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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • CLI book (by AliasMarlowe on 2012-09-10 08:53:30 GMT from Europe)
Thanks for the review of a CLI book, Jesse. Those of us who came up the "hard way" mostly assimilated our CLI knowledge in small increments over the years. Nowadays, with kids, it's good to have books which can systematize that knowledge and present it in a clean and comprehensive way.
2 • yum x apt (by Sergio on 2012-09-10 10:00:37 GMT from Brazil)
I don't think that Google person has ever seriously used rpm/yum. I won't say it's light-years ahead of apt but it's certainly superior (easier to use, more flexible and much more features).
3 • RPM vs APT (by DavidEF on 2012-09-10 12:10:31 GMT from United States)
I've used apt tools almost exclusively myself, mainly the Synaptic gui package manager, a little apt-get, and a sprinkling of others. However, with the limited experiences I've had with rpm tools, I can say I prefer to stick with what I know (apt). In other words, if there is any superiority of rpm vs apt, it is cleverly hidden from the casual user. It certainly isn't enough to get my attention. If asked, I would say apt is superior, but I couldn't tell you why, except I personally like it better. See what I mean?
As for specific applications, I am strongly in favor of Synaptic, and other gui package managers which are similar. The "app store" style installers seen in several distros nowadays get in my way more often than not. Others are hard to figure out (not discoverable). Synaptic is simple (enough), powerful, and elegant.
4 • APT vs. RPM (by Tourniquette on 2012-09-10 12:23:32 GMT from United States)
I can understand what they're saying about apt, but I think a lot of it comes down to userbase. Personally, I've used most of the major package managers and prefer the Pacman manager because of its speed. But apt definitely has the upper hand as far as the number of distros, and therefore people, using it and putting in the time to maintain it.
5 • DEB vs RPM (by Omari Norman on 2012-09-10 12:24:07 GMT from United States)
Google guy has no idea what he is talking about.
"The days have passed in which Debian's package management wiped the table clean. Today, various approaches exist, each with their own special features and annoying caveats. When people tout their favorite package management system and diss the other available solutions, they effectively admit their own ignorance of the matter . . . A common belief among Debian supporters seems to be that the DEB format is largely superior to RPM, which is simply false (and certainly one of the reasons why Debian's reputation is not always positive). In fact, the RPM format is actually more feature-rich than DEB, but the additional features are not commonly put to use. Nevertheless, in terms of the capabilities actually put to use, the two formats are just too similar to compare."
Source: "The Debian System," page 200, by Martin F. Krafft (a Debian developer!)
6 • Way to start a religious war... (by David Hughes on 2012-09-10 12:39:45 GMT from United Kingdom)
The guy from Google could have thrown in a reference to them using Vim because it's way better than Emacs while he was at it. ;-)
Such talk is quite daft; I personally (slightly) prefer working with apt-get, but I recognise that that's probably got something to do with the fact that Ubuntu was the first Linux distro that I used. If I find myself working on Red Hat or OpenSUSE I find that I can work productively using their package management systems.
The only ones that come to mind that definitely don't make me a happy bunny are Slackware and Gentoo. [But if you enjoy Gentoo, you're doing it wrong. Probably. ;-) ]
7 • Arch, Archbang and Bridge (by Alex on 2012-09-10 13:02:36 GMT from Sweden)
We have Arch at #7, Archbang at #35 and Bridge Linux at #55, and both Archbang and Bridge are Arch distros, but while Archbang was made from Arch installation iso, Bridge Linux was done by remixing Archbang. So, whould we call Bridge Linux an Arch derivative or Archbang derivative?
For example, Solus OS is from Debian, while Mint 13 is from Ubuntu, so what would Bridge Linux be, an Arch derivative or Archbang derivative?
8 • openSUSE and SlackDocs (by Barnabyh on 2012-09-10 13:02:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Downloaded the KDE i686 iso the day it came out and have to say I'm impressed. I tried Suse often over its lifespan of various incarnations and name changes but was never quite happy enough with it, due to crippled players and media libraries compiled with important playback options disabled, and due to a general feeling that package management took too much time.
12.2 is a top release in my view, and I may even keep it on my new external hard drive as boot option. This is a very polished, and fast distribution, Or it may just be that now that I have less time available I appreciate well and long-term supported distris like RHEL clones and openSUSE better.
SlackDocs is a great project certainly worth of attention, and it coming into existence completely surprised me. I thought one of the requirements for being a slacker was to be able to dig through the internet and use Linuxquestions.org or the relevant newsgroup ;) Bit like you can't be an MA student without knowing how to use the library. But Arch, and Gentoo before, have shown how good such a centralized resource can be.
A good week to everyone, Barnaby
9 • Who needs APT or RPM when you can have... (by jaycee on 2012-09-10 13:25:26 GMT from Australia)
Slackpkg. Seriously, once you get used to having control over exactly what packages you have installed on your system, it's hard to go back to dependency-based package management. That said, the idea of using a package manager without dependency resolution essentially assumes you're starting with a complete operating system - I certainly wouldn't like to try building Slackware up from a minimal install! (For that, of course, Arch and Pacman serve the purpose.)
10 • "The Linux Command Line" book (by Joe H on 2012-09-10 13:51:25 GMT from United States)
Note that the book is released under a Creative Commons license, and is available for free download in PDF format at...
http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php
11 • - (by Simon Pedersen on 2012-09-10 14:23:54 GMT from Denmark)
For anyone bothered by the termination of alternate CD's, there is always the Minimal isos located at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD
12 • @10 TLCL download (by DavidEF on 2012-09-10 15:30:34 GMT from United States)
Thanks Joe! I got my copy.
13 • openSuSE 12.2 (by Sam on 2012-09-10 15:30:37 GMT from United States)
Was fast and zippy and ALMOST replaced my trusty 11.4 installation. Unfortunately, after three days use and one or two rounds of "updates" it refuses to boot on my system (an old Thinkpad R61i circa 2006/7). I ran into a similar issue on the same laptop with Fedora 17 - installed, ran once, then an update killed it. I suspect this is an issue with a newer linux kernel and I have to reset the kernel boot parameters, but c'mon.
Looks like I'll stick with 11.4 for the foreseeable future - when official support ends in November I'll just switch my main repo over to the Evergreen Project and try to squeeze more months out of the distro. I suspect some distro with "legacy" support is on my horizon early next year...
14 • Damn Sam... durned ole java again (by Jordan on 2012-09-10 16:09:57 GMT from United States)
I keep having to go running back to Windows with my tail between my legs because Pogo and other sites keep tweaking their games code. The latest java update often fixes it for a while, and lo and behold I log in one day some games won't fully load. The site sometimes brings up an error page saying to clear cache and temp files etc. Never works.
Happens once on a while on Facebook games as well, but not as often as Pogo. Talking to the Pogo people in chat brings up canned responses and once in a while the mention of "security."
What I want to know is: why does any and all versions of Windows do the job and linux distros don't (by and large)? It's been the same for many years.
15 • Java and web pages (by Jesse on 2012-09-10 16:35:34 GMT from Canada)
@14: Since both Pogo and Facebook use a web browser (and, in Pogo's case, Java) as a base, then it shouldn't matter which operating system you use. Their sites should work exactly the same on Windows, Linux or OS X as long as you're using the same web browser and an up to date installation of Java. If something breaks then their website is probably trying to ID your system and breaking something as a result. Properly coded web pages and Java applets don't care about the underlying OS.
16 • 10 • "The Linux Command Line" book (by Joe H (by Sven on 2012-09-10 16:46:15 GMT from Sweden)
Thanks for the info, Joe. I've already downloaded it.
17 • @15 (by Jordan on 2012-09-10 16:48:55 GMT from United States)
Thanks for that explanation. It sounds plausible.. but "...it shouldn't matter which os..." is way, WAY opposite of what we're experiencing (I say "we" because it's an ongoing issue and is in the Pogo and other forums).
All I have to do is snatch my W7 hard drive, whip it in and all, ALL games work at Pogo. Switch back to my spare hard drive with SuSe 12.2 on it (same with other distros) and voila: no Monopoly Slots, etc.
VectorLinux has been an exception most of the time. I do admit to going back to it most often (NO: I am not a VL fan boy etc and I don't work for them etc). The version numbers of the java and flash in VL are the same as in other distros. Now that is another question: why some work and others don't? And again, always works in Windows 7 (and Vista). ???
18 • 7 • Arch, Archbang and Bridge (by Alex (by Sven on 2012-09-10 16:50:19 GMT from Sweden)
Interesting info by Alex, but the DWW states "Bridge Linux is an Arch Linux derivative that includes a GUI and standard applications. It comes in four separate editions with a choice of GNOME, KDE, LXDE or Xfce desktops."
Most probably maybe all arch distros could be called arch based. It would've been interesting, if Linux Mint Maya could say it is based on Debian, but cannot use Debian repos.
19 • @9 (by bonzoso on 2012-09-10 17:03:44 GMT from United States)
exactly, my skill set doesn't allow me to tolerate dependency checking
20 • @15 Pogo and Java (by corneliu on 2012-09-10 17:04:23 GMT from Canada)
Not true. There are different Java Virtual Machines, one for each operating system. All these JVMs implement the same interface but they implement it differently. There are unwanted inconsistencies between them.
21 • Slackware Linux Documentation Project (by V. T. Eric Layton on 2012-09-10 17:36:00 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
Thanks for the mention of the project. I just wanted to comment that I'm just one of many participating in this community effort. Credit for the idea and the implementation must go to Nicolas Kovacs and Eric Hameleers.
We currently have over 160 pages of data on the new wiki. The project also has permission to duplicate the new Slackbook, which is in beta at this time, in its entirety on the wiki.
There's still a lot of need for input, article submissions, and community support. C'mon over, Slackers. Be a part of this historic project from it's inception.
Thanks again, DW!
~V. T. Eric Layton AKA Nocturnal Slacker
22 • @20 (by Jordan on 2012-09-10 17:46:38 GMT from United States)
Thanks corneliu. The number on them looks the same to me, but if they are different in function then it must be Pogo site's fault for not being scripted for different operating systems. I keep thinking it's "linux vs the world." It looks like the Mac users in there complain too though (just noticed that today).
One of the Facebook games, "Pyramid Solitaire Saga," corrected in SuSe when I did an update on icedtea in the browser addons area.
23 • re 22 Java (by corneliu on 2012-09-10 18:12:26 GMT from Canada)
It could be Pogo's fault but IMHO it is more likely that it's Sun's/Oracle's fault. Java was created to solve platform fragmentation, to make software run the same way on any JVM (compile once run everywhere). The problem is that operating systems are so different from each other, it is impossible to get the same behavior on all JVM. For simple applications Java can achieve its goal. But when the Java application has to deal with system calls, advanced graphics, sound etc., then the issues start popping up. Speaking of different implementations, IcedTea is a good example. Sun did not have the sole ownership of the Java code, so some parts of Java could not be open sourced. RedHat implemented the parts that could not be open sourced. And this became IcedTea. So IcedTea is a JVM that is different from Oracle's stock JVM.
24 • OpenSuse - Currently Fastest Linux? (by Bob on 2012-09-10 18:12:41 GMT from Austria)
Haven't installed it yet, but judging from feedbacks this one might be as good as it gets. Fewer complaints regarding stability as compared to previous versions. Any related comments appreciated... Tks.
25 • @23 (by Jordan on 2012-09-10 18:29:57 GMT from United States)
Man that info about why java was created is good to know, to say the least. I had no clue! Thank you.
Some of us are pretty dopey about all this.. just wanting to move off the Microsoft stream and stay with linux. :)
26 • 23 continued (by corneliu on 2012-09-10 18:33:18 GMT from Canada)
What I meant with RedHat was that Sun could not open source all Java bits, so RedHat came up with the missing parts in order to have a completely open source JVM.
re 24. Not sure about Suse's speed, all distros have about the same speed but for sure the best KDE integration. And the Suse Studio is amazing. I wish Fedora had something like that.
27 • Java (by Jesse on 2012-09-10 18:33:38 GMT from Canada)
>> "Not true. There are different Java Virtual Machines, one for each operating system. All these JVMs implement the same interface but they implement it differently. "
That is exactly what I was saying. The whole point of using Java is to provide a consistent interface across multiple platforms. If a site's code isn't working properly across OSes then their is either something quite wrong with their code or with the installation on the client's machine (buggy version, out of date version, not integrated with the browser...)
28 • re 27 Java and Suse (by corneliu on 2012-09-10 18:48:56 GMT from Canada)
OK, I didn't want to offend you, I just wanted to highlight that even properly coded applications can misbehave due to the JVM. I had this idea, If you plan a Suse review, I think it would be nice to review the Suse Studio instead of a regular Suse install.
29 • CLI Review (by Rick on 2012-09-10 19:16:43 GMT from United States)
Thanks Jesse for that review. I am greatful for any additional knowledge about using the terminal effectively.
And Thanks to Joe H for the pdf link. (I actually became engrossed in reading it before I realized I was still online taking care of some other projects!)
30 • APT vs YUM (by SilentSam on 2012-09-10 20:07:06 GMT from Canada)
I've ran across RPM dependency hell before, but that was due to the number of 3rd party repositories I had added to YUM in attempts to make my Fedora far less free (and therefore more productive for me). I honestly think that RPM / YUM get a bad rap because of the lack of certain packages in the main Fedora repos, thus sending people to 3rd party repositories for their non-free needs.
In Fedora the SELinux defaults bothered me far more than YUM ever did, plus I thought Yumex was pretty spectacular once installed.
31 • ZDNet Goobuntu article (by René on 2012-09-10 21:11:48 GMT from Anonymous Proxy)
Perhaps it was not his intention, but it read as if Thomas Bushnell was comparing APT to RPM, rather than comparing dpkg to RPM or comparing APT to Yum or Zypper.
32 • @13: Evergreen 11.4 (by cba on 2012-09-10 21:21:41 GMT from Germany)
Yes, Evergreen 11.4 support is slowly beginning: http://lists.rosenauer.org/pipermail/evergreen/2012-September/thread.html openSUSE really needs an Ubuntu-like LTS release and this time they will try to accomplish this goal with openSUSE 11.4. Evergreen 11.1 went out of support after around three years, but openSUSE 11.2 ist still supported by Evergreen. So 11.4 is number three. Moreover, it is planned to use the SLES 11 SP2 3.0 kernel in Evergreen 11.4 (this SLES kernel is freely available in OBS). First tests showed that this SuSE kernel works flawlessly with openSUSE 11.4.
33 • yum and selinux (by corneliu on 2012-09-10 21:33:05 GMT from Canada)
Yum seems very polished to me. For example if I have an rpm already installed and I update, it doesn't download the whole rpm. It checks which bits of the old rpm have changed, then it downloads only the different bits and rebuilds the old rpm with the new rpm. This is really nice for bandwidth, especially if you have a bad internet connection. Does apt or any other package manager do that? I don't know much about security, but if I am behind the firewall of the router, what's the point in having selinux running? To me selinux seems more annoying than helpful. Am I wrong?
34 • @33 (by cba on 2012-09-10 21:56:57 GMT from Germany)
Yes, you are totally wrong, but only with regard to servers. :-) And remember, security is not only a firewall, it is a whole security concept, and therefore, your strategy to physically separate the firewall (on your router) from the desktop system it protects, is a very important step towards better security. So, yes, disable it on your desktop, when selinux is really "annoying". But I do not recommend it. Another strategy would be to ask Nvidia and Google and game developers to make their software fully compatible with selinux. If "selinux" begins to pop up and shows you "problems", these are real. It is no joke.
35 • @33 (by René on 2012-09-10 22:18:36 GMT from Germany)
You are speaking of DeltaRPM support. This is achieved with Yum via the presto plugin (Yum's extensibility via plugins is great). The fastestmirror plugin can also speed up the downloading process. These plugins are available for RHEL derivatives as well.
openSUSE/SUSE's package manager supports DeltaRPM functionality as well.
36 • RPM and DEB (by TobiSGD on 2012-09-10 22:55:10 GMT from Germany)
It seems to really be confusing for people to differentiate between the package formats (RPM and DEB) and the package management systems (APT, yum, zypper, ...). Things like delta support for downloads are neither advantages of RPM nor DEB, they are advantages of the package management systems (I don't know about zypper, but both yum, via plugin, and APT, via debdelta, support this). I don't know why a developer does make such a mistake like comparing APT to RPM, but it does simply not work this way (have a look at PCLinuxOS, RPM packages with APT package management).
Anyways, since we all know that the best package management is that from Slackware discussions like that are not really worth the time.
37 • slackware package management (by jon on 2012-09-11 01:46:49 GMT from United States)
#36 "Anyways, since we all know that the best package management is that from Slackware discussions like that are not really worth the time"
What evidence do you offer to back up this rather bold statement?
38 • Voyager 12.04 and honesty (by Sven on 2012-09-11 01:52:07 GMT from Sweden)
Voyager 12.04 is based on Xubuntu and was released in May 2012. It is one of the best Xubuntu derivatives around, much better and faster than Mint XFCE for example. The most interesting fact of this distro is that it asks for donations, but not for its developer, but for Xubuntu!
That's honesty! The developer likes Xubuntu enough to make a derivative out of it and asks his users to donate to Xubuntu! All others ask for themselves. He is a Frenchman.
39 • apt vs. yum (by Kevin Burrus on 2012-09-11 01:57:13 GMT from United States)
I agree with the second comments listed above by Sergio. Thomas Bushnell of Google is just being fancy for the article but no way apt is "light years ahead" of rpm. I use both Ubuntu and Fedora and openSUSE on the same machine and I've used Debian many times. Apt and all its variations, especially, aptitude is supreme over all, but Yum comes in a close second. Also, Zypper with openSUSE is just as good if not better than yum as well, or at least its more user friendly in my opinion. But now with Yum-Extender, yum is comparatively equal to its Debian counterpart. Kudos to the developer of Aptitude because that application alone is phenomenal in its dependency resolution, especially when doing distribution upgrades within Alpha or Beta phases (in a safe manner).
I rarely comment here on Distrowatch but the hyperbole of the Google guy's comment just bugged me enough to get that off my chest. Thanks.
40 • @37 (by TobiSGD on 2012-09-11 02:02:27 GMT from Germany)
"What evidence do you offer to back up this rather bold statement?"
Damn it, I forgot to add a smiley to that statement. But it is rather simple, at least for me: No dependency resolving, therefore no problems with meta-packages and such crap, a really simple package format and a straight-forward package management system. Have a look at the package format and the tools to manipulate packages (makepkg, installpkg, upgradepkg and explodepkg), hard to get more KISS than that.
41 • CLI, yum/apt, SELinux, openSUSE 12.2 (by Caitlyn Maritn on 2012-09-11 03:17:11 GMT from United States)
First, nice to see a review of an up-to-date command line reference. The one I've had on my shelf for years is "Linux System Commands" by Patrick Volkerding and Kevin Reichard, which is excellent but is getting to be a bit dated. Oh, almost everything in there is still accurate but newer technologies like SELinux just aren't covered.
SELinux is really vital security nowadays. It's also really not nearly as hard to learn as people think. Here's a tip: instead of disabling it set it to permissive mode. That way SELinux will block absolutely nothing but log everything. Take the resulting log, which will show you how SELinux reacts to your typical use of your system, and build your policy from that. The end result is that you'll have a policy which won't get in the way of your work but which will stop an intruder from doing things to your system.
Finally, the whole yum vs. apt or rpm vs. deb debate is a bit silly to me. Both are excellent, mature, well maintained package formats and packaging systems. Both work extremely well. Neither is immune from "dependency hell" if the repository maintainers and/or packagers do their job poorly. In practice "dependency hell" has all but disappeared in any case.
#30: The way to avoid conflicts when using multiple repositories is to install the yum-priorities plugin and to rank your repositories. That will eliminate conflicts and generally prevent any dependency issues. I use it on both servers and workstations and it really does help.
#5: Good quote. I'll point to delta rpms and to the ability to rebuild an srpm for a different environment as two real time savers available in rpm based systems with no real Debian equivalent last time I checked. That isn't a negative reflection on Debian packages, but it does show that for an experienced systems administrator there are some really nice tools in the rpm system. I personally really like the way you can basically put everything you need to determine how an rpm is built in a single spec file.
Having said all of that, I've also built Debian and Slackware packages and there is nothing at all wrong with either of those systems. Slackware packaging, even with Slackware Apt (slapt-get, gslapt, slapt-notifier) added and dependency checking added, which is commonly done in most Slackware derivatives, is relative feature poor. However, it works very quickly and very reliably.
Finally, I'm just starting to play with openSUSE 12.2 as I will be working in a SLES/SLED shop most of the time starting next month. So far this looks like a very good release.
42 • @13 openSUSE on R61 (by LAZA on 2012-09-11 05:49:20 GMT from Germany)
I did an fresh installation of Edubuntu 12.04.1 on my R61 for my wife to do some homework for tutoring here students and it works great (even Edubuntu is very bloated vs. Xubuntu). So try this and get free three extra years out of the old ThinkPad!
43 • openSUSE 12.2 (by zykoda on 2012-09-11 11:46:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Installed from a downloaded and burned i586 DVD (#8 mentions i686 but I did not find that!). onto an older 1GB RAM AMD sempron 2500+ with many distros on board. Tried to Chainload the root partiton resident GRUB2 boot loader from the primary Debian etch GRUB MBR...result MBR stage1 cleaned to zero. Reloading Etch GRUB stage1 (446 bytes) retrieved the situation and ability to multiboot/chainload again. Found the install quite slow and the KDE desktop positively sluggish with the OOTB settings. Things much crisper without all the superfluous bling. Yast is showing its age. Without some fresh input I see openSUSE in decline and fit for retirement. SUSE 8.0 was my intial distro which has sslloowwllyy evolved into 12.2. Alternative DE not tried yet. MMMV.
44 • Fishing for Complements for Slackware! (by Transform Humanity on 2012-09-11 13:21:59 GMT from India)
@36 Slackware doesn't need you to be fishing for complements for them! ... at least not this way.
45 • @44 (by TobiSGD on 2012-09-11 19:40:01 GMT from Germany)
Nice that you know what Slackware needs and that you are obviously the compliment police. May be the next time try not to tell people what to like and what not, also may be next time ask yourself about humorous or ironic comments.
46 • SElinux and such. (by Anonymous Coward on 2012-09-11 22:57:20 GMT from Spain)
I don't really like SElinux, as it seems to me too complicated for what it offers. I think OpenBSD maniacs have a point when they say that, when such security solutions get in the way and are designed as an addon, your admins are more likely to turn them off than not. Of course, using default policies or pre-designed ones is easy, but building your owns is a pain. I find the documentation for doing so sucks.
I tend to favor GRsecurity, because it comes with PAX (which includes proteccions against common buffer attacks) and is damn_easy to set up. I have heard good words for other solutions too.
However, these solutions are designed as afterthoughts and are not natural to use, or over-complicate the administration of the system in not-so-complex scenarios. You have to test the systems far better to find out if your security measures are thrashing the running software. A (very) bad SElinux/GRsecurity/RSBAC/whatever policy is likely to DoS your system more quckly than any platform of Vigilante Cyberwarriors.
47 • Added security (by Jesse on 2012-09-12 11:07:54 GMT from Canada)
I tend to agree with post 46. SELinux has a few problems. One being that it feels like a bandage rather than a fix. The other being that it is such a pain to learn and use compared with other security solutions. Which is why people tend to turn it off rather than trouble-shoot it. I've heard it argued that SELinux is more powerful than, say, Apparmor, but the latter is so much easier to learn and set up that, for most people, it's a much more attractive solution.
48 • Java issues (by BluPhoenyx on 2012-09-12 16:13:11 GMT from United States)
Another option for those willing to put in a bit of effort. Use WINE with a Windows based browser/java combo. Once it's up and running there should be little need to change things. If necessary you could keep different setups available for different sites which offers some minimal security if each setup is in it's own WINE configuration/drive/etc...
Cheers, Mike T
49 • @13 VAIO laptop from 2004 (by AliasMarlowe on 2012-09-12 21:05:55 GMT from Finland)
I suspect the problem is with Suse or the laptop rather than with the kernel itself. I'm posting this from an 8-year-old Sony VAIO VGN-A117S laptop, which is running fine with Xubuntu 12.04 and it has never had an issue with updates. It started its Linux career with Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary" which was replaced by a beta of Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy" on which everything worked well enough that its XP partition was removed. It has been regularly updated ever since, but sticking to LTS releases since 10.04, along with our other PCs and newer laptop.
50 • mepis (by Mac on 2012-09-13 00:10:15 GMT from United States)
Welcome back to my hard drive mepis 12 b2 looks good to me and thanks for all the hard work.
Have fun Mack
51 • openSUSE 12.2 - WOW fast! (by Andy Prough on 2012-09-13 01:04:28 GMT from United States)
This distro is just flying. This is really amazing to watch. I'm running it on a dual-core laptop with 4 GB of ram - about 2 years old.
52 • @51 Flying vs. flying (by Microlinux on 2012-09-13 08:55:42 GMT from France)
If you consider "two years old" is "old" and "4 GB of RAM" is "low RAM", you should take a peek at my standard desktop (Slackware 13.37 + Xfce 4.8.3 + tons of addons) running on a ten-year-old Pentium IV 1.0 GHz with 512 MB RAM. My battered Panasonic Toughbook has roughly the same specs, and I use it daily for work, with the same setup. You'd be surprised, I guess.
53 • @51 (by tim_c. on 2012-09-13 11:22:53 GMT from Germany)
openSUSE 12.2 flies also on my old PIV computer, in contrast to other Distros like Debian Wheezy and also in contrast to older openSUSEs. So it is very obvious that openSUSE "optimized" something. But what software part? Maybe the Glibc? What tweaks does openSUSE 12.2 use?
54 • @52 (by Andy Prough on 2012-09-13 13:11:40 GMT from United States)
I don't doubt that you can get Slackware+xfce optimized to run really well on your system. If I wanted to run something light and fast, I would prefer xfce also. But I'm shocked at how fast openSUSE+KDE is - this should be an absolute resource hog.
55 • @51,52,53,54 (by notsure on 2012-09-13 13:16:22 GMT from United States)
I don't use opensuse, but my guess is they are using a recent (4.8+) KDE, which is probably your main reason for flight.
56 • Bodhi (by Jimmy Carl Black on 2012-09-14 02:20:08 GMT from Germany)
> Jeff Hoogland has announced the release of Bodhi Linux 2.1.0, the latest > update of the Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Enlightenment 17 > desktop: "I'm happy to release to everyone our first scheduled update > of Bodhi Linux's 2.x.y branch - version 2.1.0.
I'm glad some development teams still use the phrase "I'm happy" or "We're happy" instead of "I'm proud" or "We're proud" when they're announcing a new release of their GNU/Linux distribution. Happiness is a much nicer sentiment than pride.
57 • @56 happy happy joy joy (by Jordan on 2012-09-14 16:57:30 GMT from United States)
Oh I agree. And if the dev is happy to help others with his distro, then people who feel "proud" to help others and say so might stop and think about why they're so proud. Of course one can be happy and proud at the same time. :oD
Meanwhile, I'm fixing to burn the Bodhi image and give it a go.. I miss the whole Enlightenment scheme and admit to not enjoying the new KDE that much anymore. Don't want to judge them all but even Gnome leaves something to be desired imo.
58 • @55 (by tim_c. on 2012-09-14 21:19:05 GMT from Germany)
No, openSUSE 12.2 could not fly if I would use KDE4 on this old PIV machine. I am still using KDE 3.5.10. openSUSE 12.2 is fast, but it is obviously not a "miracle", openSUSE did something every other distro could do also, new glibc, new kernel, some tweaks for a better desktop experience. But it is a real surpise.
59 • SuSe 12.2 (by Jordan on 2012-09-15 01:27:43 GMT from United States)
It is fast, but error messages when opening "my computer" and sometimes Yast. I did another install and the same stuff.. hmm.. hardware? This is a new HP Pavilion m7. The same install disk works better on my old Toshiba Satellite.
Well, I'm going to stick with it and put the Bodhi on the Toshiba. I like the "big" distro on this one; I'm going to read in the SuSe forums .. it is a very "substantial" feeling distro this SuSe. Big areas of configuration, etc.
I'll mess around with Enlightenment on the smaller laptop.
60 • @59 (by cba on 2012-09-15 21:29:49 GMT from Germany)
By the way, there are OBS repos with E17 for openSUSE 12.2: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/Enlightenment:/Nightly/openSUSE_12.2/ It is quite stable and very lightweight and it will be released very soon.
Yast is a very powerful configuration tool which is available in every desktop environment, even on the command line. You can even configure e.g. an old serial mouse with it without knowing anything deeper about the Linux system. Yast is very valuable if something goes wrong.
The only "not so good thing" with openSUSE is that it is not "company-independent" like Debian, it is more like an upstream distro solely for SLES/SLED, although it is completely free. But maybe this will change in the future. The real good thing is that Attachmate decided a little time ago to let their engineers in Nuremberg work on their own unaffected by company decisions of people who do not really know free software.
61 • other e17 opensuse repositories worth mentioning (by RollMeAway on 2012-09-15 23:53:04 GMT from United States)
From the above link, go to "Parent Directory" (one level up), to discover e17 for other distros and older versions. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/Enlightenment:/Nightly/
Note: the entries appear OK for rpm based distros, but all deb based are incomplete. I can verify the Fedora_17 version worked.
62 • Important:Sabayon wiki (by Sven on 2012-09-16 04:50:13 GMT from Sweden)
A very interesting matter, mentioned in the Sabayon Wiki;
Reverse dependencies
Gentoo Reverse dependencies are a major drawback of Gentoo's current portage implementation: It does not take care of them at all at the moment. This means that you can uninstall packages needed by others without being warned about it. E.g. you can remove the x server package without portage warning you that kde (which you have installed as well) depends on it. This way you can actually break your entire system (e.g. by removing glibc).
Debian In Debian, reverse dependencies are taken care of by dpkg.
Arch Linux Also automatically removed when needed.
Looks like using Debian and its derivatives is safer for the users.
63 • Re: 62 • Important (...) (by Anon on 2012-09-16 13:51:13 GMT from Norway)
Sven wrote: "Arch Linux Also automatically removed when needed."
Not sure how to interprete that, but trying to uninstall (remove) glibc from my Arch system, I get:
[root@Adm /]# pacman -R glibc checking dependencies... error: could not prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies) --> then a (very) long list of dependencies follows, ending in a new prompt.
Whatever you meant to say, there is NO automatic removal of needed dependencies in ArchLinux. The admin gets, not simply a warning, but an error message and the transaction is NOT carried out. This goes for ANY package needed by other packages.
If I misunderstood and you meant to say something else, my apologies.
64 • dangerous package removing (dependencies)... (by Jordan on 2012-09-16 15:58:00 GMT from United States)
Re post #62 about the reverse dependencies and the dangers of wrecking your system, it's about removal of packages. But then the word "safe" is used as if Debian based distros (the slowest in many cases I've noticed) can't be rendered insane by removing packages.
That would have produced a huge number of complainers using non-Debian distros.. I can't find much searching around. Perhaps some will speak up.
65 • Sabayon ATI video problem (by Roland on 2012-09-16 20:10:16 GMT from United States)
Booted Sabayon_Linux_10_amd64_Xfce.iso from thumbdrive, no problems, got audio working. Installed, booted, screen was a total mess. Reboot didn't help. Sabayon forums show quite a bit of that sort of thing. ATI HD3000 video controller on motherboard, it isn't that old or unusual. Beware!
66 • What's up with gnome 3 / Unity ? (by G-Linux on 2012-09-16 20:25:34 GMT from Canada)
What's up with gnome 3 / Unity ?
A LOT of people disagree the way Gnome 3 and Unity are developed and they just don't LIKE IT !
Even FEDORA that was a PURE Gnome Distro for many years, become to offer KDE desktop more and more in they new release...strange, isn't it !
The fact is that : Mint work on a project to build his own gnome 2 like (call ???) Mate desktop already exist Cinnamon already exit XFCE already exist ( very close to gnome 2 )
Gnome 3 / Unity are more like toys instead of a real desktops. (Some administrative or preferences options are missing)
So that's why MANY Gnome2 users switch to XFCE / MATE or EVEN KDE4 !
Not because Gnome3 / Unity and so on, are huge in RAM (Kde4 is huge anyway) , but just because they are not reliable for all days use.
So, Gnome / Unity... WAKE UP...or like Mandriva , die and let's develloper try a solution FOR YOU...If you cannot !
I am and ex-Gnome2 users now using KDE4 and MATE (a have 3 computers at home) and I'm very happy with them , beleive me !
KDE 4 is especially intelligent the way each desktop has his own menu !
If you reply to tis message :
1) Know what you're talking about (I builld some Linux from Scratch or sometime use Slakckware), so be a REAL Linux user.
2) Have at least a couple of years of experience with Linux (Like to know developer's and experienced Linux user opinions)
3) If you're newer from Windows, PLEASE, don't reply, you just don't know what you are talking 'bout, because you're certainly use Ubunutu or Ubuntu based Distro !
For the others , be patient, the good old Linux days will come back ... I hope !
Ciao !
Number of Comments: 66
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