because of how live installs work. It is not the case when installing from the DVD or network install images. If you want to use a non-ext4 root partition, just install from DVD or netinst. It's that simple.
33 • @ 32 (by Anonymous on 2012-06-11 22:09:28 GMT from United States)
Change the installer included on the liveimage then you both can stop whining about it ;)
34 • Choice, division in the linux world (by cflow on 2012-06-11 22:31:31 GMT from United States)
Having tried a lot of Linux desktops and OS's these days, I noticed how each one has strengths and weaknesses:
KDE4: Lots of features and options, but they're too integrated and interdependent (you MUST have nepomuk installed into the desktop, and you can't remove certain parts of it that you don't want) It's hard to make it "lightweight" like the others.
Gnome Shell: A unique, extensible interface (as of 3.4), but lacks a lot of options and themes KDE has, and it is an aquired taste - just too odd for everyone to like.
XFCE: Stable, lightweight, basic, and the settings seem pretty consistent. However, it still lacks features KDE has, and settings are still interdependent - you can't remove certain parts without removing the desktop itself.
LXDE: Very lightweight, and the parts are completely independent (you can remove lxappearence without distroying the desktop). However, naturally, it lacks many features of KDE.
MATE: Has similar strengths and weaknesses to XFCE, though it has more customization options
Trinity: Trying it, the problems are similar to kde4 - interdependencies in the desktop.
Unity: Has very unique features no other desktop has - but ironically doesn't have many of the features all the other desktops above have.
What's my point? The division I see in the desktops is from the features and customizations you can install onto a desktop, and the features implanted in a desktop that you cannot remove. Toolkits and inner technical philosophies aside, thats about it.
I think this division in desktops could solved by making one single desktop that is completely customizable. By that, I mean that every major part of the desktop - except the window manager - could be removed if not needed, like in LXDE so to lower resource usage. At the same time, it would have all the major customization options you could add like in KDE, Bleeding-edge features in GNOME and Unity, and the stability of XFCE. A "Universal Linux Desktop Environment..." I'll bet a lot of people would like this!
35 • About diverity, strength and weaknesses and a look behind the curtain (by Pierre on 2012-06-11 23:49:42 GMT from Germany)
@21,26,34 and maybe some others
I think that diversity is not a problem but a feature. The point is, that 'features' are only as much important as the user wants and needs it. And what the user needs and wants differs a lot, because everyone is an individual, doing the things on his/her very own way.
So, it is absolutely impossible to make THE KILLER DESKTOP that features every strength of each desktop environment and delivering such a flexibility at the same time, that you could tweak it to your very personal needs.
In Germany one would call that "Eierlegende Wollmilchsau". It's a nice dream, but even technical impossible.
But what I really want to show is, that Linux does not need that one desktop, because it's strength is diversity, only because of this Linux is able to satisfy such many individuals as it actually does.
The problem of Linux isn't it's diversity at all, because there is a lot of collaboration between projects already. The real problem are Windows and MacOS and the financial power behind these and their guaranteed support by it's developers. You can count on the fact, that Windows or MacOS will be supported for a long time giving other companies the security that their developments will work, because of a strict base that is delivered.
Linux distros can disappear or altered a lot as fast as they got released and this makes development of such mentioned 'killer apps' a great risk.
On cloud computing and servers on the other hand for example there is no real option to Linux/Unix/BSD. Linux as the base of each distro has it's strengths and weaknesses because of it's concept and technical realization. There always are limits to what a piece, even a really good one, of software can deliver. Just keep that in mind.
And one last thing: I cannot agree on the argument that KDE for example wouldn't be stable enough or linux in a bad shape. Just think back 5 or 10 years. Linux never had such a great and big audience like these days. It is its sake and darn all at once.
Linux and the distros got a lot better than 5 / 10 years ago, but the requirements and expectations grew with it. Everyone is expecting Linux to work like a charme like MacOS does (sometimes or in some points), not regarding that Linux is free and open source, build and developed in the free time of most of the developers not earning anything or getting anything in return for the work and efforts they are putting into their projects. MacOS is build from a multi million company for a small amount of own concrete hardware by paid employees and not giving even a little of the flexibility and freedom to the user like Linux does.
So, everyone that does not work on improving linux, or one of these many projects around it, should just be happy being able to use this software all for free instead of complaining about the good ol' days or what so ever.
Just my two cents.
Kind regards.
Pierre
36 • @ 34 (by claudecat on 2012-06-11 23:57:59 GMT from United States)
Too integrated? Is that like being too happy? Integration is a good thing. As for interdependence, nepomuk can be disabled rather easily, as can akonadi. Aside from that, depending on the distro, KDE is highly modular, and is becoming more so with time. Don't like a particular K app? In most cases it can be uninstalled... right down to the level of things like the printer-applet or other specific plasma add-ons. You can even use a lightweight window-manager if kwin is too heavy for you.
I'm not trying to sell KDE as a lightweight DE by any means - just among the most configurable, though it can indeed be made much snappier than what most distros give you by default. Just because you can't save a few dozen MB by uninstalling the appendix or gall bladder (nepomuk and akonadi... even kwin) in KDE doesn't mean they need to be used and thereby take up the more important space in RAM.
I myself find the majority of K apps quite useful, and like the fact that they are so tightly integrated from a UI standpoint, but that doesn't preclude me from using gparted and uninstalling the KDE partition manager. In fact, I'd rather run KDE to use, for example, the best burning app (k3b) than to run it under say XFCE, where it will cause loads of dependencies to be installed.
All that being said, I agree with most of what you say in principle, I just think you underappreciate how well KDE already accomplishes at least some of what you want.
37 • @35, 36 (by cflow on 2012-06-12 01:06:21 GMT from United States)
"I think that diversity is not a problem but a feature. The point is, that 'features' are only as much important as the user wants and needs it. And what the user needs and wants differs a lot, because everyone is an individual, doing the things on his/her very own way."
Basically, this is exactly what my "dream desktop" idea is all about - the fact that you can add, remove, and switch features with another one no matter what it is. In other words, it would actually let anyone have what they really want on their desktop, whether it be a minimalist type like crunchbang or fully loaded like Linux Mint. Even better, we wouldn't have all these rather annoying haters of a specific desktop style on Distrowatch. It would not dismiss diversity, my dream desktop would promote it. It it any wonder why slackware and arch are so popular?
"All that being said, I agree with most of what you say in principle, I just think you underappreciate how well KDE already accomplishes at least some of what you want."
Just note that KDE is my favorite desktop, but it has some of the problems you mentioned: It can't be configured to be lightweight like how others do so, and from that DE's like razorqt come along to attract people away - you can't remove things from kde in order to make it as lightweight as to attract Lxde users towards it, so it still doesn't fulfill the dream desktop. But I have faith it could someday!
Now on another note, slashdot placed a thread on why aren't certain people use KDE -gained close to 600 comments. Whether to say some posts are valid, I don't know. Know thy enemy, I guess...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/06/11/1358201/ask-slashdot-why-arent-you-running-kde?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotLinux+%28Slashdot%3A+Linux%29
38 • @33 (by Adam Williamson on 2012-06-12 01:27:22 GMT from Canada)
It's not that simple. The live image is basically a snapshot of a complete Fedora filesystem - in ext4 format. 'Installing' the live image consists of simply dumping out that snapshot to a disk partition. That's the fundamental nature of Fedora live images and how they're installed. To make it possible to install from a live image to any given root filesystem format we'd have to completely change the design somehow. I don't think anyone's actually come up with a plausible mechanism to do it without compromising on something else yet.
39 • @2 (by Adam Williamson on 2012-06-12 01:31:04 GMT from Canada)
There's very little reason to have acpid installed on a modern system, so the obvious solution is just to remove it, unless you're running something obscure that needs it. I don't believe it's present in a default install in recent Fedora releases, so it's unlikely to be what @1 is seeing.
40 • @18 (by Adam Williamson on 2012-06-12 01:41:08 GMT from Canada)
What's your source for that? I don't believe it's the case, though in poking around fsf.org, I'm having difficulty finding any stuff dealing with the question directly.
Remember that in talking about MP3 you are talking about *patents*. There are several implementations of both MP3 decoding and encoding that are published under free licenses; that's not under debate by anyone. Fedora considers that these implementations cannot legally be included because the MP3 codec is subject to patent protection in the U.S.A. It's not a question of licensing from a copyright perspective.
Philosophically, I've always understood that the FSF considers freely-licensed software that's affected by a third party patent claim to be essentially non-free, because the patent means that you cannot effectively exercise the rights the license intends to grant.
41 • Response to gnobuddy on disappointment with KDE 4 and Linux (by Thomas Mueller on 2012-06-12 02:25:07 GMT from United States)
If you're disappointed with KDE 4, and indeed I found it difficult to find my way around when Slackware went from KDE 3.5.x to 4.x, Trinity Desktop further develops from KDE 3.5.x:
http://trinitydesktop.org/
If you're disappointed with Linux, try FreeBSD
http://www.freebsd.org/
It's good to see and compare more than one open-source OS.
42 • @ 21 and 26 (by brad on 2012-06-12 04:56:00 GMT from United States)
I've been saying this for a few years now.. There's so many egos, mindsets, etc out there, that choice is linux's strength and even GREATER weakness.. I'm sure someday soon there'll be 1,000 distros, 800 of them ubuntu based each one with a different fancy boot screen or wallpaper as default, or one app/package difference.. etc.. and 300+ on the waiting list.. and while they all make themselves fight for "hits" on distrowatch, MS/Apple are laughing all the way to the bank while 1000+ distros fight over 1-3% (depending on what stats you believe) market share..
43 • @ 42 (by brad on 2012-06-12 05:00:20 GMT from United States)
I forgot to add how like others have said on here, it would be nice if linux had actual KILLER apps.... I mean wireless is still iffy on some distros/hardware, all that effort on creating another 'buntu would be best served making wireless work better..
or making libreoffice/calligra/openoffice/ with all the functions they seemingly "dont" have since so many people dual boot just to use office...
there's so much more I can say.. but this is my .02 now I'm broke
44 • @39 (by Chris on 2012-06-12 05:25:49 GMT from Germany)
Or the Fedora Team could just fix this obvious defect. When acpid isnt needed, why is it still enabled by default?
My system gets totally messed up when acpid gets disabled.
45 • Desktops #34 (by zykoda on 2012-06-12 07:26:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
Maybe it's a waste of resources (RAM, CPU, DISK..) but it would seem possible to run several desktops simultaneously using different X server displays on each tty[1-7], Analogously, virtual environments could do likewise. In the first scenario this would solve the issue of Gnome-centric apps unable to run (OOTB) under KDE...(eg Gparted in Fedora 17). It occurs to me that some distros are classified according to DE. 'buntus support different sites for each DE, yet some can run various DE "grafts". But, today, cheap resources are in abundance.
46 • Some more cents from me to some comments (by Pierre on 2012-06-12 07:36:31 GMT from Germany)
@42
I don't think that this will ever be the way things will go, simply because like the market regulates supply and demand this will be the same with distros.
Sure, maybe the size of falvours of ubuntu and other distros will grow, but with it there will grow the people who find what they want right from the start. And all other, who prefer to tweak a system to their own needs, will continue using a distro that suits them and tweak it for their own.
So why should they be laughing, it is more likely that they will start crying when they see, what freedom of choice and open source can do. It's not for nothing that Microsoft does the Linux more and more as a real competitor to Windows.
Sure, there will always be people prefering Windows or Mac OS, but people like you and me, who prefer to work the way we like and not the way Windows or Mac OS wants you to work, will stay with Linux.
I currently use many different distros. On work we are running Debian Testing with Gnome 3.2 on the workstation, my Laptop runs Arch with Xfce 4.10 and my home workstation/desktop is currently running Debian Testing with a custom OpenBox config I did myself.
Maybe this can demonstrate how perfect I can make all the different Desktops and Distros suite my taste and work behavior.
@37
As you maybe already read above, my opinion is, that 'your dream desktop' already exists. If KDE suits your taste the most, grab it, tweak it and it's yours.
I started using Linux in 2001 with Suse Linux 7.3 adopting it for day to day use in 2005 with KDE 3.5.x (Suse 10.1). From there on I stayed with Linux, not OpenSuse in fact, and got distro hopping, using Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, Crunchbang, Fedora, Mint, CentOS, Slackware, Salix, Chakra, Sidux, Aptosid and some other flavours of the already mentioned distros.
I then started testing FreeBSD and openindiana, too, and I want to show, that so many different distros can suite your taste as well, just needs to be made your home.
That's what I love about Linux. If I like KDE, but not their panel, I just configure Tint2 for example. If I don't like Rhythmbox or Brasero, I am free to install Amarok and K3B. And it does not really matter what desktop I'm running as base. The only thing is, that themes get maybe 'broken' on non Qt-Apps in a gtk+-based environment, but you can use qtconfig to make qt-apps look almost the same like your gtk+-apps and everything is fine.
I understand that most people hate to get a lot additional dependencies if they do so, like I discribed and it's not the taste of everyone, but just stop to care so much about Qt or Gtk+, both have it's advantages and drawbacks and both feature some really great apps. Nothing on Windows for example compares to K3B, it's maybe something you could call a 'Linux killer app' if you want to.
I just want to show that Linux is in a really good shape and even getting better and better with time as are getting their apps.
That Linux developer are free to 'reinvent the wheel' isn't bad, too. This makes real innovation possible. No one is forced like the Windows developers to carry old libraries with them, just to keep backward compatibility. It's just the way you look on things if you like them or not. Gnome 3 has it's nice features like every other DE out there, it just depends on how you want to use Gnome. On a classic desktop it really performs bad, on a laptop or touchpad it would just work perfect.
And KDE? Has it's own desktop style for this case. And that is why I really appreciate the work of the KDE team.
Kind regards.
Pierre
47 • What i forgot... (by Pierre on 2012-06-12 09:16:07 GMT from Germany)
...is to mention, that KDE is one of the most modular DEs out there.
You can highly configure the K-apps delivered with the KDE SC and make them look und feel the way you like it.
The reason why I'm not using KDE at the moment is that I was waiting for it to mature and Debian is not delivering the most up to date version of KDE right now and I'd prefer to use the 4.8.x versions and not the older ones.
An other point is, that my laptop - where I configured Arch a few weeks ago and I'd have a new KDE version - is not as powerful as my desktop and xfce therefor is the much better choice for it. As well as, that Xfce since 4.10 is able to do window tiling by holding a windows with left mouse and dragging it to a screen edge just like like Gnome/KDE, what has been one central agrument for KDE/Gnome in the past few weeks and months.
A really stable and nice classic DE and my first choice since development on KDE 3.5 had stopped: Xfce
If there is enough HD-space and CPU/GPU-power and one wishes to have a quite modular and highly modern DE my first choice still is: KDE
When it comes to a comparison between KDE/Qt-based and Gnome/Xfce/Gtk+-based apps I just cannot say to often: both have high quality apps for each task and it depends more on taste and way you like to work, what is really better or not.
I personally prefer Dolphin, Kate, Amarok, Gwenview, K3B for managing files, editing simple text files, listening to music, presenting and batch editing images (like resizing) and burning/ripping.
That does not mean, that apps like Thunar/Nautilus (file manager of Xfce), Geany (advanced text gtk+-editor), gmusicbrowser/rhythmbox/exaile (gtk+-apps for managing and listening music) or Xfburn/Brasero would not do the most jobs as well as the KDE alternatives, but I simply prefer the power of the KDE apps in these cases.
And this is the reason why I'm thinking of switching back to KDE, enjoying Kwin and all the other nice apps in KDE, although I can get work done on the same high level on my OpenBox machine or my Xfce-based laptop. It's always just a matter of taste in my opinion.
I just realized that this comment got huge once again and I'm sorry about that. But I thought a lot about which DE might be the best.
My conclusion is: they all are great pieces of software and even I am switching from time to time for reasons of taste and feeling. I cannot say that on is better or worse, because I can use and tweak them all to my needs - even Gnome 3 to a little.
Why does this discussion on DE's matter at all?
Because feeling at home and comfortable is important for getting work done. I think this is the reason that everyone is tweaking his/her own linux and some even are delivering flavours of their own config, because their could be people out there, that feel comfortable with it too and save the time to configure and tweak their linux, too. Just see it this way and it becomes another reason for loving linux and it's diversity. :)
Kind regards once again.
Pierre
P.S. I'm short at time and therefor there are a few faults in my comments, I beg: just irgnore them as long as you unterstand, what I want to say. :)
48 • @ 32 • (by Adam Williams) (by greg on 2012-06-12 10:38:41 GMT from Slovenia)
The situation you describe holds _only_ when installing from a live image, because of how live installs work.
As stated before other distributions do not suffer form this. In fact if you try to install Ubuntu you will be offere numerous file types you can use in your partition and all that from a liveCD install.
i think what the review points out is that maybe it's time to make a change. though i see no issue with ext4 so far.
49 • @ 46 (by greg on 2012-06-12 10:46:38 GMT from Slovenia)
" No one is forced like the Windows developers to carry old libraries with them, just to keep backward compatibility."
I kind of like backwards compatibility. It often happens that a great tool is working before but then development stops on it, and it gets abandoned. the old libraries mean i can still use it. at leats unitl something newer comes along. And this is exactly what enterprises need. for example at work we have an old MS-DOS application that we still need at this time. though less and less it will still take about 3 or 4 more years before it will be completelly obsolete and useless. Untill then we need it. developer is long gone from company and also no one wants to make an effort to port it. and we can easilly run it. i can't imagine running anything so easy if it was made in linux back in 1993 or so...
otherwise nice post. DE doens't matter much. i have mixed apps and use KDE and Xfce (on older maschine) but also like old Gnome 2. Unity is not my cup of tea and yet i see some like it. and i think it is good for beginners to introduce them to Linux. at leats it forces them to think differently already with it's look &feel.
50 • @49 (by Pierre on 2012-06-12 12:09:39 GMT from Germany)
@49
Sure, in a company backward compatibility is an important issue. That is why Debian and Red Hat and any other professional / commercially / enterprise used distro only adds in security patches but stays with the versions of release time.
This is because of stability reasons, too. But more important is the fact, that a development made for, lets say Red Hat EL 6.0 will still work the same after 5 years on an updated RHEL 6.x.
And I can understand that no one has the time or wish to port an old MS DOS application that still is important but maybe one or two years later gets obsolete and therefore abandoned and can still be run on new hard- and software.
But on a user level and if you are not forced to keep everything backward compatible and therefore being able to start new, if needed, you don't have to care about keeping everything backward compatible what might limit your possibilities.
For real innovation that is a nice thing. That was just the point. :)
51 • Diversity is wrecking linux debate (by Sayth on 2012-06-12 13:04:35 GMT from Australia)
Mass Hackathons and Sprints to acheive goals it would be great wouldn't it. everyone set aside their distro specific goals and come together to further linux as a whole. Ahhh.
it would be great and could really push the adoption of linux a long way in a short time but to be honest without nominated and accepted leadership what is needed would never be decided.
In these commercial times how could a board be created fairly, Samsung recently donated an obscene amount of money to be on the Linux Board (http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55664:samsung-joins-linux-foundation) but we will never likely see any benefit as distro users.
I love linux for development, however as a music fan it has a way to go rhythmbox can't even manage an equalizer by default(extremely necessary in a music player). But when you look at some of the best music apps such as MusicBee on windows and EAC and Foobar, Imgburn they are all largely run by one man/woman shows. They allow full intergration and ripping of Wavpack, flac, lossy.wv and lossy.flac and all the standard basic formats and lists of features that are incredible.
Why can't we get these types of programs on linux? Lack of collaboration? Doesn't seem so since they are largely one developer outfits? Is it getting more unique skilled developers to be able to contribute? Is there something about linux libraries that limit developers abilities?
PS I don't know the answers to the last questions. It doesn't appear to me thought that diversity is the key limiting factor for linux.
**Would like to shout out to the developers of Sabayon. Sabayon 9 with XFCE 4.10 is an absolutely outstanding release. Congratulations.
52 • @ 50 • @49 (by greg on 2012-06-12 13:09:46 GMT from Slovenia)
from user point of view i also like to play older games and use older programmes if they worked well. the company programmes popped into my mind as an example since i am at work :-)
in windows using new programmes on old system or old programmes on new is realtively easy (well at least in most cases, some games are exception). especially it works old stuff on new systems. sometimes not so good but again most of the times it is possible.
an example would be one of the first versions of winamp. they work well on win95 with 32MB ram. sure not so many features, but they play the music and have playlists, so it might be good enough. or for example you can use older adobe reader that loads faster (ok not really a good example due to security concerns but you get the point).
but this is not always the case in linux. dependancies can make it difficult. I find PC-BSD interesting for htis reaosn since as i understand it programmes bring their necessary libraries with them there.not sure how well it is backward compatible.
53 • Linux Mint's Mintbox (by Marc Visscher on 2012-06-12 13:31:51 GMT from Netherlands)
As far as I'm concerned Linux Mint is one of the best distro's Linux has to offer (my opinion!) I was pleasantly surprised when they announced their "own" hardware in the form of the Mintbox. The idea of the Mintbox is fantastic. It has the potention to serve a wider audience. But only one thing is preventing that: the price! It's way too high to be a succesfull project. The specs aren't that spectacular, and for the same money you can buy a laptop with better specs (and a OS pre-installed with Windows 7).
If the price drops to plusminus 300 dollars, it could be a succes. So Clem... if you read this, consider a lower price for the Mintbox. If you do that, 'll be the first to buy one! And perhaps a whole lot more people...
54 • Fedora / RHEL / CentOS and Gnome (by Johannes on 2012-06-12 15:09:08 GMT from Germany)
Fedora uses a quite standard Gnome 3. RHEL being "based" on Fedora, one could wonder if the next major RHEL will ship with Gnome 3, which is all but not ready for enterprise use...
55 • @ 51 Sayth (by mandog on 2012-06-12 15:13:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
Sayth said>
I love linux for development, however as a music fan it has a way to go rhythmbox can't even manage an equalizer by default(extremely necessary in a music player). But when you look at some of the best music apps such as MusicBee on windows and EAC and Foobar, Imgburn they are all largely run by one man/woman shows. They allow full intergration and ripping of Wavpack, flac, lossy.wv and lossy.flac and all the standard basic formats and lists of features that are incredible.
All that is already on Linux, Rubyripper Morturi. Are both exceptional rippers, Clementine, Exaile, exeptional music players, Banshee, Xnoise, vlc "also plays iso files", gnome Mplayer, are Media players. Then there is the mighty XBMC, the killer media player yes its open source makes win media player look and perform crap.
Ardour, is a professional music editor mixer. Cinelerra is an amassing film editor if you know how to use it the list goes on and on. this is only a snapshot
You just have to look and ask
56 • @ 7 - Fedora 17 on VMWare (by Marco on 2012-06-12 16:39:57 GMT from United States)
I am running VMWare Player on Win 7.
I downloaded the Fedora-17-i686-Live-KDE.iso
And it seems to work fine. (although I think Kubuntu 12.04 just feels a bit better to me).
Did you install VMWare Tools? I find that usually helps.
57 • @48 (by Adam Williamson on 2012-06-12 17:23:06 GMT from Canada)
It's not straightforward to just 'change' it, though, and any change would compromise some other features we have in live images, AIUI. It's true that other distros use different systems, but then they always have and they're used to the benefits/drawbacks of those systems.
What annoys me is that Jesse keeps bringing this up in Fedora reviews _without correctly explaining that it only affects the live images_ (and he keeps harping on the fact that other distros which use anaconda don't have the 'problem' - but he's comparing to the non-live images of those distros!) I don't mind if he wants to consider it a shortcoming of the Fedora live images and point it out in that context. It's perfectly fair to do so. But he's been told multiple times by multiple people that it only applies to the live images, but he continues not to make this clear in his reviews.
58 • Reviews... (by Digital on 2012-06-12 22:55:29 GMT from United States)
Add rpm-fusion free and non-free, yum install gstreamer* ... Quick way to add every free and non-free codec available. Was this really a problem? I know red hat/fedora has a MUCH stronger "free software only" stance than other widely used distros, but i don't think proprietary codecs are difficult to get. However, im not too familiar with how simple (or even how, legally) other distros make this step out of the box.
Also, while doing a review of a spin/alternate/non-primary version of a distro is typically a no-no, you did specify that this was not the default Fedora installation and that is appreciated. I am looking forward to reading the Opensuse blackbox or Ubuntu CDE reviews. ;-)
59 • @Mandog 55 (by Sayth on 2012-06-12 23:54:50 GMT from Australia)
@ Mandog i like the players and rippers you have mentioned but no they don't compare. rubyyripper is a start as is Asunder but they just aren't anywhere near as capable as EAC or MusicBee for High Quality Audio ripping, try and rip lossy.wv or lossy.flac with them, you can't. They are fine if you just want to encode mp3 or aac.
I wish they were I have tried them all SoundJuicer the lot at the moment no linux solution is as complete unfortunately. for info on high quality audio encoding hydrogenaudio is the best forum.
Clementine, Exaile, exeptional music players, Banshee, yet again are getting there but just are nowhere near as complete. Sorry I have tried. Yes they can all play music and retrieve some info off last.fm etc but no. I think is signified by the fact Ubuntu shipped a music player without an equalizer as they couldn't find anything they thought reliable or better.
Cinelerra is nice but I require Avisynth for my video encoding and as at version 2.6 it is still windows only. There was initially a version 3 of Avisynth started years ago that had the goal of supporting linux but the project has had no progress in years. Most of the high quality Video Encoders and Encoding discusiion you can find is at Doom9 Forum. I would have to say Avidemux and handbrake are the best linux encoders. Only now though in its last release has handbrake started to implement alternatives to FAAC which isn't currently(and hasn't been for a while) up to standard.
60 • solus 2a (by michael leones on 2012-06-13 02:04:39 GMT from United States)
this new release is less buggy and boots on several different configurations with no problem
61 • Video encoders (by Anonymous Coward on 2012-06-13 08:01:39 GMT from Spain)
Yes, HandBrake is a good encoder.
I use Mencoder too, when you need to encode to avi because you have to handle the file to someone that demands this format. Mencoder is extremely powerful when compiled with the proper options... and when you have taken the time to learn how to use it (which is not really trivial).
62 • @56 (by David on 2012-06-13 12:47:14 GMT from United States)
I am talking about real VMWare (think ESX), not Player. Also I installed from the DVD image, not using a LiveCD. You shouldn't have to install VMWare tools for basic functionality to work, especially now that Xorg supports it natively. Fedora 16 worked just fine without it.
63 • @59 Rubyripper (by mandog on 2012-06-13 13:36:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
You are very wrong I have over 500 albums all ripped To flac Some by EAC. some by Morturi some by rubyripper the are all based on the same idea and if anything Rubyripper is the closest to the original as you will get even with EAC.
Perhaps you did not have the codecs as you can rip to wav/flac or to lossy,
Pulse has a 1st class equalizer and it works very well, But saying that I'm a Hifi purist and believe music should be listened to as it was recorded. They spend large amounts of real money to produce the music, It should be listened to with respect using top quality gear not messed up so it sounds lousy but others will disagree i'm sure all i say is Krell Levinson to them.
As for film editing in windows there is only 1 real professional Sony Vegas very expensive but the best ves they make real films on it so they say as they do with Cinelerra so they say. Avidemux is very good but can go out of sinc on long encodes. Handbrake is still very much work in progress as it tends to stop encoding a lot of times.
64 • one for a nex review (by forlin on 2012-06-13 14:51:19 GMT from Portugal)
I've been watching that a very little and young distro project has been catching the attention of DW users, and consistently is climbing up positions in the DW's PHR. Its name is Pear.
I leave here a suggestion for a review of it for us to understand why is it becoming so popular among Linux users.
65 • @63 mandog (by Sayth on 2012-06-13 14:58:49 GMT from Australia)
Hi mandog I think there maybe a misunderstanding. I am not saying flac or wavpack or lossy. I am saying lossyWAV and lossyFLAC. More indepth info here http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LossyWAV .
Essnetially its a similar process to lossless wavpack flac encoding however it receives the lossy name because of the removal of zero sound bytes which whilst not affecting audio quality are removing some of the file so receive the lossy name.
It results in lossless sound quality audio with signifcantly reduced file size, usually half the size in most of my encodes.
PS I have installed Moturi on three different machines and it has never run or worked at all never loads. Rubyripper and Asunder have worked but as I say no lossy.wv and the auto tagging, error checking of MusicBee is unbeatable. I used to use EAC but musicbee has all this installed by default extreme high quality ripping supporting latest ripping technology and codecs with no config required and its an amazing audio player.
66 • Handbrake (by Verndog on 2012-06-14 02:21:48 GMT from United States)
"Handbrake is still very much work in progress as it tends to stop encoding a lot of times."
I've never had any issues with Handbrake, and I have encoded movies many times on several dfferent OS's.
67 • Jesse Smith's Openfiler 2.3 review (by mkruger on 2012-06-14 03:01:48 GMT from United States)
I was a bit surprised to see an review of Openfiler 2.3 when the current release (available for quite some time now) is 2.99. And I have to say OpenFiler 2.99 makes for an exceptional VMware SAN.
Back several months ago, while putting together a home VMware Infrastructure lab, I tested nearly every available ISCSI NAS/SAN solution that I could get my hands on. The list was extensive. In the end I concluded Openfiler 2.99 provides the very best ISCSI file/IO performance available...Hands down. None of the other solutions even came close to matching the performance of Openfiler.
So, if your building a shared storage solution for a VMware lab, my advice would be to use Openfiler. Sure, it's not the prettiest (that award would probably have to go to FreeNAS), nor the most intuitive (FreeNAS wins there too), but if performance is what matters most, then the choice is clear - Openfiler.
68 • Mageia vs Rosa (by mageiaII on 2012-06-14 04:42:48 GMT from United States)
I have tried rosa, and the amount of packages they have compared to Mageia is very minimum. the kde desktop is pretty compared to mageia's. But Rosa didn't have the program I need it so I stayed with mageia.
Hope they add more packages in the future...
69 • @65 Music Bee (by mandog on 2012-06-14 06:58:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
MusicBee is a windows only app not a Linux application the other apps you mention do run in wine I don't personally use windows. I did go and did do a Quick check to your link its based on flac loosly but still based on flac. I personally do not think dropping the bit rate is the way to go unless your aim is to compete with mp3 but thats my opinion.
Anyway good luck in what you are trying to achieve what ever works for you
@66 Handbrake up to a few weeks ago I would of supported your statement, lately I'm having problems unfortunately and having to rip to h/drive 1st as it seems to crash after encoding 33mins on several occasions.
70 • @57 Fedora/memory requirements (by tim on 2012-06-14 17:48:26 GMT from Germany)
If you read this
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Welcome_to_Fedora_17.html
it is obvious that Fedora 17 needs 768MB RAM at least. :-)
Or is this wrong?
What is the lowest amount of RAM that Fedora 17 needs for a successful installation?
71 • EDE (by Marti on 2012-06-14 19:29:07 GMT from United States)
There was a note about the Equinox Desktop Enviro a few issues ago. Here is am Ubuntu 12.04 LTS LiveCD ISO with the newest EDE 2.0.
http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=2345.0
The above is the forum posting. The below is the download link:
http://www.remastersys.com/downloads/
I am not a developer. I know no one at EDE nor remastersys nor Canonical. I just like small footprint desktops.
72 • @71 EDE (by greg on 2012-06-15 07:08:59 GMT from Slovenia)
"On my netbook after login, htop shows only 106MB ram in use"
How is that light ? Or lighter than LXDE?
XFCE on my notebook has about 85-88 MB on boot. I know lubuntu is also between 85 and 90 MB when idle (or at least it used to be).
73 • RE #9 (by Anonymous on 2012-06-15 10:42:49 GMT from United States)
@ Onederer (#9)
Chasing around for this app. and that app. and missing dependencies is only for those who want to be explorers like Christopher Columbus all over again. ...I've made a resolution to be from now on, a Linux user, and not a Linux Mechanic.
I heard that!
Apparently, the good people at Fedora/Red Hat (and others) don't realize the problems they cause by constantly trying to add a fresh coat of paint to a rotting house. I could care less about all the desktops and eye candy. A certain degree may be necessary but come on! Gnome, KDE, Unity, etc. only add to the mess. And it's especially troublesome when there are entire groups devoted to designing new graphical installers - a one time use application where even colored text may be overkill. But if that's what they want to focus on then fine. I'll use something else that actually provides the software I wan/need. And that includes hardware support too.
I'm too and done being a technician! I just want to USE an OS to do the things I want/need to do. And if anyone ever came up with a distro that actually let me use things like my TV card for PVR functions - like I do with Windows - then I might actually consider donating money to whoever that is too.
(Don't even try to point out a MythTV distro or XBMC. They are good examples of poorly thought out spaghetti development. But at least they tried. I just don't have the time or patience to go through all that only to end up with a still non-functioning system that still can't tune in static no matter what app is in control.)
74 • @ 72 EDE (by Marti on 2012-06-15 11:02:27 GMT from United States)
I do use a plain LXDE desktop with Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS and my usage, right after reboot, is about 80MB as well. However, I am just glad to see another smaller, at least relatively, distro still get developed. The EDE looks quite nifty, IMO.
Anything to compete with the ever increasingly hungry GNOME, KDE, etc! They are fine, they work, and they developed by smart folk.....but, jeez, I tried KDE once on a refurb box and it used OVER 300MB at reboot.
I retract and should state, "I like SMALLER footprint desktops."
75 • RE:14 (by Landor on 2012-06-15 14:46:42 GMT from Canada)
"You're making two assumptions, one that I downloaded all packages as one big batch. Such was not the case. It was a matter of downloading some packages, finding I was missing something else, downloading more packages, applying updates, discovering something else was missing, downloading more packages.... And two, you're assuming you know how many packages I downloaded. Since you don't know what I downloaded, you really don't have anything upon which to base your time estimate. Yes, it really really did take most of an afternoon."
I didn't make any assumptions, you stated it took you a few hours to download everything you wanted. Now you're changing it to fit what you want and trying to pass it off as I don't know how to read. Here's exactly what you posted, you should have read it before replying:
"and spent a few hours downloading all of the pieces of software and codecs I wanted"
"I think it's interesting you believe I should download an entire DVD just to select a different file system. Almost every other distribution in the world allows users to select their root file system from live media. Fedora insists they cannot do it, even though other distributions using the same installer do not have this artificial limitation. As long as Fedora keeps crippling their distribution I am going to continue to mention it in reviews."
I never said I think you should download an entire DVD to use a different file system. I said you are aware that is the case with Fedora and if you want to select one that is what you should do. I don't care what you use, or not, but Adam pointed out the reality here, which I spoke of first. You know it already but you want to harp on it as a downfall. Maybe you don't understand it. You're also not telling the truth again. They never said they cannot do it, they said that's the way they do it for live media. Period.
You seem to be trying to skirt everything you're writing about and blaming it on other people, hell, the guy about Rhythmbox you even tried to lay fault at his feet for a language barrier how ignorant is that. Seriously. Here's what you wrote about it.
"Konqueror, Amarok, the Calligra office suite, Dragon Player and KolourPaint all have basic functionality, but not on the same level as Firefox, Rhythmbox, LibreOffice, VLC and the GNU Image Manipulation Program."
Then just like you tried to do with me, you tried to pass it off on him with this:
"No, I did not. Once again, when I said Rhytmbox was more functional I wasn't talking about features. As I said before Amarok is an application I've always found buggy and prone to crash. Rhythmbox just works for me. Sometimes "functional" doesn't mean more features, it means the features present actually work"
So what then, Konqueror, Calligra, Dragon Player, and KolourPaint are all buggy and prone to crash with features that are present but don't work? Because you bunched them all together and stated they all have basic functionality but not on the same level as others. So, you're talking about the whole group, and you didn't say crap about crashing, being buggy, or features that actually work.
The Fedora camp has complained often in the past that reviews were not done properly when the distribution gets a bad review and it's as if they can tell you how to review their product. Absurd to say the least. Now you're doing the same thing, you're telling people we're not reading your reviews properly and assuming things.
This is a good reason why I don't read your reviews and this is the first one I've read in a long time.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
76 • Diversity IS a feature. (by hootiegibbon on 2012-06-16 23:15:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hey All,
I have been following the chat here , and have seen the topic of Linux (and in fact free and open software) diversity being raised as a negative.
I don't believe that an everyman distro would be the solution, tastes in OS's vary too much for that and is why 'alternative' OS's exist in the first place
imo the biggest issue we have is the lack of inter-distro/inter-community communication - which leads to a type of "tribalism" between and within distro & OS communities, it seems that most folks miss the cool stuff that all our OS's (Linux distros, BSD's, Haiku, Minix and others) have in common, and what we may be able to to do to improve and celebrate this common ground.
I think that by learning from each other as users of different distros and OS's could be a key to making all our different OS's better.
I have put together an "everyman" forum where users can join and discuss their OS of choice, and while it is not specifically a help forum the users there will try to help if help is requested, its early days yet but please call by
Jase
77 • Fedora, KDE (by Justus on 2012-06-17 01:24:47 GMT from United States)
I'm in agreement with Gnobuddy above. I've tried every version of KDE4 that's been released, hoping that it'll be usuable, as I enjoy the overall look and feel of the DE, and I also prefer some of the KDE-specific applications such as Amarok, KOrganizer, and KDevelop. Unfortunately, despite my hopes, I've yet to find a build of KDE4 that wasn't at best mildly crash prone.
As far as the Fedora review itself goes, I do find myself wishing that DW had reviewed the standard Gnome spin instead. I don't really understand the complaints many people have with the DE - this latest release especially is exceptionally usable.
78 • @77 (by claudecat on 2012-06-17 05:47:50 GMT from United States)
I haven't had a KDE 4 crash in a very long time. Even the latest Kubuntu is rock solid (for me). Either my hardware (3 machines with 3 different gpus) really likes KDE or you (and others) maybe haven't looked hard enough for a decent "build" of KDE 4. Most probably the former, but still, I just don't get the continuing dismissal of this great DE. Oh well... one person's "exceptionally usable" is another's flaming pile of crap. To each their own, etc.
79 • @ 76 • Diversity IS a feature. (by forlin on 2012-06-17 23:17:18 GMT from Portugal)
"tribalism" is a true statement regarding behaviours among different Linux distros and it will take long years before people understand that's not good for Linux nor for the developers or the users.
80 • world marketshare (by Julian on 2012-06-18 02:54:36 GMT from United States)
"what if we could work together to get Linux - all of it - to climb together in terms of world marketshare?"
This is what Ubuntu is intended to be about (see ubuntu bug #1) and what Unity is intended to be about. I am not a big fan of Unity itself but i would love to have the CHOICE to run my favorite linux software on devices from smartphones on up to laptops/desktops, which is part of the reason why they created Unity and the direction Ubuntu is heading.
I salute Canonical for making the attempt to appeal to people who aren't already linux fans, to make something useful that hasn't been made before... and not focusing on 'like windows/OSX but you don't have to pay for it' or making the perfect OS for experienced linux users like me (plenty of people like me are happy with GNOME2+debian or some other tried and true DE)
Number of Comments: 80
Display mode: DWW Only • Comments Only • Both DWW and Comments
| | |
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Archives |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
| Random Distribution | 
Bicom Systems SERVERware
Bicom Systems' SERVERware is a commercial, Gentoo-based, purpose-built virtualization platform designed specifically for telephony and cloud-based Unified Communications (UC) environments. Its goal is to deliver high performance, reliability and scalability in a modern, intuitive user interface. The distribution's main features include built-in data integrity and resilience, geo-redundancy for disaster preparedness, user-friendly management, and support for modern virtualization technologies. Bicom SERVERware can be used as a standalone server, as a mirror for enhanced redundancy via real-time mirrored storage, or as a cluster.
Status: Active
|
| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
|
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
|
|
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
